Creating My Own D&D Lore

[Bartmanhomer]

Is it easy or hard to create your own D&D lore? :confused:

[EisenKreutzer]

Is it easy or hard to create your own D&D lore? :confused:

As in bullding a campaign world, creating gods and legends, writing a history and setting the stage for drama and adventure in the setting?
For me, it’s easy. It just comes to me naturally as I sit down to write, or when I’m out walking, or about to go to sleep, or doing some mindless repetitive task or something like that.
Worldbuilding is a hobby of mine, in many ways. I build worlds all the time, often without even meaning to. Something inspires me, and ten minutes later I’ve built a world in my head.

[weckar]

I agree. To me, building worlds is easy. Building stories within those worlds is hard.

[Bartmanhomer]

As in bullding a campaign world, creating gods and legends, writing a history and setting the stage for drama and adventure in the setting?
For me, it’s easy. It just comes to me naturally as I sit down to write, or when I’m out walking, or about to go to sleep, or doing some mindless repetitive task or something like that.
Worldbuilding is a hobby of mine, in many ways. I build worlds all the time, often without even meaning to. Something inspires me, and ten minutes later I’ve built a world in my head.
Oh wow. That's awesome. :smile:

[RNightstalker]

It can be hard for some people, but you just need to keep good notes as you're inevitably going to have to come up with stuff on the fly, and deal with knucklehead PC's like myself that can't wait to catch you in a contradiction:biggrin:

[Bartmanhomer]

It can be hard for some people, but you just need to keep good notes as you're inevitably going to have to come up with stuff on the fly, and deal with knucklehead PC's like myself that can't wait to catch you in a contradiction:biggrin:

Well I'm planning on building my own world in D&D 3.5 setting. I guess I have to be on my toes to keep the game going. :biggrin:

[RNightstalker]

Well I'm planning on building my own world in D&D 3.5 setting. I guess I have to be on my toes to keep the game going. :biggrin:

I hope it's successful, one people like to play.

[Bartmanhomer]

I hope it's successful, one people like to play.

Well it's a work in progress. We will see. :wink:

[EndlessKng]

There are some great videos on YouTube (probably not-so-great ones too, but try them all and see what makes sense); search for Worldbuilding. The thing to keep in mind is to decide how much you're porting over from existing lore and how much is from scratch. Are you keeping iconic monsters (i.e. Mind Flayers, Beholders, etc) and if so what changes are you making to them? Are you taking rumors from existing settings and making them real? How aware are your players of the existing lore? And how far are you willing to step away?

Two examples I particularly enjoy of breaking hard while keeping elements are Keith Baker's Eberron and John Wick's Wicked Fantasy. The former is an official D&D setting that won a contest to, well, make a setting back in the 2000s. One principle was that anything in an official D&D book could be in Eberron somewhere. The setting was intentionally designed to be flexible. It kept certain core ideas, but also changed things around - the Dark Elves of Xendrik aren't the same as other dark elves for instance (still tend towards worshiping gods of evil and darkness, but not a matriarchal-bordering-on-actual-misandrist society, and also being focused on survival in a harsh land), and they're only one change. Wicked Fantasy took a lot of fantasy tropes and turned them on their head for Pathfinder - Humans are the old race, with the others arising only recently; dwarves are a sexless race that cannot reproduce on their own and thus are dying, but are trying to rally a charge against an evil enemy beneath the earth; the elves come in many varieties, but Dark Elves are not a natural subrace but rather a result of a deal made by those elves bound by iron and cut off from their natural habitat as a result; halflings as pint-size protectors of the world and major players therein; and orcs basically being Klingons, including myths of killing their gods, all amongst other things. The races are familiar, but with huge twists to them that make you rethink them.

Of course, these are just two examples. Go find your own, and best of luck!

[Katie Boundary]

It depends on the individual. Some people are great at spitting out random or pseuso-random data, as if there's a computer program inside their heads that can procedurally generate whatever they want from continents to monsters. Other people can't do that worth a damn, and are good at making use of existing data instead (finding it, remembering it, organizing it, detecting and extending patterns, drawing logical conclusions, etc).

I fall into that second category. If I ever decided to DM, I'd have to rely on the pre-designed modules like Scourge of the Howling Horde and The Sunless Citadel, and if my players did anything unexpected, I'd be totally screwed.

Player: "I ignore the dungeon and wander into the nearby forest. What do I find?"

Me: "Ummmm... trees."

Player: "What kind of trees?"

Me: "...the kind with leaves on them? I don't know."


Or I could bring a friend along to do all the random detail generation.