Ravenloft is the home to the Vampire Strahd who has been trapped there and lives an eternal life. All the people are trapped there in fact, and in the 5th Edition Adventure, The Curse of Strahd, characters are pulled from the Forgotten Realms into Ravenloft. Not just the people, but souls as well. There is no rest for anyone, because when you die your soul will be put into the next child born. And if there are more people than souls, so be it, those people are shells of people going about their routines that have been created for them.

Most of the games that you’re going to play in Ravenloft are going to be surrounding trying to lift the curse and take out Strahd. Even if it means that you can’t leave Ravenloft, to let souls be able to leave and have rest is going to be a driving force to the game. And campaigns in Ravenloft are going to be more deadly by nature because resurrection magics don’t work in the setting, so if you’re dead, you’re dead and your soul will be reborn, but you won’t be adventuring anymore. Granted, there’s a chance that if you die, you’re just becoming a vampire and joining Strahd’s undead.

When thinking about this setting, besides the vampire, it’s going to feel different because instead of the more traditional fantasy feeling houses, this world is going to have that run down Victorian era feel to it. And there are going to be things, cults, monsters, and the like, hiding around the corners. This is going to be a good setting for that spooky horror game as it’s going to feel more familiar to the players because it’s less steeped in fantasy. A downside to this is that you can’t play many/any other types of game in Ravenloft. There’s a lot of dark things to toy around with and you can focus on different pieces of it, though it’s likely to come back to Strahd in the end, but there is no grand world to travel through, there are mists that keep adventurers from being able to escape Raveloft and Strahd’s reach. So try as they might, the only momentary release from the darkness of the world is death. For that reason, you’re not likely to find happy NPC’s around Ravenloft as well. They are going to be feeling the weight of the darkness that locks them in the lands, and even though they don’t know who their soul was previously or have those memories, they’re going to be feel the weight of being reborn again and again.

This sort of setting is going to work well for some groups. I think that I could enjoy running or playing a game in it, but there has to be buy in that this is the type of game that you’re going to be playing. It’s going to be more depressing than your normal fantasy, and if you have new players, it’s not going to be what they expect from Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t know that Ravenloft is an advanced setting, I would say more so that it’s a setting that you need to warn people about. And not just once in passing, repeat it when picking to play in this setting, because it will feel different than they are expecting. But it does offer a lot of options in terms of delving into that spooky sort of game.

Have you played in the lands of Ravenloft and fought against the Vampire Strahd? How do you like it compared to the more fantasy focused worlds of D&D?

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Forgotten Realms
This is a high fantasy setting where you’re going to see all the content (almost) from Wizards of the Coast coming out in. It’s your typical fantasy setting where Dwarves act like Dwarves and Elves act like Elves. This setting can be seen as a little bit vanilla in how standard it is, but it also makes it an amazing jumping off point for new players because it has a level of familiarity to it. The main cities in the Forgotten Realms are going to be Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate.

Eberron
Eberron is a very different setting than your typical fantasy setting. Magic is basically used as technology in this world. And it isn’t just a world where you have your standard races that you can play, there are shifters, changlings, and monstrous races that you can play as well. What also makes this setting unique is that the setting and call the adventures are set after this great war has ended when a country wiped off the map do to some cataclysm, but it’s never stated what it is, so it leaves it open for players and DM’s to decide for their campaign. The setting is very pulp and noir in it’s feel.

Ravenloft
Another different sort of setting where it’s less your standard fantasy setting and more focused on a Victorian Gothic setting. It is also going to be focused on a lower level of magic. The land is ruled by a vampire, Strahd, that is basically locked into the cursed land and most adventures set in Ravenloft are going to be about finding out Strahd’s history and then dealing with him. In 5th Edition the Curse of Strahd adventure pulls players from the Forgotten Realms and sticks them into this setting that is different than the world that they know and they are stuck there until they can defeat Strahd, if they ever leave.

Dragonlance
One of the first, if not the first D&D setting, Dragonlance is going to be another epic fantasy setting. The world is greatly influenced by the deities and a lot of the stories revolve around the good deities fighting the evil deities or the return of dragons after centuries of absence. It’s going to be much more in the standard version of fantasy and another good jumping off world that you could use to introduce Dungeons and Dragons.

Grey Hawk
As compared to the epic fantasy settings, Grey Hawk is more of a sword and sorcery setting. It is going to be darker and more dangerous for your characters. Magic is going to be less common than some settings. Grey Hawk is more of a world that is on it’s way out and the adventures that you might be more about keeping the world going versus bringing the world into a new great place which some Epic Fantasy stories can focus on more so.

Spelljammer
Now, if you want something completely different. Spelljammer is kind of a setting, but it can hit up most settings as you have magically powered space ships. This is going to be a game where you want to hop between a lot of worlds, have grand space exploration sort of adventures, versus a more traditional traveling adventure like Lord of the Rings. It really isn’t something that they’d call it’s own setting anymore, but it’s something that you could easily focus on to move between the worlds in your own campaign.

Dark Sun
This used to be a great world, but now, magic has defiled and the land and use of magic can make it even worse. And there is a god-like Sorcerer King who is ruling and can you stay out of their wrath or will they crush you and your party as you try to survive the harsh lands. Dark Sun is going to be a lower magic game that is much more focused on the survival throughout the lands and avoiding the halflings who are jungle cannibals. There are some new races that you can play in this setting as well and one of the biggest types of magic is psionics.

Birthright
If you want to play that extremely epic nation level game, Birthright is going to be the setting of you. In Birthright every player is going to be connected to a nation and have some sort of royal blood. These campaigns are going to be more about that nation ruling, epic wars, versus that smaller adventuring party. Birthright is a setting you’re going to have to come up with or tweak combat for to make it done at a bigger scale.

Planescape
This setting wraps several planes of existence into a single setting. It also takes it out of the normal medieval fantasy setting and puts it into a more Victorian and pseudo-steam punk world. There is a city of Sigil which is the home base for the players and is generally where you are going to be sending them out to the other planes to have their adventures and then returning back to Sigil to resupply, recover, and get new adventures.

Now, that’s just the start of Dungeons and Dragons settings. There are new ones being created as well as old ones that might come back. Most of these settings don’t have official books for fifth edition, but if you find older world setting books, you’d be able to turn them into something that you can use in 5e.

Do you have a favorite setting or is there a setting that you’ve really wanted to play in?

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For the purposes of this post, I’m going to make a couple of assumptions:

1. You’ve already gotten the books
2. You’ve already roped some friends into playing with you

So, with those assumptions out of the way, let’s hop into the first topic:

Where in the World are you going to start?

I capitalized “world” for a reason — this part is going to be about world-building. It is one of the bigger things that eats into a DM’s time, and how you set up your world will make a big difference in your game. There are countries, continents, oceans, cities, and all sorts of other things that you need to think about when creating a world. You then follow that up with who is ruling this country, who is the mayor in that town, who runs the bar, what are the guards’ names, and so on. Next, you’ll need to come up with about 100k different Non-Player Characters (NPCs). Which sounds miserable.

Or instead of starting from scratch, you could spend a bunch of time reading D&D books to learn the history and lore of the land, and once you have all the backstory down, you could lay your own story on top of it — for example, you could develop your own version of existing worlds like the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Ravenloft. But again, this seems like a ton of work if you are just picking it up on the fly.

So what is one to do?

I’ve had luck with two different ways of world-building. I’ve used the Forgotten Realms as a base and placed my own city and my own little area on the Sword Coast and just ran a game that was completely unconnected to the rest of the D&D world but that was set in a place that already existed. I didn’t have to come up with what the land looked like; I could see it on a pre-made map. I was able to build out my own city creating a handful of different NPCs that the PCs (Player Characters) interacted with. This worked quite well, especially for a short game that ran for a handful of sessions. The players were in a limited area, and they were given solid direction within that area. If that game had been meant to go on any longer than just a few sessions, I would have needed to start studying up on the greater Sword Coast area.

The other way that I’ve done it (and the way I’m currently doing it for the world in Dungeons & Flagons) is to create a small chunk of the world as I go. I had only created the town of Green Sparrow in any depth, and knew some about the Lieth Barony. East Tadalia and Barbuga were both made up on the fly. Once I knew that the characters wanted to and were going to go to Barbuga, I sat down and came up with the seven pirate princes, and fleshed them out and drew a map of the island so I knew what that looked like. But even with this method, I still allowed Wizards of the Coast to do some of my work for me. For example, Chauntea is an actual D&D deity of nature, so I just piggy-backed off of that at some points.

Checklist Version:

1. Start by picking an area where the players are going to start the game.
2. Figure out what towns are nearby
3. Figure out any important taverns/buildings in the town
4. Figure out any important people in the town
5. Make it a living world

Item #1: Keep this a small area. I’m going to suggest setting it on a coast; this makes it easy to create a reason for all the players to be together. Also surround it with wilderness on the other sides. You don’t have to plan wilderness so much; you just need to know the type of terrain for it, and now you have a large play area to start with. You can draw a map of this area if you want, but it won’t always be needed. However, it might be necessary as you get to larger places, just for your own reference, even if the players never see it.

Item #2: Keep your main town smaller-sized. Even if the characters are from the big city, it is very possible for them to be traveling up and down the coast. And with a smaller city, you don’t need to plan out that large an area all at once.

Item #3: Most coastal towns are going to have a number of basic things going on. Docks of some sort, inn/taverns, and a handful of shops, for example. Decide what the important places are, and just focus on developing those, or allow your players to create them. The Stacked Fishwench, our tavern in Dungeons & Flagons, was clearly made up on the fly, and I didn’t even have to give it a name myself. But the name of the tavern clearly implies a bunch about the place, so I just ran with it.

Item #4: Again, keep this simple. Create the captain of the town guard, a mayor, the major players in the town, and not many others, to keep the number lower — both to make them easier to keep track of, and so you don’t have to do so many voices. For example, you can have a standard NPC bartender who has a single voice across multiple towns; you don’t have to be a person of a million different voices like Matthew Mercer to run an entertaining game.

Item #5: Even though you might have only built up a small section of the world, spend time making it a living world. Know how your PCs might affect what is going on in the world, for better or worse. Know that if they leave one thing alone, something else might happen elsewhere. Give the players real choices to make in your world, and as the world grows, have events happen that your PCs have only heard hints about; that makes the story even more immersive for the players.

Most importantly, make the world yours. If you want to spend the time up front to build a huge world in which you know the inns and outs of every town, you can do that. Just know that whatever you come up with, the important thing is to have fun doing it, and to give the players an ability to make a difference in the world.

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