Dear fellow DM's,

    I am here because I am in need of your help. I am a completely new Dungeon Master, and am a little ways into my first campaign. Now, I am telling you this right away: I made several rather poor and uneducated decisions when I began DM'ing(such as not hosting a session zero) that have led up to this point, and I understand that I was incorrect to make said decisions, so please note that calling me out on such mistakes will not help me at this current time. The two issues that I want to focus on right now are; I decided, against my better judgement, to have my first campaign be completely homebrew, and two, I only began with a few loose 'quests' or adventures for my players(four)to find and explore my world through, without developing an overarching conflict. So now, I have four level four players who have completed all of my original quests and adventures, with no main conflict to introduce to them, and with a severe case of writer's block imposed upon me. What I am asking of you, my acquaintances, is help brainstorming a main conflict for my campaign. Here is some basic information about my world if you would be so inclined to help me:

• The setting is high fantasy, with magical technology, similiar to the technological level of Ebberon and Sharn.
• The world as the players and the surrounding NPC's know it is made up of one supercontinent under the rule of the Kingdom of Khalar, which is ruled by a member of the royal family, from which the kingdom gets its namesake. There is also a chain of small islands called the Southfait Islands,  which is lawless by proxy of it's distance from the continent proper.
• Although the previous leaders of the country were greedy, cruel, and militaristic, the current ruler, King Benedict Khalar I, is mostly benevolent and well liked(in comparison to previous rulers at least) by his people.
• Almost every type of environment exists in the kingdom, from the frigid Arctic Wastes to the expansive, sandy, Whalesong Desert.

             Please feel free to ask for any more information if needed, I would be more than happy to supply it. Please know that any idea is a good idea in my current situation, and I appreciate greatly any contributions anyone decides to make. Thank you so much for your time and commitment.

Quote from BrooksBattleHammersAndBestiaries >>

I decided, against my better judgement, to have my first campaign be completely homebrew,

First off, it's never too late to go back on that decision.

Second, what exactly do you mean by "main conflict"? Campaigns revolving around a quest, a mystery or a dungeon crawl don't necessarily have or need a main conflict. Are you looking for campaign arc ideas in general or do you specifically want the campaign to be centered around a conflict?

Third, is there anything you can tell us about the party's motivations? Are they or could they be linked to any known power groups? Do they have particular skill sets in common (criminals, diplomats, investigators, magical/technological experts, etc)? 

My advice: make some sort of BBEG (big bad evil guy) that causes the problems of the campaign. Then have players attempt to fix the problems presented in their backstory, with the BBEG being at least partially responsible.

EG: Player wants to find lost relatives, who were captured by BBEG, player wants to pay off debt, indirectly caused by BBEG, etc.

The first thing I will say is, even if you're running a homebrew world, there is absolutely nothing wrong with looking through published material and shamelessly stealing from them.  In my own homebrew world, once the current story arc is finished I'm planning on cracking open Ghosts of Saltmarsh and seeing what I can adapt from there.

The second thing, and this is going off your third bullet point, is even with a ruler who is beloved there are elements that are going to be dissatisfied with their rule.  Maybe there's nobles who are loyalists to the old regime.  Maybe there's a group of military brass who are planning on replacing the king with a junta.  Maybe there's a group of anarchists who want to do away with kings forever.  Maybe a highly influential church is planning on creating a theocracy.  Maybe someone made a deal with an extraplanar entity in order to become the new monarch.  Just that one idea, of who's not happy with the current ruler, has lots of potential behind it.

Quick note:  If your players are enjoying what you're doing now, you can keep doing it!  You don't need a grand overarching narrative!  You can just have fun running through dungeons together.  That's basically the first 10 years of this game.  So don't stress yourself out.

Writers' block sucks, but you have to write your way through it.  Let's start with an exercise.  King Benedict Khalar I has just been found murdered in the royal bath.  An ornate, jeweled dagger was plunged between his ribs.  The water is crimson red; his flesh is deathly pale.  The guards have already taken the chambermaid who found the body into custody.  When the Royal Doctor removes the knife, everyone sees there are words etched into the blade...

What are those words?

Hi, I have been DMing just for a year now and the world is homebrew to, but I started off running the lost mines module with just an edit to NPCs and the end to point them in a direction. As others said, use modules and one shots and adapt them to your setting or to get ideas for quests and events.

As for an over arching plot. Break it down into something like 3 stages. Start with bullet points and then come back to flesh it out. Each stage draws the group into another part of the world, becoming less familiar than what they are used to. This means along their journey you can run varying side quests depending on the landscape. Maybe try doing the 3 stage idea for each of your bullet points and see which you are drawn towards most before fleshing anything out to much. 

An example based on your first bullet point.
- Stage One. For an hour, day or week, magic simply stops. No spells, cantrips, magical items etc. Maybe it is just arcane, or divine as well. This isn't to punish players, so don't throw a wizard into combat with no magic, but what effect would it have on a city or country. How much do they rely on the magical technology. Do guards rely on magical gear to protect a town from wild creatures. Is magic tech used to aid industries. Are hospitals set up for pure medicine or do they rely of people who can cast basic healing spells. The group need to investigate and research the occurrence. Maybe having to visit multiple locations to 'triangulate' where it originated from. The research could lead them to a group/cult who are setting up things, sort of anchor points. This finalises with a conflict with the guy leading the groups. This guy could still get away, for a trail to follow.
- Stage two is to follow the research to locate the origin, some kind of ritual like magic to cancel magic, or a mechanism that relies on the sun, moon and stars alignments to focus a crystal. Maybe magic isn't being cancelled, but absorbed into the crystal or focused into a creature or person. This gives the group something to stop that isn't just another creature kill. 
- Stage Three, Time to go after the BBEG. What is their motive to cancel magic. Or if the absorbed route then has it been focused into this guy or a bunch of creatures, mutating them. Is this the same person from the first stage or were they just a servant for this BBEG. You destroyed the mechanism but need to lock him up to make sure he doesn't build another one, or you stopped him from absorbing all the magic, but he got enough to become scary as hell/god like and is just hell bent on scorching the world. Again what was the motive.

So that was an idea based around your worlds magical tech. It was the risk of losing it. But you could do the opposite thing with the idea of a new, advanced and dangerous magic or technology being distributed amongst the criminal networks. This could provide a lot of intrigue towards stopping/solving jewel robberies or assassination attempts etc.

Peaceful kingdom?  Easy to fix.  Either you kill the king or you have invaders encroaching on the borders. From there you can have them going to remote locations looking for pure battle or tracking down clues to a murder.  And if the King is not directing the party, then an upper class noble or something... and perhaps they are the big bad anyway, and saw the party as a threat and want them off running around tracking down red herrings while they solidify their power.

Or perhaps the King's child grows ill and the only known cure lies in the hands of the pirates on the Southfait Islands.  Or perhaps a shaman lives on those islands, but needs materials from the Whalesong Desert (love that name) to complete the cure.

If you want longer and more complicated, there is a plot to overthrow the king and the players are tasked by local officials (or whoever they helped in their previous quests) to look into the matter.  In finding the first group, they uncover that it is a nationwide plot and they need to find the cult leader before the King is killed.  This could easily span the continent as they go from Empire town to town to find more clues.  In hidden groups like that you'll have cells and uncovering the leader may connect you to other cells, but won't lay out the entire organization until you piece together several upper level cells... so this could be as simple or as extensive as needed to get them to your next objective.  And this one easily leads into "The King Was Killed... Now What?"

One of the player character's family members is kidnapped.  Trying to locate them and why they were kidnapped may take some thought, but can lead to all of the same kind of places.

Or maybe a noble just needs help getting goods from one place to another and needs better help than the caravan guards.  Which could lead to additional help in all kinds of scenarios.

I tend to look at big picture items when trying to go from this stage.  Cause if you have an idea of why things are happening, then you can start putting specific things on the map and in your outline.  And they can easily be adjusted based on actions of the players and how they resolve (or don't) things.  I know some others like the one specific thing, but I want the tone and the feeling to begin at the top and then introduce the characters involved and the supporting cast they need to make it happen and then work into the locations they'll be encountered.  Heck, I've sparked an idea for continuing a campaign by finding a single magic item that spurred an idea and figuring out how to get it to the characters, who wanted it back and what they would do to get it.  So, keep looking and sifting ideas... it will come.  

Also, you completely have the option to put a campaign on hold as they have reached a plateau... take a break for a few weeks or whatever.  Play a different game or pull a module and run through parts of that and then pick it back up later on.  There's really no wrong answer... and sometimes what you really need is time to develop things... nothing wrong with telling players that and being up front with them.  "Hey guys... we accomplished what I had laid out for beginning this... and I'm not ready with the next phase..."  It will all be fine... and then one night you'll wake up at 2 am and have a great idea and start writing and it will generate fire all day long.  

Edit: And never be afraid to steal from other sources.  Sure you said homebrew.  Tweak something someone else wrote and use the whole yard or whatever threads you need to get your campaign to the next phase.

I thank you for your time and effort. You have given me several ideas already! I can't wait to start writing them out! Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.

It is never too late to have a session zero. Just have a short one before your next session asking everyone how they like the campaign so far; what areas can be improved; do they want more focus on combat, exploration, or social encounters; do they want to try new characters or stick with their current ones; etc.

And as others have said, there is nothing wrong with copying ideas or outright plagiarizing official sources. In fact, copy and take inspiration from any kind of story you come across: Roman history, Egyptian mythology, King Arthur, Lord of the Rings, Goblin Slayer, Harry Potter, Avatar, etc.

If you do not want to plagiarize too much from others' work because you still want to visit those worlds, what you can do is have the party be employed by a patron of an interdimensional organization, and send your party on adventures into those worlds now so it gives you time to work on your homebrew world before they come back. And after the adventure is done, you can copy whatever ideas you have not used into your homebrew world. For example, if you run the Lost Mines of Phandelver and your party did not finish all the quests, you can recycle some of those unused quests into your homebrew world.

You could do the ultimate fetch quest.  Some person needs 4 things (insert your own reason for the 4 things: relics to close a gate, components of an elixir that will heal the king/queen, pieces of a magical item that will untie the kingdom, whatever).  Those 4 things are guarded by evil dragons (green, black, blue, red).  The iconic monsters of DnD that every quester fears/loves and are scaleable to party level (young, adult, ancient, dracholich).  You can then create sub-quests to find out where these dragons are located.  These can be dungeon dives to rescue a cartographer that knows one location, then another quest to maybe to find a lost map located in a drow fortress.....all kinds of possibilities to incorporate iconic monsters, magical loot, and cool homebrew roll playing scenarios. Have fun with it!

its ok to use other adventures and ideas from other books and then look backwards and add in a narrative.  Think about comic books.

So grab one of the campaign books or a one shot from somewhere (official or unofficial and tweak for your world and the feel.  Then go to the next one until you get your inspiration back.  As you build a narrative will build itself.

                        Dear @pangujan,

            I realize that it is never too late to go back from my decision to use a homebrew world, it's just, in all honesty, I much prefer the idea of running a homebrew campaign as opposed to a prewritten module, by "against my better judgement", I simply meant that I knew getting into it that homebrewing the campaign would be considerably more difficult to do than running a module. 

           What I meant by "main conflict" is that I am looking for ideas on both general campaign arc ideas, and  a main, central conflict, involving some kind of "world shaking" event and BBE for my players to have to try and deal with. As far as motivations and connections, well firstly, the make up of my party is as follows: an Aasimar Monk, an Aasimar Fighter, a Half-Tiefling/Changeling(Homebrewed) Bard, and a Human Bladesinger(Wizard). Both Aasimars were friends when they were young(however, they are unrelated, just as a note), and the Bard and the Bladesinger knew of each other in their younger years. Each character grew up in the capital/palace city of the kingdom, the Imperial City, which is made up of multiple floating tiers, and modeled after Sharn from Eberron. The Wizard grew up in a middle class family with magical researchers for parents, the Monk grew up as the child of two working class parents in the lower tier, the Fighter grew up in an upperclass family on the top tier, and the Bard grew up in an upperclass family, but on a different tier than the fighter.

        At some point, each character has had a run-in of some sorts with a criminal organization called the Black Knights, a large syndicate that operates around the Imperial City, stealing, selling, and trading contraband under the guise of a legal trading corporation, and killing or threatening all who get in their way. The bard is the daughter of the two leaders of the Black Knights, who tried(she ran away) to "condition" her to become the heir to the corporation. While this is a good conflict or hook, I have already written it in as a side conflict, and am looking for a different main conflict not involving the Black Knights.

Just remember that Dungeon Mastering is NOT writing.  There is no such thing as writers block as a DM, because it is the players job to tell the story.  Not yours.  All the DM does is create a world (I have a systematic and effective way to do this using queues for thing such as dungeons, towns, etc) around the players that they then choose how to interact with.  

Whenever I sit down to DM I have absolutely no idea what my players will do next.  That is the true joy of DMing.  Let the players tell the story.  

Spend some time on DMs Guild. In addition to having adventures and modules you can insert into your home-brew world, there are a lot of other books meant to help DMS who have home-brewed worlds. It's been a lifesaver for when I have writers block. The modules, PDFs, etc are not expensive, either. 

Quote from SireSamuel >>

Just remember that Dungeon Mastering is NOT writing.  There is no such thing as writers block as a DM, because it is the players job to tell the story.  Not yours.  All the DM does is create a world (I have a systematic and effective way to do this using queues for thing such as dungeons, towns, etc) around the players that they then choose how to interact with.  

Whenever I sit down to DM I have absolutely no idea what my players will do next.  That is the true joy of DMing.  Let the players tell the story.  

So I disagree with this entirely.  On a visceral level.  

The DM is where the story funnels through.  NPCs act and react differently based on the DM, modules are entirely different based on the DM, and when the DM loses creativity it's generally evident. Writers Block, or Creativity Block TOTALLY exists at the DM level, and I've seen groups flame out because their longtime only DM just doesn't have a new idea to push through and the group gets bored with the same old stuff. Not only that, but telling the OP that the thing they have doesn't exist is just rude, because here they are asking for help and you're invalidating them saying hey you're wrong, throw it on your players.

I think some about of randomization at the DM level is fine in terms of random encounters, some rooms in a dungeon, etc.  I think allowing the players to have agency and control over parts of the world is important, but if all you're doing is facilitating the game from a DM standpoint.....what's the point?  The whole fun of DMing is being able to see your creativity flourish and your players romp around in that setting.  They might tear it apart, but then you can put it back together or teach them how the world reacts. 

 At some point, each character has had a run-in of some sorts with a criminal organization called the Black Knights, a large syndicate that operates around the Imperial City, stealing, selling, and trading contraband under the guise of a legal trading corporation, and killing or threatening all who get in their way. The bard is the daughter of the two leaders of the Black Knights, who tried(she ran away) to "condition" her to become the heir to the corporation. While this is a good conflict or hook, I have already written it in as a side conflict, and am looking for a different main conflict not involving the Black Knights.

So here would be my counterpoint to this:  Why doesn't it involve them?

You have ties to character backstory, players being invested in that storyline, and just because they aren't the top dog doesn't mean they aren't working for the top dog, or that there isn't an offshoot working from inside the evil organization trying to do their own specific thing.  

Do your players like any of the NPC's you've created?  Any towns they like?  Any animal companions they've accumulated?

Kill them.

No seriously, kill them, or at least threaten them greatly.  A local cult, a goblin or orc band, etc.  It really doesn't matter the threat, but have a "Man walk in with a gun" and then give the players a way to trace this threat back to wherever they originated from.  Give them the means to take out this threat, and then some clues about who that guy might be working for.

These escalating threats and villains working for bigger villains is a tried and true campaign structure that works over and over again, and is a great way to start.

The way you get your players to care about a story arc is to make that story arc threaten what the characters care about.

Quote from SireSamuel >>

Just remember that Dungeon Mastering is NOT writing.  There is no such thing as writers block as a DM, because it is the players job to tell the story.  Not yours.  All the DM does is create a world (I have a systematic and effective way to do this using queues for thing such as dungeons, towns, etc) around the players that they then choose how to interact with.  

Whenever I sit down to DM I have absolutely no idea what my players will do next.  That is the true joy of DMing.  Let the players tell the story.  

That isn't really how stories work. A story is not dropping a handful of protagonists into a world and seeing what they do. A story is having something happen to a handful of protagonists and seeing how they react. That thing that happens and what might then happen when they react to it - that's what the DM writes. 

Everybody at the table facilitates the story in a fluctuating capacity, that's as far as I have to say re: DM or players telling the story.

Re: the "dilemma", I think the only thing you're doing "wrong" is thinking of this as a problem and not an opportunity.  I think I'd also course correct you away from the forum of strangers for campaign development and use as a focus group the folks you're game focuses on: the PCs.

I'm being a little glib, but also a lot serious.  I'm at a similar point in one of my games.  Party is cleared third level and I've got some stuff I can put before them to get them to fourth.  I have no idea where we're going.  What I am going to do is actually survey my players.  First question I'm going to catalog significant NPCs (either by design or randoms the party liked interacting with) and have then ranked in order of not minding seeing them again (even if they're dead, doesn't matter, there's magic in the game).  I'll also include a highlight reel of the groups' battles and challenges and all around good times to date and get a sense of what they got the most out of.  Include some questions about where they've been and that caps the retrospective questioning.  Then I list some themes the campaign could deal with: war, exploration, mystery, crime, politics, horror, comedy, all around heroism, etc.  Find out what sort of ideas the players want to explore.  Fill in the blanks should be available here too.  Similar question about settings: Forrests, jungles, mountains, deserts, cities, lower planes, upper planes, limbo, Feywild, etc).  Fill in the blank on "where do you see your character going? why does your character do what they do?"  And then finish it off with a sort of boundary check I've adapted from the Monte Cooks Games Consent in Gaming (it's free and a good read for a DM or player).  It basically gives a player a good way of articulating their comfort zone when it comes to violence and horror through a series of "green/yellow/red light" checks.  I supplement that with "Ok, I know there are some things that are horrific or graphic that make you uncomfortable in a way you don't enjoy.  But what about the scary or thrill stuff you do enjoy?  What sort of scares or action do you like?  Feel free to name tv shows or movies if you want to be specific.

With that, as DM you go into reactive mode in a way some story tellers call "working their audience."  It's fun, and for me at least a little rewarding, to deliver an environment my players actually enjoy.  So for broad strokes of what I should do as DM, I turn to the folks my DMing has the most impact on for guidance.

Note, I'm not saying let the players dictate the script, you're asking them for thematic interests.  It's up to you as to how you flesh out the world so their interests are engaged and entertained.

I sometimes worry a lot of DMs short circuit themselves with "pressure" out there that TTRPG is an "art form" so DMs think of themselves as the chief creative and then fall back on the tropes of the lone tortured artist.  It's a collaborative art, and collaboration in creative work is something a lot of folks don't understand but is actually something really essential for a creative work to be successful.  After all, the game is conducted through communication, not talking to yourself.

Thank you for your response and criticism, I will do as you suggest immediately.

I will definitely check them out!