Story setting input

[Zahhak]

This seemed like the least-wrong forum for this.

So, every now and then I like to pretend I'm a writer (never gotten anything published, hardly ever even really try that part), and I had an idea for a story, or more of the setting. From the setting, I think the story tells itself. I was thinking about making this a DnD game, but I don't know if I want a bunch of players running around mucking up my world with their dirty shoes. So, I'm thinking about just making it a novella. What I was hoping for is some suggestions about how the setting's background would affect the societies and peoples in its present.

Eons ago there was a race whose name has been lost to time, but they are now called "the Ancients", they were an incredibly powerful, intelligent, and evil race who could change their shape at will, and considered any species that could not as not being truly conscience, or deserving of rights. Through means lost to time they altered any species they wanted, turning proto-humanoids into the majority of the humanoid races, making owlbears, gelatinous cubes, and all manner of monster and abomination.

Because they had a place to vent their malevolence, they rarely had internal conflict, instead they had a massive society that wrapped around the planet with little need for police or military. Unfortunately, some of their number didn't like the order, and so they splintered off. They had a slightly more radical opinion about who or what was deserving of respect. Dragons, being able to change shape, were mostly left alone, except by the radicals, who felt their daily limitations of shape change were reason enough to not consider them conscious beings. And so, the mighty dragons which already did not trust the Ancients, suddenly found themselves having plenty of reason to want to destroy the foul race. They were messing with forces beyond their ken.

Of the hundred or so dragons, six of the most powerful and mutated escaped and they launched a holy war. They exterminated the populations of whole continents, and left massive swaths of land completely uninhabitable. A mighty civilization indeed. It only took the dragons, called the Dread Reapers, a few months to completely destroy the whole race, save for a few who were hiding deep underground. What those ancients were doing is really anyone's guess, but they stayed in the depths until they were fairly sure the Dread Reapers were all dead of old age.

When the last of the Ancients came up from the underground centuries after the Reaping, they found the world very different. Humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and orcs had built civilizations on top of the bones of the civilization of the Ancients. Enraged, the remnants, who now called themselves the Iku Turso, tried to destroy the humanoids. They didn't expect to rebuild their own civilization, they just wanted to punish the humanoids for the perceived slight.

And so, the Iku Turso began their task of building an army of freakish monsters*. They planned this time for a possible rebellion. They made their armies into battalions, each one had a unique tattoo on the back of the neck, which was a remotely detonatable explosive ruin. If there was any dissention in the ranks, the whole battalion would simply be killed. As the Iku Turso were getting ready for their initial assault they realized they had forgotten something.

One of the Dread Reapers was still alive.

Malsumis, the most powerful of the Dread Reapers showed up as the Iku Turso were getting ready for their attack. He completely destroyed the castle they had been working from, and killed every remaining member of the race. When he showed up, the armies of the Iku Turso scattered, and wiped the populations of whatever continents unfortunate enough to have them show up. After time the armies of the Iku Turso, called the Abhorrents, settled in a few continents.

Now, the Abhorrents keep most would-be adventurers from daring to enter the continents, leaving humanoid civilization to stay on a single continent. But, the highly magical world keeps most needs satisfied. There's little need for food, water, or healing, and rising the dead to living removes the disincentive to prevent people from going to war. Now, the world is run by not states, but by massive mercenary companies and guilds. The ability to raise raise the dead tends to keep borders fairly static. Even if a region might be the site of a different battle every day of the year, the border as whole tends not to move. Some neutral cities remain, acting as meeting places for temporary alliances, but also as places for the indifferent to stay.

From these neutral cities come many adventurers who seek to leave the bleak ever present combat, and seek virtual immortality by going into the continents of the Abhorents and reclaim the riches, knowledge, or weapons of the lost civilization.

* As a point of interest, I'm heavily inspired in this by the Daleks in concept, and the Slivers, Baloths, and Wurms from Magic of the Gathering in terms of appearance/abilities

Good suggestions will be merit a mention in the "thanks" section of my novella if/when it gets published, in addition to possibly mentioning Gitp in general.

Thanks in advance!

[DiscipleofBob]

I think you're focusing a lot on the past/big picture when you should really focus on the characters and the main story. It'd be a fine setting for a D&D campaign, but if you want to write a novella, then I think you need to focus more on your characters as well as what makes your setting unique as opposed to other fantasy settings.

For example, right now I'm looking at what you have and seeing all the standard fantasy races and a generic dragon big bad. I think setting-wise you should start to focus less on the mythology, which is fine, and more on the modern setting. Especially whomever you decide your main characters to be and their surroundings.

[warty goblin]

I opened your spoiler, got to 'Eons ago there was a race whose name has been lost to time...' and felt my eyes cross.

Firstly you don't need to specify that their name is lost to time, and then name them. Just call 'em the Iku Turso from the get-go. And since they're all dead anyway, do they even matter? The whole armies of mutated dudes with explosive kill tattoos thing doesn't seem like it requires the backstory. It could just be part of the setting, and not require half a page of exposition. Although if you've got Raise Dead going down all the time, aren't the kill tattoos pointless anyway? I mean disobey, and you'll be temporarily inconvenienced isn't exactly the most chilling of enforcement policies.

See, the whole world ruled by warring mercenary companies locked in eternal stalemate due to Raise Dead spells etc is cool. It's about stuff that is happening now. A person can imagine the protagonists having to deal with that sort of stuff. Chaining it to a backstory involved Bad Elves and mutant dragons doesn't make it cooler or more interesting; quite the opposite in fact.

My advice:
1) Take chainsaw.

2) Apply to backstory.

3) Tell your story in the setting you want to tell it in. Don't worry about how it got that way.

4) Don't even worry too much about the setting. Just give the audience some decent characters and a plot that isn't boring. The plot has to be the thing that's happening now, not stuff that happened thousands of years ago.

5) Keep the chainsaw handy, should the backstory threaten again. Remember, you want dynamic and important things to be happening to your characters in the present. I, the reader, only care about your characters because (hopefully) they're good and interesting. I do not care about things not involving your characters, such as extinct Bad Elves.

6) Remember, if the only thing that happens in a chapter is exposition, it's time to fire up the chainsaw again. Remember, if you're writing a novella, you've only got about a hundred pages. Don't waste them.

[Bastian Weaver]

I care about extinct ancients.
So, a couple ideas... there might be some people running around, screaming around racial purity. They might also be hiding a dirty secret - the knowledge that all current races, including their own, were created by ancient ones' experiments.
Someone might also be looking for a way to detonate the explosive runes, removing the problem of the Abhorrents once and for all. The protagonists might be hired for that, and later find out what their success might actually lead to.

[Zahhak]

I think you're focusing a lot on the past/big picture when you should really focus on the characters and the main story.

So, if you were reading story that happened to have a continent full of incredibly power monstrosities, which has oodles of money, and powerful relics with a party of adventurers trying to claim some of it without getting killed you wouldn't immediately ask where it all came from and why no one else has tried to take it?


I think setting-wise you should start to focus less on the mythology, which is fine, and more on the modern setting.

My intention was to have the group going into one of the lost continents, which I thought was somewhat apparent enough from the "the story tells itself" comment. So, the mythology part is kind of important. And so is having it all stated in the beginning, because otherwise I'd need a 'straightman' who is going to ask questions that everyone else in the world already knows like "why is there a 40ft green wolf eating that elephant?"


Just call 'em the Iku Turso from the get-go. And since they're all dead anyway, do they even matter?

I was trying to get across the idea that they aren't the same people anymore, without explicitly saying "they aren't the same people anymore"


Although if you've got Raise Dead going down all the time, aren't the kill tattoos pointless anyway? I mean disobey, and you'll be temporarily inconvenienced isn't exactly the most chilling of enforcement policies.

My comment about the monsters being based on the slivers, wurms, and baloths comes into play here.

[DiscipleofBob]

So, if you were reading story that happened to have a continent full of incredibly power monstrosities, which has oodles of money, and powerful relics with a party of adventurers trying to claim some of it without getting killed you wouldn't immediately ask where it all came from and why no one else has tried to take it?

Nope. I'd care more about the characters in the party of adventurers and why they're undertaking such a dangerous task.


My intention was to have the group going into one of the lost continents, which I thought was somewhat apparent enough from the "the story tells itself" comment. So, the mythology part is kind of important. And so is having it all stated in the beginning, because otherwise I'd need a 'straightman' who is going to ask questions that everyone else in the world already knows like "why is there a 40ft green wolf eating that elephant?"

A straight man is very good to ask these sorts of questions. Just make sure there's more to him than just being a straight man.

[Zahhak]

You weren't a fan of the Lord of the Rings, were you?

[DiscipleofBob]

You weren't a fan of the Lord of the Rings, were you?

I was. Lord of the Rings DID go into characters before the story, mostly by describing life in the Shire and the lives of the various ProtagoBaggins before going into everything else.

I'm not saying don't eventually get into the mythology of your setting, but it should take a backseat to your actual characters. They are the important aspects of your story.

I understand, though, that right now you're working on developing the setting for your story. So far you've got some mythology but none of the modern setting. Does the story start in a kingdom? A barracks? An anarchistic pirate town? Why is the mythology important in understanding the motivations of the main characters and their conflicts?

Fleshing out the modern setting is probably where you should focus on developing next.

[warty goblin]

So, if you were reading story that happened to have a continent full of incredibly power monstrosities, which has oodles of money, and powerful relics with a party of adventurers trying to claim some of it without getting killed you wouldn't immediately ask where it all came from and why no one else has tried to take it?

Only if I progress to feeling nitpicky. And I only progress to feeling nitpicky if the story has already left me bored and annoyed.

And don't the hordes of powerful monsters rather explain why nobody's tried to take the loot before? It certainly explains why nobody's succeeded...


My intention was to have the group going into one of the lost continents, which I thought was somewhat apparent enough from the "the story tells itself" comment. So, the mythology part is kind of important. And so is having it all stated in the beginning, because otherwise I'd need a 'straightman' who is going to ask questions that everyone else in the world already knows like "why is there a 40ft green wolf eating that elephant?"
Why does a forty foot green wolf eating an elephant need explanation? It's fantasy, the buy-in of the genre is that some whacked out fantastic stuff goes down. If I read a bit about a forty foot green wolf chowing down on an elephant, my reaction would pretty much be 'There are forty foot green wolves here. Apparently they eat elephants. Cool.'

It's fantasy. The reason for the fantastic in fantasy pretty much always reduces to 'because magic.' Regressing that to 'because magic a long time ago' neither changes nor improves it.

And let me forestall the forthcoming response that magic doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to in a story. I'm not advocating last minute mystical ass-pulls here, merely that ancient creator races cooking up canids of unusual size and pigmentation doesn't strain my credulity any more or less than there simply being canids of unusual size and pigmentation.



I was trying to get across the idea that they aren't the same people anymore, without explicitly saying "they aren't the same people anymore"
Again, does it matter? They weren't very nice before dragon apocalypse, they aren't very nice after, and they're all dead anyways. The potential for actual impact on the characters due to this distinction seems minimal.



My comment about the monsters being based on the slivers, wurms, and baloths comes into play here.
I have no idea what any of those things are, and in order to read your story I shouldn't have to. Simpler, non-meta explanation. Humanoid wizards discovered how to raise humanoid creatures from the dead, but it doesn't work for non-humanoids. So little Billy can come back, but his dog Spot and his razor-limbed spider demon Sally-Mae can't.

The question of what magic can do is important to the reader, because it sets up what the characters will do and how they react to stuff. Ff stuff can come back from the dead, the reader needs to know when, where, how and with what restrictions because this directly impacts the way the characters will behave.

[MLai]

Warty Goblin would be writing the story I actually would want to read. I write that way myself.

You said "I was originally designing a D&D campaign setting, but now I want to convert it to a story..." It shows. The way you're resisting Warty's advice, I think it would probably work better as a game campaign setting.

[Story Time]

...I don't belong in this thread. I shouldn't post here. Most of what I have to say...probably won't be under-stood.

But...

I do have a perspective to offer that comes from dealing with businesses and persons in the industry. And to give any perspective other than this one is... I think it would be harmful.

So...

"No one cares." No one cares about super ancient races that went through multiple epochs. No one cares about how humans survived an ice age or how ogres were once the most beautiful species.

No one cares about all the things that make a setting interesting. They don't! Because they can't.

They didn't make the setting. The author did. The author finds these things interesting but the readers ( and consequently players also ) can not care about all the things that the author finds important.

But...if the author can connect those items of interest to actions or events that happen in the text itself? Then they become interesting. These little details make a work of art flavorful and multi-layered. They do not support a plot. Like trying to put metal armor plates on a house made of ginger-bread beams...


...I won't say that character is the most important. But I will say that an author ( as all good authors do ) should connect the events of their plot with the items of meaning. The people who know what they're talking about keep saying it over and over. So I'll just say it again:

"Show! Don't tell."


...good luck. It was an okay synopsis. :smallamused: