I originally started my current world by being mildly frustrated with the gods available. I didn't want historic pantheons and the gods for the base game and published setting were just... too... sensible. All of their portfolio was too logical for me. I liked the gods of historical myth that had portfolios of things that didn't go together logically and only made sense because of the legends around them. So I came up with a needlessly complex way to generate gods, then I gave them a backstory, then I gave them the world to be godly to.
How much has world-creation been important to you?
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Yora
Legend
How did that quote go? "Bad writers borrow, good writers steal."
People like to be able to understand things, referencing ideas they had already learned somewhere else. While it is possible to come up with truly unique ideas, it's hard to get people to like them. A few well thought off changes that have far reaching effects are good, but the audience needs to be able to put the pieces together by themselves. So you get the best response if you take something familiar as a base, add a few new aspects to it, and then make all the logical conclusions that would result from these new changes to the old standards.
I don't think any good author ever created anything that did not make very heavy use of stories that were already known to him.
People like to be able to understand things, referencing ideas they had already learned somewhere else. While it is possible to come up with truly unique ideas, it's hard to get people to like them. A few well thought off changes that have far reaching effects are good, but the audience needs to be able to put the pieces together by themselves. So you get the best response if you take something familiar as a base, add a few new aspects to it, and then make all the logical conclusions that would result from these new changes to the old standards.
I don't think any good author ever created anything that did not make very heavy use of stories that were already known to him.
I think there's a false dichotomy between using published campaign settings and "custom worlds". A published campaign setting becomes a custom world once you start planning or running adventures in it.
The setting books always have large areas where I want or need to use world building guidelines to flesh it out. Even areas that are very detailed will change during a campaign. Kingdoms will rise and fall, gods will ascend or be displaced. Even geography may change due to world-changing magics.
So I run my campaigns mainly in the Realms, but I absolutely require the DMG to give me lots and lots of help with world building.
The setting books always have large areas where I want or need to use world building guidelines to flesh it out. Even areas that are very detailed will change during a campaign. Kingdoms will rise and fall, gods will ascend or be displaced. Even geography may change due to world-changing magics.
So I run my campaigns mainly in the Realms, but I absolutely require the DMG to give me lots and lots of help with world building.
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