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World design, block by block
By Emily K. Dresner-Thornber
I'm sitting on the floor before a big plastic tub of
LEGO. The tub is about two feet high and four feet across.
It's clear-ish in that way plastic tubs are universally
clear-ish. It holds several thousand assorted bricks. Instructions
are lost to the whims of time.
Today, although I am thirty years old, I am going to build
something neat.
I have two choices, two predestined paths before I thrust
my hands into the giant bin and pull out heaps and heaps of
small plastic pieces.
The first path is the path of Zen. I grab several bricks
and click them together in a logical way. What begins as a
bit of a house with some walls becomes a house on large, ponderous
wheels and pairs of small LEGO anti-aircraft machine guns
on a hinged roof. Inside, tuxedoed minifigs carrying trays
of hors d'oerves serve fighting pirates ready to fight
all the other giant wheeled armed houses of the post-apocalyptic
basement floor. It's the Mad Max of LEGO, Beyond the
LEGODome, a nightmarish conflagration of pieces and parts
bringing a vision to life.
The second path is the path of Meditation. I sort and shift
the pieces before me into categories and parts and groups
of color. I ponder the numbers of wheels and wings and parts
of appropriate size and build. And then, I come up with a
Grand Scheme, a super plan bringing all my LEGO dreams to
fruition. I cackle. Perhaps I even model my plan on my renderer
on my computer, and have it spit out step-by-step instructions.
(I have software that does this precise thing.) Once I have
fiddled and changed and edited and planned, I build. What
I build is complicated and difficult and uses many fiddly
parts. The end result is perfection: a fully motorized minifig
death machine, destined for small plastic doom. Days of work,
and it stands before me, great and proud.
Some say the first path is more fun, but the second path
is more satisfying.
RPG building blocks
Role-playing games aren't actually LEGO blocks--there
are no plastic bits to leave on the carpet for unsuspecting
toes. But building games is not unlike building the grand
machine of plastic death. In the universe of actual World
Building, two approaches come to the fore: start at the very
center and work out, or start out and work in. This is the
"Bottom-Up" approach versus the "Top-Down"
approach, respectively.
The most common method of constructing a world by game masters
is the "bottom-up" approach. The game master (or
designer or what have you) is faced with a collection of objects--characters,
NPCs, villains, objects, maps, monsters, etc. Some he swipes
from other game systems. Others, he makes up out of whole
cloth. He starts at a small place: a village, a house, a small
dungeon. The game begins with the handful of people, places
and things. Everything outside this small area is grayed out--yet
to be explored. Yet, it exists by consensus.
As the game progresses, and the game master adds to the world,
he tacks on new parts helter-skelter. Even the best-organized
game master spontaneously generates bits of inconsistency,
spawning the well known "That's not quite right--didn't
we meet this guy in another form last week?" effect.
It is the weaving and interweaving of characters and places
where some earlier details are forgotten. Some parts of the
world become disjointed. Notes are lost. Bits of potato chips
collect on the floor.
A town here, a dungeon there ... for most games, it's
perfectly fine. Especially if the game is short, or limited
in scope, or segues into a well-documented area, like published
and canned material. But some games turn into a large wheeled
monstrosity with anti-aircraft guns on the roof. The game
lacks proper scope--not knowing the great outdoors until
we all venture outside and are promptly eaten by bears.
Think big
The other approach is considerably more difficult and time
consuming. It's also what we, the great unwashed gaming
populace, pay for at the game store. Starting from absolute
scratch, or using some ready-but-unusual resources, the game
master assesses the entire world, starts from the outside
and works in. He envisions an entire world, and populates
it with people, items, places, things, history, and politics
in smaller and smaller circles before the players even sit
down to create their characters. The result is a very detailed
playground.
Starting from a clean slate, a game master asks, "What
do I want in my world?" And then he starts writing (or
indexing or populating a database), and does a little research
to fill in the areas that need a little coloring in.
The easiest way to do top-to-bottom world building approach
is to ask several questions and write down the actual answers.
For example:
Setting: Can I imagine a world full of countries and
populate it with races of the correct genre and feeling? Can
I describe my setting in a few sentences without referring
to specifics? What is my world, precisely?
Geography: How do my countries look? Do they bump
against each other? Do they have giant mountain ranges as
boundaries, or immense rivers of blood? Cartography software
or fractal generator software is useful for generating a country,
a continent or a world. It generates random, natural looking
land with rivers and other physical features to lay out boundaries.
History: Now that I can see my world visually before
me and infer some political boundaries. Which groups have
been at war? Which are allied? Which shares resources? How
has the lay of the land contributed to the history? Imagine
the history of the world in chunks: 10,000 years ago, 1000
years ago, 100 years ago, last year, last month. Imagine the
phases of change over time. Have they always hated each other?
Who populated these lands when, and why?
Religion: What do the people believe? Is there one
god? Many? Do they believe in the ultimate coming of some
evil or an uncaring God from beyond understanding? Is existentialism
the reigning philosophy? Who believes what, and why do they
believe it? Religion can tie very neatly into history--defining
changing political boundaries, the backing of holy wars, and
millennia-old racial tensions.
Politics: With the political boundaries of countries
and their religions, what kind of governments do these countries
have? Are they theocracies? Are they ruled by iron-fisted
kings who repress their people and push forward the dogs of
war? Are they constitutional monarchies with the state held
in careful political balance of secret infighting and collusions
across borders? Is the entire world descending into post-apocalyptic
anarchy?
Dramatis Personae: With a setting, countries, a history,
religions, and the political landscape, the world needs important
people--movers and shakers the players might or might
not care about. Build convincing non-player characters, give
them histories and motivations of their own, and let them
go.
The above points collude to an Earth-like fantasy world,
although it works with some modifications with everything
from Steampunk to the Ancient World to Space Opera. And to
show how this works, here is a small, mostly incomplete example.
This old house
Instead of starting from a more difficult point--designing
a universe, or a world, or a country--let's start
with something simple.
Imagine a house.
I start with the setting. Then I add the political dynamics,
and flesh out some of the history. Now, with three simple
steps I have where, who, and why for any game I wish to set.
The world is bounded by the house. While theoretically there
is a road and it leads to a town and the town has people,
it's not interesting to the story, and therefore does
not exist.
Setting: A House out in the woods, slightly smaller
than a rambling Victorian mansion, yet too large to be a generic
split-level ranch. It's one of those big, named houses
crumbling off some forgotten lane, a heaping relic of a forgotten
time. Behind the house are some untended, overgrown rose gardens
and a small creek. Down the lane a ways is civilization.
Geography: The House is a large, multi-level affair
built in a much earlier time with large banisters and dark
corners. It's complete with a basement, a large formal
dining room, several bedrooms upstairs, and an attic. Who
knows what's in the attic? Old, forgotten servant and
slave chambers are off the large kitchen.
Everything in the House smacks of age, growth, and mold.
It's old. Old as the gnarled trees outside the windows.
Old as the day and the night.
Outside are a small creek and a giant rose garden. Down by
the creek is a small family graveyard. All is overgrown with
ivy and time.
That which is beyond the house does not matter. While there
is a road and some people come in and some people leave as
needed, there is never any reason to follow the road to some
other world--or at least not desired. Why would you ever
leave the protection of the House?
Politics: The House is run by the Grand Matron of
the House, old Theodosia. She holds the household in an iron
grip, supported by her sister, Henrietta. After this come
the aunts and uncles and children populating the House like
rats--and acting much the same. Sometimes new people are
brought into the House through marriage--met in some mysterious
way, arranged by old Theodosia and married into the Family.
Sometimes people just disappear.
All the rest--the uncles, the aunts, and the cousins--jockey
for Theodosia's attentions and desires through their
own internal politics. Whoever has the favor has the most
attention, and can lord over the others their control. Whoever
is out of favor may be dismissed from the protection of the
House, never to return.
History: The history of the family itself is a story of inbreeding
and murder and bloody secret ritual.
History: The history of the House goes back far beyond
Theodosia, to her grandfather, Thaddaus, an evil old man who
built the House on the time of a great confluence of powers
between the Heavens and the forgotten God Iadalath, oft referenced
in forgotten alchemical texts of the Middle Ages. He sanctified
the cornerstone of the basement with blood of those relatives
who refuse worship Iadalath in a ritual of murder and suffering,
holding up the Trimethius as his guide. After building the
House, he only allowed those who truly believed in the cult
to survive. Forthwith, it brought the family great Wealth
and Power in times of yore.
Perhaps not by murder, but terminal accidents happen within
the family with an uncomfortable frequency. Uncle Joseph's
wife Laura drowned in the creek. Aunt Marcia tragically fell
from the window of the attic. And children mysteriously died
after the conjunctions of Mars and Saturn.
Although Thaddaus is dead and buried in the graveyard by
the stream, Theodosia still lives on, practicing Thaddaus's
rituals. Those of the family who have survived through the
years have lived through currying Theodosia's favor while
remembering Thaddaus's forgotten god. The power of the
House is waning; only renewed ritual will bring it back into
power.
To Do
Flesh out the history to have a timeline so players can dig
up truth about the world as they play. Fill out the names
of the assorted uncles and aunts and determine their relationships.
Build a family tree full of inbreeding and murder. Draw a
plan of the House and the surrounding grounds.
The Game
The setting demands a creepy conspiracy game to escape the
house to the outside. Obviously, this is not a long running
game, but it has a setting, a history, and people to populate
the world with motivations and lives. The players would best
play children--grandchildren of Theodosia. Then, the game
master can relish offering up bits and pieces of their history
and the plotting of their elder relatives to keep them from
escaping the House.
We have a place (the House) for a Setting, some evil History
to expand upon, and some surrounding Geography to give the
players someplace to go and something to do. So far, no players
have created characters. But everything is ready for the players
should they play. If the game master completely fills out
the world, finishing the exercise, the players will jump him
with fewer surprises. He'll also create a richer tapestry
of game for the players to game in.
Too small, too large, just right
Certainly, in the above example, there is an outside world,
and in the top-down world creation process, if it was important
to build outside towns, we'd start with a town (containing
the House) and work in. If it was important for the characters
to travel to a city, we'd start with a state, build some
towns (one containing the House) and work in. But for this
example, the entire world is the House--and all the evil
therein. Although this may feel constraining, several books,
including Stephen King's Misery and The Shining, and
V.C. Andrew's Flowers in the Attic, have been set entirely
inside a house to great effect.
Small is good, however. Trying to build a world over-ambitiously
may mean too much work, too much scope, and not enough focus.
There is too much information to assimilate and write down,
and not enough time in the day. A large world can be built
from the top-down approach, and it's preferable for a
long-term campaign or a book. But, small is manageable. It
is just enough to chew and swallow.
Most game masters won't want to put this amount of work
and effort into a game, but a good game designer must if the
game designer is building a convincing setting or world. If
other people are to play in the big box of LEGO without the
designer standing over them and holding a whip, the world
must fit together in a way that is easy to understand and
believable.
The Realized World
One of the stumbling blocks of putting all the pieces together
in a top-down approach is to build something plausibly realistic
yet still stays within the intended theme. Staying in theme
is crucial. If a Space Opera is suddenly interrupted by warriors
from Conan breaking through the airlock because the game designer
was watching Conan The Destroyer while working on the game
world, the interruption strains the suspension of belief.
Unless the world plausibly demands, for whatever reason, that
space barbarians be a part of the world, the barbarians shouldn't
be included in the game design.
When working on a world from the top down, keep underlying
themes in mind. These include the timeframe, the races, and
the progress of scientific invention. Keep races and their
interaction in mind. If the steam engine has yet to be invented,
it should not appear in the history of the world, nor should
it suddenly be included in an invading army's arsenal
without good reason.
The final, secret trick to true top-down world building is
keeping the project in scope. The world remains believable
as long as the designer doesn't throw in everything,
and then some, into the design. Simple is best. Tempation
wags its little fingers at any game designer – the devil
himself causes fledging game designers and neophyte game masters
to see piles of neat shiny things and shove them willy-nilly
into a game where they don't belong.
The End Product
The end product is, for me, a completed LEGO abstraction
of plastic bricks. I will take a few digital photos, share
my design, and perhaps bother to tell people for a few days.
Games are much the same, although in words and concepts instead
of physical: parts and pieces carefully planned to build a
coherent whole.
If the designer does put in the work, he or she will be satisfied
in the end. The designer will walk away from the process with
a complete product in a neat package to either run a private
game or share with the greater and more wonderous world. •
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