The Campaign Builder's Guild

Okay guys, first thanks for the words of encouragement, and second, life has been busy, but there is more coming. I promise.

When I have more of the material posted, or at least written up for my own use, then I'll set up a PbP game. Thanks for the interest.

The Gods:

I've decided to use a limited number of gods, each with a number of domains. Some of the domains may seem unusual fits together, but I think it better represents how real ancient gods were viewed - and that was the inspiration here. As for the cosmology I'm leaving that as presented in the DMG. I like they way it works, and I've always liked plane jumping. This plane is just another material plane in the infinite universe.

All of these god are quite new to this particular plane. They came into being as the old existing gods appeared to do nothing to help their people. At this point most people are unaware that the gods they worship now have not always been the "true" gods. With so much knowledge lost this is not to be unexpected. Also, due to the nature of the calamity that befell this material plane, the gods in this mythos will actually appear from time to time and take affairs into their own hands - this did it before during the war and are not shy about doing it again if the need arises.

 [spoiler=The Gods]
 
 [ic=The Ice Queen]

Also Known As: Shamiraf the Protector and Moa (the Mother)
Domains: Cold, Protection, Law, Strength, and War.

The Ice Queen is usually portrayed as a tall woman wearing armor made of ice. Her face is covered with a ornate face piece connected to her helm, with her dark hair flowing over her purple-white armor. Occasionally the Ice Queen, in her guise as Moa, may appear as a rather short plain looking woman wearing typical peasant garb, surrounded by small children. Interestingly, she is most dangerous when appearing in the guise of Moa.

The Ice Queen is seen as being the god that actually held off the armies of Pyrrhus as the wizards with Nerus and Azzurra worked to move large chunks of the earth into the air. She is often shown in paintings as leading the humanoid forces into combat with the armies of fire. Her churches and shrines are visited often by the peoples of the land, and are often the largest and most beautiful in the city. Her holidays are always extravagant affairs lasting days with much drink and food, with frozen deserts presented at the end of feasts.

Symbol: Purple-white ice shield covered in filigree.[/ic]

[ic=Nerus]

Also Know As: Marinus or Muir
Domains: Ocean, Storms, Water, Destruction, and Knowledge.

Nerus appears as a huge Ocean Giant. It is believed that Nerus travels the worlds oceans in the company of other ocean giants, whales, and sea dragons.

Nerus the protector of the oceans and seas of the world, no small task for this world. He is seen as wild and easy to anger, being as unpredictable as the oceans he rules. He acquired the domain of Knowledge due to the fact that most of the worlds knowledge was swallowed by the oceans released from the plane of water. Those seeking lost or forgotten lore often say a prayer to Nerus, bidding him to release the knowledge from it's watery grave.

Symbol: Cresting wave in a circle.[/ic]

 [ic=Timur]

Also Known As: Achan or Rajnish (Lord of the Dark)
Domains: Earth, Death, Metal, Caverns, and Darkness

Timur appears in two guises. In one he's a large earth elemental, encrusted with gems and shot through with veins of precious metals. In his second incarnation he appears to be a shadowy, wispy figure with burning red gems for eyes.

Timur is the lord of the earth, ruler of all dark places below the ground. There are still tunnels in the earth that have yet to fill with sea water, and in these places one finds Timur, or more often Rajnish. Miners and dwarves often worship Timur in his elemental form, while the drow that remain in the world often turn to his darker side. In any of his forms Timur is usually worshipped in areas that are below ground and dark.

Symbol: A burning red gem on a black background.[/ic]  

 [ic=Azzurra]

Also Know As: Ilma
Domains: Air, Windstorms, Illusion, Luck, and Magic

Azzurra appears as either an exceptionally large Roc travelling the skies accompanied by a flock of more normal sized Rocs at her side. Her other form is as a beautiful air genasi.

Azzurra the sky god is a very important being in the mythos. She is responsible for lifting the lands into the air, and it is believed that her hands hold the lands aloft even now. Her powers are also claimed to be responsible for the airships that ply the skyways between the sky isles. This power of hers in why she rules the domain of Magic.
While often seen as calm and at ease, she can be ired and is then a force to be reckoned with. She is very popular with airship crews and captains, and most ships will have a small shrine somewhere on board dedicated to her. Taking her name in vain on an airship is a quick way to be tossed overboard.

Symbol: A cloud with a lightening bolt shooting out of the bottom.[/ic]

 [ic=Rodica]

Also Known As: Mu
Domains: Plants, Animals, Healing, Good, and Harvest.

Rodica traditionally appears as a beautiful dryad. She is often accompanied by treants, other dryads, and many small woodland animals. She is another important and powerful god in the mythos. Her main role is as the protector of the woodlands, including all the plants and animals that live there. Since the amount of land has been so drastically diminished she is often called upon to protect what little remains. Farmers and those that earn a livelihood from the wild are her main worshippers, although every town and city has a church or shrine dedicated to her. Of all the gods in the mythos she is most likely to actually appear on this material plane to protect the lands. A warning to all that would recklessly destroy the land.

Symbol: A collection of oak leaves and acorns.[/ic]

 [ic=Pyrrhus]

Also Know As: Azar, Casimir the Destroyer, or the Burning One.
Domains: Fire, Destruction, Evil, Sun, War.

Pyrrhus appears as an incredibly beautiful young man with flames for hair. His dress is regal and presented in colours of red and gold. He is very rarely portrayed as a very large pillar of flames - a typical fire elemental.

Pyrrhus is seen as the one to cause the invasion and destruction of this world. His worship is outlawed in most cities, and it would be very hard to find a shrine to him in any town or village. Most people don't even like to use his name, they instead refer to him as "the Burning One". It is believed that small cults dedicated to Pyrrhus do exists, but what the goals or aims are of these cults is unknown.

Symbol: A flame shape in a circle, often the flame is done in stained glass.[/ic]

[/spoiler]

Quote from: TybaltWell...those who are 'skyborn' might have an extra stat for balance maybe? They say that some Amerindian people have a lack of fear of heights and that makes them very competent when say doing high up building construction, it might be a similar benefit.

That's a good idea Tybalt. Skyborn could be one of those feats that give a bonus to Balance and Climb checks, although I'm sure they must already have one but it's not coming to mind at the moment.

Okay, I'll check that book out - I don't have too much of the Eberron stuff, I'm more of a Greyhawk guy. Thanks for the tip.

I've been thinking about boarding actions and how dangerous they would be at 1,000 feet over the ocean, or even a hundred feet over land. I was thinking of this - a magic ring that all crew memebers would wear, a "life" ring if you will (yeah, it's a bad joke). When someone wearing the ring moves farther than 10' from the ship the ring activates. The person is put into a floating stasis field - they don't fall, but they can't move, cast spells, talk, etc. They bob along until the ship they fell from comes back and picks them up. The person in the stasis feild does not age, or need to eat or drink, and cannot be affected by spells. This effect lasts until she returns to the ship from which she fell. Only a ritual taking an hour to preform can remove the stasis from a person - so if you find someone floating around you'd have to take them somewhere to have the ritual preformed to revive them.

Now this is going to continue to make boarding actions dangerous as the rings would have to be taken off before you left your own ship. A fall while boarding is certain death. You'd really have to want something off of the ship being boarded to take that kind of risk. Or, you might have wings and not worry about it too much.

Quote from: DyneSomething I've been considering is a new system for magic items, similar to Final Fantasy's materia or the magic gem things in MIC. The idea would be to make magic item effects interchangeable: you buy an item with "materia slots" and can buy different abilities that you can switch in. Between the slotted items and the costs of the abilities themselves, magic items would still cost the same, they'd just be a bit more versatile.

Oh, I like this alot. I can see whole quests being carried out to find the   Vorpal orb. Very cool indeed.

Obviously there would be Craft feats to deal with different orbs, or would one feat do them all (as long as you could cast the spell(s) required to craft the appropriate orb in the first place)?

I'm not a big fan of the XP cost for magic items (it's just not practicle to use up XP to creat a magic item that you can just pay for. And who are all these wizards that are creating all this good stuff anyway? Why would any mage craft armor?). What do you think of it? Will there be an XP cost for creating the orbs?

Yeah, from what I see there will have to be some playtesting. I find that D&D is a very well built house of cards, changing anything can often have drastic results. It is at heart after all a table top war game and the rules are carefully balanced. The feat I mentioned above worries me (the gang I play with are quite adept at using the rules to their advantage - I hate to say power gamers, but....), as a 1st level human would have access to that feat, thereby increasing his rage ability to +8 Str, +8 Con. Also, the rage would last much longer as the duration is based on the new Con number. I would suggest giving that feat a BAB minimum, so one prerequisite would be BAB +5 or greater, something like that. What I try and do is think about when I'd like that feat to come into play. Obviously I wouldn't want it at 1st level, but maybe 6th - the characters gain another feat due to progression anyway.

Just a thought.

Also, are you going to use the regular alignment rules in this setting, or are the elemental alignments taking their place - I know they are not the same, but just wondering? If you are using the regular alignment rules, then are the elemental alignments tied to a certain good/evil lawful/chaotic position?

Okay, that's it for now. I should go do some work on my setting..... ;)

I really like what I see so far. You and I have similar themes running in our settings. I did notice that in the Elemental feats all had prerequisites,(for example):

QuoteFiery Fury [Elemental]
Prerequisite: Fire-aligned, rage ability, any elemental feat
Benefit: When you go into a rage . . .

but there are no feats listed that don't have a prerequisite so gaining "any elemental feat" would be impossible. I realize that this is this an incomplete list of home-brewed feats, just thought I'd point that out. The list of feats looks really good so far.

I look forward to seeing more.

Just to give some perspective to the measurements that Mustard put up, the Earth's equatorial circumference is 24,880.616 miles (40,041.47 km for my kinsmen). That would mean that there would have to be 49.76 of the represented distance markers Mustard used laid out end to end to equal the size of the Earth. They all appear to be quite large then, making the planet quite small. I don't have a problem with small. Consider this also, a Halfling in D&D moves 20'/round, so on easy terrain could travel 16 miles in an 8 hour day. He could travel the length of a marker in 31.25 days. On horse back the trek would take 15 days. I guess it really boils down to how long do you want it to take the characters to move from one area to another?

Quote from: MittenNinjaSilly Hang, Pluto isn't a planet.  :-p

I'm starting to show my age. Who do these guys think they are change planets to, what is it now, a demiplanet or some such garbage? Pluto will always be a planet to me :D

I wanted to add a few comments regarding the map (which is looking really good). The placement of the Empire is odd to me (and I know this is a fantasy world where the normal laws of climate and geography don't have to mean anything). All of the great empires on earth have occured (with few exceptions) at relatively the same mean distance from the equator. Off the top of my head I can only think of the Incan empire as having been close to the equator - the others, Roman, Mongolian, Chinese, Japanes, Hitties, Babylonian, Egyptian, etc all occured north of the equator. Climate is more conductive to large scale agriculture, which would be required to sustain an empire. Just something to think about.

As for the ring, nothing I've been able to find indicates that a world of the earth's proportions could not have a ring, and in fact there is some talk that Pluto may have a ring and that when the New Horizons probe reaches the area in 2015 we'll know for sure. A ring would be a great addition to the world.

I was wondering about the Thug class. Have you played this class in a game yet? He looks good, but maybe a little tougher than standard classes. Will the class be usable by the players, or is it an NPC class only?

I agree with the above posts that the setting sounds really good. I'm sort of picturing Dark Sun - separate city states going it alone against the world, only without the all encompassing desert.

Here are how the classes from the PHB work into the campaign setting.

[spoiler=Classes]
[ic=Barbarian]
Barbarians are rare in the main cities of the Sky Isles. As one travels away from the cities and into the wilder lands at the edges of the isles one is much more likely to encounter barbarians. The lands are wild now, and space to live and hunt is limited. Humanoids and crowded in with the "nobler" races and competition is fierce. The peoples what have not recovered as fully from the war and loss of the great lands rely on barbarians to hunt for food, and protect the tribal group from incursions. Barbarians most often adventure to put down large humanoid threats and make the lands more secure for their people.[/ic]

[ic=Bard]
Bards have always been important sources of news and information, and that has never been more true then now. Travel between the isles is dangerous and quite often very expensive, but bards find themselves in a position of respect and can quite often travel "for a song" as it were. This allows them to get to the far flung isles, to find the news, the histories, and tales that the people need. In the cities bards are treated very well, especially if they have tales and news from the farther isles. Adventuring comes quite naturally to the bard. What better way to learn the tales of heroics then being there when they occur.[/ic]

[ic=Cleric]
The class of cleric may be removed from this campaign setting, being replaced by the Order of the Magi class. I'll post that class and you can let me know what you think.[/ic]

[ic=Druid]
Druids are much respected in the world. What little land is left is all the more precious and any one willing to dedicate his or her life to protecting it has the support of the people. Druids are welcomed warmly in all small out lying villages and hamlets, and even most cities, although city folk are less directly effected by the special powers and spells of the druid. Villagers will often offer free lodging and food if the druid will only look over the crops or live stock to ensure a bountiful harvest. Druids take to adventuring to travel to the farthest reaches of the isles, ensuring that balance is maintained and the lands are safe. They also travel to spread their help among the farmers and herders of the lands, ensuring there is enough food to feed all the people.[/ic]

[ic=Fighter]
Fighters have always had a place in the lands. Never before were their talents needed more than now. Humanoid bands are everywhere, waiting to strike at small villages and take what little food there is. Bandits and pirates are common in the lands, and above them, hitting merchant vessels and disputing trade. Fighters adventure all the common reasons, glory, treasure, and the thrill of combat.[/ic]

[ic=Monks]
Monks are very rare in the Sky Isles. Lonely monasteries can be found among the peaks of mountains or on small sparsely populated isles, but they are few and far between. The goals of these strange men is unknown to the common man, and so monks often receive a cool reception. Only after proving that they are no threat will they be welcomed. Adventuring monks are almost the only monks one would expect to come across in the isles. The reasons why they have left the safety of their monasteries is unknown to all but themselves.[/ic]

[ic=Paladin]
Paladins are also rare in the Sky Isles. Men that gain power from the gods are not common and so treated with a little fear (they do carry swords after all) and suspicion. The goodness of paladins will quickly win the people over however. The only change to the class (if clerics are gone) is that they can turn undead as a cleric of their level, rather than their level minus three (paladins gain the ability to turn undead at 4th level normally - in this campaign they gain the power at first level). Also, turning is a full round action rather than a standard action. Quickened turning will change that from a full round to standard action.[/ic]

[ic=Ranger]
Rangers are seen in the same light as druids. They were some of the strongest protectors of the lands during the wars with the elementals and are still seen as protectors. Most rangers travel the lands putting down humanoid incursions. Their ability to track, and their bonuses due to favored enemy are great boons to the forces of good in the world. Rangers adventure to see the lands, deal with the humanoids, and secure the lands they love.[/ic]

[ic=Rogue]
Rogues are common in the cities and among the many crews of the skyships, both merchant and pirate. All the cities have guilds dedicated to the arts of the rogue, and some of the guilds have even branched out to pirating. Opportunities for rogues are endless in the Sky Isles. Much of the wealth of the lands is still unclaimed below the ocean, and what wealth is left is vulnerable to the skills of a wily rogue.[/ic]

[ic=Sorcerer]
Those that can wield the arcane arts are feared among the people. The rulers of the land are all members of the Order of the Magi, and so those that can wield that kind of power are painted with the same brush. At the same time, it was magical forces that caused the ruin of the lands, so the fear is tempered with distrust and a little resentment. All users of arcane power are required to register with the Council of Thirteen (the thirteen mages that rule the lands) and this includes sorcerers. The Council is more presecutorial of sorcerers because they did not have to study and learn their powers, and therefore they can exist without the Councils knowledge (unlike members of the Order of the Magi who had to petition the Council to gain entry to a Magic College to learn their trade in the first place). Add to this the belief that sorcerers gain their powers from some link to dragons, and you have a class that can meet some stiff resistance in the world. Still, the unfettered freedom afforded the sorcerer in spell use overcomes this disadvantage. In the Sky Isles the sorcerer, like the order of the magi, may select spells from both the arcane and divine lists. However, they may not select druid spells.[/ic]

[ic=Order of the Magi]
The Order of the Magi replaces both the cleric and wizard in the Sky Isles. It has the hit dice of the cleric and the spells lists of both the cleric and the wizard to choose from. However, armor is still a hindrance and weapon selection and skill with said weapon is low. I'll post the class write up soon.

The Order of the Magi is both feared and loved. The Council of Thirteen is made up of the thirteen most powerful members of the order, and all magi are members of the order. However, most members travel through out the lands helping the common man (I'm basing this class quite closely on the Wizards of Earthsea - and if you haven't read that book yet then shame on you!!). Members of the order are almost like monks, living alone and with very few possessions. They are the healers and protectors of the people, just as the druids and rangers are the protectors and healers of the land itself. Most common people will welcome and member of the order into their village, but be afraid of the man at the same time. Adventuring comes naturally to members of the Order of the Magi as they travel the lands helping the common man.[/ic][/spoiler]

I have yet to go through any of the splat books with an eye towards this campaign. It will happen eventually, and then I'll update this post.

Here are a few more images that really capture the feel of the setting. This one is from the  Arms and Equipment Guide although the Zaratan first appeared in the 2nd edition of AD&D in the Al-Qadim campaign setting.
 

This one also is good and will be included in the setting. I know that in one of Monte Cook's books a creature similar to this appeared, but I can't remember the name of the book at the moment.
 

Well, that's it for now. Oh, the creature above also appears in the  Arms and Equipment Guide and it's a Soarwhale.