Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5566422" data-attributes="member: 4937">I would say that I typically do something more middle of the road.  I consider my world to look something like the 80's D&D cartoon, but I also pick and choose what goes in it (no orcs, halflings, or gnomes, for example, though having a goblin in the bar with you would not be unusual in large parts of the world).I personally consider 'Earth' to be a kitchen sink world, simultaneously having Eastern and Western themed area, and simultaneously supporting civilizations at any tech level from stone age to industrial.  In isolated areas of 21st century earth you can go from tech level 1 to tech level 7 in the space of a few hundred miles.  And in some sense, the ancient world was even more diverse with thousands of distinct cultures and languages isolated from each other by distance and xenophobia.I prefer that a world be at least as diverse as earth, and more if it contains more than one sentient species.Again, something of a mix.  Monsters are usually species, but typically there is a liberal sprinkling of legendary monsters about of the sort that if defeated, it is a matter of legend and song.   Often these legendary monsters are progenitors of the class, either globally or at least regionally.  The primary inspiration isn't Greek, so much as it is Tolkien - with monsters like Ungoliant and Shelob being the legendary progenitors of the race of monstrous spiders.   Because of this Tolkien like prespective, I've been 'advancing' monsters on an ad hoc basis almost since the beginning of my DMing career.  So for example, in one country there might be a legendary Peryton - from which a great brood of the foul beasts has decended and plagues a wide area across a continent.   On another continent, these beasts might be unknown.  Some two hundred miles away, there might be a mountain pass gaurded by the paragon of Manticores, from whom is decended every manticore east of the Great Spine, and so forth.I like this because it makes for a good sandbox.  I have a map that can say things like, "Beware Traveller - Certain Death Awaits", and introduce a monster at 1st level through story, cut scene, or environment that will ultimately become relevant at 10th or 15th level.</blockquote>

Verification