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Worldbuilding Tip 48: When building maps, using real-world topography can be helpful. While it can satisfy those looking for realism in the geography of a world, it can also be a great prompt for interesting story or adventure elements. Geological oddities are great places for adventures.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Happy #FreeRPGDay to all, including the aspiring Heart of the Game in Fredonia, NY! A small but distinct selection of RPGs await inside, along with a couple private game rooms. I assume I have @shawnmerwin.bsky.social to thank for finding Grim Hollow stocked there. First time in the US!

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Worldbuilding Tips will be on hiatus for the next several days while I attend Origins Game Fair. If you are attending, come say hello at the Ghostfire Gaming booth in the Dealer Hall. If you are not attending, have a great worldbuilding weekend!

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 47: Using other languages to name world elements for published material often backfires, as it is possible that someone who speaks that language will use it. If you want to avoid some awkward moments, try to create names that aren't too on the nose or embarrassing when translated.

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 46: Naming elements in your world is challenging. No name you use will be beyond someone's scorn or ridicule, so don't try to be perfect. You can, however, make them usable by being at least pronounceable. Using other languages can be dangerous (more about that tomorrow).

submitted 9 days ago • 5 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 45: If you create a history for your world, think about how it affects the current state of your world. If the historical periods you create are more exciting and evocative for stories and games than the present, set your world in that time period instead. Find the fun and use it!

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 44: If you rely on real-world elements to build a world, consider moving beyond broad tropes and expectations, especially in terms of cultural or political polemics. Explore issues in your world through unique elements, unless you are looking to create satire or social commentary.

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

Worldbuilding Tip 43: To enhance verisimilitude, use existing world elements but change key features of those elements. A vampire nation's economy runs on blood instead of precious metals or commodities. What does that economy and nation look like now? How are taxes collected and services procured?

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 42: Provide a variety of locations that perform different tasks for adventure/story creators. Some of the places must be functional, like stores and farms. Some should be ornamental, to provide color and utility. Then you can have a few oddities, which contrast with the others.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 41: Locations and other world elements shouldn't be static, even if they are shown as just a snapshot in time. Have places being built, places in the process of being brought down, and places otherwise in a state of flux. Let characters see the world is in process, not artificial.

submitted 14 days ago • 2 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 40: How do locations exemplify the action and stakes of threats to your world? If a hostile entity is taking over, what locations best show the stakes? Start with a few people in a border town, then move to the city? Or show the city fall, and then the effects on bordering areas?

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

Worldbuilding Tip 39: A farming community a day's travel from a large city should not just offer different adventuring opportunities, it should show the similarities and differences in theme, tone, and plot for your world. What are the people's commonalities and differences besides location?

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 38: Let's expand back to top-down building. After you create locations and people, you need to put them together into a larger picture. These places should contrast with and highlight each other, both smaller locations in a community and the communities within a larger region.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 37: The known and unknown are powerful tools in worldbuilding. What do characters know about people and places? What do they think they know but later learn more about? What unknown elements must they explore to overcome hurdles and achieve goals? Make use of veils and revelations.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 35: For locations in your world, ask who has the power and how they wield it. Whether global, regional, or local, whether wielded secretly or in the open, the characters will inevitably come into contact with the powerful. How that power is presented within the world drives plot.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Just $77 more dollars and we can call Grim Hollow Transformed a million dollar Kickstarter! So close! www.kickstarter.com/projects/gho...

submitted 21 days ago • 3 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 34: The type of worldbuilding I'm discussing is separate from rule or adventure design. It's about building a setting that other people will want to build rules and adventures and stories and PCs in. As such, there will always be a conflict between adding too much and too little.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 33: When building locations, leave yourself room to maneuver, but also gifts to use later. The alchemist has two assistants, but don't delve too deeply into their specifics. This allows you to use those assistants later to greater effect without being hemmed in with past details.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 32: The alchemist's large fiery cauldron described on a first visit is where the fire demons emerge months later during a fight. The alchemist's commentary on her disdain for the royalty early in the campaign comes back when she helps the PCs against the queen's fiendish plots.

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 31: When you create locations, think of their utility across different modes. The alchemist's shop where the characters buy their potions at level 1 is also the center of a story at level 5 and then an encounter location later. Foreshadow each of those on its first presentation.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Since I posted this 24 hours ago, we've gotten within $747 of topping $1M. Thanks to everyone who spread the word and joined us on the journey! I'm really excited to see the content in the hands of DMs and players, and can't wait until the Organized Play campaign launches at Gen Con this year.

submitted 26 days ago • 1 comment

Worldbuilding Tip 30: Many locations go into worldbuilding, from sites of conflict to sites of power, from places the characters will need to assist them in completing their goals to places that are fun and interesting but not necessarily vital to the overarching plot. We'll take each in order.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

With the impending release of the 2024 update to the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, Ghostfire Gaming had to decide how to move forward. Our decision was to update our flagship setting, Grim Hollow. Without knowing what the final version of the rules would look like, we established a plan.

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

Worldbuilding Tip 29: If you're creating a world to set adventures in, you want to leave space for yourself or others to tailor NPCs and locations to those adventures. If every NPC and location is fully developed and spotlighted, their stories and utility are severely limited for game masters.

submitted 27 days ago • 2 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 28b: The "one cool thing" method is a way to move through your bottom-up worldbuilding without getting bogged down. Not every NPC or place needs a full treatment, but we want to make it easy for Game Masters to present. One memorable trait or detail goes a long way to help GMs.

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 28: As you put locations and NPCs together, think about their service to the game, the stories, and the world. Use both synergy and contrast. Tropes have power, like a dwarven smith who speaks of the war they fought in. So do anomalies, like the leader who doesn't want power.

submitted 29 days ago • 1 comment

Worldbuilding Tip 26: If you find that players become intrigued with a flat character during play, you can slowly round them out to give them some depth. This deepening of a loved (or hated) character can draw the focus of other worldbuilding and storytelling elements you want to highlight.

submitted 30 days ago • 1 comment

Worldbuilding Tip 25: Do all NPCs need to be complex, robust elements in your world? No. Flat characters were defined by EM Forster as "constructed round a single idea or quality." These characters are not only useful, they are essential to delivering your world in a concise and memorable way.

submitted 31 days ago • 3 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 24: When pivoting to bottom-up focus, look at what the players/characters touch first. How does a location, NPC, plot point, creature, or feature drive story and illuminate the world? Not every character or place needs to be a metaphor or symbol though. A smith can just be a smith.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 23: If you want consequences of actions in your world to be vast and deep, you almost need to create multiple worlds as you create the first one. Who's in the village at the start of the events that play out, and then who is still around when the potential devastation happens?

submitted 34 days ago • 1 comment

Worldbuilding Tip 22: When you add danger and stakes, also think about consequences of success, failure, or shades between. How does the failure to defeat the dragon affect local, regional, or world settings? How does the revelation that a hostile galactic empire is approaching change life?

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 21: If the danger in a campaign/story threatens the world, you need to know what's at stake by knowing the state of the world. Regional or local stakes are also viable, assuming you know what's a risk and what the consequences might be. Fall of a local leader, or fall of the world?

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

Worldbuilding Tip 20: Understand how society interacts with characters in your world, and create just enough of the society to ascertain that. In fantasy worlds, how do townsfolk react to adventurers? In a superhero game, how do they react to superheroes? Stories flow through and around the answers.

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments