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.