Check out Zed and Two Noughts! bit.ly/ZedTwoNoughts The Gygax 75 Challenge: bit.ly/Gygax75 Patreon: bit.ly/QBPatreon The blog post that started the Gygax 75 challenge: dragonsneverforget.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/the-gygax-75-challenge-introduction/ Hextml: hextml.playest.net/ Hexographer (free edition): www.hexographer.com/free-version/ Hex Kit (costs money, but very cool): cone.itch.io/hex-kit Dungeon Scrawl: probabletrain.itch.io/dungeon-scrawl Dungeon Map Doodler: dungeonmapdoodler.com Fantasy City Generator: watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Five Steps to Get Your Campaign Started 1. Create the overall setting concept. 2. Create the immediate region the players start in. 3. Map out at least three levels of a megadungeon for the players to explore. 4. Create the layout and inhabitants nearest to the dungeon. 5. Slowly begin expanding the world from there as needed.

This video should have a sub title, “Why Keep on the Boardlands is one of the best starting adventures yours players can start in”.

I am kind of a lurker, but just let me say that his advice is gold. Your channel deserves to be way, way more popular. Cheers!

I basically followed this without knowing it. I generated a random hexographer map, picked a strting spot, and made a prettier Inkarnate map. I wanted it to be sandbox-y, so I built the surrounding area with the initial dungeons/quests, encounter tables, etc. Then in worldbuilding, I made mine specifically to be 5e friendly, so I added places for all the 5e different races to be from that were close enough to described cultures to work with some fun twists. Then I started filling in all the rest of the world out from there because I had a long bus commute and was bored.

3:27 "What races and classes are allowed?" God I WISH most players asked this question. Instead of just assuming everything will be allowed and bringing their pre-baked aasimar blood hunter to session zero.

Well this looks like a fun exercise. Hold my 🍸. I'ma make one of these in only one week.

Great video! Thanks, Ben.

My process was pretty similar: 1. Came up with the campaign and world themes and a hook for players. 2. Made a map hexmap, seeded it with a few major settlements and a few other important sites (like ruins, etc.) that the locals - and by extension the PCs - would know about. 3. Fleshed out the starting town (really I borrowed one from another setting, filed off the serial numbers, added my own materials and twists). 4. Fleshed out the starting adventure location and hooks. 5. Wrote a short primer for players about the big truths their characters would know about the world, what kind of characters they should create, a little bit about the local cultures. 6. Made some random encounter tables for the wilderness (1d8 per terrain type to start, and then I'll be adding to them in play), and a few visually interesting landmarks near the starting adventure location. That was quite enough to get the game started.

ZONES pick 4 monsters or magic items place them around the world map. Create a random table that relates to the item or monster in that zone. The closer you get to the item the more dangerous encounters will show up. In my opinion playing world map adventures should be theater of the mind and the party should be able to split. I use monster minis to show the area the monster was seen but not were it is.

My group played a game of The Quiet Year, then I took that map and filled in a few more details and POOF we had our campaign area. It was really nice as the players knew more about the world than had I just given them a document / book to read.

My most extensive campaign and the world linked to it started with a drawing of a map with no clear goal in mind. I've started some plot, decided a location to start from and than went from there, giving players the total freedom of making stuff up for their characters just as I was doing for the other stuff. Eventually it grew up to have a pretty distinct identity and I'm pretty proud of all the things that combined to paint the picture

I just started running a dungeon crawl classic game in the "always on" style, and this video is immensely helpful and perfectly timed for my group!

I started out with a city, then filled out a continent from that and the other continents to fill out the world. Some it is not done in much detail yet, just the high level stuff. I tried to fill each continent with one large mega threat to make sure there is plenty of drama to go around. One continent is ruled by an ancient white dragon, another the undead are threatening to over run, orc & goblin raiders are the original continent's major threat, there is one continent ruled by minotaur slavers and the final continent it is just regular old greedy warlords that are the major problem.

Nice Barrowmaze reference. I'm always impressed by how solid Gary's ideas are even after nearly 50 years!

This is great, thank you! One more suggestion: provide a map to players showing labeled locations of varying difficulty (Ogre Cave, Wyvern Lair, Castle of the Lich King, etc.) within several days travel from their home base. Perhaps they found the map in the first goblin lair they cleared out. The players then have some choice where to adventure each session. If an encounter is too easy they won't gain many XPs or level up. Too hard: Lots more XPs but higher risk of death!

Gygax had some awesome ideas. I use the world map from Mystara and my players can go wherever they want on the world and I plan one session ahead to prepare for it.

"Don't have a dragon just drop out of the sky and eat them." *looks accusingly at Essentials kit*

I stumbled across your videos recently and I love the coverage of old school D&D concepts and rules. Thank you!

I met Gary Gygax at Gencon in Lake Geneva, Wi in 1974. We had a nice talk. The 1st rule book was 'Chain Mail with Fantasy Supplement', 2nd ed. I still have it.

Very cool. Thanks especially for the Gygax 75 Challenge link, and the blog post. Nice finds!

Totally agree. My setting started with a concept, building the starting town, building the two towns that could be reached in a week, then a dungeon. The players never knew THEY were helping me build the world. So I ran the setting a second time and put them in another location, etc.

Reading that article online, I discovered that it was part two of a series of at least three projected, and I would love to see the rest of the installments. The whole newsletter was a march down memory lane (I started playing D&D in '78), and many of the names associated with its content I recall as figures of wargaming history (and a nascent Games Workshop described by Ian Livingstone thus: "We also sell games across a market stall in London and make up ancient games in wood.") As for Gygax's design philosophy, the details of his Castle Greyhawk, described in the article, reinforce the "Disneyland dungeon" effect, with thematic but otherwise unrelated areas set up explicitly as a playground for treasure seeking adventurers, and not a realistic, cohesive whole, as players today might recognize. Gygax's advice is still sound, of course, and if you have heard his voice (if only from a cameo on The Simpsons, or an old appearance on late-night TV), reading his words is enriched by imagining them spoken by him. =^[.]^=

Thank you. This is an exciting resource that I'm printing out right now. My gaming group started in 1978 and we're still going strong forty-four years later. I'm sure several of them will be eager to read this.

My party once set out to explore a mega-dungeon, they hired an expedition manager and security for the base camp and at check points in cleared areas of the dungeon, a barrister to bargain with the local Duke for tax requirements, and ended up with a whole host of camp followers that made their way along with the party in the hopes of securing some fortune. Base camp itself turned into a large temporary settlement of tents and ramshackle huts and an endless source of adventure hooks and ideas - not to mention outright problems.

Have a start at ground zero world my friends and I created aprox 25 years ago. We played in and expanded on that world for about 10 years. Dusted that world off again when my youngest showed interest, and ran a campaign for her and her friends there with the original campaign's characters as prominent NPCs. She has now taken the reins and runs multiple campaigns in that ever expanding world. I love what she has done with the place! Kinda nuts how deep the history of a world will become all on its own through game play riffing. Stack years into a custom world and you wind up with detail you couldn't possibly create for a world out of the gate.

This was very inspiring. Thank you! I'm making a campaign region on a large island off the coast of the main continent. The homebase will be the stronghold created to house the first settlers from a kingdom on the continent. It's got lots of wilderness to explore, and even some ancient ruins, both above and below ground.

This is the best of yours I have seen. Very nice.

My first campaign world was co-developed with my best friend and alternating DM if the setting. We started with a generic medieval type setting and played in that as much as we could, peppering in stuff pinched from official content. When we wanted a more tonal shift tat didn't fit the central realm, we would create another kingdom or region. This went on, creating the horror nightmare forest of Drakenforst where Helm Drakken the demigod lich ruled. The Konigslande where a more magical renaissance was happening. There was Ravania, a land perpetually locked in winter where superstitious villagers cowered at night, locked in their homes, terrified of what roamed the night while their emperor was preoccupied with his tryst with the Queen of Winter. We had an analog of the classical world with both Greek and Roman influences and desert kingdoms such s Thothia, Sythron, and Stygia (cribbed from Conan). Essentially the world grew as our interests shifted and our current world couldn't contain our plans.

More like Questing Best lol seriously tho this is my favorite RPG-related KZfaq channel and you have radically changed the way i plan on running my games moving forward. Thank you so much for making these videos; they’re always a huge inspiration!

Great content! Clearly the best method for putting together an old school campaign.

Thank you for the link to the Gygax 75 challenge! I am going to use this to build my own world and have my friends run it with me

I have found, when building a Dungeon, that I quite enjoy using the Random Dungeon generator in the 1e DMG to solo play a group of NPCs while creating the dungeon. It's also an effective way to do an on the fly playtest while creating it.

Nice. I really like this thank you very much for sharing. I'm planning on getting back into pen and paper rpgs so this will help with a lot of things even when I start with greyhawk in swords and wizardry

Don't forget to had exits out of the dungeon at different levels so the party can have a break and resupply. Also when mapping don't just go horizontal also vertical, a shaft down to the next level instead of the stairs they decided to pass on for some reason is just a choice for the party to make which brings in a lot of role playing.

I tried this twice over the summer; didn't finish either, but I got some solid ideas down on paper, and since I was pushing as hard as I could against what could be a "dungeon", "wilderness", and "town", I think I got some really fun ideas on paper.

Nice to see the B/X book on your bookshelf!!

When you started the numbered list of Gary Gygax guide. It would make it easier for the viewer to see the points written on screen.

I run a more modern style 5e campaign, but I think a lot of this still applies. I think too many people think they have to know all the deep lore and background of the world before they're willing to start (maybe because the 5e DMG starts by talking about the gods and the multiverse for no reason). IMO the most important thing is to set the right vibe (and make sure the players are all on board with it), and then make a town and some adventure nearby. Once they start exploring the world, things will come to you, and its easy enough to add on to an existing world and slowly flesh out the lore using the themes that you've built up over the course of a few adventures

great video, quality info

Awesome content! Keep it up!

In my experience, they always go to the tavern and play out the drink order. Describe a tavern, a barkeep, a drinks list, some of the chit-chat with the barkeep and a joke. Don't forget the joke. Write all of this down in bullet points on a single page and draw a beer jug on it. Always doodle on the paperwork. My point is; there are "unimportant details" that come up every single time they enter a town, if those details have some variation the players will remember that name of the town.

Great video. I noticed the UVG book on your bookshelf. Great system. I hope you make a video about the book someday.

Whoa. I have been reading this the past couple of weeks and about to start working in a campaign myself.

The Europa article is a gem. I'd point out though that Gygax only had less than two years experience with fantasy RPG worldbuilding when he wrote that article, having only just been introduced to it by Arneson in early 1973. So those years and years of experience you mentioned were well in his future. Still, it is a great article.

Wow. What timing. I just downloaded that book today. I think the author was in my Palace of Unquiet Repose game at GaryCon and was a swell dude.

For my current campaign we had several session 0s that we used to hammer out a lot of the broad world building. Creation myths, mechanics of gods, life, death, resurrections, rules of magic and so forth. While this was going on I mapped a pretty large area, several hundred miles, and started building the city the players were going to be primarily interacting with. Instead of a mega dungeon I ended treating the overworld as its own dungeon. Days to cross, random encounters, factions, points of interest, in depth travel rules, all that. More of West Marches vibe. Something that was really important to me, and my players have responded well too, is giving the world history. One of the characters is a history buff and a main plot driving is that this area is rich in ruins of the particular civilizations she wants to investigate, so every ruin has more weight, every item has a story. They are piecing together how these civilizations grew, but also how they fell. Lastly, I really put time into making the city full of NPCs. I go by the SPERM principle pretty frequently, introduced to me by Dael Kingsmill (Monarchs Factory). Basically every civilized place can be broken into Social, Political, Economic, Religious, and Military (SPERM) and if you make a location and at least one NPC per entry, you have a really fleshed out system. This time I made some of them entire factions with their own infighting and such instead of just an NPC. A barkeep for the social, the Elvin families for the political, the gnomish guilds for the economy, a new church for the religious, and the wall guard for the military. Oh yeah, through an extra M in there for magic and I've got a wizard in there as well.

As excellent video. This is pretty much my process by campaign creation for any game; not just OSR/D&D. I’m currently working on a Mutant Year Zero game and am following these steps for that too. The only difference is that I wasn’t going to have a mega dungeon but lots of little dungeons. A mega-dungeon would be fun though…

Seeing even Ben list actual numbers of rooms really makes me realize that my own style is sort of a "how can I turn a 'five-room dungeon' into a megadungeon by stacking a series of them" approach. In my main (5e with OSR sensibilities) campaign that I'm running by now, the PCs have spent over a year of our world's time (and in-setting time) exploring the local megadungeon and have I think only visited about 12 total rooms (albeit multiple times in some cases as inhabitants changed based on their interactions with the place).

Great stuff friend 👏 👍

My most recent campaign was just supposed to be a starter game for a few new players so I just hijacked the Sword Coast map and have been using it for about 6 months now. The world definitely belongs to us and feels very relevant to the players and we have ignored the pre-existing lore , I would recommend it to others! There are loads of great resources in existence to play with

It’s funny how I did a lot of this independently when building my own campaign setting except I kinda did it in reverse. I don’t know of it is just the way I think, but it seemed a bit more sensible to start with planet going in as opposed to starting town going out. It helped me think about what things might be found in dungeons, and how people in the surrounding city might behave.

Solid, all-around advice, but telling a DM that he shouldn't create anything the players will never discover is wrong. One one the major joys of being a DM is creating your own fantasy world as it's the best way to know the in and outs of the setting, which makes you even more prepared when you're with your players. More importantly, it's simply FUN coming up with neat ideas that you may want to use in your games one day.

I start with a kingdom map with the 3-5 largest towns and have the players guard a caravan making it's way between major trading hubs. Since major roads incur tolls, the caravan meanders between smaller settlements and along the frontier. Each session is either a town encounter or an encounter minor dungeon to explore. Since I know what will be needed next session, that gets created and added to the map.

For me, I started with part of an island. This island had the capital city, the city they started in, a city they were delivering supplies to for the initial plot hook (which would be their main town) and a few things like caves and forests. It also had the promise of a path with a name, going towards a mountain range, so they knew that this was the 'creche' for them to learn the game before seeing more of the world. It meant I got to expand the main island over time, so even that wasn't all at once. Heck, we didn't even have a proper pantheon for the first year of playing because nobody wanted to be a cleric or paladin.

It's worth noting you can still do broader world-building in your campaign world. It's just helpful to keep various large sections thereof vaguely defined. In my setting, which takes a lot of inspiration from real life history, there are a bunch of direct analogues to Real Life medieval and Renaissance countries. But most haven't been fleshed out much beyond theme and a bit of geopolitics. In my case, these nations were designed to serve as backdrops for themed campaigns. Like swash-buckling urban adventures in Not Venice. Or an all-underwater campaign in the channel between Not Britain and Not France. So the locale is directly informed by what sort of adventures the party would have there. And I'd fill the details in if and when a gaming group wanted to run it.

Although all you need is a regional sandbox, extensive world building is fun even if you never use the material in a game! 😄

I've mostly created small scale campaigns focused on one or two locations, or large continent-spanning free-roam adventures. The small scale adventures are front loaded in terms of the work I put in, while the large scale are easy to start but require more work on an ongoing basis: essentially, paying cash up front or making regular payments that add up to more work but over a longer period. Honestly, the large scale ones tend to be more popular and easier for me. To start I create the following: 1. The map. One inch is 30 miles. The maps can be very big. 2. Notes on world-building, such as kingdoms, rulers, key locations, trade, deities, history. Very abbreviated. 3. Wandering monster table - generic creatures/people like goblins, bandits, etc. 4. Wandering NPC table - specific named individuals. This tends to be where the most fun comes from. The local sheriff, the infamous witch, a serial killer pretending to be a bard. 5. Wandering encounter table - this has set pieces like broken down wagon, castle siege, flooding, forest fire, witch trial,etc. Essentially, the entire game is free-roam. There might be a basic premise, like find a McGuffin, but usually what the players end up doing is dictated by the random encounters. For example, one campaign was entirely centered around an encounter where the party rescued a witch who was about to be burned at the stake, and a lord who didn't like adventurers perverting his righteous justice. I've also created dungeons with random rooms, but it generally works better to determine what's in each room ahead of time rather than on the fly - although that can be hilarious for a short game.

I follow the following steps when making my D&D campaign. First, I make an overland map. Just some landscape, mountains, forest, maybe a lake, river, or shore. I then put down dots and stars, the stars being kingdoms/cities, and the dots being towns/villages. Next I name them. I put down strange names from a racial language if it's a non-human settlement (D&D racial dictionaries on the net are good for this), but otherwise it doesn't matter what the town's are. The players haven't been there yet. Next I flesh out the town the players will be starting in, just a little bit. Usually something simple: "this is a town of artists," "this kingdom is like ancient Rome," "this town has a history of rulers getting assassinated by the next ruler in line," etc. I don't worry about what's in the town as a whole unless the PCs want to go some place specific, then BOOM! There's a location like what they're looking for on that corner over there. Next I make a dungeon for players to play in. This part I pay attention to. It will have multiple rooms with many encounters, traps, and treasure. It will also have a goal the players are dealing with. In one game, the party had been kidnapped by slavers and had to escape without their equipment. In another, they had agreed to help a king by finding historical texts so he could learn more about the kingdom he ruled. In yet another, the party was searching for an ancient statuette of the goddess of lust for some rich pervert. Whatever it is, the players have a goal to get to and I can add to the story later. I tend to start in medias res. The players are at the dungeon and ready to go. I don't let them stop the game by suddenly doing things in town and never getting to the adventure; they have already negotiated a price or the starting events have happened, you can do the stuff you forgot to do later. GO! The main thing is that I don't have anything planned beyond the bare bones and the first adventure. The players are expecting an adventure, so I give them one and worry about the main story later as events happen. I have a few hooks for the story in mind in the first adventure, but what the players do determines how the story flows.

Great content, many thanks.

I just found your channel and I LIKE it. I'm kind of sorry that I'm so late to the show. My fantasy world took years, and was created based on the concept that people who live in a world actually know things about that world. Think about the world, and that even in medieval times, people could conjure up and imagine certain places in their minds just be hearing about it. People in say, London, knew of and had stories about places like Scotland, Ireland, France, Daneland, and Wales. In addition, they heard stories of faraway Rome, Holy Lands, Araby and Cathay. Too they had legends of the Roman Empire, Ancient Greece, and their own Myths. All too often players in a home game have no idea of what the world is like. No basic concepts, No history and no attachments. They can play in 'Bob's world' for years and never have any idea if what the world is like, yet mention Forgotten Realms and they can suddenly discuss it for days. They know the major cities, megadungeons, points of interest, and the major movers and shakers in the world. So I started from that idea. Create a world from the aspect of the town. kingdom/ region characters would start in... and give them some basic world history, which in itself can help create the tone of the setting. Give them the major places that people would hear about. (Like Neverwinter). Then the question becomes... where are the people from? And where do all of the various 'trope cultures come from? This is kind of important, because players like to suddenly create something like this, even if you're not ready and you have to do this on the fly. So I added the main trope cultures, based vaguely on the real world cultures. So there's a medieval nation, a Game of Thrones with Merchant houses culture, a Disneyesque Fairy tales culture, a Swashbuckling 3 Musketeers culture... a Theocracy, a Mageocracy, and a place where the Anthropomorphic races might have developed cultures of their own, rather than being minor creatures in a Human only world. I also thought that there are a Ginats and a ton of Giant creatures,,, why? What if there are Giantlands where everything is "Giant"? Then I created a world threat. Not a we have to deal with it today... but an everyday kind of threat. That one Kingdom/ empire that would like to take over the world, but cannot. At least not yet, for various reasons... including...they aren't quite string enough. And I created roads.. at least major travel routes, to connect it all. I created the main 'continent' in such a way that one can get anywhere on that continent within 2 months (Give or take). Reaching other continents can be done within 3 months or so by ship. Then I focused more on where the players would meet. It has to be a center that various people can reach. And followed much of what You mention in this video, I didn't create the megadungeon, yet. I actually wanted that to be farther afield from the initial town, to create a secondary place to make friends and adventure from at a later stage. the idea being that there are different places in the world, that aren't THAT far away. My biggest issues are the idea of running in town adventures, as I myself have never enjoyed them for the most part. This may well be one of the most useful D&D videos I have encountered on KZfaq to date. Thank you. You got me. Subscribed

Reposting something I posted on a DungeonCraft video: I design the starting place (town, village, etc.) in great detail and then all of the nearest possible destinations. This has always worked for me. The main reason is I have had players decide on session 1 to ignore the rich town around them, with all its plot hooks and starting experience opportunities and head directly into the wilderness. Those session are able to continue because I have the details about where they were going. I do this like a spiderweb. I have a full area map with named locations and as they discover one area I detail all the areas around it. This allows them to go where they want immediately. If they finish an area at the end of that session I do ask them if they have plans for where they are going to go the next session and that lets me review and maybe second draft where they are headed adding detail as needed. It also allows me to grow the spider web out from the next destination. This way I am always 1-2 sessions ahead of the players. After 40 years of GM-ing this way seems best, at least for me. If there is a down side, it is sometimes it is too much detail for casual players. I will have one player that wants to know everything about the place they are in and others who just want a map and bullet point list of what is where and nothing more. This tends to give advantage to the players who want and can absorb details. I try to tailor the handouts to match the player's style of taking in information. I may give a map and bullet list for one player who prefers that and the next gets 1-2 sentences per numbered area and an overall summary of the area. To my in depth players they get a map (or more than one), and each area has a short paragraph of what and who is there and how it ties into what they know, with appendixes about details and things they know overall about the area, light history, contacts, a legend or two, etc. Behind me I have a wall full of three ring binders. Each one started from a campaign I have had. At the end of the campaign I reorganize the binder to be less about the campaign and more about the area. If anyone goes there again I can pluck it down from the shelf and pick right up. Of course this is my life's hobby. It isn't for everyone and I totally understand that. When I am running a group, I spend 4-16 hours of prep and design before each session. I find that the early and ending prep sessions take the longest and the middle session prep are shorter because much of the work is done and I am just tying threads together or adding details where the players decided to do something novel. The late ones take more prep because I enhance it to tie in what they have done as characters to have an appropriate chance to end it in the ways they have shown me they prefer. So maybe that annoying innkeeper that they kept arguing with and who always charged them too much for everything turned out to be the brother of the one of the villains and at the end to get to the villain they have to deal with the innkeeper in a fashion that is fulfilling for them. That's just how I role....

Honestly figured this video would be about stuffing the world to the brim with highly-lethal absolutely-ludicrous traps. That was sadly a common trait of Gygax-era D&D, and something that we still can't be rid of fast enough because nearly every trap is horrible world-building (almost never do people fill their homes/workplaces/etc with traps of any sort, especially lethal ones). Good world-building is about realizing that no rational person builds a pit trap except in some very specific scenarios (like hunting or defending against invading forces), and so what you want to do is instead design similar environment challenges but in a way that makes sense: it's not a _built_ pit trap, but a corridor ending in a waterfall, where the water has eroded everything away and there's no "far side" of the corridor visible, and instead you have ot figure out how to survive the 75 foot drop to the next visible corridor that leads to the rest of the dungeon (and maybe leaves something behind so you can get back up too). Basically there are plenty of ways for the environment to challenge players without using traps that feel like they make no sense. Same goes for puzzles usually -- you don't open your front door by stepping on an elaborate sequence of pressure places, and if you did you can be sure people would be busting into your place all the time because that's really bad security. So the default frame of mind should be to drop all the traps and puzzles and only implement some if there's a really good logical reason why they'd exist in a place. _Rarely_ there is. _Usually_ there isn't.

Fun! Good. Thanks!

looks like a fun resource!

I love that Forever DM had been a meme in the D&D community since the D&D community

Good Stuff. I really enjoyed the video - Griff

I run RQG (Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha) so the world setting is already created, but I use a similar "start with local area" concept. I build my campaigns on a MtG card system I learned on DM's Block which gives me a three-part starting adventure settings set within the world.

Used this method, ended up running a campaign when I showed my notes to my previous GM.

There is a random terrain maker in the 1st AD&D book. Great for doing 1 mile hexagon maps.

I would also recommend Worlds Without Number by Kevin Crawford. Though it is his version of Fantasy Roleplaying, most of the book is made of ideas and tips for world building. Very useful for any DM.

In 75 Gary had not run campaigns for years and years. At that time he had played and DMd for just a few years. Not that the advice is bad. It's important to remember he was just as big of a newbie DM as anyone else once upon a time.

If you're going to create a mega-dungeon, make sure it makes sense. Level 12 full of dragons? Why? How do they survive? Why do the other inhabitants stick around? Why is better treasure in lower levels? Who built the dungeon and why? I'm not saying there can't be good answers to these questions, but they do need good answers for the campaign to make sense.

My campaing is about race conflict. Humans and dwarves come from a """central""" continent called Hebreska, the dwarves were created by 7 dwarf gods (pretty obvious detail), each representing a form of crafting/piece of how the universe works, and they live isolated in a huge mountain chain to the east, near to halflings. For other continents we have Mordok, home for the mordokin which include goblinoids, orcs, ogres and other "mean" things (I purged their prejudice against them in the very first session and teached how they are just different people and finally from the multiples islands that form the Yivin region come elves, gnomes and other more magical races. I'm still in a rough draft, but I'm surely going to follow your guidelines to better mix the race placement, give them twists and more flavour.

I dislike those big dungeons no way the monsters dont kill each other and those places have no realistic reason to exist even in a magical world. I prefer to have roughtly 1 "ruin" per character level around the map that can work as a dungeon esque location. And if they dont get visited i just crank them up if they get visited later. Gygax had many many things right that get forgotten especially with the newer official material but those really hardcore dungeoncrawls across huge dungeons is kinda outdated. In my experience its much more fun to visit those once in a while in the form of normal dungeons.

I’d suggest getting Keep on the Borderlands and expanding from there.

I only recently stumbled into this channel. Good content man. Please, start your videos with a standard greeting. Then introduce your topic. It makes a difference

Thank you for the video. I like the old school approach expect the meaga-dungeons. I have always wondered how we could justifiy the existence of wandering monsters and settled monsters in a mega dungeon. But I might be too influenced by modern play-style. How could level -12 host many Dragons, how do they ended up there? How do they leave the place? I think when the focus was slaying monsters and hoarding treasure, this wasn't an issue. But today if you meet a Vampire in a corridor just after a fight against wolves and goblin in level minus 4 and jsut before a deadly trap that prevent any progression without seeing it and disarming it, well, I guess you will face some consistency issues. How the wastes are evacuated (gelatinous cubes cannot be everywhere). How the cooking smoke is escaping (If you thought about a place where humanoid prepare their food).... etc... So, I do like the old school approach and most of the points. But the Mega-Dungeon is going to break consitency issues. Unless you set as rule #1 in a Mega Dungeon: forget about logic, you enter a world where there are opponents, traps and treasures. Where monsters are spawn endelessly and randomly.

I've been using this method since I found out about it back in my 3e days. One modification I've made is using 2d6+½ level for my encounter tables. Let's me make one big table that scales with the adventure.

I'm running my first OSE session this Friday and I'm building a level ZERO funnel for it so the players can learn the system with imputiny. I've pregenned(using zed2noughts as a basis, but with my own twists)(ooh, twisted sounds fun!) 16 characters and will have character sheets for the players to each create one additional character to add to their respective "gangs" of villagers. I only have the classic rules tome pdf and the dolmenwood patreon content, so I'll be limiting the players initially into the 4 basic classes, no non humans for now. They'll need to earn and unlock those. I've also tagged specific level zeros for if they survive the opportunity to achieve level 1 in specific dolmenwood classes.

Instead of mega dungeons I have a couple towers in my world with mini-game type encounters for them. Completing one room allows you to move up with encounters becoming harder and loot becoming better

Great vid! Nice job on my name, almost no one gets that right (Rod Nedlose). Keep up the good work Ben!

Its a long hidden fact. Your players will supply you with most of the world building you will have to do. When you set them up at Sesh 0. You give them a broad spectrum of what is possible and available. Then listen to what they want and give it to them. There are constraints, of course, but the buy-in should never compete with the wide wonder of what is about to happen. You describe the world, the players interact and you give them a reason to be heroic.

My process for my campaign setting was, I wanted to make a final fantasy style 2D rpg in RPG Makver MV as a hobby. I made a huge world that was pretty deep, my own races, etc. Eventually I stopped working on that project to focus on projects that would be better for my career. Eventually I decided to get into D&D and, well look at that, a very deep world already made and good to use for RPGs. I actually still use RPG Maker to plan and run sessions, because who would have though RPG Maker would be a great tool for making RPGs Even tabletop ones? Since its got a tile based map editor and scripting tools where you can just write comments about what's in a tile. I don't show my players the pixel versions though, I moved all lore to World Anvil and used Inkscape to create a more presentable map for immersion sake. I also write note and homebrew mechanics on docs/spreadsheets in google drive and use dndbeyond. I have never used a hexmap since RPG Maker only uses a square grid and my players don't really like the look of hexmaps, though I have tried. Since my map was for a large 2D overworld, I think I went too huge so my map. If it was originally for D&D, knowing what I know now, I definitely would have started with a 1 mile per tile based area map.

My process was different. One day i decided to try DMing, so i picked up a random one shot adventure i found online. I added a little detail that the players wouldn't have the chance to explore at the time: hints of an evil drow mage doing dark experiments on human beings, using a dark magical powder. I kept this character as a cool idea to maybe get back to if i ever had to design a campaign. One day i decided to create my world. I used that little theme, the dark powder, to literally create: 1) A planet 2) Gods and a reason for them to inhabit that planet (that is, extractions of the powder). From there it went all "outside in": i invented the stories of the conflicts between the Gods, the end of peace, the changes in the shape of the world that occurred in response. I had few ideas in mind for the worldbuilding that i tried to connect with mythology, history of the races and even astrology. I made a word file of dozens of pages that i would come back to to add details day after day. I played other one shots that would fit the lore of the world, a history of past events for the future players to be acquainted with, even if they would have come back with new characters. I opened photoshop and took weeks to make my pen and paper map look stunning and real. I even used plate tectonics theory, geology and meteorology to shape the planet. I also invented a new race (and its origins, history etc.). At some point i decided to play the campaign. I had the characters' stories, a world, and no plot hook. I made everything up in a short time the best i could, downloaded a random small dungeon map and went for it. Every day i played i would not know anything that would have take place the following session. I invented all the story session after session, cause simply i found it beyond my capabilities to design a full campaign all at once. All of the above took me some months to complete, and i still have many blank spaces in my lore and geography as well. I slowly adapted my style of preparation to be more "inside out", even if this is not my natural way. Briefly, i took all this long to invent a deep world knowing that the players would not see the 95% of it, just cause i loved it. Keep in mind that even if you develop a world like Tolkien, you would still miss almost the full part of preparation. All this work can even be detrimental: you risk loving your world too much that you will be sad when your players will f* your favourite good faction just because the chief of the party is a druid and he hates castles.

Hi Ben! Any plans to review the Stockholm Kartell zine adventures; "The Ommadonian Ossuary", "The Cursed Abbey", and "The Prison-Crypt of Mu-Ye"? I'm a new DM and unsure how to tell if an adventure is right for my players, so would appreciate your thoughts on these. Thank you, love your videos!!

Yes, kept my players in a montane forest region. Now they can expand out a little, but keep coming back.

I tend to go waaaaayyy overboard and just create tons of material. It is the funnest part for me. I just need to get better at building dungeons. I create so much overworld that the players can do whatever and I will always have more for them to do. Makes sessions easy to play out but the initial prep time is soooo long lol

My first time I was a DM. The entire campaign was what you call that dungeon, since it was based upon Sword Art Online. Every floor that is canonized, I didn't have to actually do all of that much work. The other 75%, I'll admit I made it up as I went along, in terms of the specifics. I mainly just had a vague list of ideas that every floor would be based around. For example I stole from a fan fiction and made one of the floors a neigh untravelable swamp with sparce settlements dotting the landscape. Another one was literally "Pokemon Red/Blue" except fuck version exclusives. Granted for the progression boss you had to beat Giovanni with a much stronger team than what he offers up as the gym leader

I never strayed from that. Read all his Dragon Magazine articles and haven't changed much since 1981. Everything after the AD&D DM's Guide, Players Handbook and Monster Manual has been optional fluff.

Old school definitely had more interesting and better encounter tables. Mixtures of difficulty, including some results that should send the players running for their lives. They also, as you pointed out, had non-combat encounters that mixed things up. Nowadays, encounter tables are just done by challenge rating, meaning you are locked into encountering certain things way too consistently

What is the best way to apply the Gary 75 Challenge to a Space Setting? I was to build a west marches campaign with WEG D6 Star Wars.

Will you rewiew into the unknown? :) it's very very good

I really like Gary's guidelines and honestly have been using them to DM for years. I love love love starting off with a moderately sized region and building outward along with the players as their characters experience it. The only guideline I don't agree with is the mega-dungeon. Honestly I am not a fan of big dungeons. It just doesn't work with my playstyle and world aesthetic, but mostly because they really slow down the campaign story progression. But yeah, this is some of the best advice for new DM to get started.

What's the map on the wall behind you? It looks familiar but I can't place it.

The two “successful “ campaigns I have run have both been started with a cheat of sorts. The first I killed all the characters at level one and had them saved and indentured to my favorite god/demigod at the time Zygig. He transported and revived them in a facility (pocket plane) with no exit other than a portal controlled by a sentient crystal in service to the god. From there he would send them on missions to gather unique items or acquire unique magics at his whim. This allowed me to pull characters and put in others as circumstances with players required. The second I started with a small island and the initial party was from a particular town which I had fleshed out. There was no contact with the greater world as the island was off major trade routes and had been ravaged by several powerful evil dragons. It did offer a better defined final goal for the players. So…… in different ways I managed to loosely follow the ‘Gygax 75’ without knowing about it lol Special note both of these campaigns were 2.5 edition so could have been kind of cooked into the system.

Step 1: dig a hole. Step 2: Put goblins in hole. Step 3: give PCs a reason to explore hole. Or, buy Keep on the Borderlands for 3 bucks on drivethru. Basic D&D? Yes. Don't like that? Do Hommlet/Elemental Evil.

I started with the map, a great deal of ignorance snd naivety, and a desire to create something out of Heavy Metal magazine. This was in 1980, with just the Moldvay Basic for rules.

I build small and work out from there. This all depends on where the characters go and do.

I think one thing that traps new DMs is the idea of creating a massive world for the players to travel and explore over the campaign. But that's really unnecessary. If you look at a campaign setting like Rime of the Frost Maiden, for example, it's designed for levels 1-12ish and the entire thing takes place in and around Ten Towns. If you look at the entire map of Faerun, Ten Towns is barely a blip in the far northwest. A campaign doesn't need to span continents or even multiple nations unless you really, really want it to. And if you're new to world-building, starting small this way is much more manageable.