World-Building Turn-Offs

[xBlackWolfx]

In my setting (which is actually designed for a series of books I might right, rather than an RPG), magic is used as an analogue to science. New spells are constantly being discovered, and some spells actually reshape the world after their discovery. The one school of magic in which this is most obvious is 'biomancy', an analogue to medicine. This school of magic allows ones to remove most diseases and even repair damage to the body, some individuals have even discovered ways to use it to sustain themselves indefinitely, giving them immorality. But it also has a dark side, just as they can destroy disease, they can also create it, and the world has been ravaged more than once by artificial plagues. Also, a sub-set of biomancy is in alteration of living beings. One of the earliest examples of this was a spell that allowed two creatures of different species to mate with eachother and produce a fertile hybrid, even if they naturally could not (for example, they could make a half-human half-wolf, even though those two species obviously could not reproduce through natural means). This was once used to create a variety of super-soldier races simply (like orcs). But soon enough, these artificially created races escaped into the wild. Now, creatures like orcs are multiplying out of control destroying everything they can purely because they were bred to be insanely aggressive and uncaring. They made a mindless killing machine, now they've situated themselves in the wild and are destroying entire ecosystems and ravaging cities for no reason other than to sate their endless inborn lust for violence.

A recurring theme is magic is a double-edged sword, similar to science, it has its advantages, but also has caused huge problems for their world, more than once. In some nations infact, magic is illegal purely because of the harm it has brought in the past, and even in nations where it is legal the general populace is often paranoid of most forms of magic (except for the biomancers that fix them up when they get sick or injured) since most the schools of magic can do alot more harm than good.

If you care to know what the schools of magic are, there are seven:

biomancy: I have already explained for the most part, only thing I didnt mention is that biomancers can enhance their own physical abilities using their magic (its easier to use biomancy on yourself than someone else, so sadly they cant do this for other people all that well), infact biomancers fill the role of monks in DnD, though they also have cleric-like abilities.
alchemy: changing materials into other materials, mostly a crafting profession
conjuration: making things appear out of nowhere, such as fire or lightning, unlike alchemy conjured things are only temporary and typically dissipate within moments
enchanting: giving materials properties they normally couldn't have, I might change this into rune-making since the traditional idea of enchanting overlaps too much with biomancy, if i do change it to rune-making it'll be the only school of magic that does not require one to be born a mage
spiritlogy: i really need a better name for this. simply this school allows one to mess with people's souls, such as killing people through eye contact or even transfer their own soul into a new younger body (it is the most widely dispised school of magic, infact you cant learn it in schools normally, the only spell of this school that is tolerated is the one that allows you to analyze someone's soul, its the only way to detect a lich, someone who has transfered their soul into another body, but this is problematic since if you even learn one spell in a school, you can rather easily figure out more, so there's always the risk that your lich-hunter could decide to abuse his powers)
psionics: the ability to control and alter people's minds simply, they're often called warlocks
mysticism: the ability to control magic itself, countering spells, increasing one's resistance to magic, even causing the mana in a mage's body to 'combust', which almost always kills the unfortunate mage, obviously a widely feared spell among mages of all sorts, though it has few ways to influence the material world beyond messing with spells others have cast.

One thing that magic teaches in my setting, is that some things are better off never being discovered. Science in our world has also brought horrible things that this world would be far better off without.

As for my races, they are somewhat monocultural (though they dont inhabit single nations, all the city-building races have multiple countries which are often at war with eachother, the various dwarven kingdoms for instance are well known for their endless conflicts with eachother, resulting in most dwarven nations being highly militarized). Each race was designed as a thought experiment, simply what human civilization would be like if our instincts were different. For example, elves aren't nearly as prone to passion or being overwhelmed by their emotions, they're very logical and practical. Dwarves only have to sleep every few days, and can easily work tirelessly for most of a day, they typically perceive other races as lazy purely bc they cant work nearly as hard as they can, and of course need to sleep and rest alot more than dwarves do.

There are also gods in the setting, which do exist, though the main theme behind them (and the story in general) is that people in power often aren't very trustworthy, and even most gods can't be trusted, since most are indifferent or openly hostile towards mortals, and the few nice ones are often foolish or questionable, for example some good gods won't judge others, they're happily aid both good and evil individuals regardless of the consequences. Infact, there's only one god who really can't be construed as evil in anyway, and all he really does is try to keep the world from being destroyed. well, maybe there's two if you count the goddess of death, ironic i know but she isnt exactly a clone of hades, infact she actually overthrew the original god of death whose sole interest was erasing reality because he found it to be too miserable and depressing, she herself actually allows souls to continue to exist, infact her primary domain is rebirth rather than death

I dont think highly of real-world religions myself, so I put real gods in my setting to show why you shouldn't blindly trust such beings, real or no.

Obviously, one thing I don't like is the whole good vs evil thing. Wheather or not pure good or pure evil exist in the real world is a highly debateble topic, and just bc someone does something with good intentions does not mean it'll have a good outcome.