In 2005, I was playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons. I was a player then. Well, the Dungeon Master, a friend of mine at the time, was just a really horrible DM. You see, in my humble opinion, there are some things that you need to do to be a good Dungeon Master.

First, you don’t involve the gods in the world. And for those who don’t understand, I’ll say this. When you start playing, you are at 1st level. The game usually goes up to 20th level and then it eventually ends and you start all over. D&D is not really about winning, like Monopoly, but more about the journey. Like a good book. When a DM involves gods in the story when the player’s character are 1st level, to me it’s a sign that they are a Power Gamer. And that they really need to reinforce to the players, the power they hold in their hands as the Overseer of the game.

Now from a player aspect, I feel like, those gods, who are usually dealing with fighting off such bad things that the mortal mind couldn’t comprehend, aren’t going to be paying attention to a 1st level character. It’s like you, caring what happens in the lives of an ant you just walked over on the sidewalk.

Anyways. The second thing you don’t do as a DM, is run a Non-Player Character, known as an NPC, in the game unless you have no choice. When a Dungeon Master does this, it’s usually because they can’t give up the fact that they aren’t a player anymore, and still cling to the idea that they can be a character in their own game. This usually does not end well and interferes with the game for the players.

But continuing on…. The Dungeon Master sucked, so I asked if I could DM. And, as if you didn’t see it coming, the guy leapt at the chance not to be the one running the game.

So, I took a couple weeks, and started drawing a map on one single 8 ½ by 11 piece of paper. Naturally it had small hexes on it so I could know how far people were traveling. These hexes were about the size of an eraser on the end of a pencil, and each one represented 10 miles of territory.

Well. As the players continued venturing out further and further, I realized that I needed to expand the map, and that I wanted to have a central city to the entire kingdom. And when I reached that city, I named it: Corsana.

And so, the world sprung to life.