Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Astromath Jan 12, 2010 21:51:14	I'm creating a campaign that revolves around the world being ~500-1000 years after the deity-primordial war is over. The PCs will be the very first leveled heroes.  Here's the restrictions I have imposed: * No drow. Lolth is still Araunshnee and has yet to have her infamous arguement with Corellon. * No githzarai. The Gith race is still enslaved by the Mind Flayers and has yet to evolve into the two different races. (I might have it as one of the PCs goals is to free the Gith.) * No Vecna. He has yet to rise to lichdom. (I'm thinking he will be the PCs main archenemy before he lichifies himself [which will happen when the PCs reach epic tier]. After the PCs defeat him, Orcus will raise him to be is first exarch. Of course Vecna will lose his eye & hand in his battle with Orcus to become a full fledged deity.) * No Raven Queen or other "raised from mortal" deities. They have yet to be born. *12 Custom deities except the "creator race" deities, such as Bahamut, Corellon, Moradin, etc. Each custom deity is a greater deity with three different domains. Only two deities have overlap of two domains. Two deities have the Poison domain. One covers invented poison, the other covers natural poison. Two deities have the Knowledge domain. One covers knowledge found through effort. The other covers revealed knowledge not found through effort. * No magic items (or rituals) except for what the PCs create and their arch enemy create. Treasure packets will be adjusted for this loss. * No warforged. They have yet to be created. (One of the PCs took Artificer and one of his main goals is to be the inventor of the warforged.) * No magical monstrous hybrids such as the owlbear, etc. They have yet to be created. * No undead that can be created by a ritual, because the ritual does not yet exist.  (At least for the first 5 of the PCs levels. Then lower level undead will start showing up.) * No revenants unless it is a PC. * All divine classes will be a direct investiture from their deity or a representative thereof. I have as yet to name this world. Comments? Questions? By responding to any will help me build my world.
#2 garner_adam Jan 12, 2010 22:30:04	I'm seeing a lot of restrictions. (I might note magic teleportation circles also probably do not yet exist) What about things that would really only be possible during this time period? Perhaps the gods and goddesses are very responsive. They spend lots of time with their followers cultivating them. The players could even travel to see their deity.
#3 Novacat Jan 13, 2010 5:08:27	I'm seeing a lot of restrictions. Making new content requires hours of creating, writing, and balancing. Restricting old content is practically effortless. That's why DMs with long lists of content modifications almost always compose their list of 90+% restrictions, and very few additional options. In response to the OP's list as a whole, the world you play in looks exactly how you want it to look, regardless how distantly or recently certain events may have happened. There's no objective reason to ban anything other than "that's how you envision the world at that point". For example, in my campaign setting, less than 1000 years after the creation of the Firstborn Mortals (Vanyar, Dwarves, Humans, and Orcs), the Vanyar had already split into their two factions, the Elves and the Drow, and the Drow had already been driven undergrounds and killed. Humans had already rebelled against the gods and waged war among themselves, becoming forever banished from the first human city, Belen, splitting into the Four Kingdoms that spread across the world. That's less than 1000 years after the mortal races were first created. But that's my setting, not yours. You do whatever you want with yours.
#4 Astromath Jan 13, 2010 10:50:30	I'm seeing a lot of restrictions. (I might note magic teleportation circles also probably do not yet exist) What about things that would really only be possible during this time period? Perhaps the gods and goddesses are very responsive. They spend lots of time with their followers cultivating them. The players could even travel to see their deity. I placed restrictions that I thought would be logical for a world/cosmos that is still in its infancy. The deities are still licking their wounds from the deity-primordial war they just won. So the deities will not be as active in this world as they would like. However, one (or more) of them will invest divine power to the PCs that take a divinity class. It may be direct by an avatar appearing before them, or a representative like an angel or a marut. For example, a paladin of Bahamut may have one of his avatars appear before the PC and tells him/her that they have been chosen to do great things in his name. Bahamut's appearance would have some missing scales, some scars that are still healing and maybe a missing horn that is in the process of regenerating from his fight with his sister, Tiamat. spoiler The beginning adventure deals with coming across a 5-year-old child and taking him back to his parents. What they don't know is that the child is a polymorphed pseudodragon companion of an adult adamantine dragon. The adamantine dragon is a representative of the deities as a whole. This meeting will be a skill challenge. This is to determine if the dragon will be their patron or not.
#5 crugen-lon Jan 13, 2010 13:22:10	No Raven Queen, Does this means Nerull is still the God of the dead ?   In this case undead could be a lot more present in your campaign since Nerull used to raise them and if i remember well Vecna could only have powers over undead because the Raven queen never claimed them after killing Nerull and therfore Vecna cannot gain acces to godhood without the RQ. Unless, you houserule Nerull never existed or you make Vecna only the god of secrets as long as Nerull lives
#6 sfurtwangler Jan 13, 2010 13:53:23	It does seem like a lot if restrictions - most of which are unlikely to matter, or even be noticed, unless a player had wanted to exercise the option which has been removed. As an example, why would any normal level 1 character even be aware that a 'gith' is a thing that exists, much less that they are the slaves of monsters that are far far too high level for them to be encountering, nor that that particular race is neither playable (why would it be, there is no entry for it anywhere) nor has it split into two subraces. I'm not sure how this would come up, in game, and if it comes up out of game, it has only served to disappoint the PC who wanted to be one (otherwise, if nobody did, they won't care, and will immediately disregard the fact). About half of those restrictions seem to be things that - if you did not mention it to your players ahead of time - they would not find out about for quite some time. Some of them seems to be restrictions on generally "evil" options, that aren't even usually options to the assumed "heroic" PCs. For example, there is only one undead-creation ritual in the game (before 5th level), ands its kind of crappy, and is in a DM sourcebook, and generally frowned upon in "heroic" games. Vecna and Lolth are also not generally options for PC deities, unless the DM intends to run an evil campaign - which it sounds like you are not. In general, I guess what I am saying is that most of your ideas make sense for the world you want to create, and you won't have to worry about stepping on too many PC toes, since only a handful of those changes would possibly effect them. In fact, you may have to go out of your way to highlight these changes, so that it seems at all strange or shocking when they are changed back to the way they are by default. For example, at 5th level, when the PCs fight some undead - none of them are going to bat an eye at that, unless you remind them that "moving corpses" are something none of their characters have ever seen or heard of before. same goes for the first time they encounter a magical hybrid monster. Seeing an owlbear in the woods is only going to be impressive to them if you've gone out of your way to accustom them to the idea that things like that don't exist in your game. The only one I suspect might be missed by your players is the removal of the RQ - and only because WotC has given her the most support of any of the gods. So long as her domains are covered by someone, though, you could probably refluff the things that pertain specifically to her (such as the revenants, which you intend to allow) and make them fit your vision.
#7 Astromath Jan 13, 2010 18:18:07	I do have a "death" deity for this campaign.  Here's the entire list and descriptions.  Yes, the names are hokey, but I'm not good at inventing names. Deities   Shilvara Unaligned Greater God Gender: female Sphere: Science & Magic Dominion: Priests: Adjective: Shilvarite Domain: Arcana, Knowledge, Poison
#8 glak2 Jan 15, 2010 8:46:20	500-1000?  Why so long.  Just think of how long that is.  We're in 2010 now.  500 years ago the world was nothing like it is today.  The new world was just being discovered and science didn't even really exist.  Shorten your timeline to 100 years.  Mary Poppins is set in 1910.  It is recent enough that we can relate to them (banking, England existing, telephones) but they also were very different (chimney sweeps, hired help, no tv).  100 years might also be too long, you could do 20 even.
#9 Astromath Jan 15, 2010 18:04:42	Hmmm.  I'll think about it.
#10 deliverance Jan 20, 2010 11:10:37	You should also keep in mind that the technological and social developments over the last centruy is exceptional and has no counterpoint elsewhere in history. For example there wasn't a huge difference between society 500 BC and around year 0.
#11 phlip_ Jan 20, 2010 23:39:17	I'm creating a campaign that revolves around the world being ~500-1000 years after the deity-primordial war is over. Awesome. Also remember to stick with bronze-age technology. And note that many FRPG milleux hypothesize an "age of lizards". You could have a civilized stock of Kobolds, instead of the modern degenerates, and you can pick any pet dino you like for a mount. And don't forget the couatl, lizard-men, mind-flayers, aboleths (all this old), snake-men, drakes, and ancestors of the dragons. One more tip: 4e canon _never_ says "evolved". You are, instead, close to the Creation, so everything might not be designed very intelligently! C-:
#12 strand0 Jan 21, 2010 4:05:39	You should also keep in mind that the technological and social developments over the last centruy is exceptional and has no counterpoint elsewhere in history. For example there wasn't a huge difference between society 500 BC and around year 0. Well yes... but if you campaign was set in Egypt at that time none of the changes are technological. If it was 3000 BC to 2500 BC Egypt nothing would be changing. Just new pyramids going up. They were in the copper age the whole time. No religions change. No political up heavals.