The world as the characters know it
Overview
The game world is the only world the characters know and it is the world you want your players to experience. It will have to make an impression, it has to be exciting and the players must be able to immerse themselves in it.
This chapter will discuss how to build the game world.
What do you need to think about? What makes a world playable? What makes it suitable for adventures? How will it work? What people will live in it? What is their life like?
These and other questions will be examined and hints and guidelines will be given.
What makes a world suitable for playing
A good world has to have a mix of several things. It cannot be too simple, or the players will quickly see through the illusion and see the game data. It must have some sort of conflict of interests, or there will not be anything around for the players to do. It also has to be familiar enough to the players for them to relate to it.
Complexity
The world has to have a certain level of complexity to seem real for the players. If it is too simple, it will look more like a stage and less like a world.
Complexity is also needed if the world is going to last more than a few gaming sessions. A simple world quickly runs out of adventure seeds.
Closely related to the complexity is concept. Concepts are what makes a world unique and gives it a special feel.
A good world should have more than one major concept or it will become single-minded and boring. It is equally important that is does not have too many major concepts or it will lose it?s direction and become a hopeless stew of non-related stuff. A good balance is probably in the vicinity of three or four major concepts.
Just major concepts are not enough. They provide the overall direction, but we also need all the interesting twists and turns. In this context, we will call these minor concepts. Minor concepts are usually things on the same scale as the characters, while the major concepts define the world, although this does not necessarily have to be the case.
You can have lots of minor concepts and they may change over time. You may add minor concepts as needed to slightly alter the direction of the world.
The popular TV series X-Files is based upon the major concepts of investigation, conspiracy and the supernatural. These, while interesting, have little immediate effects on the main characters, so some minor concepts are also used. These vary as the series progress, but include the relation between the main characters, Mulder?s sister, Scully?s child, the black oil, cigarette smoking man and so on. These minor concepts are what draw the characters into the story and deep into the major concepts. Without them, the major concepts would just be a distant background.
Conflict
Face it; utopia is not a place for excitement and adventure. Every good world needs conflicts. It may be huge conflicts concerning the entire world; it may be lots of small conflicts or any combination of large and small conflicts.
What is important, however, despite the size of the conflict, is that there must be a place where the players can fit in and make a difference, even if it is just on a local scale. It does not work well to put the players in the trenches of the First World War among thousands of other soldiers and subject them to random shellings. They will have little or no influence on the outcome. This does not provide a good start for good gaming.
There are several solutions on how to best involve the characters.
- Have smaller conflicts. This involves changing the world a bit, so it may not be appropriate in all cases.
- Put the players in key missions in a larger conflict. Put them in special operations attacking key targets.
- Put the players in some kind of command position. Let them command a star ship.
- Have smaller conflicts within the large conflicts. Let them play resistance members in the Second World War instead of frontline soldiers.
Don?t be afraid to have a larger conflict in the background. It provides a good setting and incentive for the players as they go around doing their small part. Just make sure you have a place where the players fit in.
A good idea in some cases is to have many smaller conflicts between smaller groups or countries. That way, you can easily allow the conflict to evolve and even be won or lost during the game without disrupting the entire game world.
Conflicts do not have to involve wars. They may be smaller fights or contain no violence at all. Classic examples of this is power struggles, economic conflicts, two men who wants the same woman (or two women who wants the same man), theft, espionage or just general dirt flinging.
Whichever way you go, make sure that your world has plenty of conflict in it.
Familiarity
The players must be able to relate to the world. It does not have to be exactly like the real world, but if it gets to weird they will lose contact with it.
It is important at this point to examine the concept of realism. Realism can be a lot of things at many different levels. It can be that a big gun hurts more than a small gun; it can be that even a hero dies sometimes; it can be that there are no ghosts. It is not, however, a requirement for familiarity.
Level of development
Technology
Social development
Travel between worlds
Society
Structure
Laws
Customs
Religion
Politics
Trade
People
Races
Organizations
Events
What is going on
Why does it happen
What is likely to happen
