How BIG should your homebrew D&D setting be? 

For anyone looking for more advice on literally drawing the borders of your map, I like to use autumn leaves as inspiration for landmass. By following the pattern of drying on the leaf, you can get really interesting coastlines, islands, peninsulas, and inlets. It is a little tough to eyeball the geographical features, but the Autumn Leaf technique is really fantastic for the broad silhouette.

I absolutely love your advice about nog having to fill in every part of your map before starting out! You said the same in your “How To Start A Campaign” video, I believe, and that realization was a load off my shoulders! I recently started DM’ing my first campaign and am homebrewing the world. I use your videos a lot when prepping, they really do come in handy regularly! I can’t wait to watch the rest of this series, no doubt it’ll be immensely useful!

Just in time. I just started writing a new setting. Very helpful

Totally agree. Great advice, as always. Also, I can see the return of the legendary mustache!!!

Love the first episode of the series. Thanks.

I feel like a really important idea is how much the players are idolized and the absolute forefront of the story is inversely proportional to the scale of the setting. A small area, maybe just a single fief granted to a lord? Your players could very well be the strongest people there, even in lower level play, and they are unequivocally THE heroes. A continent? There are warriors and kings, and great armies and mages and battles that completely outclass them. I think it really depends on the players. I know many enjoy being the typical beloved hero of an area after becoming its savior, but my players always enjoy my large grand worlds where, at the beginning, they are but a small cog in a grand machine that they know very little about. They are strong, and they will be heroes of many places due to their deeds, but my level 6 fighter has nothing on the emperor blessed by the god of health and vitality so that very few injuries are capable of killing him, or of the vast legions of war-mages of the autocracy who exclusively wear heavy armor to make themselves both the unstoppable force and immovable object. These things exist, and act and change the world without the players' input or consent. If they want to be in the annals of history, names never forgotten and passed down through time, they have to put in the effort, and carve out a spot in the history books for themselves. It adds a lot more grandeur and glory to the act of finally becoming renowned, because it was much more difficult on such a large scale.

This was also a very practical presentation. Thank you.

Very helpful! 🌟

9:38 You can also mix this. Make everything slow and shaded, but one biome could be immediate, maybe it’s by magic or some curse, but it would make the players ask what great magic could cause this?

Top channel, mate. Thanks for your work

As always a wonderful video that breaks a large daunting topic down into small manageable pieces.

This is exactly what I needed! Thank you so much! :> you’re so underrated, your content is amazing Im excited for the next parts in this series!

Great video!

Your advice helps DMing my first campaign with my friends. thanks for the great work and keep it up 😊

Yoink I can't wait for the rest of them

Love it! ❤ As a Dm just 5 sessions into my first homebrew setting, I’ve found one point you’ve said to be particularly true. Get the bones laid out, and then only prep in detail what is right around your players. This includes not only geography, but story as well. I’ve found that it’s this continual adjustment of focus from big and broad to tiny and specific, depending on what is next for the players. I also decided to use Inkarnate because of your recommendation on a previous video. Thank you for the great video!

Great video! I look forward to the next ones in this series.

Fantastic! looking forward to the next instalment 🤘

I really like the idea of homebrewing a country for player races so I can tie the player into the world with actual cultural and other information based on where they come from. But that's why I have 12 countries on my main continent and haven't consistently run lol

I plan on converting the real world to fantasy, and use real world borders, etc. The entire map-making process is done for me, I just need to rename everything.

I would really appreciate if as part of this series you spoke about balancing your economy. As a new DM, it’s hard to have a reference point for in game currency. Should I only use gp? Or should I include sp and cp? How much should things cost? How much should a party of 5 be rewarded for killing a monster or taking down some bandit lord? I feel like as a topic it doesn’t need a whole video but it would be a nice include especially in a series like this.

I hope the answer is planet sized because I started off with Pangea Última.

I think I should start small and then with each campaign grow a little more each time given you room to think about what goes into it a little further each time of course that's why I think you should start them out at a level 1 at a young age to keep them in the city and as they get older and at a higher expand outwards

Great video. Looking forward to the others. Just want say that I personally love to first set up a base. And base is: Shape of continents, mountains, rivers and biomes. For base trying to be realistic. Then I put on purpose a few on purpose illogicality places that are result of some magic, direct influence of the gods etc (good places for some lore later on)… For example: I have some huge scare with shattered islands that are crystallized, and all on them are crystallized. Or one huge cursed swamp where one of villain has his base. Then I put roughly location where will be large civilization like Humans, Dwarfs, Elfs etc. Just o know if some of my player what to play as this race to know something. Maybe campaign is start on different continent so that I can tell him that majority of population of his race is on another continent ect. That is generally it for the world. Then I start to focus on region and place where campaign will start.

That's helpful advice. I'm having a really hard time narrowing it down to something simple. I run a campaign for my partner but I kind of postpone because I want to have figured how the planet was formed, how arcana and the other types of magic became available, who are the gods and how did they attain godhood, and how come there are relics of ages past ready to be found. I feel like I need all those things figured out in case I'm being asked questions so that my world doesnt feel like an empty shell with no history, and I don't know how people can run campaigns without having figured all those aspects. So the answer is probably "people actually will not ask and you're making a fuss out of it" Also, for the life of me, I cannot decide on how to shape my world.

I am having a severely bad time figureing out how to balance a villain and make one not story wise but like what abilities they do and what stats they have Ps great bud helped alot

Have you put out anything on mass combat?

In my world I want a hard spontaneous border for my environments. Because magic war in the past

First! Great stuff, as usual!

6:37 Very low resolution image of the island of Sulawesi

Is it possible to make a homebrew setting without a map? I have inkarnate but I'm so bad at making realistic and believable continent and regional maps, at least ones I like. I get bad "writers block with things to include on the map.

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