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Titanium Dragon
2008-03-24, 05:19 AM
Right now I'm in the process of building a campaign world for fourth edition. I've more or less decided on the general structure of the first adventure, mapped out a good area for the campaign to start in, ect.

Now, though, I'm working on the macro level. I enjoy this a lot, and am looking for stuff to play around with until I find exactly what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for:

A world map generator to play around with. I found Dire Press's fractal world generator, and have found some maps I've enjoyed, but none that really fit me. I've heard of something called World Builder, which builds worlds via continental drift and the like; however, all links to it are dead. If anyone knows where this or other awesome (and hopefully realistic) world map generators reside, I'd love it.

Some stuff for my pantheons. I'm thinking I'm going to go with the "the gods don't seem to care that much" model, leaving a lot of religious ambiguity (and hopefully a number of varied religions which conflict with one another because they actually believe different things, rather than one side worshipping a good god and another an evil one). What I really am looking for is someplace that lists a lot of attributes for deities; my issue is oftentimes I end up looking too much at real world deities and I feel like my deities are not unique enough. What I really want are a bunch of possible domains (sun, moon, the harvest, ect.) which I could mix and match to make a lot of possible gods, but I don't know if there's a good, definitive list of such things anywhere.

Altair_the_Vexed
2008-03-24, 10:11 AM
I don't yet know where 4th Ed gods are going, mechanics-wise, but you might try the little house rule I made up: gods can be "unaligned".

If you want gods and religion to be nice and loose (a bit more "real-world" rather than the "gods-all-up-in-your-face-like-Faerun" style), and some luscious moral ambiguity to boot, having deities without discernible alignments helps.
E.g.: God A destroys unbelievers in a hail of fire, heals the faithful, nurtures the land of his flock and rains poison on his foes' forests. The faithful must serve unquestioningly a set of rules that look like they were written by the clergy... He's not evil or neutral, 'cause he's actively good to his followers, and he's not good 'cause he's so harsh on the unfaithful. No-one has ever seen this deity in living memory. Worshippers are of all alignments, taking whatever they want from the teaching of the clergy, buying atonement if they need it and tithing as a sort of soul-insurance.

Titanium Dragon
2008-03-24, 02:43 PM
E.g.: God A destroys unbelievers in a hail of fire, heals the faithful, nurtures the land of his flock and rains poison on his foes' forests. The faithful must serve unquestioningly a set of rules that look like they were written by the clergy... He's not evil or neutral, 'cause he's actively good to his followers, and he's not good 'cause he's so harsh on the unfaithful. No-one has ever seen this deity in living memory. Worshippers are of all alignments, taking whatever they want from the teaching of the clergy, buying atonement if they need it and tithing as a sort of soul-insurance.

[scrubbed]

Now, mind you, unaligned gods are fun (or ambigiously aligned ones, like the god of greatness I had in one campaign world who I may well reuse - he supported all his followers, and did not care HOW they became great, and indeed would sometimes throw them away so other people could become greater).