Our current Iron Heroes campaign is nowhere near ending, so this may be a bit premature, but I know that when it's up, I'm going to get tapped to run our first 4e campaign. On a whim, I read Races and Classes last night, and I got a number of cool ideas from it that whirled off into a campaign setting that I'm planning to use when we finally do get around to 4e.

I always set myself a couple of rules when designing worlds. They vary from world to world, but I try to keep them in mind as I go about designing the world so that I maintain consistency.

The rules I set myself this time were:

1) No racial monocultures - this is one rule I almost always make. I can't stand that all Dwarves and only Dwarves live a certain way, all Elves and only Elves live another way, and so on.

2) There has to be something to do in the world other than save it. I really don't like settings where everything is a clash between monolithic good and evil. I also don't like settings where there's one overarching threat, usually the Evil Empire of Whogivesafuck, and it's clear that the PCs ought to be fighting Whogivesafuckians (rhymes with "Kentuckians") instead of doing anything else.

3) The world has to include all the races and all the classes from the PHB, even if it doesn't feature them all equally. This is a 4e campaign setting, after all. Might as well try everything now and see how it all works rather than ruling anything out from the start.

4) No kowtowing to core fluff. Most of it isn't set down anyhow, and there's no sense integrating it now only to have to change it later.

5) The world has a mediaeval, high fantasy feel. I typically avoid these two things in settings I create, so this is a personal challenge. By contrast, the last world I was created was on technological par with Europe and China in the mid 15th century, featured guns, printing, cannons, ocean-going ships, privateers and a new continent that had just been discovered and then colonised by hobgoblins. The world our IH game is in has cars, trains, guns, and other steampunk paraphernalia.

First thoughts on the setting:

There's a surprising emphasis in the Dwarf section of Races and Classes on Dwarven cities being above-ground with subterranean sections instead of completely buried. I saw the picture of a Dwarven city and decided that I wanted one of those to be the main bastion of civilisation near the PCs.

There's also a mention in the human section about the aesthetic of humans riding horses being like bikers roaming a postapocalyptic landscape on motorcycles that triggered something.

So, I had two elements that I wanted - a Dwarven city and nomadic horse-riding tribes of humans.

Basic Outline:

The city of Dwer Tor is built on the western side of a mountain with a lake at its base. The Little Road is a river that stretches from the lake about a hundred kilometres west to the coast, breaking up into a delta that runs through marshland. Dwarf and Halfing merchants ply the river, ferrying rice and iron between Dwer Tor and its trading and farming colonies on the coast. Control of the Little Road's trade is Dwer Tor's source of political power.

Some geography:

At work today,  I started drawing a map by hand, and ended up with a fairly clean copy. I based it roughly off the Western geography of the Americas. The idea was to have the ocean to the west, with a stretch of marshland, rainforest and hill country running up into mountains. On the other side of the mountains were drier plains and hills where the horse riding humans could predominate.

I made two major changes. First, I added a large penninsula that jutted out into the sea, forming a large bay for the Little Road river to terminate in and to give myself a less developed area in case I needed some unknown territory to explore. The second was that I realised that there was no way to get across the map easily because of the giant mountain range in the way.

To solve this, I chopped the mountain range (which I was referring to as "the Rockies" while I worked) in half, leaving two separate ranges with about two hundred kilometres or more between them. Dwer Tor's mountain (also called Dwer Tor) is the northernmost peak in a large chain running south for hundreds of miles, with most of it about a hundred kilometres or less from the coast (possibly along a fault line?). The other set of mountains runs north-east by southwest, from far inland almost to the coast (only about 50km away at its nearest). The southern range (where Dwer Tor is) is tenatively named the Stormbreaker Mountains because they stop storms from from going any further inland. The northern range isn't named yet.

This left me with a huge chunk between the two ranges which I designated as plains and hill country, albeit wetter and more desirable for farming. I put a bunch of lakes in the mountains and had rivers pouring out of them and into the plains to break things up a bit. I tried not to violate any important laws of hydrology. I named the plains the Plains of Kadiz.

New Races:

So, I had a Dwarf city and some human tribes, but I decided to stick to my first rule. In 4e, you've got the classic human, elf, dwarf, halfling, but also tieflings, dragonborn, eladrin. No gnomes at least, which is great since I hate gnomes. I needed places to stick these buggers.

Halflings are supposed to be fond of rivers and marshes, so I decided that they'd be all over the rivers, especially the Little Road and its corresponding Great Road (a big river I ended up drawing that branches off the Little Road and that stretches most of the western penninsula before draining off into the sea). They'd be part of the polity of Dwer Tor, though they probably wouldn't be found much in the city proper.

Eladrin are supposed to be magic elves that like stone and metal, so I thought they'd work well with the Dwarves too. At about this time, I decided that I wanted a far-off kingdom (well, city-state) called the Kingdom of the Fallen Star built in the crater of a meteor. The Eladrin of Dwer Tor would be refugees from that kingdom, an awesome and terrible place somewhere to the far south. I didn't put it on my map. This also gave me the neat idea of more meteors falling - maybe meteors just drop out of the sky every so often to the chagrin of everyone nearby?

Most elves would live with the human tribes on the savannah / pampas / plains. This would explain half-elves. Other tribes of elves would be found with independent groups of halflings in those marshes and rainforests between the Stormbreakers and the sea.

This left me with Tieflings and Dragonborn. Tieflings are supposed to be modified humans originally. This meant that I needed an explanation for who was doing the modifying. I decided that another city would be fine. I was reading about the Spartan constitution, so I drew on my pitiful knowledge of Greek and came up with the Orthocracy of Kaddish (with the idea that "Kadiz" and "Kaddish" were originally the same word). I decided that they would have a class of people called soulsmiths or soulforgers and that it would be the application of this art that would create Tieflings. For good measure, I decided that Dragonborn were a variation on the same process, and I decided to leave it open-ended whether there were other varieties.

I put the Orthocracy at the disjunction of a river near to the northern range of mountains. This put them at the other end of the plains from Dwer Tor. I estimated the distance between them as the distance between Toronto and Kingston, Ontario (~250-300km) which seems far enough that they aren't always warring, but near enough that they might jostle for power. I decided the Orthocracy was mainly human, with tieflings, dragonborn and halflings as sizable minorities.

I now had two groups of humans. Some were elf-loving, plains-riding nomads, and some were transhumanist urbanites.

Good governance:

Reading about the Spartan constitution made me want to have crazy and byzantine political systems for Dwer Tor, the plainsmen and the Orthocracy of Kaddish, but that shit's never too interesting for PCs to actually sort through.

So, I decided to keep it relatively simple:

Dwer Tor is run by a king who is advised by a group of councilors and ministers. Citizens are one of three classes: Optimates, Thaumates, or Helots. Optimates are the merchants and professional warriors, Thaumates are casters, doctors and other skilled professionals, and Helots are manual labourers including most trades. Only Optimates and Thaumates can be ministers or councilors. Dwer Tor is all about making money. It caters to trade and doesn't care what you buy or sell so long as nothing rocks the boat.

The Orthocracy of Kaddish is a radical and highly unstable democracy. In practice, it's mob rule with powerful demagogues and cult leaders vying for votes. It used to be a kingdom, but a revolution killed the king and drove off his heirs. It's a dynamic and fickle place, host to powerful magic and capable of deploying mighty armies, but only if its citizens can even make up their minds to go to war in the first place.

The nomads of Kadiz are the descendants of loyalists to the former kings of Kaddish. Each tribe originally backed a different pretender to the throne. They have since become clans, most with a single autocratic head and a number of informal advisers. Dwer Tor and the Orthocracy each try to buy the loyalty of the clans to use against the other. Battles between the two are usually fought on the plains of Kadiz, so chiefs must choose their allegiance wisely.

Next time:

Places to go, things to kill, stuff to take.

Places to Go:

Remember, rule #2 was that there had to be something to do in the world other than save it. This means interesting locations to explore, strange beasts to fight, and so on. I have to be a bit vague because my potential PCs might read this. Here are the some of the ideas I had:

The Harrow Downs- A ring of megaliths and dolmen located in the barren southern plains, it was once used for sacrificing humanoids.

The Cyclopean Barrow - A meteor struck the side of a hill and rather than leave a crater, it left a long shaft down into blackness. Being thrown down the shaft is the cruelest punishment the tribes inflict. No one knows what's down there.

Ruins of Amber - South of the Last River, out where the plains become desert, lay the ruins of a city of some sort. It appears to have been carved from amber.

More to come as I think of them.

Love it and couldn't agree more about your Rule 2.

QuoteSo, I decided to keep it relatively simple

Nice one - I hate it when everything's spelled out + set in stone from the start. I especially like how you've found a place for the eladrin, tieflings and dragonborn.

I really like what you've done with the Orthocracy of Kaddish, and may well steal the idea for my True20 S&S campaign. A teeming city-state on the precipice of anarchy as cults and demagogues vie for power appeals to me on a number of levels. Good work.

QuoteI decided that they would have a class of people called soulsmiths or soulforgers and that it would be the application of this art that would create Tieflings. For good measure, I decided that Dragonborn were a variation on the same process

Why did these soulforger blokes create tieflings + dragonborn ?

What's their status within the Orthocracy - or does it just depend who you talk to ?

I might adapt this to HARP for the lads using gryx and lizardman instead.

Even though I'm somewhat apathetic towards 4e, this sounds like a very cool setting.  I look forward to reading more!

I'd like to know more about how tieflings & dragonborn fit into Kaddish society.

Thanks for the support guys. I've been off running around for the past few days, but I've finally gotten a chance to do some more work on it.

Recent history:

I hate laying out the ten thousand-year long history of the ancient empires of Griblax and Bloop, so here's the history that would be important to someone living in this world.

For centuries, there was the Kingdom of High Kaddish in the north, between the Birth and Death rivers. Across the plains of Kadiz, Dwer Tor stood independent and proud in the south. After the last of the hill elves were driven back just over a century ago, the two cities broke out into war with one another.

Kaddish lost, and its king was about to surrender when radical demagogues within the city seized control, drove him out, and mustered every last soldier they could find to drive back the Dwer forces.

The king and the noble houses fled the city and settled on the plains between the cities, hiding in the vast savannah. Dwer Tor supported him, and his descendants, with arms and money against the Kaddish, though neither side fully trusts the other. The former nobles and their servants have become a nomadic people, herding cattle, sheep, bison and horses while roaming the plains.

The Races and Customs of the Orthocracy:

Kaddish is a city teeming with people. Farmers fled the land during the war, and many of their descendants stayed to work. Though not a resource-rich city, the land is good and the weather mild, and food grows all year round. Supposedly a democracy, Kaddish is run in practice by demagogues, cult leaders and oligarchs who can muster the popular support to pass the laws they please. Panics, riots, shortages, and assassinations all happen frequently. Uprisings are frequent, though none have been successful yet.

The real wealth of Kaddish is its people's drive to innovate. The best wizards, engineers, rhetors, merchants, doctors, sages and swordsmen all come to or from Kaddish. It is the only place where the knowledge of soulforging is preserved from the ancient days of the Dawnmen, and the soulcrafters of Kaddish strive to outdo their predecessors each day. Goblins, Vampires, Drow, Dragonborn, Tieflings, all were born in the crucible-creches of Kaddish, though most have established themselves independently of their birth city.

The soulforged, as these creatures are known, are found across all strata of society. Dragonborn veterans form a powerful political force in the city based around the Red and Blue Snake Cults. They are often re-mustered by the rich to break up riots and uprisings. As a group, they are considered the most loyal to the Orthocracy, the species having been created just before revolution.

Tieflings and Drow are the results of the same procedure performed on different rootstock (human and elf respectively) and are seen as more or less the same as one another, barring a few minor physical differences (pejoratively, they are referred to as "the burnt" after their darker appearances and demonic origins). Generally speaking, there are few middle-class Tieflings or Drow. Burnt subculture is very heavily based on patronage, with many lower-class tieflings and drow supporting a single patron. He in turn hands out rewards to his most loyal and useful supporters.

The humans of Kaddish consider themselves to be descendants of the Dawnmen. The most conservative and the most radical members of the populace tend to be human, and they form the rootstock for most of the soulforged. The few elves in Kaddish are treated as if they were human rather than as a distinct group, though elves are almost entirely part of the lower class. Humans in Kaddish have only dark hair - other shades are signs of interbreeding with the Salt Men or the mountain tribes.

They are polygamous but matriarchal, with all the wives of a husband considered collectively as the mothers of all of his children, and descent (when it matters) tracked through mother-clusters rather than fathers. Large families are common, and complicated kin networks take over many of the responsibilities that the government would elsewhere.

There are few dwarves, eladrin or halflings to be found in the Orthocracy.

The Races and Customs of Dwer Tor:

Dwer Tor has three classes, optimates, thaumates, and helots. It also has a large underclass of slaves, mainly elves, halflings and humans. Dwarves and Eladrin are the upper class of society, and most optimates and thaumates are Eladrin or Dwarves. Poorer dwarves, halflings and humans form most of the helot class, with most non-dwarven helots living outside the city in subject territories as farmers.

Dwer Tor is a rich city but its food supply is tenuous. It must import rice from the coast along the Little Road, and it trades arms and money to the nomads of Kadiz for livestock to feed its warriors. Dwer Tor is known for its fine metalwork, and is the only place where plate mail and other heavy armours can be forged. Most coinage found is of Dwer Tor origin - the Kaddish lack a mint, while the nomads barter or use Dwer Tor coins. Almost anything made of gold or silver is from Dwer Tor, since they are the only source of these metals.

Dwer Tor has a number of trading villages far away from the city proper. The most important of these are found along the Little Road and on the coast. The population is mostly halfling and human, with perhaps a single Eladrin or Dwarf optimate as overseer. As well as producing food for the city, these villages serve as waypoints for the ships of the Salt Men, so-called because they use salt as currency amongst themselves. Silk, opium, peppers, ceramic and glass come to Dwer Tor, along with many other strange artifacts, from this trade.

Though originally Dwarvish, the Eladrin arrived in Dwer Tor centuries ago, fleeing a place they refer to as the Kingdom of the Fallen Star far to the south. Nothing more is known of the place, and impenetrable swamp has prevented any exploration. Though some Eladrin are still alive who remember the place, succeeding generations have integrated fully into the culture of Dwer Tor. Eladrin and dwarves will intermarry for political reasons, though such unions are sterile and uncommon. More dwarves are optimates, and more Eladrin are thaumates, but the division between the two classes is functional rather than hierarchical (whereas both classes are above the helots and slaves).

Optimates are the political class. Warriors, merchants and politicians are optimates. Once married, optimates receive a stipend from the king based on the number of children they have and their service to the state. An optimate is identified by his descent.

Thaumates are the expert class. All skilled professions of interest to the state (alchemists, engineers, doctors, architects, accountants, sages, etc.), and anyone who can cast magic and is not an optimate, is a thaumate. Collectively, they control the religious life of the city, the calendar, and the city's layout. All thaumates must belong to a guild, a church, or another organisation with state approval which supports them in their livelihood. A thaumate is identified by his organisation.

Helots are all unskilled labourers, all manual labourers and any skilled professions that are not of interest to the state (blacksmiths, carpenters, farmers, cooks, etc.). Helots are inferior to the other two classes socially. They are forbidden to carry any weapons unless ordered to by an optimate. However, they are still citizens of Dwer Tor and have certain rights - they cannot be assaulted without reason, their goods cannot be seized without recompense, and they may move and resettle as they please. Helots are identified by their deme of origin.

Slaves are below all of these classes. Dwer Tor makes extensive use of slave labour, especially in its mines and as construction workers on state buildings. Farming, non-sexual servitude, and artisanal work are left to helots. Slaves are generally captured hill elves, bog halflings and Kaddish prisoners too poor to be ransomed. Slaves are property of the state, and are rented to optimates or thaumates as required. Killing or maiming a slave is damaging state property, and they enjoy a small amount of protection from the worst abuses from this. Their lives are typically short and miserable.


Hope that answers some questions.

More places to go, people to see, things to kill:

The Goblins of Moon Peak- In ages past, the Dawnmen hammered silver and gold into the souls of their greediest halfling slaves and created the goblin race to ferret out precious metals for them. The goblins of Moon Peak have kept true to that, and now sit atop the only known gold mine in the northern mountains. Though the mountain where the mine is found is known, few know the secret passes and trails needed to reach, a secret the goblins guard well.

They long ago swore fealty to Dwer Tor, and eladrin cataphractoi guard their yearly caravans as they wind their way across the plains of Kadiz to the City of Stone. Moon Peak goblins are rarely seen, even in Dwer Tor, without Dwarvish phalangists to protect them from kidnappers. The reclusive but fabulously wealthy goblins are rumoured to have an entire cavern filled with gold bars.

The Hill Elves - A by-word for savagery, the hill elves live in the foothills around the Stormbreaker Mountains. The more advanced tribes are now part of the nomads of the Kadiz, but older and more conservative tribes have never come down from their barrows. The tribes have some halfling and half-elf members, but are mostly elves. The hill elves come from a time before cities, and resent especially the men of Kaddish, who drove them off the plains with sword and fire. They are notorious bandits and cannibals.

The Falling Islands - Located off the northern coast of the penninsula, the legend goes that these islands fell from the sky one day in a great cloud of smoke. No one has been there since the fall of the Kingdom of Kaddish, and the records of that voyage were lost in the revolution.

Ok, that was a fat wad of pre-made stuff without much explanation behind it. The basic idea is that Dwer Tor is kind of a Spartan state capitalism, while the Orthocracy of Kaddish is just a mess, but a glorious and inventive mess. The two cities don't really have a ton of power projection - I refer to Dwer Tor as a "state" a couple of times, but that's just because I didn't know what else to call it without sounding even more grandiose.

I'm really thinking of it as a collection of trading villages, a big river, and a city at the other end of the river. That gives me something cool to have attacked, or for the PCs to sneak around in (the big fortified city), but also satisfies my own need to have an explanation for how a big fortified city built into the side of a mountain doesn't starve. I'd say my world building is fairly strongly influenced by China Mieville's Bas-Lag series, with the same sort of Marxist concern for how people are fed, and what they work at, and how they find themselves free and unfree.

That lack of power projection is gonna be important, because I'm thinking the PCs will be nomads, which means they'll be caught between these two cities. It also means the land between them is not civilised, settled farms broken up by irrigation ditches every half mile, but is a barbarous contested wilderness where you're as likely to wander into wolves that spit acidic death rays as an enemy column.

The Hill Elves are part of that too. If there was only the one group on the plains - the nomads of Kadiz - then things would be way too settled. Even if NPCs couldn't travel safely across the plains, the PCs certainly could as nomads. This way, you've got a rival group struggling for power. I see them as hiding in the tall grasses of the plains, waiting for someone to come traipsing by on their horse, then feathering him with arrows before emerging screaming and howling to dismember what's left and drag it back into the grass, leaving only a bloodstain behind. "Where's Eorlic? He's been gone for hours." "The elves got him. Tell his mother."

The gobs are just someone to rob. I always enjoy pairing up traditional enemies in my games. I find it kind of silly that across all possible D&D worlds, goblins and dwarves always hate one another, etc. Also, it reinforces how rare gold and silver are, and how rich the goblins are, that the dwarves are willing to team up with goblins to control a gold mine (the _only_ gold mine).

I like the origin story of goblins too. Though it's not clear from way I wrote those posts, I came up with the idea of goblins being soulforged halflings _first_, then thought that Drow would be cool as soulforged elves. The reason that there are few halflings to be found in the Orthocracy is that they stay the hell away from any place that's going to turn them into gobs and then use them as hunting dogs for precious metals.

Ok, so I've written more than enough about those two bloody cities. I don't want them to overwhelm the rest of the setting. I'm going to leave them at that unless someone else wants more info for now.

More cool places to go, things to kill, people to see:

The Storm Bull Graveyard - A great pile of cattle skulls (and only skulls) between two hills. No one knows who put them there, and those who remove one are cursed. A great wind blows between the hills and through the skulls, making a noise many claim sounds like lowing. The priests of the storm bulls claim this is where their gods were born. A great holy place for the nomads, but a favoured ambush ground of the Hill Elves.

Giant Mound - Stretching into the sky and visible several miles away is a dirt mound of unknown origin. At night, a blue glow can be seen on the top of the mound. No one has ever returned.

The Great Southerly Road - Here before Dwer Tor, it was this road that the Eladrin took through the southern swamps when they fled the Kingdom of Fallen Stars. Though paved with stone and dry throughout, the dwarves did not build it, nor did the eladrin. It is the only passable route through the swamp, but still not safe, since monsters lurk near it waiting for prey.

OK, all this stuff so far has been places to go, or things to kill, or whatever you call the stuff that turns into the stuff you set a stage with. Really, this game isn't about the culinary habits of Dwer Tor optimates or whatever the fuck, it's set on the Plains of Kadiz, and the PCs are going to be nomads roaming around them kicking the shit out of things and taking their stuff.

The vision I keep on having of these plains is scrubland. I want long stretches of open country with rolling hills and the occasional cluster of tall grass or trees. I don't want a desert, I want something like the steppes of Asia or the African savannah or the pampas or the great plains of North America. Ravines, gulches and wadis break up lines of sight and serve to hide bandits. Every so often you might see a few tents pitched off on the horizon, but otherwise there's a tremendous sense of solitude that hangs over the traveler. Features and landmarks exist in isolation - a single boulder at the top of a hill, a lone tree or oasis, a flame miles away in the night.

I want the feel and look of the people of the plains to convey impermanence. I want a kind of postapocalyptic feel to the way they look - patched together clothing, tents instead of buildings, no roads, picked-over bodies thrown into ditches or burnt instead of being buried or entombed, warriors constantly sharpening notched blades and checking their equipment. The landscape echoes them in this respect - dried-up rivers, a wind that flares up and dies down unexpectedly, dust storms and seed pods constantly blowing about.

The nomads have large amounts of personal space - they stand more than an arm's length away from one another when talking casually. This lets me model someone taking up twenty-five square feet of personal space on the battlemat without it seeming like an exorbitant amount. They mostly ride horses and banners are a common form of identification. Because they lack expensive dyes, the banners are usually abstract designs in black-on-cotton (also because it means I can draw them easily on our whiteboard). The wealth of the nomads is calculated in steel and livestock. Their clothes are thick wool and leather, pinned and tied together. No buttons, no buckles. They wear kilts and cloaks and wrap up the rest of the skin to protect it from the dust.

Some things I want to avoid:

Magic Indians - No wise old shamans who can see into the souls of men and who speak in cryptic allegories drawn from the myths of their people yet which possess surprising relevance blah blah blah. No "the earth is our mother" stuff. No "they're trying to steal our land!". If anything, I want the nomads to feel like the Macedonian armies of Alexander the Great (and this loose, and almost entirely inappropriate, comparison is about as close to a pastiche of any group as the nomads will get).

Swarthy Troublemakers - No dudes dressed entirely in fur who laugh at death and possess moustaches longer than their fingers. No ululating shouts. Someone must make a living off of something other than banditry.

The founding myth:

The nomads were once the retainers and members of the oligarchic families that ran Kaddish. They were driven over a century ago and their heirs have adapted to the plains as nomads. The future-nomads were not driven out empty handed, but left in force and took much with them. While they no longer have the industrial base or the population of the Orthocracy, they are not primitive barbarians. As once-oligarchs however, their customs were already distinct from the plebs of Kaddish and have since diverged considerably.

Pukka!

Who drove the nobles out ?

I'm going to leave that undetermined for now. I've got a couple of reasons for that:

1) It doesn't matter too much to gameplay yet. I haven't written a lot of history for this setting, and much of it is very vague. That's intentional. My PCs probably won't be historians, and there's no sense in having ten thousand years of history planned out when they just want to smash goblins.

2) I want to avoid the Star Wars Prequel thing, where it turns out the fall of the  ten-thousand year Old Republic comes about from... tax protesters.

3) I want the rulers of the Orthocracy of New Kaddish to be kind of shadowy and diffuse. The vaguer I leave their political organisation and its history, the more mysterious and weird it appears.

Good thinking, sound ideas about the nomads