Worldbuilding

“You like the world, huh? Name every river.”

Land Design

The minutiae of geographical land design is beyond the bounds of this document, doubly so when Sburb needs not follow real life laws of nature. Instead, here are some guidelines to keep in mind when making each Land.

• The player’s starting area, and the four odd-numbered gates that send the player to another part of their land. This means five distinct zones upon which to focus; the five should likely share some themes common to the Land, but otherwise can be radically different.
• Combat, stealth, diplomacy, and exploration. Many playstyles can be summarized as a blend of these four. Plan accordingly.
• Mechanically, play to the character’s strengths. Roleplay-wise, this rule need not apply, based on how your NPCs and Quest is designed. More on that further below.
• Assign rough levels for each zone to get a feel for how long a player would spend in there. This will let you estimate how long or short the player’s arcs and wanderings should be.
• Think about NPCs. As a rule of thumb, one or two new friendly NPCs per zone is enough.
• Antagonists on the land are hard, but not impossible. Traditional underlings can’t speak like sentient creatures, which poses difficulty when using them in any diplomatic sense. Figure something out that works for you.
  • On this note, also come up with an antagonist or goal for each zone. This will aid you when making the Quest.
• Ramp up gradually; do not throw the entire splendor of the land or anything marvelous at the beginning. Players typically expect escalation the further in they go, not for it all to be burst upon them at the start. The latter is a factor in players growing bored during the latter half of the session, after the midgame’s climaxes but before the endgame.
• Each zone should feel fresh. Avoid making each zone “like the last zone, but it also has X.”

NPC Design

What Do You Do Here?

Think of the purpose that a given NPC serves. What do they do in the story as relevant to the player’s journey?

• Exposition. Sprites are a clear example of this.
• Herald/quest-giver to direct the player. Sprites can also do this.
• They provide a service.
  • For another NPC. Carapacians to their king, for example.
  • For the player. Friendly consorts.
  • For the antagonist(s). Minions, but more than faceless goons.
• They make the player feel good about themselves.
• They have their own motives.
  • Consider how the player works into these motives, or how they don’t.
  • Is what they want beneficial to the player’s goals? Or detrimental? Or perhaps it’s irrelevant?
  • Would they be antagonistic to any other NPC? Any in particular?
  • If they die, do their goals die with them?
• The setting mandates their existence. Sprites also fill this.
• As an antagonist.

What Do You Want?

Think of an NPC’s motivation. What do they want? As per Vonnegut, every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. Sometimes, you may find that they have everything they want, in which case a popular answer is they want everything to stay the same. This answer is incredibly common in real life.

Personally….

What is the NPC like? What’s their personality? Flavorless, bland NPCs have a place when extra bodies are needed; the spear carriers, of sorts. However, those don’t require much of a guide to utilize, whereas creating nuanced characters may.

• A typing quirk or distinct way of speaking is a large factor in how a player responds to an NPC.
• Mechanically, if they have a disposition or an inverse, they will likely reflect it in their mindsets to some degree.
• When creating several NPCs, use common groupings to differentiate them. The Four Temperament Ensemble, the Myers Briggs personality types, or even the Zodiac (of Western, Eastern, or Extended flavors) are widely used for a reason.
• Make nuances and details within the characters after the broad strokes are in place.
• Ask, “How and why do they do X?” when determining if a character is ready.

Change and Development

How can the NPC develop throughout the story? What makes a person change?

Well firstly, let’s ask why an NPC might need to change. They change as the story progresses and events influence them. Often, the players may latch onto what were intended to be temporary characters, and what little was written for them to cover their temporary use needs to be expanded.

• Overcoming skill or moral flaws within themselves.
• Consistent unpredictability.
  • Contradiction between words and deeds. Do as they say, not as they do.
  • Treatment of people. People don’t treat their mothers the same as they would their child, and both different from a coworker, a client, or a stranger.
  • Throw them into new and unexpected situations. For example, what if they’re at a restaurant and they don’t have their wallet?
• Achieving their goals.
  • Are they corruptible? Power and money have ways of changing people.
  • They achieve their life’s dream. What now?
• How set are they in their ways to begin with?
  • Planescape would answer that regret can change the nature of a man.
  • Younger characters tend to change more than the elderly.
  • Sometimes, the character isn’t easily changed, and this immutability is a core tenet of their character.

Pitfalls to Avoid

There are mistakes commonly made in RPGStuck relating to SMs and creating NPCs.

• Make everything related to a theme. Not everything about a character must wind back to a central concept.
• Something cool or badass about a character should not be the only facet to their character, give them more. The same goes for expository NPCs; if they only exist to give information, why not move that role to another, fleshed out NPC?
  • Then again, sometimes an NPC doesn’t need to, which leads into the next point.
• Not every single NPC needs to be fleshed out with a comprehensive backstory and psychological breakdown.
  • Part of being a good SM is recognizing what characters do and don’t need to be detailed, and saving themselves said effort.
  • If the NPC’s main purpose is cannon fodder, they don’t quite need a fleshed out personality. Not when they’re not really going to use it. If they live past their expected expiration, expound on them then, not before.
• God NPCs are a type of character that make the player irrelevant because they eliminate any challenge for the player. Remember, it is the player’s story, not the NPC’s. The NPCs are a supporting cast, and should be treated as such. Write accordingly.
• They should be consistent. Make a short list of core ideas or what an NPC would do, and follow it when unsure.
  • “I have no idea what to do.” is a valid response, both in-universe and in real life. But use this in moderation.
• Make do with less. You only have so much screentime you can spare for a given NPC, and this time goes down the more NPCs you need to show. If you can reduce the number of NPCs, do so. If you start being crunched for NPCs, you can always introduce more later into the story.
• Show, don’t tell. An out of universe explanation of a character, short of something meant to remedy disruption and friction in the player’s thread or session group, such as a warning to stop killing NPCs wantonly, should not be accepted as good exposition.
  • On that note, don’t talk up an NPC’s abilities. One bad string of dice rolls can easily curtail whatever potential they were expected to live up to.
• Child NPCs engender a desire to protect with incredible ease and rapidity. Use them cautiously.

Moon Design

Everyone that has read Homestuck knows the basics; there is a king and a queen of each moon, there are two moons that are at war with each other, and Derse is destined to win over Prospit. But let’s take the broad strokes into something actually usable.

What do They Do?

Canon is a reason for them to exist, but you as an SM probably need more than that. You need something to do with them.

• The dreamself. Every player typically has one, barring horrible or temporal (hilarity optional) shenanigans. The dreamself, technically, does not have weapons, though SMs can and do allow them to share weapons or give other means of arming themselves, depending on what they have planned.
  • The dreamself is the non-combat portion of the session, and a major part of the overall scheme of things. Between a dreamself’s reverence from the carapacians and their ability to fly, diplomacy and discovery easily come front and center.
• The Reckoning, at the canon endgame. Endgames don’t just happen, there’s setup and foreshadowing long before the players get there. The dream moons, being the homes of the factions involved in it, easily serve as locales in which said setup can be shown to and influenced by the players.
  • If you have another endgame planned, change the moons to setup and foreshadow that instead, in some way. Derse dreamers can look into the Furthest Ring, and Prospit dreamers have visions in the clouds. Both of these are straightforward ways to disseminate info to the player they wouldn’t otherwise have.
• Access to the carapacian NPCs. Treat the moons just as you would a Land for the purpose of being a hub in which NPCs can hang around, ply their trade, and go about their business while being open for interaction.
• The queens of the kingdoms typically stay on their moons, and they carry the rings. Powerful NPCs, sometimes available from the very beginning.

Plan for the Players

The players can fly. This sole fact gives them a ridiculous amount of freedom in where they can go, so plan accordingly. They can go just about anywhere, and players, being players in a tabletop game, will end up in places you didn’t intend for them to be.

Other than that? Plan for them as you would if they were anywhere else.

Organization and Bureaucracy

All kingdoms have some sort of hierarchy; someone has to tell the peasants what to do, the soldiers where to go, and the dreamselves what mandatory and silly rules they should follow. This is also a convenient way to go about making NPCs, and also a way to show off the character of a moon.

Ask yourself; if something on a moon needs to be done, who goes and does it?

• A single, overworked bureaucrat. This has some grounding in canon. Even without repeating what Jack did, a government worker who understands the system is a dangerous opponent and a useful ally.
• Emissaries and diplomats. The king and queen can’t speak to everyone at all times. They can be anything from glorified messengers to political forces in their own right.
• Generals, marshals, khans, strategoi. What have you. The military brass. This one should be obvious.
• Stewards, trade secretaries, master of coin. They keep the money flowing, and the economy afloat. For how effective a coin counter can be, look no further than Littlefinger from Game of Thrones.
• Spymaster. Intelligence gathering, espionage, cloak and dagger, wetwork. This one should be easy to extrapolate.
• Heir to the throne. This one’s rare, and not canon, but it’s been done before. Succession crises are, in fiction and in history, wonderful sources of chaos and new plotlines.
• Spiritual authority. Also seldom seen, but a more philosophically minded mentor of some sort can help players decipher prophecies, learn more about their session, and muse on the more esoteric aspects of Sburb.
• Scientific authority. Chief ectobiologist, doomsday weapons creator, any sort of role that can be filled by the smart one of the cast, which makes it versatile.
• Nobles. Seldom to sometimes seen, canon unconfirmed. A feudal kingdom has lesser nobles to whom land management is delegated. If the monarchy is a bit more absolute, replace with politicians, like a House of Commons, or bureaucrats, as the Chinese did, or whatever else works for the moon you have in mind.
• Figures of interest. Advisors, traders, personal servants, people with reason to be spoken to on kingdom business.

When you’ve compiled your list, go over it. And then begin cutting. Look at each NPC again, and ask yourself if their role can be better done by someone else. It’s not as though you will only have this cast; more can appear as the session goes on should you desire it.

Tying it all Together

Sticking to Canon

Obviously, this is a tabletop game based on Homestuck, and thus should stick to the canon when reasonable. However, past experience has shown what does and does not work.

• The entry process is almost always stuck to, though it’s a process with many steps.

Said steps have been reproduced as a checklist for easy tracking. In previous editions, it’s been tradition to reward players with a level for seeing this through, which continues to 3e. Give them 30 XP for getting all this done. More if unforeseen shenanigans occurred during it, which given the nature of the setting, shouldn’t be ruled out.

• Deployed the Cruxtruder

• Deployed the Totem Lathe

• Deployed the Alchemiter

• Deployed the Punched Card

• Opened the Cruxtruder

• Prototyped the Kernelsprite

• Carved the Cruxite Dowel

• Created the Entry Item

• Solved the entry puzzle

• Level up Client PC

• The Seven Gates do not follow canon in most actual sessions; the layout of these gates makes it difficult to impossible for a player to return home. For simplicity’s sake, most sessions instead have each odd-numbered gate go to a locale on their own land. The even-numbered gates still retain their function of sending the player to their server’s house, but they are located above the player’s house like the odd-numbered gates, instead of in the area to which the odd-numbered gates lead. Return nodes exist for both such that the player can go both ways without much hassle.

• Ectobiology, ensuring the players’ origins and sending them back through the meteors or some other method, is dependent on the SM. More sessions lean towards including it than excluding it, though the choice is left #Keup to the SM, based on the particulars of their session.

• The Genesis Frog, as of February 5th, 2019, is not a topic many RPGStuck sessions have gotten far enough to handle, and not enough information exists on its creation in practice upon which generalizations can be made.

Sometimes, if you don’t enjoy an aspect of canon, or you’ve been around the block and want something novel, you can disregard canon if you so wish. However, there are two major factors to consider when deviating from canon.

• Is this what the players want? If you want to deviate from canon in a major way, it should be stated as such at the beginning, as explained in Setting Expectations.
• Are you fine with explaining every bit of the deviation as it becomes necessary? Canon gives expectations that your players can expect, that you play off of.
  • For example, while in-character the players may not know what an alchemiter or grist initially is, out of character everyone knows what they are. This isn’t something you have to explain to them.
    • A deviancy has no such benefits. You cannot expect them to read your mind; you will have to explain everything to them.
  • Experience has shown that players tend to gloss over such in-character discoveries, specifically because out of character they already know it. They’ll react to it in-character, but they don’t want to spend a real life month over it.
  • Every part of the session that doesn’t match canon creates more uncertainty, which influences a player’s actions.

Keeping Track

Once you have everything ready, it needs to be tracked. For NPCs, they need to be catalogued, their associated player noted, and simple but distinguishing facts like appearance, quirk, and disposition noted. For NPCs with a greater hand in things, keep track of their motivations and what they aim to do; motivations can change as the session does.

Session Length

This is an important part of the session, important enough that you MUST answer this before you actually start the session:

How long do you actually want to run this game?

An unfinished session is a tragedy for all involved. You should think about the long term when you do this.

There are five session lengths, corresponding to each of the five tiers of levels. E.g. Length 3 means the session expects to end around when the players finish tier 3, or level 13. This also affects everything else, such as pacing, story content, etc, so give this some considerable thought.

Developer’s Note (3/15/20): For the 2e veterans, we’d estimate that one tier of play in 3e is equivalent to about 9 levels from 2e, maybe a few more or few less. Furthermore, going by historically finished sessions, we’d peg the average session length as length 2 or length 3.