How RPG Settings Make You a Better GM

One of the things I enjoy most about roleplaying games is that they give you a window into other worlds. They let you interact with and get to know a place that doesn’t exist. They also let you shape that world with your ideas, actions, and remarkably stupid decisions. Now that creates a big problem for anyone trying to design a setting for players and game masters to use. Namely, they have to develop an engaging, fleshed-out, and detailed world that’s also ready to be stress tested by the machinations of players and GMs. The only real solution to this little catch-22 is for designers to work with GMs to make the perfect setting. Here are four simple design decisions that apply to nearly every RPG setting, purpose-built to let you tell better stories in their world.

The Great Gridlock

Have you ever noticed that the Blood War isn’t getting anywhere? Or that, for some reason, Cthulhu is always still sleeping? I call this design technique the great gridlock. In RPG settings, nothing is ever happening! These tremendous forces of good and evil always seem to cancel each other out perfectly, and ultimately the status quo stays intact. This means that most settings are just one move away from world-changing events.

When you sit down to plan your campaign, find your setting’s local gridlock and see what happens when you tip the scales a little. If the mob and the police have an understanding because their leaders made a deal twenty years ago, what happens when one of those leaders dies? If the goblin horde stays in the mountains to avoid the dragons, what happens when those dragons move to a new home? The inherent tension that the gridlock creates means that releasing it can make your story significantly more compelling.

Use Your Limitations

Every setting has rules. When playing call of Cthulhu, all the technology you have access to is from the 1920s, so that creates several problems and limitations we don’t have in the modern world. If you ever want an example of how technology has changed our lives, go back to an old sitcom from the 1970s. A cell phone could solve nearly all the problems in those shows.

Oh no! Jessica is getting on the plane right now. I have to race to the airport and tell her I love her! Oh wait, I’ll just call her and solve this problem instantly.

You get the idea, but this neatly demonstrates how limitations create agency for stories. If a problem can’t be solved instantly and efficiently, you have to imagine creative solutions that break the mold. If there’s a dragon wreaking havoc on the countryside, and it cannot be killed by nonmagical weapons, then the world’s limitations have handed you a MacGuffin to use in your plot. The +1 Dragon Chopper sword might be hidden somewhere, and now defending your home against this dragon has gone from a combat encounter to an adventure!

When you start planning a campaign or feel stuck and need help figuring out where to go, look for the rules and the problems they create. There’s a lot of story in there.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

- Orson Welles ¹

Danger

Roleplaying settings are dangerous. Almost irrationally so. You can hardly walk down the streets of Baldur’s Gate without a Mind Flayer scooping you up to do something nefarious with your brain. The streets of Innsmouth and Night City won’t leave you feeling any better about life. That’s because, in these settings, the danger is a feature. The threat drives the most exciting plot and creates the most looming tension. The cult of fanatics plotting to take down your group is much less menacing if they only carry nerf guns.

So how do you use this to your advantage? A setting’s danger provides easy escalation and conflict that your players can engage with. If things are going too smoothly and you’re worried everyone at your table is starting to doze off, put the danger between them and their goal. Hell, crash an alien spaceship between them and their escape pods. Let’s see how they feel about xenomorphs!

Lastly, remember to leverage what makes the dangers so dangerous. I’ve heard too many stories of parties filled to the brim with holy worriers destroying the vampire that was meant to be stalking them in one turn. That’s not exciting or fun for anyone, so stop them from getting into a fair fight with their hunter. Being strong isn’t why vampires are scary. It obviously doesn’t hurt, but vampires are far more likely to use their power and influence to attack would-be heroes with waves of underlings. Or, if they prefer a more personal touch, they could abuse their regeneration and drain a party’s resources with smaller, more frequent attacks.

Blank Space

The designers working on RPG settings aren’t lazy, I swear. So when you find blank spaces and things left unexplained or unexplored, you can assume they were left that way on purpose. Look, all settings, no matter how unique, get boring the more people play and interact with them. They are designed as static locations with set structures and rules, so the only way to make them dynamic and let every group have a different experience with them is to leave enough blank spaces for GMs to fill with their ideas.

If you don’t like any plot hooks or burgeoning conflicts a setting is giving you, look for the areas that were left purposely vague and see what you can fit into them. You could flesh out the underground smuggling rings or set the rules for the local religion. You can create sought-after commodities and cultural sights that mean something to your players and their backstories. The open space isn’t just for world-building. It’s to help you meld a setting more closely to the stories your players want and to fit the characters they create.

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Narration provided by elevenlabs.io