The Worlds We Create - Built from Scratch Campaigns


Homebrew and House Rules

1 to 50 of 91 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>

I'm not too sure if this belongs here, or in Campaign Setting general discussion, but alas, I'll once more try here first!

Greetings my fellow GMs! Curiosity has the better of me this rainy night, and I'd like to delve into the topic of custom campaigns. I must say, I think I'm in the wrong threads or categories a lot of the time, but I nearly NEVER hear about the campaigns that are absolutely pure imagination. Then again, I'm not quite sure if it's all that popular around here, a lot of people despise it. Slowly but surely over these past few months, I've been writing more and more of a campaign idea I've had for awhile; writing huge chunks of lore for the various countries, their rulers, the history of the nations, all that jazz! Now, keep in mind, I only recently got myself into Pathfinder, around October of 2011. I lived in a small, middle of no-where village, so pen and paper games weren't a thing really until I finally made it to the big city. And the first group I joined, this guy was a veteran of the 1st Edition and so on, and he always preferred custom campaigns, so I can't say I've ever actually played one!

But that's not what I want to talk about, no, I want to hear about the worlds you guys have built, or are currently building, and the fun that's gone into it! I know building such campaigns can be tiresome, but the thrill of PCs exploring your world is truly something else!


I'm currently working on the Archmage campaign setting and rules. It's been a hard and often lonely road, struggling through crippling depression to try and finish it.


Umbral Reaver wrote:
I'm currently working on the Archmage campaign setting and rules. It's been a hard and often lonely road, struggling through crippling depression to try and finish it.

...holy crap that is a lot of text too. Nice! Sorry to hear about the depression thing, it's a GMs worst nightmare. And you've honestly done more work on your campaign than I could ever dream of doing haha


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Personally I only run campaigns in my own worlds. Starting four years ago every campaign has taken place in the same world and the events of each campaign help shape the world for the next one. The way it worked out I ran four 6 to 10 month campaigns in the last four years. PC's from old campaigns have become legendary figures and overall having the the world be shaped by the actions of the PC's as well as my own imaginations has made it a more rich world than it would have been had i made it entirely by myself.


Bardarok wrote:
Personally I only run campaigns in my own worlds. Starting four years ago every campaign has taken place in the same world and the events of each campaign help shape the world for the next one. The way it worked out I ran four 6 to 10 month campaigns in the last four years. PC's from old campaigns have become legendary figures and overall having the the world be shaped by the actions of the PC's as well as my own imaginations has made it a more rich world than it would have been had i made it entirely by myself.

That's awesome! I can only hope one day I have such a tale to tell like that. I'm writing everything down in a nice, fifty dollar brown hardcover book with gold trimming on the pages, making it look super fancy and what-not.Unfortunately there are errors and scribbles but hey, it's still something nice to have! I'm hoping to make various parts of the campaign, carrying on and on and on. A dream of mine is to hear "remember when ______ happened and it changed _______ which led to ______ " and stuff like that haha. Glad to hear yours is turning out well sir!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

It sounds like you have a good background setup and a general idea of your plot points. If you're playing with friends (by which i mean people who like you outside of Pathfinder and won't be a&@#~**s if you mess up GMing) then my advice is just to start. If you don't have everything planned out that's okay. If you do have everything planned out the PC's are going to go to the one place you didn't plan out anyway and you'll need to make something up on the spot. I found that once I started I got better at filling in the holes as I went.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I honestly prefer worlds of my own creation, as I feel more attached and invested in the setting than I would playing in the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Greyhawk, Golarion, etc. I just don't have the personal investment into the shaping of the world/setting. Closest thing to the best setting for me, that has been published, is Eberron. But some things in that setting don't do it for me (like the Quori stuff).

I have a setting that is deeply intertwined with the elemental planes, in which there are 8 in this setting: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Life (positive energy), Death (negative energy), Shadow and Light. It's something that I have been working on (off and on) for 11 years now, ever since the release of the revised 3rd edition. Unfortunately, there hasn't been anything played within that world, and I have been updating things to the Pathfinder ruleset for the last 18 months.

Maybe one of these days I will actually be able to run a game within, but I don't really know.


Storm Sorcerer Arcturus wrote:
Umbral Reaver wrote:
I'm currently working on the Archmage campaign setting and rules. It's been a hard and often lonely road, struggling through crippling depression to try and finish it.
...holy crap that is a lot of text too. Nice! Sorry to hear about the depression thing, it's a GMs worst nightmare. And you've honestly done more work on your campaign than I could ever dream of doing haha

Thanks. Comments are welcome. It can help rouse me to further writing.


I have only run games in my own world since I started running from the Basic Set almost thirty years back. Skipping back and forth through time from campaign to campaign the world's history has developed and been filled in. Events, characters and places from older campaigns are blended with the prefab parts of the setting to make them, hopefully, seamless. I have piles of hand scratched notes and tattered notebooks, but in truth the totality only exists in my head. Players receive maps and explanations to the extent of their character's knowledge.
I find it difficult to describe the overall setting, I choose a region and time to match the type of game I want to run each time.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Good thread Storm Sorcerer Arcturus, I also love to hear about others games, gets my creative juices flowing.

I just recently came back to Gm'ing last year and have played one campaign, set in the same world as Steven Eriksons 'Malazan book of the Fallen'.

(that died of consumption finally when the only character that knew what was going on died, curtesy of his own fireball. He left behind no clues to the other characters and they just mullied about until I decided to stick a fork in it)

It was a blast to play but I found myself struggling more and more as we progressed through the plots with finding in-world explanations for what I wanted to do. (that world for example is not that heavy on wandering monsters, and most opponents are other humans with different goals)

So when I started a new game I went a totally different route, I started center-out.
It started as a module for trying out some homebrew ideas and theories, but (of course) as I tinkered with it I started adding details and lore and before I knew it I was making the hazy outline of a country and a history.
The game choices I made also changed the lore drasticly; "no Elves, why not?" "if the hobgoblins joined the humans, why?" etc.

more details:
IF YOU PLAY GAMES AT NG72, GO READ SOMETHING ELSE PÅL.

Darker Days:

Geography:
The setting is ithe land of Zumia, centered with the sea in the west, leading to Idunno.
with swamps leading to the east and the lands of orientalism and tengus.
In the noth are the Nornreich mountains with xenophobic Dwarfs that live in their ruined keeps while keeping at bay the threats from underground and the north, unknown to the other races.
And in the north is a desert of some sort I guess.
The land itself has a big chain of mountains and a central great river.
Most of the land is "english" in style but I don't really stress much about lagics and science when I make places, If I need a forest, I place it and don't give a hoot if the climate doesn't make sense.

History:
In my setting the land is currently in low-magic dark age after a great war against the tyrannic Eldren (elves) ca 500 years ago. much knowledge is lost, and only few people and places remember or belive in things like archmages, holy orders and horrible monsters. In the cracks and in the shadows there are Things hiding, preying and spinning their plots while the Humanoid races ignore them.

My plot (or the garbled mess that passes for one) centers on a group of friends and associates, who after inadvertedly freeing a (/THE) vampire from captivity start a hunt for it and knowledge. On the way they will stumble over the other evils lurking in their ignorant world, and slowly turn their group of friends into a organizasion meant to battle these problems.

Currently they are a noblemen whom dabbles in the arcane, a hobgoblin bodyguard with more heart than he shows, a streetkid who found religion and is seeking a higher calling, and a half elf looking for a home and a goal for his life.
They are supported by a sickly nobleman with deep pockets, an alchemist addicted to his own wares and an outcast dwarven smith.
the characters are still hunting down clues to what they freed and how to kill it.

inspirations I draw hevily on are from Dracula, van helsing, the ninth gate, most nWOD-games in some way, penny dreadful, and a lot from the witcher.


whops, typo/brainfart: the desert is in the south.
my map does not have to norths, how would that even work?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

If you click on my name it will take you to a couple of threads where I asked for advice on building worlds. I've done one to completion, a post apocalyptic fantasy where the end of the game was pretty much the beginning of Genisis and one I've been building for a whiiiile about the planes. In a nutshell, they all used to be one plane and the first archon's of the Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, and... Some killer whale race... Any who, they crafted then"anchors" that split the elemental planes and created the material planes. That happened a loooooong time ago, so long that humans came into being AFTER the fact. Few remember the lore of what actually happened except for the guardians of said anchors and a cult that is going around trying to destroy them ;)

My ultimate goal was to have one campaign for each of the four anchors, roll new characters each time as if they are happening concurrently. The final, fifth campaign in the arch, the players pick one of the four characters they have played and go off to fight the Big Bad.

It shall be... *dramatic pause* my Masterwork.


LuxuriantOak wrote:


I just recently came back to Gm'ing last year and have played one campaign, set in the same world as Steven Eriksons 'Malazan book of the Fallen'.

I just finished this series like..yesterday. I was wondering how to go about making a setting out of it.

What kinds of things were done in that game if you don't mind me asking?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I've been running the same world since my first 3.0 campaign. It's evolved to include new rules and classes, but the bones of the setting have remained the same. Past characters are legends now, and my wife's been playing since before we were dating in the world. She's always finding some nugget that I put into new adventures that she recognizes from her old characters' experiences (there has been a literal ROFL moment in one campaign when a certain realization dawned on her).

My world is complicated, and I'm still trying to force myself to stop being lazy and actually get it all written down, but I've already gotten illustrations for the allowed base classes' iconics drawn up, and biogs for all but one deity done. Mechanical tweaks and flavor text are needed, and my goal is to eventually spin it all into a campaign reference document that can be the go-to for most house rules and flavor.

The world is vaguely inspired by action movies, anime, and Final Fantasy, with an eye to logical niche in the world for races and monsters. Dragons are extremely rare, dwarves are like shogunate-era Japanese vikings, elves are Heian-era Japan inspired (I was an East Asians Studies major...). This campaign has existed for almost 14 years now, so it's always interesting to see where the world turns next.


I've always run homebrew settings. The one I currently use goes back as far as 1991. I don't write a lot of it down, just the races available and a short history of the setting. The rest is in my head and the heads of my players. I have piles of notebooks filled with the ideas that helped build it, though.


Me and my wife are currently building a campaign world to play in. We try to keep it as far away from real-world and classical fantasy stuff as possible, meaning no elves, dwarves, halflings etc., but all custom races, gods and whatnot.
We started playing recently and try to flesh out much of the world lore when it comes up. I hope it will offer home for many campaigns in the future.


I've played nearly 100% custom in my gamer life, my group (s) seem to prefer it.

The game world I used to run until recently was my own typical fantasy realm.
It was populated by any if the classic races and had room for just about any class and race somewhere.
The countries had a mix of made up names and ones based in real life, such as the city state "Brittannica" or the tyrannical elven land if "Shalom".

My new story is also rather classic. But I've removed a few classic races and interspersed them with rarer ones. Sometimes modified.
Elves for example don't exist in this world, replaced with a custom brand of fetchlings who possess blindsense instead of their spell like abilities.

Your world is your own. Even if fantasy stables like LoTR had elves and Dwarfes your world does not need to have them. Heck you might even remove standard magic altogether and implant Word magic instead.


Back in the good old days (approximately three years ago), I had just begun to take up DM-ing with a group of friends overseas, but no one had any books except the 3.5 Players Handbook.

I had an idea of how a +1 flaming sword worked, so I decided to throw them into the campaign whenever it was fun.

I've run homebrew since then, as when I discovered the Wealth-By-Level rules, I thought "Gee, this kinda sucks."

Sovereign Court

About 10 years ago I ran a campaign built completely on a world taken from a game of Civ I had been playing. I changed the nationalities and made some of them racially specific, but I ended up with an interesting history on an Earth-like world. I think I ended up having no halflings or gnomes, but large-sized creatures were common enough to have 2 kingdoms to themselves (a neutral aligned giant kingdom and an evil giant kingdom).


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm used to playing custom.

At the moment I'm only running in Golarion, but that's because I decided to make my life easier by running an AP and not having to adapt it to an entirely different setting, especially one that has some rules mismatches.

I have 3... well, now 4, settings in various stages of design.

The Four-Fold World
This is a swords & sorcery setting, moderately high on magic being around, but low on traditional magic (i.e. spellcasters); more of a world where it's pretty easy to get a couple of supernatural abilities, I guess. It's not intended to be played in Pathfinder, but in a system I'm slowly designing.

The starting region is a plateau controlled by five Clans locked in a semi-permanent (cold) succession war; this part is quite inspired by the Inner Sphere of the Battletech universe, crossed with some aspects of those Clans, and a lot of culture from historical fiction of early Saxon & pre-Saxon England. On the plains below the plateau are a set of city-states modeled largely on Renaissance Italy, with a touch of Tokugawa Japan thrown in.

It's also substantially inspired, actually, by the cosmology of 4th Edition D&D, one of a few things I did like there. It's a world with four coincident planes, defended by its gods (ascended mortals, in fact) against the aggression of other gods, from other worlds. I've cribbed a few high points from the "default" 4th Edition history, though I'm in the process of filing off the rest of the serial numbers and transitioning this from "copied from" to "inspired by". This definitely includes the notions of points of light on a dark map, and civilization being built on layer upon layer of past, fallen, civilizations.

The setting, though still very incomplete, has gone through many iterations, including a 4th Edition version I was working up during the launch period, and one where it was to be the host for a magic system inspired by the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Players in this setting should expect to spend a lot of time delving into long-lost (or buried) ruins, facing threats sealed away millenia ago, and battling the occasional evil wizard or priest of the gods beyond.

This one I would very much like to publish one day, along with the game system.

After Atlantis
This setting posits that Atlantis did once exist, and in fact ruled pretty much the entire Mediterranean Sea region... until it was wiped out in a magical cataclysm. The rise of the Empire was modeled in part on the Malazan books, though that's all ancient history in the setting anyway. Atlantis was filled with sorcerers, and it was their combination of heavy infantry (largely on the Roman model) and heavy sorcerous support which enabled them to conquer all.

A generation or two ago, something shredded the island of Atlantis, shattered weather patterns, and blotted the core of the Empire's infrastructure from existence. Atlantis itself is now a ruined city in a demon-haunted stretch of sea. The order imposed by Atlantis collapsed, and various provinces reacted in their own ways; Rome becoming a republic, Babylon turning back to the worship of the Annunaki, and so on.

This is an Epic 8th setting, though I do intend to allow limited amounts of mythic in it. That means no character ever gets past 8th level; progression is just feats afterwards (maybe a stat point or two?). One day, when I've got more experience with mythic, I'm thinking of running Reign of Winter, adapted to this, with time travel in one specific adventure.

This is also a setting that is probably not publishable, because it uses real-world religions, and not only dead religions. Of course, there's no reason it would need to be published to play it at home.

Unnamed Setting 1
This setting is inspired by a mix of Dark Sun and watching Les Miserables. Not the movie itself, but a single specific line "fall as Lucifer fell".

This produced in my mind a setting where angels fell to earth, wreathed in flames, causing massive damage, much like a series of large meteor strikes. Then they set themselves up as (mostly) benevolent sorcerer-kings, taking control of the surviving cities and eventually feuding with each other.

Unnamed Setting 2
This one is being built out now, just enough to feed a one-shot I decided to run using Tome of Battle.

It's a mash-up of the lore in the Tome of Battle book itself, the 3rd edition Oriental Adventures book, and Michael Stackpole's A Hero Born and & An Enemy Reborn books. I doubt it will get built out much more than needed for the adventure, though. Too much of it comes directly out of books someone else wrote.

Shadow Lodge

I love custom worlds but rarely if ever create my own. This is largely because I am obsessed with the details of a world and every time I try to create my own I end up going nuts trying to get every little thing written down. I have 2 half made worlds at this point and have never used either.

My obsession with details does extend to created worlds though. I have spent years fuming that Paizo hasn't properly written about how magic works and where it comes from in Galorion.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I am currently working on my own game world at the moment, titled "Tharenika". Its a lot of work, but im hoping that being able to run it for my players will be worth it :)

Paizo Employee Design Manager

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I have a campaign world called Oceaq that takes place in an entirely aquatic world where the two major races are the sea elves and the sahuagin, with dozens of less populous races struggling to eke out an existence amidst the raging wars and conflicts that constantly occur between the two major societies. I borrowed races, classes, and battle mechanics liberally from the Cerulean Seas Campaign Setting by Alluria Press when I discovered it as they had a ton of stuff that was essentially a well fleshed-out and polished version of similar mechanics I'd been crafting at home.

Between myself and the members of my group we created all kinds of great custom creatures and threats and had an absolute blast. I remember our "Purple Tides" adventure where a strain of spicy shrimp were introduced into a population of shrimp-like mind controllers resulting in a massive swarm of shrimp that would drive entire populations into frothing rages, leaving death and devastation in it's wake. The party had to man a shrimping vessel with magical nets to try and break the swarm up into a manageable size, all while avoiding having party members come into contact with shrimp lest they go berserk. The latter half of that encounter involved the party monk tripping and running from the group's maddened rage prophet while the druid and bard desperately tried to man boat and nets with only two sets of hands.

The latter part of that campaign involved the party trying to unite the various political factions of the world to give one side of the major conflicts raging across the world enough power to force stability and repel and otherworldly invasion of horrific aquatic aberrations led by an ancient aboleth psion.

Good times.

Sovereign Court

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Another world I had "created" was essentially an exact clone of 1600's Earth in the Mediterranean for a pirate-themed game. The major nations were all there, but certain races dominated those nations. Elves were French, Dwarves were British (Scottish!), Orcs were Norse, Gnomes were German, and Halflings were Spanish.


mephnick wrote:
LuxuriantOak wrote:


I just recently came back to Gm'ing last year and have played one campaign, set in the same world as Steven Eriksons 'Malazan book of the Fallen'.

I just finished this series like..yesterday. I was wondering how to go about making a setting out of it.

What kinds of things were done in that game if you don't mind me asking?

Sorry to dissapoint if you're looking for homebrew, I actually kept the game fairly vanilla in terms of classes and such.

The game was set in the lands of Fist; simply because it was the least described and visited area in the books and I was trying to avoid any weird canon-changing events that could be caused by having the PCs meeting and influencing main characters in the books.

Starting about 7 years before the events in the first book, the players were part of a fresh supply of malazan marines sent to reinforce the already entrenched and tired veterans in Rool.
I the plot started at the end of a large siege (yes I pulled of a massive battle, as a first session, pure silly when I look back now) and followed the squad as they were sent out as pathfinders for the army, litterali making first contact with many villages and places as the army truged behind them.
During the story they fought monsters in the wild, explored old jaghut ruins, killed cultists in farming villages, fought cannibals in the wild and in general got in trouble.

Their involvment with the metaplot was intangible at best, but mayor points include: killing/saving a corrupted sword of Trake, being manipulated into working for Dancer and Shadowthrone (who were still keeping their head down at that time) and completly missing all the clues that corruption was spreading through the ranks of the malazan army in Rool.

The plan was to turn the plot into the story of how one company of marines slowly became their own hidden army, and as they cought up with the metaplot in terms of time I was planning to have them be the hidden heroes that enabled many of the events in the books as they skirted the edges of the military, nudging and sacrificing themselves where needed.

I was planning to call their group the Gray Company. Named after their captain Xivart Gray, after his death one of the players would take up the name of "Captain Gray" to start the legend of an imortal commander.

didn't get that far though :)

Paizo Employee Design Manager

LuxuriantOak wrote:
mephnick wrote:
LuxuriantOak wrote:


I just recently came back to Gm'ing last year and have played one campaign, set in the same world as Steven Eriksons 'Malazan book of the Fallen'.

I just finished this series like..yesterday. I was wondering how to go about making a setting out of it.

What kinds of things were done in that game if you don't mind me asking?

Sorry to dissapoint if you're looking for homebrew, I actually kept the game fairly vanilla in terms of classes and such.

The game was set in the lands of Fist; simply because it was the least described and visited area in the books and I was trying to avoid any weird canon-changing events that could be caused by having the PCs meeting and influencing main characters in the books.

Starting about 7 years before the events in the first book, the players were part of a fresh supply of malazan marines sent to reinforce the already entrenched and tired veterans in Rool.
I the plot started at the end of a large siege (yes I pulled of a massive battle, as a first session, pure silly when I look back now) and followed the squad as they were sent out as pathfinders for the army, litterali making first contact with many villages and places as the army truged behind them.
During the story they fought monsters in the wild, explored old jaghut ruins, killed cultists in farming villages, fought cannibals in the wild and in general got in trouble.

Their involvment with the metaplot was intangible at best, but mayor points include: killing/saving a corrupted sword of Trake, being manipulated into working for Dancer and Shadowthrone (who were still keeping their head down at that time) and completly missing all the clues that corruption was spreading through the ranks of the malazan army in Rool.

The plan was to turn the plot into the story of how one company of marines slowly became their own hidden army, and as they cought up with the metaplot in terms of time I was planning to have them be the hidden heroes that enabled...

I'm wrapping up a class right now for Amora Games that was heavily influenced by the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. It's called the Iron Lord, and I wanted a class that did a better job of emulating some of the Bridgeburners and characters like Dujek Onearm who don't really fit neatly into any of the core classes.

It's basically an Int-based Full BAB class that uses combat drills to grant special bonuses and effects to allies and share Teamwork feats. The class then has a series of "careers" built into it with ranks that you progress through that give you expanded abilities. So a character who took the Scout career path can sneak in heavier armor, lay traps, etc. while a character who takes the Grunt path is an into the breach, right in the thick of things combat brute.


Ssalarn: that class sounds pretty cool, if it is what you're describing it could be the one martial to rule them all!
I'd love to see it.

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I was wondering if any of you add race/class restrictions to your campaigns. I like the idea of a campaign where the only spellcasters are Summoners. (Because that's how magic works, you make a pact with an Eidolon who will grant you spells and control over his aspect.)
I'd also like to GM a campaign based solely on what the players come up with for their characters. This includes exotic races, classes, etc.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

In fact, I do the exact opposite. I design my worlds so that any thing could exist somewhere.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I don't add in race/class restrictions, as I always disliked such things. It, to me, stifles some of the creativity of players. I prefer variety and options, which is why I enjoy Pathfinder.

I have many races available for choosing, with about half of them homebrew. There's a chance that I even have too many races. While humans exist, I will try to dissuade anyone from choosing, as they are my world's equivalence of orcs, goblins, gnolls, etc. That is, they are about the only true "enemy race" in my setting (lore reasons).

And thank you, Storm Sorcerer Arcturus, for starting this thread. It has kickstarted my booty into delving into my setting and continue with the conversion to Pathfinder, and the creation of more of it.

The Exchange

A few years ago I designed a world built as a deific prison. It was sunless and moonless - a fairly standard planet, except that the edge of its atmosphere ended not in star-studded space but at a solid 'firmament' (inspired by the crystal spheres of the old Spelljammer setting) that brightened and darkened to provide a sort of day/night cycle. In the style of Le Guin's "Earthsea" series, I made it a world-ocean dotted with islands - no continents... and peopled it with exiles driven out of older Prime Material planes. (I based that on an old Green Lantern series called 'Mosaic', and didn't realize that Kingdom Hearts had done something very similar until one of my players who plays more video games drew my attention to the parallel.) I felt it gave a stronger reason for so many fantasy races to co-exist on one world.

Of course, their world hadn't been built to confine all these poor mortals. The Kraken were the intended victims (and, again, when Golarion came along I was surprised to realize there was a parallel there with Rovagug.)


When the kingdom building rules in Kingmaker came out I ran a game set in the beginning of creation. PCs were basically experiments in an Aboleth lab , where the Aboleth was trying to create better servants. Bought 'perfect' specimens there and started breeding them for thousands of years. Aboleth put things into motion and then basically went senile.
PCs started thinking that this was a slowly failing bunker in a post-apocalyptic world.

Only homerule was that as I was going to 20 and I wanted races to be important I 'doubled' all racial bonuses, but limited people to the core races + goblins.

Unexpected winner here was dwarves. +4 con, +4 wis, +4 on half their saves, weapon focus in dwarven weapons, 120ft darkvision, I changed defensive training to orcs (no giants) and had their kingdom in a war to the death with "mutants" (orcs) ... every dwarf was a spartan basically. They just kept coming until they were dead, and with +8 dodge AC (and medium + armour) a single dwarf was pretty much only hit by an orc on a 20. I was a bit disappointed when no-one played one, but then decided to set the game just after the fall of the dwarven kingdom to the orcs. The general feeling among the surviving races was that if the dwarfs couldn't stop them, no-one could.

It really emphasized how important race was, and I'd be very tempted to do it again.

Second homerule was to use a 10:1 level ratio (so for 1000 people 900 are level 1, 90 are level 2, 9 are level 3, 1(.9) are level 4, etc. PCs were exceptions. Worked fantastically up to about level 7. After that I had to rely on enemies with racial CR.


the David wrote:

I was wondering if any of you add race/class restrictions to your campaigns. I like the idea of a campaign where the only spellcasters are Summoners. (Because that's how magic works, you make a pact with an Eidolon who will grant you spells and control over his aspect.)

I'd also like to GM a campaign based solely on what the players come up with for their characters. This includes exotic races, classes, etc.

Those are both awesome ideas!

Dark Archive

The Mighty Chocobo wrote:
In fact, I do the exact opposite. I design my worlds so that any thing could exist somewhere.

Well, the latter actually is a world created around whatever the players come up with, so it shouldn't exclude anything. The former does because it tells a story, but that's also known as railroading. Although nothing would stop me from turning it into a plot point campaign, though.

Dark Archive

Harakani wrote:
the David wrote:

I was wondering if any of you add race/class restrictions to your campaigns. I like the idea of a campaign where the only spellcasters are Summoners. (Because that's how magic works, you make a pact with an Eidolon who will grant you spells and control over his aspect.)

I'd also like to GM a campaign based solely on what the players come up with for their characters. This includes exotic races, classes, etc.
Those are both awesome ideas!

My idea was that humans are the only playable option, and that the only monsters that exist (beside animals) are the creatures that could be summoned. The BBEG would be some kind of Eidolon that switches from Summoner to Summoner after being defeated. Unfortunately, not many players like fantasy worlds without dwarves elves and catgirls.

For the other one, I only ever got cute races as suggestions. Leshies, Teemo from League of Legends, hedgehog people...


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Here's ours. =)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
the David wrote:
The BBEG would be some kind of Eidolon that switches from Summoner to Summoner after being defeated.

So... Sin from FFX?


Been a long time since I built a whole world, I go with a concept and write the campaign around that. The last campaign had one city which I forget the name of since the whole campaign was devoted to exploring and changing ecological/economic developments in the subterranean which were causing ghouls to attack the city and it just became "The City". I could piece together the last 3 campaigns (last 3 can be considered compatible, the D&D fantasy one before that is too tied to 2nd ed) and add material to create a world, but then I'd have to find a way to shoehorn in the next campaign idea. As long as the players don't need an entire world the create as needed style works.


the David wrote:

I was wondering if any of you add race/class restrictions to your campaigns. I like the idea of a campaign where the only spellcasters are Summoners. (Because that's how magic works, you make a pact with an Eidolon who will grant you spells and control over his aspect.)

I'd also like to GM a campaign based solely on what the players come up with for their characters. This includes exotic races, classes, etc.

I almost always do in some way or another.

My last campaign was human only and had no paladins or monks.

My current campagin has 5 races (2 of which are not in the core book).
We started with 3 npc classes and at lvl 3 we added most of the core book classes, but no full casters.
I think I'll add full casters at lvl 6, as long as the pcs have some reason to have the class.
Prcs are probably not going to be used, unless it is a request from the players.

And on the question of world building, I always go from center and out, focusing more on where the ocs start or where they are planning to go next session.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

My world building style is Big Picture first. I can't seem to function without a fully made world map. I don't do full write-ups of all of the countries, but I just gotta know where in the world they are located. Then I go more small scale, and flesh out where I would like the campaign to start and etc.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Well in my most recent campaign, my players have figured out that all of our campaigns for the last ten years have been in the same world, we have just been moving backwards along its history :-).

It has been a very fun ride and now in my current campaign they are finally in the golden\first age and things are getting very interesting...


Mine has a fully-listed timeline, with campaigns skipping all over it. The current Kingmaker game is in a shortly post-feudal era, our Runelords game is a little later at the beginning of a renaissance, our CoT game is a short bit after that, and our upcoming AoW game is much later, in the midst of the Age of Steam.


I hate drawing maps. Hate them. So I just use Earth's continents. I name and populate them as I see fit.. lol


Dooooooooooooooot.
:D


1 person marked this as a favorite.
DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I hate drawing maps. Hate them. So I just use Earth's continents. I name and populate them as I see fit.. lol

I just get my friends to do it. :P


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I hate drawing maps. Hate them. So I just use Earth's continents. I name and populate them as I see fit.. lol

I have drawn many many maps. Too many, probably. In the 11 years since I first started on my world, the map has changed at least 11 times. Usually drastically between them, sometimes going back to a previous design. I think I have the final design of the map completed. At least, the continents and borders. I still have to put up all the geographical features.

The majority of the wall of my room behind my head is covered in the current world map. Something that big makes it rather annoying trying to transfer it to the computer.


When I design a world I start with the entire picture. Planar arrangement.
Then I pick where among the world's the pc's start. Then I pick out the world map. With only a few select names. Nemesis regions, Dwarf domains and such.
Then I pick out a region map, townships and cities in the starting region, most plots happen entirely within this area or so far outside it(other planes) that I don't need to complicate things by expanding it.

Finally there are local maps, showing possible quest locations, important places and other stuff.

This sounds like a lot but I'm studying illustration so I just think if it as training.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I used the AD&D 2nd Edition World Builder's Guidebook to create new worlds, so I have entire solar systems/crystal spheres/alternate Prime Materials simply full of potential game worlds.

The one that saw really any use at all was one I cobbled together myself, featuring a literal mish-mash of countries for various races and Earth cultures - mediaeval Arthurian Britain next to Dwarven mountain, an Elven kingdom next to a magocracy (imaginatively called the Magelands), minor island chains for arctic Scots, for Hun/Visigoth barbarians and so on.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I have been playing in -and creating- homebrew worlds since I started roleplaying. Every game I play, Pathfinder or otherwise, I prefer to make the world completely different than the norm for the rp. Every time I create a new world, I use bits and pieces from older worlds, so each world is more fleshed out and deep than the last. So far it creates some fun combinations and interesting situations.

Most of the people I play with cannot settle on a character, so my newest homebrew "world" is actually many worlds, across different timelines and through different material planes. These worlds have what are called "World-Wounds" and "World-Souls". World-Wounds are portals to other worlds in different universes or timelines and World-Souls are the only people who can traverse them safely. However, each time a person travels a World-Wound, they becomes someone else (and start again at level 1). So, for example, Gruck the Level 5 Goblin Ranger goes through a World-Wound... and comes out the other side as a Level 1 Ifrit Sorcerer.

They are not locked to staying to each world, and can switch back and forth freely. The enemy himself is a World-Soul and the main campaign draws from each of the worlds, in addition to each world having a main story that extends from level 1 to level 30. Needless to say, I have been spending a lot of time working on this and it isn't even close to being done. Won't be for another few months, at least.


I love custom worlds, and in fact generally prefer them. and until very recently, never had a group that had issues with it. my issue is the desire to make games rather than just settings. got one going right now actually. maybe i'll get over that one day. or just get some stuff published, meh.

1 to 50 of 91 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Homebrew and House Rules / The Worlds We Create - Built from Scratch Campaigns All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.