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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Orc in the Playground
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    Oct 2017

    Default need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    ok so ive been dming for just shy of 20 years and my friends and i always used the same campaign world, well the world ended in the last campaign, the players defeated the bbeg and were able to reform the multiverse. the one my new campaign is in now. so the campaign now is all the gods walk the material plane as powerful mortals and are trying to get these motes of divine power to ascend and whichever pantheon ascends becomes the forever gods of my campaign world. so naturally at this point there are no clerics, but i also went ahead and made is so the world is only 40 years old, the world was created with cities infrastructure and some beings such as dragons get magical knowledge for things such as magic, farming... to name a few. and as such there are no wizards yet cause magic is still being discovered and only the most rudimentary magical items, one player has a magic sword that does deals 1 point of damage to the user and for the next d6 rounds it deals an extra d4 magic damage. cause people are still figuring out how to make magic items. im trying to think of other things that would happen in a world this young. such as people not being aware they can die of old age

    any help would be appreciated

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    Is there anything you'd like help with in particular? It seems as if you have the broad stroke concept set out already.
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  3. - Top - End - #3
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    really, if you just have any sort of idea that i hadnt considered, im looking for things like people not knowing about dying of old age

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    Never describe a monster by its name, or use its name in descriptions. Nothing can be “vampiric” if the word “vampire” doesn’t exist yet, let alone if vampires don’t exist.

    If a party member makes up a name for something, make sure that name comes back to them in a highly distorted or truncated form, which is now the “accepted” term for that thing.

    Also interesting to consider the common “trader’s tongue” won’t have been agreed upon yet. As such, the language “common” doesn’t exist yet.

    Gods walk the earth is cool, but I’d advise against a “forever pantheon” unless you’re planning a tier 4 campaign. Much more fun would be to have religions spreading, and converting people who are not religious, then showing the beginning of early kingdoms, which fight for control of more religious regions extra points if political and religious boundaries line up, and double extra points if they don’t but there’s a good story and drama resulting from this.
    There are no PC clerics, because they are all generals commanding evangelist armies.
    Paladins would be fair game, though, as they attempt to convert through showing how great they are. (If you do that, oath of conquest paladin should be the “default”)
    Last edited by Lupine; 2020-07-11 at 01:16 PM.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Titan in the Playground
     
    KorvinStarmast's Avatar

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    mad Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    TLDR: Titans. Make them major players and forces in the world.

    Your world, in a nutshell: No gods, but 'wannabe gods' who are trying to ascend. No Wizards. Love it.
    No Clerics. Fine, but I think you need to have druids; the power of Nature is raw in this new world, and can be tapped by just the right kind of PC.

    Various wannabe deities are rivals and I guess 'getting motes of divine power' means 'build a bigger following' or something like that. So yeah, as above, plenty of religious/cult rivalry and such.
    The world was created with cities infrastructure and some beings such as dragons get magical knowledge for things such as magic, farming... to name a few. Magic is still being discovered and only the most rudimentary magical items, one player has a magic sword that does deals 1 point of damage to the user and for the next d6 rounds it deals an extra d4 magic damage. cause people are still figuring out how to make magic items.
    The cities were created by the Great Old Ones and maybe a few Titans. Your standard arcane caster is a warlock. (yay!)

    Celestial patron is still valid if there are angels, titans, solars, et al running about. Since nature is raw, I'd suggest the Archfey be a player also; a great fit since the powers of nature and creation are still raw. The various archfey spirits possibly know the great old ones, but are wary of them, or maybe they helped them. With this in mind, you need one thing for more magic.

    Portals to the Feywild.

    Magic is leaking into this world from the Feywild, and as well as from the influence of dragons (therefore, you can have sorcerers!). Also, because of warlocks, the pact magic is a way that magic is leaking into the world from the great old ones and various other patrons.

    Sorcerer origins: Draconic? Yeah. Shadow? Yeah. Wild Magic? Heck yeah!
    Divine Soul? Hmm, linked to a celestial, maybe, or serving a Titan? The celestials are waiting for a deity to ascend to fill that gap, but having mortals serve them along the way seems to work. (Is the ultimate objective of the campaign world that when the players get to tier 4, they help various gods to ascend?)

    Titans! Who built the cities? Some of the hard work was done by Titans; maybe some regions are "Great Old One"-centric and the others are Titan centric.

    Warlock Patrons: Celestial, Fiend, Archfey, Great Old One, Undying, but no Hexblade. My suggestion is that until you establish a connection to the shadowfell, no hexblades. I think that shadowfell needs to belong to an older world ... your mileage may vary.

    But I will ask; if there are no gods, are there fiends, devils, demons?

    I suggest there be celestials and fiends, but none of them acknowledge or serve the gods. These wannabe gods need to either ally with celestials / fiends, or, subdue them ... they are more along the lines of serving primordial chaos or law in its rawest forms ...

    And one more thing: the elementals should be a significant power, which is another argument for druids being a key magic wielding class in this world. I'd consider including the djinn's as a powerful influence on the world, and maybe try out the UA djinn / Genie patron for warlock.

    Also, as the factions and cults form, take a look at DMG pages 10-13. Forces and philosophies. That allows there to be belief systems not (as yet) aligned with gods, so the various "wannabe gods" need to establish which force/philosophy they embody.

    Paladins: the power of the Oath stands out even more if there are not gods. That's a good thing for this edition. All Paladins, all oaths ... and maybe some paladins are also cult leaders.

    Bards: If the world isn't very old, how do Lore bards fit in? All of the others I can see fitting in pretty well.

    You have massive amounts of great world building potential there.

    Magic Items, an idea for you

    Last thought: people are still figuring out how to make magic items: do you all like the Artificer from Eberron: rising from the last war? That might establish a source of magic items, or you can fey and goo and others do it ... but I'd toss in the "oops, magic item malfunctioned" options somewhere. The technology isn't mature.

    (Pick some magic items that, if the user rolls a 1, you roll on either wild magic table or wand of wonder table for an effect ... or not. If your table likes that kind of flavor, it would be fun. )

    Links to UA Genie and Lurker in the deep warlock options, for your consideration.
    https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/warlock#TheGenieUA

    https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/wa...kerintheDeepUA

    And finally:
    Regarding the above ideas: take what you like and leave the rest. Best wishes!
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2020-07-11 at 02:28 PM.
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  6. - Top - End - #6
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lizardfolk

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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    So all the humanoid races just popped into being with no knowledge of anything? Were they all adult age? Did each community have to make up their own language? What about crafts? It would take a very long time to learn how to do smithing, alchemy, medicine. Would they have learned how to domesticate any animals? If they have seen animals, then they would know those can die of old age.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    Quote Originally Posted by Mellack View Post
    So all the humanoid races just popped into being with no knowledge of anything? Were they all adult age? Did each community have to make up their own language? What about crafts? It would take a very long time to learn how to do smithing, alchemy, medicine. Would they have learned how to domesticate any animals? If they have seen animals, then they would know those can die of old age.
    yeah, im still trying to figure this all out, the beings who are able to become the deitys have these sort of magical knowledges and part of the way they are gaining followers is teaching them this.


    Quote Originally Posted by Lupine
    Gods walk the earth is cool, but I’d advise against a “forever pantheon” unless you’re planning a tier 4 campaign. Much more fun would be to have religions spreading, and converting people who are not religious, then showing the beginning of early kingdoms, which fight for control of more religious regions extra points if political and religious boundaries line up, and double extra points if they don’t but there’s a good story and drama resulting from this.
    there are usually only 1 set of gods in any dnd world, and it doesnt matter what tier im using for any campaign, I use the same world over and over again, exploits of prior adventuring groups become the myths and legends of future groups. so whichever pantheon ends up victorious this campaign will be the gods in my world going forward until it ends or someone kills them

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Planetar

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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    1) The first war. It's very important for your to decide if it has happened yet or not. Sure, there probably already was some deadly conflict. But the first war will be or was a traumatic event for your world.

    2) Do you have an original sin? By an original sin, I mean a devastating event (like the first war mentioned above) responsible for peoples being mortals. Note that it is not forced to be a "punishment", it can also be a "the first war damaged the fabric of the universe, making all the future souls mortals".

    3) Since your world is so young you only have ~2 generations, the notions of newly born peoples having a different opinion on how the world should work because of them being raised differently than the previous generation is probably alien to the peoples living. The first generation to raise child will also be the first generation to have to deal with rebelling teenagers.
    (BTW, you might need a reason on why and when peoples stopped being "generated" and had to reproduce to have children).

    4) Something that could really help your worldbuilding is to assume that the first generation is given some sort of "basic knowledge" coming from the creators about "how life is supposed to work". In particular, they have a vague notions of all the central concept of civilisation (trading, education, war, ...) even if they didn't have personal experience with it.

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Man_Over_Game's Avatar

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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    Cults or anything with leaders will be very prevalent for protection. Nobody knows anything, so anyone who does (or pretends to) will instantly be in a position to gather followers and gather power.

    Additionally, any consistent force of magic will be something to worship. It could be some sort of magical item, or an idol that creates a fog around it, or a mortal god gathering motes through their followers.

    Heck, expect mortals that also followed gods and are planning to gather the motes for themselves, or for barter for boons and whatnot.
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  10. - Top - End - #10
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GreenSorcererElf

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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    You mentioned dragons. If all the dragons are 40 years old or younger, then they are all Young. No Adult or Ancient dragons yet exist unless some were magically created. So no one really knows just how powerful dragons can be.

    Same goes for Elves. None of them realize they're going to live hundreds of years and everyone else won't. So a lot of the assumptions of elven culture in D&D won't yet apply - that detachment from the other races, the sense of superiority, probably won't be there because they won't have all experienced their friends all growing old and dying in a relative blink of an eye.

    There are no legends. Sure there might be stories about gods or whatever, but no one has any mortal heroes they're looking back on. That means the cultural template for a "hero" doesn't really exist. You don't have children picking up wooden swords and fighting an imaginary dragon, because none of this exists yet. What they do have to look up to is people who understand things and make things - kids would be more likely to aspire to be bakers or or farmers. (Think about who would leave a positive impression on a kid, that's who they'll want to be. A baker selling pastries will make kids think about how awesome it is to be able to make as many pastries as they want.)

    There are no heirlooms and no pride of ancestry. No one has a glorious or infamous lineage.

    The economics is going to be tricky. So you've got cities. Who runs them? Is there a noble class? Probably shouldn't be. Who owns what and how was that decided? Did people just move into buildings? Did they wake up already in one? If so, did someone say "Okay, we're all confused, but we need to get a handle on things, I'm good at organizing stuff so I'm in charge now and everyone owns the building they woke up in." Even that has challenges, like how that person enforced their rule, and how they keep track. Maybe everyone found a deed under the bed, too. Did the gods claim individual cities and appoint people to be in charge? Conversely, maybe it was a mad dash and chaos for a while until someone forced some kind of peace.

    Who wrote the laws? Did they come already codified in books, or did mortals have to figure them out? If it's the latter, expect them to be extremely rudimentary and with lots of unintended consequences. Do people see all laws as equivalently important, or is there a set of Divine Laws perceived as coming from the gods with a secondary set of mortal rules about taxes and stuff?

    If the gods claimed cities, then expect every city to be effectively dictatorships with varying degrees of benevolence. This will probably be the easiest way to go, since you have personalities you can design society around with the power to enforce those designs. In this case, I would look at Dark Sun for inspiration. Each city there is its own nation-state with a culture suited to the whims of the Sorcerer Kings. Not all of your gods have to be monsters like the SKs, but it's still a good starting point. And of course it's only a matter of time until one or more of those gods decides they absolutely cannot tolerate what some other god is doing and it's time for war.

    It's an ambitious concept. Good luck!

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: need some help figuring out the repurcussions of my world

    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    1) The first war. It's very important for your to decide if it has happened yet or not. Sure, there probably already was some deadly conflict. But the first war will be or was a traumatic event for your world.

    .
    this, this is the ideas i was looking for, i had never even thought anything along those lines. thats great thanks. oh man i really like this point i keep coming back to it as i go through the other responses.


    Quote Originally Posted by Evaar
    Same goes for Elves. None of them realize they're going to live hundreds of years and everyone else won't. So a lot of the assumptions of elven culture in D&D won't yet apply - that detachment from the other races, the sense of superiority, probably won't be there because they won't have all experienced their friends all growing old and dying in a relative blink of an eye.
    .
    people are just starting to notice that elves and dwarves really havent aged, but i hadnt considered the aloofness and detachment

    The laws were given to people by the heads of the pantheons, who inherited it from the prime creator. all your ideas are good stuff, thank you


    Quote Originally Posted by Man_Over_Game
    Cults or anything with leaders will be very prevalent for protection. Nobody knows anything, so anyone who does (or pretends to) will instantly be in a position to gather followers and gather power.

    Additionally, any consistent force of magic will be something to worship. It could be some sort of magical item, or an idol that creates a fog around it, or a mortal god gathering motes through their followers.

    Heck, expect mortals that also followed gods and are planning to gather the motes for themselves, or for barter for boons and whatnot.
    the various factions are pretty big right now, and magic is pretty common with their being an unusually high number of sorcerers but the divine motes are dangerous to keep

    the motes are tiered based off their power, and while they belong to a person level 1 shines a light visible from 100ft away, level 2 1000, level 3 2 miles so on an so forth and being under cover doesn't stop it since its direct divine power being radiated. and the most kinda have a 1 ring effect that you want it to be yours, but if a mortal takes in the power it utterly destroys them, body and soul.

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