Bringing Your RPG Campaign World to Life: 37 Tricks to Give Your Setting a Soul - a podcast by Thorin McGee

Do your players feel into the campaign setting you’re running, or is it just generic D&D world #124 to them? What can you do to bring that world more to life and make it feel unique to you and your players? What makes a D&D session feel like more than just a glorified board game?

With about a half dozen campaigns running between the 3 of us, making each of those worlds and settings feel unique is important (especially with Strahd running around in two of them). Over the years, we’ve built up a bunch of description techniques, mechanics and tricks to try to give our settings just the right amount of detail to feel alive without overwhelming the players with architectural dissertations.

Here are 37 of the tricks the 3 Wise DMs use to try to make the players feel immersed in our worlds and give the settings some soul. If you can think of any to add, leave a comment or write us at 3wisedms@gmail.com.

2:00 Do the Drow have clown schools? — Setting ideas that … appeal to us

5:00 Why it’s important to make players feel the tone of a setting

6:00 Trick 1: Keep your descriptions brief but memorable — pick one detail you want to make sure the players remember

9:00 Trick 2: What does this look like in the game? Think about how players will interact and the why behind what things look and act like

12:00 Trick 3: What am I playing? High fantasy needs different descriptions and details than horror or other types of games

14:00 Trick 4: Deep logic: Why pull historical details into a high-fantasy game where you could do “whatever you want” (and why what you make up may feel less fantastical than the historical detail)

16:00 Trick 5: Using “generic” fantasy tropes to set up unique twists and subversions

18:00 Trick 6: Don’t introduce things you won’t be able to give the attention they need (i.e., why Beta Ray Bill didn’t make it into The Avengers movies)

20:00 Trick 7: Start your description small and let the players ask for the details they care about

22:00 Trick 8: Curse of Strahd’s Baby Walter Returns! Don’t be afraid to steal plot ideas the players throw out that you didn’t think of — use them to hook that player

26:00 Trick 9: From Spartacus to Plato’s Utopia: Steal smart and without shame

29:00 Trick 10: Be careful not to design so much you can’t run it effectively

30:00 Trick 11: Do spend time building the unique, cool things that players will interact with often

32:00 Trick 12: Why highly magical campaigns where you fly/teleport/space travel often leave players feeling disconnected from the day-to-day worlds their characters are in

35:00 Trick 13: The timing of your sessions should impact your level of detail — monthly games don’t have room or attention for details like a weekly game

39:00 Trick 14: You can’t horny bard your way through Barovia — showing the players what works and what doesn’t in your campaign setting

42:00 Trick 15: How to teach D&D players to be afraid in a Call of Cthulhu game

49:00 Trick 16: If your setting is in our world or historic, search online for real photos and records to show it

50:00 Trick 17: How and when to use an unkillable monster to teach the players to run away

53:00 Trick 18: Like they noted in the original Ravenloft module, horror is tough to convey when everyone is sitting around eating chips

55:00 Trick 19: Skill check difficulty is its own kind of horror

56:00 Trick 20: Know when a too-easy fight could ruin the adventure

58:00 Trick 21: Limiting technology (or turning it to evil) can enhance horror

60:00 Trick 22: How secrets and PC insignificance make Call of Cthulhu feel different

63:00 Trick 23: Modern settings require the highest suspension of disbelief — unless you take them off-world

64:00 Trick 24: Why most Marvel RPGs are set in the ‘80s, even when they’re in the “present-day”

65:00 Trick 25:...

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