Blast from the Past! How to Make Your World Realistic: Some Tips

Below is an article from a fanzine I've been contributing to as the editor in chief.

Please excuse my mentorship, that was 20 years ago ??

Date of publishing: May 2004.

As a Dungeon Master (DM), I often ponder how the world around my players should look. In any game, whether it’s D&D or cyberpunk, there are buildings, structures, dungeons, and catacombs. All of this, whether crafted by human hands or by an ancient, long-forgotten race, should be realistic and well-integrated into the game universe.

I will never forget how, in one of the dungeons designed by a DM friend of mine, we fell into a trap. His description of the surroundings was as follows: “You’re walking down a corridor, the ceiling height is about 2.5 meters, and the width of the corridor is 4 meters.” And so, we walked along this corridor until we fell into a trap: “The tile under the paladin begins to spin, and he falls into a pit located under this tile.” When asked about the size of the tile, the DM replied that the tile was 7 meters long and wide, covering the entire passage. When asked how a 7-meter tile, even if its axis of rotation was in the middle, could complete a full rotation in a corridor with a ceiling height of 2.5 meters, we got a short and simple answer: “Magic.”

To avoid such situations, it’s not enough to simply remember what was said before. You need to be the chief engineer of your world, its architect. Even in worlds that do not adhere to the laws of earthly physics, there are limitations. Blaming everything on magic or others is a conscious way to ruin your players' immersion in your world. It creates the impression that the DM can do whatever they want (which they certainly can, but why should the players know about it?).

So, here are a few basic tips that will help your world be realistic, even if it’s completely fantastical:

1) According to all the laws of physics (unless, of course, you’ve changed them—and you haven’t, right?), a building's interior should match its exterior size. I’m talking about normal buildings, not interdimensional pockets, multifaceted dwellings, and so on. If a tavern is two stories tall from the outside but has five stories inside, and the tavern keeper isn’t named Elminster, it’s at least strange.

2) When planning a dungeon, consider what area it occupies, with all its branches. Doesn’t it end up under the city, and isn’t your Tarasque’s lair located directly beneath the town hall and temple?

3) In the skyscrapers of future cities or on interplanetary space stations, there are definitely ventilation shafts, but they don’t stretch for miles, and you can’t wander through them for several sessions. Also, enemies don’t sit in these shafts waiting for the heroes.

4) If you want to run a medieval module, it wouldn’t hurt to read about castles and look at some typical architectural plans from that era.

This is, of course, not a complete list, but if I were to describe all the inconsistencies that turn your painstakingly crafted module into a farce, no magazine would be big enough. I strongly recommend thoroughly preparing for the game, reading not only core books but also additional literature. I highly recommend the book “Castle Guide” released by the once-great and mighty TSR.

I also strongly advise you to get acquainted with any programs for drawing buildings and castles, because it’s very pleasant to provide players not only with a map hand-drawn in Campaign Cartographer or another program but also with floor plans of houses, at least the most important and key ones for solving the task and completing the module.

For example, here’s a house, both inside and out, drawn in five minutes in Archicad.