THE ONEIROMANCER

THE ONEIROMANCER

Gygax 75 Challenge: Worldbuilding Cravana

Over Easter weekend this year (2022), I visited my parents, who live in a little village called Long Preston in the arse-end-of-nowhere in the Yorkshire Dales. I say the arse-end-of-nowhere, despite the fact that Long Preston lies on the A65, one of the busiest main roads through Craven District, because that's kind of how it felt growing up there while being a fan of RPGs. That's because, until I got to high school, there was no other sod willing to play them other than my brother, who (may the gods bless them) ran my party of six adventurers, spear-headed by the creatively named Beowulf the Dragonslayer, through dungeon after dungeon until they reached the mighty achievement of ascending to immortality.

Anyway, back to that trip. As we drove through the green fields of God's own county, the blessed motherland, home of the White Rose, my wife and I got to discussing the etymology of various place names on the route. Most of them have Old English or Anglo-Saxon routes, with places like Gargrave being gāra+graf, roughly translating as "wood from which spear-shafts were cut". The discussion quickly moved on to folklore and so on, and the inkling of an idea began to form in the back of my head that I just couldn't shake over the course of the visit. What if I could create a hexcrawl for a D&D game based on where I grew up?

It seemed like a relatively easy task to wrestle into shape (more on why I am an idiot later), given that the area, and all of Yorkshire/Britain in fact, is replete with folklore, monsters and other traditions that would provide an excellent grounding for it. Excited, I later posted on Twitter about the idea and received some healthy encouragement, including Glynn Seal, famed author of The Midderlands, telling me to "do it". Well, you don't have to tell me twice. I picked up my copy of Folklore Myths and Legends of Britain, ordered a few more books online (including The Lore of the Land—why, oh why, did I not already have a copy of this), and got stuck it...

It's been about a month or so since then. Ideas, if anything, are effervescent. They bubble up, sometimes overflowing, or all the gas leeches out of them and they fade away. The former happened here. There is SO much exciting stuff knocking around that could be plugged into such a setting. And not just by porting in stuff from elsewhere. Craven district is full of idea fuel. For example, did you know that there's around 89km of interconnected cave networks stretching underneath it? Talk about mega dungeon fuel!

The only problem I found was that there might be TOO much available. I've been falling down rabbit holes for weeks looking up strange anecdotes, weird folklore, creepy beasties and strange place names. I even drew a fancy map based of the old 16th century maps of the area! But, while I have a tonne of hooks to hang stuff on, the set dressing wasn't really coming together. Roll in the Gygax 75 challenge...

Map of Cravana

A work in progress map of Cravana

What's the Gygax 75 Challenge, I hear the you ask? Well, it's based on an article that Gary Gygax wrote back in 1975 about the steps required to get a D&D campaign up and running without falling down the worldbuilding well. I was first put onto it by Ben Milton over at Questing Beast, who discussed it on his YouTube channel. The thesis of the essay has been expertly translated into a five week/five step challenge by Ray Otus, which he has made free over on Itch. Go pick it up now. I can wait and you can thank me later. And, if you want to know more about the ins and outs of the challenge, then I highly recommend giving Ben's video a watch below.

Basically, the weeks/five steps break down into:

The idea is to have the basis of world, a preliminary area that is fleshed out for the players to explore, while creating just enough detailed notes about the rest of the world that you can use these to expand out from your starting area. Much like the concept of onion layers in Call of Cthulhu mysteries, this concept builds out from a core, adding layer upon layer as you play in and develop the world. And the key word there is "play". Gygax emphasises the goal as getting the campaign up and running so that you and your players can get to exploring and playing in your creation.

So, with that in mind, click on the links below and join me as I build the world of Cravana, a small scale hex crawl, which I plan on using to form the start of the next D&D campaign I run...

#May22