Greetings from Magrathea

Times have changed a little bit. When I started gaming in the Greyhawk universe, the tradition was to have a huge world mapped out. Sandbox games, as it were. But, here's the thing. My cousin and I ran a fairly long campaign in the Greyhawk universe. The map had two sections to it, east and west. West had Iuz, Horned Kingdom, Dreadwood, the various kingdoms of Ulek, Wild Coast, all these wonderful places where our characters fought and killed. East had ... well, I'm not really sure. Greyhawk was somewhere in the middle, if I recall, perhaps a bit to the east. But, we never really actually got to the eastern part of the map. I don't think we ever took the second part of the map out.

Oh, I did need to look up the names to refresh my memory. Looking at the ful map, we did encounter monks from the Scarlet Brotherhood. And I remember Nyr Dyv, but only because it sounded Cymry. And Cymry is cool.

Now, I have two theories. The first theory is that the fact that even though we never crossed that line from West to East, we still benefited from all that extra information. We had some idea that there was "those kingdoms over there." It was all part of the gestalt and added to the atmosphere of the game. It gave us the freedom to say, "lets pick up camp and travel," even though we never did.

The second theory is the first theory is crap.

This column focuses on world building, a la Greyhawk, Eberron, Star Frontiers (for many worlds ... universe building?), etc. I realize that this is out of vogue — modern games are into collaborative storytelling (Apocalypse World) or generic settings (D&D 4th edition). Assuming the second theory is more accurate, why should we build entire worlds upfront? Why should we build a Greyhawk world when Greyhawk city might suffice? Let me list the reasons why knowing how to build a world helps.

• It opens up some options. This happened in the latest game I'm running. The world it took place in has about six different cultures, ranging from metropolis city-dwellers to Victorian age denizens to tribal. One of the players said, "I'd like to play a healer, someone in tune with nature." Well, just so happens that one of the cultures was a druidic-elvish-cultish mashup. Not only did it create a background, but it asked some questions of the player — did he stay with the culture, did he try to get away, etc. Just like limiting yourself to seventeen syllables or 140 characters makes you create a transdencant poem or witty phrase, the limitations that come with an existing structure can force you to go into directions you wouldn't normally go, ask questions you normally wouldn't ask, and try new things.
• It's fun in of itself. Now, this is truly a matter of opinion. But, part of why I got into gaming is because I like creating things. And a world is a cool thing to build.
• It gives you a better framework for improvisation. This is, to me, the biggest plus. I quote master storyteller Lawrence Block, from The Liar's Bible. "Chekov wrote somewhere that the writer should know everything about his characters — their net work, their shoe size, their medical history, and so on. It doesn't matter that none of this data may be passed along to the reader. The writer knows it, and hence perceives the character more completely, and thus writes out a fuller sense of the person." And this goes for double in role-playing games. Players are going to do things you don't plan for. By building worlds and knowing what's going on behind the curtain, you can react when the players decide they want to see what's going on behind the curtain. The cardinal rule in improv is "don't say ëno'." If you can think on your feet fast enough, you don't need to say no.

And here are the reasons why you shouldn't "build big" (unless of course, you and your group go for this):

• You want to railroad players. If you build the world, you may want to use all the bits. And players have a tendency to do things you don't expect them to do. Run with it. Remember, you're playing a game, not authoring a story.
• You want to stifle creativity. There's a fine line between "meeting the game expectations" and "everything is my way." You don't want to run a serious medieval fantasy game and a player names his character "Stuffy McButt." At the same time, sometimes a player wants to build something not part of your world. You can use the Same Page tool to decide who does what.
• It makes the game "not fun." It all ends with this. If you or your players are not having fun, then think about changing things. Something I'd highly recommend is the Same Page tool. Basically, it makes sure that you are playing the same game that everyone else is wanting to play. Handy thing, that.

Next article is the "how" on the building process in a general sense. The articles after that are going to focus on ecology, linguistics, geology, and other sciences on how to build a world, focused from a GM's perspective. Because columns are fun to build, too. And I guess I should show my bonafides. I've been gaming for quite a while, and been GMing almost as long. I've build three worlds: one a city and surroundings, one a sci-fi style set of worlds, and one an Illuminati University-style campus ("what does the O in IOU stand for? No one knows.") The last one is the setting in my latest story, Virtual Campus. Yes, I encourage you to read it. Yes, this is a shameless plug.

And yes, I will be talking about trees.