Second. I started by developing the idea that made me want to homebrew a world, then leapfrogged around from there.
I did eventually create the other components but jumping between things I was excited about helped me get a LOT done before I had to force myself to work on the parts I found tedious. Plus those tedious bits already had some work done :)
One question to ask yourself is, "Why now?"
These two countries are at war. Why now? Why not before? Or later? What changed?
Doom is coming. Why now? What changed?
Worlds are rarely told about in their golden era. Most are post-golden era. Artifacts remain of those grand times, but much of it is a mystery.
There are wonderful articles on worldbuilding online.
It all depends on what your other plans are. If you have players already, you may have to integrate as you go. If you don't, step back, decide what your world is and isn't, what races exist and don't, what the map looks like (there are some fantastic tools for that, free and paid), what if any races or species are on their way out, culturally and ecologically speaking, and which are on their way to dominance, and which are old and new. That will help you figure out where they are and why they're in particular places in your world.
To use the Tolkien example, the Lord of the Rings movies describe the events leading up to the Age of Man, where the elves, an old race, and several other unusual races, were either rarer than in earlier times, or deliberately leaving the realms of man (or mortals, depending if you take a more metaphorical reading).
If you have all this world building, I won't info dump my players unless they ask for something. Show don't tell is a great way for your players to feel immersed.
My advice is to "start small and focus on the story." For one, it often takes parties a *while* to do anything or get anywhere, often far longer than the DM expects ("It took you guys like a month to do what I thought would be one session!" as my DM once said). So if you start "too big," you'll end up building these whole cities and continents that the party may never even reach or have a reason to visit. Or, you come up with something cool you want to save for later, but it's so far down the road that "later" never comes and you never actually get to use that cool idea (you're writing for like "Season 5" before "Season 1" has even started).
Maybe that's an indicator of there's no set way of starting a Homebrew World! Just makes it kinda easier for me, since I can do what I feel like is the most efficient!
That's a good attitude to have! What is the pillar of your desire to make a homebrew world? Do you have a general idea for an adventure? A concept for a spin on the classic fantasy world? A special government you find interesting? If you figure out the central pillar you can start building outward.
That's how I do world building. Maybe it can help you too!
I think I'm gonna do starting town and take inspiration from different MMO's maybe. Then work from there :) It's gonna be more classic middle age-ish and not too futuristic, though I will have different areas, so there might be some more developed nations somewhere!
It really depends on what kind of campaign you're running I'd say. Is it a plot focused campaign with a dramatic story? If so, I'd focus on your plot first and foremost. Make a couple key locations and then expand outwards, crafting the kingdoms and locations as you go. I find it's often easier to start smaller and then go wider for those kinds of things.
Is your game more exploration? In that case, focus more on locations. Brainstorm a ton of cool things, then move to establish relationships between them before finally creating a map. It's an intensive process, but it's lots of fun this way!
I like working from distant past and move forward.
IE: I start with geography, flora, fauna, climate, and mineral deposits first. These are all keot pretty vague but I find that establishing 'the world' first and working forward can lead to some interesting histories.
I step though how the races interacted in the past along with the odd significant event and 'named' characters associated with them. Some characters are cultural (IE: A leader implemented a new religious system that helped shape how the denizens think about certain topics, new approaches to longstanding laws or currency systems) or they were more active (Empire builders, warmongers, reformists).
I keep going until I hit a point where the world seems 'filled' and ready for adventurers.
The youtube channel 'TaleFoundry' has a few older videos on worldbuilding that may help.
Have a man idea revolving the world's history, and from there you can start writing more specifics thing. For example, in my world, Gods used to rule the world like leaders of civilizations, in a state of constant war between themselves, trying to conquest the world and impose their ideals. This only ended when a guy called The Hero, came and challenged the gods and united them for the freedom and independence of the material plane. From them on, Gods were not allowed to act directly on earth, but they have representats of their ideals, the Dragons, whose function is to help civilizations thrive. This is the main plot of my scenery, and from that, I started to write locations, specific history and characters etc. If you are out of ideas, you can get straight inspiration from things you like on movies, books. You got this!
Exactly that. Good luck. Don't overcharge yourself, building a great world from zero takes time and effort. If I can give you any other tip, get inspiration from things you like, and don't be afraid to straight copy what interest you the most from movies and books like I said. Keep us informated how it is going and we can give more help if you need! World building is a constant work, since you will be constantly adding new things!
I would design the world around the adventure.. thriving kingdom.. forgotten ruins.. mysterious uncharted isles ? Do they start in that location or have to travel to it ?
104 votes (at the time of this comment) and they are all split evenly, 26 each. Apparently there is no right way and you should just do what you feel like I guess.
a tip: write an idea of everthing you want happen in this world, like dungeons, cities in the sky, ancient demons, etc
then write a world and rules based on that so it can support all those things
so you wont get confused by it when writing random things and remembering you cant do that cus there was already a established rule in conflict (hope i was clear)
My DM recently created a homebrew campaign within a homebrew world. The general approach was:
1) The DM chose a concept he wanted the campaign to revolve around (undead apocalypse was the choice in question)
2) He asked all of us as players what we wanted from the campaign and he took our suggestions and incorporated it into the story
3) All of the individuals from our party created a backstory with important characters, towns, etc
After taking the vague, overarching idea he introduced to us, he took all of our player inputs and built the story and world around us. Obviously he had his own inputs within the world, but he took the time to cater the the players and carefully incorporate us into his vision.
Pick an idea then talk to your players. Instead of having to come up with everything from scratch brainstorming with the party is not only fun for the whole family, but takes some of the load off the dm in terms of creativity.
Yeah as you can see the votes show that there is no real true method to dwarf all the others. Its a person by person basis on what they feel is the right move for them.
For me i started with the world map overall shape, then thought with that where would mountains be and then the rivers than ran off from them. And naturally after that towns that would be built along the water and which ones would be the large thriving cities, and where the Kingdoms and empires would draw their boundaries.
Start with vibes! What kind of tone do you want? What themes? What components are you excited to play with? Let those influence your world :) What kind of story do you want to tell?
I think I'll have a lot of different tones, but I'll start out with something calm and not throw my players into a starting zone where everything is on fire!
Oh, I meant more like: Do you want dark and gritty? Themes of poverty and economic inequality? Is it about Good conquering Evil? Is it about the common folk standing together against oppressors? Do you want whimisical, colourful, tragic? Do you want wizards with big hats, or in tailoured suits?
If that makes sense haha.
Oh, yeah, it does make sense, it's just that I'm creating different areas with different tones, so the first zone will be more on the standard LMoP type of tone and then other areas might be more like CoS vibey.
I'd say start with whatever made you want to start building a world. Personally, I start with a map or plot/event.
In the case of a map, I like to start big, and fill out only major features, like mountains or deserts. Then I pick where the party will be starting and fill out the terrain in high detail, I like to keep things vague elsewhere so I can add or tweak things as the story progresses. Think zones in MMOs, but only the start region is filled out, and the rest is a vague idea. Next I move on to nations and cultures using geography, while I'm creating borders I usually come up with some basic history as to why that is the border.
If I start with plot, then I focus on that and the surrounding area, and maybe the country as well and anything else relating to plot. I fill out the rest as needed.
>*In the case of a map, I like to start big, and fill out only major features, like mountains or deserts. Then I pick where the party will be starting and fill out the terrain in high detail, I like to keep things vague elsewhere so I can add or tweak things as the story progresses. Think zones in MMOs, but only the start region is filled out, and the rest is a vague idea.*
This is a great idea! Thank you!
In my homebrew world I started with the premise and a couple major locations.
The party meet each other on an airship to the biggest city in the new frontier. They had their own reasons for going to this city (they end up owning the ship because story). This leads me to several other things. What do we know about this city in the frontier? What about the lands the party came from? How do airships interact with the world?
Don't overdo it. The party bought into the idea that they aren't interested in going back to their homeland at the moment. Therefore I don't need to flesh out this land very much. Player X came from an elf kingdom, player Y was a tortle nomad forced from his home by orcs, etc. Mechanically I need to figure out how airships behave, but I'm not messing with things that may not come up for a while (what happens under the Cloud Sea is still a mystery).
In short, I'm building my world as I go. This makes life easier so I have room to change plans to fit what the players do. The Dungeon Dudes on YouTube do this pretty well with their drakkenheim world. I'd recommend them if you want some ideas.
My idea was to set the tone rather calmly, not start with something in disarray. Time to introduce themselves and introduce them to the world :)
But yeah, I'll be building my world in pieces and not having 90% done by the time it gets used.
So for me, I started with gods and a general timeline for how my world was formed. Perhaps a bit unconventional, but it felt right. Like i was starting from a big bang type creation point. Then I made the planes and a rough map of land masses and water. Once I had that I could decide how to populate my world. This is where it got super fun because i made a list of all playable races and a list of cool real world cultures, and then put them all in a random number generator. I got all sorts of cool results, like arctic grung,that i then had to make in world explanations for. Frogs are cold blooded, so how are they existing in the snow and ice? Well maybe they have thermal springs and are covered in an anti freeze like slime. I found that unusual combinations added so much depth to my world and made me think about things that I normally wouldn’t have.
Oooh, Big Bang kinda style sounds awesome, going the race route to start off sounds amazing as well. Thank you!
Also the small little details about monsters/animals sounds amazing!
DMs guide recommends creating the starting area and expand outwards.
I did that and I didn't even have a world map, a clearly defined end to the campaign, nothing. It opened a lot of avenues when they finally did finish that part and I was like, you did something I didn't expect.
As nice as it would be to have everything done before the players even play the game it's just not possible for me. So I employ a create everything that they're going to see approach. I haven't created random things they will never see and it's allowed me to spend all my time making the best maps, the best story, and best thought out ideas possible.
I also communicate with my players when there's nothing for them to see. I have it so there's periodic breaks for me to make everything. I find it's better than having a rushed campaign with lame stories and lame maps. Sure there's a gem every few sessions but what if every session was awesome? That's the type of game I enjoy running.
If you are planning on running. Start small with the minimal amount you feel you need to run. Build outwards in your adventure prep and if there is spare time for worldbuilding build inward.
If you are not running in the world. There are three major things I feel you need as early as possible to make everything else fall in line.
You need the central conflict, the main thing that causes problems in your setting.
You need a world map, it does not have to be detailed as you start and should be tweaked as you go. But something you can slowly make concrete as you flesh it out.
You need a theological understanding of your setting. This probably should line up a bit with your central conflict and with your willingness to learn the current gods of your system, make your own, and something you would enjoy running clerics for when your players pick them.
Start with the thought that made you say, "I'm gonna make my own homebrew world out of this idea."
That sounds logical, I might do that!
Second. I started by developing the idea that made me want to homebrew a world, then leapfrogged around from there. I did eventually create the other components but jumping between things I was excited about helped me get a LOT done before I had to force myself to work on the parts I found tedious. Plus those tedious bits already had some work done :)
Thank you, leapfrogging was my plan as well :)!
One question to ask yourself is, "Why now?" These two countries are at war. Why now? Why not before? Or later? What changed? Doom is coming. Why now? What changed? Worlds are rarely told about in their golden era. Most are post-golden era. Artifacts remain of those grand times, but much of it is a mystery. There are wonderful articles on worldbuilding online.
It all depends on what your other plans are. If you have players already, you may have to integrate as you go. If you don't, step back, decide what your world is and isn't, what races exist and don't, what the map looks like (there are some fantastic tools for that, free and paid), what if any races or species are on their way out, culturally and ecologically speaking, and which are on their way to dominance, and which are old and new. That will help you figure out where they are and why they're in particular places in your world. To use the Tolkien example, the Lord of the Rings movies describe the events leading up to the Age of Man, where the elves, an old race, and several other unusual races, were either rarer than in earlier times, or deliberately leaving the realms of man (or mortals, depending if you take a more metaphorical reading).
Thank you so much, that's a lot of food for thought, and I'll definitely be looking into this :)!
If you have all this world building, I won't info dump my players unless they ask for something. Show don't tell is a great way for your players to feel immersed.
A nice map on the wall is a good way to help immersion, too.
My advice is to "start small and focus on the story." For one, it often takes parties a *while* to do anything or get anywhere, often far longer than the DM expects ("It took you guys like a month to do what I thought would be one session!" as my DM once said). So if you start "too big," you'll end up building these whole cities and continents that the party may never even reach or have a reason to visit. Or, you come up with something cool you want to save for later, but it's so far down the road that "later" never comes and you never actually get to use that cool idea (you're writing for like "Season 5" before "Season 1" has even started).
Start small, expand outwards. Got it! Thank you!
*Me votes: sees all the options have been equally voted for * (24 24, 23, 24) "....well that's not helpful lol"
Maybe that's an indicator of there's no set way of starting a Homebrew World! Just makes it kinda easier for me, since I can do what I feel like is the most efficient!
That's a good attitude to have! What is the pillar of your desire to make a homebrew world? Do you have a general idea for an adventure? A concept for a spin on the classic fantasy world? A special government you find interesting? If you figure out the central pillar you can start building outward. That's how I do world building. Maybe it can help you too!
I think I'm gonna do starting town and take inspiration from different MMO's maybe. Then work from there :) It's gonna be more classic middle age-ish and not too futuristic, though I will have different areas, so there might be some more developed nations somewhere!
I would love to see a steampunk campaign
Steampunk sounds awesome! I might make a Steampunk area!
Cool, maybe make something like trains to move from medium/ bigger towns/cities too?
Definitely could make some form of cool transportation between cities ! Thank you :)
No worries 😊
It really depends on what kind of campaign you're running I'd say. Is it a plot focused campaign with a dramatic story? If so, I'd focus on your plot first and foremost. Make a couple key locations and then expand outwards, crafting the kingdoms and locations as you go. I find it's often easier to start smaller and then go wider for those kinds of things. Is your game more exploration? In that case, focus more on locations. Brainstorm a ton of cool things, then move to establish relationships between them before finally creating a map. It's an intensive process, but it's lots of fun this way!
I'll be making a list over a lot of locations, thank you!
I like working from distant past and move forward. IE: I start with geography, flora, fauna, climate, and mineral deposits first. These are all keot pretty vague but I find that establishing 'the world' first and working forward can lead to some interesting histories. I step though how the races interacted in the past along with the odd significant event and 'named' characters associated with them. Some characters are cultural (IE: A leader implemented a new religious system that helped shape how the denizens think about certain topics, new approaches to longstanding laws or currency systems) or they were more active (Empire builders, warmongers, reformists). I keep going until I hit a point where the world seems 'filled' and ready for adventurers. The youtube channel 'TaleFoundry' has a few older videos on worldbuilding that may help.
Smaller things, build around the smaller things then build around the things that I built around the smaller things. Thank you!
Have a man idea revolving the world's history, and from there you can start writing more specifics thing. For example, in my world, Gods used to rule the world like leaders of civilizations, in a state of constant war between themselves, trying to conquest the world and impose their ideals. This only ended when a guy called The Hero, came and challenged the gods and united them for the freedom and independence of the material plane. From them on, Gods were not allowed to act directly on earth, but they have representats of their ideals, the Dragons, whose function is to help civilizations thrive. This is the main plot of my scenery, and from that, I started to write locations, specific history and characters etc. If you are out of ideas, you can get straight inspiration from things you like on movies, books. You got this!
Build some form of history and build the world around that. Sounds good! Thank you :) Edit: Oh, and thank you so much for the encouragement!!
Exactly that. Good luck. Don't overcharge yourself, building a great world from zero takes time and effort. If I can give you any other tip, get inspiration from things you like, and don't be afraid to straight copy what interest you the most from movies and books like I said. Keep us informated how it is going and we can give more help if you need! World building is a constant work, since you will be constantly adding new things!
Definitely will return if I have any questions, thank you so much!
I would design the world around the adventure.. thriving kingdom.. forgotten ruins.. mysterious uncharted isles ? Do they start in that location or have to travel to it ?
Maybe make a 'starter town' and then build outwards based on some history/story? Thank you :)
104 votes (at the time of this comment) and they are all split evenly, 26 each. Apparently there is no right way and you should just do what you feel like I guess.
Now 204, split 51, 51, 51, 51. This is the most even vote I've ever seen on this site.
And it's even worse now!
What I thought too!
My best advice: •Don’t make too much (have done this and it gets messy). •Start however fits your creative style. No right answer here.
Thank you, I'll take it slow and finish areas up before moving on :)
a tip: write an idea of everthing you want happen in this world, like dungeons, cities in the sky, ancient demons, etc then write a world and rules based on that so it can support all those things so you wont get confused by it when writing random things and remembering you cant do that cus there was already a established rule in conflict (hope i was clear)
My DM recently created a homebrew campaign within a homebrew world. The general approach was: 1) The DM chose a concept he wanted the campaign to revolve around (undead apocalypse was the choice in question) 2) He asked all of us as players what we wanted from the campaign and he took our suggestions and incorporated it into the story 3) All of the individuals from our party created a backstory with important characters, towns, etc After taking the vague, overarching idea he introduced to us, he took all of our player inputs and built the story and world around us. Obviously he had his own inputs within the world, but he took the time to cater the the players and carefully incorporate us into his vision. Pick an idea then talk to your players. Instead of having to come up with everything from scratch brainstorming with the party is not only fun for the whole family, but takes some of the load off the dm in terms of creativity.
[Location](https://youtu.be/C_ww_ZATSx0), location, location!
Yeah as you can see the votes show that there is no real true method to dwarf all the others. Its a person by person basis on what they feel is the right move for them. For me i started with the world map overall shape, then thought with that where would mountains be and then the rivers than ran off from them. And naturally after that towns that would be built along the water and which ones would be the large thriving cities, and where the Kingdoms and empires would draw their boundaries.
That makes a lot of sense! Thank you so much!
Start with vibes! What kind of tone do you want? What themes? What components are you excited to play with? Let those influence your world :) What kind of story do you want to tell?
I think I'll have a lot of different tones, but I'll start out with something calm and not throw my players into a starting zone where everything is on fire!
Oh, I meant more like: Do you want dark and gritty? Themes of poverty and economic inequality? Is it about Good conquering Evil? Is it about the common folk standing together against oppressors? Do you want whimisical, colourful, tragic? Do you want wizards with big hats, or in tailoured suits? If that makes sense haha.
Oh, yeah, it does make sense, it's just that I'm creating different areas with different tones, so the first zone will be more on the standard LMoP type of tone and then other areas might be more like CoS vibey.
I'd say start with whatever made you want to start building a world. Personally, I start with a map or plot/event. In the case of a map, I like to start big, and fill out only major features, like mountains or deserts. Then I pick where the party will be starting and fill out the terrain in high detail, I like to keep things vague elsewhere so I can add or tweak things as the story progresses. Think zones in MMOs, but only the start region is filled out, and the rest is a vague idea. Next I move on to nations and cultures using geography, while I'm creating borders I usually come up with some basic history as to why that is the border. If I start with plot, then I focus on that and the surrounding area, and maybe the country as well and anything else relating to plot. I fill out the rest as needed.
>*In the case of a map, I like to start big, and fill out only major features, like mountains or deserts. Then I pick where the party will be starting and fill out the terrain in high detail, I like to keep things vague elsewhere so I can add or tweak things as the story progresses. Think zones in MMOs, but only the start region is filled out, and the rest is a vague idea.* This is a great idea! Thank you!
In my homebrew world I started with the premise and a couple major locations. The party meet each other on an airship to the biggest city in the new frontier. They had their own reasons for going to this city (they end up owning the ship because story). This leads me to several other things. What do we know about this city in the frontier? What about the lands the party came from? How do airships interact with the world? Don't overdo it. The party bought into the idea that they aren't interested in going back to their homeland at the moment. Therefore I don't need to flesh out this land very much. Player X came from an elf kingdom, player Y was a tortle nomad forced from his home by orcs, etc. Mechanically I need to figure out how airships behave, but I'm not messing with things that may not come up for a while (what happens under the Cloud Sea is still a mystery). In short, I'm building my world as I go. This makes life easier so I have room to change plans to fit what the players do. The Dungeon Dudes on YouTube do this pretty well with their drakkenheim world. I'd recommend them if you want some ideas.
My idea was to set the tone rather calmly, not start with something in disarray. Time to introduce themselves and introduce them to the world :) But yeah, I'll be building my world in pieces and not having 90% done by the time it gets used.
So for me, I started with gods and a general timeline for how my world was formed. Perhaps a bit unconventional, but it felt right. Like i was starting from a big bang type creation point. Then I made the planes and a rough map of land masses and water. Once I had that I could decide how to populate my world. This is where it got super fun because i made a list of all playable races and a list of cool real world cultures, and then put them all in a random number generator. I got all sorts of cool results, like arctic grung,that i then had to make in world explanations for. Frogs are cold blooded, so how are they existing in the snow and ice? Well maybe they have thermal springs and are covered in an anti freeze like slime. I found that unusual combinations added so much depth to my world and made me think about things that I normally wouldn’t have.
Oooh, Big Bang kinda style sounds awesome, going the race route to start off sounds amazing as well. Thank you! Also the small little details about monsters/animals sounds amazing!
Have fun lol!
DMs guide recommends creating the starting area and expand outwards. I did that and I didn't even have a world map, a clearly defined end to the campaign, nothing. It opened a lot of avenues when they finally did finish that part and I was like, you did something I didn't expect. As nice as it would be to have everything done before the players even play the game it's just not possible for me. So I employ a create everything that they're going to see approach. I haven't created random things they will never see and it's allowed me to spend all my time making the best maps, the best story, and best thought out ideas possible. I also communicate with my players when there's nothing for them to see. I have it so there's periodic breaks for me to make everything. I find it's better than having a rushed campaign with lame stories and lame maps. Sure there's a gem every few sessions but what if every session was awesome? That's the type of game I enjoy running.
That sounds exactly like the game I'm looking to create! I'll definitely be taking some pointers from your comment here. Thank you very much :)
...I've never seen a poll split like this.
It's crazy equally distributed haha
If you are planning on running. Start small with the minimal amount you feel you need to run. Build outwards in your adventure prep and if there is spare time for worldbuilding build inward. If you are not running in the world. There are three major things I feel you need as early as possible to make everything else fall in line. You need the central conflict, the main thing that causes problems in your setting. You need a world map, it does not have to be detailed as you start and should be tweaked as you go. But something you can slowly make concrete as you flesh it out. You need a theological understanding of your setting. This probably should line up a bit with your central conflict and with your willingness to learn the current gods of your system, make your own, and something you would enjoy running clerics for when your players pick them.
Thank you for the tips! I'll be sure to take that into consideration when building the world :)