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Looking for experiences people had with their homebrews, to aid mine.
I try to find something engaging for every character in the party at every session, even if it involves some solo play for a short while.
I prefer sandbox games, and try to implement them where it makes sense and not use it in every situation. I also like puzzles for my PCs to solve, but I've found most players do not like that, and have had to cut them out.
I also go into a session with descriptions already done for things, but I do not have specific scripts or events written up. I let the players decide where they want to go, then start building the story in that direction. Sometimes it involves making a lot of stuff up on the spot, then once the session is over, fleshing that out more for next time.
Encounters end thematically, not mathematically, most of the time.
I like to, on occasion, give heroic descriptions during fights, of precisely what a character did that round (some groups much more than others). I like to give the same to how badly an enemy hurt them.
Lastly, every NPC is a bad guy, until the PCs treat them nicely, then maybe they are a good guy :P
I like to design worlds that aren't just my take on a whole bunch real world cultures vaguely reskinned and crammed together. I either want something as its own feel as Dark Sun was or I want to take a single culture and try to figure out how to immerse and expand it into a whole world. My favorite parts of world building have always been of a myth crafting and a cultural anthropological nature.
I still haven't got mine off the ground yet because I'm still refining the creation myth for my world. Next will come the myths explaining the initial interactions among the gods and why some are allies and others enemies. Next comes the stories of the earliest mythic heroes, then the first cities, then the first empires, then the more realistic political and sociological crap in broad strokes, then a laserlike focus on the present, along with some general ideas of what will happen in the future if the PCs didn't exist, and several pivotal moments or changes and what the future would be like if the PCs brought them about (or failed to stop them).
I have a bad habit of forgetting that nonhuman races and fantasy elements exist, so I have a little buzzer that occasionally goes off, and when it does I insert fantastic elements and try to incorporate them.
As for the geography of the planet, I usually just take a randomly generated Huge map from a game of Civilization V and use that.
I like to design worlds that aren't just my take on a whole bunch real world cultures vaguely reskinned and crammed together. I either want something as its own feel as Dark Sun was or I want to take a single culture and try to figure out how to immerse and expand it into a whole world. My favorite parts of world building have always been of a myth crafting and a cultural anthropological nature.
I'm quite the opposite. I love taking real-world cultures and re-examining them through the fantastical lens. For example, one of the major powers in my homebrew setting is "ancient Persian/Babylonian empire... with necromancers and a council of mummified ex-rulers". Another is "ancient Rome... with winged elf mage-emperors and magic-resistant human soldiers". And such like. I'm admittedly not vague about it, pretty blunt actually, but the juxtaposition is part of what I enjoy about it.
A lot of my world has come from suggestions, ideas, contributions, or stories put together by my players. It's really a collaborative effort.
My world is mostly structure fluff atm.
For instance it is composed of only 3 "planes" the spiritual plane, the matirial plane and the plane of the dead which are layered on top of one another, and seep through in placed. (for instance a ghost would just be a person from the plane of the dead who is "bleeding though" into the matirial plane.)
I've also completely removed alignment my games. every nation and race is considered "neutral" and no country empire or race is "evil" and "the bad guys" change drasticly based on where you ask.
Tech and sociaty wise i set my games around anchent greek city states rather than something resembling medieval Europe. those city states tend to be wary of each other and look down on people from the other city states.
Magic is Rare and the domain of the spirits and gods. people wishing to learn it would need to learn directly from another rare magic user or from the spirits themselves. the gods have much less power and rarely if ever influence things directly. only the highest members of a church or cult are capable of becoming clerics.
*(mechanicly this makes every Prepared full caster a prestige class that requires 16 casting stat and 4 ranks in knowlage [arcane, religon or nature] as appropriate. paladins and rangers have the same reqirement only needing 12 casting stat and 2 knowlage respectivly)
the world is mysterious and uncharted and states rarely have maps detailing the world far beyond their borders and never with any accuracy.
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My world is mostly structure fluff atm.
For instance it is composed of only 3 "planes" the spiritual plane, the matirial plane and the plane of the dead which are layered on top of one another, and seep through in placed. (for instance a ghost would just be a person from the plane of the dead who is "bleeding though" into the matirial plane.)
I've also completely removed alignment my games. every nation and race is considered "neutral" and no country empire or race is "evil" and "the bad guys" change drasticly based on where you ask.
Tech and sociaty wise i set my games around anchent greek city states rather than something resembling medieval Europe. those city states tend to be wary of each other and look down on people from the other city states.
Magic is Rare and the domain of the spirits and gods. people wishing to learn it would need to learn directly from another rare magic user or from the spirits themselves. the gods have much less power and rarely if ever influence things directly. only the highest members of a church or cult are capable of becoming clerics.
*(mechanicly this makes every Prepared full caster a prestige class that requires 16 casting stat and 4 ranks in knowlage [arcane, religon or nature] as appropriate. paladins and rangers have the same reqirement only needing 12 casting stat and 2 knowlage respectivly)the world is mysterious and uncharted and states rarely have maps detailing the world far beyond their borders and never with any accuracy.
stealing this....
*snip*stealing this....
Glad you like it! ^_^
Of course, one big problem you run into if you try and forgo using other cultures as models is the potential for your world to turn into a confusing cluster****. That's one reason the John Carter movie didn't do too well with general audiences.
My world is mostly structure fluff atm.
An all too common purgatory in which potential campaign worlds find themselves...
Mine is a "classic" fantasy world, with mighty ritual and "world magic" juxtaposed with moderate and more subtle "personal magic". It contains an Elven empire in decline, a Dwarven kingdom allied with (but antagonistic to) the Elves, several Human "proto-kingdoms" (who are subservient to, but agitating under, the Elven empire), an expanding Goblinoid empire, and the shattered remains (and playable descendents) of an ancient Giant culture. Also, my world features unique deities who form a perfectly balanced circle of opposition, based on the Nine Alignments of Pathfinder. The irony here is that I won't be using alignment for mortals.
It draws inspiration from the original AD&D Deities and Demigods, Arcana Unearthed, Star Trek, Star Wars, the Forgotten Realms, and of course Lord of the Rings, among others.
But....its so much! I never have gotten more than broad strokes and a few Gods written down, as I constantly vacillate between spending the rest of my natural life detailing and running games in my world, and starting a classic Greyhawk campaign, or relaunching a customized "FRZero" Forgotten Realms campaign, or even throwing in the towel completely and running AP after AP in a Golarion campaign....
May we all find the strength to forge our own paths. Lol.