Here's my world... tell me yours!

[Wik]

So, I was asked to describe my campaign world, and I got super excited and started blathering on. Then I figured, why not post it here? And then, all you GMs out there that never get a chance to discuss your own worlds can post your own, ask questions about others, and steal ideas as you see fit.

But let's keep things relatively short - brevity is usually a good thing, after all. Focus on the unique, cool stuff!

Wik's Campaign World - The Shattered Isles

The shattered isles are, geographically speaking, based off British Columbia, with the exception being that instead of there being a Vancouver Island, there is a series of small islands. Each island is surrounded by half-submerged reefs and crags that constantly shift due to the tides, making sailing very difficult. Because of this, the place was barely settled (except for the nautical orc raiding tribes in the north, halfling gypsy sailors, and runaway slave shelters in the south) until a little over a century ago.

That was when the Kaellian Empire, a roman-esque empire, really started to crumble. the imperial ruling families (collectievely known as Tiefs) had been making deals with devils and demons for the last century or so. Then, in an nice cataclysmic touch, the devils took their share of the bargain. All the imperials with Tief blood were changed into Tieflings, and devils and demons of all sorts were unleashed upon the world.

Most of the slaves and mercenary armies made their way west, battling the rugged climate until they settled on the large islands of the Shattered Isles - places like Tasker's Island (ruled by a crimelord Gladiator), Bronze Shore (named after the mysterious bronze arrowheads that wash up on the beach), Slave's Landing (the oldest island kingdom, and a place where the military and the guilds constantly clash), and Drogas (a mainland kingdom ruled by dwarves, though flooded by decades of refugees).

The only safe mainland areas are the cities of Ravenglas (ruled by a selfish king and protected by a thick sea wall patrolled by highly-paid mercenaries and bribes of human sacrifice), Kael Baerin (built around a central lake, and slowly decaying under the clashing feuds of Tiefling aristocracy) and Kael Turath (the remnants of the Imperial Strength, and the big bad nation of the setting).

The feywild gets a lot of attention in this setting, with many PCs races being refigured to fit the plane (which is also heavily modified). In it, the central city, Mithrendain, is a land of perpetual day. As one moves outward, the time gets darker and darker - and once you hit around midnight, bad things start lurking in the shadows.

The races of the Feywild are all actually one species, but as one's political leanings change, their body changes to match. The races are Eladrin (who believe in dealings with mortals, and a central bureaucracy based around Mithrendain), Drow (who believe in dispersed living within the Feywild, and protect the borders of the Eladrin lands) and Shadar-Kai (basically, half-drow/half-eladrin, and hated by both sides).

The major arc of my campaign has been pretty muddy, with two seperate PC groups exploring the isles before merging together, and running through some modified adventures and dungeon delves. Currently, however, they're in the Feywild, as both sides prepare for the death of the Eladrin king Cunen and the political wars that are about to erupt. And someone seems to be poisoning the drow, which means the borders are no longer patrolled - and the perpetual night at the edges of the feywild are creeping in...

There is also a side arc involving the lost city of Kael Tessera, also known as the "Mazeworks", which was a minotaur city forcibly colonized by old Imperial troops, and now is supposedly a demon and ghost breeding ground somewhere in the north (roughly where Fort St. John would be in B.C.). The PCs want to get there sometime in the summer, and find an artefact that is related to all those demons being unleashed upon the world... of course, there's also an expeditionary force from Kael Turath that wants the same artefact. Luckily, the winter months make getting that artefact impossible right now. (The players know that this event will be the end of the campaign).

Anyways. It's a 4E setting, and it was put together with a few sentences originally as a "let's use this setting while we figure out 4e". As players started accumulating, we added detail as necessary - the Feywild was developed because I had an Eladrin and Drow PC in one group, and now there's a Shadar-Kai as well. Tieflings were a major enemy because I had multiple Tieflings in one group (At least for a short while), and Ravenglas was created to give the original Dragonborn Paladin (who was involved in a TPK very early on) someone to fight against.

***

Well, that's my world. Now, show me yours. And feel free to ask any questions and whatnot. Sharing campaign worlds is fun!

 

[Meek]

The intro to mine is on my blog, I don't really want to repost it here as it's...completely massive, and I don't know if I can summarize it any further than that. It's a "10 Things You Must Know" section like D&D 4e's setting books have. You can find that here.

Really really basically, it's high fantasy with hindu mythology, wuxia and places a huge amount of focus on the setting's polytheistic, shinto-style religion. Humans, dwarves, elves, etc are nearly extinct from a cataclysm extinction event, and the world is instead dominated by many new races. But I like to think it has more depth than that little blurb

 

[Wik]

That is a very well-done writeup, Meek. And it makes me want to play in your game.

 

[davethegame]

The intro to mine is on my blog, I don't really want to repost it here as it's...completely massive, and I don't know if I can summarize it any further than that. It's a "10 Things You Must Know" section like D&D 4e's setting books have. You can find that here.

Wyatt's campaign setting is one of the most awesome ones I've ever read, AND it's totally free on his site.

My campaign is "Dark Ages" style where disease, poverty, and ignorance run rampant in the wild lands, while major cities are protected by magic called "Etherium" that keeps out the worst creatures. An oppressive Empire controls most of the continent, with an organization called The Inquisition keeping a tight hold on magic within the Empire. Magic-users must be licensed, and powerful rituals (including resurrections and disease-curing) must go through loads of red tape to be approved... unless you're one of the rich and powerful. Many nations have been conquered by the might of the Empire and the Inquisition, but they are now beginning to chafe under their rule.

I run in the "past" of the game world, while my friend Danny runs in the "future" for his campaign with a completely different group.

 

[Meek]

Magic-users must be licensed, and powerful rituals (including resurrections and disease-curing) must go through loads of red tape to be approved... unless you're one of the rich and powerful

I've always found the interaction of magic and law to be really interesting and I like settings that dare to do that rather than being entirely permissive. In mine I sort of go half and half – there's places where it's illegal to heal people entirely for free, and there's a lot of red tape involved in Undeath. Anything mind-bending like domination is entirely illegal, but black markets pass scrolls of such magic around.

I haven't thought of Rez and Remove Disease, but those are good to consider too. Especially Rez'ing, that could conceivably be a pretty hot topic, especially in a really religious world like mine. Does just any "well-meaning" cleric get the right to walk up to your family members and bring them back to life willy-nilly? You can kinda imagine something like the healthcare debate rising out of that.

Though I wouldn't go that far on the anachronistic realism scale

 

[Wik]

In my setting, magic is pretty free-wheeling, with a group of wizards known as "the Gray Wizards" dealing in black market magic item sale and the moving of material components.

Magic and Law *is* a fun topic, and it's one of those things I loved about Dark Sun.

 

[weem]

Mine is evolving pretty much from the bottom up but I think I can sum it up (see sig link for a few more details).

It is called the Last Lands.

The basic idea is that as the 'Old World' crumbled and fell apart around the civilized races, a being known now as The One God came to these races and offered them a new home.

The Humans and Eladrin accepted, while the Elves did not. As such, the elves were left behind. The problem was, upon arrival in the Last Lands, instead of their being thousands and thousands of survivors, there were barely 300 - most of these being humans.

Over 1,200 years have come and gone since that day and humanity has spread out from the small island the first arrived on. Their people blanket the shores North and South of the island now know as the Island of Ways, and it's immense city Havenshore.

Some items of interest...

* The Last Lands is a world given to the civilized races of the Old World during a time of cataclysmic destruction there. The small number of Humans and Eladrin that made the trip some 1,200 years ago are now the dominant races in a world full of many different sentient and intelligent beings.

* Havenshore, the city at the center of these lands and home to the leaders of the various human kingdoms, is simultaneously a place of great beauty and unimaginable suffering.

* Subdwellers, as they are called, live below the city within it’s many corridors, sewers and forgotten dungeons. Consisting of multiple races of creatures (including goblins, kobolds, halflings, and gnomes), these beings are subjected to beatings, slavery and even murder with almost no protection from the law. Most can speak Common (somewhat), but their lack of proper intelligence earns them no respect and they are often considered to be no better than the rats they live with

* Arrivals of ‘Outsiders’ occur randomly from time to time within the limits of Havenshore. Be it a Human who suddenly finds himself in a field of corn, a group of children who find themselves standing in the halls of the Great Spire, or a monstrous beast that suddenly appears in the kitchens of the Council Palace, none of them recall anything that occurred before that moment beyond their names.

* The Great Spire is a building in Havenshore of awesome size. Constructed around the Stone of Calling, it protects this ancient obelisk and provides a home to the Watchers who study it.

 

[Kzach]

My world has roughly 1,000 pages worth of material written up for it on my computer. And yet, I wouldn't even consider it to be 10% finished. I have at least another 1,000 pages of material in my head that needs to be typed out. I also have the outlines of four novels and the seeds of five more for it.

One of these days I may even get around to writing all of that out. It's not likely though

My campaign setting idea formed around the concept that I wanted everything to have an explanation and a reason for existing in the setting. By that I mean that for every question, there needed to be an answer. For instance, why do dwarves live in the mountains? Why are elves 'flighty'? Why are eladrin magical? Why does everyone hate orcs?

I wanted to avoid the 'everything and the kitchen sink' approach to world design as well. So instead of having several thousand races, I paired down the races to a core set and created mythologies for why other races are either extremely rare or non-existent. For instance, minotaurs were once a highly successful race that prevented expansion by the orcs and the establishment of humans in a rather large geographical area until they were wiped out by a godly cataclysm that signalled the end of an age.

Despite being extraordinarily rare, minotaurs have an entire history in the campaign setting that explains their quirks like their fondness for mazes and whatnot. And I've done that for all the races, including how all the races came to be in the first place.

I also wanted to create strong mythologies behind each race and legends of how their gods came to be and how the world was shaped by the struggles of immortal beings. I wanted to explain the intricacies of magic and how it affected and interacted with the PC's and the history of the setting. It wasn't enough to just say, "'cause its magic..."