New DM here, I want to write a campaign. I can't decide on the setting, though. I have "Storm Kings thunder" lying around. We played that campaign, but there is a ton of unused material in it, that I could use for my campaign. On the other hand, I don't know much about the forgotten realms lore and I will likely disregard a lot of canon. A home-brew setting on the other hand, sounds like a LOT of work, and I don't know if I could build an entire setting on my own. What do you suggest?
There's always the patchwork model: create your own setting, but steal liberally, or use a published setting, but rip big holes out of it to more conveniently put your adventures. There's certain types of adventures that simply don't work in a setting as well-defined as the forgotten realms.
New DM here, I want to write a campaign. I can't decide on the setting, though. I have "Storm Kings thunder" lying around. We played that campaign, but there is a ton of unused material in it, that I could use for my campaign. On the other hand, I don't know much about the forgotten realms lore and I will likely disregard a lot of canon. A home-brew setting on the other hand, sounds like a LOT of work, and I don't know if I could build an entire setting on my own. What do you suggest?
You don't really need an entire, complete setting fully ready and fleshed out before you can use it. Most, I'd say nearly all, homebrew settings have been grown over long periods of time while actively being played in. That said, it definitely is a lot of work even if you liberally steal whole chunks from elsewhere.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Yeah if you're a new DM, making your own setting from scratch can be very daunting. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using an existing setting or "Forgotten Realms lite" (taking pieces of the setting that work for you without going too deep into the lore). You could also keep the campaign strictly in one part of the Realms, so you only have to read up on one piece of the lore. The Sword Coast and the Western Heartlands are both popular areas of Faerun that easily have enough variety to host an entire campaign.
That being said, if you like DMing and see yourself doing it often, making your own setting is something quite a lot of DMs aspire to do eventually. It's really an investment in yourself and your brand as a DM, since once you make it you have it forever and can add to it over time. It doesn't have to be fully fleshed out to start using, but coming up with even the basic details of a setting can take quite a lot of time and effort, especially since players won't see 90% of that work during the game.
If you're on the fence I would recommend using an established setting, either in part or in whole.
I would suggest taking FR and making it your own. Homebrewing your own setting can be very rewarding, but is also a lot of work, even if you steal a lot of it from elsewhere.
Taking a setting/campaign guide type book and using it as a baseline, and changing things to suit your campaign or preferences, allows you to test out flexing your creativity while having a baseline in place to work with, while you're getting feet wet so to speak as a DM. And just make it clear to your players that you will be, intentionally or even by accident, deviating form standard FR canon in the game as you make it your own.
I'm in the process of something similar using the grim hollow setting as a baseline for an upcoming dark fantasy campaign, but changing some things within to fit my style and preferences better. So I already have a map and the groundwork for many nations and races there and I can just add, remove and tweak things as I see fit.
There is no one size fits all way to go about it, but that's my advice anyway.
If you DO want to start with full on homebrew setting though, I suggest you start the campaign focusing on a singular, somewhat isolated retion. Maybe a large valley with a small number of nations in it. Or a large archipelago with some island nations. Or a small continent. Or even just a single city and the surrounding area.
It can be part of a larger world with allusions to things beyond the scope of this initial region, but keeping the focus there can let you focus on a smaller number of nations, political factions or geographical areas to flesh out, and then when you're comfortable, start having more and more info form the outside slip in. Having your PCs all be from this region would limit their IC knowledge of the world beyond as well and reduce the number of questions you may need to ask before you're ready to go into detail.
When the Forgotten Realms was first published for AD&D, DMs were encouraged to "make it their own." That encouragement was stimied a bit by the close to exhaustive support (so many gazeteers) the setting received, but I think most folks who play "in the Forgotten Realms" do so through a touchstone method. Sure, the geography has been pre-generated there are even factions and stuff to populate the geography with power struggles, but everyone can basically do it their own way and in a way that works for their tables, including world breaking if it comes to that.
You will never be sanctioned for "deviating" from some sort of sense of "canon" advanced by some players.
You can do this with most of the Sword Coast based 5e adventures, but Storm King's Thunder is definitely the most stand out in my opinion that few groups will play it identically unless the DM sort of enforces a plot railroad. There are a lot of ways the game can go and SKT supports deviation from the intended path more than most.
1.) You want to play a game. 2.) You find the prospect of building a new setting a bit daunting. 3.) There is a bunch of ready made stuff on hand you see a lot of potential in. If the goal is 1.) isn't 3.) going to get you actually playing faster than 2.)?
As for world building on your own, Nyr-Ventus's advice tracks with what's in the DMG about building a world, probably the best advice it gives to new DMs.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
There is a ton of stuff set in FR in DMs Guild. I have been running a campaign set in the Moonshaes (with a few journeys to Candlekeep) using their stuff, and it is pretty consistent with characters, plot lines, etc. I homebrewed a lot of magical items and did throw in one non-Moonshaes adventure just because I liked the way it fit in, so I transplanted it to the Moonshaes. If my players get through all of it, they will have gone from level 1 to level 12.
DM me if you want a list of all the modules, in the order I am running them.
They don't exist but I like the idea of the D&D Police busting in on tables when they deviate from the integrity of published game world's Spanish Inquisition style, "Laerel Silverhand would never do that, all PCs in this travesty hereby lose a level and the DM must run The Lost Mind of the Philanderer, AS WRITTEN, twice as penance."
Oh wait, Adventurer's League....
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
A homebrew setting does not need to be hard work at all. I am currently running one, I started with a piece of paper on which I wrote out some key bullet points about the kind of campaign I was going to run. Then I drew a really basic continent map, I didn’t have names for nations or a pantheon. Then I asked my players to create there characters, I then used those characters to add a bit more detail. Someone was an elf, so I created an elven city, someone else was a tabaxi, so I put them in place. A players wanted to play twilight cleric so I have them a choice of 3 gods.
Then I planned out my first 3 session arc, a simple adventure to bring the party together and get them settled in the first town they where in. From there I have world built session by session, only defining what I need for the story. Making up stuff on the fly to answer questions about other details.
I am now 12 months in I still don’t have my pantheon fleshed out, large parts of my map are still marked TBC. It is the easiest way to homebrew.
So, something that comes to mind for me is the Actual Play series "The Adventure Zone", which is one of the better-known D&D shows mostly because it's played by a group that's already a fairly popular Podcast. Anyway, for their first adventure they were initially just playing through Lost Mines of Phandelver, then gradually got bored of that setting and started swapping out character names with something they thought was funnier (like, "Sildar Hallwinter" got renamed to "Barry Bluejeans"), and gradually it shifted to being an entirely homebrew world that completely abandoned everything from the original setting except a few place names.
It can be as extreme as that, or as simple as just swapping around characters to match the story you want to tell. I personally have DM'd my friends through Lost Mines and eventually shifted them into Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and just adjust the plot to accommodate both those changes and stuff that I just, personally, wanted to do. I tend to swap the races of NPCs, because I get kind of bored of humans and a huge chunk of the NPCs in these stories end up being humans... which, to be fair, helps to sell the idea that humans are the most common race, but I find it fun to give someone a new face and personality. Like, there was one minor character who I reflavored to be a glamorous female goblin who I described as pretty much just looking like the female Gremlin from Gremlins 2 and she quickly became a favorite character the players went out of their way to interact with whenever possible.
If you're a new DM, I suggest running some short adventures in an established setting such as FR. It'll let you get your arms around the entire concept of DMing without worrying about your setting. Once you get a few (or more than a few) sessions under your belt, then think about making your own setting.
When making your own setting, don't worry about total originality. While doing something unique and distinct is good, the main reason to create your own setting is so you don't feel bound by the conventions of an existing one. It gives you the freedom to go your own way. You'll more easily be able to specialize and focus. You can eliminate elements of the game you don't like, and focus on the parts that you do. At the same time, you can steal what you want and no one's going to care. In my setting, Bahamut isn't a dragon.
Make sure your players understand that you're running your own world. Most old-school gamers won't care, and in fact might even be surprised that you're doing anything else. I never played any TTPRG that actually purported to take place in an official setting, even if they lifted things from them.
Having done both, I recommend starting with an established setting and modifying as needed to make it your own. A setting like FR has much of the world building done. Which makes it less time consuming. Even with computer tools for mapping etc trying to design a world, the regions, nations, folks and politics as well as the history to give the setting some depth all take large chunks of time. That is mostly done for you with an established setting. FR can be problematic just because there is so much available but it’s also great because of that and you have the forgotten realms wiki to go to to look up places, people and things when you need it. As someone else suggested all you really need is a piece of it to start with then as you get comfortable you can expand. I’ve been playing and DMing for about 40 years and doing the work to build and maintain my homebrew on top of my professional requirements was simply too much after a while. Doing an homebrew FR alternate has been much easier and far less time consuming.
New DM here, I want to write a campaign. I can't decide on the setting, though. I have "Storm Kings thunder" lying around. We played that campaign, but there is a ton of unused material in it, that I could use for my campaign. On the other hand, I don't know much about the forgotten realms lore and I will likely disregard a lot of canon. A home-brew setting on the other hand, sounds like a LOT of work, and I don't know if I could build an entire setting on my own. What do you suggest?
If you want a great setting but is devoid of tons of lore, I would go with The World of Greyhawk. I have added Dune, Thieves World, Sword of Shannara, the Uplift series, Alien and the Movie Heavy Metal to my Greyhawk campaign.
Definitely make it your own, there is no shame in borrowing ideas from things.
For instance the DnD world we've played in for the last.. god :S 30+ years now started out as PURE homebrew by teenagers.. than some Forgotten Realms worked its way in, some Eberron slipped in, some things from this movie or that concept from a game we all enjoyed etc etc. /shrug. There's nothing wrong with starting from a base concept you like and taking things from other sources or making it all up yourself than pulling in ideas from other sources.
Not everything needs to be fleshed out right off the bat, the world can grow and adapt over time, another example is our pantheon probably has 3 gods at first if that, than we dumped in practically the entire FR pantheon during 3e's reign, the Raven Queen entered the scene with 4e and I'm sure others will arise over time while some others die (original homebrewed ones have all died by this point, but one recently rose to power)
I've found Faerun lore to be so dense as to be inaccessible, but also weirdly under-supported in 5e. I don't really even think if Forgotten Realms as a setting, because outside of "it's got Waterdeep!" I really can't think of much else really stands out about it.
The closest I ever get to playing in Faerun is lifting locations (like Waterdeep, or dungeons) from FR and transplanting them into homebrew settings.
Ive struggled several times with using both FR and Greyhawk as my setting, because I was so devoted to canon, or what is considered official. Really got bogged down in a hurry. Crushed my fun.
The last campaign I ran, however, started in Ravenloft (curse of Strahd) and spilled over into FR. This went MUCH better, because I cherry picked what I wanted to use and ignored the rest, No canon concerns.
In fact the point of that campaign was the destruction of Waterdeep by hellish forces, that the party was involved in thwarting. That event is now Canon in the Second FR campaign I'm now running.
There is a ton of material for either of these worlds, and I mine it for background stuff or names, now, but I dont worry to much about canon, and Im basically homebrewing using names and places from the forgotten realms.
So my advice to the OP is dont get too concerned about canon, but homebrew using FR stuff.
As a fairly new DM who started with a homebrew world, I thoroughly recommend dropping the idea of making a world all by yourself.
I made a world, and some huge aspects of it which I am really proud of, and once I thought it was enough to get going with, made a campaign.
The first player made a character which was a drow druid, and so I made a section of the underdark called "Styx", which is below a forest and so is full of the roots of the trees. I then made a town nearby, which I called New Lake as it is beside a lake which is, unsurprisingly, quite new. This is because the town I was setting the campaign in (Greyhold) is cursed with eternal rain, which has been going for 200 years and filled the valley to create a lake.
The second player made a wizard who had blagged his way into a mage college using sleight of hand tricks, and is now studying actual magic. I am putting together a mages college for them to have been a part of.
The third player made an Orc who was a member of a tribe renowned for strength, and was exiled for being to oweak, and so seeks to prove his strength. He has strength 18! So now I'm making a tribe of extremely strong orcs in the mountains, for him to originate from.
The Fourth player made a monk, who he wanted to be linked to the reincarnation of an ancient gold dragon. This one led me to not only create the Holy Order of the Gold Dragon, who worship this dead dragon and expect it to return, but an entire section of Lore on why there are no ancient dragons (a hero led a cull of them long ago, leaving only young ones, who have now grown to Adult but not to Ancient). This led to a few ancient dragons still surviving, and where they are hidden. It's also leading to a dragon-slaying weapon which I will have hidden in the world somewhere.
Another player (same world, different campaign) has managed to take a horse into a sewer, and now I'm building a thieves guild for the area who will use the sewer and the regular caravans which come & go from the town to trade in illegal and immoral goods. The sewer now opens into a river to the East of the town, which is near the road where the guild joins the caravan, which by then has passed beyond the towns borders.
None of these things would have happened were it not for the players, and whilst the writing was down to me, the concept was out of response to the players themselves - and most of them not even during the game, but instead during character creation!
New DM here, I want to write a campaign. I can't decide on the setting, though. I have "Storm Kings thunder" lying around. We played that campaign, but there is a ton of unused material in it, that I could use for my campaign. On the other hand, I don't know much about the forgotten realms lore and I will likely disregard a lot of canon. A home-brew setting on the other hand, sounds like a LOT of work, and I don't know if I could build an entire setting on my own. What do you suggest?
Yes. Definitely.
Ed Greenwood, the creator of Forgotten Realms, has said many times that he does this to help provide and make the world available, but it is up to you to make it your own. It's expected that you have "your" Faerun, and while this means that there are many sources available to check with, you're free to change them up however you like.
I've blown up Neverwinter and changed the lore of the Spellplague. The players loved it as it made it personal to them, while still having thematic connections to a common lore within the grand community of D&D.
As a fairly new DM who started with a homebrew world, I thoroughly recommend dropping the idea of making a world all by yourself.
That doesn't seem to be the question here, though. What you're talking about is bottom-up shared worldbuilding, which is certainly a perfectly fine style of world building. You can use the same method in a pre-existing setting as long as it has holes sufficient to fit in what you want to fit.
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New DM here, I want to write a campaign. I can't decide on the setting, though. I have "Storm Kings thunder" lying around. We played that campaign, but there is a ton of unused material in it, that I could use for my campaign. On the other hand, I don't know much about the forgotten realms lore and I will likely disregard a lot of canon. A home-brew setting on the other hand, sounds like a LOT of work, and I don't know if I could build an entire setting on my own. What do you suggest?
There's always the patchwork model: create your own setting, but steal liberally, or use a published setting, but rip big holes out of it to more conveniently put your adventures. There's certain types of adventures that simply don't work in a setting as well-defined as the forgotten realms.
You don't really need an entire, complete setting fully ready and fleshed out before you can use it. Most, I'd say nearly all, homebrew settings have been grown over long periods of time while actively being played in. That said, it definitely is a lot of work even if you liberally steal whole chunks from elsewhere.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Yeah if you're a new DM, making your own setting from scratch can be very daunting. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using an existing setting or "Forgotten Realms lite" (taking pieces of the setting that work for you without going too deep into the lore). You could also keep the campaign strictly in one part of the Realms, so you only have to read up on one piece of the lore. The Sword Coast and the Western Heartlands are both popular areas of Faerun that easily have enough variety to host an entire campaign.
That being said, if you like DMing and see yourself doing it often, making your own setting is something quite a lot of DMs aspire to do eventually. It's really an investment in yourself and your brand as a DM, since once you make it you have it forever and can add to it over time. It doesn't have to be fully fleshed out to start using, but coming up with even the basic details of a setting can take quite a lot of time and effort, especially since players won't see 90% of that work during the game.
If you're on the fence I would recommend using an established setting, either in part or in whole.
I would suggest taking FR and making it your own. Homebrewing your own setting can be very rewarding, but is also a lot of work, even if you steal a lot of it from elsewhere.
Taking a setting/campaign guide type book and using it as a baseline, and changing things to suit your campaign or preferences, allows you to test out flexing your creativity while having a baseline in place to work with, while you're getting feet wet so to speak as a DM. And just make it clear to your players that you will be, intentionally or even by accident, deviating form standard FR canon in the game as you make it your own.
I'm in the process of something similar using the grim hollow setting as a baseline for an upcoming dark fantasy campaign, but changing some things within to fit my style and preferences better. So I already have a map and the groundwork for many nations and races there and I can just add, remove and tweak things as I see fit.
There is no one size fits all way to go about it, but that's my advice anyway.
If you DO want to start with full on homebrew setting though, I suggest you start the campaign focusing on a singular, somewhat isolated retion. Maybe a large valley with a small number of nations in it. Or a large archipelago with some island nations. Or a small continent. Or even just a single city and the surrounding area.
It can be part of a larger world with allusions to things beyond the scope of this initial region, but keeping the focus there can let you focus on a smaller number of nations, political factions or geographical areas to flesh out, and then when you're comfortable, start having more and more info form the outside slip in. Having your PCs all be from this region would limit their IC knowledge of the world beyond as well and reduce the number of questions you may need to ask before you're ready to go into detail.
When the Forgotten Realms was first published for AD&D, DMs were encouraged to "make it their own." That encouragement was stimied a bit by the close to exhaustive support (so many gazeteers) the setting received, but I think most folks who play "in the Forgotten Realms" do so through a touchstone method. Sure, the geography has been pre-generated there are even factions and stuff to populate the geography with power struggles, but everyone can basically do it their own way and in a way that works for their tables, including world breaking if it comes to that.
You will never be sanctioned for "deviating" from some sort of sense of "canon" advanced by some players.
You can do this with most of the Sword Coast based 5e adventures, but Storm King's Thunder is definitely the most stand out in my opinion that few groups will play it identically unless the DM sort of enforces a plot railroad. There are a lot of ways the game can go and SKT supports deviation from the intended path more than most.
1.) You want to play a game. 2.) You find the prospect of building a new setting a bit daunting. 3.) There is a bunch of ready made stuff on hand you see a lot of potential in. If the goal is 1.) isn't 3.) going to get you actually playing faster than 2.)?
As for world building on your own, Nyr-Ventus's advice tracks with what's in the DMG about building a world, probably the best advice it gives to new DMs.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
There is a ton of stuff set in FR in DMs Guild. I have been running a campaign set in the Moonshaes (with a few journeys to Candlekeep) using their stuff, and it is pretty consistent with characters, plot lines, etc. I homebrewed a lot of magical items and did throw in one non-Moonshaes adventure just because I liked the way it fit in, so I transplanted it to the Moonshaes. If my players get through all of it, they will have gone from level 1 to level 12.
DM me if you want a list of all the modules, in the order I am running them.
They don't exist but I like the idea of the D&D Police busting in on tables when they deviate from the integrity of published game world's Spanish Inquisition style, "Laerel Silverhand would never do that, all PCs in this travesty hereby lose a level and the DM must run The Lost Mind of the Philanderer, AS WRITTEN, twice as penance."
Oh wait, Adventurer's League....
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
A homebrew setting does not need to be hard work at all. I am currently running one, I started with a piece of paper on which I wrote out some key bullet points about the kind of campaign I was going to run. Then I drew a really basic continent map, I didn’t have names for nations or a pantheon. Then I asked my players to create there characters, I then used those characters to add a bit more detail. Someone was an elf, so I created an elven city, someone else was a tabaxi, so I put them in place. A players wanted to play twilight cleric so I have them a choice of 3 gods.
Then I planned out my first 3 session arc, a simple adventure to bring the party together and get them settled in the first town they where in. From there I have world built session by session, only defining what I need for the story. Making up stuff on the fly to answer questions about other details.
I am now 12 months in I still don’t have my pantheon fleshed out, large parts of my map are still marked TBC. It is the easiest way to homebrew.
So, something that comes to mind for me is the Actual Play series "The Adventure Zone", which is one of the better-known D&D shows mostly because it's played by a group that's already a fairly popular Podcast. Anyway, for their first adventure they were initially just playing through Lost Mines of Phandelver, then gradually got bored of that setting and started swapping out character names with something they thought was funnier (like, "Sildar Hallwinter" got renamed to "Barry Bluejeans"), and gradually it shifted to being an entirely homebrew world that completely abandoned everything from the original setting except a few place names.
It can be as extreme as that, or as simple as just swapping around characters to match the story you want to tell. I personally have DM'd my friends through Lost Mines and eventually shifted them into Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and just adjust the plot to accommodate both those changes and stuff that I just, personally, wanted to do. I tend to swap the races of NPCs, because I get kind of bored of humans and a huge chunk of the NPCs in these stories end up being humans... which, to be fair, helps to sell the idea that humans are the most common race, but I find it fun to give someone a new face and personality. Like, there was one minor character who I reflavored to be a glamorous female goblin who I described as pretty much just looking like the female Gremlin from Gremlins 2 and she quickly became a favorite character the players went out of their way to interact with whenever possible.
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If you're a new DM, I suggest running some short adventures in an established setting such as FR. It'll let you get your arms around the entire concept of DMing without worrying about your setting. Once you get a few (or more than a few) sessions under your belt, then think about making your own setting.
When making your own setting, don't worry about total originality. While doing something unique and distinct is good, the main reason to create your own setting is so you don't feel bound by the conventions of an existing one. It gives you the freedom to go your own way. You'll more easily be able to specialize and focus. You can eliminate elements of the game you don't like, and focus on the parts that you do. At the same time, you can steal what you want and no one's going to care. In my setting, Bahamut isn't a dragon.
Make sure your players understand that you're running your own world. Most old-school gamers won't care, and in fact might even be surprised that you're doing anything else. I never played any TTPRG that actually purported to take place in an official setting, even if they lifted things from them.
Having done both, I recommend starting with an established setting and modifying as needed to make it your own. A setting like FR has much of the world building done. Which makes it less time consuming. Even with computer tools for mapping etc trying to design a world, the regions, nations, folks and politics as well as the history to give the setting some depth all take large chunks of time. That is mostly done for you with an established setting. FR can be problematic just because there is so much available but it’s also great because of that and you have the forgotten realms wiki to go to to look up places, people and things when you need it. As someone else suggested all you really need is a piece of it to start with then as you get comfortable you can expand. I’ve been playing and DMing for about 40 years and doing the work to build and maintain my homebrew on top of my professional requirements was simply too much after a while. Doing an homebrew FR alternate has been much easier and far less time consuming.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
If you want a great setting but is devoid of tons of lore, I would go with The World of Greyhawk. I have added Dune, Thieves World, Sword of Shannara, the Uplift series, Alien and the Movie Heavy Metal to my Greyhawk campaign.
Definitely make it your own, there is no shame in borrowing ideas from things.
For instance the DnD world we've played in for the last.. god :S 30+ years now started out as PURE homebrew by teenagers.. than some Forgotten Realms worked its way in, some Eberron slipped in, some things from this movie or that concept from a game we all enjoyed etc etc. /shrug. There's nothing wrong with starting from a base concept you like and taking things from other sources or making it all up yourself than pulling in ideas from other sources.
Not everything needs to be fleshed out right off the bat, the world can grow and adapt over time, another example is our pantheon probably has 3 gods at first if that, than we dumped in practically the entire FR pantheon during 3e's reign, the Raven Queen entered the scene with 4e and I'm sure others will arise over time while some others die (original homebrewed ones have all died by this point, but one recently rose to power)
I've found Faerun lore to be so dense as to be inaccessible, but also weirdly under-supported in 5e. I don't really even think if Forgotten Realms as a setting, because outside of "it's got Waterdeep!" I really can't think of much else really stands out about it.
The closest I ever get to playing in Faerun is lifting locations (like Waterdeep, or dungeons) from FR and transplanting them into homebrew settings.
Ive struggled several times with using both FR and Greyhawk as my setting, because I was so devoted to canon, or what is considered official. Really got bogged down in a hurry. Crushed my fun.
The last campaign I ran, however, started in Ravenloft (curse of Strahd) and spilled over into FR. This went MUCH better, because I cherry picked what I wanted to use and ignored the rest, No canon concerns.
In fact the point of that campaign was the destruction of Waterdeep by hellish forces, that the party was involved in thwarting. That event is now Canon in the Second FR campaign I'm now running.
There is a ton of material for either of these worlds, and I mine it for background stuff or names, now, but I dont worry to much about canon, and Im basically homebrewing using names and places from the forgotten realms.
So my advice to the OP is dont get too concerned about canon, but homebrew using FR stuff.
G
Thank you all so much for all the advice! that was very helpful1
As a fairly new DM who started with a homebrew world, I thoroughly recommend dropping the idea of making a world all by yourself.
I made a world, and some huge aspects of it which I am really proud of, and once I thought it was enough to get going with, made a campaign.
The first player made a character which was a drow druid, and so I made a section of the underdark called "Styx", which is below a forest and so is full of the roots of the trees. I then made a town nearby, which I called New Lake as it is beside a lake which is, unsurprisingly, quite new. This is because the town I was setting the campaign in (Greyhold) is cursed with eternal rain, which has been going for 200 years and filled the valley to create a lake.
The second player made a wizard who had blagged his way into a mage college using sleight of hand tricks, and is now studying actual magic. I am putting together a mages college for them to have been a part of.
The third player made an Orc who was a member of a tribe renowned for strength, and was exiled for being to oweak, and so seeks to prove his strength. He has strength 18! So now I'm making a tribe of extremely strong orcs in the mountains, for him to originate from.
The Fourth player made a monk, who he wanted to be linked to the reincarnation of an ancient gold dragon. This one led me to not only create the Holy Order of the Gold Dragon, who worship this dead dragon and expect it to return, but an entire section of Lore on why there are no ancient dragons (a hero led a cull of them long ago, leaving only young ones, who have now grown to Adult but not to Ancient). This led to a few ancient dragons still surviving, and where they are hidden. It's also leading to a dragon-slaying weapon which I will have hidden in the world somewhere.
Another player (same world, different campaign) has managed to take a horse into a sewer, and now I'm building a thieves guild for the area who will use the sewer and the regular caravans which come & go from the town to trade in illegal and immoral goods. The sewer now opens into a river to the East of the town, which is near the road where the guild joins the caravan, which by then has passed beyond the towns borders.
None of these things would have happened were it not for the players, and whilst the writing was down to me, the concept was out of response to the players themselves - and most of them not even during the game, but instead during character creation!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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Yes. Definitely.
Ed Greenwood, the creator of Forgotten Realms, has said many times that he does this to help provide and make the world available, but it is up to you to make it your own. It's expected that you have "your" Faerun, and while this means that there are many sources available to check with, you're free to change them up however you like.
I've blown up Neverwinter and changed the lore of the Spellplague. The players loved it as it made it personal to them, while still having thematic connections to a common lore within the grand community of D&D.
That doesn't seem to be the question here, though. What you're talking about is bottom-up shared worldbuilding, which is certainly a perfectly fine style of world building. You can use the same method in a pre-existing setting as long as it has holes sufficient to fit in what you want to fit.