New Campaign Setting: Can't make up my mind! [Archive] - Wizards Community

New Campaign Setting: Can't make up my mind! [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
TwinStorms
05-29-07, 01:13 AM So for the last little while I've been letting my creative juices stir in my head as I've been trying to create a new campaign setting. But, I'm having problems finding focus on what I want it to be exactly, one week its a serious and gritty, low-magic campaign, the next its interesting high and fantastical, one week its like Ebberron, the next like Dark Sun.

Originally, I wanted to do something close to the major D&D campaign worlds we already have. All the same classes, the same races, with the addition of 3 new ones; nightlock; a short-lived nation building race that were lawful evil and practiced slavery, kappa; amphibian humanoids from the swamps with a hunter-gatherer society, and half-dwarves, mixed dwarven and human parentange, no ability adjustments, but borrows boons from both human and dwarf, similar to the half-elf in this regard. The setting was basically pretty typical medium-fantasy medium magic Greyhawkish. At first I was okay with this, but then I realized, hey, I want to try something new. Why do the same old thing if theres enough settings out there that have already been made, that offer the same thing?

So then I decided, lets juice it up a little. From there, rich and powerful folks and successful adventurers traveled on tamed flying drakes. A gigantic world-tree existed. I started to think of things more in turn with Eberron and soon engineers and magewrights were common place, and fantastical flying machines, crude magical submarines, artificers and warforged all became part of my setting as well.

Then I thought, well, Eberron's been done too. If I want to take elements from Eberron, I should put them in a somewhat new context.

So from there, I started fresh. Ebberron-style technology and magic, as well as races, in a pulp/Great Depression style setting. Adventurers riding the rails across a land drying up from overuse of magical technology. In the cities of business there are no cars, but there are magical streetcars. In the industrial cities, the overuse of magic has created a grimy film over every corner and surface, and ash rains from the sky. A great war had ended not too long ago, explaining the warforged. Elves were native Americans and Dwarves were part of a Yukon gold rush, Shifters were backcountry folk who lived in an Appalachian-style area. Many of the halflings were Southerners for some reason. I liked it, gritty but high magic, and new.

Still, I lost interest pretty quickly. After rereading some Dark Sun stuff, my mind moved onto something else entirely, a land of wastes, were the only good land sits in mysterious craters, and it is in these places that kingdoms flourish. Outside the crater-walls is a harsh and strange world were dinosaurs and lizardfolk are common. There is a dead city in the east, were a playable undead race comes from, and hobgoblins are a playable race too. Behind the crater walls of the world are wealthy medieval style kingdoms, but even in these places, religious wars and inquisitions can make life harsh. But now I find my idea of what this campaign is shifting again.

So any ideas? What should I work with? And most importantly, I want to know if other people have the same issues of taking one idea and sticking with it, and what is the best way to decide?
Theskippingman
05-29-07, 01:21 AM Sounds like you have a little bit of difficulty in making the world structure and ecology plausible.

Try this, it's free: http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=XRPFREE2

Edit: And this too, if you're alright with going heavy on the crunch: http://www.compulink.co.uk/~morven/worldkit/index.html
TwinStorms
05-29-07, 09:35 PM Ah, good links! Thank you.
Domriso
05-29-07, 10:11 PM I've had similar problems in the past. What I've found is that by focusing all of my ideas and trying to find ways to mix them together into my own creations led to interesting results. My latest creation is the result of several months of brainstorming and creative writing, and it's still evolving. Feel free to look there for ideas. Cael (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=854855)

Another thing I have found that helps is to actually write stories, not necessarily long, that detail just everyday life, to see if they work out in the world, the way you want. Take them from different perspectives and just play around with them. It can lead to many an interesting turn of events.
Araes
05-30-07, 04:36 AM And most importantly, I want to know if other people have the same issues of taking one idea and sticking with it, and what is the best way to decide?
I continually have this problem, and my thread is a constant example of my regular attention wandering, which I guess is why I ended up with a setting that is so big it can hold anything I wander to.

That said, one potential way to overcome this problem is to initially allow your mind to wander, and just roughly brainstorm lots of different concepts for what you would like your campaign or world to be. Throw down tons of stuff, no matter how out there, just as long as you like it. Then, go back through the material and begin to sift through each item, examining each item (or set) for what made you like them.

For example, before I wrote down the beginnings of my ideas, I had been bantering around the ideas of gods that were little better than humans, of big hollow worlds, of devils / fey / elementals / ect... with reasonable explanations, and what I eventually figured from looking at all these was that my core interest was actually in trying to make a D&D world that both seemed fantastic, but could also be explained through concepts of science.

If you can integrate them in this way, then everything works out relatively perfectly, and the rest of your effort can be directed fairly cleanly. On the other hand, if your personal goals are a bit more elusive, you can also take the tact that at least now you know a vast array of things that you like. The next part of the creative endeavor can then just be figuring out how you can make all of these neat ideas play together well.

In your particular case, you have four settings, and each one has aspects that might be interesting to integrate with the others. You could work your first one into the fourth, by using the relatively vanilla Greyhawk concept, and making it the medieval kingdom behind the walls. Perhaps the more futuristic city of Eberron background could be the city which is the source of the undead. Perhaps the gritty overuse of magic has had horrible consequences?

Either way, it seems like you have lots of good concepts, and really you just need to find a way to integrate all the various things that you like into one manageable whole.
Naderion
05-30-07, 08:07 AM I frequently realize, I've been drifting quite a bit from the originals ideas I had and then try to remind myself, what I wanted everything to be like in the end.
I get a great amount of ideas and overall inspiration from pictures, books or games and draw a lot of maps and models. I think it's really helpfull to again take a look on all this material, that inspired me the most. I have tons of pictures from fantasy-sites on my hard drive and a good amount of screenshots of places or situations in games, where I thought "that's an impression I want to capture and use in the setting".
TwinStorms
05-31-07, 03:53 PM Thanks for all the advice :D

In your particular case, you have four settings, and each one has aspects that might be interesting to integrate with the others. You could work your first one into the fourth, by using the relatively vanilla Greyhawk concept, and making it the medieval kingdom behind the walls. Perhaps the more futuristic city of Eberron background could be the city which is the source of the undead. Perhaps the gritty overuse of magic has had horrible consequences?

Either way, it seems like you have lots of good concepts, and really you just need to find a way to integrate all the various things that you like into one manageable whole.

Great advice. I was worried about making one setting that had a particular flavor, but after thinking about it, I suppose theres no reason why different elements can't work together as long as its done right.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
TwinStorms 05-29-07, 01:13 AM	So for the last little while I've been letting my creative juices stir in my head as I've been trying to create a new campaign setting. But, I'm having problems finding focus on what I want it to be exactly, one week its a serious and gritty, low-magic campaign, the next its interesting high and fantastical, one week its like Ebberron, the next like Dark Sun. Originally, I wanted to do something close to the major D&D campaign worlds we already have. All the same classes, the same races, with the addition of 3 new ones; nightlock; a short-lived nation building race that were lawful evil and practiced slavery, kappa; amphibian humanoids from the swamps with a hunter-gatherer society, and half-dwarves, mixed dwarven and human parentange, no ability adjustments, but borrows boons from both human and dwarf, similar to the half-elf in this regard. The setting was basically pretty typical medium-fantasy medium magic Greyhawkish. At first I was okay with this, but then I realized, hey, I want to try something new. Why do the same old thing if theres enough settings out there that have already been made, that offer the same thing? So then I decided, lets juice it up a little. From there, rich and powerful folks and successful adventurers traveled on tamed flying drakes. A gigantic world-tree existed. I started to think of things more in turn with Eberron and soon engineers and magewrights were common place, and fantastical flying machines, crude magical submarines, artificers and warforged all became part of my setting as well. Then I thought, well, Eberron's been done too. If I want to take elements from Eberron, I should put them in a somewhat new context. So from there, I started fresh. Ebberron-style technology and magic, as well as races, in a pulp/Great Depression style setting. Adventurers riding the rails across a land drying up from overuse of magical technology. In the cities of business there are no cars, but there are magical streetcars. In the industrial cities, the overuse of magic has created a grimy film over every corner and surface, and ash rains from the sky. A great war had ended not too long ago, explaining the warforged. Elves were native Americans and Dwarves were part of a Yukon gold rush, Shifters were backcountry folk who lived in an Appalachian-style area. Many of the halflings were Southerners for some reason. I liked it, gritty but high magic, and new. Still, I lost interest pretty quickly. After rereading some Dark Sun stuff, my mind moved onto something else entirely, a land of wastes, were the only good land sits in mysterious craters, and it is in these places that kingdoms flourish. Outside the crater-walls is a harsh and strange world were dinosaurs and lizardfolk are common. There is a dead city in the east, were a playable undead race comes from, and hobgoblins are a playable race too. Behind the crater walls of the world are wealthy medieval style kingdoms, but even in these places, religious wars and inquisitions can make life harsh. But now I find my idea of what this campaign is shifting again. So any ideas? What should I work with? And most importantly, I want to know if other people have the same issues of taking one idea and sticking with it, and what is the best way to decide?
Theskippingman 05-29-07, 01:21 AM	Sounds like you have a little bit of difficulty in making the world structure and ecology plausible. Try this, it's free: http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=XRPFREE2 Edit: And this too, if you're alright with going heavy on the crunch: http://www.compulink.co.uk/~morven/worldkit/index.html
TwinStorms 05-29-07, 09:35 PM	Ah, good links! Thank you.
Domriso 05-29-07, 10:11 PM	I've had similar problems in the past. What I've found is that by focusing all of my ideas and trying to find ways to mix them together into my own creations led to interesting results. My latest creation is the result of several months of brainstorming and creative writing, and it's still evolving. Feel free to look there for ideas. Cael (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=854855) Another thing I have found that helps is to actually write stories, not necessarily long, that detail just everyday life, to see if they work out in the world, the way you want. Take them from different perspectives and just play around with them. It can lead to many an interesting turn of events.
Araes 05-30-07, 04:36 AM	And most importantly, I want to know if other people have the same issues of taking one idea and sticking with it, and what is the best way to decide? I continually have this problem, and my thread is a constant example of my regular attention wandering, which I guess is why I ended up with a setting that is so big it can hold anything I wander to. That said, one potential way to overcome this problem is to initially allow your mind to wander, and just roughly brainstorm lots of different concepts for what you would like your campaign or world to be. Throw down tons of stuff, no matter how out there, just as long as you like it. Then, go back through the material and begin to sift through each item, examining each item (or set) for what made you like them. For example, before I wrote down the beginnings of my ideas, I had been bantering around the ideas of gods that were little better than humans, of big hollow worlds, of devils / fey / elementals / ect... with reasonable explanations, and what I eventually figured from looking at all these was that my core interest was actually in trying to make a D&D world that both seemed fantastic, but could also be explained through concepts of science. If you can integrate them in this way, then everything works out relatively perfectly, and the rest of your effort can be directed fairly cleanly. On the other hand, if your personal goals are a bit more elusive, you can also take the tact that at least now you know a vast array of things that you like. The next part of the creative endeavor can then just be figuring out how you can make all of these neat ideas play together well. In your particular case, you have four settings, and each one has aspects that might be interesting to integrate with the others. You could work your first one into the fourth, by using the relatively vanilla Greyhawk concept, and making it the medieval kingdom behind the walls. Perhaps the more futuristic city of Eberron background could be the city which is the source of the undead. Perhaps the gritty overuse of magic has had horrible consequences? Either way, it seems like you have lots of good concepts, and really you just need to find a way to integrate all the various things that you like into one manageable whole.
Naderion 05-30-07, 08:07 AM	I frequently realize, I've been drifting quite a bit from the originals ideas I had and then try to remind myself, what I wanted everything to be like in the end. I get a great amount of ideas and overall inspiration from pictures, books or games and draw a lot of maps and models. I think it's really helpfull to again take a look on all this material, that inspired me the most. I have tons of pictures from fantasy-sites on my hard drive and a good amount of screenshots of places or situations in games, where I thought "that's an impression I want to capture and use in the setting".
TwinStorms 05-31-07, 03:53 PM	Thanks for all the advice :D In your particular case, you have four settings, and each one has aspects that might be interesting to integrate with the others. You could work your first one into the fourth, by using the relatively vanilla Greyhawk concept, and making it the medieval kingdom behind the walls. Perhaps the more futuristic city of Eberron background could be the city which is the source of the undead. Perhaps the gritty overuse of magic has had horrible consequences? Either way, it seems like you have lots of good concepts, and really you just need to find a way to integrate all the various things that you like into one manageable whole. Great advice. I was worried about making one setting that had a particular flavor, but after thinking about it, I suppose theres no reason why different elements can't work together as long as its done right.