I'm working on creating my own homebrew campaign for the first time for my group and am having trouble making it unique to us. I've come up with several interesting ideas only to discover that I had just remade planescape. I did not know of planescape's existence when I first came up with the idea. Another time, I had come up with a story arc that turned out to be an unintentional rip off of the gates of firestorm peak. Once again, prior to it's inception I was unaware of firestorm peak already existing. How can I create my own original idea for a homebrew campaign or campaign setting without creating unintentional copies from older dnd editions? It seems every idea I come up with has already been thought of and written out. I guess I could still use my homebrew ideas, but now it feels like I'm just ripping off someone else. Any help here?
If you didn't know about these ideas you are not ripping them off.
Do the rest of your players know about them? If not, who cares? They will enjoy your stuff and have no idea that you came up with something someone else already did.
The problem is that with hundreds of published adventures since the 1970s, it is going to be nearly impossible for you to develop a homebrew world that is nothing like any of them, and yet is still D&D. The D&D game makes certain basic assumptions that, if you violate them, you're almost not playing D&D anymore. These assumptions are things like, there is magic in the world, there are strange and mythological creatures in the world, there are wild unexplored areas to adventure in, and so forth. Put all those those things together to build a world, and you are going to come up with something that is similar to what someone already created -- to Dark Sun or Krynn or Mystara or Oerth or what have you.
Heck, I thought I was being pretty original creating a Roman Empire based game -- turns out there is a 100-page 2e sourcebook I didn't even know existed, that has pretty much everything in it that I freaking did dozens of hours of research to find out on my own. I could have just bought the blasted book and been done with it, LOL.
But when I found out the Roman Empire supplement had come out, I didn't nix my game... I just bought the supplement and stole some ideas from it (and left the others alone, since they didn't fit with my ideas).
Even the best DMs swipe from each other, from novels, and from other content. Matt Colville openly admits to using ideas from published adventures (his favorites being Red Hand of Doom, Night Below, and Keep on the Shadowfell), novels like the Belgariad series and the Black Company series, and movies. He borrows a little from here, a little from there, and makes his own stories with them. If he can do it, and he's a famous internet DM who has a 100-episode series telling other people how to run D&D, it's no problem if we mortals do it.
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.
FYI- It is in fact a long-standing practice for DMs to “borrow from” or “be inspired by” other stuff. Even if you had known about these things and ripped them off appropriated some points intentionally, it’s okay.
Also let's remember, almost everything in D&D was ripped off by Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson from someone else... Orcs were ripped off from Tolkein, as were hobbits (halflings -- they were called hobbits originally, until legal action was taken)... The original magic system was ripped off from Vance... Nearly everything was swiped from somewhere. Hardly any of it is original.
For example, the OP mentions the Planes... where did the Nine Hells come from? Dante's Inferno.... and so on.
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.
This is a common situation and honestly isn't something to be worried about. If you create something with a similar setting and plot there is no reason for players to expect it would work out the same way. Also, you can't be expected to know about the entire genre of D&D adventures along with ALL of the published fantasy fiction from the last 50 years. In many cases, whatever you (or anyone else) create will have a resemblance to something somewhere. In addition, it is perfectly acceptable for a DM to homebrew adventures that are based on or inspired by some other content - other adventures, fantasy or science fiction, mysteries, movies - all are great sources of inspiration for opponents and plot lines for a homebrew campaign.
In terms of villains, there are only so many paths to world domination or world destruction - often the goal of world class villains in D&D or fantasy.
As a result, it can sometimes be easier to come up with something more unique by focusing on the NPCs and their goals on a smaller scale and making them a bit less world shattering.
Also, making the "bad guys" a bit less black and white in terms of moral outlook can make for a more challenging and less fantasy trope situation. Two opposing forces don't necessarily need to be good vs evil or evil vs evil. Players can sometimes have a harder time with opponents like that because they can reach a point where they don't know whether they should be fighting them or joining them. Most fantasy fiction doesn't follow that path and as a result it can be easier to come up with something more unusual by walking a line between the extremes that is closer to the real world in some ways.
Anyway, keep in mind that the world you create is only at most 1/3 of the story, the DM is the next 1/3 and the players/characters are the last 1/3. Different parties of adventurers run by different DMs through the SAME content can have VERY different outcomes and experiences. One group might TPK and another might have an easy ride because they take different paths and make different decisions. Even if parts of your world bear a resemblance to other sources, the game itself will likely play out very differently.
Finally, though, the closer you follow fantasy tropes and standards, the easier it is for folks to guess what could happen next.
e.g. Finding a gold idol on a pedestal in a lost temple .. this will scream TRAP to most players. You will get players trying to use a bag of sand to quickly replace the idol if they want to remove it from the pedestal ... and then looking around for a giant boulder.
If you look hard enough at structure and plotting, you’ll find every story has been told, they just get dressed up a little differently, so don’t get hung up on being original. And the issues the OP is describing sound like blessings. If you were developing a world, and the players were into it, but then you find there’s a published setting that’s basically the same thing, your workload was just cut down to nothing beyond reading the published version. Or, at least, read it over and mine it for ideas you didn’t think of that you can fold into your world for more depth and interest.
Actually - expressing your creativity as a unique blend of fictional elements from other works is not a failing, it is strength.
Why? Because recognizable fictional elements are facets of your world that your Players can recognize, latch onto, and relate: "Oh, so that race is like Elves", "I see, so that wolf cult is composed of Berskerkers", "OK, so the BBEG is kind of a Lich". Recognizable elements of the game world allow the Players to connect to your Setting, rather than you needing to take huge swathes of play and/or exposition ( zzzzz... ) to establish what the racial characteristics, ecological & sociological roles that the Thnrebling race has - when you can shortcut it to your Players as "Elven Sub-Race".
That doesn't mean your setting, or your campaign is derivative, at all! You can find a uniquely creative world of your own, within those restrictions.
Creativity can come about by finding ways to take a handful of recognizable elements which don't normally seem to go together and find ways to weave them together into a workable whole: a nature-focused, jungle dwelling race of Dwarves, who are conducting a generations long guerrilla war against the enemy that drove them from the halls and forges, who adhere to a code of honor much like Bushido, and whose steel weapons - now that they can no longer easily forge them - are family heirlooms, passed from father to child over the generations ; a secret society of Goblins, spread out over human civilization, infiltrating places of learning, and posing as servants to scholars and wizards, secretly gathering scholarly information in an attempt to locate the location of a lost "golden age" Goblin civilization ; etc.
This isn't a new idea. Movies follow a handful of structural patterns. So do Plays. So do novels. Art has styles and conventions. So does music. There are repeated and recognizable elements in most fictional works: a spacecraft is a spacecraft whether it's Serenity, or the Rocinante, or the Roger Young - they are all recognizable variants on a standard setting element.
I love coming up with unique aspects to game worlds, but you can be too unique, and make your world un-relatable.
Think of standard setting elements as your paints. You can mix them, and use them to create something unique to you, without throwing out your paints, pallets, brushes, and canvas.
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'm working on creating my own homebrew campaign for the first time for my group and am having trouble making it unique to us. I've come up with several interesting ideas only to discover that I had just remade planescape. I did not know of planescape's existence when I first came up with the idea. Another time, I had come up with a story arc that turned out to be an unintentional rip off of the gates of firestorm peak. Once again, prior to it's inception I was unaware of firestorm peak already existing. How can I create my own original idea for a homebrew campaign or campaign setting without creating unintentional copies from older dnd editions? It seems every idea I come up with has already been thought of and written out. I guess I could still use my homebrew ideas, but now it feels like I'm just ripping off someone else. Any help here?
Someone much wiser than me once said that all films could be converted into Westerns.
Someone else said that every story in the world has already been told. You just need to tell yours differently.
The fact that you're coming up with ideas that are already published is not a bad mark on you. On the contrary, it means that your ideas are good enough to be published! I'd take that as high praise.
It happens. How many D&D fantasy campaigns DON'T look like a reskin of Lord of the Rings? As long as it isn't deliberate, and you keep the endings interesting, I wouldn't worry about it.
I'm working on creating my own homebrew campaign for the first time for my group and am having trouble making it unique to us. I've come up with several interesting ideas only to discover that I had just remade planescape. I did not know of planescape's existence when I first came up with the idea. Another time, I had come up with a story arc that turned out to be an unintentional rip off of the gates of firestorm peak. Once again, prior to it's inception I was unaware of firestorm peak already existing. How can I create my own original idea for a homebrew campaign or campaign setting without creating unintentional copies from older dnd editions? It seems every idea I come up with has already been thought of and written out. I guess I could still use my homebrew ideas, but now it feels like I'm just ripping off someone else. Any help here?
If you didn't know about these ideas you are not ripping them off.
Do the rest of your players know about them? If not, who cares? They will enjoy your stuff and have no idea that you came up with something someone else already did.
The problem is that with hundreds of published adventures since the 1970s, it is going to be nearly impossible for you to develop a homebrew world that is nothing like any of them, and yet is still D&D. The D&D game makes certain basic assumptions that, if you violate them, you're almost not playing D&D anymore. These assumptions are things like, there is magic in the world, there are strange and mythological creatures in the world, there are wild unexplored areas to adventure in, and so forth. Put all those those things together to build a world, and you are going to come up with something that is similar to what someone already created -- to Dark Sun or Krynn or Mystara or Oerth or what have you.
Heck, I thought I was being pretty original creating a Roman Empire based game -- turns out there is a 100-page 2e sourcebook I didn't even know existed, that has pretty much everything in it that I freaking did dozens of hours of research to find out on my own. I could have just bought the blasted book and been done with it, LOL.
But when I found out the Roman Empire supplement had come out, I didn't nix my game... I just bought the supplement and stole some ideas from it (and left the others alone, since they didn't fit with my ideas).
Even the best DMs swipe from each other, from novels, and from other content. Matt Colville openly admits to using ideas from published adventures (his favorites being Red Hand of Doom, Night Below, and Keep on the Shadowfell), novels like the Belgariad series and the Black Company series, and movies. He borrows a little from here, a little from there, and makes his own stories with them. If he can do it, and he's a famous internet DM who has a 100-episode series telling other people how to run D&D, it's no problem if we mortals do it.
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.
FYI- It is in fact a long-standing practice for DMs to “borrow from” or “be inspired by” other stuff. Even if you had known about these things and
ripped them offappropriated some points intentionally, it’s okay.Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Also let's remember, almost everything in D&D was ripped off by Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson from someone else... Orcs were ripped off from Tolkein, as were hobbits (halflings -- they were called hobbits originally, until legal action was taken)... The original magic system was ripped off from Vance... Nearly everything was swiped from somewhere. Hardly any of it is original.
For example, the OP mentions the Planes... where did the Nine Hells come from? Dante's Inferno.... and so on.
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.
This is a common situation and honestly isn't something to be worried about. If you create something with a similar setting and plot there is no reason for players to expect it would work out the same way. Also, you can't be expected to know about the entire genre of D&D adventures along with ALL of the published fantasy fiction from the last 50 years. In many cases, whatever you (or anyone else) create will have a resemblance to something somewhere. In addition, it is perfectly acceptable for a DM to homebrew adventures that are based on or inspired by some other content - other adventures, fantasy or science fiction, mysteries, movies - all are great sources of inspiration for opponents and plot lines for a homebrew campaign.
In terms of villains, there are only so many paths to world domination or world destruction - often the goal of world class villains in D&D or fantasy.
As a result, it can sometimes be easier to come up with something more unique by focusing on the NPCs and their goals on a smaller scale and making them a bit less world shattering.
Also, making the "bad guys" a bit less black and white in terms of moral outlook can make for a more challenging and less fantasy trope situation. Two opposing forces don't necessarily need to be good vs evil or evil vs evil. Players can sometimes have a harder time with opponents like that because they can reach a point where they don't know whether they should be fighting them or joining them. Most fantasy fiction doesn't follow that path and as a result it can be easier to come up with something more unusual by walking a line between the extremes that is closer to the real world in some ways.
Anyway, keep in mind that the world you create is only at most 1/3 of the story, the DM is the next 1/3 and the players/characters are the last 1/3. Different parties of adventurers run by different DMs through the SAME content can have VERY different outcomes and experiences. One group might TPK and another might have an easy ride because they take different paths and make different decisions. Even if parts of your world bear a resemblance to other sources, the game itself will likely play out very differently.
Finally, though, the closer you follow fantasy tropes and standards, the easier it is for folks to guess what could happen next.
e.g. Finding a gold idol on a pedestal in a lost temple .. this will scream TRAP to most players. You will get players trying to use a bag of sand to quickly replace the idol if they want to remove it from the pedestal ... and then looking around for a giant boulder.
If you look hard enough at structure and plotting, you’ll find every story has been told, they just get dressed up a little differently, so don’t get hung up on being original.
And the issues the OP is describing sound like blessings. If you were developing a world, and the players were into it, but then you find there’s a published setting that’s basically the same thing, your workload was just cut down to nothing beyond reading the published version. Or, at least, read it over and mine it for ideas you didn’t think of that you can fold into your world for more depth and interest.
Actually - expressing your creativity as a unique blend of fictional elements from other works is not a failing, it is strength.
Why? Because recognizable fictional elements are facets of your world that your Players can recognize, latch onto, and relate: "Oh, so that race is like Elves", "I see, so that wolf cult is composed of Berskerkers", "OK, so the BBEG is kind of a Lich". Recognizable elements of the game world allow the Players to connect to your Setting, rather than you needing to take huge swathes of play and/or exposition ( zzzzz... ) to establish what the racial characteristics, ecological & sociological roles that the Thnrebling race has - when you can shortcut it to your Players as "Elven Sub-Race".
That doesn't mean your setting, or your campaign is derivative, at all! You can find a uniquely creative world of your own, within those restrictions.
Creativity can come about by finding ways to take a handful of recognizable elements which don't normally seem to go together and find ways to weave them together into a workable whole: a nature-focused, jungle dwelling race of Dwarves, who are conducting a generations long guerrilla war against the enemy that drove them from the halls and forges, who adhere to a code of honor much like Bushido, and whose steel weapons - now that they can no longer easily forge them - are family heirlooms, passed from father to child over the generations ; a secret society of Goblins, spread out over human civilization, infiltrating places of learning, and posing as servants to scholars and wizards, secretly gathering scholarly information in an attempt to locate the location of a lost "golden age" Goblin civilization ; etc.
This isn't a new idea. Movies follow a handful of structural patterns. So do Plays. So do novels. Art has styles and conventions. So does music. There are repeated and recognizable elements in most fictional works: a spacecraft is a spacecraft whether it's Serenity, or the Rocinante, or the Roger Young - they are all recognizable variants on a standard setting element.
I love coming up with unique aspects to game worlds, but you can be too unique, and make your world un-relatable.
Think of standard setting elements as your paints. You can mix them, and use them to create something unique to you, without throwing out your paints, pallets, brushes, and canvas.
Good luck, and have fun with it :)
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.
Someone much wiser than me once said that all films could be converted into Westerns.
Someone else said that every story in the world has already been told. You just need to tell yours differently.
The fact that you're coming up with ideas that are already published is not a bad mark on you. On the contrary, it means that your ideas are good enough to be published! I'd take that as high praise.
It happens. How many D&D fantasy campaigns DON'T look like a reskin of Lord of the Rings? As long as it isn't deliberate, and you keep the endings interesting, I wouldn't worry about it.
Considering that D&D is basically a reskin of LOTR, not many....
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 want my campaign to look like LOTR. Better than looking like random LARP =)
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Yes you could do a lot worse than making a campaign that is like Middle-Earth... a LOT worse.
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.