Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is all about how to implement the concept of culture into your story world. Culture is difficult to define. But in the tabletop role playing game sense, at least from the 30,000 foot view, culture can safely be broken down into three foundational elements: Values History & Traditions Spirituality Together, you’ll weave…
Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is all about Theme & Flavor: the high-level characteristics which distinguish your world and story from another in the same genre. Take Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, two of the most popular high fantasy books & stories of the past century. But the theme and flavor of each story…
Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is all about best practices in creating compelling, three-dimensional NPCs for your story world. Unless you’re planning on playing your own story in your own world – certainly possible by the way – as the worldbuilder, you’re crafting a story world for player characters. Like any story, the characters will interact, grow,…
Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is about best practices for developing antagonists in your tabletop role playing game. Well rounded villains are a crucial driving force for your story. Today’s advice are best practices to keep in mind when you’re creating your TTRPG’s antagonist(s). Motivation What Makes Them Special? Integral Part of the Story’s Conflict Motivation Every…
Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is centers on the art of drawing the player into your tabletop role playing game world. What is it that captures the players’ attention? And what keeps players invested and coming back for more from a worldbuilding perspective? Today’s post centers on the two main tenets of compelling worldbuilding: Relevant/Accessible Depth to…
Today’s #worldbuilding Monday post is all about leaving breathing room for character development during your worldbuilding. As we’ve discussed in this space in weeks’ past, it’s important to keep top of mind in tabletop role playing game worldbuilding that the goal to have people play stories within your world. To that end, because those players…
Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post centers around the concept of “railroading” and best practices around keeping your use of it in check. For the uninitiated, “railroading” essentially means forcing the players down certain plot paths and/or taking specific actions they otherwise may not have intended. And there’s various degrees of railroading, from fairly necessary/trivial in order to…
Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is about the thought process behind selecting the difficulty of your story’s tabletop role playing game campaign. We do a deeper dive into the best practices for delineating the level of challenge your story presents to its players while not compromising on its narrative. Of course, the vast majority of TTRPGs use…
Today’s #worldbuildingMonday blog post is all about best practices for staying true to the internal rules you’ve created for your world for when you add new rules. Nearly every story world has a consistent, foundationational bedrock of rules that govern how it works. Take for example again Romeo & Juliet: the Capulets and Montagues will…
Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is all about how to craft engaging dilemmas for your players. Encountering dilemmas – whether it be combat, social, psychological, and/or physiological – is a huge part of the TTRPG experience for players. And defining through their choices how they individually/collectively hurdle these obstacles is a integral part of this slice of…