A long, LONG time ago – before I tried to figure out what the hell a campaign actually was, how to start one, and how to explain that to all of you – a long time ago, I wrote this overlong screed about how campaigns weren’t settings and settings weren’t campaigns and how the difference was super important. The problem is that that’s pretty much how I write everything. Overlong screeds about how the topic du jour is super important and how people who don’t see it are idiots? That might as well be in the description metatag for this stupid site. And that’s a problem because, well, I’ve been at this for ten years now. And all the articles are kind of running together. So, even though I know I wrote an article about how campaigns and settings are – super-importantly – very different things, I can’t remember which article it was. Mainly because I think that actual revelation was buried in a Long, Rambling Introduction™ to some other article. A feature which should also be mentioned the site description.

I don’t know why you’re even still reading this crap at this point. But I also don’t care why. As long as you keep reading.

Here’s the point: I’m ready to transition from talking about campaigns to talking about settings and world design and all that crap. I hinted at that a few weeks ago when I started talking about how to build a mythology for a world I hadn’t yet taught you to build. But then, presenting things in whatever my disorganized stream of consciousness is just another delightful part of my personal style. So here we are.

As is typical when I’m ready to transition from one major topic that will fill dozens of articles to another, I’m going to start with a broad, conceptual overview, filled with hyperbolic claims that I’m the only one who actually understands these vitally important, fundamental concepts and everyone else is filling your head with garbage.

Look, I haven’t written an article like this in a month. And I just got done writing a book for publication and distribution to a larger market than I normally pursue. So, this Long, Rambling Introduction™ is really just about me reminding myself how the hell to do this. And if you don’t like it and want to complain? Well, people complaining about my overlong screeds with their Long, Rambling Introductions™ and their hyperbolic egomania is pretty standard for me. It’s right up there with people complaining about the fact that I don’t f$&%ing swear properly. $%holes.

What Actually IS a Setting?

Okay, let’s remind ourselves – or, rather, let me remind myself – what I’ve said in the past about campaigns and settings and games in general. I’m pretty sure I reached the conclusion that a campaign was a series of adventures with something to serve as a kind of through line. To tie them all together. If not a big, important, save-the-world-style plot, at least a fairly stable cast of characters. Fine. Easy enough. The trouble is that, for many years, companies like Wizards of the Coast – and TSR before them – were selling these things called campaigns that actually weren’t campaigns. Okay, technically, they called them campaign settings. But I’m trying to make a point here. The point is that a campaign is basically a long, multi-part story. Or a series of stories. Like a book series. And, although I’ve been critical of the term in the past, I’m glad that someone at Paizo invented the term “adventure path” for a series of adventures with something to serve as a yaddah yaddah yaddah. I mean, an adventure path IS a campaign. But, by using the phrase “adventure path” for a published campaign, the confusion of calling things like Forgotten Realms and Eberron “campaigns” was mostly removed.

The problem is, though, that most GMs of a certain age only have those published campaign settings to go on to figure out what actually goes into building a setting. Those GMs are familiar with thick, hardbound books detailing huge worlds. And when they decide they want to build their own setting for their own campaign, they wonder if they need all of that crap. And that leads to people constantly asking me how much you actually need to plan about your world before you start running a campaign. Do you really need to map the continent and place all the nations and write the entire history of the world from the Age of the Obligatory God War to the Age of Heroes and Legends that Always Sounds More Interesting than the Current Age? Do you need to invent your own religion? Cosmos? Backgrounds? Classes? Do you need to figure out the population of every damned town in the world and stat up every major NPC?

And, if you scream anything that sounds like one of those questions into the dumpster fire that is any social media platform, eventually, someone will yell back “start small and build.” Because that’s the only advice anyone can give about worldbuilding. And after that, people will tell you that if you dare base your worldbuilding on some Eurocentric version of medieval history, you’re a racist, alt-right, Trump-loving Nazi. And those are two reasons I’ve stopped visiting the social media dumpster fires: I’m tired of dealing with deranged, perpetually offended psychopaths and I’m tired of listening to formulaic and utterly worthless, incorrect GMing advice from morons.

The thing is, there’s no one proper way to create a setting. But that doesn’t mean there are no wrong ways. There’re always wrong ways to do everything. Even gaming. Even having fun. Sorry, snowflake. Even if there isn’t just one right answer, there are still wrong answers. More importantly, though, that not all right answers are always right all the time. There are lots of ways to create settings. But the most right way is going to depend precisely on what you’re setting is and what it does. Imagine if J.R.R. Martin tried to write The Game of Ice and Fire without figuring out the political history of Western Ross over at least the last century. Imagine if he’d started small and built. That first book wouldn’t work at all. He had to start from a macro view and then build the details. And if you want to run a massive political drama, you have to do the same thing. Or at least, you have to pick a historical conflict like the War of the Roses, swap a few names, and jumble up the map. Just like Joe-Bob Ralph Ralph Martin.

On the other hand, if you’re starting out with a story of isolated local heroes in a small kingdom on the borderlands of civilization who kill some goblins, slay a young dragon, and eventually get too big for their little corner of the continent and travel to the next largest adventure hub, you really don’t need all of that crap in the beginning. Hell, you probably don’t need it ever. I mean, if the political complexity is never going to top out above “Empire bad, independent kingdoms good,” you really don’t need to know when the Rhoynar defeated the Andals and established the Seven Kingdoms of Gondor. Who cares.

See, the reason the “start small and build” advice fails utterly is not just because there’s more than one way to skin a setting, it’s because settings are different things in different games. They literally serve different purposes. And they are made up of different components. And even when two settings share the same components, those components might still serve different purposes and therefore might look utterly different.

Take, for example, one element of the setting: the setting’s mythology. It’s pantheon. It’s religion. In a high fantasy, mythological campaign modeled on legendary adventures throughout the lands of Ancient Greeze – note the off-brand spelling that is also used to distinguished cheeze from cheese – in a mythological campaign set in god-fearing mythical city states like those of Ancient Greeze, the mythology is important. The gods affect every aspect of life. Every city-state has a patron deity. So those deities become a shorthand descriptor of the culture of a city-state as well as explaining the motives of the political factions and so on. Or consider a word based strongly on the Middle Ages Europe during the Crusades. Religion informs every aspect of the lives of the people in the world and so it plays a big role in the story itself.

Now, contrast that with a dungeon of the week adventure across the standard fantasy world of Middle Terragaia. The only role mythology plays is to define what color the cleric’s spells are and what symbol the evil cultists wear on their robes.

And THAT is the problem with trying to explain how to build a setting. It’s impossible to come up with a systematic approach to building a setting because it’s impossible to come up with a definitive list of elements that settings need. Do you need alternate planes of existence? Do you need to know how the world began? Do you need a mythology? How much detail does it need? How big should your map be? Do you even need a map?

Yeah, “start small and build” is kind of useless in light of that, no?

And that’s why lots of GMs don’t even refer to this crap as “building a setting.” They call it “worldbuilding.” And that’s important. There’s a big difference between creating a setting and building a world. It’s just that no one really knows what that difference is. And I’m not even entirely sure. As near as I can tell, building a world instead of building a setting amounts to saying, “f$&% if I know what I’m actually trying to accomplish with this whole setting thing; I’mma just draw a map, name some kingdoms, and write a history textbook about it.”

Well, I’m not letting you off the hook that easily. You didn’t come to me to ignore any questions that got big and hard enough. We’re damned well going to figure this crap out. So, let’s start by actually trying to define a setting. And, by that, I mean we’re actually going to define the concept of a “setting.” What the hell actually IS a setting. What is it supposed to accomplish?

Narratively, people will tell you that a setting is the time and place in which a story takes place. And that’s fine. If you want to fail English Literature 101. Because it’s wrong. Setting is more than just a time and place. It’s also a mood. A feeling.

Consider two movies: You’ve Got Mail, a romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan; and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, an action movie starring a group of ninjas who happen to be mutated anthropomorphic turtles who are fifteen years old. Both of those movies are set in New York City in the 1990’s. And, except for the addition of mutated turtles and ninjas who live in secret and totally could really be hiding out anywhere, both of those movies take place in the same setting. Tom Hanks could have been mugged by Foot Clan ninjas and Splinters book of Renaissance artists might have been overstock from Fox Books. But are the settings really the same?

Of course, they aren’t. The setting in the romantic comedy is a cheerful, magical place. It’s New York City at its best. It’s filled with exciting, interesting people. It’s a place where anything can happen. The setting in TMNT is dark, it’s dirty, it’s dangerous. People are miserable and they’re afraid. Even though those movies are set in the same time and the same place, they aren’t in the same setting. And it’s not just because You’ve Got Mail mostly takes place in the upper West Side, while TMNT takes place somewhere downtown near Times Square and Broadway.

See, setting isn’t just time and place. It’s time, place, and mood. The setting defines the tone of the story. More generally, from a narrative perspective, setting defines where, when, and under what circumstances a story takes place. And that’s a really solid definition of narrative setting.

Is that a useful definition for an RPG setting? Hell yes, it is! At least, it’s a really good jumping off point. An RPG setting defines the time, place, and circumstances in which the campaign – and the various adventures that make up the campaign – take place. But let’s dig into that a little deeper. I mean, time and place are actually weird things to talk about because they are pretty arbitrary in fantasy games. They don’t really define anything. Saying that the game takes place in Faerun in 1495 D.R. or in Oerth in 588 CY is the same as saying “in the fantasy world in the current year.” And the whole “circumstances” thing is kind of vague.

It Means More than the World to You

Let’s start with that whole “time and place” thing. It isn’t enough just to name the world and tack on a fictional year. See, for the setting to make any sense at all, people need a frame of reference. When a movie takes place in New York City in 1995, most people on Earth have a general understanding of what that means. Because we live in the real world and 1995 wasn’t THAT long ago. We can conjure up a good picture of it. We know that’s it a crowded, urban center with tall buildings and lots of cars all honking at each other. We know that things like the Empire State Building and Times Square and Central Park are around. And we know what those things look like. We also know that most people have access to mostly the same level of technology as we have today. Mostly.

In addition, there’re a bunch of other things we know that we probably don’t even realize we know. We know there is gravity and there will be air. We know that there is a democratic government and legal system. In short, we know the social, political, and spiritual laws of the world of the story. Basically, they are the same as the ones we pretty much know in any civilized corner of the western hemisphere on Earth.

And that’s the thing. There’s a lot that’s wrapped up in that time and place thing. And we don’t notice most of what’s wrapped up in that time and place thing unless it’s different from what we’re expecting. For example, the mutant turtle and ninja clan thing. That’s a little weird. But it’s just one little difference from the real world. Everything else – from police and democracy to gravity – it’s all the same. Storytellers can say “New York, 1995” to establish the basic rules. Then, they only have to show you the differences. That’s why Ghostbusters literally opens with an encounter with a ghost in the New York City Public Library’s Main Branch. “Here we are, in modern – for the time – New York City. See? A perfectly normal New York City. But, what’s this? A ghost. Got it? It’s New York City. Everything is total normal. Except ghosts are unequivocally real.”

World building – whether it is for a story or a game – is mostly exceptions-based. That is, you have to start by grounding the audience in something they already know. And then you have to establish the differences. The exceptions. That’s why genres build on themselves. That’s why there’s a standard fantasy universe.

The book of the show of the Game of Icy Fire illustrates this perfectly. We start with knights and warriors on horseback. That establishes the historical, medieval period. But there are references to places that never existed, so we know it isn’t Earth. It’s just an Earth-like medieval fantasy universe. Then we get the mysterious encounter with the magical Others. And it’s presented to tell us there’s magic in the world, but that it’s uncommon enough that most people don’t believe magic is right outside their door. Later we learn that dragons are extinct. They died along with the magic a couple hundred years ago. That’s good to know because normally, magic and dragons are part of the medieval fantasy universe. But here, they may or may not exist anymore. There’s not going to be any wizards flinging spells at dragons. And then we learn that summer and winter each last for years and years. Which is also kind of weird.

And that establishes the major rules of the world. Fantasy universe, but dragons and magic are uncommon and possibly extinct, and summer and winter come and go at random over periods of many years. Other than that, swords and horses and castles and feudalism. Got it. It’s only after we have that crap down that we start learning all the political history of the world.

There’s two points here about the rules of building the “time and place” part of setting – the part we’ll call “world building.” The first is that you never build your world from nothing; you start with a set of common assumptions and then you highlight the exceptions. World building isn’t about defining a world, it’s about pointing to a similar world and saying “my world is like that, but…”

Does that mean you can’t build a completely original world? Of course not. You can totally build an utterly crazy, completely unique world. But you can’t start from whole cloth. Because there is so much stuff that goes into defining a world that you just can’t build everything you need. You’ll forget something. I mean, try it. Go ahead. Right now, explain the real world. In its entirety. Everything you need to know about the real world to exist in it. You can skip the laws of physics that don’t affect people on a day-to-day basis. But remember to define absolutely every piece of technology that exists. Don’t forget to explain all social and political systems and all the cultures that currently exist on Earth. Then write down the entire history of everything. At least as far back as the Iron Age. It’s all played a role.

That’s why shorthands exist. That’s why genres exist. That’s why we define our worlds as “fantasy, but…” or “steampunk, but…” or “cyberpunk, but…” or “space opera, but…” Fortunately, pop culture and reality provide oodles and oodles of common-ground assumptions that you can start with. Unfortunately, the more unique you want to make your setting, the longer the list of “buts.”

Circumstantial Detail

So, we’ve replaced “time and place” with “world” and we’ve defined “world building” as “starting with common assumptions and then providing exceptions.” But we’re not done with the setting yet. Because the other thing a setting provides is “the circumstances under which the story takes place.” And that’s where all those other narrative things come in. Things like themes and tone. But, I don’t feel like talking about high-minded narrative crap. I’ve done enough of that lately. I want to talk about something more practical. I want a nice, useful definition.

Well, okay, we need to talk about narrative crap a little.

I’ve established in the past that an adventure – or a campaign – is basically just a plot. It’s a sequence of events that starts with some kind of incitement and ends with a resolution. And thus, an adventure – or a campaign – is the plot part of a story.

Now, the players navigate their characters through the story. And we can say – roughly speaking – that those characters are the protagonists of the story.

So, we have a plot and protagonists. But a story – and therefore, a game – contains a lot more than protagonists and a plot. There are locations and characters, for example. And those locations and characters have various qualities. And those will affect the game. For example, the people in a specific town might be suspicious of strangers. When the PCs try to gather information there, they are going to encounter obstacles. And they will feel like outsiders. Encroachers. They might feel unwelcome. They might even be afraid. And that’s why the adventure includes an encounter where the PCs have to convince the mayor of the town that they are there to help and gain the support of the townspeople.

And THAT’S what “the circumstances in which a story takes place” actually means. And that’s what the setting is really about. The setting is all of the details that make the adventures make sense. It’s what makes the adventures possible. It’s what makes the campaign possible.

I mean, the adventure is just “the heroes arrive in a town under the thrall of a dragon, decide to kill the dragon to save the bedraggled townsfolk, win the support of the townsfolk, journey to the dragon’s lair, fight through three to five obstacles on the way, confront the dragon and either drive it off or enrage it so that it destroys the town utterly and completely.” The setting is what puts the town on the map and establishes what dragons are and why they enslave towns and why this dragon has enslaved this town and why the townspeople are suspicious of strangers.

The setting provides all of the excuses necessary for the story – for the game – to happen. It’s everything from the rules of the world to the nature of all of the world’s inhabitants to the backstory for every adventure.

In other words, a campaign setting is the premise for the campaign – and the premise for each adventure – in the shape of a fictional world. The setting exists solely to justify the characters’ existence and the plots they experience.

Assumptions in Disguise

So, when we say, “the setting is the time, place, and circumstances in which a campaign takes place,” what we’re really saying is “the setting is all of the details we need to justify the existence of the characters and the plots they suffer through.” And, we’ve already seen that world-building STARTS by taking a set of core assumptions – like a genre – and defining all of the exceptions to that genre. It’s only once everyone is on the same page with the basic assumptions that you start to add details. Like that whole boring political history of Western Ross.

And that’s what the core rules of D&D, Pathfinder, and most other RPGs do. You know the generic, default setting? The one with no major details about specific places and characters in the world? The one that explains the level of technology and how much magic is in the world and what races exist and what they’re like and what monsters exist and what they’re like and all of that crap? That’s all thanks to the core rulebooks. All the rules about character creation in the PHB? Apart from being rules, they are also grounding all of the players in a set of core assumptions about the world. Same with the rules for magic. And the equipment tables. And the Monster Manual is also a bunch of core assumptions about the world. Those ones for the GM.

Basically, the core rulebooks do the work of saying “okay, you know medieval fantasy right? Well, we’re doing medieval fantasy. And here’s the specific ways we’re doing medieval fantasy that is different from other medieval fantasy. Here’s what our dwarves and elves are like. And there’s also these other races. And this is what wizards are and how they are different from sorcerers and warlocks. And this is how our dragons are different from all other dragons. Got it? Good.”

And that crap saves the world-building, homebrewing GM a lot of work. Because he doesn’t have to go through the process of saying “okay, you know medieval fantasy, right?” and then defining all the specifics of HIS fantasy. He only has to go through the smaller subset of “okay, you know the medieval fantasy that is specific to Dungeons & Dragons, right? Well, here’s what’s different about mine.”

Once that foundation of common assumptions has been established, the GM can start layering on details to justify his specific stories.

And that’s really how you create a setting. You start with a set of common assumptions that explain the broad strokes of how the world works so that all of the stories you want to tell in the world will work. And then you add the specific details that drive specific stories.

The reason people think “start small and build” is good advice is partly because people are just stupid and partly because people don’t recognize the important first step that the core rules have mostly done for you. And they’re just talking about the process of adding specific kingdoms and towns and characters and historical details to the world ON TOP of the basic assumptions. And that’s pidgin worldbuilding.

Now, that’s fine if all you want to do is create your own little corner of the D&D cosmos and stick with the baseline assumptions in the book. But if I told you that’s all setting building was about – and then told you to start small and build – I’d be a crappy teacher. I WILL be covering that sort of worldbuilding, though. I won’t just skip it. But I’ll also be talking about the macro process of building a setting.

How Many Licks Does It Take?

And now we’re back to where we started. We’re back to “how much of the setting do I have to establish before I start running a campaign?” Or “how much of a setting do I have to create at all?” See, if we stick with the definition that the setting is all of the details that justify the existence of the characters and their adventures, that doesn’t limit the amount of detail nearly as much as we hope. For example, you don’t have to know whether laws of quantum physics govern your D&D world because those details are so far removed from the characters and their adventures as to make no difference. On the other hand, you can go a little crazy with this.

For example, your campaign might involve the exploration of a series of ruins underneath a major city. And you might have decided that the ruins are the buried remains of previous cities. That’s common, right? Ancient cities would suffer disasters. They’d get buried over. A new city would be built on the site. And you’d have layers of ruins under a city. But do you have to explain every previous disaster? Maybe. Maybe you decide that the city is prone to earthquakes and tidal waves. Natural disasters just keep burying the city every few centuries. But it’s otherwise located on a good harbor at the mouth of a river. So, people keep building new cities there. Fine. But to justify that earthquake activity, you need to figure out the plate tectonics of your planet, right? Earthquake activity is generally restricted to tectonic boundaries and fault lines. So, to justify all those natural disasters, you need to know the geological history of your planet. Right?

No. That’s stupid. You’re stupid.

Look, this is standard butterfly effect crap, right? Everything that is happening to day is a result of absolutely every minor event that has ever occurred since the beginning of time. If I don’t explain that the Big Bang that created the universe produced slightly more matter than antimatter rather than equal amounts of both, I can’t explain the Battle of Hastings because matter literally wouldn’t exist. And it’s impractical to the point of total f$&%ing insanity.

The campaign setting exists to justify the characters’ existences and their adventures, but only within reason. And most GMs don’t know where reason stops and where insane world-building masturbation begins. Most people will accept “this area is prone to earthquakes” without further question. That’s the point at which most people will stop questioning things. And that’s the point where a smart worldbuilder STOPS writing. George R. R. Tolkien doesn’t have to explain why the seasons of Western Ross are so strange. They just are because magic. Most people are okay with that. Because the world is magic. The rules are fundamentally different. No one questioned the magic of the Force. It was just part of the universe of Star Wars. So, no one needed to hear about midichlorians. And, in fact, it sucked the magic out of the force when we DID hear about it.

As I explain more and more about setting creation and worldbuilding, I’m going to keep coming back to this fundamental point, this fundamental rule. You stop creating details once you have a sufficient level of detail to do whatever you’re currently doing in the game without inviting further questions from an audience who has already agreed to reasonably suspend their disbelief. But we’ll talk more about that later. Over and over and over.

Because it’s a much better rule than that “start small and build” bulls$&%.