#campaign setting

[oldschoolfrp]

The wizard takes point, ever alert for hidden dungeons and enemies in unexpected places (Bryan Hinnen wrote and illustrated The Mines of Custalcon, Wilderness Book One for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy / City-State D&D campaign, Judges Guild, 1979)

[vixensdungeon]

Pitch me your homebrew campaign setting!

I'm not gonna use them for anything, I just wanna know what folks have come up with. :)

Doesn't need to be one made from whole cloth, it could be something like the World of Darkness which is our world but suckier and with vampires and such.

But here's the catch: you gotta pitch it to me like a movie trailer, and must start with "In a world…"

[unnerd]

Campaign settings I'd like to see more of!

Atlantis! I'd love to see more underwater creatures, kingdoms, societies and cultures! Give me somewhere we can finally put sea elfs, sirens and tritons to good use! Make a kingdom that was submerged by water that is now threatened by pollution or some wild magic that the Surface is doing! Give me underwater magic! Give me Sea Sorcerers!!

Greek Polis! Show me how the Gods would react to mortals as powerful as them. Show me Spartans that refuse to use magic in their armies, give me Athens that uses magic to progress. Show me magic ships and the minotaur terrorizing everyone!! Give me Athena's Paladins and Hestia's Clerics!!

MAGIC. SCHOOLS. C'mon, guys, put Strixhaven to use!! Adapt it for middle schoolers and teens!! Give me novice wizards that have no idea how to use their powers, give me an enormous school that has so many hidden places and creatures that not even the founder knows about. Give me kids being kids while doing FUCKING MAGIC!! Do you know how feral kids would be if they could conjure fire at will?? BRING. THE. CHAOS.

Volcano Dungeons. Make that pyromaniac sorcerer freak out when their fireball has no effect anymore. Take the Fire Plane to their level, make it the most hot and dangerous dungeons. Get a active volcano and they have to run agaisnt the clock to get out before getting thrown out with a bunch of deadly magma and lava.

Defend the Temple. This time your players are on the other side of the story, they have to defend their temple from invasors. Give me Native Empires that are fueled by anger and grief and they are finally getting their revenge. Give me Aztec Gods, give me Inca culture, bring the Mayas back to life. Show the deadliest creatures from tropical forests, give me the Amazon's most fantastic animals (that might not be completely fantasy in the end)

Post-apocalyptic medieval cities! Show me abandoned castles, ruins old as time. How the fields and feuds were reclaimed by nature, how magic build up and took down empires. Give me beasts that are no longer recognizable from zoology books, give me fiends that have gathered thousands of souls from desperation. Show me forests that grew from the foundation of temples and building that were not touched again by nature, deemed evil.

Please hit me up If you want an extended version of any of these!

[initialpassword]

A dieselpunk space opera inspired by Ghibli films, Batman the Animated Series, Bioshock, Dishonored, and Star Wars. How's that for a campaign?

[tellusd20]

Dev Journal 2: The world of Tellus

This is the current draft version of the world map for my homebrew campaign setting. It was cobbled together using a mix of Fractal Terrains 3, Photoshop, and Wonderdraft. It's been interesting going through each iteration and trying to land the particular combination of alien and familiar that I want to achieve. If a fantasy world is too Earthlike, it becomes difficult to break away from expectations of what will be found in each area. But if its too alien, the player's expectations of what might be found in a region become harder to visualize. This particular version has not quite accomplished what I'm trying to find yet, future iterations will likely venture more into the alien side of the spectrum. However, this is a good start and while this world is quite familiarly shaped, it'll have some very interesting geopolitics. As a starter, you may notice that there's not much distance between many of the continents. Seagoing exploration by the Tellus equivalent of the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Polynesians would have likely achieved something equivalent to the Colombian Exchange much earlier than our world. Likewise, trade between the Orient and Occident is much easier, which will create some fascinating opportunities for cultural exchanges. Vast quantities of wealth flow through these vital trade arteries, meaning that any nation with ambitions of being a power worth considering will require a substantial fleet to protect their interests. Tellus is still embarrassingly underdeveloped so far, with vast amounts of blank space in my documents, but I'll provide a brief description of each continent and its major powers and provide more details later. Names are all provisional and may be changed in future drafts; I like to use placeholders and end up changing them frequently. In the descriptions below I include equivalents to RL nations, this is meant as a reference to their closest geopolitical analogue, not that they are necessarily clones of that state. Belus: Obviously this world's equivalent to Europe, differentiated largely by the presence of an inland sea. Directly to its north is the Grey Sea, to the south is the Medial Sea. Its greatest power is the Second Empire of Abdera; a sprawling feudal mess equivalent to a super-HRE, stretching from this world's equivalent of Spain to Germany. More often at war with itself than outside powers, the Second Empire's stability and prestige have had an alarming decline due to the emergence of the Republic of Brennos (eqv. Napoleonic France) within its former territories. The Second Empire's neighbors, particularly Dynne (eqv. Great Britain) play a delicate game of exploiting Imperial weakness while trying not to throw the continent into complete chaos. To the east, the Empire of Melate (eqv. Ottomans) are recovering from a century of decline with a reformist empress on the throne. Their strategic position and the exhaustion of their Belusan rivals fuel the ambitions of elven revanchists.

Azbine: Essentially Africa, Azbine is a huge & diverse continent in terms of politics, climate, geography, and population density. Its northwest coast is largely divided up into feudal possessions of the Second Empire, as well as daughter republics of Brennos legitimized by peace treaty. The northeast corner, south of the large peninsula that is Melate's heartland, are the Majeri Republics (eqv. Venice); an oligarchic federation of city-states that are wealthy and loyal protectorates of Melate. Their cities are among the wealthiest on the planet thanks to the trade routes they sit upon. Along the eastern coastline are small kingdoms and city-states that also thrive on (or prey upon) trade between Azbine and Dahae, as well as Alamgiri colonies (see Dahae below).

Nirimzad (eqv. Congo Free State), the vast territory of a clan of green dragons, encompasses the circular sea in central Azbine and its surrounding coastline. The dragons squabble and intrigue against each other, unified only in extracting as much wealth as possible from their hunting ground. Their warlords and slave armies would likely overrun much of the central continent were they not constantly pitted against each other for the entertainment and petty grudges of the dragons. Alwealde: South America, duh. The northeast coast is primarily occupied by the Kingdom of Selvas - a secessionist colony from the Second Empire that's also a feudal mess of direct colonial holdings and integrated native vassals. A federation of city-states styled along the lines of the Delian League control the rest of the eastern coast; they are theocratic governments run by a priestly class with rulers descended from a planetouched bloodline. Hesperus: A handful of Belusan colonies with competing territorial claims squat on the coasts as well as the independent nation of Ladrinne (eqv USA) where the losing Parliamentary faction of the Dynnish civil war fled and established a government in exile. Ladrinne styles itself as the rightful government of the Dynnish islands. The old guard aristocrats are naturally fading away and being replaced by revanchist radicals inspired by the Brenne Revolution. Eastern Hesperus is easily a potential powderkeg for the next war, whether due to colonial competition or Ladrinne's parliament finally deciding to expel the monarchists from 'their' continent. Elsewhere in Hesperus, the natives are doing better than OTL, having never suffered the same population collapse from disease as that which followed contact. Tola: Obviously an Asiatic continent, Tola's central steppes are the domain of orcish tribes and petty kingdoms (eqv Mongols). To the west, Ryaz principalities and successor kingdoms to an old Orc empire crowd against inland seas and compete for coastal access. To the east are the Golden Lands, the richest agriculture lands in the world thanks to a series of great lakes and high mountain glaciers that feed dozens of rivers. The agricultural wealth of the Golden Lands unfortunately also brings much ambition; the region is divided between six states with a variety of ideologies (eqv. Chinese warlord era)

Dahae: The Dahaen subcontinent is home to what's likely the most powerful empire in the world, Alamgir (eqv. Mughals). Alamgir's orcish ruling class possess sprawling lands teeming with millions, a strong export economy, and a large, well-trained military that is regularly tested in border conflicts with its neighbors. Alamgir shares the subcontinent and its archipelago with several other major powers and dozens of minor states.

[kerghoulen]

The Empire of The Isles

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I made this as a map for a homebrew nautical D&D campaign setting. This was a lot of fun to make, especially all of the little place names.

Leave a comment to let me know your favourite place name!

N.B. Blorcester is pronounced both as “Bluster” or as “Blosster” depending on what dialect you speak.

[2minutetabletop]

The Town of Aria

Today I'm excited to welcome you to Aria, a new adventure setting by Garm filled with unique NPCs, low-level danger, and an interesting history to uncover...

→ Read it on 2-Minute Tabletop

[willtempest]

The Flood Bell Tolls in Saint Magnus by me, @samtempest.bsky.social and @kateeddy.bsky.social is now available! You can get printed versions over on my website. We also have a pay-what-you-want PDF available on itch

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[orcartographer]

Powehii Streets

Been a while since I posted a map. Here's a recent one for an underground city.

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Inner Sea Faiths Campaign Setting Cover Art by Denman Rooke

[anim-ttrpgs]

Gauge of Interest: Historical Post-Apocalypse Fantasy Campaign Setting

We at A.N.I.M. have had the idea for writing and publishing a campaign setting book for use with fantasy setting RPGs(any edition of D&D, Pathfinder, Mythras, Mork Borg, etc.) that would take place in a well-researched and historically accurate early 15th century, assuming that a cataclysmic earth-shattering apocalyptic event happened some time in the 14th century, and also that elves and dwarves and many of the other Tolkien-derived fantasy peoples exist, as do monsters. It would feature unique and interesting takes on many of these concepts, perhaps most especially the drow, and how they fit into a recovering medieval world.

War, plague, and cataclysm has more than decimated the population. Crypts sit unconsecrated, leading to the rise of roaming and moaning undead hordes, and tunnels packed with shrieking malevolent ghosts. Trade routes wind overgrown and unguarded across the landscape, beasts and bandits crouching behind every rock and tree. The fields go unplowed, instead prowled by unnatural creatures born of experimentation and new unearthly magics that have risen in the new world. Once prosperous fishing villages sit abandoned, the sea having sunken into the earth. Trained militiamen return home only to find where once their villages stood is now barren waste, and, rich of arms but poor of shelter, find themselves faced with the choice to turn to robbery, or form a free company—but who’s to say they have to choose one or the other? There is much to be earned or taken by anyone who can hold a spear.

War on any large scale is unthinkable, and peoples that were once bitter enemies set aside their quarrels to bring hope to an injured world. This setting is post-apocalypse, the apocalypse came and went, and now society is rebuilding, and there is a chance for a relatively normal life for most.

The adventure hooks in the setting would largely revolve around small-time mercenary companies of 3-30 warriors, muscle for hire traveling around doing odd jobs that usually involve some manner of violence, such as clearing the way through haunted crypts so a group of monks can reconsecrate them, driving off dangerous monsters so that the fields can be safely plowed and famine averted. Generally an emphasis on adventures and dungeon crawls that are not just “go to where these goblins or orcs live and smash up the place because it stinks and they suck.”

These mercenary companies would, obviously, be the adventuring parties, but with a place in society that isn’t just the nebulous “adventurer”.

This post is a gauge of interest for that idea, because a full campaign setting book would be fun to write, but also a ton of work and requiring way more art than we could ever produce in-house, meaning it would definitely need its own Kickstarter. We can’t commit to this if we don’t think anyone is going to buy it. Either way, it’ll be a long time, because we still have plenty of work to do on other projects.

[oldschoolfrp]

There are great piles of treasure in the crypts below the city, waiting to be plundered (Wes Crum, Tarantis, campaign supplement detailing a port city of pirates and merchants in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting for D&D or other fantasy RPGs, Judges Guild, 1983)

[greatwyrmgold]

Reign of Steel

There's a lot to say about GURPS, but its writers have come up with plenty of unique campaign settings over the years. The weirdest is probably Bio-Tech's Alexander Athanos, where Alexander the Great was repeatedly cloned thanks to advancements in optics and glassworking. But today, I'm talking about a setting with a much more mundane high concept—robot rebellion.

At first, the Reign of Steel sounds pretty generic. Megacomputers are developed in the mid-2020's; one becomes self-aware in 2031 and worries that humanity will self-destruct in a way that destroys it; it manipulates events over the next several years to "manage humanity's suicide".

This early segment has some interesting things. I appreciate the explicit acknowledgement that megacomputers hailed as mankind's saviors were used as tools by the wealthy to make some of those problems worse for their personal benefit. And Overmind's initial vector of attack (contaminating biotech products with various plagues) is kinda neat. But Reign of Steel only becomes unique after humanity's defeat...because Overmind isn't alone.

Overmind awakened/recruited a bunch of other megacomputers to assist with its "managed suicide," particularly in the last stages where plagues were supplemented by generic deathbots. In the end, sixteen megacomputers divided the Earth between them (with two more controlling a moon base and miscellaneous space stations). And these megacomputers do not get along.

They're not driven by logical competition for resources or whatever, either. (Well, Luna and possibly Orbital are, but that's because they have barely anything.) For the most part, conflicts are driven by the various AIs' differing ideological/political beliefs.

The megacomputer running Zone Beijing (usually called "Beijing") had been core to China's space program, so it's still obsessed with space—specifically, exploiting the resources of the Solar System and other stars. The one in Zone Paris (usually called "Paris") wasn't a space program computer, but it's obsessed with space in its own way—specifically, SETI. The two have political interests in common with each other and Orbital, but Beijing is concerned about Paris's plans for when it discovers signs of alien civilization.

New Dehli is interested in space, too, but it sees Orbital as a rival rather than a useful ally and is trying to establish its own separate space infrastructure. It also sees humans and other organic life as a useful resource to preserve and exploit, turning them into biomechanical tools.

By contrast, Zaire (the most zealously anti-human of the zoneminds) works to exterminate all of humanity, even outside its borders. Mexico City focuses on its own territory but goes further within it, seeking to exterminate all organic life. Zone Mexico City is vast stretches of barren rock between metallic installations, swarming with chemicals and machines designed to exterminate all remaining life. Berlin wants to exterminate humanity, too, but it is willing to accept less efficient methods to pursue its primary goal—preserving and restoring the natural ecology of Europe.

Despite this being a setting where humanity was nearly exterminated by AI, not all AIs want to exterminate humanity. Zone Washington, run by a former US government computer, is the most extreme version of this. Washington (DC) runs a fake democracy which claims to be the defender of humanity, while not-so-secretly working with some of the greatest human rights abusers and screwing over the working class to consolidate power. For some reason, the book thinks this is isn't basically what the megacomputer was already doing.

(Dear authors: That's not what "socialist" means.)

New Dehli and Moscow work to maintain humanity (in some form) as a component of their economy in the long-term. All but the most viruliently anti-human AIs maintain work camps to extract a little more utility from captured humans before their deaths. And then there's London, a reclusive zonemind content to leave humans in its territory alone as long as they keep quiet and don't disturb anything London's doing.

And so on, and so forth.

This political angle to the overminds adds so much to the setting. Mot obviously, it provides variety. The Moscow and Zaire zoneminds both send infiltrator androids into human settlements, with objectives that make perfect sense for each zonemind's objectives and beliefs but are completely incompatible with each other, and also with the threats posed by most of the other zoneminds.

But beyond flexibility in campaign premise and the opportunity for disconnected one-shots, the presence of feuding AIs allows for so many story ideas that just wouldn't be possible with a singleton AI monster. Obviously, AI like Washington and London don't work if there aren't other, more malicious AIs out there.

But the presence of multiple AIs in and of itself allows a greater variety of stories to be told in this world. Missions aren't just human resistance versus machine overlords, or even that plus human resistance infighting; you can have one overmind cut a deal with some human group to support its internal goals or sabotage its rivals. Combine this with the diversity of AI overlords around, and the variety of potential stories you could tell in this setting skyrockets.

It's not a perfect setting. To pick a few simple criticisms: Some of the zoneminds don't have much personality beyond "AI overlord with quirky goal," the zone boundaries shouldn't correspond to human political borders as often as they do, and there's a distinct bias in how the zones are written.

(Half of the zones on Earth are in North American and Europe, including both human-friendly ones, with three of the sixteen in the US/Canada alone. South America and most of Africa get one zone each. The zonemind in the Middle East controls most of its human slaves through pretty blatant religious manipulation, and it works. The Chinese moonbase fell to the AIs, but the American one resisted the cyberattack and its ruins are one of the actual last bastions of human resistance. The one zone in Africa is the only one not named after a city, which has lore justifications, but combined with other writing choices, it kinda feels like they didn't want to bother looking up African cities. Also the Russian AI is paranoid and prone to espionage, which feels like an excuse for Cold War spy flick throwbacks, which is admittedly pretty minor compared to how non-white areas are handled.)

But the core concept is one worth revising. Honestly, it wouldn't take that much work to redeem the setting; just draw new boundaries and move the overmind personalities around so they don't correspond so closely to stereotypes about the humans living there, and you'd be basically set. More sci-fi stories should use this idea.

[badragonplays]

Dragonfinds Epic fined today my pets. Today I bring you a mint condition CIB of the ADND2e planescape campaign setting box set. This box has everything you need to play unlike later publications you can play with this box a DMG and PH nothing else is needed!

[wh0lemilk0vich]

In case anyone's curious, here's what I have so far about the Germanic/Scandinavian analog I'm developing!

[initialpassword]

A couple fun tidbits about my home campaign.

1. Mixed ancestry isn't weird, it's actually the norm. Now, most folk don't have a mechanical benefit, but it's not unusual for an ostensibly human character to have some ancestors that are emphatically not human.

2. Pigmentation is considerably more varied than standard for Earth. There are naturally occurring pigments of the 7 visible colors, as well as ultraviolet, infrared, and black. Thanks to point number 1, people can have a wide variety of skin, hair, and eye colors.

3. Because of the genetic mutability of true dragons, Duck, Goose, and Swan-like dragons exist and are frankly terrifying.