Thought I'd rescue this from the edge of the Abyss...
I still haven't come up with a good name for my swamp area. It's surrounded by mountains to the north, east, and west, and to the south is a very large lake.
I wouldn't mind giving it a fantastical name if I could think of something good. How do fantasy writers come up with names, anyway?
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UtsanomikoBros before DoesRollin' in the thlayRegistered Userregular
edited January 2009
A dartboard filled with syllables.
Or they just utter combinations of sounds out loud, trying to find one they don't hate, until they give up and stick with the last one.
I'm having a spot of trouble coming up with ideas for BBEGs. I can think of small-time cult leaders and monsters, but I haven't really hit on any evil mastermind concepts that seem too interesting to me.
What kind of characters have you guys used as BBEGs?
I am planning to take a cue from the likes of FF8, X-2, and Earthbound to have a rival or small-time baddie (or group of) from the earliest tier coming up through their ranks at a pace similar to or quicker than my heroes; even a competing group of heroes who are in it for motivations your group might disdain, things like that.
Although generally speaking I prefer to make at least one of them more competent than Pokey or the FF-series rivals. This sometimes works to spice up an Ancient Evil campaign with more interpersonal interaction rather than just Good v. Evil, yadda yadda yadda. It does require some good RPing on the part of DM though, in order to keep the PCs giving a crap about the competition.
Most of my BBEGs tend to favor the Utopia by any means necessary/radical freedom fighter tracks. A pseudo-BBEG I used was my old character that got DM-jacked... hard. Like, I was chaotic good but I was made lawfil evil via DM fiat / Geas or whatever it was, and then afterward had my char taken from me. It was a really sore point for me. Still is, sort of.
Though I've kept it around, I've constantly adjusted its role to be less major. Even though he was particularly strong in his own right, all he amounted to was a figurehead. His opponent and true campaign BBEG's sole motivation for action was jealously over the amount of attention his wife paid to his subjects. Like any rational being, he opted to treat the problem with death. My figurehead had to be the villain in order to have a foundation to fight against the other guy. And at endgame the figurehead was just a tank for the party resolve the conflict elsewhere.
Other individual BBEG's I've done just happen to be incredibly powerful beings who manipulate others for no reason other than they can. In general, I prefer to use large organizations or nations as BBEGs over individuals though.
But in the end, I'm not really a fan of white vs black/good vs evil deals. Everybody does something that can be viewed as a purely evil action. My campaign here was kicked off with some of the party on the way to taking part in what could objectively be viewed as an evil action: wiping out an entire city. From time to time I implied there was some dissent/debate over the action, but it was viewed as necessity. Evil doesn't have to be pure evil though, and good doesn't have to be absolute good, I guess is what I'm getting at? Just run with a character, not a villian.
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“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I like both kinds of villains. The three-dimensional variety are interesting and present great RPing opportunities, while the "evil for evil's sake" villain is fun in a cartoonish super villain kind of way. The second kind is also easier to make plots for, IMO. A fleshed-out antagonist needs proper motivations and a convincing back story, while the cartoonish super villain could possibly be behind any force of evil in the world.
Is anyone here a fan of the Mega Dungeon campaign model? I've never run anything like one before, but I think I'd like to after I've finished the campaign I'm working on now.
If you don't know what a Mega Dungeon is, it's basically a campaign that takes place mostly in one huge dungeon and was the preferred campaign-style of Gary Gygax. A town or city is probably located close-by, perhaps one whose economy is driven by adventurers who plunder the Mega Dungeon for treasure. Many monsters and factions make their homes in the dozens of levels of the Mega Dungeon, and the structure's features can vary wildly from area to area. The players never know what to expect, and the Dungeon Master gets to throw in whatever he wants without having to worry about it making sense. This combined with minimal emphasis on story turns the complex into one huge sandbox.
I'm sure there are old-school DnD modules that I could check out for inspiration (like Castle Greyhawk). The 4E DMG has a handy random dungeon generation section, and the 3.5 supplement Dungeonscape has a lot of nice material, too, such as ideas for dungeon themes and NPCs. Dungeonscape also includes tips for treating dungeons as cities run by monsters, which is a neat concept.
I'm sure some of you have played Spelunky. You know how you randomly find "kissing parlors" in the caves? I'd love to run a game session where the PCs come upon a brothel run by a rakshasa and hobgobln slavers.
"Candle light peeks between the archway's veil. As you push past and into the chamber you are greeted by the scent of incense and sweat. A tiger-headed humanoid sitting on a cushion at the far end of the room bids you welcome.
"'We don't get many visitors of your kind here. Fortunately for you I've acquired several girls from the surface.' The luxuriously-attired rakshasa gestures with his backwards hands towards the iron cages hanging from the ceiling, each one containing a frightened, scantily clad woman.
"'Of course your reputation has preceded you, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. As long as you don't cause this establishment any trouble, my staff won't cause you any trouble.' The fiend gives you a friendly, albeit toothy, grin. 'Now, would you care for the company of one of my fine consorts?'"
This area could wind up as merely a strange encounter, a morally-reprehensible diversion, or the sight of a heroic battle of good versus evil.
Oh, and of course if the PCs save the girls one of them will turn out to be a succubus in disguise.
i've always found the megadungeon the most compelling of campaign ideas, actually - one of the ideas i've kept in my head, buried in the dark recesses, is a campaign that basically takes place entirely in a fabrication of a mad wizard.
You mean like a mega dungeon demiplane? If so, sweet.
I don't know how many people would contribute (as this thread hasn't been as popular as I hoped it would be), but it might be interesting to make a Mega Dungeon thread here that posters can contribute ideas to. As it wouldn't have to coalesce into one adventure people could just throw in random ideas for encounters and scenarios that others could pick and choose for their own games as they want.
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UtsanomikoBros before DoesRollin' in the thlayRegistered Userregular
edited January 2009
Sounds like a good setting for an epic-level campaign, I'm picturing something like a cross between Sigil and the city of Dis (or I suppose Barbaroy for anyone who's seen Vampire Hunter D). An enormous monster-run city that is quite hostile to the adventurers but still is interested in their money and services.
Also, I now want to incorporate a wizard's tower in an adventure that has animated all the items in his keep and hides himself as an object as well. Eventually the party will have to realize he's still around and they have to search for him. Only some of the objects would be openly hostile and attack as standard encounters (a bear-skin run, swarms of books, chairs around a dinner table, a cooked turkey, etc); every other item checked will simply attack once and die from one hit, until the party has had a good run of encounters and you finally pick the next item to be the wizard.
What about the tower itself? Take a cue from the old-school "everything will kill you" trope and throw in doorways that crunch down on people like mouths (mechanically the same as a portcullis, but a living doorway in flavor). Oh, and don't forget these:
If you don't want the entire floor to be animated, how about tiles that rise up and fling themselves toward adventurers ala Link's Awakening?
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UtsanomikoBros before DoesRollin' in the thlayRegistered Userregular
edited January 2009
Animated rugs would function the same way, and overall I think I'd rather have things that are mobile and not so heavy. And being attacked by a dinette set and swarms of silverware is funnier. Definitely could make for an entertaining curveball to my preference for low-fantasy, classic fairytale & mythological adversaries.
Speaking of mythological, the Catoplepas in the first MM amuses me. It's such a great classic monster concept, and then it's drawn to be a pig-headed brontosaurus with a mace tail. And don't get be started on how odd the land shark looked back then.
When I heard about the Points of Light, I had an idea for a campaign setting that I thought would embody that quite nicely.
So there's a high-fantasy world dominated by humans, eladrin, dwarves and hobgoblins. Their cities are overpopulated, resources are running low, and all the brightest minds of the age have been trying to work out how to keep their lifestyle sustainable. Finally someone cracks it, and the solution lies in interplanar travel. The theory? Build a specific, self-contained city (known as a tief), and by a special ritual, shift that entire city over to the new, undeveloped plane. A gate will link the city to the now unoccupied landscape on the home plane, meaning that people and goods can be transported between planes, and apart from a few unruly natives, suddenly there's twice the space and almost twenty times the natural resources available. Fantastic!
As with all advances of this nature, the different factions compete to claim their space. As the original experimenters, the Eladrin cities are well placed in prime, level woodland, ready to be developed in their way. Much to their surprise, they have encounter numerous members of a surprisingly similar race to their own - a group that they refer to as elves. Upon arriving, they entreated with these noble savages, but as the years pass, more and more these elves are marginalised and their lands fall under the influence of Eladrin thaumotechnology; recently there has been conflict over a platinum refining plant scheduled to be built.
The dwarves, focusing on security from the natives, have built fortresses - but unfortunately their geographic correspondence to the new plane was less well advised. Instead of the mineral-rich mountainsides they had hoped for, the first batch of dwarven tiefs have formed an archipelago, just off the shore of the continent they had aimed for, though successive batches have been successfully built from that point towards the coveted mountains. The natives that they clash with most readily are sea giants, and the coastal humanoids known as orcs.
As the most diversely spread race of the old world (and fastest breeding), human settlements have been deliberately placed on a broad scatter around the habitable lands of the continents. They have encountered all manner of native races, and of all the old world races have the greatest understanding of the geography and geopolitics of these great new lands.
The wily hobgoblins have succeeded where the dwarves have failed - they have managed to land the vast majority of their tiefs in mineral-rich mountain ranges. Unfortunately, their accuracy has also led them into what are probably the most dangerous batches of previously unknown natives; giants, orcs, dragonborn, bugbears and goblins...who knows how the hobgoblins will cope?
Fast-forward five years. Dwarves are coming of age to whom wielding a spear is more natural than an axe. Humans have found that many of their young exposed to the effects of the tief gates have been born mutated - with ugly horns and other pseudo-demonic deformities. The elves edge ever nearer to a state of war with the neighbouring Eladrin, who as the masters of the thaumaturgic arts, are sure that their hand is guided by fate and destiny. The hobgoblins in the mountains are rapidly amassing wealth, to the point that their status in the old world is rising significantly; their workpower boosted by their domination of the native known as bugbears and goblins.
Fast-forward another ten years. The tief gates close. All of them. Anyone who is in the new world is now stuck here. Stuck here with the feral elves, the sweaty orcs, the deformed and demented tieflings, and the numerous other barbaric and monstrous races of this new world.
(Yes, this is all just an allegory for standard empiric colonization, but it sure works for points of light, and excuses any amount of "you don't know that region/god/race/class/ruin")
Wow, that's a pretty awesome and original concept.
You mentioned "thaumotechnology". I assume this means technology made possible by magic? The setting's history sounds more like a science fiction world than a fantasy one. What level of technology is emulated by magic?
Also, what happens to the races' original home plan once the tief gates close? It would be an interesting turn of events if beings from yet another plane conquered the first plane.
Undecided as to technology level to be honest, though `industrial revolution' would be a fun level. Crazy pollution, terrible working conditions, incredible waste.
The races' home plan is stuffed - the tiefs would be chockers with industrialists, oppressed natives, gold rushers, land speculators, miners, carpenters, and all manner of people with nowhere near enough knowledge to replicate the gate opening rituals. Ideally interaction with the old world wouldn't happen until late paragon, which would be something to think about at that time.
I had a somewhat similar idea while thinking of campaign settings for a game I'm gonna be running this summer, but yours is much more fleshed out, seeing as so far all I've got to go on is the Player's Handbook as I am waiting for my DMG and MM to arrive in the mail. I'll definitely be borrowing quite a bit from you as a starting point, for sure.
In my setting the Eladrin are responsible for the gates, and are using a variation of whatever magic allows their cities to exist partially in the Feywild. However, their usual method involves the Feywild as kind of a middle ground between the two planes, and they've tried to cut that out for the purposes of the other races. Because of this, occasionally a human crossing for the first time gets botched up, resulting in a tiefling with a somewhat broken mind (haven't decided if I'm gonna go for full memory loss and personality change or what yet, but the idea is that they are decidedly not human anymore, and even with something 'jogging' their memory they can never fully go back). The source of this corruption is unknown, as humans crossing into the Feywild by normal means don't magically transform into tieflings, though it's theorized that the corruption is caused by being spread across several planes at once.
I think the gates simultaneously collapsing is going to be lifted heavily from the end of the 2nd season of Dr. Who; each subsequent travel between the planes erodes slightly at the connection between them. However, under normal circumstances, such erosion would heal itself over time. But with the massive influx of colonists coming over, this connection isn't allowed to heal itself, until finally it collapses. I thought it would be a nice touch for the Eladrin cities (that in my game will exist across the two non-feywild planes as well as the Feywild) to be cut off suddenly from the Feywild. I don't know how much that would break their powers, not having read too terribly into detail on their connection.
You really got me with the cutting off of travel between the two planes, it reminds me of Firefly and the premise for Planetside. A civilization forced to rebuild itself when it's cut off from it's homeworld.
I also just want to say this is one of the best campaign setting threads I've seen. I started reading this one, and on a whim went looking at a bunch of more popular rpg websites, and nothing has come close to the creativity I've found here. Most of it revolves around Forgotten Realms vs. Eberron and Forgotten Realms 4e vs. 3.5.
I also just want to say this is one of the best campaign setting threads I've seen. I started reading this one, and on a whim went looking at a bunch of more popular rpg websites, and nothing has come close to the creativity I've found here. Most of it revolves around Forgotten Realms vs. Eberron and Forgotten Realms 4e vs. 3.5.
I think that's because most of the discussion of printed resources occurs over in the main D&D 4E thread, this is strictly for world building, which allows it to stray (and stay) off the more traditionally belabored paths.
Also, that sounds like a great campaign, both your version and what Hayasa was describing. It's really inspiring my one-off adventure that involves delving into the past of a couple of our campaigns PCs for a couple weeks when one of them's out of town (also so our DM can play). I've been struggling with plausible destruction/disappearance of most of an entire race (to which, of course, one of the PCs belongs), and I had kept trying to come up with some sort of monstrous assault, but I don't wanna step on the main DM's toes. A planar travel issue, though...especially if it's just them mucking with the planes, it keeps it as an isolated incident unless the DM chooses to expand the ramifications, allows for interesting monsters and settings, and could wipe out an entire race's home without much political upheaval (allowing the DM to pretty seamlessly keep right on doing whatever it is he's doing with the intrigue and whatnot).
So my 4E campaign is starting this saturday. I have three players, two brothers who are playing a warforged paladin, and a teifling warlock, and my wife who is playing a genasi swordmage. There is the possibility of two additional players coming into the campaign once spring comes around (damn grad students). So as it stands the party is two defenders and a striker. I'm not worried about balancing the encounters because I'm usually pretty good about adjusting difficulty on the fly, and 4E seems pretty easy to make these neccisary adjustments (though any tips would be helpful).
It's taken some pretty big turns but in the end it's come out to be really pleasing so far. In kind of a strange cycle I had started with a wholely realized world with pages and pages of history and background, and have decided to fully embrace the points-o'-light campaign style. The reason being is twofold, the world's history will often be created by the players themselves fopr example as they roll checks to see the history of an item a succesful roll may mean they are able to create a background for it. If the player says the sword was once owned by the renouned Astoriax of Genuag Lake and was used in the Titan wars, there are now three new pieces of the world that exist and can be built further on. Perhaps the next adventure will be to Genuag Lake to discover the fate of Astoriax. With a points-of-light setup this is easily facilitated. The second reason is that the players themselves have expressed a desire to start out simply dungeon diving to get their feet wet in the game, and as a DM I'm not sure what their play style will be like. This way I will be able to implement dungeons and adventures that they feel are fun as we go rather then completely re-writing a story becuase they are sick of the lake temple.
There are some basic principles of the world though which I will establish. The tech level is fairly advanced. Airships exist though they are fairly unrelliable, major cities have power sources fueled by ancient arcane magic. Magic is pretty common in use, but difficult to weild. Firearms have just been invented (basically one shot crossbows with slightly increased damage and accuracy used as an encounter power), and it isn't uncommon to see magical technology that is equivilant to modern tech for example a washing machine powered by a tiny water elemental. This I intend to have border on ridiculous and lean towards a discworld style technological background.
I also want to establish a very ancient and powerful civilization who's backstory is created as we go, but who's influence is seen throughout the whole campaign.
Which brings me to the story. Since they are mostly interest in just going out killing things and stealing shit I've decided the best way to go about this was to have a sponser who sends them out to gather artifacts and do odd jobs. The trick is the sponser is basically Wednsday from American Gods, an old dying god who is on a quest to kill the new gods (those in the player handbook) and return to power. Heroic tier will have them traveling the world to gather artifacts and allies though they won't know to what en, by paragon tier he will start sending them on planar missions. At the end of the paragon path or by the middle they will have figured out what exactly his game is, and we will go from there. If they stick with him they will help kill the new gods, but if they go against him...well I have quite planned that out.
To make a long story short it's American Gods + Discworld + Stargate.
Ideally interaction with the old world wouldn't happen until late paragon, which would be something to think about at that time.
You've got some interesting ideas there, very nice.
Regarding the home world: Maybe beings from the Far Realm have noticed all of this "plane jumping" and come closer to investigate, using the inter-planar pathways of the gates themselves to pass into the Prime material world.
Caring little for the fate of insignificant mortals, their passage through the gates caused them to collapse, sealing off the Home world from the New world.
Maybe when the PCs re-establish contact with the Home world, they find that grotesque abominations have taken over, enslaved most of the people and generally taken one giant-sized, tentacled dump on their homeland.
Which brings me to the story. Since they are mostly interest in just going out killing things and stealing shit I've decided the best way to go about this was to have a sponser who sends them out to gather artifacts and do odd jobs. The trick is the sponser is basically Wednsday from American Gods, an old dying god who is on a quest to kill the new gods (those in the player handbook) and return to power. Heroic tier will have them traveling the world to gather artifacts and allies though they won't know to what en, by paragon tier he will start sending them on planar missions. At the end of the paragon path or by the middle they will have figured out what exactly his game is, and we will go from there. If they stick with him they will help kill the new gods, but if they go against him...well I have quite planned that out.
This may not come up in your campaign, but how will the new gods react when they notice a group of mortals is stockpiling weapons that could be used against them?
I'm a fan of interplanar politics, so I'd imagine that some of the more intelligent extraplanar beings would be aware of something as significant as the stockpiling of god-killing artifacts. Perhaps the old god is being manipulated by an evil god such as Asmodeus or Lolth even Tharizdun? Maybe the deaths of the gods would empower Orcus or call Atropus to the world, or both?
As for the old god itself, maybe its a primordial or even the Primal Spirit? I don't know what the official background of the Primal Spirit is, but I think it would be interesting if the Primal Spirit represented "the old ways". Maybe while the gods were busy fighting the primordials they didn't have time to answer the prayers of those in the world, and so turned to an animistic belief in the Primal Spirit until the gods returned from fighting.
Which brings me to the story. Since they are mostly interest in just going out killing things and stealing shit I've decided the best way to go about this was to have a sponser who sends them out to gather artifacts and do odd jobs. The trick is the sponser is basically Wednsday from American Gods, an old dying god who is on a quest to kill the new gods (those in the player handbook) and return to power. Heroic tier will have them traveling the world to gather artifacts and allies though they won't know to what en, by paragon tier he will start sending them on planar missions. At the end of the paragon path or by the middle they will have figured out what exactly his game is, and we will go from there. If they stick with him they will help kill the new gods, but if they go against him...well I have quite planned that out.
This may not come up in your campaign, but how will the new gods react when they notice a group of mortals is stockpiling weapons that could be used against them?
I'm a fan of interplanar politics, so I'd imagine that some of the more intelligent extraplanar beings would be aware of something as significant as the stockpiling of god-killing artifacts. Perhaps the old god is being manipulated by an evil god such as Asmodeus or Lolth even Tharizdun? Maybe the deaths of the gods would empower Orcus or call Atropus to the world, or both?
As for the old god itself, maybe its a primordial or even the Primal Spirit? I don't know what the official background of the Primal Spirit is, but I think it would be interesting if the Primal Spirit represented "the old ways". Maybe while the gods were busy fighting the primordials they didn't have time to answer the prayers of those in the world, and so turned to an animistic belief in the Primal Spirit until the gods returned from fighting.
You got what I was going for partly right.
The order of appearance of gods in the creation story is so:
Primal Gods (think shamanistic) -> Primordials -> the new gods (PHB gods)
Everything existed on a single plane when the primal gods were in power. Basically the nexus from that shit star trek movie. It was the primordials that then took this plane divided it and then shaped it. Then the new gods moved in and acted like they ran the show from the begining. All in all I'm leaving the existing cosmology in place but I am adding a prologue.
The particular primal god they are working for is the Trickster god. So he is essentially a fantastic con artist. While the players are gathering artifacts he will be working behind the scenes playing the "thefts" as a way of moving the new gods to act against eachother. Sort of a three card monte, but instead of cards it's +6 longswords and Folding boats.
Thats a good idea of having him be a pawn of a Big badass god, or at least make it look like he's a pawn .
What are some of the crazier figurative curve balls you've thrown/had thrown at you in a single session?
The mention on one of these boards about having an enemy with a weird effect that reversed the effects of dice (1 crits, 20 fails, etc) got me thinking, and here's my idea:
planar disturbance/illusionist villain that causes the characters to switch roles/shift times. I am working to rename the different skills and powers each time, even print off revamped character sheets accordingly, and make the source of this perturbance a recurring event/enemy, so that every couple levels we can switch things up without losing our characters or their personalities.
As an example, I was gonna have them do a Fallout-style adventure, with some skills changed (arcana::science, heal::medicine, heavy blades::big guns, etc.) and the scenery updated until they track down the source of the disturbance. I've also been toying with concepts for present-day, prehistoric, non-dystopian future (star trek/wars, flash gordon, etc), maybe even something earthbound-ish, but with just a few (read: max of 4 depending on player reception) per tier of varying lengths, from a single encounter to a whole week's playsession.
I am not sure how much to play up the transformations; if it's like when the main guys in FF7 and FF8 switch and know all of the guy's skills and are like an extra mind in his body, or if i actually whisk them there, more Black Knight (yes, the Martin Lawrence movie) esque. Maybe I should do some of both?
I was also thinking of having this baddie or other supernatural force cause encounters where the players are forced to switch PCs via some form of mindtakery, sorta "freaky friday"-style. Except they only keep their personality, not any of their skills, because even if you say only a wizard's body has the arcane ability for spells, his mind still retains his diplomacy, arcana, and bluff skills, which would be ridiculous in an athletic, acrobatic, endurance-trained rogue.
Also, If a player misses one of the mindtaking sessions, his/her mind gets swapped with a horse or creature of equivalently amusing nature for the battle, causing his character to perform random actions the whole time.
Thoughts, comments, similar or weirder experiences?
I'm studying Greek society in World History, and though many of you probably already knew this it seems that the DnD pantheon is heavily based on Greek religion. It's strange to me that a game that largely assumes a world based on the Medieval period would take so many cues from Greek religion. I like the Greek-influenced religion, but now that I've become more aware of it I'd like to integrate the belief systems of the Medieval period to make some sort of weird hodgepodge.
Ancestor worship might be fun to incorporate as well. The core setting assumed by the 4E books states that the vast majority of souls vanish from the multiverse. I could choose to ignore that, but as I'd prefer to stick close to the core setting I think I'll work around that with unique beings. Ghosts are the most obvious beings to use, but the Berbalangs in the Monster Manual retain the memories of the people they eat and thus could be important in ancestor worship. Various forms of intelligent undead would work in societies similar to the ones described in Open Grave. With the release of the PHB2 I could use Devas as a focus for ancestor worship in some societies as well.
Has anyone used a different form of religion for their campaign worlds in this or previous editions?
Arrangements have already been made for me to DM the next campaign for my group, at which point several of our previous heroes will have ascended to godhood and will come complete with their own channel divinity powers that I'll develop as we get closer. Probably going to just combine some of the other powers together for it.
As for similarities with old world religions, I feel like there are notable parallels with Greek, Roman, Norse, and Pagan religions. This makes plenty of sense though, as pretty much any polytheistic pantheon follows a similar structure: similar concepts/professions/elements get the same god, each god has many associated professions/dominions (Apollo has luting, archery, invention), etc.
That said, there is a huge deviation in D&D and ancient western polytheism - greeks didn't really have evil gods. They had the titans, who were related to the gods, but they were sorta mindless brutes who didnt have worshippers or wouldn't have cared if they did. And some of the gods were dicks, but all the gods interacted in a very soap-opera-y manner, making "good" very hard to discern - the gods were just like people, except for the whole "being gods" thing (which is actually one of the reasons I have no problem elevating a reformed alcoholic cleric to Godhood).
I would be really interested to see a campaign that used a more ambiguous definition of alignment with respect to the gods - the gods themselves not specifically being good or evil, and maybe playing a more active role, a la the greek and roman myths. It would appeal more to my amorality to not have to be "good" or "evil" and just stick with maybe lawful, neutral, unlawful.
Plus, I think it could make for an interesting and legendary adventure if the gods are flawed and entangling themselves in the mortal coil, noticeably active in the world in mid-late heroic teir and actively interacting with the plot and the PCs by about halfway through the campaign. Maybe even have their progeny be some of the Baddies and PCs. I mean, according to the DMG the heroes are a special class of people, rare and elevated above the norm, of uncommon skill and all that, and being related to gods would fit that bill and allow for some easy pillaging of ancient myths.
Though in hindsight it's super-obvious, I've figured out a way to reincorporate my "Eladrin Venice" concept into my campaign. I'm thinking now that the swamp is just a frontier territory owned by a nearby human kingdom in the mortal world, while in the Feywild the swamp is host to an eladrin city. The human kingdom sends goods down river and through the swamp to a portal to the Feywild. The eladrin in return ship goods to a gate to the human kingdom via more expansive waterways.
At first I was trying to find a reason for why trade isn't just conducted entirely through Feywild trade routes. Then I remembered something from Manual of the Planes: traveling the same route in the Feywild can be shorter one direction and longer the other way. I can also say that the river current in the mortal world is much faster than the slow-moving waterways in the Feywild.
I've also figured out a way to use my idea for the city to be swamped and infested by undead. Instead of the city being like that from the get-go the PCs can work to keep fomorians and other underground monsters from ruining the city from underneath.
So, I'm putting together a campaign for some friends giving things a bit of a magic-heavy tweak, also permitting use of any published PC races. I just thought I'd throw my ideas up on this rarely-touched thread to get anyone's input. (also, was thinking about trying my hand at a PbP through the setting soon, barring an all-primal game distracting me)
Spoilered for Wall o' text.
Of course, there's a pretty well-developed starting location:
River's Watch:
Ages ago, it was a supply outpost along the great river Thareyn, but it has since adapted and grown into robust city with the passing of time; beginning in one of the ancient wars, when the supply outpostt became reinforced as a fort and barracks, to defend ships' safe passage out to sea and up to the larger cities inland.
When Humans first rose to power in the region, the town became a bustling trade city.
For interracial peace and to assure worldwide trade, the Humans later gave the eastern side of the river to the Dwarves in exchange for passage under the Umbril Peaks. Once there, the intrepid dwarves built a colossal stone archway between the two sides of the river, which still stands and is a focal point of local lore.
In the interim years, the town has swelled and dwindled nearly a dozen times with war, famine, and political upheaval being the most noted among the causes.
Recent times are little different, though a calm has settled on the town. The world has been recently (read: couple hundred years past) ravaged by a war that seems to have shifted the very Planes, leaving most people simply trying to live their lives in peace. Since the war, the world has been relatively turmoil-free; a few kingdoms have been reorganizing themselves, but most people are unaffected as of yet, including the town of River's Watch. And between travelers crossing the river via the bridge and the ships making their way up and down river, the town has settled in as a boisterous trading crossroads. As such, it is equipped with several Inns of varying pedigrees, and even has a tavern that isn't also an Inn (which is notable in that it's quite a rarity to prosper entirely on the profit of food and ale); it is the Cheeky Friar, which caters primarily to passing sailors.
The songs of the Last War still cut the night air in all the taverns, telling tales of lands across the Ocean, epic battles, and the heroes that fought them. These tales are never remiss to include the fact that heroes came of all races and creeds, and these same sentiments are seen on the streets every day; there is no consideration for race, only character (though one can frequently tell ancestral nation at a glance for most any race, such as taller, darker humans coming from the arid plains, while the shorter hail from the snowy south).
Recently, River's Watch has seen another group take up residence, members of the Historical Excavation and Lore Preservation Society (HELPS). They investigate the bardic stories from towns around the world and try to find proof of what kernels of truth may have birthed the legends. The group believes that the plains just east of the town hold some lost secrets. They have begun an archeological dig on the site and have already come up with sufficient enough finds that the Mayor of River's Watch is hosting their leader, Junah, and arranged with the Crimson Palm and the Golden Iris (two of the most prominent local inns) to house the group until further notice.
And then there's just overall information:
Planes:
Planar arrangement is similar to that out of the PHB/DMG; the plane that most people, including the PCs, live in is the material plane (we are live. ing. in a material world.) There are also 3 parallel planes (the Feywild, Shadowfell, and Far Realm) and each has some influence on the other, and certain points at which the planes intersect (often resulting in unnaturally thick and vibrant jungles, unusual fog or darkness, or other slightly out-of-place settings). Mostly the Material plane serves as a kind of middle ground between them.
Planet:
It's called Earth; easier than making something up, and terms like "Earthsoul" and "earthen" still make sense. The continent (Agro) on which the PCs' civilization exits is huge - think Asia - but the cold is to the south and warm, equatorial conditions to the north. Also, unlike Asia, where half of Russia is tundra or snow-covered, there is some tundra, then enormous snow-covered mountain ranges through which no one has ever fully passed, though that's few have even bothered trying (more than the first few mountains in, which do house some dwarven and goblin settlements, the sun doesn't even reach and storms are frequent). There are rumors of continents beyond Agro to all sides, but there is very little in the way of evidence.
Civilizations:
All civilized races coexist relatively amicably. This does not mean the world is without Evil, just that each race tends to dabble in such pursuits pretty equally; in fact, the groups with the most evenly distributed numbers of each race are bandits, followed closely by adventurers, major secular societies, religious organizations, and sailors.
Also, though it isn't uncommon to see just about any race anywhere, many locations have what were once racially-exclusive, and still racial majority, cities. For example, the Dwarven city of Untra, which occupies the caverns beneath a mountain of the same name, is home to mainly Dwarves (~40%) and Drow(~20%). Many above-ground non-fey-built cities are predominantly Human, because their comparatively short lifespans lead them to have more kids (4 kids/couple on average, versus the 2/couple averages of most other dominant races). For examples of Human-y cities: Caemlyn is about 60% Human, as is the seaside port city Bianca. Fey-built cities are, naturally, Eladrin and Elven-dominated, the two races accounting for more than 70% of the population of Nirava, while the desert town of Kah'mell is Dragonborn run.
Few are left that remember the Last War. Most who survived it were either too young to know what was going on or old enough that they've long since passed (it was close to 400 years ago). Even accounts of current events tend to distort much of the news (there are no telephones, so it's much like playing a game of telephone...does that make sense?), which is why HELPS was formed, to try and piece together the facts about the war and times before (many records of previous ages were lost when the cities were beseiged).
In the rebuilding that has followed the last Age, there has been very little warring; militias of neighboring regions have occasionally disputed the edges of dominions, but investigations by regional commanders usually reveal it to be nothing more than a ploy for one side or the other to get a prime piece of farmland, hunting ground, etc. Most people simply try to make a living farming or trading, and devotion to many widely varying religious sects keeps most people just praying that no war does erupt, though political manuevering is starting to become prevalent in some areas, especially important trade hubs where tariffs are the prime source of native wealth. (note: Crime does exist. I'm just pointing out that there's no current global plight or major criminal syndicate. Yet.)
Magic:
The War was fought with more than steel and flame - Magic played a very large role. In the years since, it's been one of the quickest aspects of everyday life to rebound, thanks to the packrat-ish nature of most magic-weilders (many tomes and volumes of magical and planar lore have been easily recovered, though I'm sure you guys will find there are plenty still itching to be uncovered again).
It's not exactly commonplace to be a Wizard (or other magic user: this includes clerics, shaman, warlocks, etc.). A town the size of River's Watch probably has one resident magic-user who does fortune-telling, minor healing, and advises the local political powers from time to time. There are also probably a handful (on the high side) that could be trained, but most could never master much more than cantrips and basic healing spells. Even so, enough people can use such power, and enough functional magical equipment survived, that despite often being impressive everyday magic isn't really surprising to people (it's not "witchcraft" nor that sort of unclear LotR stuff; it's magic).
Some examples that are common knowledge of everyday uses of magic:
In Bianca, they have central rooms in most of their larger buildings that use magic to move between floors (called "Levetators"). Untra is lit by large, opaque globes on poles and mounted against walls throughout that provide light whenever anyone is near. Ocean-worthy ships often use magical enchantments or have resident Clerics, Shaman, or other magic users that can calm the seas and direct the winds. On the western side of the continent there is a group of islands that move up and down the coast hundreds of miles, some of which even submerge entirely from time to time (people aren't clear on why). There are plentiful magical creatures in the world, from simple wood sprites and satyrs to plane-shifting beasts, and many cities have still-functioning ancient wards barring vermin from entering.
Posts
I still haven't come up with a good name for my swamp area. It's surrounded by mountains to the north, east, and west, and to the south is a very large lake.
I wouldn't mind giving it a fantastical name if I could think of something good. How do fantasy writers come up with names, anyway?
Or they just utter combinations of sounds out loud, trying to find one they don't hate, until they give up and stick with the last one.
At least those are my methods.
What kind of characters have you guys used as BBEGs?
Although generally speaking I prefer to make at least one of them more competent than Pokey or the FF-series rivals. This sometimes works to spice up an Ancient Evil campaign with more interpersonal interaction rather than just Good v. Evil, yadda yadda yadda. It does require some good RPing on the part of DM though, in order to keep the PCs giving a crap about the competition.
Though I've kept it around, I've constantly adjusted its role to be less major. Even though he was particularly strong in his own right, all he amounted to was a figurehead. His opponent and true campaign BBEG's sole motivation for action was jealously over the amount of attention his wife paid to his subjects. Like any rational being, he opted to treat the problem with death. My figurehead had to be the villain in order to have a foundation to fight against the other guy. And at endgame the figurehead was just a tank for the party resolve the conflict elsewhere.
Other individual BBEG's I've done just happen to be incredibly powerful beings who manipulate others for no reason other than they can. In general, I prefer to use large organizations or nations as BBEGs over individuals though.
But in the end, I'm not really a fan of white vs black/good vs evil deals. Everybody does something that can be viewed as a purely evil action. My campaign here was kicked off with some of the party on the way to taking part in what could objectively be viewed as an evil action: wiping out an entire city. From time to time I implied there was some dissent/debate over the action, but it was viewed as necessity. Evil doesn't have to be pure evil though, and good doesn't have to be absolute good, I guess is what I'm getting at? Just run with a character, not a villian.
If you don't know what a Mega Dungeon is, it's basically a campaign that takes place mostly in one huge dungeon and was the preferred campaign-style of Gary Gygax. A town or city is probably located close-by, perhaps one whose economy is driven by adventurers who plunder the Mega Dungeon for treasure. Many monsters and factions make their homes in the dozens of levels of the Mega Dungeon, and the structure's features can vary wildly from area to area. The players never know what to expect, and the Dungeon Master gets to throw in whatever he wants without having to worry about it making sense. This combined with minimal emphasis on story turns the complex into one huge sandbox.
I'm sure there are old-school DnD modules that I could check out for inspiration (like Castle Greyhawk). The 4E DMG has a handy random dungeon generation section, and the 3.5 supplement Dungeonscape has a lot of nice material, too, such as ideas for dungeon themes and NPCs. Dungeonscape also includes tips for treating dungeons as cities run by monsters, which is a neat concept.
I'm sure some of you have played Spelunky. You know how you randomly find "kissing parlors" in the caves? I'd love to run a game session where the PCs come upon a brothel run by a rakshasa and hobgobln slavers.
This area could wind up as merely a strange encounter, a morally-reprehensible diversion, or the sight of a heroic battle of good versus evil.
Oh, and of course if the PCs save the girls one of them will turn out to be a succubus in disguise.
think Truman Show meets DnD.
I don't know how many people would contribute (as this thread hasn't been as popular as I hoped it would be), but it might be interesting to make a Mega Dungeon thread here that posters can contribute ideas to. As it wouldn't have to coalesce into one adventure people could just throw in random ideas for encounters and scenarios that others could pick and choose for their own games as they want.
Also, I now want to incorporate a wizard's tower in an adventure that has animated all the items in his keep and hides himself as an object as well. Eventually the party will have to realize he's still around and they have to search for him. Only some of the objects would be openly hostile and attack as standard encounters (a bear-skin run, swarms of books, chairs around a dinner table, a cooked turkey, etc); every other item checked will simply attack once and die from one hit, until the party has had a good run of encounters and you finally pick the next item to be the wizard.
If you don't want the entire floor to be animated, how about tiles that rise up and fling themselves toward adventurers ala Link's Awakening?
Speaking of mythological, the Catoplepas in the first MM amuses me. It's such a great classic monster concept, and then it's drawn to be a pig-headed brontosaurus with a mace tail. And don't get be started on how odd the land shark looked back then.
So there's a high-fantasy world dominated by humans, eladrin, dwarves and hobgoblins. Their cities are overpopulated, resources are running low, and all the brightest minds of the age have been trying to work out how to keep their lifestyle sustainable. Finally someone cracks it, and the solution lies in interplanar travel. The theory? Build a specific, self-contained city (known as a tief), and by a special ritual, shift that entire city over to the new, undeveloped plane. A gate will link the city to the now unoccupied landscape on the home plane, meaning that people and goods can be transported between planes, and apart from a few unruly natives, suddenly there's twice the space and almost twenty times the natural resources available. Fantastic!
As with all advances of this nature, the different factions compete to claim their space. As the original experimenters, the Eladrin cities are well placed in prime, level woodland, ready to be developed in their way. Much to their surprise, they have encounter numerous members of a surprisingly similar race to their own - a group that they refer to as elves. Upon arriving, they entreated with these noble savages, but as the years pass, more and more these elves are marginalised and their lands fall under the influence of Eladrin thaumotechnology; recently there has been conflict over a platinum refining plant scheduled to be built.
The dwarves, focusing on security from the natives, have built fortresses - but unfortunately their geographic correspondence to the new plane was less well advised. Instead of the mineral-rich mountainsides they had hoped for, the first batch of dwarven tiefs have formed an archipelago, just off the shore of the continent they had aimed for, though successive batches have been successfully built from that point towards the coveted mountains. The natives that they clash with most readily are sea giants, and the coastal humanoids known as orcs.
As the most diversely spread race of the old world (and fastest breeding), human settlements have been deliberately placed on a broad scatter around the habitable lands of the continents. They have encountered all manner of native races, and of all the old world races have the greatest understanding of the geography and geopolitics of these great new lands.
The wily hobgoblins have succeeded where the dwarves have failed - they have managed to land the vast majority of their tiefs in mineral-rich mountain ranges. Unfortunately, their accuracy has also led them into what are probably the most dangerous batches of previously unknown natives; giants, orcs, dragonborn, bugbears and goblins...who knows how the hobgoblins will cope?
Fast-forward five years. Dwarves are coming of age to whom wielding a spear is more natural than an axe. Humans have found that many of their young exposed to the effects of the tief gates have been born mutated - with ugly horns and other pseudo-demonic deformities. The elves edge ever nearer to a state of war with the neighbouring Eladrin, who as the masters of the thaumaturgic arts, are sure that their hand is guided by fate and destiny. The hobgoblins in the mountains are rapidly amassing wealth, to the point that their status in the old world is rising significantly; their workpower boosted by their domination of the native known as bugbears and goblins.
Fast-forward another ten years. The tief gates close. All of them. Anyone who is in the new world is now stuck here. Stuck here with the feral elves, the sweaty orcs, the deformed and demented tieflings, and the numerous other barbaric and monstrous races of this new world.
(Yes, this is all just an allegory for standard empiric colonization, but it sure works for points of light, and excuses any amount of "you don't know that region/god/race/class/ruin")
You mentioned "thaumotechnology". I assume this means technology made possible by magic? The setting's history sounds more like a science fiction world than a fantasy one. What level of technology is emulated by magic?
Also, what happens to the races' original home plan once the tief gates close? It would be an interesting turn of events if beings from yet another plane conquered the first plane.
The races' home plan is stuffed - the tiefs would be chockers with industrialists, oppressed natives, gold rushers, land speculators, miners, carpenters, and all manner of people with nowhere near enough knowledge to replicate the gate opening rituals. Ideally interaction with the old world wouldn't happen until late paragon, which would be something to think about at that time.
I had a somewhat similar idea while thinking of campaign settings for a game I'm gonna be running this summer, but yours is much more fleshed out, seeing as so far all I've got to go on is the Player's Handbook as I am waiting for my DMG and MM to arrive in the mail. I'll definitely be borrowing quite a bit from you as a starting point, for sure.
In my setting the Eladrin are responsible for the gates, and are using a variation of whatever magic allows their cities to exist partially in the Feywild. However, their usual method involves the Feywild as kind of a middle ground between the two planes, and they've tried to cut that out for the purposes of the other races. Because of this, occasionally a human crossing for the first time gets botched up, resulting in a tiefling with a somewhat broken mind (haven't decided if I'm gonna go for full memory loss and personality change or what yet, but the idea is that they are decidedly not human anymore, and even with something 'jogging' their memory they can never fully go back). The source of this corruption is unknown, as humans crossing into the Feywild by normal means don't magically transform into tieflings, though it's theorized that the corruption is caused by being spread across several planes at once.
I think the gates simultaneously collapsing is going to be lifted heavily from the end of the 2nd season of Dr. Who; each subsequent travel between the planes erodes slightly at the connection between them. However, under normal circumstances, such erosion would heal itself over time. But with the massive influx of colonists coming over, this connection isn't allowed to heal itself, until finally it collapses. I thought it would be a nice touch for the Eladrin cities (that in my game will exist across the two non-feywild planes as well as the Feywild) to be cut off suddenly from the Feywild. I don't know how much that would break their powers, not having read too terribly into detail on their connection.
You really got me with the cutting off of travel between the two planes, it reminds me of Firefly and the premise for Planetside. A civilization forced to rebuild itself when it's cut off from it's homeworld.
I also just want to say this is one of the best campaign setting threads I've seen. I started reading this one, and on a whim went looking at a bunch of more popular rpg websites, and nothing has come close to the creativity I've found here. Most of it revolves around Forgotten Realms vs. Eberron and Forgotten Realms 4e vs. 3.5.
I think that's because most of the discussion of printed resources occurs over in the main D&D 4E thread, this is strictly for world building, which allows it to stray (and stay) off the more traditionally belabored paths.
Also, that sounds like a great campaign, both your version and what Hayasa was describing. It's really inspiring my one-off adventure that involves delving into the past of a couple of our campaigns PCs for a couple weeks when one of them's out of town (also so our DM can play). I've been struggling with plausible destruction/disappearance of most of an entire race (to which, of course, one of the PCs belongs), and I had kept trying to come up with some sort of monstrous assault, but I don't wanna step on the main DM's toes. A planar travel issue, though...especially if it's just them mucking with the planes, it keeps it as an isolated incident unless the DM chooses to expand the ramifications, allows for interesting monsters and settings, and could wipe out an entire race's home without much political upheaval (allowing the DM to pretty seamlessly keep right on doing whatever it is he's doing with the intrigue and whatnot).
It's taken some pretty big turns but in the end it's come out to be really pleasing so far. In kind of a strange cycle I had started with a wholely realized world with pages and pages of history and background, and have decided to fully embrace the points-o'-light campaign style. The reason being is twofold, the world's history will often be created by the players themselves fopr example as they roll checks to see the history of an item a succesful roll may mean they are able to create a background for it. If the player says the sword was once owned by the renouned Astoriax of Genuag Lake and was used in the Titan wars, there are now three new pieces of the world that exist and can be built further on. Perhaps the next adventure will be to Genuag Lake to discover the fate of Astoriax. With a points-of-light setup this is easily facilitated. The second reason is that the players themselves have expressed a desire to start out simply dungeon diving to get their feet wet in the game, and as a DM I'm not sure what their play style will be like. This way I will be able to implement dungeons and adventures that they feel are fun as we go rather then completely re-writing a story becuase they are sick of the lake temple.
There are some basic principles of the world though which I will establish. The tech level is fairly advanced. Airships exist though they are fairly unrelliable, major cities have power sources fueled by ancient arcane magic. Magic is pretty common in use, but difficult to weild. Firearms have just been invented (basically one shot crossbows with slightly increased damage and accuracy used as an encounter power), and it isn't uncommon to see magical technology that is equivilant to modern tech for example a washing machine powered by a tiny water elemental. This I intend to have border on ridiculous and lean towards a discworld style technological background.
I also want to establish a very ancient and powerful civilization who's backstory is created as we go, but who's influence is seen throughout the whole campaign.
Which brings me to the story. Since they are mostly interest in just going out killing things and stealing shit I've decided the best way to go about this was to have a sponser who sends them out to gather artifacts and do odd jobs. The trick is the sponser is basically Wednsday from American Gods, an old dying god who is on a quest to kill the new gods (those in the player handbook) and return to power. Heroic tier will have them traveling the world to gather artifacts and allies though they won't know to what en, by paragon tier he will start sending them on planar missions. At the end of the paragon path or by the middle they will have figured out what exactly his game is, and we will go from there. If they stick with him they will help kill the new gods, but if they go against him...well I have quite planned that out.
To make a long story short it's American Gods + Discworld + Stargate.
You've got some interesting ideas there, very nice.
Regarding the home world: Maybe beings from the Far Realm have noticed all of this "plane jumping" and come closer to investigate, using the inter-planar pathways of the gates themselves to pass into the Prime material world.
Caring little for the fate of insignificant mortals, their passage through the gates caused them to collapse, sealing off the Home world from the New world.
Maybe when the PCs re-establish contact with the Home world, they find that grotesque abominations have taken over, enslaved most of the people and generally taken one giant-sized, tentacled dump on their homeland.
This may not come up in your campaign, but how will the new gods react when they notice a group of mortals is stockpiling weapons that could be used against them?
I'm a fan of interplanar politics, so I'd imagine that some of the more intelligent extraplanar beings would be aware of something as significant as the stockpiling of god-killing artifacts. Perhaps the old god is being manipulated by an evil god such as Asmodeus or Lolth even Tharizdun? Maybe the deaths of the gods would empower Orcus or call Atropus to the world, or both?
As for the old god itself, maybe its a primordial or even the Primal Spirit? I don't know what the official background of the Primal Spirit is, but I think it would be interesting if the Primal Spirit represented "the old ways". Maybe while the gods were busy fighting the primordials they didn't have time to answer the prayers of those in the world, and so turned to an animistic belief in the Primal Spirit until the gods returned from fighting.
You got what I was going for partly right.
The order of appearance of gods in the creation story is so:
Primal Gods (think shamanistic) -> Primordials -> the new gods (PHB gods)
Everything existed on a single plane when the primal gods were in power. Basically the nexus from that shit star trek movie. It was the primordials that then took this plane divided it and then shaped it. Then the new gods moved in and acted like they ran the show from the begining. All in all I'm leaving the existing cosmology in place but I am adding a prologue.
The particular primal god they are working for is the Trickster god. So he is essentially a fantastic con artist. While the players are gathering artifacts he will be working behind the scenes playing the "thefts" as a way of moving the new gods to act against eachother. Sort of a three card monte, but instead of cards it's +6 longswords and Folding boats.
Thats a good idea of having him be a pawn of a Big badass god, or at least make it look like he's a pawn
The mention on one of these boards about having an enemy with a weird effect that reversed the effects of dice (1 crits, 20 fails, etc) got me thinking, and here's my idea:
planar disturbance/illusionist villain that causes the characters to switch roles/shift times. I am working to rename the different skills and powers each time, even print off revamped character sheets accordingly, and make the source of this perturbance a recurring event/enemy, so that every couple levels we can switch things up without losing our characters or their personalities.
As an example, I was gonna have them do a Fallout-style adventure, with some skills changed (arcana::science, heal::medicine, heavy blades::big guns, etc.) and the scenery updated until they track down the source of the disturbance. I've also been toying with concepts for present-day, prehistoric, non-dystopian future (star trek/wars, flash gordon, etc), maybe even something earthbound-ish, but with just a few (read: max of 4 depending on player reception) per tier of varying lengths, from a single encounter to a whole week's playsession.
I am not sure how much to play up the transformations; if it's like when the main guys in FF7 and FF8 switch and know all of the guy's skills and are like an extra mind in his body, or if i actually whisk them there, more Black Knight (yes, the Martin Lawrence movie) esque. Maybe I should do some of both?
I was also thinking of having this baddie or other supernatural force cause encounters where the players are forced to switch PCs via some form of mindtakery, sorta "freaky friday"-style. Except they only keep their personality, not any of their skills, because even if you say only a wizard's body has the arcane ability for spells, his mind still retains his diplomacy, arcana, and bluff skills, which would be ridiculous in an athletic, acrobatic, endurance-trained rogue.
Also, If a player misses one of the mindtaking sessions, his/her mind gets swapped with a horse or creature of equivalently amusing nature for the battle, causing his character to perform random actions the whole time.
Thoughts, comments, similar or weirder experiences?
Ancestor worship might be fun to incorporate as well. The core setting assumed by the 4E books states that the vast majority of souls vanish from the multiverse. I could choose to ignore that, but as I'd prefer to stick close to the core setting I think I'll work around that with unique beings. Ghosts are the most obvious beings to use, but the Berbalangs in the Monster Manual retain the memories of the people they eat and thus could be important in ancestor worship. Various forms of intelligent undead would work in societies similar to the ones described in Open Grave. With the release of the PHB2 I could use Devas as a focus for ancestor worship in some societies as well.
Has anyone used a different form of religion for their campaign worlds in this or previous editions?
As for similarities with old world religions, I feel like there are notable parallels with Greek, Roman, Norse, and Pagan religions. This makes plenty of sense though, as pretty much any polytheistic pantheon follows a similar structure: similar concepts/professions/elements get the same god, each god has many associated professions/dominions (Apollo has luting, archery, invention), etc.
That said, there is a huge deviation in D&D and ancient western polytheism - greeks didn't really have evil gods. They had the titans, who were related to the gods, but they were sorta mindless brutes who didnt have worshippers or wouldn't have cared if they did. And some of the gods were dicks, but all the gods interacted in a very soap-opera-y manner, making "good" very hard to discern - the gods were just like people, except for the whole "being gods" thing (which is actually one of the reasons I have no problem elevating a reformed alcoholic cleric to Godhood).
I would be really interested to see a campaign that used a more ambiguous definition of alignment with respect to the gods - the gods themselves not specifically being good or evil, and maybe playing a more active role, a la the greek and roman myths. It would appeal more to my amorality to not have to be "good" or "evil" and just stick with maybe lawful, neutral, unlawful.
Plus, I think it could make for an interesting and legendary adventure if the gods are flawed and entangling themselves in the mortal coil, noticeably active in the world in mid-late heroic teir and actively interacting with the plot and the PCs by about halfway through the campaign. Maybe even have their progeny be some of the Baddies and PCs. I mean, according to the DMG the heroes are a special class of people, rare and elevated above the norm, of uncommon skill and all that, and being related to gods would fit that bill and allow for some easy pillaging of ancient myths.
At first I was trying to find a reason for why trade isn't just conducted entirely through Feywild trade routes. Then I remembered something from Manual of the Planes: traveling the same route in the Feywild can be shorter one direction and longer the other way. I can also say that the river current in the mortal world is much faster than the slow-moving waterways in the Feywild.
I've also figured out a way to use my idea for the city to be swamped and infested by undead. Instead of the city being like that from the get-go the PCs can work to keep fomorians and other underground monsters from ruining the city from underneath.
Spoilered for Wall o' text.
Of course, there's a pretty well-developed starting location:
River's Watch:
When Humans first rose to power in the region, the town became a bustling trade city.
For interracial peace and to assure worldwide trade, the Humans later gave the eastern side of the river to the Dwarves in exchange for passage under the Umbril Peaks. Once there, the intrepid dwarves built a colossal stone archway between the two sides of the river, which still stands and is a focal point of local lore.
In the interim years, the town has swelled and dwindled nearly a dozen times with war, famine, and political upheaval being the most noted among the causes.
Recent times are little different, though a calm has settled on the town. The world has been recently (read: couple hundred years past) ravaged by a war that seems to have shifted the very Planes, leaving most people simply trying to live their lives in peace. Since the war, the world has been relatively turmoil-free; a few kingdoms have been reorganizing themselves, but most people are unaffected as of yet, including the town of River's Watch. And between travelers crossing the river via the bridge and the ships making their way up and down river, the town has settled in as a boisterous trading crossroads. As such, it is equipped with several Inns of varying pedigrees, and even has a tavern that isn't also an Inn (which is notable in that it's quite a rarity to prosper entirely on the profit of food and ale); it is the Cheeky Friar, which caters primarily to passing sailors.
The songs of the Last War still cut the night air in all the taverns, telling tales of lands across the Ocean, epic battles, and the heroes that fought them. These tales are never remiss to include the fact that heroes came of all races and creeds, and these same sentiments are seen on the streets every day; there is no consideration for race, only character (though one can frequently tell ancestral nation at a glance for most any race, such as taller, darker humans coming from the arid plains, while the shorter hail from the snowy south).
Recently, River's Watch has seen another group take up residence, members of the Historical Excavation and Lore Preservation Society (HELPS). They investigate the bardic stories from towns around the world and try to find proof of what kernels of truth may have birthed the legends. The group believes that the plains just east of the town hold some lost secrets. They have begun an archeological dig on the site and have already come up with sufficient enough finds that the Mayor of River's Watch is hosting their leader, Junah, and arranged with the Crimson Palm and the Golden Iris (two of the most prominent local inns) to house the group until further notice.
And then there's just overall information:
Planes:
Planet:
Civilizations:
Also, though it isn't uncommon to see just about any race anywhere, many locations have what were once racially-exclusive, and still racial majority, cities. For example, the Dwarven city of Untra, which occupies the caverns beneath a mountain of the same name, is home to mainly Dwarves (~40%) and Drow(~20%). Many above-ground non-fey-built cities are predominantly Human, because their comparatively short lifespans lead them to have more kids (4 kids/couple on average, versus the 2/couple averages of most other dominant races). For examples of Human-y cities: Caemlyn is about 60% Human, as is the seaside port city Bianca. Fey-built cities are, naturally, Eladrin and Elven-dominated, the two races accounting for more than 70% of the population of Nirava, while the desert town of Kah'mell is Dragonborn run.
Few are left that remember the Last War. Most who survived it were either too young to know what was going on or old enough that they've long since passed (it was close to 400 years ago). Even accounts of current events tend to distort much of the news (there are no telephones, so it's much like playing a game of telephone...does that make sense?), which is why HELPS was formed, to try and piece together the facts about the war and times before (many records of previous ages were lost when the cities were beseiged).
In the rebuilding that has followed the last Age, there has been very little warring; militias of neighboring regions have occasionally disputed the edges of dominions, but investigations by regional commanders usually reveal it to be nothing more than a ploy for one side or the other to get a prime piece of farmland, hunting ground, etc. Most people simply try to make a living farming or trading, and devotion to many widely varying religious sects keeps most people just praying that no war does erupt, though political manuevering is starting to become prevalent in some areas, especially important trade hubs where tariffs are the prime source of native wealth. (note: Crime does exist. I'm just pointing out that there's no current global plight or major criminal syndicate. Yet.)
Magic:
It's not exactly commonplace to be a Wizard (or other magic user: this includes clerics, shaman, warlocks, etc.). A town the size of River's Watch probably has one resident magic-user who does fortune-telling, minor healing, and advises the local political powers from time to time. There are also probably a handful (on the high side) that could be trained, but most could never master much more than cantrips and basic healing spells. Even so, enough people can use such power, and enough functional magical equipment survived, that despite often being impressive everyday magic isn't really surprising to people (it's not "witchcraft" nor that sort of unclear LotR stuff; it's magic).
Some examples that are common knowledge of everyday uses of magic:
In Bianca, they have central rooms in most of their larger buildings that use magic to move between floors (called "Levetators"). Untra is lit by large, opaque globes on poles and mounted against walls throughout that provide light whenever anyone is near. Ocean-worthy ships often use magical enchantments or have resident Clerics, Shaman, or other magic users that can calm the seas and direct the winds. On the western side of the continent there is a group of islands that move up and down the coast hundreds of miles, some of which even submerge entirely from time to time (people aren't clear on why). There are plentiful magical creatures in the world, from simple wood sprites and satyrs to plane-shifting beasts, and many cities have still-functioning ancient wards barring vermin from entering.