How We’ve Changed TTRPG Worlds

In TTRPGs we all (for the most part) play heroes! We fight evil and we save the day, but for those who are in long-running campaigns or play in settings like Suzerain (has the Legends Awakened initiative where player sessions can affect canon lore of the universe, more info on that on the Savage Mojo site).

What’s the biggest change or affect you/your party has had in a TTRPG? (be it scripted campaign event or ‘party-gone-wild’ events that the GM has had to deal with! :D )


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(Picture is of Solrayon-Sur-Mere it was a fishing village that was destroyed in a Legends Awaken initiative game, more info on that on the Savage Mojo site)

Well most of my games that I have run began with one simple village or town. I never build past that. My GM style is very heavily in the improvised direction and hardly do any world creation. The characters do that work for me. I ran a group for 3 years with many campaigns in one homebrew campaign. The players fleshed out the world. I would just pick (or the players) would pick a place on the world map and start the campaign. I would even start other groups in the same world, but in different time periods or other locations. The world began to take life and you start to see how the world functioned after these characters impacted it. They played heroes, but also they created the villain characters as well by campaigning as them. Players came and went, but as time moved on, old players knew more of the history of the world than I did. I used other tools from other supplements to help enhance and add gaming mechanics to the domain level for retired PCs. So the players could do domain level play in between sessions. Players loved running into memorable NPCs and even created some with picking up retainers and henchmen. So I guess my style tries to get the players to enhance my world instead of the other way around. I would say that I strive for those instances where players throw a monkey wrench into the works as it makes the story interesting to me and I feel like I'm playing as well to keep up. My one advice for any GM out there is don't be afraid to stick to a personal world of your own. Let each group of players help build it for you. It becomes a sentimental thing and take the good with the bad since worlds can't be pristine or perfect. They need some ugly and silly in them.

I always leave the future open, but I think it's important to have some of the history (even if subjective, maybe even best if its subjective) of the world/region. I loathe stagnant settings. But changing the future has little impact if the world (or region) doesn't have history.

I had a campaign set in a frozen world that was the result of Thor and Ra teaming up to murder Gaia. this had nothing to do with the campaign, it was just the ancient history of the world. My players thawed out the world, resulting in a global flood killing 90%+ of the population and leaving only a few mountain chains still above sea level as archipelagos.

I've also played a few games using https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17166/ the rules that let D&D players be gods. Those games all had massive changes, including complete annihilation of worlds, creation of new planes of existence, massive alterations of geography and civilizations, etc. As you could imagine.

In a Rolemaster campaign I ran the players were looking for an artifact that was in two parts (crown and scepter), the scepter gave the bearer the ability to control the land within an ancient kingdom's borders and the crown gave the ability to influence the thoughts of every sentient being within the ancient borders. They were to find both parts because the crown alone inevitably warped the mind of its wearer and turned them into tyrants who enslaved everyone, only with the scepter to balance it out could the kingdom actually know peace. The players decided that was just a rumor and intentionally never bothered to find the scepter but did give the crown to a descendent of the royal family, resulting in a 200 year era of tyrrany, darkness and suffering. Never got to run the follow up campaign, unfortunately.