Space Opera Part Deux

So I’ve been running this Space Opera campaign idea around a bit more in my head and have a few more random thoughts to add to it.

So this star cluster (a group of stars near each other and grouped together) is a remote region that is not resource rich, it doesn’t have any real strategic value, and isn’t claimed by either major government surrounding it. So why the hell would anyone live there? Well, being not claimed by either government is exactly the type of place people who want to be left alone would go. There are always humans who will flee from civilization to be where they can just be left alone and I’m sure there are species of aliens that would do the same.

There are bound to be enough resources and such in the area to seem at least attractive enough to people to move out to there, so it isn’t going to be devoid of an economy. It’ll just be smaller than other areas. Maybe there’s a nice planet that people will fly to as a tourism destination, possibly on the way to another destination. So one planet in the entire cluster will have a larger economy and population than the rest of it, but it will be more of a tourism/consumer based economy than anywhere else in the cluster. Most of the cluster’s economy would be based around feeding raw materials and supplies to the largest consumer in the area because that’s how economies tend to work.

This means that interstellar shipping will be important. Great time and place to be a trader… or a pirate.

With the lack of a central government, each system is going to be policing their own territory and not caring about what other places are doing. Coupling this with how much shipping is going to the same location you’re going to see a decently large pirate presence throughout the cluster. The area being poorly patrolled by civilized society means that privateers, security companies, and bounty hunter types exist in droves to help provide the law and order. Most of them are even pretty decent folk.

Okay, so let’s talk about technology. Since this is my personal setting it has its own set of tech. Most of it is pretty straightforward.

Let’s start with propulsion and interstellar travel. Keep in mind that we’re going to go with the cinematic approach to speeds similar to how Star Wars or space flight sim games like Wing Commander use. It isn’t realistic and is explained by the “Rule of Awesome” as to why this is even practical. So you have 3 speeds of travel; Local/Combat, In-System Navigation, and Interstellar.

Local/Combat speeds are the slowest and are based upon the speeds required to safely maneuver near gravity wells of certain strength or around other ships. It also enables ships to operate weapons safely and accurately. This propulsion system is based off of Fusion/Plasma Engines generating thrust.

In-System Navigation (I-SN, ISN Drive) is kind of like Warp Speed, but it only works while within a certain distance of a star’s gravity well, the further away it is from the star the slower it goes. Once you pass the Interstellar space threshold the I-SN is about as useful as the engines for Local speeds. This is a separate type of engine that is essentially a field generator that manipulate space-time/gravity around it similar to the familiar warp-drive but interstellar space doesn’t have enough gravity generating matter available to provide the “wave/bubble” effect.

Interstellar navigation was a difficult thing for the various species to master. The true key to making a functioning interstellar drive was to design a system that didn’t interact with the physics of our universe. The Sub-Space Drive (SSD, sub-drive, subspace field generator, SFG) is the interstellar drive of this setting. It basically covers its parent ship with an energy field that allows it to travel into another reality that exists partially within our own. These drives more or less open a shortcut between two points in reality using subspace as the path because subspace doesn’t work the same as our universe and allows for quicker travel. The Navigation of subspace is dangerous and difficult. It must be plotted carefully or else you could end up very off course very quickly. Navigation Computers make it easier but they can take a while to put together a course. Auto-pilots can also help to handle the dangers of subspace, but leaving them entirely in charge without oversight has led to some spectacular disasters over the years. (There’s a lot more about the subspace field generators bouncing around in my head but I’m just going to call this much a good starting point for most people) Oh, one last thing about them, don’t use one that’s broken. It’s bad news. What they find is messy to say the least.

Weapons Technology is based around the classic trio of Projectiles, Missiles/Torpedoes, and Energy Beams. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. Energy Beams/Weapons are based around Plasma technology. Projectiles are based around rail-guns. Missiles/Torpedoes come in various shapes and sizes and each have a different mission to fulfill. Defensive measures generally are energy shields, but there are anti-missile systems and armor plating as well.

The newest type of torpedo that is driving military planners crazy is the “Skipper” torpedo. Typically attached to a very large warhead and designed to take down the most heavily armored starships, the skipper torpedo has a small subspace field generator on it that allows it to briefly enter subspace. This essentially allows it to increase its speed and range with the same fuel load and makes it harder to target with anti-missile weaponry. The skipper’s targeting system can also time the shifts to subspace to bypass the defenses and come back inside of its target. These systems are extremely limited in distribution, expensive, and heavily controlled by the various governments of the galaxy.

The one time pirates got a hold of a cache of these weapons the cost and damage was catastrophic. The pirates didn’t survive, not a single one. There has been a big push to adapt this technology to fighters and ships, but each time they activate the test ships’ drives all organic matter disappears from the ship within the first few skips through subspace.

Stealth technology is essentially unheard of. Most everything that is able to circumvent a certain type of sensor is easily going to be able to be detected by another type of sensor. Most of the known types of stealth craft are extremely expensive, ridiculously short range, and extremely underpowered. They will usually be deployed by a different ship that acts as their support ship/carrier. Typically they will be used for Spec-Op insertion planetside. Most reconnaissance work is conducted by spies in civilian ships and cheap probes that only escape detection most of the time due to their small size.

One relatively common tactic in full-scale warfare is the use of boarding ships/pods on the target. The targets in these cases are going to be Starships, Space Stations, Planets, etc. There are two types of boarding ships, Breachers and Cutters. Cutters fly their way onto the hull of an enemy ship, using plasma beams it cuts open a section of the hull and allows its occupants to enter into an enemy ship and later be able to escape with ease just by reboarding the ship and flying away. Cutters are great for  Spec-Ops teams with precise missions to accomplish. Breachers on the other hand tend to be more brutal and direct in their approach.

These heavily armored and very fast ships act like missiles filled with troops. They slam through the enemy hull and anchor themselves to it, making it extremely difficult to remove the ship. Once the hull is breached the hull on the Breacher opens to allow all the troops inside to rapidly board the ship. These are typically used in large numbers when the controlling fleet knows it has a good chance of capturing an enemy’s vessel with those troops.

On the ground, limited stealth field generators can give some semblance of cloak to unaided vision, but most security systems and vision enhancement equipment is able to see through these devices. People will carry around man sized versions of the energy/projectile/missile variety and wear armors of various types. Robots, super-medicine, bionic/cybernetic implants, cloned body parts, and other such things will end up existing as well.

After looking through the book for D6 Space I realize I’m going to have to design equipment myself and/or steal it from other settings because the core rulebook has pretty much nothing in it. Same thing goes for ships. At least there are extensive design rules for that. I’ll probably just steal already existing pictures of other settings ships and use them as filler and a template for the time being.

As far as aliens go, I’ve never actually populated this setting with specific species before. I just never got around to actually doing it, I was too busy with the sculpting of the Humans and their struggles to actually give them specific aliens to encounter and deal with. I’ve got ideas about what’s out there, but my sensibilities regarding alien races have changed themselves so many times over the years that nothing has survived a purging of Tropes and silliness. I really need to figure out a few of them now.

A recent tragedy and some thoughts

I know I said I’d keep my political hobbies off of this blog, but this story just touched some very deep seated and very emotional things in me and this is the only place where I can write them out in a competent manner. I will however make the promise that I will do my best to not talk about political opinions. A few may come out, but it is not my intent to talk politics on this entry. I do have a reason for this.

This story (Link!!! Do not read the link or this entry if you don't want to look at horrible things humans do to each other for stupid reasons, this is not a light subject. Go look at pictures of kittens instead, it'll help you keep you sanity.) is related to the recent terrorist massacre that occurred in a mall in Nairobi, Kenya. A very terrible and serious tragedy that just gets worse the more you read about it. It is an onion of awfulness that for some reason I can’t stop looking into and I don’t know why.

This particular story is about a conversation between one of the gunmen and a 4-year old child. The child, in the middle of the slaughter, looked the man dead in the eyes and said to him “You’re a very bad man.” That’s it. The boy spoke in an honesty that is only possible in the hands of a child my daughter’s age. He looked evil in the eye and called it what it was. The gunman looked back at the child and honestly said the following things: “Please forgive me, we are not monsters.” “Do you forgive us? Do you forgive us?”

He handed chocolate bars to the kid at some point during this. This particular group of gunmen was going through a supermarket in the store and allowed everyone with children to leave. Not every group of gunmen in this attack did this though.

Why am I speaking about this on a gaming/nerd culture blog? Because it touches on some things that are not only philosophically important, but also important in storytelling. I looked at this one story and was struck very hard by the gunman’s words. He doesn’t see himself as evil. He can’t see himself as evil, he is the hero of his story. Everyone is the hero of their own story.

Take a moment and start reading through that comment section. I’m a fan of The Blaze as a news source, but their commenters are some of the worst this side of YouTube. The contrast of the comments and the attitude of the shooter are fascinating to say the least. It is amazing to me that these people can’t see how their own attitudes are exactly the same as the gunman’s. Deep in their own narrative they think they are just as justified to make wild accusations and speculations about the fate of people’s souls and how “right” they’re living.

Then, in the middle of reading this stuff I realized something. Being a player of RPGs, a person who overanalyzes character motivations in fiction, self-identifies as a Mises/Hayek Libertarian, and being someone who understands major portions of his own craziness* I felt like I was able to have a brief glimpse into that gunman’s mind and motivations. Why was I able to catch a glimpse? Entirely because of gaming.

(*- An article series I read following the Sandy Hook shooting really helped me realize and think hard about some things. I understood how someone could get there because of my own issues and problems. I never got even close to the point that shooter got to, but I could see how I could have ended up going further down that path. It’s a touchy subject that I don’t want to go into on this blog any more than this. If you want to know more, ask me over a drink sometime.)

Gaming has always been a creative outlet for me. Over the years I’ve wanted to improve my roleplaying andwriting skills so I read a lot about character development, motivations, etc. In addition to this I read a lot of political and historical books while paying attention to current events because of my other hobbies. Understanding these things and implementing them in stories/characters/backgrounds has helped me out immensely in making my characters more realistic and have believable motivations.

What happened to me though during this story was that I applied the same logic and questions I normally do when I see a story or a character in a work of fiction, the difference here being this was a real world monster who suddenly showed a bit of his humanity underneath. Suddenly this all made sense. This doesn’t justify it, or his actions but I was briefly able to understand the motivations of such an individual. No one believes themselves to be evil unless they’re bat-shit crazy. The real world is full of people doing what they think is best for themselves or their families or their communities.

Briefly I was able to role-play as this gunman and suddenly I understood far more than I should be able to about the mind of such a person. I was immediately able to see the same mentality in the various commenters, or random political pundits.

My gaming helped me understand the world a bit more, and strengthened my resolve for my other passions. Gaming well is not only a release but when approached the right way, just like anything with complex characters and themes in fiction, it can teach you things about the world and allow you to explore reality in a new light.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled nothing new… maybe

Space Opera

So after discovering the absolutely wonderful webcomic Darths and Droids (I highly recommend it, check it out here) I have been kindly reminded about my love of sci-fi epics. It has put me in the mood to at least look into writing down some campaign ideas for some type of space epic that will go into the file of “Things that will never see the light of day again.”

Thanks to my new found love of Old School gaming groups on Facebook I’ve found that West End Games, the creators of the wonderful d6 Star Wars system, have released the core rulebooks for their generic Fantasy, Adventure, and Sci-Fi d6 rules to the public for free download from the various PDF distribution sites out there. They've even made them Open Game License products so anyone can use them as a baseline system for their own settings which is a very awesome thing to do.

So with those downloads fresh on my various storage devices and a glorious spark of sci-fi epic based creativity I've kind of gotten into a mood of wanting to play or run a sci-fi epic. I know it won’t happen because apparently anytime I try to run something it falls through and I've got some other things that are ready to go and are just waiting for players first (Geinrich, Dresden, multiple World of Darkness, an Exalted campaign, a couple Pathfinder/3.5 campaigns, and a partially built Star Wars D20 which I would like to convert to d6 now). I think it shouldn’t be a problem to use the D6 Space rules for this so that’s what we’ll use.

So picking a setting for sci-fi is a difficult thing to do. Most people end up wanting to play in a well established setting with certain tropes or various things they know well. That’s all well and good, but when given the ability to create sci-fi from scratch with a system I think this is as perfect a time as any to pull out one of my brain. Way back in those dark days of middle school (shudder) I started to develop and flesh out my own sci-fi universe. It had originally been a rip off of various established universes (primarily Star Wars and Wing Commander) but it was mine and I liked to come up with neat ideas for various characters and societies in it.

In my navy days I came back to it again to revisit and re-work it because underway you have a lot of extra time on your hands and watches are long. I wrote out a bunch of ideas and concepts that eventually grew into the current version of this universe. Now that I’ve been out of the Navy for years and some of that information I wrote is lost, forgotten, or stupid and I want to refine it again for my new sensibilities. So hey, look, an excuse!

Back to what I was trying to say, I’ll use my own setting for a Sci-Fi campaign. It’s your standard Sci-Fi fare in general. Kind of like what you’d find in various video game universes, animated shows, comics and such. You have a Human organization spread across a large number of planets, a bunch of alien races with varying types of governments and alliances, a semi-stable level of technology, shields, plasma cannons, FTL travel, and cinematic action.

I love realistic sci-fi combat, but in an RPG no one wants to deal with the realities of space based combat, they want to be Han Solo, Christopher Blair, or Captain Kirk. They don’t want to be John “Black Jack” Geary trying to calculate the relativistic distortion of two giant fleets coming towards each other at 0.1 Lightspeed over the course of dozens of hours setting up the perfect last minute maneuver that will give them the best advantage for that brief fraction of a fraction of a second that the opposing ships will be passing each other at insane speeds. That just isn’t very RPG-ish, so I have fighter wings and such in my setting because it’s cool.

So really, just think that the setting is a rip-off of Star Wars with elements of Wing Commander, Mass Effect, and Titan A.E. and you’ll probably be close enough.

So, what could I do for a campaign? That’s always the first question. For that I turn to my favorite settings and series and look for inspiration. There are two ways to approach a new and unknown setting, Railroad tracks or Sandbox. Railroad tracks you start off with everyone in a pre-defined role with a mission already briefed and ready to go. You don’t give them an option and force them into a story and drag them around to some set pieces. They can learn new things that way. The sandbox just plops them down and you say have at it! Sandbox can be very difficult most of the time but is far more rewarding in the end. I’ll probably need to do something that’s a combination of both though.

With those in mind, what’s a good starting point? Military? Freelancer? Traders? Privateer? Pirate? Stuck on a planet because of an accident? Do they have their own ship? Human only party?

Hmmm…

Primarily I’d say that starting out as some type of Freelance Trader is a good jumping off point. Firefly is a wonderful example of the possibilities that this type of starting point provides. So at least one of the players will be the owner of a ship, at least one other person is a member of the crew and everyone else can either be a passenger or a crew member. They’re doing their best to make a living for themselves as they make their way from planet to planet at their own pace. Ah, yes. That makes the beginning easier. The opening adventure module could be a simple transport job or something. Very easy for something to go wrong, money being owed, success or failure, etc. I like it.

Alright that basic premise is done. What’s next? Scope is a good one. Maybe make a cluster of star systems near the border of the Terran Interstellar Alliance and the Confederated Systems. Some type of semi-unclaimed set of territory. Call it “The Borderlands” or some other stupidly simple name that humans would name something like that. This particular star cluster has something like 10-15 systems in it usually with 1-3 inhabited planets and handfuls for stations or hollowed out asteroids in each system. The systems may have some type of general pirate/raider problem and aren’t patrolled very well by either major power. Each system probably has its own system of government and laws, plus their own militia/law enforcement. This is probably more than enough for the first module and possibly the campaign.

What types of major dangers and conflicts exist in this cluster that they’d have to deal with? Obviously the pirates as mentioned before will be one. There is likely to be some type of criminal enterprise that operates on multiple planets and in multiple systems. Maybe some of the planets in a system don’t like each other very much and are planning a feud or a violent trade dispute. Some of the planets are going to have their own sets of problems too. Yup, Liking where this is going.

The area isn't super resource rich and not of much interest to either government and isn’t important strategically so it isn't likely to be contested soon. This means that any major problems (like the pirates) will have to be handled by the cluster. Which also means that they'll probably be handled by the individual governments independent of the others.

That's a pretty good start maybe I'll continue fleshing this out some more just as an exercise in world building.

Of course I could just do Star Wars instead and scrap all of this… do some New Jedi Order, Knights of the Old Republic, or Rebellion Era and call it a day. Yeah, that does sound tempting, but whatever.

Werewolves? Oh man, do I know about them...

So my buddy decided to write about Werewolves on his blog and I’ve been looking for a subject to get me back into the habit of writing on here again and figured that Werewolves are as good of a subject as any to inspire some writing. I am somewhat of a fan of them after all. This is mostly a response to his blog post and how I interpret some things differently than him.

My background with dealing with werewolves comes from my gaming background and love of cheesy horror movies. As I’ve mentioned before, Werewolf The Apocalypse is the game I have played the most extensively and have tons of experience with. It is absolutely wonderful and amazing and full of well thought out fluff and NPCs. I miss it and I miss my old gaming group where we played this… sigh…

Okay so, I completely agree that Pathfinder/DnD lycanthropes suck. They suck hard compared to Whitewolf’s and those in most literature/mythology. Hell, arguably Twilight’s wolves are just as “awesome” as the template in the Monster Manual. Instead of unstoppable killing machines, these critters are a slight boost to the base creature and aren’t that good at some of the things their base animal can do. I don’t like that and I hate having to use them as is. Given the chance I would change the template completely.

Let’s start with the same things he did. First we look at the template:

+1 CR, Gains Shapechanger subtype,  Size: unchanged, AC: +2 Natural Armor, DR 10/Silver (Natural), DR 5/Silver (Afflicted), Gains Natural Attacks based on creature when in hybrid and animal forms, gains all natural abilities of the animal when in Hybrid of Animal forms, gains low-light vision, scent, Change Shape (Use Con roll to change between Human, Hybrid, and Animal forms), Curse of Lycanthropy, Lycanthropic Empathy, +2 Wis, -2 Cha, +2 Str and Con (in hybrid and animal forms only), in addition other stats of the lycanthrope in Hybrid or Animal form default to either the animal or base creature’s base stats (whichever is higher).

I don’t mind the two types of lycanthropes existing (Natural and Afflicted) but I do have a problem with them being different in terms of some abilities. I would remove the Afflicted’s reduced damage reduction and leave it at that. I don’t mind the concept of both types of lycanthropes existing (Natural and Afflicted) but I just don’t like the concept of the afflicted’s physiology being weaker.

+2 Natural AC, makes sense.

Damage Reduction. Like my friend, I also think that damage reduction isn’t the best way to deal with this piece of Werewolves and other lycans. They heal insanely fast, can absorb tremendous blows, and keep going no matter how powerful a blow they’re dealt. I might change this to be a DR 5/Silver and Fast Healing 4 or 5/Silver. That puts them in the right category for me. Regeneration works, but I feel that Fast Healing and a DR are more appropriate to what I’ve seen on film and in literature. I only include Silver as the end all be all way around them because they are lycanthropes. That is their weakness, period, end of story. Maybe it can change depending upon the species (not all lycanthrope legends have an allergy to solver, some are allergic to gold or other precious things), but for anything connected in such a way to the moon it must be silver.

Shape Change. I’m a Werewolf The Apocalypse (WTA) veteran. I’m used to werewolves having 5 (yes FIVE) forms. I’m perfectly okay with lycanthropes having 3 forms in this template. The use of the Constitution modifier for controlling the change makes sense to me as well. You are trying to control your body and force it to change itself through the use of the disease that you have inside of your body. You also have to fight through the violent and awful pain that the transformation causes you in order to not stop yourself partway through.

I will happily agree that a Werewolf in Hybrid form needs a set of claw attacks. 1D4 seems too low for a supernatural predator like that though. I also feel that the Bite attack’s 1d6 is also too low. That is, unless there are additional abilities that a werecreature was granted. For a werewolf, maybe instead of just gaining Trip in hybrid form it instead gains 2 Claw attacks (at 1D4 each), a Bite (its normal 1D6), Pounce, Grab (on the Bite attack), and Rake. In animal form you’d only have the abilities of the base animal, so in the case of a wolf you’d have trip in that form.

My experience in WTA leaves me wanting more from my shapeshifters in hybrid form. In that game, someone entering Crinos (their equivalent of Hybrid form) gains approximately 50% of their own height and doubles their Glabro (Near-man form) weight (which is usually already almost double their human form weight and is all muscle). So a 6 foot tall, 180 pound werewolf in human form would turn into a 9 foot tall, ~650-700 pound Crinos. (And this is the low end of the scale!!!). If a character is shapeshifting into a hybrid form known for power or strength (Wolves, great cats, pretty much any large predator) they should be subject to the same effects as an enlarge person spell, making them 1 size category larger with all associated penalties and bonuses. (This would include increasing their claw and bite damage to the next die category)

I do like his changes to STR/CON/DEX modifiers. Those are pretty solid. I’d stick with a +4 STR/CON and a +2 DEX for werewolves in Hybrid form myself. Maybe give them a bonus to Speed and DEX in Animal form. Obviously this should be incorporated with the Enlarge effect in mind.

Being a shapeshifter you are now, you have been cursed with a pure, primal spirit of fury and anger that has incorporated itself into your very being. The legends of werewolves attacking during full moons is spoken of for a reason. In WTA this was explained by Werewolves being easier to anger as the moon got fuller, fueling their supernatural Rage powers and making them more likely to enter into a Frenzy. This was because of their connection to the moon. In DnD you just go into a crazed frenzy with no control during a full moon.

Now, in WTA, you could use your Rage score to gain additional turns, activate powers, or you had to roll it when something that could make you angry did. Kinda like the Hulk, you wouldn’t like them when they are angry. I would like to see something like this implemented with Lycanthropes in PF/DnD. Maybe not quite to the same extent though. Maybe give them a 1/Day use of Barbarian Rage or the Frenzy of the Frenzied Berserker prestige class, but it can only be used in Hybrid form and you could end up entering it involuntarily if you fair a Will save or drop below ¼ HP or something similar. Obviously the difficulty is determined by the phase of the moon.

And re-reading my buddy’s post he’s already mentioned something like that…

Anyways the point is that I want to add something like WTA’s Frenzies that also makes the Werewolf stronger and tougher to kill while taking control away from the base creature. Maybe entering Hybrid form automatically puts them into a State of Barbarian Rage… hmmm…

So there’s a bunch of thought dumping for you to sift through.

A quick update

I'm on vacation for a week. So I'll try to get something ready for next friday...

Some filler

So I never got around to writing something ahead of time this week so this is coming out later than I wanted it to.

Last night I ran the Tomb of Horrors for our regular group, well sort of the regular group. I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly had a blast running the game. It was fun to do some classic dungeon crawling with that wonderfully sadistic module.

They were only able to get as far as the.Colorful Sphere Room and the Evil Temple in the time we had.

Some thoughts on the session itself. Lance had his girlfriend playing for the first time,  which was very nice to see. It has been a long time since I've seen a complete noob at a table and there really isn't anything like that experience.

A few times my lack of practice showed itself when I screwed up a few traps and a couple descriptions. There were a few times where I had to improvise some things and I was probably more generous than I should have been, but overall I think I did okay. I've got a list of what I think I need to improve upon and I'll probably ask around a little for other people's opinions. It's been a few years since I last ran anything and I need some pointers.

Lastly, fuck that stupid complex of secret doors. That's a poorly described section that was boring for all of us. I'll have to try and figure something else out with it.

Starting a What!?!

So I had an awful bit of inspiration the other day. I want to create and publish a true tabletop campaign setting for commercial sale. I have been doing research into how I can do this on the cheap and think I have a pretty good grasp of the budget for such a thing. How that money is going to be raised is a different issue that will be worked out later when we have a product to work with. For now though I want to concentrate on producing the setting.

The first thing to go through my head was that I immediately need to involve Clint, the DM for the Pathfinder Campaign I’m playing in, because he and I have been talking about designing a campaign setting together anyways. We have similar design philosophies when it comes to mechanics and settings and have been bouncing ideas back and forth between each other for various RPG related topics for a while now. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to collaborate on a project with him and give us both a chance to take a step into the industry we both love.

Right now we’re working on figuring out what type of setting we want to create. We both have campaign settings already created that could be published, but I want to create something new with him from the ground up. If we can’t come up with any ideas we will probably flesh out and publish one of our existing settings first. In the meantime I’m going to type out some of my brainstorming and the thought process behind the creation of a setting that I go through when I create something like this.

Normally I’m inspired by something I watch, read, or see and then write down that idea in a margin, notebook, or the back of a piece of paper and come back to it later when I have enough ideas to flesh it out. This is different than normal though. Now I need to do something that will force some inspiration. I’ve been looking at legends, watching some movies, and delving into Wikipedia over the past few days searching for inspiration and I’ve had a few things pop up.

First and foremost though I need to decide what type of unique things will make up this world and what potential systems we will use to create it. This has to be a commercially viable product so we need a hook and we need to apply it to a popular system. I think the best system to use will be Pathfinder. It is popular in the community, we can use the Open Gaming License to link our book to it, and we are both pretty familiar with the system at this point. Clint and I have some issues with the system that we’ve discussed at length before, so we will probably want to alter the system a little to fit our own tastes, maybe a couple of simple, custom systems that are potentially appealing to other people.

Clint and I are also fans of firearms in fantasy settings, magic systems that have built in catastrophic failure systems, and unique/different races. So I’m pretty sure we’ll end up with some type of firearms and a magic system along the lines of each of our magic failure systems from our individual campaign settings (both of which are using a variation of the Taint mechanic). The unique/different races thing will be hashed out more when we’re closer to defining the actual setting itself I think.

So starting from the ground up…

Any world I build I start with a grittier, low magic setting. Typically I think of an Everway style setting. Magic exists, and you might see it in use every day, but it isn’t (always) world shattering stuff and everything comes with a price or potential for failure. So we’ll start off with that type of assumption. We can discuss the potential existence of deities, dragons, and odd-ball races later.

The night I sprung this on Clint the wife and I were watching a Jimmy Stewart movie from the 60’s called Shenandoah. Great movie, depressing as hell, but still great. It’s about a family from Virginia that gets dragged into the Civil War against its will and gets screwed over by both sides and other people. It’s a good look into some of the issues of the day. This immediately inspired me. A good setting should always have some type of brewing or active conflict. It gives you a lot of things to work with. Just like the civil war, there’s got to be a lot going on under the surface so that no side is clearly good or evil.

There was a lot of things going on during the American civil war other than slavery (which despite the arguments to the contrary, it really was mostly about slavery even though the South tried to dress it up as more than that). Both sides in the conflict weren’t doing good things and weren’t necessarily fighting for the right reasons. I won’t get into the specifics here, but both sides were doing bad things and both also had good things. It is a very complex situation and both sides are shades of grey. Sounds like the perfect thing for me to use.

So a big civil war type situation is all well and good, but it needs more. Obviously it requires two sides of a larger and stronger nation. What else can I add though to make it more than just an analogue for exploring the issues of the civil war? Obviously more drama is always a good answer. What if we expand it? What if this civil war is fall out from the collapse of what used to be a larger empire? Like, say the Roman Empire or the United States collapsing into 3 or more chunks. Maybe this former empire broke up into 3 major chunks and a few smaller minor kingdoms/city-states.

What if two of these major chunks didn’t agree on whether or not they were one or two nations? One remnant claims that this other one is part of it and demands taxes, conscripts, and resources while the other claims it is independent. The third chunk is remaining entirely neutral in the matter. To make matters worse, this empire used to be a stabilizing influence across the entire continent and with their collapse and being on the brink of war with itself it has freed up the other powers of the continent to do what they want. Maybe this empire was more of a bully than police, maybe a meaner Roman Empire.

Maybe there’s an “evil” nation starting to amass their own armies to attempt conquests upon their neighbors. Oh, there could be an extremely well-defended city-state somewhere that is considered a Freeport type city with massive monetary influence. Kind of like a Singapore or Tortuga. (I really like these Freeport city ideas for some reason, that might be my politics influencing me.). [after popping in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust] OH! Dhampier are awesome. Maybe we can use them somewhere, like that “evil” nation!

Wikipedia led me to pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures… again… the thought of a Mesoamerican style culture with sacrifices and elaborate ceremonies is always a fun thing to contemplate being an influence upon a Western European style culture.

A viewing of Howl’s Moving Castle made me think about an idea I had long ago for an Arcanatech style setting and a class that a navy buddy of mine helped me design (the Articifer, a base class that was all about making constructs and magic items. Mostly constructs). Might not fit with the low magic/magic with consequences though.

What types of traditional fantasy tropes exist here? What types of ancient secrets are around? Potentials for dungeon crawls? Can we develop an item creation system outside of the normal magic item system, maybe with alchemy, unusual materials and superior craftsmanship instead? What type of geographic landscape are we looking at here? How many traditional races are there and where do they live?

What I’d like to see is about 80-95% human coverage of the continent with the rest split up between the rest of the races, whatever they are. I hate elves so can we make them real jerk-offs? I’d like to see them as xenophobic, racist assholes. It just seems appropriate.

Maybe there’s a place where there’s just a cubic ass-ton of minor kingdoms and city-states that are constantly at war with each other. This could be a great place for a Kingmaker style game to take place. Maybe there are some vast swaths of unclaimed territory on the continent, at least not claimed by any of the important nations. This could be where the remains of a great and ancient magical empire was and the landscape is dotted with magical beast/mutants and ruins that are extremely dangerous to go after. Especially when there are easier ways to make your fortune in the constantly brewing conflicts elsewhere.

There is of course that Mercenary setting that Clint had me help him out with. That was neat. It could be adapted to its own setting outside of Hekinoe but that is pretty well established.

Hmmm… That’s a pretty good list of random things to work with so far. Maybe after I read Clint’s ideas (and he reads these) we’ll be able to hash some more out and start laying down the foundation.