The Realm of Tharstradt
Designing a setting for a campaign is a rather daunting task. You can take several approaches to this, with one end of the spectrum being insanely detailed to the point of ecological information being established and the other end just being a typical fantasy world that transplants existing setting rules. I went with the former, because I don't know how to pick tasks that are of a reasonable scope.
Using the Savage Worlds system, one of the worlds that I came up with for an RPG campaign that I ran was a small-ish continent in a world of haphazard magic along various ley lines. The premise was that people from Earth were reborn in this place with no memory of their prior life. As time went on their memories slowly returned and as the ages progressed eventually every life that came to Tharstradt was through a newborn that inherited memories instead of being born as an adult in a mysterious shrine towards the center of the continent.
Understandably, it can be very hard to get a feel for what region your characters are traveling through without a visual aid of some sort. To help with this I spent a lot of time and energy on building a nice looking map. I also made a not so nice looking map with underlying features visible for my personal use. Below are these maps, respectively:
In that same vein I also created a large document, that I called a bible, that had two forms. The one for the players had easily accessible information on setting-specific features and mechanics as well as relevant flavor for the campaign; the other for myself that had all/most of what the players had and then all the secret information and historical timelines of Tharstradt as well as any corrections to purposely erroneous information that was in the player's bible.
My guiding principle for writing about the plots and history of Tharstradt was that most interesting happenstance stems from perversion of a simple tenant. An example of this is the Pyrheliodiumites, an order of monks that revere the metaphorical spark, taken literally, of life within every living thing as holy fire. The way they showed this reverence was by abhorring external heat sources and mastering their emotions to have a cold demeanor in order to reduce cross contamination from sources of light and heat like the sun.
The two major political forces that players were concerned with were the Republic of Flach (West Flach) and the Independent Unified Socialist Democratic State of East Flach. The movers and shakers of both governments were mostly interested in innovation, research, and development. West Flach focused on magic and East Flach focused on mundane technology. Instead of pitting the two forces against each other, they were in a state of long term cordial cooperation. The way I explained these sorts of fortunate circumstances was that in a world where people remember any number of atrocities throughout human history, many who viewed their birth on Tharstradt as a second chance spent their efforts trying to prevent atrocities.
One of the more interesting anecdotes from playing this campaign came from my implementation of lycanthropy. I sought a way to make lycanthropy meaningful as opposed to just a simple buff or a type of monster. Resource compilations such as this page online were immensely helpful for developing (read: borrowing) lycanthropy mechanics. Talk of all this led one of my players to absolutely fixate on becoming a werewolf. Some serious struggling with NPCs, other players, and just not being an idiot led to him drinking blood from the decapitated corpse of a lycanthrope. The mechanics I had already set up for this branch of lycanthropy led to him turning into a werewolf and leaving for the wilderness (no longer under this player's control) for three in-game years.
Definitely not what my player was expecting, or wanted, but it was a hilarious story to watch unfold. It ultimately was quite the perversion of his desires and thus quite interesting!
See you later.
Using the Savage Worlds system, one of the worlds that I came up with for an RPG campaign that I ran was a small-ish continent in a world of haphazard magic along various ley lines. The premise was that people from Earth were reborn in this place with no memory of their prior life. As time went on their memories slowly returned and as the ages progressed eventually every life that came to Tharstradt was through a newborn that inherited memories instead of being born as an adult in a mysterious shrine towards the center of the continent.
Understandably, it can be very hard to get a feel for what region your characters are traveling through without a visual aid of some sort. To help with this I spent a lot of time and energy on building a nice looking map. I also made a not so nice looking map with underlying features visible for my personal use. Below are these maps, respectively:
In that same vein I also created a large document, that I called a bible, that had two forms. The one for the players had easily accessible information on setting-specific features and mechanics as well as relevant flavor for the campaign; the other for myself that had all/most of what the players had and then all the secret information and historical timelines of Tharstradt as well as any corrections to purposely erroneous information that was in the player's bible.
My guiding principle for writing about the plots and history of Tharstradt was that most interesting happenstance stems from perversion of a simple tenant. An example of this is the Pyrheliodiumites, an order of monks that revere the metaphorical spark, taken literally, of life within every living thing as holy fire. The way they showed this reverence was by abhorring external heat sources and mastering their emotions to have a cold demeanor in order to reduce cross contamination from sources of light and heat like the sun.
The two major political forces that players were concerned with were the Republic of Flach (West Flach) and the Independent Unified Socialist Democratic State of East Flach. The movers and shakers of both governments were mostly interested in innovation, research, and development. West Flach focused on magic and East Flach focused on mundane technology. Instead of pitting the two forces against each other, they were in a state of long term cordial cooperation. The way I explained these sorts of fortunate circumstances was that in a world where people remember any number of atrocities throughout human history, many who viewed their birth on Tharstradt as a second chance spent their efforts trying to prevent atrocities.
One of the more interesting anecdotes from playing this campaign came from my implementation of lycanthropy. I sought a way to make lycanthropy meaningful as opposed to just a simple buff or a type of monster. Resource compilations such as this page online were immensely helpful for developing (read: borrowing) lycanthropy mechanics. Talk of all this led one of my players to absolutely fixate on becoming a werewolf. Some serious struggling with NPCs, other players, and just not being an idiot led to him drinking blood from the decapitated corpse of a lycanthrope. The mechanics I had already set up for this branch of lycanthropy led to him turning into a werewolf and leaving for the wilderness (no longer under this player's control) for three in-game years.
Definitely not what my player was expecting, or wanted, but it was a hilarious story to watch unfold. It ultimately was quite the perversion of his desires and thus quite interesting!
See you later.
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