Setting the Setting - OD&D (3LBB) & AD&D2e - Part 2 - Local Campaign Area

 


In the previous post, I picked (some randomly and some directly) some 'World Hooks' for our 3LBB OD&D Setting, getting Cultural:Seafaring, Climate/Landform:Archipelago, Situation:Religious, Historical:Insurrection, and Sites:Shrines.

Now it's time to shrink back down to a Local Campaign Area. The first table for Local Campaign Areas concerns bodies of water, but given our World Hooks this was more of an easy choice than a roll - 'Island.'

Island: The local campaign area consists of a single good-sized island about 20 to 40 miles across. Most or all of the island's coasts will appear on the map of the local area. The isle may feature minor lakes, streams, and other bodies of water.

The next table concerns topography, and for this I did roll, getting:

Plains: The area is predominantly flat, although small ranges of rolling hills and outcroppings of rock may create minor hill systems covering about 10% or so of the local area. Plains may also feature depressions, canyons, or similar features, at the DM's discretion.

The next few choices refer back to tables earlier in the book. For Climate and Weather, I rolled Tropical, and I didn't roll for Seasonal Variations, choosing 'None' to fit with a tropical setting.  Prevailing Winds I rolled and got East->West, and while the books lists Grasslands only under Tropical/Arid and not Tropical/Humid, I overruled it and went with Humid.

Finally, we get to cultures and races/ancestries/species. The chapter for Local Campaign Area recommends 1 dominant race and 1d6 major or minor races, but I felt like having some significant representation, so I decided to go with the one dominant race, 3 major and 5 minor. Now, the book defines dominant race in terms of power (i.e., in a city of 90% humans but which is secretly controlled by mind-flayers, the book would call the mind-flayers 'dominant' and the humans 'major.' But to me it feels more natural to look at these terms in regards to population (so, in the aforementioned city, the humans would be 'dominant' and the mind-flayers would be 'major' or 'minor' depending on their actual numbers.)

I wanted humans as the dominant race of the area, and so didn't roll for that. For our 3 majors, I rolled first, getting first dwarves. Second roll came up minotaurs - unexpected and interesting! For the third major, I chose elves. Under minor races, I reserved one spot for a second culture of humans, and one spot for halflings (thus covering all bases for our PC races.) I rolled for the remaining 3, ignoring duplicates, and got goblins, orcs and lizard men.


Over the next few posts, I'll go over some rolls and choices for each of these cultures, and give my thoughts on which direction to take them.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Setting the Setting - OD&D (3LBB) & AD&D2e - Part 11 - Cultures: Soltari Humans

Image
It's finally time to detail the final culture in my OD&D setting, the Eldorian Isles! So far, in the Cultures subseries of these Setting the Setting posts, I've detailed the dominant culture of the area - Eldorian Humans - our three major cultures - the mercantile Thunderan Dwarves, the Egyptian-like Sunari Elves, and the militaristic, Roman Empire inspired Tauren Minotaurs - and four of our minor cultures - the Vindhyaksha Goblins, the Hearthwarden Halflings, the Drak'Thul Lizard Men, and last week, the Drogathi Stormcleaver Orcs. Now comes our final minor culture - well, minor while currently being dominant - and this is our second Human culture. For the Cultural Archetype for this culture, I rolled on the World Builder's Guide Cultural Characteristics Table on page 43.  The result was Arabic, particularly fun for me having lived for one year in the Middle East. Arabic: The campaign has a fantastic Arabian feel, modelled after A Thousand and One Nights or the sto...
Read more

Character Creation Corner - OD&D (3LBB) - Thalindra Aelrindor

Image
The first set of characters I'll be making are for Original Dungeons & Dragons, using only the original '3 Little Brown Books,' though I have them in the form of last year's 'Big Red Book.' I'll get to characters using the supplements, and probably some magazine or third party content later. Ability Scores I rolled characters using 3d6 in order, keeping 8 out of 12 sets of rolls. Our first showcase for this party is roll #5, which I decided to make an Elf based on the stats. For each character I determined gender by rolling 2d4, one pink and one blue, taking the higher die. Our elf came up female. Since we don't have a setting yet, I used the Name Generator at capitalizemytitle.com, and got 'Thalindra Aelrindor.' The rolls were: Strength 12, Intelligence 14, Wisdom 11, Constitution 9, Dexterity 10, Charisma 11. Starting Gold is also 3d6, multiplied by 10, and Thalindra got to start out with a whopping 160gp! Elves in the original boxed set ar...
Read more

Setting the Setting - OD&D (3LBB) & AD&D2e - Part 3 - Cultures: Eldorian Human

Image
  In the first two posts on generating a setting for a try at soloing Original D&D, I used 2nd Edition World Builder's Guidebook to generate some World Hooks for the world our characters will adventure in, then generating some ideas for what the Local Campaign Area would be like, culminating in generating some cultures to populate it. This will be the first post taking a closer look at one of those cultures, some rolls and choices to further define, and breathing some life into it. We'll start with looking at the dominant culture of the area, one of 2 human cultures. For the Culture Archetype, I selected European Middle Ages. At its core, I wanted the culture to still have that familiar (TSR) D&D feeling.  However, there will be acknowledgement of the environment as well. A European Middle Ages culture doesn't just spring up on a large, grassy isle in a tropical sea, and if such a culture settles in such a place, there will be adaptations. European, Middle Ages: Th...
Read more