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Using Northeastern Faerûn as a Campaign Setting
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<blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8651561" data-attributes="member: 6670763"><p>Imagining the Northeast as an open land of cold steppes and forests covered in demon haunted ruins and barbarian burrial mounds, with enigmatic sorcerers and witches had me thinking of classic pulpy heroic fantasy.</p><p>The classic snake men and ape men don't really fit here. But frog men would! Bullywugs could be great humanoid antagonists. You just have to not make then googly eyes goblins, but instead big burly hulks. In their original incarnation they had stats similar to orcs. They can stay under water, have stealth advantage in swamps, can jump 20 feet, and have a decent bite attack. They don't have to be funny if you don't present them that way. And <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/2/23/Bullywug.jpg" target="_blank">the 3rd edition illustration</a> looks mean.</p><p></p><p>It's also a great place to use fog giants. My favorite kind of giants, and I've never had real opportunities to use them.</p><p></p><p>As I mentioned before, I think this region would work quite well with having large numbers of low level warriors who can be found in most small settlements on one end, and a small number of high level wizards on the other end. This stays true with the style of the Rashemi and Nars being strong barbarians, and the Damarans pushing back the monsters on the frontier who can all take care of themselves, but leaves open a nice middle space for mid-level PCs do to stuff that makes an impact. Have some 1st level and maybe a few 2nd level fighters in most villages, with the occasional 3rd or 4th level local champion. Villagers can handle the occasional goblin or bullywug raid or deal with a rampaging griffon, but that's it. They are not going to go anywhere near a hag's swamp or basilisk's lair. That's where a party of half a dozen 4th level PCs can already feel like badasses riding into town.</p><p></p><p>However, I think for this setup to feel really believeable, characters will need to level up slowly. That isn't to say they have to advance at a snails pace, but that it will have been spending years on adventures since they got off the boat in Uthmere or Telflamm. Thing is, the region is actually not that huge in terms of distance, and much of it is open grassland with nice big trade roads going through it. So typical adventures wouldn't take a great amount of traveling and only take a couple of days, so a party going for fast progress might easily do an adventure per month on average. And if they gain a new level every two or three adventures, that could go from 1st to 12th level in just three years. If it's that easy, why aren't lots of people doing it in this land that greatly values strength and heroism?</p><p></p><p>Here's a few ideas I got mostly from <a href="http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Against the Wicked City</a>.</p><p>First, have the PCs only go on adventure during spring to fall. Winter adventures should be exception and things that have great urgency and time pressure. Make travel in winter so unappealing that anything not time critical can wait until spring. In a cold region like this, this cuts the time for adventuring down from 12 months to 8. The remaining four can be a time skip while the PCs are waiting for spring (and burn through money during that time with no income), with the unexpected crisis of monster attacks now and then.</p><p>Another one is to actually have the PCs go back and forth all across the region map. They don't have to stick to one town and see what kind of adventures they can find nearby. If they are explorers and treasure hunters, let them get information about ruins ready to plunder that are a couple hundred miles away. While this land is desolate, people have been living here continuously for over a thousand years. All the easy to find stuff has long been discovered.</p><p>The third thing is that 3rd and 4th edition actually <a href="https://spriggans-den.com/2021/11/29/how-the-map-of-faerun-changed-over-time/" target="_blank">scaled down the continent map</a> of Faerûn considerably. I guess they thought it was too sparsely populated and wanted it to be a bit denser. Going back to the map comparison files I made to measure the changes at the Sword Coast and doing some measurements in the Northeast, restoring the original distances from 1st edition means increasing any distance on the 3rd edition maps by +10%. That doesn't seem like much, but in two dimensions that adds up to +21% more area. And in in the absurd hypothetical model of a party doing nothing but traveling every day, this translates to about a month lost per year.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Yora, post: 8651561, member: 6670763"] Imagining the Northeast as an open land of cold steppes and forests covered in demon haunted ruins and barbarian burrial mounds, with enigmatic sorcerers and witches had me thinking of classic pulpy heroic fantasy. The classic snake men and ape men don't really fit here. But frog men would! Bullywugs could be great humanoid antagonists. You just have to not make then googly eyes goblins, but instead big burly hulks. In their original incarnation they had stats similar to orcs. They can stay under water, have stealth advantage in swamps, can jump 20 feet, and have a decent bite attack. They don't have to be funny if you don't present them that way. And [URL='https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/2/23/Bullywug.jpg']the 3rd edition illustration[/URL] looks mean. It's also a great place to use fog giants. My favorite kind of giants, and I've never had real opportunities to use them. As I mentioned before, I think this region would work quite well with having large numbers of low level warriors who can be found in most small settlements on one end, and a small number of high level wizards on the other end. This stays true with the style of the Rashemi and Nars being strong barbarians, and the Damarans pushing back the monsters on the frontier who can all take care of themselves, but leaves open a nice middle space for mid-level PCs do to stuff that makes an impact. Have some 1st level and maybe a few 2nd level fighters in most villages, with the occasional 3rd or 4th level local champion. Villagers can handle the occasional goblin or bullywug raid or deal with a rampaging griffon, but that's it. They are not going to go anywhere near a hag's swamp or basilisk's lair. That's where a party of half a dozen 4th level PCs can already feel like badasses riding into town. However, I think for this setup to feel really believeable, characters will need to level up slowly. That isn't to say they have to advance at a snails pace, but that it will have been spending years on adventures since they got off the boat in Uthmere or Telflamm. Thing is, the region is actually not that huge in terms of distance, and much of it is open grassland with nice big trade roads going through it. So typical adventures wouldn't take a great amount of traveling and only take a couple of days, so a party going for fast progress might easily do an adventure per month on average. And if they gain a new level every two or three adventures, that could go from 1st to 12th level in just three years. If it's that easy, why aren't lots of people doing it in this land that greatly values strength and heroism? Here's a few ideas I got mostly from [URL='http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/']Against the Wicked City[/URL]. First, have the PCs only go on adventure during spring to fall. Winter adventures should be exception and things that have great urgency and time pressure. Make travel in winter so unappealing that anything not time critical can wait until spring. In a cold region like this, this cuts the time for adventuring down from 12 months to 8. The remaining four can be a time skip while the PCs are waiting for spring (and burn through money during that time with no income), with the unexpected crisis of monster attacks now and then. Another one is to actually have the PCs go back and forth all across the region map. They don't have to stick to one town and see what kind of adventures they can find nearby. If they are explorers and treasure hunters, let them get information about ruins ready to plunder that are a couple hundred miles away. While this land is desolate, people have been living here continuously for over a thousand years. All the easy to find stuff has long been discovered. The third thing is that 3rd and 4th edition actually [URL='https://spriggans-den.com/2021/11/29/how-the-map-of-faerun-changed-over-time/']scaled down the continent map[/URL] of Faerûn considerably. I guess they thought it was too sparsely populated and wanted it to be a bit denser. Going back to the map comparison files I made to measure the changes at the Sword Coast and doing some measurements in the Northeast, restoring the original distances from 1st edition means increasing any distance on the 3rd edition maps by +10%. That doesn't seem like much, but in two dimensions that adds up to +21% more area. And in in the absurd hypothetical model of a party doing nothing but traveling every day, this translates to about a month lost per year. [/QUOTE]
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