Using a made setting VS Making your own

Right now I'm working on a five volume high fantasy series, and lately I've been feeling troubled over whether I should use a homebrew Dungeons and Dragons setting made by someone else or use my own. The reasons for this is I want to focus on other details besides setting, like character and plot, however I feel worried about publishing a story based in a campaign setting I found on a wiki.

The reason for this is the story seems to blend somewhat seamlessly with the campaign setting described in the roleplaying wiki I found, and since mileau is not quite the focal point, I decided on using a homebrew setting as a springboard for characters and story events.

If I decide on making my own setting from the ground up, there are a few things I might change, but a lot of it might just be names.

 

I think, unless you're writing this for your personal enjoyment, you should create your own setting. Using someone else's creation, including places, names, descriptions, etc. will be a concern if you hope to publish this work at some time in the future.

 

Thanks, I'll look in my old notebooks and see what I can put together. In my younger days I used to put more thought into world creation than I do now. It's gonna be a lot of work, but it will prevent it from becoming a concern at least.

 

I would definitely say make your own. I quite enjoy world building, and it honestly isn't as scary as it seems. Just jump in and see what you come up with

 

I agree here - make your own. I enjoy building characters and plots much more, but I still make my own worlds. It's definitely doable. And you can find lots of questions on various blogs to help you, questions that ask you about certain aspects of your world and prompt you to think of all the little things that will build it.

 

Thanks for the advice. I have notebooks from my school days and afterwards where I developed my own setting, and I'm gonna rely on those for my inspiration. These next few days I'll be tinkering with this element of the story. I'm gonna have to redo my old drafts, maybe start over again, but I guess that's just part of the process. I'm used to hitting dead ends by now, and lately this is the problem that's been bothering me the most.

 

You're not using Dungeons and Dragons in any way at all, right? That--using their settings, creatures, rules, magic, character types, anything--will also likely get you hit with copyright issues.

 

I'm not using anything from it. I'm in the process on deciding factors for my own fantasy world, and it's probably gonna take a few days. I have multiple drafts because I keep getting stuck, and right now I haven't quite decided on what direction to take the story, I need to spend the next few days thinking all my material through.

 

Actually, I had to make the same choice. I love D&D and the Forgotten Realms. I played the Baldur's Gate games and read all the novels about the 'Time of Troubles'. I began to write my own story set in the 'ToTs' and planned on trying to sell it to WotC. Last spring, I decided that with all the work I was putting into the magic system and fleshing everything out, plus some of the directions I wanted to go in conflicted with the source material, I would be better served creating an original property. I haven't looked back and now I'm close to starting the first draft of the first book. World building is very time consuming and there is so much about the 'FRs" that I love,but, I'm happy I made the choice I have.
Godspeed!

 

If you ever need help with magic system, I'm willing to help. Kinda my cup of tea to think about and to get all the crinks and plotholes out! Further, whilst I agree with everyone that you should make your own, having a premade setup could certainly give you ideas for your own.

 

Not sure if you were aware of it, but Wizards of the Coast has released some stuff for use by authors in works of fiction. They have a list of things that you specifically can not use, and a list of things they classify as "Open Use". Look up a book called OSRIC and the "Wizards of the Coast Open Game License."

OSRIC is the list of everything you can use royalty free in you novels.l It includes a LOT of characters, races, classes, and a few settings. The book is available as a free pdf download or you can buy a hardcover copy of it (it's HUGE - about 700 pages).

If you use anything created by Wizards of the Coast or TSR for D&D, you have to cross reference it with the OSRIC book to make sure it's something you can use. For example you can NOT use Illithids, Mind Flayers, Beholders, Red Wizards, Yungtai, Genasi, Drow, Lolth, or Drizzt, as they are trademarked races/people created for their franchise specifically. (Yes, Drow are a copyrighted race, that's why outside of D&D you see them called "Dark Elves" instead).

They have a large list of monsters you CAN NOT use and a list of monsters that you can use with creating them as the creator (BugBear, OwlBear, Gibbering Mouthers, for example) this is because they created those creatures, but didn't file for a trademark on them before places like Paizo put them in Pathfinder. (NOTE: trademark is different from copyright and has much bigger fines, much longer prison sentences. Trademark lawsuits are nasty and far more serious a crime than copyright infringement. D&D actually filed trademarks on their races and settings, instead of just the standard copyrights that most companies use.)

If you do use anything, you have to then go to Wizards of the Coast's website and download a copy of their "WotC Open Game License" and paste that text (about 3 pages long in a paperback novel) into your book manuscript. Most authors put it as the last page after the novel. (If you have a copy of Pathfinder books or any D20 books... look in the last page of them and you'll see they type up the WotC game license in the backs of every volume - they are required to by law, because of the trademarks WotC filed on their characters and settings)

There's a lot of info about how to do it, both on OSRIC's website and on Wizards of the Coast's website.

Do be careful though. WotC does have a reputation for constantly being on the lookout for copyright infringers and taking them to court. They rank up their with Disney and Nintendo for watching out for that sort of thing.

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As for using something you found on someone else's site... it's possible to ask them for permission. Worse they can do is say no.

A guy contacted me once, a few years back, liked one of my sci-fi series and wanted to use a certain region of my planet as a setting in one of his stories. He had all his own characters and stuff, just wanted to drop them into a town and region I had created, said he'd create me as the creator of the place setting. I was fine with that.

If you can find the contact info for the home brew setting, ask them. If they say yes, be sure to create them on the copyright page as the creators.

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That said, creating your own setting isn't that hard to do. You don't have to create an entire world. Just the one city or region your characters will be in. And not even the whole city - maybe you jut need to create the setting for one street. Then add more stuff as needed for the story as you write it. World building while you write, basing stuff off real world places, is a common thing a lot of writers do.