There’s a lot of reasons you could ask yourself about why I’m not qualified to give you tips. There are also a lot of reasons why I am qualified to give you tips regarding how to improve your Role Playing experiences.

Let me give you a good reason why I’m not qualified first:

I have not, do not and probably will never play D&D. The reason isn’t that I don’t like it. I love the concept of it, in fact. It strictly comes down to my location. The one group we have that plays it does not jive with my working schedule and never will.

RIP me.

It has left me to find an outlet in text based role playing and RPG based video games with open world concepts. I play the Hell out of those games and role play with a computer like a boss.

That started 20 years ago.

Yes. You read that right. 20 years ago. Which is the first reason that makes me qualified to give tips on how to Role Play; I’ve been in this for a very, very long time compared to a few others. I do not claim master class levels, but I do take credit where it is due.

Moving on!

You’re here to look at tips on how to build an original world to suit the needs of many people. A world that will keep those people going in an RP even when you aren’t there to guide them as their fearless DM.

I’m going to give you food for thought on everything from the character creation model (race options) to how much information is too much (when your players will become discouraged and leave). So hold on tight!

Here we go.

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Part 1: Your World, Your Way?

Not necessarily.

You own the world, but that doesn’t mean you’re the dictator. In fact, think of it more like you’re a guiding light! You’ve laid down a solid foundation, done a good job of getting everyone started and can give yourself a pat on the back. Now it’s time to sit back, enjoy the ride and step in to give a nudge or a helping hand when your players need it.

So how do you go about that? Let’s take a look!

1. Don’t over saturate your world building!
   – Keep to a broad stroke view of matters. Does your world have Gods? Tell players who they are, what they do and where they reside.
   – Answer the 5 W’s. Who, What, When, Where and Why! NEVER answer the question of HOW. That’s the job of the players! If you answer HOW then you’re taking the fun out of it for them and taking away their job. Unless they ask you for an answer you’re willing to give that doesn’t spoil the story / lore.
2. Give them enough lore to make it interesting but also let them build some of their own!
   – What if their character is tied to one of the Gods of your world? Wouldn’t it be more fun for the player to have interactions with their order in ways they could control? As an example!
3. Create a WORLD MAP but leave some areas intentionally blank to add player made towns and cities in!

Now. After that it seems a little simple, doesn’t it? It really is! The key is to give players enough to start, open the world to them and most of all have fun.

You don’t have to create a huge and detailed world just to show that you’re an amazing creator. The key to success is constantly updating information, communicating well with your players and being a fair DM.

In fact, most people will walk away from a group RP that is too detailed. The reason why is that it takes up too much of their very valuable time.

REMEMBER: Not everyone has the same amount of time to spend reading the information you have provided as you spent creating it. They also do not have the same amount of time to stay updated. Role Playing is for fun. You could be missing out on a top tier player just because their work schedule does not jive with the amount of world building you put out.

Find that happy medium!

Part 2: Getting Your Players To Use Your Full Discord / Forum

I’m going to be blunt about one major flaw in original world group role plays: You either need to have an extremely large group or everyone will converge into one room / thread and that will be THAT.

Get a big group. Advertise and market what the RP is about or it will fail. This is a key point you cannot forget to do.

Now moving on to the main point of Part 2– how to actually get people to use every option available to them.

This is dependent on you having a large group to Role Play with. I will need to assume that you have at least 50 people to make this work correctly. Anything 20 or less and you should consider a one room / thread role play. Or even two if they post often(ish).

1. Ensure each room / thread has a mandatory usage that the players do NOT need to use every day, but WILL need to visit eventually.
2. Hold area wide events (room / thread based) so that if you see a room isn’t getting used, you can enforce that it is by keeping it interesting in some way, shape or form.
3. Give out player title opportunities for making use of the World Map and not just sticking to one area.
4. Have people set up in various areas (home base them) but allow them to move around to the other home bases.

Part 3: Caring For Characters

This is more important than you as the world builder probably realize.

What impact do the characters of other people have on your world? Everything. Literally everything.

Many world creators have realized this and actually get feelings of anxiety from it. They feel the need to restrict character creation to a ridiculous point in an effort to keep players from becoming OP and blowing up their beautiful land.

Here’s a question though: Why don’t you want them to blow stuff up?

The fun of being a creator is to create. I’m not implying that you should encourage players to do their damnable best to level the world, but I am saying that you should encourage them to seek out character combinations that at once:

1. Keep them engaged.
2. Encourage high levels of creativity.
3. Promote original combinations while also proving that not every cliche is bad.
4. Explore new and untested ‘proving grounds’. Something the player has not (perhaps) done before.

This doesn’t mean you cannot put in any restrictions whether that be racial (Fantasy or Sci-Fi based) or class. What it means is to not restrict them so much that they can’t run around (or even wiggle) and explore what they can come up with.

Though that does bring up another question: How much power is too much power? When does a character become OP?

That’s a question that I can’t answer for you. It also depends on the group of people you’re playing with. You need to consider if you will have people who will abuse the power of their character. If that answer is yes then you will need (unfortunately) good restrictions.

Myself? I like to see where people will take the Gods of the land when they play alongside mortals. It’s fun.

You also need a really responsible group for that. A strong player network.

It brings me nostalgia.

Over seven years ago now.

But that’s a story for another day.

Hit me up in the comments with questions!