The Basic Rules of Novis Terram

Novis Terram - Strange Land - is just that. This D&D campaign takes many elements of the original 5E setting and changes them to be different. Not for difference's sake, but to address some of the underlying issues with Wizard of the Coast's D&D settings.

First Rule: no creature big or small is fundamentally evil or naturally good

Be they goblins or krakens, sentient beings are shaped by their lives. Their moral compass is based upon their experiences and motivations, not the supposed inclinations of their species. When you cannot easily identify friend nor foe, the world becomes a lot more complex.

Second rule, there is a natural order

The world of Novis Terram is not one of pure chaos. Birth, life, death and magic is the order of every creature in the multiverse. Those terms may take on a different meaning, but they follow each other. even creatures thought to be undead have merely entered their magic state prior to leaving a material plane. To kill them again and banish them to one of the gods' holdings where their magical state can be contained, they must begin the cycle anew.

Third rule, gods are but those who contain the magic of the dead

Nearly all those who practice magic are considered gods, no matter how minor they may be. They have harnessed the magical state that comes after dying. This may be a warlock's pact with a higher god who lends them part of their domain, a cleric's ability to communicate with their patron to be granted a fraction of power, a sorcerer's ability to tap into their ancestral line and draw power from the other side, or a druid who can reach into the land to take power from long-dead plants and animals.
Only wizards who study the arcane arts can harness magic without using the life-forces of the dead. They instead listen and create magic from natural wells. This may be tapping a tuning fork to create vibrating energy or pouring a cup of water to harness the moving flow. There are many ways wizards create natural energy for use in magic.
The higher gods are worshiped for the domains they hold, each allotted a certain number and type of soul by the reapers kept by The Raven Queen in the limbo of the Astral Plane of Dreams. Those who cannot, for whatever reason, be passed through to one gods' domain become reapers charged with dispatching souls. In return for this duty, The Raven Queen is granted the Astral Plane which all souls spend some portion of time in and which mortals enter while dreaming.
It is within The Raven Queen's interests to retrieve any souls who have entered the magical state prior to arriving in the Astral Plane. She is a ruthless hunter of the undead.

Fourth rule, there are specific circumstances in which you may enter and exit parallel timelines

These timelines may not move at the same rate as the timeline you were previously in. For example, Timeline A experiences one hundred years relative to Timeline B's months. That means every month spent in Timeline B will be an additional hundred years that have passed since your last visit to Timeline A. See the table below for time calculations based on timeline.

List of Timelines

The timeline my players are from, Terraprime, is considered the master metric at 1 and all other timelines are calculated relative to Terraprime in time units (t) per seconds (s).
| Timeline | Time Rate (t/s) | | Terraprime | 1 |

Type

Metaphysical, Astral