One setting I have wanted to run a D&D game in is a prehistoric setting. I have been hammering ideas together, trying to form a framework that I am happy with. After milling some ideas around and soliciting the folks on the Roleplayers group on LJ, I think I have a pretty solid idea for a setting that is both new, yet retains some of the familiar elements of a fantasy world.
The basic premise was to design a setting that captured the savagery and primal nature of prehistoric societies while keeping elements of fantasy. This turned out to be a bit more challenging than I had originally imagined. Rather than revisit the entire creative process, this is what we (and I use we because the input of others was instrumental in making it all gel).
In the beginning (how biblical) there was a world of heat and fire and immense saurian beasts. The world was still forming in those days. Where other worlds had abundant resources, this world seemed lacking but it did have an abundance of magical energies, flowing naturally through the lands effecting those things it came in contact with and gathering in spots which became places of power.
Into this landscape appeared the dragons, the first of the world's "wise" races. The dragons were the results of the world's natural magics on the saurian denizens of that early warm time and they grew in power quickly, learning to harness and control the power that ebbed through them.
Next came the dwarves and elves, though not called that at that time. They were the first humanoids to appear, a manifestation of the elemental and magical energies that congeled in pits and pools and darkened glades. Eager and blessed with their own wisdom and will, these new creatures ventured into the world, only to find it a dangerous place and themselves ill-equipped to cope with it. The dragons and their saurian kin drove the elves and the dwarves to the corners of the world - elves into the mountains and the dwarves into the blasted wastelands where they were forced to dig to escape their flying harrowers.
The world developed and grew colder and as the saurians lost their grip on the planet and died out or retreated to its remaining warm parts, the dragons went dorment and the age of the warm-blooded creatures came about. Though the world never turned to ice, as it did on our own, it was a much colder place where wood, stone, and bone were the only real natural resources to allow for survival.
Into the new cold world came men and the beginnings of orcs and orgres and such. By then the elves and dwarves had found their own niches in the world. In the mountains, the elves found pools of magic and areas where the energies of the realm had saturated the minerals of the peaks. The wastelands where the dwarves had retreated, proved rich in meteoric iron, the world's only ready supply of metal deposited in the world's volitile past.
Now man has spread. Safe from dragon tyranny and blessed to live in the world from which he evolved, he has flourished. Men exsist in many different states of society from the barely surviving, roaving gatherers and and hunters, to those who have settled in rich fertile lands. In some places towns and even a city of mud have risen with hundreds if not thousands of men gathered in one place. There is even tale of a place where walls of stone, not bone, wood or mud, rise into the sky.
Religion in this world is new as well. Ancestors, spirits, and elementals are the most commonly observed beings of divinity. Totemic shamans and clans, secret societies and brotherhoods and ancient rites passed through the generations of tribes are as much organization as can be found in most places. Still, there are places where cults have formed around the aspirations of men, or beasts or even dragonkind and the first glimmer of true gods begins to take form...
This is a rough overview of how things are. I also have an idea where halflings have arrived in the main campaign area, having migrated from across the sea much like the early islanders did through the Pacific Ocean region.
Humanoids fill the gap that in a prehistoric Earth was occupied by Neanderthal and other early, parallel homonid species. One the tenants of this setting was to keep the world nasty and primal. Even magic is handled as a primal force, with only elves having any real control. The quest for magic parallels the quest for fire with humans gathering it where they can find it, trying to sustain it.
This is also designed to be a world without the stereotypical giant lizards that populate every other prehistoric or lost world setting. I wanted to give some screen time to the shaggy, big-toothed, horned, ,trunked and generally cool and unsung denizens that occupied prehistory. To that end I am even using the Linnorms as the basis for dragons in this world instead of classic dragons. Other menaces will include fey, elementals and even construct types (usually spontaneous manifestations of gathered magical energies). Undead would also appear, but mostly in the form of ethereals sorts or those who could be the result of spontaneous leaks from the Negative Material or the result of the world's magical currents.
Thanks for reading,
-Eli
Tags: Prehistoric Fantasy Rpg Commentary
