Grey's Guide to Beast World
Scope
The motivation behind building Grey's Guide to Beast World
I want to build a world that is mostly mine, while taking inspiration from the Beast World setting, to share with others in a DnD 5e context. This will be largely a homebrewed setting with additions to the world that I'll come up with on my own.
The goal of the project
I'm hoping to create an immersive world that will be my first Homebrew experience. It's going to be fun coming up with and filling in the gaps of this setting with something that is all my own. I'm a little bit of a continuity freak and that sometimes gets in the way of my Forgotten Realms DM'ing since I want to keep true to the preestablish content.
Grey's Guide to Beast World's Unique Selling point
This is a world created by Furries for anyone interested. Our community has only been growing since I joined in with the fun and I love the idea of a world predominately occupied by anthropomorphic animals. Where everyone is still young and figuring it out in a brand new world created just for them. As I learn more about what Cullen McGuire, the creator of The Beast World setting, created for us, I'm hoping his ideas inspire something for me. In turn, letting me create a fun tabletop experience for my players.
Theme
Genre
Setting
Science rule-of-thumb: Renaissance + a little more. Most technology in the Beast World could have existed in the 16th century. There are a few things that exist in the Beast World, but weren’t around in the Renaissance (such as rubber and simple electric circuits).
Magic
It’s a “high magic” setting. Magic is common in the Beast World. People who grew up in a city might have met a 20th-level character. Almost everyone knows someone who can cast a cantrip. Most people have used at least one common magic item before.
Reader Experience
The world is young. At the moment of the post, Beast World history starts 1365 years ago. The jackal species are long-lived enough that some of them remember the world’s first day. Almost all danger is centered around dungeons. The communities of the world are generally accepting. There is currently no war or turmoil causing stress or death.
Reader Tone
The world is Bright, Darkness has simply not been introduced yet.
Recurring Themes
In the Beast World, adventuring is a trade and its workers are called “delving crews.” Monsters and dungeons aren’t everywhere all the time, but there are thousands of delvers in the world.
Delvers travel in wagons, and in caravans. Crews of around four delvers travel in house wagons, grouped up to look for adventures.
“The Dungeon” makes dungeons. A mysterious phenomenon causes mazes and ruins to appear out of nowhere, all around the world. They call this “The Dungeon.” A specific one is “a dungeon” or “an entrance to the Dungeon.”
Monsters come from the Dungeon. They aren’t sapient. Delvers kill monsters, but this isn’t considered murder. Monsters can be intelligent, but they act on instinct and don’t change their worldview based on experience. These traits are defined as being a “willful creature”, and it’s also what separates two-legged “beasts” from four-legged “animals.”
Character Agency
The players will be a part of the world. Living in it with the NPCs. The adventures will be lighthearted and challenging.
Focus
Drama
In 1350, the beasts repelled a human army’s invasion. Humans were curious creatures from a parallel world the beast didn’t know existed. The war surprised them, and a grueling conflict followed. After three years of occupation, the beasts pulled freedom from the precipice of defeat. The Invader War redefined the world, but change was just beginning.
Victory solved the beasts’ plight, but defeat left humanity with theirs. Millions of desperate humans were still trapped in their Broken World. Fallow soil would starve most and thin air would suffocate the rest. We learned that their invasion was motivated by a catastrophe threatening their existence.
The beasts learned that sometimes, forgiveness requires deliberate effort. Despite the humans crimes, the beasts looked to the future and prepared to accept humans into their world. No longer as invaders, but as brethren. The beasts declared their forgiveness and pleaded with their goddess to help rescue their enemy.
Pirhoua performed her second great miracle: the Pilgrimage of humans. In an instant, millions were swept from the final closing of death’s jaws. Humans were here to stay. The Pilgrimage redefined the beasts world again, but more change came with it.
The Pilgrimage rescued the brethren, but something else came along. An entity spread out underneath the world: the Dungeon. Its mysterious power manifests labyrinths and ruins, monsters and traps, and other bizarre challenges.
Invasion transformed the world. The Pilgrimage transformed it again. Now, the Dungeon is transforming it once more. Heroic beasts and brethren take up arms to chase it away wherever it may appear. More bold adventurers join the cause every day to win the unimaginable riches waiting in the Dungeon’s belly. The Delve has begun.