Homebrew – Where did you start?

[Gez]

The first thing was drawing the map, but I never drawn it for D&D... It was for a totally homebrew game, Thetys, which I was making with my brother, and never finished. The Thetys world was quite interesting, as the basic idea was to have an infinite, flat ocean, on which "archipelagos" would be scattered. In fact, these archipelagos were usually one continents or two, with some islands around: a setting in itself.

The aim was to make a space-opera game with a heroic-fantasy look, the vast Ocean instead of space, and these archipelagos instead of planets.

So, we drew about a dozen of world maps for as much "planets", and detailed heavily two or three.

My homebrew world started when my brother, and D&D DM #1 requested to play. I took one of the archipelago maps that haven't been detailed yet, downloaded an adventure from the web, and used both.

 

[barsoomcore]

Starting with a map is good. Many of my campaigns have started exactly that way. I think for many people, maps are evocative in and of themselves. Staring at a map, you can't help but start wondering about stuff -- what kind of animals live on this long thin peninsula? Are there cities in this vast bay? All that stuff.

But what I find works best for me is:

Make a list of Cool Stuff.

Nowadays I start my campaigns by opening up a text document and typing, "Cool Stuff" at the top. Sometimes it'l be "Cool Jungle Stuff" or "Cool Arctic Stuff" or "Cool Monster Movie Stuff" or whatever, if I've got something in mind. But the key is Cool Stuff.

Then I just write down everything I think is cool that might possibly be in this setting. Everything. I don't try to come up with complete ideas -- though I write them down if they come to me. I don't try to fit things together or be rational about anything -- though if one idea suggests a couple of more related ideas, I follow my nose and see what comes of it.

I let it sit for days, maybe weeks, opening it up every so often and adding more to it until I have a big long list. I stick images in it if I find some that work.

I won't ever use most of the stuff on that list. But it's been my experience that every good idea requires five or six bad ideas, and when I'm coming up with ideas, I can't always tell which ones are good and which ones are bad. So I just come up with lots, write them ALL down, and later, as the campaign develops, I keep coming back to the list, sifting it for good (or suitable) ideas, and my campaign stays rich and detailed and fun for me.

You can never have too much Cool Stuff. That's a fact.

 

[blargney the second]

Barsoomcore, that's pretty much it for me too!

This is my first time DMing, so I started with a simple idea: a school the PCs will attend. Then I just started looking for Cool Stuff, and finding ways to tie it into the local environment. I've bought two sourcebooks so far that I'm using pretty much as is, and the rest is just trying to find neat things to do.

-blarg

 

[D+1]

Ditto what Barsoomcore said. I too have a long list of "Cool Stuff", but the Map is also of paramount importance. A great world with a sucky map will lose me every time. A great map with a sucky world has much better potential IMO. I can't really tell you why - it just is.

For my latest campaign I also settled on a theme of sorts at the outset - "Old School". I went back into my files looking at old OLD maps from my earliest 1E days. Found maps that I can't even believe I ever forgot. They formed the basis of the world and now I'm adding bits of "Cool Stuff" to fill it out.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

It depends. Usually I started from the map and worked on down from there. I have several huge poster sized maps, and my magnum opus of four huge poster sized maps that fit together to form one big one. The walls of my bedroom were my workshop!

On the other hand, I've also created campaign settings from the history I've written up and drawn up the map afterwards. I did this on a pre-Carolignian-era European style setting concerned with the Kingdoms of Westvalen and Eastvalen, which was a Roman-esque province about 100-200 years after they were conquered by the Valen barbarian tribe and split into two kingdoms. I also stole some ideas from the old TSR Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.

 

[megamania]

For my homebrew of Caldonia I went through 6 months of making a point of not writing a thing down.

First- What had I seen and read that I liked?
Second- did not like?
3rd- What was missing?
4th- theme?
5th- play style? adventure? hi or low magic?

Then I started with gods
what kinds and what influence

Then I thought about neat physical world settings

After six months of thinking about this I started with hand drawn maps and later maps on the computer.

Maps saved and saved as to include points of interest.

I typed up 1-2 sentence descriptors of these points of interest seperately.

Once I finished my 20+ maps done this way I began to fill in the fun stuff- history and how the island nations got along.

Now ..about 12-15 months later, I have Caldonia which is painfully similiar to a certain Eberron. Such is life.

My point- don't rush into it. Think about what you want. It is better to think small before going global (harder to do than you may think) and finally-

have fun.

 

[DragonLancer]

IFor example; did you start by creating an Uber-Plot? Or maybe just a simple map and let your imagination run rampant? Did it start as an add-hock improvised game session?

I nearly always start with drawing a map. As I do that I get inspiration from other sources and pencil ideas in.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I actually start out with the premise of the opening scenario. "You're captured slaves" or "Soldiers in World War 3" and then crap starts happening.

From there, they generally explore a world that would be unfamiliar to the PC's- shipwrecked on an unknown continent, postapocalyptic Germany, and so forth.

Generally speaking, I let them make up whatever "home" background they want for their characters.

 

[Henry]

Believe it or not, my homebrew started kind of like Ed Greenwood started the realms. I created a "place" to set all my fantasy adventures when I played with d/o/l/l/s/ Action figures when I was a kid. I shortly afterward discovered Dungeons and Dragons; I first played just disconnected games of it, set in no place special, and for a few teenage years didn't play at all, and forgot about it. When I was first DMing 'seriously' at age 17, I realized that all my childhood stuff would do well as source material, and gradually ported over the characters and adventures from my childhood into my new homebrew world. There may be a reason that the oldest mage in my homebrew looks suspiciously like Emperor Draco from the Buck Rogers toys, the most powerful wizardess looks like Princess Ardala, or the most skilled rogue looks like G.I. Joe's Storm Shadow.

From there, it grew as my first few campaigns grew, and the rest of the story is pretty typical.

 

[Hand of Evil]

For me a homebrew started with not being able to find a setting that met my world myth concept. Then a map. Once I have a map a lot of things start to fall into place.