Homebrew World Preparation

[Acid_crash]

This is for all of you out there that have created your own worlds...

Just how much do you prepare before you begin your first game session? I am coming up with just the basics of my own world, and the feel I am going to present (Black Company meets Dark Sun with no real clerical healing -- the players would be their own mercenary company) and I have a few basics of general geography, but the more I think on it, and the more notes I write, the more I keep writing and now some of my ideas are all jumbled up. Plus, I really suck at drawing maps and I don't have the money to get any of the good map makers out there.

The basics of my world is that I have the main feudalistic society (called Central Kythika) ruled by a benevolent Queen, then east of that is a smaller religious dominated state by the Inquisitors of the One God (and they are really not all that pleasant, NPC only), and then the main area of the setting east of that, a land (called Far Kythika) ruled by the smartest (or most powerful, or most influential, or most cunning, or most brutal) warlords that are carving out a place for themselves since they have lost contact with their main ruling state fifty years ago after the Gods War. Bandits, barbarian hordes, bounty hunters, roaming Inquisitors looking to convert followers, mercenary companies, and the last bastion of the original army from Kythika (stationed in a city simply called Capital - where the last ruling Houses of the original Noble families hold sway with iron fists) all reside in a region that has been torn asunder by the war.

I have all these ideas, but coming up with actual location names, more of a history, towns and npcs, geographical data for players to see and visit, etc... all that is not really coming to me. This has been my problem in the past, I can come up with the ideas, but the actual details, well...that's something I need help with.

So, for those of you who have ran successful homebrews, what preparation do you do and how do you handle running your own personal worlds?

 

[reanjr]

In my experience, you can start a campaign with no preparation at all as long you take good notes while playing. You probably should at least come up with names of places to drop in conversation and description (the farmer looks like an immigrant from Hyrskar with his olive skin and squat features). You can then add in reasons later for using those descriptions (you decide later that Hyrskar was invaded and taken over by the Gords, sending a lot of refugees to the surrounding regions).

The more information the better, but none is necessary if you can think on your feet and have an internal understanding of how the world works.

 

[Emiricol]

I and a dozen other people spent a year working on our homebrew, including a large pantheon of deities, creation myth, planar structure, prestige classes, organizations, races, realms and a few thousand years of rough history. It was more fun than work.

 

[Turanil]

So, for those of you who have ran successful homebrews, what preparation do you do and how do you handle running your own personal worlds?

Writing down everything is mostly something that satisfies the DM only! If you have a pretty good idea of what you want to do, have already printed stuff (or things you found on the numerous homebrews on Internet) available to help you, you don't need write anything. Your players will like it th same, and won't know the difference.

A suggestion: award XP to players who help develop the world, coming up with maps and descriptions of regions, organizations (to which they belong) etc. The players will like the world even more!

 

[lotuseater]

it sounds like you have a good foundation. now you can just start fleshing out the details as you go along. you should probably use the same approach that you use for creating a single adventure. for me, that means i come out with the basic outline, and then as i come up with more details, i just keep piling them on. you have the overall map laid out, so make a page in a notebook for each kingdom/city/region and as you think of details, write them in.

you can also get your players to help. say they want to play a cleric. you might have a generic idea for a god or temple or order, and then they can start filling in the details for their character and that group of clerics as a whole(names, appearance, philosophy, etc). as long as you approve of their ideas, then you can include that in your over all world view.

if you keep careful notes, soon enough you'll find you've created an entire world.

hope this helps.

 

[Verequus]

There is AutoRealm as free mapmaker tool. Also I've seen a tool for creating entire worlds after some scientic formulas - it is from the same company as the Campagin Cartographer.

 

[philreed]

In one game I was in we created the campaign world a piece at a time. Each player brought in a page of new information for the campaign world each session -- the DM then blended the elements together. Some of what was written by players wasn't true (it was what that player's character thought was the truth) but it really made for an unusual -- and fun! -- setting.

 

[TerraDave]

I bassically agree with reanjr: you have a good foundation to build on, and no, you don't need to detail everything at once.

Given that you already have a lot of the big picture stuff, try to focus on things you may need for charecter creation (e.g. a few dieties they may worship or languages they need to know) and the first few sessions of play. Write down your ideas (good ideas can be forgotten) and keep notes during/after play to try to stay consistent. Don't be afraid to just make stuff up, borrow it, or get it from players, and let the world develop along with the campaign. Just try to keep track

 

[SpiralBound]

This is for all of you out there that have created your own worlds...

Just how much do you prepare before you begin your first game session?
. . .
This has been my problem in the past, I can come up with the ideas, but the actual details, well...that's something I need help with.
. . .
So, for those of you who have ran successful homebrews, what preparation do you do and how do you handle running your own personal worlds?

There isn't any intrinsic "list of required preparations" really. It basically comes down to this: How much do you need to adequately make your setting feel real for your players and provide both you and the players with enough support to allow everyone to collectively breath life in to your original campaign concept? Just how much material you need to create initially in answering that question really depends on what you're trying to accomplish and your personal GM style.

Speaking for myself, I usually don't prepare a whole lot. I usually start with the bare minimum of actual setting details and allow it to develop and grow naturally as the campaign progresses. For example, for my last setting, I had a VERY rough pencil sketch of a corner of a continent with 2-3 locations, a general feel for what the style of culture was here, what vague political activities were happening or about to happen, what races and classes were allowed, and a couple of adventure ideas for the first few sessions. I started them with a treasure hunt in the ruins of an ex-capital city from an ancient fallen empire in a current day land of city-states.

This grew and evolved into an entire continent with a history, several cultural realms, a few unique monsters, and a bunch of really fun adventures as the characters slowly unravelled the truth of an ancient forgotton war that had radically changed their world from what it once was into what it was now. (my original campaign theme) The PCs didn't even know that their world had ever been different. They also stumbled across the fact that the original cause of this world-altering war was coming back to finish the job...

 

[Ry]

Since you're trying to bring things up to the first session, I'll advise on that.

For their first experience in your world, you'll want to make a fairly straightfoward adventure. This will establish what "normal" is in your new setting (it doesn't hurt to tell the players that you're doing this for the first game). From experience, players don't ask about far-off political situations or ancient history first-time in a new world. At the same time, you don't want to paint the wrong kind of picture, so you should know where your campaign is going.

So there's 2 things I think you need before you start: A proper adventure (there's tons of modules out there) and a rough outline of your campaign's future.

Do a rough outline of the campaign's main plotline - what's going to happen to the player characters over the course of the future. Work on detailing things that came up in the skeleton (with heavy emphasis on things that need mentioning in the first session). Don't waste time drawing maps of cities that players won't hit until 10 sessions in - draw the map of this week's town and this week's dungeon. If you can get your players to make their characters in advance, that should make it even easier.

Is your campaign particularly exotic? If it is, then I'd say you need one more thing: A player handout, no more than 1 page front and back, that gives them the bare essentials of what the world is like.