| DR460N |
I am just starting as a GM and have home brewed my own campaign, world and all. I would like some input.
The backstory is that many eons ago there was a cataclysm which destroyed the world. In an attempt to save it a large group of mages shunted it over into the transitory space between planes. I was having trouble deciding on which coterminous plane this was so I just dubbed it the transitory plane. My world after all. The world was mostly destroyed though, so it now exists as floating shards. They range in size from small as a house, to large as a continent. Out past the farthest shard, the "natural" geography of this endless plane reasserts itself, which is mostly empty space with various odd features floating there. Examples are, more shards (though not as clumped together as the remains of the world), clouds of magic, giant puddles of water, or anything else weird I can think up. Portals to the various planes are fairly common and easy to identify where permanent ones are by corresponding magic effects lingering around.
The Gnome mechanic's guild holds the most power, since it was them that ended the isolation and chaos by inventing airships. How they work is a closely guarded secret. All that is known is that it uses an ore that is native to this plane, dubbed cloudstone since it is blue and floats. The shards float too, but not naturally. The Dwarves are in close alliance with the gnomes since they are obviously the best miners for this material. The tribal goblinoids are subservient to just about everyone, and only recently was slavery done away with. Halflings thwart the rule of the gnomes with their attempts to tame flying animals to ride, but this is a long and hard process, and the airships are far more convenient. They do this to they can indulge their love for travel with out having to do so under the gnomes rule. Still, many halflings are captains on the airships. The cataclysm revealed something to the elven nation that has caused them to become even more xenophobic. They eventually drove everyone off their shard, and now maintain just one city where visitors are tolerated, and rarely leave their shard themselves. Finally, humans, as always adapt and survive.
The plot for the campaign involves the secret the elves found. They werent native to the material plane. The elves as a race, were slaves to the Gith, who had a plane spanning empire. When they finally rose up and freed themselves the empire was crushed and they went into hiding on the material plane. Seeing as they became the haughty and proud race they were, the elves are rather ashamed of this discovery and are paranoid about anyone finding out.
Meanwhile, the Gith have discovered the shards floating there and think it would make a great place to finally start their new empire, plus they can get revenge on the elves at the same time.
Since the players wanted to start at lvl 5, they all had to be members of an explorer's guild called the Far League, whose job it is to explore beyond the farthest shard. This explains them being lvl 5 adventurers. Their choices are to go do their job and explore or go into town to kill time, I have hooks for both directions. We havent actually started playing yet, only finished character gen.