Imagine a generic fantasy world with low tech and average-low magic, where magic succeeded to replace some aspects of real world technology - better medicine and reliable food production.
As a result, population exploded.
What happened few hundred years later, is that vast majority of available land is now covered with one quasi-medieval megalopolis. In some places, it resembles the Kowloon Walled City. People even live on rafts and ships, and some mages are trying to break into elemental planes to colonise them, but the way there is still long. Food is grown in greenhouses, special protected farm areas, sometimes on the roofs of huge condominiums that are spawned everywhere. Oceans are heavily depleted of fish. Few remaining wild reservations are protected by royal houses and druids.
Another outcome of the population surge is that humanoids by cheer numbers subdued all the monstrous races. Most were destroyed, some were accepted as racial minorities, and the remainder, who were too wierd, violent, or proud to live among humanoids, but still could be useful to them, were forced into ghettoes. Those "neighbourhoods", for lack of a better word, are usually surrounded by walls and located on the bottom of ravines, so they could be isolated better. Cramped there are what remains of the monster races. We are talking about everything - dragons, illithids, beholders... Alignment doesn`t matter when you are surrounded by tens of billions of people who hate you. Even the Tarrasque is rumored to sleep somewhere under one of the ghettoes.
Those ghettoes are crazy places, and rarely visited by law enforcement. Usually, if some communication or business is required, it is the monsters that are being allowed to leave temporary, on personal basis. As a result, those ghettos also house the "monsters" of the humanoid races, in form of various criminal structures, as well as some outcasts, rebels and political refugees. Those people sometimes forms ghettoes within ghettoes, enclaves of humanoids among monsters.
The idea is to begin a campaign in such an enclave. I think it can have very nice flavor, and present D&D monsters from a different side...
What do you think?
As a result, population exploded.
What happened few hundred years later, is that vast majority of available land is now covered with one quasi-medieval megalopolis. In some places, it resembles the Kowloon Walled City. People even live on rafts and ships, and some mages are trying to break into elemental planes to colonise them, but the way there is still long. Food is grown in greenhouses, special protected farm areas, sometimes on the roofs of huge condominiums that are spawned everywhere. Oceans are heavily depleted of fish. Few remaining wild reservations are protected by royal houses and druids.
Another outcome of the population surge is that humanoids by cheer numbers subdued all the monstrous races. Most were destroyed, some were accepted as racial minorities, and the remainder, who were too wierd, violent, or proud to live among humanoids, but still could be useful to them, were forced into ghettoes. Those "neighbourhoods", for lack of a better word, are usually surrounded by walls and located on the bottom of ravines, so they could be isolated better. Cramped there are what remains of the monster races. We are talking about everything - dragons, illithids, beholders... Alignment doesn`t matter when you are surrounded by tens of billions of people who hate you. Even the Tarrasque is rumored to sleep somewhere under one of the ghettoes.
Those ghettoes are crazy places, and rarely visited by law enforcement. Usually, if some communication or business is required, it is the monsters that are being allowed to leave temporary, on personal basis. As a result, those ghettos also house the "monsters" of the humanoid races, in form of various criminal structures, as well as some outcasts, rebels and political refugees. Those people sometimes forms ghettoes within ghettoes, enclaves of humanoids among monsters.
The idea is to begin a campaign in such an enclave. I think it can have very nice flavor, and present D&D monsters from a different side...
What do you think?
