D&D 5E Tell me about your Homebrew 5E campaign setting

[Grimstaff]

I'm curious if anyone has developed their own Homebrew campaign settings, and how (if at all) the design of 5E influenced that setting.

For instance, in the Homebrew setting I'm tinkering with, I developed the settings pantheon based on 5E's 8 cleric domains, and a cabal of Great Old One warlocks are the settings primary villains.

I what other ways can 5E stuff directly influence a setting?

 

[pming]

Hiya.

I have two, actually. The first...the more "fleshed out and unique" one is called Paeleen. Here: https://paeleen.obsidianportal.com/ if you want to read a bit on it. Basically, it's got "slightly changed" races; in Paeleen, Wyr are the Dragonborn without the Dragon connection...closer to a Lizardman connection, and my Elves are divided into Alfar and Wood Alfar (each of those divided into three or so sub-races). That kind of thing. Classes also need to do whatever is 'core' to their class or they loose their core ability until they do something about it (e.g., a Barbarian who spends too much down time hanging out at taverns in a city and doesn't do any wilderness and/or Rage-fighting will eventually loose his Rage ability...until he gets away from all that "big city life" and re-attunes to his feral nature).

Our current 5e campaign, which just started last Sunday, is set in a world called "Genericka" (see the 'k'? That means it's different...lol! Here: https://world-of-genericka.obsidianportal.com/ ). I basically wanted just a core-rules-based world to roll dice in and throw monsters and treasure at my players. I think they've gotten a bit shell-shocked at my generally (quite) stingy hold on both treasure and magic...so this one is pretty much a "let the dice fall where they may" type game. It has no real world map...I'm just using whatever maps I can find or that seem interesting at the time, on a whim, or otherwise just make up on the spot. It's total sandbox and wide open from a DM'ing perspective. I wanted a world where my players could just make something up for their character and I can say "Yup, ok..." and then fit that into the world somewhere. It lets my just let my imagination go and not be constrained about preconceived world stuff like countries, customs, expectations, etc. I started them off with the modules Idol of the Frog God, using the Swamp Arena city of Coruvon as a base; it's kinda got that "lankhmar" feeling to it for me, coupled with the Black Mire feeling very much like the "Godslost Swamp" south of Queensdale in the MMORPG "Guild Wars 2" (water, croaking frogs, buzzing insects, glowing plant life and mists/water...a very fairy-land-gone-horribly-wrong feel). They just talked to the Frog God and are off to collect the three items he requested. Basically, a wilderness adventure speckled with dungeon bashing.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Jester David]

I'm only updating my homebrew campaign setting to 5e, having originally created it between 2e/3e (I was halfway done when 3e released). And I've updated/revised/reimagined it several times since.
Link for the interested.
Although, back when I was doing my worldbuilding blog on the WotC community site (and the compilation book) I half-designed a world as an example, taking into account more 5e-isms from the start. It didn't change my process that much, since so much of a setting is campaign agnostic.

5e is very D&D, so it doesn't take much extra thought. The main examples of 5e-isms are including the in-world roles of subraces and subclasses in the world, and trying to accommodate those additions to the game. Such as establishing who the various warlocks might ally with, where totem barbarians live, or the cultural differences between high elves and wood elves. Bardic colleges required some thought, as did accommodating options like the monk. You always have to answer how monks fit into the world. Clerical domains fit into that, as clerics require that extra bit of forethought and worldbuilding.

For my current world, I've accommodated a lot of that. I've been trying to explain where the various races hail from, and giving some classes a dash of flavour. I might eventually give each background a (short) paragraph of world-specific flavour as well. Explain what it means to be a soldier or priest or outlander in the world.
Plus some thought on how the classes are seen and viewed by the kingdoms and common folk. Are barbarians respected or feared? Are druids weird hippies or one of the checks and balances for the world?

When converting to 5e, most of my changes involved races. I initially changed all the eladrin in the setting to high elves (having originally been grey elves in 2e/3e). But with eladrin in the DMG I might slip in a few more references. I had downplayed the current place of gnomes in the setting, as they were not playable initially in 4e, so I'm returning gnomes to prominence somewhat. Dragonborn and tieflings are well established in the setting (as were genasi and warforged).
My setting is a bit savage and uncivilized in places, being a dash post-apocalyptic. So the idea of barbarous people being rare didn't make much sense: large safe cities and civilized lands are rare and lots of people live in small makeshift towns or nomadically. So I did some design to separate barbarians the class from barbarians the culture.


Plugging the setting itself, it's post-apocalyptic D&D. The world has become tidally locked: one side faces the sun, while the other always faces away.
MAP
It's been a few centuries since the everything went heck and civilization collapsed; nations have slowly expanded and taken over the habitable land where life can survive. The ruins of the Old Order are still all over the land leaving lots of ruins to explore. Monsters are everywhere, having taken over much of the land.
It's basically D&D blended with as many post-apocalyptic tropes as I could think of.

 

[tsadkiel]

Lost Albion, which is essentially post-Arthurian Britain with the serial numbers lightly filed off. The PCs are knights in the service of Queen Alis, daughter of the deceased High King Artos, as she tries to slowly rebuild her father's shattered kingdom.

The setting was designed for 5E, and specifically for the Basic Rules + the Elemental Evil Player's Companion. Albion is something of a magical backwater, meaning that most of the part-caster classes and subclasses in the PHB are possible but rare. There's a strong tradition of elemental wizardry, but not much else in the way of native arcane magic, and the New Faith and Old Faith both mainly produce life clerics.

The rest of the 5E material exists in the world; the continent as a whole runs on the core rulebooks (and not the EE Companion) so people who really want to can play dragonborn and warlocks and what not, they'll just be from somewhere else.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm curious if anyone has developed their own Homebrew campaign settings, and how (if at all) the design of 5E influenced that setting.

For instance, in the Homebrew setting I'm tinkering with, I developed the settings pantheon based on 5E's 8 cleric domains, and a cabal of Great Old One warlocks are the settings primary villains.

I what other ways can 5E stuff directly influence a setting?

It uses only the PHB classes and races, excepting drow (who aren't there; replace with shadow elves.) and svirfneblin (who are). It uses my homebrew pantheon, which has been built by players since about 1991...

The gods are a humorous lot. Every one either a tribute or a parody of some form.

No two campaigns have been set in the same parts of the world.

It's bigger than Earth. Horizon distance is about 6 miles, not 3. There is a hollow world. There is an underdark, too.

All the races are non-native. Most have cultural myths about the "arrivals" - or in the case of the elves, actual written histories.

Dragons claim to be the original inhabitants, but the lizardmen have myths about the dragons arrival... after their own.
Draconic colors only strongly tend to correlate to their alignments.

 

[bedir than]

I'm building a worldspace where both role-playing and original fiction will occur, so I'm applying some 5th edition variants to help that tie-in. The most obvious of these is use of the healing variant "Gritty Realism." I find that gets a pace of action that is more attuned to books than the more sped up healing.

I also "grant" feats to peoples that are from various places. The story-origin continent has just three races. Each gets a feat built out of and modified from the Ranger Beast Companion. The Kin are all people that bond with other people and the animals that gather around people.

Other tweaks aren't based out of 5th edition, but grow from my enjoyment of AD&D* while applying the more modern and simple systems. Cantrips aren't at will and the story starts with non-cantrips reduced to just rituals. All known magic is only a single generation old.

* for example I brought back racial minuses to ability scores.

After playing six sessions under this modified rule-set I'm currently re-modifying things. Some for balance, but mostly for simplicity. I may tear out many of the PHB classes and/or shift them to subclasses.

 

[Grainger]

My homebrew world was made to play with 5e, but if I'm honest, there isn't a lot that is 5e-specific. It could just as easily have been built with other versions of D&D, or other brands of fantasy RPG (which are also available). However, I think it's a testament to the ease of 5e that I feel I can just create a world and let players pick any options from there, and that it will all work. About the only thing I added was monk temples (I decided that eastern style martial artists settled in the mountains generation ago, and that's how PC monk characters can come into the otherwise medieval-English style game). Even then, this isn't really an element that is unique to 5e, but it was something that I wouldn't otherwise have included in the setting, but wanted to offer players the choice of being a monk because it's a PHB option and... why not?

 

[JeffB]

I have been using a homebrew both in Dungeon World and D&D , that is based on the little sandbox Jean Wells wrote up in the original Palace of the Silver Princess, but also incorporating some things from Tom's edit. Arik and his cult, for example.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

I have three D&D 5E settings going at the moment (plus a Pathfinder setting and a D&D 3.5 setting but those are a bit off-topic here).

The Secret World - An "other side" sort of setting based on Narnia, the Harry Potter series, Labyrinth, and every other fantasy novel in which people, usually children, from Earth find a way to a mystical realm of some sort. The geography is Earth-exaggerated - mountains are taller, canyons are deeper, etc. The population is also a lot lower since only the largest cities on "our side" have analogs on the "other side" and those are much smaller, generally speaking.

Everything D&D Ever - A kitchen sink setting in which I try to incorporate every official D&D adventure and setting and such into one setting, specifically Earth about 11,000 years after a magical apocalypse. Its 5E-isms are more apparent than the Secret World's since I laid the foundation with the 5E Monster Manual and Player's Handbook first, and then went back and started incorporating older edition material. As an example, there are no clerics of demon lords or archdevils or the like - all of those characters from early adventures have been replaced with warlocks. So, Lareth the Beautiful from T1: The Village of Hommlet, is a Warlock dedicated to Lolth, for example. Hommlet and most Greyhawk locales are located in the Northwest United States, by the way. The Known World locations are mostly on the east coast. The Rocky Mountains are now known as the Barrier Peaks. White Plume Mountain is where Old Faithful used to be. And so on.

The Fifth City - Babylon 5 translated into a swashbuckling, seafaring fantasy epic. The setting is a massive archipelago with hundred of islands populated by the various races, with Humans, Elves, Dragonborn, and Tieflings being the major powers in the islands. For those familiar with Babylon 5, Elves are the Minbari, Tielfings are Centauri, Dragonborn are Narn, and Humans are, of course, Humans. Most of the "monster" races (gnolls, orcs, kobolds, etc) are not inherently evil and walk side by side with dwarves, halflings, gnomes, etc in the Fifth City, an artificial island built by the elves and humans in an effort to promote peace among all races. Goblinoids are the only major exception as they went a campaign of genocide a couple of decades ago and were nearly wiped out because of it, surviving only as raiders and pirates.

 

[SilverfireSage]

Mine has been evolving over the years. Currently, it's based on some celtic and Gaelic myth and culture, but with tweaks and an underlying theme of chaos and order. The world originally was split into two worlds, a world of order in which the four metallic dragons ruled and created the Eald and the Dwaed, and the world of chaos in which the four chromatic dragons played with their prey and created the Ada and the Orcine. Eventually, someone caused a cataclysm that smashed the two worlds together, and the cultures mixed and warred until the current state of affairs, a world which thrives on the dichotomy between order and mayhem. In the center of the continent is a large, violet cloud that houses all sorts of lovecraftian horrors, and an empire desperately tries to keep its people in check.

That's the gist, with some other influences like Sorcerers and Paladins being joined together, unsanctioned magic is outlawed, and demons from another realm are running rampant. I'm thinking of writing it all up and putting it on here if there's interest for more campaign settings!