Crazy Clinto's Handy Homebrew Hacks Part 2 - Go West!

I wanted to follow up on my recent post about homebrew hacks with some practical and free resources that you can apply today to create your own Gygaxian / Westmarches style campaign for your kids or students. I’m going to focus much more on materials and resources in this post than on theory and technique. I will link to some great articles and videos to cover theory and technique.

This post was inspired by a recent video by Professor Dungeon Master and his son over on the Dungeoncraft channel. That video was inspired by a recent video by Questing Beast about time keeping in your campaign. For your convenience, I've embedded the Dungeoncraft video here:

On the off chance that the above video didn’t give you a good handle on what this kind of campaign is, here’s the original source of this term, Ben Robbins explaining in detail.

The Setting & Your Home Base

I talked a lot in my previous post in this series on creating your homebrew setting. I’m not going to rehash all of that information right here, but I do want to share some quick resources to give you a "lay-of-the-land" you can pick right up and steal right away. The wealth of free resources available on the Internet cannot be understated, particularly those in the form of wikis and material published for the "Basic Fantasy Role-playing Game".

Professor DM noted that you should have a home base. Here are a few home base possibilities:

• Phandalin - in the Starter Set & Essentials Kit, this is a great home base town for your West Marches campaign.
• Morgansfort - a somewhat Keep-on-the-Borderlands inspired town created for the Basic Fantasy RPG.
• The Town from "The Chaotic Caves", again another Keep-on-the-Borderlands / Hommlet inspired town created for the Basic Fantasy RPG.
• If you're feeling more creative, I'd suggest starting with the Fantasy Town Generator on Donjon. You can expand on this with the other excellent tools found there, like 
• The Inn Generator
• Magic Shop Generator
• NPC Generator
• and so much more!
• I really like to combine Donjon's generators with Town Maps from Dysonlogos.
   

This home base allows you to build out into the wider world with your players. I always remember Enrique Bertran's advice, on the excellent first episode of the DM's Deep Dive, that you should, "Start Small. You're not Tolkien. Nobody cares about your prose. Nobody cares about your world. Nobody cares about the mystical mount where the oracle lives... The way you make your players buy in is to make them the heroes of their own little world." That said, you may eventually find yourself needing to come up with some details to flesh out your little world. For this, I give you articles AND resources.

Articles / Advice

• 11 Steps for Building your Homebrew world - man this has some GREAT advice, breaking the process down and making way less overwhelming. 
• 4 essential elements for creating a homebrew world in D&D 5e

Tools & Resources 

• The 5e SRD has a lot of lore and info for you to improvise on and remix into your own unique world. Some examples include:
• Fantasy / Historical Pantheons 
• The Planes of Existance
• Again, Donjon is an incredible resource. Here are a few more awesome tools from Donjon:
• Fractal World Generator
• Fantasy Calendar Generator
• Fantasy World Generator
• Medieval Demographics Generator
• Mystara at the Vaults of Pandius - this is the first D&D setting (mentioned above), originally known as "The Known World".
• There's a lot more in my last post in this series.

Just remember, You should still be thinking two horizons out, as Mike Shea recommends. 

Going forth to Adventure!

Where do we go from our home base? A big part of this style of play assumes that you will move out and explore the dark and hidden places on the map. I spoke a lot in the last post in the series about putting in pre-bought modules, like Scarlet Citadel, from Kobold Press; any of the official Wizards of the Coast modules; or even old classics from the 90s. There are so many places to explore! "What if I haven’t bought anything?", you might ask. Well, let’s take a look at some of the awesome resources available to you.

• Official D&D Adventures from Wizards of the Coast on the Magic web site
• Dwarven Forge has commissioned some of the best writers in the business to make a bunch of Dungeon Crawl Modules for free!
• James Introcaso has a bunch of free resources on his World Builder Blog.
• There are a ton of fleshed out adventure modules available from the afore mentioned Basic Fantasy RPG. Yes the rules are for Basic Fantasy, but it's very easy to get the 5E stats from DnDBeyond or The 5e SRD. 
• For those comfortable with improvisation and homebrewing the Dungeon Generator and Campaign Generator at Donjon are really great.  
• The Random Encounter Generator is a quick way to grab stats for an on-the-spot encounter. 
• Finally, If you have a story and just need a map, go to DysonLogos.
• Tips for a Lazy and Time-short DM to randomly populate dungeons
  

Closing Thoughts & Parting Shots

Yesterday, the D&D community online lost its collective crap because #SpelljammerConfirmed. I love Spelljammer, but I'm honestly surprised that this is blowing up as much as it is. One thing I can see is that Spelljammer has the possibility of being the ultimate West Marches Campaign. After all, space is the final frontier. If you want to get started Spelljamming right away with all the mechanics of space travel and lore, might I recommend the 2nd Edition Spelljammer Setting from DrivethruRPG. 

I wish you and yours good luck and great games. Don'f forget to be awesome dungeon masters!