Grimoires and Gaslamps - Collaborative 5e Setting

Hi all,

Me and Unique Exemplar have discovered we are both working on a similar style of setting, in his case a steampunkesq world with steam replaced with magic, and in my case a Victorian era world with magic added. Each of us have only developed a small area and I thought it would be cool if we tried to put them all together and invite others to join in.

So I present to you the Grimoires and Gaslamps, an collaborative DnD 5e Campaign setting!

We invite anyone and everyone to stake a claim on a region on the map below for you to run games in and develope. Building up the lore of the world as we all play.



I've developed some stuff for London and Unique Examplar has staked a claim to the North Sea.

I'm curious as to why you chose DnD 5e for the system of choice for this setting. Is there already established place for DnD monsters or magic in the setting? If this is based on our 19th century than where do fantasy races come in? Are national borders expected to be similar to our world or can they be wholly different? We'd probably want to know about the underlying aspects of the whole setting before we take a region.

Personally I would like to help with ideas but I wouldn't want to cover a whole region unless there was someone else to bounce ideas off of for that region. I'd be interested in many areas from North or South America to the Middle East, even France, Italy, or as far away as India and China. But I'd want to know what the world as a whole should look like.

The Frontier of the US/Canada/Mexico is perfect for DnD style adventures, with native tribes both hostile and diplomatic, daring adventures, ancient treasures, and frontier settlements. Thing is though, you could do that with Brazil, Peru, Africa, Australia, and the South Pacific as well. Not to mention Central Asia and a fantasy version of the second Afghan War.

Correct me if I get any of this wrong, Genisisect, but D&D 5e seems to be what's most well known and so the best chance to get more DMs into this. As for the map, it's just a baseline starting point. I claimed the North Sea because I'm putting an island nation in there that doesn't exist on the map. If a geological location doesn't exactly fit for you, make changes. I've never been a map maker so I wouldn't do anything about altering maps. I theater of the mind everything anyway. Speaking of real world cultures and events, you're certainly free to use them as examples and inspiration, but it's not necessary.
I chose to be a part of this because I want to create my own setting, but doing a whole world is beyond what I have time for right now. I'll have my own region and it'll have its place among other regions of other people's design in the world.
Pick your place and make it as big or small as you like (within reason of course). I think this will be loads of fun.

It was my intention that the nation boarders would remain approximately the same. I was leaving it up to each region as to how far deviated it is from history, my stuff for England sits reasonably close to history, working in the magic as I see fit. I'm working in some of the DnD monsters that I feel fits the region. The intention is this is the world with magic existing throughout all of history as oppose to a rending the veil style story where the magic has only just appeared.

As for fantasy races, I was considering using diverse humans only, but that could just be what's going on in England.

I could co build a region with you Penitant, we could do a pair of how the other side lives campaigns on two sides of a colonial war...

Ok so I was slightly off. I think that if someone were to include fantasy races, it would be fine for what we're creating. Oriental elves come to mind, and dwarves could be thrown in any mountain region I think.

Genisisect, is my island nation going to cause problems? LOL You gonna sink Atlantis? (Not the name I'm using).

Also, since there will be different cultures and regions created by different people, I assume religions/deities will not be world spanning entities and be culturally specific?

Your island nation causes no issue at all! Just because in England history progreesed some approximation to what happened in reality doesn't mean that history has to be right everywhere, particularly coming from what you told me about your island nation, I doubt it will have a sizeable impact on my history which couldn't be explained away as a substitution.

We have plenty of examples of DnD worlds with culture specific dirties (Faerun in particular), so I don't see an issue with that.

Is anyone watching Penny Dreadful? I started watching it last night on Netflix. It's darker than I was thinking of using for my setting, but the rest of it was pretty much what I was thinking (with the addition of more fantasty style magic).

I'm not watching it but I looked at the trailer, this is definitely the aesthetic I'm building off.