D&D General Homewbrew Campaigns: How Old Is Your World?

[Ath-kethin]

In high school my roommate and I would stay up 0layong 1 on 1 games and tinkering with rules, and much of what we discussed/developed for settings and themes still show up in my games today, as do many of the monsters we developed.

So I voted 2e era; this was all going down in 1995-96.

 

[Blue]

My shortest campaign in the past several decades was 4 years long. After that much time, players have been exposed to lots of the secrets of the worlds, and they have become familiar to me. I'd much rather create a new world for a new campaign then revisit one, same way as I won't recreate a character Ive played in someone else's game. Why retread old ground when I have too many ideas to ever be able to run them all?

My current new campaign process is that I design a light framework that holds things unique to support adventures I couldn't have in another generic world. I come up with some high level setting details - basically just hooks and awesome for the players to pick up on, and then do a big session 0 where we see what ones catch players interest and from that what type of party the characters are interested in.

During sessions 0 I really empower my players to come up with setting details as long as it doesn't impact my minimalist framework. I'm not talking about just "what's your hometown" - during my most recent campaign start the first thing was a player wanting to play a druid want3ed a real connection, and the moon is the skull of a decapitated deity and the land is literally her body. From there we ended up with - all player suggested - that the Dwarves had been genocided, and the Imperium (part of my framework, an aged and failing empire) had created the Drow to take over the Dwarf lands to literally mine the Bones of the Earth. After that Halflings were also a created race, servitors and agricultural workers.

All of this made what I was planning so much richer, and so much more unique than a single person designing it themselves. Which does get me to "reusing" settings - I am a fan of shared settings, preferably with multiple campaigns going at the same time but that's not a hard rule. Either shared by just players, or also multiple DMs.

 

[Blackrat]

I chose other. The thing is, I began plotting my world way way before I even knew of roleplaying games. It was at first inspired by lotr when I was like 10, and I started writing short stories set in a similar fantasy land. The first game in a still protoversion was a larp in ’99, that I created in collaboration with the game master. I keep creating the world, but actually running games in it is rare. I think along the decades I’ve run three or four short one shots in it.

 

[Mark Hope]

Mine started in 1982 and is still going. Began with B/X, transitioned to AD&D 1e and 2e, then adopted 3e for a while but gave up on that and went back to a houseruled mix of B/X and AD&D (with a couple ideas stolen from WotC editions like ascending AC and CMB/CMD from Pathfinder).

It's dynamic world that absorbs whatever I think is cool. So it started out based at the Keep on the Borderlands and grew from there as I developed the world around it. I tend to add dungeons that I like from other settings into it (so it has its own version of Undermountain, Myth Drannor, Castle Greyhawk, Rappan Athuk etc) but these all exist within the homebrewed setting.

 

[Lanefan]

I tend to add dungeons that I like from other settings into it (so it has its own version of Undermountain, Myth Drannor, Castle Greyhawk, Rappan Athuk etc) but these all exist within the homebrewed setting.

All my settings must have pretty good trade agreements with other settings, as I keep managing to import their dungeons without any problem.

 

[ccs]

Sometime in 1980-81/82. It was before we got hold of the Expert set & any AD&D rulebooks.
At first we didn't have a "world". Just adventures each adding a bit of detail if needed. Sort of like watching an ink blot spread.
Then for some reason we needed something more. So I drew a rough map. Being a kid in the USA, the easiest map to sort-of copy was... the USA. So the eastern coast of the continent looked alot like the outline of the Eastern USA/North America. Going west would be filled in as needed.

Then we got the Expert set.
"Huh, TSR copied the general outline of North America." Proof that we were doing it right.
Of course some of what TSR put on the map didn't work at all with what we'd already come up with. That stuff just got ignored or moved. Other stuff we kept.

And it's been slowly evolving ever since then. You'll find places & names cribbed from all manner of sources - books, assorted D&D products, reality, other games, etc on my map. Even from other campaigns.


In recent years there's been two large influences on my "world".
1) PF. The PF "world" lies eastward from my continent, across the sea, much as Europe does in RL. It's referred to in my games as "The Old world.
"The Azlanti Isles? that lie westword in the ocean in PF? Well, my map long had a bunch of islands way out in the middle of the eastern sea.... Now they have a name & some more detail. They form the divide between My World & the PF setting.

2) A friends campaign world. He went to considerable effort & came up with some cool stuff. His map looks suspiciously like the Eastern USA.... He ran a great campaign that lasted for almost 3 years & when it finished he never did anything else with his "world". Not even when he DM'd other D&D/PF games.
Some of his stuff would fill in space quite nicely in my own world though.
So I asked him if I could use his stuff in my games. He said go for it.

 

[Lanefan]

Huh.

40 votes in and I'm still the only one whose current homebrew setting started play in the 2008-2013 period - and even that only by a whisker.

Interesting...maybe?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

1990 or maybe a little earlier. Since then there has been roughly 1000 years of in-game time, and countless PCs have come and gone...