Campaign Notes and Possible Campaign Ideas
The Name of Love
Far Right Nutjob
So I've been wanting to create a 5th Edition D&D campaign and run it on this website and on Discord, and I want to share some of the ideas I have with you guys. I have some broad outlines about the campaign setting below. I've briefly outlined my vision for its theology, its cosmology, its geography, and some aspects of the local cultures.
I'd like to present some of my campaign ideas to you below. These ideas are derivations of the Dungeon Master's Guide 2: Roleplaying Game Supplement from 4th Edition D&D.
So I'd like to hear your comments and responses to these ideas, both about the campaign setting and the possible plots. Are there suggestions for worldbuilding? What kind of campaign would you like to do if you were to join my D&D group? Let me know.
Theology
- The gods are capricious deities. You don’t worship them for their “goodness,” but because you don’t want the sea to swallow your ship when you travel to the capital or because you want to ensure a good harvest this year.
- The gods do not depend on worship for power/survival. Rather, it’s the other way around: any given religion depends on the power of the gods it worships for its propagation and success. This is because gods with less power are more limited in how they influence mortals than the more powerful deities.
- In the past, there were wars between gods, as well as wars where the gods teamed up against threats to themselves and their creations. Pretty much every religious faith talks about these conflicts from the point of view of the deity they worship.
- There’s a bit of theological uncertainty; everyone knows the gods exist, but their exact nature and creed are a mystery. Are the gods divine beings in themselves, or do they serve an “overdeity” that ought to be worshipped over them? Why do the gods deign to interact with the Material Plane? Are evil gods actually divine or are they a type of fiend that is aping true divinity? As you’d imagine, there is a great deal of debate and discussion amongst learned theologians about the nature of the gods and which religion is true, a bit like the real world.
Cosmology
- The Material Plane – Consists of multiple worlds (including Feywild and Shadowfell) where mortals reside. The Material Plane consists of multiple inhabitable planets of varying climates and peoples. Humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings are the most common civilized races in these planes.
- The Transitive Planes – Consisting of the Ethereal Plane and Astral Plane. Both of them are featureless planes that serve primarily as pathways between the different levels of reality, and they are accessible through specific spells.
- The Elemental Chaos – The world where elementals originate. It is divided into four Planes: The Plane of Water, the Plane of Fire, the Plane of Air, and the Plane of Earth. Genies of all four elements (Marids, Efreet, Djinn, and Dao) dominate their respective Elemental Planes.
- Heaven – The world where celestials like angels and unicorns originate and the good gods reside. This place is one half of the afterlife, where the souls of the righteous are gathered.
- Hell – The world where fiends like devils and demons originate and the evil gods reside. This place is the other half of the afterlife, where the souls of the damned are gathered.
Customs
- The vast majority of people are expected to follow the faith of their ancestors. If your parents worshipped a particular god or group of gods, you are expected to worship those same deities. And chances are, your parents worshipped their parents’ gods. And so on. In addition, people often to pray to their ancestors for support or to honor them. The ghosts of the departed are thought to stick around in the material plane to answer the prayers of their descendants. These ghosts are called “ancestor spirits,” and they aren’t counted as undead by most people.
- Strong folklore elements are also present alongside religious traditions. The people in this world are superstitious; every place has rumors of spiritual/supernatural forces at work: the forest shade in the woods outside town, the haunted well, etc. Every locality has its own quirky beliefs, such as thinking that imps are responsible for sunburns, or that looking into a mirror at night is bad luck. People tell stories about town heroes that, over time, may be exaggerated to the point where these heroes are deified.
- Monotheism, polytheism, animism, philosophic religions, ancestor worship, and mystery cults all profligate freely. Cults centered around fiends (i.e. devils and demons) are the only religion to be universally condemned (and for good reason!). Generally speaking, only the major religions have clerics, though the lesser ones do have church leaders or cleric-replacements (like druids and warlocks). In culturally diverse areas, expect a lot of syncretism.
- People tend to have a reverence for monarchy. Even if the populace dislikes this or that particular monarch, they shy away from direct criticism of him out of respect for his position as monarch. The general attitude is that even a tyrannical monarch deserves some measure of respect from his subjects. The monarch’s throne is seen as being close to the divine, and beloved monarchs are worshipped as gods even after death.
Geography
- This world has three major continents: The Westorient (which resembles India and China), Carabia (which resembles North Africa and the Middle East), and Urope (which resembles Western Europe). These continents are surrounded by the Great Ocean, which stretches miles and miles. There are many small islands on the other side of the globe, but none are inhabited by civilizations of intelligent races.
- The Westorient exists the Southernmost and Westernmost parts of the World. The northernmost parts are mountainous regions, mountain ranges separating it from Urope and Carabia. The tallest mountains in the world are found in these parts. On the Orient’s side of the mountains, a lush temperate rainforest that turns into a tropical rainforest as you go further South exists. There are also large, grassy plains in the center of the continent that go on for hundreds of miles. Finally, Southernmost point of Westorient is a cold desert. The Westorient also has tropical islands off its coast that have great weather.
- Carabia exists in the Easternmost parts of the map. It is separated from Urope by the Center Sea. The continent is mostly flat desert, with civilized peoples clamoring around the Center Sea and its islands, its rivers, and the occasional tropical oasis.
- Urope exists in the Northernmost parts of the map. The areas surrounding the Center Sea have a moderate climate and many rolling hills that lead to rocky mountains. Beyond the mountains lie great beautiful forests with a cool, wet climate, grassy plains whose climate is dryer than the forests, and many rivers. The Far North consists of a frozen wasteland with a few mountains.
I'd like to present some of my campaign ideas to you below. These ideas are derivations of the Dungeon Master's Guide 2: Roleplaying Game Supplement from 4th Edition D&D.
- Breach Smashers: In this campaign idea, our heroes are a group of planar adventurers. They once were ordinary people from an unassuming village until one day, a portal from another realm opens up. This portal releases horrible monsters and weird energies that endanger your town. So you must travel through the portal and find a way to close it in order to protect your town, only to find that the world is much bigger than you thought. This campaign will be a cross-planar adventure of epic proportions. You have to collect artifacts from different worlds, slay dangerous and bizarre monsters, and, eventually, save the multiverse.
- Pillars of the State: Here, the players are fated from birth to be kings and queens of their own kingdoms in this political saga. The monarchies that the players rule have similar cultures and histories and share the same coastline, but each has differences based on each player's background, class, and race. A paladin or cleric might rule a theocratic kingdom, while a fighter character might rule a kingdom ruled by a long line of warrior-kings, for example. In these Kingdoms, monarchs don't sit around all day in their castle; they are expected to go around fighting villains and monsters with their cool powers in addition to governing the realm. Your characters will start out as princes and princesses, but will eventually succeed their parents and become the rulers. From there, it's a matter of balancing the concerns of the different kingdoms to keep the peace.
- Blood and Treasure: This is a military-themed campaign in which the PC's rise from humble beginnings to become generals in a war to pacify an entire continent and save civilization from barbaric hordes. In the vast country of Veratur, marauding tribes of orcs and goblins have plunged the continent into a dark age of barbarism. The imperial government is a shell of its former self, with Emperor Illius IV cowering within his besieged palace. With peaceful occupations being made substantially more difficult thanks to the reality of war, the PC's decide to take up arms. Perhaps they become soldiers at a citadel, a free militia that acts as wandering heroes, or a group of bloodthirsty sellswords. In any case, their victories will eventually attract a large enough following of soldiers that can turn the tide against the barbaric hordes.
- The Mobius Trippers: This campaign involves time travel as a main plot point. The PC's start having dreams about searching for these machine parts. In these dreams, the players are told that if they succeed, they will achieve their destinies as "heroes of time" and receive all they could ever desire, but if they fail, the world will be destroyed. The players have a few dungeon crawl adventures to find the lost pieces, then they assemble the machine. It allows them to travel through time and influence the past, present, and future how they see fit. From there, the PC's start travelling to different points in history, trying to figure out how it works and how to use it to their advantage. However, they soon encounter a group of villainous time travelers known as the "Time Jackers" whose entire goal is to go back to the beginning of creation and become gods. The PC's have to take up their destiny as heroes of time and stop them.
So I'd like to hear your comments and responses to these ideas, both about the campaign setting and the possible plots. Are there suggestions for worldbuilding? What kind of campaign would you like to do if you were to join my D&D group? Let me know.
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