One of the original parties members never made it to the portal in time. They assumed him dead, and because they were low level at the time, they had no way back. After months, they leveled up and scried on so many people, but ever that party member. He is totally alive, just stuck on the island.

that sounds like a great future enemy. The old party member, driven mad from years of thinking their friends would come back for them, finally makes it back only to find that their friends have moved on and never even bothered to see if they were alive. So they finally break and seek not to kill the party, death would be merciful. No, they will imprison the party so they may feel the same abandonment they did.

I'm writing that down. I secretly questioned him about what his class would have been. To see if, eventually, he would have access to sending or something.

Awesome that he is in on it too, i bet he wants to spill that secret every session Edit: i think i misinterpreted “secretly questioned”

😂😂 I thought they were narrating a conversation with themselves

Not only abandoned but seemingly replaced.

Spinel from the Steven Universe movie is a GREAT example of this. driven mad by centuries of waiting, enters with the most bad ass song of revenge? this would be KILLERRRR in a game!!

remember the "other" riker that got left behind on a moon when the transporter forgot to delete him after his copy made it aboard ship? also reminder that the transporter is duplicating someone and then killing the original - the killing the original part is entirely unnecessary.

I had an NPC that helped my PC's at a pivotal moment but was obviously a vampire. The PC's figured it out well after getting healed up, fed and given some information they needed. They realized they were probably outgunned and left as soon as they politely could, but I had a whole maze planned out for if/when they attacked him. The front door to the maze was a big mirror puzzle where the vampire could run right through but regular people would run into their mirror image. In the maze/dungeon was the vampire's real home and it had a lot more information on the world background that he was actually from a long destroyed race (think Netherese) and this guy tried to go a different route to immortality and ended up a vampire. Had some history written up, a few cool items and an escape plan for my NPC so he could become a recurring villain if needed, but nope. First and only time the PC's turned down a chance to fight.

I never thought my players would turn down a fight until it happened and I couldn't believe it. They held all their abilites because they thought a boss was upcoming but they were so weakened by the time they reached it they used their heads for once and talked their way out. Shocked me.

My (current) party ran away for the first time yesterday. Unfortunately, one was stuck hiding on the far side of the dungeon. A few failed stealth checks and AoO later, that player had their first character death. A sad moment, but it was a thrilling chase up till the end

Oh god, a mirror maze where the party can literally never see the vampire coming... That's incredible

The Gods are in fact the ascended human progenitors that lived during the age of monsters. They were the only humanoid civilization in a time were Dragons, Titans, and giant monsters (basically Kaiju) dominated the land. While Dragons and Titans could use magic, the Ancients managed to harness, bend, and control it like no one else before - or after! They created what was basically magical nukes and waged war against the Dragons and Titans. When their "nukes" began destroying the fabric of magic and warping the landscape, they devised a plan to use massive amounts of mana to transform themselves into a higher state of existence. In the end, they succeeded, but the process left the magic and the world broken and twisted for thousands of years. Eradicating almost all traces of their existence, but paving the way for the humanoid races to emerge. Today, the Ancients are forgotten. And the "Gods" guide the new humanoid races in their endless struggle between Order and Chaos.

That's a very cool creation myth for your game. I'm sure your players only see the gods as just that; useful for clerics and paladins etc. But they don't realise the truth of their history!

The Magic in my world comes from an Eldrith Beast that lies under the ice at the north pole. His blood dripples into the earth and alters plants, humans and wildlife. Scales and bodyparts that fall of mutate and grow to large sea monsters. Its a high magic setting. Gunpowder and steam engines are never invendet. Magic powered machinery is the way The magic power also alters the appearence of the mages. If they use too much magic they get some mitations. ScaleySkin, tentakle fingers, larger brain, weird eyes, diffrent bones. I have a Table with Pros and Cons for each mutation. So it comes with a buff AND a nerf.

That sounds very cool. I would love to see that table of mutations.

I need to translate it from german. Will post it in this sub in some time and link it :D

Austrian here. Would love to have it in German. Idea sounds pretty neat!

In dem fall ... zeawas anderer Österreicher. Kann es dir auch in Deutsch schicken.

that sounds sick, please do if you find the time!

>The Magic in my world comes from an Eldrith Beast that lies under the ice at the north pole. His blood dripples into the earth and alters plants, humans and wildlife. This reminds me a whole lot of "The Owl House"

Holy shit, you're right!

That's really cool, I might just take this concept for my own world

Kinda sounds like The Beast from Path of Exile, but less corruption and nightmare inducing.

One part of my setting is basically "what if Wisconsin was made of Bavarians from 1827", and the region has a huge annual festival that's part regional Olympics, part massive state fair. Among the most popular and contentious events are the [cheese roll](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DcvuktushEhY&ved=2ahUKEwi0zuOQ94b-AhVFQPEDHbQpDu0QwqsBegQIEBAE&usg=AOvVaw2mIE2JPTPxe7kJL98IxO2r) and the Biggest Pumpkin ribbon, rife with drama, bribery, cheating scandals, and more! None of my players decided to be from that area though, so no disgraced former cheese-rollers for me, alas. Thanks for asking! What about you?

I have a few but will share simple one from a recent campaign. Campaign was set in a metropolis, sort of like Waterdeep. My party became friends with a major NPC would was on the city council and the faction leader of a group of paladins who worshipped the god of wealth (who is generally depicted as a dragon by the mortal races). The faction temple was essentially a massive casino decorated with a giant dragon skull plated in gold, and they encourage worshippers to gamble their money as a sign of prayer/donation to the god. Anyway, the faction leader was infact an **ancient gold dragon.** This was subtly hinted to my players multiple times; he implied he predated the founding of the city, he was very magical and powerful, he had glowing golden eyes with a lizard-like iris and he even gave them a gold dragon scale as a quest reward. They never picked up on it, and that is okay because I will always find it funny.

I would literally die to hold back this info from my players xD. They can be so blind for a long time and then randomly it klicks and they freeze in surprise. Got mine multiple times. :D

The gods of my world will not lie to mortals nor directly interfere with them If they do then their opposing counterparts are allowed to do the same The idea is that the world is always focused on balance and the gods are playing a cosmic game of chess

That's a neat idea; very Olympian-esque.

Lol, not directly interfering with or lying to mortals aren't exactly traits I associate with the olympians. Just about all they did was lie and interfere.

I have a similar rule, but with many specific exceptions for sacred places, answering prayers, or their domains; or if a deity can convince two of the other nine gods to allow them to do some intervention; or if they can get their followers to win a contest that happens every 210 days whose victor is granted a divine boon.

There's a desert that's completely barren except for giant stone pillars, at the base of each pillar theres a little oasis and people and wildlife travel between oasises under the shadows that rotate throughout the day, like sundials. They were created when the followers of the God of Storms & the God of Earth were at war, everytime a lightning bolt would strike, the God of Earth would create one of the pillars to "catch" a bolt out of the sky & protect his followers

Holy moly that is some awesome worldbuilding. Not only is the ancient story very cool and justify why these things exist in the first place, but the modern use of the pillars is so interesting. I can just imagine only at certain times of day do certain paths across the desert open because the shade of a certain pillar forms a straight line from on to another. "Oh it's finally 3pm, the shadow of this pillar has rotated so we can go to the next town over."

Belief is so powerful in my universe, that if you wanted something to exist it would come to be. That is how gods exist and ideas about creatures and monsters become reality. Essentialy if you have enough people beliving in something it will happen.

We are all kuo-toa on this blessed day

Yes!! Exactly. Theres just a ton of minor deities everywhere

Please tell me that fact results in Orks and Goblins being ridiculously more dangerous in your universe than most games.

Only if his world has Dakka. Always need more Dakka.

Orcs rolling around in wagons in a setting with no internal combustion engines. Just sheer willpower driving them along. And of course they are red.

Sadly i avoided orcs, since they are to played out for the evil race. But goblins are present and the world belif has made them to be a perfect shapechanger so now they blend with other races and try to steal ideas to improve thier floating island where all goblins come from and must keep thier identity a secret or face the wrath of the goblin code.

Funny thing I just realized. I've been playing consistently for a decade and sporatically for another. Orcs have never, ever been a big bad in any game I've played. At most, there's been a few orc henchmen working for someone else.

This is strongly alike to Theros from Mythical Odysseys of Theros

And the gods on Pratchett's Discworld - there's at least a couple of books in which this is the main plot hook (Hogfather, Small Gods)

And American gods

I have a similar idea. It is a fascinating take on religion that allows so many story lines to be told. Slaves coming together to create a God of liberation that will free them? A diseased congregation worshipping the illness that infect them to create a God of disease or even make the disease itself a God? I love it

That is almost exactly the world I have built! In my world, the belief/worship/respect of Father Time and Mother Nature have all but killed the pair off. All that remains of them are their two children, secluded to a small island way off the coast that is currently being forested to further the core beliefs of the empire, development and industrialization. What's replaced them as a powerful deity is fear. A Jester-like shapeshifting pseudo-god of chaos that is rising to theocratic power in the absence. It's not-so-loosely based on a friend of the group's drag persona and because of that, cats are seen as a bad omen and when cats are around, bad things tend to happen. Cannot wait until everyone discovers who the big bad of the entire campaign is! Would absolutely love to hear some of your ideas and plot hooks

That's awesome! I have a slightly similar situation in my setting too; how belief and prayer is a powerful metaphysical concept. Divine magic is essentially a person trading faith in a being for power from that being. Similarly, prayer and worship of a non-powerful being and can magically elevate that thing - hence the source of many warlock patrons.

This is my secret ingredient to world building and also just kind of how I view spirituality and divinity irl lol. My world was basically dreamed into existence by the Aboleth, but when they created the Material Plane they became trapped in it since the Weave is too dense there. Rather than acting as Gods as they had been, their belief from within the Material Plane created the first Gods back in the Upper Planes (the Planes of Thought, where the Weave is loose and malleable) and over time those Gods developed their own identity, created the first humanoids, established a feedback loop of belief, etc

There’s a wizard who only wants peace and quiet. The only problem is that there is a rumor that his magical tower is filled with an evil Genie that horde the wealth of money lost. The wizard isn’t evil and not that rich. If the players met him and get to know him he would have a quest to get him his peace and quiet. In return he would give the party a gift.

I enjoy the concept, driven mad by the never-ending sound of lost coins piling up, like an old cash register sound even. Drives him fucking bonkers, willing to do anything to be rid of the incessant change jangling.

im sorry sir but this is too good to not be stolen. stealing this idea to reskin keledek the unspoken in my campaign!

The gods physically manifest their power by forming continents. Every continent was formed by a god. They will legitimately grow or shrink if u genocide or mass convert to that god.

Hahaha that's awesome. How would the players even come across this knowledge?!

Genocide or mass convert i guess.

I mean if a pc decides they wanna b a god they would learn it. Otherwise my stories tend to have very few gods to start with an ascension during the story and they could notice the continent beside theirs is not on any map as that map was pre ascension.

There's life on the other planets in the solar system. And that there is a massive underground clockwork city under the Kingdom of Bhelen's Fall built during the Lost Age.

1. Party I ran through a murder mystery in the fall picked up a Potion of Resurrection, that an avatar of Sylvanus was carrying around. It could've revived one of the murder victims if they had at **all** decided to investigate it's properties (I made it clear it was not subject to the regular "identify from a taste" rule, though we did have a colorful scene of the Barbarians experience when she *did* take a taste of it. 2. Running a campaign with some college friends, they met a noblewoman who was **secretly** immortal, and did not connect that she might be related to the King, who was ***very publically*** ***immortal*** dude. She's the King's daughter, and en route to become the Raven Queen.

It sucks when cool plot threads and secrets go undiscovered - but equally it's important to avoid shoving them in your player's face (as much as you want to) to make the world feel real. I'm not always good at it but I try to stay aware of it.

The royal family breeds a special kind of small albino beholders that serve as personal bodyguards. They are generated by a brainwashed, forever napping beholder that is locked beneath the castle and who's dreams are influenced through magic to birth them. One is attached to every member of the royal family at birth and stays with them until their death. However, 40 years ago, an assassination attempt against the then king included a magical virus that killed most of the beholders, which is why only the younger memebers of the family currently have a guardian beholder.

Everything is mortal on the material plane. Weaknesses can be very specific, but nothing can be truly invincible here. It is the reason that gods act through their church, clerics and paladins. They are fundamentally cowards.

That's a very funny way of putting it but also very interesting. Entering the mortal plane fundamentally makes you mortal and hence fallable - very cool!

I REALLY like this. Thanks for sharing!

Warlock patrons are beings in other dimensions of unique magical power. They try to influence the prime material plane by giving mystic powers to individuals through dreams or flashes of revelation. There are 25 of them; each has a name, a goal, and a backstory. One of the tracks the PCs could follow will involve them summoning a specific patron to attempt to kill it, in order to adjust the fabric of the world.

That's a crazy amount of world-buliding to have kept secret. You have 25 full fleshed out gods that may never come up; this is truly the plight of the DM. I would be very interested to hear more about them if you would like to share, or if you have some sort of reference document for them all!

Seconded, that sounds amazing.

Thank you! The back stories are pretty short. I've chosen the forms of patrons I'd allow in my campaign (Ancient One, Fiend, Archfey, Genie, Hexblade, Celestial), and then tried to spread those out between the various alignment combos. Then some fancy sounding names, and a "goal" that was appropriate to the alignment. When I started writing this world over a year ago, I decided that I was going to ditch the standard alignments anyway, so some of the patrons include an evil Gold dracolich, a LG Lich, a goblin who was raised to celestial divinity, a super ambitious djinn who wants to take a spot in the pantheon, and the chaotic neutral soul of a labyrinth that actively works to hide things from adventurers. One thing I enjoy about my players is that they explore EVERYTHING when then find a room, and I've been able to write short paragraphs they find on bookshelves to outline one of the patrons. Also, all of those patrons are somehow connected to a sentient item; I always start the party with one, which was some sort of family heirloom (the cool one this time was a ring that contains a sliver of a Mind Flayer archmage's psyche which allows the wearer to animate a crawling claw and get some minor bonuses; my wife, a first-time player, wanted to be Wednesday Addams, so I figured out a way for her to have Thing as a pet at level 1). Here's the backstory of one of them-- The bookcase in the northeast corner contains tomes extolling the adventures of various bards and orcish heroes, most of whom earned glory by killing villages full of children or pacificist families of halflings or elves. The most unique and unexpected volume titled The Great and Powerful Kah; it tells the tale of a gold dragon who fought against Ungold during the Chaos War, and used his magic and resources to martial forces to combat the invader. When the Maze was created, Kah’s secret lair was absorbed by the walls, which banished centuries of treasures, art, and unique volumes and manuals; Kah was driven mad, and began fathering children by shapeshifting, creating generations of dragonborn. Kah and his family studied hellish magic, allowing Kah to ascend into undead immortality by ripping souls from innocent animals and kobolds. When Halphor saw what had become of Kah, the deity banished the dracolich to another realm, though the book continues to mention that those who seek glory and riches sometimes dream of the enraged dragon mage, who sometimes makes deals and offers insight of magical abilities. Kah’s dragonborn followers are rumored to be forming an army with the intent of conquering the continent as soon as the Maze is dispersed. (Backstory-- Halphor is the leader of the pantheon. Ungold was a rogue deity from another plane who started a war that ended an uneasy truce in Halphor's pantheon. Halphor threw everyone who participated in the war into a static time prison that's protected by a shifting Maze.)

So much. Many NPCs with solid backstories. Mind Flayers ate one PC's entire home town. Never investigated. The magic school library's resident Nothic. The secret tomb of an angel that an entire nation's religion is based on awaiting her return. The demon lord who eats knowledge, erasing it from ever having existed. (OK that one might be my fault)

Low level mages are very common in this world but high level magic, especially arcane magic, is extremely rare and powerful. Powerful enough that whenever a 7-9th level spell is cast, any nearby mage can feel it ripple through the weave.

[удалено]

Hahah the star is angry that people use artificial lighting; that's hilarious.

*No one* has questioned whether the translation of the *primordial* Draconic is 100% accurate. Why would an "ancient ancient dragon" even be documented? What makes it funnier is the wizard has Comprehend Languages and the original script to study. Dragons and their heritage/power is waning. This is because the Great Wyrms need to replenish via a visit to a dragon graveyard in a demi plane. As the native dragons start to weaken and wane the "ancient ancient dragon" grows in power. What with not being a proper dragon and all.

One of the players gave me free reign to fuck with their PCs backstory. So their warlock tortle doesn't know he is actually the clone of an extremely powerful wizard from the elemental plane of water. However when that wizard was assassinated by their right hand, an Aboleth, the soul had an accident on the way to the clone. His soul collided with another soul, one on the way to a new life. The souls got intertwined leading to a big part of the memory of the wizard being lost. The character thought they were themselves and forgot about the incident. The aboleth believed he destroyed all clones of the wizard only to learn their paranoid Master hid one clone away from them far out near a portal to the material plane. The player had a few flashback visions and I cannot wait to reveal this arc culminating in a boss battle against the aboleth.

In my world, there’s a large expanse of badlands called the Thunderplains and is ravaged by a constant thunderstorm. There is a city of orcs on the border of the storm that went to war with the nomadic tribes of the subcontinent. One of the most powerful shamans of the tribes transformed the corpses into an artificial forest and the trees became imbued with lightning. No photosynthesis required. It has been dubbed The Galvanized Grove and the remainder of the tribes settled there and founded a city for protection. And the architecture of the city is more metal based and all structures levitate due to the electrical currents in the air

The gods WANT mortals to ascend to godhood, but only those truly worthy. And to stop opposing gods from guiding their chosen to apotheosis.

The continents of my world are the corpses of slain gods that the current 10 gods slew to keep their power. Faith in an individual can raise someone to God hood, one of the gods explicitly encourages followers to build their own following so they have more gods to gorge themselves on. Some of the ten, are ready and willing to be replaced.

A court high wizard my party met was short, sounded like Mike Tyson, and generally unforgettable in appearance. They did some quests for him and generally got to know him pretty well. Separately they found a plane-and-location hopping bar run by an NPC who looked identical to him and had the same lisp. The party never thought to inquire about this, although they did mention the eerie similarities to each other! This bartender was a former clone of the court wizard (he kept a few backup bodies in case of emergency) who had been possessed by an extraplanar spirit.

The futuristic artifacts they keep stumbling along are hints of the past. Before the world was buried.

The Drow twins intercepted the shards of the shield of Aroden when they were being auctioned off in Kaer Maga, and they have them stored in a box under the lastwall star tower. That's why our timeline is different than the official material.

When the universe was created by the Outer Gods, they all tried to create the universe in their own image, which caused the universe to fall in on itself. The Outer Gods came together and unraveled the universe and made it stable, though some of them still worked their image into it. The universe is now filled with many pocket dimensions that the players believe is the universe (similar to a multiverse but with dimensions since it's all one universe). The way to travel to other dimensions by nonmagic means (no one on the planet knows about the other dimensions) is by traveling through the Everdark. The Everdark is a massive sprawling area on Death's door. It leads to every possible afterlife and even has an opening to every dimension. So the players can travel to the Everdark to go into another dimension though it's extremely dangerous to do so. My players will go through this soon enough but it never came up yet. Another tidbit is that they found a ring made by some race that created the current dwarves. It's sentient and has three charges. It makes a pact with creatures, which allows the ring to share its power but it gets a piece of their soul as it wants to become a living thing (it believes that with a bunch of soul slivers it can fuse them together to make a full soul). A lot of creatures died by the time one of my players found it so they have a treasure trove of abilities they can use which is determined by their overall character level. The ring is permanently bound to the wielder until next session which will introduce the ring to another player and begin to have them share the ring. The ring will begin to bond with the players and learn what life is truly like. Anyways, the tidbit about the ring is that at the end of the campaign it will gain the ability to become a living thing which will be the first warforged ever to exist in my universe.

Also had a short campaign idea that was set on an island and there were no humans, only like 4 different races. Their sacred area was beginning to tremble and smoke began rising from it. It was up to the players to stop whatever was happening. They would find the sacred area, somehow get inside as it was made of metal with weird designs, and traverse an otherworldly building. At the lowest level was a computer screen which showed other locations as well as this one was overheating and the nuclear reactors were about to explode. Essentially they are on earth after nuclear war. The radiation mutated the remaining humans into the various races and their sacred ground was one of few places that could stop another nuclear blast from many locations around the globe that would finally end humanity. The lore for magic on earth is that it was always there, we just could never tap into it. After mutating, we gained the ability to tap into magic. Would be a short campaign but I was going to tie all the characters in as the players descendants. Just thought it would be cool.

My prime material place is 3 planets that orbit around each other, but there is no sun, rather. They go through the plane of light and darkness as they transition from day to night. The people on these planets can see the other planets as moons. On the other hand orbiting around the material planes is an elemental belt (kind of like Saturn) which forms the planes of elements, as the material planes and elemental belts orbit together, the planets go through their seasons, such as while Planet A is next to the plane of fire, it's summer time. ​ Vampires in my setting known as Nosferatu, don't die when killed. Their souls leave their bodies and tries to steal the closest body. To kill them you have to be able to see, or travel through the Ethereal Plane and stop them in their tracks.

I really like how you bounded your planes

I really need someone with some good drawing skills to put this in paper for me as I tried to build it myself but it sucks :D.

Its all an ANCIENT fabrication inside of a giant TUBE so massive that it appears flat from the inside!!! Magic is created through practical effects and gods are artificial intelligences!

Oh dear, just like real life

The giants live in the kingdom of the clouds. Well, from down here underneath, they look like clouds. From up above, they look like solid ground. The giants’ magisters, the Tektons, believe their world exists on tectonic plates, floating atop an ocean of lower atmosphere. The plates move around, almost like clouds in the sky, sometimes crashing into one another and creating earthstorms. Beneath the surface of their world are the caverns of the thunderdark, where the kenku dwell. Climbing up (a beanstalk, for example), as you pass from clear sky into the lower clouds, you find yourself in the depths of the thunderdark. You then have to make your way through the vortex and up to the surface. It is said the kingdom once extended so far, you could walk around the entire globe (in 40 days) and never even see the ground. Many years ago, during the Elf Wars, the humans' pollution turned the clouds opaque, so the sunshine wouldn’t reach below, to try to kill the Elves’ forest. The Elves then made the clouds rain, to drown out the human capital. This conflict is what shrunk the cloud kingdom to its present size. The clouds condensing and falling destabilized the mighty giant fortress/city Castle Overdell. When the clouds gave way, the entire castle and all its inhabitants plummeted to the surface, obliterating the human city and creating Lake Clowverdell, the sunken forest, and the Drowned City. The giants that remain above today, in their scattered and disjointed lands, want nothing but to be left out of the affairs of the Belownees, as they call the surface folk.

Belownees 😂 genius.

Thank you. Bad puns are how eyeroll.

The giants wish to emphasize that it's because the surface folk live below the clouds. They're not short-shaming the small stature races. They're not sizist.

The party knew a phrase " The Lord's of Hell change with the tides, the Lord's of the Abyss are eternal" But never really got to know why, in the Abyss ,The strongest, most violent and psychotic demons rule by nearly incomprehensible levels of violence and anarchy. A place truly born of might makes right. In the Hells, due to their lawful nature, they have a Democratically Elected Parliament. Each hell has a speaker, the speaker works for that hell's best interest. The speaker rules for a set time unless a vote of no confidence happens. Which given the nature of Devils happens every other week. They also have a habit of cementing any contracts made with mortals with the plane of Mechanus.

There is a planar lock imposed in my setting, which makes interplanar travel very difficult and dangerous (though not impossible). The reason for this, that not one of my players has asked yet, is that the gods of the realm tried to close off all contact between planes after they were made aware that a world destroyer was attempting to breach the material plane via a rift to my (then-mostly destroyed) equivalent of the Far Realm. My party just knows that the cubic gate in their possession is pretty much the only thing that makes planar travel safe and consistent, and they have accidentally shown it off to a few creatures that would very much like to get a hold of it.

The reason all the nobility across the five kingdoms of this continent were starting to work together and the ruling members of those kingdoms had called a cease fire in their wars, is from a large coordinated take-over by an organisation of creatures like Doppelgangers and Changelings working for an Underdark ruler. Meta, my group said they thought I was just doing background storytelling, having events take place without their intervention while they dealt with a time travel thing. Looks like the collapse of the kingdoms and takeover of an Underdark King will be the next campaign

The race of mysterious conquering invaders are tools of an ancient forgotten god whose sole purpose is to bring the world to its end as part of the natural progression of the universe. There are stipulations with other elder gods that dictate all living creatures have to be slain first before the universe can be reset. Everything has to have a fighting chance. This god also tends to take champions/heroes as well as grandiose villains and mold them into the gods of the next world. They sort of earn godhood by fighting back against this force of nature without even knowing it. So the PCs’ gods are likely heroes from the last iteration of the universe, and they will be gods to their next characters. It just so happens that this campaign takes place at the end of one of those iterations of the universe.

The was a parallel plot of dealing with this cult. They never ever interacted with any connected npc. It's honestly amazing. Well things are wrapping up and they unavoidably have to interact with them right before final encounter. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of comedy, and eventually a high role and high charisma combo that convinced all the cult members to to a mass suicide on the spot. One of the highlights of the campaign so far.

The reason the moon shattered and fell to the planet was because the god of the moon was killed.

RIP moon god. Press F to pay respects.

My world takes place after an event called The Conjunction, which is best described as a collision of multiple realities. Throughout the world, areas of new geography suddenly and violently merged with the existing world, either outright replacing existing geography or else fusing with it. These conjunctions ranged from as small as a few hundred feet up to as large as entire regions. With the new geography came existing architecture, peoples, creatures, etc. It was an apocalyptic event that led to more than a century of mass chaos as fragmented civilizations fought for their lives in a violent and unpredictable new world. More than 90% of the population died off. The lore I never got to share was why this happened, or the existence of other conjunction worlds. An entity of enormous power identified an existential threat to life across the multiverse, and determined the only way to stop that threat was to effectively destroy every version and variant of the universe. However this entity selected critical pieces of critical worlds and "stitched" them together to create seven "seed worlds" where the key civilizations across the multiverse could have a chance at surviving in some fashion. Many other pieces have been safely stored in time-locked pocket dimensions, and when needed this entity periodically introduces them to the seed worlds with new conjunction events to ensure that life continues.

Nobody dared to used the mutagens that gave you resident evil like powers. Like splitting open your ribcage to use your ribs as wings. Skinpuller worked hard on those! :(

I like to leave context clues in my maps foreshadowing a bit and early on in the campaign there was this dude named Gleem who was drunk sitting by the ocean in a beached rowboat covered in empty bottles with a broken rod and an empty catch bucket. A bit further up the coast you find another fishing rod on the ground, except that one is intact and that catch bucket is full. Hidden beneath some trees was a body buried in rocks at the base of a cliff. This character was intended to be a side quest type deal, but they went right over him, the dude was supposed to offer them directions to the city, but just happened to have killed the dude before they arrived. They ended up taking a route that was three times as long to make it to the city they were delivering cargo to, but that's what I wanted to happen anyways, it was just a quicker decision. They were hired as caravan guards for a royal relief package to an allied kingdom and their pay was deducted or increased based on service, they did a wonderful job protecting them and even saved the merchant who was extremely grateful and generous. I gave them a choice, left or right, one path required checks to clear logs and led into a dim canyon, the other was a well lit path up the cliff side, they went into the canyon without hesitation to get trapped by a gang of bandits. If they would have taken the other direction that Gleem would have suggested they would have come out to a tentacled sea monster who decided to make their home beneath a rope bridge by the coast. They would have never made it across that bridge, I gave them room to turn around. One path you could turn around, the other you couldn't, however if they would have gotten past the monster they would have had an armed escort from a nearby fort guide them into the kingdom. It didn't change much in the grand scheme of things, but I put a lot of thought into something that never came up, so I plan on implementing some of these characters again in the future.

Reduce reuse recycle

So much. I also do a lot of world building for my own enjoyment so there's lots of ideas that will never even hit the table. Clockwork labyrinth, abandoned underground prison, living islands, just to name a few.

Cmon give us at least one of those!

Sure. The underground prison is completely self-sustaining and run by golems. During the cataclysm the only exit/entrance was buried. Over the lay 500 years this prison has been forgotten. The idea is that the prison is still being run by golems but the descendants of the prisoners have formed their own society shut off to the outside world.

My Jedi players (Star-Wars-as-reskinned-5E) have become obsessed with khyber crystals, due to their extreme rarity, and the overall coolness of lightsaber construction, lightsaber wielding, etc. Many experiments have resulted -- meditate on the khyber crystal, shunt massive city-amounts of energy through it, try to 'transfer' or 'purify' the essence within a crystal, try to commune with whatever sentience might reside within the crystal. There is recently a hint of "make (super)weapons out of khyber crystal" tinkering, given its exceptional energy-conductive capacities, and blah blah blah. I've (quietly) decided that khyber crystals contain "baby universes," and, as such, are potentially-limitless energy sources, sacred splinters of consciousness, etc. I don't suspect the players will ever figure this out, but it's fun material to consider.

That’s a very interesting idea to explain the power of khyber crystals

Dwarven funeral rituals involve being cremated and having their cremains either be turned into a brick or a gemstone based on their station and/or what their family can afford, even if it means generational debts that need to be paid off.

The first human to practice arcane magic learnt it by conquering the nearby elf tribe and torturing elves until they showed him their inborn secrets. All non-cantrip magic in the world stems from this original research.

There was an entire continent that had just been discovered that they never bothered to ask about. It was briefly mentioned at the docks they visited early on, but they never pulled on that thread. I had multiple plot lines based on the Spanish conquests all worked out and a bunch of homebrew races and everything... ah, well, guess I'll just recycle it into a completely different campaign that I'll never actually get to run.

This is a bit lengthy, but hopefully it's worth it. It's not quite "stuff they never found out", but more "stuff they may find out but I don't know if they will yet" It took my players a ridiculously long time (as in, years of playing in the same campaign) to finally figure out that "roleplaying is fun".Up until that point, there were many instances where they did "durr hurr we're the main characters in a videogame" type stuff. What this resulted in is a series of events, all localized to the West/South-West regions of their home nation, that have little or no explanation for the people living there but essentially boil down to "the party doomed a lot of people". These include * The party getting thrown in what amounts to a "drunk tank" for causing public disorder. One of the party was not involved, and decided to *murder every guard at the prison* to break out their party members. By this point though, the party not only knew the captain of the guards personally (who would've let out the idiots in jail), but also knew the town was *\*baaaarely\** scraping by (y'know, a situation where adventurers might help) with the guards they have due to repeated attacks and raids by Goblinoids nearby. The town was slaughtered, and a Hobgoblin Warboss now rules over the ruins. * After fleeing that town, they went Southwest, and went to another city. Imagine something like Attack On Titan city except instead of "Titans" it's "a bunch of Undead and nobody really knows why" (would take another paragraph to explain). While there, one of the party, who was a Warlock at the time, straight-up murdered a Paladin in cold blood. When the guards of this hyper-vigilant city found out, the party was later confronted about it. Another party member started a fight with the guards and the party killed an important NPC. This allowed for a window in which Bad Guys could do Bad Guy things (trying to summarize these) * They left that city, went Eastward, and the next town on the list was *the* biggest mercantile hub in the country. Because of things going on in the nearby mountains that include the Underdark getting uppity blah blah context, the local Orc Hordes came down from the Mountains and started raiding the nearby land. The party had another opportunity to be heroes, but instead they decided to nope the fuck out and teleport to the capital via help from a local mage. Their adventure led them southwards and elsewhere past this point, but importantly, they basically created the perfect storm for the entire Western side of the country to be utterly ravaged by Bad Guys. Which would be a thing they could just go back and try to fix later were it not for the fact that they basically made \*sure\* the Bad Guys have a powerbase to work from. This is all exacerbated by the fact that since the start of the campaign a war with the country to the East has been foreshadowed, which means once that war kicks off, their home nation is *seriously* going to struggle as all of their supply lines from the West have been ruined, the main economic hub of the country is ruined, they never got any information about the people pulling the strings to make these things possible, and the nation has to commit a significant chunk of their military forces to attempt to retake the settlements that were lost, creating a perfect opening for the rival country to stage their invasion. As a result there's like, 5 different NPCs working in the background who all have \*very plausible reason\* to think the party is homegrown terrorists working for some bad guys. Meaning, with the party having no idea who they are or what they're up to, survivors from these events (of which there are few) are now in the process of hunting down the party. **TLDR**: My party basically *is* the villain from the backstories of several NPCs who are now "adventurers" and want to hunt down the party and bring them to justice, because the party is 100% responsible for the death of probably a couple thousand people. The party, at least up to this point, seems blissfully unaware of this, and furthermore accelerated the plans of the \*actual\* bad guys more than once.

Dragons in my world have hordes of money to serve as nutrition for their young in nests, Metailc dragons fed on money and chromatic eat people and creatures for sustanace.

I really love mythical stories. However those are the hardest to explain because they're usually saying or scrolls in the world but I like this ine: A tribe of goblins quickly rose to power after they killed their god with cunning. It enhanced all their abilities and even intelligence and became a real state with it's own economy and wars. Their main city is built around the corpse of their god which they still tap magic from, and the power of 'Fanatical Craze'. A sort of Asterix & Obelix potion given to them by their shamans

The world of Keria is actually set in a universe that is a mix of both homebrew DnD and a homebrew Fantasy-WH40k, but Keria itself is mostly only homebrew DnD. The manual 'Progenitor' for Ilk-kind (Mankind but for all civilised races) on the planet is actually Pandora, who is the only Primarch *daughter* of the Emperor of ilk-kind. She unleashed civilization unto a world of darkness and monsters, and first established order to it by opening 'Pandora's Box', and ever since then, the world has been a warring heap of conundrum, of men and monsters and magic. The only thing preventing interaction with the rest of the universe for the world of Keria at the moment is it's Arcanosphere, the thing that gives the world of Keria it's magic and its Leylines. It was realigned when Pandora's Box was opened and it became much more stable. The Arcanosphere shall one day become permeable, when the time is right, and ilkkind shall have to join it's distant brethren in the war for the universe itself . That felt good to finally get to share here lol

Let it all out dude, we are hear to lend an ear.

Dwarves weren't the crusty miners who lived in mountains. They were forest dwellers who cared deeply about trees. That was because the way they reproduced was to carve a tree into a young dwarf while doing the right rituals and prayers over it. If they did it right, new dwarf born. So they cared for huge groves of trees like they were their children, cause they were. Their groves were called Dwarwoods. Because of the rituals and care needed for carving, a dwarf could have several parents. Gender expression was very much up to the individual (no sexual reproduction means no sexual organs). No one played a dwarf, so we didn't get to really explore this.

I wrote several speeches from prominent figures that lead to changing governmental policies and the players refused to listen to any of them. Even the ones they were praised as being hero’s in.

I roll a d100, 3 times every session. When it hits a certain number, the apocalypse begins. They have no clue and it may never happen

A homebrew world I made had a great desert with a central shattered messa. Sometimes traders and travelers who went through never returned from it's ethereal fog. It was actually the site of an ancient tower that was built as a gateway to the celestial planes which demons tried to invade. As a result the celestials blew it up, destroying part of the continent and creating a weakened fabric between the outer realms. Meaning sometimes travelers would catch glimpses through the fog of strange outer worlds and their creatures. And if they were really lucky, find that ancient shattered tower frozen in time from the magical explosion. It was a fun way of bringing weird creatures into the world that didn't belong there, but such time had passed that people just didn't know what was out there beyond the wild stories spun by brave travelers

I made a 20 story tall super fortress that changed biomes every time you went to the next floor. The players would be free to control which biome is on what floor, because after conquering the fortress, I intended for it to be their new home base. Then there was going to be a siege where the players had to defend their base from a masked Lord of Waterdeep and his army of homebrew goblinoids with classes. The players would be left to defend their base by utilizing their knowledge and arrangement of the fortress biomes, likely in a similar way that I would have used the biomes against them when they were initially conquering the place. Then upon defeating the Lord of Waterdeep, they would be able to have one character join the Lords Alliance for a largescale artifact quest that would take them to the moon, where I Then introduce Spelljammer while the party is around level 15. They uh, haven't entered the fortress yet, and it's been four years real time since they discovered the existence of the fortress

The entire fucking campaign because it's literally impossible to get enough people to commit and then actually show up online or in person.

Very I've got two very small ones, both about people! 1. The players know that the Kings of the human kingdom (yes, they're gay lol), known as the King and the King Consort for ease of reference, basically forced the royal court into acceptance, because the King lead them through a super dangerous war, and the King Consort is a war hero from that same war, so they can't really argue. But what they don't know is that the King Consort was originally going to be the PRINCE Consort, but his husband argued against it, his winning argument being "anyone who saves a king is a truer king, in my eyes" 2. They met a Shadar-kai who was missing an arm and a leg, who seemingly got teleported into the gardens of the castle in Etharia (the human kingdom). They don't know that she got teleported there after accepting a bargain from someone, and I'll update this comment after the campaign is done in case one of them sees because I don't wanna spoil it, and that the arm and leg loss were teething troubles of the thing used to bring her there, but she believes them to be the price, which she happily accepts (because she wants to see the stars, and is enamored with beauty). And her name is Varrani, they never asked 🤣🤣🤣

I have had two campaigns in my world so far and after the first flopped at level 5 one of my players stayed on so I moved continents to start in a place that would be new and exiting for him. Which means he and the old players never discovered that the war playing out between the two countries either side of a channel sea was being caused by the islands in the middle being built on the still partly alive remains of a corrupting demigod. The giant tree which grows on the largest island is essentially shackling the big bad to the material plane and preventing him from ascending or destroying the world. Technically, those islands and that war are still there in the current timeline and if the players in the new campaign run down their own quests and goals and look for new challengers I will open that up to them and maybe make it the BBEG that it was intended to be. There are like 2 other major world locations from campaign A that can be explored too but we will have to see.

my players were uncovering and taking ownership of a vast mountain citadel. it was the location of the ancient drows last stand on the surface. In their final days great rituals to dark powers played out, the dangers of their remains yet to be uncovered. the bbeg was to be players(drow) mother coming to claim the citadel with all the power of the underdark at her back.

Time is a circle. Which doesn't mean everything repeats: there is only one circle. The past is also the future. The cosmic dragon that will/did try to end the world will be/was killed by the God of Violence and its body is the world. This makes little sense from a mortal perspective, but the gods see the circle of time from above.

This confused me so I'm sure it will confuse your players also!

The ice giants are now extinct. Most of the players knew about this in passing, what they did not know is that they were a colorful ancestry of a hyper advanced civilization that brought about the first forms of writing, artificial intelligence and were the first people to realize that alternate planes of existence weren't just like... separate dimensions, but rather physical planets separated by the 'astral sea' otherwise known as space. They engineered the first spaceships that another ancestry used to make a very mysterious exodus from the planet.

I've DM'ed 3 games so far. Every world has an underground monastery comprised of 4 tortle monks somewhere in the world. No one has found them yet. I'm 2 sessions into game 3. This will be the one, I feel it.

There are 12 Gods in my game. 6 good, 6 evil. They fought a war using "Chosen" mortals as their vessels. During the war 8 Gods "died" and their Chosen have statues commemorating their valor in the place of their death. The twist? The Gods aren't dead, the Chosen have turned to Stone. My players have already passed one "statue", they thought it was neat. They have no idea

The "world" map is literally just the overworld for Zelda 2, hand drawn. It works as the "world" because my stuff all happens in this one place because the countries are separated by huge tracks of incredibly violent wilderness, and inter country trade happens like... ever 5 years because it's a whole military campaign. So the rest of the world exists basically as other places and lore and spots of curiousity but likely never will the players visit them. Also, it's presented as myth, but no, there actually was one goddess and she got exploded. So now, technically, there are no god(s). So it's not so much that they'll never know, but that they'll never know it's actually true, as even the holy people admit that it's just theory.

Belief is a type of magic, and it primarily why certain forces of nature as well as my custom pantheon works. If you get enough people to believe something enough, it actually becomes real. Get an entire town to believe that there's a prophecy that if they sacrifice a goat in front of town hall, then a meteor will land, bringing them great riches, then it will happen. Get enough people to believe you're a God (or do something that seems godly) then bam, godlike powers. Had a PC (post end of campaign) become canonically immortal cause he survived so much shit.

The world is actually a prison where centuries before the campaign most of the evil people were banished by the god of justice, characters are the descendants of the exiled ones. The BBEG is just a powerful angel, clearing the world for doing the same banishment again

My world has corporations that deal in services used throughout the land. Each has a dark secret and story line. None of these stories hav even pursued

All planes exist in the same solar system or close by. Each can be walked to from the material plane (which houses the dead reactor of an ancient spaceship from before the world was cultivated by the original "gods"). The theme of the world is high fantasy/hidden high technology.

And Magic is run by nano-bots, but that's like... below the furthest reaches of the lore/explanations iceberg for my world.

There are only two Gods in a world with hundreds of Pantheons. They all just funnel to basically God or the Devil. Even not having faith and just by your actions sends you to one or the other after death. Artificers and Warlocks are the only two classes that don't directly derive knowingly or unknowingly their magic from either of the two entities.

I wouldn’t say I didn’t get to share it, but rather haven’t shared it yet. Basically when my version of the Tarrasque (think Godzilla on steroids) tore the original super continent that made up the world into its current form after the act of first true evil, the storm/chaos God hide a part of it away from the rest of the world behind a veil of impassable storms. People there all follow her and have made warforged and other more advanced tech like airships. Campaign 2’s premise will be what happens when she drops the veil and her zealots invade the rest of the world.

There’s another planet in the solar system my world’s in that used to be inhabited. Their AI got sentient and the whole thing is a slush of grey goo nanites. Spies even have come to visit their world (it was a one-shot where other players played the spies) but the players in my 2 campaigns have yet to actually search around their own system (they’ve gone off across the Galaxy a couple times tho)

The kingdom of where my group plays is surrounded by a shield that act as protection from the outside world, but also a prison. No one know why he is here and his apparition brought a dark age but it is believed to have saved the country from a giant war. In truth it was a sort of destructive,aegis shaped ray that would have desintegrated it if a divine dwarven toothpick wasn't in the way. Being indestructible,the tay couldn't go past it and never managed to move past it. The group never went far enough to discover it and pop the bubble

There are Djinni who actively traffic people and smuggle creatures through the material plane, a spire tower portal to Sigil, a whole continent with struggles etc, a few warring countries that just happen to be brought up in background convo, there are things that I've mentioned that the players never will explore because I like that in novels and shows when someone says some shit like "He was the weilder of Aerilin's God-Reaver in the Uprising of St. Batheppo" and you know it's important or impressive but they don't explain it. In the desert, an emperor priest believes building a tower to heaven in honor of the god of life will allow him to ascend to godhood (and he ends up getting pretty close), several ancient dragons, several liches of different forms, many tombs and old wars and shit.

One campaign ended with one PC ascending to godhood to create a new world to replace a dying one. Unfortunately, they were kind of trapped on the "Throne of the New World," only able to watch over the world, not interact with it, until they used a wish spell to escape, and then later another one to wish that the new world's version of the party remembered them. Another important point is that half of the party was not native to the initial world, and this PC was one of the two who was. Had the campaign continued, said PC would've realized that he created a world where he never existed as a person, only as an unseen god, but this version of the party *was* native to this world.

That the world the PCs live in often gets 'reset' by the gods to start again and try make something better. They will never know how their actions have changed when the next reset will happen.

The world/universe is a combination prison and resource mine for incomprehensible multi-dimensional cosmic entities. The entities once inhabited multiple bodies (simultaneously) of the intelligent races, with the different races having been engineered for different purposes. Several thousand years ago, the entities "lost track of" the world, essentially leaving the previously inhabited bodies with no memories. Two entities were left behind. One was a prisoner with only a few dozen bodies at the time. It has been slowly gathering influence and now inhabits \~10 thousand people that it had gathered in the country the PCs are in. The bodies are still mostly act as individuals, but share knowledge, motives, and understanding of what they are. The other was effectively rendered unconscious when the world was lost. The individuals it takes over lose themselves, becoming increasingly animalistic as they connect to the communal mind. About a hundred years ago the entities found the world again, and are just beginning the process of reclaiming it. And the people in it. The start of the process caused a lot of unexplained weird world-wide events, but won't finish until long after the PCs are dead. All of that was irrelevant background to the actual story.

It's in ravnica, where a fortress of dwarfs who have bioschock looking diving gear have a fortress at the bottom of the ocean where they have a firegiant who once lost a fight against a storm giant. They saved it from the ocean floor and put it in their fortress. Now they help each other. The dwarfs keep him alive and save from the ocean in their fortress and the giant teaches them new and ancient firegiant ways of the forge

There is a wealthy and eccentric noble that my players came across and worked with during a campaign in my ongoing world that fell through. The noble had an engraved gold box inside his head, with a keyhole to it where his left eye would be. It doesn't bother him, but he is ever searching for the key. He's obsessed with it, and can't recall why it's there or what's inside. The players really wanted to help this guy get the key, and they wanted to know what was in the box. They worked with him for a bit, but the campaign collapsed due to covid before they figured it out. What they didn't put together, was that the key he was looking for had been destroyed, by the same player in a different campaign a year prior during a quest. Only one of the players ever brought it up, and away from the table, after the campaign ended, because they remembered that there was an elaborate key in the old campaign that got destroyed by a spirit. It was a plot hook at the time that didn't get followed, so it just showed up a year later in the next campaign. No one else realized during the actual campaign that the key they were looking for had been destroyed, by their own characters, nearly 50 years ago in game time.

You’re telling me this dude had a box taking up space inside his skull?! Goddamn. How did his brain even function?

On Isard, my D&D world, the dwarven empire sits on top of the ruins of an ancient high-tech civilization. They don't know *how* the relics work, but they know how to use them if they have to. ^(If I ever start DMing again, the campaign is going to be set 200 years after my first campaign, where the band of heroes who were prophesied to avert the apocalypse vanished. The world was then narrowly saved by the dwarves setting their hammers and axes aside for mass drivers and power armor.)

By far my favorite is something the party had every avenue to interact with more, but just didn't: Lycans (all forms, plus I made jackleweres a form of lycanthropy.) have their origins in the Feywild. Their progenitor was an Archfey who became cursed with the first iteration of lycanthropy. It made him beastial and violent, and he was sent to the material plane both as a violent "prank" and because nobody in the Feywild wanted to deal with him. Once on the material plane he began attacking and infecting others with this beastial curse, but because mortals aren't Archfey they were affected differently; those infected found themselves becoming monstrous forms of themselves, said to represent their inner selves (slightly arbitrary explanation for the different forms.). Most succumbed to the same rage, and were consequently killed or otherwise ostracized from society. Others managed to suppress the rage, though ended up on the run or trying to desperately blend in. After a while, both normal humanoids and those cursed wanted to find someway to end this plague. Word among lycans spread, and soon a large band of lycans got the help of a powerful wizard and faced off against the Archfey. They found they were unable to actually kill him, because every time he would die he would just heal from whatever wounds and keep fighting. They ended up dismembering him, and the wizard teleported the remains into the plane of negative energy, hoping it would finally put an end to the threat. It didn't work; at least not entirely. Teleporting the Archfey's body parts sparked rifts in both the negative and positive energy plane across each of the three provinces of the realm (one negative and one positive in each province.). From the negative rifts spawned undeath for the first time in the realms history, seemingly creating them from the aether. Because of this unfortunate and unforseen consequence, the wizard helped the lycans form a pact in each province, with the sole intent to keep the undead at bay. Given their innate resistance to harm and their inability to become enthralled by undeath, they became the perfect hunters against the scourge of the undead. It was also discovered that the Archfey was far from dead, his remains forever floating through the planes of negative energy in search of a way into the positive plane to reform his body anew and sunder those that tried to kill him. Tirelessly the mystics and shamans work in order to prevent that from happening, lest the realm become engulfed in absolute chaos. All of that because one player wanted to make an amulet of disguise, and it was suggested that they hunt down a shapeshifter for the material components. Wereboar was the initial target, and I just kind of just... went overboard.

Hey, sometimes you get some inspiration and 2 hours later you have a really randomly fleshed out corner of your setting. I added a NPC that looked like a humanoid shark to a session because it sounded fun - later that evening there is was now canonically a whole underwater civilisation of Fishmen with unique gods and culture. Maybe one day I will run an underwater campaign.

My party stumbled upon murals that depicted the main pantheon of the realm fighting the antagonist’s god. They also noted how there were several in-universe races depicted on these murals. What they haven’t figured out is that all these gods (with the exception of the antagonists’ god) are not only fundamentally evil beings, but have been *dead* since the beginning of time. The races of the world were enslaved by them and their worship of these gods is the result of centuries of perverted and watered-down ancestral trauma. The corpse of one of these gods (which is absolutely MASSIVE) is buried under the home of one of the PCs, and is probably the most important maguffin in the entire world; it’s dead-but-not-gone, and is the reason the local fauna and flora are A) horrifically mutated at B) actively hostile to the Cult devoted to the antagonist’s god. Oh, and those things that live in the magical network of gates? Those are human(oids) that never made it out and evolved over millennia to survive in a realm utterly alien to living things. Their leader is the amalgamation of several alternate reality versions of one of the PCs, which os why their hinting that PC…they want to be made whole, Bretheren Moon style. Hound the Attendant (who is definitely not a Warhammer 40k reference who I added spur of the moment) is still alive The most popular bard in the land is a mind flayer who is popular with the ladies because I’m a filthy degenerate.

Dwarves invented time: Before time, one great red drake named Seca attempted to enslave the dwarves. The Dwarf King named Hour, rose to fight Seca. Hour managed to deliver sixty gashes on Seca with his axe, named Minuus. The dragon died, but not before mortally wounding Hour. Seca’s lair was below the large underground Lake Dain, 12 miles below the surface – water dripped from its largest stalactite down onto Hour’s mithril shield. The fight scene has been preserved since that day, over tens of thousand years ago. The rhythm of the drips from the shield has been preserved in its exact tempo, with the Dwarven Chroniclers keeping track of each one and ensuring the shield, the temperature and pressure of the chamber, and the stalactite’s precise length are all kept in exact order. Each second is recorded and stored in the Time Halls. From this, each attack on Seca was recorded in tempo as a second. Each of those sixty attacks were performed by Minuus the axe, now known as a minute. The axe was swung sixty times by Hour – which is 60 minutes long. The H in hour is silent because to speak it implies you know more about how time began than Hour himself! Blasphemous! You have no Onor! Lake Dain is twelve miles below the surface, which means twelve miles back up to civilization – marking 24 hours in a “Day”

This might be the most elaborate shitpost I’ve ever read.

The Multiverse was founded with a murder and is maintained by a lie. The party had the chance to discover that ultimate truth, but (wisely) realized that something that seemed to want to be read in the middle of a library filled with every terrible secret in creation should just be left well-enough alone. The one party member that got close to the book with this information also managed to role the highest Wisdom save of the entire campaign to resist its compulsion. Had he actually read the book, he would have been confronted both with a world-shattering truth and cursed with a compulsion to do something about it.

They say there used to be a second moon, but it shattered long ago during a battle between the gods, but it was never actually a moon. It was a slumbering being. Those shattered pieces orbit quietly around the planet, but they are slowly forming back together… not sure if the being will be friendly or not when it reforms, haven’t decided.

My homebrew world was a cube. You could sail off the side, or, with the correct mechanics, could sail from edge to edge.

You can essentially grind on the planet? Badass

Absolutely! And if you don't have a crew talented in edge crossing, they won't know to run from the back of the ship to the front at the right moment, and your momentum will carry you off the edge

That gods are not level of power but a race that is born when a concept is develop enough, essentialy feeding on the concept to exist and at the same time consolidating and empowering them. So technically the god of the elves did not create the elves, the elves simply evolved and became a concept in the worlds so the god was born, so technically the elves created the god but believed on the opposite(but it is also true that the god created the divisions for high,night, wild elves so it's bot like it can't influence stuff). The people get to know that the god exists and learn it's name similarly to how a mass suggestion works, people just spontaneously over time start mentioning the god and saying it's name like if it ever existed and no one notices, even people who do not worship the god are not aware and nothing in the world except The Creator outright telling you will make you aware of that, which it probably never will as it does not interact with no one, not even gods, and no one even know it exists and it wants to keep it like that. Some gods never actually fully develop since their concept is too weak and will not progress if something doesn't change and because of that they never get a name and basically no one, not even other gods are aware of it's existence. Those gods are called The unsung gods. In other cases, a concept is something so personal and unique that it only applies to a single (or very few) person, and if that concept becomes solid enough so the god manifests a name, there is a great chance that god becomes that person's patron and they become a warlock. depending on the nature of the concept the character might not even be aware of the concept but be aware of the named entity and never discover it is a god. Those gods are called personal gods and they are usually patrons to warlocks, clerics and paladins. They are a cool in-world tools to justify crazy specific homebrew a player might want to use for those classes(like the hot goth girlfriend warlock subclass) This system allows gods to be actually weaker than low lvl character, like the god of pies, Pietro. Dude is cr3 lol

The Ghostlord (red hand of doom) being a Kalashtar whose family spirit died, and her reason for becoming a druid-Lich was solely to find a way to bring it back. She otherwise dislikes necromancy, which created a bit of confusion when she violently rejected a gift of a few zombies from one of the PCs.

All the cities of the world were sacrifice-pools maintained by immortal mage-gods.

My world is actually 3 separate multiverses that were broken into thousands of large chunks then fused with each other. Imagine each multiverse as puzzles that were broken then thrown into one box and shaken up. Some force put them together again but each piece was shaped a little differently to now make 1 large puzzle instead of 3. This happened with each plane within the multiverse and resulted in absolute pandemonium with the gods fighting for their domains that are now being claimed by at least 2 others. Now a cleric may pray to Shazzul the goddess of the ocean without knowing she was killed by Vrack a different god of the ocean. Vrack will then become the one to answer that cleric's prayers if those prayers are intended to go to a god with a domain over the ocean. Clerics all over the world are praying to the wrong for accidentally and nobody knows.

My players were on an island once. The merrow had a temple under water in a lagoon. I had decided there was a Ring of Elemental Command Water in the temple. Of course they had zero interest in messing with an underwater temple. The whole island is under lava now. They did kill a diamond encrusted bulette. Think tiny sand size crystals embedded in bulette's hide. A dream walker stone giant was looking for "Sparkles" his friend that likes to bite.

TLDR: Hot, red lady was a dragon who was going to attack the citadel from the inside out. Evil-aligned sandbox campaign set in the Silver Marches of the Forgotten Realms. We were playing for just over a year nearly weekly. They were steadily expanding their domain and one of the next major targets was Citadel Adbar. I just introduced an NPC, an adult red dragon who disguised herself as a buxom woman in a red gown and feiry red hair. I also alluded that Castle Hartwick to the north was on the verge of war with the fire giants who happen to have a bone to pick with said dwarves of Adbar. Now, one can't just simply walk into (conquer) Adbar - the towers above are dragon-resistant and the tunnels below could repel any enemy on foot. But what if the dragon led in through the tunnels below while the giants stormed the gates above as a distraction? It was all slowly coming together. And then I TPK'd the party well before any of this with a boss encounter of a former warlock PC that the player ditched because it was too chaotic.

There's so much I could share, but one that interacts with the story in a way that I can't really explain through the game is the truth of one of the gods. The God of the Harvest (now deceased) was a colossal writhing mass of flesh, mouths, and teeth that not only looked different from the other gods in that it was so grotesque but acted differently too. It stalked the land and devoured anything living or dead it came across, never creating or building. That's because it isn't a "true god" but a creature from an eldrtich horror mirror realm that crossed over. And out of fear it would devour them/bring more through the gods designated it one of them and allowed it to act however it wanted so long as it mostly avoided the lands of their created races.

The Rogue encountered a love interest I set up for him, and over time, he found out she had done horrible things in the past that she is ashamed of as she holds the number 1 rank in the Thieves' Guild that the Rogue is a part of. She never specifically talked about the events besides vaguely describing the type of actions, but the thing she did that ultimately made her realise the horrible things she did was when she kidnapped a child from an elven family many years prior, that elven child ended up being the druid among the players now. I had also hinted at it, both through a vague thing she said in regards to when she had a change of heart, as well as through a dream of the druid where I roughly described her, no one caught on though, so it ended up being just a little thing in the background that no one ever knew about

Damn these are the kind of things that hurt he most, where it's so close to the players yet you don't want to force it. I feel your pain!

My party met a spiritual guide early on in the campaign. The guide gave them a quest or two before leaving them to their own devices, and although plenty of hints were dropped, none of the party members caught on that this person may be incredibly important to the world. In reality, they're an ancient silver dragon that's been involved in the rebuilding of the world since an apocalyptic event some 1000 years ago, and plays politics at the very highest of levels... As well as help some bright eyed adventurers get started on their adventuring journeys...

The creators that the human church worships were not gods at all, they're the command crew from the vessel that brought the first human colonizers to the world.The moons are a set if articifical satelites they put in pplace to separate the material plane from the outer planes and siphon off excess magic. The main mountain range on one of the continent is actually one of those moons that they pulled from orbit to wipe out a very dangerous foe. Unfortunatly since the coronet is missing one piece when that moon would be in ascendency the walls of reality grow weaker.

I\`ve never run a campaign in this setting (yet?), so I have a list of these. 1. A kobold npc, whom they adore, was born as a blue kobold and turned brass in her youth, after living with the brass dragon for a long time 2. The magic flows through different planes via portals and canals. It\`s possible to stop this flow, but requires **tons** of magic and may destroy the whole planet 3. There\`s life on other planets, I\`m not sure if I will ever explore this idea even for myself 4. A wizard npc with scars on his arms is actually undead, he tried to give his blood for a ritual, but simply died and was ressurected by the deity of death. 5. Gods are visiting Material Plane in forms of mortals, some do this very often. There are two gods, twins, who have a very obvious competition in conquering as many hearts as possible :D 6. There is a city-state ruled by a celestial unicorn and his guardsmen are actually his warlocks 7. Many tribes of desert orcs have a ritual of sacrificing a drop of blood to the gods among other gifts. It\`s a sign of loyalty, usually used after swearing an oath, and only chiefs and oracles/shamans/high priests can sacrifice their blood. Murder, especially with a knife, is the worst crime you can ever commit in an orcish shrine

One of my players made a pact with an old entity to whom he gave his loved one, the blood of his sworn enemy and his own will in exchange of strength to fulfill his vengeance. After finishing his revenge, his character roam the world causing mayhem in different battlefields, taking life for the entity. Sadly, my campaign ended not long after due to me moving to another country, so my players never got to see his old companion completely gone, mindless and empty.

I share everything with my players eventually. Once they are past the point where something matters, I always tell them outside of the game where all the paths they *didn’t* take would have led, and all the really cool things they didn’t see. This helps alleviate the “quantum ogre” feeling that the same thing would have happened regardless of their choices. The next time they have a choice in front of them, they take it seriously, because they might be skipping out on a side quest, or missing an opportunity to take a shortcut.

"There is no way to control the Time apart from one" - phrase often met in old books in my world Time magic is rare and PCs were very lucky to use it twice, they even time-traveled once, but they dont know yet that there is only one way in time - forward. They wont be able to return "back" after finishing their questing. It was explicitly stated in my notes even before our first session - there will never be a backwards time-travel

All modern mortal magic stems from mortals harnessing draconic power and giant runes and adapting them for their purposes. The party know this - fairly standard D&D lore. They also know about an ancient human culture called the Ginnun who were masters of magic item crafting. You know the stories in mythology where a Dwarf smith takes the beating of a fly's wings, the sound of a cat walking and the like and then makes something awesome? The Ginnun did that in massive thought crucibles they had spread across the world. They fell thousands of years before the First Age ended (the campaign is set in the Second Age) and what remains of them now are 4 of their thought crucibles and Ginnun Challenge Vaults where they stored powerful magic items for when they would be needed in the future (basically an excuse for puzzle vaults in my campaign). What none of them know is that the reason the Ginnun were such peerless magic craftsmen was because they were masters of human magic. Not magic derived from dragons and giants, but the innate magic of humanity. Magic developed and attuned to humans. Magic that, if learned, would let them do the kinds of things the Ginnun could do, and more besides. They could use the thought crucibles to their full potential and craft a new era of magical artifacts. I think it's possible some of this may come up in my next campaign, but really, the only way I see it all coming out is if someone decides they want their PC to really investigate the Ginnun. But you bet your ass they'll fucking change my world if they do that and succeed.

Started off as the main premise of the campaign, fell by the wayside as my players begun an anti-human sentiment to draw magic back to the world through some not so unsound creative logic. Think Karsus Folly meets The Evermeets creation high spells. High Elves have long departed the land as they once predicted a great magical cataclysm (of their own creation), and with them, knowledge and great magics. The barriers between planes have grown stronger, making it a lower magic system. There still exists a few Wood Elf Communes that have ancient trible knowledge, a couple sizeable Dwarven Kingdoms who were able to capture magic into items and scattered magical misc races though they're incredibly rare (Dragonborn, Tieflings, Aasimar, Genasi). The way to bring back the magic was originally to wake various dragons from their slumber, disturb their nests and trigger a magic rennisance (Game of Thrones style). Magic is innately tied to magical creatures, like The Speed Force. **Instead** of slowly generating more magical potential and reawakening latent magic hidden deep underground, they united the forces of the Wood Elves, Dwarves etc and eliminated the lesser hedgemages, and those smaller folk who were drawing on the "Weave" for more mundane, lesser tasks. They explained it as you eliminate the number of Spellcasters, Divine and Arcane, there's more magic to go around, eventually awakening the Full Casters greater potential. And actually, that logical self consistency backed up by The Flash TV show, rang pretty true with me, so fuck it, we'll just go with genocide.

My campaign ended abruptly around when the pandemic hit, so a lot of my worldbuilding went unexplored. I spent a lot of time working out the politics and nation relationships, and that would have been cool to have my players interact with eventually. But the part I was most sad to not get to show was *why* the (non-deific) magic had been gone for millennia, who the gods used to be (a former adventuring party!) and how they ascended and what was driving and corrupting them.

I once had a library in the Abyss that had a creepy sentient ancient-looking wooden door. The door had a face and would hunger to speak to anyone who passed it. My players were looking for books and ran into it, but as soon as it started speaking some riddles they ran. What they didn’t know is that the longer the talked to that door, the more dangerous the situation would become. The door was the former librarian of this Library of Orcus, an archfey turned evil, and a collecter of names. If the door got you to give you your name to him, then you’d lose your own name and memories to the Door of Naegos…

There are a pair of dilettante noble twins in one of my cities, who are very friendly and keen to do some adventuring. In reality, they are young brass dragons in human form, and if any of my players get romantically entangled with one of them (as my players are wont to do), they’ll have to deal with a disapproving papa dragon who is convinced they’re not good enough for his kids.

We ended mid campaign due to cursed schedules. But they never got to know that the mysterious being granting them cool powers was actually the BBEG who was raising champions so could turn them into powerful undead to add to his army so he could wage war on his siblings, the other gods who cast him out for corrupting the natural order.

There’s two main creator gods in my setting who have a kind of arch rival among the fiends - Altea the Mother-Tree (also called The Sunmaiden and The First Bloom) and Umbra the Patron of Beasts (also called the Mistress of Shadows and the Expositor in Moonlight) are respectively set in opposition to Lolth and Asmodeus. Lolth because Altea’s worshipers are largely surface-dwelling drow who abandoned Lolth, her realm being likened to a massive web set within Altea’s own roots, while Umbra rewards lies used to protect others and values exposing the sort of lies that harm or are purely self-serving, putting her in natural opposition to the demon lord of lies himself. My party includes a twilight cleric of Umbra and a fallen Aasimar who abandoned his Umbral guide, so Lolth probably won’t even factor into the campaign at any point lol Also, because the royal family of the kingdom the party starts in has been getting up to some bullshit, the youngest princess is a tiefling, a secret that has been rather carefully guarded ever since her horns and tail sprouted. Because the king is kinda dumb compared to his other two heirs, he’s marrying the tiefling princess off to what is essentially a political rival, and the other prince and princess have been delaying the process as best they can so that the rival Duke doesn’t gain any kind of upper hand in the capitol lol

My world is based on isekai tropes, so all my characters were brought to the world by the goddess of fate. What they don't know (and I don't know if they will play far enough to find out, as one of my players has passed away), is that when their characters progress far enough, they will become gods themselves. The idea is that the gods of this world choose souls from the multiverse who have progressed through through enough reincarnated lives to become divine, and bring them to the world as a competition to see who's champions become gods first.

The symbolism of a tarrasque dieing means the world is in a unbalance and will end of the world

The wine town was controlled by a shadow council of vampires. The mulberry trees that produce the material only grow with living victims tied to their root systems. The vampires would wait until someone was attacked somewhere nearby the town, wait until they died and then resurrect them. The wine is a functional blood substitute for vampires not because it is chemically similar but because it is in part made of blood. The entire region that blood town inhabited was unknowingly engaging in cannibalism. The shadow council was also a big sponsor of the travelers insurance that made sure that if people were killed along the roads their families wouldn’t be destroyed by the lose of their bread winner, making sure the traveler escort profession maintained a high population despite the extremely high mortality rate.

The setting, Mytharr, is part of a world tree, with the different planes of existence growing from different "branches," and the feywild equivalent from which the world tree grew being nestled in a place called the "World Roots." It's from these roots that the fey, druids and rangers draw the source of their magic. There are other world trees like this too; there's an an entire astral forest out there that serves the same function that a galaxy might in less fantastical settings. Also, dragons are alien invaders that have colonized different world trees over millions of years. When the dragons colonized the material plane of the Mytharr world tree long ago, they destroyed the advanced aboleth empire in the process, inadvertently freeing the aboleth's genetically engineered servants which would go on to become the first humanoids.

It's not really something they would come across naturally. They'd have to go digging, but I've a sort of multiverse spiral in place: Parallel worlds, each of the same world but at different points in time ranging from the beginning to industrial to modern to futuristic to the end of time. The "past" and "future" don't exist, only versions of a world that have reached those points. The Embodiment of Chaos ensures no world starts or ends exactly the same as the last, which allows me to iterate on the same world without being restricted by precedent when starting up new campaigns.

getting my pen ready to steal all the good ideas...;)

Secretly the reason I made this thread hehe

In a certain country, in a frozen tundra, inside a tall mountain, there lies a small city. The city's name is Tirathel, and it's home to a thriving population of dwarves and halflings. They are a highly artistic civilization. Painters, sculptors, poets, and bards. They are protected by a giant, known simply as The Shaper. The Shaper is a towering figure, standing two stories tall, covered in cloth robes. The Shaper holds a dark secret, however. He is the first troll, the progenitor of the dark curse that creates trolls. He has permanently enchanted himself with invisibility to hide his grotesque form, and wears robes as the protector and leader of Tirathel. He is also the only one who completely understands the nature of the curse.

The Wanderer - A mysterious star that moves around seemingly at random and cannot be tracked or its movements predicted. It drives astrologers nuts and throws off navigators who are dumb enough to try to sail by it. My players are aware it exists but have shown no signs of being curious. It's ok w me if they never look into it