New CRM Wizard: Regions
Posted by: Ruel Knudson in Campaign Resource Manager, DPnP, Developer Blog, tags: Campaign, campaign resource, Campaign Resource Manager, Campaign World, campaigns, CRM, Digital Pen n Paper, E-RPG, galaxies, game rules, game world, planes of existence, WritingRegions!
Honestly, what is so great about that? Well, to be frank, it is the keystone of a campaign world. It is such a huge part of building and organizing a game world I am thinking of releasing it as a separate program. Read more to find out why.
Alright, everything you can build with the CRM allows you to create game rules including races, items, skills, etc. All of that is fine and dandy. However, that is really just the core elements of what your game is about. Your game has a world, or an entire universe. It is huge, or it is small, but it is a living world. It has NPCs, stores, inns, etc. It has all the elements in your game, but it has them organized in regions. Regions are collectively a game world.
Building a world is a huge and daunting task. It behaves in layers in some ways, with a world, broken into continents, countries, states/provinces, etc. Larger campaigns may have solar systems, galaxies, and entire universes. Planes can exist, Heaven and Hell could be included. The possibilities are endless. Where do you start?
Well, the CRM makes that easy. You start wherever the hell you want to. You can start by creating a few small towns that make up a county. Then, later, you decide they are part of a larger town or city. Then you build more counties, towns, cities, and continue growing.
Or, you could start at the top. Build a universe populated with galaxies. Add in a few planes of existence as side universes. Add galaxies, systems, planets, the continents, countries, etc.
You can easily create an idea of something here, and apply it to something else over there as you need to, when you need to. Or, better yet, you can add in regions created by other users to build up your library of regions. That way, you aren’t stuck adding every single little town to your growing country.
After all of that, you may get ambitious and print out a nice, neat, campaign world book. It will take your nice little collection of regions, super regions, NPC in your regions, landmarks, stores (including buy/sell inventory and rates of exchange), with all the pretty little tables and stats you need.
It is huge! What this tool does is basically take all the difficulty of organizing the resources of your campaign world and lines them all up. It then allows you to easily (simply change an entry field when editing the region) place the entry into an entirely new position. For instance, someone creates a game world you like. However, your game has an entire galaxy made up of worlds. Well, add the game world into your galaxy by importing it, and the set your new world’s parent as the solar system where it is found. Wham-o! An entire game world has just been added to your growing game universe.
So, I hope this helps wet an appetite or two. I know it has me excited. I am furiously working away (through a migraine mind you) to build a small little demo region. The content of the region will be available as a free PDF soon to show off how it all comes together.
Until then,
Happy Gaming!
