#campaign setting

[oldschoolfrp]

Deep in the Underdark in the Sunless Sea, the Isle of Shadows is a bleak ruin shrouded in perpetual cold and fog, radiating a palpable aura of evil. Even the aboleth avoid this place. Varandek, Priest-Servitor of the Dark God, oversees a conclave of shadows, spectres, and skeletal priests. (Art credited to Arnie Swekel and Glen Michael Angus for Night Below: An Underdark Campaign, Book III: The Sunless Sea, designed by Carl Sargent, TSR, 1995)

[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…"

[mikemyler]

freeeee https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fozjco8xrbQMpdJBX-UopZ3JlSOcHKg2/view?usp=sharing

[phill-art]

Commissions open!!

Here's the character I did:

Face: The character should be a female Aldarin human (Aldarins are essentially Romans, so quite dark tanned skin), Facial structure-wise, wide jaw between 25 and 30 years of age. 

Hair: with long brownish-blonde hair, braided as per the reference photo. 

Build: her body showing her as quite muscular (lots of exercise walking around the city in heavy armour!).

Outfit: They are better funded than The Legions, so their roman style armour is made of iron and steel rather than bronze. The skirt part of the armour comes down closer to the knees, as would the tassles/baltea (dangly strappy bits). Include the Emblem of Permadecio on her chest armor. 

Outfit color: Black and a dark navy. The shield worn by them would be a much larger shield, more in line with traditional Roman scutum. 

Shield: This shield would be the same blue and black as the armour, with the Permadecio emblem on it. The eye of the emblem would be centered around the boss with the pupil being the boss itself.

Cape: On her left shoulder, the one not decorated with the gryphon design, she would wear a shoulder cape. This is currently fashionable in the present Aldarin era. The cape would come down a bit past her knees, but only cover her shoulder and that side of her body (added references for this). 

Cape color: The cape would have a silver lining, a black exterior, dark navy/blue interior, and maybe some blue patterning along the black (feel free to play with this design!). 

Footwear: She should be wearing roman style sandals which come up about half-way to the knee. Again, feel free to play with the design of her outfit a bit, keeping practicality in mind.

Belt and belt items: On her belt, she would have a waterskin, a coin pouch, a clip pouch for carrying food rations, and a pair of vials with healing drafts inside (these would appear a magical red in colour). Not all these need to be visible in the illustration, just listing what she has to let you decide what can be seen. She would also have a scabbard for a gladius, a Roman shortsword. She might be wielding the gladius, or have it holstered, depending on the pose you go for.

Overall colour: Blacks, greys, dark blues, navy, silvers (if you think any other colours might work here, feel free to experiment!)

Emblem

The Permadecio emblem is a white eye with two feathered wings protruding from behind it. The intent is to state “we are always watching”, with the wings referring to the speed at which they move to help their clients. The pupil of the eye might be silver or a dark navy, depending on where it sits. 

[disgruntledexplainer]

D&D elves

[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.

[initialpassword]

A dieselpunk space opera inspired by Ghibli films, Batman the Animated Series, Bioshock, Dishonored, and Star Wars. How's that for a campaign?

[kerghoulen]

The Empire of The Isles

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I made this as a map for a homebrew nautical D&D campaign setting. This was a lot of fun to make, especially all of the little place names.

Leave a comment to let me know your favourite place name!

N.B. Blorcester is pronounced both as “Bluster” or as “Blosster” depending on what dialect you speak.

[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.

[2minutetabletop]

The Town of Aria

Today I'm excited to welcome you to Aria, a new adventure setting by Garm filled with unique NPCs, low-level danger, and an interesting history to uncover...

→ Read it on 2-Minute Tabletop

[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 ambitious, 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.

[oldschoolfrp]

The wizard takes point, ever alert for hidden dungeons and enemies in unexpected places (Bryan Hinnen wrote and illustrated The Mines of Custalcon, Wilderness Book One for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy / City-State D&D campaign, Judges Guild, 1979)

[willtempest]

The Flood Bell Tolls in Saint Magnus by me, @samtempest.bsky.social and @kateeddy.bsky.social is now available! You can get printed versions over on my website. We also have a pay-what-you-want PDF available on itch

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[thefosterkelly]

“Give what they need, no more less they pay.

Give them my love, my deliverers” -Father Bianchi

Models made in heroforge

Models for my Fallout table top campaign which I am in the process of writing. (Using the Fallout TTRPG developed by XP to level3)

[mikemyler]

I'm not saying this is the best samurai archetype for D&D BUT it does have that cool dash-through-enemies-and-make-a-crazy-slice anime move https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/verantheacodex/mists-of-akuma-5e-eastern-fantasy-noir-steampunk-bonanza

[orcartographer]

Powehii Streets

Been a while since I posted a map. Here's a recent one for an underground city.