Check out Arcana of the Anicents from Monte Cook Games for the ultimate science fantasy sourcebook for the world's most popular roleplaying game! www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/arcana-of-the-ancients-a-5e-science-fantasy-source?ref=5zpcbq
one thing i dont think was really covered, what do these things interact with identify. that opens up the great idea of what identify really is, is it vestiges of a god of knowledge you grasp to reveal information, is there a great magic encyclopedia and when a new item is discovered, there is a quest to catalouge it OR someone come FOR the item, what is behind identify? would it be able to identify the item, even though no one ALIVE knows ? would you just receive a blank?
demi lich is actually more powerful than a lich, they often don't even need a body, they just boobie trap their skulls and leave them behind so any poor saps that get too close, their soul gets sucked and fed to the phylactry
Can you guys please do a video on using vehicles? Maybe talk about ships and stuff with the new ghosts of salt marsh coming out. But you could also talk about using carriages, doing a sort of Oregon trail campaign, and maybe about the other animals in the phb like elephants and how to use them.
If you check out the old 2E stuff, there were sourcebooks that got into using vehicles (as well as mounts & pack animals). Caravan logistics also specifically get some love in the 2e Al'Qadim books.
15:55 From the end of JoJo's Bizzare Adventure: Battle Tendency - "And though he wished for death, he was unable to die. So eventually, Kars stopped thinking"
I really like the idea of a Wizard that locks himself away in his own Demiplane and just learns magic for an immense amount of time. He creates his Demiplane for fun, creating new interesting creatures as a hobby until it becomes its own living world. Then AO comes over to him an says "Hey, you're a God now, Congrats." Wizard: "Wait... What?"
theres nothing more satisfying than finding out deep and ancient lore for me, the idea of how to use this, how this was formed and what to do with it is incredible! you feel like you are forming the world, just a little bit this is one of your best episode!
This video, plus one on map/world design I watched the other day, makes me want to lock myself in a room with a lot of scrap paper, and a lot of coffee, and make my own universe
Good luck, I've been here all year. Once you start it's hard to stop. If drawn maps for the coral reefs of the planet, a huge world map, and a in depth history. It's been a good time.
"What if the Flintstones, but d&d?" Is such a hilarious concept. I'm trying to expand my homebrew world right now, and my players are reaching a point of (maybe) learning about an incoming invasion, and that invasion is linked to the invaders having a history on the planet. This episode, as well as the cosmic conflict episode has been exceptionally useful in this regard. Thank you guys!
I like the idea that the aboleths just knowing all this, and that they were something else before what they are now, and decided that this was the perfect form and became what we know them as. So they can’t remember back before they created their final form, cause it was before they had the ability to transfer perfect knowledge. The one blurry thing they can’t quite remember.
What if the aboliths were the way these people kept their history? They were once small, like the size of a pony, but over time they grew into the giant sea-tentacle-slugs they are in current time.
One way to bring deep history into the game is Elf dreams! Utilize long rests to create/tell stories! The Castlevania series on Netflix was a great example of what you're talking about. Dracula was so powerful and lived so long, that he forgot how to be human, and probably forgot more than he had learned himself. He was more monster than man at that point, and he had no sympathy for humanity when they took his wife, who was his last thread to humanity. I love how Dracula was portrayed. He was genuinely "evil" from the humanity perspective, but from the view of a god, or deep history, he was logical and calculated. Ironic that he thought more eternally, yet was persecuted by the church who claim to be the mouth of god. However when he lost the last of his humanity, he descended from logical into chaos, and he was so brokenhearted that he had no military prowess, sending in the swarms to slowly and randomly torment the lands with no leadership. This left a power vacuum within his own ranks. His humanity was the true monster that wanted more, and when he lost his humanity, his god logic concluded that no one deserved to live, including himself. to commit suicide by starvation after he committed total genocide was a true cold calculation.
Something else I thought of in actual RPG books: In the Palladium Fantasy RPG, the "Further Adventures in the Northern Wilderness" there is a hook of a haunted tree out in the forest near this boarderlands logging town. No one will go to it. If the players decide to check it out, they find a twisted old tree that isn't haunted but has an immortal knight that got tired of living and sat down under a tree and stopped moving as the tree grew around him. Turns out his sword is cursed with immortality but not agelessness and he needs help returning the sword where it came from so he can finally die. He developed a low level telepathy to communicate and has been asking for help whenever anyone came near. But he was mostly hopeless. If the players take up the deed it will lead them to the ruins of a seaside castle that has been almost completely warning away with time. Following directions will lead them through into the foundation that are partly submerged and into a vault that is... surprisingly well preserved but highly secured through old magic that has been failing. Once inside they will not only find the riches of this lost castle but also a stash of magical swords, each with their own platform to be placed upon and one slot is empty. The problem is that all the swords are cursed in different ways. They were not put here due to their value way back when, but due to their curses, power, and protection of the general population. On in general has a rather nasty hulk like demon's soul trapped in it and if anyone takes that sword, a battle of wills commences and if the holder loses, the demon wipes their mind and takes control.
Yeah, I'm a huge lore junkie as both a player and a DM. I love creating/learning about lore, even if my players never end up researching or discovering it. It is a huge reason as to why I love exploration of the unknown, especially when that exploration might produce both questions and maybe a few answers about my surroundings (an ancient ruin, for example). As a DM, I love the payoff - the moment of the epiphany - when the in-game historical lore, whether personal or societal, causes my players to realize that all the notes they may have been taking/learning actually comes full circle with their current adventure or even just some offscreen events. It's definitely a major factor as to why I love video game RPGs like the Elder Scrolls and the entire Souls series. The downside to my love of lore is that, as a player, I tend to have a self-sufficient, but scholarly outlook. A high-INT Human College of Lore Bard with the Outlander background (or Hermit or Sage, as less-likely but still viable alternative choices), Expertise in any combination of Arcana, History, Investigation, and Survival, the Ritualist (Wizard) Feat with Comprehend Languages and Identify, and a pure support-build selection of spells is probably the closest I could think of in terms of the "ideal" character for my personality and style. :) ...I think I need sleep. My comment may be a bit disjointed and scattered. Apologies if that's the case. Great vid, though. :)
I have a current campaign that follows the idea of "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." So the dungeons are ancient forges that where used to create everything on the world. The "gods" are just AI that have given up on their original task. The players are slowly figuring out it's a sci-fi setting that they dont know is sci-fi yet.
15:20 10.000yo Lich turns to the Party & says: "no thing is immortal" then they realise that "undeath" actually means really, really, ..., really slow decay, & the failing of their Intelligence is the symptom of that.
I always really liked the idea of drastic climactic changes over time. I have a campaign on the back burner where the PCs start in a polar environment that’s temperate, with no ice caps really left, but that still has the midnight sun and the polar night. There’d be cities and communities throughout the area that are totally accustomed to six months of darkness, and who think that’s totally normal. Only the polar regions could really support cities - the rest of the planet could grow increasingly hot and Arrakis-like and eventually become uninhabitable as you moved towards the equator. The PCs could try to journey towards the opposite pole on a sort of Silk Road, past old ruined baked cities and towns.
I have an idea sort of like this, the main thing is that there is a day night cycle, just a VERY slow one, and the world is habitable elsewhere due to strange dark storms that periodically darken the day, and make sort of a regular day night cycle. however true night brings an ice age that lasts until the dawn comes again. As a result most of the peoples are nomadic, with several of the elder races, elves and the like having permenent settlements.
I'm creating my own world for my campaigns and this was really helpful, it's great to have insight from all this questions that you guys have already thought about
A while back, I came up with this idea for a "Mummy" campaign set in a mythic version of our world. By that I mean, the PCs were ancient Egyptians who got mummified in a special rite, and periodically return to life. The gods (and later, when the gods fell into sleeping from lack of worship, the impersonal force of Ma'at) bring the PCs back every few centuries, in order to right some wrong and fight evil. It would start during the Bronze Age, when the characters were only centuries dead. The capstone of the first "arc" would be them fighting Sea People (who are actual merfolk or Tritons or whatever) during the Bronze Age Collapse. It would just keep going down through history, the PCs growing steadily stronger and going through all these successive civilizations. Until they're getting up to 20th level, and they're fighting two-fisted pulp heroes, mad geniuses, and Golden Dawn wizards, on top of zeppelins over cities like London and New York, in the 1930s. The PCs would have _become_ the kind of grossly powerful mummy wizards of the Mummy films (pick a version, so long as the mummy isn't a glorified zombie). And all throughout this campaign, the players would be inundated by evidence of time's inexorable passage. So that they come to realize that they are OLD. Old as balls. THEY have become living Time Abysses. And that they don't really know what the hell it is they're doing anymore.
The game Endless Legend is all about this science Fantasy stuff. It is a 4x (think civ) but the faction intro videos especially the Morgawr and broken lords are great potential enemies.
That was a cool revelation in Mass Effect about the precursor civilization of Protheans who were thought to be behind all the wondrous tech in the galaxy.
All of this is so interesting when considering Planescape, the related factions and their theories, and the nature of "Powers" in the multiverse. Also, Ao, the Lady of Pain, and Tharizdun representing timeless Law, Neutrality, and Chaos over and above the concept of deity.
What if the D&D Gods were a exiled group from the Far Realm. Exiled due to being aberrations to the Far Realm. They entered the center of the Elemental Chaos, built the Material Plane, and that starts the Dawn War because the Elementals dislike that action. But the war cracked parts of Creation, the cracks and bits make the Shadowfell and Feywild. The Gods then built the Outer Planes to rest from their victory.
very glad you guys are touching on creation for homebrew (at least that's what it seems this episode is about. ) I find thats about the only thing your channel doesn't really cover to often.
Fossilized Lich: is the creepy statue that really wants you to take the magical "amulet" off of it to "lift the curse on it" so it can once more be free.
I think this episode is still one of your most significant videos. It would be so helpful if you guys did a similar one again, or if you linked this everywhere.
You know a really good source for insperation for old magic gone bad is The Brothers War and The Thran. In there the Thran's magic was heavily based on magic artifacts... and it just happens the crystals that generated the magic were radioactive and gave people magic resistant cancer that when healers tried to use spells to fix it, it made the cancer worse. The only thing they could do is get one of those that are known and feared all over. The ones who damage the body and cut it open to peek at what is inside where the gods hid away what make us live... The butchers known as... Doctors.
I can't stop looking at the display of FFG Star Wars RPG books in the background, recently started playing the game and collecting the books but they're really hard to get here in Europe, i'm a little jealous to see you have a store that's fully stocked with all the books and products. Anyway great video as always.
Working on a setting through emergent play. Started en with a village, expanded to a couple of continents, gave some places names based on populace or geographicnames, and others esoteric names. I have jotted ideas for vestiges of one great prior civilization for them to discover. Once the players understand how the lost history leaves leftovers, all I have to do is create a new one for things an they investigate that defy a mundane recent origin. They don't have to know I didn't prep on it years ago, or that their investigation is stalled because I haven't written the rest of history till next time.
I just love science-fantasy and deep time. My main story is a VERY deep time version. great thoughts. I especially loved the thought that what if long ago bats were intentionally engineered as a tool to create the guano needed as a fireball component! You guys always have great stuff! Keep up the fantastic work!
I like an idea from Assassin's Creed where a prior civilization leaves behind clues and artifacts for a later civilization behind because they know that some catastrophe will repeat itself eventually. Maybe the players uncover some artifact, take it to the Mage's Guild, and the Mage's reveal that they've been working on a solution for past 300 years and they need the party's help to find the last few artifacts. Now you've opened up tons of potential quest design possibilities. Maybe you need a book from the king's library, now you have to either solve some problem for him or use diplomacy to convince him to hand it over. The next artifact might be located on a mysterious island that doesn't appear on any maps and the local wildlife has been warped by the magical energies. Maybe the mages need help recruiting an expert on some super obscure and niche subject matter. The mages might be keeping a tight lid on everything to prevent people from panicking, so there might be a rival group trying to find the artifacts for themselves that you have to compete with. And the best part is, if the party doesn't want to get wrapped up in everything you have lots of ways to end the campaign. You could have it continue in the background of a later campaign, or maybe if the party loses to a different BBEG you can have the catastrophe occur right after the TPK.
Fakjbf That's a great way to add your feature your worlds ancient history front and center. You could totally add some fantasy flavor to that with the 3.5e Elder Evils book. Each of the entries in there is an apocalyptic threat, especially Pandorym who will literally kill the gods if he gets the chance
Oh, boy! This episode just gave me a great insight on how to finally visualize a way to interconnect a bunch of concepts I've had in my mind for a few months now... I wasn't quite sure how to make it all work and you guys really helped. Noice! +1 rep [edit] I've just realised that a few of the aforementioned ideas have been on my mind for at least 7 years, not a few months... I tried to make these primitive concepts of mine work on two campaigns before but my inexperience as a DM meant those were both failed attempts. Both campaigns died after two or three sessions. Let's see if I can manage to make it work this time around. シ
That idea of prior civilizations creating the current world is something that I did in my setting's deep history, actually. Basically, the short-lived races were created by the long-lived races, and their hubris is what brought evil into the world. I'm honored to hear that you have ideas similar to mine.
This is a Golden episode! Lots of good stuff. Surprised you didn’t mention the Mindflayers again. But this is how I want to introduce Moogles into Exalted one awakening and being depressed there are no more moogles and joining and Exalted Circle with their Airship.
Great topic and video. I love this topic. My own campaign world, which is a sort of earth-based post-post-apocalyptic setting that asks "what happens long after a civilization recovers from a super disruptive apocalypse?" has a deep history that spans the universe and goes back to the big bang. Archaeology also happens to be a prominent theme in my world.
I would like a campaign were you help a kingdom of dwarves reclaim a anceint homeland but the ancient kingdom is also the ancient kingdom of the drougur! And you must decide what kingdom is wourldy enough to reclaim it!😎😎😎
I've had a couple interesting ideas that fit in this category. Either a race of interstellar constructs that have been observing the world for untold eons and collecting data on the civilizations, or this ancient repository of knowledge and relics existing deep beneath the earth that's under control of a powerful immortal being that feeds off of negative energy and the lifeforce of evil beings. Over time countless evil monsters have flocked to the gates of this underground fortress, sensing the power within, but are unable to breach the defenses. It had gotten to the point where even the spirits of deceased evil beings started to be drawn to this place, making it a de facto Underworld, and the civilizations on the surface start using this Big Hole of Evil as a convenient spot to dump all their worst villains. Meanwhile, the immortal guy chilling in his throne room at the bottom's just like "Uhh, yeah. Okay. I *guess* I'll be the warden of your underworld. Not that y'all ever *asked* or anything."
"I have spent my life searching for the answers that my father and my father's fathers failed to find. Who were the Precursors? Why did they create the vast monoliths that liter our planet? How did they harness Eco, the life energy of the world? What was their purpose? And why did they vanish? I have asked the plants, but they do not remember. The plants have asked the rocks, but the rocks do not recall. Even the rocks do not recall." I love ancient history in games
Thanks for the inspiration, I think I'll send my players through an dungeon that is itself a museum of collected artifacts from even older civilizations, many of which are mundane, some are... less so.
As an interesting addition to the "Ancient Dungeon Discovery" concept, you could start adding Splat-book info (spells, archetypes, magic items.) As "New" Discoveries either through player action, or by NPCs. If you really like that idea, maybe talk to one of your players who wants to play a weirder class archetype (Eldritch knights, Planer rangers, hexblade warlocks) and have them, either in their backstory or in the first dungeon, Discover something new to the world. (An E.K. could find an ancient grimoire, a ranger could find a Gate and become obsessed with finding a way to stop Eldritch monsters, Hexblade could have already found a weapon in a previous dig.) I might add this concept into a game world I want to run anyway, so, thanks guys. I liked this video a lot.
Literally just watching this one with a piece of paper and pen, writing down ideas. My setting just got a lot more interesting, and a lot more dangerous.
Caves of Qud is a great example of this. A long ago civilization called the Eaters of the World whose refuse and ruins form endless caverns and wonderous items in a bronze age world of moisture farmers and sentient bears.
Am I the only one who thought of Fri from futurama when he mentioned playing a time displaced character. And he's just incredibly excited to explore an exciting new world after hating his old boring life XD
You guys should check out resurgence of the dragon, "El resurgir del dragón" in spanish, a spanish versión oficial 5th edition DnD, that an Spanish company made when they thought that the books weren't gonna be printed un spanish language. It has a super cool setting, and It is pretty similar of what you are saying here.
I wrote a blog about something that I call the "Time-tech conundrum". Has anyone else addressed this? It's the idea that, when deep world building, you need to be able to explain how your world can stay in the iron age for thousands of years. Especially when it comes to magic research, which is, essentially, science. If a fireball spell was around 2000 years earlier, why is it not nukes, at this point? The trick is to still keep the cool tropes, but to think of ways in which tech gets lost and set back.
Another adventure from Palladium Fantasy, this time the Old Ones sourcebook, has its start at a trade town along a major mountain pass. A hook of that the trade route goes out of it's way along this path due to a forest in the valley the pass is part of has a forest of silence. No sound can be heard when in the forest. Only dead silence. Its of magic nature but no one can figure out the cause of it. If the players investigate they will find in the m8iddle there is the ruins of a bunker of sorts. Its heavily overgrown and some nasty forest critters (that can't be heard but adapted to the noise) made their home there. Investigating the place leads to a chamber that isn't overgrown, in fact even the cracks of the walls don't have roots or anything going into it. All that is inside the chamber is a platform with a mummfied body laying on a slab. and the remains of small animals at the entry way. If the players enter they start hearing a heart beat through the silence, Slow at first, and then breathing joins it. During this time the players can destroy the body through fire if they have any and the spell will be broken and the sound will return. If they let it go to conclusion, the spell will also go but the body will wake with each player losing about 1/4th of their hitpoints. The one on the slab will get up and look normal instead of preserved and be very confused. It looks like a lizard man with draconic wings and start making demands in his language. If the players attack they will be in a fight with rather strong magic user. If they let him figure out they don't speak the same language or if one of the players have a tongues spell, it will be cast and they will find out he is the ancient king of this area and he retreated into this room when he was wounded during a war he was in with the Crystal Empire. The room and area were kind of a bunker to hide in if something happened but his servants were to come to find him there once things were safe enough to... which as can be seen that never happened. If the players attend him, he will appreciate the help but he has nothing to his name anymore and he will want to know the fate of his people. If they go back to town with him they will find someone that been to the desert areas to the SE that has barbarians there that look something like the king from a trader passing through. He will want to go to investigate. If the players go with him they will hear stories of the greatness of his kingdom, the feats of magical artifice they did and so on and will be continued to be shocked how most never seen any of his kind which worries him greatly. Once to the desert area things only go worse for him... He will find his people but they are just tribal nomads bickering among each other. Many worship a warrior god that share his name but he will be disgusted with the loss his people have had and what they had become. He will from there want to find the fate of the Crystal Empire. To see if they were the cause of this but will find just as much of a blank on history of that kingdom as well. I kinda filled a lot out here, I don't know if I should continue on.
My dad & I came up with a neat idea: some city build out of old old old ruins that had some sort of generator inside, & a blue dragon had like, kinda taken over bc it knew its lightning breath could power the generator, & the people of the city REALLY like having electric lights & refrigerators & stuff
In my setting, Dragons are essentially terraforming machines created by arch-fey so that they could colonize the prime material. Then the fey pissed off the angels so now the dragons are kinda just left over. Dragon Age, Berserk, Middle Earth, and Forgotten realms are all great resources for insipiring and building deep history. Oh, and real world history, cosmology and mythology obviously. In general though, I draw a lot from the Mythos Cycle for deep history stuff. There is a ton of content there, and it is very easy to adapt to just about any setting or purpose.
Wake up Do the work thing Get breakfast with a friend Find fresh brownies on the stove at home Get notification for new WebDM I fucking love wednesdays B)
idea for a neutral faction: a famous wizard who became a Lich, faked his death, allowed himself to be entombed, and has been idly waiting the Eons away for people to forget about the tomb so he can expand it into his lair. Anyone who comes in he just plays dead (pun intended) and waits for them to leave. At least until the party notices him
I was just working on this myself for my setting! Fun coincidence and a great video as usual! ^^ Edit: looked it up and 7 pieces can be combined 127 different ways (ignoring order)... I would not want to have to come up with 127 unique and interesting things for all the combinations to do :P
I have a suggestion for a future video. What are some good ways to make Lawful Neutral characters like Modrons interesting in the game? I’ve been avoiding them because of that challenge.
Reminds me of the first mom joke they found from ancient Babylon. Your party finds this tablet and spends all this time trying to discover what it says and decode it's ancient history and meaning. Its magic and wonder! Then it's just a mom joke. Lol.
I imagine with a lot of undead, like Vampires and Liches, that they would grow stronger as they age. Some sort of truly ancient vampire, for instance, might have some of their weaknesses lessen or even totally disappear. It's just that... y'know... they have to live something like tens of millennia, and a lot don't.
im about to play a character who was sequestered and woke up thousands of years later. she was trained to fight an impending doom by an old divination wizard, then told to awaken when the ancient evil does. instead of playing a brooding sad character, i'll be playing a character who chose to go out of their element and didn't think through the cultural consequences of jumping into the future.
I like the idea that elves were once full fey and in the deep history they lost their fey immortality possibly during a magical plague in the fey wild - they cam to the mortal planes and formed both the elves and the other races - this is a secret not known to the elves
![KSI - Thick Of It (feat. Trippie Redd) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/At8v_Yc044Y/mqdefault.jpg)
Check out Arcana of the Anicents from Monte Cook Games for the ultimate science fantasy sourcebook for the world's most popular roleplaying game! www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/arcana-of-the-ancients-a-5e-science-fantasy-source?ref=5zpcbq
The Audio in this video is non-existent, I thought it was an intro bit, but skipping forward, your audio is simply missing....
Can't hear a word. You might need to re-upload :P
one thing i dont think was really covered,
what do these things interact with identify.
that opens up the great idea of what identify really is, is it vestiges of a god of knowledge you grasp to reveal information, is there a great magic encyclopedia and when a new item is discovered, there is a quest to catalouge it OR someone come FOR the item, what is behind identify? would it be able to identify the item, even though no one ALIVE knows ? would you just receive a blank?
hell legend LORE what the hell is recording all this'??
demi lich is actually more powerful than a lich, they often don't even need a body, they just boobie trap their skulls and leave them behind so any poor saps that get too close, their soul gets sucked and fed to the phylactry
I want to introduce a legendary wizard who created bears and owls by experimenting on owlbears.
Brilliant
Exemplary
Bear? Surely you mean Platypusbear. Armadilobear?
That's amazing 👏
@@arempy5836 this place is weird
I know you've hit it big time now that the RUclips search doesn't correct Web DM to Web MD
Look out T-Series.
Can you guys please do a video on using vehicles? Maybe talk about ships and stuff with the new ghosts of salt marsh coming out. But you could also talk about using carriages, doing a sort of Oregon trail campaign, and maybe about the other animals in the phb like elephants and how to use them.
Thanks for the suggestion!
I second this notion, I don't think I've seen a video like that before
If you check out the old 2E stuff, there were sourcebooks that got into using vehicles (as well as mounts & pack animals). Caravan logistics also specifically get some love in the 2e Al'Qadim books.
I think there was an unearthed arcana on ships, it certainly wasn't perfect but it would be worth checking out
I'm imagining a wheelhouse that's magically bigger on the inside than the outside, and forms its own mobile dungeon.
15:55 From the end of JoJo's Bizzare Adventure: Battle Tendency - "And though he wished for death, he was unable to die. So eventually, Kars stopped thinking"
I just saw that episode of Jojo's!
I really like the idea of a Wizard that locks himself away in his own Demiplane and just learns magic for an immense amount of time. He creates his Demiplane for fun, creating new interesting creatures as a hobby until it becomes its own living world.
Then AO comes over to him an says "Hey, you're a God now, Congrats."
Wizard: "Wait... What?"
Ancient litch "I miss how the atmosphere tasted back in my day"
All it says is "Basic Spells for Beginning Spell Casters".... "Remember to buy all 30 Volumes to see all Spell levels 1 to 42.."
Players: .... Wat?!
theres nothing more satisfying than finding out deep and ancient lore for me, the idea of how to use this, how this was formed and what to do with it is incredible! you feel like you are forming the world, just a little bit
this is one of your best episode!
Thank you so much!!
@@WebDM thank you for giving me a cornucopia of ideas!
Pruitt should have had a trenchcoat on for the intro.
This video, plus one on map/world design I watched the other day, makes me want to lock myself in a room with a lot of scrap paper, and a lot of coffee, and make my own universe
Do it!!!
It's dangerous to go alone. Take this!
🖊
Good luck, I've been here all year. Once you start it's hard to stop. If drawn maps for the coral reefs of the planet, a huge world map, and a in depth history. It's been a good time.
Godzilla is at the center of every one of my campaign worlds. You dig deep enough, you're just gonna find a kaiju.
That's literally the terrasque in a nutshell, just add a breath weapon.
"What if the Flintstones, but d&d?" Is such a hilarious concept. I'm trying to expand my homebrew world right now, and my players are reaching a point of (maybe) learning about an incoming invasion, and that invasion is linked to the invaders having a history on the planet. This episode, as well as the cosmic conflict episode has been exceptionally useful in this regard. Thank you guys!
I like the idea that the aboleths just knowing all this, and that they were something else before what they are now, and decided that this was the perfect form and became what we know them as.
So they can’t remember back before they created their final form, cause it was before they had the ability to transfer perfect knowledge.
The one blurry thing they can’t quite remember.
Love it.
What if the aboliths were the way these people kept their history? They were once small, like the size of a pony, but over time they grew into the giant sea-tentacle-slugs they are in current time.
One way to bring deep history into the game is Elf dreams! Utilize long rests to create/tell stories!
The Castlevania series on Netflix was a great example of what you're talking about. Dracula was so powerful and lived so long, that he forgot how to be human, and probably forgot more than he had learned himself. He was more monster than man at that point, and he had no sympathy for humanity when they took his wife, who was his last thread to humanity. I love how Dracula was portrayed. He was genuinely "evil" from the humanity perspective, but from the view of a god, or deep history, he was logical and calculated. Ironic that he thought more eternally, yet was persecuted by the church who claim to be the mouth of god. However when he lost the last of his humanity, he descended from logical into chaos, and he was so brokenhearted that he had no military prowess, sending in the swarms to slowly and randomly torment the lands with no leadership. This left a power vacuum within his own ranks. His humanity was the true monster that wanted more, and when he lost his humanity, his god logic concluded that no one deserved to live, including himself. to commit suicide by starvation after he committed total genocide was a true cold calculation.
Something else I thought of in actual RPG books: In the Palladium Fantasy RPG, the "Further Adventures in the Northern Wilderness" there is a hook of a haunted tree out in the forest near this boarderlands logging town. No one will go to it. If the players decide to check it out, they find a twisted old tree that isn't haunted but has an immortal knight that got tired of living and sat down under a tree and stopped moving as the tree grew around him. Turns out his sword is cursed with immortality but not agelessness and he needs help returning the sword where it came from so he can finally die. He developed a low level telepathy to communicate and has been asking for help whenever anyone came near. But he was mostly hopeless.
If the players take up the deed it will lead them to the ruins of a seaside castle that has been almost completely warning away with time. Following directions will lead them through into the foundation that are partly submerged and into a vault that is... surprisingly well preserved but highly secured through old magic that has been failing. Once inside they will not only find the riches of this lost castle but also a stash of magical swords, each with their own platform to be placed upon and one slot is empty.
The problem is that all the swords are cursed in different ways. They were not put here due to their value way back when, but due to their curses, power, and protection of the general population. On in general has a rather nasty hulk like demon's soul trapped in it and if anyone takes that sword, a battle of wills commences and if the holder loses, the demon wipes their mind and takes control.
This video is bursting with great and thought-provoking concepts that could fuel a lifetime of campaigns. :D
When in doubt: Lolth
I can tell that Jim has really thought about the perplexities of lichdom
Yeah, I'm a huge lore junkie as both a player and a DM. I love creating/learning about lore, even if my players never end up researching or discovering it. It is a huge reason as to why I love exploration of the unknown, especially when that exploration might produce both questions and maybe a few answers about my surroundings (an ancient ruin, for example). As a DM, I love the payoff - the moment of the epiphany - when the in-game historical lore, whether personal or societal, causes my players to realize that all the notes they may have been taking/learning actually comes full circle with their current adventure or even just some offscreen events. It's definitely a major factor as to why I love video game RPGs like the Elder Scrolls and the entire Souls series.
The downside to my love of lore is that, as a player, I tend to have a self-sufficient, but scholarly outlook. A high-INT Human College of Lore Bard with the Outlander background (or Hermit or Sage, as less-likely but still viable alternative choices), Expertise in any combination of Arcana, History, Investigation, and Survival, the Ritualist (Wizard) Feat with Comprehend Languages and Identify, and a pure support-build selection of spells is probably the closest I could think of in terms of the "ideal" character for my personality and style. :)
...I think I need sleep. My comment may be a bit disjointed and scattered. Apologies if that's the case. Great vid, though. :)
I have a current campaign that follows the idea of "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." So the dungeons are ancient forges that where used to create everything on the world. The "gods" are just AI that have given up on their original task. The players are slowly figuring out it's a sci-fi setting that they dont know is sci-fi yet.
15:20
10.000yo Lich turns to the Party & says: "no thing is immortal"
then they realise that "undeath" actually means really, really, ..., really slow decay, & the failing of their Intelligence is the symptom of that.
An example would be in DarkSun the different ages in Athas the Blue, Green ages etc. Another good video from a fellow History major.
Huh, I rolled high on RUclips Initiative for once.
Same
I always really liked the idea of drastic climactic changes over time. I have a campaign on the back burner where the PCs start in a polar environment that’s temperate, with no ice caps really left, but that still has the midnight sun and the polar night. There’d be cities and communities throughout the area that are totally accustomed to six months of darkness, and who think that’s totally normal. Only the polar regions could really support cities - the rest of the planet could grow increasingly hot and Arrakis-like and eventually become uninhabitable as you moved towards the equator. The PCs could try to journey towards the opposite pole on a sort of Silk Road, past old ruined baked cities and towns.
Dude, love the Dune reference. Definitely gonna use something similar at some point
I have an idea sort of like this, the main thing is that there is a day night cycle, just a VERY slow one, and the world is habitable elsewhere due to strange dark storms that periodically darken the day, and make sort of a regular day night cycle. however true night brings an ice age that lasts until the dawn comes again. As a result most of the peoples are nomadic, with several of the elder races, elves and the like having permenent settlements.
I literally use an 'under the ice' map of Antarctica for the geography of my campaign world.
@@addisonmartin3200 That's awesome, man
@@the_rose_garden01 It's a dynamic map, with one main landmass pockmarked by lakes, and a mountainous archipelago to the west.
That door beeper is exactly like the one we have where I work. I keep thinking customers are coming in.
I'm at home.
I needed someone to post this to prove I wasn't going crazy. I had to turn the video off to make sure it wasn't the carbon monoxide alarm
I'm creating my own world for my campaigns and this was really helpful, it's great to have insight from all this questions that you guys have already thought about
A while back, I came up with this idea for a "Mummy" campaign set in a mythic version of our world. By that I mean, the PCs were ancient Egyptians who got mummified in a special rite, and periodically return to life. The gods (and later, when the gods fell into sleeping from lack of worship, the impersonal force of Ma'at) bring the PCs back every few centuries, in order to right some wrong and fight evil.
It would start during the Bronze Age, when the characters were only centuries dead. The capstone of the first "arc" would be them fighting Sea People (who are actual merfolk or Tritons or whatever) during the Bronze Age Collapse. It would just keep going down through history, the PCs growing steadily stronger and going through all these successive civilizations. Until they're getting up to 20th level, and they're fighting two-fisted pulp heroes, mad geniuses, and Golden Dawn wizards, on top of zeppelins over cities like London and New York, in the 1930s. The PCs would have _become_ the kind of grossly powerful mummy wizards of the Mummy films (pick a version, so long as the mummy isn't a glorified zombie).
And all throughout this campaign, the players would be inundated by evidence of time's inexorable passage. So that they come to realize that they are OLD. Old as balls. THEY have become living Time Abysses. And that they don't really know what the hell it is they're doing anymore.
That moment when you're wearing the same shirt and own the other shirt of the hosts of one of your favorite shows on RUclips.
What is that shirt Davis is wearing? It looks glorious.
The game Endless Legend is all about this science Fantasy stuff. It is a 4x (think civ) but the faction intro videos especially the Morgawr and broken lords are great potential enemies.
That was a cool revelation in Mass Effect about the precursor civilization of Protheans who were thought to be behind all the wondrous tech in the galaxy.
Dreadstones, meet the Dreadstones,
They’re the modern Dark Age family!
From the town of Dreadrock,
They're a leaf right out of history!
That bat guano/animal engineering concept blew my mind! Totally using that!
All of this is so interesting when considering Planescape, the related factions and their theories, and the nature of "Powers" in the multiverse.
Also, Ao, the Lady of Pain, and Tharizdun representing timeless Law, Neutrality, and Chaos over and above the concept of deity.
What if the D&D Gods were a exiled group from the Far Realm. Exiled due to being aberrations to the Far Realm. They entered the center of the Elemental Chaos, built the Material Plane, and that starts the Dawn War because the Elementals dislike that action. But the war cracked parts of Creation, the cracks and bits make the Shadowfell and Feywild. The Gods then built the Outer Planes to rest from their victory.
very glad you guys are touching on creation for homebrew (at least that's what it seems this episode is about. ) I find thats about the only thing your channel doesn't really cover to often.
Shirts on point as always. Great topic too. Every time you guys come out with a world building episode, I lose hours changing and adding to my world.
Glad to help inspire Quinton!
Fossilized Lich: is the creepy statue that really wants you to take the magical "amulet" off of it to "lift the curse on it" so it can once more be free.
I think this episode is still one of your most significant videos. It would be so helpful if you guys did a similar one again, or if you linked this everywhere.
Time is circular, the ancient creators are a civilisation that will rise from the ashes of yours... And their gods were your people.
You know a really good source for insperation for old magic gone bad is The Brothers War and The Thran. In there the Thran's magic was heavily based on magic artifacts... and it just happens the crystals that generated the magic were radioactive and gave people magic resistant cancer that when healers tried to use spells to fix it, it made the cancer worse.
The only thing they could do is get one of those that are known and feared all over. The ones who damage the body and cut it open to peek at what is inside where the gods hid away what make us live... The butchers known as... Doctors.
I can't stop looking at the display of FFG Star Wars RPG books in the background, recently started playing the game and collecting the books but they're really hard to get here in Europe, i'm a little jealous to see you have a store that's fully stocked with all the books and products.
Anyway great video as always.
Working on a setting through emergent play. Started en with a village, expanded to a couple of continents, gave some places names based on populace or geographicnames, and others esoteric names. I have jotted ideas for vestiges of one great prior civilization for them to discover. Once the players understand how the lost history leaves leftovers, all I have to do is create a new one for things an they investigate that defy a mundane recent origin. They don't have to know I didn't prep on it years ago, or that their investigation is stalled because I haven't written the rest of history till next time.
I just love science-fantasy and deep time. My main story is a VERY deep time version. great thoughts. I especially loved the thought that what if long ago bats were intentionally engineered as a tool to create the guano needed as a fireball component! You guys always have great stuff! Keep up the fantastic work!
I like an idea from Assassin's Creed where a prior civilization leaves behind clues and artifacts for a later civilization behind because they know that some catastrophe will repeat itself eventually. Maybe the players uncover some artifact, take it to the Mage's Guild, and the Mage's reveal that they've been working on a solution for past 300 years and they need the party's help to find the last few artifacts. Now you've opened up tons of potential quest design possibilities. Maybe you need a book from the king's library, now you have to either solve some problem for him or use diplomacy to convince him to hand it over. The next artifact might be located on a mysterious island that doesn't appear on any maps and the local wildlife has been warped by the magical energies. Maybe the mages need help recruiting an expert on some super obscure and niche subject matter. The mages might be keeping a tight lid on everything to prevent people from panicking, so there might be a rival group trying to find the artifacts for themselves that you have to compete with. And the best part is, if the party doesn't want to get wrapped up in everything you have lots of ways to end the campaign. You could have it continue in the background of a later campaign, or maybe if the party loses to a different BBEG you can have the catastrophe occur right after the TPK.
Fakjbf That's a great way to add your feature your worlds ancient history front and center. You could totally add some fantasy flavor to that with the 3.5e Elder Evils book. Each of the entries in there is an apocalyptic threat, especially Pandorym who will literally kill the gods if he gets the chance
Same as it ever was
Look where my hand was
Time isn't holding up
Time isn't after us
Same as it ever was
YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF
WELL? HOW DID I GET HERE?
LETTING THE DAYS GO BY
*let the water hold me down*
LETTING THE DAYS GO BY
*water flowing underground*
I was literally looping this song all day yesterday.
Oh, boy! This episode just gave me a great insight on how to finally visualize a way to interconnect a bunch of concepts I've had in my mind for a few months now... I wasn't quite sure how to make it all work and you guys really helped. Noice!
+1 rep
[edit] I've just realised that a few of the aforementioned ideas have been on my mind for at least 7 years, not a few months... I tried to make these primitive concepts of mine work on two campaigns before but my inexperience as a DM meant those were both failed attempts. Both campaigns died after two or three sessions. Let's see if I can manage to make it work this time around. シ
That's awesome!!
Fabulous intro as always! Lolth totally did it and Moradin is snitching. Love Jim Davis as Kang the Conqueror in the thumbnail!!
That idea of prior civilizations creating the current world is something that I did in my setting's deep history, actually. Basically, the short-lived races were created by the long-lived races, and their hubris is what brought evil into the world. I'm honored to hear that you have ideas similar to mine.
This is a Golden episode! Lots of good stuff. Surprised you didn’t mention the Mindflayers again.
But this is how I want to introduce Moogles into Exalted one awakening and being depressed there are no more moogles and joining and Exalted Circle with their Airship.
Today's thumbnail is a real banger! Also, it makes me want to play spelljammer real bad :)
The look in that dude's face behind the bookshelf 1:32
Great topic and video. I love this topic. My own campaign world, which is a sort of earth-based post-post-apocalyptic setting that asks "what happens long after a civilization recovers from a super disruptive apocalypse?" has a deep history that spans the universe and goes back to the big bang. Archaeology also happens to be a prominent theme in my world.
Oh man you gave me SO MANY IDEAS (like most of your videos to be fair)
"Well maybe you have memory loss, you've been stoned for a long time." We've all been there Jim
I often find your videos hello me past a road block when designing encounters and world building. Thanks again, guys.
Glad to help Austin!
nice Deep Time / Miskatonic University T-shirt combo
So how deep is the lore?
Well...
; ~ D E E P E S T L O R E ~ ;
This is the best intro I've seen for one of these vids
I would like a campaign were you help a kingdom of dwarves reclaim a anceint homeland but the ancient kingdom is also the ancient kingdom of the drougur! And you must decide what kingdom is wourldy enough to reclaim it!😎😎😎
I've had a couple interesting ideas that fit in this category. Either a race of interstellar constructs that have been observing the world for untold eons and collecting data on the civilizations, or this ancient repository of knowledge and relics existing deep beneath the earth that's under control of a powerful immortal being that feeds off of negative energy and the lifeforce of evil beings. Over time countless evil monsters have flocked to the gates of this underground fortress, sensing the power within, but are unable to breach the defenses. It had gotten to the point where even the spirits of deceased evil beings started to be drawn to this place, making it a de facto Underworld, and the civilizations on the surface start using this Big Hole of Evil as a convenient spot to dump all their worst villains. Meanwhile, the immortal guy chilling in his throne room at the bottom's just like "Uhh, yeah. Okay. I *guess* I'll be the warden of your underworld. Not that y'all ever *asked* or anything."
"I have spent my life searching for the answers that my father and my father's fathers failed to find. Who were the Precursors? Why did they create the vast monoliths that liter our planet? How did they harness Eco, the life energy of the world? What was their purpose? And why did they vanish? I have asked the plants, but they do not remember. The plants have asked the rocks, but the rocks do not recall. Even the rocks do not recall."
I love ancient history in games
That’s a super badass quote. Did you write that?
It's from the opening cutscene in the first Jak and Daxter game :)
This was a great topic!
Thanks for the inspiration, I think I'll send my players through an dungeon that is itself a museum of collected artifacts from even older civilizations, many of which are mundane, some are... less so.
As an interesting addition to the "Ancient Dungeon Discovery" concept, you could start adding Splat-book info (spells, archetypes, magic items.) As "New" Discoveries either through player action, or by NPCs. If you really like that idea, maybe talk to one of your players who wants to play a weirder class archetype (Eldritch knights, Planer rangers, hexblade warlocks) and have them, either in their backstory or in the first dungeon, Discover something new to the world. (An E.K. could find an ancient grimoire, a ranger could find a Gate and become obsessed with finding a way to stop Eldritch monsters, Hexblade could have already found a weapon in a previous dig.)
I might add this concept into a game world I want to run anyway, so, thanks guys. I liked this video a lot.
Just say that time travels both ways in your world and then you can retcon everything.
In my setting men and elves have a common ancestor. One group of that race was isolated in the feywild and adapted into elves.
Literally just watching this one with a piece of paper and pen, writing down ideas. My setting just got a lot more interesting, and a lot more dangerous.
Glad to help!
That chick who photobombs the very beginning of the video, lol
Caves of Qud is a great example of this. A long ago civilization called the Eaters of the World whose refuse and ruins form endless caverns and wonderous items in a bronze age world of moisture farmers and sentient bears.
Am I the only one who thought of Fri from futurama when he mentioned playing a time displaced character. And he's just incredibly excited to explore an exciting new world after hating his old boring life XD
You guys should check out resurgence of the dragon, "El resurgir del dragón" in spanish, a spanish versión oficial 5th edition DnD, that an Spanish company made when they thought that the books weren't gonna be printed un spanish language. It has a super cool setting, and It is pretty similar of what you are saying here.
5:08 you should check the Human Era video on the Kurzgesagt channel, Jim.
I wrote a blog about something that I call the "Time-tech conundrum". Has anyone else addressed this? It's the idea that, when deep world building, you need to be able to explain how your world can stay in the iron age for thousands of years. Especially when it comes to magic research, which is, essentially, science. If a fireball spell was around 2000 years earlier, why is it not nukes, at this point? The trick is to still keep the cool tropes, but to think of ways in which tech gets lost and set back.
Greatly enjoyed this episode. I now have some writing to do.
Another fab video. Always look forward to every episode
Thanks!
Another adventure from Palladium Fantasy, this time the Old Ones sourcebook, has its start at a trade town along a major mountain pass. A hook of that the trade route goes out of it's way along this path due to a forest in the valley the pass is part of has a forest of silence. No sound can be heard when in the forest. Only dead silence. Its of magic nature but no one can figure out the cause of it. If the players investigate they will find in the m8iddle there is the ruins of a bunker of sorts. Its heavily overgrown and some nasty forest critters (that can't be heard but adapted to the noise) made their home there. Investigating the place leads to a chamber that isn't overgrown, in fact even the cracks of the walls don't have roots or anything going into it. All that is inside the chamber is a platform with a mummfied body laying on a slab. and the remains of small animals at the entry way.
If the players enter they start hearing a heart beat through the silence, Slow at first, and then breathing joins it. During this time the players can destroy the body through fire if they have any and the spell will be broken and the sound will return. If they let it go to conclusion, the spell will also go but the body will wake with each player losing about 1/4th of their hitpoints. The one on the slab will get up and look normal instead of preserved and be very confused. It looks like a lizard man with draconic wings and start making demands in his language. If the players attack they will be in a fight with rather strong magic user.
If they let him figure out they don't speak the same language or if one of the players have a tongues spell, it will be cast and they will find out he is the ancient king of this area and he retreated into this room when he was wounded during a war he was in with the Crystal Empire. The room and area were kind of a bunker to hide in if something happened but his servants were to come to find him there once things were safe enough to... which as can be seen that never happened.
If the players attend him, he will appreciate the help but he has nothing to his name anymore and he will want to know the fate of his people. If they go back to town with him they will find someone that been to the desert areas to the SE that has barbarians there that look something like the king from a trader passing through. He will want to go to investigate. If the players go with him they will hear stories of the greatness of his kingdom, the feats of magical artifice they did and so on and will be continued to be shocked how most never seen any of his kind which worries him greatly. Once to the desert area things only go worse for him...
He will find his people but they are just tribal nomads bickering among each other. Many worship a warrior god that share his name but he will be disgusted with the loss his people have had and what they had become. He will from there want to find the fate of the Crystal Empire. To see if they were the cause of this but will find just as much of a blank on history of that kingdom as well.
I kinda filled a lot out here, I don't know if I should continue on.
My dad & I came up with a neat idea: some city build out of old old old ruins that had some sort of generator inside, & a blue dragon had like, kinda taken over bc it knew its lightning breath could power the generator, & the people of the city REALLY like having electric lights & refrigerators & stuff
i like pruitt's miskatonic university shirt.
In my setting, Dragons are essentially terraforming machines created by arch-fey so that they could colonize the prime material. Then the fey pissed off the angels so now the dragons are kinda just left over. Dragon Age, Berserk, Middle Earth, and Forgotten realms are all great resources for insipiring and building deep history. Oh, and real world history, cosmology and mythology obviously. In general though, I draw a lot from the Mythos Cycle for deep history stuff. There is a ton of content there, and it is very easy to adapt to just about any setting or purpose.
Brooo, that miskatonic university t shirt is on point...I want one
"Show your hero reloading"
FUCKING THANK YOU.
Wake up
Do the work thing
Get breakfast with a friend
Find fresh brownies on the stove at home
Get notification for new WebDM
I fucking love wednesdays B)
idea for a neutral faction: a famous wizard who became a Lich, faked his death, allowed himself to be entombed, and has been idly waiting the Eons away for people to forget about the tomb so he can expand it into his lair. Anyone who comes in he just plays dead (pun intended) and waits for them to leave. At least until the party notices him
I was just working on this myself for my setting! Fun coincidence and a great video as usual! ^^
Edit: looked it up and 7 pieces can be combined 127 different ways (ignoring order)... I would not want to have to come up with 127 unique and interesting things for all the combinations to do :P
Aaand now I'm making a Gnome based on Giorgio Tsoukalos
I'm not saying it's aliens... I'm saying it's ANCIENT aliens
13:54 the hero we need!
I have a suggestion for a future video.
What are some good ways to make Lawful Neutral characters like Modrons interesting in the game? I’ve been avoiding them because of that challenge.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Seeing pruitt's dm look when he hears adamantine golem lich
Reminds me of the first mom joke they found from ancient Babylon. Your party finds this tablet and spends all this time trying to discover what it says and decode it's ancient history and meaning. Its magic and wonder! Then it's just a mom joke. Lol.
I imagine with a lot of undead, like Vampires and Liches, that they would grow stronger as they age. Some sort of truly ancient vampire, for instance, might have some of their weaknesses lessen or even totally disappear. It's just that... y'know... they have to live something like tens of millennia, and a lot don't.
all those cool kickstarers we have to wait for. i want to use that stuff NOW!!! :P
Is that, a green screen of the inside of a comic shop?
Interesting move.
No, we're actually there! Tribe Comics and Games in Austin TX!
I am going to use Spell Weavers for this stuff
That mountain range? That's where the terrasque went to sleep
good morning gamers rise and grind
im about to play a character who was sequestered and woke up thousands of years later. she was trained to fight an impending doom by an old divination wizard, then told to awaken when the ancient evil does. instead of playing a brooding sad character, i'll be playing a character who chose to go out of their element and didn't think through the cultural consequences of jumping into the future.
I like the idea that elves were once full fey and in the deep history they lost their fey immortality possibly during a magical plague in the fey wild - they cam to the mortal planes and formed both the elves and the other races - this is a secret not known to the elves
Ahh the opening bits *quality intensifies*.
I saw him! I saw travis. Thank you for this episode of where's Travis.