Musing: Fae

I never liked the idea of Fae was happy cute critters that prance around the forest and play tricks on you and giggle. Maybe it's because overly cute things make me want to kill a puppy just to even up the world or maybe because as a DM, I don't want to play a cute high pitched thing. I may come across as elitist, but I like to run games that aren't overthetop goofy and stupid. There will be humor, of course, the object is to have fun, but, in the end, I try to tell tales that are on par with epic novels, not absurdest humor.
So Fae in Deminar, like most things, are a bit different. For me, I wanted to bring the fae back to their more medieval roots, where they were aloof, mysterious, and oft times very powerful. I mixed that with a bit of the Changeling: The Lost vibe from nWoD, to get the idea of fae I now have.
The Fae come from their own plane, but many are trapped here because they were visiting when the world shattered and were cut off from their home plane, others like it here, despite it's differences from home, there's new things to explore and play with. Others are only here visiting, but shall soon return to the plane they call home. The plane in which the Fae come from is a vibrant natural world, however it's very morphic, things don't stay the same for very long and the Fae are the untold masters of this plane, they rose to intelligence amongst the chaos, and many can control it.
The Fae are alien in thought, they don't think like the other intelligent species on Deminar do, nor do they hold onto the morality. They are used to everything around them being their playthings, and they take that mentality into the floating lands with them. An area with a fae in it will start to show signs of it's influence. Places begin to warp and look out of place, two animals may have been crudely stitched together and survive, in pain, by magic. Fae seeing the "friendly species" in its lands may leave them alone, may kill them swiftly, or may torment them with magic, trickery, and invading their dreams. A Fae will gut another intelligent species and feel the same remorse that we do when we rip a leaf off a tree. They'll keep a creature alive as they flay off their skin just as readily as they'll take a creature as a sexual conquest. It's not that they're malicious and mean, it's just they don't think in absolute terms like we do and that makes them far worse.

One last thing, while the standard Fae creatures that are iconic to LL will be present, Dryads, Sprites, and the like, they'll not look the part.

Where as the standard D&D fae may look like this:




The ones on Denimar look more like this:






With much thanks and respect to Gullermo del Toro's twisted mind...

On: A Little Reality in a Fantasy Setting

A Little Reality in a Fantasy Setting

It was a tag line we used in our first attempt at our setting and it's something we look to carry forward into this one. But, isn't that an oxymoron of a statement? How can you have reality in a fantasy setting? We have flying islands, airships that run on magic rock, people casting spells, demons, devils, the works, what is real about that?

Well it certainly doesn't mean we're basing everyone only on what occurs in real life, after all, where's the fun in that? And we've already established there are plenty of nonreality things happening. So what does that silly tag mean?

Well, Sean and I are very inquisitive by nature, you lay something down in front of us and our first questions are why is it there and what does it do? And that's something we want to carry into the game.

Everything will make sense, everything will have a place, everything will have a reason. When we choose a monster to use, we'll know why it developed the way it did, what it eats, how it mates, what's its place in the ecological ladder. We'll figure out exactly what a MU is doing when he's casting magic, what magic is, how the manipulate it. We'll know know why clerics can turn the undead, what that means in the setting. We'll know how magic items are made, why they retain their magical properties, etc. etc. Making a world work is extremely important to us.

Now, will we explain all this? Eventually, it won't all make it into the first book, or parts will be, with parts to be expanded later, but it will be out there and we'll know why long ahead of time, so going forward, things will fall into place more easily.

How does this effect the game? It actually doesn't, mechanically. If you don't care about the "whys" and want to just run our dungeons and setting cause it looks cool, so be it. Not opting to explain or read the background won't hurt the experience, but for people who dig flavor, it certainly will enhance it. If you're someone who's into the nuts and bolts of delving and killing and looting, this setting will work for you, if you're someone who's into the nuts and bolts of how the world works in a narrative sense, this setting will work for you.

We aim to please!

On: Dark and Gritty

I think Deminar is going to be a dark and gritty setting when all is said and done. Now, saying those words immediately sets about all sorts of images and ideas in someone's mind and usually all are different from the rest, so here's my take on the term.

Even with advances in magic and technology, the people on the floating isles worry about survival first and foremost. Much of the air around them is unexplored, home to pirates and monsters unknown. Raids are frequent, they're cut off from allies by miles of air, the only reason they're alive is because their ancestors were lucky enough to be on a chunk of land that rose above the devastation on the surface. Death is indeed always around the corner, to survive that, people have to become tough.

Now this doesn't mean that it's a humorless setting, that you shouldn't make PCs that can have a good time or that everyone in town looks at the ground and never smiles. It's just that there's not a lot of "light" in the setting. There are no sparkling elven towers that seem to glow on their own, for every knight, armor polished, protecting the weak, there are hundreds of orcs waiting to devour the weak. The streets are dirty, full of soot and ash, smoke is heavy in the air in the more technologically advanced places, some islands have never seen magic and would burn you at the stake if you did so in front of them.

It's like the world of Warhammer without some of the humor or even the "Points of Light" that D&D 4E is claiming to follow, without some of the more fantastical elements.

Now, some would argue this isn't a good fit for Labyrinth Lord and its AEC. After all, it, and it's spiritual parents B/X and 1st Ed AD&D regularly cared a sense of whimsy, humor and lightheartedness. From the artwork, to some of the more memorable NPCs to even many of the monsters and their design both artistically and mechanically. However, I'd argue quite the opposite, LL is a wonderful fit for the more Sword and Sorcery gritty setting. Characters are not superheroes, magic is very scarce (look at the spells and magic items compared to later editions of D&D), death for the heroes could be around any corner, and often times, they can't just waltz into town and pick up new "ubermagicweapon 5000," instead they must pry it off the cold dead hands of some monstrous being that was threatening to unless unspeakable horrors on that very town. Rules systems are just a tool to help tell a story, I could use something at high end as Exalted and still write a dark and gritty story around it and even reflect it inside the rules, but sometimes it helps to have a system to support it. And a system where the average magic user maxes out at 4hp and regularly goes up against things that average that amount of damage in one hit definitely supports the feel I'm going for.

Now I'll note that I love the whimsy that shows up in the "old school" D&D, the weirder monsters and places and that classic artwork, it's just not what I write best and indeed, if we were ever lucky enough to be graced with artwork, it would feature a much different style then what's typical in the OSR product that's coming out now that pays homage to the original.

Will that turn off some people that play with these rule systems? Absolutely, but it will also be something different and that has a chance to attract both brand new people and those willing to look beyond the "need to preserve the integrity of the game."

And I'm mostly writing it for myself anyway, so what does it matter how it's received?

Musing: Airships Part Deux, Identify That Airship!

Gnomes airships are often over done, with a variety of embellishments and overly complicated steering mechanisms, proposal systems, and weapons. Gnomes like making something just to see if it's possible, not always because it's needed (like the Japanese or Electronic Nerds) and this carries over to their airships. They're more likely to use nontraditional materials and sometimes makes hulls out of things other then floating rock. Some places even make gnome airships dock separately from the main docks to do less damage when they inevitably explode. Gnomes are also the leading manufacturer of airships and make many conventional models to sell to others.

Humans and Lizardfolk tend to contract their airship construction out to the gnomes, but that is not always the case. Both these species make more practical airships, though both portray ascetics pleasing to their species.

The other "friendly" species don't normally construct airships, dwarves are busy securing their lands, halflings would never build such crazy technological things, kobolds try and rarely succeed, but more often it ends in disaster. Minotaurs may open a airship construction facility or be part of a group that constructs them, but none of their identity comes through due to no large species presence.

Of the "monster" species, only the gnolls will receive mention now, many live on airships, using them as the ultimate raiding vehicles, and indeed, the very vehicles are raided themselves. Gnolls do not build their own airships, they take them, and many are in desperate need of repair, barely holding together with no attempt to fix them. Gnolls don't bother with such things, they run it till it breaks then take another to ruin, after all, they didn't put any work into making it in the first place.

Musing: Species Part V: Give the Bad Guys Some Love

The good guys weren't the only ones we went over when we set about looking over the intelligent species, our minds started coming up with all sorts of fun we could have with some of the less friendly species as well.

Below are a small smattering of some of the "monster species" found in Deminar, these are not necessarily going to show up in our first sandbox, nor are they the only ones we discussed, just a preview:

Ogres: Ogres don't usually amass in large numbers (if they do, something big is about to happen), instead sticking to smaller family groups to try to cut back on power struggles, inter-species assassinations, and running out of food in their settled area (Ogres eat a lot). Unlike Halflings, who, while similarly living in smaller tight knit communities, send members of their tribe out into the world to both settle new lands and spread out genetically, Ogres are content to stay in their family groups forever. The result is a degenerate group of incestuous inbreeders, spawning no shortage of physical deformities and keeping the species mentally stunted. Ogres are content to take what they want from lesser species (in their minds, everyone else) and killing them is much like us killing a spider we see on the wall in our home, we wouldn't think twice about it and feel no remorse afterwards, the only difference is, while only some of us take perverted delight in squashing a spider, nearly all ogres take the same delight in killing other intelligents.

Goblins: Goblins were, at one time, on the list of playable species, but as they developed they fell off the list due to their highly regimented and caste built society. Also, they're ruthless and don't play well with others. Goblins live underground, much like the dwarves and the two are constantly fighting. Goblin society is very rigid, with every goblin born into a specific caste and there that goblin will stay its whole life. While there is no hope for movement out of one's caste, there is a ruthless desire to move to the top of a specific caste and goblins will stop at nothing to reach that top. Death is all too frequent to goblins, from enemy hands and from within, but luckily they breed quickly and plentifully, meaning the species is never in dwindling numbers. While many species develop as separate races depending on the environment they exist in, goblins have species developed based on their caste. Hobgoblins, Bugbears, and other goblinoid creatures are not separate species on Deminar, but instead, caste specific racial offshoots, built from generations of breeding certain traits (Bugbears, for example, are bred within the assassination caste of the goblins). Sean has grown particularly attached to this species and could probably fill you in on all kinds of details.

Gnolls: Gnolls are parasites among the intelligent races, they have developed no technology of their own, they do not manufacture goods, nor work in any way to provide for their people. Instead, gnolls scavenge, raid, and take from others (including each other) never settling in one place for too long. They often arrive on stole airships at night, raiding a community, cackling madly as they do and running off before a sizable defense can be mounted. They are cowardly and feel no shame in running if it means they'll live to fight again. They have no sense of fiar fights, morality, or honor like other intelligent species develop. They are a sickly, dirty, lot, barely caring for themselves and certainly not for others. They never mend wounds or equipment, they are often covered in scars and infections while the gear they use is rusted and breaking. Gnolls have quickly become my favorite monster species on Deminar, and much like Sean with his goblins, I have plenty of ideas about these mangy creatures.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well this picture, crafted by velinov at deviantArt sums up a lot about the look and feel of gnolls in Deminar.

Musing: Species Part IV: Tell me about the Friendlies

So I went ahead and mentioned what we chose as our "friendly" species, in other words what are offered as PC species.

Seeing as I'm going to be talking about these species a lot in the upcoming sandbox design, I thought I'd just down a few basic notes about each one, for both the readers benefit and mine.

Human: Okay, I start off by lying, as humans are no different then they are anywhere else you've seen them. Of course I talked about the need to have the standard human species previously, so this should come as little surprise.

Dwarf: Dwarves have some similarity to the standard ideal of the dwarf (standard in fantasy RPGs anyway), they live underground, they're fond of mining, gems, and metalwork. However, dwarves in our setting have known little but ongoing conflict for generations. They are constantly fighting for what little underground space is left against the goblins and the goblins show little to no sign of slowing down. Their love for mining and metalwork comes for in the way of making superior weapons rather then great works of art. They are much more militant and coldhearted then they are often portrayed elsewhere. Dwarves are more prized for their ability to fight then their metalwork in Deminar, though they do still share a fondness for alcohol, after all, when all you've known is fighting all your life, wouldn't you turn to drinking. Many dwarves found out in the world not defending their homeland would be seen as cowards and heretics were they to travel to a dwarf hold, so many dwarven adventures have a strong reason for leaving home and would rather not return to any dwarven holdings.

Gnomes: Gnomes are a very eccentric bunch in Deminar, they have embraced the move forward to steampunk more so then any other species. They seemingly have no home island as a species and are instead found integrated amongst only the largest and most advanced friendly settlements as well as prowling the airways in massive airships, many powered in unusual and often dangerous ways. Gnomes are much akin to gypsies, albeit gypsies with a penchant for inventing all kinds of things, whether they're useful or not. Gnome adventurers are quite common, many travel place to place to sell, build, and try out new inventions, others wish to plunder old ruins to see what technology is hidden away, and still others adventure because they've been kicked out of just about every civilized place for one explosion or another.

Halflings: Halflings, as we've visioned them, have been around since the earliest incarnations of Deminar. Halflings can be divided into two camps, the "Ferals" who are everything the Roman's used to claim the "barbarian hordes" were, savage killers, masters of ambush hunting, know to pillage a settlement when in need of something, etc. These are usually not the ones used as player characters. Then there are the more civilized Halflings, but that's only saying that in comparison to their feral cousins. These halflings still tend to shun the settlements and technological advances of other species, but occasionally they are found within more mixed settlements. Halflings normally are found in places far from settled lands, living in tribes in hidden valleys between mountains, deep in untamed woods, or on lost islands away from most others. They live mostly off the land, hunter/gatherers, but are would not be considered primitive in mindset. They don't use technology not because they don't know how, but because they shun it, for reasons they will not tell any nonhalfling. On occasion one can spot effigies of more advanced machinery and sometimes halflings go through rituals that emulate what would be considered modern practices, like eating around a table in traditional human noble ways or simulating forging metal weapons using wooden replicas. They claim they do this "to remember," but that raises more questions then answers. Many halflings leave their communities to explore the world, sometimes to report back to their homes, others to seek out new places to settle or to disperse their genes among other halfling communities. These explorations can sometimes last for years and these are the halflings many see in other lands or among adventuring parties.

Kobolds: Kobolds are another hold over from our original design. Kobolds are like the rats among the intelligent species. They are everywhere and seemingly have no place of their own. Anywhere that is settled by the friendly species, there are kobolds, (except for the Halfling communities) from small human hamlets to dwarven clanholds, to lizardfolk settlements. Kobolds have three distinct qualities about them. One, they insatiably curious. Two, though they don't form their own communities, they are very protective of one another, if they feel their species as a whole is being threatened, they will move quickly to eliminate that threat, often time with numbers into the thousands coming from seemingly nowhere. This is why most communities don't flush out the kobolds that live among them. finally, they desperately want to be accepted by those they live among. This means they'll seek to emulate the clothing, mannerisms, and speech of where they live as well as collect anything discarded by others. They often take jobs withing a town that no one else wants, like garbage disposal, rat catcher, or gravedigger, and they do it with pride, knowing they're part of the whole. This is the other reason most communities keep them around. Obviously many kobolds become adventurers to satiate their curiosity and because adventurers tend to bond strongly with each other giving the kobold acceptance.
And as Sean so kindly reminded me to inform people, they're dog based creatures, not dragons or lizards dammit, how they should be, thanks Sean!

Lizardfolk: Lizardfolk are a chance to do offer something different, yet similar at the same time. LIzardfolk have vastly different customs, tastes (in food, entertainment, clothing, etc), gods, and even language yet they have been on friendly terms with humans for as long as either species can remember. They are integrated with each other, but separated, they tend to live segregated from each other when they share a settlement (by nature, not by force), much the way racial groups of humans do in cities in the real world. There are those close minded folk on both side of the species that hold prejudice against the other, but all in all they are communal allies. It's as close to demonstrating natural racial separation and integration on a species scale in a fantasy game.

Minotaurs: Minotaurs are interesting because they don't seem to have settlements of their own and while they can be found in just about any settled area, they never seem to congregate with one another. They are the lone bodyguard for a minor noble, the merchant offering rare herbs, and the figure you see disappear down the dark alley. Minotaurs are often found on airships in a variety of roles, yet there don't seem to be airships consisting of just minotaurs, like the gnomes. Occasionally a minotaur will join an adventuring group and make a loyal and strong team member.

So there are some basics about the PC races, just so you understand their placements in the sandbox going forward.

Building a Fantasy Sandbox: Steps 11 & 13 - Step 12 TBAL

There's only a few more steps for the actual mapping to do, so let's move along, shall we:

11. Decide to place Population Locales note their race (species!) this includes social monsters

Okay, well time to place where folks live it seems!

We knew from the outset we were going to have a city set along the edge of the "bay" of the large island. This would be the central place in which everything else was built around. Here airships would come and go, it would be the most technologically advanced and be most likely to have a mixed population. So, city goes there. The two floating rocks along the edge of the "bay" each get a tower to be used as a defense structure against attacks from pirates, other nations, etc.

So, city, mostly human, with good chunks of gnome, lizardfolk, and kobold populations as well. The active airship port means that all the friendly species could be encountered here and you'd see the occasional halfling, minotaur, and dwarf, but none hold enough of a population to be considered part of the community.

South of the large island was clear away for farm lands, but a few communities would have arisen as well. We plop down a village as sort of a communal center for those not into the bustle of the big city, and a few hamlets, particularity two along the wooded edge to act as logging towns. Again, these places would be mostly human with a smattering of kobold, the gnomes wouldn't set up permanent shop in any of these low tech places, and the remaining species may or may not have enough of a population here to note.

These are all connected by a well maintained roadway that meets in the center of the farmlands. A keep sits at this crossroads, a place that can be used as refuge by the noncity folk in case of disaster (both monstrous and natural) as well as a place where the watch that patrols the farmlands and roads stay.

Next, there's a town set up on the southern island, along the shores of the vast lake that comes off the mountain. Enjoy good fishing, mostly because of the lake's nature (to be discussed later) Undecided if they have always been there or were built up from people coming off the larger island when they realized there was a water source there (and the reasons for not having a settlement by the water source on the larger island has to do with something nasty living around there. Perhaps the heroes can cleanse that area so construction can begin... ah, but I get ahead of myself). Like most of the other settlements it's human centric.

Finally, there's a small dot on one of those hills in the northern left isle, where most of the water meets. This denotes entrance to a dwarven settlement, one that's in the middle of heavy warfare against the goblinoids over the tiny amount of space they have. Both feel that the island belong to them and refuse to move to the spacious mountains on the other islands (could you image how long it would take to carve out a new home?!).



13. Decide to place Ruins (locales that revolves around a site)

Ruins were dropped wherever I thought it would be fun. The weird looking structure on the desert island shows just how different the culture that existed (or still exists????) in the area where it originally came from is. The ruins nestled in the mountain range near the active volcano shows that the volcano couldn't have always been active, and finally the lone ruined keep on the very untamed wilderness of the other northern island is just waiting for someone to find out why it's there.

You'll see that I skipped one of our steps:
12. Decide to place Lairs (locales tht revolves around a home of monsters)

That's because I did most of the town/ruin drops on my own and wanted Sean to have some fun input on this step. After all, this leads writing into writing all the hooks revolving around this place and I wouldn't want to take all the fun. So, Sean will pick a few spots and stick nasty creatures into them and get back to me. At which time, I'll put it up here.

On: Monster Books

I love a good Bestiary (hell I even love mediocre ones) and not just because they give me a whole new group of things to kill players with (that's just one of the reasons).

I love monster books because it lets you begin to watch a world be built. Before the required several hundred page hardback or box set campaign setting became the normal, all you had were the rule book, various adventures, and the monster book. Much like elements of a rule system does, the monster book tied into a set of rules begins to flesh out the world. Certain monsters exist in certain places and tend to do certain things. Each monster gives you a glimpse at the greater whole as the names of different planes are mentioned, things being made as magical hybrids are called, the mention of certain dark gods that a creature is mentioned as to worshiping. You suddenly see a world coming together.

The 2nd Edition AD&D monster compendium books/folios/3-hole punched sheets were some of my favorites. They went beyond stats and a paragraph, here the idea of monsters fitting in the world peaked (in my opinion anyway). Monsters received notes on ecology, habitat, society if intelligent, there place in the world, I used to read them constantly, even when not running a 2nd edition game (an indeed, my stint as a DM of 2nd Ed. AD&D was quite short lived).

As a world builder, the most fun I have with monsters is figuring out the how's and why's of their existence. Using the 2nd Ed. Compendiums as an example, I love to figure out what a monster does when it's not waiting to be killed, where it came from, and why it chooses to do anything. Especially with our design philosophy of having things "make sense," you can't just drop a giant brain with lion legs into the world unless you figure out what niche that creature occupies.

While Sean and I were going through a variety of species to determine which ones wouldn't kill the humans on sight, we came up with some very cool ideas for many of the "monstrous" species. And while we'll continue to be making Deminar one sandbox at a time (and probably each will be wrapped up in a pretty .pdf when done), the idea of a good old fashioned bestiary will always be in the back of my mind.

Musing: Species Part III - Who Will YOU Choose?

The current line up for Playable Species:
Humans
Dwarves
Gnome
Halfling
Kobold
Lizardfolk
Minotaur

Though not all will show up in our first sandbox.
As for intelligent species that aren't playable, can't give out all our secrets yet.

Musing: Cleric Spells

So while I just mentioned that part of LL rules system is that all clerics have the same spells, and while the most current version of D&D comes close to that (saved by feats that give access to special prayers based on the god you pick), most fantasy systems usually give each cleric some difference depending on the god they follow.

So, the thought just popped into my head, do we add a new rules system that give clerics something extra based on their worship? And if not, how do you explain, in universe, why all clerics have access to the same spells, regardless of the deity they swear fealty too.

Hmmm, something to ponder

On: Rules System: Why Labyrinth Lord, Why Any Rules?

When you go about making a setting, usually you have a rules system in mind when making it, often one you're currently playing. And while this is partially the case for the remake of Deminar, it's quite a simple question to ask, "Why build the setting for any one rules system at all?"

While making it for a specific rules set means it's easy for a group using that system to just pick up the product and use it, you could potentially reach a wider audience with no rules in place at all. After all, we could easily populate the map, point out towns and say "Mostly humans live here, along with some elves (we're not using elves, but stay with me)," and let people take their favorite fantasy rules system, and put humans and elves stats there no problem. We can say "there are goblin tribes in those hills," and you can easily find goblin stats (of probably equivalent challenge across multiple systems) in every fantasy game.

So why choose a system? Well, for me, I think a rule system is actually the first step in setting the tone of setting. Hiding in every rules set is a sense of how the "default setting" works, even if the rules have no Proper Names anywhere in it. There's an implication on how things work within the very rules themselves.

If we were to design this for 4th Edition, there's a huge feel of the setting that changes, 4th edition has characters on par with superheroes, wizards can cast magic as often as they want, and there is a huge variety of PC species to choose from that all live and work together. LL and it's roots in B/X are quite different, characters require a lot of adventuring before they rise up to superhero level, all clerics have the same spells, magic is rare and it is hard to cast more then a few at a time. There are comparatively fewer races and they don't all mesh together in the same town.

While our setting could work in 4th edition, or indeed any fantasy game, the gritty low magic undercurrents that we want to establish, the large vast dangerous sky the separates nations, these things work best with LL. So the question becomes, did we start to build the setting this way because of LL or did LL come along and fit so nicely into how we want to build our setting?

Musing: Species Pt. 2 or Why the Humans Must Prevail

So can you make a fantasy world without fantasy staples?
Yes, I think so, with one small "but" edged in there.

I for one don't really think I want elves or dwarves in Deminar, unless we do something to radically alter their culture. Not because I *hate* either species like some people who like fantasy do (I know plenty of pretentious geeks who feel they're somehow "above" other geeks because they think elves are overplayed and don't like them), but because I want something a little different in the setting. What will effectively replace them? Possibly another species with a culture tweak, or possibly nothing at all, with the new Player Species being nothing like Dwarves or Elves.

Will people still want to play it? Sure, I think so, some might be miffed and never want to wander into our sandbox because they like a particular species, but I know plenty of fantasy worlds that don't have iconic species, friendly or hostile (Dragonlance never had Orcs, and technically never had halflings, but they really did), and still did just fine. However, I think you can't eliminate one particular species without really making the game difficult to into. And that's the plain ol' vanilla humans.

Humans are essential to getting players, because, no matter how exotic some players want to go, it's really hard to play anything but a human properly, so it's always a good staple to fall back on.

Let's honestly look at Elves for a second, in their Tolkien style, like most FRPGs use, these guys live for hundreds of years, magic comes to them naturally, and they have a fey quality about them. How does anyone truly embrace that mindset? I've DMed with a good number of players, many who have played elves, and while some were great roleplayers they weren't truly thinking like someone who was two hundred years old and who magic comes as naturally to them as speaking does to us. Why? Because it's impossible to do. If anything, we're playing humans with slightly elven nods, even myself as DM, you can't play such an alien mindset, and if you tried to force everyone too, they wouldn't have fun anymore and taking fun from players is the harshest sin a DM can commit.

So I believe that you have to have atleast the human option available (unless you're going for a very specific genre, like say a *shudder* anthro game), especially if you want to have a game a DM can use to attract new players. People new to RPGs tend to either pick the weirdest available species or fall back on being human because if you're going to act like someone, human is the easiest to do.

So, yes, there will be humans in Deminar. I already said I don't want half-breeds, but will any of the other "standards" make it in? Will there be Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings? Probably not all of them, and some that do make it, might not be completely recognizable (see Dragonlance Kender or Dark Sun Elves), but you'll see humans.

Musing: Races... I mean species, damnit, species!

The next few steps in our Design project involves placing the various towns, hamlets, towers, ruins, and lairs that make up any good fantasy land, basically places where the "friendly races" and "hostile monsters" hang out for the PCs to interact with. So, naturally that has me thinking about what creatures are going to show up not only our first area, but the world as a whole.

Firstly, we need to stop saying "Races," they're not races, they're species, they're biological different from one another, a race is a subtype of a species, so we'll be calling them species from now on.

The easiest thing to do is use the "player races" presented in the AEC as the friendly species, after all, then everyone can just pick up the AEC and decide what "race" they want to play and start making a character. However, that brings up some problems, one of which is that it can kill the uniqueness of your setting.

Also, one of tagline of Omniscient Projects is "A Little Reality in a Fantasy Setting," which may sound like an oxymoron, but hear me out. Sean and I are detail people and we don't like to settle with "because we said so," when we can take things apart and see how they work from the inside. Because of that, we tend to design stuff under the philosophy of having to have a plausible reason why it's there and doing what it's doing (granted the plausible reason can involve fantasy elements like magic and other plans, but there's still a reason).

I mention this because I have to call out one of my biggest dislikes in terms of species, half-breeds. The Half-Elf and Half-Orc just don't make sense! First of all, they're elves and orcs are separate species from humans, so genetically, it's impossible. And why does the mix only work with elves and humans and orcs and humans, why not halflings and orcs or dwarves and gnomes or humans and halflings? Also, if you argue that, maybe in the setting Orcs and Elves are distant offshoots of humanity (or the other way around), why do they breed true? When you normally get two similar species to mate, you normally end up with a sterile offshoot (like a mule), so why is it, half-elves and half-orcs exist (especially cause in most D&D settings, they're not related to humans at all, elves are fey for crying out loud)? So, for me, half-breed species are right out.

Now, I talked about making a setting unique, and one thought that tends to go through a designer's head is to take out all the standard fantasy troupes to really stand out. No humans, elves, dwarves, or anything, instead all weird creatures are the PCs, Lamia, Sphinx, Newly Made Up Crystal Thing, Three-Headed Sloth Species, etc. This can actually hurt you, more so then help you stand out, remember, there are certain elements of fantasy that are expected by an audience, you go too far out there, and you potentially scare people off. RPers have been playing elves and dwarves and halflings for decades now, to completely leave out all of them (or worse still, humans, the easies species to pick cause they're, well, us), and people don't want to give it a try because they don't want to learn how to play a brand new species.

So balance is key, we want to mix up a lot of elements to make the world unique, but we don't want to go so strange that no one wants to give us a shot. A good way to do that is to make familiar friendly species different a bit in culture but retain their core being, or pick a fairly common monster and make it a friendly species.

Of course, the more entirely new species you decide to use, the more new rules you have to write up and try to mesh into the rules already in place.

As of now, we haven't written off the final selection of either the playable species or even which ones exist as monsters. But, atleast you can see where the thought behind our choices is.

Building a Fantasy Sandbox: Steps 7-10: Seriously This Time!

Okay, so now we have the basic layout of an area 150X200 miles, so, what's next?

7. Draw in mountains

Easy enough, we already said we wanted a volcano on the one "lair" island, and I pictured the lower island with a huge peak, with a lake below it, that had a river that tumbled off the edge as a waterfall down towards the surface, so I want atleast a mountain there too.

Here's what we come up with:


We put some mountains on the upper edge of the big island and at that point decide that the upper island actually broke off from the big one, so naturally the mountain range continues onto that island too. So I added the range for continuity and finish off Step 7.

8. Draw in rivers
9. Draw in hills using them to divide the region into distinct river valley

Again, I know I want that lake with the river, and I figure there needs to be atleast a water source on the big island as well. In my original cruddy paint sketch I drew the island in the upper left as having mostly hilly terrain with a river that comes from one hill and disappears into another, a good way to hint at a small underground network below the hills.
Once again, I start adding stuff:


Moving along pretty good now. What's next?

10. Draw in vegetation (swamps, forests, desert, etc)

Last but not least, forest, the desert I already did because I knew that was a whole island in of itself.
So I start plopping down trees:


As you can see the entire lower island and the non mountainous upper island are entirely woods, that means they're not settled human style yet (but that doesn't mean they're not yet settled) At the very least, the lower island makes for a good spot for the big island settlers to get lumber. The bit empty on the large island will be farmland, areas where the humans cleared out space so they could make food.

So that wraps that up, next up will be adding the places where living things... uh, live.
Of course, first we have to decide what living things exist on our world.

Musing: Flying Mounts

So airships are very prevalent, a form of almost parallel technological evolution throughout the scattered island nations, and while their form and function vary to a degree, they are everywhere.

But why did I not discuss flying mounts? Surely there are lots of flying mounts in fantasy worlds, from wyvern to griffons, pegasus to perytons, the list goes on and on. And while I'm sure there are many places that use them, they don't hold the same impact as airships, for several reasons:

1. Transport Size: A flying mount can only carry a few people, airships can be made to be massive, transporting soldiers, passengers, and cargo across the skies.
2. Safety: Floating Rock airships are relatively safe, whatever is keeping the stone afloat, it does so no matter what you do to it, there hasn't been a case of an airship just falling out of the sky for no reason. Flying mounts are not nearly as safe, even raised from a hatchling they're still wild animals and aren't 100% predictable and simply not enough time has passed to domestic any of them.
3. Practicality: Training a mount takes time, you have to raise it, teach it, reinforce your teaching. You also have to feed it, keep it healthy, breed it or find new eggs/young to keep the cycle going, on the flip side, floating rock is everything and doesn't need anything but space.

So flying mounts are more of a specialty item, nobles will ride them when they want to show off, knightly orders may use them like the knights of old did with horses on the ground, some might even be used like draft animals to pull airships along, but there aren't huge queues of transport flying mounts about in the world and certainly not WoW style mount outposts where someone will just throw you on the back of a flying mount and it will always go the EXACT same way to the EXACT same destination (and both magically disappear and reappear at each area to save on a mounting/dismounting animation)

Building a Fantasy Sandbox: Steps 5 and 6 - Almost

Let's move along, basically this is the start of where we'll be restarting again and again as we make more and more islands and clusters and build our world.

5. Grab a 8.5 by 11 sheet of hex paper.

Well, I'll be using a computer mapping program and I won't be overlaying the hex until after putting down all the cool terrain features, but, okay, got one!

6. The scale should be so that it represents a 200 by 150 mile region

Okay, so, the most important thing about picking your "opening" region is that it needs to both facilitate low level play and call out what makes your setting so different from the millions of others. A task that's not as easy as it sounds, as a lot of settings comes up with cool things, but those things would only be something a high level character could ever interact with.

For us, we wanted to do a "starting hub" cluster of islands. We have an idea of doing atleast one large "Super Island" that is bigger then the 200X150 mile range, but taking a chunk out of that to start would disguise the fact that the world is floating islands.

On the other hand, just dropping a bunch of floating islands with a few small towns and a cave or two of kobolds would just take your standard "Medieval Europe with some Mystical Monsters," and put them up on islands, and still not be unique.

In the end we wanted to hit a few key ideas:
1. Have a central "safe house" island that has atleast one town advanced enough to show both our swashbuckling airship elements and basic steampunk elements.
2. Have sister islands to show how island communities have used technology to connect islands to one another (cable cars!) but make them unique (visually at the very least) from the central island.
3. Have atleast one "lair" island, that is the main baddie area for the PCs to go off and kill things to liberate this cluster from fear of attack.

In the end, we came up with this:


The island is the center will be the main starter island of the area, within it's "harbor" will rest a steampunk advanced town that features airship docks and plenty of story hooks. The island will not feature any full size lair or dungeon, but there will be small threats that need to be quelled.

The islands below are sister islands, each settled and connected to the main island through a variety of magical and steampunk ways, they'll feature something unique about them to make them a change of pace for characters who travel there.

The two small rocky islands off the tips of the central harbor will pulled in to house dock security, currently I picture large towers with a huge ballista and other anti-ship weapons purchased on rocky landscape.

The islands two the right are going to act as our lairs and main baddie islands. Each will have atleast one full size dungeon, and they overlap because the one with the standard grassy terrain is actually floating above the desert one. The desert one is there for variety, drifting into this cluster thousands of years ago.

We haven't fully fleshed out what will be on the upper islands yet, mad druids, evil undead, ancient ruins? We'll figure that out as we go, we just wanted to have more options available.

So, you can see, everything low level characters need are within one convenient 150X200 mile area, places to shop and learn, places to delve and kill, and places to explore and discover. Eventually they'll be leveled enough to want to ply the skies with their own airship, at which point, a whole new cluster or isle will be ready to be made.