Thoughts on Setting

[Tony Vargas]

As for the opposite side, I have a lot of options as the impact of the beam of energy I mentioned could have transformed that area in many ways. Right now, I'm envisioning some kind of spill-over from another plane across an entire continent, etc.

It could take the place of the 'magical radiation' that enables Drow and their crazy magic items?

and the extreme portion of the dark side could contain something equally unique.

It could be a Domain of Dread, like Ravenloft. An extreme-depths of the Underdark analog. Or, it could be like the Shadowfell, in the same way the twilight area could resemble the Feywild?

 

[SPE825]

Or, it could be like the Shadowfell, in the same way the twilight area could resemble the Feywild?

I wasn't even really knowledgable about the Feywild and Shadowfell until you guys started mentioning it, now I'm throwing around the idea in my head of the world being half Feywild and half Shadowfell after watching some stuff on YouTube and reading a few things. Too many options!

 

[Satyrn]

Too many options!

There's infinite options. What you create will be uniquely yours. It's what makes worldbuilding so fun.

 

[Mercule]

Sounds cool, to me. Oh, and don't worry about Tony Vargas -- I started GMing pretty much immediately, too. The down side is that, after 35 years, I'm still the standing GM. The up side is that I've had a lot of practice and fun. I have no idea what your age is, but I can tell you that the ideas of middle school and high school don't carry forward well. Even as an adult, understand that you'll probably regret (or heavily ret-con) your first setting. Don't worry about it. As long as the group is having fun, it's all good.

I think the setting pitch sounds pretty fun, myself. It's horribly unrealistic, as others have pointed out. I wouldn't worry about that, though. My current home brew setting is a bunch of land masses floating in the air. If you fall off the edge of one, you'll literally fall to Hell, at least according to universal lore (dwarves are very careful and slightly crazy). Great seas flow off the edges because they're fed from elemental water. Don't ask too many questions. In your case, all you need as an answer is something along the lines of a magical Van Allen belt that mitigates the Mercury-like effects of being tidal locked to the sun (maybe someone managed to get off a wish to the effect of "I wish this wouldn't kill all life on the planet" and *poof*).

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sounds cool, to me. Oh, and don't worry about Tony Vargas -- I started GMing pretty much immediately, too.

Between AL and on-line options, there's not the need to jump in at the deep end the way so many of us did back in the day. (Of course, if none of us had, there'd've been no inspiration for SJG's Munchkin card game.)

 

[SPE825]

Yeah, there's a ton of AL activity and other games going on around where I live.

And as for realism, I'm not too concerned since we're already talking about a game with magic, dragons, undead, etc...

 

[SPE825]

It's horribly unrealistic, as others have pointed out.

Of course it is I randomly found this scenario online funny enough as to what would happen to the earth if we stopped rotating on our axis, but still spun around the sun:

http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/475-the-day-the-earth-stood-still

And from actual scientists. Though it's extremely different than my original idea.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm super new to D&D (or RPGs really), but want to jump in head first as a DM. I've DM'd a couple of home sessions that were super fun and basically one-shots. But now, I'd like to start creating my own world. Since everything's been done before (like the Simpsons), I wanted see if my general idea seemed cool and/or if there was already maybe a world like it where someone else had already thought of similar things.

The basic idea is that a cataclysmic event occurred in the past (10,00 years ago, details can be determined later, etc.) where a rift in the heavens appeared for a period of time. Then a beam of energy poured forth devastating a continent on impact. This caused quakes, dormant volcanoes came back to life, etc (maybe the continent of impact is partially merged with another plane of existence?). The other major consequence being that the rotation of the planet stopped, causing one half of the world to be plunged into darkness while the other half would then be in the light. So creatures and beings of the darkness would then freely roam the surface of the dark half of the planet (Drow on the surface, etc.) while the other half would be the refuge of the light. And to this day, the beam of energy from the rift continues to bear into the planet, anchoring it's rotation.​

I think this sets things up for interesting ideas at the border of the light and dark halves of the world. Additionally, I'd like to say that teleportation circle travel before the cataclysm was commonplace and that teleportation between the light and dark halves might still be possible, but highly dangerous as no one knows what might await them at the destination. There could be some cool opportunities here for what lies where the beam of energy still impacts the planet, etc. How did it happen, was some cult or god behind the rift/beam of energy, etc.

Just curious for opinions as world creation is all pretty new to me.

Its not 100% original as Spelljammer had planets like this but they were never covered in any detail.

My advice is keep it simple, perhaps the campaign is set near the border which are the twilight lands. Even if you are using a generic sandbox type campaign perhaps add one thing in addition to the fluff that makes your world unique. Could be something like magic doesn't work in a certain way, location or time (day, week, month etc) or perhaps culturally. Crime for example could involve being dumped in the twilight lands where things like Drow prey on the exiles but there is an ancient city with functioning magical food creation so the exiles can live and not be reliant on crops.