So I am still new I was the DM for two adventures which my players enjoyed sadly one got canceled due to covid.
I am still experimenting with a proper method for homebrewing... anyways i wanted some advice!
so homebrewing a world/campaign: what should I start with? Should I start with a map? The creatures I want to eventually use? Or what?
How often should players be leveled up? Since I plan to drag my first campaign to a year with many adventures making up arks.
What are some good ways for getting the player characters in a party together? I hate to limit their creativity too much but also don’t want the headache of people having no connection to eachother...
Any advice for doing this online? Idk if we will have we cams or not available...
How you should approach homebrewing is going to depend on how you think and what you want to achieve. I've been going through the process of building my own world, and evaluating the process introspectively. What I'm finding works best for me is to start with the story. Get a sense for the major threats in the world (BBEG) and general world dynamics (War, peace, trade, etc), then think about adventures you would like your players to experience along the way. Toss together a few plot points to connect the beginning to the end in a few "Acts". Each "Act" should foreshadow and prepare the players for the next. However, you should let the outline be vague enough to avoid getting bogged down in specifics.
After that, start small to avoid overwhelming yourself. Draw an outline of a region that your characters will start in, maybe 14 days across (~300miles). This will represent the world that your players are likely to stay within for the first several sessions. Depending on how often you play, this will give you a few months of buffer to prepare the next region based on your players interests. The less you put on paper definitively now, the more flexible you can be later.
If you know how long you want the campaign to be, then set your pace accordingly. You can either level up based on the number of sessions, you could do milestones to tie it directly to the story, or you could do a "checkpoint" style, where the player grow based on standard XP progression, but then hit checkpoints every 5-6 levels where they have to overcome some significant challenge before continuing to grow. (During this time, they might focus on side quests to collect magic items.)
The easiest way to get a party together is to give them all a common Patron to call them together for some task (Which is discussed in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything), or directly asking them to discuss relationships between each other ahead of time. They don't all need to know everyone in the party, but as long as everyone has a strong connection with one other person, then it's easy to string the rest of them together through circumstance.
Roll20 will basically have you covered. Have everyone install the Beyond20 chrome extension to roll directly from the DNDBeyond character sheet.
Most importantly, don't try to do it perfectly from Day 1. You'll learn a lot from the process, and should be comfortable writing and rewriting. Give yourself enough to work with, but don't invest so much in any individual NPC or encounter that you'll resist starting from scratch when you realize that you like something else better.
First, good luck. It’s can be very fun and rewarding to make your own world. There’s so many different ways to approach it, and no single one of them is right. Personally, I like to start with the story. Then come up geography that serves that story. But the opposite can work just as well.
Definitely start small, particularly if it’s your first time. Start with a town, D&D works well with edge areas, a town on a border of two countries, or civilized areas and wilderness, that helps build in conflict, which is at the heart of any story. Have a good idea of that town, it’s power structure and immediate surroundings. Have a vague idea of the region, and even more vague of the country and continent. Then you can fill in details as you need: “Oh, I said there was a wizard tower to the north and a tribe of goblins to the east, so now there are.” And then, once the players get to that wizard tower of goblin tribe, you can decide what’s the next thing over.
Leveling is more subjective. Players like to level, so don’t be too stingy, but you also need to let them be a certain level for a while to allow them to get used to new abilities, and do leveling becomes more impactful. Milestone might be best, because you kind of have more control over how often it happens.
As for getting them together, you could start with them. Tell them they’re starting in that town you made up, and let them take it from there. Have them explain how they got there and why they are there. Tell them about that during your session 0, maybe some of them will decide to know each other and make it easier for you.
Hi! I have been running a homebrew campaign for about 2 years, and it's amazing! It can be challenging, as well, welcome to the party and don't give up! The struggle is real.
There is no "proper" method of homebrew. You can literally start anywhere. I can give examples of where I started and that might help.
1. NaNoWriMo. Or national novel writing month. I started by writing a novel during the month of November and turned it into a homebrew campaign set in the same world afterward.
2. I started writing with a skeleton of a plot, a world map, and a few basic characters based on my friend's personalities.
3. I rely heavily on what's already been created. I homebrew locations, magic items, and characters, but most monsters and maps are pre-made and re-purposed. I'd say it's about 40/60 homebrew vs. pre-made. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to make everything from scratch. Reskin monsters, but use a pre-made stat block, your PC's won't know the difference. I used the Sunless Citadel map/quest for a catacomb under a temple and it worked great!
When I made the leap from novel to D&D campaign, I had to do a little "fiddling" with the races, magic, and lore to make it fit D&D 5e. But I kept the pantheon of gods from my novel. When I invited the players, I gave them the option of playing the characters I'd written according to their personalities, or their own. Then adjusted the novel to cater to their characters when needed, or wrote new lore and story arcs to fit their new characters and tie them into the main story. All their backstories became side-quests and any characters that weren't "claimed" became NPC's.
As for leveling, it depends on if your campaign is XP-based, or milestone-based. Ask your players in session zero what they prefer. I opted for milestone-based so that all PC's level at the same time after the completion of a story arc. I don't have a definite "end-date" to my campaign so leveling is completely up to the player's progression through the story. Get through the first few levels quickly. Level 2 after session 2-3. Level 3 by session 3-5-ish. I started my players at level 3 on session 1. It's been 2 years and they're only level 11.
Again, you don't have to do this on your own. Ask your players! When I started, there were only 2 players. We started at session 0 and they cleared out a tomb of some zombies. They had inside jokes going into session 1. Then I added one more player. He started at level 4 since they leveled up. Then a few sessions later I added another player at level 5. The final player joined at level 8. Run mini-session zero's with pairs and slowly bring them together. Or do the stereotypical "You've been hired to do a job, meet the party at a tavern."
For doing it online, I'd recommend reading up a bit on different software/methods. I'm making articles for folks breaking into digital DM-ing. Click here to go to my Wordpress blog on the subject, it's called Dungeon Apprentice.
I hope this helps! You can always ask me for more detail if you'd like as new questions come up.
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So I am still new I was the DM for two adventures which my players enjoyed sadly one got canceled due to covid.
I am still experimenting with a proper method for homebrewing... anyways i wanted some advice!
so homebrewing a world/campaign: what should I start with? Should I start with a map? The creatures I want to eventually use? Or what?
How often should players be leveled up? Since I plan to drag my first campaign to a year with many adventures making up arks.
What are some good ways for getting the player characters in a party together? I hate to limit their creativity too much but also don’t want the headache of people having no connection to eachother...
Any advice for doing this online? Idk if we will have we cams or not available...
How you should approach homebrewing is going to depend on how you think and what you want to achieve. I've been going through the process of building my own world, and evaluating the process introspectively. What I'm finding works best for me is to start with the story. Get a sense for the major threats in the world (BBEG) and general world dynamics (War, peace, trade, etc), then think about adventures you would like your players to experience along the way. Toss together a few plot points to connect the beginning to the end in a few "Acts". Each "Act" should foreshadow and prepare the players for the next. However, you should let the outline be vague enough to avoid getting bogged down in specifics.
After that, start small to avoid overwhelming yourself. Draw an outline of a region that your characters will start in, maybe 14 days across (~300miles). This will represent the world that your players are likely to stay within for the first several sessions. Depending on how often you play, this will give you a few months of buffer to prepare the next region based on your players interests. The less you put on paper definitively now, the more flexible you can be later.
If you know how long you want the campaign to be, then set your pace accordingly. You can either level up based on the number of sessions, you could do milestones to tie it directly to the story, or you could do a "checkpoint" style, where the player grow based on standard XP progression, but then hit checkpoints every 5-6 levels where they have to overcome some significant challenge before continuing to grow. (During this time, they might focus on side quests to collect magic items.)
The easiest way to get a party together is to give them all a common Patron to call them together for some task (Which is discussed in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything), or directly asking them to discuss relationships between each other ahead of time. They don't all need to know everyone in the party, but as long as everyone has a strong connection with one other person, then it's easy to string the rest of them together through circumstance.
Roll20 will basically have you covered. Have everyone install the Beyond20 chrome extension to roll directly from the DNDBeyond character sheet.
Most importantly, don't try to do it perfectly from Day 1. You'll learn a lot from the process, and should be comfortable writing and rewriting. Give yourself enough to work with, but don't invest so much in any individual NPC or encounter that you'll resist starting from scratch when you realize that you like something else better.
First, good luck. It’s can be very fun and rewarding to make your own world. There’s so many different ways to approach it, and no single one of them is right.
Personally, I like to start with the story. Then come up geography that serves that story. But the opposite can work just as well.
Definitely start small, particularly if it’s your first time. Start with a town, D&D works well with edge areas, a town on a border of two countries, or civilized areas and wilderness, that helps build in conflict, which is at the heart of any story. Have a good idea of that town, it’s power structure and immediate surroundings. Have a vague idea of the region, and even more vague of the country and continent. Then you can fill in details as you need: “Oh, I said there was a wizard tower to the north and a tribe of goblins to the east, so now there are.” And then, once the players get to that wizard tower of goblin tribe, you can decide what’s the next thing over.
Leveling is more subjective. Players like to level, so don’t be too stingy, but you also need to let them be a certain level for a while to allow them to get used to new abilities, and do leveling becomes more impactful. Milestone might be best, because you kind of have more control over how often it happens.
As for getting them together, you could start with them. Tell them they’re starting in that town you made up, and let them take it from there. Have them explain how they got there and why they are there. Tell them about that during your session 0, maybe some of them will decide to know each other and make it easier for you.
Thanks!
Hi! I have been running a homebrew campaign for about 2 years, and it's amazing! It can be challenging, as well, welcome to the party and don't give up! The struggle is real.
There is no "proper" method of homebrew. You can literally start anywhere. I can give examples of where I started and that might help.
1. NaNoWriMo. Or national novel writing month. I started by writing a novel during the month of November and turned it into a homebrew campaign set in the same world afterward.
2. I started writing with a skeleton of a plot, a world map, and a few basic characters based on my friend's personalities.
3. I rely heavily on what's already been created. I homebrew locations, magic items, and characters, but most monsters and maps are pre-made and re-purposed. I'd say it's about 40/60 homebrew vs. pre-made. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to make everything from scratch. Reskin monsters, but use a pre-made stat block, your PC's won't know the difference. I used the Sunless Citadel map/quest for a catacomb under a temple and it worked great!
When I made the leap from novel to D&D campaign, I had to do a little "fiddling" with the races, magic, and lore to make it fit D&D 5e. But I kept the pantheon of gods from my novel. When I invited the players, I gave them the option of playing the characters I'd written according to their personalities, or their own. Then adjusted the novel to cater to their characters when needed, or wrote new lore and story arcs to fit their new characters and tie them into the main story. All their backstories became side-quests and any characters that weren't "claimed" became NPC's.
As for leveling, it depends on if your campaign is XP-based, or milestone-based. Ask your players in session zero what they prefer. I opted for milestone-based so that all PC's level at the same time after the completion of a story arc. I don't have a definite "end-date" to my campaign so leveling is completely up to the player's progression through the story. Get through the first few levels quickly. Level 2 after session 2-3. Level 3 by session 3-5-ish. I started my players at level 3 on session 1. It's been 2 years and they're only level 11.
Again, you don't have to do this on your own. Ask your players! When I started, there were only 2 players. We started at session 0 and they cleared out a tomb of some zombies. They had inside jokes going into session 1. Then I added one more player. He started at level 4 since they leveled up. Then a few sessions later I added another player at level 5. The final player joined at level 8. Run mini-session zero's with pairs and slowly bring them together. Or do the stereotypical "You've been hired to do a job, meet the party at a tavern."
For doing it online, I'd recommend reading up a bit on different software/methods. I'm making articles for folks breaking into digital DM-ing. Click here to go to my Wordpress blog on the subject, it's called Dungeon Apprentice.
I hope this helps! You can always ask me for more detail if you'd like as new questions come up.