The Campaign Builder's Guild

Haven't read through everything yet, but wanted to first say I couldn't agree more with your basic design principles:

1. Emphasizing consistent internal logic  :D
2. Rarer magic  :whoa:
3. Medium-High Power  :yumm:

I love the fantastical magical power that a character can achieve in d&d, but it's just always been difficult for me to conceive of a world where that kind of power is commonplace and to still have the world make some kind of sense. :soap:

You might want to think about a philosophy of Naturalism to replace the druid class - center it around that all living things are part of the larger web of nature and everything from the most powerful humanoid to the lowliest plant has its place in the world, etc, etc...

The World of Acheron
f_hayek

Acheron
The World of Acheron is a classic D&D world that interweaves familiar concepts into a highly-detailed highly-interconnected world. It is perfect for a DM looking for a more 'realistic', persistent, low-fantasy setting. The various forces and locations in the world are not treated as separated, stand-alone settings of rare, powerful racial and magical composition. Instead, all aspects are interwoven into an enormous tapestry where the smallest events in one corner of the world can have far-ranging effects on the rest of the world. It is a world where the PCs can truly shine, as the average individual in the world of Acheron is a simple person looking for peace, prosperity, and enough profit to provide a comfortable life for their family. When danger rises, it often takes a rare breed of hero to deal with the threat.

CBG Thread: http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?25205.last
WotC Thread: http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=781501

Sounds like a really well thought-out idea. The way you've described the development, and the 'families' really reminds me of organized crime. I could see the Boatmen families pooling power into larger groups and possibly starting to take a page from modern day organized crime and getting involved in not only smuggling, but racketeering, river 'highjackings', and serious bribing of public officials to keep their activities free from government scrutiny.

Not sure if you want to take it to that extreme or not though.

First, thanks a lot for checking out what I've put together!! You are most certainly welcome to read through everything and make any comments you'd like. But to narrow things down more, I guess these are the first questions that come to mind:

1. As Tybalt said "just enough fantasy to be intriguing but not so swamped in it that every other person seems to have magic" - I built the world off of some very basic, classic d&d concepts and focused more on interweaving those classic concepts, and less on inventing new, wild races/classes/forms of magic/etc... So let me know if the 'interweaving' makes sense. I put a lot of effort into referencing other parts of the world within every description of one individual part of the world, so you get the feeling of a real living, interconnected world. Does that come across well? Any places where that's strongly evident? Any places where it's a little weak?

2. Along with the interweaving, does the organization of it all make sense and flow well. Are the pervasive links within every description too few, too many, or just right? Are the links at the bottom of each section ("Top" and "Table of Contents") all it needs, or should there maybe be a link back to the main entry that the subheading is under on the page?

3. I also tried to write it not as necessarily an exhaustive list of everything about every part of the world. There are supposed to be some holes that can be filled in by the DM for whatever adventures he comes up with (just how many warring provinces and city-states are there along the Herkasian shores anyways?). And some of the things that are mentioned are not necessarily the most important parts of the nation or the world (like the small city of Talyn in Kasalat) - they are there to provide some interesting flavor that can spawn some adventure hooks. Do you find some entries that do inspire some adventure hooks?

4. Do you like the 'Character Paths' section or is it unnecessary?

5. Good & Bad - anything in particular you really liked reading about, anything that seemed written poorly or was unnecessary?

That's what first comes to mind, but feel free to comment on anything you like!! Thanks again for checking it out - you guys all have some very interesting well thought out campaigns on this site, and I'm glad to have you all reviewing what I've put together!

Hey all, I just got around to posting my campaign setting up to the web - the world of Acheron.

http://acheron.bravehost.com/index.html

It's more of a low-fantasy setting. Comments/reviews are welcome please!! (I know, the map is pretty cheesy looking, but I was never much of an artist).

Read the whole 'OOC: Some History of Tasothilos' post - very interesting to hear the human story behind a setting's creation. Thanks for posting it! I wish more worlds described the real-world aspect behind the setting.

It's true, it's not necessary to have a crazy climax to a story line, but my personal preference is to include a little of the down-to-earth, and a little of the out-of-this-world.

I think BeefotronX hit the nail on the head with what I meant by history. Geography is most definitely important in defining how the history of a world will go. Culture, races, natural resources, magic, all will affect how the history of the world will play out. And you can certainly have a world without any decent history, but I guess I was really thinking of the difference between a good campaign setting and a bad one. Any joe blow can come up with a campaign world filled with stuff - "To the south is the great lizard kingdom of Totoland in the swamps of Pubar. To the east of the lizard kingdom live the strange magical people known as the Lillypads in the Plains of Uncquil". A setting really comes to life when someone does the legwork of thinking out how all that stuff interacts with each other. Has there ever been tension between the lizard people and the magical plains people. What affect would the endless arable plains have on the economy of the Lillypads - would they tend to a more agriculturally based society because of the plethera of good farmland. If not, why wouldn't they?

I guess in the end, you can ask the basic questions about a campaign world - who, what, when , where, why, and how? And they all need to be answered. But the most important questions that make or break the setting are not the details of who, what, when, and where, but the meaty questions of how does the world operate in the present day, and why does it operate that way?

Looks like this thread's days have gone by, but in case anyone is still interested - I think high and low fantasy both exist in any d&d world. Because every setting needs a high-level overview, there is a tendency to pigeon hole any given world into a being a certain type. But even in a dramatic landscape where brave knights wield swords and magic against the invading demon hordes, the party might find some time to drop by a local tavern and have to leave town when the party rogue is caught in the store room with the innkeep's daughter ("She told me she was 18, but I didn't realize that was still underage for an elf!"

That said, I think any good adventure/campaign will have times of both low and high fantasy. Every minute of every adventure can't be a do or die epic moment where the fate of the world is on the line. And even the most nit-picking realistic role-players eventually need some dramatic, out-of-the-ordinary conflict to come into their characters' lives to make them worth playing. Most good adventures will have a natural low-to-high progression - setting the stage with a simple, realistic and believable beginning and proceeding to an out-of-this-world dramatic climax.

I think Kalos Mer is right that different people will see different things as defining a world, but the purpose of settings or worlds on this site is for use in a role-playing game. In that vein, I think there are 2 defining characteristics of a world that make it a world. A good world doesn't need both, some DM's will be looking for the one and not the other.

1. History (especially the recent history of conflicts and relations between power groups) - developing the history for a world is like winding up the crank on a dancing toy. It won't go on its own if you don't crank it up first. Any story the characters go through will include NPC's with their own agendas they are trying to achieve, and the recent history (and sometimes even the ancient history) of a world provides a spring board for those motivations to evolve out of, and for the PCs to understand those motivations in context. The history is the seed for all the story lines the characters will be proceeding through.

2. Races/Rules/Spells, etc... The other possible defining component of a world is its offering of a new variation of the traditional rules. "Lets use this campaign world 'cause I want to play that crazy half-elf/half-bugbear race that gets the special natural ability of being able to brew potions with its own blood." Whether it's an interesting new race, new prestige class, or a bevy of new interesting spells, sometimes you'll want to use a campaign just to try out the goodies in it. Does it really matter whether the new polymorphing centaur knight prestige class traditionally hails from the plains of Khar'plek or the Forests of Lajeer? Let's just start rolling some dice!

I just don't see the other factors - geography, etc... as defining a world very much. As a DM, I can whip any old fantasy world up pretty quick, or just use a random world map generator, and get an interesting disbursement of terrain and countries as I need.

Also, keep in mind the rapier has a special status as a rogue weapon - it gets singled out for inclusion in the weapon finesse feat. Might want to think through ahead of time whether weapons with the same stats as the rapier will be included in the weapon finesse feat.