Follow the Campaign 1: Evershift World

 My Pathfinder campaign, The Maelstrom, ended earlier than I expected, in a session that I described to another friend as having "only a 25% chance of the campaign ending."  I had had my eyes on 5th edition for about a month prior and figured it would be worthwhile to take the leap - the next campaign would be 5th edition.

Enter Evershift.

Evershift is a world loosely inspired by Magic: The Gathering's Zendikar setting, a world of dangerous terrains where adventure and travel were as dangerous as the monsters one might face. One thing I wanted to encourage in my new campaign was a sense of exploration and dungeon-delving, so I chose to design a world based that encouraged that basic premise.

One thing DMs tend to love doing is making maps, and I am no exception. I always tell my players they are welcome to add something to the world or modify it, but I like to come up with a wide, basic expanse of ideas that the players can draw from. Some of the regions I design will never be interacted with. I also don't force myself to stay strictly to the constructions of the map - I will happily fill things in in the middle and I purposefully avoid discussing scale to allow myself to distort the map size and length if it becomes necessary for the game. For me, creating the map is a source of inspiration for both myself and my players, and not limitation.

 I also told the players they would be starting in Leyhaven, a relatively powerful city-state that exercises a decent amount of influence over the world by being a powerful trading hub. Centrally located by land and by sea, Leyhaven is inspired by the concept of Venice during the Renaissance, and I decided that a Doge and a Council of Merchants would rule the city to add to that flavor. Unlike Venice, however, Leyhaven sits atop a mesa that borders the sea. Many theorize Leyhaven was created by magic: a large obelisk sits in the center of the mesa and some scholars say it was placed there to capture the magic of leylines (magical 'strands' that travel across the world), and when it did, it caused the mesa to rise out of the plains that Leyhaven is now surrounded by.

Leyhaven has a powerful crank that brings ships up from the sea into the city, but this is only for ships that can pay the port fees. Leyhaven Below is a shanty town that sits at the coast below the mesa, touching the sea, and is a dangerous place of cutthroats and sailors.

In introducing the campaign, I also included the map below, and a link to a Google Doc listing out some of the basics of the geography, politics, creation myth, and religion of the world. In some games I create my own pantheon, but in this one I chose to use a pre-established one as  my previous game has been heavily impacted by the home-brewed pantheon I used. I chose the Greyhawk deities because there were a fair amount relating to both travel and terrain: deities that would be notably revered in a world like Evershift.


Details of the campaign in this googledoc