How BIG should your homebrew D&D setting be?
In the first part of a four-part series on creating a homebrew TTRPG setting, we're covering scale and geography in Dungeons and Dragons.
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Music Credits: "Papov" by Yung Logos
Link: • Papov
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All artwork used in this video was either created by me using Inkarnate (inkarnate.com/) or is official artwork from 4th and 5th Edition Dungeons And Dragons - ALL copyright for these images belongs to Wizards of the Coast LLC (I own nothing) and is used here for the purposes of entertainment and education.
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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!
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
Thank you for the kind words! I think that's such an important point - you only need to create and develop each area as the characters move towards it. Otherwise, it can just be wayyy too much work 😅
Just in time. I just started writing a new setting. Very helpful
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
Nice! Hope this one was useful, then. I'll have the other four parts of the series out over the next few weeks.
Totally agree. Great advice, as always. Also, I can see the return of the legendary mustache!!!
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
We'll see how long it lasts this time 😅
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?
Love the first episode of the series. Thanks.
This was also a very practical presentation. Thank you.
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.
Very helpful! 🌟
As always a wonderful video that breaks a large daunting topic down into small manageable pieces.
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
That pretty much sums up my goal with this channel, so thank you!
Great video!
Top channel, mate. Thanks for your work
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
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!
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
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
Already working on the lore and history one - that's where things get interesting! 😁
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!
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
That's so nice to hear! Whenever people say my channel is underrated, I'm just reminded how cool it is that ANYONE watches my stuff at all 😁 Looking forward to sharing more of this series soon!
Great video! I look forward to the next ones in this series.
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
Working on the next one as we speak! 💪
Fantastic! looking forward to the next instalment 🤘
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
Thank you, mate! 💪
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
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.
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
Tbh, I think that could absolutely be a whole video! Pricing and rewards are a challenge for a lot of DMs. Adding it to the list.
I hope the answer is planet sized because I started off with Pangea Última.
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
I respect the ambition!
@johnmagowan6393
11 ай бұрын
@@TalesArcane lol I was expecting the usual, start with an outhouse and build from there. The campaign is centered on one very filled out nation. I add little bits of the rest of the world as different characters are introduced. One player wanted to be like a Mongolian ranger. So I added a blurb and a place on the map.
@johnmagowan6393
11 ай бұрын
Live messaging. The way you used Greece, I reverse city maps a lot. Venice and New Orleans get used a lot.
@johnmagowan6393
11 ай бұрын
Go to bed.
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.
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
I really like this as a formula! You get the big building blocks in place quickly and then focus in on the first area, without getting bogged down in detail elsewhere, but also without leaving the rest of the setting too blank.
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
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
Balancing villains and monsters is a topic I have to cover soon - balancing combat is such an interesting, tricky subject. That video is coming 💪
Have you put out anything on mass combat?
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.
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
One thing to remember is that people in your world don't know everything. NPCs might have heard rumors or made vague assumptions about the rest of the world, but their knowledge will be limited and often inaccurate. Your average villager isn't going to be able to answer your players' questions about history and lore, beyond a few vague facts, so you don't always have to have all the answers when your players start digging deeper.
In my world I want a hard spontaneous border for my environments. Because magic war in the past
@JB-vq6oe
11 ай бұрын
I once went with “The Barrier of 10 Thousand Thorns”, which was a 1,000mi long impenetrable thorn barrier the elves raised in a centuries-gone war that changed the landscape of the continent. 100ft high and a half-mile thick in most places. Hope that gives you some ideas!
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
That's very fair! Good environmental storytelling too, as it weaves your history into the physical landscape.
First! Great stuff, as usual!
@TalesArcane
11 ай бұрын
You ARE early! Thank you mate, hope you find the vid useful 💪
@JB-vq6oe
11 ай бұрын
@@TalesArcane as a Forever DM I’ve always found your suggestions and tips useful, because even if you say something I already know, it connects to something else I didn’t think about. Cheers!
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.
@secretlyaslug2325
2 ай бұрын
It really depends on what your players find engaging. Art is something my group has realized is really important, even if its borrowed images, Ai Art, or best of all stuff made by hand. It's nice to know what the GM had in mind when they were designing everything. But we've realized this because our current GM puts essentially no effort into visual aids and it's very disconnecting. We didn't have a map of his city the story is happening in until months into the game. But if your group prefers theater of the mind for the world and combat then I think it could work. You just have to communicate with your players what you can and can't do.
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