|
Fiendish Dire Ponies are sated... time to inquire. (Sorry Crystal!)
So, I'm a BIG fan of settings. I've written my own homebrew worlds thrice, and I've played in every campaign setting I can. And upon reflection, I can't really decide which is my favorite.
Golarion is totally super keen, I'm a MASSIVE dork for Krynn, Shadowrun had me hooked at the word go, TORG... I only wish I could afford more chosm source books, I adore Ravenloft (even though I never want to be the player in a Ravenloft game), I think that Dark Sun was totally the bomb... the list goes on.
The point of this thread? What's your favorite game world/campaign setting/universe? Why? I'm always looking for more!
I'm putting this here because I'm wanting to avoid limiting things to D&D/Pathfinder/d20...
And away we go!
During 3.0/3.5, I started in Faerun - my introduction to gaming as a hobby was Neverwinter Nights, so my first few PnP games were drawn from there as points of reference. (I didn't make the connection between BG/IWD/PST and D&D until some time later, despite playing them first.) However, when I started gaming on a regular basis with a steady group and even more so when I started DMing, I tended to lean more towards Greyhawk due to the looseness of some of the requirements in the setting (divine magic being the big one).
I don't think I ever ran an actual Greyhawk Campaign Setting game before I ran Savage Tide, though. Everything else I used the pantheon, but created a custom world from scratch. By contrast I know enough of Faerun by memory to run an FR game and actually use the setting, and know where to go to get what I can't remember.
I've only played in Dragonlance twice, but I've also read all the Weis-Hickman books and know the setting well enough to get by.
I've never actually played Dark Sun but I've read a lot about it and would be interested in giving it a try.
I've created two homebrew settings over the space of the past year and a half or so - one called Stormwind and another called Atlas. Sadly neither have gotten a chance to be playtested.
|
|
During 3.0/3.5, I started in Faerun - my introduction to gaming as a hobby was Neverwinter Nights, so my first few PnP games were drawn from there as points of reference. (I didn't make the connection between BG/IWD/PST and D&D until some time later, despite playing them first.) However, when I started gaming on a regular basis with a steady group and even more so when I started DMing, I tended to lean more towards Greyhawk due to the looseness of some of the requirements in the setting (divine magic being the big one).
I don't think I ever ran an actual Greyhawk Campaign Setting game before I ran Savage Tide, though. Everything else I used the pantheon, but created a custom world from scratch. By contrast I know enough of Faerun by memory to run an FR game and actually use the setting, and know where to go to get what I can't remember.
I've only played in Dragonlance twice, but I've also read all the Weis-Hickman books and know the setting well enough to get by.
I've never actually played Dark Sun but I've read a lot about it and would be interested in giving it a try.
I've created two homebrew settings over the space of the past year and a half or so - one called Stormwind and another called Atlas. Sadly neither have gotten a chance to be playtested.
Right on, and thanks for commenting. I actually got my start back in 2e, but have played every edition at least once (Basic set through Immortal, 1e, 2e, 3.0, 3.5 and PFRPG. And through it all, I've been a setting junkie.
As a fellow homebrewer, my hat's off to you. I'm in the process of finalizing my own homebrew, Tinris and am just putting on the finishing touches before letting someone create characters for it and run through. I'm a bit hung up on the timeline, as writing millenia of history is HARD.
Don't suppose you have any online reference for your homebrews?
Stormwind Paradigm was intended to be a play-by-post community, which Stormwind (durh) was created for, but it never got off the ground. It's pretty much inactive now - we aren't working on the forum system anymore, just using it as a hosting site for our Ventrilo games and play-by-post continuance of an old home Faerun campaign that got put on extensive two-year hold while one of the players was in the army and without contact due to a busted laptop. My sister-in-law, the forum founder, is using the setting in the books she's trying to write though, so it's not dead for good presuming she follows through with her project. There's not much information even on the forum I linked, as we never got around to finishing enough of the project to go live and start attracting more members. I can answer any questions you have though, either here or there (under the username Edge-of-Oblivion).
Atlas was created for my NaNoWriMo novel project, and other than the copy of the story posted on SWP - "Alter Enigma" in the "Inn at the Edge of the World" subforum - there's no online repository anywhere. Information on Atlas, which is still sort of under construction as I write the story, is in scattered notes on my computer. Again, I can answer questions and such as needed.
Here's what I plan on running locally.
Campaign Themes: Bronze Age Fantasy, Pirates!, Lovecraftian Post Apocalypse
Realism Level: Heroic
System: D6 Dramatics, a variant of the WEG D6 system.
Map.
Pitch & Premise:
Before your grandfather's grandfather, there was only one moon in the sky, Gods imbued mortals with Power, and vied amongst themselves for their own reasons.
Pantheons strove, armies marched across the land, and the Gods gave gifts of armor and swords and more that were beyond the ability of men to make. Either through the appeals of men, or a simple desire for more power, a rift between this world and the next was opened, and the Drowned God arose from the sea, terrible and inhuman, incomprehensible and implacable in its uncaring contempt for Men.
The Gods united, though not without bickering. The battles were long and contested, and even during them, the Pantheons fought one another. It was an age of miracles. It was an age of disasters. Aerun clove the moon in twain, creating the Dawn Belt, sending skyfire down onto the Risen City, and other places throughout the world; even that was not enough, as darkness rose, and gods sacrificed Men, and eventually each other, to seal the chasm. The seas rose, the floods came, and entire cities were lost. The riven moon creates strange tides, and shooting stars fall yet.
Those who held the God's favors are long since dead; where once we strove with Heaven's blessing, we cower and cringe and scurry, like rats in the granary.
But this need not be so. The sages say that a confluence of tides will bring the city of Tolaru-Ro back to daylight for two days and a night. Are you brave enough to seek out what was once lost?"
World Notes:
No horses - there are oxen and cattle, but no horses. Infantry rule the day. Without horses and the stirrup, a lot of this can be patterned on Aegean and ancient Greek myth. Or, for that matter, from Aztec, Inca and Mayan sources.
No ironworking - everything is cast from bronze. There are steel artifacts left over from before the God War.
Divine intervention was once common, but is now virtually unheard of, save through old artifacts pre-dating the GodWar.
Magic is known, but comparatively new, and unreliable.
Most of the topography is islands, lots of islands, some newly formed from skyfire falling into the ocean and raising up craters.
There is PLENTY of opportunity to create a strange new culture on an abandoned island for the players to find and explore. Most power is maritime power, and timber (for building ships) is a commodity wars are fought over.
The top level premise is that a series of pantheons (Celestial, Storm, Sea) vied for human worshippers, meddling in the affairs of kings. One of them summoned Cthulhu, thinking that it would give them an advantage against the others, and All Hell Broke Loose.
One of the deities, Aerun, attempted to stop Cthulhu by bombarding R'lyeh with fragments of the moon. He partially succeeded, but melted the ice at the top of the world, flooding the entire planet...and there's now three "moons" that are slowly reforming as spheres (there used to be a fourth, but it was used) and a ring of fragments that still fall regularly. Even the Gods fell in a holding action, but not before Cthulhu was put to rest.
Civilization fell, and if the Gods are there at all, they do not answer. Man is left to his own devices, in a world of pirate kingdoms and city states, with periodic plundering of drowned cities revealed by strange tides, and disasters from rocks falling from the sky.
Characters may start out as slaves captured on a slaver's ship that got storm-fouled.
There are political machinations aplenty, the chance to leap from trireme to trireme clad in a bronze breast plate, wielding a spear tipped with Godmetal, carve a kingdom out of the chaos, and try to build the political influence to make it last longer than your lifetime.
There are also the mysteries of what happened during the GodWar, artifacts from the GodWar (some of them may drive men mad) and more.
Character Creation:
If there are non-human races, it will be up to the players to suggest them and create their culture. Certainly, the world has potential for mer-creatures and more.
Character building starts with the following:
1) Pick three things that are noticeable about your character. I'm frickin' tired of "Uh. 5'10", 160 pounds, and a rogue." *grin*
2) Pick two people your character cares about - who aren't fellow PCs - who would do something useful for your character.
3) Pick one person who could do something useful for your character but dislikes them.
4) Pick a problem your character is driven to solve.
5) Tell me a little bit about the society your character comes from; strange cultural bits, oddments of religion, anything to make it clear your character is "from somewhere" and didn't just appear in the middle of the campaign world with all the explanation of a fart.
There are four major city states; you don't have to be from any of them, but they're going to be the main political drivers for the game.
Tal-Melos: Ruled by the dynasty of Declemos, Tal-Melos is renowned for its heavy infantry, and its willingness to use them to acquire slaves for its silver and copper mines from its neighbors. Declemene dynasts, by preference, tend to marry cousins from lesser branches of the family, and marrying brother to sister is not unheard of. (Think Sparta with some of the dynastic feuds of ancient Egypt).
Political Players:
Arcorea: A democracy of landholding men, Arcorea is a wealthy trading city with decent farmland and a good harbor. It has recently been dealing with strife with Tal-Melos; Tal-Melos is sending slavers to raid the outlying islands of Arcorea, Arcorea has been issuing letters of Marque and Reprisal, though the fractious nature of a pure democracy means its policy is fickle. Arcorea narrowly voted down installing a Tyrant for two years to deal with Tal-Melosian slavers. (Think a mixture of Athens and England during the era of the Spanish Main, but before either ruled the waves of their respective era.)
Xebes: A theocratic state of meritocratic scholars, Xebes is ruled by the God King Lemnos, who was a general during the GodWar, more than a century ago. He was granted the gift of immortality...but not eternal youth. His youth is maintained by a blood magic ritual that happens when certain portents rise in the sky. This ritual is the highlight of a series of games - where the winners gain great wealth, and the losers are sacrificed for Lemnos' youth. (Think Aztecs supported by Confucian bureaucracy.)
Ceylurium: The citadel of Ceylurium has never fallen to an outside force, and is reputed to have several relics of the GodWar all in working order, maintaining its defenses. Ceylurian nobles are aloof and disdain outsiders, and hire mercenaries to protect their interests overseas. The Ceylurian Navy is professional, and the top naval power in the Drowned Realms. Maintaining the Navy has stripped most of the usable timber from the island of the same name, and Ceylurium will literally go to war over more timber. (Think of feudal Japan crossed with Melnibone from the works of Michae Moorcock.)
There are countless little islands that (for the most part) wish they'd be left alone by the Big Four; most can have nearly any pseudo-classical "bronze-age" culture you can imagine, and I encourage you to write up a one paragraph summary, including how many days travel you are from one of the big four.
If you have a cool idea for another city-state on the scale of the Big Four, feel free to suggest it. I am perfectly happy to extend the map to give you guys an oar in defining the setting
You can usually tell what setting I like by the games I run:
Chronicles of the Silver Rose Company: My fairly strict canonical take on the [2E] Planescape setting with updated PF rules. Based in Sigil, it lets me run one of my favorite settings ever.
Appalachee Jihad My attempt to infuse a bit of the old-skool Gamma World sensiblities with the updated rules. Somewhat serious, but also with the classic comic GW craziness.
Tales From the City of Opal: A game based on the homebrew world I have been fiddling with for the last three years or so. Jungles, dinosaurs, undead, Old Ones, vanished civilizations and pirates all mashed up in a delicious stew. I enjoy the mental exercise of making a 'homebrew' and running characters through it breathes it to life.
Expedition to Tharkad-Kûl; Started out as a simple PF Beta testdrive dungeon crawl, but started to blossom on its own, despite my intentions to keep it 'setting lite.' Now several countries have been acknowledged and the dungeon has been left behind in favor of an overland crawl.
I still want to run a Spelljammer campaign one day ...
I still want to run a Spelljammer campaign one day ...Spelljammer is AWESOME!
My homebrew's major history is predicated on Spelljamming immigration, and I'm very much going to have to wrangle the massive amounts of 2e material into PFRPG when I run the world.
I have Spelljamming pieces tucked away in my world Arcaia's backstory as well Mikhaila, including a small moon called Midian which is actually a large asteroid put into orbit long ago by the Old Ones and currently a giant spacestation/dungeon swarming with Spelljammery goodness. Never know when it might come in handy ;)
|
|
I have Spelljamming pieces tucked away in my world Arcaia's backstory as well Mikhaila, including a small moon called Midian which is actually a large asteroid put into orbit long ago by the Old Ones and currently a giant spacestation/dungeon swarming with Spelljammery goodness. Never know when it might come in handy ;)
Huh, that's uncanny. I just wrote a bit of world history for Tinris that includes a deific attack involving relativistic stellar matter launched at the campaign world. The pantheon caught it just in time and put it in a stable orbit. It now plays a much more major part in the campaign than I'd originally intended.
One of the continents of the world has a mothballed space port that's now a holy site for people who actually know they're descended from spelljammers.
Gorramit, now I'm really jonesing to get this campaign world started.