Tabletop Game / Planegea

Planegea is a prehistoric fantasy campaign setting created by David Somerville for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, released as a sourcebook titled "Star-Shaman's Song of Planegea". Set in a fantasy Stone Age, Planegea remains recognisable as the same game, but is populated by prehistoric animals living alongside humans, dwarves and elves. In some ways, it can be presented as the distant pre-history of a classic medieval fantasy setting like Forgotten Realms.

You gather around a clanfire instead of a tavern hearth, delve into cave systems instead of dungeons, and tattoos and cave paintings take the place of books. The planes of existence have yet to separate, and you can travel by foot from the Material Plane into what would eventually become the Plane of Fire or the Astral Sea. Gods are particularly powerful creatures or places that have taken on divine qualities, but have not developed into the universal forces typically encountered in later fantasy. Writing, numbers, wheels and money are forbidden; those who try to break these taboos end up dying gruesomely at the hands of the enigmatic Hounds of the Blind Heaven, ensuring that the world is locked at Stone Age technology.

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This game contains examples of:

• Alien Sea: The Sea of Stars is an ocean of liquid magic. This 'water' is an extremely powerful spell component eagerly sought by spell casters versed in arcane wonders. Stars can breathe this magic, but mortals submerged in it without protection will be reduced to nothingness.
• Animalistic Abomination: The Hounds of the Blind Heaven. While the Animalistic part is only implied as the beasts are never shown visually, the Abomination part is very clear: No matter where you are, if you break one of the Black Taboos, the Hounds will bring you a gruesome death.
• Base on Wheels: Some beasts in the Dire Grazelands are so massive and docile that entire huts and platforms can be constructed on their backs. As these herds live in close formation, some tribes of the Direstaves construct what are called "beastback villages", using rope bridges slung between them when the camp settles down for the night.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Six Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition classes have different names, to fit a world without monasteries, ancient religions or magical universities: ascetic (monk), chanter (bard), shaman (cleric), guardian (paladin), scavenger (rogue) and spellskin (wizard).
• Circle of Standing Stones: The Soaring Stones are massive menhirs, too large to be lifted even by the hands of a giant, arranged in a circle and drifting in midair.
• The Commandments: The Black Taboos are 3 laws enforced by the Hounds of the Blind Heaven, and are what keep Plangea in a state of Prehistoric Stasis. They are...
  • Writing is death. Pictures and patterns are fine, but no abstract symbols to communicate information.
  • No number after 9. Any number higher than nine is simply referred to as "many". For mechanical purposes, regular numbers are still used but In-Universe 10 or higher numbers gets a visit from the Hounds.
  • No wheels or money. As the inventions most responsible for ending the stone age, either of these are strictly forbidden. Planegea operates entirely on barter.
• Dark World: The Nightmare World bears a strong resemblance to its waking counterpart. Any location could be identified by a creature familiar with it in the waking, but always looks as if marred by disaster. In addition, everywhere is perpetually overcast and shadowy, drained of colour, existing mostly in shades of grey and black.
• Elemental Plane: The four Elemental Wastes—the vast and dark sea of Brinewaste, the soaring ranges of the Quakewaste, the burning hellscape of the Scorchwaste, and the vast storm of the Windwaste—are wild, uninhabitable realms of earth, air, fire and water at the very edge of the world, where ancient genies and alien elementals dwell. Since the planes have yet to actually split, a traveller can walk from one to another on foot, but the lands seem to strain against each other, pulling reality ever farther apart. Between each of the wastes lies a similarly accursed region known as the Four Fangs, which correspond to the future Paraelemental Planes.
• Elephant Graveyard: Shatterbone was originally a mammoth graveyard where old elders of the herds would come to die, and has become a haunt for scavengers of all kinds.
• Enchanted Forest:
  • A wild wood, thick with wolves, Howlgrove is said to be haunted by accursed wolf-men, whose bite spells death and whose hunger is immortal. Its offputting reputation makes it a favourite meeting place of scavengers and murderers.
  • An ancient forest that long ago exiled its treants and dryads, the Slumbering Forest has more than its share of monsters, enchantments and secrets. They say that lost hunters in the forest fall asleep, dream of taking root—and when they wake, they stretch their branches towards the heavens in search of the winter sun.
  • The Daggerwood is famous for its twisted treants and alluring spirits that haunt and tease the weak-willed into sinking deaths in oozing mud. It is home to outcasts, exiles, murderers and traitors.
  • The trees in the Nodhold are shrouded in constant fog, which hides the caves and subterranean passageways into Nod. This nexus of travel is a death sentence for the unprepared, with countless ways into the terrifying Nightmare World.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: The Eyestone is a towering stone with a great, seemingly natural hole drilled in the middle, in which sputters and burns a glowing light of ever-changing colour and brightness. All manner of spellcasters have examined the Eyestone, trying to unlock its secrets, but the only effect seems to be a terrifying feeling of being not only watched but seen and known utterly.
• Fictional Color: Certain colours are not seen in the waking world but do appear in the Dream World. They have no name and are so entrancing that they cause mortals to react as if under the effect of the hypnotic pattern spell. Mortals often seek certain mud poultices or chitin lenses to affect their vision so they wouldn't have to see these colours.
• Forever War:
  • The bloodthirsty efreeti who inhabit the Scorchwaste are locked in endless wars and political machinations. While they could turn and destroy the Fire Empire in a moment if they would unite, the fire giants know that such cooperation is impossible for them.
  • The struggle between krakens and storm giants is older than anyone but the aboleths can remember. The Sea Empire stands against the chaos of the deep, a bastion of defence from the tentacled horrors that would tear down all life, and the entire Kraken Coast shakes at the violence between the two powers.
• Foreshadowing: Certain elements of Planegea lore are clearly setting things up for the future to an experienced fan of the wider D&D multiverse, given Planegea's status as "D&D's Stone Age".
  • The dwarves are noted as having skills at construction that are greatly admired and respected by the giant empires, resulting in the giants treating the dwarves with what some dwarves are starting to regard as "almost suspicious" friendliness. In some D&D settings, chief amongst them the Nentir Vale, dwarven history includes a prolonged period when the race was enslaved by the giants to be their primary workers of stone (and later metal).
  • "Monsterblood Orcs" are orcs who are noted as being warped into violence-addicted, rage-driven bloodthirsty monsters by their diet of Eldritch Abominations. If this alone isn't clear that they are devolving into the Always Chaotic Evil orcs of most settings, monsterblood orcs are also referred to as "The Doomed".
• Ghost City: Bosa was a fortress-city built by a foolish Fire Emperor who tried to invade the Inferno Waste beyond the border carefully negotiated by his forebears. The city was ravaged by the rage of the efreeti, and still exists as a fire-blackened, magic-twisted ruin, haunted by undead giants and fire elementals.
• Grim Up North: The Scorchwaste, in the extreme north of Planegea, is a burning hellscape, whose flames would consume Planegea in a moment if there were not a great barrier desert to break them.
• Heaven: To forestall Nazh-Agaa's growth, some gods have begun to experiment with creating shards of existence for certain souls of their choosing. Non-evil deities make fragmentary realities where they can bless and protect their followers.
• Hell: To forestall Nazh-Agaa's growth, some gods have begun to experiment with creating shards of existence for certain souls of their choosing. For evil ones, these take the form of eternal punishments for especially hated rivals or transgressors.
• Hollywood Prehistory: Planegea throws together prehistoric species separated by millions of years and works off a pop culture understanding of the Stone Age.
• Hungry Jungle: The Venom Abyss is a writhing jungle full of dinosaurs, apes and gigantic poisonous crawling beasts of all kinds. Everything is alive and growing. Twisted poison vines, enormous carnivorous plants, things that are half-plant, half-monster... the jungle crawls with danger, most of it mindless and instinctual.
• Intelligent Forest: Most trees in Planegea are awake, aware of the world around them, and able to move through the earth from place to place. To travel in a forest is to be watched, judged and threatened should one carry fire or a chopping blade. Many mortal clans have been wiped out by a roving forest that deemed them unworthy of survival.
• Land of Faerie: The wondrous World of Dreams, full of twilight beauty and strange delights, works with a shifting, metamorphic logic that is an expression of inner state and desire, full of allure and magic. But things can change abruptly to be much stranger and more fearful than one could possibly imagine.
• Loads and Loads of Races: All of the standard 5e races are represented in Planegea, alongside four unique races, and it's mentioned that the young world may well be home to other races of the Dungeon Master's desire, such as various Beast Man races.
  • The "Godmarked" are a nascent race of humanoids descended from humans whose alliances with specific gods has resulted in them gaining distinct physical mutations and magical blessings. These are just used to justify the presence of tieflings, though.
  • Half-oozes are humanoids who were killed by a parasitic ooze, which awakens to sapience after binding itself to the nervous system of a fresh humanoid corpse and then has to find a place for itself in the wider world.
  • Starlings are sapient stars that fell to the earth from the heavens and now cannot go home.
  • Draconic Humanoid: Dragonborn are the youngest race to appear in the Great Valley, as the known world of Planegea is called. They claim to be the direct descendants of the Worldheart Dragon, who broods on Blood Mountain, and to have sailed up the Unfalls on rafts made from the trees of the Venom Abyss to bring the Worldheart's will to Planegea. These primordial dragonborn only have Chromatic Dragon ancestry, as the Metallic Dragons don't exist on Planegea.
  • Hobbits: Known as the "Quietkin", these are silent and vicious hunters who view all the world's other creatures as both enemies and prey.
  • Lizard Folk: The Saurians are a collection of four humanoid dinosaurs — the pterosaur-based Leatherwings, the ankylosaurid Hammertails, the carnosaur-evolved Sharpfangs and the hadrosaur-descend Webfoots — united by a common culture, centered around a blending of necromancy and ancestor worship, as well as an intense wanderlust and a hunger for knowledge. Individual subraces have defining traits too. Leatherwings are noted for their skill at mysticism and their inherent reclusivity; they have a well-deserved reputation for cruelty and for pursuing arcane knowledge with a ruthless zeal. Hammtertails are deeply contemplative, but experience wanderlust the most strongly of all the races. Sharpfangs are territorial, warlike and predatory. Webfoots favor coastal regions, marshes and river banks, and tend to be the most laidback of the saurians.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The first dwarves of Planegea carved themselves from the living stone of the earth's womb and set themselves free to wander the surface. These first generation dwarves, known as Hewn Dwarves, tend to have stony growths and outcroppings on their flesh, whilst their second-generation offspring, the Born Dwarves, are much more fleshy in appearance.
  • Our Elves Are Different: Elves in Planegea are living dreams who have begun to leave their home in Nod to explore the world of flesh, with different kinds of dream roughly equating to different elfin subtypes. Half-elves often seem to be a weird mishmash of human and elfin physical traits, and some, known as Blood Shifters, have a kind of humanshifting power which lets them freely shift between one of three forms; their half-elf form, their human form, and their elf form.
  • Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Gnomes are despised in Planegea, being regarded as a race of sneaky, dishonorable scavengers who rely on trickery, subterfuge and deceit to get ahead. With their willingness to pick over kills, scavenge from trash piles and steal whatever they believe will help them, these cunning tinkerers prioritize survival over honor or shame.
  • Our Orcs Are Different: Orcs in Planegea are a rare but highly respected and admired race renowned for their strength and toughness. They regard the gods with contempt, and even hunt them down and eat them to take their strength for themselves, which is slowly twisting them into the monsters that the future world will remember them as.
  • Plant Person: The Dreas are trees who were so fascinated by mortals that they took up humanoid form and mobility to walk amongst them.
• Magically-Binding Contract: Those who swear a pledge in the Dream World often find themselves haunted by pact totems, incorporeal spirits who ensure the enforcement of the pact by stalking those who swear to do something. Pact totems are harmless unless oaths are broken, at which point they cross into material form and violently attack.
• Mask of Power: A magic mask is carved and decorated to resemble a specific creature, and imbues its wearer with a measure of that creature's power.
• Medieval Stasis: Enforced. The Hounds of the Blind Heaven are a mysterious metaphysical force that attacks and kills anyone who breaks the Black Taboos (no writing, wheels, money, or numbers above 9). These metaphysical rules and their mysterious enforcers were created as DM tools to keep Planegea locked in the Stone Age. The absence of metal and agriculture is not due to the Blind Heaven; metal simply does not exist and Duru the forest titan assaults those who harness the power of the growing earth.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: In the Dream World, there is no sensible distinction between types of being. A dinosaur may have a frill of leaves, an elf may have clouds for hair, or a mountain may have eyes. Anything might talk just as a humanoid may turn out to have the mind of a wildfire.
• Mordor: Tomb-lands are cloaked in darkness and fog, which hapless mortals lured into the domain of the vampire find it impossible to leave. They unwillingly guard the vampire's tomb, erecting traps and cultic warnings while warding off any potential interference; all the while both hating and fearing their overlords.
• Nay-Theist: Clans without any divine relationships are rare, but do exist. Some clans—such as those comprised mainly of orcs, druids, or arcane practitioners—see the gods as a distraction, believing that they take as much as they give and that mortals are better off surviving on their own terms.
• Perpetual Storm:
  • The Windwaste is a vast white windstorm that howls with an endless wildness.
  • The Everstorm is an infinite wall of elemental fury where the water battles the air, always raging, shaking the ground and lashing out with lightning.
• Pirate: Heavily armed sharksails sail in spiked boats, prowling the Scattersea for easy prey, launching themselves onto the catamarans of Whale Clan families to plunder their supplies.
• Power Tattoo: Rather than carrying a book like wizards in other settings, spellskins tattoo the shapes of magic onto their skins. Powerful spellskins are covered in tattoos, and can call forth the magic they have wrestled into their skin at will.
• Reincarnation: Since Nazh-Agaa is forever barred from its borders, all life is cyclical in the Dream World. To die is only to be reborn in another form. To kill is a light offence or more often a good joke, since the soul will simply get a new body.
• Resurrection Sickness: Those who are resurrected by magic are not unaffected by their sojourn among the dead. After being resurrected, when resting, they're occasionally plagued with visions of oblivion. This is called the gravemark, and it can only be removed through a spell such as greater restoration or the blessing of a god.
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Dwarves are known for their love of building structures and their abandonment of finished projects. It's said that though dwarves may build a stronghold for seven generations, no sooner is the last stone placed than they gather their belongings and move on. Because of this peculiarity, the world is dotted with stone monuments, circles, shrines, towers, fortresses and other habitations left behind for other creatures to move into.
• The Sacred Darkness: The Saurians use necromancy to commune with the spirits of their ancestors, and take great steps to preserve them as fully as possible in preparation for a prophesied event where they will rise as one to protect their living descendants.
• The Savage South: In the southern arc of the Great Valley lie wide, sparse grazing lands with hearty grass, uneven hills, and little forests and pools of water. This land is unwelcoming, and its little hills and valleys are claimed by countless minor deities known collectively as the Winter Gods, whose spitefulness, petty aggression and limited power makes them an object of reluctant worship for the shamans forced to make camp in their lands. The tribes of the Great Valley would avoid the region if they could, but during the winter months, the southlands undergo their rainy season and become relatively lush and verdant, compared to the dry, wind-scoured north, so animals and people alike migrate south for the winter and then head north once spring returns.
• Sentient Stars: The stars of Planegea are alive, and spend the night dancing, endlessly recombining as they gossip and preen.
• Shrouded in Myth: None can say who or what the spider-queen is. Some say she is a cursed woman in the shape of a gigantic spider from the waist down. Others that she is the mother of spiders—a great, massive many-eyed thing without a shred of humanity. Yet others believe she is neither spider nor woman, but an evil goddess in spidery form.
• Single Specimen Species: The Worldheart Dragon's Five Consorts are the only metallic dragons in existence—one ancient metallic dragon of each species.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Planegea designates any character or creature who enslaves others as canonically evil. The gamesmaster's section also discusses removing any aspect of slavery from the setting, for groups that find it too much to stomach.
• Sword and Sorcery: The setting takes many elements of inspiration from this genre, albeit with a higher magic level than usually associated with the genre, and even outright describes itself usiong the term.
• That's No Moon: The Breathtaking Lagoon appears to be a lake of majestic beauty, yet those who touch its surface find themselves sucked under by sticky pseudopods—for the lake is in fact the greatest of all primordial oozes. Its appearance is a lure for the hapless creatures on which it feeds.
• Thirsty Desert: The Fang of Sand and Wind is searing desert, where constant sandstorms choke and bite and rip the flesh off of those foolish enough to wander into them. If a storm is not blowing, the sun can reduce a traveller to dizzy weakness in a matter of hours, before skull-scarabs finish them off when they fall.
• This Way to Certain Death: Most apex predators will leave clear signs that their territory is their own. This might consist of clawed trees, furrowed earth, or—for a more intelligent creature—symbols or corpses left as a warning to others.
• Tree Top Town: There is an entire world in the treetops of the Venom Abyss, full of creatures who live and die without ever touching the jungle floor. Arboreal villages gather fruits and nuts, hunt small prey, and avoid predators.
• The Underworld: Those who die in Planegea step through the Dark Door and find themselves in the Infinite Necropolis, an endless, lightless city inhabited by fading souls. There is no food or water, no sound, and no escape. All shades who inhabit the Infinite Necropolis find themselves adding to it, constructing walls, towers, cellars and foundations, spreading its reach. The shades work for unknowable time, wasting away until the merest whisper of a soul remains and then vanishes, and they are fully absorbed into Nazh-Agaa. It is said that there are secret ways for the living into Nazh-Agaa's kingdom, but that once you find your way in, you can never again depart.
• Weird Moon: Planegea's moons traverse a life-cycle from birth to death. New moons are formed irregularly (usually at least once a month), born of a violent eruption of ash and smoke at the mouth of Blood Mountain. Each moon begins small and dark, then grows as it waxes until it is full. Afterwards it begins to die, waning until its husk turns to dust and disappears into the Sea of Stars. This entire process takes thirty days. Because of this cycle, there are never the same number of moons in the sky at any given time—sometimes there are many, and sometimes none at all.
• Weird Weather: The Nightmare World is where sleeping spirits twist and seethe in negative emotions, acting as the Nightmare World's weather. Soulstorms can take many forms (fog, lightning, rain, wind) all from the horror and anguish experienced by countless restless sleeping souls.
• World of Chaos: The land in the Dream World is utterly unconcerned with the physics of the Waking World.
• Zombify the Living: The longer a mortal spends in the Nightmare World, the less they resemble themselves or identify with the waking world. Spending too much time can convert a living creature to undead.

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