World Ideas you think are cool or good

[Turjan]

These elements may be out there, but I haven't read/played them yet: [snip]

I think one or the other look outside of the contemporary D&D/d20 worlds in their ever returning regurgitation - with minor changes of course - might help here. But you can already sense the rising conflict between originality (which always means lesser accessibility) and verisimilitude (to reality, or to standard fantasy clichés?) by looking at the few answers in this thread .

 

[Nightfall]

I also like worlds where that have really developed deities and various unique areas or regions to explore. And lots of conflict and flavor. I believe Scarred Lands fits this bill (although I haven't had a chance to read much of SL, I'll remedy that soon).

Yeah I think you'll feel that way too after reading it. Check out my response in my thread to your question.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Urbis, of course!

The general idea of the setting is to deconstruct the D&D rules, take a look at everything that would have weird effects on society (like raise dead spells, or Spells of Mass Destruction like fireball, the abundance of magical items), and construct a world around it that actually makes sense. The end result is a fantasy world that stays true to the D&D rules (all the standard races, spells, monsters, and equipment from the SRD exist in it - but there are few new additions, since I wanted to keep the learning curve small) - and yet moves far away from the usual pseudo-medieval paradigm of most D&D worlds.

Oh, and I wanted to throw in some really big cities, too... ;-)

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

- Imaginative implementation of extraplanar cosmology. Feel free to ditch the Great Wheel and dump all the demons and devils. We've seen all that before.

How about this? It's certainly not the standard "Great Wheel"...

Short description: The "planes" are set in stable locations (similar to the "Lagrange Points" between Luna and Earth) between the 10 "Cosmic Forces" or "Cardinal Points" (Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Positive Energy or Life, Negative Energy or Death) in metaphysical space. There are 40 such stable locations where the metaphysical pull between two non-opposing cardinal points cancel each other out.

In other words, you have a plane that is similar to the traditional Abyss (Chaos and Evil), but you also have a plane of Evil Life, Deadly Water, Fiery Chaos, and so on.

 

[Dark Jezter]

I was watching Ben-Hur the other day, and I thought "Man, it would be cool if somebody made a campaign setting modeled after the ancient world rather than the typical medieval Europe-style setting."

 

[Acid_crash]

For me, I want a world that is really different. It's hard to make a setting that is different than the others because so many people will complain that it's too different, but yet if this world has a race, let's say they are called Cymarilians, have light green tinted skin, live in crystalline cities that appear to be made of glass but yet is as strong as steel, and then give them pointed ears...we all know that many people would say that this race is this world's elf race, and that they should live in forests, and because of this difference they would then say that this world wouldn't fit for D&D because it's too non-Tolkenese.

I'm not saying that everybody would say that, but a majority of D&D players would I think, and therefore wouldn't want to play or purchase a book that had a race like this.

 

[Turjan]

How about this? It's certainly not the standard "Great Wheel"...

Well, it's not the Great Wheel, but it's a near derivative thereof. It still has all the elements of the Great Wheel tied to it, plus some more.

Don't get me wrong; personally, I don't have any objections to the general idea of the Great Wheel - my own campaign has some elements borrowed, too, although the number of major planes is drastically reduced to only 6 (though there are many "demiplanes"), and only 4 of them are accessible. But I think, the original poster meant something radically different !

 

[Derulbaskul]

The original question was along the lines of, "what are the good ideas that haven't been done yet?"

I really can't think of anything new. I've recently fallen for both Midnight and Dawnforge: the former because the bad guys are really very much in charge and that's basically new and the latter because it's set at the beginning of a world where the PCs get to create the proverbial "golden age", or not.

I tend to think that both settings were fairly "new" in concept, but I am sure many would argue that Midnight is borrowing themes explored in Ravenloft and Dark Sun.

So, the question is, is there anything new under the sun?

 

[Oni]

Well it's already been done, but I would love to see it redone for 3rd edition. Al-Qadim. Or at least a good arabian nights flavored setting for some sort.


Really I can't think of any particularly appealling right now that hasn't been done somewhat (are sure that are plenty of new avenues that could be explored, but I can't think of any of them right now).

 

[S'mon]

What makes a good world depends on what you want it for. Generic worlds like Oerth and Toril are good for long-term play in that you can put pretty much anything in them. They are good introductory/starting worlds for players & DMs new to D&D.

By contrast, a world-hopping campaign benefits from "worlds with a schtick" - worlds with one or two strong concepts, easily grasped. Moorcock does this well, so did George Lucas in the Star Wars trilogy. Eg I created Werskara, a flat world loosely based on Norse myth, where the east & western edges are literally the End of the World (you go to far you fall into the infinite void of Ginungagap), while the icy northern edge transitions into Niflheim and the southern into Muspellheim. The northern part of the world is dominated by conflict between the huge wolf-life Wolfen tribes and the human barbarian tribes, and the civilised human coastal cities. Across the central ocean are desert lands and volcanic mountain cities ruled by a Surt-worshipping theocracy. This made a great setting for a quest scenario to recover the ancient relics needed to defeat the Wolfen, with one possessed by the Hag of the Twisted Tower in the Falling Marshes overlooking the void on the eastern edge of the world, another in the catacombs beneath the volcanic city of Sunderhold, another in possession of the Ice Witch in her storm-shrouded tower at the northern edge of the world. Etc.