Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master

by Michael E. Shea

State the Six Truths of Your World When you’re building a campaign that focuses on the characters, you’ll need more than three words to give the players enough information to build those characters around the campaign. To help everyone understand the bounds of the campaign, you can build the campaign’s six truths. These truths are the facts that separate this campaign from all the other possible campaigns the players might have previously been involved in or might be expecting. Six truths is an ideal number because they’re easy to write down, easy to digest, and they keep your world from getting too complicated. Here’s an example of six truths for the world of our “Scourge of Volixus” adventure. A terrible power lurks beneath the village of Whitesparrow. The lands surrounding Whitesparrow grow ever wilder. Machines of a hellish war lay buried in endless caverns beneath those lands. A powerful devil has its eye fixed on Whitesparrow, the surrounding valley, and the mysteries held there. The ruins of elven guardians from a thousand years ago litter the valley. The borders to the outer planes in the valley are stretched thin. When your running the first session of your adventure (called “session zero,” which we’ll talk about in the next chapter), you can give this list of campaign truths to the players. They’ll then use these truths to build characters that fit the theme of the campaign.