Campaign Setting Directory

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Avisarr, I've always been a big fan of your work.  It's one of the few settings online that I peruse occasionally.  Welcome to the site, I hope you are able to get some use out of it!

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Wow, ditto, Avisarr. I read all your work a few years ago and was totally blown away by it. Big welcome to the guild.

[LD]

Note: apologies if this is clutter; I'm slowly but surely trying to collect links and names of very unique or very good campaign settings from other locations that people at the CBG may wish to read. If anyone else has other ideas, please feel free to add.

List of Many Settings:
http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Homebrew_Campaign_Settings#Dungeons_.26_Dragons_3.5_Edition

The Magicant, the Heartstone - Wizards
http://www.wjs3.com/tMtH/
http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-221815
[spoiler]Summary of The Magicant, The Heartstone
This summary was posted on another thread, but I've put it here so people can get a quick idea of the world.

Basic Description
This is a world undergoing magical renaissance, full of politics and intrigue as various factions (noble, religious, merchant, and humanoid) struggle to dominate the ever-changing social landscape and take the most advantage of new inventions and discoveries. Of particular importance is the discovery of wizard magic, enabled by spell focus called a Heartstone. Heartstones are extracted from the dead corpses of magical creatures, and by sprinkling Essence on them, you can cast magic spells from them (as a wizard). This threatens the longstanding power of the Church, which for hundreds of years had a monopoly on spellcasting -- clerics can ingest Essence to receive visions from the gods and gain spellcasting ability. The Nobility controls giant crystals called Magicants which produce the Essence.

Selling Points

Lots of opportunities for roleplaying. There are a lot of competing factions, using diplomacy, subterfuge, or force, as necessary. All alignment restrictions are lifted (CG paladins, NE clerics of LG deities), as NPCs and their schemes are more complex than in typical D&D.
It's a high-magic world, but only recently -- wizardly magic is still poorly understood and restricted to the nobility. But it does give the PCs a chance to explore the use of magic and how society reacts to it.
Social changes that the PCs will be able to impact directly. Also gives the DM lots of leeway to invent variant fringe cultures.
Low-Level NPCs allow any PCs that reach even mid levels to be significant, important people.
All the D&D staples are here -- dwarven miners, half-orc outcasts, red dragons, and dungeon adventures -- but the world is full of unique twists -- dwarven wizards, half-orc nobility, red dragon freedom-fighters, and urban adventures.

Interesting Races/Creatures

Half-orcs are commonly nobles. Orcs (now extinct) are venerated as a race of courageous warriors.
The known world used to be controlled by an empire of elves, giants, and goblins. Giants are now rare and isolated, but elves are commonly nobility. Goblins are a playable race and are very militaristic and team-oriented.
Gnomes are more wilderness-oriented. They tend to live out in the forests. They generally dislike the use of Heartstones, because each Heartstone was taken from a slain magical creature.
Ogres and half-ogres are playable races. Ogres are primitive tribal people known for riding dire elk.
Halflings live in nomadic caravans with their own colorful culture, and are very gypsy-like.

Organizations

Dozens of noble houses rule the world. These own the Magicants, which produce Essence, the "fuel" of spellcasters. They are the only people legally allowed to weild Heartstones as wizards.
The Church of the Pantheon is a unified religion that has worked with the Nobility for centuries, tending to the Magicants and casting spells on their behalf.
Independant Temples are new religions created by those dissatisfied with the Church.
Wizard orders, explorers' guilds, universities, and other academic institutions are on the rise.
Merchant organizations are still dominated by the nobility, but indepenant middle-class merchants are on the rise and trying to assert more power.
The Old Ways is a primitive, naturalistic faith practiced by druids out in the wilderness. Most people think of them as dangerous heathens.
In response to being hunted for their Heartstones, the monsters have organized into several resistance organizations.
A number of secret organizations try to sway the course of events from the shadows.

Magic
The Nobility owns giant glowing crystals called Magicants. Housed in special chambers, whereever the light from the Magicant falls, a fine dust called Essence builds up. This is used by spellcasters as a sort of magical fuel.

Clerics ingest Essence to gain visions from the deities. In these visions, they also get spells they can cast later in the day. (Druids work the same way, but they get their Essence from the fruit of great trees planted over top of Magicants.)

Wizards sprinkle Essence onto their Heartstones when preparing spells, and can then cast spells out of the Heartstone later (the Heartstone acts as a focus and is not consumed by spellcasting). Magical creatures are the source of the Heartstones -- each creature, when slain, can be made into a single Heartstone. The stronger the creature the higher level spells can be cast from that Heartstone.

Sorcerers & bards are decended from magical creatures and cast spells normally, but are rare because of persecution.

Locations
The main location is the city of Lienne, in the republic of Renflour (ruled by a council of noble houses, as opposed to most countries which are ruled by a single noble house). There are also a lot of countries. Most noble houses are spread out, with holdings in multiple countries (thanks to long-distance communication magic).

Other
This world, for the most part, follows basic D&D rules -- you don't need to learn a whole new spellcasting system or wonder about the balance of custom classes. The most important rules modification is the Essence rules (listed under Magic, above), which basically boils down to, "it costs a few GP to prepare spells each day."[/spoiler]


Serpents and Sewers
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102346
SoS Setting: The Dark Golden Age: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116163

Lords of Mechanus (Lords of Avramir)
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4738910#post4738910
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114832

Sewer Rats
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Sewer_Rats_(DnD_Campaign_Setting)

d20 Rebirth
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98722

Cabbages and Kings (Lewis Carroll- Grimgrin)
http://grimgrin4488.tripod.com/

The Dustlands
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46752

Knights of Everest
http://www.freewebs.com/rsknightsofeverest/
http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-756079

canta- Land of the 5 Dragons
??

Legends of Hyerune
http://www.legendsofhyerune.com/
http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-180587

Havilah, the Land of the covenant
http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-369839

The Warlord's Tales- Kalus van der Kroft
http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-369839

A Dying Ember- Vorpal Tribble
http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-566554

Irslindur- World of Demons
http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-756079

The World of Cora
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Cora_(DnD_Campaign_Setting)
[spoiler]    Cora's design came out of my desire to see a world filled with magic, but not the kind of magic we are used to seeing in Dungeons And Dragons. I didn't want wizards running around casting spells all day, or druids patrolling the forest with their magical companions and wild shaping abilities. I wanted to see a world with magic much more like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A world where magic was everywhere, but was rarely seen in big flashy displays. I wanted a world where magic was used to forge weapons, and infused into items, and a world where people drew upon the power around them, and learned to tap into it to give them enhanced abilities. I feel from this starting point I have found a good middle ground in my world's design. I've incorporated Draconic Auras, Incarnum, and normal spellcasting methods to attempt to strike that feel of magic being wherever you are. I have also designed the campaign around using the E8 ruleset in an attempt to limit the curve of power increases as the players reach past the mid levels.

    At first when I was brainstorming ideas for my pantheon I desired to have no gods at all, and to simply have the world as it was, but as I began to work out the history of Cora, I realized that adding a Pantheon was a good idea and would give a good backstory for why everything was created, how the world came to be, and also it would help to capture a story and define the world of Cora from all the other campaign settings. This led me into redesigning the cosmology of Cora, into a world of planar travel much like a Planescape setting. I hope that this will give opportunity for countless adventures, and a good roleplaying experience. [/spoiler]

Wanderer- A Planar Campaign
http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-336998

World of Sulerin
http://www.sulerin.com/

Valgora
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Valgora_(DnD_Campaign_Setting)

Zyanya
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Zyanya_(DnD_Campaign_Setting)
[spoiler]The cultures and deities of Zyanya are inspired by real life cultures or cultures prevalent in mythology. It is preferred to maintain some minor level of 'realism', at least as it translates to a fantasy game.[/spoiler]

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Magicant/Heartstone is one of my favorite older settings, but I don't think 77IM is updating it anymore.

[HandsomeRob]

Sorol
HandsomeRob
Sorolpedia
In Sorol I've attempted to design a world with a place for everything. Well, everything that interests me anyway. Sorol has a long history of lost empires, civilizations, and interstellar wars; it has magic and science and mysticism; it has vast wildernesses and great cities; it has monsters, dinosaurs, and dragons; it has wondrous technology and stone-age civilizations.

[LD]

Verduria
From: The zompist
http://www.zompist.com/virtuver.htm
A Con-Lang world. Extremely indepth. Almost bizarrely so. If you are a fan of Languages and Tolkienesque-detailed levels of history, this world is for you.
The Atlas http://www.zompist.com/atlas/index.html is also an extremely fascinating example of how to do evolutionary historical maps.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

In Sorol I've attempted to design a world with a place for everything. Well, everything that interests me anyway.

:-p Awesome line.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

In Sorol I've attempted to design a world with a place for everything. Well, everything that interests me anyway.

:-p Awesome line.

Yeah, that's exactly what I want to do.

[LD]

Metal Fantasy (not mine)
http://miscellaneousdebris.sitesled.com/gamefiles/ktattoo.pdf
(links to a PDF)
Leetz might be interested in this a bit.
I especially like their "BS" action rule.

[Niccodaemus]

Campaign World:Shatterworld
Author: Niccodaemus
http://shatterworldrpg.blogspot.com/

Highly civilized late medieval/early renaissance setting built on the bones of a corrupt ancient empire. It is a "points of darkness" setting where monsters lie just off the well beaten path. Designed to be used in an OSR style, but where players are human.

Shatterworld is intended to emulate folklore, where the adventure is something that is sought out, rather something that happens when orcs or undead start attacking towns. There are specific homes/cultures for rangers, paladins, druids, and bards. Adventurers can be mercenaries, come from clans of noble savages who yet live in the wilderness, or can align themselves to a cause.

Magic is rare and something of a lost art, yet ruins abound with forgotten secrets and wealth which pre-date The Shattering.

[Hibou]

Campaign World:Shatterworld
Author: Niccodaemus
http://shatterworldrpg.blogspot.com/

Highly civilized late medieval/early renaissance setting built on the bones of a corrupt ancient empire. It is a "points of darkness" setting where monsters lie just off the well beaten path. Designed to be used in an OSR style, but where players are human.

Shatterworld is intended to emulate folklore, where the adventure is something that is sought out, rather something that happens when orcs or undead start attacking towns. There are specific homes/cultures for rangers, paladins, druids, and bards. Adventurers can be mercenaries, come from clans of noble savages who yet live in the wilderness, or can align themselves to a cause.

Magic is rare and something of a lost art, yet ruins abound with forgotten secrets and wealth which pre-date The Shattering.

I read several chunks of your blog. I am amused because even though I don't think we've ever met we're writing almost the exact same kind of setting with the same kind of feel (and I've been looking at transitioning to E6 or E10 for it, assuming I use d20 at all); mine is called Haveneast and has gone through several revisions trying to perfect this atmosphere, and to me they look very similar except that I think I'm focusing a little more on the horror genre. You've certainly done a great job of capturing that low-magic, mythical feel with what you've already posted.

Welcome to the CBG, hope to see more.

[Niccodaemus]

I read several chunks of your blog. I am amused because even though I don't think we've ever met we're writing almost the exact same kind of setting with the same kind of feel (and I've been looking at transitioning to E6 or E10 for it, assuming I use d20 at all); mine is called Haveneast and has gone through several revisions trying to perfect this atmosphere, and to me they look very similar except that I think I'm focusing a little more on the horror genre. You've certainly done a great job of capturing that low-magic, mythical feel with what you've already posted.

Welcome to the CBG, hope to see more.

I'd love to see what you've got. I think there is a hunger for this type of setting. Things have gone too far in the other direction, with "monsters are people too" being an all too common mantra.

I plan on incorporating horror into my setting. I'm a big Ravenloft fan, but don't want to be that overt. It shouldn't be hard to drop a Ravenloft type adventure in the setting though.

Here's a short story I wrote which gives a sense of how I see horror fitting:

http://shatterworldbts.blogspot.com/2011/11/calabrian-tale-of-ancient-dead.html

[Hibou]

I read several chunks of your blog. I am amused because even though I don't think we've ever met we're writing almost the exact same kind of setting with the same kind of feel (and I've been looking at transitioning to E6 or E10 for it, assuming I use d20 at all); mine is called Haveneast and has gone through several revisions trying to perfect this atmosphere, and to me they look very similar except that I think I'm focusing a little more on the horror genre. You've certainly done a great job of capturing that low-magic, mythical feel with what you've already posted.

Welcome to the CBG, hope to see more.

I'd love to see what you've got. I think there is a hunger for this type of setting. Things have gone too far in the other direction, with "monsters are people too" being an all too common mantra.

I plan on incorporating horror into my setting. I'm a big Ravenloft fan, but don't want to be that overt. It shouldn't be hard to drop a Ravenloft type adventure in the setting though.

Here's a short story I wrote which gives a sense of how I see horror fitting:

http://shatterworldbts.blogspot.com/2011/11/calabrian-tale-of-ancient-dead.html

That was great. Told in the way it should be told for this kind of setting, definitely. The kind of undead presence is certainly unique; usually it's more aggressive and destructive but I like the subtlety shown there.

I have to agree with the monsters stuff going too far; it depresses me a little when one talks about dragons, undead and even more "natural" creatures like gryphons as if they're normal things (I am guilty of this with undead, sometimes). Part of what is so cool about settings like these and the E6 system is they try to make those encounters special again.

I'm also a big fan of Ravenloft although I haven't actually played it much. I hope to run Expedition to Castle Ravenloft sometime soon, as despite being a more high-powered module, the scenarios look like a lot of fun. I'll be posting some of my material on Haveneast soon and when I do I'll give you a heads up. :)

[Stryker25B]

Kaliir
Stryker25B

Kaliir is a world where magic is not what once expects. It comes in the form of a physical substance, runectar, that seeps into the world around it, is shaped by the races that inhabit this world, and drives all schemes large and small. Runectar is shaped into trinkets and weapons, household instruments and sentient constructs. It can be used to heal or hurt, uplift or enslave. It changes the world around it in ways completely unpredictable.

Homebrew Thread
CBG Wiki Entry