Help with campaign setting

[Omega_Lord]

Okay so I have this rather nebulous idea that I belive I can hammer into a setting. Basic idea: insted of the UA convention of stuff from the shadow comeing over to our world, instead we have our world leaking over into shadow. Core idea: the players (along with an undetermined number of other people) are transported through a planar rift of some sort (whose cause is unknown, adventure idea) to a pristine shadow world. Magic is in full effect (nd one option is that the players know about magic due to the shadow incursion and the brighter among them might realize that they are on the "far side" of the shadow) and the players might have training in it. Failing that players who desire to might have a "calling" for magic.

The trick is in the transferrence cause you see not just the PC's come through. Indeed a whole CITY comes through dragging the players and a percentage of the population along with them. My intial idea was to have a large city (300,000 plus people) to come through wholesale into the shadow world. Then I got to thinking about how dependant cities are on outside support (food, equipment, electricity) that a city would probably not be a good idea. At least not a WHOLE city. I have a couple of options:

1. an entire city comes through but only a fraction of the population comes with it.

2. a smaller city/town comes through thus reducing the need for food and simplifying the explination for why everyone dosent starve.

Now one of the key parts of this idea is the idea that on the far side of the shadow, civilization is really freaking sparse. As in hundreds and hundreds of miles between pockets of intelligent civilization.

Another idea I am playing with: humans might not exist in this new world exept for those people that "crossed over" from our world.

At first the players will be trying to figure out where they are and then how they can help thier town survive. At first there is going to be a lot of scavanging for stuff as well as a mad rush to develop a way to restore/maintain electricity.

Once the players start exploring outside the town they will find that a) magic works rather well in this world and b) this world is very sparsely populated. Later on the characters could discover dwarven enclaves, elven tree villages, or perhaps I will ditch the standard races altogether.

Anyways as is obvious, I could use some help fleshing out this idea. Any suggestions are welcomed as well as contributions.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

I suggest starting with a little semi-isolated rural town originally located somewhere in the southwestern or western US with a population of no more than a few thousand residents.

For food, you can include some sort of outlying farm or ranch facility if the PCs fail to come up with something else. This also lets you quietly put in place the traditional small town power alternative; propane. In many small towns where running power lines is cost-prohibitive for much of the town, residents turn to propane and LNG systems to fulfull their electrical, heating, and cooking needs. That way your solution is in place and the PCs need only notice it. with 2000-3000 resident, you can also readily include mechanics, doctors, etc. to handle those ancilliary things the PCs cannot.