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Post by hengest on Apr 15, 2016 12:40:41 GMT -5
I love D&D and all that magic implies, but when I think of a campaign world or a setting, I always imagine a place where magic is unknown, almost an empty world -- empty for its denizens -- not only of magic, but almost of anything. Somehow I can't escape the idea of the PCs discovering (slowly) magic and all that that entails, even though this makes the game practically not D&D. I admit I wonder what's going on here. It feels almost like I like the idea of creation and discovery so much that I find it hard to escape from that "empty canvas" even when I'm thinking about settings, where PCs could start, and so on. I love reading settings, campaign journals, all kinds of notes about playing in different worlds and so on, but on my own, I feel drawn always to an "empty world" where the PCs are infant-like observers, just barely beginning to act. Almost like the first Elves in Tolkien's story about their awakening (in one of the History of Middle-Earth volumes, I forget which).
Has anyone else ever experienced this or anything like it? A "snapping-back" to some primordial blankness? Or something at all similar to what I've described here? When you close your eyes and let the first idea come into your mind, what happens? (This thread is not here to help anyone steal setting ideas!)
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Post by robkuntz on Apr 15, 2016 13:08:04 GMT -5
Yep, I have felt it and it is incorporated right into my World of Kalibruhn. Large, seemingly empty tracks of land, strange never before heard of creatures, distant legends which have grown in too many ways through their telling, etc. It's called the "UNKNOWN". To know the unknown is not to know Fantasy; to discover it is. Thus the reason why I create all new things (for play and print, PD!)  |
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Post by Admin Pete on Apr 15, 2016 13:22:46 GMT -5
 OK Rob!  I agree with hengest and robkuntz , My world of Murkhill is an ancient world that once had many great civilizations spread across the world, but now large tracts of land are empty of intelligent life forms. Humanity and other races exist in small populations here and there and are slowly growing and just beginning to expand. There are many unique never before seen creatures, vast ruins, etc. The land area is approx 7.7 times that of earth and humans are present on only about 50% of the world's land masses.
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Post by hengest on Apr 15, 2016 14:08:20 GMT -5
Cool, guys. Maybe I need to find ways to roll with it more, instead of resisting it!
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Post by robkuntz on Apr 15, 2016 14:08:44 GMT -5
OK Rob! I agree with hengest and robkuntz , My world of Murkhill is an ancient world that once had many great civilizations spread across the world, but now large tracts of land are empty of intelligent life forms. Humanity and other races exist in small populations here and there and are slowly growing and just beginning to expand. There are many unique never before seen creatures, vast ruins, etc. The land area is approx 7.7 times that of earth and humans are present on only about 50% of the world's land masses. You only have human habitations? My first iteration of WoK is, at a guess, between 30-45% inhabited; certain areas are on the decline (the West especially) and most CIVs hug the coast lines. My second iteration progressed to 50-60% due to the geography allowing for it, but it is in many ways more treacherous and divided due to it (major mountain chains which twist and curl inward near the center makes it good on the south side, hard to navigate north, where the lands fade away into legend, the NORRDREYMA), so populations reside in mid-large pocket zones with the same large tracks of land separating them. In all it is broken and feared in many places, as things descend from and return to the mountains for miles in all directions. |
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Post by Admin Pete on Apr 15, 2016 15:51:28 GMT -5
You only have human habitations? No, I just mentioned that as one example. Humans have at least some presence on about 50% of the major land masses. I don't have the document handy but I have worked info for about 15 or so races of varying levels of intelligence plus the same thing for a lot of monsters and the types of monsters found. For instance, if a group of PCs were to travel to some continents they would find it peopled only by monsters. Some continents have only animal life and currently no intelligent life at all. There are a total of 47 continents ranging from about 2.5 million square miles for the smallest one up to about 28.4 million square miles for the largest one. There are 3,087,716 islands ranging from less than a square mile up to about 800,000 square miles in area. One continent that the players were on a few years back has a great riff that is over 100 miles wide and over 1500 miles long that is marshy and swampy with active volcanoes and multitudes of hazards. It has a small kingdom of about 500,000 people on the north end of the continent with a couple of ports. South of that are some mountains with barbarians and other creatures. South of the mountains and north of the riff is a blasted blighted area where only a few weird deformed plants grow, the ground is covered with a caked ash and smells of burnt sulfur. The only water is laced with salt and poisons. Only a few strange and very deadly creatures roam this vast desolate plain. Another thing about the Murkhill world is that there are a lot of portals to otherwhen and otherwhere. |
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Post by captaincrumbcake on Apr 15, 2016 16:04:39 GMT -5
I think my "Lost Lands" campaign here kind of speaks my position on it.
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Post by robkuntz on Apr 15, 2016 16:42:41 GMT -5
Cool, guys. Maybe I need to find ways to roll with it more, instead of resisting it! One cannot resist the Unknown, they must embrace it! |
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Post by Von on Apr 17, 2016 11:59:42 GMT -5
I think it's only natural to conceive of a setting for D&D play as it'll be experienced through play: start in one location with one adventure and branch out, or prepare one span of territory to be explored through the crawl. That has an air of the exploratory about it and so the blank space off the edge is to be embraced.
With Titan I am making a world for the sake of making a world, as much as for playing games in it: it is a place where philosophies and ideas flourish and compete and this happens to be expressed through gameable concepts. I write poetry sometimes, for the technical challenge of wrestling thoughts into a strict form and seeing how this changes their meaning and implication: building Titan is much the same.
The result is a world in which the things that I'm interested in are very clear at the macro level and the things which I want to use in a game are very clear at the micro level. The layers in between, and the spaces on the map between the places I've needed to detail in order to express and explore given concepts, are much more vague.
In a lot of ways it's like a join-the-dots puzzle. I have a map, with some place names. I have some ideas which are assigned to various of those names. Sometimes travel happens and I have to link these places and these concepts - but what's in between, but the mists below and the red sun above? I'm starting to get a feel for the answer now, at last - but it's taken long enough.
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on May 9, 2016 11:43:04 GMT -5
My players love the UNKNOWN and are currently circumnavigating the world and so far that has consumed 9 years of real world time and about 25 years or so of game time. Of the original 12 PCs that started the trip there are three remaining: the paladin, the ranger and one of the fighting men.
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Post by hengest on Sept 20, 2021 18:05:08 GMT -5
I love D&D and all that magic implies, but when I think of a campaign world or a setting, I always imagine a place where magic is unknown, almost an empty world -- empty for its denizens -- not only of magic, but almost of anything. Somehow I can't escape the idea of the PCs discovering (slowly) magic and all that that entails, even though this makes the game practically not D&D. I admit I wonder what's going on here. It feels almost like I like the idea of creation and discovery so much that I find it hard to escape from that "empty canvas" even when I'm thinking about settings, where PCs could start, and so on. I love reading settings, campaign journals, all kinds of notes about playing in different worlds and so on, but on my own, I feel drawn always to an "empty world" where the PCs are infant-like observers, just barely beginning to act. Almost like the first Elves in Tolkien's story about their awakening (in one of the History of Middle-Earth volumes, I forget which). Has anyone else ever experienced this or anything like it? A "snapping-back" to some primordial blankness? Or something at all similar to what I've described here? When you close your eyes and let the first idea come into your mind, what happens? (This thread is not here to help anyone steal setting ideas!) Since I started this thread five and a half years ago, things have changed a bit for me. Now I see a world alternatingly intricate, bizarre, magical, and barren. I hardly even think of Classic D&D, Greyhawk, or whatever I imagined the implied setting of OD&D to be. |
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OK Rob! 
