09 Places

Title

This is the Places blogdex page. It includes articles on:

Fantasy Locations,
Sci-Fi Locations,
Real Locations,
Climate & Weather,
- The “Diversity Of Seasons” series
Choosing Locations,
Creating Locations, and
Using Locations

See Also the “Cities & Architecture” section of the Campaign Creation page, the “Locations” section of the Adventures page, and the product reviews on the Publishing page.

A Campaign Mastery 750th-post Celebration includes advice from a host of GMs on just about every subject as the climax of the party (and some from stragglers in the comments). So I’m listing it at the start of each page, as well as a handful of places where specific content warrants inclusion.
	Fantasy Locations See also “Mike’s Fantasy Tavern Generator” in the “Cities & Architecture” section of the Campaign Creation page. See also the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series in the Magic section of the Campaign Creation page.
Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder – For my sixth post in the September 2013 Blog Carnival, I raise the question of Wonders Of The Known World and the qualities they need to possess in order to live up to the label; four reasons they are hard to do well, ten reasons why they are worth doing, and 12 sources of wonders to help overcome those difficulties. Six Wonders: A selected assortment of Wondrous Locations for a fantasy RPG – When I sat down to list ideas for the September 2013 Blog Carnival, I only intended to do one article on Wonders. But when you get inspired… The offerings in this post are: The Broken Man, The Pool Of Reflection, The Palace Of Winter, The Citadel Of Secrets, The Spire Of Contention, and the Library Of Shelves. Five More Wonders: Another assortment of Locations for a fantasy RPG – My Ninth article for the September 2013 Blog Carnival continues where the last one left off, with five more Wonders Of The Known World (that I didn’t have time to complete for the previous article). This offers The Pyramid of Reason, The Caves Of Rockbeard, The Rainbow Of Eternity, The Desert Of Gold, and The Emerald Falls. Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – My front window overlooks the twentieth busiest road in Sydney. From traffic patterns and estimating how much busier those other roads are relative to this one, I estimate that the busiest road in the city takes part in ten million personal stories a day about the inhabitants of the city. Note that at the time this article was written, the city’s population was being officially measured as just over five million – a factoid I’m including to let you scale that 10M stories to other metropolises. “George” is an individual who is resident here. One day, he is approached by a stranger named “Sam”. From their conversation, if it’s extensive enough, George not only comes to life as an NPC, but so do various facts about the city and what it’s like to live in it, using a technique that I include and a deck of cards. This technique is fast enough that it can be applied “live at the table” and even interactively with the players contributing. This article has also been translated into French at Dix millions d’histoires de gens, and has been rated as 9.3 out of 10. If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis – You may be wondering what a synopsis from my superhero campaign’s archives is doing in this section. In a nutshell, this takes what is essentially a fantasy idea, wraps it in a classic sci-fi trope, adds a new perspective on life if you could shrink to a quantum scale, and makes the whole thing palatable in a sci-fi or superhero context. The quantum stuff alone makes it worth including, never mind the implied example of how to “retool” ideas from one genre to another. Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping. Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places – How to choose a location, how to delineate it, how to present it, and how to use it to your benefit. Plus lots of advice on the side about travel, and the spacing between settlements, and other location-oriented tips. Thatch and Confusion – creating a village – “for a fantasy RPG” is what’s missing from this article title. Don’t miss the articles at the bottom of the page, which show that I got a little carried away in the writing – because I wanted to be able to set an adventure in my example village, I built it accordingly, but failed to note where you should stop if you don’t want to do that. There are also some great reader contributions there, including a reader-supplied list of 100 points of conflict around which to build your village. This article also discusses larger population centers briefly, and the process (modified as described in the article) scales up as necessary. Abandoned Islands – Iconic Adventure Settings – I discuss why abandoned islands are one of my favorite settings for a whole adventure or part of one, look at abandoned islands in modern settings, and in fantasy settings, then share some tips and tricks for using google image search to ferret out real islands for the purpose. Some of those tricks are still valid, even though the Image Search interface has been completely redesigned at least twice since. Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive) – a reader asks why I go to so much effort to distinguish Elves from Drow when the latter are an offshoot of the former. I spend most of the article looking at the advantages that derive from making the races of a campaign distinctive, not only from each other within the campaign, but from other campaigns, before providing some resources and sources of inspiration on the subject. Pt 3: Tab A into Slot B provides a template for creating exotic spell components and then dives into some examples: Perfect Octarine (carries Cosmological implications), Etherial Alloy (carries more Cosmological implications), Firesphere (logically consistent with the preceding two, same implications), Ghostwood (carries Cosmological implications, Life & Death implications, and plot implications; mandates sentient trees; consistent with Positive and Negative Planes being two poles of a single structure), Heavenly Airs (profound implications for Death & The Afterlife, profound plot implications). Many of these substances are extremely valuable. After detailing those 5, I was completely out of time… Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element. Inn Through The Side Door – Reinvigorating the cliché – This was a filler article that I wrote and then set aside until the next time I was caught short. After discussing the cliché of starting a campaign with the PCs gathering in an Inn, I offer 26 plot seeds for interesting and new twists on the idea. Ask The GMs: On Big Dungeons – Johnn and I both offer advice on handling a big dungeon, then my fellow GMs rip that advice to shreds, forcing me to discover and solve the real issue with Big Dungeons (and other larger settings like Cities). Big is not necessarily better, but it can be – if approached in the right way by the author and the GM. Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth. The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this. What Empowers A Curse and other dangerous questions – For the September 2015 Blog Carnival, I ask “What empowers a Curse” in D&D / Pathfinder and find that the answer has some profound implications, potentially touching on everything from Cosmology to why Gods need congregations. Although I talk down the value of a curse sub-system within the game mechanics, I’ve actually found it necessary to craft one for an as-yet-unpublished (Jan 2019) series of articles. Visualizing what’s going on is a critical GM skill, but any reasonable list of exactly what’s involved makes the task seem almost impossible.Obviously, it’s not, but beginners can be overwhelmed at first. With experience, we develop new techniques that are far more efficient and effective, so subtly and gradually that we’re hardly aware of it happening. Which makes it kinda hard to study other GMs’ techniques. In I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, I detail (with examples and an exercise for the reader) the six techniques that I use to develop and manage my visualizations, how to translate them into description, and the big differences (aside from being able to try different things to see whether or not they work) that doing it in advance makes vs improv. When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.
	Sci-Fi Locations See Also the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series in the Magic section of the Campaign Creation page.
Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder – For my sixth post in the September 2013 Blog Carnival, I raise the question of Wonders Of The Known World and the qualities they need to possess in order to live up to the label; four reasons they are hard to do well, ten reasons why they are worth doing, and 12 sources of wonders to help overcome those difficulties. Still More Wonders: Fifteen Amazing Locations for a Sci-Fi RPG – I snuck this one in because September 2013 wasn’t quite long enough to fit everything into the Blog Carnival (actually, it was delayed because I needed an extra half-week to deal with Fantasy Wonders and because I was having trouble gathering enough ideas. Thanks to the players in my superhero campaign, I got there in the end). This article offers The Orouberus Molecule, The Cascade Nebula, “Birth And Death” By Garl, The Dyson Superplant Of Epsilon Centauri, The Spiderweb Of Rukh-C, The Torus of Andraphones, The Confusion of Hydra, The Waltz Of Minos IV, The Diaphanous Assembly of Omicron Boötis, The Billboard Of Greeting, The Halo Rock, The Necrotis Plague Planet, The “Cosmic String” of 18 Delphini, The Arena Of Canopia, and The Fireworx Swarm. Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – My front window overlooks the twentieth busiest road in Sydney. From traffic patterns and estimating how much busier those other roads are relative to this one, I estimate that the busiest road in the city takes part in ten million personal stories a day about the inhabitants of the city. Note that at the time this article was written, the city’s population was being officially measured as just over five million – a factoid I’m including to let you scale that 10M stories to other metropolises. “George” is an individual who is resident here. One day, he is approached by a stranger named “Sam”. From their conversation, if it’s extensive enough, George not only comes to life as an NPC, but so do various facts about the city and what it’s like to live in it, using a technique that I include and a deck of cards. This technique is fast enough that it can be applied “live at the table” and even interactively with the players contributing. This article has also been translated into French at Dix millions d’histoires de gens, and has been rated as 9.3 out of 10. If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis – You may be wondering what a synopsis from my superhero campaign’s archives is doing in this section. In a nutshell, this takes what is essentially a fantasy idea, wraps it in a classic sci-fi trope, adds a new perspective on life if you could shrink to a quantum scale, and makes the whole thing palatable in a sci-fi or superhero context. The quantum stuff alone makes it worth including, never mind the implied example of how to “retool” ideas from one genre to another. Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping. Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places – How to choose a location, how to delineate it, how to present it, and how to use it to your benefit. Plus lots of advice on the side about travel, and the spacing between settlements, and other location-oriented tips. Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth. The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this. The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this. When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.
	Real Locations See Also the subsection on the “Diversity Of Seasons” series within “Climate & Weather,” below..
Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder – For my sixth post in the September 2013 Blog Carnival, I raise the question of Wonders Of The Known World and the qualities they need to possess in order to live up to the label; four reasons they are hard to do well, ten reasons why they are worth doing, and 12 sources of wonders to help overcome those difficulties. Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – My front window overlooks the twentieth busiest road in Sydney. From traffic patterns and estimating how much busier those other roads are relative to this one, I estimate that the busiest road in the city takes part in ten million personal stories a day about the inhabitants of the city. Note that at the time this article was written, the city’s population was being officially measured as just over five million – a factoid I’m including to let you scale that 10M stories to other metropolises. “George” is an individual who is resident here. One day, he is approached by a stranger named “Sam”. From their conversation, if it’s extensive enough, George not only comes to life as an NPC, but so do various facts about the city and what it’s like to live in it, using a technique that I include and a deck of cards. This technique is fast enough that it can be applied “live at the table” and even interactively with the players contributing. This article has also been translated into French at Dix millions d’histoires de gens, and has been rated as 9.3 out of 10. Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping. Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places – How to choose a location, how to delineate it, how to present it, and how to use it to your benefit. Plus lots of advice on the side about travel, and the spacing between settlements, and other location-oriented tips. Abandoned Islands – Iconic Adventure Settings – I discuss why abandoned islands are one of my favorite settings for a whole adventure or part of one, look at abandoned islands in modern settings, and in fantasy settings, then share some tips and tricks for using google image search to ferret out real islands for the purpose. Some of those tricks are still valid, even though the Image Search interface has been completely redesigned at least twice since. The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
	Climate & Weather
Ask The GMs: Weather, Not Climate – How do you give your campaign realistic weather without overloading the GM with admin tasks? Johnn & I offer a variety of simulation systems, but not everyone agrees with us. Which is fine by me. A strong wind blows: Environmental effects for RPGs – This is the second of four articles containing the House Rules in use within the Pulp campaign that I co-GM. This is all about cold weather and wind-chill and their very dangerous effects, bringing together research from a number of sources. The rules are available as a free download from the site. These rules can be adapted to any campaign. I recommend anyone reading this article to also read the unexpected follow-up, Stormy Weather – making unpleasant conditions player-palatable about how to use weather in-game as something other than a boring-but-deadly background element.

		The Diversity Of Seasons Series Introduction .
	Content Goes Here

	Creating Locations See Also the “Touchstones Of Unification” series on the Genre Overviews page.
A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents. Part 2 of the Basics For Beginners series, Creation, could be more accurately entitled ‘creativity’. It starts by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”. Visualizing what’s going on is a critical GM skill, but any reasonable list of exactly what’s involved makes the task seem almost impossible.Obviously, it’s not, but beginners can be overwhelmed at first. With experience, we develop new techniques that are far more efficient and effective, so subtly and gradually that we’re hardly aware of it happening. Which makes it kinda hard to study other GMs’ techniques. In I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, I detail (with examples and an exercise for the reader) the six techniques that I use to develop and manage my visualizations, how to translate them into description, and the big differences (aside from being able to try different things to see whether or not they work) that doing it in advance makes vs improv. When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

	Choosing Locations See Also the “Touchstones Of Unification” series on the Genre Overviews page.
Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping. Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places – How to choose a location, how to delineate it, how to present it, and how to use it to your benefit. Plus lots of advice on the side about travel, and the spacing between settlements, and other location-oriented tips. Abandoned Islands – Iconic Adventure Settings – I discuss why abandoned islands are one of my favorite settings for a whole adventure or part of one, look at abandoned islands in modern settings, and in fantasy settings, then share some tips and tricks for using google image search to ferret out real islands for the purpose. Some of those tricks are still valid, even though the Image Search interface has been completely redesigned at least twice since. Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars. Phase 8: Enfleshing from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure to form the additional ’tissue’ referred to by the title. The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
	Using Locations
Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – My front window overlooks the twentieth busiest road in Sydney. From traffic patterns and estimating how much busier those other roads are relative to this one, I estimate that the busiest road in the city takes part in ten million personal stories a day about the inhabitants of the city. Note that at the time this article was written, the city’s population was being officially measured as just over five million – a factoid I’m including to let you scale that 10M stories to other metropolises. “George” is an individual who is resident here. One day, he is approached by a stranger named “Sam”. From their conversation, if it’s extensive enough, George not only comes to life as an NPC, but so do various facts about the city and what it’s like to live in it, using a technique that I include and a deck of cards. This technique is fast enough that it can be applied “live at the table” and even interactively with the players contributing. This article has also been translated into French at Dix millions d’histoires de gens, and has been rated as 9.3 out of 10. Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places – How to choose a location, how to delineate it, how to present it, and how to use it to your benefit. Plus lots of advice on the side about travel, and the spacing between settlements, and other location-oriented tips. An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session – If you’re human, you make mistakes. If you’re a fair or better GM, you learn from them. Better still, you can learn from the mistakes of others. This article (and the discussion in the subsequent comments) is one big mea culpa on my part (and on behalf of my Pulp GM) for a total trainwreck of a game session. I detail what went wrong, why it happened, what could have been done to avert the trainwreck and why it wasn’t, what was done to get the campaign back on track, and conclude with ten lessons that I (and any reader) can take out of the experience, including what early warning signs were there to see but were ignored. In the comments, there’s a discussion between myself and one of the most-affected players, extending several of the threads mentioned above. How effective were the lessons identified? This was more than four years ago, as I compile the Blogdex, and not only is the campaign still running (with the same GMs) but the same player is still a regular. Now remember that the trainwreck was supposedly a bigger-than-life adventure to celebrate the campaign’s tenth anniversary… The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – The players want to get to the interesting stuff, the GM wants them to feel what the world around the PCs is like, to immerse them in its colors and textures, and to make them feel like their characters are part of that world and not simply passing through. Over time, a series of level-based compromises has evolved (this article is specifically about D&D / Pathfinder and similar level-based games) in which both sides get some of what they want – and in which the GM gets compensated for giving in to the players, whether they realize that or not. Ask The GMs: On Big Dungeons – Johnn and I both offer advice on handling a big dungeon, then my fellow GMs rip that advice to shreds, forcing me to discover and solve the real issue with Big Dungeons (and other larger settings like Cities). Big is not necessarily better, but it can be – if approached in the right way by the author and the GM. The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this. Visualizing what’s going on is a critical GM skill, but any reasonable list of exactly what’s involved makes the task seem almost impossible.Obviously, it’s not, but beginners can be overwhelmed at first. With experience, we develop new techniques that are far more efficient and effective, so subtly and gradually that we’re hardly aware of it happening. Which makes it kinda hard to study other GMs’ techniques. In I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, I detail (with examples and an exercise for the reader) the six techniques that I use to develop and manage my visualizations, how to translate them into description, and the big differences (aside from being able to try different things to see whether or not they work) that doing it in advance makes vs improv. When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.