General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Indeed, and this can apply to most anything. I've look at fantasy art from book covers, or even the back cover book blurb, and come up with ideas that weren't similar to what was found within. Heck, I only had a vague idea what Dark Sun was about, but as I was considering buying the initial campaign set, I was thinking what Defilers and Templars were. If I'd made it on my own, there's no telling how different it would have been from the official version.
I wonder what ideas people would get if they were given 12 bullet points of an existing setting...
I like this idea, a lot.
As a way to get people away from the weight of Canon and to the core ideas of a setting, as well as to inspire DM's, what if we describe our favorite settings in a minimalist fashion, something that somebody who has no prior experience with the setting but knows D&D can read those bullet points and take away key ideas and elements enough to run a game for players that don't know the setting but know D&D, that at least bears a decent resemblance to the canonical setting in theme and flavor.
Maybe a simple summation of basic concepts, key elements of flavor, religious concepts, really big name NPCs (Elminster, Raistlin, Mordenkainen, The Lady of Pain, ect.), odd elements that make a setting really unique (Warforged and Artificers for Eberron, Defilers and Preservers for Dark Sun. . .).
So, does anybody want to try to summarize their favorite setting into 12 single-paragraph sections?
* No Psionics
* No orcs, orogs are the main enemy
* Dwarves physically made of rock, halfings can see into shadow world, elves have no clerics and are largely antagonistic to humans
* goblins are somewhat civilized
* Humans are divided by culture
* Magician class
* really powerful monsters called awnsheghlien
* gods were once human
* Player Characters are regents, rulers of a country or area
* Bloodlines
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Eberron
- Pulp fantasy: two-fisted adventurers in magical setting reminiscent of the 1920s.
- Low, wide magic: minor magic is common, powerful magic is rare.
- Old races are new again: elves, dwarves, halflings, goblins, orcs and gnomes all have unique flavor.
- New races tied to the setting: construct soldiers, psionic ascetics, morphing changelings and savage beast-men.
- Balance of Terror: a continent-wide war just ended because of a nation-wiping cataclysm, but peace is but a dream.
- World of exploration: mysterious continents await brave adventurers.
- Mercantile Princes: twelve houses hold control of major economic areas thanks to magical birthmarks.
- Ancient Evil stirs: demons bound in the underground, alien entities sealed in a distant plane, insidious nightmares ruling a far-off empire, dragons manipulating a mighty prophecy to control the future.
Dragonlance:
- Heroic Fantasy: good-hearted adventurers in world where magic is rare and power has a price.
- Balance in All Things: Good, Neutrality and Evil must coexist.
- Magic is Controlled: wizards gather in secret societies, clerics in strict religions.
- Dragons are no mere beasts: each dragon is smart and has its own agenda.
- There's a place for funny: gnomes are crazy engineers, kender are benign kleptomaniacs, gully dwarves are decadent dummies.
- There's a place for love: sincere love is the mightiest weapon, obsessive passion is the downfall of the powerful.
Ravenloft:
- Gothic Fantasy: tragic heroes in a world of supernatural horror and insidious corruption.
- Evil is Rewarded... And Punished: evil deeds bring more power and corruption, until the evildoer becomes trapped in a prison of his own making.
- The World is Beautiful By Day and Terrifying By Night: By day there's hope, beauty and love. Night brings despair, horror and rage.
1. The Great Wheel. Planescape is the "Great Wheel" Cosmology of the 1e and 2e Core books and 1e and 3e Manual of the Planes fleshed out into an entire setting instead of just being a place for high-level side quests.
2. Powers. Also known as Gods/Goddesses, they are all out here, pretty much all the fantasy and mythological deities are present, and they are pretty close. A divine realm could be right down the road. Their followers, servants, and offspring are everywhere.
3. Sigil. The City of Doors, at the center of the multiverse, accessible only by portal, where pretty much everyone from everywhere can meet in relative neutrality, ruled over by the nigh-omnipotent Lady of Pain and administered by Factions. No Gods Allowed.
4. Factions. Large societies devoted to a philosophy or ideal: Law, Knowledge, Death, Entropy, Self-Reliance, Intuition, Reincarnation, Chaos, Sensation, Atheism, Nihilism, Anarchy, Independence, ect. they are the major political bodies of the Planes, and they provide most of the civil services in Sigil.
5. Belief is Power. On the Outer Planes, belief creates reality. Get enough people believing something strongly enough and it can become true, at least locally.
6. Portals. You can go anywhere, if you have the right key. Portals connect the various planes with each other and Sigil.
7. The Lady of Pain. Nigh-omnipotent, reclusive, enigmatic, and wrathful woman clad in robes with her head covered in a crown of blades. She rules Sigil, and her greatest laws are that Powers can't enter and she not be worshiped as a deity herself. Those that defy her are banished to The Mazes or just plain flayed.
8. Law & Chaos. The Ethical axis of alignment is just as important as good vs. evil, maybe even moreso. The Blood War pits fiends against each other in titanic conflicts, chaotic factions face off against lawful ones regularly in political as well as more overt clashes.
9. Unlikely allies, unlikely adversaries. It's possible for PC's to have allies that are fiends, and antagonists that are celestials. Seeing a Devil and an Archon drinking together in a tavern in Sigil isn't unheard of, and having a Harmonium Paladin as a persistent pain-in-the-neck to the PCs is quite plausible.
10. Philosophy and Exploration. The setting is a lot more than dungeon crawls and linear adventures. Exploration of the planes, exploration of yourself, and exploration of what is reality is a big deal.
11. Patterns and Cycles. The multiverse has odd cycles and patterns, that are oddly predictable (and in some ways oddly unpredictable). Things happen in threes, things happen in cycles, but then there is the odd flicker of chaos in order, or surreal order in chaos.
12. Crossovers and Kitchen Sink. Since the Planes are shared by most D&D worlds, it's possible for pretty much anything from any D&D book to show up eventually, even if it's rare. Very few things just plain don't fit at all.
Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting (coming in August 2009)
1. Gothic horror in a feudal Japan-like world.
2. Undead Imperial Court & Shogunate rule all absolutely.
3. Undead lords become so to maintain power and status quo.
4. 15 Martial noble houses & 15 samurai variant classes
5. Ninja with ki/psionic powers.
6. Ressurrection and Raise Dead do not work.
7. Reincarnation is hard-wired into society.
8. Past lives of reincarnated characters can be remembered, thus are multi-class characters.
9. Escaping endless reincarnation cycle is possible though rare and heretical.
10. Taxes are 40% of annual income
11. Becoming undead is too easy.
12. Undead and Demon-Spirits are never what they seem.
Reading these gives me tons of ideas of stuff to incorporate into my games.
We allowed to do homebrew as well, or just published settings?
Exalted
* There are many types of Exalted: Solars, Lunars, Terrestrials, Siderials, Abyssals and all dwarf mortals with their power
* Exalted can look like normal people or they can wear armor and artifacts of Orichalicum, Soulsteel, or Jade that mortals can't even lift
* The Realm is at the center of creation, ruled by the Terrestrials/Dragon-Blooded with powers over the elements
* The Empress, the ruler of the Realm for centuries, who alone knows how to use the mighty Realm Defenses has vanished
* Solars, Lunars, and Abyssals are labelled Anathema by the Realm, who sends the Wyld Hunt to take them down
* The world is surrounded on all sides the formless chaos of the Wyld, where anything and everything is possible and the Fey Courts hold power
* In the distant First Age, the Solars ruled Creation, the Lunars served as their companions, the Terrestrials their servants, the Siderials their advisors
* The Yozis, the Primordials that were imprisoned by the Gods, cast a curse on the Exalted that caused the First Age to end in terrible war, the Solar's hunted to extinction and their souls locked away
* The primordials that died in the war with the gods fell "beneath" Creation and their dying dreams creating the Underworld, the shadowy world the exists in paralled and "below" Creation
* Shadowlands exist in areas of terrible slaughter or gruesome dark deeds; there the Underworld overlaps with Creation and anyone who enters the Shadowland will walk into Creation if they leave by day and will walk into the Underworld if they leave at night
* The Deathlords arose in service to the dead gods of the underworld and corrupted the stolen souls of Solar Exalted to create the Abyssals, terrible and awesome mockeries of the Solars
* The players can be any of these things, can reshape the face of Creation... or destroy it
__________________ Robots, assassins, hobgoblins, the Ashen Tower, polite beholders, land pirates, gnome genocide, the Corpse Ramp, artifacts, exploding zombie dragons, flying islands, dying heroes, blood feuds, vanished races, the Black City: Rise of Felskein.
Last edited by Iron Sky; 6th July 2009 at 01:55 AM..
My homebrew setting. I can only come up with 10 points, as I like to keep things as simple as possible and as focused on the characters the players design. For example, point 1, elves and dragonborn only, is based on the players only choosing to create elves and dragonborn pcs. Had it been dwarves and orcs, then we'd have a game about dwarves and orcs.
1. Elves and Dragonborn, only.
2. 50 years after the mother of all wars between the two, with the elves emerging victorious.
3. A younger generation that's looking to the future, favoring cooperation between the races.
4. An older generation mired in anger over the past, the victorious elves looking to punish the dragonborn, and the rebellious dragonborn unwilling to accept the new world order.
5. An economic boom as both races, sometimes together and sometimes apart, rebuild and reestablish the civilization that was destroyed in the war.
6. But new threats have arisen in the power vacuum left behind as the two largest forces for civilization tore each other apart.
7. From the tropics, the lizardfolk are emerging as the Crawling God wakes from a long slumber, intent on reestablishing a dark order from hundreds of years in the past.
8. An order of wizards, grown powerful with dark magics mastered during the desparation of the war, schemes amongst the highest reaches of society.
9. New economic concerns profit from the construction and the exploration of the world, with little regard for the ethics or long term consequences of their excesses.
10. And what are the kobolds up to, really?
Bizarre races are common, with no dominant species in numbers. They range from Humans to Non-Humanoids beings.
The closest being to "gods" are Weavers (inspired by Perdido Street Station's Weavers) they are musicians. With their cross-dimensional limbs and claws they pluck and tone the vibrations of Strings altering their sound and reality itself.
Both science and pseudoscience are common. From Strings, Parallel Realities, Probability/Quantum Mechanics and pseudoscience such as Aether, Hollow Earth and Psionics.
Technology/Steampunk and Magi-Tech are rampant: Difference engines, firearms, steam-contraptions, constructs (AI and punch card personalities of real people), punch cards, atomic weapons, trains, etc. To Magi-Tech like non-eculidean difference engines, probability maker machines, Torque bombs (also inspired by Perdido Street Station), the Tower.
Two different Parallel Realities have begun to meet, especially in one city. Various sections of the city if you allow to "see it" lead into the other reality and ghost images of the other reality are common.
Social, race and political tension is high. The largest being the tension between realities, one which is prospering the other in fear of being wiped out from Torque storms ravaging their reality (Torque storm are Strings whose vibrations have gone berserk)
Rogue scientist, criminals, and activist are common roles for PCs who usually are involved in dealing with the city-state, other rogue parties. Many plots relate to the use of science and/or magic and trying to manipulate or control realities.
Mechanically and most Fluff wise anything goes. It is likely to have some place in the world.
Hmm... Could only think of 8 big ones.
__________________ Secret Member of... *blink, blink* Damn you amnesia!
You don't need 12 bullet points to set the stage for a setting - it can be done with even less. Here's my background bit for a 3.5 E6 game I ran based on the "Encyclopedia of Mu".
_________________________________________________
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Ozymandias, Percy Shelley
The world of Mord is dying. Countless eons ago, it was a place of great beauty, a green jewel shining among the stars, but the slow passage of time has taken its toll. Forests and fields have been swallowed by the ever-expanding red desert, and the great ocean has been reduced to to a few meager brineflats. The works of the Old Ones -- mighty pyramids capable of sailing the void, metal stamped in the likeness of mind, hieroglyphs written in the strange language of Maths -- lie forgotten beneath the red sands, waiting for storms or arcane knowledge to bring them to light.
In dark Lemuria, the Witch-King sits atop his throne, gathering practitioners of dark and loathsome arts while the noble houses squabble over the scraps of power at his feet. His sorcerous followers make pacts with forces from forgotten epochs, and winged shapes wearing the faces of men darken the skies of Lemuria. It is whispered in the streets of his capital that the Witch-King has acquired a demon in the shape of a sword, a creature capable of consuming history itself...
To the east, the fanatical legions of Hy-Brasil are joined daily by new believers, eager to prove their worth to their Damsel Messiah so that they may be one of the 144,000 who join her when she ascends and leaves the wastes of Mord forever.
In the west, citizens of the decadent city-state of Atlantis sit idly in their crystal domes, unconcerned with the growing armies of Lemuria and Hy-Brasil. Under the domes, the few surviving masters of enigmatic tradition of psience use their strange powers to grow powerful crystal weapons, strange alien beasts, and -- according to some -- even human life itself...
In times such as these, heroes are sorely needed -- will you restore Mord, or abandon it to its fate?
Last edited by Kunimatyu; 6th July 2009 at 03:26 AM..
The progenitors of the gods, the Titans are defeated
The war to defeat the Titans has only recently ended.
The mortal races are picking up the pieces left over from the Titanswar
The world is very, very dangerous.
The people of the world are divided into those that follow the Gods and those who want to bring back the Titans.
Civilization is limited to tiny pockets along the coastlines and the interior of the continent is largely wastelands and home to very, very bad things.
The Gods take an active role in day to day life.
If it's got more than the regular number of limbs, don't eat it.
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I double-dog-dare you to make your game sound super cool without comparing it to other editions. - paraphrased from Umbran.
Ravenloft:
- Gothic Fantasy: tragic heroes in a world of supernatural horror and insidious corruption.
- Evil is Rewarded... And Punished: evil deeds bring more power and corruption, until the evildoer becomes trapped in a prison of his own making.
- The World is Beautiful By Day and Terrifying By Night: By day there's hope, beauty and love. Night brings despair, horror and rage.
Supplementing this:
- Good is Punished . . . And Rewarded: Heroes face a lot of handicaps, but can win if they're steadfast, clever, and willing to make sacrifices so others don't have to. Doing the moral thing is more important than doing the valiant thing. (William W. Connors, DRAGON #315)
- Heroes Are Alone: Ravenloft tends to isolate heroes from allies, familiar settings, ordinary folk, and sometimes even each other.
- Evil Has The Upper Hand: The villains in Ravenloft drive the situation, and the heroes are typically cuaght in it and have to fit their way out.
- The Villain Has A Story: Not only do the villains drive the situation, but they have histories, motives and reasons for both being what they are and doing what they do. That's why so many Ravenloft villains are humans or once-human beings, instead of monsters--it makes them easier to relate to.
- Bit By Bit: Ravenloft plots aren't revealed all at once, and the villains don't open with their strongest attack. Secrets are pieced together, horrors are unveiled gradually, and PCs risk suffering a death of a thousand cuts.
(A lot of this comes from the Black Box and from the design summary in Thirty Years of Adventure.)
As I see it the purpose of this thread should be for people who have no idea what anyone is talking about when they say "Dragonlance." So if you're putting a paragraph for each bullet point that's too much, and homebrew sort of clogs up the thread.
I would like to see somebody do "Dark Sun," and I'm not sure I get Dragonlance yet.
As I see it the purpose of this thread should be for people who have no idea what anyone is talking about when they say "Dragonlance." So if you're putting a paragraph for each bullet point that's too much, and homebrew sort of clogs up the thread.
Frankly, I don't see a problem with paragraphs, I specified that in the Original Post as an upper limit for these bullet points. For describing a setting to someone who knows D&D but knows nothing that specific setting, 12 reasonably short paragraphs is still pretty dang concise. If you can convey it in 12 words (!), 12 phrases, or 12 sentences so much the better, but 12 paragraphs isn't bad at all.
I also don't see anything wrong with homebrew, there are only a few dozen official D&D settings, and that's combing through to obscure 2nd edition sub-settings to get that far, and when you add in professionally published 3rd party settings that's still a relatively small number. No point in putting an arbitrary limit on this, if somebody has a fully fleshed out homebrew they want to share. Heck, somebody just might run with that brief synopsis, flesh it out on their own and run a campaign in it.
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