Laurefindel
Legend
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D&D General List the 3 Coolest Parts of Your Homebrew World
- Thread starter AcererakTriple6
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Voadam
Legend
1) Henotheistic Theocratic Empire in civil war.
There is big D&D infrastructure but tons of resources poured into the multifront succession war so local problems are mostly up to local heroes to deal with. Having an imperial church devoted to an ascended paladin but not monotheistic in cosmology allows a big D&Dized but familiar medieval type church to work with as well as D&D's polytheism.
2) Divine spellcasting is godless and the nature of gods are vague and ambiguous.
Allows lots of options for heresies, intra-church issues, non-deity divine spellcasting traditions, and theories on the nature of the gods.
3) Mashup campaign.
I am taking what I like from tons of sources (Ptolus, Golarion, Eberron, Warhammer, Midgard, Freeport, Spiros Blaak, Scarred Lands, World of Darkness, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc.) and running with it with a lot of fun syncretism. There are familiar elements for people to hook onto and play off of, but I don't have to deal with any of the setting elements I do not care for and it is open enough for player input.
There is big D&D infrastructure but tons of resources poured into the multifront succession war so local problems are mostly up to local heroes to deal with. Having an imperial church devoted to an ascended paladin but not monotheistic in cosmology allows a big D&Dized but familiar medieval type church to work with as well as D&D's polytheism.
2) Divine spellcasting is godless and the nature of gods are vague and ambiguous.
Allows lots of options for heresies, intra-church issues, non-deity divine spellcasting traditions, and theories on the nature of the gods.
3) Mashup campaign.
I am taking what I like from tons of sources (Ptolus, Golarion, Eberron, Warhammer, Midgard, Freeport, Spiros Blaak, Scarred Lands, World of Darkness, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc.) and running with it with a lot of fun syncretism. There are familiar elements for people to hook onto and play off of, but I don't have to deal with any of the setting elements I do not care for and it is open enough for player input.
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SkidAce
Legend
The Kaijuraiman Plateau is a Lost World area, kept tropically warm by one main volcano, and many smaller and varied geyser and steam filled areas/vents. Various creatures of a bygone age frequent the plateau, such as various giant reptiles, insects, and mammals. It is also inhabited by lizardfolk (lacerta), aarakocra, and an advanced tribe of goblins.
There are several gargantuan creatures known as kaiju that inhabit the area, whil other unknown behemoths may lay slumbering within hidden areas.
The area on the top of the plateau is secluded from the outside world by treacherous weather conditions, and nearly unclimbable cliff walls towering hundreds of feet. Recently, an earthquake caused by an unnatural cooling of the area caused a section of cliffs to collapsed int a fairly accessible ravine, prompting exploration of the area.
There are several gargantuan creatures known as kaiju that inhabit the area, whil other unknown behemoths may lay slumbering within hidden areas.
The area on the top of the plateau is secluded from the outside world by treacherous weather conditions, and nearly unclimbable cliff walls towering hundreds of feet. Recently, an earthquake caused by an unnatural cooling of the area caused a section of cliffs to collapsed int a fairly accessible ravine, prompting exploration of the area.
theCourier
Explorer
1) The Rainbow Archipelago are the remains of the Florida Peninsula in the future after it was destroyed by the God of Natural Calamities following a ritual-gone-wrong.
2) Travel is locked down by a ring of storms that surrounds the islands, causing rainbows to be seen in the distance at most times and giving the Archipelago its name. They also keep it safe from the several apocalypses going on in the American mainland.
3) The remains of Jurassic Park Florida remained relatively safe and there are several islands with thriving dinosaur populations.
2) Travel is locked down by a ring of storms that surrounds the islands, causing rainbows to be seen in the distance at most times and giving the Archipelago its name. They also keep it safe from the several apocalypses going on in the American mainland.
3) The remains of Jurassic Park Florida remained relatively safe and there are several islands with thriving dinosaur populations.
Demetrios1453
Hero
The three coolest places in my campaign world? The North Pole, the South Pole, and the tops of the highest mountain range.
SkidAce
Legend
I cannot express how much I love doing this and playing in this style.
I wholeheartedly endorse this approach.
pukunui
Legend
I mostly run the official adventures set in the Forgotten Realms with minimal changes; however, a few years back I did run an episodic campaign set in a homebrew world that had a mashup of ideas from various places.
The most notable thing that I thought was cool about it were the religious beliefs of the various races/cultures. To start with, I borrowed heavily from Game of Thrones and went with the whole "old gods and the new", with primal nature deities still worshipped in secret by rural folk and druids and the like, and a more organised religion (the Andarian Septry) based around a single god with seven aspects (Father, Mother, Maiden, etc). I went with an Eberron approach and made it so no one knew if the gods were real or not, but I took it a step further by removing divine magic (and clerics and paladins) all together.
For the dwarves, I borrowed heavily from Dragon Age. So my dwarves didn't worship gods. Instead, they honored the "best and brightest" among them as saint-like paragons. They also revered a Mother Earth-like entity they called the Stone.
Halflings, meanwhile, worshipped a trio of female deities they refer to collectively as the Sisterhood. One of them was their goddess of luck, and they only ever refer to her as "the Lady" because to say her name is to invite misfortune.
As I said, that was the thing I thought was the coolest, but unfortunately my players didn't really engage with that aspect of the game, so none of those ideas really saw much use in actual play.
The most notable thing that I thought was cool about it were the religious beliefs of the various races/cultures. To start with, I borrowed heavily from Game of Thrones and went with the whole "old gods and the new", with primal nature deities still worshipped in secret by rural folk and druids and the like, and a more organised religion (the Andarian Septry) based around a single god with seven aspects (Father, Mother, Maiden, etc). I went with an Eberron approach and made it so no one knew if the gods were real or not, but I took it a step further by removing divine magic (and clerics and paladins) all together.
For the dwarves, I borrowed heavily from Dragon Age. So my dwarves didn't worship gods. Instead, they honored the "best and brightest" among them as saint-like paragons. They also revered a Mother Earth-like entity they called the Stone.
Halflings, meanwhile, worshipped a trio of female deities they refer to collectively as the Sisterhood. One of them was their goddess of luck, and they only ever refer to her as "the Lady" because to say her name is to invite misfortune.
As I said, that was the thing I thought was the coolest, but unfortunately my players didn't really engage with that aspect of the game, so none of those ideas really saw much use in actual play.
cbwjm
Hero
My world has elder dragons asleep throughout it, essentially lesser gods, a true challenge for the true gods who couldn't destroy them them, only put them into an eternal slumber. They created the dragonborn and kobolds to serves them in a great war during the mythic age.
Dwarves, the original mage-smiths, each dearth has within themselves the ability to forge a magical item of great power.
Rituals, not all of them are spells that can be cast with a spell slot, some are powerful magic that anyone can cast, if they gather the right materials. For instance, a portal to the shadowfell was opened by finding a soft spot between the planes and then performing the ritual, killing a family member to complete the ritual.
Cool idea for a thread, by the way.
Dwarves, the original mage-smiths, each dearth has within themselves the ability to forge a magical item of great power.
Rituals, not all of them are spells that can be cast with a spell slot, some are powerful magic that anyone can cast, if they gather the right materials. For instance, a portal to the shadowfell was opened by finding a soft spot between the planes and then performing the ritual, killing a family member to complete the ritual.
Cool idea for a thread, by the way.
Campaign: "DREAMS OF ERTHE" (D&D 3.5)
1. The PCs are some of the few individuals in the world who wake up each morning with perfect recall of the previous night's dreams, which makes them particularly suited to serve the Queen of Dreams, who has her dream-servants train them as dreamwalkers each night while they sleep. (She'd tried training others, only to have them wake up the next morning having forgotten everything they learned while sleeping - very frustrating!) The PCs are needed because there's a strange dream-plague spreading across the small continent the PCs start the campaign in, causing some people to get trapped in their dreams, with their physical bodies undergoing a sort of stasis in the meantime, requiring neither food not drink as their minds repeat the same dream sequences over and over. With the proper training, the PCs can enter the dreams of those trapped and try to free them, although so far they have the best success when entering the dreams from the point of origin, so they have to hunt down the dream victims as they slowly make their way across the continent.
2. The gods in this campaign are patterned after the PCs and the prominent NPCs of two campaigns ago which ended when those PCs gathered up the four elemental pieces of the "universe seed" which grew the universe that eventually (billions of years later) supplanted their own. This campaign takes place in that universe, with the gods being patterned after the specific individuals the universe seed had become attuned to.
3. There's a gnome NPC in the PCs' home city named Aenus Feysputter (deliberately pronounced "Anus Face-Butter," because gnomes have a predilection with trying to outdo each other with having the most ridiculous-sounding names; if you don't believe me, just ask the renowned gnomish wizard Grimblegrack Fishmelon). Aenus is a potioncrafter and also sells penny candy to the children of the city out of a bicycle cart. The "copper penny candyman" offers potions in either the normal liquid form or in candy form; "candy" potions with instantaneous effects are standard candies that you eat at once, while those with ongoing effects are often in the form of gum or hard candies whose effects last as long as you keep chewing the gum or keep sucking on the candy (up to the spell's normal duration).
Johnathan
1. The PCs are some of the few individuals in the world who wake up each morning with perfect recall of the previous night's dreams, which makes them particularly suited to serve the Queen of Dreams, who has her dream-servants train them as dreamwalkers each night while they sleep. (She'd tried training others, only to have them wake up the next morning having forgotten everything they learned while sleeping - very frustrating!) The PCs are needed because there's a strange dream-plague spreading across the small continent the PCs start the campaign in, causing some people to get trapped in their dreams, with their physical bodies undergoing a sort of stasis in the meantime, requiring neither food not drink as their minds repeat the same dream sequences over and over. With the proper training, the PCs can enter the dreams of those trapped and try to free them, although so far they have the best success when entering the dreams from the point of origin, so they have to hunt down the dream victims as they slowly make their way across the continent.
2. The gods in this campaign are patterned after the PCs and the prominent NPCs of two campaigns ago which ended when those PCs gathered up the four elemental pieces of the "universe seed" which grew the universe that eventually (billions of years later) supplanted their own. This campaign takes place in that universe, with the gods being patterned after the specific individuals the universe seed had become attuned to.
3. There's a gnome NPC in the PCs' home city named Aenus Feysputter (deliberately pronounced "Anus Face-Butter," because gnomes have a predilection with trying to outdo each other with having the most ridiculous-sounding names; if you don't believe me, just ask the renowned gnomish wizard Grimblegrack Fishmelon). Aenus is a potioncrafter and also sells penny candy to the children of the city out of a bicycle cart. The "copper penny candyman" offers potions in either the normal liquid form or in candy form; "candy" potions with instantaneous effects are standard candies that you eat at once, while those with ongoing effects are often in the form of gum or hard candies whose effects last as long as you keep chewing the gum or keep sucking on the candy (up to the spell's normal duration).
Johnathan
DeviousQuail
Explorer
1. Shard Realms: Think oblivion gates meets Dragon Age Inquisition. They are mostly random in appearance, occurring when two or more worlds "overlap" each other. The different magics create dangerous places full of the weird and impossible. They wither away over time and my plan is to use them as the explanation for the weirder stuff across the worlds.
2. Shards: Found in the heart of a shard realm, the shard is a twisted object of pure potential magic. Using 5e, any spell that has a GP cost uses shards instead (you might also need the items listed in the components but the cost for those is greatly reduced). They are also required for all those great workings of magic not contained in the spell list. This includes enchanted objects.
3. Species not Races: I posted about these in another thread already but I dropped the 5e races and came up with a list of playable species instead. Human, Wolv, Verdan, Drakken, Elemental (4 subspecies), Riven, Kothan, and Witch. Each one has their own creature type (humanoid, beast, plant, wyrm, etc) and interactions with the core rules of 5e. For example, Elementals (except water) and Riven are not healed by healing spells or potions.
2. Shards: Found in the heart of a shard realm, the shard is a twisted object of pure potential magic. Using 5e, any spell that has a GP cost uses shards instead (you might also need the items listed in the components but the cost for those is greatly reduced). They are also required for all those great workings of magic not contained in the spell list. This includes enchanted objects.
3. Species not Races: I posted about these in another thread already but I dropped the 5e races and came up with a list of playable species instead. Human, Wolv, Verdan, Drakken, Elemental (4 subspecies), Riven, Kothan, and Witch. Each one has their own creature type (humanoid, beast, plant, wyrm, etc) and interactions with the core rules of 5e. For example, Elementals (except water) and Riven are not healed by healing spells or potions.
huh. Three? Do you go with nations? Religions? Deities? Species? Geological/-graphic regions? Cultures? Languages? Classes? Organziations? ...or...or...or...
Well, it's my setting, so I think ALL of it's cool. hahaha. This is hard....So, hmmm...I'll try to go in different directions.
1. Location: The "Lost Sands," a.k.a. the Thelitian Desert, a.k.a. "The Seven Sands," a.k.a. the Empire of Thel. A region of magical "fallout" from the calamity of the Godswar. Currently the expansive deserts (seven different desert regions, in all) that constitutes the Empire of Thel ("Thelitia" to those outside the deserts). Magic there is chaotic. "Wild magic," in the 5e vernacular, for anyone not native to those realms. Only those born and raised (taught and trained) in the desert environments are capable of reliable, "proper," spellcasting. This makes the mages of the indigenous Thellic humans extraordinarily powerful within Thel. The other species of the sands: a felinoid people of the border grasslands, and salamanders who inhabit/"rule" (insofar as anyone can rule anything there) the Flame Desert, are also able to cast normally. Outsider mages are at a severe disadvantage within the realms of Thel.
2. Biology: True dragons are in decline. They have more and more difficulty producing wyrm/"true" dragon offspring. More often than not, the majority of a clutch of eggs (if not the entire clutch, in recent years), viable offspring are mutated 'draconic" creatures: hydrae (four limbs, multi-heads, possible breath weapon), behirs (serpentine, many limbs, no wings, breath weapons), linnorms (serpentine, two clawed forelimbs, no wings, venomous bite), wyverns (two rear limbs, wings, venomous tail, no breath weapon), dragonnes, and such like. So, that is where those kinds of creatures come from...and they are increasing. The number of actual "D&D dragons" is slimmer and slimmer. Gemstone dragons, specifically, are singular individuals. True wyrms are dismayed and at a loss for a remedy.
3. Organization: maybe not "the coolest" one, there are an awful lot of organizations across my setting. But, a particular favorite of mine, is the Riv Chaliir ("rihv sha-leer"). Translated from [my world's] elvish as the "Leaf Dancers." A mystic order of my world's largest "high elf" kingdom/realm. The Riv Chaliir are sacred archer-monks who are trained to the perfection of their arts for the express purpose of being assigned to defend the high elves' premiere council of sorcerers (the most powerful mages among the high elfin folk, tasked with the caretaking and protection of the magic of the world).
Well, it's my setting, so I think ALL of it's cool. hahaha. This is hard....So, hmmm...I'll try to go in different directions.
1. Location: The "Lost Sands," a.k.a. the Thelitian Desert, a.k.a. "The Seven Sands," a.k.a. the Empire of Thel. A region of magical "fallout" from the calamity of the Godswar. Currently the expansive deserts (seven different desert regions, in all) that constitutes the Empire of Thel ("Thelitia" to those outside the deserts). Magic there is chaotic. "Wild magic," in the 5e vernacular, for anyone not native to those realms. Only those born and raised (taught and trained) in the desert environments are capable of reliable, "proper," spellcasting. This makes the mages of the indigenous Thellic humans extraordinarily powerful within Thel. The other species of the sands: a felinoid people of the border grasslands, and salamanders who inhabit/"rule" (insofar as anyone can rule anything there) the Flame Desert, are also able to cast normally. Outsider mages are at a severe disadvantage within the realms of Thel.
2. Biology: True dragons are in decline. They have more and more difficulty producing wyrm/"true" dragon offspring. More often than not, the majority of a clutch of eggs (if not the entire clutch, in recent years), viable offspring are mutated 'draconic" creatures: hydrae (four limbs, multi-heads, possible breath weapon), behirs (serpentine, many limbs, no wings, breath weapons), linnorms (serpentine, two clawed forelimbs, no wings, venomous bite), wyverns (two rear limbs, wings, venomous tail, no breath weapon), dragonnes, and such like. So, that is where those kinds of creatures come from...and they are increasing. The number of actual "D&D dragons" is slimmer and slimmer. Gemstone dragons, specifically, are singular individuals. True wyrms are dismayed and at a loss for a remedy.
3. Organization: maybe not "the coolest" one, there are an awful lot of organizations across my setting. But, a particular favorite of mine, is the Riv Chaliir ("rihv sha-leer"). Translated from [my world's] elvish as the "Leaf Dancers." A mystic order of my world's largest "high elf" kingdom/realm. The Riv Chaliir are sacred archer-monks who are trained to the perfection of their arts for the express purpose of being assigned to defend the high elves' premiere council of sorcerers (the most powerful mages among the high elfin folk, tasked with the caretaking and protection of the magic of the world).
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