Summary
One of the more exciting aspects of being a dungeon master forDungeons & Dragonsis getting to craft your own world for your players to explore. Even if inspired by the decades-old worlds of Faerûn and Eberron, having something you make yourself can give you more control and allow you to improvise freely.
With this also comes the challenge of having to actually design a world in the first place, which can be both tedious and time-consuming, leading to mistakes and overlooked details. Luckily, a handful of the most common mistakes can be easily avoided while also acting as a source of further inspiration.
10Starting Too Big
It’s easy to want to build out the entire empire, or even world, that your players will be galavanting inside, as establishing all of your juicy lore can get you carried away. The problem is, you can be giving yourself far too much work that will ultimately never see the light of day.
When you put pen to paper, especially when drawing a map, don’t start with entire continents but rather a coast or group of towns. This way, you can focus on the parts of the world that your players will be interacting with first, then expand the finer details of the world at large only when necessary.
9Too Much Plot
Worldbuilding and designing a specific campaign usually go hand-in-hand, forming one to match the other with gameplay in mind. What can set you into a trap is planning out the events of the campaign too far ahead before your players have even begun to rummage through it.
This can lead to false expectations where your big villain speech never even happens because the rogue never found the hidden map or your paladin ignored the warnings of a lingering curse. Start withan opening plot hookto get your players going while having notes on a few key conflicts happening in the background.
8Inaccurate Or Confusing Distances
An often overlooked aspect of designing a map and its major features is determining how far apart they are from one another and trying to keep these distances consistent and accurate. You can easily ruin immersion by making the time it takes to travel to new locations far too long or short.
Start by considering what type of campaign this world will foster. In Curse of Strahd, for example, it only takes mere hours to travel between various locations, making road encounters and survival checks less important than what major locations hold.
Pages 36-41 of the2024 Dungeon Master’s Guidecontains useful information on calculating distance and travel activities.
7Lack Of Guilds Or Factions
It can be easy to forget to blend the mechanics of D&D with worldbuilding, especially when considering all the factions players have access to. While you don’t need the history and impact of each faction and guild, having a name and key feature is important for some players to build their character around.
These will likely include more than one bard college, monastic orders, druid circles, cleric groups, and thieves and artisan guilds. You can also allow your players to do some of the work for you, offering for them to create their own faction in their backstory if they want something specific to them.
6No Lost Remnants
Unless you are building a fairly unique world with this one, specific detail, yours didn’t come into existence a mere generation ago. More than just to give a background for plot hooks and dungeons, you should have evidence of forgotten or ruined civilizations.
Just a vague description of an impossibly tall tower in the distance, crumbling from ages of wear, is enough to get your players hooked while also serving as a simple landmark. Because of the inherent mystery of lost ruins, you don’t even need to do the tedious work of crafting detailed lore.
5Uniform Regions
In a world filled with magic and mystery, traveling across various locations only to see the same forest or plains over and over can make the world feel stale. Having unique and magical details that separate individual locations or regions can help sell the idea of a fantasy world.
This can be a red moss that spreads across most of the ground, mountains with floating rocks, or bioluminescent bark from magic trees. Not only can this serve as a jumping off point for various plot hooks, but it will help your players remember where they are after a week or more between sessions.
This can also help you name locations. Giant, red trees got a forest off the coast of California named the Redwood Forest.
4Lack Of No Man’s Lands
While not necessary for every type of campaign, most maps in traditional fantasy worlds have large sections uninhabited by traditional civilization. Making sure to include these types of regions can add new challenges to gameplay while also serving as a backdrop for nefarious schemes.
This can be a toxic swamp only home to monstrous creatures or a vast, scorching desert where almost nothing survives, giving your players an excuse to make survival checks and use niche spells they usually don’t get the chance to. It might also be a location players get randomly teleported to after a magical mishap.
3Ignoring The Planes
Tied to various creatures, character subclasses, and many spells, the various planes serve as a vital function to both the mechanics and worldbuilding of D&D. While you don’t have to build an entire new series of universes, establishing how the planes interact with your world is important.
This is due to the fact that many of the elements of these planes have unique pieces of lore tied directly to Faerûn, such as Asmodeus, Primus, and most ofthe outer planesthemselves. You should verify you know how the planes affect your world and which to keep, change, or throw away.
Chapter six of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide covers all the planes and unique ways to craft your own cosmology.
2Not Enough Rulers
While it’s easy to establish a single ruler across an entire region in an effort to simplify its politics, this can lock you into unimmersive worldbuilding as you design outwards. Even empires have kingdoms within them with monarchies or councils ruling them, if ultimately answerable to a larger authority.
This also includes minor lords and even mayors, creating a chain of leadership that makes the world feel complex and nuanced, mainly acting as a source of conflict that isn’t just demons and cultists. Having warring leaders use their authority to close trade routes or castle gates can create an interesting challenge for players.
1Forgetting Other Heroes Existed
In the ages where kingdoms have thrived, surely there have been world-ending dangers or powerful enemies threatening the lives of everyday citizens. Without this history, it can feel like your players are superheroes by simply standing up to a local kobold infestation.
While you don’t need a detailed account of every hero and their deeds, a statue in the town square or an ancient rift in the earth can make your world seem inherently dangerous. While these details seem small, they have a big impact on making the world feel lived-in and realistic.
