Welcome to our lovely community. I hope you enjoy your time here and I'm glad you enjoyed the video.

@Tomas Leland Yup, I've been using InstaFlixxer for years myself :)

Something like this is useful for published settings too because you can present your version of that world and highlight the differences between the published setting and your version.

Thank you! I'm glad it inspired you! A lot of folks want to see my design process so I will definitely make a video on it!

Thanks! I do have some plans bubbling away for how to get Ashk out there as a setting for folks to use.

Thank you for the kind words! I'm always happy to help folks.

Thanks, Aviad! They really enjoyed it :)

Glad you found it helpful!

Exactly! Give them enough to hook them, and then focus on their immediate area.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed. Like I said in the video, going the extra mile with design and printing isn't necessary, but it makes the players feel special and gets them excited to play.

Hopefully this helps inspire you :)

I'm glad you're finding the videos helpful. If there are any topics you'd like to see in the future, let me know!

@@IcarusGames actually I'm trying to make a city. It has plenty of quests, several NPCs, a particular ambiance but I'm not quite satisfied yet. It doesn't feel enough "alive" to me. So if you have some tips I will be glad to hear it.

I will add a video to my pool of ideas on making the world feel more alive, but in the meantime my homebrew campaign series has videos on lots of different topics that should help :)

@@IcarusGames that songs cool ! Otherwise, do you know some nice gm's discord to speak and share about tips ?

I do! We've got an Icarus discord where you can hang out with other DMs and get tips and ideas, the invite link is in the video description.

Hey Sam. I would love to do a deep dive video on my writing and design in the process in the future, but it will be months before my schedule is clear enough so let me give you the cliff notes: I used a desktop publishing program to do the design. I used Serif page plus, but affinity publisher is my current favorite. I got a lot of the assets like the page folio from r/UnearthedArcana and their excellent google drive resources. For printing, I used a local print shop and just sent them the print ready PDF (X-3 format I believe) The best way to get a look at my process is probably Twitch. I have just started streaming this week, and I will be doing some design streams in the future where I build some products live.

@@IcarusGames - Thank you so much, Anton. That gives me a good starting point. I think I will see what I can do with this as a personal project here soon.

I sent them all physical copies in the mail before we started the campaign via fantasy grounds. And they still reference the physical copies every couple of sessions or so.

Icarus Games awesomepawsome 👏🏼 good to hear that

Some kind of investigation, maybe looking through books in an old library, or consulting a local occultist to find out what pieces of esoteric lore they have.

I've never actually read wheel of time!

Having a printed version is nice. We primarily play online but I still wanted to send the players printed copies to go that extra mile and get them excited for the new campaign.

I sent the PDF off to a local print shop who printed and bound it. Came to a couple bucks per copy, but I think i was worth it for the impact it made on the players. I'll have a video doing a deeper dive into the process coming out October 16th.

Glad you enjoyed! This particular guide was A5 sized and handled 2 column text just fine 😊

@@IcarusGames Awesome thanks so much for getting back to me.

I've never made that connection before, but now you've said it - of course! That's cool :)

I made it all from scratch. The guide was made using some resources from the r/UnearthedArcana subreddit (fonts, colours etc). The map was made is Wonderdraft (which I have a whole playlist on) and the calendar was done in photoshop. I have a blank version of the cosmos map available on my patreon too!

I made the image of the calendar in serif page plus, but I currently use Affinity Designer and publisher for making things like this. There are going to be more Wonderdraft videos for sure. I'm going to be making a new ice themed region map before the end of the year.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. The pantheon is of my own creation. There are a couple videos about my process in my homebrew campaign playlist. The books are the Harry Potter books.

I came up with the day and month names myself, and then laid the calender out using the same program as the guide itself!

@@IcarusGames The same program? Meaning photoshop or does UA have a template?

I used the affinity suite of programs, which are an equivalent of Photoshop and other Adobe products.

@@IcarusGames Awesome, thanks man, appreciate your videos and your knowledge

Unless you are playing in a setting where you already know about every part of the world, if the player comes from a different nation, I let them tell me about where they are from. Most of the details included in my Ashk guide are things even foreigners would pick up very quickly after arriving, so I probably wouldn't do things much differently unless one of the themes I was going for in the campaign was the players exploring a completely unknown land.

@@IcarusGames thanks a lot for the answer. Of course not every part of the world is fully fleshed out but the PCs homes are mostly and I know a thing or two about every major location. The human samurai comes from the hidden village Asasunai on Tanjū, my asian-themed continent. The tabaxi druid lived in a clan in the southern djungle of Ucuàn, was sold on the market of faces in Kaimal, on the island Skyil Whos, and eventually raised by a half-elf couple near Sylmar, the elven capital, on the main continent Aerora. The gnome ranger lived most of her life in the eastern gloomneedle forest in Middle Aerora, where sometimes the feywild and the material planes overlap in certain areas. The half-elf bard wandered the lands of Middle Aerora around Ravencrown, a human capital city. The gold elf sorceress was raised in the inner high-society circle of Ashar, the jewel of the desert, a capital in the South on Ashar. A human now paladin plotted the assassination of his father, the king of Stormwell set in Western Aerora - a plot nobody except him and me know about. All met in a prison near Stormwell on the isle Last Hope for different reasons when they got to Stormwell to await their final judgment. I know you didn't ask for it but you may see my problem here with seeding enough and too little information. 😅 But I suppose we'll figure it out. I will have a personal discussion with each to flesh out their backstories a bit more before the next session anyway.

Thanks for the reminder! Setting it up in the new defaults will be easy, but manually going through older videos to update it will take some time. I'll block some time in on my calendar to sort it though, thanks :)

I just sent the PDF to a local print shop. DrivethruRPG would be an option if you don't have anything convenient nearby.

Program is affinity publisher, templates were from the resources in the video description.

@@IcarusGames Thank you so much for the replay this really helps!

I feel like I was inspired by a 3rd or 4th edition location initially. It's a super cool concept.

I used a print service in the UK called Mixam.

Thanks

I ordered them from a local print shop, I just sent the PDF I had made (homebrewery and gm binder are great free tools for making thematically appropriate documents) and they printed them for a couple of bucks each.

@@IcarusGames Thanks for the reply

Thank you for the honesty and feedback, I totally understand why you feel that way. Something I didn't communicate strongly enough in the video I think, is that I have an entire playlist dedicated to making Homebrew campaigns that focus on the specific elements of the book and how I approach making locations, pantheons, or central tensions. This video is like a high level overview of the kinds of things I include in a setting guide, with the rest of the playlist offering all that depth on the how for each specific section.

@@IcarusGames Makes sense. I actually started working my way through that playlist earlier this week and didn't see that this video was included in it. So far the playlist has been excellent in provided that previously stated generic advice, it's just that the advice that can be found throughout the web on making settings vastly outstrips the advice for writing them into comprehensive guides, which was the main cause of getting my hopes up.

That makes sense! If it's something people are interested in, I can't totally do an in depth guide on writing something like this the next time I'm making something.