Writing a Cyclopedia for Newold

One of the greatest, if not the greatest campaign setting books ever is the Cyclopedia of the Realms which came in the Forgotten Realms original grey box set. Printed on goldenrod paper that looked like old, worn parchment, the Cyclopedia was a wonderfully brief yet incredibly evocative introduction to Ed Greenwood's world. It gave just enough detail: Maps for some of the major cities in the Dalelands and Sword Coast as well as (of course) Shadowdale, but simple descriptions of others so that you could develop them as you saw fit. It even came with a promise (later broken) that certain regions would never have further "official" development from TSR so that the DM could have a free hand to work them out as he saw fit without worrying about canon overruling him, including the entire nation of Sembia.

About a month ago, I realized that my campaign notes, some of which go back nearly two decades, where scattered over multiple notebooks and files. This had resulted in some inconsistencies in my world (which I could explain as time passing between campaigns, fortunately), but also made it more difficult to pull up old material when developing adventures and regions.

Now, I had tried to put everything into one or a few big files before, but I always had difficulty staying enthusiastic about the project. Somehow, writing in black serif font on a bright white background just seemed to suck all of the magic out of my world.

Cue writing in dark brown comic sans text with parchment font headers on a parchment background:

I don't know why, but something about this just energizes me. I've done more in three weeks to pull together all of my world notes than I've done in several years.

Now very obviously, the purpose of this work is not to try to keep absolutely everything in one file. That would get ridiculously large and cumbersome. I have other files, both electronic and dead-tree, that hold my adventure location notes, maps, and so forth. The point of the Cyclopedia is simply to have the lore of the world in a place that I can easily reference during both prep and play. By putting the most common knowledge on each entry in the first paragraph or three, I also make it easy to copy-paste that information for the players as they ask or otherwise learn about it.

World-Building? Baaaaaad DM!

In certain old-school circles, world-building for its own sake is frowned upon. It takes away from the spontaneity of the campaign and the flexibility of a good DM, or so we're told. One should only prep what is immediately needed for play, and let the actions of the players, the off-the-cuff imagination of the DM, and maybe some random dice rolls determine the growth of the world organically.

Well, for what it's worth, that is pretty much how Newold has developed since day one. The best-developed areas are those where we've run extensive campaigns, like Urlaen, Callain, and Umbria. Most nations, like in the original FR boxed set, are just a sketch of a few sentences or a paragraph or two--enough to invoke them in gameplay by way of rumors or NPC travelers. What I'm doing here is simply pulling my notes together.

But having said that, I don't think that there is a problem with world-building for its own sake, with the following caveats: (1) Don't bore your players by rambling on about the lore. (2) Make sure you don't mind the players breaking stuff. (3) Make the world big enough.

I've found that the best way to introduce players to campaign lore is to focus on what they want to know, and to write it down for them. Having a Cyclopedia, as I said before, makes the latter part easy. Sometimes they run with it, sometimes they don't. Either way, you shouldn't be upset.

Once you've created the campaign lore, you have to expect the players to break it. Yes, there should always be a bigger fish, but if you create a Mary Sue, expect the players to want to kill that Mary Sue. If you create a Mary Suetopia, the players will do their best to bring Big Brother down. If you create a railroad, expect the players to sabotage that railroad. And whatever you do, don't drag them into a "save the world" plot unless you're willing to let the dice fall where they may, even if it means creating a whole new campaign world.

Finally, make the world nice and big, so that there's always room for the ideas of the players as well as your own. When we started the new campaign over a year ago, I intentionally set it far away from the previous campaign areas. While the lore of the old campaigns is still there, the players have space to uncover and invent new lore. Since one player is running a kenku, I've integrated the kenku as a marginalized part of the local population, something which would have been more difficult in an established area. As we've developed the Phoenix and the Wyrm mythology, I've presented it as legends from Fallen Kalevala, which originally received them in its heyday when it had trade with the far and mysterious eastern lands.

I think my philosophy in this area is best exemplified by C.J. Cherryth's introduction to the Lore of the Witch World collection of short stories:

It's a land, a world, a place of dark shadows and alien powers and human beings touched with strangeness . . . [It] is never explored. The smallest valley holds strange happenings and a past which reaches into things stranger still. The traveler finds the unexpected, the ancient, the bizarre at every turn.

A successful long-running campaign world is the same. I think that the problem with world-building is that it is all too often too small, too inflexible, and too brittle to withstand the players' natural tendency to explore, push, and smash the boundaries. I've made these mistakes in the past, but fortunately have been blessed with incredibly good players who have helped carry the campaign past its weaknesses. And having survived the foibles of the DM, Newold has become a wonderfully rich tapestry with dozens of threads just waiting to be interwoven with new threads, and which I enjoy continuing to build as an end to itself.