D&D General Homewbrew Campaigns: How Old Is Your World?

[Umbran]

I generally use a different world/setting for each campaign, so they all wind up roughly equally played.

 

[Oofta]

I wrote up my campaign in high school, one of the few things I have from that era is the world map I created on some hex graph paper with colored pencils.

Details have changed a bit the map changed a bit when I went to digital, campaigns have altered details here and there. But the broad brushstrokes are still the same.

 

[Voadam]

My current campaign setting started as the Ptolus world from the 3.0 Banewarrens module back before it was a full setting. It was a shared campaign with DMing switching between three of us. We developed it as a future of Greyhawk, which I had been running as my big campaign setting in 1e, so my friend was a paladin of the now Old God St. Cuthbert. Later I adapted the world with other add on elements like Freeport and a lot of Golarion and other mashed in setting elements as I ran different campaigns with different groups in the world.

I am a big fan of the Holy Lothian empire with a religious civil war as a backdrop framing element and it has been a go to of mine for more than a decade.

 

[Minigiant]

It was a homework assignment in the early 90s, a freeform RP in the late 90s, and a D&D setting since 2000.

 

[Lanefan]

Voted 4e-era as technically my current campaign started play in March 2008, but the preparatory world-building and rules-tweaking for its setting was well underway by late 2006/early 2007 so if that counts then I suppose I should change my vote to 3e-era. And it's a 1e-variant game, to further confuse things.

Before that I had two other settings - one completely homebrew that did me from about 1984-1994 (the very last shreds of which made a cameo appearance during my current campaign); and another part-homebrew part-FR that ran from 1995 to 2007, a few characters from which are still active in other settings/games.

 

[Iry]

I've had a few last multiple years, but I tend to swap settings from one campaign to the next.
I might use my current setting multiple times. I'm really digging the sheer amount of story hooks.

Spoiler

The planet is tidally locked. Most of the thriving species have settled in the middle ground, which they affectionately call The Belt. The Great Dark lies away from the sun, a place that rapidly descends into freezing temperatures and eventually massive glaciers, strewn with frozen over mining networks. and the remains of five ancient cities.

Long ago, noble folk struck a deal with devils to bring blazing sunlight to The Great Dark for 1,000 years. From them, incredible innovations of magic and tinkering sprung forth, while the lineage of nobles was slowly tainted by the blood of devils to give birth to what are now called Tieflings. The greatest of them were known as the Red Kings.

But they do not rule anymore. At the end of the 1,000 year bargain, the brilliant sunlight went dark, and so did the warmth they brought to the great cities built beneath them. Many fled for their lives into the harsh winter, some getting lost, many making it to The Belt, and a few... are still trapped to this day.

Towards the scorching desert lie few settlements, some of them little more than a collection of shanties built around shallow oasis. But a few bastions of civility perch in sand and the flame. It is said a city of brass was erected in a place where sand becomes glass, and another lies shrouded behind wavering sheets of heat like a veil of illusion. This place is treacherous and deadly in it's own right. This is Sunward.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I’ve been running games (various systems) in my main homebrew world since high school, which was in the early 2000’s, but I’ve been writing stories set there since I was a kid, probably early 90’s.

 

[Tonguez]

I’ve got three primary worlds with the earliest Terayne being developed in the mid 80s when I was in High School.

I started with the Red Box set and Terayne started as kitchen-sink medieval to drop whatever in to. However I soon moved to Kara-Tur and AL-Qadim homebrewing my own world with Tayuan and Khitai in the east and Al-Qahira in the south. Between Cruithne and Tayuan I put the Lands of Erdhurhastok whuch inspired by the Carpathians, the Kalevala and Slavic myth.
In the later 80’s and into the 90’s came Tu-Anziko, initially as an expansion of Al-Qahira into ‘Africa’ (but using a map of Eastern Australia flipped on its side). It had lots of influence from Nigeria and Sahel myth and legend.

In the 90’s I homebrewed two worlds one being Legends of Hawaiki being an Island world based on Polynesian myth and the prehistory of the Pacific Islands.

The third was a alternate history ‘real world’ setting based on REH Solomon Kane with more Fey, Demons and Monsters

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

My homebrew world was born in the late 1980s and went through ten years of development before a single adventure took place there. Regular adventures took place from 2005 to 2010 but it hasn't seen much action since, although I did run a weekly adventure there through the first half of 2020 and plan to do so again in the spring.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I started just before the 1E era, however, what was probably my most popular and intensely played campaign was a 3rd Edition era game using 3.5E rules.

I'd note that since MOST of my campaigns ended within a year (as did the one in question), many lasted longer. Even though the players were pretty much the same for a couple decades across multiple editions and multiple campaigns, this question isn't answered very accurately with the way the poll is designed. I ran campaigns for YEARS in the Forgotten Realms setting across three editions - starting with 1E. I used it so often that I, the DM, got sick of it and vowed to myself not to use it again. But they were not all ONE campaign, even though it was all nominally the same setting. And even saying it was the same setting is really misstating it because one campaign may have centered around Waterdeep and the Sword Coast and never explored further, while the next may have centered on Cormyr (and never explored further), and another may have covered a WIDE expanse of the setting, but have utterly ignored or radically changed events, PC's, NPC's, and even places and terrain that featured in previous games. Each was a DIFFERENT campaign which simply used some of the same "wallpaper" carried over from one to the next. And even though it wasn't the LONGEST running campaign, it was the one which I think best fits what you're asking for.