Tag Archives: Homebrew

World Building – Villages & Cities

World Building is a messy, messy place and I’ve yet to figure out how to put it in order. Where to start. Some say start with the religion, others say start with a faction or with the map. Personally, I think it’s best to start with a village and make reminders where needed to link to the other facets of world building.

This is going to handle building a village for a long-term world. For one you intend to reuse. If you’re building a town for a one-shot this’ll probably be far too much.

When we’re building a town we have to keep track of quite a few things. First the geological position. Is it a seaside town, is it a trading hub? You can sort of fill these in afterwards. For my example it’s going to be a town by a river in a temperate area. My mind travels to Spain or France. Rich fertile fields rolling in each direction for (almost) as far as the eye can see.

One of the other basics we need to establish is a rough guestimate of the population. Us humans and definitely not mimics are really poor when it comes to large numbers. What does a town of five thousand look like? A town of fifty thousand? I always struggle to imagine so I like to google towns near me to help build a feeling. In this case, my number is 7.000, same as the village I live in so I have a much easier time imagining the scale.

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Homebrewing: Mimics

Today we’re re-tooling the mimic. Make it more interesting because let’s face it. Most 5E standard monsters lack a certain jam, a certain je ne sais quoi. They lack MSG.

First let’s look into the lore that Forgotten Realms provides. Mimics were strange predators that assumed the form of mundane furnishings and household objects in order to attract prey.

In other words an ambush predator.

Behaviour:

Mimics had no concerns beyond surviving and acquiring food. Although some intelligent varieties of mimics were capable of basic communication, they had no culture, no moral code, and no interest in religion. More aggressive mimics could not be reasoned with in any capacity

Doug Stewart, Monstrous Manual as taken from Forgotten Realms
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Tome of Farbalv – Tmy Balv (The Bond)

I adore homebrewing, I love the framework that 5E provides and how easy it is to create something within that space. I also enjoy high magic item settings. I would rather overflow my players with magic items than be stingy with them. Feast rather than famine. I want magic items to be something the player choses depending on their goal, their surrounding or the foe they are expecting to fight, something that is part of the strategic layer.

I also really enjoy ‘powerful’ items, of course balance and all that, but that’s in your hands at the end of the day. As long as all players have at least one item that makes them go ‘Holy Shit this is amazing’ and makes them shine (preferably in a way that is similar enough to avoid jealousy but unique enough to provide identity) everything is balanced.

The Tome of Farbalv is one of those corner items. The, everyone-gets-at-least-one kind of special magic item that borders on requiring the Legendary rarity. I like these corner items to have a measure of growth within them. They should be cool when the players receive them but should evolve… either through plot (as is the case with this item) or through certain (semi-hidden) milestones. It does involve the transformation into a tiefling so it pays to know your player, if they are very attached to their race… maybe skip this one. (Unrequested transformations should be a session 0 topic!)

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