How do you start. - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

How do you start.

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
Ninja_Ferret
Dec 30, 2008 14:20:27 How do you all go about to starting a new homebrew/ new Campaign? Do you start off deciding which house rules you will want. Like Elves are rare and dont venture out of the forest often so only one person can be an elf.
Or do you just jump right into world making or plot stuff?

I have been thinking about Making my own campaign for once and i just cant seem to figure out where to start.
#2
archangel_james
Dec 30, 2008 15:15:10 First, let me straighten out your terminology. A campaign is a series of adventures your group plays over a number of sessions. To start a new campaign, you have to find players and pick a place to play, like your living room or a game store, and then agree on a time to meet.

What you're talking about seems to the be campaign setting. A campaign setting is the fictional world in which the campaign takes place.

To start a new campaign setting, you have to decide on what sort of theme you want--wilderness adventure, horror, dungeon delving, urban intrigue? What kind of culture do you want to represent--high fantasy, medieval Europe, Arabian, Asian, modern Western, futuristic space? Once you have those in mind, it's down to specifics--place names, geography, history, government. What sort of deities will you use--the standard D&D pantheon, a real-life pantheon like Egyptian or Norse, or something of your own devising? It also may help you to keep in mind what role the various races play, and how influential they are.

Any house rules you select will probably not affect your campaign setting. If you want to use critical failures or add some skills, it won't matter to the history of your world.

For example, if you have a homebrew psionic system you want to use, that will only affect your campaign setting if psionics has some bearing on your campaign setting's history or government. Otherwise, it probably won't matter to your campaign setting.

I hope this answers your question. Let me know if I didn't get to the root of your problem, or if something isn't clear.
#3
yellowdingo
Dec 30, 2008 20:57:38 Random Campaign Settings

The last campaign setting I built was based entirely around the world it was to be based on.

Random Geography

So I established my globe (a d20 with 4000 miles to each side of a facet).
Establish the percentage of a single triangle being dominated by a terrain type.
Dominant Geography: 50% Sea/ocean, 5% Plains/grassland/savanna, 15% Mountain/hills, 25% Forest/jungle, 5%swamp/bog/fens, 0% desert.

Roll the %dice for each Triangle region and plot the raw map on a world map of 20 triangles. Then we draw a new map with coasts taking in areas that are globe spanning oceans or inland seas. Mark large numbers of Mountains in mountainous regions, swamps, plains, etc.

I find a Plain running from the north pole to the equator that is entirely plains. So starting with people fleeing cataclysm in a desert across the other side of the world pole, through a mountain pass at the north pole, down onto the plain known as the Dragon's head Peninsula ("they who wander" and "they who follow") and a few locals ("The salt people" and "the vine people"). The plains are rich with herd animals and predators adapted to the plains.

Peoples of the Dragonshead Peninnsula

Travelers from the Polar Pass

They who Wander: These are people who abandoned the destruction of their land. They have become a nomadic people living off the herds, never to settle.

They who Follow: THese people are following their rivals down through the Pass. This ancient enemy will continue to compete with the other tribe forcing them to retain their nomadic life.

The Local Peoples

The Salt People: Around the coast they build settled communities in the salt marshes. They have small boats and pylon dwellings and a primitive fishing life style in the Neolithic.

The Vine People: in the forests and jungles to the east of the peninnsual Primitive Jungle/forest Dwellers whose weapon is Poison blowdart and arrow. Most live in dwellings of vine or cane in the canopy.

The Deer People: They move with the Herds. They ride Deers and live on milk of Deer, and meat. They have bows of Horn and hunt the dragons that raid the herds. They also have come into conflict with the new tribes that have come to the Dragonshead Peninsula.
#4
Rhineglade_
Dec 31, 2008 11:26:03 About the best advise I've heard is to "stick with what you know." Ask yourself what interests YOU and then start from there.

Your question is a valid one that everyone goes through. Looking around this board might help too in terms of getting you some inspiration. I think you will find however that possibly everyone on this board has their own method of campaign creation. Not everyone will do the same thing as not everyone has the same interests.

For myself, I often start with the mythology of the world as that is one of my favorite interests. Let's hear it for Urien, the goddess of waters! I think that a campaign world's mythology is what really gives it its flavor and sets a tone of "realism."

I also like to do lots of Google searches and just look at what comes up. Most of my campaign worlds have a strong Celtic and European influence simply because this is what I am most familiar with. This doesn't mean you have to be limited to just that however. Just follow your gut.

In terms of where YOU can start only you can answer that. What do you feel comfortable with? Do you want to start small and build off of that? Or do you want to just "jump right into the deep end" and work out the details later. It's entirely up to you. For beginners, starting small is usually the best bet to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Starting small you can begin with just a simple village or town and work from there. What do you want in your town? Where is the town located? Is it a farm community? Does it make its living through the trade routes that cross the region? Is it a mining community? Or did it grow around a local military fortress in order to be sheltered from the hostilities of the area?

How does this town/village fit into the surrounding countryside? For a sense of realism, it should be located along some road or waterway but it doesn't have to. Is it on the shore of a lake or an ocean? Is it nestled in a peaceful mountain valley where life beyond the mountains is horrific?

Is this region isolated? Is it part of a larger community? Perhaps the local Lord owns a number of towns and this is just one of them? Or maybe this is simply a small corner within a larger Kingdom or other Nation-State? Who are your neighbors? Do they get along? Is there relative peace across borders or constant warfare?

For each aspect of your campaign, you will likely come up with more and more questions just like described above. This is all part of the creation process. Don't feel overwhelmed as you don't HAVE to expand if you don't want to. Much of it depends on how much YOU want to do and how involved your players become.
#5
gorditobandito
Dec 31, 2008 12:27:52
How do you all go about to starting a new homebrew/ new Campaign? Do you start off deciding which house rules you will want. Like Elves are rare and dont venture out of the forest often so only one person can be an elf.
Or do you just jump right into world making or plot stuff?

I have been thinking about Making my own campaign for once and i just cant seem to figure out where to start.

I had a DM who was a real prude about this, saying that a class was so rare that a player "couldn't" be one. The adventuring party is an anomaly in and of itself, and the scarcity of a race or class really should have no bearing on what the players play without a pretty good reason.
#6
elondir
Dec 31, 2008 12:42:57 My technique (note I'm a 2e & 3e DM more interested in world creation than actually playing D&D):

0. Decide which rules you will use along with houserules. Genre, rules edition, races, classes, feats, spells, etc.. Make sure the players are all on the same page with you.

I. Physical geography (I wrote a computer program that does steps 1, 3, 4, and 5; it's buggy but works for me. I'm eventually updating to .NET)
1. Start with a flat blob supercontinent.
2. Scatter metals and gems around on it.
3. Simulate plate tectonics by making rifts and drifting. Add mountains along the leading edges of continental movement.
4. Calculate ocean currents and air currents.
5. Estimate climate by elevation, rainfall, wind direction, and latitude. Deserts (type B climates) get less than 10cm per year regardless of temperature. This occurs where the wind flanks the continent (blows south). Grasslands have wet winters and dry summers, and forests are wet year-round (~60 cm annual for typical broadleaf, 690 cm for rain forests). Type A climates (tropics) are always warmer than 65 F. Type C climates (warm temperate to subtropical i.e. the seoutheast USA) have average monthly winter temperatures in the 26 to 64 range, and always get above 50 degrees at least one month of the year. Type D climates (cold temperate to subarctic i.e. Canada) have low temperatures below 26 all winter long and summer high temperatures above fifty. If the minimum temperature is below freezing and the maximum temperature is above zero but never gets above 50 in the summer, then it's a tundra climate. If it's always below freezing then it's polar.
6. Add rivers where it makes sense, following the path of least resistance. Erode around them.
7. Recalculate climate to account for the presence of rivers and lakes.
8. Throw in some fantastic terrain if you want (i.e., a lava sea, a sea of silt, plaguelands, dead lands, whatever).

II. Human geography (This site really comes in handy)
9. Find a fertile tropical or temperate area at a riverbend or near a river mouth, and place your first human city. Repeat two or three times. Repeat for any nonhuman races you want to have civilizations, where it makes the most sense for each race.
10. Expand the civilization along reasonable routes, similar to filling lakes in, until they're size you want.
11. Place cities along bays or riverbends, or where metals are concentrated.
12. Make roads between cities.
13. Place trade cities at major crossroads.
14. Put in the farmland to accomodate the population density you assigned. Wilderness ~ 1 person per square mile (ppsm), borderlands ~ 10 ppsm, lightly populated civilized ~ 35 ppsm, normal civilized ~ 80 ppsm, densely populated ~ 120 ppsm.
15. Assign an EL range to each area. The higher the population density, the lower the maximum monster EL and the higher the maximum civilized EL (random chimeras vs. legions of soldiers).
16. Figure out where the ruin sites are. Assign each an EL range.

III. Political Science and Organizations
17. Figure out the most reasonable national borders (if nations exist).
18. Assign each nation's leader an alignment. Assign a system of government that fits.
19. Make a few organizations - some the PCs can join, and some they can fight. Include the divine pantheon in the organization list. The deities themselves aren't as important as their respective temple organizations.

IV. The campaign adventure arc.
20. Get copies of everybody's character sheets from the players. You will NEED these in 3e and probably 4e to make sure you're adequately challenging them.
21. Decide where to start the PCs, and write up stats only for those NPCs the party is likely to run into, and of course the main villain.
22. Write up the main villain. TV Tropes has some great ideas. Start with a character idea and add some tropes for character depth (extreme restraint must be used to avoid cliches).
23. Decide where the final climactic end-campaign battle will be but don't design that adventure until you get there.
24a. Write up a SKELETON outline of the main plot events and locations, and make sure it's easily modified to account for unexpected PC actions, PC power growth, new splatbooks, and any other things you don't know about yet. Try to make the order of events less important unless you want a strict timeline (not a good idea unless you want to prevent excessive item crafters and downtime abusers).
24b. Write up the history of the world, especially the parts that are relevant to the main arc.
25. Create a sandbox of adventure locations with vague descriptions and plot hooks to get the PCs to go to each one. Do NOT try to force them into going there. Try to make them interconnected (i.e., insert hooks for locations B and E in dungeon A, and location C in B, etc.)

V. The next game session
26. Only do a detailed adventure design for one adventure locale ahead at a time. This is because the PCs might learn some great tactics against your encounters that forces you to undergo complete revisions in order to keep the game challenging.
27. When designing encounters, try to balance them to last about four rounds with about 25% of the party's resources used. Don't kill them outright, but don't be shy in making them use up wands and potions in the non-boss encounters (that means exhausting the wizard's spells). Avoid large scale combat if you're using a battlemat with minis - it takes forever. Avoid NPC fights because in order to make it a fair fight you have to give the NPCs superior equipment, which leads to rapid PC power gain. Use sorcerers instead of wizards so that the spellbook doesn't fall into PC hands. Expect spellcasters to go nova with their best spells right off, so make the battles tough enough that that's just not good enough. Assume the party will try to rest after every battle. That means monsters with several hundred hp and tough saves after a while. If you're not in 4e, make saving throws and SR high enough that casters who like save-or-dies are forced to spam them repeatedly to make them work. (Aim for a 25% success rate against a fully buffed caster).

Make encounters unique and interesting - scenery, environment, traps, monsters, puzzles, skill challenges are all available. If you must use a cliche that will most likely be trounced (like the succubus pretending to be a damsel in distress), put a twist on it (like maybe making the point of the adventure be to rescue damsels in distress, or making the succubus really be in distress).

28. If any of your PCs have flight, put all encounters with creatures that lack ranged attacks be in rooms where the ceiling is within reach. Avoid buildings above ground (i.e. castles, towers, and houses - the PCs will just scout out the place with arcane eye, then blast a hole in the wall where it's most optimal, bypassing nearly everywhere except the goal).

28. (does not apply to 4e prior to 22nd level) If any of your PCs have flight, put all encounters with creatures that lack ranged attacks be in rooms where the ceiling is within reach.

29. Watch out for spells like blindness, invisibility, and glitterdust, they're lethal to your monsters. If you run into a problem with these, make sure your monsters can see invisible or have blindsight.

30. Be ready to adapt quickly and make up stuff off the top of your head - you're going to have to. One more reason to only plan ahead one session.

That's my how-to list that I use.
#7
Ninja_Ferret
Dec 31, 2008 13:14:53 Wow Thats a lot of good advice there. I just have some many ideas running around in my head i have to put them down then work from there.

I will check into those programs. Might put a little less strain on it all.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Ninja_Ferret Dec 30, 2008 14:20:27	How do you all go about to starting a new homebrew/ new Campaign? Do you start off deciding which house rules you will want. Like Elves are rare and dont venture out of the forest often so only one person can be an elf. Or do you just jump right into world making or plot stuff? I have been thinking about Making my own campaign for once and i just cant seem to figure out where to start.
#2 archangel_james Dec 30, 2008 15:15:10	First, let me straighten out your terminology. A campaign is a series of adventures your group plays over a number of sessions. To start a new campaign, you have to find players and pick a place to play, like your living room or a game store, and then agree on a time to meet. What you're talking about seems to the be campaign setting. A campaign setting is the fictional world in which the campaign takes place. To start a new campaign setting, you have to decide on what sort of theme you want--wilderness adventure, horror, dungeon delving, urban intrigue? What kind of culture do you want to represent--high fantasy, medieval Europe, Arabian, Asian, modern Western, futuristic space? Once you have those in mind, it's down to specifics--place names, geography, history, government. What sort of deities will you use--the standard D&D pantheon, a real-life pantheon like Egyptian or Norse, or something of your own devising? It also may help you to keep in mind what role the various races play, and how influential they are. Any house rules you select will probably not affect your campaign setting. If you want to use critical failures or add some skills, it won't matter to the history of your world. For example, if you have a homebrew psionic system you want to use, that will only affect your campaign setting if psionics has some bearing on your campaign setting's history or government. Otherwise, it probably won't matter to your campaign setting. I hope this answers your question. Let me know if I didn't get to the root of your problem, or if something isn't clear.
#3 yellowdingo Dec 30, 2008 20:57:38	Random Campaign Settings The last campaign setting I built was based entirely around the world it was to be based on. Random Geography So I established my globe (a d20 with 4000 miles to each side of a facet). Establish the percentage of a single triangle being dominated by a terrain type. Dominant Geography: 50% Sea/ocean, 5% Plains/grassland/savanna, 15% Mountain/hills, 25% Forest/jungle, 5%swamp/bog/fens, 0% desert. Roll the %dice for each Triangle region and plot the raw map on a world map of 20 triangles. Then we draw a new map with coasts taking in areas that are globe spanning oceans or inland seas. Mark large numbers of Mountains in mountainous regions, swamps, plains, etc. I find a Plain running from the north pole to the equator that is entirely plains. So starting with people fleeing cataclysm in a desert across the other side of the world pole, through a mountain pass at the north pole, down onto the plain known as the Dragon's head Peninsula ("they who wander" and "they who follow") and a few locals ("The salt people" and "the vine people"). The plains are rich with herd animals and predators adapted to the plains. Peoples of the Dragonshead Peninnsula Travelers from the Polar Pass They who Wander: These are people who abandoned the destruction of their land. They have become a nomadic people living off the herds, never to settle. They who Follow: THese people are following their rivals down through the Pass. This ancient enemy will continue to compete with the other tribe forcing them to retain their nomadic life. The Local Peoples The Salt People: Around the coast they build settled communities in the salt marshes. They have small boats and pylon dwellings and a primitive fishing life style in the Neolithic. The Vine People: in the forests and jungles to the east of the peninnsual Primitive Jungle/forest Dwellers whose weapon is Poison blowdart and arrow. Most live in dwellings of vine or cane in the canopy. The Deer People: They move with the Herds. They ride Deers and live on milk of Deer, and meat. They have bows of Horn and hunt the dragons that raid the herds. They also have come into conflict with the new tribes that have come to the Dragonshead Peninsula.
#4 Rhineglade_ Dec 31, 2008 11:26:03	About the best advise I've heard is to "stick with what you know." Ask yourself what interests YOU and then start from there. Your question is a valid one that everyone goes through. Looking around this board might help too in terms of getting you some inspiration. I think you will find however that possibly everyone on this board has their own method of campaign creation. Not everyone will do the same thing as not everyone has the same interests. For myself, I often start with the mythology of the world as that is one of my favorite interests. Let's hear it for Urien, the goddess of waters! I think that a campaign world's mythology is what really gives it its flavor and sets a tone of "realism." I also like to do lots of Google searches and just look at what comes up. Most of my campaign worlds have a strong Celtic and European influence simply because this is what I am most familiar with. This doesn't mean you have to be limited to just that however. Just follow your gut. In terms of where YOU can start only you can answer that. What do you feel comfortable with? Do you want to start small and build off of that? Or do you want to just "jump right into the deep end" and work out the details later. It's entirely up to you. For beginners, starting small is usually the best bet to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Starting small you can begin with just a simple village or town and work from there. What do you want in your town? Where is the town located? Is it a farm community? Does it make its living through the trade routes that cross the region? Is it a mining community? Or did it grow around a local military fortress in order to be sheltered from the hostilities of the area? How does this town/village fit into the surrounding countryside? For a sense of realism, it should be located along some road or waterway but it doesn't have to. Is it on the shore of a lake or an ocean? Is it nestled in a peaceful mountain valley where life beyond the mountains is horrific? Is this region isolated? Is it part of a larger community? Perhaps the local Lord owns a number of towns and this is just one of them? Or maybe this is simply a small corner within a larger Kingdom or other Nation-State? Who are your neighbors? Do they get along? Is there relative peace across borders or constant warfare? For each aspect of your campaign, you will likely come up with more and more questions just like described above. This is all part of the creation process. Don't feel overwhelmed as you don't HAVE to expand if you don't want to. Much of it depends on how much YOU want to do and how involved your players become.
#5 gorditobandito Dec 31, 2008 12:27:52	How do you all go about to starting a new homebrew/ new Campaign? Do you start off deciding which house rules you will want. Like Elves are rare and dont venture out of the forest often so only one person can be an elf. Or do you just jump right into world making or plot stuff? I have been thinking about Making my own campaign for once and i just cant seem to figure out where to start. I had a DM who was a real prude about this, saying that a class was so rare that a player "couldn't" be one. The adventuring party is an anomaly in and of itself, and the scarcity of a race or class really should have no bearing on what the players play without a pretty good reason.
#6 elondir Dec 31, 2008 12:42:57	My technique (note I'm a 2e & 3e DM more interested in world creation than actually playing D&D): 0. Decide which rules you will use along with houserules. Genre, rules edition, races, classes, feats, spells, etc.. Make sure the players are all on the same page with you. I. Physical geography (I wrote a computer program that does steps 1, 3, 4, and 5; it's buggy but works for me. I'm eventually updating to .NET) 1. Start with a flat blob supercontinent. 2. Scatter metals and gems around on it. 3. Simulate plate tectonics by making rifts and drifting. Add mountains along the leading edges of continental movement. 4. Calculate ocean currents and air currents. 5. Estimate climate by elevation, rainfall, wind direction, and latitude. Deserts (type B climates) get less than 10cm per year regardless of temperature. This occurs where the wind flanks the continent (blows south). Grasslands have wet winters and dry summers, and forests are wet year-round (~60 cm annual for typical broadleaf, 690 cm for rain forests). Type A climates (tropics) are always warmer than 65 F. Type C climates (warm temperate to subtropical i.e. the seoutheast USA) have average monthly winter temperatures in the 26 to 64 range, and always get above 50 degrees at least one month of the year. Type D climates (cold temperate to subarctic i.e. Canada) have low temperatures below 26 all winter long and summer high temperatures above fifty. If the minimum temperature is below freezing and the maximum temperature is above zero but never gets above 50 in the summer, then it's a tundra climate. If it's always below freezing then it's polar. 6. Add rivers where it makes sense, following the path of least resistance. Erode around them. 7. Recalculate climate to account for the presence of rivers and lakes. 8. Throw in some fantastic terrain if you want (i.e., a lava sea, a sea of silt, plaguelands, dead lands, whatever). II. Human geography (This site really comes in handy) 9. Find a fertile tropical or temperate area at a riverbend or near a river mouth, and place your first human city. Repeat two or three times. Repeat for any nonhuman races you want to have civilizations, where it makes the most sense for each race. 10. Expand the civilization along reasonable routes, similar to filling lakes in, until they're size you want. 11. Place cities along bays or riverbends, or where metals are concentrated. 12. Make roads between cities. 13. Place trade cities at major crossroads. 14. Put in the farmland to accomodate the population density you assigned. Wilderness ~ 1 person per square mile (ppsm), borderlands ~ 10 ppsm, lightly populated civilized ~ 35 ppsm, normal civilized ~ 80 ppsm, densely populated ~ 120 ppsm. 15. Assign an EL range to each area. The higher the population density, the lower the maximum monster EL and the higher the maximum civilized EL (random chimeras vs. legions of soldiers). 16. Figure out where the ruin sites are. Assign each an EL range. III. Political Science and Organizations 17. Figure out the most reasonable national borders (if nations exist). 18. Assign each nation's leader an alignment. Assign a system of government that fits. 19. Make a few organizations - some the PCs can join, and some they can fight. Include the divine pantheon in the organization list. The deities themselves aren't as important as their respective temple organizations. IV. The campaign adventure arc. 20. Get copies of everybody's character sheets from the players. You will NEED these in 3e and probably 4e to make sure you're adequately challenging them. 21. Decide where to start the PCs, and write up stats only for those NPCs the party is likely to run into, and of course the main villain. 22. Write up the main villain. TV Tropes has some great ideas. Start with a character idea and add some tropes for character depth (extreme restraint must be used to avoid cliches). 23. Decide where the final climactic end-campaign battle will be but don't design that adventure until you get there. 24a. Write up a SKELETON outline of the main plot events and locations, and make sure it's easily modified to account for unexpected PC actions, PC power growth, new splatbooks, and any other things you don't know about yet. Try to make the order of events less important unless you want a strict timeline (not a good idea unless you want to prevent excessive item crafters and downtime abusers). 24b. Write up the history of the world, especially the parts that are relevant to the main arc. 25. Create a sandbox of adventure locations with vague descriptions and plot hooks to get the PCs to go to each one. Do NOT try to force them into going there. Try to make them interconnected (i.e., insert hooks for locations B and E in dungeon A, and location C in B, etc.) V. The next game session 26. Only do a detailed adventure design for one adventure locale ahead at a time. This is because the PCs might learn some great tactics against your encounters that forces you to undergo complete revisions in order to keep the game challenging. 27. When designing encounters, try to balance them to last about four rounds with about 25% of the party's resources used. Don't kill them outright, but don't be shy in making them use up wands and potions in the non-boss encounters (that means exhausting the wizard's spells). Avoid large scale combat if you're using a battlemat with minis - it takes forever. Avoid NPC fights because in order to make it a fair fight you have to give the NPCs superior equipment, which leads to rapid PC power gain. Use sorcerers instead of wizards so that the spellbook doesn't fall into PC hands. Expect spellcasters to go nova with their best spells right off, so make the battles tough enough that that's just not good enough. Assume the party will try to rest after every battle. That means monsters with several hundred hp and tough saves after a while. If you're not in 4e, make saving throws and SR high enough that casters who like save-or-dies are forced to spam them repeatedly to make them work. (Aim for a 25% success rate against a fully buffed caster). Make encounters unique and interesting - scenery, environment, traps, monsters, puzzles, skill challenges are all available. If you must use a cliche that will most likely be trounced (like the succubus pretending to be a damsel in distress), put a twist on it (like maybe making the point of the adventure be to rescue damsels in distress, or making the succubus really be in distress). 28. If any of your PCs have flight, put all encounters with creatures that lack ranged attacks be in rooms where the ceiling is within reach. Avoid buildings above ground (i.e. castles, towers, and houses - the PCs will just scout out the place with arcane eye, then blast a hole in the wall where it's most optimal, bypassing nearly everywhere except the goal). 28. (does not apply to 4e prior to 22nd level) If any of your PCs have flight, put all encounters with creatures that lack ranged attacks be in rooms where the ceiling is within reach. 29. Watch out for spells like blindness, invisibility, and glitterdust, they're lethal to your monsters. If you run into a problem with these, make sure your monsters can see invisible or have blindsight. 30. Be ready to adapt quickly and make up stuff off the top of your head - you're going to have to. One more reason to only plan ahead one session. That's my how-to list that I use.
#7 Ninja_Ferret Dec 31, 2008 13:14:53	Wow Thats a lot of good advice there. I just have some many ideas running around in my head i have to put them down then work from there. I will check into those programs. Might put a little less strain on it all.