While coming up with ideas for my fantasy world, I kept thinking about all the awesome campaign settings I've read over there years. There is so much in common, even as far as the layout. There is the: World overview, the in the beginning, the pantheon, places of interest, etc. It's like everyone has always followed some plan...
This also made me start thinking about the usual generic fantasy troupes (and what to do about them), as in the following:
- Dwarves & Elves dislike each other (f**k it in my setting they are friends)
- Orcs grew up of a fucked up crossbreed of Elves and some magic. (You know what nope, they are just orcs and they are pissed off at the world, and power hungry).
- Humans are a relatively new race. (nope, nope, they have been around since the dawn of time, just like all the other races).
- Something unexplained = fairy/fey creatures. (here's another big nope, Fairy's are just around to screw with adventures when they walk thru their gardens).
- At some point the gods had a HUGE fight, walked all over the earth, destroyed stuff. (yah this happens more often that not. If I'm a god I'm staying up in Valhalla, its much nicer and they have a all you can eat shrimp bar. The gods don't care).
- Dragons are dicks, and love treasure. (How about something else, maybe dragons are extremely literate, they know the lost secrets, maybe they spend all of their lives as humanoids unaware that they are in fact dragons until a very opportunist moment! Or maybe there are no dragons....egad it's D&D Shane!)
- Halflings = eat a lot, drink a lot, and generally don't adventure. (How about the complete opposite! They are power hungry, land owners, with a large chip on their shoulder, they employ goblins to carry out wars!)
- Demons (see the whole god bit, but you know some kind of meaty goodness buffet).
- The Ancients, there are always Ancients. As its the only way to explain all the random dungeons all over the place. (in the beginning there were elves, humans, dwarves & halflings, they went there separate ways and did things, some of them build dungeons).
- The great evil menace (I'm looking at you Sauron! Honestly this is a bit old isn't it! I mean I just finished running a campaign like this. Maybe there's just lots of mini evil all over the place, and in reality they are just trying to carve out a niche for themselves).
- Kings & Queens. - (Yah here's another one. You know what, how about the King & Queen died from a mysterious plague. The kings rather moronic low intelligence cousin in law is next in line!) ..
There has to be a better way to go about this. And I'm going to work on it.
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