D&D General Let's Workshop Some Setting Elements

[Imaculata]

Stealing from 4th age, have Icons. These are NPCs that the players should not generally be assumed to meet -- King George, Margaret Bondfield, Churchill, Gwyneth Marjorie Thompson, Dorothy Lawrence, Chamberlain, Dr Marie Stopes, Agatha Christie, Oswald Mosley, Beatrix Potter, Fleming, Einstein, Orwell, DH Lawrence, Dame Millicent Fawcett.

I love this idea! One of the fun things about using a historic period as a campaign setting, is having various historical figures make cameos as npc's.

Steal from Dungeon World the idea of fronts and dooms. Crowley should have multiple things going at once, and the players should be able to stop one; but this (in effect) just accelerates the others. Other Icons should have things going on (so not everything is Crowley).

That is PERFECT! This is exactly the sort of system I was looking for. I hadn't even heard of it before. As I see it, Crowley will attempt to unlock the secret to immortality, and burn down parliament. Much like in the game, the campaign will steer towards this climactic finale where the party does battle with a super powered Crowley monster. But in order for him to get there, he needs to accomplish a few different goals. These threats are then linked to various response missions of the players.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I got some stuff I have been working on so here they are.
the half-sunken city of za-ha-mor

the half-sunken city of za ha mor has always been.

The half-sunken city of za ha mor never was.

Sitting in a shallow area of the southeastern ocean at its most northern point is at 9°15'00.7"N 63°47'44.3"E

it is the largest city ever known it is 261 km long and 138 km wide

the partly submerged structures are covered in slit and mangroves making traversal by boat or foot difficult the fact the many of the broken buildings flat out flout in midair makes the sky’s difficult to move through but house eclipse embraces has been able to make it through the narrow spaces because of this it has made a fortune in salvage and their sky fleet is willing to let other explores in for a cut of the profit assuming you mad enough to try exploring this magitek hell.

Its tallest towers are snow-capped and stand 4,810m moving around here without flight or climbing ability is death and not just by falling, drowning or being crushed.

Not including the bizarre wildlife, the abominable constructs or the arcana-trophic mobile vegetation, the most common dangers are the Feeralto legions their webs which are as thick as a human arm, bright purple and smell of lavender for some reason.

The other largest threat is the others a collection of strange aberrations who work together for unknown reason their territory is littered with image traps which the more you look at the more they damage you, copies of which do not harm views.

Fortunately, the others and the Feeralto spend most of their time trying to kill each other than explores and salvagers.

Feeralto are known as stealers of life, destroyers of hope, soul grinders an army of bug horrors look like a ten limbed ettercap crossed with an arcane construct they have six legions known to be found all over za ha mor they are universally aggressive, hateful, sadistic but seemingly incapable of turning on each other. Feeralto do not seem to need food or water but can eat if they wish and are most active around the evenings or early mornings with mild activity throughout the night. Six types are known corresponding to six of the seven elemental planes.

The others are telepathic with most types capable of floating in mid-air and seem to always contain a crystal organ which is highly prized by scholars, wizards and mystics. Some have abilities that let them attack with the poisons light.
Nearly nothing is known of them.

Why do people brave za-ha-mor?

Almost any part of it when salvaged is worth more money than most human leaders make in a lifetime and lavos-la will pay twice your literal weight in gold for the information that comes out of za-ha-mor plus it has more magic weapons and magitek than almost anywhere else and it is more or less free past giving a cut to the house eclipse embraces which is not hard to do.

I do not think there has been many 3-dimensional hex crawls?

legend of the seven elemental masters.

Seven there are

seven-sealed away

seven uplifted from the small folk

seven that must never return to the world

fire beneath the islands of artifice, fire and gun.
She how would let the war return to the world

water lost in the bowls of the western ocean
she would drown and dissolve us all.

wood hidden in the forest beyond the great desert.
He forged the Forrest of blades and would crush the nations in vines

metal jailed in the star-filled sky
she with lightning and steel would reap our souls.

Earth hidden in the heart of the tallest mountain
he would crush or shatter the skin of the world

cold void chained to the white moon
she would freeze the land and rot the sun

the transcendent polarity prison can never be spoken of
he would be the calamity beyond the world.

The smallfolk were once said the follow the Gígantes of the elemental planes in number lost in this age.

For faith full service seven were made into elemental lord to lead the small folk

four meters of flesh merged with elemental might.

The elemental masters ruled for a time before there apathy and cruelty to the people became too much.

An alliance of all species cast them out and locked them away.

have tomb filled with a super boss might be fun.

 

[NotAYakk]

I love this idea! One of the fun things about using a historic period as a campaign setting, is having various historical figures make cameos as npc's.

Each of those NPCs should have a Secret, an Ambition and at least one Plot.

You can set up their Plots to, like dungeonworld, have portents and results. Portents are the result of them advancing their plots (and give players a chance to see it in action), and results are the change to the world state if their plot succeeds.

Secrets are just fun.

You can make a table of such NPCs and their plots, and randomly roll to see which of them advance their Plots, then add the portents to the local news (plus some other random crap). A weekly newspaper! That would be awesome, where you can embed random noise plus plot advancement for your various NPC protagonists.

That is PERFECT! This is exactly the sort of system I was looking for. I hadn't even heard of it before. As I see it, Crowley will attempt to unlock the secret to immortality, and burn down parliament. Much like in the game, the campaign will steer towards this climactic finale where the party does battle with a super powered Crowley monster. But in order for him to get there, he needs to accomplish a few different goals. These threats are then linked to various response missions of the players.

Fronts – Dungeon World SRD

Campaign Front.

Dangers:
Arcane Enemies: Crowley. Doom: Ascends to immortal monster form
Ambitious Organization: NAZIs. Doom: Coup, takes over government
Planar Forces: Demon Lord. Doom: Demonic infestation of England
Cursed Places: Tower of London. Doom: Area falls into the shadowfell

Grim Portents: (NAZI)
A newspaper controlled by the Fascists being everywhere.
The founding of the British Union of Fascists.
"Brownshirts" smash union strikes.
Parliament blown up, blamed on communists.

Grim Portents: (Crowley)
Flesh golem experiment successful, escapes into the city.
Steals Rosetta stone to decode ancient text
Jan 24 1925 partial Solar Eclipse goes total, doesn't end until someone stops it.

Grim Portents: (Demon Lord)
The Heir to the Throne kidnapped
Archbishop possessed, starts crusade against demons that actually causes backlash
Everyone in a part of the city just dies, their blood staining the Thames red

Grim Portents: (Tower of London)
Guards of the Royal Jewels go missing. Jewels ... seems ... ok.
The Ravens increase in numbers. Those who hurt them suffer horrible misfortune.
A storm cloud forms over the tower, and never goes away.

Crowley is behind a lot of this. He is using the NAZIs to get access to arcane materials held both by the British and overseas. The demon lord is providing power. And the tower is where he intends to ascend to immortality, crowning himself using the corrupted crown jewels as the immortal dark lord of the eternal British empire.

At the same time, the other Dangers are using Crowley. The actual doom is opposed or not really needed by the other dangers, except Crowley actually does want the Tower to fall into the Shadowfel.

Then adventure fronts! The above are major campaign events.

 

[Reynard]

Just as an opinion (and not trying to poo-poo anyone else's) I really don't like the way Dungeon World does D&D. It's too on the nose. Generally speaking I don't like PbtA games. I think they are so gamist in their attempt to be narrativist that they kill any chance of immersion, and Dungeon World is even more problematic for me because it boils down D&D into a pretty silly list of tropes I don't think actually happen at the table very often. It is like a serious remake of a parody of a movie, rather than a remake of the original movie.

 

[Imaculata]

Just as an opinion (and not trying to poo-poo anyone else's) I really don't like the way Dungeon World does D&D. It's too on the nose. Generally speaking I don't like PbtA games. I think they are so gamist in their attempt to be narrativist that they kill any chance of immersion

I'll probably borrow the ideas I do like, and fit them into a D20 campaign.

The most important thing to me is to have a strong underlining structure to drive all the action. I'll make sure the players stay fully immersed, and don't really notice the mechanics behind the curtain. However, I do want them to feel the effects of London slowly falling under Crowley's grasp.

Reading how Dungeon World builds these cascading narrative systems, helps me understand how to build the foundation for all of this. I see now the importance of having multiple factions, each with their own goals.

I can see Scotland Yard also playing a large part in all of this. Perhaps Scotland Yard is one of the organisations that Crowley needs to topple in order to move forward to the next phase of his plan. This could mean that the players can benefit from the help of this faction, until Crowley puts a stop to it. Having the players experience the effects of Crowley's plans is important.

 

[NotAYakk]

Just as an opinion (and not trying to poo-poo anyone else's) I really don't like the way Dungeon World does D&D. It's too on the nose. Generally speaking I don't like PbtA games. I think they are so gamist in their attempt to be narrativist that they kill any chance of immersion, and Dungeon World is even more problematic for me because it boils down D&D into a pretty silly list of tropes I don't think actually happen at the table very often. It is like a serious remake of a parody of a movie, rather than a remake of the original movie.

Oh, I'm not saying use DW for everything.

I'm saying a gamist system to advance world plotlines stolen from DW is fun and useful.

This gamist system isn't exposed to the PCs, but a game the DM plays with themselves.

The structure is just lovely as well; the way it forces you into player-facing things is awesome.

The BBEG isn't a BBEG, they are a Danger; what matters is how they present to the world, not what they are. (You go off and do the thing that they are as well).

As a danger, they have a Doom -- what happens if they succeed. You want this to not be "game over" always; this ensures player agency -- they can just ignore the danger! Then the doom happens!

The grim portents are player facing. What happens in the world that gives signs of the incoming doom? By framing them this way, you aren't saying "the players find X" or "they defeat a dragon who is their ally". They are moves by the bad guy, not events scripted for player involvement.

Players can engage, or not. If not, they happen. If the players are in the wrong spot and can't stop it from happening, it happens. If they are in the right spot, they experience it first hand or can stop it. Cool!

This lets you structure the adventure in a way that doesn't railroad. The players can ignore everything you set up, and you can scrap it or make it keep happening. They might fall in love with one subplot and explore it, letting the other stuff just roll forward, and your world lives and breathes. Then the other subplot touches something they care about, and instead of coming out of nowhere there was all of this foreshadowing built in!

 

[Bupp]

That's a nice simple idea for ley lines, does a nexus boost spell level by 2 levels? Perhaps a ley line/nexus also allows the caster to bypass the 9th level limit so that a wizard could, hypothetically cast a 10th or 11th level fireball.

I quite like the idea of ley lines ever since I read rifts, not sure I ever really implemented them in DnD before though. I think I'd possibly allow a once per day renewal of a couple of spell slots, something similar to arcane recovery but that might be a lot spell slots if they are all over the place. Could be something that has to be at a place of power to draw on the extra spell slots, a place of power that filters the raw magic of the ley lines into something that spellcasters can safely access.

I've also been wanting to use ley lines since Rifts, and I'm finally getting around to starting a new game where I'm going to work them in.

I've been pushed by a series of articles that Nick Landry at Kobold Press put out last year about ley lines, and should probably revisit them.

Midgard Ley Magic Archives

koboldpress.com

At Higher Levels sounds more like a nexus point thing now that I think about it more, Maybe extended durations, or re-reroll 1's on damage spells.

I do like that renewal idea, though.

I've got enough ideas that I think I'm just going to playtest a bunch of them. Like different lines and nexus points can have different abilities. Like this ancient tomb is a nexus of necromancy, and boosts necromantic spells. This ley line lets you re-roll 1's. That way if there are ones I don't like or don't work, I can just avoid using them again.

 

[cbwjm]

I've also been wanting to use ley lines since Rifts, and I'm finally getting around to starting a new game where I'm going to work them in.

I've been pushed by a series of articles that Nick Landry at Kobold Press put out last year about ley lines, and should probably revisit them.

Midgard Ley Magic Archives

koboldpress.com

At Higher Levels sounds more like a nexus point thing now that I think about it more, Maybe extended durations, or re-reroll 1's on damage spells.

I do like that renewal idea, though.

I've got enough ideas that I think I'm just going to playtest a bunch of them. Like different lines and nexus points can have different abilities. Like this ancient tomb is a nexus of necromancy, and boosts necromantic spells. This ley line lets you re-roll 1's. That way if there are ones I don't like or don't work, I can just avoid using them again.

Having them focused on a school is a good idea I hadn't even considered, you could then include alternate effects like a necromancy focused point might deal more necrotic damage butbalso undead gain temporary hit points. An illusion focused point might make the illusion act like it's real so if you make an illusion of a ladder then you can actually climb it.

 

[cbwjm]

Reading those ley line kobold articles now, some cool stuff in them.

 

[Imaculata]

This lets you structure the adventure in a way that doesn't railroad. The players can ignore everything you set up, and you can scrap it or make it keep happening. They might fall in love with one subplot and explore it, letting the other stuff just roll forward, and your world lives and breathes. Then the other subplot touches something they care about, and instead of coming out of nowhere there was all of this foreshadowing built in!

This is what I love about this game mechanic, and I think it can easily be used for any roleplaying system. I like creating a world for my players that is like a sandbox, but with bounderies. I want to give my players the freedom to chase plots that they like, while showing them that the world moves on while they do their thing. I want them to feel how a shadow gradually falls over London, and certain districts are no longer safe.

It also reminds me a bit of the boardgame Arkham Horror, where a doomtracker progresses steadily, eventually causing shops to close, and certain allies to become unavailable. The players feel the growing shadow that hangs over their quest.

I can see a similar thing happening in my campaign. As Crowley's hordes take control of certain areas of London, important shops in those areas close down, and allies are killed or forced to flee. Players can choose to defend certain districts to keep them from falling under Crowley's control. Every adventure day is a race against time. Can the players prevent or delay Crowley from achieving the goals that bring the doom closer? Which leads do they prioritize? On top of that, they may also need to defend their home base, if Crowley attacks that area.

I think it might be fun to have markers on a map of London that show the players which areas are now lost. Without tipping the veil too much, this would give the players some clue how bad things are.