Well, its finally come: A day I get to create and build my own character and see how swiftly I can get them killed by the DM I’m going to be running under.
I figured I’d start out this little epic by giving a rundown on the character I am going to be playing, Clovis the Brutal (Working Title). Its a character I’ve wanted to play since early 3.5 that I just never, ever got around to, and now is his time to shine!
The Scion of Earth and Ash – Gromulus, Son of the Demon Queen
Yesterday, as I write this, I finished up one of the longest campaigns I’ve ever ran, and the first one that took the group from 1-20. It was an awesome nearly 3 years, and I’d like to share just a little bit of it with you.
It has been a while since I’ve done a From the Ground Up Article. I stopped in the middle of Feudalism, so I figured I’d pick it back up and have a go at it. So, here we are, a small article on Feudal and noble titles.
We’ve started into the world and lives surrounding the inhabitants of the world. I’ve gone into a bit of detail before on how the feudal system works, and how its people live, but here I want to go a bit more detail about the central hub of feudalism, Manorialism and the Manor.
We’ve come a long way. The World is built, its natural laws surrounding magic have been established, its been populated with animals and plants, and we have a general knowledge of the cultures that we have options for along with the general history. Now, its time to dive deep into the lives of the individuals.
Welcome back, Last week we put the touches on the landmass and vegetation portions of the continent I’d been creating, putting together the lessons from the first section. Now, it is time to start populating it with creatures.
This second section, The Natural World, will focus up to and on all the creatures in the setting, why and how to populate them, and how to conceive of their interactions beyond the standard predator and prey situation. Since we are here, however, lets take a look into exactly how predators and prey shape up and how they work differently in a Fantasy world.
Last week, I mentioned I was going to do vegetation, but I think this week suits better with a discussion on climate. This is also where we are going to start getting a bit into how it works with the fantastic, because while the other topics: Land formations, Waterways, Ocean and Wind Currents, and Tectonic Theory, are all pretty static things that can easily be explained in real world terms and barely react to stimuli, Climate is nothing but a huge response to all the stimulus above, and likely others that are more fantastic
Last week, I talked about how to look at a land mass, and take a bit of a more realistic approach to creating it. This week, I want to take it a step further and try to define some of the greater geographic features and overarching climates created by Plate Tectonics, Wind Currents and Air Currents.
I have often said that I wanted to write a bit more about DMing, and I think I’ve found a way. Now, at least every other Tuesday, I will be writing about my DMing style, my research, and about what I do in order to create the game that I play in. This will not be a series on actually DMing a session, but instead on how to set up world that breaks the suspension of disbelief the fewest times while also giving the greatest felling of setting, time period, and culture.
Come and let us delve deeply into designing a world.
As often as I play D&D – Once a week or so, you’d think I would have more to say on the topic. Strangely, it is a difficult topic for me to write about not only specifically because I don’t want to give any portion of the story away as the DM, but also because it seems to be a fairly significant amount of winging it that goes on on a week to week basis.
However, I do want to start making it a bit of a regular thing for me to put something out there about what I think about, how I go about DMing and playing characters, fun characters I’ve built, and other things that I am working on with my D&D world, even if its just a little peek into how my brain works while DMing.
Awesome Icy Hillscape by Shavans
Or, as it is this week, in preparation for DMing, and all the small, fun things I think about when going about creating, or retconing, worlds.