DF Khoramandu Sea

 I've mentioned the Nordlond setting in HoJ recently, and how I've thought to integrate it into the setting I'm already using. I haven't talked about the setting itself, so let's do that. When this Dungeon Fantasy campaign started 18 months ago (back in July of 2018), I didn't have a name for it. I didn't even have more than a vague notion of the setting. 

 Now we have the Nordlond setting for DFRPG, as described in Hall of Judgement and Citadel at Nordvorn from Gaming Ballistic, along with Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown and now another DF Setting book from SJGames is apparently in the works. Back then though, all I had were basic assumptions implied by the starting adventure in the DFRPG box, and the character descriptions of the pregens that came with the GM screen. Armed with that, I started shopping around for a suitable setting, or even a regional fantasy map that I liked, into which I could drop the two DFRPG adventures.

 I looked at several maps and fantasy settings. In the end I settled upon the Jordoba setting as described in World of Jordoba Player Guide by Matt Finch. It's a systemless book, although clearly written with OSR/D&D in mind. It's available on DriveThruRPG and now apparently as an add-on for Fantasy Grounds for those using that VTT platform.

 From the publisher: "The World of Jordoba is the masterpiece swords & sorcery campaign setting written by ENNIE award-winning author Matt Finch. Jordoba is an ancient world populated by strange peoples and stranger monsters, physically fraying into the depths of the oceanic multiverse. Ruination has spread across the world, and the civilizations of the Sea of Khoramandu are pushed back to the very coasts. And yet, humankind has risen from worse threats in the past eons of its existence. Scattered villages remain in the wildlands, and new barons carve out freeholds in the wilderness, their names scribed upon new maps. Great wizards make sorties into the very shadows beyond reality, seeking forgotten lore and undiscovered frontiers of arcane scholarship. It is a world where unnatural things survive from ancient times, where nameless gods have turned their unfathomable intentions, and where even civilized regions must literally be re-explored.

 "This is … the Weirdling world of Jordoba!"

 The setting is clearly supposed to conjure a swords & sorcery vibe, and it does. The world as shown on the map is of coastal kingdoms and city states, most of which are clustered around and connected by, a central sea. While the setting could certainly be bronze age, nothing in the material says it has to be, and it works well enough with my game having iron and steel technology. 

 The included map is excellent. There is both a separate high-res JPG, as well as a version split across 6 pages of the PDF. This was useful for me to print the map onto six sheets of A4 paper which I trimmed and stuck together like a folding map. The following screenshot from the Fantasy Grounds website will give you an idea.

 What grabbed me about this book was the amount of setting that the author conveyed in such of short number of pages. It strikes an almost perfect balance (for me) of enough detail to inspire, but not so much as to be restrictive on the GM. The games master can always change anything in a published setting to meet their needs, of course. However the more of a setting that the GM has to change, the more work they have to do; it can reach a point where you're better off with another setting or rolling your own. I had previously bought a separate fantasy setting book from a different publisher, which I ended up not using (and may now never use). That was before I realised that I already had a copy of World of Jordoba players guide and map, as part of a prior Humble Bundle offering.

 Of course there are bits of the Jordoba setting that I will alter to fit my own needs, but the book is written such that this feels easy to do. There are a small number of names from real history that I will remove (a setting that does this too much breaks the immersion for me). I have dropped in a small mountain range that isn't on the world map, as I needed one in that place. The book gives me broad enough spaces to fill in the gaps as I choose, while still peppering interesting details for setting flavour. 

 The titular Jordoba of the setting is a large and powerful city-state. However my campaign is not currently set there or anywhere nearby. I needed a Kingdom with a more feudal feel to it, to fit with what had already been established at the table. I chose Ioscany, which is a kingdowm along the northern half of the map, bordering the Sea of Khoramandu. 

 I didn't want to name this DF campaign after a city the party may never visit, but neither did I want to make the campaign feel limited by the name of a kingdom that the PCs might well outgrow. I decided to name it DF Khoramandu Sea, after the body of water that takes up much of the map, and connects many of the civilisations and unexplored places together.