White Tornado
2014-02-21, 04:42 PM
Hi all, I'm currently working on my own setting. I DM'd a campaign for a bunch of friends and had to put it on hold because of the dreaded DM burnout. One of the reasons for my DM burnout, besides over-stretching myself, perfectionism and getting too far out of my comfort zone, was the fact I set the campaign in the 2E Forgotten Realms. It is far too detailed for me to comfortably work with, and also too vanilla to play with as much as I want.
After getting over the abrupt-ish end of the campaign (we finished a story arc in a great way, and were all set up for the second story arc when I collapsed) I decided I wanted to leave the Realms behind and build a low maintenance, non-vanilla setting. One of my players asked me what I really wanted to do (which is nice), and I decided I wanted to do religion in a completely different way. Most fantasy settings I know have a pantheon of one or two dozen gods, but somehow their religions resemble European medieval religions a lot.
I decided I wanted an animistic setting, with hundreds or thousands of spirits, and no active "gods" in the usual sense. I later figured out I wanted a creator God who retired and gave the rulership and/or ownership of the world to spirits. In a stroke of genius, I decided he gave different groups of spirits different territories. That way, I can have vastly different regions due to the different policies of the spirits. I can have a Shinto-like not-Japan next to an African-inspired region. I can put a lot of specific flavour in the region we're playing in, and every PC that doesn't fit that region comes from a vastly different one. At first I wanted to ban paladins, but then I came up with a region where the spirits disagreed whether spirits should serve humans, or humans should serve spirits, and they split in a LG and LE camp (aka angels & demons). Whatever wacky ideas players have for their characters, we can fit it in.
We had an e-mail discussion about it, and one player proposed a human only campaign. I liked the idea, and I decided to replace "race" with "background". Every PC gets a +1 to an ability score and a -1, a free WP slot and a free NWP slot. They can think up of any background they want. A nomad tribe running through the desert? Bow-wielding wizards? Give me a good story, we'll put it in the setting, and it's done. I hope this will help my players get invested in the world and share a bit of the world-building work.
Oh yeah, we're playing 2E AD&D for a bunch of reasons. There are other systems I really like, but as a DM I prefer a system that I know really well. I could talk about my ideas for a long time, but I would really like some input of any kind. Any cool ideas? You like where I'm going? Do you see any problems with my ideas? Please let me know! Thanks :)
After getting over the abrupt-ish end of the campaign (we finished a story arc in a great way, and were all set up for the second story arc when I collapsed) I decided I wanted to leave the Realms behind and build a low maintenance, non-vanilla setting. One of my players asked me what I really wanted to do (which is nice), and I decided I wanted to do religion in a completely different way. Most fantasy settings I know have a pantheon of one or two dozen gods, but somehow their religions resemble European medieval religions a lot.
I decided I wanted an animistic setting, with hundreds or thousands of spirits, and no active "gods" in the usual sense. I later figured out I wanted a creator God who retired and gave the rulership and/or ownership of the world to spirits. In a stroke of genius, I decided he gave different groups of spirits different territories. That way, I can have vastly different regions due to the different policies of the spirits. I can have a Shinto-like not-Japan next to an African-inspired region. I can put a lot of specific flavour in the region we're playing in, and every PC that doesn't fit that region comes from a vastly different one. At first I wanted to ban paladins, but then I came up with a region where the spirits disagreed whether spirits should serve humans, or humans should serve spirits, and they split in a LG and LE camp (aka angels & demons). Whatever wacky ideas players have for their characters, we can fit it in.
We had an e-mail discussion about it, and one player proposed a human only campaign. I liked the idea, and I decided to replace "race" with "background". Every PC gets a +1 to an ability score and a -1, a free WP slot and a free NWP slot. They can think up of any background they want. A nomad tribe running through the desert? Bow-wielding wizards? Give me a good story, we'll put it in the setting, and it's done. I hope this will help my players get invested in the world and share a bit of the world-building work.
Oh yeah, we're playing 2E AD&D for a bunch of reasons. There are other systems I really like, but as a DM I prefer a system that I know really well. I could talk about my ideas for a long time, but I would really like some input of any kind. Any cool ideas? You like where I'm going? Do you see any problems with my ideas? Please let me know! Thanks :)