Ok so I am homebrewing for the first time. I started working on everything a while ago, but our current campaign is taking a while. The good part is that this is letting me flesh out the world I am making more. Anyway, I am rubbish at maps, so I had planned on using real world maps as a base line. I enjoy my Scottish heritage a lot so the campaign has a Celtic theme. I had started with including an amalgamation of real world places, old myths, and my own story elements. I had developed a viking analogue as they will frequently be interacting with the players. And an invading empire that has taken over part of the islands (essentially a Roman analogue).
Seeing the real world cultural aspects, I have a player who is playing a Kitsune and wants to ancestrally be of a Japanese analogue. I have no problem with that, my question though is more of a practical one for GM's who have prepped worlds before. Since I have opened this door of real world places and cultures, should I work at being ready for players to potentially visit anywhere reasonable. To give real world flare to the places I am making I am actually looking up some of those places and legends to include. Then I am letting those flavor what I put there of my own story elements. On the other hand a part of me is now wondering if it wouldn't just be easier to have a friend map out a completely new world and populate it with the few cultures already identified, rather than attempting to summarize a cultures when it looks like my players will interact with it.
You don't have to build the whole world at once. Leaving white space outside the area filled with the identified cultures (until the party gets close to the edge) is totally OK.
If you have a friend who's good with maps and whose taste you trust then outsourcing a map or two works too.
Your Japan-analogue might want to be off the edge or otherwise partly separated from the existing cultures due to the differences though. Perhaps there's a barrier of magically-rough seas between their islands and the 'West'. Or perhaps they're newly arrived; Japanese colonising some land from far away could work.
You don't have to build the whole world at once. Leaving white space outside the area filled with the identified cultures (until the party gets close to the edge) is totally OK.
If you have a friend who's good with maps and whose taste you trust then outsourcing a map or two works too.
Your Japan-analogue might want to be off the edge or otherwise partly separated from the existing cultures due to the differences though. Perhaps there's a barrier of magically-rough seas between their islands and the 'West'. Or perhaps they're newly arrived; Japanese colonising some land from far away could work.
Given what I had originally planned the Japan analogue would be where Japan is. The player specifically wants his parents to have been explorers. He's leaving it up to me why they left their homeland. His personal experience though was to have been born around when they reached the viking analogue and moving to the current island. I guess I am just worried that if I don't limit things, then it could get out of control. I know a decent enough about the Celtic cultures and the Roman influence to work through things. Past that though I wonder if I could do it justice.
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When you are a player in someone's campaign, you accept some sort of contract, though of course not a physical, written one. This differs between different groups, but (almost) always contains:
* Making a character that mostly fits the campaign. No merfolk in a desert campaign, for example.
* Making a character that will be possible to motivate to adventure without going too far overboard (i.e. one that can accept a task for money, doing the right thing, challenging themselves, honours, or whatever).
* While you can expect to have freedom to act as you please, you recognize that this freedom will by necessity be limited to the scope of the campaign. Thus, while it WOULD be possible to start playing Rise of the Runelords in Sandpoint and set off to Irrisen instead of staying with the plot in Varisia, it's not the point of the game you chose to play.
There is more, but enough about it. The point is that you don't HAVE to make it possible for everyone to go everywhere when you plan a campaign. If they do leave the area in question to seek out the Japan analogue, just tell them that doing so is going to mean the end of the campaign, possibly asking them if anyone else feels like GMing the journey and visit there. It doesn't make you a bad GM.
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When you are a player in someone's campaign, you accept some sort of contract, though of course not a physical, written one. This differs between different groups, but (almost) always contains:
* Making a character that mostly fits the campaign. No merfolk in a desert campaign, for example.
* Making a character that will be possible to motivate to adventure without going too far overboard (i.e. one that can accept a task for money, doing the right thing, challenging themselves, honours, or whatever).
* While you can expect to have freedom to act as you please, you recognize that this freedom will by necessity be limited to the scope of the campaign. Thus, while it WOULD be possible to start playing Rise of the Runelords in Sandpoint and set off to Irrisen instead of staying with the plot in Varisia, it's not the point of the game you chose to play.There is more, but enough about it. The point is that you don't HAVE to make it possible for everyone to go everywhere when you plan a campaign. If they do leave the area in question to seek out the Japan analogue, just tell them that doing so is going to mean the end of the campaign, possibly asking them if anyone else feels like GMing the journey and visit there. It doesn't make you a bad GM.
Exactly, that's basically the idea behind a setting. (Unless that setting is Eberron or Golarion.)
Even if it's Eberron or Golarion, I'd say. A vast setting doesn't make it easier to prepare for everything that might happen. And a campaign will only be what you can prepare anyway.
Did you want to mix it up a bit and have the Japanese Empire invade the Celtic Isles instead of the Roman Empire?
Flesh out the starting city more than the entire globe. Have an outline about what lies beyond the border of the "home" country, with a few notes about those areas, but don't try to fill in everything for an entire planet. You want to leave some places vague so that player-generated ideas have a place to grow.
The players will start in a single city. That is going to be their introduction to your world. That city needs to feel vibrant and alive to hook the players and draw them in. If that first city isn't captivating, you'll have a hard time getting the players invested in the world at large.
What happens at the entrance to the city? Dungeon #119 has an article on City Gates.
Where are the players staying? Dungeon #130 has an article on Inns & Lodging Houses.
Where do the characters gear up? Dungeon #123 has 100 random Market Stalls, Dungeon #118 has pre-made Shops, and #147 has Shops & Taverns.
Level 1 adventure entails a trip to the cemetery? Dungeon #117 has Graveyard Encounters.
If you want to let him play a Japanese flavored character but don’t want to worry about the party trying to head there just make a magical mishap part of his parents journey. He can play the culture he wants and he and the other PCs won’t know if his land is somewhere beyond the edge of the map (like if it was a teleport effect), or in a completely different realm (like a plane shift effect)