2002年，WotC举办了一场"奇幻世设征稿"(Fantasy Setting Search)，众所周知的在这场征稿中艾伯伦最终胜出了
如果足够博闻强识(指看过《艾伯伦战役设定集》[ECS]Page.7的概述部分)，就会知道杀入决赛的总共有三个人：Keith Baker (即艾伯伦的作者)、Rich Burlew以及Philip Nathan Toomey。
这场征稿的规则如下：
1. 先投一份一页纸设定，通过回答部分问题的方式来进行世设概述，这一步收到了超过11000份投稿
2. 创作10页左右的设定概述，并通过黑箱方式进行审核，进入这一步的有11份作品
3. 获得1万美元的奖金，并创作一份125页左右的背景故事，进入这一步为以上的决赛三人组
4. 艾伯伦诞生了，而KB则因此获得10万美元的奖金
核心概念描述
Core Ethos Sentence
英雄们是谁？
Who are the heroes?
他们在做啥？
What do they do?
威胁、冲突与恶人
Threats, Conflicts, Villains
魔法的本质
Nature of Magic
有些什么新东西？有些什么不同点？
What’s new? What’s different?
在此，我试图收集了一些在第1步中投稿的世设
Core Ethos Sentence: Gemstone is a setting of epic fantasy adventure in the world of Palidoria where heroes pit their swords and spells against the advancing hordes of darkness that threaten to destroy the world.
Who are the heroes? Heroes on Palidoria can come from an incredibly diverse array of backgrounds, since one of the key points in the world’s flavor is the incredible diversity in terms of races, cultures, and life paths. Since the main threat is the tide of darkness and evil pouring from the Doomportal, anyone with a reason to fight against it or stop it has a chance to be a hero, from the lowliest halfling farmer to the mightiest of elven warriors. Some examples include Rolling Thunder, a human werebear who has inherited the guardianship of one of the lost Eight Silver Keys. Darinna is a scholar and a wizard who abandoned her studies at the Royal College when her professors began to dabble in and gradually become consumed by terrible, dark sorcery. Colin Northwind is a druid who once lived in as a hermit in the shadow of the northern mountains before he was driven away by the monstrous hordes of darkness. Atlactli is the champion archer of the Lizardfolk, whose empire across the southern Emerald Sea is collapsing from within.
What do they do? Naar the Deranged, a wandering mad elven prophet feared by the common people rants and raves about the the legendary gemstone known as the Eye of Kade. When the Doomportal was torn open by the forces of evil long ago, the god Kade closed it with a gem crafted from his own right eye and sealed the stone in place with eight silver keys. Five years ago, a thief who called himself the Disenchanter managed to steal the Eye from its setting without realizing the gemstone’s significance. He has since gone missing, and evil has begun to flood the land. The Eye of Kade must be recovered and sealed again with the lost eight silver keys before the forces of evil destroy the whole world.
Threats, Conflicts, Villains: The gray robed, porcelain-masked Cult of Oblivion infests the land, with agents and cells nearly everywhere pursuing their evil agenda. On the borders of the Steppe of Shadows, the great alliance of Hobgoblin tribes raze villages and terrorize the people. The blood of the elves grows weak, and more and more of them succumb to madness. In the far north, beyond the great mountains, the Winter King rules his frozen, evil domain unchallenged. The great underground dwarf kingdoms have been torn apart by the internal strife of the Grudge War, and many of the dwarf clans have been corrupted and joined forces with fiendish powers. Deranged Gnomes build huge and terrible machines of blind destruction that are a hybrid of technology and arcane sorcery. Creatures that were evil all along revel in this new age of darkness and terror. Most of this chaos is the result of the Doomportal, a huge magic gate in the far northern mountains that underlies almost all that is dark and evil in Palidoria. The greatest source of supernatural evil in the world, it is a portal directly into the lower planes. Not only do fiends and horrible nightmare creatures pour out of it day and night, but it also has a subtler influence, twisting otherwise good and decent peoples’ minds to evil and darkness.
Nature of Magic: Magic is the raw stuff of creation that flows in the spaces between the planes, like the life blood of the universe. It can be drawn upon and manipulated, either through a studied learning of its nature, use, and properties (arcane magic), as a gift from a deity (divine magic), or through sheer willpower and strength of mind (psionics). Magic operates on a level of laws beyond the physical, since physical laws are merely a result of the outgrowth of magic on various planes.
What’s new? What’s different? The traditional split between devils and demons doesn’t really exist in Gemstone. While there are different types of fiends and they may have rivalries with each other, there’s no Blood War that divides the lower planes. Also, there is less safety among the traditionally “good” races (elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings), since most of them are becoming slowly corrupted by the powerful magic of the Doomportal. Note that not everyone is evil and corrupt; most Palidorians simply do what they’ve always done. However, enough are corrupted so as make the setting dangerous and the sealing of the Doomportal all the more urgent.
Core Ethos Sentence: Gondwanaland is a savage, primitive world where heroes forge their destinies amidst the ruins of a fallen primordial civilization.
Who are the heroes? The main heroes of Gondwanaland are the humans of the western coast who are in the process of rising from savage tribalism and forging a new civilization. They are led by Coyopa, a golden-haired, bronze-skinned demigod who is part of a newly born pantheon of gods. However, there is plenty of room for heroes of other races and backgrounds as well, even the odd savage humanoid like Arag Gol, the half-orc seeking to unite the jungle tribes, or Ahuatla, the legendary exiled lizardfolk swordsman.
What do they do? One major goal common to everyone is simply to survive in such a savage world. The humans of the western coast seek to build their new empire, gaining allies and fighting against their enemies. Really though, Gondwanaland is a rich enough setting to allow a multitude of heroes to pursue a multitude of goals, just as in any other great setting for a role-playing game.
Threats, Conflicts, Villains: Fierce predators roam the jungles and forests while savage tribes of orcs and men wage war for food and territory. The remaining lizardfolk led by the mad sorceror-king Ixhactl dream hallucinogenic dreams of their ancient glory, and plot for their fallen empire to rise again. The catacombs and tombs of the lizardfolk are full of forgotten terrors that sometimes rise to the surface.
Nature of Magic: Magic in Gondwanaland will function much the same as it is laid out in the Core Rulebooks. Druids and adepts will be common, but clerics will be common enough as well. There are at least three separate pantheons of gods: the lizardfolk’s pantheon, the alien gods of the elves, and the new human pantheon.
What’s new? What’s different? Gondwanaland is a huge supercontinent stretching from the teeming, lush jungles of the south through the endless savannah to the boreal forest and the jagged, icy, glacier-covered mountains in the north. It is a prehistoric “lost continent” setting where savage human and humanoid tribes fight dinosaurs in the south and huge ice-age mammals in the north. The ruins of the once-mighty lizardfolk empire are everywhere, but new civilizations with a Mesoamerican flavor are on the rise. The elves are stranded visitors from another star, with citadels in the northern mountains built from the wreckage of their great star galleons. Many of the elves, however, live nomadic lives in the northern boreal forest, having left the mountain citadels and forgotten much of their past. Dwarves were bred to be a slave-race, but their rebellion against their lizardfolk overlords was one factor in bringing about the latter empire’s downfall. The prevalence of dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts makes for a quite unique set of mounts and beasts of burden, and a set of new prestige classes like the Raptor Knight, the Fossil Mage, and the Mammoth Rider is one of the results.
Climate: Gondwanaland is a land of extremes. Near the coasts, it is a lush, humid jungle, and there are a few inland seas that help extend the wet climate further inland than would otherwise be possible. However, as a supercontinent, the entire center is an unelievably huge arid desert plateau. The plateau has craggy mountain ranges that conceal ancient secrets, ruined lost temples, and some say in the center, in a mountain range of staggering unmatched proportions that no explorer has ever reached or even seen. In this range is some ancient and terrible secret. Rumors call it the place of dead gods.
Core Ethos Sentence: Illyria is a world where heroes do mighty deeds and city-states vie with each other for supremacy with great armies and majestic elemental-driven airships.
Who are the heroes? Illyria is a world of mythic heroes who seek out adventure for glory and renown. Many of the world’s heroes are minor nobles, since they have the time, means, and motive to challenge danger for its own sake. The greatest hero of Illyria is Nemo, a noble water genasi. He is a warrior-king who rules the small island of Aragos. His companions are Agesthes, an air genasi bard, and Kidu, a human barbarian whose tribe was destroyed in battle by the armies of Hyklos.
What do they do? Nemo likes to believe that he is in fact the hero that his people make him out to be, and so, much to the chagrin of Agesthes and the delight of Kidu, he constantly seeks out monsters to vanquish, battles to join, and great, heroic deeds to accomplish. When not simply adventuring for his own glory, Nemo defends his home and household against Xenephron and the phalanxes of Hyklos.
Threats, Conflicts, Villains: There is always a fierce rivalry between neighboring city-states and between followers of the three elements (water, air, and fire). From that rivalry arises most of the more mundane conflict. For example, Xenephron, one of the high priests of the gods of fire and the ruler of the city-state of Hyklos, is a scheming villain who seeks to pillage and conquer, dominating the servants of air and water and dragging them into the all-consuming fire. He is also in love with Nemo’s daughter, Nereis, and plans to one day kidnap her and force her to be his bride. However, the greatest menace in Illyria comes from the mysterious Elemental Plane of Earth. The pantheon of earth gods holds an ancient grudge against the three elements, no earth genasi have been seen for years, and earth elementals are impossible to bind. The rocky, stony places of Illyria are trodden lightly, and the deep, dark places are greatly feared. Sages say that the earth deities have called up a terrible champion known as the Deep One to be the sword of their vengeance.
Nature of Magic: Civilization is still new and arcane magic is a very young art. Actual, experienced practitioners are very rare. Most “magic-users” work their magic through summoned and bound elementals of fire, air, or water (the summoning and binding is a fairly common practice, and elementals of varying power levels are often used as a kind of currency, although when a binding goes awry or an elemental manages to free itself, the results can be disastrous). Divine magic is common; there are four separate pantheons of gods, one for each element. Each elemental pantheon has both good and evil deities. The earth gods are, however, distant, frightening, and all but unknown. The various types of genies are held in the same esteem as celestials or fiends in other settings.
What’s new? What’s different? Illyria is a world of rocky, sunkissed coasts, wine-dark seas, rugged landscapes, deep forests, and vast deserts. It is a material plane that is actually coterminous with the four elemental planes. Creatures native to or somehow tied to those planes are therefore very common. Civilization is dominated by the genasi, humans who are touched by and linked to the elemental planes. They are the rulers and the nobles. There are no great empires or continent-spanning kingdoms; most of the civilized world is organized into city-states and small kingdoms that are dominated by the genasi. Airships powered by bound air elementals are common.
Core Ethos Sentence: The Tiki War is an adventure setting that consists of a huge tropical archipelago called Wala-Ku, also known as the Arcadian Islands, where the forces of light clash against the forces of darkness under the shadow of the Empire of Sapar.
Who are the Heroes? The main character is an incredibly powerful witch doctor named Ap Manu, who, when he saw that he would soon die, enacted a mighty ritual that preserved his identity and life essence in two great carved wooden masks. One was the dark Pu mask, and one was the good Ki mask. The evil Pu mask immediately set out to conquer the islands and began amassing followers, while the Ki mask set out to stop it. Other heroes could be islanders, dwarven traders, elven pirates, lizardfolk tribesmen, locathah chieftains, or Saparian soldiers or missionaries.
What do they do? The allies of Manu Ki and Manu Pu clash in epic fashion, of course, but over them hangs the threat of Sapar one day extending its control. Dwarven traders ply the waters in Gnomish ships trying to make a profit and defend themselves against elven and hobgoblin pirates. Aquatic elves and locathah try to maintain their unsteady alliance against the sahuagin.
Threats, Conflicts, Villains: The main conflict is between the allies of Manu Ki and the allies of Manu Pu. In addition, the Empire of Sapar directly controls the western end of the archipelago and lays claim to the rest of it. Native to the islands are halfling, orc, and lizardfolk tribes, all fairly primitive., but the shallow ocean waters between the islands teem with merfolk, aquatic elves, and locathah, all threatened by the Sahuagin who live in the great coral reef that protects the islands from the harsh weather to the south.
Nature of Magic: Magic works much like it does in the core rulebook and the setting and cosmology associated with it. Divine magic would be slightly different, with a new pantheon of tribal gods including minor spirits and the gods of Sapar in competition with each other. Prestige classes would give druids and clerics access to powerful animal abilities granted by spirits.
What’s new? What’s different? This setting would be quite different from usual D&D settings because of its greater focus than usual on the shallow seas around and among the islands, making underwater adventures and aquatic PC’s a viable option. Also, there is very little in the way of traditional dungeons other than the occasional small cave complex or dead volcano, and underwater caves abound, especially in the coral reef that is infested with sahuagin and other monsters. This means that emphasis would generally be on event-based rather than site-based adventures. There is a clash of cultures, as the Empire of Sapar interacts with the islander natives. Sapar, a more traditionally high medieval-based culture like that which is standard in other settings, provides PC’s so inclined with the option of a more familiar atmosphere.
Core Ethos Sentence: Twilight of Gaia is set in the Badlands, a ravaged, barren fantasy world where heroes use swords, pistols, and spells to fight monsters, defeat marauding gangs, and stand against the terrible forces of darkness.
Who are the heroes? Heroes in the Badlands include anyone brave (or stupid) enough to take up their sword, musket, or spellbook and stand up to the chaos and mayhem engulfing the world. Bran Barandorn, is a stout dwarven soldier who leads the town of Sunset Gulch, defending it from monsters and marauders with the help of the gnomish engineer Filbert Fimblefungers. Howls-like-the-wind is an outlaw wild elf shaman who believes that encoded into the songs of his people are the locations of the Six Amulets of Gaia. Finally, there is an enigmatic wandering swordswoman named Meshanna and her companion, a cowled figure known only as the Pistolier.
What do they do? The most serious objective is to thwart Black Rupert before his power-madness goes too far and the whole world falls under his terrible shadow. As his armies grow larger and more unstoppable, the heroes will have to unite the scattered tribes and settlements and enlist the aid of powerful magic. This includes recovering the lost Six Amulets of Gaia, powerful magic artifacts that date from before the Sorcerors’ War that hold the key to restoring the world to what it once was. But, Black Rupert also wants to hunt down the Amulets so that he can twist them to his evil purposes and use them to rule the Badlands forever.
Threats, Conflicts, Villains: The Badlands teem with monsters who lair in the mountains, scrub forests, and rocky wastelands. Gangs of orc, hobgoblin, and gnoll desperadoes run wild in the vast and rugged wilderness led by notorious leaders like Grodda the Unkillable, Broldak Ironfist, One-eyed Samuel, and Slidewinder, whose names strike terror into innocent peoples’ hearts. Evil wizards build towers on lonely mesas. Black Rupert, the infamous Warlord of the Mountains, rules his alpine kingdom, entices the bandit gangs to rally under his authority, and dreams of the day when the whole of the Badlands will belong to him. Behind Black Rupert stands dreaded Acliss, a terrible wizard of unknown origin whom few have ever even seen.
Nature of Magic: Although magic still functions as normal, it is rare, and most people are suspicious and distrustful of it. Everyone knows that it was magic that drained so much of the life from the once-lush world of Gaia and turned it into the wasted Badlands. Clerics and druids are more highly esteemed than wizards and sorcerors, but they’re rare enough that some people wonder if the gods even really care anymore.
What’s new? What’s different? The biggest difference is the addition of black powder firearms (muzzle-loading smooth-bore muskets and pistols, blunderbusses, and artillery cannons). Such weapons are prevalent enough to add a new flavor and dimension to the game, but not so common or advanced so as to overshadow longswords and crossbows. Advancing technology, mostly including innovations made by dwarves and especially gnomes, is one of the results of a reluctance to rely on magic. Elves, on the other hand, have by and large abandoned their high civilization, reverted to their primordial culture, and joined the grugach, or wild elves, living in nomadic tribes that wander the Badlands and often come into conflict with permanent towns and settlements.
Urbis is Urban Fantasy
As the name implies, cities are central to Urbis. Gone are the quaint market towns of other fantasy worlds - these belong to an earlier, feudal age. Instead, the world is divided into a multitude of city-states with populations ranging into hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people! While there are plenty of wilderness and frontiers left in the world, these are not the main focus of this setting. There are plenty of things to do in the cities, from hunting monsters in the sewers, getting caught up in struggles between crime families, fighting for social justice for the downtrodden masses, to high-stakes games of dimpomacy and intrigues between the rich and powerful of the cities.
Urbis is a Magical Industrial World
While most RPG fantasy worlds draw their inspiration from the Feudal Age or Renaissance of our world - or even earlier periods - Urbis is heavily inspired by the time of the European Industrial Revolution - the time when cities came into their own. On the one hand, it was a time of wonder - of scientific and technological prowess, and it seemed that there was nothing that humanity couldn't do. On the other hand, it also saw the rise of the urban poor - of masses of desperate people huddled together in ramshackle apartments who had not only work themselves to near-death, but also had to send their underage children to the same factories to keep their families from starvation.
The Nexus Towers, the iconic image of Urbis, represent both of these extremes. On the one hand, they promise near-limitless magical energies to those who control them, and thus make the vast cities with all their splendor and magics possible. On the other hand, they draw upon the very life of all those who live nearby, thus also becoming the Satanic Mills that many people imagined the early factories in our world to be.
Urbis is Realistic High Fantasy
At first glance, this seems to be a contradiction in terms. After all, "realism" and "fantasy" do not often come together. What this means in the context of Urbis is that for all the magical trappings of the setting there is an inherent logic to it. Fireball and other spells have radically altered the face of the battlefield. No longer is a battle fought with tight infantry formations that just ask to be killed by area-effect spells. Instead small groups of warriors try to sneak into enemy territory so that they can take out key installations or people before the other side notices. Raise dead has a real effect on the social structure of the setting - the rich and powerful are unlikely to die permanently of anything except old age. And all those monsters that look like they couldn't have possibly evolved in an Earth-like environment… well, they didn't. Most of them were brought to this world from other planets.
To sum it up, nothing in here exists in isolation from the rest of the setting. Everything affects the rest of society in some big or small way, or at least has the potential to do so - if the player characters bring it to light.
Urbis needs Heroes
While the cities seem calm and civilized on the surface, below it are intrigue, social unrest, and hidden wars that could turn into open bloodshed at any moment. As the cities grow ever larger and the differences between rich and poor more pronounced, some sort of radical transformation or even outright revolution becomes more and more likely.
Something has got to give. The only question is: In what direction will you push it?
Designer's Notes & Resources
Many pages in this wiki will contain a Designer's Notes section such as this one. In it, the author(s) of the page will add their thoughts on what they intended with writing the page - what their inspiration was, and how it fits into the larger context of the setting. Here now are a few thoughts on the setting as a whole.
On one hand, Urbis introduces some fairly novel concepts (such as the nexus towers) and also tries to rigorously examine the effects of these and of standard D&D magic on society, which in many cases produces a rather alien culture compared to either real-world societies or the "standard" fantasy worlds published for D&D. On the other hand, Urbis also has a large number of obvious similarities between many of its regions and real-world countries and regions throughout various periods in history.
This is intentional.
Yes, having so many parallels to our own Earth is not entirely realistic, especially if you consider the effects of magic and non-human intelligent beings must have had on the history of a world. However, it makes the world much more accessible for players, who don't always have the time to familiarize themselves with massive amounts of setting information about a realistic, but throughly alien fantasy world. It also makes adventure and campaign design much easier for dungeon masters, who can freely borrow ideas and plot lines from history, which has far more written material than all published fantasy worlds together. Likewise, most nonhumans still exhibit most of the common tropes associated with them (although I hope I have managed to introduce some new twists that make them interesting in their own right) so that the players will have some basic ideas what to expect of the role of these beings in the wider world.
But remember, all of these are only a starting point. Once you and your players have become familiar with the basics, you can introduce them to the more alien aspects of the setting that lurk just below the surface…
Dawnforge (由Fantasy Flight Games出版，半决赛选手[即提交了10页纸概述的选手])
Morningstar (由Goodman games出版，很不巧的是它的材料我也没找到，半决赛选手)
The Sunset Kingdoms (很遗憾的，这个我也没有找到详细材料，半决赛选手，并在2003年10月出版了基于d20系统的实体材料)
Midnight (又一个没有详细材料的，推测是半决赛选手)
其中，Conrad Deitrick (Random Goblin)所投稿的部分均由他本人上传至wiki.rpg.net；而Urbis目前则由paizo基于PF来进行开发