by Alex Meehan
Homebrew DnD refers to content created for Dungeons & Dragons by the fan community, which can include class features, species, characters, adventures, spells, and settings. If you’ve ever wanted to create your own homebrew DnD content, The Story Engine is ready to provide helpful guidelines, as well as assist DMs and players in making their own homebrew DnD content.
“I absolutely LOVE The Story Engine Decks! Surprised to see the number of creative ways to weave card draws into such full, flowing ideas!” - Mischi
Learn how to create your own D&D homebrew content - including what is homebrew DnD, how to come up with original ideas, and how you can use inspiration to create - with The Story Engine and the Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle now.
Homebrew DnD Is Easy When You Start With Clear Creative Building Blocks
When trying to make your own DnD homebrew content, there are potential creative roadblocks you could face - here are some of the worst.
- Blank Page Syndrome is when you find it impossible to start writing, leaving you wondering at a blank page. This can be frustrating, especially if you have a session coming up soon.
- Getting overwhelmed by worldbuilding is not an unusual experience for DMs. Sometimes, you can have too many thoughts inside your head making it challenging to decide where to start.
- Alternatively, you might find it challenging to organize your lore. It’s not enough that you have ideas, those ideas have to be usable when running a campaign for your players.
- DMs might suffer because they need ideas in the middle of a gameplay session - such as non-player characters or story hooks - but struggle to think of them on the spot.
- You might have the feeling that your homebrew DnD creations don’t seem original, and the worry that they’re too generic to your player group.
All of these problems can be tackled with the helpful guidelines of The Story Engine’s Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle - which gives you the power to create fresh and fun ideas, whether you’re preparing for your next campaign or running it.
“Your decks have helped me immensely in unlocking ideas that would have otherwise exhausted my brain to try and think up.” - Jelly Sheep
Ready to build your campaign faster without sacrificing depth?
Order the Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle
You Can Create DnD Homebrew Content Faster With Structured Inspiration Tools
The Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle features a variety of Dungeon Master tools, each one designed to help you create original DnD content for your campaign.
- The Deck of Worlds is a DM homebrew tool that assists with imagining and shaping entire settings like towns, villages, ruins, and forests.
- The Story Engine Unique Items Expansion is perfectly engineered to assist DMs with coming up with unusual items to include in their DnD campaigns.
- The Lore Master’s Deck features prompts that help make motivations, histories, and character traits for non-player characters and DnD homebrew characters.
- The Deities Expansion is an ideal tool for crafting a rich pantheon of gods for your world’s civilizations to worship and fear.
“This is a fantastic, inspiring, and easy to use system with high quality materials and near endless possibilities for writing and gaming.” - JS Laopooh
Lore Master's Deck Helps DMs Build Better Worlds, Quests, NPCs, and Magic Items
Lore Master's Deck contains a collection of prompt cards, each intended to help you devise a different element of your homebrew DnD content: from non-player characters, to factions, to magic items, to monsters and races.
You can rotate each prompt card to choose which cue is active at the bottom. You can then combine it with others to form and develop your creative prompt.
“The deck infuses the story generation process with the fun of exploration and discovery... the possibilities are endless."
Grace Fong, narrative designer for Magic: The Gathering
By combining multiple prompts together, you can form a collection of fresh ideas to develop your Homebrew features. For example, you can grant NPCs additional details to describe them and enrich their relationship networks. Alternatively, you can give your monsters new powers, special attacks, and behaviors.
You can also use The Story Engine Deck whilst running a campaign because it takes no time to conjure up a quick prompt. For example, your player characters might have arrived in a village with the hope of encountering their next quest, so you can quickly make an interesting NPC to direct them to a nearby dungeon.
“Both the Story Engine Deck & Deck of Worlds have been instrumental in helping me craft my world & stories set within it.” - Michael Taylor
What’s Inside The Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle
Deck of Worlds
Helps You Create New Settings With Adventure Hooks Already Built In
The Story Engine: Deck of Worlds is a homebrew creator for building your DnD world, including towns, landmarks, geography, ecology, politics, and trade. The Deck of Worlds works whether you’re preparing for a session zero, or if you’re looking for ways to spice up a campaign.
“Deck of Worlds is a wonderful addition to my collection of writing tools.” - Chris Moore
Worldbuilding Fantasy Expansion
Adds D&D-Ready Depth to Your Setting
The Worldbuilding Fantasy Expansion provides prompts that can be developed into unique fantasy settings, regions, and inspirations for magic systems for your world and campaign.
“Great addition to the core box!” - Ash P
Adventure Prompts Expansion
Helps You Generate Quests You Can Run Tonight
With the Adventure Prompts Expansion, you’ll be able to pull instant quest ideas that can customize with your existing lore - or you can fill in quest details with the Lore Master’s Deck - whether you’re running a sandbox game or a one-shot.
“Opens up multiple options and expands possibilities” - Ahmed Hassan
@featuringalex Have you checked out the @The Story Engine
@featuringalex Have you checked out the @The Story Engine ♬ In My Mind - Skeler
Lore Master’s Deck
Lets You Create NPCs, Factions, Monsters, and History on the Fly
The Lore Master’s Deck is the ultimate tool for worldbuilding major and minor villains, local factions, DnD homebrew races, homebrew monsters and regional history. This is also great for improvising wiki style elements mid-session, whether you need some non-player characters for your nearby town, or monsters to populate a dungeon.
“From storytelling to role playing. I can't recommend the Lore Master Deck enough” - Frode
Deities Lore Prompts Expansion
Helps You Build Gods, Pantheons, and Divine Lore
The Lore Master's Deck Deities Lore Prompts Expansion offers a powerful framework for deciding how divinity shapes your world through its relationship with religion in the past, present, and future.
Creating a pantheon with the Deities Expansion involves crafting rich mythologies, backstories for gods, interesting cleric domains, and ancient customs for your world.
“It’s really helped me flesh out my pantheon & create some truly unique deities that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own!” - Michael Taylor
Unique Items Expansion
Generates One-of-a-Kind Magic Items Your Players Will Love
Powerful homebrew magic items can act as a way of rewarding player achievements and/or providing new story hooks. The Story Engine’s Unique Items Expansion allows you to conjure up one-of-a-kind homebrew magic items and weapons, with the option to use it standalone or alongside the Lore Master’s Deck.
“I’ve started integrating these items as anchors in my stories and it it really is shaping up in a very natural/organic way” - Ahmed Hassan
Prompt Cards Make Homebrew Prep Faster, More Fun, and More Consistent
Our decks and expansions give you the power to overcome creative roadblocks. No more random generator tables producing chaotic results, no more shallow noise that doesn’t lead to compelling ideas.
Instead, with the prompt cards in the Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle, you’ll be devising rich DnD homebrew wiki-style elements that work cohesively together, whether you’re a highly-prepared or more improv-heavy DM, whether you’re running a quick one-shot or a longer campaign.
“They are fantastic thought starters. I pull them out whenever I need to prep a session fast.” - Kahlin Whatley
Here’s How DMs Use These Decks During Prep and Live Gameplay with Player Characters
DMs can use The Story Engine’s Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle to create a wide variety of homebrew Dungeons & Dragons elements, both during preparation and live play.
- Imagine creating the perfect antagonist character for your next campaign, complete with complex motivations and a rich backstory.
- You could create a local faction whose goals clash with those of the player characters or their allies, making for a perfect element to drive your homebrew storyline.
- During live play, your players could stumble across a new town as they explore, only for you to conjure up several potential gameplay quest hooks for them to follow.
Want the Most Complete Homebrew Toolkit? Upgrade to the Ultimate Dungeon Master Bundle
The Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle features core decks that are ideal for creating your own homebrew DnD world and campaigns.
If you wanted an even more complete homebrew toolkit, then you can upgrade to the Ultimate Dungeon Master Bundle, which includes everything in the Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle PLUS:
- The Story Engine Deck
- Fantasy Story Prompts Expansion
- Backstory Expansion
- Cartography Set (Worlds of Tide & Tidings: Coastlines Expansion, Worlds of Sand & Story: Deserts Expansion, and Worlds of Frost & Fable: Arctic Expansion)
- Culture Keyholes Worldbuilding Expansion
- Lore Fragments Worldbuilding Expansion
- Emblems Lore Expansion
- Namesakes Lore Expansion
- Bridge Expansion Set
This collection of creative writing decks will empower you to make an inspiring homebrew DnD world and campaign that your players will relish exploring.
FAQ About Homebrew DnD and The Story Engine
What can I create with homebrew?
You can create a wide variety of original good stuff with homebrew, including: DnD homebrew characters and class features, dungeons, monsters, weapons, NPCs, spells, races, and entire settings.
Are these decks compatible with 5E?
These decks are system-agnostic, meaning that you can use the decks with D&D 5E rules, Pathfinder 2E, or any other tabletop RPG.
What makes The Story Engine Deck different from homebrew generators or PDFs?
The Story Engine Deck and its expansions differ from homebrew generators and PDFs, because they empower you to create ideas for your world, campaign, and adventures, rather than simply providing shallow elements that fit wrong.
Start Creating Homebrew DnD Worlds and Adventures Today
The Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle contains worldbuilding and storytelling prompts trusted by both experienced and newer DMs, It's perfect for DMs looking to easily and quickly make homebrew DnD content for their campaign/oneshot.
Unlock the secrets of crafting great homebrew DnD worlds and campaigns with the Dungeon Master Essentials Bundle and the Ultimate Dungeon Master Bundle.