Disclaimer: Stranger's Elsewhere players should DEFINITELY not be reading this thread (Moon/Sun/Eclipse/Eventide/Eventual Ghosts/Converge).
I'm presently working on my next campaign, called Converge. It is set in my homebrew world which has an enormous amount of history that I won't bother to detail much here. The short of it is that the world has been riddled with cataclysmic events throughout the Ages, such that in most cases vast amounts of history, written and oral, as well as languages, entire races and species of creatures, and a whole host of magic-based technology, have been lost. The last one was about 7,300ish years ago, when one of the two (remaining; originally three) moons Fell. About 300ish years ago, it was revived (the moons are deities). These are not regular; they happen at (seemingly) random intervals based on the workings of beings in this realm and in other realms.
Another being, who was also brought back into the world around the same time, has finally decided to enact his long-term goal: to shatter and devour the sun (also a deity). (I won't bother explaining his motivations here, that's not the point of this thread.) The PCs' stories will begin at the end of the world - the day the Shattering occurred - but the game itself will begin 20 years later (I'm planning for it to be a level 3 through 20 epic campaign). When the sun Shattered, slivers of it remained and fell to the world and now hang heavy in certain parts of the world. The Great Cities of the world (the bastions of advanced magitech and civilization, of which there are only a handful), are rumored by some to have created great machines to hold these slivers and control them for their cities, to keep those cities as alive as possible. Throughout the world, those slivers not held by the Great Cities are small, producing 24 hours of thin and dying daylight across small regions, sustaining them but not necessarily very well.
The point of this thread and what I'm requesting: Obviously, there are some enormous swathes of logic that need to be worked out that I'm mulling over - and in addition to general ideas about what this sort of world might look like, what sort of characters might inhabit it, what sort of quests might happen, etc, I'd definitely appreciate people pointing such logic holes out or asking questions that I can build an FAQ around for my players to reference as well as to help me worldbuild this better.
Some random information I've already decided upon, in no particular order:
I'm thinking that the overarching theme of the game will be "What do you do when the world is ending?" The world might have already ended 20 years ago in a way, but it survives yet, somehow. But it may not survive what is to come.
I'm not focusing heavily on the survival aspect as a core point of this game, as many post-apocalyptic games do, simply because there are so many easy ways around it with D&D. I am definitely keen on using D&D 5e for this game, though I know there are plenty of other systems out there that do what most people think of as post-apocalyptic better. It is not going to be a high-technology game with plentiful guns and bullets, although those things will certainly exist as remnants of the lost world.
Agriculture is failing. Where the Slivers are, it is surviving, but not well (plants require a day-night cycle to be healthy - constant sunlight is bad for them - thusly, the Great Cities and maybe some smaller communities with these Slivers have likely developed some method of creating an artificial day-night cycle with magic or machines). Where these Slivers are not, which is the vast majority of the world, darkness has consumed those places. Flora and fauna are surviving off of leftover errant magic that flows through the leylines of the world and spreads out from there, and things called "Seeds of Dreva" (in my world, these are physical manifestations of the world's goddess [not unlike "Gaia" is to Earth] and are extremely magical) are feeding the world as much as they can to keep it alive; this, however, especially over the past 20 years, has drained the goddess, whose seeds fed, sustained, and reinvigorated her through the magic and sunlight of the Sun god.
Obviously, this will create huge food shortages, put huge stress on farms and farmers and hunters and foragers, etc. Scarcity at this level will mean mass starvation, and will mean that huge populations of people are willing to resort to any means necessary to feed themselves.
Spells that can create food and water and sustain people (Goodberry) are extremely sought-after, leading to a high demand and need and a shortage of those capable of these spells. Additionally, in my home rules, these magical methods of survival might sustain you but you will still feel the physical effects of hunger and thirst (which is how I have gotten around their use in average survival situations).
What, if anything, is now the gravitational center of the solar system this world is in without the Sun? Is there some sort of epicenter of gravity that keeps things more or less the same? Magic? Do I even need to worry about this?
This newest Cataclysm has caused magic in the world to go into whiplash and become unstable and unpredictable. This is partially why strong magic users can't just "magic away" or magically fix the problems. Another reason for that is because all the powerful magic users have likely been snatched up by the Great Cities in order to sustain their needs.
On the subject of "fixing" - deities and allpowerful beings (including surviving level 10-20+ PCs from previous campaigns). For the former, for some reasons I'm still working out and would gladly take ideas towards, pretty much all the gods are silent, dead, or gone, for one reason or another. The "canon" gods of D&D (excluding any that are based on real-world IRL deities, which I don't allow in my games for personal reasons) have never paid this world much focus (detail note: my world is called the Prime Meridian, not the Prime Material; it is the twin of the Prime Material, and is different in some special ways that are based on my multiverse-building) and have largely decided this world not worth the effort when there are other equally big problems going on in their own realms. My own world's pantheon is a different story; some of these deities and demigods have been fairly involved in the world up until now, while others have merely watched on idly. As for the latter, most of these heroes of yore are either stuck in their own communities or Great Cities protecting what can be protected there, or are else Elsewhere.
Currency still exists, but more as tokens of trade in bigger communities. In most communities, which are small, barter has been brought back to normalcy. In the main city the story will begin in, and probably serve as the working center of the game at least for awhile, you earn your food and water rations by partaking in Watch Hours where you "volunteer" for part of the town watch, no matter your "day job." This would be especially difficult for those with disabled or impaired or elderly loved ones who are incapable of doing watch hours, but are still mouths to feed. Your "day job" is expected of you simply for living within the safety of the community. Obviously, other communities might function a bit differently, but I think many will have a similar work ethic.
Hungry creatures, many twisted by the errant magics of the world, lurk in the dark parts of the world. Those that have failed to adapt or evolve have not survived. Predators are everywhere.
I don't plan to limit any Darkvision stuff, mostly because I feel that having such a desirable trait will be beneficial for the PCs in multiple fashions. I do, however, plan to have plenty of places that are Oppressive Darkness, where Darkvision itself might be limited to half your usual distance, Magical Darkness regions, and Hungering Darkness regions - where even those capable of seeing through magical darkness cannot see.
Some remnants of old technology, including primitive golems and constructs fueled by magic, have survived, but not much. Those that have have largely been corrupted by the wild magic of the world and become hostile and dangerous, but most have probably gone into hibernation mode (at least until the PCs discover them).
For your question about the solar system, the world strikes me as not something that’s orbit the sun. Since the sun is apparently small enough to be gathered up as shards and used to cast light over a small portion of the world, it doesn’t seem like it’d be particularly large. Or, y’know, an actual star, but that much is obvious. It seems to me more like it’d orbit the planet instead. This could also result in an interesting “dark zone,” if it shattered over a certain part of the sky, so the opposite side of the world didn’t get any shards and was plunged into darkness.
As for a reason why the gods have abandoned the world… well, maybe they just got bored with the world. They just left, and maybe that’s why the world is experiencing these cataclysms. Without deities to hold it intact, it’s falling apart. Also, with all the darkness, and the lack of celestial influence, undead and fiends should definitely be prominent. Perhaps the more civil ones are even somewhat accepted as members of society, since no one can do anything about them. Also, those races that once found themselves in the dark, underground, like drove and duergar, should be prominent in the dark areas.
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"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
For your question about the solar system, the world strikes me as not something that’s orbit the sun. Since the sun is apparently small enough to be gathered up as shards and used to cast light over a small portion of the world, it doesn’t seem like it’d be particularly large. Or, y’know, an actual star, but that much is obvious. It seems to me more like it’d orbit the planet instead. This could also result in an interesting “dark zone,” if it shattered over a certain part of the sky, so the opposite side of the world didn’t get any shards and was plunged into darkness.
As for a reason why the gods have abandoned the world… well, maybe they just got bored with the world. They just left, and maybe that’s why the world is experiencing these cataclysms. Without deities to hold it intact, it’s falling apart. Also, with all the darkness, and the lack of celestial influence, undead and fiends should definitely be prominent. Perhaps the more civil ones are even somewhat accepted as members of society, since no one can do anything about them. Also, those races that once found themselves in the dark, underground, like drove and duergar, should be prominent in the dark areas.
I considered the idea that the Sun orbited the world itself, and I'm not decided either way to be honest? I lean more towards no, but it's a very good potentiality that would take away some issues rolling around my head. I'll definitely think on that.
You could just have a miniature black hole type anomaly where the sun used to be, somehow created as a side effect of the sun's destruction. It's gravity may be somewhat lesser or greater than the sun's was, causing the planet's orbit to destabilize to any number of further deleterious results for the planet.
I'm very interested in how the lore of the ancient advanced society could benefit the game. Perhaps they knew of the impending end of the world and tried to create some magical artifact or machine that the players could go on a quest for and somehow restore the balance. Another thing that strikes me as a possibility is, if you have vampires or other light-hating race, this could be their high point with being able to roam at all hours. You could also say that a gravity well has formed in the center of the solar system and the planet is slowly spiraling into it, and that could wreak havoc on the weather and such.
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"Never walk away from home ahead of your axe and sword.
You can't feel a battle in your bones or foresee a fight."
I recommend you develop potential Tasha's patrons for your players to explore. Even if you don't use any of them, they will help give you ideas about how religion, education, crime, authority, and powerful creatures. would fit in a dying world.
Well, re the gods, you could sort of imagine it like Rick Riordan’s Egyptian God series – the loss of Ra led to infighting amongst the gods for the position of king god and the actual decline of their power and many of them caused so much trouble that humans actually sealed them. So you could have had them sealed which could lead to interesting quests and groups (see below) or perhaps, like your 'Gaia-goddess' their power has declined without the power of the sun such that they can only work in very limited ways (in which case, some at least, would be very invested in seeing the sun restored. However, others might enjoy their new power - of the ruling position kind - and be blind to their losses and so try to thwart such goals - quest potential either way).
Questwise: However, that only fixed things in the short term and the gods actually need to be freed to sustain the world, but the group that originally sealed them refuses to believe/accept that.
restoring the sun could require collecting the shards of the sun that have been scattered which would obviously have momentous side-effects for the communities that survive from them - that could lead to some very interesting moral predicaments for the players as well as some fun quests.
I’m kind of imagining a sort of trigun style setting when I picture this:
Some towns have slivers of sunlight and are doing ok, but there are probably many more smaller settlements that are also surviving, but a lot worse off – such places would great places for bullies and lowlifes or more upper scale criminals that maybe the party could deal with.
Questwise: You could have them investigate the disappearance/kidnapping of this vital goodberry or producing person (or have them hired to kidnap said person from the darker angle or stumble into the plot of the kidnapping)
For the unstable magic, I would suggest rather than making that a universal thing, make it a varying focus thing - some places are stable (relatively speaking perhaps) and no real side effects, but others are areas where magic has gone totally askew (have players roll on the Wild Magic Table when they cast spells in such areas, but edit it slightly depending on how severe the whiplash-effect is in the area, or you could craft your own) - such areas, however, would be excellent locations of rare relics - so sort of like CR's Aeor.
I imagine, in such a world, there would be a group or groups who seek ways to preserve life or perhaps the sun and, on the flip side, groups who selfishly try to take from others to ensure their own survival – I imagine both such groups would have uses for a band of plucky adventurers.
For another possible, long term quest, you could have this ‘Gaia-goddess’ going a little crazy in her desperation to sustain herself. Maybe she was a good goddess originally who was expending her power to help people. However, as life failed she begins consuming worse-off populations in an attempt to gain power to provide help to other communities, but its warped her and she’s lost sight of her goals – it could be a long term thing that the party could investigate and resolve (however, they couldn’t kill her, because doing so would have as bad an effect as letting her continue what she’s doing)
Quest: perhaps there was some kind of legendary construct/machine, created post cataclysm that was meant to save the world, but something went wrong and it was never activated and now remains lost and in hibernation, waiting to be woken up
Disclaimer: Stranger's Elsewhere players should DEFINITELY not be reading this thread (Moon/Sun/Eclipse/Eventide/Eventual Ghosts/Converge).
I'm presently working on my next campaign, called Converge. It is set in my homebrew world which has an enormous amount of history that I won't bother to detail much here. The short of it is that the world has been riddled with cataclysmic events throughout the Ages, such that in most cases vast amounts of history, written and oral, as well as languages, entire races and species of creatures, and a whole host of magic-based technology, have been lost. The last one was about 7,300ish years ago, when one of the two (remaining; originally three) moons Fell. About 300ish years ago, it was revived (the moons are deities). These are not regular; they happen at (seemingly) random intervals based on the workings of beings in this realm and in other realms.
Another being, who was also brought back into the world around the same time, has finally decided to enact his long-term goal: to shatter and devour the sun (also a deity). (I won't bother explaining his motivations here, that's not the point of this thread.) The PCs' stories will begin at the end of the world - the day the Shattering occurred - but the game itself will begin 20 years later (I'm planning for it to be a level 3 through 20 epic campaign). When the sun Shattered, slivers of it remained and fell to the world and now hang heavy in certain parts of the world. The Great Cities of the world (the bastions of advanced magitech and civilization, of which there are only a handful), are rumored by some to have created great machines to hold these slivers and control them for their cities, to keep those cities as alive as possible. Throughout the world, those slivers not held by the Great Cities are small, producing 24 hours of thin and dying daylight across small regions, sustaining them but not necessarily very well.
The point of this thread and what I'm requesting: Obviously, there are some enormous swathes of logic that need to be worked out that I'm mulling over - and in addition to general ideas about what this sort of world might look like, what sort of characters might inhabit it, what sort of quests might happen, etc, I'd definitely appreciate people pointing such logic holes out or asking questions that I can build an FAQ around for my players to reference as well as to help me worldbuild this better.
Some random information I've already decided upon, in no particular order:
For your question about the solar system, the world strikes me as not something that’s orbit the sun. Since the sun is apparently small enough to be gathered up as shards and used to cast light over a small portion of the world, it doesn’t seem like it’d be particularly large. Or, y’know, an actual star, but that much is obvious. It seems to me more like it’d orbit the planet instead. This could also result in an interesting “dark zone,” if it shattered over a certain part of the sky, so the opposite side of the world didn’t get any shards and was plunged into darkness.
As for a reason why the gods have abandoned the world… well, maybe they just got bored with the world. They just left, and maybe that’s why the world is experiencing these cataclysms. Without deities to hold it intact, it’s falling apart. Also, with all the darkness, and the lack of celestial influence, undead and fiends should definitely be prominent. Perhaps the more civil ones are even somewhat accepted as members of society, since no one can do anything about them. Also, those races that once found themselves in the dark, underground, like drove and duergar, should be prominent in the dark areas.
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
I considered the idea that the Sun orbited the world itself, and I'm not decided either way to be honest? I lean more towards no, but it's a very good potentiality that would take away some issues rolling around my head. I'll definitely think on that.
Definitely some good ideas, thank you!
You could just have a miniature black hole type anomaly where the sun used to be, somehow created as a side effect of the sun's destruction. It's gravity may be somewhat lesser or greater than the sun's was, causing the planet's orbit to destabilize to any number of further deleterious results for the planet.
I'm very interested in how the lore of the ancient advanced society could benefit the game. Perhaps they knew of the impending end of the world and tried to create some magical artifact or machine that the players could go on a quest for and somehow restore the balance. Another thing that strikes me as a possibility is, if you have vampires or other light-hating race, this could be their high point with being able to roam at all hours. You could also say that a gravity well has formed in the center of the solar system and the planet is slowly spiraling into it, and that could wreak havoc on the weather and such.
"Never walk away from home ahead of your axe and sword.
You can't feel a battle in your bones or foresee a fight."
- Havamal, The Sayings of Odin
I recommend you develop potential Tasha's patrons for your players to explore. Even if you don't use any of them, they will help give you ideas about how religion, education, crime, authority, and powerful creatures. would fit in a dying world.
My only good homebrews: Races, Subclasses.
An aspiring DM and Homebrewer. Ask me if you need anything.
Well, re the gods, you could sort of imagine it like Rick Riordan’s Egyptian God series – the loss of Ra led to infighting amongst the gods for the position of king god and the actual decline of their power and many of them caused so much trouble that humans actually sealed them. So you could have had them sealed which could lead to interesting quests and groups (see below) or perhaps, like your 'Gaia-goddess' their power has declined without the power of the sun such that they can only work in very limited ways (in which case, some at least, would be very invested in seeing the sun restored. However, others might enjoy their new power - of the ruling position kind - and be blind to their losses and so try to thwart such goals - quest potential either way).
Questwise: However, that only fixed things in the short term and the gods actually need to be freed to sustain the world, but the group that originally sealed them refuses to believe/accept that.
restoring the sun could require collecting the shards of the sun that have been scattered which would obviously have momentous side-effects for the communities that survive from them - that could lead to some very interesting moral predicaments for the players as well as some fun quests.
I’m kind of imagining a sort of trigun style setting when I picture this:
Some towns have slivers of sunlight and are doing ok, but there are probably many more smaller settlements that are also surviving, but a lot worse off – such places would great places for bullies and lowlifes or more upper scale criminals that maybe the party could deal with.
Questwise: You could have them investigate the disappearance/kidnapping of this vital goodberry or producing person (or have them hired to kidnap said person from the darker angle or stumble into the plot of the kidnapping)
For the unstable magic, I would suggest rather than making that a universal thing, make it a varying focus thing - some places are stable (relatively speaking perhaps) and no real side effects, but others are areas where magic has gone totally askew (have players roll on the Wild Magic Table when they cast spells in such areas, but edit it slightly depending on how severe the whiplash-effect is in the area, or you could craft your own) - such areas, however, would be excellent locations of rare relics - so sort of like CR's Aeor.
I imagine, in such a world, there would be a group or groups who seek ways to preserve life or perhaps the sun and, on the flip side, groups who selfishly try to take from others to ensure their own survival – I imagine both such groups would have uses for a band of plucky adventurers.
For another possible, long term quest, you could have this ‘Gaia-goddess’ going a little crazy in her desperation to sustain herself. Maybe she was a good goddess originally who was expending her power to help people. However, as life failed she begins consuming worse-off populations in an attempt to gain power to provide help to other communities, but its warped her and she’s lost sight of her goals – it could be a long term thing that the party could investigate and resolve (however, they couldn’t kill her, because doing so would have as bad an effect as letting her continue what she’s doing)
Quest: perhaps there was some kind of legendary construct/machine, created post cataclysm that was meant to save the world, but something went wrong and it was never activated and now remains lost and in hibernation, waiting to be woken up