Good sources for making a Homebrew World

[Woas]

Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft articles: the first and last resource any homebrewer needs, as far as I'm concerned.

QFT. Those articles are my DMing Bible and the Rules of Dungeoncraft are written in sharpie on the inside cover of my DMG.

 

[dmccoy1693]

A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe is unbelievably good and useful. I would start there before looking anywhere else.

Honestly, I'd recommend the whole line. Ecology and Culture is great for coming up with the map as well as how weather influences culture, gods, etc. Silk Road is amazing for detailing long distance trade routes and economies.

 

[Psion]

Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft articles: the first and last resource any homebrewer needs, as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah. Ray's "4 NPC roles" and "make a secret for every game element you create" are things that are now standbys in my GM toolbelt.

 

[Dan Bell]

Hi Jakar,

I can't offer guidelines but can suggest www.lythia.com for the free downloads. That Harn material can be cut and used in your homebrew. Plus it sometimes can raise some issues that you haven't thought of before.

Enjoy,
Dan

 

[InkwellIdeas]

Worldbuilding: Cultural Quirks

What timing! I just finished creating a list of Cultural Quirks for use when Worldbuilding. Worldbuilding: Cultural Quirks

Please do look at borrowing some of these when you are fleshing out the cultures (whether that's by country, religion, region, etc.) in your world.

 

[mcrow]

I found Terry Brooks' book a good resource.

 

[Boss]

I am surprised no one has mentioned the Campaign Builders Guild. That's pretty much all they do.

 

[Desdichado]

I found Terry Brooks' book a good resource.

Wow, really? I mean, not to crap on your advice, but I checked that out from my library recently and found it to be terribly vapid. It seemed like a whole lot of really vague, fluffy stuff and very little actual useful tools I could use. I read about half a dozen of the sections and then gave up in disgust. That was bad enough from a fiction writers' standpoint, but even worse from the standpoint of a setting designer for D&D. Most of what it's going on about would be irrelevent in a D&D environment.

As an aside, Terry Brooks just wrote the intro; a collection of other folks wrote the actual book.

 

[mcrow]

Wow, really? I mean, not to crap on your advice, but I checked that out from my library recently and found it to be terribly vapid. It seemed like a whole lot of really vague, fluffy stuff and very little actual useful tools I could use. I read about half a dozen of the sections and then gave up in disgust. That was bad enough from a fiction writers' standpoint, but even worse from the standpoint of a setting designer for D&D. Most of what it's going on about would be irrelevent in a D&D environment.

As an aside, Terry Brooks just wrote the intro; a collection of other folks wrote the actual book.

It's probably better for an overall theory than actually telling how to do it. For that, I though it was pretty good.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Check out the Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds line, especially:

• Living Fantasy
• Cosmos Builder
• Nation Builder