In this post, I am going to lean into an atomistic interpretation of Gary’s method. Essentially, this means building up a setting from individual “atoms” which have only a weak, external relationship to each other (as discussed in this prior post). I’m not suggesting that this is the “correct” interpretation, or that a single, correct interpretation even exists. But it might be the most efficient way to follow the method.
The basic idea of Gygax ‘75 method is to start with the smallest element of a campaign setting required to get things up and running. The game world is built from the bottom up, branching out from the site of the first few adventures. More overarching questions around the specifics of the campaign world are kicked into the long grass.
The first step of the process concerns the setting. I’ll return to this later. Step 2 is creating a map of the immediate area. The immediate area of what though? This is the central feature of the map which “must be the major town and dungeon entrance”. Step 3 takes us to a yet smaller atom – the individual levels of the dungeon.
It is the dungeon that seems the real starting point of the process, from which the other elements are orientated. The town is a reflection of what the characters need in order to engage with the dungeon, meaning it must contain equipment, mercenaries and carousing opportunities etc. The “immediate area” is designed to facilitate exploration, camping and eventual strong hold building. The campaign setting branches off in this way from its central atom.
The Jewelled Net
There seem two main ways to interpret the process from here. It could be that wider elements of the game world emerge organically from the dungeon as starting point. These subsequently become crystallised and begin to determine canonical elements of the setting. What begins as a collection of isolated atoms become enmeshed in a web of intrinsic connections.
An example of what I mean could be the large parties of fighting men that Gary suggests turn up at the town on occasion.
"If a few warring nobles from the surrounding territory also send large parties of men into the place occasionally some interesting brawls can occur."
From the inclusion of a few brawls, we now have the identity of a local nobles, who from this point could influence the campaign in any number of ways. Residents of the town might well pay tax to one of these nobles. Random wilderness encounters with parties of fighting men would likely be aligned with one noble or other. The game world begins to become a more interconnected web.
This recent blog post at Felix’s Dry Dog Inn has an excellent example of how world building can occur in this way, through events in play. After reviewing the events of their previous game session, Felix uses this to determine the factions that will occur in their setting. From the simple act of players selling goods at a port, this is taken to mean a merchant society will be one of the forces in the city. The merchant society is then set within a network of relationships to other factions.
Within Buddhism, there is a helpful analogy for understanding a strongly holistic interconnection of this sort. Indra’s Jewel Net is a metaphorical vast net, with a brilliant jewel located at each of the net’s “eyes”. Each jewel reflects light refracted through every other jewel. This means removing or changing any one jewel affects every other jewel in the net.
Okay, few campaigns are going to have quite this level of interconnection between every element of its setting. But without some degree of internal connection between its elements, a campaign is likely to be lacking in intrigue. If you take away the warring nobles, that large band of fighting men in the town will suddenly be at a loss to explain what they are doing there. This is much the same as way as a jewel is changed by removing another on Indra’s Net.
A Fractured World
An alternative interpretation is that Gary’s method is generating essentially independent elements of the game world. The nobles above crop up here but nowhere else in the campaign. Perhaps we are dealing with fractured landscape of innumerable warlords, with no overarching system of rule.
Gary’s suggestion to include a tavern which drugs its patrons seems more naturally atomistic in this sense. The tavern is a location for carousing and rumour gathering, but is unlikely to have much other relevance in a setting. Random encounters with packs of wolves etc can easily be run on this principle too.
Returning to the setting stage of Gary’s method, his approach does seem more on these atomistic lines. He mentions potential settings drawn from historical periods or works of fiction (Norse mythology; the Conan novels). But his own preference is a context that can “mix any and all” of those he lists “and then some”. It seems effectively an anti-setting, opening the field to drawn elements from the whole of fantasy.
Gary’s generic fantasy game world is the perfect basis for an atomistic approach to running a campaign. When a setting becomes more specific, it begins to imply relationships beyond those explicitly stated. In a Norse setting, a character will have an implied relationship to a clan, or they’ll be a reason why this is not the case. The clan itself will have relationship to a regional power structure, all implied through the introduction of a single Norseman. The jewelled net begins to knit itself.
Of course, we could introduce a Norseman to a campaign without paying attention to any of these implied relations. This is the essence of how a gonzo campaign works. Bizarro incongruous elements crop up without thought to how they make sense in the setting. Gary’s own dungeon example contains both Balrogs and Martian White Apes. Even if not explicitly gonzo, there seems little fear of off-key juxtapositions.
In an obvious sense, Gary’s generic fantasy game world requires less preparation work than a more specific setting. There is very simply the time saved in considering its culture, economics and history. But arguably far greater is the mental load saved of having to account for a network of relations when designing each atom of the world. It’s much easier to throw in a warlock or band of soldiers without having to think about their relationship to regional power structures etc. Atomism is in this sense is labour saving.
Summary
Gary’s 1975 advice for campaign creation seems very much of its time. He talks of his own players never having participated in such a game before, allowing them to be engaged by a simple maze of rooms lacking even a theme. For such players, encounters with disparate, unconnected monsters might contain a sense of wonder. But this could become hard to sustain once players get a few adventures under their belts. Otus’s Gygax ’75 challenge document contains a greater level of advance world building than the original article, and this might be a necessary adjustment to the expectations of contemporary players.
For me, Gary’s 1975 method is a starting point, from which to judge the best way of introducing complexity to a setting. What I want to avoid is exponential growth in the mental load of maintaining a setting, which could result from an exploding nexus of connections. (The approach advocated in this video seems like it could easily lead to this.) Keeping Gary's original method in mind feels helpful in avoiding this result.
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