A homebrew campaign has two crucial components: the world and the story. At this point in the series, we’ve already built a beautiful, vibrant, living world that is populated with unique characters and filled with civilizations and stories waiting to be encountered. We’ve written one arc, the first arc of the campaign, and I’ve talked about one-shots. Now, however, it’s time to look at the most critical part of the story: the central arc, or the arc that covers the entirety of the campaign. Sure, there will be other stories and some detours along the way, but this is the trunk of the tree from which all of the branches extend. In fact, that’s how I want you to think of this session: we’re building the trunk of the tree.

In this third part of my fifteen-part homebrew campaign series, we work out the necessary components of our arc and prepare to flesh it out.

In this session, we’re going to zoom into the map and focus on one of those regions and one population center within it. You should select a region that has a few interesting features to it, rather than something that is less interesting like a grassy plain or desert. Those can be made interesting, of course, but we want to pick an area that’s interesting right from the start, for this. Note that this is going to be where we write the first arc, too, so keep that in mind when selecting the region you’re going to focus on for this.

This series will, from start to finish, showcase me creating my own homebrew campaign from scratch. We'll make maps, cities, and story arcs. By the end of it, you should have everything that you need (and more) to sit down for the first session of your long-lasting tabletop campaign. Below, I'm going to break down what each entry into this fifteen-part series will cover.