James D'Amato put his experience in RPG gaming and his skills in improvisation together to bring us his next installment in The Ultimate RPG Guide Series: The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide: Prompts and Activities to Create and Customize Your Own Game World. Going forward, I will simply refer to it as TURPGGMWBG:PAATCACYOGW for short. [Editor: Um, no. You can't do that. Just use "The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide"] Oh... Okay, you're the boss...
So, what has D'Amato served us in this long-named Worldbuilding Guide? Well, as the last part of the name indicates, inside you'll find questions, prompts and interactive activities to assist you in creating your own world of Fantasy. Or Sci-Fi... Horror... Cyberpunk... Steampunk... well, really fill-in-the-blank-punk. It does this by having five chapters - one each for Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror and "X-Punk", which is explained within that chapter, but evidently all of the "Punk" genres share certain underlying similarities in infrastructure, allowing one chapter to be equally applicable to your punk flavor of choice. If none of that is exactly what you're looking for, or if you just want a little bit "more" for one of those genres, there's a generic "Neutral" chapter at the end that just works for any and all worldbuilding into which you may endeavor. These prompts are the kind of things that are often used in improv and they help to get the creative mind turning. And, once you get "going" in creating your own worlds, you can find yourself inspired and invigorated to move forward and create new and interesting environments and immersive and realistic-seeming societies.
I expected to be most interested in the Fantasy chapter, and I was, indeed, quite interested in some of the prompts and activities within. For one, the Fantasy chapter breaks down Magic into six "aspects" that help to define how magic is viewed in your world, what it is capable of doing, who might wield it and at what costs. Additionally, James presents six different "paths" of magic, which do a great deal to describe the "feel" of different systems of magic: Scientific, Artisan, Arcane, Natural, Legendary and Forbidden. For example, a type of magic that deals with alchemical reagents is going to feel quite different from one based on the manipulation of or perhaps reading of astronomical phenomenon or one based on manipulations of pure mathematics that describe the world around us... and those are just some of the scientific ones. Imagine how different these would be from Artisan styles, such as Bardic performances or carving Dwarven runes. When you consider these different aspects and work your way through the other prompts and considerations, you end up with not only a feel for what magic is like, but how magic fits into the world and how magic and its practitioners are viewed by townspeople.
The Fantasy chapter also has some rather interesting prompts and activities to create your own pantheon of deities that considers not only their domains, personalities and temperaments, but also how they are related to each other and how they might interact or be at odds with each other. Additionally, there are exercises to define different factions and cities that your adventurers will encounter and the benefits they may hold.
For those who prefer to explore and develop their own futuristic world, the Sci-Fi chapter will interactively help you decide how technology has advanced in this future of yours and what effects that has had on society. There are also activities to determine the scale, range and mode of travel, defining how far and how fast your space-faring adventurers will be able to travel, as well as how much time that means they'll be spending inside of their ship. Additionally, there are exercises to help you generate concepts for the types of spaceships that your players might pilot and what the big, bad, oppressive enemy organization's ships and dress code would look like. This fits equally well with the ranks of Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars or Emperor Ming from Flash Gordon.
When I started reading the Sci-Fi chapter, my mind immediately went to Star Wars, even though I know it's more Science Fantasy than Science Fiction. However, I wasn't really familiar with "Punk" genres. As it turns out, the Punk genre as described in the X-Punk chapter is all about a world/universe being oppressed by a controlling and corrupt power where conforming is the norm and only oddball misfits are willing to stand against those oppressors to take down the corrupt system. This led me to wonder whether Star Wars would actually be something like "Laser Punk." A brief search on the Internet revealed that most people who are pondering that aspect of Star Wars seem to agree that it's between "Ray Punk" and "Diesel Punk" (Yes, those are both things). This chapter helps you to define the oppressive regime in charge, how they manage to be oppressive, the subtle (and not so subtle) ways that you can see their influence and intimidation in the world and includes exercises to help you come up with slang terms that the punks use that adds a unique flavor and "lived-in" feel to your setting. And, of course, there are activities to help define the megacorps that operate above the law and actively work to oppress, suppress and control the masses and eliminate resistance such as our heroes. Now, don't think that megacorps only apply to Cyberpunk or futuristic Punk subgenres... a "megacorp" could just as easily be a company setting up a colony back in colonial times or a coal-mining company trying to use its control over access to a life-giving fuel to shape society as it sees fit. Basically, where there's tyranny and monopoly, you've got a "megacorp".
I'm not a fan of Horror, whether it be in games, movies or literature. Even so, I did find the chapter on Horror to be somewhat interesting. Horror presents a greater challenge than other genres, because one of the scariest things about Horror is the not knowing. D'Amato explains that, as such, there are important moments in Horror where all we see is the effects of the monster, not the monster, itself. He explains ways to heighten this building tension and dread and has interactive activities that help you quickly put together events that will bring your party a little closer to understanding the nature of the horror they're facing in these moments of discovering what the monster has wrought. He also includes activities and prompts to help you determine how the monster is connected to the location in which it lives and what connection it has to the people who live there, as well as keys to making a working end battle and setting the scene for that battle appropriately.
The final chapter, "Neutral," has some detailed activities to help define some fairly generic concepts that could be useful in any genre. These include ways to come up with the Big Bad Guy that your heroes are trying to thwart, sought-after prizes that may attract the attention of your party, and how to breathe some life into the (many) bars/cafes/taverns that your party will encounter to give them a feeling of uniqueness and substance. Additional exercises help you to create interesting patrons, lively cities, notable landmarks and interesting events to help bring your settings to life.
In general, I've liked most of the books in The Ultimate RPG Guide Series series. The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide might be my favorite, so far. It expects the reader to have access to certain randomizers, but we're primarily talking about a d6 and a standard deck of playing cards. There is one section in each chapter called, "d20 Questions" that has 20 different questions you can choose from to answer about your setting. I would expect most Game Masters to have a d20 accessible, but if not, you can find randomizers online to give you values or you could just skim over the questions and answer the ones that "speak" to you. I remember there was an exercise somewhere that called for a d8 as well, but again, not a big ask. Other than that, all you need to bring to the table is your creativity and imagination and some manner of writing down the details of your new campaign setting. One point of complexity could be working your new setting into an existing game. You might come up with a really interesting magic system, but if you want to use it in a D&D game, you'll need to determine if you're adding a new magic system, modifying an existing one or replacing all magic in the game. And, if it's a replacement, what impact does this have on magic-wielding characters in the game? Are you still using the spells from D&D or have you replaced all of that with magical effects? Adding a new type of magic or customizing how a certain type of magic user practices magic can allow for unique experiences, while not discarding all of the existing game mechanics from a given system.
I think that this Worldbuilding Guide could be useful and inspiring to players looking into creating their first world or old pros looking to bring something new or that certain spark to their campaigns. Highly recommended.
