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!
Monday, May 24, 2010
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)