So far this is just a map

Maybe something with Elves... or Native Americans.. maybe a mash up meh ... tomorrow.

Some of the town names are hard to read. Is Rask a twin town or is the town on the other shore unnamed.

Otherwhise, it is a nice map, maybe add some pottential adventuring sites?

Some of the names really make me think orks and goblins. A setting of sympathetic, but rough and tumble humanoids plagued by elegant nasty elves, unicorns and fey would be fun.

Quote from: Gold Roger;788075Some of the town names are hard to read. Is Rask a twin town or is the town on the other shore unnamed.

Otherwhise, it is a nice map, maybe add some pottential adventuring sites?

Some of the names really make me think orks and goblins. A setting of sympathetic, but rough and tumble humanoids plagued by elegant nasty elves, unicorns and fey would be fun.

Yeah I agree about he names and I hat eht ered for the cities too. Was playing with effects and I like the overall sanded feel but think its needs a revisit.
Not too bothered about adventureing sites. That will emerge through the setting description. Got to stay true to the main idea of these which is as micro settigns that are grokkable and instantly playable and not make them full blown complete settigns with meta plot and blah blha.
 

Setting wise .... I will have my morning cup of tea then write something. Maybe something with a slavic twist.

Monsoon flooded forest, massive slow river (almost like a narrow lake, but with a current) that picks up down river, towns on stilts, pseudo-Bangladesh, monotheism, fish predominant cuisine, most roads are useless half the year due to flooding.

edit: Favored races & classes & backgrounds.

races - mountain dwarves on edges, hill dwarves & stout halflings within the forest proper, sprinkling of black dragon dragonborn. everything else marginal.

classes - fighters, druids, rogues, sorcerer. others marginal.

backgrounds - folk hero (vehicle water instead), sailor, acolyte, criminal, hermit. others marginal.

Quote from: Opaopajr;788112Monsoon flooded forest, massive slow river (almost like a narrow lake, but with a current) that picks up down river, towns on stilts, pseudo-Bangladesh, monotheism, fish predominant cuisine, most roads are useless half the year due to flooding.

edit: Favored races & classes & backgrounds.

races - mountain dwarves on edges, hill dwarves & stout halflings within the forest proper, sprinkling of black dragon dragonborn. everything else marginal.

classes - fighters, druids, rogues, sorcerer. others marginal.

backgrounds - folk hero (vehicle water instead), sailor, acolyte, criminal, hermit. others marginal.

Flooded Forest stuff is a nice idea, hmmm...

Let me engage my post lunch creative juices.....

Fixed the map made it bigger and gave it a frontier feel kind of Fern Gully meets Fitzcarraldo .  Varied results not quite cliched enough I think....

The Vosk Forest
Flavour : Jungle Adventure
Tropes: Noble Savage, Low tech, Flooded forest, Fern Gulley
Cultural Motifs: Asian Jungle, floating cities, lost temples, lots of snakes

Classes:
Human
Fighters - Champion, BattleMaster
Rangers – Hunters, BeastMasters
Druids – Circle of Land, Circle of the Moon
Barbarians – Totem Warrior
Bard – Lore, Valour
Rogue - Thief, Assassin
Sorcerer
Warlock

Draakan (Dragonborn)
Fighters - Champion, BattleMaster
Rangers – Hunters, BeastMasters
Clerics - Tempest
Monk – Way of the Open Hand, Way of the
Bard – Lore, Valour
Rogue - Thief

Fedaar (Wood elves)
Fighters - Champion, Elrich Knight
Rangers – Hunters, BeastMasters
Druids – Circle of Land, Circle of the Moon
Bard – Lore, Valour
Rogue - Thief, Arcane trickster
Wizards

The Vosk, forest, lake, river. It is all these things and more. An ancient place  jammed between the Namir and Salus Mountain ranges to the North and West the Vosk it is said has 2 seasons the Wet Season and the Very Wet Season.  Isolated from the busy port of the Cradle to the south and the expanding Sisk Empire to the north the Vosk remains a humid backwater.

The Fedaar  legends say that in the old time of The Dreaming their people occupied the whole of the continent and lived in harmony with nature, the scholars of the Sisk academies claim this a fiction but unlike them a number of the Fedaar were there at the time so the debate is somewhat moot. They are scattered but a small number maintain the ancient City of Jedaar empty but for the Caretakers and the hundred year festivals.

The Draaken claim to have descended from the Dragons themselves and have lived in the Solan Mountains for generations the City of Piltz was founded by the Draaken prophet Altan several hundred years ago. It remains a religious community where Perun the Storm god is worshiped. As well as the standard temples of Perun found all over the continent the Solan Mountains are also home to the mystical Karite order.

As well as these two aged races there are numerous human settlers, some are members of tribes that came to the region hundreds of years ago others are new arrivals either forced out of their ancestral lands by others or here to make their fortunes in the recent booming market in timber. The tribes live hand to mount in small groups whereas the newcomers have settled in two towns, the provincial Rask in the interior, a lakeside town built on stilts and home to a ragged mix of loggers, trappers and assorted hangers on. At the southern edge of the forest sits Orbutz a more solid place and a melting pot of the various peoples of the south all looking to exploit the forest.

The forest is dominated by the river and the inundation where the Vosk expands and floods the forest to a depth of 30 feet. It is home to a range of creatures from jaguar, monkeys and alligators to more exotic beings such as Naga and Dragon Turtles. Deep in the forest interior are numerous temple structures from an earlier age that even the Fedaar claim to have no knowledge of. These ziggurats with their unsettling octopoidal statues are left well alone by the locals but reports of treasure have started to circulate the streets of Rask and Orbutz and a number of groups have set out  to investigate with predictable results.



Unique Backgrounds
Prospector
Tribal (kind of a modified Outlander)

I like the specialized wood elf & draaken cities.

The distance between cities is huge. Orbutz to Rask is around 200 miles. How large are these communities, and how are you sprinkling smaller tidbits of civilization between them?

Have you considered factionalizing the forest with overlapping tribal lands? Then you can have mobile civilization circulate between the large distances. Easiest way I would do it is asterisk several Common slots, and then use them as random encounters.

There should be a lade point city at the edge of that Western Road that fades into the forest towards Jedaar. Perhaps elven control of the lands and a concessional point of contact to the outside, reserving Jedaar as a festival gathering locale.

"hand to mouth existence" is usually how I heard it.

A lot of classes for me personally. I tend to prefer an ever decreasing pool from Backgrounds>Classes>Races. What is your setting reasoning for all those classes and I am assuming all backgrounds plus two unique ones at the bottom?

Quote from: Opaopajr;788212I like the specialized wood elf & draaken cities.

The distance between cities is huge. Orbutz to Rask is around 200 miles. How large are these communities, and how are you sprinkling smaller tidbits of civilization between them?

Have you considered factionalizing the forest with overlapping tribal lands? Then you can have mobile civilization circulate between the large distances. Easiest way I would do it is asterisk several Common slots, and then use them as random encounters.

There should be a lade point city at the edge of that Western Road that fades into the forest towards Jedaar. Perhaps elven control of the lands and a concessional point of contact to the outside, reserving Jedaar as a festival gathering locale.

"hand to mouth existence" is usually how I heard it.

A lot of classes for me personally. I tend to prefer an ever decreasing pool from Backgrounds>Classes>Races. What is your setting reasoning for all those classes and I am assuming all backgrounds plus two unique ones at the bottom?

If you check it out I increased the scale massively on the revised map and took out cities. the idea of a collection of tribal groups living in semi isolated areas either as hunter gatherers or as semi agreculturalists doesn't work in a forest that was 80 miles by 200 miles in size but does work on an expanded scale. Thus I removed scities and removed the roads.
So I was going to do a secondary tribal map showing the various population groups.

there was a city there (see top map) but I pulled it. I see the western road as being dotted with small towns and villages that get increasingly sparse as you head north.

Basically the original map was a very settled small area when you sold me on the drown forest idea I kind of moved towards a different paradigm and selected the frontier option. So the area is now more akin to the Congo or the Amazon. Yes its 200 miles by river from Rask to Orbutz so the journey downstream with the current will take 2 days upstream probably 4 or 5 days under sail. That makes Rask isolated enough to form its own character.
I might map the cities... maybe. Orbutz would be close to 4 or 5 thousand. Rask closer to 1,000. Mapping Rask as a stilt city would be a challenge but a city on slilts with rickety wooden bridges joining sets of houses would be a great adventure space.

I don't think the number of classes is too big, but its all come from the roleplay side. I can see tribal humans in each of those roles easily the same is true of the other 2 main races. Of course folks coming in from ourside woudl be entirely up to the DM to deal with an expanded setting.

So here the subtext is that the PCs would probably be from outside. You can see a party arriving to explore the interior so its a different sort of game I think. I am trying to get each one of these to fit a broad archetype. The Noble War against the goblins, the city theives, the frontier. I think I will do a couple more. I probably need to do an underground setting as that is such as strong trope. Also All the time I am trying to learn how to map. I mean this is week 3 for me mapping in photoshop and I can already see improvements as I get confident enough to extrapolate into other techniques.

It looks like a classic drowned river valley system, which is unusual in the real world unless created by a dam.

What about putting in a dam somewhere near Orbutz? Possibly created by an ancient ruler to drown the riverbank city of his upstream enemies.

Quote from: The_Shadow;788241It looks like a classic drowned river valley system, which is unusual in the real world unless created by a dam.

What about putting in a dam somewhere near Orbutz? Possibly created by an ancient ruler to drown the riverbank city of his upstream enemies.

well it could be created by a terminal morraine of course from the mountain based glacial retreat... I mean it works for most of the Lake district



You could have a dam but creating a dam to drown your enemies is usually quite a slow process and they tend to move... destroying a dam to drown them tends to be a faster process. You could build a dam to control water cultivation downstream and control flooding. You could build a dam to hide a temple complex of an ancient past evil that shoul never be spoken of.. that kind of makes sense, trap the citter, dam the river and drown the lair kind of a thing.

Quote from: jibbajibba;788244You could have a dam but creating a dam to drown your enemies is usually quite a slow process and they tend to move...

That's why I said the dam was created to drown a city.  How exquisite to slowly drown your enemies' great riverside city and their best farmlands. Also you then have the vengeful descendants of the dispossessed, even centuries later attempting to destroy the dam and drain the lake that used to be their fief, and restore the drowned city...

Anyway it might not be what you want to do with your map, but it's an idea.

Again, totally fucking awesome.  We need to eventually collect these microsettings and make a book out of them.  The Backgrounds too.

Sorry Work has been insane....

Tribal Background
Skill Proficiencies: Survival, + Speciality
Tool Proficiencies: See below in equipment
Proficiency: Depends on biome – Vosk Forest =Small boats + tribal language
Speciality: (based on biome and niche you can add others from Plains horsemen to Inuit)
Forest – the Invisible People –silently forest hunters - Stealth
Forest – the Fierce People – Warlike raiders – Intimidation
Forest – the People of the Monkey – Hunter gathers who specialise in harvesting from the forest canopy – Athletics
Forest – the Dog people – More settles group who train dogs and other animals to assist with hunting


Equipment:
Tribal PCs are used to living in more primitive conditions where a tool may not be too hand however they are highly adept at creating the right tool for the job. When ever a tool is required the tribal PC makes and Int check. A successful check means they have worked out how to make a similar tool from local materials. A Dex check is then required to fashion a tool. Some of these disposable tools are actually works of art (a critical success on the Dex check). The way the tool is created and the longevity of it depends on the tribal culture. A flint hand axe for example might last for centuries but its edge will dull quickly and need to be "fixed" (tools can be maintained on a subsequent Dex save at the DM's permission). A lockpick made from a fish bone might only be good for one use. An oar carved from chunk of driftwood might be just as serviceable and long-lived as one bought in a store.
Tribal PCs start with 1 set of traditional clothing. A simple weapon depending on background and perhaps a mode of transport (boat, horse etc.)

Feature:
Tribal groups are defined as those that live in more primitive settings away from civilisation. They are typically hunter gatherers although some may use limited forms of agriculture.
Tribal PCs are much closer to nature than most other groups they survive with what they can carry or what they can make. Some might be "noble savages" others "fearsome cannibals" but mostly they display the same range of personalities as everyone else. Most PCs will have left their tribal group.
Because of their close relationship to nature they gain advantage on survival checks in their native biome (forest, jungle, desert etc) but are very uncomfortable in cities and will not understand even the basics until they have been explained or experienced. So concepts like money, inns, police etc are likely to be entirely alien to them initially.  

Personality:
1. The Explorer:  You can't believe there is so much to see. All your life you thought that the world was small and now you find there is so much more that you want to experience.
2. The Displaced:  Your people have been driven out. You have been searching for somewhere to start again ever since.
3. The Naïf: You are filled with wonder at everything you see. All aspects of civilisation fascinate you and you are easily distracted and gulled by new things.
4.The Trader: You have set out to trade goods from your local area with outsiders. You are interested in acquiring goods and skills you don't have access to at home.
5. The Wananbe: Forget all that living in the wilds you want to be civilised. You have discarded those simple clothes for the latest fashions and adopted all the latest modes of speech.
6. The Warleader: You are have left home to find out about the Others. You know there will be a time of reckoning when your tribe will need to take up arms to defend your homeland so best to learn as much as possible about them now.

Ideal:
1. Guarded: you don't trust these Others and you are fairly sure they are all out for themselves. (any)
2. Protector: you want to protect your homelands and make sure they are not despoil or damaged. (any)
3. Exploiter: You always play up the "uncivilised savage" savage stereotype to get advantage on people and the drop on them. (any)
4. Avenger: You see your tribe as being wronged and look to extract vengeance from the outsiders where ever you can (any Lawful)
5. Racist: Only your tribe have any value all others aren't real people as they don't really have souls so you can treat them in any way you like (any evil)
6. Noble savage: Your tribal principles of truth, natural justice and working as one with the world guide you through life (any Good)

Bond:
1. Your father is a Big Man and you have to prove yourself to him.
2. You are looking for the outsiders who killed your family
3. Your tribe has contacts with traders at a local city
4. Your tribe have helped the local military and have a good relationship with them
5. You are looking for a marriage partner to bring fresh blood to the tribe
6. You tribe have links to a local criminal gang (providing people, goods whatever)

Flaw:
1. You were exiled from your tribe
2. Your tribe have been massacred
3. Your tribe are feared by locals because of rumours of cannibalism (real or unfounded)
4. Other tribes hate your people (they are raiders, have "sold out" whatever)
5. A family member has been kidnapped and you are searching for them
6. You tribe has a strict set of taboos you must adhere to if possible.