ElScotcho
2013-03-02, 11:59 PM
Hello all. After being a long time lurker, I decided to finally join your wonderful forum to get some help beating some of my ideas into a viable homebrew campaign.
My initial ideas are thus:
1. Dwarves are the dominant race. I have always liked dwarves, so I decided that they would be most dominant in this world. To my mind, the world needs to be fairly mountainous to make this viable. I was really taken with some articles I read a fair while back about dwarven steam ship minis being built for a one off table top game, so i have decided that my dwarves will have access to steam ships, and thus will came their rise to power. So steam ships that go to far off exotic lands that only the dwarves have access to. Also, they have flintlock based firearm technology. I fell that anything more reliable would make them nigh unbeatable, but that flintlocks and possibly wheel locks are inherently unreliable enough to fail as often as spells might.
They are also a more neutral race than in the typical fantasy setting. There will be no racial split, dividing into dark and light dwarves, they will be broken into individual kingdoms and city states, whose ruling faction influence their alignment.Steam powered technology is very highly guarded racial secret, but firearms not as closely guarded.
2. Elves are extremely reclusive, and most people have never seen or heard of one. I don't inherently dislike elves, they just seem to be in everybody elses settings, so I felt that to differentiate mine a little, maybe take the influence off of them. I see them as living on an archipelago with little contact with the outside world, much like the native americans and the pacific islanders. They have very distinct tribal groups, but not so distinct that they are markedly different from one another. Their main point of contact with the outside world would be the dwarven traders, who either trade equitably with them or exploit them horribly, based on which kingdom/state is in charge of the trading colony.
3. Humans, orcs, and halflings are the most common races in the world. Humans stats-wise would be as they are in 3.5, Halflings smaller and more nimble, orcs slightly stronger and tougher. I'm having trouble on deciding if there should be more races thrown in, and what they should be. I also don't think I want to add the "used to be slaves" aspect to any of the races, though if I did i think it would be the orcs, used as slaves in dwarven mining operations. I had thought of adding centaurs as a playable race, but they seemed a bit too over-powered, and I sort of wanted to make them an equivalent to the plains tribes or north america, but I also thought that might be adding too many tribal cultures to the mix. Whatever non-dwarf races i do add to the mix would have a "great age of sail" level of technology, meaning that they could sail, it would just be on wooden ships using cloth sail and/or rowers to power them. They would also have limited access to blackpowder weapons, with more of a focus on using melee weapons due to the unreliable nature of blackpowder.
4. I like the idea of most of the world being divided up into city-states, with a very few larger kingdoms. Sort of rennaisance italian in structure, where they have a common language, but compete for prestige and technological advances in a generally non-belligerent way. Obviously the dwarves are a bit ahead of the technological curve, but given that they live longer, they tend to take a while to come up with their advances, while the shorter lived player races have a more rapid developmental cycle based on the comparative shortness of their life spans and competitive nature of their social structure.
5. As far as world wide antagonists go, I like the idea of there having been races of evil/demonic creatures, shaped by their gods to their own cruel designs. Initial thoughts for this would be Cthulu like humanoids, Naga-like snake men, perhaps this is where the centaurs previously thought of could come into play. They were overthrown but never completely destroyed, hence their are still small pockets of them left. I had thought to make a water based evil race, but there is no technology present in this world at this stage that would allow terrestrial based player characters to take the fight under water. The over-arching plot could be that the evil gods are gaining power again because they have secret worshippers within the player races. I think this could be done fairly well without making it to grimdark, or Lovecraftian, unless the players want a game aimed in that direction.
6. The main thrust of play to my mind would be almost like a game of Rogue Trader, but all based on the same world. The players would basically be trying to create a trading company to wrestle a small amount of the trade from the dominant dwarves. They would form a small company, have a design for a ship, and then proceed to carve their own niche.
These are just some very basic ideas that have been forming over the last while in my head, and other than the dwarves being dominant, and the level of technology, nothing is really set. As I stated, I have nothing inherently against elves, but I would very much like to avoid having 4-5 different types.
All comments, critiques, suggestions, and encouragement are welcome. And thank you in advance.
My initial ideas are thus:
1. Dwarves are the dominant race. I have always liked dwarves, so I decided that they would be most dominant in this world. To my mind, the world needs to be fairly mountainous to make this viable. I was really taken with some articles I read a fair while back about dwarven steam ship minis being built for a one off table top game, so i have decided that my dwarves will have access to steam ships, and thus will came their rise to power. So steam ships that go to far off exotic lands that only the dwarves have access to. Also, they have flintlock based firearm technology. I fell that anything more reliable would make them nigh unbeatable, but that flintlocks and possibly wheel locks are inherently unreliable enough to fail as often as spells might.
They are also a more neutral race than in the typical fantasy setting. There will be no racial split, dividing into dark and light dwarves, they will be broken into individual kingdoms and city states, whose ruling faction influence their alignment.Steam powered technology is very highly guarded racial secret, but firearms not as closely guarded.
2. Elves are extremely reclusive, and most people have never seen or heard of one. I don't inherently dislike elves, they just seem to be in everybody elses settings, so I felt that to differentiate mine a little, maybe take the influence off of them. I see them as living on an archipelago with little contact with the outside world, much like the native americans and the pacific islanders. They have very distinct tribal groups, but not so distinct that they are markedly different from one another. Their main point of contact with the outside world would be the dwarven traders, who either trade equitably with them or exploit them horribly, based on which kingdom/state is in charge of the trading colony.
3. Humans, orcs, and halflings are the most common races in the world. Humans stats-wise would be as they are in 3.5, Halflings smaller and more nimble, orcs slightly stronger and tougher. I'm having trouble on deciding if there should be more races thrown in, and what they should be. I also don't think I want to add the "used to be slaves" aspect to any of the races, though if I did i think it would be the orcs, used as slaves in dwarven mining operations. I had thought of adding centaurs as a playable race, but they seemed a bit too over-powered, and I sort of wanted to make them an equivalent to the plains tribes or north america, but I also thought that might be adding too many tribal cultures to the mix. Whatever non-dwarf races i do add to the mix would have a "great age of sail" level of technology, meaning that they could sail, it would just be on wooden ships using cloth sail and/or rowers to power them. They would also have limited access to blackpowder weapons, with more of a focus on using melee weapons due to the unreliable nature of blackpowder.
4. I like the idea of most of the world being divided up into city-states, with a very few larger kingdoms. Sort of rennaisance italian in structure, where they have a common language, but compete for prestige and technological advances in a generally non-belligerent way. Obviously the dwarves are a bit ahead of the technological curve, but given that they live longer, they tend to take a while to come up with their advances, while the shorter lived player races have a more rapid developmental cycle based on the comparative shortness of their life spans and competitive nature of their social structure.
5. As far as world wide antagonists go, I like the idea of there having been races of evil/demonic creatures, shaped by their gods to their own cruel designs. Initial thoughts for this would be Cthulu like humanoids, Naga-like snake men, perhaps this is where the centaurs previously thought of could come into play. They were overthrown but never completely destroyed, hence their are still small pockets of them left. I had thought to make a water based evil race, but there is no technology present in this world at this stage that would allow terrestrial based player characters to take the fight under water. The over-arching plot could be that the evil gods are gaining power again because they have secret worshippers within the player races. I think this could be done fairly well without making it to grimdark, or Lovecraftian, unless the players want a game aimed in that direction.
6. The main thrust of play to my mind would be almost like a game of Rogue Trader, but all based on the same world. The players would basically be trying to create a trading company to wrestle a small amount of the trade from the dominant dwarves. They would form a small company, have a design for a ship, and then proceed to carve their own niche.
These are just some very basic ideas that have been forming over the last while in my head, and other than the dwarves being dominant, and the level of technology, nothing is really set. As I stated, I have nothing inherently against elves, but I would very much like to avoid having 4-5 different types.
All comments, critiques, suggestions, and encouragement are welcome. And thank you in advance.