1. A from scratch world builder. Original maps, adventures, locations, NPC's, the works!
2. I play from the sourcebooks using established locations and adventures.
3. Some sort of mix of the two.
I fall under the last. An original world, with maps etc, but I like to use adventure sourcebooks and modules with appropriate locations and whatnot changed to fit my world. I used to do everything from scratch but I just don't have the time for that anymore. I've currently fit the Dungeon of the Mad Mage under my capital city.
1. A from scratch world builder. Original maps, adventures, locations, NPC's, the works!
2. I play from the sourcebooks using established locations and adventures.
3. Some sort of mix of the two.
I fall under the last. An original world, with maps etc, but I like to use adventure sourcebooks and modules with appropriate locations and whatnot changed to fit my world. I used to do everything from scratch but I just don't have the time for that anymore. I've currently fit the Dungeon of the Mad Mage under my capital city.
Depends on the campaign type. Depends on the players and what they wanted to have based off informal polling of them for their expectations prior to character build session 0 prior to possible session 0.5s depending on answers.
just depends. But for the most part I lean 1 unless it’s a module or a intentional build off a module like fan fiction style of “what happens next”
I do not generally like the official worlds, especially the 2 flagship worlds (Eberron and Forgotten Realms). Heck I don't like the way they do the planes either -- too many, too complicated. I start with my own multiverse and build down from there.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
100% in agreement with BioWizard. That's exactly what I do as well - and I do a new one for each campaign. Although I tend to build from the party out, not the Planes down ( I'm big into build only what you need around what the needs of the Party's actions and travels are ).
I just really like making up worlds and watching people explore them :)
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I tend to use published materials for their "good parts" simply changing names/locations to fit the world. For learning a new system, I"ll start with something straight out of the box, and then "move it" into the world I want. I rarely introduce the BBEG until the party has done something to actually merit notice.
Current campaigns include: Custom world with 25 custom races, which uses plot lines and side quests ripped from published adventures modified to fit the world and needs of the plot/quest, the "campaign world" of Flanaess, which is on its 12th campaign going back 36 years which has DM rotation, a "learning campaign using LMoP/DoIP but with names changed and only using a "close-up map so surrounding cities/features are not seen, the newbies are exploring lore to see if there is anything in particular they want to do so I can then "make" the start fit into any regular fantasy world easy enough, and then playing in a Realms game with a DM who only does Realms or Conan settings.
I normally uses number 1 because I feel I can’t deal with the lore of the main worlds
There is a LOT of it, especially FR. And it is spread all over the place, so you have to consult multiple disparate sources to get all the information you need. To make matters worse, it is published in what appears (to the end user, at least) to be a random order. It's not like they go from east to west, continent by continent or region by region. The information is fragmentary, and my guess is this is probably by design -- so you have to buy ALL the books to get a clear picture of Faerun. And good luck with any of the other continents (or worlds other than FR). It would be maddening to try and keep track of and organize it all by yourself as an end user, and I suspect hardly anyone does.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
That's both a benefit, and a challenge to building your own. You can create the lore you need as you need it ( although that's not the same as spuriously making up stuff on the spot without any consideration as to whether it's consistent with everything else, or can cause problems down the line ). However, you really need to keep that lore organized and accessible for when it becomes larger than you can hold in your head.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I am 96% a number 1. I am not afraid (and I would suggest that other not to be) of "stealing" maps and ideas for persons, places & things. There are so many cool maps available, that one should be able to find something out there - unless you are heavily invested into mapping... Take those, village, town, city, dungeon & site maps and make them your own. That being said, I am trying to map out the campaign world. I must admit I am struggling a little to do that.
My main reasons for being a number 1 is that I find many IP worlds, well terrible. Granted this is all based on my personal taste. The gods are a mishmash of multiple terrestrial pantheons, the roles of the gods make no sense. And other than a few very demented cultists, who could worship some of the gods in those IPs. Many worlds are also too high fantastical for my tastes, like Ebberon.
The thing that speaks to me about homebrew worlds, is that I can tailor them to my and my player's tastes. Get your grain. Get your hops. Get your favorite recipe and brew away.
Interesting results so far. I'm actually a bit surprised that sourcebooks are getting bashed a bit. I think they are decent starts, but once you've created a bit, one runs into problems with them.
What I like to do is build from scratch, for many of the reasons that everyone above has listed. The big one being information is so disjoint and haphazard in sourcebooks that it's more work (and unfun work) than just creating. What I actually do is burgle from many sources and take a few ideas and settings and try to turn them into something.
Building a world is also Tolkienesque, at some point you will hopefully fall in love with it. I think that then translates to players and how they perceive you presenting this world. It's also nice in that they have a hand in it, their actions and events change what's on the canvas and it becomes more personal.
My two electrum pieces.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Interesting results so far. I'm actually a bit surprised that sourcebooks are getting bashed a bit. I think they are decent starts, but once you've created a bit, one runs into problems with them.
I don't think anyone is "bashing" them per se... but there is a ton of information out there about each world, it's spread all over the place, some is updated for 5e and some is not, and there isn't any one place that you can easily go to learn all that you need in a coherent and organized way.
Among people I know who play D&D, the ones who have been with one of the worlds, say FR, all along, are fine with it because they have been there to watch the info build and have kept up. But if you are jumping in new, trying to deal with FR can be rather nightmarish just in terms of everything that's out there. Now you don't necessarily need to know all of it -- you could easily just buy SCAG, nothing else, and just work with whatever is in that book. But if you want to really sink your teeth into all of it... good luck. It's a huge, disorganized mess, as a world. Lots of the content is good, mind... it's just not easy to get your arms around.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I've tried for the first time in years to run a prewritten campaign (Descent into Avernus). Next time I'll go home made. Much easier and less fuzz.
Yeah, I can read something and get inspiration, but running a campaign "by the book" - that's a lot more work than just do it yourselves.
But I should add that we don't usually use maps or stuff like that, we mostly only describe actions (and have played a lot of different systems up through the "ages").
3. I don't find fantasy worldbuilding particularly fun (I prefer sci-fi), and if I tried, what I'd end up with would be similar enough to Eberron that it's not worth the work of creating the world from scratch. So I just start with Eberron as a foundation and then change it to suit my needs.
I've run pre-written adventures/modules as one-shots and the like, but I write all the adventures I run for my main campaign from scratch. I said I don't find fantasy worldbuilding particularly fun, but the actual storytelling is what I love about GMing. I have little interest in telling other people's stories, except as brief escapes from having to do work without narrative stakes for the characters I treat more seriously.
I'm #3. I have homebrew worlds, but I also like exploring the worlds that others have created, learning the lore, and seeing other's ideas for inspiration and to be used in games.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
3. I don't find fantasy worldbuilding particularly fun (I prefer sci-fi), and if I tried, what I'd end up with would be similar enough to Eberron that it's not worth the work of creating the world from scratch. So I just start with Eberron as a foundation and then change it to suit my needs.
I've run pre-written adventures/modules as one-shots and the like, but I write all the adventures I run for my main campaign from scratch. I said I don't find fantasy worldbuilding particularly fun, but the actual storytelling is what I love about GMing. I have little interest in telling other people's stories, except as brief escapes from having to do work without narrative stakes for the characters I treat more seriously.
What I find is that my worldbuilding and storytelling are two sides of the same coin. I was a bit bemused by your position, until I realized that there's probably more than one activity that people pursue which we're throwing under the umbrella of worldbuilding.
If you mean sitting down and creating an analog to the published sourcebook material - hundreds of cross referenced lore entries, characters, and location designs, before you start with your first adventure - then yes, I agree. From my perspective that's an interesting activity - but I don't have the patience for that, and I have to fall back on my own imagination ( not saying I'm unimaginative, but collaborative efforts have more brains to draw upon ).
The approach I take to "worldbuilding" is: create a pretty high-level sketch; fix the atmosphere & tone of the setting, and brainstorm out a pile of setting ideas, elements, and inspirations, which may-or-may-not eventually be canon. That's to give everything that comes after a rough framework, and to be a guide for consistency. Everything else, comes out of the actual gameplay, and the adventures that the Party has. I think of it as "movie set worldbuilding", which means that everything the Characters look at, or interact, has to look and feel like a fully realized part of an actual dynamic world - but everything else can be more nebulous, sketched out, or undecided. That means that the campaign ends up defining the world around it. I pre-design parts of the world around the needs of the Adventure I want to run, create needed world elements as they are needed in the course of play, and diligently record all the "facts" that the Party discovered, because - for the world to be consistent and realistic - that has to be canon now.
The danger there is that if you are just making stuff up on the fly, you run the danger of making spur-of-the-moment choices which lead to in-world contradictions. I've - unfortunately - gotten very good at retconning explanations, and there may have been one or two actual adventure ideas which popped up to explain why this and that both appeared to be true, and yet are contradictory. That's why the high level sketch, and decisions as to tone and atmosphere, come first in my process: it gives those "on the fly" design choices a framework to slot into, and - hopefully - helps preserve consistency.
So - in depth, hyper-detailed, encyclopedic world building? I'm right there with you. But I do like the back-and-forth between my ongoing build-it-as-you-need-it worldbuilding, and the Players ongoing adventures a great deal.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I used to write gobs and gobs of stuff back in the day, but now it is just a few paragraphs and bullet points. Time is precious and many players do not appreciate extreme detail. I think most GMs that homebrew worlds are doing it mostly for themselves and their love of the creative process.
To open a rabbit hole. I would love some comments/critique on some of my worldbuilding articles. I am unsure of the proper forum for this but don't want to post publicly (or at least widely) at this point. I could offer the same in return.
Number two. I like Forgotten Realms / Faerun setting in general and I will just pick some of the areas and begin to add more details (=my own content) to it: Town or two, factions, quests, NPCs...
Best way for me to start is just take a look at map of Faerun and decide some area which I like and then look for more information about that area. Other way to start is to think an environment that I like to use. For example, I am thinking heroes travelling in harsh winter conditions then I look at map of Faerun and choose one of the areas with snow in north.
What sort of DM are you?
1. A from scratch world builder. Original maps, adventures, locations, NPC's, the works!
2. I play from the sourcebooks using established locations and adventures.
3. Some sort of mix of the two.
I fall under the last. An original world, with maps etc, but I like to use adventure sourcebooks and modules with appropriate locations and whatnot changed to fit my world. I used to do everything from scratch but I just don't have the time for that anymore. I've currently fit the Dungeon of the Mad Mage under my capital city.
Depends on the campaign type. Depends on the players and what they wanted to have based off informal polling of them for their expectations prior to character build session 0 prior to possible session 0.5s depending on answers.
just depends. But for the most part I lean 1 unless it’s a module or a intentional build off a module like fan fiction style of “what happens next”
Blank
#1. From scratch.
I do not generally like the official worlds, especially the 2 flagship worlds (Eberron and Forgotten Realms). Heck I don't like the way they do the planes either -- too many, too complicated. I start with my own multiverse and build down from there.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
100% in agreement with BioWizard. That's exactly what I do as well - and I do a new one for each campaign. Although I tend to build from the party out, not the Planes down ( I'm big into build only what you need around what the needs of the Party's actions and travels are ).
I just really like making up worlds and watching people explore them :)
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Yup, this.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I tend to use published materials for their "good parts" simply changing names/locations to fit the world. For learning a new system, I"ll start with something straight out of the box, and then "move it" into the world I want. I rarely introduce the BBEG until the party has done something to actually merit notice.
Current campaigns include: Custom world with 25 custom races, which uses plot lines and side quests ripped from published adventures modified to fit the world and needs of the plot/quest, the "campaign world" of Flanaess, which is on its 12th campaign going back 36 years which has DM rotation, a "learning campaign using LMoP/DoIP but with names changed and only using a "close-up map so surrounding cities/features are not seen, the newbies are exploring lore to see if there is anything in particular they want to do so I can then "make" the start fit into any regular fantasy world easy enough, and then playing in a Realms game with a DM who only does Realms or Conan settings.
I normally uses number 1 because I feel I can’t deal with the lore of the main worlds
Mostly nocturnal
help build a world here
There is a LOT of it, especially FR. And it is spread all over the place, so you have to consult multiple disparate sources to get all the information you need. To make matters worse, it is published in what appears (to the end user, at least) to be a random order. It's not like they go from east to west, continent by continent or region by region. The information is fragmentary, and my guess is this is probably by design -- so you have to buy ALL the books to get a clear picture of Faerun. And good luck with any of the other continents (or worlds other than FR). It would be maddening to try and keep track of and organize it all by yourself as an end user, and I suspect hardly anyone does.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
That's both a benefit, and a challenge to building your own. You can create the lore you need as you need it ( although that's not the same as spuriously making up stuff on the spot without any consideration as to whether it's consistent with everything else, or can cause problems down the line ). However, you really need to keep that lore organized and accessible for when it becomes larger than you can hold in your head.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
The organization is the hard part, yes.
World Anvil is helping me a lot with that. Plus I have a bunch of stuff in Excel and OneNote.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I am 96% a number 1. I am not afraid (and I would suggest that other not to be) of "stealing" maps and ideas for persons, places & things. There are so many cool maps available, that one should be able to find something out there - unless you are heavily invested into mapping... Take those, village, town, city, dungeon & site maps and make them your own. That being said, I am trying to map out the campaign world. I must admit I am struggling a little to do that.
My main reasons for being a number 1 is that I find many IP worlds, well terrible. Granted this is all based on my personal taste. The gods are a mishmash of multiple terrestrial pantheons, the roles of the gods make no sense. And other than a few very demented cultists, who could worship some of the gods in those IPs. Many worlds are also too high fantastical for my tastes, like Ebberon.
The thing that speaks to me about homebrew worlds, is that I can tailor them to my and my player's tastes. Get your grain. Get your hops. Get your favorite recipe and brew away.
Semper Fidelis
Interesting results so far. I'm actually a bit surprised that sourcebooks are getting bashed a bit. I think they are decent starts, but once you've created a bit, one runs into problems with them.
What I like to do is build from scratch, for many of the reasons that everyone above has listed. The big one being information is so disjoint and haphazard in sourcebooks that it's more work (and unfun work) than just creating. What I actually do is burgle from many sources and take a few ideas and settings and try to turn them into something.
Building a world is also Tolkienesque, at some point you will hopefully fall in love with it. I think that then translates to players and how they perceive you presenting this world. It's also nice in that they have a hand in it, their actions and events change what's on the canvas and it becomes more personal.
My two electrum pieces.
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
I don't think anyone is "bashing" them per se... but there is a ton of information out there about each world, it's spread all over the place, some is updated for 5e and some is not, and there isn't any one place that you can easily go to learn all that you need in a coherent and organized way.
Among people I know who play D&D, the ones who have been with one of the worlds, say FR, all along, are fine with it because they have been there to watch the info build and have kept up. But if you are jumping in new, trying to deal with FR can be rather nightmarish just in terms of everything that's out there. Now you don't necessarily need to know all of it -- you could easily just buy SCAG, nothing else, and just work with whatever is in that book. But if you want to really sink your teeth into all of it... good luck. It's a huge, disorganized mess, as a world. Lots of the content is good, mind... it's just not easy to get your arms around.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I've tried for the first time in years to run a prewritten campaign (Descent into Avernus). Next time I'll go home made. Much easier and less fuzz.
Yeah, I can read something and get inspiration, but running a campaign "by the book" - that's a lot more work than just do it yourselves.
But I should add that we don't usually use maps or stuff like that, we mostly only describe actions (and have played a lot of different systems up through the "ages").
Ludo ergo sum!
3. I don't find fantasy worldbuilding particularly fun (I prefer sci-fi), and if I tried, what I'd end up with would be similar enough to Eberron that it's not worth the work of creating the world from scratch. So I just start with Eberron as a foundation and then change it to suit my needs.
I've run pre-written adventures/modules as one-shots and the like, but I write all the adventures I run for my main campaign from scratch. I said I don't find fantasy worldbuilding particularly fun, but the actual storytelling is what I love about GMing. I have little interest in telling other people's stories, except as brief escapes from having to do work without narrative stakes for the characters I treat more seriously.
I'm #3. I have homebrew worlds, but I also like exploring the worlds that others have created, learning the lore, and seeing other's ideas for inspiration and to be used in games.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
What I find is that my worldbuilding and storytelling are two sides of the same coin. I was a bit bemused by your position, until I realized that there's probably more than one activity that people pursue which we're throwing under the umbrella of worldbuilding.
If you mean sitting down and creating an analog to the published sourcebook material - hundreds of cross referenced lore entries, characters, and location designs, before you start with your first adventure - then yes, I agree. From my perspective that's an interesting activity - but I don't have the patience for that, and I have to fall back on my own imagination ( not saying I'm unimaginative, but collaborative efforts have more brains to draw upon ).
The approach I take to "worldbuilding" is: create a pretty high-level sketch; fix the atmosphere & tone of the setting, and brainstorm out a pile of setting ideas, elements, and inspirations, which may-or-may-not eventually be canon. That's to give everything that comes after a rough framework, and to be a guide for consistency. Everything else, comes out of the actual gameplay, and the adventures that the Party has. I think of it as "movie set worldbuilding", which means that everything the Characters look at, or interact, has to look and feel like a fully realized part of an actual dynamic world - but everything else can be more nebulous, sketched out, or undecided. That means that the campaign ends up defining the world around it. I pre-design parts of the world around the needs of the Adventure I want to run, create needed world elements as they are needed in the course of play, and diligently record all the "facts" that the Party discovered, because - for the world to be consistent and realistic - that has to be canon now.
The danger there is that if you are just making stuff up on the fly, you run the danger of making spur-of-the-moment choices which lead to in-world contradictions. I've - unfortunately - gotten very good at retconning explanations, and there may have been one or two actual adventure ideas which popped up to explain why this and that both appeared to be true, and yet are contradictory. That's why the high level sketch, and decisions as to tone and atmosphere, come first in my process: it gives those "on the fly" design choices a framework to slot into, and - hopefully - helps preserve consistency.
So - in depth, hyper-detailed, encyclopedic world building? I'm right there with you. But I do like the back-and-forth between my ongoing build-it-as-you-need-it worldbuilding, and the Players ongoing adventures a great deal.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
1. As I love creating new worlds from scratch, I enjoy making a world and watching me pc's discover it on there own intuition!
I used to write gobs and gobs of stuff back in the day, but now it is just a few paragraphs and bullet points. Time is precious and many players do not appreciate extreme detail. I think most GMs that homebrew worlds are doing it mostly for themselves and their love of the creative process.
To open a rabbit hole. I would love some comments/critique on some of my worldbuilding articles. I am unsure of the proper forum for this but don't want to post publicly (or at least widely) at this point. I could offer the same in return.
Semper Fidelis
Number two. I like Forgotten Realms / Faerun setting in general and I will just pick some of the areas and begin to add more details (=my own content) to it: Town or two, factions, quests, NPCs...
Best way for me to start is just take a look at map of Faerun and decide some area which I like and then look for more information about that area. Other way to start is to think an environment that I like to use. For example, I am thinking heroes travelling in harsh winter conditions then I look at map of Faerun and choose one of the areas with snow in north.