(Advance apology if this thread belongs in the Campaign Journals sections . . . )
I'm building a new homebrew world for a campaign I'd like to launch soon w/ my current gaming group. I've built 2 large homebrew worlds/campaign settings before, and I've moved on from them, but now that I look back on them for some sort of guidelines while creating my new world, I realize that there was a LOT of material that I created that NEVER got touched on by the players.
I created too much.
Now, it's certainly better to have too much material than not enough as it helps you prepare for the inevitable curveball the players are bound to throw your way, but when I think about the amount of time I could have saved (most of which could have been devoted to the actual gameplay itself!), I don't want to make the same mistake again.
When building a world, how much prep work do you do? How much should you do? What didn't you do that you wish you had done beforehand?
what i've done is do a world map...and then several regional maps...named the continents, the main countries...but only added detail as i got closer to the location of the campaign...until i was placing cities, major rivers.....
i developed the cultures of the surrounding countries a bit...and the main country more....more detail as i drew closer...
build out as they reach out. but keep track of all you build as it goes.
and for the real fun..next campaign pick a place close to, but not overlapping, their explorations...
just my take on it
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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I agree with the last poster, however, I would add that if you have an idea of where the story arc of the campaign will go plan some of those distant map sites that you can use to foreshadow important events, people, or locales. I especially like to do this with famous landmarks, great cities, or magical sites as well as some of the famous people who might be found there.
I treat history in much the same way: more detail closer to "now" and less the further back you go. Any historical periods with direct impact on the storyline of the campaign get extra attention as well.
If later some of those hints or historical bits that you actually gave your PCs don't quite fit with what you need now you can reconcile some of the differences as bad rumors, historical inaccuracy or the like.
These are good bits of advice, and I really appreciate the input.
One major point I'm really struggling with now is religion. Because this is a homebrew game, I'm steering away from the "standard" D&D (Greyhawk) pantheon, as well as gods from the Forgotten Realms.
Creating a religion from the ground up just feels overwhelming.
Religion and Deities are some of the most fun things to create in a campaign world, but to make sure your players don't have to read too much info make sure your deities are somewhat archetypal.
I've had measures of success basing deities on everything from Tarot, to superheroes to straight riffs on existing earth pantheons. The point is you need gods your players would want to worship and you need some bad gods, so that your players can defile some temples too.
Building gods:
Where I'd start are the practical issues (and by the way I think it's awesome you're striking off making your own stuff rather than getting sucked into the "different setting--same gods" deal that so many gamers stumble into. The setting will be tons better for it).
Take a look at the list of Domains. Chances are you're going to want to cover these bases at least. I'd list them down and mark off groupings of 3-5 in what you think would make interesting groupings (Healing, Plant and Protection for example). When you have the list divvied up these will give you a skeleton of your primary gods. Remember to have enough different divine alignments that players have as much free range as possible--this may require some overlap of good and evil gods with shared domains. Typically the races have a few gods each of their own, so go ahead and toss some of those in (though these do often cross over from setting to setting, like Llolth, Gruumsh, etc. so you may be okay just using the some of the basic ones). That's the basics, then make sure you have appropriate planes for the gods you've made and you're set. Granted the more gods the better, but this is enough to have your bases covered at least. Also dead and forgotten gods are good as well to give a sense of depth and history.
Good luck.
These are good bits of advice, and I really appreciate the input.
One major point I'm really struggling with now is religion. Because this is a homebrew game, I'm steering away from the "standard" D&D (Greyhawk) pantheon, as well as gods from the Forgotten Realms.
Creating a religion from the ground up just feels overwhelming.
I found making the religion for my homebrew was the hardest part. Not only do you need good fluff, but it also sets the stage for your cosmology and probably is the backbone of your major campaign theme. As if all of that was not enough its critical for all sorts game play crunch parts of the game especially pertaining to clerics.
That said if you do go with the 'build outward' version of campaign creation you don't need every deity in the entire campaign from the get go. You need major write ups from some of the main Gods your players might worship in the area where they are from and maybe a paragraph or so pertaining to other Gods they might know about.
Still you should decide before hand what the theme of your campaign world is and the basics of your cosmology. This stuff is just too important not to know ahead of time. That said you likely already have the basics thought out otherwise its hard to see what inspired you to make a whole new campaign world.
Finally I am curious why you choose to start from scratch instead of using campaign worlds you have already made. Usually a campaign world grows and evolves with every campaign set in it. Generally it gets better every time you use it so I would not be abandoning them too easily. I would think that the real goal behind making a homebrew is to make a world that you would like to run campaigns in for the rest of your life. Each campaign adds more to the world. After the creation of Gods I find the most difficult aspect of making a good campaign world is populating it with important individuals. Powerful trade guilds, famous historic adventurers and ancient depraved monarchs add authenticity to your campaign world but its really nearly impossible to sit down and make 200 such important people from the get go. Much easier to just keep adding them as the campaign progresses. If your players encountered an old war hero that was building a fleet to go exploring in one campaign but nothing really came of that you can have him feature as part of the background in the next campaign. This famous fleet could still be being built in the next campaign and your new 1st level players could be dealing with the fact that wood is desired in a far away port city for ship building etc. This may or may not be important to these 1st level characters but it adds authenticity to the campaign as a whole to have this sort of thing around.
I just had to create a pantheon for a campaign I am currently running, and it can be a bit daunting. Personally I found the Deities and Demigods book quite helpful. Most of the book contains information on various Grayhawk and Earth gods, which can help spark a few ideas. The first chapter, however, contains tips and tricks to creating your own pantheon. They have a chart of some 150 different portfolios. To jump start myself I rolled two or three times on this chart for each god and then came up with a dogma to cover the portfolio. The book also has the minimum number of gods for a pantheon broken down by potential worshiper. This helped me to break down the job into reasonable parts and made it much more manageable. The book also contains a section on writing up gods as characters, it even includes a list of divine feats. Personally I didn’t use this as it seemed way to much work for what I was doing. In a campaign where the characters play as gods, it would be nice to have though. I need to touch it up a bit, but I will go ahead and post the gods I came up with on the Campaign Journals/Saratiel: Prestige Class/Gestalt Setting thread (It’s probably a bit big to post here). Feel free to peruse it for ideas or to comment on it (I love to hear the ideas of my fellow Paizonians). Good luck in your endeavor, be sure to post when you finish.
I'm in the same camp as Jeremy- why make a whole new setting? I've often times realized something was missing from mine, or desired a change, so I just scooched a country over here, added a gulf there, insert evil dungeon here, etc., and viola, it's as I desire it!
Also, even if you really get a wild urge all of a sudden to just do something completely different, you don't have to ditch your old work. It's likely that you have not mapped out every continent and country in the world. Even if you have, all you have to do is say, "I'm adding another one here." Then make it as different as you want. There's no reason that people in different areas might not have wildly different views of religions and unique pantheons- perhaps this is the only area those gods managed to attract followers, or perhaps the gods and even planes are generated by the faith of the people, so different cultures can have completely different cosmologies behind them. Or just don't set a definate limit on the number or structure of planes, so there's always room to add more.
Given that, if you are bound to go on with making a whole new setting, the one thing I will say that hasn't been mentioned before: Size and variety! This isn't such a big deal if you only plan to run one campaign here, or if you don't plan on travelling much. But if you do, make sure the world is plenty big enough to always be able to go into a small area and add detail where there never was before.
And when I say variety, I mean in geography. I hate it when there's "The Elven Kingdom" and the "Dwarven Kingdom", etc., as if each only has one realm in the world. This also typically leads to segregation of terrain styles, where there's the big forest here, and the vast desert there, and the misty mountains over here, but they don't really interact, and if you want to do a mountain adventure, you have to go halfway around the world to get to the only real mountain range.
And even bigger for me is the inclusion of access to water. Be it a vast lake or a full-blown ocean, for me, I love to make sure most of the countries and regions in my world have access to some sort of immense body of water, both for the potential to adventure and to give a sense of mystery and vastness.
This is a prime force driving my world building. I look at how to get a good mix of land and sea, various terrains, and diverse cultures, and stitch them together in a map that leaves each a large amount of relatively isolated room so that they stand out, while still being close enough that interaction can easily be achieved, which leads to some rather interesting (and, I feel, organic) maps.
Oh, and one last thing: When you're working on the small scale, don't forget to put in roads! For the longest time, I didn't, and just figured travel distance by straight line. The inclusion of roads is much more realisitic, obviously, and helps to define trade routes, possible targets for wars, etc., as well as just highlighting geographic features (Why doesn't the road run straight from here to there? Well, it's because of the Dragontail Mountains...).
I'm probably getting a rep for saying this but...
Let your players help make up the world!
You'll get plenty of room to change things and shape the world as the game progresses. Also it helps your players feel at home when the game first kicks off. And their assumptions work wonderfully for surprising them with plot twists!
Give it a go!
Peace,
tfad
the prior two posts have some very good points. I didn't go their general direction, but at the same time, there was room for what they had to say and it made my campaign better for it. I have said that i set the countries over most of the world on my map, but the players actually only know the names of the adjacent countries to where they are. And i didn't divulge anything about those cultures. so player feedback on some exotic origins helped flesh out those adjacent cultures.
You are getting a lot of good advice. some of it may seem contradictory, but very little of it is. just mull it all over and see how the advice fits together...and how it fits you mental image of the world you're building..and enjoy as it takes shape with you and your players leading the way across the map as it forms.
Also, even if you really get a wild urge all of a sudden to just do something completely different, you don't have to ditch your old work. It's likely that you have not mapped out every continent and country in the world. Even if you have, all you have to do is say, "I'm adding another one here." Then make it as different as you want.
Related to this. You'll probably find that your campaign world updates every so often. I started mine at 14 and its gone through two major revisions. Its simply inevitable that some ideas that seemed totally cool to a 14 year old will seem blah to a 30 year old. But one always has the option of tweaking things as you go along and in the end every time you revise material it gets tightened up and improved upon.
Brother D congrats and the birthing of another "homebrew" setting. I've done one for sure, and I have a second one in the works, and all the other posters have given a lot of sound advice. You are right, religion-making can be daunting, but I thought it was the most fun part of world-building. I tried to take my cues from my favorite real-world mythology, Greek, and model my gods and goddesses from that. My favorite deity I created in my homebrew setting, was known as the Mother of Monsters; Malignant and Benign. (The idea being that all monsters or creatures (non-real world animals) were her creation. And like IO the ninefold dragon, I based her alignment in True Neutrality, but her children or 'spawn' if you will could (and did) span the alignment axis.
So... other than tooting my own horn, and offering you congratulations and votes of confidence, I don't have anymore 'nuggets' of wisdom beyond what my esteemed peers have said before.
~Peace
When building a world, how much prep work do you do? How much should you do? What didn't you do that you wish you had done beforehand?
Over on Treasure Tables, that's been a popular discussion.
Martin has a few good posts on the subject, Stross's Law and Start Small are good for getting you off on the right foot.
A popular suggestion is Ray Winninger's "Dungeoncraft" Essays. They were a 29-part series of articles that appeared in Dragon magazine from 1997 to 1999.
I'm probably getting a rep for saying this but...
Let your players help make up the world!
tfad
I'm in this camp. Maybe I'm lazy but it allows for flexability. Player will always want to play out some concept you as a DM have not thought about. ALways leave room for this situation. I'm in the camp that as Dm, this is not my game but our game. I share the game and game world with the players. Let them help build it.
Then again I am pretty lazy.
Player input is great. Make sure to leave spaces that are not too detailed in your world, and if someone wants to make up a cool PC, spend some time brainstorming the PC's background with him--you can come up with all kinds of ideas for new cultures and so forth that way.
Religion is a reflection of culture and culture is a reflection of religion for most societies with a "pre-modern" flavor. I've been working on my campaign world for over five years now and have gradually fleshed out four full pantheons and a number of lesser-known deities that provide local flavor (e.g. the sandstorm god that all travelers sacrifice to before crossing the Sea of Sand) or evil cult villainy. I've found that you can't do it all at once, so it's best to start with a pantheon of about 6-8 main deities for the dominant human culture in the region where the campaign kicks off, plus 1 or 2 primary deities for the important PC races. For a pantheon, think about the themes that are most important to that culture and list them in rough order of prominence--these will be the primary portfolios of your main deities. As you think of additional important themes, you can add them to the portfolios of existing deities or come up with lesser deities for them. Then come up with interesting sounding names and titles for dieties, and those items that are of immediate importance for game play: alignment, holy symbol, domains, favored weapon.
As my conception of each deity firms up, I have also found it helpful to add a description of the way people visualize the deity (i.e. iconography), including the deity's signature possessions (not statted up, just a brief description of what each item does), and any alternative forms the deity commonly assumes (animal or monstrous or alternative humanoid appearance). A description of the main elements of that deity's "church," including specialized orders of non-clerics dedicated to the deity's service, prestige classes, and the role of the church in the larger society will help you and your players figure out how to incorporate the deity into everyday life in the campaign world, and a brief description of the major festivals of the church will add to this.
So, what I do is keep a series of computer files with standard entries. I often start with most of the entries blank for a given deity, and when I get an inspiration--usually happens when I'm on my afternoon walk--I'll put down my ideas. If I think of something to add later on, I'll add it in.
(There is really no need to "stat up" deities unless you're really into epic-level play--I don't even own Deities and Demigods, and don't see much need to.)
Here's a sample of a fleshed out entry from my homebrew, just to illustrate. Feel free to copy the template, but I'd appreciate it if you don't borrow the creative parts whole cloth, since I'm working on a novel using the setting.
Seldimble Silverbrow, Wealthmistress of the Brightwood Burrows
Alignment: N
Iconography: An ageless gnomish matriarch with braided platinum hair and silver eyebrows, her brow is adorned by a platinum circlet that allows her to find her way safely through the most difficult and confusing terrain. She carries a traveler¡¦s staff that transforms itself into a great tree or a constrictor snake on command, and a shamrock amulet encrusted with emeralds bound to her left wrist that gives her great power over luck. She often rides a euriddyon, but occasionally transforms herself into silvery-gray wild goose so that she can travel long distances over land or water.
Portfolio: Wealth, Trade, Travel, Gemcutting
Domains: Luck, Travel, Protection, Wealth*
Holy Symbol: A shamrock
Favored Weapon: Quarterstaff
Cult Centers: Stubbleruck
Background: Seldimble is the patron deity of the gnomish merchant families that conduct most of the long-distance trade through the Greatoake Forest and beyond. Although these families compete against each other to some extent, they nonetheless have a loose guild organization that sets the rules for competition and decides on strategies for countering outside competitors, such as the Coramine Royal Eastern Overland Merchants¡¦ Guild. Most major gnomish burrows communities have guildhalls known as the Hall of the Wealthmistress, which serve as both temples and meeting places. Every year, each community sends a representative to the Trademoot, which convenes on the last Goldsday of the year at Silverbrow Manse, a great burrow in Stubbleruck that was Seldimble¡¦s dwelling place when she lived among the mortal gnomes many generations ago. Traditionally, only women can represent their houses in the Hall of the Wealthmistress, and those who do are initiated into Seldimble¡¦s priestesshood. (Thus Seldimble¡¦s priestesses are typically multiclassed with expert, rogue, or ranger). Gnomish merchants following Seldimble¡¦s precepts follow the rules decided upon by the Trademoot scrupulously.
Holy Days: Trademoot (convenes 11/32)
Regular Worship: Goldsdays at dawn, before setting off on any journey
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I've got a homebrew campaign that we're playing in for nearly six years now and its getting better and better, because every campaign adds more detail.
I've had another world before but back than i made the mistake to feel the need to develop all the important things (history, religion, politics, nations, cosmology) at once. This hasn't been a good idea, because it was a lot of work and some of the stuff wasn't that good because it was done in a hurry. Later i had quite better ideas on certain aspects but there was no room for these anymore.
In the current world i avoided these mistakes. At first i only developed the things that are absolutly necessary (like the important nations and their relationships to each other, important events in history, major gods etc.). But these informations weren't that fleshed out and were more of an overview than detailed and it worked really well. Sure, there has to be enough information that the players get the feel and tone of the world. I experienced that players have problems with too much information and that they get frustrated if you confront them with thirty new gods at once or century-long detailed histories of nations far away. There's time for this later. What i fleshed out in detail were the things that are needed for the beginning of the campaign, like the town they start it and the character background. And it was cool how much was added to the world just by the things the players imagined for their characters background.
For the pantheon i only fleshed out the three most important gods to start with and just mentioned that there're far more and the characters do know these. The players don't have to in the beginning. I know that many DM's feel the urge to develop a complete pantheon but i never met players that're introduced to a new world and that demand to get informations on all of the 30+ gods in detail. They're quite glad if they don't have to know this first...:D For a player that wanted to play a cleric of a nture deity i needed to create one and i did this together with the player and this was lots of fun and the finished deity is just great...
What i like most about this method is that it keeps the fun of creating worlds fresh, because i can add detail after detail as needed. There's always room for cool stuff i'm creating even years after we first played on the world and i don't have doubts that this can go on for another six years. Sure, by now we have lots of material and the players contributed plenty of it and they really know the world by now and its still fun to add things.
The history for example, which only told of a handful of important events in the beginning is now very, very detailed. The pantheon now contains about 30 higher and lesser deities and there's a whole bunch of important and/or memorable NPC's, just to give some examples.
To summon up, don't feel the need to create everything at once. Leave spaces for future ideas and create only those aspects that you need to run the adventure. And don't feel badly prepared if a player asks a questions that you can't answer. Mostly these are questions that are not important to the current adventure and just out of interest. Think about it and answer it next session or ask the player if he likes to answer the question himself by fleshing out this certain detail. When i look back at the development of the world i wouldn't change a thing. I'd only go back to play more...:)
My last campaign was home-made. Worked pretty well. I started out by drawing a single map (with the player's village in the middle) and tought of a dozen exiting places for them to explore...
Places like 'The Howling Mountains' (a hole in one of the mountains would emit a howling sound when the wind blew through it, could be heard for miles), 'Whispering Lake' (if you stood on shore of the lake and listened carefully, you could hear everyone around the lake), and 'Twin Kingdom Valley' (a castle/city in a cold valley that, when the conditions were right, had it's reflection cast into the snow-filled sky).
Then, as the group progressed, I made another map, then another map, then another... Until I ended up with quite a few maps all with very interesting/mysterious places. I made up the gods as we moved along as well. I started with two and grew from there. Same with the countries, same with everything else.
There's no need to create EVERYTHING at the beginning. Like it was mentionned above, let the players help you in fleshing out this new place... And you'll find yourself discovering it at the same time as your players!
This campaing I've tried something different: I used Greyhawk for the first time. What I enjoy the most about a pre-made world like Greyhawk, is all the rich history found in many of the source books and Gazeteers. Every hill, every lake, every village has at least a paragraph of text that I can present to my players as they move from place to place. There's also a map to everywhere that can be found on-line and can be printed in a matter of seconds. Apart from being well done and very intricate, it also save me the trouble of drawing, inventing and writting everything.
So there you go... the best of both worlds. Nomatter what you choose to do, I'm sure you'll have quite an experience! Enjoy!!
Ultradan
As someone else making a homebrew this thread comes at a good time. Right now we're focusing on one city so I'm developing that specificaly. The city is totaly based on trade so right now I'm laying out the major guilds and trade houses for merchants. These are replacing the standard nobility of normal kingdoms.
The biggest problem I ran into was how far down do I break down the guilds. Thankfully some advise here has spared me the time, grief and effort of listing each one and putting too fine a point on the world.
I love homebrews and world building is a ton of fun. But the easiest part is the hardest at times. Let the players develop it for you. Lay out the skeleton and allow them to flesh out the rest as needed. The world is more intimate and fun that way. But a good skeletona dna few campaigns is the best thing for any world.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I am supremely lazy, so I tend to just detail the area where the characters will operate. As I run games, I tend to churn out emails about various things and flesh out the world to the players as they go. I had two of my players take off things that I spewed out and start running adventures of their own in the same campaign world. It was the most bizzare thing. One player took a throw-away reference that I included in one email about a continent being nearly destroyed and built an entire campaign about exploring what happened to that continent.
I hate dieties. I generally run a more mono-theistic game with a trinity of gods based (very loosely) on the Catholic Father (LN)/Son (LG)/Holy Ghost(NG) idea. The local empire worships the Roman/Greek pantheon and then a handful of cults operate anywhere they can take root. The problem with fleshing out the gods is that really only two players (at most) give a damn - the DM and the guy playing the cleric. But it's one of those areas (like magic) that receives a disproportionate amount of attention.
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I do the same thing, not out of laziness, but due to my own flightiness. I know I'll be off on some completely different tangent in a month, so it is an exercise in futility to flesh out more than the 'immediate environs' per se.
As regards the gods, heck, anything goes. Who's really to say what they even are, or if they exist? It also allows for me to be tangental later on.
I've never really 100% scripted a campaign from the outset like an adventure path. I just kinda shoot from the hip, and see where it goes.
I guess in comparison to the X-files, I usually go the route of several episodes vaguely related to one another, rather than follow anything resembling an overall mission such as "find Mulder's sister and unveil the great conspiracy."
I too became overwhelmed at the prospect of creating a pantheon in my homebrew so I decided to chuck it entirely. I'm playing with the Arcana Evolved ruleset, which has no clerics, so I decided that one of the defining characteristics of my homebrew was that the gods had died or been killed long ago. Switching subjects...I think the people in the world are even more important than the world itself. I'd encourage you to spend time thinking about organizations -- the mage's guild, the thieves' guild, crime families, noble houses, taverns, brothels, orders of monks, mercenary companies, secret cults, rival adventurers, romantic interests, et cetera -- what they want, and how the PCs can help or hinder their goals. Campaigns come alive through characters, not through intricate histories or giant world maps.
One more thing...the chapter on Saltmarsh in the DMG II is a great inspiration for how to create a homebrew campaign setting. It doesn't have to be big as long as it's deep.