A lot of the major most famous world settings seem to strive off of one big gimmick. I.E.:
A place that radiates evil
The death of a God
Magic blight
The world is a desert and you're going to die alone
etc.
So for better or worse you might get the best idea by finding a "gimmick" and playing off of it. It might be campy and "overdone" but it's part of the staple of the culture, at least in my opinion.
Golarion is somewhat designed around the "Death of a God". So if you can get a look at the Inner Sea World Guide that could give you a lot of inspiration. Then again, you could always just use their wonderfully developed world and fit your campaign in there in the most "region appropriate" area.
Every time I plan on building a world for something I read through that setting and realize I can plop it down somewhere in there and it'll work just as well :D
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Yukom, there are lots of ways to post your campaign information for your players. Do a search for "Obsidian Portal" to see a website based around the concept of posting custom campaign information including maps, character descriptions, encounter summaries, etc. I used to use it but now I have my own Wordpress blog that I use for my gaming stuff, including posting my campaign information.
Back to "How do I make my campaign popular"... While a "gimmick" might be helpful in providing your campaign world with a theme or a hook, that's not really what will make your campaign popular. As a GM who has been running a custom campaign world for 30 years, here is my advice:
1. Determine the scope of your campaign environment. Is it a village with some surrounding woodlands? A mountain valley? A small country? An island? A continent? An entire world? Make sure that you've got your environment laid out enough that you can address questions your players might have like "My character is a gnome, where do the gnomes live?"
2. Create a plausible set of settlements, villages, cities etc. If your setting is expansive, lay out country boundaries. For each country you should have a short description of the government type, including the names of key NPCs such as "King Hiram of Gorantium" Besides providing a sense of order and completeness to the campaign, it will also give you the ability to start adding details for future campaign hooks.
3. Do some basic geography. In a fantasy world you don't really need to worry about how "realistic" the geography is, meaning you don't necessarily have to understand or even care about things like plate tectonics, glaciation, drainages, plateaus, etc. But I like to try to make the geography somewhat reasonable. You will need to figure out where the major bodies of water are since those will be a big factor in the next bit:
4. Decide how interconnected your world is. A well developed world will have extensive networks of trade, communication, travel, etc. That usually means roads, paths, rivers, canals, sea ports etc. If you can lay out trade routes that will provide you with opportunities to predict where your players will likely travel since most players will follow established paths when they travel. This interconnectivity can (and should) include political and cultural connections. What is the financial capital of your "world?" What is the cultural center? What is the military powerhouse? Are there guilds? If so how powerful are they? Do they have the power to enforce guild rules? And finally, what are the main religious centers and where are the main temples, churches and holy places? Something as simple as defining a river or a mountain as "holy" to a religious sect can create amazing opportunities for role playing and questing.
5. Build a list of key NPCs. This should probably start with your main BBEG and any NPCs who oppose them. It should include all kings, emperors, Presidents or Prime Ministers of all the actual countries. For the cities and towns that your party will frequent, you should list the main NPCs of those cities/towns, such as the Mayor, the leaders of the local chapters of the important guilds (mages, rogues, mercenaries, etc.), the main religious leaders and then throw in some cultural figures too, I like to put in things like famous actors/playwrights, famous artists, local healers, magical figures like a local powerful hedge witch, etc.
6. Create an overarching plot. Who is trying to take over the world and why? What is their motivation? How extensive is their network of minions and sympathizers? How does that overarching plot affect the country your player characters are in, and how does it affect the local town?
If you put all that together, your world should feel solid and consistent. You will have plot points you can use as campaign hooks, and if your party wants to just sandbox it, you can provide them with any reason they want to go adventuring. I've been doing it this way for 30 years and so far everyone who has played in my world has been very complimentary about the world.
I'll just leave a dot here and look on curiously at this.
Kind of been in need of tips like these myself for a while now.
Excellent advice from Adamantine Dragon.
I would add the biggest *mistakes* GMs tend to make when world-building:
- they focus on their story rather than the players' characters' stories.
- they plan too far in advance for "the big moment".
- they overreach in world scale.
Keeping characters engaged in a world means involving them in it. If they include names of mentors or whatever in their characters' backstories, make those NPCs in your world; if they mention a place (I'm from a small town in the Forest of Oblivion), consider making "the Forest of Oblivion" and having a small town there. As the world and campaign, give them things in the world they care about - a town, some NPCs (patrons or dependents or family, etc), maybe a keep or house they've built or earned - not just as individuals, but as a party (maybe the dwarven cleric owns a tavern as an investment, but owns a local keep jointly with the party). Things like that. The PCs don't have to be the most important heroes in the world (that's what high level and mythic is for), but they should have the opportunity to be big men (or the local scourge) of their neck of the woods.
As for a campaign arc, it's worth dividing it into sub-arcs (look at APs for an idea). Remember that the world itself is a character, and it should change and develop (for better or worse) as the game develops. It's worth starting small and growing from there, rather than trying to have a world spring fully grown-and-armed, Athena-style, from your head at the start.
Example: I'm developing a campaign at the moment, with a unique world. For flavor, I'm looking at Medieval Romania, specifically a certain forested mountain valley. In my campaign, the valley is the frontier of a kingdom (to de developed in detail later on, when it matters), has a castle town which defends it, various smaller towns and villages, a trade road, and so on. It's administered by a baron, a significant NPC, whom the PCs might seek to get the attention/patronage early on (which might eventually lead to patronage by the count or duke above him, and maybe eventually the king). The valley will be pretty detailed, but other aspects of the world can be developed later.
Excellent advice from David Haller.
The weaving together of the player's backstories into the campaign is a key thing that drives player immersion. It is something that also can drive your own creativity and expand the story of your campaign world. I especially like how David described the world as a "character". That is exactly true and can't be expressed enough.
The world has to evolve and react to what happens. My world, for example, has a town named after one of the first PC heroes to play in the first campaign. He eventually became a demigod and now has his own temples dotting the region. That player is REALLY invested in the campaign world.
My world grew in the telling. It started as a small town near a ruined castle on an overgrown island in a river. As the player party explored and interacted with the town and the area surrounding the island and town, it grew. By the time it was reaching about the size of a couple thousand square miles, I decided it was time to create the entire world. It was probably two years from the time I created the first limited maps to the time I had the whole world mapped out.
But the important thing is that at every stage of the growth of the world, I had all the bits I listed above laid out for the scope of the campaign world I had created.
You can start small, but you still need to be as "complete" as possible.
Wow...you've just come to the forum for EVERYTHING, haven't you? Not that that is a bad thing, but we of the forums can't do all the work for you. You should draw ideas from games you like. That's a great place to start as far as settings go.
Wow...you've just come to the forum for EVERYTHING, haven't you? Not that that is a bad thing, but we of the forums can't do all the work for you. You should draw ideas from games you like. That's a great place to start as far as settings go.Sorry if it seems like I don't know what I'm doing...I mean, I know certain things about the game, but-yeah, sorry if it seems like I came to the forum for everything about the game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing you. I'm glad our collective mind can help you, and I'm sure most of us wish to help you, but remember that it'll only truly be satisfying when YOU come up with a setting. Even if you bum our ideas, put your own spin on it. If you really want someone to do all the work for you, get an Adventure Path.
Basically, I need help making my own campaign. I already have ideas for the races, but I need some help creating the world that the races live in. Any ideas?
Have you already posted a brief overview of the races you have in mind? Their biology and culture will likely have a strong impact on the world you create, since it will have been a part of what shaped them.