CONSTRUCTING A SETTING

Constructing a Setting
By NoblemanNick

Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. The Geography
III. Creating a History
IV. Setting up Cities and Governments
V. Conclusion

I. Introduction
Hello there all you readers and future game creators. It's been a very long time since I wrote an article, and after sorting through my original "Constructing a Character" article, I felt it needed some other articles to go with it. I am known across the forums as NoblemanNick, or Nick. Why I am here today? Good question, today I am going to go and try and help you stimulate your mind to create a setting for your characters and your plot. A setting is very important, other than your character this is the second thing your player is constantly interacting with. The setting, places, towns, cities, mountains, temples, and other areas of your world. What a different it can make for the player playing the game. Comparing this to a player playing a game with a bland setting, no history given, no interesting stories to tell about it. Now let's go to the other setting that's riddled with areas and places you don't even explore in the main plot. Dungeons and towns everywhere. Some that you can miss easily while playing. Now let's have a history, which intrigues your players and allows the player to connect more with the setting he is in. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but that makes a difference to me. Now like I said in my previous article, this isn't a guide or a step by step how to. This is my opinion and suggestions if your settling from writers block. Maybe to even give you a new approach on things. Because other will tell you, setting is a crucial part of any game. Now break out pens and paper once again, the lesson can now begin!

II. The Geography
Let's start with geography, now it's more than just some stupid subject you had to take back in school with the most hated of all teachers. Before we have a history and things to add into it. It needs a geography. What things do you want to add to your world. Right now it's a boundless ocean and flat landmass. Do you want mountains, or deserts? Do you want an arctic tundra in the middle of the world? This isn't planet earth, the arctics don't need to be the north and south poles of the world. Your world doesn't even have to be round. What if your world is the flat world believed by many Europeans what if that's a side quest to sail off the end of the earth and go to some secret dungeon. What if gravity never existed? You wanted everyone to have fly in the sky to get to places. Also it doesn't have to have mountains, deserts, and oceans. What if the world is a desert planet and water is very scarce. I see a plot forming from that as well. The world is your oyster, nothing is unconventional. Your the creator, and your characters will go along the world seeing this as all normal. When a player plays a game, he suspends all disbelief. If they didn't they be constantly thinking: Wait this could never happen or, those are extinct. Suspension of disbelief is something players go in when they play. So nothing will seem to out of the ordinary in your world, unless you want it to be. Now draw up your map, if you have terrible art skills write down were everything is. Write what's north of the world, what's south, whatever. Add limits in geography and where characters can go on their feet. Everything should be explorable at some point in the game. Soon your small world will grow into regions, then into nations, then into countries, then into continents, and even into worlds separated by space and time.

III. Creating a History
Take out your history books is a phrase mentioned by many. Now you don't have a history book, you have a huge book with blank pages. Now it's time to fill it up with all history. You write what things happened and when they happened. Does the people know how the world was created? Then write down how it was created. Do they all have certain religious creation stories? Then write a few creation stories that was done from some divine intervention or even some cosmic coincidence. How were the mountains form, how were the seas brought upon. Did the continents always look like this, did they shift. If so write it down. Start with your natural history, history not usually written down. Write what happened before life ever existed or when it was very primal. Then you can focus on recorded history such as great wars that were fought, empires that were began or brought down. Civilizations that were wiped out, colonization of other lands, and governments that were formed under the years. Maybe your nations have all different forms of government. Maybe it's a monarchy, an autocracy, a dictatorship, maybe it's a democracy like a lot of countries today. You can write down pages of history and it might now ever be explained to the players, maybe just hinted at. Or there were no recollections of it being there at all. But it's still there for you, you can expand on the history. You have the ins of outs of your history, so you don't create blank spots of history, or things that are just so out of place.

IV.Setting Up Cities and Governments
We have a geography of the world and a history which builds upon it. Let's make the towns and cities, and dungeons that your player may visit. Let's build the empires of your world, their capital cities. Their minor cities and villages. Let's build the dungeons formed by natural means or man made dungeons. Let's build our technology, let's build our governments. Let's assign our rulers. Like I said before, don't do the bare minimum, make extra cities that might not be even involved in the main storyline. Players like to explore, if they venture outside their planned track and find nothing, then it's boring and unimaginative. But if you have cities, continents, even other worlds not involved with the main storyline, if your player stumbles upon them. It will keep them interested and a nice break from the main plot, they'll be happy with all their explorations. And the repetitiveness of your game will vanish. It racks up play-time, adding more thing to see and do. But do not forget the importance of your main cities however, were does the main plot take you. To what places. Since you have a geography, you know what life might be in your city, your usual climate. Even the rescources it has, and you have your history. So you can explain why it was built there, how long did it take and by who? It evolves the experience by a lot by doing this. Making nice cities will be easier now, and they won't be thinking. Why am I in this dump?

V.Conclusion
We've come to the end of my article. I hope you enjoyed reading this, I hope you learned something. I thank you for even reading this. As long as one person out there finds this article useful, I feel like I have done my job in writing this article. So please go out there and make your games, and never be afraid to ask for help. We all need help. Make that great big world of yours and maybe I can use you as an example later in my articles. You never know who will find it interested. I thank the readers who read this, the staff of rpgmaker.net who allow this to go on their website. Later everyone. I'll be back.

Until then,
Nicholas (NoblemanNick)