Thumbnail World Creation
Thumbnail World Creation
You won’t always need a fully fleshed-out world for the characters to visit. Sometimes, you only need a world to serve as a backdrop for a scene or two, and then the characters are off on other adventures. Maybe you need a setting where the characters can pick up their contact, or maybe the characters need a place to get their spaceship repaired. In cases like these, you can use the thumbnail method of creating planets.
The thumbnail method is a “quick and dirty” way of creating planets—use it when you won’t be spending a lot of time on a world. There aren’t any particular stats or rules associated with the thumbnail method. Your basic goal is to develop the world just enough to serve the demands of your adventure, and flesh it out just enough to give the characters a taste of the character of the world. The thumbnail method is more an extension of adventure design than campaign design, since you are using it to serve the needs of a specific adventure rather than the needs of the overall campaign.
There are only a few steps in thumbnail world creation: • Determine the function of the planet: Not necessarily what role the planet has in intergalactic trade, but what role it plays in your plot. Is it where the characters are to meet someone? Witness something? Get into a fight? Pick up a hard-to-find engine part? Analyzing what the planet needs to provide to advance the plot gives you the information you need to move to the next step. • Develop adventure locations: You don’t need to develop an entire global economy and political system if the characters are only going to land in a provincial border town, spend the night, and leave the next morning. Develop the areas you know the characters will visit, and focus on developing a unique feel for those locations. Good visual images are important here. • Establish first impressions: What characters might notice right away: that the spaceport is on a giant seashell; that the air smells of sulfur (or can’t be breathed without a mask); that the star bathes the entire landscape in a blue light; that there are lots of palm trees and dusky brown penguin-like animals about; and so on. Again, these aspects of the world will likely be local to the specific area the characters are visiting; the penguins, for example, might not live in other areas of their world. • Develop global aspects: Summarize a few exotic elements which apply to the world in general. You can use this step to include interesting ideas you haven’t yet developed, such as cultural mores and traditions, and unique geological features.
Source: REUP:454