I've been mulling on potential campaign ideas for future games I might try out with my current players, or a new group down the line, and one idea that came to me was to have a setting based on the (admittedly exaggerated and often flat) "Western" trope. I listened to Critical Role's Deadwood miniseries and found it rich and inspiring. A story taking place on the edge of major political entities is part-and-parcel to DnD, but I imagine this setting could take it a step further and really lean into the large, untamed geography and expansiveness of a region where the terrain and climate itself presents major obstacles.
The PCs could, in this thinking, meet in like the one settlement of any notable size in a massively unknown part of, say, the Forgotten Realms' Faerun continent, dropped there by an airship instead of trains that only makes a stop in said town every so often. They're isolated and far from most of the things considered "civilization" and the people in the region are hard and scrappy, requiring the players to think about how they can maintain their gear/equipment or concoct even basic potions that are otherwise rare and expensive. Keeping with the motif, everything outside of this settlement is pretty far away and dangerous – gangs and hostile folks, ruins and mysteries, all the usual stuff.
I suspect I'd have to home-brew some content but that's okay, that could be fun and a lot of items in 5e could be easily reskinned for this purpose. Guns might be the only trope that would require some real thought, but they exist already and magic wands function in a gun-like manner so could provide a basis to work with. I also don't want to exclude melee, or other ranged items and spells, even if the game might lend itself to Artificer and Gunslinger types and tools. "Western" frontiers, be they deserts or steppes or craggy mountains or grassy plains, have existed around the world long before guns did and people were exploring those for millennia.
Anyway, thought I'd throw this out onto the communal whiteboard to see if anyone else has ideas, or had done/seen done a game like this! At this stage it's just the earliest percolations, so I'm open to a lot of influence or suggestions for where I can get ideas for world-building, peopling, content-making or story arcs!
Eberron is a good example of a D&D setting that just has trains - the Wild West has serious issues if you introduce zeppelins as a primary means of transport, so I'd stick to trains (which can only go where the railroad construction crew has already been) and wagons as primary transports. You can have airships, but they should be extremely impractical - some combination of expensive, unreliable, etc. Train robberies are core to the tropes involved here. Zeppelin robberies require worryingly powerful bandits.
You don't need firearms, mechanically - you can reskin crossbows - but Wild West stories usually involve firearms that don't need to be reloaded every shot, so you might indeed want to use the DMG rules for more advanced firearms, so your revolvers act like revolvers without needing the Crossbow Expert feat and a hand crossbow.
Q'barra, from the Eberron book, is something you may want to look into, and it provides some hints.
The West, as a setting, is less about guns (however beloved the Gunslinger character archetype is) and more about, as you said, an untapped frontier and the hardened, grizzled men making their way out there. One thing you'll want to keep in mind is that there needs to be a reason for people to be out there. In Q'barra's case it's because the region is extremely rich in fantastically valuable Dragonshards; in the historical Old West it was gold and/or the promised of wide-open, nearly free space with which to make your living. In D&D it could be the newly discovered ruins of an ancient, forgotten civilization, replete with fantastical and exceptionally valuable artifacts - as well as the dangers of any dungeon. Perhaps the rough, jagged hills of an inhospitable badland is freshly discovered to actually be the crashed remains of an ancient magitech floating sky-city, and now people are starting to poke through the wastes in search of treasure.
In whichever case, there needs to be a resource of some sort drawing people to the area, something that makes putting up with the intense challenges of the frontier worth it. The players need not necessarily be after that resource themselves, but the mere existence of such a thing can drive the story. After all, without some sort of valuable resource to be claimed there's no frontier town to do the claiming, and with no frontier town you have no bandits to prey on said town, no base of operations for the PCs, no collection of hardscrabble NPCs trying to make it out here, no supply lines to be disrupted...nada.
Figuring out what the Resource your frontiersmen are after is should probably be the start of your game planning. Things like figuring out how to do gunslingers is kinda secondary - the character trope of the gunslinger is more about toughness, self-sufficiency, and mastery of their chosen weapon than about the gun itself. You can make a character that feels like an Old West gunslinger regardless of weapon or method. And figuring out what the Resource is lets you figure out the rest of the setting much more easily.
Helpful! And a good point, though of course people did (and do) live in the Old West long before gold and other resources were discovered there, as is true for Australia and the Taklamakkan Desert/Central Steppes in Asia and around Africa and elsewhere. That said, other people did not begin expanding or colonizing without some kind of reason or drive to do so, and a frontier town survives on some kind of trade whether it's resources being found or produced. I imagine I can people that one settlement with all sorts of usual types – farmers from nearby homesteads, missionaries from distant temples to nearly-unheard-of gods, prospectors and the like – without much more explanation of "why" but outside of the settlement might be harder without a reason to justify the expenses of maintaining even a remote frontier town. The idea of some "newly discovered" ruins or wreckage, or uncovered resources of great value/great risk, or the rumors of a dragon hoard now open as the Smaug-like monster has perished, that could do it. As it is, I envision it as a pitstop on the Golden Way between the far east and far west, not much more than that – but sustained because it's the only secure source of water and habitation for leagues.
Perhaps though, unusually-potent warlords with some means of bringing down airships and caravans (because railway takes more infrastructure to sustain I'm inclined to go with magical airships, albeit these too are rare) that traverse from Shou Lung to Thesk through the Wastes could be an interesting hostile force, either becoming a power that threatens that trade or even the discoverers of some ruins (and/or, have managed to secure something of great value from a pilfered airship).
I do like the idea of a West without being married to guns, though I also think some steampunky elements might be fun without becoming the dominant driver (like from Eberron). But mostly I like the idea that the players would have to face the kind of challenges that might be presented from scarcity, isolation, and grand distance, and carving out a story for themselves without a clear structure at least to start.
I know this isn't quite the same, but I do recall hearing one idea of a campaign reminiscent of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The characters are plopped onto the very edge of the known world and are tasked with exploring it. There are no roads. No cities. No maps. No plots or schemes. Just a vast, unexplored frontier that the players get to discover. There'd likely be a settlement that they could return to in order to resupply and turn in any discoveries for pay, but while they're out in the wilderness, they're on their own.
THAT's kinda interesting, too...and provides a degree of structure for players to be "doing" a thing (cartography, maybe botany and such; or, escorting NPCs doing that) that leads them into the unknown.
THAT's kinda interesting, too...and provides a degree of structure for players to be "doing" a thing (cartography, maybe botany and such; or, escorting NPCs doing that) that leads them into the unknown.
You might want to consider a Hex Crawl or West Marches structure. Both rely on the characters exploring the unknown and (from time to time) returning to the last bastion of civilization to restock and share information.
Each can/would work just fine in your Western theme.
Keep in mind that the American west was really explored not by the cowboys and miners but by the mountain men who were out there after furs that were no longer available in the east or Europe. Also, the land was already occupied by the native Americans you will need to think through how your going to populate the region especially if your going to try to limit racial prejudices within Demi humans and / or humanoids in general. Guns are not the problem- gunpowder/smoke powder is. I don’t allow it in my world but we do have repeating “crossbows” and “hand crossbows”. A bow is just a leaf spring of some sort- use a curled spring in a chamber you load a dart into and a mechanism to rotate the chambers and you have a hand crossbow revolver. Two evenly matched opposed curled springs moving a loading/ firing chamber over a clip of bolts gives you a repeating “crossbow” rifle/msg. If you want some inspiration for story arcs try some of Louis lamour’s early Sacket novels that cover the period from about 1590 to 1830, or william Johnstone’s mountain man series about his character Preacher. If you want to avoid both trains and airships it’s easy- have your settlement be at the head of the ocean accessible part of a river and be supplied by ships. They might even have some problems with pirates.
I am somewhat drawn to the idea of handcrossbows functioning as a thematic stand-in for guns, and the idea of a repeater crossbow is kinda cool. Or even a magic crossbow that functions in that way. Of course spellcasters won't feel that need at all, but part of me envisions setting a tone where my PCs see themselves in this kinda Western-punk environment and build their characters accordingly.
I'll look into those novels. I want to capture the expanse of the frontier and a range of biomes, but that may simply be impossible to consider "practically" given how nature and geography work. Of course magic is magic in this world but still – some degree of plausibility is nice. In that sense I'm combining the real-world inspirations of West China/Central Asia + the frontier of North America + the swaths of the Sahel in Africa. How I do that exactly might simply be to say the most different biomes are the most far away from one another – I envision this to be very much a campaign where my PCs would be on their own for a lot.
Peopling, and even incorporating some of the tragedies that real history is replete with as potential missions, is something I think will be interesting for them. Building this into a story that can take them up to the teens in levels if not 20 allows for a lot of little cliche missions lifted from Red Dead and elsewhere, along with explorations and encountering beasts and potential friends or adversaries in the wild. Having "mountain men" exploring/prospecting/trading in a remote and seldom visiting part of the continent, home to a mix of semi-friendly "native" groups and openly hostile communes, makes a lot of sense, too – and provides hooks for things.
Currently, I'm gravitating to the Taan/Endless Wastes region with the Lake of Mists, namely Almorel, as the stand-in for that "city on the edge". Based solely on wikipedia that part of the continent's lore could give me my worldbuilding needs of being a place with trade interests bringing in folks from afar + being the biggest waypoint on a long tradeway between the Far East and West + local powers like the Red Wizards and others providing options for activities. As others mentioned, the discovery of some lost ruins and/or recent stability brought about through the end of some war or rise of some local power could create the opening that brings in explorers, vagabonds, missionaries, more traders, and the sort of folks who prey on others.
If it is really Western western, there isn't a lot of armor going on. If that is the case, there aren't many ways to increase AC with the result being the party getting shot a lot.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Several additional ideas then. 1) the endless wastes of Faerun make some sense, the represent the steppes but north of them would be the huge forested areas that represent Siberia and even Ed Greenwood never really described them.. you would have basically 5 environments: the steppes, the forests, the deserts, the Arctic. And the high mountains. There is a full map of the continent here:
you have Rashemen and Narfell to the west, Kara turn to the southeast, the remnants of the tuigan as a sort of stand in for the Comanche - Cheyenne - Souix nation that nearly was and the possibilities of ancient Imaskari ruins all over the south and possible elven and Dwarven kingdoms or their ruins in the Alma Basin and various unnamed mountains. So yes lots of opportunities now that the spellplague is overSemphar in the south might become your “staging” area.
if your not using real guns then armor would still be around its the power of a chemical propellant and the ease of training masses of men to fire the weapons that makes armor disappear in the 15-1600s.
I’ve e often thought of wands as guns but the fact that you have to attune to them really nerfs that idea since you can only attune to 3 items max.
I am somewhat drawn to the idea of handcrossbows functioning as a thematic stand-in for guns, and the idea of a repeater crossbow is kinda cool. Or even a magic crossbow that functions in that way. Of course spellcasters won't feel that need at all, but part of me envisions setting a tone where my PCs see themselves in this kinda Western-punk environment and build their characters accordingly.
Someone mentioned Eberron before, but it also introduced the concept of wandslingers
The Last War saw a dramatic increase in the use of magic in battle. Aundair was the first nation to field units of arcane dragoons, but as the war continued cantrip specialists could be found in the armies of most nations. Due to the considerable training required to master magic, this has remained an elite specialty. The common soldier wields a spear or crossbow but it’s not unusual to see a warrior with a sword on one hip and a wand on the other. Within the army, such a soldier is referred to as an arcaneer.
On the streets, they are called wandslingers.
A wandslinger is defined by the ability to cast at least two cantrips, typically drawn from the sorcerer or wizard spell list. A common wandslinger also knows a single 1st-level spell, which they can cast once per long rest. An exceptional wandslinger may know up up to three spells of up to 3rd level. A wandslinger’s spells and cantrips are almost always combat spells with an immediate effect, such as fire bolt, ray of frost, burning hands, or shield.
The critical limitation of the wandslinger is a dependence on an arcane focus. A wandslinger must have an arcane focus—a wand, rod, staff, orb, or crystal—to perform magic. Some wandslingers use different focuses for their various cantrips, such as a wand for fire bolt and a rod for burning hands, but wandslingers can use any arcane focus they get their hands on. As a result, arcane focuses are regarded as weapons throughout Khorvaire.
If you’ve got a wand tucked into your belt, people may assume you know how to use it.
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
A cantrip wand does sound pretty cool, and not game-breaking if it's simply the lowest-level version of cantrip. Easy enough to say that "By this time, advancements in magical tinkering have allowed for the manufacture of unlimited-use wands, albeit with other limits. Spellcasters and non-magic users alike have found these devices useful supplements in their travels."
For armor, I kinda envision this period as being in an early transition stage where thematically some advanced weaponry and tool do exist – powered by magic but still – and most people do not have that or know how to use it. So like with airships: I can say that they have become a bit more common (allowing me to use them), but are very expensive and operated by very wealthy nations and merchants so most people use land transport even to cover the vast distances of the Endless Wastes.
I am thinking to reskin/homebrew some armors though, just for theme purposes. Dusters in place of standard cloth and leather armor for example, otherwise with the same stats, maybe do something with hats and such. Heavy armors still exist but might be rare in this part of the world – and require, maybe, the PC ride a sturdier animal than others lest they be walking a lot! – and the elements being a factor I'm thinking "wear and tear" might play into the campaign in a way it hasn't before with my games.
you have Rashemen and Narfell to the west, Kara turn to the southeast, the remnants of the tuigan as a sort of stand in for the Comanche - Cheyenne - Souix nation that nearly was and the possibilities of ancient Imaskari ruins all over the south and possible elven and Dwarven kingdoms or their ruins in the Alma Basin and various unnamed mountains. So yes lots of opportunities now that the spellplague is overSemphar in the south might become your “staging” area.
I wasn't thinking of Semphar immediately but that is a good location too, on par with Almorel in my initial thoughts. The few population centers in that entire swath of the map makes it easier in some ways – the first or one of the missions I can set PCs on is to escort a caravan, or deliver a message, from one starting point to the other (or one of two, including Kourmira as a destination) notable population center outside of the bordering countries.
if your not using real guns then armor would still be around its the power of a chemical propellant and the ease of training masses of men to fire the weapons that makes armor disappear in the 15-1600s.
If we're talking largely untouched by civilization frontier areas, there may have been very little armor - certainly advanced/steel or better - to begin with.
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I've been mulling on potential campaign ideas for future games I might try out with my current players, or a new group down the line, and one idea that came to me was to have a setting based on the (admittedly exaggerated and often flat) "Western" trope. I listened to Critical Role's Deadwood miniseries and found it rich and inspiring. A story taking place on the edge of major political entities is part-and-parcel to DnD, but I imagine this setting could take it a step further and really lean into the large, untamed geography and expansiveness of a region where the terrain and climate itself presents major obstacles.
The PCs could, in this thinking, meet in like the one settlement of any notable size in a massively unknown part of, say, the Forgotten Realms' Faerun continent, dropped there by an airship instead of trains that only makes a stop in said town every so often. They're isolated and far from most of the things considered "civilization" and the people in the region are hard and scrappy, requiring the players to think about how they can maintain their gear/equipment or concoct even basic potions that are otherwise rare and expensive. Keeping with the motif, everything outside of this settlement is pretty far away and dangerous – gangs and hostile folks, ruins and mysteries, all the usual stuff.
I suspect I'd have to home-brew some content but that's okay, that could be fun and a lot of items in 5e could be easily reskinned for this purpose. Guns might be the only trope that would require some real thought, but they exist already and magic wands function in a gun-like manner so could provide a basis to work with. I also don't want to exclude melee, or other ranged items and spells, even if the game might lend itself to Artificer and Gunslinger types and tools. "Western" frontiers, be they deserts or steppes or craggy mountains or grassy plains, have existed around the world long before guns did and people were exploring those for millennia.
Anyway, thought I'd throw this out onto the communal whiteboard to see if anyone else has ideas, or had done/seen done a game like this! At this stage it's just the earliest percolations, so I'm open to a lot of influence or suggestions for where I can get ideas for world-building, peopling, content-making or story arcs!
Eberron is a good example of a D&D setting that just has trains - the Wild West has serious issues if you introduce zeppelins as a primary means of transport, so I'd stick to trains (which can only go where the railroad construction crew has already been) and wagons as primary transports. You can have airships, but they should be extremely impractical - some combination of expensive, unreliable, etc. Train robberies are core to the tropes involved here. Zeppelin robberies require worryingly powerful bandits.
You don't need firearms, mechanically - you can reskin crossbows - but Wild West stories usually involve firearms that don't need to be reloaded every shot, so you might indeed want to use the DMG rules for more advanced firearms, so your revolvers act like revolvers without needing the Crossbow Expert feat and a hand crossbow.
Q'barra, from the Eberron book, is something you may want to look into, and it provides some hints.
The West, as a setting, is less about guns (however beloved the Gunslinger character archetype is) and more about, as you said, an untapped frontier and the hardened, grizzled men making their way out there. One thing you'll want to keep in mind is that there needs to be a reason for people to be out there. In Q'barra's case it's because the region is extremely rich in fantastically valuable Dragonshards; in the historical Old West it was gold and/or the promised of wide-open, nearly free space with which to make your living. In D&D it could be the newly discovered ruins of an ancient, forgotten civilization, replete with fantastical and exceptionally valuable artifacts - as well as the dangers of any dungeon. Perhaps the rough, jagged hills of an inhospitable badland is freshly discovered to actually be the crashed remains of an ancient magitech floating sky-city, and now people are starting to poke through the wastes in search of treasure.
In whichever case, there needs to be a resource of some sort drawing people to the area, something that makes putting up with the intense challenges of the frontier worth it. The players need not necessarily be after that resource themselves, but the mere existence of such a thing can drive the story. After all, without some sort of valuable resource to be claimed there's no frontier town to do the claiming, and with no frontier town you have no bandits to prey on said town, no base of operations for the PCs, no collection of hardscrabble NPCs trying to make it out here, no supply lines to be disrupted...nada.
Figuring out what the Resource your frontiersmen are after is should probably be the start of your game planning. Things like figuring out how to do gunslingers is kinda secondary - the character trope of the gunslinger is more about toughness, self-sufficiency, and mastery of their chosen weapon than about the gun itself. You can make a character that feels like an Old West gunslinger regardless of weapon or method. And figuring out what the Resource is lets you figure out the rest of the setting much more easily.
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Helpful! And a good point, though of course people did (and do) live in the Old West long before gold and other resources were discovered there, as is true for Australia and the Taklamakkan Desert/Central Steppes in Asia and around Africa and elsewhere. That said, other people did not begin expanding or colonizing without some kind of reason or drive to do so, and a frontier town survives on some kind of trade whether it's resources being found or produced. I imagine I can people that one settlement with all sorts of usual types – farmers from nearby homesteads, missionaries from distant temples to nearly-unheard-of gods, prospectors and the like – without much more explanation of "why" but outside of the settlement might be harder without a reason to justify the expenses of maintaining even a remote frontier town. The idea of some "newly discovered" ruins or wreckage, or uncovered resources of great value/great risk, or the rumors of a dragon hoard now open as the Smaug-like monster has perished, that could do it. As it is, I envision it as a pitstop on the Golden Way between the far east and far west, not much more than that – but sustained because it's the only secure source of water and habitation for leagues.
Perhaps though, unusually-potent warlords with some means of bringing down airships and caravans (because railway takes more infrastructure to sustain I'm inclined to go with magical airships, albeit these too are rare) that traverse from Shou Lung to Thesk through the Wastes could be an interesting hostile force, either becoming a power that threatens that trade or even the discoverers of some ruins (and/or, have managed to secure something of great value from a pilfered airship).
I do like the idea of a West without being married to guns, though I also think some steampunky elements might be fun without becoming the dominant driver (like from Eberron). But mostly I like the idea that the players would have to face the kind of challenges that might be presented from scarcity, isolation, and grand distance, and carving out a story for themselves without a clear structure at least to start.
I know this isn't quite the same, but I do recall hearing one idea of a campaign reminiscent of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The characters are plopped onto the very edge of the known world and are tasked with exploring it. There are no roads. No cities. No maps. No plots or schemes. Just a vast, unexplored frontier that the players get to discover. There'd likely be a settlement that they could return to in order to resupply and turn in any discoveries for pay, but while they're out in the wilderness, they're on their own.
THAT's kinda interesting, too...and provides a degree of structure for players to be "doing" a thing (cartography, maybe botany and such; or, escorting NPCs doing that) that leads them into the unknown.
You might want to consider a Hex Crawl or West Marches structure. Both rely on the characters exploring the unknown and (from time to time) returning to the last bastion of civilization to restock and share information.
Each can/would work just fine in your Western theme.
Keep in mind that the American west was really explored not by the cowboys and miners but by the mountain men who were out there after furs that were no longer available in the east or Europe. Also, the land was already occupied by the native Americans you will need to think through how your going to populate the region especially if your going to try to limit racial prejudices within Demi humans and / or humanoids in general. Guns are not the problem- gunpowder/smoke powder is. I don’t allow it in my world but we do have repeating “crossbows” and “hand crossbows”. A bow is just a leaf spring of some sort- use a curled spring in a chamber you load a dart into and a mechanism to rotate the chambers and you have a hand crossbow revolver. Two evenly matched opposed curled springs moving a loading/ firing chamber over a clip of bolts gives you a repeating “crossbow” rifle/msg. If you want some inspiration for story arcs try some of Louis lamour’s early Sacket novels that cover the period from about 1590 to 1830, or william Johnstone’s mountain man series about his character Preacher. If you want to avoid both trains and airships it’s easy- have your settlement be at the head of the ocean accessible part of a river and be supplied by ships. They might even have some problems with pirates.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I am somewhat drawn to the idea of handcrossbows functioning as a thematic stand-in for guns, and the idea of a repeater crossbow is kinda cool. Or even a magic crossbow that functions in that way. Of course spellcasters won't feel that need at all, but part of me envisions setting a tone where my PCs see themselves in this kinda Western-punk environment and build their characters accordingly.
I'll look into those novels. I want to capture the expanse of the frontier and a range of biomes, but that may simply be impossible to consider "practically" given how nature and geography work. Of course magic is magic in this world but still – some degree of plausibility is nice. In that sense I'm combining the real-world inspirations of West China/Central Asia + the frontier of North America + the swaths of the Sahel in Africa. How I do that exactly might simply be to say the most different biomes are the most far away from one another – I envision this to be very much a campaign where my PCs would be on their own for a lot.
Peopling, and even incorporating some of the tragedies that real history is replete with as potential missions, is something I think will be interesting for them. Building this into a story that can take them up to the teens in levels if not 20 allows for a lot of little cliche missions lifted from Red Dead and elsewhere, along with explorations and encountering beasts and potential friends or adversaries in the wild. Having "mountain men" exploring/prospecting/trading in a remote and seldom visiting part of the continent, home to a mix of semi-friendly "native" groups and openly hostile communes, makes a lot of sense, too – and provides hooks for things.
Currently, I'm gravitating to the Taan/Endless Wastes region with the Lake of Mists, namely Almorel, as the stand-in for that "city on the edge". Based solely on wikipedia that part of the continent's lore could give me my worldbuilding needs of being a place with trade interests bringing in folks from afar + being the biggest waypoint on a long tradeway between the Far East and West + local powers like the Red Wizards and others providing options for activities. As others mentioned, the discovery of some lost ruins and/or recent stability brought about through the end of some war or rise of some local power could create the opening that brings in explorers, vagabonds, missionaries, more traders, and the sort of folks who prey on others.
How are you going to handle armor or AC?
If it is really Western western, there isn't a lot of armor going on. If that is the case, there aren't many ways to increase AC with the result being the party getting shot a lot.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Several additional ideas then.
1) the endless wastes of Faerun make some sense, the represent the steppes but north of them would be the huge forested areas that represent Siberia and even Ed Greenwood never really described them.. you would have basically 5 environments: the steppes, the forests, the deserts, the Arctic. And the high mountains. There is a full map of the continent here:
Toril full map
you have Rashemen and Narfell to the west, Kara turn to the southeast, the remnants of the tuigan as a sort of stand in for the Comanche - Cheyenne - Souix nation that nearly was and the possibilities of ancient Imaskari ruins all over the south and possible elven and Dwarven kingdoms or their ruins in the Alma Basin and various unnamed mountains. So yes lots of opportunities now that the spellplague is overSemphar in the south might become your “staging” area.
if your not using real guns then armor would still be around its the power of a chemical propellant and the ease of training masses of men to fire the weapons that makes armor disappear in the 15-1600s.
I’ve e often thought of wands as guns but the fact that you have to attune to them really nerfs that idea since you can only attune to 3 items max.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Someone mentioned Eberron before, but it also introduced the concept of wandslingers
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
well that is one way to turn your focus wand into a pistol - just reskin it as such and actually cast cantrips from it.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
A cantrip wand does sound pretty cool, and not game-breaking if it's simply the lowest-level version of cantrip. Easy enough to say that "By this time, advancements in magical tinkering have allowed for the manufacture of unlimited-use wands, albeit with other limits. Spellcasters and non-magic users alike have found these devices useful supplements in their travels."
For armor, I kinda envision this period as being in an early transition stage where thematically some advanced weaponry and tool do exist – powered by magic but still – and most people do not have that or know how to use it. So like with airships: I can say that they have become a bit more common (allowing me to use them), but are very expensive and operated by very wealthy nations and merchants so most people use land transport even to cover the vast distances of the Endless Wastes.
I am thinking to reskin/homebrew some armors though, just for theme purposes. Dusters in place of standard cloth and leather armor for example, otherwise with the same stats, maybe do something with hats and such. Heavy armors still exist but might be rare in this part of the world – and require, maybe, the PC ride a sturdier animal than others lest they be walking a lot! – and the elements being a factor I'm thinking "wear and tear" might play into the campaign in a way it hasn't before with my games.
I wasn't thinking of Semphar immediately but that is a good location too, on par with Almorel in my initial thoughts. The few population centers in that entire swath of the map makes it easier in some ways – the first or one of the missions I can set PCs on is to escort a caravan, or deliver a message, from one starting point to the other (or one of two, including Kourmira as a destination) notable population center outside of the bordering countries.
If we're talking largely untouched by civilization frontier areas, there may have been very little armor - certainly advanced/steel or better - to begin with.
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