Considering the needs of having the players build the world with the GM, how would you approach the creation of a historical setting?
I think the map should be previously drawn, including the major regions and settlements (leaving blank spaces to include places history forgot but are true in the game), for instance, but I’d like to hear what you think about it (and other pitfalls I may face if I want to present my players with something like that).
How historical do you want to get? Like, do you mean historically accurate or historically inspired.
I can’t really see historically accurate working. Like, unless you had a bunch of players who were historians versed in the era/region and you asked them questions all the time… but that seems iffy.
If you’re going for historically inspired, I would:
* Pick a region/time, and get as many maps as you can from it.
* Figure out who the major players are, the things that define the time and place.
Like, if I was going with Late Ottoman Empire, I’d sketch out the weak sultanate, the viziers who actually ran things, the growing influence of the jannissary corps, the breakaway Egyptian suzerain, the Greek and Turkish intermingling along the coasts, the ethnic tensions with Armenians and Jews and Kurds, the growing powers of Europe eyeing up the weakening empire, German emmissaries, and so forth. A short list of key places, names, ranks (bey, pasha, etc.).
I’d also want to decide on what fantastic elements I wanted to include in the game.
* Update the playbooks to have background moves instead of race moves
* Update the names lists on the playbooks to have 2-4 lists, by ethnicity and gender
* If I was really, really committed to this, I’d consider revising the classes or even making entirely new classes that felt setting specific.
* Come up with a bunch of names lists, and possible traits, for NPCs and places and monsters
Format that all in a useful, engaging way and ask your players to read it and reference it.
And then (and this is crucial), don’t sweat the details. Don’t worry about who was actually the pasha of Iznik or when exactly the 3rd Jannissary uprising happened or if that was even a thing. Play Dungeon World and invent the details as you go.
You might also take a look into Microscope, an RPG in which you build a setting together with your group. Then everybody has the same view on the world, you see what the others like to have in the roleplaying session and you get an image of the world with more than enough blanks to fill up.
“Draw maps, leave blanks” doesn’t particularly say how much to leave blank. You can sketch out a nearly full historical world, as long as there are parts for the players to fill in.
I’ll probably follow the inspired route (as Jeremy Strandberg suggested), with draw maps, leave blanks (less emphasis, as Aaron Griffin mentioned).
In fact, I may even draw inspiration from The Perilous Wilds and build the whole thing as Almanacs… Maybe this can be useful for other GMs…
Btw, Kamillo Fitzek, I’m familiar with Microscope, but this is something I’d like to avoid in this particular case, since the players are not familiar with the historical period.
Everything’s fine, Marcelo Paschoalin. I can just say that we played in a homebrew setting, and after we played a few sessions and major informations were known, we played microscope in order to find the spaces where the players wanted to be part of and to colour things up.
It would be cool if you present the final result of your setting creation and some thought about why and how you did it.
“Designer’s Notes,” Kamillo Fitzek? I can do that. 🙂
Let’s see what I can do with all those ideas… So far, I’m still on my brainstorming phase.