I thought that it might be helpful to also include some information on my site to help out anyone who might be new to Dungeons & Dragons and may want to create a campaign world of their own. It may seem like it is an overwhelming task but it really isn't. It is a lot of work, I won't lie to you but you might find it rather rewarding to create something out of your own imagination. If you have any other questions at all, feel free to send me an email (my email address is at the bottom of the Hyerune Home Page) and I will be happy to help you if I can.

My personal reasons for wanting to create a campaign world was not so much for role playing purposes but rather as an aid for me in my writing. I feel that having a concrete point of reference to give the characters a starting position in relation to the rest of their world helps in the creation process. It certainly makes it much easier for the ideas to flow once you have your thoughts on paper (or in a computer as the case may be).

Your first question may be "But why do I even need to bother with creating my own campaign world in the first place?" That is a very good question to start since there already exist many other published materials including "Greyhawk," "Forgotten Realms," and the soon to be released "Eberron" campaign from Wizards of the Coasts. All of these materials are excellent in their own way and are very popular. I even use them myself. However, creating your own world offers so many more benefits that you might find it well worth the while. The mere fact that it is something to call "your own" is emensely gratifying. It really gives you a sense of accomplishment to sit back and look at your work and say "Hey, I made that" even if you may have gotten some ideas from other sources.

Second, you have complete control over the makeup of your fantasy world. It is almost like "playing god" in a sense since you decide all aspects of what you wish to include from planetary size, shape of land masses, climate and environment, racial make-up, monster populations, history, mythology, etc. The list goes on and on.

Alright, so you have decided to go ahead with the idea of designing your own campain world. Where do you begin? There are actually two ways of approaching this. It is commonly referred to as the "top down/bottom up" approach. That means that you can either start be sketching the outline of the world as a whole and add the details as you go (top down) or you can start with just a small location (say a town or village)and expand your way from there (bottom up). Based on personal experience and preference, I like the top down approach. It was much easier for me as a novice designer to come up with a sketch of the basic land masses and then decide what goes where.

The way I approached the initial design was to go to my local office supply store and buy a roll of paper. I laid the sheets out on a large table, taped them together and just started sketching. Since I tend to be a perfectionist, I started over many times until I came up with a layout I thought would work best. TIP: It really helped me to look at some real world maps as well as fantansy maps that appear in some of the popular books these days.

Once I came up with the outline of the basic land masses, I began to fill in some of the geographic features like mountains, hills, forests and bodies of water. Then I would figure out where to place deserts and swamps and rivers. At this stage it is important to figure out how true to life you want your campaign world to be. The beauty of design is that you can do whatever you want. If you want to put a tropical jungle in the middle of a desert, go ahead. But for the sake of "believability" I decided to try and remain true to the basic rules of nature. (Mountain chains tend to follow the contour of the land mass, rivers flow from high elevations down to the sea or lake. deserts generally occur on the eastern sides of mountain chains and a jungle would need an adequate supply of water.)

Once I had the land in place, it was time to come up with some of the place names and countries. This part of the design, for me anyway, was the most involved simply because I wanted it to be unique as well as appealing. I didn't want a bunch of non-sensical names thrown around. I wanted to really put some thought into the matter. This is where a notepad, a pencil and LOTS of books come in handy. I started doing research on various place names from the real world first. A good source is your local library. I spent a lot of time just browsing book after book and jotting down words or phrases that jumped out at me. Once I got a good list going I would look at it again and strike anything that I thought sounded too strange. This process is very subjective I know. I would often change my mind about certain names over and over. Again, I think this comes from my perfectionist side. I wanted names that "sounded cool" and that would fit within my campaign. I even started my own reference library so I could look up information at a moments notice if I wanted to.

This step is probably the one where you as a designer will need to decide how much time you want to spend. It is certainly acceptable to detail only a corner of your world and leave the rest up to the player's imagination. Even some of the best game products out there do this very thing since it can take a lifetime for players to explore even one area. It may help if you take some ideas from some of the more well known cultures in our world and expand from there. These include, Western European, Eastern European, Mediterranean, African, Middle Eastern, Southeast Asia, Asia, North America and South America. You can get even more specific by examining Scandanavia, Irish, British, American Indian, Chinese, Arabic or Egyptian cultures. Include as much of a mix as you want to include. Of course, you don't have to use these at all and come up with something completely unique to your world.

Since I was in no hurray though, I decided I wanted to plan out the entire world. Again, it just helped me put the various areas into perspective. I also tended to focus on real world cultures since that made it easier for me to place the countries and to come up with new ideas.

As you start putting in the details, you will find yourself thinking about how these various pieces fit together. It may help to write your thoughts down in your notebook so you can hash them out later. For instance, as you place a few countries, you will find yourself thinking about how these countries get along with one another. They do not just exist in some vacuum but will rely on each other for military support and natural resources. They may even be hostile to each other which of course will require the building of many castles and fortresses. The countries don't even have to be dominated by humans. In a fantasy world such as one based on Dungeons and Dragons, you have many other races to choose from including the various monster races. Countries and cities located near less domesticated terrain like mountains, forests and swamps will likewise be plagued by various monster problems.

As I began finalizing my world, I started to branch out into some more specific areas like history and mythology. History of course is always evolving as time goes on. In terms of mythology, I wanted to have some concrete figures to give real flavor to the campaign world. Again, you have many options in this area depending on how involved you want to be. You can have the mythology be monotheistic like the Christian and Muslism faiths of our world where there is only one god. You can be polytheistic like the Hindu faith or some of the ancient cultures like Greece and Egypt that had many gods. The important thing to remember is to be creative and have fun using your imagination.