D&D 5E Homebrewing a Setting, advice?

[TheCosmicKid]

Like dual wielding a pair of two handed weapons?

You can have two out and ready, but you can't attack with both of them on the same round. The two-weapon fighting rules are quite clear on the sizes of weapons allowed.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

They do... eventually. They don't absorb all that from your campaign document prior to session one; they absorb it through actual play.

Nope. Not IME.

Whether its a homebrew setting or their first time first time looking at the Eberron players guide, my experience is that they get excited about multiple races and factions and other elements, and first time around, build characters that are bonded to that world in precisely the way you are claiming no players will be first time playing in a setting.

And its it's not just a group, but at least some members of every group I've run with.

The times where it doesnt happen are when the DM assumes they won't care about the history or cultures etc of the setting, and make no effort to help them do so. Even then, there is usually at least one person (other than me) who wants more info during chargen.

 

[Mercule]

Funny, that's one thing I could never get away with. My players adore maps.

As do I. It was painful for me to change the maps, but once someone pointed out that the larger continent looked a bit like Pac Man, I couldn't unsee it. The second round of changes was mainly to fix a few things that I'd broken with the first remodel. I'm not sure the players even had an opportunity to realize it had been changed, again, but I know and that's one of the dangers of doing too much work up front.

Man, some of you have directly opposite experiences from me on this stuff.

IME, most players will care a great deal about any halfway detailed setting that isn't a clone of another setting. They dig into the history of the guild they're a part of, or the kingdom they come from, they remind me of things I've forgotten about the world, even.

They do... eventually. They don't absorb all that from your campaign document prior to session one; they absorb it through actual play.

This. My two primary players (a.k.a. default leaders) absolutely suck at geography, so maps never stick, even when I print them for the player side of the GM screen. I've had single-campaign players who were otherwise, but not the folks who I've gamed with for 20-25 years. Over the course of things, I would have assumed that the ancient wars that left behind world-shaking artifacts would have sucked PCs in; they only caught one player, in a solo game. Maybe the rich trade city that sits across a mighty straight (imagine if Constantinople had been built across a natural Suez canal, with all the trade implications, housed one of two human arcane colleges, and had been the seat of Roman Church until the truest paladins were driven into the Sahara, converted an empire of hobgoblins and became itinerant knights) -- they've passed through it once and cleared out. The island nation that houses the other human college and has remained studiously neutral for over a millennium? Avoided for 30 years of gaming.

What have the PCs chased? Throw away lines about 1E undead moving silently (yeah, it was a thing, somewhere) because they had extremely limited levitation to avoid breaking twigs and whatnot spawned a scholar of the undead. The obligatory evil empire at the edge of the map that experiments on their people to enhance psionic potential? Sounds like a great place to sneak into. Multiple times. But, let's not worry about the social/political fallout caused by the power vacuum when we free a slave state from their grasp -- that's a good time to move to normal civilization, renounce allegiance to the (off camera) wizard college and help build a new one, even though you know your patron is a manipulative bastard. And, despite having about 30 well defined gods, we're always going to go to the same two because one is the LG god of the paladins and the other is a CG god of death that amuses the players because the church allows parishioners to donate their bodies to be raised as deathless groundskeepers so the clergy can do more interesting things.

Short form: you can't predict the players. The best GMs just have enough interesting ideas sitting around to be able to throw stuff at the wall until something sticks, then improvise well.

 

[Mercule]

Nope. Not IME.

Whether its a homebrew setting or their first time first time looking at the Eberron players guide, my experience is that they get excited about multiple races and factions and other elements, and first time around, build characters that are bonded to that world in precisely the way you are claiming no players will be first time playing in a setting.

And its it's not just a group, but at least some members of every group I've run with.

The times where it doesnt happen are when the DM assumes they won't care about the history or cultures etc of the setting, and make no effort to help them do so. Even then, there is usually at least one person (other than me) who wants more info during chargen.

IME, it's mostly the statistical information most folks gravitate towards, initially. Everyone wants the Dragonmarks and maybe the idea of belonging to a House/faction, but no one actually cares which house is the oldest or what the internal sub-factions are. The halfling wizard wants to cast cure wounds to back up the cleric, but doesn't care about the fluff around why Jorasco is so adamant that you must pay/charge for the service. Players think it's cool to be able to play pseudo-lycanthropes (shifters) and/or Paladins that favor long bows, but don't want to deal with the fluff around the distrust between the two groups.

You generally get lucky with a few things. The whole table embraces that the Valenar warrior is scary, potentially untrustworthy, and driven by glory even if they don't particularly care about the ancestor worship or other historic aspects. The Phiarlan agent plays up his role as an artist who just happens to be resourceful -- and never actually admits to being a member of the house, let alone Dragonmarked.

You also end up with folks bringing their own assumptions to the table. From the time of AD&D, the elves in my primary setting have always been more high elf than wood elf. I would occasionally get a player who could only envision wood-elf types, with one who saw elves as graceful barbarians and really, really wanted to play that sort of character. No matter how many times I explained that elves were deeply into magic and their lands incorporated natural things in the way ultra-modern cities do green zones, it never really stuck for those folks. I eventually added a group of wood elves into an existing, but unexplored forest. Likewise, I went with the original forest gnome woodsy illusionists. After Dragonlance came out, everyone wanted to play a tinker gnome (with varying degrees of competence). No matter how much I maintained that gnomes and tech were a campaign-specific thing to Krynn (later, that non-tech gnomes were campaign specific to my setting), it never stuck. Since I hated tinker gnomes, I just ended up with a metagame rule that says if a gnome ever tries to play with anything more mechanically advanced than thieves' tools, he will die to the "thumb of God", without regard for suspension of disbelief.

Basically, players are unpredictable. At a micro level, I can often encourage certain behaviors, but not always. At a macro level, it becomes a lot harder. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to, in most cases. Part of the fun is seeing where they go. Sure, I like backstory, history, etc. But I can't tell you exactly what the players will latch onto. I don't have the time to detail everything out, so I watch the players and add depth where they seek it. For worldbuilding, this means painting with a broad brush, at first, and increasing resolution in only the areas that need it. I see this as the "start small" idea, even if it isn't literally a single village.

 

[GameOgre]

Give yourself a maximum of one page for anything. World history=one page, World map=one page,deities= one page, Adventure= one page

Just keep it down to one page everything at most.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

IME, it's mostly the statistical information most folks gravitate towards, initially. Everyone wants the Dragonmarks and maybe the idea of belonging to a House/faction, but no one actually cares which house is the oldest or what the internal sub-factions are. The halfling wizard wants to cast cure wounds to back up the cleric, but doesn't care about the fluff around why Jorasco is so adamant that you must pay/charge for the service. Players think it's cool to be able to play pseudo-lycanthropes (shifters) and/or Paladins that favor long bows, but don't want to deal with the fluff around the distrust between the two groups.

You generally get lucky with a few things. The whole table embraces that the Valenar warrior is scary, potentially untrustworthy, and driven by glory even if they don't particularly care about the ancestor worship or other historic aspects. The Phiarlan agent plays up his role as an artist who just happens to be resourceful -- and never actually admits to being a member of the house, let alone Dragonmarked.

I mean, I"ve had those players, but at every table with them I've also had players who, given the opportunity, read most of the player's guide before making a character, and that character has bonds and allies and enemies and strong opinions about who should have won the Last War, and who probably caused The Mourning, and whether Breland still needs a King, and whether the Houses have too much power, and...etc.

Or, they make a Tairnadal elf who literally couldn't care less about any of that, because her whole purpose in life is to do right by her namesake, and her people, and she's too busy trying desperately to not give in to her inexplicable need to teach her fingers to dance the strings of a lute. It's impossible! Her ancestor never played a damn lute! She didn't even like musicians!

ANd meanwhile, and these are my favorite kind of players, another player has made her twin brother, a warlock whose namesake is literally in his head, whispering secrets to him. At first, he was ecstatic, but recently he has begun to fear that his namesake has gone mad, or been corrupted somehow, and he feels that he is slowly losing control of himself, losing himself to the long dead elf for which he was named. He can't ask the elders for help! What if they call him Traitor, ungrateful cur! Surely, he should be honored for his revered ancestor to choose him in this way, right? Right!?

But sure, you also get those players who just want to make Jack the Halfling thief, and never really even remember much about recurring NPCs.

It's jst not my experience that they outnumber the other kids.


I agree that you can't predict the players, though. Which is a big part of why I like getting player buy in when creating a setting. I ask questions about what kind of characters they have been wanting to play, give them an overview of the setting/campaign, and they ask me questions, make suggestions, ask "What if my character comes from a place like [description], and that "q&a" process helps build the world or campaign.

I generally don't make big changes to the world to accommodate a character concept, unless it's purely or mostly additive (can there be lizard people? Sure, I can find a place for that), doesn't contradict the setting (is faith rewarded with supernatural ability/is there magic? No, it's a science fiction based setting, but there is some psionic stuff, and we can work out some manner of benefit your character has because of their faith*) and isn't a huge amount of work to fit in.

If we had fewer campaigns, or if we tended to play really long campaigns, I'd be more willing to make big changes, but the desire to play something like a 4e avenger can wait till we play the next campaign, which won't be a no-magic, low-psionics Alternaty game. Obviously, if the group wasn't interested in such a game, we wouldn't even get that far, we'd be playing something else entirely.

*that one was actually my character, but still a good example of how our group works. Ended up, he had some mental defenses stuff and clarity of mind type stuff that was a result of his faith/meditative practices. He could basically do the Sherlock Holmes deduction thing, and effectively see what had happened in a place, or to a person, etc.

 

[Lazzamore]

Wow! So many posts while I was gone! Thank you guys for that wealth of great advice!

But I think it might not be too wise to mix my books with a campaign. Based on your advice, it seems like I, as a writer, might not be flexible enough to make a really good setting out of it. It would really be better for me to come into it thinking of it as 'ours' not 'mine'. Plus my book's magic is so different from D&D's magic, 'Additive' classes to that system here would be impossible.

My friends older brother is DM'ing a game of pathfinder for us, and he's pretty experienced, so that puts my turn off a couple of turns (First it was happening after my other friend's campaign, now we are moving all that down the road for what we hope is a pretty long and involved Older Brother's campaign).

 

[TheCosmicKid]

But I think it might not be too wise to mix my books with a campaign. Based on your advice, it seems like I, as a writer, might not be flexible enough to make a really good setting out of it.

I don't think anyone here wants to shut you down on this idea entirely. If you want to run a campaign in your book setting, you can definitely do it. An old friend of mine is a writer, and most of the time when he DMs we play in one of his worlds. It's just with an understanding that this is a slightly alternate version of that world where magic works D&D-style and there are some D&D-specific monsters like otyughs and the party may accidentally kill off very long-running archvillains who are only cameoing in the adventure simply by annoying them to the point of suicide (yeah, he takes "kill your darlings" very seriously). So whatever you do, don't let us stop you from bringing your own stories to life in this game. Just be aware of the necessities of adaptation.

Or alternatively, you can start a totally new setting, and embrace it as an opportunity to flex your worldbuilding muscles all over again. It's all in your perspective.

It would really be better for me to come into it thinking of it as 'ours' not 'mine'.

This. This is the heart of it.