Perfect worlds don’t need heroes, and they certainly don’t need adventurers. Functioning kingdoms do not need to hire mercenaries to do the jobs of soldiers or a police force, civilized areas do not need a half-dozen heavily armed warriors acting as caravan guards, and very few hamlets or villages are threatened with slavery and death in a happy countryside. By the needs and conventions of the game, D&D worlds have to be seriously flawed, and even kingdoms ruled by a kind and just king must have their problems. Even campaigns built around delving into forgotten ruins seeking treasure and magic suggest a non-utopia based on the fact such a dangerous occupation is appealing, which says that there are few safer ways of earning that wealth. After all, the life of an adventurer is

The dominant element in fantasy campaigns tends to be nations, be it tiny city-states like the city of Greyhawk, or massive continent-spanning empires like the Five Nations of pre-Last War Eberron. Expansive and detailed nations are a staple of fantasy worlds and separate fantasy from the vague unnamed kingdoms of fairy tales.

This is the Fifth Part in a series on fantasy world building

Chapters

Below are links to the other chapters in this series.

Introduction

Part 1: The Hook

Part 1.5: Factors

Part 2: Conflict

Part 3: Geography

Part 4: Races

Part 5: Nations

Part 6: Room for monsters

Part 7: Deities

Part 8: Cities

Part 9: Factions

Part 10: History

Part 11: Economics

Part 12: Culture

Part 13: Starting

Eventually, when designing a new fantasy campaign world, you’ll want to map things out. For many this is just doodling on paper or in Photoshop or turning to a campaign cartography or fractal mapping program. But let’s look a little deeper at maps and charting your world, to avoid some of the common pitfalls and mistakes.

This is the third chapter on a series on world building.

Chapters

Below a links to the previous chapters in this series

Introduction

Part 1: The Hook

Part 1.5: Factors

Part 2: Conflict

Part 3: Geography

Part 4: Races

Part 5: Nations

Part 6: Room for monsters

Part 7: Deities

Part 8: Cities

Part 9: Factions

Part 10: History

Part 11: Economics

Part 12: Culture

Part 13: Starting

Let’s talk about the upcoming changes to the Forgotten Realms. This isn’t really a topical subject, being some time after the announcement at GenCon and some time before the novels and adventures are released. I had planned it earlier but kept delaying this piece to write other blogs. Oops.

If you hadn’t heard, the forthcoming revamp of the Realms was revealed at the GenCon Keynote address and mentioned in a couple panels on the Realms. They’re doing an event called “the Sundering” which is designed to both transition the Realms to 5e but also bring the Forgotten Realms back to basics.

Yeah... I’m experiencing a little déjà vu here.

The Nuking the Realms

For 4e, the Forgotten Realms was altered via a trilogy of modules published

All stories are driven by conflict. Fiction is driven by narrative conflict and games are driven by the conflict between either the players at the table or – in the case of most RPGs – between the GM and the players, be it directly or indirectly.

This is the second chapter on a blog series on World Building.

Chapters

Below a links to the previous chapters in this series

Introduction

Part 1: The Hook

Part 1.5: Factors

Part 2: Conflict

Part 3: Geography

Part 4: Races

Part 5: Nations

Part 6: Room for monsters

Part 7: Deities

Part 8: Cities

Part 9: Factions

Part 10: History

Part 11: Economics

Part 12: Culture

Part 13: Starting Zone

Part 14: Player's Guide

Conflicted

In D&D, much of

This is the start of a new series discussing world building and the creation of campaign settings.

With 4th Edition winding down and many new campaigns looming on the horizon, ready to start when 5th Edition officially launches (or there's enough playtesting material) I imagine many DMs are thinking about where they'll set their campaign, what world they want to play in, and the nuances of creating their own campaign setting.

This blog series is designed to offer advice and suggestions on the art of world building. Each blog will discuss an element of design, and I’ll also demonstrate the advice by loosely designing a brand new world just for this blog.

Chapters

Below is a list of chapters (to be edited into links when I continue this series)

Introduction

Part 1: The Hook

Dragons of Despair

New Beginnings

Back in 1984 I ventured into La Grange Hobbies and looked at the game section of the store. There I found this new AD&D module called DL1 Dragonlance: Dragons of Despair and the cover just blew me away. I bought it and opened it up right away.

The map was so cool looking and the store was about heroes rising up and helping return the divine magic back to the world following some great cataclysm that had caused the gods too turn their backs on the world.

We played almost every module that came out and I read all of the novels. I had really hoped we would have seen Dragonlance for 4e, I really do. With D&D Next now being available I saw a chance to run this adventure, railroad or not by today's standards, for my group of players. I had decided back when

The Eberron campaign setting is almost ten years old.

It was released as the culmination of a search for a new campaign setting, and chosen from amongst 10 thousand submissions. The contest began in 2002 and ended in 2003, when 3.5e was released and we saw the first teasing hints of the world, although the actual campaign guide was not released until 2004.

Let's quickly put that into perspective. I'm a librarian at an Elementary school, which is K-6, or ages 5-11. So the majority of the kids in my school are younger than Eberron. They have never lived in a world without the Last War and Warforged and magitech. They have never breathed the air of a world where there was no such thing as dragonmarks or dragon shards. Eberron is becoming less and less "the new kid" and more and more

The hook behind 5e, what really makes the edition special, is its emphasis on customization. Instead of the game telling you how to play, it will let you play the way you want, emulating the edition you want. 5e will have “rule modules” that can be used to customize and redefine rules, options that can be dropped into a game or used to build a campaign.

What are the must-have modules? Which optional rules that simple have to be included as soon as possible? Here’s my list:

By Any Other Name

First, I need to get one quick thing off my chest. WotC needs to rename the optional rule packages. The term “modules” is a little confusing, having been already used to describe adventures. Using “module” is a little like using “level”. D&D has