What have you all done or been doing for maps and world design?
7 thoughts on “Setting prep!”
Oooh, are you running a City or Colony game?
As for me, I tend not to prep beyond my bare-bones Jump Point, to the point of not even knowing the major terrain features or climate, and asking the players instead. After all, why should I do all the work 😉
I’ve polled the players about what their location is like, asking about things like biggest natural problem, any predators, advantages and disadvantages facing the Colony, and the like. For maps, I use a hex grid and just dump all the cool locations they named onto it, and made a copy of that hex grid overlaid on an aerial photo that was “close enough” to what the described.
So yeah, mostly just grilling the players and adapting to what they gave me.
I’m making lists of cool stuff that could be in the world, a simple starmap with a couple of very broad sectors (like the Kazok empire, unexplored space etc.). That way, nothing is fixed in the world and open to player input, while at the same time I have stuff to draw from if I’m stuck for good ideas during play.
I am a low plagiarist when it comes to this sort of thing. For general world production, if needed, I grab the tables in Sine Nomine’s Stars Without Number, which gives you just enough information to make worlds Very Interesting without bogging down. For a possible city setting, I’m looking at a sci fi miniatures skirmish game called 5150 New Beginnings and the official location of “New Hope City”…which is less a comprehensive setting and more a loose collection of notes to give the emergent story and occasional blaster fight some structure.
Most recently, I’ve started thinking about one of my world settings from SWN as a UW setting. Full development will have to wait for FBH, assuming we get Psionics, but in the meantime I get my catgirls-with-blasters fix.
I really need to take a detailed look at how SWN handled their tables/planet stuff. Thanks for the reminder.
There will absolutely be Psionics in FBH! In fact, I’ll probably have a preview of the Kinetic career up this weekend.
Sean Gomes Glad to be of some assistance, good sir!
Sean Gomes Oh man, you have to — SWN’s tables are the absolute best
Oooh, are you running a City or Colony game?
As for me, I tend not to prep beyond my bare-bones Jump Point, to the point of not even knowing the major terrain features or climate, and asking the players instead. After all, why should I do all the work 😉
I’ve polled the players about what their location is like, asking about things like biggest natural problem, any predators, advantages and disadvantages facing the Colony, and the like. For maps, I use a hex grid and just dump all the cool locations they named onto it, and made a copy of that hex grid overlaid on an aerial photo that was “close enough” to what the described.
So yeah, mostly just grilling the players and adapting to what they gave me.
I’m making lists of cool stuff that could be in the world, a simple starmap with a couple of very broad sectors (like the Kazok empire, unexplored space etc.). That way, nothing is fixed in the world and open to player input, while at the same time I have stuff to draw from if I’m stuck for good ideas during play.
I am a low plagiarist when it comes to this sort of thing. For general world production, if needed, I grab the tables in Sine Nomine’s Stars Without Number, which gives you just enough information to make worlds Very Interesting without bogging down. For a possible city setting, I’m looking at a sci fi miniatures skirmish game called 5150 New Beginnings and the official location of “New Hope City”…which is less a comprehensive setting and more a loose collection of notes to give the emergent story and occasional blaster fight some structure.
Most recently, I’ve started thinking about one of my world settings from SWN as a UW setting. Full development will have to wait for FBH, assuming we get Psionics, but in the meantime I get my catgirls-with-blasters fix.
I really need to take a detailed look at how SWN handled their tables/planet stuff. Thanks for the reminder.
There will absolutely be Psionics in FBH! In fact, I’ll probably have a preview of the Kinetic career up this weekend.
Sean Gomes Glad to be of some assistance, good sir!
Sean Gomes Oh man, you have to — SWN’s tables are the absolute best