Greetings from Magrathea

"Well, don't look at me. You're the lunatics that wanted to go through this RPG designed for historians or linguists or whatever. I just wanted to play Mechwarrior!"
—DM of the Rings I: The Copious Backstory, Shamus Young.

So, you want to build a world. Well, come on up and I'll show you how it's done. You have a few options. Like any good endeavor, you'll need to balance what you want with what works. With that in mind, here's some dials you can twiddle with.

Scope. At one extreme, the players start in a bar, and all you really know about is the bar. Once you open the door to the street, that gets created. One could say that this is the observer's solution to the extreme — nothing exists unless a player characters sees it. At the other extreme, you have my space adventure, where I outlined two dozen worlds, and said "Finis!". Well, I didn't say that. But, I would have. Anything outside those two dozen worlds was off limits. Except, not really. Even the most scoped-out area has something under the floorboards, something that can be pried open. I listed planets, but there could have been moons and space stations, something I didn't write about that a player could have taken advantage of. But, I asked my players to create characters based on those worlds, and not some space station.

You do a Google search on world building, and one of the things you encounter repeatedly is "inside out versus outside in." This is really just another way of saying, "do you want to start with a high level of scope, or low scope." If you have a high scope, it creates ready-made backgrounds for the characters and hooks for new campaigns. But, it also creates more work for the GM, and it limits future expansion of the game world. If you've said, "there are five continents," then when you add a sixth continent, it does suspend belief slightly. Low scope presents possibilities, but that's all they are ... abstract possibilities.

Note that I don't say how much is written about the worlds. That leads to ...

Detail. This is the amount of work you put into an area. Coupled with scope, this creates an elegant Punnett Square. Low scope, low detail means that there's a single place with some furniture strewn about somewhere. Maybe. Low scope, high detail means you are still limited to the bar, but you know everything about the bar — who its patrons are, what types of drinks they serve, etc. High scope, low detail means you've outlined a dozen planets, but you only have a few lines about each of them. High scope, high detail means, well, it means you've written a book.

Obviously, the more detail, the more work is involved from your perspective as a world creator. Also, more details means more the players have to absorb. Players will only take so much before their eyes start to glaze over. Some groups enjoy that level of involvement. Other groups just want to hit something and be done with it. Again, there's a social contract involved, either formal or informal.

I guess I should mention something. Scope and Detail doesn't mean "what the players know." It's what the GM knows. Players can be kept in the dark about certain details, of course.

The other aspect of this is not all areas are created equally. You probably have a high level of detail on areas your players are investigating, and perhaps a lower amount of detail in other areas. The whole "Sandbox Game" mentality suggests that things are going on outside the player's knowledge, and that suggests that you have some level of detail in areas outside the player's knowledge.

Player input. This roleplaying Stack Exchange question is a good example of fiddling with this dial. One extreme is the round-robin GM, where each player takes a shot at GMing the game and determining what the world is. Often, there's some meta-universe structure that allows this (different dimensions, magic, TORG-style multiverses). The other extreme, just as uncommon except for one-shots and conventions, is to give players the finished world, including the character's backstory and family. "I've created this world; you are here just to inhabit the characters in it." Obviously, most groups fall into somewhere in the middle. People like self-determination, and allowing them to modify their world to fit their player characters is a usually a good thing. But, this does require some level of coordination. And if two players try to modify the same culture, then you may run into problems.

Something I wanted to do with one of my games would be to have all the players create a character from different cultures. Along with them creating the character, they'd create the culture. I never did it, because the players didn't sign up for that kind of game. And I like keeping my players happy, as I'm married to one of them. As I said, know thy players.

Preexisting worlds. There are three types of preexisting worlds: off the shelf commercial worlds, premade worlds from existing campaigns, and Earth. All of these can save time and engage the players. There's some attraction to be able to say, "this takes place in the Star Wars mythos." Suddenly you don't need to go through hours or pages of backstory (assuming everyone at the table is familiar with the movies). And when I ran a Serenity campaign, each of the worlds there were sketchy enough where I could interject my own details without worrying about disrupting canon. Even the real world is vast enough where you can have some level of control without fear of contradiction. And who doesn't like re-visiting a previous campaign?

The big danger is, again, making sure everyone is playing the same game. Some folks have preconceptions of certain worlds. And these types of preconceptions, if they aren't pointed out, just lead to confusion. Also, each world comes with some baggage — there's a sense of a story, a theme, interwoven with the world. Make sure your game isn't at odds with it.

I wanted to get into detail with this series, and I realize that this is "fluff." Common sense, as it were. But, I wanted to get a framework down before delving into the details. Next column, we'll start with some basic geography. And I want to end with my shameless plug of my story, Virtual Campus. Until next month.