D&D5e: Does This World Interest You?

Hello, fellow gamers! At the moment, I'm a bit busy with other campaigns to be starting a new one here, but I have been coming up with some ideas for a D&D world on the side and I was considering using it for an adventure here eventually. I'd like to see of anyone would be interested in playing it someday.

One relevant aspect of the world is that humans are very rare (0.1% of the sentient population) and found pretty much only on an isolated island. Because of this, humans, half-orcs, half-elves and tieflings are unavailable (but there are a few elf-dwarves for fans of hybrids).

Instead there are three dominant species: the elves, the dwarves, and the orcs. Orcs in my world are not all savages, many are civilized and they even have an empire.

So the main playable races are elf (including Drow), dwarf, orc, Halfling, gnome, and dragonborn. Merfolk, catfolk, and the aforementioned dwarf-elf hybrids are playable too, but official rules for them are harder to find. Goblins and kobolds are also a possibility but they tend to be nastier. And other races are not out of the question so long as they aren't directly human derived.

The world has 3 continents, one primarily inhabited by each of the most powerful races: the largest is the Elflands to the west, with the Orclands to the north and the Dwarflands to the south.

There are also subraces a bit more specific to the setting (for example, hill and mountain dwarves become northern and southern dwarves, respectively) but I digress.

A long chain of archipelagos and scattered islands known as the Isles exist between the continents. The Drow, high elves&northern dwarves, wood elves, and southern dwarves each have their own nations. There's also that Orcish empire, and a more lawful-neutral orc nation called the Alliance of 20. Lastly there's another nation in the Elflands, this one much more mixed-species, and a monster-infested wasteland in the central Orclands as well.

Does this sound interesting to any of you? Do you think it sounds like a fun world to play in?

Tell us a little about the tensions between these nations. Are the politics relevant to the stories you would set up, or are you envisioning standard blank-spot-on-the-map adventuring?

Politics are certainly relevant! I just didn't want to give every detail right away in the opening message.

I'll give a brief overview of each of the 7 main nations and alliances, from north to south on the map:

- The Orc Empire was formed when powerful orc sorcerers led a campaign to expand their nation in the northern Orclands, and were so successful that a new empire was born. Although they're of the civilized variety of orcs, the orc empire as a whole is xenophobic and somewhat hostile, leading to awkward relations with other nations.

- The Alliance of 20 started with the union of 4 orc tribes, then 12, then 20. The allied orcs are probably the furthest from average ideas of D&D orcs politically speaking; they generally don't really bother any other nations. The Wasteland separates them from the Orc Empire, so they don't have to worry much about being conquered by fellow orcs.

- The Forest Kingdom is a more or less peaceful one, and one of the largest in land area. It's unsurprisingly lived in by wood elves, ruled by King Saelis V.

- The Great Nation. This one has a complex history--2 centuries ago it was composed of an elven empire, the dwarves' Northern Kingdom, and three other elf countries. A war between the former and the rest led to a lasting alliance, which became one of the world's strongest nations, in parts of two continents. It's made up of dwarves and High Elves, and gets along well with most of its neighbors, except the Orc Empire and the Drow Dominion (but Drow generally dislike other elves).

-The Tropical Union, located in the Elflands south of the Forest Kingdom, is technically 7 different governments that allied to one another. It's the most racially diverse nation, with lots of Halflings, gnomes, dragonborn, catfolk and more.

-The Drow Dominion was founded a few centuries ago after a group of Drow returned to the surface. In my world, the Drow had originally been elves on the losing side of a war, exiled millennia ago. Their isolation and bitterness has caused them to behave cruelly towards other elves. Fortunately, their attitudes towards the other races are more neutral.

-Lastly, there is the Southern Kingdom, populated mostly by southern dwarves. Originally, the dwarves of the Dwarflands were united in a single empire, but they split (a large mountain range is a natural barrier, which had made it harder to keep culturally distinct dwarves on either side of it governed).

One location where political tensions are especially interesting is Northcoast, which is the northernmost area of the Elflands as the name implies. This place has territory controlled by the Orc Empire, the Forest Kingdom, and the Great Nation. Those three powers compete over control of the area quite a bit, but all of them know better than to start an all-out war against the others over it.

You don't know me, but if you were to think my next move would be to troll you, you wouldn't be far off, haha. There, my trollish instincts have been satisfied by meta-troll.

So my next question is, what aspect of the world would you love to see the characters explore first? How might you motivate them to get involved?

Wow...that's something I didn't put as much thought into to be honest. By aspect, do you mean locations, or themes/qualities, subjects, etc. ?

Overall I'd say depends on the party. Seems like a lazy answer but it's kind of true--if everyone decided to play orc clerics, it probably wouldn't start in the Drow Dominion and would feature religion most likely.

Soeaking of religion, the world also has a unique mythology. I haven't detailed the gods themselves yet (this is still a WIP overall) but I have something I call "The God Cycle".

Basically, it had different stages that can last anywhere from a few centuries to tens of millions of years. Simplified, it starts with a group of gods, but they begin to decline, and a new group of gods step in to fill the void. The old gods (usually) object to this and must be overthrown by the new gods, and great social change often occurs simultaneously in the world as this happens. The cycle has happened countless times in history.

Currently, the campaign is at the party where the new gods have arrived, and are about to start preparing to take down the old gods.

This has led to a split between religions that worship "new" and "old" gods. Even within those, every culture has vastly different interpretations of what little reliable information exists about the gods they worship.

I do think it would be cool to start with a more open beginning that focuses on characters and establishes the party, then maybe a classic dungeon crawl, followed by a campaign where they get to explore the larger world a bit more.

Depending on the party my preferred starting locations would probably be either Northcoast, or one of the Isles, or the border between the Tropical Union and the Drow Dominion (justifies a varied party, and in that area there is some danger but it's not as deadly as the Wasteland).

This setting would be of interest to me, as I like playing elf or dwarf characters. I like that the party could have political or religious motives, not just act as treasure hunters.

Yeah I always like for there to be a multitude of possible motivations for player characters. There's nothing wrong with a few PCs in it for the cash but it's often more interesting if at least 1 or 2 have more unique or specific reasons for doing what they do, even if that's only dungeon crawling.

Honestly though, if I do a campaign I doubt it will be dungeon heavy. I usually prefer adventures with more varied locations and encounters (social and combative) but dungeons are a classic--and easy to run--so I might throw one in.

The God Cycle sounds amazing, plenty of high drama and chaos. I guess what I'm missing from your works description is the instability points. Where might things go wrong. My thinking there is that if the world is very stable and established, then it might be too static to interest players. But having those volatile places, and the God Cycle fits this, gives a real sense of things mattering, and that the players could be involved in epoch level events.

Right. I haven't fully fleshed out the details of such things, but based on where the god cycle is, I want to have a sense of things not changing yet, but about to change. The end of an era.

Pretty cool.

There are lots of more details, but too many to put in here all at once. I have about a dozen pages on Google Docs so far.