How to Start a Homebrew Campaign WITHOUT Overwhelming Yourself

Starting a campaign is overwhelming, but let me show you how!

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*** ABOUT ME ***
Hello! My name is Jay, and I am a long-time veteran of storytelling and a semi-seasoned DM! I began playing Dungeons and Dragons roughly 5 years ago and began my first ever game as the DM. I figured things out by watching online games and fumbling my way through the rules, and never looked back! I've fallen in love with TTRPG's in general and want to share my experience and thoughts with the world and community I love so much. I currently DM two separate games regularly, and continue to learn every day.

*** ABOUT THE CHANNEL ***
Play Your Role is a project with the intention of helping inspire and coach players and DM’s alike to add story beats and dramatic moments into their games through basic writing concepts, interesting player character inspirations, and discussions on how to effectively roleplay in a way that helps (not hinders) everyone else's roleplay at the table!

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• DND5e
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[Garrett]

"I love it when my players tell me things about my world that I didn't know." - Jim Davis, Web DM

[greyborg]

I've been designing my world one area at a time. Each of my games recently has been just a single adventure running roughly 5-8 sessions. I design a town or city and the surrounding area and that's where the adventure takes place. Afterwards, I take a break while I think up the next adventure which might take place in a new area or in one I've already built, I reach out to the people I want to run for, and I run a new adventure of 5-8ish sessions, and I just keep repeating this process. Also, after designing each area I assign it to a space on a Hex map so that all of my towns and regions are interconnected.

[blackmask]

Bro I’m literally planning on doing my first campaign right now. This couldn’t have come sooner!

[SuperGoose]

My entire campaign is centered around 1) my PC's backstories, and 2) the lore that my players contributed to our setting and the worldbuilding. Everyone came up with a piece of the world's history and nations and deities, and all the campaign's focus is towards what they contributed

[EuclideanVision]

"Hey GM, are there any hot spring baths in this dwarven city built into a volcano? I'd like a soak."
"Well there are now! And yknow what, the underground systems that feed lava-heated water upwards are also home to cave eels, which are now a local delicacy!"

Just a small example, but it's one I remember well for how quickly it expanded the feel of the place :)
I'll try to do this more, thank you!

[spyco]

Nothing Better than a YouTuber validating how I make my stories.
Here are some things my players have added too my world before we even started:
- A high assassin guild
- A city filled with agriculture
- Colour coded imperial guard
- Villages that fear magic
- An entire religious order that controls a continent and opposes the empire
- How the fey and humans interact
- a lack of dragons after they were hunted
- the disappearance of the majority of dark elves
And here are a few things I’ve built off of some backstory stuff:
- An orcish blood cult that idealize the beastial parts of their race
- a political assassination that connects to multiple backstories
- A group of dragonslayers no longer in use
- More stuff but I’m scared my players will find this lol

This is hands down the best way to build a world

[beowulfodinson]

I’m currently building an urban fantasy setting for my best friend (he’s playing an oni fighter who uses an axe that’s also an electric guitar because he’s in a rock band) his wife (who’s playing a selkie Druid who’s a wildlife rehabilitation specialist) and my fiancé who’s playing a witchy cleric who owns a metaphysical shop, and they’re all coming together to open a private investigators agency because the corporate owned adventurers guild only takes on contracts for the rich and famous, its gonna be lit.

[ancientdarkmagic]

One of my biggest recommendations when one is trying to create a homebrew campaign is decide what type of fantasy or type of campaign one as the DM is willing to run and the players are willing to play.

Because onces you have does thing determined I think it will definitely help you in creating the three pillars that you mentioned in this videos.

[dylanmcloughlin]

My forever DM is going to college, and I'm going to be DMing after that (he has time to play, but not to DM). This is so helpful. Thanks. BTW, I am having my players help me flesh out the world. I made a few things and while explaining it to them, they get to share their ideas. The main things I need are cities and factions, which I will create with them as they build backstories.

Edit: I wrote this before the "having players come up with stuff" segment. :)

[flyoutfate]

The timing on this is too perfect. I'm about to go into a session 0 on Friday!

[DoeToKnowChannel]

Its funny you mention a slave trade and colloseum, because in my campaign where slavery is widely outlawed, two of my players, mind you unknowing of eachothers plans, came to me asking about slavery as a backstory option. I've now made a large scale slavery ring hidden from the eyes of the law where both these players were former slaves thay escaped and neither know that connection they share. A huge plot point has developed from this small coincidence

[intelli-gent]

Right when you got to your first point, "You don't have to have all of the details figured out to start a campaign." that really spoke to me. I wish I knew this when I started my first Homebrew campaign with players I don't know. I had no idea that my campaign would only go 25 sessions and I planned for it to go for a year. That was my first mistake.

I made it too complicated and didn't have much of a plan of how they would get to the ending that I wanted them to get to. I didn't need to flesh out multiple countries when they ended up ending the campaign in the same country they started in. one of the ways I found to simplify your campaign is to write it like a pre-written adventure, don't make it long or plan for a campaign that goes all the way up to level 20. try and aim for 20 sessions or less.

Also, read and take inspiration from pre-written adventures. Do not shoot from the hip and create a campaign that heavily relies on having players that know what to do. Make their choices obvious and not vague. Unless you really want to challenge your players then make it a reachable avenue. They don't know what you are thinking. This is the best way to avoid situations like "x isn't doing what I want them to do" or "X isn't going where I want them to go"

Learn from my mistakes. It will save you lots of stress and heartache.

[cazadorcrazy]

One of the things I like to do with "Banned races" is the idea that races can be made as well as born. Say a human makes a deal with a powerful archdevil and as a result of this pact, they end up becoming a tiefling. Or an archfey that gives them the ability to change their appearance at will a la changeling. Or someone who, through numerous wounds or other mishaps, ended up with the majority of their body being replaced with prosthetics, making them a warforged. So your lizardfolk example could be some sort of druidic or magical mutation of a dragonborn.

[Aaron-pjky]

I used this in my campaign. I had a basic idea for the central city it would take place in, but I let the players come up with their characters and I built everything around them. I was prepared for them to pick any race or class. Most of them played PHB races, but one of them played a Kalashtar and I got to build an entire extra secret society into the world that's added a lot of flavor. All of my player characters have a lot of interesting intertwining stories that I'm slowly getting to unravel with them. My entire worldbuilding has been really built around making their characters the center of everything, rather than just some random strangers who go murder things.

[foggytuesday]

I’ve DM’ed a few times but currently making my own homebrew world that’s very botw and DA inspired and my players backstories really helped me flesh out my own world.

It’s a small group of three: one is an heir to a magical mining and tool company, one’s a historian that studies the empire that fell long ago and the other is an elite guard that deals with monsters and scouting out new found ruins in the kingdom.

I didn’t know how I was gonna connect these characters at first but the more they told me about them the more I started getting ideas of how! So I thought of this: The historian has a close friend that runs a small shop of potions that he likes to help with but like many small businesses in the kingdom capitol, is in competition with the bigger businesses such as the heir player’s family and slowly making a monopoly. Meanwhile the historians job actually works with communicating with the elite guards on anything found during their searches and reports. However since many ruins are collapsed the Elite guards use gear from the heirs family during their exploration and excavations.

Atm they’re loosely tied together but their higher position in society has given them front row seats to the kingdom princess’ coronation (and me the DM an excuse to get them to all together) for an “eventful” time I have planned.

Case in point, my players backstories helped flesh out the kingdom more than I could by myself lol

[ZeroMultiplied]

Can't recommend this channel enough. If I could go back 3 years ago, I'd show my newbie self these videos. Awesome work

[ast]

I'm the greatest DM ever, you won't stop me from knowing everything inside the world i make!!!

My world is a 30x30x30 feet room with walls you canot go outside

[MattyMakez]

This should be mandatory viewing for all DMs

[bookmasterharry]

This is so what I did. My Players where playing a Barbarian, a Paladin and a Fighter. The Fighter hated Slavery and joined a guild so as to become better able to oppose it. The Paladin used to be a member of a Cult before joining a specific group of Paladins because they have a magic item that helps deal with bad memories. And finally the Barbarian was guarding a very powerful magical material/item that he made up. It was glorious. I had so much to work with.

[arekkusuo]

This is so helpful, I've been wanting to create a campaign for SO long and this has made it much more manageable.