D&D 4E Home Brew worlds: did you expand out from 4e's Nentir Vale map?

[Redthistle]

To the other DMs out there who may have made Home Brew maps set in the world of the Nentir Vale, but set outside of the Vale itself, I address this question:

What can you tell us about how you developed your version of that expanded world?

WoTC described the world as one of darkness (somewhat akin to Europe in the medieval era) following the fall of the Nentir Empire, with isolated communities separated by vast areas of wilderness reclaimed by dangerous creatures. They left it open to DMs everywhere to develop the world outside of the Nentir Vale as they desired. I am one of those DMs.

Then ... THEN ... WoTC came out with a board game set in that world, and I’m sure I’m not alone when my first reaction upon seeing the board game map was a proprietary exclamation: “But, that’s NOT what that world looks like!”

Ahem.

I collected myself and remembered that it didn’t really matter, and after all, it’s WoTC’s to do what they wish with it.

The game world I made was originally conceived of following the release of the Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition and I continue to use it now in 5e. My friend Nick F. and I both wanted to run games, and decided to play in each other’s campaigns. He chose to use the published adventures set in the Nentir Vale.


My decision was to write my own adventures and set it in the same unnamed game world, but with game play beginning in an area far downstream where the Nentir River ran into the sea. Using the 4e DMG, I used the map of the Nentir Vale to set the dimensions of the region I’ve named after Nonzh Bay, a large body of water that marks the south-southwestern boundary of a regional map centered on the large town of Anna’s Port.

I also used the Nentir Vale-based regional template size (approximately 175 miles by 100 miles) as spacers to separate the Nentir Vale and Nonzh Bay locations. Six intervening regions, going simply north-to-south, made the distance between the towns of Fallcrest and Anna’s Port a crow’s-flight of roughly 700 miles. Most of the lands between them were (and are still) left blank for future development, although I used one of them for a short series of adventures.

I'll be posting more information regarding my version of the world, but mostly, I'm interested in what other DMs did with their worlds.

 

[Redthistle]

Here's some more information touching on the connection between my game world and some of the official published game world settings:

Lesser Gods

Let’s call this world Crossroads, as that was the function it performed for a few thousand years.

The ambitions of a number of lesser gods led them to explore the different planes of existence and eventually led to the discovery that, just as ley lines and nodes spread in vast nets over individual worlds, there exists in the material plane a cosmic equivalent on a far grander scale. Enormous skeins pulse with dark magical energies across the voids between planets, stars and galaxies.

These gods found ways to twist those forces to their own purposes.

They learned that they could reach out through these cosmic lines to reach other worlds at instantaneous speed, bypassing the space in-between. Firm routes needed to be carefully crafted, requiring the strength to withstand the constrained energy flows yet flexible enough to bend with the undulations of the cosmic web, and anchored by powerful gateways at each end. Where cosmic lines converged at nodes, it was also necessary to construct arcane connectors to splice route segments together by binding elementals to the structures, as only such creatures could survive the hostile conditions of interstellar space.

Overconfident in their ability to manage it, a few gods even used entities they had captured from the Far Realm of the multiverse to build their pathways. Ultimately, that would prove their downfall, for even a god can be driven mad.

As with any powerful and useful invention, the makers of these magics guarded their knowledge jealously to best control any-and-all benefits that could be squeezed from it. They were, after all, scheming against the greater gods. They were able to keep the secret of their conspiracy much longer than they could the magic of the cosmic pathways.

Crossroad’s uncommon advantage was its location at a magical nexus between several other worlds, including Abeir, Athas, Eberron, and Toril. It was habitable and nothing special otherwise, but that didn't stop it from becoming a pawn in the ambitions and conflicts that arose and seethed elsewhere.

While the great portals were open, travelers from many planes and planets would pass through them on their way to far destinations. The world lacked any sentient races of its own and was slowly settled by races from other worlds. Enclaves became territories that became kingdoms. Animal and plant species, sometimes inimical to each other, were also introduced, and in many parts of Crossroads out-competed the native wildlife.

With a wider mix of sentient races than most other worlds, it was inevitable that conflicts would break out, and they did. Ancient racial enmities can abide for generations. Even far removed from their home worlds, hatred found fuel to re-ignite old wars on Crossroads. There were winners, there were losers, borders moved, regional powers rose and fell. In time, an empire coalesced on a major portion of one continent. The strength of the Nentir Empire made its neighbors more circumspect in their actions and led to a more civilized era, the Pax Nentira.

Timeline Relative to Other World Settings

Good things, it is said, do not last forever. The major gods were aware of more than the lesser gods knew. Rivalries among the conspiratorial deities grew, and spilled over onto various worlds. On Toril, it led to the death and replacement of gods; its lighter effect on Eberron, as nations there went to war, manifested among the mortal races in the same way that children in a household where the parents are stressed and combative will sometimes act out of their apprehensions. At this time in its history, Athas was still a green and pleasant planet.

Crossroads was one nub of these conflicts. The battles on the ground were a mere reflection of the machinations of the gods above. At its worst, whip-lashing forces sundered the cosmic pathways, unleashing the Spellplague on Toril, Crossroads, and other worlds, hashing and swapping out whole regions of Abeir and Toril, while Athas was torn out of the inter-worldly connections entirely, the seeds of the rise one day of the sorcerer-kings taking root there with a rejection of the madness of the gods even as a taint of the Far Realm insinuated itself into the practice of the arcane arts. The lone gateway on Eberron had just been rediscovered outside the city of Making in Cyre on 19 Ollarune, 994 YK; the rupturing of the pathways on the following day shattered the portal, but allowed a slow leakage of corruption, an unanalyzable mixing of arcane, cosmic, and Far Realm essences, slowly blossoming into the Mourning. [Note: the Mourning is not at all the same thing as the Spellplague due to environmental differences in Eberron’s location in the Cosmos.]

Never on their own since the gods had first opened portals to it thousands of years earlier, the resident races of Crossroads lost all access to their ancestral home-worlds. The most knowledgable and powerful of its spell casters had been conscripted for the wars. Wherever they were in the world, the powers they could channel suddenly became torrents that overwhelmed them, consuming their bodies and the area around them.

The Spellplague then covered the sites of portals and every place a spellcaster perished for more than a century. Most of the ruins of the cities and institutions of magical research that had arisen around the gates became too dangerous to explore. The disappearance of the Spellplague happened just as quickly and inexplicably as it had appeared.

During that period, only innate spell-like racial abilities and cantrips functioned for several years, then actual spells began to work again as new clerics established relationships with their gods, and warlocks entered into their risky pacts. Sorcerers were next to appear, as children born after the rupturing began to manifest their powers. The last to make their presence known were wizards, as they painstakingly had to reinvent their particular magical wheel.

One hundred and fourteen years after the fall of the empire, research is increasing as access to the ruins of places such as the College of Oghma in Durshin has begun.

 

[SkidAce]

I had a Red Hand of Doom and Nentir Vale map combo going...as there was a lot of similarities. Seem to have lost the map where I had moved them around and scaled them. Other folks on the internet had the same idea/thoughts...so if you google "Red Hand of Doom" and "Nentir Vale" you may find their map attempts.

 

[Redthistle]

I had a Red Hand of Doom and Nentir Vale map combo going...as there was a lot of similarities. Seem to have lost the map where I had moved them around and scaled them. Other folks on the internet had the same idea/thoughts...so if you google "Red Hand of Doom" and "Nentir Vale" you may find their map attempts.

Thank you, SkidAce. I've already seen some of those maps; Mike Schley has a website that includes his adaptation of the RHoD map:

http://mikeschley.zenfolio.com/p680849502/h410203A8#h410203a8

 

[Wik]

I used some of hte ideas of the Nentir Vale, but put them in my own 4e campaign. Basically, I took some of the core ideas, and put them on a map that looked similar to the Pacific Northwest (hey, I like my own backyard!)

So, Kael Turath got put in. So did the Feywild's Mithrendain. And Spelgard was dropped in there, and many of the little towns and settings got dumped throughout. But I never used the actual Nentir Vale setting. Too many inconsistencies that hurt my head.

The setting got re-jiggered a bit when I brought it back for my 5e campaign, but it's still pretty good.

 

[Redthistle]

I used some of hte ideas of the Nentir Vale, but put them in my own 4e campaign. Basically, I took some of the core ideas, and put them on a map that looked similar to the Pacific Northwest (hey, I like my own backyard!)

So, Kael Turath got put in. So did the Feywild's Mithrendain. And Spelgard was dropped in there, and many of the little towns and settings got dumped throughout. But I never used the actual Nentir Vale setting. Too many inconsistencies that hurt my head.

The setting got re-jiggered a bit when I brought it back for my 5e campaign, but it's still pretty good.

Thank you, Wik! This is exactly the kind of thing I was curious about. I feel that all of us who like shaping our own game worlds are, at least in that sense, kindred spirits, using bits of published material as seasoning to the churning stew of our imaginations.

As to liking "your own backyard", I did the same, and so did Gary Gygax, for that matter. The Nyr Dyv in the world of Greyhawk is clearly inspired by Lake Superior. Likewise, the Nentir River put me in mind of the Mississippi River, leading me to set the river's full length to match that.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Nope, but I did for the Elsir Vale: http://elsirvale.wikidot.com/.

That is one of our mini-settings.

 

[Wik]

Thank you, Wik! This is exactly the kind of thing I was curious about. I feel that all of us who like shaping our own game worlds are, at least in that sense, kindred spirits, using bits of published material as seasoning to the churning stew of our imaginations.

As to liking "your own backyard", I did the same, and so did Gary Gygax, for that matter. The Nyr Dyv in the world of Greyhawk is clearly inspired by Lake Superior. Likewise, the Nentir River put me in mind of the Mississippi River, leading me to set the river's full length to match that.

Thanks. I just thought it'd be cool to have Tiefling Romans (I love ancient Rome, and have a whole shelf dedicated to the works of Polybius, Ovid, Cicero, and modern Roman authours like Adrian Goldworthy and -the best guy ever - Anthony Everitt. And the idea of Romans in the Pacific Northwest just seemed too cool for me.

But I was lazy at the time, and took a BUNCH of 4e material and dropped it into this very loose framework. I believe I used many of the ideas, such as:

Bael Turath (which I renamed Kael Turath because a k is better, doncha know)
Spelgard
Hammerfast? Hammerfall?
Mithrendain from a Dragon magazine article on the feywild
parts of the Shadowfell
some minotaur stuff that I can't remember the source from
the town that was the adventuring site from the Slaying Stone
Some Dragonborn ideas that got congregated with some King Arthur book I was reading at the time to make weird draconic knights
And was there a 4e island called "Tasker's Island", or did I make that up and forget?

As for the Pacific Northwest being awesome - it is. You have a climate that's fair enough that PCs can reasonably adventure year-round, you have a coastal climate so you can explore by ship (which is fun!), and there are so many fjords and islands that you can locate self-contained adventuring sites without having to stretch believability.