I'm sure most of us fantasy and sci-fi gamers have not just one, but many homebrew worlds we've created, contributed to, and played in. What was your favourite of them like, why was it your favourite, and what distinguished it from the other settings you've played in? Not your favourite campaign mind you, but your favourite setting.

Following the forum addict's manifesto, I'll hold off posting mine until we hear about some of yours.

Most of the campaigns I've played in have not been homebrews, really. So I can only nominate my own settings, my favourite of which is Tiwesdaeg. I've gone on enough about that in the past

Quote from: PseudoephedrineI'm sure most of us fantasy and sci-fi gamers have not just one, but many homebrew worlds we've created, contributed to, and played in. What was your favourite of them like, why was it your favourite, and what distinguished it from the other settings you've played in? Not your favourite campaign mind you, but your favourite setting.

Following the forum addict's manifesto, I'll hold off posting mine until we hear about some of yours.

Well, by far my favorite was David Kahn's.  It was both a home-brew setting and rules.  Ran in the traditional style of GM-Player relationships, and had a very substantial world of great and fascinating histories.  I don't wish to give away much about it because I believe David eventually intends to publish and so I don't know what he would object to my saying about his world.  I'll just say that it was fabulous, and he managed to create a real sense of Team with the group, and I felt a good deal of amazing immersion playing in his world.  Some of the best aspects are the fact that David kept the Master in GamesMaster intact, doled out information about his world very slowly over time, had innovative game mechanics whcih worked well, and didn't coddle the players to death.  If you played WELL you lived.  If not, oh well, you rolled new Characters a lot.   And it was great!   I wish he would pick up GMing again, but he's very busy with getting himself ready to publish so ... not likely any time soon.  *sigh*.

Currently in my D&D game we are playing in a game world (Link notice: This image is huge. If you're on dial up it will choke your shit out.) I entitled: The Middle Kingdoms.

The Middle Kingdoms is a world in which an established republic has run efficiently for ten thousand years, run by dwarves, gnomes and halflings-who tend to live longer. The Elven peoples have fallen, their cities abandoned, and in disrepair as a secret civil war tears through their people. (A war between the Drow and the surface dwellers. The Drow are still widely unknown to exist, let alone separate from "normal" elves.)

Primary trade and travel is through the massive system of rivers, lakes, and inner seas, and the Dwarves control the seas from their Island Nation. The Dwarves have access to a limited amount of advanced technology-steam boats, some guns, and other technology. But it's use is controlled and limited.

Few nations stand against the Dwarven Hegemony-the free Orc Nation of Theilios, which is loosely based on ancient Sparta. (A nation of scholars, and warriors it is one of three major orc tribes, and the only one that is civilized.)

It's pretty fun for us!

Well, last saturday one of my players brought his younger brother (age 11) over to game with us. We'd tried before to fit him in to our existing games - In Harm's Way, StarCluster - but the concepts just sailed over his head and left him lost. This time I decided I'd let the group decide between FtA!, Two Fisted Tales, and a low-level supers game based on my own Blood Games II. They chose Blood Games II supers to my shock. I had nothing at all planned.

I let them cobble whatever they wanted from the path and non-path characters of BGII, StarCluster uplifts, implants, augmentations, weapons, and robotics from the Big Book o' Tech, Martial Arts from the BBoSocial Stuff, and whatever else struck their fancy from any of my games.

They came up with:

The Kid: Robospider! An alien robot who crashlanded on earth and, due to brain injury, has the delusion that he's human. He's a morphing Terminator 2 type bot with four extra arms he can pop out whenever he needs them. His alter ego is a used car salesman.

Kid's Older Brother: The Viking! A former soldier who got caught in a meltdown when clandestinely raiding a reactor in Iran, The Viking grew in size and strength and shrunk in intellect. Now he's seven-four, four hundred and fifty pounds, Wears armour, and carries a sledgehammer in each fist. By day he flips burgers in Mickey D's.

El Zambo: Snake! An augmented former supersoldier based on Solid Snake, with an eye implants. He's got funky guns like Green Arrow has arrows. His secret identity is a rich texas rancher/oilman.

Klaxon: Celestial Dragon! A super-martial arts double-master, his particular martial art made up by Klax though I forget the name of it - something Japanese. He's also a blade master. Celestial Dragon's a martial arts teacher in real life.

The game was a total blast! Doc Satan and his bioroid devils had taken over Salt Lake City, putting the Mormons to the pitchfork. The climactic scene occurred in the Tabernacle over a pool filled with electric eels. Snake eventually got around behind the deviloids and blasted Doc Satan with his 20mm bullpup assault rifle. The Viking went down in the last frame, riddled with pitchfork holes and scorched with hellfire - it didn't help when he tried to pick his teeth with a pitchfork and pressed the Hellfire button... Robospider had to do alot of self repair in between fights, as well. All the meat heroes ended up in the Bacta tank back at HQ under the Ranch.

I was delighted by how well it all went together! The players were free to propose anything - Doc Satan and the pool full of electric eels were player ideas - and I ignored it or included it as I chose. Everything - and I mean everything - was improvised. Everyone had fun, and they want to play it regularly - once a month or so as a break from the heavier gaming we usually do. Oh! And the Kid loved it and never got lost.

-clash

Oh man. I love talking about my homebrew. I get a glazed look in my eye, and start talking about mutated elves and shit.

Before 2001, even, I wanted to run a D&D game that could pretty much allow any of the character concepts and cool shit that my players would want. I didn't have any of the planescape stuff to run a serious, in depth campaign, and they wern't enthusiastic about planescape at the time anyhow, so I just invented a steriotypical fantasy world with a huge-ass city right in the middle of it. I justified it pretty well, and so it went.

Over time, I added more to the setting, but eventually just left it to sit there as I played other games. I got rid of most of my notes. But, when I had to justify some D&D-ism such as Orcs that were pretty much generically Chaotic Evil and why Elves could live so long and not take over the world, I used my setting to map out some reasons and what those reasons would do to the rest of the world.

Eventually, the whole damn thing was fleshed out. My setting it pretty much the setting I use for the D&D game I want to play. It's pretty much a fantasy heartbreaker if you ignore the social, historical, and political overtones of the setting which leak into the games mechanics. Much like Iron Heros or Ebberon, the setting takes a practical look at magic, industry, and social infrastructure, but the way it adopts it is really pretty different. I've been wanting to publish it for a long time, and Brantai and I are actually working on it for a True20 rules mod. We both feel it's better then the stuff that actually came out.

I'm going to stop before I get into the really long explainations. It can be done short and sweet, but I think you get all that from the above. It's got your demi-humans in part because 1) when you add different races, they usually fall into pretty much the same brackets anyhow and 2) the fun was in taking a new look at them, not in trying to deny them totally. It started out as D&D, and I'm not trying to deny that.

Here's the four page primer I sent out about my world to my buddies when we started playing it. I'm going to send it out again soon to a different group because I'm going to run a game set in it for them.

"Ok guys, here's some info your PCs would know about the world. If you need anything further, send me an e-mail and I'll flesh things out further.

A Brief History
---------------
One hundred and fifty years ago, the sacred volcano of the hobgoblin and elvish tribes, called "The Throne" erupted and spewed ash into the air. The hobgoblins took this as a religious sign that their main god, (also called "the Throne") wanted them to go forth and conquer the world, which was just as well, becaue the ash from the eruption meant they had trouble growing crops within their former heartland. This kicked off a religious crusade that they've been pursuing down the southern continent (called Tash) since, conquering all sorts of demihuman races. They tried invading the northern continent you live on (Emern) but were repulsed by the various human and dwarven states. There's been an uneasy peace between the two sides (hobgoblins/elves and dwarves/humans) ever since.

About twenty years ago, an explorer named Hesh (now called "Hesh the Great Discoverer") tried to sail around the earth, but ran into a continent no one even knew was there. He called it "Arkhesh" and claimed it for the King of Renna, one of the bigger human states (and his patron). No one really cared until later explorers discovered that there were people living there (both hobgoblins and humans) in barbarian tribes and that the place had all sorts of untapped wealth and strange magic. This kicked off a race amongst the nations of the world to settle and exploit the place as much and as quickly as possible.

Geography
---------

Emern is the northern continent. It's populated mainly by humans, dwarves, gnomes and a few heretical groups of hobgoblins and elves. The southern edge of the continent is just above the equator, and is organised into a number of rich city states that control trade across the Inner Sea (the body of water that separates the two continents). The main cities are Zamara, the biggest city in the world (where the game will start), Ilos the Holy City, Lamta and Barbern, but there are a few other smaller ones. They're the centre of technological and intellectual progress. They tend to be oligarchical, with the rich merchant families and other powerful people keeping the cities lawful.

The northern and western edges of the continent are separated from the rest by a mountain range. There aren't any states there, just feudal lords and clans that control the area. Supposedly, hundreds or thousands of years ago, there was a powerful empire located there, but nowadays it's just a few overgrown ruins. The people call themselves "Larns". The eastern and central parts of the continent are where the main states are located. They're connected to the other parts of the continent by large rivers. Most of these states are monarchies, dictatorships or republics. In the few states with significant non-human populations, humans and dwarves are the only races to be members of the nobility or enfranchised citizens. Renna is the most powerful of these states.

Arkhesh is the new continent. It's about a month's journey to the West of Emern and Tash by ship. It was originally longer, but as more people have gone over, sailors have discovered how to find favourable winds. The "gateway" to Arkhesh is Heshtown on Fortune Island (Hesh is still governor of the place). Fortune Island is a big island about two or three day's sail from the nearest part of Arkhesh, and it's the base of a lot of pirate activity, as well as being the place that most of the Emern nations use as a base for exploring.

Arkhesh itself is mostly unexplored. Along the coast, and on a number of the larger islands, Emern and Tash colonies have sprung up, but none of them is more than a week's travel inland. The biggest colony is New Kalar, a hobgoblin/elf settlement that specialises in mining and slave trading. Nobody's yet found the other side of the continent. Arkhesh, it turns out, is populated by humans and hobgoblins living together in tribes. Most of the humanoids in the area call themselves the "Xorca" (Zork-ah) and claim to be loyal to a Ikan empire, but nobody's yet found the Ikan empire.

Tash is the southernmost continent. It's under the control of the "Empire of Tash" which is really a bunch of hobgoblin and elf kingdoms united by religion against the other races. There's a common infrastructure and culture, and a nominal emperor, but warlords vie with one another for military supremacy. The biggest mountain known, the Throne, is a sacred volcano worshipped by both races as a god, and is found just a few hundred miles inland from the northern coast. Non-hobgoblins and non-elves are generally second-class citizens, but talented members can rise to great importance in Tash society..

Races
-----

Humans can be found almost anywhere, but the only known human-run states are on Emern. Generally, humans get darker skinned the further east and south you go. Humans in Arkhesh look like South Americans.

Dwarves have lived in harmony, sharing a common culture, with humans for thousands of years. Dwarves tend to have either dark brown or grey skin.

Elves are either green, brown or black-purple skinned (drow). Almost all elves live on Tash, where they're part of the ruling class, along with the hobgoblins. Drow are considered rare, but are considered especially blessed by the Throne.

There are no gnomes.

Hobgoblins look like taller, more muscular elves with rougher features and red irises. They're either grey, orange or maroon skinned. The other goblinoids look similar - goblins look like grey skinned halflings. Hobgoblins and elves are interfertile (producing either more hobgoblins or elves, not mixes).

Halflings all live on Tash, and are slaves or peasants for the elves and hobgoblins.

There are no orcs.

Other humanoids are rare on Emern, but the far south of Tash is supposed to have dozens of species, all conquered by the Empire. Strange reports come from Arkhesh now and then about new species being discovered.

Religion
----------

The "gods" of Emern and Tash aren't traditional "Man with glowing sword" type gods. The gods are seen as and named after objects in the world, not people (though they aren't always named after a single object, but usually a type). Each one of these gods is worshipped under a number of different aspects, each aspect having its own cult or church organisation, which broadly break down by whether they allow a priest of that aspect to channel positive or negative energy. All the churches, even ones that worship the same god, squabble incessantly. There isn't a "pantheon" of gods everyone worships, but most people in Emern tend to pray to whatever god they've heard about that seems suitable. Gods often have overlapping portfolios, and their priests debate over who "really" commands the elements, or magic or whatever. Ordinary people just pray to them all and hope for the best.

The best known gods:

The Throne - A giant volcano in Tash. Its followers claim it's the forge on which the world was created. It is the dominant god of Tash, and of the elves and hobgoblins wherever they might be. Its priests love forging new things, ordering the world and destroying anything that gets in their way.

The Hollow - An ancient god long worshipped by the Dwarves (and later humans). They claim it is the underlying chaos of the world, the source of magic, fate, madness and prophesy. Most wizards pray to it periodically. It's common to swear in its name for oaths.

The Sword - The god of violence and all the uses it can be put to. Its priests are the best healers in the world, and claim that every sword dipped in blood is an icon of their god. It is almost entirely an Emern god, because of a debate over whether the Throne or the Sword is the "true" god of destruction that resulted in the followers of the Throne killing their co-debaters.

The Tree - The priests of the Tree claim it to be the source of life, the seasons and of the elements. Most of its followers are druids, and it is popular in the northern reaches of Emern. It is an actual black tree with white leaves found in Renna.

The Sea - The god of wealth, of trickery, of traveling and of protection from misfortune. People pray to the Sea to prevent any sort of bad luck. It is widely believed to love idiots especially. Its priesthood is rich and corrupt and very popular.

The Severed Head - The god of thought, judgement and justice. It is the only major god concerned with good and evil. It is another popular god to swear oaths by. After death, priests and saints have their heads cut off and turned into undead oracles and repositories of lore.

Culture
-------

The more advanced regions of Emern and Tash are at the level of 16th century Europe. So the printing press and guns are common (though the man on the street probably owns neither). Medicine is still pretty crude (outside of divine magic). Ships can sail across the ocean and often, though not always, mount cannons. Bathing, and what we think of as good hygiene more generally, are uncommon. People throw shit into the streets, and buildings are built close together with multiple stories and narrow streets. There aren't usually city police outside of private guards and militia groups supported by more powerful groups, and they're mainly interested in preventing riots. Piracy and privateering are very common, and are considered quite respectable ways of making a living, so long as you don't rob from the ships of whatever state or city supports you. Almost nobody is formally educated in things like reading and math, but most people can do a little of both. Educational institutions for wizards, scholars and priests do exist, but they're mainly for rich people or exceptionally promising students. People are usually superstitious, but know that magic exists and aren't afraid of wizards just because they're wizards. Nor do people have "a" religion unless they're from Tash. Slavery is legal, though most people don't own slaves. There are no prisons - criminals are banished, branded, flogged or executed. Organised armies with uniforms and standard equipment are a new innovation. People eat with their hands most of the time, using knives when they have to. Brothels are common, legal, and even respectable. People dress in mediaeval, renaissance and early modern styles of dress.

Zamara: Zamara is a giant free-wheeling boomtown right now. It's run by a small number of powerful merchant families who fund trading missions, explorers and privateers. It's become very rich in the past decade off of the goods coming back from Arkhesh. Criminals, mercenaries, merchants and anyone else looking to make a quick buck usually end up passing through Zamara. So long as you don't bother anyone important, you can get away with almost anything. Lynch mobs and assassination are the most common forms of justice.

Some quirks of Zamaran culture:

Hospitality is very important. Being rude to a guest or insulting a host are major taboos.
Zamarans are polygamists, though only the rich have more than one or two wives.
Most Zamarans are obsessed with money and status.
Most people carry some sort of weapon all the time, even if it's just a dagger."

Mine actually started as a Civilization 2 fantasy mod.  I had no experience with Warhammer, but from what I had heard it sounded intresting.  You know how Warhammer is dark and grim with a little humor thrown in every now and then to break up the bleakness?  Well, I completely missed the humor bit, and the result was even darker and grimmer than Warhammer (with which I am now fairly familiar).  One lone kingdom holding on to the last shred of civilization as the rest of the world plunged into savagery and worse, with an unnamed force of pure evil slowly corrupting everything it touched.  Oh the things I made happen to the poor people of that world.

My own homebrew would have to be Icar. I like it so much, I decided to share it.

The homebrew world I'm most pleased in is a conglomeration of new and old ideas.

The basic world is described by two continents. One is a pretty well fleshed out standard fantasy environment. Several different countries with different cultural flavors (European, Native American, Middle-Eastern etc.). The main country of interest is divided up into duchies, who are constantly trying to outmaneuver each other. I love this sort of political scenario. Everyone pays fealty to a single  king, but there is a lot of backstage politicking, and maneuvering going on.

The second continent focuses around two historical countries who dominated the area. They were constantly at each other's throats involved in minor skirmished until one day a strange magical disaster struck one side and annihilated much of it. A few survivors fled across the sea. Several generations later, a bold group sets out to explore what became of their ancestors homeland. This is the focus of a campaign - Exploring. Starting off with the wild, then the ruins of one of the prior civilizations, barbarian peoples who are remnants of the destroyed country, and finally the militaristic society that the adversary country evolved into. The order in which things were discovered was to be somewhat scripted, but what the PCs did was left completely open. Conquer the wildlands? Restore the lost civilization of their ancestors? Establish trade and commerce with the remaining society or engage in guerrilla warfare.

The second continent story ideas really drew my interest, because right from day one, the PCs would begin altering the course of history, at least in a small way. There were also plenty of opportunities for me to run whatever kind of game they wanted. There would be ancient ruins (dungeons) to explore, vast expanses of largely uninhabited terrain for wilderness adventures, native peoples to be discovered and attacked or RP'ed with, an authoritarian state ripe with opportunities for intrigue, infiltration, conflict, espionage etc.

Still haven't gotten around to running it, but every few days I jot down more adventure ideas or flesh out a bit more of the campaign world.