What's so special about your homebrew?

[Lanefan]

This is my homebrew. There are many like it but this one is mine.

Ayup; except I've had three so far.

Homebrew #1 was a very generic fantasy setting, with the main tweak being an inherent instability in magic that caused spells to occasionally fail - sometimes dangerously - caused by a meteorite landing several centuries ago and releasing trace levels of uranium (previously unknown on the planet) into the atmosphere. The uranium was the destabilizer. Intelligent, technology-based Hobgoblins were the main enemy, until they got beaten by Drow.

I stuck with typical basic euro-cultures (celt, norse, french, etc.) in that one, but didn't bother with niceties such as accuracy.

I mined it for all the story I could, then had the final plotline be the removal of all magic from the world before the instability got right out of hand.

Homebrew #2 was only partly homebrew; I took the northwest chunk of the FR continent and reworked it from the ground up. Other than Norse (and as far as I'm concerned, *every* D+D world needs Norse in it) the cultures were very generic. There was no "main enemy" as such, but the same sort of Hobgoblins figured prominently at some points until people realized they were being driven by Githi. I probably left some story on the table with this one, but after 12 years I'd kind of burnt out on it.

Homebrew #3 uses more cultures taken directly from our history (and suitably chopped up into playable bits - think the Xena-Hercules universe and you'll be pretty close) and so far the main enemy has been Ares. This time, however, I've done a lot more with history and backstory; giving me a much richer vein to mine for adventure stories than I've had before (and that is *such* a luxury!). I figure I've got enough story to keep 2 parties going for maybe 5 years of play each, never mind what might come up in the meantime whether player-driven or not.

Lanefan

 

[wedgeski]

Just to parrot what other posts have said... what's special about it? Not much, but it belongs to me, and some of the time, to my players as well.

 

[MortalPlague]

Cat. Cat is well not just one cat, but many, dozens of identical looking black cats spread across the city. You see, Cat is a hive mind creature of sorts...

Absolutely brilliant. I may have to adopt this particular NPC at some point in the future.

I used to create a new homebrew campaign every time we started a new game. It was fun, though; I enjoy world building. I take great pleasure in drawing out a map, filling in the countries and cities and the like, making up the kingdoms and empires and the conflicts they share.

For 4th Edition, myself and one of my players who DMs from time to time crafted a world. We put it into effect for our last short campaign in 3.5 as our evil characters brought about the apocalypse that shattered the Tothandran Empire and brought an era of law and order to an end. Our 4th edition world emerged from the ashes with three isolated kingdoms warding their borders against the Great Plain, filled with savages and roaming tribes. The Free Cities to the south are the only refuge from imperialism, a collection of loosely allied city-states.

Each kingdom has its own general theme, and we threw in the free cities as a DM's toolbox; if one of us required a location that bucked the trend established in one of the kingdoms, or if one of our players wanted to play a character with odd characteristics, they could be from a free city. We also have some nebulous continents scattered about, like the huge Magocracy to the south, but these are deliberately left blank to let us develop them as we choose.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

My homebrew?
My homebrew campaign world adopts the name "Forgotten Realms" most the time, and has alot of the same characters and places as the Forgotten realms setting.
I don't follow "FR cannon" I've never read a FR novel, Nor do I care just how cool Drizzt, Elminster, Symbul, Szass Tam, anyone is in the setting. I make Forgotten realms my world. In fact I've done so much to the forgotten realms that I bought the 4E FR campaign guide just for the names of places and to see what WoTC did to it in their world breaking event (And changed most of it to match my world breaking event at the end of 3.5 that I ran).

That might be cheating for this thread so:
My first ever attempt at a homebrew game world was very short lived and not very well planned out. It was a reverce Ravenloft, the good side to Ravenloft's bad.
All of my characters were the key characters of the setting, and all the adventures they had were the stuff of legends of that world.

Fast forward 13 years: I dug up my old notes of that world and desided to re-write the whole thing from the ground up. My old (and now officially retired) characters are the main guys in the world (why not right?) Not much has changed realy, except this time I'm putting alot more effort into fleshing things out and putting story behind everything. Also, its nothing like Ravenloft now (I hope *Crosses fingers that its nothing like what might happen to 4E Ravenloft if it ever exists*)
If it turns out as good as I hope it will, it will be the "Campaign setting X" in my signature.

 

[Crothian]

15 years and 9 campaigns worth of history helps.
I have a civilization based on Plato's Republic.
A squirrel rose from being a normal animal to a demi god.
I have one race that is pure evil. Everyone knows they are pure evil. And yet the PCs get talked into making deals and working with a member of the race nearly every time.

I'm sure there is more.

 

[Bluenose]

It's closer to Dark Age than medieval Europe. That does mean the not-Roman empire went into decline as the campaign started.
It's episodic, with the events of one campaign often forming the basis for one set twenty years later. Or not. Some characters have been children of earlier ones and inherited their reputation, status, and sometimes equipment. And their enemies
Gods are numerous, mostly localised, and if they're widely known don't necessarily work the same in different lands. The Sun God might be a god of rulers in one place, a bringer of light in an arctic region, and a god of destruction to be appeased in the desert.
PCs who achieve great deeds will be remembered, and sometimes will be worshipped as demigods after their death. Which does mean that one cleric PC in my current campaign is worshipping his own character from a previous game.
What are gnomes? Some sort of rat-men?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

For Urbis:

- A magical industrial economy explaining all those magic items lying around.
- Some really big cities.
- Lots of classical fantasy tropes - both played straight and subverted.

 

[GnomeWorks]

I have a civilization based on Plato's Republic.

Complete with a philosopher-king, I hope?

My homebrew is very much a "kitchen sink," consisting of elements that I thought were neat or interesting taken over the last thirteen years or so.

The central idea of the setting is opposition, a great struggle, similar to the "good vs evil" struggle, but on different axes. I have three three-way overarching struggles: "magic vs psionics vs technology, "divine vs nature vs void," and "time vs memory vs entropy."

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Pretty much nothing really; I set my games in a pretty generic setting, and the only real reason I don't use a published setting is so that I can invent whatever I need for the plot without contradicting anything or copying an element of the setting already there. I turned dwarves into Australian stereotypes who live in pyramids on the plains (artificial mountains, y'see - their old homelands were typical dwarven mountains, but they migrated north away from that) and are renowned for their crocodile cavalry, but other than that I haven't really done much that's at all innovative or different from the norm.

Yes, that's pretty much it, except the Australian Dwarves.

It is for me about having creative space. I can put into the setting what I want. I can steal from other sources, and I can put my own spin of things, without ever worrying whether I will contradict another source. Important part for me is here to avoid "disappointing" player expectations. Of course I could run the Forgotten Realms and say that Waterdeep is ruled by Vasca Dagama, an Elven Bard instead of who ever is ruling it in canon, but the player would have expected something different - and maybe even hoped for.

The disadantage of course is that the players know little about the setting, and I will have to ensure they know all that is necessary to understand what's going on. But on the other hand, it also gives the freedom - they can make suggestions (conciously or unconciously) and I can work it in.

 

[roguerouge]

My player, most importantly.

Probably the other special thing is the concept: the pantheon is getting rid of the dead weight amongst the demi-gods. The only way to survive as a god is to gain faith share amongst the mortals, so all of the gods of very narrow domains have to select avatars to accomplish that. The god of ill luck selects an avatar and makes him an object lesson on how bad luck can ruin your life, encouraging people to placate him with prayers and sacrifices. The avatar of the flighty goddess of good luck is a swashbuckling bard, the PC. The avatar of the god of cannibalism? Stuck on a shipwreck having eaten the crew. The avatar of Dagon? Trying to destroy the world, except for him, which increases Dagon's percentage of faith. The goddess of monstrous births? Who knows?