Sorry about the late reply here....had some out of town things to do, and for the last couple of days have been working out the details for an online game over at real roleplaying (cheers!).
MDC said, " IMO you can start fro scratch and create your own races if you have RMFRP GM Law or RMSS Talent Law. IMO this can be very rewording as it is all your own and you can have specific talent and flaws to fit your game world and its unique environment.
It sort of sounds like Shadow World a little bit to me but SW has a lot of fantasy races and your world does not."
I think this is a great idea, and one that I would really love to explore. I like the idea of having 'races' that correspond with the world itself. My initial thoughts for the humans is to have each nation as it's own 'race', with only slight variations as they are all humans. I am thinking, looking over GM law, to look at the various point builds of the 'mixed men' races, and use those as a base. I.E., averaging the race costs of those races, and using that somewhat as a boundary or guideline, with nation specific tweaks for each race. I'm right there with you on this one, Mark....we are definitely on the same page. It will also teach me a bit about RM I hope
Also, I really appreciate your pointers on which books to get....that is always helpful and thank you! Initially, I bought a value pack from I.C.E., and then a couple of individual books, so the only book I have that is not RMFRP is the castle one (rmss of course). I will definitely look into the '95 version of arms law! I also have school of hard knocks and really love this book so far. I love skill-oriented RPG's personally, and I think even if I intend to play another system later on I'll still use this book. Doubt I'll need to, RM will most likely be my flagship system from now on. I am VERY interested in getting the various 'companion' books relating to magic, but that will take time as I have some financial responsibilities that keep that from happening now. But, I just want you to know, your expertise is appreciated very much, Mark.
Arioch said, "My 2 cents:
- start small: once you've decided more or less how the setting will be (basically what you've done until now) pick a small area that inspires you, detail it a little more and start playing. You'll fill additional details on other regions as you play. Writing everything before is a huge task, and it's very easy to get lost in the details before the end.
- involve the players: if someone is playing a member of a particular or uncommun culture/profession, make him flesh it out for you. If the PCs are exploring the ancient ruins of a lost civilization and a character has many ranks in that culture Lore, ask the player controlling him how the pillars of the temple are designed, what's the name of the god represented in that sculpture, etc... This makes the players feel more "at home" within your setting and makes you feel as if you were exploring it together with them."
First, I have to make it clear that I am not shrugging off your advice because this is VERY sound advice. My only inability to make good use of it, is that I have no players or a group to game in at the time, so I figured I would engage myself in this project in the meantime. Otherwise, this is very much the way I would proceed, and have done in the past for sure, as it takes alot of the initial GMing pressures off so you can get the ball rolling as it were.
"You'll fill additional details on other regions as you play. Writing everything before is a huge task, and it's very easy to get lost in the details before the end."
Absolutely! For the first part, I'm trying something a bit new for me at least, as in the past I have tried to 'fill' the land mass of my world with nations, place names, etc....leaving no room whatsoever for expansion (my older worlds were alot smaller, this wasn't terrible hard due to the scale of it all). This time, I am purposely leaving around 40% of the total land area undeveloped (that number is just a guess, what I did was place the general locations of the various peoples, and left some areas completely alone, even areas that make sense that people would have settled there). My idea is really just to leave it open for some of the reasons that you have allready brought up, and maybe even to open up places to introduce ruins of older nations who do not exist any longer, or allow players (when I find a group) to grow to be able to generate their own 'nations' if they would choose to do so. But, it IS a huge task, and getting lost in the details is well, lets say that its holding me back a bit right now haha, and I'm happy I have an online game opportunity to break some of the GM's block as it were. Hopefully, as you have suggested, once I get some players, they will also have character ideas that will actually fill in some of that free space with other ideas of culture and race that they introduce, as you say. All in all, I appreciate your advice...and thank you for your time in reading my post.
Happy gaming everyone, I'll update what I'm doing here just for fun as I have opportunity. I hope all of you are having movie-quality roleplaying sessions and are in good health.
Merctime