Strategies for flexible homebrews?

[Ry]

This is a post that is not about rules.

How do you build a kitchen sink homebrew? I know many people do it, but I just don't know how to approach it.

The issue came up because of the different kinds of stuff I like:
Races from Eberron and Races of...
Steampunk Items
Spelljammer ships
D&D Gods and Demon Lords
Scarred Lands Gods and Monsters
Forgotten Realms Countries (individually, not how they're stitched together)
Planescape Philosophies
Recurring locations
Ptolus Noble Houses

 

[Ciaran]

First thing, you need to decide what it is you want out of your homebrew.

So, what do you want out of your homebrew?

 

[painandgreed]

This is a post that is not about rules.

How do you build a kitchen sink homebrew? I know many people do it, but I just don't know how to approach it.

My $.02.

First, make a list of ten things that make it different from current campain worlds. Sounds like you have a start with your list. Write up a paragraph or five that can tell people what it is about and the general theme. You might let a few friends read it and get their impression.

Second, decide on your strategy, top down, or bottom up. In top down, you start with the whole world and detail the big things and slowly work down to the little stuff. This usually begins with a world map, descriptions of coutnries, etc. In bottom up, you start with the area the PCs are going to be adventuring in and only worry about what they will encounter. Usually, most people do a little of both but will center on one strategy.

Third, dump players in the world and playtest it. They'll ask questions and you can come up with answers and if not flesh out your world on the fly, at least figure out what you need to work on.

Fourth, keep filling in stuff as you need it or come up with it.

 

[phindar]

Involve the players in the prep. Take a system like Universalis, which a friend of mine just ran for me the other day. Play starts with no setting, and you go around the table pitch-meeting style with everybody throwing out idea they like. After two hours, we had built from scratch a campaign world that any one of us would have liked to build a D&D campaign around. Four heads are better than one, and by involving your players from the begining, they'll be invested in the setting. (No matter how brilliant a homebrew is, if the players aren't buying it, its not going to be much fun for you or them.)

It's like the old sketch-comedy rule, If they buy the premise, they'll buy the joke. Players are less likely to shoot holes all through a campaign world they helped create.

 

[Tonguez]

You've already got a good list going here

Your job now is to apply a Setting/Campaign Theme and figure out how they all tie together within the context of your Theme. Once your theme is in place wverything should fit in fine.

Just to help I've sorted your list thus:

Culture
Planescape Philosophies

Geography
Recurring locations

Technology Level
Steampunk Items
Spelljammer ships

Races
from Eberron and Races of...

Gods and Monsters
D&D Gods and Demon Lords
Scarred Lands Gods and Monsters

Political Structures
Forgotten Realms Countries (individually, not how they're stitched together)
Ptolus Noble Houses[/QUOTE]

 

[ender_wiggin]

My #1 most important strategy for making a "flexible" homebrew.

Don't make it all up at once. In fact, my advice would be to not sit around thinking about it for hours. Because when you do that you fix things about the world, which makes it inflexible.

We are all human -- decent ideas come often, great ideas come sporadically, and truly bad-ass ideas only come around once in a while.

If you keep your world mostly liquid, you can, over the years, fill it with amazing ideas. And there will always be room to for it to grow.

And if you take my advice, make sure to write everything down! You don't want to forget what kind of cool stuff you came up with two years ago.

 

[Mark Hope]

All good advice above - I'd agree with this all. I would tend to start top-down for a while, and then pick a playing area and focus on the small scale. The top-down period gives you a framework on which to hang your finer details.

When it comes to actually getting started, I'd pick an area (with your players' input) and keep it simple. Feel free to limit the available options with an eye to building a solid feel and theme for your opening adventures. My current homebrew begun with adventures set around members of a small barbarian tribe. The players were told that all characters had to be human and related to one another. Classes were limited to a group of about 10 base classes (most not PHB, but that's just my taste). From there the game flowed pretty naturally. You can expand the game as you go along - indulge in your creative urges and feed the players as taste dictates.

In short, keep it small, keep it simple, and let it grow naturally.

 

[Psion]

Well, I'm still experimenting with my "kitchen sink world", my "two-pronged attack" consists of:

• Lists
• Regions

Not in that order.

I am taking the game elements I want to include, and sorting them into regions. I have four major continents. Each has its own flavor/character. And I am trying to sort races, classes, and setting material into those four continents.

Of course, I'm not done with this activity yet, but it's my strategy. Here's a look at what my homebrew kitbash world looks like, with a few of my allocated regions plotted out:
[sblock=Click me for the map]

[/sblock]

I'll add a third tool in my toolbelt: play up coincidences. Sometimes you'll find redundancies in published material by different publishers. One way to make these elements seem less redundant and more linked is to play up any areas of overlap.

A quick example: Psigates from the old Talaron article in the Dragon feature as part of my world. I am also using Bluffise and the Dry Sands region in the West continent, and Hamunaptra in the center continent. Both Hamunaptra and Dry Lands feature jackal-headed humanoids. Okay, do we need 2 races of jackal headed humanoids? Well, what I did is made the Dry Lands version a subrace. They are psionic, so arrive at the desert in the west via the network of psionic gates. I may even decide to make them the tenders or keepers of the gates on the world.

 

[Ry]

First thing, you need to decide what it is you want out of your homebrew.

So, what do you want out of your homebrew?

Player Characters from Varied Background Work Together to Solve Problems and Defeat Threats - in a Cool Way that is Fun and Awesome.

 

[Ry]

Your job now is to apply a Setting/Campaign Theme and figure out how they all tie together within the context of your Theme. Once your theme is in place wverything should fit in fine.

What do you mean by theme here? I mean, if I said "good vs. evil" was my theme it wouldn't really help stitch these things together.