How much do you prepare for a homebrew?

[Katerek]

Ray Winnenger all the way. I actually really like world-building, but I lack focus, and am easily distracted by other ideas for other settings if I try to put too much detail on to a single one. However, I find that a good idea, with just a little flesh on the bones, can keep me satisfied for a long time if it's getting some use.

Yup, I cannot pimp the Winnenger articles enough.

It took me the better part of 5 years of serious discipline to build the level of dedication that I have now. Focus, for me anyway, is something that was learned and most certainly did not come easily, or for that matter, naturally.

One thing that I have learned to do, is when I have those scattering of ideas, is to immediately wrap up whatever it is I am working on and flesh them out. Even if they may not come into play for years or even months to come. That way, when I need them, I am not trying to struggle to remeber some really cool idea I had months ago. Also, I used to keep a notebook for random ideas on me at all times. I eventually upgraded to a micro-recorder, and now I use a palm-pilot with a voice recorder in it. Now, those really neat ideas that I come up with during my 45 minute commutes don't vaporize.

 

[nopantsyet]

Ditto the articles. Quality advice.

I prepare a lot. I tend to have several main organizations and plenty of NPCs. Usually a continent or so worth of geography, though I'm not the cartographer I'd like to be. Then I make sure I've got lots of plots and events. Some I develop thoroughly, others just a few details.

I spend a lot of time putting together ecologies. I don't like running the standards "orcs, drow, illithids, oh my!" type of game. I like to develop ecologies of monsters for different regions to create a particular feel as well as challenges for various party levels. Nobody thinks anything of frogs in a swamp...unless they're three feet tall and have rows of razor-sharp teeth! I usually take standard MM monsters and create some of my own to fill it out.

Finally, I try to think of one big thing to piss my players off the first session. Something that jerks the assumption rug right out from under them. Waking up the first in-game day to a vision that changes your whole world view and puts you at odds with your society and culture. Or to find said culture has been destroyed. Something to kick the characters in the booty...hard! Give them a need to act beyond for reasons beyond simple ambition.

 

[KenM]

I have my own world. I have a map with the major landmasses, on the main contenent, I have one kingdom, the one where the campaign starts, deatiled and maped with the the major features. I have the town they start in detailed. and the list of gods. As the players move in the game, I would detail more of world. Unfortantly, everytime I try to get it going, it only lasts for a few sessions before it tanks due to real life goings on.

 

[DocSER]

I have also found the Dungeoncraft articles wonderful though I fall in the camp of people who enjoy world building as much as actually playing.

After playing for years, I have found that Final Fantasy titles have really started to influence my world building - sort of. I know focus a lot of attention on the backstory of the world to create a unified narrative. I really try to develop the world with a theme in mind from the beginning. After I nail down the world history, I have the pantheon and major conflicts ready to go. I then follow the Dungeoncraft advice of only preparing as much as I have to in terms of local cities, dungeons, encounters, etc. These seems to come easier and have more of an impact on the players when everything develops out of a backstory (even if the players don't know much of the backstory).

 

[Kichwas]

I guess you could say I go from out to in. I want the world to make sense. FR's problem is that it started as a home game with probably a dungeon and some local town - and Greenwood just went from there without thinking about how it all fit together until he had the mess that eventually hit print.

I think of the geopolitical scene, the pantheon, the general geography, the civilization, the culture, and so on long before I pick exactly where in that world I will run a game and what it will be like.

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Interesting; at this point we have the same number of people saying they over-prepare as under-prepare.

I fall into a category of people who over-prepare inconsequential details while not making any progress with the important things.

 

[The Cardinal]

All my homebrews are in GURPS.
For a campaign (i.e. potential for 1-2 years play) I usually prepare:

1. A global map (using Fractal Terrains)
1.1-5. various local maps (continent, nation, city level)
2. History (whatever is needed: in my Inhuman Space campaign, which is based on Transhuman Space, I only need to create a timeline for the past 158 years - however in my Malmsturm fantasy setting there will be at least 14k years of history...)
3. Important creature stats (only for original, frequently appearing foes)
4. One BIG plot, i.e. one that will go on in the background of the setting even if the PCs are not involved in each and every step of its develoment
5. One SMALL plot for the first 1-3 sessions, but one that is somehow related to the plot from 4.
6. If necessary: large organizations, important NPCs
7. A yahoo group where I'll post all player information, incl. maps, house rules etc.

 

[Katerek]

7. A yahoo group where I'll post all player information, incl. maps, house rules etc.

Yes! I cannot believe I forgot this! Yahoo Groups are almost a must! I use a different group for each game I run and it makes things so smooth. We get alot of 'behind-the-scenes' stuff done on email through the week and it really speeds up play time.

I am not sure how we ever gamed before the internet, but Yahoo Groups is one of the most effective tools out there.

 

[barsoomcore]

I do THIS much.

Actually, that's obviously not what I started with.

I started Barsoom with a big list of "Stuff I Think Is Cool". Literally, I had a sheet of paper with "Stuff I Think Is Cool" at the top, and under that I made a list of everything I could think of. Dinosaurs, flintlock pistols, red guys, ironclad airships, unstoppable crazed bad guys, it went on and on. I spent about a month just on that list -- deliberately refusing to let myself actually start working on the campaign while I just generated as many ideas as I could.

I'm a map whore, I admit it. I love drawing maps, I can pore over them for days on end -- so I took one of my favourite maps and stuffed as much of the "Stuff I Think Is Cool" into it as I could. In fact, I made a point of sticking in EVERYTHING.

I deliberately, at this point in the creation, didn't bother trying to make it logical and self-justifying. I've run many campaigns over the years and I have confidence in my ability to come up with sufficiently plausible explanations later.

At this point I had a world, a bunch of countries or cultural areas ("Aztecs over here!", "Red guys down there!"), ideas for wacky sites, and a number of key characters. I had an idea for an initial adventure and found a good place to stick that in and then added in the detail I'd need to be able to run that -- more detailed maps, yada yada.

I spent another little while applying some detail to the areas and ideas I'd come up with previously, and started adding ideas to my Timeline. Threw together a quick calendar (but forgot to add in real holidays which I now regret) and got some friends together and away we went. I created the website so they could plan their characters, did some pre-game work with each of them to make sure the characters would fit together, and the rest, while not exactly history, was at least a Story Hour.

 

[baradtgnome]

You see doc, it all start so innocently. Alternate DM when the whole group couldn't make it. Just a little island off the coast of the main DMs homebrew. Just a few maps and towns, not too big. Ah, well we need a cosmology, and of course a local currency, a little history, a few more islands, some age old conflict, a few prophecies, a couple of grand climaxes, wars, pestilance, divine intervention, legends, myths, multiple plot lines, multiple groups playing simultaneously, and, and, oh god I need a fix... must... create... another... part... of homebrew....

So really it is a bit chaotic. whatever I needed for an adventure or color or whatever I was feeling that day. Trouble is now, 24 years later, I can't walk away from it. I know it too well, and it is too easy to drop an adventure in it any time any place. We have always tended to adventure in the low to mid levels, so my players never used it up. There are story lines that are still playing out over 20 years. I have NPCs that have been with me longer than my kids! And sometimes they don't behave any better

So I didn't plan it to happen this way, and don't quite know how I would go about doing it again. But something tells me the chaos lords would help me do it the same way again.