One of the best ways to come up with a campaign setting is to get down to ground level and imagine the miniature landscape in one's immediate vicinity scaled up to 100 or 1000 times its actual size. Let's call this method, 'Small Worldism'.
Earlier this week I visited Iwaisaki, an cape of unusual rock formations off the coast near my wife's hometown. In an earlier life, she and I spent hours swimming in its stunningly clear waters, occasionally stepping back onto dry land to lazily drink beer and sunbathe. Now, with two young kids in tow, we mostly spent our time there chasing them around making sure they didn't slip or hurt themselves. But I did manage to take some low level photos to illustrate what I mean.
First, then, the overview. What we see here is clearly a vast lagoon, perhaps dozens of miles across, and surrounded by mighty rocky cliffs. At the base of these cliffs are many sea caves within which can be found entire city-states - their inhabitants trade and war with each other with armadas of vessels that continually traverse its vast expanse. (There also, naturally, here and there lurk pirates, too.) Higher up these cliffs lurk monsters, dragons, harpies, and the like. In the depths of the lagoon are crab-men, sahuagin, aquatic elves, tritons - the whole marine shebang. And on top of the cliffs are huge expanses of arid, barren badlands populated by savage tribes, outcasts and outlaws, and dotted with - natch - lost civilisations and ruins.
And so the thoughts go on. I daresay you could have as much fun in your back garden, though undoubtedly wild or rural areas are going to provide the most inspirational ammunition.
You are on to something here. I remember the magical worlds I would find even in a puddle when I was a child in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
ReplyDeleteSame here. I used to imagine rock pools at the local beach were like oceans.
DeleteSounds like an immediate setting right there! I can confirm if you read this post with a sort of David Attenborough voice setting on your interior monologue soundtrack, it is splendid and fantastic.
ReplyDeleteHa, well, I noticed a lot of infelicities of language in there - not my best proof-read of posts….
DeleteThis is essentially what I've done with my Hitherland setting: a vast, miles-wide city overrun by magical forest. The buildings might not be out of scale with where I'm from but the scale of the city itself is exaggerated. Throw in a chaotic god-lich-thing causing it's collapse and you've got a good setting for adventure!
ReplyDeleteChaotic god-lich-things are always helpful.
DeleteAnd the ruined caldera of the giant volcano that casted the lava that formed this immense coast is, naturally, now completely submerged a long way from the shore, but neither quite dead nor uninhabited.The tales of half collapsed, inundated lava tunnels going down, down into the dark below to where the forerunners of the present exiled sub-dwellers still live, the very rock of their termite hill like colony inlaid with orichalcum and gold, are just greatly exaggerated sailor's tales, for sure. But fishermen do still give away to the sea the first fish caught in the last month of the season as a superstitious tribute to the irate precursors of those below they shun to name, and have no doubts to where mariners that are lost overboard at sea do turn up. No, those are not lost. Any child will point the spot in the horizon where the volcano supposedly once stood millenia ago and explain that the shipwrecked invariably sink their way there. But all hope of return for these castaways is lost, forver to toil in sunken courts older than any of man's ancestors.
ReplyDeleteNice.
DeleteI remember doing the same thing as a kid while hiking, imagining how amazing a larger version of a mossy forest would be as a D&D world.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think it comes from having spent lots of time playing with toy soldiers in the garden as a kid…
DeleteMan, I love how you have that active imagination. Is the mark of the ones that refused to lost (or even recovered) their innocence. Really, a great sign.
ReplyDeleteI love some of the ideas that you mentioned... Really cool...
PS: I hope you had a great vacation!
Thanks very much mate.
DeleteA beautiful post; one that is genuinely inspirational. .
ReplyDeleteThanks Nick!
DeleteThanks Nick!
ReplyDeleteInteresting location! What it makes me think of is a world where Water won over Earth. Earth elementals retreated from the shorelines, taking their ability to support vegetation either very inland or off world entirely. In their place Water and Air elementals are supporting a different sort of life, one that needs salt water in place of fresh and salty air to be hale.
ReplyDeleteOr it could be a location where Water and Earth use for diplomacy as they have both worked to keep most other creatures at bay. On the edges they are willing to trade with mortals but deep in those lands, the living won't be for long if they are discovered. It also happens to be a former, very wealthy kingdom and so there are ruins still to be found and raided, usually filled with undead.
Or it is a new world and the elements are still working on creating or evolving terrestrial life. All the character species are marine but some individuals have taking to something like Oathbound's prestige races to explore the land and sky. It could be fairly boring or it could be filled with aberrant or elemental life.
I usually don't care much for sandy deserts and other mostly dead places, but this shoreline has potential.
Nice ideas! Kind of reminds me of that old Weiss & Hickman series about the different elemental worlds….
DeleteHm. Feels like a good idea. Had some thoughts in a similar vein before though they didn't turn into something more concrete...
ReplyDeleteOf course, in this specific case, isles, etc. should have at least some vegetation added: people and animals don't live on bare rocks nor tides which keep the rocks barren on the present scale reach hundreds of meters high...
Mike
Just reflecting - this is easy to do with barren landscapes that are fractally expansible in their horizontal and vertical dimensions - not so easy to handle plant cover as part of terrain, because grasses, weeds, bushes, and trees do fundamentally different things at their scale.
ReplyDeleteHow long is a shoreline, indeed!
Yes, but giant grass/plants etc = cool.
DeleteAlso, there are things like mosses which resemble rain forests. And the bases of plants with thin tubular stems, can suddenly resemble trees. You've just got to grub around a bit.
DeleteI
(Sorry for the Anonymous. That insightful comment was me)
ReplyDelete