I'm creating a post apocalyptic eternal winter setting, and I need (YOU) to help me, noble anon.
I'm looking for worldbuilding ideas to make the world more fleshed out and interesting.
Here's all that I have so far:
>What does the world look like
Typical dnd 5e setting, dwarves, elves, humans, halfings, etc.
Farming is all but impossible, resources are scarce, and sentient races have dwindled down to just a few. Staving off hunger and cold is about all they can do in this scenario. Fire magic is impossible, and conjuring food is not a known technique.
>the humans
Humans, being the most populous race, suffered the greatest losses. All but the strongest humans starved at the beginning of the new ice age. What remains of the once great race are small bands of nomadic hunters, the descendants of adventurers and magicians that were able to stay alive during the chaotic decline of civilization. Other, less fortunate races (Orcs, for example) may occasionally be found among their ranks. These tribes wander the wastes, tracking and hunting powerful monsters that are well adapted to their new harsh environment. The monsters provide them with food to eat, fat to burn, bones to carve, pelts to wear, and anything else they may need. Still, even the monster population is declining these days...
>the dwarves
Only one of the dwarves' great underground cities remains. It is currently the largest city on the planet. Warm and bustling with activity, it is one of the few places of comfort in the frozen hells. All manner of survivors can be found here, from dwarf to halfling to dragonborn. Though they live in relative comfort, farming mushrooms and cave moss has its limits. Strict capacity quotas and draconian laws are just the beginning of what it takes to maintain peace and order. Still, nothing lasts forever. The mysterious heat source that powers the city (Balrog chained up in the basement) seems to be more and more unreliable as the days pass.
>the elves
Far to the north, buried under mounds of snow, a small group of elves persists within the royal elven botanical gardens. The elves are able to leverage their arcane knowledge of elementals to keep things running... but as the world's connection to the elemental plane of fire has been severed, more and more sacrifices must be made to keep the sole fire elemental bound to this plane.
MY PLAYERS must find a way to save this dying world... or just frick off and ignore every plot thread I feed them, like every time
Regardless of the system you're using, when in doubt borrow ideas from settings that sound cool to you.
I am reminded of the Seventh Tower books, where viking-like nomad groups follow migrating hordes of megafauna that thrive in the new ice age. Mammoths, narwhals, phosphorescent sea life for light.
If the sun is still shining, you can have wizards w/towers that reach above the clouds up to where the sunlight is still strong if you want a group that's just waiting out the ice age. Or make some floating islands or something, I dunno.
Could have dragons and fire giants that live in volcanoes. Dragons keeping the volcanoes hot sounds neat. Pic related for a civilization camped around a volcano.
Or magic trees blessed by a nature goddess that make the forests livable.
Maybe the PC's have travel and find different groups' methods to stay warm and cobble together a solution to restore the world?
>5e
No. It won't work.
This anon is correct, unless you want the world to be nothing more than a differently flavored backdrop, you need to run this in a system that's built for something more survival focused. No you cannot simply convert 5e for that, many have tried.
why would 5e not work?
Normally this board is just being contrarian hipsters when they shit on 5e, but in this case they're right.
Need to find food? Cast goodberry or create food & water.
Need warm shelter? Leomund's tiny hut.
5e is not made for hardcore survival.
NTA but OP specifically says conjuring food isn't an option. I don't disagree with you though, D&D isn't ideal for this.
I had a dream about a snow covered planet recently. Lots of skiing resorts and aurora borealis in the night sky.
What are these absurdly powerful monsters eating, why can't humans and why is there no coal?
>what are the monsters eating
Other monsters, plants and animals (what remains of them, anyways), in some cases even inorganic matter. Some of them don't require food at all. Still, most of them need food, and as the world gets colder they're dying off as well.
There is coal but you've got to go mine it. Usually not a worthwhile proposition, especially since caves and mines are now much colder than the already cold surface. People mostly get their fuel by chopping down trees.
>especially since caves and mines are now much colder than the already cold surface
I can tell this moron has never been outside a city.
FFS moron, the temp below 40' is constant through out the year.
Anon, it's a fantasy world. Stop showing your sperg levels. The mines are colder because elemental earth is associated with cold or whatever.
>the temp below 40' is constant through out the year.
moron kun... you know what temperature that is? No? It's just below the average annual temperature. Which, in this setting (which, may I remind you is in an eternal winter with no seasons other than winter) would be...
>A: WARM
>B: COLD
Can you guess the answer with me?
...
...
...
That's right! It's A! Great job.
Now, suppose, in some scenario, that the Earth's core were to suddenly go cold. As you descended, would the ground
>A: WARM UP
>B: COOL DOWN
Let's do this one together.
...
...
...
That's correct! It's B!
Never speak to me again.
Unless there is something actively making it colder in the center of the Earth then there wouldn't be much difference between the surface and the ground because your only heat source would be the sun. That's even assuming the surface is consistently warmer as underground isn't dealing with convection. Also if infernal beings can be captured to provide heat, how is the setting interacting with those realms?
>how is the setting interacting with those realms?
Basically, the “essence of fire” was all used up on this world, and no longer exists outside of maybe one or two instances. Call it a super weapon experiment gone wrong.
As for other planes, e.g. hell, their connections with this realm are also dying. I dunno, maybe something fricked up the connections to other planes as well. Maybe the elemental plane of ice is slowly absorbing the planet. Maybe the Gods, who rarely answer prayers anymore, have just written off the world as a lost cause.
The entire point is that things are fricked and the players have to fix it, moron. Not that things are fricked and can never be fixed.
The planet gradually gets colder, and after a few decades farming no longer provides sufficient yields to support a population.
>Why couldn't wizards just make spells to replicate that process?
They could, but they haven’t. It’s hard to study how monsters eat when they’re trying to kill you. Mages could trap and study or even farm these monsters, with help from the players.
Farming is impossible? Meaning no plants grow, or do you mean farming inexplicably doesn't work anymore? Because if the former, everything on the surface is fricked. If plants don't grow the herbivores are dead. If the herbivores are dead the carnivores are dead. And once all the dead bodies have been eaten, the scavengers are dead. Is an apocalypse where everyone is basically fricked what you're going for?
>Typical dnd 5e setting
So everyone just goes to the underdark then? Or at least goes to the subterranean places where they can grow weird underground plants like mushrooms. I imagine the deeper a race lives, the less effected they would be.
>in some cases even inorganic matter
That's actually good, and gives a way for an ecosystem to function without plant life. But it raises a question. There's clearly some sort of biological or magical function that allows (for example) a Xorn to turn gems and rocks into normal nutrients and protein which humans can then eat. Why couldn't wizards just make spells to replicate that process? Why can't wizards make a spell that allows people to get nutrients off of eating snow?
Small particulates of organic matter thrown up by the same volcanoes that blotted out the sun and ushered in the eternal winter.
>what is Dark Sun
A yeti has taken over a ski slope from its dwarven owners. They want the party to go deal with it. Hes a labor agitator, and has gotten the workers to strike. You can break the strike, try to reach a settlement between the two, or join the workers and kickstart the proletariat uprising.
>grimdark bullshit
>interesting
What is with people and making settings where suicide is the best option for people in it? Grimdark has limits, these "settings" are just angstwanking8xkayv
Nuance is a dead concept.
when i was a kid i used to worldbuild while being bored at school classes one of the continents was called "everfrost" which was this. many expeditions went there and failed to come back.the shorelines of the continent were lined with ice locked ships that will never again see voyage. deep into the continent it is rumored there are massive towers built by ancient wizards . within these towers- infinite libraries and staircases are overgrown with life flora and fauna.everything blooms under artificial sun. but outside them is ice cold frozen death.an endless frozen wasteland wghere the danger is not only the temperature,but also strange anomalies: at one moment you may be trekking through the snow desert, then you would suddenly find yourself in a maddening maze of ice
OP I lived in an area where it was five-six months of winter per year on average (Upper Peninsula Michigan) for two years and I hated snow near the end. People that live in this all year round probably need a frick ton of pick me up to survive the seasonal depression. I would make sure you have vibrant colourful holidays in the cities and something related to the long lost seasons to keep their mind off winter when they need it.
There are no cities, just shrinking populations of humans traversing the frozen wastes until they to become one with the bleak unforgiving landscape.
then let thumanity and everybody else frick of and die already you autistic grimderp sperg
Use anything else more fitting but still dnd adjacent so the setting stays the same but the system is more accommodating. Any of the darker fantasy 5e alternatives like Shadows of the demon lord, Shadowdark gets thrown around a lot, or some actual oldschool dnd or OSR like Lamentations of the flame princess or Sords and wizardry or maaybe you could actually go castles and crusaders. Either way pich another system.
Honestly the way you describe the setting it feels very much like an OSR or oldschool type game.
OP you should check the older d&d book Frostburn.
Might have some interesting stuff in there you could steal.
But in all honesty I wouldn't want to adventure in this place.
Thought: instead of the connection to the elemental plane of fire being destroyed, instead something happened so that all arcane magic now absorbs heat (sort of like Scarred Lands, but in reverse). This adds a "meaningful" cost to magic - in the setting at least. Though you can, I dunno, make your mages constantly pass fort checks or else take ice damage.
>dwarves, elves, humans, halfings, etc.
Fricking gay.
There are a ton of great icy post-apoc ideas in the Heart of Ice adventure novel by Dave Morris (pic related). In this future world of 2300+ AD the world developed weather satellites and a global AI to control them, but it went insane and a new ice age destroyed most of civilization. There's also psychic powers, mutant monsters and suprareality weapons.
Do a bit of research into volcanic/meteoric winters, they'll inform you with a bit of real life context on what surviving (for a little while) in a 'permanent' winter will be like. tl;dr is a carnivore explosion due to all the carrion, followed by a catastrophic population crash. You could also look at The Banner Saga games for a world that has ended but people are still alive, I guess.
You need to think of the wider implications of this forever-winter. If there's no sun or not much due to an ash cloud, even hardy plants are in big trouble.
I guess the question too is how 'hard' you want the scenario to be. There's a world of difference between real extinction events and something like, say, The Night Land.
Yeah add some scavenger/cannibal post apocalyptic in parts of the world where people were not properly acclimated to the cold.
Take a look at this, anon. Lots of things in there that you can use as the premise is similar.