Randomling's Dungeoncraft Diary (my players out!!)

[randomling]

First point of order: if you're in S'mon's Borderlands game and StalkingBlue's Midnight game - GET OUT! Go on, go!

Okay, having got that out of the way:

I'm following Delgar's example and putting together my new setting with the help of the Dungeoncraft articles, and posting my results on ENWorld so that you lovely folks can help me out.

So, then.

Campaign Hook
"Sword and sorcery on the high seas" is the tagline that I'm going for. I really want a swashbuckling type setting with fireballs and muskets, and 7th Sea doesn't really inspire me (it's too low magic for my tastes) though I am going to steal some basic classes from the d20 version.

The "continent" of the campaign will be called The Hundred Islands. It's an archipelago, so seafaring is going to play a very important part in the campaign! No one really knows how many islands there are, but "around a hundred" seems to be the general count. Different counts and maps over the centuries have come up with different figures. The current map shows 103...

Secret #1
The reason for the differing counts of islands is that the number is actually not fixed. Islands appear and disappear at, to be honest, a fairly alarming rate. Look at a map of The Hundred Islands from 250 years ago and it shows only 98 islands. Seven new islands have appeared, and two have vanished, in that short time period. Why? I'm not sure yet...

(Next post will deal with basic goverment and religion.)

 

[alsih2o]

if islands are appearing and disappearing i think it leaves you a RB opportunity to have ocean depths changing, making accurate nautical charts ahrd to come by and quite valuable.

this could be lots of fun!

 

[randomling]

if islands are appearing and disappearing i think it leaves you a RB opportunity to have ocean depths changing, making accurate nautical charts ahrd to come by and quite valuable.

this could be lots of fun!

Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea! I know little about the realities of seafaring, so thanks for that.

 

[maddman75]

That is a pretty cool idea. And it fairly begs for the question, what is affecting the islands? There's a lot of way you could go here - perfectly natural movements, an ancient evil who uses the isles as a treasure collector (pop one up, and in a few decades it's chock full of all kinds of stuff), or even a cthulu-esque great evil deep in the sea. While its actions cause the movements of the isles it really doesn't even think about or care for the creatures who live upon them.

For real rat-bastardliness, you can even give them a treasure map that leads to the wrong place. After all, if the isles move up and down the likely slowly drift as well. Could even lead up to a grand collision, with the isles threatening to slam into one another.

 

[randomling]

Part two. Home Base and local politics.

Home Base
The PCs will be based out of a port town called Tarantelle on the island of Lucca. It's the biggest trading town in The Hundred Islands - and the shadiest. It's a small city, population around 6,000. It's ruled over by a mayor (who's in the employ of the island's governor, who in turn answers to the queen of The Hundred Islands). We'll be starting in one of the shadier sections of the town, the lower dock district, probably in a tavern called the Buccaneer's Rest. More on the Rest later.

Being a port town, Tarantelle gets most of its necessities through fishing and trade. It's a wealthy merchant town, and tradition has it you can trade anything in Tarantelle. And thus, the city has it's dark areas: thieves, pirates, highwaymen, and other nefarious types think of it as a haven.

Secret #2
Rumour has it that somewhere buried underneath Tarantelle is a marvellous artefact that was lost by the Church some 300 years ago due to a terrible curse. The artefact does in fact exist, and is indeed, underneath the city, but it isn't quite what rumour says it is...

Politics
Queen Leandra, a good and benevolent monarch, rules over The Hundred Islands. There is a large continent far to the east, and occasionally people visit from "the mainland", but The Hundred Islands have very little political contact with other nations.

Secret #3
Not every island is strictly under Queen Leandra's control. The information is kept carefully under wraps, but at least four islands have succeeded in rebelling against Leandra's rule in the last few years. In addition, the Queen's Navy has been repelling orc and goblin attackers from the North in recent months, and this gossip has only just begun to filter down to the rumour mills of Tarantelle...

 

[randomling]

That is a pretty cool idea. And it fairly begs for the question, what is affecting the islands? There's a lot of way you could go here - perfectly natural movements, an ancient evil who uses the isles as a treasure collector (pop one up, and in a few decades it's chock full of all kinds of stuff), or even a cthulu-esque great evil deep in the sea. While its actions cause the movements of the isles it really doesn't even think about or care for the creatures who live upon them.

For real rat-bastardliness, you can even give them a treasure map that leads to the wrong place. After all, if the isles move up and down the likely slowly drift as well. Could even lead up to a grand collision, with the isles threatening to slam into one another.

Ooooh, I like that! True about the treasure maps. There are probably lots of treasure maps that lead to islands that simply don't exist any more, too...

And I do wonder what's causing the islands to appear and disappear. It's fast for it to be natural, and I'm not quite comfortable with the idea of an ancient evil manipulating it very directly. I'm not quite sure yet what the secret behind the secret is, yet...

 

[alsih2o]

also, if the depths of the ocean are being pushed up so are all the nasty little buggers that l9ive in the depths and are immune to all kinds of damage from this fragile environment up top

 

[Erithtotl]

Even with a few islands revolting, it may make for less interesting gameplay to have the whole archipelago essentially under the rule of one benevolent monarch.

What about if the Queen had just died, and the game actually started during the coronation celebration of her very young daughter. Even before the celebrations die down you could have rumblings begin of islands challenging the new Queen's authority, plus the ever popular manipulative advisors.

 

[randomling]

Even with a few islands revolting, it may make for less interesting gameplay to have the whole archipelago essentially under the rule of one benevolent monarch.

What about if the Queen had just died, and the game actually started during the coronation celebration of her very young daughter. Even before the celebrations die down you could have rumblings begin of islands challenging the new Queen's authority, plus the ever popular manipulative advisors.

Cool idea. I think that that will happen, and the rebelling islands are laying the groundwork for disaster brewing as the Hundred Islands start to fall apart politically. I think that eventually (once the PCs are high enough level to start meddling with this stuff) Leandra will die, and the Isles will be pitched into chaos as her young daughter takes over. But for now I'd like things to be relatively stable politically (there are probably other things for the PCs to focus on as I'll be starting them at first level).

 

[Nifft]

"It is said that there is a great serpant coiled around the world, biting its own tail, which preserves the boundries of space and time until the end days. But it is also said that the World Serpant wrestles with the great Giant-Father, a primal being of rock and fire. Their struggles are earthquakes, their wounds are volcanos, their battle field is ... home."

In this cosmology, World-Serpant = Healing, Water, Plant, Knowlege, Law and Giant-Father = Earth, Fire, War, Chaos, Death, Strength. (This leaves room for an Air, Trickery, Music, etc. Fey trickster archtype spirit.)


"The Church teaches us that our fathers had sinned, and the Mists were sent that they might offer expiation to our Lord. The Mists take the wicked to Hell for eternal suffering, in life and death. All praise be unto the Lord, let his wrath fall upon the unfaithful and preserve us against vampires. Amen."

Your world is slowly being eaten by Ravenloft. Sometimes whole islands are taken, but they are eventually returned -- once they're completely ... clean. But sometimes, something comes back with an island.


"Lem' tell yer, landlubber, I's seen an islan' fall rit outta th' sky, I has! It were smokin' an' flamin', lik a pitched hull all a-fire, till th' bleedin' thin' come splashin' not a half-league from me bow! Ach, th' wave were big'n a kraken's fart! I's took me cutter out fer lookie-loo, an' the bleedin' thin' were still glowin' like a nereid's lagoon, an' a shore full o' some ragg'd barbarian-kin. Blest er curst, I's left it fer stronger souls than I's got."

Your islands are linked to Ysgard. They come, they go, but to a place far kinder and more heroic than Ravenloft.


Perhaps combine 2 & 3, having your world be a sort of transition between Ysgard and Ravenloft, where islands appear (from Ysgard) and are leached into Ravenloft. In this cosmology, Ravenloft is a parasitic plane. Is your world endangered? Is Ysgard endangered?

-- N