In the Beginning (or a little before)

Introduction

Back in the day, I loved nothing better than to sit down with a pad of loose-leaf, college-ruled paper, some hex paper, some graph paper, and a pencil and some colored pencils and whipping up D&D campaign worlds.  My high school gaming days were never given over to a single, generations-spanning campaign.  We'd switch GMs and settings often, so I ended up writing a lot of campaign worlds.

In retrospect, it is probably a kindness that I didn't keep any of them, because they were pretty bland.  Mostly, it was just an exercise in poorly thought-out maps and ideas where I stuck in everything from the PHB and the Monster Manual.  By the time I got better at world design, I had mostly abandoned D&D as a system.

But the appeal remains.  And now I have this bright, shiny blog that constantly hungers for new content.  So I've decided just for the heck of it, it'd be fun to whip up a campaign world.  Maybe someone will like it enough to offer me money to finish it. :)

So, here are the parameters:

• My world has to have room for every race in the Player's Handbook.
• I'm not allowed to add any new PC races.  I will try to avoid adding new monster races.
• All the Player's Handbook classes have to be present and make sense in the setting.  I am, however, allowed to suggest that certain class/race combinations are frowned upon.
• Should the time come, I am allowed (ye even encouraged) to write new PrCs.  But mostly I'm planning on skipping the mechanical sections.

My goal is to create a basic gazetteer that covers every region in the setting, world and "nation level" history, and discusses races and classes in some depth.  I might also do some maps.  It'd give me an excuse to learn some more about Campaign Cartographer.  When the world guide is done, I'll consider mechanics.  Maybe I'll even use d20, but I'm leaning toward Unisystem, since it's what I dearly love.

But rather than just produce the world book and post it here, I'm going to use the blog to post my initial thoughts, then assemble them into the coherent book at the end.

Now, let's begin.

Setting Flavor

Most D&D worlds derive from Middle Earth, and hence are European-flavored worlds with Elves off to one side, Dwarves off to another, and Hobbits hanging around somewhere.  There are Wizards and Clerics, and incredibly powerful monsters like Dragons, and yet normal, mortal humans tend to rule most kingdoms.  And I'm not going to completely condemn that approach.  It produces a setting that's familiar to most players, so it's easy to communicate.  If you have to spend too much time figuring out the setting, you have a very hard time doing anything else.  Tekumel and Journe have their hardcore fanbase, but they have never reached a lot of popular appeal simply because they're difficult to get into.

And yet, there's no good reason that a D&D world would look anything like medieval Europe.  Why wouldn't magical "technology" have caused massive societal changes?  Why aren't Dragons in charge?  Spell-resistant, damage resistant, magic-using creatures with massive damage capabilities would be hard to beat.

For that matter, why should we limit ourselves to a spherical world floating in space?  How about a flat disc with the bowl of heaven up above?  That'd sure be easier to map, let me tell you.

So my goal for this setting is to find a good middle-ground, to produce a setting that isn't too tied to convention, but stays close enough to it to be comfortable.  I'm looking for a novel approach to traditional material, rather than a whole new paradigm.

Over the next few posts, I'll be looking at many of the common assumptions of a D&D world and seeing how I can bend, twist, and shape them to work for me.