Random Fantasy Campaign Generator Example

Here is the explication of my Random Fantasy Campaign Generator demonstrated with an example of its use. Suppose you wish to run some adventures that have no predetermined setting (or none you care to use), and you would like the world to grow as the characters explore it rather than spending countless hours beforehand building it from scratch. Where do you start? You start with the location of the very first adventure and gradually expand from there. You start with a roll on the Starting Place table.

Starting Place

With a roll of 2, the adventure starts in a village. It could be the player characters' home village, or it could be a village they are visiting or through which they are passing on the way to their destination. In this case, we'll say the player characters are visiting a friend.

Landmass

With a roll of 4, the village is located on a supercontinent. There may be islands, but most of the world's landmass consists of a single Pangaea-like supercontinent. This suggests that the world might be geologically younger than our planet Earth, and it might even have megafauna or dinosaurs (or weird variants thereof).

Nearest Waterway

With a roll of 4, the nearest waterway is "Sea," which would mean a world-spanning super-ocean. So, our village is on the coast, which means fishing and trade are probably important to its economy.

Nearest Geographical Feature

With a roll of 12, the nearest geographical feature is "Volcano." The villagers may believe the volcano is dormant, or they might not know it is a volcano. In the real world there are actual communities built in the craters of "extinct" volcanoes (e.g. Mt. Tabor in Portand, Oregon, U.S.A.), but we'll set our village at the base of the volcano at the edge of a bay since we established that it is a port. If the volcano were to erupt, there would be time for people in the village to react.

Most Prominent Architectural Achievement

With a roll of 6, the village's most prominent architectural achievement is a library. In general, the impressiveness of a location's most prominent edifice depends on the location's size, prosperity, cultural priorities, and level of technology. Given that our location is a fishing village near a volcano on the coast of a supercontinent, perhaps we could make the library the only building that (miraculously) withstood a previous eruption. A village was gradually rebuilt from the ruins of the destroyed city, and it was decreed that no building shall ever rival the library in magnificence. The importance of the library has grown as a consequence, and scholars from near and far come to the village to study there.

First Patron

With a roll of 6, the player character's first patron will be a local official. In this case, it would be logical to make that local official the Head Librarian, a person of importance with vast knowledge. Regardless of the adventure's premise, it ought to be easy to think of way to link it to the Head Librarian's interests.

Best Place for Rumors

With a roll of 12, the best place for rumors in the village is the well. Sure, there may be gossip aplenty amongst the scholars at the library, but the rumormongering at the well is more reliable.

Summary

In a coastal village at the foot of a volcano, the adventurers have come to meet a friend who is connected with the Head Librarian of a famous library that is the sole remnant of an ancient city. The community well is the best source of information of a non-academic nature, as the hardworking villagers are honest folk and more cosmopolitan than most. All of this is taking place in a world dominated by a single supercontinent.

These initial details provide the ingredients for a larger world of interconnected places, cultures, and adventures that can be expanded as needed.

Random Fantasy Campaign Generator

The Random Fantasy Campaign Generator can be used as a prompt to create a setting and situation for a party's first adventure, and, perhaps, the initial focal point of a new campaign world that will expand with the party's travels.

Random Fantasy Campaign Generator

Starting Place

Roll 1d4

1. Outpost
2. Village
3. Town
4. City

Landmass

Roll 1d4

1. Archipelago
2. Island
3. Continent
4. Supercontinent

Nearest Waterway

Roll 1d4

1. Stream
2. River
3. Lake
4. Sea

Nearest Geographical Feature

Roll 1d12

1. Barrow
2. Canyon
3. Cave
4. Desert
5. Forest
6. Hill
7. Jungle
8. Megalithic structure
9. Mountain
10. Plains
11. Swamp
12. Volcano

Most Prominent Architectural Achievement

Roll 1d12

1. Abbey
2. Castle
3. Fountain
4. Granary
5. Guildhouse
6. Library
7. Marketplace
8. Mill
9. Monument
10. Palace
11. Temple
12. Tomb

First Patron

Roll 1d12

1. Abbot
2. Alchemist
3. Elder
4. Guildmaster
5. Innkeeper
6. Local official
7. Merchant
8. Noble
9. Sage
10. Spy
11. Trader
12. Wizard

Best Place for Rumors

Roll 1d12

1. Castle
2. Den of iniquity
3. Dock
4. Fountain
5. Inn
6. Guardhouse
7. Marketplace
8. Shop
9. Stable
10. Tavern
11. Temple
12. Well

Dungeons of Catan

There seems to be some interest in random wilderness generation lately, and there is always interest in worldbuilding in general, so it occurred to me that we already have what may be the perfect participatory, evolutionary campaign world generator in the form of the board game The Settlers of Catan. I haven't tried it yet (since I just thought of it about ten minutes ago), but the idea seems too irresistible not to have been conceived before now, so I'm not claiming to be its originator. If you've already written, posted, tweeted, or talked about this before, congratulations. Great minds ratiocinate similarly.

Consider the possibilities. The geography is determined by the random placement of terrain hexes. Hexes! The settlements are established by competing cultures (the players) in logical places. Newer settlements arise as the cultures compete for resources and expand into the wilderness. Roads are built to connect the settlements. By the end of the game you have terrain, resources, towns, roads, and nations. And that's just the basic game. Expansion sets allow you to introduce things such as trade routes and city improvements. Once the board game is over, the GM has a campaign world with all these things and even a history of the interactions of the various cultures. All the GM has to do is assign names to the nations, towns, and natural features (such as mountains, rivers, forests, deserts, etc.). Further details can be determined by the GM as needed, such as town maps, names of leaders, types of government, etc. The GM can create random wilderness encounter tables for each hex or use those provided by the preferred rulebook. If the campaign grows beyond the island, play another game of The Settlers of Catan to create another island. If an island is too small, call it a continent and treat every settlement as a collection of villages and towns with a city as its nucleus. The beautiful thing about it is that the worldbuilding process becomes more of a game than a labor, everyone gets to participate in shaping the world before role-playing in it, and the world arises organically from a process of evolution rather than creation. There is nothing wrong with authorial worldbuilding, but I think there are alternative methods that can be equally rewarding. Both methods, in fact, could be employed in building the same world. Certain lands, for instance, might be more recognizable to player characters whose players participated in their creation, whereas more distant lands might appropriately seem more foreign for having been wholly conceived by the GM. In a way, the board game worldbuilding phase serves to familiarize players gradually with their characters' backgrounds on a macro level.

The placement of dungeons, catacombs, and ruins is entirely at the GM's discretion, of course. Certain settlements could be designated as ruins or as having dungeons beneath them or nearby. Many important destinations, however, will be in remote locations far from any sign of civilization. It's good to preserve the unknown even in a land the players helped create.