Tell me about your homebrewed, fandom themed campaigns!

[beckyangelix]

My friends and I always talk about running an atypically set 3.5 game, but never get around to it. Unfortunately, my strengths and interests lie in medieval history, so I never want to branch out too far.

However, a lot of my players have expressed interest in running Avatar: The Last Airbender campaigns, Pirates of the Caribbean campaigns, and lots more. While it was generally agreed upon that nobody would be allowed to play canon characters, we could still use them as NPCs (on rare occasions), but mostly as villains. I mean, who wouldn't want to fight Fire Lord Ozai in D&D?! I think most people just wanted to use the settings and some of the themes (we went so far as to homebrew all the bender classes and that was fun, though we could never make Air very useful).

Have you ever run a fandom-based campaign? I know Song of Fire and Ice, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings settings already exist under d20 systems, but have you ever homebrewed your own?

[GilesTheCleric]

I ran a game set in LE Modesitt Jr's Saga of Recluse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saga_of_Recluce) world. None of the players were familiar with the setting, so there was no problem stepping on the toes of the plot. It ended up being mostly helpful as a guide for me to set up encounters and do world-building with rather than trying to immerse the players in the setting. However, that would have changed if the game had been less politically-focused and more about exploring and fighting.

I did begin work on a homebrew setting guide (https://www.dropbox.com/s/j9g1vpzxffouzon/Colours%20of%20Chaos%20mk6.pdf?dl=0) for it that I should really finish or convert to PF/5e at some point.

The key difference the Recluse setting has to typical D&D is that magic is more common, and depending on what part of the history you're in, society runs on a magiscience basis (but not magipunk like eberron). There's social and cultural implications to using magic that vary by era and nation. There's also an emphasis on nation-states run by atypical and varied regimes -- empires, theocracies, parliamentary nations, druid... nations, even "nations" that are run by the earth itself through the unintelligent beasts that live on its lands.

Edit: I should note that Recluse can fit into a standard D&D game fairly easily:The premise of the setting is that the "Rats" (rationalists; think Zeon from Gundam 0079) were having a giant space battle with the "Angels" (Federation from Gundam), and one ship from each side was planeshifted into another dimension. The ships crashed on a planet in this new universe during different times in its history, a planet whose existence until that point was much like dark ages europe, plus the printing press.

The survivors from the crashed ships had to survive on the new planet, but had a bit of technical advantage starting out. However, they find that physics work differently in the new universe (physics are similar to our own in their original universe, so no magic), and that magic exists. They are able to blend their high tech with the magic, and thus do very well for themselves.

Hundreds of years later, the Rat's knowledge of technology has helped to create a vast empire (basically Rome to a "t"), but of course like Rome it overextends and the great amount of power it had amassed became its undoing. The empire falls, and the whole world goes back several tech levels. In the centuries post-fall, magic becomes more popular than technology.

In short, it slots easily into a Spelljammer/ Planescape setting. I did actually put some crashed spelljammers into my game, which the party came very close to finding.