Backwater World (GLoGtober 2023)

 (Thanks to Xaosseed for the prompt and CatDragon for running GLoGtober this year)

An example world from my Alternate Fantasy World Generator.

People of this world typically have black blood, lending an inky cast to most variations of appearance.

They are more callous, deceitful and content than folks in our world. War and other mass conflicts, are rare. But most do not account it to be shameful to lie, and in the most dominant cultures it is held that if you own something you have no obligation not to waste it. They would make good capitalists, except...

Trade and Gender roles are completely foreign concepts to them. Rather than any kind of exchange, they often band together on the basis of mere affinity, in its various forms. 

Common classes include: Ranger, Bard, Thief, Fighter, Cleric, Illusionist, Picker

If you are playing something B/X-like, use these rules for a Picker:

• Picker
  Level as thief. Requirements: Dexterity 9, Alignment lawful
  Prime Requisites: Wisdom
  Hit Dice: 1d4
  Attack: as thief
  Saves: as fighter
  Armour: Any, no shields
  Weapons: Any one-handed weapon
  Languages: Lawful, Common.
  Abilities: Infravision 60’. Surprise attack as ranger. 2-in-6 chance of Hear Noise.

If you are playing something more like a classic GLoG, use these rules:

• Picker
  Start with: shortspear, hardened leather shirt, waders, spool of copper wire, spyglass
  +1 inventory slot per level
  A: Never surprised, keen hearing, Inhabitants of Imvou assume you are entitled to take almost any object
  B: You can combine two slots' worth of tools into a new, normal slot of tools. You can discern the use of mundane items on sight, and of magical items with an hour of tinkering.
  C: If there is an extant specialist profession that can use an item, you can fake it pretty well.
  D: Speak with Osoge. Your riggers assemble contraptions in half the time.

The planet has been gradually reshaped by its frequent connection with interplanar travelers. "Foreigner" cities and fortresses are common especially on the northern coast of Imvou. It is mostly a desirable destination for such people as a stable dimension where an exceptionally patient wizard of modest means can gradually befriend a workforce of some size. Even with the means of interplanar travel, the exoplaners are usually no match for the Oboczo's rites, and so dreams of conflict are sheathed. There is little for the Foreigners to do but hide out from other planes in their cities, trade in second-rate arbitrage schemes, and attempt to charm the locals. 

Survey

Imvou, the southern continent:

Oboczo: Faith-based Silent Rot Post-Industrialists. A religion of communal living and contemplation, with rites involving the consumption of fermented vegetable matter. Many of the faith's core populations are Guak, troll-like humanoids whose work can feed many people efficiently. They have close control over the rot fields which provide for the faithful, and as such their decisions impact everyone else. PCs may desire their superior armor, somehow antibacterial in a way that allows the wearer to go longer without removing it. The unauthorized fringers of the Oboczo seize supplies from those not of the faith and centralize it in wicked depots to disperse to others.

Ekmo: Nation-based Heath Grassland Complex. Surrounding most rot farms, sometimes for hundreds of miles, are sub-prime yet workable territories, divided up in approximate and disputed nations. Even a jumped-up Ekmo king or bureaucratic orcish nabob is likely to pay homage to the faithful of Oboczo when a representative comes to visit, owing to their perceived technical superiority and prestige. Conflict between cultures is resolved through a complex bureaucratic union every five years, where a nation found to be in the wrong can be effectively driven to privation as other nations gang up against them in punishment. Many conflicts concern control of the mighty Ek trees, needled and green-fleshed, with an uncommon ability to store water. You could squeeze fresh wood like a sponge to disgorge double its mass in potable water. Arcane towers dot the landscape, once sponsored by nations but ever-more entangling themselves with the Foreigner cities.

Zovo: Identity-based Crystal Salt Nomads. Sailing along Imvou's intricate coasts, the Zovo follow the migration of fish and animate kelps, closely-guarded gifting routes, or seasonal passages. They are renowned for Saltplanking, a secret process of introducing salt crystals into wood to give it a unique texture and pink coloration. Unmarked grottos serve as the graves of  their greatest heroes, buried with wealth and salinated living fossils. Some errant microorganism, said to originate from a careless Foreigner bastion, is spreading through the waters around Imvou, causing the sea life to rot in new and unwholesome ways. The Zovo more than others has suffered for this, not only finding privation but a new illness, the insidious Brown Grasp.

If: Identity-based Heath Lake Nomads. Have frequent interactions with Ekmo folk, and form an unacknowledged pressure valve on Zovo gifting routes. Much tribute is paid to perverse lake monsters, the species of which Grendel's mother is the most famous example. In return, they are given an unnamed metal which they form into helmets and tools. When held out of the water, the metal absorbs air around it, and when submerged an If nomad can suck on the metal to take in the air it previously absorbed. The people enjoy uncommon prosperity, and they don't give a damn about Foreigner gold.

Uwimob: Clan-based Incorporeal Polluted Post-Industrialists. The ghosts and ghost-adjacents which arrise from the swirling cycles of life and death in the practice of Oboczo, arranged in oversensitive lineages, the eldest and most twisted serving as the heads of each ancestry. These leaders bless and curse certain farms over others to improve their own position in the ghastly hierarchy, an advantage they cannot hold for long as to bolster their lineage's position in undeath they must starve it in life. They know the secrets of this magical immortality, and teach it to the most promising of the Oboczo sages. Meanwhile, some Uwimob devise deadly gauntlets for the living to undertake, showering victors with glory and arcane secrets. 

Imueb, the western continent:

Lokoa: Family-based Glacial Fell Utopia. In the rich remainder of a gradual glacial recession, families of morose snow elves refine their magical arts, "OP" like how elves are sometimes depicted. Their puissance is due in part to the cultivation of thawberries, which are harvested in springtime floods like chilly cranberries. These berries can be rendered into powders and unguents that constitute material useful for researching spells and constructing magical items. While the people of Imvou are lukewarm at best when it comes to the Foreigners, the familiarchs of Lokoa send constant embassies to gain their favor. Recently, these embassies have diminished in grandeur as Lokoa have encountered more and more tunnels revealed by the receding ice, connected to an underground network of strong and magically-resistant freaks they find better to simply pay off with tribute. Meanwhile, Lokoa engage in a cyclical system of raids, feuds, and captive-taking among themselves.

Omobiuz: Region-based Atomic Acid Horticulturalists. While Lokoa families are preeminent in Imueb, much more of the continent is taken up by the gardening communities of the Omobiuz. Disdainful of Foreigners, they tend to rebuff the occasional obsequious otherworlder trader who seeks the secret of their planting, as they are masters of ferns so acidic as to serve as weapons and fences. The most impressive plants are fed in greenhouses by shards of fallen stars, which many Omobiuz cultures consider the blessing hands of providence. In these greenhouses, it is common to wear "garden-armor", also desirable to adventurers for its resistance to beams and dragon breath. Conflict is rare between different regions beyond mocking each others' silly accents and garden-armor styles, but within a region cultures are usually strictly divided along racial lines, with internecine struggles for dominance. Garrisons usually made up exclusively of a dominant ethnic group enforce their customs and hoard magic, and it is here where prospective mages go to train and be trained.

Ujom: Ethnic-based Deep Electricity Complex. Descended from the same culture group as the Omobiuz. Many of their race categories are similar to those the Omobiuz codify, and it is not uncommon for a member of one culture group to assimilate into the other. Ujom broadly avoid absorption by other groups by tapping into the planet's electric core to power simple mechanisms, charge shocking traps, and melt through permafrost in a unique masonic art. Because of the underground predation of the magic-resistant freaks paid tribute by the Lokoa, electrified polearms and other weapons are close to hand under the northern and southern regions of the continent. Ruins of the first great Ujom builders dot the upper crust, haunted by their sins. 

Iahodro: Multicultural-based War Jungle Hunter-gatherers. Spread through the equatorial rainforests of Imueb is a complicated system of interlocking cultures. Generations of wealth and plenty concentrated in the head of the influential Nacre-Ring People's imperial line. At the direction of a clique of Foreigners, she has broken with many traditions limiting conflict to pursue a line of absolute war against several neighboring cultures, a violation so severe that many of the cultural exarchs which aligned themselves with her have broken from her, leaving a strip of dense jungle fighting that spans the continent, safely averted only through Ujom tunnels. Soldier and hunter alike wear wooden helmets blessed by their cleric-rangers to radically improve their sense of hearing. In remote jungle groves, independant illusionists, styling themselves "visionaries", develop and redevelop strange defenses.

Aldau: Nation-based Scrub Mindless Fiefdoms. Bound by the Wands of Jalau, powerful sceptres that enforce a potent and magical form of feudal loyalty. Those directly sworn to the monarchs are as mental extensions, those sworn to the extensions are as bondsmen, all the way down until the frightened or prideful serfs who act freely but with the constant threat of more exultant, invasive service. Foreigner envoys have made friends with some of the nearer Aldau nations, both their rulers and their humble freemen, granting them magic items to reshape the scrubland, from canal-digging suits of armor to weather-commanding towers. Those nations without such gifts are variously in a scramble to seize, align with, or flee these ascendant remakers of the very land. The opulent temples of former dynasties fall into disrepair in the dryest wastes of Aldau, and it is said that disobedient peasants go to swear fealty to strange beasts of blood and bone.