Do you have a personal custom Hub Town in your head ?

[Pugwampy]

Where do your players meet in session 1 ? Do you just use DND geographical locations with all the lore it comes with ?
Do you make something yourself or maybe a little bit of both ?

I myself use the Faerun map but from there I do my own custom town as i like . 2 examples .

I use the location Palaschuk in the land of Damara the "lore" says its just a tourist attraction . I made an underground half orc city hub with lots o colourful Npc,s . The above ground seems like a hovel of Half Orc shacks and a tavern . Underground looks an abandoned dwarf ruins that half orcs moved into . Players do the cliche start in a tavern called the S....e and Bite run by an elderly grotesque Halforc Female called GarMum . Mum Keeps the peace by either beating up players or calling her dire wolf babies S....e and Bite to take care of them .


My second location hub is on the island of Chult aka Dinosaur land . It is a Liliput fey realm called Tamual . The players dont meet in a tavern they all lost their memories a year ago and are just part of the community . Currently its divided into two sections a miniscule town called tiny town and a Lilipution size part called giantland . Ruled by twin fairy queens Sparkle Bottom and Escargo Pudding . Players go through warp portals that make them Human size when they exit the fey realm . Size is relative in Tamual . The peace is maintained by wild magic dust which anything can happen if tossed at naughty players . The only folk who can restore the players would be the queens .



Naturally i have a generic back up hub town or two if new players find my unusual hubs to be a little bit too wild . A Dwarf town called Stone town and a human town called Griffinford .

What have you guys got in your heads that plays over and over and over ?

[Biggus]

Nothing quite as interesting as yours, but I do have a town called Pullara I start new players in, which began life in my first homebrew world of Solvia but which now also has a remarkably similar twin in Faerun. It's a small town on the border of the wilds which always has work for mercenaries...sorry, adventurers protecting against monster attacks on the outlying farms. There's a surly but honest sheriff called Bucolius who gives out the jobs and occasionally helps them out if necessary. He's known as "the unluckiest sheriff in the world" due to my skill at rolling extremely low at critical moments. On one occasion he failed four consecutive rolls against fear when he only needed a five to succeed on a d20, which the players never let him live down.

As this topic doesn't appear to be 3E specific, would it be better in the general roleplaying section?

[Pugwampy]

Nothing quite as interesting as yours, but I do have a town called Pullara I start new players in, which began life in my first homebrew world of Solvia but which now also has a remarkably similar twin in Faerun. It's a small town on the border of the wilds which always has work for mercenaries...sorry, adventurers protecting against monster attacks on the outlying farms. There's a surly but honest sheriff called Bucolius who gives out the jobs and occasionally helps them out if necessary. He's known as "the unluckiest sheriff in the world" due to my skill at rolling extremely low at critical moments. On one occasion he failed four consecutive rolls against fear when he only needed a five to succeed on a d20, which the players never let him live down.

As this topic doesn't appear to be 3E specific, would it be better in the general roleplaying section?


Pullara sounds pretty good bro . The town and world and sheriff they belong to you alone and any player you invite into that world .

As for appropriate section i am sure the mods will move it if its a problem .

[Elkad]

I bought T1 when it was a brand new module. I'll admit to re-using Hommlet a lot since then, rather than a creation of my own. Oh, I've changed it somewhat over the years, but the core is still there.

When a decade after that module was published I read the 2nd Paksenarrion book and saw Elizabeth Moon had done the same (and changed it even less than me), I found it rather entertaining.

[redking]

Raven's Ruin! Just kick out Raven at the end of the adventure and claim the lands around the castle. That is a great way to get the PCs involved in the conflict on the borderlands between civilization and barbarism.

[pabelfly]

Raven's Ruin! Just kick out Raven at the end of the adventure and claim the lands around the castle. That is a great way to get the PCs involved in the conflict on the borderlands between civilization and barbarism.

This sounds like an interesting adventure. The closest I'm finding is "Assault on Raven's Ruin" for 2e, is that the one you're talking about?

[redking]

This sounds like an interesting adventure. The closest I'm finding is "Assault on Raven's Ruin" for 2e, is that the one you're talking about?

Yes but it's for basic D&D not 2E. You can adapt Raven's Ruin pretty easily for any setting. Just drop it in there.

[Pugwampy]

I'll admit to re-using Hommlet a lot since then, rather than a creation of my own.

I vaguely know Hommlet . Its from GreyHawk and has a temple to St Cuthbert .



Raven's Ruin! Just kick out Raven at the end of the adventure and claim the lands around the castle. That is a great way to get the PCs involved in the conflict on the borderlands between civilization and barbarism.

I need to google that i know nothing of Ravens Ruin . Probably before my time .

[Firechanter]

Yeah kinda. I have three or so default settlements that I mix and match depending on campaign focus and character backgrounds when I run a game in my homebrew setting. The main idea is that there are two continents; one is a flowering advanced civilization, the other a monster-infested wilderness with a couple of points of light in the darkness.

- one little village, as yet unnamed, by the shores of a lake and near the mountain range that constitutes the northwestern border of The Empire, and the frontier to the northern wilderness. A road leads to a port city in the east (see below).
It offers various small-time opportunities: PCs can come from here, or from the neighbouring country beyond the mountains, or from other places; there are bandits and certain monsters in the north. They might work as caravan guards protecting grain deliveries to the east.

- that larger city at the east coast lends itself as the starting place for more urban and/or bookish types. Here we have a magic university, a warrior academy and various temples.with cloister schools. There are sea connections to other cities of the Empire. And more importantly, to the largely unsettled continent across the sea.

-- This aforementioned eastern continent is known as the "Old World"; it used to be the home of several civilized nations, until it was struck by escalating calamities about 500 years ago and had to be evacuated. The Empire and various other countries on the western continent (New World) were established by refugees from the Old World, which now harbours only a small number of strongholds between untamed, monster-infested wilderness. Recently, the Empire has begun an effort to reclaim the old home, and established a couple of bridgeheads on the Old World's western shore.

- which finally leads us to the most important hub in my game, the city of New Ryganon. It is located in a well-protected inlet on the west coast of the Old World. Despite its low age (just a few years), it is surprisingly well developed, thanks to extensive use of a Lyre of Building. New settlers enjoy a number of benefits, such as tax breaks and free real estate. Adventurers are welcome to sign up with the Exploratory Service, which assigns and coordinates missions and facilitates the conversion of recovered treasure into useful equipment. This remains the main hub for a good part of the campaign.

["Rygannon Exploratory Service" shamelessly ripped off the old Privateer 1 game; it just has a nice ring to it]

[atemu1234]

I used to be big on homebrewed settings, but as my free time waned and exhaustion waxed, I've switched to running APs for Pathfinder but adding in stuff I find interesting, and basically have made an 'alternate timeline' for the Golarion campaign setting that contains every campaign I've run thusfar in it - it helps that I've had a consistent group, more or less, since high school.

My favorite bit thusfar is the results of writing Talingarde from the Way of the Wicked setting into the ocean near the Inner Sea, and retconning it into the history of neighboring countries. I'm also working on writing various Elder Evils from 3.5 in. As time goes on, I plan on introducing Mind Flayers into the Darklands from whenever I get around to running a Ragnora Elder Evil campaign, and right now I'm running Age of Worms, with the setting rewritten.