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#1 whodatninja_dup Jan 09, 2009 3:30:17

Hey everyone! So I'm not exactly new to roleplaying (although I'd hardly call myself a veteran; I've been at it for years, but very intermittently), but I'm pretty darned new to D&D. I owned and read the 3.0 core books without ever playing and before that I had the 1st Edition AD&D DMG and MM as hand-me-downs from my mother, but I've never really played, let alone DM! But I'm about to start my own campaign off here soon and I wanted to soundboard at someone that wasn't my players- who are almost all complete D&D newcomers (and in some cases RP newcomers in general). I don't have much yet and I'm keeping it pretty simple since it's my first time going into this stuff. But here's the very short blurb I posted on our Facebook group that we're going to use to disseminate information between sessions: Two centuries ago, the last true empire fell. With the demise of the human empire of Fennevan, civilization started to recede. For one hundred years the responsibilities of government fell to regional dukes, self-proclaimed emperors, and community leaders of all stripes. Today, civilization is even further withered. The Fennevan Empire is a distant memory to the humans who once knew nothing else and where its cities still stand, they are now autonomous states linked only by slowly decaying trade routes. The monstrous races are on the rise in the anarchy of the land, but not all is yet lost. The light of civilization has not yet been extinguished and in some remote areas, large areas of settlement- mostly non-human enclaves of single races- remain safe, if wary of the outside world. Despite the collapse of society, the civilized races fight on against the darkness. Humans, thanks to the expanse of the Fennevan Empire, are scattered throughout the three continents. The elves, ever wild, are mostly clustered in small communities in the deepest forests of the world. The dwarves remain cloistered in their underground kingdoms, resolute in their stance against the hordes of the Underdark. The eladrin, residents of the Feywild- a glittering parallel world of magic and wonder- guard the places where the veil between the worlds runs thin. The dragonborn empire of the southern continent fell not long after the Fennevan Empire, and its sons and daughters have scattered with the winds. Tieflings, subjugated as slaves by the Fennevan Empire, roam the planet trying to survive in the face of hatred and fear of their uncertain origins and the general mistrust of the day. So stands the planet of Aquea. ======= I know most of it doesn't really deviate from the core but with new players and all I'm trying to keep at least the very beginnings of the campaign somewhat vanilla, since D&D itself is a lot to grasp for people who hadn't heard of RPGs before a few months ago (yes, this really describes one of my players). I do know one kink that I have up my sleeve is that the bit about the Tieflings being a former slave-race is because the Fennevan Empire itself is the "fallen empire" that became the Tieflings, although in a roundabout way; when the dark pacts started twisting the rulers of the Fennevan Empire into Tieflings, there was a silent coup that put the former rulers into subjugation and out of the public eye while trying to retain a facade of normalcy. But the taint brought on to the empire went far further than the twisting of some DNA, and despite (and perhaps also because of) the enslavement of the Tieflings long before the empire fell, it was doomed the moment those nobles pledged their souls for power.