D&D General trying to come up with a decent setting idea.

[R_J_K75]

You have a pile of things you want. You’ll need to see if you can put the theme or aesthetic into a descriptive sentence.

I’d start with like “Vikings on big game hunts for dinosaurs to placate vengeful deities.” And build off that. Because as it stands, your pile of Wants is incoherent to me.

I think you need a clearer picture/theme/aesthetic for a setting. Not that the ideas are bad - just having trouble with the big picture.

Yeah get it down to the elevator pitch where it can be described in under 3o seconds.

 

[Dioltach]

You could make the elements the key forces in your world. Conflict between Fire, Earth, Air and Water, with various lesser elements siding with the one or the other. I'm talking about the elements in an abstract sense, on a mythic level, not a world where mud doesn't exist because water and earth don't mix. But forest fires, tidal waves, earthquakes and hurricanes could be manifestations ... and that's before they start allying with each other: Fire and Earth create volcanos, Air and Earth create sandstorms, that kind of thing. Actual elementals would just be the messengers and agents.

This would create a very primeval world, so dinosaurs and mammoths would fit right in.

 

[Lanefan]

me trying to come up with a decent setting idea.
my head has been long trying to come up with decent ideas to build a setting around.
note I have no idea what a setting is supposed to honestly be like.
here goes:

properly integrate the monk class into the world.

older megafauna are normal and commonly used so I can have Vikings on mammoths and someone on a Trex.

guns they for some reason never get used so why not have them.

use elementals and operations for something as other than killing pc they end up with few plot for them.

more or less complete death of alignment aside from somethings in which it is closer to a job description than an outlook.

mythic style gods, you know the will meddle or curse people for an odd reason or give you crazy lot? yeah, that sort.

restrict racial choices only five more or less aside from metas(artificially made, a human example would be yuan-ti) and plane touched but other than human none of the common elf, dwarf or halfling, no orc and goblins. pick less used or interesting concepts and build them into more than one note nobodies.

plus a mixture of crazy strangeness mixed in which is part of my preferred fantasy flavour.

would this be an okay seed for a setting or should I go back to the drawing board?

That's more a series of seeds rather than just one; and while some look fine as-is, others might want a long hard look over.

Integrate the monk? Two ways of doing this but neither might suit you: one is to have the whole setting be somewhat Asian-based (which if nothing else would be an interesting departure from the norm if you can pull it off), or two is to somehow "westernize" the monk class though I've no good ideas on how to do this or whether it'd work.

Older megafauna normal? Easy. Just do it. No-one's gonna complain, and it gives you more cool monsters to work with.

Guns? Think very long and hard before even considering this. Small arms in and of themselves aren't the problem - musket-like guns and pistols co-existed with bows for some time - but when guns grow up and become cannons the idea of fortified castles and walls fairly quickly goes away, and that'll change the entire look and feel of your setting. Do you want this?

Elementals? This one's entirely up to you; if you've some elemental-based plot ideas in mind then go for it. @SirMoogle suggested upthread looking at the published Eberron setting for ideas on this, and I concur.

Death of alignment? Can be done, though keep in mind you'll also lose the ability to have aligned weapons or locations show up in the campaign - it's largely the not-wanting-to-lose-these that made me keep alignment in my game.

Meddling deities? Love it!

Restricting races? EDIT: My initial thoughts went by my first reading of the OP where I thought you were restricting the races to just Elves, Dwarves, and a couple of others. That you want to take those out as well, I can't get behind.
Not sure what you mean by 'metas'; if you mean a bunch of half-races (e.g. looking at a yuan-ti as a half-reptile) will be available as PCs this might be self-defeating: you might just end up opening up a lot of strange options right after closing them off.

Crazy strangeness? Love it! Give some thought to some sort of underlying cause for it, though; as "just because" doesn't stand up well in the long run.

 

[Lanefan]

You could make the elements the key forces in your world. Conflict between Fire, Earth, Air and Water, with various lesser elements siding with the one or the other. I'm talking about the elements in an abstract sense, on a mythic level, not a world where mud doesn't exist because water and earth don't mix. But forest fires, tidal waves, earthquakes and hurricanes could be manifestations ... and that's before they start allying with each other: Fire and Earth create volcanos, Air and Earth create sandstorms, that kind of thing. Actual elementals would just be the messengers and agents.

This would create a very primeval world, so dinosaurs and mammoths would fit right in.

You're on to something here. The meddling-deities idea fits in also; they're still arguing over just how to build this world and who (if anyone) should be the dominant species.

That said, I'm not quite sure how this is going to square with gun-toting adventurers of artificially-made races...

 

[Ancalagon]

properly integrate the monk class into the world.

Integrate the monk?

that one is easy. I decided for my first "live" (not pbp) 5e character that I wanted to play a classic - I wanted a legolas like character. Fast, great archer, handy in close combat, good with nature, stealthy... ranger right?

Well... maybe. But how about ... monk? Specifically the Kensei monk, with the outlander baground. That is super elfish. So I went that way and I'm having a great time.

If your world doesn't have elves... does it have other races or cultures that could be "monk - ish" without being "kung-fu"?

 

[turnip_farmer]

Guns? Think very long and hard before even considering this. Small arms in and of themselves aren't the problem - musket-like guns and pistols co-existed with bows for some time - but when guns grow up and become cannons the idea of fortified castles and walls fairly quickly goes away, and that'll change the entire look and feel of your setting. Do you want this?

Cannons long predate muskets and pistols - they're pretty much the earliest gunpowder weapons except for grenades and fireworks-on-a-stick (which were used in China as early as the 10th century).

 

[aco175]

Sounds a lot like Star Wars or the Avatar cartoon with these cool effects.

It can be cool to have monks with subclasses similar to mage-knights/jedi or elemental channelers. You could have elemental familiars that boost powers or allow spell-like abilities, though feels a bit like Pokémon or Golden Compass.

I never liked having gods that much involved in games. Always feels like the DM is forcing things since gods can make you do anything. There could be some sort of gods vs elemental lords theme that may work. Some background rumblings at lower level leads to open conflict with the elementals trying to overthrow the traditional gods and their forces on the ground. Maybe one side develops light sabers and blasters similar to crossbows that is meant to target the other side.

I'm not a fan of restricting out the common races. It does not feel like D&D to me to not have elves and dwarves. Goes back to a Star Wars feel when everyone is a turtle-man, or cat-man, or crystal-man, or snake-man, or etc... Cool if you and your players want it. Maybe check with your players first though.

 

[turnip_farmer]

I never had a problem with monks. If you want to be a monk, you just have to give me a reason why you've travelled so far from the distant land of fake China Zhong'tao.

But my home setting is a big bowl of tired cliches, so don't listen to me if you want something original.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not a fan of restricting out the common races. It does not feel like D&D to me to not have elves and dwarves. Goes back to a Star Wars feel when everyone is a turtle-man, or cat-man, or crystal-man, or snake-man, or etc... Cool if you and your players want it. Maybe check with your players first though.

Ah - I misread the OP! Thanks for pulling my attention back to it - I thought it said races would be restricted to ONLY the core five, plus the metas.

Time to go upthread and do a bit of editing...

 

[Mercurius]

I think a post-apocalyptic framing would work well, which could explain the guns, megafauna, even gods.

Take our world as a start, fast forward a few decades. Genetic research has allowed the re-creation of extinct species, including megafauna (e.g. "Paleolithic Park"). Life extension and genetic meddling has led to superheroic abilities, near immortality, etc. Then, boom, apocalypse. Civilization collapses, only a few survive, all kinds of crazy stuff happens.

Now fast forward a few centuries. Megafauna abound. Artifacts little the ruins of the prior civilization, including guns. A few survivors of the prior age have survived, becoming the "gods" of the new era. Maybe they've been modeled themselves after the gods of old mythology. Mutations have led to the creation of the D&D races (or, alternately, once humanity died off, the elves saw it safe to return from the fairy mounds of old, and the dwarves from their long slumber deep within the earth; maybe the apocalypse tore open the fabric between worlds, and let creatures and magic back in).