Help me build a setting from the ground up!

[Desdichado]

I'm wanting to run an online game, I think. I have a campaign setting that I've been developing for a while, but rather than use it (coz it's really dark and characters are relatively powerless -- a fantasy Call of Cthulhu, kinda) I thought I'd just pirate it for ideas now and then but do something from scratch. However, I'm not necessarily inspired or set on lots of other aspects of it, so I'm hoping to get some suggestions and ideas.

Here's the basic premise, though -- I want a world thats urban and vaguely steampunkish, but with lots of chances to explore the wildlands outside the city as well. Lots of big, slummy, dirty, sooty cities with the dregs of society making up most of the NPCs that you'll actually meet. Lots of secret societies, espionage perhaps, political intrigue, and sudden and random violence. I'll have primitive firearms (either Iron Kingdoms or Freeport rules). Cities will truly be massive -- almost like the megacities in Judge Dredd except steampunkish and gothic instead of futuristic.

It'll be a lower magic than standard D&D: I really like the Sovereign Stone magic system, so I might use it (slightly simplified to a single mage class, though) with the stipulation that you have to multiclass a non-magical class, so you can only get a maximum of 10 levels ever in the spellcasting class.

All other classes will be non-magical, so that leaves fighter, rogue, barbarian, maybe the monk? and any other alternate core classes that are non-spellcasting (like FFG's urban fighter, or their alternate rangers, for example.)

For races, I'll have at least humans, of course, but I'm completely not convinced on anything else yet, except the fact that I certainly want something else. Don't really have any ideas about various cultural groups, but I'd like some, certainly -- although instead of seperate nations, different ethnicities can have "quarters" in the cities, or villages outside the city proper.

What else: oh, I'll steal allegiances from d20 Modern instead of traditional alignment. I'll probably also swap out the decriptions of D&D Heal skill with the d20 Modern Treat Injury skill, because (especially when combined with the Surgery feat) it makes magical healing unnecessary.

Anyway, other than that basic skeleton, the setting is a blank slate. I'd love some ideas: after seeing the rapid development of Sharkworld a few months ago, I think tossing in some basic premises and letting the folks here go to town with suggestions can potentially lead to some great stuff.

 

[kkoie]

This one rpg came out a few years ago called Nexus: the Infinate City. The reason I bring it up is, the premise is that its an infinate sized city, made up of "quarters" from all sorts of dimensions, both future, present and historical. The residents, as you can imagine, are everything.

Why not steal some of that and create a world thats its own dimension or plane. The technology is primarily steampunk, but you could easily establish quarters that varry slightly in available (and workable) technology. The dimension could have a set border, or, it could be so vast, that no one truly knows how big it is...

It could literally be a graveyard of civilazations. Say, any time a city in any world/dimension suffers from a catastrophic event, the "soul" of the city gets transported to this dimension, thus the hodgepodge of differing cultures etc etc. Huge vast chunks of the city could be deserted wastelands, for unknown reasons. While other portions could be choking urban jungles, filled with people of a variety of nationalities, races, and beyond.

You could go anywhere with this, establish one city as the primary base or location (possibly ruled by some mysterious god similar to Planescape), with all the other quarters surrounding it. The primary tech level would be steampunk, due to the standards established by the primary quarter/city.

If you wanted to introduce other cultures with higher or lower tech levels, you could rule that some tech works or doesn't work within the boundries of a certain quarter. Say... one quarter from the 21st century has introduced computer technology, but once its taken into a quarter that hasn't gotten to that point, the technology stops working (due to the god?). Other quarters could be closer to middleages tech, thus none of the PCs steamtech works there.

Or you could just rule the whole plane has never gotten past steampunk tech levels. but each quarter is a more alien, and differn't style location.

Or, not worry about whether all tech works. You could easly drop huge dangerous wastelands of urban expanse between where the PCs start and where some of the higher tech (or even Higher magic) leveled areas are located. Shoot, with a plane this huge and chaotic, who's to say that people in the pc's area even are aware that some quarters have higher available technology?!

Some laser pistols might actually be available in their area... but they'd be so rare and so highly prized... you'd have to take on an army of god knows what, just to get to it, let alone even find out it exists.

Anyway, just some rambling thoughts.

 

[LostSoul]

Do you want to start off small, or do the whole world?

I'd suggest focusing on the PCs and their starting location for the beginning, and leave the big world stuff vague. That way you can drop in hints of the League of Lost Souls or the Guild without having to get into specifics. I guess that means coming up with neat ideas and basing organizations around them and name-dropping while the PCs are playing.

Have you thought about going with high-tech mixed with low-tech? Something like DUNE, where people fight with swords and magic but there are peices of high technology that exist to further the plot.

 

[Desdichado]

Do you want to start off small, or do the whole world?

I'd suggest focusing on the PCs and their starting location for the beginning, and leave the big world stuff vague. That way you can drop in hints of the League of Lost Souls or the Guild without having to get into specifics. I guess that means coming up with neat ideas and basing organizations around them and name-dropping while the PCs are playing.

Have you thought about going with high-tech mixed with low-tech? Something like DUNE, where people fight with swords and magic but there are peices of high technology that exist to further the plot.

For your first question, the answer is a little of both. I don't want necessarily a completely fleshed out world, but at the same time, I don't want just a local neighborhood. For the second question, yes -- that is somewhat what I'm thinking: but not necessarily "high" technology. The technology, where it exists, is steampunk mixed with magic, not futuristic.

 

[Hand of Evil]

To keep people in cities you need to make the outside world hostile, it has to wear you down. Place your cities in a hell world, with areas that can support life.

I used a campign I called Plateu, where the the characters lived on top of them and had to travel down into the jungle/swamps below. Life was safe on the plateu but down below dinos and man-eating plants, plus the heat & illness.

You every read White Wolf's 40K stuff, long time about in White Dwarf the had a city concept for what they called a 'hive city'. It was built on the lines of termite mound, it was basicly a city built on another and another and another. The lower the city, the worse and more chaoic things became. You could do something like that but using the alignments for each level of the city, from the high light of lawful good to the dark skum of chaotic evil.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Something you may want to check out...

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engineering/pyramidcity/interactive/interactive.html

 

[Desdichado]

You every read White Wolf's 40K stuff, long time about in White Dwarf the had a city concept for what they called a 'hive city'. It was built on the lines of termite mound, it was basicly a city built on another and another and another. The lower the city, the worse and more chaoic things became. You could do something like that but using the alignments for each level of the city, from the high light of lawful good to the dark skum of chaotic evil.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Of course, Games Workshop [ahem] borrowed that idea from the Judge Dredd megacities, though.

I don't want alignments to be a part of it, though. Even the top levels aren't "good." A feature of xxxpunk genres are that everything is kinda gritty and dark. At the top is the worst backstabbing, slimy, corruption-rife center of the whole city. It just all happens under the table, so to speak.

EDIT: That Pyramid city concept is really cool. Although it holds less than a million inhabitants, which is too small to be my whole city.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Here's the basic premise, though -- I want a world thats urban and vaguely steampunkish, but with lots of chances to explore the wildlands outside the city as well. Lots of big, slummy, dirty, sooty cities with the dregs of society making up most of the NPCs that you'll actually meet. Lots of secret societies, espionage perhaps, political intrigue, and sudden and random violence. I'll have primitive firearms (either Iron Kingdoms or Freeport rules). Cities will truly be massive -- almost like the megacities in Judge Dredd except steampunkish and gothic instead of futuristic.

Take a look at Urbis, the setting I'm developing - it has a lot of similarities to what you are describing...

 

[Carnifex]

To perform some thread necromancy of my own, I'm interested as to whether anything ever came of this (I was just browsing through the depths of my email inbox and came across some old emails from Joshua Dyal about it, which made be curious about its eventual fate).

 

[Desdichado]

I've been running it, with some minor interruptions. Also, check out the first link in my sig file; that's a direct descendent of this same core idea as well.