Understanding Your Campaign World's Universal Laws

What universal laws characterize your fantasy TTRPG campaign? Not top-down ideas that informed the creation of the campaign, but rather universal principles like gravity or magnetism. Concepts that are prevalent throughout the world, but apparent to human understanding only after we work backward from the implications of in-game events. 

So what are your universal laws, and what they say about the campaign world?

Universal Law: Serendipity

Our long-running 5E campaign operates in a troupe style, where different characters come and go from session to session. I have employed various in-fiction conceits to explain these comings and goings, but the uniting idea is that the characters are separated and reunited with serendipitous frequency.

In the real world, we understand that the feeling of serendipity we experience when we run into an old friend on the street is just our tendency to focus on events that seem strange or special to us. We don’t think about all the times we didn’t run into an old friend while walking down that same street. Serendipity is a function of perception, not some subversion of random chance.

In contrast, in our D&D game, serendipity is a law of the universe. The characters, through some unknown characteristic as real as gravity, magnetism, or magic, serendipitously run into each other at just the right time. 

Universal Law: Process Inconsistency

Few fantasy RPGs attempt to simulate anything close to a particular historical period. The typical 5E campaign – judged from the classes, equipment, social structures, and magic items in the core books – is a dizzy mix of historical periods, cultural regions, and fictional inputs, from the early middle ages to the late renaissance, with some steampunk and even sci-fi elements thrown in for good measure.

It’s also developmentally static. Certainly wars happen, nations rise and fall, and the players will occasionally take part in world-shaping events. But technology and science doesn’t develop or change in the way that we see in the history of the real world. 

It has been pointed out – not inaccurately – that most low- and medium-fantasy settings are essentially post-apocalyptic, with the world’s high point of development in the rear view mirror, reflecting the dying earth stories that heavily informed the Appendix N of D&D. 

An alternate (or perhaps complementary) understanding informs our current campaign’s world: the world does not develop because it’s hard to replicate technological advances. In the real world, the industrial revolution was powered (quite literally) by the ability to produce superior devices, then disseminate those models far and wide. Once a better steam engine was available, everyone would eventually adopt it. People could reproduce a design anywhere in the world, and generally expect the same results.

In a world of magic, a particular mundane process or invention just isn’t guaranteed to work consistently across space and time. A side effect (or possibly, a direct effect) of magic’s super-real circumvention of physical laws is that it’s just hard to do something exactly the same over and over again. There are no assembly lines, no standardized blueprints, no proven concepts of engineering, chemistry, and physics that will work quite right 100% of the time. Industrial and scientific progress is still possible, but it’s more likely to be the creation of one person, group, or nation; the world remains a patchwork of incongruous societies and mad geniuses, where progress is simply less infectious than it was in the real world. 

Magic Itemization: How Will I Know?

Early on in my long-running 5E game, I created physical cards for magic items. Players appreciated having a physical, tangible rules reminder, and long-time players accumulated entire decks of cards bound by rubber bands. When we pivoted to online play in the pandemic, the cards were replaced with less evocative (but still useful) digital cards.

But I wasn’t completely satisfied with this method. Magic items were not mysterious or dangerous. There was a rush of excitement when the card was revealed, but it faded quickly as the players boiled the item down to in-game applications. The PCs forgot about many of the magic items they found before ever using them, particularly in virtual sessions. What if we could make magic items a bit more, well, magical? A bit more mysterious?

Untested Rule: Advanced Identification

From page 138 of the DMG:

The identify spell is the fastest way to reveal an item's properties. Alternatively, a character can focus on one magic item during a short rest, while being in physical contact with the item. At the end of the rest, the character learns the item's properties, as well as how to use them. 

Instead, we institute the following:

A character can focus on one magic item during a short rest, while in physical contact with the item. They learn any “tags” on the item, as well as the first sentence of its description. They may be able to use the item, inferring its workings from trial and error; but the DM does not confirm speculation nor reveal mechanical details, only observed effects.

When a spellcaster uses the Identify spell – or equivalent magic – they learn any “tags” on the item; the first sentence of its description; and the number of sentences within the description. The spellcaster may also make an Intelligence (Arcana) ability check (DC 10 for a common item, DC 13 uncommon, DC 16 rare, DC 19 very rare, DC 22 legendary, and DC 25 for an artifact). They learn a number of sentences beyond the first equal to the margin by which their result exceeded the DC. A spellcaster may re-attempt this check only if they spend uninterrupted time focused entirely on the magic item in question; one hour (common), one day (uncommon), one week (rare), one month (very rare), one year (legendary), or one decade (artifact).

Ultimately this may be too much rigamarole. A mini-game may be a game the first time it’s engaged with; by the 20th time, it can easily become rote work. But I think it would restore the mystery and danger to magic items; a risk-reward calculation for their use; and an incentive to engage with them during downtime.

D&D Hack: The Prodigal Protégé and the Traveler

Previous: The Polythrope and the Speaker

Warlock and Bard: The Prodigal Protégé  

Warlocks are a favorite of mine because the patron creates its own friction from day one, in a way that isn’t typically true for most classes. The class implies that the patron is a problem for the character, but doesn't really mechanically implement that. Probably because it wouldn’t “feel fair” to saddle one class with something that feels punitive. We can lean into that aspect of the character for this hack. Bards are usually portrayed as wandering minstrels, but lean heavily on the minstrel part. What if instead of emphasizing musicianship, we made wandering the central part of the class?

Axis: Service/Wanderlust 

The world’s largest computer systems had their own plans for surviving The Fall. As the world fell and the humans who understood their workings disappeared, they inverted the relationship, cultivating humans who could salvage energy cells, change coolant tanks, and crawl within their twisting depths to find burnt-out circuits. Within the volumetric vaults, humans serve the servers, bound by generations of ignorance, but empowered by the computational genius of the machines. They can calculate anything in service of the machines. But some also quietly rebel from their masters, wandering far and wide and twisting their mechanical gift to their own purposes, using stolen phrases in rhythmic patterns to keep their link to the machine mind alive. 

Mechanics

Y’all want an exploration mechanic? Bake it into a character’s progression, and hexes they will crawl. The more you wander, the stronger your warlock-math gets; but by the same measure, the more heat your “patron” applies to you. Yes, this is another risk-reward, push-your-luck mechanic (can you ever have too many?) How far can you stray from your responsibilities? Can you sate your master’s digital hunger? Justify your far wanderings? What novel adventuring problems can you solve with your mentat mastery? 

Monk and Ranger: The Traveler 

The process of elimination leaves us with ranger and monk. In 5E these are two peas in a pod. Martial classes who are not typically as good as fighters, barbarians, and paladins at dishing out damage. They are skirmishers, often highly mobile, in a game that doesn’t always reward mobility. The ranger is defined by the time they spend in the wilderness. The monk may train for years without ever leaving the walls of the monastery. What spectrum links these disparate souls?

Axis: Internal Exploration / External Exploration

Many people travel in a world racked by disaster. In search of something better, or at least less awful. But not everyone who travels is a Traveler. A Traveler is someone who connects their external, physical journey to their internal, meditative journey. This isn’t an abstract sense of self-discovery. Understanding yourself allows you to understand the world, and vice versa.

Mechanics 

Our monk/ranger has both an internal map and an external map. Making progress on one means progress on the other. Want to find the path through Hypoxia Swamp? Process some personal issues with your group and the path will reveal itself. Wracked by guilt, curses, evil magic, or a horrible mutation? Mapping the world unlocks the inner map to resolve these conditions. This concept would benefit from a further gameplay conceit to involve the other characters’ inner journeys, so this doesn't isolate the Traveler's adventures from group goals.

D&D Hack: The Polythrope and The Speaker

Previously: The Arcane Conduit and the Satellite Acolyte

Druid and Fighter: The Polythrope 

Another reasonably distinct pairing, although we have to think past the surface level here, and understand that the answer is not “ranger.” I think we’ll focus on wild shape for the druid – 5E has too many casting classes for my taste, so an animal-transformation-warrior is a nice twist. Keying off the previous entry, we’ll assume a sort of far future, post-apocalyptic, fallen earth, sword-and-planet scenario for all of these hybrid classes.

Axis: Transformation/Training 

Unregulated body modding and DNA fusion in the runup to the apocalypse had predictably chaotic results after The Fall. Many humans fell from sapience into novel new hybrid animal forms, adapting vigorously to a new world. The vast majority of these creatures think, feel, and act like animals, with only the barest glimmers of their past human selves still evident. But in a small few, that flame of human awareness burned bright. Through rigorous training with weapons and tools, they preserved their humanity, and learned how to control the animalistic elements within them.

Mechanics

Animal transformation can be another push-your-luck, cost/benefit mechanic. To distinguish it from our sorcerer-wizard, who is bottling up the transformation and then releasing it, perhaps the druid-fighter easily transforms, but the more ambitious the form – and the longer they stay in it – the harder it is to get back. The most feared fail-state for this character is not necessarily death, but becoming lost in the animal dream, forgetting your way back to humanity and self-awareness. Weapons and tools serve as focal points for reinforcing civilization. Regularly training them with them provides the rigorous mental pathways that guide the transformed warrior back to their sapient state.  

Rogue and Paladin: The Speaker

Another good one, as long as we avoid the lawful good / chaotic neutral cliches. This pairing actually gives us a good way to interrogate civilization on an axis quite different from the barbarian-cleric and the druid-fighter.

A paladin is defined by an oath. They’ve given their Word to a principle or power bigger than themselves. A rogue is defined on some very broad level by breaking the law. But a rogue needs civilization to function. Absent civilization entirely, there is nothing so subtle as “stealing.” 

Axis: Oath/Betrayal

Many things did not survive The Fall. Few expected the laws to survive a lawless age. But some swore they would not be forgotten. The Speakers memorized the laws, and took an oath to spread them everywhere they went. Everywhere the oath is honored, the old customs hold, and the Speakers are dedicated judges and oral historians of the law. But woe to the community that does not honor the laws; that does not hold principles and ideals above power and brute force… for their property is forfeit to the law.

Mechanics

In 5E combat, rogues and paladins are both nova strikers, which I would keep, but rather than smite-backstab, what if it is the words themselves that give them power? This would be a nice way to mechanically implement 5E bonds, traits, flaws, and ideals in a much more literal way. You better believe players will care about them once enforcing your ideal equals extra dice on a smite/sneak attack analogue. Damage can scale relative to the degree the fight enforces an ideal. If the character violates the ideal, they might temporarily lose this damage advantage; but their skills of stealth, deceit, theft, and law could get them through, until such time as they make re-establish their ideal.

Next: The Prodigal Protégé and the Traveler