A few game sessions ago, I was struggling with how to continue the campaign after the players ran through Death Frost Doom. I thought that I had to think up every possible scenario that they would choose to deal with the consequences of their actions, and it kind of freaked me out and paralyzed me as a GM. They (the players) kept pestering me to continue the campaign, so I threw up my hands, wrote 5 bullet pointed sentences, and the game continued in what they all said was awesome and amazing.
What I took from this was that planning for every possible eventuality is fruitless, stressful, and not fun.
I also took from it that letting the players discover the game world was a lot easier and fun than me designing it.
What I mean by that (I'm five Christmas Ales in right now, so please forgive me), is that I stopped attempting to define and map the game world, and instead let the players go where ever they wanted.
In this case, they wanted to escape the area and head to the nearest big city.
So on the fly I made up a city (using Vornheim) and that was that.
There is no world map. There is no lunar calendar. There is no tectonic plate system. There is no system of weather patterns. All of which I was told are "necessary" to make a game world.
The point being; less is more.
By creating less detail in the gigantic background that no one cares about, I can put more emphasis on the here and now, while giving the players more, and I hate this term, agency.
I'm spending more time on picking up on what the players want, rather than forcing them to adhere to a preconceived timeline or geographic map. In layman's terms; less railroad, more explore.
Certain things are going on in the background, of course. Every event put into motion since the first session is still happening. And as the players explore the world, I keep track of where they've been and the geographic relations between those places.
But, I'm making the world backwards from how I'm "supposed" to make it. I'm not planning ahead beyond the next adventure. Even then, I'm hardly even planning the next adventure, just planning off whatever hook they go for on the current adventure.
And the players don't care and don't notice. And my job is a lot easier and more fun this way.
I'm the first to admit that this won't work for everyone, maybe even most people. But for me it does. I can't draw a map to save my life. I know that anything I plan will be fucked because the players will inevitably do something completely the opposite of what I plan. And world building, to me, is boring and time consuming.
I don't even have a name for the planet, simply because no one has ever bothered to ask. When/if they do, I'll just make something up on the spot.
Is this gonzo world building?
What I took from this was that planning for every possible eventuality is fruitless, stressful, and not fun.
I also took from it that letting the players discover the game world was a lot easier and fun than me designing it.
What I mean by that (I'm five Christmas Ales in right now, so please forgive me), is that I stopped attempting to define and map the game world, and instead let the players go where ever they wanted.
In this case, they wanted to escape the area and head to the nearest big city.
So on the fly I made up a city (using Vornheim) and that was that.
There is no world map. There is no lunar calendar. There is no tectonic plate system. There is no system of weather patterns. All of which I was told are "necessary" to make a game world.
The point being; less is more.
By creating less detail in the gigantic background that no one cares about, I can put more emphasis on the here and now, while giving the players more, and I hate this term, agency.
I'm spending more time on picking up on what the players want, rather than forcing them to adhere to a preconceived timeline or geographic map. In layman's terms; less railroad, more explore.
Certain things are going on in the background, of course. Every event put into motion since the first session is still happening. And as the players explore the world, I keep track of where they've been and the geographic relations between those places.
But, I'm making the world backwards from how I'm "supposed" to make it. I'm not planning ahead beyond the next adventure. Even then, I'm hardly even planning the next adventure, just planning off whatever hook they go for on the current adventure.
And the players don't care and don't notice. And my job is a lot easier and more fun this way.
I'm the first to admit that this won't work for everyone, maybe even most people. But for me it does. I can't draw a map to save my life. I know that anything I plan will be fucked because the players will inevitably do something completely the opposite of what I plan. And world building, to me, is boring and time consuming.
I don't even have a name for the planet, simply because no one has ever bothered to ask. When/if they do, I'll just make something up on the spot.
Is this gonzo world building?
Gonzo world building
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