What do YOU want in a homebrew gazetteer?


Advice

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

When you play in a homebrew campaign, what do YOU want in the campaign gazetteer?

I'm working on one now for my homebrew Steampunk/Dying Earth campaign, and I'm using the 2nd Edition Planescape Campaign Setting as a template.

But how much is too much? What are the bare bones you want for your campaign gazetteer? How much is too little?

I'm currently focusing on the hometown (a big city) and the basic cosmology and geography (gods and continents and empires), and some homebrew races. I want to keep the "main" continent a little vague so they can explore it.

Anything else I should consider adding?

I'm also going to have a few house rules (this is for 5th Edition), but they're relatively minor (swapping out some weapon proficiencies for firearms, magic item attunement, inspiration, and the number of spells you can concentrate on tied to your proficiency bonus (or half your PB for concentration)).


I basically like to set up all the races, and a bit about the internal politics and how they relate to each other.

You can easily build off that, the terrains they live in or areas help. Crude maps and whatnot.

Giant in the Playground has gaming articles that cover stuff like this.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

I'm going to do a weird experiment and have the races kind of be blended into each society.

So if a society is a bunch of pale-skinned redheads, there will be pale-skinned redheaded dwarves, pale-skinned redheaded elves, pale-skinned redheaded humans, etc. If the society is a bunch of bronze-skinned and dark haired folk, there will be bronze-skinned and dark haired halflings, bronze-skinned and dark haired half-orcs, bronze-skinned and dark haired elves, etc.

The only exceptions will be dragonborn and possibly drow. But maybe not even drow. Maybe I'll just insert a drow-like society of black skinned and white haired humans, dwarves, gnomes, etc.


A one page summary up front helps a lot. As to how much is too much... Depends on the people you game with. I can't guarantee that my friends will read more than that summary, and there's at least one who won't read that much. The minimum is the email you use to sell people on the game.

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