When I set out to make a setting all my own, I knew it needed to lend itself well to particular kinds of stories to be told, and that it needed to do things different enough to justify not using the rulebook's core setting. Fortunately, this idea came pretty easily to me. Most tabletop RPGs seem to focus hard on the most fantastical of scenarios and the most dangerous of threats. In light of that I wondered what the game might look like if it was set in a world not fraught with cataclysmic dangers, but simply harried by smaller scale threats. A world where the stories aren't about the epic stand of the heroes to barely hold together the world as they know it, but the more intimate stories about bands of adventurers who face threats to protect the homes, people, and ideals they cherish. That's not to say major threats couldn't arise, but if the party died the aftermath would more be neighboring countries needing to run damage serious control rather than the doom of all that is. The other big goal was to make the setting approachable, as I know it'd likely see use with casual non-gamers based on my friend groups

The setting itself takes place on a world with four continents (or at least four discovered continents), and the design was heavily inspired by the spirit of the Age of Exploration and my own need to keep things manageable. In the eastern hemisphere there are two continents. The northernmost continent of Einheit is essentially Europe, with 9 countries crammed onto a single land mass and overall the most known area of the world in terms of what's where. To the south east is the continent of Leben, a land defined by the duality between the gently rolling hills and plains where people flourish, and the vast deserts rife with hardship and old ruins with clues about the fate of those regions (this one was inspired by the Starfinder planet Verces). In the western hemisphere there is one large continent called Neuwald, whose thick forests have yet to be penetrated and explored by civilization. Linking southwest Leben to south Neuwald is a vast archipelago called the Miriam Isles, which has its share of settled islands and complete mysteries, with the former becoming less common the further west one sails. By this setup, I've aimed to have Realm of Succor support multiple kinds of campaigns and writing styles, depending on weather the story needs a more detailed base to go off of for intrigue, or a deliberately underwritten area for more discovery based narratives. This also gives the layout of the world a pleasing U shape which I find easy to picture in my head.

The setting currently has a total of 16 countries written. As I mentioned Einheit has 9 of them, and I do have some reservations about how well I've managed to differentiate them, but I am fairly satisfied with most of them. It includes two racial capitals, a large country which admittedly needs a little more fleshing out for one so large but essentially functions as a mini United States in terms of structure, a kingdom that proudly and stubbornly survives despite bearing the brunt of the trouble that comes from the one major unclaimed area on the continent, an altruistic kingdom, a kingdom of the arts, an insular but well-meaning military state, a feudal state, and a small dukedom trying to gain wealth. Leben has 4 and feels perhaps a bit underdeveloped at present but I'm confident that something's at least there. It has a holy land, a nobleman's getaway, a country with lots of martial traditions, and a kingdom valued by others mostly for its proximity to the Miriam Isles (this one I'll definitely take another pass on at some point). The Miriam Isles is a bit more experimental in than the rest in that conceptually the biggest island near Leben (Nue Larum) is a heavily urbanized island lead by four noble houses who sponsor new settlements on other islands in exchange for having governmental oversight, essentially making Nue Larum a seat of ever expanding power, kept in check only by the shared authority of the houses. Finally Neuwald has 2 countries, both on the southern edge of the continent. I like these ones because each culture can look at the other and peer through time in doing so, seeing either where they came from, or where they are working towards. One is a country of mainly entrepreneurs and adventurers that has recently come into its own despite its relative youth, and the other is barely a country at all and feels more like a frontier or a colony.

In terms or races, the setting is currently written with four big ones, Humans, Dwarves, Half-Elves, and Half-Orcs. Now this spread is definitely odd so let's take it slow. Humans are obviously the simplest to understand and don't really need an explanation so I won't bore you. Half-Orcs are mostly unchanged from their origins as being born of orcish atrocity against humans, but as a major race one can assume the human parents of these children have acted significantly more ideally towards them than another setting might assume. I get that's not particularly realistic, but I figured I'd just embrace it. With the half-elves, I saw an opportunity where it could be that true elves were one of the major races in antiquity, but some event caused them to die off or disappear, leaving the half-elves as the remaining evidence of their existence. I thought this could give them a unique paradigm, with elements like their racial capital being an inherited country rather than something of their own making, and culturally really stand out. I should mention though that between the humans, half-elves, and half-orcs, I envisioned them to be overall more of a cultural unit rather than three completely separate entities, which I think allows them to be played more flexibly than the usual fantasy concept of "race." After all, they share a common ancestry in their humanity. The game calls them races, but in practice I see them as more distinct variations of human rather than totally different things. This leaves the dwarf race, who I've also written with respect to the disappearance of the elves. I imagine elves are seen from an archetypal standpoint as the wise guides for their shorter-lived contemporaries. In a setting where they disappeared, I thought that it would be interesting if the second longest lived race would rise to fill that role. Effectively, the dwarves as written did exist in the setting's history, but upon winning the title of longest lived race they had a cultural shift where they trimmed their beards and watched how much ale they downed per night. Obviously their words of wisdom are different from what the elves might have said, but the point being they take up that role for the other three races where they otherwise may never have. I also included some minor races in Tengu, Aasimar, and Tiefling for those players who really want some extra options but their overall prevalence is appropriately small so I won't detail them here.

This next section I think I would normally scribe later down, but I think I'll need it for context in the Classes section. This is also the point where most people are going to write me off as a loser and I lose my credibility but here we go. When it comes to cosmology, I have elected to just use a fantasy rendition of Catholicism for it. I know, its really silly but hear me out. I meet a lot of people through church communities and if I run a game with some people from them, I'd like to make jumping into the roleplay as easy as possible for them. From personal experience, trying to assume the role of an adherent of another faith while having strong convictions in real life can feel super awkward and the last thing I want to do is make my friends uncomfortable by telling them they can only play cleric or paladin if they pretend to worship some nerdy deity. I know I'm a lot more comfortable in those roles if I can just play as a Catholic. Admittedly, this is an element of the setting I'm willing to essentially reskin based on group needs, but when detailing the setting this is just what I really wanna write, and you are 100% allowed to think less of me for it. In any case I'll only really mention this wherever it was a hard influence on the design of the setting like in the next section so I promise I tried to make it a part of the setting rather than the whole foundation of it. Besides I just really think monotheism helps the project stand out.

For classes, the setting narrows it down to just 6. Barbarian, Cleric, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, and Rouge. The setting felt more internally consistent if the faith was the only way to produce caster abilities, so that is why the arcane classes (though put a pin in these) and the nature casting classes were removed (I know there's magic-based rouge talents but I figured those would be easy enough to re-flavor as gizmos or techniques so I gave it a pass). The classes themselves haven't changed much in flavor, just the cleric having more limited options, and the monk's ki points making more sense as something less mystical, such as representing their stamina to perform their feats. I will say though, I am totally going to reinterpret barbarian rage as simply "a burst of emotion" and encourage players to enter the rage state through whichever emotion sounds the most fun for their character (sobbing berserkers anyone?).

Of course all these character options are fine as they are, but as the power is scaled eventually the characters are going to reach a point where the only thing that will challenge them is those battles against extinction or similarly over the top situations, which is why my most significant change to the rules will be the setting by default capping at level 10. This has some other ripple effects such as creating a limitation on what magic items and enchantments can exist (which is already limited by what spells are on the cleric spell list) but ultimately those effects don't bother me in the face of weaving the kinds of adventures the setting strives to achieve.

Now to finish up with some smaller things I made notes of in no particular order. The bestiary, aside from having high CR monsters that just won't work in lvl10 max setting, is definitely at the mercy of weather or not I think any given category of monster makes sense in the setting, but I am thinking of ways of applying into the world in new ways. For example to gives entities like zombies precedent without introducing arcane necromancy outright, I came up with the gems of dark power called Blightstones which could essentially act as cores for them, or "hearts" if you will. In fact maybe these buggers could be responsible for all kinds of phenomena like corrupting people who hold on to them for too long and giving them eldritch powers at the cost of their sanity, which would give the arcane caster stat blocks and Spell Immunity something to do. Additionally I do plan to make original monsters for the setting too. I've been working for starters to make my own monstrous races so I do not have be obligated to put Goblins in the setting for example, though at present they are aggressively under powered and I have some anxieties about their physical descriptions feeling too amateurish.

You may have noticed a few moments in my pitches where history seems to play a big part in the current state of the world, but honestly when I tried making a timeline of world events I found myself having a hard time to come up with stuff to plot out and how to space it out so the progression of time felt natural, so I wonder if making a timeline specifically is really all that important.

I also tried writing up a few international factions to give the world a collection of organizations that felt relatively omnipresent, but other than the church I couldn't think of anything that really called for it so I may rework what this category actually refers to so I can write about more globally shared things easier.

Finally I did write up some "iconics" to get a feel for how player characters might look in my world, but this was done mostly for fun and they felt bare bones anyways.