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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BookTenTiger" data-source="post: 8528580" data-attributes="member: 6685541">I haven't had a lot of opportunities to play D&D right now (newborn, Omicron, etc.), so I find myself spending a lot of time thinking about creating D&D settings. I've started to imagine a campaign setting that encourages characters to build a better world, and I'm going to use this thread to slowly brainstorm and create it. Maybe it's just the news, climate change, or having a newborn baby around, but I have been thinking a lot about making sure I've done my own part to make the world a little bit better than it was when I came into it. I think that would be a neat theme for a campaign too! For now, I'm going to call this campaign setting Amnesis. Here are some campaign themes:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The main conflict of this campaign is corruption vs optimism. The heroes will be on the side of optimism, hope, and unity. The enemies will be forces of corruption, pollution, and dehumanization.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The campaign setting will be medieval Americana. That is, the trappings of Americana in a medieval-technology setting. Think farms & forts instead of villages & castles. Bison and turkeys, pumpkins and corn, land barons and frontier towns. This will not be set in America, or even an analogous America, but it will draw from the visual and thematic vocabulary of Americana applied onto a medieval canvas.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The setting will be made up of race-agnostic cultures. Instead of having the elf forest, the dwarf mountains, the halfling farms, there will be distinct cultural areas in which live members of any race or lineage. Communities will still struggle with xenophobia and tribalism, but their cultural identities will not be based on race.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Adventurers will be tasked with making the world a better place. Gold found in dungeons will be spent on improving communities. As the world improves, characters will gain more access to magic items, allies, magical gifts, property, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The campaign setting is still very much in the D&D Spirit. There are orcs and trolls and dragons, dungeons and haunted ruins, magic swords and mimics.</li> </ul>As you can see, I just have the foundations of ideas, but nothing written in stone yet. One of the most important things in this campaign is the main conflict. Everything is going to be based around corruption vs optimism. What's that mean for a D&D setting? I'm going to brainstorm what those two words actually look like, manifested in a fantasy world: CorruptionPolluted farmlandsPolluted natureBribed and blackmailed leadersZealotryCults preying on the impoverishedDemonic temptationsPlagueUndead transformationsSpiesDoppelgangers and other shapeshifters OptimismBuilding communitiesAgricultureHarmony with natureLightThrowing off the yokeUnitySafe to travelBridging fractured communitiesRestoring traditionsCelebrations When I build a campaign world, I like to think about what is the world's present, its past, and its (hoped-for) future... In this campaign setting, the past and present are corruption, and the future is optimism. I could see in the past corruption being the product of war and strife. As the war ends, it leaves room for optimism to grow, if the old powers don't hold it back. I’ll add more posts here as I figure out what this campaign setting looks like, what adventurers do, who the enemies are, and house rules I’d use to support the theme.I'd love to read your ideas, too! How would you build or support a campaign setting in which characters are beacons of hope in a world of corruption, rot, and darkness?</blockquote>

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