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I remember thinking long ago that your channel would be perfect if it were a bit more system agnostic or multisystem. Welp, now is perfect.

Gygax probably would have kept the map secret. Mainly, not to deceive the players but because there was always one designated mapmaker in any player group back in the olden days. It was expected that this player (in this meta-role) would draw all the maps as they travel to new locales, explore unmapped dungeons, and the like. Which, of course, made buying maps in-character a much bigger deal and made those maps a treasure in and of themselves... IF they were accurate, and inaccurate maps (especially the maps that some NPC intentionally made inaccurate to lure adventurers to their doom) were opportunities for new and unexpected adventures.

My heart goes out to all you veterans of the OGL Wars!

It's been quite a while since I've been exposed to anything written in High Gygaxian. Thank you for that :-)

Your Gygax impersonations had my dying 🤣

"All a RPG town really needs is an Inn where characters can sleep with an Inn keeper who..." *computer error noise* "...AND an Innkeeper who can proved them with quest hooks." ¿Por Que no los dos?

A Gygax method that actually aged well and not antiquated? No way!

Ah, my favorite type of Bob World Builder video: a video about world building with Bob.

For my own world I take a lot from Conan the Barbarian, Arthurian legends, Ursula le Guin, Fritz Lieber, and Bronze age History.

The most impressive part of this video was that you were able to get Gary Gygax himself in for the video-- props to Grace for the talented necromancy!

Bob Gygax is a mood and is too powerful to go undefeated.

The Warhammer Old World is my favourite setting; grim, dark, and deeply silly.

The Otis pitch is really stripped down, with just one species and two classes. Still, the idea that iron and magic are opposed like Order and Chaos, is interesting. Maybe “Mageborn & Ironsworn”?

Building and then unveiling parts of my world to my players is my favorite thing about TTRPGs. When they find a mile wide cylindrical hole in the ground surrounded by a moat and they split the party to find out what's at the bottom....thats the juice.

I'm so glad you shared this. My players just overcame their first plot arc, and I wasn't sure what to do next. This really sparks my imagination on building their path, not their destination, to see where the story goes.

Good one Bob! Nothing says going off on a tangent quite like using parenthesizes inside parenthesizes. 🤣🤣🤣

The Gygax 75 challenge interests me far more than the Dungeon23 one. Bravo!

One thing to keep in mind, and the reason Gygax 75 is so great: Gygax was great referee, not so much a great GM. If your read anything he wrote, from the OG DMG to this article or the infamous Tomb of Horrors you get what I'm saying. He was absurdly antagonistic with his players, in that wargaming way. So even when he has some great advice, you still find that "GM vs Players" philosophy. Gygax 75 does a great job in bringing said advice to a more modern DnD approach.

Can we talk about the embroidery floss moustache for a moment? 10/10

When I taught myself to play D&D in 1985 I was 10 and learned naturally that an unfinished map/world is a great way to start a game. Waiting for me to finish a map and / or world before we start would mean we never start. Great Gygax btw 😄

I'm thrilled that you covered the Gygax75. Ray Otis is the man. And pairing this method with GFC D&D's KZfaq video on hexcrawling is the most approachable way of making a setting I know of. My weird jungle science-fantasy exploration campaign was built with a similar method and my friends and I have had a blast. Just last weekend they found a band of hateful geese over a cauldron of gold and split it with a group of robots. Good chaotic fun.

I was inspired by the mappi mundi (the known medieval world map from around the 14th century) in how they would draw land features and then the kinds of creatures you'd find there. So some good advice is just like gygax says about drawing the locations to draw the eye of the players, and include a picture of what creatures or types of humans are there (only one or two, these would just be the most common in the area) but also be sure to leave lots of negative space between these locations so the eyes don't get overwhelmed.

Let me just say that freaking random encounter matrix you set up brought some memories back to me of the hours of work I spent for projects that similarly, may never see the light of day. Its so hilarious because we dont realize how ridiculous it is until we step back and look at it.

NEVER CLICKED ON A VIDEO SO FAST IN MY 31 YEARS OF LIFE

Your pitch for DCC was very good, I bought it last week and it arrived Sunday. I am so very excited!

The Gygax cuts are priceless!

I've been running my DCC campaign for almost five months now. My favorite thing, hands down, is the approach to world-building the book suggests. Making the world smaller and encouraging custom monsters has made GMing more enjoyable and the players seem more excited for game night than before. Thanks for letting me know this Gygax essay exists, great videro!

One of the players I DMed in 1981 gave me a map I made for my original campaign last year, it's a couple of roads, a coastline, some mountains, and a handful of locations, lol. I really liked building it bit-by-bit as more was needed, made it easier and more flexible to adapt.

I was there. In the beginning, there was no world to explore, no modules to use, no books to explain. Three of us were confronted with the realization that we would have to create our own world, our own adventures, even our own rules. We decided to each take a section of the world to develop. We started with a city, Rivazend that was a port city with a river that came from the east. I developed the part of the town on the north, Marty developed the less developed part on the southern shore, and Marybeth developed the island in the middle of the river. we drew a general outline of the coastline to the north and south and a separate land across the sea to the west. We developed adventures and our lands in the designated areas and agreed that the world would be based on a Tolkien type world with somewhat low magic. After all, there wasn't much D&D material after third level. Regrettably, as time passed and lives changed in the real world, I was left by my fellow world builders and have continued to flesh out the rest of the world and run adventures there for all the years since that auspicious beginning. D&D rules changes over the years have changed aspects of my world at times, but at least we have left Thac0 behind.

"today there are countless books and videos about world building" - Build Your World vid by Bob World Builder. The meta is strong with this one. Great stuff, thanks. And I like the coverage of original works. Dnd history, esp TSR's [bit later than his 75 article], is interesting; and doesn't repeat, but boy sure does rhyme.

I love Gygax's approach to world-building and how it boils months of work down to a few easy to digest concepts. This really helped me understand why so many of my previous attempts at creating my own campaign settings have stalled out when I inevitably get bogged down in the details and end up feeling overwhelmed or moving on to a different idea altogether. I would love to see a series of videos putting these concepts into practice (and maybe the end of the series could culminate in a new official Bob World Builder campaign setting (I would buy the hell out of this, extra parentheses here for emphasis))!

I'm not sure how you got Mr. Gygax himself to agree to make an appearance in this video, but I really hope he plans to return in future videos!

"like any proper game master project, it will probably never see the light of day" had me laughing. Yes I would be interested in that video.

I always love seeing everyone's weird encounter table matrixes, so I'd be up for that video.

*sees your random encounter spreadsheet* God bless your soul, Bob.

Doing real good Bob 👌

I haven't done much dming yet but you, professor dungeon master and Matt Colvil have been inspiring me. The world I'm thinking of is inspired by 1500s Europe (been playing Europa Universalis 4) particularly with colonialism into a continent inspired by the Zendikar setting from Magic with living land. A part in the silmarillion where it describes the course of the river Sirion running made me picture water spirits that chart courses for rivers and lakes amongst the ever changing landscape. Finally there's a piece of art from Magic that I always loved. Strionic Resonator. Idk how it will be incorporated, but it may be a being that guides the formation of the land.

I will say, I'd love a video talking about ways to build a random encounters table.

Whenever I start out world building, I'm drawn to 80s style cartoons. Mysterious Cities of Gold, Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, Song of Fire and Ice, basically post apocalyptic worlds where advanced civilizations where lost to hubris and greed, where the technology has outlived their creators and haunt a new world that where magic and myth have returned.

Hey Bob. Thanks for being such a positive guy. I appreciate it :)

I’d love to see some random encounter discussion. They’re one of my least favorite parts of DMing so some suggestions or even some complete tables would be really nice.

I know why I enjoy your content so much now. It's because we have the same basis (i feel) for where we draw from fantasy, err well at least what you're drawing from for this 🌍 you're building

My favorite way to design "random" encounters is by planning it ahead of time - randomly. My current travel system relies on each party member taking a role and then rolling a skill check based on what role they take. This is lifted right out of the "Adventures in Middle Earth" setting books by the way. There is a DC for their travels and the number of successes and failures they get will determine what kind of encounters they get. So, they will always get a random encounter while traveling, but sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, or sometimes it's neutral. But the key is, I have a few different random encounters at the ready, whether it be good, bad, or neutral. In my session prep I roll on the random encounter tables from Xanathar's Guide (based on terrain) until I find something that makes sense for my setting, and that will be what happens. So even though I "plan" the encounters, I still prepare them randomly.

Looking forward to the DCC updates!

I’ve been reading Worlds Without Number the past couple weeks. Has a ton of DM tools for world building. It has a free pdf version. I recommend picking it up. It’s like the advice from Gygax in this video but so much more and tons of tables for rolling or inspiration.

I think I like your video even better than my guide. :) Thanks for the love.

What I think I take from more than ANYTHING is Shin Megami Tensei games, and ATLUS games in general. The techno-magic aesthetic that it has is very much in the style of everything I love running! Along with that rougelikes give a fount of possible magic items and lore for me to insert and inspire into my world!

This video was great and had a lot of useful information!

I loved your Gygax portrayal, that was really funny. Also good video, I really like the 5-step program.

This was a brilliant video Bob. I really like how you took the work done by Gygax and Ray Otis and complemented it with your own game sensibility and wisdom. Great work. 🚀

Your Gygax is very funny! You should have him pop up every now and then in videos, if it fits the subject

Some of the inspirations are Wheel of Time, Dresden (particularly the Fae), Obsidian Mountain trilogy, even older stuff like Dragonriders of Pern.

2:26 I believe Gygax is referencing something akin to CS Lewis' "The Magicians Nephew", where the player is discovering a world from fresh/a-new For example: a group of players discover a large mirror and a note from a common friend, who has mentioned they have entered a world passing through the magic mirror... the players enter the world and discover what lies beyond... The book by CS Lewis was my childhood favorite and prompted myself into DM'ing my own 1AD&D world back in 79

Brilliant video! I love your interpretation of Gary. I think he would have laughed. Good on you for promoting Gygax '75... that's the way it should be done!

when you start your path in OSR its common sence to just create your own stuff and mix with whatever you feel like, great video!

As I want to do more West Marches campaigns, and I do struggle with charts the same way you did (spending way too much time on it for a minimal use) I'm interested with a full video about it !

Have been working on a home brew adventure set in exandria to lead into Call of the Netherdeep and had been getting stuck, this video i think is gonna help a ton

@10:12 - Yes, please! I would love to see a video of you detailing your process of creating an elaborate set of random encounter tables.

Encounter design is so overwhelming, I would love to hear your advice

I've always wanted to build a campaign that use selections of Lord Dunsany's "Gods of Pegana" and "Time and the Gods" and even Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" as (entirely optional) in-game texts. I've seen a few independently published games that say they're "inspired" by Dunsany's work, but they're usually just generic fantasy games with some Dunsany quotes dropped here and there and maybe a place name. No, while neither Dunsany nor Gibran were doing conscious world-building, Dunsany mentioned multiple place names and close reading hints at possible relations each of these places have (for example, Aradec seems to occupy a role comparable to Rome or Baghdad at their heights and certainly has trade with the city of Bodrahan).

Hey! Love the video, this is an awesome document that I needed to see. I have just been thinking about how to start building in Pathfinder, and this couldn't have come out a better time. I also think that your encounter generator video ideas are both good, and I think you should do both!

This is the brewing of a fantastic series; I'd like to see more focused videos on this process

This is the Crux of D&D as we know it today. The OG system enabled GMs and players to flesh out a world of their own. Making the Game Your Own. The rules were roughly laid out to accommodate a narratively driven collaborative story created by all participants. D&D expected your table to be unique and different from any other table while still following the "guidelines". Please do not let the new players fall into a rut of "this is what the game should be." Rather let them spread their creative wings and tell a tale of what the game really is.

I absolutely love your style. Not only do you get the information across, I laugh out loud at your clever and subtle humor. Keep up the amazing content and work! You are an inspiration to Game Masters everywhere!

a really useful resource, many thanks for sharing!

Veteran of the OGL Wars You see me now, a veteran Of the Open Gaming wars I've been living on the edge so long Where the voices of fandom roar And I'm young enough to look at And far too old to see All the scars are on the inside I'm not sure if there's anything left of me Don't let these shakes go on It's time we had a break from it It's time we had some leave We've been living in the flames We've been eating up our brains Oh, please, don't let these shakes go on You ask me why I'm weary Why I can't speak to you You blame me for my silence Say it's time I changed and grew But the war's still going on, dear And there's no end that I know And I can't say I'm forever I can't say if we're ever gonna be free Don't let these shakes go on It's time we had a break from it It's time we had some leave We've been living in the flames We've been eating up our brains Oh, please, don't let these shakes go on You see me now a veteran Of a Open Gaming wars My energy's spent at last All my goodwill is destroyed I have used up all my weapons And I'm helpless and bereaved Wounds are all I'm made of Did I hear you say that this is victory? Don't let these shakes go on It's time we had a break from it Send me to the rear Where the tides of madness swell And been sliding into Hell Oh, please, don't let these shakes go on Don't let these shakes go on Don't let these shakes go on

Thank you Bob, this is finally the kind of framework I need to finally get to building a world! Actionable checklists!!! Love the Gygax footage!😂

One of your best videos yet. Tons of great information.

Favorite Video of the last few months!

Love the content I recently got the Old School Essentials set of books and I am in the process of building a world to play in thanks

It's good to get actionable content for your players down relatively early. Else it's far too easy to keep building and building and building, but never getting one part of the map actually playable. When I create a campaign map I think I'd start a few levels higher, on the continent level, and get the biomes and winds patterns down. Then zoom in on one part and increase the detail on those, then zoom in on a part of *that* and start with the advice here.

Because I really enjoy wargaming and all that, I'm making a campaign that will have a few wargame-y aspects to it every now and then. While the setting is a dramatized historical fiction, I like to borrow general ideas from Yasuhisa Hara's manga "Kingdom", where generals of superhuman might and strategists of computer-levels intellect can really make or break an army and decide their kingdom's fate, and want my players to experience a similar fantasy if they wind up enjoying the more wargame-y aspects of it. I also style my world similar to Sword Art Online's Aincrad, solely because it lets me partition the story into individual regions without worrying too much about figuring out how each region will "logically connect", and lets me get away with more blatantly game-ified places, things, and events when I'm hitting a rut trying to think about how to advance the story.

I dig you new coworker. Has a nice vibe :D . I've read Odis PDF (and praise be to him) but thanks for the overview and I'm interested what you are going to do with it :) Keep on building

As someone who’s been seeing a lot of really cool OSR games with roll-tables (especially the character generation ones) a video covering the topic in more detail would be great, especially since I couldn’t find one on KZfaq

I didn't get a chance to say it before, but Embroidery floss for a mustache is amazing.

Even some of the old-school box sets were SO in-depth (even in ogD&D and AD&D) even those "modules" were so well thought out that the entire box can be considered on par if not more in-depth than some video RPG games today. I kind of miss the old box set "modules" with all their maps and creature layouts and detailed added magic items. AN incredible DM back then could take those Box sets and make for some extremely long and wonderful stories. Addendum, not sure if they still put that much work into creating modules (last I played D&D their "modules" could be and were all created on one card/pamphlet like you find at a gift shop on the POIs in vacation spots, and quite pathetic) LOOKS like the "aftermarket" has kept the massive game modules going. 10:10 IS what keeps D&D going, the passion of the community to create. Sorry to add But getting the feeling like WotC trying to squash that creativity and bring everything into a micro-transaction subscription service sickened me.

I love this kind of video. Amazing work. Glad to see you continuing down this path.

I think what gygax meant with not letting them know that secrets won't be secrets and it will be all less exciting. Imagine how less cool the eclipse scene from berserk would be if every player would already know about the eclipse is and what it does etc

Thank you so much for this video. I’m finally planning my own world, and having this as a starting point is invaluable!

I started work on my homebrew setting in the early 90s, as a result there's a lot of varied influence in it. From popular media, history, and other games. I have established a sort of duality of concept where I blend science fiction and fantasy into the various cultures. Dwarves for example are a bit of a blend of the Ferengi and the Giants of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, with some other details taken directly from Terry Pratchett. It makes for a decidedly alien species that has some of the hallmarks of the classic Fantasy Dwarf, but definitely not what one might expect. I think most people associate Klingons with Dwarfs, so going Ferengi definitely throws people. Dragonborn are essentially Cardassians, and so on. I have a bit of a homebrew bible I've built up over the years with the shorthand available if I need to refresh myself on a part of the map I haven't dealt with in a while.

Love this video. Thanks Bob

love the embrodiery thread mustache

Remember DM’s you still get to interpret the meaning of the roll. E.G. if your first or second is ‘the dragon’ that doesn’t need to mean combat with the dragon; it could simply mean “there is clear signs that the dragon has been this way” or “this way to the dragon’s resting place” and then the party can choose to go that way or not.

As far as the random tables for encounters go , I actually think this is the most valuable tool in Xanathars guide to Everything. The CR system is trash of course but I simply add 1-2 extra dice to the quantity of the monsters or I'll double their hit points and add a d6 to their DMG rolls. (If the players are at a level where I feel that's needed. Those tables could also be used as an outline for your Skyrim tables? Might be able to just change the name of the monsters and bingo, table done.

Awesome 👌

Incredible information for a new DM like myself. Been so wrecked over making a world this has been awe inspiring. Thank you so much Bob! :D

Thank you for this video! I'm currently fleshing out the town/city for a homebrew setting (osr/ose). I'm have it been built in and around the ruins of a previous city. Creating a huge dungeon that can be fleshed out a little at a time along with the surrounding area. Inspired by some anime I have watched along with countless books.

I absolutely adore this channel. Well done Bob!

I'm getting a huge kick out of your delving into old school thought.

I'm most inspired by mythology and history, and of course sci-fi and fantasy media.

Bob would you consider sharing the encounter sheet you have as a Google sheet as you work on it? That interests me!!! Really appreciate your review!!!

Step one : My main campaign setting is fairly heavily inspired by my favourite fantasy novel death gate cycle I’m not going to elaborate to much in this since I don’t know if any of my players will see this and there some stuff about that inspiration I’m keeping from them for plot reasons Step : 2 I’m working on a pirate camping where my plan is to have a map that every time the party finds a new island I add that island too it Step:4 The above pirate campaign actually as a fairly interesting in my obviously biased opinion main town, a neutral outpost that was built around an ancient tavern that was dug up Step: 5In my current main campaign while I had a concept for the world as a whole it was actually the input and actions of my players that really pushed a lot of the details into reality

Oooooooooh! I was looking forward to this video!

I'm particularly inspired by the pulp fantasy I grew up reading and watching. Magic is always somewhat dangerous to deal with, even in my high fantasy campaigns, and adventuring always comes with fatal risks and big rewards.

I would love to see how you set up a random encounter table

Could you link us a copy of that series of random tables you made based on prevalence? This is exactly the kind of DM nonsense I love to do!

I did something similiar with the bronze and Iron (along silver wich is also very used against magical creatures), I really like the bronze and Classical age so I tend to go more with romans, hittites and Hyborian age. About sources of inspiration, a lot of myths and folklore and history, games like Dominion 5, Morrowind and JRPG, and lots of books of fantasy, specially be Howard, Vance, Lovercraft and Clark ashton smith and other pulp writers, along some in Spanish like Mascaras de Matar.

For "random" encounters, I tend to "pre-roll" the choices, and have only a couple of possibilities fully ready instead of a complete list. That way I have stats and minis for the 2-3 monsters they might encounter, and the party still gets to roll the dice for what happens, though they are none the wiser only a couple possible choices exist. Example, d20, odds=orcs, evens=wyverns. Higher rolls mean the party spots the enemy first; low rolls, party is ambushed.

Thanks Bob. Enjoyed this and looking forward to the next instalment.