World/Campaign Setting Themes/Flavours

[Roman]

What flavour does your homebrewed campaign setting have?

 

[Samothdm]

It's mid-high Renaissance (minus the gunpowder) but with scattered "primitive" socieites based on ancient Babylonian/Sumerian city-states and some other ancient earth areas. Most of the world is fairly civilized, but there are many encounters where the modern monotheistic religions encounter folklore and superstition. It's a land of mystery where something or someone has been able to limit the effectiveness of divination magic, making it impossible to do things like scry others to find out what their true motives are. Humanity has taken over the world and through sheer numbers become the dominant species. Each of the other races, including the classic "humanoids" like orcs and goblins, have mostly adapted to this and become assimilated to human culture. They worship human gods and follow human customs and live in human cities. Small pockets of traditional non-human cultures exist, and that helps to create the main themes of the campaign: tolerance, the "sense of entitlement", and racial tensions. The fact that no one can use divination magic to spy on their other races, like they used to, just fuels the fire even more. Lastly, because the three major world religions are all monotheistic, it creates a lot of conflict because each religion has clerics that cast spells, and yet none of them are able to figure out how exactly the priests of the rival "pagan" religions are able to cast spells, since they know that the god they themselves worship is the "one true god". They just can't wrap their heads around that.

 

[Desdichado]

Swasbuckling Lovecraftian vaguely steampunk Mars. My homebrew's a bit on the odd side.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

It's kinda hard to nail down. Put in some medieval Europe and elements of the Near East, Hercules and Xena, with a smattering of Vedic flavoring, and that's close to mine.

 

[IronWolf]

I don't homebrew anymore..... My games take place in the Forgotten Realms.

 

[JBowtie]

My homebrew has several cultures, each with a different feel and some unifying themes. The polynesian, oriental, and arabic influences are easy to identify. There is some (hopefully) more subtle classical and celtic influences, but those are more artifacts of the D&D system than premeditated inclusion.

 

[Wombat]

High Renaissance, colonization of New World-equivalent, gunpowder incuded (mainly as shot-and-drop), clash between the swashbuckling semi-European culture and the semi-Mesoamerican culture. Lots of room for piracy, religious intolerance (internal and external),culture clashes, linguistic mix-ups, a multitude of superstitions, and even mismatched calendars. All "monsters" are either nonintelligent creatures (and plants) or else NPCs/classed characters, except for some undead, both of European and Native persuassions. Magic much less common than in standard D20, especially in terms of magical items. The basic rules used are AU, modified by Skull & Bones, Complete Book of Eldritch Might, and Swashbuckling adventures, eked out by a lot of Osprey/Men-At-Arms books, various history books, and a lot of cooperation amongst the players.

 

[James Heard]

My homebrew is basically a microcosm of the Mediterranean in the 1600s set on another world, with industrialization happening as well to muddle the waters. Depending on my mood when I start a game in it, I also have a tendency to throw in a genocide of the elves as well - no real reason except I don't like 'em.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Which one?

Seriously, I am currently running Steampunk (industrial), but my D&D setting is Reformation/Counter Reformation, just before the age of enlightenment.

Which also explains why I like the Iron Kingdoms setting...

The Auld Grump

 

[Turjan]

The feeling is somewhat European/Mesopotamian/East Indian (elements thereof, not as a direct model) and so-called medieval (more early than late) with quite a few high fantasy elements. It's got aspects from Ultima, Planet of Adventure/Durdane, Conan, Glorantha, Sovereign Stone, etc. The ruleset borrows heavily from AU. This may sound like hodgepodge, but I hope the mix is internally consistent .