A few weeks ago Ethan posted about fluency in a campaign world. His post got me wondering how people like the little details in their game to be handled. I’ve always been one of those GMs who enjoys worldbuilding. One of the obvious but important decisions that comes with worldbuilding is how the players are going to become fluent in the culture of your campaign. The big things should come easily: the name of the town they are in or the name of the item they are looking for will be continued topics of conversation. I’ve even put together a narrative of recent events and a timeline to introduce and kickoff a campaign. Besides these though there are some obvious questions to ask such as whether time works the same way as it does in the real world, or whether you change the names of the days of the week or months?
If time is not important enough to the quest, or the players of the game can’t grasp the differences, you’ve not only made time irrelevant to your campaign, the players wont ever really know how to discuss the topic. You’ve made that aspect of the game into a new vocabulary that, until the players learn it, actually hurts communication in the game. The same can be said for names of places. Is the town called “Oak Creek” or is it called “Shalimar.” Too many names like the later, and players are likely to lose track of the vocabulary.
For the campaigns I run, I decided to start with a pantheon of twelve gods and to give each month a name based on the diety. I chose six day weeks with each day having some cultural name, mostly based on the creation myths of the world. The result? Unless I have a custom calendar in front of me, even I have trouble using the vocabulary of time in my game – and the players never use it at all.
The best solution, I think, is to take things you think are important enough to learn and build plot and conflict around them. Add some flavor to the world by inserting holidays and showing your players that the world has a life of its own. Or better yet, if you want them to understand and remember some bit of culture in the world you’ve built, tie it into the treasure/rewards you’ve given them. That is the Mace of the Barbarian King, and its powers are strongest during the days/months/holidays/etc tied to the dark god worshiped by the barbarian tribes.
How important is this fluency to you? Do you like having cultural naming of people, places, time, etc? Do you stick to the vocabulary we all already know? Or do you gloss over those details and play a game of high fantasy in a world that is always spring or summer, where it rarely ever rains, and where you only know the names of the closest trading villiage to the dungeon?
Similar Posts:
- Blacktree Chronicles #14: Book Learning
- Blacktree Chronicles #11: The True Illusion of Death
- The Deadly Art of All-Night Brainstorming, Part 1: The Sea of Thought
At the age of eight JackOfHearts was invited to play Dungeons & Dragons during summer camp by kids that were much cooler than him. When he wasn't working on the family farm or practicing tennis, he spent much of his teen years reading fantasy novels and playing games of the role playing, collectible card, tabletop, and video varieties. He's now a nine-to-fiver who never forgot the joy of descending into a tomb for forgotten treasures. 
I’m somewhere in-between. I’ve tried to use campaign calendar’s with special days, holidays, moon charts, etc… But they ALWAYS end up being used as an afterthought and confuse players.
One great example was back in my 3.x Kalamar days. I was using this AWESOME excel calendar that tracked all three moons’ phases, amongst other things, and my campaign was heavily centered around the solstice… Well, that was great until I mis-read my own freakin’ calendar and put the solstice on the wrong month, which the players caught, creating one galactically stupid mistake.
I think it’s actually easier to use the months of our campaign (hey, if Tolkien can do it, so can I) at this point. Casual reference to “it’s near mid-summer, around July, or base all weather on seasons and the solstice/equinox, without any actual names.
It really depends on the pace of the game. Fast, cinematic games don’t usually care except for occasional color.
A slower, more methodical game craves those details. Slower games sacrifice thrills for versimilitude so they need it whenever they can get it.
I know I’m biased, but great article.
Unless you have a group that really gets a kick out of the little details, I think you’re better off putting more thought into encounters.
I’ll be honest, I love to fill in all the little gaps from a world. I often start with the creation myth and work may way forward in time through that, putting in days of work on a depth to the setting that nobody will see but me.
Well, usually just me. I’ve found that if you organize your game through a wiki, you can get away with a little creative indulgence by including the setting information in sidebars or by creating a section specifically for lore.
I think you’ve got more time than you know. You don’t need to introduce everything at once, and it’s better for the players to drink from the cup, not the fire hose.
I started a campaign in the village of Kandersteg once, and all I needed was the village and it’s major NPC’s. The rest of the world wasn’t even an issue until third level, when the characters had to travel to a nearby city.
Best of all, the players even rationalized everything as ‘my character is from a remote small town, we don’t know much about other parts’