Redesigning the World Map

I'm in the process of redesigning my campaign world map.  The previous layout had problems that I couldn't easily fix in-game, so when I decided to revise my campaign, it was my chance to review the way I had originally envisioned to something that makes more sense and is more congruent with how the various nations interact.

My original map had the world laid-out in a ring of islands orbiting around the sun (actually a fire elemental node).  This was how I wanted it, as I had envisioned the world breaking and its chunks settling into a plane of asteroid-like islands orbiting the sun.  I liked the visuals of this layout but it posed some problems.  First, how would say and night work?  If the islands are all orbiting the sun there would be no day/night cycle; only perpetual day/night depending on which side of the island faced the sun.  I thought about having the individual islands rotate on their own axis, but that would make the day/night cycle vary by island and it was too much work to figure all of that out.

Second, if in a ring, the three primary nations would have to be positioned linearly, meaning one would be caught between the other two & that's not how I wanted it to work.  I wanted all three nations within reach of each other.  

And the last major problem was that it provided shortcuts to the region that I wanted to leave as inaccessible and mysterious.  So I needed a better layout that  would prevent easy excursions to that part of the world.

So the solution to these issues that I came up with is to keep the remnants of the world in a sphere instead of a ring, and to have the sun orbit the world rather than the world orbiting the sun.  The idea is that the devastation that broke the world didn't spread the remains out, rather it sort of unglued the pieces so that the world just broke apart into chunks and drifted outward from the center, expanding outwardly but retaining its spherical shape.  The sphere is bisected into hemispheres by the Dark Nebula, to prevent easy access to the other side.  Since the sun orbits world, the islands wouldn't need to spin, so I could keep the day/night cycle mostly normal and consistent.  I could also lay out the nations in a non-linear manner, allowing for there to be territories claimed and contested between the three nations.

So, that's the plan.  I'm working on drawing out the map now, which is presenting new challenges, such as now I have a 3D sphere to map out instead of a 2D plane, but I can work with that.  So far I'm happy with the redesign.  Just goes to show how you can shelf a project and let new ideas incubate until they are ready to hatch.

Back to the Drawing Board

It's been many months since I have played in my Broken World campaign, and that is because I've decided to take what I learned from the few sessions that I ran it and make some revisions.  Those revisions led to a rethinking of the whole campaign.  The basic premise will remain; a world broken by a terrible event in the distant past.  The changes I'm making are in the details and background.  I've also been toying with the idea of changing the game from D&D to Shadow of the Demon Lord, as the system for the campaign, but I still have to try that game out before making that leap.  That being said, I'm in the midst of revising the campaign and will probably not run a game in it for a while.  I'll likely be jotting down ideas here from time to time to get them out of my head.

In the mean time, I'm running a D&D campaign that I've wanted to run ever since it came out in Dungeon magazine many years ago, and that is the Age of Worms adventure path.  I'm also running a mini Star Wars campaign using the Saga Edition rules, which I've wanted to try out for some time now.  I also want to run Shadow of the Demon Lord to give that a go, and there are a few other games that I would like to run as well.  Luckily, I've recently gotten a weekly game going over Roll20 which will make running these games much more likely than before, as getting my group physically together to play is becoming more and more challenging (a subject I may speak about in a future blog post).

So, back to the Broken World.  I'm not going into a lot of detail here and now, but I would like to drop some of my major changes down, and the reasons behind the changes, so I can remember where I'm at in my headspace when I read this again many months from now.

The Backstory: I've decided to drop the detailed backstory that I originally came up with that told where the gods came from, how they came to this universe and how the entity followed them and led to the destruction of the world.  Instead, I'm going to leave all of that a mystery that is shrouded in myth and legend.  I'd rather not lock down the pre-history of the world in detail as I have a tendency to modify things as play progresses, so the looser the backstory, the easier it is to develop and modify as the campaign takes shape.  Plus, I want to focus on the post-cataclysm, emerging from a dystopian era, stories that are in my head.

Changing the Dragon Isles to the Dragon Empire:  Originally, I had the Dragon Isles populated by all races and then conquered by dragons sometime after the Great Devastation that sundered the world.  Then I found the Council of Wyrms boxed set in my local 1/2 Priced Books store and decided that the Dragon Isles would be a perfect place to establish this sort of setting.  Since the rest of my campaign has been heavily influenced by other campaign settings (Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Iron Kingdoms, Arcana Evolved, Elder Evils, etc), it makes sense to fit this in as well.  So, the Dragon Empire will be a place where dragons live and adventure and if players want to run a dragon, this is where they will originate from.  The dragons rule these islands and the majority of the population are dragons, dragon-kin, or dragonborn.  The older the dragons, the less involved they are in the world as old dragons require longer periods of sleep to recharge their magical batteries, so to speak.  The empire's day to day business is run by younger dragons that report to older dragons.  Dragonborn are the working class and soldiers of the empire.

Giants as the Dragon's Mortal Enemies: Things would get pretty boring in the Dragon Empire if they were left unchallenged, so I'm adding a region of nearby islands that are ruled by giants and titans who constantly try to conquer the dragons.

Changing the Map: Originally I had drawn out the map of what I call the Archipelago, which is the area that encompasses the Dragon Isles, the Neutral Aether, and the Confederation.  The placement of these regions gave me problems in justifying certain historical events, so I'm going to re-draw the map and try to use more of a 3D approach rather than just the two dimensional plane I'd been using.

The Confederation: I need to go back and retool this nation as I'm not completely satisfied with the way I had it set up before.  Modeled after the Iron Kingdoms and Horde campaign setting from Privateer Press, and injecting some Eberron into it as well, and drawing some inspiration from the Rush concept albums 2112 and Clockwork Angels, I have a lot of ideas that I need to flesh-out.

The Neutral Aether changing to the Independent Islands: This region was mostly just the island of Thelos and very little else.  I'd like to change this to be the main adventuring region for the campaign, drawing and placing the elements that don't fit into the Confederation or the Dragon Empire, in here.  The dwarven kingdoms will likely be placed here as well as other small kingdoms and civilizations and weird places.

That's about it for now.  I'll do a deeper dive later, as I focus in on each part of the campaign.