DnD Has an Implied Campaign Setting

[@michaelnurse9089]

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of..."

[@Earthmote]

Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

[@ScottBoydathome]

@@Earthmote *kettle drums rock out*

[@EriktheRed2023]

The magical elements aside, medieval Europe is not as dissimilar to the standard D&D setting as many would think. Egyptian monuments built hundreds or thousands of years earlier dwarfed what was being built in Europe at the time. Ancient Rome commanded armies and fleets numbering in the tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands at Philippi. Cape Ecnomus was the largest naval battle in Europe until Jutland in WW1. Aristotle, dead for centuries and many of his works unknown, was considered the high watermark of science. Alexander, Pompey Magnus, and Hannibal were generals the likes of which nobody expected ever to see again. All the grand stuff was in the past, and usually the long distant past, and so much was lost.

[@Earthmote]

Yeah, there was definitely a regression after the fall of Rome (as the obvious name implies "Dark Ages"). And we definitely still cite many classics for influence, inspiration and standards that still apply. So its interesting to see how we've evolved, but also retained so much over time too.

[@digitaljanus]

But that's only because medieval people deluded themselves into believing it so. Whether it was secular rulers envying the scale of Roman organization or religious authorities believing the farther away from original sin humanity was, the more evil they became. While by the High Medieval period most technologies had already advanced beyond Roman levels, as needing other solutions to problems besides "throw more slaves at it" led to much innovation, and the importing of advanced sciences from the East. As the Early Modern period progressed, the nascent European empires who were busy conquering distant lands, enslaving or eradicating their populations, and exploiting their resources decided to emulate...an ancient empire that had conquered distant lands, enslaved or eradicated their populations, and exploited their resources!

[@EriktheRed2023]

@@digitaljanus Agreed, albeit with the caveat that reductions in population (not least due to plagues) and long distance trade were real, non-psychological barriers to technological and sociological advances.

[@Bluecho4]

@@digitaljanus It's not really medieval people deluding themselves, so much as Renaissance people playing up the crappiness of Post-Roman Europe, to make their OWN developments seem better by comparison. Insisting that they, the Renaissance Men, were the inheritors of the Roman Empire's greatness after centuries of ignorance and squalor. Rather than the complex and constantly evolving world the medieval period actually was. Like, Renaissance people (and thus, by extension, historians for centuries after) loved to pretend Byzantium didn't exist. (I would be remiss if I didn't also point out that the obsession with Rome tended to have a White Supremacist and Imperialist undercurrent and motivation. Colonial powers loved to play up the greatness of Rome, and the tragedy of its fall, because they, too, were bloody-handed, slave-holding imperial civilizations. Eager to justify their own exploitation and atrocities heaped on other ethnic groups, by way of glorifying the last great civilization that did that.)

[@beardyben7848]

Rome stood on mass slavery and a constant war machine. They had incredible feats of organization and civic development, with everything from apartment buildings to highly effective plumbing and sophisticated road development. They were great and terrible. Egypt was subjugated to be the agricultural supplier. Citizens could vote and travel the entire empire freely, only free Roman Men could be citizens but foreign born men could serve the military to become citizens. Let's not reduce either their brutality or their achievements.

[@ericjome7284]

There is more time between Cleopatra and the building of the Giza pyramids that between us and Cleopatra. For thousands of years, the Giza site would have loomed in the desert, testament to the amazing wealth and power of the long gone builders.

[@tsoliot5913]

This has seemed a weird observation to me. Cleopatra (the notable one) was a contemporary ofJulius Ceasar, who was born 100 years before christ. She was Greek, not Egyptian. The Ptolemys had ro ruled Egypt for hundreds of years.

[@saryakan]

It's why I love Earthdawn as a system. It took a typical DnD world and setting and tried to find different reasons for such a settings idiosyncracies.

[@pandoraeeris7860]

I loved Earthdawn!

[@saryakan]

@@pandoraeeris7860 The world and setting are amazing, but it has a lot of mechanical problems. While I like the exploding dice the success System means you constantly are looking up things on a chart. 4th Edition tries to fix this but introduced more math and especially made spellcasting way, WAY more complicated than it needs to be.

[@Joker22593]

There was a prevalent suggestion in early D&D that magic and magic stuff was radioactive. Combined with the fact that the Greyhawk map was based on areas within the united states, there's a clear suggestion that the world of D&D is just post-nuclear earth. Much of fantasy in the wake of the atom bomb was based their worlds on a similar assumption.

[@texassasquatch5734]

Thats a Terrible Take for D&D

[@The_Custos]

@@Joker22593 lame

[@Aurora2097]

Well,it also had martian landscapes and beings so... no i think D&d is more like an overlapping of many different worlds. I don't think Planescape is actually THAT far from it, only far less mundane.

[@DellikkilleD]

@@texassasquatch5734 whats terrible about it? its literally foundational to *many* of the most respected fantasy works

[@MemphiStig]

Saberhagen's Empire of the East, for example, posited a post-nuke Earth in which magic had arisen and created god-like beings. And the sequel series, the Books of Swords, featured gods who came about in the wake of this, created magical swords which they gave out to humans as a game, causing wars to spread in an attempt to find and control these swords. And all of Brooks' Shannara Chronicles are set in a post-nuke Earth that is filled with all sorts of fantasy races, and magic which existed before humans was reactivated by the apocalyptic energies unleashed. That's just two examples, and they're both D&D AF. So yeah, totally lame. 🙄

[@mr.pavone9719]

I ran a campaign where the monsters in the dungeon were tired of humans slaughtering them so they started bringing all the treasures to the surface and dumping them wherever they could. It wrecked economies, left the world in the throes of constant war and caused kingdoms to crumble. How did my players deal with it? They hired armies of laborers and mercenaries to bring it back to the underworld, slaughtered any monster who opposed them and locked it all away in deep vaults.

[@erig6596]

How they hired them if currency is useless.

[@monstergelo1072]

Sloppy toppy with a twist ​@@erig6596

[@dragoknight589]

@@erig6596a wrecked economy doesn’t mean an absent economy

[@DemigodoftheSea]

Not creative enough. Obviously the solution was to take advantage of the political turmoil to overthrow the Monarchy and create the goods necessary for the spending so much money.

[@arnantphongsatha7906]

​@@erig6596 carbohydrates

[@SyrEmilon]

This is why I love settings like Ravnica. The deadliest weapons require venturing into the most perilous offices and overcoming the epic challenge of filing the correct requisition forms.

[@Jacksonstreet71]

That's something I'd like to see explored more, beyond the practical campaign writing stuff there's a trope in fantasy which isn't just pseudo-medievalism that won't move forward, it's a surface-level medievalism where everything implies that the best days are long past. The Renaissance and Enlightenment will never happen. It's most blatant in Elden Ring and Dark Sun but it's there in almost most high fantasy settings and almost all game settings. I'd like to know more about why and if this trope has been subverted or averted by anyone.

[@AL2VAR]

short, probably incorrect answer: It is like that because Tolkien. Long answer? You can talk a lot about the politics of fantasy, and hoo boy, people talk about it a lot - it might not show on some people's radars because the idea that "the best days are long past" is deeply conservative and people that talk (or subvert it) are mostly not.

[@dindindundun8211]

@@AL2VAR As a complete tangent, I always found the "best days are behind us" perspective very frustrating. We can be the "Strong Men" who bring about "Good Times" *today* if we can stop wallowing in yesterday's loss. The whole internet zeitgeist of believing we're witnessing the fall of civilization is based on comparison to some undisclosed past none of us were likely to have even been alive for. What such people want to achieve by going back is best accomplished by moving forward.

[@Oddmanoutre]

I say bring back the "Enchant Item" and "Permanency" spells for high-level wizards to start making their own magical items.

[@ZyvenZ]

2024 dnd has concrete item creation rules now.

[@DellikkilleD]

@@ZyvenZ so did 3.0 and 3.5

[@OwlShapedCeramic]

The 2024 DMG items rules are just Xanathar’s item creation rules with a requirement for Tool Proficiencies tacked on. So it’s been around even longer

[@bobhill-ol7wp]

Why bring back when you could do it yourself or better play something other than 5e

[@ayoutubewatcher2849]

I adore Eberron as a Dnd setting. It can have both the "old, lost tech and weapons" feel to it, and also the "cyberpunk-esque cutting edge weapons" produced by monopolizing mega corporations (Marked houses) feel. All in a noir 1920s aesthetic mixed with medieval/renaissance fantasy.

[@adamjchafe]

Even ancient story and mythology follows this. The Illiad, Odyssey, and Beowulf are all about the glory days and the height of civilization when the greatest figures lived.

[@cadian101st]

With the Iliad/Odyssey it was essentially fact. It was probably composed in the Greek Dark Ages/Early Iron Age, where the impressive Mycenaean civilisation had more or less completely collapsed centuries before and classical Greece had yet to rise from its ashes. Beowulf was less about a height of civilisation and more simply of heroic age figures. The Danes and Geats aren't portrayed has particularly advanced politically, technologically, or economically.

[@nakenmil]

​@@cadian101steven Gilgamesh waxes poetic about the lost golden age.😊

[@Da_maul]

I remember someone having a theory that the "lands between" in Elden Ring were composed of ruins stacked atop ruins stacked atop more ruins, , to the point where certain cliffsides and plateaus were composed entirely of some grassed-over ancient monolith of unknown make and purpose. "it's ruins all the way down" is an interesting way to frame things.

[@Lampoluke]

That is literally how some Italian cities work, modern day Rome is the extended medieval Rome, which was built atop of Old Rome. (Also Rome isn't even that old compared to most sites, not only in Italy but in the whole mediterranean area)

[@dindindundun8211]

There some locales like that in the Levant and Anatolia.

[@Trivial_Whim]

Luxor in Egypt is the longest continuously inhabited city in the world. It’s just a layer cake of older structures sinking into the earth under the weight of new structures that were built on top of them.

[@thebigoof9458]

DnD's Rome was the Netherese empire, their leader made a mistake so great it killed a god. Now the god replacing her set rules which is why spells are tiered at all the DnD.

[@smeefman6923]

Almost every d&d setting has a fallen empire like Civilization that once existed Netherese is just one of many

[@keylimepython641]

Technically, they had tiered spells before. They just had 10th and 11th level spells, and one 12th level spell as well beforehand. They went away.

[@alicebrown6215]

My favorite repeated trope is wizards making floating cities, then pushing the weave so hard in their folly that they break the magic which made their city float in the first place.

[@ljmiller96]

We can borrow the basic shape of Myth and Legend, that our civilization arose from an apocalyptic ending to a previous civilization, with successive waves of growing civilization each ended by its own apocalypse. Way back at the very beginning was the Mythic time when the gods did the Mythic acts that created the patterns of True and correct living. After the gods came the heroes of the time of Legends who also shaped human life. And finally after many generations of humans we were born into the world created by these previous generations of humanity. Shall we be heroes or villains to those who follow in our footsteps? This structure works with either Noble-Bright or Grim-Dark campaign concepts and explains the persistent pseudo medieval level of technology.

[@Earthmote]

Well said!

[@silvertheelf]

Thing is, our modern civilizations are built on the collapse of older ones, if you consider the Bronze Age Collapse for example. Fantasy just makes it cooler.

[@jeffersonian000]

As a forever DM that doesn’t particularly care about fantasy, but runs mostly fantasy, I think of the D&D meta setting as a post-scarcity interstellar civilization that lives on theme park worlds, but they have collectively forgotten that they are the ancient high tech culture that created the ruins, that magic is technology, that all the human like races are humans, that the intelligent monsters are also humans, that angles, demons, elementals, etc, are sentient programs, and that the gods are humans with admin level access to the power grid with portfolios that define what areas of access they can grant to others. Magic users either have to figure out access codes and pull power from specific resources (prepared spell casting), are granted access from a patron (clerics, Druids, paladins, warlocks), or inherit access (sorcerers, specific monsters, etc). Crafted creatures like golems are programs imprinted on crudely constructed materials. Curses are programs imprinted incorrectly by accident or intent. This is why traps in dungeons reset, why treasures can be found in obvious places long after the treasure should have been looted, and Magic can be high or low in some places, and wide or narrow in others. This also explains why hybrid races/monsters can exist, and how people can travel to other worlds with near identical languages, customs, monsters, and gods. It keeps me entertained while my players play out their individual fantasies.

[@shivasrightfoot2374]

Ctrl-F "vance" 1 result in the middle of the word "advancement." Jack Vance created the "Vancian" conception of magic used in DnD whereby wizards "memorize" spells at the beginning of the day. He also wrote a series of books set in his "Dying Earth" which heavily influenced future fantasy writers including Gygax and GRRM. "Dying Earth" was a post-apocalyptic setting in which magic was technically advanced technology influenced by Vance's experiences in WWII and the fears of nuclear war at the time. The world is extremely sparsely populated with most humans having mutated into monsters and a few scattered wizards holed-up in castles. It really makes a lot of things in DnD fall into place: traps and monsters protect a wizard's keep because there aren't a bunch of people to hire as guards; the places are also not air-tight because there are so few actual humans left around that would try and break in; the abundance of mythological creatures is due to wizards purposefully making style choices to emulate mythology when creating those creatures. Like even more sparsely populated Mad Max with advanced far-future techno-magic.

[@kadmii]

in the setting I'm developing, there are the empires that people know about (analogous to the Roman Empire or Ptolemaic Egypt) and then there are the layers of civilization buried deeper down. I didn't go lore crazy in developing the history of the world, but I did bullet out a series of layers: - Ancient Elven high civilization -- the epitome of high magic - Magical Sumerians -- the first humans who learned to harness magic - Dark Age Warlords -- they pillaged from the ruins left by the previous two layers, then buried their finds as grave goods - Romans with SOME magical power -- it's already beginning to leave the world - Medieval Mediterrean (now) -- magic is strange and rare, the PCs (if any take a caster class) may end up becoming some of the most powerful magic users in hundreds of years if, somehow, the PCs delve deep enough, maybe theyll find layers deeper and stranger (I'll figure out something if i get there)

[@Earthmote]

Sounds fun!

[@Grimlore82]

If they delve deeper... Illithids!!

[@17joren]

A good idea/bit of advice from Matt Coleville is how he had his world’s history cover three dead empires, inspired by Roman, Chinese, and some third classical civilization I forget, because of the variety they provide. That way, he varied the architecture of ancient ruins, tombs, and other dungeons in varied states of decay, it allowed for different art styles, languages, and the design of magic items, and it gave inspiration on the types of monsters that might populate each.

[@Simpson17866]

This is why Frieren: Beyond the Journey is one of the greatest fantasy works of all time, and more GMs should incorporate its lessons into their RPGs :D 80 years ago, a demon lord created the greatest killing spell the world had ever seen, capable of penetrating all defensive wards. However, when he's released from his prison in the present day, he learns the hard way that the spell he created was SO terrifying at the time that the entire magical community spent the last 80 years studying it and developing work-arounds, and the new, more powerful defensive spells have become so commonplace that even the demon lord's own spell has become one of the most basic offenses that nobody needs to take seriously anymore. But when the demon lord SEES one of the new defensive wards that took the magical community decades to develop, he's able to figure it out in seconds, and when he uses the new defensive spell himself against the protagonists' attacks, it takes him seconds to figure out a weakness that he can take advantage of when attacking them again. If he'd won that fight, or even just escaped after losing, then he would've taken over the world within a week :D His power was not the spell he came up with - his power was the creativity that it took to come up with the spell, and after catching up on the other arcane advancements of the last 80 years, he would've used the same creativity to come up with even more new ones.

[@Oddmanoutre]

I'm reminded of General Patton studying cavalry technique for nearly a decade, only to have to scrap most of what he'd learned due to tanks and mobile infantry being developed.

[@osbourn5772]

The most popular D&D Campaign Setting, the Forgotten Realms, had an empire called Netheril thousands of years ago. The power of the empire was not in the spells they came up with, but rather in the secrets of even more ancient artifacts called the Nether Scrolls, which taught them the core principles underlying magic. Like that demon, their power was not in a single spell, but rather the creativity that the scrolls enabled them to use. If the Nether Scrolls had been united in modern realms, it would change the world. “One look at the Nether scroll and I've learned what a spell is. I've been collecting spells as if every one were different. That's illusion...spells are all the same. They're all a path through illusion to truth. One look, and I've seen the fundamental truth of magic.” - The mage Druhallen.

[@InfiniteStyler]

Most Fantasy works sleep on it with their superiority in all aspects. Recency bias is real.

[@bobhill-ol7wp]

What anime brainrot does to a weeb

[@novanleon]

In what aspects? Musical arrangement? Visual storytelling? Screenplay? Art style? Framing? Dialogue? Comparing a 1000+ page novel to a manga and anime series is comparing apples and oranges. It’s like saying Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time is better than Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. The two are working with a completely different set of tools. It’s not a serious comparison that any reasonable person would make. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is an excellent work of visual storytelling and fantasy fiction.

[@colerape]

World's Without Number by Kevin Crawford is fantastic for creating a world with layer upon layer of ruins and dungeons (and things that are like dungeons but aren't). Much of the book is devoted to creating these locations or hex crawls. There is even a default setting reminiscent of Vance's Latter Earth. Even if you don't use the setting you get lots of tools to make your setting and the dungeons to delve. It is openly OSR so it is easy to convert.

[@kaduVIII]

In tormenta (a Brazilian rpg) there is a villain caled Mestre Arsenal (Arsenal Master) who seek every magic item to restock the magic of his giant robot (something line a megazord).

[@YahziCoyote]

D&D cribbed from Jack Vance's The Dying Earth way more than it did from D&D. If you haven't read that book yet, you are in for a treat.

[@joseywales6168]

All of history, recorded or not, directly affects me, you, and literally everything that exists

[@KynMites]

You could also view it as these powerful items tend to be in the hands of those already in power. If you or anyone else wants to rise above their power level you must choose your enemies. You could try and take the princes +3 longsword, angering him and his nation, or you could delve into places whose new ocupants the prince despises to take their sword.

[@Earthmote]

Good ideas!

[@RayCase]

Really good return to our roots. I just established that 'the ancients' created all the magic items of the world last session. Thanks for the full story about why

[@heavymetalelf]

I've been playing D&D since the mid 90s, and I've rarely actually considered a lot of this. Thanks for giving me some things to think about!

[@Earthmote]

Thanks for watching!

[@ajdynon]

The assumption that "Older = More Powerful" is so ingrained in fantasy that it comes off as a surprise when it turns out not to be the case (see the Frieren vs Qual fight in "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End")

[@PrebleStreetRecords]

The Witcher books also bring that up. At one point Geraly needs a new sword, and the smith comments his Witcher sword was made with meteorite iron for strength from the included nickel and chromium. However in the 70ish years he had it, metallurgy improved so much that even a cheap sword is more robust.

[@joeyj6808]

Fact: the implied setting of D&D *was* Oerth aka Greyhawk setting. I think the game started it';s long slide into mediocrity when that changed. But then, I am old and bitter, and don't get to play anymore. (Honestly I am very happy to see young people are keeping the game alive. It was my whole existence from 1977 to 1992...)

[@inventist]

I love having old empires inspire different ruins - for example, inspired by Rome, Egypt, the Aztec/Mayan/Incan Empires. You can imagine a Roman Empire style empire collapsing due to internal strife, a plague, and barbarian plundering. The sudden vanishing of the Eternal Court, the Egypt inspired-empire's ruling gods and demi-gods, led to chaos, rebellion, and fragmentation. While the Mesoamerican Empire fragments after a celestial event caused by a miscalculation of their famed star-charts shattered their magical stability, leading to apocalyptic event such as volcanic eruptions and a civil war and the populace abandoning their cursed cities for the wilds.

[@chriscooper654]

Excellent point about making a campaign's ancient history relevant to the PCs era and goals.

[@manfredconnor3194]

This is all that I think about . . . all the time. You need to go to Germany, Czech, Republic, Italy, France, Belgium, etc. D&D worlds are all post-apocalyptic. I just hate that they say it is Medieval and then do not narrow it down and present us with Biedermeier clothing, ships and architecture that are at the earliest Renaissance. You have to think about how magic and dungeons would affect economies. Think of what a gold mine running out of gold did to some kingdoms in the Middle Ages or what the Silver train did to inflation on the Iberian peninsula. With monsters like those wandering around, I cannot imagine any village not having some sort of protective wall or magics to protect them. Certainly dragons would make a lot of fortresses obsolete. Maybe they would have pikes all over them like giant anti-bird spikes? Having druids around would be great for your crop yields. How are the adventurers going to get all that treasure out of the dungeon? I am sure that the local lord will tax them for the treasure that they gained. The good old treasure tax! If there are all these treasures in all these dungeons than there are going to be scads of robbers who prey on adventurers after they have delved into the dungeon!

[@Earthmote]

Yes, great points! It does present a lot of implications and challenges. It’s nice to see thought out world building ideas around some of them.

[@Oglokoog]

anti-dragon spikes are a hilarious idea

[@JonBrase]

One potential thing to do if you don't want to spend too much work on fleshing out a history is simply to go back in 100 or 500 or 1000 year increments and role dice for how the "civilization level" of the surrounding society changed over each increment. This tells you what time periods in the past had better or worse artifacts than the present day in your setting. You can then assume a given percentage of artifacts lost per time increment to determine what sorts of stuff the party is likely to find.

[@Earthmote]

That's a nice simplification technique!

[@sirguy6678]

Great video! A good thought project- modern gaming civilization stand on the shoulders of giants- the secrets of the past can only be glimpsed by it’s lost ancient artifacts- like the pyramids of Egypt -

[@JtsTheDaneAndCrab]

Very interesting video! In my own campaign setting, sat in an alternative 1200th scandinavia (we're scandianvian after all), a clash between the Asir and Vanir god, and the Jotunn in Midgaard has left the world in ruin and transformed it from a golden age of wonder to an age of mankind (implying that the wonders of the world has left.). Although mighty kingdoms of humans still exist, they look like specs of dust compared to the colossal ruins and mile wide old battlefields of the gods and jotunn still left in Midgaard.

[@SusCalvin]

Carcosa has a magic system where you learn spells by going out to some stele in a tundra and transcribing the content.

[@JimFaindel]

I for one love to run campaigns with magic shops, and wizard schools, and both artificers and enchanters making lots and lots of money flooding the market with powerful objects. I like the flow of having my players invest all their gold into power early on in order to venture into more natural dungeons, where they can acquire rare minerals and monster pieces that can be brought back to those artisans in order to make even greater magic items. If there isn't war and turmoil in my world, I don't see how something like this wouldn't immediately become the norm, particularly with monsters, and dragons, and gods still around. You'd think a decently administered kingdom would invest in some young mages to keep the King's guard outfitted with enchanted weapons and armors, and a lot of other logical consequences of magic being available to anyone experienced enough to have killed a dozen of rats would have manifested themselves in your society. In a particularly economic-minded game I run, I even use electrum as coinage from ancient fallen civilizations that can only be recovered from ruins by adventurers, and thus its value fluctuates and affects the market depending on how successful my player characters and their competition have been plundering dungeons.

[@radaro.9682]

You can easily do this with a low magic campaign. Just make them black market and accessible only to those in the know. The PCs are in the know from lvl 1. Don't block them. But make the common folk treat even a +1 sword like the power of the gods.

[@brentogara]

See... you're _thinking_ about this from a real-world economic perspective. Most folks _don't_ treat a fantasy world like it's a real place full of real people... in fact, most people _don't spend much time _*_thinking_*_ at all_ . Which is sad, because what you're describing is _awesome_ and exactly what *would* happen if magic and martial powers were as quickly and easily obtained as is shown in most modern TTRPGs. On the _other_ hand, Player Characters in the original D&D were so _squishy_ that it makes _perfect sense_ that nobody in their right mind is going out 'adventuring', and those who _do_ are seen as (somewhat uncivilized) 'heroes' who are worthy of admiration and who regularly ascend to near-noble status on the basis of a few successful delves.

[@krispalermo8133]

@@brentogara My first gaming shop during the late 1990's before WotC, all the dam gate keeping with AD&D and nonsense over multiclassing and limit limits to nonhumans. Best one, .. you have to start all campaigns at 1st-level. So in my early twenties I told some of them to F-ck off and I set up a mini campaign location where everyone was playing AD&D 9th-level wizards to brew potions & scribe scrolls. ( before they became first level wizard feats.) The wizards run a .. Walgreens .. in the under dark. There was a male drow that braided dwarves beards and braided decorative ropes. A dwarf knife smith that hands his blades off to a drow to engrave. Drow makeup was in the Walgreens. They came off as a lawful/chaotic .. good community, when business is good. If you wrong them, they will feed your feet to an ooze. Follow with torture for a few months and then sell you for mine labor or spell parts, a piece at a time. But if you were polite and down on your luck, they take you up to the green dragon nest on the main road back to the nearest trading output village. The green dragons are d-cks but they work under a lawful contract. Greens love new people to bicker and insult. Drow act like teenagers, the dwarves tale dad jokes in a dry matter of fact tone of voice.

[@FlameForgedSoul]

1:55 Sword of Goujian and the blade found in Chengyang. Turns out you really do find them in tombs.

[@AegixDrakan]

HUH. I'm really glad I seem to have intrinsically understood this. The TTRPG setting I'm running just barely got out of a bit of a Dark Age following a local cataclysm that struck just after a massive war, that was at the tail end of a golden age of colonizing a new land. And an RPG I'm making at the moment is essentially post-post-post- *multiple* apocalypses, both world-wide and localized.

[@docnecrotic]

I haven't seen this as much. There is a focus on game-ification of things, shifting the setting away from that implication. Magic item shops, cool builds, neat crunch for players to explore, and what not have created new feeling and expectations. These aren't bad by themselves, they just don't really fit that setting as well. As you implied, I think that setting better fits old school rules and the expectations they bring.

[@Todesbot88]

That was super interesting stuff, that I never thought about before! Thank you for that! Also it really reminded me of the world from "The Wandering Inn" Series...

[@Earthmote]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@mathiasseverin5673]

Great insights! But, thank god for x2 speed.

[@Jordan-kq3qw]

DnD is a post apocalypse story.

[@Zoie3x8]

or even a post-post-apocalypse story, depending on how you tweak the settings.

[@jonathanfrost8767]

The implied setting of 5e is modern day Los Angeles LARPers.

[@Earthmote]

Oof, that cuts deep

[@ciscornBIG]

Haha, very true.

[@arempy5836]

I don't get it

[@ciscornBIG]

@@arempy5836 it means they all have main character syndrome

[@arempy5836]

@@ciscornBIG but what does that have to do with LA or LARP?

[@Oglokoog]

I think there's certainly an alternative that maintains the "best way to get cool shit is to delve deep" vibe while getting rid of the "lost golden age" element that it at first seems to require. Simply take a cue from the real world: the best weapons aren't for sale because making them requires restricted know-how and resources. As an individual or small organization, you can go buy a gun, you could even hire a decent craftsman to make something custom for you, but the actual high-grade gear is restricted to use by institutional forces. Of course, you could always just go dig through some old surplus (i.e. do the dungeon delving thing). Those things still aren't equal to what the current day big wigs swing around, but it'll still be of a higher caliber than what most people have. Bam, solved.

[@Ozblock1]

Good video thanks. I've been thinking about similar things for a while and was good to have you talk it out to help me think through it.

[@WandererEris]

Greyhawk until 3rd, Forgotten Realms from 4th onward.

[@v0Xx60]

this is the real answer.

[@cshairydude]

4th edition's default setting is definitely not Forgotten Realms. For example the gods are all wrong and the there's an ancient tiefling empire that doesn't exist in Faerûn. The developers referred to it as "Points of Light" and it was intentionally sparsely specified, because the DM is supposed to fill in any needed details.

[@Aurora2097]

I was fascinated to read the old, original D&D setting and realize that it seems to imply a very much open world setting, even as rhe game master you do not really know what mightbhappen next, you're thrown into a very hostile, alien world you don't know much about and have to explore a world that just takes shape as you play!

[@benrex7775]

I'm just dropping by to say this thumbnail looks really cool.

[@redinthesky1]

The best settings of D&D and your favorite Fantasy novels that you should be using as settings all have rich, developed histories

[@CountryBwoy]

0:40 I feel you Brother. I feel you.

[@gimpytheimp]

Had a Spelljammer campaign where the ships were able to travel between systems instantly via an ancient gate system created by a long dead god in the Astral Sea.

[@simontmn]

I love this, great practical thinking about the game setting.

[@HKFencer]

this was actually one of the best rpg videos ive ever seen

[@defnlife1683]

Yes! You can look at implied worlds with Appendix D. The original games were inspired by sword and sorcery + Dying Earth. It changed over time.

[@talscorner3696]

Aw, man, the British Museum has so much cool stuff! Also, if you haven't been there and happen to visit Londond again, take a gander at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wallace Collection!

[@hallavast]

You talk about all the things pinging around in my brain with a kind of mellow Ryan Reynolds voice.

[@harley3211]

I heard about how, before the first campaign settings, everybody played in 'fantasy land', just whatever people expected to see in fantasy. Then Greyhawk happened! Information courtesy of Matt Colville.

[@akv-e5t]

Yes, it is the influence of Jack Vance and the Dying Earth books.

[@PhilipDudley3]

I've heard called and now call D&D and most "fantasy" games Mediaeval Stasis settings.

[@fleetcenturion]

The people who call it that don't take into consideration that from the Bronze Age, up until the proliferation of gunpowder, the level of technology, and the average person's access to it, remained about the same. Modern man has been around for about 100,000 years, but most big advancements have only occurred within the last few hundred. "Stasis" is the world's default setting.

[@digitaljanus]

​@@fleetcenturion No, that discounts all the medieval advances in agriculture, animal husbandry, weaving, rope-making, textiles, metallurgy, windmills and watermills, castle construction, ship building, and more.

[@RichWoods23]

@@digitaljanus Yes, but the rate of change rarely hit any tipping points. The really big changes were ocean travel, gunpowder and the printing press. Once the expensively-trained and expensively-equipped armoured knight could be brought down by a man who'd spent a week learning to load and fire an arquebus, and when the middle classes could read, write and publish pamphlets criticising the feudal order, social change was inevitable and speeded up. There's a reason most people place their fantasy games somewhere between 500BCE and 1450CE, socially and technologically speaking, and disallow the inventions which would enable the escape from that era. Augmenting their societies only with minor magics keeps the 1% (the Lvl 20 PCs, if you like) in charge and societal change infrequent.

[@mvmusic8467]

@@fleetcenturionEverything you just said is absolutely incorrect, even down to the fact that modern man has been around for 300,000 years not 100,000 😅

[@roberthartburg266]

@@RichWoods23 Your proposed time scale is totally terrible. The Early Middle Ages only ran from 500 BCE until 1024CE, the End of Rome until the End of the Ottonian line in the Holy Roman Empire. After which came the High Middle Ages from 1024CE until 1300CE, in which Europe surpassed the technology and development of the Roman Empire. Fashion also started to change more often and advancements in clothemaking took place. If you are doing Medieval Reenactment, dessing for the Early Middle Ages is easy. But for the High Middle Age and Late Middle Age you have to be really careful, because the fashion changed every 50 to 20 years and your kit can be dated by how it looks. It's also only in the Late Medieval period from 1300CE until 1500CE, that you get the full European Plate armor and that was also a time when the first soldiers with guns started to run around. The Medieval Period in Europe only ended more or less during the religious wars caused by the 30 Years War. "Knights in shining armor" existed at the same time Europeans invented their own field canons and started to dig the first trenches to escape gun fire during sieges. The realy fantasy is RPGs having them standing together with Barbarians inspired by North Vikings and Roman Gladiators, both being dead for centuries by that point.

[@iamkrohn]

Earthdawn did this well

[@YossarianVanDriver]

This is also drawn heavily from D&D's Tolkien influence and his own influence from stories like Beowulf--which was written in a time when there wasn't technological standardisation, so the highest-quality swords were probably the oldest ones, because they had lasted longer, the only real way of testing that--hence the hero finds stuff of great power in barrows and ancient hoards.

[@Arkay24]

I think this might be very "obvious" advice, but the specific way you've framed it feels invaluable to me. "Showing, not telling" through the distinctions between item enchantments themselves I think is pretty brilliant. Sure, the best thing mortalkind can still make might be a +2 piece of gear, but a +1 scimitar that can produce fire (assuming the people who find it even know what a scimitar is) is actually incredibly useful, perhaps even more so than a weapon that can "cut" things better. The bit on "forgotten spells" and older edition D&D characters having less HP is something that's been on my mind a LOT the past couple of years. I feel it's something that might be implicit in recent editions, but it's not really a "default option" of the games themselves. They just tell you "oh, you know this is a cool idea if you want to use it". I remember an older friend of mine saying his years of playing AD&D as a wizard were mostly trying to figure out how to perform ancient ritual spells and mitigate the "system shock" of some spells. I don't know if any of that is part of the base mechanics of the game, or just good playing on both sides, but it sounds a lot more mysterious by "default" than what we've got going on these days.

[@Diana2112Gaming]

"Once, the Creator walked among us. There was untold bliss, harmony. We never knew sickness. But in his rage and jealousy, the Creator's brother struck him down, and slowly, ever so slowly, the world began to die. The light is fading. The days grow colder, and the sun itself gives less light. What was once a bright, hopefully paradise, is now a barren, winter wasteland. So much has been lost since the World Broke when the Creator Died... Much that was known is now lost. The mountains rose up, swallowing the valleys. The seas split, giving rise to new land. And the very foundations of the world changed, forever. Come, child, dance the sands. Melt the ice. Fight on. The Long Night is coming, but we fight on. Until the Final Sunrise."-A fragmented passage from a Syndicate letter, written to a nobleman's child on their coming of age birthday, date unknown, sometime before the Third Breaking, and the coming of the Long Dark.

[@jab9109]

That's the premise of Pathfinder's setting. There are thousands of ruins everywhere, many disasters destroyed past civilizations and the world is basically a graveyard full of ancient wonders and super advanced space tech.

[@flyboymike111357]

Why can't a dungeon just be a bandit stronghold in a cave or an old fort? There's no reason, other than a lack of imagination to limit a setting like this.

[@flipdbit]

I delve into the Salvation Army when I want a +2 wool sweater, furniture of sturdiness, or Vinyl's Discs...artifacts that the modern world has forgotten how to produce.

[@whangbar]

Good insights in this video. Thanks.

[@texassasquatch5734]

Low to Medium Magic setting is the Best IMO.. Where whole adventures are based around gaining 1 magic sword...Magical streetlights and Magic item shops ruins the " Magic" of Magic Items

[@Subject_Keter]

For me it the opposite, I love magic and how it works. I dont think people be like "lets do the 40k ttrpg but no force weapons cuz i hate psyker stuff"

[@gurugru5958]

You make some great points.

[@beavschannel5217]

Woop Randall is back, I missed my weekly Earthmote last week.

[@Earthmote]

Yeah, I was travelling for work, and then caught a cold at the end of it. So I needed the week for my voice to recover. We are back at it now though!

[@beavschannel5217]

@@Earthmote all good my dude, glad you're doing well. Thanks for all the great content.

[@KonRoge11]

My world’s sort of like this, except in reverse. In ages past, the world was ruled by the balance of good and evil, and was much like the typical DnD setting. However, over the course of millennia and a series of divine shenanigans, all of the old gods are either dead or cyborgs, and the forces of light and darkness fight in an eternal war that burns on for its own sake. Consequently, some of the strongest artifacts, and some of the thickest-blooded celestial- or infernal-born warriors are running around doing their high-fantasy thing. But all of that is because of the war. The country of Evyscara isn’t in power because it’s a source of radiance and virtue (the last quality being dubious in its veracity), it’s in power because they and their Lawful ‘Neutral’ war god are the only things stopping the Condassans from taking everything and burning it in the fires of glory, rape and literal nuclear fallout. This is an age of great power, of gods directly empowering men and grand mages penning new spellbooks and forging legendary, enchanted blades. It is also the most dismal and terrifying age in recorded history.

[@gideongallant1185]

Reminds me of Frostgrave and these points line up very well

[@eternalmiasma5586]

One of my favorite things to do in world building for DND is to make a world, a fully fleshed out one with countries and governments, then hit it with magic nukes, apocalypse, wipe it off the map and raise a new world in its place out of the ashes. That’s how the elden ring world was made, George RR build an entire world then the Japanese writers destroyed it and made a new one, hinting at what used to be there

[@paulsmart4672]

This was made slightly more explicit in 4e and its brief discussion of the "points of light" campaign setting. The generic D&D setting is basically fantasy post-apocalypse, and it had been for decades when they explicitly said it in late 00s. I kind of late playing it as civilization not still in regression, but at its absolute nadir. There have been a couple generations or a couple centuries of gradual collapse (to taste) following some sort of apocalypse or cataclysm, and now the new order is emerging and the new powers that will rule the next empire are being decided. Playing through the actual collapse would be fun, if you had a DM would could convincingly portray it. I've never quite been able to convince myself I've got a good plan for how to do that.

[@jtdavie9466]

This is why I run LotFP not DnD. The in system assumptions are a lot more weird and unknown than a system like DnD. And yes you can change any system to fit your wanted formula, players are often expecting something more specific depending on the system. Saying “I wanna run DnD” means something very different than say “I wanna run DCC.”

[@vitalitymirth]

Very interesting video, thank you

[@donaldyoungberg9033]

I would argue that the powerful magic items were only from era long ago. Ruins and stuff have items that just do not have a 'current' owner that the players would not be likely to want to kill to take such. A kingdom likely has many potent weapons. Its just the current user of some of them are not going to give them away and/or do not show off such power. So likely the lower power weapons are sold or openly made more while the much more powerful items would be kept by kingdoms as national assets.

[@Earthmote]

Yeah for sure, the (found) magical artefacts would wind up in the hands of the powerful. Be it kingdoms or other factions.

[@Kurotaisa]

In my own homebrews, the ancient world was of magic and monsters, and while war between the sentient species happened, it wasn't common due to the danger of mosnters and demons. The modern world is a world of technology, where magic has (mostly) been left aside (but not forgotten) and monsters are few, weak and domesticated, more like the difference btween cows and urochs. A great worldwide earthquake caused widespread devastaton and the resurfacing of dungeons, ruins of the ancient world where magic is still strong. In that homebrew, most people can't use magic, but anyone who has delved into a dungeon can *awaken*, and modern weapons and armor are not inferior to the ancient artifacts of the past, as technology can replace a lot of the magic, but modern technology was made to combat the sentient species. They are weapons that don't do that much damage, comparatively, but are easy to handle and (crit bonus against sentient races and penetrate resistances), modern armor is likewise made to handle that type of weapon, a lot of AC, very few resistances. Ancient, magical artifacts were made to fight monsters first and foremost, big and strong creatures. No to-hit bonus, but pretty big dice and damage bonus, armor that is less focused on deflecting and more on adding damage resistance.

[@ShizaruBloodrayne]

Imagine accidentally coming across an un-excavated archeological dig site that seems unrelated, while under a time crunch because the land is torn with war and the call to action is pressing. However maybe some lost information about how the wars even started is found under that dig site which might influence the major politics waging war against each other....Your party could totally just pass this up due to the pressure of plot action and sequences of events happening elsewhere, only to aid the war for the wrong reasons within ignorance....or leave the dig site to an NPC, who then gets captured or betrays the party with this uncovered information that the party never knew about because they didn't stick around. However, maybe the party did stick around and uncover what information could sway the conception of world politics while letting the events elsewhere play out, because they chose to stay instead of getting to the next destination asap....so maybe there's a loss from that but traded for what they now know. Gobekli Tepe is one of the oldest ruins found recently and is being covered up, with trees being planted atop most of the un-excavated site, which will in no doubt destroy the ruins underneath, while they built a parking lot over it as well and a half dome to preserve the main feature. This has become more of a tourist site now, and the World Economic Forum has no incentive of continuing excavation for the next 100 or so years....This could for sure be taken as inspiration for what I mentioned above; of an NPC taking over a dig site and betraying the party with the info. Now drawing in other npcs to check out the site while the true source of info has been removed or tampered with, but still being erected as a distracting beacon for traveling scholars and wizards to then come there to a dead trail or mislead answers. The source of info however could be well shipped off in secret to aiding the antagonist.

[@userJohnSmith]

I've struggled with this premise because ultimately economies receed, and therefore kingdoms and public works projects, but the skills of weapons manufacturers generally don't. My solution was to basically have significant complex magical items be found in dungeons, but not weapons. Things of significant archeological, historical, magical research, or strategic value are generally the motivations for delving, but there's rarely a direct value to the PC. For that I encourage putting in for custom work with a smith, enchanter, etc and that costs money. It makes lore, history, and commerce more valuable and makes side quests feel less tangential. It's also a bitch to keep track of because it only works if you're world lives and breaths with an actual economy.

[@cshairydude]

One exception I can name could be interpreted as a bit of magic: the formula for Greek fire was a Byzantine state secret that was lost when the empire fell in 1453. We still don't know what exactly it was. Incidentally this idea could be an excuse for magic weapons all being of archaic design, like a khopesh, falcata, or simple club, that are inferior to modern designs.

[@garryame4008]

Magic items should be found underground, not in a 'magic item shop'. I prefer dungeons over Kwik-E-Marts

[@arthurbarros5189]

I like magic item shops for small things, like a magical firecracker. The kind of sime thing creative players may use in unintended ways, like creating a diversion, starting a fire or making someone believe they're a powerful mage.

[@Trivial_Whim]

I sort of ended up doing the opposite of this, the players kept complaining so the best magic items were in exorbitantly expensive shops while ruins had ones they’d collect to sell to afford the better ones. They basically just wanted to be able to customize the enchantments and there wasn’t really an argument for why they couldn’t based on the reputation we’d established for the capital city by that point.

[@SavageGreywolf]

I mean it depends on your point of view. In our world if you want wealth and power you delve deep into the earth for the remains of ancient creatures and the hearts of long-dead stars.

[@Gruoldfar]

Lots of solid advice.

[@Seer_Of_The_Woodlands]

it would be nice if the dilapidated state of the world was in a larger part of the gameplay and the story that is told at the same time. why is the world so full of abandoned structures and buildings? etc. Great Video !

[@BeardedDevil-cn9tw]

Think post-apocalyptic if you want to think about the implied setting

[@timothybruce9366]

This was actually addressed in the 2E PHB.

[@VitoWolf-me3tq]

Appreciate the information

[@scottmarsh2991]

All my youth, I liked the logical approach you take to world building-but I have warmed up greatly to illogical, “gonzo” game worlds. Flying Buffalo’s Tunnels & Trolls RPG is just plain fun, as are the herringbone tweed trousers that delvers often wear in the illustrations to the original GRiMTooth’s TRAPs books.

[@Earthmote]

Gonzo can be fun too as long as everyone buys in!

[@gilliganIII]

I just got an idea about a merchant who buys a magic item from the party for cheap, because they don't know what they have. It can go 1 of 2 ways, the merchant keeps the item, or sells it. Either way the Party needs to find out they were gipped and then suffer the consequences, either realizing the item is far too difficult to get back, or maybe just how much they can trust random shopkeepers they meet....

[@defnlife1683]

This video is great

[@pandoraeeris7860]

There are two constants in D&D: Dark Lords and fallen Empires.

[@wrlrdqueek]

Imagine if the ancient peoples actually did leave glittery magic item behind. Random guy pulls out a glittering curved bronze blade, inset with turquoise and fluted with gold. "Behold the blade of the fallen god Aten. If I knew how to wield a Khopesh you all would be in dire trouble."

[@PlatipuseKing]

You speak of some sort of... Forgotten Realms

[@Fibonochos]

(i realize this more a comment about magic items than about the world building but...) i personally find +1 weapons to be fairly boring while they would definitely be priceless items and undebatably useful, if just a weapon with a few effect like maybe you can have glow and once a day cast divine favor is much more interesting than a +1 sword. Hell, a sword that is just a sword not even a +1 sword, but have it be a sword to EVERYTHING. to a mortal it is no more or less deadly than a regular sword would be to a commoner, but its just as deadly to anything else, it does have any bonuses to damage or anything, but it will ignore what ever insane supernatural craziness a monster may have. (I.E. is that a ghost that would be resistant to slashing/piercing/bludgeoning damage, yes it will cut the ghost like it cuts anything else. Is that a demon immune to non-magical damage, yeah the sword doesn't care, the demon takes full damage. is that a banerloth that will when you kill it the banerloth will slowly grow inside your soul and turn you into the banerloth you killed, the sword will permently kill it. no growing back. no revivals. no saturday morning villian that is back next week this sword isn't fancy but when it kills you, you stay dead. at low levels it just seams like slightly better and more durable blade but nothing crazy, but grows with you. and at the high tiers this is the kinda thing that gods tremble at the mention of. i guess my problem with +1 weapons is that the feel unmagical. they are just mechanics and no flavor. you could give some small mechanics to a simple sword but if you do the flavor right a very simple thing can be the seed of legends

[@konigstigerr4518]

i always felt that the term dungeon, outside of the clear marketing benefits of an alliterative title, is a bit of a misnomer, and ruins is what you mostly explore.

[@suddenllybah]

4e had Points of Light, and had mutluple dead empires.

[@nosaurian]

wow I was Just talking about this yesterday on twitch (while playing a game).

[@robertbemis9800]

I like naturally forming labyrinth that spawn monsters and treasure Magic items should bivided between mortal and immortal I teams Mortals can only expendable items or items with charges New mortal magic sword starts as a +5 But every time you roll a 1or 20 it loses a +1 and it sharers when it reaches 0

[@theunlearnedmind7374]

Interesting take.