Redwolf's Journal (continued)

 I've gotten into mostly-listening to some streams and videos about Battletech in recent times, including getting caught up in hype over the Mercenaries kickstarter project. One discussion had me thinking about the suspension of disbelief involved in the setting, how things don't fit, and in some cases why. In fairness, most science fiction settings require certain leaps - perhaps more so for settings that are built around games, as games require certain things.  One of the most commonly-fudge aspects in scifi is that of scale. Frequently planets are distilled down to a single dominant terrain and can be flipped by a single battle - not very realistic if you take even a passing glance at modern Earth. But when your setting is constructed around the conceits of a tactical wargame, that's what you get. Managing more than lance-, or maybe company-, sized battles gets unwieldy fast, so smaller scale battles have to matter somehow. What brought this up was more discussion of soc...

Years ago... sheesh, over a decade now, I think... an online friend shared this D&D-system world he used in some campaigns, Rym. He put up a web site with a lot of information, though there are still a lot of gaps, too. He also tied this in with Furryfaire MUCK. That had ups and downs, and there are still compatibility issues that we sort of skirt around, but I've always liked the magic/tech "vibe" of the setting even if I've interpreted it differently than others. One of the races of this world is the hoomiku. Now, when it comes to roleplaying them, there really isn't all that much information set out by their creator. There's a race page with some basics and D&D 3E-ish stat modifiers, there is a glimpse at their technology on the weapons page , and then there are some scattered references in images and map sites such as Haizat and Southwind Cove . When you put it all together, you get a picture, but it's a bit sketchy in places. To date, I...

Back and forth, back and forth... But in the last week, I've actually made some progress, at least. So I had a campaign idea I wanted to follow up on, but it's been a struggle to get anywhere with. I started with some scene-setting imagery in mind a while back. On further thought, it might be interesting to have people who aren't such celebrities, so that's ceased being a "requirement." Rather, the PCs are survivors of the climactic battle of a war - possibly from either side or even just on the scene at the time. Whatever the case, they've inherited a degree of supernatural power. That power, though, has a sort of dark side to it. The first part of the campaign is likely to be learning about that power, through personal experience and witnessing of others. Then things develop from there. One huge hurdle had been even picking an RPG system. Similar to my sources of inspiration, I want a system that allows heroic mortals to stand above the rank-and-...

The recent RPG research had me pulling out my d20 Sorcery and Steam book. It certainly didn't have what I was really looking for, but it did have a good section on incorporating steampunk-ish technology into a world. And it brought up a point that, perhaps, hadn't fully clicked in my mind before in the "what's different between magic and technology" debate. Magic (unless deliberately designed otherwise) can exist on its own. Technology, however, requires infrastructure, and that has inherent implications. Oh, a secret inventor/society could create a few prototypes on their own, sure. When you start getting into airships (plural) or mass-produced anything, you need factories. And you need mines. And transport for the parts. And... The making of things en masse almost unavoidably causes a big change in society to support it - something that we have historical evidence of.

As a follow up to my last post : Hmmm... so it's acceptable, at least in some cases, to conceal major plot twists. I would have expected at least a little more reservation from those two, just based on what I've perceived as a desire to not cope with major changes in a campaign and/or a desire for full disclosure in advance. Well, I agonize over and over, but... I really cannot imagine any way in which I would run this online. It's not terribly likely offline either (perhaps more due to scheduling and such), and there's really only one offline gamer I know who might read any of this anyway. Kyn, at least, keeps prompting me for more details whenever I post some sort of campaign seed, so here's what I scribbled/fleshed out the other day... Spoilery self-notes: The Empire of Vastyr assaults and is eventually defeated by the Republic the PCs come from. In the process, the PCs (and several NPCs) are exposed to mystical forces that render them more than human w...

I have some ideas floating around in my head that I want to tie in with a campaign concept I had in mind some time (years?) ago, but while I'm pretty sure I made a related LJ post back then, I'm unable to find it. Blasted me not tagging things in a useful fashion... Edit: Ah. There we go . So as I write out terrifically spoilery notes while they're in my head, a major question comes up. Mind you, this campaign is still all theoretical. And I think it unlikely still that I'd run it online. But I need opinions on a certain point. How much should a GM disclose to players about a new campaign? I have trouble with the "full disclosure" thing when there's some concept of the campaign that I feel works out well from a narrative perspective as a surprise to the characters. Yet the last time I tried that, in my Midnight game, I think it was far, far more trouble than it was worth. Or maybe I just didn't reveal enough ? I think there's some more ...

Random notes on a setting in mind... or the background for one. I see a world that rose to great heights of magical prowess and understanding, which all fell apart in a vicious war. This leaves a world of crumbling ruins, lost knowledge, and some great wonders still around. In the decades after, civilizations on a smaller scale rebuild. Would-be mages struggle to regain the understanding of the height of society, some cities are still guarded by small armies of automaton soldiers, creatures and races that were brought into being by the great mages of old run rampant or struggle to find their place... Torvarian Magocracy Magic and Science Magic, simply put, isn't fully understood in a quantifiable fashion. It's most often defined as the use of one's will to exert unnatural change upon reality. It's understood that magical energy exists both within the human being and existing within the rest of the world, and that there is a connection between those reservoirs. A ...

Zombie apocalypse dreams last night - probably connected to seeing a few minutes of a Saw movie just before bed. @whee! I was wish a group of survivors who had set up around a few houses in the ruins of a sparsely-built area. I came across some kid and was showing him the ropes when we got back to find the houses under attack. These zombies were tearing down doors and proving more resilient than usual to the frequent metal bat or crowbar to the head, prompting some discussion about how they're getting tougher and what to do. Finding a suitable place to wall off was a favored suggestion, even perhaps using something like school buses as a basis for the walls. I wondered, but my dream never actually answered whether we were dealing with infectious zombies or global ones. The latter scenerio, which seems less common in media these days, has always seemed to me the scarier one. No matter what precautions you take as a survivor, if someone dies quietly in the night, you've got a ...

Okay, so you're in a fantasy world. The technological level is fairly limited, but there's magic to make up the difference. Now take a look out over the port and start thinking... Ships are good for getting people and cargo around. Handy, that. They don't require gateways or knowledge of your destination, technically, so you can explore with them. That's awesome! I want one of those. But why limit yourself to the seas? With magic, you can have a ship that can soar through the air, or cross planes! The form of a ship, however, is designed with the sea in mind. If you take that out of the equation, you should actually build things differently, shouldn't you? Let's start with the bottom of the hull. That's really only suited to sitting in water. If you don't want to be limited to seasides, what then? Well, if you make the bottom flat, at least it can sit upright on the ground. Heck, that's a really good place to put some sort of entrance or loa...

Cracked is occasionally an amusing read. Today's list doesn't really contain any surprises for me, but the bit about standard time zones phasing in within about fifty years on either side of 1880 strikes a chord. Just a few days ago, my thoughts we wandering over how radically the evolution of transport and communication has changed life and how that really kicked in with the railroads. Before that, a lot of things simply didn't matter because they were days or months distant, rather than hours or days. Pondering that also calls up previous thoughts of how any world with common or powerful magic would radically change. So many settings take this for granted. The "dark ages" were dark partly because communication and travel were difficult, dangerous, and time consuming. Simple sending spells and some airships or teleportation magic could easily cause an explosion of civilization development along the lines of telegraphs and trains in real history. Unless you ar...

A much more in-depth look at ways and reasons to limit the influence of gods in a fantasy world than I've ever had the focus to write: http://www.campaignmastery.com/blog/monkeywrench/ I find the log in general to have a lot of good thinking about worldbuilding and running fantasy games. Those behind the blog seem to have a lot more time to put into such things than I did even at my peak. I find it hard to imagine getting into so much detail, but it makes for interesting reading - at least to me.

Feeling better in general than I have in a few weeks, though I still can't say I'm highly motivated to creative roleplay. Slowly accumulating more fantasy world thoughts to record, though. Longevity I mentioned it in passing before and had a little follow-up discussion. So why is such a small point in a setting worthy of such consideration? Well, in the case of a book or campaign, it absolutely isn't. Unless there are supernatural aging effects floating around (2nd Edition AD&D ghosts, for example), it generally doesn't matter if a character is 20 or 60. Adventurers aren't likely to live to a ripe old age anyway. But in a persistent/ongoing world, such things do have an effect. The phrase "long term plans" doesn't even start to cover it. Plus, I think a mechanical enforcement actually works along with reality - or believability rather. As I said, I see someone who extends their life through magic as losing their "humanity" (for la...

Realism, or Not One article I recently glanced at summed up an aspect of fantasy for me in a way that resonates pretty strongly. "Internal Consistency, not Realism, is the benchmark of a believable fantasy world." If you made things realistic, it wouldn't be fantasy. No, what the audience and/or players want is to be able to make the initial leap of logic and then not have their suspension of disbelief shaken further. You're already accepting magic (in some form and measure), historical variances, and whatever else. Being given cause to question "well, why doesn't the archmage next door take five minutes out of his day to solve this problem?" takes you out of the illusion of a working world. The world doesn't have to work/grow/develop/look like the real world, it just has to be believable within its own confines. Well, that and be at least somewhat relateable in most cases - it's hard to roleplay something/someone that is completely alien....

Collecting more scattered thoughts... Magic Magic remains a difficult point. On further consideration, I think I'd set the bar for mortal magic at subtle, "alchemical" effects - usually minor effects that take preparation and could in many cases be considered fringe science more than magic. That means anyone tossing a fireball is at least a little bit of a monster, or has somehow bargained with one. That seems like a fair way to keep magic limited and the consequences of magic from spinning the setting wildly out of the realm of what we can even conceive. Geography It's been a long time since I've sat down with colored pencils and drawn out a map, but that's usually my preferred method with some inspiration coming before or during the process. Geographical barriers often define nations and it helps if things make sense. For a "lasting" setting, I'd be inclined to stay away from fantastic features like a desert right next to marshland, tho...

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") ...

I came in on a discussion yesterday about magic. In part, it was about certain applications looking too technological for a fantasy setting, but it got me thinking well beyond that. My comments at the time: The good/bad of magic is that it's magic . By definition (or lack thereof) it can accomplish anything you can think of, unless there are some sort of hard limits in place. So the inventor spends his years learning aerodynamics and says to his mage pal 'I've had a contraption that lets a person fly like a bird!' The mage takes a few minutes with all his arcane knowledge and whips up a spell that... makes someone fly like a bird. The mage doesn't need to understand the technical points because magic itself is a shortcut/plot point/fiat that makes it possible. Unless, of course, the setting's magic has some other requirements, but it usually doesn't. I'd also add that the only way I see to keep magic from doing certain things or looking a certain wa...

I was flipping through channels to see what was on recently and caught a scene from a movie I'd seen before. I can't even say it was a good movie. Still, it got me thinking of how characters become casters, and a slightly different angle I don't think I've seen before... I think I most frequently magic in fantasy settings as either an inborn talent (only certain people have it) or result of specialized training (theoretically, anyone can learn). Sometimes there's a mix of the two, or there's the "chosen of the gods" approach. More rarely I'll see magic that's only available by pact, or something like that. What if magic were finite and bestowed? Imagine a world that is... gifted by the gods, or blessed by chance, or whatever, but you end up with X amount of people who can work real magic. A hundred. A thousand. Whatever. Probably no one knows exactly why anyone can cast at all. If a wizard dies, his magical gift flits off to a new host....

So, normally I argue that: 1) Gods in a fantasy world should be somewhat removed from mortals rather than being frequently present and driven by "normal" goals, so as to be something more than "just powerful guys." 2) Technological advancement should still happen in fantasy worlds. But between Warbreaker and Furryfaire, I'm running some mental theory on a different perspective. So... as far as technology goes, I very much believe in the old saying "necessity is the mother of invention." Technology advances a lot in wars because multiple sides are striving to gain an edge over one another. On a smaller scale, you get that when companies or craftsmen compete, too. Then what happens if there isn't a need? In a extended period of peace with little threat, military advancement can halt and stagnate. If the needs of the citizenry are all met, why make something new? Of course, that depends somewhat on what is "need." There may always ...

So... venting a little more in the way of ideas and analyzing them. Were I actually to run this as a campaign, I might put forth something like this to the players: You were a part of the assault on the beachhead at Port Nadir. It was the last, desperate gasp of the Republic. With the Emperor himself present, success could lead to a negotiated cease fire with the Imperial generals. If the attack failed, there would not be enough of an organized resistance to slow the Vastyrian armies anywhere. Progress was hard-won, but you survived were countless others did not. At the doorstep of the Emperor's mobile palace, you met up with General Farius himself, leader of one of the few combat-tested Republic military units. True to his reputation, the general rallied stragglers from what units had made it and he led the final charge himself. Alongside his knights, you saw the line held against waves of fanatical foreigners dying by the dozens on spear and blade. As costly as it was, the f...

The Empire of Vastyr was a mystery to us. Far across the Eastern Sea a foreign people was known to exist, but few of our vessels were capable of making the journey. Thus it was an utter shock when the Empire's invasion force landed on Republic shores. Three coastal cities fell within the day. Waves of trained soldiers spilled forth, supported by self-mechanized devices we had never even conceived. The Imperial onslaught seemed unstoppable. We won. Victory came not through numbers or technology. Our magic was not superior. Some say the gods gave their favor to the Republic. Certainly the valor and determination of our heroes contributed much to winning the day. Figures of will and fate, numbering a score, cut to the heart of the assault - indeed, the very Empire itself - to save us all. They are revered today. Rightly so, for they are the saviors of the Republic. Monuments are crafted to the fallen as the living have risen to the peak of our society. The Republic shines brigh...