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Other Games, Development, & Campaigns => Design, Development, and Gameplay => Topic started by: LiferGamer on July 15, 2020, 10:04:44 AM

Title: Folia (Nest) Homebrew World - Dragons Dominant, Wild West with Cults Galore
Post by: LiferGamer on July 15, 2020, 10:04:44 AM
Here's the initial 'pitch' and more wordy (but not too revealing) opener to the campaign.

The war of annihilation was at hand, the orcish hordes were winning. In a desperate last stand, the grand high arcanist of the elves led the royal guard (the royal family had perished in the fighting, all save the heir) in a charge against the orcish god-that-walked, Balogog, said to be an avatar of Gruumsh himself.

No one knows what weapon the grand high arcanist used. The land was blasted for miles around, and a strange rotting sickness affected it for leagues in the weeks that followed.

All that the remaining civilized races knew, was that the orcish horde was gone, and with it, the greatest of the elvish kingdoms. The orcs were reduced to roaming bands, the elves were broken as a nation, and the other civilized lands were saved. The elvish survivors, warded their cities in the dying land, taking what they could, and sailed to the colonies in the west.

For centuries, the lands to the west were a wasteland. Occasionally, some brave explorers and madmen would venture into the badlands, seeking lost elvish weapons or artifacts from their cities, survivors would come back and tell tales of orcish savages, eking out a living on the plains, bandit gangs driven into the waste, and 'prospectors' looting the long-dead, and creeping around abandoned elvish settlements.

Then, twenty years ago, royal surveyors confirmed the rumors of the land recovering. At great peril they crossed the wastes. While the site of the grand battle was still a blasted waste, that caused sickness in all that dared cross it, the badlands were slowly recovering, and becoming fertile again. The elvish cities still remained warded and locked, with strange and ominous unliving guardians, and the orcs and worse creatures roamed the land, but it was recovering.

His highness,Thomlen Herdan I, cousin to the elvish court [he's a half-elf] issued a royal proclamation claiming all the badlands as sovereign territory. Any freeman that wished it, could claim homestead rights and claim land outside the royal zone. A thriving border town, King's Reach, became the hub for caravans, and adventurers heading west.

With his neighbors to the south rejecting the claim, and a cold war starting, the king is loathe to send troops into the badlands. The solution is to revitalize the guild system. Any guild of freemen, willing to pay for a royal charter, may register for rights to bear arms, enforce the kings law, and take on royal bounties (and 'request' payment from the locals).

A guild requires twelve brave souls, a cash outlay of 500 gold, and the willingness to venture into the badlands.

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So I started the game with some friendly NPC 'officers' of an old guild that needed new blood to get back up to twelve members, so they fronted the fee and recruited the PCs. As a shout out to our old WoW guild (roughly back in Lich King) most of the NPCs were named from old guildies and that informed their class/look/etc.

I'm taking a lot of cues from old Westerns, classic D&D feel, and playing using 5e.

I'd love feedback in general, and barring objections, will post some campaign stuff here; as I don't keep a blog or anything - and my players are unlikely to snoop.