I am not certain if you'd call it 'original', but the homebrew the team and I have been using for the past ... fifteen years, dear god ... was one where the backstory was the Gods were almost universally bastards, and you needed two Gods to come together to make a Mortal Race. Thing was, as long as that Race still existed and still worshipped their parent-gods, those Gods could be slain but could never actually die, they'd just be reborn amongst 'their' people and eventually become divine beings again.
Long story short ... there were Hundreds of Gods and they basically used their mortal children to wage war on each other, for sport, for their agenda, for power.
After a few millennia of this ... there came a Half-Elf Hero who managed to get the leaders of several races together and went "This is stupid. We're literally dying in the tens of thousands, entire races are being systematically wiped out to prevent Gods from resurrecting and the lands are being ravaged to the point of collapse just to feed and arm our soldiers. We need to stop this."
So he convinced several so-called 'Dark' Races to leave the fight and head to an island-continent created by one of the few Gods that wasn't down to clown while he and his allies tried to get the fighting to stop in a more diplomatic fashion since nobody was going to put down their weapons with their ancestral opponents just a hop, skip and a jump down the road. Realizing this was very much the only way their people were going to survive in the long run, the Hobgoblins, Orcs, Kobolds, Ratfolk, those kinds of races, began a systematic campaign of retreat to the ocean, stole and/or built the ships needed to make the journey, and they disappeared into the mists. At this point the Half-Elf, ironically a nascent God himself and one uniquely unaware of his own heritage, ended up winning the original wager that started the war as a result of this, of being the 'leader' of scores of races, and ascended to the High Throne and told the other Gods to knock it off, or else.
Fast forward a few hundred years and this island-continent has been home to flourishing societies of supposedly 'monstrous' races, and is now taking in as many refugees as they can because, without war, the economy of the rest of the planet had collapsed, the children of the now-divine Half-Elf God rebelled because what's the point of being the heir if the King will never grow old and die, caused a disaster by attempting to murder and absorb the power of dozens of Gods at once and caused global disasters that rendered most of the planet either uninhabitable or cursed to the point only Undead or races with prodigious amounts of magic-users to push back the chaos could exist.
Fast forward another few hundred years and the island-continent and her races are fighting a war on four fronts. Internal strife as the descendants of the refugees want more territory for themselves and refuse to accept they have to limit their numbers like the 'original' settlers do and are still doing, constant skirmishes with Dwarves trying to tunnel in from the bottom of the ocean where their mountain homes ended up sinking, the fractious descendants of the High God's elven heirs who are more Outsider than Elf at this point, and an army of Undead lead by a Cleric Lich who believes the only way to save the world is to kill everything and then let his God (naturally) take the High Throne and bring order to this chaotic world.
Having players being able to pick Orcs, Hobgoblins, Cyclops, Centaur, Kobolds, Ratfolk, Lizardfolk, Harpies, Medusa, Human-descended aquatic races based on sharks, eels, octopus and turtles, Native Outsiders based on Phoenixes, Dragons, Rabbits, Oni and Monkies with a distinctly oriental/india theme, stuff like that in addition to Humans, Halflings and the rare Dwarf was just so ... invigorating to write, as well as a good thought exercise in "Okay, the good guys won ... now what? Is it really going to be sunshine and rainbows till the end of time now? Without a common threat, all these different races, ways of life and religions are just gonna be chill?".
It took over a decade, and multiple groups taking up interlinked generational-groups of heroes to get the job done, but they managed to negotiate and beat the enemies of Sanctuary into submission and now ... I have to write up where do they go now that they've essentially saved the world and finished what the High King of the Gods set out to do in the first place?
Let me just say “Wow”. I just DM using stuff others have written. This is amazing. I love adventures from old Dragon magazines...Now I really want to play a Harpy!
well as an player i worldbuilt "the hermit kingdom" the homeland of my halfling barbarian who was third in line for succession. Their homeland had a bunch of big open plains and owlbears, and their capital had spider legs so it could move, we never got there but it existed
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
My story uses the assumed multiverse for D&D, although it's a bit 1st edition like. I've DMed it for 2 years, and I've got a good story behind it.
The so-called Low Elves of Kobold's Axe were banished by the high elves. (This is completely separate from the Drow.) They came together to form a huge costal city known as Ithia. It was an Oligarchy, and the city itself contained all manor of races, including Humans, Halflings, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Wood Elves.
There was only ever one non-elven Oligarch in Ithia. (Low elven, specifically, there were never any wood elven Oligarchs.) It was a human, and he was a mistake. The human was attacked by four followers of Tiamat (who, much later in their career, became major campaign villains), and almost died. He made a deal with a dark entity, thus becoming a warlock. And so the human returned to the council of Oligarchs, ready to enact his part of the bargain and appease his patron, the drow goddess Lolth. The goddess had him murder his fellow oligarchs, and overrun the city with drow and spiders. The oligarch, now a tyrant, seeing what he'd done, made a dangerous but necessary decision. He used the imprisonment spell to trap Lolth deep beneath the ground, and disappeared into the Ithian library. The drow of my world still use slaves to mine at the earth where the drow goddess is buried, trying to eventually excavate her.
The city was soon abandoned. The low elves died out, and a large group of them disappeared. Halflings stayed in the east, where they eventually formed the halfling hills. Some of the dwarves joined them, others retreated far north to the mountains. In the hills you can still find Lightfoot Halflings, along with Hill Dwarves, and the descendants of the two, Halfling Hill Dwarves, or Stouts. The Dwarves that retreated to the mountains became mountain dwarves.
The northern government district became overgrown, and supposedly the library of Ithia still stands, full of magical tomes, with the old oligarch still living in the center of said library, surviving as a lich or deathlock perhaps. This area is full of secrets, ripe with adventure, and is known as the Northern Forest.
The southern areas became farmland for humans, known as the Southern Farms but the central part of Ithia would remain a ghost town until many, many years later when Ithia was re-established, although separate regions like the Halfling Hills and Southern Farms.
And that is the history of the capital of my campaign world, Ithia.
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What is the most original dnd world or nation that you have ever made/played in?
I am not certain if you'd call it 'original', but the homebrew the team and I have been using for the past ... fifteen years, dear god ... was one where the backstory was the Gods were almost universally bastards, and you needed two Gods to come together to make a Mortal Race. Thing was, as long as that Race still existed and still worshipped their parent-gods, those Gods could be slain but could never actually die, they'd just be reborn amongst 'their' people and eventually become divine beings again.
Long story short ... there were Hundreds of Gods and they basically used their mortal children to wage war on each other, for sport, for their agenda, for power.
After a few millennia of this ... there came a Half-Elf Hero who managed to get the leaders of several races together and went "This is stupid. We're literally dying in the tens of thousands, entire races are being systematically wiped out to prevent Gods from resurrecting and the lands are being ravaged to the point of collapse just to feed and arm our soldiers. We need to stop this."
So he convinced several so-called 'Dark' Races to leave the fight and head to an island-continent created by one of the few Gods that wasn't down to clown while he and his allies tried to get the fighting to stop in a more diplomatic fashion since nobody was going to put down their weapons with their ancestral opponents just a hop, skip and a jump down the road. Realizing this was very much the only way their people were going to survive in the long run, the Hobgoblins, Orcs, Kobolds, Ratfolk, those kinds of races, began a systematic campaign of retreat to the ocean, stole and/or built the ships needed to make the journey, and they disappeared into the mists. At this point the Half-Elf, ironically a nascent God himself and one uniquely unaware of his own heritage, ended up winning the original wager that started the war as a result of this, of being the 'leader' of scores of races, and ascended to the High Throne and told the other Gods to knock it off, or else.
Fast forward a few hundred years and this island-continent has been home to flourishing societies of supposedly 'monstrous' races, and is now taking in as many refugees as they can because, without war, the economy of the rest of the planet had collapsed, the children of the now-divine Half-Elf God rebelled because what's the point of being the heir if the King will never grow old and die, caused a disaster by attempting to murder and absorb the power of dozens of Gods at once and caused global disasters that rendered most of the planet either uninhabitable or cursed to the point only Undead or races with prodigious amounts of magic-users to push back the chaos could exist.
Fast forward another few hundred years and the island-continent and her races are fighting a war on four fronts. Internal strife as the descendants of the refugees want more territory for themselves and refuse to accept they have to limit their numbers like the 'original' settlers do and are still doing, constant skirmishes with Dwarves trying to tunnel in from the bottom of the ocean where their mountain homes ended up sinking, the fractious descendants of the High God's elven heirs who are more Outsider than Elf at this point, and an army of Undead lead by a Cleric Lich who believes the only way to save the world is to kill everything and then let his God (naturally) take the High Throne and bring order to this chaotic world.
Having players being able to pick Orcs, Hobgoblins, Cyclops, Centaur, Kobolds, Ratfolk, Lizardfolk, Harpies, Medusa, Human-descended aquatic races based on sharks, eels, octopus and turtles, Native Outsiders based on Phoenixes, Dragons, Rabbits, Oni and Monkies with a distinctly oriental/india theme, stuff like that in addition to Humans, Halflings and the rare Dwarf was just so ... invigorating to write, as well as a good thought exercise in "Okay, the good guys won ... now what? Is it really going to be sunshine and rainbows till the end of time now? Without a common threat, all these different races, ways of life and religions are just gonna be chill?".
It took over a decade, and multiple groups taking up interlinked generational-groups of heroes to get the job done, but they managed to negotiate and beat the enemies of Sanctuary into submission and now ... I have to write up where do they go now that they've essentially saved the world and finished what the High King of the Gods set out to do in the first place?
Let me just say “Wow”. I just DM using stuff others have written. This is amazing. I love adventures from old Dragon magazines...Now I really want to play a Harpy!
well as an player i worldbuilt "the hermit kingdom" the homeland of my halfling barbarian who was third in line for succession. Their homeland had a bunch of big open plains and owlbears, and their capital had spider legs so it could move, we never got there but it existed
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Thanks.
My story uses the assumed multiverse for D&D, although it's a bit 1st edition like. I've DMed it for 2 years, and I've got a good story behind it.
The so-called Low Elves of Kobold's Axe were banished by the high elves. (This is completely separate from the Drow.) They came together to form a huge costal city known as Ithia. It was an Oligarchy, and the city itself contained all manor of races, including Humans, Halflings, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Wood Elves.
There was only ever one non-elven Oligarch in Ithia. (Low elven, specifically, there were never any wood elven Oligarchs.) It was a human, and he was a mistake. The human was attacked by four followers of Tiamat (who, much later in their career, became major campaign villains), and almost died. He made a deal with a dark entity, thus becoming a warlock. And so the human returned to the council of Oligarchs, ready to enact his part of the bargain and appease his patron, the drow goddess Lolth. The goddess had him murder his fellow oligarchs, and overrun the city with drow and spiders. The oligarch, now a tyrant, seeing what he'd done, made a dangerous but necessary decision. He used the imprisonment spell to trap Lolth deep beneath the ground, and disappeared into the Ithian library. The drow of my world still use slaves to mine at the earth where the drow goddess is buried, trying to eventually excavate her.
The city was soon abandoned. The low elves died out, and a large group of them disappeared. Halflings stayed in the east, where they eventually formed the halfling hills. Some of the dwarves joined them, others retreated far north to the mountains. In the hills you can still find Lightfoot Halflings, along with Hill Dwarves, and the descendants of the two, Halfling Hill Dwarves, or Stouts. The Dwarves that retreated to the mountains became mountain dwarves.
The northern government district became overgrown, and supposedly the library of Ithia still stands, full of magical tomes, with the old oligarch still living in the center of said library, surviving as a lich or deathlock perhaps. This area is full of secrets, ripe with adventure, and is known as the Northern Forest.
The southern areas became farmland for humans, known as the Southern Farms but the central part of Ithia would remain a ghost town until many, many years later when Ithia was re-established, although separate regions like the Halfling Hills and Southern Farms.
And that is the history of the capital of my campaign world, Ithia.