And on the Seventh Day, He rested on His Laurels

The Empire was brought together when an outside figure like Alexander the Great united the squabbling "Greeks" against the "Persians," both of which were skilled in the magical arts.  The "Greeks," however, prevailed as the "Persian" empire suffered from discord within - and numerous enemies without - who were only too ready to attack.  It split into several successor states. Meanwhile, the "Byzantine" Empire rose to prominence, slowly subjugating client states and outright conquering lands around it to nearly encircle a great inland sea.  Magic arts flourished, reaching a peak that has not been seen since.

But let us call the Greeks Darians, and refer to the Palantyne Empire rather than the Byzantine.  Persia is mighty Zantiph.  For a thousand years the Empire endured, through its powerful Colleges of Sorcery; by an efficient bureaucracy that managed state affairs even during the reign of incompetent Emperors; and through highly-trained and loyal legions.  But pieces slowly whittled away, as the fate of the long-defeated Zantiphan Empire caught up with them.  Internal politics and power struggles weakened the Imperial Court from within, while humanoid and barbarian tribes took the opportunity to take what they could from the borderlands.  Frontiers were conquered.  Provinces rebelled.  Others remain part of the Empire in name only, but govern themselves, as the Darian city-states now do.  As a final blow, the Zantiphan successor states are united again.


With new vigor and purpose, the Padishah who now sits on its Lazulite Throne presses every advantage against his ancient enemy, Palantys, the jeweled center of the World, and tests the mettle of her Dragon Legions only sparingly.  Atop Mount Pergion, in the City itself, nobles intrigue against each other and the Emperor, and decadence abounds.  Meanwhile, the sun-worshiping Helic Cults have risen to prominence, preaching a return to Law under their Hierarch.  In their sylvan realms, the Elves appear unmoved by human affairs, having predicted the decline of young Palantys, as they foretold the first fall of Zantiph before it.  North, across the Cerulean Sea, a "barbarian" kingdom in the old province of  Esclamor (Hiskalaborea), has absorbed aspects of Palantyne civilization into its feudal order, and welcomed the Helic religion.  Dwarven kingdoms once traded with the Empire, but have become more secluded since the humanoid invasions of the past two centuries.  In corners of the Old Empire, ruins attest to the power of long-dead Palantyne wizards, and earlier sorcery that even they could not attain.

The young kingdom of Esclamor is the setting for initial adventures, on the borderlands where the King's cousin, Lord Thrandon, led a campaign against humanoid armies several years ago.  Interestingly, the human realm was aided by forces from the nearby Elven domain of the Idyllglades, as well as the Hill Dwarfs of Ironcrag, an alliance not seen in recent memory.  While the threat was mostly quelled, pools of evil remain, ready to rise again at the next opportunity.  Into this milieu enter the characters, who have heard of long-lost treasures and lore and are ready to make their names.

In the Beginning

Gygax created the World of Greyhawk, and we saw that it was Good.

I've recently discovered this little "Old School Renaissance" phenomenon on the internets, and it's resurrected my own interest in playing.  There are so many systems to choose from, but I think I've narrowed it down to either some variation on OSRIC, or Basic Fantasy Roleplaying System.  While I've heard good things about Labyrinth Lord, I never played OD&D, and can't quite wrap my head around the whole race-as-class thing (I'm sorry but a dwarf is a race, not a profession).  BFRPG seems to strike a balance between simplicity and the separation of race and class, but nothing is set in stone.  Anyway, discussing which system to use is probably another entry entirely.

When beginning a campaign, the first thing that comes to mind, perhaps even before deciding on a game system, is creating the world.  (The flavor of your world might suggest a certain system might or might not be preferable.)  And time spent here is usually well-spent if you're fleshing out the flavor of a world and leaving many of the details for later.

All of my earliest attempts at world creation back in high school and college tried to emulate the feel of Greyhawk, sometimes too closely.  In many ways it seemed (and still seems) the ideal setting for D&D, offering a wide variety of cultural influences - from Vikings to Mongols to savage jungles and forsaken deserts, with the general feel of medieval Western Europe in between.  Plus, you could name your PC anything and it would seem to fit in.

In retrospect, this makes sense because from what I've read Gygax did not design his world from the top down; rather it was from the ground - perhaps even the dungeon - up, with each new nation or geographic feature added as needed to account for something new in the rules, like the Barbarian or Monk character class, or for an adventure ("hey, wouldn't a pyramid set in the desert or jungle be a cool place for a dungeon?").  Only afterward did he try to organize the Flanaess into a coherent whole.

Contrast that with Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms setting, which seemed at once more generic and more specific in its flavor: Moonshae Isles = mythic Britain, Mulhorand = Egypt, etc.  FR struck me as some sort of bastard child of Robert E. Howard's pulp Hyborian Age of Conan with Tolkien's high-fantasy take on elves and dwarves and some of his naming conventions.  Perhaps I was conditioned by Greyhawk to expect some vague sense of history in a campaign world, which made an attempt to explain much of the shared civilization of the Flanaess.  Or maybe FR just wasn't Greyhawkian enough for my taste.

I didn't really take much interest in any of the other "official" worlds presented by TRS, like DragonLance.

Taking a course in ancient history in college only served to befuddle my world-building endeavors.  Learning of the rise and fall of "real" civilizations over millennia of history made me pay more attention to how a world came to be as it was.  I could not imagine "winging" a campaign setting, lest it commit the cardinal sin of not making historic sense to me.  Throw in magic and the supernatural, and now you have to reconcile all that with "real" history.

I remember the 2nd edition AD&D's Sourcebooks for certain settings (A Mighty Fortress, Vikings, Celts), but it always struck me that such a narrow, specific setting might get tired more quickly.  How long could you be a Viking warrior or a Celtic druid before your options started to all look the same?  So the discovery of the Old School Renaissance (OSR) gave me hope that if I returned to my roots, adventuring Nirvana could be attained.

I toyed for a while with trying to recreate a lost campaign world I designed 25 years ago, mostly as a map with some Gazetteer-like notes, but it felt too Greyhawkian to me.  Plus, I lost any copies I had of it.  So, I started from scratch.  Well, not exactly from scratch, since I think every world-builder has some concepts and names floating around in their heads or in dusty tomes that were once high school composition books.

I started with the trope of an empire in decline, an empire that served the role of the Roman Empire in Earth history. But I liked the Byzantine flavor of the empire in Harry Turtledove's Videssian series, so I based my Empire more on Greek Hellenistic culture to give it a twist.  (This means that names of scholars, priests or the erudite would have a Greek- rather than Roman-sounding affectation.)

So that's the start.  Next I'll be describing the setting some more....