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2017-11-12, 01:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- Corvallis, OR
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What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
The more I DM and world-build, the more I find myself using certain patterns, shortcuts, themes and default assumptions. Ruts, if you will. These may be things that I avoid or things that show up, whether I intended them to be there or not.
A few of mine are
* Gender-egalitarian societies. I'm more likely to include a matriarchy (usually biologically-inspired) than a classic primogeniture, women-are-property/can't hold positions of power sort of society. Most of mine don't care about gender at all.
* Hidden media references (usually in names or in obscure puns).
* The relationship between sacrifice and power. When involuntary this is blood magic, but voluntary sacrifice has tremendous power.
* Very few (if any) irredeemably evil villains (even fiends). My BBEGs tend to either be individuals doing what they think is best or outright insane (by common standards. In reality, it's more often Blue and Orange morality at work). A large percentage can be talked out of it. Often there's a clash of people who believe that they're good (and may even be), but the two different ideas of what is right are incompatible.
* Tentacles. Eldritch horror/body horror seems to come up a lot...
What are some of yours?
N.B. I'd like this thread to be the positive counterpart to the "Tropes I hate" thread. Please focus on things you do because you like, rather than things you avoid because you don't like them.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
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2017-11-12, 02:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
If you mean to ask "which things I like to include in my settings?", then:
1) surrealist dream world and dream sequences. In pretty much all games I run, there is a place or situation where ordinary logic takes backseat to hazy nonsense people experience while asleep.
2) long treks through wilderness. I like hiking in the real world and I heavily draw from my real experience to give a feeling of being there for my players. Lately, this has primarily involved drawing from my experience of being lost in the woods, because my players don't have enough real life experience of hiking to bring with them a map and a compass.
3) giant lizards, especially komodo dragons. Because giant lizards are cool. And weird.
4) giant spiders, because those are a classic.
5) wolves, bears, deers etc. normal wildlife, in abundance.
6) vast underground cave systems with glowing fungi, edible moss and pale cave-dwelling creatures.
7) Mermaids/Deep Ones/Sirens/Zoras. Ambiguously aligned fish-snake-people living in the unreachable depths of the ocean, inhabiting sunken ruins of humanity and ruling their own shadow society built from the scraps of the surface world.
8) Sailing ships! Piracy! Cannons! Fighting against nature as you sail from island to island!
9) Vague allusions to Panspermia and that life, and especially deities, are from Outer Space.
10) Faceless Death Gods.
11) societies with inverted, subverted or just plain weird gender roles, contrasted with others of more familiar sort.
12) Vast, unchallenged Empires who are, if not the good guys, at least not the obvious evil sort. And definitely not something a ragtag bunch of misfits could topple."It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
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2017-11-12, 03:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2016
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- The Frozen North
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
I love smart villains, the mastermind. Especially when they have little personal power but use charisma, social leverage or just their cunning and intellect to thwart the PC's.
The humane villain, the better arguments for their actions the better the villain. Those times the villain gets, almost gets the PC's aboard with him/her or just sows dissent among the PC's because the rationale of his/her actions is priceless.
Complex plots with lots of politics, backstabbing, manipulations, betrayals and grey moral choices.
Far reaching consequences
Power corrupts and giving the PC's the chance to get power at a price.Last edited by RazorChain; 2017-11-12 at 03:08 PM.
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2017-11-12, 03:09 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2015
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Well, lets see:
*Fantasy Racism-Lots and lots of this.
*Not so hidden media references everywhere (but you'd need to know my personal ones to get them all)
*Religion of each god in a very real divine way
*The Afterlife and what will become of a character after they die.
*Dark Humor.
*Things are Not Always What they Seem.
*Pure Evil is vile, dark, horrible and monstrous.
*Pure Good is pure, light, nice and friendly.
*Actions have Consequences
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2017-11-12, 03:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2012
- Location
- Poland
- Gender
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
- rehashing scenarios from tv shows or comic books that I know none of my players watched/read (you'd be surprised how well some episodes of "Charmed" work as World of Darkness adventures)
- morally grey competent but not too genre-savvy villains (they are ususally well intentioned extremists with clear goals in mind)
- father-like "good" and competent bosses (I feel a need to give players a "safe harbour")
- prophetic visions and rumors (especially used to "cold read" my players - I feed them a vague vision, and they feed me tons of potential ideas where to take the plot)
- family, childhood friends or comrades at arms relation between PCs (really helps party cohesion)Last edited by Bulhakov; 2017-11-12 at 04:00 PM.
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2017-11-12, 06:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Gender
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
1. There is no generic medievally-flavored-Western-ethics-and-values society. If there is an option for players to choose what kind of society their characters are from, none of them will seem like modern day America or Europe. I once ran a game about the players being dwarves and fighting their ancestral enemies, the goblins. Dwarves in the setting literally spring from deep, dark places undergound, and have a society built on conformity, doing what you're told by elder dwarves, and warring with goblins. Meanwhile, goblins in the setting also literally spring from deep, dark places underground, and have a society built on conformity, doing what you're told, and warring against the dwarves. At every turn, NPCs insist that the other culture is the complete opposite of them and must be destroyed without mercy.
I'm currently working on a setting shared by three cultures - one is a medieval city-state with intense class stratification, one is a society evolved from a province having become a battleground for 2 centuries, the last is a tribal culture that was totally enslaved for two centuries and only recently became free again.
2. Magic is ambiguous. Nobody's throwing around lightning bolts from their hands in my setting, but there is a "Lightning" spell that dramatically increases the caster's initiative for a round. Is the effect of the incantations to make him faster? Is it something more like a special technique? There'll never be a canon answer.
3. I like to keep the story on a small scale. You are not ever trying to save the world. You may be trying to do something personally fulfilling to your characters, make a quick buck, save a town, possibly save a city at the most. I find keeping the stakes relatively small and personal makes the struggle more plot more relatable.It always amazes me how often people on forums would rather accuse you of misreading their posts with malice than re-explain their ideas with clarity.
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2017-11-12, 07:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- Corvallis, OR
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
I'm not one for political plots--I can never keep them straight. Oh, and I haven't had any players who were interested in such things. They get bored easily and are super snarky. Chutzpah is their MO.
I take lots of inspiration from books or movies (more books, because I don't watch as many movies). Mine is more phrases and visuals inspiration than plots or scenarios though. My portal network--it's a vertical ring with symbols on it and a pedestal in front of the actual portal ring.
I guess I'm just the opposite. I don't really plan stories--I at most plan arcs and those on the fly. And mine tend to involve much more long distance travel--my longest-running game has been to both coasts of a North America-sized continent over the course of a year (plus a few months) in universe. CF "Portal network".Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
5e Monster Data Sheet--vital statistics for all 693 MM, Volo's, and now MToF monsters: Updated!
NIH system 5e fork, very much WIP. Base github repo.
NIH System PDF Up to date main-branch build version.
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2017-11-12, 07:33 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2017
- Location
- East of Hell
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
I personally enjoy really high-power fantasies. Usually things that follow the feeling of ancients sagas and epics of mythology in terms of scope or scale.
I also generally enjoy my campaigns to end on relatively high notes, both in terms of tone and power, so my players usually finish their campaigns with at least once ancient horror/deity slain at their feet.
Beyond that, I write societies with somewhat strict honor codes, or with complex codes of conduct based on the environments they developed in.
This one is a bit more recent, but my last two campaigns have features Shifters as a race of nomadic raiders. The previous one had them based around the ancient tribes of africa, with a little bit of viking thrown in, while my current one has them as a dinosaur-riding Mongol horde.
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2017-11-12, 07:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
It always amazes me how often people on forums would rather accuse you of misreading their posts with malice than re-explain their ideas with clarity.
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2017-11-12, 08:43 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
- Things that receive a lot of emotional attachment end up becoming sentient at some point
- There is usually some way that the underlying concepts that form reality can be altered permanently, and plots often involve someone accidentally stumbling on one of those ways without realizing what it is
- Setting-wide problems usually involve inherent tradeoffs rather than conflict resolution.
- Creative endeavors tend to imbue things with the local magic equivalent
- There will be some kind of combinatoric or word-game subsystem where coming up with clever combinations lets you create new abilities
- Weak but permanent effects are used to signal when the players are getting close to the real serious stuff. Gaining a non-removable point of a taint, permanently losing 1hp, stuff like that.
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2017-11-12, 09:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- Corvallis, OR
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
I mean that I make no attempt to keep things small scale. I only really know what they're doing one, two sessions ahead, and my plots tend to me more proactive than reactive--my long-running group had one person who wanted to save the world (as in, that was his character's goal), and they have. Just not from the threats I was thinking of. I thought they'd stay small and local...and was totally blindsided. So I gave up planning That's all.
Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
5e Monster Data Sheet--vital statistics for all 693 MM, Volo's, and now MToF monsters: Updated!
NIH system 5e fork, very much WIP. Base github repo.
NIH System PDF Up to date main-branch build version.
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2017-11-12, 09:51 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- a nice pond
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
My villains are almost always polite, likeable, affable people. Good guys are the only ones allowed to be jerks (but aren't always).
Sometimes environments in my setting just Go Bad. A forest turns hostile and malevolent (but not necessarily evil), the dead rise of their own accord in a tomb (either improperly-consecrated or the consecration has worn off or you just built the tomb in the wrong place), a manifest zone acquires crude sapience and starts doing bad things to the surrounding environment.
I like to use a broad variety of succession schemes. There is all of one nation in the setting that uses agnatic primogeniture (eldest male child inherits), most of them are more fanciful. There are two matriarchies (the drow and the merfolk) and everybody else is gender-equal.
I like to subvert expectations regarding queerness. Setting canon: 90% of NPCs (who have an orientation at all) are bi, the remaining 10% are evenly split between straight and gay. Though this is mostly a.) to maximize romance options for PCs who want to go that route and b.) just to be doing something different; being a good social message is a distant third. (I have managed to twist Pathfinder's similar proclamation from the writers that "all NPCs of Golarion are bi unless explicitly stated otherwise" to rules-lawyery ends -- the unnatural lust spell gives a +4 bonus on the save to resist it if the target of the spell would not normally be attracted to the object of the spell, and said proclamation means hardly anybody gets that bonus.)
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2017-11-12, 10:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- Corvallis, OR
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
I'll admit, I don't do romance in games. I'm bad enough in real life with that...I don't think I'd be comfortable with it in game. This also means that I don't touch on sexual orientation. It gets left vague, although in canon many halflings are bi or lesbian (it's a genetically female dominated race in my setting).
I did have a character (suck up high elf rogue) disguise himself as a pretty woman to try to infiltrate a cult base once. It's on the list with "don't talk to dragons with tentacles coming out of their backs" on the "don't do again list".Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
5e Monster Data Sheet--vital statistics for all 693 MM, Volo's, and now MToF monsters: Updated!
NIH system 5e fork, very much WIP. Base github repo.
NIH System PDF Up to date main-branch build version.
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2017-11-12, 10:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
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2017-11-12, 11:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Okay, I think I'm getting where the disconnect is.
From my perspective, you don't need to attempt to keep things small scale, you need to make the attempt to make things large scale. If the PCs are going to travel a continent, you need to think about what's there on the different locations of the continent.
But yeah, alright. That sounds like a pretty interesting way of running the campaign. You have the players decide what enemies are the most important ones, and then expand those threats in the background to meet their expectations?It always amazes me how often people on forums would rather accuse you of misreading their posts with malice than re-explain their ideas with clarity.
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2017-11-12, 11:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Members of Evil races & tribes, especially LE humanoids, especially Kobolds and Hobgoblins, being willing to ally with PCs against other enemies. Including sometimes PCs assisting them in revolting against or taking over their own tribes. They're invariably willing to strike a bargain that means they'll have to start working with Demi/Humans in the area afterwards in a non-hostile way in return for PC assistance. Although often said Demi/Humans aren't all that happy about the situation.
Allows the PCs to succeed where they'd otherwise potentially fail if they just tried to murder everything, as is their wont. As well as be a kind of peacemaker in ways other than 'slaughter everything'. Requires the PCs either not be Good, or be able to understand that sometimes making concessions to and working with a lesser Evil against a worse Evil is better than trying to fight them all and lose. That certain kinds of Evil can be dealt with, when its necessary business.
As I've said recently in another thread: after all, I give my business to Lawyers and Mechanics all the time.
Of course, Evil is still Evil. Not butterflies and sunbeams. It's always possible Good PCs might be forces to come back and apply some judicious murder-heroing later on.
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2017-11-13, 01:01 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Location
- UK
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
- Choose your team - The PCs get thrown into a struggle between three or more factions and have to choose sides. No side is obviously in the wrong at the beginning of the game.
- Class struggle/feudalism - characters who aren't highborn themselves have to kneel and scrape to their betters. Modern concepts of fairness don't apply; the common people are inured to their condition and 'know their place'.
- Magic is scary and untrustworthy - supernatural threats tend to be rare and deadly in equal measure. Ordinary people treat magic with a mixture of skepticism and fear.
- They walk among us - major villains tend to be mobile and mingle with the rest of the NPC cast, rather than providing a purely external threat.
- Too clever for their own good - characters' greatest strengths are often also their downfall.
- Do we have a deal? - bargains that seem too good to be true almost always are. Characters in extreme circumstances agree to things they later regret.
- There's no justice, there's just us - there's no order or divine providence to the game world. The gods are remote enough that it'd be reasonable to doubt their existence. Happy endings and poetic justice have to be imposed by the players.
Last edited by LCP; 2017-11-13 at 01:06 AM.
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2017-11-13, 01:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
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- Lakewood, Colorado
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Long time before I'm ready to GM anything, but I have made up some worlds and put a couple to words.
-Past sins and dark secrets. Long in the past some person, group, or other form of existence messed up badly, and the scares of that event still harm the world. Most people don't know what happened or the full extents of the event's concequences, however, as they are kept as a closely guarded secret.
-Large stretches of untamed, often dangerous wilderness. Many places are corrupted by dark influence, though in my "main" setting there are good locations too.
-Strange phenomena that happens largely on it's own. There's one instance of a cave with DNA-like rock formations. This can even happen to artificial constructs, like a highway that goes farther than it should, not because it was intentionally enchanted but because the magic attatched to the dying souls who cough a battle there never left.
-All things have the spark of what we the viewers would call magic, but the inhabitants of the world don't see it that way because they've always lived with it. Basic magic is very common, but there are often higher techniques or phenomena that most people don't know about. An idea I've played around with more recently was that experiences phenomena causes it to "stick" to you in some way.
-Another recent idea is that people can often be worse to member's of their own species that those of others.
-Interesting,but dangerous, stuff happening underground.
-"Evil" (usually one of the results of the past sin) species are treated in a tragic light. After all, it's not really their fault that they're trying to kill you.
-Beings that, while powerful, are observers rather than actors in evens (not always voluntarily).Last edited by NovenFromTheSun; 2017-11-13 at 01:04 AM.
I imagine Elminster's standard day begins like "Wake up, exit my completely impenetrable, spell-proofed bedroom to go to the bathroom, kill the inevitable 3 balors waiting there, brush my teeth, have a wizard fight with the archlich hiding in the shower, use the toilet..."
-Waterdeep Merch.
Laphicet avatar by linklele.
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2017-11-13, 06:07 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
My standard settings? Hmmm...
-Humans only, or humans+creations. While I'm not against aliens and the like, all my favourite stories have only humans as protagonists, and so I limit players to humans and human derived beings. It also makes roleplaying easier for them.
-Pro-intellectualism, there is nothing that man is not meant to know. Yes, you're even supposed to know that, go on, it's how you use the knowledge that matters.
-Ethical conflicts, not moral ones. I like shades of grey and for all characters to have understandable viewpoints, even those with a viewpoint of 'kill everything that isn't me', although that's a really hard one to pull off.
-The players aren't going to be shiny heroes. Less an intentional one, more an observation.
-There's probably something about technological advancement in there, at the forefront of my science fiction (no matter if it's pulp or hard) more of a background detail in my fantasy.
-No definitive divine power. If I have magic-using priests each religion gets the exact same spell list.
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2017-11-13, 08:34 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- Corvallis, OR
- Gender
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Basically. My villains tend to have long-running plots. Slow, incremental growth of power rather than invading armies or cataclysmic destruction (that usually results from PC actions ). That means that there's lots of villains scattered about wherever they go, and I observe which plot seeds (less strong than plot hooks) they're interested in and develop those. Often I'll create an area with only a one-or-two sentence note about what's there and why they're going there and build the rest as they interact with things. Once it's built its solid, but until someone visits it's fuzzy.
As an example, let's take my long-running group. The campaign premise was "You're all in jail in a conformist society. Tell me why." They were then given the sentence to work as adventurers until they died (normally 1-2 missions, but PCs are special). The first two missions for their assigned town were pretty forced--they were ordered to do X and Y. How was up to them.
The third was where things got interesting. All I knew was that there was a set of ancient towers (from before a cataclysm) that had appeared on an island in the lake. I knew that there were cool things there and the basic layout, but I built it as they went along. As they interacted with pieces of the setting, the details of why those towers were there and why they hadn't been there before became clear. Why was there a divine barrier keeping the party from leaving? I knew it had something to do with demons, but it clicked that there was a demon imprisoned in the bottom of one tower being used as a living power source for the towers. Who had imprisoned it? Why had the towers vanished 200 years ago? Those came later and introduced a villain I hadn't planned on there being. Where had she gone? It wasn't until later that I realized where it made sense she had gone and why. A throw-away factoid (humans are descended from goblins!) turned out to be a key world-building element that explains almost all of the other races.
Basically, the world is in an indeterminate state until they explore and express interest in things. Then I build out from there. If they express strong interest in a "side-quest," then I'll find reasons that make sense for that to be strongly connected to the main quest, even if only in theme or as a consequence of other things. I'm not building a plot as much as reacting to what they do and building a world around that.
I also talk OOC to my players and ask what they want to focus on. What kinds of plots do they have in mind, what kinds of enemies do they want to face. There's threats and interesting things everywhere. The only question is which ones come on stage and which stay in the background.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
5e Monster Data Sheet--vital statistics for all 693 MM, Volo's, and now MToF monsters: Updated!
NIH system 5e fork, very much WIP. Base github repo.
NIH System PDF Up to date main-branch build version.
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2017-11-13, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Major fan of this ever since Sunless Citadel and the kobolds made us honorary members of their tribe for getting rid of the goblins.
More recently:
In my cleric game we got a truce with the goblins of Phandelin and able to walk through their guards without incident because we agreed to take out their Big Boss. When we were successful, the goblins left on their own accord in peace and two joined our party as NPCs, one later promoted to PC.
In my paladin game set in Silvery Moon I soon have to start negotiations to forge an alliance between Silvery Moon and the Cult of the Dragon against invading orcs and fiends. We previously had cordial encounters with them earlier in the game with two of their bosses - a black dragon and a lich. I literally had tea with the lich as we discussed matters at hand about the orcs and fiends.
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2017-11-13, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Let's see...
- Good and evil are not cosmic forces.
- Good and evil are not determined by one's birth or blood, they're determined by one's actions.
- Good and evil do not come with easy markers -- darkness is not evil, light is not good, etc
- Deities are not good or evil, they're motivated by what they're "the god of" and take actions accordingly.
- Deities do not have a "divine right" to proclaim morality, nor are their actions justified by fiat.
- Both settings done in detail had cataclysmic battles between deities in the deep past, that were caused by the deities themselves, not mortals
- The lives of mortals are not determined by fate or destiny -- free will exists.
- There are multiple intelligent species or subspecies.
- They will not be standard D&D "races".
- Species and race are not synonyms.
- Species and culture are not synonyms.
- Ethnicity and culture are not synonyms.
- Cultures are not all equal or equally valid.
- Gender equality varies between cultures and species.
- Prejudice and bigotry exist in varying degrees by culture and individual, but not in the cartoon fashion promoted by "fantastic racism".
- Low-end magic is somewhat common, high-end magic and attack magic are rare and special.
- Differences from the workings of the real world are reflected in the details of the setting.
- History matters.
- Economics matter.
- No narrative causality.
Will keep adding more as I think of them.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-11-13 at 06:43 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2017-11-13, 02:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
The last time I ran this (way back in early 2000s) the kobold started off by shooting the living hell out of the (all human) party from the darkness with their crossbows, dropping the party Monk ,and showing them exactly how dangerous Kobolds could be. The party still ultimately ended up not getting into a knock-down, brutal, fight to the death with them, although I can't recall if they active became allies or just decided on a live-and-let-live truce.
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2017-11-13, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2014
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Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
- Allies.
- Capture over kill, at least for humanoid villains. (And for the party, too, when it makes sense that the enemies wouldn't actually go for the TPK.)
- Megafauna. On Earth, there are thirty thousand wild rhinos in the world; in my setting, there are baronies with more than that.
- Almost everyone is some stripe of neutral - including the gods. "Good" and "evil" are, to a large extent, in the eye of the culture or, in the case of a paladin casting Detect Evil, of the deity.
- Altered laws of physics. "Not magical" doesn't necessarily mean "could exist in the real world" - and "exists in the real world" doesn't necessarily mean "possible in the setting".
- Regional plots. You're not going to be saving the world, but you may well save a kingdom.
- It's not so much "medieval stasis" as it is a technological oscillation between the Iron Age and pseudo-Dieselpunk that averages out to medieval, in the same way that the average of (the years) 1950 and 250 is (the year) 1100.
- Deities are like CEO's of large corporations in terms of the sort of things they address vs. what their underlings address. They're close enough that their existence is not in doubt, but remote enough that their natures and wills often are.
- Magic is renewable but limited - a resource in the same way water is (use too much of it in too short a time and the well will run dry).
- Bad things can happen to good people, and good things to bad people. Bad things can also happen to bad people, and good things to good people. And don't expect the afterlife to resolve this in all cases, either; the universe can end with your karma still unbalanced.
- Time marches on. Ignore a quest for too long, and either the questgiver will have hired some other adventuring party to do it, or the situation associated with the quest will have deteriorated.Last edited by bulbaquil; 2017-11-13 at 06:20 PM.
Planck length = 1.524e+0 m, Planck time = 6.000e+0 s. Mass quantum ~ 9.072e-3 kg because "50 coins weigh a pound" is the smallest weight mentioned. And light has five quantum states.
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2017-11-13, 06:31 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
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2017-11-13, 06:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Redeemed villains are fun. But also ...
Cartoonish Villains. The bad guys that it's okay to go full on murder-hero on. Effectively, a big sign from the DM that says "don't worry about moral quandaries on this one, guys".
(Star Wars is big on this one. Despite the third movie.)
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2017-11-14, 08:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2015
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
Let's see:
- Humans and Others: I seem to break this into two major groups. Either humans are the only race/non-humans are actually variant humans and as still pretty rare. Or humans are pretty small in the grand scheme of things, even if they are the POV.
- Power of Body: I tend to have a lot of powerful non-casters, martial artists, swords masters and really good crafters. Sometimes magic is involved, but not in the "I have studied the secret arts" way.
- Active Good: This one is odd for narrative reasons, but there is often an established force for good out in the world making the day better. The rarely are enough (and when they are, the characters are part of it).
- Other/Other-Other: Ever since the Tribe of One's elfling (Elf/Halfling) I have enjoyed characters of very mixed heritage where no part of that heritage is human. Its not something done very often, possibly because it lacks both the "stock" nature of it all and the human connection.
- Things are Different: Some assumption you know about the world is wrong here. Or there is some addition that I have let seep into the cracks and corners of the world.
- Don't Do it Like That: One common source of inspiration for me is something that I feel was done wrong. Or could be done in more interesting away. I'll take a crack at it and if I like the way it turns out it will often end up in some story or setting.
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2017-11-14, 08:29 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- Corvallis, OR
- Gender
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
I've done both of these. One group is dealing with a probable case of one of these right now--a parasitic thought form that entered reality as a group trying to destroy it but has fallen in love (ironically, she embodies the idea of improper desire/lust) with reality and is trying to repent.
Other villains have included a goblin boss (at low levels) who was engaged in...non-consensual activities...with prisoners when the party walked in (he literally had his pants down). The uniform consensus of this group (who would talk to everyone) was "string him up by his guts" which they promptly did.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
5e Monster Data Sheet--vital statistics for all 693 MM, Volo's, and now MToF monsters: Updated!
NIH system 5e fork, very much WIP. Base github repo.
NIH System PDF Up to date main-branch build version.
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2017-11-14, 08:33 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- Corvallis, OR
- Gender
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
I have used the first extensively--sometimes in conflict. I have a group who liberated an empire and is working toward making the universe better for mortals. Their methods are causing somewhat of a celestial cold civil war and might be having other side effects, but their motives are good and they only kill confirmed, unrepentant evil-doers. The party isn't quite sure if they're good guys, bad guys, or just extremists.
On topic of the second, I use goblinoids as my base for crossbreeds. Humans are magically-altered hobgoblins, halflings are magically altered goblins as are gnomes. All the other races except elves and dwarves descend from goblins in some way or another.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
5e Monster Data Sheet--vital statistics for all 693 MM, Volo's, and now MToF monsters: Updated!
NIH system 5e fork, very much WIP. Base github repo.
NIH System PDF Up to date main-branch build version.
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2017-11-14, 03:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
- Location
- San Francisco Bay area
- Gender
Re: What are habitual positive elements in your GM or world-building?
:
Um "positive"?
Well I positively don't like too much complexity, and basically I just have just two setups, one is "You meet at a tavern to loot a Dungeon" with an intro like this:
Another is "You find a treasure map" like this:
But I'm considering a "campaign arc"
:
Let's explore!
So a basic "swords against sorcery" theme.
How to turn that "positive" in @PhoenixPhyre's terms?
Well in "sword using times" as now, I believe some societies had more and some less gender inequality.
The Scandinavians, for example, were known to be more equal (as attested to by Arab traveller Ibrahim ibn al-Tartushi for example).
In fact some Viking graves, that contained weapona as grave goods and consequently were originally thought to have held men (Assigned male at excavation?), were actually women ("shieldmaidens"/skjaldmær), and that's been the cause of some speculation, true or not I'ma gonna run with it.
Even if someone says a dóttir wasn't as likely as a son to pick up the family sword, my game, my rules Berserker women are more fun, I picked Viking-ish for a reason.
Some parts of old Scandinavia weren't fun, slavery for example (yes I know probably not as brutal as the old sugar plantations of Barbados, but still too brutal to be fun, I don't want to go full Game of Thrones), so I hand wave then away.
Why not go more fantasy and less expy?
Because I"m lazy as a GM, and as a player I dislike "homework" (reading a big fat lot of setting information) before we can get to the part where the GM says, "What do you do?".
Why not a swashbucklimg Caribbean settimg, pirates are cool?
Yes that would be cool, but I want to make use of Norse myths and monsters.
How about Ninjas, they're cool?
Yes Ninjas are cool, but homework is involved in fitting them in the initial setting.
How are you going to have Druids then?
I'll get to that.
I don't want to play some pasty-behind Scandinavian named Astrid or Ragnar, verily you sucketh 2D8HP!
That's a good point.
One reason I chose Viking-ish is because they had battle-axes, and they....
....okay that's pretty much the reason.
Sorry!
Oh wait! It's because Vikings are familiar enough that players, may just get into character without doing much homework, and besides who doesn't want to shout out "By Odin's sagging bits, you will taste steel!"?
Dude, I don't know Norse mythology! How about Greek or Egyptian? Hekate and Osiris are cool!
Hmmm, they really are.
Okay, how about this: A melting pot Empire, or collection of City States (decide when it comes up in game) sends out merchants and missionaries all over, and they settle amongst, well everywhere, so you have families in the village who aren't pasty, and have Italian and Spanish names, so you have Rodrigo the blacksmith next to Signe the leatherworker, and the imported wine merchant is a cleric of Dionysus.
Oh that's a little better..
...what a minute!
Italian?
Spanish?
Not Egyptian and Greek?
Well those names are harder for me to pronounce, 'sides someone has to be able to be called Inigo Montoya.
What if someone just wants to be called Jane Thatcher or William Weaver?
Fine, the village is Anglo-Norse then.
Hey! You still haven't 'splained the Druids. Hark you still sucketh 2D8HP!
Oh right. In the woods, and some nearby village there's Celts with Druids.
So your using the Celtic pantheon as well?
Um., no I can't pronounce those names
Can I play a Tabaxi Bladesinger with a bonus Feat?
No.
Bogus! Totally lame and un-positive 2D8HP!