Worldly Brainstorming
Someone recently asked me about worlds/settings of my own, which is interesting as I'd recently been pondering things I would put in a fantasy setting were I to build one up...
I've really only had one world that I used over an extended period of time, developed, and expanded on: Makelia. It was spawned largely out of a "vision" of a character (and one big expansion came from another one). It was a world that bucked a few fantasy tropes, but had its fair share still. At the time, I was very interested in a "shades of gray" outlook. The "evil" nation wasn't really evil, wars were motivated as much by differing political views and competition for resources as any crusade of light against dark. There were no true gods, just being who attained greater and greater degrees of magical power - some of whom liked to be viewed as gods. There were two types of magic, differing more on source than capability, and later psionics ("mind magic") was introduced.
Even though I added a lot to the scope and depth of the place, such development was necessitated and limited by the campaigns I was running. Naturally, wherever the PCs were got fleshed out more than other locations. A chunk of important history was detailed when the PCs travelled back in time to that point. Things like that. So, thinking about it now, I can't claim the world to have been more than a backdrop to the games. It was just a much more detailed fascade than I'd done before.
Or since. I really haven't kept a setting of my own devising past the length of a single campaign since, I think. The advantage to that is not unlike you get when using a fantasy setting for a novel: everything only has to work over the course of the events depicted. Historical continuity is nice, but only to explain the present. And the future doesn't really matter at all - the story is over once it ends. Some of these have felt very rich and alive, but they simply don't exist beyond the scope of that particular story.
If I were to actually design something "big" and lasting, to write multiple stories or run multiple games or a long-term MUCK off of, what would I do? That's a big question that I surely won't be able to answer completely here.
Some points:
Universal Truth: One thing that has bugged me about Furryfaire, that I'd definitely go against on my own is the "everyone is right" approach to how the universe works. Some people believe one god created the world, some blame another, some believe in reincarnation, some in an afterlife - and they're all right! Ugh. No. The populus of the world may never know the truth (or may firmly believe in certain, differing things), but you can be darn certain I would know how it all really worked.
Gods: I'm not quite to the point of a firm thesis on the topic yet. I find religions and faith to be an interesting and big (if sometimes overused) element of fantasy worlds, so I kind of like it there. But I also feel gods which regularly perform miracles or appear for dinner to be destructive to the very concept of faith. So I'd probably want divine beings that are, in a sense, alien and beyond regular perception. But I'm not sure where I would want to draw the line between making them distant enough that followers might have to actually have faith and present enough to be "real."
I'd also be more likely to make a set of entities that might be worshipped differently in different cultures, rather than having one pantheon per region.
Magic: Oog. A hugely complex issue in and of itself. What do you allow magic to do and how common do you want it?
Well, I'm inclined to spin off from a concept in the Dresdenverse, where magical power and mortal will are inversely perportional in some sense. A full-blooded mortal may only be able to channel X points of power, limiting him to modest fireballs. Someone with mixed supernatural blood might be able to channel 2X for bigger effects. Eventually you get to purely supernatural beings such as elementals, "demons" and "angels" who can channel a lot more energy into bigger effects, doing so almost innately, but they are totally creatures of their nature, rigid in what they can and will do. This keeps the most extreme effects out of PC hands, generally speaking, and only in the hands of those beings that use such power according to specific rules in keeping with their nature. Though I might allow for some "cheats" where someone sells their soul for greater power or whatever, but they'd be exceptions rather than commonplace.
Restoring life to the dead, mass-scale destruction, or widespread manipulation of reality would be seriously limited. Such things just make it too easy to muck up the place.
I'm not sure if I'd give all mortals the capacity to learn some magic. I suppose it depends on the overall tone I settled on for the setting. I can see some advantages to making it require some "spark" of gifting or somesuch, but I'm not sure.
Hmm... enough for now. More to think on later...
I've really only had one world that I used over an extended period of time, developed, and expanded on: Makelia. It was spawned largely out of a "vision" of a character (and one big expansion came from another one). It was a world that bucked a few fantasy tropes, but had its fair share still. At the time, I was very interested in a "shades of gray" outlook. The "evil" nation wasn't really evil, wars were motivated as much by differing political views and competition for resources as any crusade of light against dark. There were no true gods, just being who attained greater and greater degrees of magical power - some of whom liked to be viewed as gods. There were two types of magic, differing more on source than capability, and later psionics ("mind magic") was introduced.
Even though I added a lot to the scope and depth of the place, such development was necessitated and limited by the campaigns I was running. Naturally, wherever the PCs were got fleshed out more than other locations. A chunk of important history was detailed when the PCs travelled back in time to that point. Things like that. So, thinking about it now, I can't claim the world to have been more than a backdrop to the games. It was just a much more detailed fascade than I'd done before.
Or since. I really haven't kept a setting of my own devising past the length of a single campaign since, I think. The advantage to that is not unlike you get when using a fantasy setting for a novel: everything only has to work over the course of the events depicted. Historical continuity is nice, but only to explain the present. And the future doesn't really matter at all - the story is over once it ends. Some of these have felt very rich and alive, but they simply don't exist beyond the scope of that particular story.
If I were to actually design something "big" and lasting, to write multiple stories or run multiple games or a long-term MUCK off of, what would I do? That's a big question that I surely won't be able to answer completely here.
Some points:
Universal Truth: One thing that has bugged me about Furryfaire, that I'd definitely go against on my own is the "everyone is right" approach to how the universe works. Some people believe one god created the world, some blame another, some believe in reincarnation, some in an afterlife - and they're all right! Ugh. No. The populus of the world may never know the truth (or may firmly believe in certain, differing things), but you can be darn certain I would know how it all really worked.
Gods: I'm not quite to the point of a firm thesis on the topic yet. I find religions and faith to be an interesting and big (if sometimes overused) element of fantasy worlds, so I kind of like it there. But I also feel gods which regularly perform miracles or appear for dinner to be destructive to the very concept of faith. So I'd probably want divine beings that are, in a sense, alien and beyond regular perception. But I'm not sure where I would want to draw the line between making them distant enough that followers might have to actually have faith and present enough to be "real."
I'd also be more likely to make a set of entities that might be worshipped differently in different cultures, rather than having one pantheon per region.
Magic: Oog. A hugely complex issue in and of itself. What do you allow magic to do and how common do you want it?
Well, I'm inclined to spin off from a concept in the Dresdenverse, where magical power and mortal will are inversely perportional in some sense. A full-blooded mortal may only be able to channel X points of power, limiting him to modest fireballs. Someone with mixed supernatural blood might be able to channel 2X for bigger effects. Eventually you get to purely supernatural beings such as elementals, "demons" and "angels" who can channel a lot more energy into bigger effects, doing so almost innately, but they are totally creatures of their nature, rigid in what they can and will do. This keeps the most extreme effects out of PC hands, generally speaking, and only in the hands of those beings that use such power according to specific rules in keeping with their nature. Though I might allow for some "cheats" where someone sells their soul for greater power or whatever, but they'd be exceptions rather than commonplace.
Restoring life to the dead, mass-scale destruction, or widespread manipulation of reality would be seriously limited. Such things just make it too easy to muck up the place.
I'm not sure if I'd give all mortals the capacity to learn some magic. I suppose it depends on the overall tone I settled on for the setting. I can see some advantages to making it require some "spark" of gifting or somesuch, but I'm not sure.
Hmm... enough for now. More to think on later...
I am intrigued. -- Mark
ReplyDelete