Help with World-Building

[Serenity]

I have lately been toying with a wonderful little idea for a campaign setting, based off a few premises:

1) It is a well known fact that arcane and divine casters are far and away the most powerful casters in the game.
2) Psionics are generally considered a much better balanced casting system, effective at blasting, less utter Batman-type ownage, and perhaps slightly less prone to narcolepsy than your standard wizard.
3) Melee types are accepted to be weaker classes, particularly Fighters and Monks.
4) Tome of Battle provides versatile and effective combatants who can replace the weak versions to be found in the PHB, and is generally agreed to be one of the best balanced books in 3.5.
5) The fluff of Psionics and ToB mesh well--the concept of drawing power from within yourself and your own force of will, not tapping into an external force as arcane and divine casters do.

Thus, the idea has formed for me to create a setting in which arcane and divine magic do not exist, but the psionic and ToB classes stand side by side. Any class with non-psionic magical abilities is out, or has those abilities replaced with something else. Thus: Bards are out, wandering minstrels being represented by Experts. Rogues and Barbarians remain unchanged, while Rangers lose their spell progression, replaced by a druid's Animal Companion progression (I'm also tempted to work out a maneuver progression for them, involving, say, Tiger Claw and Stone Dragon). Fighters exist, but they now replace warrior as an NPC class, while PCs will take the Warblade. Paladins and Monks are replaced by Crusaders and Swordsages, respectively.

The Base Races:
Humans: Fluff and mechanics pretty much the same as ever
Elves: The nigh-immortal masters of the psionic arts, living in towering crystal spires hewn in ages long forgotten, though their long lifespans have led them to stagnation. (Naturally Psionic--2 innate PP, Favored Class: Psychic Warrior)
Halflings: No change in mechanics, though they are now explicitly fluffed as a gypsy race, growing up in wandering communal clans, and worshiping the innumerable stars--in effect, each halfling has his own personal 'god'.
Dromites: Insectoid traders hailing from sprawling underground hives carved along the ley lines of the world. There, they mine for crystals with natural psychic resonance, essential in crafting psionic items. (Lose their energy ray ability, LA reduced to 0)
Elans: Often dismissed as 'elf-poseurs', these self made immortals organize themselves into secretive cabals, each with their own unique goals. (Otherwise just as detailed in EPH).

I'll also probably use Changelings and Warforged with some fluff alterations to the latter.

All of this in a world that could be best described as 'Crystalpunk'--psionics harnessed in similar ways to how Eberron harnesses magic. I'll probably copy the lightning rail wholesale.

The major obstacle in my way is now to actually build the world, placing the various countries. The concept definitely has an element of the 'points of light' behind it: great cities of crystal psitech, populated by the rich and scheming merchant consortiums, as well as a number of slums, outlying villages, little cared for by the elite, and outside those bastions, dark wilderness where vicious beasts and savage cultures dwell. There needs to be room for a powerful Goblinoid empire led by Roman-styled hobgoblins (with perhaps a dash of Persian god-kings to them), sunless primeval forests, where dwell the drow, who believe their elven brethren are being kept in thrall by their elders, and practice self-mutilation to steel their minds. I also do have one idea for a country, a desert land led by a Celestial Rahjah believed to be descended from the twin deities of the Sun and the Moon.

What ideas can the brilliant people here offer me?

[boomwolf]

Tome of Battle IS very balanced, if you campare things in there to other things in there. but the book is on another power level then CAd, CS, and CW. (CA and CD are better jest cus they are casters.)

Facing facts, the problem from the first place is the casting system that allows virtually anything and can be countered only by other magic-or some very, very effective ranged attacks. so I see your reasoning for taking these guys out.

But putting in ToB, looks like a bad idea.
In a realm without arcane and divine magic the guys in CW can be very, very
effective. and also the guys of CAd.

Also-I don't think bards, paladins and rangers will prove to be a problem. magical hacks begins in higher levels then paladins and rangers can reach, and the bard has no real aggressive spells, only support ones, so he remains useless on his own, but good choice for a leader.

Problems you might want to take care of:

-No divine means no revive. I'm pretty sure there is no psi revive. if you have arcane at least you would have "clone" left. maybe you can add a technological method of revival, but that involves some high-tech, and hightech+psi=bad SeFi movie.

-No arcene means a lot of fair builds are gone missing, you might want to transmute some arcane PrC's to psi (Mindbender has a built-in psi conversion suggestion.) as many fit right into a psi world in flavor.

-Dragons have natural arcane magic, where did it go? and if you keep dragons-why not sorcerers and the sorcerer-only PrCs? a sorcerer is not as troublesome as a wizard, and you can use the "battle sorcerer" variant to make him less problematic, and more stylish.
Actually-if you keep dragons you can keep almost the entire "races of the dragon" book unchanged.

-The psi classes are very similar, if you ditch other casters you might want to made a few modifications to psi classes to make them more separate from each other.

[Serenity]

*The Cure X Wounds and Heal spells get added to the Egoist power list--or rather, given the nature of psionic powers, a 'cure' power gets added, that, depending on the number of PP used to augment it, can act as CLW, CMW, etc. There's a psionic power called Revivify which brings someone back shortly after death. Beyond that, the only way to cheat death is Reality Revision. No more wondering why the kingdom doesn't just ressurect the assassinated monarch.

*Chromatic and Metallic dragons are out, Crystal dragons are in. Since they're all some variation of neutral, this adds a certain element of uncertainty to dealing with dragons. I do recognize the need to convert a lot of spell-like ability lists to psi-like equivalents, but I'm saving that for last.

*It's been stated before that the ToB classes are roughly on par with the Psionic classes, and the fluff fits very well together. I've not read Complete Warrior, but I do not like the Complete Adventurer classes. The point of this world is a Psionics heavy one without magic. I'd very much like to alter a number of suitable arcane PrCs to based off psionics, but as with altering the monsters, finishing the creation of the world itself is my priority.

[batsofchaos]

Well, from what I can see you've got a pretty strong core idea built up (one that I like, by the way), so you don't really need help fleshing out the fluff. At this point, it's time to start making descisions based on geography, instead of theme. Obviously there needs to be a not-too-humble chunk of land for the Dromites to make sense; vast underground catacombs + islands doesn't really work. Additionally, we know that there needs to be at least one large desert, and at least two more habitable locations with a natural barrier between them (whether that's mountains, a nest of dragons, psionic "dead zones" or just great heaps of distance is up to you) for the main Psitech kingdom and the Goblin Roman/Persian Empire.

Other questions to ask are:

Is there more than one Psitech city-state? Are they clustered together or far apart? Are they allies or enemies?

What percentage of the world is civilized vs. wild? Are there just a few localized areas of civilization surrounded by wilderness for miles, or is there a lot of "mostly civilized" stretches? If someone were to leave a chrystalline city, how long before they are completely out of all forms of civilization?

What is the political climate like? One of wars? Uneasy peace? Are former enemies coming together to face a bigger threat?

[Squash Monster]

For reference, full manifesters are still more powerful than martial adepts. However, as far as tiers of power go, that's probably the smallest gap there is. So it should be a lot more workable than the standard setting, balance-wise.

I like the setting's basic ideas quite a bit.

As for geography, you should decide if you want to go for realism or complete fantasy. Entire worlds composed of floating islands are not used nearly often enough, for example.

On the other hand, if you want to get into realism the best way to handle it is to start with mountain ranges, then do coastlines, then add rivers, then find naturally dominant locations for trading and put your major cities there.

You could also get into details like what kind of grain the people eat and what percentage are farmers, if you want to make the thing feel very real. I recommend a corn-based society with some form of psionic purification rite performed to stop it from blighting all over the place, as that can justify as little as half of the population being farmers.

[Serenity]

My immediate thought is that there's quite a lot of wilderness, but that a number of the greater cities are, if not really clustered, closely connected by lightning rail and such, so the elite don't really have to leave their safe, civilized bubbles, while the outlying villages and smaller towns are more exposed to the wilderness, and have less access to psitech. I imagine some of the elven cities might be fairly remote, but probably the majority of them have probably been incorporated into human kingdoms.

I'm not sure of the political climate. I'm already borrowing heavily from Eberron, so I probably want to avoid 'uneasy peace after brutal wars'...

[batsofchaos]

I like the dissaffected upper-class/downtrodden lower-class angle. I especially like the contrasting image of the rich shuttling across vast stretches like nothing, with the poor braving dangerous stretches to make it to the same place. It's like a Wilderness-based Gotham.

A class-struggle political climate is what immediately comes to mind for me. There's no unrest from the forces without, but things could crumble from within.

[Serenity]

There's something of a Shadowrun element to it in that way, I guess. So some scheming merchant consortiums jockeying for prestige and power would fit right in. The various Elan secret societies make for inherent plot hooks. Some are devoted to various psychic ideals (read PrCs--the Unbodied comes to mind), but surely there's one that holds total control of the world as its goal.

So far, then, we've outlined a few primary sections: the desert lands, the Goblin Empire, and a close-knit section of human and elven cities. The Dromites live underground, probably trading with all sides. Halflings travel everywhere, so in addition to the many Rogues they produce, they're also probably prime candidates for Rangers, since they're so often in the wilderness. Mind Flayers are doubtlessly out there too, since what psionic campaign would be complete without them? I'll keep their usual fluff of being from the future. Orcs live everywhere, innumerable scattered tribes ekeing out an existence in the harshest areas of the world. Still doesn't quite give me the geography...

[jagadaishio]

I'm thinking a massive central desert with a northern and eastern mountain range, the desert blending into salty, blasted cliffs on the western and southern coast. A few large and a large amount of small islands would sit south of the main continent. The islands would be something of jungle paradises, kept by the rich and powerful as private, personal resorts. They would, of course, be connected by a network of lightning rails.

The majority of people would live in the greener places between the mountains and the deserts, farming or living in psitech cities encircling the desert. The cities themselves would have a very narrow footprint, instead being impossibly tall, metal, brick, and glass towers, capped by glowing crystals which, through some unique psionic resonance, keep these towers upright and balanced, partially defying gravity.

The elves would have a few monastery/palace cities scattered throughout the western mountain range, hewn entirely from living, carefully shaped crystal. They would all be protected by both height and massive walls, but once behind the walls would be full of verdant green terraces and low, sprawling buildings in a style akin to those of ancient china. Libraries consisting of nothing other than crystal orbs full of psionically accessible information would drift lazily in what they consider to be libraries.

The dromites would have cities that never sleep and never end, deep below the earth. There are massive subterranean fissures crisscrossing the desert, rich with psionic crystal, but narrow enough that, with buildings on either side of the fissures, there is only enough width for a single street. This leads to cities dozens of miles long, impossibly dense, and lined with infinitely urban buildings, shining brightly into the eternal night with crystals like neon. For those of you that have been to the more compact parts of Tokyo or to Times Square at midnight, you have an idea of what it would be like.

The cities are built in the empty spaces where they have extracted the crystal to be used or exported. The dromite cities are constantly slowly expanding as they mine more and more of the crystal away in both directions along the underground psionic leylines, and show no sign of stopping. Many of the grander above-ground cities are built at the intersection of leylines, where massive honeycomb-like caverns lie, forged on healthy trading with the dromite metropolises below.

Elans would tend towards the blasted cliffs, carving small compound into the hard rock. There they would specially grow crystals which, thought not even CLOSE to as numerous as the crystal mines of the dromites or the living cities of the elves, hold a unique degree of power, and serve as the primary component in crystal capacitors, a relatively new item revolutionizing psitech devices as a more highly compact power source than they had previously. This makes elans odd, somewhat feared, but tolerable for their amazing and rare crystals.

Mind Flayers have their own cities in leylines even deeper beneath the earth than the dromites, but sometimes the dromites dig too deep. And then another mind war begins. And there's a worldwide recession as the dromite's mines slow down and their product is redirected away from export. But after the Illithids are driven back or exterminated, there is a new upswing in the markets, as a new and deep pocket of crystal is unearthed by the dromite confederacy. Illithids also sometimes break up into human lands to steal a few for their farms. After all, good cattle needs genetic variance and sometimes you need to replace a flock after a particularly bad blight.

Is that the kind of stuff that you were looking for?

[Vadin]

I read whats written so far, and it just keeps screaming 'Wild West' to me. Many fairly large trading hubs connected by rail and population flow to a few large, protected cities.

Beyond those trading centers are innumerable small villages composed of the downtrodden races and the best and worst of what the 'greater' races (humans and the most populous peoples) have to offer.

Back in the cities, the people pretend like everything out in the Wilds (which really aren't all that wild) is just fine, they imagine it as some fairy-tale land of rough and tumble beamgun-wielding vigilantes fighting malicious dragons in terrible showdowns that last fractions of a second.

Where are the parallels: in the middle of nowhere, these little villages that maintain the lightning rails and trade with the ever secretive Dromite Hive Prime agents exist independent of their respective rulers. In the Old West, the only law was the fastest gun. The rarer races are treated at best as grudgingly welcome guests, and at worst as little better than farm animals. In the Old West, these 'rarer races' would be Native Americans, Chinese, and Blacks. In the Wilds, these are orcs, half-elves, half-orcs, and halflings.

Thoughts?

[jagadaishio]

I read whats written so far, and it just keeps screaming 'Wild West' to me. Many fairly large trading hubs connected by rail and population flow to a few large, protected cities.

Beyond those trading centers are innumerable small villages composed of the downtrodden races and the best and worst of what the 'greater' races (humans and the most populous peoples) have to offer.

Back in the cities, the people pretend like everything out in the Wilds (which really aren't all that wild) is just fine, they imagine it as some fairy-tale land of rough and tumble beamgun-wielding vigilantes fighting malicious dragons in terrible showdowns that last fractions of a second.

Where are the parallels: in the middle of nowhere, these little villages that maintain the lightning rails and trade with the ever secretive Dromite Hive Prime agents exist independent of their respective rulers. In the Old West, the only law was the fastest gun. The rarer races are treated at best as grudgingly welcome guests, and at worst as little better than farm animals. In the Old West, these 'rarer races' would be Native Americans, Chinese, and Blacks. In the Wilds, these are orcs, half-elves, half-orcs, and halflings.

Thoughts?

Yours could exist in many ways in parallel with my idea, save for the dromites being the driving economic force in the world. They would have a ridiculous amount of resource in the form of the underground crystals, likely far more than they would have a use for. Ergo, export becomes a norm, and a means of having power in the occasionally visited world above.

[Serenity]

This is exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for! Have I told you lately how awesome you guys are?

[jagadaishio]

This is exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for! Have I told you lately how awesome you guys are?

I've been hoping for a good world building project ever since the Cataclysm of Green slowed down, and I have a particular soft spot in my heart for psionics. Anyway, what specifically do you like or dislike about our ideas? We should make sure that ideas get critiqued rather than just lauded or languished. This has the potential to be a seriously cool campaign setting if we all get some input on it.

[Serenity]

The description of the elven cities is pretty much exactly what I envisioned, and the addition of putting them in the mountains makes for a nice contrast to the drow, who reject everything about their brethren's society--from the mountains to the lowlands, from crystalline splendor to the dark and primitive forests. The skyscraping nature of psitech cities in general is also wonderful.

I was actually planning for the elans to live primarily in the cities, since they are a 'made' race--human cabals questing for psionic mastery. The idea that they are revolutionizing ways to attune crystals works well...and some of the societies probably do maintain monasteries or lodges in inhospitable areas.

The idea of many city dwellers romanticizing life in the outlying villages in a similar manner to the Wild West provides a nice character hook for the players--restless city dwellers who decide to live out the fantasies, or a 'remittance man'.

I think one thing that the resonant crystals should do is be able to effectively simulate the manifestation of a power for the purposes of crafting items, effectively converting that requirement to the extra gold needed to acquire the crystal--thus allowing mastercrafters who aren't also psions of incalculable power.

I wasn't particularly planning on using half-elves, but I suppose there's really no reason for me to drop Half-Orcs. Need someone to be the Barbarian archetype! They're probably pretty rare in the grand scheme of things, doubly so ones raised outside of orc tribes.

A few ideas on the organization of the Goblin Dominions: the regular greenskins are of course the most numerous, the vicious, cheating foot soldiers of the empire. Any Goblin who displays psionic talent is taken by the hobgoblins for indoctrination. Once they have been sufficiently brainwashed, these Blues are sent to goblin villages, often not the ones they hailed from, to serve as shamans and advisors, and thereby maintain the hobgoblins hold. The Hobbos themselves maintain Fleshwarping Labs, where prisoners are subjected to experimental surgical and psionic techniques to mold them into powerful shock troops--most noteably the bugbears, but probably a few other monstrous races as well.

[jagadaishio]

I wasn't particularly planning on using half-elves, but I suppose there's really no reason for me to drop Half-Orcs. Need someone to be the Barbarian archetype! They're probably pretty rare in the grand scheme of things, doubly so ones raised outside of orc tribes.

A few ideas on the organization of the Goblin Dominions: the regular greenskins are of course the most numerous, the vicious, cheating foot soldiers of the empire. Any Goblin who displays psionic talent is taken by the hobgoblins for indoctrination. Once they have been sufficiently brainwashed, these Blues are sent to goblin villages, often not the ones they hailed from, to serve as shamans and advisors, and thereby maintain the hobgoblins hold. The Hobbos themselves maintain Fleshwarping Labs, where prisoners are subjected to experimental surgical and psionic techniques to mold them into powerful shock troops--most noteably the bugbears, but probably a few other monstrous races as well.

I was thinking that it might be interesting if the orc 'barbarians' were actually a race that's herbivorous by nature, territorial but otherwise only violent when provoked. As for the goblinoids, I like the idea. The hobbos are something of the elite echelon, serving at once as the monarchs, philosophers, and scientists, using the goblins and blues as pawns and bishops, respectively. I also very much enjoy the idea that bugbears and certain other goblinoids are not natural creations, but instead hobbo experiments that have been warped and twisted into something else.

[Serenity]

I was thinking of them in a vaguely similar manner to 40K's orks--everywhere, impossible to get rid of, but spending just as much time bickering and fighting with each other as anyone else. Maybe have a would-be Genghis Khan trying to unite the disparate tribes to overrun the world.

[Vadin]

Oh man! I just had an idea about the orcs. Think Native Americans. Compared to the actual brutality of the Eternal Empire (or whatever the hobbo empire is named) and its shock troops, they aren't really all that violent.

They do, however, fight amongst themselves. They usually take prisoners, however, a fact that many outsiders choose to ignore. They fight brutally, but rarely to kill. Their weapons would deal mostly nonlethal damage. The enemy will reach 0 hp, but they won't drop any lower. The weapons would still have to have an option for lethal damage, though.

The orcs would eat meat, certainly, but they aren't the flesh-eating monsters that city-dwellers and ignorant people in the Wilds imagine them to be. The few who actually take the time to learn the Orc's language would find them to be a society that values honor above all else and abhors needless violence that results in permanent death. For example, murder is terrible. Slaying an enemy in battle is regrettable, but not something to brood over. Killing your opponent in an honor duel with someone standing nearby to resurrect the loser is perfectly acceptable.

Also, their psionic items would work fundamentally differently from 'civilized' items. Whereas the civilized items tend to have power point reserves and per day uses, orc items would almost exclusively be at-will items or stat enhancement items. They add items to enhance their overall power, not give themselves a few one-shot abilities they can only use every now and then.

Also, maybe a Sitting Bull style person who's trying to convince all the disparate orc tribes that either the Hobgoblins or the Humans or the Dromites are a threat and need to be stopped before they do something or other thats fairly terrible (like shunting all of the orcs to some other plane or just exterminating them).

On the Dromite thing, I was envisioning a few different Dromite Hives, each one specializing in a different area and producing different kinds of crystals. Most of the Hives would be near population centers, certainly, but there would be a few smaller Hives out in the Wilds. Out in the middle of nowhere, these Hives produce unique crystals, crystals unlike the more common varieties sold in the cities. From these crystals the orc items draw much of their power, a power that civilized folk are only now realizing has rather interesting potentials.

I'm getting the feeling that with all of these crystals and such getting thrown around, the way psionic items are created might need to be redone so as to allow for both more standardization and more customization.

[jagadaishio]

I'm liking hobbos being portrayed as an advanced evil empire, and the orcs being more of an honor-bound nature-worshiping (though still having psionic shamans, peyote and everything to 'expand the mind') people. I still like the idea, though, of dromite 'hives' being less centralized clusters and more long, drawn-out strings underground built along corridors that are natural fissures with some honeycombing branching out into the rock walls. I just like the idea of the domite crystals being natural once found in these fissures. It would be the elves and the elans which grow crystals, humans and orcs that import them, and dromites that mine them.

[batsofchaos]

On the subject of geography, an important question to ask is about scale.

How much of the full geography of the world are we talking about right now? 100%? 50? Less? While we certainly don't need to flesh any of it out (at least for now), it'll be a good idea to determine how much of the world we're talking about to get a good foothold on the overall appearance of the world.

Of what's detailed so far, we've got a modestly sized continent of stuff, maybe an Australia-sized chunk. If the planet is roughly Earth-sized, that's a lot of extra room to fill up. It could conceivably be entirely water aside from what's figured out, but that's kind of boring (or leads to fantastical underwater kingdoms, psionically shielded from the water/populated by water-breathing species). Conversely, the fleshed-out region could be a drop in the bucket compared to the explorable areas of this campaign setting. How big the rest of the world is, and how close it is to the planned section, doesn't need to be defined very thoroughly right now, but is an important thing to determine when trying to flesh out exact geography.

[jagadaishio]

Given the mountain ranged to the north and the east (did everyone agree on those?) I think that it would imply that this Australia-sized chunk is just the southwest portion of a larger, possibly Pangaea-style megacontinent. If that's the case, 'beyond the mountains' may be an unexplored land of things which are very different from the humanoids of mountain-sheltered regions. Vast forests of shining crystals which resemble trees. Beings existing purely telepathically, displayed as a mass consensual hallucination. All sorts of crazy cool epic stuff.

[batsofchaos]

I tend to avoid super-continents when I design worlds, but most of it is a matter of taste, not an inherent superiority of other models. There are some advantages, most notably it allows for PCs to hail from different lands that are far removed from the current focus, which is great for Roleplay opportunities for that specific character. The main reason I don't like it is that it can choke off the availability of "mysterious lands far away."

I'm also not terribly fond of the rest of the lands being an "epic-level playground," especially when the civilized section that we're talking about is not particularly expansive. There's a wealth of campaigns available in what has currently been decided on, but if a DM wanted to do something far and away removed from the main action focus, they're gonna need to come up with a different setting.

For example, my campaign world has eleven countries spread across seven continents (one is actually a floating country not on a landmass), no continent much bigger than Australia. There's an assortment of cultures and races spread across the world (which is mostly water), each with its own political climate. While the focus is on three countries in particular, there's the opportunity for players to come from any of them and there's the possibility of future campaigns focusing on other regions.

I'm just of the opinion that what's been decided on is small-fries for a whole campaign world, and that the option for other locales with different customs should at least be left open for the moment.

[jagadaishio]

When I said epic, I didn't necessarily mean epic level. I mean a place far more alien than that already unusual part of the world that the humanoids would be from. It would be strange, mysterious, and exciting in much the same way that Asia was to European explorers in the 18th and 19th century. A land of marvel, exotic beauty, and alien strangeness. It would be about as accessible as a distant island would otherwise be.

The coastal cliffs could inhibit any form of sea travel, meaning that weeks of caravaning through massive mountains dotted with monasteries and villages would be required in order to reach this land separated not by distance but by harsh terrain. It just seems like a less common method of isolation than "it's across the sea." I have a hard time thinking of any campaign setting that has oceans and doesn't opt to use them as the mechanism of isolation rather than, well, anything else.

[Vadin]

Hmmm...rather than Australia as the model for the campaign landmass, maybe North America? It's large and has pretty much every biome (I think every one except the ever-debatable cloud-top rainforest (which was discussed in CoG)) and a large enough area to make semi-isolationism likely.

Also, it could put the Hobbo empire all along the south and into the mysterious 'evil' southern landmass. The monsters there would be more vicious, the diseases harsher, and the locals wilder. Everything would be more intense in the Southern Regions.

The big human cities would be along the east coast and some of the northwest, their lightning rails following parallel to many of the major rivers.

The Wilds would be the southwest, the orcs would roam in the sparsely settled inlands.

The elves would have scattered enclaves all across the landmass in the more forested areas.

That leaves the Dromites the underground and (maybe?) parts of the central mountains.

Where is left that people currently inhabit? The north. There would definitely be some orcs up north, too, but who or what takes refuge in the frozen north? Is there an answer? Is it a mystery? Do people go in and fail to come out? Is it a new race that is more or less anti-psionic, whether by choice or biology? Are they evil? Or simply different? Is the north instead a barren wasteland filled with giant monsters? What, I ask my fellow playgrounders, is up there?

[batsofchaos]

Oceans as a method of isolation is a common motif, mainly because it strikes so close to home for people. Oceans really are a barrier that can separate people drastically. Even now they offer a great gulf of separation between people that's palpable. I live in Denver, and right now I could hop in my car and drive to any other spot in the United States in a matter of days. Except Hawaii. That's a mind-game, really, since I could take a plan and be to any place including Hawaii in a matter of hours. Still, it's a palpable perception.

It's also a classic archetype in epic-storytelling. For example, the entire story of The Odyssey takes place in the Mediterranean Sea, and that story spans twenty years.

I don't agree that oceans are necessarily relegated to land-separators in other campaigns. Water-heavy campaign worlds can and do use travel-distance as a separator, but it can also serve as a setting itself. Pirate campaigns, navel campaigns, and underwater campaigns all immediately jump to mind as possible scenarios that use the water as the VIP, and not just to make getting from point A to point B difficult.

[Serenity]

Hmm...well, it seems like we're coming up with a sort of Greek model for the human lands--a group of loosely affiliated city-states, though presumably more closely connected to each other than the Greek versions. If we're looking to expand beyond the single small continent we've described so far...perhaps humans arrived here from a land across the sea that has grown into a massive, overcrowded urban jungle?

[Serenity]

You guys still helping me on this one?

[batsofchaos]

Lotta people go offline over the weekend.

I'm still here for what it's worth. Not the best cartographer (the wifey helps me there on my projects. :D) so I can't really help there.

One thought, what sort of scale do we want to have for this project altogether? My take based on your first post was that this was a personal campaign that you wanted a little help on, but it's starting to take on the dimensions of a communal project, like Cataclysm of Green or Tears of Blood. Is that where you want it to go? If so, how far should we take it?

Do we want to develop the crunch for altered classes, if any? Should we come up with some Psionic monsters specific to the setting?

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

[Vadin]

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

Seconded, willing to help develop ideas regardless of project size.

[Serenity]

It did indeed start as a personal thing...I wasn't planning on developing much more than a single continent for the PCs to adventure on, maybe get some ideas for what lay over the ocean so I could answer questions. But the more I hear yu guys come up with, the more I want to fully flesh this out. Besides, even if we confine ourself to the defined area, there's plenty that needs extensive work. Monsters must be given psi-like abilities to replace their spell-likes. Outsiders will need the most work here, since psionic characters will still be plane hopping plenty. Similarly, we need to consider the origins of constructs and undead in a psionics only world. Golems need powers as construction requirements, rather than spells, and while undead can simply arise spontaneously, do psionics have any way of controlling them? If not, we need to either create one, or eliminate the archetype of undead as the ravenous minions of the Dark Lord. Some magical PrCs should be adapted to use psionics--the Jade Phoenix Mage, for example. We need to create some unique psionic items for the setting. Crystalline laser guns are a must, for example, preferably ones whose damage can be augmented by spending PP. Perhaps CrystalCallers are the hot new item on the market, allowing easy contact with people miles and miles away.

In short, with all the work that needs to be done, a community project seems in order.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I would love to help. I'll get a rough map up later. How rugged should the coast be? At the moment, I believe the consensus is an Australia-sized peninsula, cut off from the comparatively bizarre mainland by high mountains. I would say around as high and impassable as the Alps? Or quite possibly the Atlas Mountains...

One idea for structure of dromite cities that gives me awesome-gasms just arrived in the little grey cells.

The first thing I do when making a world is look on its history. Who were the firsts? In this case, the dromites make a prime choice for progenitor of civilization, themselves probably taught by the mindflayers deep underground. In this case, civilization came from bottom up.
Bah, I need to go. I'll finish this thought later.

[Vadin]

The first thing I do when making a world is look on its history. Who were the firsts? In this case, the dromites make a prime choice for progenitor of civilization, themselves probably taught by the mindflayers deep underground. In this case, civilization came from bottom up.

That is an absolutely amazing idea. Where did civilization originally come from? Plane-hopping illithids looking for slaves. They find these semi-sentient dromites with a penchant for psionics, muddle around a little, and add in an ability to detect psionic energy. A few generations of labor, some racial psionics brought to bear by constant exposure to minds of unimaginable power and crystals with immense energies, and whammo! The dromites are all able to communicate purely by thought, and they have a limited form of empathy always active. The Prime Hive is born. In one coordinated swoop, the illithids are overthrown by hundreds of thousands of psionic warriors with astounding tactics.

Below the earth they are kept (as was stated before), and below the earth they will stay. The mindflayers are powerful foes to be sure, but their extensive and ancient knowledge has proven indespensible on several occasions. They are very, very dangerous. But are they servant or master? As the old illithid saying goes, "Bring me my meat and bring me my wine and I'll proclaim your rule 'til the end of time."

Within a few hundred years of the founding of the Prime Hive, the other races (the hes'ka, lesser minds in archaic dromite) began to unite. No longer were humans merely small groups of hairless apes. They formed themselves into large groups of hairless apes. To the dromites, hardly any change was noticed. They fought just as unpredictably and smelled just as bad.

The elves ceased their roving. Their small bands settled down into the treetops and became sedentary folk. The power of the elves interested the Hive. Alone, an elf was merely a formidable opponent. Together, however, the elven tribes far surpassed the dromites in power. The Hive, realizing this, sought out negotiations with certain groups of elves so as to play them against each other. Never would they unite while they each pandered for the favor of the seemingly indomitable Hive. In time, the Hive knew, they would move on and become engaged in their own affairs. By setting them on this course, however, it wasn't likely that these affairs would become violent. The Hive suspected they would be petty power struggles and nothing more. How wrong they were.

A small number of elves saw through the dromite plan. They misconstrued their intentions, though, and thought the Hive was out to brainwash all of elvenkind. These elves shunned their birthright and fled to the forest floors. They swore never to use psionic power they hadn't earned. Through harsh training, they steeled themselves against psionic assault and sharpened their minds and bodies into deadly weapons. From their paranoid preperations, the 'dark' elves, as they came to be known, crafted the Way of the Blade, a fighting style so deadly that, individually, no single man was able to slay a dark elf warrior for centuries. It wasn't until a roving halfling watched the dark elves' ways from afar and learned the Way of the Blade himself that their warriors could be stopped.

The halflings have always been a sneaky bunch. They have much in common with the dromites, watching from afar, listening, observing. But where the dromites are cold and calculating, the halflings are social and curious. The migratory halflings move from place to place in small bands, taking a little bit of every town with them when they move on. In this way the halflings have compiled innumerable secrets. For a price, anyone can buy a secret. The halflings have them all. All the secrets, not merely those they hear themselves. They read the stars and know what is, what was, and what will be. The stars are their gods, and their gods are just as social as the halflings themselves.


I got through dromites and just couldn't stop. Thoughts?

[Vadin]

[EDIT] douplepost...deleted!

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Alright, going back to my original idea, (love the rebellion though), the more humanoid races were taught by the dromites, who were taught by the mindflayers, who were taught by some Elder Thing. Or something. Anyways, the humans (not just humans, but I'm just saying humans for the sake of it) built on top of the sites of underground dromite cities.

What I'm imagining is, out psionic skyscrapers, and below them, pillars of a sort of beeswax hive, mirroring the skyscrapers.

[KingGolem]

Given the mountain ranged to the north and the east (did everyone agree on those?) I think that it would imply that this Australia-sized chunk is just the southwest portion of a larger, possibly Pangaea-style megacontinent. If that's the case, 'beyond the mountains' may be an unexplored land of things which are very different from the humanoids of mountain-sheltered regions. Vast forests of shining crystals which resemble trees. Beings existing purely telepathically, displayed as a mass consensual hallucination. All sorts of crazy cool epic stuff.

This particular post inspired a thought just as I was reading the last part about mass consensual hallucination. The thought of the myconids crossed my mind, since I recall that they engage in a communal mind melding hallucination for eight hours of their day. I envisioned the myconids being native to a large island, or perhaps one of these "lands across the sea," where the ecosystem consists mainly of fungal organisms in a symbiotic relationship with living psionic crystals, in such a way that the crystals were present in the cellular structures of these organisms.

I thought that the psionics blended in quite well with this initial concept, because it would explain how exactly the myconids are sapient fungal organisms who are capable of sharing a communal mind-link, how they communicate using spores (these spores contain tiny psionic crystals encoded with information), how they used spores to pacify and induce hallucinations (the psionic crystals in the spores contain a "psionic static" that interferes with the normal process of the mind), and how they re-animate corpses (the fungal spores infect the corpse's nervous system, which was jumpstarted by the psionic energy contained within crystal-infused spores).

Furthermore, I thought that the myconids could posess some ability to use psionic powers that interact with the psionic crystals that suffuse the cellular structures of the fungal "plants," and gain some limited control over them. What this would entail, exactly, I am still uncertain of. I am not intimately familiar with the psionics system, but I believe that their abilities should have some basis in a few of the druid spells that deal with plants, such as entangle, wall of thorns, and control plants, just to name a few that come to mind.

To think of what this ecosystem would look like, I imagined that it would resemble Zangarmarsh (from World of Warcraft, the Burning Crusade expansion pack), but with significantly less blue.

[Serenity]

Excellent stuff! Of course, the dromites probably don't let anyone outside the Hives know any of the truth of this history. They allow the elves to believe that they were the first creatures to walk the world, though the dromite mastery of crystals points to their true age. The dark elves, insular and xenophobic as they are, have long forgotten that it was the dromites whose power they fled from, instead believing in a conspiracy of the elven elders. Thus, the drow bear a twisted love of the elves, seeking to convert them all to the drow Truth. Psionic classes, however, are to be destroyed, as are non-drow who dare to practice the sacred path of the Shadow Hand, stolen from them by the outsider Reshar thanks to a traitor who betrayed the race and fled to the outside world.

The Warforged were the creations of the dromites, initially, and to this day many a dromite keeps a Warforged bodyguard at his side. They sold the secret of constructing the golem-men to a human merchant House in centuries past, however, and that family now largely controls production--but only by the dromites' sufferance. This is one of their favored tactics, manipulating and controlling surface affairs through a web of favors and granted monopolies. The influence of the illithid at work, perhaps? Of course, since what they have is telepathic communication, rather than mind-reading or a true hive mind, many young dromites may not know the extent to which their elders plot.

Changelings, of course, are wild cards, feared and little trusted, though they get on well with halflings, with whom they share an outcast's kinship, and a keen eye and ear for what others do not wish known.

[jagadaishio]

First, I love the idea of fungus/crystal creatures.

Second, on the topic of outsiders, I have always been particularly partial to the concept of the god-mind, beings which developed such unbelievable mental power that they simply transcended their own bodies. They would exist as beings of pure mental thoughts, and would grant powers to classes such as Divine Minds.

For the undead connection, undead could be beings reanimated through psionic forces rather easily. A spark of power to fuel their bodies in a way similar to but far cruder than that of the elans and the rebinding of various parts of their minds to their bodies. Zombies would have some of their unconscious rebound, enough to follow orders, but nothing else. Liches, on the other hand, would be far more complex and would have their whole minds rebound.

This creates on problem, though. Some undead should be tweaked into non-magical versions of themselves. Vampires should probably be some sort of psychic vampires, some of their normal weaknesses being replaced by the inability to leave a certain proximity of intelligent minds, effectively confining them to cities. Liches, animated through their own power points, would have defenses directly proportional to how many power points they have left in their reserve. Zombies would not only be susceptible to telepathic attacks, they would be so easily destroyed by them that telepaths would be the psychic necromancer's bane, considering how volatile the bonds holding that chunk of their minds to their bodies would be.

Where did the art of the creations of elans arise from? It looks like only humans can become elans, so it stands to reason that either the art is known among humans, a single visionary thought it up and keeps it secret (still alive in an elan enclave somewhere), or that something else taught the art to one of its followers. This something else could be a god mind, the illithids, or even one of the elder dark things that preceded even the god minds.

[batsofchaos]

I don't think undead would need to be tweaked too terribly. There would need to be some slight mechanics changes, since Turn/Rebuke Undead would no longer be available, as well as rules for psionically animating undead. However, I don't see a problem with switching out spell-based Supernatural abilities and qualities for Psionic-based ones, and give them PP based on HD. Same thing with Liches, give them Psi-like abilities instead of spell-like, and make it something Psions and Wilders can become.

There are already rules for psionic undead, and they are immune to mind-effecting powers.

[thevorpalbunny]

Love this idea.

Where do the gith fit in? By ToB, the githyanki invented at least one style, and they have the historical association with the mind flayers.

Personally, I'd have them be the progenitors of Iron Heart. The hobgoblins don't seem to fit the style in this setting. Diamond Mind is probably a dromite creation, White Raven an attempt by others to mimic the dromite's tactics. Shadow Hand comes from the drow as mentioned earlier, Tiger Claw from the noble-savage half-orcs. Stone Dragon is clearly a dwarven creation. Speaking of dwarves, they don't seem to have much of a place in this world. Do they exist?

Also, the elven society, complete with light/dark dichotomy, seems to resemble the protoss from starcraft. You might want to take inspiration from this or, if you'd rather not, take steps to distance them.

[Vadin]

Where do the gith fit in? By ToB, the githyanki invented at least one style, and they have the historical association with the mind flayers.

Personally, I'd have them be the progenitors of Iron Heart. The hobgoblins don't seem to fit the style in this setting. Diamond Mind is probably a dromite creation, White Raven an attempt by others to mimic the dromite's tactics. Shadow Hand comes from the drow as mentioned earlier, Tiger Claw from the noble-savage half-orcs. Stone Dragon is clearly a dwarven creation. Speaking of dwarves, they don't seem to have much of a place in this world. Do they exist?

Also, the elven society, complete with light/dark dichotomy, seems to resemble the protoss from starcraft. You might want to take inspiration from this or, if you'd rather not, take steps to distance them.

Good question. Community, are the gith a prescence here, or are the midflayers a sufficient deterrent? Is that another reason the illithids are kept?

On the styles thing, maneuvers are a dark elven creation, expanded upon by their later scholars and by halfling and human practitioners. The individual styles are like schools of magic: they differentiate between powers, sure, but at the end of the day, its all still just magic.

And, I hate to say it (not really, Blizzard angers me), but thats because Protoss are sci-fi elves. Well, WH40K eldar crossed with more alien looks, but basically just sci-fi elves. Seriously, not even looking at their stuff, just look at them physically. Tall, thin, fit, with pointy heads? Elves. I don't think that resembling the Protoss will be too big an issue, but it is a good place to maybe take a few ideas from. :smalltongue:

[jagadaishio]

The dromites seem to fill the cultural niche of the Gith, in that they were a society of mind flayer slaves who used war to escape and then pose a serious threat to their former slavers. If they Gith exist, they should be from across the mountains, or something. They would be an example of how the races could have developed differently without the influences and helping hands which they all had in the primary area of the world.

It sounds like, statistically, the drow would be very different from their ordinary versions. Since they aren't subterranean matriarchal theocracies built on subterfuge and manipulation, that is.

[thevorpalbunny]

Well, the protoss heads aren't pointy (they have tentacle hair thingys), but other than that you're probably right.

I don't like having all nine disciplines be elaborations on the one original style. If that's true, why aren't they all more stealth-oriented? I like the as-written idea of the styles emerging in different places.

Gith probably don't have a place in the main part of the world. Do dwarves have a place? The race of deep miners is out (dromites), the mountains are occupied (elves), . . . the only reason can think of to keep them is that duergar are some of the most iconic psionicists after the mind flayers.

[Serenity]

I am, in fact, intending to use the dromites in place of the dwarves, and I never really saw why the duergar were psionic. I was planning on keeping hobgoblins as progenitors of the Iron Heart, as I think their Roman-inspired culture works well with the tenet of ultimate skill with the blade. Other races probably deny it, but Reshar learned from the Hobgoblins and took one as a student.

The gith presumably exist, but they probably bother only rarely with this material plane. If they ever learned of the dromites' continuing connection to the illithid, however, they might well pour in on a holy crusade to destroy their ancient enemies.

Desert Wind and Setting Sun both come from the desert lands, of course. Desert Wind was probably first developed by the nomadic Thri-Kreen packs, where Setting Sun was developed by the humans in honor of their dual gods of Sun and Moon, combining the martial prowess of Mother Sun with the trickery and guile of Father Moon.

Of course, 'comes from' is primarily a matter of historical interest, as since Reshar mastered the Nine, anyone can learn any of the disciplines.

[Vadin]

Of course, 'comes from' is primarily a matter of historical interest, as since Reshar mastered the Nine, anyone can learn any of the disciplines.

That's kind of what I mean about them being more or less really indistinct. Of course they (the schools) are all different, but they're all still just maneuvers. A scholar or martial master might be able to tell a Desert Wind style stance from a Setting Sun style stance, but, just as a fighter finds it hard to tell an evocation spell from a conjuration spell, the average person on the street just sees them all as maneuvers. The different schools are groupings of similar moves, not set in stone collections of absolutely unique and unchangeable moves. As an example of what I mean, see here (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=849692). Flavor of ToB schools is highly mutable.

[Serenity]

*Whistles innocently as he bumps.*

I think we've got the themes of this world pretty well hammered out. Now, if we can get a map, and really start working out some specifics on the countries and kingdoms, we'll be in good shape.