Foundation
Scope
What is your motivation for building this world?
I want to build a world full of gods and characters with large agency to affect the world around them in a D&D setting.
What are you hoping to get out of it?
Fostering a setting that has ample opportunity for ethical and moral dilemmas that can help teach teenagers ethical and moral decision making.
What is the Hook or Unique Selling Point of your world? What makes it unique or different?
The world is filled with gods and heroes each vying for their own ends, creating a plethora of opportunity for alliances and conflict that cross unique cultural divides.
Theme
What’s the Genre of your World?
My world is fantasy, with some magic fueled steampunk elements, and elements of pop culture and horror.
How does the world feel (player experience)?
The world feels vast, with seemingly endless room for exploration and discovery.
What is the tone of your world?
Worried but optimistic, except in Fade which is dark and horrifying.
What is the character agency level like?
Character agency is grand with large scale consequences for decisions made to emphasize decision making and its outcomes, but gods also have large agency and some of them could be working against them.
What are the recurring themes which reinforce the genre, tone and feel of your world? (Give three examples)
1. Fade is filled with blighted and corrupt plants that almost whisper their dark intent.
2. Gods will seek out players and other characters of import and try to influence their decisions.
3. NPC's are weary of all the powerful forces they cant control.
Meta
Religious: Gods are competing for power and followers, creating factions that have great influence and dramatic differences. (Think Camp Half-Blood from the Percy Jackson series.)
Military: Massive armies led by gods and their followers battle for control of important artifacts or places of power.
Class Relations: Powerful people and organizations don't consider the plights of ordinary or lower class citizens of Discordia in their pursuit for the 'Greater Good'
Technology Influence: With knowledge from other realms and immortality, gods have greatly influenced the development of technologies across Discordia, for generations, putting them in the hands of people that do not understand their purpose or power.
Agriculture and Trade: Smaller organizations and villages rely on agriculture and trade but it is unstable due to world events.
Drama
Airships have advanced enough that previously isolated areas and there resources are no longer secured by their geography.
The continent of Fade surrounding the Tree of Life is in turmoil after Hel skillfully manipulated the ruling nobles into rallying against Life's Revolt in what was a stalemate for hundreds of years. The other gods of Discordia can feel this change and are quickly preparing to take advantage of the change
A powerful Dragonshard has been discovered in the Mountains of Kord, and villages in the great crater do not have the resources to defend it.
Odin has gained a cult of followers outside his domain on Discordia greatly increasing his power, and has started building an alliance to break Fade out of Discordia and move the root of the Tree of Life to another realm.
The long standing stalemate between gods has fractured many of the dominant religions of the world, allowing many more gods to find a foothold across the the realm. These less powerful gods have taken a greater interest in the affairs of mortals, creating demi-gods and heroes that have their own views on gods and there roles in Discordia's future.
Scene
Rules of the World
What are the fundamental differences in the natural laws of your world compared to Earth?
1. Magic exists, it permeates the world, holds things together, or tears them apart
2. Gods walk the earth, influencing mortals either directly or through careful manipulation
3. Some mortals have been gifted divine power by the gods, but unexpectedly not all have chosen to help their divine benefactors
4. A new form of magic has been rumored to have found its way to Discordia, a power of the mind, though practitioners of the craft are secretive, and hard to pin down for information
Cosmology
How did this world come to be?
Discordia was created when several powerful gods of multiple realms (Odin, Zeus, Viracocha, Neith, and Bumba) came together to create a neutral world that was meant to be untouched by immortal plans and power. A place where the ancient races dragons and giants could build there own people and exist without taking place in immortal affairs.
Geography
What does the geography of your world look like?
Discordia is a fractured world, with massive mountains that spike out of the ground and reach miles into the air. These massive mountains drastically alter the land around them, making dense forests and brutal wastelands. The geography itself can be the most brutal enemy in Discordia.
Does your Geography have any special properties or features?
The Mountains of Kord are towering walls miles high made as molten earth solidified mid air after a devastating meteor strike.
Initial size of building (you can always expand later!)
What is the initial size of your active campaign setting?
Because my world is a setting for several concurrent campaigns I am building large portions of the world at a time. Currently Fade and the Mountains of Kord are my primary focus for D&D campaigns
People and their History
Who used to live in your active campaign space, and what’s their history?
Dragons and giants used to populate Discordia back when it was a unified landmass. A meteor was pulled from another realm into the planet and shifting it physically and interdimensionally brushing it up against the ethereal plane and breaking the land into pieces. Dragons and giants saved as much as they could, but went into hiding when gods began to descend upon the land. Nothing has been found that points to their existence or history.
Which species/cultures live here now and what’s their history?
Discordia is populated by a multitude of species, some where brought to the realm when it brushed against other plains. It is mostly populated by humans and elves that the gods brought with them as followers after the cataclysm. There are other species such as lycanthropes, vampires, dragonborn, centaurs, Minotaur and more. Mostly following there god across planes of existence to aid them in war. Other races tend to build small communities for themselves only interacting with other species when needed.
What do they need, and what do they need from each other?
Minotaur mine the mountains of Kord for dragon bones to sacrifice to their god. While the humans and elves of Fade try and just survive the onslaught of undead that ravage their land. The races inside the Forest of Kord trade with the Monitaur for photium which they use to make their weapons and structural supports. Most races are just trying to worship in peace and survive the harsh landscape of Discordia.
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