I need to make a couple new maps for my #DnD clients this week, so I'm going to try #brainstorming on here. Probably should give myself a few hashtags so I can find my posts...
Let's go with...
#Writing #GameDev #Fantasy #TheCovenant
(And I'll try to do all the posts as replies to this one...)
Welcome to #Edgemere : A Single continent surrounded by an endless sea.
Originally populated by people who were the victims of failed teleportations and corrupted portals, Edgemere has become a popular source for powerful magic components.
The only major city of Edgemere is a town, also called #Edgemere. It is where the first people settled upon realizing that they were trapped in this place.
To the south of Edgemere is a vast sea which stretches away to the #EternalVeil. None who pass through this wall of mist have ever returned. In theory the Eternal Veil surrounds all of Edgemere, girding it like a prison wall, but nobody has explored full circumference of this realm.
Seven towers are arranged across #Edgemere, spaced out across the continent. Five of the towers are on land and two are out at sea. These mysterious towers were built by wizards who sought to control Edgemere and bind the #EternalVeil. This effort was not successful as all but three of the towers are now abandoned basins of dangerous magic.
To the east of #Edgemere city a vast jungle stretches away for near a hundred miles before the land gives way to the crashing waves. What little of this territory is mapped is known as #TheWeepingEast.
This jungle is home to fierce, chimeral beasts. Many of these aberrations are the abandoned results of terrible experiments from other realms, creatures which landed here when their creators attempted to destroy them or teleport them to enemy strongholds.
#TheWeepingEast is also home to several bands of semi-nomadic hunters. These hunters are, for the most part, formed from the smaller intelligent species of the multiverse. Like the beasts they alternately hunt and hide from, many of these tribal people are of mixed lineage. Were-folk and fey blendings are common, as the magic suffusing #Edgemere allows otherwise impossible unions and births.
Don't be tempted to think of the tribes of #TheWeepingEast as less civilized merely because they lack major cities. Each tribe both has a unique culture and shares customs with other tribes they encounter on a regular basis. Complex arrangements of alliance, love, and hate bind these tribes together. Their dependance on raw magic and lack of large cities is the result of living in a hostile environment which lacks large deposits of stone and metal...
... but this nomadic culture does not make them weak or "savage". Spend a few hours talking with a shaman from one of these tribes and you'll learn more about the ways of magic than you would from days studying with an Arcanist from the Mage College of Doleth. Talk with one of the healing women and you will learn as much about herbs, extracts, and setting bones as you ever would from the doctors of Sundrop.
North of #Edgemere, steep mountains rise up to a high plateau. Waterfalls cascade down the rocks, feeding most of the rivers which wind through the land towards the sea. A passage behind a waterfall leads to a long and winding path through dark tunnels, which lets out at the south end of the #GrayFields.
@andrew what an awesome brainstorm, and all in a short period of time. As an aspiring DM who has mostly run modules and only took one stab at a homebrew world (before COVID stopped our campaign), I’d love to hear about your process.
I believe that worldbuilders are as varied as songwriters, so I like to hear about all the different ways people find the inspiration to create!
@andrew so I think I’m most curious where you draw your inspiration from. For example Rivers Cuomo from Weezer shared in an interview that he likes to work off the names of TV episodes when coming up with new song ideas.
Also curious if the order you posted is the order that you came up with those ideas (eg started with the island, decided it was where failed teleports land, then worked out what’s outside of it) or if you thought it up differently before posting?
@tswan Good questions.
Inspiration-wise, my fantasy writing is mostly driven by what I find missing in other universes. I read Tolkien or D&D books or Sanderson and think "yeah, neat, but what if..."
The hardest part is nailing down the cosmology... which became a lot easier when I decided that, unlike Tolkien, I don't need to come up with the definitive truthful version of my story.
@tswan I usually start with a single location and work my way out from there. Comes for years of live DMing open world games. One of my most successful storylines only lasted about a year in the real world, but was DEEPLY player driven. As in, I didn't even make a map for outside of the areas they explored.
So I usually begin with a location or boss and ask:
1 - What would make this cooler?
2 - How would this impact the surrounding territory?
3 - What makes this unique and exciting?
Linke
tswan 