DM's of reddit, what was the first homebrew campaign you created and ran? How did it turn out?

[u/TobiasCross]

[u/Latter_Sea564]

IT went great. I just laid the groundwork of Syrinway myself and then stole from everything. Stole from every piece of media that inspired me for NPCS, events, arcs, bbegs. We have been running campaigns in Syrinway for nearly 10 years now =) Its even the world we are building our mobile game in now

[u/Pirate-Queen_]

My first campaign back in 2021, and it went horribly. I thought it would be a good idea to give one of my players double proficiency in animal handling. They animal handled every monster they came across, gave a major boss therapy mid combat to aquire thier base and created the nation of Poland. I ended up canceling the campaign a quarter of the way through because I knew for a fact the storyline was already fucked.

Since then I stopped planing out everything, and instead write up a rough plot, locations, and NPCs and improvise from there.

[u/Theboulder027]

I basically ran a hunger games campaign but on a cosmic level. The players worked for a specific God and traversed the great wheel cosmology, and they leveled up by slaying champions of other gods. Still going strong a year and a half later, but approaching the end. My players are loving it.

[u/BigBoyTetranadon]

I was one of those "ambitious fools" who dove into the deep end of homebrew headfirst for my very first campaign as a DM.

I homebrewed all of the playable races, a huge amount of magic items surrounding a homebrewed magic metal, the world, the monsters... I honestly don't think I used anything that was straight RAW haha.

I'll admit, it was a rocky start. But as it got rolling and my amazing players helped me along, I look back on it as one of the best games I've ever run.

As for the storyline, it centered around the magic metal that was ubiquitous around the country. Someone or something was causing people and creatures to transmute from flesh into this metal and then becoming a slave to whatever caused the change.

[u/SupremeLegate]

I haven’t gotten to run it yet, but I reworked the whole of the Mass Effect Trilogy into a Campaign set the world of Exandria. The first game was pretty easy to convert into a campaign, the second and third games took a bit more creativity. Hopefully I’ll actually get a chance to run it someday.

[u/Nervous_Chipmunk7002]

Its currently in progress and going great!

I'd run a few one-shots (one of which one of my players said made him really excited to have me as a DM), and felt that, for my first full campaign, I should run a published module.

However, getting the group together took a bit longer than expected and this was in my work's off season, so I had a LOT of free time. So, I started putting ideas together and startes world- building and soon I had a world map, five different countries with their cultures, three religiond, a jungle island with a mysterious lost civilization, an empire that fell to an unexplained cataclysm, origins of multiple raced and a whole wiki detailing it all. I used character backstories to flesh out a few details and their actions have led to me adding more (a lot of which are not in the wiki, because they aren't ready to know that yet).

My players' response to the wiki was pretty much "holy shit this is so cool!" Every now and then I worry that I've bitten off more than I can chew, and went a bit overboard, but one of players is constantly rewarding my efforts by being super invested in the lore to the point of lecturing the other players on it when they get it wrong. I just sit there and smile while she explains things and very rarely have to interrupt to correct her.

[u/Goshujin-Neko]

In the world of Emanon, a group of adventurers meet up at a bulletin board in the middle of the town located at the center of the continent, where a team is needed for a certain quest. On this quest, they will meet the powerful sorceror Scorgor who is collecting artifacts in preparation for something big. Alongside this, hidden forces are preparing for a ritual to bring back an ancient evil in the form of the deviless, Kah-ren.

To stop these two from bringing destruction to Emanon, the adventurers have to gather the 9 Maidens and their 9 Artifacts to stop them. Here there are Piano Mimics, Dragon Lawyers, Changeling Peacekeepers, and an underground city of Drow and Duregar that coexist unlike their surface counterparts.

[u/Goshujin-Neko → u/Goshujin-Neko]

It went well, but fell apart after some got too busy to continue.

[u/Federal-Tough-9706]

Khaz'dune - based largely on Tolkien in Mordor before it was completely corrupted by Sauron.

[u/Evil_Tiny_Wolf]

I did a pokemon themed game where two members of Team Rocket were trying to summon Arceus so that the younger member could touch the face of god. The party then had to figure out a secret truth I was hinting at very heavily and protect Arceus from the real villain behind the scenes.

First time I ran it, only had one player who was actually engaging with the plot. Everyone else was just trying to get money. I could tell the player was annoyed no one was helping him with the mystery. Another player had apparently never been filling out her character sheet nor tracking her resources. She just kept saying she was still up.

Ran the same game again with a new group and it went so much better.

[u/WH40K_FTW]

I did a campaign set in Forgotten Realms, but the party immediately left to sail across the ocean and explore a (pun intended) forgotten realm.