I'm currently working on a story and need help finding a world that's appropriate for it. It needs to be medieval-adjacent, where there are orcs, tabaxi and firbolg, vampires can exist but sort of in secrecy and that allows for interaction with various less known deities of the DnD pantheon. There also needs to be a big forest in a mountain somewhere, but I assume that's the easiest part.
I've only read the novels that happen in Dragonlance and the Drizzt ones and watched some actual play. I'd really appreciate some pointers or ideas of where to start, since I feel the worlds I know would probably not mesh well with what I have in mind.
Yes, it sounds imposing, but you're already a good chunk of the way there. You know what you want to be in the world, so you need to sit down and rough in some details of how they interrelate in the world. You don't need to figure out everything right now, just enough to let you add more detail to the parts that become relevant in play.
If you need help, I recommend World Crow on YouTube. A couple of example questions, what kind of biome do you think of when you think of a certain race, make the area they live look like that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hello There. I am a worldbuilder and proud DM that is creating a huge world called Eldredom. I'm pouring many hours into it and I may make some things later...
If you're committed to an established setting, that might be a bit tricky since vampires are a better-known phenomenon in most of the more developed settings as far as I'm aware. So, while this doesn't answer the question you asked, making your own setting is probably the easiest thing to do. However, to provide some insight regarding the more official ones:
I don't know much about it, but you might consider Nentir Vale/Points of Light/World Axis/Dawn War/No Official Name/Too Many Unofficial Ones, the default-ish setting from 4th Edition? It was designed to have a detailed cosmology but fairly loose worldbuilding of the material plane and recent history to allow heavier homebrewing. I do think the pantheon is a bit of a greatest-hits of better-known Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms deities, so it might not serve your purpose in that particular respect.
That said, you might consider using a lesser-developed region or historical time period in an established setting. By "the DnD pantheon," I'm gonna guess you probably mean Forgotten Realms (setting for Drizzt, most current-edition adventures, the movie, and most of the video games), and that's probably got the most densely-populated pantheon, so it might serve your purposes. If you use an area outside the Sword Coast, Cormanthor, and northwest Sea of Fallen Stars regions where like 95% of canon stories take place, or set it in the past (say... post-Fall of Netheril? Timeline's fuzzy enough between then and the setting's original "present" to get away with a lot), you could probably get away with vampires being obscure?
That said, Greyhawk has less restrictive lore and probably the next most extensive pantheon, so it might serve your purposes a little better.
Depending on what you're trying to do, you could... maybe use a Ravenloft Dread Domain, so long as it's, uh, not Barovia, obviously?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Medium humanoid (human), lawful neutral
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hi,
I'm currently working on a story and need help finding a world that's appropriate for it. It needs to be medieval-adjacent, where there are orcs, tabaxi and firbolg, vampires can exist but sort of in secrecy and that allows for interaction with various less known deities of the DnD pantheon. There also needs to be a big forest in a mountain somewhere, but I assume that's the easiest part.
I've only read the novels that happen in Dragonlance and the Drizzt ones and watched some actual play. I'd really appreciate some pointers or ideas of where to start, since I feel the worlds I know would probably not mesh well with what I have in mind.
Thank you for any input and help!
Make up your own world.
Yes, it sounds imposing, but you're already a good chunk of the way there. You know what you want to be in the world, so you need to sit down and rough in some details of how they interrelate in the world. You don't need to figure out everything right now, just enough to let you add more detail to the parts that become relevant in play.
If you need help, I recommend World Crow on YouTube. A couple of example questions, what kind of biome do you think of when you think of a certain race, make the area they live look like that.
Hello There. I am a worldbuilder and proud DM that is creating a huge world called Eldredom. I'm pouring many hours into it and I may make some things later...
If you're committed to an established setting, that might be a bit tricky since vampires are a better-known phenomenon in most of the more developed settings as far as I'm aware. So, while this doesn't answer the question you asked, making your own setting is probably the easiest thing to do. However, to provide some insight regarding the more official ones:
I don't know much about it, but you might consider Nentir Vale/Points of Light/World Axis/Dawn War/No Official Name/Too Many Unofficial Ones, the default-ish setting from 4th Edition? It was designed to have a detailed cosmology but fairly loose worldbuilding of the material plane and recent history to allow heavier homebrewing. I do think the pantheon is a bit of a greatest-hits of better-known Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms deities, so it might not serve your purpose in that particular respect.
That said, you might consider using a lesser-developed region or historical time period in an established setting. By "the DnD pantheon," I'm gonna guess you probably mean Forgotten Realms (setting for Drizzt, most current-edition adventures, the movie, and most of the video games), and that's probably got the most densely-populated pantheon, so it might serve your purposes. If you use an area outside the Sword Coast, Cormanthor, and northwest Sea of Fallen Stars regions where like 95% of canon stories take place, or set it in the past (say... post-Fall of Netheril? Timeline's fuzzy enough between then and the setting's original "present" to get away with a lot), you could probably get away with vampires being obscure?
That said, Greyhawk has less restrictive lore and probably the next most extensive pantheon, so it might serve your purposes a little better.
Depending on what you're trying to do, you could... maybe use a Ravenloft Dread Domain, so long as it's, uh, not Barovia, obviously?
Medium humanoid (human), lawful neutral