We haven’t talked about worldbuilding in a while.

With all of the flap about The Great Dungeons & Dragons 5.5E Dark Sun Debacle of 2026, I thought we were overdue to discuss campaign settings for a while. (My title. I called it!) I’m not going to talk about D&D 5.5E or even 5E. I’m not going to talk about D&D or Dark Sun at all. I’m so ashamed of Wizards of the Coast, I’ll be posting another open letter. I’ve already begged them not to do Dark Sun back on September 4th of 2025. .

Today we’re here to discuss every game but D&D. Let’s look at something that isn’t WotC garbage or even something from back in the day. I have been slowly creating a campaign setting as a solo game for Dragonbane for quite some time now. And realize I have tons of other setting ideas and come up with more every day. Campaign planning is my jam.

Everything comes up sandbox these days.

I see so many grimdark, dystopian, bleak, discouraging settings coming out these days. I even backed one of the more recent ones, Ruttigers Almanac and Game Toolkit. (This is not a dig on Ruttigers, Richard or Cawood Publishing. I love those guys!) I just need a break from all the depressing, dark, dystopian stuff. I also won’t touch Daggerheart with a 10ft pole, but Twilight Sword uses a similar mechanic to Hope and Fear, only on a grander scale.

In Twilight Sword, the Champions (aka the PCs) get benefits from uplifting a region and chasing out all the monsters, etc. I am overjoyed to bring that to Dragonbane. My as-yet unnamed solo game world has some freaky post-apocalyptic elements to it. Wouldn’t it be cool if the PCs could build up a positive reputation and gain the trust of various local factions as they explore various hexes?

So, in my sandbox hexcrawl world, various calamities on a grand scale have occurred that have left various civilizations in ruin. To make matters more interesting, the very planet they stand on reclaims land that has been left uninhabited or uncivilized for too long. There are as many things buried in the ground or under a mountain of vegetation as there are on the surface.

I used to plan entire campaigns as anime or TV episodes.

Back when I was younger, I made lists of entire seasons with one episode being an adventure for D&D or whatever I was running. I usually planned 12-24 episodes and a “movie” consisting of an isolated story arc. The downer was we never got that far in the game to actually do half of what I had planned.

No plan ever survives contact with the Player Characters!

We live in an era where a lot of level-based d20 games end before 7 levels out of 20. I used to play in and run games that went a lot longer than that. I think the scope of grandiose adventure planning needs to be reigned in. Even for solo games there needed to be a change of mindset with the way I do things.

That’s where sandbox gaming truly comes in. The PCs got dumped off in my world with no clear way of ever going back to the Misty Vale. The Otterkin they encountered upon arrival did not have the means or space for them to establish a permanent base of operations. One of the next cultures they encountered, the Ophidslakt, might have eaten the group in their sleep for all we knew. It meant the group had to keep pressing forward and exploring.

I think exploration is something sorely lacking in modern fantasy TTRPGs. I want a world where I’m not going to find the same old thing over and over again. To make things more challenging, there are random road encounters with some scary large-scale calamities. There’s everything from large roaming hordes of zombies to a massive Kaiju. Each step into a new hex is a rising check for something crazy to happen.

First hex, free from major encounter. Second hex: 12 on a d12. Third hex: 11-12 on a d12. Fourth hex 10-12 on a d12 and so on until they encounter something. Then roll 1d12 to determine the big oops. That’s on top of what’s already in the hex. I don’t need to write any kind of plot for this sort of thing. It sorts itself out eventually just by playing the NPCs, describing the environment/situation, and letting the players decide what to do. You know: Roleplaying!

There are some advantages to planning a whole campaign.

As a content creator, I think building an entire episodic campaign with several intertwined adventures is a good idea. I have a quest giver line coming up where the group will secretly be working to help build the main villain. The hanging question will always be there until the end when he finally steps out of the shadows as the unholy terror that the group has accidentally been building up the whole time if everything goes according to plan. (Yes, I know what I just said.)

If nothing else I intend to give GMs some one-shot material, adventures that can be sprinkled into their regular campaign somewhere, or maybe just one adventure running a quest out of the blue for this guy. I’m not going to say, “Do it this way or else you’re doing it wrong.”

I intend to say, “Here, try this in your game and see how it goes.”

But much like building a sandbox or setting up a linear style adventure for a new GM to run, building a relatively short campaign can cut down on GM prep time as well as set the GM up for success. Sometimes it’s just easier to have everything all nice and laid out, ready to go on short notice.

And if the PCs or even the GM goes off script? Oh well. In fact, good for them. Run with it as a GM. It’s what I live for. They won’t need a big lore dump or a fancy adventure if the group is living in the moment.

Even if you don’t use all of the outline or even all of the adventures you plan, that material is still a gold mine for other times or other campaigns. Sometimes just having that outline or list of adventure titles can be something to go off of in a pinch. I can improvise based just on a title and what I’d call an episode description as long as I have a few NPCs I know well and a situation to put the group in.

We can always work with the why and the who, but the where matters.

Campaign settings—living, breathing worlds—are what great, memorable games that last for years are made of. Some people, as we’ve seen the last few weeks especially between Professor DM’s Deathbringer and all the Dark Sun talk, really like the gritty, dystopian, bleak worlds of grimdark gaming. Some people really love cozy, sweet, combat-free games with kittens and coffee shops. (Kittens & Coffee Shops from Jeff’s Game Box is coming to a digital market near you. LOL!) Personally I like games with scary dungeon crawls, and obvious dichotomy between good and evil with some obvious Muppet cartoonish humor thrown in. Mirth and mayhem is how I like my world. There is an infinite continuum from serious to lighthearted.

When it comes to overall campaign setting creation, I think bigger is usually better. I prefer a world that is a huge forest, some mountains, with patches of jungle and maybe a little swamp. I tend to avoid big cities, clustered towns, and large areas of open prairie or desert. I’ve even tinkered with the idea of a game taking place on a Jovian planet, but then the day/night cycle might change and things could get complicated. As much as I am a Globe Earth proponent, I’ve even considered setting a campaign on a flat plane of existence just for fun.

Terrain is one thing. Fantasy people, sites, and cultures are another entirely. I like it when the group has a chance to soak in a little about the various factions around them before introducing a faction conflict. Maybe those goblins down the road aren’t so bad. Maybe the humans to the north are pretty nasty. Maybe the orcs down south are okay as long as you don’t cross them.

My point is, the PCs should be allowed to discover all this for themselves. If the PCs automatically side with the cute, cuddly Otterkin and go attack the Ophidslakt down the road because allegedly someone got eaten, maybe they should confirm or find out that the Ophidslakt are vegetarians.(Odd for snake people, I know.)

There is a distinct difference between the Campaign Setting and the World.

For example, in D&D most Forgotten Realms campaigns start and end on the Sword Coast. Yet there is an entire huge world on the surface and even more in the Underdark to explore. Not that we ever see any of it in the 5.5E era of D&D because the designers at WotC have all the creativity of a toppled fence post.

Entire campaigns in Dragonbane can easily fit into the Misty Vale, Arkand, or on the Path of Glory. Yet we know that world is huge, vast, and unexplored (here outside of Sweden.) I can’t wait to see what they do with Trudvang.

Right now the entirety of Twilight Sword takes place on a 5 x 5 one-inch grid map of Radia. The more sections of the map that are filled with Hope, the closer the Champions are to defeating the end boss once and for all. It’s a different approach than we’re used to seeing, that’s for sure.

My point is that as a GM, you don’t need to have the entire world figured out from Day One of the game. I know I’ve said before as long as you’ve got a starting village or area, a dungeon, and a point of interest on the map, you’re golden. You can figure out the rest from there. Contrary to popular Dungeon Master advice, you don’t have to know all the rules, memorize all the books, and know everything about the lore. We need to get back to the lost era of make some characters and play the game.

Wrapping it all up.

Your world can be as big or as small as you’d like. It’s good fodder for conversation during Session Zero, too. The scale and depth of the campaign can be as small as one village or as large as an entire pocket dimension. If the vastness of outer space and the greatness of the Universe are too limiting, I’d sure as heck love to know what you’re doing. To borrow an old phrase, you’re only limited by your imagination.

Happy gaming regardless of how big or small the campaign is. Longevity is more meaningful than any lore dump. Returning to a place that seems familiar for one more adventure is all you really need.

I say it every year, but I think 2026 bears repeating it. This year I intend to write more, read more, and discuss cool TTRPGs as well as supplements. Most of all, let’s just have more fun. Let’s explore. Let’s save the kingdom from the evil warlord. Let’s discuss all the fun stuff in gaming that we love.

With the world in the state it finds itself in today, please be kind. Please be considerate to one another even if we don’t agree. Lastly, please pursue the thing that brings you the most joy without harm to others. Thank you!