This is a copy of the e-mail I just sent out this weekend for my players who will be starting up in the weekend campaign at the end of the month. A couple of player have played RM2 before, 2 players who are brand new, and my daughter show's familiar with the gaming world. I'm adding some Shadow World elements into the system we've been using since college so I decided to name the gaming planet "Kulthea" to give it more ties to Shadow World. The only magic that is allowed in the game system is from Elemental Companion. This was done for several reasons decades ago and it's what we've always stuck with. Lately, I've decided to allow Alchemy Companion as well.
The World of Kulthea.
The planet:
The world is flat, mostly because no one has been able to prove otherwise. There are monsters out there that are still being discovered but there is very little knowledge of those monsters because the discoverers are usually caught by surprise and eaten by those same monsters. The physical world itself is mostly water but there are plentiful continental landmasses and even more islands and smaller landmasses. The temperatures are colder at the poles, hotter along the equator, and all myriads of weather are abundant.
Society:
The peoples of Kulthea run the full gamut of tribal nomads to educated scholars, from collections of tents and cave dwellers to wonderful cities rising up two or three stories high. In some greater cities, the buildings can have as many as five stories! This is the Age of Enlightenment. In the larger more cosmopolitan cities, races intermingle mostly without a second thought. There are of course always those members of society who, by virtue of being less enlightened, still harbor silly prejudices. Humans, Elves, and Dwarfs make up the majority of the races. Trolls, Half Trolls, Half Orcs, Halflings, and even the very occasional Half Ogre are at the very least, tolerated in society. Gnomes and Gnolls, Faeries and Pixies, and various other creatures are seen around frequently enough. With enlightenment came the understanding and desire to learn more of the world rather than to kill that which was once unknown and therefore feared.
Magic:
Gone are the silly superstitions and tales of wonder. Science (or what passes for science) is the new norm. Universities, scholars, and knowledge seekers are coming to their own status levels. What passed for magic is easily explained away by science. The magic potion that cured the vomiting child was really an herbal tea that had a calming effect on the stomach nerves. The paralysis curse from the old hag in the tent was simply the slime from a brightly colored frog that was smeared on the tankard of ale you drank. The mind control from the voodoo shaman was nothing more than hypnosis.
Religion:
“There are as many religions as there are people on Kulthea.” – Author unknown
With the Age of Enlightenment came the thirst and desire for more knowledge. This shift from the mystical and superstitious to the known and quantifiable led to the downfall to major organized religions. What were once miracles were explained away by science. Cults and sects are the best any god can hope for in the face of science and it is decreasingly less common to see major religious edifices.
Cutting edge:
The newest hot topic is the discovery of Elementalism, followed closely by Alchemy. The advent of Elementalism happened some decades ago when “magic” was all the rage. As science unraveled the mysteries of what really made magic, it uncovered the existence of “raw elements.” These raw elements are what makes fire a fire. There is fire that is created by the proper mixture of temperature, fuel, air, and chemical reaction, but there is also the raw element of fire that doesn’t need any of those physical components to exist. Even here, as with religion, there are differing schools of thought. The Classical Elemental Theorists gave birth to the Golden Age of Elementalism, which in turn gave birth to the Enlightenment Elemental Theorists but those ideologies are considered ancient by today’s standards. There are two up-and-coming schools of thought that have very sound research and backing by a great number of followers, the Tri-Elementalist School and the Opposite Elemental School. Many fervent debates have come up over the differences between the two schools, with some debates ending up in the local tanty, infirmary, or the morgue.
Undead happen:
It seems that only in this area do Religion and Science come to some sort of mutual agreement; undead happen. Even if the underlying reason why is still hotly debated, both factions see undead as another form of life or the continued extension of Life. The life force of the being that was killed was so strong it still inhabits the physical body. In the case of pure spirits, the physical body finally eroded and the Spirit essense is still mobile. The Elementalists have even thrown their hat into the ring on this topic and go as far as to suggest that Spirit is also an Element that can be manipulated. The notion that the person or being was “evil” in life or somehow “cursed” to walk the living realm in undeath is considered absurd and is the stuff of nursemaids and mothers to scare their children towards a desired behavior.