I've been GMing a Dungeon World game for a couple years now, and I love it. I've also played along in two really enjoyable D&D campaigns.
That D&D group just finished up the second campaign, so we're looking to start another. I somewhat nervously volunteered to GM it.
I like running games, but I rely heavily on improv. D&D feels a bit intimidating because of how much stuff there is to keep track of; it's so much easier to wing it in Dungeon World, where there are only a handful of rules and it's nearly impossible to kill the players.
But anyhow, I'm doing it, and I'm looking forward to it.
I like using a combination of historical and fantastical influences as a setting. In my Dungeon World campaign, I started out with the vague idea that it would be a combination of:
=> The Salamander volcano from Romancing SaGa 2
=> Tarna from Quest for Glory 3
When the players eventually wandered into the volcano dungeon, I realized that I needed a floor plan in short order, so I just cribbed the map of Pompeii, which they've been exploring for over a year now.
So, yeah. Most of the names and mythology are from Indonesia, some aspects of the setting are African, the starting point for the setting was from a weird lizard island, and I threw Pompeii into it at a moment's notice.
The setting for the new campaign has followed a similar path.
For the videogame influence, we have Jeff Vogel's Exile/Avernum series, which revolves around a giant underground prison world. I stumbled across a historical period where Persia was threatened by Greco-Buddhists (I don't remember how) and that got thrown into the mix.
Here's the result, which is the intro description I sent the players just now.
You live in (or are travelling through) the city of Paradisus, capital of the Kairen Empire.
Originally a chaotic mess of arid desert states, the continent was subjugated five hundred years ago by Kairus the Dragonking, servant of three great dragons:
The current Emperor is Pharaxon the Golden, the Avatar of Hadhayosh.
Under threat from a stoic horde of Easterners led by King Ashoka, the once freewheeling spirit of Paradisus is broken by austerity measures as the Emperor desperately tries to bring military discipline to the city.
More disturbingly, an increasing number of Paradisians are condemned to eternal imprisonment in Barakum, a vast underground wasteland abandoned by the Dwarves. Barakum means "the pit of futility" in the Dwarven tongue, but locals simply call it "The Pit."
The slightest infraction--or worse, a whim of the City Guard--can land a commoner in the Pit.
None have returned from the Pit, so no one has any idea of what it's like there. That doesn't stop rumours from spreading, though...
Today is your day to be thrown into The Pit. The handful of others lined up with you seem common enough, but one strong-looking young human woman doesn't quite fit in...
Questions to think about before the first session:
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