D&D 5E Pick-and-Choose World Building

[Hand of Evil]

A couple of more pics...places to adventure

 

[Desdichado]

-- Scrolls are not A Thing. Instead, spellcasters tattoo spells onto their flesh, the ink magically fading when the spell is called upon. Evil spellcasters have been known to skin their opponents and wear cloaks of stitched-together tattooed human skin, replacing patches as they are used.

Oooh, I really like that one.

I really like the idea, actually, that magic is Not Natural™ and therefore, by definition, anyone who practices it is--conceptually--the equivalent of the old Alienist prestige class. Anyone who practices magic--of any kind--is not going to follow the Merlin or Gandalf archetype. They're going to be power-hungry, obsessive, callous and inhuman. More like the Ten Who Were Taken. Best thing to do with them is lynch them before they become too powerful.

This human-skin scroll notion fits perfectly with that paradigm.

 

[Gilladian]

A world/region wherein civilization consists of highly powerful wizards who completely dominate the landscape. Each wizard lives in a massive structure of some sort, filled with the minions, servants, guards and followers who support his lifestyle. Eternal war is waged between each of these structures and the wizard rulers, with armies of ...whatevers... constantly being summoned/generated/constructed and launched against each other, for reasons no ordinary non-wizard can comprehend.

 

[Herobizkit]

Sometimes it's easier to just flip what's expected.

* The Underdark is now an underwater civilization and the Drow are now also Sea Elves.

* The goodly races have been driven underground and now Drow, Duergar, Mind-Flayers and their demonic allies dominate the surface world.

* Dark Sun, but now the "desert" is an Arctic tundra. Instead of life energy, Defilers now siphon warmth from enemies and the land. Preservers seek out underground pockets of natural heat and try to coax them to the surface.

... or steal liberally.

* A world in decline: the Great Nothing closes its darkness around the land, slowly consuming it and all its inhabitants into a great void. Or perhaps an intelligent Giant Meteor is heading to the planet and will destroy it in Three Days unless someone can stop it, or somehow reverse time...

* A world where anthropomorphic animals are the dominant species and humanity failed to evolve past the caveman stage.

* A great flood has almost completely submerged the World of Old leaving only a handful of natural, habitable islands to a population of seafarers and relic hunters.

* A race of shape-shifting robots wages war on a (believed to be) inorganic and dying planet. The core of the world holds the seeds to heal itself, but only organic creatures may venture into its depths and survive long enough to claim them...

 

[ephemeron]

-- A militaristic kingdom of hobgoblins that are not "savage humanoids" but boast a civilization as proud as any in the setting. Sure, they're ruthless, antagonistic and not at all nice, and they keep slaves and oppress goblins as a servile underclass, etc. But they're not savages or barbarians. That kind of nonsense is what orcs are for. Treat them as a kind of combination of Nazi Germany and Imperial Rome.

And Claudio Pozas has already illustrated them:

 

[The Grand User]

Humans are the only race without access to magical power unless in physical contact with a dragon, and dragons have no control over it beyond their breath weapon, but together they make a formidable team. This leads to humans and dragons having generally friendly relations, while other races are more variable (they dislike competition).

The dwarven empire has the ability to create localized earthquakes, with which they use to enforce order in the overworld.

 

[auspexRex]

(a cut down version of my campaign world)

A canyon, miles wide with islands floating in the air (inside it) with an everglades like swamp lands below. Where Halfling and Gnomes slavers merchants run airships from island to island and giant eagle riding pirates hunt them. In the swamp below ruins are found where serpent men and lizard men plot against all.

Love it!

 

[Desdichado]

And Claudio Pozas has already illustrated them:
View attachment 64038

I admit that the concept came to me years ago after seeing his Pax Hobgoblinica work. Then the Skorne Empire of Iron Kingdoms further fired my imagination on the concept. Then reading the Legacy of Dhakaan series of novels by Don Bassingthwaite finally made it a reality. I developed the concept of a civilized hobgoblin khaganate as a modular setting element, and whipped up a few details of it on my setting wiki.

Even the Lord of the Rings movies, with their wargs-as-giant-hyenas visual played a role.

 

[Hussar]

- The world is magical. Everything is imbued with magic to some extent and everything imbued with magic is alive, for a certain value of alive. Forests change and move, hills and other geography become amorphous, gods are localised, within small regions they hold power, but, beyond the limits of their domain, they are nothing and their domains are typically nothing more than a single valley or possibly a river or lake.

- The world actually utilises the possibilities inherent in fantastic creatures. Giant beetles are farmed for meat, giant fireflies provide light in cities (and deal with garbage removal at the same time), giants are used in construction, treants are treated as highly valued allies by neighbours and live in fairly symbiotic relationships with the humanoids (of whatever stripe) clearing out dead brush and whatnot keeping the forest healthy and the treants aiding their neighbours. Flying creatures are in common use as are burrowing ones as well. So on and so forth.

 

[JWO]

I'm going to try to incorporate non-evil orcs and maybe goblinoids as well. I like the idea of having some tribes of them that just go about their business without the whole marauding side of things. We're playing in Forgotten Realms so I'm not quite sure how to incorporate this. Obviously they'd still be treated the same way by the vast majority of the "civilized races" but I like the idea of bringing a more nuanced approach to it.

I'm not actually using alignments in my game at all so this should help.