A wise GM once told me: If you make a sandbox, you gotta fill it with toys.
Good advice, right there.
A wise GM once told me: If you make a sandbox, you gotta fill it with toys.
Good advice, right there.
I typically do it with a good schema (like nested folders) This is the skeleton. I like starting here because I can do it on my phone anywhere. Folders look like this (loosely) Universe World Planes, gods, kingdoms Let’s open up to cities. It’s the best place I like to start personally. I really think beginning exactly where I do here is a way to actually put pen to paper. I always start with “city 1” Inside that will be more folders. Npcs, locations, non magical items of note, and magical items. A cities folder changes a lot depending on the city. But these are typically safe to have. Remove the folder if not used. Now, I still have no idea where or what I’m even making. But the next step is where it starts to mold. 📁 Universe └── 📁 World ├── 📁 Planes ├── 📁 Gods └── 📁 Kingdoms └── 📁 Cities └── 📁 City 1 ├── 📁 NPCs ├── 📁 Locations ├── 📁 Non-Magical Items of Note └── 📁 Magical Items So now that we have the bones here, we haven’t even named any cities our universe or our world. We want to put people in the city. This is the biggest part of the world, the npcs. Let’s add more bones! We don’t have to name anything yet 📁 NPCs ├── 📁 Complex NPCs │ ├── 📁 NPC 1 │ ├── 📁 NPC 2 │ ├── 📁 NPC 3 │ ├── 📁 NPC 4 │ ├── 📁 NPC 5 │ ├── 📁 NPC 6 │ ├── 📁 NPC 7 │ ├── 📁 NPC 8 │ ├── 📁 NPC 9 │ └── 📁 NPC 10 │ └── 📁 Minor NPCs Now. This is where you begin to breathe life. For a city to feel alive you need key figures and influential npcs. So I have a folder called complex npcs. Basically a complex npc is any pc with a backstory. Before I even name them I want to create relationship diagrams. This is sort of jazz like in nature. Or you can be more deliberate. But I like having a seed to imagine the dynamics. But inside of each npc I have a relationship folder. This is where we add Drama! 📁 NPC 1 └── 📁 Relationships ├── NPC 3 ├── NPC 4 ├── NPC 7 └── NPC 9 📁 NPC 2 └── 📁 Relationships ├── NPC 3 ├── NPC 5 ├── NPC 8 └── NPC 10 📁 NPC 3 └── 📁 Relationships ├── NPC 1 ├── NPC 2 ├── NPC 6 └── NPC 9 Basically I just randomly create the concept of a relationship here. I don’t know if it’s good or bad or anything. But this is where we write. We begin naming them. We remove the npc 1 place holder and put their name. Then write what the relationship is to the other etc. I like doing conflict triangles, essentially if one gets what they want how does it impact the others. Example: Npc 1 is having a very very large library built for the people. Npc 2 the seemingly only place that it can fit is an area of ancient forest (add to locations) and fears for the wildlife there. Npc3 is the best contractor in the city and was hired to build the library and son of Npc2. Then do another triangle with 9, 2, and 4. I always have all of this on a relationship map pinned to my screen. By the time the campaign starts these folders are created irl and I put it all on paper because you need to make quick notes and I don’t want to click through a bunch of folders on my phone. NPCs will have character sheets laying this out. If the party runs into a random npc and learns anything about them that even has a hint of backstory (like their history or brother or sister etc) they graduate to complex.