your homebrew campaign - generic setting or single campaign?

[deltadave]

I've been using the same homebrewed game world with variations since the mid 80's. That would be about 12 different campaigns and at least a hundred independent storylines. As pc's graduate to NPC status by finishing their story arc, I make copies of the sheet and they show up in later games. Some games have radically affected the direction of the game world and others have been very local in effect. This is all history or current events for the next game, building richness for the game world even for those players who are new to the game.

 

[Gothmog]

My homebrew setting is coming up on 13 years old now, and I have one long term (12+ year game), and have run three shorter campaigns in it. So I would be solidly in the camp of a setting where multiple stories can be told. No offense, but worlds built around one storyline and epic events that change reality of the world seem somehow shallow and less compelling to me, mostly because the real world isn't that way. Sure, its great to have important events the PCs are a part of in the world, but one-trick-pony worlds (which most fantasy novels are) make for rather dull campaigns IME.

 

[barsoomcore]

I seem to be in the distinct minority.

To me, "campaign" and "setting" were always interchangeable terms, but I've learned here at ENWorld that you don't HAVE to reinvent the world everytime you want to start a new storyline.

Huh.

But I'm a sucker for the more-epic-than-epic plots anyway, and my campaigns ALWAYS seem to end up being about the history of the world, and the final culmination of the gods' plans or whatever.

My Kung-Fu Angels game is actually set in my Barsoom setting, and it's the first time I've ever done that -- run more than one campaign in a single setting. I'm nervous because I feel like things are very limited for the Angels -- they aren't going to be able to do anything about the big bad of their time because she's still hanging around in the main campaign, a hundred years later. So what do they do?

I dunno. I can always say, "Multiple dimensions!" or something, I guess.

But maybe if I can learn to do this, it could save me a lot of work.

But you know, I kind of LIKE the work. Am I a bad person?

 

[DragonLancer]

I've done both, single shot and campaign. I prefer campaign design though. It means that I can continue to use it long after the original campaign came to an end, and even incorporate the chanages that different groups inflict upon the setting.

 

[Umbra]

I run a homebrew campaign for a year or so and then default back to Forgotten Realms for a year or two before another homebrew campaign. My homebrews usually have an epic focus (achieve X and save the world) which when completed is abandoned.

The Realms campaign is my default world where I just plug anything in. The last time we played that I ported RTTOEE into the Silver Marches. The Realms is also used by anyone else in the group if they want to try DM'ing (a rare experience).

Before that I ran a homebrew very loosely based on Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence children's books (HIGHLY recommended) where the characters had to retrieve various artifacts for the Light in order to defeat the Dark. Lots of little adventures all over the world building to the climax.

I enjoy the homebrew more despite the extra work.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I play in the same homebrew setting now that I played with back in high-school. Our world started small (a large island, really) and expanded outward with each successive campaign we ran, until eventually, it's wasn't just an island, or just an island and the contient next to it -- there was a world there.

Generally speaking, unless the heroes do something that's literally earth-shattering, most homebrew settings are just like the published settings -- big enough to sustain many campaigns that could stretch over any concievable distance or period of time. In my own setting, I tend to jump around the map for starting locations of each campaign (the game usually begins with the PCs saving some small town from some monsters before moving on to grander plots) and I'll even vary the time period, for example, between eras that resemble the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment/Napoleonic period, or even the Victorian period (in which case I'm better off using the d20 Modern rules than D&D -- and since spells in d20 Modern only go up to 5th level, those rules are *great* for low-magic campaigns).

 

[Afrodyte]

Right now, I'm working on a very small-scale campaign setting, perhaps no bigger than a county. It has a single city surrounded by fewer than two dozen villages of various sizes (larger closer to the city, smaller further out). It's been a real challenge to keep things small and focused. However, it's very rewarding to have more energy to devote to the more character-centered aspects that I like.

 

[Turjan]

Well, my setting is similar to those that others have mentioned so far. It's large enough to allow diverse campaigns for a lifetime, but it is only fleshed out where needed. It's somewhat generic with the usual pecularities. You cannot use published adventures like printed, though, because of several distinct differences. On the other hand, it's similar enough to standard D&D in the core region so that most published adventures are easily adaptable.

 

[Ibram]

So far I have run three major campaigns (running for several RL months) through my world, each encluding multiple story archs. I have also run several smaller campaigns (1-3 sessions in lenght).

Two of the three large campaings were cronologicly related to each other (the second involved the grand nephew of a character in the first). The third takes place across the world and has no casual links to the other two (so it could be running before, durring, or after the other two).

The smaller campaigns were almost always completly independent of each other.

I keep developing my campaing more and more, and there is plenty of room (both geographicly and chronologicly) open to run campaings big and small.

 

[npiccini]

I run a homebrew campaign loosely based on the George Martin Westeros concept with a wall in the north and wildlings. It is principally a low-magoc campaign, but im slowly inserting material in that will expand magic. I have eliminated wizards and made clerics a non-playable class. I have also inserted elements loosely taken from the wheel of time series. It has worked very well, and the players are all into it. So, when this group finishes, I see no reason to switch worlds,