Strange Brew

Tabletop Tuesday

  I'm sure many of you out there have experimented with homebrew material. Maybe even going so far as to make your own setting. Playing in established worlds is great. There is plenty of readily available information so a lot of the heavy lifting has been done for you. But what if you want to make something completely original? A simple search of the internet will reveal a plethora of information about how to go about the task of worldbuilding but it can be daunting. Where do you start? I'll discuss my approach to worldbuilding another time.   Today, I thought it may be useful to take a look back to the year 2002 when Wizards of the Coast took the unprecedented step of hosting a contest for the world to submit to them a proposal for new campaign setting. This was the contest that eventually gave us Keith Baker's 'Eberron'. I'm sure you can imagine that the response was overwhelming. In the first round, applicants had to submit a one page proposal based on six questions. From there ten people were selected to write a 10 page treatment of their setting proposal and from those lucky few a handful were selected to write a 100 page setting bible.   So in 2002 I and my then partner in dice rolling crime along with countless others submitted ideas for consideration and we along with countless other people... uh, well, we lost. Of course Julie (my original co-creator) and I we were disappointed but perhaps losing in the first round was a blessing in disguise. Why? Our submission was awful. It was dirivitive, irrelevant and didn't propose anything fresh that our work could bring to the game. It was banished to the Abyss, into a mire of submissions that were passed over because they were equally bad or that failed to follow the submission formatting guidelines.   Losing made us take a hard look at our work and forced us to reevaluate, rewrite and edit what we had become determined to put out there into the world, contest or no contest. That didn't quite work out either. So in the end, our work didn't reach the audience we felt it deserved. As time went on Julie and I drifted apart and didn't play table top that much but out of habit and perhaps a dash of spite, I kept working on the setting. Building all manner of elements, tweaking, polishing rewriting and after 16 years, the setting we had submitted transformed into something drastically different and, more importantly, something far more unique and compelling.   So I'm going to take you through those six questions from the initial proposal and show you how they still prove to be a useful tool to the would-be world builder and how you can use these questions to begin creating your own homebrew setting or polish your existing work. And don't think that this just applies to D&D settings. Understanding these questions and your answers will help craft any sort of setting be it fantasy, sci-fi, modern - you name it.   With D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast has given everyone the opportunity to share their own homebrew game material with the whole world. I think making this repository of official and fan-made game material is wonderful and long overdue. In a previous post, I discussed my feelings towards the benefits of D&D Beyond and how it may be well worth the efforts of Wizards to update the classic campaign worlds of the past and adapt them to the 5th edition rules. Giving players new and old access to as much game material as possible can only enhance the players experience, keep the game fresh and relevant in the age of sophisticated video games and in the end, continue to keep the brand profitable for generations to come.   Down below, are the original rules from Wizards of the Coast's announcement. If you ever wondered, this is how the professionals look at your worldbuilding.

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Initial One (1) Page Proposals

All Proposals must: 1) be covered with a signed, unmodified copy of the Idea Submission Agreement.
2) include an accompanying cover letter with contact information.
3) be structured in accord with the attached template. Initial proposals shall be no more than one (1) page in length.

Second-Round

Ten (10) Page Treatments Should your setting be chosen as one of the approximately ten (10) settings Wizards would like to see developed, you will be notified and requested to expand your proposal into a ten (10) page treatment. This treatment must be postmarked no later than July 31, 2002. The ten-page treatments will then be reviewed and a maximum of three entrants will be given the green light to further develop their ideas. You will be notified if your setting is chosen for third-round consideration by August 5, 2002.  

Third-Round

One Hundred (100) Page Setting Bibles.

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Fantasy Setting Proposal - Round One - Initial One Page Proposal

  1. Core Ethos Sentence. [A sentence that describes the core ethos of the world. For example, Forgotten Realms is a world of sword-and-sorcery adventure, where heroes battle monsters with magic.]
2. Who are the heroes? [Brief description of heroes central to the setting. This need not be a comprehensive list.]
3. What do they do? [What are the main objectives of the heroes, and what steps do they take to achieve those objectives?]
4. Threats, Conflicts, Villains [What is the main danger to the world, and from whom does it come?]
5. Nature of magic [What is the source of magic? How abundant/scarce is it?]
6. What’s new? What’s different? [What makes this setting unique?]
7. Entrants [Who is submitting this? Contact information etc.]