So, I'm planning to run a 5e game on roll20 soon. Sort of a sword-and-sorcery style campaign with a lot of class restrictions. Before that, though, I want to flesh out my setting.
I decided completely fleshing out a continent's worth of locations and history was a bit extreme, so I decided to create a micro-continent that was once the center of a great empire that spread across a nearby continent.
So I've created a timeline for the micro-continent, fleshed out the regions a bit, made a hex map for it, and decided which classes/races fit into the setting and how they fit in.
Anyway, I just want to ask, how much does /tg/ consider "too much" or "too little" setting information when going into a new campaign?
>>43729490
Class restrictions? In 5E? PC customization is already pretty limited and what exists isn't particularly exciting. Why would you do this?
>>43729490
5e was pretty much designed to be underpowered D&D, you don't need to restrict more.
>>43729668
>>43730043
Jeez, I'm not taking out that much in the way of classes, just:
>Bards
>Paladins
>Sorcerers (except for the SCAG Storm sorcerer)
>Fighter & Rogue archetypes that add spellcasting (Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster)
>the really flashy Monk archetypes (Sun Soul, 4 Elements)
>Bladesinger Wizard
also restricted the Ranger to the one without spells from that UA a while back. I'm kind of going for a grittier, low-magic setting.
Now, can you please answer my question?
>>43730211
>Grittier, low-magic setting
>Still allows wizards, clerics and druids
>>43730211
Anything more than a single adventure site and a home base is too much.
Game won't get passed the first session anyways desu
>>43730368
When did word filters come back?
>>43730299
Doesn't mean there's gonna be a whole lot of them.
>>43730368
Especially since the already limited choices are being limited even more.
Just can the entire idea OP, it's horrid.
>>43729490
>>43730211
No bard or paladin but wizard and cleric are allowed?
Why not dump cleric for paladin in a 'low magic' setting?
As much as it dismays me because Bards are so good, I sort of understand why you would drop them out.
But why allow arcane trickster and eldritch knight but not paladin? They have identical spell progression.
>>43731305
Flavor.
With Paladins, you could basically make a Fighter with the Knight background and have it be the non-magic version. Clerics, on the other hand, have the religious aspect of their occupation a lot more front and center, so it can play a role in a campaign that no other class can, unlike a paladin.
Plus, there are a lot more options for the cleric than the paladin.
>>43731594
Okay, I can accept that.
So druid is allowed because?
I'm honestly not trying to destroy your campaign idea, I actually really like the low magic idea and I've been toying with it myself.
I am rather curious as to your logic behind the exclusions.
Clerics are obviously there because a healing element has to be there in a D&D group, and Druid has access here to that, but at the same time, to me, it seems out of place.
as to answer your initial question though,
It is difficult to find that balance between telling them what they need to know, and overloading with information.
I would begin by doing a short story of the history of the land.
It doesn't have to be a literary masterpiece, but it helps to write in the information their characters would all have general knowledge of.
Too much would be detailed information about the whose and whats are responsible for the evil.
Too little would be limiting to the immediate information of where they are and saying, you can't do this because i said so.
I would do a broad history of like "This happens and these events set it into motion." with perhaps a preamble detailing the restriction of magic.
Was this predetermined by your group or is this all your initiative?
>>43731710
This is something I'm working on myself.
Okay, maybe "low magic" was a bad word for it. More like "focused magic".
There are basically four ways one can cast magic:
>Divine worship (Cleric)
>Nature worship (Druid)
>Making a pact with some planar being (Warlock)
>Studying magic (Wizard)
And each of these caster classes has this as their basic hook, with little overlap with martial classes.
Does that make any sense?
On the subject of my setting, I've basically got an island about twice the size of Great Britain, with several independent states on it. Two of the regions present obvious threats to the region (to the north, conquering barbarians from a far-off land, and to the south, a small state ruled by yuan-ti), along with general decadence and corruption in most of the large settlements.
There are several "bygone" eras of the world (which I, the DM, plan to keep privy to myself), and the farthest back recorded history is around the rise of the empire that the island was once the center of, thousands of years ago.
Does that sound sufficient?
>>43731925
I understood it perfectly from you fr first few posts, OP. There is something inherently a bit too fantastical with classes that walk the line between Wizard and fighter or theif and Wizard. If magic us only in the hands of Wizards, it drives home that low fantasy feel.
>>43731925
What program did you use to make that map? I love the tile set up.
So the main threats are barbarians ravaging the lands, and a more sinister group who are plotting something more layered?
Is the adventure going to begin somewhere closer to one threat or the other?
I would probably introduce just one of the threats as the initial enemy in their 'known' information. So that they discover the other stuff.
>>43732048
>What program did you use to make that map? I love the tile set up.
Hexographer, the free version
Anyway, the barbarians are the known threat, and the yuan-ti are the unknown threat.
I was planning to initially start the campaign off with some dungeon crawling, and have those threats make themselves more strongly present later.
Like, the barbarians would be raiding surrounding lands from time to time, and eventually they'd escalate into full-blown invasion mode.
