Your setting

Tell me about your setting(s). What inspired you to make it Have you had a game in it yet? are you finished with it or is it a forever work in progess?

Share with us what you got.

To start if this thread I can share with you my sci-fi setting that I (hopefully) plan to use in the future. I have based it off my stellaris playthrough.

The setting takes place on the 2nd of September 2357. The factions that currently rule the galaxy are:

>The Ulgo-Rakatha Commonwealth
A large Plutocratic Oligarchy. The wealthy elite rule in their senate. The current leader "High-Lord Utynik Poxinirkis" has kept the Commonwealth neutral in most conflicts around the glaaxy. But a year ago the commonwealth set off to liberate planets from the Sondrithan Hierarchy.

>The Sondrithan Hierarchy
The Sondrithan Hierarchy is a Harmonious Collective that in the past had a lot of border and colony dispute with the Ulgo-Rakatha Commonwealth. Over the years they have been keeping to themselves and continued their expansion

>The Confederation of Rethell
The Confederation of Rethell is a Mega Corporation that has spread throughout the starts. They have been an important trading partner to the Ulgo-Rakatha Commowealth in the past. They have remaid out of most conflicts, but have time and time again waged war on The Allied Trakpocian Dominions

>The Allied Trakpocian Dominions
The Allied Trakpocian Dominions is small warmongering empire located just south of the The Confederation of Rethell and east of the The Ulgo-Rakatha Commonwealth. Due to their exreme warlike nature they have been subject to many wars. But the most notable was the "Manward conflict" in 2298. The war started when the The Allied Trakpocian Dominions enslaved the populations in the Manward and Holdebaana systems. A huge uprising followed and with the support of the the Confederation of Rethell and the Ulgo-Rakatha Commonwealth both systems became free from the Allied Trakpocian Dominions, and they are now "The Trakpocian Soverignty

I don't think I can fit all of this in one post, do you want me to continue?

Tokyo Apocalypse 198X is what happens when a joke sequel hook to a campaign goes too far

I ran a fun League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/Giant Robo inspired campaign a while back about the International Police Organisation's shadow war with the evil Human League which culminated in the evil genius Baron Collins and his henchmen defeated as they tried to activate Mulian leylines from their base at Colditz.

The campaign ended with a sequel hook - BUT EVIL NEVER RESTS etc.

My next campaign will be the same setting 60 years on, in the 80s. Superheroes have become a fact of life and the IPO has become a UN Taskforce while the Human League became an international megacorp receiving backing from a mysterious billionairess.

It's a total mashup of superhero cliches with the PCs assigned to the Japan branch, working alongside a team of references to Ultraman, Gavan, Golgo 13 and Sukeban Deka to investigate supernatural and superpowered crimes.

There will be aliens, conspiracies, a new wave of grimdark superheroes ala The Punisher and refusing to cooperate and super robots.

Haven't thought a lot about it but its pretty much Tropico in a magic setting.

You are the president-for-life of an island populated by lizardfolks who are pretty much caribbean thirdwolders.

There are 3 great powers that look forward to world domination in one way or another, your island close to them so you have to constantly deal with them trying to push their ideologies.

Humas are NotUSA, Orcs and greenskins are NotUSSR and Elves are NotNazi with less genocide to make things lesa biased.

Cristalyds and the Mana Wastes would act as the NotMiddleEast.

I havent worked a lot on it and probably wont turn into anything but I have fun thinking about it and how the world would look and work.

The players only know it so far as a collection of islands in unknown waters that shift in a seemingly random pattern. The entire population has been cut off from the rest of the world, and power is divided between the remnants of a monolithic trading company and a growing faction of free settlers, mercenaries and ex-soldiers who seek to form a new order rather than continue the legacy of the old world.
And then there's the king's loyalists and of course the pirates.

The four compete over whatever infrastructure they can build on the shifting islands, alongside the ruins of a civillisation forgotten long ago.

The islands move along great ocean-spanning leylines, making up a natural formation that can be manipulated to open portals between worlds.
The ancient people that discovered this tremendous power found one reality that was "higher" than the rest and which from all other worlds were merely echoes. They sought to ascend to the heavens but found the nature of their two states of being simply incompatible, their ambitious explorers obliterated by the very fabric of space in this higher realm.
And so they took the invaluable truths they had learned in the pursuit of becoming Gods and turned instead to the rest of the echo realms like their own, jumping from world to world and taking the best nature had to offer back with them. They fancied themselves keepers of the multiverse, building terrariums into their homeland to house the biggest zoo all things under the sun had ever seen.

In time, they found their ambition could not keep up with limitless number of worlds they had access to. They grew humble (by their own standards) and settled on the goal of creating paradise, taking relatively empty, lifeless world and filling it with the very best of all the flora, fauna and intelligent races they had recovered. They retired to that heaven of their own devising and closed the last link to their old home behind them, unknowingly leaving those islands in motion to eventually open its doors anew to humanity.

So that's why there are dungeons and dragons in my setting.

I've been designing a campaign setting that I probably won't get to use any time soon, since I'm too busy to GM at the moment.

It's purposefully done as a pretty standard fantasy, with your mountain dwelling dwarves, wood elves, and a bunch of human kingdoms that used to be ruled by a morally ambiguous magocratic empire (themed after Chinese dynasties). I want to keep it generic enough for players to easily get into.
However, I'm a big fan of eldritch horror, so I incorporated stuff like that into the setting. The main antagonists are dark elves, who in this setting are theocratic empire that worships strange eldritch gods, rather than spider-worshiping femdom-elves. They're very intent on forcibly converting/enslaving everybody to the service of the "true gods". Cults worshiping various eldritch beings in general take the role usually fulfilled by demonic cults, and in dark and remote places of the world otherworldly influence seeps through to reality.

Basically, typical fantasy, but set in "Lovecraft Country" (not really Locecraftian in tone, mind you, but I've based a lot on how he described the setting of his stories).

Im probably going to steal some stuff from this thread, just so everyone knows.

The most interesting thing about my setting, in my opinion that is. Is that was was born from my worry that players would grow too powerful too fast. I actually have the fluff story that ill post here.

Many millennia ago there was a time when Gods and Man walked side by side in harmony, Angel and Spirits roamed the land and interacted with Mortal Man. It was glorious, all was pure in the world. Magic was abundant and stable, live were long and happy, Technology was advanced and mighty.

But all good things must end...

Nearly five thousand years ago the World changed for the worse. One the day of the winter eclipse, the Patron God of Humanity, Aroden died. In his absence Chaos overtook the Mortal world. From the dark pits of the Great beyond flew monsters of eldritch power. Demons slaughterd, Daemons feasted and bodies rose in mountains. It was said that for a year and a day the river of Souls did not flow. All were consumed by the evils form beyond.

But one day our savior came, a mortal whose name has been lost to eternity was born with such Arcane power that he was able to combat this new threat. He banished back the hordes of evil and sealed them away. Hundreds of Gods fell at his hands, with their power he wove an enchantment to keep Outsiders out of the Material World. With his last breath he split his soul so that others like him could be born in times of great need.

So, young one. With the fate of the world at hand and reality breaking around you. What shall you do to help your world?

I'm going to type mine in greentext, as I find the more verbose and eloquent i try to make the descriptions, the faster people snooze.

>Somewhere in the universe a planet explodes, sending crystal of pure soul energy into space (probably exploded from its inhabitants hubris, but it doesn't matter)
>Shards fly through space, landing on another planet (the setting world)
>Setting world is like earth when shards fall, no non-human races, normal animals, all is regular
>People being to find shards of pure power
>Meanwhile the planet itself is reacting to the foreign energy, starting to exude its own magic
>First is giant battle royale among shardholders
>Mostly good guys win
>Oh shit but mama earth isnt happy, and some people who worshipped druidism before the shards fell, now are actually getting powers
>Druids still nowhere as powerful as shardholders, but war happens anway
>Druids lose, go into hiding, still hate shardholders to this day
>Suddenly 9 dragons show up from space over the course of a century, star wyrms
>Attracted to shards energy
>Most are evil and hungry as fuck, but a few good ones
>The eldest of the good star wyrms teaches shardholders how to harness their power more reliably
>With elder starwyrms knowledge they rip a hole in dimensions to an overlaying dimension of their world and begin to construct the Annulus, a ring city for the gods (basically sigil)
>In the center of this ring is the great machine Exis-Asul, a controller and storage field for shard magic

Cont

>Tell me about your setting
Everything and everyone is dead. The world beneath your feet is dust. You are an empty soul-less shell futilely trying to fix things so you won't have to suffer anymore.
>What inspired you to make it?
I had a talk with my friends and one of them pointed out I usually make my games too happy and innocent. One of them challenged me to make a grimdark thing.
>Have you had a game in it yet?
No. Apparently I went overboard and it's "pointless to play."
>Are you finished with it or is it a forever work in progress?
I've abandoned it completely. I don't much care for it.

>Exis controls outgoing magic (basically like data, its a giant computer but the shardholders dont know that) Asul control incoming.
>This machine creates laws for "magic" like putting in a code to a computer, doing something very specific in the world is like running a command
>PCs will never know this until level 20, seems like pretty normal magic system to them, if not more well articulated
>Shardholders become gods, and are arranged in the Annulus circularly by times of day
>Dawncourt is like the good good guys, but the duskcourt isn't evil, just shadier portfolios
>Gods create titans (half matter half magic creatures with only psuedo physical forms) to do complex maths and such required for magic and study the shardholders cant (remember they were once tribal people)
>titans thrive on planet while other races dwindle, help gods fight starwyrms.
>Most starwyrms defeated, others sleeping off great space journey
>titans get uppity
>One builds a machine that distorts time and steals a goddess he covets from heaven down to earth
>Ohfuckno say gods
>Titan-God war
>Gods win duh
>As dust settles, where is Ereb, lord of the night?
>Waaaay back when the shards fell, one was eaten by a regular snake
>Snake (now mega magical but still barely sentient) slowly slithers through history, secretly growing huge and powerful, but mostly acting on instinct
>Slips through unnoticed into the Annulus
>Starts eating gods, starting with ereb
>Gains the knowledge of each god it eats
>Starts causing mass chaos and destruction on the planet
>Few remaining gods have to close planet to Annulus connection, so no more damage can be done
>3 remaining gods trapped in empty heaven with hungry snake with the power of 4 gods it devoured
>other gods choose to remain on earth, meaning their access to exis-asul is cut, and their remaining power does not replentish
>campaign is occurring 200 years after the shutting of heaven

>players want a slightly less bright game
>you go overboard and make some spergy ultra dead universe
>Apparently I went overboard and it's "pointless to play."

You sound like a miserable twat

Wow rude.

Running this in a 5E campaign tonight. Group aren't typical "adventurers out to do good." They're part of a treasure hunters guild that hires out parties off to areas to retrieve magical artifacts for "historical preservation." The founders of the guild are actually the BBEG's trying to gain power for themselves, not for world domination, but just because power.

>Tell me about your setting.
General fantasy fare. Smallish country, with a few cities, some villages, bunch on the coast, some forests and spooky swamps to explore. Names are pretty basic. Had a week to create the world and am basically just focusing on the main peninsula to begin with.

>What inspired you to make it?
My group of friends had a Strahd game going up and one player had to back out due to personal issues, another was slightly unreliable for time because his job forced him to work a lot of overtime. So, we put Strahd on hold until we could definitely play again, and I created this.

>Have you had a game in it yet?
Nope, will be starting one in about 5 hours.

>Are you finished or is it a work in progress?
Work in progress. I feel like the base map is pretty bare, and this was just going to be the basic "starting area." There's going to be more stuff.

Post-Hillary memepunk future, where the Minority Report-esque Meme Police enforces corporate-controlled memewashing culture. A brave few memepunks, adherents of esoteric Kek, defy the Meme Pigs with dank meme graffiti and other rebellious activities.

"Open up, this is the Hilstappo! We have reason to believe you're harboring a schedule 1 meme on your hard drive! Give up the frog and nobody has to get hurt!"

Think about it.

"man, I really don't like sonic the hedgehog, can we play a shooting game?"

"WHAT? SHOOTING? Ok, how about I ACTUALLY shoot you in the fucking head"

"N-No please?"

Why are you suprised no one wanted to roleplay in a world where EVERYTHING is dead?

Because I gave them what they asked for.

Also, you are really overreacting and extrapolating on things to a ludicrous degree. Calm down.

>one of them pointed out I usually make my games too happy and innocent

Sorry, sometimes I forget that when people say they want a little more of something, what they really mean is "give me the most of that thing possible please"

Did you just stop reading? Because the very next sentence clarifies things a whole lot. Please go back and read it a few times, it'll clear things up.

On my phone, so I'm keeping this short:

The world is a donut with the sun bobbing up and down through the middle. The top and bottom are temperate, the inner surface is pretty hot (the sun just moves from one horizon to the other, then back again) while the outer surface is dark and cold (every twelve hours one horizon will glow).

The donut wobbles as it spins, producing mild seasons in the temperate regions. Mostly though, the climate is determined by position on the world.

Most calendars are based off the moons. The closer of which (wrapped in chains) is used for months while the further (small and green, Fey realm) is used for years.

I have no idea what the stars are.

The planes exist within the minds of the sleeping gods that rule them. They can be found across the world and often have great temples built around them.

My players are going to be doing a crusade in this world.

Ok here goes

The world was created millenia before the setting by Mana, which is a sort of "anti-entropy" natural substance that orders matter into more and more complex forms, first it created forces and concepts, which gave way to intelligent "god" beings and eventually a whole world and the creatures inhabiting it. Mana is what allows spellcasters to use magic and it exists in all things, all except for humans (I'll get to that)

The factions:
>The Free Peoples of the woodland
The Warden is the god of natural long-lasting life and flora. He created the first elves as your stereotypical woodland fae-people, long lived and patient just like the plants. They are scattered and decentralized, not doing much as groups unless gathered by a particularily old elf (they automatically recognize the authority of elders). Short-ish and thin, with slightly green tinged skin. Their nature magic works slowly and mostly deals with plants

>The Great Five Kingdoms
The Singer is the sun of the world. She did not have the patience to create intelligent beings of her own, but much as she found she had the power to turn some of the Warden's shrubs into beautiful flowers through her song, she decided she would also turn some of his elves, creating the first Sun Elves. Taller, with golden hair and sandy skin, the Sun Elves took to the plains and founded great cities and kingdoms (they are basically humans in any other setting) their magic is based on light, manipulated through song

>the Under-Empire
Jealous of his sister's creations, the Whisperer, god of the cold and the night, used his maddening dreams to drive some of the sun elves underground, where their skin became almost translucent white and their hair rough and grey, their form heavyset and almost toad-like. The Spreg, as they called themselves, shunned all direct interaction with other intelligent beings, and even with eachother, creating vast webs of communication with their shadow magic (cont)

The Spreg come together only in their hatred for the surface-dwellers and their madness. In times of war they elect a leader by mob rule and will follow his direction fanatically, jumping into battle in a frenzy crying "REEEEEEEEEE"
The spreg have no females of their own and reproduce by inserting their essence into vaguely humanoid fungi which eventually release spores that create more Spreg.

>The Mountain Confederations
The Enduring, god of stone and perseverance created for his own a race of stout and sturdy beings that populate the rockiest crags and mountains. The dwarves are your typical dwarves, except they live on the mountain instead of under, they create marvels of stone and ice, and manipulate the magic of runes. Their nations are run by democratically elected leaders, changed every year.


Will continue later, time to drive home

We played Dreams of Dragonflies tonight (pdf related). The final rule: publish your haiku. Here they are:

Cherish the brief moments,
For the pear's sweet flesh
Falls to sand; grows to rot.
- Hasoki

Lantern light
A brief echo
The last tax.
- Yoshita

It's a great, short indie rpg that teaches you how to write a haiku. Can be played with as few as 1 or 2 players. Highly recommended.

Here's what we did last week:

>Trapped by father in innocence,
>My lord's praise is not enough
>To let the salmon free to spawn.
- Kureko (A courtesan who slighted a guest and is ordered by her lord to kill herself.)

>Young Sun rising soon,
>Conversing with the Earth,
>Departing with the Moon.
- Suzuki Itona (A great thief, caught, now facing execution.)

Tell me about your setting(s).
Tolkienesque fantasy nonsense with an evolving tech tree and weird magic.
>What inspired you to make it
Fantasy HERO, 1986 - wanted to leave DnD behind.
>Have you had a game in it yet?
Hundreds over the last 30 years
>are you finished with it or is it a forever work in progess?
The progess continues to this day, OP.

>What inspired you to make it?
Dream, I literally saw this setting on a dream.

>Have you had a game in it yet?
Nope

>The setting.
The setting has 3 parts, the first 2 ones are just something that will lead to the third one.
PART 1
Its future, and there is a world war going on.
At some moment people throw atomic bombs at each other.
Low fantasy to mid fantasy (for the lack of an better word) monsters exist, dont ask me how they fit in a futuristic setting, since I mostly saw the world war like in those grand strategy PC games where you see mostly the world map.

PART 2
Because of atomic bombs world go to a apocalypse era.
(Low) Magic was discovered here on part 2 or already existed on part 1, I dont remember.

PART 3
After some amount of time, the world go to medieval like post apocalipse era, instead of the usual post apocalipse stuff.
Dont ask me how the world gone to a medieval like apocalipse era, instead of the usual one, it was a dream and I dont remember.
If you are suuuuper lucky, you can find stuff from part 1 here.
Then I saw a conan like guy battling against 2 elfs or ogres I dont remember, on a desert like place.
While battling those guys he find an motorcicle from part 1 buried on the ground, "he still remember what it is". The motorbike was white and it was a mix of those star wars speedbikes with art deco (for the lack of an better word)

>are you finished with it or is it a forever work in progess?
Forever work in progress.

In the barest terms possible, It's science fantasy in a dyson sphere. It was built to protect humanity and It's allies and descendants from the effects of The Final Weapon (basically a radiation that converted solar plasma into confused matter; slower than light but unstoppable it fucked the whole galaxy) used by their mysterious enemies millennias ago as a last fuck you before being ruthlessy genocided (or so people think).
However, they fucked up the shielding and so there was an horrible disaster and, while the sphere as a whole survived, trillions died and much of the infrastructure and recorded knowledge was forever lost. Some people retained some of the Acient Technology and survived by covering it up in secrecy and mysticism, so as to remain usefull to the various warlords that started competing for who was the rightfull successor to the Old Oecumene, the lost government of the sphere, and should direct the repairing operations.
So about 3000 years later Omphalos, a flying city, is the Official See of Government, there are "wizards" everywhere and "heroes" with powerfull mystical techniques that are trained in schools and dojos that kept some of The Old Ways. People worship the terraforming machines that keep them alive and/or The Final Intelligence that will Exalt them all when they repair the sphere (something completelly out of their league atm). There also are a thousand of races (with a "build your own system") various powers and nations that are either "allied" to Omphalos or anathema (that means everything from activelly hostile to they don't have a clue the omphalos exists because the sphere is huge), Transhuman "Demons" and "Angels", the occasional very weird Alien, Silicate-Creatures that infect people with terribad Alien biology making them vampires, 0 grav adapted gnostic-rastafari Space Elves and basically everything I want to put in.
It's a shameless kitchen sink of fantasy tropes through semi-hard-scifi, very tongue in cheek at times

It's still WIP since I add shit every time I feel like it but otoh it has a very strong underlying concept of what is ok or isn't in-setting so it doesn't get out of hand. It has It's own feel that is very comprehensive but not omnicomprehensive.
Also I'm working aboard for a few years so still haven't got the chance to run it.

Made a setting for pathfinder because I'm not a fan of golarion. It's mostly inspired by Hindu myths, but at some point it turned into something else. I think the core is still visible though.

I've played one game in it, after which I advanced the timeline by ten years to account for the PC's actions. Having a game played within the world showed me a lot of the faults in the original design, so I made everything a lot more neater and less generic, I think. I joke with my players that they ruined my setting but also made it 100x better.

I've got a google doc up to 40 pages, mostly fluff. I want to add more and keep going, so now I'm making character traits for the setting. Not sure when's a good point to stop at anyway.

>What inspired you to make it
Early works of Hayao Miyazaki: Shuna's Journey and Naushicaa of Valley of Wind (the manga, not the movie).
The idea is based around a world with little to no efficient agriculture, where humans are forced to either live a primitive, uncertain life of hunters, gatherers and animal herders, or to sell slaves in exchange for steady and reliable supplies of food to strange god-like creatures from across the sea. A lot of the inspiration comes from cultures of Central Asia (Tibet, Mongolia, Tajikistan etc...) and Middle East. It's technically speaking a (rather soft) sci-fi with some post-apocalyptic elements, but my players haven't figured that out and and still think it's actually fantasy. Which is how I like things.
Mostly, it's about grand steppes and extensive grasslands, small proud tribes of nomads and their tribal disputes, rich, decadent slavery-fueled cities and their cloak-and-dagger conflicts, and every now and then something strange happening, like a flying machine on the sky.

>Have you had a game in it yet?
Few short campaigns to test the settings out, yes. Nothing major. I use games to test out and expand on the world-building, not really vice-versa.

>are you finished with it or is it a forever work in progess?
Forever WIP. It's a pretty extensive and ambitious project.

>Everything and everyone is dead. The world beneath your feet is dust. You are an empty soul-less shell futilely trying to fix things so you won't have to suffer anymore.
You might want to take a look at a game called "The Void" by Russian studio Icepick Lodge. You'd see that a world pretty much exactly as you described it could be still interesting, fun to play and even "colorful".

>Players are in generic fantasyworld modeled roughly off of Conan The Barbarians Hyboria
>BBEG snake cult of set, uses arcane powers to mutate themselves to be more snakelike at the expense of captives and slaves in rituals
>players constantly having to deal with cult activity, attemp to join all races together.
>humans and orc tribes competeing out on the steppes, elves stick to the coasts, dwarves stick to the mountains, are vulkan in thier adherance to "the old way" being logical to a fault

>an underdark of a type exists, beneath the earth are catacombes honeycoming the "planet" covered in thick reddish dirt, eventually giving way to metal deposits if they dig deep enough
>immpassible mountain ranges to the far north and distant south, none have ever returned from thier edge.
>to the far east is said to be the mountain of Crom, but no one has ascended it, or returned from attempting
>of course the group will eventually have to go there
>air thinner and thinner towards the top
>opening at the peak seals them in once they are inside
>Party beset by iron golems from all sides, red beams of fire from hier eyes
> finnaly reach the central chamber, enourmous in size, with a single plinth in the middle with a hand imprint upon it
>laying a hand upon it, bright lights coalesce in the center of the room into words in mid air, its an ancient form of "dwarvish"
>translation "Steel Security. Pasword?"
>next translation
>C/ROM
>S.E.T.T
>SETT Staged evolutionary theory technology. With the right "ritual" priest where using the prigram unknowingly to access it to change themselves, and how all the other races came about
>C/ROM. Main menu for the entire dyson ring installation. Shift continents, drain seas, level mountains, everything. Other spellcaster use designated "code" for spells, verbal, somatic compinents, shit like that

Their whole world is a long forgotten test run.

Three buttons remain

>SEND DATA PACKET
>REBOOT SYSTEM, RESET ADMIN
>OPEN HANGER BAY DOORS, PREP SHIP

I want to drop hints all along the way that there is something more here, but describe it own thier characters would percieve it, just to blow thier minds at the end that they are literally on a giant Dyson Ring

What's the point of posting in this thread? It's not like anyone is reading or responding?

>What's the point of posting in this thread?
There is certain catharsis and fun in writing up about your world, even if you know the odds are nobody will care.
But yeah, world-building threads are fundamentally disfunctional on this board. I've been wondering how to fix that for a year, but I can't think of anything. Which is a shame - world-building is probably the most interesting aspect of this hobby all together.

I have too many to mention.

How many is that? You will know too when you reach it. Welcome to suffering.

I really need to get a paid job as an author so I have an excuse to write for my setting. Most of it is in my head. I've dumped tons of it on Veeky Forums, though. I've never pitched it as a setting because I want to wait until my current campaigns to end before I work on the setting the party's in.

>Tell me about your setting(s). What inspired you to make it Have you had a game in it yet? are you finished with it or is it a forever work in progess?

>What inspired you to make it
At some point I was wondering what science fiction would look like if written by someone in a fantasy world. So I've basically made a "sea opera" set on a infinite flat material plane with immense distances between the major continents.

>Have you had agame in it yet?
One short campaign. It was fun, thoug.

>are you finished with it or is it a forever work in progess?
I was planning on releasing it as a system-neutral setting book, but I haven't nearly finished my first draft, so....