How to start a Homebrew?

[Zappo]

The way I see it, you have two ways to make a homebrew world. You can proceed from large scale to small scale or vice versa.

In either case, you must decide the "core ethos sentence". The flavor. That, and a few other details as well. Pick up WotC's contest submission form, it's a good start. Fill it out. And try and keep it to a page; it won't give you a 1/10000 chance of being published, but it will force you to identify and underline the most important elements of your setting.

Now, you have the choice.

You can write down the world's history, large-scale map, political and economical information for all major countries, descriptions of all major religions and races, as well as maps and info on each major city.

Or, you can describe to the last building and last NPC the small village where the PCs start from and its surroundings, and detail whatever area the PCs blunder in afterwards in the same fashion, leaving the big picture undefined save for legends or tales.

Both are viable; the first is more work, probably too much, but it makes it easier later (more consistancy, no sudden lack of info due to the PCs having gone the wrong way, leaves room for change at the small detail level). The second is easier to start but it'll take some skills later (consistancy is tougher, you may have troubles if the PCs go off the parts you make, and the number of notes grows constantly).

 

[Aristotle]

I've been working on a homebrew as well. You can find quite a few links if you search the web, although many of the sites that sound like they might be the most help are dead links... Here are couple of links to get you started.

The Google Directory for world building. Some dead links in there, but a few good sites... and you can get more links at some of those sites.

The World Building Homepage is the home of a World Building mailing list. It is not role playing specific, and some of the discussions can get pretty heavy.

Good luck!

 

[rounser]

At risk of sounding like a broken record, I suggest planning out what adventures you'd like to run first, and then design a world to accomodate their needs. Adventures are the heart of the game - to prioritise worldbuilding before adventures is to put the cart before the horse, IMO.

I think that the kind of worldbuilding appropriate to your needs depends on your gaming style, and involves a payoff.

If you're into epic, world spanning "road trip" campaigns where tens or hundreds of miles of travel and visited cities are glossed over or improvised as the PCs get to their next destination, then macro level worldbuilding is probably for you. Using this approach, the world comes alive in a sprawling fashion that brings much of the world into view, though it may end up very sparsely detailed except for in broad brush strokes. It's good for epic, political or high level adventure, IMO.

If you're into campaigns where attention to detail is at a premium, then micro level worldbuilding in a defined locality with (for instance) a handful of lairs, interesting wilderness locations, dungeons and detailed villages that PCs can interact with is probably for you. Using this approach, the world comes alive in a richness of low level detail, though the big picture of the world and it's politics might never come into view. It's good for low and mid level world exploration style adventure, IMO.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Jürgen, I think I contributed to the thread in which the Focus Towers (or whatever they're called)

Nexus Towers

featured in your campaign setting were featured, and this is definitely one of those distinctive bits that sets it apart from FR and Greyhawk. This is the kind of thing that makes a homebrew, not the lack of paladins etc, although my opinions about steriotyping in DnD definitely surfaced major in that last post.

Take away the towers, and all you have left is a Greyhawk with different geography.

Well, I do hope to make it more distinctive - see my recent threads on mind flayers and ghouls, for example. They don't change D&D "canon", but they do add for it. Then my takes on the PC races - here is an excerpt about elves:

" Elves have a lot of advantages over humans and other shorter-lived beings - and they know it. They are longer-lived, usually more attractive, don't need to sleep, are very talented in the magical arts, and the experience accumulated over the centuries of their existence means they can do just about anything, and do it with style.
Typcally, elves see humans as interesting toys, pets, irrelevant, or a threat to their way of life. Few elves, even those of a generally benevolent nature, take humans seriously on an individual basis - after all, there are hundreds of millions of them around, so how important can a single one be?
Elves travel to human cities and realms more often than one might expect - young elves (usually not more than a century or two of age) go there to celebrate, observe these interesting little creatures, and generally "sow their oats" before moving back to the elven realms and assuming a position of responsibility (as much as there are positions of responsibility in elven realms). There they usually dabble in the arts, warfare, or politics. The intrigues of the latter type should be watched especially careful, for their attitudes can be described as a cat playing with a mouse, a child playing with an ant farm, or a noble playing out war strategies with tin soldiers - except that the tin soldiers are usually flesh-and-blood humans.
Human city-dwellers usually view elves with a mixture of awe and distrust. The upper classes especially seek out the elves dwelling in their midst, for the attendance of a well-known elven artist can make or break a party."

Oh, and I've put some details on the other planets of the same star system into my setting as well. These are definietly different from Spelljammer, and no humanoids in funny suits inhabit them, either. Nevertheless, all these are locations that can be visited by high-level parties...

Put the towers back, and you've got one distinctive homebrew. (it doesn't hurt that you proseletyze it in your sig either )

Well, I see it as an excercise in creative advertising. It seems to work, too...

 

[Drakmar]

well.. as I am in the slow process of creating one..what I have to offer is a link to how I do it.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26268

basically.. I figure out the things that I like to DM.. the things that my players like to do.. and then try and build the world in such a way that it supports that.

For me. getting the various cultures worked out is one of the most important things (and in some cases why they have that culture)... This allows me to dm on the fly.. because I know exactly how somebody from a given culture would normally react.

 

[kiznit]

World building for lazy DMs

If laziness and procrastination are your modus operandi (I as a DM definitely fall into this category), the trick is is to THINK SMALL. You can poke around at a million websites that have their homebrews detailed down to every minor god and tavern name, and that's great, but how much of that gets seen in a game? Really? Especially at 1st level?

If you've been playing FR for a while, you've probably got your gaming style down pat and worked out the house rules, and that's really the tricky part.

The DMG is all you need at first. Honest. It's written by this guy named Monte Cook who everyone knows is the best DM out there, and it's written well. Build a small town using the Adventure chapter guidelines, get some help from the players to come up with some mentor-type NPCs, and you've got a start for a setting. It's a medieval world, so there's really nothing wrong with nobody in town really knowing what's over the next mountain range (yet).

And you honestly DON'T have to be absolutely original. Borrow all over the place. Work the class combos. Stick with a couple of "flavor" ideas - level of magic, ruling powers, etc. You don't have to come up with your own PrCs, feats, cults, relics, master plans, if at all, until maybe later, and then maybe only at request and working with your players.

Come up with some Gods, if you want to be original, but you really only need to decide what their domains are. Come up with a couple of nifty ideas about a big city nearby, where the demihumans hang out, and a nearby dungeon. Then come up with a bad guy (arguably the funnest part about DMing), stat him up like you're making a particularly nasty PC (feel free to munchkin him up a little, you want him to be a challenge) and give him some nasty plan and some nasty minions. There're NPCs all over the place online, so you don't even need to do the math.

Yeah, it's a formula, but it's a good formula, and we've all been loving it for years (try to deny it!). So you meet in a tavern and get hired to go underground and kill things. Trust me, stick with this at first and this is where ideas will germinate.

Players can be a great resource. If you ask everybody to write a character background, when you collect them you're going to find that you have half-a-dozen adventure ideas right there. Ask them what kind of places they want to explore, what kind of feel they want the game to have, and chances are, the setting will build itself. If you've got an e-mail list going, you'll be surprised at how much a few simple questions (and keep them simple, sometimes it's hard to take the time to fill out those 3-page questionnaires) can generate in terms of ideas and themes.

Now here's the great part: Do this little chunk of labor, and I garantee some cool ideas are going to pop into your head. Cliffside city with halflings on hanggliders? Friendly local bollywogs? Eye-tyrant-ruled gladiator arenas? If you don't think you can make it fit, or it seems too complicated, work it anyway. You're the DM, absolute power and all that, and you can do anything you want, and you don't need to rule everything into the ground.
The bad guy's got a twig blight familiar and rides piggyback on a dire ostrich? Go with it. The PCs have to be shrunk down because his fortress is inside an undead hollowed-out walking treant? Why not? Once you try it, you can see that it's easy to make anything work. The game has an incredible amount of leeway for imagination, and you're not accountable for coming up with a reason for everything. Sometimes it's just flavor. Nothing beats that feeling (for a DM), of seeing your players get that eye-popping "Wow" look on their face the first time you describe some crazy idea that you've just pulled out of your.. uh. subconcious.

Pretty soon, your players are going to get excited, they're gonna come up with ideas, start bouncing stuff back at you, it can be a communally created world. And I think you'll find that the more you work on it, the more fun it gets to be.

Pretty soon you're gonna have maps down to the last border town and the names and ranks of the kingdom's pet farm, and boasting your website underneath your sig.

The nature of D&D: start small, end up creating and saving the world.

 

[mmadsen]

I am thinking about starting my own world/campaign. I have been running a FR campaign for the last 2 years and have grown stale/bored. The characters have reached 12th level and I feel like I'm running a video game rather than an RPG. This has pushed me into the direction of Homebrew.

Are you sure the answer is to create your own world? Or would you be better off removing the "video game" elements you don't like? You could reduce the magical treasure, make all spellcasting classes prestige classes, etc.

 

[DaveStebbins]

I agree with the World Building recommendation.
http://www.nocturne.org/world/

I would recommend the Dungeoncraft series of articles from Dragon Magazine more highly, however. Wizards keeps them archived at :
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dragon/dungeoncraft

Start from the beginning and the articles will help tremendously. They're set up for the average gamer who wants to have fun and not for the hard core world designer who wants everything to be just right.

-Dave

 

[Tetsuyama]

You might also check out http://www.roleplayingtips.com -- between the two links cited above and the tips on the site I just mentioned, it gives you a *lot* to chew on, and lots of good ideas to bounce around.

 

[Psion]

First things first, if you want to homebrew, I definitely recommend getting a hold of the 2e AD&D World Builder's Guidebook.

That said.

IMHO, a Homebrew is not a Homebrew if it consists of a world with clerics, paladins, wiards, and druids, and has elves, gnomes, halflings, dwarves, and humans in it. These are Greyhawk. These are generic. These are borring, steriotypical, overused, burned-out hasbeens. If you want a serius homebrew, you will think of something to make it unique.

You'll excuse me if I vehemently disagree with you.

First off, there are a ton of ways you can twist those different shapes. My campaign has all of those things. And I take exception to your accusation that it isn't a "real homebrew."

My campaign has its own history, its own deities and power centers, and its own unique little quirks and history.

Uniqueness is not an inherently positive quality. You can overdo it. You go and create something that is too bizarre, you largely rob players of the familiar tropes that they used to get a handle on the campign. By giving them a few hooks that they can grab onto, you can pull them into a very different world.

Your criteria are entirely artificial. If you feel the need to dispense with some conventions, more power to you. But spare me the "if you use anything in the PHB, you aren't a real homebrewer" attitude. My world is not Greyhawk, I assure you.