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GameMastery Guide / Creating a World / Time

Crafting Time

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 162
When answering the questions in this section, don’t be afraid to start simple and add more as you run adventures. Write up a few important events in your setting’s history, shuffle those around, and when you’re happy with the story, you can set their dates and lay them out into a timeline. Even if you only have five important dates, that’s enough to provide context for dozens of potential adventures. And as the game progresses, you simply flesh things out more.

Some people really get into this aspect of world building, and that’s great. It’s important to remember, though, that unless an event has some value to the stories and games you plan on running, it isn’t worth burdening yourself or your players with it. If you are especially detail-oriented, you can go so far as to set up multiple timelines, keyed to specific topics: religion, politics, and technology, for instance. You could also transition this to a digital document, making it even easier to link events together. Be careful with this, though, as the complexity of such systems can snowball rapidly.

This last point cannot be stressed enough: one of the most common player complaints about a setting is an overzealous backstory. Don’t fall so in love with your world’s history that you marginalize your players. Historical facts should be presented in a manner that’s fun, exciting, and useful—or else ignored altogether.

Archives of Nethys

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Crafting Time