For those trying to design their own home-brew game settings and systems, I was curious what tools there are out there to help facilitate this. I decided to scour the internet and see what I could come up with that would help myself and others build their own home-brew setting and system. Here is a list of some of the tools & tips that I discovered.

DungeonMastering.com – Instant World Builder
Yax’s D&D Instant World Builder is a free PDF booklet that helps you design an entire D&D campaign setting in a short amount of time. However, the tips and tricks included in this PDF can be used in multiple campaign settings. If you have aspirations on creating your own campaign world, this is a good place to start. The PDF is twenty-one pages long and is an easy read. It will give you a good head start on how to create your own campaign world.

ProFantasy Software – Map Making For Gamers
Campaign Cartographer, City Designer, Dungeon Designer, and many other programs are offered by this company. These three are built around being able to develop and create high-quality maps for your roleplaying games. They have a variety of other softwares to help you create your gaming world, including: Character Artist, Dioramas, Cosmographer, Castles, Cities, and much, much more. If you’re looking to create maps for your own world, this is the place to start. Their software is basically the industry standard and has been for years.

John Kim’s RPG System Design
A great collection of articles and links on building an RPG system. It includes dice mechanics, dice-rolling mechanisms, card mechanics, and a whole lot more. I highly suggest you check out this link as it will be one of the best, easy-to-access, and free resources on RPG system design that you will find. If nothing else, it will give you a great place to start when designing a system for your home-brew game.

Roleplaying Tips – Card-based Home-Brew System
This is a small article from Johnn Four at Roleplaying Tips on using cards in a roleplaying system. Nearly every system uses dice, but very few use cards. The only system that I have plays that uses cards is the Savage Worlds system. It definitely adds another aspect to gaming that not all gamers consider. This particular article actually adds a unique idea that allows the players to do all of the card drawing, leaving the game master to focus on the story.

World Building Generators: The RPG Toolbox Volume 3
I haven’t used this product, so I can’t speak to its quality or effectiveness. But the product is only $10 and includes individual generators for a world overview, major landmasses, political divisions, flora, fauna, weather, medieval options, modern options, miscellaneous details, and complete reference charts. One of the comments listed that the program had over 600 different medieval professions, as well as obscure lists like “indefinite qualities” and “types of currency”. For the price, it definitely seems like something that could help you with not only the major details of your world, but smaller aspects of your world as well.

Aleph Gaming – Campaign World: Mapping
This is an article from Aleph Gaming that lists tools and tips for mapping your game world. They list ProFantasy in their article, but also a host of other programs and ideas that cost significantly less. There are even tools that allow you to create maps that require no monetary cost at all. The article is definitely a good one to check out for world mapping.

Aleph Gaming – Building A Campaign World: Part One
This is another article from Aleph Gaming that poses several interesting questions that you should ask yourself when building a campaign, or game, world. It will help you determine how big of a task you are willing to tackle, as well as attempt to determine how big the task in front of you actually is.

There are obviously many other tools and articles out there that will help you start on creating your own gaming world and system. This list is a good way to help yourself get a jump start if you don’t know where to start, or if you’ve reached a stumbling block in your creation efforts.

What tips do you have on home-brew gaming world and system creation?

What tools do you use to create your home-brew gaming world and system?