Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 arthnek_the_boar_dup Jun 07, 2008 17:09:20	Hi everyone, This afternoon I began taking notes towards working up a 4th edition campaign setting and adventures. Why? Because I love writing the material myself and prefer that over running everything out of the box. Call me a glutton for punishment. I have been writing campaigns since 1978 and I usually write one each time a new major edition of the game comes out. In the case of 2nd and 3rd I think I poked around with two or three ideas over that span of time. Anyway. I suspect that this is going to be my last go around on writing up a campaign setting and adventures old school style. So I thought I might post the process I go through as things develop over time. Starting Out... Each new edition has had its own sort of fluffy setting or style that it seemed to cater to in some ways. Back in 1e it was fairly dark, sword and sorcery based. 2e introduced a higher magic fantasy setting flavor in a fair amount of the materials. 3.5 seemed to me to be more a return to the every man or woman hero idea where any character could both pick a lock, swing a sword and cast a spell. So my first step is to try and discover some aspect of what the vital center or style suits the races and rules best (at least in my own opinion, I don't suffer any delusions that my quirky notions will appeal to many). I have quite a bit of the rules to go over and some playing with battles and such to do before I can have a clearer idea of how to answer that question but what I do have is an excellent tool in the new 4th edition Monster Manual. Before I decide on how high or low fantasy the campaign should be, how dark or obscure I can use the monster manual as a tool for ideas about what groups, factions, kingdoms and histories will be present in the setting. Basically I go through the monster manual and first decide whether or not I even want to include a certain monster into my campaign. Some monsters I'd just rather not use. Others are very clever but they seem to be written to represent themselves as part of a well developed kingdom or empire and yet no kingdom or empire has ever been attributed to them in any campaign i am aware of. Take the doppleganger for instance. Here is an entire race bent on ruling the world and one should suppose that they must hail from somewhere. They must have some kingdom or empire of their own hidden away from whence they breed, have their culture and work their plots. Even if their secret land is hidden somewhere deep inside the underdark. In my experience dopplegangers rarely made it beyond a shtick sort of monster to ambush a party with randomly in the depths of a dungeon. So anyway. After I decide on which monsters i am going to dump and which i am going to keep I then sort through the remaining monsters and decide which are going to be major mastermind races...the monsters pulling the strings behind kingdoms or other groups and which are largely going to be servitor races. Somewhere along the lines I start thinking about the different PC races and where they fit into the whole larger scheme of mastermind races or servitor races and the like. Sometimes I stick with good old tried and true monster and race relationships. I like having the giants / goblins and dwarves all connected in some fashion and the 4e spin seems to be a good starting point although I'll likely refine the story quite a bit before I am done. I like the Raksasha and consider it an obvious mastermind race. Perhaps grouping them with Shifters and Lycanthropes works for building a region where the Raksasha rule a land behind the scenes and breed warriors, guards and servants through the application, experimentation and advancement of lycanthropes within a servitor population of humans and PC race humanoids. So anyway. Just getting started really and having fun. Thought I would sort of post up the process as it unfolds here.
#2 thaka_zum Jun 07, 2008 18:01:48	Interested in how this unfolds!
#3 Barmp Jun 07, 2008 18:40:44	As am I. I think a lot of us do something similar on a smaller scale when world building, and it's never dull to see how someone else fit all the pieces together.
#4 SoulCatcher78 Jun 07, 2008 21:02:56	With the feel of 4e and it's old empires/points if light framework, you might want to dig deeper into the Yuan-Ti. The 3.5 sourcebook Serpent Kingdoms is a great place to start for background information on them (not to mention you can probably pick it up cheap now).
#5 arthnek_the_boar_dup Jun 08, 2008 20:01:18	Thanks for the feedback so far guys. =D At first glance and this is just my earliest impressions...4th edition seems to be a good match for running the sort of Robert E Howard world developed in the old Conan novels and perhaps later in some of the comic books. Heroic characters are very heroic and capable of battling a horde of minions back to back in some decayed jungle ruin somewhere. While Sorcerors and magic items exist and can be extremely powerful there are no magic shops, magic is not widely used for lighting or technology. Steampunk fantasy is almost completely absent in this sort of a world. While you could easily run high fantasy elements in this same sort of setting I think I am going to depart from that. I have been writing a high fantasy setting with floating worlds and sky ships since 1998, after all. Sort of a steampunk and high magic world. While that has been a great deal of fun I think I'm ready to run something a little different. Ok so obviously I don't want to copy the World of Conan. So where to begin. I am not going to use or reference Atlantis as Howard does in the World of Conan but I am thinking that my own campaign will take place in a similar ancient period. This means that the look of armor, weapons and places is going to be more ancient world than classic fantasy or middle ages. There will be no full plate armor wearing paladins riding around with lances and shining armor for example although a sort of half-plate may exist and the paladin might be riding on the back of a raptor of some sort. I am pretty sure that I am going to make the setting feel really ancient by having some dinosaur types still living. Sabre tooth tigers instead of your typical big cats. That sort of thing. Enough on that for now. I am still thinking about all this. On the topic of monsters I plan to use and for what here is the general relationships I have in mind so far... This is no way a complete list just a couple of examples. Beholder / Mindflayers / Tieflings and Humans + Golems, Animated Statues, Animated Servitors and Armors, the Colossus, Iron Guardians, etc... Beholders once presented themselves as gods to the totemic tribal / primative humans dwelling in villages in a chaotic state up and down the Eastern coast. Through raw power and trickery the Beholders carved out for themselves a good sized Empire along the Eastern coast which survived for almost three hundred years. Through this empire they waged war on the races of the elves, dragonborn and others. Tieflings were created by the Beholders through pacts and agreements with demons and other extra planar intelligences to act as their priests, staff their military and serve as their administrators. ALso the Mindflayers were an attempt by the Beholders to enslave a powerful race from the far reaches beyond their own world. Unfortunately most of the Mindflayers managed to slip out from under the psionic grasp of the Beholders and ultimately forged their own cabal further to the South. Animated Statues, Gargoyles, magically animated guardians of all sorts are part of the look and feel of the minions and servitors used by the Beholders during the age of their Empire. Open worship of Beholders as gods atop step pyramids, images of them and such still survive in ancient ruins to this day although the Beholders and any followers loyal to them have long ago been forced to flee in the underdark. I am thinking that this ancient and now lost empire would have ancient Assyrian names for places and peoples. This would be my own idea for an empire with Tieflings in it that was destroyed but also helped to destroy the ancient civilization of the dragonborn. With the Tieflings acting as pawns of the Beholders and having ultimately risen up and overthrown the Beholders the Tieflings are not necessarily such strict racial opponents of the Dragonborn at the present time of the campaign.
#6 holy_beholder Jun 08, 2008 23:01:00	You might want to read up on the ancient Phonecians, Assyrians, Hittites, Egyptians, and on the ancient empires of Mali and Ghana.
#7 arthnek_the_boar_dup Jun 09, 2008 11:29:11	Hi Guys, I am putting the brakes on this project sadly. I today discovered that there is no virtual table top. At least there is none planned to be available for months and months. I purchased the books specifically so I could run on the virtual table top for friends. That was what had me so excited in the first place. THe failure on the part of Wizards to announce the long delay of this vital piece of the puzzle really irks me. This is a real deal breaker for me and I am probably not going to bother with doing the campaign. In fact I am so angry I am probably going to go down and return my books. Or possibly mail them directly to Wizards as a final protest for treating their customer base so poorly. It is an easy thing to do to post an announcement about a project delay. Especially one so easy to know as the virtual table top. They've known it was going to be delayed for weeks if not months prior to the release date of the books. Just a little announcement would have gone miles towards allowing me to hold off on buying the books until the table was also available. As it stands I really feel duped and poorly treated. SO sorry. YOu won't be hearing anything more from me on the forums. Good luck guys