Homebrew Settings

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Figure I can either talk about my personal homebrew settings-- my eventual professionally published settings-- or the folding, spindling, and mutilation that I put existing published settings through. Since I get stuck in weird ruts and have only tried to run the same four or five campaigns over the past twenty years... this is actually fairly easy.

We'll start with Spelljammer, my favoritest of the TSR settings, and the baseline for what "my D&D" looks like:
  • The game's not set in the Radiant Triangle. There is no Radiant Triangle. Nobody's heard of Realmspace, Krynnspace, or Greyspace.
  • The game's not set in the Great Wheel. Academics argue about the source of the elements and the afterlife, but none of their theories are verifiable. Extraplanar entities are heavily downplayed as setting elements.
  • It uses an expanded class list: more, narrower Mage classes; more, diversified (and non-theistic) Priest classes; Barbarians, Bards, Ninjas/Assassins, Monks are all standard. Martial Arts Proficiencies from OA/CNHB are available to all classes from all cultures.
  • Complete Spacefarer's Handbook races (and the Gith) are emphasized over non-human PHB races; the line between Race-and-Class and Race-as-Class is blurred by bespoke racial classes and more idiosyncratic class restrictions.
  • The Inhuman War occurred in the distant past and explains why orcs and goblinoids are lesser powers; modern references to the Inhuman Wars are replaced with the ongoing Elf/Gith/Kreen hot-and-cold war.
  • The concept of Immortals from BECMI/Mystara is in place. I'm toying with the idea of Immortals being divine patrons, but really personal divine patrons.
I don't really run any other canonical settings on a regular basis, except maybe Street Fighter which I run more or less as-is. I may or may not decide to post up about my various personal projects later.
 
The home-brew setting I came up with most recently is this one for Psychic Spies... I've run it with Modern AGE, and with (my favourite) Cepheus Modern.


The setting is the UK during the Cold War in the late 1950s

The specific period I used was to start the campaign on 4 May 1958

The theme is Red Scares, Secret Agendas and Hidden Areas with a Shades of Grey morality.


Some basic historical context

Rationing only finished in the UK in 1954 and some things are still not plentiful. The only cheese most folk have access to is “Government Cheddar” for example…. There is of course a new, young monarch (crowned in 1953).

The Suez crisis has recently taken place - a humiliating experience for Britain, which has put the UK-USA alliance under a degree of strain.



Ghana has just received independence, Nassar has become president of Egypt and Papa Doc Duvalier president of Haiti.

Alaska and Hawaii are about to become the 49th and 50th states and Castro’s revolutionary forces are about to overthrow the Batista regime in Cuba.

The space race has begun with the Russians having recently launched Sputnik 1

Eisenhower is president of the US

Khrushchev has just become chairman of the council of ministers

Harold Macmillan is Prime Minister of the UK


The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in Britain has been in existence since 1882


At the start of the story the President of the Society is Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick John Marrian Stratton DSO OBE DL TD FRS PRAS.



PCs have been recruited by the UK Intelligence Community and work for….

The Department of Sustainable Development

Part of the Intelligence Community in the UK, DoSD is the cover for the UK’s clandestine psychic division.

The DoSD works out of rather run down offices at Cambridge Circus, badly in need of a new paint job, central heating and decent furniture.

Known (to those who know about it at all) within the rest of the Intelligence community as “The Freak Show”, it remains very much a Cinderella service. It is under-funded and under-resourced, and is viewed with considerable suspicion - many still don’t really “believe” in “psychic powers” (though it can be hard to maintain disbelief in the face of obvious psychic phenomena….)

There is also a small “research department” attached to The Freak Show. Agents don’t know all that much about what goes on there - it is in part of an old country house in Sussex. When agents are inducted spend a couple of days there being “put through their paces” by a "Professor Lidenbrock” and his assistants, but when they leave they are generally none the wiser - and maybe the scientists aren’t either.

The head of the Department is Charles Weldon-Banks (“The Chief”), a late middle-aged man of a stern demeanour who is seldom seen by the agents themselves. The PCs mostly deal with the Day Officer, William “Bill” Smithers and a middle-aged secretary (Miss Maitland) who deals with a lot of the routine typing, filing etc. She also arranges travel and hotels/boarding houses when necessary.

There are a number of other “agents”, some of whom are entirely “ordinary” as far as you know

Psychic operatives tend to be organised into teams of 2 - 4. The Chief likes to field groups with complementary abilities. The PCs team is regarded as well-balanced and in terms of psychic abilities fairly “powerful” - in fact one of the better prospects of the Freak Show.

No-one knows if The Chief or Bill Smithers have psychic abilities - and they aren’t telling.

Any unauthorised use of psychic abilities within the Department (for example if someone was detected trying to read Smithers’ mind) would be considered a potentially serious breach of the Official Secrets Act and have serious consequences for the individual concerned.

The Department has links with the SPR (see above).

Stratton, through his wartime record has maintained links with the Establishment, and through the Society has been carrying out a series of tests around the country, looking for people with “psychic potential”.

On finding potential “marks” details are passed to The Freak Show who arrange clandestine background checks followed in promising cases, followed up by a private approach to the individual. Suitable individuals are “recruited” and offered “special training” and induction.


Antagonist Organisations

MK Ultra


In the game MK Ultra is a clandestine organisation that is seeking to recruit, examine, train and report psychics on behalf of the US Military. The Department knows little about it, except that they have a much better funding than The Freak Show…. They are trying to forge links with the group but have met with limited success.


Department for Psychotronic Research (DPR) (Otdel Psikhotronnykh Issledovaniy/OPI)

In the wilderness Northeast of Moscow there is a heavily guarded, top secret paranormal research centre known as B-12. Although the Soviets have several psychic research labs around Leningrad, Irkutsk, Vladivostock, and other cities, the facility at B-12 is the most preeminent.
It is also the headquarters for the Department of Psychotronic Research (DPR), which oversees all paranormal research conducted in the U.S.S.R. An elite team of psychics, government agents, and researchers operate from B-12, dedicating their efforts to developing methods of mind control, astral projection, and clairvoyance for purposes of espionage and counter intelligence.
 
The home-brew setting I came up with most recently is this one for Psychic Spies... I've run it with Modern AGE, and with (my favourite) Cepheus Modern
Interesting! I think you've made a good choice of period.

I just recently I ran a one-off adventure for James Bond 007, set in October 1957, that involved an unrepentant Nazi in the pay of Nasser's Egypt using hypnosis to hijack the Grapple 2 device en route to Kiribati and use it to destroy the Gatún Locks, thus creating a permanent rift between the USA and UK and preventing the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. Players really enjoyed it! The historicity made it feel solid, but the UK and USA lacking the Special Relationship also made it seem exotic.
 
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I've been picking at an alt-history D&D/real-world mashup setting recently, and am finding myself inspired to note that one of the big departures from real history is the escape of King Charles I to the American colonies* shortly to be reorganized into the Kingdom of New England. There, an uninterrupted Stuart dynasty lasts into the modern era and brings most of OTL USA, Mexico, and the Caribbean under the Bonnie Banner (a blue saltire on a red field). The biggest exception is OTL New England, which breaks away sometime in the 18th century (I'm thinking 1745 for maximum irony).

Back in Old England, meanwhile, the Commonwealth comes to an abrupt and sudden end when Cromwell's forces in Ireland are met with and overwhelmed by the return of Queen Elizabeth's half-elven** son from the planet Avalon (OTL Venus), but that's probably another post.

*A development gleefully stolen from Northern Crown.

**I did say it was a D&D mashup.
 
I got into GMing in 1981, when the Dungeon Master's Guide gave me to understand that each DM was expected to design his own "milieu". My first effort (with AD&D in 1981) and my second (with TFT in 1982) were crippled by a fatal attempt at "bottom up" design. I started with a village and a dungeon, but found as I tried to expand outwards an upwards that I had let important decisions about fundamental things be made by default before I got round to thinking about them. I made a better attempt in 1983 with a TFT setting called The Great Vale. I had started to take a bit of interest in cultural anthropology and economic geography by then, and had developed the sense to design the land first and then work out what people did in it. (The map was a traced contour map of Hungary and surrounding lands with the whole thing made bigger and the floor of the Hungarian Plain raised a hundred metres in altitude.) In '84 I switched from fantasy gaming to pulp adventure and Illuminatus noir for a while—games set ostensibly in the real world, with a real atlas and real encyclopaedia.

In I think 1987 I designed an interstellar-SF setting for "planet of the week" adventures. That was partly an abreaction against a friend's setting, which I felt made a mistake in following a preachy utopian tendency, especially as I didn't share his vision of a utopia and thought many of his ideas are unworkable. There I thought the needle had swung too far towards top-down design and pages spent on the description of features and institutions too vast for PCs ever to deal with. I designed my setting with some care to make the swarm of planets accessible to PCs but isolated enough to prevent their societies from homogenising, and to prevent issues from emerging whose large scale and wide scope would pull PCs out of contact with the planet of the week. It is very much not a utopia and not space opera.

That setting is called Flat Black, and I have been using, expanding, revising, and yammering about it ever since. The latest version consists of a Players' Introduction in about 10,000 words that you can, if you are interested, download from a site at Wikidot. I am supposed to be working on the next volume: Forty Exotic Worlds, but that's not going too well just now (maybe tomorrow).

In I think 1988 I designed a fantasy setting called "Jehannum", a name that I later changed to "Gehennum" for orthographic reasons that no longer seem compelling. I had dusted The Great Vale off for use with a playtest version of HindSight, and had a bit of trouble with players assuming that any fantasy setting had to be like their misconceptions of mediaeval Europe, and either resenting or arguing with me about my inventions in cultural anthropology and economic geography. So in the design of Jehannum I conspicuously reversed most of the assumptions of vanilla fantasy. The setting was not in the northern temperate zone, is was on the equator. The people weren't white, they were brown-skinned with black hair. The main kingdown wasn't on the western side of a continent, it was on an archipelago of island. The ruling class weren't aristocratic cavalry, there being no horses, they were ship-owners and feeders of men. Technology was high classical—Archimedes and the Antikythera Mechanism. Subsistence was on irrigated rice in terraced paddies, not on open-field cultivation of wheat. Dress and arms were quasi-Hellenistic, not mediaeval English. It was a rococco swirl of mediaeval Indonesia, Tokugawa Japan, the Hellenistic Aegean, and Restoration England. Jehannum got a lot of development over about fifteen years, including the outgrowth of an "archaic period" with more post-Homeric Greece in it and a "decadent period" with more Persian Empire and Kamakura Japan. During a hypomanic episode in 1991 I wrote a 73,000-word alphabetical encyclopaedia for Jehannum.

But about 2005, after reading Geraldine Brooks Nine Parts of Desire, I became dissatisfied with the deeply sexist nature of Jehannese society. I could n't see an easy way to fix it, so I haven't been using Jehannum since then.
 
I've been picking at an alt-history D&D/real-world mashup setting recently, and am finding myself inspired to note that one of the big departures from real history is the escape of King Charles I to the American colonies* shortly to be reorganized into the Kingdom of New England. There, an uninterrupted Stuart dynasty lasts into the modern era and brings most of OTL USA, Mexico, and the Caribbean under the Bonnie Banner (a blue saltire on a red field). The biggest exception is OTL New England, which breaks away sometime in the 18th century (I'm thinking 1745 for maximum irony).

Back in Old England, meanwhile, the Commonwealth comes to an abrupt and sudden end when Cromwell's forces in Ireland are met with and overwhelmed by the return of Queen Elizabeth's half-elven** son from the planet Avalon (OTL Venus), but that's probably another post.

*A development gleefully stolen from Northern Crown.

**I did say it was a D&D mashup.
I am intrigued with your ideas and would like to subscribe to the newsletter.
 
[ . . . ] In I think 1987 I designed an interstellar-SF setting for "planet of the week" adventures. That was partly an abreaction against a friend's setting, which I felt made a mistake in following a preachy utopian tendency, especially as I didn't share his vision of a utopia and thought many of his ideas are unworkable. There I thought the needle had swung too far towards top-down design and pages spent on the description of features and institutions too vast for PCs ever to deal with. I designed my setting with some care to make the swarm of planets accessible to PCs but isolated enough to prevent their societies from homogenising, and to prevent issues from emerging whose large scale and wide scope would pull PCs out of contact with the planet of the week. It is very much not a utopia and not space opera.
I think excessive mid-level world building is a trap that it's easy for folks to fall into. It's better to design just enough of a big picture to hang everything together and then concentrate on stuff needed to support your adventures. Spend too much time in the middle and you wind up with a whole load of lore that doesn't really matter at the level your players are operating at. Unless it directly informs an adventure in some way, nobody cares who was the successor to Ogar the Flatulent or what effects the 1217 Battle of Lower Throcking had on the balance of power in the major noble houses.
 
There is a thread kicking on over at TBP which is actually interesting, in that it's asking people to talk about their homebrew settings.
This got me thinking about my old homebrew days, and I thought perhaps this may also be a good thread for here as well.

It's basically a blank canvas, you can discuss current homebrew settings, or published settings that you have significantly altered at a fundamental level.
Or just plain nostalgia regarding gonzo settings you created in your youngster days.

If anyone is interested, post away :thumbsup:
Well I got to publish mine

The Majestic Wilderlands
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Folks seem to like it.

But it not all I had

For decades I noodled with Rob's 100% original setting. But never used for anything until I used a tiny sliver of it at the example I used for How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox.

Here is the main map
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Like Blackmarsh it had a meteor smash into the landscape. Although for this it was the Dark Lord master stroke for wiping out the alliance against him.

Before
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After

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The color map I did in 1988
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I once had a large portion of this mapped out to a high degree of detail. Sadly I lost all but one page. Which I used later for my Fantasy Sandbox series.

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And no this is not the setting behind Blackmarsh and Points of Light.
 

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I been noodling around with a science fiction setting forever. Think Aliens, Outland, Space 1999, etc. but with dinosaurs!

The basic conceit is that in this universe there was an advanced technological civilization on Earth 65 millions years. They expanded into the stars and terraformed every world within reach. As of the 25th century, humankind has not reached the limits of what they terraformed. A hundred worlds have earth based ecologies descended from what the dinosaurian civilization did 65 millions ago. On some the dinosaur continue to thrive, on other they also died out an mammal, avians, etc. dominate.

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I have plotted out the expansion of human from earth using current star atlas
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The Artemis Station the setting for the one campaign I ran in this setting

Artemis Station Rev 01.jpg

Artemis Station Levels  01.jpg


Artemis Station Levels  02.jpg
 
I think excessive mid-level world building is a trap that it's easy for folks to fall into. It's better to design just enough of a big picture to hang everything together and then concentrate on stuff needed to support your adventures. Spend too much time in the middle and you wind up with a whole load of lore that doesn't really matter at the level your players are operating at. Unless it directly informs an adventure in some way, nobody cares who was the successor to Ogar the Flatulent or what effects the 1217 Battle of Lower Throcking had on the balance of power in the major noble houses.

It's a trap that I fell into hard. The Great Vale had a bad case of LotR-appendicitis: five hundred years of detailed history since the fall of the Elvish Empire, with dates for twenty successive princes of the Great Vale and lots of clever stuff about how the situation came to be and hidden rationalisations for the secret bits. But that was completely useless to players and put them off from reading. The Great Vale was not a successful setting design. By contrast the history for Jehannum was "there was a war of succession eight years ago, and Regikhord is emperor now because his side got lucky. Jasper of Suvein joined his side and made a bunch of decisive innovations of tactics and drill. Since the war Regikhord has become very unpopular, but Jasper the Terrible runs his government and has executed every possible claimant to the throne except for Regikhord and his daughter Lysandra, who is sixteen."

I am a lot too interested in the histories of my settings and the details of how the governments work. The more of that stuff I leave out the better the settings work.
 
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I think excessive mid-level world building is a trap that it's easy for folks to fall into. It's better to design just enough of a big picture to hang everything together and then concentrate on stuff needed to support your adventures. Spend too much time in the middle and you wind up with a whole load of lore that doesn't really matter at the level your players are operating at. Unless it directly informs an adventure in some way, nobody cares who was the successor to Ogar the Flatulent or what effects the 1217 Battle of Lower Throcking had on the balance of power in the major noble houses.
Yeah, I struggled with this when I was designing my most recent setting. I did some very appropriately loose cosmology and culture stuff, and some geography and whatnot. Then I got too hung up in doing crap like a Empire map (which I won't need in the foreseeable future) and working in history for places thousands of miles form where I was going to set the game. Trying to work out country and city names, needless map detail, needless religion detail. After A while I stood back and said WTF am I doing here? Then I got back on track designing the initial town and environs, which went well. I did that PbtA styles, with a rough map and two adventure fronts. Essentially the only well developed thing to start the campaign was the town of Cobblefell. That worked well though, because when we started playing the party could bang around in the town pretty much any way they wanted and I could make it work, and then once they bit on a hook and struck out I just kept a session ahead and used the associated adventure front to manage the crap in the background.
 
My Shadowrun campaign was based on Portsmouth and Southampton merged into one continuous city with the Isle of Wight as a corporate owned free trade zone. Using somewhere that you know can really help in real world games



I played in a WFRP game that was a bit like this. All the food was detailed, but the Skaven were glossed over. It was quite fun and half the party bankrupted themselves when we ate at a posh coaching Inn by mistake.
Ever get as far out as Gosport? I grew up in Bridgemary in the 80s/90s. Haven't been back since the last millenium.

I've only ever properly homebrewed 2 settings. The first was a feudal sci-fi game, complete with competing nobles with a weak-ish/dying Emperor, force shields that stopped bullets/beams but didn't stop swords, psionics, capes, slow-ish FTL travel etc.

I think I played one game in it with friends, and probably still have it lying around somewhere.

The second is a swashbuckling world of Imperial agents and demonic creatures that I wanted to give me some creative freedom. It could have been set in our 17th century but I didn't want any contradictions to arise, so thought it was a better option. This one is still growing organically.

Everything else I've ever played has rarely been 'straight' (except Star Wars and the modern world). It's been inspired by some property or other with an added twist, WFRP but 99.9% human, renamed 17th century Europe, piratical Caribbean with added fantasy, cartoons, Lego etc. - at heart I'm a dedicated plagarist.
 
Ever get as far out as Gosport? I grew up in Bridgemary in the 80s/90s. Haven't been back since the last millenium.

I grew up in Havant and lived in Eastleigh for a couple of years after university. Still have family in the area.

Gosport was a bit of dead space in the middle unless you were going to the submarine museum.
 
My last homebrew setting was called Albion. Yep, totally original name. Loosely based on the British Isles of the Dark Ages, only Wales got broken off the mainland and Scotland was full of Trolls. Using BRP/RQ2 (the Games Workshop edition) and drawing heavily on Brave, seasoned with Prydain. Which my players never actually cottoned on to.

I decided that I wasn't actually going to write down anything that wasn't going to be used in play, so there were only very loose notes. But there were three kingdoms, with the Wales expy being a fourth related but separate one. The High King had died and the three remaining kingdoms fell to the usual clannish squabbling. There was also the remnants of a Rome analog in the South West. And I had this vague idea about 'The Isle of Wights' that never came to anything.

I love it! By coincidence, my longest-running homebrew was also called Albion. It was an Arthurian game, but not much influenced by Pendragon, which I'd not read at that time, though I did use Phyllis Karr's King Arthur Companion a lot for ideas about N.P.Cs. The basic idea for the game was (1) take Geoffrey of Monmouth's view of Arthur and add (2) a fair amount of historical detail based on English society in the period 1180-1220. Supernatural elements, when they were not borrowed directly from the Arthurian stories, were mostly from folklore, ballads, and so on. A memorable early session was based on the song "King Willy," although it was a local count rather than a king whose new wife had been bewitched using 'combs of care' by her mother-in law. There were no standard demi-humans, but plenty of fairies along the lines of medieval tales. The game was set in what we would call Yorkshire, and I spent a fair amount of time lifting details of its feudal geography (including coats of arms) from the Victoria County History. It had its own homebrew system as well, with magic based loosely on some medieval ideas. For example, one spell was 'detect form' which when cast allowed the mage to see the Platonic form of objects nearby, but not their accidents. So it would reveal invisible items, or show if someone was a fairy or human--but when using it the caster couldn't distinguish individuals. The tone was grittier than Pendragon, though not as much so as Warhammer (which I hadn't seen at that point).
 
Had a wacky rpg idea just popped into my head whilst I was at work today
Definately something for a rules-lite pulpy system...

Bear in mind it took me about 60 seconds to think this up, here's the premise:

Lewis Carrol's Wonderland, Frank Baum's Oz, J.M.Barrie's Neverland, Roald Dahl's Wonkaville & Loompa Land, etc etc are all the same world, just different regions - a world called 'Fable'

And its all gone to shit.

It's up to Charlie to sort it out

Dahl's Charlie character (now a zillionaire adult with Wonka's fortune), sets up a posse of female badasses called Charlies Angels

You get to play adult versions of Dorothy (Angela Joline), Alice (Uma Thurman), and Wendy (Scarlet Johanssen)

And they all kick ass
Think Kill Bill on Acid -

ANGELS IN FABLELAND !!!

ok I was just wasting time, but I still thought it was worth posting, heh heh :grin: :thumbsup:
 
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You get to play adult versions of Dorothy (Angela Joline), Alice (Uma Thurman), and Wendy (Scarlet Johanssen)

And they all kick ass
Think Kill Bill on Acid -

ANGELS IN FABLELAND !!!

ok I was just wasting time, but I still thought it was worth posting, heh heh :grin: :thumbsup:

Brunhilde (Gwendoline Christie)

Moana (Frankie Adams)

Wen-li (Zhang Ziyi)
 
Stormfell this was created early for D&Dnext/5E, I still prefer to use it. Lots of crazy ideas I've picked up elsewhere like magic was once used for what we'd consider using technology for here in the real world, I mean they once had magic airplanes! Someday, I hope characters find one and have to figure out what it is and how it worked. Almost all the fantasy races descend from magical tampering or side effects, orcs ARE evil, and they're humans who've gone REALLY bad in the wrong place. Half-orcs are A) Orcs seeking redemption B) The children of orcs who ran away from their corrupt and vile relative and trying to be good for example. However, I used classic piglike orcs with green skin. (goblins are small orcs, ogres are giant orcs, etc. All the same thing--corrupt humans.) I only used classic common D&D races Humans, Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Half-orcs (no Teiflings or Dragonborn or such.)

The Forge, from my campaign Destiny's Forge idress_variant_by_silverlion_ddps2e1-fullview.jpg was a world I used more recently for several years--characters were level 13, and we were aiming for 20. PC's were all resurrected out of a soul-drinking sword's remnants and sent off by the spirit that rescued them to fight the evil Emporer. Who now rules. They chose the path, and I only gave them a map somewhere between 3rd level and 5th that showed where the shards of the sword were which they said were needed to kill him for good. The truth is a lot more complicated though. The gods were dead (except the primeval creators of the cosmos.) The hells had been emptied and shut and only a few demons/devils survived (they were the same thing.)

The primeval creators were who resurrected the players but were barely more than weak spirits compared to what they had been, and the PCs managed to almost every continent, many of the larger islands even their Artic/Antarctic locales. Claimed all but a few shards before the game crashed. They were getting close to the end, had made friends with some Elves, some Hobgoblin military groups, fought of minor threats, and took down the evil emperor's underlings and servants.
They discovered their pasts as well since they were amnesiac (except for my nephew who could follow directions...) so I totally messed up everything his character remembered and added some creepy elements to it. Though even some of that was a bunch of lies. They fought dragons, let one escape, aided another, met Halflings, Kobolds, Minotaurs, Aaracokra people and while alignment was used, most monsters didn't hew to D&D's standards, for various reasons.

The aim was to get a reforged sword, face the emperor, and kill him--since the game is unlikely to be run again it had a SERIOUSLY bad secret, the players would get at the end. The evil Emperor? Didn't start out the way, he has been trying to stop things worse than Cthulhu, who devour everything in a universe from getting inside, that the earliest magic wielders unleashed, he managed to "chain the door" with souls, but even that needed a constant supply to keep the chains from breaking--he'd made a deal with one that had its least tendril through--and fed it some souls as well after it ate one of their two stars. It kept the others from trying to break the door and blocked the way from others because of the souls he fed it--it was a glutton and became a living wall on its side, but the door was going to open all the way if the PC's killed him. Unless one of them took his place and fed it more souls. Their choice to kill him would end everything, taking the throne kept the cycle going, but the evil Emperor would offer them a third choice--sacrifice himself, the last gods, and them to shut it completely. That's the price that needed to be paid....

But, that would then leave me a chance to re-incarnate their characters (in "human" bodies for those who weren't) and chance to claim the thrones of the gods and serve the world, as its new deities. (Using Godbound) Those are just two D&D ones!

I'm running an MSH game set in an original universe, where all the superheroes seem to vanish after WWII, and no one remembers they existed, every film, photo, newspaper, etc have been altered, memories erased, until a time capsule is found in Germany where the American patriotic team all gave their lives to help stop the German's something. The opening of the capsule triggered powers and unleashed the Spirit of Liberty (think Phantom Stranger) who helped them keep from having their memories erased, and they got powers when it opened.

Since then they've been investigating the secrets of the team: The United Sentinals of America and discovering more heroes vanished and erased going even farther back, got "help" from a bad guy who really wanted them as pawns, realized he's dangerous, hit one of the "MIB" bases and stole an entire VAULT, as well as discovered one of the USA's original bases under a bank. Met helpful people, saved lives from a demon (a very dangerous one), discovered that there ARE magic users around who can stay out of the super erasure people's notice and that a tournament to decide who the Mystic Master of Midgard will be--their choices being Bad guy, unknown, and a nice occult bookshop owner, or a dream magic-based nineteen-year-old kid, who thinks they're cool. Or they proposed the Spirit of Liberty (who technically can't participate unless they convince everyone to change the rules so the ghost can serve on the council.)
 
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Rpg.net wants people to talk about their home brew settings...?

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They’re just looking for people with the wrong sorts of elements in their worlds so they can shame them and/or ban them. :devil:

Purple making an honest request for posts...in the words of the philosopher James Woods in The Hard Way...
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Oh! The Necromancy!
 
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I been noodling around with a science fiction setting forever. Think Aliens, Outland, Space 1999, etc. but with dinosaurs!

The basic conceit is that in this universe there was an advanced technological civilization on Earth 65 millions years. They expanded into the stars and terraformed every world within reach. As of the 25th century, humankind has not reached the limits of what they terraformed. A hundred worlds have earth based ecologies descended from what the dinosaurian civilization did 65 millions ago. On some the dinosaur continue to thrive, on other they also died out an mammal, avians, etc. dominate.


I have plotted out the expansion of human from earth using current star atlas


The Artemis Station the setting for the one campaign I ran in this setting
I love that 3D start atlas. Where is that from? Have for years want4ed to do a 3D star map for my far future campaign....so much time and ideas spent on it, many before software could solve many issues.
 
I love that 3D start atlas. Where is that from? Have for years want4ed to do a 3D star map for my far future campaign....so much time and ideas spent on it, many before software could solve many issues.
Astrosynthesis by NBos

I used the real world data set from here.

But it will autogen stuff for you sector by sector. If you use real world data, be sure you really love worldbuilding as a hobby. There a lot to go through.

Also be careful about what you use to generate star system. Realistic generators tend to generate habitable worlds far apart like separated oasis in a vast vast desert. It rare to get the exact combo for inhabitable world.

I side stepped the issue by saying the dinosaurians terraformed everything that was the right size and distance from the home star.
 
Astrosynthesis by NBos
I've found it a mixed bag. I did get it and frig with it a bit. Some of the features like generating images of worlds are kinda useful. Ultimately I did something a bit more abstract. It generates star-trek style world classes (e.g. 'M' class) and a basic notation that lets you see a list of planet types in a system on a single line. I did think of trying to write a plug-in for Astrosynthesis.

[ . . . ]
Also be careful about what you use to generate star system. Realistic generators tend to generate habitable worlds far apart like separated oasis in a vast vast desert. It rare to get the exact combo for inhabitable world.

I side stepped the issue by saying the dinosaurians terraformed everything that was the right size and distance from the home star.
This ^^^ The size goes up cubically which means you get to a very large number of star systems very quickly. My approach to star systems was just to hack the map. Scatter some habitable worlds around by hand in systems with suitable main sequence (say: F5-K2) stars.

There's a thread here where I discuss some experiments in doing a tool to visualise the 3D star map structures. It started out with off-the-shelf near star data, which tends to be usable out to about 15-25 parsecs from the sun, but gets sparse further out as most smaller stars get too dim to see at long distances.

 
When I was working on my 3-D star map for a variant Traveller using Paul Gazis's Eight Worlds ship rules, my "map" was a list of star systems, and then a list of star systems within the 30 parsec jump range of that.

But I ran into issues. First of course is that "habitable" stars are rare in the catalog for the region of campaign space (as noted above, 15-25 parsecs is pretty much the limit for detecting them)... So I invented stars. The problem then was that other than a dense Sol based polity, pretty much all the stars on the actual map were invented. I named polities after a nearby "interesting" star from the catalog, and some of those made it onto the map. So then the next problem... Even if you MUST jump to a star system, you don't need to follow the "routes" my map showed because right next to an inhabited star system were dozens of perfectly good stars to jump to... And set up refueling stations in if you needed to... In fact, you could have two polities completely overlaid in space and not have to be in conflict at all... And then with such a "realistic" system, I couldn't keep from thinking about why the heck would anyone do interstellar trade and such at all?

And then I started reading Chistopher Kubasik's blog. And then I dug out my 1977 Classic Traveller box and rolled up some Traveller sub-sectors and left the "realistic" 3D map behind...

For "realism" you could look up Evil Doctor Ganymede's T2300 setting re-do with real data. With a shorter (about 7 LY) "jump" distance, using the real star catalog makes a lot more sense. On the other hand, even that might be blown depending on your assumptions about brown dwarfs...
 
I tend to grow homebrew settings like oysters grow pearls. It will start out as some little idea is a published product that needs more content, and I slowly add to it. I find having a functional backstory, slate of major actors, etc., provides the grist I need to run adventures.

For example, I established a plane-hopping campaign around a concept called The River of Worlds in the D20 supplement Portals & Planes by FFG. I also stole liberally from other settings to populate the worlds withing, such as 0one Games's Great City setting and the various planes in Monte Cook's Beyond Countless Doorways, altering them to fit into the framework that the river provided me.

A more recent example is my take on Halcyon City and it's version of Earth for my Masks: A New Generation game (which I have a running campaign log for here). I used a few of the villains from the games' deck of villainy, but I slowly grew a body of historical and current superheroes, which forms a backdrop for the game. The game splits superheroes and villains into ages (golden/silver/bronze/modern), so I created a sort of timeline to track them:

Halcyon City Heroes and Villains

Operational superhero teams:
  • Darkwatch
  • Paragons
  • Superior Six
  • Justice Guardians


Silver Age Heroes:


Silver Age Paragons (retired)

MemberBorn/Age
(2018)
SummaryAnalog
The Human Tank (retired)1950/68Original Powered Armor heroIron Man
Grendel (deceased)1953/65Dr. Jekyll type; gained powers by secret serumHulk, Hank Pym, Hourman
Futurian1963/55Psychic, appeared as a baby in physics lab, allegedly from the futureVisionary (Sentinels of the Multiverse), Captain Comet
Dark Eagle (now solo)1969/49Young hero worshipper (at the time), was a Beacon typeBatman, Punisher, Wolverine, Dexter

Bronze Age Heroes:


Bronze Age Paragons (active)

MemberBorn/Age
(2018)
SummaryAnalog
Futurian (F)1963/55Psychic, started the new team after Grendel died and Dark Eagle went solo. Looks younger than her 55.Visionary (Sentinels of the Multiverse)
Moondragon (Marvel)
Captain Comet (DC)
Bicentennial (M)
(formerly Sprit of 76)
1976/44Baby born in 76, blessed with the “Spirit of 76”. A bit old fashioned. Votes Republican.Captain America, Wonder Woman style paragon
Knightstar1983/35Cosmic powered heroCaptain Marvel (Mar-Vell)
Prime(♂)1983/35Genius GadgeteerMr. Terrific

Modern Age groups:


The Darkwatch

A group of “fringe operators”. Started by Dark Eagle’s former protégé, Kestrel, after they had a falling out.

MemberBorn/Age
(2018)
SummaryAnalog
Kestrel (♂)1993/25Former Dark Eagle protégé.Nightwing, Batgirl
Final Girl(♀)1995/23Highly trained avenger with supernatural senses?
Prime(♂)1983/35Genius GadgeteerMr. Terrific

The Justice Guardians

MemberBorn/Age
(2018)
SummaryAnalog
Silver Seraph(♂)1980/38Armored Hero with wingsIron Man, Hawkman, Angel
Kunoichi(♀)1989/29Ninja/master of disguise and minor magic abilitiesBlack Widow, Elektra, Coleen Wing
Gestalt(♀)1991/27Mutant with ability to merge with an animate objects?
(Strong Hero?)(F)
(Speedster?)(M)

The Superior Six

A “Marquee” supers group with a rotating roster set up by Rook Industries. As of now, the Superior Six's member have moved on to other things (heroing or villainy, depending...)
MemberBorn/Age
(2018)
SummaryAnalog/Notes
Hardware1984/34Disabled man in powered armor. History with the Human Tank. Has “keys” to Opal.Iron Man, Buddy/Syndrome
Cryptic1980/38Secretly had a villain ID, bought out by Rook. Would recognize Night Gaunt.Deathstroke/Batman

Ex-Superior Six members
MemberBorn/Age
(2018)
SummaryAnalog/Notes
The Living Opal (or just Opal)
(MISSING)
? / ?Scary powerful golem, has been around a long time. Stoic. Usually doesn’t speak until prompted.Red Tornado, Superman
Mentallica
(Ex-member after session 12)
1999/19Powerful psychic. Previous Superior Six winner. Replaced Ground-Zero (disappeared during Exclusion Zone Crisis)Marvel girl, Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
Junior Members
Fusillad
(Ex-member after session 12)
2001/17Cybernetic warrior, destined to become a foe of the team/Rook faithful.Cyborg, Arsenal, Genos (One-Punch Man)
Might rejoin Superior Six?
Flashing Will
(Ex-member after session 12)
(PC)
 
I've found it a mixed bag. I did get it and frig with it a bit. Some of the features like generating images of worlds are kinda useful. Ultimately I did something a bit more abstract. It generates star-trek style world classes (e.g. 'M' class) and a basic notation that lets you see a list of planet types in a system on a single line. I did think of trying to write a plug-in for Astrosynthesis.

I use Astrosynthesis as a starting point not my main data management tool

This ^^^ The size goes up cubically which means you get to a very large number of star systems very quickly. My approach to star systems was just to hack the map. Scatter some habitable worlds around by hand in systems with suitable main sequence (say: F5-K2) stars.

There's a thread here where I discuss some experiments in doing a tool to visualise the 3D star map structures. It started out with off-the-shelf near star data, which tends to be usable out to about 15-25 parsecs from the sun, but gets sparse further out as most smaller stars get too dim to see at long distances.

2300 AD Link and Branch system is the answer to something manageable and sharable/publishable if desired and still be true to how star are truly positioned.

For example this from Atomic Rockets. All of the nodes are taken from a star atlas and have X, Y, Z components.
1629260941442.png

Even if interstellar have ranges you can still take a 3D Map and make a node map of the locations important to the campaign. For example this one showing only those start with potentially inhabitable exoplanets.

1629261290419.png
 
I tend to grow homebrew settings like oysters grow pearls. It will start out as some little idea is a published product that needs more content, and I slowly add to it. I find having a functional backstory, slate of major actors, etc., provides the grist I need to run adventures.

For example, I established a plane-hopping campaign around a concept called The River of Worlds in the D20 supplement Portals & Planes by FFG. I also stole liberally from other settings to populate the worlds withing, such as 0one Games's Great City setting and the various planes in Monte Cook's Beyond Countless Doorways, altering them to fit into the framework that the river provided me.

A more recent example is my take on Halcyon City and it's version of Earth for my Masks: A New Generation game (which I have a running campaign log for here). I used a few of the villains from the games' deck of villainy, but I slowly grew a body of historical and current superheroes, which forms a backdrop for the game. The game splits superheroes and villains into ages (golden/silver/bronze/modern), so I created a sort of timeline to track them:

Halcyon City Heroes and Villains

Operational superhero teams:
  • Darkwatch
  • Paragons
  • Superior Six
  • Justice Guardians
Nice. I'd share my setting for H&S2E, but it's got a huge timeline.
 
Primeval Thule wasn’t any good, or they just stole your thunder?
Primeval Thule wasn't very good but the worst part is that they touched on and despoiled just about every idea I was working on. It was dismaying to see the ideas that had been bubbling in my brain for years executed poorly on a big budget scale.

Do you mean the one from Sasquatch Games?
That is correct. Their 7 setting conceits are a strong base but the execution was poor. They tried to cram every goddamn pulp fantasy trope known to man into the setting with disappointing results.

Thanks for the votes of confidence, guys. Your kind comments have encouraged me to review my notes and reconsider the project.

The one consideration I am dithering on is system. A B/X hack with reskinned Mythos-style spells is (relatively) easy-peasy and I have already done a great deal of the work. On the other hand the OSR field is glutted with excellent material. 5e could really use a solid S&S treatment but it would be a lot of extra work and need more rigorous playtesting.
 
The one consideration I am dithering on is system. A B/X hack with reskinned Mythos-style spells is (relatively) easy-peasy and I have already done a great deal of the work. On the other hand the OSR field is glutted with excellent material. 5e could really use a solid S&S treatment but it would be a lot of extra work and need more rigorous playtesting.
I hope to see it. I like Mythras a bit more than 5E in terms of design, but I run into problems with its lethality. S&S might have a lethality in it but doesn't usually apply to main characters (usually.) There are tons of systems out there, but setting design is what can really set a game apart.
 
I hope to see it. I like Mythras a bit more than 5E in terms of design, but I run into problems with its lethality. S&S might have a lethality in it but doesn't usually apply to main characters (usually.) There are tons of systems out there, but setting design is what can really set a game apart.
Yeah but Main Characters surviving has nothing to do with the S&S tropes, it has to do with them being Main Characters.
 
I use Astrosynthesis as a starting point not my main data management tool


2300 AD Link and Branch system is the answer to something manageable and sharable/publishable if desired and still be true to how star are truly positioned.

For example this from Atomic Rockets. All of the nodes are taken from a star atlas and have X, Y, Z components.
View attachment 34534

Even if interstellar have ranges you can still take a 3D Map and make a node map of the locations important to the campaign. For example this one showing only those start with potentially inhabitable exoplanets.

View attachment 34535

I did this with graphviz, but I dare say someone spent a fair amount of time manually untangling that map.
 
I did this with graphviz, but I dare say someone spent a fair amount of time manually untangling that map.
Yed has a lot of arrangement tools for nodes that gets you most of the way there. But it is still a fair amount of work.

 
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