The Sunday Slog: Cooperative World Building

When I first started Dungeon Mastering I wanted to be completely in charge of the setting and the world. It never occurred to me that other people would create NPCs. That didn't make any sense. Other people were players, and allowing players to have that sort of input would lead to spoilers. It would let players know about things I thought were exciting, things I might use later in the plot, and to me that felt like the worst transgression in the world.

I wasn't even aware of my thoughts on the matter. Unless I was working on a setting with another Dungeon Master, world building was something that I did on my own. The idea of anything else never occurred to me.

But then systems running on Powered by the Apocalypse came out. The first one was Dungeon World, and as I opened it up I was met with a brand new idea.

Let players be part of the world design. It's been a long time since I've looked at the actual system, so I might get some of this wrong. But the idea is that when you start a Dungeon World game, instead of telling the players where they start and what they are doing, you have a conversation. It might go like this:

DM: I'm going to run a game that takes place in a small swamp village. Most of the houses and shelters are built on poles, or in the tree tops, or maybe around gigantic tree stumps. Let's see, one of you is playing a rogue. What brings you to a village in a swamp that's in the middle of nowhere? Have you been here long, and if not, where have you been on this map? (pulls out a mostly blank map and puts it on the table).

Rogue: I'm actually playing an Assassin. I'm part of an elite assassin organization. Can we call it the Black Hand, or the Shadowed Hand?

DM: Yeah, I like the Shadowed Hand.

Rogue: Okay, cool. I haven't been in the village long. I usually spend most of my time in a city. But since this village is pretty remote, maybe we can say the closest real urban center is two weeks away? Between here and there might be a couple small villages, but not many.

DM: That works. Where do you want to put the city on the map?

Rogue: Well, cities do well when they have access to the coast. So let's put it over here. (points to a place on the map close to a bay). I like the idea that's its a hub of commerce, and the Shadowed Hand has a training center here for the people they choose to join their ranks.

DM: Excellent. That sounds perfect. Which one of you is playing the Bard?

...

And the scene would go on from there. As each player adds locations to the map you pick up more plot hooks. The Rogue is in the village because he is on a job tracking down a judge that sent a major criminal mastermind to jail, but then had to flee for his life. The Druid is here because they are trying to find the location of a rare herb. The herb is said to grant wishes to those that can talk to it.

This is players adding real depth to the world, and I fell in love with the idea.

And then I ran into the Dresden Files game that's powered by FATE Core. And if Dungeon World let's players add some influence to the game, The Dresden Files RPG lets them have major influence in the game. The system even comes with a city building sheet that gets pulled out during session zero. As a group you all decide what kind of supernatural threats your city is facing, what organizations are helpful or malicious, what themes and ideas you want to explore during the game. And none of this is made up by the GM alone. You pick the city you play in as a group, design the city as a group, play in the city as a group.

Image Capture of a Dresden Files RPG city building sheet

Of course, once a game starts the GM gets to play around with stuff. But the core world building is completely cooperative, and again - I fell in love with the idea.

And then finally I landed on gamed like Dawn of Worlds and Microscope. These are games that take the idea of world building and turn it into an actual game! In Dawn of Worlds you get points each round that you can spend to do things like create a Diety, form a mountain range, or birth a new race. You get to declare wars, watch religions rise and fall, and instigate world changing apocalypses. And at the end of a game? You have an entire world in the middle of a story, perfect to pick up and run in a fantasy RPG game.

I love Dawn of Worlds, and I have used it more than once to generate a campaign setting with the group I'm going to be playing with.

But... why do cooperative world building at all? What about all those worries I was talking about before? What about spoilers, and keeping things secret to enhance player fun, and things like that?

Well... I think there might be an argument to be made there. Only, the thing is, even in Dungeon World where the world building is kept fairly small scale, it's still very broad. Yes, there is an assassin organization called the Shadowed Hand. But we didn't talk about who it's leaders are, what it's role in the world is, and things like that. The GM can still decide that the organization is really testing their assassin, and if they don't do their job right they will get killed in turn.

And in other, bigger games, it's even broader. I think that there is still a massive amount of room to hold some good cards close to your chest.

In addition, cooperative world building fits into one of my core DM tenants: Tell your player's stories. Don't tell your own.

Finally, I find that cooperative world building gets players invested in the game in ways that they aren't when the DM is making all the decisions behind the scenes. I didn't do any cooperative world building with my Curse of Strahd game because the setting is already there. And my players are invested in the Gothic horror around them... but not quite in the same way. I think that my CoS game is sort of missing some of the attitude I've grown to love because we didn't have that world building session.

If you haven't given cooperative world building a try, I suggest you do. You might love it as much as I do.