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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 7286389" data-attributes="member: 92511">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.</blockquote>

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