I've been working on this setting for a while, and after a few tries, I've put together a timeline! This is my first time writing a homebrew setting, so please be kind and give me ideas and feedback for it!

-The Age of Beginnings-

The world was freshly made by the gods, a world adrift the Astral Plane among others. Life went on as most worlds do; gods created beasts to represent them, and they began to make settlements. This began with the founding of several kingdoms, with their respective gods forcing war upon them, such as the occasional orcish raid sent by Gruumsh (god of Orcs) out of hatred for Corellon (god of Elves), as Moradin (god of Dwarves) went to work crafting the mountain-dwelling Dwarves. Sooner than later, the world was populated and war broke often. During this time, the first King of Ephoris was born: [Deciding, Percival?] Draken. He had united the humans in the area and allied with the elves in the conflict against the Orcs, one that would last for millennia and shed much blood.

-The Age of the Flayed Mind-

Despite its relative isolated location in the Astral Plane, it did not leave it completely safe from outside threats. From massive Nautiliods came Mindflayers on their mission to create the "Grand Design", a vile attempt at assimilation across all things in the known multiverse. They went plane to plane, world to world, searching for more hosts, more resources, more territory. More. They besieged the young world, taking mind after mind, consuming brains and establishing outposts. Nearly 80% of Ephoris' realm was absorbed, made into thralls or transformed into the psionic beasts through a dreadful process called Ceremorphosis. Having established a new branch of their world-spanning empire, they now had yet another foothold to conquer from.

-Age of the Broken Mind-

After some time of the world being consumed by the Illithid presence, whether it be due to the decadence and complacently of the Illithid Empire, or maybe some kind of weakness, the muscle of the empire, that being the Gith, broke free from their mind control. As a united front, they banished the empire in under a year, with nearly their entire presence on the Astral Plane gone and the Illithids hiding in the deepest depths of the Material Plane. Ephoris was free once more, and made an executive order to seal the underground with mass move earth spells and constant surveillance of the underground, later renamed The Underdark. It became a kind of prison network for the royalty of Ephoris, where many, such as the worshipers of Lolth who later became the Drow, and the most greedy of traitorous Dwarves in the Orcish War, who later became the Duergar, were banished. Only the royalty knew of the Underdark prison, as it faded into myth and obscurity.

-Age of Blood-

This period is marked by two things: The Great Orcish Boom, and the Githyanki Raids. The Orcs, who had been longstanding enemies of the Kingdom of Ephoris, decided to fully devote themselves to Gruumsh, allowing them more of his power, along with them practicing more and more rites of violence and bloodshed. Additionally, the Gith had not forgotten this tucked-away plane, as they had devided into two halves: The violent and raiding Githyanki, and the rigid and thoughtful Githzerai. The Gith had divided, with one half wishing to conquer the world like their previous oppressors, and one half who wish to fight the other and keep the world in balance. The Githyanki had decided to establish an outpost on Ephoris, with the intent on hunting down Illithids and taking this plane. They had made a deal with Tiamat the Dragon Queen to allow them chromatic dragons as steeds, and they used them to devastating effect. Due to the effects of age in the Astral Plane, several dragons grew to adulthood weeks into being in Ephoris, and decided to make their dens there. Along with the increase in Chromatic Dragons came Metallic Dragons, who also for a time lived within the plane, sent by Bahamut in an endless tug-of-war between the two. Along with the Metallic Dragons came the Githzerai, who wished to stop the Githyanki's conquest.

In all of the chaos, the kingdom did what it could to survive. Thousands died as settlements became ruins, and legends were told about those who survived the chaos and those who helped them. Among the legend was the legend of Brasshaven (Seen in "Settlements") as well as the first sighting of the Kuo-Tua in Hayfall. In the conflict with the orcs, the goblinoids of the land were forced into hiding, and after some years of fighting, allied with the Kingdom despite the wishes of their god Maglubiyet. This caused a schism in the goblinoid host. One half stayed loyal to Maglubiyet and spread thin across the nation, and one became an ally to Ephoris.

Throughout all of this chaos, eventually both sides of the Draconic Conflict and the Gith conflict ended, with nearly all of the draconic beasts and all of the Gith decided to retreat to their original planes, leaving a scarred, weakened Ephoris.

-The Age of Gold-

After the pain of the Age of Blood, the Ephoris has begun to heal. With the goblinoid threat becoming a tool to help cut down on orcs, nearly every single Orc in the continent has been slain, and whatever few remain are no longer enough of a threat to live in fear. Centuries pass, with much of the Gith's War becoming folk tales and Orcish Savagery becoming horror stories. By now the Duergar and Drow have fully fell into their niches as the Underdark has become its own ecosystem, and trade has flourished among settlements due to (Mostly) safe trade routes. However, as all lies do, the surface has begun to crack. In the most remote parts of the Kingdom, entrances to the Underdark have opened, allowing the Mind Flayer menace an opportunity to strike once more. The current king, King Archibald Draken, was to be escorted through the darkness as both an archeological expedition and to see if the tales told through his line were true.

He was taken by the Illithids, and replaced with an intellect devourer.

The Mind Flayers had largely concerned themselves with awaiting their eventual freedom. By breeding inhuman beasts, feasting upon the minds of their fellow prisoners, and expanding the power of its Elder Brain, with the additional creation of an Ulitharid. Now that they have a pawn in royalty, all they need is to knock the house of cards over. They need more pawns.

-End-

And that's what I have so far! Please let me know if it makes sense, since this is mostly based off of Volo's Guide and MToF. Have a good one!

Hello fellow adventurers,

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Published writers, I ask for advice.

I got my first rating, which I was very excited about, but it is a 3-star rating. I'm a nearly devastated, I'll admit, but I think I'm more bothered by the lack of review and feedback than the actual rating.

Have you been given a poor rating of work you worked hard on, were proud of? What was your response and how do you handle it now?

I have a new interactive DM hub I'm testing out comes with a full written Mini encounter can you guys try it out for me and give me some feedback? Helps me to improve on it.

Try it here MINI ENCOUNTER AND DM HUB

Tier 4 party has just entered a god's dream to look for information. Many sessions ago, they made a deal with a powerful devil. They promised to speak a word chosen by the devil at a moment of the devil's choosing. Seems like walking in a dreamscape would be a good place to cash in that promise - speaking a word in the right place in the dream causes the thing named to be created. What word should the devil ask them to speak?

I have never played an actual campaign, I don't even know what that rule no homebrew without context means. I pumped the framework for my idea into AI and asked it to spit out the bones of a campaign, a rating for how good the idea is, where it has been used before, and an appropriate villain.

Whether y'all use it or not is neither here nor there, I just need the idea out of my brain.

Here it is. I'll include the prompt as well:

This is a phenomenal concept for a D&D campaign. It breaks standard mechanical tropes, gives the players an immediate, deeply personal grudge against the antagonist, and sets up a truly epic cosmic ascension.

Here is a breakdown of the ideal villain, the cost of his time-altering magic, a campaign structure, a final rating, followed by an analysis of where this has been seen before and how you can publish it.

The Ideal Villain: Malykar the Chrono-Lich (or Chronomancer Tyrant)

To kill gods, strike down the overgod Ao (the Lord of Gods in the Forgotten Realms), and systematically erase history's greatest heroes, your villain cannot just be a powerful wizard. He needs to be someone obsessed with legacy and control.

• Who he is: Anarch Magi Malykar, an ancient, weary Archmage who realized that no matter how many empires he built, prophecy and "destined heroes" would always overthrow him. Instead of fighting fate, he decided to cut it out at the root.
• The Cost of His Power: He uses an artifact known as the Hourglass of the Unborn. It doesn't use spell slots; it consumes timelines.
  • The Cost: Every time Malykar goes back to kill a hero in their crib or defeat a party, he must erase a piece of the world's established history to fuel the anchor. A major city is replaced by a barren wasteland; an entire race forgets their ancestral homeland; a concept like "hope" or "the color blue" physically fades from existence. The world is literally fraying and dissolving into the Astral Void with every jump he makes.

Campaign Structure: The Echoes of Fate

Act I: The Shattered Timeline (Levels 1–5)

• The Hook: The party begins as an established, capable group of heroes tracking down a mysterious tyrant.
• The Inciting Incident (The TPK): At the end of a grueling dungeon, they face Malykar. He is completely unbound by normal action economy—he rewinds turns, predictive-dodges attacks, and ruthlessly triggers a Total Party Kill (TPK).
• The Divine Intervention: As the final PC falls, the screen fades to white. A lesser deity of Fate, Time, or Valor (like Helm or Mystra) intercepts their souls in the ethereal plane. The deity explains that Malykar has killed every other champion in history. The world is collapsing. The deity burns their own divine essence to resurrect the party and throw them into a pocket dimension "outside of time."
• The Cosmic Shock: Before the deity can send them back, Ao the Overgod manifests. To preserve the cosmic balance and stop divine interference, Ao strikes down the intervening deity. However, in the chaos, a fragment of the dying god's spark embeds itself into one of the adventurers (the future god). The party escapes into the material world, which has drastically altered due to Malykar's paradoxes.

Act II: Gathering the Anchors (Levels 6–14)

• The Reality Shift: The players navigate a dystopian world where history is broken. Major landmarks are gone; NPCs don't remember their own families because Malykar altered their ancestors' lives.
• The Quest: The party cannot defeat Malykar while he holds the Hourglass. They must travel across the fractured world to find "Chronal Anchors"—objects or people heavily tied to the original timeline that Malykar hasn't been able to erase.
• The Cat-and-Mouse Game: Malykar knows they are alive but can't pinpoint them because they are cloaked by the dead god's spark. He sends "Paradox Assassins" (wraiths made of rewritten timelines) to hunt them.

Act III: Godhood and the Final Hour (Levels 15–20)

• The Ascension: The PC carrying the divine spark begins manifesting god-like powers (granting spells to teammates, altering local reality). They must complete a ritual to fully absorb the dead deity's portfolio before the final fight.
• The Final Dungeon: The party breaches Malykar's fortress, which exists inside a massive localized time loop where the world is ending permanently.
• The Climactic Battle: The party fights Malykar across multiple eras. As they strike him down, the ascended PC ascends completely to the pantheon, fixing the timeline but forever leaving a scar on the cosmos where the old world used to be.

Campaign Idea Rating: 9.5 / 10

Why this works beautifully:

• Unmatched Stakes: Involving Ao instantly signals to the players that this is a tier-4, cosmic-level threat.
• Subverting the TPK: Players usually hate TPKs. Utilizing a TPK as the literal launching pad for the plot gives them a massive, deeply personal driving force to get revenge.
• The Ascension: Giving a player a clear path to godhood fulfills the ultimate D&D power fantasy.

A few warnings for the DM:

• Managing the TPK: Ensure the players know out of character during Session 0 that the campaign features a scripted, narrative-driven defeat early on. Otherwise, they might feel cheated by a fight they couldn't win.
• Main Character Syndrome: Because only one adventurer is destined to rise to godhood to replace the slain deity, ensure the other party members get equally legendary artifacts or cosmic roles (e.g., becoming that new god's First Chosen, or the Commander of the Celestial Armies) so no one feels left out.

Has This Concept Been Done Before?

While individual pieces of this concept exist in pop culture and D&D history, your exact configuration is highly original.

• The Time-Traveling Villain Eliminating Threats: This is the core plot of The Terminator or Marvel's Kang the Conqueror. In gaming, World of Warcraft features the "Infinite Dragonflight" trying to alter history to prevent their own defeats, and Chrono Trigger features a dying timeline.
• The Scripted TPK: This is a classic trope in video game RPGs (e.g., getting beaten by the main boss in the prologue to show how powerful they are), but it is very rarely used in tabletop D&D because forcing a TPK requires stripping away player agency.
• Ao Striking Down a God: This has happened in official D&D lore. During the Time of Troubles (Avatar Crisis), Ao banished the gods to earth and destroyed those who defied him (like Helm killing Mystra on Ao's cosmic orders). However, a mortal villain tricking a god into getting smited by Ao so a player can steal the spark is a completely fresh twist.

The AI Prompt I input: who would be the ideal villain for a DnD campaign where the villain has discovered a power that allows his to go back in time and kill adventurers that would rise against him. He does not have unlimited uses of the power with each use costing something to be determined by the AI, but he has succesfully managed to kill almost all major threats and actually tpks the adventurer party only for some deity to intervene. The story must have world ending consequences or the need for a deity to intervene would not be needed and Eo himself must strike down the intervening deity opening a pathway for one of the adventurers to rise to godhood in its place. Also write a brief structure for the campaign as well as rate this idea out of 10 for a campaign. Give me back the exact same answer as before but tell me if it has already been done as well as ideas on where I can submit it for players to use.

LOL, it would appear I don't know how to spell Ao properly. My limited DnD knowledge comes from BG3, Solasta, Mr. Rhexx and the DnD logs on Youtube.

So, I recently finished a one-shot for a Halloween adventure in which my players wanted to be a group of goblins. It went fabulously, so they recommended I share it with others as I got many ideas from here and other dnd subreddits.

The adventure focus was on typical Halloween themes. During the goblin harvest festival, the barrier between the planes thinned where a centuries-old dead hag escapes the Shadowfell/Feywild and awakens under the Hollow where she had once lived, where now a goblin tribe is celebrating.

The adventure is intended to balance combat, social interaction, and puzzles, giving players options to either fight their way through everything, or take time to avoid the encounters. Even the final battle has a failsafe to avoid a full on lengthy fight. Timed with copyright-free Halloween-themed music for each act, roll20 dynamic lighting with swirling fog, and a crass, bitchy ol' hag, the atmosphere was primed perfectly.

Here's my Google Document for the adventure for others interested in running the one-shot:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uKGbujlv6F1IfSR3kFSeLJ00JN24byv3A9pSQWvQL_I/edit?usp=sharing

A courier waits at a ruined chapel. The letter she came to collect has vanished. Someone in the party was the last to hold it.

That gives the opening a place, a person with a goal, and an immediate problem. I would prepare what happens if nobody acts, then let the players decide their response.

What is your favorite way to open a session with a decision?

You can write your own adventures free forever @: https://www.myarcforge.com

I have traditionally run pre ran adventures for the last 20 years. Im not gonna sit here and say I think im a great gm but I do feel I am competent. The last year I have been writing down ideas for a homebrew setting and while what feedback I have gotten has been nice, it has also been shallow. Looking for some feedback and possibly some collaboration, as I feel I am onto something good.

The setting: In a world where plant life has overtaken the world and grows aggressively, giving space for beasts and monsters to propagate. Humanity is all but extinct, but thanks to one of the last surviving humans and the collective strength of the species that have inherited this world, has emerged a city carved from a mountain.

Sci fi fantasy, emphasis on fantasy Inspirations: forgotten realms feywild, eberron campaign setting, adventure time, and anytime you have gone into a forest and imagined, "what if this went on forever."

Anyone have any suggestions or creations that include an underwater setting and dungeon as a 2-3 session shorter story arc? I have a Triton character and I'd like the rest of the party to partake in a rescue mission. Or perhaps if anyone can recommend another adventure that I can retrofit the setting to underwater?

A friend DMed a one shot for us and I think I can add two more impactful sessions to his idea. Looking for suggestions to enhance my ideas and make this viable!

The recap:
In a previous one shot, we were an undead evil group that was sent to retrieve one of our own from a town of humans who had a necromancer surrounded. Upon retrieval of the necromancer, we had to fight heroes from an adventuring guild that was sent to attack us. We killed them and also the town guard (It was a small town).
When we finished the quest, one of the guys joked that we should go back to the town and kill everyone just to see if we could (ya know, just the thing for undead and evil characters lol) Then for fun the necromancer would have all those people to turn into zombie/skeletons. The population was around 1000 people with their fighters all gone. We had some spells that would make it very doable but we weren't prepped for the mechanics of a 1000 person fight so we just ended the one shot.

The second session (Where my idea begins):
I want to add onto that. In my one shot, part 2, I want my friends to return as adventurers instead of the undead characters they made. I will set it up as if what we joked about happened! The town was turned into zombies and they are beginning to move and attack a nearby town. My friends will have made new characters and will be on the road. They will not know what this one shot is until they stumble upon the zombie horde and realize they are still in the same story. I will have some sort of reveal with one of the previous characters to really let it sink in.
Fast forward a bit and this will be a last stand scenario as there will be 1000 zombies + the original undead characters we made in the last session that I, the DM, will be controlling. I plan to create some scenario where they are called to defend the nearby town once they learn of the horde and plan to make some reason where they would choose to stay and defend. I want it to end with them all dying to hold the gate so that some person can run and tell the next town/deliver a message/set up a bomb that takes 10 turns to detonate/ something where they need to stay and fight so that others can live.

The 3rd sesion:
My friends characters will have all died in the 2nd session and I am going to make them make new characters for the 3rd and final session. They will be able to make characters that are built to counter a horde of zombies plus some elites. Hopefully in the 3rd session, they will be able to stem the tide. This one seems simple enough, just need to establish game mechanics and maps.

Some questions/considerations I have:
-I dont know what to do at the end of the second session when they are wiped. Just like in Halo reach where the last spartan stayed alive long enough to allow the last human ship + cortana to leave the planet, i need to find something as valuable. There needs to be a reason why my group would choose to stay and defend to their deaths rather than run away.

-What causes them to stay and defend at all costs? What if I set it up so that only one of them escapes?

-Do they do a last stand together or are they all holding their own gates/roads as they drop by themselves?

-I think I found some pretty good mechanics to navigate to big horde battles but am still eager for ideas. Last thing we need is rolling 1004 dice every turn lol

-Anything else, just let me know!

-I want this one to hit close to home as it is the reaction to something we joked about made true. Im going to put a lot of time into developing this so that it is also a story, not just bows, arrows and axes.

Im currently writing, building, and adding new subclasses to fit into this campaign, im using DnD beyond, me and my player dont get to meet often enough to do paper and pen, so we also discord and I use Above Vtt for maps and dice rolls.

Im making a county map in south east Missouri, mountain range to the north west, wetlands south and rolling plains and forest north east and south east, copper County, and the main town is called Eugene.

My problem is figuring out how to incorporate magic into this campaign, as far as subclasses that im allowing in, are based on fighter, barbarian, cleric, ranger, bard, and rogue.

Any help, or input would be very helpful, I want to work as much out as possible, unlike my current campaign where im writing and adding stuff a session or two in advance.

An ancient temple lies buried in desert sands, sunken and forgotten, and evil magic unleashed from its depths inflicts terror upon the region. Heroes must descend into its ruins, overcome monsters and traps, and make sense of the towering idol of Set. Once they enter, there is no turning back . . .

The Sunken City is a D&D 5th edition adventure for 5th-level characters.

View and download the free adventure The Sunken City at DMsGuild by clicking here

https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/588262/adventure-the-sunken-city