The campaign is a lifelong love project. In the late 80’s/early90’s, I read what became right then (and has remained ever-after) my favorite fantasy series: Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn saga. And even as a mostly-dumb mostly-kid, I knew there should be a D&D campaign setting about it. Everything I’ve done since then with regards to building campaigns has had elements of that first reading: the wrongly-persecuted-yet-now-objectively-evil elf-like race who would reclaim their glory at the expense of every other living being around; multiple subraces of humans based on believable real-world cultures, factions, conflicts, and philosophies; a perhaps-overreliance on having arctic/polar/cold regions playing prominent roles in the overall story; lying/misleading prophecies; major players & NPCs who are not gods in human form and can (and do) actually die, creating consequences throughout the world. I could go on. Maybe I will. But not right now.
My very first campaign setting was such a ripoff of Williams’ that I would be sued if it was still available for others to see. Luckily, I grew up a bit.
Now, other ideas have rightfully wormed their way into my ever-evolving setting. Influences like Miyazaki, with the haunting Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the environmentally-themed Princess Mononoke, the beautiful Castle in the Sky have found a way to put their stamp on parts of the world. H.P. Lovecraft has undeniably left his mark with ancient, illimitable horrors. The Difference Engine is there in some small way, as are concepts one could possibly recognize from Dan Simmons’ Hyperion and various Tim Powers’ novels. Final Fantasy VI and IX (the good ones, don’t at me bro) both make appearances in various fun ways. There are undoubtably flashes from all the media I consumed as a teen and young adult – like The Wheel of Time, The Dark Tower, The Belgariad, and the Legend of Zelda and Metroid series of Nintendo games – that I can’t identify directly, but I wouldn’t deny if someone pointed them out to me. I would say it has become a respectable mongrel of influence that owes its existence to hundreds of pioneers before me, yet is not a copy of any and has become its own thing.
Or so I hope.
One lesson I have learned (or am learning) while creating a hybrid is in how to merge already-existing, beautiful works into my creation, and not try to reinvent the wheel when there are pre-existing innovative and ingenious wheels to work with. Some great D&D and rpgs have already been written, and many of the ideas in them are some I want to explore. A small sampling of such exploits include:
- Deep Carbon Observatory by Patrick Stuart
- Yoon-Suin: The Purple Land by David McGrogan
- The Dark of Hot Springs Island by Jacob Hurst
- Slumbering Ursine Dunes by Chris Kutalik
- Winds of the Ice Forest by Labyrinth Lords
- Anomalous Subsurface Environment by Patrick Wetmore
Anyway, this is the first post in a series about the campaign. Here’s a word storm of concepts which I’ll go into more detail later – some of them are more generally thematic, and some are very specific things I want to see or already have.
umbral toxic mushroom forests; anti-elements linked to primaeval noumenal beings (like the Chinese elements linked to their deities); mysterious fey race that wiped itself out through terrible advanced and forbidden war tactics; sleeping calcified titans; white-scaled crocodilian-frog-folk harnessing Deep Light; ancient clockwork scarecrow knights-errant left behind by the gnomes; floating clockpunk cities in ruins (left behind by gnomes of course) that people fight over; volcanic archipelago remnants of aboleth empire; ecoterrorism-based magic system; whale oil ships; abandoned dwarven earthships; ancient disused railways; 4-legged-8-armed-goblet-headed patron with a clock on chest; clerics & warlocks are replaced by binders