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Homebrewers: How old is your world?
- Thread starter Andrew D. Gable
- Start date
Knightfall
World of Kulan DM
Copied from my website, Walk the Road
Normally I'd write something new to describe how old my campaign settings are but I can't do that right now because of my injured left arm. Thus, this excerpt from my RPG website will have to do (slightly modified). - KF72
=====
Getting into the Game
It all started several years ago when I was living in Forestburg, Alberta, a small rural town in Canada. A friend of mine at the time, Chris L., invited me over to watch how this game called D&D was played. Now, I'd heard about this game but had never heard anything good about it. It was supposed to be evil and twisted... boy was I in for a surprise! The first reference I remember seeing was the AD&D 1st Edition Oriential Adventures accessory. That was all it took, I was hooked before I even played one game. And I knew that my interest was in being the Dungeon Master (the title sounded so cool) and my mind started to wander all the time, which didn't help my studies. But I didn't care, I finally had found something to drive my imagination and, man, did I go nuts. Sure, it took time to convince my parents that this game was not some demonic text that would lead me down some dark road of evil. They're intelligent people though and once I told them that D&D made me interested in history and mythology they understood.
My Campaign Settings
Eventually, Chris and his younger brother Ian left town and I became the Dungeon Master for a small group of my friends. I had already drawn a series of maps for a campaign that I called The Islands of Malecade. The world wasn't fleshed out very well but we didn't care, we were having too much fun. The campaign was full of conflict and energy and sometimes the conflict outside of the game world overshadowed the game. But hey, we were young, excitable guys burning off some steam by slaying orcs. I think the campaign would have gone better if I had been willing to kill the characters when they really got in a jam. I also tried running a character of my own while DMing. That didn't work very well...
The Islands of Malecade was hit with my friends for as long as I was able to keep them interested, which wasn't very long. As they got older, more popular past times called to them and they stopped wanting to play. I couldn't blame them, I was not a good person to hang around with if you wanted to be part of the in-crowd. But I'd like to think that the boys I knew live on in their characters, that have now become prominent characters in that campaign world. So to Duke, Mike W., and Mike C. (wherever you are)... keep living the good life boys! And a small thanks to Jim, for helping make me feel less like an outcast and letting me play in his campaign for a short time.
After I left Forestburg, Malecade went through a transformation that still scares me to this day. I took a campaign of about a dozen maps and transformed it into a super world I entitled Warped World. It had no consistancy, no theme, and no end in sight. Like the Empire of Rome, it fell into decadence and disarray. So I scrapped/shelfed it for several years while I concentrated on collecting as much D&D material as I could. I fell prey to the TSR mass marketing campaign of the early 1990s and soon had bought almost one of everything that I could get my hands on (and NO I am not exaggerating). From Birthright to Spelljammer, I bought 'em all! And the scary part is that I loved every minute of it! This actually saved my butt later in life as I had to sell roleplaying products to pay my rent and have food.
Now, not only did I buy up all the campaigns TSR produced, I also began creating new worlds of my own such as AlterEarth, Sons of Odin, MagicLight, and my greatest obsession to date... World of Kulan. Now, I spend a lot more time designing worlds than I do playing the game and over the years I've come to see myself more as a World Builder than a Dungeon Master (of course, it doesn't help when one of the main catalysts for the campaign that I was running moves to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory). As a result, I have detailed more campaign material for World of Kulan than I ever did for Warped World. I became so happy with my progress that I've even decided to revise Malecade into a mesh of what it was suppose to be with what it became (less maps, more imagination) and the world has returned as my Time of Ages Steampunk/Spelljammer campaign!
Then I came up with Arcanum of the Stars. Originally designed to be an add-on reference to Spelljammer for D&D the basis for the campaign setting has gone through an overhaul recently (Nov 2001). This was due to two things. First, I didn't really want Arcanum of the Stars to be part of the core Spelljammer product line. The second thing is/was the impending release of Dragonstar, a d20 Fantasy/Science Fiction campaign setting from Fantasy Fight Games. This setting is exactly what I've been "trying to design" / "been looking for" for the last three or four years. Dragonstar has even lead to the demise of what was to be the hard science fantasy d20 System campaign setting I was calling Twilight Galaxy. Now, elements from Arcanum of the Stars, MagicLight, and Twilight Galaxy will be now be incorporated into Dragonstar, creating an alternate Dragonstar-Spelljammer universe under the banner name of Arcanum of the Stars.
The Workshop
A lot of what's listed on my site are works in progress. However, these campaign ideas are not the only roleplaying projects I have rolling around in my head. My other 'vapor' campaigns and ideas are not detailed, in my mind, enough for me to call them real campaigns.
First Defense is the one idea that actually exists as more than mindvapor. It is my goal to develop stats for the Red Eagle supporting cast members: Darkstar, Ironhawk and Firestorm. The goal has always been to create these characters in Alternity format but as the years go by I find myself less interested in Alternity and more determined to use the d20 System. This could lead to First Defense being reworked using d20 Modern.
Another idea I have is based on a magical continent that was originally part of my Warped World campaign setting called Euroias. This continent included a chaotic land called Hyberiae. I just did a map using the Fractal Terrains demo, which I then imported into Campaign Mapper. It turned out better than I thought and has been posted in the Workshop section of my site, as the World of Hyberiae. There are also a few NPCs from that campaign posted there but the details are still sketchy at best.
=====
Well that's it.
Later,
KF72
p.s. Oh yes, there is also the following new d20 Modern spy campaign idea, which I'm calling Project: Pheonix.
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38418
Also, 2003 might see me try to resurrect Sons of Odin and/or AlterEarth using Green Ronin's Testament. First Defense, listed above, will definitely become my d20 Modern/Future campaign.
Ok, no more typing... owww!
Normally I'd write something new to describe how old my campaign settings are but I can't do that right now because of my injured left arm. Thus, this excerpt from my RPG website will have to do (slightly modified). - KF72
=====
Getting into the Game
It all started several years ago when I was living in Forestburg, Alberta, a small rural town in Canada. A friend of mine at the time, Chris L., invited me over to watch how this game called D&D was played. Now, I'd heard about this game but had never heard anything good about it. It was supposed to be evil and twisted... boy was I in for a surprise! The first reference I remember seeing was the AD&D 1st Edition Oriential Adventures accessory. That was all it took, I was hooked before I even played one game. And I knew that my interest was in being the Dungeon Master (the title sounded so cool) and my mind started to wander all the time, which didn't help my studies. But I didn't care, I finally had found something to drive my imagination and, man, did I go nuts. Sure, it took time to convince my parents that this game was not some demonic text that would lead me down some dark road of evil. They're intelligent people though and once I told them that D&D made me interested in history and mythology they understood.
My Campaign Settings
Eventually, Chris and his younger brother Ian left town and I became the Dungeon Master for a small group of my friends. I had already drawn a series of maps for a campaign that I called The Islands of Malecade. The world wasn't fleshed out very well but we didn't care, we were having too much fun. The campaign was full of conflict and energy and sometimes the conflict outside of the game world overshadowed the game. But hey, we were young, excitable guys burning off some steam by slaying orcs. I think the campaign would have gone better if I had been willing to kill the characters when they really got in a jam. I also tried running a character of my own while DMing. That didn't work very well...
The Islands of Malecade was hit with my friends for as long as I was able to keep them interested, which wasn't very long. As they got older, more popular past times called to them and they stopped wanting to play. I couldn't blame them, I was not a good person to hang around with if you wanted to be part of the in-crowd. But I'd like to think that the boys I knew live on in their characters, that have now become prominent characters in that campaign world. So to Duke, Mike W., and Mike C. (wherever you are)... keep living the good life boys! And a small thanks to Jim, for helping make me feel less like an outcast and letting me play in his campaign for a short time.
After I left Forestburg, Malecade went through a transformation that still scares me to this day. I took a campaign of about a dozen maps and transformed it into a super world I entitled Warped World. It had no consistancy, no theme, and no end in sight. Like the Empire of Rome, it fell into decadence and disarray. So I scrapped/shelfed it for several years while I concentrated on collecting as much D&D material as I could. I fell prey to the TSR mass marketing campaign of the early 1990s and soon had bought almost one of everything that I could get my hands on (and NO I am not exaggerating). From Birthright to Spelljammer, I bought 'em all! And the scary part is that I loved every minute of it! This actually saved my butt later in life as I had to sell roleplaying products to pay my rent and have food.
Now, not only did I buy up all the campaigns TSR produced, I also began creating new worlds of my own such as AlterEarth, Sons of Odin, MagicLight, and my greatest obsession to date... World of Kulan. Now, I spend a lot more time designing worlds than I do playing the game and over the years I've come to see myself more as a World Builder than a Dungeon Master (of course, it doesn't help when one of the main catalysts for the campaign that I was running moves to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory). As a result, I have detailed more campaign material for World of Kulan than I ever did for Warped World. I became so happy with my progress that I've even decided to revise Malecade into a mesh of what it was suppose to be with what it became (less maps, more imagination) and the world has returned as my Time of Ages Steampunk/Spelljammer campaign!
Then I came up with Arcanum of the Stars. Originally designed to be an add-on reference to Spelljammer for D&D the basis for the campaign setting has gone through an overhaul recently (Nov 2001). This was due to two things. First, I didn't really want Arcanum of the Stars to be part of the core Spelljammer product line. The second thing is/was the impending release of Dragonstar, a d20 Fantasy/Science Fiction campaign setting from Fantasy Fight Games. This setting is exactly what I've been "trying to design" / "been looking for" for the last three or four years. Dragonstar has even lead to the demise of what was to be the hard science fantasy d20 System campaign setting I was calling Twilight Galaxy. Now, elements from Arcanum of the Stars, MagicLight, and Twilight Galaxy will be now be incorporated into Dragonstar, creating an alternate Dragonstar-Spelljammer universe under the banner name of Arcanum of the Stars.
The Workshop
A lot of what's listed on my site are works in progress. However, these campaign ideas are not the only roleplaying projects I have rolling around in my head. My other 'vapor' campaigns and ideas are not detailed, in my mind, enough for me to call them real campaigns.
First Defense is the one idea that actually exists as more than mindvapor. It is my goal to develop stats for the Red Eagle supporting cast members: Darkstar, Ironhawk and Firestorm. The goal has always been to create these characters in Alternity format but as the years go by I find myself less interested in Alternity and more determined to use the d20 System. This could lead to First Defense being reworked using d20 Modern.
Another idea I have is based on a magical continent that was originally part of my Warped World campaign setting called Euroias. This continent included a chaotic land called Hyberiae. I just did a map using the Fractal Terrains demo, which I then imported into Campaign Mapper. It turned out better than I thought and has been posted in the Workshop section of my site, as the World of Hyberiae. There are also a few NPCs from that campaign posted there but the details are still sketchy at best.
=====
Well that's it.
Later,
KF72
p.s. Oh yes, there is also the following new d20 Modern spy campaign idea, which I'm calling Project: Pheonix.
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38418
Also, 2003 might see me try to resurrect Sons of Odin and/or AlterEarth using Green Ronin's Testament. First Defense, listed above, will definitely become my d20 Modern/Future campaign.
Ok, no more typing... owww!
Last edited:
Remathilis
Legend
I started with "Mystara" as per the D&D box set, but had little or no setting rules (I didn't have the Gazetteers :-( ) Thus, I made up everything. Eventually, I totally schismed from Mystara and created Enderia, with a new map and such, in 1998.
I'm starting work on a new world, Ardania, currently. This will be built on what I know has and hasn't work in Enderia. Both worlds will be used in various games, but Ardania is my new pet project.
I'm starting work on a new world, Ardania, currently. This will be built on what I know has and hasn't work in Enderia. Both worlds will be used in various games, but Ardania is my new pet project.
Kid Charlemagne
I am the Very Model of a Modern Moderator
My home-brewed campaign world in its current form is essentially 14 years old, though a few cities and the continent map itself date back a couple years earlier. Certain elements - city names, NPC's, etc - date back 22 years. It's current configuration of kingdoms, gods, landmasses, and so on is 14 years old, however, with little macro-scale change (if that makes sense). Lots of small changes for individual sessions, but thats just fleshing out the skeleton that is already in existence.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
I began creating Aquerra in the summer of 1989, soon after 3E came out.
I guess that would make it nearly 14 years old.
I've run five campaigns of any significant length there (plus a plethora of failed ones), while some others have run a handful as well.
You can check out the site: www.aquerra.com
I guess that would make it nearly 14 years old.
I've run five campaigns of any significant length there (plus a plethora of failed ones), while some others have run a handful as well.
You can check out the site: www.aquerra.com
Brian K. Moseley
First Post
I began creating the Maelstrom Campaign Setting in 1982 
My world is about three years old.
A few parts of it are older, I have a folder of material (names mostly) but until recently I only ran infrequent piece meal games
I wanted to put all the pieces together in one world.
The basic concept was "I can pick up any Fantasy source material I like and use it with very few modifications and retain coherence and a feeling of versimilitude" So far I have met that goal.
A few parts of it are older, I have a folder of material (names mostly) but until recently I only ran infrequent piece meal games
I wanted to put all the pieces together in one world.
The basic concept was "I can pick up any Fantasy source material I like and use it with very few modifications and retain coherence and a feeling of versimilitude" So far I have met that goal.
Plane Sailing and I seem to have a similar history. . .
I began Ladros in 1981 using my brand spankin' new Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books. Over the next five years or so, our group played every Sunday afternoon almost without fail. I filled three spiral notebooks (the thick kind) plus other materials.
We moved from AD&D to Runequest (I borrowed many mechanics but adapted them to my world) to Rolemaster. I then became busy with college, others moved away, and the world went on hiatus.
When 3e came out, my brother bought several copies of the books and suggested it was time to resurrect Ladros. I moved the timeline up about 70 years, made their former characters legendary heroes, and commenced play again.
Now that we have kids and live in different cities, we don't get to play as often as we used to. . .
I began Ladros in 1981 using my brand spankin' new Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books. Over the next five years or so, our group played every Sunday afternoon almost without fail. I filled three spiral notebooks (the thick kind) plus other materials.
We moved from AD&D to Runequest (I borrowed many mechanics but adapted them to my world) to Rolemaster. I then became busy with college, others moved away, and the world went on hiatus.
When 3e came out, my brother bought several copies of the books and suggested it was time to resurrect Ladros. I moved the timeline up about 70 years, made their former characters legendary heroes, and commenced play again.
Now that we have kids and live in different cities, we don't get to play as often as we used to. . .
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