I'm hacking Ray Otus's work! #The Gygax 75 Challenge

In his article The Gygax 75 Challenge Ray Otus features an article by Gary Gygax on creating a campaign setting. With this base, Ray proposes a challenge in a document of about thirty pages to create a setting. Go and see it, it's really great! The document is very detailed and proposes a precise procedure to create a complete universe. Today I am proposing how to change Ray's instructions to turn 5 weeks of work into 5 minutes of fun!




First here is the link of The Gygax 75 Challenge: https://rayotus.itch.io/gygax75


The challenge is to create a background in 5 weeks using 5 steps:

1. The Concept
2. Surroundings Area
3. The Dungeon
4. Town Features
5. The Larger World

For each chapter, Ray provides a task list and concrete examples.

But at Lunchbox RPG, we're in a hurry. We don't have time to spend 5 weeks to create a background. In my previous article Setting up a campaign background in 10 minutes or less for solo rpg sessions!, I was already talking about my image interpretation technique to quickly create a game environment. By extrapolating this technique, you can create a complete background. Here are my tips to condense the 5 weeks of Ray Otus in 5 minutes! (Of course, the result will be less detailed, but still inspiring enough for the player in a hurry)

Part 1: The Concept 

In this part Ray Otus invites us to create a concept for his universe. I refer you to my article. Interpret 3 icons with the help of the table above:

1. Object
2. Location
3. Information / Knowledge
4. Magic
5. Unexpected event
6. Monster / NPC

The danger here is to remain too flat. The idea is to make something unique and refreshing.  Often, I start from a known universe and add a twist: the relations between peoples, the rules of magic, the institutions...

Each time I ask myself the following question: Is the result fantastic for an already fantastic world? Are we in science fiction of science fiction?

Example: Star Wars is already a science fiction world... Which has a certain normality. Ships, jedi, that's "normal" for star wars. To do science fiction in star wars is to add an abnormal element, itself fantastic.

Examples:  

• Cool robots
• The Droid Rebellion
• The super ia goes on the attack
• The Return of the Space Sheriffs

For those who are less bull-headed and more sentimental...

• The droids are claiming rights
• Covid9999: The droids are sick.
• Droids are sensitive to force

But also robotic clones, jedi vs. daleks... The possibilities are endless

If you don't have any ideas, mix 2 universes, it can give you things like

Part 2: Surrounding Area 

The second week consists of filling in the map of the surrounding area. My advice: stay minimalist! In the solo parts, no one knows what tomorrow will bring. A party kill in the first session can lead you to throw your universe in the trash.  Don't waste time. Create only what you need. Otherwise, create ideas that you will only develop if the characters venture into it.

To develop the ideas, use the same technique. Discover images, associate them to a category and create a place.
Note that you can create a place with anything. If I take the example of robots, it could work:

• Object: a shop where they make a new generation of electronic circuits...
• Location: an underground city populated only by robots.
• Information / Knowledge: a micro moon on which lives a genius repairman
• Magic: a city in which a robot has awakened to the power of the force
• Unexpected event: a planet where the robots rebelled
• Monster / NPC: The palace of a particularly dangerous robot assassin

Build your background like a spiral. The characters are in the center. Prioritize the description of the closest elements.

Part 3: The Dungeon 

Ah!! The legendary Dungeon! You'll notice that Dungeons and Dragons works very well without  dragons, but not without dungeons. It's like another game I know: Ricard and Peanuts: it also works without peanuts...

In D&D, the dungeon is the shopping mall of adventure, it's where everything happens, where you find plots and resolve secrets. In a solo role-playing game, generation of plots and resolution of secrets cannot be defined a priori. So you can skip this step

However, if you still want to do a dungeon, here's how I'll do it:

1. Set a dungeon theme. Is it an underwater cave? a castle in the sky or a graveyard in fire?
2. Prepare tracks to answer three essential questions:
1. WHY is this dungeon here? What's inside? Monsters don't build a dungeon for no reason.
2. WHO runs this dungeon (who's the big boss. Why is he scaring everyone?)
3. HOW does the Big Boss plan to achieve his goals?

I've already written an article on dungeon generation, but there are others. I refer you for example to JohnnFour's very famous 5 room dungeons.

4: Town Features

The idea here is to build a base camp for adventurers to come and rest between dungeon explorations. The idea here is to thicken the background of the characters' "home", but also to change the scenery and perhaps introduce "filler" adventures between two explorations. Things can be oversimplified here too.

• How big is your town?
• What is its theme? Masonry? Sewing? Art?
• More difficult, what makes this city unique? Fantastic? Is it nestled between two mountains? In the middle of an acid lake?

Keep it short. Just remember three main points. Imagine that the adventure moves to the nearby city at the end of the first scenario? You've done all this work for nothing!? That's also the big difference between the single player game and the game with MJ: nobody really controls what happens.

5: The Larger World

This final step broadens the background to make it a real country universe. Threats need to change as levels increase. Levels 1 to 4 or 5 allow adventurers to become local stars. Beyond level 5, characters change divisions and can deal with larger problems. In a solo design, it is not useful to plan the world from the beginning.
However, if after several adventures, the characters are still alive and have explored several places, it becomes essential to add coherence to your universe.
Usually, you have described a world, places, characters in an eccentric way: you started from a small core and expanded it as you went along. Sometimes, randomness produces unexpected and even contradictory results. That's why a global reflection on your campaign world will bring coherence to your campaign.