A good place as any to start with #Baronstoke is what I use for inspiration and aesthetic touchstones for the setting.
For inspiration: #Mordheim, #Turnip28, the illustrations of Keith Thompson, and Sanctaphrax and Undertown from #TheEdgeChronicles (particularly Chris Riddell's illustrations).
As touchstones, #Annihiliation, #Bloodborne, #DarkSouls, #EldenRing, and the 2009 and 2011 #SherlockHolmes films starring Robert Downy Jr.
I'm sure there are many more escaping me at the moment.
For a while now there's been this idea stuck in my head of a sprawling, endless cityscape. Trapped in a mix of gas-lamp smog and medieval squalor, where people are making the best of a bad situation because the alternative is much, MUCH, worse.
And perhaps it's fitting that Baronstoke is also an artifact of me salvaging a campaign that failed spectacularly due to my own inexperience as a DM.
#Baronstoke as a setting takes place decades after a hole between the Abyss (where demons come from in #DnD) and the Material Plane.
That event was triggered by my players and was the start of my Poor Decision Making. What ensued was a lot of me not letting my players fix the situation, overcome it in a meaningful way, or even deus ex machina the problem away with a capable NPC.
But now we have Baronstoke.
#Baronstoke is, geographically speaking, far removed from the location of the failed campaign, occupying the fantasy equivalent of a hybrid Victorian London and New York to counter the previous campaign's hybrid Napoleonic France and American South (bayous for days).
It's a massive city, especially given the technology level, situated where a river meets the sea. Around its perimeter are massive walls to keep out most of the creatures that would want in. Above those walls stand imposing spires.
February (she/her)