island-hopping setting

[geonova]

I've just started work on my first fully fleshed out campaign setting and have decided to post what i currently have to see what the playground thinks of it.

Deities

A female sun god who represents honour and law
A male moon god who represents guile and chaos
A sky god who represents change and magic
A sea god who represents love and life
A land god who represents war and death

the gods aren't in direct conflict but instead simply exist as uncaring forces

Races

Humans - simply because i think that a setting without them is slightly odd
Halflings - their racial abilities are excelent for seafaring and the nomad fluff is perfect
Darfellan - make them a bit more populous and pariahs and they work perfectly as a fringe society
Aventi - though i'm considering removing Human Blood and rewriting their fluff
Hadozee - simply perfect
Merfolk - extremely rare, but are treated as nobles everywhere they go

I also have the sahuagin and kuo-toa as an evil alliance bent on exterminating all other races, but players can't play as them

Classes
All that i have here is no monks


the campaign will be the PCs traversing the vast oceans, exploring new lands, cementing alliances with friendly races and fending off the sahuagin/kuo-toa alliance.

[Malachi Lemont]

but players can't play as them


Awww, but that sounded like so much fun!

Anyway, this outline looks good so far, but I'd like to know what kind of theme or mood the campaign will have, and what kind of story it might tell. You've mentioned exploring and diplomacy. Will this game be light on combat? It might be cool to have a game based on politics/economics during a war. What kind of obstacles might the party face?

[Fairy Lisa]

Excellent start, but what kind of geography will your setting have? Ship technology, natural harbors, and natural resources can heavily dictate what kind of cultures will develop. I was just talking with my friend earlier tonight as well about seafaring merchant empires, and it is no coincidence that insurance markets and the stock market developed first in England and Holland, both whom had major seafaring empires.

[geonova]

The campaign would mainly be diplomacy, combat or a blend of both, depending upon how the PCs react to the early quests. The overarching plot would be forging bonds with the scattered races and fending off the encroaching alliance.

In regards to technology and topography; any race that can't breathe underwater lives on boats and have small villages on islands that are abundant in natural resources. The aquatic races mainly make there homes in reefs, but have metropolises underwater. Most of the world is covered in water, about 80-90%, with no large continents, the largest landmass is about the size of Madagascar, which is where the only land-bound metropolis is located.

The PCs would start off as guards for an enterprising captain who's task it is to find new lands and scout the borders of the alliance territory.

In addition to the sahuagin and kuo-toa, the alliance also as skum as a slave race. The locathah are also a rarely encountered traders.

[sktarq]

My first question would be how big are these "scattered islands" While I figure mostly small are they only small? And how small is small? Tonga, Fiji, and Hawaii were considered rather large by their inhabitants. But how about Sicily? New Zealand? Hispaniola (Hati/Dominican Republic)? Cuba? Borneo? Java? Britain? Japanese Home Islands? even a Madagascar?
This will say much about how hard it is to find trees to make boats, how large and complex a society develops and what kind adventures develop.

[Sabeki]

You should make a Swashbuckler class, if you are having an oceanic setting.

[Everyl]

Are there differences in the way that different races/countries travel? I think most people tend to think of Age of Exploration-style European sailing ships for settings like this, but they're hardly the only way to travel long distances over water, even in real life. Polynesian longboats were used to reach places as remote as Easter Island long before Europeans ever came to the South Pacific. Oared ships and oar/sail hybrids were in active use in many areas for quite a long time.

A fantasy world gives you even more options. Have any peoples learned to tame or ally with large sea creatures to ride on as an alternative to ships? Are there spells or magic items that can serve as alternatives (or supplements) to wind or oar power on ships? If so, how do those magics affect the setting - are they rare and expensive, or do they effectively "shrink" the setting by making long-distance sailing faster and safer?

As for the suggested swashbuckler class, you could modify the Ranger to make it. Their fighting styles and light armor are a good start, and you could change out the wilderness stuff for stuff that's more directly relevant to a nautical setting. That's probably a discussion for Homebrew, though.

[Tvtyrant]

I rather like island hopping myself. The big key to me is to make each island as unique as possible.

Skywhales.

[Nevershutup]

I love the idea of an exploration/settling/diplomacy setting. Depending on how much diplmacy is used, you may want to use Rich's diplomacy fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=172910). A few questions:
What rule set are you using (i.e. D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, etc...)?
Are aquatic halflings (Unearthed Arcana) a thing?
As was earlier stated, how big is the average island?
What are the general views on magic?
What kind of area does the alliance encompass?
Have you looked at 3.5's Stormwrack?

If I just made no sense whatsoever, I apologize. My mommy always said I was special!:smallbiggrin:

[Tablesalt]

If Merfolk and Darfellans are on the same level, power-wise, as Humans and Halflings, you might want to take a look at how you're handling underwater breathing and combat. If the PCs need to raid an underwater Sahuagin fortress, then the Darfellan with the spear is going to be far more powerful than the human with the warhammer. Conversely, a Merperson isn't going to be very useful aboard a ship or on an island, what with the lack of legs and such.

Are there magic items to aid breathing air/water? Are there any magic items that mitigate the penalties of moving from air to water, or water to air? How do they work? How common are all of these?

[geonova]

I'm using 3.5 edition.

Since the campaign will mostly take place on boats and the shorelines, breathing underwater is only a slight advantage and i'll probably halve the price of item's that grant water-breathing.

Merpeople are very rare, and i probably won't even tell my players that they exist in my campaign until they actually meet one.

I'm using standard halflings and i own stormwrack.

Magic is fine as long as my players don't do anything to stupid, i'm planning on having a heavily templated creature with a CR of 20+ be a deterrent.