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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord of Wyrmsholt" data-source="post: 5299014" data-attributes="member: 94406">The recent posts about preferences for different published campaign worlds (I've always been a bit of a homebrew guy) has me pondering an idea that I've been kicking around for a long time now.Much of the best fantasy has the main characters fundamentally altering the worlds they live in (Lord of the Rings probably being the most well known).  So why not the same for D&D?For me, the most successful 'disposable' campaign worlds will have a very distinctive characteristic with the pinnacle of the campaign being the defeat of whatever is responsible for this characteristic (whether or not it directly involves a final battle with an overall evil).  I actually think of the War of the Burning Sky as one of these types of campaign worlds (or at least that's how I'd use it) and were I to use Dark Sun or Ravenloft, it would be with the goal of the PCs to 'fix' those worlds (or at least one of the demi-planes in Ravenloft) as well.A few examples:1.  A world ruled by the undead whose entire existence is dependent upon an opened portal.  The PC's role is to simply close the portal.  [My notes on this world suggest that the portal was opened by an empire that worshipped the dead, much like the ancient Egyptians, and that the effect of the open portal was that all of the dead came back to unlife.  The long dead, such as venerated kings, wizards, and the like, were intelligent; the recently and newly deceased always come back as unintelligent undead.]2.  A world of comprised entirely of a sea of magma over which great flying vessels and fortresses war.  The PC's role is to locate and use the fabled artifact version of the decanter of endless water to cool and solidify the ground.3.  A world of isolated mountain tops separated by a toxic fog from which come monsters that can survive in both normal air and the fog.  The PC's role is to eliminate both the fog and the monsters by sealing off the planar gate through which both come.  [My notes involve both griffon-riding cavalry, capitol cities in the clouds, and great dwarven mines that have been lost when earthquakes opened up shafts that reached deep into the mountains below the fog-line.]These sorts of worlds only need to be as detailed as necessary for the progression to the final encounter and then you move on to another one.  Given the length of time that single campaigns take to run (especially now that many of us have real jobs), I don't think there is such a need for any permanence to the campaign world.</blockquote>

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