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View Full Version : ZodiacEmpires (Homebrew, Pathfinder + 5e)



Akaizhar
2015-08-03, 10:08 AM
Hello fellow giants! Long time lurker, first time poster!

ZodiacEmpires first began as most other homebrew worlds do, a spark of imagination among the usual ideas flowing around my head. First came the map (fantasy cartography is one of my hobbies), which has evolved quite a bit over time. Next came the first few nations, as me and my friends sat down and asked "what would be cool". Then came the games, as we decided to play in our world. Now it's been ten years, and ZodiacEmpires has outgrown our original table many times over, with dozens of gamers having their hands involved.

ZodiacEmpires, at its core, is a setting based on the world of Vathis, the smaller sister planet to Farilis. It's a land rich in history with an enormous scope. Its inspiration evolved from media such as Dishonored, A Song of Ice and Fire, and earth's history (specifically the 1800s and 1900s). It's a world of perilous design, heavy focused on the gritty realism of real life, as well as the high fantasy that comes with most D&D games. Technology blends with magic in a way that is both interesting, and explained. Guns are only a recent introduction into our world (as we accounted for our Pathfinder groups). The world was recently devastated by the Darkest War, where the evil feindish children of the deities, decided to kill those giving their parents power (mortal worshipers). However, we didn't win the Darkest War, we merely survived. Our nations were shattered by the rapid expansion of the Darkest War, and as the vandiels (those fiendish children) were vanquished or fled it left a large power vacuum in the world. A rise of fierce nationalism and imperialism throughout most of the nations have sparked a power race among the survivors for who rises to the top. Gritty noir plots, infiltrating spies, and outright assaults have infested the streets of rival nations.

After we developed the setting itself for as long as we did, one of my players asked why we hadn't done something larger with it. And after seeing Thule's booth at the last Gencon (and asking way too many questions about printing and such) we realized we could actually print this, and share it. So we decided to take the steps towards that, but I had an overriding question that was bugging me for a long time. My groups, as we played in them, each left our mark in the world as the timeline progressed.

What's stopping us from sharing in a true shared world, with the entire gaming community? Why can't we all carve out our own piece of this world to share with each other? So at first, we figured out how we'd do it, because it's a pretty daunting task to keep track of hundreds of groups at once and keep them in order. We created our own Campaign Tracking system, which has worked fairly well for our groups at home. We plan to use that to manage the games and the timeline of the setting moving forward. We've created a Pathfinder and a 5e rendition of the world, and plan to expand it onto other rules systems eventually. Overall, it's been a blast to play and track, so I figured I'd share it with you.

www.zodiacempires.com is our website
and if you're interested in helping us make the dream of having the world become a printed reality, you can check out our kickstarter here.
http://kck.st/1JSEMYE

Thanks for your time! If you have any questions, feel free to ask!