How to build a D&D world your players care about (according to science)

Comments · 99

• RO

  @roleonbuddy · 3 weeks ago · pinned

  Dude! For a real-time example of a Session Minus One, check out this video by my friend Tablerunner Crispy and guests:<br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/qc3S9SSx2tk?is=oOl9phI0Muq-wQQS">https://www.youtube.com/live/qc3S9SSx2tk?is=oOl9phI0Muq-wQQS</a>

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• TA

  @Tablerunner · 3 weeks ago

  Accurate.<br><br>Also, the &quot;space western with a group of salvagers travelling from sector to sector&quot; makes me think that we should play some more Horizon games!

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• KI

  @KincaidDeWayne · 3 weeks ago

  I don&apos;t miss 2010, but I appreciate where you&apos;re coming from. 😉<br>I recently wrapped up a campaign set in a Dark Souls-esque world. I had the players create their home base, a bastion of safety in a world destroyed by a magical nuke that left behind a wandering curse. <br>We played &quot;The Quiet Year&quot; as our Session -1. They answered questions about this community, came up with projects and setbacks, the survivors&apos; hopes and fears. It was fantastic. I created a map of the settlement based on their descriptions, and I made some NPCs based on what they had decided. For Session 0, they established their characters and how they fit into the community.<br>All I had to do was create a faction of bandits (some of whom were villains in the PCs backstories) and let the players discover the bandits were planning to raid their community. It was off to the races after that. Never did anyone ask, &quot;Why are we doing this?&quot; or &quot;Who are these guys again?&quot; Everyone was super invested.

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• JU

  @just_randomly · 2 weeks ago

  Yes, the IKEA effect is strong when you spend so much time in prepping encounters, cliffhangers and consider different resolutions while your players focus on a little loveletter you gave them just to make them feel bad about killing a few to many Goblins.<br>To give my players more agency I switched from the railroady starter adventure (lost mines of Phandelver - DnD) we played to a full Sandbox. To make them care more I let them describe and name a few towns their characters visited. I asked them questions about royal families their characters knew and NPCs they liked or disliked plus a few Charakter traits to make them &quot;their&quot; friends and foes. It helped a lot and they seem to be engaging way more. Prepping also is easier as at the end of each session I always ask them which of the different plot ideas I threw at them in the session they find the most interesting and want to pursue in the next session. This way I can concentrate my world building and session prep on that.

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• WO

  @woskis9161 · 3 weeks ago

  fantastic video and awesome tip, when i first played a session zero for Fabula Ultima it had this campaign-building baked into the session zero and it felt like it unlocked so much more of the campaign we built together, really recommend trying this

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• AN

  @antonioarrendol2655 · 3 weeks ago

  First acrually interesting and unique piece of advice I&apos;ve heard from one of these kinds of channels, thanks! Much more accessible collaborative-worldbuilding for new players this way, instead of needing them to feel comfortable taking ownership of the world during one of your sessions, good stuff.

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• NU

  @nura326 · 3 weeks ago

  Tuning in to Channel 3! I miss 2010.

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• SA

  @SamLabbato · 2 weeks ago

  I&apos;m usually pretty open with my players and will just straight up tell em my plans (vaguely) for sessions. For my most recent game, I fully homebrewed the world, but only to the degree I cared about for the main plot. I then let the players fill in the gaps based on what they cared about and showed interest in. This turned my happy-go-lucky school game into a grim dark mystery, because a one off monster I threw in session 2 just so happened to be an eldritch horror and now they&apos;ve latched onto that to solve an interdimensional force of corruption that has plagued the world for millennia. Most recently, on the micro scale, a player assumed that this world should have a police and military. so I fudged something that session to serve the narrative, then came back next session with stuff for that planned, so they now have a police department full of npcs and a military general they can talk to.<br><br>I know how easy it is to fall down the rabbit hole of infinite worldbuilding, so I only build what I need for my story, then let the players fill in the gaps for everything else and change my story to fit their interests.

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• NU

  @nura326 · 3 weeks ago

  Adding your wife at the end of the video was such an incredibly wholesome touch. Seeing how happy and in love you are made my day!

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• XT

  @XtreeDMoo · 3 weeks ago

  this is a lot like how world building works in fabula ultima. There&apos;s a game mechanic where you can spend a fabula point (~inspiration, but with lore relevance) to introduce or change an aspect of the world. <br>Meet a new character? Yeah, I was drinking buddies with them before the war, and haven&apos;t seen them since.<br>Wouldn&apos;t it be cool if there was an agency that processed poisoned mushrooms into good mushrooms? Now there is.<br>Haven&apos;t seen a character in a while? Their relative owns a shop in this town, and they happen to be visiting.

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• ZO

  @Zonalar · 3 weeks ago

  Time to watch another Uriah Video.

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• GH

  @GHGDean · 13 days ago

  You are one wholesome son-of-a-gun. <br>God bless you sir.<br>Oh, and your content is rad.

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