Homebrew webpage--what to include?

[Desdichado]

Well, I'm embarking on Mk. III of my favorite homebrew setting; the one that I keep tinkering with but only rarely running. I've pared the rules down from--as buzz once called it--a galimauphry of d20 bits and pieces to something that's a bit easier to take in at a glance, utilizing d20 Modern, d20 Past and a few minor (and mostly optional) elements here and there from Urban Arcana and Unearthed Arcana.

But once I get the mechanics out of the way, I want them to kind of take a back seat, and I'm a bit unsure about what exactly else to include. My Mk. I website had a bit of setting info for the players' benefit, although not much. The Mk. II website had entries corresponding to each of the entires in Ray Winninger's original Dungeoncraft series of articles--the forest world version--so it had a bit of cool stuff about the setting too. I'm undecided about what to put up on the Mk. III version, frankly, so I'm here looking for advice. If you were to stumble upon a campaign setting as a website, what kinds of things would you want to see (other than houserules and mechanics, of course--that's already a given.)

 

[Mercule]

Tangental question: Are you coding from scratch or using some sort of CMS?

Otherwise, I'm interested in hearing the answers.

 

[Desdichado]

From scratch. These are going to be pretty basic text pages, maybe with a map that I do in Photoshop, and some other images that I either draw and scan myself, or crib from image galleries online.

I mean, I'll give a token nod to some layout that makes it a bit easier to read, but I'm not interested in getting really fancy. Not only that, it's an old-school eccentricity of mine; I like coding html in text editors; I think it's kinda fun. Except when I start putting classes up in tables; that's a bit more work.

 

[Kurashu]

Here's a short list of what I plan on putting into my homebrew's manual/website/what ever it turns out to be.

• House Rules
• Races
• Classes
• Character Options
• Magic
• Prestige Classes
• Abbr. History of Thýon
• Current Countries, Regions, and other Locales
• Organizations of Thýon
• Faiths and Pantheons
• Other Useful Facts and General Knowledge (You know, the small stuff you don't know because you're a PC but just about every NPC does know)

 

[K-Slacker]

I put together a weblog for a post-apocalyptic campaign using variant homebrew d20 rules. I've started with just the character creation rules and a handful of additional pages, you can check it out at http://scorchedearthrpg.wordpress.com/.

We're going to start a play-by-comment game in the next week or two, if anyone is interested.

In the past I ran a PBeM in the same campaign world, but using a slightly different ruleset than my current game. You can find those rules at http://members.shaw.ca/k-slacker/Ground0/Ground%20Zero.htm. Most people never looked at the rules, which is why the new site is simpler.

If there's one thing I learned, it was KISS.

 

[el-remmen]

Make it a wiki.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

el-remmen, can you explain more about that? I've looked several times at your wiki out of ... jealousy. Cause it's cool. But I've so little knowledge on how to do it and what it should cost that I just never start.

In response to the OP, I would stay away from mechanics, personally. Completely. It is much harder to violate the OGL if you simply don't post mechanics online. If you do truly have unique mechanics that haven't been published elsewhere, that's cool. But those are more rare these days.

I'd keep it to flavor text. Flip open the PHB, MotP, and Draconomicon and look just at their flavor text. That's the kind of stuff I like to see on Homebrew websites.

 

[el-remmen]

el-remmen, can you explain more about that? I've looked several times at your wiki out of ... jealousy. Cause it's cool. But I've so little knowledge on how to do it and what it should cost that I just never start.

It is super easy and free.*

I just stumbled upon wikispaces - but there are other free wikis out there.

Creating pages is as easy as naming them and linking stuff is super easy - just paste in your text and mark it up with simple tags - for example on wikispaces, putting the word "dragon" in double brackets (like [[dragon]]) makes it a link to a page called dragon. Click on the link and you can immediately start creating a page called "dragon".

Bold and italics and that stuff is all really easy, too. Heck, there is even a visual editor mode.

You can be started in the 10 minutes it takes to register.

* Well as long as you are willing to have ads on there - otherwise you can do like me and pay $50 a year have no ads and have more control over the look. Each of my players donated $5 each a year so that is $30 right there for me.

 

[Ruavel]

I've maintained a couple of websites for games in our group (1 for my own game and the other for another GM).

We kept it limited to:
Session Summaries
Rules (House Rules & up-to-date FAQs)
Setting Details, &
Characters (PC & known ally NPC- just incase someone couldn't make it & details were needed to be readily at hand)

that was more than enough to keep everyone in the loop.

btw Hobo - love the sig. Now I have a mash-up of about 3 different remixes playing in my head.

 

[Desdichado]

In response to the OP, I would stay away from mechanics, personally. Completely. It is much harder to violate the OGL if you simply don't post mechanics online. If you do truly have unique mechanics that haven't been published elsewhere, that's cool. But those are more rare these days.

I'm not concerned about violating the OGL because 1) I'm just a guy with a webpage that'll probably get half a dozen hits a year, and 2) I know how to avoid violating the OGL anyway. Besides, I'm not actually posting mechanics--just saying which mechanics we're using. I need to be specific, because d20 Modern + d20 Past is supposed to be a modular toolkit, and I need to say, for example, which occupations are acceptable in this setting, which advanced classes, which feats and skills are too modern to fit the mileu, which equipment tables, etc.

But yeah; I'm not trying to do anything unique with mechanics, but I do need to clearly delineate what's usable and what's not. I've just done it as a list, though--referencing the books, tables, feat and skill names, etc. without actually including any mechanics on the website. That's probably all I'll end up doing.