Campaign Setting

So by popular demand (by that I mean 2 or 3 people, more than half my readership), I'm going to write out the campaign setting and some basic themes of the campaign concept. I don't want to give away too much of the opening of the campaign so I'm going to try my best to give as much as I can without describing the starting scenario in too much detail.

I haven't come up with a name for the setting yet so for now it will be known as Generic Fantasy Setting #4. The numbering is arbitrary. The time period is similar to the historical Golden Age of Sail. So we're looking at flintlock weaponry being common and the early beginnings of what we see as modern industry. The steam engine hasn't been invented yet but may be less than a century away.

The size of the currently known world is an area approximately the size of Europe and Asia with a little bit of North Africa. So about a hemisphere's worth of area to explore. The edges of it are blocked by various things that prevent exploring out of this area at this time. Some are very clearly natural, like the polar regions of the North and South. Others are more suspicious, like the storm that has been raging for over 2000 years at the western edge of the world and the unnaturally large area of windless doldrums at the eastern edge.

Most of the world is covered in oceans. This means that ships and sailing have been one of the most important things in this setting's history. Every major nation/civilization has had a major commitment towards their navies. Typically this means that most of the major advancements in technology have been applied to the ships of the fleet or merchant vessels first. There are only 5 "large" continents where the major civilizations are. None of these continents are larger than Australia. There are multiple island systems (Similar to Japan/The Philippines) and a few Greenland sized islands scattered about the world. Of course there are random volcanic islands scattered about every once in a while too, so you never know if you'll happen upon an unclaimed one.

I'll go into more detail later on those lands when I have my little green book where all the information is written down at. I'll also upload a map with that information.

Like I mentioned earlier the Western Edge has a perpetual storm raging that no one has heard of anyone passing through while the Eastern Edge is basically nothing but a windless doldrums patch that no one has passed yet. The Eastern Edge is also known to see some bizarre colors in the skies and waters inside of it whenever people actually try to traverse it. Basically think of the Auroras only more magical script/geometry like. With this huge difference between the 2 sides of the world you see a very clear change in ocean weather patterns. The further West you go, the more skilled a sailor you need to be as the storms and winds get stronger and more common.

Because of this, Eastern world ships tend to be larger and less maneuverable because they have an easy time sailing and don't need to worry too much. Their armaments and armor are heavier too. You will see the 60+ gun ships similar to what Western Europe used during the Golden Age of Sail as their ships of the line. The further West you go the smaller and more maneuverable the ships become. Built for speed for riding the edges of storms.

The world is made up of your typical fantasy races for a DnD setting. Humans, Orcs, Elves, Goblins and such are pretty common. Even the lesser seen savage races are pretty common in civilization, so seeing Minotaurs, Gnolls, and other such races isn't rare. Races outside of the 1st monster manual and the core rulebooks require approval to be used, but only because I need to work out how they fit into the world first.

As mentioned earlier briefly, the tech level puts guns as pretty common weapons. They are all not much more advanced than flintlocks right now. Humans were the ones to discover gunpowder. Dwarves and Gnomes took to the use of it quickly while Elves despise it. Orcs are starting to use them more. Goblins are just starting to use them but their use is growing rapidly among them because of how powerful and equalizing guns are. Anyone else is basically on an individual basis. Elves despise the use of it so much that they still haven't equipped their ships with modern cannons and because of this have suffered a massive loss of territory around their homelands and territorial waters.

So that's the basic setting overview, now let's go over some gameplay related items.

The gameplay is going to be semi-sandbox style. By that I mean something along the lines of Mass Effect. There will be objective based, railroaded storyline, but with the ability of the players to choose their path navigating it. The increases in storm occurrence is a limiting factor for the players as to how far they're going to be able to travel. I have to be careful how much I scale it though because I don't want NPC characters to be easily sunk by weather (how the hell would they have commerce if it took being a level 14 PC class in order to just be a merchant?). So I'm still tweaking the weather tables for the right balance.

Because this is such a heavy nautical campaign setting I'm going to have to create a ton of ships using the rules found in the Stormwrack book. (Also, if anyone has a good suggestion for a D20 Nautical source book that has ships from the time period I'm using I would love to know about it) I'm also modifying some of the rules for ships and combat to fit an increase in the number of weapons on board a ship. The Stormwrack rules are just too medieval for the flavor I want. I'm kicking around a few ideas that need to go through balance tests for the high level gameplay. Almost all designs and classes of ships will be based on real world counterparts.

Because of the sandbox gameplay I'm going to create a simple trade system for each of the major islands/continents/etc that way the PCs can choose a peaceful seagoing career if they feel like it, or a profitable pirating one. They won't be given a chart and social skills will have an impact on the prices of goods. Prices will have a natural variation based upon a random chart upon their arrival in port which will contain random economy variables for the area which will have further variance based upon character social interaction rolls. This system is still in development and I will post it when I'm finished making it. (Maybe simple isn't the best way to describe this one...)

As I've mentioned before, I don't like the power scale of magic in DnD so I've been struggling on exactly how to go about dealing with it but still allowing it. I'm still debating this over and over. Some of the stuff is pretty easy, make resurrections difficult by requiring it in specific locations of religious power and providing damn good reasons why the character wouldn't want to be in their afterlife or why a deity would allow that character's resurrection. That type of thing is a really big deal when you're talking about it from a religious perspective. Most gods/religious figures in our own real world religions would be mid-leveled DnD characters after you stat them out. Some might get as high as the low 20's. Plus, bring the threat of perma-death to a character generally helps players think before they make a decision.

As far as magic itself is concerned I'm now leaning towards a catastrophic failure style system. If I allow for Psionics they'll probably have to have the same type of system to maintain play balance between the two systems. I don't think the setting is a good fit for psionics though so I'm leaning towards not allowing it. I'm still not entirely sure what I plan on doing with the magic system though and it may change 3 or 4 more times before I finally decide on it. Since I'm debating the magic system I'm also in debate over the magic item system. Not sure what I want there yet since everything is under going creational flux right now.

Now, as I mentioned in the previous post, I'm keeping the player characters at a particularly high level of statistical power. This is to put them at a far above average potential capability. The characters are meant to be quite a cut above the norm which is why they are "selected" for what they are doing at the start of the campaign. They are truly destined for something amazing and will be facing down a great many more and much stronger than normal foes for characters of their level. They need to have a major advantage to go up against what they will be eventually facing. They don't know anything about any of this, but that's why I've set it up this way.

They will be given their own ship early on, it won't be much, but it'll work for the beginning. Plus they will be given ample opportunity following the first module of the campaign to earn enough to either upgrade it or buy a new one.

The characters will spend just as much time on land as they do at sea. So being a purely aquatics/seaborne character archetype is not going to be a good idea.

I think I've written enough on it for now, if anyone has questions, comments, ideas, etc I'd be glad to hear them.