Help me design my homebrew setting...

[reelo]

Even though I'm currently DMing a campaign in the Realms, I somehow feel that it is too High Magic, Renaissance and generally too "upbeat" for my liking.
I've always wanted to come up with a homebrew setting with an old-school feel to it. Maybe it's a false sense of nostalgia, I don't know...
Anyways, I have a bunch of ideas floating in my head and I'd just like to bounce them around here to see if I can elaborate them into an actual setting.

First things first, I want to limit race and class options to the more "classic" choices. This means races are limited to humans, dwarves, elves and half-elves, and gnomes, and classes limited to barbarian, cleric, fighter, ranger, rogue, sorcerer and wizard. No monks and no warlocks. I will probably also want to incorporate some form of race/class restrictions like for example reserving the wizard class to elves (studying magic takes time), and sorcerer to humans, with arcane magic generally being rare and exceptional.

I also want to eliminate a lot of weird monsters from the MM, focusing rather on the more classical antagonists of orcs, goblins, ogres, giants, undead as well as evil humans and the likes.

I want gnomes, hill dwarves and high elves to mingle somewhat freely with humans, while mountain dwarves and wood elves are more secluded in their respective environments.

But most importantly, I want the world to have a more early middle-ages feel to it, not Renaissance (so no clockworks, no full plate etc) so I'm gonna use equipment and armor lists from AME. Also, slower healing (DMG options)

While I can reasonably well write up the mechanics, I'm struggling with internal consistency and history: as I said, I want a more early middle-ages feel to the world, (think Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Norman) so smaller settlements, with a few bigger cities. I don't want too much political infighting (like it would happen with small city-states and kingdoms) and I want to dot the landscape with ancient ruins and dungeons (undead-infested, no doubt!) I might be going for sandbox/hexcrawl, but my worry is, what would be the historical events of such a world be? Who made those ruins/dungeons? Think Aleyd ruins in TES Oblivion. What lost/sunken civilization? Was it humans that had advanced to a certain point? Did the elves once teach humans magic and they messed up big? Did the elves themselves mess up? Does any race remember what had happened? Are there resentments or hidden racism? Those are the questions that bug me.
How do the orcs and goblins factor in?

Any comments and critique that get my creative juices flowing are highly encouraged.

P.S. As you can see from the examples I'm giving, style-wise I'm aiming for a mix of 80s D&D, Elder Scrolls, Middle-Earth (minus the lore) and possibly Hârn.


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[Satyrn]

What sort of stories do you want to tell in this setting? What sort of plot hooks will add to the setting's feel? What sort of adventures are the PCs meant to embark on?

I mean, actually outline a few as you start writing this up. It should help lead you to create the setting bits relevant to the PCs.

What are the monsters they'll face? Make lists.

 

[Slit518]

Here is a bit of lore you can try out:

The early goblins and orcs were a once beautiful, advanced sort of races.

They were able to build amazing constructs that defy conception.

The other races jealous at the superior craftsmanship of the goblin and orcs banded together, forming a secret society built on greed, envy, and malice.

The leaders of men, dwarf, elf, and gnome bonded together in secret, discussing the plans to topple the goblins and orcs.

First their society was small in numbers, just the leaders with their immediate families.

Suddenly, it grew, with other high ranking noble leaders and their families.

The propaganda turned to conspiracy, the conspiracy to irrational hate.

It was there, under Mount Shelimbom the leading societies conspired in secret, where they laid down their ultimate plans of eradication.

It was the eve of the Thostosph festival, the most sacred holiday to that of the goblins and orcs that the armies struck.

They knew that on this most sacred day the goblins and orcs bring no tools of warring, it was forbidden, that is why they chose to strike this day.

It was a massacre, the goblins and orcs did not stand a chance.

They lived in peace, and paid the price.

That was untold ages ago, long buried in the annals of history, where barely a mortal alive, even the elves of long ago remember the events that happened that day.

And the goblins and orcs you see before you today, they are twisted forms of their former selves.

They were left to die, living through years of slavery, malnourishment, disease, hardship, hatred, fighting, this mutated their being to the very core, turning them into the vile creatures you see before you today.

They were warped, body, mind, and soul.

And now it is built in their DNA, they are built for war against the dwarfs, elves, gnomes, and humans.

 

[Satyrn]

. . . How did reelo XP and laugh at that post?

 

[reelo]

. . . How did reelo XP and laugh at that post?

What do you mean?

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[Satyrn]

What do you mean?

Sent from my Nexus 6P using EN World mobile app

Slit's post says you gave him both XP and a laugh. I can't do that - and there've been a few posts in the past I really wanted give XP and laugh at.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Well, what you (OP) just described is...imho...very similar to the old Greyhawk Folio from '83 (?; don't have mine at hand atm). Just start the campaign at/around 570 CY and you're pretty much ready to go. The only thing it assumes is that there are also Halflings and Half-Orcs.

Greyhawk (the Folio) has large, open swaths of wilderness brimming with...well, whatever the DM wants. Wilderness...hidden enclaves of long lost races...ruined keeps...ancient dungeons...etc... are all there if the DM wants. Settlements of any size (Town is between 1500 and 5k, and a City can go upwards of 10k) tend to be dozens, but typically a hundred (or hundreds) of miles away from each other.

Is it perfect? Hell no. But for a good medieval-level of "civilization", Greyhawk is pretty damn good. The fact that it's so bare-bones if you use the Folio (or even the box set from a few years later) means that virtually every DM's Greyhawk campaign is different. Lots of "creative wiggle room", so to speak.

Of course, finding a physical copy of the Folio or Box set for a reasonable price may be harder...but the PDF's you can buy from RPGNow are very good quality and totally printable without costing a fortune on ink.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[steeldragons]

My own homebrewed setting has a combo of lost/fallen civilizations, layers of them build up and collapsed (through various means) throughout history, most long forgotten or not recorded/records lost, at all.

This offers you not only a chance to make a rough outline of your world's history, but also begins to give ideas of what passes in the current world as knowledge/what is known [to common people, to nobility, to long-lived races and scholarly types] and what has moved into legend and myth (not all of which must be true...or false).

It begins to spark ideas for different magic items, or types of magic items (or types of magic, for that matter) that have come and gone before attached to the different cultures -primarily/logically, one would assume, according to what the society/civilization or powerful individuals/creators were interested in or good at -war machines and weapons for the Great Wars, divination devices for the Society of Super-Nosy Archivists, dwarven artifacts from the ancient/first kingdom of men who kept/used dwarven slaves (or willing allies/subjects?), etc... etc... and the people/creatures who made them...and which ones of them might still be lurking in the shadows, imprisoned in magical tombs, harboring ages-long slights/grudges/vendettas, or just plain long-lived (or immortal) and want their stuff back!

A world setting -particularly in its "ancient" or "pre-modern for the game" history- is not at all to be set in stone, but is useful for the DM as a pliable flexible framework in which something believed to be centuries old might only be decades or vice versa.

The sacred sceptre of the elvish king might, in fact, be a petrified toothpick dropped by a giants before men were ever even created. The holy sword of the mighty hero Heidrake, might have been the sword of a hobgoblin general -forged by dwarvish slaves and enchanted with elvish blood- during the forgotten Great Goblin Dynasty...before the elfish archmage, Strattanion, finally broke from elvish morality and fell to temptations -in the interests of the greater good for the world, of course- to summon demon hordes into the world to carry out his bidding, utterly destroying the goblinese oppressors' mighty empire. With the aid of the gnomish sorseers and dwarven priests, they were able to destroy and/or banish most...but some remained...and some of those have bred with mortal creatures to create many of the unnatural dangers now inhabiting the world...and no one, no where, in any recorded tales, tell of Strattanion's decent into remorseful madness, wickedness, and eventual acquisition of lichdom in his grief to "right his arrogant wrong" which over the countless centuries, in his tortured mind, has morphed into destroying the world, entirely...as the only way to be sure all of the demons [he released!] are truly destroyed.

And so on and so forth. The above has all been off the top of my head...and now I want to run a campaign built around it! haha.

Don't box yourself in with hard and fast facts. Some must be. Sure. But you seem to have a clear handle on those (the races and classes you want involved, a bit of flavor and feel, etc...as expressed in the OP). Keep the ideas you like. Dump the ones you're not crazy about. Make notes of names and plots and places that you have an inkling of and maybe might be able to be worked in somewhere later. I generated an entire realm of my campaign setting based around the name of a citadel/castle/fortified city that I came up with and just liked the sound of the name. Whole kingdom, history, other settlements and a civilization and culture all just grew up around it/out of that...and don't be afraid to let your players' characters place some of that info -family history or heirlooms, long-lost relatives, PC interests or specialities, etc...

Let the world grow and...breathe, I suppose, for lack of a better term. You will be amazed just how much and how quickly all of those ancient lost places, peoples, and things just leap into existence.

 

[Inchoroi]

Steal.

Steal all the things.

Simple to say. However, my biggest suggestion is to watch and read everything you can on the 10th-14th century to get an idea of what's going on during that era. That will get you into a proper mindset, and get an idea of what kind of thing will be around--then, you can start adding in the fantasy elements.

I'd start with a starting city, and then branch out around to the surrounding area; maybe steal some historical allegories from western Europe. Copying cultures is really helpful; so, decide, for example, that you want a 13th-Century France feel. Time to go reading on fun stuff about 13th-Century France! Or, perhaps, center yourself around a historical event, like the Crusades--the main army is out in the other side of the world, so all the things that usually hide in the dark (orcs, goblins, etc) come out to play and it makes it so that all the adventurers need to buck up and go do stuff to save the area.

 

[Wrathamon]

NETIR VALE is very dark ages ... points of light idea works well with organizing a world like this. Great area to mine for ideas and how to hook in "classics"