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View Full Version : World Help Advice needed: low maintenance, non-vanilla setting. With spirits.



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 :)

Omeganaut
2014-02-21, 08:23 PM
That sounds pretty good. The main issue I spot is how spirits can influence events in another pantheon's region, and will this affect PC spellcasters?

White Tornado
2014-02-22, 06:13 AM
That sounds pretty good. The main issue I spot is how spirits can influence events in another pantheon's region, and will this affect PC spellcasters?

Thanks for the feedback! I think the simplest solution is the one Rich uses in OotS. Pantheons can't directly interfere in each others turf, but they can send priests anywhere they want and the priests don't lose any abilities in other regions. The only way this affects divine spellcasters is the opportunity to serve as an ambassador between pantheons.

I'm not sure if spirits can't interfere in another region, or whether they generally don't because of an agreement or divine law, and mischievous spirits will sometimes break those rules. I also don't know how fixed the borders between regions are. If pantheons (for lack of a better word, btw) can gain or lose territory, that would certainly change divine dynamics a lot. Maybe they can, but they generally don't to prevent all-out war (like competing crime syndicates, heh).

As for those divine spellcasters, I've decided the most common ones are monks and shamans (monks are spell-casting priests in 2E, and there are two different cool shaman classes I need to choose from), who both serve all the spirits, or at least are able to, even though many will mainly serve a specific spirit or group of spirits. Clerics and specialty priests serve a single pantheon or a single spirit, and are pretty rare and in some regions non-existent. Paladins are even rarer, and I will re-fluff rangers as honorable champions of harmony between humans, spirits and nature.