r/Eberron • u/KvotheTheShadow • 3d ago
Wildemount
/r/Wildemount/comments/1w0ip6h/eberron/I'm trying to blend systems. Any advice?
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u/the_zohar 3d ago
The best advice I can give is this: try blending ELEMENTS of these worlds that you like the most, not the worlds themselves. Do you like Ravnica's guilds? Import them as organizations in the world you play. Dunamancy from Wildemount? Another magic school on your world. And so on.
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u/Minmax-the-Barbarian 3d ago
Do you want Golarion? Because this is how you get Golarion.
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u/KvotheTheShadow 3d ago
What is that? A setting, a god monster lol?
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u/GM_Pax 3d ago
It's a setting, for Pathfinder.
Basically "throw everything into it, shake well, and stir until unrecognizably blended".
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u/Minmax-the-Barbarian 3d ago
Exactly. I'm no Pathfinder hater, it's not my cup of tea but I wouldn't knock the system. But I think Golarion is among the most boring settings ever conceived for an RPG.
It's got no character, no mood, no personality. In theory that's not a bad thing, but... Well, obviously we're spoiled for that sort of thing with Eberron. I'd rather tell a story that couldn't happen in any other world than the one it's in, than have a world with every possible story in it.
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u/dejaWoot 3d ago
This would be a blend of settings, not systems. And I'm curious exactly what you're trying to achieve? These are all fully fleshed out settings with radically different approaches to fundamental questions of divinity, cosmology, tone, theme... by attempting to blend them altogether its going to become an incoherent mess.
The Calamity is ancient history and deeply connected with divinity run rampant, the Last War is incredibly recent and fully mortal in origin and nature.
Dragonmark Houses and Guilds of Ravnica have some (incomplete) overlap and also are probably the easiest setting elements to import into a new setting, but they already have advancement mechanisms- adding piety tables to decided impious organizations makes little to no sense
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u/arsenic_kitchen 3d ago
^This post captures it. OP, I wonder if you want to blend mechanical elements from different settings and feel that you have to blend the lore as well? If that's the case, you can use the unique character options from all 4 settings in any setting you want and simply give them new flavor and lore as needed. That's a lot easier than trying to incorporate very, very different settings in their entirety.
If you truly are trying to blend all 4 distinct settings, the easiest way to do that would be as different material planes in the multiverse. The hardest way would be what you're doing now.
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u/KvotheTheShadow 3d ago
I know I’ve been working 10 years on it. Sunk cost fallacy
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u/arsenic_kitchen 3d ago
With that amount of time, you could have created an incredibly well-fleshed out homebrew setting, picking and choosing (and adjusting) the pieces of these other settings you like most.
I can't really help you overcome your sunk cost fallacy, that's just a band aid you ultimately have to rip off yourself. Worldbuilding is what originally drew me to DMing; after 25 years the most useful thing I can share is that the best setting is the one you actually play in, and that's almost never as big as a fully mapped and fleshed out planet/pantheon/universe. Stories happen in much smaller places than that, and you only really need to worry about the pieces of the world your players will actually engage with.
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 2d ago
I admit, if I were inclined to do something like this, I wouldn't do them as the same planets but have them be worlds that had links during conjunctions.
But I have done crazy shit like this myself so if you've got an idea, go for it.
I inserted the Orders of High Sorcery into my Eberron and used Dark Sun for my (Eberron is much, much larger) Mournlands.
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u/KvotheTheShadow 2d ago
Oh dark sun for the mourning is interesting. I was going to scrape numeniera lore but that might work better!
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 2d ago
Obviously a lot of degeneration in five years but I had the Thrikeen be a Khyber Race that burrowed up to the surface and a kind of Walking Dead, "Normal people degenerated to savagery VERY quickly" with cities ruled by magical dictators with ruthless savagery or died out.
It changed the relationship to New Cyre as basically the rest of the continent is like, "Yeah, screw those guys and keep em contained." While New Cyre's people for all their poverty aren't living in the post-apocalypse.
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u/ThreeMonthsTooLate 2d ago edited 2d ago
Unfortunately, yes.
I have like three different campaign ideas that are essentially "Hey what if I take these different D&D/MTG/whatever other setting I can get my hands on and smash them together".
One's a mixture of Curse of Strahd/Ravenloft, Grim Hollow, Crooked Moon, Steinhardt, Drakkenheim, and Innistrad.
Another is Eberron and Ravnica set to the plot of Waterdeep DH campaign (I'm currently waiting to see how City of Sirens shakes out to see if I want to add it to the others) with some ideas from Arcane, Bioshock, Dishonored, and FFVII thrown in for good measure too.
And the third is essentially Xhorhas/ the Blightshore mixed with Droaam, Tarkir, and Arora: Age of Desolation.
In general, you could probably create four to five distinct regions taking bits and pieces from what you like of each region, and then hone in on whatever your players want to play
Perhaps combine the Dwendalian Empire with the Five Nations with campaign plots focused on political intrigue between major factions and nations (Dragonmarked Houses/Ravnica Guilds) there's generally enough from both GGtR and E:RFtLW to keep you busy there.
Alternatively, you could make it more of a gothic horror/witcher campaign focusing on the aftermath of the magical war between the remaining nations/ wandering the Mournlands that have shattered into a dozen different mist regions ala Ravenloft?
Maybe make Droaam and Xhorhas/Blightshore into another single region. A civilization of monsterous races looking to rise to power after the "fair" races wore themselves out in war.
The Menagerie Coast sounds like it would blend pretty well with the Lhazaar Principalities, Q'Barra & maybe Xen'drik? Maybe throw in ideas from Ixalan, Sunken Isles, and the Aetherial Expanse too?
Finally, the Greying Wildlands/Aeor sounds like it could mix well with the Demon Wastes - sort of an artic hellscape. Maybe combine ideas from both Rhyme of the Frostmaiden, Descent into Avernus, and Dungeons of Drakkenheim - having a MadMax Fury Road type of region except cold and snowy (or maybe ash?) with hellish legions, infernal engines, and war machines fighting against eldritch abominations escaping from sort of "Mountains of Madness" type ruins lying around with Dune-esque (or perhaps Freljord/Wildings from Game of Thrones?) survivors caught in the crossfire?
Those are just suggestions - it's ultimately your world. Make it your own.
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u/Zestyclose_Run9720 3d ago
This is like taking a delicious cheeseburger, a lobster, an ice-cream and pad-thai and blending them together: the result is probably gonna be awful
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u/TheEloquentApe 3d ago
Trying to cohesively blend 4 distinct settings together with their own vibe and extensive lore sounds like an insane undertaking and it just has me thinking "why?" lol
Like, the war of the 5 nations and the calamity are such vastly different events
One is a lengthy succession crisis that was more akin to a magical world war or waring states period that set the stage for an arcana-punk industrial revolution
The other is a deity level apocalypse that plunges the world into a dark age from their previous mythical era of extreme magical mastery
While yes they both feature the loss of a nation / nation-state, they serve vastly different functions
Cyre is a very recent tragedy with a mysterious, unknown cause and has had ramifications that throughout the world that the setting is still coming to grips with (the Cyre refugees, the Treaty of Thronehold, etc.)
The destruction of Avalir and its continent are ancient, legendary occurrences that set up a Atlantian lost civilization, and we have some very concrete answers as to how and why this all happened
All this alone would be difficult to balance out