What minor worldbuilding details have you added to your campaign world?

[Jürgen Hubert]

A few things from Urbis:

- While human society is fairly sexist - similar to 19th century Europe - in dwarven society women are allowed to pursue all the same jobs as men, and indeed there is no gender discrimination when it comes to professions. However, because of the low birth rate of the dwarven race, dwarven women are also expected to marry as soon as possible and produce two children, as well as raise them. This means that the most skilled - and thus most respected - members of a particular profession still tend to be male.

- Sorcery is considered to be "a woman's art" because it is driven by emotions and women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional than men. The truth is that because of discrimination women have far less opportunity to study wizardry than men, and thus their most notable arcane spellcasters tend to be sorcerers.

- It's possible to travel to other planets in the same star system via teleport as long as you are in a mountain range near the equator, and some humans have expored the other planets. For the most part, that's just a background element - this still counts as fairly inaccessible. However, one city now has a few very lucrative diamond mines on a cold desert planet, and other cities are contemplating getting in on the act...

- Ghouls can attain class levels and sometimes remember enough of their old lives to retain old class levels as well. This makes them fairly nasty - have you looked at their attribute boni?

 

[Goblyn]

elves are not born as others are. An elf begins life as a plant which spruots a single blossom which blooms into a pixie; after ~80 years, the pixie forms a coccoon which gives rise to the fully-formed elf. Thus:

-there are no elven children
-half-elves can only be born to a male elf and a human female
-most elves remember their 'pixie-hoods' as extended dreams
-the seeds that female elves give birth to as well as the pixie plants are useable in various magical experimentations

 

[mythusmage]

A few more items...

Dwarfs cannot sleep under ground without heavy sedation. Otherwise they wake up in a panic and strike out at anything that moves. Some cannot sleep with a solid roof over their heads.

Cthulhu is terrified of schooners.

Halflings can only conceive with family in attendance.

Gnomes have a harder time than most other species learning how to communicate with animals. Which is why any gnome worth his ledger balance works hard at gaining the skill.

Nine times out of ten any animal befriended by an Animal Friendship permanently bonds with the one who cast the spell.

Rhinos are convinced that all elves are 'mommy'.

Elephants can gallop.

 

[Kurotowa]

Dragons run the banks. If you want to keep your money from being stolen, you give it to a dragon, and he sits on it. In return, you get paper with his arcane mark on it (called "dragon chit" by those who accept it, and something similar sounding by those who don't). Dragon chit is generally accepted within two day's flight from a dragon's home base, because the dragon will eat anyone who refuses to accept his currency.

Heh. I really like that one. It tickles my fancy, for some reason.

 

[demiurge1138]

I thought this was already the case with arcane marks? Or am I remembering that wrong?

It works that way in Forgotten Realms, at least. The Weave has all sorts of horrible curses for an FR wizard who tries to duplicate another's arcane mark.

Demiurge out.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Some more stuff from Urbis:

- If you want to cast spells within one of the cities, the odds are that you first need to acquire a licence to cast a certain spell. Harmless spells that only affect yourself usually don't require a licence. Spells that affect others - including nonlethal combat spells - can be used if you pay a slight fee for a "civilian" licence. Spells that cause damage to individuals or which can be very protitable to cast require a "professional" licence. Spells that cause large-scale devastation (such as fireball) or alter the minds of others (like charm person) are restricted to the military.

If you don't have a licence to use "cure" spells on others but use them to save someone from dying in an emergency, the authorities might overlook that use. On the other hand, they might not.

- Unicorns have been hunted close to extinction in human lands because of the rumored aphrodisiac properties of their horns.

- Orcs are now fairly rare, but thanks to orcish invasions in ages past there's still a certain amount of orcish blood in many human families, which occasionally produces half-orcs. Because of prejudice and lesser intellectual and social capabilities, these families have slided towards the lower classes, and caricatures of the lower classes often show them with orcish features.

 

[eyebeams]

Only humans have a psychological makeup fully adapted to committing acts of violence or subservience based on abstract principles. Other races not only don't believe in kings, but can literally not conceieve of extending respect and submission to someone outside of a narrow range of expertise and social organization. Dwarves will follow a strategist into battle or a miningmaster into the tunnels, but following someone in a general sense is not even an issue.

This has had several effects. For instance, humans invented swords because even though a sword is an extension of knife or spear principles, a sword's primary use is for killing other humans instead of acting as a hunting or crafting tool. Swords are the signature human weapon. It also means that while humans are capable of devoting a trememndous number of minimally competent people to a project, other races tend to perform best on specialized tasks in small numbers. This is why, for example, elves have no wars and no armies, but are good enough at "hunting" that any invading human army would be hard-pressed to hold any territory.

The gods are involved in an active campaign to keep the speaking peoples from ascending to their state. Dragons and elves have both been diverted from divine ascension in the past. This is why elves are immortal, but are only conventionally sapient for a few hundred years, and why dragons are immortal, tough and powerful, but have inbuilt psychic limitations. These are what's left over of fantasy-transhumanist projects to become like the gods.

Monks and assassins were once part of the same organization, which split on the subject of intervening in Athardalanni (the Western continent's) development.

There is only one paladin in the world -- a potential PC. The gods to not give him power, because the gods aren't the paladin-creating type.

 

[DragonLancer]

In an old campaign world of mine (named Traken), dwarves were a LE race very much inspired by Klingons. They were a war-like but honourable race who looked down upon the other less honourable races.

The current races were not the original species to evolve. Thri-Kreen were the first and they developed space travel (proper space travel, not spelljammer) and departed into the galaxy so that other races could evolve and one day join them in the great beyond.

Dragons were in fact the dreams of True Dragons, which have been asleep so long that mountains have formed over the top of them.

I mss that campaign.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I've always loved the "mentor" concept of learning magic, as opposed to the "university" idea.

Part of the reason I decided wizards used the classic master-apprentice relationship was because the Wasteland doesn't have the population, level of development, or social cohesion to support any kind of magical academy.

Conversely, in the areas of the Wasteland where psionics is dominant, most psionic characters are trained as psions in somewhat-isolated monasteries. I envision the Wasteland as a fairly bleak, mountainous place, and the image of a monastery perched on the edge of a sheer cliff high above a town sticks in my mind. These monasteries are usually supported by the landowning lords of the region, who are often psions themselves and almost as frequently former adventurers (which can mean anything from benevolent crusader to tomb raider to bandit warlord).

Wilders, on the other hand, are a side-effect of the presence of psionic characters in society, affected by latent psionic energy in the womb - or so it is believed. In fact, while it does have to do with latent psionic energy altering their development, the real reason there are wilders and indeed any psionic characters at all in the world is that the areas where psionics are common are found above the subterranean lairs of the illithid race.

 

[mythusmage]

Even more...

Ogres and gnomes get along famously.

A gnome girl must become pregnant before her 14th birthday, or develop an aggressive and fatal form of uterine cancer.

A gnome's first pregnancy always ends with a miscarriage or still birth. For this reason a gnome's first pregnancy is always terminated by the start of the second trimester.

Orcs suffer from paranoid delusions if isolated from any sort of contact for more than a month.

The different races cannot interbreed. Thus no half-elves, half-orcs, or anything of the sort. This also means that prostitutes prefer customers from species other than their own.

The ghosts of the crew of The Golden Lotus (An Imperial Chinese superbattleship lost during The Great War off Point Loma in San Diego CA.) go clubbing on Saturday nights in the community of Mission Beach. Their presence is credited with reducing crime in the area.

Satan stopped tempting people into sin centuries ago. Largely because mortals have no need of his assistance in that department.