It is a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, and for a bit of variety I set myself a mini-project. The goal is to give myself 24 hours to outline the skeleton and basic concepts of a new Homebrew D&D setting.
Why A New Setting ?
The initial spark was that I wanted to try out World Anvil. My current setting is one that has been running on and off for around 40 real-world years, and it is getting increasingly hard to manage the volume of material using paper, Word and Excel.
So I wanted to experiment with World Anvil and see if it would work as a way to organise all that information. In the process of experimenting, I recognise that the free subscription level doesn't give me all the tools I'll need, but I want to at least discover if I like the feel of the software and interface before spending money on it.
Basis and Flavour
There are times when I feel like taking a break from the main setting and running something completely different. I still prefer it to be Dungeons & Dragons, although I'm split between 5th Edition and 3.5 - I've sometimes run previous settings as multi-edition, so not too worried about that.
Argull (the main setting) is a fairly low magic, political and gritty place. But one downside of low magic is that the players are always pushing hard to get more and more magical items.
So I decided it might be interesting to come up with a setting which is high magic, but where the monsters get a fighting chance. Also somewhere that is less rigidly logical and Earth-like, where the unusual and weird can happen without breaking immersion.
What's In A Name ?
When you create a new setting in World Anvil, the first question it asks you is what your world's name is.
I made a pretty big mistake here - I came up with a name off the top of my head and put it in. It was only later that I did a search in Google and realised that the name, while unique, was similar to the name of a deity in Pathfinder.
To avoid confusion or the risk of anyone claiming I'd stolen the name, I decided to change it. Easy, yes ? No. That is where I discover that World Anvil tries very hard to be "helpful". It had pre-populated the name of the world to a whole bunch of places (probably a dozen in all). Changing the world's name in the main Dashboard screen doesn't retroactively change all the other pre-populated places. So in addition to going through the material I'd written, I had to hunt down all the other places (some quite deeply hidden) and manually change them.
Lesson learned; research your world name a little before creating it.
Basic World Concept
World Anvil has a "World Meta" section which takes a couple of hours to complete to even a basic level. It is well worth doing, and a superb tool to focus your mind on what the setting is all about.
Typically, I didn't do this first; I came up with the concept, made a basic map, and wrote the first couple of articles about the world. Then did the World Meta section.
So here it is; the world of Confluence. It's a flat lump of land sitting at the end of a spike protruding from the Elemental Plane of Earth, where all four elemental planes meet. No sun or stars; enough light is provided by the flames of the Elemental Plane of Fire, and the natural light of the Elemental Plane of Air.
Where Does Civilisation Fit Into The World ?
A key question when creating a setting it to determine the balance of civilisation and savagery. If a setting is too barbaric, it can be hard to justify where the artefacts of civilisation come from (weapons, equipment, even simple luxuries like decent food and clothing). But if a setting is too civilised, it might be a wonderful place to live but doesn't leave as much room for exciting adventures - killing people and looting their bodies is generally frowned upon in polite company.
So in Confluence I decided to keep it relatively simple. around 20 years ago, a chap called Leonidas Sharrow arrived on what was then a barren, unexplored world and created a town, Sharrow's Hold. As it grew, some of the population moved into nearby areas and created agricultural settlements. But Sharrow's Hold is still the only sizeable town.
The barbarism element comes from the constant tension between the elemental planes. Land at the boundaries is continually created, destroyed and re-formed, in a chaotic environment. Sometimes, when new land is made, monsters and whole tribes of monsters or barbarians are created out of nothing. The clever (or lucky) ones realise that they need to push inland to avoid being re-absorbed into the chaos when their land is destroyed. So those living in the centre are always under pressure from whatever random monsters I feel like throwing at them.
Populating The World
I'm only outlining the setting at this stage, so I'll probably follow my standard methodology when it comes to populating the world.
I start by creating one or two leaders, plus the people in charge of local law enforcement and security. Then I'll move on to creating a few of the kinds of local that adventurers are almost certain to want to interact with; armourers, magic item shop owners, a couple of local religious figures who might be willing to heal damaged characters etc.
In each case, I don't go into huge detail initially - a sentence or two, just enough to give a clue about their function, basic motivations, and appearance. That's something World Anvil is good for - it makes it easy to drop in an image as a portrait, which can save a lot of writing when it comes to describing what someone looks like (which often also reflects their behaviour and mannerisms).
So that is where I've got to so far; after about 8 hours of work, I have learned a lot about World Anvil. I've got the outline of a setting which looks a bit different to my norm, which I think has potential, and which I am actually looking forward to running at least a one-shot in to see if it turns out as fun as I think it will.
It still needs a huge amount of development, but I think Confluence is the kind of world which might make for a really great "Westmarches" type campaign.
If you want to wander around what I've made so far in World Anvil, you can find it in World Anvil at Confluence - constructive criticism welcome, but bear in mind it's still a skeleton outline so far, only just quantifiable as a work in progress !