Thinking outside the generic campaign

[mkletch]

I ditched goblins and their kin, made Orcs lawful evil and gnolls lawful neutral. Orcs are militaristic and agressive. Gnolls are even more militaristic but more introspective; but don't kick over the behive. Bizarre monsters (digester, darkmantle, etc.) are not around.

Elves are secretive (but hate gnolls), dwarves very outgoing (Dwarven is the 'common tongue', since I omitted Common as a language). Ditched gnomes altogether and halflings are uncommon. No subraces of these species.

I like dragons, and they are 'active' in the world: ecologically, politically, militarily, economically, etc.

That is the short short short answer...

-Fletch!

 

[Tonguez]

Legends of Hawaiki. Mythic Polynesia

Some aspects of my setting

1. Hawaiki is Mythic Polynesia - Tropical Islands, no metal, no large land mammals, No ride skill, lots of Sea-based activities (on and underwater). Cultures are neolithic 'tribal' and range from highly stratified 'divine' monarchies, through to small scale 'family mobs' and occasionally competing warlords

2. Races: Humans (Half-elves and half-orcs are also considered human. Half-elves are fairskinned and have reddish-blond hair, Half-orcs are humans 'blessed' by the god of ugly things). A group of winged humans exist as do a humans who live underwater
Other common races include gnomes, goblins, sahuagin and ogres
(both good and evil).
Elves are Sidhe 'magical fey' and not a playable race, dwarfs don't exist. Lizardfolk, Gnolls and Merrow exist but are rare

3. Religion. Other than the main 'Polynesian gods' Hawaiki is a world of Spirits and 'Tupua' with whom the mortals interact, sometimes giving sacrifice and tribute in return for favours. The Shaman is a common class and is attended by these Spirits
Tupua are Creatures (animals, beasts, plants, waves) with Half-Fiend and Half-Celestial (and other eg elemental) templates attached. These creatures are also treated as 'spirits' and sometimes given tribute in return for protection and favours
(eg the gnomes of my main Island make regular sacrifices to their Eel-god (a Giant fiendish Eel). Of course if any of these 'spirits and tupua' become troblesome the humans can abandon them or even kill them (Polynesia had a very pragmatic religion).

4. Heroes: The Tupua template is also applied to certain humans and these people are the heroes of Hawaiki

5. PCs: PCs are champions and/or leaders of their village with responsibility for ensuring that the harvest is brought in, that the new Temple is constructed before the Festival, that the hunting parties are protected from attack, that the Young Chief is taken to a neighbouring island to find a wife, and that the sahuagin raids are dealt with.
In other words wondering adventurers do not exists, every PC has a family and responsibilities to their home.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Re: Re: Re: Thinking outside the generic campaign

I don't mean to tease, at least in a mean way, but would your setting feature vast, brutal desert wastes, silt seas and go by the name Darksun?

Not at all.

Well, actually there are two desert mentioned in my setting so far - in one, I will try to go for an "Arabian Nights" kind of flavor (with heavily emphasis on cities, of course), and the other one is ruled by a clan of quite non-humanioid blue dragons.

The region I consider to be the "heartlands" of the setting are rather fertile and temperate - think of the Dutch and North German lowlands. Plus, it is rare that a single ruler controls an entire city - the many threats to the rulers could easily overwhelm a single person with sheer numbers. A tightly-woven family clan or a group of friends and strong allies lasts much longer.

No, Dark Sun wasn't the inspiration for the setting. The main inspiration are probably the Obscure Cities by Schuiten, Peeters, and other Belgian comic artists - their visions of grand cities are simply brilliant, and I wanted some of that vision in a fantasy world as well instead of having teeny-weeny towns that top out at 100,000 people or so...

Though that's not the only source of inspiration - I've thrown in lots of things that I thought are cool, as long as they make sense within the setting.

 

[boothbey]

Dragongirl and I are constructing a world. We are trying to shake up some of the accepted conventions. Admittedly she is more groundbreaking than I...we eventually come to a nice balance. Heh

Some of the things we have...

1) Organized orcs based on ancient Rome.
2) Nautical minded dwarves.
3) Evil, non drow elves. Devil worshipers, half fiend/half elves, etc.

 

[Jeph]

My campaign is so non-archetypical, you'd almost not believe you were playing DnD. This is manily because you wouldn't be: you'd be playiong d20. It uses a classless system, for the characters and monsters and NPCs, so I've had to make up all the enemies from scratch, but it's been fun. Actually, even with the classless system, many of the animals and vermin from the MM port right over.

The campaign started in a city called No Hope. Btw, this is in a future, no-magic universe. PCs got in trouble with some mercenary cops, and escaped through a portal. found themselves in a medieval world with a spellcaster 4 levels higher than them. He's worked with them some, against them some, behind the scenes some. Shady sort o' dude.

I think the real thing that makes the campaign unique is the really, really huge guns that the PCs stole from some of the cops just before they hopped the escape train. See, there are only 2 of the Burst Cannons, but 3 PCs . . . when the troll attacked, they'd each fire a shot off and then use their move action to toss around the gun. It was pretty funny, actually . . .

But I digress. Basically, it's not your standard setting.

-Jeph

 

[Snoweel]

I've tried to go outside the box IMC:

NO Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes or Halflings.

I've eliminated virtually every class as written, except for fighter, rogue (some tweaks to special abilities), commoner, expert and warrior. Then I mix and modify these to create virtually unlimited core classes, eg. ranger, tribesman, swashbuckler (groan - what else can one call it?).

Spellcasters are all either priests (who get their spells from the non-sentient Old Gods, and use CHA), shamans (get their spells from Spirits and use WIS) or wizards (get their spells from Dead Gods and use INT). Apart from Wizardry, all magic is spontaneous casting. NB. Spirits actually get their magic from the Dead Gods too, but this isn't common knowledge IMC.

Prestige classes are VERY RARE and only go for 5 levels. In-game events are the major factor in whether or not a PC can enter a PrC.

Magic Items are much rarer than in Greyhawk or FR.

Of course, my campaign makes the ECL/CR system more broken than it already is, so I've had to basically rewrite the Monster Manual.

The Hit Dice system now works on minimum hit dice for size (so Gnolls are 1HD creatures, for instance, as are Ilithids), with advancement by character class for all humanoids.

Sentient undead don't yet exist in my campaign world, but they will after certain events transpire.

D&D Dragons don't exist, instead they are EEEeeevil Spirits that cultists call into the world by performing rituals on a host female creature (the bigger the better, ie: horse, crocodile, elephant) that eventually gives birth (a painful, bloody death) to a Half-Dragon. Heavily modified, of course.