#upon saying i was going to look at god in the ethereal plane the dm responded “careful not to look to close. you might fall in love”

[im-still-a-robot]

Asked the dm about the ethereal plane in our modern setting and he gave me a piece of information that I didn't ask for but boy am I fucked up about

[dndplus]

Getting Started: Settings

The Setting

Few things can be as fun, or as agonizing, as forming the setting for a new campaign.  If you’re the creative type, you’re probably very excited for this step.  If you’re not, you probably nodded along very enthusiastically when I described it as potentially agonizing.  Regardless of whichever you are, I’m here to give you a quick (relatively...) rundown on how to ‘frame’ the world your players’ epic campaign will be taking place in.

Before going further, I want to be clear on one thing: this is D&D, and you are the Dungeon Master.  Everything is negotiable, and can be changed to create the world you’re looking to offer.

Step 1: Take a deep breath.

There’s a lot of text below this point, and it might make you feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.  Here’s a helpful tip to make this all more palatable: You don’t have to do it all at once.

If you want to get into D&D right away, read through the article, get a map set up, and follow the steps to flesh out a single kingdom or area of the world.  You and your players can get up to all sorts of trouble with that alone, and some campaigns can run their full course in such a “small” area no problem if need be.

Step 2: A map.  

You might have expected to start with choosing a name for your world, but honestly, that step isn’t very important.  What is important, however, is having an image to look at and imagine the world upon.

The more creative-minded will break out the art supplies here do it from scratch, and for that, I salute you.  The rest of us need some help, and there are plenty of resources out there to help you “generate” a map from scratch.  Personally, I prefer the fantasy world generator at D20srd (Link here).  It’s a fine enough tool, although it may take several tries before you land on an outcome you’d like.  The settings the map tool defaults at create a world that feels a little land-heavy in my opinion, so I recommend turning the %Water setting up to 65 or 70 if you want larger, proper oceans in your setting.

Step 3: The Inhabitants.

Humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, dragonborn, even tieflings!  That’s a lot of peoples that need a home, and I’ve only touched on what the 5e Player’s Handbook offers as default player races.  What about orcs and goblins?  Giants, dragons, and the like?  It’s a lot to take in, but it’s important we get them settled first, with one exception...

Gods.  Unless you’re the very small percentage of DMs looking to run a game without any deities, it’s time to start thinking on them and what you’d like.  If you have any aspirations of creating gods of your own, *now* is the time to do it.  Look at the map you’ve created, imagine the worshippers of the god you’ve got in mind, and then pick the place they exist.  That much is easy, and some of you might feel I told you something you already knew, so here’s something a bit more to think about: how powerful is this god?  How many followers do they have, and are they terrestrial (that is to say, are they present in the world?).  

Most importantly, once you have your gods selected, how do they interact with one another?  If you’ve taken peoples with contradictory gods and made them neighbors, how do they view one another?  As a nuisance, or is war on the verge of breaking out at any moment?  

With peoples settled, gods imagined, and their followers labeled, it’s time to take a step back and look at how to make it all distinct.  Who was left out, and if no one was, should they be?  Not everyone needs a homeland.  Some races, like tieflings, lend themselves to being scattered about the world due to their chaotic nature, and are oftentimes mistrusted in many areas for their appearance or less-lawful leanings.  

With these considerations made, look at the locales you’ve created and ask yourself: what ails these people?  What monsters lurk in the hillside and are common to their region?  Perhaps the dwarves in your mountains are in a constant battle with orcs.  Maybe the pious humans of one of your more lawfully imagined kingdoms find themselves beset by an unusual amount of undead.  Threats can be less visible too, ranging from expansive and unseen criminal undergrounds, to an ancient aboleth working to enslave a kingdom with a plan that spans thousands of years.

Finally, look at your kingdoms, your countries, and your smaller, backwater locales of intrigue, and imagine an alignment that best describes the region.  In a typical fantasy world, “Good”, “Lawful”, and “Neutral” alignments should be most dominant, as they’re easier to imagine as more stable.  You should still strive to have places, maybe not even particularly large ones (a chain of islands home to pirates, for example), that don’t quite fit the ‘good’ mold.  These can be as large as an entire kingdom in and of itself, or you can add them in later as small, seedy towns lurking in the shadow of a ‘good’ empire for its criminal underbelly to use as a headquarters.

Step 4: Beyond The Material Plane

Dungeons and Dragons wouldn’t be D&D without more than just the obvious world in your setting, unless of course you’re designing it that way.  Most of us, though, will want a variety of external planes to have players fight foes from and, potentially, even go to.

The default planes, I feel, do this incredibly well.  Roll20 has an article that explains them fairly well (found here).  At some level, you should be using what is already offered in the D&D mythos.  I recommend keeping the concepts of he Transitive Planes (Ethereal and Astral), and the Elemental Planes (Air, Fire, Water, and Earth) most of all.  The Ethereal Plane isn’t really a plane the way the others are, and some spells rely on it, so if you want something unique there, I suggest you just edit The Ethereal Plane to suit your needs.  

Let’s get to the meat of the issue - Outer Planes.  Again, I’m a big believer in the established mythos, but how much of it you use is up to you.  In addition to this, you can edit them in any way you please!  That new god you made, be it or good or evil, will have very little difficulty finding a proper plane among the established to call home.  Good old wikipedia (Link Here) has a very useful chart that explains the various upper, lower, and neutral outer planes.  Which of these you use is entirely up to you, and the framework offered lets you remove some entirely and supplement your own if you’re dead set on it.

In Conclusion...

Give it a name.  Any name.  At this point, you probably realize that the substance of the world you made is so much more important than the name.  The best part of all of this is, you made it, and until the players see it, none of it is set in stone.  You may hear ideas your players have for their characters and want to shape some of the world around it, to create a place where that character of theirs really belongs.  You may want to change enemies to fit their backstory vendettas as well, and that likewise can help make the world feel more varied and alive.

More than anything, I hope everyone who’s made a setting here hasn’t forgotten they’re here to have fun, or that nothing should ever come before that.

Continuation of the Getting Started series:

Getting Started: Combat

Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 1

Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 2