Homebrew Setting advice


Advice


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Hi guys,
I'm new to the message boards here so sorry if this is in the wrong place.

After reading nobodyshome's RotRL campaign journal recently, I have been inspired to try my hand at DMing once again. I'm mainly a casual pathfinder player and don't DM often. I have a rough idea of Golarion's geography but my knowledge is far from perfect and was wondering if you could offer some advice as to where to place my setting in the world.

I'm planning on a large tropical island which was discovered about 2-3 years prior to the start of the game as the basis of the campaign. The island is covered in dense jungles, swamps and rugged hills and mountains. It's rich in natural resources such as exotic woods, veins of precious metal and a surprising amount of sky metal. In addition to the jungles are ruined cities and temples of a lost civilisation.

The pcs base of operations will be a small frontier style town of about 700 people willing to take a chance in the unknown to make their fortune or carved out a new life for themselves in the wilderness. I'm hoping that by giving them a home base in a largely isolated wilderness area, they'll build relationships with the locals and actively become part of their new home.

Obviously where there are resources to exploit and ancient artefacts to discover, there will be various factions, organisations and entrepreneurs fighting over them.

I'm trying to go for a mix up of Indiana Jones, pirates of the Caribbean and Firefly with a good dose of pathfinder thrown in for good measure.

My main question is where on Golarion to put it? I was thinking that a trading ship may have been blown far off course from the shackles by a storm unleashed from the eye of adenego. So somewhere far west from the shackles in the fever sea. Would this be a good place to put it out does it contradict existing background information about Golarion?

I was thinking about some of the ruins being tied into Ghol-gan but can't find much information on the Ghol-gan empire, can anyone clue me in as to who, or what the Ghol-Gan were and any info about their civilisation?

Last of all, has anyone got any other advice that might help me in the form of plot hooks, encounters, quests or rpg material that would give me inspiration?


You don't need to put it on Golarion. Have it as part of a self contained setting of its own. Design the island and any neighbouring ones and focus on that.

Sovereign Court

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Don't be afraid to copy stuffs. Favorite video games ,movies or tv series, offer sometimes excellent hooks. Example:

-An Alchemist falling on hard times after discovering that he has an incurable magical disease, decides to go on making a high quality blue crystal drug with a former student to make a lot of gold for his family's future. Your pcs ends up being victim of the drug abuse, whether directly or indirectly. (Breaking Bad).

-Pcs need to go into a library in the sand to extract an important piece of knowledge. (Avatar the last airbender).

-Blue Medicine, a company, is hiring bounty hunters to retrieve a kidnapped female test subject, a Female Human Mastermind (investigator archetype). Primary suspect is her brother,A chirurgeon (Alchemist Archetype), traveling around with a bunch of mercenaries. (Firefly).

etc...you get my point.


Agreed with Eryx, don't feel the need to put the homebrew within Golarion. One homebrew I attended as a player just had a separate continent, while my own homebrew setting is a separate plane that still has the same gods as Golarion.

If you absolutely must have a place within Golarion, perhaps Numeria, Land of the Linnorm Kings, or the Mana Wastes?

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