Saol-Na-Fola - A complicated homebrew (PEACH!)

[EchoKnight]

I was Co-DMing a 3.5 game. Unfortunately it has fallen on hard times as of late due to schedule conflicts. The other DM has taken it upon himself to both adjust the ongoing plots to the character's choices and go into further detail of his homebrew world.

That's right; his. I was not allowed to build any of it unless it was in response to the PC's doing something unexpected.

So, I've decided that during this little break, I'll be making my own homebrew world. Unlike some people I'm happy to share the setting and I am open to ideas and surgestions.

And I already found this, so don't worry about any hand holding.

I will be resverving the first few posts and editing in the basics later.

Yes this means you've only got the name and ramblings for now.

A cookie (::) to the first one to figure out where I got the name from.

[EchoKnight]

Ok, now that I've got some breathing room up here; let me cover the basic ideas. Beware, here be wall of text. I tried to format it but...

I want to make a big, sandboxy campaign world that can cover the gambit from puzzles and magic to stealth and intrigue to hack and slash.

The good news since it is unlikely to be played by me anytime soon, I'll can take my time getting to all that. Most likely by developing a general overveiw, followed by more specific key points in various 'micro-settings'.

The bad news is I am a fan of both the interconectedness of all things, (like one of my fav detectives), and dynism. Meaning things will get complicated very quickly, as at higher levels of play, the various factions of all the 'micro-settings' will tie in. It also means, I expect to have enough detail to deal with what happens if the PC's ignore a plot hook too long or bungle fixing it.

The setting will be made for 3.5 with varies houserules (and class modifications) but will hopefully still be easy enough to adapt to other systems.

General themes

• Starts off High Middle ages in most of the world, reaching early enlightment era in only a few countries.
• The largest and most powerful nations are ruled by fey sorceror-'slavemasters'
• Those same said nations are in a state of war.
• Human nations, (which the fey overlords laugh at the concept btw), are either a deliberate attempt to create a buffer zone between those various nations or on the outskirts, away from the cultural centers of the world.
• In terms of geographical climate, think continental europe, including the middle east. I am considering adding tropical islands to the north though.
• The first continent, (won't start on a second until this one is done), is in the southern hemisphere, simply because, so few 'offical' settings are.
• Just so there is no confusion, the mage-lord fey have been known to create entire species to serve their needs. It doesn't always go well.
• Subnote of the above: many of the playable LA +0 races will be examples of this.
• The metaphysics will be consistant, even if this means dissallowing many cool classes.
• There will be no psionics as described by the Wizards.
• Magic will be powered by life, because spellcasters need to have consequences. To support this, I freely admit to raiding Midnight 2nd edtion, Dark Sun 3.5 (ala the Burnt World of Athas) and Encyclopedia Arcane: Blood Magic. Do not expect to see me define any of those rules until I have fiddled with it enough to not break copyright laws.
• There is no active divine magic anymore. While there is still priests, holy warriors and churchs, there are no traditional D&D clerics or paladins. On the fence about druids and only non-spellcasting rangers allowed.
• Cause and Effect. There will always be a logical reason for events in the setting. This logic may be as simple as 'It was the best idea he had at the time', but there will be a reason and consequences.
• There will be at least two major threats at the 'start' date. By major, I mean 'End of the Campaign Climax' threats. There will, of course be more both in the past and future.
• With the exception of humans, none of the traditional races will be used, at least to start.
• There will be close ties to a 'Spirit Realm', where the traditional fey, elementals and a goodly number of ancestor-spirits/ghosts, (seemingly chosen at random and most certainly not everyone's afterlife) live together under a complicated politcal system.
• Subnote: The mage-lord fey are not welcome there. Known Defiler Wizard at the Annual Athasian Druids Convention not welcome.
• Advances will be made. while they don't exist yet, firearms and the steam engine are being developed in the more technologically advanced nations.
• IT WILL NOT BE STEAMPUNK. I cannot stress that enough.
• In order to make things easier to deal with, (since the 4 subraces of the Mage-Lord fey are PC races), the traditional alignment system will not be used.
• I am ultimatly aiming for a dystopian revolution flavour for the over-all setting, though the various 'mirco-settings' (with maybe 1.5 per nation) will have there own flavour.
• This should be low to mid level fantasy most of the time, only reaching high fantasy at the truely high levels.
• There is no one Common tongue. Languages will be played up to increase the scope of the setting and drama therein.
• It will be a fairly large contenant (I'm thinking, Russia sized) and most nations will be land based.
• This should be used for stories that are ultimatly about making choices and dealing with them. You are your own worset enemy here and your actions will have effects that will alter the world around you.
• Wilderness, defined as unclaimed land, does not exist. The wild does, but certainly not enough to justify playing traditional druids, rangers or barbarian. This setting is about the mortal peoples of the world, not conquering nature.
• Nations will have cultural identities, much like in the real world. These identities will not simply be rehashes of the real world. Do not expect them to be simular.
• It should be noted that the subraces of the Mage-Lord Fey are not universally slavemasters and even those that are vary in how they treat their slaves. There is a divide along racial lines, but there are no exceptions.
• This is tended to be a Grey-Scale Morality world, not crapsack.
• Subnote: There is no defult bad guy race. Every intelligent race used must either be capable of making peace with the PCs.
• Even on this continent, there will be blank spaces. These are to be filled with towns/villages, not countries. (Though, they might feel differently, ala Texas or Qubec.)

As you can tell I already have a few ideas where to go, including some basic history.
But as you can see it is a little scattered in my head. Keep in mind this is just the seeds I've got now. I have ideas for a total of 10 pc races; humans, the fey subraces, neanderthal/beastman/centaur hybrid, 'goblins/kobolds' with related race and symbiotic insects that are only sentiant when combined. Yes, one is missing from the list.

[EchoKnight]

Post reserved for geography and cosmology.

Will include a continental europe climate, modfiered for being in the southern hemisphere (south is cold, north is warm), a map, and more detailed breakdown of the various regions of the setting.

Also anything related to planes. The standard ones not be used.

[EchoKnight]

Post reserved for races.

Will not only include the races & their (generic cultures), but links to discussions threads for them.
I don't want to crowd this thread too much, after all.

[EchoKnight]

Post reserved of links to the multiple microsettings, Nations and factions for navigation ease.

I will be posting that data in this thread, but I expect it to slowly grow to the point in which this is nessicary.

[EchoKnight]

Post reserved for class modifications and house rules.
This rule changes must be backed up by the setting.
If I add or alter anything and it is not setting supportted, let me know immedately.

Since there much of a setting so far, I cannot make anyhouse rules yet.

[EchoKnight]

Post reserved for something...
I don't know yet, but if I've missed something, here it goes.

[Elemental]

This is going to sound a bit mean...

Try to avoid too many apostrophes in a word. It makes them harder to read and subsequently work out the pronunciation of.
At this point in time, I can not work out how that word is pronounced. The individual parts, yes; the whole thing, no.

Unless you're planning on releasing a linguistic guide to assist in pronunciation; try for a phonetic spelling. So much easier on the reader's eyes.

[EchoKnight]

ok...naming is not my strong suit. Thank you.

[Grinner]

Let's see...Is the name in Gaelic?

[EchoKnight]

Irish but close enough

Tah-Dah! (::) cookie for you!

Seriously though, any have something to say about the mad rambellings?
I know it is difficult to follow. I Have trouble following it sometimes. Hence why I put it up here, so I can have some help to say it more clearly,

[Grinner]

This is ambitious. From what I'm reading, you basically intend to write several entire histories from scratch.

[EchoKnight]

Pretty much.

Fortunantely this project doesn't have to be ready for a while yet.
Otherwise I'd be in real trouble.

[Elemental]

Now it's much easier to understand.
I thought each section was supposed to be separate from another.

Finally a continent in the Southern Hemisphere! Excellent.
For some reason, they don't show up very much in fiction.

It all sounds good so far in my opinion. I especially like the abandonment of a common tongue.

[ufo]

I love many of your basic principles with this - especially the parts about magic and life, the continent being in the southern hemisphere (deserts can be in the north, dammit!) and especially the part about languages.

Do you have any details of the mage-lord fey, yet? Especially with the revolution-theme, I imagine their history and abilities are really important.

[EchoKnight]

There is going to be deserts in the west actually. The north is the tropics, the 'far' south has snow in the winter etc.

As for details on the mage-lord fey...
I have a rough outline of both their offical and real histories, why they split into for different 'races' and the like. I've just haven't done enough to justify a post yet.

However Ufo, I have determined that one of the four deserve that particular title more than the others. It was their idea to create new life-forms after the 'First Schism'. (These guys basicly balkanised a lot. Not that they were very united to begin with.) I have done the racial stats for them (not the others yet) but the fluff and ecology isn't quite done yet. Keep in mind, unless it is a dragon or an outsider, any intelligent creatures I allow into the setting will be considered PC races.

I should have that all done by the end of the weekend though, at least for this 'branch'. Well, except for names, cause I suck at those. The working one for this branch is 'Tiarodel'.