Is it possible to make this jumbled mess work?

[Evilhalfling]

Flack ...incoming

My answer is no.

I firmly believe that worlds should have more cohesion than generic fantasy. If your homebrew doesn't have specifics and limitations then how is it distinct? I mean really how many humanoid tribes can logically exist? and elven subraces? comeon. There should be distinict cultures rather than racial variety.

A logical way to go about it is to leave open spaces in your world, where the PCs can come from. Then as they decide what they want to play it slowly gets filled in. In the campaign Im building now, the focus starts on an island chain overrun with dragons, modified gnomes, halflings, normal humans and dwarves. A second continent has bare bones behind it and a third is left to players for filling in culture and society.

 

[Particle_Man]

If they come from different parts of the world, you need a way for them to meet. A mad mage, randomly teleporting slaves to himself that the characters have to escape from? A large empire, that captures people from various lands and forces them to fight in an army against another land, (not one of their homelands, as that is bad for morale)? Something like that?

 

[Kelleris]

I would just make sure it's a leaky world, as Oathbound (someone suggested it) is. Have it be well-defined, but with a tendency to pick up strange people and groups of people, introducing new ideas and such.

Perhaps thin barriers between other worlds and yours?

Maybe there's some academy or country that is quite chaotic, and encourages the learning of bizarre techniques and the creation of weird crossbreeds?

Perhaps a world where, like old wuxia films, there's a sort of balkanization of styles, with everyone belonging to one or another small tradition of fighters?

 

[dagger]

You don't need a reason any deeper than they all DO exist in your campaign. The problem is that the vast majority of them will never see the light of day in your game. You can structure a campaign setting that has all those prestige classes and where various NPC's SOMEwhere have those feats but when you as DM start trying to ensure that they ALL get used by PC's and NPC's in the course of the campaign your players are going to chafe. They will still likely play the characters they've always played no matter all the expanded options and the vast majority of those options will simply sit, unused and uneeded on a shelf.

You probablly right about them not getting used. I just have all this stuff that never sees the light of day, and I feel like I should at least attempt to use it. One problem is I don't get to game very much.

 

[Psion]

You probablly right about them not getting used. I just have all this stuff that never sees the light of day, and I feel like I should at least attempt to use it.

Well, in addition to assigning bits you like to regions, you should probably make a list of those bits and regions and have it sitting next to you when planning adventures. For example, let's say you have an unusual class or prestige class (like, picking one from recent Dragons, the Erudite), make up an organization that would train or use the class, make up an NPC that belongs to that organization, and give that NPC a reason to get involved in the game. That NPCs involvement may lead players yet other places. Like lets say the players are in a port town. An NPC erudite needs from a far off land needs an escort to a region inland. Where? Perhaps if you are using dragon templates from 313, he is headed inland to meet with a dragon to trade for an item that is important to his order, only to find that the dragon is afflicted with a madness (which the players must deal with.) And so on.

Contrary to what the wicked dimunuative one says above, it is not difficult to weave disparate elements together and give them a presence in the game. Simply consider their goals and how their goals might involve others people or locations.

 

[dagger]

Post holiday bump!

 

[fusangite]

Dagger, I need to find out what you are trying to do with all this stuff before I respond. So let me ask you some basic questions:
1. What is your campaign about? What things have you already decided about the overarching plot and/or setting of the campaign?
2. Are you suggesting that you are using 100% of the stuff from the sources you mention or are you just going to use stuff that "fits" with your world? Take a book like MOTP: the book itself prohibits the simultaneous use of all of its contents.

Published gaming materials are tools. You are asking us for advice on how to use these tools. But you haven't told us what you are making with them. If we knew that, we could answer your question more easily.

 

[Blue_Kryptonite]

I've run my own campaign much the same way for the last 20 years. The secret is to have a large, populated world (or worlds... our game has three extradimensional worlds linked to its solar system, which has five inhabited worlds, two of which are hollow) with multiple barriers (physcial, culture, or mystical) preventing cultural diffusion while at the same time having relatively easy travel between populated areas.

The trick is to keep it all organized and summarized. I keep a large list of what can be done and where in the world it comes from drawn from an equally enormous list of sources. The players can build almost anything that doesn't violate my three core "These are the heroes" rules in our campaign's Series Bible.

Its been successful and ongoing through three generations of players (five if you count my father and my great aunt and grandmother playing with us briefly in the late 70s) and expanding still.

 

[Iron Sheep]

Is there a way to make this work? One of my players suggested using Sigil from Planescape, but I also want to solicit some ideas from this fantastic community (I’m a suck up).

Rather than trying to fit it all in before hand, you may be able to work co-operatively with your players to build a sort of "open campaign world." Start with some of the options that you think are cool to create a small starting area. Let the players get an idea of the options that are available, and get a sense for the characters they want to create: which feats, classes, prestige classes, spells, etc. look like things they want to use later. Then work out some way to build those in. Create organisations for the prestige classes, cultures which use the feats, and so on.

As the campaign develops and you and the players use more options, weave those into the campaign as well. By starting small, you can always change whatever's over the next horizon, or throw in another continent, or squeeze in another country, or make a connection to a parallel plane. The only things which need to be fixed are things which you have told the characters about, everything else can morph and flex as you need it to.

This style of play also allows you to grab new things and work them in as you feel like it.

You probably won't use 90% of the options, but the world wont feel like a grab-bag of millions of different options, because the players will only see the 10% of options that are used (and ideally well-woven into the setting as they are introduced).

Not all players will like playing like this, of course, and some options (like regional feats from FR which are significantly more powerful but must be taken a 1st level) should be clearly worked in from the start if you want to use them so you don't end up with some players upset because they have weaker characters because they didn't know about an option. It requires a fair bit of communication with your players, and it probably works best when you don't have some campaign story arc already worked out.

My last campaign was played like this, and it seemed to work pretty well.

Corran

 

[Kilmore]

Having a truly cosmopolitan setting on a world-wide or even planar scale suggests not only having different cultures and rapid methods of travel, but also a good reason for so many different peoples to represent themselves so close together.

The first thing that comes to my mind is a city that is the capital of a world-wide and interplanar empire that has been around for hundreds or thousands of years. Delegations of each culture set up shop within this capital city in their own part of the balkanized city, in order to represent themselves in the Imperial government. Relations between the communities are not always cordial.