„If it exists in D&D, then it has a place in Eberron!“

This bold statement was the start of it all. Part of the „Ten Things you need to know“ (in the Introduction of the Eberron Campaign Setting) totally got my attention. That a setting with such a different tone from the normal kitchen-sink D&D fantasy setting could still claim to be kitchen sink was something I’d never thought possible beforehand and made me rethink what I actually wanted to do with setting design. Now given the sheer masses of material written for any edition of the game, it seems physically impossible to do this, but at least this idea made me rethink my former policy of disallowing a lot of stuff which didn’t seem to fit into any given setting.

In the meantime, I’m all about allowing stuff, but under one condition: You have to be willing to modify the fluff to fit into the setting we chose to play (for example there are no Warforged in the Pathfinder Setting of Golarion, but with just a bit of rewriting, we surely could find a way to import them).

This is also the way I tend to read role-playing material from whatever source: How can I make it fit into my setting. So let’s that make RULE ONE for the design of Tetheril (the name of my world):

1. If it exists in Pathfinder, then it has a place in Tetheril!

And just to be clear: I do not intend to restrict myself to Paizo material only. But given that PFRPG is the engine that drives my game , this should be a minimum requirement. So I’ll give you rule 1.1

1.1. If it exists in the OGL universe, then it most probably has a place in Tetheril too.

And as if that wouldn’t be already overwhelming enough:

1.2. Without outright stealing, taking inspiration from D&D 1-5 or even other RPGs is explicitly allowed.

There are other rules I strive to follow:

2. The setting will be created through adventures first, through a campaign book second.

This is something that was originally the idea behind the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. Not to develop the setting through a lot of setting books but through the actual adventures written for Golarion. This policy has changed a bit in the meantime, and might also change for my setting someday, but at the moment, I hope that it will keep me from doing stuff that is not really useful at the moment. By the way, if I’m saying „book“, you’d better take this metaphorically. Maybe this will someday end in a publishable form, but that’s a long way to go, if I can go it at all.

3. Preference for low- to mid-level game.

I’m a big Eberron fan and what I think the setting did really well was to give a lot to play for characters between level 1-12. There were high-level dangers which would later be expanded upon, but at it’s core it wasn’t written with lower level characters in mind. I’ll try to take the same approach. Start small, but with the possibility to expand.

4. Low-magic approach

This is a bit tricky, so let me try to explain. One idea behind my setting is that magic has become scarce for some reason I’m not willing to share yet. There’s still magic there but mostly in the form of low-level magic. And (at least in the beginning) magic will even be more restricted for the player characters though that is something which will hopefully gradually change over time. So given what I said regarding point 3, I’m not sure if this will restrict player characters too much or at all, but if you expect the same magic level and magic wealth of the Realms, Golarion or other high-magic settings, you might get disappointed. This might also involve heavy tinkering with the rules and at least a bit nerfing of the Tier 1 and 2 classes.

5. Alignment isn’t what you think it is

This is also something I liked about Eberron, how it played with the alignment system (and thereby with the players‘ expectations). So I hope that I can create a setting where alignment isn’t something absolute but more of a gray area. And there might even come surprises in the form of inter-alignment alliances. So if you can’t handle Paladins working together with „evil“ persons, this setting might not be for you. There will be fight, there will be conflicts, but whose side you might find yourself fighting on has not necessarily to do with alignment

6. Culture and Race might define class choice

Well, in the beginning there won’t be many races to chose from because it will mostly center on humanity and there’s a lot of exploring to do. What I mean about that is that I will try to make cultural and racial choices of class and other options so appealing that players don’t necessarily look for the mechanically best option. There will be no hard restrictions, but setting-side it should be very clear that dwarves cannot take levels in the dragonrider class, because only elves have learned to tame those beasts and they don’t share the secret (just an example, which will most probably have nothing to do with my setting). So at least at my table, if a player comes up with this great idea for a dwarven dragonrider, he’d better have a good background explanation for how this came to be. Because, quite frankly, while I understand why official settings tend to be as nonrestrictive as possible, I don’t think that it necessarily makes for a good setting, if anything goes. Luckily, the Pathfinder archetype system gives me a lot to work with.

Well that’s it for today, but I wanted to get it out of my chest before I really start with working on my adventure.