Welcome to Vindaruun! (VIN-duh-roon)

What is this?

In the same vein as The Forgotten Realms or Eberron, Vindaruun is meant as a multi-purpose setting to run more than one campaign in, to allow me to work really hard to make the setting as expansive and alive as possible without having to do that for every single campaign I run. The general spirit behind the setting is to make a world in which anything could theoretically exist-- a sprawling, slightly nonsensical world where anything I or a player needs could easily be contrived to exist, lending itself to strange and over the top plot points and worldbuilding. The worldbuilding I have written out and prepared here is the most relevant information for the slice of the world I anticipate operating in, and is by no means the only things that exist in the world. Need a place for your backstory and nothing here fits? Talk to me about it and we can work something out. Want to play a homebrew race? Ask and we can find a place for them. I specifically want this to be a setting where anything could exist in some corner of the world.

Give me the gist of the setting

Several millennia ago, some force shattered the planar system, sending fragments of every plane careening through the Astral Sea to shift and combine and break apart like the universe's largest, slowest lava lamp. This event is very creatively referred to as The Shatter. Remnants exist of life before The Shatter, in fact the world existed for thousands of years before it, but the world changed so much in the wake of it that many consider the world pre-Shatter to be irrelevant. Interplanar travel is much easier in this setting than in others, with portals and plane shift circles and Astral sailing ships extant on nearly every fragment of the world, a necessary means to travel in a world where a single plane of existence often isn't large enough to hold a moderately sized nation.

What should I expect going in?

Its gonna get weird. Rob Zombie levels of weird are the bar I'm trying to clear. We're gonna have fun and we're not gonna get bogged down in making everything 100% realistic or sensical-- anticipate leaning into the suspension of disbelief at least a little bit. I'm trying my best to make the setting internally consistent, if externally strange. This is very much a fantasy setting, with high quantities of magic in use at all times; imagine the inverse of those "this is a dark gritty low-magic campaign where everyone is gonna play a human", get weird with it and have fun. Channel your inner 2008 Deviantart scene kid OC-- as long as everyone shares the limelight, no character choice is Too Much and we don't believe in the concept of Mary Sues here. I once played a tiefling warlock who was an undead elderly time traveling cowboy who was also the grim reaper and had a PhD in anthropology and his pact weapon was his boyfriend full on Soul Eater style, and I had the time of my life. That's the vibe here.
I do very much want to tell impactful engaging stories, but that doesn't mean the setting and the vibe has to be super serious. Silliness and comedy are NOT the enemies of drama and emotion.

How do we get started?

Prepare for our session zero by looking over the information in this PHB and the world meta, as well as as much or as little of the content I've published here on WA as you'd like-- anything I have published is publicly available knowledge and how much of it your character may or may not know is up to you. If being prepared makes you feel better, come with a couple character concepts and/or builds, but don't come married to a single specific character or with a set-in-stone character sheet-- we're going to do group character creation as we discuss boundaries and gameplay styles to ensure everyone is on the same page and playing the same game that we are all going to have fun with. I don't have any hard rules about player secrecy, so don't be shy about discussing character concepts/introductory backstory as a group, especially keeping in mind that I typically like to give my players connections with each other before the campaign starts-- if you don't decide with each other that your characters know or are relevant to each other in some way, odds are I will seed something into at least a few of your backstories.

Content warnings and establishing soft and hard lines

D&D is meant to be fun for everyone involved, it may seem a little overly-serious to talk about boundaries for a board game, but making sure that everyone is comfortable and where boundaries lie ahead of time can make more intense or darker storylines more fun and run more smoothly when it comes time to have them. Broadly speaking, the biggest content warning I can give for all of my games is for body horror, it won't be in every session but it always sneaks its way into my darker monsters and plot points; as well as plot points that may resemble upsetting aspects of the current state of the world, I personally find it cathartic to make my villains echo real world evils/problems in a context where individuals can do something about them, so many of my more world-spanning storylines resemble some conflict in the real world. Before our session zero, please think about if there are any topics that are hard (do not include) or soft (approach with caution or with caveats) lines for you, to discuss with me and the rest of the group. Do also understand that if at any point during or after a session, if something that came up is too much for you, please either stop me (or whoever is bringing it up) in the moment or approach me afterward to talk about it and establish that line-- session zero isn't the deadline to establish boundaries, and the comfort and enjoyment of the whole group takes priority over total immersion.

Be a courteous player! My only hard rule for character creation is that you must make a character who has a reason to engage with the story, even if that reason is as simple as wanting friends or wanting to adventure for treasure. If your character ignores the story hook or leaves the party in session 2 because "they have no reason to go along with this", I will ask you to either make another character who does, or leave the game. I spend a lot of time and effort as a DM writing my setting and my campaigns, it is your singular responsibility as a player to make a character who is willing to be a part of an adventuring party and do adventuring party things. True Lone Wolf Edgelords don't work in Dungeons and Dragons, even Strider joined the Fellowship, your brooding loner can too.