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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 3933552" data-attributes="member: 19675">To answer Quartz:An ELE occurred when the fantasy world was about as advanced as we are today.Before the time of the campaign, an Illithid-induced storm of meteorites reduced the average surface civilization to the stone age.Aboveground, most former centers of population are decimated: buildings, bridges and other infrastructure are in ruins.  Very little of the printed word- including magical text- survives because much of that which wasn't destroyed in the fires after the meteorite storm was burned for fuel. Currently, most people are nomadic, but some smaller townships have begun to rise from the ashes.  Think: The Postman (the book, if you've read it)- so those townships actually have a tech level slightly below a normal D&D campaign.Belowground, certain cultures survived more intact, but not unscathed.  Mountain Dwarves were wiped out, replaced by their creations, the Warforged-like Inheritors who have taken up the standard of Dwarven culture.  A Drow-like fey race and other similar empires fared slightly better in their deeper holdings, but still lost many people in the catacalysm. The Illithids who started the swarm were forced to crash land, and are currently ruled by an amnesiac Elder Brain.Only the aboleth remember everything...Your typical PC will be illiterate.  Sorcerers will outnumber Wizards just because of the dearth of learning material & teachers, but Wizards will be more flexible (players will have more freedom with spells since they are the new pioneers of magic- unique spell design will be a perk).  Most centers of learning will be tied to some religion, only a few wizards and other scholarly types either survived the ELE or have risen up since then.Any kind of written text will be immensely valuable, and if its magical, all the moreso.Masonry and metalworking fared slightly better than academic fields, since the practitioners  didn't rely as much on books as on practical demonstrations of knowledge and technique, but they lost nearly all of their advanced tools in the ELE.  Still, they know books of science are out there.Firearms exist as a pipe dream.  There are stories about them, but in the decades since the ELE, nobody has found any texts regarding the science of gunpowder and the neccessary metalworking skills, and the few caches of working weapons and ammunition are jealously guarded secrets.</blockquote>

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