The Campaign Builder's Guild

Alright these are two ideas I had, just throwing them out there, want to see what people think of them. Feel free to express any opinions about these, even comparing them to my other works, saying it would work well together, not work well together, any opinion really.

First Idea

The idea is basically that the world isn't a sphere in the traditional sense, its a never ending trail. Something follows this trail, devouring everything it catches, removing them from existence. As such people have to be constantly on the run.

This would make normal civilization pretty difficult, very little stability and no real buildings or ways to amass a lot of wealth, so cities are built on the backs of giant animals. Birds, fish, whales, turtles or dragons all have cities built on their backs, and they're all colossal animals, miles and miles long/large.

So cities are on these animals, which flee the devouring thing that chases them for all eternity. The animals still have to eat, so there are smaller animals, some with small villages on them that could get eaten. Also, I was thinking of instead of forests being static, they also move. These moving forests could be food for herbivore animals with cities, like turtles or something.

Second Idea

The second idea is a world where the ground is too dangerous to live, monsters and barbaric tribes travel across the land. Rampant growth has caused plants to grow very fast and new kinds of plants have evolved to catch and prey on people.

This caused people to build upwards, all towns are built on huge pillars, or the top few tiers of tiered pyramids, stuff like that. To help protect them magic rains down from the sky, sometimes physically sometimes metaphorically. The higher you go, the stronger magic is, however once you get down to the surface, magic stops working.

This has lead to a strange kind of balance, civilizations can fend off monsters and barbarians but can't expand because there magic stops working on the ground. However while the barbarians can't topple the cities they control all the natural resources. So barbarians trade building materials and some food for things built by the cities.

The balance isn't perfect, this leaves a bit of tension. A barbarian horde could potentially find some way to topple a city, or a city could develop a way to push back the wilds.

In this setting I would see air travel by means of magic being fairly easy, so flying carpets, magical zeppelins and flying mounts would be common for traveling between cities.

The first one reminds me of a Stephen King novel (where creatures devour the past).

Quote from: NomadicThe first one reminds me of a Stephen King novel (where creatures devour the past).

I THOUGHT THE SAME EXACT THING! I LOVED THAT STORY!

Anyway, both of these ideas sound really cool. I'd love to see how they develop.

Hmmm, do you guys happen to know which Stephen King novel it is? I can't recall ever reading one like that, though sounds familiar to IT.

Well, to add a bit more to the second idea, I see each city being almost a culture unto itself, with travel being so restricted. Two of the first cities I came up with are these

Pillar City, this is basically a city that sits on a huge pillar, it has magical platforms (giant circles) that orbit around the top that provide more area to build and land to grow crops.

The second is a city built on the top three or four tiers of a colossal tiered pyramid (think mayan pyramid). The city is run by small creatures (similar to Kobolds from D&D). The thing is that the city's hierarchy is based around who has the most dragon blood in them. Now they don't necessarily need to be born with it, as a blood transfusion is possible.

I figure that a giant dragon slumbers in the middle of the pyramid and they drain blood from it. The creatures would eventually grow wings and such as they gained more and more dragon blood, finally turning into full blooded dragon fledglings to fly away and do whatever it is dragons do :p

Quote from: LlumHmmm, do you guys happen to know which Stephen King novel it is? I can't recall ever reading one like that, though sounds familiar to IT.

It's actually a short story from his "Four Past Midnight" book. The story is called "The Langoliers".

Thanks Nomadic, I'll pick it up at a local library.

The other stories in it are good, too. I believe the movie Secret Window is based on one of the ones from that book.

Also, I'm almost positive I once saw 15-30 minutes of a made-for-TV movie version of The Langoliers, but I've never seen or heard any acknowledgment that such a movie ever existed outside of my own experience. Now that I put it in those terms, though, it seems eerily fitting...

Yes they had a small short movie for it. From what I have heard though, it was quite bad.

Quote from: NomadicYes they had a small short movie for it. From what I have heard though, it was quite bad.

No language has words adequate enough to describe how bad that TV movie was.

The secoond idea is really cool. If I homebrewed it, however, I would get rid of the whole "magic is higher up" theme. I would just make the ground so terrifying and inhospitable {some kind of unheard of swamp world where trees eat people and horrible amphibious beasts roam around devouring everything} that no one, except for small pocket of Barbarians, would be able to survive there. And I might have changed the cities build on pillars, to something like this: "Long in the past, great Wizards, having to find refuge from the inhospitable world, ripped huge masses of land out of the ground and into the sky, creating huge islands floating thousands of feet up in the air." Somehow, then, the Sky Islands would colonize and there-you have huge floating sky cities. Trade is made by giant rope made elevators and flying creatures. I could see this being an interesting setting to work on...

I think the second one needs some work. It's really interesting, but has some major holes - who built the pyramids/pillars, if the ground is so dangerous? How did they get built without magic? Where did the resources come from? Why don't the barbarians just topple the cities by refusing to trade? (If the cities rely on the barbarians for supply, and the barbarians don't have a compelling need for the cities, then the barbarians win, period.)

I like drizzt's suggestion, but it still has the same problems when it comes to trade. You need to have the barbarians need the cities as much as the cities need them.

The first idea, IMO, is made of pure win...for a story. For an RP setting, it'd be interesting, but unless the characters interact with the monster in some meaningful way, or the moving cities and such provide more for RP than just cool background, it'd feel a bit gimmicky. How would the cool elements of the setting (because they do sound awesome) affect players in such a world? Not everyday people. It's pretty obvious how it impacts them. But what cool things could players do in this world that they couldn't do anywhere else?

Quote from: EclipseI think the second one needs some work. It's really interesting, but has some major holes - who built the pyramids/pillars, if the ground is so dangerous? How did they get built without magic? Where did the resources come from? Why don't the barbarians just topple the cities by refusing to trade? (If the cities rely on the barbarians for supply, and the barbarians don't have a compelling need for the cities, then the barbarians win, period.)

I like drizzt's suggestion, but it still has the same problems when it comes to trade. You need to have the barbarians need the cities as much as the cities need them.

The first idea, IMO, is made of pure win...for a story. For an RP setting, it'd be interesting, but unless the characters interact with the monster in some meaningful way, or the moving cities and such provide more for RP than just cool background, it'd feel a bit gimmicky. How would the cool elements of the setting (because they do sound awesome) affect players in such a world? Not everyday people. It's pretty obvious how it impacts them. But what cool things could players do in this world that they couldn't do anywhere else?

Alright, I didn't mention this but the ground wasn't always dangerous, it started and gradually became more and more dangerous, this gave the people some time to build the pillars/pyramids. As for without magic, the pillars and pyramids aren't themselves inherently magical, their just large structures. Its perfectly possible to build them without magic (humans could have on Earth if there was ever a reason really).

The Barbarians control natural resources, like stone lets say, the cities can still grow their own food (one pillar city has floating disks that have agricultural land on them that orbit around the top of the pillar). Also the Barbarians do get things for their trouble, magically created items (once its made if it doesn't need magic to sustain it, it will still work on the ground, ex: forged alloy weapons, hard to make as a barbarian but still work without magic).


Also some cities raid the ground for supplies. One example of this is finding a quarry, going there with a zeppelin, dropping a bunch of people then hoisting up stolen stone etc...

I also like Drizzt suggestions, however I wanted to avoid the whole flying island thing in a setting, I've used it in other places. As for scrapping the magic doesn't work the ground bit, while viable I liked the unique aspect it added to the world, and if magic did work on the ground, someone somewhere would eventually use it clear a large area.

As for the second idea not being a good RP setting but good for a story, well that's great because I don't play RPGs, I conworld because I find it fun. Although a hypothetical solution would be needing to get something to stop your city from slowing down and being devoured or something. I'm glad you liked it thanks for all the reply.

Alright, I've done a bit more world building on these two ideas.

Now my question is, for those of you familiar, would fitting these into Divergence (I have a fair idea how to do it, Idea one would be related to the Azure and idea two would be the center of the Warren of End Times) be a good idea, or do you think they have enough potential to stand on their own?

I think that the first idea would fit nicely into it, make an interesting part, as it doesn't seem like enough to fit in by itself.

  The second, I don't know, it might be alright.