Campaign Worlds: What do we need?

[Janx]

I would think that a listing of all the material components for existing D&D spells in your edition would give some ideas...

Consider where all those ingredients come from, especially those that are more costly, rarer, useful.

You might also go look at all the real herbs and spices and look at their purported qualities. Make these effects real in your game, and you just upgraded their impact. What if Shark's Fin really did enhance virility?

Some other things to consider, is that if the PCs get into being merchants of spices, you may have to model the economics of that, to reflect the impact of the players actions on the market.

Additionally, if the PCs get involved in spices that do "magic", you'll have to accept the possibility of the PCs getting ahold of a game-breaking inventory of this stuff. It's not a big deal if the PCs own a couple tons of pepper. It's a whole different thing when they own a couple tons of Healling Potions, or some other magic item.

 

[Janx]

On a different tack, the OP content is not the same as the OP title.

The OP has a campaign idea he is pondering.

That's differrent than what do you need to make a campaign world (which is what I interpret the OP title) to mean.

For that:

a world map, showing the continents and major waters

a map of the continent the party will start in, with national borders

a map of the nation the party starts in, with at least major cities and the starting city/town/village

a list of all the known deities and their domains, and brief descriptions

a deific explanation that indicates how religions are organized and the role of the priest class (to justify adventuring clerics)

defined list of allowed PC races, and where they are from (national assignments)

defined list of allowed classes, and explanation of any organization/unions/guilds

a definition of the starting nation, including government structure and brief history

One of the main purposes of all this, is so that the classes and races are all explained such that a player knows where it came from and fits in the campaign world. Saying you're playing an elf, and having no idea where elves come from, or how they fit in with the starting town's society is pretty lame. I expect those kind of things to be answered in the campaign document.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Thanks, Janx. I like the list and think it is a good way to look at it. Ideally, enough of the world should be available that the player should know how a PC fits into the world.

But, for example, would a world that is mostly unexplored and thus unmapped work? Perhaps there are no national borders--it is just a matter of whoever can exert control wherever? Would those also work as definitions?

 

[Desdichado]

As to the original idea, I've long been fascinated by the Silk Road towns of the ancient and Medieval Taklamakan. At least, I have been since the Caucasian mummies wearing plaid tartans showed up buried in the sands there. After reading Victor Mair and J. P. Mallory's book on the mummies and their society, I promptly adapted it to a fantasy setting.

I've since evolved that fantasy setting into something else, by sticking a giant Mediterranean-like sea smack dab in the middle of the region, but the idea still has a lot of merit, I think.

I'd modify Janx's list just a little bit. The first dot point or two aren't really strictly necessary. Why do you need to have all the continents in the world if its assumed that the action will all take place in a smaller, localized area? Why do you even need an entire continent?

My current campaign setting is mapped out in a roughly square area that's about as big as southern Europe and Northern Africa (and geographically, that's a similar comparison. It's comparable to a circum-Mediterranean setting in a lot of ways.) I guess that's about the size of a single modest continent, and it's more than enough space to keep me running campaigns for potentially the rest of my life.