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Tonight I am kicking off a tabletop campaign based on my updated Silver Kingdom setting. I have reverse engineered it to that it will dovetail into D:OS2 when it drops in September. I couldn't wait to start telling this story, so I am giving it a test run the old fashioned way. With Dice!


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Originally Posted by norD
Amazing stuff guys!
It's really awesome to see and I'm looking forward to see what every single one of you will do for sure.

If I'm not dead exhausted after the release, I may also want to create a campaign in one of my world I used for years in Pathfinder.

http://imgur.com/6Qjl82q
(Map was done in Cartographer 3)


Love the map! I thought about using CT3, (which is an outstanding program) for my maps but I wanted to do more than it would allow me to do.

Man I hope this game fills that void that was left when NWN got old as hell.

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Originally Posted by Chili1179

Love the map! I thought about using CT3, (which is an outstanding program) for my maps but I wanted to do more than it would allow me to do.

Man I hope this game fills that void that was left when NWN got old as hell.

Yeah, well, CT3 was a PAIN to use though. The opposite of user friendliness....

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Exciting times. I hope we see the modding community continue to rally and flourish with the full release of the tools.


DOS2 Mods: Happily Emmie After and The Noisy Crypt

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So how are people progressing with their projects?
Are people working on lore, story/quests, dialog, designing maps or in-game levels (as much as is possible now), or a mixture of any of those?
Or simply just enjoying that northern-hemisphere summer and not worrying about any of that until September (D:OS 2 release)?

Are people planning to make big game levels, sort of like the Cyseal area in D:OS, where you have a central hub (Cyseal) and a big surrounding area for questing and exploration?
Or is it more like the Matt Mercer GM session with many smaller levels, that players can go through relatively quickly?

I'm planning to have a small and linear starting area, I think that will help me familiarise with the game's editor and not be too big of a hurdle, so that I'm gonna feel overwhelmed and can't see it through.

After that I'm planning a Cyseal-like level, with a central town and surrounding lands. Albeit with substantially less detail, NPC dialogs, quests and a bigger distance between hostile NPCs.
But after seeing how the Matt Mercer GM session went, I might wanna try to just create some smaller levels in stead of going big with one level. I'll need to play the game and tinker with the editor before I'll find out.


Originally Posted by Redunzgofasta

As I am Dutch I like to mix in a bit of Dutch or German, I also enjoy non Dutch speakers trying to pronounce them laugh
I suspect any non-english language would do the same trick.

And there are hundreds of name generators to be found on the internet.


Sorry if it seems like I ignored your advices and only acknowledged Azmo's. I was typing a post when you posted your reply and I didn't saw it until now.

Another 'trick' I have used is to semi-base some lore characters on real historical counterparts and then giving them names that are anagrams to the historical person.
But I think one should be careful, that it doesn't become too cheesy and you end with a villain's name that is an anagram of Adolf Hitler or something similar.

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Originally Posted by MAHak
So how are people progressing with their projects?
Are people working on lore, story/quests, dialog, designing maps or in-game levels (as much as is possible now), or a mixture of any of those?
Or simply just enjoying that northern-hemisphere summer and not worrying about any of that until September (D:OS 2 release)?


This is my One Note, I started using it way back in Neverwinter Foundry and I love it for organizing my thoughts and ideas.

https://imgoat.com/uploads/e732ced346/25239.PNG

Last edited by Chili1179; 21/06/17 11:26 AM.
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Originally Posted by MAHak
So how are people progressing with their projects?
Are people working on lore, story/quests, dialog, designing maps or in-game levels (as much as is possible now), or a mixture of any of those?

I never prepare stories, quests or dialoge as I like to run "player driven" campaigns. I just create a setting, set the players loose in it and take it from there.
I am designing maps and ingame levels and doing some test builds in the DOS1 editor.
[Linked Image]
This Friday the group will start playing Act1 in early access together to get a feel for the game, test party composition and tactics.
So yes preparations to start a campaign sept. 15th are in full swing laugh

EDIT
Just had some bad news on steam though.
"Same level area transitions (as in from the first floor to the basement of a house) will probably not work"
Steam Discussion
That most likely will change the nature of my campaign.
I will still try to run it as free form as I can, but I have this nagging feeling the tools will try to force me to run it as a series of encounters instead.

Last edited by Redunzgofasta; 21/06/17 04:21 PM.

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I created a custom world known as Cedola, where centuries of war between a few factions caused global devastation, with the magical equivalent of an atomic war, which only ended because a group of powerful wizards took it upon themselves to anchor one of the warring continents into another plane.

The campaign i've set takes place a few hundred years after the war's end, when the race of peoples who are sequestered into this other plane have found a way through using a new type of magic, they've staged a full-on invasion into the world, and it's up to our heroes to push back the enemy, with several twists and turns that occur throughout the campaign (including a surprise bad-guy).

[Linked Image]

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Originally Posted by MAHak

But after seeing how the Matt Mercer GM session went, I might wanna try to just create some smaller levels in stead of going big with one level. I'll need to play the game and tinker with the editor before I'll find out.

Just so you know, the mode will be released with around 150 already made high detail levels.
Ranging from beach to forest to desert.
With the base, you'll be able to do pretty much everything that is not highly specific. smile

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Originally Posted by norD

Just so you know, the mode will be released with around 150 already made high detail levels.
Ranging from beach to forest to desert.
With the base, you'll be able to do pretty much everything that is not highly specific. smile

And from what I have seen in streams, the "official"campaign and the arena levels the design is awesome. and that is an understatement.


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Azmo Offline OP
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This is a very inspiring thread. I am glad to see so many creative folks forming this community.
I couldn't wait to start telling stories in my old setting, and to make my players (locally and old friends far away) ready for it, I tinkered with an old setting of mine to make it fit the framework of D:OS2.

The elves of my setting were already morose and odd, and although my original work had Clockwork instead of Undead, I think the change in flavor is fun and we ran our first session of this hybrid last Friday.

Here it is. Let me know what you think.
Google Doc



Last edited by Azmo; 22/06/17 02:47 PM.
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Originally Posted by Azmo
This is a very inspiring thread. I am glad to see so many creative folks forming this community.
I couldn't wait to start telling stories in my old setting, and to make my players (locally and old friends far away) ready for it, I tinkered with an old setting of mine to make it fit the framework of D:OS2.



I agree 100% with this. Checking out the doc, thanks smile



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Originally Posted by Twiztedterry
I created a custom world known as Cedola, where centuries of war between a few factions caused global devastation, with the magical equivalent of an atomic war, which only ended because a group of powerful wizards took it upon themselves to anchor one of the warring continents into another plane.

The campaign i've set takes place a few hundred years after the war's end, when the race of peoples who are sequestered into this other plane have found a way through using a new type of magic, they've staged a full-on invasion into the world, and it's up to our heroes to push back the enemy, with several twists and turns that occur throughout the campaign (including a surprise bad-guy).

[Linked Image]


Nice, I hope you are able to make it happen in DOS2

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Azmo Offline OP
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Originally Posted by Chili1179

I agree 100% with this. Checking out the doc, thanks smile




Right on, I will post later iterations as it develops from conversion and playthroughs.


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Originally Posted by Azmo
This is a very inspiring thread. I am glad to see so many creative folks forming this community.
I couldn't wait to start telling stories in my old setting, and to make my players (locally and old friends far away) ready for it, I tinkered with an old setting of mine to make it fit the framework of D:OS2.

The elves of my setting were already morose and odd, and although my original work had Clockwork instead of Undead, I think the change in flavor is fun and we ran our first session of this hybrid last Friday.

Here it is. Let me know what you think.
Google Doc




Interesting setting you got there, I'm looking forward to seeing more of it.

I like the deities and how many you have fitted in. Deities is an area where my setting is lacking, at the moment I got at least 4-5 major religions on the drawing board, one is monotheistic while the other are polytheistic ones that have pantheons ranging from a handful to dozens of gods. Coming up with somewhat original ones can be a bit hard, without ending up with generic god of fire, generic god of war, generic god of death and so on. Although they are probably ending up semi-generic anyway.
I dig the history as well, my setting actually have something similar to the doom Malzin wrought upon the capital, in mine it's called the Blight Event.

Now I feel compelled to disclose something from my setting, but since it is still a big mess of notes, and text that have to rewritten properly, I don't have much to show at the moment. So I spent some time straightening out something about how the settings handles the undead.
Uuuhh I can be really classy and call it a development diary, in order for the text to make some sense I advice people to look at the two maps I uploaded in a previous post in this thread.
Note, I have since changed the name of the nation of Zhanbo to Betizara.

On the undead, Google Drive.

Any kind of feed-back is appreciated!

P.S. forgive my english

Edit: I forgot to say that this lore document on the undead is still missing a detailed entry on the so called Blight undead, I haven't had time to write it properly yet.

Last edited by MAHak; 24/06/17 12:36 PM.
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Azmo Offline OP
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That is good stuff, there MAHak. I like that necromancy is pragmatic treatment of the afterlife, not inherently evil.

I also like the Wraith writing. As it reads, it comes across as a mere haunting, but transforms into something like the Nazgul or a Dementor.

Nice work!

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This is the PDF I gave my players in the last Roll20 session I had in my game world, to get them familiar with the history. Warning, its a long read.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7HnOhqNJFQ5VmROekUzNC1HdkE

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It feels like reading notes from previous campaigns. Were the events the result of player character's actions? How much of this is preamble and how much happened at the table?

Nice style, and I dig the naming conventions, Chili1179

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Originally Posted by Azmo

I also like the Wraith writing. As it reads, it comes across as a mere haunting, but transforms into something like the Nazgul or a Dementor.


Yeah that's pretty much the idea of it.

Originally Posted by Chili1179
This is the PDF I gave my players in the last Roll20 session I had in my game world, to get them familiar with the history. Warning, its a long read.


Interesting game world you have developed, I like it. How did you get all those illustrations?

Please allow me to point out one inconsistency, that I think you should change.
You say that the number of people who managed to flee from Kesparl were 3481 distributed across 112 ships. Yet within a 100 years these human survivors have multiplied enough to form several kingdoms. Maybe I read it wrong and the nations formed by these humans, absorbed a lot of indigenous people along the way.


As for my own setting, I've made a list of some of the nations that exists in the world, along with a small description to each.

Historical (defunct)

Thydoria – An ancient culture-group of humans, dwarfs and elves centered around the fertile and resource rich Thydorian valley, here all three races lived in peace and prosperity. The land north of the valley was populated by humans, elves populated the area south-west of the valley and the dwarfs populated the region south-east of the valley. The Thydorian valley and the surrounding land eventually froze over in a couple of decades, known as the Cataclysm, culminating in the White Night where a massive blizzard hit the valley and covered it in snow and ice. All the people who did not perish in the Cataclysm migrated south and formed most of today's nations. All of which trace their history, religion, language and culture back to Thydoria.


Ifnuan Empire – The city of Ifnu was founded on the Dagger peninsular (today's Blight Land), by Thydorian humans fleeing the cataclysm. It soon expanded its rule over the peninsular and in the following centuries it grew to encompass must of the nations (including Dothnia) formed by Thydorian migrants. It had a long-time arch rivalry with the Rusilarpusian Empire south of it, which involved several wars. Not long after the last war, where Ifnu had emerged with a major victory, the Blight Event happened. A massive explosion of magical energy wiped out the city of Ifnu's entire population, who were all turned into the undead. Having lost the capital and heartland to the Blight, the rest of the empire soon crumbled and a series of new and old nations gained their independence.

The Ifnuan Empire is inspired by, surprise surprise the Roman Empire.


The Gudjambheri Empire – Not much is known about this empire, at its height, long before the Thydorian Cataclysm, it stretched from the far south-east of the world all the way up to the southern banks of the silent bay. Wether it fell, like the Ifnuan Empire, or just receded its influence no one knowns, not even where its heartland is located is known, a fitting testimony to the vastness of the Gudjambheri Empire.

The Gudjambheri Empire is partly inspired by India at the time of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great conquered all the land from Macedonia to India and introduced greek culture to all the conquered nations. So my idea for the Gudjambheri Empire is sort of, what if an Indian empire had done the opposite, conquered everything from India to Greece.


The following are nations that are near to the Kingdom of Dothnia (see below), where the setting's story will take place.


Dothnia – Human kingdom and the place where the campaign is supposed to unfold. It was carved out from the southern part of the elven kingdom of Ganatha, around and immediately after the Cataclysm. Dothnia is made up of several distinct regions.

There is no real world inspiration for Dothnia, I like to think of it as a run-of-the-mill fantasy kingdom.


Ganatha – Elven kingdom located in the vast forest, that bears the same name, it has a history of animosity with Dothnia. The monarch is mostly ceremonial and the population of elves are highly autonomous and freedom loving. There is a vibrant civic society in Ganatha where people form many different organizations and groups cooperates with each other, all in the name of personal liberty.

Ganatha is inspired by some sort of libertarian America.


Dead Water – The name given by the humans to the huge swampland between the Mist Peak Mountains and the sea. The continuously flow of steamy clouds coming from the boiling sea, discharges in the Mist Peak Mountains which then creates a special condition where warm water is constantly pouring down the mountain side all year round. Thus the Dead Water swamp is quite warm and doesn't freeze over in the winter.
The swamps is filled with diseases and venomous animals, that are deadly to most humanoid races. It is however home to a great number of Lizardmen tribes.

Partly inspired by tribes living by the Amazon river.


The Umuligs – Is the common name giving to the horsemen tribes of the Umuligian Steppes. Just as people from the Thydorian culture, they migrated south when their ancestral homeland froze over. To the countries and city-states, in the southern part of the Umuligian steppes, they are a scourge that annually raid and pillages the countryside and occasionally sacks cities.

Partly inspired by central asian nomads tribes and early medieval Hungary.


The Lifvatnian Order (placeholder name) – They share the same ancestral homeland as the Umuligs, but they settled on the coast and islands west of the vast mountain range that separates them from the Umuligian steppes. At some point in their history a monotheistic religion took hold and quickly spread throughout the coasts and island, converting the people from their pagan religion. A great sea-faring people, they have colonised the landmass west of the Shallow Sea, where they have wages some wars with the United Realms.


Partly inspired by medieval Denmark, just think of Christian Vikings.


The United Realm – Is a powerful union of kingdoms, lead by the King of Geslia. The land is fertile, with a warm climate, and it has a relatively large population. Geslia have plenty of rich gold mines, that brings a lot of wealth to its ruler. It also makes Geslia a nexus of art, culture and academia, as great people from far away are drawn in and hired for their services. The United Realms sees itself as the successor to the Ifnuan Empire, as well as the premier torch carrier for the whole Thydorian culture.

Partly inspired by the Holy-Roman Empire and medieval France.


Kutharos – Is an ancient dwarven kingdom south of the now frozen Thydorian plateau. Unlike most other Thydorian nations it survived the Cataclysm, relatively intact. It is a highly stratified and conservative society, where the traditionalists aristocracy wields the power. Kutharos' influence reaches far south down the plains beneath the mountains. Here a number of semi-nomadic humanoid tribes are held as tributaries, providing food and other resources that are scarce in the mountains, in return for protecting against other tribes.

Kutharos isn't really based on any real life culture, with the exception of their Scottish accent.


Rani Palokto – The name means new forge in dwarven, it was founded by migranting Kutharos dwarfs who tunnelled south and eventually settled in the Stone's Edge Mountains. They formed a lucrative alliance with the Ifnuan Empire and later with the United Realms. Their craftsmen and artisans are highly prized and sought after throughout the known world.


Rani Palokto isn't really based on any real life culture, with the exception of their Scottish accent.


The minotaurs of the Fire Isle – The minotaurs inhabiting these isle are notorious pirates and fanatically devoted to their fire deity.

Partly based on ancient greek and norsemen culture.


There are more people and cultures... that I hope I eventually gets to write down. Dothnia being the site of the campaign of course is going to have the largest content of lore. Those with relevance to Dothnia will also have somewhat extensive lore, while others will be more lightly covered.


And I've updated the world map and the map of Dothnia (where the campaign takes place), with some names so it should be easier to locate the different nations.
Keep in mind that both maps aren't finished yet.

Dothnia

World Map

At the moment I'm working on editing the lore on Thydoria and after that the first part of Dothnia's history, so they becomes presentable. I'd like some feed-back when the time come smile


Last edited by MAHak; 04/07/17 06:19 PM.
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So not much activity here.... guess we're all waiting for that d*mn game to be released.
Well anyway, one of the many sporadic things I'm on and off working on is creating pantheons for my setting.

So to aid me in my endeavour I have done some 'research' into a bunch of ancient real-life polytheistic religions, namely the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Germanic/Norse, Celtic, Slavic and Phonetician.

So what I did was to skim (to varying degrees) through all the gods', from the different religions, Wikipedia pages and copied their assorted domains, aspects and portfolios, into a document. I also added some of the major deity domains types from DnD.

Then I distilled all those aspects into 7 big groups and several sub-groups, that way I have a big list of aspects that I can use for inspiration when I'm making up deities.
So if anyone is in a similar situation or might be in the future, here is a link to the document I've made.



P.S. some of the aspect are kinda weird sentences but remember that they are copy/pasted off Wikipedia.

Also, if it is of interest, the raw-writing of the historic lore of the ancient Thydorian culture from my setting is about 2/3 way done, then comes the re-written process so it looks presentably and not like an affront to people with English as their first language.

Last edited by MAHak; 28/07/17 09:55 PM.
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