Hey everyone,
I've been an avid fan of d20 since its debut with 3.0. I've made the moves to 3.5 and then PF smoothly. Rules are not really my big hangup. I'm willing to use just about any rules that work.
Story is very important to me. Since I started playing RPGs back in 1998, most of the games I've been in and almost all the games I've ever run have been set in the Forgotten Realms setting.
Now I love the Realms (obviously), but I have always wanted to make my own homebrew setting. I've tried a few times, mostly resulting in frustration and a return to a published setting.
I don't really play anymore but I'd love to take one last crack at making my own Setting. I've hit a few hurdles that keep stumping me and I thought I'd ask for some advice from those of you more experienced in this sort of thing.
The Setting I want to make is very standard high fantasy. Essentially a world that would include everything you can find in the PF rules, minus one or two things. I intend to put my own little twist on them, of course, hence the desire to write my own setting. The problem is that a great deal of excellent published settings (like FR) already do the "standard fantasy" thing and do it far better than I ever could. For example, every setting needs a good map, and I can't draw to save my life. Published settings have great maps. So, if my goal is to create such a standard setting, am I wasting my time with a homebrew? Should I just use a published setting and make adjustments? Are homebrews only good if you plan to do something so outside the box it won't work in the published settings?
Some of you swear by Homebrew, as in it's the only way to go. Some of you never use anything outside a Published Setting. Some of you do both. I am looking to hear points from every side.
If an established setting already does pretty much everything you want, then run that and make modifications to taste. It sounds like you're pretty liberal with what you want to include, so you shouldn't have issue playing mix-and-match with materials from a wide range of different sources.
Focus on developing new material - places, people, cultures, deities, magical spells, relics, and so on and so forth - to add to your world rather than rebuilding the world from the ground up. The implicit material in the Pathfinder rules, taken together, already leaves you with a mostly complete setting and you just need to throw together specifics.
If you feel you want to make stronger changes to the world that breaks the underlying assumptions of other settings, that's when you should start from scratch. If you want to add or remove a very large amount of content that completely changes the character of the setting, or if you make changes that require mechanically reworking some things then a fresh start makes a lot of sense. For instance, in the campaign setting I'm working on I've completely reimagined the cosmology of the universe, and how mortals, outsiders, and deities fit into it.
As for maps, you don't need anything more than a rough outline with major cities and trade routes, mountains/coasts, and maybe a couple places of interest. You don't have to make it pretty, just functional, and in many cases your players will never even need to see it anyways.
Thanks, this has helped me immensely. :)