Session Zero University - Worldbuilding 101 with Doug Grosser - Session Zero Heroes - A TTRPG Actual Play Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Skylar (00:15):
Welcome students to Session Zero
University. My name is Professor Rainier, one of the
many teachers here at the university. But for right
now I am your orientation
representative. Here at scu, you will
find a variety of professors well versed in the realms
of tabletop role playing games, offering you

(00:35):
their insight on every facet of
TTRPG's. Perhaps you'd like to
take a homebrwing class with our potions
professor or join in on a role playinging
class put on by our theater department. Be
sure to take all your required general education
classes like Character Creation 101,
Intro to World Building and NPC

(00:58):
Voices for Beginners to help round out
your education. There are also plenty of electives
and intramural opportunities to add some fun and
diversity into your everyday schedule. So get
out there and learn. Whether you'hoping to
graduate with a degree in DMing or playing, it
matters not. There is always room to
grow at session zero university.

>> Doug Grosser (01:29):
Algh students, this is Dr.
Bimmer's class for worldu
building. 101 discovery of new worlds and how
to explore it. If you are here looking
for Professor Thimble and their art of
terraforming, you've come to the wrong class. And
please get out now. I am
in quite a predicament. Unfortunately I seem to be a bit

(01:52):
under the weather at this time, so I will hand it off
to my ta, this
human and they will do what they need to
do. So I will be off now.

>> Skylar (02:03):
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Session
Zero University. You are here for class. And
today. We have a phenomenal professor to speak to you
today and help you to learn about
TTRPGs, the very many, many, many
aspects of them. And more specifically, we're going to jump into one of
those many aspects. We're going to be talking about world
building today. And joining us to teach us

(02:25):
all about the intricacies and the exciting
world of world building is Doug
Grosser. Doug, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. It's good to be on.

>> Skylar (02:35):
Yeah. Well, we're so excited to have you and world building
is a big topic.
We're talking a whole world, right? You look at our world, the earth and
everything like that and there's so many complexities to it.
So, with jumping off, just kind of right off
the bat, if you could tell us he a little bit about yourself. Obviously we
want to know who you are and what your experiences

(02:55):
are with TTRPGs, but then tell us a little bit about,
kind of an overview of what we'll be looking at as far as
world building goes.

Sure, of course. So hello everybody. My name is Doug Grosser.
I've been a DM for oh, going on
for almost a decade now. Wow. I have
had quite a bit of experience and I've had the pleasure of being able
to join Skylar in real life for some fun
TTRPG experiences. but I've built
multiple worlds, whether it be for one shots. I actually, my

(03:23):
favorite thing that I got this past year for Christmas,
gift was I got a map of one of my personal
worlds called Ace Room.

>> Skylar (03:30):
nice.

Which we'll dive into a little bit later. But I've
built multiple worlds, whether it be small
one shots, just little playgrounds, or big ones that
can encompass eons of
lore and worlds. So
I have a little bit of an inkling and I'd like to be able to share
it to you.

>> Skylar (03:50):
Yeah, absolutely. And we're excited to learn because I mean
like I keep saying it, but worldbuild building is huge. It's a
big thing. There's a lot of elements to it
and I think there's probably, and we'll probably go into this, but there's a lot
of different ways that you can do worlduild building. You don't have to go so
complex as to figure out every minute
detail when you're about to run a campaign. Right. there's a certain level

(04:10):
of world building for any given story that you're trying
to create with your players.

Exactly. And so it is daunting, especially
if you want to make a world. But when you make a world,
you'not. You don't need to make five different
continents, four different oceans, cities
upon complex hierarchies
and forms of government. You don't need to do
that instantly. There's multiple ways to be able to start
off and then you can grow out. A world can

(04:36):
start as a point and then become a full plane.
So to start off, I think the best thing to do
is why make a world?

>> Skylar (04:44):
Ye.

So worldbuild building can do a lot of things.
And if any of you who are listening, have
listened to the One Shot, episode, you will probably hear
a couple things that overlap.
So one of the main things and things that have helped me
for what I've wanted to do for many of my campaigns is
it'll help inspire either long term or short term
campaigns. So whether it be surrounded by a specific

(05:06):
concept or maybe just an idea you had for a place,
it'll help you Develop those areas and
the surroundings to be able to help
develop what your players and what you can help
explore.

>> Skylar (05:18):
Yeah, absolutely. So when we're talking concept, Right. We're
talking kind of like the overarching narrative.

Yeah. So it could be for you or any other
individual, a concept could be as major as I want
to have something that deals with the anger
of loss or the complexities
of a m of power
hungry, hierarchies, people who are trying
to take down governments and things like that. Or it could be something as simple
as I like this one class, I want to make something

(05:46):
that does something here.

>> Skylar (05:48):
Right, right. And then of course place that's pretty
straightforward for the most part.
Cities, countries, maybe a
continent even, that everything kind of takes place on. And that's
where you're kind of focusing your world building on.

And then similar to wanting to be able to try out those types of
concepts, you can also try a player concept. So you
might want to try a theme for a one shot. So like for example,
you guys are very familiar with the Avatar Univers universe.

>> Skylar (06:13):
Oh yeah, absolutely.

Maybe like multiple elements coming together with
fire, wind, earth, water or
maybe something else. Maybe mind, body, soul,
something of that nature. And you want to try to develop
worldild building can help you flesh out where these things can
happen, why these things are happening and
what you can be able to explore with them.

>> Skylar (06:34):
Absolutely. And I like that you mentioned that too, that a
player's character can be an element in
helping you as like the game master, the dm, whatever you
want, whatever the term is for whatever TTRPG it is that you're
playing to create that world and to build that
world. Right. That character is going to bring
elements of whatever their characters like
culture, background, so on and so forth is. And that's going

(06:56):
to flow into your world because obviously it's taking place in
your world. Oh yeah. To help you develop it.

Yeah. And I'll dive into a little bit more on that, on some of the
techniques later. another thing that you could be able to do is
that you just want to have a sandbox and just something that you can be able to
do for the future. Whether it be you want to be able
to live there or have things that you want to be able to do or something that
you just want to have your players to be able to jump out in. You want
to try a new class or try a new enemy type, well, you can

(07:21):
just plop them right into the world that you already have.
It'just something that people want to enjoy,
and that is one thing that we'll get into later. But you want
to enjoy your world. It's not something ably.
It's not something that you want to be able to just put in there
just for the heck of it. You want to. It doesn't necessarily have to be a good
thing too. It could be like, you know, a, power structure
that you don't like, you know, the monarchies or the governments that

(07:44):
are very corrupt. But it's something that you want to either
have change, whether it be by your players or by the people in
there. But it's something that you want to be in, something that you want
to be able to enjoy. So you want to be in this
world, give it color.

>> Skylar (07:58):
So you've got this world and you want to flesh it out to
give a little bit more immersion for your players who are going to be playing in it.
What are we looking for? What kind of things should we be
trying to, either target or maybe questions
that we want to ask ourselves as far as that goes.

So it really comes down to who you and your players
are. And that's actually one of the reasons why to make a world,
sometimes you just want to be able to try something out.
So one of my favorite systems is, the
One Quiet Year where literally you end up
building a world. It'by a very narrow concept, but
you build a world season by season by having individuals

(08:32):
come in, by having events happen. And then you can
help create something that brings that immersion
together. So it is something that it is not
necessarily automatically going to be done, but is
something that you can help build towards.

>> Skylar (08:46):
Yes, absolutely. I'seen, I listened to in the
Adventure Zone. They did the One Quiet Year for one of their campaigns. And
it was really, really cool to be able to hear all
of them. The, dm, which is usually
Griffin, and then of course his brothers
and dad, who were all the players, working
together, playing through this quiet year to use it

(09:06):
as a way to build the world that they would
inevit to be playing with. the D and D rul set, I think, is
what they used, to build the world
first and then play into it, which was really
cool. And I know Cameron and I have both talked about
we really got to do that sometime. We got to try this out and
play into it. So maybe that'be something we'll do in the
future.

Funny thing is, Cameron already has some experience because one of the
campaigns that he and I are in where I'm DMing, we did
that and we're in a space campaign with it.
So it is not something that is so narrow
that you have to be able to have it in one setting. Because that's another thing
for worlding too. You could want to explore a genre.
You don't have to just be D and D. You could

(09:46):
do a space campaign, a space
opera that does various other systems.
You could be able to do a heist, world or
just like a small narrow setting for Blades in the Dark, one
of those various other systems. There's the whole Daggerhard
rule set that's coming out soon. That you can also be able to look
at a more narrow set while still fantasy, but looking

(10:06):
at a new area that has not been
done before.

>> Skylar (10:10):
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess with that kind of
playing off of that. Right. So systems aren't necessarily
directly tied to the world building element. They are
kind of built towards a theme. As
you mentioned, if you want to run something within the world of avr,
Last Airbender, use Avatar Legends, the system,
because it's built to handle that. We talked a lot about this in

(10:31):
our last sessions, Zero University, where we talked all about
systems and running them for
different purposes and Blades in the Dark, it's
fantastic for heist. With that being said, that doesn't
necessarily have to limit the world that
you build them within. Just because D
and D is built for the forgotten reals, that doesn't mean that you can't handle
your own personal world sort of within a fantasy,

(10:54):
medieval fantasy to some extent theme. And of course
people have done some other crazy stuff,
superheroes and modern day stuff and whatnot within the D and
D, rule set. But with that being said, Doug, if
I can ask, what is the sort of benefit
between, you know, obviously these systems a lot of
times create worlds, but what benefit is
it for me to sit down and start to make and create

(11:17):
my own world to put that system
into so it can.

Go hand in hand of what you want to be able to do
and using those systems. But you can also use those systems to help
create your world. We'll get into that in a little bit. But by being able to
have your own world in play, you can be able
to help formulate what will work out best for
your system. If you are looking for that medieval
setting, the one that everybody goes to is for
D&D5E. Or you could look at Pathfinder or

(11:44):
something similar in that vein, but you don, you may not want
to Do a world that is just tied to
medieval times. You want to be in the future. You want to be able
to focus on something that'in space. They have a bunch
of Star wars tabletop RPGs that you can be able to use
their systems. Hell, you could even try to make your own.
One of the ones that actually funny that you mentioned in Adventures. So

(12:04):
they actually made their own system for this latest
one, which is this superhero Saturday morning
cartoon version where its's essentially like a D8
system. You roll it and if you get above a 4, you
succeed. But this world is specifically
like. Theyre called Abnables because theyre basically the
humanoid animals that have abs because theyre super buff and

(12:24):
strong. But that they created that world,
from inspiration, from the real world.
And then they created that system around it. But you can
also do something in reverse. And I'll get into that in a little
bit when we talk about actually how do you set up a world?

>> Skylar (12:39):
Yes, absolutely. It's funny though, I know we both, have
used, Adventure Zone as kind of examples within so far
with this. And I know I've used it several times in the past. Just obviously big
fans of, the stuff that they're creating over there.

Right, Exactly.

>> Skylar (12:51):
Awesome. So what of before we jump into some of the
more detailed stuff? Because we keep saying,
we'll talk about that here in a second. what should be the goal of
this class before we just jump into things? Right.

Yes. So the goal of this class is I'm not going
to give you a world. I will give you an example world
with which is my own. But at the end of the day, it is not going
to be something that will be 100% flesh out. I'm not going to give you a
lore document or something that has a big long
history and all these individual places. What I'm going to give you
are the tools that help you start making your own

(13:22):
world or start making places that you
can expand into a world. A good way to think about
it is that for this world building, you're going to start using
your senses, the five senses of seeing, hearing tast,
smelling and feeling. What are you
actually seeing here? What is in your world?
What are you hearing? Why is it, looking this

(13:42):
way? what's on the air and why is it so
maybe accurate or very moist? What is
causing all this stuff to happen? It helps with a lot of
the what questions. And while we'get into like some
questions that help the lore side, the why and the how it
won't give you the individual places just yet.
Itl ll give you a point where you can use your own inspiration

(14:03):
and then bloom it into your own
place.

>> Skylar (14:06):
Right? Right. Because story isn't
necessarily the world. Correct.
The world is everything that's around
you. But the story develops within the
World S.A.C.T. and honestly, that's part of
what you're about to create. with the people that you're going to sit down with
and play inside of this world is the stories that inhabit this
world.

Right. And some of those ideas of what you want to tell
for a story can help bloom a thought so
that you can be able to help create this world. But it is not the
full way to get from A to Z. It
won't help you do that. It will help you give you those
individual points that your players can go to. Whether it be from A
to B or maybe A to F or A to

(14:47):
2. It'completely random. Because
your players will want to develop the story along with you.

>> Skylar (14:52):
Absolutely. It's sort of part of the skeleton. Right. You're going to have
the mechanics of the game that is part of the Mechan M. Well, that's
the skeleton of the game aspect of
TTRPGs. But building your world is going to be the
skeleton towards the story and how that's all going to
get set up.

Yes.

>> Skylar (15:08):
Exactly like it. Very cool. So when should we be making a
world? When should I decide to myself I'm going toa make a
world and we're going toa use it for a
ttrpg.

Yeah. So the best time to actually be able to make a world
is when you're trying to do those one shots. When you're trying to
plan something out that's a little bit on the smaller scale
you, can help control. maybe you have this point of
inspiration. You went on a grand trip, to let's
say Hawaii. And you found this beautiful,
green, canyon area that's almost.

(15:38):
They call it the Grand Canyon of the Pacific called the
Yimei Valley. And then you're like, I like that.
I want to be able to put that into a place. I want to use
that, pulling on my own inspiration of what I've done
in the past. You want to be able to help create a place
that your players can also have that awe
inspiration. Absolutely. And then it a

(15:58):
place that either you or your players want to be.
Maybe someplace interesting or at least something that will
be able to help develop the story.

>> Skylar (16:07):
Absolutely. Obviously you want to play. We talked about this
before in previous episodes, but you want to play something that you, as the dm,
are going to fall in love with, but you also obviously want your players to fall in
love with. So if you're going to build a world, make sure it's something that
everybody can enjoy and not just something that
you're building this, you're not writing yourself a book.
You're not writing a book built on exactly how

(16:27):
you want things. Because at the end of the day, your players are going to go into this world
and things are going to change, things are going to happen and they're going
toa be a little bit out of your control, to be honest with you. So,
yeah, you don't want to definitely, lock yourself in by just saying,
I'm just going to create this world. And it's like, well, what's the point of having
these players in there if it's going to be exactly the way that you want it? You want
to keep it loose, right?

Solo D and D is basically writing a book. That's all it is.

>> Skylar (16:49):
Exactly. And there are some interesting solo
TTRPGs that I've been sort of noticing a little bit
here and there lately. But even those, it's already kind of like some pre
established stuff anyway. That's beside the point.

And for the writers out there, you can definitely use these techniques to help you
build your world and then maybe, create a
novel from it or eventually go into the
TTRPG aspect.

>> Skylar (17:10):
Absolutely, yeah. This is a dual,
purpose here, this whole class. Right. You don't have to. This
isn't just for TTRPG creators. This is for everybody
who's trying to make their own interesting worlds. All
right, so I'm, a gm, obviously.
I've run a lot of campaigns. Most of what I do
is homebrew. And so I'm always looking

(17:30):
for tips and tricks and ways,
to build or techniques. You could even say to
worldill because it's a lot, it's a lot to
handle, it's a lot to take on. So what would you
advise as far as. So let's go right from the
beginning, right? We're setting up. We've seen something that's
inspired us. Kind of like you mentioned with the Hawaii thing, I want to
start building a world that surrounds us. Where should I start?

So before anything, before you even start
building the world building points, you need to have
some way of documenting it. You need to be able to have some way
to be able to let yourself know in the future or Even
start to help put your idea onto a
pen and paper on the laptop, a chisel and stone. It doesn't matter.
You just need something to write down. Now there may be

(18:13):
revisions along the way. You might help develop it. As you start
writing it down and youre like, oh wait, no, itd be cool if I could be able to add
this or Ah, that doesn't make sense. I want to probably
you shouldn't have that part, but you need some way to be able to
know what it is and then be able to go back to it. Anytime
I make a world anytime. And it's the same thing for
DMs who are making a session. Anyime you start
any of this stuff, you need to have a design document.

(18:36):
Now you don't have to have 20,000 pages.
You don't need to have a novel that goes through it. But it just has to
have some definition of what you're
doing, what this is, where this is, how
this is, things like that. You don't have to necessarily answer
them all in that immediate when you create it, you just
have to be able to have the framework.

>> Skylar (18:56):
Absolutely, absolutely. Start with yeah,
basics, keep it small. And then we're going to
work outwards.

Right. And so diving into that,
going from that point, with a good transition.
So now you have the framework, you have a
document, you're inspired. What can you do?
Well, the great thing about human imagination is that it is
limitless. You can imagine anything being in
space while breathing underwater at the same time. How
is that happen? Nobody knows. Its'just happening.

(19:24):
But to be able to help make your world and help
make it be a place, you have to make
boundaries. Your world can be infinite. It could be the
whole galaxy if you wanted to. If you
dont help boundary it now
even that, you could help, you can make a universe and thats
your world building and you just start having those external
boundaries. But you dont want to start allowing

(19:47):
yourself to just keep going and building without having
something there. And thats where I create one of the things that
helped me in making either Acer Room or other things in the
past is what I like to call the House of the World
method, which is essentially you are creating
five boundaries. You'creating four walls and then a
fifth ceiling, which. The fifth ceiling, we'get into
that in a little bit. But so to help

(20:09):
establish your world, the first thing that I always try to
do is what are the in game, in
universe physical laws you want to establish
are these, these are the ideas of magic.
And technology, can you actually individuals,
can they fly in, like, thinking of anime,
are. Is this the world of, my hero academemia?

(20:30):
And everybody has quirks, people have superpowers.
Or is it something that is more grounded in reality,
even using our own world as the
point? Where are those physical laws?

>> Skylar (20:42):
Yes. Does gravity exist or kind
of have the ability to float around? And obviously there are gonna be
things that stem from that, which is what's really exciting. Right. I
even saw, recently, I saw on some subreddit,
somebody was asking the question, they're like, well, in a world full.
And I'm glad that you used the my hero academia in a world full of
people with superpowers, what are going to be like those jobs

(21:02):
that just either don't make sense or absolutely
suck at that point. Right. And people were talking about. They're like,
well, defense lawyers. That's notn toa be a fun
job. Because how are you going to be able to prove that this person wasn't under
the, effects of, mind control or something
along those lines, you know what I mean? And I was like, you know,
that's kind of what goes into that whole.

(21:23):
You got to create that framework for the rules and
what's going on in this world. Or how does the world. Is it going to
work with whatever it is that you're kind of jumping into?
Right? And those are the questions that you ask yourself. And the beauty of it
is, it's not a problem. Right. It's not
a bad thing to ask those questions. Be like, ooh, I'm challenged by this
question. That is going to help you build. That's going to

(21:43):
you help you say, well, to combat that
fact, I'm going to have to put something in place that
logically would stem in this world that logically would happen and
inevitably kind of work its way into the system. Because
people in this world would see that and say,
oh, we need to fix that, you know, or we need a
rule for when that happens. You know, that's why we have laws and
things like that. But. Right. Sorry, I'm getting way out of. No, you're out

(22:05):
of line here.

No, that is perfect. Because that is. You don't have to answer those questions
in this building of the framework. But those are good points
to even help, like, build your story or build what
will develop inside this world. But that is something
that you want to establish. Is this like a world of superheroes?
Or is this a world of, life and death, a
world of gods, just something that's physical, that you

(22:27):
can be able to understand. And then from that point we
talked about the physical laws. But the next wall is
what about the metaphysical laws that you want to establish the things that
are not specifically in the world but what you are
doing. So is there a game system that you want to be
able to use? Is there something that you were inspired by
that, oh, this will help me develop my world or this

(22:47):
aligns with what I want to be able to tell with this physical
world. And maybe theres s not. Maybe there's something that
you want to either homebrew or something that you just
havent found yet. And thats okay. That is something that you
now have a door rather than ah, a full wall. It is
something that you will develop along the line and you
just need that inspiration.

>> Skylar (23:06):
And ideally you explore that idea too. And not just like
slap A, were going to do D and D on this one, you know.

Right, exactly. And that slap and D and D. A lot
of people think, oh, now I have to make a sandbox world and
be ready for anything and everything. But that's not
necessarily the case. You can make something that is specific
for your campaign or an event. Like when you're
making a world you. And this will actually tie into one of the
later ones. You don't have to just make literally a

(23:33):
world. Your world can be as small as a
day camp. It doesn, it doesn't have to be
huge. It is just something that your
players are at the whats and the where
that they can be able to establish.

>> Skylar (23:46):
Absolutely. And the mechanics will work around those things.
And that's the beauty of it. You don't have to make these broad
mechanics that could work for any given situation
potentially. And it's something we've talked about on previous episodes.
When you get super broad with the mechanics, you end up
losing a lot of that sort of personality that
the game has. Right. You can get really specific

(24:07):
and say we're at day camp. Right. You got to roll this
check to see how well your campfire works or something
like that or how fast you can canoe. And you've got a whole
mechanic set up for, you know, you racing your canoe
against, the other teams canoe and seeing
who gets to the other end of the lake first.

Right, Exactly. And those metaphysical laws, the
game system can help you establish what that physical
world is. Because now you're. If you are doing
something that is with superheroes, you can use a game system
that like some of the Powered By Apoc, the Apocalypse,
superhero Stuff you can use that system that to help
you develop that world. Or there could be

(24:44):
stuff that you just don't have yet. And that's okay.
Not everything has to be established right from the get go.
A world is ever building. That is one thing I'll
touch upon again. A world progresses. You do not
have to have everything set in stone. A world
is not made of stone. It could be made of water. A world could
be made of molten, earth that is

(25:04):
still flowing like our own. Things will
change, absolutely. But that is okay.
But some of the things that you want to know before you continue
on is what are you trying to accomplish? What is the
theme or the genre of this world? This
goes back to that physical property. Is this like a
cyberpunk fantasy? Is this something that you are now in

(25:24):
the advanced technology stages? Or is it something that
is back to that medieval section? Is it something that is more
aligned with D and D? What is the timef frame that
you are in now? You can be able to have
it so that in the future, if this is a sandbox world,
you could have it so that it'll eventually develop into one of
those future ones. Like one of my favorite
authors, Brandon Sanderson, he has the whole Misborn

(25:47):
trilogy, It starts, or it's actually a
sixology, a dual tril trilogy. But you have the
original trilogy of Mistborn that you have this
medieval setting and then it goes on into this
kind of cyber. Not cyberpunk, but most
steampunk, almost like advanced
technology. And that is something that you can be able to

(26:08):
help evolve as your world evolves as well.
But what do you start with? What is your technology when
you're telling the story, when you'developing this world?

>> Skylar (26:17):
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, yeah, you
can. You're not limited by any means to a singular
genre per se. I mean, obviously you want to make things logical, you want
to make things flow nicely. So it's kind of weird when
you have a sci fi world over here with UFOs and
lasers that can destroy entire buildings and then you've got a m medieval society
that exists over on the other side of the world

(26:38):
and somehow they're still alive even though the laser
beam people don't like them, and could
easily just wipe them out with a nuclear destruction or
something in seconds.

Exactly. And the other thing too that this can really help
establish is a theme. And this theme could not,
and I don't mean just like a social theme like,
oh, evil is bad and we have to conquer and rule
out all evil. I mean, like, it could be a physical theme. So, like, for
example, another big inspiration for me is the
dimension 20.

>> Skylar (27:06):
Dimension 20?

Yeah. Yep. So one of the ones that they did that I adore, one of
the campaigns was a crown of candy.
Essentially it is a world where everybody
is a food object. Like there are
sugar people, there are vegetable people, there are
meat people, there are dairy people. And that
can be a theme that's just an interesting topic to be able to

(27:27):
talk about. And that could be just something you think about.

>> Skylar (27:29):
Yeah, absolutely. And that's creating a whole new world in and of
itself. Right. Like, it's bizarre where you can
draw inspiration from, but it's also really
interesting to see where people have managed to draw inspiration
from. Like one day they just popped open the fridge and they
looked at their items and they said, what if these were like
kingdoms and you had different people

(27:50):
from different kingdoms that represent. By the food group?
It's crazy to think about, but it's really cool. With that
being said, obviously you're the gm, you or DM or
whatever, and you're creating this world that you're going to set your players
into. But what about your players? How are they going to impact the
world, in some way, shape or form? Are they going to contribute to the
world building in some way? Or are they kind of locked in?

So that depends on what you're trying to establish. Again, it goes
back to how you're setting up this world. Is it something
that will start as a sandbox that you'll bring your players
in and then they can help develop from the inside? This is just the
framework. You could have it so that the framework is built by
multiple people, so that it's not just
you putting up the walls for this world. You can
have people come in as well, but that's what you

(28:32):
establish from the beginning. Is this going to be. That's part of the
metaphysical thing. Is this something that you establish or
is this something that you have other people
collaborate on?

>> Skylar (28:42):
Right, right.

And speaking of, ah, collaborating with people,
and then bringing them in, what is the state
of the world? Is the final wall? Is
this a big world like we were mentioning before? Is this
a whole universe? Or is this just a DC Cam?
Is the city the size of a country, like some of
the, for D and D and magic, the gathering, the
Ravnica stuff? Or is it just a village with about a dozen

(29:06):
people? And that's all we're focusing on by
establishing what the state of the world what size it
is. You can help be able to get those
ideas into one place and help move it
forward.

>> Skylar (29:18):
Absolutely, absolutely. So just going over
everything that we talked about before. So five boundaries.
This is the house of the world. Right. What are the
physical laws that you want to establish? That's one of those walls. What
are the metaphysical laws? That's kind of your outside
metagame. the more technical aspect of the
mechanics of the world that you're going to be in. You've got

(29:38):
the theme or genre, which of course
it is what it is. Is it sci fi, is it fantasy, so on and so
forth. What is the state of the world and the size of
it, which we were just talking about? And then is the world
a vacuum?

Yes, that is the ceiling. And the thing
about the is the world of vacuum is the question
of are you using your own stuff?
Is this 100% homebrew or like
Avatar legends? Are you using that with
this roof? This as. Is this already a pre
established roof of what you can be able to do? You're in a world of

(30:11):
avatar, you have air bisons,
you have benders and things like that. What
are you limited by? Or is it.

>> Skylar (30:19):
I love that metaphor so much. The roof.
The roof is where you're like kind of stopping
yourself at as far as what you're drawing the inspiration
from. and where you're going toa.

Take that.

>> Skylar (30:29):
That's cool.

Y.

>> Skylar (30:30):
Sorry, I just needed it. I just needed to chime in there. That was awesome.

No, that's perfect. And it helps establish what is
happening. So.

>> Skylar (30:37):
Right, right.

So now you have a framework. Now
you have what it is that is
here, but it is a shell. It does not have
things that have detail. It does not have the color of what
you want. You have ideas. But now you have to
start building in. This is where the next step
comes in. This is world detail. this is
where you take your boundaries and then you either

(31:01):
start big and go small, or start
small and go big and. Well dive into both of
those in just a sec. So for example,
if you start small and go big, this
is something I like to call ballooning.
You start with a single small thing,
an item, a person, a place of
establishment. Then you start

(31:22):
increasing in scope, you start going out and
circling what exactly is happening in
this area. So one of the examples that Ive ve
done for acerum acerm in this
world, I wanted to be able to have an
individual or maybe a group of individuals that
are a protector and group people who
Actually come and be able to help others. So

(31:45):
start there. Okay, how are they
actually going to protect the people? Well, they'going to
travel around and they'going to have methods of being able to
do that and they'going to have to have, you know,
places of establishment. They're going to have to go to
either base camps or things of that nature.
As they go to those places, how are they viewed in those

(32:06):
areas? Are they seen with
good or ill intent? Are they people that
people want to have or are they
shunned? And then once they are
there, how are they doing it? What are they doing
in those areas? So as you can
see, by ballooning, you can help create those plot hooks and things
that will want people to understand. Oh,

(32:28):
so what is going on over there? What is
happening? And so interesting. So that
helps.

>> Skylar (32:34):
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. Yeah, start small, go big.
Right. And I love that. your example is honestly a
perfect one, right? These people are traveling
around to do their duty as,
protectors, right? So you're taking the small
group, you're establishing them as kind of the baseline
where your world is kind of building from.
They're traveling around, you say, okay, they travel to this place. What

(32:56):
is this place like? What is their culture like? How, like you said,
how do they feel about these protectors? Do they like them, do they
dislike them? What are they being protected
from? In this case, right now you've got another city
or another place that you've established and you've built a chunk of world. Now
these protectors travel to the next place, they start to
help you build within that next place that you're going to be,

(33:16):
adding to your world, right?

And like a balloon, whether you're inflating it or say you
are the individual and you're rising up on the balloon, you don't
just see a single line going in one direction. You see
things overall in all sides
starting to expandute. in the same example, when I
was grading this group, when they are protecting, what
are they protecting it from? Well, we were talking

(33:39):
about how they'going to these different areas. Well, they're protecting it,
from these outside forces. This world is
meant for D and D. So it's protecting them from the planes?
Well, they're protecting from the planes what is in the world
already to help protect them. Are they doing it themselves?
Well, there are established spires that
help create this almost invisible shield that protects from

(33:59):
the outside world from coming in, things like that. And that is
something that was developed as you balloon out just to
be able to have that inspiration. And then with that
group, you can be able to see a bigger picture
of what they do.

>> Skylar (34:11):
Absol. Wow.

And so now weve got start and small going
big.

>> Skylar (34:16):
Well, or is it big to small now?

Yes, exactly. This is now what I like to call
diving youe diving into something. One of
my favorite examples is, in this
world there is an area of magic that
is more concentrated than anywhere else. And that
is where it came out to the kingdom of
either. You know, just the typical
thing that you would see in any kind of fantasy genre.

(34:41):
So you have this kingdom of either. Okay,
cool. Well, so what are they trying
to. What are they. Are they a
like power hungry organization or are they, you
know, peaceful? Well, I was thinking when
you have a bunch of magic in one place, sometimes youre not
satisfied with just that. So theyre ever expanding. Well,
okay, so lets dive more into that. If they are

(35:04):
power hungry, how are they set up? Is it something that you have
a hierarchy or is it a monarchy? Well,
with it being so power hungry, youre thinking, okay,
there has to be somebody on top, somebody who is the best. But there is
this drive to be better than other people. So there
are these layers, there are these teiers that
people want to be in and thats where there is a various

(35:24):
hierarchy system. That is there where you have
the highest of the high, the king archanaum, who
is the top of magic. And then you have the slowly
scribes who are trying to get up to that location.
Okay, diving in more. Okay, so
how do the people inside this kingdom,
inside this, let'say the capital, feel about
this? Well, if they'all

(35:47):
knowing this and knowing that they are the
most magical of the people and that they are the
best, well, they're probably going to be pretty arrogant. They're probably going to
be those individuals who are like, oh, I'm better than everybody else, so
I don't want anybody else to be able to come up to my
location. Well, that's a really, really cool
idea. But is everybody like
this? Well, diving in deeper. No, it

(36:10):
in this area, not everybody is that
grand magician or has a
great amount of magic. There'still people.
Everybody is different. And not everybody is just naturally
talented with magic. And then you
know that you have that. Will you dive even deeper?
Is there an individual

(36:30):
that feels this way that might not be
just okay with it?
And it turns out no, people don't
like it when you're stepping on them. And that's where
I created the individual who creates
this other organization, it was
called the Ink Stained. Those who are seened
as a blemish on the society. And

(36:53):
because they are inked with, the lack of
magic, they are, gathering others who
feel this discontent, and they want to be able to do
something.

>> Skylar (37:02):
Wow.

(37:24):
Yeah. It's amazing how much can stem
out of that. And like you said, just because you're
starting big, right, you don't have a lot of detail yet,
Right. You've got a very broad concept, and then you're just
diving in and in and in. It's like zooming in on Google
Maps, right? Like, you've got w. This is the whole United States of
America. I'm gonna click this one spot, and you zoom in. Oh, there's

(37:44):
the borders that I can see for the city or the
states. Zoom in a little bit more. Okay. Now I'm seeing cities
pop up, names of cities. Zoom in a little bit more and a little bit more
until you can see the street view, and you're seeing
people and you're seeing houses and you're seeing
decorations and, greenery or whatever
else. And yeah, so it's amazing how much detail

(38:04):
can start to spawn from starting so big. And
I would argue that this is actually exactly how I created the, Criminals of
Violinuma campaign. We're playing through, for session
zero, Heroes is I set up. I said, okay, the
entire thing is going to take place in the city of
Isaumis. So I said, here's my city. And then I said,
okay, what districts exist within the city? Because not
everybody is just part of. This is one big city.

(38:26):
It's a lot to just throw up my players to say, this is just one big
area. Here you go. So I was like, I need to break it down
somehow and help establish a little bit of, the
different cultures that are going on within the city. So then I made
the districts, and then in each district, you say, what's going on in
each district? What exists in each district that could become plot
points for the players to play in. And then you just dive

(38:47):
deeper and deeper and deeper. So I love that. I dove. I dove,
Doug.

Yeah, you dove really hard. And that is what the
diving is really good for. Diving is really good for
starting. Creating your starting point, making it so that
your players know what is happening at this
location. You have an idea of what's happening in the
surrounding, even if the players are only familiar
with the one point at this point.

>> Skylar (39:10):
Absolutely, absolutely. And then you can, of course, take
something specific that you create
within your bigger picture
and then you can balloon it and say okay,
let's expand on this. It's a small, It's a fragment piece
inside of here. But I think it's really important and I want to focus on
that for a little bit. So we're going to balloon that specific
element and we're going to let that kind of help build.

(39:32):
Honestly, it sounds like you go. You can start
from either way but it sounds like you can use both
methods throughout your world building process.

Exactly. And you will, it will help you once you start
big and go small, once you start having those cocentric
circles of all the things that touch this ones
point, you can start on those small points and
then expand them out. Once I created that
individual who is now the leader of this ink
stained well. Now lets expand out

(40:00):
what they have and so this is where some inspiration
can be able to come in and help you establish what that is.
there, there was a class that I saw that
was basically called the War Mage. And the War Mage
is different in most D and D settings where they dont
have access to leveled spells. They only can do
cantrips. But cantrips is what they do. Right?

(40:21):
And that is the idea of well not everybody is
good at this magic. Nobody can do these higher level
spells. But the basics, the things that everybody can be able to
do, the firebolts and the pres theigitations and
all that stuff they can do really well.
Where you start expanding that out algh they have these
individuals. What can you be able to do for those
individuals? in the actual class they are

(40:43):
actually organized by the order of. They used
chess pieces. So the order of the rook, the order of
the bishop, the order of the
pawn, the various other individuals.
Well how do these individual organizations get along with
each other? How do they get along with everybody else? Well,
they get along for the most part okay with themselves,
but everybody else is kind of an enemy. Well then

(41:06):
now expanding it out, how does everybody else feel about them?
Do they know about them? Is this a secret organization? Is
it something thats actually in the town or is it something that
is puppeted or outside of it?
That is kind of the idea that you can
dive and then balloon into
various hooks, into various plot
ideas, into various stories that you can be able to

(41:28):
tell?

>> Skylar (41:29):
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Makes me think of like cliff
divers. You dive off the cliff and then they get into the
water and then they're like oh yeah, you know this is deep water. I'm go going toa
activate like what, some kind of inflatable suit to
bring them back up so that they can go do it again.

Exactly. But the nice thing about this is that you don't get the bends as you
dive and rise.

>> Skylar (41:48):
That's right, that's right. Awesome, awesome.
Fantastic. So we talked earlier about lore
and we said that, you know, world building isn't lore,
but I would say that Lore to some extent is world
building.

Right. I will 100% agree. It is nice to
be able to have your standing point of where you are right
now. But how you got to that point can also influence
how your world is. If you think of, you know, the famous
example as critical role and how right now,
like they just got done with their third campaign and now theyre
looking into the divergence that how everything had

(42:20):
become. Well, Matt Mercer had
all this idea before they even dived
into it. And that was all developed because of the lore.
And there are things to be able to help you with that. So
for me, what I do is that I have two methods as
well. very similar to the balloon
and dive, except I like to call them as if you're looking on a Google

(42:40):
map, the pinch and the spread.
So the first one, the pinch, is essentially you start at
either the beginning or you start at an event and then
you pinch down. And like a pinch, you start wide and
you goes narrow.
So that is where at the beginning I knew I
wanted to be able to have magic in this world. Okay,
where did magic start? Okay, it started before

(43:02):
everything else happened, before this world was
established. Well, it started, before everything
was established. What was there? What was the inciting event?
It's the gods. Like almost everything that seems
to happen, it's the gods who helped develop the magic
that came into here. Okay, cool. The gods have
magic. How did we get it? Well, now you narrow it

(43:22):
down. Well, it's not as if the you could
have divinity. And that's where like clerics and things like that come
in. But what about the regular man? How do we do that?
In the world of Asram, what ends up happening is that
you have people who help essentially write
the language of magic and they wrote it down into
what's known as the prime tomes. So

(43:42):
in for those who don't know, in D and D, there are
various classes or various, schools of
magic. And those schools of magic, transmutation,
necromancy, conjuration, things like that.
In this world, those schools are the
tomes. This Tome of conjuration
is all that has ever been for

(44:03):
conjuration. But like most magic, it can
expand, it can change and do that stuff. So its'an ever writing
tone. So okay, so we have these
tomes. Who were they written by? Well,
these are the individuals who are known as
the arcane, settlers. They settled
how magic works, they settled where the
arcane comes from. Okay, cool. Now they'the ones who

(44:26):
do it. How did they spread it? How did they actually
figure out who gets what? Well
like everybody else who is here right now, they went to school,
they created their school and thats how they have
the various colleges throughout the land. And
these schools help develop others where
they are now, how they can be able to actually

(44:47):
do conjuration, transmutation, things like that.

>> Skylar (44:50):
That's awesome. That's awesome. Gotta
go learn at the school that you want to learn the specifics from.
Rightact. If you want to do conjuration magic, you're going to go down
to the conjuration school.

Exactly. And this is great for establishing those
places. Now you have a college where
these can happen. And then after you do that, now you
have a big overview. You have a college now. Now you can
dive in, go back to the other methods that we have done. You can
dive into that college and see, all right, we're at
that college. All right, who's at the top? Who are the

(45:21):
faculty members? Who is the
nerd that everybody pokes fun at? Things like
that. Yes. These help establish
the points where you can also do the other methods that we talked
about.

>> Skylar (45:32):
Absolutely. And then there's a little bit of logic to it that kind helps you stem
out. Right. If there's a college here, well, where are people living? Are
they living in dormitories? And if there's resources,
here at the college, like where is the college getting its food from?
Where is it getting its other resources from? Well now
we've got to design maybe or a village that kind of surrounds
this college. And then from there you're starting to

(45:53):
build outwards. You're doing
the balloon. Re Ballooning. Yes, you're ballooning
out and adding to that world. But with that being
said, now we have the spread method which you also
mentioned.

Right. So the spread method is you take an individual point.
This is great for improers because now you
are. Oh shoot. Now your players said
that they are at this tavern now and they're
chasing this individual for whatever reason. Alrigh.
That individual is at the tavern. We know that. Lets spread
out There. Why are they at the tavern? What led them to

(46:26):
this point? What helped them establish this is why
theyre here. Okay, so they came here because they'looking
for a contact. Okay, now lets spread back a little bit more.
Why do they know that this contact is here? Or how do they know
that contact was going to be there no matter what? Or are
they searching for them? Okay, they knew that they were going to be there. They
got that contact information from higher up.

(46:46):
Okay, whos that higher up? And then you start spreading out m
more. And then it doesnt have to be linear. It can be
like when youre spreading out with your fingers on a map.
You can see around and all. And when youre
using more than just two fingers for the spread, you can use
three or four. There are multiple paths as you spread
out for how things got to this
point. It is very good for when youre prepping for a session

(47:09):
and youre like, oh, shoot, they are here. I had
established this. Now I gott figure out how they
can be able to continue from this point in a satisfying way.
Because now you have a logic that is algh. Im spreading
out more and more. This is how everything got here. This makes
sense.

>> Skylar (47:24):
Right? Right. So can we use, Because weve already talked a little
bit earlier about how we use the dive and the balloon
method together. Is there other combinations that
we can use to help us with different elements
of creating our world?

Oh, absolutely. Like when we were talking about before, about
now, we created this balloon and then, this dive all
in one, or this dive. And now you can balloon up. You will want
to hybridize these. You will use various other
ones to help you establish what your world is.
So one thing that I'd like to be able to do is this dive
and pinch. You're getting into this

(47:57):
individual spot and you know exactly what happens.
It's very good for understanding specific
areas and being able to have these concepts get
into a starting point for your players. So, for
example, you dive down and you pinch down into
this individual point at this tavern.
Okay. Everybody is starting from
big concepts. These, various

(48:20):
kingdoms that are having problems. Okay, theyre having
problems. Okay. Whats causing the problem? Okay, so
in the past, these kingdoms were at a
warring faction. Okay, that is now you start to pinch.
Ono that. Okay, theyre warring. Why are they
warring? Okay, so now they're
fighting over this resource. Okay, they're fine over this
resource. Pinch down more. Okay, they're fine over this

(48:42):
resource. It's still ongoing. Okay, so is
everybody exhausted? Are they tired? Okay. They're
wanting this war to end and they, they've been at it for years.
Okay, you pinc it down more. Okay. So now individuals
want to be able to start doing it. How are they going to start?
Are there rebels? Are there individuals who want to be able
to stop this war at any means necessary? Okay, yesday you

(49:02):
do. They just want it to be done. And there are factions
on both sides who just want to get it done. You get
down to that end point and now you're in a
tavern and that tavern is housing
a secret meeting for either
your. It could be one of your players or could just be happening at the same
time for your players. That is happening for
this. And you started with this big concept of

(49:24):
this warring nations and now you're at
this individual point, Right?

>> Skylar (49:29):
Right, absolutely.

Same thing. You can be able to balloon and spread, help create
those plot and hooks that you will eventually go to.
Something that your players could hear about but dont necessarily
have any context for right now. Like for example, you
start with an individual and you start with how
the individual, associates with maybe the
kingdom or maybe the town or something like that. And then you

(49:51):
start spreading out. Now I know Im'using a lot
of D and D terminology because very easy to be able to do
that. But you can also do this for if this is at
a day camp like the one that we keep going to. You start
with the individual, the camper whos one of
your players, and you start there and you start spreading out from
there. Okay, how do they come to this place? Okay, so

(50:12):
they are here now. they came here because their
family wanted them to be able to come, to be able to
enjoy the day camp. Well, why are they doing it? Do they not have
time or things like that? Well, no, they don't really have time
because they have a lot of other things going on. and then
you help create that backstory for that individual. I was
same player character. But you could also do it for an npc, things like
that.

>> Skylar (50:32):
Yeah, absolutely. I like how it's kind of keeping
things open too for yourself as the gm, to let
your players jump in and kind of help
modify or change or add to your world as
well by using their character
as kind of a starting point to spread from.

Exactly. And out of all these
methods, after you do them, or as you're doing
them, the one final thing I have to say is
that you never, while you have your
framework, your house is never going to be fully
filled. You do not. I do not go up to my living
room and I have a, couch on top of a chair, on
top, on top of a table, on top of a tv.

(51:11):
My whole house is not filled. I have
the ability to be able to move around in there. I have the ability
to build if I need to, or even replace things.
And that is the one thing that you want to do with your world as well. You want to be
able to have enough room so that you can also be able to
do more or, have your players do
more. You want your world to be able to progress. You
want your world to not just be stuck in one

(51:34):
space and time. Your world will continue to
evolve whether the players are there or not. As long
as you let the world continue to have time,
it will go and do things. I,
I dont think. And this has helped me a lot. I dont think
worlds should stagnate now. Unless theres like a time curse
or something that forces your world to stopft, which is a cool

(51:54):
plot interest, but thats outside of the scope. And then you can also
start doing that world building up. Why are you at that point?

>> Skylar (51:59):
Yeah, absolutely. What created this time? Why did they
create this time stopper, whatever it is.
Yeah, exactly. That's very cool. All right.
So it's a lot of information,
a lot of incredible information, and hopefully a lot
of, really definitely a lot of very
beneficial information for people that are trying to build their world.
Let's kind of summarize our points, summarize our techniques.

(52:22):
So that way, hopefully everybody who's sitting here at the end, they're like,
wow, that was a lot. Let's like reinvigorate, and
reestablish everything that we've talked about so far.

Yes. So a summary of the techniques, the things to
help you build your world. First things first.
Create boundaries. Create that house that your world
will be in once you create that house.
Exactly. The five walls. Once you have created that
house, give it details. Pinch down, zoom
out, balloon dive. Start creating that color that your

(52:50):
room is. And as you're starting to do
that, then that's when you blend and
progress. Once you start getting the color in
your room, then you leave it for your
players, for your story, for time, to continue
to allow you to be inspired and add into that
room into the future. Those are the techniques to

(53:11):
be able to do it. And if you take nothing else away from
here, if you take nothing else on how to build your
world, I would like to at least leave you with these
five points. Be inspired
for Anything that's out there to be able to add into
your world, be diligent. And not
just what you're building in that world, but in your

(53:31):
note taking let you let yourself know five
years from now, 20 years from now, whenever you go into this
world, you know why that thing is there. And maybe you
evolve it. Maybe you have something that's a little
different. Be interested in your world.
You want to be there or maybe you want things to
change in there. But don't just have a
blank wall. Don't just have a gray

(53:54):
room that you can be able to do. Allow
your allow your world to progress.
Allow there for it to be open and
flexible for what happens. And that is the final
thing. Be open to flexibility.
Be open for your players to be able to help build
the world. You can start with the framework of the world
but eventually your world will allow people to come in

(54:16):
and then you can be able to have that. And
you got to have that flexibility so that it can be able to
expand. Otherwise youre making a novel. That
is all youre doing.

>> Skylar (54:26):
Absolutely. Which again, totally fine if you are
not quite what were going for here exactly.

Not for here.

>> Skylar (54:32):
Wow, Doug, thank you so much. This has just been
some incredible, incredible information.
Just so much and so much help to
those out there that are trying to build their own worlds. Home breewing I
I think pretty much right when I learned how to
play D and D home breewing was
pretty much my straight go to. I didn't have any of

(54:52):
the books, any of the pre created campaigns, so
on and so forth. I just had my own imagination.
And so I just started building stories within that. I had
the Monster Manual. So I just kind of used
that as sort of a base framework for
creating the worlds and the stories that I wanted to run as a
dm and so it's, it's awesome to be able
to hear these amazing tips and tricks and

(55:15):
direction of all. Oh my gosh. That's one thing that
every home breewer wants is just like I need direction.
I have ideas. How do I get them out? How do
I get them onto paper? How should I structure this?
And this is exactly what people need to
help guide them so that they can build the world that they're
trying to build and fill the world that they're trying to build.

Y and by building these worlds you can
do this either with a book or completely
homeom. But either way you're going to want to use these
techniques to help make something memorable. You
may start with something that is maybe already written
down. Maybe you are using one of those campaign books, but your
players are going to, go through and they're going to try to

(55:55):
see how this world progress. They're never going to follow
what that book is. And so you got to be able
to allow your world to expand.

>> Skylar (56:03):
Yes, absolutely. Gotta have it. Let it do its
thing. Let it become more than any one person
could possibly fill it to be.

Exactly.

>> Skylar (56:12):
Awesome. Doug, is there anything that you wanted to,
plug or anything else? I know you talked about your
own world, which I know is something really cool that you've been working on. I
know it's not really. I don't know if it's something that you were planning on publishing at
any point, but is there anything that you wanted, to pitch other than
that or plug again for, before we jump into
the intramural game here?

Yeah. No, I don't have anything at this time. Maybe in the future I'll
be able to develop, not only this world and
publish that, but like the various things that I put into that world
for my other players to be able to enjoy.

>> Skylar (56:42):
Yeah.

Absolute nothing.

>> Skylar (56:43):
I can't wait to see that. But with that being said, I know that you
also do some, voice acting work as well. I think anybody that
listens to this knows you have a phenomenal voice and
so definitely something worth checking out. I'll definitely
try to put some kind of a link in case you're somebody with a project
maybe. I, know you said that you recently actually did some
narration for a book. So if you're somebody out there
looking for either a narrator or maybe even

(57:05):
character voices within your own world building, I think, that
would be a great way, to plug you as well.

Yep. I will have links for you so that
you can be able to check it out down below.

>> Skylar (57:15):
Fantastic. Awesome. All right, Doug, it's time to
go into our intramural games.
It's time for intramurals.
All right, well, welcome everybody to the intramural games portion
of our Sessions Zero University. For those that have listened in
past, you know, this already. But for those that are maybe new to

(57:36):
Session Zero University, we like to have a little bit of
fun at the end of all of our class episodes. You know,
we just got done learning so much amazing information. It's
time to take a little bit of a break from learning and just
kind of have a little bit of a goofy, fun
time to sort of, play. Right.
Because that's what we like to do. We like to, pull out a TTRPG and we

(57:56):
like to play it. so with that being said, we
are going to be playing a game that Doug and I actually kind of just put
together before we jumped into this episodert,
we never really came up with a title for it, but essentially it was based on
the kind of concept of Jailbreak.

Yeah, I thinking a vague extent, I was just
thinking of a name like Oops.

>> Skylar (58:18):
Oops. Oops.

Oop. Something happened. We got to figure this out now.

>> Skylar (58:22):
oh, we made a stinkyh.
O. So with that being said, what we did was we
wanted to create a. We wanted to plug off
of the idea of WorldB building. And
so we created this kind of simple story
game where we're going to take three prompts,
we're going to take a setting. So this is going to be

(58:43):
the, sort of fictional concept,
right? Is it fantasy, is it sci fi, so on and so
forth. And then we're going to add int the
place that it's set in within that theme.
Then we're going to take a predicament, the problematic
situation that we are dealing with that we have to
overcome our character in this situation. And then of course, we're going
to take the character themselves and we're going to see

(59:05):
what they look like. And then from there we're going to take those three
prompts and we're going to create the story.
obviously it's very improv. Obviously there's no
stats, there's no dice rolling here or anything like that. It's
kind just a short, fun game that we're going to play. But, but
with that being said, I actually have four
different, sort of prompt sets that I have already
put together. And so I think we'll do just

(59:28):
a 1d4 role to see which one. Do you want to
go first or do you want me to go first?

Sure. As the volunteer,
teacher of this course, I think that it's only fair that
I go first. All right, get
some.

>> Skylar (59:42):
Oh, you're going to roll your dice. Perfect. Yep.

So I got my dice roll.

>> Skylar (59:46):
Go for it.

First prompt is going to be a two.

>> Skylar (59:49):
Two. All right, sounds good. I got, I rolled a one.
So I'll take prompt one, but, I'll give you the two. And it's
all three of the prompts are in here.

So perfect. And so I can give you all the numbers, which
is two, then one then
four.

>> Skylar (01:00:02):
All right, perfect. Sounds good. Okay, so for yours,
the setting is a,
I like how they name some of the stuff in here too. A,
remote isolated island in the age of sail,
shrouded in perpetual fog.

>> Doug Grosser (01:00:16):
We're going one piece on this?

>> Skylar (01:00:18):
Yeeah, yeah, exactly. your predicament is you
are a disgraced navigator, exiled to the
island after a catastrophic navigational error
led to the loss of your ship and crew. It's
interesting how it says exiled as if it kind of alludes to the
idea that you crashed the ship and now you're stuck
here all by yourself. Now you must survive on your own.

(01:00:38):
Haunted by the ghosts of your past.
And the whispers of the island's ancient malevolent
magic. And then of course your character. Let's get
a little bit into them. We already know they're a disgrace navigator.
Let's find out more. A seasoned sailor named
Finn. Little typical, but that's
okay. Possessing a worn out sextant, a
tattered map of the treacherous seas, and a rusty

(01:01:00):
cutlass, you also carry a small intricately
carved wooden bird, a gift from your late
captain, which you believe holds a hidden message
or a clue to your redemption.

Okay, alright, Interesting.
So for those playing at home,
the method that I will use right now is the dive
method. Starting from the big world that we now have,
the world shrouded in fog. Now we will
dive into this island.

(01:01:41):
This island is an individual island that
not many have enjoyed or been able to
explore. We start out that big island and now we
go down. Alright, what is in this island?
What do we have available to us? it's a desert
island. We don't have much to be able to survive on, but people
are still alive here, although only the
natives and they don't have a lot to go with. So

(01:02:04):
inside this desert island there is an
oasis. That oasis is where all
the individuals are. This is the only place where any
freshater is able to come through. This is the only place where
vegetation and actual food can be able to
survive. So Finn, the one who has the
sexton to be able to try to find his way. Though disgraced as he
may be, Finn finds his way through the

(01:02:26):
island, navigating through the stars that
can only be seen every once in a while as the
fogs tries to obscure them. But with
the help of the navigation, he's able to get through and
find these natives. The individuals who are here
on the island that they call
Nexoma Nexima, for whatever
reason, is isolated but still

(01:02:48):
has this life giving source. We're going to
dive into even farther. How does it
this water? How does it able to have this vegetation
survive. Well, as Finn is starting
to explore, he gets the trust of the
individuals. He is alone after all. He doesn't have much
and they can see the rust on his

(01:03:08):
saber on the individual parts that he has
and they can tell he needs help.
Well, they haven't experienced this
individual yet, so they have no reason to distrust him. They
go in and they show him down.
Inside this basically oasis
area, there's a crystal, a crystal of
ever flowing pure water.

(01:03:31):
It's beautiful, just this
glacial blue.
Finn has never seen anything like it. And
he feels a tinge of pain on his heart
knowing that he could not actually be able to bring the rest of
his crew here for the accident that
happened that caused him to crash

(01:03:51):
their ship outside of this island.
And that's where we start our adventure.
And, and that's the world that we have. We are now in
this isle of Nexoma.

>> Skylar (01:04:07):
Nice. I love it. And that'hey you know
what? We kind of just gave people a free little adventure that they
can run there.

Exactly.

>> Skylar (01:04:15):
Maybe there's a couple more survivors from, the crash of the ship
so that you can have a couple more players involved, but there you go.
Wow, that was awesome. All right, Doug, I
rolled. I will tell you my prompts. O
so my setting is going to be very
different. we are talking a cyberpunk
megac city, specifically a neon drenched
district known as the Grid. My

(01:04:38):
predicament, and this is all very like
Cyberpunk 2077. Here you are a data
runner, a courier who smuggles sensitive information
across corporate firewalls. You just
stolen a crucial piece of software that exposes
major corporations'illegal activities. But now I'm
being hunted by their ruthless security forces.
My name or my character, a nimble and

(01:05:00):
resourceful street urchin named Glitch. Adapt.
At navigating the city's back alleys and hacking
into unsecured networks, you possess a modified data
chip containing the stolen software, a grappling
hook and a small arsenal of improvised
cybernetic enhancements.

Oh, interesting.

>> Skylar (01:05:18):
So first off, I want to dive into the character
Glitch.
It's mentioned that he's a street urchin, which is interesting because
of the fact that he has such a crucial piece of soft
software from a major corporation. How did he get

(01:05:38):
this? Let's start with zooming in and finding out a little bit more about
Glitch.
He went to school, even though he was
orphaned at a young age. And he
was kind of that bad kid in school.
Right.
He wasn't super attentive to
the actual class itself. But there was a hidden

(01:05:58):
potential within him. He was very smart, most specifically when
it came to hacking and technology.
Hence why he's able to have this small arsenal of improvised
cybernetic enhancements, things that he's tampered with,
things that he's scrounged up amidst the streets of the
Grid, and things that he's enhanced
himself to be able to connect to himself

(01:06:19):
and be able to better himself. As far as this
kind of stuff goes, he's focused a lot on the hacking
element. He wants to focus on
diving in and getting software. And of course with any street
urchin, it'very Oliver Twist in the sense that amidst
the streets you have of course these questionable individuals
who will hire people, pay people to do these
illegal activities if they see potential in them. And of

(01:06:41):
course Glitch has gotten in with this shady
crowd. So of course Glitch takes
a job, one that he didnt know the extent of and one
that hes certainly being paid too little for a major
corporation, or at least he didn't realize it was a major
corporation at first. Just a offshore account, you
could say, a separate entity that this company has set

(01:07:02):
up that he was paid small fee
to hack into and steal secrets from. Not
knowing that this was a major corporation's owned
section. They're sort of a sub network you
could say. And of course stealing this catches the
attention of the individuals. Now normally this isn't a big
deal. If it is actually a small operation, there's not much they can do

(01:07:22):
about it in this, the Grid. Right. These
companies, they see this kind of stuff all the time. Small
bits of information go here and there. It's just a little bit of data
mining that happens here and there. They're not too worried about it. And that's
too much of an expense to possibly
send a whole am mass of guards to chase after
an individual for taking. But this was a
secret sort of side

(01:07:45):
network, something they didn't think anybody would even notice, which is
why they put their biggest secrets there. So now
Glitch got ah, hold of something far more valuable than he
was expecting. And unfortunately the individual that was
paying him for it is notnna take that fall for
him. So Glitch is tasked with
finding some way to get out of the trouble that he's landed himself

(01:08:05):
in in the Grid.

that is so good. And for those playing at home, you just saw, while
we were calling it dive, this was specifically the spread
method.

>> Skylar (01:08:20):
That's True. Yes.

As you start with the individual and you're going through his
backstory, spreading outes. Absolutely. M and as you
can tell, so many individual connections to it. You started
with talking about his past and how he got hacking, and then you also
got into why he's in this situation. Multiple threads
that come from one place.

>> Skylar (01:08:38):
So much potential. So whether you're playing a pirate
adventure like Doug's pitch, or you're playing something a
bit into the future like my pitch, we hope
that the world building that we have taught you, or
specifically Doug has taught you all about today, will help
you in building that world and that exciting
adventure that your players are about to go on.
Doug, thank you again for being on the show. Thank you for

(01:09:00):
sharing this invaluable information to all of us who
are just desperately trying to build really cool
stuff out there in TTRPG land. And
we just need a little bit of direction and a little bit of guidance to
help get us to where we need to be in order to run the
campaigns that we want to run.

Oh, absolutely. And thank you so much for having me. I
honestly believe that a lot of people out there have, a ton of great
ideas. Sometimes you just need to focus
in and having some of these tips and tools, you can
help create a memorable and glorious
world.

>> Skylar (01:09:30):
Absolutely. So hopefully you guys all learned
something. We'see you guys next time on another class
from Session Zero University.
Thank you so much for joining us for todays class.
We hope you gained some new knowledge and ideas from our
incredibly knowledgeable professors.
Which you can take with you to.
Your table and implement into your games and

(01:09:51):
sessions. If you enjoy what we were developing here at
Session Zero University, then be sure to che/ck out our
lessons in practice by checking out various
actual play episodes. We have tested and
recorded a variety of games, systems,
stories and themes for your enjoyment. From
Dungeons and Dragons to Powered by the Apocalypse to
Kids on Bikes and more. Be sure to follow and

(01:10:14):
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(01:10:36):
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Session Zero University - Worldbuilding 101 with Doug Grosser

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Session Zero University - Worldbuilding 101 with Doug Grosser