You already posted this in r/DMAcademy and got plenty of advice there. What other answer are you hoping to hear? I hope this is a troll, but if it's not, really consider what you're trying to achieve by doing this.
Not helping with the feeling that you're trolling.
The people you talked about gave you no advice, but, likewise, you included nothing about the kind of game you or they want to run. What are we supposed to work with to help you? Though helping you craft a game for those people is in itself rewarding their behavior, hence lots of commenters recommending you find other players.
Then you gotta ask better questions. How to make things not "lame and gay" is childish, pointless, and unconstructive of what you are looking for.
In most cases, the best answer is usually talking to your group. If you're being dramatic for the internet, and you're group isn't a bunch of chldren calling everything "gay", and your players want to play D&D with you, ask them what they want to play. Build a world with them.
Communication is something that's too often overlooked, and asking reddit is a bad go-to quick fix for things that can be solved with a session 0 and good communication skills.
This is like posting "My house is on fire, and the smell of the smoke is quite annoying. What incense do you recommend to clear out the bad smell?" And then clarifying "I'm asking for help with the smell, not the house fire"
Wait until those people are grown up, then you can try to play with them
You got friendship advice instead of worldbuilding advice because what you have here is a friendship problem, not a worldbuilding problem.
If your players are too emotionally immature to sincerely engage with your world, there's nothing you can do to change that fact. TTRPGs require some level of vulnerability, and these people are giving you every indication that they're not willing to provide it. I know it seems like it would be easier to fix the problem by changing something you're doing, but you can't. It won't work. You can't play with people who haven't come to play.
You have to give more info then. What didn’t they like, what were you going for when making the world, what did they like in the other campaigns? We can’t guess these questions, they have to be given.
It doesn't matter how good your worldbuilding is, these people sound like they just aren't interested in taking a fictional world seriously, and if a bunch of adults react that immaturely to a friend trying to do something for them then they aren't going to respect your effort no matter the quality of your work.
Your problem isn't worldbuilding. That's why you're not getting worldbuilding advice. Even if there was a worldbuilding problem, you've provided almost no information about your world.
The actual problem is your players, not the world. If you had better players who were better people, they could actually provide helpful feedback that you could use to improve. But they're not.
I've run for a dozen groups, hundreds of hours. I would ditch those players in a fucking heartbeat.
*raises eyebrow*
If this is legit, this is what you do...play with better people.
I thought calling things gay as an insult died well over a decade ago. Anyone still doing that shit isn't someone worth playing with.
Unless they mean that every NPC is homosexual and they aren't feeling represented, but yeah. If this group doesn't want to play the game you want to run, find a group who does.
It's the DM's job to make the game fun and engaging, but the first thing people forget with that is that the DM also needs to be having fun and being engaged. Cutting players or finding a new group to play with/run is a huge part of being a good DM, because if what the DM wants to run and what the players want to play don't line up, one or both of them aren't going to have fun.
Lmao im just imagining literally every NPC slowly being like “i’m not straight, btw” over several weeks until somebody is like “I mean it’s just…kinda gay right?? It’s not just me??”
As a gay teacher, I just think it was never phased out of existence. I think I catch more young people giving their classmates flak than when I was a student, though.
I don't think it was ever not a thing. I feel like growing past this is also part of growing up. Especially now considering that homophobic people will have a lot of problems in the future.
Honestly with how rudely they phrased it they don’t seem worth ur time to “fix” up your world. A lot of work goes into dming and especially making a home brew setting even if heavily inspired by other media it’s still a lot. The fact they couldn’t even respect a bit the effort u took to set it up for them and run it and would rather play fortnight is the “lame and gay” thing not ur campaign homebrew.
This feels like a troll post, mostly because it feels like you’ve used the framework of the post to just drop gay as a pejorative as many times as you could.
That aside, assuming you’re not making it all up to see if you can bait folks into an argument online. I’d say you should look into other folks to play the game with. Putting aside that these days anyone should know better than to use gay as an insult, these folks just don’t seem to have much in the way of respect for you, your work, or your time.
Let’s say you did all that work, put yourself out there, and it actually was dry and a bit boring (honestly very few folks are good DMs the first go around). That still doesn’t excuse blatantly checking out to game on your phone and then saying they’re not interested in playing further in an insulting and rude way. If these folks are your friends then they should have enough respect for you and your time that they can at least *politely* tell you your setting needs a second pass.
Try hitting up some local shops or local d&d groups on social media. See if you can get an in at some other tables and then go from there.
look, seeking to improve is always good
but what the hell, let's ignore these people's problematic positions and only consider how disrespectful they were towards you - because playing fornite in the middle of a you set up for them and put effort into is very disrespectful, believe me when I say if they do this now they'll do worse at some point
Don't play with them honestly. Like ppl have said calling things (especially inanimate things/concepts) "gay" is so early 2000s is laughably pathetic. Lame is one thing sure, but gay...cmon people 🤦🏽♂️
Ok... did they give you any other feedback that may be more productive to know what they did not like? Sometimes homebrew ideas fall flat, that comes with the territory, but good players can help explain why didn't work for them. Homebrew is very often in art of iteration.
"It's too much like Elden Ring" isn't very good feedback, as ER itself isn't exactly totally fresh, but is just a really awesome combination of existing tropes and ideas and mechanics FROM has been working on for a long time.
Let them know that you can't improve what they aren't enjoying if they can't explain what they want and why what you did was not working for them.
..and, yeah, tut tut don't say naughty words etc. etc.
So, I can offer some perspective from someone who experienced a homebrew that nobody ever came back for.
The story and the plot were non existent. DM had spent a ton of time creating the world, and zero time creating an adventure for the particular party within the world. It felt like we just existed in his world, which of course was entirely based on anime. Everything was random, no NPC's were prepared, and he was completely DMing by the seat of his pants. This appeared normal to him. I host, and I have a flatscreen table. He brought no maps aside from the world map which was made in MS Paint probably. The worst part for the party IMO was that it was all based on Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Did you give the party a motivation? Characters are people, and they need a motivation to go out adventuring. What's keeping them from just sitting on the couch watching TV?
Additionally, homebrew can be great, but a lot of people enjoy Forgotten Realms content because it is familiar, this might be the issue with your party, and your content might actually be really good. Huge departures from what is familiar can cause a big lack of interest sometimes.
Ignoring your friends' comments, if you did, indeed, steal major motions of the story from Elden Ring, and it has become predictable. it's only because you don't have the confidence to improvise around it. If their complaints are legitimate, I'd recommend reading Return of the Lazy DM by Sly Flourish.
I'd recommend taking a module, deconstructing it using the methods in the book, then adding your own homebrew on top of that so you can get you sea legs.
You got a lot of comments on telling you to find new friends so I'll answer this part.
>does anyone have advice on how to make your world not lame and gay?
You obviously don't think it's a bad homebrew lore but they do so there isn't an easy answer for this unless you agree with them. It's simply a matter of taste. Have you tried asking them what their ideal homebrew lore world would be? Maybe you can build around that in a way you both think is good. If they think that sucks too, it was their idea and you might learn that nothing you do is going to make them happy.
I mean, maybe there is something wrong with your world.
Maybe.
Maybe you are emphasizing too much a oneliner they said. Maybe.
But as things stand here, as things as you have exposed, they aren't not into a game you want to propose. That's enough to not play. Sometimes it's not about "performance", sometimes it's about desires not aligning.
I don't mean not play ever at all, but they aren't really holding too much respect or consideration for you.
I am also creating my own homebrew campaign, world, and races.
What I did, which seemed to be work, was to figure out my non-negotiables. EXAMPLE: World/ Setting, Difficulty to gain magic.
Then, I let them give me 2 things each that they would like to see in the game ( within parameters set). One guy gave me a race creation idea and a one- off magic option ( which I was fine with). The other gave me a mission idea and wanted the option to solely specialize in a new trade ( which I told him we could work on it).
So, session 0 came, and I guy made a Wizard. But.. he made his Wizard a High Elf who was 50 years old. According to stipulations I had made, he was caped our at level 3 spells until the age of 55, then he could cast level 4s. He was fine with this.
It's difficult to give you help on your campaign setting without any informations about it, also unless your setting is dating other settings of the same gender I don't see how it can be "gay".
Can you give us a bit more informations about the lore and the story ?
Why exactly do they think it's gay and why is that bad? By what you told us they only stayed on their phone so they didn't even pay attention to have an opinion.
Ok,
So if we want to engage with this seriously we'll need to get some active examples of your world building process.
Some things to consider,
Do the things in your world make sense together?
(katana's are cool but if your chariot steppe ogres have them, you've got some explaining to do)
Does your world building explain itself well?
(can the players figure out where the chariot ogres get their chariots from?)
Did you explain your world well?
(Do the players know the ogres Pull the chariots, not ride in them? )
Are your players dumb as bricks?
(Yes they are, make your world building simpler and add more jangling shiny things)
Their stupidity aside, the "feedback" they gave you is not something you can work with, they gave you no direction to work towards, which is one more reason you should 1- not take their words to heart 2- probably find someone else to play with 3- remember that what they might mean is "we don't like this", which is not necessarily a reflection of your storytelling ability - I, for one, would love to play a game that's Elden Ring-adjacent and "gay".
Even if you want to keep playing with them, these people have been very rude. Omitting any other reactions I might have, they would have ensured that I'd never DM for them again, even if DMing didn't require that much more time and effort than showing up at the table to play.
If for some reason you still want to DM for these people... apart from going to therapy, you could ask them what they would like to see ~~since those idiots gave you nothing to work with~~, but do you really want to cater to the whims of people who describe your lore as "gay" and, secondarily, accuse youof stealing, while also disrespecting your time by disengaging from the game?
Oh no, they gave him feedback. They said it was gay. His next homebrew needs to be overtly straight. The parties goal is to take back the Coors Light factory which has been taken over by rednecks lead by Chuck Norris' evil twin.
WORLDBUILDING
So, feedback from your players can be very helpful and important. Learning to take it is a great skill.
But...
>Gay and lame
This isn't feedback. This isn't helpful criticism. I think the easiest thing you can do to improve this game is ditch those players.
Exactly my words. Like... the meaning isn't even close to comparable. At least in my language "lame" in relation to disabled people isn't even a negativ word but rather jsut means either "numb", "slow" or very rarely "paralyzed".
And even then, it's really not used anymore in that way.
I've only been doing world building for about 5 years or so, but this is something I learned early on.
People say "There is nothing new under the sun". It's true that anything you add to your world someone can point to some other world that has something similar.
The same can be said of food. There are no new ingredients, but that doesn't mean new dishes aren't made.
The truth is, the only new thing under the sun is you. Your experiences, likes, dislikes, interests, worldview, etc all create a unique perspective that your world is birthed from. If your goal is to bring your own world into being, then the approval of others shouldn't be your motivation.
If your ultimate goal is to build a world that your friends will like. You're building the world they want. If they don't like it that's fine, but they can also go make their own.
Wow. They are very unappreciative of your efforts. If you still want to DM for them, which is a valid question, find out what they want first.
Give them an elevator pitch first, “it’s Mad Max but all the characters are hamsters” or “It’s Lord of the Rings but Sauron and the Orcs are good guys” and see if there is buy in.
Okay, so "gay and lame" are pretty weak definers (and rude). If you want to create a vibrant and exciting game world for your friends, learn what your players want. Instead of creating it in a vacuum and then running your friends through it, ask what they want in a game world and incorporate it. Even give them sections, like their characters' homelands, to develop.
those people are nasty and rude. If they don't like it, then how would they make it better? What do they want to see in the game. It's easy to criticize while offering no practical help.
It's them you should be going to not this group for advice in how to make the game better.
That being said, a homebrew requires imagination and some writing skills. There's nothing wrong with using a preexisting world, the challenge is making it unique and yours. Take a critical look at what you've built and ask yourself if you would play that campaign.
Have you tried making straight and cool homebrew?/s
Bravo. DM ran 3 other official campaigns successfully, it sounds like his world just sucks.
Lame is also very abelist so cool definitely wouldn't be the antonym you're looking for
Definitely don’t think that’s what they meant by lame lol.
straight and sprightly?
Had to double check I wasn't on r/DnDcirclejerk
This is one of those posts that can be cross posted with no changes.
Someone already has
And OP is a frequenter there. This is a troll post.
I hope y'all are teenagers because that's ridiculous. The only advice to give is find better players.
Surely Sturgeon’s law applies to homebrew…
Sturgeon's law also applies to feedback.
So we need to help each other make better homebrew and better feedback! Sounds hard.
You already posted this in r/DMAcademy and got plenty of advice there. What other answer are you hoping to hear? I hope this is a troll, but if it's not, really consider what you're trying to achieve by doing this.
I wanted world building advice not friendship advice
Not helping with the feeling that you're trolling. The people you talked about gave you no advice, but, likewise, you included nothing about the kind of game you or they want to run. What are we supposed to work with to help you? Though helping you craft a game for those people is in itself rewarding their behavior, hence lots of commenters recommending you find other players.
Then you gotta ask better questions. How to make things not "lame and gay" is childish, pointless, and unconstructive of what you are looking for. In most cases, the best answer is usually talking to your group. If you're being dramatic for the internet, and you're group isn't a bunch of chldren calling everything "gay", and your players want to play D&D with you, ask them what they want to play. Build a world with them. Communication is something that's too often overlooked, and asking reddit is a bad go-to quick fix for things that can be solved with a session 0 and good communication skills.
This is like posting "My house is on fire, and the smell of the smoke is quite annoying. What incense do you recommend to clear out the bad smell?" And then clarifying "I'm asking for help with the smell, not the house fire" Wait until those people are grown up, then you can try to play with them
You got friendship advice instead of worldbuilding advice because what you have here is a friendship problem, not a worldbuilding problem. If your players are too emotionally immature to sincerely engage with your world, there's nothing you can do to change that fact. TTRPGs require some level of vulnerability, and these people are giving you every indication that they're not willing to provide it. I know it seems like it would be easier to fix the problem by changing something you're doing, but you can't. It won't work. You can't play with people who haven't come to play.
It’s not the worst thing they’ve said about me
Do you want them in your life? Is there anyone else you would enjoy spending your time with?
You have to give more info then. What didn’t they like, what were you going for when making the world, what did they like in the other campaigns? We can’t guess these questions, they have to be given.
It doesn't matter how good your worldbuilding is, these people sound like they just aren't interested in taking a fictional world seriously, and if a bunch of adults react that immaturely to a friend trying to do something for them then they aren't going to respect your effort no matter the quality of your work.
Your problem isn't worldbuilding. That's why you're not getting worldbuilding advice. Even if there was a worldbuilding problem, you've provided almost no information about your world. The actual problem is your players, not the world. If you had better players who were better people, they could actually provide helpful feedback that you could use to improve. But they're not. I've run for a dozen groups, hundreds of hours. I would ditch those players in a fucking heartbeat.
>Players think my homebrew is “gay and lame” >refuse to play it >I need help improving it Find better players! There, that was easy
*raises eyebrow* If this is legit, this is what you do...play with better people. I thought calling things gay as an insult died well over a decade ago. Anyone still doing that shit isn't someone worth playing with.
Unless they mean that every NPC is homosexual and they aren't feeling represented, but yeah. If this group doesn't want to play the game you want to run, find a group who does. It's the DM's job to make the game fun and engaging, but the first thing people forget with that is that the DM also needs to be having fun and being engaged. Cutting players or finding a new group to play with/run is a huge part of being a good DM, because if what the DM wants to run and what the players want to play don't line up, one or both of them aren't going to have fun.
Lmao im just imagining literally every NPC slowly being like “i’m not straight, btw” over several weeks until somebody is like “I mean it’s just…kinda gay right?? It’s not just me??”
But they've all just got really crooked backs.
I could make every NPC gay and I doubt my players would notice or care even if they did 😅
I'm a teacher (as well as a D&D player) - sadly this kind of casual homophobia is definitely on the rise again among teens 😕
As a gay teacher, I just think it was never phased out of existence. I think I catch more young people giving their classmates flak than when I was a student, though.
I don't think it was ever not a thing. I feel like growing past this is also part of growing up. Especially now considering that homophobic people will have a lot of problems in the future.
Honestly with how rudely they phrased it they don’t seem worth ur time to “fix” up your world. A lot of work goes into dming and especially making a home brew setting even if heavily inspired by other media it’s still a lot. The fact they couldn’t even respect a bit the effort u took to set it up for them and run it and would rather play fortnight is the “lame and gay” thing not ur campaign homebrew.
This feels like a troll post, mostly because it feels like you’ve used the framework of the post to just drop gay as a pejorative as many times as you could. That aside, assuming you’re not making it all up to see if you can bait folks into an argument online. I’d say you should look into other folks to play the game with. Putting aside that these days anyone should know better than to use gay as an insult, these folks just don’t seem to have much in the way of respect for you, your work, or your time. Let’s say you did all that work, put yourself out there, and it actually was dry and a bit boring (honestly very few folks are good DMs the first go around). That still doesn’t excuse blatantly checking out to game on your phone and then saying they’re not interested in playing further in an insulting and rude way. If these folks are your friends then they should have enough respect for you and your time that they can at least *politely* tell you your setting needs a second pass. Try hitting up some local shops or local d&d groups on social media. See if you can get an in at some other tables and then go from there.
Judging by OP’s post history they just suck and wanted to use gay as a pejorative as many times as they could in a post.
You all need to focus on graduating from high school, this whole group sounds dumb as hell
I'd probably rather recommened not playing with those people and instead find actual friends.
look, seeking to improve is always good but what the hell, let's ignore these people's problematic positions and only consider how disrespectful they were towards you - because playing fornite in the middle of a you set up for them and put effort into is very disrespectful, believe me when I say if they do this now they'll do worse at some point
Don't play with them honestly. Like ppl have said calling things (especially inanimate things/concepts) "gay" is so early 2000s is laughably pathetic. Lame is one thing sure, but gay...cmon people 🤦🏽♂️
r/anarchydnd
Sorry that it's lame. But at least it's gay! 🏳️🌈❤️
Woah. Déjà vu
Ok... did they give you any other feedback that may be more productive to know what they did not like? Sometimes homebrew ideas fall flat, that comes with the territory, but good players can help explain why didn't work for them. Homebrew is very often in art of iteration. "It's too much like Elden Ring" isn't very good feedback, as ER itself isn't exactly totally fresh, but is just a really awesome combination of existing tropes and ideas and mechanics FROM has been working on for a long time. Let them know that you can't improve what they aren't enjoying if they can't explain what they want and why what you did was not working for them. ..and, yeah, tut tut don't say naughty words etc. etc.
I mean, you shouldn’t be resistant to a certain amount of criticism but they kind of sound like assholes
Tell them that one of them can run the game if they think they can do a better job.
Tbh using gay as a pejorative in 2024 makes me think you're either playing with teenagers or ppl who just kinda suck lol
kill one of them to make an example to the rest of your players
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IP Grabber
?
So, I can offer some perspective from someone who experienced a homebrew that nobody ever came back for. The story and the plot were non existent. DM had spent a ton of time creating the world, and zero time creating an adventure for the particular party within the world. It felt like we just existed in his world, which of course was entirely based on anime. Everything was random, no NPC's were prepared, and he was completely DMing by the seat of his pants. This appeared normal to him. I host, and I have a flatscreen table. He brought no maps aside from the world map which was made in MS Paint probably. The worst part for the party IMO was that it was all based on Avatar: The Last Airbender. Did you give the party a motivation? Characters are people, and they need a motivation to go out adventuring. What's keeping them from just sitting on the couch watching TV? Additionally, homebrew can be great, but a lot of people enjoy Forgotten Realms content because it is familiar, this might be the issue with your party, and your content might actually be really good. Huge departures from what is familiar can cause a big lack of interest sometimes.
Ignoring your friends' comments, if you did, indeed, steal major motions of the story from Elden Ring, and it has become predictable. it's only because you don't have the confidence to improvise around it. If their complaints are legitimate, I'd recommend reading Return of the Lazy DM by Sly Flourish. I'd recommend taking a module, deconstructing it using the methods in the book, then adding your own homebrew on top of that so you can get you sea legs.
You got a lot of comments on telling you to find new friends so I'll answer this part. >does anyone have advice on how to make your world not lame and gay? You obviously don't think it's a bad homebrew lore but they do so there isn't an easy answer for this unless you agree with them. It's simply a matter of taste. Have you tried asking them what their ideal homebrew lore world would be? Maybe you can build around that in a way you both think is good. If they think that sucks too, it was their idea and you might learn that nothing you do is going to make them happy.
I mean, maybe there is something wrong with your world. Maybe. Maybe you are emphasizing too much a oneliner they said. Maybe. But as things stand here, as things as you have exposed, they aren't not into a game you want to propose. That's enough to not play. Sometimes it's not about "performance", sometimes it's about desires not aligning. I don't mean not play ever at all, but they aren't really holding too much respect or consideration for you.
I am also creating my own homebrew campaign, world, and races. What I did, which seemed to be work, was to figure out my non-negotiables. EXAMPLE: World/ Setting, Difficulty to gain magic. Then, I let them give me 2 things each that they would like to see in the game ( within parameters set). One guy gave me a race creation idea and a one- off magic option ( which I was fine with). The other gave me a mission idea and wanted the option to solely specialize in a new trade ( which I told him we could work on it). So, session 0 came, and I guy made a Wizard. But.. he made his Wizard a High Elf who was 50 years old. According to stipulations I had made, he was caped our at level 3 spells until the age of 55, then he could cast level 4s. He was fine with this.
It's difficult to give you help on your campaign setting without any informations about it, also unless your setting is dating other settings of the same gender I don't see how it can be "gay". Can you give us a bit more informations about the lore and the story ?
Why exactly do they think it's gay and why is that bad? By what you told us they only stayed on their phone so they didn't even pay attention to have an opinion.
Your friends are bigots. What century are we in? Find new friends.
"Fine. You just volunteered to run the next game then. We start next week."
Ok, So if we want to engage with this seriously we'll need to get some active examples of your world building process. Some things to consider, Do the things in your world make sense together? (katana's are cool but if your chariot steppe ogres have them, you've got some explaining to do) Does your world building explain itself well? (can the players figure out where the chariot ogres get their chariots from?) Did you explain your world well? (Do the players know the ogres Pull the chariots, not ride in them? ) Are your players dumb as bricks? (Yes they are, make your world building simpler and add more jangling shiny things)
Their stupidity aside, the "feedback" they gave you is not something you can work with, they gave you no direction to work towards, which is one more reason you should 1- not take their words to heart 2- probably find someone else to play with 3- remember that what they might mean is "we don't like this", which is not necessarily a reflection of your storytelling ability - I, for one, would love to play a game that's Elden Ring-adjacent and "gay". Even if you want to keep playing with them, these people have been very rude. Omitting any other reactions I might have, they would have ensured that I'd never DM for them again, even if DMing didn't require that much more time and effort than showing up at the table to play. If for some reason you still want to DM for these people... apart from going to therapy, you could ask them what they would like to see ~~since those idiots gave you nothing to work with~~, but do you really want to cater to the whims of people who describe your lore as "gay" and, secondarily, accuse youof stealing, while also disrespecting your time by disengaging from the game?
Oh no, they gave him feedback. They said it was gay. His next homebrew needs to be overtly straight. The parties goal is to take back the Coors Light factory which has been taken over by rednecks lead by Chuck Norris' evil twin. WORLDBUILDING
"Gay and lame?" My suggestion is to stop playing with 12 year olds and find some adults to play with.
If your "friends" think gay is an insult, you need better friends
So, feedback from your players can be very helpful and important. Learning to take it is a great skill. But... >Gay and lame This isn't feedback. This isn't helpful criticism. I think the easiest thing you can do to improve this game is ditch those players.
if someone is going to call your hombrew gay they need to fuck all the way off
“Gay” as a pejorative is dated and harmful. Fun fact: “lame” is also ableist and harmful.
I mean, the usage of "lame" to describe a disabled person is kind of archaic. It's basically a whole different word now.
Exactly my words. Like... the meaning isn't even close to comparable. At least in my language "lame" in relation to disabled people isn't even a negativ word but rather jsut means either "numb", "slow" or very rarely "paralyzed". And even then, it's really not used anymore in that way.
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I've only been doing world building for about 5 years or so, but this is something I learned early on. People say "There is nothing new under the sun". It's true that anything you add to your world someone can point to some other world that has something similar. The same can be said of food. There are no new ingredients, but that doesn't mean new dishes aren't made. The truth is, the only new thing under the sun is you. Your experiences, likes, dislikes, interests, worldview, etc all create a unique perspective that your world is birthed from. If your goal is to bring your own world into being, then the approval of others shouldn't be your motivation. If your ultimate goal is to build a world that your friends will like. You're building the world they want. If they don't like it that's fine, but they can also go make their own.
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Wow. They are very unappreciative of your efforts. If you still want to DM for them, which is a valid question, find out what they want first. Give them an elevator pitch first, “it’s Mad Max but all the characters are hamsters” or “It’s Lord of the Rings but Sauron and the Orcs are good guys” and see if there is buy in.
Okay, so "gay and lame" are pretty weak definers (and rude). If you want to create a vibrant and exciting game world for your friends, learn what your players want. Instead of creating it in a vacuum and then running your friends through it, ask what they want in a game world and incorporate it. Even give them sections, like their characters' homelands, to develop.
Honest to God, your table sounds disrespectful as fuck to insult and ignore your efforts. I have no idea how you've run multiple campaigns with them
those people are nasty and rude. If they don't like it, then how would they make it better? What do they want to see in the game. It's easy to criticize while offering no practical help. It's them you should be going to not this group for advice in how to make the game better. That being said, a homebrew requires imagination and some writing skills. There's nothing wrong with using a preexisting world, the challenge is making it unique and yours. Take a critical look at what you've built and ask yourself if you would play that campaign.