Leonine Roar

Love your home brew campaign setting, and how much you borrow, pillage or re-imagine for your own, unique world?  Does its breadth, evocative landscapes and both natural and unnatural dangers excite you?  Looking for that next bit of inspiration for your next home brew campaign?

Much like Dark Sun or the Underdark, the natural world – its amazing and colorful contours, mighty forces of nature, and motley natives – have served as simple, yet powerful inspiration for countless homebrew D&D campaigns since the dawn of the game. 

Looking for some help on how to decide where you and your player characters should explore or journey to next?  

Begin your next campaign world’s creation, exploration and story with one simple, useful tool: the 18 geography-based PC backgrounds currently in the D&D game. 

That’s right – backgrounds aren’t just for PCs!  When you next DM a new campaign, use the D&D Compendium’s geography-based backgrounds (mostly found in PHB2 and Primal Power) to shape and forge your homebrew D&D world and get those new heroes adventuring! 

In fact, with the holidays coming up, breaks are likely, so go ahead and start planning for your new homebrew campaign launching in January 2012!

The discovery of unique and inspiring D&D worlds and stories await you right this moment.  Yet how do you choose the most inspiring one for your gaming group?  All 18 of these backround settings have a “cool factor” to offer you, so let’s briefly review them, including the one my gaming group is currently in love with, our primal Frostfell campaign:

Leonine List: 18 World Hooks

1. Blazestone – A volcanic world, complete with ash storms and black glass crunching and cracking underfoot.  It’s not about if, but when another eruption will blacken the land.
2. Bleakmire – Lizardfolks’ and hags’ dream – mud, insects, disease, wet and heavy travel.  No wonder only one idiot has ever tried to build castles in the swamp!
3. Bloodtangle – I see yaun-ti capture and an adventuring party “roast” in your future!  Never mind that the jungle and all its sweltering heat and toxins are quite the deatg trap.
4. Broken Lands – It’s like those nostalgic Brady Bunch Grand Canyon episodes.  But much, much, much more dangerous and heinous.  At least take it from G to PG-13, will you?
5. Frostfell (Primal Power) – Just in time for winter: frozen tundra, blizzards, avalanches, slogging through feet of snow, death by frostbite… now we’re talking! 
6. Geography – Desert – Dark Sun-light?  Get it?  I agree, that’s horrible.  But either setting will threaten your very survival – the desert wastes and heat alone are not merciful.
7. Geography – Forest – Maybe it’s the simple, rustic Abe Lincoln type of place.  But shouldn’t it be more enchanting?  Freshly released, Heroes of the Feywild calls to you!
8. Geography – Mountains – Natural place for tough hikers and climbers like goliaths and dwarves.  Oh and for tunneling purple worms too.  Use those minis, I know you want to.
9. Geography – Urban – Not usually my thing unless I’m in the Realms, where their cities feel like New York, Boston and L.A.  That said, crime and political themes thrive here.
10. Geography – Wetlands – I guess the She-DM is right, there’s a little bit of background overlap or a glut after all, as this one sounds like a more generic brand of Bleakmire.  Save 30%!
11. Howling Plains – How about a mounted travel and mounted combat-heavy campaign?  Mongolian horse-rider Genghis Khan style – Mount Up and Ride!
12. Ikemmu – A specific urban setting, Ikemmu is the capital city of the shadar-kai, close to multiple planes.  A great city, dark fantasy race, and multi-planar dangers, all in one.
13. Maelstrom – An echo of 3e’s Stormwrack, here is a world of tsunamis, whirlpools, torrential rainstorms and more than a few lost ships, no matter who the master or commander.
14. Sea of Dust – Greyhawk’s Sea of Dust returns – a desert-like wasteland of ash and destruction brought about by magical means.  Magical power corrupts… and destroys. 
15. The Breach – A specific Elemental Chaos-like setting, “everything is wrong here.”  Imagine Elemental Chaos “events” where raw, primal madness leaks into the world.  Once more, great ideas from Robert J. Schwalb. 
16. Thunderpeaks – She-DM wins again!  This time, the Thunderpeaks is a stormy, sleeker, deadlier-sounding Geography – Mountains setting.
17. Underwild – Reminds me of my Drow House campaign, where the Underdark isn’t always barren, but full of deadly flora and fauna.  Feywild meets the Underdark?
18. Wrathwood – A watchful, sentient forest dominates this setting, and its creatures and wildlife protect it.  Another dangerous magical place just in time for Heroes of the Feywild!

Honorable Mentions

Don’t forget some classic D&D homebrew settings and worlds that have their own full D&D 4e or previous edition sourcebook, filled with flavorful ideas and details:

Leonine List: 7 More World Hooks

1. The Underdark
2. The Plane Below: The Elemental Chaos
3. The Plane Above: The Astral Sea
4. Frostburn
5. Stormwrack
6. Sandstorm
7. Cityscape

These sourcebooks have so much material that the best way to get the most mileage out of them and feature the unique setting is to play an entire campaign setting fully within them.  Visiting is okay in most campaigns – but there’s a gulf of difference between putting your toe in the water and diving right in!   There’s nothing like beginning and ending a campaign on an astral skiff, on flying islands of storm-charged magma-rock, or deep in the pitch-black secrets of the Underdark.

Consider 3e’s Frostburn, Stormwrack, Sandstorm and Cityscape outstanding resources for detailed environmental and adventure ideas to expand upon much of the 18 background geographies.  I loved these books myself, and they’re still so inspirational for me today in me getting the right feel across in my campaigns. 

Speaking of capturing the right feel or tone, I happened to catch Master and Commander again on AMC this week – and I’m excited because it’s filled with brilliant takeaways for a D&D seafaring campaign.  As I mused on Twitter, maybe even Chris Perkins was inspired by it in some ways for his homebrew Iomandra campaign? 

Like Dark Sun and Eberron, some style of seafaring campaign is now on my “Next D&D Campaign” hot list.  Which campaigns are on yours?

How Do You Brew?

What’s your approach when deciding on what homebrew world you want run a game and play in next?  How important is geography and its associated tone to you?  How much do books, art, photos, music or even video, shows or movies figure in for you? 

And how do you involve your players in the decision of what homebrew world and setting you’re going to explore next?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Design, Mechanics & Efficiencies, News, Previews & Reviews, Storytelling & Roleplaying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.