D&D 5E What would you want for a *new* 5E campaign world?

[Celebrim]

The whole point of a young world is to break with those tropes - or should I say cliches - of RPGs. No dungeons? You're the ones killing the guy who constructed it, so you're the reason the dungeon stands. No ruins?

The problem with a 'young world' is you are really telling the DM what he can't create. The real value of the 'consensus world' over a 'trope world' is you can always find some niches in it to do whatever it is you want to do. The trope world is one size fits all. After all, on 'old world' you can always provide some guidelines for running campaigns when the world was young and even eventually a guidebook if enough demand exists for it. 'Old World' presumes some sort of outline of its prehistory. Tolkien's ME is an 'old world', but if you want to RP in it during the 1e, its fully supported.

Trope World IMO supports one thing and one thing only - an adventure path you wouldn't want to set in the your main setting that is about saving the world from a disaster unique to that setting.

 

[Kalontas]

The problem with a 'young world' is you are really telling the DM what he can't create. The real value of the 'consensus world' over a 'trope world' is you can always find some niches in it to do whatever it is you want to do. The trope world is one size fits all. After all, on 'old world' you can always provide some guidelines for running campaigns when the world was young and even eventually a guidebook if enough demand exists for it. 'Old World' presumes some sort of outline of its prehistory. Tolkien's ME is an 'old world', but if you want to RP in it during the 1e, its fully supported.

Trope World IMO supports one thing and one thing only - an adventure path you wouldn't want to set in the your main setting that is about saving the world from a disaster unique to that setting.

As you see by examples I provided, there's nothing limiting in a young world. If you really want to, you can get still a twist on all standard tropes in it. It's merely suggesting a different type of game - one which is more about exploration and taming the young world than the old, bored "dungeon crawl". Even your basic D&D suggests certain playstyle by its structure - a young world merely suggests a different one. The only limits in that world are ones the DM creates himself with an inability to look past a standard structure.

 

[Ryujin]

As with Tolkien or Donaldson ("Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever"), you can do "ages" of a world. The old is young again. This has the added advantage of being able to bring old, powerful, terrible magics into a 'young' world, without needing to completely alter the world in order to do it.

 

[Derren]

A real, living world with kingdom politics, working economics (at least at first glance), guilds and without monster infested ruins every 10 kilometers (I like the "No/rare dungeon idea) or 26 simultaneous world destroying plots by DragonballZ villains.

 

[Gilladian]

I wasn't actually saying I wouldn't run a "young world" - more pulling AbdulAlhazred's leg (he IS my older brother, and introduced me to DnD lo these many decades ago...). I think that a young world would work if the PCs were interested in being "larger than life" and were able to actively compile their mythology together; if, when the orc and the dwarf became allies fighting off the very first ghoul hordes, they knew that they were forever shaping how the future would be... and when the elf PC sneered at them, and refused to assist them because he's immune to the touch of a ghoul, it forever colored their racial relationships.

THAT would be fun, but I'm not sure standard DnD would handle it very well. It would take a pretty good DM, and a group willing to discuss metaplot as well as play the game at hand.

 

[Libramarian]

Hell
Something with lots of portals
Gothic horror but less campy than Ravenloft
Archaeologists on an alien world
Pirates
The world is one giant dungeon
Dungeons as dreams or subconsciousnesses Inception-style

 

[pemerton]

I like the idea of the "young world", especially the way [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION] describes it in post 45 above.

Sword and planet, plus some of [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION]'s options - hell, portals, Inception - could all be fun too.

I like the approach to game setting in The Dying Earth RPG, where is it less about maps and weather and more about the right flavour: there is a GM's checklist for scenarios, which tells you the things you need to include for a genuine Dying Earth feel, including things like bizarre cultural practices, outlandish clothing, etc. It might be nice to see that sort of approach for D&D scenario design too.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I personally would like to see a new strong 'trope/hook as world' setting. I generally prefer my settings to be either all-encompassing (like Planescape, my all time favorite D&D setting), or narrow and specific, around a theme (say, Ravenloft) or one focused on a specific location with a strong built-in hook, with "the world" serving mostly as a background drawn in broad strokes.

 

[Dausuul]

For me, the things that would be really important to see about a world is really thoughtful world building using the most modern standards. I should be able to tell just by looking at it that all the following is true:

a) They used a climate simulator to place the ecosystems of the world. And they've provided maps that explain climate, rainfall, ocean currents, prevailing winds, ect.
b) They've put some serious thoughts into the world's demographics. City sizes and placements make sense. Villages cluster around population centers.
c) They've built up a many layered global history of the world that helps me understand what people might believe about themselves.
d) They've put some serious thought into the world's cosmology. The world's cosmology needs to not only meet the game needs and address questions like, "Who might my ranger worship?", but they've addressed religion on something other than a gamist level so that I know why people might venerate these beings and that they are meeting basic human needs and aren't just relevant to some guy down in a dungeon. Frankly, to this point only 'The Book of the Righteous' has ever attempted that among any of the 'Dieties and Demigods' style supplements I've seen.
e) Almost immediately as an outgrowth of this examination in 'c' and 'd', the world needs to have a detailed calendar and suggestions about how to localize the calendar for different regions.
f) We've got the outline of something like cooherent economics for the world. I don't really need to know what NPC's you think should exist in a city when getting this world level overview, and I sure as heck don't want statblocks. We can have modules for that. But I'd like to know what the major imports and exports of a city or region are, and who their major trading partners are. I'd like to know what customs or laws make this city or region unique. What is the city famous for? Who are they friends with? Who is vying for their friendship? Who do they hate and why?
g) I'd like to see real exploration of the consequences of magic on the politics and sociology of the world. Make me believe in your setting.

In other words, I want to see work and craftmanship, not tropes and cheap hooks. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Sell me on your setting because it will save me countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears.

All of this. Yes. Exactly.

Additional request: Make the world strongly human-centric, such that it's possible to leave out the tired old Tolkien retread races without leaving a giant hole in the setting. (I'd ask for a humans-only world, but I know *that* isn't going to happen.)

 

[Celebrim]

All of this. Yes. Exactly.

Additional request: Make the world strongly human-centric, such that it's possible to leave out the tired old Tolkien retread races without leaving a giant hole in the setting. (I'd ask for a humans-only world, but I know *that* isn't going to happen.)

I'd ask for a setting without the Tolkien races, but I know that isn't going to happen either.

The main PC races in my homebrew are Human, Drawf, Elf, and Hobgoblin, but I couldn't bear to port in Gnomes and Halflings and rather loath the latter appearing outside of Middle Earth were they belong. Dwarf, Elf, and Hobgoblin are all questionable and I feel cheap for using them but the concept of each is so iconic that its hard to come up with races that don't end up the same in slightly different dress - see Vulcans as elves, Romulans as dark elves, and Klingons as Orcs in Star Trek for example. For 'little people' I have the Sidhe who more than double for both and Goblins which capture territory owned by neither. I also have a variaty of other fairy options, and two unique to my campaign world - the Orine and the Idreth. The Orine are a large nomadic slightly avian beautiful passionate to the point of insane warrior people. The Idreth are a mustached hunched back bow legged people who are also called the 'born old', because even their children look whizened and because they are born with a collective racial memory and so are knowing and aware from infancy. Both attempt to capture some ideological space not occupied by the tradional D&D races.

I of course wouldn't expect my particular list of races to populate any official setting, but I would at least expect at least the same degree of imagination and variation from the norm with some sort of cosmology that explains why these particular races are there. I'd also expect non-human races to both have strong tropes and be sufficiently varied that the entire race can't be represented by a single individual.

Honestly, I think you could replace all the races/nations in my world with human ethnic groups and it would still make sense. I do however think you'd be losing areas of exploration. I use my races more for the science fiction style exploration of 'alien' than as markers of good guys and bad guys. There are plenty of things more inhuman that can be used to explore morality and ethics.