The Campaign Builder's Guild

Panorah

[ic]
"Yah blubbering nits!" cried Barlo the Bloated, a horrid, gutty Weasel who's hunger for gold (and a good Autumn Stew) was only quenched by his thirst for blood.

Nob and Morg just stood there. Twin rats with half a brain between them, wound up with Barlo's wretched company of mercenaries. Oh they fit in just fine, but they were not one for the travelling life. "OI don't be angry sire....." whimpered Morg cowardly. "We got the bait didn't we?" Nob chimed in.

"Don't you dare take that insulent tone with ME, you toad!" Barlo was about to tear Nob's head off.

"I'm over here, I"m the toa- CROAK" Bumble the toad creaked out before being shanked by one of Barlo's cruelly forged knives.

"Anyone else?" Barlo said very calmly.

No one dared to utter a syllable.

Nob was firmly placed back into his humble state. Barlo continued his rampage.

"See that? Those are torches! Three guesses who's they are, and if anyone guesses wrong on the first two I'll slit your throat wide open!!!!" Barlo snarled as he pointed into the nightly horizon. There was indeed a large group of creeps coming over the horizon. It could only be those wretchedly noble Field Wardens. Blasted army tasked with keeping the eastern front safe from the terrible pirates of Cope Castle.

Barlo stood there scratching his grotesquely rounded belly for a moment.

"We can use these vermin over here for our purposes" Barlo chortled to his underlings. He was of course referring to the "bait" that he had Nob and Morg "retrieve". A three young creeps. Two young mice and an adolescent squirreless.

The Squirreless was obviously of high nobility given her clothing, a fair silk dress from the Easterly, a gift from some embassaries to her kingdom in the Dunwood forest. Her father was a lord of the forest and he was responsible for keeping the trade ports open between Urthheight and Dunwood. This made her family very wealthy, and when she was born she was given the name Brightly for her exceptionally warm smile when she was born. However while she was a very kind and loving creature she was very... well, squirrely. She was always under the protection of the guards because of her high status and wealth. One day she decided to run away and wound up in the company of the two young mice Rilo, and Rahlin. They were wandering the world looking for their families whom they were  separated from them in an accident. Brightly was never able to figure out what happened. The mice were speaking in such a strange dialect. She thought it was from the Easterly, but she was going to help anyway. Easterly mice are still fellow creeps after all.

However, they had the misfortune of running right into none other than the wondrous twins themselves, Nob and Morg. Brightly came close to outwitting them but her luck was for nothing, and so the young creeps wound up being imprisoned.

Up on the hilltop far above Barlo and his gang of poorly bred minions was Ghoath the Sharp-eyed. Brightly's older brother, he was always stern but protective of Brightly. He knew something like this would happen someday, and so he chased after her using all of the training he could from his youth studying under the Woodeyes, a distinguished group of rangers who protected Dunwood from pests like these, but now they had his beloved sister.

Mihami Sahan came to his side. A mouse from the Easterly, he was trained in the arts of strength and balance. A monk come to help a family looking for their lost children. He found Ghoath and they agreed to help eachother find their lost children. Fate would have it that they met eachother for it would seem that their targets of location have met together.

"How is that diversion working out?" Whispered Mihami silently as a snake.
"They fell for it!" Ghoath said silently.
"They think it's the Field Warden! You were right for us  to help that village with it's Bassilisk problem!"
"All in a month's work. When do we strike?" Mihami asked
......."NOW!"
[/ic]


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Genre: Fantasy (Small Talking Animal Fantasy)
Major theme: High Fantasy  (With some Political Intrigue in the background)
Tone: Fantasy Adventure with Dark political undertones.
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Magic: Medium Magic (Alchemy fairly prevalant, Divine magic and Arcane Magic is rare, Herbalist Medicine most common)
Character power level: E6
Character races: Mice, Squirrels, Badgers, Weasels, Otters, Hares (sub-races)
Rules system: Pathfinder (And any 3.x thing I feel like)
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Religion: Anora and Bzzltr
Deities: A Good vs. Evil Axis consisting of three deities.

The World of Panorah


[spoiler]Panorah is a world consumed by life. Almost everywhere around the world there are beautiful landscapes and sights. From Urthlind to the Easterly, and even in the coldhearted north there are beasts beyond imagination. This planet yields three known continents to the worlds populace,



History

I am reminded of watching Rescue Rangers when I was a kid :)

Do these little animal characters exist in a world with humans, or is it an animal-only setting?

So this is clearly Redwall-esque (which isn't a bad thing). That said, in what ways (if any) does it diverge from Redwall's setting, save for the specific names of persons and places?

Quote from: Rose-of-Vellum
So this is clearly Redwall-esque (which isn't a bad thing). That said, in what ways (if any) does it diverge from Redwall's setting, save for the specific names of persons and places?

Well there are dnd monsters so that it doesn't just become a Hoard lord of the week formula like Redwall. Also there may be a sort of "Game of Thrones" element with some political intrigue, and minor power struggles, BUT not as horrifyingly dark and gruesome....

Quote from: Ghostman
I am reminded of watching Rescue Rangers when I was a kid :)

Do these little animal characters exist in a world with humans, or is it an animal-only setting?

Animal only. I'm still posting some info.

Quote from: Love of Awesome
Magic: Low Magic
...
Rules system: Pathfinder (And any 3.x thing I feel like)

Low magic Pathfinder is... tricky. It's the kind of thing I see a lot of pitfalls in making work, because of how much the system and the default setting assumptions are all rooted in kind of crazy amounts of magic. Limiting high level spells (by playing E6) helps a little, but low level spells can ruin the "low magic" feel too, because there are a lot of low level spells that are pretty wondrous and obviously very magical. Even the lowly prestidigitation provides a bunch of capabilities that are unmistakably magical.

Some of this can be mitigated by clearly explaining the feel you want and making sure the players are on board. This will prevent some garish descriptions of magical effects or capricious use of flashy cantrips, but I think it's far from the only thing needed given how rooted in the system magic is. Caster classes need magic to function, and parties are generally based around the idea that around half or more of the party will have some magic ability. Magical weapon and armor bonuses, magical healing, and other magical boons are kind of baked into the system's numbers, too. So it's actually going to be a fair bit of work to make this function at all reasonably.

I don't want to be too negative. In fact, if you or anyone else has some good "low magic Pathfinder" house rules I'd like to see them, because it's something I'm interested in. I just have my doubts at this point.

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: Love of Awesome
Magic: Low Magic
...
Rules system: Pathfinder (And any 3.x thing I feel like)

Low magic Pathfinder is... tricky. It's the kind of thing I see a lot of pitfalls in making work, because of how much the system and the default setting assumptions are all rooted in kind of crazy amounts of magic. Limiting high level spells (by playing E6) helps a little, but low level spells can ruin the "low magic" feel too, because there are a lot of low level spells that are pretty wondrous and obviously very magical. Even the lowly prestidigitation provides a bunch of capabilities that are unmistakably magical.

Some of this can be mitigated by clearly explaining the feel you want and making sure the players are on board. This will prevent some garish descriptions of magical effects or capricious use of flashy cantrips, but I think it's far from the only thing needed given how rooted in the system magic is. Caster classes need magic to function, and parties are generally based around the idea that around half or more of the party will have some magic ability. Magical weapon and armor bonuses, magical healing, and other magical boons are kind of baked into the system's numbers, too. So it's actually going to be a fair bit of work to make this function at all reasonably.

I don't want to be too negative. In fact, if you or anyone else has some good "low magic Pathfinder" house rules I'd like to see them, because it's something I'm interested in. I just have my doubts at this point.

Okay you know what? You're right, I probably should have put down Medium Magic instead. I'll ifx that later, cause I actually have good ideas for magic in this world. I'll be busy for a little while, but I 'll be back.

Okay, so I've been having trouble defining otters as a race . I can never quite pin them down properly. Any suggestions?

Also what DND monsters would you guys recommend? I want monsters, but I can never quite figure out what would be good for this setting or not.

Dire animals seem like an obvious monster type, just apply the template on any of your races! In the setting the condition of direness could be an infectious curse that transforms those it afflicts into nasty atavistic throwbacks -- being for the STAs what lycanthropy and vampirism are to humans.

Treants and other kinds of plant-monsters would also seem very fitting. And giant spiders would be really scary from your small-sized characters' POV.

Quote from: Ghostman
Dire animals seem like an obvious monster type, just apply the template on any of your races! In the setting the condition of direness could be an infectious curse that transforms those it afflicts into nasty atavistic throwbacks -- being for the STAs what lycanthropy and vampirism are to humans.

Treants and other kinds of plant-monsters would also seem very fitting. And giant spiders would be really scary from your small-sized characters' POV.

Actually I had a better thought. The Horrid Animal Template from the Eberron Campaign Setting would be even better. Also I really the idea of Treants and Spiders. Actually one of the Mice cultures has an affinity with insects for whatever reason. But the same isn't true for spiders.... Also I remember reading in a Dragonmech book about a race of savage treants who run around performing bizarre rituals and sacrifices. Maybe I won't go that extreme, but that came to mind.

I would suggest beetles, vermin and twig blights as interesting monsters. Also fey. Grigs, Korred and pixies!

Quote from: Gilladian
I would suggest beetles, vermin and twig blights as interesting monsters. Also fey. Grigs, Korred and pixies!

Eh I don't know about Fey. There are giant insects and some have been tamed by the Arthrites, a sub-group of Mice who ride bugs and stuff. OMGarsh brain fart. They were the rival's an evil group of Giant spiders. House Soptera was born.

So some things I've been thinking about. Number one, house politics. Is it possible to have house's, and skirmishes between houses, without being as dark as GOT? Also cool House names. I feel like i'm lacking in this department. House Stoneworth, House Serpentfell, House Soptera, etc. Any interesting sources for how House names work?

Quote from: Love of Awesome
So some things I've been thinking about. Number one, house politics. Is it possible to have house's, and skirmishes between houses, without being as dark as GOT?

Sure. Have them all adhere to a common code of honor that keeps the skirmishes mostly nonlethal and favours taking (and ransoming) defeated enemies as hostages over killing them.

So I had a pretty cool idea from Endless Depths by Xeviat. What if sea life was akin to lovecraftian horrors? A hyper intelligent whale with an attitude problem must seem like a great elder evil from the perspective of a small woodland creature. Things like illithids, beholders, and other such creatures could be amphibious creatures from the bottom of the ocean.

Then I was thinking about Dragons. Dragons are actually pretty easy. The races are around the range of Tiny to small in the traditional dnd sense, so it's merely a matter of fluffing up normal dragons. My concern is more with there place in the world.

You rang?

Big animals, even nonhostile big animals, are going to be quite alien. Imagine what an elephant trapsing through your city would be like. Would the elephant even notice the homes of mice and badgers? What if the elephant is afraid of mice, and goes into a rampage at the sight of them? It's quite difficult to empathize with something that is so much differently sized than you; make them horribly intelligent and it's even worse.

I'm not sure how much combat you're going for, but crunch wise, I suggest fights against gargantuan and colossal opponents should b es

Your dragons could lean on the animalistic end of the spectrum, more earthly and less magical. Also limiting their size so that they aren't ridiculously huge compared to the characters. They could be the only type of big animal that can talk. If they are flyers then maybe they're migratory like birds, flying away for winter? Perhaps they go to some secret place that only dragons can reach?