GM World

Designer notes

I had grand plans for creating my own world. I knew the basic concepts of creating only what is needed. I partially ignored that because I wanted to have a grand scheme of things as well as the local items. So, I had the world map, generic ideas on the world map, and then a zoomed in map where the PCs where.

In part, I had a lot of cartography tools, most notably Campaign Cartographer 2 and then CCPro and its add ons. I had a program to convert CC2 into 3d maps, to show the cities to the players. I had a weather program to track the weather and give myself seasonal patterns given what the world was like. I had several programs to make heraldry for the houses and nations. I really wanted to use all of this in my own endeavor, something I have wanted to do for years.

Further, I had a decade to fifteen year plan for this world. I had a timeline of x years, again in generic terms, with about a dozen campaigns set up at various times. I planned out less and less to allow the players and their character to affect the future of the world but had an outline for it all.

The first campaign went well but it was obvious I didn't share enough information with the players. I was doing it for a reason but I think, in hindsight, it was a bad reason. So, when we went into the second campaign, I shared more. At the end of the second campaign, which was perhaps eighteen months later, it was obvious to me that it wasn't working.

There were a lot of factors for that. I had my own magic system, which didn't work as well as I had hoped. The ideas were good but the game mechanics weren't always as solid as I would like them. I was keeping too much from my players, including geography, which they probably should have known. The maps ended up being huge. I didn't have enough smaller villages to back up the big towns. I think, hope, that the players had fun in it but overall, it didn't work. Maybe it would have worked with a wiki back then. That would have allowed more collaboration, which I wanted, and a better forum to share ideas.

I learned a lot, though. I don't know if I would do it again. At least, not at the scale I did it. Further, there were definitely some areas where my reach exceeded my grasp. It should but it also made some things difficult.

Here are the details that I have about those campaigns.

Intro Campaign

Second Campaign