The Campaign Builder's Guild

My native language - Swedish.

But I suppose after having being an expat in an English speaking country for a few years, I'm getting to the point where I can almost claim that I'm becoming fluent in English.

You need a reason to bounce kobolds?

I suppose I should add the image at some point.


Bouncing kobold with chicken. Art by John Kovalich, animated with permission for the use in icons and avatars.

I'll lend you my 'bouncing kobold with chicken' if you want?




(No, it's not just that I like using the phrase 'bounding koblod with chicken', not at all... 'bouncing kobold with chicken' is a very nice phrase though, you should try it. All together now ' bouncing kobold with chicken'.

I was in a bad mood, a bit of frothing feminist rage over something or the other, when finally getting around to uploading an avatar.
So  it had to be the pussy power one.

Image shamelessly stolen from a sinfest cartoon to make an LJ icon, and it'll do here too, for now... Since I can't decide between cowthulhu or bouncing kobolds with chicken.

Quote from: Jürgen HubertA couple of thoughts and questions:

- this one is not made by me. I'm lucky enough to know someone who does pretty map for me, then I destroy  it little by little by adding text etc. [/spoiler]

The climate range from pretty much mediterranian -esque around the bay, to near enough north European at the mountainous regions of the north coast.
 

Quote- Have you given any thought to the wildlife native to the continent? I'm not even talking about the monsters here (though those are of course of interest as well), but ordinary animals that the PCs might encounter. Some of them might provide meat, pelts, or other useful by-products, while others are annoying parasites and pest, and others still are merely interesting local color ("Look what I trained my chameleon bat to do!")...

- Frontier regions, especially during something like a gold rush, often have very high prices for goods that cannot created locally and need to be imported back from civilization. In fact, often items that can be created locally are sold for high prices, because most people are far too busy prospecting for riches than to produce useful things. As a result, often it's those who provide these basic services who make the most money, as opposed to those who seek to "strike it rich" in the wilderness...

Basically, this means that the PCs will be shocked how much things cost on the new continent - the laws of supply and demand are in full force here. And this gives you the excuse to constantly drain the money of the PCs, which forces them to be on a constant lookout for new sources of wealth - motivating them under these circumstances should be quite easy![/quote]- Are there any sapient species on this new continent? Are any of them humanoid? How do they react to the intruders?[/quote]

No humanoids, no. I have been playing with the thought of having a Formian society among the mountains.  That aren't really too keen on this invasion, when they get aware of it. But we'll see about that one.

Quote from: TúrinSo keep up the good work and enjoy your time in the DM's chair!

Thank you! :)

Yes, I can well see that there are room for changes and tweakings as it grows. Even if I'm starting small. ;)

I will start with saying that Crescent Bay is very much a work in progress.
It is also fairly much a vanilla setting nothing really out of the ordinary, so I have doupted if it's really worth posting here. For the most part, it is meant to work directly with rules, classes and characters created straight out of the PHB. No new races, not even any mechanically modified ones, standard PHB deities, etc. and so forth.

That said, here goes nothing... At least it'll give me a kick up the backside to write these things down.
[spoiler=The aim]
What I'm trying to achive with this setting, apart from hopefully not make a pig's ear out of my first game as a DM. :) Is a setting which the players can explore through the eyes of their characters, and both sharing the sense of newness. If that makes sense to anyone but me?
An mostly unexplored continent the characters have little advance knowledge of.

My aim for the feeling, or theme is a more or less, what if the gold rush/settling of the wild west happened in a world with D&D technology and magic. There's a new frontier, a 'new world' to be explored and tamed, where a fortune is waiting for the few that dares to grab it...

And possibly a setting where it's 'logical' to come across ancient ruins of unknown provenance... Ruins that no one knew existed and that haven't been explored before. Even if they're less than 10 days travel from the nearest populated area.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=uncategorised ramble]
Crescent Bay is a 'newly' discovered continent across the sea, the newest province of the Velia empire. It was discovered over two centuries ago, but not until recently have the colonization of the continent begun in ernest. In the last twenty odd years since the magical proprieties of the shells of blue oysters were found [note=Blue oysters]These blue oysters is a spiecies native to Crescent Bay, but not found anywhere else in the empire.
Apart from being purely decorative, when the shell is polished and usually carved into cameos. They carry no XP cost for crafting magical items. They are however very expensive as the demand for them both as a fashion statement and for the creation of magical amulets are high. A large concentration of shells in one place will create a small localised anti-magic field as the shells soak up magic. They can only be harvested and grown by  manual non-magic labour.  
They're simply called blue oysters because the inner layer of the shell is bright sky blue. The name predates any further discoveries of the shell's special proprieties. A crosscut of the shell will reveal that the shell itself is layered in 4 different colours. Hence their suitability to be carved into cameos.
The outer layer, once the rouch surface have been polished off is iridencent white. The second layer from the outside a deep red, followed by a thin black layer before this sky blue inner layer that is revealed as you open the oyster.
The shell of a fully grown oyster is aproximatly 6 mm thick at its thickest point before polishing, up to 1/3 of the thickness can be lost during the process. A relativly small area of the oyster shell does hold the thickness that makes it suitable for carving.
Pearls are very rarely found in blue oysters, according to the law of the empire, any pearl that is found is the property of the Tsarina, although a hefty finder's fee is issued to compensate those that bring one to her. To this date, three blue oyster pearls have been found. They are currently being worked by the empire's most prestigeous jeweller into a new addition to the imperial crown jewels a ceremonial scepter for the Tsarina's celebration of half a century on the throne.
Blue oysters have been farmed in Crescent Bay for eating for over half a century before that one cameo made its way over the ocean as a gift to the Tsarina. The shells discarded, or used to craft buttons and similar common household items. Until one artistic son of an oyster farmer saw the potential in the shells and started carving cameos, one of which eventually made its way to the hands of the Tsarina.[/note]the population of Crescent Bay have grown from around 10000 to 500000.
That original population are from those two centuries of the empire was content with keeping a small garrison on the island. Many soldiers station at this garrison opted to retire and settle this pristine land at the end of their term. Sending for their families to come and join them. An additional small trickle of people with a good reason to leave the reach of the empire and start a new life also braved the seven month sea-journey during this time, (fringe religious cults, criminals escaping justice, etc.)
The empire is now activly campaigning to get people to relocate to Crescent Bay, all to feed the growing oyster industry and to farm the land to feed those working in it.
Its efforts range from sponsored travel and promises of land grants for those that are willing to emigrate and start a new life on the new continent. To offering pardon for lesser crimes to small time criminals that are willing to be deported.

The small garrison stationed on the island is not by far big enough to deal with the preassure of this growing population, it has its hands full with the purely administratative duties of keeping up with the traffic of ships and running the port. Leaving the sprawling port town, Crescent bay town, that has sprung up around it mostly lawless.
If it's not about ships, empire business, import/export duties, or disrupting the oyster industry, the garrison don't want to know, nor have the rescourses to deal with it. The only effort to keep the order in Crescent Bay town that has been made is to appoint one of its now retired officers as mayor of the town.
Civilan complaints all go through the mayor, if you can and will put up a reward, the town will foot the bill for 'wanted, dead or alive' posters to be posted in public places.
For those arriving not to work the oyster banks, or farm the land (ie. PCs) the bounty hunter trade is booming.

In the last few years, other enterprises have started to make tentative inroads on the island. This bid to colonize Crescent Bay have seen a dramatic increase in ship building back at the shores of the empire. Increasing the demand for wood, Crescent Bay island is largely covered in forests...

The ships arriving to bring new settlers to Crescent bay return to the empire with the bulk of the cargo filled with logs as it's just plain not safe to load too much blue oyster shells into one ship.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=the Velia empire]
The Velia empire, or just the empire as it's most commonly known, spans the entire known world. It is for most parts an administrative behemouth operating unter the premise of creative inertia.
Currently the empire is enjoying a long span of being politically stable and with no known outside enemies.

The empire is a large and diverse place, consisting of 17 provinces (18 counting Crescent Bay although it has not been declared a province proper yet, these things take far more time than a mere 200 years) and 5 'reservations'.[note=the reservations]Orcs, goblinoids etc. the so called savage races, (ie. most things that aren't normal player races or monsters) are part of the Velia empire. They are not, how ever citizens of the empire. Much like the provinces, the savage races are left to their own devices in large reservations. As long as they do not try to leave these reservations the empire does not interfer. And a peace, of sorts, is kept. (There are the occational border raid, but for the most part the arrangement keeps the savage races subdued.
The reservations, unlike the provinces do not have their own local army/government/administration/etc. any attempt to form such a thing would quickly be stamped out.[/note] The provinces are mostly selfgoverning, each with their own army/government/administration the empire only really getting involved if provincial policies would have an effect on the other provinces, or if they would be in direct oposition of the empire's laws, and to solve conflicts between provinces.

[ooc]In many ways the empire is more resembling a mix between the UN and EU than a traditional country as such.[/ooc]

Head of the empire is the Tsar (male)/Tsarina (female) a hereditary position within the Velia (the imperial) family. The current ruler is Tsarina Elevna, it is the 47th year of her reign.
The imperial family is half elves, the empire itself was born when two provinces joined their ruling families one elven, one human, by marriage. Since then to follow in the tradition of this joining the tsar/tarina have alternating married an elf or a human. If the last Tsar was married to a human, the next will marry an elf. The eldest child of this union inherits the throne.
[/spoiler]

I do it similarly to what has already been mentioned, but generally using the behind the name website.

Pull up a list and quickly scan through it until something catches my eye. for instance the breton version of Katherine - Katell, with a random 'r' added becomes the Katrell province.

That's looking great!
I think we have an svg convert :)
I'm just glad I could help, but how do you find it with regards to speed? I think it is a bit larger than the ones I based my comment on how I haven't noticed any slowing down of the program itself.

Wow! Luminous Crayon, I bow to your greatness. Those are fantastic.

It must be said, though...
- Crescent Bay used to be home to a pretty grand civilization. Now they're gone, and nobody knows why.

This one is absolutely true, it's part of a planned plot hook. :)

Thank you, that is very encouraging.

Now for cliches, or generic out of the PHB if you wish. My group are absolutely OK with that. You might even say that most of them prefer it over more 'out there' settings. Most of them would rather play in a generic setting where elves are poncey bow-twangers, dwarves are gruff, have big beards and drink too much. Than one filled with too much weirdness and stuff they don't recognise out of the PHB.

I know I am not the DM I'm filling in for, our usual DM is pure genious. He might have been good enough to pull something extraordinary off, but even he worried that some of the players might rebel when he started going away from the generic psuedo-medieaval D&D stuff and turned our old cosy cliché D&D into a spaceopera romp. (Wheeeee! Gnomes in space! With laserguns and rocket launchers! - Hrmmm... sorry, don't know what came over me there.)
And the players know I've never done this before. So we've got an understanding. They won't be difficult and I won't throw a tantrum and swear off DMing for ever and ever to leave us DM-less for the nine months or so until the good DM is back from his real world commitments. :P (Well unless any of them wants to pick up the DMG for our Friday night games. Most of them already run other campaigns on other days. Or have tried it and hated it, so that's unlikely.)

So if I was to be going a little bit cliché, that's the least of my worries at the moment. :)

[spoiler=preamble - Much ado about nothing]I might be in over my head, and probably don't really belong on this forum with such esteemed campaign builders like yourself. Truth to be told, this is not only my first campaign - but the first time on the DM side of the (virtual)table.
But being me, I never could do thing the easy way, so a homebrew it is.
I guess one of the reasons I did sign up to CBG, was in the hope to give myself a kick up the arse and start writing stuff down. Rather than keeping it all in my head. Maybe the deadline looming ever closer is part of it too.[/spoiler]
I've got about a month to get stuff down until the planned start of this campaign, and the players are starting to ask more and more questions. *eeeeek* and I'm slowly filtering down to them the information they need to know / their characters would know, to sort of build things up pre-game.

[spoiler=What is this Crescent Bay all about?]Crescent Bay is the name of a "newly" discovered continent. It's named after the shape of a very prominent greographical feature, which also happened to be the place for the first ship to make landfall.
It is also what I call the whole campaign she-bang.
The whole Theme (for the lack of a better world) behind this campaign is sort of a wild west/gold rush/settlers of a new continent - but with generic D&D technology, magic and possibly pirates, -thing.

The wheels of the empire turns slowly, over two centuries have passed since the new continent across the sea was discovered. For over two centuries, the empire's main interest in this new continent was little more than curiosity, satisfied to keep a small garrison on the main island and to slowly explore the continent. The Empire was in no rush to exploit this new found richness, secure in the knowledge that their position would not be challenged.

Well as the campaign starts, this has changed. For about 20 years, this empire have activly campaigned to get people to settle in Crescent Bay. A mix of the old tricks of offering pardon for lesser crimes under the condition that the convicts relocate and incentives like substidized travel and land grants to those that willingly uproot their lives in favour of the new continent.

What very much triggered this change in policy from the empire, was the discovery of a new spieces of oysters native to the bay. Or rather that the shell of said oysters, are not just very decorative and can be carved into beutiful cameos, which have become all the rage amongst anyone who think they are anyone. But more that that, that this material leans itself to be imbued with magical proprieties with an ease not found in anyting else. (Purely mechanical, there is no XP cost to enchant things made out of this material.)

Raw oyster shells are worth more than their weight in gold... There's fortunes to be made in Crescent Bay. The empire have an ever growing demand for these oyster shells. This campaign to populate Crescent Bay is very much about feeding the oyster shell industry.

It is working more people arriving nearly every week. Around where this garrison were stationed, a sprawling port town have sprung up and new settlements - little proto towns - are popping up like mushrooms after a rain. Emigrating to set up a new life in Crescent Bay have turned out to be a favourite amongst fringe religious cults, criminals escaping justice, etc. and so forth.
The garrison itself - the empire's representatives on the continent, is bogged down under the administrative duties of just keeping the port running. No resources left for things like law enforcement - Crescent Bay is at the moment a lawless land very much trapped in chaos of an exploding population. Not all of the new arrivals are very savoury.

The campaign starts as the PCs arrive at Crescent Bay.  
[/spoiler]
Now one of these things I want to give them is a little, or not so little list of rumours that would be floating around back in the empire about Crescent Bay. Some of them might even be true and potential future plot hooks.
Things like:
The streets are paved in gold (or well oyster shells. :P )
Crop circles!
Stories about whole settlements dissapearing without a trace overnight.
What the empire have really been up to during those two centuries is sininster magical experiments to create a new super race of undead. Now they've succeeded and this whole offering small time criminals pardon is just to feed their demand of new bodies...

And I figured you might have fun coming up with some of them.

Sorry, it does seem like it.
Not even the times we've used fog it's been an issue. But fair enough, fog don't come up very often as we tend use modular miniature map tiles which kind of makes fog a bit redundant most of the time. So that could well be it. If you've been using fog a lot, then I can see how your point. Especially if you've been using anything before version 1.6.3 since it was a big issue with the eariler versions.

But I do apologise for passing all the bugs on to you guys rather than suffering them myself. :P

Quote from: IshmaylYou mean other than the fact that it may just be the buggiest program in existence (other than e107, of course), but since they're stopped working on it, those bugs will never be fixed? ;)

Huh?

I guess your experience with openRPG must be very different from mine then  :halo: We've never seem to have had much in the way of problems caused by bugginess.

Very... interesting.