#campaign setting

[greatwyrmgold]

I feel like you're underselling the setting a bit. The different forks aren't just being catty over territory; they also have genuine ideological conflicts.

Manila/Overmind/Skynet #1 wants to actively exterminate all humans; so do Mexico City and Berlin. But Mexico City wants to exterminate all organic life, Berlin wants to actively preserve the biosphere, and Manila doesn't care as long as it finishes wiping out humanity.

Washington (DC) and Tel Aviv both try to control humans instead. I mean, a bunch of zoneminds use human slave labor to some extent (it's more efficient to work them to death than to construct specialized execution facilities), but Washington maintains a façade of American democracy and Tel Aviv uses religion to convince its victims that working for robots is a test of their faith.

Brisbane, Moscow, Paris, and probably London have are introverts with varying obsessions driving them into periodic conflict with humans in their territory and other zoneminds.

Out of those, Moscow is happy to work with humans, since human agents are easier to deny association with than robots from your factories. Also they have a good sense of where other humans would put the important books.

Zaire is just paranoid, man.

And that's just half of the AIs discussed in the book (if we count minor AIs like Lucifer). There's such a variety of goals and value systems among these Skynet forks. In my opinion, that's The Thing that makes Reign of Steel worth remembering.

An old favorite of mine- just in terms of big loredumps for settings I'll never run or play a game in- is the GURPS sourcebook Reign of Steel, a terminator inspired setting where the twist is that there are in fact eighteen forks of the bargain-brand skynet and the human resistance only scrapes by as well as it does because of how much energy they expend being catty to one another over their territorial holdings

[hyperstranger]

Dwarf/giant lore for my D&D setting

Back in the days long before the Extortium was written, there was a human named Kranin Gornokis. Kranin was considered ambitious by many of his scholarly peers in Aureiske, and he was never the type you'd think of being a scholar- he was large and brawny, and was often noticed degrading the elders of his conclave. For these reasons, Kranin was chosen by his conclaves leader to assist in helping evacuate a sister conclave from an earthquake. At one point when he was helping, a large crack formed in the earth, and deep within that crack was a light. Kranin, out of pure curiosity, abandoned those he was helping, slid down the crack and into the light, which transported him to a land of snow, mountains, and rocky landscapes. He arrived in a desolate valley of snow, riddled with skeletons. In the distance he saw a mountain bare of snow, and sought to travel there, in hopes of reaching somewhere warmer. As he travelled, he knew that these skeletons had the same goal, but he convinced himself he was stronger. Against all odds, he climbed to the very top of that mountain, surviving off a will alone. When he arrived, the sun fell down into his hand, shrinking into a mote of energy, and he was bestowed godhood for his feat. With charge over this land, which he named Jötunn, he created giants, beings who would reflect their environments, and grow through hardship. Hill giants living in low danger environments would be dim-witted and no larger than a house, and storm giants of difficult environments would be gargantuan and wise. There was no judgment among the giants- why change if it was unnecessary to your survival? From birth to their twenties, giants would be about four feet tall before hitting a sudden growth spurt, which would also adapt them to their environment. In a genetic mishap, one giant didn't grow, and grew a lot of hair to survive the weather- As time went on, his family grew, and became different enough that they're their own species, known as dwarves. These dwarves would set up their villages in large caves to escape the cold, a habit that would continue in the dwarven expansion to the material plane. Giants were not as ambition, most were happy in Jötunn, but sometimes through some magical mishap or another, they would get teleported to the material plane. Dwarves fit into Fahltide perfectly, and were generally regarded well, but giants in the material plane, due to their size, never acclimated with other societies, and tended to live in villages of their own, and this had lead them to be on the receiving end of Tripartisan Union colonization many times. Dwarves, humans, and Elves now stand strong as the most dominant group of people on the planet of Fahltide.

[tellusd20]

Dev Journal 4: Technology Level

Previous Development Journal: Points of Departure. I originally meant for this to be a longer development journal entry but kept running into writer’s block issues, culminating in sitting in my drafts for almost a year. So this will be a quick summary on the world of Tellus and its general level of technological achievement. As with all worldbuilding, these draft ideas go through iterations and will evolve over time. Tellus is largely comparable to that of Earth in the 1830s, though it is not a complete equivalent; in some areas its more advanced, in other areas it lags behind OTL. Development is not equal across all regions and continents. Industry & Agriculture

Early factories exist but not in great number, most production is artisanal or conducted in workshops of varying size. Cities are cramped, polluted domains because environmental protections are largely nonexistent, but the smog-choked urban hellscapes of the latter 19th century don't exist yet. The urban/rural population divide still greatly favors rural regions; farming has little mechanization available and is quite labor intensive. Change is coming but it hasn't arrived yet.

Shipping

Nautical technology runs ahead of the 1830s average due to geopolitics and strategic needs of the major powers. Sail is giving way to steam; though not widespread yet, conversions to steam and purpose-built hulls are increasingly common. Ships of the line are still the mainstay capital force of every major navy, but the wartime invention of the ironclad has sparked a new arms race and raised tensions among the great powers.

Transportation

Trains are in their infancy, mostly existing to connect mines and factories to shipping hubs. Rail networks as we would think of them do not exist, though the major powers are becoming aware of their economic and military potential. 

Air travel effectively does not exist, outside of perhaps a few unique magical conveyances. Tamed wyverns, giant eagles, and other large flying creatures are sometimes utilized as aerial couriers, but are mostly limited to military needs.

Communication

Magical methods of communication such as Sending are available for those with the ability or financial means, but most important governmental communications are transmitted by semaphore networks and couriers. Tall semaphore towers are a common sight in any developed nation, transmitting messages by signal flag. A semaphore line with well trained station operators and good weather can transmit a message across hundreds of miles in minutes.

These networks are typically owned and operated by their respective states, and most transmission capacity is devoted to enabling the administration of empire, though periods of low traffic may be utilized by private or commercial interests for an appropriate fee. For everyone else, messages and parcels are shipped to their destination by state mail services or private couriers. Reliability, speed, and expense varies by country, region, and even locality.

Interaction with Magic

In terms of authorial intent, I wanted very much to avoid the tired "magic vs technology" trope, and also to avoid the concept of "magitech". This is a world where magic exists and always has, where it's a tangible force of nature that can be harnessed and utilized like any other resource, provided one has the right tools and aptitude. For such a society, magic is no different from any other resource, just one that requires specialized methods or abilities to access, and which functions according to its own natural laws. At the same time, the practice of magic is also governed by economic and social realities, ranging from scarcity of spell components to constraints on education.

To give some examples, farmers would practice all sorts of folk magic with a wide range of efficacy to do things such as ward off disease from their herds, boost crop yield, etc. A navy with a high budget may bind fire elementals to the steam engines of its newfangled ironclads, justifying the expenseby pointings to the  financial and tonnage savings of otherwise carrying sufficient coal. The practical application of magic is like anything else, a way to save on cost, labor, and difficulty. I’ll write more about that in the future though.

[ciltilladeltilla]

Idea for a Pact Dice sandbox campaign setting: for reasons specific to each character, practitioners are obligated to spend a year within a small tourist-trap sort of beach town. Not a super popular one, but the sort with evenly-split on- and off-seasons, where the condos lie empty and the tacky t-shirt shops go into hibernation until things warm up again. Ideally players get to decide which half to start with.

In the spring-summer half, the town is bright and hectic and full of moving parts. Deals, trades, arrests, celebrations, people lost at sea, thunderstorms against the horizon, entities that siphon human jubilance or practitioners seeking the anonymity of the crowd for their own reasons.

In the autumn and winter months, the underlying community coagulates into a smaller portion of the town, and visitors wear out their welcome quickly. The unoccupied condominiums and closed storefronts make it a good place for hiding out, whether you're a human or an Other, but part of the town itself is almost detached from the spheres of ordinary human life. And throughout, forces in the ocean finally have opportunity to act without being noticed.

[three-eyed-bat]

I want to talk about my RPG campaign setting, but I don’t want to make a big post about it, I just want to chat about it with people.

[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.

[wh0lemilk0vich]

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

[pitaenigma]

My favorite tabletop campaign setting is Scarred Lands, and I keep thinking about why that is. Certainly, the edgy part of me loves the sheer dread and hopelessness of that world. Everything everywhere is about to collapse at all times. The world is a fickle balancing act and we're already watching people wobble. Things will not end well. There are infinite buried threats and even more that are just out there. It's a fascinating and terrifying setting in that sense.

It's also about selfishness. There is no reason for Burok Torn and Dier Drendal to be at total war, but that's just how shit played out. Misunderstandings and desperation mean that two imperfect peoples are in a war for their lives. Also, Paizo, you want to find ways to showcase how "evil races" are actually justified, some of your writers might want to take notes on Scarn's drow.

But even so, one thing it does is this: People are trying. The god Vangal is an evil destructive force, but he will unite with good gods to protect against worse threats. The necromancers of Hollowfaust work with priestesses of Madriel who see them as anathema. The beauty of Scarred Lands is that it is just as fucked up and hopeless as our world, and the amazing thing about it is that just like our world, people do better.

[taliesin-thefool]

yknow— i think I genuinely have ideas and thoughts and creative ambitions that could mean something to people. they seem to mean things to my players and i would love to find a way to make that grow and create something Big, yknow?

[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…"

[willtempest]

A couple of pages from the waterlogged, gothic sci-fi RPG campaign setting me and Sam have been working on. Set in a city on the verge of rebellion thats being slowly swallowed by the sea. Theres going to be hyrdromancy, ocean-tech powered machinery and mutant mosquitos.

[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.

[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.

[dungeonofthedragon]

Born From Ice

This keeps popping up on my feeds, and it seemed about time to share it! The covers look awesome, and it seems like it'll be a really in-depth stone age fantasy.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenthegm/born-from-ice-stone-age-role-playing-5e?ref=discovery

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Inner Sea Faiths Campaign Setting Cover Art by Denman Rooke

[initialpassword]

There's a world, out in the vast, where no sapient life exists.

No, only the ruins of a world that destroyed itself with industry.

That was a millenia ago, life has reclaimed it. The restless dead have insured it.