Worldbuilding: My D&D Campaign Setting Approach

My usual week is taken up with many mundane tasks. Between getting my son up and ready for school, generally keeping the house and preparing materials for games, videos and articles, I keep pretty busy. One thing I try to do is keep my articles about things I think others will find interesting to read about.

A rule of thumb I go by is if someone can read my article and use something in it either in their games or elsewhere in their life (the interdisciplinary applications of the Reroll Rule Problem for example) then I have succeeded in my task.

Value in sharing my D&D campaign setting

I automatically dismiss electing to write about my own homebrew Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting because previously it has failed my litmus test. I couldn’t imagine someone getting something from such an article I couldn’t write some other way given enough effort, and to not do so seems self-congratulatory and masturbatory. What gain could there possibly be from sharing my own work?

I have softened on this quite a bit and re-examined subjects I had previously dismissed out of hand. Having read some of Joshua Brickley’s articles on his D&D campaign setting, and the research I’ve been doing on a follow-up to my first article on this site looking into the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance and other well-established campaign settings, I’m realising I am getting something from them.

I’m learning more about the structure of these worlds, how some of the mechanics of the game informed their development and how they elicit different feelings, different themes and motivations for the players and characters to play through.

All in all, more campaign settings provide more fodder for everyone’s games. They add to the enjoyment of the hobby overall, and there are many things to draw from the exploration of something new.

In that spirit, I humbly present a brief overview of my own campaign setting. Over the coming weeks, more will be written on the subject and we can explore together not only the setting itself and what you can get out of it but also some of my process in creating the setting, its tones and inhabitants.

Let the worldbuilding begin

Simply put, I call my campaign setting Taihun after the pantheon I created for it. The concept is one of ‘Princes and Paupers’; the second edition AD&D notion of character social progression and the adventurer’s life is one permeating their entire existence.

Since D&D is a game of unlimited imagination and scope, I opted to focus on this freedom along with the aforementioned social climbing. Fighters used to become de facto lords and landowners, druids would become leaders of their circle, and so on. In the thoroughly modern fifth edition, there’s no focus on that aspect built into the class system. I view this as a good thing – modularity is my bread and butter.

Divorcing a roleplay-heavy aspect of the game from one of the most ubiquitous mechanics of the game I think was a good idea, and was done in the third edition of the game and simply carried over. I simply re-introduce this as an optional system in the Taihun campaign.

D&D magic effect on worldbuilding

The world in my campaign setting tries to incorporate as many of the expected D&D trappings as I can think of into a fantasy approximation of the medieval-era world. To that end, I lower the magic from that of Eberron or Forgotten Realms. It has long been discussed on many forums, blogs and gaming tables that some of the more powerful magic spells and artefacts would, given certain more pragmatic approaches, destabilise otherwise normal kingdoms and empires.

The ability to render stone nought but mud would make sieges more viable approaches to warfare with smaller numbers of weapons and soldiers, and endless food and water on long journeys make travel and trade a more frequent affair.

To this end, such magics are restricted not mechanically but narratively. These spells for wizards are bound in ancient tomes lost to time, requiring specific risks to be taken in order to find them. Clerics find themselves bound by the will of the gods to only use their powers sparingly, often in self-defence unless focusing on the domain of War.

Races of D&D in a campaign setting

Races are not separated by hate for their blood but instead animosity for their politics. Elves tend to be their typical haughty, distant selves obsessed with the internal politics and social manoeuvring tending to plague some of the more popular vampire fiction. My elves have naturally immortal lives, living forever until a blade or disaster strikes.

Humans and halflings I group together, essentially setting halflings up as simply short humans. I realise this may be something I revisit as I present my campaign setting to the world. I’d rather not be one of the first or few creators of worlds who has a sizable little person population and end up offending people. Their kingdoms range in size and type greatly.

Dragonborn are among the few major changes I make to their usual setup, in that they are among every race as children ‘touched by dragons’. With dragons being rare creatures in the world of the Taihun, rumours and speculation run rampant as to why some children are born dragonborn. Is it a curse? Are they simply recycled souls of dragons long dead? Regardless, they are either worshipped or shunned with few being able to live a normal life in between. In larger cities, some dragonborn begin to congregate into gangs or guilds, depending on their level of acceptance. They are not narratively handled as a separate race, though, like in some other settings.

I suppose one could say I have a focus on how the world works and how the characters fit into it. Consistency is my primary goal, to help with immersion and the feeling of being able to impact things. Recognisable reactions and predictable behaviours form the backbone of engaging media; it’s one thing to surprise an audience (or your players) with a twist they couldn’t see coming, but it’s far more satisfying to have their goals simply be at odds with someone else’s, and the consequences of their actions being plainly laid out for them to accept or deny. This is what makes the best storytelling, in my opinion, separating the incidental protagonists from the actual heroes who know the odds and risk it all anyway.

Among the planes

A final word on my campaign to finish off this little taste of it is my physical cosmology. Taking liberties with Greek legend and an assumption I made playing games in the Elder Scrolls series of computer games (If I’m right, please let me know), I have placed all the other ‘planes’ within the same universe as the Prime Material Plane.

To wit, the Ethereal Plane and Shadow Plane are actual dimensional planes of existence layered over the Prime Material one, but the Elemental Plane of Fire is actually many planes, and they exist everywhere there is lava. Inside volcanoes, naturally-occurring ever-blazing oil fields and other such places of heat and flame are places one can physically venture to without the aid of magic, but it would be dangerous to do so and as such would still be as unreachable to most. Planes of water are deep within the oceans, air planes exist miles above the kingdoms below, et cetera and so forth.

The lands of the dead, the afterlife, similarly exist on one half of the planet, separated by a mountain range dividing the world into four sections. The Crown of the World splits the north and south of the planet, the former being where giants and dragons roam more freely among the less hospitable savannahs and snowy peaks, and the latter being the more temperate and lush farmlands, hills, deserts, forests, jungles and other varied biomes quickly settled by simian races. The mortal world is separated from the lands of the dead by another strip of mountains simply referred to as the End Peaks. Any who venture into the lands of the dead rarely return.

Up next

I will spend the next while writing more on this and sharing the development of the campaign, the pantheon, the magic system, how the narrative is handled, major political groups and so on, but the gist is here. It’s a West Marches style campaign I run when using my setting, and I love using it so far. Perhaps others will too, or at least be able to get something from the ideas presented.

I other words, I present to you another Nerdarchy exclusive homebrew campaign setting, for nerds, by nerds.

Enjoy.

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