Why Ravenloft? Because it would contain a lot if abandoned little settings - settings of the dead?
TSR Temple of Elemental Evil - Waterside Hostel
- Thread starter haakon1
- Start date
Partly that.
But also thinking about how someone familiar with Greyhawk would perceive your variant version of it as clearly different. Revealing that your variant was in fact a demiplane of dread could be a shock/AHA! moment.
Greyhawk as a demiplane frees you to go darker with your storylines. It creates deeper mysteries.
TheHand
Hero
I like this theory but wasn’t this piece by Larry Elmore? I’ve never seen him without a beard.
I was thinking it’s about like the domains in Ravenloft, which are mostly separated though in the same overall setting, if I understand Ravenloft correctly. I’ve read a number of Ravenloft adventures and that seems to be how it works. I played a one-shot in Ravenloft (GenCon Online) and I’m a player in 5e campaign in Ravenloft, but with a lot of Star Wars because the DM likes that.
My other domains of Greyhawk are only hinted at so far.
My lower-level group is currently with two groups of NPC's.
One NPC is an exile from the Great Kingdom who is carrying copied records from the Attir family of the North Province mentioning their voyages of exploration and the lost colonies of Fireland and Aramax. In Greyhawk lore, the Attir were explorers but were overthrown and mostly exterminated - she is a survivor from an expropriated cadet branch. The PC's known none of this yet.
Another NPC is from Tir Asleen (the Willow setting) and searching for a stolen magic item from her family in Cashmere (referenced in Willow lore as to the East of Tir Asleen, and the Willow TV show had multiple Indian-ancestry actors, so it works in my mind), which I placed as a post-apocalyptic land where others put Zhindia. She has mentioned to the PC's where she is from.
My higher-level group hasn't met anyone from foreign lands of Oerth yet, but they know about Faerun from the Temple of Elemental Evil's Nodes. One PC (who retired from the game) was sent there by a Dismissal spell to his home plane (same Prime Material Plane, different planet) and they allied with a Storm Giantess from Faerun.
As for contact and trade between "domains" my vision is there's very little. I care a lot about trade and economics in my Greyhawk, but I also think explanation is needed for why these other domains are essentially unknown.
Last edited:
As noone requested, trade and contact among the "domains" of my Greater Greyhawk.
- Isle of Dread: Merchants from Sasserine have set up a tiny colony, and the Scarlet Brotherhood is in the area.
- Pirate Isles off the Isle of Dread: Sometimes attack and sometimes mercenaries for the Scarlet Brotherhood. Pirates against Guadalante, Aramax, and the Willow setting's meager commerce when they can. Raid the west coast of Hepmonaland and into the Azure with SB permission too, I suppose.
- Guadalante: Set up to export leather and tallow, like colonial/early Mexican California in the great 19th century sailing novel "Two Years Before the Mast". And, since it's Cal/Mex, there's gold in them thar hills. BUT the Scarlet Brotherhood cut off the Tilva Strait to the Solnor Ocean, and mostly controls access to the Azure Sea, so that's why they're forgotten and abandoned, left mostly to their own devices.
- Aramax. Trades with and friendly with Guadalante. Both Common-speaking lands that are abandoned Great Kingdom colonies and have a population of mixed Olman, Oeridian, and Cashmerean people. I haven't thought about its economy, other than it's not doing as well as Guadalante. Perhaps they make manufactured goods and luxuries for Guadalante. Probably spice exports since the colony covers part of destroyed Zhindia.
- Willow setting. Tir Asleen and Galladoorn are close allies. Nookmar is mostly barbarian tribes and Cashmere is largely depopulated, its people having moved to the other lands. Willows doesn't really mention economics, so I assume they are largely self-sufficient, but perhaps they export pigs to Aramax and Guadalante, for leather, tallow, and spices. Oh, and they definitely export Cashmere wool - some of it making its way through Sasserine or Scarlet Brotherhood trading to the Flannaess. This region speaks the language "Daikini" and their population is a mix of Oeridians, Cashmereans, Hepmonalanders, and of course Halflings. Elves, dwarves, etc. are unknown here.
- D&D cartoon setting “The Realm”: Mostly post-apocalyptic, so the economy is mostly about self-sufficiency. They might export old artifacts or Dragonbane herbs to Tir Asleen, across the Alicorn Sea/Shattered Sea, past the ruins of the Immemorial City on "Dragon Isle". The famous villain Warduke has appeared in the cartoon and was placed in Greyhawk in Dungeon, so there is a connection between these settings.
- Izmir from "D&D: Wrath of the Dragon God", on the "Bearskin map" from Dragon Annual as "Ishtarland". Exports silk, by the Silk Road (on Anna Meyer's Greyhawk maps) via the Linncroft Inn (mentioned in the movie as on the way to adventures set in Greyhawk). Baklunish traders from the Far West beyond the Plains of the Paynims and Mure hide their very distant source. Izmir knows of the Flannaess, but the reverse is not true.
- Chainmail setting as NW Oerik. Ravilla, etc. Too interested in its own wars to trade withe outside world. Known to the Baklunish Far West and Izmir, but avoided by both.
- Fireland to the NE of the North Province is another forgotten colony of the GK, using Raging Swan’s products: the Lonely Coast, the Duchy of Ashlar, the Picaroon Peninsula, and Gloamhold. They trade with the North Province, but it's not easy with Thillonrian Vikings and Picaroon pirates. Collectively, they export slate, tin, dried fish, and guano, seeking manufactured and less Arctic goods from the GK.
- West and a bit south of Fireland: Kozakura (or possibly Wa and Kozakura) from Oriental Adventures before Forgotten Realms kidnapped Kara-Tur. Once attacked by Ravilla, now fiercely isolationist. They raid Fireland, and rarely peacefully trade, exporting tea, sake, silver, and steel weapons for dried fish, guano, and far-fetched goods like magic items from the GK.
Last edited:
I was thinking of it as a single, extremely large demiplane. Possibly one that started off as unique ones that somehow got merged.
How that merger occurred would be a setting meta-mystery.
I’m thinking it’s one big world, but due to the Twin Cataclysms and very low populations in all the sub settings except the Flannaess, they’re almost entirely out of contact.
I like that better than “out if area” adventures being only extraplanar.
Much like how on actual Earth, civilizations that were once aware of each other lost contact. Examples include:
- Greenland. Norse settlement, trading with Scandinavia. If I recall correctly, it had a Catholic bishop at one point, and the Vatican of course knew about that, but the records were misplaced because of the Napoleonic Wars. I think the Danes rediscovered it based on old records.
- Aztecs, Incas, Iroquois, and other New World civilizations. Settled from Siberia, but so long ago, neither side remembered.
- Australia. Settled from Island Southeast Asia about 50,000 years ago. As far as I know, very little contact with the outside world until the 1700’s. Did China, Japan, and the Malays know it was there? I think not.
- Madagascar. Settled by Austronesians (Malays etc.) but so long ago, their languages diverged and I believe they were out of contact.
- Hawaii. Known to the Māori of what’s now New Zealand, who invaded. Not known to Europeans until Captain Cook.
Similar Threads
