Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[redwizard007]

I'm a fan of developing a consistent phonology for your fictional cultures. What vowels do they commonly use? What consonants? How do they fit the two together (i.e., do they have a lot of consonant clusters, or do they use CV syllables exclusively, or are they somewhere in between)? Do they have any sounds not native to English (like "ch" in "loch")? Once you do this, making names is mostly a matter of putting pieces together.

I saw a link to a "how to build a language" article or thread somewhere in the playground that fit almost exactly with this tactic. Can't find it at the moment though. Anyone remember seeing that?

[VoxRationis]

I vaguely remember seeing that title. I wasn't advocating creating a whole language for each culture—that's a bit much, even for a linguistics nerd like me. But a phonology helps considerably.

[BootStrapTommy]

I vaguely remember seeing that title. I wasn't advocating creating a whole language for each culture—that's a bit much, even for a linguistics nerd like me. But a phonology helps considerably. Building a language has been something of a goal of mine for a long time. I'm a student of Tolkien in that regard.

[Milo v3]

I suck when it comes to language so I just use what the words would mean rather than get what the words would mean and translate it.

[Yora]

I've got writers block on names so hard right now it is frustrating...

I had to come up with about 100 names at once (or rather had to replace all the placeholder names that have accumulated over the years), and the discovery I made is that you'll never come up with a great name for anything. What is much more easier is to come up with somewhat acceptible, though not very good sounding and interesting names. Take those. After using them for a week or two they start to look pretty good.

[BootStrapTommy]

I had to come up with about 100 names at once (or rather had to replace all the placeholder names that have accumulated over the years), and the discovery I made is that you'll never come up with a great name for anything. What is much more easier is to come up with somewhat acceptible, though not very good sounding and interesting names. Take those. After using them for a week or two they start to look pretty good. Kinda just bit the bullet and did that. Sure the place now seems oddly Aztec flavored for no reason, but the names roll off the tongue and that is all I ask for.

[IZ42]

Kinda just bit the bullet and did that. Sure the place now seems oddly Aztec flavored for no reason, but the names roll off the tongue and that is all I ask for.

My bad, I guess?

[BootStrapTommy]

My bad, I guess? I uses the "translate words to the foreign equivalent" method. Despite using Romance languages, everything turned out inexplicably Aztec sounding!

[IZ42]

I uses the "translate words to the foreign equivalent" method. Despite using Romance languages, everything turned out inexplicably Aztec sounding!

Hehehe. Which romance language did you use primarily?

[BootStrapTommy]

Hehehe. Which romance language did you use primarily? Mostly Catalan and Galician. One was Maltese, which I suppose is more of a Semitic language.

[Tzi]

So my campaign world kicked off with a bang.

I am wondering though, do other DM's/worldbuilders farm out some work to players/friends? What I mean is I let my would be players do a lot of lore writing including inventing cities they came from in one case.

Though the one player was somewhat disappointed. The players were not told that the campaign was a post-apocolyptic type world(s) and they characters were simply frozen in time, drifting in orbit until their craft turned on as they re-entered the atmosphere of one of the moons. When they made their characters they assumed their were 5 moons, their elaborate families and backstories, cities and countries all smiling. Then accident on an experimental craft and they go into stasis, emerging 160 years later to find only 4 moons and ruins remain.

On the one hand I think it works well since it makes the characters part of the world all the more. One character was a human Sorceress, from a originally very enlightened and forward thinking city. A kinda "City of Tomorrow," place of new inventions, ideas ect. Only to return to find it a smoldering lifeless ruin, devastated by warfare and massive earthquakes.

[Milo v3]

So my campaign world kicked off with a bang.

I am wondering though, do other DM's/worldbuilders farm out some work to players/friends? What I mean is I let my would be players do a lot of lore writing including inventing cities they came from in one case.

Though the one player was somewhat disappointed. The players were not told that the campaign was a post-apocolyptic type world(s) and they characters were simply frozen in time, drifting in orbit until their craft turned on as they re-entered the atmosphere of one of the moons. When they made their characters they assumed their were 5 moons, their elaborate families and backstories, cities and countries all smiling. Then accident on an experimental craft and they go into stasis, emerging 160 years later to find only 4 moons and ruins remain.

On the one hand I think it works well since it makes the characters part of the world all the more. One character was a human Sorceress, from a originally very enlightened and forward thinking city. A kinda "City of Tomorrow," place of new inventions, ideas ect. Only to return to find it a smoldering lifeless ruin, devastated by warfare and massive earthquakes.

I've have been annoyed with that, may as well have not done the work for the cities and backstories, etc.

[BootStrapTommy]

So my campaign world kicked off with a bang.

I am wondering though, do other DM's/worldbuilders farm out some work to players/friends? What I mean is I let my would be players do a lot of lore writing including inventing cities they came from in one case. An entire historical nation in my campaign setting (Smyrna) is based on an aggregation of former campaigns and character contributions.

Furthermore, one of my players actually frequently contributes to my campaign setting on this very forum. So yeah.

[BladeofObliviom]

I am wondering though, do other DM's/worldbuilders farm out some work to players/friends? What I mean is I let my would be players do a lot of lore writing including inventing cities they came from in one case.

Interestingly, one of my players ran a game in one of my campaign settings at his girlfriend's request. (She requested the game, not the setting. She wanted to try and he didn't feel like using an official setting or making one from scratch). It was somewhat interesting to see some of the subtle changes he made to various bits of lore. I liked a lot of them and some made it into the setting proper.

[Tzi]

I've have been annoyed with that, may as well have not done the work for the cities and backstories, etc.

It is true, they were not aware of the time skip or the actual full nature of the campaign world. I allowed them and their characters to discover it as they play.

One player hailed from a near utopian city in some respects. She discovered that her family is likely dead, and her home city-state destroyed. A hulking ruin with a smoldering underbelly of Alchemical fires that leave the city in a toxic fog.

However it did have some benefits. The players have discovered that largely the cities people survived and fled the city. In fighting eroded it after the cataclysm and people fled as warfare between the mostly human inhabitants of it and nearby Elven peoples intensified.

Now she hunts for the plausible descendants of her sisters and brothers and what became of them, she has reason to believe some survived and fled.

[Yora]

I am wondering though, do other DM's/worldbuilders farm out some work to players/friends? What I mean is I let my would be players do a lot of lore writing including inventing cities they came from in one case.
Nooooo!!! Never! They don't know what I want. They would get it wrong!


Though the one player was somewhat disappointed.
For good reason. You told them you are going to play A, they made characters for A, and then you told them "surprise, we're not playing A at all. We play B instead". You made a promise about what they would get and you broke it. That often breaks a lot of fiction and games.

[Tzi]

Nooooo!!! Never! They don't know what I want. They would get it wrong!


For good reason. You told them you are going to play A, they made characters for A, and then you told them "surprise, we're not playing A at all. We play B instead". You made a promise about what they would get and you broke it. That often breaks a lot of fiction and games.

I wouldn't say it was entirely like that....

The players in are circle, as does the DM's all have sort of a understood agreement that your backstory can and will be used against you. Any parents, children, siblings, all can be kidnapped, played against you.

Then again I can see the point, she wasn't aware of the extent to which things would go bad.

[Yora]

It's not that people don't like surprises. It's more that people don't like surprises that fall outside the established parameters. The idea for the campaign is a completely valid one. But making a character for a futuristic utopia campaign is a very different thing from making a character for a campaign where people from a futuristic utopia find themselves wakes up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Surprises and twists in entertainment are great. But generally people only want surprises inside the story. Surprises outside the story rarely go well. For example, people go seeing a slasher movie with the knowledge that it will be a slasher movie, not because they wanted to see a movie about teens on a road trip. (Which is why "It was all a dream" is universally hated.)
What might perhaps have worked better is to let the players start their characters as almost blank slates with the knowledge that things will get much more complex after the first session. And then, after they have found out that they are in a devestated future, let them write backstories about what their characters have lost.

[Mechalich]

I am wondering though, do other DM's/worldbuilders farm out some work to players/friends? What I mean is I let my would be players do a lot of lore writing including inventing cities they came from in one case.

It depends. If a player wants to name the village they were born in and even develop its backstory (famous for its cheeses, etc.) and maybe describe some low-level NPCs they used to know who have some connection to what is going on in the setting (and Lieutenant X taught me swordsmanship, he used to be in the army during War Y) that's great, it makes a character more complete and it adds some minute amount of lore to the world.

However, players rarely want to do something so innocuous and useful when you hand them the keys to the lore car. Instead they throw in something that is both completely inappropriate to the setting, utterly destabilizing to the geopolitics, and fits their own idea of cool and not what the world is designed to support.

Group world-building even by dedicated, seasoned professionals is incredibly hard. Bored players engineering a setting (and inevitably trying to skew the background in a way that advantages their character personally) they probably haven't even read are almost guaranteed to screw things up.

[BootStrapTommy]

Just tallied my campaign setting and I have over 40 pages. No wonder I can't really seem to get much help. They basically have to read a small book to digest my campaign setting in its entirety... :smallsigh:

[QED - Iltazyara]

Just tallied my campaign setting and I have over 40 pages. No wonder I can't really seem to get much help. They basically have to read a small book to digest my campaign setting in its entirety... :smallsigh:

,,,

Let me check something

Does that include note pages? If not I'm pretty similar, though I still have several pages chapters to add in. Like locations, although that is done. Just not in the main document.
I never expect anyone to read all of it, that's not its purpose. Its for me to be able to answer questions easily, and have stories to tell and reasons for things to be somewhere. I hate improvising.
I also enjoy world building. The two go together.

Has, however, made me give up on several attempts to summarise a post to get feedback on the setting. Maybe I should make a thread for people to exchange feedback, with a word limit on descriptions.

Actually, what do people think of that idea?

(As for my notes pages, I seem to have around... two hundred and eighty five Uhh, hmm. Not sure what to think of that.)

[zabbarot]

(As for my notes pages, I seem to have around... two hundred and eighty five Uhh, hmm. Not sure what to think of that.)

It sounds like you've written a novel without writing a novel :smalltongue:

[Roxxy]

I've been having awesome ideas for my Pathfinder campaign setting the last couple days. The basics are that it is Eberonnish technology, except alchemists produce most magitech, rather than spellcasters, and rather than emulating the 1920s it emulates the 1960s. The game largely takes place in a nation that is a fantasy version of the American West Coast rather than a fantasy version of Europe, and has many New Old West (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NewOldWest) elements (D&D/Pathfinder always did seem to reskin western tropes into something vaguely medieval).

First idea I had is that the world should have a Canada expy that is Norse. That's not a new or unique idea, but I realized that New Old West can actually work well if you take away the cowboys, vigilantes, and bandits and replace them with vikings. It's not that far off thematically. We have these legends of badass vikings raiding Indians and taking what they wanted and exploring and fighting dangerous monsters and all that, but that era is over and people don't have that freedom of adventure anymore (player characters work for the government). Then again, the vikings were committing ethnic cleansing, using raiding more as a weapon than a means of gaining wealth (Indians didn't have too much in the way of riches. Vikings just wanted to cripple their lifestyle to make them easier to brush aside later on.), and using rape as a tool of conquest (I've read that vikings raped male captives to emasculate and humiliate them. Combine this with a widespread effort to use rape to breed out the Indians with Nordic blood, and you have something seriously screwed up.). So, the viking legends shared today are whitewashing just what the vikings were doing to conquer Canada. Which isn't too far off from Westerns, really. I also want to play with Scandi Cool Magitech when I get bored with my West Coast nation. Which could take awhile, because that is versatile. Want to fit in British and Irish content? Sure. Chinese content? Sure. Italian? Spanish? Japanese? Vietnamese? Asian Indian? American Indian? Mexican? Polynesian? African American? All of these meld in easily enough. Also got hot desert, warm beaches, hills, mountains, foggy coasts, majestic forests (redwood and oak and spruce and pine), temperate rainforests, cold and rainy climates, dry and hot climates, snowy climates, dry rugged grasslands, big cities, small farming towns, and so on. Got room for so much stuff in one country.

Of course, there are Chinese and Japanese and Middle Eastern people in Canada. Japanese-Vinlanders sound interesting to play.

<.<

>.>

Eighth level Canadian character. Rite Publishing Japanese archetypes allowed. Create Tajiya 4/Skald 4. Half Samurai, half Viking!



The rise of drug culture is a part of the setting, given that it is supposed to emulate the Sixties, and I realized something that totally backs this up. If alchemists are the main driver of technology, that means people are experimenting with all sorts of concoctions. Well, it stands to reason that some of those might get you really high. Like, magical high. Literally. People are probably snorting some sort of magic dust. Which means the rise of drug culture meshes perfectly with the alchemical basis of technology.



Then I wondered what to do with Barbarians, since I don't have a lot of primitive tribes about (I certainly am not going to portray the large number of Sixties era American Indian expys as primitive). I renamed the class Berserker, and the lore about Berserkers has all sorts of drug stuff. Not sure as to how accurate the lore is, but this is fantasy, so it doesn't really matter. Now, everybody in the military is imbibing alchemical substances. I use Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder Unchained to replace the big six magic items, and the fact that soldiers are all hopped up on alchemy is the in setting justification for how Automatic Bonus Progression works. You get more powerful, you can drink more without getting overwhelmed by the power, so your bonuses get bigger.

How does that tie into Berserkers (also Bloodragers and Skalds)? They are drinking magical aggression enhancers other characters don't drink, because the aggression enhancer make people really hyperactive. Berserkers have a ton of pent up energy, and tend not to be particularly good at sitting still or focusing on things that aren't really interesting or involve intense physical activity, and a lot of them pace if kept waiting somewhere because they can't just take a seat or stand in line quietly. They can't just only take the enhancers during combat, because it takes time to build the body up with that sort of thing, and if they stop taking it they go through withdrawal, and have to slowly build back up to strength if they start taking the enhancers again. If Berserkers don't rage every day (or at least every other day), they get more and more pent up energy, and start having focus problems bad enough that they take penalties to Int, Wis, and Cha rolls and stuff like that as they get worse and worse at focusing, and they get extremely restless and such. Berserkers don't have to rage in combat to avoid these problems. They'll be fine if they rage at practice dummies for a while, or play sports, or work out at the gym, or even go dancing. It just has to be intense physical exercise.

This also explains Masquerade Revelers (http://paizo.com/products/btpy966w?The-Secrets-of-the-Masquerade-Reveler), also known as the greatest Barbarian archetype ever. Rather than wearing masks, they use their own custom fae-connected drug blends that have effects way beyond aggression enhancers.

Great, now I'm thinking about orcish Berserker go-go dancers, because Sixties.

[BootStrapTommy]

Does that include note pages? If not I'm pretty similar, though I still have several pages chapters to add in. Like locations, although that is done. Just not in the main document.
I never expect anyone to read all of it, that's not its purpose. Its for me to be able to answer questions easily, and have stories to tell and reasons for things to be somewhere. I hate improvising.
I also enjoy world building. The two go together. I don't really take notes. My long term memory is eidetic, so I have most the answers to all the various questions people might have on my campaign setting up in my noggin.

But I do feel as that if I did write all the cultural, specific, and otherwise, I might begin to approach at truly intimidating volume.


Has, however, made me give up on several attempts to summarise a post to get feedback on the setting. Maybe I should make a thread for people to exchange feedback, with a word limit on descriptions.

Actually, what do people think of that idea?

(As for my notes pages, I seem to have around... two hundred and eighty five Uhh, hmm. Not sure what to think of that.) Wouldn't hurt to keep yourself terse. I've rewritten things to conserve length before. GitP does have a ?50000? character per post limit or some sure (I've hit it a few times). So it is honestly a necessity in this medium.

[QED - Iltazyara]

I've got a pretty good memory myself, the notes are primarily due to me setting one thing up, then changing and discarding it over time. I've been working on my setting on and off since 2008, and I still have all the original files from when I first started, and my "notes" are largely just old work that isn't up to par, but gives insight on wording information later.

And for answering questions, I mostly want the written form down for consistency, as if I have no certain anchor it will mutate over time. Not really an issue, but I value consistency, don't want to accidentally rename a major player one campaign to the next.

And I actually mean a pretty short word count, as when given space to ramble I provide less information while creating larger walls of text. And I am almost certain many others who frequent this forum suffer from the same.

Only reason I ever was happy with how I described the gods in my setting is by saying "No more than three paragraphs!" keeping it short helped with their feel, and stopped redundant gushing.

So I was thinking something like, "provide insight on your setting, 300 words or less". Not sure about everyone else, but I've always found it hard to give feedback on the giant amounts of information we end up providing on our settings. Feedback on the premise, or some specific detail, would be far easier to provide I believe.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I have good memory (plus I've been working on a variation of the same setting since I was, oh, 15?), but I figured it was better to take my 40-page document and turn it into a Wiki (http://land-of-empires.wikia.com/wiki/Land_of_Empires_Wikia)instead.

[BootStrapTommy]

That is quit possibly the greatest thing ever...

[Roxxy]

I found a good explanation for anime style catgirls! Ha!

Of the core races of the setting, one is the Hengeyokai of Rite Publishing. Their appearance is described as thus:


A hengeyokai's true form is that of a humanoid with the face of an animal. The animal is that of its clan. A hengeyokai may change shape, appearing either as a human or in the natural form of her clan animal (alter self, beastshape I). A hengeyokai's human features are always the same, as are her animal features and these features are uniquely hers. That is, a hengeyokai cannot choose to take the shape or form of another person or animal in order to disguise herself without access to other abilities or powers. A hengeyokai can revert to her natural form at will. She may adopt her alternate forms a number of times per day equal to 1/2 her character level (minimum 1).

So, Hengeyokai have actual animal heads, and can straight up turn into animals. Personally, I like humans with animal ears, maybe tails. Well, it could be the case that hengeyokai go around in human form most of the time, not animal face form, because other races are more comfortable with talking to people. This is an age of flashy fashions and experimenting with appearances, though, so maybe younger hengeyokai want to look more animalistic, but don't want to straigt up look like an animal, because that wouldn't be cute. So they shift their ears into animal-person form, but keep the rest of their body human unless they feel like growing out their animal form tail. If people think that looks cool, it could become widespread, and perhaps popularise animal ear headbands among non-hengeyokai.

So, anime style catgirls are literally just a fashion statement. Which fits the tone of the setting perfectly.

[Tzi]

Okay, after an exhaustive playtest of my game world I've learned I need to find some compromise between creating the game world players want and the world I want.

The core conflict is that I want to THINK big, but players really just don't care about these aspects and its taken me awhile to get with that.

Fundamentally I want to build a world that is INTERNALLY consistent. With as few lose ends IMHO as possible.


I have complex languages, no Elven or Dwarven, but instead these are "Families of languages" and realistically the world has 600+ languages to know.
I decided to go with the idea of 4 moons the size of Earth to resolve my difficulty with "ecological niches," as in why are there so many intelligent sapient lifeforms on one little rock
Sci-Fantasy employed heavily and a sense of mathmatical mystery. The game world was not presented as it literally is but as they might perceive it to be.


From that, I've learned essentially that my players don't really care TOO much about a lot of these inconsistencies as much as I do. Players enjoy my horror stories, my complex local lore and my fun individual characters. Not so much the grand cosmic scale and the ultimate fact that "nothing matters," since the world isn't presented as one with vast world shaping destinies.

Thus I've decided to scale back some aspects of the world(s).

First, Astyra is once again a colony world as it was in one playtest. In this, Astyra is a Earth-Venus sized world. Has one moon and is its own planet. It is the second planet from the central star and one of several worlds. It is colonized by the "fantasy races" long ago after something befell the original world. Leaving the reason all these fantasy races live on one planet together a relative mystery of distant history. Likewise the colonial nature of the project means races and places they live can be shaped by migration. The difference between regular creatures and Aberration can be explained the Aberration are remnants of pre-colonial native flora and fauna.

Players did not like the 4 worlds, post cataclysmic aspects. That became a bit confusing and was not received well.

Many languages is a good idea, as it makes being foreign really meaningful, and helps have names have meaning. Theoretically different languages help make cultures truly unique from culture to culture and It was both well received AND added a new layer to gameplay and NPC interaction. Mainly the difficulty of NPC's that don't know exactly what your saying. It also helps explain why peoples have different sorts of names. If one area has largely Welsh place names and people names, but they speak Common, why are their names and stuff different than the fantasy Holland over yonder?

The scale and scope of the universe and the relative unimportant of the players was unnoticed but players noted the difference in game style. The players knew the world would go on without them, or with them. Part is that very few villains exited which were genuine threats to the existence of the world, but were definitely threats to their existence.

I think I need to sit down and consider carefully the future rewrite of the gameworld. OR even just how I present it. One might be a greater focus on individual areas and less of an expansive scope of a world. If I post here on the forum I might be careful to emphasis like 4-6 regions or even just 1-3 and leave the rest of the world vague except for general geography explanations.

[Solaris]

Snips the Awesome

Well, now there are dinosaurs everywhere in the campaign setting, and I'm thinking the Pale People don't have horses because they already have tarrasks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanuqsaurus). This will help them hunt/herd mammoths and dino-yaks. Thanks for the suggestions.

Due to the assorted difficulties with getting sentient Troodons, I'm shelving the idea for now.

[AceOfFools]

Group world-building even by dedicated, seasoned professionals is incredibly hard. Bored players engineering a setting (and inevitably trying to skew the background in a way that advantages their character personally) they probably haven't even read are almost guaranteed to screw things up.

It has not been my experience that players always go overboard on tweaking back world building to their advantage. Most want to create interesting conflicts and hooks to give their characters depth and conection to the world.

This is a very good thing.

Players who are going to add unbalanced stuff to their back story will try even if you don't invite them to add to explictly aid in the world building.

I has a player who once insisted his lvl 3 fighter was in command of an exiled force of 100 men. It was literally the only thing in the back story he submitted (which was also the only back story submitted as I did not ask people to do so for that game).

[Milo v3]

I has a player who once insisted his lvl 3 fighter was in command of an exiled force of 100 men. It was literally the only thing in the back story he submitted (which was also the only back story submitted as I did not ask people to do so for that game).

Taking an "Exact wording" stance on such a backstory could be interesting :smalltongue:

[AceOfFools]

Taking an "Exact wording" stance on such a backstory could be interesting :smalltongue:

Funnily enough, that's actually why that game broke up.

The player got extremely disruptive ic and ooc when I added a plot development that removed from command of the fighting force. In the end, he was no longer welcome at my table, and decided not to continue with only 2 pcs.

Moral of the story: invite people to contribute to world builfing, but don't play with people (including GMs) who refuse to accept reasonable limits on their contributions.

[ShadowFireLance]

What do you guys consider the most important aspects of gods?

[DixieDevil]

What do you mean by aspects?

[ShadowFireLance]

Like, to explain what they are, what would you describe about them? If you were trying to tell someone of your god, what would you tell them?

[Vrock_Summoner]

What do you guys consider the most important aspects of gods?
It depends on the system, but here's something I've always considered important about gods: If they aren't essential, don't let yourself think they're essential. Religion can be a fabulous enhancement to almost every setting, but gods aren't a naturally evolving and relatable part of society that can push lots of stories forward. Combine this with the fact that religions are based mostly on faith (thus, empirical proof of the existence of gods removes some of their effect) and my lesson should become apparent: if you don't already have a different good reason for your gods to provably exist, don't go to lengths to make their existence provable. It is, in fact, okay for people in a setting to have faith in something they can't be certain exists without them being irrational for it, or for people to believe in some gods but not others even if both sets end up being real.

Beyond that, it depends on the types of gods your setting has. Are they gods because people worship them, or do people worship them because they're gods?

In the first case, they'll likely fit in with the descriptors they've been given in order to maximize focus on themselves, and you're not going to be able to avoid God of X; people love assigning names and positions of power to the things that hold power in their life, so you don't get to just say "these gods all do X as a group," you'll end up with two or so gods sharing the mantle of war, three or four sharing the mantle of the hearth, and all of them getting various important roles in making the world work. This sort of system demands a bit more fakery and compliance from the gods; if people say Loki and Thor fight all the time when they actually get on just fine, they'll raise an eyebrow each, sigh at each other, and make natural events that feed on that belief of opposition and antagonism even though none is there.

In the second case, you have more freedom with them. People will still attribute these roles to the gods, but the gods don't generally have to give a carp. (They prefer salmon anyway.) Gods, if encountered, will often be very different from how their religious texts describe them, and in this case it's usually pertinent to evoke mixed feelings of otherworldly intelligence and childish snobbiness in the gods, though the latter is optional. If the gods aren't dependent on the feelings of their ostensible worshipers, they likely won't care about them, and will thus act however they act. Feel free to let cosmological realities disprove certain tenets of worship; the fact that, say, the moon is actually a source of negative energy and thus undead are more common/easier to raise on nights of the full moon won't stop people from thinking that the moon is some benevolent goddess, and that's okay too.

Lastly, one of the most important things about gods is that they must have purpose. Not just story purpose for existing, as I already pointed out, but personal purpose. Gods don't just sit there doing nothing unless they're sealed away or slumbering or something. Gods must have goals, more than most intelligent beings, and because they're so powerful and vast in scope, "surviving" isn't usually an applicable goal unless worship is both necessary to them and a very tenuous thing to hold on to. They need to want to do something, and this doesn't have to have anything to do with what their worshipers think they want to do.

[Milo v3]

Like, to explain what they are, what would you describe about them? If you were trying to tell someone of your god, what would you tell them?

Very setting dependant, but in general I'd say describe the religion rather than the god. A god is distant, and alot of information that religion has are metaphorical, meant to pass on the lessons the god wants to give. So say what that religion can do, what things it has domain over, what it does to help people, what are it's views on the afterlife?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Depends on whether you're running an active-god or passive/hidden-god world. Passive-god, the larger religion is more important; do we worship a single creator god? Do we worship multiple high-personality gods? Do we worship two gods forever locked in battle? What is the structure of the religion? Is there an organized church?

If not, the bigger question is portfolio; If there's not doubt that my God exists, I'm going to explain what they control: "Oh, Kord is a god of strength and sport, and courage, he really helps out whenever I feel too weak for a task, he reminds me what real strength is."

[Vrock_Summoner]

So. Working on a setting. Posted a bit about its cosmology a couple of days ago, but it's neither here nor there for this question. I'm here on the talk thread to ask, what circumstances would lead to an academically-structured government, and what stipulations would the system need to make it function? When I say "academically-structured," I mean where one's spot in government is generally directly tied to how far they've progressed in their education, basically.

[Milo v3]

So. Working on a setting. Posted a bit about its cosmology a couple of days ago, but it's neither here nor there for this question. I'm here on the talk thread to ask, what circumstances would lead to an academically-structured government, and what stipulations would the system need to make it function? When I say "academically-structured," I mean where one's spot in government is generally directly tied to how far they've progressed in their education, basically.

Well a magocracy is the first thing to come to mind.

[BladeofObliviom]

So. Working on a setting. Posted a bit about its cosmology a couple of days ago, but it's neither here nor there for this question. I'm here on the talk thread to ask, what circumstances would lead to an academically-structured government, and what stipulations would the system need to make it function? When I say "academically-structured," I mean where one's spot in government is generally directly tied to how far they've progressed in their education, basically.

Barring Magocracy (which is also a decent idea), you may be interested in taking a look at the History of China under the Han Dynasty, where a complicated bureaucratic system developed, with placement based on education (actually a test, but a very academic one).

[Solaris]

Well a magocracy is the first thing to come to mind.


Barring Magocracy (which is also a decent idea), you may be interested in taking a look at the History of China under the Han Dynasty, where a complicated bureaucratic system developed, with placement based on education (actually a test, but a very academic one).

Or combine the two!
Honestly, it kinda surprises me that most D&D (especially 3.5E) settings aren't Ancient China-type Magocracies, even without the Oriental feel.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Or combine the two!
Honestly, it kinda surprises me that most D&D (especially 3.5E) settings aren't Ancient China-type Magocracies, even without the Oriental feel.
The usual explanation given for this is that magic is too hard to learn (and thus its users too rare) to form an entire magicracy.

I have rather the opposite thing going, though. Most of the world is indeed magocracies of some flavor, but only because "magic" is quite accessible. Magic itself isn't terribly powerful (or even terribly magical by usual D&D standards) except at the high ends because all the magic is Incarnum.

Thus, the whole "magocracy" thing doesn't actually have scaling education as its logical conclusion. A meritocracy based around education would need to come about under its own merits, most likely. I'm trying to figure out what those merits would be and how I can accentuate them so the society makes sense.

[LudicSavant]

Like, to explain what they are, what would you describe about them?

The beliefs and practices of their faithful, and why players should care about them. The true nature of the actual god is almost entirely irrelevant unless people are regularly meeting with the gods directly.

[Tzi]

So, I'm debating how many of you guys use non-standard classes for campaign settings? One thing I'm considering is radically altering magic, but for me this seems to require a degree of refluffing and even redoing a lot of core mechanics and lore.

One Idea I had was to try and use nothing but custom classes Or classes homebrewed into the sorts of classes I would want in my setting. I am unsure if this would.

Part of it is the confusion of the fact that classes in the standard book have names that imply and shape lore. So the class Druid, strongly dictates what a Druid can be in a cultural sense in a game world? If that makes sense. So is a druid a sage close to nature? A priest? Say I want to have a strongly Celtic themed setting, but Druid is literally a priestly person, the closest I could come to is maybe an Archivist but with a domain power. So what do I do?

Has anyone tried mechanically operating with just homebrew classes or at least as homebrew as possible?

[BladeofObliviom]

So, I'm debating how many of you guys use non-standard classes for campaign settings? One thing I'm considering is radically altering magic, but for me this seems to require a degree of refluffing and even redoing a lot of core mechanics and lore.

One Idea I had was to try and use nothing but custom classes Or classes homebrewed into the sorts of classes I would want in my setting. I am unsure if this would.

Part of it is the confusion of the fact that classes in the standard book have names that imply and shape lore. So the class Druid, strongly dictates what a Druid can be in a cultural sense in a game world? If that makes sense. So is a druid a sage close to nature? A priest? Say I want to have a strongly Celtic themed setting, but Druid is literally a priestly person, the closest I could come to is maybe an Archivist but with a domain power. So what do I do?

Has anyone tried mechanically operating with just homebrew classes or at least as homebrew as possible?

I've generally found that moving too far away from the core assumptions on which a system's rules are built throws people off. A little bit can be done; I once ran a game where I set out "No Vancian Casting" as a rule offhand. One of my more creative players wanted to be a Priest, and opted to run a Bard with a missionary flavor instead of the Cleric class. If you go too far, it's likely to be more difficult; Once, I pitched a game without any of the Core casting classes, and it didn't make it through the planning stages. People were only lukewarmly interested, no doubt because they didn't really want to learn the Binding Subsystem or Incarnum or whatever.

It could be done, but to be honest if you diverge too radically from "standard" D&D, you're probably better off with a different system, perhaps a modular one like GURPS or something rules-light.

[Jendekit]

I think that it would be easier just to refluff the various classes than homebrew an entire d20 system which is basically what you'd be doing. For example: the Herbalist class in my Dawn of the Humanoids setting (assuming it stays Pathfinder) is mechanically Alchemist class. Same mechanics, different feel.

The Ebu Gogo (one of the races in the above setting) have a tribal historian that can strike such a cord with his audience that they can see the events of his stories right before their very eyes. Very somber, and treated with as much if not more reverence than the tribe's shaman. Mechanically a bard.

One noble character I made with an ego the size of a mountain would go into a righteous fury whenever someone below his station dared to strike him. Mechanically he was a Barbarian. What's more surprising is just how well the class fit the character.

Changing the Summoner's spellcasting from Arcane to Divine turned them into the primary priest class of a homebrew race.

I could go on for an hour, but I think these four got my point across: you don't need to build a class from the ground up to get a completely different feel.

[Solaris]

To add on to what Jendekit said, people tend to like what's familiar. If you take away everything that's familiar and replace it with wholly new classes, there's going to be a significant learning curve as they familiarize themselves with the new classes, a learning curve that wouldn't be there if they were playing their familiar old favorites. I've observed that players will tend to shy away from anything that's new, and instead cluster onto the standard stuff in the setting. By extension, if you take away all of the standard stuff...

[Milo v3]

I've done games where it was 90% homebrew/third-party classes. As long as the players understand the new mechanics, it works fine in my experience.

[Everyl]

I've done games where it was 90% homebrew/third-party classes. As long as the players understand the new mechanics, it works fine in my experience.

It depends a lot on your players. When I was in college, it wasn't uncommon for members of the university gaming club to make homebrew settings using elements from a range of different commercial game systems - one of the best games I ever played could be summarized as "2e D&D using the Old World of Darkness dice system." We all had plenty of time to read up on the house rules and learn the details of the customized settings, though. Nowadays, as a 30-something parent with a full-time job, neither I nor the few gaming friends I live near have the kind of time it takes to learn both a core system and a long list of house rules and modifications, so we'll all have more fun sticking to the basics. Other groups I've gamed with over the years have been relatively casual players, for whom just reading the core book(s) was a bit of a stretch, and a heavily-modified setting/system would be far beyond their interest.

I actually have three different settings I've worked on to varying degrees in recent months. One that's vast and richly detailed, but only hardcore gamers would bother to read up on, one that's intentionally basic and uses only core D&D races/classes, and one that's somewhere in between, a psionics-only E6 setting with modified classes, but a relatively small setting. Which one I would use when I find a group would depend heavily on the players.

[Tzi]

Well my main considerations are to either refluff classes into just "Arcane users," "Divine Users," ect and maybe change their overall presentation and really focus more heavily on lots of backstory options. Also the addition of a 5e Artificer, Archivist, ect type classes.

My next option is also reforming the setting around a Humans only setting or as close to it as possible. My core idea being there is one basic playable race, Human, but with lots of say Half-Human options. Like Tiefling and Assimar, Dhampir, perhaps a kind of Half-Elf and Half Giant, but keeping it at that. The reason being the other creatures aren't really like civilization building things, they are mythical kind of?

The reason for the Humans only is that I tend to almost entirely go for Cultural and Linguistic diversity as a major theme or element and its so hard to (in my mind) have whole races have similar culture and languages.

The other element is to heavily let the main campaign area be inspired by Dark Ages Britain, but with some recurring technology from a previous golden age.

[Talion]

So, I've been working on a particular setting off and on for about 4, maybe 5 years (I'd have to check my documentation). My intent has been to make it as immersive as possible, though I've hit a couple snags in that respect. The biggest one I've run into is in the economics portion, principally in regards to one fundamental point: how specific do I make the baseline price tables. On the one hand, I don't want to deal with the headache of pricing out, for example, every conceivable form of milk that might be found in the market. On the other hand, it feels strange to not include individual gem types. Skins and furs, by contrast, have left me at a complete loss.

My intent is to provide a means by which players may reasonably and accurately interact with the world as merchants and tradesmen, if they so chose, without making an absolute mockery of the economy. The system is a homebrew, and there exists a (as of now untested) method for altering the base price in regards to things such as Supply and Demand, Disposition, etc, which I'm currently using for things like the milk example above. However, it isn't encompassing enough, at least to my mind, for distinctions between something such as Emeralds, Sapphires, Rubies, and Diamonds. Or, again, various furs such as beaver, bear, marmot, or some other creature.

In brief, what would you say is a reasonable point in terms of immersion, but not too heavily focused on the minute details in this regard?

*As a side note, part of the pricing system also accounts for those who do not wish to use it; in essence just apply a 0% modifier to all base prices.

[ShadowFireLance]

How many stories of gods do you guys know of that involves aliens?

[Tzi]

How many stories of gods do you guys know of that involves aliens?

In the real world? 0 Historic gods,

In D&D? Depends how you define aliens.

[Solaris]

In the real world? 0 Historic gods,

... Are we bringing the History Channel into this?
'Cause they've run some 'interesting' interpretations of things during their downward spiral.

[ShadowFireLance]

In the real world? 0 Historic gods,


Actually the Enuma Elish is pretty close.

[Tzi]

Actually the Enuma Elish is pretty close.

Not really, besides the improbability of ancient cultures knowing of Aliens as we conceive them (Little green men) most of these societies had a cosmology not fully aware of the physical realities of the universe.

I am unsure were you got this idea. But yes, outside of the History Channel, no historic human Earth Gods have at least no aliens as we know them.

[Xuc Xac]

It depends a lot on your players. When I was in college, it wasn't uncommon for members of the university gaming club to make homebrew settings using elements from a range of different commercial game systems - one of the best games I ever played could be summarized as "2e D&D using the Old World of Darkness dice system."

That sounds awesome and relevant to my interests. What was great about that game for you?

[Jendekit]

I have a question: Is it bad that I'm building an entire culture/planet for the background of one Star Wars character?

This is including: a full government, 2+ predominant religions, 3+ major organizations, and possibly combining Mando'a and High Sith to form an entirely new conlang. The last one I'm most likely not going to do since I am no linguist and I could easily justify just having both instead of merging them.

[ShadowFireLance]

I have a question: Is it bad that I'm building an entire culture/planet for the background of one Star Wars character?

This is including: a full government, 2+ predominant religions, 3+ major organizations, and possibly combining Mando'a and High Sith to form an entirely new conlang. The last one I'm most likely not going to do since I am no linguist and I could easily justify just having both instead of merging them.

Negative, I'm nearly done with a 10k+ word creation story. You can never go overboard :smallbiggrin:

[zabbarot]

I have a question: Is it bad that I'm building an entire culture/planet for the background of one Star Wars character?

This is including: a full government, 2+ predominant religions, 3+ major organizations, and possibly combining Mando'a and High Sith to form an entirely new conlang. The last one I'm most likely not going to do since I am no linguist and I could easily justify just having both instead of merging them.

This is great unless that character is a Mary Sue who needs all this to justify how great he/she is :smalltongue:

Assuming they aren't, keep up the good work.

[Jendekit]

This is great unless that character is a Mary Sue who needs all this to justify how great he/she is :smalltongue:

Assuming they aren't, keep up the good work.

I have no intention of going Old Man Henderson, I just wanted to build a SW version of Dinobot from Beast Wars and it snowballed from there.

The way I'm going is that ~5.5-6k BBY a joint fleet of Sith & Mandalorians were marooned on a planet in the Outer Rim. The two people merged and ended up building a version of GoT's Wall to keep out Rakghouls. My character was a member of the Wardens on the Wall. Slavers came, abducted a large number of people, returned to Hutt Space where he managed to eh, talk the slavers into letting him go.

[Solaris]

I have a question: Is it bad that I'm building an entire culture/planet for the background of one Star Wars character?

Don't feel bad, an entire faction of my Star Wars AU future setting spawned off of a red Sith character I once made for a ~10-15 ABY Star Wars game. He didn't found it, mind, but the same groups that cloned/engineered him were responsible for it.

[nrg89]

I'm making an ancient setting here, around the dawn of the iron age, so it's dominated by city states where nationalism makes no sense and every city should be memorable.

One of the places is a Classical Greece inspired volcanic chain of islands and I want the cultures there to be united by passion.
So, I have a Spartan city that is passionate about fighting and another city that is very wealthy because it's artists are producing very fine pottery. Other than that, I've got nothing.

Since Ancient Greece was also known for good theatre, I also want some place to be a Mecca for actors (where the best bards live), and just rolling it in with the pottery city to make it a "culture capital" would make sense, but also hinder a lot of other city quirks because maybe that's the only two ways there are to illustrate a "passionate culture"; fighting and art. If so, I have to accept that, but I really hope I can do more than "the city where people paint, the city where people act, the city where people sculpt, the city where people make poems" and really establish cultures and make them clash. It's much easier to grasp why a person in love with fighting, feeling the weight of a spear in her hand and sleeping under the stars would clash with an artist who loves the confines of her creative space, indulging in other people's art who can afford to dress flamboyantly than two artists or soldiers clashing.

What other things comes to your mind when you read "an island chain of passionate cities", and preferably Ancient Greece influenced?

[Bobbybobby99]

Passion for knowledge and books? Passion for a polytheistic religion? Passion for Mediterranean nature?

[Silcugar]

@nrg89: Well, I think those two overarching themes can be mixed by cutting them into specialized parts.

For example, let's think of an island with few malleable metals, but an abundance of geologic diversity. They would favour defense over offense (strong walls, weak hand weapons). They might find interest in pottery or artistic masonry, and their culture may be tinted by a stoic aesthetic. So we have a stoic, defensive culture with a history of immense statues and architecture.

Simple list of passions or specialties:
- masonry into defensive protectionism
- shipbuilding into fishing/navy
- hunting into trapping/subterfuge
- sites of ancient antiquity into mysticism/new polytheism
- mining into military or financial specializations

Basically, I find a towns personality from the ground up, from their infancy to their growth into a distinct culture. What did they have to work with, and how has it shaped their culture?

[VoxRationis]

I'm making an ancient setting here, around the dawn of the iron age, so it's dominated by city states where nationalism makes no sense and every city should be memorable.

One of the places is a Classical Greece inspired volcanic chain of islands and I want the cultures there to be united by passion.
So, I have a Spartan city that is passionate about fighting and another city that is very wealthy because it's artists are producing very fine pottery. Other than that, I've got nothing.

Since Ancient Greece was also known for good theatre, I also want some place to be a Mecca for actors (where the best bards live), and just rolling it in with the pottery city to make it a "culture capital" would make sense, but also hinder a lot of other city quirks because maybe that's the only two ways there are to illustrate a "passionate culture"; fighting and art. If so, I have to accept that, but I really hope I can do more than "the city where people paint, the city where people act, the city where people sculpt, the city where people make poems" and really establish cultures and make them clash. It's much easier to grasp why a person in love with fighting, feeling the weight of a spear in her hand and sleeping under the stars would clash with an artist who loves the confines of her creative space, indulging in other people's art who can afford to dress flamboyantly than two artists or soldiers clashing.

What other things comes to your mind when you read "an island chain of passionate cities", and preferably Ancient Greece influenced?

Philosophy/science. I could easily see a city-state devote itself to the pursuit of understanding of the world.

[LnGrrrR]

I'll second the "Athens" city (populated by Wizards and Monks), and also suggest a city based on love, whether it be romantic, lust, or whatever (populated by Rogues, Sorcerers, and other chaotic types.)

Art-ville - Bards, Clerics (just look at how many old churches have amazing art)
Fighting-ville - Fighters, Barbarians
Philosophy-ville - Wizards, Monks, Paladins?
Love-ville - Rogues, Sorcerers, Warlock?
Peace/nature-ville - Druids and Rangers.

[nrg89]

The reason I wanted "passion" to be such a big drive for the cities is because, in the other cultures of this world, the main drive for them is "god said so" or "it makes sense". And, yes, I'm well aware this makes it a classic approach for the Magic: the Gathering lore team to build factions, and these passionate, Greek cities are basically my "red" corner of the world.

The cities I've decided to include, based on your help:


An Athens inspired city where philosophical and mathematical discussion is considered occupations of the elite. There, philosophers and mathematicians go to seek enlightenment or to present their wacky ideas. A large, academy like building hosts an amphitheatre where one can present his or her idea and subject it to criticism and questions from the audience, and then nail a summary of their theory on the wall of this academy. The walls are almost completely covered at this point, so getting a space where everyone will see your work is very hard.

A Sparta inspired city where many great conquerors has recruited mercenaries. A rite of passage is to survive a month without any assistance in the more barbaric lands, and those that bring home a slave to their family are said to be chosen for great things. They have many restrictions on their mobility and their possessions so the business is mainly done by non-citizens, who have now grown very powerful which leads to a great political divide among the population; some welcome the goods they bring, some are vary of their influence.

An acting and artists Mecca, which is also the site for a large, athletic tournament. It's main export is pottery, because of the good clay found there, and the stunning architecture surrounding the city would never have been possible without donations from both all kinds of religious organizations (who wants art delivering their messages) and the various powerful people who want depictions of the battles they've won or a biopic play authored and acted out for them.

A city inspired loosely on Delphos. There's a mystical keep where oracles use drugs and other substances to see glimpses of the future. This is also a place for people to find love, or at least companionship for the night, because the people here feel distanced to their body and feel that spiritual connection is the only one that matters, if someone else wants physical and is willing to pay for it, who cares? If you wonder who's paying for the infrastructure in this place, this might be a good time to mention that it is basically the wine capital of the world, not to mention that you can find other *ahem* party substances here dirt cheap. But, the people don't require much any way, they love to sleep in a way that takes them close to nature and mostly eat the low hanging, common fruits that are all over the place.
Just visiting the place is taboo for many, even for just visiting the oracle, because it's seen as a city of sins.


Thank you for your help!

[Tzi]

I am wondering to what extent should a pre-existing cultures ruins influence the development of another totally different culture.

One key location in an emerging setting is a small chain of islands that were once inhabited by a Minoan like people whom were destroyed in mysterious circumstances. The islands came to be ruled over by a Dragon and lots of other nasties. Until the arrival of a clan or cluster of clans lead by a Tiefling Wizard woman (In this world Tiefling doesn't necessarily mean horns and a tail. But the offspring of a Cambion and a human). They overcome the dragon and tame the Island(s) through gradual invasion and conquest and slaughter of the beastly residents. However culturally these people are decidedly different. They are an entirely Celtic inspired people. Essentially Pictish / Gaels / Icenian. To what extent might their culture develop any inspiration from these ruins littering the island.

Trying to decide exactly how that plays out for them. Do they copy the ruins? Ignore them? Is there any inspiration?

[nrg89]

Trying to decide exactly how that plays out for them. Do they copy the ruins? Ignore them? Is there any inspiration? The Aztecs around their capital, Tenochtitlan, had the same set up. They believed that an even older city 50 km north of their city called Teotihuacan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan) was the center of the universe, that their gods basically lived there when they did all the creating. It influenced their religious architecture a lot, most notably the Templo Mayor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templo_Mayor) which was the most important temple within the capital and was really, really large.

It kind of reminds me about America actually since it was founded upon ideals from the Enlightenment and was seen as a successor to the free minds of Ancient Greeks and the political structure of checks and balances from the Romans (with names like the Capitol Hill, senate and such). Especially during the construction of Washington, DC in the 19th century, architecture was heavily influenced by Ancient Rome but done bigger. The Washington monument is an ancient, Mediterranean style obelisk done really huge. The dome on the Capitol is also impressive.

From the two examples I can think of, it seems as though they would copy a lot of architecture when it comes to their symbolic, formal buildings in their centers of power and done even larger, so as to say "the torch has been passed to us, and look how much more we have accomplished!"

[Tzi]

The Aztecs around their capital, Tenochtitlan, had the same set up. They believed that an even older city 50 km north of their city called Teotihuacan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan) was the center of the universe, that their gods basically lived there when they did all the creating. It influenced their religious architecture a lot, most notably the Templo Mayor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templo_Mayor) which was the most important temple within the capital and was really, really large.

It kind of reminds me about America actually since it was founded upon ideals from the Enlightenment and was seen as a successor to the free minds of Ancient Greeks and the political structure of checks and balances from the Romans (with names like the Capitol Hill, senate and such). Especially during the construction of Washington, DC in the 19th century, architecture was heavily influenced by Ancient Rome but done bigger. The Washington monument is an ancient, Mediterranean style obelisk done really huge. The dome on the Capitol is also impressive.

From the two examples I can think of, it seems as though they would copy a lot of architecture when it comes to their symbolic, formal buildings in their centers of power and done even larger, so as to say "the torch has been passed to us, and look how much more we have accomplished!"

I'm thinking of having that be largely the case. The region I'm mapping out sort of has a southern tip area were the action is happening. Which forms part of the mouth of a great sea... think straits of gibralter esque but a bit wider. Here at some distant point a sea going Empire set up a colony there. But as things go were wiped away in some great disaster. Current inhabitants describe it was the Gods punishment or wrath, though it could have been a caldera eruption or tidal wave ect. The area became infested with Dragons and Ogres and other nasty things as well as wandering undead. Until its later conquest a great while afterwords. Over time the new inhabitants came to imitate the ruins, building cities and things partly inspired by these left over ruins.

My over all notes are "Celtic Picts settle on an abandoned Crete." So they see these great ruins and copy them. Build upon them and expand them. This cultural fusion also forms to make them on some level more technologically advanced than some of their kin to the North and West and helps posit this fledgling alliance of small Fiefdoms into the wider trading world. Though it makes them a target for invasion at times.

[Jendekit]

I remember reading about a people in the Pacific that spent most if not all of their lives on boats. I was hoping to use them as the basis of a group of halflings in a setting but I can't find anything on them now.

Has anyone heard about this group of people? The only other thing that I can remember about them is that hearing loss is very common with them due to purposely rupturing their eardrums when they are children so that they can dive either deeper or easier (I'm not sure which).

[LudicSavant]

I remember reading about a people in the Pacific that spent most if not all of their lives on boats. I was hoping to use them as the basis of a group of halflings in a setting but I can't find anything on them now.

Has anyone heard about this group of people? The only other thing that I can remember about them is that hearing loss is very common with them due to purposely rupturing their eardrums when they are children so that they can dive either deeper or easier (I'm not sure which).

You're probably thinking of the boat-dwelling Sama-Bajou peoples. :smallsmile:

Here's a link for ya: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sama-Bajau_peoples#Boat-dwelling

[Jendekit]

You're probably thinking of the boat-dwelling Sama-Bajou peoples. :smallsmile:

I think that was them, either way that link'll be a big help. Thanks!

[BootStrapTommy]

Would a god of secrets be pro- or anti-divination? Particularly if said god is patron of bodyguards?

[Milo v3]

Would a god of secrets be pro- or anti-divination? Particularly if said god is patron of bodyguards?

For a patron of bodyguards, I'd assume they'd be pro-"proper use of divination". Divinations to protect yourself or a ward are justified and encouraged, while divinations to get information on a person who is not a threat to yourself or a ward would be discouraged or seen as abuse of divination.

[Tzi]

So I've been toying around with ideas and I'm debating if perhaps I have a trouble with scale in all my setting constructions. Mainly that I tend to have things be too large or expansive or focus to heavily on building the world but NOT the locations were actual player action is likely to occur.

One of my theoretical ideas is that I need to limit things to very SMALL territories and just focus in on that but I have a tendency to create and focus too heavily on the context around that area. So I'll create an island, maybe even a small island, and build it but I soon start to want to paint around the Island and give it context. Eventually the Island is left undeveloped.

So, as a fourth+ iteration I have the idea of a kinda of Celtic, vaguely Steam Punk/Dark Ages kind of setting. The Celtic aspect is mainly that the setting is in a region of the planet for whom Celtic inspired languages/cultures dominate. The Steam Punk is mainly that technology exists, some of it reasonably advanced but mass production, industrial systems and a much of the world is somewhat isolated from one another. The Dark Ages aspect is more a reflection of the idea that the world is transitioning. There is a planet, a grand cosmology, even a solar system ect. BUT the previous golden age was wiped out through some devastating war that happened in the incredibly distant past from present time periods perspectives. So while it could be called a "Post Apocalypse," setting its a very green after the end of the world.

But my challenge is, How do I at least HINT at these elements and create a sense of a somewhat large world but confined onto a small island?

[Ninjadeadbeard]

So I had an interesting, though not terribly unique, notion. A setting where humans from our world are drawn into a fantasy world. The initial idea was that a wizard or wizards attain ultimate power in their world, but with the unintended side effect of all human life being destroyed, down to their very souls. Looking to make some sort of karmic amends, the wizard(s) feel a similar calamity about to befall another earth in another dimension. Using (their) awesome power, the wizard(s) create(s) a series of portals to scoop up as many people as they can before an asteroid hits the planet. A few million people are saved this way, but dumped onto an alien world they must learn to tame yet again. Initial impression was that it would be a non-modern selection of humans, perhaps mid-19th or even 18th century.

I like the idea of Wild West plus Magic, so this seemed okay at first. But now I'm torn on further reflection. When exactly should the portals appear? Should I even use more than one portal? I liked the idea of multiple groups of people from around the world having to start civilization anew, but now I wonder whether or not to use just one area, even one city that gets transported alone. Like, originally I foresaw portals scooping up entire city blocks from across the world, from Africa to the Americas, from Tokugawa Japan to Napoleon III's Paris. But, would it make more sense/keep focus by just saying (for example) New York City gets transported to another world? Or Paris? Or Beijing? But does that limit the options for players too much? More importantly does that limit narrative options? Does that limit the focus of the world?

tl:dr Empty fantasy world suddenly gets filled by people stolen from our RL Earth before it explodes (time period to be determined). They have to rebuild from there. What's the best way to do this while allowing for maximum options and viewpoints for players/characters to take? I am indecisive and need help narrowing down just about everything. Any advice would be appreciated.


But my challenge is, How do I at least HINT at these elements and create a sense of a somewhat large world but confined onto a small island?

The easiest way to go about this, or at least how I would do it were I running the setting (looks good by the way!) would be to build the area the players are in as isolated as you seem to want to make it feel. Don't worry about the players not getting it right away. Have an old storyteller in the street speaking of the ancient world, peppered with outright lies, myths, and misinterpretations ("In those days Man flew on the backs of great wood and canvas dragons!...I once saw a woman from the Wa'forjun Desert. She had four eyes and her flesh was fine steel....My father once fought a sorcerer, whose staff was crooked, and it cast thunder and fire from one end..."). Maybe when they decide to camp, have them spy some old ruins and just...explore. You don't even need enemies, just enough content to hint at how things used to be. As long as they come away feeling like something in the world has been lost, it's all to the good.

Or just have a celtic-themed adventure interrupted by a gnome with eight mechanical arms and a mage-arquebus in each hand challenge these "savages" to a duel. :smallbiggrin: Should be merry fun times!

[Tzi]

The easiest way to go about this, or at least how I would do it were I running the setting (looks good by the way!) would be to build the area the players are in as isolated as you seem to want to make it feel. Don't worry about the players not getting it right away. Have an old storyteller in the street speaking of the ancient world, peppered with outright lies, myths, and misinterpretations ("In those days Man flew on the backs of great wood and canvas dragons!...I once saw a woman from the Wa'forjun Desert. She had four eyes and her flesh was fine steel....My father once fought a sorcerer, whose staff was crooked, and it cast thunder and fire from one end..."). Maybe when they decide to camp, have them spy some old ruins and just...explore. You don't even need enemies, just enough content to hint at how things used to be. As long as they come away feeling like something in the world has been lost, it's all to the good.

Or just have a celtic-themed adventure interrupted by a gnome with eight mechanical arms and a mage-arquebus in each hand challenge these "savages" to a duel. :smallbiggrin: Should be merry fun times!

So far I think that is the direction I will go. I mean the main Island is a bit smaller than Tasmania IRL, so it should give them enough to play on. Outside areas I'm hoping to limit my crafting to the bare essentials necessary. Part of Brigantia the main Island has even Hyperian ruins which a very old Lydian settlement built around before being abandoned. The Hyperians being basically my Atlantian Super world spanning civilization of Magi-tech wonder and might.

I'm hoping this strategy allows me to focus exclusively on the main Kingdom and its culture and history. AND thank the stars I have players whom generally won't pick up on my occasional blatant ripping off of history. XD

Lastly, does anyone make use of ConLanguages as an instrument for giving a culture or area a unique flair? I typically hate the standard D&D languages and branch our into many languages. Currently I am using a Celtic ConLang to build my little Kingdom but I am unsure if its a common thing. Not that I would necessarily change it. I feel like the unique language and culture makes the area seem unique.... ever so slightly more real.

[Sam113097]

tl:dr Empty fantasy world suddenly gets filled by people stolen from our RL Earth before it explodes (time period to be determined). They have to rebuild from there. What's the best way to do this while allowing for maximum options and viewpoints for players/characters to take? I am indecisive and need help narrowing down just about everything. Any advice would be appreciated.
How long have the Earth humans been on this new world? Because that could determine how much their culture has changed/diversified since they arrived. If everybody was from just one city, say New York, would they split up in some way? (The Kindgom of Harlem is at war with the Manhattan Empire)

Or, if they are all from different places/cultures, how will they communicate or work together?

It's not about "where are they from?", it's about how "where are they from?" will affect their actions in the new world.

[BootStrapTommy]

(The Kindgom of Harlem is at war with the Manhattan Empire). A more wonderful combination of words in the English language is not oft spoken...

[gtwucla]

Lastly, does anyone make use of ConLanguages as an instrument for giving a culture or area a unique flair? I typically hate the standard D&D languages and branch our into many languages. Currently I am using a Celtic ConLang to build my little Kingdom but I am unsure if its a common thing. Not that I would necessarily change it. I feel like the unique language and culture makes the area seem unique.... ever so slightly more real.

I haven't used ConLanguages, but I do something similar to give readers/players a sense of familiarity with sounds and some words, while keeping it distinct from the language as they know it, and that is using older versions of the language (i.e. Old or Middle English, Ancient Greek, Old Turkic). You can find a language codex (for example: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/definitionlookup?type=begin&q=spear&lang=greek) for just about every ancient language you can think of, and for something like Ancient Greek you can use the codex for a word and then google translate to romanize it. I guess one benefit of a constructed language is that it would be more purely its own language, rather than use borrowed words, but one of the benefits of using real world languages is that you can use a region's worth of languages for the cultures you create and they come pre-interrelated.

[Tzi]

I haven't used ConLanguages, but I do something similar to give readers/players a sense of familiarity with sounds and some words, while keeping it distinct from the language as they know it, and that is using older versions of the language (i.e. Old or Middle English, Ancient Greek, Old Turkic). You can find a language codex (for example: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/definitionlookup?type=begin&q=spear&lang=greek) for just about every ancient language you can think of, and for something like Ancient Greek you can use the codex for a word and then google translate to romanize it. I guess one benefit of a constructed language is that it would be more purely its own language, rather than use borrowed words, but one of the benefits of using real world languages is that you can use a region's worth of languages for the cultures you create and they come pre-interrelated.

I used to do it that way, and on some level still do. But am trying the ConLang route this go. MAINLY to avoid having a culture be TOO similar to the language I'm using. Sure the Lydians are very Greeco/Roman/Minoan -esque but I went with Esperanto.... why? Well the language and names and things are just different enough that when players see or hear it they might be inclined to conjure the uniqueness of that culture.

Part of it is to use either minor languages that are obscure (Like Cornish/Manx) and then constructed Celtic Conlangs like say "Modern Gaulish" form the languages of the Tarmanoi. A fairly obviously Celtic analog people.

It might just be to help me get out of the habit of having my invented cultures be TOO similar to the cultures I'm inspired by.

[Sam113097]

I'm looking for advice on how to approach a monotheistic religion in an RPG world.
I'm working on a regional setting based heavily on the conflict in Spain and North Africa between the Franks/Visigoths and Berbers during the early Middle Ages.
Both cultures were heavily influenced by their religions (Christianity and Islam, respectively) and I want to represent that in a way that is interesting but not offensive to members of those religions.
(I thought it was important to note that the 2 cultures in my setting are not just fantasy versions of the aforementioned real life cultures. It's just the setting and conflict that I want to reflect.)

[Tzi]

I'm looking for advice on how to approach a monotheistic religion in an RPG world.
I'm working on a regional setting based heavily on the conflict in Spain and North Africa between the Franks/Visigoths and Berbers during the early Middle Ages.
Both cultures were heavily influenced by their religions (Christianity and Islam, respectively) and I want to represent that in a way that is interesting but not offensive to members of those religions.
(I thought it was important to note that the 2 cultures in my setting are not just fantasy versions of the aforementioned real life cultures. It's just the setting and conflict that I want to reflect.)

The conflict in Spain was actually very complicated, often involving factions switching sides and many other odd quarks. Frequently you had Christian armies and nobles fighting for Islamic Fiefdoms, AND at one point the Kings of Grenada were in a feudal relationship and paid Homage to the Christian King of Leon. What is so unique about the Spanish conflict is how much the conflict was incredibly messy.

Key though to the religious dimension of the conflict is something best illustrated in animal ecology, no two species can occupy the same ecological niche. Islam and Christianity are remarkably similar, or were, at that time. Both were monotheistic, absolutist, insurgent and universal religions. Both had the same core ideology about them and both had the same general nature. The two were inevitably going to fall into conflict. But often the conflict came as outsiders moved in. Such as the Almohad Dynasty and later newly converted armies came into Spain to launch Jihad. The new converts were incredibly zealous and doctrinaire were as the old guard often became more moderate in the messy politics of Spain. The Same thing happened on the Christian side, especially with the Almohad and other previous dynasties. Charlemagne as well did not help the conflict and outside forces from France as well as Berbers and Arabs very frequently served to throw fuel on the fire.

As for approaching them in an RPG world. Its a tough one because what your trying to capture is an absolute and universal religion. Not once, but twice. This won't work for typical D&D were Gods and Goddesses are more certain and assured to exist. A world that can support two religions like that has to be a world in which...

Gods are distant and excruciatingly difficult/impossible for a mortal to prove exists.
The source of "Divine Magic," is consequently unknown OR it is presumed that Divine and Arcane magic are the same thing.
The two absolute universal faiths need to have "pagan," faiths to be in opposition to.
The both would have to be Absolute, I.E. "This is the way!," "There is no God but God," "Muhammad is the final prophet and this religion is the Last and Final religion!" "There is no way to the father save for that which is through Christ and he died on the cross for your sins!" ect. These have to be religions with absolute pronouncements.
These religions are Universalist. Unlike Judaism or various Mithra Cults or the legions of other cults before Christianity and Islam, these religions are religions for which all the world and all its people must convert to or be converted to. BOTH see the world as "The people who see!" and the "Unbelievers!" or "The House of Peace," and "The House of War". Likewise your RPG monotheistic religions will need the same.


So you will need to create many religions, even ones that are plausibly defunct by the present era in your campaign that the Current Monotheists have "proven wrong," or are in opposition to. The create the two faiths, both with Absolute proclamations and dispensation, AND Universal ideals in which ALL must adopt this religion.

As a final note: To avoid creating Buddhism which is KIND of Absolute and KIND of Universal, both probably should have pronouncements that you can only be of ONE religion. I.E. "Nothing BUT X"

[BootStrapTommy]

Another alternative, much less messy, is to turn the interfaith conflict into an intrafaith conflict.

An easier alternative to making two absolutist, universalist, monotheistic faiths is to create one such faith, with two competing factions.

That way you need only make one faith, with some element of debatable theology for the Schism to have occurred over (religious authority is a good source, as is the definition and interpretation of scriptures). Two supposed authorities competing over control of the same flock can serve the same function as two competing religions fighting over the same land. Less infidels, more heretics. More Catholic/Protestant or Sunni/Shi'ite than Christian/Muslim.

Good supplementary history would be the Catholic/Protestant Thirty Years' War (like post-Roman, pre-Reconquista Spain, very murky and messy with sides often not clearly defined) or the ever-present Sunni/Shi'ite conflict (the Ismaili conflict with everything non-Ismaili is fascinating).

[Sam113097]

Another alternative, much less messy, is to turn the interfaith conflict into an intrafaith conflict.

An easier alternative to making two absolutist, universalist, monotheistic faiths is to create one such faith, with two competing factions.

That way you need only make one faith, with some element of debatable theology for the Schism to have occurred over (religious authority is a good source, as is the definition and interpretation of scriptures). Two supposed authorities competing over control of the same flock can serve the same function as two competing religions fighting over the same land. Less infidels, more heretics.

That seems like a better idea to me. I've just been reading the Giant's series of worldbuilding articles (The New World), and he decides on a dual-theistic, Sun/Moon approach to religion, where the gods are not definite and do not interfere with the mortal world. I like this idea, and it is definitely necessary to have unreliable gods in order to have religious conflict in a fantasy setting. Perhaps the Old Nation, which largely adhered to the traditional dualistic religion, has recently been conquered/defeated by a New Empire that has radically changed the faith (perhaps they claim one of the gods is dead). That could set up a lot of conflict between the remnant of the Old Nation, the New Empire, and any potential third parties (or adventuring parties).

Thank you for the suggestions!

[Jendekit]

I am working on a campaign setting's Bronze Age Orient-analog and am just looking to bounce ideas out there (and I find that writing my ideas down like this is easier for me to do than to just write them into Word).The earliest settlers of the region (don't have a name yet) came over the World-Spire Mountains (a mountain range measuring more than 1300 miles long) prior to the end of the last Ice Age. Until the glacial melt provided an easy route by way of a massive river that cut through the mountains, the people that later became the Shong dwarves were completely isolated. After the glacial melt, the Shong that lived on the banks of the Yung River engaged in trade with the halflings that traveled along the river in their trading fleets. In later millennia, these trade fleets would be the primary traders in the Silk Road-analog.

Both sides of the World-Spire Mountains are home to dwarves: the Ansur dwarves live on the high ridges on the Western side of the mountain range, while the Shong live on the Eastern slopes and the lands beyond.

The first government on a scale larger than individual villages, according to the tales, formed when the village leader Xia Yu gathered up the men of his village and conquered a nearby village. Things snowballed from there. By the time his thirst for conquest was sated twenty years later he ruled more than anyone previous had ever dreamed of. Dubbing himself Huan-Dai Xia Yu, he turned his first village into his capital and declared that his rule was granted by the ancestors, for how else could he conquer so much?

Doling out land to his most trusted followers, and creating the rank of Hua for them, he made them the owners of the land and all the farmers that worked the land were required to pay half their crop seasonally as tax. In exchange for their tax, the Hua protected the farmers from bandits, animals, and corrupted monsters.

As Huan-Dai, Xia Yu gathered the most brilliant men in his empire and tasked them with developing a system to make sure that taxes were paid correctly and that accurate records could be kept. All of this, prior to the first metal was smelted in the world.This is currently all I have for the history of the Shong dwarves.

[Yora]

I am working on a world that is mostly bronze age, with the gnomes of the northern mountains being the only people who know how to turn iron ore into a workable material. It's not as good as bronze for blades, but much cheaper for things like pots, arrowheads, hammers and scale armor. There are fortunes to be made but even though the raw materials are everywhere, getting the iron to markets in the south is the real factor that determines who will be rich and powerful.
One big problem with the north is that it's currently way too peaceful and quiet with nothing really going on. Competition among the mining cities over access to the only nearby major port would be an obvious and perfect candidate for a source of regional tension and the involvement of mercenaries and secret plots. But I don't want the gnomes to just build big armies and build checkpoints on the major rivers to destroy any boats with iron from rival cities. That would be too simple as a solution and I also want the gnomes to use a lot of trickery and deception as their form of diplomacy and warfare. But as of now I don't really have any good ideas how that would spill over to the elven and human tribes of the surrounding forest.

The Hobbit would be one obvious place to look for inspirations, and the dwarves of Orzammar in Dragon Age might hold some potential ideas as well.
Does anyone have other ideas that come to mind when thinking about competing mining cities trying to destroy their competitor's business?

[avr]

So you're after dirty tricks? Something like:

"The gnomes of city X tore up fields to mine their iron and angered the goddess of the crops. Say, aren't those fields next to your warehouses storing their iron being eaten by a plague of locusts?"

Or maybe the agents of one city sneak in and spray an acid on the iron goods of another while they're in transit. Not D&D concentrated acid, just something which will rust and weaken them a bit, making them appear terrible quality.

Apparently poorly stored iron goods breaking thru the bottom of the boats/ships carrying them was an occasional problem. A little sabotage might help that along.

Then there's the usual bribery of officials to get first crack at selling/transporting the goods or to delay competitors, maybe daring attempts to be the first to sail down on the spring flood, or even to try to sledge it overland in winter (both climate dependent of course), and of course salesmanship and workmanship.

[Yora]

I am primarily searching for things that make people travel with a lot of guards, weary of strangers, keeping weapons close at hand, careful of which allies they can still trust.
As it is, everyone can go to work in the morning without any worry that any trouble might show up in the forseeable future. Which is not a conductive environment for adventures. I am more in need of tensions than of clashes.

But thinking some more about it, I like the direction of your ideas. Gnomes wouldn't build large armies and march into battle. They would make small commando teams and strike at enemy infrastructure to be out again without anyone really knowing what actually happened. It's low intensity but can still get very messy and leave lots of people dead. And might even be more effective at creating tension and mistrust than big open battles.
Would be very difficult to detect enemy agents when you're nor even sure who all your enemies are. And of course it can very easily spill over to other groups of the region who are cooperating with the gnomes and that way become useful targets themselves. And you don't have to rely only on gnomes to do your dirty work when there are people who take work from anyone with coins to pay.

[zabbarot]

I am primarily searching for things that make people travel with a lot of guards, weary of strangers, keeping weapons close at hand, careful of which allies they can still trust.
As it is, everyone can go to work in the morning without any worry that any trouble might show up in the forseeable future. Which is not a conductive environment for adventures. I am more in need of tensions than of clashes.

But thinking some more about it, I like the direction of your ideas. Gnomes wouldn't build large armies and march into battle. They would make small commando teams and strike at enemy infrastructure to be out again without anyone really knowing what actually happened. It's low intensity but can still get very messy and leave lots of people dead. And might even be more effective at creating tension and mistrust than big open battles.
Would be very difficult to detect enemy agents when you're nor even sure who all your enemies are. And of course it can very easily spill over to other groups of the region who are cooperating with the gnomes and that way become useful targets themselves. And you don't have to rely only on gnomes to do your dirty work when there are people who take work from anyone with coins to pay.

"Sir, Lieutenant Cricket Littinder reporting," the young gnome said, standing at attention. She was stout, but full of enthusiasm for her first assignment.

"Littender, Littender... Ah, here it is. At ease," the captain waved one hand lazily at the young officer, "says here you received top marks in combat illusions and scout tactics. How are you at dancing lights?"

"Good, sir."

"And ghost sounds?"

"My specialty, sir."

"Good to hear. We'll be putting you in Weasel Squad. Report to Lt. Frogleg. He'll get you set up."

"Thank you, sir. Right away, sir." Cricket rendered a salute and then nearly tripped over herself in her excitement to meet her squad.

[Yora]

I chose gnomes over dwarves for the setting specifically because they are not as cliche saturated as dwarves, but when you remove the silly clown stuff they often come with you have something that might not be either easy or fun to fight.

[avr]

For people to be that wary of strangers, the tricks have to kill a number of people IMO. Perhaps there's some sort of law which would punish offenders but leaving no witnesses blunts it.

[Tzi]

I am primarily searching for things that make people travel with a lot of guards, weary of strangers, keeping weapons close at hand, careful of which allies they can still trust.
As it is, everyone can go to work in the morning without any worry that any trouble might show up in the forseeable future. Which is not a conductive environment for adventures. I am more in need of tensions than of clashes.

But thinking some more about it, I like the direction of your ideas. Gnomes wouldn't build large armies and march into battle. They would make small commando teams and strike at enemy infrastructure to be out again without anyone really knowing what actually happened. It's low intensity but can still get very messy and leave lots of people dead. And might even be more effective at creating tension and mistrust than big open battles.
Would be very difficult to detect enemy agents when you're nor even sure who all your enemies are. And of course it can very easily spill over to other groups of the region who are cooperating with the gnomes and that way become useful targets themselves. And you don't have to rely only on gnomes to do your dirty work when there are people who take work from anyone with coins to pay.

Depending on the level of isolation between communities you could have epidemic disease be a threat. Villages may be unlikely to trust strangers because of the fear of contamination and disease brought by outsiders to a region with no immunizing agents to the disease.

[Yora]

I think plague is severely underused in fantasy all the time. It can be a very powerful plot device at various scales. The 14th century plague in Europe spread extremely fast with an estimated mortality rate of 50% within just a year or two. And smallpox in America in the 16th century reached the entire continent within a few decades with mortality rates in the 90s. Those are true End of the World scenarios, and that's long before you have ghouls and zombies entering the picture.

Alternatively you could have a plague of that scope some decades or maybe a century in the past, with the memory still being present enough that people get a huge freakout about anything that could remotely indicate a new outbreak somewhere.

[zabbarot]

I think plague is severely underused in fantasy all the time. It can be a very powerful plot device at various scales. The 14th century plague in Europe spread extremely fast with an estimated mortality rate of 50% within just a year or two. And smallpox in America in the 16th century reached the entire continent within a few decades with mortality rates in the 90s. Those are true End of the World scenarios, and that's long before you have ghouls and zombies entering the picture.

That says a lot about how widespread Native American trade routes were.

Anyways, I'm thinking maybe plague is under used because it means there are a lot of people dying that your heroes can't save. Automatically makes for a darker setting, which can definitely be good, but not always what you want. It is definitely a good starting point for a campaign though, and pretty much guaranteed to be a major plot point. What hero doesn't want to cure people of the plague?

[Tzi]

That says a lot about how widespread Native American trade routes were.

Anyways, I'm thinking maybe plague is under used because it means there are a lot of people dying that your heroes can't save. Automatically makes for a darker setting, which can definitely be good, but not always what you want. It is definitely a good starting point for a campaign though, and pretty much guaranteed to be a major plot point. What hero doesn't want to cure people of the plague?

It also, or definitely says that Native Americans were horrifically susceptible to Old World diseases.

One factor might be some societies have a lack of domesticated animals which are the main cause of many pandemic diseases. Close proximity to animals allows a disease to jump species and a disease thats relatively minor for one creature is deadly serious for another.

N. Americans with their lack of cows, pigs, ect had less exposure and less build up of immunities. Its also why there was practically no crossover in diseases. I.E. no horrific plague from the Americas decimating the Old World.

[Yora]

There have been some seriously bleak fantasy books in the past 10 years. Though I think depopulating mortalities is something that none of them really touched.
You don't even need to have an extremely lethal plague. When you look at the really bad regions in the 30 years war, World War 2 looks almost mundane in comparison. The adventure Better Than Any Man is set during one of the worst episodes of that war and even if you keep the ancient evil contained it's still quite possible that the whole campaign ends in all out genocide. I think it's pretty good, but it's buy a guy who thinks any good adventure should go to where it gets uncomfortable.

[Tzi]

It could be even more mundane, Look at the global projected demographic trends towards an aging population and logically shrinking number of people in the future.

Perhaps there was once a wondrous utopia and it was as simply as after a few generations of people forgetting to breed, there were infinitely fewer peoples. Cities were simply abandoned for lack of people to maintain them OR live in them.

[Roxxy]

It’s time for a random campaign setting update. A synopsis will take forever at this rate. For the uninitiated, my setting is Eberronish magitek, though it borrows from the Sixties rather than the Twenties. I have written about the Dwarves, and the Orcs, and some about the government and the war (but not about the Reconstruction Bureau, which I totally need to talk about), and now I discuss Elves (Note: Elves, like Orcs and Dwarves, are Humans, and have a Human lifespan. There are no independent Elven nations. One race nations in general aren't really a thing in this setting. Drow are Elves from “Asia”, having no mechanical differences, and aside from very dark skin and very light hair look largely similar [Slightly androgenous, shorter than Orcs and Sapiens but taller than Dwarves, pointed ears, and hair and eyes have same color ranges [Hair and eyes can be different colors from each other. Drow have grey, blue, or purple, though hair color tends to be very pale and close to white, with eyes much more vibrant. Western Elves have brown, red, yellow, or green, with hair tending to be light or medium in tone compared to vibrant eyes, and green Elven hair having a brownish tint like dried leaves or a seafoamish tint. Red hair is usually ginger, leafish, or a medium reddish-brown. Elves do not typically have bold, bright, or vibrant hair colors.]. Roughly 50% of Elves have faint to moderate stripes or spots on their skin [Same color range as hair, but the individual Elf can have spots or stripes of multiple colors.].]. Elves bear a rather interesting collection of stereotypes. Elves are typically stereotyped as a militant, warlike bunch of savages, yet before the current century, Elves had little in the way of military tradition, having historically lacked armies, having had neither a population large enough for conquest nor the means with which to equip a field army.

Until the Industrial Awakening, Elves lived mostly on the fringes of society. As a race that hasn’t typically liked living in close confines, they’ve never been able to put together a large enough group to carve out a good spot for themselves. A lot of this stems from the Elven susceptibility to disease (-2 Con, -2 all saves against disease, magical or mundane [a preindustrial Elf would be -4, but all those people died of old age or other stuff]). In times past, it discouraged them from urban lifestyles and raising livestock or keeping pets, which combined with the high disease mortality rate to keep their population numbers low. It also made fighting in wars abroad very difficult, both because of a lack of means to raise an army and because the number one killer of troops in war has historically been disease. Elves certainly did fight plenty of skirmishes and engage in raiding, but they rarely ever formed armies to send abroad, since such armies were so difficult to keep in fighting order.

Also contributing to the fringeness of Elves is their penchant for sorcery. The Celestial Bureaucracy that once ruled the world never approved of sorcery, and this attitude rubbed off on their subjects. They never really saw crushing the Elves as worth the expense and effort, but they certainly didn’t like them and did not welcome them in non-Elven lands. They were decried as savages, since they did comparatively little agriculture (though more than they got credit for), still relied on hunting, are fine with night activity (Elves have Darkvision to 60ft), were disease-ridden, used “savage magic”, and were usually seminomadic. Even after the Celestial Bureaucracy collapsed, a lot of these attitudes remained.

Things changed with the Industrial Awakening. Medical technology improved by leaps and bounds, with vaccinations, antibiotics, and improved understanding of sanitation massively reducing both the frequency and lethality of major illnesses. Every race’s population exploded, but Elves had the proportionally highest growth, since they had the highest mortality rate. Suddenly, the Elven susceptibility to disease wasn’t that big a problem. Like everyone else, traditionally rural Elves got forced into far overcrowded cities to work hard jobs for a pittance, but Elves found societal advancement harder than any others except Dwarves and Tieflings, do to being seen as too savage to meaningfully educate.

The easiest place for an Elf to advance is, to this day, military service. Though the old stereotypes of savagery have cooled down enough that Elves can enroll in university and attempt to get academic jobs, institutional racism is still very much a problem, and it is certainly harder for an Elf to do these things as a result. The military is not by any means a perfect meritocracy, but it is better than most places. The guarantee of somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and a modest payday is also rather attractive to people who are very poor. With vaccinations, medications, and proper sanitation keeping disease under control, many Elves found themselves volunteering for military service. The Great Demonic War of twenty years past also had a lot to do with this. Everybody was being inducted into the military in huge numbers, but people proficient in skilled trades were unlikely to see combat duty, because they were too valuable to the military as support workers keeping the war machine running. Agricultural workers tended to be kept out of the military altogether because food production was vital. Elves tended to lack access to skilled trades and were rarely agricultural workers, so they were comparatively very likely to end up in combat positions. There are so many Elven veterans that the members of the current Elven Civil Rights movements are largely people who have fought for the nation in time of war, something they are very quick to point out every time they get accused of unpatriotic activity and as a justification of why institutional racism is ridiculous (as if such a justification were necessary). This is largely where the stereotype of Elves as militant comes from.

I want to talk about Elven subcultures, but it’s quite late. Coffee shop beat/Bohemian culture, urban revolutionaries, and wilderness communes (Imagine Hippies, except not pacifists, heavily armed, and contemptuous of the government and society. And probably more drug addled.) are all intended to be reflected in some Elves, and there's also the massive amount of poverty and the commonality of military service to factor in.

[Talion]

So I've reached an issue that's held me up for a few weeks and I'd really appreciate some outside thoughts:

I've mostly finished designing a calendar system for my homebrew setting. I'm missing a few month names, but on the whole that isn't an issue. The issue I've come across is choosing when the year starts/ends. Initially, I thought that working with the 'winter solstice' would be a good option. But then I realized I had a few other options, which lead to the actual problem: the monsoon season. This world's year is shorter than ours (by about a month), meaning it is closer to its local star and thus warmer, and is a fairly wet world. As such it seemed natural to include a monsoon season.

So, briefly put, in a warmer, wetter world:

1. Would it be more proper to include a monsoon/wet season or have more continuous rain such as in a tropical rainforest?

2. If a monsoon/wet season was included, should it be the determining factor for start/end of the year? Or should I work with another option, such as the solstice, the start of spring, or another factor entirely?

[VoxRationis]

So I've reached an issue that's held me up for a few weeks and I'd really appreciate some outside thoughts:

I've mostly finished designing a calendar system for my homebrew setting. I'm missing a few month names, but on the whole that isn't an issue. The issue I've come across is choosing when the year starts/ends. Initially, I thought that working with the 'winter solstice' would be a good option. But then I realized I had a few other options, which lead to the actual problem: the monsoon season. This world's year is shorter than ours (by about a month), meaning it is closer to its local star and thus warmer, and is a fairly wet world. As such it seemed natural to include a monsoon season.

So, briefly put, in a warmer, wetter world:

1. Would it be more proper to include a monsoon/wet season or have more continuous rain such as in a tropical rainforest?

2. If a monsoon/wet season was included, should it be the determining factor for start/end of the year? Or should I work with another option, such as the solstice, the start of spring, or another factor entirely?

The answer to question 1 is mostly dependent upon latitude and geography (mountains and oceans have a noticeable effect).

[Talion]

The answer to question 1 is mostly dependent upon latitude and geography (mountains and oceans have a noticeable effect).

For the continent in question, we're looking at being reasonably above the equator (to allow for snowfall in the northern territories). There's two fairly large mountain ranges running parallel to each other on the far north-west side, with the bigger one running north/south along the center of the main landmass. There is a smaller mountain range running east-west on the southern end of a large landmass to the south-east of the main continent, along with a series of islands, some of which are volcanic, to the north and east of that (and strictly east of the main continent). There are three major lakes, as well as a centrally located sea; I would consider said lakes being large enough to affect their local weather phenomenon.

My reasoning has lead me to believe that the centrally located sea is fairly rough, given its size, shape, wind, currents, and inlets/outlets (hence the name, which translates roughly as the 'whirling' sea). Generally speaking, this probably means more general precipitation rather than the existence of proper monsoon seasons. Further, being closer to its local star means that the temperature variation may not be quite as varied as places in our world, but still noteworthy.

Which then leaves me with the question of should I start the year on a solstice or on an effective 'first day of spring' or on some other factor. I'm leaning towards something more akin to the latter, but would still appreciate some thoughts on the matter.

[Sam113097]

It’s time for a random campaign setting update. A synopsis will take forever at this rate. For the uninitiated, my setting is Eberronish magitek, though it borrows from the Sixties rather than the Twenties. I have written about the Dwarves, and the Orcs, and some about the government and the war (but not about the Reconstruction Bureau, which I totally need to talk about), and now I discuss Elves (Note: Elves, like Orcs and Dwarves, are Humans, and have a Human lifespan. There are no independent Elven nations. One race nations in general aren't really a thing in this setting. Drow are Elves from “Asia”, having no mechanical differences, and aside from very dark skin and very light hair look largely similar [Slightly androgenous, shorter than Orcs and Sapiens but taller than Dwarves, pointed ears, and hair and eyes have same color ranges [Hair and eyes can be different colors from each other. Drow have grey, blue, or purple, though hair color tends to be very pale and close to white, with eyes much more vibrant. Western Elves have brown, red, yellow, or green, with hair tending to be light or medium in tone compared to vibrant eyes, and green Elven hair having a brownish tint like dried leaves or a seafoamish tint. Red hair is usually ginger, leafish, or a medium reddish-brown. Elves do not typically have bold, bright, or vibrant hair colors.]. Roughly 50% of Elves have faint to moderate stripes or spots on their skin [Same color range as hair, but the individual Elf can have spots or stripes of multiple colors.].]. Elves bear a rather interesting collection of stereotypes. Elves are typically stereotyped as a militant, warlike bunch of savages, yet before the current century, Elves had little in the way of military tradition, having historically lacked armies, having had neither a population large enough for conquest nor the means with which to equip a field army.

Until the Industrial Awakening, Elves lived mostly on the fringes of society. As a race that hasn’t typically liked living in close confines, they’ve never been able to put together a large enough group to carve out a good spot for themselves. A lot of this stems from the Elven susceptibility to disease (-2 Con, -2 all saves against disease, magical or mundane [a preindustrial Elf would be -4, but all those people died of old age or other stuff]). In times past, it discouraged them from urban lifestyles and raising livestock or keeping pets, which combined with the high disease mortality rate to keep their population numbers low. It also made fighting in wars abroad very difficult, both because of a lack of means to raise an army and because the number one killer of troops in war has historically been disease. Elves certainly did fight plenty of skirmishes and engage in raiding, but they rarely ever formed armies to send abroad, since such armies were so difficult to keep in fighting order.

Also contributing to the fringeness of Elves is their penchant for sorcery. The Celestial Bureaucracy that once ruled the world never approved of sorcery, and this attitude rubbed off on their subjects. They never really saw crushing the Elves as worth the expense and effort, but they certainly didn’t like them and did not welcome them in non-Elven lands. They were decried as savages, since they did comparatively little agriculture (though more than they got credit for), still relied on hunting, are fine with night activity (Elves have Darkvision to 60ft), were disease-ridden, used “savage magic”, and were usually seminomadic. Even after the Celestial Bureaucracy collapsed, a lot of these attitudes remained.

Things changed with the Industrial Awakening. Medical technology improved by leaps and bounds, with vaccinations, antibiotics, and improved understanding of sanitation massively reducing both the frequency and lethality of major illnesses. Every race’s population exploded, but Elves had the proportionally highest growth, since they had the highest mortality rate. Suddenly, the Elven susceptibility to disease wasn’t that big a problem. Like everyone else, traditionally rural Elves got forced into far overcrowded cities to work hard jobs for a pittance, but Elves found societal advancement harder than any others except Dwarves and Tieflings, do to being seen as too savage to meaningfully educate.

The easiest place for an Elf to advance is, to this day, military service. Though the old stereotypes of savagery have cooled down enough that Elves can enroll in university and attempt to get academic jobs, institutional racism is still very much a problem, and it is certainly harder for an Elf to do these things as a result. The military is not by any means a perfect meritocracy, but it is better than most places. The guarantee of somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and a modest payday is also rather attractive to people who are very poor. With vaccinations, medications, and proper sanitation keeping disease under control, many Elves found themselves volunteering for military service. The Great Demonic War of twenty years past also had a lot to do with this. Everybody was being inducted into the military in huge numbers, but people proficient in skilled trades were unlikely to see combat duty, because they were too valuable to the military as support workers keeping the war machine running. Agricultural workers tended to be kept out of the military altogether because food production was vital. Elves tended to lack access to skilled trades and were rarely agricultural workers, so they were comparatively very likely to end up in combat positions. There are so many Elven veterans that the members of the current Elven Civil Rights movements are largely people who have fought for the nation in time of war, something they are very quick to point out every time they get accused of unpatriotic activity and as a justification of why institutional racism is ridiculous (as if such a justification were necessary). This is largely where the stereotype of Elves as militant comes from.

I want to talk about Elven subcultures, but it’s quite late. Coffee shop beat/Bohemian culture, urban revolutionaries, and wilderness communes (Imagine Hippies, except not pacifists, heavily armed, and contemptuous of the government and society. And probably more drug addled.) are all intended to be reflected in some Elves, and there's also the massive amount of poverty and the commonality of military service to factor in.

Is there a thread where all of your setting information is posted? This seems like a very interesting premise, and I have never seen a fantasy setting based on that era of history before! A dedicated thread would be a better place than this thread to get specific advise on your setting, which changes many of the base assumptions of a traditional RPG world.

[Milo v3]

How much do you guys focus on Planar stuff in your settings, in most published RPG settings I've seen have barely touched on the planes (except for Planescape of course)?

[Mechalich]

How much do you guys focus on Planar stuff in your settings, in most published RPG settings I've seen have barely touched on the planes (except for Planescape of course)?

It depends on the nature of your setting. My setting is P6 and the planes are impossible to get to. Your soul goes there when you die and that's it. Even so, beings from the planes can be summon/bound into the world all the time and they have a dramatic impact when they are, so outsiders matter to the setting.

More high-powered settings should deal with planar stuff a lot. At some point a setting has enough people able to cast plane shift and construct stable planar portals that the world itself is effectively an extension of the planes and becomes nothing more than a regionalized part of Planescape (and an unlucky one if your planet gets invaded by Slaadi or something).

Freeform situations where anyone who can access the planes can do so are inherently unstable - someone will accidentally trigger a demonic invasion eventually - so higher magic settings need some justification that allows significant planar travel and possibly trade while preventing that from happening. Maybe the gods are highly interventionist (this seems to be what keeps FR from imploding, at least prior to it getting its own special cosmology), maybe a cabal of high level wizards has erected barriers, who knows, but limits are important. Said limits should also apply to PCs and other mortals so that you can't take your army to the Plane of Shadow and attack some unsuspecting kingdom on the other side of the world for no good reason.

[VoxRationis]

For the continent in question, we're looking at being reasonably above the equator (to allow for snowfall in the northern territories). There's two fairly large mountain ranges running parallel to each other on the far north-west side, with the bigger one running north/south along the center of the main landmass. There is a smaller mountain range running east-west on the southern end of a large landmass to the south-east of the main continent, along with a series of islands, some of which are volcanic, to the north and east of that (and strictly east of the main continent). There are three major lakes, as well as a centrally located sea; I would consider said lakes being large enough to affect their local weather phenomenon.

My reasoning has lead me to believe that the centrally located sea is fairly rough, given its size, shape, wind, currents, and inlets/outlets (hence the name, which translates roughly as the 'whirling' sea). Generally speaking, this probably means more general precipitation rather than the existence of proper monsoon seasons. Further, being closer to its local star means that the temperature variation may not be quite as varied as places in our world, but still noteworthy.

If the area is far from the equator and there are large mountain ranges limiting the directions of rain-bearing winds, precipitation patterns are probably seasonal.


Which then leaves me with the question of should I start the year on a solstice or on an effective 'first day of spring' or on some other factor. I'm leaning towards something more akin to the latter, but would still appreciate some thoughts on the matter.

That bit's largely cultural. Both the Chinese and Gregorian calendars start in winter, before spring starts but after things start to get a little lighter. I'm not sure where other calendars start, but that might be a common place.

[Sam113097]

I'm working on an original race, and I would love some feedback!

The Voidborn
“Sure, the Void magic is great for now. You’re at the top of your game, and nothing can beat the rush that comes from throwing lightning bolts. But let’s see how you like it when you lose control of the Void a few times. It might just hurt at first, but after a while, you’ll start lookin’ like a torn-up shadow. You can hide it temporarily, but it won’t last. And you better hope to the Fell that your kids don’t end up warped too.”

The Voidborn are humans who have been warped by the Void. Some of them are mages who lost control, but most are just unfortunate people who were born in a place where the link to the Void was particularly strong, or are descendants of powerful Void mages. In their true form, they resemble jagged, glowing, human-shaped shadows. When they are calm, they can take on a human visage, but any strong emotions will cause all but the most disciplined Voidborn to revert to their true form. They appear unsettling to most humans, and are often associated with dark magic due to their origins, but they are not inherently evil.

[Tzi]

In my endless desire for self-doubt and difficulty I am left considering tweaking my setting by a great deal. I still want to keep the politics, the countries and the languages but I am debating a rewrite of History and Races to make it more akin to a standard D&D world with lots of races, but a different history.

Currently its a HUMANS only world. I am debating splicing it with an older world I made.
Core Themes:

Aliens Invasion: Suprise Twist actually abberations are native to the planet, everything else was brought here ages ago in the distant history of the world.
Elves! Nearing the total extinction of the peoples roughly called "Eladrian," in most languages, the Elves had instead used their previous dominance to capture humans or bargain with some to breed whole tribes and nations of half elves. *This will require somewhat a rewrite of Half-Elves.
MORE TECH! LESS SOCIETY! The previously mentioned 7 days of fire was much more recent and thus the world is much more damaged.
MORE ALIEN STUFF! just adding more alien landscapes and life.


OR I could stop punishing myself and leave it all alone. -_-

[Tzi]

So after careful thoughts I might rewrite SOME of the setting after all. Mainly it comes about after better fleshing out the World of the setting and what I wanted the setting to be. Mainly the world needs to be more entirely well written.



http://i.imgur.com/GNKkxAO.png

Some core Lore is due for shifting, primarily the origin of Humanity and its Humanoid "problem," creatures (Orcs, Ogres, Goblins, Trolls ect). More over the alieness of the world will become more prominent as well. I have ultimately sided with being against a "Multi-Race" world like standard D&D because I just like that more.


Mainly I want to keep "Recent Lore," with only minor tweaks but completely rewrite the Deep Lore or a lot of the more ancient history and geography of the Brigantian people and their closely related peoples.

Also wish to rewrite the Lydians not as an Empire in trouble but as an Empire on the make. But a peculiar Empire, lurking in the background of Brigantian life. Lydia is rebuilding its Imperial might partly through Religion and Partly through economic and military Hegemony over that sphere of the world. The Lydians are big fans of Political Science and thus have engineered a new Order to try and police their sphere of Influence and protect the supremacy of their economic power. There interest in the Brigantian Kingdom is primarily its regional power. The internal debates of the Lydian Senate being the idea of "Deputizing," the Brigantians as a minor Deputy to control the other similar tribal fiefs in that region they live in. Mostly because the Lydians know they lack the military power to control that area directly.

[nrg89]

I'm working on an original race, and I would love some feedback!

The Voidborn
“Sure, the Void magic is great for now. You’re at the top of your game, and nothing can beat the rush that comes from throwing lightning bolts. But let’s see how you like it when you lose control of the Void a few times. It might just hurt at first, but after a while, you’ll start lookin’ like a torn-up shadow. You can hide it temporarily, but it won’t last. And you better hope to the Fell that your kids don’t end up warped too.”

The Voidborn are humans who have been warped by the Void. Some of them are mages who lost control, but most are just unfortunate people who were born in a place where the link to the Void was particularly strong, or are descendants of powerful Void mages. In their true form, they resemble jagged, glowing, human-shaped shadows. When they are calm, they can take on a human visage, but any strong emotions will cause all but the most disciplined Voidborn to revert to their true form. They appear unsettling to most humans, and are often associated with dark magic due to their origins, but they are not inherently evil.

Hm, I wonder what you mean by "lost control". Do they lose track of their morals or are they subject to fits of destructive rage? If it's the latter, there's alot of room for roleplay, some might welcome the bursts and some might hate themselves for it. If it's the former, there's also room for roleplaying "the descent".

[Sam113097]

Hm, I wonder what you mean by "lost control". Do they lose track of their morals or are they subject to fits of destructive rage? If it's the latter, there's alot of room for roleplay, some might welcome the bursts and some might hate themselves for it. If it's the former, there's also room for roleplaying "the descent".

It's closer to "fits of destructive rage". If a Mage attempts a spell on the edge of their ability- one that requires opening up their connection to the Void to a greater extent- there is a chance that they are exposed to the energy of the Void. It's basically the result of an extreme version of backfiring spells

[BootStrapTommy]

I found the greatest thing ever. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes) I feel the need to find creative ways to shamelessly use the concept in a campaign setting.

[Tzi]

I found the greatest thing ever. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes) I feel the need to find creative ways to shamelessly use the concept in a campaign setting.

Considering the Greeco-Roman inspiration of my Lydian Empire I might have to incorporate this. Potentially as "Old Believers," since I am writing the Lydians as undergoing a Political and Theological revolution, though the revolution has clear losers. Essentially the Empire is hurdling towards a more Byzantine style, an official army, codes of conduct and a general aversion towards male on male pairings.

Perhaps a similar band still exists though has been exiled or relegated to the territories with supporters and believers in the earlier cults.

[Sam113097]

I found the greatest thing ever. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes) I feel the need to find creative ways to shamelessly use the concept in a campaign setting.
If you've ever played the tactical board game Heroscape, the Sacred Band are a major source of troops for one of the armies. It's always cool to find unusual/interesting bits of history like the that :smallbiggrin:

[nrg89]

I found the greatest thing ever. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes) I feel the need to find creative ways to shamelessly use the concept in a campaign setting.

Yes, these are awesome! I've actually been inspired by them and added something similar in a very theocratic empire where the church decides almost everything about sex such as arranging marriages and stuff. This is to make sure that they control the flow of wealth so that some virtuous, hard working families can marry rich. However, the paladins cannot marry and a have the kind of structure the Sacred Band of Thebes has. You have to be an elite fighter, you take on the position for life (even if you can't fight anymore you get a very steady compensation till death) and you're outside the control of the church over your relationships so they're regarded as totally free both sexually and socially.


It's closer to "fits of destructive rage". If a Mage attempts a spell on the edge of their ability- one that requires opening up their connection to the Void to a greater extent- there is a chance that they are exposed to the energy of the Void. It's basically the result of an extreme version of backfiring spells

Cool, what social standing do they have? They sound like loners, maybe mages for hire? Or is there some sort of organization of them? I guess it depends on how numerous they are relative to other more "normal" mages.

[Sam113097]

Cool, what social standing do they have? They sound like loners, maybe mages for hire? Or is there some sort of organization of them? I guess it depends on how numerous they are relative to other more "normal" mages.

In addition to mages warped by their magic, children born near rifts to the Void often become Voidborn. Over time, enough Voidborn have been born or created that they are, for all intents and purposes, their own species. In places where the influence of the Void is strong, there are entire villages of Voidborn who do not mask their appearance. However, in places where Voidborn are rare, they are often viewed as dangerous. Voidborn are relegated to second-class citizenship in most cities, and feared in superstitious communities. Their appearance is scary to those not familiar with them, so most Voidborn mask their shadowy visage unless they are around those they trust.

This is what they look like:https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1711/24450168140_baf74ec38a_z.jpg

[Jendekit]

So, a (http://delecusdhozius.tumblr.com/image/137794981813) certain (http://zarnala.deviantart.com/art/Salarian-Jedi-Knight-300042635) set (http://perkunasloki.deviantart.com/art/Asari-Mandalorian-300155081) of (http://nimtai.deviantart.com/art/The-Force-Choke-Commission-531374977) pictures (http://egor-ursus.deviantart.com/art/Star-Effect-Krogan-Sith-513773451) I found online made me decide that I had to design a variant Star Wars setting with the Mass Effect Races. I'll be using the Fantasy Flight mechanics with a homebrew I found online (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/2e908s/star_wars_edge_of_the_empire_to_mass_effect/) for the races.

What I'm having trouble determining is how I should go about fusing the two aspects of the setting together. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Mechalich]

Mass Effect is 21st century Star Wars, so the settings should go together quite easily. Biotics = The Force.

Species wise, the variously major mass effect species map fairly well to major Star wars species. Asari are Twi'leks, Krogan are Mandalorians (not actually a species but a cultural group, still works), Quarians are Sullustans or Mon Calimari, Turians are Zabraks, Salarians are Rodians.

Mass Relays correspond to Gree/Rakata hypergates, and need no modification if you set your crossover during that time period, otherwise you have to finesse them still being in existence in 'modern' star wars. Likewise the Reapers are a Rakata/Gree creation - probably corresponding to the Eternal Fleet recently introduced into TOR.

Ships work the same, projectiles are largely charged into blasters but the difference is entirely cosmetic anyway, most technologies are functionally equivalent.

[Yora]

Mass Effect is KotOR without restrictions by the Star Wars license. Stylistic very similar.

But thematically they took it into a completely new direction. And from a worldbuilding perspective Biotics are not like the Force at all. Biotics is a cybernetic technology. Not "an energy field created by all living things, that surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together."

I've taken a lot of things from Mass Effect for my Sword & Sorcery fantasy setting. I pretty much have Turians, Krogan, Quarians, and Geth. And Collectors and Rachni.

[Jendekit]

At first I was planning on simply swapping out character races and calling it good, but now I'm thinking that if I want to keep the feel of the ME races I'll need to more or less build the setting from the ground up. Honestly, that sounds more fun anyway.

So, Tython is to be supplanted by Thessia and the Asari as a race will be entirely Force-Sensitive. The capital of the Republic will be housed on a planet-city named Citadel. The exiled Jedi (predominantly Salarians) to discovered the Sith species on Korriban, or rather Tuchanka, found them locked in a civil war with one faction composed of the Force-Sensitive members of the race and the other faction being those not Force-Sensitive. In later era, the second faction would become widespread throughout the galaxy under the name of Krogan.

Please pitch in and give me ideas! If there's enough interest I'll turn this into its own thread.

[BootStrapTommy]

But all Krogan are Biotics. Despite super warriors being mages being a weird balance choice (it is implied that un-Geophaged Krogan could overrun the galaxy for a reason).

[Milo v3]

But all Krogan are Biotics. Despite super warriors being mages being a weird balance choice (it is implied that un-Geophaged Krogan could overrun the galaxy for a reason).

Opposite actually. "Biotics are rare among the krogan, especially since the practice of surgically creating krogan biotics has been discontinued (due to the high mortality rate)." That's why the krogan biotic companion is so important since he is one of the last "Krogan Battlemasters" in existence.

[ShadowFireLance]

Anyone else feel that your world only has so much room, and each archetype can only be touched by one species? I'd like to have two reptile/lizard people, but it feels insanely crowded in regards to the environment that they'd need.

[Sam113097]

Anyone else feel that your world only has so much room, and each archetype can only be touched by one species? I'd like to have two reptile/lizard people, but it feels insanely crowded in regards to the environment that they'd need.

That comes up a lot. If you want to have a focused, in-depth setting, it's hard to introduce multiple cultures and subgroups for each race. I've found that, if your setting doesn't cover the entire known world, it's best to focus on the groups that will be integral to the setting, and just include a few small pieces of information about the other cultures that exist. That way, you can throw these cultures in later if your players travel that way.

For example, you could have a traveler mention that she visited the "River Kings of the South". They're not important at first, but if you need to introduce, say, another kingdom of lizard men, you have a pre-made place to put them.

[VoxRationis]

It doesn't help that there are often a bunch of redundant races and sub-races running around. How many kinds of elves or giants does a system need?

[Yora]

My first monster list had about 100 creatures and later I cut it down to 70. Now I am rethinking the whole thing again and plan to get down to 30 (excluding reskins of normal animals).

[Milo v3]

It doesn't help that there are often a bunch of redundant races and sub-races running around. How many kinds of elves or giants does a system need?
Those are seperate things though, I love it when a system has tonnes and tonnes of races and monsters. Since it means I have more choice when it comes to picking the small number I want to use in the setting. Saves so much time.

[Slawth13]

Anyone else feel that your world only has so much room, and each archetype can only be touched by one species? I'd like to have two reptile/lizard people, but it feels insanely crowded in regards to the environment that they'd need.

Solution: outer space. There aren't enough sci-fi settings out there imo, and the galaxy (or the entire universe!) is plenty big enough for multiple races that fill similar niches. So long as they feel at least a little different from one another, nobody will bat an eye really.

[Yora]

Space is not the problem. You can make your map as big as you want. The problem is when you have too many things that are too similar and don't really have much to distinguish between them.

If you have two clearly different ideas for reptilian humanoids, there is no reason not to have them both. There are lots of settings that have humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and a lot more and that also works.

[Roxxy]

I feel clever. I answered some key things that didn't make sense about my Pathfinder campaign setting.

So, it's a setting that takes back in the nation of Vendalia, which is a fantasy counterpart culture based largely off of the 60s American West, if they had access to magic and a bunch of them were elves or dwarves or orcs. I've talked about that before. What I haven't talked about is that, on the one hand, we have a setting with the economic golden age of America in the 60s, but on the other hand Vendalia only possesses the West and fought a huge, destructive war on it's soil twenty years ago. America of the 60s was rich partially because it controlled so much of the continent and Europe was recovering from the war. So why is Vendalia, with only some of America's resources and recovery from a war to do, on similar economic terms to the California of America's 60s? In fact, the main superpowers in the world are, on one side of the Cold War, Britain, Japan, and Mexico, and on the other side Hindustan and Aksum, with superpower France trying its best to play both sides. So why is the American West the center of the campaign and so massively powerful? It isn't even a superpower.

Well, I've established that Vendalia was at one point British, and maintains close ties. Like, close ties as in Britain having a currency union, free trade agreement, and free travel/employment agreement with a lot of former colonies, including Vendalia. So, Vendalia is using British pounds to buy things, imports and exports from them tariff free, and workers and businesses can move freely between the two. If the three allied superpowers on the protagonist side are Britain, Japan, and Mexico, that right there is HUGE. Vendalia has very easy access to all three, and if Mexico and Japan offer good trade deals, it's the natural middleperson for trade between the allies. Get good trade arrangement with the Chinese countries (my setting doesn't have a unified China) and Korea and Southeast Asia, and its looking even better. Especially if Britain were to beat a little sliver of Texas out of the French back in the colonial days, giving Vendalia access to the Atlantic. Modern France is trying to play both sides of the Cold War, so they'd naturally be good to Vendalia, old wounds aside. My setting doesn't have a Panama canal, so using Vendalia's well developed railroad system would be the next best thing if they had access to both oceans. Vendalia isn't just at the center of trade between three big superpower allies, its at the center of Asia-Europe trade in general. That means Vendalia is raking in money hand over fist, and also means a lot of soft and cultural power from being so geograpically and economically vital. It also means that, after the war, they got mountains of redevelopment aid and were able to get their economy flowing again relatively rapidly. Everyone powerful wants them Vendalia functional, so people aren't going to let Vendalia just stumble its way through rebuilding what the war damaged. And logic would dictate that Britain, Mexico, and Japan sent troops to fight side by side with the Vendalians in the war.

This also makes Vendalia symbolically important. It's location between Mexico, Japan, and Britian makes it a symbolic lynchpin of the alliance, and the large numbers of British, Japanese, and Mexican soldiers who died together with the Vendalians to keep the demonic armies at bay solidifies that symbolic relationship. It's not just economically vital to the alliance, it's where the alliance proved that it can stand together in the face of an actual fight. Then we have the cultural symbol of Vendalia as the intersection of Europe, Asia, and America. That makes it a great place to set the story.

So no wonder Vendalia is on par with the US. It may not have access to the whole United States, but it has complete economic access to Britain and all her settler colonies (to the point where the Vendalian currency is the British pound, even though they are an independent nation), as well as access to a massive amount of trade and beneficial trade arrangements.

[zabbarot]

I feel clever. I answered some key things that didn't make sense about my Pathfinder campaign setting.

So, it's a setting that takes back in the nation of Vendalia, which is a fantasy counterpart culture based largely off of the 60s American West, if they had access to magic and a bunch of them were elves or dwarves or orcs. I've talked about that before. What I haven't talked about is that, on the one hand, we have a setting with the economic golden age of America in the 60s, but on the other hand Vendalia only possesses the West and fought a huge, destructive war on it's soil twenty years ago. America of the 60s was rich partially because it controlled so much of the continent and Europe was recovering from the war. So why is Vendalia, with only some of America's resources and recovery from a war to do, on similar economic terms to the California of America's 60s? In fact, the main superpowers in the world are, on one side of the Cold War, Britain, Japan, and Mexico, and on the other side Hindustan and Aksum, with superpower France trying its best to play both sides. So why is the American West the center of the campaign and so massively powerful? It isn't even a superpower.

Well, I've established that Vendalia was at one point British, and maintains close ties. Like, close ties as in Britain having a currency union, free trade agreement, and free travel/employment agreement with a lot of former colonies, including Vendalia. So, Vendalia is using British pounds to buy things, imports and exports from them tariff free, and workers and businesses can move freely between the two. If the three allied superpowers on the protagonist side are Britain, Japan, and Mexico, that right there is HUGE. Vendalia has very easy access to all three, and if Mexico and Japan offer good trade deals, it's the natural middleperson for trade between the allies. Get good trade arrangement with the Chinese countries (my setting doesn't have a unified China) and Korea and Southeast Asia, and its looking even better. Especially if Britain were to beat a little sliver of Texas out of the French back in the colonial days, giving Vendalia access to the Atlantic. Modern France is trying to play both sides of the Cold War, so they'd naturally be good to Vendalia, old wounds aside. My setting doesn't have a Panama canal, so using Vendalia's well developed railroad system would be the next best thing if they had access to both oceans. Vendalia isn't just at the center of trade between three big superpower allies, its at the center of Asia-Europe trade in general. That means Vendalia is raking in money hand over fist, and also means a lot of soft and cultural power from being so geograpically and economically vital. It also means that, after the war, they got mountains of redevelopment aid and were able to get their economy flowing again relatively rapidly. Everyone powerful wants them Vendalia functional, so people aren't going to let Vendalia just stumble its way through rebuilding what the war damaged. And logic would dictate that Britain, Mexico, and Japan sent troops to fight side by side with the Vendalians in the war.

This also makes Vendalia symbolically important. It's location between Mexico, Japan, and Britian makes it a symbolic lynchpin of the alliance, and the large numbers of British, Japanese, and Mexican soldiers who died together with the Vendalians to keep the demonic armies at bay solidifies that symbolic relationship. It's not just economically vital to the alliance, it's where the alliance proved that it can stand together in the face of an actual fight. Then we have the cultural symbol of Vendalia as the intersection of Europe, Asia, and America. That makes it a great place to set the story.

So no wonder Vendalia is on par with the US. It may not have access to the whole United States, but it has complete economic access to Britain and all her settler colonies (to the point where the Vendalian currency is the British pound, even though they are an independent nation), as well as access to a massive amount of trade and beneficial trade arrangements.

Another thing to keep in mind is the USA got a big boost in industrialization for the war effort. The nation basically redirected every available person into factories to supply the whole Allied front (and made some money off it to boot).

With the wars going on around Vendalia there is probably quite a bit of profiteering they could be doing. :smallwink:

[ShadowFireLance]

Solution: outer space. There aren't enough sci-fi settings out there imo, and the galaxy (or the entire universe!) is plenty big enough for multiple races that fill similar niches. So long as they feel at least a little different from one another, nobody will bat an eye really.

Well I'm kind of good there mostly because Ageon is a science fantasy universe, so I have a lot of room to work with those. But As Yora mentioned, I have plenty of space. My issue is making them feel unique.


The problem is when you have too many things that are too similar and don't really have much to distinguish between them.

If you have two clearly different ideas for reptilian humanoids, there is no reason not to have them both. There are lots of settings that have humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and a lot more and that also works.

Well so far I have Issthik (Tribal-ish Lizardfolk modelled after Ancient Egypt) Kobolds (A degenerate Dragon) Dragons, and I want to include Wyverns as the third, but it already feels like too much.

[Roxxy]

Another thing to keep in mind is the USA got a big boost in industrialization for the war effort. The nation basically redirected every available person into factories to supply the whole Allied front (and made some money off it to boot).Vendalia may not be making money off of Lend Lease or war loans, but they certainly have industrialization down pat. I'm thinking back to Soviet factories churning out tanks directly into the front lines. Was totally going on in Vendalia 20 years ago. When demons are overrunning the nation, everyone builds or fights.

Also, IRL Los Angeles and the SF Bay Area have very deep aerospace roots. Could be that Vendalia has awesome aerotropolis style construction down south and a world class aerospace industry. Maybe British manufacturers like Vendalia's southern end because LA weather grounds many fewer test flights and provides more controllable testing conditions than English weather. We can extrapolate into space, especially with Vendalia's central position to the alliance (My setting has limited space colonization and resource harvesting. It's better than what we have now by a pretty big margin, but people are nowhere near being able to travel outside the star system the setting takes place in. Vendalia's space faring population is about 50,000, from a nation of over 25 million, with the one of the highest proportions of space farers in the world at 1 in 500. And most Vendalian spacefarers are astronauts who work in space or on other planets but return to Vendalia after at most a couple years, rather than the relative handful of colonists who moved to outposts on other planets permanently.).


With the wars going on around Vendalia there is probably quite a bit of profiteering they could be doing. :smallwink:I imagine Vendalia builds a lot of guns, given the scars of the war. Only natural they'd be willing to sell them. Warplanes, too. Also rayguns, but those supplement firearms rather than replacing them. In Pathfinder terms, rayguns don't deal good crits, but deal everything as elemental typed damage and can do all sorts of environmental things (Lighting fires, freezing puddles, corroding wood okr fabric, electrifying puddles, and such. Electric and sonic rayguns can be built to deal nonlethal damage.) Rayguns are quite a bit quieter than firearms, too, though the highly visible ray spoils concealment. My setting doesn't have the Flaming et al weapon enchantments, and the ability to bypass elemental damage reduction is something a PC will need. Elemental weaknesses are common enough, too. So rayguns are useful against many foes and PCs can have them, but they won't replace traditional firearms in PC or NPC usage any time soon.

Not sure about ships, because most of the Vendalian Navy, aside from coastal defense frigates, patrol boats, and some destroyers, is bundled into a combined forces agreement with Britain's pacific fleets and the Australians and Kiwis and Hawaiians and various smaller former British colonies. Basically, the ships have mixed nationality crews and fly under a unified Commonwealth flag, and everybody chips in. Incidentally, real life Germany and Netherlands have some such arrangements for ground units.

Where this gets beneficial is that the Vendalians and everybody else have access to gigantic aircraft carriers for power projection and intimidation without having to pay the full price (Which is important, because Vendalia wants to use that money for shinier spaceships, streamlinier railroads, and the aerotropolises to service all manner of flying contraptions.), while Britain can let the rest of the Commonwealth help out with securing the Pacific so they can go glare at the French or something.

Of course, this arrangement really only works because the Commonwealth traditionally projects power and goes to war as a whole. Get one nation not wanting to take part in a war, however, and the Commonwealth Fleet suddenly has a major operational problem on its hands...

[Yora]

I had an idea for a setting five years ago and have been working on it ever since, always trying to refine it. And over the last weeks I cut out a lot of stuff that seemed a bit redundant or pointless, making the setting as a whole shrink considerably. And looking at my very early notes, pretty much everything I have now had already been there almost from the very beginning, and I actually added virtually nothing new.

And I really like the result and how everything is coming along.

I made some really drastic changes over the years, but they were all removals, no new additions. Do you have something similar going on in your work? Is great worldbuildingperhaps more a process of elimination than coming up with always new ideas?

[SovelsAtaask]

I have plans for setting my first real-life campaign on the terraformed moon of a magically irradiated planet. In the centuries since a great mage war that resulted in the planet below being ruined, the nature magic that brought life to the moon has gotten out of hand and much of the moon is covered in dense jungle populated by lizardfolk, dinosaurs, and various other generic jungle monsters as well as weird alien creatures.

While doing research about how moons work, I found out that Earth's moon does have a day/night cycle that takes a month in Earth time to complete. That got me thinking, how might day and night lasting for weeks affect the sped-up evolution of the creatures living on the moon? How would it affect travelers from a world with normal days and nights? Just wondering if anyone had any ideas on the subject.

[VoxRationis]

I have plans for setting my first real-life campaign on the terraformed moon of a magically irradiated planet. In the centuries since a great mage war that resulted in the planet below being ruined, the nature magic that brought life to the moon has gotten out of hand and much of the moon is covered in dense jungle populated by lizardfolk, dinosaurs, and various other generic jungle monsters as well as weird alien creatures.

While doing research about how moons work, I found out that Earth's moon does have a day/night cycle that takes a month in Earth time to complete. That got me thinking, how might day and night lasting for weeks affect the sped-up evolution of the creatures living on the moon? How would it affect travelers from a world with normal days and nights? Just wondering if anyone had any ideas on the subject.

It'd likely cause sleep deprivation in travelers, because their natural sleep rhythms aren't in sync with the cues given to them by the ambient light levels. I assume that native life would be adapted to either ignore light levels for sleep purposes or to have a month-long sleep cycle. The former seems like less of a stretch, so perhaps burrowing behaviors would become common (at least for those creatures which can't shade their eyes with a wing or something).

[nrg89]

I made some really drastic changes over the years, but they were all removals, no new additions. Do you have something similar going on in your work? Is great worldbuildingperhaps more a process of elimination than coming up with always new ideas?

There's a quote from a French poet my computer science professor always spoke about on the subject of good software design.


Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

It sounds more profound than KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) but they're essentially the same thing, and I think it holds for worldbuilding too. A good world is both deep enough to provoke the imagination of people about what adventures can be played and still simple enough to wrap your head around. At least in my book, I for example think Forgotten Realms is not a world for me because it's too high magic, too much sentient beings meddling in it and too many factions that I feel suffocated as a player but in Planescape I both understand the whole interconnectedness of the planes and I can understand the respective factions.

[VoxRationis]

Really? I feel the opposite. When I feel my mind straining to grasp the intricacies of history, never does it seem more real. I strive to replicate that in my settings.

[Mechalich]

While doing research about how moons work, I found out that Earth's moon does have a day/night cycle that takes a month in Earth time to complete. That got me thinking, how might day and night lasting for weeks affect the sped-up evolution of the creatures living on the moon? How would it affect travelers from a world with normal days and nights? Just wondering if anyone had any ideas on the subject.

The biggest problems are temperature and energy storage. Temperature can be averted via significant atmospheric mixing across the planet, preventing the dark part from becoming extremely cold - though it would still be very cold, winter night time temperature for weeks at a time is nothing to sneer at. Energy storage is harder. during your night cycle your have zero photosynthesis, meaning zero primary production, but everything is still respiring, so your producers have to manage to accumulate sufficient energy during the daylight periods to survive through the nighttime periods. This is effectively an arctic environment operating at supreme high cycles. Plant life probably bifurcates down two major pathways as a result: one is those organisms that only live during the day, going from seed to plant to seeds again in the few short weeks available, or falling dormant completely throughout the night cycle like algae or lichens. Or you have organisms with massive and secure storage reserves, probably underground, so giant root networks and relatively small leafy areas.

[nrg89]

Really? I feel the opposite. When I feel my mind straining to grasp the intricacies of history, never does it seem more real. I strive to replicate that in my settings.

History, geography and the likes often have "self similarity complexity", meaning that they grow more complicated the more you study them. If I were to speak about the English speaking world's influence on all languages most would equate it with the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, Australia and many, many others and no one would have a problem with that. It's a concept people can wrap their head around, everyone can find the native-English speaking countries on the map and most would not raise an eye brow when they're called "the English speaking world".
However, when you zoom in on those countries you find more depth. The huge Spanish communities in the United States, the French speaking communities in Canada, the Welsh in the United Kingdom, those who identify as Irish speakers in Ireland, the indigenous populations in all these countries such as the Zulu in South Africa, the Maori in New Zealand, the Apache, the Hopi, the Hawaiians the Inuits and many, many more in North America. And then we have the sign languages which differ a lot between the countries (the American and French manual alphabet have more in common with each other than the British and the American) and have their own, separate linguistic histories from the spoken and written languages. And this is all before we even mention regional dialects and accents, that's another layer at least as complicated to talk about. "What language do people speak in country x?" can either be answered with an exhaustive Ph.d dissertation or as a table entry in an elementary school geography book and both answers are useful for understanding the world.

This is what a real world should feel like to me. It has layers of complexity meaning that talking about an English speaking world exerting influence over world language is a term that's useful despite not revealing the true complexity of the linguistics in those areas. I think a good campaign setting has to have these layers so that the players can understand what they're looking at and if they feel comfortable with it, they might look around in a small corner of the world and find out more complex parts of it (maybe this is the one province that never gave up it's independence after the war even though most of the continent did? Maybe this one area had a golden age while the rest of the world was suffering from the plague? Maybe this small part, with snowy mountains, cracks jokes about the lack of cold resistance from the other people living in what some describe as the hottest country in the world?). I think it's very important for someone to summarize stuff for the players and show rather than tell the details.

[Yora]

You could call this Asterix Worldbuilding. "The year is 50 BC and all of Gaul is occupied. Only one small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders." (This is how every single Asterix story begins.) Any time you make one universal statement about a culture or region, also tell yourself that there are a few notable exceptions somewhere. You can never do the whole process completely because it's a fractal that goes on forever until you end up with single exceptional individuals, but there's always room to expand the complexity of what specific thing you currently focus on by looking at the exceptions.

I am currently very strongly considering to not have any humans in my setting. The only prominent real life creatures are bears and tigers and those are easily reskinned. Basically I am doing a Morrowind or Dark Sun style world with jungle instead of desert. And I think ditching humans is the logical next step. Warcraft has whole continents and worlds without any human presence and they have long histories and elaborate storylines in which humans don't appear and nobody is complaining about that.
There is only one major human population in my setting at this point and I think about replacing them with some kind of neanderthal-goliaths. Though in practice that only changes their name and color and makes them a bit taller than elves. I think a few physical oddities are still needed.

[Yora]

I am working on creating a new type of professional hero for a series of Sword & Sorcery stories, which also might work quite well for campaign PCs. I'd like to hear what you think.

I often have a problem with the standard RPG adventurer. Racing from one monster slaying contract or dungeon clearing job to the next while spending all the profits on better equipment and tavern bills doesn't feel like anything anyone sane would consider for a living. On the other hand, having heroes who are defenders of their home village makes it really quite difficult to come up with new adventures. A new previously undiscovered threat every month just doesn't feel believable either.
So this idea I had is a bit of a middle way, drawing from wuxia and ronin movies. The heroes are a type of highly respected mercenaries who wander the land looking for wealthy patrons who invite them to stay in their homes for several months or a year. They get a room and good food, as well as occasional small gifts of valuables, and in return they are expected to help with the defense of the town or village. They are among the most capable fighters within any community in which they are staying, and unlike the veteran warriors among the villagers they are replaceable. Whoever invites these heroes to stay in their home are doing a huge public service to the community and gains a lot of reputation and influence from it. Officially the heroes are honored guests, but everyone knows they are hired muscle. If the compensation for the work they have to do are regarded insufficient, they can just grab their gear and leave. If they misbehave, they get kicked out.
Since it all relies heavily on trust and nobody wants armed strangers staying in their house, having an impeccable reputation and a famous name is key to getting good jobs. But it also makes for a great adventure hook when the heroes come into a village suffering from rude mercenaries who refuse to leave. And of course limitless potential for trouble with the host's beautiful daughter.

In practice this means you can have one to three adventures in one village spread out over the course of a season or year, and then the heroes just move on to the next place with new local threats and potential antagonists. If the number of wandering heroes is small, there is always a place that needs one, and once an area is cleared of trouble there is little reason to continue hosting them. You still have adventures like a regular adventuring party, but a much more comfortable and believable lifestyle. You have heroes who jump at the first sign of trouble but are neither selflessly compassionate nor exploiting the plight of villagers in danger. Payment comes mostly in food and shelter, which isn't a huge drain on the resources of a village. And when dealing with PCs, you already have a good reason why the players should behave. :smallamused:

What do you think of this idea? I primarily created it to justify how my protagonist gets into a new adventure every month, but I also like it as a campaign concept.

[Sam113097]

That concept reminds me of Doomed Slayers http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/103414/Doomed-Slayers. It's a setting where adventurers (called slayers) are their own social class in a feudal society. They live by a set of rules that are intended to explain common adventurer tropes.
Go where you are needed, help where you can. Slayers have far more freedoms than just about anyone else in their societies. This is justified by their heavy duties - they are expected to slay monsters so terrible that they could slaughter entire villages with ease. While Slayers can refuse to help others, they are only expected to do so either when those asking for help could easily accomplish the task on their own - or when the threat is so terrible that the Slayers would be overwhelmed, in which case they are often asked to find someone who can deal with it. Obviously, few Slayers like to admit that they cannot deal with a challenge...

Don't tarry where you are not needed. Slayers are a rowdy lot whose mere presence disturbs peaceful communities. Thus, whenever Slayers have dealt with any threats to a community, they are expected to move on. Certainly they can stay long enough to recuperate from injuries and to partake in any celebrations in their honor, but after that they will hit the road again. The only locations where adventurers tend to stay for longer periods are monster-infested frontier regions or communities located next to a really big dungeon.

Own only what you can take with you. Slayers are forbidden from owning any land, houses, or other non-mobile property. All they can own is what they (and a pack horse or two) carry with them. While in the case of some really successful Slayers this still makes them fantastically wealthy, this and the other rules prevent them from becoming threatening to nobles, merchants, and other members of the local power structures, and their disruption tends to remain purely temporary.

If you stop living by these rules, then you are no longer considered a Slayer by society, and thus the rest of society will no longer allow you your freedoms and privileges. So, how does the rest of society treat Slayers?


Pay them what you can, appropriate to what you ask of them. Slayers deserve generous rewards for their deeds, which benefit all. Of course, not everyone can give equal rewards - if a poor, remote village can only give free food and a place to stay, Slayers will still be obligated to help them by their rules. However, if you are a noble or a rich merchant and need a Slayer's help, you are expected to give generously - and the more dangerous the task, the higher the reward should be. There is a pragmatic reason for this - if you develop a reputation for stinginess, Slayers will come up with all sorts of reasons to avoid you, and that will be very bad for you and everyone around you when you really need them.

Do not bar their way. Unlike many members of society, Slayers can go where they will and visit any village, city, noble fief, or even a war zone (though some specific areas might still be restricted - they don't have to be admitted to the King's Castle just because they want to see it!). What's more, the property they carry with them may not be taxed or confiscated on a whim of the authorities - again, such actions would make other Slayers very reluctant to visit such a place, to its ultimate detriment when it faces the next monster attack. Of course, this doesn't prevent innkeepers, craftsmen, merchants and the like from suddenly raising their prices drastically when their customer is a Slayer, but at least in theory nobody forces the Slayer to accept those prices.

What they find, they keep. Many monsters amass considerable treasures in their lairs, and if the Slayers manage to kill those monsters, the treasure is theirs, no matter how much you claim that the treasure originally belonged to you or an ancestor. If it really did belong to you originally - especially if it's an important heirloom - you may offer them a "reward" for its safe return, which Slayers are generally expected to accept (smart people will negotiate this in advance - it might even be sufficient to tell them about the location of the lair...). Again, trying to stiff Slayers over this is unwise. After all, they managed to retrieve the item in question despite dangers that you were too afraid to deal with.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

I am working on creating a new type of professional hero for a series of Sword & Sorcery stories, which also might work quite well for campaign PCs. I'd like to hear what you think.

*snip*

What do you think of this idea? I primarily created it to justify how my protagonist gets into a new adventure every month, but I also like it as a campaign concept.

Love it! Fund it!

The only thing I see as a problem is that your players have to be 100% on board with the idea, but as an in-universe concept it's great. It's especially useful in settings with a heavy emphasis on Xenia/Guest-Friendship.

[Jendekit]

I'm looking to flesh out the culture for a mercantile "monstrous" race that will appear in a future Pathfinder session. The largest problem that I'm having is that the culture has no stigma against necromancy, and indeed undead are seen as the same individuals they were in life.

With that as the butterfly, what sort of hurricanes would come from that culturally?

[Milo v3]

I'm looking to flesh out the culture for a mercantile "monstrous" race that will appear in a future Pathfinder session. The largest problem that I'm having is that the culture has no stigma against necromancy, and indeed undead are seen as the same individuals they were in life.

With that as the butterfly, what sort of hurricanes would come from that culturally?

Well they'd have less corpse taboos. Probably be more culturally okay with bodies being cut up and examined so better medical knowledge. Fear of physical death would likely be lower, leading to more risks being taken. Things that lead to more irreparable physical damage (like crippling someones legs or something) will be more criminal than normal since that form of injury is one of the few that is not ignored in the animation of the dead.

[redwizard007]

...The largest problem that I'm having is that the culture has no stigma against necromancy, and indeed undead are seen as the same individuals they were in life.

With that as the butterfly, what sort of hurricanes would come from that culturally?

Right off the top of my head. Inheritances would be largely gone. That leads me to think it will be more meritocratic than other societies.

Social values would change exceptionally slowly. For that matter, everything would move more slowly. With eternal "life," caution would be a huge virtue. Recklessness and impatience would probably be huge social taboos.

True life would cheapen, at least to the old undead.

I'd expect to see a wicked divide between social classes. Possibly extending to undeath.

Classic feudalism with less family lineage and more take-your-stuff-when-you-fall going on.

[Mechalich]

I'm looking to flesh out the culture for a mercantile "monstrous" race that will appear in a future Pathfinder session. The largest problem that I'm having is that the culture has no stigma against necromancy, and indeed undead are seen as the same individuals they were in life.

With that as the butterfly, what sort of hurricanes would come from that culturally?

Lack of a taboo against undeath and full acceptance of the undead as functioning individuals in society means that undead will inevitably come to rule that society - they have too many long term advantages economically in addition to built in ability advantages.

Society will depend critically on what kinds of undead are prevalent - vampires prey upon the living and require a living underclass as a result, while wrights can seamlessly convert an entire society into nothing but undead if there's no actors working to stop them.

Also, a mercantile undead-controlled culture is kind of unusual. Undead have an unusual relationship with the hierarchy of needs. Most of no physiological needs at all (vampires being the exception), they have limited safety needs, and their social needs may be dramatically reduced depending on type. Their primary motive for wealth accumulation would have to be almost entirely status based - so you'll need to devise a suitably competitive drive for status that propels this race to accumulate wealth through commerce. Perhaps they need money to give vast offerings to the dark gods of undeath to earn name recognition or something.

[AtlasSniperman]

Curious: has anyone else considered/made canon that lowlight vision and darkvision are tetrachromacy? Where lowlight vision is the eye having the light sensitive cones: red, blue, green and ultraviolet. And darkvision is the eye having: red, blue, green and infrared?

I'm a big fan of anatomy and like to poke in little things like that, does the above seem reasonable to anyone else or am I crazy?

[avr]

Curious: has anyone else considered/made canon that lowlight vision and darkvision are tetrachromacy? Where lowlight vision is the eye having the light sensitive cones: red, blue, green and ultraviolet. And darkvision is the eye having: red, blue, green and infrared?

I'm a big fan of anatomy and like to poke in little things like that, does the above seem reasonable to anyone else or am I crazy?
Darkvision used to be called infravision back in AD&D, and worked like that. Having burning flames like lanterns around tended to turn off infravision.

There was a bit about ultravision in a science-free way in the 1e AD&D DMG, but it wasn't the same as low-light exactly. It's not clear to me how seeing flowers like the bees do would translate to some form of low-light, anyway.

[ThePurple]

Society will depend critically on what kinds of undead are prevalent - vampires prey upon the living and require a living underclass as a result, while wrights can seamlessly convert an entire society into nothing but undead if there's no actors working to stop them.

This can be solved by basically forcing all intelligent undead to require *something* in order to avoid degenerating into feral beasts. Vampires require blood, of course, but maybe liches require the consumption of magic, wights explicitly need to feast on human flesh, and incorporeal undead feed on emotions. Those undead that don't need to consume anything would basically be restricted to mindless undead like skeletons and zombies.

The undead would have an very explicit reason in order to maintain and generate wealth and, for some kinds of undead that need to consume something that is a comparatively rare commodity (like human flesh) they would need to travel in order to get regular access to it (since corpses aren't common enough to support a large standing population of wights). I can even imagine something like the flesh of the living being something of a delicacy that the wealthiest wights are willing to pay exorbitant sums in order to get it from poor humans willing to lose an arm or leg (or a child) for a quick payday (or even as a method of paying off debts, which itself leads into a creepy but interesting idea of wights as bankers and loan sharks that partake in predatory lending practices in order to gorge themselves on living flesh when the living can't pay). You could even make it so that positive emotions, like happiness, are more nourishing to incorporeal undead than negative emotions, like fear (of which I can imagine ghosts and shadows basically paying for the privilege of being near the birth of a couple's first child, at a wedding, or a dance; I could also imagine ghosts running brothels and drug dens for much the same reason).

Of course, this would definitely create an upper class of undead that prey upon the lower class, but the undead would be restricted by the need to have a significant living population around. If you're not operating in an explicitly feudal society (so that normal people are actually allowed to move to a different area if the local lord is exploiting them), it would create a strong impetus for the undead upper class to be benevolent towards the living lower class so that the population remains strong, stable, and, most importantly, *willing* to allow the undead to prey upon them.

In other campaign settings, the taboo against necromancy and the undead can sometimes be thought of as developing from the reaction to the habit of the undead feasting upon the living as well as a lack of non-combative exposure to them. If the first undead creatures appeared and just started eating innocent people, those early communities would react by trying to kill all undead and developing a cultural taboo on the creation or interaction with said undead because they're dangerous and people aren't used to interacting with them in any way except killing them. However, if the undead have been around since the early days of civilization and have very quickly found a way to coexist with the living by actually benefiting the community in exchange for what they take away, that taboo is much less likely to develop and the undead just become another kind of person.

I could even see the community elders that govern and protect everyone being comprised of the oldest, wisest, and most knowledgeable undead around. Imagine what would happen if a lich that's been around for millenia was on the council of elders. Sure, he might not care much about administration because he's too busy focusing on increasing his magical power and feeding himself, but, because he's an upstanding member of the community and authority figure, when his people need him, the actual administrators would probably visit him for advice, not to mention that he could basically come down from his tower with fireballs aplenty when his city is threatened.

A good example of a society that coexists with the undead is the Aerenal elves of Eberron (which are basically elves living in the Caribbean that practice voodoo). A giant court of incredibly powerful undead rule over the nation in a beneficent manner and living elves aspire to join the court by becoming great in their lifetimes and worthy of becoming one of the undying (although the undying don't actually consume anything from the living; they serve and provide out of a sense of duty and obligation to their race and nation).

[Jendekit]

This can be solved by basically forcing all intelligent undead to require *something* in order to avoid degenerating into feral beasts. Vampires require blood, of course, but maybe liches require the consumption of magic, wights explicitly need to feast on human flesh, and incorporeal undead feed on emotions. Those undead that don't need to consume anything would basically be restricted to mindless undead like skeletons and zombies.

The undead would have an very explicit reason in order to maintain and generate wealth and, for some kinds of undead that need to consume something that is a comparatively rare commodity (like human flesh) they would need to travel in order to get regular access to it (since corpses aren't common enough to support a large standing population of wights). I can even imagine something like the flesh of the living being something of a delicacy that the wealthiest wights are willing to pay exorbitant sums in order to get it from poor humans willing to lose an arm or leg (or a child) for a quick payday (or even as a method of paying off debts, which itself leads into a creepy but interesting idea of wights as bankers and loan sharks that partake in predatory lending practices in order to gorge themselves on living flesh when the living can't pay). You could even make it so that positive emotions, like happiness, are more nourishing to incorporeal undead than negative emotions, like fear (of which I can imagine ghosts and shadows basically paying for the privilege of being near the birth of a couple's first child, at a wedding, or a dance; I could also imagine ghosts running brothels and drug dens for much the same reason).

Of course, this would definitely create an upper class of undead that prey upon the lower class, but the undead would be restricted by the need to have a significant living population around. If you're not operating in an explicitly feudal society (so that normal people are actually allowed to move to a different area if the local lord is exploiting them), it would create a strong impetus for the undead upper class to be benevolent towards the living lower class so that the population remains strong, stable, and, most importantly, *willing* to allow the undead to prey upon them.

In other campaign settings, the taboo against necromancy and the undead can sometimes be thought of as developing from the reaction to the habit of the undead feasting upon the living as well as a lack of non-combative exposure to them. If the first undead creatures appeared and just started eating innocent people, those early communities would react by trying to kill all undead and developing a cultural taboo on the creation or interaction with said undead because they're dangerous and people aren't used to interacting with them in any way except killing them. However, if the undead have been around since the early days of civilization and have very quickly found a way to coexist with the living by actually benefiting the community in exchange for what they take away, that taboo is much less likely to develop and the undead just become another kind of person.

I could even see the community elders that govern and protect everyone being comprised of the oldest, wisest, and most knowledgeable undead around. Imagine what would happen if a lich that's been around for millenia was on the council of elders. Sure, he might not care much about administration because he's too busy focusing on increasing his magical power and feeding himself, but, because he's an upstanding member of the community and authority figure, when his people need him, the actual administrators would probably visit him for advice, not to mention that he could basically come down from his tower with fireballs aplenty when his city is threatened.

A good example of a society that coexists with the undead is the Aerenal elves of Eberron (which are basically elves living in the Caribbean that practice voodoo). A giant court of incredibly powerful undead rule over the nation in a beneficent manner and living elves aspire to join the court by becoming great in their lifetimes and worthy of becoming one of the undying (although the undying don't actually consume anything from the living; they serve and provide out of a sense of duty and obligation to their race and nation).

This is a great help!

The root cause of the culture's attitude towards undead and necromancy stems from a revolution in the culture's history where the common belief is that without undead, the revolution could not have succeeded. Most undead are simply awakened skeletons or zombies so they would have a major hit to their intellect upon their new "living impaired" status. Originally I was going to have this be the reason that the living were still in charge, but I am really liking the spin that you provided so there will now be much more variety of the forms of the living impaired members of the culture.

[quinron]

The undead would have an very explicit reason in order to maintain and generate wealth and, for some kinds of undead that need to consume something that is a comparatively rare commodity (like human flesh) they would need to travel in order to get regular access to it (since corpses aren't common enough to support a large standing population of wights). I can even imagine something like the flesh of the living being something of a delicacy that the wealthiest wights are willing to pay exorbitant sums in order to get it from poor humans willing to lose an arm or leg (or a child) for a quick payday (or even as a method of paying off debts, which itself leads into a creepy but interesting idea of wights as bankers and loan sharks that partake in predatory lending practices in order to gorge themselves on living flesh when the living can't pay). You could even make it so that positive emotions, like happiness, are more nourishing to incorporeal undead than negative emotions, like fear (of which I can imagine ghosts and shadows basically paying for the privilege of being near the birth of a couple's first child, at a wedding, or a dance; I could also imagine ghosts running brothels and drug dens for much the same reason).

In China Miéville's "The Scar," there's an entire district of a pirate city ruled and protected by vampires. They've implemented what they call the "goretax," taxing their citizens by drawing their blood and drinking it out of a container; this way they don't have to turn anyone, and they maintain the good faith of their populace while preventing competition.

I very much like the concept you've created for wights, but I'll throw my own idea in: wights constitute the majority of the city's clerics and mundane clergy. Their church - to whichever god suits the setting best - has at least as much influence as the secular government, so they have the clout to institute a "flesh tax" that's not harmful to the populace: you come in to the church on your assigned day, they knock you out magically or put you in some magic device so that you can't feel pain for 2d10 rounds (not sure what could do this in PF, but I'm sure it's in there somewhere), they chop off all your limbs and cart them away, and then they regenerate you. Once the regeneration finishes, you walk out again, none the worse for wear.

[ThePurple]

I very much like the concept you've created for wights, but I'll throw my own idea in: wights constitute the majority of the city's clerics and mundane clergy. Their church - to whichever god suits the setting best - has at least as much influence as the secular government, so they have the clout to institute a "flesh tax" that's not harmful to the populace: you come in to the church on your assigned day, they knock you out magically or put you in some magic device so that you can't feel pain for 2d10 rounds (not sure what could do this in PF, but I'm sure it's in there somewhere), they chop off all your limbs and cart them away, and then they regenerate you. Once the regeneration finishes, you walk out again, none the worse for wear.

The problem I see with this is that regeneration is a really high level spell, so any religious organization of wights would need to have an extremely high level cleric on hand every time they wanted to enact the flesh tax (in pathfinder and 3.X, at least level 13; 4e could get away with it because NPCs don't have to follow PC rules, if they did have to follow the same rules as PCs, they'd need to be level 8 and spend 250gp every time they cast it; not sure about 5e). It breaks with my sense of verisimilitude that every city with a wight population would have a cleric or other (divine) caster that powerful.

One option would be wight populations are only be able to be sustained around "flesh machines", which are created by wights in order to allow them to sustain themselves in other cities (e.g. wights in one city construct one and then send it along with a group of wights to another city). Said flesh machines basically perform the desired effects upon the mortal creature that enters them (knocks them out, removes their limbs, and then regenerates them). I would probably make it so that the machine is "fed" by any organic materials, so wights perform the duty of trash collectors and corpse collectors, and it takes several days for the machine to regenerate their limbs (since doing it quickly makes me think of higher level magic than would be affordable by wight populations). In this situation, wights would probably become a straight up lower class because they're doing the jobs that humans least want to do (which does kind of beg the question as to why a lot of wights don't get upset with their lot in life and just turn into serial killers, since they're beholden to the flesh machines otherwise).

This is all assuming that wight spellcasters/artificers haven't learned or created some ritual/spell that creates flesh for them to consume every single day. It's possible that artificially created flesh doesn't actually provide them with sustenance because they're supernatural creatures; some element of life force needs to be in the flesh in order to provide sustenance to wights (which would also explain why vampires and their ilk haven't done basically the same thing for blood). Or, conversely, you could just say that magically created flesh is just as sustaining as flesh taken from the living, which would reduce the level requirement by a lot (level 5 rather than level 13). Under that design, the flesh acquired from living and previously living bodies would probably become a delicacy that wights are willing to pay a high price for.

It does present a problem insofar as it doesn't really give the wights something that they can legitimately provide to the living population. In one case, they're disposing of waste, but that's pretty much the worst job you can possibly have and would leave a lot of wights angry with their lot in life. In your clerical case, it only really works if the wights have a previously existing and entrenched population that can assert dominance over the living population near them; people really wouldn't want there to be any wights around because they don't really provide a unique service (since there are clerics of other religions/gods that *don't* ask that you come and get knocked out to have all of your limbs lopped off and regenerated on a regular basis).

[quinron]

The problem I see with this is that regeneration is a really high level spell, so any religious organization of wights would need to have an extremely high level cleric on hand every time they wanted to enact the flesh tax (in pathfinder and 3.X, at least level 13; 4e could get away with it because NPCs don't have to follow PC rules, if they did have to follow the same rules as PCs, they'd need to be level 8 and spend 250gp every time they cast it; not sure about 5e). It breaks with my sense of verisimilitude that every city with a wight population would have a cleric or other (divine) caster that powerful.

One option would be wight populations are only be able to be sustained around "flesh machines", which are created by wights in order to allow them to sustain themselves in other cities (e.g. wights in one city construct one and then send it along with a group of wights to another city). Said flesh machines basically perform the desired effects upon the mortal creature that enters them (knocks them out, removes their limbs, and then regenerates them). I would probably make it so that the machine is "fed" by any organic materials, so wights perform the duty of trash collectors and corpse collectors, and it takes several days for the machine to regenerate their limbs (since doing it quickly makes me think of higher level magic than would be affordable by wight populations). In this situation, wights would probably become a straight up lower class because they're doing the jobs that humans least want to do (which does kind of beg the question as to why a lot of wights don't get upset with their lot in life and just turn into serial killers, since they're beholden to the flesh machines otherwise).

This is all assuming that wight spellcasters/artificers haven't learned or created some ritual/spell that creates flesh for them to consume every single day. It's possible that artificially created flesh doesn't actually provide them with sustenance because they're supernatural creatures; some element of life force needs to be in the flesh in order to provide sustenance to wights (which would also explain why vampires and their ilk haven't done basically the same thing for blood). Or, conversely, you could just say that magically created flesh is just as sustaining as flesh taken from the living, which would reduce the level requirement by a lot (level 5 rather than level 13). Under that design, the flesh acquired from living and previously living bodies would probably become a delicacy that wights are willing to pay a high price for.

It does present a problem insofar as it doesn't really give the wights something that they can legitimately provide to the living population. In one case, they're disposing of waste, but that's pretty much the worst job you can possibly have and would leave a lot of wights angry with their lot in life. In your clerical case, it only really works if the wights have a previously existing and entrenched population that can assert dominance over the living population near them; people really wouldn't want there to be any wights around because they don't really provide a unique service (since there are clerics of other religions/gods that *don't* ask that you come and get knocked out to have all of your limbs lopped off and regenerated on a regular basis).

Yeah, my worldbuilding style tends to be somewhat "inorganic," you could say, in that I come up with a weird idea first, and then the hard part is working backward to create a history that justifies it. I seem to be assuming a much more undead-dominated rather than simply undead-accepting society, and - I may not have made this totally clear in my post - the wight's church would, in fact, have a "previously existing and entrenched population," as you said. How'd they form it? I don't know; again, working backward. And for lower-powered individual parishes, there could be one high-level position at the central location whose whole job is continuously making scrolls of regenerate that are parceled out to the smaller branches. That idea would need more polishing, but it's a start.

Jumping off your "serial killer wight" point, putting exactly this kind of scenario into the game would be a good way to create the laws and penal code of an undead-accepting society: How great a crime is it for a wight to use its drain on a non-living-impaired, or for a ghost to basically rape someone's mind? Is turning undead considered a police-only action, and even then is it usually an "undue use of force?" Do you have to register with the authorities as a cleric of a good deity? Are worshippers of undead-haters like Pharasma and Sarenrae viewed like the KKK?

[Jendekit]

As interesting as the discussions regarding vampires, ghouls, wights, ghosts, etc. are (which is the reason I have waited so long before bringing this up), I feel I should probably clarify the type of undead in the mercantile culture that sparked the fascinating ideas.

This particular culture (the name of the race/nation being Tlaca) arose from a rebellion against an aquatic fey-touch race call the Mer'ah that made heavy use of flesh-warping magics. The Tlaca were the scholars/administrators of the Mer'ah, and unlike the earlier Abantu lacked the physical might needed to free themselves from the Mer'ah. So they turned to magic to even the playing field.

Necromancy was their main means of doing so, because while the flesh magic of the Mer'ah would be devastating on the battlefield their was a major flaw: it only worked on living materials. So the Tlaca raised an army of the dead to overthrow the Mer'ah and set about creating their own nation. The undead proved to be just as useful in regards to labor as they did in war.

Now mechanically the overwhelming majority of undead in the Tlaca nation are awakened zombies or skeletons. The only other type of undeadd that appears with any kind of regularity are liches. So with the exception of liches, the rest of the undead in the nation are lucky to have an Intelligence score of 8.

[quinron]

As interesting as the discussions regarding vampires, ghouls, wights, ghosts, etc. are (which is the reason I have waited so long before bringing this up), I feel I should probably clarify the type of undead in the mercantile culture that sparked the fascinating ideas.

This particular culture (the name of the race/nation being Tlaca) arose from a rebellion against an aquatic fey-touch race call the Mer'ah that made heavy use of flesh-warping magics. The Tlaca were the scholars/administrators of the Mer'ah, and unlike the earlier Abantu lacked the physical might needed to free themselves from the Mer'ah. So they turned to magic to even the playing field.

Necromancy was their main means of doing so, because while the flesh magic of the Mer'ah would be devastating on the battlefield their was a major flaw: it only worked on living materials. So the Tlaca raised an army of the dead to overthrow the Mer'ah and set about creating their own nation. The undead proved to be just as useful in regards to labor as they did in war.

Now mechanically the overwhelming majority of undead in the Tlaca nation are awakened zombies or skeletons. The only other type of undeadd that appears with any kind of regularity are liches. So with the exception of liches, the rest of the undead in the nation are lucky to have an Intelligence score of 8.

The beauty of the worldbuilding forum: we can create entire societal systems in a few posts, and they end up being entirely incidental to the original question.

I think ThePurple's idea for "rag-and-bone man" wights can be adapted for your zombies: back-alley scum who go around cleaning up dead vermin and occasionally humans, sating their hunger while providing some sanitation service. The only problem I can see is that those zombies may be stepping on the ghouls' niche. I can't really think of anything a non-flesh-eating zombie or a skeleton needs the way a ghoul needs flesh or a vampire needs blood, but I would definitely recommend that they make up the majority of the society's guards and soldiers - a skeleton watchman can stay on guard for days at a time without getting tired or inattentive. If the low-level undead are in the minority, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the humans forced them into these positions, especially if there's a lot of violent crime that isn't as dangerous for a zombie to fight as a human.

[Yanagi]

As interesting as the discussions regarding vampires, ghouls, wights, ghosts, etc. are (which is the reason I have waited so long before bringing this up), I feel I should probably clarify the type of undead in the mercantile culture that sparked the fascinating ideas.

This particular culture (the name of the race/nation being Tlaca) arose from a rebellion against an aquatic fey-touch race call the Mer'ah that made heavy use of flesh-warping magics. The Tlaca were the scholars/administrators of the Mer'ah, and unlike the earlier Abantu lacked the physical might needed to free themselves from the Mer'ah. So they turned to magic to even the playing field.

Necromancy was their main means of doing so, because while the flesh magic of the Mer'ah would be devastating on the battlefield their was a major flaw: it only worked on living materials. So the Tlaca raised an army of the dead to overthrow the Mer'ah and set about creating their own nation. The undead proved to be just as useful in regards to labor as they did in war.

Now mechanically the overwhelming majority of undead in the Tlaca nation are awakened zombies or skeletons. The only other type of undeadd that appears with any kind of regularity are liches. So with the exception of liches, the rest of the undead in the nation are lucky to have an Intelligence score of 8.


The ur-question here, which is: how do people become undead? What's the selection process?

The description is of a martial role, which suggests a central authority "drafting" undead to maintain a military presence...which in turns suggests that the undead are an arm of the state, and thus managed by the state directly. Now, does that, in turn, mean that the undead are like a standing army, and thus housed in barracks, trained to follow orders, et cetera? Because the shape of how the undead would imprint society would depend a lot on how they interface with the living...and as full-time soldiers, they'd actually be removed from many aspects of everyday life: after all, they don't have physical needs that would bring them into contact with people. There's no Skeleton Fleet Week, I'm guessing.

Okay, so a big thing is going to be: who were the undead, and who are they "awakened"? This is a big issue, both legally and culturally.

Is your culture is undead-ing its own people? For that matter--and I really don't know if this is a mechanical or a setting issue--does awakening a mindless undead mean that it has some or all of its in-life personality and memory back? (It seems like the answers would be Yes, then No, what with the low INT and whatnot, but I thought it's better to ask than assume.) Because there's a bunch of ramifications for family as a concept if undead are common: basically--is that skeleton or zombie someone's dad or brother, and how does that complicate day-to-day existence?

Does Skeleton Bob have a family, and how does he fit with his family? Do people that knew Bob treat Skeleton Bob as the same dude, or does the passage through undeath (and bestowal of sapience) make him someone who is not accorded the same kind of intimacy or affection? Who does he live with? Why? Is his wife a widow? If she remarries, does he get the kids on weekends? Or does recruitment into Skeleton Brigade 15 set Skeleton Bob apart from his family--not forgotten, perhaps even honored for his service, but not part of everyday domestic life.

For that matter, what do undead do with themselves all day, and how does that affect domestic economy? Is Skeleton Brigade 15 all pike drills, all the time?

I mean, INT 8 skeletons probably aren't doing accountancy. Do they labor? Do they push carts, turn grindstones, do simple physical tasks? Are they allocated to specific tasks which they're suited to because they don't have humans needs? Or to dangerous tasks? The undead would take a lot of pressure off of infrastructure projects.

In turn--to whom is their labor available to? Earlier I assumed the undeath was a function of the state, but it doesn't necessarily follow that every moment of their un-life is owed to the state (Note: Undead Stoicism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism)should be a thing. But I came up with it. MINE) Does a family unit have access to the labor of the undead kin, and is that something an undead can just choose to do?

And wages...solider or laborer, do these undead get paid? In what, and how does that money move? Undead don't have the same upkeep needs as living beings, so a skeleton's wage doesn't impact the basic subsistence-level economy. Is there a society of ridiculously over-dressed skeletons, burning money on flash clothing and crazy hats? (Please say yes.) Alternately, is there some kind of stipend paid to the living in anticipation of undeath...like, "here's your monthly necromancy welfare, be sure to stock up on delicious, bone-strengthening dairy products."

Or is undead like a corvee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corv%C3%A9e)--you don't have a personal choice, and the culture has grown around that lack of choice? Everybody becomes a low-level undead because it's a duty, a service to the nation/race/etc, so maybe it is a socially-accepted form of unfree labor, or even an honor because of how it reflects the shared past.

[Tzi]

I am considering tweaking the world I've been making yet again, this time to include a bit more fantasy race diversity. But I am thinking of having it be diluted in some way.

My first thinking related to Elves. Or more accurately that in the distant past "True Elves," existed but interbred with Humans producing the current pointy eared peoples today. Effectively creating half-elf peoples. I would like to do similar things with Orc's, Dwarves, Assimar, Teiflings, ect. But the idea might be that Because of the great diversity of appearances it is unlikely people would easily know WHAT they themselves are. Teiflings, Assimar, Orcs, Elves ect traits sometimes appear is just plain humans. Part of this is a desire to retain fantasy but avoid the pitfalls of Race/Species mono-cultures ect. The other part is a lot of playing Fall From Heaven II XD

For example you have the Partially Elven tribes, the Tribe of Macha, Rhiannon, and Epona. Formed of small clans of True Elves whom went on to become deities of the mythic cycle of their descendants.

Is it possible to capture the feeling of NATION being supreme while having multiple races? I'm always torn on this.

[Milo v3]

Is it possible to capture the feeling of NATION being supreme while having multiple races?
Yes. Look in the real world for examples (YMMV on what nations are supreme in the real world).

[Tzi]

Yes. Look in the real world for examples (YMMV on what nations are supreme in the real world).

Well its easier when obviously we all are physically similar.

What I mean is I am trying to have some of the fantasy of Tolkien without the racial mono-culture that entails.

[Mechalich]

Yes. Look in the real world for examples (YMMV on what nations are supreme in the real world).

There are actually very few strong nations with a high degree of internal ethnic diversity. The USA, despite all its vast issues with race and ethnicity is quite possibly the most successfully integrated state on the planet. Most states that are ethnically divided are well, divided, by internal politics along ethnic lines - like in Iraq or Sudan - or ethnic minorities are limited in their control by a single overwhelming majority - like in China.


Is it possible to capture the feeling of NATION being supreme while having multiple races? I'm always torn on this.

A multi-species state is tricky. I'm assuming you want to avoid a situation where you have an apartheid state with one species as the upper class and one or more members of an underclass or actual slave class. I can think of certain situations where this could possibly work. One is that if the minority species has some concrete reason to be loyal to the nation and provides an essential service that members of the other species cannot provide equally well. Additionally, if your nation occupies multiple forms of terrain that overlap it might be possible for terrain specialist species to align closely with the larger nation while avoiding direct competition with the majority - one example would be an aquatic nation with different species at different depths that the others literally could not occupy without major magic. There are other scenarios as well.

The trick is that you need some reason for these groups to be bound together into a single nation rather than agitating for secession along ethnic lines - and there is going to be a push for that if the differences between species are more than just cosmetic. Humans and Thri-Kreen - to use a particularly obvious case - are not going to develop the same culture no matter what you do. The usual forcing to produce cross-cultural unity in fantasy is an external threat, but the threat need not be current to have forged strong bonds that are maintained to the present. Alternatively, multiple species may be forced to cooperate in a joint culture because of supremely powerful overlords who mandate it at spellpoint - which is basically the Dark Sun model.

[Tzi]

A multi-species state is tricky. I'm assuming you want to avoid a situation where you have an apartheid state with one species as the upper class and one or more members of an underclass or actual slave class. I can think of certain situations where this could possibly work. One is that if the minority species has some concrete reason to be loyal to the nation and provides an essential service that members of the other species cannot provide equally well. Additionally, if your nation occupies multiple forms of terrain that overlap it might be possible for terrain specialist species to align closely with the larger nation while avoiding direct competition with the majority - one example would be an aquatic nation with different species at different depths that the others literally could not occupy without major magic. There are other scenarios as well.

The trick is that you need some reason for these groups to be bound together into a single nation rather than agitating for secession along ethnic lines - and there is going to be a push for that if the differences between species are more than just cosmetic. Humans and Thri-Kreen - to use a particularly obvious case - are not going to develop the same culture no matter what you do. The usual forcing to produce cross-cultural unity in fantasy is an external threat, but the threat need not be current to have forged strong bonds that are maintained to the present. Alternatively, multiple species may be forced to cooperate in a joint culture because of supremely powerful overlords who mandate it at spellpoint - which is basically the Dark Sun model.

I think what I might do is simply sidestep that issue by having their idea of "Race," somewhat diluted or not well understood. In conventional D&D an Elf knows its an Elf, lives an incredibly long life and has this as a core part of its nature.

Much of the differences might be purely cosmetic, I might also consider having race be less of a factor in character creation but offer certain benefits at character creation if one can "Afford" to have a certain bloodline.

With "race," I somewhat want it to be akin to say, look at Hyrule, Some people have pointy ears, others have round ones. Nobody seems to be adeptly aware of how different they are based on that as an example.

[quinron]

I think what I might do is simply sidestep that issue by having their idea of "Race," somewhat diluted or not well understood. In conventional D&D an Elf knows its an Elf, lives an incredibly long life and has this as a core part of its nature.

This is the core cause of most fantasy racial division, I think. Your typical immortal is a loner, having to deal with the "watching everyone you love grow old and die" problem. Elves, dwarves, etc., don't have to deal with that - they've got a whole race and culture of people who perceive and experience time the same way they do.

If you want to break down the racial boundaries, changing the age standard is a good first step. If elves aren't living longer - or at least not much longer - than humans, they won't have that instinct to draw into their own secluded society, because they won't feel sad watching their human loved ones die, and they won't get that sense of arrogance that comes with knowing they've got far, far more time to experience the world than a human.

[Yora]

I would even say it's a First World Problem. In the modern western world we have very low mortality among people under 50 and somewhat of an age segregation. Which is a rather unique situation for humans. In societies that deal with high child mortality, death from childbirth, and young men dying in war in significant numbers, while extended families are living door to door, people around you are dying all the time. Death from having reached the maximum lifetime for the species is very rare.
Unless you have widely available healing magic, humans, elves, and dwarves probably wouldn't percieve any difference regarding this subject.

[VoxRationis]

I would even say it's a First World Problem. In the modern western world we have very low mortality among people under 50 and somewhat of an age segregation. Which is a rather unique situation for humans. In societies that deal with high child mortality, death from childbirth, and young men dying in war in significant numbers, while extended families are living door to door, people around you are dying all the time. Death from having reached the maximum lifetime for the species is very rare.
Unless you have widely available healing magic, humans, elves, and dwarves probably wouldn't percieve any difference regarding this subject.

Not rare enough that the difference wouldn't be readily noticed. Once you get past the big die-off in infancy and another one later in life (from childbearing for women and violence for men), people in preindustrial societies can easily live to senescence. You wouldn't have huge nursing homes full of 600+ year-old elves, but you'd still have elders and nobility who remember when the neighboring human kingdom was just a couple of villages.
Plus, the age of maturity is often listed as being higher for elves and dwarves and so many must be living longer than many humans anyway, in order to keep the population going.

[quinron]

The maturity factor is what makes it difficult to integrate fantasy races - and, really, to think about these races at all. An elf takes 100 years to reach the physical maturity of a 16-year-old human; this means that 99.996% of the humans born the same year as them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenarian#Centenarian_populations_by_country) have died by the time they reach adulthood; a dwarf just becoming an adult at age 50 is watching their human peers enter their golden years. There's no way an elf or dwarf can understand what it means to see time as a human does.

The more troubling aspect of adding realism to fantasy race age is the law of natural selection. It's utterly absurd in a world as fraught with peril as the average fantasy world - the kind of world where every village is clamoring for the passing adventurers to solve a problem that's completely out of their league - that a race who doesn't reach physical maturity until age 50, or age 100, would have avoided total extinction. In the real world, humans are a bit anomalous in that we take as long as we do to mature (https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-organism-that-takes-more-time-to-reach-puberty-than-humans) - and in a typical fantasy world, as both VoxRationis and Yora point out, a lot of humans aren't going to make it that far; they're simply not physically developed early enough to stand up to the perils of the world. For elves, who take (if everything is proportional) ~30 years to reach age 5? They'd have no chance short of magic.

Which I think is the typical explanation, but it's a flimsy one at best; an elven adventurer can be killed just as easily as a human. The only times I really buy it are when the elves are established as having emigrated from someplace else, as is the case with Tolkien's elves coming from the Undying Lands to Middle-Earth or the elves of Golarion coming from another planet - these elves were, presumably, not threatened in their overlong youth as they are in their current world, and thus there was already a group of adults able to protect the children and raise them to adulthood. But again, this just drives a wedge between elves and humans - the longer the two races spend living alongside one another, the greater probability that at some point, some powerful human who hates the elves will amass his armies and manage to wipe out most of the adults. At the point where there are no longer enough adults to protect the children, the children will start dying off; and without children growing to adulthood and giving birth to new children, the population will dwindle, and then vanish.

...and this is why I try not to apply too much realism to fantasy.

[ThePurple]

The more troubling aspect of adding realism to fantasy race age is the law of natural selection. It's utterly absurd in a world as fraught with peril as the average fantasy world - the kind of world where every village is clamoring for the passing adventurers to solve a problem that's completely out of their league - that a race who doesn't reach physical maturity until age 50, or age 100, would have avoided total extinction.

I think this is part of the problem. I'm vaguely confident that most campaign settings assume that all of the fantasy races achieve physical maturity at roughly the same age (15-20 years). The difference is in achieving social/societal and mental maturity. For humans, orcs, and the rest of the short lived races, you achieve physical and mental/societal/social maturity at roughly the same time. For long lived races, the difference in lifespan and potential experience (even if it's mundane, non-adventuring experience that doesn't increase your class levels) means that the long lived races have a very different view of what it means to be socially and mentally mature enough to be called an adult.

Hell, it's actually been shown that humans aren't even fully mentally mature until they reach their mid-20s (which is why I've always thought that one of the reasons why a lot of mental illnesses either resolve or finally manifest around that age but there isn't much change after that point until you reach the old age, so you've got a lot of change and development for a quarter of a century and then you're basically stable for another quarter to half a century).

For longer lived races with brains that are designed to live for centuries and absorb and differentiate experiences much more effectively than humans are able to, it makes sense for them to take a longer time to achieve mental maturity and, if a elf's average natural lifespan is a millennium, their culture would naturally require more life experience in order to be considered an adult because of the difference in life experience. When the the major power bloc in a culture is old, they're naturally going to require more life experience in order to be considered an adult and full member of society.

So, biologically, it may make sense for a sentient creature to become mature as soon as feasible, psychologically and socially, it makes equal sense for a sentient creature to require a much longer time in order to become mature. The viewpoints aren't even mutually exclusive. Historically, what we would now consider a child/early-teenager was considered old enough to become a parent (the classic adage "old enough to bleed, old enough to breed"). It was only with the extension of our expected lifespans did we start extending that time into the second decade (which has all kinds of societal repercussions when biological and social maturity occur discretely).

The only problem with this is when someone conflates "reaches maturity" with "reaches physical maturity". Most cultures are more interested in social maturity than physical maturity (since social maturity is when you can start acting as a full member of society with all of the responsibilities and privileges therein). I know 4e actually expressly states this ("elves mature at about the same rate as humans, but they show few effects of age past adulthood"), but, then again, the 4e elves only have bicentennial lifespans (eladrin are basically the same except they are tricentennial).

I can't recall what the exact wording 3.X has for elves, dwarves, and the other long lived races (I do recall them having much longer lifespans than 4e described), but I'm pretty sure that they say "maturity" rather than "physical maturity". In effect, an elf or dwarf is physically capable of going on adventures at the same age as a human (or maybe slightly older), but they and their culture do not consider themselves mature enough to go out on their own until they are much older, which is why their starting ages are way, way older. It's not so much a biological limitation as much as it is a social limitation that can be ignored in special cases.

One example of this is Drizzt Do'urden. In the stories, he leaves home and starts doing his adventuring survival thing when he's just a couple decades old. He's basically viewed as a child running away from home (albeit an abusive home) even though he's as physically mature and capable as a human of the same age (probably more since Drizzt is generally given the stats of an olympic gymnast that's gone to college). It's the same in the rest of Forgotten Realms as far as the long lived races are concerned. Dwarves are fully grown by 20 but they aren't adults until they're 50.

[quinron]

I think this is part of the problem. I'm vaguely confident that most campaign settings assume that all of the fantasy races achieve physical maturity at roughly the same age (15-20 years). The difference is in achieving social/societal and mental maturity. For humans, orcs, and the rest of the short lived races, you achieve physical and mental/societal/social maturity at roughly the same time. For long lived races, the difference in lifespan and potential experience (even if it's mundane, non-adventuring experience that doesn't increase your class levels) means that the long lived races have a very different view of what it means to be socially and mentally mature enough to be called an adult.

*snip*

One example of this is Drizzt Do'urden. In the stories, he leaves home and starts doing his adventuring survival thing when he's just a couple decades old. He's basically viewed as a child running away from home (albeit an abusive home) even though he's as physically mature and capable as a human of the same age (probably more since Drizzt is generally given the stats of an olympic gymnast that's gone to college). It's the same in the rest of Forgotten Realms as far as the long lived races are concerned. Dwarves are fully grown by 20 but they aren't adults until they're 50.

This makes sense to me; this explains everything physically. If these are the actual mechanics of aging in core D&D, then the rulebooks are just bad at explaining it; I'm clearly not the only one who views elves as physically aging slower than humans. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0629.html) I've never read the books of Salvatore or Weis or Hickman, I only know their work by reputation.

However, this still poses major obstacle to racially integrated society. There are two ways it could work:

First possibility: elves have a different standard for maturity - a 20-year-old elf might be just as or nearly as mentally/socially mature as a 20-year-old human, but isn't considered mature among elves until age 100. This seems to be the case with the Dark Elf books, if my inferences are correct. If that's the case, elves are never going to willingly integrate into human society. Humans don't live long enough to reach that benchmark age of 100 years, and as you say, most humans don't change much mentally between age 25 and their death; definitely not after age 50. Either the elves wouldn't deign to interact with these "childish" humans, or they'd take advantage of their supposed inferiority and tyrannize the humans; sure, some elves would fall into disfavor and have to slum it with the humans, but an autocratic upper class comprised of only one race with a multiple-race lower class isn't going to be integrated; look at South African apartheid.

Alternatively, elves reach physical maturity at age ~20, but they don't mature mentally/socially until age 100. This is probably worse - an entire race of people who spend decades with all the physical capability of 20-year-olds but the social and mental maturity of children. Today, we'd call them developmentally disabled and assign them a legal guardian while trying to help them develop the skills to integrate into society; in the Middle Ages, they'd call them "addled" if they were being charitable, and if they didn't smother them in their sleep, they'd consider it a mercy if they died peacefully or at least quickly before they grew much older.

[ThePurple]

First possibility: elves have a different standard for maturity - a 20-year-old elf might be just as or nearly as mentally/socially mature as a 20-year-old human, but isn't considered mature among elves until age 100. This seems to be the case with the Dark Elf books, if my inferences are correct. If that's the case, elves are never going to willingly integrate into human society. Humans don't live long enough to reach that benchmark age of 100 years, and as you say, most humans don't change much mentally between age 25 and their death; definitely not after age 50. Either the elves wouldn't deign to interact with these "childish" humans, or they'd take advantage of their supposed inferiority and tyrannize the humans; sure, some elves would fall into disfavor and have to slum it with the humans, but an autocratic upper class comprised of only one race with a multiple-race lower class isn't going to be integrated; look at South African apartheid.

I think this is a bit cynical. First off, just because it takes elves 100 years to achieve the level of experience and maturity required to be an adult doesn't mean that they have to hold humans to that same standard. They probably recognize that humans have shorter lifespans and have to cram more into them (a common enough trope of the elven view of humans in fantasy). Recognition of your own mortality and how much of your life has actually passed is actually theorized to be a major factor in the development of social maturity. Basically, humans have short lives so it occurs to them earlier that they need to be mature which ends up making them become mature faster.

It also does lend some credence to the superior view that elves have of themselves, since, in their minds, the short lived races are basically children. I don't necessarily see them as dominating and exploiting them, but I can definitely see them as condescending bastards that don't bother explaining anything to an adult of a shorter lived race because they think that the human just doesn't have the experience necessary to understand what they're trying to say.

Keep in mind that maturity isn't synonymous with being interesting or intelligent and that's one of the big things that matters when dealing with social interaction. Elves might not care about dealing with the average human, but exceptional ones would probably be viewed as most enjoyable to interact with. A genius human wizard could be viewed as something of a wunderkind who, while not really mature in the social sense, has a vast wealth of knowledge and perspective on the field that draws the attention of everyone around them. An expert human duelist would most definitely be of interest to an elven duelist, especially if the human has managed to become a legitimate challenge in the span of only a few short years. It might even be that elves are always on the lookout for such people simply because they're the only humans that elves find interesting. In this way, elves could basically become the experts and teachers in any integrated society so that they can be there to find, nurture, and learn from the humans that actually catch their attention.

In effect, any elf in an integrated community would be a community elder. They wouldn't necessarily have all of the political power or authority, but they would definitely be respected members of the community (which makes sense since, in an integrated community, elves would be rapidly outpopulated by humans because, comparatively, the human population growth rate is way in excess of their own).


Alternatively, elves reach physical maturity at age ~20, but they don't mature mentally/socially until age 100. This is probably worse - an entire race of people who spend decades with all the physical capability of 20-year-olds but the social and mental maturity of children. Today, we'd call them developmentally disabled and assign them a legal guardian while trying to help them develop the skills to integrate into society; in the Middle Ages, they'd call them "addled" if they were being charitable, and if they didn't smother them in their sleep, they'd consider it a mercy if they died peacefully or at least quickly before they grew much older.

I think you're stretching out that mental/social development by a *lot*. Long lived races wouldn't follow the same pattern that humans do, just extended from 15-20 years out to 100 years. A lot of the mental/social development that takes place in humans in the first 10 years are straight up biological and a lot of the next is just socialization so it's *really* hard to imagine elves basically being mentally handicapped for their first century because I have a hard time seeing that as a believable or even functional development pattern.

What I would expect, instead, is that elves are basically the equivalent of human teenagers from the age of 15-20 until their first century. Instead of taking 100 years to develop in the same way that a human develops in 15, it takes them 15 years to develop in the same way as a human does in that same time and another 85 years to develop in the same way that a human does in 5 years. In much the same way as they have a magnified adult lifespan (900 years compared to a human's 50), they have extremely magnified teenage years.

In effect, elves that are under a century of age aren't considered mature enough to participate in government, aren't expected to work full time, aren't expected to live on their own, are expected to focus on learning a trade and/or going to school, and everything else that goes along with being a teenager. Because of this, I can only imagine that elven parents are ridiculously patient and expect their child to mature slowly and ease them into adulthood.

[VoxRationis]

The physical/social maturity dichotomy is irrelevant when it comes to population dynamics, unless we assume that elves have a lot of hushed-up teen-pregnancy-equivalents. With a few exceptions, likely to be social pariahs, most of the childbearing will come after the age of maturity, and whether that's physical or cultural or social or mental is irrelevant.

[ThePurple]

The physical/social maturity dichotomy is irrelevant when it comes to population dynamics, unless we assume that elves have a lot of hushed-up teen-pregnancy-equivalents. With a few exceptions, likely to be social pariahs, most of the childbearing will come after the age of maturity, and whether that's physical or cultural or social or mental is irrelevant.

Except that it matters a *lot* when the difference between social/mental maturity and physical maturity is somewhere near 80 years. That's a lot of "stupid time" and hormonal craziness that comes with the portion of a person's lifetime that leads to social maturization (a lot of which can be summed up as "controlling those urges").

Maybe a lot, possibly even a majority, of elven pregnancies *are* the equivalent of teen pregnancies, only, instead of the expectation being that they should be raised by their biological parent or parents, they are instead expected to be raised primarily by their grandparents or closest biological ancestor of socially mature age (possibly to the extent that there are entirely different words for "biological parent" and "parent that raised me", such that, linguistically, it never occurs to elves to think of their biological parents the way that humans think of when they say "parent"; Sapir-Whorf is a thing, yo) with their biological parent(s) fulfilling fulfilling a role more akin to an older sibling in human families. It would definitely shorten the generational gap that prevents elves from being able to effectively rebound from any dramatic decline in population while still having only those elves that are considered mature actually rearing children.

Millennia long lifespans and dramatically different development curves can and probably would do all kinds of crazy things to a culture. Assuming that elves follow the exact same cultural paradigm humans generally use, only extended and exaggerated to account for a longer lifespan, is kind of ludicrous when you consider how much different our views of social maturity have changed since advancing the age of social maturity beyond the age of physical maturity by just a few years. Compare the bat mitzvah, which occurs at age 12-13, and the quinceanera, which occurs on the 15th birthday (which is what it literally means), both of which originally represented that the social group considered the person an adult, with the 18th and 21st birthdays in the US (and Jewish and Latin cultures) nowadays, which are of particular note because they are the ages in which people are considered to truly be adults (18th is basically "adult with limited responsibility" and 21 is basically "full adult"). In just a couple hundred years we've moved the line dividing physical and social maturity by half a decade and, honestly, there's probably a growing sense in the developed world that the age where someone is truly an adult is even later than that (insurance companies and car rental places don't really consider you an adult until you're 25). That movement has had all kinds of cultural repercussions, probably the biggest of which is the entire idea of a teen pregnancy as different from other extramarital pregnancies.

I'm pretty sure with a culture that has extended the age of social maturity so far from the age of physical maturity that a member of that culture spends about 5 times as much time socially maturing as they do physically maturing would have some pretty extreme deviations from what humans expect for our own cultures.

[Yora]

In some societies adulthood was even later than in western culture today. Roman citizens where legally full adults at 25. I believe in Japan it was 23 until relatively recently (100 or 200 years ago).

[ThePurple]

Roman citizens where legally full adults at 25. I believe in Japan it was 23 until relatively recently (100 or 200 years ago).

I can't find anything concerning the age required for Roman citizens (probably because the actual requirements for becoming a citizen varied heavily throughout the course of the Empire along with the rights, privileges, and responsibilities therein though the requirement for military service most definitely delayed it), but the Coming of Age in Japan is 20 (and has been for over a millennium).

Marriageable age, however, has consistently been much lower, until relatively recently around 12 or 13 (onset of puberty) along with age of consent (which is a relatively modern construct insofar as "puberty" was basically considered the "age" of consent with consent itself being the major topic of debate) and other major legal markers of adulthood and maturity, like age of competence (e.g. when you start being held accountable for your actions rather than your parents).

It's also important not to conflate the legal constructs for adulthood, like age of majority (or majority itself, since majority isn't always predicated exclusively upon age), with the societal constructs, like age of maturity. In the modern age, they're basically the same thing (most Jewish people wouldn't consider a 13 year old boy an adult even though that's what a bar mitzvah is supposed to represent), but, historically, they were significantly different. The Roman might have been assumed to achieve their majority around 25 years of age, but that doesn't mean that they viewed anyone who wasn't that age as not being an adult. I have a hard time believing that the martially obsessed Romans would consider a soldier as not being an adult (military service was a requirement for becoming a citizen, iirc, so Roman citizens would need to have been in the military for some years before the age of 25). That's actually the main reason that the age of majority in the US is 18 now; it used to be 21 until people argued that someone who is old enough to serve in the military should be old enough to vote (e.g. age of maturity should be equal to age of majority). The difference between the age of maturity and age of majority, in that case, would be largely determined by the need for specific experiences in order to participate in the running of the state. Even someone as old as 40 might not be considered as belonging to the majority if they hadn't fulfilled their military service requirement (majority), though I doubt anyone would think that they're not an adult (maturity).

In effect, age of majority might be relatively static (or decreasing) historically, but age of maturity has, in fact, been increasing in most cases, which is what most people would consider "adulthood" to be defined as.

The descriptions of elves achieving maturity at around 100 years of age would then mean that elves don't consider elves under that age to be adults. Some elven societies could be imagined to be even more gerontologically biased and have the age of majority in their legal system as high as 150 or 200 (roughly 25% of their natural lifespan finished, which is about the same ratio that we currently use in the US), though I find that doubtful.

Honestly, I imagine that elves probably have the age of competence (when they're considered responsible for their actions) to be roughly 15-20 years, around the same developmental point that humans reach it (for humans, it occurs closer to 12-13 but, in my mind, elves develop a bit slower than humans in that regard but not by much) and the age of maturity (when they're considered an adult) to be roughly 100 years (marriageable age and age of consent could be anywhere in between, though, in my mind, elves view marriage as a much more solemn and long term arrangement than the short lived races do and probably restrict it to the age of majority; I would also expect them to admit to the existence of pre-adult postpubescent hormonal adjustment and have the age of consent closer to puberty than to majority).

The age of majority would then be dependent upon where exactly they live (because it's a legal construct), which does create an interesting question as far as the governments of fantastic races are concerned: if there is such a massive difference in the development curve and views of maturity and competence for the different races, how would governments handle the differences? An elven nation might set the age of majority at 100 for everyone, which basically prevents any human or short lived race from actually participating in government (though I doubt they would declare them unfit for military service or many other indicators of adulthood) and would require dwarves and gnomes to be middle aged. A human nation might set it at 20, which would mean that there are a lot of elves that aren't considered adults by their own people but are considered fully adults by their government (their own cultural biases might prevent them from acting on their legal rights because they don't view themselves as mature enough, but they might well have the legal right to do so).

A well integrated society might have different rules for each of the races, though I expect there to be some level of disagreement and perturbation among the longer lived races since they might view even adult humans as being immature by their standards. I think it might be much more logical for a fully integrated society to basically have separate legal structures for each of the different races, so that elves are judged by elven standards, dwarves by dwarven standards, etc. with interracial legal concerns handled either by a special arbiter chosen by the concerned races aware of both systems or an explicit arbitration branch that deals with such cases. If the city or state has well defined racial territories, the cultural belief of the predominant race concerning the proper age of maturity would probably become the legal standard for that territory (so, in the elven district, you're not legally an adult until 100, regardless of race; in the dwarven district, you're not adult until 50; in the human district, you're an adult at 20) regardless of what race you belong to (which means that young elves fed up with their parents and elders might move to the human or dwarven districts in order to have additional rights and the ability to partake in government while humans might move to the elven district in order to the less draconian legal code of the elves even at the cost of their ability to influence government directly), though that would probably only work with a representative form of government that gives each race equal control of the government (I could see the voting weight of such representatives determined by total age of the population of their district, including children, in order to prevent long lived, slower reproducting races from getting shut out by shorter lived ones).

[Tzi]

I think my primary goal would be to limit the lifespan differences between peoples of different fantasy races if I go ahead and use them.

The ideal being say those of an Elven descent or partial Elven/Eladrin descent are almost entirely pointy eared to some degree, and the imprint of the Eladrin on their writing and language, as well as knowledge of magic and cultural interpretations of the world is huge. But I'd prefer to make it MOSTLY cosmetic.

http://i.imgur.com/jPeHLEy.jpg

So here, this worlds average "Elf,"-like being is more akin to a Hylian of the Legend of Zelda, Not a one to one, but comparable in that they are mortal, have average lifespans the same as humans, ect.

The key might be that a Tiefling, Assimar, "Half-Orc" would not be readily apparent.

[VoxRationis]

I can't find anything concerning the age required for Roman citizens (probably because the actual requirements for becoming a citizen varied heavily throughout the course of the Empire along with the rights, privileges, and responsibilities therein though the requirement for military service most definitely delayed it), but the Coming of Age in Japan is 20 (and has been for over a millennium).

The Roman might have been assumed to achieve their majority around 25 years of age, but that doesn't mean that they viewed anyone who wasn't that age as not being an adult. I have a hard time believing that the martially obsessed Romans would consider a soldier as not being an adult (military service was a requirement for becoming a citizen, iirc, so Roman citizens would need to have been in the military for some years before the age of 25).



RE: Roman maturity: The Romans would give the toga virilis to their sons at 16, replacing the purple-striped toga used when they were boys. I'm not sure what legal significance it had (it probably changed over time), but it seemed to be a culturally significant marker of becoming an adult. And military service was only a requirement for citizenship if you weren't already a citizen by birth. Furthermore, as the term of service was, after the Marian reforms, 25 years, the citizenship was more of a retirement benefit than something a person could grab through a short interruption to their earlier career plan.

[Yora]

In my setting the highest live expectancy (for people over 30) is 300 years, with a few remarkably ancient individuals who just barely cross the 400 year mark.
Generally speaking elves live four times as long as humans, while reaching maturity about +30% later. That seems plausibly managable to me.

[Roxxy]

I just gave Dwarves and Elves the same lifespan as everyone else. So much easier to work with. Then again, I also made Dwarves and Elves races of humanity, and dispensed with the idea of Earth humans (called Sapiens) as the mechanically generalist D&D race. I always kind of treated Elves like pointy eared humans, anyway, so it kinda works to just make them pointy eared humans. Explains interbreeding, too. May be different races, but it's the same species. As for why everyone isn't a mutt, nobody actually is 100% any one race. Racial choice represents what most of your bloodline is, and there is a mutt/half breed race (Can't really make a half-Elf or half-Orc race for every single possible racial pairing, and some people are a bit of everything), which replaces the D&D human as the mechanically generalist race. At the same time, the gods really hated intermarriage, and after they got deposed that stuck with humanity. It took a while for it to become legalized, and it hasn't been legal more than a few decades. Not to say that people didn't interbreed when it was illegal (Hence nobody being 100% any one race), but only recently has it been common.

[Tzi]

I just gave Dwarves and Elves the same lifespan as everyone else. So much easier to work with. Then again, I also made Dwarves and Elves races of humanity, and dispensed with the idea of Earth humans (called Sapiens) as the mechanically generalist D&D race. I always kind of treated Elves like pointy eared humans, anyway, so it kinda works to just make them pointy eared humans. Explains interbreeding, too. May be different races, but it's the same species. As for why everyone isn't a mutt, nobody actually is 100% any one race. Racial choice represents what most of your bloodline is, and there is a mutt/half breed race (Can't really make a half-Elf or half-Orc race for every single possible racial pairing, and some people are a bit of everything), which replaces the D&D human as the mechanically generalist race. At the same time, the gods really hated intermarriage, and after they got deposed that stuck with humanity. It took a while for it to become legalized, and it hasn't been legal more than a few decades. Not to say that people didn't interbreed when it was illegal (Hence nobody being 100% any one race), but only recently has it been common.

Actually that might make a degree of great sense depending on the age of a world. Imagine the general concept of a D&D world as a place with ancient long lost empires, but how ancient? How many cycles of golden age and dark age have there been? A typical D&D world 4000 years in its own future, and perhaps making Elves and Dwarves have similar human lifespans or even assume they don't, the half human ones would like eventually rule the planet.

My world operates not just on the assumption of that time scale but that this campaign world is in effect a colony of another now gone or too unreachable world.

[nrg89]

How does people here approach food?

It's one of the first things that stick out when you travel abroad, that food culture is very different depending mostly on the climate but also on other more cultural stuff. A classic I've seen is using dwarven ale to illustrate the amount of stamina they possess and it's a good trick to "show-not-tell" but it's been done a million times.

And, this is a segway to the real question; how much detail do you put into food since it can seriously warp cultures completely. If the dwarfs have this huge ale surplus, where is their agriculture? What stuff is fermented to produce the ale? Do they trade the stuff to ferment (which would imply they brew their own) or do they trade for finished beverages (which would imply that the dwarfs are not the best brewers around)? Do you just use these different cuisines to make sense of your world history or do you also convey it to your players in some other interesting ways?

Since I'm doing a setting in ancient times I've made an empire across a predictable river into a grain super power, a culture who keeps sugar production a state secret very wealthy, a region that produce a lot of salt feared because being ordered to work in the salt mines is seen as a prolonged death sentence and some more things like that. I'm also keeping new world foods like potatoes, tomatoes and stuff like that far away and rice is also not present along with chickens because I want to capture bronze age Mediterranean cultures.

Beyond that, I've also started to make some sample menus of what skilled artisans might be eating in each region. This has made me think more about prices and trade relations. Again, it might just be fluff that never impact players or it might actually convey some texture just like it does to us when we travel abroad and our breakfast routine goes out the window, I've not had enough games with my players yet.

[Yora]

As the type of food on the table generally has no narrative relevance, it's not something that adds much to the game. The important thing is that there is some food on the table. Because when there's not, you got a big conflict going on.

When it comes to agriculture and economy, a high degree of abstraction works just fine. It might be worth considering where the food is being grown and where the animals are kept, but what food plants are harvested and which animals kept doesn't really make a difference.
One exception that can be interesting to consider is salt. In cold areas you need salt to preserve food for the winter when nothing can be harvested, and in warm areas the salt normally included in the food is often not enough to keep a balance with the greater amounts of water you drink. So in both cold and warm regions people need huge amount of that white stuff. And very conveniently there are many places all over the world where there are huge piles of it just lying around in the ground, left over from dried up ancient seas. You can just shovel the stuff into bags and sell it to all the people who don't have it conveniently next to their homes. There's a lot of money to be made in mining and trading salt, and if you really want to hurt someone's food supplies, it's much easier to cut of their salt shipments than to try destroying all their farms. It's like ancient and medieval oil. A simple substance traded in huge quantities that is absolutely vital to keep a coutry running.

[quinron]

Since I'm doing a setting in ancient times I've made an empire across a predictable river into a grain super power, a culture who keeps sugar production a state secret very wealthy, a region that produce a lot of salt feared because being ordered to work in the salt mines is seen as a prolonged death sentence and some more things like that. I'm also keeping new world foods like potatoes, tomatoes and stuff like that far away and rice is also not present along with chickens because I want to capture bronze age Mediterranean cultures.

Most of these ideas are less about food and more about trade. Yes, the trade is in food, but these nations gained power not because people like the food they offer, but because they need it; and once the needs of the people writ large come into the picture, this stops being a matter of diet and becomes a matter of politics.

That said, the best way to show culture through food is in the weird and the disgusting, particularly if it's considered a delicacy by the locals and would be offered to guests as a generous gift. Casu marzu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_marzu), for example, is a good way to show that you're in Sardinia, and that Sardinia is not like home (unless, of course, you're from Sardinia).

[Tzi]

Having decided to play Skyrim a bit, (Yes, late to the party) I think maybe I should steer "race(s)," in KINDA that direction. But while still being kind of liberal with it.

I would like to have Humans be theoretically the oldest, but have elves appear as creatures whom "awoke," first but went on to largely vanish save for a few populations. Humans are the oldest theoretically and related to Elves, But seemingly lived as wild people for a very long time. The missing bits are Dwarves whom I could pull a Dwemer and just say they are gone, or extinct. Orcs also serve as an odd remainder, whom I have little explanation for, such as are they engineered people? Later creations? Should they be called Orcs? How do other people give Orcs? an explanation? Finally smaller races, I could create an equivalent of the Khijit but have them be Tibbits, mostly because I dislike purely non-humanoid races. I want a degree of inter-breed-ability for these races. More aptly I would like Elven long lives to be a bit exaggerated by history, Elves in the past lived a long time due to highly advanced Alchemy and technical prowess, in the intervening time span that knowledge is lost. Though the pointy eared people can make it to 150, but risk a type of advanced dementia with old age as their magically infused blood can play tricks with their minds as they age.

Partly this is because the Skyrim Breton (An actual IRL Celtic language and people) Are fairly ideal for my world but as a much more Celtic cultural group.

[Yora]

If you don't want dwarves in your setting, don't include them. Everything you put into a setting should have a good reason for being there. If you think there's no good reason why it should be in, leave it out.

[LudicSavant]

If you don't want dwarves in your setting, don't include them. Everything you put into a setting should have a good reason for being there. If you think there's no good reason why it should be in, leave it out.

Agreed. Do not include things out of a sense of obligation. Throw out anything that doesn't represent your best.

[Tzi]

If you don't want dwarves in your setting, don't include them. Everything you put into a setting should have a good reason for being there. If you think there's no good reason why it should be in, leave it out.

Its less of a "I don't want," and more of a "I want, but am unsure what."

I am not satisfied with a humans-only setting, well mainly because players are never satisfied with it and in the end It feels pointless knowing I can't convince a soul to play.

My core Idea is to use the idea of a subterranian dwelling people as a backdrop for ruins and structures but to have them physically absent.

With other races, Orcs make an ill fit, but some other stand in that is closer to human might work. The focal point being these are all very interrelated peoples.

[Yora]

I went with a no-humans settings and switched the one important human population I had with goliaths from D&D. If you want something like orcs, but more human, those might be worth a look.

[Everyl]

My core Idea is to use the idea of a subterranean dwelling people as a backdrop for ruins and structures but to have them physically absent.


Well, as long as you're intentionally echoing Dwemer, just make the extinct "dwarves" a long-dead civilization from a still-existent race. Elder Scrolls Dwemer-dwarves are a now-extinct elven cultural/ethnic group. They might not even necessarily have died out - maybe they had some good reason for abandoning their underground settlements en masse, and the survivors melted into the pool of other ethnic groups, their lore forgotten to the ages. As for the nature of that good reason - a disease that spreads quickly in underground conditions? An interruption in the food supply chain necessary to supply sunless settlements? They exhausted some finite resource that made humanoids living underground feasible? Plenty of possibilities that result in Dwemer-style ruins while letting you make your setting your own.

[Tzi]

Well, as long as you're intentionally echoing Dwemer, just make the extinct "dwarves" a long-dead civilization from a still-existent race. Elder Scrolls Dwemer-dwarves are a now-extinct elven cultural/ethnic group. They might not even necessarily have died out - maybe they had some good reason for abandoning their underground settlements en masse, and the survivors melted into the pool of other ethnic groups, their lore forgotten to the ages. As for the nature of that good reason - a disease that spreads quickly in underground conditions? An interruption in the food supply chain necessary to supply sunless settlements? They exhausted some finite resource that made humanoids living underground feasible? Plenty of possibilities that result in Dwemer-style ruins while letting you make your setting your own.

I might play with the idea that this is related to the current Drow(ish) population. The underground settlements were crucial to them at a previous date, but disease, lack of food and warfare continued keeping them below. In a sense I am thinking of having the Drow returned to the surface after a long disappearance.

The fall of the elves being a fairly dramatic war, but the Drow survived by being underground, in deep vaults and hidden places. Plus a plausible civil war among their kind, and theoretically some dug even deeper into the earth.

In this sense I intend to handle Drow as not being evil, but another branch of the Elven tree. The Drow Elves survived in deep vaults before being led to the surface, by some. Others remained below and continued to tunnel down. So you get the Demonic and evil creatures that turned towards odd means to survival and others who decided to emerge from the vaults below and settle back on the surface once the dust had settled.

The Deeper ones were more keen to preserving their very extended lifespans. In this I may expand upon the Drow Pantheon or tweak it to make it more historical figures revered in a kind of ancestral/imperial cult. Lolth, the Spider Queen of Eight vault cities, directed the people during the long war among the Elves. Led many into refuge beneath the a great plateau in built new cities. Lolth died after a very extended life, the magics and alchemy that prolonged elven lives still being known. But with the wars passing above supplies ran short and the ability to prolong lives and enjoy the richness of Elven lives gone by faded. Prophet/Heirs to the ancient matriarch Lolth, disputed with one another about what to do in deteriorating situation. Theological, Ideological and just generally divided, the ones whom emerged were Eilistraee whom favored a return to the surface, the abandonment of the rigid social orders set up since Lolths death by her priests and clerics. Eilistraee preached a message of nature worship, she believing the dangers of old were past. The great Elven Kingdoms are mostly ruins and the world is largely empty. Kiaransalee, had become obsessed with Necromancy and did see the surface but saw it as a place to harvest using blood ritual and magic to sustain life everlasting. Vhaeraun and Selvetarm both preached an idea of conquest, though Vhaeraun had concocted the idea of summoning and binding demons to survive through a method of resurrecting the magic that once prolonged elven lives to nearly 1000 years.

[Yora]

Today I had to admit the realization that my totally cool and awesome Underworld aberrations don't fit into my setting. :smallannoyed:
I really, really like them, but they are just thematically totally out of place with everything else. They are too different to be natural, but not alien enough to be believably from a different reality.

The demons I have are still okay. Incorporeal spirits unconnected to animals and plants who animate bodies of rock, ash, tar, and corpses when they accidentally find their way into the world of the living. (Usually because a sorcerer screwed up.)
But I had also planned to have something like aboleths, ilithids, chuul, and rachni, and those just don't want to blend in with the rest of the setting. All my ideas end up being too much space aliens. :smallfrown:

I actually had the two groups be completely different beings but meshed them together when scrapping the idea for an astral plane and the demons needed a new home. And now I somehow ended up scrapping the natives of the Underworld, leaving it for the demons alone. Strange how these things sometimes work out.

But I think it really gives the world a clearer focus. Now I can crank up the horrificness of old, half-forgotten spirits that crave for blood, like wendigos or Koh the Face Stealer.

[Jendekit]

This last weekend I was telling my cousin about a setting I had read about where the author rolled randomly to determine the "core" races. We both ended up rolling races for our own challenge settings.

For mine, the races were dhampir, halfling, orc, nagaji, tiefling, and vanara.

What I have settled on for the setting, is that the nagaji and vanara war over the secrets hidden in the long abandoned ruins of the yuan-ti. To the north of the Terena River, dhampir mage-lords send armies led by tiefling knights to war against each other while the halfling serfs are caught in the middle. In the midst of all of this, orc clans tend to their bison herds while studying secret magicks.

That however isn't what I need help with. What I could use some help with are the monsters. I already know that the classic fantasy antagonists aren't what I'm wanting. I'm looking to keep the monsters (aside from the extinct yuan-ti and the rare naga) from Central and South American mythology.

While I have passing familiarity with Aztec mythology, I'd like to hear ideas from the rest of the playground.

[Max_Killjoy]

Ahuizotl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahuizotl_%28creature%29).

Cadejo. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadejo)

Feathered Serpent. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_Serpent)

Nagual. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagual)

[Max_Killjoy]

I'll (hopefully) start another discussion then, based on a side-exchange I had with one of the regulars.

In a world where the gods actually, demonstrably exist (avatars manifesting from time to time, devout priests gaining miraculous abilities, ruins can be found of the places in the old legends, etc), and those gods claim to have created the world, isn't it also true that any given creation story will be objectively true or untrue? If a creation story says Ranalon The Mighty smote the Great Beast and made the world from its bones and the mountains from its teeth and the seas from its blood... can both that story and another story both be objectively true?

(This isn't a question of what different faiths or cultures or persons might believe, but rather the objectively true cosmology of that fictional world -- "true" as in true within said setting.)

[Yora]

Part of each story might be true and other parts untrue.

And some stories might be analogies meant to be understandable by mortals but not entirely accurate as what really happened.

[Max_Killjoy]

Part of each story might be true and other parts untrue.

And some stories might be analogies meant to be understandable by mortals but not entirely accurate as what really happened.

Ranalon either slew the great beast, or he didn't.

[Everyl]

Ranalon either slew the great beast, or he didn't.

Maybe Ranalon had help from other deities, but doesn't like giving them any credit nowadays.

Maybe Ranalon actually just severed one of the Great Beast's countless limbs and forged the world from bits of it, leaving the possibility of the Great Beast returning and threatening the world.

Maybe Ranalon forged one continent from the remains of the Great Beast, but other deities created other parts of the world by other means.

You could call the Tale of Ranalon the Mighty and the Great Beast "untrue" in any of those cases in the sense that it isn't 100% accurate. But with many aspects of the tale still accurate, it can't be dismissed as a total fabrication, either. Given that real-world humans like to spin history into neat narratives that omit some details and may fabricate others, why wouldn't gods do the same?

[Max_Killjoy]

Maybe Ranalon had help from other deities, but doesn't like giving them any credit nowadays.

Maybe Ranalon actually just severed one of the Great Beast's countless limbs and forged the world from bits of it, leaving the possibility of the Great Beast returning and threatening the world.

Maybe Ranalon forged one continent from the remains of the Great Beast, but other deities created other parts of the world by other means.

You could call the Tale of Ranalon the Mighty and the Great Beast "untrue" in any of those cases in the sense that it isn't 100% accurate. But with many aspects of the tale still accurate, it can't be dismissed as a total fabrication, either. Given that real-world humans like to spin history into neat narratives that omit some details and may fabricate others, why wouldn't gods do the same?

If Ranalon The Mighty, high god of the Forest Clan, says that he built the world from the corpse of the Great Beast...

and Fergus the Forgemaster, chief god of the Mountain Clan, is said to have molded the world from molten iron...

and the people of the far southern city states claim that the world was sung into existed by all 12 gods of the Eternal Choir...

and so on...

is there a true story in there anywhere?

At some point, you start running into stories that can't all be simultaneously true, and some of the gods or pantheons have to be just plain lying. At least to me, the more "objectively real" the deities become in a setting, the more they can't be chalked up to mortal belief and tradition and dogma, the less it works to actually have multiple pantheons and multiple valid faiths.

[VoxRationis]

If Ranalon The Mighty, high god of the Forest Clan, says that he built the world from the corpse of the Great Beast...

and Fergus the Forgemaster, chief god of the Mountain Clan, is said to have molded the world from molten iron...

and the people of the far southern city states claim that the world was sung into existed by all 12 gods of the Eternal Choir...

and so on...

is there a true story in there anywhere?

At some point, you start running into stories that can't all be simultaneously true, and some of the gods or pantheons have to be just plain lying. At least to me, the more "objectively real" the deities become in a setting, the more they can't be chalked up to mortal belief and tradition and dogma, the less it works to actually have multiple pantheons and multiple valid faiths.

Where "works" means "you can take Codex entries at face value," this is true. However, there are lots of ways that divinities can exist and have power without myths associated with them be all true, and lots of settings where the gods are either lying or not correcting people's misconceptions when it comes to the nature of reality and the cosmos. Furthermore, a faith may be "valid" in the sense that the being(s) it worships is/are real, but not be "valid" in the sense that all of its tenets are correct. So long as a cleric, for instance, keeps getting spells, people (including his god) may not care whether his understanding of the reason rainbows exist is correct. And so inaccuracies persist in lore and myth.

[ThePurple]

is there a true story in there anywhere?

This assumes that you believe that the prehistory of a magical universe has to adhere to logical causality. Mayhaps all of them are true because, at some point after each deity with a legitimate creation myth created the entire universe (including the other deities), all of those realities fused (by each deity's story, the fusing was either a natural outgrowth of their own creation or due to their own influence, not an outside one). In such a history, these creation myths are all explicitly true while being simultaneously contradictory. It's entirely feasible that the trait by which deities define themselves isn't the ability to grant divine magic but, instead, the ability to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they created the universe, as each of them has already done.

We're talking about the fantastical stories of fantastical worlds here; you don't really have to play by the rules of reality any more.

[Max_Killjoy]

This assumes that you believe that the prehistory of a magical universe has to adhere to logical causality. Mayhaps all of them are true because, at some point after each deity with a legitimate creation myth created the entire universe (including the other deities), all of those realities fused (by each deity's story, the fusing was either a natural outgrowth of their own creation or due to their own influence, not an outside one). In such a history, these creation myths are all explicitly true while being simultaneously contradictory. It's entirely feasible that the trait by which deities define themselves isn't the ability to grant divine magic but, instead, the ability to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they created the universe, as each of them has already done.

We're talking about the fantastical stories of fantastical worlds here; you don't really have to play by the rules of reality any more.


I still have trouble with the idea that two mutually incompatible claims can both be true.

And if I as the GM (or writer) know how the world of the setting was actually created, aren't all the other stories / claims actually not "internally true" within that setting?

And don't I need to know that history in order to build forward to an internally coherent and consistent setting that actually makes sense even if players (or readers) start to look under rocks, peek behind the curtains, etc?



On the subject of multiple pantheons -- if there are multiple pantheons, haven't I just multiplied the work I need to put into the deities and belief systems however many times?

[ThePurple]

I still have trouble with the idea that two mutually incompatible claims can both be true.

Which is just one of the wonderful mind-screwy things that can occur when trying to comprehend the divine as a mortal. It just ends up making deities that much greater than mortals.

Personally, I tend to adhere to the "one true history" approach to things, but that doesn't mean that it's absolutely necessary.


And if I as the GM (or writer) know how the world of the setting was actually created, aren't all the other stories / claims actually not "internally true" within that setting?

Well, if you're the GM and the setting has a "one true history", then you don't really have to deal with the idea of multiple mutually exclusive "true histories" since that's what's true in your campaign world. The point I was making was that, in a fantasy setting, you don't have to have a *single* absolutely true history; it's possible to have multiples that are all absolutely, and equally, true even though they outright contradict one another.

One of the best ways to exemplify this is a line from the Joker, of DC fame:

"If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice."

[BootStrapTommy]

I was watching my friend beat his head against a brick wall until his brains were squishy and leaked from his ears play Dark Souls 3, and this post came to mind and my brain got creating:

Orcs are not a race. They are a post-traumatic syndrome. Orc culture is one of initiation into a cycle of violence and brutality, with low status won by the successful endurance of cruelty by higher status members of the group, and status from their gained by the infliction of cruelty. "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return." Most orcs were not born orcs, they were taken by an orc band. About half survive the initiation process, half do not. Those who survive are scarred, both in body and mind. Some of those who do not survive birth young ones, raised in a culture of extreme brutality.

Take that bit of psychology and put it in a magical universe, where an inverse "Portrait of Dorian Gray" effect is very plausible. So bonuses to physical stats, penalties to mental stats. Sometimes, full orcs do breed in the natural way, rather than with captives kept alive for the purpose. Children of those unions are where ogres come from.

You also get your zombie-fiction tropes here. "That's not Ygrrith anymore. It looks like Ygrrith, but your brother is gone!" plus the dilemna of captives who ask to be mercy-killed.
The idea is post-apocalyptic fantasy. Not in the Shannara sense, but in the sense of a fantasy world recently rocked by a magical apocalypse of the magnitude of, say, a nuclear war.

Thus it would be a world with diseased, decayed landscapes populated by tribal bands of survivors scratching a bleak existence from a poisoned world. Cold and twisted, a dying Sun and Moon reigning over a frigid, dying country. Like Dark Sun, but cold and on crack.

The above type orcs could be Firefly Reaver-like creatures driven mad by the residual magic. Others could be twisted, shriveled Fallout Ghoul-like Hollows, half dead, half alive and driven crazy by magic. Magical aberrations and abominations would abound.

Thinking a Brotherhood of Steel-like order of knightly scholars, who seek to find and control magical items and artifacts. Bandits, raiders, and other evil types, balanced by emerging strongholds and fiefdoms. Minimal resources. Casters are anathema, for fear of the havoc they bring.

Where only the strong, smart, or lucky survive. Like Dark Souls meets Fallout meets Dark Sun meets Lovecraftian horror.

[Yora]

Midnight can get a bit like that, but it's more about the land being conquered by the Dark Lord than outright depopulated.

There's also a vidogame Bound by Flame, which I think has a really cool setting. A gang of ice necromancer liches has come from the north and as far as all the characters know they might very well be the last place in the world not yet burried by ice and snow and populated only by the undead. And they keep losing pretty hard. Their plan of making a heroic stand at the last remaining elven city and summoning a fire spirit to defeat the undead army seems completely delusional from the start. Even if they win against all odds, there isn't really anything left to save.

My setting is quite similar, but it's pre-civilization instead of post, and a bit like Dark Sun in the Green Hell, or Heart of Darkness.

[LordotTrinkets]

I have a question about maps. Recently, I got to thinking about building the realms of the dwarves and now that I've considered the broad strokes, I've run into a problem. How exactly does one map out the underdark (not it's actual name in-campaign, but still)?

At least the way that I'm working with it, it will be kind of 3 dimensional, having unique locations if you move horizontally or vertically. Would the best solution be to just map it out in levels or is there some other idea that could work?

[Yora]

In most cases huge global cave systems will be much more wide than they are deep. This makes it relatively practical to treat it as having several levels. Don't wory about slight slopes and minor drops and just do everything on three or four levels stacked atop of another.

[VoxRationis]

Which is just one of the wonderful mind-screwy things that can occur when trying to comprehend the divine as a mortal. It just ends up making deities that much greater than mortals.

Personally, I tend to adhere to the "one true history" approach to things, but that doesn't mean that it's absolutely necessary.



Well, if you're the GM and the setting has a "one true history", then you don't really have to deal with the idea of multiple mutually exclusive "true histories" since that's what's true in your campaign world. The point I was making was that, in a fantasy setting, you don't have to have a *single* absolutely true history; it's possible to have multiples that are all absolutely, and equally, true even though they outright contradict one another.

One of the best ways to exemplify this is a line from the Joker, of DC fame:

"If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice."

That's really a cop-out so writers can avoid worrying about contradicting themselves or upsetting their fans.

[BootStrapTommy]

Midnight can get a bit like that, but it's more about the land being conquered by the Dark Lord than outright depopulated.

There's also a vidogame Bound by Flame, which I think has a really cool setting. A gang of ice necromancer liches has come from the north and as far as all the characters know they might very well be the last place in the world not yet burried by ice and snow and populated only by the undead. And they keep losing pretty hard. Their plan of making a heroic stand at the last remaining elven city and summoning a fire spirit to defeat the undead army seems completely delusional from the start. Even if they win against all odds, there isn't really anything left to save.

My setting is quite similar, but it's pre-civilization instead of post, and a bit like Dark Sun in the Green Hell, or Heart of Darkness.I'll have to give some of that a look.

I'm a big fan of Dark Soul's aesthetics, just not a big fan of it's actual gameplay (I usually need a plot to motivate face-brick wall interfacing), so I want to capture some of that ambience. I've always been a fan of the frontier aesthetic, and apocalyptic feeds well from frontier's survival aspect.

Was thinking Bloodbourne's magical steampunk decay aesthetic might work, but it lacks the wilderness and "man-vs-nature" element I want.

I feel like the Magical Fallout scenario is oft referenced, but few settings seem to take place in those periods. Which is strange, given how much conflict that era would provide to good storytelling. Probably not many stories with good endings, but stories nonetheless.

[Yora]

Oh, and speaking of all this: You should check out either the comic or the anime of Berzerk. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls is pretty much Berzerk: The Game.

[quinron]

Springboarding off the "untrustworthy gods" discussion: My setting has two sets of gods, the Seraphim (the great gods) and the Cherubim (the lesser gods).

The Seraphim were forced to seal themselves into a "pocket plane" that is, to everyone's knowledge, completely inaccessible from any other point in the multiverse. They have to influence their followers by sending them prophetic visions and the like, so their followers tend to be more focused on living up to a particular ideal than on any particular action.

The Cherubim are in charge of keeping the mortal world in balance and preventing anyone from reaching the Seraphim's pocket plane. They can and will directly manifest in the world, and they tend to give their followers specific quests to carry out. They don't really represent any particular ideal - there's one Cherub for each of the 8 non-Neutral alignments, but they're all Neutral themselves, serving more as arbiters of their respective alignments than patrons.

What I'm wondering is, how would this world develop in the face of these two different groups of gods? I've already determined that there's some skepticism growing among academics, who think the Seraphim might be a myth that the Cherubim have created to make themselves seem more powerful; I'm just not sure what other ramifications this cosmology might have. I anticipate that most adventurers would be worshippers of Cherubim, because they're more prone to sending followers on adventures, but I feel like a lot of players would prefer to worship Seraphim because they won't pop up one day and start "pushing them around."

Any thoughts?

[akma]

The Cherubim are in charge of keeping the mortal world in balance and preventing anyone from reaching the Seraphim's pocket plane. They can and will directly manifest in the world, and they tend to give their followers specific quests to carry out. They don't really represent any particular ideal - there's one Cherub for each of the 8 non-Neutral alignments, but they're all Neutral themselves, serving more as arbiters of their respective alignments than patrons.

What I'm wondering is, how would this world develop in the face of these two different groups of gods? I've already determined that there's some skepticism growing among academics, who think the Seraphim might be a myth that the Cherubim have created to make themselves seem more powerful; I'm just not sure what other ramifications this cosmology might have. I anticipate that most adventurers would be worshippers of Cherubim, because they're more prone to sending followers on adventures, but I feel like a lot of players would prefer to worship Seraphim because they won't pop up one day and start "pushing them around."

Any thoughts?

Sounds like there is not much conflict in that world. The Seraphim are not really present, all the Cherubim basically work for the same goal, and those who question the Seraphim existence don't really seem powerful enough to effect anything.

[quinron]

Sounds like there is not much conflict in that world. The Seraphim are not really present, all the Cherubim basically work for the same goal, and those who question the Seraphim existence don't really seem powerful enough to effect anything.

It's not so much conflict I'm concerned about as it is societal development - this world is quite new, so my hope is that my current game is quite a bit earlier in its history than future games would be. I'd like to know how things might change in the interim between campaigns; I'm not necessarily looking for concrete futures as I am for possibilities of what people might expect to happen in these circumstances.

For a bit more context, the main Seraphim-worshippers are the elven archmages, while the main Cherubim-worshippers are the dwarfen clerics. They're totally at peace right now; the skepticism is being disseminated by a group of humans from either side who have started questioning the way things work.

[akma]

It's not so much conflict I'm concerned about as it is societal development - this world is quite new, so my hope is that my current game is quite a bit earlier in its history than future games would be. I'd like to know how things might change in the interim between campaigns; I'm not necessarily looking for concrete futures as I am for possibilities of what people might expect to happen in these circumstances.

For a bit more context, the main Seraphim-worshippers are the elven archmages, while the main Cherubim-worshippers are the dwarfen clerics. They're totally at peace right now; the skepticism is being disseminated by a group of humans from either side who have started questioning the way things work.

I expect there to be some sort of rising religious conflict - between those that believe in the Seraphim, those who believe the Seraphim are a lie, etc. Not necessarily war, but it could lead to big divide in society, that might lead to a geographical division.

[quinron]

I expect there to be some sort of rising religious conflict - between those that believe in the Seraphim, those who believe the Seraphim are a lie, etc. Not necessarily war, but it could lead to big divide in society, that might lead to a geographical division.

Thanks, that's a help - there's already been some impact on philosophy from geography, it'll be interesting to make it work vice versa.

[Carl]

It's not so much conflict I'm concerned about as it is societal development - this world is quite new, so my hope is that my current game is quite a bit earlier in its history than future games would be. I'd like to know how things might change in the interim between campaigns; I'm not necessarily looking for concrete futures as I am for possibilities of what people might expect to happen in these circumstances.

For a bit more context, the main Seraphim-worshippers are the elven archmages, while the main Cherubim-worshippers are the dwarfen clerics. They're totally at peace right now; the skepticism is being disseminated by a group of humans from either side who have started questioning the way things work.

Answering this with any degree of accuracy is going to require a lot more world building really. You need to figure out why specific groups favour one or the other and what the existing sociology is. How societies are "now" will define to one degree or another how they grow into tomorrow. In the same vein what are the 2 groups of gods main goals, what are they trying to achieve in the world besides being worshiped. What ultimately are they hypothetically offering as incentives to their worships, what do they get out of it. e.t.c.

[Xuc Xac]

I don't really see how it matters. Recast the seraphim as the board of a company (all the Chief Whatever Officers) and the cherubim as Vice Presidents of different departments. All the mortals are low-level workers in the company. High level clerics can be middle management. What would happen if some of the dudes on the bottom said "You know what? I've never seen the CEO in person. How do we even know there is one? Maybe the VPs are really running everything and they just say policies are being handed down from the board when they want to deflect the blame for something that they think will be unpopular?" What is the actual difference as far as the workers are concerned? If you're a graphic design drone in the marketing department and the VP of marketing tells you to email your current project designs to the committee that approves them, are you going to refuse? "No, way! You're not the boss of me! I'm only going to email stuff if the Chief Information Officer tells me to use the internet."

If it's set up like a hierarchy and you're on the bottom, it doesn't matter if there's anyone at the top because you answer the ones above you anyway.

[341gerbig]

Is there a book or website that shows what technologies were avalible during different periods of time?

Like a timeline of inventions?

[Carl]

Not really. Oh such a thing probably exists for children but in reality different inventions turned up at different times in different parts of the world and where then somtimes lost and rediscovered only to be lost again and rediscovered yet again. It's only in the last few hundred years that globalisation has really put an end to this.

[Roxxy]

I feel clever. I have a problem in my fantasy setting. I have 20th century tech, particularly propeller driven planes, because they are cooler than jets. Prop fighters are state of the art military tech. I also want commercialized space travel. The two naturally conflict. If we can get into space that easily, we can build fighter jets. So I came up with this about 7 months ago:


The gods (now departed from the world) have messed with terrain features quite a bit. Thanks to divine shenanigans nobody really understands (I go by the Greek system of the gods being able to be spectacularly immature at times), there is a three mile column of zero gravity around the North and South poles, surrounded by a weird bubble that prevents the atmosphere from entering the vacuum but does not bar the movement of people and vehicles. This world has a late 1940s level of vehicular and architectural technology (though they haven't invented jet engines) and a modern level of communications technology, and integrates low level Eberronish magic into technology. These zero gravity wells at the poles are what allows space travel, given the lack of rocket engines powerful enough to exit the atmosphere with any significant payload. This is important, because the only way to get really useful stuff like adamantine, mithril, and some useful magical phlebotinums is to mine it from space. So, despite the pre-Apollo mission tech level, there is enough space traffic to make NASA go berserk with envy. Of course, one can only go into space via the North or South pole.

Well, I just thought of what the tube is and why it exists. Instead of being a zero gravity tube, it's some sort of invisible giant multidirectional tractor beam. It actually connects the planet to tubes criss-crossing through space to other planets and important moons and such, and is centered over each planet's axis. The function of the tube was to allow gods to travel the galaxy by using the tube to pull their chariots or whatever in whichever direction within the tube they want to go. Humans have figured out how to connect a ship to the tube and get the tube to propel the ship, thereby allowing space travel without jet engjne technology. This also creates a good reason for space based warfare. If your military controls part of the tube, you control trade and travel through that region. If you control a planet or moon with desireable resources, there might not be another on the tube anywhere nearby that's feasible to colonize.

Now, a single stage rocket is certainly not too complicated for the 40s, and spaceships do use them. Space stations and cargo depots are built just outside the tube to avoid taking up valuable tube space, making rockets necessary for maneuvering (ships lose all velocity upon exiting the tube).

[nrg89]

Now, a single stage rocket is certainly not too complicated for the 40s, and spaceships do use them. Space stations and cargo depots are built just outside the tube to avoid taking up valuable tube space, making rockets necessary for maneuvering (ships lose all velocity upon exiting the tube). If this is actual, vacuum, interplanetary space we're talking about here you only need to eject something to maneuver. The massive force of a rocket is really only necessary for getting off the planet and it's orbit because once you're in space you can just point to where you want to go, apply a force suitable for the acceleration you want for a short time, and then you don't have to do anything while Newton's first law takes care of the rest. If you have to turn right to avoid something on the way, you can just spray something (maybe water) on the left side.

[Carl]

Just to really emphasise somthing as well, whilst there's a lot of similarities between the two tech and a fair amount of cross passage good rockets does not = jet engines. Some of the tech needed to make a usable rocket will be useful for building a working jet engine, but one doesn't automatically follow from the other though without primitive jet engines there's a limit, (most high end rockets use turbo pumps and any decent turbo pump is going to lead to a jet engine eventually). That said just throwing stuff overboard won't get you anywhere, LEO to Geo Sync is 450m/s of delta v, a moon shot would be even more and i think mars is around 4000m/s off the top of my head but don;t quote me on that without me checking it. You're going to need a minimum of a basic regenerative cooled rocket to do that, space does not passively cool well enough for anything else.

[nrg89]

That said just throwing stuff overboard won't get you anywhere, LEO to Geo Sync is 450m/s of delta v, a moon shot would be even more and i think mars is around 4000m/s off the top of my head but don;t quote me on that without me checking it. You're going to need a minimum of a basic regenerative cooled rocket to do that, space does not passively cool well enough for anything else.

I thought he was well outside of LEO once he started, which would mean a lot less delta v, but I still vastly underestimated it according to this chart in this Stackexchange question (http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2046/delta-v-chart-mathematics) (it might be useful to Roxxy). You'll most definitely need a rocket. Or, there's another way, but it's very strange and might not be what you want for the setting.

You can blast your way around. This works a lot like a rocket because a rocket will not be thrusting all the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of the trip but just enough to achieve the delta v and a blast can do the same. However, it's a lot harder to travel this way because you have to drop the bomb at the right distance and with the right angle between you and the explosion for it to work. The most delta v is needed to escape the celestial body and it's low orbit, you would need a nuke to move a spacecraft off the Earth. The Americans almost made a prototype of such a space craft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)), which would've probably scared the world into World War 3 not to mention that if you thought the Challenger disaster was bad just imagine all the ways dropping nukes behind you to ride the shockwave could end in catastrophe. But, if you're already starting in space, you've got a lot less to worry about and you don't need as powerful blasts.

[Elodin]

Any ideas for a caste system utilized in a jungle?

[nrg89]

Any ideas for a caste system utilized in a jungle?

Are we talking hunter gatherers or city dwellers (like the Mayans)?

India's caste system was based on a hierarchy of body parts, the labor caste being represented by the feet. If it's a city dwelling culture maybe representing it with the food chain would make sense. The highest caste is the big cat in the region (maybe a jaguar or leopard), followed by a primate that's preyed on by the big cat (maybe a mandrill or baboon), followed by something the primate eats (a bug maybe or a rat), followed by some plant and finally the earth. The authorities could just invoke the law of the jungle when one from the higher castes exploit the lower caste.
The big cat would represent the military commanders, warriors and kings since big cats are strong predators, the primate could represent the poets, lawyers and engineers since the primates are the most like ourselves, the bugs could represent the merchants because while everyone hates them they're needed to move stuff around on the market, the plants could represent the farmers since they put food on the table and the earth could represent the slaves, something we all stand on top of.

If it's hunter gatherer I don't feel educated enough to give a good suggestion, but I'll try. My gut reaction is that it will be much simpler than the social structures of the city since sharing between strangers is much more common in hunter gatherer societies. Maybe three castes, the first is the normal hunters and gatherers who live of the jungle and need to respect it to make ends meet. The second is the shaman/priest/druid/spiritual guide who acts as an interpreter between the jungle spirits and the people. The third caste is the spirits of the jungle, once you've reached that caste through many pious lives you are very powerful and important to the people of the jungle, which is why you must have shown great wisdom and kindness because it's a scary thought to have lazy, evil and ignorant spirits influencing the fate of the entire population.

[Elodin]

Are we talking hunter gatherers or city dwellers (like the Mayans)?

India's caste system was based on a hierarchy of body parts, the labor caste being represented by the feet. If it's a city dwelling culture maybe representing it with the food chain would make sense. The highest caste is the big cat in the region (maybe a jaguar or leopard), followed by a primate that's preyed on by the big cat (maybe a mandrill or baboon), followed by something the primate eats (a bug maybe or a rat), followed by some plant and finally the earth. The authorities could just invoke the law of the jungle when one from the higher castes exploit the lower caste.
The big cat would represent the military commanders, warriors and kings since big cats are strong predators, the primate could represent the poets, lawyers and engineers since the primates are the most like ourselves, the bugs could represent the merchants because while everyone hates them they're needed to move stuff around on the market, the plants could represent the farmers since they put food on the table and the earth could represent the slaves, something we all stand on top of.

If it's hunter gatherer I don't feel educated enough to give a good suggestion, but I'll try. My gut reaction is that it will be much simpler than the social structures of the city since sharing between strangers is much more common in hunter gatherer societies. Maybe three castes, the first is the normal hunters and gatherers who live of the jungle and need to respect it to make ends meet. The second is the shaman/priest/druid/spiritual guide who acts as an interpreter between the jungle spirits and the people. The third caste is the spirits of the jungle, once you've reached that caste through many pious lives you are very powerful and important to the people of the jungle, which is why you must have shown great wisdom and kindness because it's a scary thought to have lazy, evil and ignorant spirits influencing the fate of the entire population.
More city dwellers, but there are some places where they travel around. I like elements of both of your ideas, as I kind of want the hierarchy to be based on physical, social and spiritual factors. Thanks for the ideas though!

[Max_Killjoy]

A question about ancient and classical city-states:

How far did their economic and political control actually extend beyond the "city walls", and how much "fuzzy" or buffer or unaligned territory would have existed between them?

[Xuc Xac]

A caste system doesn't necessarily have to be hierarchical. You could have hierarchies within castes, but you don't need them between castes. A good example is the Tau from Warhammer 40K. The Fire caste are warriors and they include everyone from basic infantry up to the generals and admirals at the top. The Earth caste are workers and include farmers and factory workers up to the engineers and scientists that research, develop, and design their technology. The Water caste are bureaucrats and administrators, including all the basic administrative types from secretaries and clerks up to government ministers. The Air caste are the movers, including postal workers and messengers up through the pilots and navigators for the largest vehicles. The castes are all equal in value because they are all vitally necessary for society, but they don't have overlapping functions. A person's caste limits their roles in society. If you're born into the Fire caste and you like math, you'll never be a mathematician or engineer because those are jobs for the Earth caste and you'll never be an accountant because that's a job for the Water caste; you'll probably just calculate firing solutions for the big guns on a tank or a battleship. The only caste that "outranks" the others is the Ethereal caste, who are the priests and leaders. They tell the Fire caste who to fight and the Earth caste what to build, etc. The other four castes have an equal part in making society run, but the Ethereals direct where and when their society is going. If you wanted to keep things totally equal, you could replace the Ethereals with a council of the highest ranking members of the other four castes.

The defining feature of a caste system is that your caste is determined at birth. If you can change from one to another, it's just a job or a class and not a caste. In a class system, it's theoretically possible for a farmer to take up arms and become a soldier and a warrior could leave the military to become a blacksmith or a farmer. In a caste system, they can't.

[Max_Killjoy]

Another thought I've had today -- regarding maps.

When setting out to map part or all of a world, how much attention do you pay to the forces -- natural geology, catastrophe, extraordinary events and forces, etc -- that shaped that world?

I routinely see maps that are, at least with natural geology, almost impossible.

Deserts and jungles on the wrong sides of mountain ranges given the likely prevailing winds.
Mountains where there are no other signs of the geological forces that lift them up.
Mountains that hug coastlines or form convenient state borders.
Rivers that appear to run in the wrong direction.
Incompatible climates adjacent to each other (tundra and tropical forest at the same latitude and altitude).
Etc.

[Pictogram]

I need help with antagonist desert monster race. Both Saurians and Dwarfs are playable races in my setting and are very aggressive- however I want a non playable monstrous race that will bring strife to the party and the world. And suggestions or candidates?

[BladeofObliviom]

I need help with antagonist desert monster race. Both Saurians and Dwarfs are playable races in my setting and are very aggressive- however I want a non playable monstrous race that will bring strife to the part and the world. And suggestions or candidates?

I think this one needs a bit more qualification. Do you want more of an Always Chaotic Evil Humanoid, or an actual monster race that's just an out-of-control problem?

For the first one, I'm going to suggest Nomadic Asherati (or similar) Raiders, who aren't necessarily evil but are extremely territorial and don't speak other people's languages so can't really communicate with 'civilized' races. Additionally, since Asherati (or equivalent) build cities underground that have no surface access unless you can sandswim like they can, it's extremely hard to tell when one is intruding upon their territory until a war party appears out of the ground and starts killing people.

For the latter, I dunno. Blue Dragons?

[Pictogram]

I think this one needs a bit more qualification. Do you want more of an Always Chaotic Evil Humanoid, or an actual monster race that's just an out-of-control problem?

For the first one, I'm going to suggest Nomadic Asherati (or similar) Raiders, who aren't necessarily evil but are extremely territorial and don't speak other people's languages so can't really communicate with 'civilized' races. Additionally, since Asherati (or equivalent) build cities underground that have no surface access unless you can sandswim like they can, it's extremely hard to tell when one is intruding upon their territory until a war party appears out of the ground and starts killing people.

For the latter, I dunno. Blue Dragons?

I like the first suggestion of the Asherati rather than the later. Even the idea that their not necessarily evil just culture and language barriers have created a history of violence among them and the "civilized" folk. I'm not completely sold on them yet, but I do like where that is going. And actually my setting has no Dragons, I've replaced them with Worms being the large monstrous threat of the desert that is an out of control problem.

[nrg89]

A question about ancient and classical city-states:

How far did their economic and political control actually extend beyond the "city walls", and how much "fuzzy" or buffer or unaligned territory would have existed between them?

If peasants in the region wanted to do better than subsistence farming they needed to trade and the city had the market, that was the only viable way to get your produce to a buyer. So, economically, the power extended very far because you just had to pay the toll, the tax and the fee to get into the market wether you liked it or not. At least a few days travel away people would be contributing to the economy, but further than that and either the closest village would have to do or you could just pick up herding.
Poltically, that's a tough one to give a good answer on. I'm not even going to try. I will however offer you a book advice (http://www.cambridge.org/ke/academic/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-history/cities-peasants-and-food-classical-antiquity-essays-social-and-economic-history), maybe this will help.


When setting out to map part or all of a world, how much attention do you pay to the forces -- natural geology, catastrophe, extraordinary events and forces, etc -- that shaped that world? Too much, I'm so scared of messing up I can barely start. I really want the placement of my most powerful civilizations to make sense so in addition to making sure I respect the natural laws enough I try to think about which places would be good for my cities and I often start with the civilizations already in my head, meaning that I just want to throw the map at the floor and jump on it when i can't find a suitable spot for every single one of them.

I don't think it's that healthy, actually, because I've yet to see a map that makes complete sense even though most people seem to enjoy them, but the problem is I will still notice it since it's my map. Sometimes we should just shrug, I think, if the detail is minor.

I should also add that I'm not completely sure if I would pass a blind test; someone shows me one fictional map from a fantasy novel and one actual map, formatted in a way that it looks like ti comes from a fantasy novel, and asks me to tell which one's which. I think I would, especially if there's glaring errors in the rivers or a desert without a rain shadow and with the horse latitudes too far off, but I'm not positive.


A caste system doesn't necessarily have to be hierarchical. That is a good point. I would, however, say that depending on the era one caste will wield more power than the other and be the dominant one. In a time of war, the warrior caste would rule, in a time immediately post famine the farmers could rule, in a time of scientific revolution the intellectual caste would be the dominant one and in a time of huge trade surpluses the merchants would rule. That is unless there's some outside power keeping them in check (maybe cultural values) but the differences could also be minuscule between them because of a tax system or something.


The defining feature of a caste system is that your caste is determined at birth. If you can change from one to another, it's just a job or a class and not a caste. In a class system, it's theoretically possible for a farmer to take up arms and become a soldier and a warrior could leave the military to become a blacksmith or a farmer. In a caste system, they can't.

Absolutely, I was making parallels to the Indian caste system where one could theoretically move to a different caste in another life.

[Elodin]

I need help with antagonist desert monster race. Both Saurians and Dwarfs are playable races in my setting and are very aggressive- however I want a non playable monstrous race that will bring strife to the part and the world. And suggestions or candidates?
Condorlike humanoids who are religious fanatics. They worship Eareat, the God of Wind, Water and the Sands of Time. They have a theocratic monarchy, with the Lord of Wind (a ruler who is from a high level in society and fulfills the prophesied conditions) being a ruler with no power check. They primarily export ceramics, rugs, gold and books. A group in their society who call themselves the Shadowed Ones are particularly destructive, as they are highly trained saboteurs and assassins. Each noble (someone who converted seventy-seven people to Eareatism, has a lot of money or is selected by the Lord) owns at least one Shadowed One. They mainly eat meat, although they also cook the tough desert grasses into a soup on special occasions. They use water mixed with cactus juice as their main drink, and it is a powerful intoxicant. They live mainly in a large sandstone city called Serana, but they also have small towns on the outskirts and spread around the desert. They use intricately carved gold pieces as currency. Their God does not accept sacrifices, but every stormy day or 7 days of the lunar month, they pray to him for 7 hours, drinking a glass of water every hour. They are adept mathematicians and novelists, and they use intricate machines called diviners to determine weather and navigate. When a member of a family is killed, the family members meditate with a candle in each hand for 77 minutes, then try kill the person who killed them with gold blades. If they fail, they must wait 7 hours to try again. If another two members of the family are killed while attempting this, they may give up. Children under fourteen are exempt from this tradition. Their holy number is seven.

[Pictogram]

I really like the themes of where you're going with the Condor people. I'll probably change their god up a bit but keep the sands of time theme, the water and wind will not work/ conflict with another gods portfolio. I'll probably just switch it to Weather or storm. Thank you!

[Hoosigander]

A question about ancient and classical city-states:

How far did their economic and political control actually extend beyond the "city walls", and how much "fuzzy" or buffer or unaligned territory would have existed between them?

It depends, Athens (one of the largest Greek City-States both in terms of territory and population) directly controlled the region of Attica, which is about 2,500 KM square and had a population of 200,000 people throughout the whole territory. Athens itself housed about 40,000. Athens was large for a Greek City-State, anything above 10,000 people in the city itself would be big by ancient Greek standards. Corinth, for example, was a significant city, but only had about 10,000 inhabitants. (All the population figures are for the period of the Persian Wars)

An additional factor is that cities could exert political control over areas not technically within the Polis. The classic example is Athens, which slowly turned the Delian League from a confederacy of equals into an Athenian Hegemony. In 454 B.C. Pericles moved the treasury of the league from the neutral ground of Delos to Athens and in the 450s began to establish cleruchiai within the the territories of the league. Whereas normal Greek colonies were independent city-states with a special relationship with the founding city (which itself could be a means to projecting influence), colonists in a cleruchiai were still Athenian citizens and as such obligated to serve as hoplites. There were two rebellions against Athens during the Peloponnesian War, both of which were surpressed.


Another thought I've had today -- regarding maps.

When setting out to map part or all of a world, how much attention do you pay to the forces -- natural geology, catastrophe, extraordinary events and forces, etc -- that shaped that world?

I try to create maps that are logical, but I don't start from first principals, which is to say a complete geological history of the world. Since I like to base my settings on historical periods and cultures I often strive to create a matching feel with my geography. For example a map I made for a Chinese inspired setting had two rivers mirroring the Yellow and the Yangtze, a Gulf of Bohai, and a warmer and wetter south and a colder and drier north, everything else was different. I didn't consider geography but by aping a real world region my map probably has some geological coherence as well as working with the feel I wanted to invoke.

[Elodin]

I really like the themes of where you're going with the Condor people. I'll probably change their god up a bit but keep the sands of time theme, the water and wind will not work/ conflict with another gods portfolio. I'll probably just switch it to Weather or storm. Thank you!
Of course! :D

[Max_Killjoy]

It depends, Athens (one of the largest Greek City-States both in terms of territory and population) directly controlled the region of Attica, which is about 2,500 KM square and had a population of 200,000 people throughout the whole territory. Athens itself housed about 40,000. Athens was large for a Greek City-State, anything above 10,000 people in the city itself would be big by ancient Greek standards. Corinth, for example, was a significant city, but only had about 10,000 inhabitants. (All the population figures are for the period of the Persian Wars)

An additional factor is that cities could exert political control over areas not technically within the Polis. The classic example is Athens, which slowly turned the Delian League from a confederacy of equals into an Athenian Hegemony. In 454 B.C. Pericles moved the treasury of the league from the neutral ground of Delos to Athens and in the 450s began to establish cleruchiai within the the territories of the league. Whereas normal Greek colonies were independent city-states with a special relationship with the founding city (which itself could be a means to projecting influence), colonists in a cleruchiai were still Athenian citizens and as such obligated to serve as hoplites. There were two rebellions against Athens during the Peloponnesian War, both of which were surpressed.


Let's say that each city-state controls an area roughly 100 miles in radius around it, but that two of the actual cities are 250 miles apart.

What's going on in that 50 mile stretch? Nothing? Freeholds and outlaws? Constant struggle between the two cities to influence the area?

[Hoosigander]

Let's say that each city-state controls an area roughly 100 miles in radius around it, but that two of the actual cities are 250 miles apart. What's going on in that 50 mile stretch? Nothing? Freeholds and outlaws? Constant struggle between the two cities to influence the area?

As I understand it borders were not as strictly defined as ours are today (in theory, that is). Major roads might be marked with boundary stones that marked the end of one polity and the beginning of another, but most of it would not be marked and would be a amorphous and ambiguous "Borderland" or "frontier." Many borders were situated in mountainous areas with little habitation and where most land was owned directly by the City-State. There might be military garrisons on the edges of the frontier, which might be patrolled by either mercenaries or citizen-soldiers. There were also officials in charge of boundary stones (which were also used to mark field divisions) and they might have played a role. Interestingly there are a large amount of references to religious shrines and sanctuaries in border regions, maybe because of the in-between nature of frontiers.

Sometimes land might not be not owned by either city-state, but both might have access to them according to some sort of arrangement, mutual grazing rights etc. Of course if there were disputes a war might be fought over who controlled it, e.g. the Lelantine War. There were a number of regions where two city-states had traditional claims and this could be a source of long-running conflicts over generations.


I also feel compelled to note some inaccuracies in my earlier reply. Estimating ancient demographics is hard, and I've found some alternate numbers, 60,000 for Athens and 15,000 for Corinth. These are also the population of citizens not counting resident foreigners or slaves.

[alacritousduck]

Another thought I've had today -- regarding maps.

When setting out to map part or all of a world, how much attention do you pay to the forces -- natural geology, catastrophe, extraordinary events and forces, etc -- that shaped that world?

I routinely see maps that are, at least with natural geology, almost impossible.

Deserts and jungles on the wrong sides of mountain ranges given the likely prevailing winds.
Mountains where there are no other signs of the geological forces that lift them up.
Mountains that hug coastlines or form convenient state borders.
Rivers that appear to run in the wrong direction.
Incompatible climates adjacent to each other (tundra and tropical forest at the same latitude and altitude).
Etc.

Mmm, that's always annoying, especially when it would really be wuite easy to either correct or excuse with some handwave or something, but it's clear they just don't care.

[Pictogram]

Hey everyone, I need some more help with my desert world setting. One of the playable races is going to be Entobians http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/alluria-publishing/entobian

They'll look like the entry's physical description, except they won't be as crazy of colors, but that's where my entobian's similarity's end. I don't like their personality/society very much so I made it to where the Entobians are going to be very focused on their work and structure of society, everyone has a job and all of those jobs are vital to a smooth running machine. I need suggestions on how their society will work however, and also I'm changing their stats completely. Making them stronger between 15-19 Rp http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/character-creation so i need help coming up with new abilities as well. They are the most industrious and technologically advanced race so i need it to reflect that. I think i'm going to make them the inventors of guns and other stuff along those lines, but I want to make it specifically with a "insect like" feeling. Oh, and lastly I need to figure out a clothing aesthetic for them, I already have an indian, arabian, and egyptian, and australian aborginal look to the other races, can anyone think of another desert culture I can mimic them off of? I know this is a lot to ask but I really need help with these little buggers, help a DM out!

[Roxxy]

So, on that worldbuilding project a few pages ago. I just figured out the best form of transportation for far flung colonies. I've established that, while petrol is available, it's expensive to ship, and tends to be reserved for uses that absolutely require it, which is not everyday civilian transportation. Horses and mules are an option, and definitely present in the colonies, but they aren't the cheapest option, and require vet care and skill in handling animals. There's a cheaper to ship, simpler to take care of, and easier to use option for the everyday interplanetary colonist.

It's the common bicycle. Almost any able bodied person can ride one, it takes up far less room in a spaceship than a car or a horse, you don't need to feed it or have a vet around, a lot of maintenance and repairs can be done by a layman, spare bike parts are easier to ship than car parts, and so on. It makes perfect sense as long as commuting distances are around the ten mile range or lower, which is doable for a properly thought out colony.

[Sam113097]

I'm about to run a campaign set in Abaddon, a location in my Fallen Sky campaign setting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?476392-Fallen-Sky-(Criticism-Appreciated)). Abaddon is a ruined city built by ancient giants that has become a haven for treasure-seeking adventurers and criminals. I'd love any feedback about the locations, factions, or details of the setting!
At the southern end of the Shadestone Mountains lie the ruins of Abaddon, the great capital of the giant empire. Destroyed in the ancient past in a war between the giants and their dragon enemies, the city now lies shattered and burned, full of monsters that have made their home in the ruins. For any raiders willing to brave the dangers of the fallen city, the treasure of the giants lies ripe for the taking...

Locations in Abaddon:
Break-town:
On the outskirts of Abaddon, a large settlement known as Break-town has sprung up, fashioned out of the enormous fallen buildings. Break-town is a lawless place, dominated by lawless adventurers and treasure hunters who search the crumbling city for gold and glory. Break-town has become a hub for criminal activity, filled with mercenaries, smugglers, and Voidborn sorcerers.

Lanternport:
The small city of Lanternport sits on an island just off of the southern tip of Abaddon’s peninsula, near the Firecliff Isles. The city is a haven for pirates, smugglers, and all manner of dishonorable seafarers. It gets its name from the enormous lighthouse that stands in the middle of the island, built by the giants in ancient times. The Jacks are headquartered here, far away from any government that might try to stop their web of smugglers.

Spires:
In the center of the city of Abaddon stand the tallest of its once-proud towers. The Spires are damn near impossible to reach, requiring days of dangerous travel through the outer ruins, but the great turrets that still stand have been largely untouched since the days of the giants. None know what treasures might hide inside them, or what dangers perch atop them.

The Burned Quarter:
Dragonfire razed Abaddon, and the Burned Quarter serves as a grim reminder of the fate of any fool brave enough to offend a dragon. The southeast corner of the city is a charred husk, made up of melted stone buildings and mountains of ash. It is a place that any scavengers would do well to avoid.

University District:
The giants were masters of science and magic, and the greatest of their scholars worked in what was once the University District. Any mage worth his spells would gladly give an arm and a leg to recover any lost information that survived the destruction of the city. Unfortunately, the district is also home to monsters that have been warped by Void as part of some twisted ancient experiment.

The Metalworks:
The smiths of Abbadon smelted steel of incredible strength and durability. Their weapons are too big for any but the strongest Fellborn to wield, but they crafted more than just weapons of war. Intricate machines, both magical and mundane, are scattered around their creator’s enormous workshops, and can be sold for a great deal of money to the right buyers. However, some of these machines are still active, and they don’t like intruders.

Tombs:
In the great mausoleums of ancient emperors that sit in the southwest section of the ruined city, the dead do not rest in peace. Undead giants patrol their crypts, and any raiders that dare to enter the Tombs might join the restless dead. There are even rumors in Break-town of a lich that is slowly building an army of undead. But adventurers aren’t the most cautious people, and some of those giant emperors were buried with enough treasure to fill the Void.

Firecliff Isles:
The Firecliff isles dot the Dorian Sea south of Abaddon. The islands are jagged, smoking hunks of obsidian and magma that constantly rumble with volcanic activity. New islands are constantly forming, and others are sinking back into the sea. These hellish rocks are the home of most of the dragons that still survive in Edom.

Factions in Abbadon:
The Kingbreakers
If you need something - or someone - broken, you need the Kingbreakers. They’re a mercenary company that doesn’t much care for the law, if they get paid enough. Their captain, Bromh the Hammer, isn’t the sharpest, but he knows how to kill you in a dozen different ways. They are based in Break-town, and regularly send parties into Abaddon to search for treasure -or to hone their skills by fighting the monsters that live in the city.

The Marauder Queens:
Like the Kingbreakers, the Marauder Queens are a morally-dubious group of sellswords. However, where the Kingbreakers use brute force, the Marauder Queens fight using skill and tactics. They set traps, perform heists, and are generally skilled at planning and executing complex attacks. The commander of the all-female faction, Beatrice, is obsessed with learning the secrets of the Spires in the heart of Abaddon. The Kingbreakers and the Marauders are rivals, as they often compete for the same jobs.

The Jacks:
The Jacks are the most infamous gang of smugglers and thieves in Edom. The centuries-old organization has members everywhere from Umbria to the Southern River Kingdoms. Their current leader, the legendary Skyborn thief Jihl, operates out of Lanternport. They can be recognized by their symbol, a stylized dagger set inside of a diamond. If you need something, the Jacks can get it for you - for a price, of course.

The Arcane Aces:
Some come to Abaddon in order to seek out lost secrets of magic and lore. Most of them join the Arcance Aces, a guild of adventurers that sends parties into Tombs, the Metalworks, and the University District in order to retrieve arcane relics. They are a fairly loose organization, but their de-facto head is Aaron of Ninevah, a skilled human wizard who seeks to find some device or spell that will allow him to use Void magic without the risk of magical corruption that comes with it. Many of the Aces are scholars that aren't cut out for the adventuring life, and the other factions consider them “soft”.

[ThePurple]

I'm about to run a campaign set in Abaddon, a location in my Fallen Sky campaign setting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?476392-Fallen-Sky-(Criticism-Appreciated)). Abaddon is a ruined city built by ancient giants that has become a haven for treasure-seeking adventurers and criminals. I'd love any feedback about the locations, factions, or details of the setting!

As soon as I read about Break-town and the well armed and violently disposed factions within it, my first thought was asking why they're coexisting for an extended period. I could understand the "current" state as a short term one that's just waiting for something to happen by happenstance and end up with total war, but that seems more like an adventure hook than a setting detail, especially since it seems like Break-town isn't just some boomtown that'll fade away in a year or so.

The solution that immediately came to mind was that there is some individual within Break-town with the personal and political clout to arbitrate and adjudicate conflicts and maintain a peace between the factions, like Tina Turner's character in Beyond Thunderdome. Considering how wild and dangerous the area around Break-town is, I have a hard time imagining there being multiple factions within it for an extended period without there being some moderating influence.

[VoxRationis]

Another thought I've had today -- regarding maps.

When setting out to map part or all of a world, how much attention do you pay to the forces -- natural geology, catastrophe, extraordinary events and forces, etc -- that shaped that world?

I routinely see maps that are, at least with natural geology, almost impossible.

Deserts and jungles on the wrong sides of mountain ranges given the likely prevailing winds.
Mountains where there are no other signs of the geological forces that lift them up.
Mountains that hug coastlines or form convenient state borders.
Rivers that appear to run in the wrong direction.
Incompatible climates adjacent to each other (tundra and tropical forest at the same latitude and altitude).
Etc.

I try very hard to keep on the right side of such principles. When I was studying ecology in college I made a handy flash card describing air currents and how they relate to latitude (Hadley cells and whatnot), which I use as a reference. It actually tends to cause problems for me, because I always end up putting my elves on the other side of a mountain range or two, raising problems of "Why the hell is your PC elf all the way over here?" Not insurmountable problems, but they still cause headaches from time to time.

[Miranda]

It's the common bicycle.

Nice idea! It would be cool to see a sci-fi or fantasy society where bicycles play a central role. There could be extensive rituals surrounding them, some of which would have clear practical benefits, but others that would be more symbolic.

[Roxxy]

Another thought I've had today -- regarding maps.

When setting out to map part or all of a world, how much attention do you pay to the forces -- natural geology, catastrophe, extraordinary events and forces, etc -- that shaped that world?

I routinely see maps that are, at least with natural geology, almost impossible.

Deserts and jungles on the wrong sides of mountain ranges given the likely prevailing winds.
Mountains where there are no other signs of the geological forces that lift them up.
Mountains that hug coastlines or form convenient state borders.
Rivers that appear to run in the wrong direction.
Incompatible climates adjacent to each other (tundra and tropical forest at the same latitude and altitude).
Etc.I do these two, but I have an excuse. The gods used to get up to all sorts of antics with each other, which directly effects the terrain of the world. Pulling up mountains or drawing rivers around a chunk of land was a reasonably common way of asserting ownership, and more than one mountain chain formed around a slain god. We also have fjords facing westwards at around 33 degrees latitude because one god chased another around with a hatchet and ended up whacking chunks out of the beach instead of hitting the offending individual.

Basically, any time my geography gets whacky, a god probably did something to make it that way. Good way of covering for any errors I make :P

Also, there's a tropical island chain where it's always hot and sunny because the Spirit of Sunshine murdered the other weather spirits, and the only reason all the water doesn't evaporate away is because the Spirit of Rain sacrificed herself in a magic ritual to make sure the islands stayed wet before the Spirit of Sunshine could catch and kill her.

Yes, this is the same setting with the space chariot track railroad that allows Dieselpunk space travel.

[Roxxy]

Nice idea! It would be cool to see a sci-fi or fantasy society where bicycles play a central role. There could be extensive rituals surrounding them, some of which would have clear practical benefits, but others that would be more symbolic.Yea, I love bicycles. They are a lot more useful than they get credit for.