Anyone with some inspiration for a new campaign?

[Dispater]

I was sitting here the other day, when a thought struck me...

My old campaign's getting boring.

So...

I'm gonna make a new one.

Just a quick brainstorm here, how I imagine it to be so far.

Not high fantasy, nor low fantasy

Hmm, I dont want all too powerful magical items, spells and wizards spread around. But I want a fair share of it.

Races: Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Goblins & Halflings. Half-Orcs and Orcs (the orcs are here going to be named beastmen or canibals)

My idea is kind of that the friendly races arel living toghether more or less in republics, oligarchies or democracies. Independent city-states or smaller villages governed by the citizens themselves, or the most influental of them. I want that each races governs its own part of the society, like elves are historians, sages and couriers, dwarves the smithsm craftsmen and law-enforcers, gnomes the bankers and merchants, humans everything from workers to warriors, halflings being explorers and scouts, and goblins the garbage-men (if you get the idea). Orcs of, coruse (or beastmen), will play no role in this given they are hostile to this civilisation. They roam the wilderness and prey on all other races.

... and the world itself
Is a lot of wilderness and ruins from ancient kingdoms. I want no set borders for it, but for it to expand and and expand endlessly. The theory is that the mighty creator of this world is quite mad, and keeps on expanding his creation to the infinite. He is also quick to anger, and every thousand years some great disaster has struck the lands.

The wilderness is largely unknown and undiscovered, mystical and dangerous. Spirits, good or evil, watch over every forrest, mountain or river.
Gods? Wizardry?
The creator is the only god-like enity, and those who dabble with him go mad. No, clerics are a class who draws their power from inner strength rather than what is common, a god.

Wizards are uncommon, and should be drawing their strength from a pact with the spirits.

Well, that's it for now. I'll have to think more and come back to this later.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Redo your current world. Have something major happen that changes the appearance and adds spice. This could be a god war or astroid hitting the planet. Your current game then takes place X number of year after. Every one is just digging out.

It could force the races to stand together or die.

It gives you your prior history to build on, your players will know something of the past.

It gives you a lot of ruins.

 

[Aloïsius]

Redoing the world ? What about a great amnesia ?
100 years ago, people awaken without any memory of their former lives. They didn't recall their names, had forgotten how read a book...
And/Or all adult have suddenly disapeared.
That's why there is so much wilderness and mysterious ruins, why the world is mostly unknown.

 

[Echoes]

Given what you were saying about the clerics drawing on inner strength and the wizards drawing on a pact with the spirits, I think that a very interesting idea would be to have some sort of agent of the god begin to wipe all clerics and wizards off of the face of the earth. Or, another scenario that quickly jumps to mind is this:

About two years or less from the next major disaster, and suddenly the wizards find out about it (it seems to make sense that the few wizards in the world would be working together, for the most part). Or even the clerics find out about it. Whatever...some segment of the population, but not the whole. Now, this can go two ways:

The epic way: The heroes, of course, must try to defy the god and save the world from utter destruction. Interesting, but fairly standard, with the twist that they're going against the world's creator.

The realistic way: The heroes find out that the world is basically coming to an end, but have several goals to accomplish before then, perhaps figuring out a way to stop it the NEXT time that it happens, for posterity. This I see as far more dark, very White Wolf-esque stuff.

Well, I know I didn't get much into the other ideas of the setting, but I did really like the notion of the crazy creator god. That alone has many a possibliity for good campaigns.

Laters,
-John-

 

[Dispater]

A litle something I wrote the other day:

The old world was long ago created by one mighty being, that the elves know as Lahon, ”Creator” or ”Father”. From his fingertips spread woods, oceans, rivers and mighty mountains. Indeed, he has since the Beginning never ceased in his creation. The world he creates knows no borders, and the lands stretch on into wilderness and beyond our knowledge. Lahon created the spirits to master every mountain, lake and wood, and he created the mighty dragons, but also brought into existence the many humandoids that now roam across the realm. Elves, dwarves and men, were all his creation and lived peacefully under his hand for many ages. But Lahon, as we have learned, is as terrible and wrahtful as he is gentle and wise. Without warning, disaster struck our world. The mountains spewed burning stone and ash, filling the sky with an impregnable darkness. Terrible sprits made of flesh and fire, the Khalar, began to prey on the mortals. The mortals fled in to terror, and as years passed, Lahon’s wrath disspated and the Khalar vanished.

Centuries of silence emerged. Yet Lahon’s all-seeing eye was still wathcing. The elves still remebered and feared their terrible father. It has been long since men had forgotten him. But one day they would painfully learn that we live, and die, on his mercy.

For over thousand years ago, there was an age we knew as the Reign of Kings. During this age, the men, the elves and dwarves grew strong and proud, they built many kingdoms and pushed the wilderness away. The beastmen, who once had hunted man, became the hunted. The kings were many, and powerful, and raised marverlous wonders with magic, great cities, wonderful palaces and gardens; the world has never seen its like. The names of the kings and kingdoms are today unknown to us, but the ruins who litter the land still bear witness of a glorious past.

Yet, as all things, this age came to an abrupt end. The elder of elves have told that many years of flood and storms came to our lands. The kings rule started to fall apart, and many turned to evil ways for the power to rule, demanding terrible tributes from the people. The last centuries the kingdoms were held in terror by the dying and corrupoted kings.

The people desired freedom from their fallen rulers and unrest and riots began rise everywhere. Within decades of civil war, the kings were overthrown and their evil doings forgotten. Yet, the beastmen came from north and tore down our walls and cities. Our people fled south in despair.

The races left one another to their own and sought to save their own hides. Tribes of men led by many chieftains, thousands of elves led by their elder Myrthiel as well as the dwarves, the gnomes and halflings crossed the southern river of Oalas and into unknown lands. It was here, wise men and leaders of all races gathered and built the tower of Illunar, where the furuture of the people was decided. A council of all races; among the greatest the mighty chieftain Aran of the humans, Myrthiel the Philosopher of the elves, Clansleader Arakun of the Dwarves, Mistress Kere of the Gnomes and Luathin the Halfling decided to let rulership pass onto the people, as the elven philosopher Myrthial had suggested, and to form an alliance of defence, peace and cooperation for the years to come between all races. The Pact of Illunor, engraved in stone at the tower and signed by the leaders of all races, still stands at the tower of Illunor today and obliges us all.

As the free people moved south they built roads and cities. We call this new age the Reign of the People, for we have chosen not to put our faith in a strong king, but to share our lives in mutual independence and duty. Elves, man, dwarf, as well as gnome, halfling and goblin, now live in peace and co-existence with one and another as we had before.

Yet many things that were, are now lost. The kings took with them much knowledge into their graves. We now live sparsely scattered across the land, with litle defences and few roads to connect our towns. Caravans and messengers rarely come far without having to cross danger; from north beastmen and wildmen come into our lands, and in the forrests and mountains dark spirits have risen once again. That is why we put our fatih in a chosen few, for the Pact of Illunor forbids us to raise armies. These explorers, adventurers, warriors and rangers bravely go into the darkness to keep our lands safe.


Some footnotes:
Illunor is supposed to look like a fantasy Utopia from the outside, where the races live in liberty, prosperity and peace. Yet I plan to make this Utopia look like it could be falling apart from the inside, making room for intrigue and more political adventures.

Concerning magic, an idea is that wizards and clerics draws of Lahon's strength when fueling their spells, thus also starting to awake the wrath and the attention of the spirits of nature.

The Khalar are spirits of fire and earth (more like demons), to whom the kings paid tribute to in the end of their reign. The idea is that the kings were wizards of formidable power, who used magic to build, war, and rule. This, of course, eventually drew the attention of Lahon, and invoked the disasters and awakened the Khalar spirits. These infernal spirits corrupted the kings, posing as powerful enities promissing them more power in return for tribute. When the kings were overthrown, however, all their enchantements were broken and magic disappeared from the lands. The disasters thereby came to an end.

Another idea is that the world really is HUGE. The creator creates new lands and creatures every day, so there is really no knowing what is beyond the known world.

 

[Brudewollen]

Having had a break of about 4 years since I last ran my campaign world and then the release of d20, I decided to start a new game (in part because for change I now had time in my life).

I had a few options, as I saw it:

1. I had my old world, which I could continue in the same time frame but with new rules...

2. I could start a completely new campaign with a new world, which I very nearly did. I had, for a long time, been working on a new campaign world, at least in brief, merely as a means of "getting things out of my system," things that really didn't belong in the world I had first made, but which I found myself thinking about and wanting to create...nobody has ever played in this world, it's just something I write about or add to every now and then.

3. My third choice, the one I finally settled on, was to use my old world, but set the campaign in a new time period and in a far flung part of the world. This way I could make some radical changes not only to rules but to setting and culture, as well. It gave me a lot of freedom, but still allowed me to draw upon the very richly developed history I had already laid out for my world (much more well developed then the world mentioned in #2).

To be sure, your new world sounds like a much more radical depature then mine was between the two games. I guess my suggestion is simply find a way to keep the best of the old, without keeping the stale stuff, and fuse it where it seems most fitting with the new.

 

[Dispater]

Many good points here.

In reply to all who suggest redoing the old world; since I've told my players I am going to need a break from the old campaign, I figured I'm starting more or less from scratch with this one. I want to keep it more simple though, since I just don't have the time on my hands to create a whole horde of new creatures, lands and cities.

Basically, what I wanted to change from my old campaign was the more or less isolated races and make a more mixed culture so to say. Also, I now do regret that I modelled the old campaign very cloesly to a standard high-fantasy setting with a surprising lack of originality. What I want to do with this campaign is take the standard d&d Tolkien-clone and go the other way around; I want to change and do things different. Then I came on the idea of a real messy culutre of goblins and elves and a flust of other humanoids, republics instead of kingddoms, their one deity who is in fact quite mad, the infinite and crazy world idea, and a lot of other things still in process.

How d&d handles magic is one thing I am a bit disappointed about. I want a more low fantasy campaign and emphazise the danger of wielding magic powers. I admit I want a more rugged, frontier type of campaign where the wilderness inspires awe and terror.

Well, I'll be back with more.

-Dispater

 

[Raduin_Nimblegrund]

Strange idea I had a while back... never put it to use, so I don't know about it's viability.

It would be an essentially ravenloftian setting, but the entire campaign would take place inside a haunted house. The house is constantly shifting, so that on any single day, the house would look nothing like before. A door that opened into a lavish garden one day may be a broom closet the next or worse; a temple dedicated to the evil demon hidden in the heart of the house.

Essentially, the house is not just one house but many, all on a paralell dimension to each other, all inescapable. Every day at midnight the house shifts; all doors close by themselves. then, in an instant, the rooms change. if pc's become separated at midnight, (which the evil forces at work will often try to do,) the lesser half of the party gets to roll up new characters, because they are permanently lost.

There are of course, endless catacombs beneath the house, and strangely the only thing that changes about the catacombs is the entrance. However, the catacombs are much too dangerous for low level characters to pass, so they have to bide their time until they can even attempt to enter.

I don't know how viable this campaign idea would be... I think I just may have spent too many quarters playing the house of the dead at the arcade. =]

 

[Maldur]

Nice, the idea of a everchanging house as the complete gameworld. yet I would let the changes only occur on major occasions, like large magics or massive battle etc.
In that way you can foreshadow "housequakes" and let the characters scramble for cover/fight for safepoints (like rooms/sections strong enough not to collapse).

Also the mystical lands of the roof, or the mysterious window-view . I think Ill use this idea in my planescape campaign.

 

[Maldur]

ok, back to the original thread.

I like the idea of an endless world, I guess this gonna be a travelling/exploring campaign. But with an endless world wont there be a lot of wilderness compared to the civilized lands? Is there some kind of defensive system or are orc constantly threadning to overwelm the civilized lands?