DMs: What's a bit of world building on the micro-scale you're proud of?

Our session this Saturday had been delayed for five weeks giving me way too much time to come up with the specific whys and hows of a group of primitive drow living in a small cave system directly below a lost temple to a dark god. Very little of what I came up with will be at all relevant to the adventure but it's satisfying to see my players' light bulbs turn on sometimes: "Ohhhh Their ancestors escaped from an Illithid colony and they breed troglodytes to sacrifice to the shrine's undead guardian because they think it's stopping the mindflayers from coming back! Cool, now where's that magic sword we're looking for."

They might not even learn about a tenth of what I came up with but it was fun to do all the same. What are some bits of world building you've come up with for small locations or communities that maybe didn't matter at all but you're proud of?

I had an adventure set on Lemnos around 400BCE. I researched the Classical economy of Lemnos at that time to figure out what industries they would have for export. I looked into local mythology about the Kabiri. I even came up with a little family drama between the local vineyards.

The Kabiri bit made it into my campaign, but the rest got ignored in favor of the world ending vampire threat that had taken residence on the island. Can't fault my players for focusing on the important parts for this one.

I had another campaign where it ended a few sessions in. I'd made a physical prop, a journal that the BBEG was keeping. It detailed two years of his life as he descended into evil. It also gave clues for defeating him, with updates as the PCs chased him through 300CE Germany. The campaign died before they could get the journal from him though. The long term plan was that the BBEG had a magic quill that was unknowingly linked to the journal. After the theft, he'd get a new journal, but his quill would also still write to the old journal in the PCs possession. They could then use it to track him.

World building? This may qualify as introducing life saving spells into the local economy.

The party I am DMing for recovered the body of a female elf NPC they were sent to rescue. They were low level and they heroically spent 500GP from their loot to have her Reincarnated since that was the only resurrection type spell available in the town.

In 5e Reincarnate restores you to life but you have to roll to see what species you come back as.

Oops. She came back as a 1/2 Orc. In the background of the next campaign I mentioned the former elf woman's mother was spending the family's fortune ons to k diamonds and Reincarnate spells until the rescued daughter came back as an elf.

Well a dozen sessions later the party met up with the woman who was once again an elf. Turned out it broke her family and took 13 tries. Unknown to the party the NPC made a pact with a Devil during the 13th try.

I have a setting (anthropomorphic animals of several species) where babies aren't born, rather cloned in laboratories controlled by the Church. Locals don't know about the laboratories, rather they are taught that is the city’s goddess (Bisbishna or Bishna for short) who directly blesses them with the gift of a newborn.

Nobody is given a baby unwillingly, rather families make a request to the church and is the goddess who decides if it’s appropriate to answer that request.

As babies are perceived as a favor from the goddess, there is practically no family that doesn’t wants to have one for their own, so is rare that the Church has problems assigning them. When it happens that there is a species with low population and no family is requesting for babies (for example Lions), then the Church clones them anyway and recruit them as monks, nuns, militia or whatever the city needs.

Have two:
One I built a civilization built on ancient Egypt...but set in a swamp. Very much like the Nile delta but near mountains instead of desert (bit like bangladesh). Same flood cycle etc. Same focus on preservation (now as way to contrast the swamp instead of similar to desert). Egyptian Blue dye became green. Animal headed deities? Check. Replace pyramids with domes and helix shapes over obelisks. Used Egyptian style food and medicine. And replace ancient Egyptian/coptic with phoentian/carthage/hittite similar names. But the moment that made it all? The look on the face of a couple players with ancient history/archeology (one each) when they put it together and realized what I done and that they had missed it for two/three months.

Actually my other favorite worldbuilding moment was as a player. In ravenloft I rolled up a stupid-lucky character (and so made him a Paladin to knock him down a bit)...but my DM asked me to write up my family and hometown. So I did. All 600 locals were given a basic mapping (only 60 in the village itself-it was a farming region) and the breakdown of the family with tons of take it or leave it hooks for the DM. He ended up using the town twice more (with me) in other campaigns as a major setting. And from what i heard still was ten years later when I lost track of him.

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Originally Posted by CombatBunny

I have a setting (anthropomorphic animals of several species) where babies aren't born, rather cloned in laboratories controlled by the Church. Locals don't know about the laboratories, rather they are taught that is the city’s goddess (Bisbishna or Bishna for short) who directly blesses them with the gift of a newborn.

Nobody is given a baby unwillingly, rather families make a request to the church and is the goddess who decides if it’s appropriate to answer that request.

As babies are perceived as a favor from the goddess, there is practically no family that doesn’t wants to have one for their own, so is rare that the Church has problems assigning them. When it happens that there is a species with low population and no family is requesting for babies (for example Lions), then the Church clones them anyway and recruit them as monks, nuns, militia or whatever the city needs.

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I assume these clones are infertile, so that if a couple of kids get carried away, they can't discover the secret of making babies?

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Originally Posted by Lord Torath

I assume these clones are infertile, so that if a couple of kids get carried away, they can't discover the secret of making babies?

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Exactly, they are infertile =)

I have an Empire nestled in a far off corner of the world. It abutts the largest mountain range in the setting, cutting it off to one side. The next major humanoid popuplation is half a continent away on the other side. And since the setting is a giant cylinder, that makes them pretty isolated and self-contained. It sits between two great rivers, fed by snowmelt from the mountain range. And because of the distance between the two rivers, they exist in separate hemispheres and thus are in different seasons. So one of the two rivers is always in its seasonal flooding. The land between the rivers is at a slight downward incline, so the flooding feeds into seasonal rivers and streams that eventually feed into a massive lake, where the primary foodstuff of the empire grows along its banks. And since one of the rivers is always flooding, at least one side of the empire is in its flood plain and thus growing food.

The two rivers also are color code. The one to the west runs through an iron-rich desert, similar to the American southwest. When it floods, it picks up iron-rich clay making the river run ruddy red and the eastern bank (towards the empire) is rich in iron, silver, gold and other precious metals. The eastern river runs through marshlands and when it floods, the river overflows its banks and the entire area is one giant marsh. When this happens, the nutrient rich snowmelt causes algae blooms which are photo luminescent. So while its flooding, the marsh is constantly in a hazy blue glow giving it an ethereal and magical quality. Due to these algae blooms, the farmlands to the west (towards the empire) are especially fertile, so while farms exist on both sides, the eastern side is big on cash crops, like grapes (for wine) or pipeweed (tobacco).

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Originally Posted by CombatBunny

I have a setting (anthropomorphic animals of several species) where babies aren't born, rather cloned in laboratories controlled by the Church. Locals don't know about the laboratories, rather they are taught that is the city’s goddess (Bisbishna or Bishna for short) who directly blesses them with the gift of a newborn.

Nobody is given a baby unwillingly, rather families make a request to the church and is the goddess who decides if it’s appropriate to answer that request.

As babies are perceived as a favor from the goddess, there is practically no family that doesn’t wants to have one for their own, so is rare that the Church has problems assigning them. When it happens that there is a species with low population and no family is requesting for babies (for example Lions), then the Church clones them anyway and recruit them as monks, nuns, militia or whatever the city needs.

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Sounds like a great hook for a horror/intrigue campaign.

Doomstalker's detailed explanation of how the twin-rivers affect the ecology and economy of the empire is the kind of stuff I love.

Ultra microscale worldbuilding here, but it's one of my favorite details of my campaign setting.

The village the players start in has a strong gnomish influence, because honestly, gnomes are best race. One of the features the original gnomes built is a fountain set atop a geyser, so that every day at a specific time, the geyser erupts and water shoots out of various orifices in the fountain. To make it a bit more interesting, on one end of the fountain is a small box nobody has managed to open for decades. If the players can solve a few puzzles, they can open the box and access the control panel for the fountain. They can use the control panel to inject all sorts of chemicals into the fountain water, altering it's properties to do all sorts of wacky stuff.

Like I said, it's the tiniest of minor details, but I had a lot of fun making it up.

East of the great city of Madripore are great open plain with little human settlement. There's a complicated relationship between the races that dwell there, tribes and nomads and micro-kingdoms. I'm proud of that. It .. may not qualify, tho. The plains are enormous, midwest size, and perhaps not really micro-scale? But the tribal interactions, how the wild centaur are feared by everyone, the gnolls rule the area around the mesas, the harn (homebrew) are peaceful but powerful nomads - and so on - and everyone is subtly manipulated by druids, so that the 'forces of nature' are strong enough, collectively, to hold civilisation at bay ... that's kinda micro, and I think it's an elegant solution to what I wanted to create: A world where wild nature actively resists the march of civilisation.

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Originally Posted by The Cats

Sounds like a great hook for a horror/intrigue campaign.

Doomstalker's detailed explanation of how the twin-rivers affect the ecology and economy of the empire is the kind of stuff I love.

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Thank you. I like to make sure, at least at a surface level, that my setting makes sense.

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Originally Posted by MesiDoomstalker

Thank you. I like to make sure, at least at a surface level, that my setting makes sense.

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You say your world is a cylinder? I presume it spins along the axis of the cylinder? If that's the case, and it gets seasons for the same reason Earth does (axial tilt relative to the plane of its orbit) then the entirety of the curved surface of your cylinder will have the same seasons at the same time. It will be warmest around the equinoxes and coldest near the solstices (you'll have 8 "seasons" per year). The flat regions at the top and bottom of the cylinder will have warm and cold seasons at the "normal" times (winter solstice is colder, summer solstice is warmer, with 4 seasons per year, although the 'flat' summer will probably be colder than the 'curved' winter unless you have an axial tilt of close to 45 degrees - Earth's is 22.3^o).

The reason for this is not because part of the earth is closer to the sun, but because of the angle the sunlight makes with the surface of the planet. I mean, yes, the summer part of earth is closer than the winter part, but that's a difference of about 4000 km or so compared to an overall distance on the order of 150 million km. Heck when it's winter in the northern hemisphere, the Earth is actually about 4.5 million km closer (3% if I did my math right) to the sun than it is when it's summer in the northern hemisphere. That's also why it's colder near the poles on Earth. On your world it will be slightly colder near the ends of the cylinder, but only because the flat ends will get less sunlight than the curved regions, and so will be colder - again, depending on the amount of axial tilt your world has.

If your planet has seasons for a different reason, though, please ignore all the stuff above.

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Originally Posted by Samwich

Ultra microscale worldbuilding here, but it's one of my favorite details of my campaign setting.

The village the players start in has a strong gnomish influence, because honestly, gnomes are best race. One of the features the original gnomes built is a fountain set atop a geyser, so that every day at a specific time, the geyser erupts and water shoots out of various orifices in the fountain. To make it a bit more interesting, on one end of the fountain is a small box nobody has managed to open for decades. If the players can solve a few puzzles, they can open the box and access the control panel for the fountain. They can use the control panel to inject all sorts of chemicals into the fountain water, altering it's properties to do all sorts of wacky stuff.

Like I said, it's the tiniest of minor details, but I had a lot of fun making it up.

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Dawww, so cute, in a good way. The concept of that fountain already triggers a lot of ideas that could be explored and who knows, maybe it is just the tip of something bigger.

I like the little details that fit together and feel right. Like the logging town that celebrates a midsummer festival by leaving jewelry in the forest to propitiate the spirits of the forest and sends their Winter Champion to spend the night as an offering that is sometimes accepted and never seen again. The way that nymphs and dryads will leave male offspring to be found at the edge of fields and the farmers take them in and raise them. If they fail to raise the children their fields are cursed and if they do a good job their fields are blessed.

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Originally Posted by Lord Torath

You say your world is a cylinder? I presume it spins along the axis of the cylinder? If that's the case, and it gets seasons for the same reason Earth does (axial tilt relative to the plane of its orbit) then the entirety of the curved surface of your cylinder will have the same seasons at the same time. It will be warmest around the equinoxes and coldest near the solstices (you'll have 8 "seasons" per year). The flat regions at the top and bottom of the cylinder will have warm and cold seasons at the "normal" times (winter solstice is colder, summer solstice is warmer, with 4 seasons per year, although the 'flat' summer will probably be colder than the 'curved' winter unless you have an axial tilt of close to 45 degrees - Earth's is 22.3^o).

The reason for this is not because part of the earth is closer to the sun, but because of the angle the sunlight makes with the surface of the planet. I mean, yes, the summer part of earth is closer than the winter part, but that's a difference of about 4000 km or so compared to an overall distance on the order of 150 million km. Heck when it's winter in the northern hemisphere, the Earth is actually about 4.5 million km closer (3% if I did my math right) to the sun than it is when it's summer in the northern hemisphere. That's also why it's colder near the poles on Earth. On your world it will be slightly colder near the ends of the cylinder, but only because the flat ends will get less sunlight than the curved regions, and so will be colder - again, depending on the amount of axial tilt your world has.

If your planet has seasons for a different reason, though, please ignore all the stuff above.

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The cylinder rotates about an axis that runs through the flat planes, like a soda can rolling on a table. This same axis of rotation is the tangent line of orbit around its star-equivalent (it isn't a star but functions like one for most purposes). Or rather, its almost a tangent line. It wobbles, so the curved surface (which is the only habitable surface; the flat planes on either end can't support life as gravity is not "center of mass" but "center of rotation") is always at an angle to the light of the 'sun'. This is the source of seasons. Much like how Earth's axis is tilted relative to the plane of orbit.

At least, I think that would work to create seasonal differences on opposite ends of the cylinder.

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Originally Posted by MesiDoomstalker

The cylinder rotates about an axis that runs through the flat planes, like a soda can rolling on a table.

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So like if you took a mercator projection map of the earth and rolled it and taped the edges together. The North and South poles are centered in the flat faces, and the axis of rotation runs through them.

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Originally Posted by MesiDoomstalker

This same axis of rotation is the tangent line of orbit around its star-equivalent (it isn't a star but functions like one for most purposes). Or rather, its almost a tangent line. It wobbles, so the curved surface (which is the only habitable surface; the flat planes on either end can't support life as gravity is not "center of mass" but "center of rotation") is always at an angle to the light of the 'sun'. This is the source of seasons. Much like how Earth's axis is tilted relative to the plane of orbit.

At least, I think that would work to create seasonal differences on opposite ends of the cylinder.

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Well, the entire face of the cylinder will have the same angle to the "sun", so it will have the same "season" across the entire length.

The reason the part of the Earth closest to the sun gets the most heat is not because it is closer to the sun (though it is), but because the sunlight at local noon is coming in perpendicular to the surface. That means each square foot of earth gets one square foot of sunlight (assuming we can treat the sun's rays as coming in parallel to each other, which we mostly can because the sun is so far away) at noon. 45 degrees away, half-way to the poles, each "square foot" of sunlight gets spread over 1.4 square feet of earth. So each square foot of earth gets only 0.7 "square feet" of sunlight at noon.

Because the Earth has a 22.3^o tilt to its axis, that "1 square-foot of sunlight per square foot of earth at noon" point moves from north to south and back again as the planet orbits the sun.

With your cylinder world, though, the entire curved face has the same angle to the "sun". The square foot of land next to the south flat face of the cylinder has the same angle to the "sun" as the square foot of land next to the north flat face.

You will go through all four seasons twice each year. The solstices, when one of your flat ends is closest to the sun, will be the times when your "square foot of sunlight" is spread over the most square feet of planet, so those will be the starts of winter. The equinoxes will be when you get the 1 "square foot" of sunlight per square foot of surface, so those will be the starts of summer.

The flat ends, on the other hand, will have the normal four seasons per year, with the end closet to the sun having summer when the end farthest from the sun is having winter. These end seasons will have a slight effect on the curved-surface seasons, with a greater effect the closer you get to the flat face. But note that it will always be winter on the living space when it's summer/winter on the flat faces.

So the seasons on the cylinder will be Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall - Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall - Winter. Closer to the flat faces it will go: Severe Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall - Mild Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall - Severe Winter. The region of the livable surface close to the sun-side face will be in Mild Winter while the region close to the far-side face will be in Severe Winter. But the entire livable surface will always be in the same season at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Lord Torath

So like if you took a mercator ...

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Oh please, don't thread crap this enjoyable thread. If MesiDoomstalker tell us that his world has four seasons, then that's it, even if it's shaped as a cone. Better give us more world building examples.

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Originally Posted by CombatBunny

Oh please, don't thread crap this enjoyable thread. If MesiDoomstalker tell us that his world has four seasons, then that's it, even if it's shaped as a cone. Better give us more world building examples.

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Originally Posted by Lord Torath

<snip a bunch of technical crap>

If your planet has seasons for a different reason, though, please ignore all the stuff above.

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I think the bit I'm most proud of is the stuff I did to the Isle of Dread.

Spoiler: This is a 40-year-old module. If you don't want to know what happens, skip this bit

Show

The module has at the center of the island the last remnants of a once-great empire of the Kopru. Rather than have it on its last legs, I had it just starting to recover. The Kopru had managed to charm a young red dragon, and used that to help catch and charm most of the locals, and to start rebuilding the empire. The surviving locals had abandoned their village on the shore of the volcanic lake and build a new stockade up against the caldera wall. This way the party was ending an emerging threat, rather than striking the last blow to a threat that would have been gone in a decade or so even if he party did nothing.

I also had a zombie uprising in the village the party first arrives at, and had a dungeon under the village that was shaped like a four-armed skeleton raising a two-handed sword over its head. The tip of the "blade" chamber was directly under the pyramid the natives used as the focus of their totemic worship up on the surface, and found the animated skeleton of one of the village elder's pet sabre-toothed tiger as well as a bunch of other undead down there.

I turned the rakasta camp into a nomadic village, with the tribe moving their camp every week or so to avoid over-hunting any particular area, and gave them a competing tribe of hyena-like gnolls. The PCs were also confronted by ogres who were hunting mammoths. The ogres ordered the party to move around in a different direction to avoid ruining their ambush.

I had a lot of fun with that module.

Another thing I'm rather proud of is the "warhorse" dream I made for the party paladin. It starts out with a view from near the ground through tall grass of a herd of elk, with a particularly fine specimen as the focus (definitely suitable for a paladin's mount). I created about 5-6 different "versions" of the dream, each one the same as the previous one, but with a few more seconds of action tacked on to the end. The view creeps closer through the grass until the stag catches a scent on the wind. It trumpets the alarm, and the herd scatters, with your view following the stag. The last dream ends with the stag almost close enough to reach out and touch as the paladin wakes up. The party reaches the appointed location, passes through a copse of trees, and discovers said stag with its neck broken and a giant tiger (his actual "warhorse") perched on its back.

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Originally Posted by Lord Torath

Another thing I'm rather proud of is the "warhorse" dream I made for the party paladin. It starts out with a view from near the ground through tall grass of a herd of elk, with a particularly fine specimen as the focus (definitely suitable for a paladin's mount). I created about 5-6 different "versions" of the dream, each one the same as the previous one, but with a few more seconds of action tacked on to the end. The view creeps closer through the grass until the stag catches a scent on the wind. It trumpets the alarm, and the herd scatters, with your view following the stag. The last dream ends with the stag almost close enough to reach out and touch as the paladin wakes up. The party reaches the appointed location, passes through a copse of trees, and discovers said stag with its neck broken and a giant tiger (his actual "warhorse") perched on its back.

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OK that made me crack up. Good job.

When my party's cleric was being revived from death he saw a vision of him leading an army of storm giants. Few sessions later he found out about the chamber with an army of giants held in stasis that the rest of the party had found way back near session 1 (He had joined the campaign about halfway through). That was fun to watch. And now I get to prep a few nostalgia sessions back in the place they had their first adventure.

This is larger scale than most, but small scale in the context of the campaign.

I'm running a Prime Directive game (set fairly early, around the time Pike has the Enterprise) at the moment, and I've decided to delete some of the nations (Right now, only the Klingons, Romulans, Kzinti, and Federation are confirmed to exist) and add others to keep an air of mystery.

One of the new nations is a time-displaced accidental Vulcan-Human-Klingon colony that is essentially a typical D&D setting with Star Trek technology - the Vulcans and Klingons are even called Elves and Orcs. Not the nost original of ideas, but I'm pretty pelased.that I made it work.

Lesbian halfling religious communes. They had special outbuildings for men to stay at.

Oh, and what homosexuality MEANT in goblin society, structured, as it is, with socially dominant males controlling access to goblin females, and males in a strict heirarchy.

Hm... I'm not sure how to interpret "micro-scale".

In general my favourite bits are the little details (though on big scale) that no one thinks about that add verisimilitude to the setting(3.5e). I have a ton of these.

For example a functional planar geometry. Or Teleport wards that prevent the setting turning into a Tippyverse. Or the unreliability of teleport preventing the obviation of overland travel.

And taken as a whole it's those little details that create a unique setting.

Gnomish teas. In my first campaign, I had a gnomish tea and pastry shop in a building shaped like a boot (big folk were served in the leg part of the boot). A sampling of the Gnomish teas: Glitter Tea, which has the effect of giving you little fireworks in your vision (like seeing stars but way better), and Bubble Tea, which allows you to blow bubbles out of your mouth. Both are pleasant magical effects which last for about an hour, and the goliath PC really took to Gnomish Bubble Tea, always keeping some on hand to entertain himself and the children they encountered.

One of the cultures in my world actively farms and cultivates a fantasy-equivalent of silphium, with comparative effects on humans. For one of the demihuman species, though, it functions as a mild narcotic and intoxicant somewhere between chewing tobacco and marijuana. They end up buying most of what is available for export and only the surplus/leftovers make it into the hands of outside cultures. This is one of the contributing factors to the origin culture being heavily matriarchal in nature while allowing for other cultures to develop differently.

Gnomes are magical in my low-magic world not because they come from another plane, but because magic ages like a fine wine, and grows stronger over time. And it just so happens that thousands of years ago, a battle between cavemen-era humanoids (i'm thinking like, ten individuals at most) occurred inside a valley that the ancestors of Gnomes would eventually call home. During this battle, one of the combatants was able to (either in death or life, not sure). Enchant a primitive stone weapon into a basic +1 weapon. This weapon was used to kill an enemy on top of a rock, embedding the weapon into the stone while also cracking the weapon itself. This did nothing at first, but as the years went by and the weapon went untended, it's magic slowly grew more and more powerful, leaking out of the crack and slowly filling the valley.

In the present day, the Valley is known as the "feywild", and is filled with wild, primal magic. Anything that moved in there thousands of years ago has evolved into wild fey-like creatures such as the Gnomes. And anything that tries to get in today, is torn apart by the wild magic unless wearing a specialized suit. Gnomes and other Fey can leave the valley, but may require certain accommodations, such as regular inhalation of magic-laced air, and it may take training to get to that point. As a result of all of this, nothing moves into the feywild permanently, and very few ever leave it.


Not sure how strong that old stone weapon would be in the modern day. probably not even half as strong as it would have been if it hadn't been cracked.

I'm going to throw in the bunch of lore i made about the whole church of hextor, god of tyranny.

at that point in the campaign, the high cleric of vecna was openly trying to conquer the world, and he was seeking the alliance of hextor. the players had recently defeated the forces of hextor, leaving them much weakened. they were reluctant to join vecna, as they feared, being so weakened, that they would be disposed of once they outlived their usefulness. on the other hand, they also had plenty of reasons to ally with the forces of vecna to get back at the players and their allies.

so i engineered a scene where the party (who had come to persuade hextor's state to ally with them, or conquer it) just came upon the high priest of vecna trying to persuade the high priest of hextor to join him.
and the hpoVecna (brilliant, knowledgeable, and a great diplomancer) was quoting hextor's own gospel at the hpoHextor to persuade her; he was specifically mentioning the conversion of saint Otaro

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"and I was working on my field, when lo! a stranger on a big black horse with a shiny black armor and a wicked-looking sword appeared
and he told me "now i am your master, and all this is mine"
and i bowed and replied "excellency (with the big black horse and armor and sword he certainly was someone i wanted to treat respectfully), far be it from me to question one such as yours
but i already have a master, and he may disagree"
so the big dude on the horse spoke "perhaps we should ask your former master himself"
and from a sack he pulleth out the severed head of my old master, and he asketh him if he had anything against the overtaking of his serfs, that he may speak now or forever be silent
as i saw this, I prostrated on the ground and intoned
my lord,
i am your humble servant,
my land is your land,
the produce of my labor is yours in tribute,
my home is your home,
my wife is your wife
and when the mighty conqueror passeth forth with his mighty army[needless to say, those were the armies of hextor], my field was not pillaged, my home was not torched, my family was not hurt, and my wife was not abused"
[actually, that last part only happened because the wife was really ugly. there is even a fresco in the great cathedral of hextor depicting the scene, based on accurate contemporary depictions. about his wife, saint Otaro declared "when you are at the bottom of the hierarchy of power, you've got to take everyone else's leftover". yes, there is some sexism into that; the whole religion of hextor is mildly sexist, as befitting a god of tiranny. but they respect achievement enough that their current high priest is a woman, because they are not so dumb that they would waste good talent]

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the whole life of saint Otaro (extremely servile, spent most of his non-working effort to posture with his neighboors for greater social standing) is meant as an example of how the lower classes should behave, and hpoVecna was quoting it to tell hpoHextor "i am strong and you are weak, so you must obey me; even your god says so".

the players, though, had a chance to make a dc 35 knowledge religion check, that would have revealed another obscure piece of hextor's scripture, about the people of Banzanei.

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the Banzanei were one of many people that the newborn state of hextor invaded early on. when the rulers tried to mobilize their people to resist the aggression, the people revolted; no matter who won the war, they'd still have to work the fields, pay taxes. they didn't care who their master was, and saw no reason to spill their blood to pick one over another.
however, the church of hextor was much, much more oppressive than their former rulers. eventually they revolted, and were wiped out as a result.

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quoting that piece of scripture would have persuaded the hpoHextor that actually the weaker party can still make a difference, and sometimes there's reasons to pick one master over the other. the players had offered several guarantees of basic integrity to the forces of hextor, while it was suspected that vecna's endgame was to exterminate the worshippers of every other god, and remain the only god. this would have instantly ensured the alliance of hextor, without further checks.

unfortunately, the players failed the knowledge (religion). but they rolled high enough in diplomacy that they convinced the hpoHextor that, like saint Otaro, she should let her two wannabe masters battle among themselves, and serve the winner. they defeated the hpoVecna in battle (being a weakened form of demilich, he only suffered a temporary inconvenience), and the hpoHextor submitted to them using an adapted version of the original formula
"my lords,
I am your humble servant
my nation is your nation
my gross domestic product is yours in tribute
my cathedral is your cathedral
my sadomaso slaves are your sadomaso slaves" [yes, she is a dominatrix. being the high priest of the god of tiranny, it would be scandalous for her otherwise :smallsmile:. No, i didn't give detailed description, nor derailed the session to deal with the issue. it was simply one more small piece of background. do also notice that hpoHextor was in her sixties, and was doing the whole dominatrix thing because it was socially expected from her; so there was nothing particularly salacious about it, nor was it ever intended to be]

I also wrote other pieces of scripture for the cult of hextor. And i'm quite proud that it got the whole religion feel alive, and I also managed to hit the right blend of dark humor and consistency, so that even if the whole concept look ridiculous, one can see how a population may become enticed into following it, and then it would become too stuck in their little feuds and rivalries to ever mount an effective rebellion.

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Originally Posted by Vegan Squirrel

Gnomish teas. In my first campaign, I had a gnomish tea and pastry shop in a building shaped like a boot (big folk were served in the leg part of the boot). A sampling of the Gnomish teas: Glitter Tea, which has the effect of giving you little fireworks in your vision (like seeing stars but way better), and Bubble Tea, which allows you to blow bubbles out of your mouth. Both are pleasant magical effects which last for about an hour, and the goliath PC really took to Gnomish Bubble Tea, always keeping some on hand to entertain himself and the children they encountered.

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Goblin sauce. In my world goblins have a very poor sense of taste and smell. They really like spicy sauces and will go out of their way to try a new one. Adventurous, non-goblin, idiots will often give goblin sauce a try. Goblins find this hilarious. Twice.

We've left the "micro" part of this thread behind now...

I always make it a point to determine what trash a community generates and what they do with it.

I know it's a weird sticking point but I've had archaeological training and the most exciting and informative digs are always in a settlement's garbage piles, middens, and... erm... "nightsoil treatment"