The world of New Moon Bay
I'm back because why the hell not. I figured I would drop some notes about my homebrew D&D setting, because I'm really enjoying the hell out of it.
The Basics: I have elves, dwarves, humans, halflings, firbolgs, and gnomes as my primary playable races.
Most elves live in New Moon Bay, which is a city on the coast about two weeks journey from the mountains called the Barrier Peaks, which I have modeled on the Sierra Nevadas. The mountains run in a ridge from the northwest to the southeast. High in the northweste mountains there is a lake which I don't think I have named yet. It is modeled on Lake Tahoe before Lake Tahoe collapsed under the assault of development, fertilizer run-off, and algae blooms. Not far from the lake, burrowing deep into the mountains, is the main dwarven city, called Dwarrowdelf. At the southeast end of the mountain range is the city of Auldminster, which is the main human city. In a bit of valley in the middle of the mountain range is Halfholt, a large halfling town.
In the rolling hills between the mountains and the sea are forests and plains where the firbolgs live a semi-nomadic life. Each firbolg tribe has a summer encampment in the mountains and a winter encampment on the plains. They practice forest gardening, and though they do not domesticate livestock, they have developed sophisticated methods of cultivating wild game in their lands, using controlled burns to encourage the green shoots and fresh grass favored by deer and elk. Gnomes live in small, close-knit villages in the woods, tending gardens and cultivating small game such as rabbits and ducks in the same way that the firbolgs cultivate large game.
In caves and tunnels under the mountains live the drow and dueregar, the elves and dwarves of a vast underground region called the Underdark. In the deep ocean beyond the continental shelf there is a merfolk city. We haven't really spent much time with the merfolk yet, so I haven't quite got them figured out.
Currently, the dwarves and humans are in conflict over the mineral resources of the Barrier Peaks, which have veins of gold running through their granite bones. The gold was difficult to mine because almost every vein of gold was embedded in a thick sticky blue mud that fouled mining equipment and generally made all but the richest gold veins too much trouble to work. An enterprising alchemist got curious and analyzed the mud, and came to the astounding discovery that it was almost 90% pure mithril. (This actually happened in Nevada, but the blue mud was silver, because mithril doesn't actually exist.) This caused a mithril rush, with both dwarves and humans staking conflicting claims to the wealth.
The main reason the conflict hasn't developed into a full-blown war is that dwarves don't see the point in pitched battles between armies. It makes much more sense that if there are humans digging in your territory, you just go and collapse their mine shafts. If the humans happen to be in them at the time, well, maybe that will serve as a warning to the rest. The humans would probably declare war on the dwarves if they weren't pretty sure that the dwarves would simply decline to participate.
The elves do their best to remain neutral in this quarrel, as do the halflings, whose territory is right smack in the middle of the conflict zone. Firbolgs and gnomes dislike the mining because of the ecological threat it poses to their way of life. A lot of timber and water is required to sink the mines and process the mithril, and the cutting down of forests and the fouling of water are considered to be both physically and spiritually destructive.