Char Creation

[Grodech]

Welcome.

I'm not gonna set a definite deadline for production of char sheets. Take your time, make something awesome. Ideally it would be nice to have them in by the weekend if not before.
I have a vague story outline but would rather tailor the over-arching idea to your character backgrounds so make the bios decent. The more you give me to work with, the more likely stuff will happen involving your backstory.
As I need somewhere to start before working stuff from your bio into the game I have a fairly self-contained opening "bit" so in your backstory please include the reason why you have booked passage on a ship heading to Talon's Reach, a city on the southern tip of the northernmost continent. Your reason can be as specific or vague as you wish, maybe it's simply a stop on your way elsewhere, who knows. Either way, it'll help by giving a definite destination while the party gets to know each other in the opening bit.

We'll be starting at level 2 so there's minor ECL to work with if you really want to play something non-core. No drow (mainly because I'm reserving the right to potentially use them as antagonists). No evil alignments. I have an idea for an evil campaign and maybe I'll run it at some point but this is not that game.
If you're playing a non-core race, please check with me first.
You have 900gp to spend on starting equipment. Due to the way we'll be starting the game you will begin with only your weapon(s), ammo, armour, shield, money pouch, potions, scrolls, a waterskin and any class specific necessities (thieves kit, spell components, focuses etc). Any other equipment would have been lost during the opening events. If unsure, check with me. You can also have any minor plot related trinkets you would start with (a ring with the family sigil, your dead mother's necklace, etc...)
Most books are available, I'll drop a list of books I own in the next post. Just copy/pasting from a text file so ignore any obviously 3e stuff.

As far as the world goes I'm not gonna dump a load of lore on you. You'll discover info about the world as we play suffice to say there was an event roughly 2500 years ago known as the Cataclysm. History is a bit fuzzy on the details but it involved the disappearance of the dragons and the death of the vast majority of magic users. The surface races recovered with time and magic slowly returned to the world. As such, low level magic, especially things such as Cure Light Wounds, is fairly common. The first focuses on the recovery of magic were around these things. Mid-level magic is uncommon, high level magic is rare. Many secrets were lost along the way and are only now being re-uncovered so things like planar travel for example are fairly unknown. Minor magical items are fairly common. Higher level magic items tend to be relics of the past found in long forgotten places rather than just picking up a +5 flaming vorpal longsword from your local arcane dealer.

Couple of house rules.
Firstly, not using death from massive damage. I hate it.
Secondly, "Attunement". Basically if you find a magic item you can identify it with the spell, or pay for such a service, or alternatively you can try to attune with it. Magic items are created to be used after all and people are good at figuring things out. To try identify an item through attunement you spend an hour of your day with the item, studying it, focusing on it, meditating, whatever. Attunement check is a wisdom check with a DC modified by the item's level and method of activation. If you fail, you can try again the next day, gaining a cumulative reduction to the DC. You can only attempt to attune to one item per day and the cumulative bonus is lost if you then switch to another item. There are no other benefits to attunement other than as a means of identifying an item's properties. Once identified, you can then pass the item to someone else who can use it. Hope that's straight forward enough. Ask if you're unsure what I'm getting at here.

I think that's everything but I'm bound to have missed something. Any questions, ask away.

[Grodech]

Oh almost forgot. Dunno how you guys are doing character sheets these days but any method is fine really. Plaintext in a post, pdf upload, email attachment, link to dropbox, etc...
It'd be handy to physically have it in the char sheets forum but we'll see what's easiest.

Book list follows:

3/3.5e

Arms and Equipment Guide
Book of Vile Darkness
Complete Adventurer
Complete Arcane
Complete Divine
Complete Warrior
Defenders of the Faith
Deities and Demigods
Draconimicon
Dungeon Master's Guide - 3e
Dungeon Master's Guide - 3.5e
Eberron Campaign Setting
Epic Level Handbook
Expanded Psionics
Faiths and Pantheons
Fiend Folio
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Frostburn
Hordes of the Abyss
Libris Mortis
Lords of Madness
Magic Item Compendium - 3.5e
Magic of Faerun
Manual of the Planes
Masters of the Wild
Monster Manual - 3e
Monster Manual - 3.5e
Monster Manual 2
Monster Manual 3
Monster Manual 4
Monsters of Faerun
Planar Handbook
Player's Handbook - 3.5e
Psionics Handbook - 3e
Races of Faerun
Races of Destiny
Races of Stone
Rules Compendium
Sandstorm
Savage Species
Song and Silence
Sword and Fist
Tome and Blood
Unearthed Arcana

[Grodech]

Duh, also, stats are standard 4d6 drop, with the usual reroll allowances for a particularly bad set. Don't worry too much about powergaming. I'm aiming for this to be fun not how many of you can I kill in a single combat encounter.

[Grodech]

Geography

I don't have a map, because I suck at drawing but here's an idea of the geography of the world. This is OOC so how much of this your character is aware of will depend on his level of education, his upbringing, how well travelled he is, etc.

The main central continent is called Voreth, it's a large landmass divided into an eastern and western side by a large expanse of desert. The larger eastern side is the main human "kingdom" if you will. I say human but in truth its very multicultural featuring people from all the core races and possibly others.
The main city on this continent, the biggest by far is Se'traal. (seh like set. traal to rhyme with Karl, emphasis on the traal). In the wake of the cataclysm this was the essentially the largest bunch of survivors who then worked together to rebuild a settlement, defend it from roving monsters, etc. These days Se'traal is a big city, a cultural melting pot and actually has an Academy of Wizardry called The Inquisitive Mind.
North of Se'traal is the port city of Khrone (as in crone). It's another fairly large place being the biggest port on the northern coastline as it allows access to Talon's Reach for one thing, and also to the western side of Voreth without having to cross the desert.
The smaller Western side of Voreth is heavily forested and is divided into the Halfling kingdom (Mowenna) in the north and the Elven kingdom (Scintillion) - the c is soft) in the south.
If you're from Voreth you could potentially be any race or class. A wizard would likely hail from Se'traal or at least have studied there. Elves or Halflings may hail from the western side of Voreth.

Further west is a continent that the humans call Damora which is heavy with incredibly thick and hostile jungle. Little is known about it. Explorations have been few and far between as frankly, most people have better things to do with rebuilding society than go off to get eaten by god knows what hostile wildlife. It's unlikely any of you hail from Damora.

To the south of Voreth are two more small continents known as Mikul and Banar. These are both fairly mountainous areas and are primarily home to gnomes and dwarves though there are others living there. The land there is less civilised than Voreth so it's a good home area for a barbarian for example.

North of Voreth is Askar. The easiest way to Askar is to sail by ship from Khrone to Talon's Reach. Askar is not as well populated as Voreth. Talon's Reach was founded by explorers seeking to find more info about the past but they arrived to find Askar pretty inhospitable. A lot of orcs lived there and as Talon's Reach was founded its growth was slowed by long protracted war with the orcs. Efforts to explore past the orcs yielded little as the plains give way to forest then swampland thick with goblins which in turn gives way to impassable mountains. To the east of Talon's Reach the continent continues but little is known about what lies beyond. A huge gorge (Ferin's Gorge) blocks off land access to the east and the area is just as unreachable by sea due to strange currents that pull ships in to the path of two large whirlpools.
Just over two decades ago, a rudimentary peace was forged with the orcs and they allowed the construction of a new settlement on the outskirts of their land. Part of this peace effort was that the humans would help the orcs bridge across Ferin's Gorge, only to find that beyond it the sand has all been fused into treacherous glass. What lies beyond is currently unknown. This eastern half of Askar is usually referred to as Barresh (emphasis on resh).

If you wish to invent a village, town or city for your backstory that's absolutely fine. Give info on it and using the above suggest whereabouts it might be found. There may be other landmasses out there that are currently unknown. Sailing, as with everything else, was a thing to be relearned after the cataclysm. Speaking of which...

Magic

Finding out more about the cataclysm may or may not be part of the adventure. If not, no worries, I will likely run other games in this world in future.
The exact date it happened is unknown. The current date is considered to be 2381 AC but no one can be sure if year 0 totally coincides with the cataclysm. The event itself was a bit like the breaking of the world in Wheel of Time. Landmasses were destroyed, continents shifted, the dragons disappeared somewhere around this time and the vast majority of magic users both arcane and divine were killed. But people being people, survivors clumped together and rebuilt; the first and thus now the biggest new settlement was Se'traal. Magic drifted back to the world very slowly. The first magics to be discovered and reused were things that were practical in day to day life. Light, purify food and drink, create water, mending, cure light wounds and so on. As such, minor magics like these are not uncommon. Most towns will have someone capable of whipping out a cure spell. Maybe even some villages. You walk into a village and cast light, people might be surprised momentarily, but they'll be familiar with the concept and might even have seen someone do so before. You walk into Se'traal and cast light and no one's gonna bat an eyelid.
Moving up the chain, you whip out a cone of cold those villagers are gonna be pretty blown away. That's impressive stuff. Even in towns they might not have seen such a thing before, but they might have heard of others who can do so, especially if they have friends in Se'traal.
Further up, you suddenly pick up prismatic spray and that is impressive. You might even be the first guy to have figured that one out. They might even name it after you.

So that's the state of it. It's not so much a low magic world as simply a world that's only now really starting to discover some of the more exotic and destructive spells. Levelling up a sorcerer you might be discovering new spells through pure magical talent. As a wizard it reflects your studies and research into the arcane. Certainly a mid-level wizard is gonna find that there aren't easy ways to pad out your spellbook short of finding a long buried city with a pre-cataclysm spellbook inside.
Same goes for magic items. Sure it wouldn't be hard to find your every day run of the mill potions. There are some enchanters out there creating things. +1 sword sir, not a problem. But the good stuff, the high level gear, well that's mainly pre-cataclysm items. True there might be a store in Se'traal where such items are on sale, looted as they were from ancient hidden temples and such but having them custom made is unlikely and once someone buys that +3 axe of wounding there isn't another one to replace it next week.
That said there's still plenty of monsters out there, some of which may have innate magics of their own.

And then there's psionics. Oh yes, psionics are around. Rarer than magic, for sure, but around nonetheless.

So. Hope that helps give a clearer idea of what's going on. I don't expect you to memorize it all. As I say, your character might not even know all that anyways. ^^