So what's YOUR world's 'hook'?

[LazerPointer]

Sometimes you gotta do something to the elves. 2000 years before the PC's were 'round, the most powerful elven arch-mage wrecked horrible magics that consumed the two elven gods and bound that power into a new, evil god. The planet has been shattered into several planar fragments, and the mystery/promise of forgotten knowledge is woven into the myths of all other races. i.e. all races are trying to reach the elven lands while not knowing elves still live. The elves live in a terribly nasty place, drinking blood, and remembering a shadow of their former grace.

The Dwarves are delving deeper and deeper trying to reach other parts of the world, the Gnomes are building a huge tower, and humans....well, they're caught up in a traditional fantasy setting. I can't wait to use Piratecat's tesseract to bridge the PC's to the elven lands.

 

[LazerPointer]

if I was drunk, I'd have an excuse for double posting.

 

[youspoonybard]

When people die, their souls don't leave the material plane. Instead, they float up and form clouds.

Over all the great battlefields of the past rage dark, timeless storms that shead tears of rain for all eternity.

New life cannot survive without death, as the rain is essential to maintain life.

Oh, and gods lose much of their powers when they enter the plane. I don't like the idea of Gods interferring too much. The plane intrigues a lot of them, as well as frightens them, as they are most vulnerable here. Two great wars have been fought by the gods, and only death, suffering, and storms have resulted from the bloodshed.

The most tragic figure in all of this suffering is that of the god Malah. Originally she was the most good, unyielding deity, patron of the Lizardfolk. However, as the gods were losing the first war, her insistance on using honorable tactics even as defeat drew near threatened one of the groups of gods' future. So they betrayed and killed her.

That's when the souls stopped departing the plane.

Few know about the mysterious circumstances regarding the afterlife here. Malah's death drove the Lizardfolk mad with rage and hatred, twisting them, and as time passes they will do anything, from slaughtering whole villages to making demonic alliances, in order to free their God, who they believe is bound within the very Earth beneath their feet.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Most of the world is under the dominance of an opressive lawful good theocratic empire.

Somebody I already mentioned this, but I wanted to chime in. Good is, by definition, not oppressive.

The church may claim to be good. It may even believe it's good, and have all the best motives. But if it's oppressive, it's not good.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled topic.

 

[Balrog]

My campaign world takes place in a post-Ragnarok setting, where the older Gods that have survived are battling with newer, younger(and often more powerful) Gods. The elements play havoc in the resulting chaotic world, and as such Midgard has evolved into almost 5 distinct realms. The Elemental Planes now coexist with the Prime Material, and what results is one corner of Midgard is dominated by Fire, one corner by Earth, and so on.....but the net result is that there is one fairly large region where all these elements meet where the weather, climate, and magic is relatively normal, and that is the most hotly contested region in the entire world, and most populated by the "good" races.

So the PCs in my world began with the Wizard's Amulet adventure and Crucible of Freya. They quickly became embroiled in the mystery of the amulet, and its possessor a target of sinister plots. They helped the followers of one of the old Gods, Freya, while making enemies of Orcus, Demon Prince and Lord of the Undead. Things snowballed from there.

They eventually ended up going to the Tomb of Abysthor a couple of times to thwart the aims of the Orcus cult there also.

The PCs took a lot of initiative themselves in the development of their backgrounds while at the same time weaving their stories into the recent history of the region.

I try not to keep throwing my own hooks out there, which they occasionally bite on, because they are so good at following their own leads and enjoying themselves and the resulting drama and story.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Urbis is dominated by vast citiy-states that are defended and sustained by magical towers which draw upon the life force of those who live nearby and convert it into magical energies.

 

[Emperor Valerian]

I'm a history grad student, so I tended to base the nations in my realm on historical places...

The Holy Santoric Empire, the largest human nation in my campaign world, is about the size of medieval Europe, and is a combination of the Byzantine Empire, medieval Germany, and medieval France (depending on where you go). It has massive cities (the capital is a city of one million), a huge tax base, and some stability issues (tends to happen when there is a standing Imperial army, and each noble also has their own army, as well as some of the churches...)

The Empire of Ak Konylu is loosely based on China during the 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms.' Save that there are ten kingdoms... and that after three hundred years of fighting, they've managed to get along a little... enough that instead of fighting everyone, they merely gang up on each other. Another thing I added for flavor is that all the noble families in this realm are descendents of invaders that broke up the original Ak Konylu empire... a tribe of hengeyokai tigers.

This realm as has a few tributary kingdoms I've based loosely on medieval Japan, Korea, and SE Asia.

Kara Kitain combination of Middle East and Asian Steppe. Windswept steppes populated by nomads, and desert oasis cities home to world famous artisans.

The Northern Tundras - Scandanavia anyone? Want to muck around with Norsefolk? Here ya go.

Moramin - realm south of the Holy Santoric Empire, and refuge of the elves (driven out by aforesaid Empire years before). Based in Celtic lore and early Saxon England.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Well, not sure if some of these count as "hooks," per se, but this is what I have:

• Lankhmar Campaign: The hook is that, well, it's Nehwon. The world of Fafhrd & Grey Mouser (though it's set after the Twain essentially retire to Rime Isle). No standard D&D races (barring humans, of course). Crystal-fleshed ghouls. A rat conspiracy. Diamond-in-amber glulditches. Swashbuckling, heroic, morally-ambiguous, sword-&-sorcery-style adventure.
• Marvel SAGA Campaign: It's basically a "What If?" setting: a decent-sized change of the Marvel status quo (group rosters, what characters do/don't exist, etc.). A main hero (player-created) campaign, plus a mini side-campaign where players play villains (albeit lower-tier, existing Marvel character/NPC ones). Based in Texas rather than New York.
• My "Core" D&D Campaign:Fighting an evil long-thought & long-believed to be vanquished. The creation of new terrors, beasts, and beings by this villain (such as bugbears, hobgoblins, blues, & ogre mages; never existed until very recently). Divine spellcasters never directly venerate deities--instead, divine spellcasters follow paths of belief/philosophy (light, darkness, magic, or nature). No mechanically-different demihuman subraces like drow or duergar (different appearance, yes: different stats/mechanics, no). Psionics & pseudo-Asiatic-style PC classes & races. The decline of the known dragon species & the rise of new ones. The rare appearance of otherworldly alien beings (like illithid and aboleth). Githzerai as a native race to this Prime Material. A lizardfolk city. A colony of crystal-fleshed Nehwon ghouls.
• d20 Modern Campaign: A yuan-ti madman has formed a ruthless terrorist organization bent on ruling the world. The PCs are recruited & trained to act as an top-secret, elite special-operations force dedication to protecting the free world. (I think you can see the inspiration sources.)
• Azulunth Campaign: Based on the world depicted in my writing. No divine magic. No thesaurus-based/A.K.A. monsters/creatures. Uses generic classes from UA. Four-limbed dragons & griffons (which are related, like wolves, coyotes, dogs, & foxes). Lower magic than a standard D&D game (but not as low as other settings like Conan or Lankhmar).

Well, that's what I have, so far. I'll probably have a d20 Future campaign & a d20 Past campaign as well, when I get those books.

 

[RangerWickett]

The world is awakening from its own dark ages, and as it uncovers the history it had forgotten, it discovers many sinister plots of the ancient ages have not yet run their course.

By the way, read my storyhour, in my sig. *grin*

 

[Terwox]

My hook for the game I just finished (and the story hour I'll never finish!) is that the characters are thus:

Wake up with complete amnesia, after dreaming about dying as a different person.
Are on a featureless grassy plain in most directions, except for a few nodes, and travel does not follow laws of physics: point A to point B is 10 minutes, point B to point C is 10 minutes, point C to point A is 2 days, point A to point C is 15 seconds. That sort of thing. Points are places -- castles, gardens, places, whatever.
The PCs have a fighting chance against anything on the planet, unless they create something more powerful than themselves.
There are no deities, clerics cast through ideals.
The PCs in my game were the embodiment of the three fates, one with power over creation, one with power over death, and one who spun people's lives together. (In game, before they ascended to their proper place as the fates, one PC could bindingly name everyone, one PC could change things' alignment and bind people together, and the last PC could kill things by willing it.) (All of this used a version of the action point mechanic in UA.)
Everyone was true neutral.
eh, sure was a lot of fun. No deus ex machinas... there was no deus until the players created them.
And in their dreams they were many different people, all on different worlds. (Halfling farmers, aquatic gnomes, 2 bronze dragons and an ascended [celestial] black dragon [who later stopped being celestial.])

Oh, it was a fun game, so much fun to run... so chaotic. ahh, I'll miss it, until I figure out how to run a game for 8th level characters that are now divine rank 0.