World of Buzzard

Summary: 

     World of Buzzard is a massive TTRPG campaign for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, set in an entirely custom setting. I created it as a personal project, and am currently (as of November 2023) in the process of running the campaign. The campaign has lasted over a year so far, and there is still much more for my players to discover and accomplish.

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     The project consists of a 99-page main story document, several custom mechanics, supplementary documents detailing NPCs and additional worldbuilding, nearly 150 custom items, 113 custom monsters with full statblocks (approximately 30 of which are especially-detailed boss monsters), and several dozen pieces of original artwork. All done by me.

     The campaign revolves around the players exploring the secret histories of a post-apocalyptic setting, with the goal of locating and recovering mythical artifacts that can help them save what remains of civilization. All the while, they have to face the gruesome dangers of a dead world... and the things that have come from beyond to feast on its carcass.

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     The setting is explicitly biological, with the world itself taking on the characteristics of a corpse, all in favor of both creating interesting creatures, locations and other setpieces as well as emphasizing the themes of the campaign's story. These themes include nature, change, acceptance of death, and the role of death within nature. The biological styling also served as an excellent opportunity for worldbuilding, featuring marvelous land features such as mountains of bone, a putrid muddy ocean, and of course the magic disease volcano caused by underground gas buildup from the decaying of the world. It has also been an excellent exercise designing monsters for the wasteland setting, as they have to be particularly resourceful, brutal or just plain bizarre in order to survive. The only parts of the setting that aren't a decaying mutant wasteland are the few remaining pockets of civilization, which have taken on a gothic gaslamp fantasy aesthetic.

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     The actual structure of the campaign revolves around the players searching for the scattered pieces of a divine monument that was supposed to protect the world, as well as piecing together the history of what exactly happened to result in its destruction. Playing the campaign alternates between spending time researching, roleplaying and preparing, and then voyaging out into the savage world for combat and dungeon crawls. Every part of the setting is meant to be explored and has at least one point of plot relevance, ensuring a "world tour" of the blighted wastelands. At many points, the party is also provided with multiple choices as to which objectives they wish to pursue, in order to break up the relatively linear plot structure. There is nothing actively stopping the party from going wherever they like at any point in time, but they may find themselves underprepared for higher-level areas.