I'm not really sure I'll even change to 4th Ed but such stuff works with any ruleset. That the core books will likely be based on the assumption of "Generika" as a setting is probably a good start. I very much enjoyed books like Lords of Madness, Frostburn, and Races of the Wild. I rarely took anything like it was in the books and added it unchanged to my setting, but they helped imensely anyway. I'll hope to see much more like that the next years.
You know something? I would like to see more DM's under the new rules come up with their own Campaign Settings instead of falling back on what is currently available( like the Forgotten Realms, etc.) because they are too scared to come up with their own stuff.
That is not the issue. There are alot of us that LIKE the published settings (me with Eberron). Also, as an older gamer, I don't have the time to work on a setting. Tried to for a couple of years into 3e, but never had the time to fill it out.
For the 4th edition, if I go that route, I plan on using the points of light model they keep talking about and making my home world a bit more Dark Ages and less Renaissance. (Perhaps towards the end of the Dark Ages with the first baby steps going into the Renaissance.) I haven't decided yet if I will keep the same world I've created for my current game or go a completely new route. I'll make that decision once I finally get some hard evidence of what the new game will be like.
I do know one thing for sure, I will stay with the core books only for this one.
I do know one thing for sure, I will stay with the core books only for this one.
That's kind of my point. You've got all this source material that you've put together in a unique way, yet you imply that you'll have to potentially get rid of all the non-core source material that helped make your world in the first place.
I guess my concern is that WotC is making it difficult (by design) to encorporate non-WotC material. I don't know if they are or not, but from what I've seen and read so far, that's one of the impressions that I come away with. Mostly I'm worried about a homebrew world that a friend of mine created years ago, and has been cultivating and expanding upon for a few years. He has a whole set of house rules, alternate classes, a couple new PC races, custom weapons, the whole thing. Back in the day, when he had to convert to 3.0 (and then again to 3.5), it seems to me it was a simpler process since you merely had to make sure everyone at the table was aware of the variations and house rules. With 4.0 linked to a computer, where does that leave the non-programing-inclined? Will WotC allow enough flexibility in 4.0 for DM's to put houserules and customized details into their campaigns, or will DM's have to find whatever pre-published material currently available that comes close to their original vision?
What happens to the DM's who don't want to create a new setting, but want to keep using the same world they've been using for years?
Anyone else worry about this, or am I just getting worked up over nothing?
Since I crafted my world without a single Rule Set in mind, I'm lucky that I've been able to integrate anything from the 3.x splat books I like or are reccomeneded to me by my players. This same mind set, is going to make the transition to 4D&D easy for me, I think.
If I switch to the new edition, it really is coming at a good time since I am wrapping up the current campaign that has been going on for the past 4 years and was looking to start up a new one late this fall or early next year. I really don't think I will have a problem upgrading my world to the next edition if it comes to that. It might make more work for me at the beginning, but creating homebrew worlds is always extra work anyways. I don't see how using non WotC official material will make my creating a homebrew world any more difficult than it already is.
I usually create new worlds when I start up a new campaign. This one will be the 4th world I have created in my 25 years of gaming. Like I said, I don't do everything from scratch and I really don't create new races, classes, weapons, etc... Though I do create magic and magic items. Those might be a bit more difficult. My homebrew rules are things that I don't allow from books, combat times- as in how long a PC takes for their turn, and some changes to dying. These rules transcribe to whatever version or game rules used easily.
It'll actually make my job easier for a while with world creation since the points of light in the vast darkness that I plan on using means I can start small and work out as the players evolve and venture further out.
From what I understand, you will not need the computer to play, that is just an enhancement.
I have read that converting won't be impossible, it just won't be supported by WotC. Someone will come up with guidelines and post them anyway. Maybe not on this board, but someplace people will be able to get to.
With my world, I prefer to leave most details unwritten. It allows the explorers to assimilate the information as if they were actually learning it for the first time ('cause they are), and lets me as the DM float whatever I need to without wasted hours of pencil, paper, rulebooks, and calculator.
Plus since I use the playstyle of letting the PCs make their own decisions, it maintains my flexibility to maneuver the world and its inhabitants partially around them when necessary without committing myself to a static sheet.
With "points of light" as the base setting. In your own home brew campaign would you take this further and consider having more monotheistic countries/regions. Or would you still go with a pantheon style campaign?
I would have a patron deity for each "point of light". There could still be other deities worshiped at each point, but only one main god(dess). For example, a farming community producing corn, wheat, veggies, etc.. would have a major deity that would probably be a nature/fertility aspect. But maybe the next town, still a farming community grows grapes and makes wine. Their patron would then be an aspect more like Dionysus. A city might have a patron dedicated to law and good, where the Orc tribe has an aspect dedicated to chaos and evil.
Of course there may be more popular deities that reside over more than just one point of light. There would also be clerics of other deities trying to get a foothold into different places that they do not have control or influence. Makes for some really fun intrigue for the cleric, monk, paladin, holy person, etc.. This can also lead to secret societies, with all sorts of hidden sanctuaries, ways to recognize eachother, and other fun things along that nature. (Illuminati)
You would be more likely to find multiple aspects in cities, but small shrines could be found just about anywhere, especially if there is a god(dess) of travel, luck, the brave and the foolish, etc...
In my campaign I have a pantheon, but they are just aspects- or multiple personalities- of one divine being. The fracturing of this divine being happened so long ago, that the races of the land no longer remember that at one time there was only one divine being. (This will eventually play into a major theme in my campaign.)
I am beggining to wrap up my 3.5ed game in preparation for 4th ed. In my home brew the gods relative power is linked to their number of worshipers.
With Asmodeus making it to godhood in 4th I am going to use this as the impetus for the last story arc.
His cults have been brewing up trouble with the other evil priests and have been fosterng out right war between them.
Zarus the god of Tyranny will die and the new 4th ed campaign will pick up 20 years later with Asmodeus taking his place
The nice thing about that is, that you can really have a great bunch of religion in each races culture but won't have to have several houndreds of gods. (Though I think there are still about 40 in my setting. :D)
I really like your idea of the multiple apsects of the same god.
I am beggining to wrap up my 3.5ed game in preparation for 4th ed. In my home brew the gods relative power is linked to their number of worshipers.
With Asmodeus making it to godhood in 4th I am going to use this as the impetus for the last story arc.
His cults have been brewing up trouble with the other evil priests and have been fosterng out right war between them.
Zarus the god of Tyranny will die and the new 4th ed campaign will pick up 20 years later with Asmodeus taking his place
Thanks, it's something I've been working on for a few years. I'll probably carry that aspect of a fractured deity into the 4E campaign.
I thought Asmodeus was always a deity of some sort. Well, I've been using him as one anyway.
The big culmination for my campaign will start tomorrow night as the players realize that there is an organized cult trying to bring a being over from another dimension. (A cult which worships the outer gods from CoC and they are trying to open a portal that will allow Azathoth in.) But first I need to introduce a NPC that is actually Nyarlathotep. The PCs are going to kill me when we are done. I'll probably never introduce the cthulhu mythos into my fantasy campaign again after this campaign finishes.
That is not the issue. There are alot of us that LIKE the published settings (me with Eberron). Also, as an older gamer, I don't have the time to work on a setting. Tried to for a couple of years into 3e, but never had the time to fill it out.
And there are also those of us out there that don't like using the published settings, so why should we be forced to do so? I, myself, have been gaming for over 20-some years, and let me tell you that the most fun that I have had as a player was when the DM came up with an original setting instead of playing in one of the published settings, such as the Forgotten Realms. It is more fun to play in an original, DM-created setting, than in a published setting, like Eberron, in my opinion. Now, that isn't to say that I think using elements from published settings, like the Forgotten Realms or Eberron or whatever, is a bad thing. I do think, though, that DM's should be able to pick and choose whatever works best for their campaign and shouldn't feel as though they HAVE to use a published setting if they don't want to.
In short, there is no reason why you cant makeup your own world or use 4e with a current setting that you developed for an older edition of the game. The rules aren't what makes a campaign setting; it's the history, geography, social structures, and stories that defines your world.
I am designing a world right now that I will use in 4e and I have no doubts that it will work and that it will be fun.
Okay, I can do fluff myself too, but Lords of Madness, Heroes of Horror and Lost Empires od Faerûn have all given me a HUGE amount of ideas and insirations I can use and adopt into my own setting, at the later is actually a setting-specific book.
I don't use any of the background-stories or societies of Lords of Madness, but this book is almost cover to cover "lets talk about aberrations" and those are the books I really enjoy. Libris Mortis and Draconomicon weren't bad either, but they didn't really inspired me that much, probably because they made too much use of old and known cliches most people allready know.
I'm sure all of us who have been DMing for a while have made more than a few changes to the base rules, but I imagine most have been fairly minor; a new race here, drop a class there, whatever. I know that elves in my world won't be some kind of strange ultra-hippy, but they're already different from the "normal" ones so that's no big deal. But if I have to rewrite, say, the rogue class, a built-in staple of the game, to remove, hypothetically speaking, a magical imp disguised as a glove that is what really lets him use his thief skills and gives diabolic powers, that is a big deal.
I don't like the idea that every character has self-healing and clerics have passive group-healing because the world has been made to create an atmosphere were PCs are normal people. It would be like Jedis in Star Treck. It just doesn't fit together... :D
I don't like the idea that every character has self-healing and clerics have passive group-healing because the world has been made to create an atmosphere were PCs are normal people. It would be like Jedis in Star Treck. It just doesn't fit together... :D
I don't mind a bit of self-healing after a battle, like Iron Heroes had (at least, I think I remember that in there). It's like just being winded during a fight and recovering from it afterwards. That kind of thing can help if a character has a run of really bad luck in an encounter, but it shouldn't be full healing by any means. I've not really read about how this is supposed to work, though.
As for clerics and a video-gamesque aura of healing, that might be going a bit far. I'll have to see on this one. It sounds a bit TOO video gamey, and if I want to play a CRPG I will. :p
Anyway, this rambling isn't really related to the topic.
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I really think some things may be considered by WotC, and make our hobby easier. There are many tools they could desing as a world mapper, not only dungeoneering. Maybe they could make a sort of list of the relation between the different monsters in MM, or where are these expected to be. One of the things i like of homebrewing is the creativity you can develop.
I made a few years ago a full kingdom where the arcane magic users were hunted down. I made a prestige class fully dedicated to this, blackguard based. The casting of a fireball made the players end in prison... and the arcane users were sent to a different prison where they were forced to make magic items to the rulers... the PC ended multiclassing their arcane casters to deffend themselves in the big cities...
The elves were gonne, they left in a large exodus, leaving behind them many fortress that were taken by the orcs and goblins...
All humans born or raised there past through military training, giving them a 1st level fighter, and +1 adjustmen...
Personally, i think the worlds we made up to this point will not change too much, but if they mop up the sorcerers, the principal arcane caster in that world (because the schools were burned down, and the elves were gonne), I will have many problems with all the PC and the NPC revels...
Maybe WotC may consider to say something about how can we mannipulate this... We expend lots of time desining our fantasy worlds... I don´t want to have a frustration...
A pracitcal question, tho... what happens to DM's who have spent years building their own homebrew worlds and campaigns, complete with their own house rules and variations? How easy or difficult will it be to transfer a homebrew world to 4.0? Will it even be possible?
You can either keep playing with the current rules, laboriously update it to 4e, or do what I do when campaigns run their course: advance the timeline some huge number of years (long enough to accomodate the edition changes) and redo everything from scratch, and keep some of the locations as ruins or extremely old cities (kind of like Final Fantasy VI's map change). Some new things appear, some things disappear, some things move (due to plate tectonics), and some things which were once lost reappear.
Supernatural energy evolves in my world, and sometimes, it goes into convalescence (or into a cocoon) to come out healed (o transformed).
I'll probably redo all the fluff in the PHB , no Iron Sigil, Golden Wyvern, etc. There's plenty of magical traditions already in place.
I think much more of fluff-writer manuals than guidebooks for creating creatures, prestige-classes and magic items. Those I can do myself.
Okay, I can do fluff myself too, but Lords of Madness, Heroes of Horror and Lost Empires od Faerûn have all given me a HUGE amount of ideas and insirations I can use and adopt into my own setting, at the later is actually a setting-specific book.
I don't use any of the background-stories or societies of Lords of Madness, but this book is almost cover to cover "lets talk about aberrations" and those are the books I really enjoy. Libris Mortis and Draconomicon weren't bad either, but they didn't really inspired me that much, probably because they made too much use of old and known cliches most people allready know.
I agree with you on the monster type books and the Terrain books (Frostburn, etc.): useful and not too fixed to a setting you might not need.
What do I want in a homebrew: well, a lot of stuff as influences from fiction and legends, though nothing as direct references, just more as inspiration:
The Inspirations:
- Some Thomas Covenant
- Some Middle-Earth
- A Little Nine Princes in Amber or Highlander
- A Fair Helping of Celtic Mythology
- A Nice Chunk of Norse Mythology
- A Good Bit of Chinese Mythology
- Some Birthright
- A Tiny Bit of Primal Rage!
- Just a Pinch of Star Trek (No Technology!)
- Some Higher Mathematics (Number Theory, etc.)
- A Touch of Magic: the Gathering
If I can figure out how to put this all together, it'll be awesome!
- Wild West: Not steampunk but more old west with elves, dragonborns, dwarves and other fantasy monsters with the wild west code, gunslingers using wands or magic and construct trains.
- Pulp (1930s): Take the cities of Chicago or New York of the 20s and 30's and throw in magic and D&D races+monsters
- Sword & Sandal: 300, Galditor and all other genre mixed with D&D
- Sword & Planet: Think John Carter of Mars or even Flash Gordon with more D&D
- Pirates: Think about it, D&D of the High Seas... bUt with more look/style of the era
- Victorian: D&D by gaslight you might say. The cities, culture and fashion will be very gothic similar to Sweeny Todd or From Hell
I've been working on a homebrew campaign setting, with the hope of one day publishing it, for the last three years. The setting is based on short stories that I've written, and 4E gives me both a sense of hope and frustration. I feel frustrated that I have to convert all the things I've mapped out mechanics for; but I also feel hopeful that some of the new mechanics will more accurately capture the feel of my written works. Until 4E comes out however, I'll have to put all the mechanics of my setting on hold and just focus on the world flavor or "fluff"
Relying upon mechanics at all, beyond the most basic setting elements of swords and sorcery, or guns and tech, is asking for trouble. Systems evolve. A good story with strong characters and settings can survive the evolution of the mechanism by which they are measured for reference. Whether a hike is one mile or a couple of kilometers or two score fields matters not. If a combat round is six seconds or ten it makes little difference to a creature fighting for its life.
System-specific references should be entirely absent. For instance, a sort of scout, rather than being called a Ranger of the 12th rank, might be referred to simply as a veteran scout. In-story, he might be known as Halgarath, a man capable of seeing without being seed, striking silently from a field away and departing swiftly with no chance of being detected or followed.
Non-mechanical parallels to game terms for class, race, level of skill, and the nature and effects of magic can be crafted so as to make the setting system-agnostic. This is surely the best way to create a setting that will survive and mature.
I have used my original setting since the D&D blue book (1978), through the transition to AD&D, 2e, 3e, and 3.5, without having to alter a single map, NPC background, area description, or plot line to match the current system. Only when setting up each adventure would I work up the setting of specific system reference for monster/npc stats, encounter planning, trap damage, and other details for use with the current system, leaving such separated from the narrative.
The history (or future) of the world is not written in stats, but in narrative form. When crafting a setting, keep this in mind and you will be able to focus on the parts of your world's story that really matter: the fundamental aspects of the world (natural, spiritual, magical, etc.), the characters, their motivations and their deeds.
Focusing on world flavor is not just the "fluff", it's the core of a good campaign. A good game system should fade into the background and become thoughtless habit. A good setting - a good story, if well told, should have the power to make grown men weep at the loss of a minor NPC (Yes, I've actually managed such on more than one occasion).
mdono
Well I got several campaign ideas I am working now. They are somewhat called multi-genre campaign mixing fantasy/D&D with other genres.
Multi-genre worlds or settings are difficult to pull off well. Unless there is a perfect reason for the mixture of two genre (see: Firefly, a mix of sci-fi and western), genre-mixing communicates exactly this to your players: you are indecisive and, therefore, may make bad judgments (against or in favor of the players).
What tends to work better is not mixing physical elements from the different genre, but cross-pollinating plot and motivational elements. For a rather crude and quick on the spot example:
An evil empire build a huge warship that sails within reach of a rebel port city and destroys it with a massive arcane fireball created by a complex magical device. The ship, call it the "Death Barge", has a weakness (many Bothans died to bring us this information): a small vent tube on the aft just above the rudder where the heat from the magical mechanism escapes while the thing is idle. A small, one-man skiff could approach unnoticed and launch a magical photon arrow into the exhaust tube, triggering a magical chain reaction that would destroy the Death Barge.
Here I've robbed a sci-fi movie plot and transformed it into something that would fit well in a regular swords and sorcery setting.
Where you will run into trouble is in dragging in physical elements from another genre. In the above, if the one-man skiff was a magical flying box that launched a photon torpedo, it might not fit as well.
Likewise, having 300 elite Spartech mechtroopers defend a crystal mine from marauding aliens would work, but not if they had to use spears instead of blasters (well, maybe it works if the last Spartech runs out of ammo and has to use his ceremonial regiment flagpole as a spear).
You get the idea... mixing motives and plots works... mixing tech levels and physics/metaphysics can be tricky at best and requires constant justification.
mdono
Relying upon mechanics at all, beyond the most basic setting elements of swords and sorcery, or guns and tech, is asking for trouble.
I believe you may have misunderstood. I do not rely on the mechanics to determine the fluff. The fluff is good and... "fluffy". One must depend on the mechanics as a means of letting the fluff flex its muscles.
In my world, "black magic" requires killing or the shedding of blood. If you slaughter a lamb as part of your animate dead spell; the spell works better than normal. If you have no blood sacrifice; it works a little worse than normal. If you sacrifice a human; it works even better than sacrificing a lamb. This is the fluff. It's dark, creepy, and beautiful. Without mechanics like Caster Level or Save DC however, there is no way for this fluff to impose itself on the game world.
The true frustration for me, is that the game was originally made when i was playing Palladium games. I abandoned the mechanics of Palladium for the simpler and more balanced mechanics of D&D. Now I will have to alter the mechanics for 4e. This hasn't and won't change the fluff, just how the fluff makes itself felt.
I believe you may have misunderstood. I do not rely on the mechanics to determine the fluff. The fluff is good and... "fluffy". One must depend on the mechanics as a means of letting the fluff flex its muscles.
In my world, "black magic" requires killing or the shedding of blood. If you slaughter a lamb as part of your animate dead spell; the spell works better than normal. If you have no blood sacrifice; it works a little worse than normal. If you sacrifice a human; it works even better than sacrificing a lamb. This is the fluff. It's dark, creepy, and beautiful.
Dark and creepy indeed
But such things should be left to back-story and evil plot lines.The blood sacrifice part (albeit fictional), if required of or even optional for characters, will forever limit the setting to your own use. I trust there is a balancing method for "white magic".
Placing such ethically heavy requirements on magic really does pose a bit of a functional problem - it may limit the use of magic to such a point as to make it impractical in game terms. For instance, a dark wizard would need to carry a sack full of rodents to dispatch for smaller spells, a lamb for medium work, and perhaps an ox and a few enthralled humans for the really big stuff. Not exactly practical to be dragging such a noisy and hungry (not to mention stinky) herd around in a dungeon.
I suggest not placing such requirements on the casting of spells, as there are a number of practical flaws and the notion of blood sacrifice in general will have an understandably negative reception from all but a few, no matter how well reasoned.
For historical reference, blood sacrifices were no small matters. They were only called for by very frightened ancient peoples in times of great strife and generally only after all other methods failed. The more modern tales of such are largely exaggerated, if not entirely fictional, or are falsely claimed by posers.
Also consider this: To vastly over simplify things, white magic seeks to dominate through the proliferation of life and growth, while dark magic seeks dominance through corruption and decay. In both cases, life is required. Corruption and decay are not death, but the conversion of one life form into another of more basic, primitive and chaotic nature.
Blood sacrifice is almost always an appeal or appeasement offered to a deity to relieve the suffering of believers or to gain the favor of the deity in support of an heroic endeavor. I do not know of a single historical reference where such was used for the purpose of granting individual magical power.
I will not debate further on this, as I will not be convinced that blood sacrifice for the purpose of granting magical power is in any way advisable (for good or evil). Please accept this not as criticism, but as helpful information to consider in crafting one of the more crucial elements of your setting.
mdono
Enworlders seemed to like that aspect.
Dark and creepy indeed
I will not debate further on this, as I will not be convinced that blood sacrifice for the purpose of granting magical power is in any way advisable (for good or evil). Please accept this not as criticism, but as helpful information to consider in crafting one of the more crucial elements of your setting.
mdono
I believe you missed the point. Whether or not you agree with fictional blood sacrifice as part of dark magic, it has a very real impact in my game world (which is part of what makes dark magic so despised). Without mechanics to implement this power-enhancing effect however, the fluff has no impact and becomes neutered.
Also, I had considered the notion of evil mages needing to haul around sacrifices. That's why the sacrifice isn't usually necessary to cast the spell (although a human sacrifice is required for dark magic resurrections). Most spells function, albeit at reduced strength, without a blood sacrifice. Also, most lower-level spells simply require a few drops of blood to be spilled by the mage. Usually this comes from cutting themselves, or their target in the case of "buff spells".
As for blood sacrifice preventing the setting from being published or sold, I respectfully disagree. There are a number of rpg products that touch on dark or "mature" topics like sex, vampirism, insanity, and ritual murder. World of Darkness, Vampire, the BoEF, and Call of Chthulu all spring to mind.
On a side note: If blood sacrifice makes you uneasy... good. You're a moral human being. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back. Lord knows it doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. There are reasons why dark magic is deplorable and gives all mages a bad name. This is one of them.