The Big Picture

Before sketching maps, naming kingdoms, or designing dungeons, the most crucial step in worldbuilding is establishing the Big Picture. These foundational decisions about your campaign world’s fundamental nature will inform everything that follows, from the types of adventures players undertake to the challenges they face and the atmosphere at the gaming table. Getting the big picture right ensures consistency, helps manage player expectations, and provides a solid base upon which to build the finer details.

Think of it like constructing a building. You wouldn’t start laying bricks without knowing whether you’re building a rustic cabin, a towering fortress, or a sprawling temple. Similarly, you need to decide the fundamental kind of world your Alacrity campaign will inhabit. This involves considering three interconnected elements: the Tone, the Scope, and the Core Themes of your campaign. Answering key questions about Foundational Assumptions regarding magic, technology, and society further solidifies this base.

Making these decisions early doesn’t mean carving everything in stone. Worlds evolve, and campaigns can shift focus. However, having a clear initial vision provides direction and helps prevent inconsistencies that can pull players out of the immersive experience. It ensures that the world feels like a cohesive whole, rather than a patchwork of unrelated ideas. Let’s explore each of these foundational elements.

Defining the Tone: What Does This World Feel Like?

Tone is the overall mood, atmosphere, and attitude of your campaign setting. It’s the lens through which players experience the world and its events. Is it a world of shining heroes battling unambiguous evil, or a gritty landscape where survival is paramount and morality is murky? Is magic a wondrous, common force, or a rare, dangerous secret? Defining the tone is perhaps the single most important step in ensuring everyone at the table – GM and players alike – is on the same page regarding expectations.

Consider these common fantasy tones, understanding that many campaigns blend elements:

• High Fantasy / Heroic Fantasy: This is often characterized by epic stakes, clear distinctions between good and evil (though perhaps with complex characters on both sides), powerful magic, legendary heroes, ancient prophecies, and world-threatening villains. Think The Lord of the Rings or classic Dungeons & Dragons settings. The tone is often optimistic, focusing on heroism, sacrifice, and the potential for good to triumph. Player characters are often expected to be heroes, capable of significant feats and destined for greatness. Magic is often relatively common and powerful, and gods may take an active interest in mortal affairs. Alacrity’s flexible system can easily support heroes capable of extraordinary actions through high skill levels and potent Effects.
• Low Fantasy: This tone dials back the epic scale and pervasive magic. The focus is often on more grounded, human-level conflicts – political intrigue, local wars, crime, survival against harsh environments or mundane threats. Magic, if present, is typically rarer, subtler, more mysterious, or carries significant costs or dangers. Gods might be distant or their influence debatable. Heroes are often flawed, and victories are hard-won and may not change the world. Think A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) or historical fantasy settings. Alacrity’s focus on skills and percentile chances fits well here, where success isn’t guaranteed, and even mundane tasks can be challenging under pressure. The lower starting XP levels might be particularly appropriate.
• Dark Fantasy / Grimdark: This takes Low Fantasy elements and pushes them towards bleakness, horror, and moral ambiguity. The world is often a harsh, unforgiving place where corruption is rampant, hope is scarce, and protagonists may be anti-heroes struggling against overwhelming darkness, often making morally gray choices simply to survive. Cosmic horror elements, body horror, and psychological dread can be common. Magic is frequently dangerous, corrupting, or tied to forbidden powers. Think Warhammer Fantasy, Berserk, or parts of The Witcher. Alacrity’s damage and injury rules, especially the penalties incurred at lower HP/SP thresholds, can effectively model the gritty struggle for survival inherent in this tone. The optional Fear and Morale rules become particularly relevant.
• Sword & Sorcery: This classic pulp genre focuses on personal action, daring heroes (often morally ambiguous rogues or mighty barbarians), exotic locales, sinister sorcerers, ancient ruins, and monstrous threats. The scope is usually personal rather than world-saving; the goal might be treasure, revenge, or escaping a perilous situation. Magic is typically powerful but rare, often wielded by villains or found in dangerous artifacts. Think Conan the Barbarian or the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Alacrity’s fast-paced combat and focus on individual skill checks align well with the action-oriented nature of Sword & Sorcery.
• Mythic Fantasy: This tone draws heavily on real-world mythology, folklore, and epic poems. Gods walk the earth, legendary creatures are common threats or allies, fate and prophecy play significant roles, and heroes might possess divine heritage or perform truly mythic feats. The world feels ancient, imbued with deep meaning and powerful supernatural forces. Think Greek myths or Arthurian legends. High-level Alacrity characters with access to powerful Effects and high skill percentages can embody these larger-than-life figures.

Why Tone Matters:

• Player Expectations: A player expecting heroic high fantasy might be frustrated by the gritty lethality and moral compromises of a dark fantasy game, and vice versa. Communicating the tone upfront helps everyone align their character concepts and play styles.
• GM Description: Tone guides your descriptions. A dark fantasy forest is “cloying, shadow-choked, smelling of rot,” while a high fantasy forest might be “ancient, sun-dappled, echoing with birdsong.”
• Challenge Design: Tone influences the nature of threats. Low fantasy might feature bandits and corrupt officials; dark fantasy might involve sanity-draining cults and monstrous body horror; high fantasy could pit heroes against dragons and liches.
• Magic’s Role: The tone dictates how magic feels. Is casting an Effect a common tool, a sacred rite, a dangerous pact, or a forgotten art? This affects how players approach magic-using characters and how NPCs react to magic.
• Moral Landscape: Tone sets the stage for moral choices. Is the world black and white, shades of gray, or almost entirely black? This impacts how players approach dilemmas and defines what “heroism” means in your world.

Choose a primary tone, but feel free to incorporate elements from others. A heroic fantasy campaign can still have dark, gritty moments or explore morally gray areas. The key is establishing the dominant feel of your world.

Setting the Scope: How Big is the Sandbox?

Scope refers to the geographical and temporal boundaries of your campaign. How much of the world will the players interact with directly? How long is the story intended to last? Defining the scope helps you manage preparation, focus your worldbuilding efforts, and set appropriate stakes for the adventures.

Geographical Scope:

• Single Location: The campaign might be confined to a single city, a large dungeon complex, a remote valley, or an isolated island. This allows for deep, detailed worldbuilding within a limited area. Travel is minimal, and the focus is on local events, factions, and mysteries. This is often great for urban intrigue, dungeon crawls, or survival scenarios. Example: A campaign set entirely within the sprawling, faction-ridden city of Lankhmar.
• Regional: The campaign focuses on a specific region – a kingdom, a collection of baronies, a large wilderness area, a stretch of coastline. Players will travel between settlements, explore different environments within the region, and deal with regional politics, threats, and history. This offers a good balance between detail and breadth. Example: A campaign exploring the conflicts and ancient ruins within the Dalelands.
• Continental / Kingdom-Spanning: Adventures take players across vast distances, involving multiple kingdoms, diverse cultures, and significant travel time. The stakes might involve national wars, widespread plagues, or continent-spanning conspiracies. This requires broader worldbuilding but allows for epic journeys and high-level political maneuvering. Example: A campaign following the War of the Ring across Middle-earth.
• World-Spanning / Planar: The campaign encompasses the entire globe or even multiple dimensions, planes of existence, or planets. Travel might involve magical portals, planar ships, or world-spanning voyages. Threats are often cosmic in scale, involving gods, planar invasions, or reality-altering magic. This offers the grandest scale but requires the most abstract or high-level worldbuilding. Example: A Planescape campaign hopping between Sigil and the Outer Planes.

Temporal Scope:

• Short Arc / Limited Series: The campaign is designed to tell a specific story over a limited number of sessions (e.g., 5-15 sessions). Character progression might be accelerated or capped. The focus is tight, often revolving around a single major goal or event.
• Standard Campaign: Expected to run for months or even a year or two of regular play. Allows for significant character development, exploration of multiple plotlines, and facing escalating threats. This is the most common scope for TTRPGs.
• Generational / Epoch-Spanning: The campaign covers vast stretches of time, potentially with players taking on the roles of successive generations of characters or witnessing major historical shifts. This allows for exploring long-term consequences and the rise and fall of civilizations but requires careful planning for continuity and character transitions.

Why Scope Matters:

• GM Prep: A smaller geographical scope allows for more detailed preparation of specific locations, NPCs, and encounters. A larger scope requires broader strokes, focusing on key locations and travel rules, with more improvisation needed for unexpected destinations.
• Pacing and Travel: Scope directly impacts how much time is spent traveling versus interacting with specific locations. Alacrity’s travel rules (Chapter 5) become more critical in campaigns with a larger geographical scope.
• Stakes and Conflict: A single-city campaign might revolve around guild wars or neighborhood mysteries. A continental campaign might involve kingdom-level warfare or stopping an evil empire. Scope helps define the appropriate level of conflict.
• Character Progression: A short arc might see characters gain only a few significant skill increases. A long-term campaign allows characters to grow from novices into powerful figures, potentially influencing the world on a larger scale.
• Player Agency: A smaller scope can sometimes feel restrictive if players want to explore beyond its boundaries. A larger scope offers more freedom but can sometimes feel overwhelming or less detailed. Finding the right balance for your group is key.

Starting Small: Even if you envision an epic, world-spanning campaign, it’s often wise to start with a smaller geographical scope – a single town, a starting region, a specific quest hub. This allows you to introduce the world, the core mechanics, and the initial plot hooks in a manageable way. You can always expand the scope outwards as the characters explore and the story unfolds. This “zooming out” approach prevents the GM from needing to detail an entire world before session one and allows the world to grow organically based on player actions and interests.

Identifying Core Themes: What is This Story About?

Beyond the mood (Tone) and boundaries (Scope), successful campaigns often revolve around Core Themes. Themes are the underlying ideas, conflicts, or questions that the story explores. They provide narrative focus, guide plot development, and give the adventures deeper meaning. Identifying your campaign’s core themes helps ensure that the adventures feel connected and that player actions resonate with the overarching narrative.

Themes are not the plot itself, but the recurring concepts the plot engages with. Examples include:

• Exploration & Discovery: The unknown frontier, lost ruins, charting new lands, uncovering ancient secrets. Adventures focus on travel, survival, overcoming environmental challenges, and the wonder (or horror) of discovery.
• Survival: Battling harsh environments, scarce resources, monstrous creatures, or societal collapse. The focus is on resilience, resource management, and the struggle to endure against overwhelming odds.
• Intrigue & Politics: Power struggles between nobles, guilds, or nations; espionage, diplomacy, betrayal, and maneuvering for influence. Adventures involve investigation, social interaction, negotiation, and navigating complex webs of alliances and rivalries.
• War & Conflict: Large-scale battles, military campaigns, the impact of war on soldiers and civilians, questions of duty and sacrifice. Adventures might involve strategic missions, holding the line, rallying troops, or dealing with the brutal aftermath of conflict.
• Mystery & Investigation: Unraveling crimes, uncovering conspiracies, deciphering cryptic clues, solving ancient riddles. Adventures focus on gathering information, deduction, interviewing NPCs, and piecing together puzzles.
• Good vs. Evil: A clear struggle against malevolent forces – dark lords, demonic cults, monstrous hordes. Themes of heroism, sacrifice, temptation, and the fight for hope are central.
• Shades of Gray / Moral Ambiguity: Exploring situations where there are no easy answers, where protagonists must make difficult choices with unforeseen consequences, and where traditional notions of “good” and “evil” are blurred.
• Consequences of Power: How does wielding great strength, magic, wealth, or authority change individuals and societies? Explores themes of corruption, responsibility, temptation, and the burden of leadership.
• Nature vs. Civilization: The encroachment of settlements on the wild, the clash between druidic circles and logging barons, the dangers of forgotten natural powers.
• Rebellion & Freedom: Fighting against tyranny, oppression, or unjust laws. Themes of liberty, sacrifice, revolution, and the price of freedom.
• Loss & Redemption: Characters dealing with past traumas, seeking forgiveness, making amends, or finding purpose after tragedy.

Why Themes Matter:

• Narrative Cohesion: Themes act as the connective tissue between adventures, making the campaign feel like a unified story rather than a series of unrelated events.
• Meaningful Choices: When player actions engage with the core themes, their choices feel more impactful and resonant.
• GM Focus: Knowing your themes helps you design relevant encounters, NPCs, and plot hooks. If a core theme is “political intrigue,” you’ll focus more on developing factions and social challenges than designing elaborate dungeons (unless the dungeon holds a key political secret!).
• Player Engagement: Campaigns often resonate more strongly when their themes align with player interests. Discussing potential themes with your group during session zero can be highly beneficial.
• Improvisation Aid: When players go off the rails (as they often do!), understanding the core themes can help you improvise new situations that still feel relevant to the campaign’s central ideas.

You might choose one or two primary themes, or weave several together. A campaign about a war (Conflict) might also explore the Consequences of Power for its leaders and the Moral Ambiguity faced by soldiers on the ground. The key is to be aware of the ideas you want your campaign to explore and to let those ideas subtly guide your adventure design.

Establishing Foundational Assumptions

Once you have a sense of the Tone, Scope, and Themes, it’s helpful to establish some foundational assumptions about how your world works. Answering these key questions provides a baseline consistency for both you and your players.

• Magic: How Prevalent and Powerful? This is perhaps the most crucial assumption. Is magic common, rare, or almost non-existent? Is it wild and unpredictable, or codified and studied? Are there different sources (arcane, divine, primal, psionic)? Can anyone potentially learn it, or is it restricted to certain bloodlines or organizations? How does society view magic users – with awe, fear, suspicion, or indifference? Your answers here directly impact character creation (how many players might take the Magic skill), the types of Effects available, the challenges players face, and the overall feel of the world. (See Chapter 7 for Alacrity’s unified magic mechanics).
• Technology Level: What is the general level of technological development? Standard pseudo-medieval (castles, swords, crossbows)? Early Renaissance (incipient gunpowder, printing press)? Iron Age? Bronze Age? Does it vary by region? Are there pockets of unusual technology (lost artifacts, unique racial crafts)? This affects available equipment, architecture, travel methods, and societal structure.
• Dominant Species and Cultures: Who are the main players on the world stage? Is it human-dominated? Do elves, dwarves, or other species hold significant power or territory? Are monstrous races organized threats or scattered dangers? What are the major cultural groups, and what are their general relationships (allies, rivals, ancient enemies)? This informs potential character choices (using the Species rules in Chapter 4) and the social and political landscape.
• Gods and the Supernatural: Are the gods real, active forces? Do they grant tangible power to their followers (tying into the Magic system)? Are there multiple pantheons? Is religion organized and influential, or more localized and animistic? What about other powerful supernatural entities – demons, elementals, fey, powerful undead? The answers shape religious character concepts, potential allies and enemies, and the nature of cosmic conflicts.
• Major History and Current Events: What are the defining historical events that shaped the present day? Ancient empires fallen, magical cataclysms, great wars, founding myths? What are the major conflicts, tensions, or looming threats now? A recent plague, a simmering border war, a prophecy nearing fulfillment, the rise of a dark cult? These provide context, adventure hooks, and reasons for the world to be the way it is.

Answering these foundational questions doesn’t require writing an encyclopedia. Simple, clear answers provide a framework. For example: “Magic is rare and feared, mostly wielded by secretive cults or hedge witches (Low Magic Tone). Technology is roughly late medieval. Humans are dominant, with dwarves in mountain enclaves and elves rarely seen outside their ancient forests. The old gods are largely silent, though folk traditions persist. The major event is the recent collapse of the central empire, leaving the provinces fragmented and rife with banditry (Political Intrigue/Survival Themes, Regional Scope).” This simple paragraph sets a clear stage.

Integrating the Elements: Weaving the Tapestry

The real strength of establishing the Big Picture comes when you see how Tone, Scope, Themes, and Assumptions weave together. They should ideally reinforce each other.

• A High Fantasy Tone often pairs well with a Continental Scope, Good vs. Evil Themes, and Assumptions of powerful, relatively common magic and active gods.
• A Dark Fantasy Tone might suit a Regional Scope, themes of Survival and Moral Ambiguity, and Assumptions of rare, dangerous magic and indifferent or malevolent supernatural forces.
• A Sword & Sorcery Tone could use a Single Location or Regional Scope, themes of Exploration and Personal Gain, and Assumptions of exotic locales, ancient ruins, and powerful but isolated sorcerers.

Consider how your choices interact. If you set a gritty, low-magic tone but then decide the scope is planar travel, there might be a disconnect unless you have a very specific explanation. If your theme is political intrigue, but your scope is a tiny, isolated village with no external connections, you might struggle to generate enough conflict. Aim for synergy between these foundational elements.

Conclusion: The Blueprint for Adventure

Defining the Big Picture – the Tone, Scope, Core Themes, and Foundational Assumptions – is the essential first step in crafting a compelling Alacrity campaign world. These decisions act as your blueprint, guiding your subsequent design choices for locations, factions, adventures, and NPCs. They ensure consistency, manage player expectations, and provide a cohesive framework upon which memorable stories can be built. While these elements can evolve during play, starting with a clear vision provides the strong foundation necessary for a dynamic and engaging world ready for your players to explore.

 

File Created: 05/07/2025
Last Modified: 05/07/2025