Plenty of DnD players take on the challenge of creating a homebrew for their favourite fantasy IPs, and many do the same for their most beloved manga series. However, manga and fantasy have one major thing in common – their worlds and stories can be absolutely massive, spanning endless episodes and with enough detail to drown even die-hard fans. It’s no surprise that many come up with small 5e adaptations that capture one small part of the source it pays homage to.
Of course, there are those who stare insurmountable odds in the face and laugh. One of those people is Redditor OneWorldHD, who has created a DnD homebrew for the world of One Piece. One Piece is a fantasy-adventure manga and anime about a pirate blessed with strange stretching powers after eating a Devil Fruit. The manga currently has 103 volumes, and the anime has 20 seasons with over 1,000 episodes – so there’s a lot of content to work with.
OneWorldHD has created a homebrew Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide with over 200 pages of content. “I’ve been a hardcore One Piece fan since early high school”, OneWorldHD tells Wargamer. “I am also a long-time forever DM in my D&D groups (and gladly so).”
They say their One Piece/D&D journey began many years ago with the One Piece D20 system – a 2013 adaptation of One Piece using DnD 3.5E rules. “I was so enthralled with the concept of One Piece and D&D that I made several d100 Devil Fruit tables for my friends to roll on”, OneWorldHD says. These tables randomised a character’s starting Devil Fruit and related ability, and they’d eventually make it into the OneWorldHD’s 5E homebrew.
“We had a blast playing that system for a while, but with me being a new DM, I eventually ran out of content and ideas to use in my game every week”, OneWorldHD adds. “We then switched over to fifth edition, where the One Piece mechanics didn’t work very well.”
When OneWorldHD and their D&D group wanted to return to One Piece D&D years later, their options seemed limited to a few short One Piece homebrews that could be found online. “I thought, ‘huh – what if someone made a system that converted all the new D&D content to a newer but similar system that allowed for One Piece mechanics?’ And after searching far and wide for systems that aimed to accomplish that, I didn’t find anything with near enough content for my liking – so I set out to do it myself.”
Working on the project off-and-on between university and working, OneWorldHD says the Player’s Handbook alone took “a few years”. “I put roughly two to three summers into making this”, OneWorldHD tells Wargamer, “definitely around a year or more of time spent overall”.
“My favourite parts of this system are 100% the Haki and Devil Fruit systems”, says OneWorldHD. Haki is a spiritual power that can grant various supernatural abilities, and Devil Fruits can also unlock new powers for characters. OneWorldHD’s homebrew uses a “spirit surge” system inspired by Draconic Gifts in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, and this “allows DMs to give players Haki and Devil Fruit improvements for overcoming major obstacles and winning difficult battles”.
Further updates to the homebrew may be coming, but OneWorldHD says these will be slow. “I want to refocus my efforts on university and my career. I am working towards becoming a game designer, so I will be making more projects over time.”
You can find ways to access the DnD One Piece homebrew through OneWorldHD’s original Reddit post. You can also find OneWorldHD on Twitter.
For more official D&D sourcebooks, check out our guide to the best DnD books and campaigns in 5E. Or, if you like tabletop crossovers, why not check out our MTG Secret Lair guide?