World Building Basics

Start small, stay simple, and add stuff over time. Don’t sweat the details so much. I have been building up the World of Alidor since around 1999. The world initially was made of three places, a dungeon, a small town, and a big city, all fitted nicely on a piece of graph paper. If I find my old map I’ll post it. For now, bare with me.

The town was on a lake rumored to have a great dragon that allowed people to live by it as long as they payed tribute once a year. The town was called Gillian’s Rest, nine years an many adventures later it had been burned and sacked on many occasions by both beast and dragon, and today is exists as a place called Shent Lodge.

The city started out similar to Sigil from the Planescape setting except that it was floating high above the Valley of the Gods and there was no strange magic field or spire as stated in the Planescape Setting version of the Outlands. After many sessions of players saying “Oh you mean like Sigil.” I changed it, now it is star shaped and held aloft by eight squatting stone statues instead of a floating donut. It took five years to make that adjustment and I only have very rough sketches since I only needed a bar or street and alley from time to time. Most my players just imagined the city and that was enough.

The dungeon was a 14 room pit of despair, and home to Murne, a half black dragon minotaur monster that I pulled down from wizards website back when they were free and nice to their fans; I think it was called a monster a week section or something. The dungeon started out with hand drawn stairs leading down into the darkness. Many parties ran screaming from that dungeon until one day in 2004 someone finally put Murne down nearly  four years after the first party had tried.

Years of gaming, all from three simple places. When the party asked about the mountain off in the distance, I came up with the name, Mt. Laudin and the world grew. As my players expanded their explorations Duftown, and Glenfiddich appeared. First as joke names from The Simpsons TV show and some whisky.

My doodling of maps between gaming groups placed parts farther and farther apart until I arrived at the world’s present incarnation. When one group spawned the wrath of Murne, many maps of Jeilling were drawn. Another group attempted to take on Surma which forced me to map out the lake and surrounding area quickly.  Alidor as a real adventure environment, did not come into being overnight  but filled out over time starting when one party woke a great sleeping evil that to this day is called Pagdush Firethrower. When the players asked for more info on Pagdush, I had to create the mythology and back history. Those players learned their history of the world from an ageless man named one Ian Russerson while visiting the great tortoise city called Tudd. The story just happened… no real pageantry just me and my players talking, rolling dice and asking questions.

When I started I did not have all the details, what I did have was the rule books, the dice, and a real cool monster, the players filled in the rest. You see, I had players eager to play outside the box of store bought material and that made a big difference. I ran modules created in-house from listening to the talk around the table and then queuing those adventures in when the party was ready.

You can buy worlds with everything included and awesome modules to place here and there, or you can make stuff up as you go. If you start with the basics of a dungeon to explore, a small town to rest in and a bid city to dream about, then you have all that you need for years of role play and adventure as long as you have players and listen to them as you play. I should point out you will not save any money no matter which way you go, store bought or home-brew still both take time and money. I can say that I found that I really did not start having fun with D&D until I started just using the core 3.X books, the dice and some hand drawn maps. After nine years, I still have players that want to know more about Pagdush Firethrower. How many store bought modules can hold a player’s interest that long without them going out and buying it?

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