My First Campaign, PEACH, and need some help/ideas

[RadioThief]

So i am starting to design my first campaign, world, story. Everything. Its going to be a rather large build that encompasses a lot to it. The world will be a homage to my favorite RPGs. it Will have references to games such as, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Baldur's Gate, Breath of Fire, Secret of Mana, Archanum, and a few others included some movies as well. Im thinking of taking certain cities from various games, NPCs that are main characters in some of the games. Examples: a warforged named Robo(Chrono Trigger) a Zeplin called the Millenium Falcon (star wars) a Location, The mana tree (secret of mana) Etc.

Those ideas will just be a fun exta in my world, most wont be direct links to the campaign. So the main quest line will be that the PCs will stumble across a dwarf near death somewhere near the starting town who gives them a cut Diamond Prisum and tells them to keep it safe. The Diamond eventually gets stolen and is used in new Dwarven technology to focus light beams and create a sort of laser rifle, which they use to assasinate either multiple people or someone really important with no hope of ressurection. So what the PCs have to do is figure out a way to stop this. In my wolrd there will be a portal that brings them back to a specific point in time, but first they must find the 8 keys from 8 different kings to unlock this portal to be able to travel back in time and either stop the creation of this gun, or kills the assasins etc. So the main challenge will be when they go into the past, anything they do will have consequences on the future (the present time for the PCs). So i need some ideas on ways i can play with this, or anythign you think i should add, take away, change, im up for all comments.

Just as a note, we will be playing D&D 3.5, and i an very open to a lot of different races living in my world. I will also consider a lot of playable races, classes, prestige classes. So if you have some good homebrew stuff you would liek to suggest that is for the most part balances, please feel free link them. For starters i know i will have 2 races of Goblins, one playable and one as enemy. Thanks in advance.

[TheFamilarRaven]

First and foremost, I suggest reading these articles by the Giant, under the Gaming section. In my opinion, they give some pretty good tips on how world building and how to avoid cookie cutter settings, and they were my first source of real guidance on world building. THAT being said ....

So i am starting to design my first campaign, world, story. Everything. Its going to be a rather large build that encompasses a lot to it. The world will be a homage to my favorite RPGs. it Will have references to games such as, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Baldur's Gate, Breath of Fire, Secret of Mana, Archanum, and a few others included some movies as well. Im thinking of taking certain cities from various games, NPCs that are main characters in some of the games. Examples: a warforged named Robo(Chrono Trigger) a Zeplin called the Millenium Falcon (star wars) a Location, The mana tree (secret of mana) Etc.

As a general rule, having blatant references can brake immersion in the game world. There's nothing wrong with that if your players are cool with it. But you're not really describing homages, rather you have simple references.

Perhaps a better way to include the homages you want would be to reenact the events of said games/movies. For example, maybe the PC's have to fly said zeplin into a bigger zeplin, and destroy said bigger zeplin from the inside (Star Wars homage), or an indirect reference to Characters/events/iconic [fill in the blank], for example, instead of The Millennium Falcon, the name could be change to "The [Blank] 1000

Those ideas will just be a fun exta in my world, most wont be direct links to the campaign.

Why not? If you go through the trouble of including them, at least make them relevant to the story, else you might end up adding all these references to other movies/games that are just there to make you smile, but ultimately, are just passed over cause they're not important, even after ALL the trouble you went to make that particular reference/homage fit into your campaign world!

So the main quest line will be that the PCs will stumble across a dwarf near death somewhere near the starting town who gives them a cut Diamond Prisum and tells them to keep it safe. The Diamond eventually gets stolen and is used in new Dwarven technology to focus light beams and create a sort of laser rifle, which they use to assasinate either multiple people or someone really important with no hope of ressurection.

Plot note, (and I don't know if you've thought of this already but...), make sure the dwarf is attacked by someone/something OTHER than the people trying to steal the prism in the first place. Else people will wonder why the thieves didn't just take the prism from the dwarf right after they essentially killed him.

So what the PCs have to do is figure out a way to stop this. In my wolrd there will be a portal that brings them is back to a specific point in time, but first they must find the 8 keys from 8 different kings to unlock this portal to be able to travel back in time and either stop the creation of this gun, or kills the assasins etc. So the main challenge will be when they go into the past, anything they do will have consequences on the future (the present time for the PCs). So i need some ideas on ways i can play with this, or anythign you think i should add, take away, change, im up for all comments.

Putting story aside, since i'm here to help with the world design, here are some things you need to think about.

-For each kingdom, you'll need to think about what kind of culture they have, whats their government, their main import/export, their top 3 racial demographic, and what their attitude is towards the other kingdoms.

The first two are easy (ish), just look at real world cultures from various time periods and countries across the world, and mish-mash to suit your needs.

The third point helps to clarify what the kingdom actually contributes to the world, so the world doesn't seem static, just waiting for the PC's to do something.

The 4th point goes along with the first two, and will help you define the "expected behavior" of certain races. This is also a good way to brake away from fantasy racial stereotypes .... (that sounds wrong ....), I mean, sure, Elves LOVE forests and trees, but maybe in THIS world, they live in a desert and have a fundamentalist government with a culture reminiscent of ancient Egypt!

Finally, the last point is arguably the most important, defining the relationships between each kingdom will not only create the necessary conflict to make a setting interesting, but will also help you flesh out the history of the world. For instance, kingdom 1 hates kingdom 3 because 123 years ago they went to war because they each thought they made the prettiest dresses ... or something like that. And Kingdom 4 likes kingdom 1 because they like to buy said dresses dresses.

Just as a note, we will be playing D&D 3.5, and i an very open to a lot of different races living in my world. I will also consider a lot of playable races, classes, prestige classes. So if you have some good homebrew stuff you would liek to suggest that is for the most part balances, please feel free link them. For starters i know i will have 2 races of Goblins, one playable and one as enemy. Thanks in advance.

Hopefully whatever I said helped, I could help more when you have a more definite idea of what the cultures are.