Topic: A Setting Proposal

[David Johansen]

On the "Products You'd Like To See" thread, I proposed an open generic fantasy setting in which writers could be assigned their own sections to detail.  Key to this would be ground rules to keep things on an even keel.  A setting bible so to speak.  So here's a broad notion.

The universe is a perpeptual war between light and dark.  These overarching powers are occasionally personified in beings of light or darkness but are generally remote and inapproachable even for the gods.

There are many gods, with weaker ones being fairly local and greater ones having gathered power and spread their worship over larger areas.  Gods are a race of beings rather than personifications of principles.  They have specialties and interests but are not automatically good or evil any more than people are.  Nor are gods fueled by the faith of their worshipers, instead they gain political power in the world without violating treaties between various tribes of gods.

The origins of the various races is lost to history and hotly debated.  It remains a mystery and nobody gets to do orcs descended from elves stories. 

The main setting area is a continental landmass in the northern hemisphere.  There are three close neighbouring continents with some land bridges and a vast ocean to the east.

The great elven empire began to fall a thousand years ago and the final pocket crumbled a hundred years ago.  The cause of this decline was many elves turning to darkness but this is not widely known.

[Marc R]

How would you divvy up the land among the authors. . .and how would you avoid or reconcile conflicts?

[David Johansen]

There are a handful of strongholds of civilization in a growing dark age.  Without the power of the elven empire's mostly human legions old enemies and threats are arising as are new ones.  These maintain a late medieval level of technology while the vast majority of the lands are limited to dark ages technology.

The north is home to a war like race of barbarians.  No surprises there.  There are spirits of cold and madness which seek to see the world frozen forever.  These beings occasionally possess warriors making them berserkers.  The barbarian gods are quarelsome and dour beings as harsh as the northern wastes.  (So more Conan, less Warhammer...)

The eastern continent is home to a rising human empire which is looking westward.  Merchant ships are often covers for spying and mercenaries from the east may be soldiers sent to infiltrate stabile kingdoms and eventually overthrow them.

The Western ocean is a forboding place of mad storms and deadly rocky reefs.  Dragons come from the west and it is said the realm of monsters lies beyond the ocean.

[David Johansen]

How would you divvy up the land among the authors. . .and how would you avoid or reconcile conflicts?

I'm thinking at least initially a mega hex per writer gives them each seven hexes to detail.  Probably go first come first serve for land grants though it's rumoured that back in the day the Traveller land grants were assigned by throwing darts.

But first and foremost the way to avoid conflicts is clarity on matters of tone, power level, and content from the beginning.

I'm afraid conflicts become the province of the editor.  They okay the proposal, review the draft document, and insist on changes.  I'm afraid if it came down to some kind of board the politics of it would be problematic.

[David Johansen]

To the south is a continent of jungles, deserts, and scattered ruins.  Tribes and primitive kingdoms abound as do lizardmen.  Here's I'm thinking the Lizardmen should be classic alligator headed types that like people as a light snack.  A bright new empire is rising in the south, forward thinking, rational, and brave.

Across the main continent, the orcs, long ghetoized and nearly extinct during the ages of the Elven empire are growing strong in a world better suited to their brutality.

In hidden fastnesses, Dark elven sorcerers are conjuring dark forces for their own mad ends.  Dealing with dragons and demons alike in their quest for ever increasing mystical power.  The thing a dark elf sorcer fears most is another dark elf sorcerer.

The dwarves and goblins find themselves strangely at peace in the new order.  Goblins and dwarves always got along better with each other than elves in any case and now there's room for both.  While they have imperial ambitions both races are leaning to building an economic power base.  How long they can go without starting to kill each other is anyone's guess.  At any rate, the only people who aren't uncomfortable with this strange alliance seems to be the dwarves and the goblins.

[David Johansen]

Tone And Scope

And now we come to the quick of it.  Over all, I believe this project would be best suited to a lower level, lower key campaign style.  There shouldn't be an overarching meta plot, just various smaller conflicts with a sense of greater dangers lurking in the background.  Small kingdoms to save from small dragons.  Plenty of room for player characters to make their place in the world and still have something new to see over the next hill.

Higher level areas exist but not in the sense of level appropriate zones.  The tower of a mad sorcer can be very high level, but it's localized.  And there are plenty of subtle signs in the area to discourage the foolhhardy.

While there are great powers of light and darkness these are very distant ideological forces and most people, even most monsters, demons, and gods, are just living.  Wars are fought for political and economic reasons rather than broad philosophical ideas.  The gods work through their earthly agents and tend to fight their own wars in their own extraplanar realms.  Most neighbouring tribes of gods intermarry and party as much as they make war.

Magic items are valuable and only the most minor trinkets are ever found for sale.  Magic shops are unheard of and certainly don't resemble a Walmart in any case.  Where a local alchemist has some questionable sword with a slight aura or the like, it will cost a fortune and be of poor quality at best.  You have to earn the good stuf.

[Old Man]

What might be kind of fun is if the hex or mega-hex areas developed by authors might be, to a degree, interchangeable. Like when you take a selection of tiles to build a dungeon map. You take a selection of countryside sections and build the continent of interest to you. Workable?

[David Johansen]

Well, I think there'd be an official map but modularity would be a major goal and making the megahexes geomorphic would be a good idea.  So you could easily line up rivers and mountain ranges when you reshuffle the map.

It might even be set up so map reshuffling happens.  Like The Great Juju in the old Kings and Things board game where you just pick up the tiles reshuffle and layout the map again.  Perhaps not so comically but I could totally see grey areas that bleed into each other and switch places through misty moors trackless deserts and the seas.

That might even be a neat framing for the whole thing.  Lost lands, maybe with the fall of the Elven empire geography itself has become a bit shakey.

[Chris Seal]

This sounds like an excellent idea,

Here's my attempt at something suitable, feel free to gut it as required.

To the North West there is an advanced culture, worshiping a seemingly benign deity, but rapidly conquering their neighbours in a ongoing crusade. Off the coast there is a large island chain, which is home to several distinct peoples, human, elves and halflings, each with their own culture. In the forests of the islands, elves, cut off from their homelands and becoming displaced by the upstart humans, fight a drawn out campaign against all invaders. Nomadic dwarves live further north amongst the polar ice-flows hunting whale and seals and trading in oil and furs.

Recently the advanced culture on the mainland has established itself on the largest island in the chain and has embarked on a campaign of religious and cultural indoctrination. Their foothold is tentative due to the difficulty in getting reinforcements and supplies from the mainland, but they are gaining ground.

Rough seas and dangerous coastlines limit trade to a few well established trade routes which are occasionally preyed on by pirates. Great underground passages, cut by a long lost civilisation provide alternative trade routes, but these too are often subjected to banditry.

Remnants of an ancient people dot the landscape in the form of great architectural works, crumbling under the weight of ages.

The general tone of the area is one of ongoing conflict and the struggle to maintain ones culture. Set against this ongoing struggle is the question of what happened to those who went before.

Magic is generated the motion of the elemental planes moving against each other.The elemental planes, in contact with each other and being dissimilar in nature began to move relative to each other and the “friction” between the planes generated the great sea of magic that powers all spell casting. Like an ocean, this sea of magic has currents and eddies such that some areas areas are rich in magic (earthnodes for example).

Anyhoo, hope something is useful.

Cheers
Chris

[David Johansen]

Yeah, that's the type of detail.  It might be a bit larger area per writer than I had in mind but then again, I've got no idea how many writers would be interested in staking a claim.

Good point about the magic needing an explanation though.  I hadn't put much thought into it.  There might even be multiple explanations from multiple schools of thought.  Yours certainly would appeal to mages.

[Chris Seal]

Heh, just wait and see what the mages think of the gods

In the beginning there were the six elemental lords:

Fire, earth, water, air, light (energy) and nether (entropy). Each carved out a portion of the multiverse as there own thus creating the elemental planes.

The elemental planes, in contact with each other and being dissimilar in nature began to move relative to each other and the “friction” between the planes generated the Ethereum Arcane, the great sea of magic that powers all spell casting.

The material plane coalesced as a result of fluctuations within the Ethereum Arcane and with its creation came the inevitable rise of intelligence, first drakes and their kin, then the lesser mortals.

The presence of intelligent thought imposes, to a greater or lesser degree, a pattern on the Ethereum Arcane, (essentially this is how spell casting works). With sufficient entities contemplating the same things (what is lightning for example), a permanent pattern is established and may develop sentience. Thus were created the gods.

The gods, once created are almost impossible to completely destroy as the pattern established within the Ethereum Arcane is a new “stable” state so to speak, and while it can be dissipated, it tends to re-establish itself given sufficient time.

Only through the channeling of truly vast quantities of nether can the pattern be sufficient perturbed for it to be fully dissipated. This is well beyond the ken of mortals.

Being entities of pure magic, the gods are able to manipulate the flows of the Ethereum Arcane at will and have influence anywhere where it is present.

As one leaves the material plane and heads out towards the elemental planes one enters a realm of increasing chaos. Strange creatures spontaneously appear and disappear within this realm. Some of these creatures have found ways of holding onto their existence by latching onto the patterns generated by the intelligent races of the material plane. These patterns are twisted by the chaos of their home realms and as a consequence such creatures tend to be unfriendly. Typically such creatures latch onto the ‘vices’ of the mortal races and, as they rely on such patterns for their very existence, work through mortal agents to encourage such thoughts. These are the various daemons and daemon lords.

Whilst they do not have the complete control over the Ethereum Arcane that the gods have, they do have a fair amount of power over the flows of magic and can channel such power to any mortal followers that they may have.

There is an advantage to having more followers. Think of a god as a standing wave in the fabric of reality. Each new follower increases the amplitude a little more, thus a god without followers exists, but only barely, to the point where they are on the brink of no longer being sentient.

[David Johansen]

My, you mages go to such great lengths to explain away simple things.

This world is a dream, an illusion, a fancy of the gods and if we serve them well, they will remember us and love us and hold us in a better, happier dream when we have proven ourselves.  Magic is our will disturbing their grand dream and while it can make amazing things happen it disturbs their pleasure in the dreaming and those who use it are soon forgotten.  Yet some are so foul that they cannot be forgotten and so are damned to eternal torment thus becoming demons.

So it is writen on the wall in the great temple and it could not be that such a great writing that cost so many lives and blood would be done for any foolish reason.

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

I am reading this thread. This has promise. Keep thinking and talking, please.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Chris Seal]

My, you mages go to such great lengths to explain away simple things.

Such, one could argue, is the nature of mages .

On the mainland, to the East of the great advanced empire is a collection of city states, yet to be swallowed up. Outwardly unified, the city states, ruled over by a number of Merchant princes, are in a constant state of flux. Borders change on a daily basis and subtle schemes are an expected part of day to day life. Invasion of these Merchant Principalities has proven difficult, as an invader is welcomed but is rapidly lost amongst the twists and turns of law and politics within these lands.

Guilds, professional, craft and trade, are an important part of society in all of these North Western lands and these guilds often imprint an indelible mark on their members to indicate their rank and belonging. Such marks include the mundane, such as tattooing (normally on a readily visible place, the cheeks of the face are popular), and less mundane, such as the magical sigils of various mage and metalist guilds.

Guilds provide a measure of protection for their members, a place to rest and free meals, providing the member is in good standing. Guild law is harsh, and impersonating a guild member is a particularly serious crime. Guilds also provide their members with a source of work with most guild houses having some sort of notice board listing currently unfulfilled contracts.

[Cory Magel]

On the "Products You'd Like To See" thread, I proposed an open generic fantasy setting in which writers could be assigned their own sections to detail.  Key to this would be ground rules to keep things on an even keel.  A setting bible so to speak.  So here's a broad notion.

I like the idea generally, but there can be some issues... I'll explain...

The universe is a perpeptual war between light and dark.  These overarching powers are occasionally personified in beings of light or darkness but are generally remote and inapproachable even for the gods.

This works because it is really the nature of most settings.  Good vs. Evil, it's "genric" enough.

There are many gods, with weaker ones being fairly local and greater ones having gathered power and spread their worship over larger areas.  Gods are a race of beings rather than personifications of principles.  They have specialties and interests but are not automatically good or evil any more than people are.  Nor are gods fueled by the faith of their worshipers, instead they gain political power in the world without violating treaties between various tribes of gods.

This, in my opinion, is becoming too specific to be broad.  The part about the gods being a race of beings.  For example, it has major implications for Channeling Magic.  How does it work if the gods are not fueled by the faith of their worshipers?  Does all Channeling Magic come from a "Sphere" that ebbs and flows with the strength of that idea in the world?

The origins of the various races is lost to history and hotly debated.  It remains a mystery and nobody gets to do orcs descended from elves stories.

This works, but you need to be careful to make a rule that no one determines how it actually happened in their particular world.  They can have their version of a theory that their population believes.

The main setting area is a continental landmass in the northern hemisphere.  There are three close neighbouring continents with some land bridges and a vast ocean to the east.

I think far more land masses need to be present, many separated from each other completely.  In this way you can have a base setting overall, sections that can later be written in with 'official' material, and still have land masses that fans of the system can fill in with their own material.

The great elven empire began to fall a thousand years ago and the final pocket crumbled a hundred years ago.  The cause of this decline was many elves turning to darkness but this is not widely known.

If you're talking about your part the world it works, but if you're talking the entire world it's too specific again.

Basically I think you just need to come up with how the world itself works - not the races within it.  What are the physics of the world?  How did the races evolve to their beginnings?  Where they went from there could be individual to each portion of the world.

I think the most specific you'd want to get is where does magical power originate from?  Mentalism you can explain as developed by a race itself somehow.  So long as the base mechanics of it as the same you can explain away how each race figured it out differently.  Channeling would be something collective created by worship... but is it worship that powers a deity that then provides the power to the upper end of followers, or is it worship of an idea that only some people can then draw upon?  Essence is the one that sort of has to be more set.  It, most likely, needs to be a power already present in the world that is being tapped into.  Akin to the magnetic field around the world, or the elements, or life itself.

[GrumpyOldFart]

I've been doing something sort of along the lines of what you're describing here, but I used HARP as the base system and Earth as the world.

http://www.realroleplaying.com/rmsmf/index.php?board=327.0

And yes, I've found many of the arguments made above to be unavoidable.

[RandalThor]

The great elven empire began to fall a thousand years ago....

How about, instead of elves (over done), it was an empire of dwarves that ruled the lands from their mountain and hill strongholds, through the might of their technology. The dwarves were manufacturing steel equipment when everyone else was still using copper or just beginning to use iron. They could also maybe have (or had) early steam engines. (I find it hard to believe that elven skirmishers with their bows would be much of a match for heavily armored dwarven troops - especially when those troops could keep discipline.) Also, the dwarves, being the miners of the world, had access to the natural materials needed by the others, so they were (and still are, to a degree) able to hold that over the other races.

To me, it seems as though a race more attuned to building and construction*, would be more likely to be the ones to put together a large empire.


*Plus, they have an SD bonus, whereas elves with their negative SD mod are unlikely to be disciplined enough to put up with a very structured/ordered society. I think elves should be portrayed more like vikings in culture, clannish, but not prone to putting together a larger nation (unless they have to).

[Marc R]

To offer a few thoughts that might help.

Any "Mega Hex" will have 6 sides.

1) The absolute easiest way to handle it would be to say that all borders must be ocean. . .of course, you'd then end up with an island or micro continent world, but you'd then have no problems with borders, and the tiles would all fit together in both official and any other configuration.

2) The second way to do it would be to establish the first mega hex, with established terrain, then as each additional person comes in, make them take a hex that borders an already established hex. . .which would determine (or at least affect) the terrain in the two adjoining hexes. . . .of course, as you went on, you'd start getting hexes where it has 3, 4, 5 or even 6 hexes bordering established hexes. . .some authors might object to being handed a hex in which they are only truely "free" in just two or even just the center hex due to being in a surrounded hex. . .those might end up being hexes the editor takes over to "fill in". . .which might also give the project a bit more overall tone associated with the core editor, who approves author hexes, but also fills in those less desirable surrounded hexes. Likely the editor would also fill in the "Open ocean" hexes, unless a 7 hex chunk of open water covers an undersea civilization an author wanted to do.

3) The most complex would be starting off multiple editorial starting hexes, or even just having the initial author's hexes start it off .  .very far apart. . . .so that completely different areas expand out. . .only to merge together much later when the hexes expand out to each other and touch.

[David Johansen]

Well, I basically wanted a reason for there to be a wide spread dark age and small kingdoms rather than large ones.  Fallen elven empires are a pretty generic fantasy trope.  The current growing goblin / dwarf trade alliance is the closest thing to an empire on the main continent at present.

Giving people an island or continent in a world with many continents seems to defeat the purpose to me.  At that point one can just have the writers make their maps fit this hex and let people paste them together however they want.  I want there to be interaction between people's creations because that's what would make an interesting project.  Admittedly it also creates many problems.

I wanted to define the nature of gods to a lower key approach to reduce their impact on the world.  I'd much rather have the player characters making their own mark in the world than endlessly fighting the wars of the gods or have divine matters writ small upon the world.  I would say that the divine realms are not directly geographically adjacent to the physical world and that a priest's faith is sufficient to draw power from their god wherever they are and leave it at that.

The problem is to create a unified setting that is broad enough to allow creativity while still having a unique character that makes it interesting to read and gives the various areas some thematic consistancy.  Think of it in terms of a shared world anthology like Thieves World.

I was thinking that requiring a one megahex separation of creator controlled zones might overcome some issues.  But I really would like some collaborative things like warring kingdoms by different creators.

I've always intended that the core map be defined before land grants are made.  The objective is a consistant world with many creators, not a disparate set of creations that are nominally in a single mileux.

[rdanhenry]

Where does the power for Channeling come from? From the gods. Where do the gods get there power? From themselves. That what makes them gods. The "powered-by-their-worshipers" trope is an RPG and modern fantasy cliche, but it is hardly generic. A race of gods, with innate powers far greater than those of mortals, is a far better fit for real mythologies and therefore deserves to be considered "generic" if anything does.