Picking up the pieces


Advice


So I have found that my notes and map of my campaign world have been destroyed and honestly, it's put me in a bit of a shlump. I am not sure where to even begin. I'll have to start back at square one, of course, but I'm a little disheartened. Any advice?


I think maps can be the least important part of a campaign world. Though helpful and make it seem real, it is the rich story that you place into the world that brings it to life. You can save the map for last.

If you are short on time before your next meeting, i would focus first on reconstructing what you remember about the area your current campaign is taking place. If your memory is incomplete, borrow bits and pieces from other worlds you remember.

Another quick note, it might be hard, but building a new and different world inspired by the other might be quicker than trying to recreate the other in its full entirety.

I'll check back later with more help. Need to get ready for work now.

I hope you are able to get the world you have worked hard on back into full working order soon.


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I feel your loss brother, the same happened to me a year ago.

This is what I did: I broke my world

The fact is that i like you wouldn't have been able to recreate the world as it had been simply because it was to complex. Some of it was created through long nights of thinking while other parts were played out together with my players.

When it happened my players were on an adventure to stop a minor BBEG whom had committed some minor crime of stealing an artifact from a museum. I Changed the story and decided that this seemingly powerless artifact actually held the power to break the world. This was unknown to both the Pcs and the BBEG. I designed the combat to focus around using the artifact, but no matter who held it in the end, it would unleash its power destroying the world.

Breaking of worlds are need tools - See warcraft cataclysm, dragon lance cataclysm, wheel of time the breaking, forgotten realms times of trouble and spell plague etc.
It allows you to rethink everything. Nothing needs to be as it was. City might have been destroyed or sacked by someone seizing the moment. Seas have dried out and mountains have crumbled. In short it allows you to recreate your world from what you and you players remembers.

If you players remember Sandpoint their nice a quite city, have it change. Maybe it was swallowed by the sea, maybe it was conquered by a local warlord who rose when the nearby capitals city guard was killed in an earthquake.

By now I hope you get the idea. Get a general idea of what might have happened, but don't try to write it all down. Instead focus on the things that has taken up a lot of your games and the things that you PCs pays interest.

A last suggestion is to make you breaking a comment on your loss. I lost my notes in a flood and decided to flood my world, if yours etc were impounded by the government have your ingame government be the course of the breaking.

Sorry for a very long post


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Thanks guys. I've already begun building things back up. The hardest thing to deal with will probably be my near complete conversion of EN Publishing's Steam and Steel to Pathfinder. Sure, it was only 3.x, but quite a bit of work went into it.

I'll probably make a map in Inkarnate or even do a hex map of the starting country since I have transplanted Karameikos to be adjacent to the country my players are in. I'm not an organized person, but I had never truly realized how much work I had put into creating my world in only five years. Wow. The world breaking artifact sounds like an interesting idea. In my world, Death (much like in the Terry Pratchet discworld novels) has his hand in the world. Indeed all the deities do. Perhaps I could mimic the "Time of Troubles" mentions in Forgotten Realms lore. I'm disheartened, but if I just sit down and start with a small area, I can rebuild...only this time around I may loot a bit more from Ebberon.

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