World Building: Addendum

In episode 3, I posit that your world history should be virtually unknown, and discovery should be a natural part of the game, both for the GM and the players. I (seemingly) made the case that you shouldn't invest in your world history because it's mostly a waste of time.

...And it is. However, you are still completely allowed to create your world history, as long as you honor the following rule:

Only write history if it affects your players.

That is, your world history should create gameplay opportunities!

When you're sitting down to write about how the titan Gomek forged the World Staff of Agnar, ask yourself the following questions:

"How does this affect the world today?"

"How is the world different because of this event?"

"How does this affect people in their daily lives?"

If the answer to any of these is, "it doesn't really," then I would rethink my lore.

Here are some examples of interesting-but-useless bits of lore, and how I would try to weave them into the fabric of the world in ways that the players experience.

• The War of Ancients: A huge war a thousand years ago.
• The Death of the Neutral Good god: She sacrificed herself to stop a comet that almost hit the planet eons ago

The War of Ancients and How it Affects Us Today:

• A large portion of the planet was used as a battlefield, and people still find weapons and artifacts buried in the ground.
• Some people have made a career of excavating these places and selling (or using) what they find.
• The Guilds of Archaeology have become major powers in the world, because they have a massive collection of artifacts.
• It’s become dangerous to be an artifact hunter if you don’t work for one of the guilds.
• A few small wars have broken out in the last few years between factions, cities and kingdoms over property rights

Wow, this went better than I expected. Already, we have a lot of lore that gives us plot hooks for our characters. We can have characters who have either fought in these small wars, or know someone who has, or LOST someone who has. Its a big political issue fought over tangible and powerful stuff. It also leads to several interesting questions that we don't know the answers to. Who were the "ancients" and why did they fight such a huge war? How come their artifacts were so powerful? Who won the war? What happened to them? Why did it take so long before people started finding their stuff?

The Death of the Neutral Good Goddess and How It Affects Us Today:

• The goddess sacrificed herself to save the planet from destruction by comet
• Her followers still honor her, even though she's gone, which is weird for D&D
• Their insignia is that of a comet striking a hand, depicting that terrible event
• This religion follows traditions of self sacrifice, protection, and fire magic
• On a larger scale, her death has led to an imbalance in the cosmos. The other gods are sending their followers on holy wars to destroy others.
• Holy wars have been much more common for the last few hundred years, and recently one of the religions is gaining a foothold over the others. Perhaps it's Lawful Good, represented by a massive religious organization that is causing problems for people.
• Taxes have been raised to pay for a distant war in a faraway land, and people are mad about it.
• People are migrating en masse to get away from this oppression, but this has just led to stricter laws, soldiers on the road and travel restrictions.
• A lot of people are now hiding out in the woods to dodge taxes.
• Basically society is having a big upheaval and nobody feels safe, stable, or secure, especially not the government.
  

Often, I find that "cosmic" level storylines have trouble getting down to the mortal level. See how I've pushed to "put the story on the ground," so the average Joe is feeling the rub? A good GM wouldn't necessarily have to explain any lore to their players, they can let the players experience the problems of society, and answer questions as they come up.

The bottom line is this: You can and absolutely SHOULD get excited to create your world and its history. I just encourage you not to waste your time writing lore that is inaccessible to the players. You want your prep to lead to adventures!