Make Your World Unique (Realism Is Overrated)
Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0910
RPT GM Tara sent me some cool world details. I thought her ideas were very creative and might make tiny examples of how you can make things unique and interesting for your setting.
Hello Johnn,
I emailed you last year about running my first 5E D&D campaign. I was very stuck for ideas then, and I continued to be stuck for a while, but your recent Musing on creating more ideas than needed has really helped me get through that!
I’ve been practising generating ideas, and now — after talking more with one of my players about what she wants out of the game — I have the beginning of a campaign setting in one of my notebooks!
My player said she’d like to see things that work differently in the game world to how they do in ours. So I created d4 ideas…and all of them inspired me.
Here they are:
- Most humanoid species in this world actually lose weight the more they eat. If everyone in the orc camp is on the chubby side, you know food’s been scarce.
- There’s a type of intelligent predatory tree that drains the air and life from its surroundings, creating desert and wasteland areas where it’s difficult to breathe.
- Dragons age backwards…so you need to watch out for both the enormous young and the more intelligent and magically powerful, but much smaller, ancient dragons.
- This world’s sun is a glowy ball of ice. Days are brighter, but nights are warmer. It’s a bit of an ice age world…however, it does snow tiny little fireballs in the winter months.
Next time my group meets up, I’ll ask both my players to add a few ideas of their own.
Thanks for the tips, Johnn!
– Tara
I love reading ideas like this. I often get caught trying to make things realistic.
Realistic — what an imagination-killing word. Bleh.
So thanks for the inspiration, Tara!