In which I tell you about my setting...

When 5e was announced, I hummed-and-hawed about what kind of a setting to run it in. 

For 4e, I wiped the slate clean and ran a homebrew setting that fulfilled a few personal goals I had at the time. Those goals were to get away from feudal Europe as a default. I swapped feudal Europe for feudal China of the warring states period. It wasn’t a huge leap, but the Chinese cultural default worked great. This was arguably because 4e was essentially a Wuxia version of D&D.

I debated using that same setting, the Six Kingdoms, again for 5e, but encountered two stumbling blocks. The first was the amount of work I would have to either finesse the structure of the setting to fit 5e, or vice versa. Neither of those options really seemed like it did the setting or the game justice.

The other problem was one of the pay group. Two out of my seven players had played in the setting, and it felt like the prior campaign’s success would rear its head disruptively. It seemed better to let thos group build their own setting along with me and create their own narratives of success and failure.

So I wandered back to feudal Europe and doubled down on the medievalism of the setting. One Catholic Church which worships a dual set of deities, one male, one female. There are cults, knights’ orders, kings, merchants and a generalized lack of convenience.

My campaigns tend to wander into a tension between realpolitik and heroic-action adventure, which would be fine. I even know the endgame of the campaign, that is, I know roughly what levels 18-20 should look like. Everything else was loosely sketch, and the players have done a great job of adding to that sketch, providing me with strange holy relics, oaths to retake lost dwarven cities, and the curse of a dying dragon, to round things out.

I wanted the setting to be loaded with potential conflict. If much of D&D is set in a post-collapse setting, where there’s fallen kingdoms to discover, I wanted to have a setting which was in the process of collapsing. Evil is winning on all sides. There isn’t much of a place to call safe. To leave the borders of the main human kingdom is to risk life-and-limb or mind-and-soul.

Here’s the elevator pitch for the setting, The Dying Lands:

It is a dark time for the realm. The king is slain, fallen in battle. The king is but a child. The regent is strong, one of our best men, but the barons of the land have fallen into squabbling and sword-rattling.

The darkness they say began at the edges of the world has encircled us. Kingdom after kingdom has fallen to its forces.

The lands of the elves and gnomes were consumed by the Empire of the Red Moon, their blood drained and their forests and barrows unhallowed. Now undying lords and their skeletal armies stalk our eastern border.

The great Northern fortresses of the dwarves were broken by the hordes of the mountains and now their great forges lie cold while their treasure halls seethe with the twisted hatred of the Orc and Goblin.

The Southern lands of the Zala and the dragonborn have been slowly consumed by the swamps of the Oligarchy. Ancient towers crumble as the scaled worshipers of the Unclean Gods flay themselves and commit blood sacrifices to the sun.

The trees and vales of the halflings have been scorched and burned, turned to the Charnel Wood, where demon lords rule from a great unholy throne. Only a few, scattered fey linger at the edges of what was once a fair and peaceable land, but they are shrunken and terrible things, tainted by the ash which they eat.

This is a dark time indeed. We face the darkness without, but I fear there is a darkness within.