Well, even though I now run a campaign in FR, I really love world building too much to let my homebrew die. I've got quite a bit of detail put into it, but I'm looking for more special things. Most of my detail deals with the over-arching world history of the development of human kingdoms, fall of old empries, and creation of the modern political order. Nothing orignal in terms of what the world is like; it's probably closest to Greyhawk in an effort to let you know what the feel is like, with areas favoring a FR flavor. Most of the detail is in various cutlural/politcal interactions aroudn the world.
But, I'm looking for elements to make it "unique." I look in the FRCS and hear about all the "secrets" in Eberron, and I feel that I should include something like that in my homebrew. I've got several iconic figures and stories already, but nothing that the players can really identify with, and I feel that I need things like that. Although, to avoid making it FR, I'd rather focus on iconic non-human characters (I've got a very powerful dracolich with a long history already), and even more preferably, items, such as powerful swords, staffs, etc., that are the stuff of legends and tales that make people take up adventuring in the first place.
So, I was just wanting to ask other people what plot elements/NPCs/items have you put into your homebrews to make them stand out as unique, and give them you players something to latch onto and give the world an epic, expansive feel? Feel free just to toot your horn about how great your campaign is, but essentially I'm looking to steal and modify your good ideas for my own benefit. :) So, write away if you don't mind sharing!
A couple of items from most to least important:
1. Most often for homebrew campaigns, the longer people game in them, the more fleshed out they become...this is a natural course of progression and directly associated with the amount of time that both the DM and the players spend in that campaign setting. So, if the impitus for this thread is in any way based on feelings that world development is taking a long time, it's ok - they usually do (unless you have a team of game designers working on a setting for 40+ hours a week).
2. The easiest way to distance your campaign setting from published ones is to begin deviating from the conventions found in those settings. For example - devise a new panthion of gods, rework how magic is perceived/used/garnered/etc, alter how the cosmos is constructed, etc. These are the large-scale aspects of world generation that should be worked out before beginning a campaign. Although not impossible to integrate these aspects mid-campaign, it will save you a ton of time to get them fleshed out right off the bat. For example, a major element of our current campaign setting is based on a time continuum with groups converging from the past and future to interact in the present time (see time thread for more details)
3. After you make the big design changes, then you can fiddle with how things like race, society, history, topography, etc. will work...for example, our homebrew is very ethnocentric where societies are based and divided by race (in general). Geopolitical interactions are commonplace and it gives the feel that the world is in constant motion - the spectrum of events goes way beyond what the PCs do during a given session. Part of my role as the DM is writing a campaign summary between sessions and forwarding events in the world that the PCs do not affect in the course of their adventures (although they certainly keep tabs on everythign and decide what to do based on not only their goals, but what they see happening around them in the world).
Anyway, just some comments.
As ever,
ACE
his comments were very insightful, and i have to admit that they were pretty much in accord with my thinking. I'll go ahead and give a few examples from my campaign world, which may or may not be too far off from a lot of others....
Most of my campaigns in my campaign world take place in one specific region, so that area is more developed than the others. This are has a technology and overall feel that is somewhat reminiscent of the traditional 'semi medieval' backdrop we're all used to with a few differences. First, The primary country (The Mehari Empire) is a theocracy. You cannot be a noble without having some rank as a cleric in the pantheon that the Empire worships. This pantheon has some similarities to the Greek pantheon, but there is also a focus on the afterlife more reminiscent of the Egyptian pantheon. Each place with a differing culture has a differing pantheon, with its own gods and rules. There is considerable philosophical debate about whether or not the worshipped deities are different faces of the same forces, though this is met with varying degrees of hostility by the clerics of the established churches.
The history of previous campaigns is a large part of the backdrop for the current campaign, even if it's not immediately apparent.
A feature that my campaign shares with Eberron, which seems to fit very well with the 3.5 concept, is that unless an adventuring class requires a specific alignment, that alignment isn't as much a driving force, and even when it is in place, it isn't as limiting a force. My party can encounter lawful good orcs, chaotic evil couatl, and an encounter with a gold dragon may involve conversation at the start of it, but the party may very easily still have to explain why they shouldn't be eaten. When there is not blanket assumption you can easily make, almost every encounter can become a lot deeper easily.
There are other factors, but these are a few that i thought may be of some use as examples.
Somewhere in my vast collection of all that is RPG Lore (hey, I have levels in Loremaster, so it's all good), I have a document on how to build a homebrew world that may help you out, Saern. When I've found it, I'll let ya know.
I agree with theacemu - giving your world "a twist" that sets it apart from everything else is very important. For instance, the world creation myth that I shared in another thread detailed the magocracy that had set itself up in the fall of the human empire. Wizards were the norm, while sorcerers were seen as the deviants, heretics if you will. Elves couldn't travel far from their homelands - if I wanted to, I could negate their racial penalty to Constitution when they are in their homeland, representing their ties to the Earth.
For me, setting up a clear origin and history will help me flesh out my homebrew campaign. YMMV, but something that may be helpful is to walk through the PHB and think about the origins of the various races, classes, think about regional feats for your world, your pantheon, equipment, any magical flavor you want to do. I do believe that the DMG/DMG II covers creating your own world. You might want to also cruise through the Roleplaying Tips archive for world development/creation subjects.
Good advice so far,
I'd also advise cutting things out.
Make a list of things that you don't want to be in the world. You could eliminate drow, chromatic dragons, metallic dragons, corporeal undead,the astral plane, the outer planes, the underdark, elves, etc., etc.,.
Doing so really frees you up to twist things in new ways. If there aren't chromatic or metallic dragons, but there are dragons, what are the dragons like and what role do they play? If drow aren't the evil sub-species of elves, do good elves have a traditional foe? What happens when good elves go bad?
The advantage of this is that it really lets your players know that it's a new world that they are playing in. One disadvantage is that it can can conflict with the races or classes that the players want to play. If you eliminate divine spell casting and someone has their heart set on playing a druid, you've got some comprimising to do.
The other thing to do is to steal. From books, movies, tv, myths and even from other cultures. You just have to make sure that all the stuff you steal fits together, and isn't terribly cliche. Some cliche is good.
Cheers.
Looking back at my first post I thought that i'd give a kind of visual example of my thought process. I've always considered a homebrew campaign structure from what i'll call a "top down" approach and use the pyramid as a schematic working from the top to the base.
Consider the elements that are staples of the game that at some point in a long-term campaign will likely to come into play that are the most significant to your campaign. For world building, i'd suggest starting either with the cosmos and how it works or the panthion and how it is constructed. From there, ask yourself what the secondary, tertiary, etc. elements of a world are the most important and address them in that order. Each step should act as a lynchpin that if not properly addressed can cause significant problems further down the pyramid. You will find that the lower you go on this order of import, you will turn to the logic behind constructing these elements from the previous steps.
The flip side to this theory is the "bottom up" approach. To me this seems a bit haphazard, but the idea would work in reverse. For a homebrew, the DM and players would begin a campaign (or series of campaigns) with some very general histories, a specific locale to adventure in and around...a narrowly focused slice of a much larger world. From there, the DM builds inward toward all of the inner-workings of societies, different lands, the gods, cosmos, etc...only revealing (and constructing) what is relivent to forward the actions of the group. Slowly, in this fashion, will a world be conceptually built for both the DM and players, constructed from the many individual experiences of the party (the bottom of the pyramid). This approach may be desirable if fleshing out all kinds of complicated ideas, theories, and events is not desirable!
Just some more thoughts...
As ever,
ACE
So, I was just wanting to ask other people what plot elements/NPCs/items have you put into your homebrews to make them stand out as unique, and give them you players something to latch onto and give the world an epic, expansive feel? Feel free just to toot your horn about how great your campaign is, but essentially I'm looking to steal and modify your good ideas for my own benefit. :) So, write away if you don't mind sharing!
Hey!
I've posted it before on these boards, but, I'm serious about this. LET YOUR PLAYERS HELP YOU CREATE THE WORLD! That includes NPCs, countries, continents etc. etc. This has three benefits.
1) Two heads are better than one. And a whole group of players has a lot of heads (and that's before any templates! ;P ). Your own ideas will change and evolve as a result of a joint creative process. What's that phrase about greater than the sum of it's parts?
2) The PCs will feel at home. Because the players will. There's no more 'I thought south-landers were the fighter-dudes' mix ups. Everyone comes from somewhere, and the players can use their knowledge of those somewhere's to flesh out their PCs before the game even starts (Damn-pansy Sud-landers!). This is great for you as a GM too - you can mess with the players/PCs perceptions so easily as they make so many assumptions. 'But, there are no Dragons in the south-lands. These rumours must be false.' Heh. :)
3) Lightens the load, share's the fun. It will cut down on the amount of work the GM has to do. Big time. Whilst the game may start off in the south-lands, you'll have another 6 continents waiting to be explored and it's only a matter of time before the PCs will want to go home, and the player's 'adventure in their bit'. Nothing motivates a PC like their player's wishes! The whole process is FUN too.
I usually start off all my campaigns with a 'lets create the world and our characters' session. I usually (as the GM), get things started by sharing the theme (redemption, dragons at war, love, a quest for wealth, money and the good life, etc.), the setting (wild west, high fantasy, spooky, etc.) and the rules (good alignments only, oriental adventures, Savage Species and SRD only etc.). As always the GM gets to vetto everything in the interests of a fair and fun game. But it's best to take a back seat and see what unfolds.
If you only ever listen to one thing I say, make sure it's "You really don't want to pull that trigger." If you listen to two things, then make the second;
"Let your PCs help you create the world. You'll have plenty of chances to flex those creative muscles during the campaign."
Peace,
tfad
***sorry for any bad english -> very tired***
Ooh! World-building is my favorite activity (probably since I was about 5 years old, and long before I started playing D&D).
I've been working seriously on my homebrew world for about 4-5 years, and it's starting to develop a flavor of its own, now--though it has a long way to go. Some random pointers based on my own experience:
--Read lots of history and literature and combine tasty bits that you like from these sources in new ways to make something unique and counterfactual.
--Write a short creation story outlining how the multiverse came into being (or how the inhabitants of your world think it came into being) and explaining the origins of the gods, the planes, humankind, plants, animals, the elements, etc. It can be sketchy, but it suggests a lot about your world. The fundamental conflicts or contradictions that drive your campaign setting will become clearer to you in this process, and you will understand better how humanity and other sentient beings relate to each other and the gods. (The early parts of Tolkien's Silmarillion are a good model for this kind of project, as is the opening of the Book of Genesis, and the various pagan creation myths (Greek, Norse, Babylonian, Chinese, etc.) (Note that the story doesn't have to be literally true if you don't want it to be--you can write it from the perspective/understanding of a particular group of beings in your world.)
--Pick one to three key cultures that you want to focus on and flesh out their histories a bit. What key events in the past shaped their cultures? Who are their greatest heroes and what traits or deeds make them heroic? For example, the part of my world where my campaign is focused right now is dominated by a human culture (the Arlan) that first became somewhat civilized under the influence of the elves, but then had a quarrel with them and was defeated. They were forced to leave their forest home and become horse-riding steppe nomads. Later, the steppes dried out and became deserts, and they migrated to territories ruled by another elf-influenced civilization. They settled in that empire's territories, and eventually became the dominant people in the region, abandoning their nomadic ways and becoming sedentary in the process. More recently, they have become rich and powerful through trade by land and sea. So this culture is very suspicious of elves, and not very respectful of neighboring elven principalities as they expand into the forested regions nearby, blazing new roads and cutting timber for their growing fleet of merchant and war ships. They also lord it over the descendants of the older human civilization, seeing themselves as bringing civilization and proper religious practices to the outlying areas that they have recently subjugated. At the same time they have absorbed many cultural practices from the older peoples in the region, but they explain those practices in terms of their own heroes and deities. I have similarly detailed histories for the elves ("Tualtha," the most developed non-human race in my campaign), and am working on such histories for the Brithondians (the displaced civilization), gnomes, dwarves, and Othgars (another group of steppe nomads)--but they are less fleshed out, with only a few key events detailed in some cases.
--Invent individual stories explaining the origins of the key deities in each culture's pantheon, and flesh out a few details of how the god is worshipped. How did this being become a god? How does he or she relate to other deities? What important symbols are associated with him? How is she portrayed in temple artwork? What powers is she reputed to have? What major festivals do her worshippers celebrate? Who worships him? How is his church organized, what special organizations serve him, and how does his church relate to others in the pantheon? Where are her holiest shrines located, and what do ordinary temples or shrines dedicated to her look like? In the example above, the Arlan classify all gods that aren't part of their own pantheon as "pagan" and prohibit their worship, whether they are evil deities or not. Their gods are mostly heroes from their own culture are called "saints" and serve as the deities in their pantheon, but a few "saints" are drawn from other sources, for example a draconic deity with a portfolio covering rainfall and water arrived several centuries ago with refugees from the east. After a twelve year drought, this deity's cult spread and animated a peasant uprising. The king at the time decided it was politic to include this deity in the pantheon, so he claimed he had a dream in which the chief deity reached an agreement with the Dragon King, and he ordered his priests to admit this deity to the Arlan pantheon as a "saint." By contrast, the elves claim that their deities are drops of the Creator's blood that fell to earth and took form similar to humans (the creations of the creator himself). The elven deities are supposed to have made their home on an island that was removed from the material plane and is now its own plane, visible in the night sky as the northern pole star. I've found that in making up these legends and answering the above questions for six or eight important deities in each pantheon, the culture itself takes shape in my mind, and starts to give each race or culture a unique feel that is a bit different from FR, Greyhawk, Eberron, or for that matter Tolkien or Terry Brooks or whatever--the elves are still elves, but they are different from other elves.
--Come up with a cosmology and calendrical system that fits your creation story and pantheons.
--Come up with a theoretical structure explaining magic. (You can use D&D's built-in mechanics for this, but tie it in to your creation story and cosmology. For example, all magic in my campaign world derives from "opening" one of the "eleven gates." Each gate is tied to a specific set of powers, including the (seven) elements plus positive and negative energy, spirit (the force driving animals and higher life forms, and enchantment magic), and mind (which drives illusion and plays a role in transmutation and some other forms of magic).
--Keep a folder system on your computer to organize various aspects of your "fluff" and "crunch" material that goes with the campaign world, and add new files as you think of ideas. Some categories I use: religion and pantheons, magic, cities, calendar and astronomy, history and chronicles (includes stories I've written out and chronological outlines), feats and prestige classes, trade and economics, politics and geography.
--Think about your campaign world while you're doing boring things (like driving to work or exercising), and jot your ideas down in computer files as they come up. You can rough ideas out or jot ideas down, then refine them later as you are in the mood and have time.
--Don't take anything from our world for granted. Think about how things like the kinship structure, architecture, rituals and ceremonies, etc., might be different for different races and cultures, and write things down. For example, some elves in my world reckon kinship through the female line. They don't perform marriage rituals, but most women form a lasting relationship with a man of a different family who visits often, but does not live with the woman's family. (Reading lots of ethnography or taking a basic cultural anthropology course is useful here--I borrowed this idea from the Moso people of southwest China, but it seems to fit elvish society quite nicely, and has led to some interesting character quirks in one of my players' half-elven PCs.)
Basically, world-building is a huge project, and you just have to keep plugging away at it. Every little detail you can add makes the world richer, whether it is the names of the finest wines and the regions they are grown, or how the gnomish women pick out husbands, or how country X's legal system decides capital punishment cases. The more real it becomes in your mind, the more real it will seem in the players' minds. And the more you write out, the more real it will become in your mind.
Sorry for the long post, but I assume this is what you were looking for, Saern. Good luck--it's a long-term project, and if you do it well, it could become a fantasy novel series or a d20 system campaign setting.
As an aside, my son just got "Gary Gygax's Nation-Builder's Guide" or some-such (I can't remember the exact title), I think it's from Troll Lord Games. It's not actually written by the big EGG, but he says it's full of useful topics and tables that he's finding helpful in building the campaign he's doing for his high school friends. It's available in Paizo's online store, and it's part of a larger series of campaign world building books.
I've churned out many a homebrew setting in my day, and I have to say it's a mark of maturity I think when a DM approaches making a new world not by what cool whizbang he can stuff into it, but instead tries to keep the play very close to standard with more nuanced changes. For that I salute you.
I generally start with cosmology. An alternate prime plane can add a nice dimention to a setting. What planes are there? How are they configured? What pantheons exist and how did they come about? What's the creation myth? How did the races come about? Sometimes simple things like differences in seasons or like FR, a moon that trails a shimmering comet trail behind it make a setting seem not only different from the published settings--but also different from the world around you. You can even mess around with the mix of creatures that exist--more aberrations? more oozes? very few fey? all but two breeds of dragons extinct? where and how big is the underdark?
I usually then start with a map--create some continents, give them all names and pick the main one (or ones) the game takes place in. Maybe a couple more that have been discovered but are largely unknown. Then take your main continents and carve them into nations. There should be some evil ones to make good badguys, but also a bunch of ones PCs can use as places to be from. Give out a couple of regional feats for each nation, come up with some politics of who likes who, who wants to conquer who, maybe some historical alliances or grudges can come of this. That never hurts.
Beyond that comes history. Generally it's best to go back for three (human) generations. What were the big events of each generation? This could be a war, or a philosophical movement, or some great crisis. Then flesh out an event or two that are fresh to the minds of races like elves that live hundreds of years, that the more myopic races may concider ancient history. Then go back to the origins of your main countries and come up with a founding event or famous myth each.
This should really give you plenty to work with. You'll be busy for a while, but afterward you'll have a pretty rich world that feels lived in.
I recently returned to the game after nearly 15 years away and despite my best efforts, I find myself building a homebrew. In truth, I'm just stealing the best bits from other campaign settings. Very little original thought on my part. Yet it's tremendous fun. I'm playing with the Arcana Evolved rules. AE has no true "cleric" class because it draws no distinction between divine and arcane spellcasting. Playing in a ruleset without clerics, it seemed to me there was no need for gods, and I created a campaign world where the gods had died long ago and magic is simply a remnant of their divine spark. This is an example of what I think is most important in building any setting: The best way to make your world come alive for the players is to dramatize the unique aspects of the world through gameplay. And I think it better to create a world that fits the rules, rather than rules that fit the world.
Fantasy Worldbuilding Tips by Patricia C. Wrede
A guest article from Roleplaying Tips, (which I think every GM/DM should subscribe to, IMHO), which I am presenting here for everybody:
31 Questions To Define A CultureA guest article by Mike Bourke
I often compile a checklist of questions to be answered when creating something new, be it a magic item, setting, or society. The more exhaustive and complete this checklist is, the better visualized and more complete the item in question will be.
I recently had occasion to generate such a checklist for the creation of a new, intelligent species, and thought it might be useful to other people as well. In some ways, this article is a companion to my previous one on Customizing Common Races, though this one is going to focus more on technique.
[ Issue #290 , Issue # 291 ]
While it might not be necessary to write a response to each checklist item, at the least its presence ensures you will have thought about the subject matter. If you take the time and trouble to write a short paragraph or two for each, at the end of the process you will have a solid foundation for play. Be warned, this can take a long time!
It's important not to be inventive and creative in response to every question, else the resulting race/culture will be too alien, hard to comprehend, and impossible to play. It's better to craft a couple of unique points early on and explore the ramifications and consequences of those points.
It's also helpful to use a known society as a basis; it will become something unique once your creative ramifications have made their impact felt. That's the function of Question #1 - to explicitly state the key concepts and ideas that will form the basis of the answers to the questions that follow.
When using a checklist such as this, start by reading each question and jotting down one- or two-word notes on any points that are affected by the core concepts (ignoring the last question). This gets your mind exploring the ramifications. Self-discipline is important here because it's too easy to start writing whole paragraphs or more to discover you have run out of steam - or time - before you get to the end. Try to spend no more than ten minutes on this first pass in total.
A first pass acts as a warm-up exercise for the imagination. Keep notes brief and simple. Once you've finished, take a 5 minute break. Next, run through the questions again, looking for secondary impacts - the consequences and ramifications of these brief answers on other aspects of the culture. Again, skip the last question. As you look at each question, glance through the list of answers given so far and ask, "how is this subject affected by the answers already decided?"
For example, if you started with three or four core ideas, and generated a dozen one-word implications, that's roughly 15 things to think about for each question. With 30 questions to consider (you don't have to worry about the first), this should take an hour or two.
Step three involves one more pass through the list of questions looking for additional consequences. With luck, you will now have 30-60 ideas and notes to work through. Take a little more time on this final pass. Get all the ideas down that occur to you, but move on after a few seconds if none do. I allow an average of about 10 seconds per item in this step, and that means that it will take close to 4 hours to do the lot.
By the time you have finished, you should find overall culture ideas have started to gel into a firm visualization. Summarize, in two to ten sentences, the overall concept in response to the last question.
Take a break. Then, explain and expand on the rest of the one-word answers you've written in response to the other questions. That might take a sentence, a paragraph, or even a page or two, though the shorter the better. If you manage 5 questions a day, the whole thing will be done in a week. If you can only do one or two at a time, it will take a month. I would generally try to get this lot done in a day, as keeping the schedule tight means that I don't have time to get sidetracked into unnecessary detail.
Then comes the final stage - assembling all of this into a useful format. You can either expand on what you have, giving explanations, examples, and the like, or you can take these notes and use them as described in the article on Customizing Common Races, which contains additional thoughts and considerations. For that matter, there is nothing to stop you from retro analyzing the available source material on a common race - boiling the information provided down into single-sentence answers to each of these questions - to get a summary of the existing materials for use in that article.
Above all, have fun, because this is an awful lot of work to do if you don't.
The Questions
1. What key concepts describe these people?
2. What is their genetic legacy and how does it affect them?
3. For what tasks are they especially suited/unsuited?
4. How might they use their strengths?
5. How might they compensate for their shortcomings?
6. Where do they live? What is their primary habitat?
7. What are their homes like? How does the habitat affect their dwellings and lifestyle?
8. What is their level of civil construction and what are its characteristics?
9. What is daily life like?
10. What do they eat and drink? How do they react to other foodstuffs?
11. How do they express themselves artistically? What are their styles of music, sculpture, poetry, painting, plays?
12. Do they farm? If so, what? For what purposes? How is food distributed?
13. What does a farm look like? How is a farm organised?
14. How do farms operate? What farming techniques do they use?
15. What are their primary enemies, natural and cultural?
16. How do they defend against them?
17. What is their culture? Their government? Their politics? Their economy?
18. What is their history? What's the real story, and what is misunderstood or misremembered?
19. Who are their allies?
20. What are their dreams, goals, myths, legends?
21. What is their religion?
22. How does it affect their daily lives?
23. What crafts have they mastered? What special abilities or knowledge do they have? How do these impact their lives?
24. What is the criminal code and how are crimes punished?
25. How do they travel? Do they trade? With whom? For what? Are they good or bad at it?
26. Do they use magic? What is their attitude to magic?
27. Do they use advanced technology? What is their attitude to science?
28. How do they react to outsiders?
29. What weaponry do they use?
30. What are their personality archetypes? What are their cultural blind spots? What are the unspoken absolute beliefs that give society its foundation?
31. How can you sum up these people into a first impression?
Hope this helps you out Saern (and everybody else).
Thanks again, Lilith!!! As usuall, you always bring true gems to this board. That article is a good one. It makes me want to bring out one or two of my dozen or so home brew worlds that I have started on and flesh them out.
thank you Lilith!
When I find my other stuff, I'll post some of my resources I've used in the past.
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So, I was just wanting to ask other people what plot elements/NPCs/items have you put into your homebrews to make them stand out as unique, and give them you players something to latch onto and give the world an epic, expansive feel? Feel free just to toot your horn about how great your campaign is, but essentially I'm looking to steal and modify your good ideas for my own benefit. :) So, write away if you don't mind sharing!
Here's an idea for you - A small stretch of forest called the "Walking Wood". It used to be a part of a larger forest about 100 years ago. Then one day, this small bit was further from the rest of the trees. It has moved further over the years, but no one has ever seen it do so. Any who try have found their efforts balked (i.e. they fall asleep or are distracted somehow). Also, no one is quite sure where these trees are actually going or who/what is making them go there.
Another idea - A king built a prison on the site of a ruined keep, incorporating the only remaining part of the previous structure, a massive tower. The pinnacle of this tower was made into a kind of "maximum security" cell, where they locked away a homicidal madman (lunatics are considered touched by the gods and so, not to be killed). Over the years, the madman has escaped multiple times, but no one has ever figured out how he does it. The secret: his top-of-tower cell is actually an ancient mimic that took advantage of the prisoners madness to convince him to bring it food. Every so often, it opens the "wall" and lets the guy out. He then goes and kills and brings back the body. He has actually escaped far more often than the guards realize, and killed quite a few people, bringing the bodies back for the mimic to devour.
Thank you everyone, especially Aberzombie! I've been working on this particular world since I was in the seventh grade, ever since reading DragonLance Chronicles.
I start with a big picture approach, either drawing a continent or regional shape and fleshign it out from there, or thinking, "What cultures do I want to portray? Where do I want them? Now that I've put them there, how will their presence and their geography/ecology affect and mesh with that of the lands around them, and vice versa, and how will their culture differ from the historical basis on which it's founded?" I love building societies and histories.
I have one large kingdom with a very detailed, dynamic history already, as well as an explanation of the modern ordering of the various pantheons, although I like the Great Wheel and Greyhawk pantheon too much to let them go. As Sexi Golem often puts it when we talk about the pantheon, "It's so simple but has so much character." Besides, I already have two theocracies of Heironeous, two of Hextor, and one of Vecna built into the world.
I have opened the world up to player development recently, TFaD, although not long ago enough that they've come up with much. But the invitation is there!
I also have made cuts- no half-orcs (just plain orcs, which are a perfectly acceptable racial choice, they even have a city or two of their own, and aren't all evil savages, though the perecption of that remains) and I'm seriously thinking of removing half-elves, too. No halfs outside of semi-magical crosses, like half dragons and half fiends.
I have a relatively well-thought out history of the rise and fall of the major empires and events of the world over the last 3,000 years (since humans becvame the predominant race).
Magic exists as a sort of "phantom physics", an alternate set of rules that govern reality that are simply dormant most of the time until invoked by spellcasters or magical beings. The exact origins of this force have yet to be flushed out, however....
One thing that features largely in the history of the world is fiends. I really like fiends, and one of their invasions of the world was actually the reason for the rise of humanity to predominace, as the old empires of giants and elves were broken after the demonic onslaught (which was accidentally brought about by humans, a fact some hard-liners of the various races still hold against men). I've already incorporated that story into the origins of warlocks and hexblades, but I'd like to find a way to emphasize the presence of the threat of the lower planes to the world. Although, it's important for me to not turn them into the "new drow" for my group.
EDIT- I do have the Book of Vile Darkness. Perhaps it's time to peruse those pages again, but I just really didn't get into most of the PrCs they had for villains, and as other people have said, the art in the book just reminds me of some "goth" disgruntled teen's view of evil, when my take on true evil is more like Hannibal Lecter and Seven.
Speaking of drow, I do have them incorporated already, but the only areas where they really matter are a group of Aztec-like drow (thought up before Eberron) in a swamp that serve a powerful dracolich, and a group that are semi-subserviant to a nation of undead and necromancers.
I have yet to actually detail a lot of specific religious practices in the world, but that will be a good direction to go next.
But what I'm really looking for are pieces of lore to add, like what Aberzombie posted. Hopefully, my players will come up with some things like that on their own, but I was hoping for some general ideas of interesting things to do with such bits of campaign backdrop.
Thanks again to everyone that posted!
So, I was just wanting to ask other people what plot elements/NPCs/items have you put into your homebrews to make them stand out as unique, and give them you players something to latch onto and give the world an epic, expansive feel? Feel free just to toot your horn about how great your campaign is, but essentially I'm looking to steal and modify your good ideas for my own benefit. :) So, write away if you don't mind sharing!
I know the thread became a general advice thread, but you did ask for specific examples of "uniqueness." Here it goes. . .
I do have one element that I think makes my homebrew truely unique, and maybe it's something that you could use or incorperate into your own ideas. I'd like to share it, as that "toot your own horn" thing has great appeal. :)
Anyway, my home brew has the standard constrasting alignment system of Good vs. Evil and Law vs. Chaos, but there is also another unspoken conflict called Stasis vs. Consciousness. My cosmology is linked to an extra plane called the Plane of Conscious Possibility. It's job is to shape the rest of the Cosmology, and create the basic dualities and standards used for that particular set of infinite material planes (there are infinite sets of infinite planes, but outside of the rules of our particular set of infinite Conscious Possibilities, they are absolutely inconceivable). Outside of all of these spheres of possibility, there is a Plane of Stasis that they all float in. . . which is completely anti-consciousness. While not goal oriented, it can easily infect conscious possibility and disrupt temporal flow whenever there is the absence of the conflict necessary to power conscious worlds.
In the current timeline of my campaing world, civilization has ended most war and strife, and "adventuring" is nearly a thing of the past. Almost all individuals in the setting have heard tales of orcs, dragons, etc. but have never seen one, and the sets of PCs that have adventured in my world are extremely rare, only finding adventure in the few "frontier" areas of the world.
However, the more civilization advances and the less conscious entities have to struggle, the more the Plane of Stasis is allowed to infect consciousness. Thus, Heroes and Villans become more than just iconic stories in my game, their struggles are the key to the entire Cosmology's stability.
In my campaigns, good heroes often find themselves working with evil villians in order to stave off the Static anti-energy waiting to infect the growing banality of civilized life. I make it clear through NPCS and occassional players that villans may have evil motivatations, but they are STILL 3 dimensional. They are often brave, courteous, funny, adventurous, motivated, capable, and so on. . . just like heroes.
The timeline of the material plane is infinite, and the height of every civilization is inevitably destroyed by Stasis. As a result, there are countless civilizations, ruins, magic items, etc. that have come and gone through the Ages. In my timeline, the previous age, called the Gilded Age, was heaviliy magically oriented. Since Eberron came out, I have been thanking my lucky stars to now have the perfect resource to describe that age and it's ruins.
The Plane of Stasis has four Anti-Alignemnts, and a few modified creatures and spells. As an overview, they are Anti-Neutral Dogma, Anti-Neutral Apathy, Anti-Nuetral Hedonism, and Anti-Neutral Wistera.
My campaign setting is called "Wistera," named after one of those four anti-concepts, a realm where true alignment is checked by avoidance, daydreaming, fantasy, and escapism.
It's been fun to develop the world, so far. I've never seen anything quite like it before, but then again, I travel in narrow circles. One of these days, I'll figure out a more concise way to explain it, and maybe it could be published someday.
Anyway, thanks for the opportunity for the brain dump. If you want more information, I did a similar brain dump on my blog here: (http://quixoticagenda.blogspot.com/2005/12/wistera-cosmology.html) . . . it has a picture of the Cosmology. :)
I'm not sure I completely understand the anti-alignments, but the concept is certainly novel if nothing else, and interesting. For my own uses, I thought a little about the topic of presenting fiends in a somewhat new, important manner, and I think I'll go with the following idea:
Rather than having the main division between categories of fiends being ideological splits along the Law/Chaos axis, this alternate categorizes them by appearance into one of four groups: Nazithar, Hyrzan, Erazkyn, and Byrkazul.
The Nazithar cosist of "man demons," those with humanoid forms such as dretch, babau, osyluth, hamatula, and barbazu, amongst others.
The Hyrzan consist of "insect demons" including gelugons and bebiliths and several of my own creations.
The Byrkazul are "beast demons," such as howlers, bezikira, and hellhounds. They wander the lower planes existing in little more than an animalistic state of being.
Finally, the Erazkyn are "true" or "great" demons, those of classical fiendish form, ranging from imps and quasits to cornugons and nycaloths and vrocks to balors and pit fiends.
The Blood War simply becomes a genocidal free-for-all between the various fiendish powers, and the destinction between an Achduke of Hell and a Demon Lord dissappears.
I like this as I enjoy featuring things such as warlocks and hexblades, and as I said, demonic invasions feature largely in Saernic history. However, I don't like dealign with questions of "Did the demons and devils fight when invading the world, or did they stop? If so, why? And what power does the warlock/hexblade serve? Abyssal or infernal?"
This view presents all fiends as part of one large group. They fight within themselves, but can be unified behind one great being should it come to power. And, the infighting is universal; it's no longer an attempt to completely erradicate another type of being, but a struggle for supremacy over other fiends in an effort to mass them all into an army large enough to attack the Material Plane again.
This also leads to a blurring of the Lower Planes. Though the Nine Hells still exist separately from Gehenna and the Abyss, the more blended nature of all fiends helps consolidate a more general concept of "Hell" or "the Nether World," which I like.
It also weakens some of the emphasis on the Law/Chaos axis, which I like. I love the Good/Evil aspect of the game, but the Law/Chaos can sometimes get confusing, and while I don't want it to dissappear, I'd be fine with it taking a backseat in my games.
At least, that's how I'm going to portray it.
Now, hopefully my players will help me come up with some interesting bits of religious lore about the various deities and their veneration, but just to put it out there, what, if any, bits of lore have the people on the boards come up with? Ever detailed the ancestors worshipped by clerics of Wee Jas? Ever written up some of Hieroneous's Analects? I agree that that's the kind of thing that will add a lot of depth to the world.
And if you haven't done anything like that, want to start? When I get some more time, I'll try to give it a shot myself, but nothing's coming to me at the moment. And feel free to come up with different forms of religion for different deities. Various cultures will come up with various ways of worship! Especially with chaotic gods, but I'd imagine that even the veneration of St. Cuthbert would differ dramatically between a Germanic-themed setting, and let's say, a Greek setting, or Indonesian.
And, I realized I didn't put a direct thank you to Lilith for that list of questions earlier: Thanks!
Got a new thing for your world, Saern.
The Sanguine Moors
*enters into storyteller mode*
Long ago, when the demons invaded our world and set themselves to conquering the land, it is said that they appeared in a lush expanse of grasses that covered from horizon to horizon like an emerald sea.
The first step of the demons' unholy feet caused the blood of those damned in Hell to seep out into those lush grasses, turning the grasses into needle-sharp razors that cut the flush. The blood of those slaughtered to satiate the demons' profane desires permeated the earth and stained it forevermore.
It is said that on the darknest night of the darkest part of the year, those slain in that great battle rise again and re-enact their deaths and weep tears of blood over the Sanguine Moors.
*end storyteller mode*
the major focus of my current campaign is a red dragon that has demanded a tribute from the humans who live in a specific valley adjacent to his lair. This valley is huge, and this dragon is particularly powerful. He leaves the people of the valley in peace as long as certain conditions are met.
First, the tribute, which he specifies the nature of at the beginning of the year, and which varies a great deal in what it is.
Second, that no armed forces in large numbers gather in the Vale.
Third, that no other extremely powerful monsters, particularly dragons, live in the Vale.
Any time that the second or third conditions aren't met, if the people of the Vale don't settle the issue quickly, the dragon does, with great finality. Any armed forces entering the Vale, whether on a dragon hunt or any other military maneuver, have been eliminated to a man, no survivors have ever been found.
The people of the Vale have actually gotten used to this situation, and the empire they are part of has accepted it as well, deciding that they have less work to do in policing this area because the Dragon is doing such a good job of it himself.
The players, as the campaign progresses, will have to decide if they want to disturb the status quo and confront the dragon, or let things be. This decision is the conclusion of the 'non-epic' campaign, and will be a major wrapup.
Of course, the dragon has secrets. A red dragon, normally being chaotic evil, wouldn't normally have the discipline to be so orderly in how he deals with things. And even the most powerful of red dragons would normally have problems taking out an entire army.....
But triplets....strength in numbers.....
Thanks again, Lilith! You have an uncanny ability to come up with just what someone is looking for at a given time.
I'm really looking forward to that Fiendish Codex later this year. Anyone have a clue as to a release date?
Mrannah, here's an interesting direction you could go with that dragon: you said the empire doesn't interfere because the dragon does such a great job policing the area. What if they came to NEED the dragon, perhaps because they trusted him with a powerful relic of the royal dynasty or something? However, this isn't common knowledge- it's a carefully kept secret of the state. Then, if the party decides to go up against the dragon, they've got much great consequences to deal with, and much more depth than a simple (although very difficult) dragon-slaying mission.
The Righteous Fists of St. Cuthbert
Note: You could use the Fist of Raziel prestige class for this order, from the Book of Exalted Deeds.
"You call yourself a follower of Our Revered Saint? Bah! You know nothing of our holy cause!" - Praetor Algriss Lowensun of the Righteous Fists
The Righteous Fists are a splinter group from the Church of St. Cuthbert who are dissatisfied with the "tame" actions of the Church. The Righteous Fists believe that all demons are manifestations of impure souls that must be cleansed in order to return to their true state of holiness. To that end, the Righteous Fists regularly engage in fasting and flagellation to prepare their own bodies for combat against the Impure Ones.
Unfortunately for the Church of St. Cuthbert, the Righteous Fists' definition of "Impure" isn't a good one - any being suspected of impurity or demonic acts are ruthlessly hunted down by this sect and "cleansed." The Righteous Fists have earned a reputation as being a rigid and unforgiving order, and rightly so.
The Nevermelt
An expanse of blue-green ice near the Southern Lands, the Nevermelt is a wonder to behold. Especially useful in alchemical creations, pieces of nevermelt are used to chill foods and wine. Such a wondrous item would happily be in every home, except that the Nevermelt is no easy place to get to. Surrounded by treacherous seas and whirlpools, the weather is hazardous even at the best of times. Cold winds blow off the Nevermelt frequently and mix with the warm Southern breezes causing thunderstorms that make even the most foolhardy pale in fear.
Still, for those that dare to go to the Nevermelt, they bring back stories of castles of ice, terrifying creatures, and entire civilizations buried under its sea-green shell. Probably sailor's bar tales, all of them...
Wow. I'm glad I joined this board, seems like there is all kinds of info to take advantage of.
Anyway, I'm working on my second homebrewed game right now, and am fully aware of the problems and just how daunting it can seem. Heck, I haven't even finished naming all the major cities in my world! But I personally find it easiest to get your players to help as well. My plan with this world is to create several "groups" Monastaries, guilds, nobility, ect. and maybe come up with a smattering of things and then have a player fill me in on the other details. In the end I hope to have a fully fleshed out world that I can use for years to come.
In my last home brewed world, I ended up getting some much help from two players that they ened up being co-dms, coming up with story ideas, npc creation, helping run battle, assisting in NPC roleplay. But that tactic has its flaws. After all, several players then know most of the twists, but it worked for the game at the time and due to the sheer level of thought put into the world, my friend and I are turning it into a book series.
A little something that I have in my world, and Lilith has already touched on, is multiple sects of the same god. For example, my God of Death has two sects. The first call themselves the GateKeepers and are largely LN, helping people with burial rites, contacting dead loved-ones, resurrecting those that need it (and can afford it), combating undead (as they are seen as being against what their God stands for, in thier reading), those sorts of things. The second sect call themselves the DeathBringers and are largely CE. They believe that death is something to be welcomed and seek to bring as many people as they can to this realization, usually by killing them. They also create tons of undead, as these then go out and "spread the word" of their God by, you guessed it, killing people! Needless to say, these two sects do NOT get along and there have been conflicts between the two, even though they worship the same Deity!!
Hope that helps. You're a brave DM for taking on this task. I've been working on my world for about 16 years now, and it has recently undergone a massive revision that will have me tossing out some maps, re-writing some history and creating 2 new continents. I love my world, but sometimes it makes me just wanna cry...
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A little something that I have in my world, and Lilith has already touched on, is multiple sects of the same god. For example, my God of Death has two sects.
I did something similar. I had a LN god who was the god of Death and of Knowledge. So one sect consisted of the priests who help with burials, guard tombs, and battle the undead. The other sect embraced him as god of knowledge and acted as historians, sages, and (for lack of a better term) librarians.
I also had a situation where two gods were married and so their churches acted more like a single organization with two sides to it. One was the goddess of the Stars, Music, and Travellers. The other was the god of Civlization, Discipline, and Earth. Together, their worshippers formed the Stones and Stars, and were dedicated to protecting people and advancing civilization. The Stars were a lot like bards, while the Stones were almost exclusively monks.
Here's a piece I came up with myself some time ago:
On the frozen northern subconintent of Aksal, there is a city overlooking a bay called Northwind. Centuries ago, the visier of the city, a powerful mage, was revealed to be thoughouly evil and was run out o the city, banished to the desolate island of Varkas. However, he continued his nefarious works and called down an ancient curse on Northwind, the Breath of Telchur, which blew a constant stream of supernaturally cooled air over the city. The whole land was in peril, until a priest of Pelor (or Pholtus if you wish) appeared with an artifact known as the Sun Orb of Pelor (or Pholtus). The erected a greast tower and placed the Orb atop it. Now the whole city is protected from the Breath of Telchur and heated by conduits that run beneath the streets. An order of clerics and mages, the Radiant Spire, now reside within the tower and work for the good of the city and surrounding lands.
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Another something I had thought about but never really fleshed out - a floating city. I was going in one of two directions. First would be an actual island that floats around by some whim of the gods (think Delos, birthplace of Appolo and Artemis). The other would have been a city that started out as a few ships lashed together and slowly grew from there. Like I said, I never fleshed it out, just jotted down some preliminary ideas. If anyone wants to run with the idea feel free.
Another something I had thought about but never really fleshed out - a floating city. I was going in one of two directions. First would be an actual island that floats around by some whim of the gods (think Delos, birthplace of Appolo and Artemis). The other would have been a city that started out as a few ships lashed together and slowly grew from there. Like I said, I never fleshed it out, just jotted down some preliminary ideas. If anyone wants to run with the idea feel free.
I think floating cities are cool, too.
One idea that I never fleshed out was an archeological black market, which was located on a floating city of magic theives. Instead of theives with rogue levels, most of them would be mages and clerics of death (to recognize value in stolen merchandise).
It would also have thousands of unknown relics on it at any one time, almost like collected libraries.
I wanted to model it after those seedy towns in Egypt in the late 19th century, where hundreds of grave robbers would congregate to unload their stolen wares. In a D&D setting, with so many ruins scattered about the world, having a magical and mobile base of operations sounded like a pretty cool way to fence those goods.
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I was thinking about doing a mysterious island one time, kind of a Galopagos Dungeons&Dragons style. The characters get off on the rocky coast and the first thing they see is all these black and white, 2 foot tall creatures that stand erect with fins for arms or small wings, that hobble merrily up to the party. The metagamer in everyone would (hopefully) think penguin, but when the creatures approach the party and stick their probosci into their shins...on this island the stirges evolved into pengustirges. I got the idea from a book called "After Man" by Dougal Dixon, a conjectural evolution for earth millions of years after mankind is extinct. Rabbits are large deerlike creatures, rats are dogs and cats, penguins are giant whalelike beasts etc. I wanted to do up a bunch of creatures from the Monster Manual this way...maybe tiny rust monsters that do their thing to stone, that might be useful for mining, etc....The party sees a group of 200 pygmy rust monsters that will do absolutely nothing to their plate mail. They run in terror.
The whole island is mobile, for it rests on the back of an unbelievably huge zombie fish. Inside the zombie fish's gut is...I haven't gotten that far yet.
*insert Jaws theme*
Dum dummmm...dum DUMMMMMM!
Check out The World Project!
I always add things from out favorite books and stories; many peeps want to play some of these things and since my world is for my players I put them in at appropriate times and places. I say if someone wants to come from a place or play in a place from such a place as the Thomas Covenant Series with bloodguard and such; let em; the game can support it; I like to keep them all on separate continents though and have the gods stay with their culture; dieties in the game set the rules for that area of their influence so it works out and is not as fractionalize as you would think offhand.
In my world, the special mechanic I put in was something called the Age of Oppertunities (or however you spell that) where around every 3-4,000 years, the Gods step away and let the ancient powers come back so the current "ruling race" doesn't get to much power and build universe spanning empires. It's kinda like the mind flayers once had an age but were overthrown by say, yuan-ti who in turn were overthrown by dragons and the cycle has been like that for a very long time and once again humans are in control (with elves dwarves ect.) The age of Oppertunities also explains The Age of Worms, Savage tide, Shackled City, and all the adventures I send my PC's through. So ya, thats it in a simple small nutshell...