D&D Homebrew for All Your Favorite Fandoms (TV Shows, Movies, Books, and More!)
Here’s our compendium of DND fandom homebrew, from Batman to Grunkle Stan!
One of the best parts of Dungeons & Dragons is being able to change it however you want: adding D&D homebrew classes, rules, even entire homebrew D&D campaigns for sci-fi, superheroes, cyberpunk, and more! Here at Young Dragonslayers, we have a soft spot for homebrew D&D fandoms: taking players’ favorite video games, books, movies, and more and bringing them into the game. We build our campaigns from scratch with elements like this, so we’ve shared plenty of our adaptations, homebrews, and suggestions over the years. For your perusal, we’ve pulled all of our fandom D&D homebrew knowledge into one place, from superheroes to anime to science fiction!
What Is Dungeons & Dragons Fandom Homebrew?
DND homebrew is perfect for fandoms, and we have everything you need to know to make your own!
“Yeah, I love my fandoms,” you may be saying, “but what exactly is a fandom homebrew?”. Put simply, D&D homebrew is any element added into a D&D game that wasn’t taken from the official rules and materials. This can be anything from a house rule to a full D&D monster stat block with attacks, ability scores, and special moves. They can emerge from a Dungeon Masters imagination, be inspired by a piece of media, come from the creative minds of the internet, or some combination of the three! Our basic overview of Dungeons & Dragons homebrew rules explains how to make homebrew classes, monsters, and races (now called species) and how to use tools like D&D Beyond and The Homebrewery to make your homebrew look official. You can read it on our blog or watch it on our YouTube channel to get inspired to build your own D&D homebrew from your favorite TV shows, movies, video games, and more!
Best D&D Homebrew Rules for Superheroes
Check out our guides for adapting DND for superheroes
Not everyone has the know-how (or the energy!) to create Dungeons & Dragons homebrew from scratch. Luckily, our Dungeon Masters have done a fair bit of homebrewing, and we happen to love superheroes. In fact, DM Jesse has been reading comic books since he was a toddler, and his alter ego, Doc Palindrome, is a character in a published superhero tabletop roleplaying game! So we decided to try and adapt D&D for superheroes, imagining some of our favorite heroes as playable Dungeons & Dragons characters. In the Marvel universe, we took a look at the Fantastic Four. We discuss how the makeup and power set of the Fantastic Four mirrors that of a D&D party and took a look at each character to determine exactly how one would play them in D&D, including Reed Richard’s Universal Translator, Memorium Device, and stretching powers; Ben Grimm’s durability, strength, stamina, and skills as a trained fighter; Johnny Storm’s pyrokinetic flight, superhuman constitution, and fire manipulation abilities; and Sue Storm’s invisibility, force fields, and strategic attacks. In the DC universe, we looked at the classic heroes and recommend the best ways to represent their powers in D&D, including Aquaman’s animal speech, ability to breathe underwater, and magical trident; Batman’s stealth abilities, mastery of ranged weapons, and detective skills; The Flash’s quick healing, superhuman attacks, and incredible speed; Green Arrow’s aptitude as a swordsman, skill with a bow, and specialty arrows; Green Lantern’s flight, ability to manipulate objects, and creation of hard-light constructions; Hawkgirl’s flight, fighting ability, and Nth-metal lightning mace; Oracle’s hacking skills, eskrima sticks, and many inventions; Superman’s x-ray vision, heat vision, and super strength; and Wonder Woman’s diplomacy, Lasso of Truth, and power of lightning. With so many superpowers to choose from, you’ll be able to adapt superheroes to D&D in no time!
Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Ideas Based on Anime
Of course, we’re also big anime nerds in these parts! DM Hannah is big into One Piece, while DM Liv watches everything from Yu-Gi-Oh to HunterXHunter to SpyXFamily, and DM Sergio is a certified Studio Ghibli fan currently dipping his toes into Delicious in Dungeon. Sergio loves Studio Ghibli so much, in fact, that he’s put Studio Ghibli elements in his games! He crafted a beautiful guide for how to adapt Studio Ghibli movies for D&D. He explains how to create a one-shot plot, what elements and tricks Miyazaki uses in his movies, creating a Ghibli-style setting, combining action and calm scenes like the movies, re-skinning D&D for a Studio Ghibli world, and incorporating Ghibli-inspired story elements like coming of age, intangible forces, and antagonists who join the heroes. DM Jaclyn did the same, explaining how they adapted anime to D&D by making their own Delicious in Dungeon one-shot for our winter games! They break down the D&D classes and abilities of each of the Delicious in Dungeon characters, crafting the perfect self-contained dungeon, creating monsters and other potential ingredients, and even creating D&D homebrew cooking rules inspired by Delicious in Dungeon!
Adapting Your Favorite Fantasy Movies to D&D
There are plenty of fantasy DND campaign ideas based on books, movies, and more!
As you can see from the Delicious in Dungeon adaptation, it’s pretty easy to adapt your favorite fantasy to D&D – much of the game is built with the fantasy genre in mind! When the live-action movie came out, we scoured the internet to find the best D&D homebrew rules for How to Train Your Dragon. We found a homebrew D&D one shot; custom dragonrider feats, backgrounds, and classes; and tons of options to adapt your favorite HTTYD Dragons to Dungeons & Dragons, from a simple singular statblock to a massive homebrew compendium including custom player ancestries! And of course, we had to pay homage to one of the key inspirations for the original Dungeons & Dragons game: J.R.R. Tolkein. First, we went through the entire plot of The Hobbit and imagined it as a D&D campaign. We built characters (Bilbo Baggins as an halfling Rogue, Thorin Okenshield as a Mountain Dwarf Fighter, Gandalf as a Aasimar Wizard, Beorn as a Human Druid, and Bard as a Human Ranger); broke down the encounters, puzzles, and magic items; and found statblocks for trolls, goblins, giant eagles, giant spiders, wood elves, and, of course, a red dragon. Then we looked compared and contrasted Dungeons & Dragons with Lord of the Rings: the history of its inspiration, playable races inspired by LotR (like elves, dwarfs, and halflings), and Monster-Manual counterparts to classic LotR creatures, including demonic Balors for the Balrogs, ghostly Wraiths for the Nazgul, and tree-like Treants for the Ents.
Putting Your Spooky Fandoms in Dungeons & Dragons
We have some of the best DND homebrew for horror and spooky campaigns!
There are tons of spooky D&D campaign ideas based on TV shows, movies, video games, and more. One of the best recent inspirations, though, has to be Stranger Things. Not only is Dungeons & Dragons a big part of the show, but it’s also built like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign: a group of heroes teaming up to fight horrifying monsters and save the day! We covered everything Stranger Things and D&D, including an overview of each of the D&D monsters named in the show and how to run a tabletop RPG campaign inspired by Stranger Things using the Kids on Bikes system. We also built a ton of playable characters inspired by spooky media. DM Hannah, who is a huge Gravity Falls fan, put each of the character’s abilities from the show into D&D homebrew characters; Mabel Pines’ creativity, optimism, and contagious positivity; Dipper Pines’ insights, investigative skills, and thirst for knowledge; Pacifica Northwest’s obsession with family status, sarcastic bullying, and general mean-girl nature; Grunkle Stan’s false identity, penchant for evading authorities, and greed; Soos’ strength, sensitivity, and loyalty; Old Man McGucket’s devotion to his community, inventing know-how, and eccentricity; Gideon Gleeful’s crafiness, thirst for vengeance, and willingness to make a deal with just about anybody; and Bill Cipher’s interdimensional powers, flight, and penchant for chaos. Finally, horror fan DM Jaclyn went through some classic spooky icons and built them in D&D: Beetlejuice as a wild-magic sorcerer, Jason Voorhees as a fighter, Wednesday Addams as a divination wizard, Pennywise as a bard, Ghostface and Michael Meyes as way-of-shadows monks, Freddy Kruger as a college-of-swords bard, Eleven as a sorcerer, and Winifred, Mary, and Sarah as necromancy wizards (er, witches).
Play Your D&D Fandom Adventure!
Adapt your favorite TV shows to DND, just like our players!
We love adapting Dungeons & Dragons for different genres, fandoms and more. We’re a crew of professional Dungeon Masters (and semi-professional nerds) who run online games of Dungeons & Dragons for tweens and teens. Our games incorporate as many of our players' interests as we can, letting players embody their favorite characters, create custom abilities, and play out wild homebrew adventures (like the time a teen group took down vampire lord Dio from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure). We make things accessible for new and beginning players, teaching the game, helping create characters, and creating groups with similar play styles to maximize the fun. If you or someone you know is interested in joining in the shenanigans, why not join our waitlist? We’ll give you a call to chat about our games and let you play out a trial game to find out the best fit for your fandoms, play styles, and more.
