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RagingKrikkit
2012-01-27, 01:19 PM
I have a rough idea that I have been mulling over for the last few weeks, which is to create a full world, complete with campaign ideas. My goal is not to publish this world, but instead to run a number of campaigns in it myself over the course of the years across various forums. I will be trying to present my thinking process in a manner similar to the New World articles on the main site. Any comments and suggestions are welcome, and I may just launch a campaign on this forum.

My statement about this beng a multi-campaign setting requires the potential for many types of game. I have had a number of various campaign ideas flit through my head in the past few months alone, and I will see what I can incorporate into the setting.

Campaign ideas are roughly:

1. A campaign revolving around four (planetouched) heroes who are foretold to save their kingdom in its darkest hour. Kind of cliched by now, but I think I can add a few things to the theme to tweak with this (common folk no longer believe the prophecy? The sheer intimidation of suddenly being told that your goal in life is to save a whole kingdom?

2. A strategic campagin revolving around four military officers in charge of a company (or whatever) of soldiers each, this game being more related to tactical prowess rather than wading into battle yourself and killing everything in sight.

3. A campaign revolving around a group of heroes attempting to stop the revival of a pair of monsters that once led an extraplanar invasion of the world (by cliche, dragons or demons. I'm thinking elementals.)

4. Campaign revolving around four heroes who are sent forward in time in their attempt to defeat an evil overlord (maybe I just played too much Ocarina of Time.)

Before I get too ahead of myself though, I want to do some tweaking with some of the underlying assumptions of D&D.

The Eleven Assumptions of D&D (by Rich Burlew)

1. Humans dominate the world.
2. Gods are real and active.
3. Magic is real and can be used by anyone who learns it.
4. Opposite alignments fight each other.
5. Arcane and divine magic are inherently separate.
6. The wilderness is separate enough from the cities to justify 3 wilderness-oriented classes.
7. There are hundreds of intelligent species of creatures, but 99% of them are considered "monsters".
8. Arcane magic is impersonal and requires no "deal" with a supernatural being.
9. Beings from other planes of existence try to influence the mortal world, usually on behalf of gods/alignments.
10. Magic items are assumed to be available, and game balance proceeds from that assumption.
11. Magic is consequence-free.

First off, let me throw number 11 right out the window. All energy must come from someplace, and since matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed (although divine intervention is generally assumed to overrule this), then the energy must be taken from somewhere to broduce the spell effect. I'm thinking that at least for arcane magic, that there should be some sort of "arcane plane" from which energy is taken. This can either be in the form of taking energy directly (which would result in sudden temperature drops and such), or by converting matter into energy via the equation of E=mc^2. One may ask why I just cited an Einstienian principle in a fantasy game, but the principle was around long before is was ever put to paper. Anyway, given the energy that would be lost transferring energy arcoss planes to the caster's mind would be of considerable size, we are talking about fairly significan amounts of energy/matter that are baing torn out of this plane, and this has been happening for as long as arcane magic has been used. Presumably, the reverse is true, and the arccane plane has spellcasters that use prime material energy to cast their spells, but they are much fewer in number, as the world is not slowly disintegrating. The existance of this alternate plane is not known with the possible exception of a few very reclusive wizards, but if word ever got out that magic was destroying another plane, it could make good adventure (campaign?) fodder.

Heck, let's go one step farther with the magic. What if the energy of the other plane is intrinsically harmful to creatures of the prime material plane? I have a copy of the Star Wars Role-Playing game, which includes rules on radiation. This could give great atmosphere to exploring old ruins, where there could be old pockets of magical energy that have been slowly decaying over the centuries. (of course, any decently ventilated area will not have any significant buildup of magic, unless somebody broke a staff full of 9th-level spells, releasing the energy within.)

As for #1, I am planing to have at least one major kingdom be ruled by one of the major races (including a goblinoid kingdom, jsut to spite #7), with maybe even a United Nations-esque cauncil with a non-human chair.

I haven't ths slightest idea at the moment, but I also want to do something about #4.

Now, on to history. I want this world to be an allegory to the real world, but at the same time, very different from it. Right of the bat, we need some historical wars to make this work. Currently, I'm thinking:
1 War of the Gods (against each other or some snarl-like thing?)
1 Extraplanar Invasion (led by elementals described in campaign ideas)
3-5 Worldwide PC race wars (some an easy call WWII-style good vs bad, others a more muddled WWI-esque political mess.)
2-3 Major wars with goblinoid races (see kingdom idea in assumption #1 paragraph.)
1-2 Wars with dragons or such (everybody's gotta have one.)
1 Massive undead invasion (with hopefully slightly more than the ubiquitous distrust of necromacy as a result.)
Dozens-hundreds of 2-3 kingdom wars, border conflicts, guerrilla campaigns, etc.

All these wars (and the peaces in-between) will require a massive history, perhaps extending back thousands of years. I'm thinking I'll brush over the rise and fall of the major kingdoms, and go into more detail for the last 200 years or so. And yes, I will be increasing the technology level as the history progresses.

As for a name for this world, I will be saving that part for last, as I find that naming things after everything else has been completed gives a sense of completion to the project (usually characters to this point.)

So once again, suggestions and comments welcome, I will be updating this as I progress. (Whoo, this message rode out a power outage!)

Yitzi
2012-01-27, 03:41 PM
1 War of the Gods (against each other or some snarl-like thing?)

An idea I came up with of this sort (sort of merged with "extraplanar invasion"): Long ago, the outer planes, led by gods, warred on the Prime Material, good against evil. The fallout of their warring threw humans (pretty advanced at that time) literally back to the stone age, and decreased their lifespan hugely (hence the low lifespan for humans). Dragons were weapons created for this war (hence why they're all strongly aligned). Wizardry began in this war, as a group of {insert race here, I used hobgoblins} formed a pact with a group of good gods to teach them more systematic use of magic; this group eventually became the elves. The war finally stopped when one extremely powerful sorcerer (high epic) spent his life in a major working, channeling all the power of an extremely powerful* nexus of magical energy to awaken the earth itself. The newly awakened power (it's the same one that druids serve) told the gods to cut it out and fight somewhere else; it had the home plane advantage, so they had to listen.

Not that that's based on anything IRL; I just thought it was a good way to explain some background.

*Before this time, it was by itself responsible for a large number of sorcerers in its vicinity, simply by its effect on various humanoids.

RagingKrikkit
2012-01-27, 05:22 PM
I'm liking this idea, and might implement some part of it into the history. Perhaps though, if the Material Plane was just the (one of the) battleground(s) in this war, with it not being directly involved other than that being a neutral plane, nobody gets any bonuses or penalties on it (evil plains give stat bonuses to evil characters, and vice versa.)