User blog:EchelonMT/Developing Prynh 1: Filling The Landscape, New Villages

''Because Prynh is a D&D campaign setting I'm making on the fly, I just thought it would be interesting for anyone wondering about the world and more importantly just for my own brain to get things out, to do development blogs. They will shed some light on my mindset on creating certain aspects of the world, why I made certain design decisions, what sort of changes I made to make my player's experiences better, etc.  Enjoy!''

Keeping Prynh Open For Interpretation
You generally create a world for one of a few means, but it's almost always a tool or utlity for some project you're working on. In general, it's likely a story you are trying to tell and the map is as much for you as the creator as it is for the people who are going to be digesting the tale. Many times it is for something like a book, or maybe even something more adventurous like a film. In the case of Prynh however, it was for a D&D campaign I was going to be running for a friend and that changes a lot of the design choices you make.

At the core, the main difference is that you only have a loose control over the narrative of the story you're trying to tell. Because it isn't your story, it's the players. You're merely a guide in their epic journey through this world. This is completely unlike something like a fantasy novel, where you have complete control over everything that happens and so your story will benefit greatly from having every part of a world mapped out and expanded upon when you're in the world-creation phase of your writing process.

I found when I was creating Prynh, that when it came time to fill my landmasses in with civilizations such as cities, towns, villages and other settlements of sentient beings, I wasn't quite sure how in depth I should go. Immediately when you begin to do this sort of thing, stories pop into your head. It's unavoidable that when you decide you're going to have a seaside city called Stormwall that you begin to write a history of this city in your head. Why is it called Stormwall? Obviously, because it has a titanic wall meant to block out storms. Why did the people settle there if the storms from the sea were so bad? Of course they began settling there and braving the storm for the incredibly fertile fishing waters. It's natural, it's instinct, you're creating a story and as someone telling any sort of tale, your mind is going to race with ways to flesh this sort of thing out. And even if you're coming up with a setting for a tabletop RPG setting, you still gain quite a lot from doing this.

But I decided about halfway through adding these various landmarks on my world, that I didn't want to lable every nook and cranny of Prynh. There needed to be a lot of room for changing on the fly. Don't get me wrong, it is incredibly important to have a large chunk of your world filled out. Who knows when your player/s are going to decide to take that left turn instead of the right turn that you had planned for them? You need to know what is in that direction, at least vaguely. But when I was planning out what my player was going to come across when he made his way from Stormwall to the town of Crowley's Grave about 3-days to the South, I had the freedom to come up with new villages and fill them with interesting cultures and people. Maybe the player falls in love with someone in one of these villages? Maybe the player decides to help defend the village from an impending Orc attack rather than continue on? That much is up to you, and because the world was left open in this particular portion of Prynh, I was able to come up with two villages that didn't exist before and give them histories on the fly. And the villages are better for it.

If in the future it is important to me that my player gets to develop a certain part of his or her story, I have plenty of blank canvas on the surface of Prynh to place a context-driven landmark that will spark that development. Maybe one of my players really needs to resolve an issue with racism he has against Dwarves, but as we are not near the Ironbone Keep, capital of the Dwarven faction, how can I make him confront it? Maybe a mining city called Thoren's Forge is now found in the area the party si traveling and suddenly you have the tool you needed to progress a certain aspect of your player's story. Of course, Thoren's Forge doesn't exist and this was all an example reason that you want to leave blank spots on your world map for making plans on the fly.

So, without further delay, say hello to Haven and Floodwater. Haven, the farming village a day south of Stormwall on the road to Crowley's Grave. And another day south from Haven is the mining outpost of Floodwater, a small town built on the edge of a marsh, close to the edge of The Gallows, a dangerous mountain range on the island-continent of Crimshan, which is the onlys pot in Prynh to find the rare ore known as Mithril. Both have their own people, and those people have their own reasons for settling there. It is up to me, or you if you decide to settle your players in Prynh, to decide just who those people are.

Thanks for reading, I hope to keep these coming as I add new and interesting places, people and "things" to Prynh and I am also hoping to keep a dungeon master's journal about the various twists and turns that the story I am currently leading Chaith Mageborn through.