Its a new world

So now on to part 2 of my world creation project. I now know the threats I want to use but I still need some geography. Well start by looking at what sort of scenery it would be nice to use. There are a wide assortment of interesting backdrops from endless deserts to perilous cliffs to the cliche secret lair in a volcano. Well first its clear from my earlier ideas that the underdark is important. So we will have a large warren of underground regions underlying much of the surface world. I see a lot of subterranean chasms, huge geodes, and underground rivers and seas.

On the surface I think I want weather to be important, suggesting the region is temperate. Dangerous snowstorms, fierce downpours, and deadly heat waves allow for a lot of variety in even a small location. A simple combat near a bridge plays out very differently if the river is frozen, the roads are mud or the region is flooded. For terrain, mountains would be interesting and work well with a large underground region. Perhaps a range of ancient mountains divides the realm. Deserts are another interesting option to include but I've used them extensively in the past. The same with seasides and archipelagos. I've actually underused winter in the past so it might be interesting to set the game towards the cold north. Forests are always interesting spots to use, so I think I'll need several distinct forests (for the eladrin/elves, for a dark evil wood, and so forth). Despite lacking an ocean, I think several large lakes and numerous rivers might be nice (especially for that flood idea). They also become easy ways of linking cities and towns (and ruins). Plus that also allows for a swamplands.

A few ideas jump out at me that don't fit this pattern. First is the idea of blighted regions, areas distorted by ancient magical wars. Magical (and hungry) woods, living storms, floating islands, great chasms, and so forth. These might be nice to place here and there as evidence of great and terrible conflicts (perhaps between the gods and primordials as links to a later giant plot line). Then there are dinosaurs but I think I might use them in a land that time forgot in the underdark.

Next week need to think of political geography. Luckily for me I'm going with the points of light setting where civilization consists of small independent towns and city states and not large modern nations. Still its good to think about what is known about the wider world and where the various races and classes can be found.

We will start with the dwarves. I think there will be several scattered dwarven fasts in the mountains along with many abandoned ruins from a great dwarven kingdom. Elves will be found in the nearby woods, clustered about the ancient sites of the eladrin cities. A few of these cities will still exist, diminished but still powerful. Most are in the Feywild but a few bleed into this world on special nights. Once it was every night but now they grow few and far between. Halflings just are and can be found everywhere, but especially along the slow flowing rivers. The dragonborn clans I think will nomadic and their ancestral lands are lost. The same with the tieflings though a few demon haunted ruins can be found here and there.

For history, I think the elves kingdoms fell when the drow were cast out several thousand years ago. The dwaven kingdoms fell into ruins more recently after a war of succession a little over a thousand years ago. The dragonborn kingdom was destroyed by the tiefling led empire sometime between that of the elves and dwarves but the cost of the tielfing's infernal pacts swallowed the remains of that empire in single night. A few centuries ago a great human empire that had united the world fell, thus leading the current state of affairs.

Other races such as the aboleths, drow and hobgoblins also had their empires that rose and fell. As far as the surface races are concerned only the hobgoblins are notable. I think I'll have them exist about the same time as the dwarves, thus explaining their enmity.

Now that I have a little history I need to work out the starting setting. This is something I do best with a paper and pencil so I'll have to describe it later.

4th edition and a new game

So I may actually have a new game starting soon. For the last month I have been helping a friend work with an online gaming tool, called itabletop. It basically functions as a digital whiteboard with voice/video conferencing. Basically all you need for an online D&D game. Also now that the 4th edition of D&D is almost out, I'm finally interested in running a new pseudo-medieval fantasy again.

The new game looks like fun with tools to make the DM's life easier. The system also gives PCs more interesting things to do. This is a game that works well with a DM/group that is not too nit-picky and is focused on the story. Which is to say, my kind of game. Reviewing the new write ups of the monsters I see a lot of cool ideas forming. In particular I want to focus on some monsters and themes that I rarely used in my old 2e and 3e games.

So on to creating a world. I've collected a number of world creation guides over the years and sort of come up with my own "system" along the way. Anyway I found an old photocopy (on odd shaped paper) from Dragon magazine #226 (which I have on pdf somewhere I just realized). The author David Clarke (interestingly the same name as a friend I knew in college) breaks the process into three parts. Part 1 is just the basics (amount of detail, default assumptions) so we'll skip it. I like D&D's assumptions and I follow dungeoncraft's first rule of campaign creation: Never create more than you need. Part 2 is more interesting and is really where I think world creation begins, determining the climates and terrain you want to use. This ties into determining a campaigns hook, that is what makes this world different and interesting.

So lets brainstorm some ideas for my new campaign. Like I said earlier I've neglected certain key monsters and ideas over my 17 years of DMing. So lets look at those first. Well there are two terrain types that have gotten little use in any game I've either ran or played in and that is underwater and the underdark. Underwater is not a friendly environment to airbreathers and I had an (sadly) short nautical themed game 2 years ago. The underdark would be interesting so we'll save that idea for the moment.

How about monsters? Well D&D has no shortage of evil humanoids and there are many that I've never used. Of those that are well represented in 4e, we have gnolls (evil demon worshipping hyena-men), drow (dark elves in the underdark!), aboleths (underdark dwelling fish things), and an assortment of fish people who we will discard for obvious reasons (though they might work well as minions of the aboleths). Then there are new monster that excite my interests, like shadar-kai (shadowy ex-fey) and the cyclops (one eyed servants of mad fey giants). Lastly there are monsters I've used but not focused on (despite being obvious foci): dragons and giants. Giants (true giants at least) in the new addition are much higher level (beginning tied to the primordials who created the world) so I'll skip them for the time being.

So now to start putting things together. Well the underdark links drow and aboleths (and I can use the fish people in conjunction with them). These monsters lay in the paragon tier (11-20) in the new system so i suspect the PCs will spend the majority of their time underground for those levels. I'll need to come up with a reason for that. Cyclops and their formian masters are also paragon level monsters that live underground in the Feywild reflection of the underdark. Even better drow are also fey so there is a natural connection between the three.

We need some Heroic tier (1-10) monsters to focus on first however. Gnolls work for the upper end as do the shadar-kai. Well how about dragons? They can fit almost anywhere and are prone to forcing lesser races to serve them. Kobolds and dragons are bit cliche but work. Perhaps the land is being ravaged by a brood of young dragons and dragonspawn, seeded by a much older (and prolific) wyrm that could show up later. Looking over the monster lists I see a monster I overlooked, troglodytes (stinky lizard people) and happen to be near the upper heroic level as well as being natives of the underdark!

So we have an infestation of dragons and dragonkin driving the local monsters as they strive for power as well the need to feed. The PCs might trace this infestation to the underdark where they get wrapped up in the intrigues of the drow and the mad formians as well as a war with the treacherous aboleth led fish people. The rest of the plot can be worked out later. Perhaps the dragon is building a power base on the surface in order to strike at one or the other of these factions or perhaps something more sinister is behind all these problems.

Next: A map and a starting location.