The Campaign Builder's Guild

I think it's a good explanation for D&D's race heavy setting. My race list is rather limited, and a number of those are limited in number (Yuan-Ti, Dwarves, etc have small populations and are in fact dying out as races) However in a way it fits because of the plans of the Lich Kalikazan who is spreading his undead rule over the world as best he can.

My pcs have enabled New Edom to remain free of the undead curse (that the dead will walk, that kind of thing) because of their various deeds and because they are worshippers of true gods--most religion in my campaign setting is false in fact or involves unknowing pacts with demons.

In Haveneast, it's already been there for a while in most respects. Many nations exist and most of them possess large sections of land in Myrenia (this will change soon, as the Age of Unity as it is called is near its end, and most countries will shrink/divide), but the land they lay claim to is usually not well maintained or guarded. Most of "civilization" lies within so many miles of the city except in the Empire of Llander. Beyond these regions lies hundreds of miles of quiet, dangerous terrain between centers of activity.

4e's "Points of Light" system is a relic of past human perceptions where everywhere humans don't go is overrun with not nice stuff, like soul sucking fey and baby eating werewolves. It's the standard industrialization fed fear of the wilderness.
PoL suffers from the arbitrary decision that monsters come from everywhere but cities, 'cause Lvl4 commoners are killed by packs of cats. The whole world is inherently divided into two distinct factions, Team Monster Force and Team Light Force. I think this is dumb, as it follows the simplistic design paradigm of old video games. The one where all towns are monster free, and leaving town generates random encounters.

NE is having a much different approach. We're calling it "Nodes". The concept is that the outer planes sometimes have portals that lead to them. Some are one-way or two-way gates, some are overlapping, and some are points of power called "Nodes".

These nodes are portals that only leak magic from the outer planes, and hanging around them gives you magical power. Setting up a thrown on a Node that seeps Death magic will make you a powerful Necromancer. Building a temple around a cloud node will give you genie magic. Living in a volcano will give you awesome gunpowder crafting skills. And if you just sit near a random Node you'll get some random badass powers. This isn't the only way to gain power in Ne, but it is the standard power acquisition method that DM controlled empires, overlords and random encounters use.

This doesn't create the setup where you have a Lighthouse surrounded by a city, and monsters infest the outside world like a plague, waiting for the PoL's war machine to wipe them out and build more Lighthouses.
This also setups random monster encounters inside cities built on a node, and keeps the lowest level creatures in the lower level areas.[/shamelessplug]

The year is 731 in the second age of Vantir. The empire is growing steadily, Eladrin are making groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of Arcane and Philosophy at the greatest of universities. The Dwarves have just established forms of primitive musketry and banking. In just the last eight year we have put a complete stop to the hobgoblin raids in the west,  adopted halfling merchant city-states into the empire, and reunited with the remnants of the . The powers of the church, nobility, and guilds have been slowly waning in favor of a rising middle merchant class. Or at least that's the way it was two years ago, the golden age.

In just two short years, everything changed. The thought that the hobgoblin raids ceased was only partially true. During their eight years of silence, they was united every tribe in the west under a single banner. The strike can out of the blue, swift and merciless. Not only were their hobgoblin, but hordes of demons as well; no longer were they locked in the abysses of the elemental chaos, but free to pillage and burn as they choose.

Survivors are few and lonely, two-thousand at most. The Arch-Mage Ariel of the Arcane University has put together a ritual to tear a hole into another world, allowing us to escape from this wasteland. We will all travel to a clean world, a fresh one, free from the monstrosities of this age. Over the course of the next three long days, every one of us is to take what they can and journey to this new land, and a new age.

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The adventure really begins here, Ah'rem (literally meaning 'land known), a world that has never known empires, kingdoms, steel, or law. The initial PCs will most likely be Humans, Tieflings, Dwarves, or Eladrin: the civilized peoples. The new world will open up some new options - savage lizardfolk that worship the great fire-breathing beasts that rule the wilderness here, wood elves that seem to bear some relation to the eladrin of the homeworld, and maybe others.

The world will be wild, untamed, new, unknown, and dangerous. That seems appropriate to a new edition. The surviving colony will need a lot of help to survive, and PCs will have their pick of all kinds of missions. There might even be faint remnants of a precursor civilization, an entirely unknown species that could have left some dungeons behind.

I really like the PoL mindset, and an amount of it will be in my setting. But rather than "points of light in a sea of darkness", I want my setting to be "points of knowns in a sea of unknowns". I don't want my world to be a dangerous place, I want it to be a fantastic place. Yes, there will be danger, as the wilderness will be full of animals (and not all animals will be mundane in my world).

My first 4E game, after running some of the premade adventures in the default setting, will be an episodic world-traveling game. The players will be searching for things, and thus have an overarching story for the campaign, but they'll also have lots of side stories. I want to run a campaign like a TV series, where each session or adventure is an episode, connected with the others through continuity but not always content. I've been watching lots of Stargate SG1 and reading lots of comic books, and I'm thinking that this might be the best way for me to run a campaign.

Leaving more of the world unexplored and unknown does two things. First, a DM can pop things in as needed. Second, there are more places to travel and explore. Having a lost empire in the past leaves wonderful things for the players to find.

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Tom, your idea is awesome. As a player, your setting would inspire so much wonder in me. I'd want to explore the world and protect the people I came over with.