Why Your D&D HomeBrew Campaign Probably Sucks (And 5 Ways to Make It Better!)

[@Zr0din]

VENTING: I'm the DM for some very experienced players. In session zero, they requested to be in Faerun. They assumed the Sword coast and I started them out in Thay because frankly, I knew they would argue with me if I got ANY detail wrong in Waterdeep (that npc wouldn't have reacted that way, why can't I talk to this person). There is much less lore in Thay to argue about. I gave them player agency - one wanted an order of paladins - Included, another wanted to get rescued by Fae, included. Anyway, one of the players took this setting change as a personal attack instead of an interesting reveal. He needs some therapy. He was completely disruptive for the rest of the game (session 2). Post-game talk - he just wanted it his way. I was like... do you want to be the DM? I'll play if you want to DM. But you know too much about that area (you prove it by this conversation) and I have to put in some mystery for this game or you will just be on rails. What is it in the Sword coast that you can't do here? He never answers. By the way, I'm not in HomeBrew. I have a sourcebook called "Thay: Land of the Red Wizards" and one of the Authors is Ed Greenwood. I even told them about the book early.

[@restoredtuna8264]

Consider having your players be newcomers to the world, either by a boat crashing on the shore, teleport spell gone wrong, or anything you can think of. If their characters have never been here before either, they have a much easier time learning without thinking they know less than their characters.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

I agree. I tend to set my homebrew campaigns on an island chain out off of the sword coast. That way they have a vague understanding of the story world, but it’s also new and undiscovered

[@Goodroosters]

Gotta be real I disagree with the title being this way. It's discouraging and uses fear as a form of marketing, which we really need to keep out of D&D.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

What do you think it should be titled?

[@templar_niko9390]

I agree with him, the problems discussed are prevalent in both home-brewed campaigns and pre-written modules especially with accessibility. In an icewind dale campaigns I'm a player in I have access to everything about Ice-wind dale through the internet, but when I want more information on the setting I can't look it up as to avoid any spoilers of information.And within the community at least the younger side of it from my experience a lot of people only know one or two things about Faerun if that, they understand that its more or less a generic fantasy (TBH I don't know much at all about Faerun and I've been playing and GMing games for 7 years) personally I think a title like "The problems of character and setting" or something akin to that though it isn't as flashy as "Why Your D&D HomeBrew Campaign Probably Sucks" so i understand why you chose that.

[@BenjaminPMorrill]

i left it all open to my players. they told me back stories and i built the world to incorporate them. i don't care what they do. if they choose to bugger off and circumnavigate the planet they can. there is a big bad happening but it's nota threat they could ever take on until level 17, it will always be there growing. with everyone on the planet still wanting their own goals while an impending doom is approaching. they started off taking job flyer's off a Guide Post at a 3 way road crossing, i asked them to please jump on to that one ask. "decide if they want to take the job" that's all i asked them. there is a Loxodon a Sharkin and a Changling, the town they went to had an issue but it was being caused by a creature that also had an issue so from there all game info has come from PC's they only got a map once they received it as a gift in game from the hag they helped. her knowledge left it open for me to lore drop then. her gifts to them were based on tid bits of past events that are part of the world, they might have heard about the great incursion 800 years ago but she told them more about it when describing the pendant she gifted one of them. "owned by the last elven warrior as she died bravely against the death slaadi in the defense of the ancient city gates , now re-named after her..." I hthen said that if you have traveled to the capital you pasted through those gates not knowing the reason for the odd name ( Aranvana's Stand) the slaadi were the Great incursion but 800years along ass time and probably not remembered well other than fire side tales more bull than not. BTW the loxodon is the only one of his kind on the whole planet and is actually from ravinca, there was this thing with Zuggtomy and he got sucked into/out of the material plane where ravinca is/maybe was ( haha) and dropped into our campaigns material world.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

This is smart. By letting them just explore the world before the big bad arrives, when s*#t goes down they actually feel invested in saving it.

[@BenjaminPMorrill]

@@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring first dming since I was 14. Now 48 lol much love brother!!

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

@@BenjaminPMorrill Amazing, gald to hear you’re reconnecting with something you enjoy. Stick around, and hopefully I can find out how it goes!

[@IamSandpaper]

What I did with my lore for my world is that I kept the lore broad and brief. Short summary of why the world is as it is right now when the campaign starts. It doesn't need to be super fleshed out, as it will slowly get richer as the party have their adventures in the world. Build the details of your lore with the partys role playing. Also, keeping the lore brief and short allows for lots more flexibility for you as a DM to improvise without clashing with the established lore. The lore of my world takes at most 3 minutes to read, that's more than enough to get started.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Yes! Exactly! It’s important to have flexibility and incremental additions.

[@alexplayer8367]

Start small is the best one for me, I just give as much lore as my players want and sometimes like once every 3-5 months or something like that I write a doc of 1 or 2 pages with important lore that will make you understand better what's happening, but if you don't read it it won't be a problem since is completely optional. Reading it may change the perspective about an important npc tho. We've been playing for a year in this linear campaign and my players are invested not only in their characters, but the lore and world around them. Even if there are some inevitable events since is a linear campaing, they are always the ones to decide how to solve it or what to do next.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Love this. Good job making it an opt in choice rather than just monologuing lore to your players that might not be interested. They’ll be much more receptive to finding out the history on their terms, as opposed to front loading it in massive chunks.

[@mcfixer9503]

I'm planning on running a reduced-magic world with a different economy to standard dnd. I'll be running a Pound/Shilling/Pence sort of monetary system with gold taking the place of pounds, copper being shillings, pewter (custom coinage) being pennies and farthings, and silver, electrum, and platinum taking up other roles in the monetary system the only other thing is that it'll be prep-heavy with a high focus on the time in town investigating but also stocking up, and general sandbox world exploration. by reducing magic from "everything everywhere (all at once)" to "slightly costly, can be done for a price" where magic is doable and used but not often for most stuff. for example, magic leaves an aftertaste on food and leaves a sort of sheen on items produced with it, magic healing is still used but isnt overused because it causes psychic illnesses or a staticy feeling for a fair while. the party could still be 3 wizards and a monk, of course, but the rations they can get are only a certain quality unless they want to pay more for rations that only really store well for a week or so

[@xerathgaming5008]

I'm currently playing in a homebrew dnd campaign with my closest friends. We have the opposite situation - DM seems to forget that this is his world and we literally still don't know what's the difference between his lore and DnD common lore. Yeah, we have different names for continents, countries, gods, etc, but in general it looks like it the same faerun we all know. What is the purpose of having your own lore if the entire campaign could be done in whatever setting? Also, we are just in the beggining, but through 5 sessions all we do is run from one dude to another and try so solve "mystery assasinations". We ask a guy - he sends us to another guy who sends us to another guy and this is all we do. DM told us that he moves pawns behinds the screen and the world is living it's own life while we zoom around. And whenever we have a game, it seems the DM wasted 900 hours on worldbuilding , politics, religion , etc etc and put it in an encyclopedia, while he barely manages to move the plot itself and interact with players. As you just said, if you don't want your characters to influence the story, JUST WRITE A BOOK

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

I totally get this. It’s having a homebrew campaign for the sake of having it. With my own games, I’ve tended to set them on an island off of the sword coast, so characters are knowledgeable about the world, but not necessarily the specifics of the local area. I think if you’re doing a whole new world, go big. It needs to be obviously different, whether that’s the climate, civilisation or culture. By telegraphing those identifiers, your players can assume more and feel confident about interacting with it.

[@mayhemivory5730]

1. The audio, both in quality and ratio of volume speech to music, is better in the outdoor sections. Idk how to fix that, but I‘m sure you will. 2. When I started my current game, I gave my players a short summary of the creation myth the people of that world believe in. That helped one player to tie his character backstory and motivations closely to the lore without needing to know all the mechanics behind it. 3. I also gave an overview of the stereotypical member of every species and what professions were limited for various reasons. This included non-playable options. It was basically a quick overview of the cultural and political side, without making things too complicated. 4. I think it‘s better to be open about what kind of story you plan to be telling. Even after stating upfront that I was going for a „souls-like“ with pretty much every consequence for failure except death, one of my players still managed to have his character go through a crisis after finding out he can‘t die. Then again, that was the third time in a row a character of his accidentally lost his motivation as a consequence of the story (it‘s a talent 😂). 5. Pedantic: Curse of Strahd is not a pocket dimension in the Forgotten Realms. Curse of Strahd is a module, the setting is called Ravenloft, but the name of the land is Barovia. It is a Dreadrealm within the Shadowfell, and connected with the world of Greyhawk, even though it originated from the Forgotten Realms; because the Plane of Shadows (with which the Shadowfell is combined) connects throughout multiple worlds. The Forgotten Realms are also not a setting but a world, the usual setting is the Sword Coast on the continent of Faerun; but don‘t mistake the world for being the planet, that is Abeir-Toril or rather just Toril at some point, just like how the planet of the world of Greyhawk is Oerth and the setting there is Ravenloft when you play the module Curse of Strahd. I‘m mainly just pulling your leg in the name of making things complicated xP

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Thanks for the audio point outs and for the whole comment. It’s nice to hear someone else’s perspective and you’re also right about the curse of Strahd stuff!

[@onetruetroy]

Excellent video! I’ve only created two campaign worlds and learned a lot from mistakes developing the first one. The idea of everything being original and different is too tempting. #1 was an absolute ridiculous failure. For a decade I just ran campaigns in the premade settings and learned more about what to do, but without duplicating and parroting. I wanted a world for all my favorite TTRPGs. It’s weird, wild, and wondrous, with enough expansion room. The main difference in my approach is that whatever I changed or added had to benefit the players, characters, and/or story in some way without diminishing existing usefulness.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Thanks so much! And you’re right, you can always expand out. In fact, player will feel super useful and rewarded if they get to the point where they’re exploring whole new continents or islands!

[@iitim2152]

If you can tell your story in the setting then you should... Because simpler is almost always better.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Exactly! It’s more immersive and also less work!

[@IcarusFormaldehyde]

I love the vid, great editing, however- there's a couple scenes where the audio balance is off, it's too much to the left.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

I’ll keep an eye out for that in future. Thanks!

[@vincentpey3929]

When i started my homebrew campaign i first set up this giant dokument for my players, it was kinda messy as i hastely made it in the midst of having a lot of university work to do. But it gave a generall overview over a lot of important information: Firstly i had a explanaition of how everything works, the nature of the setting and its metaphysical laws. A world map so that they could identify where mentioned places are in relation to one another. Some recent history. An overview over the native races and their cultures aswell as recent histories. A list of the deitys and entities most commonly worshipped in this worlds religions. And a couple other things. I also let them have a say on the world, for example i made a race of tribal mutating sea people (mechanically its a simic hybrid reskin) whos naming shemes i orriginally wanted to base on ancient greek, but one of my players who choose that race made up his own naming sheme wich we now use since it is simpler and more fun, so i retconned the greek-ish names of the seafolk cities on the map as names that other cultures gave them. I made simmilar changes to other aspekts of my world so that it fits my players better. The biggest realization i had is that this is not just my world but theirs too. The first twosessions where basically just a big setup i more or less guided them through, they could do whatever they wanted but they had a clear goal in terms of their mission, "get to the ab!ndoned temple, retrieve the magic scroll, give it to the guy who will pay you" after these two intro sessions i let them explore the world freely giving them a goal in a location on the map that they should try to reach in arround a month in game time, so they are currently on a whacky journey through the wilds of my weird world getting tied up in all sorts of shananigans on their way to reach "Cloudpiercer Peak".

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Great job collaborating and giving them an on rails beginning to jumpstart them off into your world. Sounds dope!

[@ryankunst668]

I specifically built my homebrew world to be a pretty generic D&D fantasy world so existing players mostly know what to expect. While I love worldbuilding, all the intricate details can just stay in my head unless they specifically become relevant to what's happening. I'm also always tinkering and continuing to work on building my world, so I can change or add stuff based on what happens the campaigns set in it.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

I do the exact same. If you’re changing something drastically that needs to be shared, but it’s often easier for the players to inhabit a generic world at the start. Also, I don’t want to prep too much. They might need a chill session after the actions of the last so I feel it out and decide from then.

[@TrustingTroller]

This great! However, *homebrew?* Clearly 🤓 this is lorebuilding.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Maybe homebrew world would be a better title. It definitely dips into lore-building, but the idea was to help introduce players to a setting / adventure they know little about.

[@TrustingTroller]

@@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring Okay then: _"worldbuilding"_

[@anathema1828]

Excellent!

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Thanks!

[@DrTurt-uq3kc]

Fantastic guest appearances 👌

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Glad you thought so! Curious what you make of the advice.

[@DrTurt-uq3kc]

​@@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring I think the advice is good for starting out. One thing I would say is when I did this I had quite an in-depth homebrew world with lots of lore already built, but in order to jump the learning curve for players I put in some preparation before the campaign began. Luckily I had a group of players who were interested in this sort of gameplay, they wanted to find the lore, so that's an important thing to hash out first, what kind of game are we playing. Then when we did our session zero's I talked to each player individually about what character they wanted to play and we came up with a section of the world together, so their character lore and place in the world was something they had helped to build, which just gave them that extra level of investment in the world and the story. Basically I think the only missing thing is your players don't have to go in blind, and they can help to build the world with you, include their character backstory and ideas into your lore and incorporate it together, it's not a novel, it's collaborative storytelling.

[@MultiverseDrifters]

Excellent content :D Keep it up!! Greetings from the DC20 community :D

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Thank you so much!

[@nooctip]

The eternal problem. No one wants to read 80 pages of filler to learn the one paragraph that sparks character ideas.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Exactly, this is why we have a session 0. So you can all work on and tailor the characters together!

[@Joshuazx]

I think the problem with fantasy is writers inventing fantasy names. It was cool when Tolkien did it. When DMs do it, I just can't remember any of it or keep track of any of it. If I can't spell a name or prounce a name, I won't remember it or what it's associated with. My advice would be no fake or madeup names.

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

I definitely think it’s about incrementally adding NPCs and places. Like in LOTR, at the beginning the only other location they were told of besides Hobbiton was Rivendale. Your much more likely to remember a name / place of you have a memory or event attached to it, rather than just enjoy told or reading it.

[@Joshuazx]

​@@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring Agreed, keep the scope manageable. I was added to an Eberron campaign at level 7 and it felt like the other players had some encyclopedic knowledge that I was missing. But also for me, in general, if I can't pronounce or spell the fantasy name, then I have difficulty remembering it and remembering what it's associated with because it is like learning a new language. I find that frustrating rather than fun. I would prefer Bobtown over Kaibor.

[@eggwhitepopcorn2918]

This is a great video :)

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

Thanks for that! You’re a legend!

[@eggwhitepopcorn2918]

​@@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring I was so surprised to see less than 100 views. You're going to make it big for sure! This is such good content.

[@demonlordsdungeon]

1 hundro

[@Grey-Wolf-Adventuring]

What a hero!