Effective NPCs

Nirrum is 100% real

I, On the other hand, have doubts about my own existence.

Part of creating a world is creating people who live in that world. At least usually. People, thankfully, are extremely predictable. Across time and culture, given the same chance, we will do the same thing. They will associate mostly with their social class, they will congregate in villages, live in safe places, eat good food when they can, make do with what they have, delight in the bawdy, the erotic, and the intoxicating. There will also always be outliers to every aspect here and people who dislike people who like any particular thing. In my particular context we just got out of Marijuana prohibition and are near a hundred years removed from nationwide alcohol prohibition. I can personally attest that the use of such items never stopped and was in fact quite widespread. Figuring out what vices are allowed and how many people use them regardless is a matter for Cultural context (read, Bullshit until it's relevant), but outside of a couple of factors, there's some easy guidelines for making NPCs that

• Have easily expressable personalities
• Easily describable Looks
• easily expressed motives
• Quickly cross-referenced classes

The Formula

Here is a rather full example

The Brawny General Atlas Sowelo (INFP)(Growing One)(Bear Totem Barbarian 6, Light Cleric 6, Brawny)

This Goliath lifts, A god grants him higher levels of strength but he probably doesn't need it

Age: 35
Hieght: 7'0

Weight: 400

Atlas Sowelo is almost certainly the strongest mortal to exist on this plane. Capable of carrying extreme loads, with a carrying capacity of 4800. Atlas can literally carry houses. He spends his time in the Maze with a large cart that he uses to carry out people and treasure. He'll act as a Depot for the other maze runners if they ask him and he'll safeguard the people in the maze himself until it becomes an opportune time to leave. He wears a shimmering shirt made of fish scales and heavy brown linen pants. He carries a Spellguard shield but is cursed by a shield of Missile attraction... Voluntarily. He also wears a barbutte that acts as a helm of comprehend languages. He heads into the maze daily to retrieve those lost in it, just as he was once, armed with a War Pick that glows a soft white light constantly, in protecting others he will hold both his shields.

And now the Formula, the elements of which will be explained later
<Title, Name> (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator*)(School, Faction)(Class levels and Archetype if any)
<Quick one liner >

Age
Size descriptors

This paragraph should basically describe

• how the general populus might think of them without context
• What makes them special
• What makes THAT special
• The Character's Context, what they do and probably why they do it.
• What the character is wearing
• Any notable magic items or effects
• A tidbit about their personality.

Quick and Easy

Names should tend to follow a theme. Similar phonemes or even full concepts, have often been used, to convey connection. People who know the Goliath tribe of the eastern Aegis Mountains might make the connection that Atlas here is one of their people. Aside from having a Predone name list which you can pick from on the fly, my most successful technique has been to slam my hands on the keyboard wantonly and try to make a name of the resulting mess. It's how the Svilsbo family came into existence.

Watch

• wgltnb;psgnmj
• ..Wagalton..fuck the b, Posegnomaji
• What? You haven't heard of the Posegnomaji Family? Their (rolls gender table) Patriarch Wagalton is a Famous Cook!
• NO ONE KNOWS THAT PERSON DID NOT EXIST UNTIL JUST NOW
• bask in the glow of the depth and completeness of your world 

Meyer's-Briggs Type Indicator. 

Or More accurately, the stereotypes. This one requires a bit of study to do fluidly and takes some quick googling to do dynamically. You can easily replace this one with the name of someone who you want this NPC to be. People are far more complex than an MBTI can really tell you, but knowing the stereotypes can really help you nail down some reactions that you hadn't thought of already, as an example (and I won't fill all these out, it would take too long), here's a couple

• ENTP - Verbose, Capitious, Snivelling malcontented shitlords, Also adventurous, clever, witty and despite being obtuse and abrasive, quite caring when they're not oblivious, They're also notoriously creative while being absolutely terrible at executing long term plans. They tend to forget a lot of what they're doing. These people have too much energy to argue with and don't really care who wins or loses. You'll find Characters as varied as Jack Sparrow and Deadpool all the way back to Mordin Solace, Nirrum, Doc Brown, Elodin, or Bugs Bunny.  
• INFP - Quiet, caring, the best daydreamers, some joke that they're made of pre-cracked glass emotionally. Where the ENTP can create a solution to a problem, the INFP can make something new, they make fantastic storytellers and unparalleled musicians.  Kermit the frog, Gohan of Dragonball z fame, Hyuuga Hinata, Alphonse Elric, Fred Rogers. They love to be loved and really, don't need much more than support from others.

I really recommend searching around and getting a feel for these characters and stereotypes, Do a bunch of tests yourself. Atlas is actually just based on a friend of mine. Guy doesn't talk much but he'll work himself to death to keep someone safe. And while these are stereotypes, they really help when you're not sure of a character's quirks or what makes them unique. There are 16 types and you could probably break them down into subtypes. Personally, I enjoy experimenting with the dynamics between two types. Making characters with different types interact is how life works and, from an audience perspective, can make worlds seem massive and dynamic, even though they're only thin shells.

School or Faction, Where they is what they be

Atlas here is part of the school of the Growing one From Danzuishan. In this case, it highlights the most key aspect of his character, in that he intends to hone himself and his talents to their highest possible extent. In other cases, it will help keep faction agents separate during political problems. This could be as simple as a country, their military rank, or even their disposition to the players if they've been encountered already.

Classes, Feats, a quick note on the way they fight or don't/

As mentioned in my post on Balance, I frequently level my NPCs like Players, meaning their powers are predictable and that the players know what sort of balance they're facing if they manage to glean that information. It also means that if I give them special power, ability or item, it makes it all that much more dramatic. For other systems outside of 5e, this might just be their archetype or what *sort* of thing they are. I often include race here if it matters. If it's tertiary then I include it in the description.

Snappy One-line description

• An exciting and Charismatic Leader of the Kholirahi's Ground forces
• A wild force of nature, Some say he is the very spirit of the valley 
• The Summer Archfey of Eyes is known to grant nightmares in the form of one's own faults 

This one-liner is a dense description that should tell you the tone they should set and might be something another character says to introduce them

Physical descriptors

There's not much to say for these, but they'll tell you if they look up or down  to your players, if they tip a boat when they get in it, or how to do their voices, should you need to. 

I already covered the Paragraph so I think that's it for now. Next up I'll probably talk about The two best encounters I've ever run

Mishali, betlysvil'u'lo sho oosha saven. 

-Nirrum

Balancing Power: Just Run with it

Nirrum is painfully unaware of the value of Dust of Dryness

I, on the other hand, am Painfully aware of the artificial tidal wave that wiped out Berpsin,

Power creep and pacing in Dungeons and Dragons is hard to manage. Do you starve your players of magic items, or risk unbalancing the game with them? Is it poor sportsmanship and poor writing to take away those magic items without deep narrative mechanisms? Should you disallow classes or spells that make it difficult to force a narrative, or allow your audience the agency to lend a hand in curating their (and your) experience? The answer to all of these questions is yes.

Agency and Consistency

You can get away with just about anything so long as you are consistent. 1+1=3? It's unusual but hey, the god of mathematics is saying that's what it is so that's how we do things here. But players, audience members, experientomancers of all sorts tend to come prepacked with all sorts of Silly baseless assumptions.  As a designer, you might have expectations for the outcome of your players interactions with the world. If you're designing videogames, you have far more control over that than if you're writing or Mastering a game, as you can easily enforce the rules mechanically. 

There's only a problem with this when your agonists end up going where you didn't expect them to go or, didn't want them to go, or have something that you didn't think they should have. When you haven't told them about the rules changing before critically tense points, particularly The moment it matters. But you're not a god, and being able to see the future isn't something that we Human-worms are particularly good at. There are styles and methods which will allow you to get by without seeming too mortal. 

Anything you can do, I can do better

fancier, and retroactively before you did it.

The time has come. They have destroyed the Drama of a situation by being incredibly powerful when they should not be. Time to fight fire with fire. Whatever they did that made them powerful, you, the great spirit of dramatic enterprise, can do as well! An assassin strikes the would-be assassin. The Wombo-combo they have is suddenly reversed! Before them now stand creatures that would actually pose a challenge.  Entire armies might use the same strategy that your players employ, industries set up on a quirk of the wording of a spell, a planet of hats where the hat is "whatever that one player just did"

Remember that as a curator of experience, you are unbound by stats, or even most rules. The less you abuse this, the better of a Storyteller you will be. By using the same mechanics that your players or viewers use to create an expected result, you have the opportunity to create not only deep literary themes of self-discovery, but you also remain consistent. You can throw your hands up and say "I'm just playing by the rules."

Don't get me wrong, your people know what you're doing. Twists should be sparse, just so that they preserve narrative impact. The important message here is to not fear the power creep for yourself, you, and by extension the story, will be fine. You are a god after all. Ho ho, see what I did there? Subversion! Ha-HA!

Morse Code: Telegraphing and Loss Reflex

Anger is the most powerful emotion humans experience. It is the one that drives us to act the fastest, and the easiest way to make us angry is to take something away. Loss reflex is probably the most powerful motivator on the planet, and agency, the ability to act for oneself, control of one's circumstances, is the most devastating loss. 

When your players think that they're being railroaded, when your audience thinks that there's no point in paying attention, you've lost as a storyteller. Part of the power balance is balancing your own power to achieve a desired result. Just as twists should be sparse, telegraphing should be frequent. Your captives need to know what being wrong looks like, what impending terror is so they can change before it hits. Fun is serious business. See, there's no skill in being blindsided. A person dying to something they didn't know about isn't fun because really, they don't even need to be there for it. They were just the person that it happened to. Telegraphing that they don't know things by hinting mysteries or even showing them that their preconceived notions were wrong before it happens is how you end up with tension, because now avoiding those things becomes their goal. This is drama. Surprise is only dramatic when they have the chance to react. 

But telegraphing has its own issues that we'll talk about later. The important thing is to understand that consistency allows your players to solve problems in their own way, but also gives you important tools for being able to manage that so that you don't feel powerless in trying to keep your story interesting. Personally all of my villains are rolled up characters, this way my players know what sort of things they're getting into if they find out what their opponent can do. It grants a character that is familiar with that world the ability to adequately judge in character what their enemy is capable of. It also creates a game of seeing who can out-munchkin who, but this isn't the only way.

Having a villain show up in an early sequence is a particularly common tactic. This is fine so long as the villain has a method of leaving that can't be interrupted by the players. A villain or counterparty whose only real schtick is that they run away becomes predictable. A villain or counterparty who doesn't run away runs the risk of being untelegraphed danger. A merciful villain might not be realistic, killing one company member and leaving the rest is a tactical mistake. A powerful villain who manages to show up and kill everyone doesn't add anything to the story, as your protagonists are all now deceased. A villain whose Modus Operandi is to pit-and-forget, allowing the players a chance to escape must be careful to ensure that the player's escape takes long enough for the villain to leave. Much the same theme shows up with traps. A player falling into a trap is all fine and dandy but a trap that's lethal should always be telegraphed by the presence of clever enemies, the parts for more of that trap, or signs that the trap is there.

There's always the option to "Just be a dick" but your actors will resent you for it. Remember, you are a curator of experience, presumably one people wish to enjoy. The skillful path is the preferred one in my experience.

What power creep looks like

Levels are a really good place to start when talking about power creep. Should your desired media have levels, the most important ones to think of are the first, second, third and last levels. In most cases, the second level is a whopping double the potency of the first level, you are literally on whole 'nother level. In one campaign we went from fearing for our lives, hiding behind barrels to avoid gunfire to starting armies with our suicidal valor. It took a year for us to reach second level and when we did? Hoo boy. We felt like the bees knees then, but what'd we get? About 4.5 hp, a minor ability that we could use once in a while, One guy multiclassed, we made it work. In Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition, Level 3 is where a lot of classes get their archetypes, The power jump is surprisingly small with some exceptions (looking at you, assassin). The real sneak is in the spells. "Fuck your map" spells like Detect thoughts, Find Traps, Healing spirit, Hold Person, Invisibility, Knock, Lesser restoration, Misty step, pass without trace, see invisibility, silence. and zone of truth,  are all capable of taking your well-planned puzzle and just... ignoring it. Especially knock and Detect thoughts. Entire murder mysteries are built around the idea that you don't know who did it, but when your wizard pops "detect thoughts," and all of a sudden they know who did it. When did this happen? How did this happen? All of your prep time undone by a single spell. There was no creep, it was "SUDDENLY, POWER!" Which is terribly unfortunate if you had put any amount of time into planning the whole thing out. Sure you could use a ring of mind shielding, and risk your players getting one (which is more creep), you could make that spell not work against your villain or target (and invalidate player agency. This is like buying a ), orrrrr you could just let them waltz through what should have been a tense moment and enjoy being badasses. None of these are particularly appealing are they? While it was your lack of knowledge about the capabilities of your munchkins that lead to this, how are you supposed to keep track of the constantly changing landscape of power in your medium?

Worse is what happens when you are the cause of the creep. When you've given your costumers a gift and it's too good. You need to find a way to get it back from them don't you? I'm gonna be honest, in my experience, it's too late now, you'll have to steal it back from them and let them get it back when the power scaling evens out or won't matter much in the future, near the end of a story or at least nearing the end of a chapter. 

The effect the players have on your campaign shouldn't be the issue.

Spotlight: Really, You must learn to balance your goons against eachother

You may have noticed that some players seem... better than others, for lack of a superior term. A hack'n'slash fighter in a target rich environment is having a great time compared to the utility musician/pack mule. Your Sneak's sneaking skill doesn't really matter if everyone charges forward before they can get into position or accomplish their goal, or conversely, while your sneak does all the work, everyone else just picks their ears clean waiting for the day to be done.

This isn't really what your adventurelings are here for. They all want to be important (although some may want it less than others, though that's another topic). The important thing is that, as the creator of the world before them, you should learn to enable them all, especially if you can do it simultaneously. As someone who can adjust the world on the fly, your balancing job is fairly easy. The hard part is making sure the party is balanced against itself.  Spreading the spotlight to where it is wanted is your greatest task, and for this, I have a couple of points. The first is my Traffic Signalling Technique. 

It takes place after you, the storyshaman, do something that the group can react to

1. Ask the most relevant, usually the closest to the action, player what they're going to do, make eye contact with only them, indicate to the others to be silent. Listen
2. Look around for the most excited person who wants to act. They'll be trying to make eye contact usually. If nothing needs to happen to immediately respond to the first player, act on the second. Repeat this step until you've gone through everyone
3. Ask anyone who hasn't acted or reacted what they're doing right now.
4. Do something again, repeat process from 1. If you reach step 3 again and the others don't react to the current situation, whatever they're doing now becomes the thing you talk about.
5. Use discretion at all steps in this process to keep narrative flow. Try to keep time equal.
6. Don't force anyone to act when they don't want to, they'll have their own fun.

The second point is to talk to your thespians. They have things to say.

Building up: Don't Tell A Story, Tell The News

Your villains want to win, your forces wish to conspire, your machinactions wish to become godly. These things are forces that exist in a world that might be fictional but should function with verisimilitude. Villains make mistakes, Adventurers come up with clever ideas. People get blindsided by things they didn't think of.

I build my worlds in such a way that I try to think like my NPCs beforehand, how they build their houses, what precautions they take against intruders, how they organize their forces and what they've encountered and know how to deal with. It's pretty front heavy, but once you've got your prep done, you don't need to lift a finger to change anything while your tourists take a romp through a real and dramatically significant world that was built to react in a limited but impactful manner. You don't need to adjust the Drama, you only need to say what just happened. While this isn't the only way to DM, this design philosophy has proven extremely effective for the people I know who have used it. The Unexpected things your players do are now funnier and more significant. The things they do that are expected have their intended effect and increase drama. The things they do that cause detriment were always going to cause detriment, and you can rest assured that what just happened probably wasn't hot bullshit.

Considering these thoughts, you should find it a lot easier when designing your playing field to take what's given to you and then to Run With It.

Mishlia,  betlysvil'u'lo


- Nirrum

On Making a Civilization 2: Culture and Cause

Nirrum has a programming board for rituals, a library, and students.

I, On the other hand, have barely functioning limbs.

We both have 8 constitution

If you've read the previous post, you should already have a place with a basic semblance of civilization ready to go. You're ready for your players to go there and when they get there you realize that all of your houses are empty, all of your people have neutral accents and have the same dialog from the previous town. Your people are all the same color, the same race, and all wear the same clothes. You see where this is going? Today we're going to go through a basic tweak list of what should be considered for a civilization that'll make it seem that much more real.

Urban Stylization

Here we'll talk about some SRD-style descriptions of your civilization and how it should appear from any given angle.

The houses

Provided your civilization's members actually have problems with the elements as a whole or don't want their stuff blown away, they probably have constructed some sort of nanoclimate regulation structure. Most frequently these structures have some sort of roof and often, walls. Houses come in many styles and mean many things to different people and they are often built to accomodate their cultural lifestyles. A human in our day and age does not need very much at all to live. A single 3m by 3m room, somewhere to poop and somewhere to cook is a comfortable minimum. For a family, that room needs to get a lot bigger. Historically we have seen houses for entire villages down to single room dwellings for single room individuals. Our largest buildings are frequently massive living complexes, filled with rooms for people to sleep, frequently with a few rooms for eating, and a great many for pooping and washing. 

Start by describing the average family dwelling, Their amenities should echo the civilization as a whole, Where the food, water, poop, and a place to be are all taken care of. Always remember to ask where these people go to party, whether that's their neighbour's kitchen or the local club scene. Few civs have a place to party in every home, but they should all have a place to chat

The Neighbourhood

What does the biggest house in town look like, and who lives there? What's an ideal place to live? What's the worst? Depending on the size and age of your civilization, you'll probably have a couple of trends. The first house set up is always the most convenient when viewed in isolation. Handy to water, a decent path to the nearest road, A nice plot for everything they need. Over time this land might become less convenient but still a large property. The further away from these conveniences, the worse the neighbourhood. Eventually, as the civilization develops and properties get rebuilt and upgraded, this flips, and rich houses don't need to be near their resources because they have the opportunity to have things done for them. Thankfully, none of this actually matters. Just make sure that you have a bad neighbourhood, a good neighbourhood, a best Neighbourhood, and that one recluse who just has to be different. Protip: The places where people work and trade are never in the noble's district but also rarely in the poor zone.

Describe the basic differences between someone's experience in each neighbourhood. Poor places tend to be more violent, but can also be far more welcoming. Rich Places might be safer but the traditions may lean toward being a shit. Noble districts are almost always where the party is.

The sights

Your civilization will always have something to do in their downtime. The harvest has just come in, the trade's been done, the laundry was just dried, the floor is swept and the animals are fed. Boredom is not something people tend to be complacent with so let's address that with anything to do at all. Narratively speaking, this is usually where you'll find the start of adventures and the most interesting people in town. This is the inn, the temple, that one guy's living room, that cool waterfall where everyone goes to swim, The mystical university, that cave where teenagers have been going to party since the first goats grazed the rocky hillside. The quality of these entertainments usually either depends on the environment or the economy.

No one wants this place to be ruined or in trouble, that's why it's the best place to threaten. One guy's house is one guy's house, but the pub is THE pub. Sure a kid got kidnapped but they got kidnapped from THE swimming hole. That means it's bigger than one person.

Don't forget to describe the civ's infrastructure. You don't need to describe it until it becomes relevant, but you do need to know it's there.

You don't want to need to move a critical building to make place for a watermill or an aqueduct

The Environment

People don't tend to have control over the greater effects of mother nature, With that in mind, there's always going to be some environmental effect that's worth noting, even if that note is its conspicuous lack of poor weather, especially when that sort of boon often causes an abundance of ants.

Weather and Climate

Set your slide-bars up for some basic factors here and you're usually good to go. Ignoring the gross meteorological inconsistencies that are most fantasy settings,  You can usually just consider weather and climate along these lines

• No Precipitation --- Lots of Precipitation
  How often do things fall from the up to the down? Snow, rain, meteors, Ghosts. This will dictate a lot of thematic aspects, such as vegetation and  clothing styles
• High Temperatures --- Low temperatures
  This will change the precipitation, the clothing and the vegetation to suit. 
• No wind --- Windy
  I live in a place that has an area known as the Wreckhouse and for some reason, people keep trying to build there. I have no idea why. This changes how those people go about hunting, farming, and building.

Combine these three factors and you should get plenty of variable weather, especially if you just grift with real-world climates and abundant Google searches for "trails" in countries that you've probably never been to. Gotta work with what you've got

Terrain

The geography of an area can have some incredible impacts on how it is imagined or presented, not to mention the effect it has on people. If you have fond memories as a child of a certain terrain where you lived, congrats, people feel that way around that terrain. You can possibly even convey that feeling by using that terrain. Trekking across landscapes like this can get across feelings of desolation, briefly, at least. We'll talk about that in another post. Forest entrances like this can really mark the change in setting. The terrain will be the biggest real change to the story while not really affecting the people that live there much at all. They'll change their buildings to suit but they'll find a way to live there. For your civ, this is just Fluff setting, but it matters for how they make their livelyhood.

• Rocky --- Earthy --- Swamp
  This one is actually incredibly important for determining how the land reacts to the weather. And since most races people will write about tend to be terrestrial, you should really know how hard farming is or how likely you are to fall down a hidden pit. Many plants in harsh environment have to come up with interesting methods to stick around and many times, people make use of this abundance.
• Scrub --- Forest --- Extreme Forest
  Really this is about vegetation height. Save the extremes for special occasions!
• Dense Vegetation --- Sparse or No Vegetation
  Desolation? Claustrophobia? The inability to farm because of the overabundance of Ents? Your people will heat their homes with wood or cow shit depending on what's on hand. They'll hunt Caribou in the woods or raise cattle in the fields. 
• Coastal---Riverside---Inland
  Your People's proximity to water has been mentioned before. To us humans, the water is life. It's easy transportation, filled with food, and hard to hide on, and transperitidal predators are Thankfully rare. You can escape from wolves in the water and from sharks on land. But if you can find a good resource inland and secure trade and water, you're pretty well set.
• High elevation --- low elevation
  This doesn't really matter much but will make more sense with the next one
• The final point is how rapidly those features change. Most (but not all) of the pictures linked so far have been from my home. The same chunk of land, the same altitude, the same weather. Ask how often an aspect of the environment is going to change from step to step. Thankfully, we're able to shortcut this in ways like "Bogs between mountains" or "desert oasis" as defining terrain

Ecology

Look up the environment you want to have, look up what animals live there. Copy. Paste. Once you're done that, if you're dealing with a fantasy world or fictional setting, you should not only alter those creatures in a unique way to suit the setting. Bioluminescent deer aren't a thing for a reason, but maybe without large predators, they can be! Give the goats forward facing tusks to root up wild tubers that are inedible to humans, give the fish new patterns. 

When you're done with the base biology, throw in some extra fancy. In my case, as a dungeon master, this means running through the Monster Manual and seeing what belongs in this biome and changing things that aren't normally so that they can be. Keep a basic biomass tree intact if you can but use a change in that tree for drama if you need to!

This is how your people will hunt and also be the dangers they face in living here.

Government

I cannot possibly hope to clarify government as easily as CGP Grey does in his video "The Rules for Rulers" and "Death and Dynasties." Watch these videos and take notes. 

Economy

Economy, thankfully, is far far easier to set up. Set up a supply chain which is an aggregate of the information you already have so far. 

1. Talk about where the food comes from, including more exotic goods. Like chocolate to an Englishman or Moose to a Arab
2. Talk about what they export
3. Talk about what they import
4. Talk about any tangible tax rules
5. Talk about where the government spending goes
6. Talk about reasons to move to or from this place
7. Talk briefly about the inefficiencies in this system when talking about corruption.

In practice, Economy is extremely difficult to actually emulate or form theories on because we honestly don't have enough data and/or aren't smart enough. One of my favourite examples comes from "The Story of the Hero and the Demon King." A mindbogglingly mediocre show if it were not so fantastically intelligent with how it handles and deals with its conflict. In one scene, after the protagonists set up a new nation, banks, operating without government oversight, decide to purchase nearly all of the grain harvest from one country. This lead to widespread famine and economic collapse in one country while the new one is unharmed but has to institute tariffs so that their country doesn't tank as well as people try to escape their misfortune in the collapsed territory. Money is a salable good, and what it has in granularity, it lacks entirely in practical use short of its material components. A few, independent citizens simply did what they were allowed to do legally (Buy grain and not sell it) and not only did it make them ludicrously rich, it allowed them to control an entire economy to the detriment of the established government and its people (for the better, as the case was). Being aware of this, we can patently ignore it. If we are unaware, we will be caught unawares, but if we are aware, we can have the handwaved response of "the government has instituted such laws that the destabilization of the economy is not the present issue" ... Unless it is, of course. For the purposes of most stories, know the seven points above and assume the rest is kosher, because this leads us into our penultimate point

Political alliances

Did you know, for the first half of the second world war, America knew Stalin as "Uncle Joe?"

Alliances can change at the drop of a hat, and the definition of those alliances can be exceptionally hard to maintain. If you want to experience how cutthroat poltics are, set up a game of Diplomacy. Incidentally, I highly recommend Matt Colville's Running the Game Series. I have never found better advice for dungeon masters and seldom found better for writing as a whole.

There's a simple and basic formula that's worth having in the description of your Civ, and I use it for every political faction, down to the gangs, in my writing.

• Allies
• Ally 1 
• Ally 2
• Ally 3
• Enemies
• This one
• that one
• Probably this one too
• Controlled by
• Any faction that has any power over your faction
• Sneaky treaties
• Extortionate pirates
• The local Necromancer
• Controlling
• Any Faction that your faction has power over, even if they're on the previous segment, which they frequently are
• Satellite territories, Distinct treaties
• Really, what the hell is America doing with Puerto Rico?
• Keys to power
• As seen on CGP grey's video, your faction needs a reason why it hasn't been subsumed into a larger faction 
• They should also try to have as diverse a power portfolio as possible

Fill in the chart and if refer to it if you need a poltical reason why someone isn't doing something. You might notice my approach to this involves a lot of side-eyeing a bunch of difficult to investigate phenomena that your player or reader might have questions about. You'll look really smart but in reality you've just got a formula. A formula which culminates in

Sociological notes

Your people now have a place to be, a reason to be there, someone to answer to and a way to (on average) not die while they're doing it. They've got a place to be and if they've been there long enough, they've probably got stories to tell about it. Here's a neat list you can fill out now that your civ has some ground (probably) to stand on. 

• What language do they speak, Do they have a special Dialect or accent? When they speak the language your audience speaks, what does that sound like?
• What's entertainment 'round these parts? How do your people spend their downtime. If they go to one of the local sights, what's there to do? 
• What's the healthcare like. Small villages might have the Local Herb Hermit, but bigger civs might have a hospital or some analogue thereto 
• Who enforces the law and how are they viewed? How professional are they?
• How are outsiders viewed? Does this vary from Neighbourhood to Neighbourhood?
• How close are they to the dangers of war and battle? Who has the best memory of the most recent conflict?
• What do these people aspire to? What's a job their parents would approve of?
• What are premature mortality rates like?
• If there are multiple races or Phenotypes, which one is the most common and how are the others treated? Who has the worst time in this society, despite not having a choice in the matter
• What is the population density like? How far apart are dwellings and how many people dwell there?
• How happy are the people with their lives?
• What would cause a riot?
• What would cause a panic?

Most importantly is the following

• How did the people of your civ adapt to challenges posed by any of the previous features of terrain, weather, or difficulties in obtaining supplies?

Fill this out and You have an excellent city setting. Later, I'll be talking about some nitty-gritty fluff, conveying tone in a medium that is prohibitively kurt, and how to manage a sudden overabundance of high-value treasure in such a way that you don't actually need to change anything. Keep your Diamonds at the value your spell requires them to be and I'll write more later

Mishali, Betlys'u'lo- Nirrum

On Making a Civilization

Nirrum lives in a desert town with no natural water source.

I, on the other hand, live in one of the most inhospitable places for pre-industrial society.

Countries are places where people live. This is important, and some people seem to forget it when they build their civilization centers.  Before you begin writing about your volcano civilization, your treetop village, your gloomy town where nothing grows and there are ghosts behind every rock and all the townsfolk are always sick, ask yourself:

But Y Þo?

Why wouldn't those people  live Literally anywhere else. Why would anyone ever,  think it is a good idea to set up the place where they will keep their children inside of an active Volcano. There is prime real-estate that is far, far more preferable, next to the volcano for example. Or Y'know, in a Grassy vale, next to a fish-filled freshwater glacial river not tremendously far from a forest or the nearest Xanaran's Bar and Inn.

People Live Places For Reasons

So let's make a formula for that.

Let me dispel the notion that your civilization should not be in a Volcano. Au contraire. Always put a civilization in a volcano. Just explain why.

Picking a location is honestly the least hard aspect of making a civilization. This goes double for Fantasy settings, and double again for settings with problems like "monsters". Throw a dart at a globe,  google the location and see what's there. Pick a biome, pick a weather type, Pick literally any geographically defining feature. The real secret is to use your amazing powers of bullshit to explain why someone thought that this was a good idea and enough people agreed with them to put up a couple of houses. 

As an example, The people of Skalmirthon are primarily dwarves. D:\Heitz\Toady\Tolkien.JPG Dwarves. They live in the largest active volcano on continental Varomar in the only real mountain range worth talking about. 

Our actual great challenge is the bullshit. We know that volcanoes are hot and full of Lava and have a vague bowl or pipe shape, but is that enough? Let's Check Wikipedia for a second. Well shit.  volcanic ash, and gases huh? Well that's worrying. What's so bad about volcanic ash though?  A few minutes into this rabbit hole, and you stumble across the terrifying realization that pyroclastic flow is one of the more terrifying things to exist on the planet. Just ask these guys. So why would dwarves choose to live here? Why would the people of Steinhaven choose to live on a barren coast? Why does the country Saudi Arabia Exist? Profit, Mostly.  

In the case of Skalmirthon, they wish to plumb the Kimberlite pipes of the great Skal Volcano to tease out comparatively easy wealth. High-density accumulations of gems like Peridot, Kornerupine, Diamond, and metals such as Iron and gold.

     Google search: Gemstones of <place> to find out what's being mined in your civ!

The Dwarves (or Dwarfs if you wanna be oldschool) are not lavaproof, so they're gonna have to figure out a way to deal with the lava. By the powers of bullshit, the citizens of the western Aegis, skal, Skalmirthon, have either:

• Made a portal to the plane of GTFO
• Made a complex system of pipes, Magmaducts, redirecting the lava outside the mountain or inside specially built chambers to harvest what is mostly obsidian
• Made their god fix it
• Mined, sold and consumed the Lava faster than it could build up pressure, slowly draining the pipe faster than the rock was melting
• Changed something to make the lava not a problem, don't worry 'bout it K?

So the first real steps of making your Civ are

• Find a Place
• Get rid of the dangers
• Find a resource in that area that's worth being there for

True Formula

   So now that we've found a place that has some form of Reason to live here, we get to our true list.

1. Where do they get their water? Provided they are our sort of biology, your people need to get some sweet sky-juice through their blood tubes somehow and the first step to that is getting it inside them. Springs are fairly ideal for most people. Clean water with the only danger being threatening mineral deposits like lead.  Rivers are great but what's upriver is always a concern. Lakes have a similar meme with the caveat of being home to danger. Rainwater works where rain is, Well water and Aquifers work where it doesn't. Glacial deposits on distant (or exceptionally nearby) mountains or just the runoff from the highlands surrounding your civ all work. So does trading for water, or aqueducts.
2. Where do they get their food? People tend to die without food, though the subversion of this trope has come up a few times. Food is a harsh part of reality. Agriculture is hard to start, Hard to maintain, but spectacularly rewarding when you have a good harvest. Provided you have some sort of vitamins and some sort of large animal to supplement your diet, you can probably hunt for meat. Maybe your resources bring in trade, but we'll get to the dangers of trade in a later post. The Dwarves of Skalmirthon farm some of their own on isolated terraced gardens on the north side of the mountain, but most of it comes in as trade for their abundant but well-controlled trade of refined metals, their crafts, and their trade hub with underdark civilizations
3. Why are they here? Resources? Political refuge? Tax evasion? The local monks make good beer? Is there any reason to believe that living life here is easier than living somewhere else? 
4. Where does the poop go? IT DOESN'T JUST EVAPORATE, WASTE MANAGEMENT IS A SERIOUS CONCERN, DO YOU WANT YOUR PEOPLE TO GET CHOLERA FROM DRINKING WHAT THEY SHIT IN? The dragonborn of the Lower Gannaga are notably immune to this disease, but most people just fucking shit themselves to death. The dwarves throw theirs into the outflow lava pools (from a safe distance)
5. What's the downside? We're writers. Nothing can be actually pure and idyllic. That's narratively worthless. The dwarves of Skalmirthon live in a city overtaken by multiple facets of corruption. Economic, Religious, and good old fashioned extortionist. They work long hours in mines and workshops and only see a fragment of their value returned to them.

I'll talk more about politics on a later date, but I think this is a good start for now.

Betlys'u'lo
- Nirrum

Hello world

This'll be a Game Design blog based on my Experiences, mostly in Dungeons and Dragons!