If you would like to build a homebrew world with me, sign up to the $10 tier on my patreon to join our community worldbuilding project creating the polar islands of Jandir. Sign up here: bit.ly/2XeqzJv
@@IcarusGames Just found your channel but that alone is why I'm initially going to sub. No other channel I watch does that with their newer videos much less ones from a year ago.
@@AlexHunter2525 Hopefully you enjoy your time with our little community :D I always do my best to respond to comments, and if you have topics you'd like to see covered, I'm all ears :)
The hardest part for me is the creating the ending part first. Even when just creative writing I just write my stories on the seat of my pants rather than outline every important detail. For me as a GM there's nothing more disheartening than trying to railroad my players especially if they're having fun derailing. Plus it's a great way to work on your improv ability.
Even if you never use it, even if the players go in the opposite direction in the first session, I think there's merit just in the process of thinking about the ending at the start because it forces you to ask questions about your world, character motivations, and how the world might evolve.
in my latest homebrew world I have the villian, the ending, where the characters start, and what needs to happen for them to defeat the villian, the rest is up to how the dice falls and what the players choose
I think one of the issue I'm running into, is "how to introduce the "main plot" to the characters". I've started DMing Waterdeep and soon moving into Mad Mage, but I had a very deep spark of creativity and have all of these "notes" of things I might or might not want to have happen, location information and stuff like that...but then I realized there isn't really a way to introduce it to the characters in such a way that it either isn't giving away everything about whats going on, or making it feel natural like the players discovered it and it wasn't attached to an arrow and shot at the players.
I think the "put the plot in front of them" style gets a bad wrap sometimes, but in some cases, it's the most easy and straight forward to get the game moving and get to the fun. Are you running Waterdeep heist? If so, you could put the hook for the next adventure direct into it. Maybe the person they have hired can tell them about it or point them to it. When all is said and done, they will remember the adventure, not how they got given the hook.
@@IcarusGames Yes, I am running Dragon Heist and then moving my group into Mad Mage. This homebrewed campaign idea would be after this in a completely new city, town, time ect.
@@TheFoxlover93 If it's for a totally new campaign, look at where you want to end up, and you can seed your "main plot" from there. For example, in my campaign, the "main plot" is the resurgence of the evil deity, Parax the Warmaster, who wants to dominate the material plane. However, my first adventure was the party taking on a freshly turned Vampire. As part of that adventure hey discovered a magical slave collar that would eventually come in really important for the Parax plot line, but at that time it was just a cool bit of intrigue for them.
This is perfect. My wife and I have never played before and are looking to start. I want to create my own homebrew duet game for us to play. Thanks for very much for helping!
@@IcarusGames I'd like to create a large size world. Kind of like a kingdom that spans 2-4 countries/territories where I can do lots of small adventures that will end up leading towards a finale. The smaller adventures would be good to start for us to get use to the way of play and then I can ramp up the story as we progress.
I’m currently making my own Tabletop RPG game and I found this to be useful. Granted I seem to be following this advice already, it’s nice to hear I’m not doing it wrong.
I made a twist ending where a crack in time formed and the weave was damaged. As a twist BBEG I explained how the weave pulled alternate versions of our 5 party members as dopplegangers. Both parties sense what they must do, if duplicates were to exist in one universe for too long it may harm the weave. Both parties realized their fates and fought to the death, I had to use their spare character sheets for info, I buffed up the dopplegangers a little but the original party used brilliant tactics to defeat them. How could I of made this a little harder and worth their time?
Depends on what edition you were running. Legendary actions and resistance in 5e are a good place to start. You could also have added some extra spells or abilities to them. But if your players had fun then all is well and that's all that matters.
I think the doppelganger approach is a good twist. It's one I've used in the past and it went down well. I think that twists should come naturally wherever possible though. You don't *have* to have a twist, but instead look for opportunities to introduce a twist naturally. An example from a recent game I ran; the players had previously encounter a portal system powered by a magic stone they had to destroy. So when they encountered this portal they assumed it would be another stone that formed the conduit. In reality it was an NPC they had previously met. So they had to decide whether to destroy the NPC to take the easy way out, or find a more difficult approach.
This is such a good idea! I'm running a game (session 1 4th of March) where the players are all themselves but lost in a mystic land. They gain powers that make them closer to who they would want to be, giving the doppelgangers the opposite powers of that is such a great twist!
I love this playlist. I'm currently making my first own campaign and these videos help me so much. Right after I've listened to this video, I went and made a poll for my players to vote for things that they want to see more of in the game. ^^
Looking to start a Forgotten Realms campaign for my family that will be a sort of tutorial for all of us with it helping me to become a mostly novice Dungeon Master.
This is so helpful! All campaigns i tried being a player in died, leading me to want to run a campaign myself thats a homebrew because im a masochist and if i doom myself to DM until I die ill do it with style. I am VERY inexperienced so I am looking for any help and this understandable even for a noob like me, thank you
You talking about genre and tone gave me an idea (I got the DMing bug recently, but don't know what I'm gonna do with it, yet). I'm thinking something whimsical, like fairy tales with princesses, dragons and castles, but with horror.
Im planning this homebrew game where the PCs are sent to the edge of this forest (by a king havent fully desided which) where the deeper they go in the bigger everything else is they are to set up a town and collect this rare material that can only be found in mines in the forest ive asked all the people i normally play with and they seem to like the idea its gonna be more of a role play then combat oriented with a more heavy focus on what skills they have
Just started playing! I definitely want to make a short home brew and I’m pretty creative so making the storyline, writing, map, etc. is easy to me. My difficulty right now is the numbers in this game. I have created my own enemies and weapons with unique abilities and what not, but idk what stats to give these enemies/weapons to make them fair to the players. I don’t want a small enemy to wipe everybody out, but I also want to present a fun challenge. Any suggestions, or links to good videos?
I'm sort of new to DMing, but I think it is best to plan encounters week by week. That way you know where your party is at and can plan something that is challenging but may not TPK.
tyler smith I am planning on having my players meet a Beholder that’s being chased by a Planetar, the beholder is just trying to get home after going on a vacation.
Not this year unfortunately. As mentioned in my last video, a series of personal issues have absorbed so much of my time and energy lately that I'm taking a break from as much as possible in December to relax and spend time with family. Next year it would be nice to hit a few of the conventions and get some games in though!
Me and my crew are pretty new to RPG is there a way to just kind of sample a whole lot of different tones so we can find what we really want to majorly playing in?
The best way to do this is with "one shots". These are 1-session games where you play a completely different story in each. It's a great way for your game master to explore different tones, and if you create a different character for each, it's a great way to get a taste for the different character types and decide what you like! For 5th edition D&D, there are two books with shorter adventures in; Tales from the Yawning Portal, and Candlekeep Mysteries, but I would suggest looking online for "D&D 5e one shots" and exploring those options too.
There is! There's a whole series: Making a Homebrew Campaign: ru-vid.com/group/PL3cwve_r0qbFtopu_ektfE3k9smywAFOB I'll get a link to the playlist added to the description too.
Been playing for like 6 months now, and this upcoming campaign is gonna be my first one! Im thinking its mostly gonna be episodic, with light arcs. Ive already set up a world and all that, just having trouble writing it lol. Any idea how to set up a murder mystery?
Murder mysteries tend to work best in an isolated location with a fairly small cast of characters. The players want to uncover small pieces of information throughout the session that point to different suspects, but that all come together at the end to point to the killer. I'd start by watching some murder mystery shows and films to get inspired.
I was thinking making a world where normal monsters and humans roles are switch and there armies in both sides and players will be able pick either side to support.
The issue that I have found with my players is that I ask them what tone they want (usually something dark) but then they all make characters that are bubbly and happy and just don't fit the setting and don't want to change?
I've been a player in a curse of stradht campaign (1st and only DnD campaign that I played after hearing so much about DnD) and I found that my dm was really chunky and glued to the storybook of the campaign and not valuing the roleplay properly to benefit combat. For example, he did not want to allow my barbarian to enter rage because he was enveloped in spiderweb and a raging barbarian would make that combat too easy. Or not allowing advantage rolls in persuasion when you're logically correct or a disvantage one when you make a blunder out of your words. So I want to make a homebrew dnd campaign hosted in Warhammer fantasy world with some twerking for storysake. (Because in Warhammer every race hates eachother, that is a nightmare for a multiracial party). story wise I already have a good and fun Idea but I have no clue on how to plan encounters, how to describe an interesting and usefully environment... Like, I want my players to be in a bad position but turn it around by shattering the ground and making the enemies fall into it, or breaking the wall to not allow the enemy to pursuit... I also don't know how to lvl up battles for the levels of the party... Like the blunder that our dm made, he put us to fight a red dragon slave of stradht but he forgot that the ancestral guardian path of my barbarian gave a lot of resistances and advantage to the party and we managed to kill the dragon that was meant to scare us out of the place, now we are over leveled for the campaign encounters because he is a bookslave
So I'm playing with entirely new players like some of them haven't seen the dice before so should I try to make a whimsical one with a dark under tone or just a stereotypical campaign
Question: How well do you know them? That will give you a good indicator. Personally I'd suggest stereotypical with a bright undertone, but that's just me. Start them with some optimism.
How would I go about dividing the parts of a campaign up in sessions? Specifically, how can the DM keep pace of the party and maintain timjng in the advantures of the campaign? I am having trouble helping the party progress theough adventures without forcing them along, changing scenarios on the fly when the party gets sidetracked and all within a 3 hour session. Is there a way to keep it in check or is it a case of, the party can be hurried along when they get distracted, given a quicker solution when they get stuck and prioritise the information so that the party is given a clear goal both in and out of the game. I don't hear the players complaining, however, we are all doing our first campaign ever. I want the best for my players and have fun myself. Is there something I can do better with?
If everyone is having fun I wouldn't worry too much yet. There are a couple of ways you can get the group to move on when they are stuck or spinning their wheels: - have an NPC deliver some information to help them get to their next plot point. - have a new piece of "action" happen that breaks them out of the cycle of being distracted/stuck. This could be combat or it could be something like a new NPC arriving, a dramatic weather event or anything else. - Or you can straight up say to them out if character that they won't find any more leads here.
The only PDF related to Valoroth I have is the starter town of Conington, which I did a video on here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XqBSxooxVM8.html
Yes, it’s whatever you want. As DM/GM you are God. The world is how you see fit. Basing your world on real world pantheons is actually really common. For instance my current group I had them decide from Greek, Norse, Egyptian or a standard medieval setting. They chose the latter one as it’s the ones they knew best. I love studying mythologies and such so making a story revolving it would be awesome. We will probably do Norse next campaign however as I won’t be giving them a choice next time around 😂 but basing a world around these gods and stories is easy as you already have all this info to play with and a lot of monsters are generally based on creatures from a lot of old myths. If they aren’t in the game simply plug them in on top of another creature. So easy.
Exactly. Your setting can be anything! If you wanted a campaign that was based on the ancient Greek city states you could do that. You'd probably want to add monsters to it to add variety to combats, but you wouldn't *have* to. Each rule system has something they do really well (d&d is fantasy for example, Starfinder does sci fi, and call of Cthulhu is pulp horror) but your setting, the story you tell together at the table can be anything.
Thank you guys for the answers. I was wanting to do a big campaign but...right now I just...dont think I can do that. Due to recent events. But I really appreciate the replys
Tori Reed no problem, you can of course write down ideas and keep them in a journal for future use. Like I have a whole map made up that I didn’t get to use since the last campaign I was planning fell through due to everyone going separate ways so now I have all this info waiting to be recycled whenever I need it. Best write everything down so you don’t forget Hope all goes well for ya
Writing it all down anyway is always a good idea. I've got a map and lots of background for a feudal Japan inspired campaign that I won't get to run for a couple of years written down.
