Community World-Building Project: [A Placefiller Title]

[jagadaishio]

Some world-building projects get off to a great start, and others fizzle into oblivion on page one. The ones that fizzle out are usually the ones where the OP already has some concept in mind and wants to start out with it already in place. The ones that succeed, though, are usually the ones that start as vague as possible, ideally drawing the original premise from one of the other posters. So, does anyone have an idea for the first vague, basic premise of this world-building project?

[jagadaishio]

Place-filler.

[jagadaishio]

Another place-filler for later consolidation.

[Owrtho]

How about a humanoid free setting? I've always thought that would be fun to try.

Also it's odd how today I started a community world building project, kopout said if no one posted anything for the landfall one by tomorrow he would start a new one, and now you start a new one. Seems like this is the day for people to want to start these things.

Owrtho

[jagadaishio]

How about a humanoid free setting? I've always thought that would be fun to try.

Also it's odd how today I started a community world building project, kopout said if no one posted anything for the landfall one by tomorrow he would start a new one, and now you start a new one. Seems like this is the day for people to want to start these things.

Owrtho

I think that everyone just loves these world-building projects. Anyway, what do you mean by no humanoids? Does that include things like kobolds and pixies? Do you mean literally no bipedal hominids with opposable thumbs? i.e. no mindflayers, humanoid demonds, and so on?

[mr.fizzypop]

Well if not humanoids then what then? Quadrupeds? Gastropods?

Hmm...maybe a race of flying sentient jellyfish?

[Thatguyoverther]

Allot of games settings talk about elves or dwarves or mind flayers being "old" races predating the rise of mankind. I think it would be cool to have a World set in that time. Perhaps on the edge of the fall of the "old" races from power.

[jagadaishio]

Well if not humanoids then what then? Quadrupeds? Gastropods?

Hmm...maybe a race of flying sentient jellyfish?

Oathbound style?

[Owrtho]

Anyway, what do you mean by no humanoids? Does that include things like kobolds and pixies? Do you mean literally no bipedal hominids with opposable thumbs? i.e. no mindflayers, humanoid demonds, and so on?

That is what I meant. Also, there are plenty of things one could go with. Some of which are already mentioned. Also there are avian creatures, aberrations, serpentine creatures, oozes, plants, creatures with more than four limbs, many arthropod type creatures, many sea creatures (or creatures inspired by them). There really are many more options for non humanoids than humanoids, its just that people normally don't think about playing as them.

Also, check out the Sun Behind Night community world building project (yay for self advertising).

Owrtho

[Vadin]

How about a humanoid free setting? I've always thought that would be fun to try.

Also it's odd how today I started a community world building project, kopout said if no one posted anything for the landfall one by tomorrow he would start a new one, and now you start a new one. Seems like this is the day for people to want to start these things.

Owrtho

I was going to start one, too, if nobody else did. A sci-fi setting.


Ideas for non-humanoids:

• Wasp/yellow jacket people who have lost the ability of flight but developed fine manipulation and grown to Medium size
• Tree people who can sense from all sides and have no 'front' or 'back'- also, they're quite strong
• Shadow beasts that are intelligent, but still are beasts, not people (Narnia-style)- they meld things into their forms to turn themselves into functions of tools (like they could absorb a hammer to make their hand extra hard, or a sword to make their claws extra sharp or their teeth extra jagged)
• Lizard/dragon centaurs. 'Nuff said.
• Jellyfish sorts of things that float around without a front or back like the tree people, but they have lots of hands and such- fine manipulation, but less physical strength
• Elemental centipedes that stand up on their back halves and manipulate things with their front halves of hundreds of arms, their back armor reflects an element

Also, I'd like to see a young world, where the weapons are bronze and the castles are sandstone. Something around the year 0, perhaps. Early Iron Age at most. And a few highly civilized empires with three or four major centers of trade and intelligent thought, not 50 different tiny nations each populated by a single race or two.

I also think there should be clear divisions between monsters and sentient player races. In a world without readily identifiable races and such, it might be hard for some players to identify these things, and I'm sure civilized races would definitely want to separate themselves.

[Zeta Kai]

Allot of games settings talk about elves or dwarves or mind flayers being "old" races predating the rise of mankind. I think it would be cool to have a World set in that time. Perhaps on the edge of the fall of the "old" races from power.

A campaign setting with no bipedal humanoids seems a bit too strange & foreign to be an enjoyable experience for most people. I'm sure some players would get something out of it, but the mass appeal just doesn't appear to be there. I prefer Thatguyoverther's idea, as it looks much more relatable & compelling.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

A campaign setting with no bipedal humanoids seems a bit too strange & foreign to be an enjoyable experience for most people. I'm sure some players would get something out of it, but the mass appeal just doesn't appear to be there. I prefer Thatguyoverther's idea, as it looks much more relatable & compelling.

I agree, but I do like Vadin's race suggestions taken on their own merits.

Hmm...perhaps both sets of races coexist in the same world, but the typical "old" races are just coming onto the scene, and the weirder ones are dying out? The elves would have to wrest their beloved forests from the treefolk and bee people who've been there forever, and dwarves would have to fight off incursions by burrowing centipede people who are trying to expand their territory.

[jagadaishio]

So the young races of the dwarves and elves would be an invading force, conquering land from the old races. The trees would likely have a longer lifespan than the elves, and would look at them in much the way that the elves would eventually be fated to look at humans. I think that in this scenario the elves would be coming in from their mysterious homeland on the other side of the sea. The dwarves, in contrast, would probably be digging up. I like the idea that's presented in Pathfinder regarding dwarves, where they originated somewhere in a place deeper than the setting's version of the underdark and spent centuries in a mass exodus to the caves in the surface.

The dwarves would be advancing with a great wall of steel shields and swords. This would be as terrifying to bronze-age natives as a platoon of adamantium-armed warriors from the deep would be to us. The elves, though, I think would be far more magically advanced than the natives, at least when it comes to arcane. Artificers and wizards would be relatively unknown outside of the elven ranks, and even sorcerers would be rare. Sure, the trees have a lot of druids, but this is an invasion by magicians on a scale that they would not be used to.

I like the wasp people, but it seems like they would pretty-much be refluffed formians. The tree people I am also a big fan of. I think that they would probably have tiny, black, bead-like eyes dotting their trunks, and the ability to put down root and not need food as long as the soil is moist enough and the sun bright enough. They would probably sit this way for centuries, only moving when needed, communicating with each other with either some form of telepathy or some form of very long-range very deep sounds, like elephants. Alternatively, they could have really long-range tremor sense and communicate with each other with a form of root sign language.

I am a big fan of the dragon/lizard centaurs. I think that they would probably have the highest incidence of sorcery of the native races, and would have some sort of empire in the mountain caves. They would be too busy trying to fend off the dwarves to help the trees against the elves. Sure, one of their sorcerers is more than a match for quite a few dwarven fighters, but there aren't that many sorcerers, and it seems like there's just no end to these metallic deep-apes.

The shadow, jellyfish, and centipede people I'm more iffy about.

[Vadin]

I agree, but I do like Vadin's race suggestions taken on their own merits.

Hmm...perhaps both sets of races coexist in the same world, but the typical "old" races are just coming onto the scene, and the weirder ones are dying out? The elves would have to wrest their beloved forests from the treefolk and bee people who've been there forever, and dwarves would have to fight off incursions by burrowing centipede people who are trying to expand their territory.

Humans, of course, aren't even around yet. But if they are, they're either very primitive, very limited, or very far away.


Dwarves- the creations of a radical sect of Ganids who were trying to forge (with admittedly dangerous magics) living guardians for the tunnels. Instilled with an instinctive dislike towards the floating Heleans, they proved somewhat too effective and escaped from the shallow dens of the ganids into older and deeper tunnels of stone. From here, they multiplied and expanded and prepared themselves until, years and years later, they stormed the ganid settlement and slaughtered the 'unnaturals' wholesale. It was in this manner that the first dwarven city, Freehold, was founded.

I like jag's idea better.


As for the shadow beasts and elemental centipedes, I was thinking that most of the old races would be advanced primitive creatures (like the wasps and trees) and planar-enhanced natural things.

The shadow beasts and genasi-centipedes would live alongside other races like most planar minorities do in D&D settings. They don't have enough to make their own homes, so they join with others. They are also non-essential, so they needn't necessarily be included.

The minorly-shapeshifting shadow beasts...I just have this really cool image in my head of a navy lion with black and lighter blue streaks in its mane charging at a platoon of elves. Like NegaNarnia. Not to say that they're evil now, they're just a lot sneakier and a lot more dangerous than Aslan ever was.

And the lizard/dragon centaurs, I think, should have a rather large empire. And why not deserts? They could have a pretty huge desert empire that just happens to stretch out to the eastern mountains where the dwarves are invading from. Then these guys are sending their armies that way, so the other nations are getting antsy about them and even more unwilling to help.

"Are you sure there are 'deep-apes' down there? You sure you don't just want us to walk into those dark caves first so you can come in behind us? HA! Deep-apes, that doesn't even make sense! How could something like that possibly evolve!"

Of course, some other races with empires in mountains would be a little bit more sympathetic.

"Yeah, we know about the deep-apes. They conquered another village just last week. We'd help if we could, but we've got our own infestations to worry about."

[mr.fizzypop]

I think the humans should be neutral in this conflict, living in neither the forests nor the mountains. Or maybe they have there own enemy, maybe from the ocean?

[jagadaishio]

I really don't think that humans would even exist yet in this setting. If dwarves and elves are the young races of the world, I can't imagine humanity even existing. This, of course, means that we need some sort of mid-range race. Which race would be the adaptable utility race of this setting?

[Owrtho]

I'd say humans don't exist yet. As for the new races coming, why should they be more advanced? In most settings humans are the new race but they're less advanced in most things. The only reason they dominate is due to superior populations. I'd say that the elves would be just learning the ways of arcane magic, and the dwarfs starting to work with metal for the first time as they encountered it while digging up to the surface, having relied on stone level technology before then. After all, they're supposed to be new races at this point. Not really old races that are just from some other place.

That said, the jellyfish race seems like it could be interesting. It was done in Oathbound as a race that was predominantly casters (they could also levitate naturally). I'd also note that as more monstrous creatures, the non humanoids would likely use metal weapons to just enhance their natural ones more often than not, and would likely regard the elves and dwarfs as puny or weak for having to make theirs entirely from artificial materials (no natural weapons).

Owrtho

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Alright...for adaptable races that can be given any role (thus, no stat adjustment)...

The Aventi (Stormwrack): Early precursors to humanity, coming out of the oceans.

The Illumian (Races of Destiny): Highly advanced ancient or otherworldly creatures...possibly the original race, or close to it.

The Underfolk (Races of Destiny): Same concept as the Aventi, only emerging from below the earth.

The Asherati (Sandstorm): Strange desert-dwelling creatures, if the world is has large desert areas. Good as the adaptable race of a drought-stricken world.

Raptoran (Races of the Wild): Either an evolutionary state from birds to humanity (a strange stance, but possibly interesting), or it's own distinct race, especially if the groundcover is dangerous.

Killoren (Races of the Wild): Becomes an interesting choice in a highly elemental or highly fey world with strong natural connections.

[jagadaishio]

Alright...for adaptable races that can be given any role (thus, no stat adjustment)...

The Aventi (Stormwrack): Early precursors to humanity, coming out of the oceans.

The Illumian (Races of Destiny): Highly advanced ancient or otherworldly creatures...possibly the original race, or close to it.

The Underfolk (Races of Destiny): Same concept as the Aventi, only emerging from below the earth.

The Asherati (Sandstorm): Strange desert-dwelling creatures, if the world is has large desert areas. Good as the adaptable race of a drought-stricken world.

Raptoran (Races of the Wild): Either an evolutionary state from birds to humanity (a strange stance, but possibly interesting), or it's own distinct race, especially if the groundcover is dangerous.

Killoren (Races of the Wild): Becomes an interesting choice in a highly elemental or highly fey world with strong natural connections.

I would lean towards Asherati, Raptoran, or Killoren. Asherati if there are tons and tons of desert with the trees inhabiting the only parts with soil and abundant moisture, Raptorans if it's terribly mountainous in most places, and Killoren if forests and jungles are the predominant geographical feature. The Asherati would likely be nomads and sometimes thorns in the sides of the draconic empire, the Raptorans would be isolationist dwelling in the highest peaks and having a slow military buildup as the dwarves approach from below, and the Killoren would more likely be some kind of tribal druidic theocracy.

What do you guys think?

[mr.fizzypop]

I would lean towards Asherati, Raptoran, or Killoren. Asherati if there are tons and tons of desert with the trees inhabiting the only parts with soil and abundant moisture, Raptorans if it's terribly mountainous in most places, and Killoren if forests and jungles are the predominant geographical feature. The Asherati would likely be nomads and sometimes thorns in the sides of the draconic empire, the Raptorans would be isolationist dwelling in the highest peaks and having a slow military buildup as the dwarves approach from below, and the Killoren would more likely be some kind of tribal druidic theocracy.

What do you guys think?

I agree with using the Asherati and Raptorans. Although they are cool, I think we have too many forest races already, to use the Kiloren.

That said, the jellyfish race seems like it could be interesting. It was done in Oathbound as a race that was predominantly casters (they could also levitate naturally). I'd also note that as more monstrous creatures, the non humanoids would likely use metal weapons to just enhance their natural ones more often than not, and would likely regard the elves and dwarfs as puny or weak for having to make theirs entirely from artificial materials (no natural weapons).

Owrtho

The idea of jellyfish people remind me of the Hanar from the game, Mass Effect. I think they could definitely work as a spellcaster race.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

What do you guys think?

Well, I don't think we'd necessarily need to limit it to only one of them, but I agree with your reasoning as to which would work best.

[Vadin]

Raptorans seems pretty awesome as some weird forgotten race of the world, closed off from the others as 'barbarians'. They're evolving into humans, but they aren't there yet and won't be for generations upon generations.

[kopout]

I prefer my proto-humans more well human. I'm going to say that some iof the tree people have used their druadic powers to modify some of the apes that live in their branches into active short lived survants. Adaptible, hary, and humanoid these will become the humans. In 7-8000 years.

[Vadin]

I prefer my proto-humans more well human. I'm going to say that some iof the tree people have used their druadic powers to modify some of the apes that live in their branches into active short lived survants. Adaptible, hary, and humanoid these will become the humans. In 7-8000 years.

That's a very interesting idea, and ties into half-elves (invaders conquering servants).

[kopout]

That's a very interesting idea, and ties into half-elves (invaders conquering servants).

Indeed, pehaps the first humans are half-elves half-tree monky people (tremps).

[jagadaishio]

Indeed, pehaps the first humans are half-elves half-tree monky people (tremps).

I like that idea. Of course, none of the humans exist yet. Not until some deviant elf decides to make it with the captured servants of their old enemies after having already been established in power for an entire elven generation.

[kopout]

For now I'm going to say that the Tremps are fighting as grunt soldiars in the war against the elves. They are more expendible than the tree people.

[mr.fizzypop]

Would the Tremps or be a player race?

[kopout]

I'm thinking player race. Probably feral Tremps, but maybe some one wants to play as a regular servant.

[jagadaishio]

I think that when it comes to the Tremp/Tree relationship it would be less slave/master and more of a sybiosis, as befits the druidic naturalistic trees. Tremps would use the trees as shelter, eat their fruit, and be tutored by these wise ancients. They would in turn fertilize soil, defend the slow moving trees from woodsmen and fires, and water them in droughts. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship.

Because of that, a PC tremp wouldn't be feral or rogue. Rather, it would just be a wandering tremp. He would still probably revere the trees and help out any he came across, but wouldn't stay with the same grove like most do. I could see closely allied troupes and groves, likely seeing each other as something of an extended family. Trees that are old enough would have houses in their branches. The ancient ones would probably sleep for centuries, too. The younger, more mobile ones would be fertilized, watered, and pampered often to make sure they grow fast and large.

What do you guys think about that relationship?