| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hello and thanks for taking the time to read this, I appreciate the interest.
First off let me do a little bit of introductions, I have been playing various RPGs most of my life, from the late early 80s till I joined the military, now retired (with way to much time on my hands), I feel the call of the game again, so as a social exercise (and a tool to try and prevent isolation/insanity :) ) I decided to embark on a creative world building project...
Ever since I can remember reading about the various flora and fauna of the fantasy worlds I always wondered at why the massively powerful, intelligent, magically powerful races always were on the edges of the more mundane and common races, (I know from a game design basis its the easiest to develop and sell and so forth).
So I decided to create a world where two of the most iconic races of fantasy (Dragons and Giants) are the top of the food chain as it were.
within this setting, the premise is that a ancient Giant civilization developed and expanded and slowly subjugated most of the natural world and its challenges (with each of the many giant sub-races playing their part in its society, and not so much as each a race apart)
Until at some point the only real hurdle the giants faced was the power of the Draconic race, so without putting to much into this , the giants began hunting and eradicating their main rival in power, until it forced the various sub-races of the Dragon race to set aside differences and squabbles to unite in the face of extinction..
queue : epic battle montage etc.
which after hundreds of years of strife will lead to the current world setting.
My vision puts the world into a massively mountainous with tremendous valleys and raging rivers flowing through them, the giants and dragons now having settled into a existence based on families, clans and such, marshaling other races under their protection/dominance, and warband level skirmishes playing out as raids and blood feuds.
Most of the greatest of each race perished in the conflict leaving the world to a diminished and reduced reflection of the giants civilization (and now its fractured and scattered remains), and a new manner of life for the various breeds of draconic life.
Settled and wild representatives of each group vie for resources living space and power, and old hatreds die slowly or flare up once more.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Now the point to all of this is I wanted a setting where monstrous PCs, and more mainstream races could reasonably mix in a world that would support the premise and provide challenges at any level.
I was very impressed by the ultimate campaign book and want to implement a lot of the kingdom building and such into the setting to reflect the rebuilding and restructuring of the world, with holds ruled by Dragon families, and giant clans, and enclaves of humans, elves, dwarves etc, living in hidden settlements or dwelling under the rule of dragon/giant masters.
and along with all the other races and monsters providing color/flavor for settlements/power groups and such.
Kinda like a Viking world where the Vikings are the monstrous races.
Members of other races can of course rise to heights of power and carve out homes and domains for themselves. The idea is also to allow players to be giants and dragons if the group so chooses to play that way, also I would like to work on a skirmish level combat system to implement to reflect the low intensity warfare that most of these groups will implement.
Anyway thanks for reading and any creative ideas and input is welcomed of course, at some point I do plan on starting a online campaign with this setting (already invested in a roll20 account )so if interested feel free to say so.
Regards. :)
What you need to consider from the perspective of game balance is how to best deal with the sheer amounts of powers that both dragons and giants tend to have (not to mention the size issues). At the very least they're going to have to be toned down so that they don't overshadow the other races at first level.
If there are various citadels and cities of giants and dragons, what do they look like? The ruins would be magnificent structures and some of them might be reused by other races.
Do you need the standard races? One possible outcome of this war is that the standards had to become much tougher than usual, so the whole setting could start out with races that are in the "Advanced" (11-20 RP) or even "Monstrous" (21-30 RP)categories. It's also certainly not beyond possibility that giants and dragons alike could have altered the standards as well or that the magics used in their wars did.
This could also extend to the types of creatures that now inhabit the world, providing reasonable challenges for the more powerful PCs.
for the most part the dragons and giants (Jotun) would be used either in higher level parties, or for groups beginning as those races exclusively, its kinda up to the players and GM call on that.
No real cities or citadels of each race currently exist, small cities , more like large towns are the limit, and during the centuries long conflict much of the world was reclaimed by the wilderness, and numerous monstrous races, basically it gives a blank check for inserting almost any kind of threat.
Likely players would start out at 3-5 level owing to hazardous nature of the world, and the demands placed upon them, but a traditional approach could be used (1st level start) with some of the hidden enclaves of the smaller races (humans dwarves elves etc)
Also their would be a emphasis on cohorts and followers, warband building would be a pretty common route in this world, and those would reave and pillage the resources of rivals or whatever.
The basis for running a Pc of the Dragon and giant races is the premise that you begin as a wyrmling or giant youth, and that would be the factor to balance it within the party, but I am a pretty old hand at campaigns, and have run many with vastly differing power levels in the party and still was able to maintain a challenge for everyone. :)
I just enjoy the concept of a world overran with nature and monstrous creatures that can still survive due to the inhabitants being adapted to it, and with the twist that the "ruling races " are not humans or such.
Kinda like a darksun world with..trees and water :)
Fun ideas. A lot of your concepts would really appeal to me as a player. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.
thanks for the interest, if you will elaborate on the concepts that appeal the most to you as a player, and I may be able to elaborate on them and/or it may spark some new ideas for me.
Input is always welcome.:)
Hmmm...ok.
I like the idea of starting with the PC races as already defeated and having to scrape by, rather than being powerful and prolific. It's almost post-apocalyptic in that way.
I've always loved wild, natural settings most for adventuring and a land retaken by nature would tickle me.
I quite like both giants and dragons as classic RPG monsters. It seems to me though that the giant society would have to be more intelligent that I typically envision them being in order for them to pose a significant threat to dragons...unless they are just very motivated and have great numbers on their side.
I really like the idea of the standard races being more tough and feral than usual due to extremely harsh survival conditions.
As a GM, I would be hesitant and nervous about running a party of dragons. They are complicated monsters and it seems to me that would be out-of-the-ordinary enough to carry with it unforeseen challenges. That's entirely my own trepidation and not a fault of the setting though. Giants would be easier to run, but I would be most excited about running a standard race party stuck between the battling behemoths.
Side note: I've never used rolld20 before, but I would be very interested in playtesting this setting by pbp with you.
The basic idea behind the Jotun ancient society is at some point they were a united race, with each of the various sub-races fulfilling whatever role in the society they preformed best..alignments and such will be very flexible, and species is more of a deciding factor in their dealings with each other.
At their height of power the jotuns built tremendous cities, and preformed staggering acts of magical power, enslaving and control almost all the lesser races, and in their hubris they decided to subjugate even the dragon races to their whims.
Once the elder wyrms of the various Draconic races realized the full threat that the jotuns poised to their existence, it forced them to unite and meet the Giants in cataclysmic warfare, hundreds of years of unrestrained warfare between these races, ground down the jotun cities and civilization, and fundamentally changed the nature of draconic behavior.
eventually the greatest of each race succumbed to war, leaving few major leaders, and a general wind down of the conflict, Giants reverted to a less civilized more basic existence, and a lot of the old sub-species bigotry and disdain has resurfaced, but they do generally mingle together for mutual gain.
Dragons have abandoned much of their solitary tendencies and have begun dwelling in extended family groups, going so far as to act as patrons and or establishing lesser race settlements to provide services for the family, some extending into clans, again the various races have lost a lot of their infighting but the tendencies are still there.
Wild and settled examples of these racial groups are also scattered across the lands, acting as raiders,reavers and generally being a hazard.
I plan on making a few sub races of giant to reflect some of the ..breeding experiments that occurred during the long war.
and to allow a slightly lower level in road to giant culture, and i will go through the various bestiary books to sort of line up the available races on each side of the fence so to speak..but its going to be a lot of fun.
As to roll20 its a VTT system that's free to use, and I started a subscription to work on the setting through that, you can even find players there for games..its pretty cool. :)
Have Finished the first Bestiary books rundown of potential PC races for the setting.
Letter code:
J = available as a PC from the Jotun background
D = available as a PC from the Draconic background
W = available as a PC from the wilds background
Aasimer : J W
Boggard : W
Bugbear : J W
Centaur : J D W
Cyclops : J W
Derro : W
Drow : W
Duergar : J W
Gnoll : J D W
Goblin : J D W
Hobgoblin : J D W
Kobold : D W
Lizardfolk : D W
Minotaur : J W
Ogre : J W
Orc : J D W
Tiefling : J W
Troglodyte : D W
And a few mood setting art pieces ( I like to find some art that helps me in fixing the world view in my mind, that and some fitting music)
From various sources, and just for inspiration purposes.
Love the linked photos. They really evoke a great feel for what the setting looks like and it's exciting.
As to the PC races...I, personally, have very little interest in playing really monstrous races. I could imagine playing something nearly humanoid, like a centaur or giant, but the rest wouldn't be my own "cup of tea." Very cool that you've worked out those options for those who would enjoy that though.
well the race breakdown is also for my own system of figuring out what npcs would usually be within each of the "background" areas, since almost every hold, steading or whatnot will include a wide variety of races.
the general plan is once a party decides what background they want to hail from we will make pcs based on the races available from that one.
and the highest ECL character will set the bar for the others, with class levels added to make up the difference, it won't really be a optimizers playground since a lot of the various classes and such may not be available to each race and background.
But I am sure with the other options available it should still be fairly easy to find something interesting to play. :)
Well getting ready to launch my campaign on Roll20, well preliminary pre-game session will be this coming week and 1st game session the next, had quite a few interested people, but I think its gonna take a actual Q & A session to get the settings particulars across.
If anyone here is interested just go to roll20 (make a free account..because its free), and look for Drakjotun in the looking for group forum.
As I hash out more of the setting I will update this..maybe even give a running account of the adventurers in the campaign.