by Russell Mcnay

Created on: November 09, 2009   Last Updated: November 11, 2009

Being a DM who has designed his own campaign setting, I thought I should some kernels of wisdom for others interested in doing the same. There is nothing more wonderful to create a world and have your players inhabit it, but depending on how you did things, your world can become a place of nightmare for you. Sometimes good intentions had have come to ruin and problems are occuring frequently. Well, how do you prevent these problems? Let me share my advice with my own setting to explain.

When you design your campaign setting, you should first look at what the feel you what to have in it. That will determine everything else in the setting. If you choose to go with a low-magic concept, then it strains believability when you have wizards walking down the street, housing for wizards on every street corner. Believability is important in a campaign setting. For my setting, Neldoreth, I went with a world that is dying and falling apart. I borrowed the concept to some degree from Andy Collin's Umbar idea, but i approved on it. Borrowing from other people is fine, as long as you make it your own. In Neldoreth, I also grabbed from the Warcraft universe because I liked the games. I also borrowed from a few other places.

After having gotten a theme, in the case of Neldoreth its a world slipping into permanent darkness, planning out campaign ideas should follow next. Without any ideas on campaigns, you won't places or npcs you might need at some point. I decided i liked the Burning Legion idea from Warcraft so i thought about making opposing it the major theme. I also liked the story with the wizards in Diablo so I picked that up. After I few modifications I have the following for a campaign theme: The Zakarum had served the Burning Legion in the past and was plotting to bring about its return; the Burning Legion had scourged much of Neldoreth but hadn't finished and so they were coming back to finish the job; the Horadrim had opposed the Zakarum and so were going to do so again. So that gives me three main themes for campaign or one overall main theme: stopping the return/aiding the return of the Burning Legion.

While that makes a main theme, I came up also with sub plots that involved getting the back story of how I incorporated game concepts. I took the idea of the Dragonborn empire and made it so dragonborn would be interested in working to restore that empire. I made a history that related to the world that gave it meaning to players. This is one the major ways you

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