I'm a pretty new DM, and I've been working on a Norse Mythology based campaign where the players explore the branches of the world tree, and are lead into starting and ending Ragnarok. I've got good ideas for the questline, but I'm finding it hard to create a setting for Midgard or Earth for the campaign. I don't want it to be small, cause Ragnarok affects the whole world, but a whole world is a lot to explore and create. I was thinking about limiting the gods range to just a single continent, or reducing the content I need to create and they explore by creating more of an apocalypse setting after Ragnarok begins for the whole world, but idk. If anyone is as passionate for Mythology as I am and wants to help out, it would be great! I hope my friends don't browse the forums, and thanks!
You don't need to create a whole world from scratch at the beginning of a campaign, especially if it's starting at level 1
Go into detail on the local area the party will be exploring, and maybe the nearest large town or city. The further out from there you go, the less detail you need to come up with initially. Just sketch out names, government types, maybe general points of interest... the kind of stuff a tourist might know before heading there, or might be in a kid's history book. If you want to go into more detail in advance, cool, but if the players never go to those places, it might feel like wasted effort
As the party levels up and starts widening the area they can easily explore, they'll probably tip off what they're interested in checking out, and you can then go into further detail on those other places when you're ready to take the campaign there
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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)
My advice to DMs who have anxiety over creating large area in their game is don't do more than necessary.
If they are starting in an area around a town, pick a radius of that area you want to work within and flesh in that area. If you want them to move outside of that area drop hints about what is happening in other parts of the world and mention other places. Eventually your players will wonder "Hey, what's up with this other place" and BOOM now you know what you need to build. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
What you DON'T want to do is build an entire Midgard with all these points of interest only to have Ragnarok happen and you did a ton of work for absolutely nothing.
One thing worth noting, Norse culture and mythology is very, very different than the commonplace modern promulgated by Wagner, comic books, and the absolute garbage that was "History" Channel's Vikings show. Though there was, of course raiding and pillaging was an important part of their culture, the Norse also formed the oldest still-existing democracy, respected lawyers and poets as equals to warriors, were notorious for their grooming and constant bathing (despite the modern idea of them as dirty barbarians), had a culture which gave women a substantial degree of rights in an era where that was nearly unheard of, have an impressive volume of literature every bit as worthy of respect as anything in the Matter of Britain. etc.. Avoiding the stereotypical "Viking" and focusing on the diversity and complexity of actual Norse culture will make your world feel believable and alive.
For your issue about constraining the area to a geographic location, here are two different solutions--one more in line with what you are asking, on justifying the gods being limited to one geographic area, and one that has roots in mythology for why your particular area might be disproportionately important.
To start with the option closer to what you requested, the Prose Edda is our foremost source of Norse myths. Compiled (likely) by famed author Snorri Sturluson in the early 13th century, it was not exactly a great time to write down pagan myths, especially for a politically complicated author. Thus, the introduction to the Prose Edda contains language basically equating the Norse gods to extremely powerful men and chiefs, ascribing any divinity in the Norse Pantheon to the Christian God. The rest of the collection pretty much ignores this assertation.
This gives you something you could use--the Norse pantheon of your story could have started as regular mortals who underwent an apotheosis after being granted divinity--this would give them a tie to their local lands in which you are setting the campaign, while also being consistent with historical religious texts.
If you want something in the mythology, a lot of Ragnarök is fought on Miðgarðr--you just need a reason to have the major battles be fought in and around your area of the campaign. The easiest way to do that? Place the Miðgarðr section of Yggdrasil--a major focus of the war--in your particular region. This gives you a reason to have Bifröst terminate in your region, making it the region the gods are most likely to visit as the closest; it gives you a reason for the denizens of Múspellsheimr to emerge in your region; it gives justification for Naglfar arriving; etc. By giving a single, necessary reason for everyone to show up in a single area, you can make it feel like it will be a single region which will decide the fate of the entire world.
Fjord is a fun word to say and are great locations for the classic "jump out from the side of the road" modified to "goblins with featherfall tokens jump off the cliffs of the fjord and shoot arrows down from above."
I appreciate the norse mythology knowledge, and I like the location of the Bifrost being a center of the story. I haven't read Snorri's collections, but I've heard of them. Of course, the Thor / Comic books are the only basis I had before getting into real mythology, and I find it hilarious that Hel(a) in the movies was the only one to die in Ragnarök itself, while she was one of the only ones (unconfirmed) alive at the end of Ragnarök in the myths. Being able to center the story there while having more of a world to be developed as needed is great. And of course Viking culture was rather interesting, and might clash with some more DnD / worldly cultures, as they were so open. The realms host some of the races from dnd, like Alfheim is similar to the feywilds, and Svartalfheim to the underdark... and perhaps the firey demons from hell are actually frozen demons from hel. I want to go into some of the unclear subjects for story, such as how Hel's fate isn't determined as well as the Valkyrie, and the happenings of Hod and Balder after Ragnarök. And maybe, as DnD has more magic, alter some things from the tales. Perhaps, Heimdal fails to slay Loki and escapes, each wounded, or Odin, in all his gathering of knowledge and planning, had a wizard bring him back after Ragnarök... but idk. Anyway, I appreciate your Norse mythology stuff, and from all the comments so far I've got a good idea of what to do. : )
I didn't realize how compatible these two subjects were, Dnd and Norse Mythology. I know that modern fantasy was heavily inspired by Norse Mythology, such as Tolkiens works, and dnd from that. The realms, the feywilds / shadowfell, earth, air, water?, fire, Ysgard! Have to be greatly inspired by it. Anyway, I hope you have a good day.
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I'm a pretty new DM, and I've been working on a Norse Mythology based campaign where the players explore the branches of the world tree, and are lead into starting and ending Ragnarok. I've got good ideas for the questline, but I'm finding it hard to create a setting for Midgard or Earth for the campaign. I don't want it to be small, cause Ragnarok affects the whole world, but a whole world is a lot to explore and create. I was thinking about limiting the gods range to just a single continent, or reducing the content I need to create and they explore by creating more of an apocalypse setting after Ragnarok begins for the whole world, but idk. If anyone is as passionate for Mythology as I am and wants to help out, it would be great! I hope my friends don't browse the forums, and thanks!
You don't need to create a whole world from scratch at the beginning of a campaign, especially if it's starting at level 1
Go into detail on the local area the party will be exploring, and maybe the nearest large town or city. The further out from there you go, the less detail you need to come up with initially. Just sketch out names, government types, maybe general points of interest... the kind of stuff a tourist might know before heading there, or might be in a kid's history book. If you want to go into more detail in advance, cool, but if the players never go to those places, it might feel like wasted effort
As the party levels up and starts widening the area they can easily explore, they'll probably tip off what they're interested in checking out, and you can then go into further detail on those other places when you're ready to take the campaign there
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)
My advice to DMs who have anxiety over creating large area in their game is don't do more than necessary.
If they are starting in an area around a town, pick a radius of that area you want to work within and flesh in that area. If you want them to move outside of that area drop hints about what is happening in other parts of the world and mention other places. Eventually your players will wonder "Hey, what's up with this other place" and BOOM now you know what you need to build. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
What you DON'T want to do is build an entire Midgard with all these points of interest only to have Ragnarok happen and you did a ton of work for absolutely nothing.
One thing worth noting, Norse culture and mythology is very, very different than the commonplace modern promulgated by Wagner, comic books, and the absolute garbage that was "History" Channel's Vikings show. Though there was, of course raiding and pillaging was an important part of their culture, the Norse also formed the oldest still-existing democracy, respected lawyers and poets as equals to warriors, were notorious for their grooming and constant bathing (despite the modern idea of them as dirty barbarians), had a culture which gave women a substantial degree of rights in an era where that was nearly unheard of, have an impressive volume of literature every bit as worthy of respect as anything in the Matter of Britain. etc.. Avoiding the stereotypical "Viking" and focusing on the diversity and complexity of actual Norse culture will make your world feel believable and alive.
For your issue about constraining the area to a geographic location, here are two different solutions--one more in line with what you are asking, on justifying the gods being limited to one geographic area, and one that has roots in mythology for why your particular area might be disproportionately important.
To start with the option closer to what you requested, the Prose Edda is our foremost source of Norse myths. Compiled (likely) by famed author Snorri Sturluson in the early 13th century, it was not exactly a great time to write down pagan myths, especially for a politically complicated author. Thus, the introduction to the Prose Edda contains language basically equating the Norse gods to extremely powerful men and chiefs, ascribing any divinity in the Norse Pantheon to the Christian God. The rest of the collection pretty much ignores this assertation.
This gives you something you could use--the Norse pantheon of your story could have started as regular mortals who underwent an apotheosis after being granted divinity--this would give them a tie to their local lands in which you are setting the campaign, while also being consistent with historical religious texts.
If you want something in the mythology, a lot of Ragnarök is fought on Miðgarðr--you just need a reason to have the major battles be fought in and around your area of the campaign. The easiest way to do that? Place the Miðgarðr section of Yggdrasil--a major focus of the war--in your particular region. This gives you a reason to have Bifröst terminate in your region, making it the region the gods are most likely to visit as the closest; it gives you a reason for the denizens of Múspellsheimr to emerge in your region; it gives justification for Naglfar arriving; etc. By giving a single, necessary reason for everyone to show up in a single area, you can make it feel like it will be a single region which will decide the fate of the entire world.
Fjord is a fun word to say and are great locations for the classic "jump out from the side of the road" modified to "goblins with featherfall tokens jump off the cliffs of the fjord and shoot arrows down from above."
I appreciate the norse mythology knowledge, and I like the location of the Bifrost being a center of the story. I haven't read Snorri's collections, but I've heard of them. Of course, the Thor / Comic books are the only basis I had before getting into real mythology, and I find it hilarious that Hel(a) in the movies was the only one to die in Ragnarök itself, while she was one of the only ones (unconfirmed) alive at the end of Ragnarök in the myths. Being able to center the story there while having more of a world to be developed as needed is great. And of course Viking culture was rather interesting, and might clash with some more DnD / worldly cultures, as they were so open. The realms host some of the races from dnd, like Alfheim is similar to the feywilds, and Svartalfheim to the underdark... and perhaps the firey demons from hell are actually frozen demons from hel. I want to go into some of the unclear subjects for story, such as how Hel's fate isn't determined as well as the Valkyrie, and the happenings of Hod and Balder after Ragnarök. And maybe, as DnD has more magic, alter some things from the tales. Perhaps, Heimdal fails to slay Loki and escapes, each wounded, or Odin, in all his gathering of knowledge and planning, had a wizard bring him back after Ragnarök... but idk. Anyway, I appreciate your Norse mythology stuff, and from all the comments so far I've got a good idea of what to do. : )
I didn't realize how compatible these two subjects were, Dnd and Norse Mythology. I know that modern fantasy was heavily inspired by Norse Mythology, such as Tolkiens works, and dnd from that. The realms, the feywilds / shadowfell, earth, air, water?, fire, Ysgard! Have to be greatly inspired by it. Anyway, I hope you have a good day.