Here’s my pitch for the Slaughtervale, the setting for my online game.
Long ago, this realm had another name. That was before the Elemental Chaos and the Astral Sea creaked at the barrier of this world. Sensing the ending of this realm, many fled. They fled to echoes of the region in the Feywild and the Shadowfell. Some fled to other parts of the world. Others stayed, unbelieving the words of sages who foretold the doom of the land.
Many of those who stayed died when the Elemental Chaos finally broke. For their loyalty they were burned by fire; crushed by stone; drowned in waves; bitten by frost. Those who remained lived to be enslaved by the Efreets, and witness the re-ascendance of the drow, unhindered by the permanently darkened sky.
Those who fled to the Feywild, whose descendants are known as the feyborn, were spared the ravages of the apocalypse that came to their land, but they were unprepared to face the eldritch fury of the eladrin and the feydark-dwelling formorians. Constrained to a small portion of the Feywild, existence is rationed on a pittance of resources and scavenging on the fringes of the Slaughtervale. The feyborn race against time to find a place to call home as old treaties with eladrin begin to crumble, and the shadowborn’s distrust and resentment increases with each passing day.
Those who are born in to the Shadowfell know a different pain. Bellies full and possessed of more material wealth than most could ever have known in Slaughtervale before the Great Storm, the sorrowful magic of the plane twists their minds. They are compelled to see doom, conspiracy, and loss wherever they look. The bonds with their brethren feyborn have broken down over their centuries. Each day more and more voice out loud the need for reckoning with the feyborn who they feel betrayed them for their better fates in the land of faerie.
Three realms exist as one but on the verge of war. It is at this time, at this place that you must decide your own fates, and possibly the fates of those around you.
So yes, I’ve been been getting definite mileage out of my Manual of the Planes. Using the concept of closely-knit sister realms in the prime, feywild and shadowfell planes, for example, was something I’m leaning on heavily for this.
This pitch has been sent out to the players and we’re getting some good discussion of what stories we can tell in this setting. If you have a moment, I go even further into this in audio –lots of stuff to kick around.
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About gamefiend
A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e. By day he is a technologist.
Even though I don’t own any of the 4e books so far (but have had plenty of time with a friend’s copy of the core) the Manual of the Planes makes me want to dive in there. Sounds like a really neat sourcebook the more I read about it. Best of luck with the campaign.
definitely, despite both lauding and decrying the defanging of the planes in terms of danger, I like how they’ve structured the cosmology. A lot. And there are a lot of great ideas in there. I’m excited about using it as the basis for the Slaughtervale game.
It’s a great pitch but who are the adventurers? Are they the feyborn? What races are being used? I’m also planning out a planar campaign. I got the book for my birthday and I love it. The feywild chapter was by far the best written but the book felt kind of short. It needed more monsters, some encounters, or at least a section on starting a planar campaign at the first level.
Who the adventurers are is what we’ll be deciding. Most of the people in the game I’ve never played with before, so I thought it best to write a good pitch, set the stage, and brainstorm with the PCs to figure out who they want to be. The PCs should be able to emerge from any of the three realms, and we can find a way to get them together.
Another article will cover the different races allowable, but it’s going to everything from githzerai to goblins.
Agree with you on the Manual of the Planes. If they wawnt to release a follow up to that full of encounters, sites, and cities, I’m there.
I know sigil is getting a more detailed treatment in dmg2. I think they also intentionally left things out so that they can use it as articles in dnd insider, and in some ways I don’t have much of a problem with that.
Manual of the planes 2? shudders… I had a hard enough time bringing myself to purchase all 3 core books. I’m cheap but I would probably but it still… as long as they don’t try to split up the content into separate books centered on each of the planes.
Whereas I don’t think I’d mind an entire book on the Shadowfell or the Feywild… as long as it was quality stuff. And that might just be a problem; historically, Wizards tends to overreach when doing that sort of thing.
A book on the feywild or the shadowborn would be awesome, especially if they would save some of the feat/power creation I’m going to have to go through for the campaign.
More realistically a book that covers the both could make for good quality and quantity of content.