PDA

View Full Version : Fleshing Out a Campaign Setting



Asklepian
2009-08-05, 06:16 PM
Howdy folks!

My group’s long-running D&D game is starting to build towards the grand finale, and I’ve been asked to step up to the DM role for the next game. Now, I already have a rough plan for the overall plot and setting, but I figured I’d come to you good Playground folk and harvest your juicy brains for sweet ideas. I mean, harvest juicy ideas from your sweet brains. I mean… well, okay, we’ll stick with the last one. Basically what I’m looking for is stuff to help me broaden and deepen, take it from ‘rough idea’ to ‘living and breathing world.’ Credit will be given where credit is due for ideas used, and if you’re just curious how your idea plays out in a game, I’ll be happy to keep you updated on that too.

So, without further ado, here’s what I have so far. Beware the wall o’ text!


Millennia ago, a powerful deity known only as the Prince of Ash and Chains turned on his brethren and started the War in Heaven. As one of the most powerful of his kind, and willing to use anything that would give him an edge, he proved more difficult to subdue than the powers arrayed against him might suggest, and the war raged out of control. Eventually it spilled over into the earthly world and the mortal races were dragged into it as well. Armies both ethereal and material marched endlessly, and the destruction was unbelievable. Millions were killed and atrocities were committed.

500 years ago, the war came to a sudden end. Ambushed and trapped, the Prince was brought to bay personally and dealt a crippling blow. Cast down to Earth in a rain of fire, his descent caused untold destruction and chaos across the face of the planet. It was the end of an era, and everyone knew the world would never be the same. Yet few realized just how right they really were.

When the people came out of their shelters, they found a shock waiting for them immediately. The sky had gone dark, covered by an eternal shadowy haze known as the Shroud. The stars were forever blotted out, and the Sun reduced to little more than a chill glimmer. Worse yet, all prayers or other attempt at contacting other planes failed completely. At first, the assumption was that the Gods had merely withdrawn to discuss the unprecedented death of one of their number, but then other facts began to surface.
Several extraplanar entities were trapped on our world, unable to return to their homes. The dead would not rest, arising shortly after falling as twisted, crazed horrors driven mad by a failed transition to the spirit world. When the celestial silence failed to end, the truth became clear: the way to Heaven was closed completely, and no one knew how or why.

Yet it is said that people can get used to anything, and so it was with this. Slowly the races of the world came together and began to rebuild and recover. Much had been destroyed, and great swaths of the land were uninhabitable thanks to the old war and the new ice age, but some places could be saved. Cities were founded, kingdoms arose, and empires were conquered. Life settled into a new rhythm that, while far from perfect, at least did not include the endless threat of annihilation that the war had brought.

Unfortunately, not all things are so flexible as a mortal. A powerful Celestial, the Archangel Apollyon, was trapped here by the Shroud and could not deal with this unwanted change of circumstances. Feeling betrayed by the masters that had abandoned him here, he at first he tried to make the world around him to become a new Heaven, to force mortals to conform to his ideals through the glory and power native to him. This failed. People are stubborn, and short-lived. No sooner would one generation be properly ‘trained’ than a new would be along and the old would die. Eventually, he despaired even of this.

Now he has decided that the only course of action is to go home by any means necessary. Unfortunately, as powerful as he is, the Shroud is beyond his capacity to affect. Only one thing can undo the works of a god, and that is another god. The Prince of Ash and Chains may be crippled, but as a divine entity he can never truly die. The only thing that has kept him from recovering completely, Apollyon knows, is the Shroud itself, cutting him off from the Divine Source that gives all the gods their powers.

Thus, he intends to gather the shattered fragments of the Prince, enough to generate a spark of his divine power, and rupture the Shroud once and for all. Yes, it will mean the War begins anew with all the horror that entails, but look at these mortals! They’re like animals. They can’t simply be left to govern themselves anyways.

And most importantly, it means he will finally get to go home.

So that’s the basic setup and our BBEG of sorts. So here’s a few other ideas I know already I’m going to have going on.


- We’ll be using D&D 4E for the game, and while the world is cut off from the divine I don’t intend to get rid of the divine classes, just refluff them a bit. They’ll either be drawing on the aura of power spread throughout the world by the Prince’s fall, or they’ll carry an ancient relic from before the Shroud that was invested with Divine power, and slowly draining it to create their miracles. No real mechanical effects either way, just a fluff thing.

- Alignment is very different. It does not allow you to ‘ping’ for what kind of person you’re dealing with, it only shows what sort of supernatural powers they’re most heavily linked to. Thus, our aforementioned clerics… if they’re drawing on the Prince’s leftover shreds of power, they’ll ping Chaotic Evil even if they’re fighting a fire at an orphanage. Likewise, someone carrying a divine relic will come up Good even if they’re using the power to conquer and wreak havoc. The vast majority of individuals are simply Unaligned in this era, thanks to the Shroud.

- There are a plethora of undead because no one can move on. The strongest spirits will come back as something sentient and thus usually much worse, while even the weak might come back as a zombie. People have developed countermeasures to prevent it, basically burning and salting every grave to force the spirit into a catatonic state, but the damage was already done by the time they figured it out and there’s still the occasional accidental death beyond reach.

- Fiends, elementals, celestials, basically anything extraplanar… they’re all unique. There’s no new source for them. They’re all named individuals who’ve been trapped since the Shroud fell. Thus, just as a rough example, you won’t have ‘a’ Kyton. You might have The Kyton, the chained horror that stalks the deserted streets of the lost city of Kasmith. You get the idea.

- One of these fiends, a very powerful one, lives in a long-abandoned ruin of a city in the midst of a wasteland, surrounded by a horde of undead. He is not, however, up to the usual fiendish tricks. Rather he has abandoned his old ways and is gathering undead to him to teach them how to find peace in their new existence and remember their lost humanity. Why use such an out-of-the-way, forsaken location for this? Mutual protection, of course! You don’t take a recovering alcoholic to a bar, and you keep brain-hungry zombies away from people.

- There is a religion of sorts in control of one nation, which has just finished a drawn out war with another in complete victory. This cult believes that since the gods are gone, they must build one to take their place. As such they attempt to seize all things magical/divine from the old days to channel into their new Clockwork God, so that he can lead them into a new light and glory and so on and so forth. The now-occupied nation was very interested in magic, and that’s why they became victims, so their stores of knowledge and items could be seized. The religion may be a front for, or merely influenced by, Apollyon. I’m not sure yet.

And that’s what I’ve got so far! A lot of reading, I know, and thanks if you’ve taken the time to do so. Any ideas will be considered, and all help is appreciated.

Danke. :)

Rhiannon87
2009-08-05, 07:52 PM
Well, first and foremost (in my political science degree-holding mind), you need to establish those kingdoms and empires you talked about in your history section.

What are they like? How are they organized-- regionally, racially, culturally, religiously, some of the above? How are they ruled? Monarchies, oligarchies, theocracies, parliamentary republic (unlikely), empires? What are their militaries like? Their economies? How do they relate to one another? What are their major cities? What traits set them apart from other nations? Get all this worked out for the major players in the world. Draw maps. Figure out trade routes, enemies, rivalries, alliances.

Then start stating out major NPCs for each location. Who are the rulers? What are they like, and how do they hold onto power? What are their personal relationships to each other, regardless of what the official national relationships are? What's their ruling style? Other major organizations, like churches, guilds, etc. are important players as well. Depending on how a given nation works, the leaders of those groups might be very important NPCs as well.

As for other references... Rich's New World guide, though incomplete, has some really good ideas in it and some suggestions on how to go about building a world. And like the setting or not, I've found the 3.5 Forgotten Realms handbook to have a pretty useful system of organization for national information. Demographics, population, religion, trade, history, important locales, and interesting happenings all in one area. Knowing all this background stuff that your players probably will take for granted is important. The world's political and economic systems are a network of strings; the PCs are going to come into this world as start rearranging, slicing, and recoloring those strings. Its important to know how the players taking an action in city X will impact their reception in city Y.

Altima
2009-08-05, 10:56 PM
You also need to decide how much everyone knows. 500 years isn't *that* long, but it's still a fairly long time, especially if divine (healing) magic is all wonky. Plus, various groups will have their own ideas on what happened, and be placing the blame squarely upon them.

Also, you forgot one of the cults that would inevitably arise--the ones that want to kill everyone and every thing and turn the planet into an undead wasteland!

I suggest expanding your fluff on the outsiders to include that, yes, while they can die, they're effectively bound to the plane and reform after X amount of years.

Oh, and the returning-as-undead thing sounds like something your PCs might take advantage of. Just letting you know before you have a couple of medium/high levelers jump off a cliff to come back as vampires, nightshades, and whatnot.

Thatguyoverther
2009-08-05, 11:28 PM
The sky had gone dark, covered by an eternal shadowy haze known as the Shroud.

How thick is the Shroud? Does an almost normal amount of sunlight get through, like a cloudy day or is it a dark perpetual night?

Either way crops the world over are going to be effected. Unless all the plants are somehow sunlight optional.

Also, how do you wage a major war when all the combatants are going to rise from the dead? An evil nation might just sneak a few assassins in and have them kill a couple hundred people and just let the undead do their shtick.

Having two armies meet in the field would be disastrous since the two armies would meet then after a few minutes there's another army on the field. Unless it takes a significant amount of time for the dead to rise.

You might also want to consider the social aspects of the dead rising. I wouldn't be surprised if every community had a detail that did nothing but knock on peoples doors regularly to make sure no one died in the night. It might even be illegal to live alone for fear that you might die with no one to make sure you don't come back.


If the settings high magic enough people might have runes put on thier heads or necks that explode on death, to ensure that the corpse is sufficiently mangled.

You might also consider the social impact of knowing that your soul will have a torturous, eternal journey ahead of it when you die. People might do anything to avoid death, or start using magic jar type spells to avoid actually entering the afterlife. Expensive spells like that might only be available to the wealthy causing large amounts of animosity between social classes.

Asklepian
2009-08-06, 08:06 PM
Thanks for the responses! Let's see...

The maps are a work in progress, as it usually takes me a while to get things to where I'm content with them. I've got some time, though, so it should be okay. I do know I'm probably looking at a single continent that is roughly Africa-esque in size. There were two more landmasses, but one of them was reduced to being completely inhospitable by the War, and the other is increasingly deadly due to the new Ice Age.

As far as what's known, yes, that's a definite feature of the campaign. Few individuals actually know why the Shroud was put into place. Some of the longer-lived races actually remember the War and all it brought, but there are very few humans alive who do.

I like the idea of the extraplanars reforming if 'killed'. It would be an awful and traumatic process for them all the same, but it also adds to your bad guy's despair. He can't even kill himself to escape this world.

And an ominicidal cult will certainly have to feature. ;)

As to my players seeking out the undead state... well, if it happens it does. It's the kind of thing that would usually make a character an NPC because of the way it would wreck a game in several ways, but... if all of them decide to go suicide pact on me, we'll see what we see. I don't think it will come to that.

Sadly enough, I hadn't thought of the crops. I should have. It's more perpetually overcast than midnight black but it does still create issues. I'll have to think on it some. Perhaps a shift to mass fungus harvesting or something similar as crops begin to suffer heavily? Or a group of magic users doing what they can to adapt plant life to survive in the new world... Hm.

I'm leaning towards a '4d4-4 hours' cycle time on the returning from the dead. I do want the possibility of a rather unfortunately sudden return, but I also don't want it to be an instant panic button. There is usually time for people to clean up the bodies and prevent a disaster.

I do like the class conflict ideas, and the reduction of privacy as important in the face of the undead menace. Thank you for the ideas.