The Campaign Builder's Guild

Hi! My campaign is still a concept but it is beginning to take some from and shape.

This are the things I'm working on and I'll be updating this thread as I come up with more.

There are four continents and four dominant cultures corresponding to each of this continents.

We have for starters, our mediaeval Europe flavoured continent. We travel south to find a Asian flavoured one, mostly Chinese and Japanese feeling to this one. We go trough the ocean to the west and find our Egyptian flavoured continent, this one I'm working on at the moment and I'll give some details bellow. And at last but not at least: A Mesoamerican flavoured continent, this continent, just like America back in the time, has just been discovered and will be a battle ground for the other nations to decide who keeps it. Will this time Europe conquer America? Or will our Americans turn thongs around?

Now, there can not be a campaign setting without our so beloved Under-dark... but... I've been thinking... when must there always be dark under the world why no light above it... so I came up with this idea: There will be a... how to call it? lets say "Upper-light"? well, just like the under-dark it won't be visible to the eye but it will still be there above everything else, a land in the sky full of unseen wonders.

I know this thread is quite vague right now, I'm posting it so you can all give me your opinion on my ideas and help me, with your advice or mere critic, to make this ideas come to a campaign setting.

And as promised, some detail on my Egyptian flavoured continent:


Ishtamure (Ish-tah-moo-reh)

(Based on Egyptian culture)

The main culture of Ishtamure lives mostly in desert, and also near jungles, they revere the dead (Deathless from Eberron)are highly religious and live under some sort of theocracy, there is a divine race, those blessed by the gods who take the shapes and abilities of the animals representing the gods (a race based on the moreaus from D20 Modern). A big empire in this continent has been growing economically and militarily strong over the decades and now looks forward to control the new-found continent to the west.

One important thing about this campaign will be the addition of new races. so far the moreaus and a race of Half-Fey. There's also one major thing I want to do.

Depending on where you were born or where you bloodline comes from races will have some minor changes or even be changed almost completely. Also, depending on where you are trained in a certain class there will be changes too. A Mesoamerican fighter would be automatically proficient with weapons made of stone or obsidian while this same weapons should be treated as exotic for those fighter from the European based continent. One major change I'm planning is for clerics coming from Ishtamure to be focused on Deathless creatures rather than Undead creatures.

This is a work in progress and any input should be appreciated. Feel free to tell me your ideas of how certain culture should be like if you please.

The idea of an OverLight (or whatever) intrigues me - although I've heard of occasional 'cities' or 'castles' in the clouds in campaign settings before, I've never yet encountered a setting that took that idea to a level so pervasive as to mirror the Underdark.  Bravo!

One question, because the initial post is a little vague- are the european and asian continents connected by land like REAL Europe and Asia?  (You say 'travel' south but don't mention the sea like you do when you talk about Egypt-continent).

Not to do too much of a self-promotion, but my own setting is also going to feature 'new lands' in the East with a slight mesoamerican feel - it could be interesting to compare our approaches in that area.

I like the idea of slight cultural variations of classes, it seems like a less complicated idea than adding completely new base classes a la Oriental Adventures.

Thank you, I first got the idea of making a campaign in a place resembling skyland (don't know if you saw that one) which are a lot of islands floating in the sky, but I also had the idea of making a multicultural campaign... and couldn't decide...I'm bisexual... we don't decide we take both, hahahah.... so I decided to combine both and came up with that idea, I think I'll make a really REALLY high mountain from which one reaches that place.

Also, I haven't decided if Asian and European continents are connected by land... but I'm inclined to make every continent separated from the others by sea.

I'd really like to see your approach on Mesoamerica too, I'm thinking of making something resembling the Aztecs (I'm Mexican after all) and Mayas, but with some kind of magic technological approach. more like divine than arcane, actually.

Now that I think about itâ,¬Â¦ if they hade that kind of technology there could also be a economic war to see who gets control of it first, hmmmâ,¬Â¦ got to take note on that one.

This is an intriguing start. I would add to that question about connection too--one thing I've always wondered about is the idea of an alternative history of Mesoamerica where the conquest is not either complete or necessarily possible--for instance one in which the Mesoamericans have discovered the use of iron, or some magic perhaps that influences them. Or perhaps simply it is not a Moctecuzoma II who rules but someone like one of his predecessors who has strongly unified the different Aztec nations or the like. Perhaps some other peril was faced by both Europeans and Mesoamericans they had to jointly face. But what intrigues me is the idea of the two cultures coexisting and having to jockey for position more say like that of Europe and southeast Asia or Europe and the Middle East--a long period of adjustment before either one can try to dominate the other fully.

I'm also intrigued by the islands in the sky thing--in my campaign I'm considering having a subplot involving Cloud Giants and I had been wondering about other sky creatures or sky adventures.

You raise a good point - in 'real world' history, the reasons for European domination were largely technological, because technology was all that there was.  But in a fantasy world, there's also magic, and it may well be possible that while technologically 'inferior', the Mesoamericans could be equals or even superiors where magic is concerned.

Indeed, I'm leaving wither they get to conquer Mesoamericans or not up to luck, but we all know, in an RPG, luck can be influenced by a lot of factors.

Also, what about Mesoamericans being conquered, but not by Europeans, but by Asians, or Africans? what about a world conquered by an Egyptian culture? Those are the kind of things I want to bring.

And yeah, Tybalt , I really want to develop that idea about the islands in the sky, I also think it would be still but moving along the clouds, not necessarily a land on the clouds but influenced by the wind just like the clouds, It will probably be invisible due to some kind of illusion magic, I'm thinking of making that land a land of fleeing celestials.

Also, I want to brake that stereotype of demons being evil, and angels being good...

By the way, have you people how a half half-ling/ half gnome would be like? I'm making interbreeding a big part of this campaign.

What do you mean the stereotype of demons being evil and angels being good?  I kind of assumed that that was part of the definition, at least in D&D terms.

I know, but I don't want that to happen anymore. Call me weird... it must have to do with being stereotyped all my life and all that, I just think there should be reasons for a celestial to be evil, what about having a celestial as the evil lord? I'd really like to see the expressions on my players face when they finally meet the guy who's making their existances imposible.

QuoteAlso, I want to brake that stereotype of demons being evil, and angels being good...

the simple way to do this is to just make angels evil and demons good, im sure someone else could expand on this idea

Nah! I don't want to go that far... >.< I do, however, want the villian to be a celestial now.

Are you retaining the alignment system, in general?

Yes and no. I sloud be making something between the alignment system and the aligances system from D20 Modern.

More like you get to chose and alignment and then one or two alligances... but I haven't decided yet.

Just to comment on what you were discussing about America not being conquered. I can tell you that a great deal of the reason why the spanish conquered the Incans so easily/rapidly was the fact that they arrived exactly in the moment when a big civil war had ended. It was a massacre and left few warriors alive... Considering the geography of Peru and sites like Machu Picchu (Where if you are at the bottom you can't see the citadel above you, but if you are above you can see everything down there), I believe the Incans could've offered a greater resistance. Ah well, not sure if any of that would help but I wanted to throw it in :P

The first really important issue to consider in disrupting the angel/demon stereotype is how such creatures are defined in your setting.  What defines an angel?  Is it its beauty?  Its goodness?  Its knowledge?  If angels are defined by goodness, you might then consider whether the nature of that goodness is clearly understood.  That is, is it spelled out for them, or do they merely have an outline, a vague set of parameters within which to discover (and perpetuate it) themselves?  If it is the latter, angels may come into conflict as readily as mortal proponents of a single religion.  One angel might argue that goodness requires the abolition of all suffering, while another counters that suffering is necessary for moral strength, and to give meaning to pleasure.  Both perspectives may lead to some kind of "evil": the former, in efforts to eradicate suffering, might attempt to enslave all humanity in a subversive, Orwellian "Eutopia", where everyone "knows" unquestioningly what is pleasurable; the latter could actually unleash a demonic incursion on the world, so that men could better appreciate the value of their current liberties (thus magnifying pleasure relative to the untold suffering that follows).

Of course, you needn't even make them servants of good.  For example, the Angels of the RPG Nobilis aspire to beauty rather than Good.  They might permit (or actively facilitate) a man's demise if in death he is rendered more glorious than in life.  Heck, they don't even let most human souls (say... 99.99999999%) into Heaven, because of their inherent ugliness.  Or, to use the Knowledge example, perhaps angels are so dedicated to understanding their universe that they consider humans relevant only as a thing to be analysed, confined and dissected, so as to further that understanding.

You could even maintain that they are wholly good, and know fully well the nature of that goodness.  But what if humanity, in its corruption, is unworthy of existence?  What if they seek to destroy us, irredeemably sinful as we are?  Thus, for all that demons wish us damned, they do not want us destroyed, and so they are closer to allies than the angels will ever be?

These are, of course, just a few ideas.  The point is, there are many ways in which an angel's ideologies can be construed to make them the villain.

Hope this helps.

And of course, even if angels are defined by good, there's always the possibility that they are working toward a "greater good" that the PCs are too mortal to understand, causing them to be villains in that sense.

Btw, I might *yoink* that idea of angels interested in beauty rather than good for my own setting, as I've been having difficulty creating anything distinctive for my own celestial/infernal spheres.