Just wondering out loud here. I've been playing 5e with a school group and everything we've played has been from the WOTC stable of adventures in the Forgotten Realms. It's fun, but I don't want to read 50 pages of history just so I can go and kill some orcs. Is there anyone out there just making or running adventures that aren't tied to these official backgrounds? Does anyone else dislike this FR overkill? Am I just a grumpy Monk?
Like you, I don't want to read a novel before I can play a dungeon. Just give me a light dusting of the area and who the main players are for the game. A quick note or two about major personalities who make up the background is fine.
I start all of my campaign worlds small and make up the rest as we go. I have a world called Mundus that remains largely unexplored. The focus of the action is along the border of two kingdoms, Foxvale and Ironwood, with forays into a region called Maag Kriev, a rocky, barren wasteland populated by all kinds of nasties.
Ironwood has a pretty detailed history of kings and back-stabbing successions. The far northern pat has most of the industry, the central part is largely farmlands, and the southern part (which borders Maag Kriev) is largely mining. Foxvale is separated from Ironwood by a mountain range that Foxvale pretty much owns. Even though parts of it are geographically in Ironwood, Foxvale has teams all the way to the base, well within Ironwood borders. Foxvale is largely pastoral but does a good amount of trade with it's neighbors to the north and east (Somner, Ukagaho, and Brevon). Between the two kingdoms, Foxvale is far superior militarily, technologically, and economically.
To the south of both kingdoms is the xenophobic land of Tumalare. There is very little foreign influence that way, and so far the group hasn't gone there. Other unexplored lands are Alkariv, the Sarval Wastelands, Thura Hold, Elternwood, Vir, Lassa, Kopeckna, Ulan, The Crown Lands (a powerful kingdom that owns Ukagaho), and Koravath. I've done very little development on these lands as the party has never gone there.
Of the lands on my map, I like Brevon the best. The people are western European in appearance, but culturally the place a territory of an as-yet unnamed Oriental-influenced land. I draw a lot of their customs, etc. from my Kara-Tur boxed set. When we run games in this campaign world, the guys call Breon "D&D: The Chuck Norris Edition"!
Like I said, I'm making a lot this up as the campaigns here go. One element I put in that is optional if anybody wants to lift this creation of mine to their own worlds is an aspect I call "The Kingdom of Rust". Some of my players like post-apocalyptic visions, so I created a story of many advanced civilizations rising and falling over the generations. Every now and then the party finds themselves in such ruins. Many are damaged beyond recognition, but some are overgrown and, to a degree as needed by the story, still functioning. One of my favorite adventures involved a hidden cave with strange runes over the entrance. The runes, quite legible to our real-world eyes, read "Uncle Klutzy's Fun House of Horrors". Let's just say "...and a good time was had by all!"
