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ghendrickson
2014-05-07, 08:40 AM
So, I've decided to create a new campaign world for a Pathfinder game with level 1 characters. I don't really have many ideas to make the world unique, other than a few interesting cities and locations. I don't need anything to crazy, but hearing some ideas on some creative and interesting features of the world would be amazing. If anyone has a cool city, country, race, class, or anything else you think could benefit the world, feel free to submit them to the post. Basically, I'm making a campaign, and I want you guys to fill it with everything you've been wanting to try, but couldn't because it was out of place, not interesting to your players, or you were just afraid to put it in. Its for a high-fantasy game, because we have a new player joining us (She's never played an RPG) and I want to make things easier to learn. So post anything you want. Dungeons are welcome submissions as well.

Rainman3769
2014-05-07, 02:54 PM
Setting: There are two wizards in some valley/island, and long story short, a powerful magical artifact has been split in two, each half in the possession of one of the wizards. These wizards each want the half the other one has, while not giving up their own half. Over time, this disagreement has come to a head, resulting in violence. Instead of directly fighting however, they both are holed up in their respective towers/castles, and constantly send waves of elementals at each other. The land between their strongholds is a wasteland from seeing nonstop fighting everyday. The PCs are sent here to aquire both halves of the magical artifact for some benefactor. The location is called the Island/Valley of Storms.

(I know that's more of an adventure hook, but the setting can work in alot of cool ways)

JusticeZero
2014-05-07, 04:16 PM
Don't try to make the setting unique; you aren't clever enough to forsee all the angles, nobody is. I have advanced degrees in figuring out how the angles work, and my settings are quite a bit more plain-jane than the default settings are, and I also use P6-P8! Make a nice, fairly mundane hook and a limited area and stretch it out from there. Keep the variety trimmed back as needed. It's not your job to come up with some Dali painted craziness; it's your place to build a setting that makes sense onto which others can place their cool ideas without things breaking down.

Sploggle1
2014-05-07, 11:29 PM
I wouldn't say no one is not cleaver enough to control their own world. I created my own world and am creating my own scenarios and haven't had an issue so far. I would say plan your world mountains, valleys, forests, rivers, cities, exc first. Then find out what your players are playing as. Then base the main enemy on that. Just don't plan to far ahead of the group. I only plan a few days out just in case they change the scenario. You could go into even more detail by having the enemy's doing things in the background. Like this assassin guild makes a deal with this wizard enemy. That would be the way I would do it. First off though get the layout of the land figured out then build from their.

JusticeZero
2014-05-08, 09:15 PM
I never said that people are not clever enough to make an original, as in not pre-published, setting. I said that they are not clever enough to make a unique as in special snowflake with dancing whatchamabob topography and wacky time and so on setting and make it work. Of course you can make West Original with its own flavor and problems. But when you start trying to make it Unique and alien and flashy and exotic, anyone is going to rapidly start running off the rails with inconsistencies and flaws and the setting is going to show oh so much duct tape and fiat that it is distracting.

ghendrickson
2014-05-09, 10:00 AM
Rainman, I really like that idea. Everyone else, I never said i was new to dming. I know how to run a world. I dont need warnings about how difficult it is or how much work it is. I just wanted some fun ideas to put into the world. Thank you Rainman, for actually reading my post

Yora
2014-05-09, 10:24 AM
Don't try to make the setting unique; you aren't clever enough to forsee all the angles, nobody is. I have advanced degrees in figuring out how the angles work, and my settings are quite a bit more plain-jane than the default settings are, and I also use P6-P8! Make a nice, fairly mundane hook and a limited area and stretch it out from there. Keep the variety trimmed back as needed. It's not your job to come up with some Dali painted craziness; it's your place to build a setting that makes sense onto which others can place their cool ideas without things breaking down.
You can make unique settings without much trouble. It's really not that hard. However, to make it good requires to carefully think through what you add and for what reasons. Just throwing together cool things never produces anything halfway decent.

Garimeth
2014-05-09, 11:07 AM
I would say find out what the players are looking for, I get alot of my adventure hooks from my players back stories.

As far as setting stuff, hmm. What is the organization of things empire, city-states, kindgoms, etc? Civil unrest is always a great plot hook, so is famine, and depending on party composition plague can be also - particularly if there is a druid/cleric/paladin. Here are some random ideas I have never actually used:

An agrarian city state that is cast in perpetual cloud cover as a reslut of angering XXX. The crops have failed and damine is imminent. You can also sub this with drought or non-stop rain, but I feel like drought is pretty common.

A remote city/tribe that only communicates to music. Stolen from Breath of Fire 1.

In the foothills of a "somewhat distant" (read, inconvenient to travel to on a whim) a logging village that is unaccessible in the winter has not been heard from since spring arrived, and merchants and travelers have not been heard from that left for it. The ruler hires the party to investigate. When they arrive they find out that the forest has become sentient and mobile and has enslaved the logging community. Their goals are unclear but there seems to be a evil druid or shaman involved.

A city of great magical prowess has closed off it border since the end of a war XXXX years ago. Any who try to investigate are chased off violently with powerful magics. (the entirecity in a powerful ritual gone awry has been turned into undead/deathless if undead then make it run by liches, if deathless(or sentient undead) then the surviving spell casters are trying to find a way to reverse the spell, the borders are to protect the citizens from being the target of some kind of crusade. Bonus, some people don't want to give up their new state of being) Used this one in a game, and it was awesome.

A nearby kindgom sends word that it has been over-run by Formians (a seldom used but awesome monster). Nobody knows where they came from (an underground portal to their home plane) but the Kingdom is falling apart, and this kingdom looks to be next in their expansion. Started a game with this, but never got to see it really develop due to work schedules.

In the XXX region (for me either the far north or a grassland/plains) there are warring tribe of barbarians. Each tribe is named after an animal, and all the members of that tribe are therianthropes of that animal. (wolf tribe = werewolves, bear tribe = werebears, etc. my tribes will be wolf, bear, mountain lion, raven/owl/hawk, boar, and possibly horse if using plains) the tribes have always been at war, and so while powerful individually never a threat to the kingdom, however now someone has united them and they have begun raiding into the kingdom. This is going to be my next game I run.

Just a couple of ideas to get the juices flowing.

ghendrickson
2014-05-09, 11:11 AM
I would say find out what the players are looking for, I get alot of my adventure hooks from my players back stories.

As far as setting stuff, hmm. What is the organization of things empire, city-states, kindgoms, etc? Civil unrest is always a great plot hook, so is famine, and depending on party composition plague can be also - particularly if there is a druid/cleric/paladin. Here are some random ideas I have never actually used:

An agrarian city state that is cast in perpetual cloud cover as a reslut of angering XXX. The crops have failed and damine is imminent. You can also sub this with drought or non-stop rain, but I feel like drought is pretty common.

A remote city/tribe that only communicates to music. Stolen from Breath of Fire 1.

In the foothills of a "somewhat distant" (read, inconvenient to travel to on a whim) a logging village that is unaccessible in the winter has not been heard from since spring arrived, and merchants and travelers have not been heard from that left for it. The ruler hires the party to investigate. When they arrive they find out that the forest has become sentient and mobile and has enslaved the logging community. Their goals are unclear but there seems to be a evil druid or shaman involved.

A city of great magical prowess has closed off it border since the end of a war XXXX years ago. Any who try to investigate are chased off violently with powerful magics. (the entirecity in a powerful ritual gone awry has been turned into undead/deathless if undead then make it run by liches, if deathless(or sentient undead) then the surviving spell casters are trying to find a way to reverse the spell, the borders are to protect the citizens from being the target of some kind of crusade. Bonus, some people don't want to give up their new state of being) Used this one in a game, and it was awesome.

A nearby kindgom sends word that it has been over-run by Formians (a seldom used but awesome monster). Nobody knows where they came from (an underground portal to their home plane) but the Kingdom is falling apart, and this kingdom looks to be next in their expansion. Started a game with this, but never got to see it really develop due to work schedules.

In the XXX region (for me either the far north or a grassland/plains) there are warring tribe of barbarians. Each tribe is named after an animal, and all the members of that tribe are therianthropes of that animal. (wolf tribe = werewolves, bear tribe = werebears, etc. my tribes will be wolf, bear, mountain lion, raven/owl/hawk, boar, and possibly horse if using plains) the tribes have always been at war, and so while powerful individually never a threat to the kingdom, however now someone has united them and they have begun raiding into the kingdom. This is going to be my next game I run.

Just a couple of ideas to get the juices flowing.

Those are all very interesting

Garimeth
2014-05-09, 11:25 AM
Thanks!

Yeah I was bummed the group fell apart for the formian one, I had set it in an amazon type setting, and combined the were-tribe idea with it. I will probably revisit it later. I may combine them again for my next game and make the players be part of the tribes. Then they can play were-creatures and the formians could work in a grassland setting. Though to be honest, I want to trides thing to be more of a viking/barbarian frozen north thing. It could be pretty cool as a Native American thing also though.

Anxe
2014-05-09, 11:49 AM
A floating abandoned library city was one that I always wanted to include but couldn't work in.

Talar
2014-05-09, 06:08 PM
A city I have been working on recently and plan on including in my setting is a city of Undead. Lots of interesting things to be done with an undead city. Mine is by a lone mountain that is rich with onyx. It has an ancient library which is ran by a demilich, blood shops for the vampires, graves as far one can see as a defense for the city, council of ancient sentient dead running the city. Having a party interact with this city can open up a lot of possibilities depending on the type of party I would also suggest checking out one of Silverclawshift's stories, one of them has a variety of interesting cities in it. It is where I stole the undead city idea.

ghendrickson
2014-05-12, 08:38 AM
Love all of this material! Thanks for the great ideas