Homebrew - Where Do You Start?

[Torm]

I'm putting together a homebrew, and it is coming together little by little, but I keep running into something, and if I were a computer I swear it would make me lock up.

Where is the best place to grab on and flesh out, first?

If you start with the geography, that will determine things about the cultures. If you start with the gods, they may determine things about the geography and the cultures. If you start with races, that may determine things about the gods and the geography. If you start with key events in history, that may determine things about cultures and thus, their gods. And so on. Argh!

I want internal consistancy to be as good as possible, So, Homebrewers - Where do you start?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Start small, work out.

I am constantly amazed how much easier it is to work in a god, country, or race than it is a town between two already established cities.

 

[the Jester]

I started my current homebrewed campaign with a religion and a map of a main island, done in very shallow detail. That left me all kinds of room to add and modify as we went on.

And boy howdy have I ever.

Keep in mind that different cultures may view the same events and creatures differently, and different histories may tell the same story so differently that it's almost impossible to recognize that they're the same story. There's lots of wiggle room there, and it adds a certain level of verisimilitude to the campaign to have those sorts of intentional muddlings, imho.

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

I've noticed that one should start out small. Don't worry about too much info about the cities until its needed. Also, let the player's build some of the world with their own backgrounds and such - makes them puny mortals feel almost important

But for a larger scale, I personally think an overall map is a great place to start. As you mentioned, it can easily lead to both races and cultures. On this note, I usually have some type of overall plot idea lurking around in my head, so in some ways I actually do begin there.

 

[Mr. Lobo]

Start small, work out.

I am constantly amazed how much easier it is to work in a god, country, or race than it is a town between two already established cities.

Seconded. The AD&D DMG really stressed this point. When I start a hombrew I have certain events (put down in note from) that are going to drive the campaign. Some are my ideas and some are based on the PC's background.

Pick a local city/town/village as a starting point and work from there. Ususally there are some ruins that need exploring nearby.

And that is it. In my campaigns I present hooks based on the event notes I have jotted down and the charcters decide where to go from there. The campaign grows from there. As a DM I become more of an observer interjecting a few ideas or hooks here and there. But that's the best thing about starting new campaigns for me.

Wherever you go there you are.

In my last campaign I asked the players if they wanted to introduce deities before and during the first couple of sessions. One player wanted a certain god of luck. He wrote it up.

 

[Abstraction]

I would start with a map of a town, some rumors (ie, adventures) in that town and some basic world info. Is the world a planet, or a disc? What is the creation myth in that part of the world? Are the gods distant, or intimately involved.

Make up a bunch of stuff on the fly. Have your players help with incorporating it. Give guy #1 a sheet that says "People we know or heard of". Give guy #2 a sheet that say, "Places we know or heard of". They write it down as you spout it out. Then simply refer to those notes later.

 

[azmodean]

I start with a map of the area where the PCs will start out. I use Campaign Cartographer II, but your mileage may vary. I'm currently wrestling with fractal terrains trying to get it to make continents with resonable coastlines in preperation for my party moving on to other lands. But as pretty much everyone says, start small. Unless you are already an expert on world building (not claiming that I am) you'll need to have freedom to adjust the world at large as your PCs advance in power and influence.

 

[AIM-54]

I usually have some sort of idea for a world (such as a desert world or post-apocalypse or something like that) that then determines how I go about building it. I really like maps, so I tend to then go into designing the continent or whatever the major landmass(es) for that particular world is going to be, pick out major races/cultures, throw a few major cities in and then try and put together a sort of "objective" history of what's happened up to the present (with plenty of room to play around with differing perspectives etc). It's easy to say, but it can take quite a bit of time to think about how everything works together and why race A is at point B and what that probably means. For my latest (which, as most of mine, gets created and then never played in ) I went through and drew different maps for the major time periods, showing shifting population patterns (basically race X in this part, but shunted off to point 3, because of war Q in the following epoch), just to facilitate my understanding of why everything is the way it is. I try to keep the internal logic mostly consistent, but with room for players to do what they want within the world that I've created.

 

[Sado]

Most people here have said start small and work out, others recommend top-down.

I say both.

Map out the geography of your world, putting mountains, deserts, and whatever else where they would logically be. But don't flesh out who lives where or what cities or civilizations are where until you need to.

Unless you aren't concerned with realistic geography, tectonics, and the like (which is ok too).

 

[Mercule]

Start small. When I first started DMing, I just drew the map as needed. Little bits of history and mythology got thrown in as needed. When I finally sat down and said, "Okay, I'm going to do the whole continent and be done with it," is when I got into trouble. There's just too much.

That, and there is a strong temptation to send the PCs half-way across the globe to check out your newest and greatest creation. That's a sure way to wreck the flow of a game.