Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Boshi 09-27-07, 01:20 PM	I'm not sure if this has been done before, if it has my apologies. Every once and a while (usually on the subway going to work for some reason) an interesting D&D setting idea pops into my head. They're mostly contradictory so I can't use them all in one setting, but I think some of them are kind of cool. So put some of your own random seeds of ideas here that don't fit any specific setting for other people to mine for ideas. (some of the following are ripped off from various sources, most are original). 1. Light (the 0 level cantrip) has a duration of permanent and marbles that have had Light cast on it is the form of money that the realm uses. The arcane upper classes are non-capitalistic and don't care about money since it is so easy to come by. Wizards who spend their days mass-producing money are the community's laughingstock. 2. Fire is able to burn away a sentient being's soul without killing the body (that's why you burn witches). The soulless live, are unable to use magic and are largely resistant to magic, but at what cost... 3. In a world with Populus-style religion (the more followers a god has the more powerful it is) some people figured out how this system worked and decided to make their own damn god, a non-sentient one who did nothing but hand out miracles to/be a source of arcane power for its followers. And then... 4. In a world with consensual reality (reality is what most people believe it is) magic is consciously using the power of one's belief to manipulate reality. However if enough people start using their power of belief to zap critters, fly around and whatnot they're not using their belief to make the mountains stay put, keep gravity working and making the sun rise in the morning and reality begins to unravel... 5. The PC's home village is the last one left. Monsters ate the rest. 6. Magic is powered by life force. Pregnant women can draw on the life force of their fetus to increase their power. Spells have been invented that slow the growth of fetuses in order to take advantage of this. 7. Wizards of a certain level don't cast shadows. Why would that be? 8. The forests were stocked with magically-created critters for the upper classes to hunt and kept from leaving the forests with magical wards. But when the kindgom fell and the wards failed...
Bowstrife 09-27-07, 02:23 PM	I love this thread-keep all the cool ideas coming
jamvid 09-27-07, 10:50 PM	assuming we're allowed to post: 8. Vampires or another spawn-causing undead have dominated the world, not just controlling it, but compromising the majority of sentient beings. the vampire PCs must hunt down their food desperately as well as fend off the other vampires in a post apocalyptic and ruinous world.
Boshi 09-27-07, 11:20 PM	Yes, please post. I can't think of 101 good ideas by myself :) 10. Gnolls have a hyena-style social system. That means that women are in charge and the men are kicked out when they become adults to go and try to find another group that they can join. Such exiled male gnolls go raiding/adventuring with other eviled young adult males to collect enough treasure/severed heads to convince the female elite of another gnoll tribe to allow them to join the tribe and mate with the females.
Return of the Flumph 09-28-07, 12:14 AM	11. Good and Evil actually are the red team and the blue team. Angels and demons are actually not inherently good or evil; both are extremely corrupt and power hungry, but the fiends are at least honest about it.
Boshi 09-28-07, 01:01 AM	12. When a king dies he gets to keep his palace, the land he personally conquered and his treasure. He is served by all of his sons, except for the one who becomes the next king, and all of their descendents. Some of these royal descendants become priests who claim to speak for the dead king, but who is really calling the shots? As the centuries pass the capitol fills with palaces inhabited by dead kings and most of the land of the kingdom becomes the property of the dead.
Boshi 09-28-07, 06:14 AM	13. There is an historical figure who preached against his people for turning against their traditional god and they burned him at the stake as a witch and brewed his ashes into potions (witch ashes are great potion ingredients). Those who drank the potions had constant visions of burning and divine wrath and became the apostles to a new religion in which the new "Burned God" is an avatar of their realm's traditional diety who let himself be burned in order to impart wisdom to his enemies (the potion-drinking apostles).
taradusis 09-29-07, 11:29 PM	14 the world is shaped like a disk that flips thru space with a sun and moon that circles it.People born on one side of the disk are Lawful,those born on the opposing side are Chaotic.Wars are fought by armies that invade over the edges and dig thru the disk.No true neutrals exist.The true neutral god who created this world watches the slaughter with dispassion.
Aneutralshadeofblack 09-30-07, 02:46 PM	15. The material plane is invaded by an army of angels and demons working together to ruthlessly conquer the mortals. The PCs embark on a planar quest to discover why the order of the world has broken down so - not knowing that an unfathomably vast, pan-dimensional, interplanar power that has conquered thousands of worlds before theirs has just moved in to their part of the cosmology. The PCs are essentially powerless against this greater threat, but they never learn of its existence until the very end of the campaign (after they've destroyed the alien controller that was forcing the upper and lower planes to fight side by side). (Cookie to whoever gets the rather obvious inspiration for this one.)
Zousha_Omenohu 09-30-07, 03:57 PM	16. (Don't know if this is properly funky, but here goes...) In the very first session, the PC's survive their world's apocalypse. Most of civilization is destroyed and the PC's are left struggling to survive in a much harsher and dangerous world. Shortly after this, they recieve a vision explaining that whatever destroyed their world also destroyed their gods, and that as survivors, they can now inherit the mantle of godhood. The catch is that they have to journey across the world to a conduit to the realm of the divine to claim it. The PC's main obstacles are the fact that they have to scavenge whatever they can to survive, money is virtually worthless since there's no way to spend it, and most importantly, they were not the only survivors. Other beings survived the cataclysm as well, and have recieved the same vision. They will no doubt attempt to hunt the PCs down to eliminate competition, or as a pre-emptive strike to defend themselves. In the end, the PCs may have to turn on each other to claim the prize (If anyone here begins to see some sort of Highlander motif you're not the only one).
Xaer 09-30-07, 06:19 PM	17. Long ago, the material plane suffered many wars due to a lack of magic, and a constant vying for magical resources/items/etc. Under the hand of several powerful wizards, the world was split into two worlds, one without magic, one with. However, in the first session, the PC's stumble across something that shouldn't be. A human from the non magical world...
sirconnorstack 09-30-07, 07:52 PM	18. A new breed of zombie that is immune to turning and rebuking has taken over most of the world, turning any of their sentient victims to zombies. However, clerics have begun production of a type of potion that can revive zombies. Noone can really die and PCs can play both sides of the conflict. (This is based off a super-fun MMORPG)
Aneutralshadeofblack 09-30-07, 08:29 PM	(This is based off a super-fun MMORPG) It's a browser-based game, not an MMORPG. Stop insulting Urban Dead in all its imbalanced glory. ;)
Tsochar 09-30-07, 08:39 PM	19: Portals on Earth open up to another world, one of generic D&D. Earth nations fight to gain power over the various magic and creatures inhabiting the other world, but they have to keep to two fronts, since Earth remains nonmagical (An antimagic field by a deity-level power, so powerful that even innate abilities of monsters are nulled, and any sufficiently magical beast or being would die on earth.) Nonmagical creatures, however, keep finding their way to Earth, and the natives of the other world can use magic to effectively nullify the Earthlings' technological advantage. PCs are either earth soldiers, trying to scout out the other world, Exogaians, trying to defend their homes, or some third party that tries to discover the reason for Earth's lack of magic and possibly cure it. 20: The world is 99% water. Merfolk and Aquatic Elves are the dominant species. Humans and elves are their mutant offspring, Orcs and other savage humanoids are primitive islanders, and Dwarves have built tunnels that go beneath the ocean. Gnomes dwell in balloon cities. (from DMG 3.5) 21: The world is an enormous cave system. It is structurally a combination of Baator, the Abyss, and the Elemental Plane of Earth. An infinite number of layers, the top of one layer connecting to the bottom of the next. Maps are made by level, and travel is faster due to the compactness. Some caverns are a few feet wide, while the large ones emit enough light to seem like daytime. 22: Life energy blocks magic. Mages have to give up all but a year of their lifespan during which they must learn to become liches. Consequently, magic is rare and mages have a negative stigma, regardless of their actual alignment.
Xaer 10-01-07, 02:40 PM	23. Taking umbridge at highly ineffective police and court systems, people all over the world take up vigilante justice, fighting for the little people of the world(and perhaps some gold, XP, and beer). These people, despite their nationality, race, or beliefs have all taken the moniker of justice: adventurers.
CombatMedic 10-01-07, 03:49 PM	24. Necromancy isn't so reviled in this world. Zombie animal labor has given the world free power [zombies can turn mill wheels, haul loads, work treadmills, etc, without need for food or rest]. The resulting growth in productivity has allowed for the population to boom, trade to increase, and made life a little better for many people. A terrible threat to the new order exists in the form of fanatical terrorists who are trying to turn back the clock and ruin the new era of prosperity. These villians are called paladins. Many are asscoiated with the outlawed cult of Pelor.
sirconnorstack 10-01-07, 07:01 PM	It's a browser-based game, not an MMORPG. Stop insulting Urban Dead in all its imbalanced glory. ;) I consider any RPG that is massively multiplayer to be an MMORPG. :cool: 25. The cosmology begins collapsing into itself. One by one, the planes are crashing into the material plane, damaging and violently combining them. (The elemental plane of water hits, and large portions of the world are submerged. Ysgard impacts and millions of warriors battle in the streets.)
Orloff 10-05-07, 12:34 AM	26. The world is made up of two races: humans and changelings. The humans rage from suspicion to outright fear/hatred of the changelings because of their ability to commit crime and easily escape. The changeling community is split between those who want to prove humans wrong, those who want to live it up and take what they can when they can, and numerous splinter groups in between. 27. Spells cannot create matter or energy. For example, 'create water' drains water from some random location, 'fireball' puts out hundreds or thousands of pipes, 'heal minor wounds' causes the caster to take damage... 28. The world is a series of disks, hundreds to thousands of miles across, floating at various levels in space. A river connects all of these disks, flowing from the highest to the lowest in a series of spectacular waterfalls enchanted so that boats can move up and down them. At the higher disks, the river is pure and beautiful. The lower the disk, the more accumulated waste plagues the river, making it practically poisonous at the lowest couple of levels. Beneath the lowest level is the Hell, and it is traditional knowledge that the river begins it's course in heaven.
Atuin 05-16-08, 10:29 PM	29(was it?). The gods in the world are surprisingly weak, like Greek gods and can be killed by a powerful human. A society of pure CN, the paladins of chaos, disciples of the void, that the PCs are in (high level campaign) has risen to kill them. It's reasons are because the gods are the law, the rulers of the world, and because they have been enlightened to the fact in the setting idea above that angels and demons are just as bad as each other. The angels and demons are all lawful. When the most powerful deity(epic level) is destroyed, he decides that the void society must be stopped, and sets an apocalypse into motion, scorching the earth and leaving with the other gods (he lives). With no gods to stop them, horrible things from other dimensions start coming into the world. The new epic level campaign arch is to fend off the things long enough to escape to another planet outside of the cosmology. BTW, this is a setting I am using. Maybe I'll do a PbP.
SilvercatMoonpaw 05-17-08, 08:45 AM	This is definitely getting bookmarked. 30: The world is ruled by intelligent magic items who have enslaved the "fleshies" to lavishly care for them and make them children. Some of these items go around fighting each other and killing random fleshies so that they can grow in power, occasionally trading in their fleshy slaves for cooler versions. 31: The gods were petty and cruel. They had created the world simply as a board upon which they could play games with the lives of mortals. So the tricksters got together and trapped the gods into watching TV for the rest of eternity. Now the people of the world are completely free from gods………except some continue on, spurred by the remaining divine servants who can only survive by feeding their egos with the blind faith of mortals. 32: The gods' war ruined the world, turning it into a wasteland with only a few patches of habitable territory. Contrite in their mistake, and believing their separation lead to being unaware of the consequences of their actions, the gods descend to help rebuild the world directly. Unfortunately they cannot so easily let go of their rivalries. And even worse, not only have some mortals discovered that a god can be killed, but the one who strikes the mortal blow receives all the god's power……… 33: It's a fantasy world………but with all modern technology. Except for guns. And explosives. In fact, personal weapons have never gotten beyond the level of the longbow. Why? Because the gods are a democracy, and just enough voted against "high death" weaponry. Everything else is fine: knights joust on motorcycles (alternative fuel) and adventurers turn off their cell phones before going into the dungeon. 34: The priests say the world floats on the back of a turtle who will one day submerge and drown the world. But the conspiracy theorists say that the world is an island floating in an endless sky with many more, and that the dwarves have tunnelled through the mountains that ring the edges and trade with each other……… 35: The entire cosmology is literally the house of an immense (and mysteriously absent) god. Humans lead raids into the cupboarddark to battle the drow for control of the Godfood. Tales are told of the Outside, of the monstrous insects of the Grass Forest and the island-sized fish in the Ornamental Pond. And occasionally, only as a curse, one mutters the name of the dreaded Basement and its evil rulers: the demons of the Furnace.
Vorteld 05-17-08, 10:38 AM	36: An evil god has recently been slain by adventurers, but its death throes are devastating. Seeping from its bane-wounds is a strange curse which makes everything it touches 2-dimensional, causing a lot of problems. this curse also radiates from the dead god's clerics wouds when they get wounded. Can this plague be stopped before eveything becames 2-dimensional?
Admiral_Lourve 05-17-08, 11:02 AM	37. You wake on a cruise ship, in a black suit, sailing along a impossibly large underground river. No passenger on the ship remembers who they are and most of them are dressed in black, even those that hate black. The captain's name is Charon, though he is never seen in person, only over the ship's radio. Where are you? Where are you headed? 38. The world is a mass of temples built on temples, cathedrals covered in shrines. Ten thousand deities, loa, demons, fae, spirits, daeva all demand respect from mortals. The gods are constantly interfering with mortal life. Deep within the underdark however, rogue bands of dwarves driving giant drills have made, after years of work, Unmaterial. And they're forging Unguns and Unbullets out of it.
taradusis 05-18-08, 08:05 AM	39 No intelligent race has males. Females become pregnant by having their prayers answered by a god,angel or demon? Would thid lead to increses in half-breeds? Perhaps all births are divinely or infernally inspired but only one in a thousand shows overt signs?
protosswarrior 05-18-08, 08:47 AM	40: all campaign settings (Greyhawk, FR, etc) are all part of the material plane, separated by massive (100,000km) stretches of water.