Once again I'm looking for a DM who wants to colloborate with to create my Homebrew World. Please be available or at the very least communicative about your actual availability.
I'm new to D&D I've only played a couple of sessions and I certainly have never DMed so a bit of hand holding through the process may be necessary
i am quite good with details of worlds, if you want to give me a general overview of what you are thinking. just put it on the page, and we can all collaborate.
i am quite good with details of worlds, if you want to give me a general overview of what you are thinking. just put it on the page, and we can all collaborate.
Yeah, why must it be on discord? Hit us up with your ideas and you might be surprised
One of the reasons for discord was so that I can share the pdfs that are my notes, so that they could be looked over. Because I felt it would be easier to discuss once a person could see the entire picture. Creating a lore dump in the thread never really occurred to me.
I have the pantheon (demigods included) lore, geography, astronomy, currency, planes, geology, seasons, and the calendar pretty much worked out. i have also been working on several Appendices if you will to explain certain mechanics in the world one for each demigod (I - IV) One is background on the First Age complete with maps and eventually some lore for each nation that existed during that time period (Appendix V). One a short view of a work that be much like The Oath and Measure from Dragonlance (VI). The last Appendix is on a strange board game that seems to be commonly played in taverns and inns across the world.
My first question is what else am I missing that needs to be addressed in so far as basic background information?
My second question is does it make more sense to only use a universal currency, or that each nation in addition to the universal currency should have their own currency with exchange rates established against the universal currency?
Aside from that I'm currently stuck on the third demigod. I can't seem to get the mechanics on what I want to work in my head. Possibly because I kind of envinsion him like Death in the Animaniacs episode Meatballs or Consequences (you can watch it on hulu, or possibly youtube) with a heavy Swedish accent. So I will post what I have so far on him, and see what happens
Lore :
Cegtar (Chemosh/Morgion in the Krynnish pantheon) feeling that once a soul was judged it was beneath him to haggle with the soul and send it off to its afterlife, asked Bryxrena (Gilean equivelant in the Krynnish pantheon) to help him create a demigod known as The Shepard to make sure all the souls come before Cegtar for judgment, and then to take them on to their afterlife. Due to the enormity of his task, The Shepard was given 4 quasi-gods to help him.
Quasi-gods:
There are 4 quasi-god helpers for The Shepard
They have no real godly power other than supernatural speed
They have neither celestial nor earthly symbols
Phexemis (Female)
Brings all the souls to a holding room where they await their turn to be called before Cegtar for their final judgement.
Katrix (Female)
Brings the souls to heaven
Phalldir (Male)
Brings the souls to hell
Khexdos (Male)
The Herald who announces the soul entering before Cegtar for judgement
Death:
At the moment of death a soul is greeted by Pheximis who greets the soul by name and declares them to be Living Impaired. Once Pheximis has a full wagon, she drives off to the Hall of Justice, where the soul enters a large waiting chamber.
If a soul wishes to return to its body for whatever reason it may challenge Pheximus to a game of checkers. Should the soul win the soul is returned to its body. Should the soul lose it takes its place in the wagon as it would normally have done
Judgement:
Khexdos calls a soul before Cegtar for its final judgment. Cegtar weighs the deeds of the souls life and declares judgment if it led a good life it goes to heaven, if it lead an evil life it is sent to hell.
I have the pantheon (demigods included) lore, geography, astronomy, currency, planes, geology, seasons, and the calendar pretty much worked out. i have also been working on several Appendices if you will to explain certain mechanics in the world one for each demigod (I - IV) One is background on the First Age complete with maps and eventually some lore for each nation that existed during that time period (Appendix V). One a short view of a work that be much like The Oath and Measure from Dragonlance (VI). The last Appendix is on a strange board game that seems to be commonly played in taverns and inns across the world.
My first question is what else am I missing that needs to be addressed in so far as basic background information?
My second question is does it make more sense to only use a universal currency, or that each nation in addition to the universal currency should have their own currency with exchange rates established against the universal currency?
Aside from that I'm currently stuck on the third demigod. I can't seem to get the mechanics on what I want to work in my head. Possibly because I kind of envinsion him like Death in the Animaniacs episode Meatballs or Consequences (you can watch it on hulu, or possibly youtube) with a heavy Swedish accent. So I will post what I have so far on him, and see what happens
Wow, looks like you have put a lot of work into this. My personal experience with playing in and creating homebrew worlds has convinced me that it is very easy to over plan. Most of the work you put into your world will be invisible to the players as they are unlikely to read very far into your material. When I play in a homebrew my first question is often 'why'? What is special about this world that we are using it over an established setting with everything already worked out. This leads me to your first question.
Are you missing anything? Players are going to be primarily focused on what impact's their characters. So what races are available and what are the attitudes between them. What organizations might they be interested in? How is magic treated in the game? From your post it sounds like players will be able to challenge Pheximus to a game of checkers if they want to come back from the dead. How will this impact the game? Are you going to stop play for a checkers match when someone dies? How do spells like Revivify or Raise Dead impact that? As a player, I would rather just cast a spell then waste 30 to 60 minutes of real time watching a checkers match. This is the kind of thing that sounds good in theory but might not be much fun at the table.
As for economics...D&D is incredibly unrealistic in the way it handles currency. I would love to see a viable currency system for the game but that would take such a overhaul it would hardly be worth the effort. You would have to create price lists for items per country and hand them out to characters. Then you would also have to deal with exchange rates, banking and what not. Plus if any of your players are economics majors you will have to deal with them buying tons of something in one nation to sell in another for a unforseen profit (this has happened in a game I played in). It's a lot of effort for little reward. Ask yourself this question - how much fun does this add to the game? When you answer that you will likely just stick with what is in the PHB.
Cegtar is an interesting deity but as a player my first question would be what is his alignment and what domains is he over? Then I would ask what races and nations worship him and what alignment does his faithful tend to be. Then if I were interested in playing a worshiper of Cegtar I would want to know about the church. The mechanics of how he handles and judges souls might be interesting but doesn't really mean much to a character who is not dead. And after 5th level that will happen less and less if there is a decent cleric in the party. So this kind of makes the concern about the quasi gods a little irrelevant. Why are you worried about them and why do they need more description than you already provided? Are you planning on the players interacting with them in some way? Since these quasi gods have little power what reason would players have to care about them?
On a final point I would like to re-empathize how important it is to be thinking of adventures and plot hooks while putting together your homebrew. Why do you need to fill in every detail of how souls are transported and judged by Cegtar? Will that have something to do with an adventure? Maybe a fun adventure would be having the players assist Katrix or Phalldir to find a soul that they lost track of? Something like that could be played to comic effect. As a reward possibly they would assist a party member who died in cheating at the game of checkers (personally I would do a game of dice or something faster that could be resolved in a few minutes). If you are not planning on doing an adventure like this than I would reinvest your efforts into what you need to make plot hooks for adventures work and working out what is special about your world over using just any established setting.
1. The DM can reduce the checkers game to say a combination of a Intelligence and Wisdom check or something to that effect or throw in deception and sleight of hand check (i have no idea how this works but you as the DM would) . I wasn't thinking of an actual checkers game being played out. My assumption would be that as long as either of those spells were cast within what would be considered a normal period of time, if cast successfully would remove them from the ranks of the living impaired without the need to challenge Pheximis.
2. Cegtar's alignment is evil as he's a combiniation of Chemosh and Morgion from the Krynnish pantheon. Chemosh being the god of death and Morgion being the god whose domain is disease and decay. No nation necessarily serves him. He may be the official diety of a city (generic term) He's generally worshipped by those who are truly evil, I didn't want to reduce a particular race to speciffically worship him. However if I were to say amongst which race would you find most of his worshippers I would say most likely orc kind and goblinoids. Like Hades he must judge every soul that enters the realm of the dead.
3. I understand that most of the players won't see most of this, however since I don't feel that I have the skills to be an effective DM so I want to make this as complete as possible so that a DM could indeed create a side quest, campaign using the plot hook you described. I can visualize a single plot hook at a time, I can't visualize how to tell the story how it would fit into a larger campaign, I don't see these threads, so I want the DM to have as complete information as possible, so that he/she has as much as possible to work with.
One method I have used in my campaigns that has added flavor is to have a standard "trade" currency backed by either a trade consortium (think of historical use of notes from the European Trade houses during the late medieval/early Renaissance periods) or by the local major political power. In my world there are other currencies that are available, but these moneys are worth either more or less as compared to this standard
These other currencies can either be "debased" or less acceptable for some reason and could be used to indicate a foreign power or ancient treasure horde. Using this option can build in the need to have money changers or some other functions that could be used for story hooks or to base conflict on. In this system currencies that are ancient or foreign in nature can be used to give introduce NPC's and quests
In addition you could build a system where all prices based on purity and weight, with the standard coinage setting all prices and other coins worth more or less based on their perceived purity, weight and acceptability (i.e, in an Elven empire the Hobgoblin Redgold coins are considered debased and worth less, while the reverse may be true in the Hobgoblin kingdoms due to their hatred of the Elven race in general, all for flavor)
All these can be used to add flavor if it is desired, but do add a bit of book keeping to the game. If it interests you it is a good tool, but it does add complication. Using a primary standard coinage simplifies things, but even if you do decide to use a standard coinage the world over you can add the odd currency to the game to build story hooks on. It is all up to you as the DM and the level of immersion your party is interested in
Personally in my games I tend to use a primary standard coinage created by a major trade consortium that is acceptable everywhere, with other currencies occurring but being relatively rare unless the party spends a lot of time working for the common people or for the local government. If they then travel I introduce the money changer option when they arrive at a new area so they have to interact with an NPC that will hook them into their new location. This adds flavor and helps the party realize they have actually traveled to a new region that is different from where they have been
That's fine. Tolkien had four separate ages and the second and third ages were each over 3000 years. The Forgotten Realms has over 20,000 years of recorded time. Ancient Mayan's believed the world to go through a creation/destruction cycle every 7885 years.
Personally I like the idea of a cycle of creation and destruction. It makes a world of consistent medieval/early Renaissance technology to be more believable. Basically, things go to heck right before more advanced technology can be developed.
Once again I'm looking for a DM who wants to colloborate with to create my Homebrew World. Please be available or at the very least communicative about your actual availability.
I'm new to D&D I've only played a couple of sessions and I certainly have never DMed so a bit of hand holding through the process may be necessary
The Great Wakkorotti#5727
i am quite good with details of worlds, if you want to give me a general overview of what you are thinking. just put it on the page, and we can all collaborate.
Yeah, why must it be on discord? Hit us up with your ideas and you might be surprised
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
exactly! do you have anything in mind, or that we could help with? put all your ideas, and the things we could help with below. thank you.
I can help my friend. Vik1ng@5354
-Meranis
Let's have some fun shall we?
One of the reasons for discord was so that I can share the pdfs that are my notes, so that they could be looked over. Because I felt it would be easier to discuss once a person could see the entire picture. Creating a lore dump in the thread never really occurred to me.
I have the pantheon (demigods included) lore, geography, astronomy, currency, planes, geology, seasons, and the calendar pretty much worked out. i have also been working on several Appendices if you will to explain certain mechanics in the world one for each demigod (I - IV) One is background on the First Age complete with maps and eventually some lore for each nation that existed during that time period (Appendix V). One a short view of a work that be much like The Oath and Measure from Dragonlance (VI). The last Appendix is on a strange board game that seems to be commonly played in taverns and inns across the world.
My first question is what else am I missing that needs to be addressed in so far as basic background information?
My second question is does it make more sense to only use a universal currency, or that each nation in addition to the universal currency should have their own currency with exchange rates established against the universal currency?
Aside from that I'm currently stuck on the third demigod. I can't seem to get the mechanics on what I want to work in my head. Possibly because I kind of envinsion him like Death in the Animaniacs episode Meatballs or Consequences (you can watch it on hulu, or possibly youtube) with a heavy Swedish accent. So I will post what I have so far on him, and see what happens
The Great Wakkorotti#5727
Wow, looks like you have put a lot of work into this. My personal experience with playing in and creating homebrew worlds has convinced me that it is very easy to over plan. Most of the work you put into your world will be invisible to the players as they are unlikely to read very far into your material. When I play in a homebrew my first question is often 'why'? What is special about this world that we are using it over an established setting with everything already worked out. This leads me to your first question.
Are you missing anything? Players are going to be primarily focused on what impact's their characters. So what races are available and what are the attitudes between them. What organizations might they be interested in? How is magic treated in the game? From your post it sounds like players will be able to challenge Pheximus to a game of checkers if they want to come back from the dead. How will this impact the game? Are you going to stop play for a checkers match when someone dies? How do spells like Revivify or Raise Dead impact that? As a player, I would rather just cast a spell then waste 30 to 60 minutes of real time watching a checkers match. This is the kind of thing that sounds good in theory but might not be much fun at the table.
As for economics...D&D is incredibly unrealistic in the way it handles currency. I would love to see a viable currency system for the game but that would take such a overhaul it would hardly be worth the effort. You would have to create price lists for items per country and hand them out to characters. Then you would also have to deal with exchange rates, banking and what not. Plus if any of your players are economics majors you will have to deal with them buying tons of something in one nation to sell in another for a unforseen profit (this has happened in a game I played in). It's a lot of effort for little reward. Ask yourself this question - how much fun does this add to the game? When you answer that you will likely just stick with what is in the PHB.
Cegtar is an interesting deity but as a player my first question would be what is his alignment and what domains is he over? Then I would ask what races and nations worship him and what alignment does his faithful tend to be. Then if I were interested in playing a worshiper of Cegtar I would want to know about the church. The mechanics of how he handles and judges souls might be interesting but doesn't really mean much to a character who is not dead. And after 5th level that will happen less and less if there is a decent cleric in the party. So this kind of makes the concern about the quasi gods a little irrelevant. Why are you worried about them and why do they need more description than you already provided? Are you planning on the players interacting with them in some way? Since these quasi gods have little power what reason would players have to care about them?
On a final point I would like to re-empathize how important it is to be thinking of adventures and plot hooks while putting together your homebrew. Why do you need to fill in every detail of how souls are transported and judged by Cegtar? Will that have something to do with an adventure? Maybe a fun adventure would be having the players assist Katrix or Phalldir to find a soul that they lost track of? Something like that could be played to comic effect. As a reward possibly they would assist a party member who died in cheating at the game of checkers (personally I would do a game of dice or something faster that could be resolved in a few minutes). If you are not planning on doing an adventure like this than I would reinvest your efforts into what you need to make plot hooks for adventures work and working out what is special about your world over using just any established setting.
Hope this helps
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
1. The DM can reduce the checkers game to say a combination of a Intelligence and Wisdom check or something to that effect or throw in deception and sleight of hand check (i have no idea how this works but you as the DM would) . I wasn't thinking of an actual checkers game being played out. My assumption would be that as long as either of those spells were cast within what would be considered a normal period of time, if cast successfully would remove them from the ranks of the living impaired without the need to challenge Pheximis.
2. Cegtar's alignment is evil as he's a combiniation of Chemosh and Morgion from the Krynnish pantheon. Chemosh being the god of death and Morgion being the god whose domain is disease and decay. No nation necessarily serves him. He may be the official diety of a city (generic term) He's generally worshipped by those who are truly evil, I didn't want to reduce a particular race to speciffically worship him. However if I were to say amongst which race would you find most of his worshippers I would say most likely orc kind and goblinoids. Like Hades he must judge every soul that enters the realm of the dead.
3. I understand that most of the players won't see most of this, however since I don't feel that I have the skills to be an effective DM so I want to make this as complete as possible so that a DM could indeed create a side quest, campaign using the plot hook you described. I can visualize a single plot hook at a time, I can't visualize how to tell the story how it would fit into a larger campaign, I don't see these threads, so I want the DM to have as complete information as possible, so that he/she has as much as possible to work with.
The Great Wakkorotti#5727
In regards to currency.......
One method I have used in my campaigns that has added flavor is to have a standard "trade" currency backed by either a trade consortium (think of historical use of notes from the European Trade houses during the late medieval/early Renaissance periods) or by the local major political power. In my world there are other currencies that are available, but these moneys are worth either more or less as compared to this standard
These other currencies can either be "debased" or less acceptable for some reason and could be used to indicate a foreign power or ancient treasure horde. Using this option can build in the need to have money changers or some other functions that could be used for story hooks or to base conflict on. In this system currencies that are ancient or foreign in nature can be used to give introduce NPC's and quests
In addition you could build a system where all prices based on purity and weight, with the standard coinage setting all prices and other coins worth more or less based on their perceived purity, weight and acceptability (i.e, in an Elven empire the Hobgoblin Redgold coins are considered debased and worth less, while the reverse may be true in the Hobgoblin kingdoms due to their hatred of the Elven race in general, all for flavor)
All these can be used to add flavor if it is desired, but do add a bit of book keeping to the game. If it interests you it is a good tool, but it does add complication. Using a primary standard coinage simplifies things, but even if you do decide to use a standard coinage the world over you can add the odd currency to the game to build story hooks on. It is all up to you as the DM and the level of immersion your party is interested in
Personally in my games I tend to use a primary standard coinage created by a major trade consortium that is acceptable everywhere, with other currencies occurring but being relatively rare unless the party spends a lot of time working for the common people or for the local government. If they then travel I introduce the money changer option when they arrive at a new area so they have to interact with an NPC that will hook them into their new location. This adds flavor and helps the party realize they have actually traveled to a new region that is different from where they have been
Just thoughts, hope they help
That's a good idea,
thank you I appreciate your input
The Great Wakkorotti#5727
here is a good link about the different currency-counting methods you could use.here
Is 4,000 years too long for an age?
The Great Wakkorotti#5727
That's fine. Tolkien had four separate ages and the second and third ages were each over 3000 years. The Forgotten Realms has over 20,000 years of recorded time. Ancient Mayan's believed the world to go through a creation/destruction cycle every 7885 years.
Personally I like the idea of a cycle of creation and destruction. It makes a world of consistent medieval/early Renaissance technology to be more believable. Basically, things go to heck right before more advanced technology can be developed.
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
thanks
The Great Wakkorotti#5727