The Campaign Builder's Guild

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Aaaand, I'm back.  Sort of.  After taking many months to do other things, including playing games, including some of the role-playing sort, I'm thinking about this setting again.  Specifically, of the need to simplify it.  Not really from a setting perspective, but from a rules perspective.  There are a lot of house rules in here, as well as non-core D20 stuff pulled from literally dozens of sources, and I want to simplify it a bit.

Also, I want to get organizing it better, so I might get one of those wiki things and try to get an organized site going to collect my thoughts and ideas better.

Some more work has been done.  I am avoiding the Elements of Magic system, as it was just too different from base D20.  Instead, I am using the Spell Point variant from the SRD.  This is for both Arcane and Divine casters.  I am also making all divine casters Spontaneous Casters, which will help focus divine spells towards the specific deities followed by those characters.

I have also been working on specific lists of classes for each race and culture.  I'm only part way done, but I'm liking how it is working so far.  This is helping to really give a different feel to the different races and human civilizations in different parts of the world.

Lastly, I have been cutting down the deities, as well.  Specifically, many of the racial deities are going away, though a few are staying in one form or another.  The original posts have been edited in a few places, but most of these changes are not yet reflected above.

As part of my continued thinking about my setting, I have come to realize that I simply want to do something different with the magic system.  Some playtesting with the "Recharge Magic" variant has shown that I consider that variant to be a massive pain in the ass, and not worth the extra book-keeping.  I am now leaning towards more of a "power point" system, like the Elements of Magic book published by EN Publishing a few years back.  I've been reading through it and really liking the idea, but I'm not yet sure how to implement it.  Anothing thing I want is for different cultures to have different arcane magic traditions.  The Elements of Magic system lets me do that, but it will be a lot of work, work which will only be accomplished slowly.

The flip side of that is how to handle divine magic.  I've got some ideas, but they are not fully formed and I don't know if they will end up being balanced or not.  Only time and work will tell.

UPDATE
So, I am realizing that there are things about this setting that I am unhappy with.  Specifically, there is just too much going on.  Too many deities, too many races, etc.  I originally did that based on play experience, as many players want almost unlimited choices.  However, it is making my brain hurt, so I am going to trim it down somewhat.  I don't yet know what will get cut, but some of the options will be going away.

However, I have other projects occupying my time currently, so nothing will be done in the near future.

Quote from: Nomadic- An undead overlord has used his army of lackeys to dig the foundations out from under a city, dropping it down into the underworld beneath. He wishes to enslave the populace as workers for his war machine, intent on conquering the rest of the country. The PCs are caught in the chaos. Will they fight their way to the top and run to warn the king? Will they lead the locals on a mad push for safety? Will they join the dark overlord and become generals in his forces as they sweep across the countryside?

This makes good sense to me.  I like the concept a lot.

You are correct, sir.  Any time there is a new edition that includes even moderate changes to underlying mechanics, this problem can occur.

Quote from: Epic Meepo

Quote from: lionrampantIf they simply left Forgotten Realms alone, and started up a whole new setting, a lot of those Forgotten Realms players would have just stuck with the previous version of D&D, rather than updating (or so they likely feared).

And yet, becauce WotC gave the Realms a face-lift using dynamite instead of scalpels, a lot of those Forgotten Realms players are just sticking with the previous version of D&D rather than updating, anyway.

The only evidence I have is anecdotal, but from what I can see, people who really like playing in the (old) Realms are refusing to go 4e, specifically because 4e bulldozed the (old) Realms. Same for people who really like playing in Greyhawk. And Mystara. And Planescape.

In fact, among the players I know, only the people who prefer adventures set in Ebberon are going 4e. Players who want to have adventures in any other setting are sticking with old-school D&D. (Or, in increasing numbers, going Pathfinder.)

Which makes it ironic that they bothered to update FR to the new edition, and the end result might very much be what they had hoped to avoid.  Ah, well, such is the risk in putting a new edition of what is supposedly the same game, even though it really feels (to me and my friends, at least) like a different game, mechanically.  I'd like to see WotC come up with a completely new campaign setting with 4th edition elements as the foundation, rather than jurry-rigging settings for other systems in to place.

WotC was always going to have a 4th edition Forgotten Realms.  There are a lot of Forgotten Realms players, and they buy lots of books.  If they simply left Forgotten Realms alone, and started up a whole new setting, a lot of those Forgotten Realms players would have just stuck with the previous version of D&D, rather than updating (or so they likely feared).  Thus, to keep the money rolling in, they HAD to update Forgotten Realms to 4th edition.  The significant differences between v3 and v4 of the game rules (new races, new power sources, etc.) meant that they had to change Forgotten Realms significantly to justify having all that stuff in Forgotten Realms.

Now, whether you like those changes or not, is of course up the individual.  But they were always going to change the setting to fit the new rules, as there is too much money to be lost if they left it alone.

I'm one of theose people that seems to be undiagnosed bipolar; I got really on fire and spend tons and tons of time on something for a while, and then the fever is gone and I'm all "meh" about it.  Never fear, I'll get back to it at some point.  Though I do have the new Mongoose Traveller in the mail to my house, so I may be designing star systems for a while.

HOWEVER, I will tip you in on what my current leaning is on the Lost Lands; Someone centuries ago got Dagon's attention.  Dagon thought they all looked tasty, and that was that.  Kind of the whole "Congratulations!  You actually summoned Cthulhu!  You are honored to be the first to die!" thing.  However, I'm not running a game of this currently, so it's all just intellectual fun, and if it ever mattered in a real game, I might have changed my mind on it by then.

Campaign design work temporarily put on hold while other projects occupy my brain.

Ishmayl, in regards to a more free-form magic system, you should at least take a look at Tunnel Quest, which is available as a free PDF at http://web.me.com/hogwrite/Site/Game_Play/Entries/2008/8/23_Tunnel_Quest_1.1.html

I don't think I've ever taken a system and changed it so much that it became something else.  House rules and tweaks, sure, but not a wholesale change.  If I was going to go through that effort, I'd probably just put my energy into finding a system that did what I wanted up front.  I'd rather work on a setting than on a set of rules.

So I have finished* the Ecology & Culture book.  Now that I have digested the whole thing, I can say that I would recommend it to anybody trying to create a campaign world that is based on an Earth-like world.  If you want to make a world thta is flat, with portals to the elemental plane of water absorbing all the water that flows off the edge of the world, with another portal in the middle that constantly pumps out new water, then this is not the book for you.  However, if you are interested in a world with normal** continents, wind currents, sea currents, etc., then there is a lot to like here.

I'm not going to use everything, though.  For example, there is a constant assumption that "magic" is a conscious entity, which I don't jive with.  A lot of stuff is good, though.  Another thing I'm not using is the discussion of how different races spring up in one place and then migrate around the world, meeting and fighting with other races as they go.  Thus, some races may still exist but be completely subservient to another race, or a race may die out completely.  I'ts not a bad idea at all, and it would be a cool little exercise to try to run the system as described.  However, for my campaign world I'm developing I determined what races were where primarily based on what would make for a fun game, so I'll just come up with some hack explanation for why things are the way they are, and say the gods intervened, or something.  If a player ever actually cares.

So, yeah, I'd recommend it.  The appendix is pretty good, too.  I liked the section on magical animals.  Not monsters to fight, just animals and plants and stuff that are effected by magic in one way or another, to help show that even though the world might follow natural laws most of the time, it still ain't Earth.


*FINISHED in this case meaning I've read everything but the rather long appendix.
**NORMAL in this case means it requires little to no magical intervention, due to following natural laws as they exist on Earth.

I was actually recently thinking that I needed some kind of unique sea monster in my campaign world to populate the huge, land-locked sea.  I'm completely stealing this, except I'm getting rid of the volcano on its back, as I don't think that would make sense for what I want it to do.  Everything else is MINE now, though, you hear me?  MINE!  The picture, too.

:)

(and everyone else's, too; I'm just frustrated at work and need an outlet.)

Just a small update:

I'm stepping back a bit from detailing the cultures of the world to focus a bit more on natural elements (which areas are wet, which are dry, where are prevailing currents, etc.).  Once that gets nailed down to something I'm happy with I'll provide the details.