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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 14, 2018 22:40:58 GMT -9
About four years ago, I started working on a new setting for my home D&D game with my kids. It was a late bronze age/ early iron age Celtic/Irish setting, and I pulled from a LOT of sources. Kids being kids, it didn't last long as they began to deal with teenage angsty stuff. Never one to give up, I began developing a Fantasy Ancient Egypt setting to lure my wife into D&D... two years later, we have yet to sit down and create her a character So, after a bit of a cognitive reset/reboot (not fun, still can't feel the left side of my face) I decided to build yet ANOTHER campaign setting for D&D, just for fun. No limits, just the chance to throw everything that has struck my fancy over the last four years that didn't fit, now needing a bit of logic to puzzle them all together. It's fun. I have a map sheet with the center titled "where things happen" with room for notes. Also the cardinal directions, with some environmental details and room for more notes. As this develops, I will post more.
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Post by cowboyleland on Aug 15, 2018 8:43:33 GMT -9
World building is one of my favourite things. I want to watch this thread.
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Post by emergencyoverride on Aug 15, 2018 15:11:23 GMT -9
Ooooooh this sounds interesting! Actually you had me at ancient Egypt.
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 15, 2018 15:24:12 GMT -9
Ooooooh this sounds interesting! Actually you had me at ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt is finished lol! This is more of a fantasy medieval setting that most commercial products can be easily spliced. A bit more later
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 27, 2018 17:26:20 GMT -9
Okay, so I realized what I really want to do for a map is to use the original World Of Greyhawk map by Darlene, complete with all of the names. I will give the various polities new identities within those names, but dammit I love that map. Probably a lot of new history as well.
Cyclopses are a player character race. They're between 8 and 9 feet tall. I'm not sure why this suddenly became important for me, but there we have it.
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 28, 2018 13:49:42 GMT -9
I think that the most basic assumption that needs to be made for a new game setting is what rules are going to be used. I have decided to use the Swords & Wizardry Whitebox rules for a few reasons: It looks like the Holmes D&D and AD&D 1st edition that I grew up with, without being unnecessarily encumbered by minutiae. You see, my method of playing is "wing everything but the player's to-hit and saving rolls" but when it comes to specifics about what the character can do, I see no limits. Wants to play a Soren from "Out Of The Silent Planet?" Great, it will take me ten minutes to work up a framework. Intelligent hyena? Got it covered. Cool "Cyclops" race they downloaded? Great! I don't care about balance between characters, D&D 3rd edition and 4th edition totally burned me out on that. As a DM, I want to make sure everyone gets to shine at least once an encounter... which is always tailored not only to the characters played, but the people playing. Whoops! I got off track there. I like Swords & Wizardry Whitebox because it looks like what I know how to play but is open ended enough for me to throw in everything I choose. For those of you interested, Swords & Wizardry Whitebox is essentially a clone of the original Dungeons & Dragons game printed in 1974 and sold in a white box. It has emulated the game through use of the Open Game License created by Wizards Of The Coast in (I believe) 2000. The particular version that I am using is the "original" Swords & Wizardry Whitebox rules, here have been a few variants to come out since then, and this version is no longer available to download from the original publisher nor the PDF sale sites.
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 28, 2018 14:01:09 GMT -9
And how about some actual content? As I have previously mentioned, I am somehow stuck on Cyclopses being a playable character race. Once upon a time, I donwloaded an OSR Cyclops Race PDF, but I have no idea where I got it from, it is entirely without attribution. And so I took some of the ideas from it, found some creative commons artwork, and wrote a nice little one-page addition to the Swords & Wizardry Whitebox rules I am using (and, I tried to match the format of the book!) You can download my PDF here. One thing that may immediately jump out is that a Cyclops may be a Shaman; I haven't written my Shaman class yet, but it is going to very important to my setting and function right alongside the traditional Clerics, Fighters, and Magic-Users. Tonight, I hope to write up my Background for the Cyclops, which will be information about where and how they fit into my new game world.
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 28, 2018 17:25:04 GMT -9
OK, so I did it. I managed to write a nice 500-word background about how my Cyclops race fits into my new world setting. And, in the course of writing it, I discovered that the plural of Cyclops is Cyclopes, not Cyclopses as I had previously believed. So I updated my Character Race document as well. Cyclops Background PDFAnd if you can, please give me some feedback on both of these. It's been a long time since I tried to do some effective writing, so any observations are appreciated.
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 29, 2018 8:19:34 GMT -9
I have been personally fascinated by shamans and shamanism for as long as I can remember. One of my biggest disappointments in roleplaying games has been a lack of characters who fit my idea of what shamans should be. Ars Magica 2nd Edition did a very fine job with their Hidden Paths supplement, but it did not translate very well to other game systems. When TSR published Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures way back in 1992, I was immediately drawn to the wizard kit '"Sha'ir," although I couldn't explain why. A few years later, RPGs dropped off my radar but I always had "shaman" brewing in the back of mind. And one day it clicked: my fascination with the Sha'ir was because they worked mechanically in the game as I thought shamans should; simply replace "genie" with "spirit" and remove some of the setting-specific rules and it was the Shaman I was looking for. Fast-forward a few years more, and here I am using the Sha'ir as a foundation to write a Shaman class for Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox. I hope you, the reader/player, enjoy this as much as I have; this is the culmination of literally 25 years of thought and exploration! Downlaod "The Shaman" here.
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Aug 29, 2018 13:59:08 GMT -9
Here is an example of what I plan to do in creating the various "play areas" using the Greyhawk map. I am at this point using the original format presented in the Greyhawk book accompanying the map (we all bought it for the map, not the books, right?) It is basically a one-page snapshot of a political division, with a few notes about the local situation that can be extrapolated to create some adventures just y being in the right (or wrong, as it may be) place at the right time. You can download Tenh here. It is currently a work in progress; I'm not sure this is how I want to go about things in the long run. Perhaps what I did for my Cyclopes background information might work out better. What do y'all think?
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Sept 7, 2018 21:08:10 GMT -9
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
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Post by cowboyleland on Sept 8, 2018 19:40:29 GMT -9
I have been watching this thread. But I have been too distracted/busy/tired to put any thought into a good response. I have fond memories of Greyhawk from about 40 years ago, but I was a no-nothing kid back then. Now I am a no-nothing old man. You are making progress on this project, which is more than I can say for me on mine, so carry on dude!
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