Pathfinder 1E Campaign World Idea: Worth using or scrap it?

BlackSeed_Vash · Sep 13, 2017

I am considering putting together a home-brewed world for my group to play in at some point in the future. We are in the middle of a campaign and I know at least 1 other is considering running something.

The premise is thus: Settlements and special locations (and their immediate surrounds) are only semi fixed points in the world. Traveling from one settlement/special location to another requires following a set of rules; such as you can only get to the city of Westmarch by marching towards the west for 1d6 days. So if you leave Westmarch's surrounding area, you can't backtrack the way you came, but must instead march west. Obviously some rules are well known, others needs various amounts of research and some you get there by accident. All require at least 1 days worth of travel.

The Crimson Binome · Sep 13, 2017

That sounds a lot like the rules governing Outland in the Planescape setting - the part of the other planes of reality which existed between the named planes. The whole thing was basically just like playing in the normal material plane, but the rules of Outland would get more chaotic as you got "closer" to the chaotic planes, and so on.

I never played in that part of the setting, but the fact that it was published at some point indicates that there's some merit to the idea. Just because I wouldn't want to play there, that's not an indication that anyone else wouldn't want to.

BlackSeed_Vash · Sep 14, 2017

I was unaware of that. I guess I'll have to take a look at that.

The Crimson Binome · Sep 14, 2017

I wouldn't worry too much about it. I'm sure both you and the original designer are just pulling from the same tropes, and I'm sure there are other examples of games which work that way.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure Nexus: The Infinite City works similarly, except that's all just one city. It's an old enough trope that it's spawned its own variations.

Razjah · Sep 18, 2017

I like the idea. I've mucked around with a setting idea of floating motes of land and flying ships and creatures as transport. But the world is in flux. Luckily, most of it is predictable civilized parts) so a good guide/rutter will get you around. But the more dangerous and less civilized sections are way less predictable.

This idea has a lot of the same stuff. Difficult travel that changes. I really like the accidentally finding places. Perhaps you can have spirits or powers or minor gods at some places that can teach the PCs how to return. For example, they're running from a dangerous encounter and are all bloody and broken- no chance of surviving a fight. They stumble into a peaceful glade and a babbling brook's clean water also heals a little. Can they persuade the denizen of the locale to teach them how to find their way back?

You can even make some locales inaccessible except from another locale. To reach the cliffs of insanity, you need to be leaving the port of stars during a full moon. Once you're at the cliffs, you can climb them travel east along the cliff and then leap into the small ring of stones jutting from the surf (aim well). Diving through the ring into the water leads to you jumping out of a underwater tidal pool into the Cavern of the Fish-God (a huge underground sea with a koi fish roughly the size of a blue whale that is worshiped by many different tribes and peoples in this great underground expanse). Of course, any time along this journey would could simply travel due west for a few days and walk back to Westmarch.

One thing I would play up, but you can do this however you want, is to make travel hard. Maybe the land itself is hostile, or there are lots of roving bandits and monsters and the like. But travel freaking sucks. BUT, if you have some of the wilderness classes with you- things are suddenly a lot easier to manage. It could just be using the survival skill or removing the ability to use it untrained. If you do this- I would definitely let the players know during character creation.

Samloyal23 · Dec 10, 2017

I never developed it into anything, but I had an idea once for a campaign on a shattered planet with pieces that were magically endowed with enough gravity and atmosphere to make them inhabitable. Each piece was like an island with its own magical rules and distinct local cultures and races. The pieces floated around the sun through a cloud of breathable gas so you could sail from piece to piece without too much effort in this sea of air. The pieces range from just big enough for one castle to a hundred miles across. I vaguely remember writing up description of three or four of them. But they each had their own orbit around the sun or around bigger pieces, so distances between them were not constant, they would be slowly shifting all the time...