Looking for help with campaign setting

[ajanders]

I'm working on a low-magic setting for something vaguely like Europe in the late 1600's, and am seeking advice, feedback, validation, or criticism. Please feel free to add any of the above.

The world is shaped a great deal like ours.
The major continent for purposes of this game looks a great deal like Europe geographically, except it lacks the Italian peninsula.
To the south of the continent lies a calm shallow sea like the Mediterranean. On the other side of that sea lies the Dragon Emirates: desert city-states ruled by mostly by blue dragons.
The eastern side of the continent is girdled by a long chain of high mountains where dwarves used to live, but now goblins do. Further east are more hills where lots more goblins live. Nobody knows if there's anything beyond that: a few people have tried, but they get killed and eaten by the goblins.
A great ocean stretches to the west: the elves live on a great island in that ocean, and they dislike visitors. Sailing west is a good way to find out how powerful elven wizards are.
As you go north, eventually explorers wandered onto vast plains of ice without any civilization whatsoever. After a while, they gave up and came back south.

 

[dshai527]

Sounds like a good start so far.

What races and classes will be playable?

How many nations will you have?

What is the economic structure of those nations are any of them at war?

How does religon fit into the mix? What god or gods are available?

Will the different nations have specialties for PC's?

What is the driving force behind the setting? What makes the players wanna be something special? Money, POwer, Save the world, Greater good...?


I'll try to add more later, I'm still at work.

 

[Sagan Darkside]

Do you want some source book suggestions?

Dry Lands by MEG- it details a dragon oriented desert society.

Cathay from AEG (not out yet) will detail an orient surrounded by a wall of fire- it could be what lies beyond the goblins.

Do you have a story in mind for the world or do you want your pc's to explore and create their own stories?

Have you considered the plug-n-play city supplements? Freeport (Green Ronin), Bluffside (MEG), and Streets of Silver (Living Imagination) are all rather well done.

SD

 

[LostSoul]

Where are the PCs starting? Let the world grow organically. Detail the locations around the first adventure and work from there.

 

[ajanders]

Starting points

I'm trying to stay fairly small scale, but at the same time I want there to be some big differences the PC's can't ignore.
Definitely will take a look at Dry Lands for the Dragon Emirates: that might be handy if the group decides that sounds cool and completely bypasses my local plot points.
But where the group is starting is the rough fantasy equivalent of Hannover, Germany.
I started going through some European history and this just looked like too neat a place to miss.
Seriously, for German people reading this thread, put your D&D on hold for a week or two: you have a really cool country, and should go see it.

Having decided I want to try a fantasy analogue of Hannover for a starting point, four major things from real-world history jumped out as good things to have fantasy analogues for so I can put adventures around them.

*The battle of Arminicus as the Germans and the 10th Legion
It's a giant clash of cultures with treachery and death: I could have whole acres of barrowmounds: little teeny dungeons just waiting to be filled with undead, exotic grave goods, and other interesting monsters.
It's the D&D equivalent of a bag of M&M's: little dungeons PC's can clear in one session and still spend the night in town.

*Schloss Wilhelmstein: a castle built on 16 artificial islands in the middle of Steinhuder Meer Lake. It's not historical, but it's just too nifty to pass up.
Good for the players when they get tired of M&M size dungeons.

*The neighboring town of Hamelin: like the Piper, right? If so, nothing more needs to be said: 4 PC's vs 400,000 rats: good challenge for high level characters, right? And if that doesn't work, there's always the Piper...

*And finally, the Hartz mountains and the Erl King, whose name I am afraid to try and spell in German.
He's big, he's magical, and he likes little kids to come play with him in a disturbingly Michael Jackson kind of way, but with magic.

Comments from people who actually studied this stuff aggressively very welcomed: I'm running off my old college textbooks and google here.
Did I get anything wrong in my four points?
Does anyone have any other ideas?
Thanks all for your help...

 

[Sagan Darkside]

Re: Starting points

Did I get anything wrong in my four points?
Does anyone have any other ideas?

It looks solid to me, but some more book suggestions:

The 7th Sea rpg (published by AEG) has a German like country called Eisen. It has a lot of cool npc's in it that could be converted- it takes place in a fractured Germany that was recently ripped up during a religous civil war.

There is also a box set (same company) called Freiburg - which details an interesting city set in Eisen.

If you want d20 stats for that game- then you can find their conversion in Swashbuckling Adventures.

Good luck!
SD

 

[ajanders]

7th Sea and going Top-down now...

Seventh Sea is a good setting and game, but I think I might just keep taking inspiration from history for my NPC's: I already have Will and Ariel Durant's histories and I'd just have to buy the 7th Sea books. I'm cheap that way

Backing up and taking a look at races very quickly...

Humans exist (obviously)
Elves exist: well, two of their subraces, do. The Gray elves are the ones that live on the island in the west. Wild elves are sprinkled all throughout the central continent.
Both sorts of elves have been charged with the protection of nature from foolish humanity, but they differ on how to accomplish such a thing.
Gray elves kidnap or recruit humans into "re-education camps", then resettle them into a better place where they can live in peace with each other and the world around them. (I am actually thinking about playing this straight, with no or minimal modern irony...)
Wild elves live in the nature and attack humans who come near it or them.
The favored class for Gray elves is sorceror, for wild elves druid.
Dwarves used to live in the eastern mountains, then the goblins pushed them out of their homes. Now they are trying to resettle in the western mountain foothills, building great megalithic pyramids in the plains, sailing giant ships, contracting out to the Dragon Emirates, or settling in Dwarf enclaves in human cities.
They're always hiring mercenaries to fight goblins: they took so many casualties getting pushed out of their mountain homes, they really don't have any dwarves to lose in combat.
But for all that, their preferred class is still fighter.
The orcs were the original northern culture in this area before the humans took over and drove them all out: but in their fighting and pillaging their blood and rage mixed into the humans of the area. Half orcs are throwbacks to some forced encounter centuries ago.
Half-elves exist, but would be very rare in the Hannover area.

No gnomes, no halflings.