A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a new setting I was thinking about for after my current Land of Azurth game comes to an end. I now think I will call it Parsulan (or at least I will for the moment!) borrowing a name coined by a friend of mine for a setting we co-created back in the 2e area. I think Parsulan will be the name of the continent this campaign is focused on. I recycle some other names from that old setting, as well, in homage.
So in addition to the aspects I mentioned before, this is what I think Parsulan will be like:
Post-apocalyptic. Having been overrun by demonic forces (true demons and their allies) several centuries ago, the magitech-employing civilization that existed prior was reduced to "points of light." There are still in typical D&D and fantasy fiction standing, city-states isolated by sparsely populated wilderness.
Absent gods. The gods, at least the major ones, have forsaken the world and retreated into the Overworld. Clerics preserve the civic rituals practiced in the days of old and try to keep the old beliefs alive, hoping that the gods will return if humanity shows sufficient humility and piety.
Adventures Guild. It's a common concept in Japanese Standard Fantasy worlds, but as I envision it, it's has much more of a Jianghu element than the very modern employment agency/professional organization of so many anime, though it will likely have elements of that--as well as being a burial society.
Dungeon Zones. Inspired by the rpg Sword World 2.5's "shallow Abysses," I think there will be eruptions/excrescences of the Demon Realm maybe called "shadow cysts" which will engulf and distort areas of the land, leading into places of altered reality and danger. These form around a nidus called a seed or heart. Only neutralization of this heart will cause of rupture and ultimately dissipation of the cyst.
7 comments:
Sounds interesting. The Dungeon Zones/seeds/hearts thing is very much like the Living Dungeons of 13th Age as well. Probably some ideas to be mined from there.
Love it. If the gods aren't talking to the clerics, are clerical "spells" more of just secular techniques for achieving the same effects (less praying for hit points, more "you should ice and elevate that and drink this potion") or is something else going on? Presumably whether the gods come back or not is a key potential plot question as well.
Definitely
Not sure if you'll find any inspiration here, but I've been crafting a Wiki for a campaign world I've been obsessed with for years. It's all about the points-of-light, taken to the extreme where the points of light didn't know each other existed until around 70 years prior, so everyone is simultaneously enjoying a renaissance and undergoing constant culture shock. Have a peek, would greatly love to hear your thoughts: https://scatteredrealms.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page
I'll check it out
@bombasticus - Sorry, missed you comment yesterday! I think that clerical spells are likely a bit mysterious. They look like magic, but they are a form of it that doesn't interact or only weakly interacts with the better understood implementations. They are only usuable by certain individuals mostly (though not always) one's of great faith, but they aren't specifically "granted" so far as anyone knows.
One of the big questions of my campaign world revolves around the nature of faith and miracles. Each of the points of light were cut off from one another for millennia, and each evolved it's own pantheon that was the "one true religion", and proved it via divine magic. Now that all the realms are suddenly encountering one another, they're finding other faiths can use divine magic just fine thank you, and now all the world's faiths are having a collective identity crisis.
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