Seeking Detailed Setting I Can Ruin

[hawkeyefan]

I think I need to add some context. The player will be exploring recently discovered continent. This continent will be the post-cataclysm ruined version of said setting. Therefore I prefer a setting the players know nothing about.

Ah, okay.....so you really are just looking for a setting that has material you can use, rather then using the setting as a starting point for the post-cataclysm game?

In that case, Forgotten Realms may be too large and have too many different iterations for what you want. What about Greyhawk or Mystara? Both have plenty of source books, but not nearly as much as FR.

When I was playing Pathfinder, I found the Inner Sea World Guide to be a great sourcebook for the Golarion setting. It's definitely a vast area, with all kinds of different sub-settings as countries/regions with their own vibe. You could use that and go with either the entire area, or just pull out a region and limit things to that. There are many more sourcebooks for the setting of Golarion that go into much more detail on specific spots, but with just the Inner Sea World Guide you'd have plenty of detail to get started.

 

[davout1805]

Golarion definitely has a lot of material. Not sure how deep the material is. Also need to find out how much players already know it anything.

Thanks.

 

[MarkB]

Eberron seems like a fair candidate for this. Most of the main setting is a single continent, reasonably detailed, with quite a bit of history, but not the level of multi-edition piled-on events that FR has.

 

[Prakriti]

I wanted to do this with FR, because I have a good map of the Sword Coast without any labels on it. It would have been a post-apocalypse setting, with most of the population wiped out, and the characters would only know that it was set somewhere in the Forgotten Realms. I was even going to flip the map in a weird direction, just to throw them off even further.

 

[Maxperson]

Look at the 3e setting The Scarred Lands. That's a fun one.

 

[davout1805]

I was even going to flip the map in a weird direction, just to throw them off even further.

Nice idea. Did any come of your idea?

 

[davout1805]

For my future reference: look at Lost Lands by Frog God.

 

[Prakriti]

Nice idea. Did any come of your idea?

Not yet. I just came up with the idea a couple weeks ago, so I haven't had time to flesh it out yet. I might make it my next campaign, though, after I finish with Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

I really liked the map-flip thing too, and wanted to make it be a part of the world where east = north. Around session 8, I'd have an NPC drop a line like, "...as surely as the sun rises in the north." Then watch as the players scrunch their brows and maybe slowly realize that in this post-apocalyptic world, the cardinal directions aren't what they thought they were.