The Campaign Builder's Guild

Hello everyone!
i've been lurking for a while here, and really have enjoyed reading everyone's ideas and settings.  there is some really great stuff all around.  anyway, that being said i'd like to open up a discussion thread for my own work-in-progress.  all the campaign info and such can be found in the world thread (which i will be putting up second to this thread - be patient) so feel free to read up and then post here, i'm sure you all know the drill.  i'm really into the ideas of world building but have yet to really get my head around all the 3.5 rules mechanics and the like, so if you've got some crits for the fluff, or some other cool ideas i can incorporate that would be awesome.  even more great would be rules and mechanics stuff that might go along with the ideas i've got running around.  so go on and have a read then come back here and let me have it...in a nice sort of way.  thanks!

(actual setting thread)

~Brian

Hey Brian,
Good to see you posting. It's always great to see another world-building enthusiastic give it a try, and also have enough confidence to share his work and have it critiqued. Now, I have only skimmed your work for a second just now, but I do have a question:
You mention your world is post-historic, in the sense of a post-apocalyptic rebuilding of the world at a lower tech level than it once had. My question is: is the pre-apocalyptic world the real world (Terra, Earth, whatever you want to call it)?

Túrin

hey!  thanks for the reply.  in regards to your question the answer is no.  it isn't earth in a far distant age, it would be akin to an highly advanced magic setting like eberron than anything else.  post-historic/post-apocolyptic definitely, but not in the sense of a blasted, barren and unforgiving wasteland; but rather a world reborn after thousands and thousands of years...a sort of neo-primeval so to speak.  after the cataclysm and the fall, the world went unchecked for a long period.  nature continued to renew without interference for millenia.  so the idea is a world so far after the fall it is practically a new world, but still dark and unknown and dangerous...but alive and vibrant and primal.  as opposed to post-apocolyptic setting in which usually take place a couple generations or less after the apocolypse; where resources are scarce and survivors fight to stay alive - Feyraal is a world where the races now fight to carve their niche in primal wilderness and are beginning the process of building civilizations.  so thematically and texturally it's neo-paleolithic (new stone age), but historically it is far beyond post-apocolyptic.  i'm working on a more robust timeline to give an idea of just how much time has passed since the Seldarine (Gods of the Sky) and the other kingdoms imprisoned and defeated Cthuul.  
thanks again for the feedback, i'm looking forward to lots more.  and i'll be posting up more maps and info over the next week.

I like that you are making use of races other than the stanard: lizardmen, centaurs, wild elves, etc.  Makes the setting feel different from those where you have the regular dwarves and elves.  You also go for flavors other than European and Asian, another thing  which there needs to be more of.

Just one question: when you say the lizardmen are Aztec in tone, how exactly do you mean that?

incan/mayan/aztec in so far as the general look and feel of their culture and visual appearance - manner of dress, design/decoration, art, etc.  though they are slightly different than those cultures on a social/philosophical level.  i definitely wanted to avoid a lot of the western european sort of themes, design and/or culture simply because i don't necessarily see them as being suitable to the sort of tech-level and time frame of this particular campaign world.  there are other regions that are not within the bounds of the starting campaign area that may have cultures much more akin to gaelic/gaul or viking in tone and feel.  though they would be northeastern from the region in this world.  
i really liked the idea of african-esque centaur and wemic embroiled in a sort of land-war and felt that would make for interesting character dynamics between PCs and NPCs alike (despite the truce, the three races have been battling for a while).  i also liked the idea of evil elves, but i honestly am not a big fan of the drow and they don't fit in to the idea that i have overall.  so elves are a race that will be one of the more dangerous NPC enemy races; but they won't live underground and they don't have jet skin.  :-P

bzump!

Weehee! I love it! Then of course, I run a world that is close in content but not in theme. I like your discussion of ethos and whatnot and I enjoy your maps (even if they are generated). For those of us without your map tool, what do the yellow circular symbols mean?

One thing that annoys me slightly are the naming conventions. Why are the Shooloo written Xulu? I'm familiar with Chinese character errors, but there is not good reason, in my mind, to confuse readers with strange spellings. I myself had to change one of my races to "Oombara" because "Umbara" didn't convey the right sound (even though the linguistic precedent would give a clue.) This is doubly true in a world with no written tongue. Has written word been re-discovered yet?

Another note on names. Cthuul sounds very Lovecraftian. Too Lovecraftian, I'd say. The word is almost identical to Cthulhu. Might want to change that.

Are there any other changes to the traditional "centaurness" in regards to the Shooloo besides the stripes? Dark skin perhaps? The Greek "centaur" idea is fairly strong, so you may want to work to explain the more "zulu" nature of the shooloo. :P

What's the level of divine influence on a day-to-day basis? Clearly, those tribes with healers would last much longer than those without. Do flashy spells like blade barrier and flamestrike exist and are they available to priests?

What are wemics? I remember them from somewhere. Are they lion-folk?

As a quick suggestion, I think you should list your racial names first and put the standard fantasy equivalent in parenthesis. I think this puts emphasis on the unique nature of the world rather than the derivative/inspired elements.

Do the wetlands at the top of your local map count as "seething crawl" because the waters of the crater leak out there? I'm a bit confused as to what constitutes the seething craw.

Great work and good gaming,
 - Rael

hello!  thanks for the comments!
Cthuul is Lovecraftian on purpose...it is an aberration...a vile seething mass of oily corruption and evil that devours everything...lots of tentacles and eyes and all sorts of fun stuff. :-P  the basic idea is that when the dwarves built this thing long ago, they infused it with the essence of an "outer god" so to speak and it is to all intents and purposes an avatar of such a being...in game-terms i'm thinking "The Patient One" from the Lords of Madness book.
the Seething Crawl is a fetid mire that is saturated with the run-off energy and corruptive influence of this imprisoned being.  it's dark essences have seeped up to the surface slowly over time and the Crawl is so named because it grows rapidly each year, taking more and more land as time progresses.  in this place it is as though the land itself is alive - animals, plants and monsters all are mutated and corrupted with the essence of Cthuul.  
as for the maps themselves, they're a composite of hand-drawn, digital and mapper techniques.  i drew each map element by hand then scanned it.  i then colored the scans in photoshop and built custom brushes for various terrain types that i could use to paint in large tracts of terrain.  i used fractal mapper to generate a black and white outline of the continents/landmasses, then brougth that in as a .bmp template in photoshop and started laying in the terrain, colors, map elements, key, distance scale and compass digitally.  the end result is a combination of several techniques.  as for the symbols, i'm working on naming them and setting up a key in a future update.  
after some thought i think i'd switch Xulu as "zoo-loo" because it would hold to the african flavor and elements i see the centaur having.  imagine zebra-striped centaur with the dark ebon upper half of a zulu warrior with similar decoration...or even a masai warrior.  the wemic are indeed centauroid lion-men.  

I'm just saying you might not want to use the name "Cthuul" it sounds plagaristic rather than inspired. IMO.

updated the main campaign thread.  changed "Cthuul" to "Baalgorgon"...i like the ring of the latter, hope ya'll do too.  :-)
hopefully i'll be putting up a lil timeline and some other stuff today...but if not then probably over the weekend.

Woo. Baalgorgon. It just rolls off the tongue. Which pronunciation of Baal are you using, by the way?

You mention spirits several times. I take this to mean there is a level of animism in the world? How far are you going with this? What sort of afterlife/reincarnation is present in the world and what do the people believe?

overall i think that each race believes that when they die their soul returns to the eidolon where it is reshaped and they are born again as a new member of that race.  though some of the religions of each race are starting to change slightly - the Uyu'Mahn and the Talakhan primarily.  druids believe in an overall life-energy that is non-specific to an eidolon, but rather free-flowing throughout the universe.  thus in their philosophy a soul can travel a great wheel of incarnations from a blade of grass to a tree to another sentient being.  that's all i've really thought about right now...it definitely needs a bit more thought...

Hey, sorry it's taken me so long to get to your setting.  I've heard good things from Raelifin and hopefully over the next few days I'll get around to more constructive comments.

To start off with though, just after reading your introductory fiction.  Which I must say is pretty cool, I must ask, what is the difference between the Gods of Earth and the Gods of Sky?  Pardon if it's already been asked, but from your fiction it appears both have power over earth, fire, etc.

As a note, I really like how you follow the greek model of divinity.  Wherein the Gods are not perfect, just powerful.  Still flawed, yet mighty beyond comprehension.  Your setting looks like it'll be a good read, and here's a belated welcome to the CBG.

hey there!  once again thanks for the comments and the welcome!  as for the question, i think what i was going for was the idea that the new races of Feyraal, are so removed technologically/magically from their ancient predacessors that they view them as Gods and have thus labeled them as such.  in reality, the Gods of the Sky were a great empire ruled by elves whose mastery of magic and such was incredible; and the Gods of the Earth were the ancient dwarven empire.  the two had grown so powerful and vast that they had absorbed the other races into their respective republics and so the entire world was under the dominion of either the elves (Seldarine) or the dwarves (Dorvesh).  when they went to war with one another, it was cataclysmic because of the power of each of these empires.  i'm finishing up a basic timeline that will flesh all of this out a bit more; but the basic idea is that the Seldarine and the Dorvesh worshipped their own gods and such, but were powerful enough in and of themselves to be almost demi-gods in their own right.  in the final part of the war the Seldarine and the remaining races built the eidolons and infused them with the power of each of their respective dieties and they were the weapons that helped defeat Baalgorgon.  as i mentioned earlier and in the campaign thread itself, the war with Baalgorgon was apocolyptic and after everything was said and done, there weren't many people left to worship the gods of old, so their influence and power waned and became limited to the eidolons themselves.
so out of all of this the new races of men and elves and such revere these eidolons as their gods, seeing them as the graven images from a time when the gods themselves walked the earth.  this mythology is in part true given the history, but obviously it is the result of a fragmented past and the imaginations of men...or something like that... :-P

First thing I noticed was that your maps rock. The political map is a bit hard to look at, and there appear to be a lot of unlikely open areas and contested areas, but still well constructed.

On to the meat of your setting, I'll just rattle of thoughts I had while reading it:
-Love the use of centaurs. That feels right and is something you rarely see. I can really see centaurs charging accross the plains with masai spears and shields.
-I like how've managed to meld the Chtulu feel with a fairly traditional world.
-The Eidolons would make interesting settings for adventures. What exactly happens to divine magic around these eidolons?
-The lizardmen have a distinctly Warhammer-esque feel to them. I'm kind of leery of that because I know that most of the groups I've played with would pick up on that and demand to see the Slann of the tribe every time they visit the Slithriss. Oooo... and the majority of their homeland is accross the sea... hmmm...
- I like the use of the old elf-dwarf hatred. It really works in this context; are there any ancient weapons left over from these great battles, besides the avatar of Baalgorgon? (I'm kind of thinking David Gemmel
- Actually, this setting has a lot in common with the Warhammer World. The Seething Crawl is a lot like the Skavenblight...