So what's YOUR world's 'hook'?

[Epametheus]

Lesse here. 50 years ago, the god's walked the land and did battle. Some died, some were seriously injured, and a few have grown even stronger.

One of the bizarre after-effects of the war is that 1 in 10 ten humanoids, upon reaching adolescense, goes through a irreversible transformation into a reptile/mammal hybrid monster with psychotic tendencies, whom are collectively referred to as the beastmen. Most go through the transformation in under 24 hours, emerging bloodthirsty, insane, and fairly stupid. A few take one to two weeks transforming, and come out every bit as smart as they were as normal humanoids, though their old self is still lost. The beastmen never fight with each other, and so have one goal -- to bring peace to the world by annihilating all other species.

There's more, but that's the one that's literally affecting the entire world.

The rise of the God-King, a red dragon of nigh-unopposable power, is merely affecting a sizable chunk of the world.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Hooks for the Middle World:

1) The gods are very, very real, and meddle in mortal affairs on a regular basis. For more information about the gods, see my story hour (link below).

2) The world is more roughly formed than most campaign worlds, with vast stretches of untamed wilderness. The idea of "taming the wilderness" is less than 500 years old, and it is opposed by as many people as supported.

3) Faerieland is tied into the campaign world. There is a real attempt to include fairy tale and folklore type encounters.

4) Prehistoric beasties still exist. Yes, that includes dinosaurs...though only "lake monsters" and pigeon-sized "leatherwings" where the PCs hail from. This goes with the whole early-world-wilderness thing.

RC

 

[Yair]

The players play gods.
They all came down to earth in mortal bodies to thwart the impending apocalyse. We use XP to simulate remembering their divine powers; virutally everyone else is a 1st level character. They truly gods amongst men.
No down time, no training, no "realism", inherent abilities replace magic items - the character's divine essence takes care of all of the little details (like how a character can jump off a cliff...)
(Of course, the bad guys have higher levels, and so on ... but that's the basic premise.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's a melange of elements from at least half-a-dozen cultures along with some weird I dreamed up, a mix of sword & sorcery, low fantasy, high fantasy, science fantasy, Hammer horror and kung fu flicks. Cranked up to eleven. On drugs.

So basically your bog standard D&D campaign.

 

[Doug McCrae]

There was a great empire and it was devastated in a way left unrecorded by history (given that it was this empire that was doing the recording of things). The center of this empire is now a dangerous wasteland, and its one-time provinces are now sovereign kingdoms, who have just made their first peace treaty after many long years of war. Among the many things for the players to do, they can try to find out what happened to the old empire, and perhaps discover a few forgotten secrets.

Oh, so it's exactly like Eberron then.

 

[barsoomcore]

I'd probably cave at "dinosaurs and ninjas"

Man, do I ownz you.

Dinosaurs, ninjas, PLUS flintlock pistols, sexy/psycho vampire lesbian goddesses, flying ironclads, swashbuckling duelists, red guys and really really big cats.

Oh, and Cthulhu-y monsters up to no good.

Welcome to Barsoom

 

[barsoomcore]

Oh, so it's exactly like Eberron then.

I'm not sure how you meant this, but I just want to say that dissing people's campaigns is kind of uncool. People work really hard on their campaigns and have every reason to feel proud, and just because it reminds you of another setting is no reason to accuse them of being uncreative.

Maybe you didn't mean that, in which case I apologize for my outburst. Pay me no mind. I just know how I'd feel if someone trashed my precious campaign.

 

[Felikeries]

These themes are far aften the case of finding any sort of world
material,home brew or not,so personally a little reverse action is a good
front to start 'anew' with :thus~there is no dominating faction,or race,the
humans are what they are,and the relations through trade,minor skirmishes,and the bounds of alignment are the all telling fire forge for more
pre-defensive ways of making 'world scenarios'

~There will be 1 major 'Magityne' event power in a party's say...20 lvl run
~The acts of fealty by one major group of foes at another is betrayed by an alignment clause,in turn the party may have struck this faction or that one in favour of a way that they were considering for reasons or a leader icon
~A lucky use of beasts as rides,party help,or a summon trick or any other will
have the effect of great combat prowess however,this is set to a boundary or
time effect that may lay a clue about what should be a party's destiny,who was responsible for a faction,what elements of power they might expect next
~When a 'mass combat' happens there does not have to be a justified reason for the pary interaction,they maybe have just wandered onto ones side,and that may be better or worse once the victory at this event is made
~With a corde dex modifier for all scenarios as player levels,or regions that they are adventuring,this will have a reason to be told,that the DM can finely make due course concerning in the campaign itself
~Treasure found spells that aren't rnd. rolled by DM shall fall into a truth of
little use for combats that may occur within 1 day,or vise versa,only 1

Taking the 'cauldren' to the castle now makes the world creation tricks a finer scholar of trained questing techniques domain,be it to use the schemes in distaste or for the party's advantage

 

[Templetroll]

One of my players told me that paranoia was a survival trait in my world. Apparently, I enjoyed myself so much running encounters with shapeshifters and illusionists along with a nasty taste in puns made them suspect anything that 'seemed okay'. the more normal it looked the more they worried.

An example: The fellow at the castle warns the group looking for the party's wizard's lost father, who were about to enter the dungeon beneath it, "Be careful, there's a white dragon down there!" Later, they defeated the undead dad on a bridge overlooking a deep, dark chasm the wizard decides to get rid of a flaming sphere after the fight by rolling it over the side and letting it drop. "We'll see how deep this is." he said, then proceeded to not watch or listen as it fell and hit bottom.

When the slightly singed dragon showed up the wizard got mouthy and the dragon backslapped him. After he got a negative level the players realized that guy above was warning them about a wight dragon!

They groveled in character, the wizard gave up his father's corpse and the players groaned enough about the pun the dragon just told them to get out.

I was pleased.

Another thing is I took the comments from various D&D sources, like there had been 10th level magic and higher in the past, and used that as part of my history for the world. An empire had outfitted its armies completely with magical armor and weapons and sent out companies of wizards with all manner of sticks of nastiness and these armies were led by the likes of Leuk-O and his Mighty Servant.

Then, something happened.....

The "Decline of Magic" was a mystic event that lowered the limit of what magic could be performed any longer. It destroyed the enchantments on almost all of the magic created by the Empire but enough survived and was carried away by non-Imperial folk that it got scattered beyond the area formerly controlled by the Empire.

It was an easy way to explain why so many similar magic items were scattered all over the place and so many forgotten 'heavily fortified defense installations', aka dungeons, were out there also. Also, the Emperor, still around after all these years, used a spell to summon folks to him. This was my GM way to remove absent PCs from the game. I put in a reason for the Emperor to do it later, once some players started trying to figure it out.

It took more than 10 RL years of running but finally some of my players were on an adventure that took them to the past and found out it was they who caused the "Decline of Magic" that devastated the world and brought about the collapse of the Empire.

they were pleased.

D&D is a pleasant game to play.

 

[Sado]

I don't know if this counts as a hook, but my favorite homebrew of mine, imagine a Mars type planet, a desert world with icy poles. Only bigger and hotter, where the poles are small oceans instead of icecaps, and the further you go from the poles the hotter it gets, until you get to the "tropics", which form a belt of impenetrable desert wasteland for about 30 degrees north and south of the equator. Civilization is mostly confined to the area within 30 degrees of the poles, with more savage, barbaric, nomadic, and humanoid groups in the area between that and the mid-world wasteland. In the wasteland itself are strange and horrible creatures who have adapted to survive in that environment in interesting ways (and obviously a good environ for reptilian races), and who knows what life may have been driven underground by the overwhelming heat...

Civilizations have risen up at the north and south poles, but they have had no contact due to the near-impossibility of crossing the middle desert.