It's a new day in Tangia...
Welcome to Tangia!
A community undertaking to build a new world for use in D&D 4.0. The effort will involve the creation of histories, cultures, place, people, events, politics, and more.
What?
The world of Tangia...
Tangia is a D&D world open to the community to build on, play in, and enjoy. It starts as a rough framework, not much more than a world map, nations with a rough concept behind each, races with the thinnest of details, and a pantheon of gods without well defined roles. The goal is to use this place for people to offer up ideas and add to the world, giving it detail and bringing it to life.
- If you have an idea about a unique culture, see if you can find a place to add it (as we start, just about all of the races are wide open).
- If you've always had a great idea for a setting for a creepy tower, ancient ruins, burned down castle, etc - pick a continent or country and add it (we can always adjust the maps to show your new place).
- If you have a great idea about a event that would have shaped the history of any of the people or countries of Tangia - add it to the coutries' or races' history.
- If you have an idea for a great villain that is threatening a town, region, or country - add him.
It's all up to us to shape and mold this into a place for us all to play.
Take a mintue to look around and see if anything inspires you.
Races & Groups
Pantheon of the Gods
Why?
D&D is a lot of fun. I only dabbled in 3.5 about 15 years ago, and didn't get into it until 4th edition. I love the strategy and creative thinking involved in the game, but I had a problem. All of the history, cultures, places, and other details of the different realms were overwhelming in their amount. Too often, I found myself skipping past much of what makes D&D interesting because there was just too much of it. The details were too overwhelming.
After playing a while, I got the itch to DM. I enjoy writing and telling a story, and wanted focus that energy into building a good framework for a story for our group. Instead of using one of the existing realms that I knew very little about, I chose to use a setting I was familiar with from a series of books I had been reading. This world, I knew. Our group is playing through a campaign run by me in this world right now, and are about to hit level 15. Things are going great, and everyone is having fun. But in taking this approach, I found that whereas I knew the world quite well, my players obviously didn't if they hadn't read the books (which they hadn't).
This made my job as a DM both easy and hard. It was easy in the sense that places, history, people, and other details of the world I had at my fingertips and could figure out what 'fit' in a certain situation. It was hard because I had to explain every detail about races, places, relationships, and other things to my players. Too often, I found myself needing to give out certain tips to player, correcting them on things characters might do or say that was entirely out of place in the setting. I didn't like doing that.
Then, I had an idea.
The Primal Provinces
Wouldn't it be fun to play in a world of your own creation? Something that your playing group grew to love and added into as time went on? If someone else DMs, they can pick up right in the world, and people are already familiar with the nations, places, people, events, etc? The world grows with the group's ideas and experiences - good ideas are adapted into the world setting and become a fixture - there for future adventures.
I had read the advice out there about world building. Don't take on too much at once. Start small and expand out. Much of what that advice said made perfect sense (and I intend to follow). But I wanted the place to be cohesive and not just a hodgepodge of places stitched together. So I set out to create a framework of a world. Something to be used as a guideline around future details.
The approach I took was as follows: #I made a map and named the continent and seas.
- I came up with countries. This included names, a rough idea of attitude and government type.
- I come up with basic themes for the countries. For example, L'antico Impero Roman themed, while Yut is a mixture of Egyptian and Indian themes, etc.
- I chose the races (and renamed a few, but kept them identical mechanically) and came up with rough ideas for some racial variations. For example, Sun Elves (Eladrin) may belong to the Rising Sun Sect or the Setting Sun Sect. It's to be determined if this will have any mechanical benefits or just flavor for the game.
- I built the pantheon - made up of 34 gods -, using new names applied to gods from Eberron, Forgotten Realms, and core D&D.
- For some of the maps, I have added city names (the continent of Halawala, the Celestial Empire, and The Oaken Duchies).
That's it. Now, I am going to start (as will members of our play group hopefully) fleshing out a few details about some of the places, but I want to get ideas and suggestions from the community. Places, people, history, culture, events, politics, religion, and other details that make a world a living place are needed.
This is something we all grow and build. It will be a world that we all use and share.
Blog & Forums
If you want, you can also visit the blog that will be tracking this effort at Help Build Tangia Blog
There you will find posts on world design choices, new things added to the world, an other information about Tangia.
While there, visit the Forums and join a discussion - or submit an idea about what you'd like to add to the world.