So, if WoTC were to do a new setting contest, like the one that gave rise to Eberron, what would your setting look like? What would you want to see, in general?
This is a great idea. They REALLY should do this again actually, because they need something fresh IMO. FR is a dead horse. Problem is they have this multi-platform business plan to adhear to now, and FR is the only one they can extend into video games, books and TRPGs at this point, so the modle is a crutch. (end rant
)
but... if they were to have a contest, I would want to see another horror setting. Ravenloft has been D&Ds go to horror setting for such a long time. Its a really good one, but it would be fun to see something new, maybe something different in flavor than undead being used for horror as a basis. I would also enjoy seeing something different then the traditional medieval setting used as a core. Eberron did a good job with this. D&D has explored all of the historical tropes as a basis for settings (at least in some mild form), but it doesn't mean that elements from these tropes couldn't be pulled apart and reconfigured and made into something unique.
Gosh, they really do need another contest like this!
I would probably go in the opposite direction of Darksun and have some sort of water world and naval based mechanics. Pirates, exploration, colonization, slavery etc as themes. That or low magic GoT type world or tweak the expected technology level of D&D to the 17th or 18th centure or classical world to dark ages era type technology.
Why get stuck with one world? They should do a whole crystal sphere with spelljamming pirates fighting ORCS....IN....SPACE....!!! while Neogi lurk on the dark side of a moon.
I'd like to see a young world. It seems like the Realms is drowning in history. Tens of thousands of years of stuff. It seems like every time I want to do something cool, I find some piece of lore that contradicts what I'm doing (or did it a thousand years ago).
I'd like to see a world with many different ideologies. Democracies, dictatorships, oligarchies - all with tangible cultural differences between the societies.
Zardnaar wrote:
I'm currently working on a campaign setting where Humans are NOT the dominant/most numerous race. The majority of humans live life as an 'underclass' among the Dwarves. I've always been interested in settings where Humans were not the dominant culture/society.
I'd love to see a more talented writer's take on this situation.
The setting I'm currently writing had wild magic shatter civilization about a thousand years ago. Long story short, basically all records got destroyed and most of the world's population died, then a few hundred years ago people figured out how to survive the wild magic and monsters that got unleashed.
So now there are giant continents covered in ruins for people to explore, while also surviving wild magic striking like lightning and monsters all around, as they attempt to clear these things out and set them up for them to be cleansed and protected for settlers.
I don't have an elevator pitch yet (obviously), so it just sounds like Points of Light in this description, but there's a lot about wild magic, the constructions that protect from it (the Foundation Stones), etc, and there's that whole 'relics of a forgotten past' deal in there too.
Zardnaar wrote:
I would like something where the big cosmic stuff is happening, and it is too late to put it back in the bottle. PC's have to ride the bull (or grab the tiger by the tail) to acheive their goals. Getting power is easy; not being consumed by it is hard.
Count me in for a proper aquatic themed campaign setting. I have always wanted to run a fully aquatic campaign (like Sponge-Bob, but with an edge).
I also would like a Classical Age (Greco-Egyptian-Zoroastrian, etc) type setting (a standard race would be Minotaur),
Zardnaar wrote:
ChrisCarlson wrote:
Kazadvorn wrote:
The concept I have been thinking about :
The gods discovered the world and it was barren.
The gods created powerfull creatures that shaped and teraformed the terain around them to the ideal of the god they represented
( the area around these creatures and items would be 6 miles just ike how legendary dragon lairs affect the area around them.
Where these creatures died or decided to bind their essence to the world this change was permanent leading a area with spoecific climate and features.
So you end up with a world dotted with 6 mile radius biomes, where a artic area can be directly next to a jungle area.
with very strange border areas where 2 biomes that would never meet in real life merge.
edwin_su wrote:
edwin_su wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
Anything that inverses the typical fantasy expectations appeals to me, which is why Dark Sun remains my favorite setting. Halflings as feared hunters and cannibals, elves as tricksters and con men, and sorcerer kings who engaged in the genocide of kobolds and gnomes? Giants wading the Silt Sea and steel more valuable than most lives? Psionics? Sweet and hard to beat, only ruined by trying to change the world to follow the novels.
Eberron went forward, a bit steampunk. Maybe a setting that goes backwards, where intelligent beasts or the Fey are a dominate force and legends like the jabberwock are real. We always see reference to these ancient days in Realms Lore or Dragonlance, etc., but rarely do we see it in play. Whatever is done, traditional races need to be removed or severely altered, otherwise there's little allure to a new setting.
edwin_su wrote:
Kazadvorn wrote:
Touc wrote:
I'd like to see all sorts of things. Maybe dust off the ideas of varied poltics, early days of a Crystal Sphere, and then cross Brithright with Netheril.
Like have characters be a cross between Do it Yourself Empire Building from shows like Tudors/Game of Thrones/Borgias, and the Spell Research enterprising exploring wonder ancients. So the idea is building empires at the same time people are building "magic".
Instead of being back seat servants to Lords and Counsels, the players would be the enterpreneurs, young heads of state, and innovators of the future. I guess it might have some elements to the "Time of Troubles" and the Raistln storyine.
Emphasis could be on border maps, little castle miniatures, and armies etc.
Rules for constructing Siege engines (1e Tinker Gnome Rules?), Monster Hybrids, Magical Items, and Spell research might be available.
Then again, you could just take another crack at Planescape...
ChrisCarlson wrote:
edwin_su wrote:
Biggest thing I'd like to see is a world in which there is no long past golden age to look to, no Rome to the setting's Medieval Europe. None of that "everything really powerful and cool comes from that lost empire, and we don't know how to duplicate it" business.
moonbeast wrote:
moonbeast wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
I've got a setting where the Feywild is an echo of a mythic past, and the Shadowfell is a vision of a post-apocalyptic future. The game takes place across the three worlds, and it's possible to "get lost in the mists" and end up in one of the other worlds. With the world on a defined trajectory towards destruction, there is little care for managing the resources of the world (it'll all go to hell eventually, anyway). People "go to sleep" and dream of the feywild, but even in the glorious, romanticised past there are horrors. And there is still good, there is still vision and desire to rise up over the impossibility of the broken Shadowfell, but it's hard. Basically, we have the two large ideals of the 19th Century at play, Romanticism (including Transcendentalism) and Realism (including Naturalism and Victorianism). The core world setting, naturally, then, is 1800s with all its wars, wild wests, swashbuckling romances, industrial revolutions, lost worlds, detectives, conflicts over slavery, linking of transportation routes, etc. And guns. But they don't work in the Feywild; nothing that didn't exist in the past can come back with you, and if you take your tech to the Shadowfell, it rusts and ages and such. :D
Another setting I'd love to do is a semi-religious one; I saw the movie Noah the other day and would love to recreate this decadent and corrupt but technologically advanced (clearly allegorical for our own society) version of Sumer and Akkad, in the years leading up to the flood. Of course, the movie made it go faster, but one could imagine a game taking place once the rains have started. It wouldn't have to be specifically a Noahide story though; that would make little room for new stories with player characters. But imagine if no one knows what is going to happen, but the Gods have decided to punish the humanoid races for their decadence with a torrential rains for years. Almost Game of Thrones with the winters and summers that last for years or decades, but rain instead. How would that change things? It would be interesting to me, to say the least.
I also like the idea of any setting in general drawing more from Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Persia… perhaps it's a young world where civilization has just grown to form the first city-states. It could strike pretty close to Dark Sun (my love of that setting is showing here), but despite Iraq's current dryness, these areas were not traditionally desert-like, but inundated with life. What happens when there's no longer room to expand away, and war with other humanoids has to begin for the first time? That would be an interesting setting, where war never existed before, but now you have to defend yourselves because the world is too populated for hunter gatherers to move on to the next hill.
Ath-kethin wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
Ath-kethin wrote:
Reinhart wrote:
edwin_su wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
Touc wrote:
Touc wrote:
What would I do?
Well, I'm currently working on a setting for my campaign. The world is really young and unexplored. The ocean is the same thing as the Plane of Water, which would be cool just by itself- but the world is mostly covered in archipelagoes, so there is a LOT of water. And one of the core things is that there is a lot of magic, but no wizards- magic schools aren't formalized enough for that. It combines traditional medieval D&D fantasy with swashbuckling action, court intrigues, jungle exploration, philosophical debates (using swords), and battle royale on the high seas.
Oh, and two other things- one, there's no common tongue; and two, the setting is both gritty, yet... a bit wuxia. So characters have lower stats, but better combat abilities (Hero Points, skill rolls in combat to dodge or throw off your opponent, things like that).
Also, I'll freely admit that a few of the different factions and beliefs are based a little off Planescape.
Anyway, I think it's probably what I'd want to submit if WotC did another Setting-Search.
I'm surprised to see so many people enthusiastic about a water/aquatic campaign, which is exactly what I'm running right now: http://community.wizards.com/forum/homebrew-campaigns/threads/4155006
Pirate of the Emerald Coast is a 3.5 campaign, which takes place in the world of Ashynt. It is a completely unique setting, which features:
-A unique world, Ashynt
-A large pantheon of unique gods
-Piracy!
-Lots of swimming, and all dungeons involve water in some way.
-Exploration by sea
-Deep sea exploration
-Underwater salvaging
-Base building
-Airships
-No elves or orcs
-Unique races and cultures, such as the Kooghans, the Speakers of the Dead, the Stoneoar dwarves, the Gongya An, and more.
-Firearms and cannons
-Custom weapon and equipment lists, including lots of naval weapons
-Oriental weapons
-Ships and ship upgrades
-Custom random encounter lists for jungles, at sea, cities, underwater, coastal areas, and many more.
-Random weather, including super natural weather
-Custom alcohol rules
-Sea monsters!
All this could easily be adapted for any version of DnD.
And what if we wanted campaign settings on already existing worlds there where not DnD worlds.
For example there was talk over a water based campaign, and pirates of darkwater imidately popped into my mind.
I have a too-infrequently running post-apolcalyptic Planescape/Spelljammer-ish campaign which draws on Rod of Seven Parts quite heavily. It's neither Planescape nor Spelljammer exactly but I'm using materials from both, along with a good bit of my own creation. Most of the PCs are from an old campaign I ran many years ago, though one is a vaati, though he's been trapped inside a gate for a long time and the world doesn't work the way he supposed it did. The post-apocalyptic component adds some nice flavor, with lots of ruin and wreckage floating around.
At present, the PCs are setting up to attack a base of Gith Pirates who are mining the corpse of a Star Leviathan to make massive quantities of smoke powder. The PCs need the smoke powder and want to put an end to the Gith Pirates, too.
I'm using heavily houseruled 2E but could be adapted to 5E pretty easily.
edwin_su wrote:
[quote="Imaculata"]
I'm surprised to see so many people enthusiastic about a water/aquatic campaign, which is exactly what I'm running right now: http://community.wizards.com/forum/homebrew-campaigns/threads/4155006
Wow, looks cool! My campaign is a little more... primal, but I like your stuff. Lots of good ideas.
ankiyavon wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
I notice a lot of people have said they want an aquatic setting, but they all seem to want the above-the-waves aspect.
I would prefer the underwater aspect.
I would love to see a setting that is completely submerged, where the main races are merfolk, sahuagin, and other aquatic races. I'd also live to see some of the land-based monsters translated to water. Consider a blink shark, or a displacer squid.
Actually Pirates of Dark Water is probably uniquely suited to expansion into a dnd campaign world. It's doen a lot of world building without being hyper constraining in what new stuff can pop up, It's got a huge overarching threat that the players can face at any time, but don't automatically have the means to do more than fight it off for a little bit no matter how powerful they become as individuals or as a ship's crew. It's got monsters, and magic. The tech level seems about right. Also there's established characters who haven't finished their story. They're on the quest but far from finished and many forces loom around them yet so having the PCs run accross them and actually have a real impact on the quest would be both satisfying, and not subject to the usual issues of party crossing the story line of established characters. Or the world's big enough they might not hear about this Ren kid until after the dark water stops, or they never hear of him because he fails and dark water starts going hog wild or somehting. All we'd really need is some sort of armor alternative, a few backgrounds, a monkeybird race, and a few sub-clases.
Imaculata wrote:
rampant wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
I like pirates, but i'd go more "sky-pirates". A world of floating islands, pirates on skyships, good knights on gryphons, evil knights on wyvern, epic heroes on dragons.
Dragonlance meets Princess Ark meets Pirates of the Caribbean
PS: with guns, of course. Really, we need guns.
Delazar78 wrote:
Imaculata wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Delazar78 wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
And +1 for pirates of the dark water.
It can start off pretty simple. Dark water consumed your home(s), and you are now refugees on this little trade island surviving with just your boat. You are walking along a beach looking for things to sell when you find an amulet. Holding it up it shines a light off into the distance. You notice the dark water retreates from the light, there must be some connection.... now you need a crew who's willing to risk their lives exploring the unknown.
Zardnaar wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
I would love a great archipelago setting. Ever since reading the Earthsea book, its something that appeals to me to no known limits. It blows my mind that Ursala has such a strong dislike to any game version of the book, similar to Rowling. But anyways, that would be fantastic. I also agree that I want to get away from the normal sword and sorcery and tolkien races. Humans as non dominat is quite appealing as well.
A Science Fantasy setting seems long overdue, sort of like the film, Wizards, you got magic, mutants, faeries, laser-guns, etc. Oh, and I just realised, no humans.
Mechatarrasque wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
i think a world where humans were an immigrant race. Dwarven Kingdoms and Clanholds, Elven City states, Hobgoblin feudal lords, dragons lord over Kobold slave cities, as well as some alternative races [Dromite, githyanki]
having the humans arrival being a mega world event, like a portal opened by a powerful wizard to allow refugees escape from some dreadful power [Tarrasque?, Demons?], or a massive armada of refugee ships fleeing from another continent. the conflict of finding/making a place for themselves and fear of what might be chasing/searching for them showing up one day, would be a central theme.
the new world is one of tension between the races as kingdoms gear up for war.
PC as ambassador; the other races wouldn't know how to act toward humans so the PC actions will dictate how they are recieved.
it was an idea i had years ago but never really developed fully.
another part was the role of elves in this world. split along racial/ideological lines
high elves; Athesit, Racist magicusers who used other races in arcane expirements. multiclass F/M/T Guerrillas commonly steal valuable magic from lesser races.
centaurs and other 'mutants' created by elves as weapons led to ideological split.
grey elves. monastic mages seeking to redress the sins and imbalances of the high elves. stoic, aloof, secretive.
wood elves = normal
Githyanki/Githzerai homeworld, one race before schism. major civilization, hadn't decided on whether Vlakith had become queen or a lich or if Gith was still hanging around.
also liked the feral mindflayer from dragonlance, so that was the remenants of the illithids.
Brock_Landers wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
There's a number of books in that list that I should now definitely check out. Thank you good sir!
* My suggestion:
The D&D version of Dr Who and Timelords, with the Chronomancers from 2nAD&D, the time dragons, and the time spheres, like the spheres from Spelljammer, but for different timelines.
* Reverse roles. A Cold War in a fantasy world, where Russia is capitalist, and America is comunist,
There was some planned (But unpublished) stuff for underwater kingdoms in Ebberon as well. I remember the Sahugin basically ruled down there, which makes sense given they're the most competant of the underwater races
My favourite underwater bit is still Vashj'ir from World of Warcraft. Lovely zone. Pity a lot of people didn't like it
Imaculata wrote:
I think an underwater, but with moderate timed drowning rules. Like, 8 hours of water breathing then you need to return to camp. As you gather resources, you can expand out to 24 hours, 1 week, and so on.
mellored wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
Fantasy can be used to create allegories about the real life, like Animal Farm by George Well..
* A world where the divine spellcasters want to control de nodes of magic, but the arcane spellcasters don´t agree.
* The psionic ardents have discovered the way to create their own new gods, the egregore, but the egregores, allied with primal titans and fays againts gods, become the new dictators.
---
* An alien mothership from d20 Future lands in a Spelljammer world.
* War of the nodes. Different parallel timelines have to fight for the nodes, who loses may suffer more attacks by the far realm.
LuisCarlos17f wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
Hmm...
Maybe a water world where some of the water is breathable and some isn't.
That way, you have terrain.
ankiyavon wrote:
LuisCarlos17f wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
how about an asian martial arts setting that is NOT based on the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game, and is NOT based in Forgotten Realms?
i know that's a tall order, to ask for a legitimately independent martial arts setting, but it would be nice for once to see people pull their Western fantasy characters into an Asian setting, rather than sticking Asian themed characters and monsters in a Western setting. I think everyone worshipped L5R like God on the Day of Sliced Bread... except me.
You know why Ebberon won that contest-- I mean, REALLY, why it won?
Because it was a setting that included absolutely everything. Every single element in every single D&D book ever published was stated to exist in that setting. It added its additional steam punk robots and flying ships and watered down werewolves and dopplegangers, sure... but basically everything that was in every single book was stated to absolutely exist precisely as described within that setting.
That meant it was a sales funnel. Every single book on sale was valid for play in the setting, therefore if Dungeon Master said "We're playing Ebberon" the players could buy and use every single other book that WotC had on sale. Opposingly if the DM said "We're playing Dark Sun" or "We're playing Ravenloft" then suddenly virtually no other splat books or monster manuals and certainly not other setting books are particularly applicable. Basically those players aren't going to buy nearly as much as the Ebberon players and therefore it isn't going to increase WotC profits.
But... well... Okay, let's say that it wasn't driven by unmitigated greed and I could create a setting that I thought could be viable and flavorful.
Okay, first thing first-- I am going to take a step away from what WotC has done in several ways. In fact, top of my list is something that would be done the opposite was the original D&D did. There are presumed and stated racial class limitations, BUT they only apply to NPCs! You want to play a Dwarven wizard? Absolutely fine. You just need to find a clever story for it because Dwarfs virtually never use that sort of magic (they might have Earth-Druids and Clerics though).
You see, PCs should not be a dime a dozen the way WotC has implied. They shouldn't all be special snowflakes that wildly differ from the rest of their people, but neither should there be these giant "adventurer guilds" serving this special "adventurer" class of people.
Moreover, so that some content would be interestingly applicable to any setting and to really set it apart, the setting would be far more pirate-themed. A lot of the game would be expected to involve traveling by ships that could be attacked by sea creatures or pirates at any time. The adventurers would travel to mostly uncharted islands on the frontier, encountering unfriendly natives and delving down into caverns from forgottten civilizations of the deep past. Firearms would be a very commonly used weapon and would probably require stats much different than the DMG unbalanced one. Likely they would just work exactly like crossbows. There would probably also be an adjustment to the rules to encourage use of improvised weapons.
I would also want to incorporate a lot more East Asian elements into it as well, perhaps through the available weaponry or the art style, the names of characters and such.
Next, nonhuman races should be flavorful! Just because PCs have access to them does not mean they should be basically human in all manners except alway friendly and nice and never combative. Why does the Monster Manual have special rules for fighting units of Orcs or Goblins or Kobold or Lizardfolk, but no special unit abilities for Elves or Dwarves or Gnomes? Seriously, what's with that? It is so totally unimaginable that PCs could EVER face a group of Dragonborn that they didn't even include them as an enemy option-- instead you are supposed to use the default human thug template and say this one is a different PC race? On the flip side-- the closest they have come to publishing official stat blocks for what should obviously be PC races like Hobgoblins are those stupid things in the DMG that build them all around the one crazy broken ability they were given in the DMG in order to reinforce the idea of how they fight as units.
Just.. no. Fix this.
So, to go down the list on the most common humanoid denizens...
Dwarfs - In my world the typical D&D Mountain Dwarf would be a primarily NPC fare. A closed society that doesn't accept outsiders at all. They keep to themselves save perhaps for some minor trading. If you aren't a Dwarf, they are likely to kill you for entering into their mountain-- or at least arrest you and ransom you back to your people. Gritty and conservative, they look on the modern world with disdain and look on the past with worship. That being said, the PCs would mainly be Hill Dwarfs-- the ones who trade between their cave-dwelling cousins and the human civilizations and outposts. They are quite the opposite of the other dwarfs as they tend to be friendly, laidback and very good at trading and finance. In fact, they own most of the banks and are the heads of most both legal and illegal guilds. They are all for innovation and exploration, often pushing the bounderies themselves. They were the first to begin using gun powder.
Elves - Elves would similarly be distant with humans, looking on them as lesser people whose lives come and go with such speed that they could hardly amount to much. They might have some affection, but it is the kind a man would have for his dog. The Elves are an ancient people and generally the ruling class of the world. The more "elfish" ones would wear masks and they lord over others. They generally live lives of extraordinary luxury, paid for by imposing taxes on the other people in exchange for their "protection" (how real this protection is can be debated). They horde most magical secrets and anyone else using magic is looked on unfavorably. Gnomes are tolerated, but other than that humans are the only ones to dare to try to learn the Sylvian secrets of Arcane magic. Mages caught by the Elves are often executed on the spot, although there are rumors of even more torturous uses elves may put an unsanctioned mage to. All this being said, there are the lowest of even the nobiliest of people. The counter-culture of the Elves, usually comprised of those who fell out of favor of the "proper" soceity are the hippie 'love mother nature' sorts. Usually pacifists and hiding out in the forests and somehow creating peaceful sancturaries for themselves in the deepet of wilds (although often enforced by lethal means against any intruders), these Elves seem to be a bit addled. Their memories are ridiculously short-term given their long life spans, often unable to recall anything about their lives in any real detail beyond a couple decades and usually acting eternally like children, they are really disdained by the proper Elves. They are often the ones drawn to other races to make friends and have adventures-- thus good for use as PCs.
Gnomes - Gnomes would be a slave race from a forgotten civilization. They would talk face, move fast, and always been driven to keep themselves busy no matter what. They would constantly try new things, learning new things and improve upon whatever they come across. They would be responsible for most of the building in civilization as well as crafting most vessels. They would actually have a SHORTER lifespan than humans, all the more reason for the to live at such high speeds. Of all the races, they would have the most cozy relationship with humans, but also be able to freely move among Elves and Dwarves and even more hostile peoples without much worry, contantly being able to make friends with everyone as they would inherently benefit everyone around them so much. Of course, the exception to this are the curmudgeonly hermits that hide out in the wilderness and master deep magics that they use to craft traps to destroy anyone who tries to intrude on their peace. Encountering one is likely to leave one in a state of madness for the rest of their lives.
Goblins - Out in the wild there is no one more at home or dangerous. They can master even the most unruly of beasts, survive just fine in the most meager of surroundings and lay ambushes that can simply totally shut down trade routes. Unfortunately, they get drawn out of the jungles and when they do, they don't do so well. Hiding away in every sewer tunnel, every alleyway, every shadow-- the Goblins are like rats. Often enslaved and occassionally employed as spies or assassins (although they are as unreliable as they are expendible), they are seen a trash by absolutely everyone. In many places they are slaughtered on sight and even in more tolerant towns they are generally chased out of town. They often live off of others trash and once they have great enough numbers, they will become braver and just totally overrun a town. It is difficult to reason with a Goblin-- few live past 2 decades and most only know how to communicate in the local dialect of their own language made up of broken pieces of the languages of those they live around, but even if you could it would do little good-- they breed too quickly and all do their own thing with little regard to others of their kind. The idea of a Goblin establishing itself as a positive force in the world is a notion most would scoff at-- perhaps only certain Gnomes are willing to try.
Hobgoblins - The difference between Goblins and Hobgoblins is so different that they can't even be discussed as the same thing. Although distantly related, Hobgoblins are the decendants of the noble members of the people who ruled the world before the Elves conquered it. They are often prideful warriors attempting to reclaim their lost glory, often as the expense of peace against others. Many, if not most, see the only purpose of their live being in perfecting themselves in battle against worthy opponents and live towards that end, seeing no grief coming from dying in battle. This often means that they are dangerous raiders, roving from outpost to outpost ransacking them and, as often as not, taking slaves and leaving behind only survivors who wish they hadn't survived. They make their fortresses on hidden islands and launch their fleets, often black ships with crimson flags, against any prize worth taking. Of course, over history plenty of fleets have been broken and defeated. While some of the survivors sought out other fleets to join, others turned mercenary. Still generally prefering jobs that involve either fighting or laying down the law, these Hobgoblins are generally loyal only to money. And a surprising number of them end up being agents for the Elves, working as tax collectors or man-at-arms for Elven Knights and Lords. But they are often by far the bravest and most reliable of folk, often when the Hobgoblin fleets show up it is the local Hobgoblins who are most ready and willing to stand up and fight them.
Humans - Humans are not the most common race in the world (that honor goes to Goblins and Kobolds), nor are they the most sociable (that would be Gnomes). However, as we are humans, they would still be the race the game would center around. Generally finding themselves the subjects of Elves, trading with Dwarves, raided by Hobgoblins, overrun by Goblins, and constantly at odds with Orcs, Draconians and Lizardfolk as they expand their territory out to including more islands, humans are an adaptable and fast-breeding species that seems to be at the focal point of encountering most other races far more often than they encounter one another. With strong spirits, their flexible natures tend to make them all too susceptible to divine, abyssal, magical, elemental and other sorts of corruption. They are often the easiest people to raise from the dead and the most likely to be infected by diseases such as lycanthrope. They also find it surprsingly easy to learn and master the abilities of other races that they might have once thought to be exclusively their own domain. Make no mistake-- humans are just as fascinating to the nonhuman races as the nonhuman races are to humans. Because of all these reasons, humans are the most likely to find themselves being drawn into adventures.
Dragonborn and Kobolds - Connected closely with one another, the agents of Dragons who would prefer not to have much at all to do with humans. They are often encountered by explorers who push
into places they should not or encountered by outposts that were built in what turns out to be territory claimed by a dragon (or that a dragon is seeking to claim). Whereever they go, one can be sure that their draconic masters are not far behind. They generally do not speak common and have little reason to try as they see no reason to use the recent speech of these mammalian peoples rather than the proper ancient speech of their lords. Encounters with them are almost certain to be lethal.
Lizardfolk - The remnants of another lost civilization that once ruled over the world. They would be far different from the DMG version, instead being very much like dinosaurs with feathers and everything. They would have dinosaur mounts, dinosaur pets and fight using only the most primitive of weapons. Although not evil or malicious, they have no means to communicate with outsiders as even their body language is totally alien and they see humans and their ilk as little more than game for slaughter. If a hapless group of explorers lands on their island, they are likely to be killed, skinned and eaten-- and if they are lucky, it will be in that order.
Orcs - Orcs would take place of unfriendly natives (when the Draconic races or Lizardfolk do not). Almost certainly relatives of either humans or giants, they have hardy constitutions and have made their homes on various islands from the frigid north to the most swealtering jungles. Although not as primitive as the Lizardfolk and they can be communicated with far easier than the Dragonborn, they are nonetheless wild and savage. Insular and living in tribes where leadership is split between the eldest and the strongest and strong division of labor along gender lines, Orcs are ready to fight anything they come across and eat anything they can. They have simple lives and thus simple minds. Sometimes Orcs have civilization imposed on them-- either after being captured as slaves or simply having their tribe broken and an outpost build in their ancestors graves. Within civilization they do what they can to get by, but often just end up living up to the stereotype of being filthy, lazy, drunken good-for-nothings. They have only limited rights in most areas and are spit upon by the general populace, kept to their own little filthy shanty towns on the edge of proper outposts. They are said to have strong souls that can endure anything and to have a connection to mother nature surpassed only by the Goblins.
Aasimars/Tieflings/Genasai - Exceedingly rare, but could probably still exist. Both would probably take on much more interesting appearances than in standard though. And Tieflings would probably be far more commonly driven to be harmful to others by nature.
Drow - Almost certainly don't exist. But perhaps some (maybe most!) Elves are purple/blue/pink skinned.
Halflings - Don't exist unless I could come up with something interesting for them!
Mixed Breeds - Sure, Half-Elves and Half-Orcs and Half-Dwarfs and Half-Hobgoblins almost certainly exist. But Half-Elf statblock will probably not be used (likely the new Gnome racial stats would be a combination of Halfling and Half-Elf) and Half-Orc statblock would probably just become the block for Orcs. A feat called "Mixed Blood" could be created that a human character could take and would allow them to choose from a few options that would suggest they were a mixed blood individual.
Basically, the races that are meant to be PC races would have two very distinct sides to them with one of the sides almost certain to be aggressive opposition to PC adventurers. Both good and evil elements rather being totally defined by an alignment system. Others would be far more alien, making the driver of conflict not simply "evil" but irreversible and irreconciliable misunderstandings and goals and desires and competition for resources-- at least on a racial level. Within that, there is plenty of room for traditional corruption and evil to manifest itself with devil-worshippers and necromancer death-cults and the like.
I think from these descriptions you can also begin to see why certain classes would be pretty much normal for some of these races while other classes could be said to be exceedingly rare among them.
Certain classes might end up not fitting this setting at all though. In fact, there might need to be a lot about the core rules that would need to be changed in order to implement it.
Hebitsuikaza wrote:
I was going to say very much what Hebitsuikaza said: a new core setting (as opposed to a homebrew campaign) needs to be "core plus" rather than "core minus". It needs to have everything the base game has, plus an extra twist.
In this sense, the strategy for pitching a new game world needs to be going for a currently unexplored genre of fantasy and D&D-ifying it.
Ideas I could see working include:
Science fantasy/sword-and-planet
Game-of-thrones-esque grimdark
Classic sword and sorcery (although this overlaps a bit with dark sun)
Non-ravenloft horror (might be room for a Lovecraftian seeing, for example)
The trick would be to set things up so that elves, dragons and mind flayers all fit together in it.
Hebitsuikaza wrote:
Imaculata wrote:
The_White_Sorcerer wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
Eberron won because it looked at a DnD world in a genuinely new way, and was perfectly designed for telling new kinds of really compelling stories.
As with nearly every post I've ever seen you make, you are completely off base.
You could make the argument that Haplo, Marit, Alfred, Samar, Samar's son whose name I can't remember, Xar (the Lord of the Nexus), and Samar's wife whose name I can't remember are all exceptional badasses.
But you'd still have to explain the flashbacks where Haplo and other teenage Patryns do badass things in the Labyrinth. Haplo gets out of the Labyrinth as a teenager by killing a few dozen monsters, doing some hiding, killing more monsters, and then refusing to die at negative HP. (Although he did require a rescue by Xar, who is definitely at absolute minimum 20th level.) It also wouldn't explain the Sartan on Aberrach who all survived (with a few losses here and there) versus the mensch races who all went extinct.
I'm not going to call you wrong if it works for you, but it doesn't work for me.
(On Jedi in Saga: Fair enough! I must have confused you with someone else, I'm half-remembering a conversation I had a few years ago about a game I played very little of in 2009 or thereabouts. I'm kind of shocked I remember anything about it at all.)
ankiyavon wrote:
I think D&D settings do generally aim for inclusivity for example Planescape, Spelljammer and to a lesser extent Ravenloft (it was more of a dead end, but characters could come through the mist from other settings) all act as bridges between 'world' based settings.
Personally I'd be interested in an alternate planar setting.
I'm not exactly sure what that would be though.
Neonflux wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Marandahir wrote: