D&D General Are the best days of your campaign world ahead or behind?

[BookTenTiger]

Great, interesting answers everyone!

Another fun way to think about this question is to consider the major conflict of the campaign world (good vs evil, law vs chaos, elves vs dwarves, civilization vs nature, etc), and ask, is the future more x or y? And why?

For example, if I have a campaign world based on the conflict Vampires vs the Oppressed, I can ask... Does the future belong to the Vampires or to the Oppressed? And why?

In my current campaign setting, the future definitely belongs to the Vampires. They are immortal, and that is a resource they use to outlast small uprisings or annoying adventurers.

Of course, the characters are working to change that!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Current 5e campaign, yes, I like to think so. Things are pretty bad right now, what with the Unending Rime of the Frostmaiden, after all.

Past (and at some point, future) 5e campaign, yes, absolutely. That homebrew was designed with hope as a guiding principle.

Current DCC RPG campaign - who knows, it's DCC? The world could get paved over for a space wizard van parking lot or the party could find themselves ruling a small country.

 

[Monayuris]

Interesting question. In my homebrew, it would be a wash.

The ancient past of my world was an advanced magic-tech society. A time of great wonders and advancements (transhumanism, post-scarcity, even travel amongst the stars and interactions with alien entities... or demons as they are called now) but this also meant more terrifying and devastating forces of destruction.

The world now is a shadow of its past and the factions squabble over the remnants and artifacts of the past. What's left of the past technology will never be fully understood again... people refer to it as 'magic items' because they can't possibly understand. No one alive in the current day of my homebrew would know what to make of the still running cold fusion reactors buried deep underground- except that the effects of their emissions create something the greatest of arcane minds barely understand as ley lines.


The past was conflict akin to pre world war I but with advanced techno-magic. When the war finally broke out, it caused the end of life as was known and what exists now in my current campaign is the result of a new world born from that. On the surface my campaign world looks like a typical fantasy setting but when you dig deeper there is more to it and it only looks like fantasy because its all the current inhabitants can understand.

I can run what looks like a normal D&D fantasy campaign, but throw in whatever weird science / magic-tech I want as players explore deeper and further and I can have underlying high magic technology explanations for typical D&D fantasy tropes.

I've always had a thought to run a campaign in that before time. I wouldn't use D&D though ( it doesn't reach high enough in power without being too clunky). I'd use Godbound, Exemplars & Eidolons, or Worlds Without Number with full Legate rules.