Golden Age/First Age

[DanotheSlender]

I have always wondered if anyone has created a world that was in the golden or first age of a world...where the great artifacts were being created, the first great empires were being esablished, when the gods of creation walked the world alongside mortals and guided them before retreating to their respective realms.


There would be few to possibly no older large scale civilizations, very few to no magic items, humans were freshly created and being taught by elves and dwarves and gods. Imagine being the first wizard, or sorcerer, hearing a wandering god speak to the aetheria of the world as he or she creates something and remembering just a few hints of words that when uttered aloud made something happen, and then using raw nerve and native intelligence to create the first spells. Imagine the epic battles of the first men as they begin to carve out the empires that one day become the ancient ruins that your characters delve into in search of treasures.

This has been on my mind on and off for years. It is probably to big an idea to actually come to fruition but I wondered if anyone else has considered or even done something like this.

Thanks for listening and hopefully I'll get a couple responses.

Game On!!

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Forgotten Realms had a subsetting called Arcane Age, from Netheril before it fell. I think there was something similar for Cormanthor (although it was during the war that killed it).

I think it'd be hard to run, as there's huge movers and shakers, unless the PCs are starting at epic level.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've done that. My first campaigns detailed a series of wars and quests leading to the end of my campaign world. Since I still wanted to run games in my world, I regressed the timeline an arbitrarily large amount of time, reconceived the details, and proceeded to layer in references to future events, lending it a certain mythic quality. The characters find the first iteration of a given monster, meet a figure of legend, or do something that will resonate for ages to come. I do refer to it as the Golden Age.

Good times.

 

[D'karr]

I have always wondered if anyone has created a world that was in the golden or first age of a world...where the great artifacts were being created, the first great empires were being esablished, when the gods of creation walked the world alongside mortals and guided them before retreating to their respective realms.

Dawnforge - Crucible of Legend was one of the semi-finalists in the campaign setting search sponsored by WotC. It is a game world that is supposed to be based in the "age of myth" if you will. When you encounter a medusa, you are supposed to be encountering Medusa - the first, and possibly only of its kind. Great deeds are not recorded in history, your great deeds are what legends will be written about.

Each of the PC races gets more iconic, more defined as they advance in level. Almost becoming the ideal, the paragon of that race. The heroes are not a few out of thousands of heroes, they are the only few.

The idea behind the game was very interesting. I played in a regular game for some time, and I rather enjoyed it.

 

[Sekhmet]

The campaign setting I created is just that.

Many years after the downfall of civilization via global necromantic plague, society is starting to rebuild itself. The Gods have come back out of hiding to help push the undead back into the core of the world, and share the secrets of creation with select, neutral individuals.
One sect of the major religion in the world is devoted to finding artifacts of the previous age and destroying them (or locking the most powerful away), because they feel affluence and hubris was the cause of the plague. This severely limits magical items available, and very effectively penalizes the creation of magical items.

The Dwarves were cast from their ancestral homes by undead, and are trying to rebuild in mountains that don't connect to the deeper parts of the world. The Elves and Drow were all but eliminated when the Drow came up to escape the undead. A small group of elite Drow are working together with a pocket of Dwarven Defenders (the last of their people), Duergar (the only remaining few, all males), and some of the other minor denizens of the deep to hold the only known entrance to the Underdark-esque core of the world. --Note, the Dwarves only agreed to fight with the Duergar because they're the last of their kind, and couldn't bring themselves to commit a genocide.

 

[steeldragons]

My own game world had such a time. I've never played in it, but it is part of the world's history...or multiple parts.

Magic and magic items is not really rare in Orea, but while potions ,scrolls and wands, weapons/armor of +1 or +2 or even staffs of striking or healing, for example, are not unusual "wondrous items" and/or powerful staves, weapons, etc...were crafted either in the first age of Men [by a now destroyed empire], prior to that in the [3] ages of elves or prior to THAT by titans or dragons.

Most by the Titans and Dragons that came and ruled the world even before the elves and shared the world with them for a time.

Now there are "Giants" decscended from the Titans and if any actual titans still exist none know of it. The current day's dragons are much as you would expect them in a D&D world, but the originals, created in the dawning of the world, even before the Elder Gods, called the Children of Zho (primordial sky god no longer in the world), were nearly deities themselves in power and magic.

Unknown to almost everyone on the planet today, a few still remain on Orea, sequestered away (by choice) in the fabled Tower of Wyr and siphon their power, through their chosen representative (the Dragonmage) focused mainly through the Staff of Wyr which he/she is bequeathed. The Dragonmage is tasked with the mystical/magical defense of Orea from the powers of evil, to act in the world for the Dragons of Wyr's interests and purposes and given power to wield "dragon magic" which no other wizard in Orea is capable of wielding/learning. There is only ever 1 "true" Dragonmage in a generation, though the family rules a secluded realm (significantly more diverse and enchanted than elsewhere in the world) whether there is an "active/ruling" Dragonmage or not.

Anyway, lil' tangent there...

I never really looked into the gods walking around while there were mortal races around. But the former pantheon did incite revolt and banishment from their divine children (both sides aided by different titans and dragons) for their interference and general cruel treatment (using them and their pain/suffering/anguish as a source entertainment -such as inciting and abetting a continental-wide centuries-long war) to their creations a.k.a. the mortal races.

Following the Godswar and destruction of the two major empires [warring with each other of course] of the day, Orea has in the centuries since picked itself up and dusted itself off and the current nations and kingdoms enjoy a world of relative stability. Of the two warring two nations from the first age of men, one of them were extremely powerful sorcerers and alchemists, and many of the world's, literally, "man-made" items of power come from them...where the rest of items known in legend are elvin or crafted by titans (or dragons), many in the times before men or just at the beginning of their history.