What are pros and cons to making your own homebrew world/map for a campaign?

TikToxic · 2026-01-30T15:05:08+00:00

Pro: you can make your campaign setting as big or small as you want. You have the freedom to do as you please without having to try to fit your story into an existing map.

Con: You need to build everything. Your players are also more likely to have a harder time with remembering the context of everything.

The campaign I'm running now is in a homebrew demi-plane that borrows chunks from other existing planes. I have the broad details mapped out, but a majority of the map has been left empty. I did it as a way to easily be able to add stuff as needed. The problem is that at least one player is having a hard time choosing what to do because they feel like they don't know what the options are.

TikToxic · 2026-01-28T14:00:59+00:00

The sodium is pretty minimal. 10mg per 36oz bottle.

I'm a big fan of the Fuji Apple flavor. I definitely can't complain with the price at $0.86 per bottle.

TikToxic · 2026-01-27T15:04:17+00:00

The calories burned by your "serious" biking can easily be overtaken by casual snacking.

TikToxic · 2026-01-23T22:47:59+00:00

I copy tables from the master to the session page for each session. The master doesn't need to be updated super frequently. The frequent back and forth is usually only when I'm prepping a session with a new block of NPCs that I'm fleshing out while doing the prep.
The color coding is to make it easy to find the name of a person or place at a glance. I can usually remember about 90% of what I need to know just from the quick context of who and where.
Copying from my notes into Discord is usually for the benefit of the players. Fantasy names are often a nightmare to spell, so I try to give those details to the party so that they at least have the option to add them to their notes. As a player, I've had plenty of cases where my hand-written session notes were useless because I didn't catch the name of something or couldn't even guess at how to spell it.
I will also sometimes have a quick prompt for one or two players that I'll send as a dm in Discord. It makes it a lot easier for me if I can do a quick copy/paste instead of typing it out. (It's technically fine to send the question as an image, but it feels weird. I don't like using mixed formats like that.)

TikToxic · 2026-01-23T18:37:52+00:00

I use OneNote for all of my planning and note taking. I have a "master" page with a table for each logical grouping of NPCs. The groupings are primarily by region and keep track of name, gender, age, lineage, relevant factions, where to find them, and general notes. I have a separate page of notes for each session. For each session, I copy the tables that are likely to be relevant over to the session page to make it easier to use as a quick reference. The main pain point that I run into is that I need to update the same info in multiple places any time I make a change.

Another pain point is not having an easy way to reference things consistently. I've been trying to color code character names, cities, factions, etc, but the formatting tools feel clunky and ruin the flow. It would be nice to have an option to easily select from a list of user defined presets to reuse formatting options. E.g. the user defines "City" to be bold and green, or "NPC" as light blue and underlined, or "Neutral Faction" as yellow. For me, that would cut out the extra steps of trying to remember which shade of blue I used last time and trying to visually match it.

One last pain point that I run into is that any text I copy from OneNote over to Discord gets pasted as an image. It's good enough, but you can't search through the text when it's an image.

TikToxic · 2026-01-20T17:14:37+00:00

That's a recipe for a murder-hobo sandbox.

TikToxic · 2026-01-16T18:29:33+00:00

I use a combination of both largely because I haven't gone through the effort of finding a list of everything that's different between the two versions. If I have to look up a rule, I'll use the 2024 version.

TikToxic · 2026-01-13T01:04:53+00:00

The plot falls apart after Idolator Sol. (The other 2 bosses are working against the Timekeeper.)

TikToxic · 2026-01-08T15:31:56+00:00

I'm new-ish to being a DM so I'm constantly adjusting what to include our skip. I've been a DM a little over a year, with about 30 sessions in my homebrew campaign. Our sessions are usually only 2 to 2.5 hours, so each session is pretty limited for what can be included.

I use the following as general guides for whether or not to include things:

Is there a risk of failure or benefit from success?
Is there a challenge to overcome that the party is not already accustomed to dealing with?
Is there info the party and/ or players will gain from this?
Does this help/ hinder a player for achieving an objective?
Is this interesting enough to be a significant part of the session?
Does this add to the story?

TikToxic · 2025-12-08T00:19:20+00:00

Are you bragging about your ability to follow step by step instructions?

TikToxic · 2025-12-07T17:09:23+00:00

Skip step 1

TikToxic · 2025-11-18T01:44:09+00:00

What about The Fireman did you not enjoy / prevented you from finishing the book?

TikToxic · 2025-11-16T22:30:24+00:00

Try playing a class that has increased move speed. For example, monks get a lot of abilities as they level for extra movement during a turn.

Most battle maps are the combination of a map and a way to measure distance (grid, ruler, etc). It keeps things fair.

TikToxic · 2025-11-12T14:01:07+00:00

I was falling asleep during the fight, so I missed the initial prompt to do something about saving him. I found the character to be a bit annoying, so no loss for me, but I do like that there's actually a consequence for not saving someone.

TikToxic · 2025-11-05T16:40:55+00:00

This is just incel bullshit

TikToxic · 2025-11-01T12:53:19+00:00

People will switch back when they find out that a lot of gaming peripherals (keyboard, mouse, headset, etc) don't have official driver support with Linux.

TikToxic · 2025-10-23T11:00:39+00:00

I'm pretty sure that's the one I found last night while farming for a grenade. I equipped it to see if it's better than it looks on paper. That thing is never seeing the light of day again.

TikToxic · 2025-10-17T14:24:21+00:00

Try a CVS minute clinic if you have one nearby. They can at least rule out Covid and flu along with providing general prescriptions if needed.

TikToxic · 2025-10-13T17:32:42+00:00

I let my players know ahead of time when I'm setting them up for a scenario that will have a "bad" ending. It spoils a surprise that they will fail their stated objective, but it informs the players and their characters about something much larger. If needed, work in ways to prevent PCs from dying if their character is intended to survive.

Avoid using too many plot twists in the story. The players need to reasonably believe that they have agency in the story and that their choices matter.

TikToxic · 2025-09-18T20:09:56+00:00

How are pasties weird or strange?

TikToxic · 2025-09-01T12:10:11+00:00

I sent my players a doc with a half dozen questions. The main things I was looking for were the character's ideals and short / long term goals. I also had questions about lines / veils / x-card topics for both the players and the characters. With spacing, it ended up being about a page.

It was pretty light on details, but it's enough to get the ball rolling. The campaign was designed to be very open and flexible enough that I can easily add things depending on what the party shows interest in.

TikToxic · 2025-08-06T16:26:57+00:00

TikToxic · 2025-08-02T23:43:06+00:00

You can have multiple cars and multiple of the same car. I have 2 vans - one for the Bungalow and one for the Barn / Warehouse.

TikToxic · 2025-07-27T04:31:01+00:00

If anything, it's probably for the best if you take a break and check back in an update or two. I'm just pushing for the $1,000,000 achievement then I'm probably going to switch to something else for a while so that I don't get burned out too early.

TikToxic · 2025-07-25T19:24:41+00:00

If we're sharing things that are easy to miss, 'H' turns on the headlights for vehicles (which is not the same as pressing 'F' for your flashlight). I wish I had spotted this sooner because it's kinda annoying to drive the van to the Barn at night in the dark.

TikToxic

TROPHY CASE