Share some details of your campaign setting

[Fighter1000]

If any of you playgrounders have ever GMed before, I would like to know some details about the campaign worlds you have created, for inspiration and/or plain old entertainment. You don't have to spill every little thing about your imagined world, just the things you think are most important.

I'll begin with some details of my own:
In my current campaign setting that I am running, there is one kingdom. It is ruled by a king who is a very powerful wizard (20th-level wizard by D&D 3.5/Pathfinder standards).
There is also a man named Arthur who controls all organized crime in the kingdom. Freelance thieves have to keep their operations secret not only from the authorities, but also from Arthur's gang. For Arthur seeks to get all freelance criminals under his control, except the Chaotic/Crazy ones.
There is also a wizard who is equal in power to the King, and his name is Los. He is quite insane, and seeks godhood. He has started a zombie plague in one of the cities, which is quarantined by the Order of Light, a group of clerics under the benevolent leadership of Holarion, god of light and holiness.

So, feel free to comment on my campaign setting's details or the details of other campaign settings that might be brought up here, and/or tell us about the details of your own campaign setting. I look forward to what you have all come up with. Thank you.

[LawfulNifty]

I haven't been able to run a game in it yet, but I'm working on a campaign setting on my blog, where dragons rule a loosely-organized empire spanning most of the world.

The "standard" D&D pantheon has been almost completely replaced by monotheistic worship of Io, the Dragon-God. Subjects are allowed to worship other deities, but the official stance is that they are "really" worshiping an aspect of Io--which saves me the trouble of coming up with new content for Io-worship, since any deity-related content can just be repurposed.

[Mastikator]

In a scifi space setting the Klackons have 4 eyes, each capable of seeing one color each, red, green, blue and infrared. Their nerve endings can sense magnetic fields. Their metabolism is similar enough to humans that they can live in our atmosphere, as long as they take sulfur supplements in their air. They have no concept of "I" instead believing that 14 ghost Klackons live in their heads making all the decisions, when they die they believe those Klackons will go into other newborn Klackons.
The Klackons are the first alien race the humans encountered, the Klackons are peaceful and quickly learned the human languages and helped them spread amongst the stars. The Klackons are also clever pacifists and most Klackon warships are manned by a lot of humans (up to 10-30% of the crew). Though they are far more advanced than humans, they are slightly less intelligent and have stagnated over the last thousand years of spacefaring.

[Yora]

In my setting, elves and gnomes are just starting with building big kingdoms, humans are still all barbarians, dragons, giants, and lizardfolk are plenty, and people worship the spirits of the land.

Adventure-wise, characters spend a lot of time crossing the wilderness, dealing with supplies, chosing safe routes, and running into all kinds of randomized creatures and small ruins on the way.

[Krazzman]

In my game currently a bit lazy Illusionist Mage tries to bring the whole of Toril under his command as he tries to collect the Magic nodes in the lands for this.

The problem is that the Base of the PC's lies directly at such a node. They are already being under attack from Drow, every now and then and now they slowly get to feel what it will be like if he starts really invading.

Currently Rashemen is together with the frozen north being tried to seal off.
On the Shadow Plane one Vampire Lord was killed by his "underling" who now works for this Illusionist and started the sealing process for him. The Dark-Fey can't do anything against this new vampire lord as the vampires are strict in doing those things themselves but are currently inactive.

The PC's are just now trying to infiltrate a Castle full of Skeleton and "Ninja" mooks that are helping this New Vampire lord. They try to disable the main sealing nexus there to stop this sealing process and effectivly bringing back the spring as being cut off from reality stops the cycle of seasons.

[VariSami]

Let us see...

There is Shalara, the world of giant jungles. Basically everything is colossal in comparison to what you would normally expect and the world itself is strong enough to force all civilization to eventually crumble. It is surrounded by misty mountains in all directions but South, and the South ends in a misty ocean. According to legend, the mist results from the water that falls from the edge of the world. In the middle, there is a mountain range surrounding a gigantic chasm.

The civilized people of Shalara consist of Halfling, Gnomes and Goblins. The Halflings are nomads who easily befriend anyone. The Gnomes are steampunk tinkerers who inherited their genius from centuries of slavery in the servive of giants. They primarily inhabit the crumbling Giant metropolises which have been converted into Gnome hives. The Goblins are somewhat barbaric in comparison, preferring to live tribal lives but sometimes becoming pariahs who attempt to remake their lives among the other folk. They were homebrewed to have a penalty to Wis instead of Cha, and there was some dappling with the other races as well. At the end of the campaign, the Gnomes were being turned into fun-sized Nazies bent on becoming the only true inheritors of the world of Shalara so that they could rebuild it with discipline. However, they had ported in Humans using ancient portals to other worlds and the big folk's own world was dying so they quite preferred not to leave when their contract was to end.

Then there is Avincar, the Material Plane metropolis that connects to a number of surrounding worlds (including Shalara but the portals between them had long been nonfunctional). The whole of Avincar was a metropolis ruled by the Titan King Solomon, an advanced Titan representing absolute law. The place was a bureaucratic nightmare, and the system was upheld by Judges, ritually armored and brainwashed Stone Giants with closed helmets that forced them to rely on magical blindsight (justice is blind, after all). However, there were also lawless zones in which all kinds of pariahs and outcasts would gather. They had been removed from Solomon's rule due to natural disasters and other such cataclysms and were mostly ruins that were shabbily rebuilt as slums. Of course, the Judges would attempt to rehabilitate the lawless zones, forcing the outcasts to further deny Solomon and his rule in order to protect their freedom.

I also had quite the meta level game in a world called Tenebra. Basically it was a MMORPG like Sword Art Online in the eponymous novels and anime. The characters were avatars for players played by the players around the table. Tenebra itself was a gigantic dungeon connected to an unexplorable surface only by the Town of Beginnings, Hole. Basically it was a small burg with a giant hole that showed a night sky over everything. The rest of the world was underground and ruled by five factions ruled by five Dungeon Masters. The factions were the Ameliorating Ensemble led by the Half-Celestial Paladin Elspeth, the Academy of Artifice led by the genius Artificer Ral Zarek, the Yore-Tiller Swarm led by the insect-loving lich Jarad, the Satanic State led by Graz'zt and the the Delirium Despotat led by the Elder, an Elder Brain. Some other locales include Chorus, the headquarters of the Ensemble. It was an underground town made in the general form of an amphitheater. Everything was made of non-absorbing materials, mostly marble, which allowed voices to reach very far.

Well, that is it for original settings as far as I can remember. There have been others but these are the most recent and developed. As some might have noted, I draw quite a lot of inspiration from Magic the Gathering. At the moment, I prefer using Planescape and Eberron.

[Vortalism]

I've been planning on trying to make this work somehow in a game that I'll be running soon. So basically all the "planes" in this campaign are actually just planets, so using spells like Gate or Plane Shift is really just fancy interstellar travel, besides travel with actual space ships.

The main planet (Srintorva) is a standard fantasy world except the people there capitalise on the fact that there is high functioning, stable magic there. The Mages Guild is essentially a corporation that does odd jobs with magic for the people in exchange for a comfortable lifestyle pouring themselves into their books with no trouble, however this is only in the orderly civilised Empire of Kaladash. The Kaladashar empire is pretty much Roman Empire meets the Corrino Padishah Empire from Dune. BTW, all magic is powered by a strange blue essence that's both liquid and sand-like called "mana", Wizards consume their spells per day:smallbiggrin: Also in this world Mages are just sorta mages, so Elder Scrolls rules apply, a Mage is able to cast restorative magic (cleric spells). Furthermore, I combine the Sorcerer and Druid classes into the new naturey Sorcerer class (Druid+restrictive arcane spells). And to top it all off there is Psionics, which runs on tattooed-powered soul burning chakra stuff that makes them invisible to human magic, which is why Elves use it, also in this setting elves are a warrior race like the Klingons, but prettier in armour, dwarves are mechanical geniuses with access to guns and firearms and gnomes and halflings are one race (gnomes) that take on the elves' previous role as "guardians of nature". To make things even wackier the Elves are currently fighting a guerrilla war with the Human Empire.

The neighbouring planets are a knock off Barsoom (Mars) and Jungle world Venus, with inhabitable Tatooine Saturn, Cloud-City Bespin Jupiter (their moons) and Ice-world Hoth Neptune (their planets aren't aligned properly). As well as a bunch of outer worlds which resemble the outer planes from Planescape.

It's weird I know. :smalltongue:

[Kaveman26]

*The traditional pantheon of D&D gods was recently assassinated and replaced by an Asgardian Pantheon

*A cursed artifact psuedo undead parrot became the most powerful diety on the material plane and is currently training his turkey vulture half phoenix offspring the ropes of tyranny.

*There was a no flight rule. I.E. magical flight was not allowed. That seems to be going away now.

[Frozen_Feet]

Details? Ask and you shall receive!


In a collapsed tunnel in abandoned dwarven mines, there is a group of corpses with sacks over their head. Those sacks were primitive gasmasks to protect them from carbon dioxide in the mines. They died of asphyxiation because their air reserves ran out.
Somewhere in the mountains east of Clearwater lives a hermit monk who guards a magic ring stolen from the Faceless Queen of the Abyss. Anyone who looks at the ring is overcome with a lust for it.
Emperor Carolus II, stated to be nephew of Carolus I, was not infact related to him - Carolus I had no siblings. Carolus I did, however, have sex with Carolus II's mother, but so did a lot of other people, since she was a temple prostitute.
When Joakim Mors, greatest necromancer of the century, died in the venerable age of 201, one of his greatest regrets was his lack of biological offsrping. This was not, however, true. He had at least two kids with two of the whores he had visited as a sailor - he just didn't get to know any of them.
Joakim Mors was a vegan due to ethical reasons.
No living mortal actually knows how their world came into being. This includes creator of the setting.
Magnetic field of the world is created by a flaming sword, but the sword only exists part of the time.
Animal rights movement of the setting was founded by a dragonslayer who felt bad for endangering the species.
The above sentence is bit of a lie. There are no dragons (as portrayed in contemporary fantasy) in the world. Rather, the word "dragon" is a shorthand for any weird beast associated with evil, and has been used from things ranging from crocodiles to monitor lizards and big birds.
Somewhere, there is a rock that is said to have fallen from the heavens. Allegedly it used to be white, but sins of mankind stained it black. This is also the reason why people have black skin. This belief was invented by black people.
Before his ascendance to Emperor, Carolus I was called the "White Lion". This had nothing to do with his bravery; it was given to him because he was an albino, a rare oddity in those parts. To his own people, "lion" was a strange, dangerous beast to be locked in a cage and to be gawked at in a circus.

[Jay R]

The following comes from the introduction I'm giving my players, about the game I'm about to start. The world is not yet designed; I have enough of it to start the game, and hooks to expand it with.

The game starts in a very small village. Everyone in this village grows their own food, and it’s rare to see anybody from outside the village, or anything not made in the village. There are fewer than 100 people living there, which is smaller than it used to be. There is a smith, a village priest, but very few other specialists. There are chickens, goats, sheep, a couple of oxen, but no horses or cows.

The village has a single road going out of town to the north and south, and you’ve never been on it. The only travel on it occurs when a few wagons go off to take food to market – and even that hasn’t happened in the last few seasons. Very rarely, a traveler may come through, and spend the night with the priest. You have all greedily listened to any stories these travelers tell. Your parents say this isn’t good for you – what’s here in the village is good enough for you, and all travelers are always liars, anyway. It's been two years since a traveler came through.

The village is surrounded by a haunted forest nearby. You have occasionally gone a few hundred feet into it on a dare, but no further, and never at night. Three times in your lifetime the village has been raided at night from the forest. You were children, and were kept safe in a cellar. Some villagers have died, but by the time you were let out, whatever the attackers were had fled or been buried.

There is very little overlap between the D&D adventurer class “Cleric” and the average priest. Most priests will have about as much magical ability as seen in medieval stories, i.e. no more than anyone else. Similarly, not all thieves are Thieves, not all bards are Bards, etc. 1st level Fighters are fairly common; anybody else with levels much less so. If you try to hire a bard, you will probably get a singer/harpist with no adventurer skills or class.

DO NOT assume that you know anything about any fantasy creatures. I will re-write many monsters and races, introduce some not in D&D, and eliminate some. The purpose is to make the world strange and mysterious. It will allow (require) PCs to learn, by trial and error, what works. Most of these changes I will not tell you in advance. Here are a couple, just to give you some idea what I mean.
1. Dragons are not color-coded for the benefits of the PCs.
2. There is no clear definition of the gods.

Unknown to the players:

The adventures are in a land that has some level of civilization. But they live in an isolated village deep is a forest which is quickly becoming the boundary between civilization and savagery. So far, only goblins have come through the forest, but the war against civilization has begun, and the ability to live in the forest is dying quickly.

There are occasional Ages of Heroes, in which higher-level enemies grow to challenge mankind, and it becomes possible to earn large amounts of experience points. One such age is just beginning.

There has been little disturbance in the past several decades, and so there are very few spellcasters, and none above the first few levels. It's barely possible that the PCs will eventually find an old Mage or Cleric who earned experience in the last great Age of Heroes sixty or more years ago.

Creatures of Chaos have been moving in.

Wherever they go, there will be signs of former settlements – castle ruins, mills on the streams, remnants of villages, with farms and orchard grown wild, abandoned roads, etc.

The lands to the south and west were in peace. The forests were wild, but not evil.

But evil is creeping in from the northen forests. It has not yet reached the PCs’ village, but its presence is felt. Hunters have noticed that there is actually more game than usual at present, but they animals are mostly seen moving south.

Something as yet undetermined has let evil into the mountains to the northwest,. A new land bridge? Delving too deep? A volcanic opening to the outer world? The workings of a high-level dark wizard or High Priest? I haven’t decided yet.

The PCs will face goblins first, then their leaders in the field, and slowly work up to a level such that they can enter the mountains to the north and west, to learn more about the evil. I will invent the ultimate cause of the challenge to mankind after I hear how the PCs react to the start of it.

The goblins that they meet will not be standard D&D goblins. Here's the description.

These are not standard D&D goblins, they are similar to D&D Orcs, but with slightly more stamina and slightly less long-term courage. They have a greenish skin and leathery skin.

They are almost free-willed and sentient, being tribal creatures who will follow a strong leader. They have no desire to be in an army – a raiding party is their preferred organization. Their morale is quite steady when they are winning, or when their leaders are behind them ready to kill stragglers.

Their claws are decent weapons (1d3/1d3), though not quite as good as swords. They prefer using weapons, to provide a little distance, but are quite willing to rend flesh with their claws if necessary, and will always feed with their bare hands.

They have no competent craftsmen, so their weapons are crude – clubs or very rough spears. If they have anything better made, they have been armed, or have stolen the weapons.

Goblins hate direct sunlight and fight at -1 penalty to their attack rolls in sunlight. Their morale decreases by 1 under these circumstances as well. This penalty slowly grows, increasing by 1 every half hour they are forces to fight in the sun.

Goblins have no sense of tactics or planning. The same, alas, cannot be said for those who are leading them. Whether you see him or not, if there are more than 20 or so goblins together, there’s a leader from some other race commanding them.

Small parties of goblins will occasionally be found riding wolves. It is an open question which race is in charge, and probably depends on the relative strengths of the orc chief and the leader of the wolf pack. It's always an uneasy alliance; goblins eat wolf meat; wolves eat goblin meat.

The first adventure will be escorting two wagons of food to market. They will get their first look at the world beyond the village, discover two abandoned or razed villages, and wind up at a fort, two days after they broke a siege.

[Note that with their wagons pulled by oxen, they cannot flee without blowing the mission.]

Here they will learn about the start of the war, and incidentally, they will get a great price for their food. Also, the fort has an unfortunate surplus of weapons and armor, that belonged to fighters who died in the siege. The party fighters will leave well-armed.

[Calinero]

I don't think any of my players read this forum, but if the Northern Exploration Company means anything to you....stop now.

My setting doesn't really have a name, which is unfortunate, but I've been having a lot of fun with it. It's for a Pathfinder campaign and is roughly inspired by combining the Western era with colonialism.

For centuries an empire consisting of dwarves, humans, gnomes, and Grendel (half-orcs, who in this setting are their own race) has slowly gathered and overcome the differences between its member races. They live on the southern edge of the continent, with the ocean south of them and a mountain range protecting them to the north. However, they have begun to get crowded and have started attempting to expand to the north.

The north is a much wilder, more untamed place. It is subject to spellstorms, where random (and often dangerous) magic effects occur. It is also not unoccupied.

Merchant caravans of elves wander the plains, selling to those they can find, as well as each other. Halflings live in the forests, mistrusting strangers and taking care of the land. Ogres live in the deep desert and jungle, a threat to all the other races. The Empire is at tentative peace with the elves and halflings, but tensions are starting to break out as they expand north. This colonial trend is driven largely by trade guilds, similar to the East India Trade Company in Britain's Imperial era. Some of these guilds are nicer than others.

That's all the public information. Here's where it gets to the good part:

The spellstorms are not a natural phenomenon. They are the result of the influence of dangerous outsiders--Proteans, who in this setting are Chaotic Evil. A race that inhabited both Imperial and Northern lands around two thousand years ago got curious, and began studying them--and opened a portal to their home plane. Since then, the Outsiders have been pouring through, attempting to degrade this plane into chaos.

Before this could happen--though too late to save the Ancient race--an order of Guardians arose. Various beasts and magical creatures became embodiments of the land, with large gems in their foreheads that marked them as Guardians. They were larger and stronger and smarter than others of their species. Though not immortal, they lived longer than most of their species, and when they die a new Guardian is born to replace them. Their existence is part of a great spell that keeps the Proteans in the far, far north, protecting the rest of the world from them--mostly.

The founder of the Northern Exploration Company used to be an adventurer, and went on an adventure to the far north. There, he was captured by Proteans, and one replaced him (they're shapeshifters.) It came back and started the colonization efforts. It also got together groups of hunters, and sent them after the Guardians. These hunters harvest the gems from the still living creatures, driving them mad (but NOT killing them), and the gems are used to protect Imperial settlements in the far north from the spellstorms. However, even though these towns are protected, the overall barrier against the Proteans is being weakened. The spellstorms are growing stronger, and soon the Proteans themselves will be free to invade.

The party has discovered the existence of the Guardians, as well as a secret order of halfling Druids that protects them (known as the Keepers). They have also discovered that the head of the Northern Exploration Company is a Protean. They do not yet know what their overall goals are, though--or how to stop them. They also have to deal with an ogre army that is gathering,
a rogue Keeper who wishes to destroy the Empire, and some jerk mercenaries who used to work with one of the PC's. Should be fun seeing how it all plays out.

[Dovius]

I've got one, although I've yet to use it in an actual campaign, yet, due to some gameplay/story details I've yet to work out:

The main continent of the world is mostly ruled over by a single massive kingdom that is the result of the consolidation of dozens of warring kingdoms after the end of a continent-wide war between various Human kingdoms, Orc tribes, and some scattered societies of magic users.

In the middle of said war, 2 factions, namely an Orc tribe and a Human kingdom of essentially no importance decided that they had enough of this crap, and made a rather bold attempt at peace between each other, to be sealed with a marriage between the daughter of the Human King, and the son of the Orc warchief. Said couple would technically be the leaders of the resulting melding of societies, but the King and Warchief have made various plans to use their kids as puppet-leaders while they themselves consolidate the resulting nation and turn it into a quiet, isolated place.

As things are wont to do, this didn't work out quite as planned.

I will spare you the details of the resulting chaos (because this post will be long enough as it is), but at present in the setting, we're about 2 centuries, a bloody unification war, and about 4 reigning emperors of the line of the Half-Blood Throne later.

Society has settled down into a peaceful mix, with Orcs, Humans, Elves (In this setting somewhat of an offshoot of early Humanity more suited to living in forest terrain) and Dwarves (Who have only recently been discovered, due to the fact that they originate on a continent on the other side of the planet, across an ocean that's somewhere between the Atlantic and the Pacific in size). Most of the previously mentioned Magic societies have collapsed due to various reasons, mostly from inexperienced wizards accidentally succumbing to a phenomenon known as 'The Longing', and promptly drestroying everything in a several mile radius.

The Longing, to put it bluntly, is a Mage mentally succumbing to the desire to truly embrace their connection to Märas (Magic, because fancy names make everything better), which in this universe is also home to some form of intelligence that causes anyone with magical talent to have a psychological urge to do said embracing, to 'come home and become one with all', so to say.

Which, although it sounds very nice and Zen on paper, tends to instead convert every single bit of their body that can channel magic into pure energy and make them blow up with the power of a small nuke.

To prevent this, most magical studies and education is focused in a single city, Tar Va- I mean, Märandar. Trained mages regularly go on tours across the entire continent to search for those with magical talent to take them to Märandar to recevie at least enough training to let them withstand the Longing so they don't turn villages into craters by saying Hi tot he nice little magical mind man. Or in a worst-case scenario, go boom inside Märander, which not only houses the trainees in what are essentially bunkers, but is also covered in enough burn-prevention spells to withstand a small volcanic eruption.

It is, however, to be noted that this is not a 'Ye'r a wizard now, Harry, whether you like it or not' deal. The kids are taken to the city, given the basic training, and then offered an actual choice to continue magical training (If they've got enough talent for that. It's perfectly possible to have magical talent and be at risk of the Longing yet not having enough magical talent to light a candle), or be returned to your old village, no strings attached.

Meanwhile, to the East, a number of Orc tribes who refused to join the Empire (Of which I can't for the life of me seem to remember the name) have instead adapted to a nomadic desert lifestyle, although most have since moved away from that to settle the fertile coastal lands that lie just beyond the desert, outside the reach of the Empire.

To the North of the main continent lies the smaller continent of Tíren, original home of the Elves, who instead of living in large cities choose to live in much smaller, family-based groups, living in villages ruled over by a democratic council of elders (Every adult gets a say in matters, and most serious matters are decided through a majority vote).

This is mostly a consequence due to the fact that while on the main continent, those with magical talents tended to organize in smaller groups and live apart from regular society, those in Elven lands instead banded together to form a single magical society many years before the Humans and Orcs.

The difference being that while Märander is a seperate city-state that tries to remain neutral and is mostly intended to be a center of magical trade and education, the Elven equivelant instead used their combined might to subjugate the rest of the Elven race under a magical dictatorship; using the raw magical power of Mages fueled by a hunger for power with only a tenuous hold on their Longing to crush any resistance.

This regime was finally toppled by a combination of Guerilla warfare by the Elves, intervention from a newly formed Märandar (And the only large-scale conflict fought by them to date) in cooperation with the Half-Blood Throne's military might (Having incorporated the armies of any defeated nations into it's own with surprising effectiveness, giving them a large and powerful force, which was unfortunately still hampered by some lingering racial tensions and logistical issues.), and the direct actions of an individual that went unnamed at the time, but was later identified as the Guardian Zha. The pressure of this multi-fronted war caused the increasingly unstable Elven regime to collapse, with the now freed masses choosing to go back to their old ways and live as earlier described.

Since then, there's been somewhat of a taboo on magic in Tíren, with treatment of those who display magical talent ranging from acceptance, to social exclusion, to outright violence. Most youth who discover their talents thus tend to make their way South, in hope of finding more acceptance, while others instead choose to hide their talents. Despite this, however, there's been a remarkably low number of cases of Elven Longing victims, causing Märandarian (Oh god, so many A's) researchers to investigate if there is something about either the Elven physiology or the enviroment itself that prevents the usual difficulties. Results thus far have inconclusive.

Meanwhile, to the West, across the Sea of Wrath (It's not a very calm ocean), there's the continent of Lífburor (I have liberally ripped of Old Norse to stand in for Dwarvish, for those who notices similarities. I've also badly compounded words, so apologies to those who can write/speak Old Norse for my mangling of the tongue), home to several of the Dwarven cities, or as they call them, the Cradles of the Earthborn. Here the Dwarves are mostly content to live in isolation, profiting of their natural talents for mining and engineering on a continent that mostly consists of mineral-rich mountains, while practicing the blood rites of the Fallen Son.

Yes, blood rites. It's a religion they follow originating from a figure in their mythology that saved them from total annihilation by bonding their race to himself through blood and shadow, and using his own powers to allow them to weather the cataclysmic events that befell their race, although for this he was seen by his brethren as a criminal, for which they cut out his eyes, and chained him in stone to suffer eternally. The Dwarves worship him for his sacrifice and selflessness, while condemning the 'Fathers' who punished him for it.

The interesting thing being, that the Dwarves managed to have that as a leading piece of religious dogma for centuries, while at same time at the other side of the damn planet...the leading religion was that of the All-Fathers, who created the world and saved it from destruction by the Living Shadow through the use of their Children, some of whom fell to the lure of the Shadow and fought at it's side instead.

As one can imagine, this caused some diplomatic difficulties when the Empire and the Dwarves learned of one another's religions.

And now that we're on the topic of religion, I was thinking of putting the creation mythos of the whole place here, but this has been a long enough post already. If anyone wants me to put that up as well, feel free to ask.

Also note that this is mainly a general description of the political and geographical layout of the setting, with no specifics regarding production, trade and population centres. If there are things that make little sense, feel free to point it out. I'm always up for constructive criticism.

[Axinian]

Yay! Time for a shameless plug!

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[Lvl45DM!]

All faerie creatures have an urban equivalent due to the proliferation of cities. And they're nasty and wanting to continue the spread. Fae on Fae action!

[Toy Killer]

*The World was forged in Violence as the 5 original dragons dueled and fought for dominance over the globe. Elves believe themselves to have sprung up from the merging of their combining blood, contributing to their long life spans.

*The last dragon standing from the duel of the Tiamati was Stormwraith, the Blue dragon. However, when a dragon dies, it is reborn as an egg hidden within the world. Stormwraith has a cult like following that has formed an enormous kingdom. Stormwraith's time has passed on, and was relaid in her own throne. The kingdom is now erupted in civil war as each leader believes themselves to be best following the fostering hatchlings best wishes...

*Elves are something shy of a global Mafia. Very carefully setting up world shattering accidents to propose global laws and treaties, as a means to protect their dying race.

*Dwarves are a recently liberated slave race of Stormwraith. During the mass civil wars, they escaped deep into the mountains where they had shelter from lightning in the sky. They deeply revere personal fortitude and tradition. They specialize in stone armor and weaponry as it doesn't conduct lightning.

*A small religion erupted into a full blown nation all of its own as a small child was born with innate Divine ability. The child has grown to be known as the child of Ahle Korme, and is the youngest high priest. His teachings are respected, although controversial. For example, while Ahle Korme has had a long standing feud with the Draconic Kingdom of Stormwraith, The New high priest has broken the long traditions of forgiveness. Declaring the body inviolable, any whom magically adjust the body as impure against the true faith. This, unfortunately, extends to dwarves by nature of their subservience to Stormwraith.

[JusticeZero]

No spellcasters, only psionics.
The campaign area is the remnant of an empire that obliterated itself by an unexpected side effect of psychic tech.
Just humans.
The area is monotheistic, and the god is agreed on to be completely unreachable. Whether that religion is correct is an open question. There's no evidence to the contrary, anyways.
There's a forest that's loaded up with enough telepathic fallout as to be toxic and permanently damaging to people who get too high of an exposure to it blocking off access to the rest of the continent.
Even though it's human only and P6, there is still at least two underwater cities.
There are a lot of plant monsters.

[SassyQuatch]

The seelie of the great kingdoms were conceited and intolerant of those less perfect than themselves. Eventually the grew tired of the lower-born and sought to subjugate them. Or wipe them, out, their choice really. To do this they conspired with the angelic hosts who similarly grow tired of daemonic incursions.

The seelie provoked the war with the various devils and demons, and as they retaliated the celestial creatures joined the battles, crushing the unseelie along the way. Soon all were involved, seelie and unseelie, demons and angels, elementals and dragons, as well as the many races of the world.

Then the gods began to die. With some it was their own angels that turned upon them, unwilling to cease their war frenzy. With others it was a death by adventurers and soldiers of the kingdoms who had amassed such incredible powers as to destroy deities themselves.

The gods grew fearful as their numbers shrank. they came together to plan, and it was a grand plan. With all of their might combined they would seal up the highest of magics from all but themselves, and ensure that they could no longer be destroyed by the lower creatures.

So it came to be, and while the war yet drew on for seventy years, it did end. Kingdoms had been destroyed, races had been eradicated, the offspring of the great creatures seemed abundant among the decimated ranks of the world's races. Feuds remained, though not enough to war over, the unseelie crushed and attempting to build anew, the seelie still haughty yet not so strong as they once were.

Magic was not gone, but it was not so strong as it once was. Firearms, once considered to be rare, were now commonplace, and innovation into the arts of gunpowder weapons was constantly growing.

And then came the final great change to the world. A new form of power, not of magic but of the very minds of the races themselves.

Nothing was as it used to be. The world had changed forever, and with a new world there were new dangers to the peace and new opportunities for the bold. A world made for those born with a spirit of adventure.

[Coidzor]

Where the borders of realities overlap and intersect there are *easy* places that form. Eddies of quasi-reality in the multiverse where the right circumstances can allow realities to bleed into one another. Sometimes even blend together. Sometimes it happens on such a grand scale that a new reality is formed from the essence of two realities where they touch, a thing of chaos and creation. Other times things, places, people from one reality are simply... lost.

But not necessarily destroyed. Sometimes they end up in the garbage bin, destined to be tossed back into the great furnace of creation at the center of all. Other times they drift until they are taken in or find a space between.

One such place exists where the true essence of the concept of water and the true essence of the concept of air meet. This is a place where misfits, lost lands, and those cast out of reality with no particular destination are drawn and once more given form and substance.

The only real question at the end of the day though, is can you get back? And if you can, would you want to?

[Ninjadeadbeard]

I'm working on one for the Worldbuilding forum, and if you peruse there long enough you'll come across the neglected corpses of my other worlds. But for now:


Using Trailblazer (3.5 replacement book much like Pathfinder) and notes from Stormwrack. Possibly an E8 campaign, or E10.
The World of Mer Korell is a world where a typical DnD world suddenly came down with a bad case of Biblical Flood, rendering 90% of the world's landmasses underwater. Arable land is something of a premium, and essentially instant money.
There are no more full-blooded races. Everything sentient is a Half-Something. Even Humans aren't really Human, but what else do you call someone who's 1/2 human, and 1/16th everything else put together?
The Gods aren't so much dead as they are...well yeah I guess they're dead. And whatever worship went to them now placates the cold, unfeeling Mad-gods of the wind and sea who have taken their place (Happy F'tagn Day everyone! Hope you brought a good sacrifice!).
With the Flood scrambling the world's leylines and the Gods being replaced with hateful cosmic gestalts, magic has fallen to a low ebb, removing all Primary spellcasters from the world. Magic items more or less are all considered artifacts... and there's less than a guarantee of finding even a handful ever.
Currently looking for a way to incorporate The Dark Water (from Pirates of Dark Water (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_5F1zYQF5M)) without my players rolling their eyes. Seriously. Need Dark Water! NEED! :smalltongue:


And once I get a map this is going in Worldbuilding, more or less.

[BWR]

My current PF campaign is pretty standard Mystara. The countries, the cultures, the adventures: just about everything is straight out of the gazetteers and adventures. The gang is nearing the point of wanting to embark on the Paths to Immortality. Whether or not we will end the campaign when this is achieved or if we run some Immortal adventures is unknown at the moment.

I am starting an L5R campaign soon. The former one saw the PCs rise from 'humble' beginnings to finding and destroying the Anvil of Despair and the survivors (2 of 4, though one of them can contest the term 'survivor') were rewarded with the reborn Boar clan. The new campaign will feature the children of the heroes. Their job will be to help the clan survive and grow. Expanding and building holdings, fighting off monsters in the Twilight Mountains, making deals with other clans, fighting off lingering resentment from the Crane (since the old group found the AoD hidden there and exposed lots of Crane wrongdoings, leading to a massive loss of face and political might, the death of one daimyo at the hands of the PCs and the seppuku of two more, including the Champion, to protect the honor of the clan), border disagreements with the Crab, poverty, famine, resource management, lots of supernatural events in the TM, developing new Schools for their clan, paying taxes, trade agreements, etc.

[prufock]

In the recent past, a group of high-level adventurers "defeated" a powerful wizard named Draloch - he was not killed, but instead both he and his castle island were transported to hell using an epic spell to manipulate the planes. This has a side effect - there are planar rifts and anomalies torn open throughout the kingdom.

In my current storyline a new group of up-and-coming adventurers has discovered the cause of these rifts and a way to fix them before they expand and eventually destroy the material plane in a turmoil of planar activity.

There are factions attempting to stop them, and other factions attempting to help them.
The Mission is a front for worshippers of the epic wizard, who wish to assist him with his goal of eliminating the gods (he has actually become a low-rank deity himself) by infiltrating and absorbing other churches. They claim to be a "god-neutral" humanitarian group so they can work with any other religion.
The Agents of Chaos are a group that considers the world as it is a lost cause and wants it to end so that it can be rebooted.
Basically everyone else in the kingdom, including the Knights of the Rose Cross, the Mage's Academy, and the King himself have been assisting the party.

[Kiero]

Massalia, 300BC. Straight historical, no magic, monsters or dungeons. The PCs are a bunch of experienced mercenaries hired by an aristocrat to whip the local militia into shape. Compared to where they've been, mixed up in the wars of the successors to Alexander the Great, this western Mediterranean backwater is approaching quiet.

The city itself is the main source of conflict, both its internal divisions and rivalries, and its status as a Greek transplant in a foreign land. One it competes over with other, mightier empires and city-states.

[Jay R]

My first time to be a DM was right after spending two summers working as a Ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch. I set the wilderness adventure at Philmont, because I knew the mountains very well. The French Henry and Contention mines became the entrances of two dungeons.

As they walked through the wilderness, I could describe what they saw, down to the flowers.