8/11/2000
by Jim Goings

I know this article is going to tweak a lot of Dungeon Masters and players alike, but I am going to stick my neck out in hopes of hitting a chord with a few of you readers out there. To best illustrate my perspective, I am going to use an actual experience as the base of this work.

After forming a sizeable group of players, we agreed to show up at the game site to meet the DM and make our characters. At the meeting, the DM brought his wife (I don't remember her name) who was also going to play, making eight players. All seemed well, even though the group was a tad too large, in my opinion.

The DM announced, like a King speaking from a castle balcony overlooking a courtyard full of his subjects that we were going to be playing in a world that he had been using for years. My eyebrows went up and I remember looking around the room at everyone else's reaction. No one seemed fazed (at first). I hid my expression of concern and continued rolling up my stats.

The DM then brought out a giant full-color map of a continent from the world he designed. Everyone had a look at the intricately drawn map. It had a lot of detail, from trees to political borders. He had clearly spent a lot of time on it. After some examination, the group started chuckling at the names of various locations. He had clearly "borrowed" some themes from other pre-fabricated worlds like Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk. What made us chuckle was not the borrowed names, but that the made-up names were comical in nature. Some city names sounded like human anatomy and others like characters in a Dr. Seuss book.

After some bantering and laughing, most of us put aside our reservations and attempted to be interested in the world the DM had created. He also brought 2 milk crates of D&D material, including a large sum of notes that supposedly detailed his world. I only say "supposedly" because I never actually saw what was on them and as the night went on, I had serious doubts about how much of this world was documented on those notes. I was starting to get the feeling that the "detailed notes" were in his head.

It was a major problem for me to get involved in this game without some knowledge of the world I was pretending to inhabit. When I asked the DM (who wanted to be called GOD, an acronym for something or other) if he had anything that I could read to get me up to speed on his creation, he said that I would not understand his notes and that I would learn as we played the game.

Ugh, that was problem number one! If you are going to make an entirely new world for your players, at least have some background materials for them to read! Like the trooper I am (yeah, right), I ignored this glaring issue and did my best to come up with a background for my character. Me: "Where's my character going to be from?"
DM: "Oh, anywhere along here is fine."
Me: "You mean anywhere along this red-dotted line or this green country?"
DM: "That's farmland."
Me: "Oh. That farmland is over 400 miles long. I thought it was a country."
DM: "The red-dotted line is the boundary of this kingdom." Me: "What kingdom?"
The DM studied his map for some time, looking for the name of the kingdom. He came up short and replied, "It's in my notes. For now, why don't you say you're from this village?"
Me: "Uh, ok. What's the village like?"
DM: "It's a dwarven community, set at the base of this mountain."
Me: "I'm human."
DM: "We can say that the dwarves raised you."
Me: "We can?"
DM: "Sure, why not?"
Me: "Fine."

Making any sense of his world was a lost cause.

At that point, the game was over for me. I knew that no matter how good other aspects of the game were going to be, I was never going to get passed the underdeveloped world. I'm not saying that all homegrown worlds are underdeveloped, but I am saying that most of them are a done by D&D players who need something to do when they can't get a game together. I know the feeling, and have done the same thing. I was able to realize that my made-up little world was never going to get off the ground without investing much more time that one person could possibly do. Perhaps I just cannot settle for the mediocre. No, I do not think that is it. There are plenty of great settings out there. Why not modify one of the existing campaign worlds? Chris, our intrepid editor, ran a modified Dark Sun game for years. It was great. The basic source materials for the world were readily available; the maps, geology, and politics were already done. Chris just modified what he/we did not like and we all knew what was going on.

Am I saying that it is not possible to make a homegrown world successful? I am not sure. I have seen many websites that are home to someone's homegrown world; however, I have never seen a complete one. Most designers start with a map and flesh it out. It seems to me that the opposite direction is the way to go. It is better to know about the places you might visit, than it is to know that the way between them is a trail or vast ocean. Worldwide geography does not really matter. What matters is that the place where your characters are adventuring has substance and that everyone is somewhat familiar with the locale.

With homegrown worlds, DM skill does come into play, but I still prefer to know that the DM and I are playing the same game. Without background materials, how else will players know that there are two suns, six months of winter, and that the local law requires everyone to be nude indoors? Even Dark Sun, one of the most underdeveloped worlds created by TSR, has more information about it than any homegrown world I have ever seen.

Sure, I have only seen five or six custom worlds. Sure, I have only been gaming for 12 years. Sure, I have never had a skilled DM who could bring the fine art of a custom world to life.

It's enough work to create epic adventures and long-running games. I say let Wizards of the Coast stick the art of world making, so we can focus on the game at hand. Isn't it enough work to play the game already?

If you have made a custom world and feel that it is as good as official published ones, send me an e-mail and the URL where I check it out.

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