D&D General Let's Share Our Alternate Lore

[Reynard]

It is fairly common for us GMs in the process of our adventure creation and world building to incorporate alternate lore for existing D&D elements -- creatures, races, classes, items, spells and on and on.

What cool alternate lore do you have for things in your campaign? Why? How did it come about? Is it just for one setting or basically any time you run D&D? Is creating alternate lore common for you, or rare?

For my part, I like to mess with the origins of monsters. Ogres, for example, are usually the bastard children of hags and noblemen who traded their seed to the hag for some boon or spell or whatever. Sometimes the ogre comes for his inheritance when the nobleman dies. Sometimes the nobleman decides to hunt down the monster (using the PCs) and the PCs find themselves in a weird moral position. I am sure I read it in some novel, myth or other game at some point and did not create it myself, but I just like the way it gives inherent backstory to a standard dumb monster.

 

[Jester David]

My world is a bunch of mashed together post-apocalyptic traits. Orcs are humans mutated by exposure to radioactive magical crystals. They're basically super mutants from Fallout.

 

[akr71]

Goblins are not inherently evil. They are maligned, oppressed and pushed to the margins of society and as a result sometimes have to resort to banditry to survive. More fortunate bands might operate a mine. It is common to find goblins working in larger towns. In fact, no humanoids are inherently evil, though bands of evildoers are common.

There was once a far reaching and advanced empire of tabaxi. They rose to prominence after the decline of the empire of giant-kind. As they taught elves - immigrants from the feywild - how to survive in this new world, the elves harnessed great magic, built Mythals and permanently altered the landscape. The tabaxi empire collapsed and the remnants are scattered and remote. The surviving bands of tabaxi believe it all to be fairy tales and children's stories.

 

[Fenris-77]

I have competing factions, one Vecna and one Raven Queen waging a war in the shadows as they both try to find the shards of the Erlking's crown. Both factions have infiltrated the other major factions of Faerun, especially the Harpers and Zents, in order to contain exposure and hunt for rumors of the missing shards. Both sides have access to magic that can remove memories, and they use this to collect rumors and stories about the shards, but also to deny information to their enemies and remove evidence of their actions. Changling spies, Shadar Kai strike teams, Necromancer Interrogators. Whee!

 

[Richards]

My 3.5 campaign is winding down (5 game sessions left) and then I'll be starting up my first truly homebrewed campaign world - the others have all been heavily-modified Greyhawk campaigns. One thing I'm doing is swapping the elf/drow relationship: in this world, the drow were the progenitor race of elves, having created a vast empire on another continent that has since fallen to ruins. The elves (on the smaller, Australia-sized continent that will be the PCs' starting area) are offshoots of the drow race. These elves also sleep, although cannot be compelled to do so (so I'll keep their immunities but allow them to sleep when desired - I want them to be able to dream normally like other races do, as dreams are going to be a big part of this campaign.)

I also like Eberron's dinosaur-riding halflings so I think I'll be incorporating something similar with them. They're over on the bigger, wilder continent, so halflings will be almost unheard of by the PCs.

Also, having run these same players through two full campaigns through level 20, I'm going to make a point of trying to incorporate monsters they haven't encountered before whenever possible. My first few planned adventures will therefore feature mongrelfolk, dire corbies, snailfolk, and flumphs.

Johnathan

 

[Doug McCrae]

Giants, halflings, and all the other humans-but-short/tall races in D&D come from planes of existence where everything else is sized as if they were humans. So in giant-home, everything is giant, and in halfling-home everything is small.

 

[jgsugden]

The short version of my Mythos:

• The Universe Creates two Primary Gods - the Light and Dark.
• They Create Tiamat, Bahamut and Vorel. While arguing Tiamat and Bahamut accidentally kill Vorel.
• Vorel is granted the Heavens as a place to recover for all eternity.
• Tiamat and Bahamut battle for 100,000 years. Their battles spawn the universe, dragons and giants.
• Gods arise from Giants and Dragons. They realize worship of these beings can create power that rivals Tiamat and Bahamut.
• The Gods create Angels, who create Elves and Dwarves as their servants.
• Asmodeus falls creating Devils.
• The Far Realm crashes into the Multiverse. This creates the transitive planes (Feywild, Shadowfell, Ethereal Plane (as a transitive plane to the Far Realms), turns many Devils into Demons, and other chaos.
• The Astral Plane connects all other planes. The Elemental Plane is one plane filled with giant pockets of the elements (cast offs from Tiamat and Bahamut battling for 100,000 years).

It is a tighter mythos, a smaller Great Wheel cosmology, and gives some more juice to the Far Realm as a major villain in the campaign world.

 

[Oofta]

I always run in my own home campaign world. Since I've been doing that for a long time the amount of alternative lore is ... significant.

But at a high level, the Norse gods are the primary movers and shakers of the world. I've also stolen non-human gods from other sources, primarily Greyhawk. I also throw in a bit of Celtic mythology with the Sidhe and Seelie and Unseelie court.

So it's a mish-mash. The feywild is Alfheim, the shadowfell is Nifleheim (and all souls go through Nifleheim to get to their final destination). Moradin crafted most of the weapons the Aesir (Norse gods), Garl Glittergold wove Sif's hair, the elven gods were the Vaenir which explains why you have elven deities Frey and Freya living in Asgard.

Giants, orcs, goblins originated from Jotunheim or were created from powerful Jotun who lived there. Jotunheim is not only the land of giants but also demons, devils and gods such as Gruumsh.

 

[Voadam]

I've done godless clerics since 3e. Divine magic is a different power source than arcane and the techniques to tap it are taught in specific traditions, often in churches and cults but also mystical societies. Many in my game world believe the gods grant the power or that the power is dependent on them, but actually it is just techniques to tap divine power and faithless or false priests who know and practice the techniques are just as potent with their magic. This also allows Thor to be a god whose cleric's can cast spells that the giant slaying warrior god cannot whereas it is a little weird when he grants the spells. It also allows the truth of the gods to be mysterious with theories that some are in fact just dragons or giants, actually demons in disguise, or just flat out false gods that do not exist. It also accommodates wildly different interpretations of the same god among people in the world.

In 3e/pathfinder I also made dwarven and giant as dialects of the same language to support myths that dwarves are actually cursed giants (lifted from Arcanis), giants are actually cursed dwarves (lifted from Dark Sun) or that dwarves were the slave creations of giants who Moradin freed in the Dawn War (lifted from 4e) along with groups who vehemently denied any connections. I further had both be mechanically treated as humanoid subtype (giant).

Similarly at different points I had orcs be subtype goblins and orcish to be simply a dialect of goblin for a more Tolkien/Warhammer feel to the greenskins collectively.

 

[Stormonu]

I have a plane of dreams, which are the origin point for the Elves and Goblinoids. The Elves are the daydreams of the gods, whereas the Goblinoids are the fever-dreams and nightmares. Both eventually found a way into the material world through the acts of humans and succeeding generations of the creatures have become material, mortal beings instead of quasi-real dreams.