So, after running a few ideas back and forth, I think we have the definitive version of the Deminar Cleric (all ideas subject to change), so let's take a look at it:
The Cleric is a tool of the god he worships, more accurately, a weapon. While his purpose does, partially, revolve around converting others to his religion, that's nothing that a priest or particularly devout layperson could do. The cleric has a much more defined warrior purpose in life.
A cleric delves dungeons and braves the wilderness to protect devout citizens from monsters, secure ancient relics and sites important to his god, and, most importantly, to destroy undead in all their forms. Undead are an anathema to the gods, a violation of the natural order, denying a soul its rightful rest, whether accidentally or in an attempt at immortality. Clerics, above all else, seek to destroy undead, mostly undead with souls, the soulless ones are not as big a deal, but still a violation of natural order.
All clerics use blunt weapons, not because of some religious doctrine, but because it's the most effective against undead. Things that don't bleed out or have living vital organs to pierce are only best destroyed when crushed to bits. It's not that they can't use other weapons, it's that they aren't trained to use other weapons. After all, all adventurers are trained before they go out into their first dungeon as level 1, 0 XP fresh meat (Something that's not talked about much, but think about it, you can't just be a farmer one day, then go off and be a fighter the next, properly knowing how to fight using a bastard sword without cutting your own leg off, every adventurer has training in his specific class, don't let people tell you otherwise). Nontraining results, mechanically, in being unable to use other weapons (rather then some clunky penalty for weapons, remember, this is LL, a model of B/X, nice and simple rules now). But, to keep clerics diverse, all receive training in their gods favored weapon (or possible weapons, TBD), a weapon that best represents the god and his ideals.
Turning the Undead, this falls into the very reason a cleric is out and about, getting rid of the Undead. Turning the undead, as the rules write it, seems to be a manifestation of power that sorta erupts around the cleric and can take down or make run any number of undead critters around him. To me, I picture it as a glow that either comes from above or from within the cleric and then suddenly radiates outwards, washing everything in the room with its light. What is it? It's the divine "fuel" that the gods give to clerics to cast their spells, just in raw form, it's divinity made manifest, in a way. It doesn't affect living things because they belong in the divine order, but unliving things, that's another story. Undead with souls run or are disintegrated as they are faced with the realization that they do not belong in the natural order, they are either made afraid or consumed by pure divine energy. Soulless undead are another story, why do they "run" or blow up? Well, soulless undead are made either by arcane or divine magic, they are fueled by that magic to operate and follow their last order, so the divine energy shorts out that magic fuel, either short circuiting their order and causing them to wander aimlessly instead of attack (i.e. the running) or sever their magical connection and cause them to crumble.
Now, clerics also get magic, and they all have access to the same spells, so why is that? Well, it's just a matter of the passage of time and the codifying of things. All gods provide is the divine fuel to cast a spell, it is up to the cleric to shape it and then make it work. So, over the many centuries and millennium that this has been going on, a certain set of spells has been codified and used again and again. Thus, as a cleric goes through training, he learns of the spells his masters know, who got them from their masters, who got them from there masters, and so on. What is taught, is what is learned, and any cleric going to learn about spells are going to see relatively the same things. Original or offbeat spells can still be found, be they released in a supplement by us down the road, they are just comparatively rare. There is already some division anyway, between the lawful and chaotic gods with the reversible spells, and, like Favored Weapons, we'll probably throw in a spell or two special to each god (maybe one per level, like domains?) to separate each cleric based on who he actually worships (something not really touched in LL and even B/X in order to stay setting neutral, understandably)
So there it is, all the mysteries of the clerics special abilities and restrictions explained! If I missed anything, drop a comment about it, if not, maybe someday soon another Design & Development post about another rule fitting in with a setting will come along.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Musings: The Planes, Part II: The Other Planes
So, as I stated before, the Plane in which Deminar rests, usually called the Material or Prime Material Plane sits in the middle of an infinite Astral Sea (yes, that's physically and mathematically impossible, but the planes don't conform to Newtonian Physics now do they?), however, the Plane doesn't not sit there alone. The Prime Material was constructed out of the six Fundamental Elements, Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, Positive Energy, and Negative Energy. These six Planes surround the Plane in which Deminar sits, with the Positive and Negative Energy one being on the top and bottom of a metaphysical sphere and the other four surrounding and encasing it. The sun the people of Deminar see is nothing more then the planar tear to the Elemental Plane of Fire used to ferry material into the Material Plane, Deminar's two moons are the Elemental Plane of Fire's reflection off the planar tears into the Plane of Earth and Water, and a tear exists into the other three Elemental Planes (Air, Positive and Negative Energy) but those cannot be seen. In theory, if one could travel far enough off the surface of Deminar's islands, they could pass through these tears and into the Elemental Planes (and indeed, many elemental creatures have passed through them), though they are all pretty hostile to most life that came to be on the Material Plane, as they consist of one type of elemental instead of the mix of all that most Prime Material beings need to function. Even the Positive Energy Plane would fill a creature so full of life energy they'd explode into a ball of radiance, and the Negative Energy plane would quickly suck the life force out of anything that resided in it for too long.
The Prime Material is not alone, however, for existing in the same space, yet in another Plane is the Ethereal Plane, a sort of "planar echo" of the Prime Material. Here, the world looks much as it does on Deminar, however most things are muted and gray. Not everything that exists on Deminar exists here, there are no copies of living things, for instance, but anything that hold particularly strong emotional resonance appears in the Ethereal Plane, even after it may have disappeared on Deminar. An old building that touched a lot of lives may have a pale echo on this plane, or a nonliving semblance of a forest that was particularly important to a clan of Halflings may stand in the Ethereal whereas it was cut down long ago on Deminar. No living thing leaves a true living echo on the Ethereal however, no matter how important a King or Warrior was revered, he, nor an echo or nonliving semblance ever shows up on the Ethereal. However, some people, who felt that, even after death, still had a strong emotional attachment to something on Deminar will find their souls roaming the Ethereal as ghosts instead of passing to a Domain. These beings sometimes find a way to manifest partially back on the Material Plane, allowing for the ghosts many people see on Deminar. Rumors of other intangible creatures being from the Ethereal and manifesting on Deminar (such as the Phase Tiger), much like ghosts is also a theory some scholars have. The biggest feature about the Ethereal Plane is, however, the fact that the gods can in no way manipulate or even send envoys to it (which is why they don't simply puck up all the souls of spirits and ghosts and get them to their proper Domain.) This intrigues the gods to no end and they believe that the Ethereal Plane is a subconscious shared construct of all living things and they work tirelessly to figure out a way to turn that power to themselves and their own advantage.
The Prime Material is not alone, however, for existing in the same space, yet in another Plane is the Ethereal Plane, a sort of "planar echo" of the Prime Material. Here, the world looks much as it does on Deminar, however most things are muted and gray. Not everything that exists on Deminar exists here, there are no copies of living things, for instance, but anything that hold particularly strong emotional resonance appears in the Ethereal Plane, even after it may have disappeared on Deminar. An old building that touched a lot of lives may have a pale echo on this plane, or a nonliving semblance of a forest that was particularly important to a clan of Halflings may stand in the Ethereal whereas it was cut down long ago on Deminar. No living thing leaves a true living echo on the Ethereal however, no matter how important a King or Warrior was revered, he, nor an echo or nonliving semblance ever shows up on the Ethereal. However, some people, who felt that, even after death, still had a strong emotional attachment to something on Deminar will find their souls roaming the Ethereal as ghosts instead of passing to a Domain. These beings sometimes find a way to manifest partially back on the Material Plane, allowing for the ghosts many people see on Deminar. Rumors of other intangible creatures being from the Ethereal and manifesting on Deminar (such as the Phase Tiger), much like ghosts is also a theory some scholars have. The biggest feature about the Ethereal Plane is, however, the fact that the gods can in no way manipulate or even send envoys to it (which is why they don't simply puck up all the souls of spirits and ghosts and get them to their proper Domain.) This intrigues the gods to no end and they believe that the Ethereal Plane is a subconscious shared construct of all living things and they work tirelessly to figure out a way to turn that power to themselves and their own advantage.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Musing: The Planes, Part 1: The Outer Planes
All this talk about gods and afterlife has the planes on my mind, so I might as well put some of it down to text, it's always nice to share after all.
The entire cosmology of everything exists within a vast darkness, this place, sometimes called The Plane of Shadow, due to the rare occurrence of when this dimension connects to Deminar via shadows, is actually a vast plane beyond all planes. It has always been there, long before Deminar or the domains of gods existed. The few people on Deminar who actually know about the planes, consider this vast plane a dimension of dark emptiness, there are others that claim this plane does indeed contain something that exists. The creatures known as Shadows are believed to come from there and many of the other creatures that do not seem to belong in nature are rumored to be sent by vast intelligent beings that dwell in the Plane of Shadow. Whether this is true or not, it is indeed a fact that all the planes, including the one in which Deminar exists floats amongst this inky blackness.
Many planes exist around Deminar, and all of them are suspended in the Astral Plane. Much like the island floats among the sky in Deminar, the planes float among the Astral Sea. It is a vast silvery mist in which nothing is tied down. Everything floats free, and it is easy to get lost as there are no permanent features. The openness allows for no constrains for growth and things that dwell within the Astral Plane can get quite big indeed.
Floating in the Astral Plane are the various Domains of the gods. Each major god has his own Domain and many lesser gods dwell alongside them. The Domains wax and wane in size as they collect more souls or are the subject of attacks from rivals. They are not permanently located in any one place and the only way to find them is to want to find them, such is the way of the Planes.
And, in the center of a place that has no center sits the Plane of Deminar, but it does not exist alone. Both encasing it, and existing along side it are several more planes. But such things are to be discussed at another time.
The entire cosmology of everything exists within a vast darkness, this place, sometimes called The Plane of Shadow, due to the rare occurrence of when this dimension connects to Deminar via shadows, is actually a vast plane beyond all planes. It has always been there, long before Deminar or the domains of gods existed. The few people on Deminar who actually know about the planes, consider this vast plane a dimension of dark emptiness, there are others that claim this plane does indeed contain something that exists. The creatures known as Shadows are believed to come from there and many of the other creatures that do not seem to belong in nature are rumored to be sent by vast intelligent beings that dwell in the Plane of Shadow. Whether this is true or not, it is indeed a fact that all the planes, including the one in which Deminar exists floats amongst this inky blackness.
Many planes exist around Deminar, and all of them are suspended in the Astral Plane. Much like the island floats among the sky in Deminar, the planes float among the Astral Sea. It is a vast silvery mist in which nothing is tied down. Everything floats free, and it is easy to get lost as there are no permanent features. The openness allows for no constrains for growth and things that dwell within the Astral Plane can get quite big indeed.
Floating in the Astral Plane are the various Domains of the gods. Each major god has his own Domain and many lesser gods dwell alongside them. The Domains wax and wane in size as they collect more souls or are the subject of attacks from rivals. They are not permanently located in any one place and the only way to find them is to want to find them, such is the way of the Planes.
And, in the center of a place that has no center sits the Plane of Deminar, but it does not exist alone. Both encasing it, and existing along side it are several more planes. But such things are to be discussed at another time.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Design and Development: Cleric, Part 2
There seems to be a reasonable agreement that Undead within Deminar are seen as a bad thing amongst the gods, whether the god is full of purity and good or hatred and evil. The idea is, the undead deny souls from going to a god, and all the gods want souls to help fuel their huge domain spanning cold war that's been going on forever.
Because of this, the cleric was born, he's the ultimate anti-undead solider. While indeed, part of his job is to convert the faithless to his god or delving into dungeon to recover artifacts important to their god or even to stop various evils (or goods) from doing things against a god's faithful (i.e. justify a cleric adventuring into dungeon that aren't mainly undead places), their primary goal is to root out and destroy undead. This is something that all the gods, despite their ideological differences in a lot of things, thinks is a good thing. This also builds up an overall world concept that people who either craft the undead or seek to become them (as liches and what have you) are almost universally despised, due to the overall agreement that the undead are going against the gods.
This is why clerics are mainly trained to use blunt weapons (most effective against dead flesh) and why all clerics can turn undead through their faith.
This still brings up a few things left to wrap our heads around though. Namely, a couple of spells in a cleric's arsenal. Those being Animate Dead and Raise Dead/Resurrection.
Raise Dead and its sister spell Resurrection bring a dead person back to life, in essence putting a soul back in a corpse and letting him fight another day. This denies a soul to a god, which, as we talked about above, is bad. In a cleric's point of view, and indeed all intelligent worshiping species, that's also denying a person his rightful place in the afterlife (which isn't a skewed and wrong look at things, but, as I mentioned in the post below, is how people think). The counter to this, I believe, is that both are fairly high level spells, so the gods only grant that ability to clerics who would use it responsibly, those that weight out the factors of if being denied a chance to go to the afterlife right away is worth coming back again. Thus, I see those spells as being used rarely, and also, it has a nice built in time factor, that represents only having so much time to do so before the soul makes it to the god's domain and gets converted into "soulstuff" and not be able to retain its memories of life. Sometimes a spell just falls into world design properly.
The bigger problem is Animate Dead, as it does exactly the opposite of what clerics do, it creates undead, rather then destroys them. Now, you can argue that, since it only creates Skeletons and Zombies, that it's just making soulless undead and therefore no soul is being denied its place. And that's a good point, soulless undead are probably not as reviled as those that still have the soul trapped on Deminar (whether purposely or not), but then, why does Turn Undead work on the soulless undead to begin with? Again, I wouldn't want to get rid of this spell, so to keep the AEC as whole as possible, but its inclusion brings a few speedbumps into the thinking of how a cleric works.
And that brings up the Turn Undead affecting soulless undead issue. If the idea is that the undead are repulsed and sometimes vaporized under the presence of such faith that is basically calling out how out of order being undead is, soulless undead wouldn't really be bothered, since they don't have thoughts. The other alternative could be that Turn Undead works by disrupting whatever energy creates/sustains undead in the first place, whether soulless or not. But then, if it is that, almost, scientific approach, how come only clerics can access it? Questions, questions.
So, agree/disagree on Raise Dead? Ideas for why Animate Dead is clerical spell canon? How about that Turn Undead problem?
Because of this, the cleric was born, he's the ultimate anti-undead solider. While indeed, part of his job is to convert the faithless to his god or delving into dungeon to recover artifacts important to their god or even to stop various evils (or goods) from doing things against a god's faithful (i.e. justify a cleric adventuring into dungeon that aren't mainly undead places), their primary goal is to root out and destroy undead. This is something that all the gods, despite their ideological differences in a lot of things, thinks is a good thing. This also builds up an overall world concept that people who either craft the undead or seek to become them (as liches and what have you) are almost universally despised, due to the overall agreement that the undead are going against the gods.
This is why clerics are mainly trained to use blunt weapons (most effective against dead flesh) and why all clerics can turn undead through their faith.
This still brings up a few things left to wrap our heads around though. Namely, a couple of spells in a cleric's arsenal. Those being Animate Dead and Raise Dead/Resurrection.
Raise Dead and its sister spell Resurrection bring a dead person back to life, in essence putting a soul back in a corpse and letting him fight another day. This denies a soul to a god, which, as we talked about above, is bad. In a cleric's point of view, and indeed all intelligent worshiping species, that's also denying a person his rightful place in the afterlife (which isn't a skewed and wrong look at things, but, as I mentioned in the post below, is how people think). The counter to this, I believe, is that both are fairly high level spells, so the gods only grant that ability to clerics who would use it responsibly, those that weight out the factors of if being denied a chance to go to the afterlife right away is worth coming back again. Thus, I see those spells as being used rarely, and also, it has a nice built in time factor, that represents only having so much time to do so before the soul makes it to the god's domain and gets converted into "soulstuff" and not be able to retain its memories of life. Sometimes a spell just falls into world design properly.
The bigger problem is Animate Dead, as it does exactly the opposite of what clerics do, it creates undead, rather then destroys them. Now, you can argue that, since it only creates Skeletons and Zombies, that it's just making soulless undead and therefore no soul is being denied its place. And that's a good point, soulless undead are probably not as reviled as those that still have the soul trapped on Deminar (whether purposely or not), but then, why does Turn Undead work on the soulless undead to begin with? Again, I wouldn't want to get rid of this spell, so to keep the AEC as whole as possible, but its inclusion brings a few speedbumps into the thinking of how a cleric works.
And that brings up the Turn Undead affecting soulless undead issue. If the idea is that the undead are repulsed and sometimes vaporized under the presence of such faith that is basically calling out how out of order being undead is, soulless undead wouldn't really be bothered, since they don't have thoughts. The other alternative could be that Turn Undead works by disrupting whatever energy creates/sustains undead in the first place, whether soulless or not. But then, if it is that, almost, scientific approach, how come only clerics can access it? Questions, questions.
So, agree/disagree on Raise Dead? Ideas for why Animate Dead is clerical spell canon? How about that Turn Undead problem?
Musing: The Mortal Perception of the Afterlife
A thought spinning off the Clerical Talks:
Despite the fact that a soul doesn't get a happy afterlife (as I talked about below) and instead is converted into "soulstuff" to be used as needed by a god, the gods don't let that fact out. It could bring about a sort of backlash if intelligent life found out it's just going to potentially be a chair (or anything else, even a powerful angel) with no recollection of its living life when it dies.
Like those devout on this planet, most species believe that when you die your soul goes to the afterlife of the god your worshiped or the afterlife of the god who's aspects your most exemplified and you spend eternity in paradise or nightmare in view of your god. Now, we don't know if that's true or not in real life, but that's what people believe, the same applies to Deminar.
Only in Deminar, WE know it's not true because we made the whole thing up, but the idea is that the gods won't let on to that in fear of losing worshipers. Even if a person doesn't worship anyone, they end up going to the domain of the god who most resembles how they lived their life. So if people found out they don't get any reward for living a good life, they'd mostly act like chaotic heathens (why's it matter what you do?!) and that would beef up the more chaotic and evil gods considerably, so gods don't let that fact out too often. Some of the chaotic gods try to, through their followers (since no god can directly interact with the world, remember?) but most other faiths consider that religious propaganda and don't buy it. If only they knew....
Despite the fact that a soul doesn't get a happy afterlife (as I talked about below) and instead is converted into "soulstuff" to be used as needed by a god, the gods don't let that fact out. It could bring about a sort of backlash if intelligent life found out it's just going to potentially be a chair (or anything else, even a powerful angel) with no recollection of its living life when it dies.
Like those devout on this planet, most species believe that when you die your soul goes to the afterlife of the god your worshiped or the afterlife of the god who's aspects your most exemplified and you spend eternity in paradise or nightmare in view of your god. Now, we don't know if that's true or not in real life, but that's what people believe, the same applies to Deminar.
Only in Deminar, WE know it's not true because we made the whole thing up, but the idea is that the gods won't let on to that in fear of losing worshipers. Even if a person doesn't worship anyone, they end up going to the domain of the god who most resembles how they lived their life. So if people found out they don't get any reward for living a good life, they'd mostly act like chaotic heathens (why's it matter what you do?!) and that would beef up the more chaotic and evil gods considerably, so gods don't let that fact out too often. Some of the chaotic gods try to, through their followers (since no god can directly interact with the world, remember?) but most other faiths consider that religious propaganda and don't buy it. If only they knew....
Monday, May 24, 2010
Design and Development: Clerics, Part 1
This is the idea that originally sparked this whole series of subheadings:
The cleric has some interesting rules that, at times, can be challenging to explain from an "in universe" perspective.
The actual casting of Divine Spells and where they come from pretty much is already explained (though it's sure to get a detailed examination within the published material), as it comes from the deities themselves, fueled by the cleric's god, allowing the cleric to perform miracles to prove the god's existence and potentially convert the nonbelievers. Atleast, that's a quick stripped down view at it.
However, there are other rulings about the class that bring up some interesting questions:
Clerics can't use bladed weapons: We all know clerics can't use weapons with an edge, the rule's been around forever. Supposedly it comes from a edict made to questing priests during the Crusades and adopted into the D&D mythos as talked about here (where he also goes on to debunk the legend). Now, while I'm not in favor of stripping what is a iconic rule about the cleric. It brings up the question within the world of Deminar, why can't clerics use bladed weapons? Obviously they did not have any Christian Crusades into the Holy Land, so what is it? The AEC states, "Strict holy doctrine prevents clerics from using any
cutting or impaling weapons," but that's not a real answer. Is it due to ancient pacts with the gods in exchange for divine casting abilities, is it part of a strict code of ethics about drawing blood held throughout all churches? Does it have anything to do with the actually casting of divine magic in the first place?
Turn Undead: All clerics can Turn Undead in LL/AEC rules, stating, "The cleric is able to call upon the name and power of his deity to repel, and even destroy, undead." Again, the question is why? I think it's because there's an assumption that most clerics within a group are worshiping a just god, one that supports freedom, life, good, flowers, etc. and that undead are a sort of abomination on the natural order of things. However, why do clerics of evil gods have the same ability? Later D&D rules add things like the ability to control undead if you're evil and some such, but again, we're trying to use the standard rulings as much as possible to make it a setting that doesn't require a lot of rules changes to run (and therefore be more accessible). So again, I'll pose the question of why? Is it because undead trap souls, therefore denying a god the ability to have it to build his domain (something all gods, good or evil, lawful or chaotic, want)? That doesn't explain away skeletons and zombies and other "soulless" undead though. Is it that this setting has no "God of Undeath" and it's against the natural order to all gods, where raising the dead isn't a matter of good or evil, lawful or chaotic, but rather a violation of the universal order of how things work, and therefore every god grants his vessels the ability to repulse and destroy them? And why does it just make undead run away at some points and at others flat out destroy them? Does the "holy power" just not have the same amount of juice all the time, so the some undead flee from the potential harmful power (a sort of unnatural instinct, like being born knowing that you probably shouldn't touch fire)?
All Clerics Get the Same Spells: This might be the only ability that gets some tweaking in Deminar. As I'm playing around with the concept in my head of each god having a small handful of specific spells that only clerics of their doctrine get. However, the "core set" of spells still remains the same, and while the reversal of certain spells into "good" and "evil" forms can help explain away some of it based on what god a cleric worships, there still seems to be a lot of uniform spells across the board. Is it another godly pact, where everyone got together and said, "well, to play fair, we should all grant our followers similar spells so that one doesn't have a clear advantage over another?" Does it have to do with the nature of divine spell casting itself, whereas although the gods grant the ability to manipulate magic, a cleric can still only access the energy of magic in a limited number of ways? Or, is it something that comes down from generations of religious codifying, where clerics throughout the ages slowly began whittling down their spells to a unified set of tested and true versions?
So, interesting things to look at and ponder the "why" factor from within the workings of the world itself. I look forward to any comments and thoughts on the matter, discussion is encouraged, but play nice!
The cleric has some interesting rules that, at times, can be challenging to explain from an "in universe" perspective.
The actual casting of Divine Spells and where they come from pretty much is already explained (though it's sure to get a detailed examination within the published material), as it comes from the deities themselves, fueled by the cleric's god, allowing the cleric to perform miracles to prove the god's existence and potentially convert the nonbelievers. Atleast, that's a quick stripped down view at it.
However, there are other rulings about the class that bring up some interesting questions:
Clerics can't use bladed weapons: We all know clerics can't use weapons with an edge, the rule's been around forever. Supposedly it comes from a edict made to questing priests during the Crusades and adopted into the D&D mythos as talked about here (where he also goes on to debunk the legend). Now, while I'm not in favor of stripping what is a iconic rule about the cleric. It brings up the question within the world of Deminar, why can't clerics use bladed weapons? Obviously they did not have any Christian Crusades into the Holy Land, so what is it? The AEC states, "Strict holy doctrine prevents clerics from using any
cutting or impaling weapons," but that's not a real answer. Is it due to ancient pacts with the gods in exchange for divine casting abilities, is it part of a strict code of ethics about drawing blood held throughout all churches? Does it have anything to do with the actually casting of divine magic in the first place?
Turn Undead: All clerics can Turn Undead in LL/AEC rules, stating, "The cleric is able to call upon the name and power of his deity to repel, and even destroy, undead." Again, the question is why? I think it's because there's an assumption that most clerics within a group are worshiping a just god, one that supports freedom, life, good, flowers, etc. and that undead are a sort of abomination on the natural order of things. However, why do clerics of evil gods have the same ability? Later D&D rules add things like the ability to control undead if you're evil and some such, but again, we're trying to use the standard rulings as much as possible to make it a setting that doesn't require a lot of rules changes to run (and therefore be more accessible). So again, I'll pose the question of why? Is it because undead trap souls, therefore denying a god the ability to have it to build his domain (something all gods, good or evil, lawful or chaotic, want)? That doesn't explain away skeletons and zombies and other "soulless" undead though. Is it that this setting has no "God of Undeath" and it's against the natural order to all gods, where raising the dead isn't a matter of good or evil, lawful or chaotic, but rather a violation of the universal order of how things work, and therefore every god grants his vessels the ability to repulse and destroy them? And why does it just make undead run away at some points and at others flat out destroy them? Does the "holy power" just not have the same amount of juice all the time, so the some undead flee from the potential harmful power (a sort of unnatural instinct, like being born knowing that you probably shouldn't touch fire)?
All Clerics Get the Same Spells: This might be the only ability that gets some tweaking in Deminar. As I'm playing around with the concept in my head of each god having a small handful of specific spells that only clerics of their doctrine get. However, the "core set" of spells still remains the same, and while the reversal of certain spells into "good" and "evil" forms can help explain away some of it based on what god a cleric worships, there still seems to be a lot of uniform spells across the board. Is it another godly pact, where everyone got together and said, "well, to play fair, we should all grant our followers similar spells so that one doesn't have a clear advantage over another?" Does it have to do with the nature of divine spell casting itself, whereas although the gods grant the ability to manipulate magic, a cleric can still only access the energy of magic in a limited number of ways? Or, is it something that comes down from generations of religious codifying, where clerics throughout the ages slowly began whittling down their spells to a unified set of tested and true versions?
So, interesting things to look at and ponder the "why" factor from within the workings of the world itself. I look forward to any comments and thoughts on the matter, discussion is encouraged, but play nice!
Design and Development: An Introduction
Design and Development is a new subheading that came out of some of my post RPG talks I tend to have on TeamSpeak long after I should have gone to bed so I can be up for work at 5am. But then I remembered that sleep was for the weak, despite how much I love it and soldier on!
Design and Development is the space dedicated to where I talk about tweaks made to the LL/AEC rules to fit our setting or (more commonly) tweaks made to the story to fit LL/AEC's rules.
I've mentioned in posts before that our goal with Deminar is to create a world of plausibility, though not necessarily reality, to everything that is part of that world. Like the bigger sci-fi universes with their "technical manuals" and epic fantasies with it's detailed histories, we want to explain WHY a certain thing occurs the way it does.
Why does a monster have a certain ability, why do clerics choose from any spell when resting but MUs only from their spell books, why do certain species only choose from certain classes. We're not talking about looking at them from a mechanic sense (oh, it's to play balance X with Y) or a history sense (well that monster is based of Greek myth and always had X power), but from a sense of continuity within the world.
Design and Development posts will deal with these issues and mostly come in two parts. The first, posing what we're looking at, the second, the roughly "finalized" explanation we agree upon, some might come right after the other, some might take days or weeks if it's a tricky concept.
The reason for the first post, posing the question, is to allow comments from my few readers, to see what they come up with, sometimes an outside mind will come up with something brilliant that you never even thought of and I never turn away a good dose of insight.
Design and Development is the space dedicated to where I talk about tweaks made to the LL/AEC rules to fit our setting or (more commonly) tweaks made to the story to fit LL/AEC's rules.
I've mentioned in posts before that our goal with Deminar is to create a world of plausibility, though not necessarily reality, to everything that is part of that world. Like the bigger sci-fi universes with their "technical manuals" and epic fantasies with it's detailed histories, we want to explain WHY a certain thing occurs the way it does.
Why does a monster have a certain ability, why do clerics choose from any spell when resting but MUs only from their spell books, why do certain species only choose from certain classes. We're not talking about looking at them from a mechanic sense (oh, it's to play balance X with Y) or a history sense (well that monster is based of Greek myth and always had X power), but from a sense of continuity within the world.
Design and Development posts will deal with these issues and mostly come in two parts. The first, posing what we're looking at, the second, the roughly "finalized" explanation we agree upon, some might come right after the other, some might take days or weeks if it's a tricky concept.
The reason for the first post, posing the question, is to allow comments from my few readers, to see what they come up with, sometimes an outside mind will come up with something brilliant that you never even thought of and I never turn away a good dose of insight.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Musing: Gods Pt. 2 - The Dark Details
I mentioned in the last post a bunch of bits I needed explain further in this post, so, here's this post... still with me? Good!
I mentioned that the gods were quite content to let people slaughter one another in their name, even if the two sides are actually worshiping the same god. That has a lot to do about what a god gains by getting a soul sent to him.
Like many fantasy worlds, when an intelligent creature dies in Deminar, its soul separates from the body. From there, a courier from the Goddess of Death (or the Goddess herself if its a particularly important chap or she's just in the mood) comes to escort the soul to the domain of whichever god the person worshiped most in life or, whichever god has a aspect most closely attached to how that person lived his life. Here's where our afterlife differs pretty majorly though, once the soul gets to the proper domain it's reverted into the stuff that makes up the domain and is added to the god's homeland. In essence, a worshiper becomes the building block of a god's domain.
The god uses the soul stuff to grow out the size of his domain, craft all the things that exist on the domain, erect any defenses along the border, create their versions of angels or demons to go spy and fight against the servants of the other gods, make some new lawn furniture. Whatever the deity wants. Death in the game is pretty permanent, you only have so much time to bring a person back to life (the time it takes to get a soul to the proper domain, though this can take a while, as the Goddess has to figure out the right domain to send each soul to and make sure it gets there, the queue can get long, especially during wars) and you certainly won't run into the afterlife version of an old friend on a god's domain years later. There are cases where perhaps a god will let a soul retain its mortal memories before forging it into a herald or something similar to help spread the word of that god, but that's the exception, not the rule.
Having lots of souls, which means lots of soul stuff, is important so that the gods can grow their domains, sabotage the other gods, and shore up their defenses against their rivals. The gods are constantly jockeying for power and a god is the only thing that can kill another god (though it's not easy even then), so they can be very wary of one another as well.
So why not go down and slaughter all the faithful to build up a huge domain and launch an unsuspecting attack on all the other gods? Well, it's complicated, but I'll try to explain.
Firstly, the gods made a pact a long time ago that no fully divine being was allowed down on Deminar personally anymore and when gods make pacts signed in divine blood and what not, they must be followed. Second, you want worshipers or else you can die.
I mentioned that anyone can become a god and that's because that is how the divine nature of Deminar works. Worship equals divinity, and, with enough followers, everyone has the potential to become a deity. It all depends on how many followers you have. Sure, many adventurers are damn near worshiped in the towns they save from an evil menace, but that does spell divinity. At best, they might have a little more luck then the average person, but they're certainly not passing on into the domains of the gods, you need scores of people for that to happen.
The major gods, the ones that have been around since before any species rose to power on Deminar snagged the major aspects that would guarantee lots of worship, major concepts like Good and Evil, the various Seasons, Weather patterns, things like Fire and Water, things lots of different folk would pray for, and while they may just worship one of the several aspects a god represents, that's still worship and that grants power. The lesser gods, ones that were either mortals on Deminar at one time, or an outsider that somehow got linked to a certain aspect and worshiped, have a ton of followers, but not nearly as many as the major gods. The lesser gods sometimes take over an aspect held by a major god, a person or being might be linked to warfare enough that he becomes the god of war, stripping that aspect from the major god that held it. These lesser gods don't usually have a domain of their own, but instead, live on a domain of the major god that the lesser god would get along with the most, acting as a general in the greater gods army and helping to increase the major god's domain by adding the soul stuff of the lesser god's followers.
That doesn't mean a lesser god can't go out and make his own domain, but that domain is generally very small compared to the major gods and easily taken out by a major god. In fact, many major gods will kill an unprotected lesser god and destroy his domain, then take on the role of that lesser god so that followers are funneled into his domain. So why keep lesser gods around at all? Why not invite them into your domain, then slaughter them to take over their followers? One, do that enough and the lesser gods may join together to take out a major god as a threat and two, having lesser gods around as high end cannon fodder in case your domain is attacked is always a good idea.
So the best way to weaken a god, so that you can take over his aspects and grow stronger, would be to lessen his worship on Deminar. The flip side is you can't do this by having your faithful go out and slaughter your rival's faithful, because doing so only makes the rival's domain stronger, and sometimes slaying faithful can actually make the faith stronger. So it's a delicate balance of keeping a rival's worship base low, while not building his domain through deaths, all the while keeping a good balance of living worshipers for power and dead one for domain building.
As you can no doubt tell, the realm of the gods is very political, with everyone thinking several steps ahead and using all manner of underhanded tricks, backstabs, alliances, betrayals, and backdoor deals to secure their own power and crush everyone elses.
I mentioned that the gods were quite content to let people slaughter one another in their name, even if the two sides are actually worshiping the same god. That has a lot to do about what a god gains by getting a soul sent to him.
Like many fantasy worlds, when an intelligent creature dies in Deminar, its soul separates from the body. From there, a courier from the Goddess of Death (or the Goddess herself if its a particularly important chap or she's just in the mood) comes to escort the soul to the domain of whichever god the person worshiped most in life or, whichever god has a aspect most closely attached to how that person lived his life. Here's where our afterlife differs pretty majorly though, once the soul gets to the proper domain it's reverted into the stuff that makes up the domain and is added to the god's homeland. In essence, a worshiper becomes the building block of a god's domain.
The god uses the soul stuff to grow out the size of his domain, craft all the things that exist on the domain, erect any defenses along the border, create their versions of angels or demons to go spy and fight against the servants of the other gods, make some new lawn furniture. Whatever the deity wants. Death in the game is pretty permanent, you only have so much time to bring a person back to life (the time it takes to get a soul to the proper domain, though this can take a while, as the Goddess has to figure out the right domain to send each soul to and make sure it gets there, the queue can get long, especially during wars) and you certainly won't run into the afterlife version of an old friend on a god's domain years later. There are cases where perhaps a god will let a soul retain its mortal memories before forging it into a herald or something similar to help spread the word of that god, but that's the exception, not the rule.
Having lots of souls, which means lots of soul stuff, is important so that the gods can grow their domains, sabotage the other gods, and shore up their defenses against their rivals. The gods are constantly jockeying for power and a god is the only thing that can kill another god (though it's not easy even then), so they can be very wary of one another as well.
So why not go down and slaughter all the faithful to build up a huge domain and launch an unsuspecting attack on all the other gods? Well, it's complicated, but I'll try to explain.
Firstly, the gods made a pact a long time ago that no fully divine being was allowed down on Deminar personally anymore and when gods make pacts signed in divine blood and what not, they must be followed. Second, you want worshipers or else you can die.
I mentioned that anyone can become a god and that's because that is how the divine nature of Deminar works. Worship equals divinity, and, with enough followers, everyone has the potential to become a deity. It all depends on how many followers you have. Sure, many adventurers are damn near worshiped in the towns they save from an evil menace, but that does spell divinity. At best, they might have a little more luck then the average person, but they're certainly not passing on into the domains of the gods, you need scores of people for that to happen.
The major gods, the ones that have been around since before any species rose to power on Deminar snagged the major aspects that would guarantee lots of worship, major concepts like Good and Evil, the various Seasons, Weather patterns, things like Fire and Water, things lots of different folk would pray for, and while they may just worship one of the several aspects a god represents, that's still worship and that grants power. The lesser gods, ones that were either mortals on Deminar at one time, or an outsider that somehow got linked to a certain aspect and worshiped, have a ton of followers, but not nearly as many as the major gods. The lesser gods sometimes take over an aspect held by a major god, a person or being might be linked to warfare enough that he becomes the god of war, stripping that aspect from the major god that held it. These lesser gods don't usually have a domain of their own, but instead, live on a domain of the major god that the lesser god would get along with the most, acting as a general in the greater gods army and helping to increase the major god's domain by adding the soul stuff of the lesser god's followers.
That doesn't mean a lesser god can't go out and make his own domain, but that domain is generally very small compared to the major gods and easily taken out by a major god. In fact, many major gods will kill an unprotected lesser god and destroy his domain, then take on the role of that lesser god so that followers are funneled into his domain. So why keep lesser gods around at all? Why not invite them into your domain, then slaughter them to take over their followers? One, do that enough and the lesser gods may join together to take out a major god as a threat and two, having lesser gods around as high end cannon fodder in case your domain is attacked is always a good idea.
So the best way to weaken a god, so that you can take over his aspects and grow stronger, would be to lessen his worship on Deminar. The flip side is you can't do this by having your faithful go out and slaughter your rival's faithful, because doing so only makes the rival's domain stronger, and sometimes slaying faithful can actually make the faith stronger. So it's a delicate balance of keeping a rival's worship base low, while not building his domain through deaths, all the while keeping a good balance of living worshipers for power and dead one for domain building.
As you can no doubt tell, the realm of the gods is very political, with everyone thinking several steps ahead and using all manner of underhanded tricks, backstabs, alliances, betrayals, and backdoor deals to secure their own power and crush everyone elses.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Musing: Gods
Since this version of Deminar is much the same version of Deminar we wrote a while ago, just advanced (both in timeline and depth), the same ideals we had for deities are going to carry forward from the previous edition.
Yes, the setting has gods, we're not trying to break the mold so much and say, "people worship stuff, but there might not actually be gods, man we're deep!" There is indeed a pantheon out there that watches over Deminar, provides clerics with spells, and sits around waiting for the souls of the faithful to come to their planes in death.
However, there isn't a lot of gods, not like Forgotten Realms where every race and culture has their own pantheon (last I checked, I believe FR has 13,571 official gods, all with stats so you can kill them to fulfill some ego filled power trip), but a more respectable number of gods watching over what goes on among the floating islands. Of course, if you went about asking the various species and cultures and islands about the gods they worship and compile a list of everyone's responses, you'd find out hundreds of gods are being worshiped on a daily basis.
How is that possible? Well, remember that many of these islands have not had contact with one another in generations and even among species that intermingle with one another (and the vast majority don't), each species has its own culture and beliefs. What this boils down to is that different groups are worshiping the same gods under different aliases. A God of War may be worshiped under one name by the goblins, but something entirely different by humans and something entirely different by another clan of goblins on another island. Some might worship the valor and chivalrous aspects of war as one deity and the vicious conquering bloodthirsty aspect as another, even though its the same being. Religious wars are fought over the exact same god, hundreds have died that way, yet, the gods don't go about correcting everyone about it.
Why? Well, a few reasons, first, they've taken a more passive approach to Deminar, they don't go traipsing about in person on the islands (FR, looking at you kid!), and they're not big into the divine intervention all the time. They made a pact with one another not to get involved personally due to events in the long past that I may get around to discussing at some point. Second, a religious war fought between two sides of the same god sends all the faithful to the same god, and for the gods, the more souls you get to go to your domain, the better, though you also need to be careful to keep worshipers alive as well, again, for reasons best left for another post.
The gods are very standoffish in a lot of things, they do provide power to their clerics in return for said clerics spreading the word about them and gaining more worshipers, advertising is important down on the islands, but the gods are actually currently more concerned with what's going on within their own domains.
Also, our gods will never have stats, you can't kill them like you can a monster, by reducing their hp to 0, but you can get rid of them. Also, everyone has the potential to become a god, everyone, and this was long before 4th Edition came up with that Epic Destiny.
There really needs to be a second post about how the gods and afterlife work, I'll have to remember that!
Yes, the setting has gods, we're not trying to break the mold so much and say, "people worship stuff, but there might not actually be gods, man we're deep!" There is indeed a pantheon out there that watches over Deminar, provides clerics with spells, and sits around waiting for the souls of the faithful to come to their planes in death.
However, there isn't a lot of gods, not like Forgotten Realms where every race and culture has their own pantheon (last I checked, I believe FR has 13,571 official gods, all with stats so you can kill them to fulfill some ego filled power trip), but a more respectable number of gods watching over what goes on among the floating islands. Of course, if you went about asking the various species and cultures and islands about the gods they worship and compile a list of everyone's responses, you'd find out hundreds of gods are being worshiped on a daily basis.
How is that possible? Well, remember that many of these islands have not had contact with one another in generations and even among species that intermingle with one another (and the vast majority don't), each species has its own culture and beliefs. What this boils down to is that different groups are worshiping the same gods under different aliases. A God of War may be worshiped under one name by the goblins, but something entirely different by humans and something entirely different by another clan of goblins on another island. Some might worship the valor and chivalrous aspects of war as one deity and the vicious conquering bloodthirsty aspect as another, even though its the same being. Religious wars are fought over the exact same god, hundreds have died that way, yet, the gods don't go about correcting everyone about it.
Why? Well, a few reasons, first, they've taken a more passive approach to Deminar, they don't go traipsing about in person on the islands (FR, looking at you kid!), and they're not big into the divine intervention all the time. They made a pact with one another not to get involved personally due to events in the long past that I may get around to discussing at some point. Second, a religious war fought between two sides of the same god sends all the faithful to the same god, and for the gods, the more souls you get to go to your domain, the better, though you also need to be careful to keep worshipers alive as well, again, for reasons best left for another post.
The gods are very standoffish in a lot of things, they do provide power to their clerics in return for said clerics spreading the word about them and gaining more worshipers, advertising is important down on the islands, but the gods are actually currently more concerned with what's going on within their own domains.
Also, our gods will never have stats, you can't kill them like you can a monster, by reducing their hp to 0, but you can get rid of them. Also, everyone has the potential to become a god, everyone, and this was long before 4th Edition came up with that Epic Destiny.
There really needs to be a second post about how the gods and afterlife work, I'll have to remember that!
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Musing: Ogres
When we initially had our discussion about many of the species that inhabit Deminar, we started playing around with some of the "monster" species, in an attempt to give them some edges besides being just a bundle of stats with a familiar look.
Some stuff came spur of the moment, other stuff we had a few previous ideas about, and, for some reason, I have the Ogres on my mind and I feel I should put down my thoughts while I have them.
As previously mentioned, Ogres in Deminar are "...The result is a degenerate group of incestuous inbreeders, spawning no shortage of physical deformities and keeping the species mentally stunted." Ogres don't live in huge tribes, you'll never stumble upon an Ogre city, instead, family groups (often quite large and quite interbred) settle an area and stay there for a while, until they are driven off or inbreed themselves into oblivion (when genetic mutations just end in all still births). Ogres don't have a concept of community, instead it's a misguided concept of family. If two Ogre family groups come into contact they'll slaughter each other until only one group remains. Ogres also have no problem taking whatever they want from other intelligent species, including moving into a small hamlet and living there after killing (and possibly eating) its former inhabitants. They also enjoy killing things, with a mix of mental instability and that of a child who feels that surge of power all humans are guilty of when knowing their superiority over something else (most adults try to hide that though).
Now, looking at your standard LL description of the Ogre, we have this bit:
"Adult ogres stand 9 to 10 feet tall, and resemble big brutish humans. Their skin color ranges from dull yellow to dull brown. Their clothing consists of poorly cured furs and hides, which add to their naturally repellent odor."
And that immediately got me thinking about where the Ogres came from. What if Ogres are nothing more then the result of humans who didn't take as well to whatever horrid cataclysm struck Deminar? Humans that were affected the same way the world itself was, changed, most died, some managed to survive and, throughout the generations, became the Ogres we know and love today. The concepts of strong family and thrill of having dominance coming to the forefront of their brains and twisted into a meaning they could understand and accomplish. Oh, and let's not have a debate on if that means they're genetically close enough to mate with humans, no half-breeds! Besides, while I'm sure many Ogres have no problems raping humans (and many other species), I don't think the poor thing being raped would survive the process (and probably dying midway through wouldn't stop the Ogre, when I say they're degenerate, I mean it).
Also, yes, I see the Hills Have Eyes connections, thank you.
Some stuff came spur of the moment, other stuff we had a few previous ideas about, and, for some reason, I have the Ogres on my mind and I feel I should put down my thoughts while I have them.
As previously mentioned, Ogres in Deminar are "...The result is a degenerate group of incestuous inbreeders, spawning no shortage of physical deformities and keeping the species mentally stunted." Ogres don't live in huge tribes, you'll never stumble upon an Ogre city, instead, family groups (often quite large and quite interbred) settle an area and stay there for a while, until they are driven off or inbreed themselves into oblivion (when genetic mutations just end in all still births). Ogres don't have a concept of community, instead it's a misguided concept of family. If two Ogre family groups come into contact they'll slaughter each other until only one group remains. Ogres also have no problem taking whatever they want from other intelligent species, including moving into a small hamlet and living there after killing (and possibly eating) its former inhabitants. They also enjoy killing things, with a mix of mental instability and that of a child who feels that surge of power all humans are guilty of when knowing their superiority over something else (most adults try to hide that though).
Now, looking at your standard LL description of the Ogre, we have this bit:
"Adult ogres stand 9 to 10 feet tall, and resemble big brutish humans. Their skin color ranges from dull yellow to dull brown. Their clothing consists of poorly cured furs and hides, which add to their naturally repellent odor."
And that immediately got me thinking about where the Ogres came from. What if Ogres are nothing more then the result of humans who didn't take as well to whatever horrid cataclysm struck Deminar? Humans that were affected the same way the world itself was, changed, most died, some managed to survive and, throughout the generations, became the Ogres we know and love today. The concepts of strong family and thrill of having dominance coming to the forefront of their brains and twisted into a meaning they could understand and accomplish. Oh, and let's not have a debate on if that means they're genetically close enough to mate with humans, no half-breeds! Besides, while I'm sure many Ogres have no problems raping humans (and many other species), I don't think the poor thing being raped would survive the process (and probably dying midway through wouldn't stop the Ogre, when I say they're degenerate, I mean it).
Also, yes, I see the Hills Have Eyes connections, thank you.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Building a Fantasy Sandbox: Step 12: Better Late then Never
12. Decide to place Lairs (locales that revolves around a home of monsters)
Lair, in this case, is a bit of a misnomer, it doesn't necessarily have to mean a dungeon area that is home to a certain creature and its guards, indeed, it doesn't have to be a dungeon at all or even always a cave that houses a sleeping warg.
Lair, basically, means any encounter that always takes place when the PCs enter a certain hex. Whether it's because it's a creature's hunting grounds, because the creature actually does have a physical lair there (be it one "room" or many levels) or because it's an area particularly thick with a certain species, if it's a keyed encounter set to go off when the PCs explore it, we call that a "Lair" for the purposes of that step.
So, here's our map, with the Lairs (conveniently marked L) added in:
As for what's located in each "L," well, I can't reveal all our secrets now can I? Much like the ruins, that will go unsaid. What it does bring up, ties into my previous post about "A Little Reality..." in that we now have specific creatures and species in particular areas, what that means is we have to reverse engineer that, so to speak. We have to know what those creatures are there, and each creature we pick, has to go through our "standards of existence," in that, we have to know how and why it exists at all. As this is the last step in terms of mapping the overall area, it leads nicely into the actual writing that's now ahead of us, where I feel the most challenged and have the most fun.
Speaking of finishing up, since the major details are finished, it's now time to drop the hexes on the map. Each hex is 10 miles and you'll see that with that new sense of scale, we had to slide a few things around to not only fit the hexes (to keep unique features within one hex as is easiest to describe them), but also to have them make more sense in how the world works (as in the fact that our "guard" islands were floating way too far from the dock to be either practical in defense or able to be secured to the main island without, as Sean pointed out, A LOT of chain).
Lair, in this case, is a bit of a misnomer, it doesn't necessarily have to mean a dungeon area that is home to a certain creature and its guards, indeed, it doesn't have to be a dungeon at all or even always a cave that houses a sleeping warg.
Lair, basically, means any encounter that always takes place when the PCs enter a certain hex. Whether it's because it's a creature's hunting grounds, because the creature actually does have a physical lair there (be it one "room" or many levels) or because it's an area particularly thick with a certain species, if it's a keyed encounter set to go off when the PCs explore it, we call that a "Lair" for the purposes of that step.
So, here's our map, with the Lairs (conveniently marked L) added in:
As for what's located in each "L," well, I can't reveal all our secrets now can I? Much like the ruins, that will go unsaid. What it does bring up, ties into my previous post about "A Little Reality..." in that we now have specific creatures and species in particular areas, what that means is we have to reverse engineer that, so to speak. We have to know what those creatures are there, and each creature we pick, has to go through our "standards of existence," in that, we have to know how and why it exists at all. As this is the last step in terms of mapping the overall area, it leads nicely into the actual writing that's now ahead of us, where I feel the most challenged and have the most fun.
Speaking of finishing up, since the major details are finished, it's now time to drop the hexes on the map. Each hex is 10 miles and you'll see that with that new sense of scale, we had to slide a few things around to not only fit the hexes (to keep unique features within one hex as is easiest to describe them), but also to have them make more sense in how the world works (as in the fact that our "guard" islands were floating way too far from the dock to be either practical in defense or able to be secured to the main island without, as Sean pointed out, A LOT of chain).
Saturday, May 1, 2010
On: Format and Publication
The title is slightly misleading, as I don't actually see this being fully published like our first attempt. But I do see this atleast being complied in .pdf form for ease of reference (either to put on RPGNow or for my own usage as a setting for a game I'm gonna run) and I've had some format ideas I'd rather get down somewhere now, so I don't forget when I get to that point later.
Basically I see each Sandbox collection of islands that we make as it's own sub-set of releases.
Basically I see a gazetteer style write up, split for both the player's and the DM.
This being a Player's Guide, you'd start with an introduction of the world as a whole, an explanation of the whole flying island concept and what not, as detailed in previous blogs. From there you'd shuffle into a AEC style write-up (a paragraph or two) on the playable species that inhabit that land along with all bells and whistles that come with choosing them. From there it's a breakdown of all the named places on the map, with roughly a paragraph of info explaining what the average person growing up in that area would know about it (i.e. leaving out all the secret bits) and it would probably cap off with one of the towns completely mapped, vendor stocked, and filled with NPCs to give off quests, as sort of a starting hub town.
The DM would get the inside dish of the same things, a slightly more thorough intro on the world as a whole, the real story or additional information about the named areas on the map, several areas not named on the map that contain all kinds of wondrous and evil things for the players to discover, a batch of wandering wilderness monster charts and then cap it off with one of the lairs/ruins/dungeons fully mapped and stocked (probably closest to the hub town) to act as the first dungeon for the adventurers to start their journey.
But now, you don't have to stop there, being the detail monger Sean and I are, there are plenty of add-on "books" just staying in that first sandbox.
Firstly, you have the other dungeons, all the other multi-room locations full of bad things for the player's to slay, these each need their own release so the DM can run a full campaign on the island chain.
Next, you have things like more detailed gazetteers, taking one of the islands and giving it a run over with a fine toothed comb, mapping all the towns/cities, giving detailed histories and NPCs, maps, lots of maps, and more.
Also, you have a monster manual attached to the island chain in question, basically taking all the monsters and monstrous species you've listed in the DM book and any adventure released so far and giving them great one-two page write-ups about their reason for being, ecology, habitat and all kinds of other fluffy bits that make the world alive (see my entry about my love of monster books).
There are also things like Species books, a whole book dedicated to the intelligent species that are introduced in the first books (or possibly later books) with more details on how they live, how they act, what they like, what they hate, what they celebrate, what they mourn, art they make, wars they wage, fighting styles, clothing, architecture, etc. etc. And this doesn't hold just to the Friendly Species either, you can also do monstrous species if they have a interesting enough society.
There are a hundred other things from there you could do to, whole books dedicated to various organizations, the obvious "Gods" book, a book on Arcane Magic and how it works (along with new spells and what not) and that's all before moving onto another sandbox.
I like this new idea of starting small and really covering that area well, we'll see how far it takes us, but, with ideas like this, we have plenty to keep us occupied.
Basically I see each Sandbox collection of islands that we make as it's own sub-set of releases.
Basically I see a gazetteer style write up, split for both the player's and the DM.
This being a Player's Guide, you'd start with an introduction of the world as a whole, an explanation of the whole flying island concept and what not, as detailed in previous blogs. From there you'd shuffle into a AEC style write-up (a paragraph or two) on the playable species that inhabit that land along with all bells and whistles that come with choosing them. From there it's a breakdown of all the named places on the map, with roughly a paragraph of info explaining what the average person growing up in that area would know about it (i.e. leaving out all the secret bits) and it would probably cap off with one of the towns completely mapped, vendor stocked, and filled with NPCs to give off quests, as sort of a starting hub town.
The DM would get the inside dish of the same things, a slightly more thorough intro on the world as a whole, the real story or additional information about the named areas on the map, several areas not named on the map that contain all kinds of wondrous and evil things for the players to discover, a batch of wandering wilderness monster charts and then cap it off with one of the lairs/ruins/dungeons fully mapped and stocked (probably closest to the hub town) to act as the first dungeon for the adventurers to start their journey.
But now, you don't have to stop there, being the detail monger Sean and I are, there are plenty of add-on "books" just staying in that first sandbox.
Firstly, you have the other dungeons, all the other multi-room locations full of bad things for the player's to slay, these each need their own release so the DM can run a full campaign on the island chain.
Next, you have things like more detailed gazetteers, taking one of the islands and giving it a run over with a fine toothed comb, mapping all the towns/cities, giving detailed histories and NPCs, maps, lots of maps, and more.
Also, you have a monster manual attached to the island chain in question, basically taking all the monsters and monstrous species you've listed in the DM book and any adventure released so far and giving them great one-two page write-ups about their reason for being, ecology, habitat and all kinds of other fluffy bits that make the world alive (see my entry about my love of monster books).
There are also things like Species books, a whole book dedicated to the intelligent species that are introduced in the first books (or possibly later books) with more details on how they live, how they act, what they like, what they hate, what they celebrate, what they mourn, art they make, wars they wage, fighting styles, clothing, architecture, etc. etc. And this doesn't hold just to the Friendly Species either, you can also do monstrous species if they have a interesting enough society.
There are a hundred other things from there you could do to, whole books dedicated to various organizations, the obvious "Gods" book, a book on Arcane Magic and how it works (along with new spells and what not) and that's all before moving onto another sandbox.
I like this new idea of starting small and really covering that area well, we'll see how far it takes us, but, with ideas like this, we have plenty to keep us occupied.
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