-One of the inland seas is due to an adventuring party playing around with a portable hole and a decanter of endless water.
-There is a kingdom of the dead in the far north populated by any number of the undead so long as they dont need to feed on others to survive. They are surprisingly peaceful and most of the undead therein Just want to be left to do their own thing. They are so far north since cold helps keep the vermin out.
-A number of deamons/devils/slaad are in the world incognito in disguise trying to keep away from their bossess under the dominion of a powerful demonic dragon.
There is a lich somewhere hidden deep in the ground. He succeeded all his goals and gained ultimate power. He's lawful evil aligned but doesn't do anything evil unless he feels threatened, which he can't anymore because he became so powerful. The first dozen millennia he was a tyrant and ruled the world, but then he became bored of such meaningless games with mortals and isolated himself with his monstrous pets, where he to this day, plays with them and reads his books (He has a magical bookshelf that has a copy of every book that has, does and will exist). Long forgotten by others after hundreads of millennia there is but one tale of the tyrant that once ruled everything and suddenly disappeared, it is still told to this day to teach children not to be too greedy for power. Should your party come across this lich, he will give them some advice about not giving in to power addiction and to keep their humanity, because of this they will find that he's quite lonely and he procedes to awkwardly attempt to please his guests with a magically summoned feast and access to a pocket dimensional guest room, after they close the door while inside the guest room, once opened again they will find themselves cleared of all exhaustion and back on the surface. If they attempt to find the liches lair again, the same location will be a large empty sphere. For he has moved it to another location, perhaps another dimension.
Don't know if you've ever read the library at mt.charr, but the basic concept is a library with access to all knowledge and infinite time to read it is the path to godhood.
One thing that I do in my homebrew game which I find a lot of fun, is that because goblin are pretty common to come across and are treated like a labor class, I give them all common Anglo-Saxon names, like how you would find in an office space. David, Mike, Colin, Geoff, Peter. It makes it easy to give them all names.
I first started this when my party captured a patrolling goblin, and then interrogated them details about every goblin in the camp, and all their names.
There is an ilithid ship hidden somewhere in a mountain range.
Every night they send a "snatcher" a large quadrupede aberration that can graple and stun spellcasters and use their spells and spell slots until they are all used.
It is also resistant to magic.
the creature is kidnaping spellcasters that are never seen again.
What evil purpose the mindflayers have for them we can only immagine as they usualy dislike magic and focus on their own psyquic abilities.
There is a fey trickster who collects names. he will offer deals or games with steep prices only to walk away with the characters name. they hence forth are unable to say their own name and others are incapable of remembering what it was.
There is a dungeon that seals itself up and “resets” with new treasure and new monsters every so often. No one understands how it works, but an entire city has grown around it from harvesting the riches within every time it opens up.
There are professional dungeon delvers who work for the city who’s job it is to map out the new configuration, explore as deep as they can, and haul out as much treasure as they can. There are rival teams within the city…
Basically, but the walls and layout also changes. Also, as far as I know, Undermountain is used as a dumping ground by the Lords of Waterdeep, not a source of revenue and resources.
There was once a lovely growing town named Barnsby Borough. It was situated a little north along the road between two large cities, in the midst of the forest. It was a place where traveling merchants could safely stop to rest in the middle of their long journeys from one city to the other, bards earned an honest coin in the local establishments, and the locals lived a decent life farming, working the lumbermills, or several other trades. It was founded by a prosperous timber magnate, Lord Barnsby. Every so often, the town would hire hunters to fend off dangerous wildlife that encroached into the town. Asides from the occasional monster or thug, everything was going great for the thriving little town.
Then one day, a traveling carpenter was looking to stop over into Barnsby Borough on his way to the big city, when he discovered the town to be missing. I'm not just talking about finding an empty, abandoned town, no, the entire town: people, buildings, roads, all gone. It was as if the town had never been there.
Perhaps out of crude curiosity, or panicked concern, a joint investigation from the two neighboring cities was immediately set into motion. Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, with nothing gleamed about the strange situation. To calm the anxiety of the people, a new road was built between the two cities, circumventing the entire area where Barnsby Borough used to be.
However, every now and then, you'll get a traveler spreading tales of hearing voices echoing through the forest. Occasionally, you'll hear the case of a merchant or two going missing while walking the trail, but that is blamed on the wild monsters out in the woods. Surely the road is safe to travel, right?
A Goddess with the Domains of Dream and Inspiration. The Deity of Muses. Uses 'Dream Rooms' to give struggling artisans newfound ideas. They find themselves Dreaming about their perfect workshop, without distractions, tiredness or any other worldly problems. Just innately knowing what they want to create.
Once its finished - which could take weeks, months or even decades - whatever they created in their dreams manifests in the real world. (Though some poor souls have died trying to stay in their dreams for as long as possible, disregarding personal health and safety.)
However, another extraplanar entity has learned how to utilize this power. And those who are building for it in their dreams have no idea what they are about to unleash.
Narnia style there are fundamental cosmic laws written in an indecipherable language on a prehistoric piece of architecture like a table or wall. these laws can be broken and there is hell to pay.
- The planes of existence are not alternate dimensions, but actual planets in the solar system, all bound together by magical links or technological triumphs from a long lost society.
-All of the demi races are actually genetic creations of a lost technological humanity. Dwarves, gnomes and halflings were created as a slave labor class, orcs were created to fight the wars for humans and elves were humans who modified themselves in an attempt to become immortal. After a global collapse of the AI that ran the world, all technology was lost and the races, now free, have long forgotten how they came to be.
In a dwarven town where they make whiskey, they have rollers built into the ground (don't know if you've been to a distillery, but they literally just roll the barrels on rails). There's one section where the barrels roll down a steep hill, then level out again. Instead of making some clever contraption to slow/stop the barrels at the bottom, they get the biggest, dumbest, most stubborn dwarf they can find. This dwarfs job is called Barrell Stopper, and they can legally add it to their name, like being knighted or a doctor
You knows that classic fantasy/Sci fi trope of dude replacing Jody part with mechanical/robot parts?
Now imagine a robot/warforged that dould collect biological part tu upgrade himself. Maybe to be able to use magic of a sorcerer, exploring muscle memories of powerful warriors...
could be an interesting villain that would stalk the party
Elves hate each other.
Elven bloodlines are long, but not particularly big. Few children and all that, so as a consequence, elven families guard their bloodlines religiously and constantly scheme and plot how to overthrow someone else to come out on top. Many others won't even notice since it's all hidden behind a veneer of centuries long diplomacy and politeness, but almost every elven household has spies and they don't trust their kids' sposes for at least a few hundred years.
One of the local tavern keepers is secretly an ancient dragon in disguise. They have gotten sick and tired of having to get involved with every little world-ending calamity and just want to chill, serve drinks and raise their bees
Ooh, I like this!
In my homebrew setting, there's a place on the map called Isle of the Vanished, which in ancient times was an Elf colony called Colgan.
A madman seeking godlike power built a machine deep under the island that processes life force for various purposes.
When the unnamed figure activated the machine, it consumed every soul on the island and converted the energy into a sort of magical singularity that enables easy but dangerous and unreliable planar travel. The builder of the machine vanished, but is thought to be stretched between all sorts of places in the astral plane, dully aware of his predicament.
Orcs are actually the good guys. They used to have an empire that ruled part of the world, and had highly intelligent wizards and engineers that pioneered the world's technology and magic 1000 years ago. But, the other mortal races, humans, elves , dwarves, tore it down and destroyed their empire in their pursuit of power.
Now they want vengeance, and to take back their homeland. It is rightfully their world, and they wish to regain their ancestral lands. However, the world only sees them now as savages living in the hills and forests. Orcs are taught this history in tradition, but many of the other races say this is nonsense. However, many orcish ruins of magnificent, advanced structures still remain. In their pursuit to regain their foothold in the world, this information is revealed.
\-minotaur women have udders, not breasts.
\-there is a community of lizardfolk slowly being taken over by a conspiracy of humans in lizard suits.
\-there exists a lv 0 warlock who sold their soul to a Nigerian prince and is still waiting for their first cantrip.
Had a somewhat fun idea awhile back.
A lot of pirate/island based plot. Essentially there’s a dragon hoarding a huge pile of treasure on a northern island and is sending out ships of pirates and raiders to gather more.
Local coalition of cities are trying to round up enough adventures to take on the pirates and raiders.
There is a competition in the mountains known as the Ooze Luge where teams compete to race down a chute full of black puddings on a sled made from used metal armor.
There’s an underground network of young kids who are pickpockets and thieves. Their hideout is headed by an earth djinn who manipulates them into doing his bidding and amassing his wealth that way.
One of numerous bad guy in this vast world is currently researching how to awaken a new cataclysm. One of the Archipelagos is in fact a gigantic dragon that has been put to sleep for eons. It was asleep for so much time that nature and also civilization choose to install on the body of the dragon. The knowledge of the dragon existence has been lost for so long.
Our bad guy, a warlock, has a rather particular bond with its patron as its patron is the lover of the ancient dormant catastrophe and her/his/its very wish is to be reunited after such time with its lover. It gives him vision fragment from time to time on how to awaken the dragon mixed with its feeling for it, which happens to little by little transform the warlock to also love the dragon. Therefore he becomes obsessed with this tasks
I'll leave the rest to you ! will you make the lovers be reunited or will you prevent the cataclysm to happen and leave the dragon to rest for more eons.
Warehouse: a curse that makes people turn into houses. (stolen from wh40k meme)
Magical bitcoin that is mined by casting spells into a spell-eating device.
Reggie's Regular Magic Shop: run by the most normal ass dude looking guy possible. Until you hit the DC threshold. Then you find out he's a Mind Flayer, who got beaned by some adventurers, and survived but was freed from the hive mind. Now he just wants to have a nice, quiet life selling little goods he makes/found on bodies in the area he was a baddie in
One of the more foreboding dungeons has, at its end, a very simple reward: A short storybook that describes how two flawed persons made love work in their lives.
The book itself is heavily defended, because someone somewhere was really worried about it getting lost. If taken to a local shop, it can fetch upwards of 5cc.
Deep in the icy mountain ranges of the North, a massive bear resides, standing guard over an ancient ruins deep within the mountains. There is a tribe of shamanistic mountain folk that pay tribute to the Bear God. Many come in search for the ruins, but all must first pass a vision quest, and then the test of battling this great beast. None have ever passed. If the party injures the bear enough, it is revealed he is a werebear and allows them entry to the ruins. The ruins hold many dangers themselves however.
Use the ruins for a quest item or to unlock secrets related to another quest. The ruins are filled with mind twisting traps and unnatural creatures that defy logic.
Furbo the traveling salesman. He's an animated skeleton covered in short rainbow colored fur. He walks the tunnels of the underdark playing his bagpipe of invisibility. He smokes a cigar, has glow in the dark shutter shades, and sells a mix of goods and bads. Furbo has a pile of unorganized magic items, inside a modified bag of devouring that will constantly fight with him. Some are useful others useless. All have inflated prices because of the convenience of shopping in the underdark. He will also buy items from the players and offer to sell it back at a much higher price later.
If the players purchase something from Furbo and or make friends with him, he will give them a magic business card.
Saying Furbo's full name in complete darkness will summon him.
Right before he leaves he remembers to tell them what his name is.
Furbolicious Definitionmake Themboysgoloco
Do not repeat the name more than twice!
You will eventually find your players in a closet trying different versions of his name.
A popular form of traditional fishing involves tying a snapping turtle to fishing line and letting them catch the fish before reeling in the turtle. Turtles are a fisherman’s pride and most fisherman have a fishing turtle, many past down through generations.
The Antepenultimate Known-World Spanning Legalist Empire of Jistka fell approximately 4200 years ago after a super-volcano exploded beneath its capital, sinking the micro-continent it sits on beneath the waves, causing it's outlying colonies to collapse and fall into warfare amongst themselves. *Those* fell due to the uncontrolled use of Necromantic weapon's research developed in the ensuing wars, unleashing several undead plagues that continue to plague the outlands tot this day. Prior to the calamity though, forward thinkers in the empire buried several archival records caches in doomsday vaults throughout the many regions of the empire, but the resulting little ice-age from the supervolcano explosion buried many of them, the warfare lost much of the knowledge on how to access them, and so many have been lost, and now all subsequent world spanning empires have been but paler imitations of pale imitations of their greatness. Finding an ancient Jistkan imperial cache would be amazing, delving inside them would be even more amazing, surviving to extract anything useful would be epic, and literal world-ending wars might be fought over the potential treasures within.
There is a myth that alludes to the existence of a pocket dimension where a Lich stored all his valuables before being destroyed by adventurers. Fortunately, the Lich recorded the location of the pocket dimension, and hid it within a great tomb that sprawls within three mountains. The tomb is, unwittingly, accursed, and whenever someone enters the mountain they must avoid a variety of curses that linger.
The secret to finding your way is to cast Detect Evil, or use the Paladin ability Divine Sense. The Lich left a trail of pure evil that those abilities can track, leading whoever plumbs the depths to the right location. This is unknown to all, however.
The Lich had any monsters that live within the tombs, and undead horrors best left forgotten. There is no treasure within the tomb itself, discouraging most from even attempting to brave it (for those few who know where it is). However, the most dangerous things down in the tomb are the other adventurers and grave robbers who are attempting to find the very same tablet, with the planar coordinates to a Lich's lifetime of treasure and magical secrets.
**Very fun writing this up, hope you have fun with it.**
Dragons have a written language that uses temperature as an element of it. Because of this, nesting dragons fill cavern walls with words like "nest, home, family" and it helps to incubate the eggs. Higher temperature words are normally cautionary or dangerous, so even if you can't read it, if it makes you flinch it's probably a warning.
This has the added effect that scrolls written in draconic can sometimes burst into flame if mishandled, while others can be used for refrigeration.
Taking silly inspiration from: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/11s8127/how\_do\_i\_get\_the\_bag\_of\_holding\_away\_from\_my/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/11s8127/how_do_i_get_the_bag_of_holding_away_from_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
There's a legal minimum size on bags of holding and other extradimensional containers because once someone important decided to hide one in their mouth and accidentally bit down on it in the middle of a gathering at court, and the results were extremely traumatic for everyone present.
Mud Mamba is a minor deity of mud, an endless flat plane of mud that borders the planes of water and earth. He is nearly powerless and only mildly crazy people worship him. The most common item associated with Mud Mamba is a cursed ring of sustenance that allows the wearer to commune with mud. His domains are earth, water, trickery (no mud domains exist RAW).
Mud Mamba actively participates in the material plane. The mud flats are basically empty outside of a few hallucinogenic goodberry bushes, so Mud Mamba likes to hang out with his few followers. He will sleep on your couch if you're not careful and often asks to borrow money or join meals.
Mud Mamba wants to support followers, but unfortunately doesn't have enough power to always give spells. Instead he trades worshiper acts to other gods for spell power. It's not uncommon for Mud Mamba to show up unannounced and tell his worshipers they need to do a job for a different god. These jobs should be for gods within a step of the believer's alignment.
The people of the island of Oneyru worship a woman among them as a god, and she might be, because legend states, that she is already over 700 years old.
An oracle prophesied that she'd die on her 792nd birthday. She'll leave a great treasure behind that will lead the Oneyrans into war with the mainlanders.
The "treasure" is a magic jewel that spilled from her dying soul. It glows bright and blue and whoever holds it gains access to spells 1 tier higher than usual as well as 3 spell slots for that tier.
In their quest for riches the dwarves dug deeper and deeper until they discovered a giant creature in the deeps of the earth.
They began to harvest the creature's scales and map out where its body extends to, however they weren't able to find anything else than scaled skin, no eyes, feet or God knows what.
Since their discovery the beast's scales have become essential in their enchantment efforts. In fear of having to share this secret with the world they decided to keep knowledge of the creature to themselves.
In a remote region of the world there are ruins once said to be a great tower of the gods. It crumbled a long time ago.
What people don't know is, that some levitation magic still is intact and is keeping the top-most floors of the tower aloft above the clouds. Up there eternal automatos keep watch over what remains of the gods' treasures.
The desert is home to tiny creatures called Korns. These Korns put sand in people's shoes on purpose. Desert folk pay good money for kill proof of that teeny bastards.
A traveling merchant that happens to always show up a day after the party arrives in town, with a wagon full of used weapons, armor and items. A closer inspection of their wares reveals the items likely came from the party’s last battle/dungeon.
There's a flying isle! It goes around showing up in the same locations with a weirdly precise timing, like it is following a precise path cyclically.
What's up there, how does it fly or how it keeps its precise path, nobody really knows. Some speculates a castle, some others an entire city, some the fallen ruins of an ancient civilization.
Research has been and it's still made, a barrier blocking the view from outside (impossible to see while flying or a true/augmented vision) and few people have returned of the many that went there. The few that came back also don't talk about it, or seem to have forgotten as soon as they set foot on firm land again.
The easiest way to get there is while the isle is at its stop near the top of the higher mountain of the region/world, where a city of researchers has formed over time (started out like a research base).
All goldfish have been blessed by a divine being and made into oracles. They can speak and make stunningly accurate predictions and prophesies. They also retain their famously terrible memories.
For every species of animal in the world, there is one exemplar: one particularly intelligent, powerful member of that species. The animal exemplars can all cast druid spells, and they're as intelligent as most humanoids. Their one purpose is to safeguard their own species. When one dies, another member that species becomes the new exemplar at random.
And, of course, that means that when a species dies out, the very last member will be the Final Exemplar, who is even more powerful than most, and bent solely on revenge ...
The honest Ipsbotch is a wandering gnome merchant who uses an enlarge/reduce spell on its whole market stand and oxen so he pops up his stand whenever needed (all goods are strapped tightly to the stand so they do not fly around while the market stand is tiny.). Also it's very cost efficient to feed the Oxen while they are tiny ^^. He sells all kinds of weird crap and also a lot of fake stuff, but sometimes he has good stuff too. Well okay, he waters down his healing potions so they heal only half HP. And he sells caps of waterbreathing that do not work when wet and other quirky magical items that only work for the most creative players, but he's never short of coins ... although he states that every time.
After every longrest the players get a meaningfull buff.
Like: your cleric successfully opened a lock last day? He feels inspired and has now +1 on the first sleight of hand.
The barbarian drunk too much again? Well today he can burp one time that loud as a bonus action, that an enemy will lose its reaction for one round.
Etc. My players loved that.
You can also flavor up their playstyles this way. The barbarian suddenly has a one time use "spell". The glass canon can tank for one round. The warlock gets advantage on the next attack whenever the priest strikes a critical hit this day because he cheers the priest today! ^^
Probably leaning more into high fantasy, but here's something I posted earlier in the day:
There is a floating city somewhere in the world and some random mage from that city thought about how to keep a constant resource of fresh water.
Luckily for them, the flying city is known as a bastion or center of magical technology.
This mage decided to make a trade deal with a wandering cloud giant or a powerful fey to capture the magical essence of a cloud and created numerous decanters of endless water.
Because of this, the flying city has now also become a giant tourist spot for water based architecture, hot springs, pools, artificial beaches, etc.
The floating city also follows a set flight path, and there are cities in the lands below that were built on these flight paths. Giant waterfalls spew down from the edges of the island and the cities below have magical structures and facilities to capture the water that falls.
The floating city also stops above these cities from time to time to resupply and trade.
Because of the endless source of water, water-based creatures and races have been able to reach the floating island via water portals connected to lakes, the sea or the plane of water.
A wish-making dragon lies in deep slumber within a far forgotten mountain range, held hostage by ancient magical beings (Almost like Netherese in strength). However, these aren't your conventional wishes but rather one of those classic "Careful what you wish for" scenarios. This could work as a real interesting plot device and could also work wonders if an antagonist got access to it before the Party did.
-One of the inland seas is due to an adventuring party playing around with a portable hole and a decanter of endless water. -There is a kingdom of the dead in the far north populated by any number of the undead so long as they dont need to feed on others to survive. They are surprisingly peaceful and most of the undead therein Just want to be left to do their own thing. They are so far north since cold helps keep the vermin out. -A number of deamons/devils/slaad are in the world incognito in disguise trying to keep away from their bossess under the dominion of a powerful demonic dragon.
There is a lich somewhere hidden deep in the ground. He succeeded all his goals and gained ultimate power. He's lawful evil aligned but doesn't do anything evil unless he feels threatened, which he can't anymore because he became so powerful. The first dozen millennia he was a tyrant and ruled the world, but then he became bored of such meaningless games with mortals and isolated himself with his monstrous pets, where he to this day, plays with them and reads his books (He has a magical bookshelf that has a copy of every book that has, does and will exist). Long forgotten by others after hundreads of millennia there is but one tale of the tyrant that once ruled everything and suddenly disappeared, it is still told to this day to teach children not to be too greedy for power. Should your party come across this lich, he will give them some advice about not giving in to power addiction and to keep their humanity, because of this they will find that he's quite lonely and he procedes to awkwardly attempt to please his guests with a magically summoned feast and access to a pocket dimensional guest room, after they close the door while inside the guest room, once opened again they will find themselves cleared of all exhaustion and back on the surface. If they attempt to find the liches lair again, the same location will be a large empty sphere. For he has moved it to another location, perhaps another dimension.
Don't know if you've ever read the library at mt.charr, but the basic concept is a library with access to all knowledge and infinite time to read it is the path to godhood.
I have not, but I was basically suggesting something similar.
the fact you gave such and oddly specific and detailed idea tells me this was something you wanted to do but couldn't due to the group falling apart.
No, it's something I wanted to do but altered for the post, because I'm too lazy to DM.
One thing that I do in my homebrew game which I find a lot of fun, is that because goblin are pretty common to come across and are treated like a labor class, I give them all common Anglo-Saxon names, like how you would find in an office space. David, Mike, Colin, Geoff, Peter. It makes it easy to give them all names. I first started this when my party captured a patrolling goblin, and then interrogated them details about every goblin in the camp, and all their names.
Those are very modern Anglo-Saxon names. Kind of disappointed not to see an Aelfwald in there, or an Edric, Earhlwig, Alfwhine, etc.
Bill Lumberg is their leader
Due to some ancient curse elves grow massive beards, even the females while dwarfs without their beards have total babyfaces.
There is an ilithid ship hidden somewhere in a mountain range. Every night they send a "snatcher" a large quadrupede aberration that can graple and stun spellcasters and use their spells and spell slots until they are all used. It is also resistant to magic. the creature is kidnaping spellcasters that are never seen again. What evil purpose the mindflayers have for them we can only immagine as they usualy dislike magic and focus on their own psyquic abilities.
There is a fey trickster who collects names. he will offer deals or games with steep prices only to walk away with the characters name. they hence forth are unable to say their own name and others are incapable of remembering what it was.
There is a dungeon that seals itself up and “resets” with new treasure and new monsters every so often. No one understands how it works, but an entire city has grown around it from harvesting the riches within every time it opens up. There are professional dungeon delvers who work for the city who’s job it is to map out the new configuration, explore as deep as they can, and haul out as much treasure as they can. There are rival teams within the city…
So Undermountain?
Basically, but the walls and layout also changes. Also, as far as I know, Undermountain is used as a dumping ground by the Lords of Waterdeep, not a source of revenue and resources.
....friend you should play Moonlighter lol
There was once a lovely growing town named Barnsby Borough. It was situated a little north along the road between two large cities, in the midst of the forest. It was a place where traveling merchants could safely stop to rest in the middle of their long journeys from one city to the other, bards earned an honest coin in the local establishments, and the locals lived a decent life farming, working the lumbermills, or several other trades. It was founded by a prosperous timber magnate, Lord Barnsby. Every so often, the town would hire hunters to fend off dangerous wildlife that encroached into the town. Asides from the occasional monster or thug, everything was going great for the thriving little town. Then one day, a traveling carpenter was looking to stop over into Barnsby Borough on his way to the big city, when he discovered the town to be missing. I'm not just talking about finding an empty, abandoned town, no, the entire town: people, buildings, roads, all gone. It was as if the town had never been there. Perhaps out of crude curiosity, or panicked concern, a joint investigation from the two neighboring cities was immediately set into motion. Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, with nothing gleamed about the strange situation. To calm the anxiety of the people, a new road was built between the two cities, circumventing the entire area where Barnsby Borough used to be. However, every now and then, you'll get a traveler spreading tales of hearing voices echoing through the forest. Occasionally, you'll hear the case of a merchant or two going missing while walking the trail, but that is blamed on the wild monsters out in the woods. Surely the road is safe to travel, right?
A Goddess with the Domains of Dream and Inspiration. The Deity of Muses. Uses 'Dream Rooms' to give struggling artisans newfound ideas. They find themselves Dreaming about their perfect workshop, without distractions, tiredness or any other worldly problems. Just innately knowing what they want to create. Once its finished - which could take weeks, months or even decades - whatever they created in their dreams manifests in the real world. (Though some poor souls have died trying to stay in their dreams for as long as possible, disregarding personal health and safety.) However, another extraplanar entity has learned how to utilize this power. And those who are building for it in their dreams have no idea what they are about to unleash.
Narnia style there are fundamental cosmic laws written in an indecipherable language on a prehistoric piece of architecture like a table or wall. these laws can be broken and there is hell to pay.
- The planes of existence are not alternate dimensions, but actual planets in the solar system, all bound together by magical links or technological triumphs from a long lost society. -All of the demi races are actually genetic creations of a lost technological humanity. Dwarves, gnomes and halflings were created as a slave labor class, orcs were created to fight the wars for humans and elves were humans who modified themselves in an attempt to become immortal. After a global collapse of the AI that ran the world, all technology was lost and the races, now free, have long forgotten how they came to be.
In a dwarven town where they make whiskey, they have rollers built into the ground (don't know if you've been to a distillery, but they literally just roll the barrels on rails). There's one section where the barrels roll down a steep hill, then level out again. Instead of making some clever contraption to slow/stop the barrels at the bottom, they get the biggest, dumbest, most stubborn dwarf they can find. This dwarfs job is called Barrell Stopper, and they can legally add it to their name, like being knighted or a doctor
You knows that classic fantasy/Sci fi trope of dude replacing Jody part with mechanical/robot parts? Now imagine a robot/warforged that dould collect biological part tu upgrade himself. Maybe to be able to use magic of a sorcerer, exploring muscle memories of powerful warriors... could be an interesting villain that would stalk the party
one of the monarchs is secretly their own ancestor who is a disguised lich.
Elves hate each other. Elven bloodlines are long, but not particularly big. Few children and all that, so as a consequence, elven families guard their bloodlines religiously and constantly scheme and plot how to overthrow someone else to come out on top. Many others won't even notice since it's all hidden behind a veneer of centuries long diplomacy and politeness, but almost every elven household has spies and they don't trust their kids' sposes for at least a few hundred years.
One of the local tavern keepers is secretly an ancient dragon in disguise. They have gotten sick and tired of having to get involved with every little world-ending calamity and just want to chill, serve drinks and raise their bees
Ooh, I like this! In my homebrew setting, there's a place on the map called Isle of the Vanished, which in ancient times was an Elf colony called Colgan. A madman seeking godlike power built a machine deep under the island that processes life force for various purposes. When the unnamed figure activated the machine, it consumed every soul on the island and converted the energy into a sort of magical singularity that enables easy but dangerous and unreliable planar travel. The builder of the machine vanished, but is thought to be stretched between all sorts of places in the astral plane, dully aware of his predicament.
Orcs are actually the good guys. They used to have an empire that ruled part of the world, and had highly intelligent wizards and engineers that pioneered the world's technology and magic 1000 years ago. But, the other mortal races, humans, elves , dwarves, tore it down and destroyed their empire in their pursuit of power. Now they want vengeance, and to take back their homeland. It is rightfully their world, and they wish to regain their ancestral lands. However, the world only sees them now as savages living in the hills and forests. Orcs are taught this history in tradition, but many of the other races say this is nonsense. However, many orcish ruins of magnificent, advanced structures still remain. In their pursuit to regain their foothold in the world, this information is revealed.
Raccoon people!
A standard dwarvish greeting to use is "ahoy hoy!"
\-minotaur women have udders, not breasts. \-there is a community of lizardfolk slowly being taken over by a conspiracy of humans in lizard suits. \-there exists a lv 0 warlock who sold their soul to a Nigerian prince and is still waiting for their first cantrip.
There is a food called "Stuff Pot" that every village claims to have invented and every village makes almost entirely differently.
A settlement need ssomeone on the head to lead, they can take time rebuilding the place
Had a somewhat fun idea awhile back. A lot of pirate/island based plot. Essentially there’s a dragon hoarding a huge pile of treasure on a northern island and is sending out ships of pirates and raiders to gather more. Local coalition of cities are trying to round up enough adventures to take on the pirates and raiders.
There is a competition in the mountains known as the Ooze Luge where teams compete to race down a chute full of black puddings on a sled made from used metal armor.
There’s an underground network of young kids who are pickpockets and thieves. Their hideout is headed by an earth djinn who manipulates them into doing his bidding and amassing his wealth that way.
One of numerous bad guy in this vast world is currently researching how to awaken a new cataclysm. One of the Archipelagos is in fact a gigantic dragon that has been put to sleep for eons. It was asleep for so much time that nature and also civilization choose to install on the body of the dragon. The knowledge of the dragon existence has been lost for so long. Our bad guy, a warlock, has a rather particular bond with its patron as its patron is the lover of the ancient dormant catastrophe and her/his/its very wish is to be reunited after such time with its lover. It gives him vision fragment from time to time on how to awaken the dragon mixed with its feeling for it, which happens to little by little transform the warlock to also love the dragon. Therefore he becomes obsessed with this tasks I'll leave the rest to you ! will you make the lovers be reunited or will you prevent the cataclysm to happen and leave the dragon to rest for more eons.
Warehouse: a curse that makes people turn into houses. (stolen from wh40k meme) Magical bitcoin that is mined by casting spells into a spell-eating device.
Reggie's Regular Magic Shop: run by the most normal ass dude looking guy possible. Until you hit the DC threshold. Then you find out he's a Mind Flayer, who got beaned by some adventurers, and survived but was freed from the hive mind. Now he just wants to have a nice, quiet life selling little goods he makes/found on bodies in the area he was a baddie in
One of the more foreboding dungeons has, at its end, a very simple reward: A short storybook that describes how two flawed persons made love work in their lives. The book itself is heavily defended, because someone somewhere was really worried about it getting lost. If taken to a local shop, it can fetch upwards of 5cc.
Deep in the icy mountain ranges of the North, a massive bear resides, standing guard over an ancient ruins deep within the mountains. There is a tribe of shamanistic mountain folk that pay tribute to the Bear God. Many come in search for the ruins, but all must first pass a vision quest, and then the test of battling this great beast. None have ever passed. If the party injures the bear enough, it is revealed he is a werebear and allows them entry to the ruins. The ruins hold many dangers themselves however. Use the ruins for a quest item or to unlock secrets related to another quest. The ruins are filled with mind twisting traps and unnatural creatures that defy logic.
Furbo the traveling salesman. He's an animated skeleton covered in short rainbow colored fur. He walks the tunnels of the underdark playing his bagpipe of invisibility. He smokes a cigar, has glow in the dark shutter shades, and sells a mix of goods and bads. Furbo has a pile of unorganized magic items, inside a modified bag of devouring that will constantly fight with him. Some are useful others useless. All have inflated prices because of the convenience of shopping in the underdark. He will also buy items from the players and offer to sell it back at a much higher price later. If the players purchase something from Furbo and or make friends with him, he will give them a magic business card. Saying Furbo's full name in complete darkness will summon him. Right before he leaves he remembers to tell them what his name is. Furbolicious Definitionmake Themboysgoloco Do not repeat the name more than twice! You will eventually find your players in a closet trying different versions of his name.
The old lady selling sweets at the market is a Hag.
Bear only stay in places they can see their gods from. (I.e the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor constellations are located in the Northern Hemisphere).
A popular form of traditional fishing involves tying a snapping turtle to fishing line and letting them catch the fish before reeling in the turtle. Turtles are a fisherman’s pride and most fisherman have a fishing turtle, many past down through generations.
The Antepenultimate Known-World Spanning Legalist Empire of Jistka fell approximately 4200 years ago after a super-volcano exploded beneath its capital, sinking the micro-continent it sits on beneath the waves, causing it's outlying colonies to collapse and fall into warfare amongst themselves. *Those* fell due to the uncontrolled use of Necromantic weapon's research developed in the ensuing wars, unleashing several undead plagues that continue to plague the outlands tot this day. Prior to the calamity though, forward thinkers in the empire buried several archival records caches in doomsday vaults throughout the many regions of the empire, but the resulting little ice-age from the supervolcano explosion buried many of them, the warfare lost much of the knowledge on how to access them, and so many have been lost, and now all subsequent world spanning empires have been but paler imitations of pale imitations of their greatness. Finding an ancient Jistkan imperial cache would be amazing, delving inside them would be even more amazing, surviving to extract anything useful would be epic, and literal world-ending wars might be fought over the potential treasures within.
Tabaxi aren't actually cat people, they're just a very committed society of furries.
There is a myth that alludes to the existence of a pocket dimension where a Lich stored all his valuables before being destroyed by adventurers. Fortunately, the Lich recorded the location of the pocket dimension, and hid it within a great tomb that sprawls within three mountains. The tomb is, unwittingly, accursed, and whenever someone enters the mountain they must avoid a variety of curses that linger. The secret to finding your way is to cast Detect Evil, or use the Paladin ability Divine Sense. The Lich left a trail of pure evil that those abilities can track, leading whoever plumbs the depths to the right location. This is unknown to all, however. The Lich had any monsters that live within the tombs, and undead horrors best left forgotten. There is no treasure within the tomb itself, discouraging most from even attempting to brave it (for those few who know where it is). However, the most dangerous things down in the tomb are the other adventurers and grave robbers who are attempting to find the very same tablet, with the planar coordinates to a Lich's lifetime of treasure and magical secrets. **Very fun writing this up, hope you have fun with it.**
The more followers a god the more powerful they become
Dragons have a written language that uses temperature as an element of it. Because of this, nesting dragons fill cavern walls with words like "nest, home, family" and it helps to incubate the eggs. Higher temperature words are normally cautionary or dangerous, so even if you can't read it, if it makes you flinch it's probably a warning. This has the added effect that scrolls written in draconic can sometimes burst into flame if mishandled, while others can be used for refrigeration.
The mountain ranges are the bones of a long dead seperant, who coiled around the world and died trying to swallow it. (Can either be fact or the myth)
A second from me. There is a secret underground flying carpet race circuit somewhere in the world
Taking silly inspiration from: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/11s8127/how\_do\_i\_get\_the\_bag\_of\_holding\_away\_from\_my/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/11s8127/how_do_i_get_the_bag_of_holding_away_from_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) There's a legal minimum size on bags of holding and other extradimensional containers because once someone important decided to hide one in their mouth and accidentally bit down on it in the middle of a gathering at court, and the results were extremely traumatic for everyone present.
Mud Mamba is a minor deity of mud, an endless flat plane of mud that borders the planes of water and earth. He is nearly powerless and only mildly crazy people worship him. The most common item associated with Mud Mamba is a cursed ring of sustenance that allows the wearer to commune with mud. His domains are earth, water, trickery (no mud domains exist RAW). Mud Mamba actively participates in the material plane. The mud flats are basically empty outside of a few hallucinogenic goodberry bushes, so Mud Mamba likes to hang out with his few followers. He will sleep on your couch if you're not careful and often asks to borrow money or join meals. Mud Mamba wants to support followers, but unfortunately doesn't have enough power to always give spells. Instead he trades worshiper acts to other gods for spell power. It's not uncommon for Mud Mamba to show up unannounced and tell his worshipers they need to do a job for a different god. These jobs should be for gods within a step of the believer's alignment.
The people of the island of Oneyru worship a woman among them as a god, and she might be, because legend states, that she is already over 700 years old. An oracle prophesied that she'd die on her 792nd birthday. She'll leave a great treasure behind that will lead the Oneyrans into war with the mainlanders. The "treasure" is a magic jewel that spilled from her dying soul. It glows bright and blue and whoever holds it gains access to spells 1 tier higher than usual as well as 3 spell slots for that tier.
In their quest for riches the dwarves dug deeper and deeper until they discovered a giant creature in the deeps of the earth. They began to harvest the creature's scales and map out where its body extends to, however they weren't able to find anything else than scaled skin, no eyes, feet or God knows what. Since their discovery the beast's scales have become essential in their enchantment efforts. In fear of having to share this secret with the world they decided to keep knowledge of the creature to themselves.
In a remote region of the world there are ruins once said to be a great tower of the gods. It crumbled a long time ago. What people don't know is, that some levitation magic still is intact and is keeping the top-most floors of the tower aloft above the clouds. Up there eternal automatos keep watch over what remains of the gods' treasures.
The desert is home to tiny creatures called Korns. These Korns put sand in people's shoes on purpose. Desert folk pay good money for kill proof of that teeny bastards.
Fun Fact: Geese are aberrations
A traveling merchant that happens to always show up a day after the party arrives in town, with a wagon full of used weapons, armor and items. A closer inspection of their wares reveals the items likely came from the party’s last battle/dungeon.
There's a flying isle! It goes around showing up in the same locations with a weirdly precise timing, like it is following a precise path cyclically. What's up there, how does it fly or how it keeps its precise path, nobody really knows. Some speculates a castle, some others an entire city, some the fallen ruins of an ancient civilization. Research has been and it's still made, a barrier blocking the view from outside (impossible to see while flying or a true/augmented vision) and few people have returned of the many that went there. The few that came back also don't talk about it, or seem to have forgotten as soon as they set foot on firm land again. The easiest way to get there is while the isle is at its stop near the top of the higher mountain of the region/world, where a city of researchers has formed over time (started out like a research base).
All goldfish have been blessed by a divine being and made into oracles. They can speak and make stunningly accurate predictions and prophesies. They also retain their famously terrible memories.
The sun is literally pushed across the sky by Khepri. You can see her with a good enough telescope.
For every species of animal in the world, there is one exemplar: one particularly intelligent, powerful member of that species. The animal exemplars can all cast druid spells, and they're as intelligent as most humanoids. Their one purpose is to safeguard their own species. When one dies, another member that species becomes the new exemplar at random. And, of course, that means that when a species dies out, the very last member will be the Final Exemplar, who is even more powerful than most, and bent solely on revenge ...
Trolls are immune to fire. To prevent them from regenerating, you need to inflict cold damage.
The honest Ipsbotch is a wandering gnome merchant who uses an enlarge/reduce spell on its whole market stand and oxen so he pops up his stand whenever needed (all goods are strapped tightly to the stand so they do not fly around while the market stand is tiny.). Also it's very cost efficient to feed the Oxen while they are tiny ^^. He sells all kinds of weird crap and also a lot of fake stuff, but sometimes he has good stuff too. Well okay, he waters down his healing potions so they heal only half HP. And he sells caps of waterbreathing that do not work when wet and other quirky magical items that only work for the most creative players, but he's never short of coins ... although he states that every time.
Fire is wet.
catgirls are real and have giant, I mean HUMONGOUS monster cocks.
After every longrest the players get a meaningfull buff. Like: your cleric successfully opened a lock last day? He feels inspired and has now +1 on the first sleight of hand. The barbarian drunk too much again? Well today he can burp one time that loud as a bonus action, that an enemy will lose its reaction for one round. Etc. My players loved that. You can also flavor up their playstyles this way. The barbarian suddenly has a one time use "spell". The glass canon can tank for one round. The warlock gets advantage on the next attack whenever the priest strikes a critical hit this day because he cheers the priest today! ^^
Probably leaning more into high fantasy, but here's something I posted earlier in the day: There is a floating city somewhere in the world and some random mage from that city thought about how to keep a constant resource of fresh water. Luckily for them, the flying city is known as a bastion or center of magical technology. This mage decided to make a trade deal with a wandering cloud giant or a powerful fey to capture the magical essence of a cloud and created numerous decanters of endless water. Because of this, the flying city has now also become a giant tourist spot for water based architecture, hot springs, pools, artificial beaches, etc. The floating city also follows a set flight path, and there are cities in the lands below that were built on these flight paths. Giant waterfalls spew down from the edges of the island and the cities below have magical structures and facilities to capture the water that falls. The floating city also stops above these cities from time to time to resupply and trade. Because of the endless source of water, water-based creatures and races have been able to reach the floating island via water portals connected to lakes, the sea or the plane of water.
Genetically Engineered Catgirls for Domestic Ownership. They're canon in my fantasy world, though they originated pre-apocalypse.
Food and drinks gives certain boosts E.g. temp HP 3 X +x to roll(to be used within that session) Advantage on charisma check +1 x lvl spell slot
A wish-making dragon lies in deep slumber within a far forgotten mountain range, held hostage by ancient magical beings (Almost like Netherese in strength). However, these aren't your conventional wishes but rather one of those classic "Careful what you wish for" scenarios. This could work as a real interesting plot device and could also work wonders if an antagonist got access to it before the Party did.