Create a Homebrew Campaign | #5: Expanding the Arc's Setting
Introduction
In the previous course, we listed out all of the beats for our first arc. We should now have a substantial list of everything that is most likely going to occur in our first arc—player intervention and changes notwithstanding. Because we now know what all we want to happen in our arc—or what might happen—we have a lot of work to do to get the setting for our arc fleshed out and expanded. This course is going to be where we take care of that. By the time you've finished with this part of my homebrew campaign creation series, you'll have a solid grasp on the setting of your arc. We've done a lot of world-building so far and we're about halfway done with that, now. Soon, we'll be focusing largely on the stories of our campaign. Bear with me, we're nearly there!
If you would prefer to learn from a video version of this content, you can do so by checking out the video below.
Listing Your Points of Interest
To start, go ahead and look through all of the beats that you have written out for your first arc. As you read through them, take a moment and note down every location that will serve as a key point in the arc. For me, I have quite a few locations within Kessit that will serve as settings for key moments of the story. Once you’ve noted those locations down, go back and open up your Settlement Information form that you should have started working on in the second course of this series. In the Points of Interest section, start adding all of those locations just as you did in that section, naming the point of interest and declaring its type, as well as providing a summary.
More Details for the Points of Interest
You’ll note that we still have a few fields in each point of interest that needs to be filled out. Specifically, there is a field called Associated People and one called Relevancy. The Other Notes section is there for you to add any other details that you think could be considered important to add here. I’m going to talk about what we’ll add to each of these sections. This is going to be pretty brief and straightforward. If you want to go into extra detail, you can do so later. I typically save extreme detail for when I'm writing a scene within a session's story beat because that is when the more thorough descriptions will be necessary. We can keep the details on this page concise.
Associated People
This may not be relevant for all of your points of interest. For example, a fountain probably wouldn’t have an associated person unless there’s someone who’s dedicated to tending to the fountain. A tavern, however, would have associated people: bartenders, wait staff, cooks, etc., would all be people associated with the tavern. In this section, I will only list the associated people by name and with no other details. Those character details will be put into a separate character section later on.
Additionally, you don’t need to list every single individual who is somewhat associated with a particular place of interest. For example, Harika Harbor is bustling and busy, filled with many traders. I’m not going to list every single trader, but I might list the harbormaster and a couple of guards who are consistently present in this area, as well as one or two traders who are well known by those in the port.
Go through now and start listing the names of all of the people associated with each point of interest.
Relevancy
Every building in your town is not a point of interest. You don’t need to write about every single house in it, but you might find that one house is particularly important and thus a point of interest. The relevancy section is where you will explain what it is that makes this particular location a point of interest. Why does it stand out? Why is it important to the characters or the settlement as a whole? What makes it noteworthy?
For many of your points of interest, this may be obvious. My harbor is relevant because it’s where all of the trade occurs in Kessit and where the majority of the settlement’s income comes from. However, the home that the characters will be using as their hideout and meeting spot is only relevant because of its relation to them. So, I’ll go into a lot more detail about why the hideout is relevant than I will for things like the harbor or the bridge.
Other Settlements
While writing your first arc, you may have mentioned other settlements. This is the time to pull away from your first settlement and look at the others that you mentioned in your first arc if you did mention any. You’ll remember that I talked about the castle town and the king when I first started talking about my plan for this arc. Now that I’m expanding the setting of the arc, I’m going to spend a bit of time on that castle town.
This doesn’t mean that you need to be as in-depth with the other settlements as you are with your core settlement, just yet. Instead, I’ll just be going through and naming the castle town—I’m calling it Caggoz— and filling out the Settlement Details, Government, and Resources sections as these are the bits of information that I believe will be most pertinent in these first sessions of my story. The rest of it can be fleshed out in the future when it’s necessary.
You especially don’t want to take a deep dive into your settlements before you’ve even started playing, because you’re going to need to make changes as play continues. Best not to waste your time working hard on something that you later find would be better suited as something else. Only write the information that you are confident will be important and pertinent to your first story arc. The rest of it can be filled in as time goes on and you learn more about your world naturally.
Points of Interest Beyond the Settlement
Lastly, I want to mention points of interest that exist beyond the settlement. I’m going to have a form that you can download from a link at the bottom of this post. The form is for the region in which a settlement exists. In the Region Information Form, you’ll list every major point of interest within your region, including the settlements within that region. For example, my region information form will list not just Kessit and Caggoz, but also the Bay of Iron Claws and Lake Olmek.
I would advise listing every point of interest in your region at this time, but only going into detail with the points that will be important for your first arc. If the characters are going to venture into a nearby forest, add details for the forest. If they’re going to dive into a bay to investigate a shipwreck, add details about that bay.
For my first arc, I’m not sending my players very far outside of the settlement. I’ll add details for Lake Sani, River Ikiz, and Grelaket’s Foot in my information form for Gurkiza. There are many other locations in this region that I’ll add details for in the future as they become relevant, but right now, those three aspects of the region are the most important ones.
Conclusion
We’ve had several long sessions in this series, lately, so I hope that this shorter one is a nice break from that! This session isn’t terribly information-heavy because how you expand your setting is wholly unique to you and is pretty straightforward. The details you’ve added here will make improvising during a session a lot easier. They’ll also help us in some later parts of this series, particularly the eighth session, in which we will add details not only to our shops but also to the characters! We’re going to fill out character information forms (yeah, I know, I’ve got a lot of forms) for the characters in our arc and our settlement.
I’m really excited about the next two courses that we have coming up. I mentioned early on in this series—I believe in the overview—that I love incorporating my players into the world. That’s what we’re going to do here in the next two courses. Immediately after this course, we’re going to write our first handout for our players to use for creating their characters! After that, we’ll take what we get back from our players and use that to work their devised character into our world, making it even easier to start expanding the world itself.
Stay tuned for that! While you’re waiting, please consider supporting me! The best way to do so is to subscribe to my new YouTube channel, where I’m creating video versions of these posts. You can also follow me on the social media platform of your choice! I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, with Instagram being my most active and consistent platform if you’re wanting to interact.
Until next time… bye!