Collaborative Campaign Setting?

[Rokrin]

So, after reading through the PHB for 4th Edition and most of the DM's guide (haven't done much in the way of MM beyond skimming and some in-depth Gnome work), I've come to the conclusion that 4th Edition is a more than worthy successor to 3/3.5. The next logical step is to either a) Find a campaign setting, or b) Make one myself. Normally I would go with option "a" if I needed one fast, and option "b" anywhere else. But seeing as how I finally got around to joining NPF, which is conveniently a community populated by 98% nerds/like-minded people, a third option that I haven't touched in a long time has sprung back up. This option is something I used to see a lot prior to taking a hiatus from the actual WotC forums, where people would give a ton of feedback on various player-made campaign settings. However, on occasion, you would stumble across a group that was doing a collaborative setting; where many people worked to create one, good, player-made campaign.

It's always been an idea that tickled me in the back of the brain, and now that 4th is...erm...almost out, with very little in the way of campaigns, it seems like an apt time to thrust the idea/concept out into the open. I just really want to see if anyone's interested.

Throw tomatoes at it.

EDIT: Looking back on that, I could have made that one paragraph into multiples and not have it so blocky. But it's 11-ish here, and I'm lazy, so you'll have to forgive me for that brick of text.

[EVILNess]

I have like 20 or 30 half-assed to fully complete settings laying around that I made in my spare time. Now, on to some questions that will better define what you want in this setting. I am up for helping with anything you want to do, so feel free to answer truthfully.

Magic:
What kind of magic availability are you going to want? Is it gonna be common? Averagely common? Moderately rare? Or Rare?

Technology:
How far is the technology? Pre or Post Gunpowder? Are there cannons? Personal firearms?

World:
What kind of world will it be? Continental? Pangaea? Vast Ocean with Islands? Other?

Basically, this is all I need to get started, but I was on a roll so I thought I'd type up some other questions to get ya thinking.

Races:
Who will inhabit this world? What Races will be present, not present? Who are the most populace major race? The Least? Any notable racial hatreds?

Governments:
How many major kingdoms will there be? What are their government types? Civics (IE do they use slavery, allow voting, give women equal rights?)? Is there a national religion? Who is the majority race? Is there any prejudices and racism in this country? Is so against whom? Now answer the same questions for the minor kingdoms.

Cities:
What is the architecture of the city? How big is it? How clean is it? How many people? What is the racial makeup? Wealth distribution? Does it have a thieves guild? What facilities are available in the city? Are there religious centers in the city? Other than a thieves guild, what guilds are present? Is this city a port? How big is the port? Can a PC charter a boat? On a major highway? How much trade does it see? Does it import or grow most of its food?


Got all that? Good. Those probably aren't all the questions you should be asking, but its a start.

Anyways, I will definitely help ya out, I have a lot of free time this summer. I <3 making traps, new races, and pretty much anything homebrew, and have been told I am quite good at it. So once again, feel free to ask. I am so into this.

[Rokrin]

Originally Posted by EVILNess

I have like 20 or 30 half-assed to fully complete settings laying around that I made in my spare time. Now, on to some questions that will better define what you want in this setting. I am up for helping with anything you want to do, so feel free to answer truthfully.

Magic:
What kind of magic availability are you going to want? Is it gonna be common? Averagely common? Moderately rare? Or Rare?
I don't think this is a question I ever answer in great detail. I'd say averagely common-moderate, but it could definitely get interesting if it was more or less common.

Technology:
How far is the technology? Pre or Post Gunpowder? Are there cannons? Personal firearms?
Pre, probably. I never felt like post fit DnD that well.

World:
What kind of world will it be? Continental? Pangaea? Vast Ocean with Islands? Other?
I think there should be other continents in the world, but restrict the development of those continents beyond relationships with the "main" one until the main one is made up.

Basically, this is all I need to get started, but I was on a roll so I thought I'd type up some other questions to get ya thinking.

Races:
Who will inhabit this world? What Races will be present, not present? Who are the most populace major race? The Least? Any notable racial hatreds?
The standard DnD races would make the campaign, obviously. I wouldn't mind seeing someone take and make the Gnomes into a race that occurs naturally as a playable race in this world...and then the possibility of a War-forged construct. But I wasn't much for Eberron. As for racial hatreds and populace, that's probably something that would be worked out when we developed some kind of history for the continent.

Governments:
How many major kingdoms will there be? What are their government types? Civics (IE do they use slavery, allow voting, give women equal rights?)? Is there a national religion? Who is the majority race? Is there any prejudices and racism in this country? Is so against whom? Now answer the same questions for the minor kingdoms.

Cities:
What is the architecture of the city? How big is it? How clean is it? How many people? What is the racial makeup? Wealth distribution? Does it have a thieves guild? What facilities are available in the city? Are there religious centers in the city? Other than a thieves guild, what guilds are present? Is this city a port? How big is the port? Can a PC charter a boat? On a major highway? How much trade does it see? Does it import or grow most of its food?

I'm short on time and can't answer these three in as great detail as I'd like too, but I think we'd have to decide on demographics in terms of racial populations and the like before we figured out ruling parties, religions, governments, etc. We'd also have to decide if we were going to use the standard DnD pantheon, or make our own.

Got all that? Good. Those probably aren't all the questions you should be asking, but its a start.

Anyways, I will definitely help ya out, I have a lot of free time this summer. I <3 making traps, new races, and pretty much anything homebrew, and have been told I am quite good at it. So once again, feel free to ask. I am so into this.

I think if we were going to do this, it'd be good to get input of everyone who wanted to be involved, but my personal answers are in bold. :p

Thanks for being the first person to show interest!

[Mirai Gen]

History and geography are easily the most crucial aspects of doing a campaign like this.

It's not terribly difficult either - make one continent that's really large and draw a few circles in it. Then take a colored pencil and mark off a few equally sized areas, then repeat the process with different colors. Throw a forest and a lake in there or two, then get to the history.

History is tricky. A good way to get started is usually a fantastic creation theory. For flavor make humanoid races be born from something dragons or giants did (Ebberon). It's a pretty unique way of doing things.

I don't have a whole lot of free time to devote to making a campaign but I've found that world-building techniques for books works just as well and I've been doing both for a while. I can say picking up a few soon-to-be-outdated 3e books for campaigns like Faerun and Ebberon and a few third-party books like Wilderlands and Midnight can give you a good idea of how to go about doing this.

[Rokrin]

Originally Posted by Mirai Gen

I don't have a whole lot of free time to devote to making a campaign but I've found that world-building techniques for books works just as well and I've been doing both for a while. I can say picking up a few soon-to-be-outdated 3e books for campaigns like Faerun and Ebberon and a few third-party books like Wilderlands and Midnight can give you a good idea of how to go about doing this.

Exactly how I think: whenever I make a new campaign setting, after getting a bit of geography in my head, I turn to my CS books: FR CS, Ebberon, Greyhawk, and sometimes older campaigns I've made up (Azeleath tends to get it's pages turned quite a bit). Not only for ideas on the actual setting, but also for ideas on how to convey the actual information. I also tend to pull books on environments, whether it's Cityscape or something else, for geographic and demographic refinements.

Thanks for the suggestions!

[Mirai Gen]

Oh, also, on history; War does wonders.

No nations really ever like each other and if you want you can just have two nations suddenly decide they don't like each other and make trade-relations and the people whom live there just hate the other. Think like the Akashic Brotherhood and Euthanatos from Mage: The Ascension.

[Rokrin]

I was thinking about this while dusting my living space today, and I think it'd be interesting if the CS started just after a god-war, where it was basically deity and followers v.s. deity and other followers. Could be interesting.

And began thinking about how to incorporate Warforged into the setting. I'm going with "Gnomes remained neutral in the <insertwarnamehere>, and built these machines to sell to the various churches" or some such. So really the Warforged have been battle slaves up until this point in time.