D&D General In the Beginning ...

[Archade]

Got a creation myth for your world? How many years ago did the celestials fall to the Nine Hells? Why is sorcery different than wizardry? Why do people worship the gods? Here's my blog article explaining what I wrote for my campaign world ...

In The Beginning ...

So, one of the things I remember early from gaming was Ed Greenwood's Nine Hells article from Dragon Magazine #75 for so ... it talked about...

archadestower.blogspot.com

 

[Azzy]

In the past that's something that I've barely (if ever) touched upon. In a setting that I'm designing (and taking my time with), I will have a multitude of religions (varying on culture) from monotheism, polytheism, animism, ancestor worship, etc.). Each will have their own creation myths (not likely I'll detail them all—that'd be overwhelming). I'm taking a page from Eberron in that the gods are not provably real (allowing for justifiable atheism)—clerics do recieve magic and there are celestials and fiends, but the actual reality of the gods and the outer planes (if they exist) is not something that is knowable by motals (queue philosiphers debating the nature of things).

 

[Quartz]

You could also refer to the Order of the Stick...

 

[Charlaquin]

In the past that's something that I've barely (if ever) touched upon. In a setting that I'm designing (and taking my time with), I will have a multitude of religions (varying on culture) from monotheism, polytheism, animism, ancestor worship, etc.). Each will have their own creation myths (not likely I'll detail them all—that'd be overwhelming). I'm taking a page from Eberron in that the gods are not provably real (allowing for justifiable atheism)—clerics do recieve magic and there are celestials and fiends, but the actual reality of the gods and the outer planes (if they exist) is not something that is knowable by motals (queue philosiphers debating the nature of things).

I’m doing something similar. I do, however, hint at an underlying truth behind the various world myths. Just as many real-world myths have common elements, so do the myths in my setting. Common themes include a war between the gods (or angels in monotheistic religions), a betrayal by one of the good gods or angels of their own side, a winter that lasted an unnaturally long time, the death of the creator god leading to the birth of other gods. Probably others I’m not specifically thinking of. Basically I’m using 4e’s Dawn War as the baseline inspiration, but adding many obscuring layers of myth instead of having a single accurate account of events.

At first I had a pretty clear idea of what the truth was behind this mythical past, but the more I develop the setting and its belief systems the less clear I get on what, if anything, “really” happened. Which is as it should be; I want the various stories to point towards some common inspiration, but I don’t want whatever that inspiration actually was to be clearly defined. No hard answers, just common themes and motifs.

 

[Dioltach]

1. In the beginning, there was the DM. And the DM said, "No kender."

 

[rgoodbb]

2. And no kender words were ever spoke by the DM

 

[aco175]

I created some generalizations along the way, but mostly stayed out of creating something long and detailed. This is mostly because the players will not or care not to read it or use it. This may be like some of the other things we talked about before like tracking rations or less so, PC background in an AL game.

Some other points that make things hard for a complete origin story is elves living so long and gods walking the earth. Some races outlive other races great-grandchildren. If the neighbor remembers when Columbus came over then history becomes changed over what we have now. Not as bad as clerics being able to call god up on the augury phone and ask him directly.

This may lead to some problems with other gods telling their people that they may have created the world instead of the other god. This can explain some of the race conflict.

 

[Charlaquin]

I created some generalizations along the way, but mostly stayed out of creating something long and detailed. This is mostly because the players will not or care not to read it or use it. This may be like some of the other things we talked about before like tracking rations or less so, PC background in an AL game.

Some other points that make things hard for a complete origin story is elves living so long and gods walking the earth. Some races outlive other races great-grandchildren. If the neighbor remembers when Columbus came over then history becomes changed over what we have now. Not as bad as clerics being able to call god up on the augury phone and ask him directly.

This may lead to some problems with other gods telling their people that they may have created the world instead of the other god. This can explain some of the race conflict.

This is why I take the Dragon Age approach with elves. Their legends say they were once ageless in their ancient and glorious past, but whether or not there is any truth to those myths, today they are as mortal as any other race. They age more gracefully than humans and have slightly longer average lifespans, but they don’t live hundreds of years. It’s speculated that this has something to do with their unique “sleep” cycle. Likewise, my dwarves live longer and healthier lives than humans due to their innate toxin resistance, but still don’t tend to live longer than 120-150 years. Dragonborn in my setting do live exceptionally long lives - in fact, they exhibit negligible senescence. But they are on the verge of extinction.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

The setting I've cobbled together, no one really worries about the creation myth - the players haven't even asked much about religion. Five years back, something large crashed to the planet and created an impact winter. The object was the corpse of Ymir, from another plane's Ragnarok. It impacted the planet and created an ice age, so people are more concerned with survival than any real before-times.

 

[Quartz]

Five years back, something large crashed to the planet and created an impact winter. The object was the corpse of Ymir, from another plane's Ragnarok.

Now that's a cool idea!