Creating a campaign part 2: Character creation

18, 18, 18 STR, CON, CHA

Introduction

A good campaign needs buy-in from the players from the very moment they show up at the table.  The best way to do that is have them immersed in your world from the moment of character creation.  By habit, for each new campaign, I try to include:

• The elevator pitch: A summary of the setting.

• Background primer: An overview of the types of societies and peoples in the setting.

• Bespoke backgrounds: A set of backgrounds made specifically for the setting.

The Elevator Pitch

To summarise, it is an overview of your setting that developed from your initial high-concept setting idea. In essence, it is you selling your campaign to your players, getting them excited and thinking about how their character may fit into this world you have created.

The pitch for Webrail went like this.

Webrail Elevator Pitch

''In the beginning, a thousand worlds were scattered into a million fragments and cast into the Abyss, an endless, starless void.

At first, people were isolated on their fragments, and many without resources warred or perished from famine.

Eventually, the spiders appeared, giant inscrutable beings that spun their webs and united the fragments together into a single network.

In time, the enterprising peoples of the fragments created trains, vast moving cities that moved from fragment to fragment, engaging in commerce and diplomacy. The Webrail was born.

However, the Abyss began to stir and change.  Demonic forces manifested across the Webrail and waged a war of extinction against all living things.  It was only put to a stop when the spiders spun great threads and descended into the darkness of the Abyss, from which they never returned.

Centuries later, the Webrail is rebuilding, and ancient trains still run across its network, but the spiders are long gone.''

Background Primer

Alongside your elevator pitch, give your players a short background primer.  This only needs to be a paragraph or two, and should describe the types of societies found within your world and how they contrast.

Webrail Background Primer

Your character is a citizen of the Webrail.  There are a huge number of diverse people.  Some live on the fragments, floating islands in the Abyss, and others will be citizens of the roaming city-states that are the trains.  Generally, the quality of life is much better on the trains as they have access to powerful technologies and magics. However, some larger settlements may have a comparable quality of life.

Technology levels are varied, from wild Stone Age tribes to steampunk locomotives.  However, due to the catastrophic nature of the demonic inundation, much knowledge was simply lost.  In many cases, technology is maintained, but the theoretical understanding of it is lost for the ages.

Bespoke Backgrounds

Many TTRPGs do character backgrounds really well.  Where possible, I create backgrounds which are tailored to the setting.  This means that when your players create their characters, they are choosing backgrounds that fit the themes of your world and allow them to think more deeply about how they fit within the setting.

A good bespoke setting should contain:

• The Profession Title

• Equipment they gain

• A question to answer about their character that should help create a dynamic background from the word go.

Scavenger A minor trinket of wonder. Question:  You have dared to walk into the ruins of the world before.  What did you see that made you weep for what was lost?

This first example is from a campaign where players took on the roles of pilgrims in a post-apocalyptic world.

• The scavenger starts with a minor magical item.

• And they have to consider what horrors are in the ruins, and how this might have affected them.

Outcast A ragged set of hides (AC13)] A makeshift Spear 1D6 A makeshift sling 1D4 or a mutation. Question: Someone is rarely cast out from their home and kin.  It must have been a terrible crime or prejudice that forced you out.  What was it?

This second example from the same campaign has a choice.  

They may start with additional equipment.  Or they can become a mutant, which may have benefits and drawbacks.

The character has been cast out of their home.  Perhaps they were shunned because of their mutation, or perhaps they have a terrible secret that was discovered.

Conductor A beautiful brass whistle Pocket watch Question:  You check everyone’s ticket.  No stowaways allowed.  However, there was that one time you found someone without a ticket.  It was a hard choice, but you had to make a decision.  What did you do, and why?

This example is from the Webrail campaign and is for a player who wants their character to have grown up on one of these vast city-sized trains.  Having no tickets in this world means getting kicked off the train.  In Webrail, it could have massive implications, and the question invites the player to reflect upon, further immersing them in the game world.

Linguist 3 additional languages  (You may choose these when you first encounter the language.) Question: The Webrail is a diverse place, and linguists are in high demand.  When did you prove your worth? Did you placate or fool a threat? Did you enable a great peace or trade? Or did you intimidate a foe into capitulation?

This final example is also from Webrail. It provides the character with some real skills.  It also makes the player think more deeply about the game world and how their character acted within it.

Summary

Your elevator pitch should be designed as a summary and a sales brochure for your setting, while your background primer and bespoke backgrounds are to immerse your players in the world from the moment they start making their character.

Next time, shopping.

Creating a campaign part 1: Developing the setting

Introduction

Alternatively, see this video

Hello there, my lovelies. In this series of posts, I am going outline my process of creating a campaign. From the outset, I believe the most important thing for any campaign is immersion. Once you get your players excited about the setting you created, they will actively engage with the shared world-building and storytelling experience that is a role-playing game.

Just a few points before we continue. The GM ultimately has the most control over the creation of the setting and campaign, but it is only through the players' input that details will deepen, and themes can be discovered in your setting that you didn’t realise were there.

Immersion is a matter of adding details that hint at a much larger world.  You don’t need to fill in every last blank, just hint at it and let the player's imagination do the rest. The Souls games do this admirably. Every item in the world contains a terse piece of flavour text that hints at a person, place or event, and by piecing together these disparate pieces of lore, a greater narrative emerges.

Awww jellyfish

Over this series, we will look at how we can inject world-building into the following:

• Shops and other vendors
• Creating a world map
• Religions
• Arefacts
• Beastiery
• Antagonists
• Secrets

Today, we will be looking at first principles. How to build the foundations of a new setting and how to pitch it to your players to generate engagement and excitement.

High-Concept Ideas

We want to create a setting idea that grabs our players’ attention.  It must generate a powerful mental image in our players’ minds and stimulate their curiosity enough that they have a bunch of questions that they desperately need answered. Across different media, several settings do this really well. Examples include:

The Underdark: A vast cavernous realm full of forgotten places, horrendous abominations, and civilisations that plot against the surface dwellers.

Blame!: All of humanity once lived in a vast city.  Aeons later, it is an empty superstructure. The few surviving humans are hunted to near extinction by a corrupted security system.

Trench Crusade: It is World War I, but this time the combined forces of the Abrahamic religions fight against the hordes of hell.

The Matrix: Life as you know it is a computer simulation; in reality, you are a battery for sentient machines.

Jurassic Park: Scientists bring dinosaurs back from extinction and make a theme park.  It goes horribly wrong.

Each of the above can be described as High-Concept settings.  A high-concept is an idea that can be described concisely, but still engages the potential audience.  The best example of this is Alien, which was originally pitched as “Jaws in space”. So, presenting your setting as a high-concept setting is probably one of the best ways to get your players excited about the upcoming campaign.

Generating High-Concept Ideas

The following method is a distillation of my mental process when developing a new setting. The reality is that regardless of your idea, it will take considerable thinking time to work out the kinks and inconsistencies.

1. Write down several ideas that you think would be cool to have in your setting. They could be films, books, games, a type of environment, a scientific concept, or even just a colour you like.
2. Select 2 to 3 of these ideas.
3. Generate a set of questions to link them together.
4. Write answers to these questions, and an idea will emerge.

Webrail Example

(The most recent campaign I am running.)

Stage 1:

Inspirations are.

• Floating islands in space
• Snowpeircer
• Forests
• Terminator
• Spiders
• Godzilla

Stage 2:

We will select.

• Floating islands in space
• Snowpeircer
• Spiders

Stage 3:

Our questions are.

• People live in city-sized trains.  How do they travel from island to island?
• Spiders? What makes them so important? Are they PC races? Are they antagonists?
• What are these islands floating in? Space? What lies below?

Stage 4:

Let's answer these questions.

• The islands are linked by a rail system built upon a vast, indestructible spider web. Made by gigantic spiders, obviously.
• The spiders built the foundations for the rail system.  Therefore, they are seen as architects, builders, maybe even worshipped as gods?  For once, they are not the bad guys.
• Every island should be its own environment. Separate and unique, like a planet.  Therefore, it makes sense that it is floating in space, or something similar. Dark and empty.

The High Concept

''In the endless and starless abyss, a million fragments of lost worlds are scattered.  They would be isolated and alone if not for the Webrail.  A vast rail network linking them together, created by great godlike spiders. Train-cities travel the Webrail for trade, exploration and conquest.''

This is our basic high concept that we can build out from.  Now we have this core concept, as we delve into other aspects of world-building, this central idea will guide and inform us as we move forward to create something truly immersive.

Next Week, Character creation

The Webrail

Hello there my lovelies!

Webrail is the setting for a new campaign I will be starting in a short few weeks.  It is a mad cross of Mortal Engines, Snow Piercer, and Spell Jammer.  The setting is a series of floating islands floating in an endless void that are linked together by a vast spider's web.  It is upon these webs that the great locomotives travel, trade, and wage war.  

For this installment I have provided the random tables I will be using to generate the campaign map, and the nature of each floating fragment in the void.  Watch the video to see how these tables can be used to create emergent narratives, and story telling hooks for your campaigns.

Fragment Size d6
1	Village	4	District
2	Town	5	Country
3	City	6	Continent
Environment d20 If the fragment is size 4 or 5 roll twice If the Fragment is size 6 roll three times
1	Mountainous	11	Elementally touched (d4) Earth Air Fire Water
2	Plains	12	Magically Infused
3	Dry Forest	13	Surreal (d4) Cubic Impossible geometry Anthropomysized Floating Landscapes
4	Swamps	14	Glacial
5	Desert	15	Necromantic/ Entropic
6	Tundra	16	Volcanic
7	Fungal Forest	17	Oceanic
8	Rain Forest	18	Constructed
9	Savana	19	Ruin
10	Wasteland	20	Toxic

. 

How Many Webrail Links Does The Fragment Have? d6
Roll	Size 1-2	Size 3-4	Size 5-6
1	1 or 2	1 to 2	1 or 2
2	1 or 2	1 or 2	A few
3	1 or 2	A few	A few
4	1 or 2	A few	Many
5	A Few	A few	Many
6	Many	Many	Many

Strange Feature d20 Size 1 or 2 (50% chance it has a strange feature) Size 3 roll once Size 4-5 roll twice Size 6 roll two or three times
1	Dangerous Ruin	11	Endless tunnels
2	Old Spider Nest	12	Ghost City
3	Fey Wild	13	Stone Circle
4	Eldtrich Abomination	14	Great Tower
5	Petrified Forest	15	Druidic Grove
6	Crystal Caves	16	Spider Structure
7	Titanic Graveyard	17	Necropolis
8	Aggressive Plant Overgrowth	18	Monster Nest
9	Great Maze	19	Void Infestation
10	Grand Obilisk	20	Cult Inundation

Chance Of Fragment Being Settled
Village	1 in 10
Town	2 in 10
City	1 in 3
District	1 in 2
Country	7 in 10
Continent	9 in 10

Notable Exports d6 If the fragment is settled what products do they export? Size 1 or 2 = Roll once Size 3 or 4 - Roll twice Size 5 or 6 Roll three times
d6
1	Wild Game	4	Textiles (including rugs)
2	Meat from livestock/fish	5	Wood/Timber
3	Furs/Chitin/Scales	6	Ivory/ Animal Trophies
d6
7	Quarried Stone (e.g. slate, marble, obsidian)	10	Metalwork (locomotive parts and tools)
8	Ores	11	Trainworks (construction)
9	Processed Metals/Alloys	12	Metalwork (tools,weapons, armour)
d6
13	Bricks\Clay\Pottery	16	Animal Products (honey, milk, wool)
14	Rare Fruits	17	Animal Reagents (used in alchemy)
15	Staple Foods (wheat, corn, vegetables)	18	Plant Reagents (used in alchemy)
4 d6
19	Arcane Materials	22	Dyes
20	Books	23	Incense/Soaps
21	Spices	24	Leather Works (including chitin and scales)
5. d6
25	Narcotics	28	Exotic Pets
26	Alcohol	29	Complex machinery/clockwork
27	Elemental Materials	30	Food (sweet foods & delicacies)
6. d6
31	Arcane Grimiores	34	Artefacts (void)
32	Artefacts (arcane)	35	Artefacts (spiders)
33	Artefacts (divine)	36	Firearms

Vibe Check d20 Terms to help prompt the GM determine the nature of the people or fragment
Roll	Fragment	Settled People
1	Stunning	Regimented
2	Beautiful	Honourable
3	Vibrant	Reflective
4	Lush	Educated
5	Serene	Pure
6	Corrupted	Wilds
7	Decaying	Cruel
8	Jagged	Untrustworthy
9	Hostile	Greedy
10	Bleak	Gluttonous
11	Confusing	Peaceable
12	Suffociating	Industrious
13	Gloomy	Efficent
14	Dark	Frugal
15	Shining	Scholarly
16	Cleansing	Bigoted
17	Dynamic	Morose
18	Holy	Opprossed
19	Eldrich	Warmongers
20	Divine	Tabboo