Starting your custom DnD campaign – goblin encounters

For DM’s who wish for a smooth start to a new campaign

There’s nothing quite like starting up a new D&D campaign, getting together with new or old friends. But especially for new DM’s setting the balance for the difficulty of the first encounters, can be a bit tricky.

The classic starting foe, is to many campaigns, the regular Goblin. Please note that there’s nothing wrong with using the classic monsters, but to more experienced players, this choice might be a bit boring. As a DM, you are the one telling the story, whether that is an official Wizards of the Coast story, that have been told thousand of times before, or if it’s a custom campaign, where you’ve meticulously written down why birds fly and how grass is green. If a monster makes sense in regards to the story, then you can be pretty sure you won’t get many complaints.

But let’s take a closer look at why Goblins are a preferred foe to start with. First off, we’re looking at their Hit-Points (HP). Here the standard Goblin clocks in with 7 (as per standard Monster Manual). 7 HP is enough to survive a hit from most one-handed melee weapons and ranged weapons, and usually it’s enough to survive the starting cantrips as well. Already here, the Goblin is a good choice. Because while the players can see their attacks hit and do damage, the Goblin still provides enough of a challenge, that all enemies aren’t just one-shot-kills which would ruin most of the idea about an encounter.

Goblins are versatile in their standard choice of weaponry; a scimitar and shield for melee and a short-bow for ranged. Seeing as both of these weapons rely on the DEX modifier, Goblins have a +4 to hit. This is where Goblins are a bit of a handful, especially if the party is small, or doesn’t have more than one semi-tank character. While their damage output isn’t amazing, they more often than not, hit the target they are fighting.

When looking at a Goblin’s armor, it have a leather armor and a shield, totaling up to an AC of 15. Most magic users, bards and rogues are usually below this, at level 1. Here it’s important to notice that the Goblins, just like anyone else, requires two hands to use a short-bow. If the general rule is to be followed, this means that they cannot be using a shield effectively, while shooting or rather between shooting. As such a good balanced encounter with Goblins can go as following:

4 player characters (PCs)

4 Goblins

“Three Goblins have their scimitars at hand, two up front, ready to engage, one slightly behind, looking how the fight is turning. The fourth Goblin is even further back with it’s short-bow loaded.”

If the two in front engages, the third will likely have time to decide (through you as the DM) if he wants to get in close or begin to change weapons into a ranged. The ranged Goblins might have their shield on their backs, or right beside them, but they are not using it, so remember to remove 2 from their total AC, bringing them down to 13.

While the ranged Goblins might seem the bigger threat, because the party’s melee-focused characters can’t get to them straight away, the biggest threat to the players is actually in the Goblins that you decide go for melee. With the combination of an AC 15 and a +4 to hit, not even a Fighter in Chain-mail and a shield (for an effective 18 AC) can feel at ease. Whereto the lower AC of the ranged Goblins means that they can be taken down fairly quickly.

If you want to make a Goblin encounter harder, you can make use of the Goblins’ ability “Nimble Escape”, which allows them to not only disengage, but also to dash or hide, just the like the Rogue of the party would at level 2. This makes the ranged Goblins even more dangerous, as they can use the Hide action to essentially, unless in fully open terrain, vanish and make themselves a lot harder to hit.

A Tale of Catacrach – A Dungeons & Dragons 5E Adventure – Part 2

After obtaining their gear, Andrunil cried out over the lack of his halberd being among the items, announcing that he would walk through fires to get it back. The party steeled themselves, expecting the Goblins to bring back reinforcements, but the ever curious nature of Galdur saw him occupied by something else.

Four pillars encircled an area that was walled off from the rest of the cave. While Andrunil stood in anguish on the poorly paved stone path, the rest of the party slowly moved around the bramble roots, to investigate the clearly constructed part.

When they came around to it, they discovered an altar as used in older sacrificial rituals. Upon it was an unconscious small figure; a Gnome with fiery red hair. At the first glance, he appeared to be sleeping, but after calling out to him with no response, it was clear that something had knocked the Gnome out. Upon further investigation, no wounds were seen on him, but traces of some form of liquid was still on his lips; he had been sedated, presumably to be sacrificed at some other time.

Nak’Ral went in to move the Gnome off of the altar, but despite the Gnome’s lacking size, Nak’Ral’s less than muscled arms just barely managed to lift the Gnome off. As he did, the others, now also joined by Andrunil, investigated the altar, and discovered that it was covered with symbols to the god of conquest, Bane.

Slugging the Gnome over his shoulder with ease, Adrunil spearheaded the others onward in the cave; determined to re-obtain his halberd. They all followed, staying on the paved path. As the party spotted the remains of a small corpse, the skeletal remains laying at the edge of a dirty looking pool of still, greenish water. As the corpse was examined, the Gnome woke up, slightly confused.

Alfyn tried to speak reason with the rowdy bunch, not fully aware of the danger he had been in. Nak’Ral suggested, jokingly, that they should sacrifice him themselves; it might buy them a way out of this prison. Alfyn, to no surprise, was not particular fond of this, but through some talking back and forth, the group venture forward.

At the next bend, the war-cries of multiple Goblins rung through the cave. Out behind a rock, a band of five Goblins in various armour and weaponry appeared, with one hurling a sharp rock from his sling, aimed for the group, hitting Blellow in the side. A series of bright, blue lights caught the other Goblins by surprise, as they tried to fend against the spell, while fighting.

Meanwhile Therion had found another Goblin corpse behind a thick spider-web. Turning it over revealed a nest of spiders, that crawled onto Therion, biting him significantly, until they could pushed off by the flame from a torch. The Goblin had been covering a strange book. The dark-brown leather binding was covered by a strange, black substance, that was identified as Mage Rot, a type of fungi that would grow on surfaces or items that had once been used for magic. However, the Mage Rot made the book impossible to open.

A single, lowly Goblin swung it’s club at Andrunil, only to be smacked unconscious by his quarter-staff; Andrunil wanted his halberd back, and this Goblin would help him obtain it. One way or the other. As the rest of the Goblins were defeated, Galdur shackled the feinted Goblin, and used a rope to bind the Goblin to himself.

Moving into a walled in room, the group found themselves back inside the prison complex. An old, mostly abandoned pantry made for their entry point. Alfyn conjured up an ethereal owl, to search an upstairs area, that turned out to contain nothing but piles of planks and some rope.

Meanwhile Andrunil and Galdur were questioning the now awake Goblin, who through some very scare screeching turned out to be named “Steek”. Under the promise of survival, the group used Steek to lure some of the Goblins waiting for them in an upstairs room, down to meet their demise. The room, scouted out by Alfyn’s owl, had a significant number of Goblins, including some in what appeared to be home-made plate armour.

The party went up, without investigating more of the sub-level, preparing to fight the Goblins, with Steek in tow.

Food, Drink and D&D – Etiquette

For all who have played Dungeons and Dragons, or a similar game, we all know that getting through the, often, more than three hours on just air alone, can be rough.

Especially because D&D is a game where you can be expected to do silly voices, and talk a relative lot. It’s completely natural to become thirsty or hungry during that time, and it might even make for a great bonding experience to eat together. But not all food items make for a good D&D time, so here’s a little piece on what you can stuff into your face without worry. Notice that I’m not saying you can’t eat or drink certain things, this is merely a mixture of my experiences and advice based upon this experience.

Pizza

Pizza is a classic food item for D&D, as it is easy to order almost anywhere in the world, and with most pizza places offering a wide range of items to put on, it is hard to find someone who doesn’t like pizza. Most pizza that you order is cut into slices, which means that you can eat some of it at your own pace. If the locale you’re playing at have options for re-heating, it can last a lot longer still.

However pizza can be a delicious pitfall for your D&D session, so consider it carefully when ordering food.

The first and perhaps most notable thing about pizza, is grease. In particular on pizzas with pepperoni or bacon. These types of meat may be the most tastiest, but they also contain natural fats, which, when heated up, turns into an oily grease.

Grease can somehow manage to get into the weirdest of places, but more notably, it gets on paper and pens. To avoid this, eat any meal at a different table, if possible, than the one where you are playing. With greasy foods such as pizza, it can also be a good idea to have everyone wash and dry their hands after eating.

Another thing about pizza is that it is often a fairly salty meal. The thing about salty meals and snacks, is that they make you thirsty, but I’ll get to drinks later on in this post.

Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai

The south-eastern Asian cuisines are also a popular choice, as there usually is a very short waiting time and, just like pizza, there’s a large variety. Unfortunately most of these dishes are not of the “dry” variety, so you should having it anywhere near your character sheets. This type of food is also fairly salty, which should warrant a slight warning of it’s own.

Barbecue

Various bbq foods can be very tasty and can fill your stomach with it’s rich meats and sugary flavours. It should go without saying that bbq makes you thirsty, as it is both a fairly fat and a fairly salty type of dishes.

Rice, bulgur and quinoa (and pasta)

This is actually some of the best food for D&D. All of these are not only healthy (which isn’t really a focus point of this post, but hey, positives sell), but also very good at filling your stomach for a long time. Excellent for those grueling six hours or more, if you’re pulling an all-nighter. These food items have very little fat, that can turn into grease, and usually they aren’t all that salty either.

Pasta can work a bit of the same qualities as rice, bulgur and quinoa. However it seems the more popular pasta dishes are Mac n’ Cheese and Spaghetti Bolognese, these are unfortunate as they tend to be rather greasy.

Bread

Sandwiches are a great way to get a large variety of easily eaten foods in. But bread might not be the best idea. Crumbs and other parts can fall off/out of the sandwich, so keep it away from character sheets and other paper.

Drinks

While deep in a delving quest, the players can get thirsty, making them do less voice acting. Even more so if you’re the DM. A lot of drinks can work, but there are also things to be aware of.

Coffee is a great pick-me up drink, when you’re low on energy, and most people become in a better mood after even just a sip. Coffee does have downsides too though, as coffee is diuretic. This means that you’ll likely need to head to the bathroom a little more than usual, but if you don’t mind that, there shouldn’t be an issue.

Tea is great for the DM in particular, especially if your D&D have a lot of NPCs, and as such, a lot of different voices that the DM needs to make. Tea can be soothing, help you take care of your vocal chords, to keep them (and you) from getting hoarse.

Soda is actually a counter-active drink, as drinking soda tend to make you more thirsty, so if you combine a soda with a greasy type of food, you’re going to become very thirsty after and during eating your meal.

Energy drinks can work to give you a boost of energy, as the name suggests, but they tend to be even more diuretic than coffee, as the amounts of caffeine is higher and more concentrated in the average energy drink, than in a regular cup of black coffee.

Other substances

It is always important to communicate needs and ideas with your D&D group, to work out what is accepted and what is crossing the line of what is acceptable behaviour.

If you have agreed to consume alcohol, there isn’t a problem. Just be aware that alcohol gets very sticky when spilled, so it might be a good idea to keep an eye out, if someone starts getting shaky hands when pouring a drink or taking a sip.

In general, communication is key. Ask if someone in your group have any allergies, and try to mind them as best you can, when you’re ordering or making food, that way D&D becomes a great experience for all, just as it should.

How NOT to build an MMORPG quest (rant)

So far the worst quest I have come across in The Elder Scrolls series (from playing Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim and ESO) has got to be the quest “A Lasting Winter” in the Elder Scrolls Online. In this quest, you are tasked with finding powerful relics for Queen Ayrenn’s ratification ceremony, as a part of the Aldmeri Dominion quest-line in Grahtwood. Upon arriving at the Falinesti Winter Site, you’re met by an NPC who gives a vague description of what’s going on. She asks that you find a different NPC, further in amongst the ruins. This NPC will, conveniently, be able to activate certain Welkynd stones around the area. So you have to guide him around an area with absolutely no enemies whatsoever, to watch projections of an Elf denying a Khajiiti trickster God the chance to sleep with her. Since there are no enemies, it makes you wonder why he couldn’t have gone and seen for himself, and just summarized things for you.

Upon completing this, we’re sent to yet ANOTHER NPC, who basically says “I don’t know what’s going on, but what you’re looking for is in one of the caves near here. Watch out for the Frost Trolls.” So you descend into the dig-site, and where you usually expect a plethora of enemy soldiers, you only get a handful of Frost Trolls and some random Skeevers (which doesn’t really make sense, and isn’t explained).

Here is a massive missed opportunity, as the whole setup is that the “big baddie” of this place, is a highly respected General of the Aldmeri Dominion, the very same Dominion that you’re trying to help. So, if you were expecting Dominion soldiers (who’d normally aid you in other quests) hostile or not, you’re in for a nasty disappointment, as only a couple of soldiers survived when the Frost Trolls “arrived”.

And regarding Trolls in ESO, they are tough, with lots of HP, and some powerful melee attacks (none at range though), but they are fairly tedious to fight, even for a group, as they don’t pose any diversity of threat, and because of their bulkiness, they slow down quest progression. Which you only ever want to do if the story is interesting enough, to make you want to experience more of it. And you’d think dealing with the imagery of a god SHOULD be an interesting concept, but here it feels forced.

You are given three markers, for three caves, and the quest says to “investigate”. In typical MMORPG fashion, this means that you have no idea which cave holds the answer. At least, and this is pretty much the only saving grace about this quest, it doesn’t have the mechanic where it’s ALWAYS the last place you look, that contains the answer. But it still breaks the natural flow of the story and play-through of the quest-line.

You find the vault, which would have been inaccessible until finding the correct cave, and enter, hearing that the Aldmeri General is inside, but all her soldiers would be captured inside. So you, again, expect hostile Dominion soldiers, but no, they have all been encased in ice. In their stead there are skeletons, ok, that makes some sense, I guess, but there are also Gargoyles. Not even more Frost Trolls, which though annoying would at least have been consistent. And the game offers no explanation as to why there are Gargoyles there.

You then bumble through an ice and snow-covered ruin, until you reach the General, who you try to reason with. That fails and you have to fight her. She then spawns a clone to fight you, and here is where things get a little buggy. Because of the way this fight is set up, you are to kill either the General or the clone, doesn’t matter, because the one you didn’t kill just becomes the real one, and if you’re too slow, will spawn another clone. If you’re too fast at taking them both out, the game doesn’t follow through, as the quest-line is MEANT for you to fight at least one original and one copy. Killing them too fast means that it doesn’t register, and you have to start the fight over and over, until you get the timing right. It also doesn’t explain why the General is able to spawn a fully non-ethereal clone, other than “she’s possessed by a God, so meh, magic or something.”

Never, since starting to play Skyrim in 2011, have a quest ever agitated me as much as this one quest did. And considering how I LOATHE the quest in Skyrim for Clavicus Vile (because of not one, but TWO characters with workbench-grinder voices), that says a lot.

But I am curious, what is the worst quest in a game that you’ve come across, and what makes it so bad?

World Building 1-0-1: Tiers of location-creation

An easy way

When making locations for your story, the balance between how much detail to put into each one, for the story to still flow naturally, can be a tricky obstacle. When I write, I consider all locations as part of a tier-based system.

Without thinking about it, you can end up with a lot of locations for a story. To some people, the amount of detail for each location comes naturally. But if that is not the case for you, here is the way I help myself when creating locations for a story.

First tier
Second tier
Third tier
Fourth tier
Fifth tier

Each location falls into one of these, making a note of how much detail I should pour into the description of each place. Even when I don’t know the name of a place yet, if I know what part of the story a location is going to be, I can start out by thinking it into the tier-system. Naturally the tier system is fluid, a location isn’t locked into a tier once placed; in fact, it often makes for a very good idea to have a location appear as being of minor importance at first, and then later on, move it up to another tier.

The tiers can also be used in a setting that isn’t made up, though obviously you need to keep the locations true to the reality of their original story.

First tier

As you can probably guess, the first tier is the most important one to the story. However this doesn’t mean that it is crowded with locations. First tier locations require as much detail as possible, the reader practically needs to, through your story, “live” in that location in that very moment. This means that the first tier locations can break the flow of the story entirely, something that’s normally considered as a “no-go” within writing, but do not be fooled; first tier locations requires attention when writing. Any lengthier story will have at least three first tier locations: The introduction, the point-of-no-return and the ending. Adding more can work, but you risk breaking the story where it should be flowing. A first tier location needs to not only tell the writer of the time of day (if relevant), small things like smells, how the air feels, sounds, anything. I will go as far as arguing that a first tier location can NEVER have too much detail.

A description of a first tier location needs to tell the reader the size of the location. You also need to convey lighting, smells, moisture, sounds, colours, plant-life, and the texture of surfaces.

Second tier

Second tier locations are similar to first tier locations, in that they need to be thoroughly described. However where first tier locations cannot have too much detail, the second tier can. As such it is important to consider the flow of the story, when plotting these locations down. They are still important to the story, but where first tier locations set the frame of the story, second tier locations works more like a helpful road-sign, leading the reader in the direction of the story, or telling the reader to stop and look in a different direction for a moment. Second tier locations can often be reoccurring in a story, this means that you don’t have to describe everything from the start. This can also help creating suspence in the story, by bringing the reader back to a place already known to them.

A second tier location needs to be immersive enough, to let the reader feel that this is important, but not so overly detailed, that the story comes to a complete halt. An example of a second tier location could be the police station in a detective story; a lot of time is spent in and around this place, but the story doesn’t start, end, or have the most important event in this location. The reader in this example needs to feel the bustle of a busy police station, through reading your story.

Second tier locations also include landmarks or other eye-catching details, even if they aren’t actually part of the story. This helps building the world up, giving the reader a momentary sense of immersion. In such moments, perspective is very important. Are you standing on a glass-framed balcony, looking out and down over a bristling night-time city, or are you walking along the pavement, shadowed by towering, grey skyscrapers on either side of the road.

Third tier

Depending on how you want to tell a story, chances are that the third tier locations are going to be the most numerous. Where both first and second tier locations aim to break, or slow, the story for the sake of immersion, third tier locations are there to move the story along. For this reason I like to nickname third tier locations as “transition locations”. A transition location’s most prominent detail is how long the story “moves” within it. Obviously the longer it takes to “move” through a location, the more details needs to be added to it’s description.

An example could be a long, tiled subway hallway below the streets of Berlin. A couple of the lights flicker unsteadily, and the clicking of the journalist’s high heels against the floor echo down, only to be cut of by the distant rumble of an arriving train. Her sweet-scented parfume mixes with the smell of old cigarette buds and dried urine. She quickens her pacing till she gets to the stairs leading down to the tracks, looking over her shoulder, she lets out a sigh of relief.

In the example used here, I’ve given the reader a vague idea of the location itself, without actually describing the location very much at all. Yet, hopefully, the reader gets the idea of being with this nondescript journalist, in this walkway tunnel leading down to a subway. So despite this being just a short example, we’ve still added immersion to it. If you add immersion to pieces like this, throughout the story, your reader will be more inclined to keep reading. Immersion is a word that you’ll find me mentioning a lot through my posts, because it, to me, is perhaps THE MOST IMPORTANT PART of any story.

Third tier locations also encompasses moving through a bland environment, regardless of it being a dark fir-tree forest, or a rainy day in a small outback town. Here the mayor part of the surrounding scene is non-descript, anything that stands out should be described, but in a way to fit the story’s pacing at that moment; are your characters walking through it slowly, trying to lose a persuer, or maybe slowly driving through at night? Obviously in night, or other darkened, situations, the description of light, if any, is of great importance.

Fourth tier

A fourth tier location is mostly undefined, it doesn’t play a major role in the story as a whole, but it is still being interacted with by characters or events in the story. A fourth tier location is the one location that can hold the smallest “area”. However, any fourth tier location must not be overly detailed, at least not if they are to remain a fourth tier location. Where a third tier location doesn’t break the pace of the story, it may alter the pacing slightly, only for the pacing to return to “normal” after the characters are done moving “through” it. In opposition to that, a fourth tier location should barely be noticed.

Fourth tier location includes furniture, doors, windows and so on. Where a nondescript door is just told as, example: “He nervously reloaded two slugs into his shotgun, and entered the house.” In this example the door may not be there at all, it doesn’t change the story or the scene, if there is a door or not. This is what I like to call a “negative location”. By this I’m refering to the fact that it’s a location that’s in “use” in the story, however as a reader we have absolutely no idea of the door’s condition, colour, or if there’s only some badly bent hinges left of it. Negative locations CAN be changed into a fourth tier location, but you should not see a negative location as a bad thing; it depends on the environment in which the location is taking place. Using the example from before, if the door looked like any other door, and there where several doors to chose from, you would need to describe how the character, in this case the man with the shotgun, chose that specific door. However, if the man with the shotgun is entering the only house for miles, it’s fairly obvious, and thus doesn’t need a description of the door. A negative location can be a good way of speeding the pace of the story up a bit; if you’re looking for a place to hide, your character probably won’t notice the colouring of a door. Of course, if you’re in a concrete basement, and there’s a long, straight walkway to a red fire-escape, it’s always a good idea to mention anything that would catch a person’s eye.

Typically, as a rule for fourth tier locations; you can see them, the level of interaction with them is minimal, and the amount of detail is thus limited.

Fifth tier

Obviously the fifth tier locations must be vague, as a fourth tier location can be as brief as a glance through a window. In fact, fifth tier locations aren’t even a part of the story at all. But still, a story without any fifth tier locations, would be hard to immerse yourself in. A fifth tier location is only mentioned in passing, and never more than that. So why even include it?

Well, fifth tier locations, just like the closer second and third tiers, helps with world building in the sense that it gives the reader a feeling of world’s overall size. Naturally, fifth tier locations in a story based in the real world, can easy throw the name of a city, country or even the ocean, into the story, without any characters ever actually going there. For example: “Carmen looked out through the scratched glass of her bus window; Boston looked no different through it, on this stormy Thursday in October. She thought about how her parents where doing back in New York.” In the example, New York is our fifth tier location. Despite even the name giving images in the mind of the reader, if the story never reaches New York, it serves as a fifth tier location. It gives us a sense of distance and time, which in turn helps to make the non-fictional world come to life in this fictional story.

If you’re dealing with a completely fictional setting, it can be a little harder to fully understand the “size” of your world. For example, would you be able to tell how far Pomfornob is away from Orchella Shore? Most likely not. Here it can help adding a little more detail. This can be done by having a character (or a sign-post) say that “Pomfornob is about six hours on horseback from Orchella Shore.” Even without putting numbers down, we’ve created an idea in the mind of a reader, about the distance between these two named locations.

But both of these examples have been with a fairly large, and rather distant locations. A fifth tier location can be, potentially, any space or area, as long as the story doesn’t actually enter them. Example: “Billy knows that the girls’ locker room is on the first floor of the dorm, but Billy never goes in there, and because Billy is a goldfish, he probably doesn’t fantasize about how it looks in there.” Here the locker room is the fifth tier location. To one of the girls in there, the fifth tier location could be one the lockers that isn’t her own. She knows of the locker, but not what it contains. And she was the one that messed up the girls’ cheerleading practice that day, so her thoughts aren’t going about what could be in that one locker, even if she have seen it.

So with these tiers of locations, you should be able to create your story in a way that immerses your readers as much as you want.

Fifty Shades of Paws

So, someone tasked me to “Write a Fifty Shades of Grey-esque piece, but where Mr. Grey is a cat.” Now, I have never read Fifty Shades of Grey, so what I’ve made is entirely out of my own imagination, guessing my way ahead:

“She sat waiting in the dark office, her back towards the door. A silent click, a beam of light. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was him. She could hear his soft paws on the hard office floor, her cheeks flushed.

Mr. Fluffykins smirked under his small, black nose. His pet was here, he had trained her well, she was silent until he said otherwise. Beside the smirk, his face showed no expression for or against her being there. He knew she would come sooner or later. Assuring his dominance over her, he rubbed his back against her bare calves, she wore a short skirt, and he could smell her scents. Knowingly, he brushed his soft tail up under her thigh, making her twitch in the chair. He didn’t say a thing, when he jumped into her lap, he was in control of that, anyway. A slight moan escaped her lips, and her cheeks flushed red again. A disapproving look from him quickly brought her to silence once more.”

A fairy tale from a first grade

I tasked a class of first graders, at the school where I worked , to come up with words of things or creatures, that they would want to be a part of a fairy tale. I told them, when giving the task, that the object or creature didn’t need to be of “classical fairy tale origin”, so that they could let their imagination run wild. This is the, translated, story, that I wrote using their words. Each time a word chosen by one of the twenty-two pupils appears in the text, it’s marked in Italic letters.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a slightly odd knight. Rather than a regular horse, this knight instead rode on a kangaroo, his lance was an old, worn flag-pole, and his sword was a wooden plank. One day, the knight got an insatiable hunger for cake, so he quickly saddled his kangaroo, and left his castle, to go into the nearby town to buy some cake from the bakery store. “Giddy-hop now, my loyal jumper!” and off the knight and the kangaroo went. Shortly after, they reached the shore of a wide, deep river. The town was on the other side, which was a bit of a problem for the knight. Even though there actually was a bridge built where the road would otherwise cross the river, the knight dared not to cross it. The knight had a terrible case of troll-allergy, and as trolls had a bad habit of taking up residence below bridges, the knight fear he would get all scratchy, if he went near a troll. As they had no other option, the kangaroo and the knight jumped straight into the river. However, kangaroos aren’t particular good swimmers, especially not when they have a slightly chubby, cake-happy knight in full armour, so both went straight to the bottom. This wasn’t a problem, however, as mermaids for a long time had been living at the bottom, magically creating a pocket of air. At the bottom, the knight met a single, sad-looking mermaid, he asked her, why she was sad. She told him that everyday, she would come to the surface of the river, looking at the town. She could see the fine dresses worn by the women in town, and she could smell the freshly baked bread from the bakery. But she could never get out of the water, and thus she had no opportunity to try these things for herself. The knight was a kind man, and asked if he could bring her the items she wanted, and the mermaid looked at him with a happy smile. And so the knight rose from the water, on the back of his kangaroo, with a new task for him to do.

Meanwhile, up at the town, the city gates were closed. A large dinosaur was attempting to get in, knocking it’s head against the wooden doors. The knight looked at the dinosaur, and clapped it’s scaled behind slightly. “Well, you’re a big one, aren’t you?” The dinosaur turned around, and for a second, the knight thought the he was done for, but instead the dinosaur began to cry. The knight asked why the dinosaur was crying, and between the large creature’s sobbing, it told that it had been bullied out of it’s lair, by a band of migrating penguins. “Alright, lead the way to your lair, I’ll help you with the penguins.” And so the dinosaur, the knight and the kangaroo took off towards some volcanoes nearby. When they arrived, the knight quickly found the cave, as the dinosaur had said “Wait for a bit out here, then roar as loud as you can.” with that, he went into the cave. Sure enough, inside the cave was more than fifty penguins, enjoying the warmth from the lava flows. The knight politely asked why the penguins had chased the dinosaur out of it’s home. The penguins really didn’t want to be disturbed, and grumbled that “It’s a dinosaur, he’s so big he should have no trouble keeping warm. Where we came from, we had to stand in a big heap to get warmth, and those standing furthest out, would STILL get cold.” The knight had not met penguins before, and did not know how or where they were living, so he couldn’t rightly argue against the penguins. However, all of the sudden, from outside the cave, a thundering roar was heard. The penguins massed up, looking around, their expressions were mostly filled with fear and confusion. “What was that?” They asked the knight. “Well…” The knight scratched his stubbled chin, “From my many years of being a knight, I’d say it’s most likely a dragon.” The penguins didn’t know this term, so the knight had to explain “It’s like… a dinosaur, only with wings and it usually breathes fire.” As another roar was heard, the penguins began to scatter, something that was breathing fire would make the cave even hotter, which the penguins wouldn’t want. After the penguins were gone, the dinosaur returned to his cave again, thanking the knight for his deed, who said “Good, but you have to promise to not enter the town again, you’ll scare the people there.”. The dinosaur promised to stay in his cave from now on. And so, the knight returned to his trusty kangaroo, and headed back to the city.

Finally he could enter and buy himself that cake, he wanted so badly. But alas, the baker’s daughter was in fact the princess of the city. Her father, the king, had given her away when she was born, because someone told him an omen that a child would one day take his throne. For this reason, the king had banned all children from even entering the castle. When she saw the knight entering the bakery, she pleaded for him to take her to the castle, as she was missing her mother, the queen, a lot. As on his honour, the knight could not say no to a damsel in distress. And so the knight placed the young princess on the back of the kangaroo behind him, and then they all bounced up to the castle. The castle guards tried to stop the knight, but the kangaroo’s hopping was unpredictable, and the knight was too heavy for them to arrest him. All the ruckus caused the king to wake from his beauty-sleep, coming out on the balcony, wearing his royal robes, royal slippers and his crown, “What is all this racket?” As the king yelled, everyone stopped in their place, and out of nowhere, the knight threw a cream cake, that he took from the bakery. With a majestic splat, the cake landed right in the face of the king. The queen had awoken too, and came out to see what was going on. The sight of her husband, covered in cake all over his face, made her burst-out laughing. The princess and the knight then also began to laugh, and mere seconds later, even the guards were laughing. The king had been disgraced, and rather than regaining his composure, he ran out of the castle, out of the town and as far away as he could, to a place where no people would come.

In his stead, the queen were to rule, but instead she let her young daughter, the princess, become queen. This was a wise decision, as the princess turned out to be a wise and fair ruler. She turned to the knight, and despite him being at least twenty years older than her, she asked for him to marry her. however, the knight refused; he had seen the royal robes, they were fitted for a much less chubby man than the knight. Also, as a king, there would be much work to be done, that would mean less time to eat cake in. And the knight still had a promise to fulfill; quickly, he jumped on the kangaroo again and sprinted back to the bakery. There he bought two delicious cakes, one for himself and one for the mermaid, he also got a special dress sewn for the mermaid. At the bottom of the river, the mermaid was patiently waiting, she got very happy that the knight had returned. The knight handed her the dress and the one cake, and was about to leave for his own castle, when the mermaid asked, “Won’t you… eat your cake with me?” In fact, rather than cake or fine garments, all the mermaid really wanted, was a friend. And so, they lived happily ever after, with lots of cake every day. And if you, by chance, should happen upon a man in a fine robe, with slippers and a crown, and cake in his face, it’s likely the old king, who is still to this day, trying to find a place where no-one knows his shame.

World Building 1-0-1: Locations

Got places to go?

With your setting in place, and the overall idea of the story more or less worked out, you are now ready to start plotting down a couple of locations. Immersion comes from the reader imagining themselves as being “in” your world, your story. One of the best ways to achieve immersion, is to describe the story’s locations in detail.

Locations might not seem like a big part of writing, you make up the setting and you already have an idea of where you want you story to take place. But, do not be fooled, generic locations and lacking descriptions are very off-putting to the reader. I would say that you need a minimum of five locations, perhaps even more than that. I have never read a story that had less than five locations, obviously depending on the length of the story, but I am not saying it isn’t a possibility.

When I write I use what I’d like to call a tier-based location system (which you can read about here), thinking up a location it ends up in one of those tiers. The tiers are based upon how much detail I feel like putting into them, this is typically equivalent to how important for the story that particular location is. While it, obviously, is important to have a great amount of detail for the locations that are significant to your story, the opposite is also important. If you go to great lengths to describe every location with the same amount of detail, the locations that matters less to the story might end up disappointing the reader. For example, there is no point in describing that a single door is painted red on a street, if that door doesn’t play in to the story.

Keeping the narrative angle in mind, is also very important. Is there story told through the eyes and thoughts of a character? Or are we, as a reader, just drifting along, knowing what happens behind as well as in front of the characters? Presenting your locations as they appear in the story, from the perspective of your characters, typically means that you’ll have to cut some information and detail away. Other things, even if there’s no interaction planned with that specific location, are important to keep, because it helps establish immersion. For example, a young adventurer ambles up towards the castle through a muddied street, the high tower of the keep looming above him as he takes each step. At the dark-wooden gate to the castle’s courtyard, the man is stopped briefly by the screech of a crow. He looks up, but the tower is no longer visible here at the foot of the keep’s walls.

In the example I just used, I had the narrative as a third person perspective, but putting the adventurer as our protagonist, I give the reader a feeling of being right next to the adventurer, looking up at a castle wall, from it’s foot with him. Another thing I’d like to point out with my example, is how much focus I placed upon the tower of the castle. Not the castle itself, the castle walls or even the muddy street, despite the street being the location the story, at that moment, was actually taking place in. This story could easily continue without the adventurer ever getting up in the tower, but we have given the reader an impression of how the castle looks, without using that many descriptive words. We haven’t mentioned the colour or the state of the stone-work, in fact, it wasn’t even mentioned that the castle was built in stone. And yet, the reader have a pretty decent idea of how the world we’ve just put down, looks from the perspective of the adventurer.

World Building 1-0-1: Choosing a Setting

The frame of the picture

When building a world in a written work, the setting is very important. Particularly in works of fiction, where the reader needs to be able to immerse themselves into your story. Naturally many different universes already exists, ranging from claustrophobic underwater adventures, over vast expanses of space with myriads of planets, to a world very similar to your own, except a grizzly murder have just been committed.

As a first-time writer, the framework of the story may seem like a massive piece of work in front of you. You begin to worry about the amount of detail, does it hold up, is this world interesting and so on. In my experience, when you begin to worry about the writing rather than just letting it come to you naturally, then it’s time to take a break. Even if you haven’t even started writing yet. It doesn’t have to be a long break, sometimes even stepping back from your keyboard for a minute, (or even switching to a different tab, if you’re really lazy, I know that I can be.) and empty your mind. You don’t have to go all out and join a yoga-class to meditate, but, and this is important, do NOT RETURN TO WRITING UNTIL YOU FEEL LIKE IT. Obviously it’s much easier to say the phrase “don’t worry, just empty your mind”, than it is to actually carry the phrase out.

One of the advises to work past this worry, is to select an already existing universe, the more expansive the better. Instead of having to worry about how a brand new universe keeps itself together, when choosing an already existing franchise as your framework, you take that worry away. Sure, there isn’t the exact same pride in building on something you did not make from the bottom, but it is a great writing practice for you to use later on in your writing career. The ability to alter your writing style, narrative angle and genre, can boost your later works with the experience, that comes from putting a particular style of writing into practice. Early on in your writing career, perhaps before it’s even a career, you can also use the practice of writing in other existing universes, to start building your own writing style. For example, you’ve read George R.R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones” series, and while you liked the characters and the way the story moved, you found that Martin’s style of describing environments and scenes, was lacking something, despite not being able to put an exact finger on what that something is. Keeping that experience in mind, you can onward from here avoid making the flaw that, in your mind, Martin made in his writings.

Changing the setting

Rarely will you find a story changing it’s setting completely, though it has been gaining some more popularity, with movies and computer games affecting authors and writers. More and more stories have the story start out in the “real” world, only for the story to enter a fictional universe, within it’s own fictional universe. I would personally argue that this isn’t so much changing the setting, as it is adding a secondary and minor setting, a sub-setting if you like, to the story. The major point in my argument is that the story almost always “returns” to the “real” world either just once, or multiple times during the story. C.S. Lewis’ “Narnia” series is a great example of this. J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series is as well, though, admittedly, it’s less obvious than Narnia. The sub-setting, despite that I’ve just called it “minor”, can easily take up a larger percentage of the story than the “major” one. The reason for this, is that a story with more settings, is always remembered, when retelling it, as starting in it’s major setting. Allow me to put this into more graspable terms, using my two examples. The “Narnia” series is about a group of English kids, who discovers a gateway into a different world, where fantasy creatures of all kinds live and dwell among each other. The “Harry Potter” series is about an English boy, who lives with an unfriendly foster-family, until he learns that he is actually a wizard, and journeys to another dimension, where witches, trolls, potions and broom-based sports are common.

Did you notice something just now? In case you didn’t, because it’s not often something you think that much about, let me clarify. The word “English” is occurring in both examples. Now you could argue that I am just paraphrasing the examples to get my point across, and you would not be wrong in that assumption. However, if you ask anyone (well, almost) to retell these stories by memory, you’d almost certainly get summaries resembling what I’ve just written here. In other words, it is not only me, but also several other people. This proves how a “major” setting is significant to a story, even when, taking “Harry Potter” once again, we, as a reader, don’t spend much more than around 15 % of the entire story in the “major” setting.

The main reason you don’t find a lot of stories with a 50/50 major and minor setting, or a full-on actual change of the setting, is that it requires more work. Putting a setting in, when starting the story, you’re building up a world, with locations, details, weather and other natural phenomenons. To change the setting, you have to abandon the previous one, and, essentially, build a new one up, only keeping scraps of the old one as reason for comparison and inducing flashbacks amongst characters. Writers generally do not mind scrapping a setting, but there needs to be a good reason to do so. Otherwise you’re essentially doing double the work for a single written piece, and having multiple story-settings going on at the same time, can quickly become an obstacle towards finishing the overall project.

Upholding the setting (don’t break the canon)

Once you’ve assigned something as “a rule” for your story, as part of the setting, most characters and events needs to follow these rules. If you find that events and characters more often than not, are breaking these rules, you need to change the rules to fit. Why not change the characters or the events to fit? That can work too, but unless you’re looking to create a plot-hole, especially if the event, or character, is reoccurring, I wouldn’t recommend it. This is where already existing universes restricts the writer, dictating typical means of transport, how advanced the technology is, fauna and flora as well as ethics and acceptable behaviour. Even in universes that are “potentially” unlimited, in terms of what COULD be existing in the universe, this restrictive setting is still active. For example, the “Star Trek” universe includes a multitude of different races, each with their own technological know-how, nature and ethical views. Because it, like many sci-fi stories, takes place in space, where the number of planets and other objects that have actually been discovered, is very, very low. It doesn’t take much logical thought to reason that there are so many more planets, even civilizations out there. But when writing in existing universes, we often have a tendency to build extreme “bubbles” within the already existing story. A bigger bubble, as in a more extreme setting, makes a bigger “pop”, and the bigger the “pop” the more your story is “heard”. But these bubbles also press against, and often through, the “rim of canon”; what actually exists within the universe already.

If you are writing your own story, with your own setting, you are also the one in charge of placing the “rim of canon”. YOU decide what goes. Can people fly? Does magic exist? Is the air polluted to a point where everyone needs to wear a gas-mask, or risk undergoing horrible mutations? Only your mind sets the rim of what is “acceptable” within YOUR world, YOUR story. However, just as in an existing story, you have to be consistent and follow the rules that you’ve stated for your world, otherwise you’ll create plot-holes, which makes your story seem rushed or even poorly written. Here’s the good news though; because it’s your setting, you can add rules to the setting at any point during the writing process. This is handy, as you can write up a rule to suit an event or character, so they fit into your setting, when they occur.

Going back to the writing practice that is trying to copy someone else’s writing style, another part of the “practice” is also to have an opinion on as many things as possible in the writing style you’re working with. Transitions, flash-backs, character introductions and so on. Essentially you’re going through someone’s story like a shopping center, when you stop to look at a “ware”, you look to your shopping check-list and ask yourself “Does this work, why/why not.” Eventually you’ll end up with a list of things you like about a style, and things that you might not like. And thus; you’ve taken the first step towards creating your own writing style.

World Building 1-0-1: Starting Up

The first steps…

Building a world from the bottom takes time, there is no getting around that. But when it comes to world building, regardless of whether you’re writing fiction or dramas, the thing writers struggle with the most, is getting the idea.

Rather than thinking that the writing process starts when you sit down to write the first couple of lines, any written work starts with shaping and getting the idea. To some people, getting ideas for a world setting comes as easy as making breakfast. But to others, or if you’re working in a team, a lot of suggestions can actually block the process entirely. The best way to handle this problem, is to allow yourself (and others) to make silly ideas. If you’re working as a team, this is crucial to even get the project started. It might feel like you’re increasing the workload later on, by adding more and more ideas to the project, but don’t worry; to most writers, deleting things during the writing process comes pretty naturally.

Unfortunately, there is no direct help to getting ideas. The best you can do is allow your brain to relax, and let yourself be open to suggestions. Another important thing is to not get caught up on being original. This is also something that you work out later in the process, getting it in your head before you even begin writing, means that you’ll be worrying about what other people create, have created, and will create. This is one of the most progress-destroying elements of writing, worry about the writing in itself, everything else doesn’t matter right now.