The Campaign Builder's Guild

hey, glad that i found this place. i introduced myself in the rogues gallery, and i'm gonna toss my campaign idea up here before i head off for work.

......
in the distnt past, the ancient kingdoms progressed to a level of magical understanding that allowed them to control the very fabric of life. the natural world was reshaped according to their whims, sickness and disease ceased to exist, all but the most serious wounds could be healed in a matter of days or weeks, and individuals could live for centuries on end. as mortals crept closer to border of immortality, the old gods began to be forgotten. religion faded in the face of the new magical sciences. prostheses were developed to replace lost or damaged body parts, and soon entire artifical bodies could house the conciousness of a person. finally, the last boundry was broken. the spark of life, the spirit, the very soul could be created from nothingness. the birth of a new race, a race of independently intelligent, fully aware, artifical beings. created in every shape and size, these "arcons" formed the backbone of ancient society. eventually there was no profession, trade, or aspect of civilized life that did not rely on these beings to continue functioning. it was a golden age where one could pursue any desires one wished, free from the toil of work, fatigue, hunger, and even death.

however, as more and more of these constructs were created, the balance of the biological world began to break down. the non-renewable store of life energy in the planet began to run dry, trapped in the immortal arcons, not being refreshed and redistributed through the natural process of death and decay. as resources started to become scarce, the old kingdoms began to argue and fight. suspicion, jealousy, and hatred swept the globe like a virulent plague. each sought to protect wat was deemed "rightfully theirs", and the forges of war began to burn painfully bright. armies of mindless artificial soldiers and war machines poured forth from every kingdom, destroying those populations not brought low from famine. law and order failed as the world crumbled. generations lived and died as the war ground bitterly on to an exhausted stalemate.

it was during one of these brief but tense lulls that the fate of the world was sealed, doomed forever. one of the smaller kingdoms, knowing that it would not survive the conflict much longer, chose to flee. to quit this blighted world in search of another. it secretly built a ship of colassal proportions, capable of carrying it's people up into the uncontested reaches beyond this dying orb. the firey liftoff scorched a crater the size of a continent in it's wake, and sparked a panicked mass exodus. a race against time to leave while they still had a chance. vast clouds of soot covered the sky as the remaining kingdoms fled. charred, smoking debris fell like black rain as the great cityships fought, crashed and burned, even as the tried to escape. many were left behind, forced to scratch out a pitiful existance in the mad scramble to depart. those that managed to excape did so with little regret, vowing never to return to their ruined homeworld.

with it's store of life energy now carved up and scattered across the heavens, the earth had no chance of ever healing, repairing the awful damage it had sustained. centuries passed and life did eventually reached a balance, if it could be called that. bleak and desolate, a twisted wasteland of ash and dust is all that remains of the once proud world. a few remnants of the mighty kingdoms remain, as twisted, bitter, and hostile as the landscape they have been cursed to live in.
......

that's it. i'm fleshing out the details as i go along. to give myself some sort of framework, i'm using the d&d 3.5 system. this will keep me on track and keep me from going too crazy. my first problem is how to work the common PC races (human, elf, dwarf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling) and classes (barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and wizard) into the setting. i also have a newly started blogsite where i record all of my thoughts and ideas.  http://www.hyvemynd.blogspot.com/ (//hyperlinkurl)

Wow. Very cool premise. I love post-apocalyptic stuff. I also like the history - with the moon-sized ships and the wrecks of the city-ships. Although, it'd be interesting to see the destruction caused by a continent-sized crater. Must've taken some powerful magic to keep the world together after that. I like it a lot, though.

One nitpicky question: what constitutes 'death' for the Arcons? couldn't they just have been physically destroyed, releasing the life energy?

Unfortunately the polls do not work at this time.

First off welcome to the Guild. :)

You shouldn't cram all the core races and classes into this setting if you don't feel they fit. I say select what you need to fill what roles you want filled and make new ones to fill in what ever you feel is missing.

I'll argue the counterpoint to Chalchi... Chalchiuh... Cha-Cha's post:

All of the Core races are very human-like, so anywhere a human could fit, any of the Core races could also fit. No need to deny players the option of playing a given Core race when they are all so human-like, anyway. Unless, of course, you want to abandon Core classes and races altogether, in which case you may as well ditch everything Core and start from scratch.

Ultimately, you should ditch Core if your main goal is to create a flavor that Core just can't pull off; but keep as much Core as possible if your main goal is to create a world that is easily accessible to the largest possible audience.

I'm going to third Meepo and .... I'm guessing that's Neptune ...'s sentaments: use as much core as you feel is necessary. If you think you need to design new classes, just ask around (I'm known for my willingness and ability to make new crunch, or adapt crunch differently). If you need to discuss the class system for your setting, make a thread in the meta boards and I'll definately come help out.

As for the fluff, I really like it. Post appocalyptic is always fun, and your background leaves things open for some very interesting developements.

My question for you, since I think constructive questions are the best thing a worldbuilder can get: what will the goal of PCs in different campaigns be? Is the primary goal always going to be survival (either the survival of the PCs, or the PCs attempting to help others survive), or will the PCs be striving to fix the world? Largely, this is determined by your desire to use this world consistantly through many campaigns, or if you want the world to house a single campaign.

wow. thanks for the great welcome, i'm really glad i found this place. i had a similar post over on the wotc site and hardly got anything. that's what led me over here. and yes, constructive questions and ctiticism are the best things that a worldbuilder can get. so here goes...

@ realm weaver - originally this was going to be a story for a graphic novel i was working on, and the story revolved around the destruction of the arcons to release stored magic and fix the world. just like you suggested. the problem with that was to turn the earth into a wasteland would require alot of trapped magic, meaning that there would be HUGE numbers of arcons running around, meaning that they would be very easy to find and destroy. once everyone figured out what was going on (i suppose that could be ae catch, people haven't figured it out yet). the world wide wars would have contributed alot to restoring the world to normal too, since arcons would be getting destroyed left and right in the fighting. plus, that would tend to dictate very monotonous "kill the arcon" type adventures. so, i decided to "solve" the problem by trapping the magic where no one could get it back, in the city ships. that way the world would stay messed up, because no one can follow after them and destroy them (meaning that this is not going to turn into a sort of "spelljammer" type setting).

as far as "death" for an arcon goes, short of total physical destruction (aka being smashed to bits) i imagine that you'd just have to wait for it to breakdown. i came up with the arcon idea before i stumbled onto the eberron campaign setting, but now i imagine them kinda looking like the war-forged. atleast the humanoid warriors and workers. there are many different kinds, including giant "super-brain" computer type ones. there wouldn't be any fancy materials on the fantasy world (no plastics or polymers), so the arcons would be built out of wood, metal, and stone (maybe even some crystal too). so you'd just have to wait until the things wore down. meaning they last a long time, espeically the metal and stone creations. so i guess EVENTUALLY the world would return to normal as the scattered city ships slowly breakdown and release their stored magic. but that's going to take a long long LONG time. things may have just broken down too much to be fixed by that point in time.

oh, and just in case you were wondering, under no circumstances will a player be allowed to be an arcon. they are strictly NPCs.

epic meepo pretty much hit the nail on the head. i'm using the d&d 3.5 rules and trying to include all the usual character staples of that system to try and appeal to the widest possible audience. i did think about designing everything from scratch (and if i did i would use the skill-based FUZION system which i really like), but here is why i decided not too. too much free reign. i'll give you an analogy: i was a graphic design major in college. i loved tweaking and playing with the rules and parameters of the projects that i had to work on. my stuff came out great. but now that i'm out of school i haven't designed a single thing for myself in the past 4 years. why? too much free reign. there are just too many themes, options, and ways that i could go with things... so i go nowhere. it'd be exactly the same thing with this campaign setting. if i allowed myself to design everything from the ground up i would get bogged down and not finish everything. so constraining myself to using the common elements of the d&d system helps keep me focused. i mean, i absolutely HATE gnomes. i think that they're totally stupid. but i'm going to find a way to work them in because it'll be a good challenge. plus i don't want to turn possible players off to my setting by leaving out certain things. i have a better chance of having people actually use my setting if i have all the classic d&d elements (just presented in a new and radically different way). and don't worry poseidon, i fully inted to include atleast one new race and character class, just to differentiate the setting that much more from the norm.

as for the campaign story xeviat, i'm not quite sure where i want to go with that just yet. my poor story-telling skills is what sparked the idea to turn this into a campaign setting in the first place. i could create all the fluff and back story, and then let other people run with it and do the story-telling. at the current point in history (where the players jump in) i imagine that enough time has passed where basic survival is not the end all be all of life. things have setteled down into a grey area where you won't die simply by going outside, but at the same time you have to be careful and aware at all times. as i said before "fixing the world" was the goal of the story at first. but that's no longer possible thanks to the city ships leaving. that could eventually be a high-level character idea, but at the beginning i think things should be much more local. like helping helping settlements defend against raiders and invaders, guarding baggage trains, things like that.

another thing i'm thinking about doing (which is very ambitious) is giving full game information about the world-war before the exodus. that way people could choose whether to play on the brink of the apocalypse or after it. but that is practically a whole nother setting.

Having eras of play would be wonderful actually.