D&D General The Homebrew Settings of your campaign

[Yora]

There's two great discussion about favorite official and inoffical D&D settings, and people are bringing up their homebrew settings. Which I think is a fascinating topic in itself.

What are the homebrew settings in the campaigns you run and play in like? What's their overall style in environment and cultures, and do they have any specific concept?

In the new campaign I am currently setting up, I am using my new Shattered Empire setting. The concept for the setting is to be a world tailored to fit the style of adventures and campaigns that are presented in the Basic and Expert rules from 1981, which is more or less the foundation of West Marches campaign. The overall style of the setting is drawing on 6th century central and eastern Europe, a few generation after the abandonment of Noricum, Panonnia, and Dacia (the Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania region), but also takes ideas for the historical background from the Wars of the Successors after the death of Alexander.
It is a great wilderness that at the same time is scattered all over with ruined fortresses and towns from the fallen empire, and littered with buried vaults of treasures and magic that were hidden away during the centuries of war, and forgotten when their owners died before they could reconquer the land. The empire is now fully erased and a distant memory to most people, but there continues to be a great distrust of conquerors and fear of another empire with centuries of war, that so far have prevented the rise of new kings who could unite a larger region under their own control. And as such, few of the old imperial fortresses have been reclaimed, and their hidden treasures remain undiscovered.

 

[Lyxen]

Favourite homebrew campaign had an old world (continent), where magic was almost all used, disappeared, decaying after an endless war between duchies, and a "new world", full of the remaining magic an wealth, but also completely broken in the sense that it was just pieces of a world held together by strings of fate, manifesting as portals and connections. The gods were all dead but two, blind fate and dumb luck, as all the others had sacrificed themselves to prevent entropy from devouring the universe. Whatever faith / divine spark was left of a future for the world was channeled through memories of these gods and the above strands of faith into the remaining elder gods, who maintained a fragile illusion. Even death had been subverted, there was no afterlife, no resurrection possible, since all suplicants' souls was automatically sacrificed to placate entropy. But the wells of souls, where new souls were born, were also slowly going dry, it was a dying world a dying universe. And of course, the campaign was about changing all that, although no-one knew it at start, the adventurers were just indentured members of a final attempt by one of the Dukes of the Old World to gain some wealth to restart the war by sending an expedition to the "New World"...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don’t have a preferred style of homebrew settings. Each one Ive created has been its own thing. Major ones have been:

1) a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting. Races were from a wide variety of sources, many with substantial revisions.
2) superheroic version of Space:1889, extensively modified by additional, period-appropriate sources for inspiration, as well as anachronistic stuff rewritten to fit.
3) a “typical” fantasy setting, but all the races are anthropomorphic animals. (The PCs had PHB standard races; they had been captured by cross-dimensional raiders for restocking a hunting preserve…)

 

[Stormonu]

One I did (recently) for publication was Crimson Empire. It's Arabic/North Africa/Mediterranean based, with a powerful empire in decline. Its major enemies include a kraken-worshipping Viking empire, a far-flung wilderness populated with dragons, a yakuza-controlled empire with ninja pirates, an Egyptian-styled empire of the undead and a native american tribal realm populated by fey animalfolk. And there are dinosaurs in the lands between cities.

My original homebrew, Amberos/Dark Summit is a kitchen sink fantasy inspired by both Greyhawk and Forgotten realms. It's been in existance for some 35 years or so, so it has had quite a bit of development and has cultures that stretch the gamut of fantasy cultures across the globe, mashed into one continent, all radiating out from a progenitor mountain/megadungeon known as Tsre Vestu, the Dark Summit. I'm about to start a campaign in it in one of the greater kingdoms called the Silkna Kingdom, where the PCs will be mage school graduates doing their final thesises by being part of skyship crew that is hunting monsters (sort of like a whaling crew).

 

[Minigiant]

I have 3 main homebrew setting that I run

1) Six Kingdoms is a asetting of god kings, demigods, and avatars. The main gimmick are that the gods walk the world. Kings don't claim to have divine right, they do. They can grant spells, have divine ranks, and have epic boons. And not just them, the gods reincarnate themselves in mortals anytime they die. Holy Wars are lead by actual gods who mix personal, racial, social,and divine issue. So divine character involve themselves in the lives of adventurers, molding them to be the reincarnations of missing gods or encouraging them to kill gods so they can be their reincarnated into better versions of themselves. Or you can kill a king and become a god.

2) The PHB races including orcs, goblins, and giants are uplifted to their golden ages and their technomagical heights using their classical themes and grudges. However outside of the golden lands are disaster zones and dungeons.

 

[el-remmen]

I ran games in the same setting from 1989 to 2009 and then a buddy ran one last game there from 2010 to 2016.

This was Aquerra, an archipelago flat world, with a lot of focus on sea travel and conflict between religious factions that was several millennia removed from "The Time Before" when the world was dominated by a Pangea-like continent that was smashed into the current islands requiring a remaking of various civilizations. This was a top-down setting that I did a lot of work on and detailing and still have two thick binders full of notes about. I have two story hours in that forum for games set in that world, but between me and other DMs, we ran over a dozen different connected games in that setting over 20 years.

When I got back to running D&D after a ten year break, rather than be trapped by the past and trying to convert the setting to 5E after all the work it took converting it from 2E to 3E, I instead took a place from that setting that I always liked but never got to use much and was under-developed, renamed and re-mapped it and used that as the starting point for my current campaigns, calling it "The Republic of Makrinos." This large island is surrounded in temperate and sub-tropical swamps and had a mountainous interior.

The central campaign conceit is that PCs are not from this place, but are from what we call "The Known World" (no relation to Mystara), which can be however the PCs imagine it - it doesn't matter much, one conceit is that we're never going back there and the characters need a motivation for leaving. I describe "The Known World" as a scattered land of kingdoms and empires constantly breaking apart and re-absorbing each other, where most so-called "monstrous humanoids" have been driven to extinction and most other monsters have been killed off or put in zoos. Its age of adventure is long over, its evils institutionalized into virtues. It is sufficiently far from Makrinos that while it is possible for ships to reach between them, it is a long and harrowing trip that does not allow for easy migration or to stage an invasion.

This allows the players to learn about the setting (Makrinos) as they play and their characters learn about it. The core conceit about this is that characters can think they know whatever it is players think they know about monsters and lineages and the like, but that doesn't mean it is actually the case.

Put together this allows for two things:

1. Players to make characters with a wide variety of motivating backgrounds without it mattering if the details match the world they will be exploring.

2. Allows me the freedom (that I usually take anyway) to make monsters and encounters whatever I want them to be.

Makrinos itself is a republic with complex laws, customs, and voting systems (based on a mash-up of ancient Greece and Rome with some other things thrown in), so very different from the typical monarchies that dominate the political landscape of D&D (see Snarf's recent post), allowing me to develop a sense of "political foreignness" (not just cultural) as a backdrop the PCs can interact with as much or as little as they like.

 

[Jer]

My current campaign is a 13th Age campaign set on a continent that is loosely inspired by Eberron and the inspirations for Eberron (Indiana Jones, the pulps, noir fiction, early 20th century history, etc.) The continent is currently in an "interwar truce" period following a brutal war between the countries of the Free State Alliance on one side and an alliance of the Demon Empire (to the west of the Alliance) and the Queen of the Deathless Wastes (to the north). The world has roughly early 20th century "magical tech" (a functional train system, flying dirigible-type ships, etc.) and the war was particularly brutal because of it.

The Demon Empire is a human/elf ethnostate whose economy revolves around slavery, summons demons to do their dirty work, and views non-humans and non-elves as lesser beings who should either be enslaved or killed outright (depending on whether they are suitable for slave labor or "just monsters" in their view). Roughly half of the Free States are inhabited by the descendants of a successful slave revolt that kicked off the century-long war with the Demon Empire (and many continue to work to smuggle people out of the Demon Empire despite the truce). Some of the other half are the Vampire Kingdoms who broke the hold of the Wraith Queen of the Deathless Wastes after she allied herself with the Demon Empire and they joined the Free States during the war in what is still a fairly uneasy alliance.

The players in this scenario are "archeologists of the arcane" - they have been hired by the Archchancellor the Collegium in Freehold (one of the Free States) to delve into the places where rumors, myths and legend suggest that "True Magic Items" can be found to bring them back to the Collegium so they can be studied for the war effort. In practice what that means is that I used it as an excuse to rework some "classic" dungeons for them to do some dungeon crawling in as a more pulp archaeology sort of focus. Over the campaign they explored the Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, and Whiteplume Mountain (when orcs show up in those adventures they get replaced by members of the Infernal Legion as appropriate - the Legionnaires make great orcs in practice, like Nazis in an Indiana Jone movie). They were just realizing that their next mission was taking them into the Tomb of Horrors (and the look on one of my player's faces was priceless when he figured out what crypt they were actually entering) when the whole dungeon got swallowed by the Stone Thief.

it's been a lot of fun - we were originally just going to do an Eberron game but we did this instead so folks didn't feel tied to existing lore and everyone's been really enjoying it. I've also been having fun DMing some classic dungeon crawling with a twist after our previous 13th age campaign which didn't involve much dungeon crawling at all. I suspect that we'll do another campaign in the same world when this one wraps up unless the players manage to destroy it before we're done (the archeologist setup has been great for my table's play style - they really prefer a "mission" framework over other models of play, so I tailored it to them).

 

[Voadam]

I run a mashup homebrew setting. Mostly Ptolus with the Holy Lothian Empire, overlaid over Golarion specific areas now. A bunch of Eberron, Freeport, Warhammer, Midgard, SpirosBlaak, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, 4e Dawn War cosmology, World of Darkness, and some Nyambe plus a bunch of fantasy analogue cultures as well. Some Elric, Alluria, and Castles and Crusades Aerth setting divine elements got used as well.

Mostly the big themes are the Holy Lothian Empire civil war and whatever the local setting of the adventures I am running are. So Freeport was D&D pirates with Cthulhu investigations. Reign of Winter was Baba Yaga and Narnia White Witch themes. Carrion Crown was gothic horror with a lot of Lothian overlay. Currently my Iron Gods campaign is superscience and barbarism with influences such as Star Trek, WH40K, Paranoia, Shadowrun, World of Darkness Werewolf the Apocalypse and Mage the Ascenscion, Acme from Road Runner cartoons, and Thundarr the Barbarian.

 

[Voadam]

One I played in recently was a 5e Disney Princess themed game.

The world had different domains with classic animated movie themes.

A friend played a walock with a fairy godmother, she was pretending to be a princess. My viking pirate valor bard broke the Beast's curse by not breaking guest hospitality when provoked and by obliviously ignoring all hints that he was overstaying his welcome until in exasperation the Beast offered us rooms to stay the night, which act of hospitality was required to make up for the Beast's not inviting the Blue Fairy to a party years ago as a child.

The swamp bayou kingdom had issues with bullywugs and a bokor's curse that we got involved in.

We traveled Under the Sea to Atlantis to deal with a curse laid by a trio of Sea Hags on a mermaid married to a port city prince. The Atlantean secret police stole my sunken treasure map because the treasure ships I had sunk were too close to Atlantean cities.

 

[Laurefindel]

I’ve got many homebrews but there are two I particularly like:

one is a human-only / PHB-races-as-optional-regional-variants, and where the fluff of all spellcaster classes has been changed but without altering the mechanics in any ways.

the other is a « you only get to play one of the following races: aasimar, automaton, girtablilu, sprite, or vegepygmy »kind of game. For the setting (called Dark Woods), think Dark Sun, but nature triumphed over magic and civilization. But now nature got insane and cruel.