Ideas from LFR, Building a Campaign

Over the years I've wasted countless hours building grand campaign worlds that really don't seem to matter at all. Recently i started playing Living Forgotten Realms and have so far really loved it. As a DM I've learned a lot from running it.

I wanted to focus now on using what I've learned from LFR and build a campaign world that is easy to maintain, doesn't take a lot of time to use, highly explorable, and highly reusable.

Map
To start, get out a sheet graph paper, this will become your world map and your notes for building your new game world

Background
It all starts with background, what better place to look than the DDI Character Builder. If you take a look at the General Backgrounds you will see around 5 main backgrounds based on geography. Divide your graph paper up into 5 main sections, and label the different areas, Desert, Forest, Mountains, Urban, and Wetlands. Put a large lake, or 3 medium sized lakes somewhere, and add an ocean.

Races
Now again using the DDI Character builder pick at least 10 dominate races, and roll 1d6 and 1d4 for each, saving the results. the d6 is the square size on the map, and the d4 is the number of cities (+1 for a capital) Assign each race a numerical value between 2-11 and roll a d12 on the actual graph paper.

Borders
Where the d12 lands, create a border for that race. For example say you assigned humans to 4, your d6 was a 3 and your d4 was a 1. where ever your d12 landed pick a center square and go out in all directions by 3 (the value of your d6), label the borders as the human zone, place your capital, and place one city, and one capital.

Borders should have at least two squares of space between each other, so adjust your landing area as needed. Repeat the process until you have at least one border in each of the 5 different zones. Borders can overlap zones, and you can have multiple borders in the same zone.

Natural 1
Where the d12 lands, add some sort of natural or mystical item, examples are a mystical lake, a set of caves, a giant pit under the earth, a vocalno, anything you want.

Natural 12
Where the d12 lands, add some sort of evil base, goblin camp, ancient dungeon, dragon cave.

1&12's will make great global locations for your players, as these places do not care about borders.

Roads
Once your done building your world, which can take maybe an hour, draw in some rough roads from the different capitals and your done. Go over in pen making sure you can see the details, the border names etc. Photo copy so your players can have a world map, it doesn't need to be detailed what you have will give them a rough idea of the world and where each adventure is taking place.

Fleshing out the world
Now that you have a general idea of what the world looks like its time to flesh it out a bit.
In your friendly neighborhood text file editing program, create a list of all borders, under each border put any natural locations that came up, capitals and cities.

Write two paragraphs about each border, describing the people. Add a third paragraph if their is any hostilities to any other borders. Don't forget to include what races are associated with this area, the type of government, and any backgrounds associated with this area as well.

Write one paragraph about each sub location of the boarder including natural locations, cities and capitals. If you start running out of ideas, ask your players to tackle an area. Some players will be excited at the idea of playing in a world they helped build.

Now your campaign is done, you have all the details you need to start playing. You do not need anything more. You could write down a few rumors for each city but that's just going to take time and you can waste creative juices that you don't need to use just yet.

Adventure Design
If you have some more time, start putting together your adventures. I recommend doing it similar to how WotC does LFR. Create an adventure per border that spans a few levels. Your adventures don't need to focus on any of the cities in a zone either, it could be a smaller town not on the map, or old set of ruins also not on the map, this part you can make up if the players ask, have them flesh out the world map even further.

In any case, i would like to thank Planet-Thirteen.com for the inspiration behind the map building. If you have not tried how to host a dungeon i recommend reading it. And as well i would like to thank WotC/RGPA for their ongoing work with Living Forgotten Realms

I hope everyone enjoyed this article, please share any campaigns you've created using this method, i would like to see what you came up with.

Until next time, keep your dice on the table.