Ongoing Campaign Setting Development by Reynard

[rounser]

That, to me, is how you create a good, "living" campaign setting.

I think that the following "rule" of adventure design from Wolfgang Baur can be extended to the entire campaign in terms of actually running the game:

Simple Backstory: Most DMs and designers hate to hear it, but much of the time lavished on history and background is wasted energy. Players never find out who dug the tomb, how the wizard was betrayed by her apprentice, or why the assassin guild changed sides and disappeared. Working on backstory doesn't improve the gameplay experience for anyone but the bards and scholars obsessed with legends or lore. Unless it connects directly to action in the current timeframe (and the PCs have a way of learning it), skip the involved history. Save that for sourcebooks.

This is not to say cut it all. Details of which faction can be turned against another, which guard might take a bribe, or what the villain ultimately plans to do if the party doesn't stop him are all appropriate. Make sure your backstory is recent and relevant; avoid anything that starts "Thousands of years ago..."

You may suggest that you're "writing the sourcebook", but I'm not sure that sourcebooks justify their own existence in terms of actually running the game. This is an extreme stance when compared to D&D's accepted wisdom, but something perhaps worth chewing over nevertheless, I think. There are, after all, only so many D&D prep hours you can spend, and I strongly suspect that the temptation to spend them on world design is simply because it's fun, rather than actually practical. That's certainly been the case with me. But I won't post offtopic further; you've got your own thing going on here.

 

[Reynard]

Time Keeping

You all thought this thread was dead, didn't you?

Anyway, I am picking it back up again -- this time running it in AD&D 1E. We're getting in the way back machine in other ways to -- the campaign will be the "lead up" to the "Hellstair" adventure I ran as a "playtest" of the setting -- searching for the Book of Dawn in order to allow the Order of Arcane Light to form before babyrast regains its might.

Here's some thoughts on time in the campaign.

There are 13 lunar months, each with 28 days. I will randomly determine the starting date of the campaign. PCs' brithdays (and other other random event days I come up with) will also be randomly determined, by rolling 4d4-3 for the month and 3d10-2 for the day.

The following is the months hours of daylight and average temperatures (for the "temperate zone" anyway):

1 (Low Spring) - 2 hours - 20
2 (Mid Spring) - 4 hours - 30
3 (High Spring) - 6 hours - 40
4 (Low Summer) - 8 hours - 50
5 (Mid Summer) - 10 hours - 60
6 (High Summer) - 12 hours - 70
7 (Low Autumn) - 12 hours - 70
8 (Mid Autumn) - 10 hours - 50
9 (High Autumn) - 8 hours - 50
10 (Low Winter) - 6 hours - 40
11 (Mid Winter) - 4 hours - 30
12 (High Winter) - 2 hours - 20
13 (Dead of Winter) - 0 hours - 10

Note that daily temperatures can range 10 or more degrees in either direction. Also note that the month starts at waxing, so the full moon is the second week of the month and the new moon is the last week. "Dead of Winter" is an (un)holy month for all manner of nocturnal and subteranean creatures -- including orcs -- and the week of the new moon that month -- where there is naught but starlight -- is often an orgy of destruction by those creatures.