New Edition: Setting

[K]

Ok, we know that a lot of DnD doesn't work with a lot of other DnD. Shadows or vampires or lycanthropes or something should rule the world, and farming should be impossible considering the number of manticores in the world.

So here is the setting:

Points of Darkness, And Not Much Else, At Least On This World

The world is mostly empty. Vast tracks of land have never known the touch of men. Some places, however, are the points of darkness and are the breeding places of monsters. Civilization grows in the spots between the wild places. Monsters are mostly created and don't breed or even exist until needed.

Examples: The Kingdom rests on the plains and forests between the Forest of Endless Mist and the Mountains of Madness. Farms are only on plains around cities, and even then they are patrolled by the Red Knights.

The capital city of New Hope is massive, and has a population of nearly twenty thousand people. The Order of Black Star has a tower in the city and and trains Wizards. Some of the dozens of wizards support the Red Knights on particularly dangerous missions.

The Forest of Endless Mist is full of ghosts and other dark creatures. They do not leave the Forest, but occasioanly people who live near the forest go missing. The last King who attempted to burn the Forest lost his entire army in its depths. Mist elves live in one portion of the Forest, but only the power of their Sorceress-Queen protects them, and they seldom venture out of their enclave.

The Mountains of Madness are home to goblins and orcs who only survive because of their stupendous breeding rate and willingness and ability to eat anything organic. Ancient ruins and other fell things, and occasionally people hear tales of a powerful order of serpent people who fight over the right to plunder these ruins with a powerful wizard who sends manticora and other misshapen beasts, while they summon serpent demons and other eldritch creatures. Sometimes this conflict boils over and one of these creatures enters the kingdom. At the base of Mountains clans of dwarves work their fortress-mines for iron, but they never go deeper into the mountains.

[Username17]

I think we should expand the idea of the pool of pure shadow that one of us came up with. Hack in it with Dominions sites and you've got yourself the beginning of a justifiable sounding reason that you can have cities somewhere in the world while still having manticores and wyverns out there somewhere doing their thing.

So basically you've got power sites. Power sites are what allows magical monsters to exist and grow in power and awesomeness just by existing such that you can encounter them. Hell, power sites probably give birth to those bad boys, which is why we can have an ecology that has sphynxes in it without worrying about the breeding population of sphynxes and maintenance genetic diversity and shit.

Basilisks exist because the Gate of Deeper Slumber is over there. It makes powerful magic. And sometimes, it makes a Basilisk. And Basilisks who stay in the Gate of Deeper Slumber will generally speaking gain power by doing so, and they feel little inclination to leave for long - the area directly around the Gate of Deeper Slumber is the Basilisk's home and it'll probably stay that way.

So if you're far enough away from the Gate of Deeper Slumber, basilisks won't try to fuck with you. At least, not very often. So you can plausibly have a culture and a group of humans doing mercantile bullshit and not have everything torn in half by Basilisks.

Of course, sometimes a Basilisk will decide that it should go out and search for a more powerful site. And sometimes it'll find Avendron Forest and be pleased. And sometimes it'll just wander into human lands and make a nuisance of itself until mighty adventurers kill it or drive it off. And sometimes a magic site will open or get sealed and then monsters will show up in a big way in an area where they didn't hang at all for some time.

This way you can have small or even massive monster infestations right next to the town and still have the steady state of the world have towns that don't have high level adventurers in them.

-Username17

[K]

Yeh, thats mostly the plan.

But I think its also important that heroes and villains also create spots. I mean, if a powerful wizard buys a plot of land in the city and builds a tower, you know there are crazy golems and bound demons and stuff guarding his crap.

He'd be happy to do his thing sitting on top a power site, but he can settle for being close to a really good sausage stand.

Fighters have their keeps and train up elite soldiers, clerics train up acolytes and have outsiders, rogues train assasin and rogue guilds, and Rainbow Bright has a team of Color Kids.

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I think big empty spaces are also important. Like the idea we had about the Abyss (its a big place, so don't worry too much about Balors. Worry about Fiendish dwarves.)

Areas should have a level. So the City of Brass is like level 11 because efreet really do sit in palaces and look out their window and say "wtf is that dude doing here. Guards!"

That way you can have wandering monsters and not go too crazy. I mean, if all XP is quest based, wandering monsters can be fun.

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Smallness is also important. I mean, an army big enough to destroy the world of men should be like 10K guys. In a world of Fireball and Storm of Vengence, big armies are not the way to go. Smaller elite armies of trained killers is more heroic.

[Captain_Bleach]

What about smart monsters, like Mind Flayers? What is to prevent them from using their knowledge to rule over the "lesser" (lower CR) creatures? How do the humans and others keep up?

[Endovior]

Mind Flayers are the long-removed descendants of smart (and evil) Wizards who used the Power Points to evolve themselves. Rather like the Yuan-Ti, only with much smarter grandcestors. Humans compete by having a higher population with more adventurers per capita; as such, despite the fact that the average Mind Flayer is much more powerful then the average Human, there are more badass Humans then there are badass Mind Flayers, which ensures that the Humans have kingdoms that can stand between the power points sticking out their collective tongues, while the Mind Flayers sit huddled in their creepy underground caverns way down in the middle of nowhere.

[Crissa]

ECL isn't needed to change the number of any particular creature in a setting - biology and setting is what's needed.

If you want your adventurers to all be humans, then you make them human. It doesn't need to be mechanically better, because that fucks up someone else's campaign.

-Crissa

[K]

1197862785[/unixtime]]Mind Flayers are the long-removed descendants of smart (and evil) Wizards who used the Power Points to evolve themselves. Rather like the Yuan-Ti, only with much smarter grandcestors. Humans compete by having a higher population with more adventurers per capita; as such, despite the fact that the average Mind Flayer is much more powerful then the average Human, there are more badass Humans then there are badass Mind Flayers, which ensures that the Humans have kingdoms that can stand between the power points sticking out their collective tongues, while the Mind Flayers sit huddled in their creepy underground caverns way down in the middle of nowhere.

I have been thinking about this a while, and it goes like this: powerful characters can build, summon, or train up powerful servants, at a rate of half your character level.

So let's say you are a powerful Sorcerer(level 10). You can train young Sorcerers up to level 5, or summon level 5 demons, or make level 5 golems, or transform sheep into level 5 black pterodactyls, or mate with dragons and produce crack half-dragon shock troopers....whatever. Thats a native power to you.

Making more powerful things requires a power site. So, while mind flayers could rule a human city, they couldn't breed there. Oh, they could split their forces between ruling a city and breeding somewhere else, but thats a recipe for disaster.

[Crissa]

The Oms won if only because of that.

-Crissa

[NoDot]

Cosmology? How many ancient Liches and Uncarnates (ducks to avoid flames) created Demiplanes?

[Cielingcat]

I think demiplanes as D&D has them now are dumb. No one just creates a plane, they make houses that are bigger inside than out, snowglobes that have actual people inside them, whatever, but no impenetrable fortress planes.

[RandomCasualty]

1197912084[/unixtime]]I think demiplanes as D&D has them now are dumb. No one just creates a plane, they make houses that are bigger inside than out, snowglobes that have actual people inside them, whatever, but no impenetrable fortress planes.

Well I don't know about that. I mean, having the impenetrable prison plane is pretty cool. And you need that shit, especially once going through walls is no longer a problem. It's far too easy to be super mobile in D&D and random pocket planes is about the only way to slow some of that mobility down.

I always wondered what would happen if you hacked through the wall of a house that was bigger on the inside than the outside. Would it just be like popping a bag of holding or what?

[tzor]

1197912332[/unixtime]]I always wondered what would happen if you hacked through the wall of a house that was bigger on the inside than the outside. Would it just be like popping a bag of holding or what?

It would all depend on how you implemented the trans-dimensional space mapping. The bag of holding is simply a bag that is in a larger extra-dimensional space. Skipping that problem for a moment basically you need to consider the dimensional interface between the outside dimension and the inside dimension. The first question is whether or not the transdimensional space requires "work" to get in or to get out. Let's assume the former for now and assume a linear work gradient to the space. We can present this in a simple graphic.

Code: Select all

[br]    --------[br]    \      /[br]-----......-----[br]

The dimensional interface has a distance equal to the square root of (1/4 * (extra length squared) + "work" distance squared) and requires an amount of "work" equal to the work number in order to pass through it.

This opening a "hole" is just accessing the interface and doens't impart any dimensional instability to the system.

[Daiba]

Or you find yourself in an empty building, and realize that the windows and doors are just portals to a pocket plane.

[JonSetanta]

Stuff would look tinier on the inside than it actually is. That is, if light warped too.

[CatharzGodfoot]

It would stay just as big on the inside until you started damaging the structure's physical stability. Then it would begin slowly and dramatically collapsing until the player characters escaped it imploded (possible into the abyss or something) and the dimensions straightened themselves out.

[tzor]

1197916744[/unixtime]]Stuff would look tinier on the inside than it actually is. That is, if light warped too.

Since the portal tunnels would probably be absolute the dimensions would look relatively the same, but a portal tunnel at the end of the structure would not show you the end of the inside of the strucutre. Note that is also possible to have portal tunnels in a non perpendicular direction through the dimensional interface. Things would look "far away" because they in fact are farther away by the distance of the dimensional interface.

Remember the "physical" walls are really just a fancy veneer over the dimensional bend points. They don't really hold anything in, as is the case with the bag of holding.

[Username17]

1197882827[/unixtime]]Cosmology? How many ancient Liches and Uncarnates (ducks to avoid flames) created Demiplanes?

That requires a whole introspection on the nature of alignment and extraplanar factions. While I think it important that the idea of infinite planes of existence has to go, the universe could have limitless planes of existence and be just fine. The moons of Eberron are retarded, but the basic idea is sound. If you have the other dimensions as just places then you can get out of the whole infinite worlds crap where infinite demons fight infinite angels every time anyone wants to sacrifice a child or drain a swamp. But here's some initial thoughts.

I have no opinion about extradimensional spaces. Seriously, while the relative access of these warps in space should be consistent throughout the campaign – I honestly don't much care. Seriously, with most of the world uncharted waste and the mappable cave complex downplayed the ability to purchase the creation of real estate isn't of much importance. But whatever the context, the state of extradimensional space should be the same across the board. I don't want rope-trick-space, shadow-space, mirror space, demi-plane space, hole-space, bag-space, haversack-space, and mansion-space all coexisting in my universe. That's too complicated and it's crap. So whether it exists and is expensive and time consuming, cheap as free, non-existent, or whatever that should be true for everyone and everything.

There should be more than one extra dimension. While it's interesting to posit a universe set up like Rokugan where there's just the world and the Shadowlands fighting it out, I think those stories can be told adequately without resorting to a single monlithic enemy dimension. After all, if there are several such planes of existence and you only center on one during a campaign you lose nothing by the fact that the other places nominally exist. Just like how the game isn't ruined by there being islands in the campaign world that you don't visit (up to a point).

There should probably be a proportional number of planes and alignments. D&D doesn't have to have a heaven for every alignment, but it helps. It makes the whole Aristotelean Ethics work better and that makes mustache twirling villainy more comprehensible in a world which demonstrably has an afterlife with punishments and rewards in it.

There probably shouldn't be any overt gods. You know you hate them as much as I do. Every god raises the question of why you have to quest for anything as well as why you'd be allowed to complete any quest worth undertaking. Better if they don't exist or aren't mentioned in any overt fashion.

OK, lots of alignment systems have been put in place in various games and worlds. Which do people like the best?
Alignment Systems with Clear Choices
“So if you win, I get tortured to death by evil worms after watching my entire family violated before me? What happens if I don't join you?”

In most fantasy settings there are the “good guys” and the “bad guys” - and it's no wonder. This makes for simple storytelling as the reasons for the main characters doing dangerous stupid stuff and advancing the plot is pretty self explanatory.

Law and Chaos: Yin and Yang and Shit
“Like in 3 Hearts and 3 Lions or Elric”
Law and Chaos are synonyms for Good and Evil except that it's not really that big a deal if you want to run around being Chaos. It's more like Seelie and Unseelie. Characters can be Chaos, but only just. Redemption is pretty easy, because the bad guys are pretty much just a political party.
Banner Bearers: Chaos gets its banner carried by a vast array of Youma, and Law gets a smaller number of Champions. But Law probably also has Elves and Archons and crap, and Chaos has the occasional Demon Lord.

Light and Dark: They will stop at nothing
“Like Tolkien or the Fifth Element”
Like Law and Chaos except that the servants of the Dark are just bad. The only villains who can be redeemed are the pawns who don't know that they work for the Dark. Every hero is “Light” and you don't even have to write it on your character sheet.
Banner Bearers: Demons. Angels. Seriously.

Pair of Opposites: Law and Chaos; Good and Evil.
“Sort of like D&D but cleaned up.”
In practice this is just like the Light and Dark dichotomy because one of the teams is fucking EVIL. But it is spiced up by the fact that the Efreet Sultans are simultaneously fighting some big war with the Slaad of Limbo. And while this doesn't normally affect humanity and their ongoing fight against EVIL much, it's a potential source of quests, antagonists. Essentially the characters are
Banner Bearers: Demons, Angels, Djinn, Slaad.

Satan and Friends: Good, Bad, Puce, Three, Rainbows, Elvis
“What do you mean you won't help us!? We're fighting Evil you self centered morons!”
In this set up there is Good and Evil, but there are also a bunch of completely arbitrary teams that are like fairies and slaad and jotun giants and whatever.
Banner Bearers: The Demons. Also an expanding cast of morally ambiguous guys such as Titans, Fairies, Djinn, Slaad, Ghosts, and whatever.

Alignment Systems with No Clear Choices
“And this is Bob, he wants to have all cities consumed by a never ending wave of plant material and also for people to eat more red meat and fresh vegetables.”

Color Wheel: Five Points
“Like Magic: the Gathering”
White is group oriented, Blue is progress oriented, Black is self oriented, Red is emotion oriented, Green is instinct oriented. Any questions?
Banner Bearers: Angels, Djinn, Demons, Slaad, Spirits

Color Wheel: Seven Points
“Like Dominions or Ayatala”
People use four elements, as well as life, death, and void. Each person gets an element, and while they are advantageous one against another there's really no moral reason to use one over another.
Banner Bearers: Elementals, Wraiths, Nature Spirits, Star Beasts

Codes of Order: Different Strokes
“Like Heroes of Might and Magic”
There are a couple of kingdoms. Each one presents a different moral code. The Orcish kingdom has a moral code in which raiding people is accepted, while the Human kingdom has a moral code in which conquest is fine but raiding is bad. Each has a list of virtues and a list of slurs. You can select your choice of moral code and sticking to it makes your esteem rise even among those who don't agree with it. There are probably monster codes which are not accepted and sticking to them better just makes you more feared.
Banner Bearers: Beholders, Djinn, Fairies, Vampires, Giants, Demons, Dragons

Adventurers and Not: A Utilitarian Slippery Slope
“Yep. That kid has been bitten, we'd better stake him right now before he gets all vampire on us.”
For the more emotional, introspective game. You actually have a scale which goes from “compassionate” to “hard core” and you try to avoid having a nervous breakdown. Being colder helps you fight monsters and chop limbs off when they get infected with demonic hagfish. But it makes you less able to work with others and deal with people face to face.
Banner Bearers: Unspeakable Horrors; Speakable Horrors.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1197933515[/unixtime]]
Codes of Order: Different Strokes
“Like Heroes of Might and Magic”
There are a couple of kingdoms. Each one presents a different moral code. The Orcish kingdom has a moral code in which raiding people is accepted, while the Human kingdom has a moral code in which conquest is fine but raiding is bad. Each has a list of virtues and a list of slurs. You can select your choice of moral code and sticking to it makes your esteem rise even among those who don't agree with it. There are probably monster codes which are not accepted and sticking to them better just makes you more feared.

This sounds a lot like vampire paths. Some guys are on the path of humanity and some other guys got some other path code that they can go up or down on.

[Voss]

What about...
Screw you guys and the high horse you rode in on
The Evil Empire depends on which side of the line you're on

So there may be angels and demons running around out there in the cosmos having their eternal war and everything, but it doesn't exactly put food on the table. And yeah, King Draxal claims to be 'the Good', but frankly the Witch King's only tax is that we have to drag Grandpa's body up to the castle when he finally kicks it. Adventuring is a good way to get cash and build up the power base to knock over one or the other if we really want to change society.
Banner Bearers: Some poor bastards in the respective armies who are likely to get killed in the first 5 minutes if a war actually starts.

[Surgo]

Voss: that sounds pretty much like "Law and Chaos: Yin and Yang and Shit". Personally I find either that one, or "Satan and Friends" the most interesting out of all of them.

[Cielingcat]

I like the color wheel, and would like to add what exactly the banner bearers should be.

Each color is a source of magic and when you just leave it there or purposefully gather it up sentient things come out. These beings exemplify that color because they're made out of that kind of magic, like D&D demons but with less stupid and furries.

Black: Demons. Black also has undead, but those all used to be people. Some could also still be counted as people.

Blue: Djinn. There are also water elementals, but they do not tend to have personalities.

Green: Nature spirits. They have no bodies of their own and like to posses plants, but sometimes they go into animals. Maybe druids too.

Red: Elementals, of the "fire" and "earth" type. Maybe some look like Efreet.

White: Angels. They're into purity and killing people for not agreeing with them.

[Voss]

1197936820[/unixtime]]Voss: that sounds pretty much like "Law and Chaos: Yin and Yang and Shit". Personally I find either that one, or "Satan and Friends" the most interesting out of all of them.

Not really. With the Ying and Yang and shit, you'll have to deal with the Law versus chaos crap, even if its just wading through hordes of Youma or assassinating Champions. Mines more of a thing where the eternal alignment wars are Out There, but unless you go Out There and sign up, you never, ever deal with it, because you're Right Here. And Right Here is like here 'n' now, where you fight for the flag you were born under or you pick one you like. Nations aren't inherently better than each other based on some bullshit alignment crap.

[JonSetanta]

Dude... Blue's banner is Spirits? What the fuck..

[Bigode]

The best ones would be Frank's last 2, IMO. I don't have absolutely any problem with Voss', but I figure it doesn't need to come explained in a publication - everyone should know well enough how to pull it off.

On a note closer to D&D, as far as Law vs. Chaos, I think using both "A Level of Organization" and "My Word is my Bond" would work; both sides get one clear advantage from their outlooks, and can be played to be opposed enough. Anybody up to telling me why I'd be wrong?

[Koumei]

I like everything in the last category (No Clear Choices), actually.