Your Campaign

[Chubbs Malone]

Hello friends,

I was just curious as to how many of you play/DM campaigns that are homemade, opposed to using a pre-gen world/story such as Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Rise of Tiamat, etc?

Personally, I have only played and DM'd homemade campaigns - some roughly based on D&D canon settings and some completely imagined and separate.

Looking forward to hearing your responses!

-Chubbs :smallsmile:

[stitchlipped]

I generally prefer to make my own settings, the process of fleshing out the setting is a large part of the fun for me.

That said, my next campaign will be set in Forgotten Realms - however, it is an alternate timeline version of the Realms that my group has been playing in for years and is drastically different to the official timeline. I'll also be setting it in a previously undiscovered continent so I'll have a lot of freedom to make stuff up.

[randomodo]

I've done both homebrew and Forgotten Realms.

At present, I'm working on a more-or-less Mystara* campaign, taking place in Karameikos just after it gains independence from the Thyatian Empire.

Planning on it being a bit gritty: In addition to exploration and traditional sorts of adventures, I'll have a lot of conflict and friction between ethnic Tradalans (or whatever the natives are called) and ethnic Thyatians (including conflict between the native religions and the faiths that the invaders brought with them - I'm skipping the whole "Immortals" concept that Basic D&D did, but haven't quite ironed out the full details on the religions).

This will work much better if I can convince most players to be human, since they'll be either natives or Thyatians (or mixed, which has excellent storyline potential).

Campaign will be semi-sandbox, starting with a minor Thyatian noble being rewarded/exiled to a new demense in the wilderness north of Ft Doom. This sets up options for the PCs to deal with:
- Exploring the area
- Winning over (or subjugating) the locals, who aren't initally too pleased by the idea of an ethnically-Thyatian overlord moving into the area
- Dealing with suspicious halflings from the Shires across the nearby border
- Handling covert sabotage and problems stirred up by agents of the Black Eagle Barony
- Opportunities to either wipe out, ally with, or come to some sort of agreement with one or more nearby goblin tribes (some tribes of which will be happy to use PCs as catspaws to try and weaken rival tribes)

Whether I do any sort of Kingmaker-style domain management will depend on whether the players want to do so. And whether I feel like porting over rules if they do.

--
*I'm ditching the Native American knock-off country, but haven't decided what to put in its place; the cheesy fantasy Hawaii tourist islands I'll do something else with; and Glantri will still be a magocracy, but won't ban clerics/divine magic outright.

[Yorrin]

I started out with a homebrew setting that used Greyhawk dieties, and have slowly transitioned over to a wholly homebrew setting. In my 7ish years of DMing the only pregen I have run is the 3.5 remake of Tomb of Horrors with a couple of re-fluffs.

[archaeo]

I am slooooooowly working on the details of a homebrewed setting. I am unashamed to admit that it's basically an idea I've been nursing since the 7th grade, though it's come a long way since it was a rehash of Chrono Trigger mixed with the first 30 minutes of Suikoden. :smallbiggrin: Hopefully, I'll even get the chance to run it someday!

@randomodo: In my setting, I've just refluffed "race" as "culture" and ran with it. Humans, elves, half-elves, gnomes, halflings, and dwarves are all just different flavors of "human," though the differences were probably racial millennia ago (not that the PCs will know that). Half-orcs, tieflings, and dragonborn will be one of the above races, but twisted due to the magic infecting their bloodline.

Something like this might be useful for your campaign, if you'd like to tie the PCs' background into your main conflict without restricting the mechanical advantages of various classes.

[MadGrady]

My group has always done homebrew campaigns. Our campaigns typically tend to be 85-90% social encounters, with a few combats here and there, and since a lot of the modules I have played focus a lot on combat and/or dungeon crawls, they typically don't appeal to my group. Mainly because the others systems we had made combat really complicated (GURPS, Pathfinder), so it ground the game to a halt more often than not.

However, that being said, as we switched over to 5e we are currently running through Lost Mine of Phandelver (the adventure that comes with the starter set) in an effort to get a feel for the intended balance of encounters and skills and such. My group has really enjoyed this adventure, and look forward to it each session. I attribute this to the streamlined combat that 5e brings.

But nothing compares to seeing a world you create come to life :smallbiggrin: We will always favor homebrews

[Ramshack]

While traditionally my group has run lots of Homebrew Campaigns, we've really enjoyed the Phandelver starter campaign and are enjoying HoTDQ so far.

That being said now that my Monster Manual has come in I am going to finish my Diablo campaign starting in Tristam for Diablo 1 and working through each of the games. Hopefully making it a solid 1-20 campaign.

With the story line and characters in place I will really just be creating several dungeons and boss encounters.

[mr_odd]

I started out with a homebrew setting that used Greyhawk dieties, and have slowly transitioned over to a wholly homebrew setting.

^ This ^ The players in mine just discovered Pelor and friends aren't what they thought they were.

[Baveboi]

I am running a Forgotten Realms game centered in the Lake of Steam region. It is more or less to test-run 5th with our group, but it has been really growing in on us. The idea is to pick up where 3rd ed left off, and update as needed when the FR Campaign Set comes out.

There are (so far) 3 players, and a total of 6 characters. 4 have died, all rerolled new sheets. The game is still a storytelling mess as I weave some plot hooks for the future and the players themselves dig a deeper hole in the realms.

So far we have a war going on, priests of Bane taking on the free people of the Lake of Steam. The Twisted Rune (and some independent Beholders) are controlling some Banites and causing even more strife while they cook their own nefarious plans. Some Banites summoned a demonic entity who proceeded to slaughter many evil clerics before flying away and is now plotting world domination, one small hamlet at a time. The players themselves released a Shadow Demon of Orcus which was imprisoned inside a crystal artifact in exchange for their lives (a tpk avoided by demon ex machina). On the west, the church of Cyric is dominating the political scene as well, which reduces the player's allies drastically.

[DireSickFish]

The biggest hiccup I face with homebrew worlds is defining the deities of the system. It's important because the Cleric class always has to have a god and it is a nice impact to the world. So when I made my own homebrew called the 5 isle I started with the gods.

Each island has a god and race associated with it. I have only ran 2 campaigns in the setting and both petered out eventually but were fun while they lasted. We use "generic fantasy setting" a lot as we run a lot of oneshots.

[Finieous]

I used Forgotten Realms in 2E and quite liked it. Homebrews before that, though our 1E "settings" were of the kind "Mike's World" or "John's World," and little more than frames for dungeons/modules. With more recent editions, I've returned to homebrews mostly because published settings like the Forgotten Realms have expanded so much and my eyes glaze over when I try to read them, let alone learn them well enough to really use them for a game.

[stitchlipped]

The biggest hiccup I face with homebrew worlds is defining the deities of the system. It's important because the Cleric class always has to have a god and it is a nice impact to the world. So when I made my own homebrew called the 5 isle I started with the gods.

No doubt - Gods are important.

I always start with the Creation myth - that way I get to think about the genesis of the world, the origins of the gods/outsiders and where the races came from in one fell swoop.

It can also be fun leaving ambiguity about whether it's the real story, or creating multiple creation stories which can't all be true.

[Yorrin]

It can also be fun leaving ambiguity about whether it's the real story, or creating multiple creation stories which can't all be true.

I use this quite a bit in my setting, not just for creation, but for things like the origin of races and the existence and nature of pre-human civilizations. There are at least four differing tales of why the Dark Elves exist at all.

[randomodo]

re: religion:

My last homebrew had religion as a central theme.

The dominant religion was monotheistic, with a creator sun god as the only recognized deity by humans.

The orthodox faith held that humanity was unworthy to directly worship the creator and that humans should more properly honor the prophet - an ancient hero who was believed to have used the strength of his faith to lead humanity out of bondage from an era when the world was dominated by demons.

There were numerous saints who were acceptable as well - these had been companions of the prophet. There was a pacifist healer type, a warrior, and a mystic philsopher-monk type and a couple others.

It turned out that - unknown to this crop of players - the prophet and the saints were the characters from my previous campaign, who had (over several centuries and with aggressive efforts from the church long after the deaths of the characters) been warped into being seen as semi-divine figures.

The revelation that there were in fact many gods and that the saints weren't particulary divine after all led to a lovely civil war towards the end of the campaign.

My Karameikos campaign is the first thing I've developed in a couple decades for which religion isn't particulary important yet. I'm more focused on the political and ethnic strife, but I'll throw in a lot of "pagan" native faiths vs more "advanced" Thyatian religions (along with advantages for those natives who convert to the new faith and the resultant problems that can bring) as I keep fleshing out the campaign.

[PracticalM]

I've got my own setting but I use a bunch of pre-gen modules that I have and adapt them to fit. I'm using the Greyhawk deities but I changed them all to fit into my history of the world.

[Greylind]

I have used published campaign in the past, but usually prefer to mostly homebrew. The upcoming one using 5th edition is going to be crafted from old modules heavily repurposed, and to add a little more complexity I'm setting it in Golarian, starting in the River Kingdoms.
The start of the campaign is set in a combination of T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil, B1 In Search of the Unknown, and Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. Hommlet is now a sizable town, with the Keep being the more upper-class area, and several NPC's from both T1 and RttKotB are present in one way or another. The moathouse, Quasqueton, and the Caves of Chaos are all secret staging grounds for the Temple, which is devoted to the Four Horsemen in their elemental aspects. Dealing with these should put the PC's to 5th level, by which point they should have enough clues to locate the Temple itself. I may leave out the Elemental Nodes and will definitely leave out Zuggtmoy, probably using some mid-range CR yugoloths as the big threat, along with hints that the cult of the four Horsemen is being manipulated by some outside source. . .

[Totema]

I'm currently working on building the same campaign setting as the one I've been working on since my 3.5 days. I've also played some adventures in FR, but I find it a little needlessly complex, as far as settings go.

[randomodo]

I'm currently working on building the same campaign setting as the one I've been working on since my 3.5 days. I've also played some adventures in FR, but I find it a little needlessly complex, as far as settings go.

Agreed. On those occasions when I've done FR, I've had to really zoom in on a specific area and do more low-level stories. My last one in FR was back in 2nd Edition days, and focused on adventuring in what I think is now called the Tunlands between Cormyr, the Goblin Marches and Darkhold. But no big NPC involvement, and I had to scale down all the different faction/secretish societies so only the Zhentarim made an appearance (hence the Darkhold part of the campaign).

[BW022]

I have likely DMed in a lot of settings.

Home campaigns tend to be in specific settings which the group enjoys, but I've run RPGA events in FR, Greyhawk, Eberron, Pathfinder, and Arcanis. I've run and DMed in player based campaign settings, DMed generic on-off or pickup modules for game stores or at conventions.

I tend not to bother with pre-made materials since 3.x since they tend not to fit into campaign settings well. Players are either teleporting around the map and encounters don't really fit what the players and characters might necessarily be into. Pre-made materials are typically fairly linear. I also enjoy campaigns where players explore the world... spend time in locations, meet people, see cultural differences.

That said, when playing new systems, we often use pre-made materials until we get comfortable with it. This gives players and DMs a chance to see "what is intended" and then compare it vs. actual balance, other groups opinions, etc. before starting a campaign which takes more effort to put together.

[hachface]

Most published adventurers are garbage. I almost never use them.

[LaserFace]

There is at least one thing I really dislike in just about every official setting out there, so I'm always homebrewing nowadays. I'm not against adapting modules, but I don't really have a strong desire to go out buying them. If I weren't playing with close friends, I think I would see greater appeal in the pre-generated stuff.

The setting I've been building for my 5E group is influenced by a number of fantasy settings, and I do actually borrow the aspects of D&D settings I like. For example, there are a number of Greyhawk deities scattered among my pantheons, although some have been slightly altered to better fit the cultures with which they're associated. In fact, the setting probably more closely resembles Greyhawk than any other. It's also got a bit of The Elder Scrolls and Hyborian Age mixed in, and naturally with Howard comes a little bit of Lovecraft.

I also borrow directly from mythology. I have a pantheon of a few Norse gods, and just use alternative spellings for their names. They're essentially the same gods, though, just slightly adapted to the culture.

An important aspect of my setting is very loosely-designed and open to change. I drew a regional (not world) map, and a few paragraphs to detail the various cultures that inhabit the area, and more or less leave the players to imagine what they will. I only figure out more detailed stuff as it serves the campaign ... allowing me to save time, not-go-insane, and also adapt material to the group's ambitions and play-style.

If a player isn't too interested in having a character from one of the places on my map, they are free to imagine another region and provide me with whatever details they want about where they're from, what it's like, all that. They can also just be "some foreign jerk" and leave it at that, but I try to use character info to drive stories, so I encourage them to think about it.

With pre-gen stuff, I don't feel like I have that kind of freedom. I feel like I have to be obligated to include this or that, and the players can't contribute as much of their own ideas, which might be cooler than what the setting originally allowed for. I try to maintain anyone can play anything they want if they give me good enough reason, and I don't think that works as well in a pre-gen.

[Bubzors]

My group always uses hombrewed settings. Occasionally me or the other guy who DMs might steal a cool dungeon or ideas from published settings, but that is the exception.

The only time I used a published campaign was last summer when we had a rotating group of players, some being new, and we decided to run the Red Hand of Doom. It was actually extremely fun not really having to plan much as the DM. Also enjoyed that we played it not as serious as normal since the cast kept rotating out.

"Oh Bill's not here today? Well being a weird druid he is just faffing about in the woods for.... druid reasons. Thankfully you're in town and the Duskblade has finally recovered from his hangover from last week and is ready to join"

[Sartharina]

I'm currently trying to run a game in a homebrew setting and campaign. It's roughly Greek+Viking mythology inspired.

[Steel Mirror]

Back when I was just getting started (in the days when 3E had just been released), I used a vague Greyhawk-ish setting and ran a lot of adventures out of the old dungeon magazine. Once the FR book finally came out, my friends and I got together and read through it excitedly, then promptly started up a Realms game that remains the longest I have ever DMed. Around then is also when I started doing adventures myself, with only the occasional map or scenario lifted from a published Dungeon adventure. When Eberron came out I decided to give that a try, and though I love the setting to pieces we never got a game to stick in that world.

These days I run homebrew settings, though I've run Eberron and FR again for people who requested them. In 5E specifically, I've run games for three different groups, all using the same setting that I've had marinating in the back of my mind for a while now. I don't run premade adventures anymore, though I played through a couple of them in 4E and thought that they were of a much higher quality than they were back in the day (that or the DM was just better at putting them into action than 14-year-old me was :smallwink:).

[Yagyujubei]

I've always played homebrewed campaign settings until the release of HotDQ which I'm currently participating in. The other campaign I'm in takes place on a continent called the westfold, and it has 4 different groups of PC's adventuring in it atm, it's a pretty cool dynamic that our DM has going, since everyone is affecting what happens in the world from week to week.

My group is currently in the same city as another group and were thinking of trying to take back a powerful artifact that the other group stole from a wealthy towns person.

[Gnomes2169]

While I've been running HotDQ (and likely will be for quite some time), but for the last year/ year and a half, I've been making a campaign setting (that mostly is in 3.P, I'll have to convert it to 5e soon...) that is centered in the poorly developed plane; The Void. (Mostly because they made a few interesting (and slightly unbalanced) creatures like the Void Walker and Void Hound in 3.0 and then for no apparent reason just dropped the project and moved on to other things.)

Now, when I say the Void I do not mean space or the far realms (though those would have the largest influence from the plane), I mean the Void. The original blank slate that gave birth all of creation, the plane that touches and supports every other plane... And the plane to which all of reality must one day return, to be consumed by oblivion without a trace, and then to start the cycle again.

I have it set as the "original plane" where the demiurges (Oroboros (time), Chaos, Order, Good and Evil) were given shape by the three original deities (Void, father of Creation and Oblivion), and where in turn the creation of the great O's (Ao, Io, Eo, Yo, etc... Yes, two of those are new) were born. It is also home to the original planet and star, formed by Creation and policed by Oblivion to ensure that there was some sort of balance.

When the young gods (lead by Eo, the Great Betrayer and Father of Demons) rebelled and threw off the original 3, the multiverse with all of its planes and realities were born, and the surviving overdeities moved on to their respective planes (Ao and Io to Fearun, Ebberon, etc...) and began again, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of horrors from their final war, and leaving behind three distinct factions:

-Creation, lead by the mourning mother of the gods and creator of the first world (also known as The Mother, Gaia, or simply Creation). They seek to protect their mother, who grieves for the loss of her mate (Oblivion) and all the children who died trying to slay him.

-Oblivion, lead by Eo, third born of Creation's children, the Father of Demons and the Great Traitor. After he claimed victory over his father, Eo was (ironically) stabbed in the back by his own third oldest son (Apsu) and then left for dead in the pit of that cataclysmic battlefield. This near-death experience caused the god once so obsessed with justice and what was fair to go insane, and he took his father's place at the throne of Oblivion. Now he tries to exterminate all of creation, both on the Void and in the rest of the multiverse, in the hopes that if everything is dead, the voices that call for vengeance in his head will finally be silenced...

-Void, lead by the cast-down shard of the original god itself (the mind of Void without their body or soul) the Void seeks to keep Creation and Oblivion from destroying one another, basically serving as a buffer between the two immortal armies. They do this in hopes that they may prevent the Great Imbalance that will one day destroy all of reality.

Important campaign features (Mostly plot hooks and setting details):

-The god Creation is still alive and whole, but withdrawn and grieving the loss of her parent and husband (Void and Oblivion respectively). Void as well still lives, though their mind was ripped from their body and soul, and both of those were scattered across the entire length of the infinite void. They do not remember what they once were, though the outsiders that they lead are still loyal to them. Oblivion is dead, destroyed so utterly that he lives up to his name sake... And yet, despite the sacrifice of untold millions of mortals, hundreds of demi-gods and dozens of their divine progenitors, some small scraps of Oblivion remain, echos and servants that reappear all throughout time, seeking to become whole again.

-There are children of Creation (a subspecies of dragon) who can and have gone out and made thousands of planets. These planets are the battleground for the eternal Void wars. The original planet is untouched by any side, and only one portal leads to the blasted, desolated place.

-There are "zones of control", or areas where forces of one faction or another have the most influence, granting creatures aligned with that faction a bonus so long as they stay within the zone, and giving those who are opposed to the faction a penalty. Zones of control can be land marks, large areas, important battle zones (which will constantly be in flux) and sometimes the area around a particular creature will be a zone of control (often in this last case it is a construct, and the faction with the most influence in the zone controls said construct).

-The defeated god Oblivion still seeks to return, despite having his body, mind and soul scourged from time. His avatar sometimes breaks through the barrier of reality and enters the void, whereupon Oblivion tries to... Remake himself. Given how quickly everything went to hell in a hand basket before when Oblivion was around last time, and given his plans to get his revenge on all gods in all realities once he has regained his body (including the eradication of the realities he would go to), allowing him to succeed is not recommended. (Oblivion will be a CR 30+ monster, and unlike the terrasque, actually worthy of the title. Stopping him is epic-level-only material, which is soooort of keeping me from running that campaign in 5e just yet. :smalltongue:)

-There are star-studded dragons that travel the void, and they are the body and soul of Void, shattered from the elder god by the conflict until such a time as it is able to remember what they are and realize what it once was. They consume magic to grow (and magic creatures), seem to just spawn from thin air if one of them dies, and they appear to be immortal.

-One of the horrors created by oblivion is a new species of dragon, Oblivion Dragons, who are seeking to retrieve their master from beyond time and space. Where they appear, an attempt to summon an avatar of Oblivion is sure to happen shortly. Unlike most of the other features on this list, the Oblivion dragon can appear and sink its plot hook in at any time.

-There is a traitor among the void faction that is telling oblivion pretty much everything they need to know about the void's battle plans. For the last few centuries, this has given oblivion a massive upper hand in the war, enough that oblivion was able to launch attacks against the other planes freely until void and creation allied with one another. The traitor must be found.

-After oblivion's attack against almost all of reality, the void (the plane itself) is under a dimensional lock that prevents all but the most crafty and the most powerful of creatures from entering or exiting it. If the traitor is found and stopped, an exception might be made for a group of particularly clever and plucky adventurers...

-There are three particularly powerful and important "mortals" in the void, granted immortality by Creation as a reward for their services in the younger days of reality. Two of them betrayed the elder gods, helping to cast them down to end the horrors of the creation wars. Two of them wish to keep the old gods shattered and defeated; one of them in the name of sanity and peace, the other in the name of revenge and justice. The third remains forever loyal, and seeks to undo the great wrongs done to his parents. Figuring out which one is which, and, depending on what side you are how to help them restore, contain or destroy the elder gods is a quest in and of itself.

-A man named Anterson Asper is one of the greatest war criminals in the history of the Void. Somehow finding a way to channel the powers of Oblivion, Creation and the Void at the same time, Asper created many wondrous artifacts and many terrible horrors, often both at the same time. When the forces of oblivion broke free of the Void, Asper is the one that created the dimensional lock that encases the Void. But though he stopped the invasion and paused the war within the void for a short, blissful time... It came ate a terrible price.

All the denizens of the void that were part of the invading or defending forces were left stranded, their portals and other methods of returning home destroyed. Not only that, but the destruction of the portals had a backlash that ravaged many of the worlds within the void in a cataclysmic eruption of magical energies. The zones of control on these worlds were shattered, and any beings that survived were driven mad. Asper himself has not been seen since, and is assumed to be either dead or hiding from the retribution that so many would bestow upon him. Still, many of Asper's creations and artifacts have survived, despite being lost or stolen during the wars and cataclysm, just waiting to find worthy owners...

-One of Asper's creations is Anterson Asper's Antimagic Adhesive, which does exactly what it says on the can. (Literally, it comes in cans) When applied to a creature, the adhesive makes them resilient if not out-right immune to the weaker magics of the world, and offers protection against even the greatest. Magical beings such as undead, constructs and elementals are harmed by contact with this substance, and full submersion is able to instantly destroy all but the most powerful magic beings instantly. Additionally, if enough of it is gathered in one place the antimagic adhesive can even block out the sight of the gods themselves... Making any pools of it into the perfect places for dissidents and rebels who would betray the gods to meet.

-Etc, etc.

Basically, this is a setting that is large enough to demand that I write short stories (or even a novel or two), there is a lot to do with it, and literally any other setting can be attached to it (including the other setting I have, which does not work with D&D, since magic (while powerful) is incredibly dangerous for the user in different ways for each magic source). So yeah... I have a bit of work to do with it. X3

[DiBastet]

Currently a Dark Fantasy low magic campaign. A setting a lot more medieval, mounted knights as the real terror to fight, only human characters, non-humans exist but most never saw one, people tell stories about when dragons lived on the mountains, the nobles are plotting and tearing the nation apart... that sort of thing.

[SaintRidley]

I'm testing out my own campaign world. I honestly don't much care about Greyhawk or the Realms, and Dragonlance makes better fiction than gaming, I think. Ravenloft and Dark Sun are pretty much the only established settings I care about at all, but when DMing I'd rather use my own - I'd prefer to play in those, though.


The biggest hiccup I face with homebrew worlds is defining the deities of the system. It's important because the Cleric class always has to have a god and it is a nice impact to the world. So when I made my own homebrew called the 5 isle I started with the gods.

Or you could have a godless world - they're all dead. Clerics in my campaign are all pretty much atheist clerics, because there's only one goddess, and she kills and zombifies any worshipers. When and if I actually codify the setting, clerics will be out completely and druids will be the big divine casters.

[Tenmujiin]

My group doesn't like to do much reading of fluff and so I have a lot of problems making any home-brew settings when I DM since I hate doing anything generic (I refuse to play a strength based paladin and my 3.5 warlocks, and I played warlocks a lot, were never infernal/demonic) so I tend to prefer published settings since the players usually know at least a bit about them already. I still had a heap of problems with my 4e Eberron campaign since one of my players didn't understand why he couldn't worship Pelor.

The other guy who DMs uses a home-brew but super generic fantasy setting that basic allows the players to insert whatever is required for their character but which basically results in no one really caring about the campaign world or the NPCs.

In 5e I'll probably run a heavily modified Forgotten Realms (basically just taking the map and god names/portfolios) since the information the the PHB and Lost Mines adventure along with old video games that many of the players used to play mean they have enough information to come up with backgrounds without having to read the setting while also not knowing so much about the Realms that I'm stuck using published material.

[pwykersotz]

While I've been running HotDQ (and likely will be for quite some time), but for the last year/ year and a half, I've been making a campaign setting (that mostly is in 3.P, I'll have to convert it to 5e soon...) that is centered in the poorly developed plane; The Void. (Mostly because they made a few interesting (and slightly unbalanced) creatures like the Void Walker and Void Hound in 3.0 and then for no apparent reason just dropped the project and moved on to other things.)

Now, when I say the Void I do not mean space or the far realms (though those would have the largest influence from the plane), I mean the Void. The original blank slate that gave birth all of creation, the plane that touches and supports every other plane... And the plane to which all of reality must one day return, to be consumed by oblivion without a trace, and then to start the cycle again.

I have it set as the "original plane" where the demiurges (Oroboros (time), Chaos, Order, Good and Evil) were given shape by the three original deities (Void, father of Creation and Oblivion), and where in turn the creation of the great O's (Ao, Io, Eo, Yo, etc... Yes, two of those are new) were born. It is also home to the original planet and star, formed by Creation and policed by Oblivion to ensure that there was some sort of balance.

When the young gods (lead by Eo, the Great Betrayer and Father of Demons) rebelled and threw off the original 3, the multiverse with all of its planes and realities were born, and the surviving overdeities moved on to their respective planes (Ao and Io to Fearun, Ebberon, etc...) and began again, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of horrors from their final war, and leaving behind three distinct factions:

-Creation, lead by the mourning mother of the gods and creator of the first world (also known as The Mother, Gaia, or simply Creation). They seek to protect their mother, who grieves for the loss of her mate (Oblivion) and all the children who died trying to slay him.

-Oblivion, lead by Eo, third born of Creation's children, the Father of Demons and the Great Traitor. After he claimed victory over his father, Eo was (ironically) stabbed in the back by his own third oldest son (Apsu) and then left for dead in the pit of that cataclysmic battlefield. This near-death experience caused the god once so obsessed with justice and what was fair to go insane, and he took his father's place at the throne of Oblivion. Now he tries to exterminate all of creation, both on the Void and in the rest of the multiverse, in the hopes that if everything is dead, the voices that call for vengeance in his head will finally be silenced...

-Void, lead by the cast-down shard of the original god itself (the mind of Void without their body or soul) the Void seeks to keep Creation and Oblivion from destroying one another, basically serving as a buffer between the two immortal armies. They do this in hopes that they may prevent the Great Imbalance that will one day destroy all of reality.

Important campaign features (Mostly plot hooks and setting details):

-The god Creation is still alive and whole, but withdrawn and grieving the loss of her parent and husband (Void and Oblivion respectively). Void as well still lives, though their mind was ripped from their body and soul, and both of those were scattered across the entire length of the infinite void. They do not remember what they once were, though the outsiders that they lead are still loyal to them. Oblivion is dead, destroyed so utterly that he lives up to his name sake... And yet, despite the sacrifice of untold millions of mortals, hundreds of demi-gods and dozens of their divine progenitors, some small scraps of Oblivion remain, echos and servants that reappear all throughout time, seeking to become whole again.

-There are children of Creation (a subspecies of dragon) who can and have gone out and made thousands of planets. These planets are the battleground for the eternal Void wars. The original planet is untouched by any side, and only one portal leads to the blasted, desolated place.

-There are "zones of control", or areas where forces of one faction or another have the most influence, granting creatures aligned with that faction a bonus so long as they stay within the zone, and giving those who are opposed to the faction a penalty. Zones of control can be land marks, large areas, important battle zones (which will constantly be in flux) and sometimes the area around a particular creature will be a zone of control (often in this last case it is a construct, and the faction with the most influence in the zone controls said construct).

-The defeated god Oblivion still seeks to return, despite having his body, mind and soul scourged from time. His avatar sometimes breaks through the barrier of reality and enters the void, whereupon Oblivion tries to... Remake himself. Given how quickly everything went to hell in a hand basket before when Oblivion was around last time, and given his plans to get his revenge on all gods in all realities once he has regained his body (including the eradication of the realities he would go to), allowing him to succeed is not recommended. (Oblivion will be a CR 30+ monster, and unlike the terrasque, actually worthy of the title. Stopping him is epic-level-only material, which is soooort of keeping me from running that campaign in 5e just yet. :smalltongue:)

-There are star-studded dragons that travel the void, and they are the body and soul of Void, shattered from the elder god by the conflict until such a time as it is able to remember what they are and realize what it once was. They consume magic to grow (and magic creatures), seem to just spawn from thin air if one of them dies, and they appear to be immortal.

-One of the horrors created by oblivion is a new species of dragon, Oblivion Dragons, who are seeking to retrieve their master from beyond time and space. Where they appear, an attempt to summon an avatar of Oblivion is sure to happen shortly. Unlike most of the other features on this list, the Oblivion dragon can appear and sink its plot hook in at any time.

-There is a traitor among the void faction that is telling oblivion pretty much everything they need to know about the void's battle plans. For the last few centuries, this has given oblivion a massive upper hand in the war, enough that oblivion was able to launch attacks against the other planes freely until void and creation allied with one another. The traitor must be found.

-After oblivion's attack against almost all of reality, the void (the plane itself) is under a dimensional lock that prevents all but the most crafty and the most powerful of creatures from entering or exiting it. If the traitor is found and stopped, an exception might be made for a group of particularly clever and plucky adventurers...

-There are three particularly powerful and important "mortals" in the void, granted immortality by Creation as a reward for their services in the younger days of reality. Two of them betrayed the elder gods, helping to cast them down to end the horrors of the creation wars. Two of them wish to keep the old gods shattered and defeated; one of them in the name of sanity and peace, the other in the name of revenge and justice. The third remains forever loyal, and seeks to undo the great wrongs done to his parents. Figuring out which one is which, and, depending on what side you are how to help them restore, contain or destroy the elder gods is a quest in and of itself.

-A man named Anterson Asper is one of the greatest war criminals in the history of the Void. Somehow finding a way to channel the powers of Oblivion, Creation and the Void at the same time, Asper created many wondrous artifacts and many terrible horrors, often both at the same time. When the forces of oblivion broke free of the Void, Asper is the one that created the dimensional lock that encases the Void. But though he stopped the invasion and paused the war within the void for a short, blissful time... It came ate a terrible price.

All the denizens of the void that were part of the invading or defending forces were left stranded, their portals and other methods of returning home destroyed. Not only that, but the destruction of the portals had a backlash that ravaged many of the worlds within the void in a cataclysmic eruption of magical energies. The zones of control on these worlds were shattered, and any beings that survived were driven mad. Asper himself has not been seen since, and is assumed to be either dead or hiding from the retribution that so many would bestow upon him. Still, many of Asper's creations and artifacts have survived, despite being lost or stolen during the wars and cataclysm, just waiting to find worthy owners...

-One of Asper's creations is Anterson Asper's Antimagic Adhesive, which does exactly what it says on the can. (Literally, it comes in cans) When applied to a creature, the adhesive makes them resilient if not out-right immune to the weaker magics of the world, and offers protection against even the greatest. Magical beings such as undead, constructs and elementals are harmed by contact with this substance, and full submersion is able to instantly destroy all but the most powerful magic beings instantly. Additionally, if enough of it is gathered in one place the antimagic adhesive can even block out the sight of the gods themselves... Making any pools of it into the perfect places for dissidents and rebels who would betray the gods to meet.

-Etc, etc.

Basically, this is a setting that is large enough to demand that I write short stories (or even a novel or two), there is a lot to do with it, and literally any other setting can be attached to it (including the other setting I have, which does not work with D&D, since magic (while powerful) is incredibly dangerous for the user in different ways for each magic source). So yeah... I have a bit of work to do with it. X3

That's a pretty sweet setup. Very nicely done.

[Nevereatcars]

I stole a map of Neverwinter, teleported the whole city into the Ethereal Plane, and filled it with crime lords. Unfortunately, I can't call it a "campaign" yet, since only one session has been played, and I built it as a combat/skill use tutorial for three brand new players.

[jkat718]

While I've been running HotDQ (and likely will be for quite some time), but for the last year/ year and a half, I've been making a campaign setting (that mostly is in 3.P, I'll have to convert it to 5e soon...) that is centered in the poorly developed plane; The Void. *snip*

O.o This...is...AMAZING. Have you thought about using a site such as http://www.obsidianportal.com/ to record your setting notes? Everything you've written sounds makes me think that this is something that I'd love to watch as it develops. Please, keep me/us updated. :smallbiggrin:

[KiltieMacPipes]

My setting is the Greyhawk setting after an epoch has passed. Most of the deities are ascended mortals that gained power after the God Wars when the major Greyhawk deities fell defending the cosmos from the forces of chaos from beyond the edge of reality (this is where aberrations come from). This plunged the planes into a Dark Age that took thousands of years to get back to where it is now, which is a few powerful city-states surrounded by endless hostile wilderness.

Cosmically, the primary strife is between order and chaos, but players generally are more concerned with good-evil. There is much more, but i'm still fleshing it out (and probably will be til I die).

[Naanomi]

My world is formally a prime contained in the Planescape setting I guess... but very homebrewed; and it has been the setting of campaigns off and on since 1990 or so; and has changed a lot in that time as there tends to be big jumps in 'history' between campaigns.

In the primordial age of the world, a being from beyond the cosmos (revealed in 3.5 era by some players to be the 'destruction' part of a 'creator-maintainer-destroyer' deity-like being from an Alternative Cosmology beyond the Deep Shadow Plane) that had the ability to 'un-name' things and utterly destroy both them and the memory of that thing... including Gods. A powerful elemental God that barely escaped it used the Prime of the campaign setting as a 'prison', cutting it off from the rest of the world through various aspects and setting guards to maintain the physical portions of the plane (Dragons and Djinn, the latter of which eventually rebelled against the idea).

One of the key features of my world is that with the world under constant threat of a God-Slaying 'Silence', there have been very few true Powers in play; and for much of world's history a tiny hand-full of 'Totems' that were *known* by many worshipers to be not 'real' Gods were worshiped as conduits the Older generation of Gods had built to channel Divine energy secretly to the world (and get dead Souls off of the world periodically) even when other planar contact had failed.

The end of the last long campaign had the Epic-level players using the energy of the Totem-Gods to more directly seal away the 'Great Silence'; and the new campaign has been dealing with the consequences of that... a new Pantheon of real Gods has arisen (Seventeen, based off of sixteen 'druidic spirits' previously tending the 3.5 'Spirit Shaman' class; and the Totem of the Death that managed to 'survive' and incarnate as a real Power)... and more directly the political effects of the war against the Silence leaving the old empires (dwarves, elves, and giants) almost completely shattered and the grand alliance to work against the agents of the Silence having no reason to keep global peace any more; so human and goblinoid empires are exploding into conflict everywhere trying to become the dominant players in the Age of the New Gods.

In fact, the main plot of the current campaign is working against the Cult of the Silence Reborn; an agency trying to free the Great Silence (or perhaps just convince people they have) in an attempt to create peace in the world by giving the world it's common enemy back.

[Freelance GM]

I'm a huge fan of spring-boarding my campaigns off of a premade adventure, or tying in premade adventures every once in a while.

However, about 70% of the stuff I DM is original content, and unless I'm DM'ing for organized play, like D&D: Encounters, it's adapted for my homebrewed setting, which uses an assortment of iconic D&D deities I like, and original ones to fill in gaps in the pantheon.

The last campaign I started actually springboarded off of the D&D: Next playtest conversion of the Caves of Chaos.

...One year of play later, they've found out that the cult from the Caves of Chaos were part of a much larger group. The cult's responsible for orchestrating several recent events in my setting- including the rise of a criminal empire called the Slave Lords (yes, THOSE Slave Lords), and a civil war in the northern reaches of the borderlands (original content). References to the Temple of Elemental Evil were made (the Orb of Oblivion is a major MacGuffin), and the wherever the PC's appear, Cultists with a black spiral emblazoned on their robes are fleeing the scene.

All in all, the setting is my take on the idea behind 4E's points of light- a melting pot of my favorite parts of D&D, with original content thrown in to give it a distinct flavor. The lore is comfortably familiar to people who've played in other settings, but simple enough for new players to get into. This makes it easy to plug in monsters, adventures, and characters from any setting and easily convert them for my own world. Which, as a DM, saves me a lot of time when I'm planning a campaign.

[Gnomes2169]

That's a pretty sweet setup. Very nicely done.

O.o This...is...AMAZING. Have you thought about using a site such as http://www.obsidianportal.com/ to record your setting notes? Everything you've written sounds makes me think that this is something that I'd love to watch as it develops. Please, keep me/us updated. :smallbiggrin:

Thank you both! And this is actually the first time I've heard of Obsidion Portal... I can't run it on my phone, but I think I'll start getting things down there once I have some downtime with my computer. :smallbiggrin: Thanks for the tip!

[Tzi]

I do homebrews pretty much exclusively, though I've been known to BORROW concepts from other campaigns and modules.

In my current campaign there are a lot of story threads going on.
1) A small village in the western province may have made an eldritch bargain (Very Innsmouth feel)
2) A strange plague has spread in the western counties of the area. This plague may be tied to the events of the small village or the village events are tied to the plague. A strange flesh devouring virus has spread and many towns are decimated and areas are derelict. Likewise some Necromancers are drawn to the area, OR are responsible for it.
3) A labor uprising has begun and the government has been partially deposed. Eastern county lumber mills and loggers as well as mining workers were organized into what is loosely called "Hilda's Army," named for the middle aged Half Elf Hilda of Brimsholme. She had long been a hard liner among the laborers but after two mining tragedies and the lack luster response of managers to compensate the injured and a general sense that the leavers of power will not address the grievances has stocked the flames of rebellion. The DSU, Democratic Socialist Union, has formed out of several groups electing the popular Hilda as a nominal head of State. The plague in the Western Counties has fostered an aura of suspicion that the plague was created to kill the "Glorious Revolution." To a large part the East is locked in Anarchy and in some areas witch hunts.
4) The Northern areas are effectively mostly Dark Elf towns and villages which have kept out of the conflict but the rising undead in the west gives them pause as they worry about fortifying their holdings.

All this is going on as the Party begins their adventure as recruits to replace a downed telegraph line, the area were all this is happened was completely cut off and the outside world has no clue whats going on. The last news from the region to reach the outside world was of a small disease outbreak in a farming community, an accident at the Eastvale mine, and the town of Irvine in the West being in some locked dispute with nearby Kelsholme.

I like doing my own campaigns, mainly because I like to really engineer a lot of story threads that give the players a sense of living breathing area that is on a course before they got there AND in theory things would progress without them. Meaning they have to also fight for general relevance to the world around them.

[azoetia]

I always used to homebrew my own campaigns. I'd spend hours world building, creating maps, settlements, npcs, quests, custom monsters, the whole nine yards. Inevitably, the more effort I put into a world, the more likely it was that the group would fall apart due to IRL stuff. Two players who are dating break up. Someone gets his work schedule shifted so that his days off don't match anyone else's. The place where we're playing ends up unavailable because of the player's elderly, disabled, goes-to-bed-at-9pm mother moving in. It's always chaos with my friends and when I put in a lot of work it usually goes to aggravating waste. Of course when we get the group back together months later nobody wants to pick up where they left off.

So nowadays I run adventure modules.

Everyone: "We want to play D&D again!"
Me: "Excellent. Who's going to DM?"
Everyone: "You are."
Me: *crosses arms* "We're doing Tyranny of Dragons, then."

This isn't to say that I don't still world build. I do enjoy it, just not in huge crunches to get ready for a session. I'm slowly developing a pure sandbox region focused around a city that is full to the brim of stuff that players can do and NPCs with whom they can interact in any sequence they want that can be handled as a potentially infinite series of connected one-offs. No overarching theme or goal. One day I may have it developed enough to actually use but I'm not in any rush.

[MadGrady]

The campaign I am planning now will be run with 5e, but will take place in Pathfinder's world of Golarion. The source material is just so rich bountiful (plus I have a ton of those books already......) that it will allow me to enrich the world without having to spend a lot of time actually designing the world. The campaign will be Pirate Themed, and will center on a Captain and her crew who are a part of the Andoran navy that hunts down slavers. As they are sent out on their first mission to put a stop to a notorious slaver in the area, they will encounter the larger plot that has been at work behind the scenes. hehehe

Wanting it to have a very Pirates of the Caribbean theme mixed with medieval fantasy. Really looking forward to it

[MadGrady]

I always used to homebrew my own campaigns. I'd spend hours world building, creating maps, settlements, npcs, quests, custom monsters, the whole nine yards. Inevitably, the more effort I put into a world, the more likely it was that the group would fall apart due to IRL stuff. Two players who are dating break up. Someone gets his work schedule shifted so that his days off don't match anyone else's. The place where we're playing ends up unavailable because of the player's elderly, disabled, goes-to-bed-at-9pm mother moving in. It's always chaos with my friends and when I put in a lot of work it usually goes to aggravating waste. Of course when we get the group back together months later nobody wants to pick up where they left off.

Sadly, I too have experienced such waste. :smallfrown: