Help! campaign setting attack!

[Shinizak]

I entered into a "bet" you could call it. (mostly I was just exercising my ego) And told someone that I could create a new setting in one month ( I have until the 7th of July) But I don't know what the setting is about, and I kinda need to know what the heck the play style is going to be before I can begin to writing the details of the setting.

I have an idea for liches, but that's no really a paly style so much as an adventure idea. Any ideas on what I can do to get the creative juices flowing? (I don't want suggestion for play styles, just tips and inspiration)

[Vadin]

Liches don't turn people automatically evil, and the world's elite use them as a means to preserve their lives.

Society has stagnated, save the area of magical research.

The common people either toil away to feed themselves and/or serve as subjects for the undead elite's experiments.

Heroes venture out as hired hands to go find rare arcane and alchemical ingredients or ancient treasures.

Some heroes go rogue, however, and have taken it upon themselves to kill off the aristocracy by means of artifacts that have been found in forgotten temples, harkening to an ancient time when an undead menace once nearly wiped out the planet.

The heroes could be the first sort, or they could be freedom fighters/ regicidal maniacs.


BAM! Campaign setting in under 5 minutes!

[Lappy9000]

Depends on how far you wanna go. Are we talking campaign setting, or are you supposed to create an entire world?

For inspiration, you could check out the maniacs up at Vote Up A Campaign Setting.

Naturally, Nation of the Dead.

This guide is wonderful: Fantasy Worldbuilding.

[Shinizak]

But once again that's an adventure, not a setting. And adventure halts once you achieve the final solution (AKA: Beat the nobles, save society) a campaign setting is the world where it takes place and is reusable after the objective has been achieved.

[Vadin]

No, that's the bare bones overarching conflict and 'uniques' that make the campaign setting special. Those are the seeds from which you can develop a history, culutural dynamics, race relations, terrain composition, etc.

An adventure would be "go find the map to the lost Spider Queen's Palace".

An adventure series would be "investigate and retrieve the Hammer of Zarash".

A campaign would be "destroy the lich king of Tyrra".

The campaign setting is the world where all of those are set.

[Zeta Kai]

I entered into a "bet" you could call it. (mostly I was just exercising my ego) And told someone that I could create a new setting in one month ( I have until the 7th of July)

Good luck to you. The Build Team was foolish enough to think that we could finish the VUACS project in six weeks. It's been over six months, & I've never been so glad to be so wrong.

It really just depends on how far down the rabbit hole you wanna go. Are you shooting for a Faerun or an Eberron? Then no way. If you're aiming for something smaller & more manageable, then you have a chance. Either way, I wish thee good luck & fun 'brewing.

[Maldraugedhen]

What I usually do for developing worlds is I pick an initial twist--a trait of the world that's slightly different from a standard. Then I ask myself, "Okay, so this has changed. What else would be different because of this?"

That can get you quite a ways.

[Vadin]

What I usually do for developing worlds is I pick an initial twist--a trait of the world that's slightly different from a standard. Then I ask myself, "Okay, so this has changed. What else would be different because of this?"

That can get you quite a ways.

That's a good approach. One that my friends and I use on occasion is weird movies. Mad Max, Waterworld, Solarbabies, Nightmare Before Christmas, anything really.

Take one or two interesting elements from that movie, apply them to a standard D&D setting, and see where you end up!

[DracoDei]

Ok... brainstormage...

The world has been locked in a war between undead and deathless for thousands of years. In the hands of mortals this conflict would have been over much sooner, but those who do not die take the long view and are more risk-averse.

Almost all undead veiw the living as mere breeding stock... most males are turned early, those they wish to breed are turned later. Only by REALLY impressing the aristocracy may a humanoid be allowed to be instructed in any magical art so that they may attempt gain the supreme glory of lichdom. Mindless humanoid undead are rather uncommon since that would be inefficent. Anything with the "Create Spawn" ability is going to be common. Animals are often turned into mindless undead, and in fact, this may be the standard proceedure. Bulls skeletons (the meat gets eaten) are kept in massive subterrainian pens, packed in so tight they can barely move, each pen is opened when they are needed for the war so that the clerics may take control of that lot and bring them to the front lines.

The deathless would no more allow a living creature near danger than one would send a 14 year old into combat in our modern day (IE it DOES happen, but it isn't considered remotely a good thing by most). Deathlessness is considered just another stage of life. There is a division of opinion on if it should be forces on the very small minority who do not desire when they grow old. Most domesticated non-food animals are taken over to deathlessness as soon as they reach adulthood, and in some regions deathless kittens and puppies (the eternal cute!) are popular among children, handed down from one generation to the next.

Specific Unit idea:
One of the few undead units in the empire of the deathless is composed of ghosts. The non-evil ritual that creates one costs at least in the mid-thousands of GP, and grants a +5 bonus to the level check to come back after being destroyed. Combined with the entrance requirements, this means that success is automatic unless there are other factors involved. Being incorporeal undead makes them very very hard to detect since they don't show up as different from the enemy with detect evil and such and often can casually evade before the second or third round of such a spell (which would reveal their suspicously high hit-dice). Outfitted with ghost-touch equipment (and perhaps items that grant the "Improved Incorporeality" ability of my Free Spirits for a few rounds/minutes), their exploits would have earned them the name "ghosts" even if that wasn't their type.


How cold or hot the war is at the time of the campaign is your choice, as is coming up with the history and cosmology to make that work.

[Too Tall]

If you don't have time to make a world the shrink your horisons. Say all these pepole know is an island the size of Madagascar or New Zealand. Anything that has been sugested above could work on a large island. Just when you player characters get a grip on what's going on then then you start asking yourself what the rest of the world is like and why haven't they been in contact lately. In the real world just think how long it took the "civilised" western countries to finally find the americas.

Just a thought.