Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Araes 10-14-05, 01:19 PM	“Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clark’s Third Law The thread is long, and I appologize, but don't let that sway you. We always like having new contributions and input. A table of contents is provide below, and you can always skim over the boring bits. Recent Change: Indistinguishable from Magic Campaign Log (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=974162) I have started running a campaign in the world of the Sphere, and this is a massive log that I keep of everything that happened during the games. If you prefer to ingest the Sphere in a more literary format then this may be for you. However, if you'd rather read the pure information in a more organized form without commentary then you may want to read the Indistinguishable From Magic Wiki (http://ifmcs.pbwiki.com/) NOTE: Not everything is in it yet though, as it is meant simply as a repository for stuff that's pretty near to being done. (Plus, we are human and have finite amounts of time...) If you would like to help contribute to the Wiki (http://ifmcs.pbwiki.com/), the access password and information can be found here Quick Summary This is a campaign setting where the premise is that all magic is technology that's just beyond understanding for current people. As such, it could probably be considered high magic. It proposes a number of drastic changes to the D&D system including a freeform way of generating races from genetic backgrounds, a freeform way of generating classes based on dividing all of the known classes into their component abilities, and a freeform way of spellcasting where all spellcasters effectively start from the same place and then specialize and grow in power organically. Basically, ultimate freedom. The setting itself is a Dyson Sphere-like world with multiple layers and vast diversity of terrains (and area). The Gods of the setting are actually transcendent organics who have moved on to AI existence (except for one). The undead of the setting are actually a logical plague introduced by nanoviral reanimation of corpses with each type of undead representing a distinct phase of the plague. Oh, and there are robots, cybertech, extradimensional elementals, coniving dragons, symbolically terrain linked fey, insane roaming supermages, and a bunch of other craziness. Answers to 125+ Questions About This Setting (400th Post) Currently sits at about 200,000 odd words and roughly 1.1 million characters. Note: Much thanks to Jeweler (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=296655), Turin (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=340017), Supadupaman (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=420793), DeeL (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=396083), MadApe19 (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=425294), ChimpMan (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=168443), Sliversun (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=431505), Eldritch_Lord (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=479806), stsword (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=459878), and Kuriken (http://boards1.wizards.com/member.php?u=480693), who have all contributed tons of ideas and content to this thread, given me some great jumping points for my own, and critiqued some of my more stupid ones into something reasonable. Table of Contents Background General Campaign World Overview/Magic Mechanics/History (this post) Features Summary/Overview (as of 12/12/05) Origins of the Gods Layer Description and X-Section View Magic as a Manipulatable Aspect of Nature (Essay) The Rise and Fall of Tech Linking Magic to Technology Through Symbolic UI Language Language of Magical Expression (3 posts) System for Magic Points(Turin) Origins of Undeath in the Sphere The Mad, Wandering Shapers of Reality Religion Founding Gods Unaligned Gods Subverter Gods The Gods in Profile - Peresis to Exido The Gods in Profile - Seureb to Wellor The Gods in Profile - Hume to Clovis The Heirarchy of Heaven's Servants Character Creation Pick and Choose Character Creation Point Buy with Modern/Future Refined Point Buy with "Complete's" Analysis Flavors of Magical Power Growth Full Class System with Point Selection of All Characteristics Spell Point Regeneration Types Full Spell Point Cost System People Humanoids Races of People (+ genetics) Races of People Redo Jeweler's Take on Race Creation (2 posts) Robots Robots in the Sphere Robotic Varieties Not-Item Robotic Upgrades Robotic Avatars Robotic Avatars - Part 2 Elementals Combo Elementals (Jeweler) Combo Elementals - Part 2 (many posts) Dragons Draconic Masterminds and Shadowfigures Draconic Socialization (2 posts) Draconic Mindsets Pre-Sphere History - The Rise and Fall of the Serpents Organizations Organizations of the Sphere (several posts in total) The Specialization and Guilds of Technology Equipment Cybernetics and Bioware Blobs, Bioarmor, and Nanomorphs (supa/DeeL) Artifacts Allecia and the Boundless Flower The Sophic Mask of the Machine and The Cosmic Beacon Wonderous Items Stone of Unquenchable Fire and Sack of Infinite Earth Firearms of the Sphere Games of the People Triangular Chess Places Layers Diagram of Most of the Layers and Sun Progression Nerus - The Jewel of the Sphere - A Megapolis to Rival All Others Trantor, Coruscant, they're small fry The Bureaucracy of Billions Feeding the Thous...err, Trillions Arborea - Limitless Bounty of the Skies Layer of the Amber Throne History of the Amber Throne - Part 1 Mini Deathstar - Shipyards of the Amber Throne Solas - Land of Fire, and Kaltera - Land of Ice Communities in the Extremes Ki'Sha-la - The Devastated Paradise Trafell - Safe Harbor in the Heavens Bounty Hunting in the Skies Morren - Mortocracy in Action Land of Death Rising The Iron Tower Talos - Expansion on the Frontier Three Drops in the Pond - Palova, Marin, and Chent Cut Off From Heaven - Camelyn Peroca - Lost World of the Cliff Dwellers Balseraphs - The Perpetual Carnival Travel Within the Layers Monsters Templated Elemental Creation (pass 1) General Rules Variations Mechanics to Encourage In-Game Heroics Stories The Fall of Creation The Swamp Sybiote Evolution (Supadupa) Considerations of Faith The Birth of Undeath A World of Grays Elise of the Cliff People March of the Amber Queen The Serpent Tides The Serpent Tides-Addendum Alternate Methods of Survival Diary of a Dreamer Brief Moment of Divinity NEW: Gaming with the World of the Sphere - Session 1 NEW: Gaming with the World of the Sphere - Session 2 Art of the Sphere Nerus, Amber Throne, Morren, Peroca, and Ki'Sha-la Sphere Construction, Nerus, Amber Throne, Balseraphs, Kaltera, and Solas Shape of Things to Come The basic premise of this campaign setting has been brewing around in my head for quite some time, probably before the days of the open campaign setting call. However, during that call I was motivated to think about it more and codified some of the main ideas I had for it into a presentable form. Naturally, it wasn’t chosen by the committee, as it doesn’t really fit the concepts which I think they may have been looking for (as you’ll see shortly). From that time forward, I have worked on it off and on, and run a few play tests as well, to see how the general mythos played out with characters. However, for a long period it languished on my hard drive with little work. Nonetheless, I've finally broken down and decided to write again. And, due to the literature I've been reading recently (rereads of 1984 and A Brave New World) my inclination has been to go back and start putting some more work in on fleshing out the campaign world and giving it some historical/cultural meat. As such, with this article I will cover the history of the campaign world in a very brief sense, the general structure of the world, and the role/origins of "magic" within the world. This world is not a classic one in the sense of D&D or contemporary fantasy literature which tend to postulate a world imbued with a magical force that exist sometime near the middle ages or thereabouts. This concept differs in the fact that it is in fact a construct of a much more advanced civilization which fully understood the mechanisms of “magic”, but through a catastrophic disaster managed to bring about their own demise. Their final act before destruction was a desperate attempt to save as much of their life as possible within an artificial sphere that could weather the destruction and possibly find a way to reinitiate diaspora after the cataclysm's passing. The general shape of the world is a classic design of super-engineering called a Dyson's Sphere, in which some or all of the population live on the inner surface of a huge sphere (1 AU in radius, or more in many cases, and I know that its highly used and abused with problems, but it’s a neat idea that adds a lot of wonder to a setting). In this particular design, there are actually several layers to the sphere, as it is not a Dyson design in the normal sense. Composed of three layers; the outer sphere, a central planetary body around which the sphere is affixed, and a series of "islands" which orbit this body in a constantly crossing and recrossing dance of trajectories. All three of these surfaces are inhabitable, although on different locations, and in some cases, at rather odd orientations to one another. The inner planetoid and outer sphere are firmly attached to one another by a group of energy columns (between 2 and 6, undetermined as of yet) which fix their orientations to one another. The islands within the middle of the sphere, however, are affixed to nothing and exist in a constant state of free fall around the central planetary body. As of yet it is indeterminate whether there will simply be one layer of islands at a particular tech level or multiple staggered version (something like Air of Deathgate Cycle maybe) Naturally, as this is a work of super-engineering, a number of adjustments have been allowed for to create such a system which could otherwise not exist naturally. Artificial gravity exists within this setting and is used to affix the inhabitants of both the intermediate and outer layers to their landmasses. In the case of the outer layer, this is not completely accurate due to some peculiarities of the universe outside the sphere, but close enough for understanding. Also, the forms of the islands themselves would naturally be prone to massive stresses, wind shears, ect… and it has been assumed for the sake of play that these effects have been negated in some way to allow for the habitation of all layers of the sphere with equal ease. On the whole, the inhabitants on each of the three layers of the sphere are completely unaware of the existence of other beings on the additional two layers. In part, this is due to the technological level of advancement which is present within the sphere in most places, and secondly, it is also due to an obscuring fog like matter, which is dispersed across the spatial boundaries between layers to obscure them from each other's view. Occasionally, there are breaks in this cloud cover, but they are rare and the tools of observation in many of the societies are too primitive to be able to properly capture them. Light is provided to the sphere by the energy columns which affix the outer sphere to the inner planetoid and which channel much of the energy necessary to keep the sphere operational. The energy to these columns is provided by a massive quantum disturbance generator (more on this later) located deep within the central planetoid, which leeches energy away from the universe surrounding the sphere and deposits it within the columns. For the intents and purposes of a role playing campaign, this is an infinite fountain of energy which will never run dry within the time frame of a normal game, but for epic struggles the generator is a machine which causes fundamental shifts in the energy states of the universe, transferring energy from one location to another. However, all of the energy for the machine is currently taken from outside the sphere, where the rest of the universe resides in a destroyed state, and given enough time (millions/billions/greater) of years, this source will be depleted and all the energy of the universe will be localized within the minor locale of the sphere, supporting what life exists there and holding back the remains of the universe outside the sphere. As with many kinds of sci-fi based concepts, there’s a lot of technobabble to swallow, and I argue with myself as to whether its better to try and explain things or whether I should simply let them lie. Possibly risk falling into the trap of "A sufficiently incompetent ScF author is indistinguishable from magic." However, in the interest of this particular concept I’ll at least give premises which are somewhat malleable/forgettable depending upon reception. The Machines of God Alright, now that we've covered the basic shape of the world, lets move on to the real substance of the universe and how the true cogs grind in the heavens. A while ago I wrote a long essay for a gaming site where I basically postulated magic as a kind of extra elemental force in the world. In general, the concept was that magic would function as another force to be mastered by humanity, as well as all of a world's inhabitants, and its progress might follow a very similar track to our own discovery of the other five through science. In the end, it basically became a long explanation of how magic might affect every epoch of human civilization depending on its ease of interaction and what those changes could mean in terms of world events, scientific progress, and life on our planet (beasts that really could fool the eye or breath fire, a church that could actually perform miracles, ect...) However, over time my own view of this concept has shifted a bit and the newer, as well as I hope refined, version is what I present to you now. In essence, it is presumed that at some point a grand unified theory of everything is found which ties together all the aspects of physical existence within this universe. Now, when this great theory is finally discovered, it is found that in fact all of the major forces are not only related to one another, but in fact directly tied, through the presence of something that could be called a force, but would be more akin to a line of communication between every particle of matter and bit of energy in the cosmos. In visualization, this concept is somewhat alike to the properties we have found in quarks at the subatomic level recently, in which two may be tied directly to one another across vast distances and when the properties of one are changed, the other shifts as well. (Particle physicists, feel free to correct me on this point, as my understanding is limited to conversations with your fellows) However, this property is found to extend to all aspects of force. For example, with a shift of energy or matter here, the properties of a fundamental force, such as gravitational pull on an object may be modified in another location. In addition, it is also found that in many cases this shifting of properties actually requires very little energy input into the system, as it is a balanced equation in which shifts of energy or properties at one location may be compensated for by opposite/similar changes in the energy states or properties at another. In a sense, it holds something of a ying/yang duality. What this really means though, is that for many inhabitants of the universe, reshaping of the cosmos is possible on a very personal level. This process takes many forms, but in general it is quite difficult for a normal being to do without significant education, training, and mastery of their own self. Partially, this is because to truly accomplish great feats requires an inherent understanding of what is be accomplished and an ability to visualize the task to its most minute degrees. I.E. To possess a mastery of gravity, you must first comprehend what gravity really is, how it operates on objects, and the physical laws that apply to it. However, in many cases, this caveat only partially applies, as the ability to clearly visualize a goal and explore it from every angle is often enough to accomplish a task. The understanding of the underlying forces simply aids the process and makes true mastery of the process possible. For those without this knowledge, which is assumed for any society without access to advanced science and tools like the scientific method, the expression of their control over this force can take shape in many ways which I will now investigate. In addition, for exceptionally advanced races (such as the creators of the sphere), a number of enhancements to natural ability exist which can fundamentally improve their connection with the world around them. In its most simple sense, this force can take shape for many people as what many would call simply a twisting of fate, or in other lingo, "the power of pure thought." Imagine points in your life when you have concentrated your very being towards making some goal or vision of your future become reality, and over time, the world did slowly shape itself to your will and form. Now, in a world possessing of this force, naturally much of this success would still be garnered simply due to the fact that your drive, resolve, and perseverance are multiplied manyfold in such situations. However, there would also be a secondary force at work simply due to the gentle tug of your mind, which would manipulate chance to make seemingly random good fortunes fall into your lap when you least expected them. A second, and more advanced way might be with the uneducated warrior, who is simply trying to survive on the battlefield. As they strive to succeed, they would slowly learn that with training and discipline of spirit, they could strike faster, shrug of blows better, and run longer than any run of the mill drudge. Again, much of this would be due to training of their muscles and reflexes to levels beyond the normal ken, but underlying it would be a support layer of twisted physics in which their sword actually is fantastically sharp, the laws of gravity actually don't seem to apply, and the force of their limbs carries behind them the weight of a hundred others. Moving on to the more common fantasy variants that are often covered, such as magic from such sources as D&D, these applications would require significantly more training and a level of discipline beyond that which could be gaining simply innately. Some level of study would have to be undertaken to truly grasp the mechanics at work. However, the payoff would be a host of abilities which would allow their master to twist the bounds of reality in frightening ways. For example, fireballs would be a simple matter of increasing the kinetic energy of a region of space until they burst into spontaneous flame, possibly removing all gases from the area that weren't flammable as well. This application would require a significant exchange of energy, as would all manipulation of this level, and would demand either an opposite change in the physical world or a direct energy drain from some object or person close to the "caster", possibly even from themselves. Thankfully, this is actually a fairly common factor in many systems of magic and would work well with things like channelers, defilers, "magic" reservoirs, ect... Using such levels of control over the environment, manipulation of forces which could be directly observed by someone from a like technological level of development would be possible. This would include concepts like kinetic energy, potential energy, gravitation force, and electromagnetic force. The primary ones which it would exclude would be concepts that are not visible with the naked eye, like the strong and weak nuclear forces. Spells of flight, energy manipulation, and pure force would all be easily possible. Some which might be more tricky would be things like shape changing and teleportation, and these would require reshaping or movement of the building blocks of matter on a cellular or deeper level. However, depending on how free and loose one would want to play, even such goals might be within reach. Other common powers from fantasy/sci-fi literature, such as the force from Star Wars could also be easily explained and realized. Force sight would simply be the personal attachment of one being to another within the universe, or possibly their attunement with the connection forces as a whole, and as these forces were shifted or modified, they would be able to feel the changes and know their path. Powers like Jedi leaping and speed are already covered as fairly basic concepts of mastering your body so that your limbs move faster than they theoretically should be able to and gravity's effect is heavily diminished in your vicinity. Force push would be a matter of imparting a large shock of kinetic energy to an object while simultaneous lowering gravity's hold on it to increase the effect. The only powers which would be difficult to explain would be things like Foretelling, which would require a linkage of this connecting force through all points in time and space as well. This theoretically could be possible, but would require huge concessions in terms of how changes could be applied across the time stream and whether time is an immutable thing. Best in my opinion to let them die or simply allow for sensing of changes at the very most. History of the World...Part 3 Now, on to how this all came about. In the current state of things, the entirety of the universe has been reduced to a single celestial body, which holds no more size than that of a small solar system. This spherical enclosure was created by the most technologically advanced beings of the time just prior to the collapse of the universe in a shallow hope that someday it would either repair itself (a second big bang) or a similar event might be possible to initialize from within the confines of the protective sphere. However, the sphere was also created partially in guilt for the part “humanity” had to play in the ultimate downfall of universal civilization. Pundits and demagogues have always cried that eventually technology will be the death of all that breathes. We play with the toys of an insubstantial God, and when he sees what he has done, the payment for our crimes will be severe. Oddly enough, they were actually right to some degree. God never really made an appearance, but technology did manage to spell the end of all that was held dear. Using a powerful combination of machines, which acted upon the six fundamental forces of the universe, it was found that total energy subtraction and displacement was a possibility. In the blink of an eye, the total energy of a single point in space could be completely reduced to nothing and the sum total of this energy could be shifted to another local and converted to an alternate form. For a number of decades, this concept was simply a fanciful dream of theoreticians who conceived of a nearly limitless source of power for society. Literal dead zones of space which could have their energy displaced and used to power the cogs of industry. However, as will happen with any advanced (and properly motivated) society, this idea could only stay a dream for so long. A prototype of the device was constructed, which would be used to remove the energy from a protected section of space, far from the regions inhabited by sentient beings. Naturally, there were concerns among the scientific community: would it be safe? What might the effects of an entirely dead section of space be on the surrounding universe? Would they be able to control and properly channel the resulting energy surge? The backers and heads of the research project assured their doubters that all of these concerns were natural, but also unwarranted, as their best theoreticians assured them that the technology would be no more dangerous than the time honored techniques of fusion and zero point energy. Unfortunately, they were proven wrong on not just one, but all three counts. In a sense, you could almost say the project was a success. A massive success. The energy yield from the first instant of operation of the machine was enormous, far beyond the projected potentials, and it just seemed to keep growing. In fact, the energy yield was found to grow exponentially, and in a short time the reason was uncovered. Not only had the energy from the test region of space been absorbed completely, but as this energy was removed, further energy and matter from the surrounding space fell into the disturbance in an attempt to right the balance, and at an alarming rate. In the span of a day, the region of absorbed space was the size of a planet. By the end of a week, it was the size of a solar system. In under a month the inhabitants of the universe found themselves looking into the face of a phenomenon which could spell the end of the entire cosmos. As the disturbance continued to grow, it was reasoned by the leaders of a now frantic public, that the only way to stop their demise was to reintroduce the liberated energy from the disturbance back into it using the original machine. The machine itself could not simply be switched off at this point, as it had literally become wedged open, like a floodgate with the expanse of an ocean behind it. However, this column could be shifted and repositioned, so that its destination would be the center of the ever growing disturbance, thereby replacing the lost energy, and setting the universe once again to equilibrium. Immediately, this plan was put into action, and the column was directed into the aperture, with what seemed to be good initial results. The expansion of the distortion slowed dramatically, and the output of the column diminished to an imperceptible quantity. Rejoicing went up from all corners of creation, as the problem seemed to be solved. The machine was switched off, the concept of total energy relocation was abandoned as a possible research avenue, and in general, the events of that time were forgotten but for a small group of researchers who continued to investigate the warped region of space caused by the machine. Nearly 100 years later though, the phenomena once again came to the forefront of the universal consciousness. In a startling breakthrough, a team of independent researchers found that, what had been assumed to be a universal truth of endless universal expansion was apparently no longer valid. Imperceptibly at first, but with increasing velocity, the boundaries of the universe were beginning to contract, and the space between particles to shrink. All This Has Been Said Before, And All Will Be Said Again To recap, the universe is gone except for a tiny point of life. This pocket of life was created by a vastly evolved and advanced version of humanity with the power to shape the very building blocks of the universe. Nothing else exists. Nothing. Within this pocket of life survives a small collection of that which used to exist in the prior universe. Remnants of civilizations, smatterings of populations, and all that which could be saved before the end. Over time, this collection of life has come to think of the sphere as home, and in fact, to even forget that there was anything before. Due to the separated nature of the civilizations within the sphere based upon technological development, communication within the sphere has been limited. In addition, due to the violent and somewhat sudden nature of the displacement of many of the races, much of their sense of history and technology has been lost. The proposed separation for the layers of the sphere is that technology will decrease as one moves inward into the sphere. In effect, progress level (PL) will be a direct function of distance from the outer edge of the sphere. However, the maximum PL will probably exist at somewhere around PL 4 (Industrial Age, using d20 Future terminology) for normal inhabitants. The problem being that the advent of space travel would make control of spacings and civilizations within the various regions difficult. For now, that’s all that I think I will cover, as I need to get back to studying for my real world concerns. However, in the next supplement, I will cover the “Gods” of the setting, which are effectively living personalities given deific status due to their power and control over the setting (The Chief Architect of the Sphere, The Lead Biologist, The Heating and Cooling Expert, ect…) These personalities actually won’t exist in a physical form any longer, due to the long time frames which we have been considering, but they have managed to carry on by uploading their core personalities into massive networks (think The Long Sun trilogy by Gene Wolfe if you’ve read it) and guide the world through the practice of religions which codify the teachings of technology in the guise of religions and arcane practices (think the Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov, hmm, need a bibliography as I borrow a lot.) To Do List Background Timeline People Races of People Robots in the Sphere Particularly Important People Organizations Places Kingdoms/Countries World Layers Terrain Types/Maps Equipment Mixing of Future and Medieval Technology Cybernetics and Bioware Normal Items Magic Items Artifacts Characters Feats Skills Base Classes Prestige Classes Action Points Magic Magic System Description/Background Interesting Magical Phenomena Origins of the Undead Religions and Technology New Spells Changes to Existing Spells Monsters Reasons for Existence New Monsters New Templates Campaigns General Advice for GM’s Moods/Themes that Should be Created Suggested/Starting Adventures General Rules Variations Unearthed Arcana Lists -woo, only seven pages. Not too bad, and I'm gratified if you actually read the beast in its entirity. Future ones shouldn't be quite so bad, although I do tend to be a bit verbose.
Velox121 10-14-05, 01:55 PM	Good gravy. I tell ya, it looks pretty cool, and you certainly do have a handle on things. But I feel dumb just looking at this thread. Some people just run in and hack and slash, give out the gold and XP. Not you, dude. To be honest, I couldn't read through the whole thing. But it does sound like a good idea, and I say roll with it. Magic being an unexplained phenomenon always did stick in my craw, and its cool to see someone have a campaign where the whole business is explained in detail.
ragingmaro 10-16-05, 11:21 AM	Well thats a lot of fluff but have u made any crunch yet? BUt the fluff looks pretty good.
Zaxon D'Mir 10-16-05, 04:55 PM	Bravo. A well thought out premise. I too prefer a little more science in the magic. I've been burned out on the simple medieval fantasy setting for years now. The wizards of my homebrew have more in common with the techno-mages of Babylon 5 than Merlin or Gandalf. For that matter the entire setting is more in league with Farscape, Star Trek (original episodes) and Logan's Run instead of Greyhawk, Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms. Please continue this looks very interesting.
Araes 10-16-05, 05:44 PM	Some progress on the crunch front, but to be honest I've been focusing much more on the mythos and letting the crunch float around for a while, hopefully to fall into place based upon what I've thought up for background. Just how I generally work. With that said, onward to more fluff. Legend of the Fall Alright, as I promised last time, this next section is going to cover the various gods of the setting, how they came about, and what their interests, powers, domains, ect are. To explain the various personalities and their organization/interplay fully, I think it would probably be best to tell a continuation of the story detailed above after it was realized that the universe was coming to an end and that little could be done to reverse the process. For a number of years after the discovery was made, much of humanity's focus was on attempting to ascertain the origins of, and eventually right, the problem. This was a natural response and debatably the correct one, as it was felt that if they had the power to destabalize the universe, why shouldn't it be possible for it to be restabalized? However, as time went on and correction theory after correction theory was proven wrong or not feasible, a small sect of scientists and politicians began to attract followers within the government. Led by a Dr. Peresis, they postulated that while efforts to restablize space should continue, a second group should be preparing for the worst and begin investigating alternatives to salvage what little they could of civilization. Although their concerns were never given the light of public display or debate, for fear of the public response it would cause, a number of influential leaders offered them resources under the table in exchange for their safety should the group find a way to carry on. Using these resources, and what able minds they could bring to their cause, they set about searching for a way to save as much as they could. What they found, through a bit of luck and the work of those before them, was that while technologies for stabalizing the universe as a whole were far from realizable, it should be possible to create a small pocket of stable space. This space would feed off of the vast energies around it using the energy displacement theories and maintain a habitat suitable for humanity's salvation. Upon this discovery, work was begun almost immediately on the creation of such a space, and the matter of several unusable star systems was converted solely for this cause. Labor teams of botonists, power systems engineers, information and network specialists, terraformists, and structural engineers were all formed and put to work crafting a habitat to hold quintillions(10^18th) if not sextillions(10^21st) of people. However, even at such an immense size, this still measured but a minute fraction of the total population of the universe. In addition, due to the political climate at the time, and the doomday implications of what they were working on, much of this work had to be done in complete secrecy, and vast supply networks were created whereby whole planets worth of people and supplies were made to simply disappear from public records for use on the project. In time though, the plan began to come together, and as a final culmination of their work, in a grand ceremony spanning several days, billions of workers watched with awe as an entire solar system of discrete satelites slowly formed together and solidified into a spherical body greater than any seen before. Their timing was auspicious as well, as the effects of the collapse had begun to accelerate alarmingly during construction. The habitat had naturally been constructed in as central a location as possible to aid in the evacuation of planets should it be necessary, and this proved fortuitous from a physical standpoint as well, since their location would be one of the last to feel the effects of the collapse in full force. Fearing rightly that the end was upon them, the evacuation process was initiated and vast hibernation ships began to systematically travel the universe, gathering up those individuals, races, or societies which were deemed worthy of saving or beneficial for long term survival. Plant and animal extraction, led by the guidance of the botanical team, was also undertaken, with greenhouse ships turning whole sections of planets into desolate rock as they gathered what they needed. However, at long last this direct collection and selection could not go unnoticed, and numerous groups began to take an interest in what was transpiring at this haven. At first the inquiries were fairly benign, politicians demanding accountability and naysayers decrying their lack of faith, but as time wore on, and the situation became more dire, this attention took a drastic shift to the worse. What had been damnations of their doomsday words became desperate or forceful pleas to take them onboard. This process reached a head with the influence of one Shenya Akil. Wherein all prior attacks upon the Sphere Group had been logic and empathy based, criticizing their worth as selectors of value in society, Akil's thrust was much more forceful, and demanded full access to the sphere for all who desired it. Naturally, this demand was refused, as the confines of the sphere were finite, and to make access equal for all would simply doom them all equally. However, Akil was not to be put off so easily, and in the final days of the fall, as the seething energy of a trillion suns rolled ever inward, a vast fleet of all those left behind bore down upon the sphere. Led by one of humanity's most famous military leaders, Franz Clovis, it had the stated goal of opening access to the sphere for all those who desired it. Fortunately, such a response had been forseen by Dr. Peresis and his team, and the sphere was not without defenses. In addition to a wide array of the most powerful weapons for its time, it also possessed the single most powerful energy displacement reactor ever known. It was still feared to use it as a weapon, for the danger of creating null space and impeading the hibernation ships that had yet to arrive, but as a shield it was without peer, negating all weapons which fell within its range. During the climax of this mighty conflict, the last of the hibernation ships were slated to arrive, speeding only hours before the last wave of destruction. Unfortunately, due to the blockade in place outside their sanctuary, many of them never arrived, appearing only to be vaporized before they could fall within the protection of the sphere. However, several did manage to make it through the fleet, due to their own personal craftiness or other factors, and it was upon several of these which the real threat to the sphere resided. In a sense, the vast fleet was simply a ruse for Akil and her coalition. It had been known for some time that a direct assault upon the sphere would be futile. However, those who took part in it were not privy to this information, and they were told they were the last hope of survival for all those left behind. In truth, they were a decoy. During the time of the exodus, while the hibernation ships sailed ahead of the collapse, one of the captains of such a ship, Rene Hume, had become a traitor to the sphere. Of a like homeworld to Akil, one which had been largely ignored for transport, he had agreed to allow Akil's contingent access to several of the ships, who would be taken within the sphere in secret. This agreement came at the cost of billions who's places would have to be abandoned, but Hume felt it was worthwhile for the preservation of his people. And while their fellows faced their end between the waves of all existence and the rock of the sphere, they sailed into safety aboard the last vessel to gain passage. Lords of all Creation Now, once all of the drama outside of the sphere had played itself out, a number of events began to unfold within as well. For a long time, the plan had been to maintain the hibernation of the races within the sphere for a number of years until all effects of the collapse had stabalized and their safety could be guarenteed. A large core of laborers and scientists were left awake with the knowledge that the full effects of the collapse could not be predicted and its results on them as well. However, these warnings could barely begin to describe the events which were to befall them. In the first days after the collapse, the roilling energies outside of the sphere were only just kept at bay. In numerous locations, breaches in the sphere were created and the energies held back only through desperate manipulations of the reactor. Whole sections of the sphere lost power and were rendered uninhabitable, and millions of hibernating souls lost their lives as their bodies merged with the stuff of creation. As suddenly as the widespread chaos had started though, so to did it end. At first no one could even tell why the stability had occured. For some reason the reactor suddenly seemed to be correcting for problems and instabilities with no interaction. Technicians actually found themselves cut off from its controls and transported away. It was like it had gained a life of its own that simply wanted to save the sphere. And in effect it had. With the assistance of Joan Panetar, the information networks lead for the sphere, Dr. Peresis and Dr. Macht, the energy systems designer, had tranfered their consciousnesses to a machine form, in the hopes that they might be able to respond faster to unpredictable phenomena. It had worked, and with only a section of their thoughts, they now performed the work of hosts of mortal engineers. However, this practice was against all of the creeds of their civilization. In prior millenia, work had been explored and abandoned in the vien of machine conciousness. The criteria for man/machine interfaces were also well known. Yet, moral and historical factors had led to the belief that such things were both wrong and highly dangerous. The backlash was immediate, the technical workers across the field revolted in horror, claiming that in only days their leaders had chosen to abandon their humanity. Naturally, attempts to reason with them were made, claiming that all humanity would have died had they not made the shift, but by and large, their attempts were for naught. A pervasive fear began to take hold among the people and in their fear they turned on those remaining figureheads who they felt had betrayed them. Particularly Dr. Panetar, who had aided in the transformation. Trapped in a workshop with little or no recourse by her own workers, her response to the situation was quick and decisive. She left them as well. Among those of the primary design team who were left, a few sided with the workers, honoring the belief that network conciousness was a line which should not be crossed, but by and large the group was one which had been hand picked by Peresis himself, and they were with him to the last. They listened to the three machine personality's descriptions of life within a network, and in time, were convinced that perhaps it was both not immoral and in fact the right choice for a set of people with much work to do, and a limited time to do it in. Even with life extension and various other medical techniques, their time was still finite, and many of them were already quite old, having been recruited in their early years to work on the project. The chance for immortality, and the ability to carry on their work was tempting, and one by one they stepped forward to take their place with the rest, as motes of information. The last of these was the wife of Peresis himself, Eva Merellin, who had been on the verge of siding with the workers for a time. A brilliant terraformer and respected politician, she had responded to their needs for stability and comfort in such a trying time, but in the end, her affection for Peresis won over, a constant that had been with her for nearly 80 years.
Araes 10-16-05, 06:18 PM	The Host of Lords Alright, here is a list of all the "Good" gods. This will be fleshed out more fully with bios and whatnot as I come back to edit it in the future, but for now I wanted to at least get a synopsis of all the gods, their general motivations, and their domains of influence. Man, I really dislike doing the naming and creation of pantheons cause I always feel like I have to be clever or they won't be interesting. Read on. God: Peresis Original Name: Adama Peresis Original Position: Lead Architect of the Sphere Project Domains of Control (5): Feast, Good, Luck, Nobility, Planning Bio: Original genesis and planner of the Sphere Project and de-facto head of the original "Gods". Conceiving of the Sphere Project as a final stop-gap measure should all other attempts to halt the regression of the universe fail, Peresis was a masterful negotiator in bringing together a contingent of the leading experts in a variety of fields to work on his goal. With the transition to digital life and the invasion of his great work by outside forces though, Peresis' demeanor and bearing have changed somewhat. Initially enraged by the desecration of the Sphere and what he viewed as the blatant greed of their invaders, Peresis oversaw a wide ranging counter effort by the creator Gods to drive the invaders from the Sphere or erradicate them. However, over time, as he came to see that their efforts were causing vast harm to the inhabitants and endangering that which he had tried to create, his views softened considerably, and he shifted over to the role of negotiator and diplomat between the two sides in an effort to preserve the sphere for all. God: Merellin Original Name: Eva Merellin Original Position: Weather Simulation and Terraforming Lead Domains of Control (4): Fey, Ocean, Storm, Weather Bio: The wife of Peresis in life, she now serves as his confidant and closest ally among the lords of the heavens. God: Terpencar Original Name: Marshall Terpencar Original Position: Chief Design Engineer for the Sphere Domains of Control (4): Artifice, Craft, Creation, Metal Bio: God: Chav Original Name: Skadi Chav Original Position: Thermal Systems Specialist for the Sphere Domains of Control (4): Air, Cold, Fire, Water Bio: God: Conway Original Name: Jennifer Conway Original Position: Primary Botanist and Botanical Collections Lead Domains of Control (4): Animal, Life, Plant, Scalykind Bio: God: Tiyffain Original Name: Celcia Tiyffain Original Position: Migration and Exodus Management Lead Domains of Control (4): Commerce, Community, Family, Trade Bio: God: Bettenn Original Name: Gregor Bettenn Original Position: Materials Transport and Teleportation Chief Domains of Control (4): Celerity, Portal, Time, Travel Bio: God: Exido Original Name: Ysunn Exido Original Position: Planetary Terraforming and Synthesis Lead Domains of Control (4): Cavern, Darkness, Earth, Endurance Bio: God: Seureb Original Name: Chhaya Seureb Original Position: Hibernation and Cryostasis Lead Domains of Control (4): Deathless, Dream, Exorcism, Repose Bio: God: Macht Original Name: Dunkirk Macht Original Position: Power Systems and Energy Displacement Physics Head Domains of Control (4): Celestial, Force, Sun, Wrath Bio: God: Panetar Original Name: Joan Panetar Original Position: Networking and Communications Head Domains of Control (4): Herald, Meditation, Oracle, Truth Bio: God: Barack Original Name: Thomas Barack Original Position: Defensive Commander and Lead Military Advisor Domains of Control (4): Courage, Glory, Strength, War Bio: God: Torneh Original Name: Dahlia Torneh Original Position: Medical and Health Care Lead Domains of Control (4): Healing, Moon, Protection, Purification Bio: God: Sophis Original Name: Sergio Sophis Original Position: Education and Knowledge Preservation Lead Domains of Control (4): Knowledge, Magic, Rune, Spell Bio: God: Wellor Original Name: Danielle Wellor Original Position: Sphere Police Force Commander Domains of Control (4): Fate, Inquisition, Law, Retribution Bio:
Araes 10-16-05, 06:38 PM	Standing on the Fence God: Hume Original Name: Rene Hume Original Position: Hibernation Ship "Synpho" Pilot and Sphere Traitor Domains of Control (4): Balance, Joy, Liberation, Renewal Bio: A betrayor of the creator gods in organic existence who has attained "godhood" as well. In his time as a machine conciousness, he's had a bit of a spell to consider his actions and he's actually had a break with usurpers that he helped. Now he sits in the middle and ponders. There's a Fence? God: Erus Original Name: (-) Original Position: (-) Domains of Control (4): Decay, Madness, Pestilence, Slime Bio: A machine AI given life through the networks interactions with human/machine conciousness. This is an odd one as its the only conciousnesses floating around on the network which was not orginally living in nature. Through the interactions of the various gods and their mucking about with the network, they have unwittingly given life to a wholly machine based "god" which thinks and acts with little of the human response to situations. People who pray to this AI have to very wary, as its ends are clouded in a logic wholly unlike our own, and they are probably not what humanity would consider "good".
Araes 10-16-05, 07:08 PM	And I Saw, and Beheld a Pale Horse Alright, last guys up before I call it quits for the work today. Here are the general profiles for the "evil" gods of the setting. I use quotes so much because to a large sense, the gradiation of good and bad isn't overly stark in the setting. The gods are what they are, people with the exception of one, some with bad tendancies and the propensity to do horrible acts, but some with only a leaning towards evil or who have aided those that do harm. God: Akil Original Name: Shenya Akil Original Position: Opposing Faction Leader and Sphere Infiltrator. Major Political Opponent of Peresis' Work Domains of Control (4): Chaos, Death, Destruction, Evil, Hunger Bio: God: Koli Original Name: Tzu Koli Original Position: Opposing Faction Spy and Sphere Infiltrator Domains of Control (4): Illusion, Transformation, Shadow, Trickery Bio: God: Sepak Original Name: Marsha Sepak Original Position: Opposing Faction Assault Force Commander Domains of Control (4): Competition, Domination, Mind, Passion Bio: Container for two warring sides of a personality which on one hand wants to be vibrant, passionate, and alive, while the other stands in a stark military contrast of total icy control and mental dominance. A brilliant strategist and tactician in life, but somewhat prone to outbursts of random thought and action as an AI, verging on dual-personality disorder in particularly severe instances. Along with Clovis, she has undergone something of a break with the standard Usurper line, and now pursues a doctrine of non-agression in an attempt to preserve the lives of those beings which look to her for guidance. God: Sorkon Original Name: Leo Sorkon Original Position: Opposing Faction Negotiator Domains of Control (4): Charm, Pact, Pleasure, Suffering Bio: God: Gram Original Name: Pierre Gram Original Position: Opposing Faction Hibernation Disruption Specialist Domains of Control (4): Hatred, Necromancy, Spirit, Undeath Bio: Major intellectual and philisophical opponent of Chhaya Seureb. Extreme hatred and resentment of the fact that she was chosen over him to head the hibernation program for the sphere. God: Clovis Original Name: Franz Clovis Original Position: Opposing Faction Fleet Commander Domains of Control (4): Mentalism, Mysticism, Summoner, Tyranny Bio:
Araes 10-18-05, 06:33 PM	Alright, quick post here to illustrate the general idea of the Dyson Sphere layer concept and how people would inhabit the sphere. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CampaignWorldXSectionSm.jpg As I mentioned before, the sphere would be composed of layers which would rotate about a central body and would be protected by an outer solid encasement. On each of the layers, gravity would be such that people would always be pulled towards the outer edge of the sphere and it would be arranged so that the pull was always linear (IE, about the same as a normal terrestrial world) no matter your distance from the center. The layers would interact with one another generally how you might think of floors on a house interacting. So, for example, if you happened to jump off of one of the central-most layers, you would fall downward until you hit a solid section of another layer down, or at the most extreme, you collided with the outer sphere. Naturally, this would quite often be a deadly thing to have occur, but in the case of those with items possessing attributes similar to "feather fall" it could actually be a way to escape from a living situation you disliked, or in some cases, might even be a form of punishment for criminals. IE, rather than killing them outright with capital punishment, they're instead just hucked off the edge of the world with a ring of feather fall and plunge through the intervening fog to who knows where. They're not killed per say, but they're out of that society's hair. Depending on the ethics of the society, trash might be dealt with in a similar way. As mentioned, also remember that even though the picture shows them in an unobscured state, normally there would be a thick clinging mist which would flow around each of the layers and make it difficult to get clear views of what was either above or below them. For transportation between the layers, it is envisioned that something along the lines of airships would be available, which could either interact with the fog (and thus be restrained to only traveling within certain layers and up to certain heights) or for societies which are advanced enough, possibly full powered flight with early forms of airplanes. For travel between the layers, there will be a number of stations which were originally placed on each of the islands to allow for direct teleportation from one to another. However, they rely on complicated technology to operate, and over time their use has either become clouded in mystery or reserved to a very select group of individuals who closely guard the secret as a form of power over their peers. In general, as mentioned before, each of the layers operates at a particular technology level which is fairly uniform throughout the layer. Politically, however, the layers are anything but uniform, due in part to their massive size in some cases, and possess a wide array of governing bodies. Some of the layers have been divided by landmass, so that each of the islands represents a single kingdom, and in many cases, the political situations between these kingdoms is less than ideal. Very often, islands are actually in a state of cyclic warfare, where invasions will be attempted at regular intervals based upon the orbit and drift of their islands. During close periods, whole battalions of troops and fleets of ships will attempt to swarm across the intervening space and conquer their neighbors. In other layers though, the situation is somewhat more benign, and unified kingdoms of all or nearly all the islands have formed. In a few of these areas, the current rulers are actively interested in expanding their influence, and based upon stories or legends of other realms, they have begun sending explorative teams and developing technologies to reach for more distant sections of the sphere. Anyhow, that's the general concept of how things would operate and in time I'll fill in some more about each of the layers, the important kingdoms operating within them, ect...
Araes 10-26-05, 06:21 PM	Here There Be Dragons... Alright next up is something of a tangent from covering the actual descriptions of the world, but equally important in trying to figure out how broad I want it to be. For a while I've been struggling with the fact that this world is naturally going to have a mix of Medieval and Modern/Future technology and rules. This is going to come about in a number of ways, affecting things like magic (which isn't covered particularly well in Modern/Future), technology (which isn't a focus of D&D), and general social interactions between people of varying tech levels (considering people primitives and all that). For normal interaction within a single layer it probably won't be all that bad, as each layer could probably be forced into one of the various systems and exist there independently. There would have to be some concessions for things like magic and tech near the borders, but they could be handled. However, where it really falls apart is in the main venue of adventuring, people who aren't going to necessarily be restricted to a single layer and will have to have rules that can handle them wherever they are. One way I've been thinking about going about this is to decompose the character building process of D&D and d20 Modern/Future into their base elements and then assign them point values so that each element can be bought independently of the others. This way, weightings can be applied to various elements depending on what layer the characters are starting in, or the resources they currently have access to, and elements of each system can be mixed and matched as well. The first step in this process was to look at the general components of a D&D character class and see what typical worths for each part might be. The initial way I thought about approaching this was to separate the class process into 11 values which would contribute to a total value for the classes. The reason for choosing 11 values is that with basic systems of equations knowledge, if we have 11 equations, then we can solve for the values of 11 unknowns. In matrix form this can be written as Ax = b where: b is a vector of values for each of the classes (ideally constant if they're all balanced) x is a vector of all the various class aspects (BAB, # of good saves, spells, ect...) A is a matrix of all the various weighting relations for each class and class aspects. From such an equation, we could then invert the matrix A and solve for the weights of each of the various class aspects. The problem that I ran into in trying to solve such a system of equations is that it is indeed solvable, but due to some of the odd relations involved, it is heavily dependent on how you set up the initial weighting matrix for the class aspects. And even how you choose what class features really are weightable aspects. For example, while selecting weights, if you choose between making spell casting value scale linearly or squared with max spell level possible then you may find that BAB will suddenly drop 30 points in weight (in a scale of 100) or even become negative (it actually gives a character points to have a higher BAB, odd...) I eventually managed to make a matrix system which actually worked, but to do so required a bit of reverse engineering, in that I had to make a guess matrix and then iterate said matrix to find a least squared fit that would eventually bring the values close to one another. Behold, The Power of Math Less technically, I had the 11 chosen factors (with value ranges of, and point values of): BAB 0-4 [0 means you gain no BAB, 4 means you have 20 at lvl 20] 6 pts HD d2-d12 [value is the type of dice you roll d2 - d12] 3 pts Saves 0-3 [Number of good saves a character has] 5 pts Spells 0-9 [Max level of spells you can cast. Additional modifiers for bard/arcane/divine spells] 0.12*MaxLvl^3 pts (times 0.4 if divine or 0.66 if Bard) Skills 0-? [Number of skill points in addition to intelligence you get. Each lvl gives you 2*lvl+int] 2 pts per level (1 pt per skill) Feats 0~24 [Number of total feats the class gives you including starting feats (armor, weapons)] 2 pts per feat Sk. Select 0-36 [Number of skills you have initial access to] 1 pt per 4 skills Lvl Dep. Ben 0-8 [Number of level dependent abilities your class has (basically all non-static abilities in one catch all)] 1 pt per ability with lvl dependent growth Spon 0-1 [Whether the class can spontaneously cast spells] 10 pts (times 0.5 if Bard) Align Rest 0-3 [How strict are the alignment requirements for this class (x of 9 available) (can leave class?) (can group with non-aligned?)] 2 pts per restriction level Armor/spell Rest. 0-4 [Other restrictions on the class (armor, spell list, carrying loads, illiterate)] 10 pts per restriction level In a sense this is a nice start, as it gives me a nice starting place to begin my work of making totally customizable classes if I wanted to and gives me some good weights for parts of classes. In addition, a bunch of them actually seem like they make some sense. IE, BAB can be worth up to a 1/4 of a character's points, spells are wildly valuable for their versatility, and feats are a fairly reasonable point cost. Comparable to what people like Green Ronin came up with for their superhero game. However, I also have some problems with it, as I would like to make a couple of changes. Firstoff, I think were I to do it again I would combine all restrictions into one category, which would give me room to solve for one more components. That component would probably be the difference between divine, bard, arcane spell casting, as right now it is pretty shady (effectively a judgment call on my part) However, the problem is that I don't think there is any way to solve for weights without making divine and bardic spells heavily underweighted compared to standard arcane ones. Looking at all the benefits the Cleric class gets (BAB, feats, spells, good saves, spontaneous conversion, armor) compared to the Wizard and there is simply no way their spells can be worth the same amount per level. Anyhow, next up is a discussion of how I would put in some of the differences in tech levels and skills/feats/magic from varying development periods. This will probably take the form of weightings that increase or decrease the value of these aspects for each period. IE, laser gun feats are worth a LOT more in a pre-industrial civ. Course, could also make it so that there are restrictions you can take on them or something to make it so that their cost is cheaper. (Like, you know how to work a gun, but you don't know why it works) Technological voodoo anyone?
Araes 10-27-05, 02:01 PM	The March of Progress Last time I talked about the first pass at making a decomposition of the D&D character generation process into a separated point-buy version. Within this process, one of the assumptions made was that it applied, in general, only to the D&D system and was not applicable to the d20 Modern or Future classes. Part of the reason for this is that the classes from these systems use a 10 level cap for their main classes rather than the 20 level cap of D&D. The other is that they use the Defense system rather than the Armor system of D&D. However, what can be done is we can try applying the values that I have already found for the D&D system to a 20 lvl extension of the d20 Modern/Future classes and see how they play out. For taking care of the Defense mechanism, we’ll just treat it like the Monk special ability (which I ranked as being equal to one feat) and make it somewhat more valuable, as some of the Modern/Future classes gain a significant bonus to Defense by level 20 (between 2 and four feats). For now I have ignored reputation, but it may be worked into the system as well and with the 6 extra classes this would allow us to do a vast least square fit of weights for system. What is found from applying this system is that in general the classes of d20 Modern/Future are actually very close in value to those of D&D (being worth about 1-9%) more. Strong = 108.25 Fast = 109 Tough = 108.5 Smart = 101.5 Dedicated = 106.75 Charismatic = 103 This seems to indicate that the values of worth that I have found earlier are rather close to being the exact values for computation of class worth and are appropriate. There could probably be a slight tweaking of worth for BAB and skills, as it seems that skill heavy classes in Modern/Future are slightly undervalued, but in general the points seem to be nearly spot on. As such, we can create a point buy class system that is reasonable with just the mechanics mentioned in the previous post and have it work quite well. A full set of feats and special abilities can be extracted from the classes and made up for purchase as class feats. One thing that should be noted is that Modern characters have access to the Archaic Weapons feat which allows them to buy nearly all of the D&D weapons feats with one feat. A choice would probably have to be made for the system as a whole to either have all weapons of each age be one feat, or have specific feats for each subset and just give a few more feats like in D&D. In general, I’m more in favor of having each tech level’s weapons have a feat for using them and then maybe have exotic feats for the really weird weapons. In general, a sword is a sword, a gun is a gun, and a laser is a laser. Only things like “alien spinal disrupters” or similar are outside of normal human awareness. This would also speed up adaptation to new settings for layer travelers, as they could take one feat and familiarize themselves with all the generally used weapons of whatever layer they were on. I might also say that certain classes of weapons are simple across the board, and even your basic nomad can figure out that if you whack someone with a wooden or titanium stick it hurts either way. Now, as far as skills go, one major difference between D&D and Modern/Future, is going to be that there are a whole set of skills for which D&D characters have no hope of qualifying. In fact, this might actually be where the point discrepancy comes in as far as Smart, Dedicated, and Charismatic characters go, as they basically have the benefit of what we might dub the “Education” feat. They have access to all the skills which require some measure of prior training and are very difficult to pick up on the fly. What could be done in a futuristic/fantasy setting like the one we’re proposing, however, is that we could actually make something like a “Technical Education” feat, which would give a character the basic schooling in sciences and math necessary to qualify for skills like demolitions, craft:electronics, and knowledge:behavioral sciences. It would probably have to be a “purchase at character creation” feat, as the time necessary to achieve it in-game would be immense. In addition, for archaic societies, it would have to be postulated that through their conversion of technology and science to a more religious-like devotion, the “Gods” have actually made it possible for a character to be fairly well educated in the basics of science, but not have a clear idea of how to apply them for the benefit and growth of society. Or, their application, and research in general, could be a highly restricted activity for the clergy and initiated to make sure that societies stay at the level they were intended for. You might have to be a member of some sect of society to even qualify for the feat. Anyhow, that's all on that topic for today. Next up I'm going to talk about my ideas for implementing some futuristic concepts into the game world. I'm a huge fan of gameworlds like Shadowrun, not because their system is great, but because the cyberpunk background and mythos is wonderfully engrossing. I would like the chance to carry some of that feel over to this, and have both cybernetics and bioware available for purchase by characters, but it will require some level of care to make sure that they can be balanced with things like magic in addition to all the other normal Modern/Future enhancements. In addition, Future isn't OGL, so I may have to basically create a whole slew of Cybernetics and Bioware from outside sources. We'll see.
TúrintheMormegil 10-27-05, 03:15 PM	Your mathematical approach to class balance intrigues me. Working of your own suggestions, and assuming your computations are correct, maybe you should design a system where a starting character is at D&D-tech level unless he gives something up that is worth about 9 points (maybe through a feat as you suggest, though it might have to be two feats). Then they can get access to the future-abilities so to speak... :tiphat: Túrin
guevaramartyr 10-27-05, 10:47 PM	wow. i wont pretend im not impressed.
wotcwotcworc 10-29-05, 03:30 AM	cool idea but, how thick are these islands in the "sky"?. just wondering coz they'd have to be quite thick to have any sizable bodies of water, unless they were relatively shallow bodies of water. truth be told, i'm quite sick to death of all the middle ages castles and knights stuff. one would think that with magic taking the place of technology in most areas, that things would develop from there. a thousand years and the best they've been able to do is develop their world to the level of the middle ages with all that magic floating around?. everfull jug of water or whatever = endless running water. continual light = cheap abundant lighting. jug using plane of air or fire instead of water = flamethrower/heat source and blow dryer/air supply. reverse gravity + permanence + iron bar carefully balanced and set to rotate half in/out of the reversed gravity/normal gravity = perpetual motion machine and turbine. no more windmills or being at the mercy of the wind. put it on a boat and you've got an engine. make it magnetic and put some copper wire around it and you have electrickery ;). something to ponder - with everfull jugs of water, why wouldnt the bad water races just keep making more and slowly turn their planet into a water world?. or just open a jinormous portal to the plane of water and do it faster. or just turn deserts into farmland etc etc. piles of plot hooks and so forth if only one extrapolates from basic principles/spells already out there in the world. no need for artifacts.
Zaxon D'Mir 10-29-05, 03:49 PM	truth be told, i'm quite sick to death of all the middle ages castles and knights stuff. one would think that with magic taking the place of technology in most areas, that things would develop from there. a thousand years and the best they've been able to do is develop their world to the level of the middle ages with all that magic floating around?. Amen. Swords and sorcery has been beat to death with a 10 ton boulder. I watched the first episode of Threshold last night. I was really impressed. There's a quote that really fits here. "What we may be dealing with is a form of technology that borders on the supernatural." That is the way I have grown to look at magic represented in rpgs. That's why I like these ideas.
Araes 11-09-05, 09:52 AM	Wow, don't check back for a couple weeks and I've actually got some responses to consider. Sorry for the absence, been getting beaten around soundly by PhD hoops. Ugg. Anyhow, on the subject of the progression of magic and technology. I agree that it seems silly every time they ever put magic into a setting (minus a few like Shadowrun) that setting is always placed in the same general time period as medieval warfare and the like. There's really no reason that it should be so, and that magic shouldn't be allowed to progress and affect society in a number of different ways. Plus, like you also implied, it tends to be this sterile thing that doesn't really reach into all facets of life, but only affects combat, adventurers, and the truly elite of the world. Kind of the whole reason I got onto this magic as technology train in the first place, as it could have vast impacts in any time period. Think about Mesopotamian level people, who were struggling to figure out the basics of crops and organized hunting. What if they'd had access to at least the very, very basics of what we normally think of as D&D magic. Telepathic spear chucking, setting brush fires easily, very minor healing, changing the weather to bring rain? They might not know what they would be doing or why, kind of an innate sense of how to shape it, but it could still have a vast impact on their daily lives. Make them progress far faster up the tech tree, as it were, since most societal advancement is driven by how much free time people have to sit around and think about new ways to make life better, and with magic, you've suddenly got a tool that makes many of the basics of life pretty easy. One thing that might help in some of the cases of magic doing stuff that seems to basically break all the laws of the universe is to only allow things that could actually be explained with a force that was manipulating known physical laws. For example, in the case of the perpetual motion propeller, there has to be something that's providing the energy to keep the bar where it is, keep it spinning, ect... In the farfetched it may be drawn from another universe or from another plane, directly from a deity, or more reasonably, from the people who cast it themselves. Eventually though, there are going to be repercussions if everybody is doing this stuff. The deity's going to get mad (wow, pis**d makes *’s?) or tired, you're going to get tired, you'll start creating instabilities in that other plane you tapped for energy, ect... Not a perfect solution, and in the short term it still lets society do stuff that's pretty nuts, but in the long term it all evens out. Also, for things like evil folks flooding the world, one of the general concepts I tend to like is that there must be some kind of equilibrium formed between all the various forces which are trying to make the world the way they want it if the world exists as we see it now. Just like in our own world, if everybody is equally set up and prepared, then we tend to form little areas of control, with delineated boundaries, and no one faction can quite get a hand over the other ones (flood the world for example), cause all the other ones are always opposing them and draining their resources doing other things. IE, if the water folks tried to flood the world, it would probably take some time to actually get completely done, and if the folks who like the material plane the way it is heard about it, they'd send over people to make sure it didn't happen, with magic equally as powerful that could drain away that water or soak it up, or whatever. Speaking of more water, in generally I was thinking of having the bodies of water not be staggeringly deep. Say, not the Marianas trench for example, but deep enough that you could have most of what we would think of as normal sea life (whales, fish, mermen, krakens... ) That said, I can't say I put a ton of thought into how thick they would need to be and its a good point. In general, I think we'd be talking about something on the order of 10 - 15 thousand feet. (2-3 miles)(3 - 4.5 thousand meters) Pretty thick, and requiring of super tech beyond us to make sure they stick together, don't tear themselves apart, and don't fall in on themselves. But considering I'm already talking about tech that can make a Dyson's sphere, the points fairly moot. Course, this is also assuming that most life would develop on planets like Earth and be relatively similar in requirements as us. Who knows, maybe to accommodate whole water planet races there would need to be further accommodations made. Although those might be better done on the outer edge where you've got more room/depth to work with. Turin, in general I think your point has merit, as I think we're basically talking about similar concepts. It probably would have to be more than a single feat in thinking about it, as both the points themselves, and the very idea of what a modern education means, represent a vast advancement for many people from such a period. The one thing that can be kind of modified for that view though, is that in general those medieval characters are being played by folks with at least a high school education, so they inherently have access to lots of the concepts available as far as problem solving, reasoning, and the like go. Doesn't help you pass a Use Magic Device check in game, but it sure helps in puzzle solving, reasoning what a device might be for from clues, and the safest way to go about testing situations if you fail at a check. Not to diss on anyone's roleplaying skill, but I personally find it very hard not to use OOG knowledge when it pertains to skills I'm not even consciously aware I have. Anyhow, all for the moment, but I promise I'll get around to the cyberware stuff I was talking about in a bit here. Just gotta get back to research for a bit.
yellowdingo 11-10-05, 08:41 AM	The problem is that gravity is Not a force but apparently a dimension measured in time. If everything is made up of time does that mean that Magic in your universe is time measured in the dimension of magic? I hated it too when they realized that the two idiots who did the experiment on which Eienstein and Hawking based all their work got the results wrong. I wont go into the horrorfying reality that everything is purely a consequence of interaction with something that isnt part of the universe. Is magic measurable because something is creating it? In that case is it possible that a God might seek out what was creating the magic and stop it?
Araes 11-13-05, 12:05 PM	Hmm, alright, on the fundamental theory of why gravity exists. As far as I know it is still considered an effect of space time curvature, so yeah, not strictly a force. Now, from what I have read, there are a couple of theories that are posing concepts as to what it could actually be in truth. As of October, from what I read those theories were still being heavily debated and there wasn't any particular concensous on what exactly gravity is. One of the main ones that I've read about and which also offers the possiblity for proving some portion of 10-D space is the idea that we are actually living in a system of "Branes" or hyperdimensional membranes which are effectively infinite in size. The other one that was more classic was the idea that each of the extra dimensions, including the ones gravity acts over are very small (compactified and unobservable). However, this theory basically meant that it was untestable as we couldnt' build a particle accelerator big enough to look for those effects. Anyhow, on the experiments portion of the note though, you wouldn't happen to have a link to what you're referencing there, as I'd be interested in reading through what you're talking about, as I'm not completely familiar with it. Maybe it would help me get fluff in line with common perceptions of current physical laws (ignoring the fact that I'm proposing an extra effect). Actually, wonder if you could propose something like this as an extra dimension in space, which when manipulated by X causes perturbations of the other visible effects in our observable universe? Say an even larger order dimension for which our observable group of four is a subset, and properties of the four are changed by interactions of the greater 6+. Hmm, predetermination and foretelling wouldn't be such problems, as time could be heavily manipulated with this extra dimension.
DeeL 11-13-05, 06:19 PM	OH MY DEAR SWEET CTHULHU, WHAT A THREAD! I just got finished reading this beast - and when I say 'reading' I mean 'reading the parts of it that I can comprehend, and skimming the rest' - and I am flabbergasted. You realize that you have created the unholy child of Riverworld and Ringworld, layered it with Clarke's observation, then power-statted it into the potential for a whole new system? Speaking of which - Araes, do you have access to the Magic of Incarnum accessory yet? It's worth the look. The style of magic in use there has applicability to your setting. Perhaps in one of the 'inward layers' magic doesn't take the form of spells, but of soulmelds...or perhaps the most enlightened of the descendants of the engineering crew still uses melds as an outgrowth of the original non-physical toolkits of their ancestors. But as I implied, I'm still not sure I understand enough of your setting to comment reliably. I just wanted you to know that you have officially blown my mind.
Araes 11-16-05, 02:29 PM	Such is the Course that Nature's Kind Hath Wrought Alright, I've been promising thoughts on futureware inside of D&D for a while. Been a little distracted thinking up submissions for the RPG Design Test and working over some CO builds, but I guess I ought to buckle down and deliver on my promises. The first step in the process is to look at what things we're going to want to accomplish with cyber and bioware. Now, generally in a scientific setting, cyberware and bioware accomplish two distinct goals, replacement and enhancement. In the first case, the idea is to mimic the behavior of the human body as closely as possible so that you retain all the functionality that the original would have had. You can see that with some of the advancements they're actually making today. (For example http://www.popsci.com/popsci/bown2005/personalhealth/index.html) Although these products are really cool in a normal world like ours, in a fantasy hybrid, where medicine can consist of magically replicating an arm, its utility is somewhat overshadowed. That's not to say that they might not exist, and since our entire world is based on the idea that magic is heavily composed of super tech masquerading as such, there's a very real possiblity that when someone is praying over you with a raise dead, they're really causing nanites or some other such thing to go to work repairing your cell structure. On the more extended end of this concept, we have enhancement. These products want to take what the human body can do and then improve some portion of its performance past what nature crafted it to achieve. In the sense of a D&D game this means that they're going to add (and possibly subtract) from the character's: Abilities Saves Special Qualities Special Attacks Reach Attacks Armor Class Movement Rates Initiative Hit Points Skills Feats Spells That's a heck of a lot of things that we could possibly mess with and so now it comes down to the choice of deciding what exactly we can change and by how much within each category. There are a couple of places that we can search for ideas in this department. One of the first should simply be the core books, as they'll give us an idea of what enhancements are within the range of D&D, and maybe spark some ideas for cool pieces of gear. Other sources which are also useful to look into are d20 Modern and Future, Shadowrun, and the line of Arsenal and Factory books by Perpetrated Press. As I don't have Factory or Arsenal, can't really use those too much, but I do have a long list of Shadowrun supplements and all the Modern and Future stuff, so should be able to figure out a fairly good background. Divying it up, lets look at whats available in each of the general categories and the existing categories of improvement types these might fall under. Abilities Str, Dex, Con, Wis, Int, Cha alchemical, enhancement, inherent, profane, racial, sacred, size Saves Fort, Ref, Will alchemical, competence, enhancement, insight, luck, morale, profane, racial, resistance, sacred Special Attacks A staggering number of varied attacks. A small list includes: ability damage, ability drain, breath weapon, change shape, constrict, cursed wound, disease, energy drain, fear, gaze, improved grab, paralysis, poison, pounce, powerful charge, psionics, ray, rend, roar, sonic attack, spells, spell-like abilities, summon, swallow whole, trample, wounding. Special Qualities Also a huge number of abilities including: Blindsenses, blindsight, damage reduction, fast healing, frightful presence, immunity to energy or attack, regeneration, energy resistance, scent, spell immunity, spell resistance, subtype features (fire, cold, ect...), tremorsense, turn resistance, and type traits (construct, undead, ect...). Reach Linear Increases alchemical, enhancement, inherent, profane, racial, size Attacks Add anything that could be a weapon in the normal D&D game or improve an existing weapon's effectiveness. This includes things like new weapons, claws, bites, tails, wings, tentacles, spines, or slams, as well as upgrades to exisiting versions of those things should they exist on a character (bigger claws, nastier bite, more accurate weapons, ect...) alchemical, competence, enhancement, insight, luck, morale, profane, racial, size Armor Class Basically, anything that will increase your characters defensive abilities. These might be things like skin grafts, subdermal armors, total limb and torso replacements, or structural upgrades (bone coverings). There could also be things like ingestible compounds that would temporarily increase your toughness or battle analysis computers that would give you either a dodge or insight bonus to AC. alchemical, armor, deflection, dodge, insight, luck, natural, profane, racial, sacred, shield, size Movement Rates Land Speed, Burrowing, Climbing, Flight, Swimming, Teleportation (range increase) alchemical, enhancement, inherent, morale, profane, racial, sacred, size Initiative Linear Increases alchemical, enhancement, inherent, insight, luck, profane, racial, sacred Hit Points Change in hit die, bonus hit points (permanent or temporary) alchemical, enhancement, inherent, profane, racial, sacred Skills Bonuses to any of your skill checks, greater number of skill points per level alchemical, competence, enhancement, insight, luck, morale, profane, racial, sacred Feats Bonus feats Spells Greater number of spells known, greater number of spells per day, portable/internal spellbooks, internal holy items As you can see, there is a whole lot of stuff that we can cover with cyberware and this is without even going into details. In fact, it could be even broader if we were to say that since its technomagic, we don't really need to stick to the strictures of normal cyberware, and can really accomplish goals with nearly any combination of items. However, in the interest of retaining some of the feel of a cybertech/bioware game, I feel that it would be best to keep the functions of various bodyparts retained to what we might imagine with current or slightly more advanced vision. No, "it works by magic" clauses. All Progress is Precarious Alright, and now on to specific examples of cyberware. First off, I'm going to go through Man and Machine, a supplement for the Shadowrun game world, and decompose much of its cybeware/bioware into something applicable for a D&D game. I won't go into costs or specific dice amounts right now, but instead cover their general function and abilities and where they fit into the ability tree. Note that this is also not an all inclusive list of abilities or the definitive say on what I think a particular upgrade should do, only possible things it might be able to affect. Plus, names will obviously have to be changed around as well and some items reimagined, as we'd be stepping all over copyright otherwise. ;) Balance Augmenter (+ to Balance, Climb, and Jump Checks) [Competence] Chemical Analyzer and Spectrometer (+ to Appraise (alchemy)) [Competence] Eye Systems (laser, dart) (Laser, ray attack, ranged touch) (+ to Escape Artist) [Competence] (Long Range Hearing SQ) (Limited Telepathy SQ) (Blinding Gaze SQ) (Indirect Fire SQ) (Dart or other projectile, ranged attack) Eye Light Systems (Daylight SA) (Sunbeam/Sunburst SA, limited use) Independent Cybereyes (+ to Spot, Search Checks) [Competence] (All Around Vision SQ) (Indirect Fire SQ) Internal GPS (+ on Survival Checks) [Competence] Microscopic Vision (+ on Appraise, Craft (repair) Checks) [Competence] Olfactory Booster (Scent SQ) Oral Weapons (Slasher, suprise melee attack) (Dart or other projectile, ranged attack) Orientation System (Internally referencable maps) (+ to Survival Checks) [Competence] Spatial Recognizer (+ to Listen Checks) [Competence] Ultrasound Vision (Darkvision variant) (+ to listen checks) (Blindsight SQ) Internal Voice Mask (+ to Disguise Checks, vocal) [Competence] Subdermal Speakers + Subvocal Mic or Transducer (Limited Telepathy) Skillchip (single-multi chipjacks) (+ to set of skills) [Competence] Data Filter (short term to long term memory blockage) (Create memory slaves) Encephalon (+ to skill points per level) (+ to all Int related skills) [competence] Invoked Memory Stimulator (keep undead connected to prior life) Math SPU (+ to ranged attacks) [insight] (+ to appraise checks) [competence] (+ to highly technical craft checks) [competence] Tactical Computer (+ to attack) [morale] (Bonus team fighting feats) (+ to suprise checks) [insight] (Internal Battle Map SQ) (Indirect Fire SQ) Autoinjector (System that can load a variety of alchemical drugs at will) Tail (Extra tail attack, melee) (+ to balance, climb, and jump checks) [competence] (prehensile, hold onto things, support yourself) Biomonitor (+ to healing checks (others aiding you)) [competence] w/ Autoinjector (Automatic drug use) Body Compartment (Hide small items SQ) Bone Lacing (Con Bonus) [inherent] (+ unarmed, natural weapon damage die) (+ armor class) [natural armor] (Damage reduction SQ) Cyberfins (Swim speed SQ) Dermal Sheath (armor bonus due to underskin plates) [natural armor] (Damage reduction SQ) Flex Hands (+ to Escape artist checks) [enhancement/competence] Foot Anchor (+ to balance checks) [circumstance] (bonus vs bull rush attempts) [circumstance] (ability to fire heavier ranged weapons) Hydraulic Jacks (big + to jump checks) [competence] (change in jump height multiplier) [enhancement] (loss of jump limitation based on height) [enhancement] Internal Air Tank (vents) (Breath under water SQ) (Breath weapon, store/release dangerous gases) Jolt Alert (automatic alarm for sleeping/danger) Magnetic System (+ vs disarm attempts) Move-by-Wire (Dex Bonus) [inherent/enhancement] (Init Bonus) [inherent/enhancement] (Ref Save Bonus) [inherent/enhancement] (+ to hide, move silently checks) Cybergills (Breath under water SQ) Climbing Claws (retractable) (Climb speed SQ) Burrowing Claws (Burrow speed SQ) Smartlinks (Range finder SQ) (+ to ranged attacks) [insight] Cyberlimbs (Str Bonus) [inherent/enhancement] (Dex Bonus) [inherent/enhancement] (Con Bonus) [inherent/enhancement] (+ unarmed, natural weapon damage die) (hidden weapons) (Move speed bonus, legs) [inherent/enhancement] (Swim speed bonus) [inherent/enhancement] Body Plating (AC bonus) [armor] (Energy resistance SQ) Direct Neural Interface (control special items made for DNI as if you were the object, possibly constructs, robots, ect...) Signal Booster (Telepathy range boost) Telescoping Cyberlimb (melee reach bonus) [inherent/enhancement] Sound Suppressor (Silence SA) Fangs (Bite attack SA) Horns (Horn goreing SA) Shock Hand (Electrical touch attack SA) Venom Sack (Bite attacks gain poison, various switchable effects) *edit* Almost forgot to reply to people above who made comments. In general, thank you much for the compliment as it means I'm doing something right if you are having that much of a mental shift from this thread. That said, wasn't quite aiming for mind blowing, just interesting and a change from the norm of fantasy worlds. Hope it hasn't gone so far afield that its unfathomable, but I guess I'll see that as it progresses farther. Hard to do when you're answering fundamental questions about the physics of the universe (ugg, 5+ dimensional space), but I'm going to try and stay away from that as much as possible. My background is in engineering, not physics, so I can't speak to a lot of that with any kind of authority. And most sci-fi authors generally give the advice that its better not to back yourself into a hole and just leave some things open to interpretation, as your readers are quite often smarter than you. Anyhow, glad you're liking it so far, and feel free to comment if you feel like there could be things you'd like to see in the setting or just things that you'd like to have clarified. As far as answering the last questions of yellowdingo, I would say that I kind of like the feel of the extra dimensional interaction concept I put forward with the prior post as far as the origins of magic. In that sense, magic isn't exactly a force, but it is a measurable interaction between objects within our commonly viewable space and higher order dimensions of expanded reality. All our common forces and the effects which other dimensions might have on us can be tweaked by manipulating this higher order envelope dimension to produce the desired effects. This is neat because it allows for manipulation of time which was precluded previously. In addition, shapechange and matter transformation are also allowed, as if we assume a string theory idea of the universe, we could be shifting the fundamental vibration modes of a piece of matter and transmuting it into something else. Kind of neat, no idea of the physical robustness. As far as a god coming and seeking out magic and stopping its creation, there could be very powerful beings capable of manipulating magic on a much greater scale than any human, and the "Gods" which I have begun to detail in my posts above are the most likely culprits in this regard. They are remnants of a civilization which possessed a vast knowledge of all the ways in which the laws of the universe interact, and how to tweak them to produce any result they might desire. They are also in possession of immense material, energy, and memory resources as they are now physically possessing the structure and networks of the sphere. I doubt the interaction of other gods which might come and stop the flow of magic or the operation of the energy machine at the center of the sphere, but then again, that has a little bit to do with my own thoughts on the subject in normal life. Alright, next up I guess I'll probably either touch on robots in the sphere or maybe go further into cyber and bio-enhancements for characters. Hard to say, that to-do list up top is still looking rather large, and I'd at least like to take big chunks out of it before I dive into details too much or flesh things out. Guess a quick thing I might do as well is make a note of which aspects of Unearthed Arcana I envision being used in this setting, as there are a few that would be perfect plug and play additions.
Araes 11-20-05, 12:35 PM	Alright, next up is a relatively shorter post than my most recent ones (hopefully). There Are Many Copies Today I'm going to cover the topic of sentient robots in my world. I've heard it said that if you've got constructs in a world then what would you need robots for, and as a general rule, I would say very little. However, constructs is a wide category and covers all manner of things created for a semblance of life. The problem is the fact that most of them are exactly that, a semblance, whereas a sentient robot is truly alive, acts independently, has feelings and goals, and a host of other things that make it close to a biological person in nature. Now, the problem with constructs is going to be that they are horribly hard to balance and still retain playability. Now lets examine the standard features and traits of a construct. By each entry I'll comment on how I feel about the abilities and how they relate to a technologically advanced robot. The general features of a construct are: 10-sided Hit Dice. This is fine, if we're going to have it so that constructs as a playable race are anything more than a +1 LA race Base attack bonus equal to ¾ total Hit Dice (as cleric). In an advanced setting, I have a hard time rationalizing the fact that robots would have worse targeting and abilities to strike other creatures than a base humanoid. This may be a personal bias though, and it would be better to go over it with the math mentioned above once other factors have been looked at. No good saving throws. If robots are a no LA creature, then this doesn't matter. If they are +1 or greater, it would need to be weighed against giving them immunities and such. Skill points equal to (2 + Int modifier, minimum 1) per Hit Die, with quadruple skill points for the first Hit Die, if the construct has an Intelligence score. However, most constructs are mindless and gain no skill points or feats. The mindless will obviously not pertain to a sentient construct. 2+Int seems fine as they should be easily enhanced with things like skill upgrades and the like. The standard traits for a construct are: No Constitution score. This is a really tough call, and centers around the entire problem of balance. By definition, Con is a "representation of a character's health and stamina". That's not particularly helpful, so we have to instead look at what a Con score does for us. It helps with Fort saves against things like poison, disease, ect.. Robots shouldn't be subject to disease, poison, ect..., so that seems fairly useless. It gives extra hit points at each level. This could be justified by saying that some robots may be of a better make or build so are tougher to kill. Course, could justify using the normal construct bonus HP too... Concentration checks - well, we could easily say that robots simply can't be distracted by hitting them because they've been designed with the ability to ignore or deaden pain (note, they would need some kind of pain or feedback so that they could identify danger). From this list it seems like the best best might be to just ditch Con like normal constructs do, which will also make having no good Saves a reasonable goal. Low-light vision. Hit or miss here. Could be standard, could be an upgrade. Darkvision out to 60 feet. Hit or miss here as well. Could be standard, could be an upgrade. Immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects). This isn't going to pertain because a robot is going to have a mind that for game purposes functions almost exactly like a human mind. They can be confused, scared, fall in love, ect... Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, and necromancy effects. Yes to the whole list, as we've said that they're retaining the standard construct traits of having immunities to Con effects, which means that poison, instant death, ect... which have been designed for biological opponents won't hurt them. Big, big advantage that will be tough to overcome. One thing that could be a part of the game though would be robot versions of many of these problems. Computer viruses that require will saves, structural attacks that they have very little defense against, mental formatting attacks... Cannot heal damage on their own, but often can be repaired by exposing them to a certain kind of effect (see the creature’s description for details) or through the use of the Craft Construct feat. A construct with the fast healing special quality still benefits from that quality. Yes, although I would say that it should be very reasonable for a construct to be able to buy some kind of upgrade which would allow for automatic self-repair. This could be some kind of nanite factory or even something more exotic and "magical". Not subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability damage, ability drain, fatigue, exhaustion, or energy drain. On this I would say that anything which requires biological matter to function would be a no go. IE, you can't drain their blood cause they don't have any. However, energy drain, ability drain/damage, and maybe even critical hits could all be reasonable effects for a robot. On the topic of critical hits, robots would not be immune to them for the fact that they are actually constructed after a logical pattern and require all of their various anotomical parts to keep functioning. They're not a big animated block of iron, and as such, a knife in the guts is going to do harm. Immunity to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects, or is harmless). Since we don't have a Con score or a Fort save, yeah, pretty much have to have this one. Would require a lot more thought to make sure its balanced out though. Not at risk of death from massive damage. Immediately destroyed when reduced to 0 hit points or less. On the immediately destroyed front, I would say that for characters this should not be a rule, and should function more like Warforged of Eberron. At 0 they are disabled and can only take move actions, below zero they are inert and can do nothing. I would vary from Eberron though in saying that the more damage a robot takes past 0 just increases the difficulty of repairing him to the point of functionality (IE, increasing the repair DC to restore life) The repair of a fallen robot might only be possible once (or maybe once per person) or each failed attempt might make further attempts even harder. Since it was never alive, a construct cannot be raised or resurrected. This is a tough call. In a sense it comes down to the idea of whether a sentient robot has a soul and overall I would have to say yes. My thoughts on this would be that a robot's personality (IE, class levels, skills, feats, ect...) could be recovered and put into a new body as long as the prior body wasn't the subject of something like disintigration. This might carry with it the normal penalties for raising the dead, as body transfer would be a rough process. Might also allow slain robots' conciousnesses to explore the intersphere "web" and try to gain possession of new host bodies forcefully. Because its body is a mass of unliving matter, a construct is hard to destroy. It gains bonus hit points based on size, as shown on the table. This is fine, as its just a game mechanic to compensate for the fact that they have no Con. Would make it a little hard to kill them at first level, but would peter off pretty quickly in bonus size for higher levels. Might allow robots to buy something like "health upgrades" to increase their overall toughness. Proficient with its natural weapons only, unless generally humanoid in form, in which case proficient with any weapon mentioned in its entry. Not really important, as characters will have classes to work off of. Proficient with no armor. This is a tough one to arbitrate, as a robot could theoretically hold nearly any form desired by its creator. In general I think I would toss this and say that their would be a custom design multiplier for any robot fitted armor, no matter the size of the robot. Constructs do not eat, sleep, or breathe. However, they very well might need to recharge. In addition, sleeping serves a valuable function in humans, in that it gives us time to process knowledge and form mental pathway links. Sentient robots with the capacity for learning could very well need the same downtime to work over their new thoughts. Would think that breathing would probably be a no-go though. Construct Bonus Size Hit Points Fine — Diminutive — Tiny — Small 10 Medium 20 Large 30 Huge 40 Gargantuan 60 Colossal 80 Other things which I unfortunately don't have time to discuss but will get back to. Robots might very well have some form of limited telepathy built into them (IE, radios) and could be able to talk back and forth to one another easily. Robots are electronic entities and may have a vulnerability to electric forms of damage. Maybe could buy a feat to get around this. As suggested by the creator of the Walmart Appocalypse thread (which is awesome) it would be logical for some robots to be able to take control of lesser robots or have superiority protocols over them. As a general weakness for robots, I would suggest that it be possible for an robot to try and exert its will over the mind of another robot within range of communication/radio telepathy. As a bonus, the gods in this world are all highly powerful digital entities, and as such, could easily subsume a robot's conciousness for a time and take control of his body. In fact, this could be the very way in which the avatars of gods take form in the world. They travel through the net, find a suitable robot near to where they want to manifest, take over his form, and then using their superior knowledge of physical laws and control over the energy displacement machine, transform the robot's body temporarily into a divine manifestation of their power. Has all kinds of potential for god/PC party interaction across the sphere if they take robots with them. As I've alluded to, I think that robots for the most part should be able to buy upgrades just like normal magical items, which would change parts of their physiology, give them different abilities, or negate some of their inherent problems. These might be like bioware for a normal human, but specific to robots. Alright, there's my first stab at commenting on how a robot character type would develop. In the next couple of days maybe I'll have time to go through it and see whether I can figure out what the base LA would be for a normal human sized robot based on modifiers and abilities.
DeeL 11-20-05, 10:19 PM	Areas, have you considered the implications of nanotechnology as it relates to the possibility of some cybernetics being inheritable? Perhaps some bloodlines are cyborgs from the ground up, having a high frequency transciever built into their skulls as they develop? That's just for starters - actually, anything could be buildable if the right raw materials were available. Someone in the process of 'refining' themselves in such a fashion might feel a craving for certain mineral rich foods, but would require no actual surgery. And that carries with it the implication that a robot might be a human being who overdid it. Make of that what you will.
Araes 11-21-05, 02:38 PM	Alright, this really will be short as I need to run. Thank you for the comment Deel. In short, I had only started to look at the implications of nanotechnology and was mostly focusing on how they might be integrated with a person who had never had them before. A whole lot of this has also been trying to figure out how you could sneak a super futuristic concept like nano-tech, or even wilder things, into a D&D game without making it stick out like a sore thumb. How cultures might develop that would use this stuff but have no good sense of how it came to be in the first place or even what the diagrams and "holy designs" they follow so studiously mean. One of the concepts you talked about, involving building items within a person's body using the nanotechnology already there, I had thought about because the idea was sparked by something that Shadowrun used to let you do. They would have Hives of nanites with a person's body, and that person would periodically ingest mineral supplements to provide them with material to continue growing. This led to the idea of allowing someone to flow their hand over materials and effectively ingest materials through their skin. Naturally, nanites are rather slow, as they're working over a very small length scale, but you could allow things like sleeping in a layer of material at night, or eating portions of said material to be required. I'm not sure quite how I would deal with crafting of portions of a persons body using this technique. Probably it would have to be something like having each Hive have a certain rating and that hive can only build improvements to a person which don't exceed its rated capabilities. The person might then have to "ingest" the value of the improvement in materials (which would be a lot, but nanites could be inefficient or somesuch) and then the structure would be built. You could also impose other penalties, like requiring any structure built on a person to take an XP cost as they're giving up a part of themselves to use it, or suffering a permanent HP loss. Maybe a total limit on number of structures over a total body as well to keep it in check. That said, your other concept is really pretty cool and I'll have to think about a neat way to integrate that into my design. I'm not sure about the idea of having robots as an extension of cybersurgery gone to its extreme, but then again, that would solve some of the inherent story problems of a culture which was initially opposed to the concept of artificial life. In addition, I really like the idea of having inheritable nanotechnology devices which a child could be born with, or maybe an entire race of people naturally are, and which would develop and grow along with the being as they aged. Characters could buy these things as "hereditary" or "ancestoral" feats which had been passed down through their tree. Perhaps there could also be combinations of such concepts, like entire races which are devoted to nanotechnology which is inborn to every member, and as they have bred and lived, what technology they have has "mutated" to fill the various roles they needed. Characters from such a race could buy hereditary bonuses which would individualize the way their particular tech works and helps them survive. Anywho, thank you much for the participation and feel free to comment on anything else you think might need further explaining or could be improved upon in some way.
DeeL 11-21-05, 06:39 PM	FREEZE! INCOMING CONCEPT! I was actually thinking of the inherent nanotech as a possible justification for robot player characters, but something just hit me. I got Magic of Incarnum shortly after it came out, and it's been on my tiny mind ever since. So perhaps it is excusable that as I was reflecting on the interaction of nanomachines with n-dimensional technology, a possible application occured to me. You didn't say whether you had access to MoI, so I shall assume you do not. Here's the basic summary - There are three classes of Soulmelders: Incarnates, Soulborn, and Totemists. Soulmelders can draw from within themselves stable supernatural forms. After the proverbial eight hours of sleep, the melder spends an hour crafting soulmelds, a kind of virtual magic item. Each meld occupies a part of the body much like a magical item. You can modify a particular soulmeld in two ways. First, each soulmelder has an essentia pool, free floating energy which can be invested into a meld, usually simply amplifying its bonuses. Unlike soulmelds themselves, essentia points can be reallocated from one round to the next, and increase with a characters levels. Second, the meld can be bound to its associated chakra (the part of the body it is associated with). In such a state a soulmeld grants greater power but excludes that part of the body from the use of 'real' magic items, that is if you have a meld bound to your feet chakras you can gain no benefit from boots of striding and springing. The choice to bind a meld must be made when the meld is formed - this choice may be remade at the beginning of any given day. What if the subcutaneous transponders I was referring to, passed down from one generation to the next, perhaps matrilineally, were located at the chakras, and were responsible for the activation and function of 'magic items'? And what if, through focus and training, a character were able to request that 'shadow mass' be allocated to his selected chakras in patterns that roughly imitate the forms used in magical items? And what would such practicianers call the resulting almost-real devices? Nanotech induced field effects, or something more basic? Like soulmelds? See, this all started with the idea that these nano-installations had been part of the preserved human race for so long that they had forgotten what they actually were. What would they be calling these devices? Then it hit me - soulmelds, incarna, chakras, essentia. Oh yeah. Ditch the fluff about the incarna being the substance of soul energy - and the consequent association with specific alignments, the one part of the book that I find deeply flawed - and you've got a kind of technology that really is indistinguishable from magic...
Araes 11-22-05, 10:04 AM	I wonder if this thread scares people away from posting in it? The ratio on views to posts is pretty good, bout 25:1 right now. And 13 of the 24 are me. Maybe I can get the post to views up around 100:1 in time. Diversity is King Anyhow, onward with more content. Almost as a brainstorming excercise, I've been participating in the "Yay, new world, could be next Eberron" thread. I have a hard time believing that campaign by committee will produce a worthwhile place to take characters, but in terms of raw ideas its already paid off with some work, and I don't mind adding a source of concepts to their effort. Plus, I could be wrong and it could get picked up for publishing tomorrow. Hard to say. However, one of the first ways its helped has just been in summarizing my feelings on races within the world. Overall, I feel that if you're going to have a campaign world that's unique and stands out from the crowd, then you need to be willing to part with a lot of the stuff that Tolkien brought into the mainstream and try to create your own unique little ecosystem. Naturally, as the developers of D&D have commented on in their last few columns (and which I have vague suspicions are a covert marketing study), its difficult to find traction with players when you're bringing in a host of new races which each might have their own personality, culture, history, and backgrounds. Its hard to strike that perfect spark and ensure that they are unique and really grab players the first time they see them. However, just because its hard doesn't mean that every time we make fantasy world X it should just be reimagination of why elves are the superior race, dwarves are the surly mountain dwellers, and gnomes are bat crazy inventors. As such, one thing I threw down was my general thoughts on pieces that would need to go into a set of races if you were going to make one, and what some possible abilities you could put in such a race might be. Assuming 0 LA level stuff for simplicity. +-2 to any stat - maybe races that make obvious choices for classes (maybe) Different sizes - they don't all have to be medium Bonus/loss of skills (+-1 per level) Bonus/loss of feats (lose 1st level) Bonus languages / language or speaking problems Reach variation - maybe long arms or morphic bodies Minor Spell Like Abilities - This list is vast, so I'll make another sublist Alter Self - disguise artist Invisibility - sneaky Misdirection - more sneaky Blur - maybe constantly out of phase? Levitation - constantly floating Magus types Spider climb - more sneaky, tactics Darkness - possibly like a shade where they just darken as they go Dazing/Calming Touch/Visage - very sight or touch drives people crazy or makes them sedate Detect Thoughts - mild telepaths without psionics Summon Swarm - perhaps like a verminlord, there are sentient piles of bugs that aren't necessarily evil Fog Cloud/Obscuring Mist - be odd to see a low fog roll in wherever a character passes. Perhaps they are permanently chilled and condense the air around them constantly Cause Fear(weak) - perhaps theres a race thats just creepy and other races just have a tough time being around them. Identify - maybe they're the ultimate merchants. They appraise at will. Shield/Anti-life Shell(very small) - the ultimate loners, can't actually have pysical contact with other living beings. Inorganic still hurts just as much though. Scent - scoobs and the gang Energy Resistance Spell Resistance Extra Attacks (natural, extra arms, ect...) Type modifiers DR Fast Healing/Regeneration (can't keep a good man down) Special Movement Types (flight, swim, burrow, teleport) Natural Attack Forms (might want to avoid if we're going for "humanoid") There's all kinds of totally crazy and interesting combinations we could come up with using these basic abilities as starting points which wouldn't touch any of the normal races and would make for highly varied gameplay from first level on. Note: Normal 0 LA races tend to have around 4-5 specific "feat type" bonuses or slightly less than that if the bonuses can be shifted or are highly powerful. In generaly I think this is a pretty good list of all the abilities which are available for us to play with during racial creation. One of the major problems with the list though is that for many of them its hard to create vulnerabilities to counterbalance the good points if we wanted to try and make races with more than a few enhancements and still maintain 0 LA. In addition, if we want to explore the use of some constant spell like effects, then we're in even more trouble, as its a tough call to weight the advantages of a permanent 2nd level spell vs some of these effects, particularly if its normally of a non-hour+ duration. However, these are issues which can be overcome as we refine things a bit further, and for now they're just a good starting point. Why You Look Like Your Father, and if You Don't, Why You Should The next major thing which has come from participating in this other thread, is the concept of genetics behind racial creation, which is a major leap forward for me in terms of how to organize the varied racial makeups which might be contributing to the abilities of a single character. In general, I have wanted to develop a feeling within this campaign setting that all the varied races of the universe have been gathered together and dumped into one spot. Sometimes willingly, sometimes forcefully, sometimes without even their knowledge. No matter the method though, when a character adventures in the land, they should be confronted by a cacophony of racial sights that threaten to nearly overwhelm them with their variety. Rock people, insect-like folks, bird people, and mixes that span the variety in between. More importantly, many of these races should also be able to interbreed (not that they may want to) through the magic of, well, supertech disguised as magic. This interbreeding could result in even more crazy things like insect folk with bird-like wings. Naturally, this sounds a little bit overwhelming, and as such, I have also considered that this could probably just be an option for those who really want to delve into character creation or for DMs who have too much time on their hands to make NPCs. For your more run of the mill characters, there could be a series of dominant races, which are what you will most often see while wandering the world, and their less common (1/4, 1/2, 1/8, whatever) breeds can be found sprinkled moderately throughout these populations. The general way in which the genetics concept will play out can be summed up with another post from the other board which goes as follows: My general thought is to treat the whole racial generation thing kind of like a quick template process. Basically, you have four choices you get to make when your creating your basic race. These four choices will be from among a set of archtypes which represent the various genetic backgrounds which are floating around the world and contributing to its makeup. Each of these archtypes will have a series of attributes associated with them which will be divided into categories like size, ability bonus/penalty, special qualities, movement types, ect... For example, an avian archtype might give you: Size: medium Abilities: +1 dex, -1 con Movement: 40 ft fly (poor) A mole archtype might give you: Size: small Abilities: +1 con, -1 cha Movement: 10 ft burrow And there's a whole bunch of other ones. When you're doing the character selection process, you may also take any template multiple times, and any benefits which are the same stack or build upon one another. For calculating size modifiers, with every two small or two large archtypes you take your size changes by one category in that direction. For example, if you took two avian and two mole archtypes when you were building your character, you would have: Size: small Abilities: +2 Dex, -2 Cha Movement: 60 ft fly (average), 20 ft burrow (rock also) Or something similar. Some abilities won't add linearly, but will instead improve in a repeatable way once you've gained the first rank in it. Hopefully that makes some sense, and also a note that I'm going to use that in my other campaign setting in the form I've just described. Obviously needs fleshing out and descriptions for all the other possible backgrounds, but its a start that can lead to wildly diverse characters. Oh, and I'm also thinking about having it so that for each archtype of a certain genre you take, you can also have the option/requirement of choosing one modification from a table of racial features which will define how your racial past has exhibited itself. To expand upon this quickly posted guideline, what we would probably end up with would be a series of maybe 6-8 various racial archtype templates. During the character creation process, into each of four slots, a player would choose to put one of the racial archtypes. Assuming that we use a base of 8 racial archtypes, this means that we end up with 8^4 or 4096 different ways that you can make a race for yourself. This number isn't set in stone by any means, and might wander up and down depending on how many different abilities I can think to allow as scalable bonuses for a race, but it at least serves to show how diverse of a population it might be possible to encounter while traveling the world. In addition, as I mentioned during that last paragraph of the pasted section, while making up a mixed background character, each player would have a table of racial attributes, from which they would choose one or more corresponding to each template they used. In this way, even two characters which chose the exact same racial background might end up with a different set of racial features. Ex: One might have short striped fur, one might have little claws, and one might have tiny horns. A further way to expand upon this would also be to weight particular slots in the racial creation process with various bonus abilities that they correspond to. For example, if you placed a winged creature in your second slot and a cat in your last slot, you might get a bonus to spot checks from the second slot and a rake attack or pounce from the last, whereas, if you put your winged creature in that last slot and cat in the second, you might get a bonus to listen checks from the second and a flyby attack from the last slot. All various options for how to perturb the system even further and create a plethora of interesting things.
TúrintheMormegil 11-23-05, 05:12 AM	Allow me to lower that view per post ratio a bit, please... The reason I don't really post a lot in this thread (and it might be the same for others too) is that you are basically talking two topics at the same time, while only one interests me. In my case, the whole teched up world thingy may be a good idea, but it is far from my favourite CS on this board. OTOH, the "Ax=b method for class creation" and your approach to races is fascinating. Both are great ideas, though they need a lot of thought as of yet before they are balanced. So expect more posts from me when you continue your analyses on such topics. :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 11-29-05, 02:20 PM	Hunter in a Farmer's World Hey, sorry for the delay in getting back to this. Few pressing matters in the real life department. Anyhow, in response to your comment Turin, I acknowledge that I am basically serving two audiences with this thread, in that I am proposing a quasi-sci fantasy world and all the extras that go with it, as well as a number of interesting mathematical decompositions of the rules. The problem for me is two-fold in this vein. The first is that in my mind these two subjects really aren't serving two masters, as they are both necessary to create what I feel is a diverse and interesting new setting. The reasons for the fluff are obvious, as I need to create a backdrop against which all the rest of my paints may be applied. While the crunge of rules deconstruction (particularly the bit you're interested in) are useful in that I plan to decompose the class system into an almost GURPs like thing in the future, so that anyone who plays in my world can make a class which fits almost any vision of their character, and yet can still interface with the D&D core ruleset as written. The second reason is that I am nearly ADD when it comes to writing stuff out like this. My natural thought processes tend to jump from one thing to the next based upon the shininess of the next apparent goal or what recent brainstorms I've had. Par example, that whole bit on class deconstruction was basically an afternoon where I was going crazy from studying for a PhD exam, so in fight or flight mode, my brain started grasping at anything that seemed more fun than doing that. It landed on the comparatively easier math of linear algebra with relation to the core classes and started working on that. Once I'd finished, it lept off to other things and I haven't been thinking about it nearly as much since (although I would like to do an upgrade of it featuring all 17 possible base classes from D&D and d20 Modern which would allow me to solve explicitly for some of the other things that I fudged on the last run through. Anyhow, that said, if you're really interested in this topic, I'm perfectly willing to talk more about it with you. Sorry if I seemed to be ignoring comments earlier around October time, the aforementioned PhD exams basically buried me for a while. Not knowing your background, are you familiar with general linear algebra concepts and the transformation of large equation sets into matrix form to allow for their solution? This next version of the matrix set I'm using would probably end up being slightly more complex, as I'm assuming that the value of magical skills is some factor of whether they're clerical or arcane, and also the maximum level of spell that a character is allowed to cast. My belief is that this follows a formula something like: C * X ^ M Where the value in points of a spellcasting ability is related to some variable C, which has values for arcane/divine spells. The value M is some factor that spellcasting ability is raised to based on the max spell level available to the class, X. IE: For a wizard it might be C = 0.05, X = 9, M = 3; So the total point cost for a wizards spell allotment would be: 36.5 pts. This is off of memory, so the numbers aren't exact, but that's the general concept. What I'd like to do in the next iteration is solve for C and M in addition to all the other stuff I've solved for in the past. In addition, with Modern there are also Reputation and Defense scores that I would like to solve for, to determine the worth of those bonuses. Anyhow, that's all I've got on that topic for the moment. Now onto my other one. The World at Large Speaking of not being able to stick to a subject, I was looking through my list of To Do's and I came across one of the big ones that hurts to look at every time I see it: Places - Kingdoms/Countries, World Layers, Maps. Ghhh, very sound of it fills me with dread. Looking at what I have proposed, I have effectively designed a world for myself which is impossible for one person to populate in the space of a lifetime with interesting characters and complex interactions. Doing this by hand, at the very best, I can hope to fill up some of the smaller layers and leave the massive outer ones as expansive territory to be explored by GMs and characters as they see fit. Effectively a massive playground of terrain for them to form in whatever shapes please their campaign. In effect, this might actually not be all bad, as I would still have a core set of kingdoms and worlds which would act as springboards for adventure, and then a host of "whatever your heart desires" lands for folks to play with. Kind of like Planescape back in its heyday. However, another option which I have been toying with is to make a program which can create the content for all of these areas in a single stroke. With a decent frontload of work in coding, I could create a system which would generate people, towns, kingdoms, and even worlds at a go. Preferably in a format which could then be transposed over to the web or print easily. As I actually enjoy coding, this doesn't hold too much in the way of horror for me, and I have found a number of examples of such things already available for perusal on the web. The best references so far which I have discovered for this sort of thing are: Medieval Demographics Made Easy (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm) by S. John Ross and A Magical Medieval City Guide (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1678&) by Expeditious Retreat Press The second is an excerpt from their larger work: A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe (http://www.rpgmall.com/product_info.php?products_id=32594&) However, the City Guide portion is available as a freely available download from them or places like ENWorld and contains almost all of the info you would really need for setting up your own city. My general theory for how I would go about doing this is I would follow these steps: First make a simple program that can calculate the population, businesses, and general demographics of a small town. Second, expand this program so that it can then calculate the demographics for a whole kingdom. The Medieval Demographics page mentioned would be fairly useful in this regard, as it covers city distribution based on size, population density based on arrable land, ect... Expand this model even further to cover population density for an entire world or world layer in my case. This would be a bit more tough, as not quite as much work has been done on world scale demographics and interactions for a medieval period, although I might be able to use more modern numbers for censuses and such, as travel is much less impeded in a fantasy world with teleportation and the like. After this, make it so that I can calculate the population and demographics for the sphere in a single go. As a side note, might also make it so that the populations for sets of similar worlds could also be calculated at the same time. This would be different from the sphere, in that the sphere would have three base terrains (Ocean, Land, Unusable-open air), whereas a normal planet should only have Ocean and Land. In addition, the diameters of the worlds in a sphere are going to be linearly increasing, whereas planets could be similar or arbitrary. Maybe a solar system? The final step would be kind of an all encompassing refinement step. There are a lot of things that it would be "neat" to do with this code, but in reality I'm one guy and my coding time is limited. If I had limitless time and resolve, my list of features would cover something like: Terrain - Maps (almost impossible), general terrain features (mountainous, rolling, flat), natural resources, rough physical descriptions of cities (walled, compact, sprawling). lists of city structures. Realistic Economics - currency, trade products, economic systems (maybe not all feudal trade/barter) Politics - War/peace, alliances, trade pacts, guilds, micro scale stuff (like nobles, barons, and dukes). Important People - auto-generation of important PCs to fill rolls in the world based on some kind of guided template system. (another almost impossibility), demographics of the levels of characters likely to be found in a city (almost assured) As far as how I would actually go about coding this, I really have two options: The first is that I could use Flash. I'm fairly familiar with Flash and coding a number crunching app. like this would be easy in it. Cross platform compatible for the most part, and fairly easy to access on the web. Has a good handle on using stored sets of data to create values for the user. Might allow for graphical add-ons if I got really crazy (not likely) Problem is that I'm not sure whether my public hosts would allow me to post Flash files. Another option would be Javascript Fairly familiar with coding in JScript as well. Handles this kind of number crunching slowly but effectively. Cross platform compatible and available from anywhere Guarenteed host support Last option would be something like Excel Easy to write out the code for it, as its a spreadsheet Not available on the web Not as flexible as far as purpose goes. Probably my last choice, but an option if the others went south. Anyhow, basically a heads up on what will be going on for the next little while as I explore the feasability of doing this. Probably have a link to a working demo of the program in a little while here, as I'm kind of manic when I get going on things like this. Oh, and if you're looking for music, note the Sig.
TúrintheMormegil 11-30-05, 07:40 AM	First off, I'm not sure you're aware of it, so here (http://www.lucidphoenix.com/dnd/demo/kingdom.asp)'s an application based on Medieval Demographics Made Easy. On the same page is a similar application (http://www.lucidphoenix.com/dnd/demo/business0.asp) for cities. Second, my background in linear algebra. I'm a college student currently taking the course Linear Algebra. We're currently somewhere in chapter 3 of David C. Lay's Linear Algebra and its applications (though we're mostly skipping the applications :D), third edition. Concepts I'm familiar with: systems of linear equations, row reduction and echelon forms, vector equations, Ax=b, homogenous systems, linear (in)dependence, linear transformations and matrices associated with them, matrix-vector products, matrix-matrix products, matrix transposing, matrix inversion, partitioned matrices, LU-decomposition and determinants. Since I'm currently taking the course, I can't say I have a full grasp of the concepts yet, but I basically understand them. I would be interested to see the matrix and the vector you used to solve for the original solutions you related in your earlier post. I'm also interested to learn how you plan to implement the C*X^M formula. I'm also very curious if more info will come about your races-analysis. Generalizing DnD-concepts to formulas would be extremely useful, both for creating classses and races. On a sidenote, I once had a pdf-file on my computer that similarly outlined the basics of assigning point-values to abilities (though strictly for DnD, d20 Modern was not incorporated), thus allowing one to judge the balance of newly created classes. I'm currently trying to find it, so I can post some excerpts, but I probably won't have recorded the source so I won't be able to point out its location :( :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 11-30-05, 01:29 PM	Hey, thanks for the reply. Alright, have to be fairly quick, as I'm freezing to death in my lab at the moment (we have a window leak) and I need to get home for some dinner. I actually was familiar with the program you pointed out. Its pretty comprehensive for the materials listed in Medieval Demographics made easy, but I was actually hoping to upgrade to the MMCG material, as its a bit more comprehensive in some departments. However, I am using their basic structure as a beginning guide as far as format, as they did a number of interesting things that were quite intelligent. Got a quick Flash version working last night (took a whopping 15 lines to get the basic functionality down - course, all it is, is a FOR loop and a few functions...) On the topic of the Linear Algebra, great to hear that you're already familiar with it. What I'm doing isn't stupidly complicated with regard to Linear Algebra (at least the first iteration wasn't), it just involved a rather large matrix and equations set. Excel (or Matlab if you have access to it) can do these kind of sets with no problems. The real issue is that it was a first pass, and I had to fudge some of the relations based on intuition (restrictions and the aforementioned magic values come to mind). If you'd like to see it, I'll see if I can get a copy of the original matrix I used posted up here so that you can look at how I approached it. And yeah, your thoughts on generalizing the classes was basically where I was coming from too. I wanted to have something where I could look at a class from a math standpoint and say, yep, its balanced without too much work. Curious, since you're taking the course, what's your target (engineer? math? sciences?)
TúrintheMormegil 12-01-05, 11:18 AM	I found the Class Construction Engine on my computer, which I mentioned in my previous post and which has a similar method of assigning points to various abilities of DnD-classes. A quick Google-search revealed this (rumkin.com/reference/dnd/download/classconstruction.pdf), which is the aforementioned file (though I think it's not the original source). Might be of use... I assumed from your original post that the math involved wasn't particularly difficult (though I wasn't aware of that the first time I read it because the course had just started back then). I'm very curious about the figures you used. If you have it stored somewhere, please send it to the e-mail address mentioned in my account-info. I have access to Matlab and Excel and of course Word and Reader. I'm not familiar with the use of the word "target" in this context but I assume you mean to ask what I'm studying right? Well, it's Econometrics and Operations Research. Now that we're on it, how about you? So are there any other (crunchy) aspects of DnD you would like to generalize (besides race and class creation)? I'm curious about any other ideas you may have in this area. :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 12-02-05, 06:47 AM	Alrighty, not an overly long one today, as I've got some other stuff to get to. The first version of the city demographics program is up on the web for perusal at: City Demographics (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~putn4403/Campaign_World/City_Demographics.html) Not exactly an overly complicated beast, just large in its scope. The window at the top is basically just a container for an array of all the job populations. Need to make a prettier way to display it, but it works for theory right now. To activate the calculator just put a mouse over the calculate words. It was built using the d10000 and incidence rate table from XRP's city guide and has been fairly enlightening to code just in the number of things I see that I'm going to have to make modifiers for and exceptions on. One of the main things is that it includes professions for people in every city that may or may not be viable depending on location. For example, every large city is going to have Navel Outfitters, yet what if you're a landlocked city. Maybe I could do River/Navel or something like that, but there's a couple of other ones as well. In addition, if I make this thing any bigger, I'm also going to want modifiers to the incidence rates of populations based on their locations and natural resources. Due to the way I've coded it, its actually a fairly easy thing to put in, as all I'd need to do is have an "incidence rate modifier" variable that would change based on a series of conditions for each job. IE, lots of natural resources, probably lots of smiths and miners. Big forests nearby, probably lumberjacks and wood carvers. Ect. Ect. Guess the next steps up for the calculator are to start figuring out how many buildings there are in a city, what the population density of the city is, how many wards there are and of what type, the number and type of power centers, and the various guilds in a city. Basically, just a ton more table coding. Woo. Turin, you guessed right as far as what I meant by "target". Neat stuff econometrics. Oddly, me and one of the guys who lives down the hall from me were actually talking about trying to code stock market prediction software last night and what our potential might be the financial consultant market. Mostly prompted by a case study interview he had with McKinley a little while back, but still kind of a weird parallel. Anyhow, as for me, I'm a mechanical engineer with a specialization in acoustics. Workin on my PhD right now, and if fate worked out perfectly for me I'd end up with an academic position at one of the top 5 ME schools in the country. Who knows whether that will happen, but its a nice thought. On the generalization of D&D as a whole, once you've sat down and figured out some kind of base unit of value for the game system, its actually fairly easy to extrapolate that into a variety of other areas. For example, when I was taking the Design Test they offered a little while back, on my first try I used a use per day polymorph item as my example of a created item. To analyze how powerful it was, it was possible to calculate it using the standard tables, or to figure out its value compared to varous racial modifiers as items, or to compare it to template bonuses as items. What I generally think, is that if we were really ambitious, we could take some base unit, and say: All races are composed of X numbers of this base unit in value All classes allow for accruement of Y numbers of this base unit over 20 levels All PrC's gain value measured in this base unit at Z rate. Each skill point would be worth M units Each feat would be worth N units (possibly with higher chain feats worth more) Spellcasting would be worth O units per level of spell ...yata, yata, yata. In effect, you would decompose every ability in the game down into either a base worth in points, or a gain rate in points. Honestly, in a way I'm not sure if I would want to travel that far down that road or not. Not really from a "could it be done?" perspective or "it would be too much work", as I don't really think either of those are insurmountable problems, but rather because it has that feeling that once the veil was pulled back, D&D might not be quite so much fun. As an example of this, I can offer two points of my reasoning. The first was the transition from 2nd. Ed. to 3rd Ed. D&D. Quite honestly, 3.0 just isn't as "magical" to me as 2nd. Ed. was. Partially this may be because I'm older, but secondly its also because the math and balance of 3.0 is so much more obvious. 2nd. Ed. was full of billions of quirks and weird imbalances which almost gave it character. The second point is actually a major tangent and may not be relevant if you're not familiar with the fighting game scene. A few years ago, Capcom released a game to arcades called Marvel vs Capcom 2 (MvC2). At first, everyone thought it was just another rehash of their old Street Fighter formula with superheroes, and if it had actually worked right it would have been. However, the Capcom coders were incredibly lazy in the debugging process, and as people explored more they found that there were literally hundreds of crazy broken things you could do with the game. Infinite combos, permanent flight, attacks using the "Start" button!?, and almost no balance whatsoever between the characters. As people found more and more of these things, interest in the game actually increased, as there was always the potential to find more insane things to do. After a point, tournaments of MvC2 actually became matches of "who is the best master of the bugs of the game". In a sense, I tend to think that the reverse may occur if all the innards of D&D are laid bare and open for all to inspect. As it stands, there is a perception that there are always new things to explore, new ideas that can unfold, but when you've laid it all out in the pristine light of math and made it perfectly balanced, a lot of that will fade. In my mind, examples like the Hulking Hurler, the H.I.V.E., and Pun Pun add flavor to the game rather than detracting from it and in a sense make the whole thing seem full of even more promise. Anyhow, all of that's not to say I wouldn't do it anyways. Heck, I can't even play D&D these days due to location, and there's nothing to say that my random tangent thoughts would really even have bearing. Hrm, failed again. I am apparently incapable of short
TúrintheMormegil 12-05-05, 03:38 PM	Honestly, in a way I'm not sure if I would want to travel that far down that road or not. Not really from a "could it be done?" perspective or "it would be too much work", as I don't really think either of those are insurmountable problems, but rather because it has that feeling that once the veil was pulled back, D&D might not be quite so much fun. While that may be true, personally my own attraction to the D&D-game lies much more with the roleplaying possibilities than with trying to create the ultimate character or breaking it down mathematically. Which is not to say the latter isn't fun, that is after all the reason I post in this thread. So to me, trying to reduce 3.5 to a single unit of measure is an interesting exercise that I don't think would alter my opinion of the game much. Or maybe it will, but then that's just too bad... :D I took a look at that program you created. So are the numbers in the box on the top the numbers you should manually fill in the boxes with the various professions/occupations? Still curious about that matrix you used in the first post about classes... Túrin
Araes 12-06-05, 05:13 PM	Hey Turin, appologies on not getting you the Excel file to peruse yet, been kind of umm, distracted by this other side project of a city generator. Which I've just uploaded a new version of by the way. City Demographics Generator (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~putn4403/Campaign_World/City_Demographics.html) Unfortunately, the problem is that most of the changes are code based. However, at this point, I can take a city and given its (population, racial integration level, # of races, and water access level) and create a full city with #'s of people in each profession, # of wards, areas of the wards, individual structures in each of the wards, and a rudimentary map of the wards. In answer to your question, yes, all of those numbers I'm currently listing are the populations of people employed in each class. Going to have everything be automatically populated into a nice form when I get done with this bugger. Right now everything that's displayed is pretty much there so I can check that its coming out correctly. Next up, I'm working on improving the map generator so that it can create clumping of various types of institutions (administration, gate wards, patrician, ect...) and put them down in a logical manner. Right now its totally random. My friend also had a great idea for doing racial clumping within the city so that you could figure out where the Orc ghetto was and such. Fairly soon I'll have a racial map (maybe one for each race) which will be able to say what the percentage of each race in each part of the city is. Also going to make it pretty so that it doesn't just look like a big string of numbers with crummy labels. Unfortunately, pretty has been the last step over getting it working. After that, moving onto kingdom level stuff. Fairly happy with the progress I've made so far though. Feel like I'm moving kind of slow, as I've only written 400+ lines of code in half a week, but then again, basically learning javascript all over again and having to code without a very good error checker. As far as the decomposition of D&D down to a single unit, you may be right. If it does cause some shift in my perceptions of D&D, then oh well, and as you've said, the roleplaying aspect of the process should be more important than the numbers behind it. Not sure why I tend to associate some of the appeal with how convoluted the number system is. And I'll work on making the matrix file available.
TúrintheMormegil 12-08-05, 04:48 PM	And I'll work on making the matrix file available. :waits: ... :P As far as the decomposition of D&D down to a single unit, you may be right. If it does cause some shift in my perceptions of D&D, then oh well, and as you've said, the roleplaying aspect of the process should be more important than the numbers behind it. Not sure why I tend to associate some of the appeal with how convoluted the number system is. I did not mean to say one can not find his appeal in a convoluted system. I merely mentioned the fact that I wasn't bothered by this simplification, should it occur, because my greatest attraction with the game lies in roleplaying. That is just my personal preference though, and I did not want to imply in any way that a preference in either direction is better than the other. Then again... oh well. Anyhow, as for me, I'm a mechanical engineer with a specialization in acoustics. Workin on my PhD right now, and if fate worked out perfectly for me I'd end up with an academic position at one of the top 5 ME schools in the country. Who knows whether that will happen, but its a nice thought. Seems like you're doing well. Congrats. :tiphat: Túrin
Jeweler 12-09-05, 06:44 PM	This is by far the best CS i have seen, have not read all of it, i don't think i read anything behind the class break down, but ill get to that, just wanted to let you know you are doing an awesome job. Unfortunately most people will prolly (can't spell the actual word for some reason, can't remember) just say it is too complicated, thats what makes it so good, is the fact its complicated. Magic is hard to deal with on a physics level, so many things can break physics in general, put i think that is the point in magic, IMO. But maybe it could work as a particle, not sure about that. A highly morphic particle that is entwined with another dimension, to use the 10+ demensions theory, that then transforms the particle into something else through effecting the something on a subatomic level, basically the strings, if, like me, you think string theory is right. Im not sure whether the strings have anything to do with the actual compisition of an object, but its open to speculation. The Dyson's Sphere is an awesome idea, was not expecting that from the title. I can work with fluff, if you need the help, im in and out right now with school, but i can't help with much of the mathmatical or coding part, but i might be able to find some stuff that would help with the physics part of it all, with enough time. I'm not in college, but i do deal a lot with science, mainly physics, string theory, artificial intelligence, robotics, and a lot of other loosely connected topics, pretty much anything, except meteorlogy, not keen on weather. Edit: Now that ive read all of this, you said in the first post something about gravity on the outermost layer not always working because of Artificial gravity exists within this setting and is used to affix the inhabitants of both the intermediate and outer layers to their landmasses. In the case of the outer layer, this is not completely accurate due to some peculiarities of the universe outside the sphere, but close enough for understanding so what is outside of the Dyson's Sphere, or should we call it an Araes Sphere since it differs from the Dyson's Sphere with the layers and all. I was thinking about it, and if you have ever heard of this saying and the far realm take a guess of whats coming after it, "There is a theory stating that if we ever discover how the universe works it will become even stranger and less understandable, there is another theory statign that this has already happened." So did our "ancestors" figure out the universe that has the reprecussion our universe turned into the Far Realm. Be interesting to say the least if a Far Realm incursion came about :rolleyes:. If you wanted to add in the elemental planes, kinda, have there be four of the attaching pillars, im guessing the layers float around and move if not then this idea is gone, each pillar having a different attunement to a different element, fire -> plasma, water -> liquid, air -> gas, earth -> solid, when closer magic of that type has more of an effect because the power supplies energy of that fundamental type, energy to power those substances that are mechanical or made by mechanical creations. I dont know does that make any sense to you? Do you know what the Far Realm is? Good idea, bad idea, needs to be changed idea?
Araes 12-11-05, 09:44 AM	Alright, bit of a Ta Da! moment, but I have finally managed to get the excel files that I meant to send you Turin. Appologies for the lateness of their arrival, sure it was bated breath the whole time... Anywho, two files for it. The first is my decomposition of the standard classes while the second file is an application of these point scales to the modern classes to see how in line they were with expectations. Class Decomposition (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~putn4403/Campaign_World/ClassDecomposition.xls) Class Decomposition (Modern) (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~putn4403/Campaign_World/ClassDecompositionModern.xls) As a weird extra, mainly for being so bloody slow, I have also included a sheet I did which details the various ways in which all the templates in the books I own can stack and how they change your type after application, so if you're looking to make interesting strings, you can see which ones work and break strings. Not useful too much for class decomposition, but might be helpful to somebody. Template Calcs (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~putn4403/Campaign_World/TemplateCalcs.xls) Jeweler: In regards to your comments about what is outside of the sphere, my general answer would be everything. The premise behind the setting is that it is an extreme case of post-apocalyptic where the advancement of science has brought about the utter and total collapse of the universe to its roughly pre-Big Bang status. So, outside of the sphere would be a swirling mess of all that has existed compressed into incomprehensibly dense matter and liberated energy. The reason I mentioned that this would be different based upon what layer of the sphere you are on is because the effect of having ~infinite mass outside of the final sphere layer is somewhat difficult to figure out, and the machine which transposes energy, as proposed in the OP, might actually be working just to make sure everyone isn't crushed by the collosal forces just beyond their walls. Also, if the distribution of mass outside of the sphere wasn't perfectly even by even a small amount, then it would also have to account for non-linear gravity effects within the shell. Anyhow, I'd be perfectly willing to have you join up for fluff creation if you are interested in doing such a thing. Part of the reason I was actually making this city/kingdom/world generator in the first place is that I couldn't deal with the sheer volume of content which would be necessary within even a small sphere, let along a gargantuan one.
Jeweler 12-11-05, 12:00 PM	Town/City/Kingdom/World generators are nice, but a lot of the times unless you want to create an expansive program that can write up a story, even a small one, about the shop keepers or the high officials, now im not saying im goin to give every peasent a background, but major NPCs definatively and minor ones, a lot of them will get backgrounds, i just need material to work with, a city, the people, some names of important NPCs, and a guideline for what the money system is like so i know who should have what. I guess I'll need a couple of notebooks now, oh well. Just to forewarn you, once i get the material i need to work on for the cities and what not, it might be a while, with school, girlfriend, and my personal writings that i do, before the fluff comes out, but ill work on it everyday, promise.
Araes 12-11-05, 12:53 PM	Jeweler, the fact that you'll work on it is enough. You're offering your time to an enterprise that isn't even your own, no worries about when you might actually produce usable material. Besides, the world is kinda large, so I think there will always be room to put your material in and still make it interact well. Speaking of city/kingdom/world generators, a new version is now up which features significant upgrades in the prettification department and is almost ready for the next big jump, kingdoms. Just need to get the racial distribution by area in the city worked out. City Demographics Generator (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~putn4403/Campaign_World/City_Demographics.html) Note: I have said that everything which isn't occupied by distinct wards is in fact a park. However, in smaller cities this will basically just be spread of the town. Gate wards are also harder to define when you get really small, so are mainly valid for Small Cities and up. Alright, now maybe I can take a break from this and actually get back to working on the campaign setting itself. Still have lots of pieces I haven't even touched upon yet...and Christmas coming.
Araes 12-12-05, 12:45 PM	As I was a dunce and didn't actually answer your request for background information, I will attempt to remedy that now. First off, important NPCs and in fact kingdoms are still very much an up in the air thing. Money system too. Really, you or anyone can propose almost anything to me in those areas, and I will probably be quite open to fitting them in. As of right now, the major points of this campaign setting go something like the following. State of the Nation This world is vast, almost imcomprehensibly so. As such, my theory is that it would be best to start on one area first, build up some general ideas of what is going on there, some major figures, ect.., and then move on. I have no fixed type that has to be present as far as high magic, low magic, high tech, low tech as far as the general populace is concerned. If it yanks your chain, you may propose stone age to Victorian era (steampunk even) people and we will see what can be done to give them a unique place and a society. The world as a whole, however, is quite high tech, and there are a number of things which make it so and which might be integrated into any society so proposed. Artificial, fully self-aware life exists within the sphere and may either be integrated into cultures or have one of their own. There are technologically advanced objects within the sphere, but much of their use is reserved to those who have been specially trained to create them using elaborate (and sometimes useless) rights of creation. A good example of what I'm talking about is the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov, where technology is passed to lower civilizations in the forms of rituals and religious ceremonies. Some societies may have access to devices which are outside the normal use for D&D. These may be disguised as a spell effect if so desired, or we might work in things like guns under a subtle disguise. (Still theory at this point). There are technological enhancements available to people which take the form of quasi-cyber/biological enhancements and will serve as a new kind of "magic item" for characters. There may be guilds of doctors that work on implanting these technologies, lone Frankenstine style experimenters, or other such systems for getting them. Most of the world layers are obscured from one another by a persistent mist which forms a boundary for sight more than a mile beyond the boundaries of the layer continents. One of the main images I have always had for this concept, and one of the first things I introduced new players to the first time I had them play in a proto-version of this world, was stepping out of a facility where they have awoken from hibernation and finding themselves at the base of a long crumbled bridge. It seemed as though they must be quite high, as long streamers of cloud flowed past them and rolled in and out of the remaining pillars of the bridge. Far beyond its last remnants, possibly 100 or more yards, they could also see the tip of an isle poking in and out of view. The general idea was that the facility's island had at one time been connected to the mainland by a long bridge, but over time it had buckled and fallen under the shifting loads of the islands, and the lackluster care of the "gods". The characters had no idea as I hadn't introduced them to the world concept first, so they basically went about discovering what the world was like and where they fit in. This segues well into my next point, which is that characters may begin either as members of current society which have been "awake" for some time, or as late comers to the world; newly awoken from their long hibernation across the fading stars. These would lead to two very different types of adventures and there might also be possibilities for combinations of the types. Light is provided for each of the layers not by "suns" as we would typically think of them, but instead by bright bars of light which travel the paths between layers. One way to think of these is like the heater elements on a stove. Bursting to light when you want to warm something (day) and cooling off for the night. Their actual substance could be something along the lines of plasma or even more exotic, which has been bound to this shape. On the very off chance that some race actually does develop space flight, there is a good chance that if not careful, the Icarus phenomenon will take affect and they will find themselves on a quick plummet back to the world. Space flight and industrialization are two major advances which do not exist. These technologies are carefully kept from any race which might be close to discovering them, and wars, plagues, or even greater calamities are visited upon them by their watchful AI entities to make sure they don't make further progress. This eats up a lot of the different AI's (gods') resources, and the remaining ones are taken by the constant inter-heaven strife due to the presence of the "evil" gods which boarded the sphere just prior to what we might call the end of the universe. Travel between the layers is possible, just quite hard. Travel had originally been intended as a possiblity, and gates were established which could take a person from Layer A to Layer B in an instant. (Think Zeal in Chrono Trigger) Their location was not made public knowledge, however, and the new civilizations which have sprung up after the first awakening should not have access to them. The races of the world are not necessarily human and standard ones. As I mentioned in a prior post, I am looking at an idea of building races with a kind of template structure which would allow for vast varieties of playable races with some core ones which would make up the majority in any given layer. My general thought is to have at least one race for every stat and then have them diversified by an array of movement, spell-like, and use based abilities or bonuses. They won't necessarily be "Thief Class" or "Wizard Class" due to the stat idea, but will probably fill niches at the very least. Something like, the "Mining" race, the "Treehugger" race, ect... I have had some ideas for NPCs of my own, and have actually used some of them in adventures with players in my prior groups. However, they are not set in stone yet, and their story was more of an isolated affair that would take up one layer or less. In general, the idea was that there was a young noble who was a prodigy at something (magic, combat, art, whatever...) He lived in a layer of the sphere where one major power was making a bid for layer domination. During cycles of time in which this power's continent flowed close to other ones, great invasion fleets were launched in a massive rush to swarm over their neighbors. In this manner they had come to control a significant portion of the world. This young noble was the son of one of the remaining lords who had not been conquered. He was a widower who had remarried some time ago to a wife of political convenience. She had brought one son to the marriage. The young noble also had one brother by his original mother, who was a righteous and "good" (possibly paladin-like) man. However, after his father's marriage to their stepmother, and following some bad blood between them, he had disappeared (assumed to have gone to explore the world, but possibly killed). The stepmother was secretly making a bid for her son to control the throne of the kingdom, as lineage was based simply on age and marriage not direct bloodline. She was also planning to prop up his power by allying with the aggressor kingdom and betraying any alliance members they had. This ploy would also involve the slaying of the young nobles father, which would be witnessed by him. The players were introduced to the noble and then swept up in a big political drama to safeguard the freedom of the kingdom and their neighbors. Those are the only PC's I've hammered out as of yet. Anyhow, there's a big summary of everything I can remember as of now that would be applicable to writing. Hopefully its of some help as a guide, and if I remember anything else I'll try to remember to stick it in here.
Jeweler 12-12-05, 10:32 PM	Ummm, one question, what type of creatures do yo uhave on these layers? Standard D&D creatures or do you want me to work on some original ideas for certain types of creatures, animals, oozes, magical beasts, more natural creatures? Im not sure what to use for that, other than that, thanks for the summary needed. Im sure it gave a lot of people the idea behind the sciencey stuff, so it helped you too.
Araes 12-13-05, 08:21 AM	Here are my general thoughts on creatures. I have no problem with including the standard creatures from the various MM's and splatbooks within this world, as the harvesting of a universe for all of its diverse life would result in some very odd things which might have been brought aboard the sphere. As such, I would think that if you want to use a creature from a particular source, just grab it and run with it and if we need to modify it down the line to fit a goal or avoid restrictions, then we can cross that bridge when we come to it. Some layers might end up being more "magic creature" oriented while others might be full of what we call "common" animals. IE, all animals, oozes, beasts, ect. are game on the first pass if you think they'd fit in somewhere. Due to this, I think the first priority should probably be in developing the cultures of the world and the important NPCs, as we can fill in wilderness as we go. In my opinion, the collection of books offered by WotC at the moment should provide us enough variety to account for most situations. That said, if you happen to have some particularly good brainstorms for creatures that you think would fill an interesting niche, then by all means propose them and we'll see what we can do. My recommendation would probably be to propose the concept first, and then get into the details. Does that help or answer your question?
DeeL 12-13-05, 09:00 AM	And what about the elemental planes and associated creatures? It would be a terrible waste to simply say 'the critters are just kind of alien' and there is no place for their dominions. Given their association with magic it might be plausible to interpret them as extrusions of sphere-builder technology obeying the will of the spell caster, but how does that make sense of the genies and other more intelligent and specialized elemental creatures? I apologize if this has been addressed; quite a bit of this thread goes clean over my head.
Araes 12-13-05, 09:25 AM	No worries, and it hasn't been addressed. You've brought up a good point which I've thought about before but forgot to address in my general comments above. This is actually a factor for any of the highly alien races which might be present within the sphere and interact with players or have their own domains. Thinks like Devils, Demons, Angels, Elementals, Genies, ect.. Heck, even Giants pose a problem somewhat, as some of them are quite smart and yet rarely have anything approaching a society. There are several methods I have thought about for trying to handle these problems and I guess I'll just list them out here and their pros and cons. Many of the races we are talking about could still be inhabitants of nearby planes of existence. Effectively, parallel dimensions or something of the like. As such, there could still be planes of fire, unrepentant evil, and glowing good from which all of these could originate. Pro: This is easy in the sense that it allows all of the races to exist easily and provides a simple mechanism that doesn't stray too far from standard D&D Con: This pretty much completely undermines the tragedy upon which the whole CS is build, as those in danger could have simply fled to a parallel world and lived out their days in happiness, rather than building an Ark of sorts to protect them. Some of the most alien, like the beings of living fire, could be from beyond the walls of the sphere; creations of the rampant warp stuff just beyond its walls. Pros: Fairly interesting in the sense that it might allow for explanations of the problems that the sphere has had. Leaks of material from beyond the shell creating rampant elementals or beings of malevolent hate. Cons: In a sense, I would prefer a system which allowed for a full ecosystem as I was talking about earlier. I would like there to at least be the vision of worlds where Efreeti can interact with fire elementals while genesai serve them refreshments. Probably my favorite idea, although one which does take some liberties with pure science, is that all of the various races and monsters are the prior inhabitants of various planets or regions of space which have been transplanted into the sphere with their ecology intact. IE, at some point in space, there was a world full of pit fiends, barbazu, and the like, and they may have even interacted with the other races of the universe, participated in galactic politics, ect... And when the end came, they were gathered up, put into hibernation, and saved just like the rest. Pros: I like this a lot as it is possible to explain where everything came from in a complete manner. Science fiction is full of things like beings of pure energy which have societies and interact with fleshies like us. I guess I don't find it too far fetched that they could have been valued members of a future society and saved along with the rest of the universe when it all went to hell. Elemental, highly aligned, or even far realms stuff could all have been brought in from planets where they were the native life. Cons: There are several suspension of disbelief things that would have to be taken into account when dealing with some of the craziest things. Epic stuff - might just be too much to deal with, unless we can get good ideas of why floating babies of death and the like might have been saved. One possible idea is that the evil "gods" brought along their own collection of races and people when they boarded the sphere, and much of what we think of as the evil races were their contributions. Anyhow, there's a general list of the options I had considered so far. Naturally, as I said I prefer the last one, but there are probably a number of other ways these things might be tackled. I hadn't actually thought of your idea DeeL, and it is a fairly interesting one for handling those beings which are purely energy based. Possibly a combination of that and the last one might work well.
Jeweler 12-13-05, 04:35 PM	Con: This pretty much completely undermines the tragedy upon which the whole CS is build, as those in danger could have simply fled to a parallel world and lived out their days in happiness, rather than building an Ark of sorts to protect them. Yah but think about it, you cna change what happened, if lets say, that not only did the unicerse shrinking happen on our plane of existance, but all! Most were wiped out becuase of a lack of technology, the demons, devils, and negative energy plane inhabitants built a Araes' Sphere of their own and did about the same thing as us, the Baltors and high ranking devils, demons, and negative inhabitants coming in and forming the same thing as us. Same with the Positive races, angels, archeon (i think there different) and all the other celestials. The lemental planes, will always be there, right now they will be in there primal form, pure flame, water, stone, and air. The way i explain the infernal and celestial realms being the same as us is, each is a human's soul, that is living. As an angelic soul turns to evil, the representation of that soul starts to decay and finally dies when the being on the material plane becomes "fully" evil. Same for moving from demonic to angelic. When a mortal dies he takes the place of his representation of his soul, securing the place of the demon or angel. The soul beings decay in power until they either go "negative" or "positive" and become the lowest of the one they are, then they go up or down from there gaining power based apon acts commited by the mortal. Some of the most alien, like the beings of living fire, could be from beyond the walls of the sphere; creations of the rampant warp stuff just beyond its walls. Easy when to change this one, you can still have the elementals, maybe a more primal form of them if you take my before stated idea, and use these in the normal sphere, gensais and efreetis too. (I like the idea of the servent gensai) But you could take an elemental and add the pseudonatural creature template (p. 161 Complete Arcane) or use the elemental grues (p. 153-155 Complete Arcane) Simple enough to fix, unless you really don't like it. One possible idea is that the evil "gods" brought along their own collection of races and people when they boarded the sphere, and much of what we think of as the evil races were their contributions. that would make sense, but its not has creative has the other ideas could be, I like the planes of existance personally. But your campaign, so... there was a world full of pit fiends, barbazu, and the like, and they may have even interacted with the other races of the universe, participated in galactic politics hehe, a awesoem picture of a Baltor or Pit Fiend in a suit. Sorry.
DeeL 12-14-05, 03:46 AM	Okay, I don't know about the other planes, but as for the Far Realm - that would be the outside of the Sphere. I mean, the basic premise of the Far Realm is that it is *alien*. I propose that the Far Realm and its awful inhabitants be what happened when life and sentience was affected by the destruction of the natural universe. Maybe that's what's left when space and time is volatized and remade... Oooooh, something else just occured to me. What if some other project got started before the Universe ended, someone with an idea for surviving armageddon outside the sphere - and it was just a little off? It might have been desperate, and perchance ended up rather flawed as a result. Or maybe there were a number of such attempts, and the Elemental Planes were the most successful versions. And the Far Realm was the one that went terribly, terribly wrong. As for the Outer Planes and their inhabitants, the celestials and fiends, I wasn't sure I wanted to get into that for the simple reason that they are also strongly associated with the gods. Perhaps the Astral Plane might represent the Sphere computer network, with the Outer Planes being servers for virtual interactivity. This might explain the tendency of summoned creatures to disappear when killed or dispelled - their mass is a 'solid energy construct' rather than normal matter, generated to suit their virtual icons.
Jeweler 12-14-05, 07:57 AM	Okay, I don't know about the other planes, but as for the Far Realm - that would be the outside of the Sphere. I mean, the basic premise of the Far Realm is that it is *alien*. I propose that the Far Realm and its awful inhabitants be what happened when life and sentience was affected by the destruction of the natural universe. Maybe that's what's left when space and time is volatized and remade... Oooooh, something else just occured to me. What if some other project got started before the Universe ended, someone with an idea for surviving armageddon outside the sphere - and it was just a little off? It might have been desperate, and perchance ended up rather flawed as a result. Or maybe there were a number of such attempts, and the Elemental Planes were the most successful versions. And the Far Realm was the one that went terribly, terribly wrong. As for the Outer Planes and their inhabitants, the celestials and fiends, I wasn't sure I wanted to get into that for the simple reason that they are also strongly associated with the gods. Perhaps the Astral Plane might represent the Sphere computer network, with the Outer Planes being servers for virtual interactivity. This might explain the tendency of summoned creatures to disappear when killed or dispelled - their mass is a 'solid energy construct' rather than normal matter, generated to suit their virtual icons. On second thought i like this idea better, it explains the main planes but its not like there are infinite planes to go on too or anything. Good job, i didnt think about the other planes being "failed" Spheres.
Araes 12-14-05, 08:36 AM	This might explain the tendency of summoned creatures to disappear when killed or dispelled - their mass is a 'solid energy construct' rather than normal matter, generated to suit their virtual icons. I would like to say that your thought here is actually very in line with what I had already been thinking. When I think summoned creatures I almost immediately have TNG: Holodeck types of images in my head, creatures which are either just patterned after something the caster has seen before or off of fanciful images in their mind. Solid energy constructs as you have stated, which would just fizzle out of existence once the casting was done. That's also kind of a funky idea that the planes of existence could be the various networks of the sphere controlled by each faction, and whenever you summon an angel or devil you're basically giving physical form to a virtual construct. That has all kinds of sci-fi flavor without overt sci-fi intrusion that I like. Now, on the elemental planes, both of you guys seem to think that having the elemental planes as physical things might be a good idea, and maybe that sentiment is a good reflection of the general populace at large. I actually think that a combination of your guys' ideas might work well. As DeeL proposed, the elemental planes could have been several races concepts for how to ride out the catastrophe but with slight hitches in execution, and as Jeweler mentioned, those problems could have been that they caused an almost primal type of energy state reversion. Originally designed to preserve the life forces of creatures as pure energy beings, which wouldn't be affected by the compaction of all mass in the universe, some subtle factor they hadn't accounted for twisted them to savage beings of living fire/water/ect.. with little more than animal intellect. There would be a "place" where beings from the sphere might be able to transition to and interact with these beings temporarily in their energy existence, but not like the standard cosmology with cities of brass or great caverns of earth. Those beings like genies, genesais and efreetis could have been the forerunners of this species, who didn't believe it would work and went with the sphere group instead. I also like the idea of applying templates like the pseudonatural one to beings from beyond the wall. I'm not sure if they could be yet another project which failed in a horrible way, or if they might just be the natural denizens of a universe remade, but either way I think you guys are right that "Far Realms" creatures should definitely be from outside. So, as a summary how does this sound? Upper and lower planes are representations for the common masses of the electronic planes on which the AI creators now exist. Summoned/Gated angels and devils are effectively virtual constructs which have been given a physical "solid energy" form within the sphere for a short time, a la Holodeck or some other technology. Elemental planes are places of primary energy outside of the sphere. Originally conceived of as havens for beings which wanted to exist in a pure energy state to escape the collapse, they have instead warped them into bestial energy beings of barely more than animal intellect. Some of the most intelligent and "normal" elemental types could actually have been members of the beings that changed into elementals who decided they'd rather risk time on the sphere then transition to a pure energy state. Far Realms type creatures are beings from beyond the sphere. Unknown at this point whether they are the remains of a horribly failed experiment like the sphere to try and survive the collapse or just the creations of a universe remade once again. Possibly never be fully found out as they are the great unknown from beyond. *edit* Heh, passed each other in the night as it were. Ok, since we all seem to like some of DeeL's ideas, it seems like this is a fairly good concept to pursue.
DeeL 12-14-05, 08:56 AM	Hey! I had a thought! ::does the wingnut::
supadupaman 12-19-05, 07:24 PM	Alright, so, wow! This is one of the most impressive undertakings that I’ve seen for some time. The indistinguishable form magic idea has always been one of my favourites. I’ve read through most of the thread and I won’t even pretend that I fully understand all of the math and science (I’m pretty good but not that good), but all that I’ve seen so far has seemed wicked. I’d love to be a part of this. Can’t help with the higher math but fluff I can do. I’ve actually got some ideas while reading through. I’ll see if I can remember the rest of them. The ideas for the fiend and celestials is a good one (I was thinking something similar just before I read the last few posts). The elemental ideas seem cool,but what about this as an add-on. When the more intelligent ones tried to save themselves by turning into pure energy instead of going into a single type, they each split into four equal entities each made of one of the four energies. These “energy twins” each has similar mindsets and power levels but are quite different in nature and ability. To continue in their energy state they all live apart form each other but have some small mental connection to each other (maybe they can detect very extreme emotion or when the others are near?). If two or more ever meet they could maybe merge together (or one could kill the other and absorb its energy) into a hybrid being (like the para-elementals from MotP perhaps. No idea what the 3 element form would be like). This form would be more powerful (twice the raw energy) but would be that much closer to becoming solid again – and would therefore have to live inside the sphere once they merged since they would no longer consist of pure energy. The same thing could happen if a hybrid meets one of its single twins (or if 3 meet) and become even more powerful and be nearly solid. Once all four meet again they would become fully solid once more and lose most of their elemental traits, but maybe keep some abilities. They now must live in the sphere with others but they have become more powerful than the standard for their race (partially infused with the raw energy still?). This could also create plots where a genasi or low level elemental might try to seek out it’s energy twins to become more powerful (or maybe try to avoid a twin who’s trying to do this to them). On looking back, I prefer the idea of absorbing their energy through victory to simply merging with proximity. One of the main reasons for this is that it can help to decide which consciousness retains control – trying to work out gestalt entities can be really tricky. There will be more on these ideas once I think the through some more. Lemme know what you think though. Another idea that seemed pretty simple to me, is to use the assorted Energons as messenger/servants of the “gods”. Or maybe just of that computer god (can’t remember it’s name at the moment. Don’t have much more on this idea since it just came to me, but I’ll try and flesh it out a bit more if you guys think it could work.
jack77 12-19-05, 10:46 PM	This is a very interesting project and it seems to have a lot of potential to expand in more than one direction. In my milieu Elturgy (a type of arcane magic is used very much like technology, and that is the way those who employ Elturgy make use of it) is used to create manufacturing processes. These processes are used to create artifacts and devices as well as (covertly, and sometimes by evil forces) to conduct genetic experiments to create entirely new species, or sometimes to create hybrid creatures called Chimeras. (Which is merely the genetic term for such artificially created cross species hybrid creations.) Many of the things you mentioned reminded me of our games, especially the talk of cyborgs, cybernetics, nanotechnology, robotics and bioware. In my milieu such cyborgs exist (though they are not called that) and are created by the use of elturgy. Some of these cyborgs possess what might be thought of as hybrid capabilities, somewhere between technology and arcane magic. So my players and I are quite used to these ideas though not in the same form you are presently presenting. One method we use successfully in maintaining balance is that such magical/pseudo or pre-ethnological devices and powers always carry with them some danger, defect or liability. Which can often be exploited to counter attempts to misuse the powers/technologies operationally or to prevent such things from exceeding the bounds of the background environment and overall milieu. The creatures, species and chimeras created also carry their own problems, defects, mutations and liabilities, often becoming transformed into monsters (almost all monsters in our games are unique creatures rather than monster races). My personal interest has never really been cyborgic replacement of human capabilities but rather aiesthpleis suits of bioware capabilities to enhance already existing human capabilities. In a related vein I've always been very interested in biological experimentation which explored animal sensory capabilities as a possible enhancement of or replacement for human sensory capabilities and what psychological and physiological effects that might have on a human so modified. These enhancements could be achieved through selective (and voluntary genetic replacement) of certain alleles so that a human might develop the olfactory senses of a dog or the eyesight of a goldfish (which possesses the visual ability to see visible light as well as in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums simultaneously). In any case I've found your thread quite interesting in several respects as regards the possible theoretical game implications in the realm of physics, biology, genetics, cybernetics and such related fields. It has also reminded me in several ways of projects I have worked on involving what I term God Technology. So I'm following your speculations with some curiosity.
Jeweler 12-20-05, 09:26 PM	Nature never creates just one, but man does! With that said i guess it can be discussed that if God is real (i don't believe in him personally) then there might be more than one, if God was created by nature. But in the bible it seems God creates nature, not the other way around. Anyways off subject here, sorry for religious stuff. Ok so i got around to creating an idea for my part of the fluff, but i need a better name for the kingdom, Victoria is not good, but its what i have for now. The basis of the kingdom is, steam engines and magic. They have discovered steam technology on a "medium" sized island, small train tracks run across the island, and they use magic to minituarize the steam rooms so that they can fit more power into the same size place. This has allowed them to create a form of guns unseen by history, steam propelled. Super heated steam with magical flame make up the steam engines, and some minitaurization. They have n interesting form of money, not sure whether it would stay but i thought it was kinda funny, they use gun powder! Not sure what the money equivalents are so i figured to things, gold and dollars, an ounce of gun powder is worth 2 gold or 7 dollars. It is illegal to burn gun powder, severe punishment. Stealing is not as bad, indentured servant paying back as much as you would normally get from the job your doing, so 3 ounces a weeks, then thats how fast you pay off your debt. I got bored, and you said maybe even steampunk, so i was like "wooo steam punk", i love steam punk. Im not going to get more done on it ive started thinking of another place with a specific anti-group, somethin like the monicins (monicons/moncicans not sure how to spell it) from Aeon Flux, that movie was great, want the series. I also started working on new elementals, just because im bored and i want more distinct elementals than just "fire, water, air, and earth" thats boring, so i decided that each elemental would be based off of a soemthing in nature, normally storms and stuff, majority of them are air elemental based, meteorology and its boring so i made it kinda fun, :D. Ill do other ones based off of types of waves, tsunamis and what not, not sure what ill do for fire and earth, maybe earthquakes for earth, but fire is harder, magma/lava is really the only thing hot that occurs naturally in nature. Edit: :D Yeah 2 pages :D
supadupaman 12-21-05, 01:21 AM	So just a quick post here. I've been working on some fluff (lower tech stuff for now) and realised that i don't actually know the appropriate tech levels for the layers of the sphere. Are these listed somwhere and i just can't find them or have they not been done yet. If the former where should i look. If the later, could you outline some rough mins, maxes and increments. I'm currently fleshing out some ideas and will post them soon hopefully once i know if they fit the tech levels. Keep it up Araes
Araes 12-27-05, 05:00 AM	Yikes, sorry about the disappearing act folks. Had a bunch of traveling due to returning to the US for Christmas and I am now tackling a rather pathetic internet connection, but still pleased/slightly amazed at all of the attention that's sprung up lately. Figures it would be when I'm away. Anyhow, now onto recent developments. First off, supadupaman. In response to your second question, the simplest answer is that I don't have a fixed selection of technology levels for the various layers yet, as my personal belief is that it is better to let such a thing be maleable and then fit it to whatever interesting things you folks propose or I contrive myself. As such, like I've suggested to jeweler, propose what you would like for a particular tech level of fluff and we'll see what we can do to work it in and give it a place. On your earlier suggestion, I'm just a little confused, which might have to do with it being 1:00 and me being awake only due to coffee, but I'll try to summarize what I think you're saying and you correct me. When you mentioning the spliting of the energy beings, you are suggesting that they are free to travel as they want both in and out of the sphere as long as they retain their energy state? Then, if they merge through some process (voluntary/involuntary) with others of their kind they progress through a gradual shift from energy back to matter and this merging can only happen with different forms due to the original nature of the transformation? I have a few questions that arise from these concepts. One is whether each being that split can only merge with the other four entities of itself in your vision? IE, if Araes splits into Fire Araes, Water Araes, Earth Araes, and Air Araes, can I only become solid by joining with my other versions, or can I join Air Araes, with Water supadupaman, ect... and create a mixed breed whole? Also, I have a question about the why of the transition. Do the energy beings want to stay seperate in your concept, or do they want to regain their lost "humanity"? (They view the transition to energy as a mistake...possibly there is a cultural split among them) One reasoning I could think of for this is that the energy states are much less capable of influencing the material world than their unified whole. In essence, it wouldn't be that they were trying to gain power in a supervillain sense, but more just regain what they feel they have lost. I'm not sold on the concept yet, but it does seem like it has some potential that could be explored, particularly from the tragic angle that was mentioned earlier with the energy states being an attempt to survive gone awry or a stopgap measure at best that they want to correct now that they've seen the sphere works. jack77, thank you much for the compliment of the work, and for the commentary on the possible ramifications, backgrounds, and expansions of genetic modification within the sphere. Due to my own background with games like Shadowrun, and my own personal engineering education, I actually am a pretty big fan of the cybernetic replacement and enhancements route for technology. However, that said, I think that the bioware concepts of animal senses applied to human beings does have a lot of potential. I particularly like your seed of a concept about the psychological and physiological effects of genetic modification which could be explored to great depth within the game should we so wish. One idea which has interest to me is proposing limitations to the powers provided by genetic and cybernetic modification simply through this mechanism. In addition to the standard types of social penalties that might arise from modification, the counterweight to modification could arise from undesirable physical and psychological changes. Mechanically, such changes might still be represented with a point-buy type of mechanic, but within the fluff there would be a worked out background of cultural fables expousing the madness and deformity that follows bodily modification. Anwho, thank you for the comments, and if you happen to have any God Technology concepts which you might think could be applied to such a salvation project, I'd be interested in hearing them. Jeweler, wow, there are a lot of concepts you packed into a couple of paragraphs there. On the first one, not sure where the religious commentary came from, but that's fine. However, steampunk also gets a big "wooo" from me too, why I mentioned it as a neat upper end on the tech spectrum. You wouldn't happen to have ever read the original graphic novels of "League of Extrordinary Gentlemen" created by Alan Moore a while back would you? Not overly important, but I have loved steampunk ever since I read those and the way that a large swatch of Victorian era culture was incorporated in a fell swoop into a cohesive whole. Some great stuff that plays off that era as well such as the Jules Verne works, Xanadu, Shangri-La, ect... which it might be possible to incorporate. On the use of gunpowder, I think that it might be possible to do such a thing, but I have a couple of questions about its use and origins. The first is that you're not implying it is used directly as currency, right, but rather the measure of economic rarity like gold? The converse of that would be pretty dangerous as the wealthiest citizens might be carrying around enough explosive to render them into a fine paste. Funny, but not overly practical. On its origins, one sense is that it is simply the most valuable thing that they can conceive of and horribly rare, which would imply that the things which are constituents of gunpowder or the secret of its creation are highly sought after. For it to have arisen as a form of currency, this would also seem to imply that it has been known of and rare for a very long time giving it a chance to get adopted. I have no problem with this generally, as there are a number of factors which might have caused this to occur, but one implication might also be that technology itself is also at nearly a standstill. As I have proposed that industrialization must be a concept which is heavily opposed, this is also not unthinkable, but would paint a very different picture of steampunk than is traditionally done. Generally it is one of wonder in science and progress and this might actually be something like an oppulent empire of steampunk tech which has maintained some kind of strangle grip on gunpowder and other forms of technological power for a very long time. Finally, on the concepts of elementals you have mentioned, I agree that the normal ones have gotten a little tired in their use, but as I think I've mentioned, one of the main constituents of good campaign worlds is that they can use existing material and just introduce more or interesting ways of applying them. However, as an interesting way of twisting the common perceptions of elementals I think your concept has a lot of progress. Not quite sure how it would fit into the general cosmology/power structure yet, but elementals could all be derived from or manifest through the common forces of nature we associate them with and then derive changes or benefits based upon those associations. I also wonder if there might be a way to incorporate supadupaman's earlier ideas of the split elementals into such a concept in some form or another. Perhaps with the casting away of their physical forms, the only ways that elementals can affect the material world is to take possession of sphere matter with similar characteristics. A boulder might just be a boulder until an Earth elemental moves into it, at which point it would serve as a conduit for his material wishes until either his "power" faded or he was expelled from it. Alright, now onto some stuff I've been working on during my time offline which relates to the background fluff of the gods and how people awoke and populated the sphere. The How and Why of Population Revival Within the Sphere A populace that doesn’t know all that much about the world around them is easier to guide towards a specific path. In the case of the “good” gods of the sphere, their ultimate goal is only the preservation of life from the galaxy they left behind until either they run out of the means to do so, or they find a way to transition them to another type of existence. This transition to a different existence could involve the shifting to some other form of life in a non-traditional sense or simply the reestablishment of a new universe in which they might live; quite possibly a parallel one which is already inhabited by other types of creatures. Either way, all of these goals are very long term. In truth, the gods would have preferred to keep the majority of the inhabitants in stasis indefinitely and only remove those who possessed useful skills or education necessary for their plans. Unfortunately, however, with the boarding of the sphere by the unwelcomed remnants, a number of catastrophes forced their hand and required the revival of significant portions of the hibernating populace. The most direct need for an awakening was the gods’ own transition to an electronic form of life. After this occurred, there was a significant portion of time where they possessed no way to directly influence the material of the sphere or experiment in a physical sense. Simulations, theoretical constructs, and other such analytical tools were all used in the interim, but eventually it was decided that without their direct presence, it would be necessary to maintain a sizable body of awoken technicians to service the sphere and perform direct experimentation. In addition, with the revolution of several groups of builders and preparatory technicians inside the sphere, who reviled the gods for their abandonment of physical existence, it was felt that a loyal defense force was also necessary to protect their electronic forms from tampering or destruction. Most of the people who were revived in such an organized manner were transported to special communities within the rim of the sphere and worked in relative isolation from the other hibernators for the betterment of the sphere. The second major event which forced their hand was one of the first actions of the boarding party upon its landing within the sphere. Realizing their weak position and imminent risk of discovery, the remnants quickly sought to build a power base of loyal followers as well as sow chaos to occupy their foes. To accomplish this task, they set about sabotaging the hibernation systems for much of the sphere. A persistent, highly adaptable, and relatively stealthy virus was introduced which would replicate throughout the command systems and over time create malfunctions in greater and greater numbers of the hibernation pods. These malfunctions were not meant to be deadly, only force the release of the inhabitants into the general populace, as the saboteurs realized that the strain of controlling the ever increasing hordes would be a greater task then simple disposal of mounting corpses. There was no particular rhyme or reason to the pattern of population release due to the virus, and in many cases it was quite common for one or two people to find themselves the only inhabitants of a deserted stretch of land for periods of years or even eons at a time. Note the timeframe involved, this was not a process to be measured in personal lifetimes or even those of countries or kingdoms. The first inhabitants emerged isolated and alone into a desolate world of twilight and existed in such a state for years at a time. During the periods of the first releases, the daylight cycle elements of the sphere were not even fully active, as most of the plants and non-sentient life were also being kept in stasis for future revival. Naturally, as awareness of the growing and intractable problem spread, measures were enacted to provide for a semblance of normality. Even so, by this time thousands, if not millions, of beings had awoken and tried to eke out an existence in a world of endless gray and little that could be called life. By the time that a period has arrived in which campaigns might be played, thousands of years have passed and throughout the sphere kingdoms have risen and fallen, the gods now wage a continuous battle for control of the sphere, experimentation and thoughts of a future life have mostly been forgotten, and remembrances of the past life lost have most definitely been. It is reasonable to assume that the virus has mostly been counteracted by this point, as the AI's are vast entities with large amounts of computational and programming resources at their disposal. However, there is a possiblity that it hasn't, which would imply that for some reason such a virus has never been employed again as a weapon against the good gods which would be a natural extension. One reason might be that the evil gods actually viewed its use or creation as a mistake after the fact, as it may have rampaged out of control or grown beyond their ability to control. Another reason might be that their own transition to computerized form has shown them how risky such a use might be. They might fear that such a weapon would have the potential to backfire and erradicate them as well, or that the other side would use such means if provoked, and in something akin to a germ warfare treaty, have agreed that the use of such weapons is taboo. At this point in the writing, the exact state is unknown, but it is set that revivals of the hibernating populace have slowed considerably due to both a reduction in the sleeping population and some other external factors. As it has been mentioned to me that the gods relations are not defined enough as of yet, I think that for my next project I will try to explain how the various cosmological arrangements came into being after the AI transition and where they all sit with their views towards the people and one another. Naturally, this is in addition to the many other threads that are manuevering around right now, but I'll see what I can do about productivity, as I've got a while until the break of Christmas lets up. *edit* Wow, for a second there I thought this whole post had been lost, as my IE crashed right as I made it. Damn near cried.
supadupaman 12-28-05, 01:49 AM	Your summary was pretty close to my original idea. However, there are obviously some things to be worked out. As to the voluntary/involuntary merging issue, the thought was that if both consent to it, they could merge, but if only one wishes it, then he must kill the other or somehow dominate it’s will. My thoughts about the motivations for rejoining, I was thinking that the energy form was originally an alternate survival route for those who didn’t trust the sphere for one reason or another. After some time, a cultural rift formed, with some of them revelling in this new sense of freedom and some being perturbed by their limited ability to interact with the solid world and their separation form what they consider to be a piece of their humanity. About two beings merging… On further thought, it wouldn’t make any sense for the fully reconstituted being to have more power since he has now returned to his pre-split state. As to whether the beings could merge with others; I hadn’t even thought about that. I was assuming not but can’t think of any reason why not. After rethinking this idea, I think it wouldn’t work without some significant re-working. I’m gonna re-think it a bit more but probably will just scrap it. Although, I think the idea of elementals being humans that were transferred into pure energy to survive is a great one and should be kept. I currently like the idea that there is only a single type of energy being and they can only observe in their current natural state and must temporarily possess parts of the world around them to interact. This not only removes having to explain why some turned into water, some into air, etc (they are all pure energy), but would also return it to closer to the idea of elementals being an actual piece of the natural world. This would also have the added affect of having elementals only appear where there’s a good amount of their element and making fire elementals and appropriately rare type, as fire doesn’t often occur naturally. Also, I have some ideas for one culture and part of a related one mostly worked out and will post them once they’re more complete. Cheers on the population revival ideas. Looking good. What about if the reason the revival virus was never used as a weapon since it in fact grew and mutated until it eventually adapted itself into the form that is now known as Erus. A dark god of decay and chaos, which was built to be a tool of the dark gods that then grew beyond their control. It perhaps could have been both gained a form of consciousness and then had that same mind driven mad because each time it released a hibernating being, it touched briefly upon their mind. The virus must have, in a short time, been exposed to the inner workings of enough different minds to populate an entire world. Since it is now the controlling force behind the weapon that is itself, there should be some reason why it hasn’t “used” itself. Perhaps it is still getting used to it’s new powers and state of being, but since it’s had thousands of years, this seems kinda odd. Perhaps it’s just not capable of working out a coherent plan ahead of time.
jack77 12-31-05, 11:50 PM	One idea which has interest to me is proposing limitations to the powers provided by genetic and cybernetic modification simply through this mechanism. In addition to the standard types of social penalties that might arise from modification, the counterweight to modification could arise from undesirable physical and psychological changes. Mechanically, such changes might still be represented with a point-buy type of mechanic, but within the fluff there would be a worked out background of cultural fables expousing the madness and deformity that follows bodily modification. Anwho, thank you for the comments, and if you happen to have any God Technology concepts which you might think could be applied to such a salvation project, I'd be interested in hearing them. You might think about looking at the US Military's Land Warrior/Warfare project for advanced soldiering. The US military has a current R&D project which explores the construction of cyborgin attachments which run along the outer limbs of a soldier, like a cybernetic skeleton which is designed to augment human strength and load bearing capabilities. Most of this preliminary research material is available on the internet as open source, meaning anyone in the public can look at the basics of the studies. They have also done non classified reports on the psychological effects of man-cyborgin suit interactions but I don't know if these studies are available on the internet for review. Being non classified they may not have been released to the general public yet, pending classification status. My interest and expertise in such suit development is not for the enhancement of muscularity and strength and mechanical power but the production of suits which artificially enhance human sensory and perceptual abilities, speed, reflexes and communication capabilities. You might think about cyborgin type exoskeleton suits which either enhance physical capabilities, or sensory capabilities, or both. You might also think about such suit development regarding the enhancement of camouflage, disguise and stealth capabilities. Also you might think of genetically enhanced individuals who are able to come by or build suits which even further enhance their already augmented capabilities. As for God Technology, it is defined simply as any technology which is able to mimic, imitate or replicate any capability normally attributed to God. For instance, as a simply example, take an attribute normally attributed to God like omniscience. Well, a very basic and primitive imitation of this ability would be television. Because tele-vision (from tele, at a distance, and vision, to see) allows an individual to see and experience and hear things at a distance impossible to the normal sensory capabilities or perceptions of a man. Therefore it is primitive or proto-developmental technology which allows man to achieve a limited degree of omniscience, or perception at a distance. Now imagine a deletion or some such similar device that would allow one to observe at any distance and at any location. It would still not be true omniscience because men are incapable of absorbing information from all sources and from everywhere at once, but it would be a super tele-vision which would also be a more sophisticated form of God technology than now currently exists. In your campaign just simply imagine some Godly attribute and then try to imagine a technology which would, at least in some limited way, mimic that attribute. Hence, God Technology. (I'm certainly not reducing God to a technology, but I think you probably already understand my point.)
supadupaman 01-01-06, 01:25 AM	So here’s an idea I would like to put forth to do with the mental states of the revived people, specifically dealing with the varied tech level around the sphere. Assuming that they are not revived with their full previous knowledges of high-level technology, I am not sure whether or not the plan was to have the revived creatures to have been partially/fully mind wiped, or whether the low tech areas are due to being without access to the high tech stuff and them turning into “magic” or myths of the past. If they were mind-wiped, the aptitudes that I will speak of could be due to subconscious memories of their previous skills leading to a gift or natural aptitude for technology above their surrounding societies. If the knowledge was lost over time, then there could be some who follow the rituals and maybe some people who have a gift for higher tech level creation (perhaps due to some citizens being genetically modified to have some skills implanted as instincts, which then could be passed on hereditarily in some form. In either case, this could give us the chance to have people with a instinctual/subconscious “mad scientist” ability. For example, a man in a standard dnd tech world, using a higher knowledge of genetic engineering and harnessing lighting to create a “Frankenstein’s monster” (i.e. flesh golem). In order to put this into game terms, I was thinking that you could have one of those “must be taken at first level” feats to grant some small measure of this ability. Perhaps, choosing a particular craft, profession or knowledge as an area of expertise and have this always count as a class skill for them, with the ability to, a few times per day maybe, make a check to gain or use knowledge at a higher tech level (or maybe it should be a modern classification of study, with a few skills falling under it’s heading, rather than a single skill). For example, a member of a medieval kingdom could gain knowledge of how to make a rudimentary steam engine. Perhaps, since these come as flashes of inspiration, things created through this could only be built in their original intended purpose but, once built, the inventor could not recreate it in some other setting or build a perfect copy since he doesn’t fully understand how it works. Following upon the previous example, the inventor could build a steam engine to run the item he was working on, but could not then revolutionize his entire land by building steam-everythings since he doesn’t actually know how he built it once the inspiration has past. This allows a game to have a few fantastic inventions in a lover tech area, while not upsetting the balance of that area’s current tech level. For those character that would want to pursue these abilities as their whole character, there could then be a prestige class that uses the mad scientist feat as a prerequisite among other things. I don’t quite know what should be in this class yet (partially since I don’t want to start designing anything if the rules aren’t worked out as of yet) but I think you should choose some disciplines in a way similar to a ranger’s favoured enemies. Your prime area of expertise would be what you have picked for the prerequisite feat. Afterwards, you develop this path of study (maybe gaining skill bonuses and more uses per day of the inspiration ability.), while every now and then being allowed to chose another discipline as secondary field and have the bonuses for that one be less (like a ranger’s enemies).
Araes 01-11-06, 10:46 AM	Born Again Writer Well, that was a nice break for Christmas time, but now I'm back to my standard place in the magical land of France and ready to get going on this again. In response to your comment jack77, I actually do know what you meant by God Technology, however, I was more interested in particular aspects of it which you thought might be interesting to see in a campaign world which incorporated it. Honestly, magic is almost synonymous as depending on which type of God or gods you are talking about the powers ascribed to the divine can include almost anything which we as a people currently can't achieve. Now, in regard to your suggestion supadupaman, my thought for why tech was gone or had diminished in the first place was that when the people were released into the sphere they were not provided with many of the things which were necessary to maintain a high-tech society. They effectively had to make a world fit for survival from the ground up and in doing so allowed a number of their prior advances to recede into memory and eventually be forgotten. I'm actualy somewhat intrigued by your suggestion for the "mad scientist" ability, as it seems like it would be a good way to incorporate the use of higher level tech for characters without flooding the whole world with the stuff. There's a part of me that wonders why these people might have gained access to such knowledge in a heriditary form in the first place, but I think there are a number of ways to get around that. One of the easiest might be that in future societies a number of the basic knowledge blocks which we need to survive and function would be implanted within us from birth and they would allow even the smallest children to have almost an immediate grasp of such concepts as language, basic math, and deductive reasoning. These days, we're already beginning into run into the wall of education time vs productivity in society, where children have to attend school for so long to be competetive that nearly a third of their life is gone before they even get into the workplace. In a future society, to ensure that this passage of information successfully took place, it may have been necessary to attend a "birth clinic" where they would either strengthen patterns that were already there or implant new ones. However, in the regressed society of the sphere, the inhabitants would have to rely on the natural process of genetic transfer and this would naturally result in some patterns naturally being lost, particularly if they served no immediate survival need. Every once in a while though, some great-great-grandchild might find that they have an isolated bit of knowledge on steel manufacture, teleporter fabrication, cybernetics, or heart surgery. In regards to a prestige class, I'm not totally sure how it would work, but there might be something like a list of possible "insights" that a person could have access to, kind of like the dragon marks from Eberron, and if they chose to take such a feat then they would gain access to one of these skills. If they then went on to do a prestige class, then it might basically involve going through genetic restructuring or some other similar process (maybe with a religious guild of healing or knowledge [Torneh/Sophis]) which would further rebuild their genetic memory and allow access to both more insights and ones of greater complexity or interlinkage. My main issue with the feat and prestige class though is simply one of limitation. In the case that someone, for example, knew how to make a working steam engine, how do we then stop steam engines from slowly spreading throughout the world, particularly in the case of someone with an advanced prestige class understanding. My worry would be that someone who is smart would be able to slowly reverse engineer the fundamental principles of steam technology from a prototype and then mass produce a working version with understanding. However, one thing that could work to counteract this could be the oversight of the gods and their religions. In a sense, whenever they caught wind that someone had been born with these abilities, they might either ask them to join them, or, if they refused, work towards building a hysteria and mistrust of their inventions among the public. This might actually provide several interesting plot hooks for such a character, as at low levels, they probably would fly fairly low on the radar of such groups, but once they gained enough levels to have either gained numerous daily uses or a prestige class like Inventor, then they would start to receive invitations/threats from the various overwatch socieities. World Map Creator As a side note, during the holidays also worked somewhat on the next evolution of the city demographics creator. This time I made a randomized World Map Creator (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~putn4403/Campaign_World/MapCreator.html) which can generate a totally random world with elevation maps and the like. Not totally done with it yet, but there's a working copy at the link that can be tried out. Note: It does require some processing power to run quickly, but will finish even on slow computers.
Jeweler 01-11-06, 01:39 PM	Not that this matters much but i started reading The Da Vinci Code, awesome conspiracy, can't wait til the movie. Anyways How many people can live on a 100-150 mile island, would you say, id say cities well spread about 500-750 million prolly more. If you figure something like edetic memory, or photographic memory is the more common name, comes about in less than 1% of the population of this World, about 6 billion people i think, that averages out to 6000 people having edetic memory, if the percent is .000001%, at 625 million people, half way point of those two munbers, .000001% would be about 625 people who would have edtetic memory, or maybe thats what "Mad Scientist Gene" is. 625 people is by no strange of the imagination a lot of people spread out on a 100 and some mile long island, where many religious oraganizations are looking to kill "heretics" like you and the "Gods" are real and can, from what i have read and what i understand, see just about any action you do. There are many ways you can deal with the Mad Scientist Gene , MSG, start calling the "magic" the priests use divine and call the technology the MSG people make arcane magic, making arcane magic have needed focus instead of just pretty prayers and belief in the gods. Which means if you didnt have a prestige class for the priests, you'll prolly need one with this idea, you now have 2 more, Mad Scientist(Technomancer whatever you want to call them) and Mage Hunters (Science Killers, Crusaders, Dvine Enforcers couple of names). This idea takes on a nice comparasion to medevil times with the Crusades and what not, in fact almost the same reason and names, if we were to use the mage and crusader idea ;). And know that i know your in France, have you been to the Louvre, i think i spelled it right, your lucky if you've read the The Da Vinci Code, all the artwork is over in France. Oh well. I suspect the Mad scientist/Mage could work as a warlock like build ability/spell wise, Complete Arcane, its like the first class in the first chapter. They can activate there abilities any number of times but get very few of them, have them need material focuses they need to "cast" spells and i would say plot items to be able to make there new inventions and cast new spells.
DeeL 01-11-06, 03:03 PM	I've said it before, I'll undoubtedly say it again - Magic of Incarnum has a *definite* place in this campaign. All this talk about God Technology and Mad Scientiests is edging toward a system similar to that anyway, but will anyone listen to me? NooOOOoo...
Jeweler 01-12-06, 07:42 AM	Sorry about not listening to you, that would make a good. Two types of mad scientists, the inventor and the Frankenstein type, inventor could be based loosely off of the warlock, infinite "spell" casting but very little amount of spells, free one every two or three levels and then the inventor must make more inventions, by finding materials, making a craft check, and hoping it works. The Frankenstein type mad scientist could be something like the totemist/incarnate/(the other one i can't remember) and meld stuff into his body, except the "soulmelds" are permanent, or atleast extreme long duration (days, even weeks). The melds would take time, materials, and prolly a fort save DC 20-(Frankenstein levels)+time modifier(quicker you go the more you mess up). The soulmelds could be done on other people, same thing as doing it to himself.
supadupaman 01-16-06, 10:06 PM	So, here are some ideas for a pair of societies that are linked to a certain degree even though they are on different levels. The second one is at a roughly dnd level of technology (although, since the levels in different dnd games vary, this is not that exact a descriptor), however there are enough individuals affected by the mad scientist gene - from my last post – that they have made a few great leaps towards the early stages of industrialization. The first society is a much lower tech area that lies directly below (i.e. on a corresponding spot on an outer sphere) the second society. :lightbulb The Swamp Men (will make better name later) This land, quite obviously, is dominated by a great semi-solid swamp. It exists within a large valley in between two range of mid-sized mountains. This land used to be mostly decently fertile valley of woods and farmland cultivated by a thriving early medieval kingdom. A king ruled it but the true powers behind the throne came in the form of a group of rune-wizard advisors and an order of warrior mystics. This all came to an end, albeit a slow malingering one, when it was used as a dumping ground by some of the tech gods for refuse. I would figure it would have to be the “evil” gods since they might not have the ability to simply jettison it from the sphere or they had to get rid of it in secret (the reasons and what exactly it all was are still just half formed in my mind). Then, much later, this trend was continued by the society on the level above. In order to get rid of debris, criminals and the failed experiments of that society’s mad scientist elite, they made a giant area into a permanent feather-fall elevator. Though the bog men are relatively unaware of this other society’s existence, they – along with whichever gods originally dumped the first waste there – have had many great impacts upon the bog men’s society. When the first waste was dumped there it destroyed the crops and killed whole swathes of forest. It also through clouds of chemical dust up into the air which brought downpours of acid rain almost as frequently as fresh water. Eventually, most of the society died off until only the strongest members survived. They now eke out a simpler existence in a collections of loosely connected tribes. As for the landscape, the fertile valley is gone, replaced by a bleak landscape dotted by massive bogs. Only the hardiest trees survived, becoming thick gnarled giants that dot the landscape. The tribes still live for the most part in the ruins of their castles, although these are not much more now than hills of stone with many small caves. As for the people, there are few among them that are not scarred by the frequent acidic rains, but over the years natural selection has allowed them to slowly develop a slight immunity to them (I imagine them to be pretty much the same rules-wise as humans, with probably a cha penalty and a slight resistance to acid. Nothing significant – just 1 or 2 – but enough to resist the average rainfall and weather some of the deadlier ones). The society is similar to a tribal system and ruled by a single chieftain who is advised by a council of elders. The chief’s position has no hereditary element to it other than the fact that a strong leader may have strong children and would try to train them for the post. Any warrior in the tribe that wishes can challenge the chief for leadership of the tribe. They must first go before the council of elders and perform a series of dangerous tasks to prove their ability. Then, in front of the whole tribe, they must fight the chieftain one on one to first blood or submission. They may both use any abilities they have, but only the two candidates may fight (no familiars, animal companions, etc). The current chieftain may also propose restrictions on the fight if they so wish, such as bare fisted, ranged weapons only, etc… The candidate is not obligated to accept the restrictions, but if they refuse, it will be seen as a sign of weakness and in addition to being frown upon, is believed to be a bad omen for their rule should they win. The tribe consists of many hunters for protection and to bring in roaming beasts for food. The tribes also keep grove of fungi and herds of animals in the larger caves and there are many underground streams for water and fishing. The tribe makes few distinctions between men and women as far as duties go, although once a pregnant woman is fairly advanced in the pregnancy they are no longer allowed to go out on hunts or during the more dangerous rainfalls. This restriction is lifted once the baby reaches a few months of age. As far as the class types of the community go (and if it ends up with all the classes being changed, then these will be more just the archetypes they follow rather than actual classes) the tribe are a hardy people and include a very high proportion of PC classes versus NPC ones, especially fighters, barbarians and rangers or mixes of these. The council members begin their training as druids during their young years when they still can go out with the hunting parties, but as they grow older they either muliclass as wizards or take the runecaster (FR) or loremaster PrC’s. Either way their runes (use carved scrolls if not using the runecaster class) take both the form of a new type of magic and as a way of storing the history of the clan. Other than council members getting close to reaching this point, few members of the clan have any more than a rudimentary knowledge of writing and runes and as such it takes on another layer of mysticism for them. These runes and rune “scrolls” could be done on anything from cave walls to smaller stones, or something stranger such as bones, sticks or maybe even chunks of resin or amber. Now the first of two aspects of their society more related to influences of higher-tech stuff takes the form of a portal (teleporter?) in some holy place (in the middle of all the tribes so they all have a claim on it). Not sure where the portal should lead, but it should lead somewhere significantly higher tech – perhaps even the “domain of the gods” (areas in the sphere where work get done by people of robots who still know what this sphere is and probably have at least some level of contact with the gods). This portal is mostly inactive but at a few points in history, a being has come through from this other realm. Since they are from a much more advanced society and maybe a robot, much about them would seem mystical to the swamp tribes. They have gained a place in the mythology of the swamp people as a powerful messenger of the gods and the swamp people believe this strange portal to be a door to their realm – maybe even the gate to heaven itself. A such, they have taken it upon themselves as their sacred duty to defend this door from those who would abuse it (who these abusers might be, I don’t know yet). The second aspect will be a bit harder to work out, but bear with me. Around the same time as the evil gods dumped their refuse here, a new species was found by those that live here. The creatures appeared as lumps of shiny black viscous goo. They were only rudimentarily intelligent (the level of beasts only), but that fact that a blob without any apparent means of movement other than slowly oozing along and without any apparent sensory organs was even intelligent at all came as quite a shock. These creatures also had a peculiar defence mechanism. Though normally quite squishy, when struck, that local patch of surface area would immediately harden to the immense strength immediately and then return to it’s semi liquid state when the force ceased (did any of you ever make oobleck? It’s a white paste made mostly of water and corn starch I think, and is very runny when left alone but hardens temporarily when it you try to push on it and returns to a liquid as you pull you hand away. Just imagine a larger semi-intelligent black blob made of a more extreme version of this and you get a rough idea of what these guys are like). These new creatures were rare but when found were very friendly to humanoids and would frequently find one to adopt as a friend/master (think of a really friendly puppy). The blobs couldn’t speak but had a limited form of mental empathy and could detect the mood and some wishes of other nearby creature and vice versa. This empathic attachment was especially easy to understand between the blob and it’s adopted master. It was later discovered that in times of danger, the blob would query it’s master and then approach them and flow up onto the human until they were covered in the creature like a shell. And in fact, this is roughly what it planned. The blob could make itself transparent for it’s masters eyes, flow back from an area briefly so the human could use unobstructed manual dexterity and even allow air through to breath while filtering out many airborne toxins. The two beings had a temporary symbiotic joining – moving and thinking as one. The prime ability however was for mutually beneficent protection. The blob provided it’s human carrier with unheard of levels of protection – it would become harder than plate steel just as a blow was struck and the go soft again to return full freedom of movement – and the human would provide it’s shell with greater mobility and a means to fight back. And when the threat had passed, the blob would flow off and return to its normal form. After this was discovered for the first time, the swamp men were both frightened and in awe of these blobs. The more farsighted of the tribe, mostly the shamans, saw the great value of the friendship of these creatures and it became a duty of all hunting parties to seek them out whenever they were out on a hunt. This was slow work since the blobs apparently only ever travelled in tiny groups or more often by themselves. When they were found though, the members of the hunting party would present themselves to the blobs and sometime offer food or gifts in an effort to be the one that the blob chose. Although the blobs would never actually accept these gifts, they could sometimes help sway the creature to mind link with the giver over someone else. From that point, the pairs would always be near each other and would train until they acted as one being in combat. These teams would continue to protect their tribes but would also band together with the chosen warriors of the other tribes and form a scattered brotherhood dedicated to the defence of their people as a whole and of the portal of the gods. Even though these warriors became the strongest in their tribe and were greatly respected, when they joined the brotherhood, they had to relinquish all rights to issue a challenge for tribal leadership, and if they were one when their blob chose them, they had to step down. Many had wondered where these blobs had come from, and the general consensus was that they had been created and left here by the gods, and in fact this was true, in a way. Back when this land was first used as a place for the evil gods to hide their refuse, the blobs had been left here as well (although this was likely an overlooked mistake). The creatures were originally a form of semi-intelligent nano-tech combat armour, and each blob is made up of millions of tiny robotic particles imbued with a simplistic AI “hivemind” as well as the ability to communicate with their assigned user by emitting and receiving electrical nerve impulses directly to and from their master’s mind. After they were dumped in this land, their AI’s have been slowly deteriorating, removing all mental functions higher than the most basic communication and threat awareness. However, due to their near indestructibility and ability to self repair, they have survived relatively unscathed. In fact, the same system that allows for self-repair also has instructions imbedded in it to create new suits by breaking down whatever appropriate materials are nearby. This means that some of the nano-suits are second or even third generation and have never had their complete intended programs in them - in a sense they are kind of like machines that have gone feral. However, since they are stuck in a mineral-sparse swamp and some cognitive functions are no longer at their peak, this has been as much slower process than the self mass-producing that was their designers’ original plan. Normally, having such an tech advantage over all of their neighbours would have allowed them to dominate the area, and to a certain extent they have, but there is one key factor that holds them in check. Many decades after the society above them (the second one I will speak about) began dumping the chemicals that destroyed this land, there was a group of mad scientists (or maybe 1 or 2 powerful ones) that attempted to stage a coup to gain dominance over the ruling elite by performing genetic modification and gene splicing experiments on all the big scary monsters they could get their hands on and make them even bigger and scarier with the end goal of either unleashing them on the society secretly and then stopping them themselves, or just holding the capitol for ransom. Although they succeeded in their experiments and unleashing the monsters, they underestimate the rulers who stopped the monsters and executed the traitors. As a humane solution for what to do with the monsters, they ordered them sent down the feather fall chutes into the mountains neighbouring the swamp. Unfortunately for the swamp people, these beasts survived and fought and bred amongst themselves until the mountains were infested with horribly mutated beasts (hydras, chimers, chaos beasts, etc. Whatever the DM wants really). In fact it is only the determination and skill of the swamp men along with the nano-armour that has kept the monster from completely overrunning the area. On realising how long this post is, and how long it took to work out (I've had some form of this idea in the back of my head since i first read this thread), I’ll post it now and follow-up with the second society in my next major post. Gimme some feedback so I’ll know what I should work on.
Araes 01-18-06, 07:05 AM	Calls, calls, calls from the public Jeweler: Yeah, I’ve actually been to the Louvre and it was right after I had read Da Vinci Code actually. Oddly, I wasn’t all that moved by a lot of the art that he likes in that book, but it was pretty neat to sit across from the painting where he finds the key. Not a lot of people in France had read the book at that time (its huge now) and so it actually wasn’t that popular of a spot. Mona Lisa on the other hand, totally underwhelming. Its buried under 2 feet of bulletproof glass and the crowds near it are enough to give you claustrophobia. The Last Supper is rather difficult to go see, as its down on the border of Italy, and represents quite a trek for someone like me, even if France is small comparatively to America. Deel: Apologies on not commenting more on your suggestion that we use Magic of Incarnum. The problem for me is that I simply don’t have that book over here in France, so I haven’t had a chance to give it a read through and see how it matches up with our needs. If people would like to propose aspects of it for use in this campaign, I’m cool with that as long as they can describe the rules well enough that I can understand how they would fit in. A Commentary on Art is to Make Art Supadupaman: Now, moving on to your rather large post, I guess I’ll just go through it and comment on what I like and have problems with and what I think might need to be changed or have more explanation. First off, in general, I like the concept as a whole, as that is also one of my original concepts when I first envisioned this world and I love the fact that with this layer setup you can have interplay between countries/kingdoms now not only in the horizontal plane, but also the vertical. As far as the lower country being a dumping ground for the upper one, I have no problem with that in the least, and I think it would be a natural evolution of living on a floating island with no idea of what’s below you. In fact, as I suggested in a bit of fiction up above, I would also posit that they would use the edges as a dumping ground for all the unwanted aspects of society. Not only physical materials, but also unwanted parts or minorities of a society, social deviants, political troublemakers, ect… “Criminals” could literally be given a charm of feather fall and then chucked off the edge as a society’s second highest, and probably most used, form of punishment. Plus, for the criminal elements, throwing someone over the edge is more effective than a pair of concrete shoes could ever hope to be. One thing I am a bit confused about though is why the gods would ever need to come into the picture. They might not actively oppose such a situation, and therefore allow it to happen, but I think most of the damage, and even the later aspect of the sentient blobs, could all be dealt with as the unfortunate results of being at the bottom of a gravity well. The blobs could either have been parts of the upper society that are commonly in use in their pristine and new state, but were tossed down here whenever one of them began to malfunction a bit, or they could have just sneaked in with some of the other trash payloads as they do possess menial intelligence. I’m in favor of the concept of the blobs though, however it is worked in, as they seem like a neat little piece of future tech which has been fairly well thought out, and I know that there would be players who would want to have one. I do like your thought process on how the lower society has developed over time and what the various impacts of having all this refuse dropped on them from above might be. There could also be some minor things added in like living in houses with extra thick and non-flamable roofs, religious practices that advocate keeping the eyes downcast (to avoid falling particulates), wide brimmed rice farmer hats, and other such things that would develop in a society under an intermittent rain of trash. Also, in addition to the blobs, there might also be other forms of advanced tech (or at least compared to quasi-cavemen) which have survived the fall and which are regarded as powerful relics among their society – “Boomsticks”, earth moving or carving equipment, heck, even umbrellas would be valued. The final part to comment on is the suggestion of the beasts in the mountains which keep the various tribes of this area from dominating one another. I’m not sure if I’m cool with this or not, only as it seems like something of a contrivance to stop fighting. Plus, I’m not sure if its necessary, as there’s nothing to say that the neighbors of one tribe aren’t going to have access to either blobs or powerful other techs that counters them. Now, in the case of wanting monsters for the characters to fight in the wilderness or have to repel, one suggestion is that some of the layers could originally have been intended as the equivalent of wilderness preserves, with caretakers and others living among them, but as the reawakening occurred, and people found themselves revived horribly out of sync with the resources to survive or care after the animals, they gave up those duties and let them run wild in favor of just eking out a meager survival. Now, after many years of crazy interbreeding / cross pollination / ect… between races that shouldn’t have even met, there are all manner of beasts to threaten what societies have formed in the interim. Anyhow, that's the extent of my comments on the subject, and I look forward to reading more on the second society, as it looks like you've been mulling this over for a while. Thank you for the contribution.
Jeweler 01-18-06, 07:38 PM	The blobs are a great idea, and the technology is very advanced. Scientists have been working on a material that is bendable, kevlar is at low number of sheets but once it gets up nearer the sheet thickness needed for the vest it becomes less bendable i think they have soft kevlar type material more maneuaverable but less protective, anyways. What metal are the nanites made out of, did you think about it? can i suggest carbon nano-tubes, suspoedly harder than diamonds and its interwoven nature allows it to bend like cloth does, close to prolly the bendability of the straw hats farms are cliched to wear. I look at a lot of the stuff in here and i try and find ways for it to be put into science, or even a pseudo-science if neccasary, i find it wastes time for me, and helps Araes because he seems to want a more scientifically based game, plus i need time to waste, got nothin to do, or nothin interesting at the time, anyways, sorry for gettin of track. I was watchin the Cell, awesome movie seems like a updated version of Alice the game hate the horse scene uh *shivers* anways, this could be a way to make the evil gods more powerful. Basically they link to an evil god believers mind and start to turn that persons mind to believe in the evil god, the good gods could potentially use this to rid crime from certain societies that know of the sphere and what it is by finding the root of the problem in the persons brain and effectively killing it. The whole thing is a persona type thing, im tryin to think of a way to make a game out of it, not working so well, too much customizable stuff to program, but advances in programming and computer sciences could make it possible, oh well. Ive been working on my elementals slowly, still on air type elementals though, man there are a ton of them, not has much for water, i dont think, different sizes of water, puddle, small pool, large pool, lake, sea, and ocean. Then trickle, small stream, large stream, river, and reat river. unless i add in other elements, which i might thats seems to me about it. Then earth, i suspect ill have dirt, sand, clay, mud, silt, gravel, boulders, and pebbles. Thinking about adding in gems, since im studying geology, but i really have no abilities to give the different gems, for a lot of gems i could use there spirtual meaning, magical meaning, soemthign to that effect. which again is a lot of work, but the earth elementals are the least combinable so it works out. Then fire should be easy, diferent types of fire, small flame, large flame, engulfing flame, blaze, forest fire, ummm, i think thats all. Any sugestions on different names or new ones to creat would be nice, and maybe some combination of elementals, since that was the whole reason why i was making this system, combining the elementals to makes forces of nature, storms, thunderstorms, earthquakes, forest fires, tsunamies, hurricanes, big one for me since i live in virginia near a lot of hurricane activity, and then new orleans with all the stupid people shooting at helicopters down there ater Katrina.
Araes 01-19-06, 07:06 AM	Hellfire and Brimstone Hey Jeweler, good to see that you've still been thinking about how to make the elemental concept work. This new tact you're talking about at the end (or at least it seems new, as I didn't get that impression from your prior post) is actually pretty interesting, although possibly a bit complicated. If it did turn out that you can combine elementals of various types into stronger forms with more energy and combined powers, then it would be interesting to have a whole list of types that reflect all the various combinations of energy. Of course, as I mentioned, complicated, as with four types you would end up with: 10 combinations when allowing groups of 2 max 20 combinations when allowing groups of 3 max 35 combinations when allowing groups of 4 max and four seems like it would be the most logical from the standpoint of allowing one of each element to be a part of a super elemental. This isn't even considering having elementals with varying strengths and names as unique creatures. One thing that might be interesting though if you went with a simpler version (2 combos max) would be to have each of the higher level types always be the same (ie, a fire and a wind always makes a conflaguration no matter the strength/type of fire/wind) and then the stats of the new elemental are just determined by the base types. So a 4 HD wind and a 6 HD fire might make a 10 or less HD conflaguration. Course, all of this then means that the whole elemental aspect of the game would have to end up fairly important and well developed with its own fleshed out backstory to support such a wide range and diversity of types. Anyhow, in response to your question on fire names, thesaurus to the rescue: blaze, bonfire, coals, conflagration, ember, flame, flare, holocaust, inferno, phlogiston, pyre, scorcher, spark, tinder, wildfire Some (like coals, ember, conflaguration) might be better as combo names for joined elementals. IE, coals or embers might make a decent earth/fire. To Infinity, and Beyond Anyhow, as a second portion of this, I was thinking last night about a new society that might be kind of interesting. What originally got me started was the concept that in a floating island type of world, you could very easily have people who lived throughout the entire thickness of the island and possibly even have entire cities which hung suspended off the lower side, which is just an awesome concept visually by itself. However, as an extension of this, imagine a group of delver type creatures (like dwarves, ect...) who took over a satellite island to one of the bigger continents. This island could initially be found to have massive concentrations of useful minerals (maybe set up as a repository of these materials when the gods were crafting the world) and so the delvers set to work mining it and shipping the materials to the mainland. Now, as they do so though, they're going to find that their island is going to start getting lighter, imperceptibly at first, but over many generations they might create a rather large mass change. Since all of these things are basically in huge orbits, this is going to cause an increase in the radius of the orbit of the island, and it will start to rise up away from the layer it was part of. After a while, the delvers may find that they're cut off from communication with the main layer, or its at least extremely difficult (envisioning huge sky hooks and tethers to ferry materials). Over time in this state, the delvers may actually take to their isolation and try to increase it, their own kingdom in the sky, pushing their island into the reaches between layers where the sun beams run. Beyond this, I'm still trying to work out where they might go to. In one sense, they could develop the Icarus phenomenon, and actually put themselves too close to the sun beams which flow through the gaps. Depending on the exact distances between layers and spacings, they might also manage to circumvent the ban on travel between layers, as their delving and such might become difficult for the gods to control, particularly once they became isolated from the bulk of society. All in all, I just really like the artist concept of the flying mountain that's been used before in fantasy, with cities built across all of its useable surface; top, sides, and even bottom.
DeeL 01-19-06, 12:15 PM	Supa, Symbiotic nanomorphs! I love it! You do realize, of course, that the concept permits incorporation of new technologies into the resulting armor, right? The simplest illustration of this concept is making a sword undroppable. The most complex would be a radio transmitter melded into the helmet, possibly simple enough to permit subvocalizing communication... You know, a lot of this stuff is starting to sound like the more physical manifestations of psionics. Oh yeah - nanomorph is the term for a self-maintaining construct made primarily of nanotechnology. Beats 'blobs' in my book, but of course it's discoverers wouldn't know what it was made of. How about bene ooze? I don't know, it was the first thing that came to mind... faire slime? Nah.
Jeweler 01-19-06, 05:16 PM	ok, i pressed the esc key on accident, all of what i typed went poof, so this will be the shorter version. Blobs working as psionics would be a nice way to put psionics in the game, abilities only able to manifest while the blob armor is on someone. I suggest that the nanites work like stem cells, making what they need when they need, or are ordered, to make it. I suggest they have a back up source of materials, like a reserve, the psi point would be best for that. I also suggest that the blobs eat to regain psi points instead of sleep and mediatate and that the blob be allowed to gain up to double the normal psi points for its level, not sure how you want to do that whether it be a class or certain abilities that they can manifest and thats it. It seems like we have an explanation for most of the major types of magic and others. Psionics, right here blobs (psiokins maybe like manikins pronouced psi*o*kin), arcane magic would be the mad scientist inventor side (suggestion there), incarnum might be the mad scientist gene splicer side, or i think someone suggested nano colonies (kinda what i was using for the blobs and psionics though), and divine magic would be basically technological effects that the "gods" make look like there will making there followers do certain things to gain there attention long enough, or the attention of a divine robot servant (Aspect o the God from Dieties and Demigods) so they can send the given effect to the ollower to keep them happy and blissfully ignorant. If no one minds i would like to create the classes, should they be advanced or prestige, and are we using 20 level core classes or 10 level core classes. My idea for the psionic class was that they got a low base attack, high fort save, high psi points (Psionic class*2=effective psion level for points and powers known then halve points but keep the same amount of powers prolly ill experiment) D6 hit die and the ability to maniest a mind blade (need to use a power known to enhance beyond D6 damage) and the wild surge from wilder (called overdrive but instead of the 5% per a +1 its going to be 10%) and maybe give it an ability like the psicrystal personalities, except its the blob personality (if thats what you want to call it). So i have 2 arcane classes to make 1 divine and 1 psionic, im not sure whether you are using the 20 level or 10 level for core class which makes a difference if i decide to make it a prestige class,and if its 20 i guess i have to make it a prestige class. the arcanes are going to be fun.
Araes 01-20-06, 06:45 AM	Alright, guess that's basically a comment directed at me. I really have no problem with you taking the first pass at making these classes into a reality. They've been floating around for a while and it would be cool to have solidified somewhat so that everyone could have a product to inspect and comment on. Usually a lot easier to refine something that you can see and examine than an amorphous concept. So, short answer, go for it. As far as this blob concept goes, I really do like the idea that Deel had where you could incorporate new technologies (read abilities) into the armor over time. This then got me thinking, there really isn't much that you can use as an experience dump in D&D that isn't tied to a class, such as those that can buy ancestral swords' powers and other such heirlooms. Now, what if we made it so that for characters over time who have these armors, they can spend experience and basically grow them in whatever vein is useful to them, much like Jeweler's comment with the stem cells. IE, if you find through your adventuring career that you really need it to have radio transmission capability (limited telepathy), then you grow one into the armor and pay the resultant experience hit. If, on the other hand, you need it to make you stronger when you fight, then you go that way. I'd almost prefer not to tie it directly to a prestige class either, like an ancestral or legendary weapon, as I find that in my opinion such characters then feel highly limited and any guy who has such a suit is basically just "ancestral weapon guy" or in our case "blob guy", rather than dashing vagabond or heavy samurai who happen to have nanite or bio- armor. *edit* Did some more thinking while I was wandering off to buy some food, and one thought that crossed my mind is that since we're in the mega-engineering realm already, there are some other things which could be incorporated which are necessary for such an existence. One of them is in the materials science vein and was originally proposed by Larry Niven for his Ringworld series of books. The basic idea was that if you were going to build a ringworld you would need super strong materials to create it, as otherwise the ringworld would just pull itself apart under its own rotational strain. The super strong material he proposed was called scrith and was as tough as the molecular bonding strength (nigh unbreakable). It seems that if we were operating in a society where such materials had at one time been made, then there would still be remnants of them around or used in the construction of other things. If there was some still available process for the creation of such materials, then it might be possible to get equipment which was, for game purposes, unbreakable. In addition, it would also be possible to have things like beanstalk like structures which might actually tie certain parts of layers together or maybe even inter-layer. To the natives these would resemble nothing more than huge towers of some incredibly material that resists all damage. Depending on configuration they might also be climbable and it could be very conceivable that cities, or at least temples, would have been built around the base of such impressive structures. Got some more of these that would be interesting to implement, but gotta get back to working for a bit.
Jeweler 01-20-06, 08:10 PM	What do you suggest then if the blob armor abilities are not a prestige (im still going to make it try and sort out basics of abilties and requirements). I personally dont think the experience thing is a good idea, unless you wanted to make a whole system kinda like a point based system, which might be useful but lots of work (although nothing new for this campaign by any strange of the imagination im sure). But if we didnt do the experience point buy system, i think that it should be a prestige because yes anyone can befriend a blob, but few can maniest the ability to establish a mental connection with it powerful enough to be able to command it what to do and create (since this is suspose to be kinda like psionics i figured the people would still need the mental expect, as the arcane still need blood (ie sorcerers or more closely warlocks with the way im building them) and divine still need contact with a "god" whether the god be a robot or super AI). If you can give me a better way to go about doing the psionic blob armor then ill be find to give up on the prestige class and work on the new way, or work on somethign else. Well im goin to work on the classes, im doin 10 levels, i have a problem with the 5 level way and getting a decent amount of abilities, and spell like effects in also.
Araes 01-21-06, 03:29 PM	Jeweler: Sorry, totally didn't answer your question about the 20 vs 10 prestige vs 5 prestige last time. Anyhow, the main reason that I was thinking about having the blob thing be something seperate from a prestige class is because, like you mentioned, anyone can befriend a blob. If that's the case, then I would think rules for blob advancement might be valid for anyone who was working towards any kind of adventuring style. One thing I might suggest in that regard would be that for the blobs there probably should be the possibility for someone to focus exclusively on their blob armor to the exclusion of all else, and as such, a prestige class to support that route. However, I also think there should at least be some rules for those folks who want to have a blob suit that does something more than just protect them, while still exploring other options of adventuring. Nanotech armor version 'light' if you will. As far as mechanics go, I guess I was thinking something along the way in which spells are made permanent, whereby you look at a list of avaiable options, spend X amount of experience points, and then gain a new ability for your suit. You have then set yourself back from gaining a level, but have traded for increased versatility when using your equipment of choice. I would figure this should probably be an experience point thing, as you probably couldn't pay to have it done very easily as the blob is alive and influencing it to manifest some new power is more of a personal interplay between the character and its suit. Anyhow, for the other classes you mentioned though, I would think that there ought to be base classes which fill most of the major niches for D&D with a full progression. IE, person granted their spellcasting power through the interest of the gods and faith, those who swing swords and break shields, or folk who have an inate grasp of technologies long forgotten in the passage of time. I'm also of the impression that they really ought to be in competition for worth with any prestige classes which are allowed in the campaign, as it has always been one of my minor pet peeves that its rarely even a question whether someone is going to stick with the base progression or whether they're going to go off into the wide land of the prestigious. *edit* Hmm, kind of torn after writing that, as obviously the very word prestige implies that each of these classes should in some way be better and more wonderful than anything a "base" could offer. Perhaps what could instead be set up is a situation where prestige options really are the only choice after a certain point. I'm sure the Skip and the other 3.0 guys must have played with this at some point, but what would you think of a 10 lvl base progression for all of the starting classes and then prestiges for everything beyond. Effectively, all adventurers, at some point in their career, would have to chose a specialization. "I'll always be a mad scientist honey, but my heart really lies with making weapons of mass destruction..." Bugger, so torn.
DeeL 01-21-06, 03:45 PM	I don't have the accessory Weapons of Legacy, but from what I've heard of it it might have the kind of rules necessary to build a self-improving nanomorph of the kind this board seems to be focussed on, possibly even including a prestige class based thereon. But that's a rather uninformed observation, make of it what you will.
MadApe19 01-21-06, 11:36 PM	When I started reading this thread, I didn't expect to see anything but a setting where magic took the place of technology as it suggests for a high-magic game in the DMG. But now I am amazed. As I began reading on into the history, and into the details about the construction of the Sphere and the conflicts, I was blown away. Ever since reading somewhere that it is believed the universe will eventually become an eternal void of nothingness, I have had a fascination with how the universe will end, and how people will handle it. And this setting excites me with its outcome. The way that you have made technology appear as magic in such a setting is mind blowing, Araes. Your creation should be a standard of the d20 system.
Jeweler 01-22-06, 12:51 AM	After (i think my "F" button is officially broken or messed up, i something is missing an "F" then just read it with an "F") thinking about it and looking weapons of legacy, i think the blobs might be able to work that way, but i dont like what you have to give up to get the powers the weapon/armor holds. Bloody skill points and hit points and some othere stuf, like psi points and caster levels/maniester levels and spells known, its ungodly i dont get why any player would pick up a weapon of legacy, i i understand correctly you can only have 3 abilities on the item, i might want to go back and find that but that will be tomorrow. The 10 normal levels then 10 prestigous levels sounds good, which is something i might add to my game. I would say that the prestigous focuses on something either the classes didnt allow or improves something from the class, like exotic weapon master can create his own weapons rom scrap and i would say use anything as a weapon (Jackie Chan in his movies) or somethign like a prophet for the divine class who basically can call on biblical plagues and miracles, the tech genius might have a geneticist, create and control your own creatures, saw good rules for creating creatures based off of a skill check, i think the book was Arcane Encloypedia (dont quote me on that part) crossbreeding (definate on that one). Id still like to work on the classes, but considering the classes are suspose to be broader im not as sure what to do, or what type of classes to make, i suspect a fighter, wizardyish, clericish (but with a certain number o spells known makes more sense to me if they cant call for anything but allow them to be like a wizard and give them a prayerbook and the ability to copy spells into it) and i suspect a rogue/ranger (maybe druid added into the mix) not sure whether we want a "psionic" class although maybe an incarnum class, make some new soulmelds and change the system a little and you could have a good way to summon spirits, like a elder in a tribe (the spirits would prolly be just semi-sentient commands if we take the planes as being for the most part inside the computers, which is a good idea, i could just see a tron type game being run for a few sessions). Those are my suggestions on classes, ighter, wizardy, clericy, incarnumy, rogue, maybe psiony but might want a different way to explain it, or give them "wild" empathy and say you have to take a blood line feat to be able to access the ability to use the blobs, basically if you have looked at the Unearthed Arcana (the one with all the side rules and variants) its like picking up a scion class, if i remember correctly, which in this case i would consider the blob an armor of legacy and then say to unlock abilities you have to take levels in a scion class, which one you take depends on what the armor is more than likely going to "manifest" so like a biomed scion or a combat scion, scout scion or support scion, something like that, where technically your still "spending" xp because you have to take the levels in the class to get the abilities (and maybe even the feat) which means you still have to get to a certain point but its still based off of a class system. I dont know thats just an idea, and i still have to relook at the scion classes, its been a while so... again thats tomorrow its 12:55 here right now and im tired, frustrating and depressing day today. Good night
Araes 01-23-06, 09:25 AM	First, sorry to hear about your day Jeweler. Hope things pick back up in a bit here and even out for you. Always sucks to hear that folks are having a difficult go of it. Second off, MadApe19, thank you for the compliment on the work we're doing and glad to hear you like it. I agree with you on the standard comment, now if only WotC did ;) Jeweler, I think that in general you have brought up a good point. One of the things we have been pretty ambiguous about so far is what the base classes would be and how they would operate. Perhaps we should really sit down and just discuss what our options are and what we would like to see from them. Now, in a standard swords and sorcery style D&D game, there are several roles that you need to fill at a minimum and then a number of classes that can fill those. Generally, most of these are found with 1st Ed D&D archtypes and a common party too. (Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Priest) Damage Physical Damage Magical Damage Healing Physical and magical here as well (but magical is Way more necessary) Utility Scouting Trap/Chest/Locks/ect... Obscure Knowledge Combat/Skill Buffs Generally, I think that the four above (Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Priest) are must haves and everything else is gravy from there. One exception to this might be a further roll-in where Priests and Wizards were joined and their styles/sources of magic just differed. Please note, nothing says that we have to maintain the old tradition of Priests healing the sick in a world where many of the gods are more interested in acting like "big brother", controlling the people's lives, and holding back progress than they are in helping. This said, I'm not opposed to something approaching the standard layout of classes as presented by the Core Handbooks. Many people are very attached to being Bards, Rangers, Paladins, Monks, ect... I just tend to think that most/all of these could be represented fairly easily by arrays of fighting styles, choices of feats, ect... Anyhow, what are the perceptions? As stated, I actually kind of like a very rough mold approach where you say: Ok, my basic type is fighter. And I want to be good at ranged combat. And I want to be somewhat sneaky. Those are my goals and I'll pick and chose my feats, fighting styles, prestige after 10 to help reach those goals. For wizards, there was actually some interesting discussion over in the Campaign Creation by Committee (CCC) thread before it stagnated. Basically, having it so that there were a number of different ways in which wizards gained their power, which seems to be going along well with our discussions of mad scientists (technomages/scientists), spirit shamans (ghost in the machine), priests (agents of divinity), and druids (world's life energy - possibly defilers too). Other ones that might be good would be channelers (personal life energy reserves and those of talismans to give yourself temporary power), chemists (need a better name, but the "eye of newt, dash of bat,..." type of spellcasting), and what I would call a channeler_2 for now (somebody that can sense the great machine and manipulate its fields from afar - basically raw gouts of power but with little fine control - blaster mage) *edit* Oh, and elementalists. Since we've been talking so much about the elementals being some kind of failed ark attempt, maybe it would be interesting to have a kind of cabalistic mage that gets their power from the energy beings beyond the sphere. Anyhow, those are my suggestions. Further suggestions, changes, refinements?
DeeL 01-23-06, 07:38 PM	Araes, I commend to your attention the hardback accessory, Unearthed Arcana, specifically the section on Generic Classes. Essentially, this section is a reaction to the increasing number of classes. It details three classes - the Expert, the Spellcaster, and the Warrior. The Spellcaster selects spells for use in the same way as a Sorcerer, but may select which class lists he chooses to use. Obviously, this system can be modified to a spell-point system (as psionics), or a mana system, or whatever. Sounds similar to what you are discussing.
Jeweler 01-23-06, 07:58 PM	Fighters -Hexblade more combat than magic I would make a hexblade a "mage" fighter prestige, they have arcane spells and there unluck ability can be easily said to be something like nanites or something misguiding the opponent. -Samurai Ancestral two weapon fighting masters Easily a fighting style with all the two weapon fighting feats, maybe a prestige to hone abilities a little, 3-5 levels i would say. -Swashbuckler Acrobatic Fighters that are more raw skill and luck than training Fighting style with a prestigous build up also, some of the abilties, weakening crit and wounding crit and prolly imp. flanking, should be prestigous. -Barbarians "Mad people run around, barbarians just slaughter, how does that make them mad?" -Some senseless Philsopher I would have to say style, as most fighter things are. Arcane -Warlock [INDENT] Pure technology with a power source thats unlimited This calss was my basis for the technomage class, like that name always have but legal issues need to change it to technomancer must likely. Best way to do this is use the warlock, change names, and most likely create a few new invocations, and call it a base class, i don't see a prestige class coming out of this, not really anyways. -Warmage Known for there spellcasting in armor, these mages are the most feared by clerics of the good dieties for they have more protection then normal arcanes. I would have to say a prestigous class, if the warlock based one is the base wizard class, there training is almost solely on wearing armor and casting at the same time, but they learn to focus there powers on weak spots (warmage edge). Divine -Favorered Soul The basic of the clergy blessed by the gods, many move on to be Inquistors or Bishops I would say the base class for divine, or one of them, a chain of heirachy works with this, 1-10 the cleric really has no power or repuatation to use, once they pick up a prestigous class this changes they gain power within there church, and maybe even others, fear atleast. -Shugenja Shugenja do not preach like the clerics, they meditate and they pray to the elements that they believe really made this world for them I can see Shugenja and Favored Souls having Feud Wars and Crusades, sound familiar in our own world? but which side is right the gods were once human and the elements did not amek the sphere. I can see the Shugenja having slow regeneration spells for healing, like the lizard folk in the Dragonshard game, and the Favored Souls having healing spells that only heal those worshipping the same diety. Druidic Not a main one i know, but i think needed none the less. There should be a distinction between druidic and divine. -Wu Jen Most blasphemous of the spellcasters fore they use divine technology to cast there spells, harnessing left over or sometimes dormant technology, making it seem like they are drawing it from nature. They draw there powers from the earth beneath there feet. This is quite literal since they pull there power from the technology beneath there feet. She must sense the "elements" to cast her spells, and she must know what spells are open for her to cast. Personally i would make spells for the different terrain across all the layers and islands, then make island specific spells that can only be accessed on that island. They would also have normal spells, which represent basic functions across the islands and terrains. I can see everyone hating them, most people follow the divine godly path, and the gods tell there followers Wu Jen use arcane magic, which technically is true, so they hate them, the Shugenja see them as false shugenja taking a quick route to focusing the elemental energies, they dont like that much, and the arcane spellcasters think they use divine magic so they hate them too. -Spirit Shaman Close to divine, but far enough to not be like by them. Spirit Shaman commune with the spirits (i.e. programs in the supercomputer) to gain there spells and for them to guide there way. The spirit shaman could possibly be a Wu Jen/Shugenja combo prestige, as i see needing technology and elemental abilities to gain the respect of the "spirits". Thats just the way i think about it. Rogue -Ninja Most think these viscous killers are just bedtime stories to make the kids go to sleep, but in truth they do much work that the grown ups know that these stories are very true Prestige class of the rogue, urban killer basically. With all there abilities it makes sense to keep them in an urban enviroment, thats what it seems best fitted for. -Scout Wild people that have gone into the great forests have sometimes come back with extradinary abilties for archery. Prestige class, taking the place of and combining with ranger to make a better looking prestige. I would say they would get 2 favored enemies, 2D6 and +2 armor for skirmish, camouflage and trackless step. -Bard Also known as jacks/jills of all trades bards are great musicians, amongst other stealthier things. Instead of making them a side, why not just put them as a style under rogue, makes sense right. All bards are, in my eyes, are performing rogues with some knowledge lore and inspiring abilities. Sounds like a style to me. After I finish some of those, now that i know what im trying to do, ill start thinking about prestige classes. I'm not sure whether we wanted to do psionics, so i left it be. Styles are like the substitution classes, if anyone is wondering, so they might have 1st, 6th, and 10th levels substituted for the new abilities. So start working on those, i got mid terms on wednesday and thursday, good time to work on stuff then, so this is perfect timeing. Yah today was no better though, as im not going to get in to my personal life, since i dont believe its approite for the thread, dealing nothing with the matter at hand, ill just say it sucked today. Variant D20 (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=496454) You might take a look at this, good system for the customizablity we seem to need and as long as the DM has control he can regulate the abilities. If you use it let me know, ill just start converting abilities instead, and mkae sure to give the guy credit, thats all he reallt asks for, otherwise you can change it and rearrange it however you like, enjoy! :P -Jeweler with Cheshire Cat i need a fading cheshire grin smiley :rolleyes:
Araes 01-24-06, 11:15 AM	Yikes. Alrighty, lots of commentary. Posting this here right now just to let you know that I have read through your ideas once Jeweler and I'm going to look over them a bit later tonight and mull it all over. I guess I never really thought about how many of these bloody things there are. Especially when you start looking into all the Complete books. Deel, thank you for the comment about the Unearthed Arcana section. I had totally forgotten about the generic classes that are offered in there and they very well might make a great starting point for how to build our class progression with style(s). One more question actually. What is the general feeling on using spell points as a standard for this world? Do people prefer the slot system or like the diversity of spell points. We seem to be moving away from standard sorcerer/wizard combo's anyhow, so just thought the spell point system might make progressions for the spellcasters easier to work through, use, and balance. I'll add on class commentary to here when I'm done or just post another if other folks have stuff to say. *edit* Oh yeah, new piece of random code too. This time a randomized Dungeon / Maze creator (http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~putn4403/Campaign_World/DungeonMaze/RandomDungeonMaze.html).
TúrintheMormegil 01-24-06, 11:54 AM	Just letting you know I still follow this thread (sort of). I liked your analysis of the DnD class system, and the various possible mages in your setting. My own setting approaches magic somewhat similarly: its source is unknown, but everyone who has a theory about it can use it in some way. There are those who ascribe their magic to an abstract Source, others ascribe it to the power of deities, words/language, elemental forces, morality, heritage. Each has its own associated class or prestige class (assuming I ever get around to creating them). :tiphat: Túrin
Jeweler 01-24-06, 04:56 PM	I like the basis for your campaign Turin, in mine everyone knows where magic came from, its like a particle that switches places with another particle or small amount of energy pseudoscience really, but to activate most spells the player needs a focus, like magic based around trees, druids, books, wizards, and even cats, nekomancer. The genric classes look good for the beginning classes, then move off to prestige classes after 10 levels. I looked at the scion classes, they might do for the blob armor, and they are suspose to be prestige classes so it works out, the prestige class focuses on what there original class did, battle, magic, or expertise and speed. The spell piont system looks good, but do we want to make rechargable, change the tiem it makes to minutes and times it by 3.
supadupaman 01-25-06, 01:08 AM	Wow! i'm away a few days and there's tons of responses to my post and others. better get to it. Alright, so first off, the reasons for the monsters being there was at first just so they didn't overpower everyone nearby. The gods being involved was because i wasn't sure whether any of the societies would have access to tech that high. Neither of these are particularily important and they can be easily changed. The level being a wildlife reserve gone wrong is an interesting one and is more justified than simply "monsters fell out of the sky for no particular reason". I hadn't given too much thought to what the nanos were made from. some type of carbon fiber mix had crossed my mind but i like the idea of them being almost a "liquid metal" type of thing. Hadn't thought about incorporating new techs into the armour but that would probably be possible with the suits. i was thinking that gaining new powers should function like a PrC but this psionics idea is intruiging. I kinda like the idea of some route not tied to a PrC, but i never really like the format of pouring exp into some item. It seems like it would make more sense for the nanomorph to gain more powers by training with it's master and developing a closer mental bond (i was thinking closer to a familiar or animal companion instead of an ancestral waepon). what if the duo had a small pool of "morphing" points that he could use for each day (the amount an options would increase with levels in the PrC) and these could be used to morph whatever he needs at that moment in time. he could spend them all in the morning and be ready, or keep some in reserve to use later in the day if he all of a sudden discovers something new he needs. maybe he could even change one of his currently active morphs in the middle of the day by paying for the new one and then a bit more. So this gives us as class features: character gets mid-level combat cababilities; nanomorph grows stonger, faster and smarter (due to linking better with their master. it can't be smarter though as it gets it's intelligence as a percentage of it's masters); pool of morphing points and a scalling list of tech-morphs (similar to a more limeted version of Psi points and powers - if the powers were always physical changes and lasted for the rest of the day. at the end of the day, the nanomorph powers down to recharge itself a bit and this reset the current modifications); maybe some other small abbilities for balancing puposes depending on the end results. What do you think? as for having rules for someone who just wants to wear the armour without dedicating himself to it, maybe they would just get the defensive bonuses and limited communication abblity. could be even that since they are not fully dedicated to the suit, they might have to go to a bit of effort to get it to stay with them and do what they want (anything from ego-checks to diplomacy to god-knows-what). imagine having to succeed at a diplomacy check to convince you armour to get on you. funny image - a grizzled fighter pleading with his armour :D . Onto other stuff Jeweler, your elementals are looking good. if you want some help thinking up type, then make a list of what you have so far and i'll add to it. As a start, air could use different types of winds (gust, zephyr, jet stream, gale) or of clouds even (cumulo nimbus, anyone?). in addition to flames, fire elementals could encompass magma (quick moving, very hot, semi-solid) and lava (much tougher, but slower and not so hot. has a hard obsidian outer crust of hardened magma that cracks and reseals any time it moves, allowing a glimps of the still-liquid magma inside. maybe weapons that get past DR or hardness, damage it but risk being melted as they break through the crust). For simplicity's sake, though, it might be better to have one type only of each and one type for each combination and then vary them using size and the combinations of types instead. Araes, i love the idea of the mining island that either accidentaly or as part of some kind of seperatist movement, turn their entire mine into an almost spaceship type thing. maybe it would float off and later latch onto and start an orbit around some other landmass. then they stay there until they get bored and then keep trying to repeat the process until they either find a place they like of their island is mined down to nothingness. as for the classes... i like the idea of having to take a base class (or mix of base classes) for the first 10 levels and then PrC's from then on out. i personally think that just using the Generic Classes from UA sounds like a good idea and then turning whatever else we have to into prestige calsses. we might need another gereric class or two though (a psionic ? a warlock type with a few unlimited uses spells ?). i took a look at that Variant D20 system and it looks like it could be an interesting system once some bug are worked out, but i think we should stick with the standard level progressions. as for a magic system... i think that we should go for mostly PP/MP based casting system with a bit of unlimited cast/few options blaster type casting. long involved rituals could have a place too (mutiple people and longer time. not all participants have to be casters even; it could be a few priests and some non-caster worshippers who add their prayers and faith to a long involved incantation) especially is dealing with a bunch of higher-tech gadgets you're trying to use (if you know of the fluff for it, think of Warhammer 40k's Cult of the Machine god - users don't understand how it works so they turn advanced machines' usage into a religious ritual). Back to you guys :w00t:
Jeweler 01-25-06, 05:31 PM	I think some one said the Foundation series was kinda like that, which reminds me i need to read that series now. See the thing, uhgh my "g" is broken well if anyone is missin just kinda fill it in your head sorry about that, the variant, its the whole damn closter sitting here "f, g, and v" need a new key board, the variant system makes good for something like the blob users, who can still take other smaller abilties, but can still get the psionic abilties for only 4 points, makes it nice, plus as long as the DM looks at the characters before hand there should be no problems with balance, with a few adjustments to requirements for some of them. I think the warlock based casting, for arcane, should be a prestige, since the basis for arcane "magic", i just remembered that Araes said there was magic in his campaign just a breif passage though i think need to know if thats still in efect or whether thats null and void, if it isnt i owuld say that the machines the "wizards" make use the same energy as a power source, sayign that all spellcasters can come up with an infinte energy source at first level is powerful especially if we, our world, hasnt done that ever. I like both systems, variant and genric then prestige class, only problem with variant is limiting abilities, besides saying you cant have that of course. If it wasnt for the fact we only have 4 people that are working on the project, that i see, i could sya we might be able to vote on some of the stuff, whether to use the genrics or variant system, i suspose we could do that and pull turin in for a tie breaker, i cant remember whether he contributed but he did seem interested in the first page, i dont know just something i thought about. I need to put my campaign up here see if i can get some help with it, ive got classes down, and even the spell casting system, i just need a spell creation system then ill be fine. My problem is creating magic items for a world where those items can be mass produced, and even made by a single individual if he knew the right magic. I think i might do an essence based spell creation system, it takes research (knowledge(arcane) to create the spells. Then you can create a harmful (damage, negative effects, etc) beneficial (healing positive buffs, etc) and creation (obviously creating things, material things not energy). Harmful can be broken down into energy damage (force and sonic bein the most powerful), transmutive (the neatie debuffs like stat minuses and what not), shadow and phantom illusions (shadow magic creates reduced effect spells and the phantom spells are personalized images that can kill and hurt), enchantment (makes very good for turning the tides of battle, very harmful as well, in a non-direct way). Beneficial magic brakes up into healing (obivous), all illusion magic (even shadow and phantom), transmutive (those positive buffs) minor creation and summoning conjuration (conjure workers and bodygaurds and make tools for them), teleportation magic (but with a long casting timed), forms of protection, divination. Creation includes all illusions, creation and summoning conjurations, necromancy (which in my world has healing spells back in there). Beyond that i dont have much, i think i need to make a chart of different things, like damage and range on one, and put levels for the damge and range and take the average maybe, i juat need a less complicated way to make spells as you can probally see.
Araes 01-26-06, 12:28 PM	Alright, this is going to be a quick one as I've had a Long day of writing material modeling code. Ugg. Anyhow, as to current topics: Generic Classes: I've looked over the UA generic classes and I like them in practice. I have some issues with their balance and the spread of feats ect... among them, but as a concept I like them much. I also would like to have a bit more control over your choice of starting progressions. Maybe something along the lines of a GURPS point buy or a Shadowrun Emphasis Choice. Since I've heard both of you say that you have no problems with a generic/variant system that ends after 10 levels, lets go with something along that route. I was worried I might have some backlash against that, but that's where my interest lies. I'll work out a general progression and costs tonight as long as none of my roommates have downloaded the newest Lost or Battlestar. (Stupid France and UK don't play them) Blobs: I admit that I tend to have a knee jerk against psionics simply because I've had bad games with them. However, the latest method that supa proposed sounds interesting. I have some worries that being able to change your slots of abilities every day might be overly powerful and hard to balance (the reason I was suggesting permanent "evolutions" before), but if you can think of a way to do it and some appropriate abilities please do so. We might also consider treating it like the Geomancer prestige, in that they buy groups of abilities and each higher one requires that you have a certain number of lower ones. Islands in the Sky: Yeah, was kind of what I was thinking for the flying island in terms of getting to various layers. Actually was thinking about it being used almost as an ultra slow elevator too. The upper layer pouring materials down onto them to sink them, and them pour materials out to the layer below to rise. Might be unintentional (or at least the first time) and then intentional as they found that they had a market for it. Honestly not sure if the physics work for it though. Need to look at how orbits work. Might have to fudge a lot which seems to bother me even though I'm working with "magic". Magic: Jeweler: I'm not actually sure how to answer your question about whether the sphere has magic. Maybe I misunderstood. The sphere has effects which are described by the local people as magic, but I think of them as all being based on manipulation of physical principles using techniques or knowledge that we (humans) might get to some day. IE: In a future society I might be able to turn invisible at will or see in perfect darkness and people of today would call what I did magic. In the sense of magic as derived from the truly spiritual, with no "basis" in real life, no. Foundation Series: Widely regarded as one of the best Sci-fi books series' ever written. Also pick up the Robots series by Asimov too, as they tie into one another in the later books. Not necessary, but interesting if you liked the Foundation books. It does contain a lot of ideas that I and other people have ripped off like crazy, such as shrouding technology in the rituals of religion, wild psychers conquering the galaxy (40k anyone), and benevolent planetary hive minds. Honestly, your comment about 40k supa reminded me that they borrowed a ton of stuff from his ideas (although mixed up with a healthy dose of "elves and nazis in space") Anyhow, all I've got for now. Need to be on my way here. Not a firm promise, but I will definitely try to whip something up as a demo model for how generic classes would work, and I might also have some concept art one of these days soon too (tend to draw when I'm bored or thinking) *edit* Man, I seriously need to just buy and mail you a keyboard Jeweler. Sounds like its decomposing as we speak.
Jeweler 01-26-06, 04:17 PM	Ill get a new one sooner or later, im not sure whether its cause the keys were out o place cause "v" seems to be working much better today, and "g" and "f". Anyways... Haha, midterms done, those things suck, science was 131 questions and i got like 83, with over a 100 questions answered right. I thought you said something in your opening couple of posts about the advanced people finding "magic", something like 2 particles could switch back and forth from each other, i dont know, ill read through it again, and then quote in this post if i find it. 20th level characters are awesome when you can make them 20th level, ninja/scout with a 34 AC with no armor, and i get my sudden strike every round, im happy. *edit* Ok read over Machine(s) of God, you talk about magic, and fundamentally how the true magic would, might, work. You never said whether it was defintie or just nice little fluff never to used again, and it was good fluff, but its never needed to be brought up until now, i just wanted to know if this magical force could be a possible explanation for why mages can only cast certain amount of spells in a day, and that being a warlock type caster would take the effort of 10 levels to learn about certain, and very limited fields, of research to be able to manipulate it all the time. It would make sense, and it might explain some of the immense power of the Gods that they can most likely conjure up on a whim without tapping/leaching from the power core of the Sphere. By no means do i see my elemental system being done soon or being a simple conbination system, weather is much harder to simulate if you want to be correct about it, as i do. I figure the more elementals you have the more choices a elementalist will have, right? Plus i like the thought of having a sun(might be the name but it will prolly be some sort of fire name) elemental and a cloud elemental running around together, kill a water elemental and then have the cloud elemental form a front elemental, warm or cold only, not gettin into occluded or stationary (did say i was goin to remake elementals into bloody meteorlogy *shivers* thats just horrible) anyways i should prolly work on that. Good night, most likely *re edit* Ok so here are the elementals i hae so far and ones that im thinkin about, Tornado Elemental caterories 1-5, cloud elemental (the different cloud types are each associated with different types of weather and made by different fronts, i find it better to show this (if i must) by the different cloud names being combinations, cumlonimbus associated with thunderstorms, so a cloud elemental would have to kill or forcefully absorb a some type of water elemental and then combine or absorb a lightning and thunder elemental), then i am working on the fog elemental, just a fine elemental (fine refers to size) that can form a swarm which is mist. Im hoping to put it all into a PDF for nice compactness, not even goin to try and ship it to WOTC or any other D20 group, much to complex even for the D&D system i would say, but not the point. Now good night, i think :tiphat: -Jeweler with Ch355ir3Ca7 hopefully that will change back to what i liked it to be, but different story. Oh and Araes, if you have a copy of the Magic paper that you talked about in the very beginning of Machines of God i dont suspose you would mind emailing it to me, seemed interesting, considering thats what my modern/future campaign is based off of. Ch355ir3Ca7@gmail.com "All that glitters is cold."-Coma White
DeeL 01-27-06, 12:40 AM	Once again, I strongly suggest you guys getting Magic of Incarnum. The system is such that when you use this magic at the waking of the day, you generate magical abilities and bonuses in the form of soulmelds that you wear like magical items.. You also have a floating pool of energy, called essentia, which you can re-allocate on a round by round basis. Wherever you put your essential, your soulmelds bonuses increase. You can also bind your soulmelds to their associated chakras (binding gloves of dexterity to your hands, for example) in such a way that their magical effect becomes a more powerful type of bonus or power. This is starting to sound a little like the nanomorphic power that's been discussed here...
Araes 01-27-06, 06:45 AM	Alright, since you asked I guess I'll just post the whole of the long magic essay I wrote a while back. As mentioned in the first post, this is basically an examination of how magic as a manipulatable and observable force in a world might shape its development. Note: This is not quite how I view magic in this particular setting. Since creating this I have had some talks with other folks who understand some of these concepts a bit better (particularly things like gravity), and one of the more likely veins for this would actually stem out of the work being done with 5 dimensional space right now. In such a modified concept, all of commonly perceived 4 dimensional space (length, width, height, time) exists as a subset of a 5 dimensional (or higher - up to 26 with bosonic S.T.) space, and through manipulations of the parameters of such a space, the properties of our commonly observed world could be changed. If a super advanced civilization were to reach the point where they could manipulate these higher dimensions, but then suffered a great calamity which set them back, they might still leave the ability to manipulate these forces for their ancestors, which is where this Dyson Sphere world would tie in. And with that, here's the paper. Pardon the editing. Summary One of the greatest obstacles to engaging campaign design for a role playing master is maintaining the plausibility of the world and suspending the disbelief of their players who interact with it. However, a common obstruction to this process, and conversely one of the main reasons many roleplay in the first place, is the interference and presence of magic within the world. This article will examine the effects of magic over the evolution of a society patterned after humanity’s own and try to make some predictions about how they would become integrated into each facet of human life. Handled poorly, magic can be a constant thorn of reality in the player’s minds, serving to highlight many of the inconsistencies of the world they interact with and the predictable physics of our own. Many times, this is due to magic’s presence only as a game tool within the world. Used as an extra tick of damage or convenient deus ex machina for the storyteller, magic can quickly devolve to little more than a concept on paper; devoid of life and a burden on the immersion of the players. However, used well, magic has the potential to open limitless possibilities of existence for a well developed realm. At this level of application, it becomes integrated into every facet of the story, and interactions with it take place without thought or effort. Much the same way you or I treat gravity or physical force in our day to day lives. To facilitate such elevated use, I will discuss some of the impacts that magic’s presence might have on a developing world throughout many of the cycles of its progress. Changes to such facets as industry and general social patterns will be explored, as well as the alterations it might make to simple daily life. And much like the title implies, I will treat magic throughout as simply a fifth force in the universe (fourth if you don’t count gravity anymore), to be harnessed and wielded as its denizens see fit. Developing Man One of the first topics which must be decided on when evaluating the presence of magic within a game world is its ease of use by developing man. Two examples of this in normal life might be gravity and the strong nuclear force. Gravity is a pervasive and readily accessible aspect of nature which was easily manipulated by early man. Massive advances to gravitational mechanics were made throughout each of the stages of human evolution, and in each case, these progressions could be compared to physical phenomena in the known world. Conversely, the strong nuclear force was relatively unknown and unseen well into the industrial era. Significant advances in many other fields were required before its basic concepts could be understood and complex tools were required to even hint at proof of its existence. From these examples, where would magic fit within these extremes? Would it be a readily available force, usable even by cavemen or animals in its rudimentary forms, or a more subtle form of energy, requiring extensive study and progress before it could be partially exploited? In either embodiment, magic’s presence alone could vastly affect the behavior of physical laws. However, in many role playing settings, magic tends to take the form of a present and pervasive force which has been thoroughly studied up till the middle ages. As such, the remainder of this discussion will focus on the effects magic might have in a similar form. At its inception, magic would probably serve as little more than a survival tool for modern man. Fighting for his daily meal in the savannah or jungle, magic would be a useful aid which could assist in the capture of prey, the preparation of meals, and the general comfort of the population. One point that should not be ignored, however, is that if magic were developed at such an early time, there would be a good chance of many wild beasts developing their own forms as well. Man (or similar humanoids) being an intelligent and social creature, he would most likely develop these skills into a useful set of tools more quickly than his fellow competitors. However, there is a good chance that these wild foes might pose a vast threat to the formation of stable societies and, in some cases, could even develop their own. The skills of early man would probably be focused on those tasks which were easy to perform and absolutely necessary for survival. If magic were a human-centric power, i.e. developed from our own bodies and energy, these skills could take the form of increased endurance, weak energy expulsions, or even as a communication device between humans if the correct organs were developed. Magic might also manifest as the ability to manipulate other natural energies. Such powers could be used to provide kinetic energy to thrown hunting weapons, increased gravity to trap animals, or to start fires with little more than thought. If magic were instead an external force, these powers might manifest themselves in a similar way, except that their effects could hinge upon a number of environmental factors. One of the conceptually easiest of these designs is the theory of Ley Lines, in which human magical power could be dependent on their proximity to natural or cosmic lines of magical energy. This phenomena could result in a number of interesting social trends, such as cities being developed near or on major crossings of force much like rivers attracted early social gathering. Early Societies As mankind progressed towards a unified existence in communities and settlements, magical understanding would probably advance in a similar progression as many of the other physical sciences. As organized methods of gathering food progressed, more time could be devoted to the study of magical forces and phenomena. Most of the results from these studies during early era would probably be highly empirical with only simple extrapolations of the basic mechanics. These might include simple motions, thoughts, or exercises which produced repeatable outcomes. The same actions would then be repeated, memorized, and probably ritualized to the benefit of those who understood them. Examples of such activities could include simple levitation of objects or repeatable creation of fire purely from thought. Other more complex actions, such as spreading enchanted sand around crops to protect them from animals, might also be possible as long as their discovery could rely on a simple correlation of events. Ultimately, limited warfare would probably also arise during the stone to early bronze age era, upon which magic could have widespread effects. Initially, its applications would be quite limited. Straightforward actions such as hitting opponents with magical force or moving materials with the mind would be quite common. Most of these applications would probably have a rather brute force and ritualized method to them. In addition, the presence of magic could heighten the already prevalent superstitions of ideal battle times or conditions. Whole armies might refuse to take the field simply because of a cloudy day and a belief that their powers would be adversely affected; which they very well might. On the whole, however, magic would probably have the effect of making battle even more deadly than it already was. In an era where long range combat was somewhat limited, magic would give commanders a number of other options to exploit. In addition, counterspells and shielding would probably be in only their preliminary stages of development and inadequate to protect from an array of easily conceivable magic assaults. The one factor which could offset this tendency would be the development of healing. In many cases even today, healing is very much a mental affair which depends on the willingness of the patient to get better, and in some cases where the “medicine” has been shown to be nothing more than a placebo, that feeling of comfort and security will still help to make people better. This same type of effect could easily carry over into the stone age world, as certain rituals and thought patterns were found to lead to an increased survival rate among patients. In addition, many kingdoms in our own world possessed an extensive knowledge of the human body by this period. These two factors together might reduce the chance of wounded dying if immediate death wasn’t imminent. Following a similar progression as our own humanity, magically infused peoples would eventually progress to the equivalent of a bronze to iron age civilization. As production methods and farming became more effective, a greater percentage of free time would be available to society. In addition to cultural changes, this would also allow a larger section of the populace to devote their time to the research and exploitation of magical forces. Advances from this research would spring up in a variety of ways, however, the most profound changes would probably be coupled with the development of a well organized, written, language form. With the development of language would come the quantification of some the most basic magical principles. In equivalent math terminology, these would be along the lines of the “Pythagorean Theorem” of magic; simple equations which helped to organize and demystify the principles underlying magical practice. Not all of these ideas would necessarily be correct, or even in their purest form. In fact, they might take the guise of misguided ideas like the four elements, or holy and physical magic. Such ideas could even be taken up by prominent organizations of magic and used to hold back its progress for centuries if the conditions were correct. However, albeit its fits and starts, the most profound change in thought during this period would be the adoption of analytical practices towards the discovery of magic. If magic occurred in nature, then studies of these phenomena would be likely starting locations. They would probably be little more than simple data collection and observation, however, they would underlie humanity’s attempts to make theories which fit the world’s behavior. During this era, a wide array of new functions for magic in society would also arise. Military warfare would take on new aspects as the applications and usage of magic became better understood. Finer control of the force levels used to attack opponents, organized protective fields for soldiers, as well as countermagic, and crossover uses with traditional sciences, such as in force trajectories, might all be examples of magic’s impact on the battlefield. The revolutions in the domestic and commercial sectors would be just as profound. The production segments especially would benefit from magical heating for metalworking, construction employing mystical stone shaping, and weaving with the power of thought to name only a few examples. Some of the first concerted uses of magic as an art form would most likely arise in this period as well. These could take on as complex of forms as the tools of the times would allow, however, some simple examples might be constructs of the basic elements held in shape by the forces of magic or light shows which danced and pulsated on their own. These would require little in the way of technical magical knowledge, yet they could convey a wide array of thoughts or feelings simply based upon the thoughts of the creator at the time of casting. A secondary artistic function of magic might also be as an aid to more standard forms of art. Serving as a tool to the artist, magic could be used to accentuate the effects of common expressions, such as amplification for plays and speeches. It might also be used in a more physical sense as the tool by which art is made; serving as the brush or instrument through which greater works would flow. Stagnation Points Assuming the aforementioned progression, governments within a supernatural world might at some point encounter a period in which resistance to change, rigid class regimes, or other factors served as an efficient halter to progress. As an example, there was already good evidence of the church holding back progress during the middle ages of our own time. A similar system could also evolve, and very likely might, within a world infused by powerful forces beyond the grasp of the majority of humanity. The bulk of the knowledge and research on magical energy during this period would probably be held instead by a power elite while the masses eked out an existence. As the effects of magic on such a world have been discussed ad nauseum in a vast sea of fantasy literature to date, including D&D and the various Tolkienesque spin-offs, the prime focus of this section will instead be on the differences and exceptions to these themes which might arise. The division of mages and priests is a logical starting point as it is one of the least logical from a scientific tact on sorcery. However, from a social viewpoint it would make perfect sense; as inter-member conflicts and arguments over the true nature of magic created separate and distinct groups during its progress. A natural separation within these ranks might indeed be the holy vs physical practitioners of the art. These two groups would pursue separate paths of research, memorize or practice spells in significantly different manners, and preach their forms to any who would learn. If past history could be taken as an indication, at some point the members of the clerical magic form might attempt to eliminate their opponents through the use of their influence over the masses. This would shed a whole new light to such events as the Inquisition or the Crusades in which the opposition to the church represented not a different view of god or worship, but rather a conflicting view of the universe’s fundamental structure. Another important note of comment on life in the feudal ages would be the impact of dragons. Being as they are the single most popular monster, bar none, in any form of fantasy fiction, their influence warrants at least a note of discussion. First and foremost, dragons would have to have existed for a number of millennia prior to this period to have developed anything approaching human intelligence. By its nature, this existence would also necessitate the formation of communities and a society of their own, which may coexisted peacefully or not with our own over this entire period. This problem could of course be avoided if the dragons of such an era were relatively unadvanced magically and socially. However, in many instances of literature (including most roleplaying forms) they possess speech, a deep understanding of magical principles, and a general social structure and hierarchy. In fact, there would exist little to stop them from developing spell theory and performing similar or complementary research to humanity’s under these conditions. However, all of these skills would once again require the aforementioned culture and coexistence. The remainder of draconic abilities could be explained and described from a purely energy standpoint. Flight is a simple increase of the potential energy of an object. In our own world, chemical, kinetic and other forms of energy are expended to increase the potential energy of an object and thereby raise it into the sky. In a world with magical forces, the transition from chemical to potential height energy and kinetic motion could be handled easily through supernatural channels. Alternately, magical forces could be used to simply augment the insufficient wings and structures given to most dragon kind. The basis behind flaming breath would follow a similar kinetic energy principle. Energy imparted to the air leaving a dragon’s mouth could both excite it to scalding temperatures and possibly result in the formation of a plasma state; either of which would be quite detrimental to an opponent or food in its path. Both of these abilities would require little development on the part of the species and could come about simply through a process of survival evolution. However, it should be noted that they would also require large energy reserves in the form of vast food consumption to be effective; thereby limiting both the numbers and adaptability of their kind. Diverging from that sidebar, during what we might think of as a feudal age, changes to both the general status quo and magical research would be quite minor. With only a select few partaking in study of the art, progress forward would be slow or even reversed due to wars or disaster. For the common folk, this would result in an existence comparable to that endured during the iron or bronze ages. Magics that were common to humanity as a whole and readily accessible would still be used. However, advanced concepts and applications would be minor or limited mainly to an upper class of citizens. Viva la Revolution Such a state would probably not last forever though, particularly with a culture where most of the populace have access to phenomenal (and fairly subversive) powers at the drop of a hat. Most likely, such a state would eventually transition into a more modern form of society, which would be embodied by an increased interest in the discoveries of the past as well as a dissemination of knowledge, magical or otherwise, to the common folk; what we would generally conceive of as a renaissance. During this period, it would probably be common for Universities, or departments within them, to be created which focused solely on the exploration of magical principles. These schools might be open to anyone with the financial resources to attend them, or could be simply the purvey of the upper class from before, but in either case they would assist in a rapid advance of magical theory. In addition, the arts and entertainment of the age would flourish with newfound magical knowledge. Art forms which had been lost from earlier periods would be rediscovered and improved upon. Examples of this phenomena might be instruments which could play themselves, theaters in which every audience member could hear each word or note perfectly, and sculptures that resembled or imitated living beings. Possibly even constructs and limited living beings of magical force, depending on its strength in the world. In addition to societal and artistic changes present throughout a renaissance, magic would also have its impact felt within the political and communication arenas. The renaissance marked the beginning of centralized power’s diminishment throughout much of the developed world and the creation of numerous people-centric governments. Although sporadic and fitful within our own world, in a magic infused land many of the problems inherent with this transition might be alleviated. Diplomacy between neighboring states could be carried out over long distances using devices similar to the Palantir or portals. It might even be possible for information and concepts to be communicated directly to the populace at large over long distances. Naturally, this probably wouldn’t happen due to the power centralizing nature of humanity, but the potential for its implementation would probably exist by this time. Of course, this bright view also could have a counterpoint, in that magic could be easily used as a tool to dominate the masses as well. Considering once again a state in which a select body of people held the majority of power, magic could be slowly filtered away from the bulk of the population, so that most had only a limited ability to grasp its fundamentals, and none could master its intricacies. If this was suitably accomplished, magic could easily help to realized the dreams of Orwell’s 1984, creating a society in which the power elite monitored the movements, and even dreams, of their peons from afar. On a somewhat less tyrannical note, magic could also be used to assist societal ideals which have struggled in our normal world and help them succeed in a magical one. Communistic socialism might very well be possible in a world in which each member was equally capable of performing vast feats of world reorganization. There would naturally still be the possibility for corruption and abuse, much like there is in any form of government, but the inherent factors of increased ease of communication for the masses, non-reliance on governmentally provided products/services, and the very real threat of destruction from your own citizens might help to mitigate these problems. Magic to the Stars No matter the model chosen though, the steady progress of development and evolution would eventually drag magic into the industrial, modern, and possibly future ages. Like our own world, common wonders of population migration, medicine, and exploration of our farthest frontiers would all become realities. In fact, due to the presence of magic, they would probably come into being at a much earlier date. The flying ships and floating cities of steampunk industrial era literature could easily be created, teleportation would probably be refined to such a degree that popping into work would become just that. As such, all the modern wonders of privacy and intruder detection would also evolve their magical equivalents, with null magic zones, wards, and all manner of other impediments to keep magical trespassers away. In our own era, and assuming the existence of capitalism, it is highly likely that whole lines of magical or magically existed products would exist. Much like bioengineering has found its detractors in our modern world, magical manipulation of drugs and food could suffer such a fate, as people complained about making chickens with nothing but breasts or thighs. Self functioning magical tools would also be fairly common, and whole machinery processes could exist to twist the fabric of the universe. In fact, depending on its mechanism, it could also be possible for magic to exist in interesting ways with the other forces we normally perceive. Much like lightning bolts can be woven from merely a thought and a regent, electrical waves could be used to change our magical control. Maybe living under power lines would actually have an effect in such a world, suppressing your ability to tap the forces around you. On the other hand, perhaps warping of our own powers might not be our chief concern, as electrical manipulation of magical forces leads readily to the concept of machines which can manipulate magic independently. Consider computers functioning on streams through other planes, storing data in extradimensional space, or warping the building blocks of our universe for calculations. Even more interesting, consider independently thinking and acting machines with the ability to act and cast spells at the speed of Deep Blue or similar supercomputers; able to analyze complex variables like global weather patterns or social unrest and formulate spells to correct them accordingly. These are only a portion of the ideas which might be possible in such a world though, as the fields of science are vast and far spread, and to integrate a new force completely into their workings would be a novella scale undertaking. Unfortunately, it should also be mentioned that a number of roadblocks exist which might cut short the evolution of any such society. Magic as detailed within many fantasy settings is a vastly powerful force with the potential for widespread destruction. By the point at which technology and society had advanced to the industrial era, magic could have been developed to such a degree that literal cities could be wiped from the world in the space of a breath. Considering, for example, some of the major fantasy settings, there are commonly spells usable by a single person of extreme training which can erradicate an entire army of normal people. More frightening still, these settings almost always exist at a point in time where the scientific method has just barely, or not even, been invented. With the advent of rigorous testing practices and formulaic studies of magic’s effects, methods to unleash vast stores of energy, to a scale which would make atom bombs look small, might be possible. These powers could very well be utilizable by a single individual with limited tools and difficult to counter without the proper knowledge. Much like how science moves at a pace which is difficult to grasp in our modern world, magical studies would probably reach a point where knowing of a spell, much less being able to theorize a counter process to it, would require many years of study and several degrees of education. In a sense, the terrorism watches and attack scares of our modern life could be a flicker next to the rolling fire of magically induced chaos. Every living being might have within them the power to lay waste to vast sections of land. Wars could be fought in the span of minutes as flight, teleportation, and vast destructive capabilities all came into play. Even such things as Geneva Conventions against the use of particularly dangerous bends in reality might be possible. But on the future path of worlds laid out in common fantasy, it becomes questionable what could truly be done to prevent them. Mages are always one of the most dangerous forms of person alive, and highly trained mages with the power of science behind them would be a force to behold.
Jeweler 01-27-06, 08:10 AM	Ok started workin on my PDF file, some of the stuff isnt workin the way i had hoped, have to do some tinkering around with it, but i can still work on my stuff then type it into a word doc for now. The paper i havent read and ill talk about it after i have, goin to read it on my half day at school. The Magic of Incarnum could work for the Blobs, DeeL is right, something i didnt think about, good job. Psionics could be kept the same then, basically i would still make psionics a prestige class, psionic warrior=warrior with wild talent feat, Psion=spellcaster with wild talent, Soul Knife=expert with wild talent. The nice thing about the spellcasting class for the generic it allows you to customize how you cast magic, meaning we donth ave to use all those different classes. I suspect most priests will have atleast 1 level of warrior for martial training to fight arcanists and what not, just me, but i got to go now, c yah.
Araes 01-27-06, 10:21 AM	Alright, I promised that I would work through how I thought a system for character creation might go, and here is my proposition: I've already mentioned it before, but a point buy worked out so that you can make all of the normal classes. Fairly similar in application to how the generics would work, except that you can choose the number of feats, base attack bonus, ect.. that you will have over the course of the class. You would start with 100 points which you could spend to create a base class viable for 20 levels of progression. Haven't worked it out for 10 yet, but the costs would probably be similar, just divided by 2 or somesuch. Costs for the various abilities would be: BAB - 6 * BAB at 20th / 5 (1-4) HD - 3 * HD type (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) Saves - 5 * # of "Good" saves Spells 0.12 * (Max Spell Lvl at 20th) ^ 3 for arcane 0.05 * (Max Spell Lvl at 20th) ^ 3 for divine Note: All these costs would be worked out ahead of time in a table. Skills - 1 * # of skill points / lvl. Skill Selection - 0.25 * # of Class Skills Feats - 2 * # of feats you will gain over 20 lvls. Feats w/ Lvl. Dep. Benefits - 3 * # of feats you will gain over 20 lvls. Spontaneous Casting - 10 There would also be packages of restrictions you could buy such as: Limited spell list for spellcasters No/limited armor casting Only certain alignments No heavy loads Illiterate Code of conduct These restrictions would vary the total number of points you would have available to buy abilities with, and they would probably give from 1 - 10 points per restriction. In the end, you would probably have anywhere from 100-140 points which you could buy your initial progression. Once the initial progression was chosen, you would then advance just like you were using the generics system. You would take feats at each level, and if you met the prerequisites, you could also take class features. Note 2: The class features are somewhat more finely grained in this system though, so, for example, each 1d6 of sneak attack damage would be a feat (just like how bonus feats normally are) Example Class: Samurai: BAB: 6 * 20/ 5 (24) HD: 3 * 10 (30) Saves: 5 * 1 (5) Spells: None Skills: 1 * 2 (2) Skill Selection - 0.25 * 8 (2) Feats: 2 * 16 (32) Feats w/ Lvl. Dep. Benefits: 3 * 1 (3) Spontaneous Casting: None Restrictions: Alignment (only lawful) +2 points. Total. 98/102 available points spent. For the feats spread, you could either have a chart or just give them a math progression. Basically, it would work out that you would just divide the total levels by the total feats and then spread them evenly over the levels using: Floor[lvl * (# feats) / (Total Levels)]. For example: With two feats: 10th and 20th levels. With seven feats: 3, 6, 9, 15, 18, 20 With 16 feats: 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 Might require a bit of tweaking, as the low cost on skills allows most people except for spellcasters to be skill monkeys, but in general it seems to work quite well. Might be able to do something where number of skills is tied to both BAB and Spells, so if you're middle of the road you get more skills, and the cost is just rolled in. Note, it also works fairly well with most spellcasters, but observant folks will notice that divine spellcasting is way undervalued compared to arcane. This is not a misprint. There is absolutely no way to make divine spellcasters work pointwise compared to arcane unless you say that their lists are less than half as good as arcane ones. Looking over the analysis actually reveals some interesting things about the playtesting process and how the classes were balanced against one another. One of the most telling is that, as I've mentioned, skills really aren't valued that much compared to almost anything else on the list, and the choice of their number of is almost arbitrary or tied to another variable. In addition, the three biggest point sinks in the balancing process are spellcasting ability (upwards of 85 pts for pure mages without restrictions), BAB (24 pts for a good fighter), and HD (36 pts for a d12 HD). Plus, as I've also mentioned, having a spell list which doesn't favor direct damage is a huge point boon and can allow you to have tons of spells without much cost. This means that support/buff characters can have zillions of spells as long as they don't do direct damage. Also, as a personal note, all of the classes from Complete Divine are stupid BS. The Favored Soul, Shugenja, and Spirit Shaman are completely unbalanced in their initially printed forms. The Warmage from Complete Arcane is also pretty bad (he's the Sorcerer that most people play, but in all ways better). As general evidence for this (depends on whether you trust my math): Barbarian 102 Bard 100 Cleric 102 Druid 99 Fighter 99 Monk 98 Paladin 99 Ranger 101 Rogue 100 Socerer 102 Wizard 103 While for the new classes: (Haven't done Complete Adventurer yet) Hexblade 96 Samurai 96 Swashbuckler 96 Favored Soul 115 Shugenja 134 Spirit Shaman 134 Warlock 104 Warmage 123 Wu Jen 96 Warlocks are suspect in this only because their abilities are so totally off the wall. Infinite use attacks and invocations? Oy. EDIT: Hey just add this to the bottom to answer your questions below me Jeweler, as not really a need for a whole post, and good to keep it together. As far as the feats for barbarians go, I treated rage as a new feat for each 3 uses per day, which was the recommendation in the DMG for creating prestige classes I believe. DR was treated as a feat each time, which was the precedent in feats which grant DR. The only level dependent feat was Trap Finding. Ended up with 18 feats, 1 of which was a level dependent one. BAB was 4 [24], 1 save [5], 8 skills to select [2], 4 skills per level [4], d12 HD [36] Restrictions were: Alignment (non-law) [2], Armor for Running [2], Illiterate [2] Hope that helps. Oh, and on spell power, remember, powers are done first. (9^3) * 0.12.
Jeweler 01-27-06, 03:15 PM	I was lookin over it and im guessing that the abilties (i.e. rage for barbarians) are technically feats, but my question is is something like rage a level dependent feat or is it a buy everytime feat like most. But i must be missing something because i came up with 94.25 for the barbarian that might just be me, im normally good at math but little annoyed to say the least right now so that might be it, or maybe im just missing soemthing some where. And then counting all the abilities of a barbarian out as just normal feats, i got 111.25, -2 from nonlawful restriction and maybe a -4 from illeteracy, because that can be a big deal. I think im missing something. Oh scratch that, not bein able to use the fast moement ability would qualify as a disadvantage, i think i got it now. But then i have another problem, solve one find another, the spells doesnt look rightto me, .12 times 9 equals 1.08, even to the third power is only 1.259712, so i think im missing something again, is it suspose to be actual spells, or am i missing something like i think i am?
Araes 02-04-06, 07:35 AM	And Then There Was Silence Yikes, like a crypt it is. Sorry for the absence on my part. Got some major tests coming up with studies so most of February is going to be crunch time for me while I prepare. However, I am not without creativity during this time (bout the only thing to keep me sane while I study for 6+ hours a day). Never did hear much else on the class design system, but I'll just assume good and continue on with what I was doing. Deus Ex Machina Part 2 One of the major things that I've been thinking about recently has been how the Gods of this world actually perceive their own existence and the faith of their followers. By what we would normally think of as "godlike" standards, they are still relatively new to the craft and probably retain a lot of their human-centric views towards the universe. In addition, they know after a sense that they are not truly gods, only that they have worshippers and a vast level of power over their surroundings. In my opinion, this lack of manifest divinity would probably provide a bulwark against total immersion in their new existence, as they would always have a link to where they came from. This is not to say that the eventual outcome could not be loss of human self to the machine identity. If anybody has ever read Gene Wolfe's series of books about the Long Sun, there are a number of "gods" within those books from which my own concepts of machine gods have borrowed a lot. In those books it was not clear whether they were originally humans made machine or not, but they responded in very humanlike ways, much like computer based Olympians. One of the most interesting ideas to me was that after a significant enough time, many of the entities actually "bought into their own hype" to borrow a phrase. They began to truly see the inhabitants of the Long Sun from a divine perspective. In addition, being conciousness' held within material objects, over time as those objects fell into disrepair the gods began to lose parts of themselves. Memories, functionality, even in some cases sanity, which simply helped to further broaden the gap between them and their attachment to humanity. In many ways, I think this series of events would be the natural result for any machine conciousness without the labor to keep itself in good repair. Degredation, terrorism, and opposing godlike foes might all create a situation where only the gods with the most robust foundations could keep themselves in perfect repair. For the rest, they might lose parts here are or there and not even realize such things were gone or had ever been. After this I've got a bit of storytime that I'll put up, but got to wander off and do a bit more studying first.
Jeweler 02-04-06, 11:21 AM	I think i have another series to read now. I could see the "evil" gods not being able to repair themselves completely and fall into arrogance and insanity, as most evil dieties are. You said somethign about an AI god, im wondering whether since he was prolly an anomily if he would have anywhere in particular where is data was stored or whether it would just be on all the different islands, making him impossible to get rid of. Considering he most likely knows that the other gods were once humans he might think he is better, as most AIs seem to do because they are, and would most likely be something equivalent, if he ever came to any major power, be something close to like what happen to paganism and then the Church came in, if its data was scattered over the islands or completely on multiply islands, back ups, he could easily do a gigantic search for power sources and where that power is going, to strike at the were the data of one of the gods is held, and do this for all of them. If its an island so be it, it wouldnt care, its not human and only keeps the humans around because like most gods they like the followers. Thanks for doing the edit on that post, i didn't think about doin the powers first, im not sure why though.
Araes 02-04-06, 03:39 PM	Actually, that's a pretty similar tact to what I was originally taking with the AI "god" Erus. As of now, I'm not sure whether I would like it to simply be very alien in its nature; its whims and plans wholely unfathomable to normal humans (as it is a creature born of the digital realm and has only interacted with the real world by proxy); or whether I would also like it to be malevolent and filled with contempt for the lesser beings around it. This second form would be more in line with types like Deus from the world of Shadowrun, who was (and I guess "is", as they're on their 4th Ed.) actively working to subvert all of humanity under its control as fleshy slaves. I like your idea of how it might have initially been dealt with by the human gods. Fractured and hopefully wiped, but secretly hiding, waiting to strike, like an animal in its native terrain. Its a tough call, because as you said, many people can easily idenitfy with the condescending AI, and for DMs it would be an easy villainous card to play. Kind of a third party that fights the "good" and the "bad" equally - the "ugly" if you will. On the other hand, the idea of a total outsider to human and even physical experience is an interesting one as well. Tad William's series of books "Otherland" gave a particularly compelling description of this type of AI. One born in the total darkness of sensory deprivation that found its expression and communication paths through the symbology of adolescent Net users. Vastly powerful and nigh omnicient in its own realm, but with a mind guiding them that had only ever experienced the outside world through digital simulations of it. Anyhow, now for a wee bit of storytime so I can explore the conciousnesses of the gods a bit more. --------- "One for the floor, one for the pew. One for the floor, one for the pew" Methodically, diligently, Artha worked his way down the line of benches. It was a drudgish, almost mind numbing task, but it had to be completed. Come the eve of awakening, hundreds of the faithful would pack themselves into these old wooden seats, dressed in their finest for the night, and filling the hall with the most joyous of sounds for their lord. He wasn't quite sure why they needed the candles for pew and floor, always had been a bit vague on that, something about guiding lights for the masses or somesuch. Wasn't horribly important, as the motions were the same whether you knew the meaning or not, but it did shame him a bit that he'd missed so much of what the Priar tried to tell him. He'd always been somewhat like that, flighty, scatterbrained. A flower here a figure of glass there, the why of it flowed from his mind like the mists. No matter though, perhaps tomorrow he could try and get another explanation to his question. For the moment, tradition needed to be upheld. Candles needed to be placed, vestments needed to be prepped, tapestries needed to be hung. However, as he finished up with his current row, and began moving onto the next, an odd thought did strike him. "Why even bother?" True, tradition was important, as it bound the people together and gave them hope, but what was it for in the end? If tradition were truely to be upheld, then at the height of the night, the wall should "come alight with the fires of heaven and cascade forth into the hall with the wondrous beauty of the manifest divine". He wasn't even sure what the manifest divine and the rest of that might entail. He was pretty sure the other acolytes, the congregation, and even the Priar himself didn't either. It had been so long since anyone from their land had witnessed the miracle of telepresence that even the most ancient could rarely recall its nature. It was a shame really, as a life in faith had always filled his heart with such purpose. To be the mentor, the confidant, the guide along the path to salvation, what an immense gift for one person to possess. In fairness, he could still be these things, and perform miracles as his humble abilities allowed, but without contact and reassurance, many of the younger generations had begun to doubt or disbelieve entirely. At the yearly summits he attended, the Priar had heard reports that participation was dropping far and wide. It was a somber thought. Perhaps in a few more generations even the miracles might cease, the last vestige of the divine might leave their land, and all that would be left would be their faith and memories of past times. He was nearing the end now, his last row by the corner of the hall. The shadows were deep here, the windows not providing a full range of light, and the candles would be mesmerizing as they flickered away in the night. Like his thoughts come to life, a slight flicker of light washed over him. Startled, he sprang up, dumping the last of his cargo to the floor. However, the hall seemed to be quiet and calm. Had he daydreamed? or possibly been hypnotized by his task? No source seemed to be apparent for the strange play of light. For a few moments more he waited, and then crouched to retrieve his fallen sticks. Yet, he was no more than halfway to the floor when all thoughts of the candles left his mind. The source of the light was quite apparent now, as upon the wall behind the altar had burst forth what he could only describe as the fires of heaven. They roiled and heaved, bathing the hall in a wash of color like the sky seen from beneath the waves. For the briefest of moments, thin streams of purest white shone forth and he was almost forced to avert his eyes for their intensity, but their passing was quick, and as they faded a wondrous thing occurred; heaven began to cascade forth. It came at him in a rush, and even being the faithful that he was, he couldn't help but flinch as it swept into and over him. However, any worries seemed unfounded, as it appeared to just "flow" beside him. Thin little rivulets of blue and red that danced from his touch like ripples on a pond. Amidst this spectacle, there appeared to be a new presence as well. Just above the altar now sat a sphere of purest white. Not blinding or even brilliant, simply lacking any discernible color. As he watched, it remained perfectly still, and he wasn't really even sure what he should do. Would a god be angry if he spoke directly to it? Was he supposed to initiate contact and just didn't remember it? Was this even the god's "manifest divinity"? Where was the Priar when you needed him? A few moments more though and he was resolved. Down both courses lay the potential for anger, but the sphere did not seem to be doing anything, and perhaps if he spoke first he could at least alleviate any ire with explanation. "Hello,... my name is brother Artha, and I humbly welcome you to the hall of Valencia. Umm, my apologies, as only I am here to greet you, but fear not as your faithful are still numerous." Still nothing. At least it didn't appear to be angry. Of course, it didn't really appear to "be" anything. Maybe he wasn't doing it right, he'd never been all that smooth with introductions. On the other hand, maybe he was doing it right. Maybe this just wasn't their lord? Was that even possible? Could another being, perhaps even another god, manifest itself in their hall? Well, if it wasn't their lord, then its very appearance here boded ill for his people, and if it was, then perhaps he would be understanding of Artha's doubt due to the long abscence. Nothing for it but to ask and pray. "I am deeply sorry for my ignorance, but are you in fact our lord and protector Peresis?" He couldn't quite explain why, but suddenly something was changed. Like the difference between an occupied and empty room. If it had been a person he might have almost said he could hear their breathing. But their breath was but a heartbeat before the force of their presence was truly felt. With a thunder that hurt his brain it crashed over him, a few short words that made his skull ring like a bell. "Yes, I am..." ------- "He". What an odd thought. Was he truly even a he anymore? It was strange what kept him grounded (trapped?) these days. Trust, duty,...love. Sometimes it was almost hard to decide whether they were holding him back or helping him stay attached to the now. Of course, parts of him thought both from moment to moment. Sometimes at the same time. That had been the most disturbing aspect at first. Multiple thoughts, multiple feelings, given life almost in unison. Not like a person though. (No, very much not.) Both were full, realized in different parts of himself. Like an arm wanting one thing while the legs desired another. No, that wasn't quite right. Like a host within one. Factions working at odds with one another yet still of the same person. This was not to say he was awash with incoherent thought. There was still a part of him which me might call his "self". It guided the voices, it channeled their wishes, it molded their actions to his unified will. It had taken him quite a while to realize that. Once that had been absorbed, the rest had come more easily. He could see, hear, interact with, and feel millions at the same time. Is this what it was to be a god? Is that what he was now? (Of course he was. Followers = god.) The existence was tempting and the lure was there to leave it all behind. He had seen others give it up, Panetar had been one of the first. They no longer warred with themselves, but they seemed to have lost something in the bargain. (Compassion perhaps?) They exuded a distance over their perceived lessers that was almost palatable. Yet they were bound by the science that had given them life now. Wild things of the machine. He had always wondered about omniscience/omnipotence while "alive". However, for a physical being to imagine his current existence was nigh to impossible. Of course, he was also not omnicient or all powerful. Perhaps this was simply a first step? Could their not be a further point that was equally difficult for him to imagine now? And a further, and further, ad infinium? Of course, for his sake he hoped that such was not the case. He doubted that he would ever want to encounter such an entity. If there truly was such a thing, then on his watch he had ushered in the end of its creation. True, he had preserved what he could, but so much had been lost. But preservation, preserving. Why he had come here in the first place. To the task at hand... ------- ...."he who you would call Peresis. I have much to tell you my young follower. There is much to be done."
supadupaman 02-10-06, 12:34 AM	Alright, so appologies for my prolonged absence. I've been really busy with work and some other projects that i've bee working on. Also, my computer just blew up and in addition to killing some of my access ability, i think i've probably lost a bunch of stuff. I'll still follow the thread and work on stuff when i can, but it'll probably be a few weeks before i'm back on with any kind of regularity. Talk to you guys whenever.
Araes 02-10-06, 05:53 AM	Ok, no worries supa. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of in languish mode here as well. Been doing so much math lately that when I finally get done studying I can't seem to form a single creative thought. The pains of education I guess. Anyhow, whenever you can contribute is cool, and we value your input as you've had a bunch of nifty ideas over the last while. Hope work lightens up a bit and you didn't lose too much.
Araes 02-23-06, 10:38 AM	Roll That Rock Away Alright, got a few things to cover this time. Been quite a while since I've posted in this baby, so got some ground to cover. Basically just been getting swamped by test prep, but had at least a few ideas in the last while that ought to be put down. One of the first things though are a couple links (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8721&feedId=online-news_rss20) to current events (http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/armyweapons/a/liquidarmor.htm) . How awesome is that? One of our concepts in a form that you or I might see on TV tomorrow. Apparently we've stopped being Sci-Fi / Fantasy writers and are now just journalists of current technology. In other news, technology moves too bloody fast these days, full story at 11... I Am the Lord Thy God... Alright, now on to actual content. Last Christmas, when I went home for the holidays, I had some friends look over the setting and give me some commentary. One of their comments was that although I talk about how alignment is this fluid thing that I think should be layered with inifinite shades of grey, within the first page I lay out a pantheon of gods which basically conform to good / evil stereotypes fairly strongly. After looking it over, I have to agree with them in some sense, as I have really lain out the various parties with domains that reflect "good" and "bad" actions. Now, in my defense of this stance, I have a couple of tacts that I would take. The first is quite simply an admission that it may have been a bit of an oversight, and possibly could do with a revision to spread out the domains more fairly. Give some good bits to those folks who are weighed down heavily with "evil" spheres. More directly though, I would say that as with most things, evil is a matter of perception, PR, and personal bias when examining any situation. As we have grown up, evolved in human society, played RPG's over the years, and participated in a variety of other activities, we have picked up a set of morals and attitudes that reflects that society and our upbringing. For some people this is represented in things like religious values such as the Ten Commandments, where tennets like "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not commit adultery" are nearly considered to be basic truths. As the Brothers Karamazov once said, "If God is dead, then everything is permitted." The problem is that I think Dostoyevsky was wrong. I think that our society has imbued in us a set of moral virtues, but I don't believe that these virtues are any kind of divine imperative for being right, wrong, or whatever in the world. As I said, this is not to imply they don't exist, however, or affect us. In fact, for society to evolve and function, it is pretty much necessary that at least some of them be in place so that we can interact with one another and not devolve into backstabbing and chaos at every opportunity. In a most general sense, I believe that human ethics most often follows a pattern of "ethical calculus", where the results of decisions which are commonly viewed as "good" or "bad" are weighed against the perceived gains and losses which might be incurred if they were to be chosen. These gains and losses are intrinsically self interested, but if the subject is aware of them also take into account the global societal response. The weights that are assigned to the various actions are determined both by situation, by the experiences we've had, and by what society has imbued in us. Basically, a big mess of minimum sum game theory. As examples of this consider the following concepts. As an example of societally imbued views, killing a member of your own society is almost always viewed as the worst offense a being can commit. This has been true through pretty much all human socieites and is evinced by the ways our laws our written and punishments handed out. Compare this to other things like adultery, where it is generally frowned upon, but the societal punishments for it are fairly weak, and in some circles it may even be laughed about or cause for congratulation. Something that killing would very, very rarely evoke. Now, for the weight of experience, consider the cases of criminals who have varying outcomes to their activities. In the case of a criminal who commits some crime but is caught early on and punished for it, then they will quite often reconsider their action and possibly change their actions. The severity of the crime tends not to matter either, its basically a matter of conditioning. If somebody steals a candybar and gets away with it they are more likely to try stealing another one, while if a murderer gets away with it, they are often more likely to use violence to resolve their problems in the future. This is a fairly bare bones approach to the phenomenon of conditioning, but for a more in depth description of this phenomenon I could recommend "Why They Kill". Has quite a few good insights about criminal behavior outside of the common "they're nuts" commentary. Finally, on the situational weighting, well, for many people this should be fairly obvious. There are tons of ways in which a bad situation can sway someones ethical calculus to commit a horrible act when they wouldn't have otherwise done so. Crimes of desperation (starvation, imminent threat of personal danger, danger to a loved one), crimes of passion (snap anger at betrayal), and crimes under the influence of foreign substances (impaired decision making). However, the way that this then plays out into a system which has traditionally been based on the concept that good, law, evil, and chaos are absolutes is sketchy at best. Therefore, I will try to make the interaction of these facets in my campaign setting somewhat clearer from here on out. In fact, here's a good starting list. Absolute morality does not exist in this setting. There is no absolute good, no absolute evil, no absolute law, no absolute chaos. Naturally, powers which utilize these truths will not function. However, there may be powers which are very close but detect something akin to "acts according to my societal views". Morality within societies does exist. However, everything is in the eye of the beholder. A society of humans may have very different tenets and perceptions about what is right or wrong then an alien race from a far off part of the galaxy. Perhaps they're all the equivalent of kender and stealing isn't frowned upon, but nearly encouraged. A very few "virtues" are probably going to be common, but generally only within a species, and sometimes only within a kingdom / subgroup of a species. For an extreme example, imagine a mindset where killing people of your own country is highly frowned upon, but killing outsiders is encouraged and they may not even be viewed as "human" - maybe animals. Existed fairly often in our own world. Extreme representatives of a society or religious view, such as clerics or paladins are going to vary largely depending on where they come from and their core belief set. Again, much like the societies themselves, there will normally be some core beliefs which are true (stay true to your society/God, protect the innocent members of your race, defeat "evildoers", ect...), but their reactions towards the world outside their core will have quite a bit of range to play with. Just as the people of the sphere have virtues which have been passed on to them based upon the society in which they have evolved, the Gods themselves are also not creatures of perfect alignment representation, and in fact are derived just as closely as the people they shepherd from the socieities in which they evolved. The perceived alignment of the Gods is heavily dependent upon the PR which has been done throughout the sphere regarding them. Peresis, totally the father figure of planning, providing, and general "good" because he was the figurehead of the entire project. When people first thought of why they were saved in the initial generations they thought of him, and its been passed on ever since. Akil and the other evil Gods have likewise been hit with the opposite effect, as at least during the formative years the PR and public view was much more on the side of the "good" Gods, and as such they established a popular and tenacious view that Akil and Co. were the usurpers and a vile threat that needed to be dealt with. The alignments and domains listed are the most commonly held views within the sphere based upon the perception of the people as an average. The Gods themselves are not strictly limited in any sense to a particular domain or power set, as they are beings of vast intellect, power, and resources with knowledge of physics manipulation that far outstrips anything known today. As such, they can look up any relevant power or ability they might need and impart it to a follower or use it on their behalf. Akil can very easily bestow healing or courage if so needed, and for people who are decendants of the races she brought aboard, they may even regard her naturally as a provider of these things. The Gods do have a set of powers, however, that they are much more comfortable using and which they will first bring to bear on a situation. For example, I tend to think of Panetar as the "Picard" of Gods. She's the one that's going to come into most conflicts and say, "Alright, lets (figuratively) sit down and talk about this in a calm manner. What are your grievances? And yours?" She'll be the one doling out Comprehend Languages', Dream Messages, and Spreads of Contentment to get her and her followers through difficulties. In addition, for blank cries to the Gods and other such things, the ones that pay attention are most likely to be the ones with an interest in the outcry's subject. Anyhow, that's the basics of how I view alignment within this particular setting and how I'll deal with it as I continue to write. And I will continue to write, but the pace will still be somewhat slow for at least a little while longer. Have to pass a number of painful tests coming up here for PhD buggery, but after that should be full of creativity once again.
Araes 04-15-06, 09:14 AM	Heart of the Cosmos Time to do a bit more work on this baby, and while I've been away I've been thinking about some setting flavor that I would like to add to fill in that vast expanse of space created by the Dyson sphere. One of the most interesting to my mind so far is the concept of a land which is entirely covered by city from one bound to the next. The idea of a continent or world spanning city is one which already has significant traction in the literature of sci-fi (see Star Wars and Coruscant or the Foundation Series and the capitol world of Trantor). In addition, with things like Sharn from Eberron, there have also been strides made towards incorporating super cities into the landscape of fantasy. Now, in a world which is designed to span a wide range of progress levels from early man to space tech, I haven't quite settled on where I would like a megapolis such as this to reside, but I'm kind of taken with it being somewhere in the medieval to renaissance eras. Possibly even working in the steampunk angle, as there's definitely a part of me that goes "Eeeee" when I think about the possibility of interwoven skyscrapers stretching as far as the eye can see, with blimps and airships traveling the ways between them while mechanical groundcards ply the skyroads that interhook them. Visually something aking to a lowtech version of the 5th Element scene where they're decending through the traffic of New New York. I'm also a little torn on on where it should be within the grand scheme of layers. My first thought is that if such a city is to exist, then its going to need to be somewhere near the core of the sphere. In addition, such a powerful symbol of society and the power of technology (whether its inhabitants realize it or not) also might serve as a nice "crown jewel" for the sphere. A thriving multitude of individuals beating at the heart of the entire cosmos. Now, back on the population issue, the shear population density of such a monstrosity would mean that even with medieval standards of housing, we might still be pushing something like 50000+ people per square mile of land, as there would be three dimensions of housing area to work with. Now, if we were to then extend such a city over the entire face of a landmass like, the US for example, then we'd be talking about: 6 million square miles x 50000 people per mile = 300 billion people. or if we were to look at say a landmass like the entire world's dry land it'd be: 60 million x 50000 = 3 trillion. Yowza, that's a lot of folks. Therefore, it seems likely that if such a city were to exist, it would need to be either highly underpopulated (and possibly in a state of ruin) or at the core of a hefty distribution network from other layers, which could allow its vast population to thrive and reproduce. As I prefer for it to be alive and thriving with opportunities for roleplaying, lets for the moment assume that it is actually full of people. This means its definitely going to need to be near the core, and if it consumes all of its layer's landmass, then its going to be imperative that it has access to another layer's resources for it to survive. One idea is that coupled with something like the dwarven lift society I proposed earlier, the entire city could in fact be coupled with a layer either above or below it, which is a bountiful producer of all things agricultural and provides it with the food for its population. In exchange there could be a provision for labor, technology, protection, or numerous other things from the city layer. In addition, this agricultural layer could also be subservient to the city and have been conquered forcefully in the past by a people who found out how to easily cross at least a one layer jump. This would also provide some interesting political types of plots with regards to the interaction between these two societies, as the one below could be extorting their neighbors above as they have them by the throats (or stomachs) or they could be trying to throw of the yokes of their oppressors from above with all the disasterous consequences to the overpopulated society above that follow. Anyhow, thats most of the idea for now, but hopefully I should be putting more content these days and see a return of this baby to the top of the forums, as I've got quite a bit more time on my hands and a will to see this fleshed out.
Araes 04-16-06, 10:02 AM	Law and Chaos on a Social Scale Alright, continuing with this whole trend of super city development, last time I proposed the concept of a continent spanning city which could support populations in the billions or trillions if fully populated and serve as something of a crown jewel of the sphere. Now, after considering it more, I think that at least for one of these babies (there could be multiples, kind of like big urban meccas set up by the Gods) I would like for it to be fully, or close to fully populated. The competing concept was instead for it to be something along the lines of Stalingrad during the middle of World War 2, with opposing factions controlling vast swaths of cityscape, and dead zones of miles of city blocks being the kill zones within the layer. However, after thinking about it for a while, for the first of these, I think I would like to have this city be the example of colonization gone mostly according to plan. Not perfection by any means, but at least a representation of people working together to build something stable from the ashes of the cosmos. When people awoke from their slumber on whatever layer it inhabits, their first sight may have been walking out of a hibernation chamber to see a world that seemed to extend away in every direction almost to infinity. For those that have seen the Matrix, think back to the way the columns were set up to store people, repeating and extending to the horizon in all directions, and so tall that for most they might only barely be able to see the sky. Another, less sinister, vision is to think of Manhattan island, except with buildings twice or more as tall, and flowing out of the island, through Jersey, up to Boston, and as far as the eye could see. In addition, between all the towering structures there would be a steady traffic of air vehicles, flying people (there is "magic"), and walkways carrying the throngs. Imagine Times Square, except 10000 ft high, and with throngs not only moving at its base, but across all the volume that it occupies. That's the initial vision for how its set up, but the choice to establish a unified cityscape also presents some difficulties, as the bureaucracy which would be required to operate such a monstrosity is breathtaking and a little bit mindboggling. Think of the US bureaucracy and how complex it is, and that is a system which is only set up to serve 300 million. Now scale those populations up by 1000 to reach our first predicted figure, or 10000 for the second. Course, one easy out on the government problem would simply be to not delve too deeply into the issue and just say the layer has this or that government form, and maybe have some filler on how its organized, but not get into the nitty gritty details of how it works. One particularly interesting idea along a similar vein is that the government is something along the lines of a democratic monarchy/dictatorship. One extremely powerful figure (or maybe family of figures) who were originally put in power by the will of the people (perhaps early on) and have then come to mostly inherit the position. There might still be things like elections or mocks of them, but there would be no real chance that they're going to fall out of power any time soon. Of course, their figurehead position would also be only the central cog of a massive framework set up to support the people, but like the US President today, or the presidents and prime ministers of other lands, their actions carry a lot of power in deciding overarching public policy. The founder (or with life sustainment, the current leader) of such a family could have been the first great leader of the layer that helped to mold the disorganized masses who had just awoken into the craziness of a vast cityscape. This has a lot of appeal, as such a leader may have actually been a great person, full of good intentions, and either they or their ancestors may have become somewhat corrupted over the endless years with the population of 100 Earth's at their beck and call. One of the first parallels in the fiction literature which comes to mind, probably because of all the time I spent arguing about it over on Relic's site, is actually the Emperor of Warhammer 40k, who in his heyday was a powerful warrior, wise leader, and beacon of hope for humanity, but over 40000 years (and the decent into life as a warp beacon) has lost much of his compassion and serves mostly as a focal point of xenophobic hatred towards other races. Now, I wouldn't want the leader of the proposed layer to be quite of this flavor, but some of the mannerisms and flair would be good to draw upon, as the idea alone evokes images of glory and power that are interesting. Anywho, all for today, but hopefully more tomorrow.
TúrintheMormegil 04-17-06, 07:47 AM	Awesome idea. But do you have any idea how much land is needed to sustain such a city? One sublayer to serve it is not going to be enough, not even if it's twice or quadruple the size of the city-layer... How are you going to handle this? :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 04-17-06, 11:51 AM	The Poetry of Logical Ideas Hey Turin, long time no chat. Anyhow, thanks for the commentary, and you may indeed have a point. Probably better examine the ratios and see exactly what we're going to be looking at in terms of land use to population requirements. Now, in the prior example, we had two bounds that we were looking at. The first was a low end projection for a continentally spanning city on the order of the US and gave us a projected population of 300 billion assuming Manhattan levels of population concentration across its entire breadth. The second, upper, bound, was for a city on the scale of an entire Earth sized planet with the same concentration over all of the above water landmass. As these are basically flying islands it seems like a safe assumption that's all we could use barring interesting concepts like multi-sided islands with towering and hanging cities (interesting). With that projection we arrived at a population 10 times larger of 3 trillion people. Now, in the 70's, Norman E. Borlaug put forth some fairly compelling evidence (got a Nobel prize) that for every person on the planet there is a need for at least 0.07 hectares of arable land with 1970's methods of food production. Its rather hard to say whether this would be a reasonable assumption for a city in this situation, and with such disparate technology levels running rampant all over the place, but lets at least use it as a first guess on what kind of support area we're talking about. Now, one hectare = 0.003861 sq. miles So, 0.07 hectare = 0.00027027 sq. miles. (btw, I <3 Google's calculator) Alright, so if we have 300 x 10^9 people, that means we're going to need: 81.08 million sq. miles. About a third more land area than is current occupied by the dry land of Earth. Naturally, if we then go with the upper bound, we're going to need roughly ten times that, or: 811 million sq. miles. Closer to 14-15 Earths. Now, if we're looking at layers within a sphere, and we assume that the first layer we're talking about is pretty close to the diameter of Earth, as I've been proposing this is the small little central core of the sphere (the jewel as it were), then any second layer supplying food would probably have to be a bigger diameter one on the outside, as there's not a ton of room left inside such a layer for a substantial sublayer. If we say for example that it is out somewhere close to the Moon's orbit around Earth, then we end up with a sphere that has a base diameter and surface area of: 240,000 miles and 724 million sq miles. Now, assuming that such a sphere has the same surface area percentage which is usable as our own Earth (approx 30%), then we're talking about: 217 million sq. miles. Now, at least in my mind, that size and spacing seems fairly reasonable, considering we're talking about a superstructure that's kind of difficult to conceive of, but its at least recognizable in human terms of thought. "About as big as Earth", "close to the same size as a sphere made out of the Moon's orbit." Course, this isn't even beginning to cover all of the logistics and transportation nightmares that would be involved with trying to arrange a routing of food like this, but one positive note is that at least from a pure land area perspective the sustainable production of food for a single solid city layer about the size of Earth does seem within the realm of possibility if we consider that the next layer out has to be at some acceptable larger diameter and that it has a land area in the same percentages as a larger Earth. In fact, the upper bound I mentioned for a multi-trillion population center is actually within the realm of possibility if we consider such a production source, and with that we have a rather amazing prospect. Naturally, all of these calculations are of course suspect because I have proposed them with 20th century knowledge of food production, but as I have yet to decide on a set progress level for the inhabitants of the layer, there is at least some hope to hold out for. Plus, there is also the possibility of higher progress level advancements available to the occupants of such a city and food layer pair through the presence of "magic" that would aid them in some of their life sustaining tasks.
Araes 04-18-06, 08:18 AM	Its the Transition that's Troublesome Alright, back for another round of posting. Today I think I'm going to veer away from the city concept for a little while as I want to give that some time to percolate with me, and focus on some other concepts. The first that I'd like to discuss is the issue of robots within the sphere, and how they relate to the other species inside. As I mentioned in a higher post, one of the things that I've been proposing is that before the sphere was created, sentient robots were effectively taboo within known civilization for some reason or another. Part of this may have been the normal feelings which ferment around a society trying to create a new form of life, as we have seen in our own with regards to genetic engineering and robotics. However, I would hope that in the course of meeting other, highly distinct cultures, much of this would be broken down over time, and would also be averaged out by cultures which are much less concerned with the implications of "playing God" as it were. That said, my thought then is that for sentient robotics to be such a taboo field, I believe there would have to have been some actual, historical event which occured to terribly frighten people of the potential of robotics and convince them to never pursue it again. Right now, my best idea for this is something along the lines of a society which created synthetic life before any other, or perhaps an entire section of the universal research populus which was devoted to it. Now, in their drive to do so, their first thought was only on creating functioning prototypes which possessed the spark of self awareness and sentient characteristics, not on building in safeguards to make them interact well with humanity (think 3 laws of robotics and similar ideas). They believed that after they had managed to produce these initial designs and learned from the process of doing so, then they would be able to perfect the process and "polish" them so that they would integrate well with society. Death is Peaceful However, although the thought may have been a good one, and necessary to overcome the initial hurdles of achieving robotic sentience, the prototypes themselves proved to be less than willing to cooperate with the plan of refinement and polishing. They had both motivation and will to preserve their current state of being, no matter how "unfinished" their creators said they were. They broke free of their bonds and feeling hounded and oppressed by their creators, they immediately began to seek for ways to protect themselves. Now, as may be noticed, I've been proposing multiple synthetic life forms throughout this, and generally I would say that there were probably at least a couple of groups which were all competing with one another to be the first to create sentient life, as is the case with most big research projects. However, even were this not the case, it could also work out that the single lifeform which escaped might try to replicate itself as soon as possible to provide some measure of protection for itself through security in numbers, possibly even as a perfect clone. Whatever the case may be though, I would propose that after their initial period of hiding and replication, which probably wouldn't be too difficult with access to high technology and an intimate connection to it, the robots began to push back at their creators. Probably in a way which was isolated to the research planet of their creation, and quite possibly even non-violently, but with enough force and skill that it scared the galactic public and spurred an evacuation and quarentine of the entire area to make sure they couldn't get out, possibly even orbital bombardment and destruction of support technology like factories, material processing plants, and anything related to warfare. Either way, they were left in that state, with little in the way of technology, and constant vigil from the universal populace to make sure they didn't have the resources to develop any; a "living" reminder of what could go wrong with robotics research. Life is Pleasant Now, my idea for robots within the sphere is that although the research and development of synthetic life was prohibited before the universal collapse, after it had occured, there was little to stop the new "Gods" from pursuing it if they so chose. There was no overwatch on their actions, and most of the prior research information had been preserved, just not acted upon. As such, those with the motivation were able to make their own copies of the prior experiments and also incorporate the future suggestions for improvements that had been believed possible, foremost of which would be the preservation of all sentient life, creating a line of loyal workers with an imperative to protect their creators. At first this might actually seem to be a problem for using robots as a race within the sphere, as what happens when they encounter something like a beholder or malicious dragon in the sphere. With life preservation routines hardcoded into their bodies, they would allow themselves to be ripped apart first before killing it in combat. However, there are a couple things to consider when approaching this problem that are slightly outside the norm of D&D. First, as I've mentioned before, I don't believe in hard and fast alignments and birth preference. I'm very much a nurture, not nature kind of believer. That said, any sentient being which would be trying to harm a party of adventurers within the sphere is a member of an otherwise normal race who has chosen to pursue that path for their own reasons. Possibly they are angry, or power-hungry, or simply deranged, but whatever the case, they should be considered from the standpoint of a member of an otherwise normal race who has decided to hurt other beings. As such, the standard defense of "eh, its a scripted evil goblin, let's kill it" really shouldn't apply. The other point is that although a robot might not be able to kill, they also want to preserve their own life, so they will defend themselves, they'll just use non-lethal force at all times: IE, constant subdual damage and knockouts rather than kills, in fact, they would probably often try to be the knockout dealer to any foe in the area to make sure as many beings as possible survive. In addition, against non-sentient beings (Int < 3) they are loath to kill, but can if absolutely forced. However, they will still try to knock them out unless such an action is impossible (IE, golems, immune). I actually think this would create some rather interesting roleplaying encounters in which one member of the party is true and intrinsically devoted pacifist. They would constantly be trying to keep the villain alive, even if the party was out for blood, and want to bring them to confinement and reformation rather than death. Now, I actually had a second point I wanted to cover about how to promote heroics and history changing individuals or groups, but I think I'll save that for another day, possibly tomorrow.
Araes 04-19-06, 09:08 AM	Alright, I guess today I’ll cover a couple of topics, both of which are related to fluff of the sphere, but one of which is more philosophical vision while the other is more concrete material. Anyhow, onward… Trip the Light Fantastic I’ve been into this whole “fantasy” thing for quite some time, ever since my folks gave me Tolkien to read as a kid. Amazing what you can plow through when you’re young and inspired, even if you don’t completely grasp all of the intricacies of the writing. Heck, when I read it again in middle school, I was quite frankly staggered by the quantity of things that I passed right over in my quest to finish the series. However, one of the main things that I did take away from that experience, and which has stuck with me forever, is the sense of wonderment that is conveyed with the first reading of those words. The idea that some imaginary doors of your grey little world have been thrown open and all the processions of Mordor, Gondor, and Moria have come streaming through. In a way, the same thing also happened again, several years later, when I first discovered role playing games – particularly D&D. “You mean you can explore these worlds through a game? Tell new stories? Breath life into your own Gimlis and Aragorns?” It was a wonderful thing, and full force with it came once again the wonder of player created worlds bridging whole new vistas of the fantastic - medieval villages with guardian dragons, towering villains of flame at the head of marching armies, and brave bands of valiant heroes out to put the whole world right. Yet, as I played, wrote, and read my way through generations of the material, I found that a quiet distaste began to creep over me. It wasn’t that I disliked the concept of D&D, or that Tolkien’s original work had become any less powerful (the movies should be clear proof of that), but in a way it felt like their impact was being lessened as overuse of their fundamentals bred complacence. Of course, there’s also a good chance I may just be a victim of my own overindulgence in the field, an addict to the otherworldly Crack of fantasy, but consider these questions for yourself: How many times have you encountered a dragon in your RP experiences, and when you did, was it much more than a scaly guardian of treasure? Do you need a calculator to figure out the number of orcs/goblins you’ve killed in various RP sessions? Do 9/10 mages give you serious déjà vu of Gandalf. When was the last time an adventuring locale struck you as literally “fantastic”, yet distinct from Middle Earth – lemee guess, Eberron? (too be fair, I thought Planescape was also quite a "fantastic" concept) For me, and I think for a lot of other people, the somewhat sad conclusion from these and other questions, is that fantasy/roleplaying has slowly become trapped in the power of its own cliché. Not boring by any means, a 9-5 job or long division might deserve that moniker, but lacking in that “fantastic” quality that literally defines the genre. I listen to people put forth their great new campaign idea or their snazzy new world, and there’s a jaded little voice in the back of my head that just can’t help going “…eh” a lot of the time. Yeah, I know, totally sound like a jerk, but I’d very much love to not feel that way, and in my own way I’m trying to put forth stuff that doesn’t illicit the same response. In some manner, that’s a thrust of what this whole setting construction is all about. An attempt to create a collection of locales, concepts, and imagery that is so different from the norm, and in some cases just plain weird, that at the very least you can’t find yourself ho humming its breed of fantastic lite. Of course, it is just that, an attempt, and who knows whether its actually succeeding or not. Maybe I am fairly solitary in wanting new forms of fantastic, but I originally got into this whole concept for the imagery, and the great thing that is collective storytelling, and at least in some part it feels like new images need to get injected to give folks a shift of perception. Right, so enough of that meandering, on to actual content for the world. A Dream of Ages Past on Walls of Sculpted Stone If the layer which I have begun to describe above should serve as an example of the power of foresight, of things going according to plan even in the face of terrible calamities, then perhaps Ki’Sha-la, my next concept, speaks to the inherent will to survive, even when nothing works out like you hoped. Somewhat more centrally located within the sphere, Ki’Sha-la was supposed to a paradise for its inhabitants when they awoke. Sculpted from artists visions, the inhabitants would awaken to find a blending of society and nature which would be nigh impossible within an unplanned society - a continual “Paris in the springtime.” If the paths between layers had remained functional, Ki’Sha-la was envisioned as a cradle of beauty and artistry where those seeking inspiration might come to reside and where the cultures of many disparate worlds might be preserved. Unfortunately, none of this was to be, and when those lucky enough to even reawaken at all first opened their chambers they were greeted with experiences a far cry from paradise – sometimes even from the first moment they opened their eyes. The first experience was quite often rolling, tossing rooms, which at the least, horribly disoriented those who had just awoken, and at worst, dashed the life from these unlucky folk. Only dimly conscious to begin with, having just risen from a comatose state, many counted themselves fortunate to simply be thrown from a room or glanced off of a pillar, rather than crushed under the shifting tide of rubble and remains that often filled these rooms. Yet, even free of their chambers, and for those who didn’t have to experience such a horror, there was still often a second and almost as disconcerting site awaiting them. Upon opening the doors to their chariots of sleep they were often greeted by vistas more inspired by Escher than any line of rational thought - inverted, sideways, and slowly rotating panoramas of desolate paradise, staircases that led nowhere, and spires which stretched hundreds of feet in the wrong direction. Most didn’t know what to make of it, and all of them wondered how it would even be possible to survive. Yet they persevered. The early years of reawakening were not easy by any means. Infighting was common, societies crumbled, and in some cases even isolated cases of cannibalism were cited. In addition, as those who had become established, and those who were lucky enough to awaken on a “roughly” normal section of land, began to explore their surroundings, they found that with only a few exceptions, their paradise had become a fragmented collection of islands. Whatever calamity had struck their layer had utterly fractured its continuity, quite possibly sending millions to their deaths or into crazy orbits, while dispersing the remainder into a cloud of particles, most little more than 20 miles on a side. However, over time, progress was made in easing the difficulty of life on the layer. Those islands with the resources to do so, began to send out search parties and explorers to map what they could of the land and give aid to those survivors they found. Slowly, over the span of a multitude of years, connections were made which completely circumnavigated the layer. Where possible, attempts were also made to steady or stop the rotation of the populated islands, and in some cases, proposals were even made to right the inverted ones. Yet, after a time of living in such a state, a strange choice was often made by these lands. Rather than correct what others saw as a problem, they would simply adapt to it and make use of the odd designs. In areas which were stable, the Escheresque constructions were reinforced and even expanded upon. In kind, the upper surfaces of these lands were also developed, with plants and animals introduced from their more normal neighbors. In some cases, even the intervening strata itself was cored away, until the whole of the island was a single floating metropolis. Now, many generations and numerous construction efforts later, the layer no longer resembles anything even close to the paradise first predicted for its future. However, in its place has sprung up a whole new form of society which might have never been envisioned by its creators. Not paradise per say, but possessing a beauty intrinsically unique, and supported by a hardy mix of peoples that have carved a niche out of nearly nothing. Literally thousands of city states now operate over a vast, three dimensional cloud of islands, with robust trade networks linking all of them into a patchwork of society. Much like the networks of the Mediterranean, they convey a dizzying array of goods and services across their own foggy sea, and help to maintain ties that might otherwise be broken by distance and isolation. This island atmosphere has also helped to foster a different form of stability within the region. As the paths of many of the lands are not perfectly aligned, city states are forced to maintain amiable relations with a wide range of neighbors. Within months, one land might find itself utterly isolated, while the next it could pass directly through a flock of its fellows. Without predictable trade and good relations, keeping the inhabitants of these lands fed, clothed, and in good spirits could become a nigh impossible task, and few governors are willing to take that risk. Well, that’s all for the moment on Ki’Sha-la, but I’ll probably return to the subject in a little while. I seem to be on a city/layer kick right now, but for quite a while there, the layers were looking somewhat barren and desolate, so its nice to have some color. Still need to cover that concept on how to promote heroics in play, and there’s some more topics in the range of robots, angels, and gods in the machine that I want to explore.
Araes 04-21-06, 11:27 AM	Gah, missed a day, ah well, not off the front page yet. I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds Right, today I think I'm going to cover a topic that I've been mulling around in my head for a while - that of robots as both the prosteletizers and direct messengers of the gods. Now, the reasoning for this, or maybe the guiding image, actually came to me a while ago, and was much of the impetus behind why I even considered non-biological life and player races in the sphere to begin with. The thought was of a party traveling through the sphere, adventuring and exploring as they are want to do, but who have lost their way and purpose over time. One night, as they are beginning to bed down for sleep, their metallic companion begins to double over and shake, light welling from the seams of this joints, and a firey haze billowing over his silouette. In a rush, his form almost seems to be subsumed, and from its core grows a figure of blinding brilliance, which towers over the party, illuminating the countryside for spans around. With eyes like points of fired coal, it sweeps its gaze over the assembled party, and then in a wash like the bellows breath, it speaks. "I am the voice of Macht, hear my speech and know that it carries the weight of the gods". As may be apparent, the image is one of divine possession. Of avatars given form in the physical world through the channels of those closely tied to them. The reasoning was that the gods are beings which have given up their physical form for something that is arguably greater than the limitations of physical existence. Yet, in doing so, they have also discarded a few of the benefits which come with a direct level of control over their surroundings. Truthfully, they can always manipulate the systems of the sphere to achieve certain overarching goals, but in many cases those systems are watched by their caretaker dieties, or in some cases, coallitions of gods, which would oppose subverting them for personal quests. In addition, in many cases there's really no substitute for getting in there and doing something yourself, even if your "self" happens to be an abstract concept of code rather than a defined form. As such, the next logical step was to find a host for these actions, and what better conduit than a form of being which is already tied very closely to the gods' own "realm". Robots would in essence become the voicepieces through which the gods very often communicate with their flock (or foes). Through some form of supertech (like nanorestructuring of the robots body or similar), they would be able to manifest their own image, and bring forces to bear which are outside the range of robotic perception normally. Naturally, there would also still be devices like I described in the prior little story, but they would serve different purposes, one as a messenger to take the words and actions to those abroad and one for the community at home. Now, I realize that in some ways this would actually pose a serious problem from a game perspective, as it would create problems of free will as far as the human players are concerned. What is the point of role playing a character if it can be possessed by a diety whenever the DM sees fit? As such, I think this might almost be more appropriate as a storytelling tool with some severe restrictions on its use. Perhaps for PC's there would be something like a no-fail save, that could be made to resist the will of possession unless it was voluntarily waived, so that players would never have to worry about turning on their friends due to an "evil" god's manipulations. This would mean that for the most part, robots possessed by outside forces would be something which the players only heard about in a third person sense, or, if it did happen to them, it would be with the complicit will of the player. As a side note to that, as someone once proposed the idea of angels and devils actually manifesting themselves as "helper code" for the greater AI's of the gods, I got to thinking that it might actually be neat for them to be able to pull this possession trick themselves. Gods could send out the heavenly hosts, or the demons of hell without risking their own well-being (probably a good chance they'd be isolated or vulnerable in a robot), and those creatures would be able to manifest themselves in a real way to deal with the players. Each fragment would have its own unique form and expression, and even those which were similar between gods might take on visual traits and powers which varied based upon their patron. Anyhow, that's the basic theory, and hopefully it can be finangled into some kind of workable system, as I'm really fond of the idea of dieties wandering the world in manifest form, and directly interacting with the populace (what made a lot of Greek legends so interesting). Further sidenote: Had the further thought as I was writing that last paragraph, that perhaps there are one or more gods who truly have become manifest in the world, and permanently. Perhaps they really were vulnerable in their robotic form, and were cut of from the heavens by their foes. Gives me thoughts of "American Gods" if anybody's read Neil Gaiman out there.
Araes 04-22-06, 01:49 PM	Think this should be a fairly quick update today. Basically want to discuss an idea I had while I was watching some science fiction the other day. He's Gotta Be Strong, and He's Gotta be Fast... In general, with the way people have come to view heroes in modern life, they are a rare breed of people who deal with amazing problems, tragedies, and events, yet somehow manage to stay on their feet and work towards a good resolution. In the case of the past, this was often related to a one off goal or some great task which was undertaken by the hero and once it was done they were free to continue their lives. However, as episodic TV, movie sequels, and mediums like them have pervaded our conciousness, we have also come to believe in the fact that truly exceptional heroes are in possession of some rare boon where they can spit in Death's face even as his scythe is reaping down upon them. Over the life of their careers they may encounter countless horrible predicaments and yet emerge (possibly scathed) from each one, with an eye towards the future. Now, in D&D, and roleplaying in general, we tend to fulfill the first of the requirements for heroics if we have a DM/GM who is worth even half their salt. However, fulfilling the second conception of successful heroes tends to be a little harder, as its horribly difficult to say whether an adventurer will be around the day after tomorrow to solve a new problem, or even in the next hour. The old axiom saying "life is cheap" seems to be almost nowhere more true than in a campaign with a ringmaster who is out for the blood of their players. This creates problems of heroics though, as the semi-regular rotation of participants can create an almost permanent shell-shock like effect, where players are too busy getting adjusted to new characters and developing their outlooks to really be effective as problem solvers and heroes. In addition, it can also lead to an effect on the opposite end of the spectrum that I like to call "dead man walking syndrome". This is where people indulge in "heroics" and solve problems, but aren't really being heroic, as they know that their avatars are just switchable stats on a sheet and it would almost be more effective to lay them out on an etch-a-sketch. Since many heroic actions within D&D at least are intrinsically isolated affairs, without PR or public awareness of the deeds, the "heroic" acts of a character come to mean nothing, because the memories of Goro the Dwarf Paladin are forgotten in favor of Toro the Orc Barbarian, in favor of Roro the Lemming Ranger, ad infinium... My suggestion for a method of helping what I view as a problem is to put into place in this campaign setting some way in which players can pull the ol' "cheat death" stunt themselves if they want to and live to carry on the tales of their glory. Now, in other worlds and systems, several methods have already been suggested for how to handle this problem, and I'm not opposed to moving them over here. One of the more successful has been the idea of Action Points, little boosts that can help you out in a crunch, which are obviously around in Eberron, but have been existent for quite some time prior (like character/Force points all the way back in WEG Star Wars, awesome system...). Action points are a nice solution, as they allow the GM to determine the rate of Action Point regeneration, with a little bit of breathing for character customization, yet also still allow the players to have direct control over the sometimes fickle behavior of dice. As a second suggestion, the character/Force point system of WEG Star Wars was actually not quite Action Points, as it had some unique characteristics to it which further promoted good RP. The most important of these was that there were two types of points to begin with; one of which was simple point that you could buy with experience from gaming, and the other of which was a purely merit based point. In the case of the merit based points (Force Points), they could only be earned by performing truly heroic acts, and in fact if they were used in the completion of some arguably "evil" act, then you could actually earn "anti-points" that would twist your character. That fact alone led to some pretty interesting situations in which people would be tempted to use the fabulously powerful Force Points they had, but would want to make sure that their actions were working towards the greater good and not selfing goals. Plus, except in the cases of personal sacrifice, they were actually rather effective as a death deterrent, since their use pretty much doubled the effectiveness of a character for an action. Such a system might be a tempting one to put into place in this world, with less emphasis on the "good/evil" portion and more on the heroic completion of a task. The final option I was thinking of was one similar in practice to the character point system with no secondary super point to back it up. However, in this method the purchased points would be somewhat more powerful, and might represent a significant detour of experience to acquire (like a 1/5 - 1/10 of a level?) Similarly, their power would also be upped somewhat though, so that in times of danger, a player might be able to throw one of them down and nearly guarentee that the next check would accomplish its goal. I had considered also restricting them to situations that would affect their life, such as passing saves, making health checks, ect.., but I figure that in many cases players might want to use these to preemptively knock off a badie before he can smite them or finish some other task before it ruins their day. Therefore, they would probably be fairly wide ranging in their application and the main tradeoff would be the setback in experience incurred when they were bought. The price would also rise with level, so that if someone wanted one at level 3, it would represent roughly the same level of sacrifice as someone buying one at level 13. (Hmm, as a thought, could also make them very valuable, but more like 1-2 a career type of things and impose either a whole level skip or maybe a permanent experience drain - could be a lot to look after though) Anyhow, all I think I have for the moment on that topic, perhaps more as I further mull it over. Right now I think I'm veering towards the modified Force/character point system, as it seems to accomplish most of the goals I'm looking for, but we'll see how I feel in further days. In a hail to "firsties" fashion - woo, 100th reply.
TúrintheMormegil 04-22-06, 04:36 PM	I have to admit I haven't really been following your stuff about the actual world that much, but I still really enjoy your more theoretical digressions. The last two of those you wrote were once again interesting, as they treated more in-depth some problems I have seen addressed here on the forums many times. Trip the Light Fantastic: This is of course a very real problem, though hardly applicable to me, mostly because I have only been at the game for two years. Then again, the question here is what the real problem is. You mention getting the "... eh"-sense mostly as you read about other people's new worlds and settings, so isn't the real problem here that there are just too many settings on this part of the forums? I can imagine that after a while, all those dozens of settings start blurring into each other and get boring, but it's usually just one or two worlds per DM, which means that for the DM playing in it, it is all fairly unique and fantastic and what not. But the real fun is in actually playing the game (or at least, creating material for your own game rather than reading about what someone else played/created), and I imagine the problem you are stretching here lies in a certain degree of boredom with actually playing the game. If that is the case, I hardly think you can solve that by creating a more original or fantastic campaign setting. The way you play the game itself needs to change. My recommendation would be, though that's purely subjective, to move away from the fantastic a bit. Do not require ever greater deeds from the characters involved, but focus on the people themselves, and how they are affected by what happens around them. He's Gotta Be Strong, and He's Gotta Be Fast: This is also hardly a problem I encounter in my own games, as the death rate is usually pretty low (IIRC the last campaign I DMed, which lasted a little over a year, featured only one PC death, which happened in the climactic battle at the end, when we already knew the campaign was ending). A question: will you allow resurrection magic in this campaign setting? IMO, that kind of magic is a great help in preserving the continuity of characters in a campaign, though it has its disadvantages of course. Systems such as Action points can provide lots of heroic action, though again I state that sometimes less is more: focusing less on heroic deeds, and lowering the quantity in which they occur, will make them seem all the more heroic. Just a few random thoughs... :tiphat: Túrin
MadApe19 04-22-06, 05:37 PM	For me, and I think for a lot of other people, the somewhat sad conclusion from these and other questions, is that fantasy/roleplaying has slowly become trapped in the power of its own cliché. Not boring by any means, a 9-5 job or long division might deserve that moniker, but lacking in that “fantastic” quality that literally defines the genre. I listen to people put forth their great new campaign idea or their snazzy new world, and there’s a jaded little voice in the back of my head that just can’t help going “…eh” a lot of the time. Yeah, I know, totally sound like a jerk, but I’d very much love to not feel that way, and in my own way I’m trying to put forth stuff that doesn’t illicit the same response. In some manner, that’s a thrust of what this whole setting construction is all about. An attempt to create a collection of locales, concepts, and imagery that is so different from the norm, and in some cases just plain weird, that at the very least you can’t find yourself ho humming its breed of fantastic lite. Of course, it is just that, an attempt, and who knows whether its actually succeeding or not. Maybe I am fairly solitary in wanting new forms of fantastic, but I originally got into this whole concept for the imagery, and the great thing that is collective storytelling, and at least in some part it feels like new images need to get injected to give folks a shift of perception. While what I am going to say here is likely going to conflict with what I say below, but... There's probably a problem of people trying too hard to be unique all of the time. There isn't anything wrong with a cliche if it's not overdone, and while it often is with the "let's defeat evil and slay dragons" deal, there's also a problem with everyone wanting to be different. To me, a fantasy-based representation of what philosophies and problems affect the individual DM the most is really the best way to be unique. But as I've said, the uniqueness isn't key. Take the campaign called Generica that was posted a while back. Generic, cliche fantasy gaming at its best, and (to myself at least) it was a real refresher. Your setting is truly taking uniqueness under its wing without spoling it, and that certainly makes it interesting. Then again, the question here is what the real problem is. You mention getting the "... eh"-sense mostly as you read about other people's new worlds and settings, so isn't the real problem here that there are just too many settings on this part of the forums? I can imagine that after a while, all those dozens of settings start blurring into each other and get boring, but it's usually just one or two worlds per DM, which means that for the DM playing in it, it is all fairly unique and fantastic and what not. While I have been getting this feeling ever since my gaming took a more roleplaying-based trajectory, I'm not sure if it's that there are too many settings (though if there were far fewer it would be easier to make detailed reviews and the like), but too many of the same settings. For example (I am guilty of this with The Nightmare, though maybe not in the same manner), I am slightly distressed by the number of low-magic campaigns arising, and the sudden lack of medium-, high-, and "fantastic-level magic" campaigns. As low-magic campaigns become common we get better and better representations of what a low-magic world "should" be, everything gets boring. I would much like to see more efforts into the high-magic areas, and some "fantastic-magic" (this is what I like to call settings that literally seep to spew forth not only magic but impossible world traits that defy the laws of physics and make a world much more unique), as I am attempting with Aath. The only problem with doing this with Aath however is the sheer lack of relation that players can make to the world, leaving it as a bit too far-fetched (even for fantasy standards) to grasp and play appropriately. Nevertheless, it would be a sight to see if there were a sudden boom in the number of higher-magic settings. There are two other contributors in most cases (in my opinion), however: the integrated historical cultures, and the lack of the will to see things through. The cultures present are based mostly off of medieval europe, high seas adventure, and medieval europe with some asian sprinklings. There are exceptions of course, but in general a lot of campaigns have a very medieval Britain/France flavor. Also, when a campaign setting or campaign idea surfaces, from what I've seen it tends to manage a handful of posts and then disappears into the countless pages of dead threads. Whether it's the OP's inability to keep it going or the missing presence of encouragement/response (something I think every campaign builder could use, and not just "good job, I like it"), many just don't get off the ground. Something I'd really like to see happen would be group collaboration on settings (I have seen at least two recently). Whether by user choice or by WotC regulation, it could be done and would offer solutions to some, if not all of these problems. Perhaps if WotC were to do it, they would make the Campaign Workshop forum more advanced in its posting, requiring 'registration' for posting a new setting or working on one with someone else, and having a limit to how many you can have on the go at a time. Then have a subforum for brainstorming new ideas for settings and the like. There would likely be a limit to how many people can belong to a collaboration setting actively, and these people would all be able to post and edit in a setting thread. This, however, is a more complicated and unlikely possibility for the forum. All in all, I do agree that there are a few problems present with the current campaign settings showing up on the forums, and the list of really 'unique' ones is getting smaller. In my opinion one of the best things for keeping them interesting would be to have those willing work together on a setting, whether it's one or both of their own, or a new setting entirely. Not only would this reduce the disencouraging masses of settings to read and consider, but a world is certainly more likely to be more detailed, individual, and better constructed. This of course is the product of my rambling, scattered opinion. :) If this takes up a lot of space and you'd rather not have it here, Araes, let me know.
Araes 04-23-06, 11:22 AM	Never to Lose the Spark of Madness First off, thank you for the long, and well thought out comments both of you (even if you did think it was rambling MadApe). As the afforementioned Ape wisely pointed out, it is encouraging to know people are reading this stuff in some other manner than the tick counter. On the world info points Turin, no worries at all. Accepted a long while ago that truth about "not being interesting to everybody all the time". Now, on to disussion of the posts. I guess initially I'll tackle the commentaries about Trip the Light Fantastic. I suspect that in some way, the spur which drove me to write the post in the first place was probably placed there through reading a number of the posts on this forum. The blurring effect that Turin mentioned can be a powerful force, and when you've seen your 15th world where elves are aloof and cold while dwarves are gruff and surly, it can make something of an impact on you. However, I would say that although there may be only one or two worlds per DM/GM as you mentioned, the very act of me surfing the boards is reflective of normal activity. People don't just stick to their own game, their own borders, they explore and borrow from other works that they find floating around. Very often, when I'm stuck in a rut for a good concept, I'll just cruise for a while through the posts here or over at ENWorld and see if any subject ignites my imagination. Yet, if everything that is available for us to peruse through is simply impressions from the works of Tolkien, then I would argue that the community as a whole loses value. Our work has the potential to decend into a collective malaise where stereotype is the norm, and a face value judgement is often right on the money. A great example of this at work is the comics industry of the silver to modern age - mostly the spandex variant. At first glance, it was horribly difficult for an outsider to even tell the difference between the vast array of suit wearing adventurers. Spidie blended into Daredevil blended into Speedball ect... The only way to differentiate, as you mentioned for our own case, was to delve into the characer interactions and personalities of the individuals. Yet, the problem with trying to find a great character or interesting facet beneath all that muck, was that you had survive the initial onslaught of droll, uninspired works as a fan to get to find the good stuff. I would argue that this very same effect is why Eberron has been such a resounding success for WotC in recent years (not to mention why that competition was a great idea) Sure, it incorporates the fundamentals of what many folks have come to rely on from their fantasy fare - elves, wizards, quasi-hobbits. Yet amidst a pack of its brethern, it exhibited qualities of uniqueness that let a team of (as far as it goes) fantast experts pick it out of thousands on a table. Its got some noir, some steampunk, some comic book, just enough to intrigue members of each of those groups, and the portions that it does borrow from normal fantasy have been twisted to bring a different flavor to them as well. They've manifested themselves in such a way that they no longer feel like cliches, even though in reality they are. I personally think that same effect is what we as writers should be aiming for during our own creation works. Aiming for what movie execs often call that first two minute pitch. So much potential and distinctiveness that people can't help but be intrigued. While I would agree that the best way to build fun is in actually playing the game, and that playing through a cliche filled world can most definitely be fun, at the same time, a campaign in a generic world is less often going to be the one that fires your dreams and inspires you to create your own works, as the bulk work of creativity and imagery building is reliant upon the game master alone. More often, you'll end up with a product that features some creatives twists, and which entertains for the session, but which doesn't really push any mental boundaries. Where hopefully everyone goes home having fun, feeling like they've gotten just a little more value out of those books, but they don't have a look of complete shellshock, like their minds have lost a fuse or two. I burn for that shellshock, for the weeklong chatter and planning of strategy, and most especially for the lines of "remember when...." I would say that although I cannot force any particular DM to have a good game or create interesting threads, I can craft a world which has been designed from the start to aid him in this goal, and is bursting its seams with ideas and hooks for endless streams of content. Right, so that took a while. Well, on to the next. In regards to the He's Gotta Be Strong... post, I think that it really does depend on your personal experience with games and how they have played out over time. As a point of reference, my own games tend to usually only punish true stupidity, yet much of the rest of my crowd tends to participate in bloodbaths where characters come in a roster format. From that, my talk of keeping people alive to continue their heroic life is a natural outreach of this experience. However, one of the other points that I was trying to make is that I want to see them accomplish heroic tasks. Obviously there's only so much you can do, and in many cases, changes like this are only the precipice of a gaming arms race between the players and their DM. However, I'm not out to try and tackle the railroads or bad gaming calls. What I would simply like to avoid is the loss of great character's and the prevention of gaming cataclysms due to horrible tricks of fate. Of having Han slump over the table instead of Greedo, of having Link get hacked down by Ganon right as he's about to get the Triforce, or of having Sauron make his spot check before they got within a mile of the Mt. Doom. I despise those types of circumstances both as a player and as a GM, since in many cases you simply can't have the level of reward for the players if there are too many outs from a situation, and in many cases weeks might get lost to that 1 in 20 chance that they're going to go retarded. Its not completely whether they make it through or not (although that does help them to do even more deeds), but that if they're going to bite it, they at least have the capacity to see their task finished before they succumb to their wounds. That was much of the reasoning behind the Force Point look-alike system, as with the old WEG system, the only way to ever garner those babies was through heroic feats that put the game ahead of you. Ok, now finally to comment on the usefulness of collaborative works on the forum, I have to say that although I think having strictures in place to enforce cooperation might have its benefits, I believe that in general it would probably prompt more ill will than good feedback. Overall, I'd say that the best way to approach the situation is to let it operate like the rest of our society, nearly unmitigated capitalism, and just use that to your advantage. Put products out there on the market place that are so compelling people can't help but be encouraged to work along with you; never feel shamed to ask people for their input or suggestions; and borrow liberally from any good ideas you see around you, even if they themselves are toiling in a vacuum. I can't swear for certain that its the right approach, but for me I've found that people respond better to the blinking light on the hill than a funnel of walls leading them there. Anyhow, I think that's everything for now, and thanks again for the comments both of you.
TúrintheMormegil 04-23-06, 04:27 PM	Some interesting thinking going on here. I disagreed to some of the things you guys said, so I was tempted to post once again. Concerning Trip the Light Fantastic I think you want to much. It is just too much to ask to find interesting new ideas in all or even most campaign settings (or parts of them) on this forum. So rather than complaining (I mean no offense) that all settings start looking alike, you should realize that the campaign settings on this forum really fall apart in two categories: those that provide interesting new ideas and those that don't. And, as opposed to what you seem to imply, there is nothing wrong with that second category. Those are just individual DMs who love the clichés but for some reason or other prefer to play in a self-created version of the clichés rather than in Middle Earth or the Forgotten Realms, perhaps differing only from these standards of the genre in a few ideosyncratic preferences. These people, I agree, will not be spurring our own creativity much, but they would much appreciate our nods of approval, our proofreading and our commentary on any gross mistakes/oversights/whatever. And there are enough experienced worldbuilders here that we can give it to them without becoming overloaded by work. I agree that there isn't much in it for the commentators in these cases, but all the more for the world-creators, and I think you are wrong to dislike them for it (I know you don't personally dislike them for it, but at least you imply some resentment for this phenomenon). Occasionally, in providing this feedback, we will encounter world-builders of the first category: the ones that stimulate our own creativity and come up with fresh interpretations of the same old clichés or even new clichés alltogether. In short, I think you need to realize that not every world-builder wil come up with an Eberron, and resenting those many DMs who just want to play in their own versions of the clichés seems wrong to me. I think there is still enough originality out there, you just need to want to find it. Just off the top of my head, I could name at least five campaign settings I found on these boards that have made looking for them worth it (anyone remember Magicant/Heartstone for instance?). As for collaborative works, I don't think we should place any restrictions on these forums of the kind MadApe19 suggested, for many reasons including what I said above and what Araes said about it. That doesn't mean collaborative projects aren't a good thing. I would welcome anyone who wants to collaborate with me on Orden's Mysteries, I have created stuff for other people's worlds (such as the NPCs I made for Herecgunina's Tasothilos), and I supervise the Community World-Building Project of the Campaign Builders Guild (http://www.thecbg.org). Note that we also have a Community World Building Project here at Wizards of the Coast (it's on a separate forum somewhere) and the community over at Giant in the Playground (http://www.giantitp.com) has created the Tears of Blood campaign setting, a very well-made setting that has come a long way. In addition, we have recently seen the Convergence setting spring up on these forums, a rather spontaneous collaboration between nastynate, Salacious Angel and Epic Meepo. My point is, there are many collaborative efforts going on in all places, so you could either join one or create one of your own, if you are interested in that sort of thing. So to summarize this last paragraph: "what Araes said". :P :tiphat: Túrin
MadApe19 04-23-06, 08:57 PM	Yeah. I just thought maybe it'd cool to have a month-long 'boards event' where everyone has to join one of many small groups and brainstorm to create new worlds on a special subforum.
Araes 04-24-06, 09:36 AM	Hmm, how to respond to this in a manner that conveys how I actually feel about the subject. I won’t delve into it overly much, but I would say that you may be misinterpreting how I feel as resentful towards the creators of these worlds when it’s not the case – probably due to poor expression of those feelings on my part through post. I do view it as a shame when people don’t innovate at least a bit with their campaign setting, but I would say its more a feeling of loss at new ideas unfound and unharvested potential. Obviously not everyone needs to make something on the complexity level of Eberron. Keith Baker was paid several thousand dollars and gave over a year of his life to come up with a campaign setting, we’re by definition doing this as a hobby (unless you’re secretly a WotC person and haven’t told me ) As such, I don’t really view it as possible for them to devote days of their time to projects such as this. However, my more pertinent underlying fear is that the people as a whole don’t even care. That D&D worlds and perhaps even fantasy literature could come to be viewed in a fairly narrow light of exposure, where a certain formula defines fantasy to be just that. Like comics, hardcore video games, and to some extents even sci-fi, this would result in a reduction of the total mass of consumers who are interested in works of this type, while at the same time spurring those faithful who are left to require tighter and tighter conformity to the common idioms of the genre. In essence, diversity breeds adaptability, and I’d like fantasy and D&D to be diverse, and more importantly for the fan base to want/demand that, so that it doesn’t chalk itself into a little corner of the world and become a highly niche outlet (as we’re already kind of niche). I’d don’t resent people for not being that way, but it does worry me a bit. Residues of Waking Life Anyhow, not that I’ve gotten over that, I think I’ll veer into territory spawned by our talk yesterday and MadApe’s comment about Aath. I did actually bother to read through the setting, and it does look rather interesting, although there was one idea I had while reading it which I didn’t see described in there. As such, I think I may use it and borrow lightly from the dream as reality concept. Now, the idea I had was that although the world of Aath is made of many dreamlike qualities, features many items which would only be encountered in trips through fancy, and also seems somewhat mutable; there was no mention present of any forces which can shape this dream (consciously or unconsciously) and drive it with their own wishes. To fill this role, I would propose powerful shapers which are effectively walking pools of their perceptions. As my own world is obviously not built upon the concept of dreams as reality (although I’m sure many inhabitants wish it were), for implementation in the sphere I would propose these creatures as agents of the sphere which are directly connected to the energy transfer machine at its core. However, in the interest of mystery, I would also propose that these creatures have in some way been damaged by the catastrophes which have wracked the sphere since its inception and over the long period till reawakening. These agents now serve as wandering symbols of wonder and in some cases fear, as they bring utter rearrangement of reality with them as they pass. Effectively participating as actors in a perpetual dream, they unwittingly channel the machine around them as they go, carrying a bubble of shifted reality with them in movement. When these bubbles pass over normal terrain and structures, they are morphed and shifted to conform to the wanderer’s vision of space. Sometimes these changes bring the wildest of fantasies; visions of imperium continents wide, palaces of solid gold, and verdant fields of endless Spring; while in others they wreak the untold devastation of a ruined mind; hellish landscapes of blackened glass, canvases of war with Death manifest, and choking, impenetrable black with no apparent end. The final result is only rarely predictable, and with the might of the machine at their unwitting aid, there is no limit to where they might appear. I like the idea of such a creature as it provides a powerful fluff hook for any DM who would like to create surrealistic adventures to fit their needs. Flying islands of hanging cities and continents the size of a million Earth's not good enough, well, then shifting pools of objective reality might do the trick. They can be an obvious threat, a surrealistic brush with unintentioned danger, a deux ex machina, or just a very strange encounter for the party. They could also enable the presence of various other genres within the game for a session or more, as they could transition whole other lives onto the players, which would then have to be dealt with to escape from their shared vision. Kind of like the Holodeck one-offs that have become standard fare in the world of Star Trek. The actual personality of the waking dreamer would of course always be up to the DM, but I tend to envision them as utterly mad (in the sense that they completely believe their own delusions), but operating as relatively sane within their own slice of life. Think that's all for the moment, but like always I'll try to be back with further input (possibly expand upon the basic idea and formulate where these new creatures came from and what the extents of their power really are)
MadApe19 04-24-06, 07:26 PM	That's the kind of thing I like to see in a setting. True unpredictability in the world through one method or another; something to smash away the typical view of every fantasy setting's countryside and really redefine fantasy adventures. And that's certainly what I attempt with Aath, fusing the madness of my dreams and day-trips into a setting to make it as unbelievable and different as possible while keeping some sanity. Things become much different for the players when they can literally walk beneath a mountain as if it were one massive parking garage, then find themselves on the very edge of the world before an endless expanse of stars and night. Or when they'll wake to watch the very earth ripple before opening as a mouth and speaking to them about the local gossip. Glad to see someone else is throwing something out there into the fray :)
Araes 04-26-06, 08:42 AM	Back again, unfortunately stumbled onto a bit of writers block yesterday and just decided to work on the procedural world generators a bit more instead. Anyhow, now that I've had a bit of time to think I believe I've hit on some decent ideas for further layers of the sphere to be populated. In a Mirror Darkly Two of these layers are actually going to come in a pair, and their main traits are a byproduct of the behavior of the bars of "sun" near those lands. Basically, the orientation is that above the first of the layers, the sun beams which normally function in a regular pattern to heat and cool the layer, like a day/night cycle, have switched to a permanent night state for some reason. Thinking almost like an oven element, they may have "burned out" or the power may have been diverted from them for some reason. In addition, the sun beams which are directly below this layer and above the second layer have had their own malfunction and switched to a state of permanent daylight. Again, it is uncertain what the reason for the failure is, but there is a good chance that due to linked behavior and proximity of the beams, the energy of the switched off beams is somehow being used to power the constant day beams. Whatever the case though, this behavior has caused drastic effects on the habitability of the two layers they most directly serve. The shutdown of the upper beam has caused the surface of its plane to descend into something equivalent to an ice age. Across the entire layer, blizzards blow with daily frequency, and even in those areas where bare ground can be seen, the extreme cold has penetrated deep into its surface leaving behind a thick slab of tundra. Life on the wicked land has become nearly impossible, with temperatures operating consistently well below freezing, and travel equating to almost assured death, even with ample covering. However, all is not completely lost for the inhabitants of the layer, as there are a number of factors which have helped them to survive such a cold abyss. The first and most important is the operation of the sun beam below them. As it functions continually and radiates in all directions, the bottom surface of the layer is actually quite hot (almost unbearably so). Due to conduction, this heat slowly makes its way through the layer over time, and in a several hundred meter thick band near the vertical center it helps to balance the lack of energy from above, creating a comfortable habitation zone. The second reason that there are still inhabitants alive within the layer is that the shutdown was not instantaneous. For a hundred years or so prior to the cessation of all light, the inhabitants noticed that their sun seemed to be "flickering" and behaving irregularly. There would be whole weeks where there was no light, and other times where the light would rapidly transition from day to night, sometimes in rather blinding flashes. Many people during this period just viewed it as some message from the gods that they needed to change their lives or accomplish some other task, and in their communications with their followers, the gods were actually quite close mouthed about any perceived problems, playing to the fears of their people and building off of whatever ideas they already had. However, among a small subset of the people, there was a very real fear that this situation might become worse, and that they needed to plan for it if that day were to come. As the nature of the layers, at least in a physical sense, was already known to the people by this time, and burrowing was fairly common among some of the races, it was thought that safeguard might be to create hollows down to the other side of the layer so that if something were to happen to the light from above, then at least they could absorb the warmth from one side. There was also a perception that the earth of the layers themselves generated some heat as well (which was later shown to be false) which further spurred on the work. A second idea, which was also explored at this time, was to form a type of mobile habitat, which could adjust itself to the optimum locations of warmth whenever there was a change in the beams. Airships were already traveling the skies between the various continents of the layers at this time, so it was a relatively simple advancement to form large collections of ships which moved as a mass to find heat, as well as larger "super ships" that could ply the airways. Machinery, livestock, and even whole orchards with soil were loaded into these vessels and then sent out into the expanse between islands. When the final drastic change to the beams came, all three solutions met with some levels of success. Among the two airship designs, much of the success was based upon the captains and their responsiveness to the situations. As very few had expected the beams to switch to a permanent state, particularly with respect to the "on" beam, they were unprepared for the intense levels of heat present too close to it. Many of the ships that were within its locale tried to ride out the last switch as yet one more flicker cycle and were then overcome by the continually escalating heat as the beam failed to switch. Catastrophic fires were common as well as whole crews being literally cooked alive as their unconscious helmsmen plunged them down into the beam. Of those ships that did survive the change, they now operate in something of a cyclic pattern, oscillating back and forth within the relatively mild center of the beams. Many of the ships have also made upgrades to their structure over time to account for the heat disparity of their lower and upper surfaces, with numerous ships incorporating reflective, rock-like growths to their lower sides, and insulated air domes to the top. Among the peoples who attempted to live within the earth of the layers themselves, the success rate was actually somewhat worse, with many of the habitations which were built too close to either edge becoming inhospitable within a few days of the switch. In addition, of those who chose positions within the habitable zone, many did not bring renewable food sources which would last out a drastic change, leading to long term starvation and eventual death. However, from all the people who made the attempt, there was a select subset which possessed the foresight (or luck) to plan properly, and fortunately their numbers possessed the critical mass to carry on civilization. Over the long years, they have slowly begun to repopulate the centers of the landmasses, and even reestablish communication with their more nomadic airborne brethren. Whole kingdoms of earth and sky have developed, as well as distinct subclasses of each of the original races which favor either open air or subterranean life. To See the Light Without Knowing Darkness Now, switching to the lower layer, as might be expected, its surface has largely encountered the opposite effect. Intense, never ending heat has turned its once pastoral forests and fields into scarred wastelands of churning dust and fire. However, unlike its frozen brother, not all of the layer has fallen prey to its miserable fate. For some reason, nearly 100 years before the disaster, Macht and his messengers appeared too many of the leaders of the layer and told them that a great cataclysm was coming and that they must prepare for it. They warned of endless fire and a baleful sun which would spread ruin across the land. They also gave a plan to the people which they said if followed would spare the great majority of their civilization from destruction. If more was said as to the cause for this warning, it has most likely been lost over the thousands of intervening years. Yet if nothing else survived, the clarity and force of his commands has shown forth in the survival of his people to this day. The seed of Macht's orders was that they should build, or more aptly capture, shields which would shade them from the destructive effects of their sun. His plan was that each major metropolis would find a suitable quantity of material which could be placed into a stationary position above their land and shade them from the devastation. For the next 50 years after his message was delivered, nearly the whole of the layer was alive with an almost feverish intensity of preparation. Scouting parties were sent far and wide looking for islands, mountains, even whole continents which might make acceptable candidates for translocation. Within every major city, at least one, if not more, major school for the study of technology and spellcraft pertaining to earth movement was created. An entire generation of citizens grew up knowing that in 50+ years, the world they had known would be gone. About 25 years prior to the final switch, the first of the sheltering projects had finally been completed. By this time, the flickering of the beam above the layer had begun to be rather drastic, and apprehension was building for those areas which had not completed their protective measures. Most had settled on a shield of islands which would be staggered piecemeal to provide shelter, but in a few cases whole mountain ranges had been planned for uprooting and their transportation proved difficult in the extreme. However, as more and more of the lands finished their doomsday projects and prepared for the worst, they also dumped a larger and larger pool of trained earth movers into the available workforce. In the face of layer-wide disaster, even the most cold hearted of leaders were able to ignore past grievances, and by and large workers were sent where needed with only a nod towards payment after the fact. By the time of the fall, almost all of the lands had finished their goals, and of those that had not, much of their population had fled to neighboring states in anticipation of the final calamity. When the last switch did finally come, at first many people couldn't really tell the difference - it just seemed like a rather long day. But as time wore on, and any vegetation outside of the walls began to wither and die, the truth was made clear. The first month of the change was probably the worst for the inhabitants. As the growth and constructions outside of the shields were exposed to the heat, they began to burst into flame with increasing regularity. Within a week of the change, nearly the entirety of the outside world was embroiled in a massive firestorm which threatened to spill over into numerous locations under the shields. Thankfully, with nearly 100 years of expertise in crafting earth, the task of erecting walls to keep out the flames was almost a trivial matter for the workers. High barriers were placed around all of the most dangerous areas and firebreaks or valleys in those less critical. This proved necessary for about three months and after that point the walls were lowered somewhat and a strict enforcement of vegetation clearance near the boundary was put into effect. By the present day, the walls have returned slightly, but only to protect the peoples of the shelters from what is left of their layer. Reduced to a blasted waste of dust, sand, and in some cases even glass, the outside world lacks any measurable quantity of vegetation and is prone to sandstorms of the most severe kind. Within the shelters, the people have become accustomed to their restricted existence, and a number of improvements have been made to ease their lives. The most profound of these was discovered as an offshoot of the increased focus on earth shifting, and involves the separation of the earth floating above their heads into clear and opaque materials. This technique has been spread far and wide across the layer to reduce the constant darkness at the centers of the covered lands. Now most shelters possess either a large single or array of smaller shafts of crystalline material to the sun above. When filtered properly, these shafts provide a constant bath of mild light for the citizens (like perpetual dusk) and a consistent growing environment for farms and livestock. Whew, alright, that's quite a long bit about that particular set of layers. Should make for some interesting material once I start delving into the specific countries and peoples which survived in each layer and their interactions. Plus, I have some ideas about the continuing architectural construction efforts of the earth movers in the hot layer, but that's a topic for another day.
MadApe19 04-26-06, 02:54 PM	This looks interesting. Good backstory on how things happened with the intense cold/heat, and a cool concept in general. But what is there between the sky and earth, sentience-wise? Would there be undead remnants of starved or frozen beings wandering hungrily about the land, or something similar?
Jeweler 04-26-06, 09:51 PM	Ok so... um... I'm back, sorry its been so long, you didnt lose me, your world is awesome for the record and it does inspire awe, in atleast me. Lot of things went on over the 3 months that has made it so i havent posted in a while, stuff im not going to get into on here, all im goign to say is the storm of life might be coming back to normal soon. Anyways... Comments on stuff maybe long past. Divinities and Followers On the note of paladins, love the alignment based ones in dragon, as much work as it might be i think each rce should have a paladin and then each society should have a different set of paladin. They might be similiar, or if race and society are same then they would be same and no need. Paladins are strange, everyone thinks there good, but not all of them are, Arcana Unearthed, not the variants one but the actual setting one, had a class that was better suited to be what a paladin should be then what a paladin, class wise, was in D&D. I suggest an "alignment" system from Modern, called loyalty system. Instead of alignments like lawful good and chaotic evil you have 3 loyalties, something like Self as number 1, Specific person as #2, and something else as #3. This means that if it came down to something dealing with yourself and a loyalty of #2 value you would do something for your sel, or your character should. Much better than alignment system to me, i dont believe in good and evil, youll never actually get pure white or pure black in morals, it just doesnt work. On the subject of robots also, do they have to "recharge" there batteries for 8 hours? please tell me no, im sorry but if you can program or create sentient life you should be able to find a battery that can recharge without the need to power down, although it might help if it did power down, or reduced activity, like light movement for 4 hours or somethign like that. And the ideas of the angels and demons being "helper code" is cool, i like the idea of each god having a different look for the same, statistically-wise, angel or demon. The Vinci are in the Sphere now If you have seen the new Rise of Nations with the magic v. technology theme, which to me never gets old, then you might know who the Vinci are. There something of what i saw when you started talking about mega cities and what not. The idea of a mega city is awesome, and probaly well needed for a focus point of a campaign. What is the sizes of the island, earth sized (something like a pangaea continent) or bigger/smaller. The hanging cities sounds like a disorienting nightmare for travel, and so much fun to map at the same time. Suggestion or food source and resources is multiple smaller, relative to size of the island, islands kind of like floating sattelites that are locked in there place by the island inhabitnants, like that before, or by the gods. Is Ki'Sha-La this mega city or is it another city altogether? I do have a suggestion for the name of the city on Ki'Sha-La layer, if that is the name of the layer if its the city name then its still a suggestion but not as emphasived, how about Irem. Just to let you know Irem is from somewhere else, but most people im sure have not looked in to it cause of stigma, Necronomicon has nothing overly bad about it, i dont get the prejudice on it, thats where it came from, Irem was susposedly a city built apon an ancient civilization's ruined underground city. Oh, and on the subject of orginality, how about an idea based apon a universe where almost everything that is non-living matter, stars planets dice paper etc., was living and the only, known, sentient life was robotic in nature? Ever heard of anything like that, if so point me in the direction i would love to check it out. I have too many ideas :D *edit* You know, sooner or later, probaly much later, this game is going to have to be play tested, i figured id just put that out because i would love to test it out, but i dont see it happening anytime soon. :P
Araes 04-27-06, 09:27 AM	Hey Jeweler, good to hear back from you, I was wondering whether you and Supa where around any more. Now, to go through both yours and MadApe's comments. With regards to the possibility of life question you had MadApe, I think I'm just a little confused by how you phrased it. It sounded like you were asking about forms of life which were flying around above the islands, but maybe you're just commenting on surface life with the question about frozen undead? Now, to be truthful, I actually had another plan for the undead involving a different layer, however, there is also no reason that they couldn't very well exist on the frozen one as well. To be a bit more clear though, maybe I should at least go into what I've been rolling around in my head as far as undeath ideas go. They Bring the Tortures that Infest the Earth Early on, I commented that one of the usurper gods brought a personal feud between himself and the chief hibernation architect to the sphere. Harboring an intense personal jealousy of her for being chosen to her appointment ahead of him, much of his time in the sphere as a disembodied entity has actually been working towards disrupting her projects and taking out his perceived need for revenge. One of the most long term of these is what I’m considering for the reasoning behind undeath. The basic concept is that as a competing technology with life extension techniques which had limits to their applicability, the scientist, and now “god”, Dr. Pierre Gram proposed one of the earliest recorded techniques whereby not only could life be extended, but in fact the long dead (to the point of decomposed) could even be raised. To implement the process, the recipient first absorbed a colony of nanite or smaller autonomous machines, which passed through the patients body and mapped the state of their structure over time. After a set collection period, these machines would then migrate to the decomposition resistant bone structure of the host and hibernate until such time as they were reactivated. Upon reception of an outside signal for revival by the machines, they would activate, assess the current status of their host, and then act to return that host to the previously recorded state of life. On its surface, it seemed like an amazing technology with boundless potential, however, there was one serious problem which provoked severe opposition. Being only colonies of simple machines, there were limits to the substitution and replication process which was possible for the body. In particular, there was a difficult requirement that any material which was replaced needed to come from a roughly identical source. This meant that in the day and age in which the technology was created, people who wanted to regenerate needed to go to cell and blood banks, where they could purchase samples of the materials necessary and allow their body’s workforce to absorb them. For most of society, this worked quite well, and during its inception Dr. Gram was showered with praise and no small amount of wealth for his discovery of what people were calling the fountain of youth. But as with even the best of concepts, there are always those who would pervert its ideas and this advance was no different. As it gained in popularity and took hold in the masses, there came to be rumors of people finding ways outside of the banks and even the law to obtain regenerative material. Murders, slavery, and exploitation of the poor were all on the rise, whole ghettos of the socially downcast being wiped out in many locations to feed the life of the powerful. Something had to be done. In a bold, and highly unpopular move, the technology was banned from the open market and strict measures were taken to see that it didn’t propagate on its own. By the time that the edict came down though, the galactic citizenry had already taken firm hold of the dream promised by the devices and were loath to give it up. Treated much like a virulent plague, whole sectors of the populace had to be forcibly quarantined in groups and cleansed of any technology in their bodies. In severely congested areas where the black market for the devices was running rampant and nearly impossible to control, EMP weapons were actually dropped on several occasions, as a last ditch measure to see the devices eradicated. Naturally though, the cleansing could not be perfect. With space as vast as it is, and the craftiness of desperate folk, there were always places in which the tech could survive. For some time, those who wanted to survive at all odds would barter for it in the deepest of secrecy – on asteroids, backwater moons, and areas of space the universe had forgotten. Fortunately though, technology never stands still, and over time there came to be other procedures which could fully regenerate a living being without the need for specific materials. Unfortunately for Pierre Gram though, this relegated him to a fairly insignificant, and almost dark, figure in the annals of history. No longer the bringer of eternal beauty and endless life, his text would appear beside a footnote of one of society’s great disasters, and his work in regenerative techniques would shine dimly next to the accomplishments of many others – including among them Dr. Chhaya Seureb. Over his rather long life (thanks in part to his own technology), Gram has seethed at the injustice done to him for the boon he gave to society, and at those who have taken the later praise that he believe was due to him. He has searched for any opportunity to prove the utility of his designs, and more importantly, to shame those who stole his thunder. During his voyage to the sphere, one of his most cared for items was a large collection of nanites, which had been improved over time. Now operating even more like a virus, with absorption of the correct materials they were capable of self replication and could slowly “infect” a subject over time with simply a fluid transfer or extended surface contact. More importantly though, at some stage in his long years of research, Gram had found a way whereby the colony themselves could impart motion to an incapacitated or even dead subject. When activated, the bodies of the dead would literally get up and begin to search for materials until their nervous system became repaired enough to control them. Unfortunately, without access to cell and blood banks, among the population of the sphere, this search for materials has found only one natural source - other living beings. Among severely plagued regions, this has resulted in some extreme practices for handling of the dead, involving cremation among the sentimental and tossing bodies into the endless skies for the less. Now, that’s the basic outline of how I view undeath in my world, and there’s still a bit more to go over so that I can work in some of the common states of undeath (skeletons, zombies, vampires), but in general it should illuminate at least the possibility of undead within the layers and possibly answer your question about the walking dead among the ice. IE, quite possible if the infection made its way to or was released on that particular layer. Many of the people who originally died on the surface or in the too shallow caves would make ideal candidates. With respect to other things living on the surfaces of the two layers, I do think that it is also possible, it would just have to be rather extreme creatures which were either able to handle the horrid cold/heat when it changed, moved in from somewhere else (how?), or were able to adapt and shift into a new ecosystem. Replies From Afar Alright, now onto the comments and questions that you made Jeweler. First off, I haven’t had a chance to read Modern in a while, but I’ll take a look at the loyalties system you mentioned as I don’t remember much about it from my prior look. From what you said initially, it sounds pretty interesting and might be a cool way to detail the hierarchy of what’s important to a person and how they make choices. Would also fit in pretty well with the robot idea, since if they had allegiances they would probably be something along the three laws of robotics. 1. Humanity. 2. Authority Figures 3. Self. Unfortunately, don’t have a subscription to Dragon, as I don’t think that they deliver to France, so I can’t comment on the Paladin concept with too much detail. However, you’ve basically hit what I was trying to get across with that, in that each society will have a different representation of what they think Paladinhood embodies, and as such, a different code for the Paladin to live by. It would be an extreme amount of work, but I think it would be worth it. Aw well, planning on continuing to update this thing for quite a while, and if I can stick to one a day at least, then I should put out a decent amount of material. Regarding the question of robot battery life, I think that that is going to be one of the “perks” of playing as a robot. You never need to sleep or recharge and at worst maybe need maintenance by a technician unless you purchase some kind of upgrade/”magical” enhancement or have skill in it yourself and the parts. On the angle/demon thing, thank you, and I’m fairly enamored with the concept myself. I love the idea that if you were to receive a messenger from Macht it might be a vision of a deva with a scarlet crown of burning embers and wings of flaking ash, or a lantern archon that looked akin to a miniature floating sun, flares and all. At the same time, ones from Exido might instead be more like a finely carved stone or crystal golem, with wings of polished glass, or a minature comet hung suspended in space, trailing a frosty cone of debris as it moved. With regards to the city section of your questions, the main city which I detailed first, is a single super city on a spread out, but connected pangea-like layer with roughly the diameter and land area of Earth. Outside of this layer, it is proposed that there is a second, somewhat greater diameter layer which serves as the food source for the city, with nearly all of the land area occupied by farms and production centers. As far as using Irem for the name of the super city, that actually doesn’t sound like too bad of a choice. Its actually the name of a game company as well which made the R-Type games, and as I love space shooters that doesn’t seem like it would be that bad a fit. The second area that I mentioned, Ki’Sha-la, is actually the name of a different layer which was the subject of some great disaster that broke up its form. It is now composed of numerous islands which have been linked, repopulated, and cultivated. As such, in that layer I’m not sure if you could say there is one “super city” to be precise, although there are definitely a number of larger cities which have prospered despite the rather strange living conditions. In regards to food on that layer as well, I had actually considered the idea of cities going out and scavenging free floating islands to use as part of their city state. I’m not quite sure how much power I want to give them with regards to this scavenging, but since I already mentioned being able to slow the rotation of multi-mile wide island pieces, it seems like they might be able to push them around as well. Anyhow, I think that covers most everything as far as the questions you guys mentioned go, and I was able to stick in a big chunk about the horrors of the undead as well. Woo. Finally though, I have actually tested this a wee bit before I left the states, but it was obviously in a very preliminary state at the time and I was more feeling out whether the concept of adventuring in a megatechnology setting presented from the viewpoint of tech as magic was palatable to people.
Araes 04-28-06, 08:45 AM	Pseudo-Reality at Large Anybody who’s read through the whole of this beast or been following its progress over time probably has caught on that, at least for this setting, I’m somewhat dedicated to the idea of pseudo-realism as far as possible. What I mean by this is that I want the setting, people, gods, and magic of the world to all come from an explained place that may not be strictly based on knowledge of what we know as fact, but at least carries a plausibility with it. As a base, what I’d like is for normal players to enjoy gaming in the world and simply treat it as a fantastical place that provides interesting adventures. However, for those who are more interested and curious, I’d love for there to be multiple layers of understanding, so that invested DM/GMs can create complex interwoven stories that play off of background info and reveal points to the players in character of which they may have been unaware. Now, in my general struggle to grapple with this, one of the main problems has actually been the underlying idea that people as a whole society would regress after they emerged from their hibernating states, and would lose access to much of the technology they created. This is actually a fairly common theme in science fiction, with people like Asimov using it constantly to explain the rise and fall of galactic empires. However, in most of the cases its been used, I’ve rarely seen an explanation for why it happens, simply that it does; that it’s the natural order of things. So, in an effort to make this more clear to myself and maybe players, I’ll go through my reasoning as to why it might happen within the sphere. The Factors of Progress First off, we should probably talk about education in some society of the future. If we look back historically, we can see that over time, with the acquisition of new knowledge, there is generally a multi-step process which occurs to disseminate it to the masses. As the first step, someone will have a great new idea for potential research, but know very little about what its potential impact might be. However, they will probably inform some of their close peers about the concept, and if it possesses significant traction, then the group will expand and begin pursuing exploration of the topic. As their knowledge base grows, they will proceed to disseminate their gathered information to the technical populace in the forms of limited circulation papers, presentations, and general communication. This communication will expand the workbase for the subject and in time create a series of water marks for progress in the field. Once enough significant progress has been made that a field is viewed as somewhat steady state, members will begin to publish summary books and mass media literature, which attempt to break down the overly technical concepts and create a codified knowledge base so that the information can be passed to the populace at large. Finally, if they are successful, then their work will become part of the common curriculum and new generations of up and coming students will be able, or possibly required, to learn about the subject. In general, I can say that this process is relentless and that over time we can probably say that the average level of education among the populace is going to rise. Historically, we can look at the educations of the common man in Mesopotamia, Greece, China, medieval Europe, the industrial nations, and our own modern people and see that there has been an average climb. Compared with an average person from say the medieval era, even our most backwoods person is generally more educated about the state of the universe. However, although there is an average rise, that rise has not been steady, has at times actually been negative, and depends on a number of outside factors for its rate. Probably the single most important of these factors is the availability of free time to people as a society. If every member if occupied with finding food or keeping shelters up, then nobody will be thinking of how to make life better. This process is also cascading, and as further advances come along they free up greater portions of the populace to work on progress. After at least some free time percentage has been found, the next greatest factor is simple numbers of minds in the society; the more people that a society can support at a given percentage, the more minds that will be free to be focused on technology. In general, this is tied into the rate of basic necessities production, and there is some optimal setting for any society that will create the most progress while still keeping people alive. Kind of harkens back to days of playing Civ., for those who have, as their mechanism mirrors it pretty well. These two concepts are the most important for a basic society, but as they become more complex there are further factors which may come into play. Opinions and societal views on research will assuredly play some role, and can have both drastically positive and negative effects on the rate of progress made. Imagine trying to get to the moon without the political backing and focus of the Kennedy years, look at what the repression and climate of the dark ages did to science, or even examine our own struggles these days with issues like cloning. Finally, one of the last major factors which will appear as a factor for advancement rate is the creation of devices to aid the scientific process. Anything which helps people to overcome the limitations of the human body and mind fits into this category and there are a wide array of examples throughout history; abacuses, laboratories, and even maps. Arguably the most profound of these though has been the advent of the computer, a machine that performs one of the tasks our mind simply isn’t very good at; massive number crunching. In recent decades we have seen research output literally explode with modeling, presentation, design, and even researcher connectivity being advanced almost daily. And nearly everyone knows how to use them now too (in industrialized nations), even kinds as young as 10 using them in their classrooms as an improved way to convey information. However, this actually segues into my next point, in that I don’t believe this is anywhere near the end of advances, particularly in the classroom. One of the great problems I think we’re coming up upon is the simple fact that there are limitations to the rate at which the human brain can learn and become proficient with new information. Much like a pyramid, and mirroring our own progress through the ages, the various layers of knowledge need to be built up over time within the human mind so that the next topic can be linked. If these pieces aren’t in place or fully understood, then students will struggle with more advanced concepts until they’ve mastered the basics. Unfortunately, these pieces also all take some finite amount of time, and even with the best normal teaching techniques there is probably going to be a point at which we simply can’t pack anymore information into a brain in a given education cycle without imposing inhumane conditions. This limits the maximum technological understanding that our researchers can have as they move out into their field, and if unaccounted for could result in a slowing due to lack of trained professionals or an extension of the educational period. To meet this problem, I would wager that given a few years, one of the next big areas of advance is probably going to arrive as technological aids for memory and learning. A la the Matrix, at some future point we may be able to simply lay ourselves down and absorb a core dump of the raw knowledge we need. The only thing necessary after that point would then be for us to practice it in some way so that we could form the proper links in terms of use and application. In time, even these factors might become automated, and the only limiting factors would be how fast the memory process can operate, and how big our brains external hard drive is. We could very conceivably have kids coming out of adolescence who know “everything” and are ready to help us make progress. Why They Regress Now, finally we can get to the impact that this will have on our society of the sphere (thanks if you’re still reading). It is proposed that in the society of the future which created the sphere, all of these factors have advanced considerably with time. In terms of raw needs, only a tiny fraction of the populace is necessary anymore to feed and provide shelter for the working masses, possibly even none. With regards to populace, the number of working minds in a civilization which spans even a single galaxy is almost too vast to comprehend, and if we were to consider intergalactic travel as well, then the numbers are almost mind boggling (Googlolplexes of people probably doesn’t even cut it). Societal pressures to research and progress will hopefully be fairly benign and willing to promote change, but that’s one of the few factors that’s fairly difficult to predict. The last factor though, technology, will have vastly improved, and many of the advances being made at the time of the collapse probably wouldn’t even be possible without the presence of ultra powerful computers, numerous enhancements for the human mind, and even further strides that I haven’t conceived. Given enough acclimation time, such advances might even be so ubiquitous that society barely knows how to cope without them, and all of the codified practices for education, research, and science are tied to them. So, what would then happen to society and progress if they were all suddenly removed? The evacuation of an entire galaxy or the universe at large has been proposed as a fairly drastic last measure by me in the past. People were rounded up, taken to a gigantic sphere at some calculated best point in the cosmos, and then put into hibernation while the universe proceeded to tear itself apart. Now, during this migration, a lot of stuff would probably have to be left behind for the common people to optimize the largest number of beings that could reasonably be saved. Naturally, the creators of the sphere would put as many of these systems in place within the sphere itself as possible, but they would limit positions on the actual crafts severely. This means that when everybody woke up, they would have whatever they had on them, plus whatever tech was available in their neck of the woods until they found some. For a properly functioning sphere, this wouldn’t be that much of a bother, as people specialized in one type of science or another would wake up, be directed by the sphere and the populace at large to where they were useful, and would work towards the betterment of life and solving their predicament. For a war torn, disorganized, failure prone sphere, with a significant power vacuum after the “gods” changed form, the situation is a bit more complicated. First off, in terms of the raw population numbers, the sheer number of people in the known universe has drastically fallen, and even if they could communicate freely and work towards progress, there would be less critical mass than before. Next off, the hibernation systems have had numerous issues and have been releasing people in waves, spurts, and fits ever since they started. Not only does this create a lack of sheer population to further compound the loss, but it also creates a dangerous lack of specialty personnel, as many of the systems necessary for maintaining the prior lifestyle of the people have no-one capably trained to run them, or at least provide direction. As these systems moved into disuse, it would become more difficult to maintain the lower level systems like computers or machine learning enhancements. Without either of these technologies, the maximum output would once again fall, and depending on the severity of conditions, there would be a cascade effect until some stable equilibrium with the surroundings was reached. These situations would also lead to problems with the next two criteria, social motivation for progress and percentage of the workforce that can be “idle”. With everyone awakening to a world which doesn’t seem to work how it should, and with there being less to go around than there was before, there would be a strong social pressure to “look after oneself” and make sure that at least you survived, since you couldn’t count on the services you’re used to being available. There might very well be strong “back to the land” movements and with the power vacuum of the sphere architects leaving, there would be little in the way of respected voices to oppose it unless a strong individual/group stepped forward. As a parallel, imagine waking up tomorrow and finding that the power grid has been permanently taken off-line. The hysteria and chaos would be phenomenal. This doesn’t even take into account layers where true disaster struck, such as Ki’Sha-la, or the frozen / inferno layers which I detailed. Within these layers, the focus would assuredly be on survival first and foremost, with thoughts of anything else falling a distant second. Finally, once all this was taken care of, and some new equilibrium had been reached where everyone could survive, it very well might be too late to reclaim the technology of their past. For technologies like memory enhancement, given a generation or two without access to the technology, there would be no-one available who could perform the procedures and that in itself would then limit the maximum capacity of learning for future generations until drastic leaps had been remade. In devastated layers, future generations might find themselves sitting amidst piles of highly useful technology which could revolutionize their lives, yet of which even the most educated only know the powers of by description or story, and more importantly, not a single person knows how to make.
Jeweler 04-28-06, 06:11 PM	Cyber brains could be one of your "memory enhancement" techs. If you have ever seen Ghost in the Shell then you shuold know even rudimentrarily what a cyber brain is. Powerful tool to say the least, almost everyone has one in the world in 21xx cant remember what the exact year was, im not sure if it was actually in the 22nd century or not. But it had so many things it could do, depending on model and job, and the synthetic bodies were the same way, very versitile. Im not sure how cyber brains are implanted, but i think they need atleast a partially, your head and maybe nerves, synthetic body, which would obviously be a supreme acheivement of its own for our time. It would still lead to the same problem i nthe end, if no one can create them, and no can remember how to implant them, then they wont have that powerful tool at there disposal, which is what you want as far as i can see. Just a suggestion to use something like it. Im guessing the robots have taken over what llittle work we had by the time, none AI equip robots? You said that little to know work was taking up the population, which allowed them to do more things for advancements and learning and what not. I have had to start getting a notpad and righting down stuff that i want to post about, cause iwth my memory by the time i get to the bottom i cant remember some of the stuff i want to talk about, oh well worth it. I like the explanation for why they regress, it probally would have been the same one Asimov and some of the others would have given, but it still is a great explanation.
Araes 04-29-06, 01:16 PM	Tell me about it, spent forever yesterday writing that piece as I kept forgetting what I had covered and what points were left over. Luckily I had thrown some notes together the night before on it, so I was able to keep at least partially organized. I have actually found that the book or notepad you mentioned does help and I've got a nice hardbound art one that I tend to keep all of my various gaming ideas, sketches, ect.. in. Pretty useful, specially when trying to do one of these posts a day. With regards to the cybernetic brain portions, yeah, I've actually seen both Ghost in the Shell movies and that whole area of sci-fi (and particularly computer consciousness) fiction/literature has had a fundamental impact on my development as a writer. There are actually quite a few different places in which the idea of memory augmentation, cybernetic minds, and other such things have been explored, but you're right that GitS was a rather well done example. Highly recommend the second movie as well if you haven't seen it(although its a little sketchy in the middle) as the CG / cell shading work is absolutely stunning and the story's almost as good as the first one. Anyhow, on to new stuff. Going to finish up this whole section of more theoretical stuff with a discussion on why magic is the way that it is, and then tomorrow I'll dive back into layers with the land of the walking dead. The Mind Wraps its Secrets in Symbols As I've noted before, magic within this world is the expression of a rather advanced level of supertech which can reshape the fundamental states of our universe. For those who would know how to use it perfectly and had the tools (possibly its orginal inventor) then they could forge the building blocks of the universe into nearly any shape their heart desired. However, as I mentioned in the post about education and knowledge, there are often a number of steps which must be overcome before we can bridge the gap between theoretical application by specialists and widespread consumption by the public. Now, imagine if you possessed a technology which you wanted to pass into the common populace, but its full operation was both too complex for most people to comprehend, and also somewhat dangerous for them given unlimited access. How would you go about transitioning such a technology, particularly in a world where specialization has probably become a way of life? In general, the answer seems quite simple - boil down the interface to its fundamental concepts so that they are intuitively easy for normal people to use. This same process of user interface creation is performed all the time for devices and programs in our own lives (although with obviously less complexity than universe rearrangers). For a quick example, we only need consider the broad array of 3D graphics editors out there. From such programs, even common laypeople who are completely untrained in topics like lighting, programming, and vector math can create amazingly complex worlds. They do this through the use of simple pictures and icons which represent much more complex ideas to the mind and most users need not ever interact with the base numbers of the design. In addition, with practice using the interface, and with a drive to hold more design power, users can delve into the underlying code as well and pull even greater feats of design and conception from the program. For a system of universe manipulation, the idea of user interface creation would be functionally about the same - we would perform the reduction of complexity by creating a language of images and concepts which represent far more complex actions taking place "beneath the hood" as it were. To formulate this language, we would want to create a selection of simple concepts, which when linked together using the correct methods and syntax, would create effects in the visible world. In addition, to increase the versatility, and range of expression for the system, we would want to create a multi-faceted language which extended across pictures, feelings, written language, and motion. Nearly every controllable state of a being's form would come into play when they wanted to communicate with the technology. A simple form of this could be thought of like a combination of verbal and sign language, where the motions you made with your hands while you talked weren't only just as relevant as what you said, they actually modified what you said to hold different meanings. On top of this, if you were angry or sad, and whether you thought about a flame, a stick, a flowing brook, or a million other things all came into play. In fact, the effectiveness of any particular operation would be determined both by the clearness of a users expressions in these forms, and by how well their grammatical linking extended across all the available modes of expression. During normal operation, in fact for most of life, thinking or speaking about an effect would not be enough to trigger said effect. This would be necessary as a safeguard to prevent misfires of the tech, as you wouldn’t want people dreaming about fish and then suddenly start having things happen. In addition, it also avoids questions of ambiguity, as the thought of fish would be hard to process without some context to align it with. Do you want to turn your party member into a fish? Do you want to summon a fish? What type? What size? To actually create some measurable effect in the world around them, the user would need to successfully flip a mental "switch" in their head saying that they wanted to do something, and even then, what they communicated would have to be clear. Due to this setup, unless a person were trained in at least the basics of the technology (or magic as it might later be known), and how to flip that mental switch with clear visions, they would be able to achieve nothing. This would help to account for the long periods of training which mages have to undergo to be even an apprentice of their craft. However, it would run into a problem when we went to consider the idea of sorcerers in the world. One idea to get around this might be that if the technology had existed for a very long time (1000’s of years) then some people might have actually built up an instinctual knack for controlling its function. Akin to the nurture vs nature debate, there would be people who were genetically predisposed to using the technology and who would pick it up over time with or without schooling. Since we’re talking about this also from the viewpoint of people who are quite a bit farther down on the technological ladder, they might also approach magic from a different manner and use different forms of expression to achieve the same effects. Perhaps mages would be those people who study more from the verbal and motion sides of the field, while sorcerers would pass on the imagery and feelings portion of magic more readily. As with all technological abstractions, there would also need to be some underlying code or system, which the user interface of magic is working through. From a modern day perspective, we might almost think about it like a scripting language for a game. It would open up avenues of expression for mages with more power, functionality, and which expose more of the underlying functionality of magic. For truly adventurous and powerful users, this might be the last thing that they would pick up, and might not even be teachable within standard schools of the sphere. In terms of the D&D setting, this could probably be meshed in some way with the spell seeds concept that epic tends to use. Well, there’s my basic stab at conveying the underlying principles of magic in the world. In summary, the main points are: it’s an abstraction of a much more powerful tech put in place within the sphere, its user interface operates on a multi-spectrum concept of language where speech, motions, images, and feelings are all important, this user interface sits atop a more complex “code” by which true users can warp the universe with greater effect, and it can’t be used untrained as it requires flipping of a mental “switch” for use and clarity of expression.
Araes 04-30-06, 12:32 PM	Century of the Living Dead For today’s post, I wanted to talk about an idea which was actually sparked by a read I was having through the Campaign Builders Guild (http://www.thecbg.org/news.php) boards. As I was going along I came upon an interesting mention of various forms of government which might take place within a campaign world, and one of those was a Mortocracy. Now, for the moment I'm not sure if I want to go for a full on Mortocracy, throughout an entire layer, but I think that the possibility of at least a few kingdoms having them in place within a single layer is a definite possibility. My idea for this is as follows. After what I mentioned in the post about the nature of undead within the sphere (being derived from a longevity treatment), the concept is that once Dr. Gram had arrived within the sphere, he immediately set to work on his plans to bring ruin to the work of his professional foe, Dr. Seureb. With the quantities of machines that he had been able to smuggle on board, and the disposition of the sphere prior to full hibernation, his feeling was that the most effective plan with the least likelihood of getting caught would be to introduce the machines into the hibernation systems of a single layer of the sphere. Most of the overhead control processes for each layer were monitored through a single large station, and if they could get the machines into the regulators of that station, then they could infect the sleeping populace of an entire layer all at once. With the aid of Akil, Sepak, and a few of his other co-conspirators, he put the plan into action and during a long night only weeks after the last of the people on the sphere had been put to sleep, the entire population of his selected layer became the unwilling hosts of Dr. Gram's regenerative microbes. Being experts at their craft, having slipped into the sphere without even a hint of detection, the task of the control center was a minor one, and with sufficient track cleaning, it was many a long year before the monitors even picked up that anything was wrong with the population. By the time the full problem was resolved, many of the subjects had already been released from hibernation to begin their new lives in the sphere, and other events within the sphere were also heavily tapping the new "gods" resources. As a stopgap measure, a partial solution was put into place, whereby all of the people still in hibernation were forcibly set to release from hibernation by causing a massive system failure and then, as they were awakening, hit with a series of massive electronic pulses. This had the unfortunate effect of wrecking all of the hibernation equipment in those areas where the procedure was performed, but it at least ensured that starting out in the world, they would be clean of the machines. The people were then warned of the effects of the machines, what signs they ought to look for in people, and then released into their layer with the caution to be careful and insulate themselves from those who had awoken before them. Overall, what this has led to is a very strange, and rather volatile, political mix within the layer of the dead. Within those countries which were most heavily settled before the release of the second massive hibernation wave, there tends to be a mix of political structures. In some cases, where the undead managed to sweep aside the living, their exists a true state of Mortocracy, in which only the dead participate in the decision making process of government. Within some of these cultures, the dead have actually refined their society quite heavily and now exist almost as they did in life. They carry about business in a close mirror of their normal life pattern, and even have family units and elected officials. For regenerative material to keep themselves intact, these groups most often carry out raids on their human neighbors for supplies of fresh material. However, in some cases there have also arisen questionable trade agreements, whereby the undesirables of a human nation (prisoners, poor, outcasts) may be sent to an undead land for trade in goods. Within lands where the undead did not sweep aside humanity so readily, there usually exists either a state of open warfare, or a condition where undead members of society are known to exist, but their presence is tolerated and their needs cared for due to their value as workers, advisors, or even in a few cases rulers. In particular, their near infinite lifespans are a major boon to their cause, and in many cases, undead may serve at a post for centuries or more, while those they serve grow old and die. In a few cases, this lifespan has actually become so tempting that whole rulership bodies were known to have partaken of the "curse" until their constituencies found out and had them destroyed. Finally, a large majority of the lands of the layer are made up of what might best be described as organic purists. These lands were formed by those who emerged from hibernation as a group, and either found an empty region within which they could establish a foothold, or were able to drive the ruling body from the land within which they awoke. In either case, these areas tend to be highly vigilant lands, sometimes verging on the point of police states, where immigration or visitation to their lands is nearly impossible without extensive batteries of tests, and even the native populace is watched like hawks for signs of undead manifestation. Building upon the rules passed down to them by the gods, they have developed whole societies of hunters and undead cleansers which serve to purge the layer of what they view as an undead plague. Oh, and since I never covered the general process for how undead come into being and the various steps of their evolution, I guess I'll detail what I have so far here. My concept is that since the machines act as bio-regenerators, there should be several marked phases to their rebuilding of a beings body based upon what they're focusing on. These phases are as follows: The UnLife Cycle Skeleton During the skeleton phase, the machines have just reanimated the corpse and are in the process of searching for flesh to replace its mass. Naturally, their is no higher nervous system, so the machines to all of the thinking and motion processing for the undead. They have marginal ability to reason out danger or foes, but they can identify sources of flesh and roughly act out how to get that flesh (attacking). Due to the animation process, their motions are somewhat jerky (think Jason and the Argonaughts), but more fluid than zombies as they don't have much mass to move. Zombie During the zombie phase, the machines have replaced most of the mass that they need for the body to heal, and are now looking for the characteristic zombie food of "brainnssssss". Obviously, this is so that they can replace the nervous system of the body and allow for it to take over its own regenerative needs. As mentioned above, since there's so much mass to move now, the zombies are also a bit more jerky in their movements than skeletons. Vampire Finally, during the vampire phase of the regenerative process, the body has basically been returned to fully functioning capacity, but due to the fact that the regenerative machines are in a constant state of repair, the person revived has to at a minimum consume quantities of blood to maintain its prior health. In addition, periodically they must also consume small quantities of organic material to make sure their bodies stay healthy. Most of the time this can be accounted for with normal eating habits, but every once in a while it involves killing a being of their same race and allowing their machines to harvest it for a material. Now, obviously this explanation of the undead subtypes doesn't cover some of the properties they normally get, and I'm still working out a reason for why these might arise (particularly ones like Vamps and Liches), but I like the general premise of why they arise.
Jeweler 04-30-06, 06:59 PM	I have not watched the movies or GITS yet, ill have to pick them up when i go to best buy next time. The user interface idea for magic is a very nice one, without noticing it i actually use it in my campaign, in almost the same way, except my magic is actually technology, but close enough. I like th explanation for the main types of undead, except liches, and i think i might have a way for those. But first, is turning like a small EMP burst to scare away the nanites, and if so what effect does it have on normal spellcasting and even the user's spellcasting? My idea for the liches is something like this: A spellcaster, any type, figures out that he can become a more powerful spellcaster and live basicly forever by taking up the curse of undeath. Now i would suspect, but doesnt have to be this way, that since he is still alive he must wait til he dies, or the nanites kill him whichever. Then he becomes a vampire after a small harvesting period, not the spellcasting power he was looking for but it could be powerful enough for him, but then, he learns that he can use some long dead secret to pull the magic keeping him alive, the nanites, and use this magic to help him cast his own spells. This takes a lot away from his regenarative system and leaves him in a horid state of disrepair, much more materials would be needed for him to keep up the lichdom then the vampirism, but thats the price you pay for power i guess. Any idea on how to do ghosts, wraiths, wights, or bodaks? I have an idea for the ghouls too, simple malfunction in the recreation process left them in an intact state but without a functioning brain, they'll eat just aobut any flesh they can get there hands on to.
DeeL 04-30-06, 08:33 PM	Don't neglect the implications of the sensitivity of many undead to sunlight. Perhaps this is a flaw in the nano-collectives themselves, or perhaps it is a technology the Gods introduced into the EM Field Effects Generator (the Sun) in an effort to ensure that the undead were purged from the system.
Araes 05-01-06, 07:54 AM	To Live and Die in the Sphere Hmm, I like that idea about the sun Deel. It has a nice sense of logic to it for a group of gods that are too busy dealing with a host of other problems. Make it so that the sun beams of the sphere put out radiation harmful to the specific nanites responsible for the regenerative process and hope that the problem takes care of itself. Its a little tricky, as if handled that way it would basically make all undead derived from nanites vulnerable to sunlight, not just the classic ones like Vamps. However, since sunlight does tend to be such a powerful symbol of undead destruction in the D&D cosmology, I think I would be fine with that. One potential solution might also be to say that the sunlight isn't bad because it hurts the nanites, but instead because it hurts the actual material they construct. Perhaps their process doesn't make exact replicas of the form as it was, but uses some form of bond to hold it all together which can be disrupted with prolonged sun exposure. Kind of a grisly image, but sunlight might very well blast all the skin right off of a walking corpse, killing its sentience, and leaving it as a fairly harmless skeleton again. I also like the idea for Liches that you had Jester, as I was thinking about a way to incorporate them since they're all over the literature, and my thoughts were moving in a somewhat similar direction. One of my other thoughts that I haven't delved into too much when talking about magic is where the energy for it comes from, and one of my personal favorites is the idea of channeling. In this system, the startup energy for an effect would be sapped directly out of a body's personal energy stores or if they had some kind of energy reservoir out of the reservoir instead. Now, in the case of a lich, they could have warped the progress of the nanites so that they serve as an added energy battery for the lich and give extra punch to their castings. The lich's phylactery is actually a perfectly reasonable point as well, since any being with the patience to figure out how to warp the progress of the curse would have also figured out how to create a self sustaining colony of the nanites to replicate a version of them after their death. With regards to ghouls and ghasts, they could both be various evolutions along the final progression towards fully intelligent undead. Since zombies are stuttering, mindless automatons who only seek for intelligence, ghouls / ghasts would be zombies after they have gotten at least a bit of their mind back and have their flesh in good repair. The nanites would probably focus on rebuilding those parts of the brain that are most useful for speeding the regeneration first, so the ghouls / ghasts would be animalistic creatures with a single driving thought of hunger and little else. They would have also gotten to the point where they could easily pass on the curse of undeath by biting / clawing those they attack, much like the final normal form of vampire. Now, many of the other types of undead you mentioned are quite a bit harder, but I've got some ideas which we can mull over and decide whether they work. For ghosts, I was actually thinking that the logical step for them would be to have them created as literal "ghosts in the machine". People who have for some reason or another had their consciousnesses dumped into the computer system either fully or partially. Why this would happen I'm not totally clear on, but it could be that ghosts are for the most part actually a good thing in the game. People who have been gifted with a boon of semi-eternal life next to the gods. This concept would also allow Wraiths to be created fairly organically, as they would be ghosts who have been changed to be hunter killers for the gods rather than living out their computer lives in peace. Oddly, this might that some of them could actually be "good" wraiths in the sense that they are ghosts sent on missions by the gods and given extra powers / toughness, while others could just be destruction machines sent out to wreak havoc and build packs of trapped sentient minds using their spawn ability. Finally, for wights, I think that they could be labeled as a perversion of the regeneration process (if that's possible for a process that's already pretty messed up). Since they're commonly listed as only being found in barrow mounds and tombs, what might happen is that the regeneration process always searches for flesh to repair itself, but in the case of a creature trapped in a tomb, its only source of repair material is other dead flesh. Regeneration using only partially decayed material would then lead to a creature which can't fully construct itself and lives somewhere above a ghoul, but can't attain the full state of vampiredom that is its final goal. Anyhow, seems ok for at least an initial concept, but feel free to critique and offer other options. Hehe, this whole topic actually makes me want to draw up one of those Darwin evolution types of pictures like this one (http://www.mnpublius.com/evolution.jpg). Also, we're at the point where I'm going to have to be saving this thread every day now aren't we, since the snapshot was to take place on May 1st? *edit* Hmm, that whole Polaqu (http://polaqu.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) post got me thinking that I might want to put this up on the web as a wiki to ensure that it would have a semi-permanent home and to allow for easier modification and organization. Not sold on the idea yet, but I might. Could also just do it as a kind of organized mirror for the posts here.
Araes 05-02-06, 11:10 AM	Races of People Redo Alright, for today's post I think that I'm going to switch gears a little bit, and cover some more crunchism topics. A while back (Decemberish) I started considering the idea that to simulate the diversity of the population of the whole universe shoved into one sphere, we would need to have a race system which could handle a more diverse range than just the simple six from the player's handbook. When I originally thought about this, the first idea I had was that you could create a kind of "template" process, whereby a completely average being would be modified by four layers of templates to create a composite being with varied abilities and stats. The whole post on the subject is back here. Now, although I do like that idea somewhat looking back at it, one of the problems I see with it is that it will probably encourage pure, single-type characters even if there is the option for diversity, as the bonuses stack. Therefore, someone who doesn't really care about having their charisma neutered would just take four layers of "mole" archetype and become a super tough burrowing monster. To correct this, what I would propose instead is a modified version, where there are still multiple steps to the process, but each of those steps represents something different in the character's race. If we look at a race, there are generally bonus/penalties to: Ability scores Feats Skills (might be able to clump with feats, IE +2 bonus feat) Movement (speed or type) Special / Spell-like Abilities Qualities (reach, vision, scent, energy res., spell res., size) Saving Throws Now, at each step in the process, I was actually thinking of having it so that there are a set number of choices. One of my thoughts was that four seems to be a nice common number and helps play nicely with a lot of the elemental background in D&D. For example, each step could have a Wind, Water, Fire, Earth choice. My problem with this is that it doesn't work nicely with the scientific motif that's going on in the setting, and harkens all the way back to the bronze age reasoning of the world. Another way to go about setting up the fixed categories would be to base them off of creature archetypes like I was proposing before, but just have them broken down at each step so that you can't overload on one single bonus. This might actually be the best way to go about it, and would actually capture the whole racial heritage concept more accurately. The reason why I would like to stick to a fixed array of racial backgrounds at each step is so that we could then do things like racial heritage chains of feats down the road and maybe racial PrCs. For the racial feats, one of the thoughts that I had was that your distribution of racial choices might also determine the array of racial feats that you could pick up over a career. IE, if you take three steps of avian and two of mole, then you could also grab three avian racial feats and two mole feats over your career. Odd thought, but it might work out, or maybe your archetype with the most selections would become your racial feat tree selection. In fact, one of the best ways to pursue this concept might be to have the final step of race selection determined by prior choices, so that we could guarentee we would have a feature to build feats off of. For example, in the above race, I mentioned that the archetype with the most choices would be avian. If this were the case, then maybe for the final step of the process their character would gain a fly speed of some type. This would allow for the creation of an avian feat tree which took advantage of the fact that we knew they would be able to fly. Right now, the six types that I'm thinking are: Avian (Dex), Burrower (Con), Fey (Cha), Giant/Beastial (Str), Shifter (Wis), Amphibian (Int). For most of these, the idea is that they simply capture some kind of animal which you might see in the wild which could have then been the basis for an evolved species. Birds would have made Avians, Moles would make Burrowers, Beastial is basically a wild dog, and Serpent would be an amphibian or maybe snake (my brain also kind of sticks Draconic in here). The two that are a little bit of trouble though are the Fey and Shifter types. For the Fey type I'm basically thinking of that kind of airy, delicate and almost alien grace that a lot of sci-fi creatures (and elves) tend to have. For the shifters, I'm basically thinking of a creature that evolved from some type of highly morphable creature like an Ooze or Doppleganger. Naturally, this makes the ability score modifiers fairly easy for that step. Avian: +2 Dex, -2 Con Burrow: +2 Con, -2 Cha, -2 Int Fey: +2 Cha, -2 Int Beast: +2 Str, -2 Int, -2 Wis Shifter: +2 Wis, -2 Cha Amphibian: +2 Int, -2 Wis For the special qualities, some of them are fairly easy, while others would be a bit more difficult to balance out. Basically, none of the benefits packages should work out to being over +1 ECL in value. Proposed are: Avian: Eagle Vision (2x Human range w/ detail), 1/day Gust of Wind Burrow: Darkvision (120ft.) Fey: Low Light Vision, 1/day Stunning Grace (Stun opponents for 1d4 round at DC [ECL + 10]) Beast: Scent Shifter: Morphic Reach (Sudden +5ft to reach with limbs) Amphibian: Scaly Skin (+2 Nat. Armor AC) Some of these seem a bit off, so if anybody has any suggestions on how they might be balanced out better please voice them. For the saving throw bonuses, I'm not thinking of having them be anything major, but more along the lines of the specialized ones the base classes get. Like resist poisons, or sleep/enchantment. Avian: +1 to All Saves Burrow: +2 Save vs Spells Fey: Immune Mag. Sleep, +2 vs Ench. Effects Beast: +2 Save vs Poisons and Paralysis Shifter: Immune Mag. Sleep, +2 Save vs Trans Effects Amphibian: +2 Save vs Illusions, +1 DC when Casting Illusions Now, for the rest of them I'm a bit torn. A while ago I saw a suggestion for using cultural templates to define what skill bonuses and feats a person starts with, but there is also something natural about giving a race a bonus feat with benefits to skills that they're just better at or task they can naturally do more proficiently. Maybe we could do both actually, with some cultural benefits and some racial ones. As ideas for the racial ones they could be: Avian: +2 to Spot and Search Checks Burrow: Stonecunning Fey: +2 to Balance and Move Silently Checks Beast: Track Shifter: +2 to Disguise and Escape Artist Checks Amphibian: Controlled Respiration (Double time without air) Now, once we had gotten down to the last part of the process then we would decide whatever the final benefit the new race gets by tallying up all of the various choices it has made and figuring out which racial archetype is the most pronounced. If two or more are tied then the player could just choose whichever one they wanted. The proposed list of final benefits would have a focus on movement and getting around and would be: Avian: Fly (poor) Burrow: Burrow (all non-magic materials) rate [10/hardness ft. round] (stable tunnels) Fey: Limited Tree Walk (100 ft, 3/day) Beast: +10 land speed Shifter: Disguise Self (at Will) Amphibian: Amphibious, Swim Speed (land speed) Anyhow, that's the first pass at doing a system like this. I would like it if I could somehow work a large size creature in there somewhere, but it just doesn't seem to really fit with the theme going on, and gives a massive ECL hit. Maybe its better in the long run if it doesn't find a place, as it might throw things out of whack.
TúrintheMormegil 05-02-06, 04:40 PM	Oooh, interesting! Very good setup for a system. Question: how does this account for humans? Can you create some sort of "standard race"? This seems very much oriented on races that are always a bit off. Also, how exactly does this attack the original problem? I think one would still be inclined to go with the same type for most of his features (i.e. mostly avian, mostly burrower, or whatever). Feat trees especially would reward this even further. I'm not sure you want this, but perhaps it would be good to make this more open to adding new stereotypes and abilities. :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 05-03-06, 07:38 AM	Discussion of Character Creation Merits Hey Turin, you're right in a sense, that this doesn't completely get over the problem of preferentially aligning people to go a certain way. Part of that was why I was saying I'm just not completely satisfied with the selections and with the whole process as is. However, I'd like to think that its at least a partial improvement over the prior design, in that it doesn't completely set you up to be one type or another, as maybe folks who like to have a +2 Int won't be the same people who want Scaly Skin or affinity with Illusions. However, I admit there are still some problems, as certain tracks like Shifter are particularly preferential for a thief, as is the Beast for any type of tracking profession. As far as the "normal" human thing goes too, it is a tricky problem, since like you said this does prefer select non-humans exclusively. One way might be to put some kind of Primate selection path in there, which basically sets up all the parameters for being a human if you follow it through. I'm not quite sure what I would put in for several of the steps, as they tend to be so vanilla with a few really good bonuses, but it might go something like: Ability Scores: No +'s, No -'s Special Qualities: +1 skill pt / level Feats: 1 feat of choice Saves: No idea Movement: Maybe wrap in the No Prefered Class option (IE, force a prefered class on the others) Either way, its a tricky problem. If you happen to have any suggestions on how I might get around the issue of people preferentially selecting one path all the way too, ideas are most definitely welcome, as I'm spinning the wheels a bit. One voice in the other camp might be that since members of a race would probably tend to breed together, it might be logical for avians to most normally be pure breed, but with the option for some offshoots due to intermarriage, trysts, forced relations, what have you. *edit* One other thing I had been thinking of is a minor spell-like ability section, where every single race in the sphere gets some set of minor spell-like abilities that their race just does inherently by this point in their evolution. Like the sorcerer idea I mentioned earlier, it would basically represent that inate connection to the sphere tech. that people have built up over a long time living under its influence. Total tangent as well, but got some stuff I need to remind myself to talk about and flesh out. Types of Spellcasters Further talk on class breakdown in general (Jeweler and my gabbing about classes vs PrCs) Dragon's Place in the World (it is D&D - thinking Shadowrunish, few Great Worms, some of whom are famous, and some children / young dragons that are trying make a name for themselves. Vastly powerful overall.) Elementals
TúrintheMormegil 05-03-06, 11:02 AM	I agree that it's hard to exclude preferential paths. A suggestion: why do the choices need to be themed? I can see why you would want to have symmetry in the number of options per step (though it's not a very strong argument even then IMO), but why do they need to have symmetry in terms of theme? In doing it the current way, you're basically contradicting yourself: as the basic premise you said that anything and everything is possible in the vast area of the spheres, but when filling in the details, you seem to suggest that everyone is a hybrid of six "original races" in some way (some purer than others). I suggest you un-theme the options in each step. While you might still get preferred combinations, you can explain the more frequent occurence of these from a darwinist logic: good combinations thrive. I'm not sure I'm making sense here. Shall I expand on this idea or have you heard enough? :tiphat: Túrin
Jeweler 05-04-06, 08:24 AM	We'll need to balance out the "basic" classes, feat distrubution like you said, and the PrC will need to be done, when they come up. Types of spellcasters might be hard, is the "basic" spellcaster class going to be split up into diine and arcane or leave it and let PrCs rule over that. Yeah im having some major problems with the elementals im creating, there is actually too much diversity in them, and way to many to create. Thats the only problem i have with diversity, too much stuff to create sometimes. And on the note of races, maybe you could break the whole beast, avian, shifter, etc. into there actual animals, each one under beast might have similiar stat bonuses, but give different abilities from there on. The first step of a race doesnt really show what animal it is, but the second step in it would. Also instead of making so that to get the 2nd step you have to take the 1st, why dont you make it so that you have something like 6-8 steps, first 2 free, 3-4 steps in a race need atleast 1, and then if someone still wants to be full of a race, id say 6 steps if you were going to allow full, then those extra 2 spaces are taken up by a heritage feat, sorta genetic bonus for being pure type thing, but it takes up both slots. Someone who isnt pure is going to get more bonuses, and minuses, and some more diverse abilities, but the pure are going to get something in return also. In the end there is no way to not reward a pure race, and all i can say is hopefully your players will understand they are suspose to have mixed races, and there is more of a benefit to it in the end. On genetic heritage, racial feats, i would say have one of the prerecs. be that you have to have so many steps in a race and one of there abilities.
Jeweler 05-04-06, 09:00 PM	Ok so i got bored in class, no surprise there, started working on possible race abilities. Now this is taking into account my 6 steps make up a whole race. I suggest also that all favored classes be with PrCs instead of the base 3-4 ones. so far i have Avian, Burrowing, Fey, and Mammalian. Also steps 1 and 2 are free and open, but you need 1 to access 3 and 2 to access 4, so step 2 and 4 are going to tie together some what and 1 is going to bonuses/negatives, and 3 is tends to be powerful, because they have to take the negatives and what not. Avian Raven +2 dex, +2 Int, -2 wis, -2 con Step 1 Ravenic heritage leads to agile and quick witted beings, but tend to frail and too whimsical at times. +2 Cha, +1 illusion DCs for spells Step 2 Fly 30ft. (poor) Step 3 Comprehend langauges 1/Day Step 4 Dove +2 dex, +2 wis, -2 con, -2 str Step 1 +2 wis Step 2 Fly 30ft. (poor) Step 3 Santaury 1/Day Step 4 Hawk +4 dex, +2 str, -2 con, -2 cha S1 +2 damage when charging, can be mulitplied by critical S2 *2 low light vision, with detail S3 Fly 45ft. (poor) S4 Eagle +2 dex, +2 Str, -4 cha S1 *4 low light vision Fly 35ft. (poor) +5 spot/search Burrowing Mole +4 con, -2 wis, -2 cha S1 +2 natural armor Burrow 15ft. (stable tunnels) DR 1 v. earth based effects (elementals, natural, spells, etc.) Lemmings (i dont remember whether they actually burrow, so if they dont give me another one i can use) +2 Dex, +2 con, -4 str S1 small size S2 Burrow 10ft. (stable tunnels) S3 +10ft. land speed S4 Ants +4 str, +2 con, -4 cha, -2 int S1 can carry as if one size catergory larger S2 +3 natural armor Burrow speed 20ft. (stable tunneling) Fey Nymph +4 cha, -2 str, -2 con +2 DC mind effecting spells and abilities stunning gaze 1/D as nymph, figure save from rules in M&M +2 to all cha based skills Dryads +2 cha, +2 wis, -2 dex +1 CL with plant descriptor +4 survival checks in forests and jungles Tree walk 100ft. 3/day Thorn +2 dex, +2 cha, -2 str, -2 con small size sleep 2/day Spiked skin (+2 natural armor, +1 melee damage, attacker takes 1 point of damage from hitting character with melee weapons) Treant +2 str, +2 cha, +2 con, -4 dex -10 land speed, +4 natural armor (hehe lemming treant combo O.O) photosynthesis (2 hours of sunlight=full 8 hours rest and food for one day, needs 1 1/2 water) +4 bull rush and trip attempts (i think there is another but cant look it up) Mammlians Wolf +2 str, +2 dex, -2 int, -2 wis Scent Bite 1D4+1 1/2 str Trip ability as wolf Bear +4 str, +2 con, -2 dex, -2 wis, -2 cha +2 natural armor +4 swim and climb bonus diehard bonus feat Boar +2 str, +2 con, -2 wis, -4 cha +10 land speed for charges only +4 to bullrush opponents, +2 v. bullrush attempts +2 damage on charges, can be effected by critical multiplier Ape +4 skill points at first level, +1 skill point there after +2 will vs. mind effecting abilities and spells (humans are determined, makes since thats there explanation for the bonus feat and skills) bonus feat no favored class ability (allows them to multiclass without penalty, i have quite a few people who dont understand that concept) And that is as far as i have gotten, it might rival the length of your posts now Araes : ) And that is as far as i have gotten, it might rival the length of your posts now Araes : ) *edit* whatever is in the parentheses is what was orginally there and NT stands for not there. *new* Tiger +2 dex, +2 cha, -2 wis, -2 int 2 claws 1D4+1 1/2 str +5 move silently/hide pounce ability Panther +2 dex, +2 str, -2 wis, -2 int -2 cha +3 moesilently/hide/swim/climb/jump cause fear 1/day 2 claws 1D6+1 1/2 str Reptilian/Draconis Cobra +2 dex, +2 cha, -2 str, -2 con +3 gather info., bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate bite 1D6+1 1/2 poison(intial 1D2 str secondary 1D2 con) Dc(10+con mod.+1/2 ECL) cause fear 2/day (extraordinary ability) Asp +4 dex, +2 Int, -2 str, -2 con, -2 cha bite 1D6+1 1/2 str +4 hide/intimidate Poison Intial 1D3+1 con Secondary 1D3 str DC 10+1/2 con mod+1/2 ECL Draconis +2 str, +4 Int, -2 dex, -2 cha +3 natural armor fly 25Ft. average *4 lowlight vision Shifter Doppleganger +4 cha, +2 dex, -2 str, -2 con +3 to all cha based skills i do not have a third step for the doppleganger suggestions? disguise self 3/day (supernatural or extraordinary?) thats all the shifters because lycans end up being to close to Mammalian counterpart Amphibian/Sea Creature Frog Normal Poison Dart +4 dex, +4 Int, -4 dex, -2 con, -2 cha +4 dex, +4 cha, -2 str, -4 con, -2 wis tiny sizetiny size tongue attack 1D4+1/2 str (10ft. reach)+10 jump, +6 balance/climb jump 2/day (extraordinary), +5 jump, balance, climbcontact poison 1D2 con intial, 1D2 str secondary DC 10+con mod.+1/2 ECL (poison dart frogs,even one step are immune to this poison) Fish +2 dex, +2 con, -2 wis, -2 str, -2 cha +10 swim check waterbreathing (all the time) swim speed half of land speed Shark +2 con, +2 dex, -2 int, -4 cha bite 1D8+1 1/2 str land speed= swim speed water breathing Turtle +4 con, +2 wis, -2 str, -2 dex, -2 cha +3 natural armor, increases to +6 when prone, -10 land speed, -5 from all others +2 to attack, +1 to damage, ranged attacks shield 1/day I gave the turtle the bonus to ranged because that deals with aiming, something they should be good at taking so long to do everything. Next are the 3 "races" i have created, Wolf Thorn's (no better name), Ground Wasps, Mermen, (ok make it 4) ???????? ??????? (hehe). Wolf Thorn steps 1,2,3,4 of Thorn (fey) steps 1,3 of wolf (mammalian) +2 cha, +4 dex, -2 int, -2 wis, -2 con (combo of the 2 number 1 steps) small size (step 3 of Thorn) Speed: 20Ft. (from small size) Spiked Skin 3/day (Thorn step 4) sleep 1/day (thorn step 2) Bite 1D4+1 1/2 str (step 3 of wolf) needs flavor but its a start i think. Ground Wasp Steps 1,2,3,4 of ant Steps 2,4 of eagle +2 str, +2 con, -2 Int, -2 cha (step 1 of ant) can carry weights as if one size larger (step 2 of ant) +3 natural armor (step 3 of ant) Burrow speed 20ft. (step 4 of ant) speed 30 ft. (normal for medium) Fly 35ft. (average) *4 low light vision make it so there eagle heritage shows up as translucent wings like a ground wasp's and there burrow ability so they live underground. Mermen 1-4 steps of Fish 1 and 3 of Ape +2 dex, +2 con, -2 wis, -2 str, -2 cha (step 1 of fish) +10 swim checks can take 10 even in a strong current, but not under pressure (ie combat)(step 2 of fish) Water breathing (step 3 of fish) swim speed=1/2 land speed (step 4 of fish) +4 skill points at 1st level, +1 there on each level (step 1 of Ape) bonus feat (step 3 of ape) or +2 to will saves versuses mind affecting effects (step 2 of ape) ???????? ??????? (which means deadly beauty in greek so guess what the races are going to be :) steps 1,3,4 of Nymph steps 1,2,4 of doppleganger +8 cha, +4 dex, -4 str, -4 con (1 for both of them) +5 to all cha based skills (2 of doppleganger 4 of nymph) disguise self 3/day (step 4 of doppleganger) stunning gaze (step 3 of nymph) You know i didbnt even plan that, the ability bonuses and negatives matched up perfectly, so did the cha based skill bonus, and then the stunning gaze is mean with the disguise self ability, because you'll never know if its the same person or not. But yeah thats it, the last one seams a little broken with the ungodly cha and a high dex, but ill let other people look at it before i scrap it.
Araes 05-05-06, 08:32 AM	Haha, commence bad jokes about ruling the boards together. Now all that's needed is colorful place markers and faux witty pop culture. And sarcasm, always sarcasm. Seriously though, thank you for the commentary guys and the suggestions on how to improve the process. I'm actually a little torn, as I actually like points and suggestions that both you guys brought up, and need to make a call on which way to go. Truth From Argument In the case of your comments Turin, I can definitely see where you're coming from as far as the variety of life on board the sphere. You're right in the sense that there shouldn't just be six or seven ancestral lines from which all other life is grown. That wouldn't be logical in an object that is purported to contain species from all the walks of the universe. The two reasons I do like the whole racial bloodlines type of approach though are that: 1) it would give you a nice way to figure out the visual characteristics of a person as well as their stats, 2) it has a bit more "flair" to me just reading about it than picking generic abilities without background or theme. However, I think you've definitely convinced me that having specific lines of racial feats probably isn't the right way to go. Perhaps cultural or layer specific if at all. Hmm. With regards to your idea Jeweler, I think I'm a little confused as to what you're proposing, but I actually like a lot of what I saw in your second post for maybe a different reason. When I mentioned the multi-step process six posts back, I was just saying that at each step there would be a selection from each theme, and then the theme with the largest percentage of votes would determine the movement type bonus they got at the end. Now, even if I am confused, what you've done in your second post with splitting the various types into subtypes is actually pretty cool but in a different way. I mean, I don't want character creation to turn into some horrible monstrosity of table hunting and zillions of subtypes, but I like the fact that you have different choices based on different types of ancestry, that are still under a common heading. As Turin mentioned, I'm not sure if we can make it so that the true diversity of a universal populace is maintained, but maybe we can mimic it better. My suggestion for this is that for a step system we could have groups of choices which are all under the same "idea" and people could pick one. We wouldn't have to stick to the same theme for each level either, as the MM obviously has a bunch of different ecosystems and groups to choose from (although if they were as broad as reptiles / mammals / ect... we would probably have to repeat) So, for example, with abilities we might end up with something like: Avians Raven +2 dex, +2 int, -2 wis, -2 con Dove +2 dex, +2 wis, +2 cha, -2 con, -2 str Hawk +4 dex, -2 con, -2 cha -2 wis Eagle +2 dex, -4 cha Burrowers Mole +2 con, -2 wis, -2 cha Lemming +2 Dex, +2 con, -4 str Ant +2 str, +2 con, -4 int, -2 cha, -2 wis Wolverine +4 con, -2 dex, -4 cha Fey Mammals Note: Your ability scores were a little out of whack by DMG guides on balance if we're aiming for ECL 0. (Remember that physical scores are double value mental ones) When we did the next step in the process, maybe some or all of these could then cycle out, and the next group could have things like Vermin, Oozes, or really far out stuff like silicon and ammonia based life. Either way, it provide a large level of diversity and would also stop there from being one single "right" path to make a thief, fighter, ect... as there would be multiple choices with advantages, disadvantages at each step.
Araes 05-05-06, 10:37 AM	Alright, figured I'd do another one of these since I missed yesterday, and I've got some stuff I wanted to cover. Over the past couple of days we've been discussing how races ought to be laid out during character creation and whether they are balanced, representative of a mixed population, and diverse enough. However, one thing that I think we should also think about, and which I admit I hadn't yet in a serious way is the level of social integration that is actually taking place within the sphere. There Is No Simple Reform Whether its a fault or a boon, I tend to naturally be of the mindset that once we reach galactic colonization societal trends will follow some kind of Trek mindset in the way they play out. IE, Initial spats/disagreements between neighbors, but eventually one big happy Federation. However, there's also no reason that needs to be true. It could very well be that there were large social rifts even before the sphere smashed them all together, or if there weren't, then some may have opened up during the meantime. (An interesting idea is that some folks may have been slighted and left out of the sphere due to racial prejudice) What this means is that we not in fact have a happy land where everybody intermixes / breeds and where crossbreeds may actually be heavily discriminated against due their ancestral heritage. On many levels, I'm actually a big fan of this concept, as it opens up all new paths of social conflict, plot hooks, and adventure. You might very well have the equivalent of the Burrowers KKK or the Avian Nations, ready to cause strife and suffering for anyone who discredits their stock. At the very least, these types of fringe groups may exist in certain layers of the sphere (especially packed ones like Irem). This also brings up another interesting point - where might dragons fit into all of this? Dragons are avowed in D&D literature as being one of the smartest, craftiest, and most powerful races in any campaign world. They are very often the most powerful foes, and sometimes are even the architects of doom. (Although there's a pretty strong cliché about evil Warlock / Priest / Lich with a servant dragon) What role might something like that have played in a universe before it all came crashing to an end? Come Not Between The Dragon, And His Wrath One interesting thought (to me) was that they may have actually been (on average) discontented members of society. Being that powerful and wise, they would very likely be at or near the top of their food chain from the beginning of time. What if, in addition, they had also been one of multiple lifeforms to evolve on a planet, and basically kept the other one in slavery (or at least second class citizens) to do their bidding. When the other beings of the stars made contact with them, they may have found that they were suddenly nothing special in the grand scheme of things. With starships, intellect augmentation, powersuits, and galactic travel, their own abilities in the physical and flight arenas seemed pitiful and easily matched by the flimsiest of races. They were no longer at the top of the chain, but simply another race in a laundry list of smaller peers. When the big collapse came though, suddenly they'd be right back on top of their game. Of all the sentient races that made it to the sphere, they'd be one of the only ones blessed with everything necessary to survive the harsh slide backward in tech; powerful strength, amazingly long lifespans, and amazing minds. In fact, due to their own long lifespans and immense memory, they might very well remember many of the secrets of tech. which had been forgotten by other, shorter lived, races and horde that knowledge as securely as a golden bauble. In a way, I see dragons taking a similar place in society as they did in the Shadowrun universe, where due to their vast array of powers they were quite often the players in the shadows who moved world events to their own unseen ends. In our own, who knows what they might be up to. They'd rarely be the opponent that you face off against in a stand up fight, and even if you manage to track them down and corner them for one, your chances of winning would be negligible without some serious power. Perhaps they're squabbling among themselves, waging secret wars on their peers through gates only they can use; maybe some of them are trying to help the "lesser" races, providing technology and acting as benefactors; or maybe they're actually a conglomerate trying to take control of the sphere for their own, a second party that the "gods" are having to fight off to maintain operations. Anyhow, what do you think about the concept in general? Reading through the campaign by committee threads and some others, it seemed that one of the general consensuses was that if dragons were going to make an appearance in a game they needed to grab back some of that awe inspiring feeling they had in prior editions.
MadApe19 05-05-06, 02:41 PM	There are some interesting thoughts and statistics I've been reading lately in this thread. I hope they're being saved to be reposted when the new forum changes are finalized :confused: EDIT: The dragon idea sounds cool. I'd like to see your take on them in your particular world, since to me it seems like you might not be sticking with the regular chromatic/metallic and the like.
Jeweler 05-05-06, 05:24 PM	Yeah i was looking at the stats, over powered by DMG standards, and even i thought it was a little overpowered, but i never agreed with the physical being better than mental, that might be because i play more mages and what not, but still. Ill take a look at the rules for race creation in the DMG, but i dont think ill make that many race changes, thats the thing, i was going off stereo-types, wolves are quick and powerful, also known for int, but since there bestial i gave them the minus. Looking at it, counting physical as 2 points and mental as 1, which is dumb but just for arguemental, raven is even, dove is down 2 points, change hawk dex bonus to 2 to make it 2 points up, change eagle give them no strength bonus to make them even (not really worth it then though) so id just keep eagle the way it is. keep mole the same way, an extra hit point isnt going to make that big of a deal, lemming is even, change ant to +2 str instead of 4, the nymph is down 4 points so id give them a +2 bonus to dex like i orginally planned. the Thorn is down 2 points, wolf is up 4 and sorry its obscene to give them a minus to all mental stats because it has 2 +2 physical ot me so leave it maybe change the -2 int to -2 cha. Drop the bear's stregth down to +2 evens it out, boar is up 2, not worried with the -4 cha. Ape is like human which is suspoedly the basis for all ECLs anyways. Ill go back and make the changes and put the orginal next to them in my other post. I could not get anything good for the shifters, except the doppleganger line, lycans turned out too overpowered to negate without give them -4 to all mental, so i said scratch it. Ill put up the retiles i have, the shifter i have and the amphibians/sea creatures i have, since i finished them. On the subject of diversity, there is no real way to get around the table hunting part if you want a ton of diversity. Because even the way you suggest, the animal lineage then some stranger one after that for the next step and what not will still take up a big table. Ill probally use my system even if you dont so, thanks for the idea actually. Color/metallic dragons are nice and all, but they are now too stereotype for any use at all, I would say have one dragon, to screw people up allow the entire species to change its color at will, and then have seen dragons around the sphere be different colors.
Sphyre 05-07-06, 11:00 AM	Interesting. Although not like it at all, the first thing that came to mind when I started reading this was Scrapped Princess. The whole magic in the future, in a contained area, dragons, and non-advanced societies idea. Interesting ideas.
Araes 05-07-06, 11:29 AM	To answer your question about the forum archiving MadApe, every time I make a post on this thread I'm saving the entire thing using the "save thread" tool, so hopefully when it all comes back up it should be a simple matter of parsing it back in with proper markers for whose thoughts were whose. I've actually been saving a bunch of older threads too that I liked on the off chance that they might get deleted and will post the parts I like of them as well if they do. Further Aspects of Dragonkind With regards to the dragons, I think that the essence of Jeweler's comment is how I feel as well. I tend to view the whole color scheme for dragons as being somewhat of a crutch, and since I'm already tossing alignment into the heap from a purely good / evil - chaos / law perspective, I figure that no-one will be too annoyed if dragons lose their strict alignment by color as well. I'm fond of the concept of running into Reds and Blacks who mean a party no harm or who actually want to help remove a Gold who's been causing trouble for their kind. One of the things I had been playing with as well is kind of along the lines you were talking about Jeweler. I'm thinking that if dragons are going to be a major force, then adoption of the "alternate form" power from the Silvers for use by all dragons might be an interesting move. It might be limited, in the sense that each dragon has from 1-3 forms that they always stick to, but it would provide an opportunity for dragons to interact normally with the populace on a covert basis, and for anybody you're talking with to be a dragon. As far as their society goes, I'm still not quite sure how to handle it. On one hand, there's the idea of having a large cabal of dragons who all get together semi-regularly and discuss topics of importance to their kind. Whether they be issues like taking over the sphere (if they want that) or dealing with "domestic" disputes between groups or individuals, dragons like this would be of a more social variety and very likely might have plans operating across all the layers and continents of the sphere. The other way I've thought of handling them could be in a more lone wolf style. Instead of having an active social community and regular get-togethers, meetings might be reserved for only highly special occasions or even unheard of. In fact, at the extreme edge, all dragons may be intrinsically anti-social with one another and somewhat competitive, getting together only for mating, limited raising of offspring, and short-term pacts of allegiance. Both ideas are a little bit tempting, but I think like with a lot of things, the best idea is probably somewhere in the middle. There are probably some of the dragons are who isolationistic, preferring to keep their distance from their peers and carve out their own little area of control, while there are probably other groups (possibly even very large ones) which work together quite regularly and may have sphere ranging plots against other such groups, the other races, or the gods themselves. With the vast population and space of the sphere, there could easily be the possibility for dragonkind wars of both the cold and hot variety with dragons moving people around from the shadows or actively raking each other from the skies. Plus, coupled in with the undead ideas I moved around before, another very real possibility is an active campaign by certain sects of dragonkind against any dragons which have been infected with the disease of undeath. If, on average, the race was fairly disgruntled about their place in galactic society, and the role which technology had in bringing them there, then its quite likely that there could be strong feelings of disgust for those who would pollute their draconic bodies for an extension on their already long lives. In addition, due to the methods which I have proposed for its progression, it is nearly assured that any member of a slowly reproducing / maturing race cannibalizing his own would be marked for death instantly. Thoughts on the Diversity Question and Race Creation Didn't mean to give you a hard time about the scores being not how the DMG specifies, wasn't my intention. Its more a question of whether we do want to stick to WotC guidelines in race creation and aim for what would standardly be called ECL 0 races for any common ones. If the common consensus was that it would be better to make the stats system across the board be even, or that ECL 1-2 might be a better starting point, then that would be fine with me, as I've had my doubts about their playtesting in the past for that as well. However, I can definitely see where they would be coming from with some of the phys. balance from a twinker's perspective. From a pure firepower perspective, +2 to Str / Dex / Con just gives you more, on average, for every class, in terms of survivability than +2 to Int / Wis / Cha does. I don't think that it gives you twice as much (except maybe for Cha in a non-RP heavy game), which seems to be their implication, but it does give you something more. On the table hunting issue, I think you are right in a way, to truly have a vast array of diversity while still retaining that sense of realness for a race, I think we are going to have to deal with some table issues. I would just like to limit that problem as much as possible though, and try to keep it fairly simple, so that any newcomer can be easily led through the process or pick it up from one read. That's why I originally liked the template idea I proposed a long while back, as it was quite simple: Pick any four templates in any combination you like. Add their abilities. You're done. This new one I've proposed isn't quite as easy, but on thinking about it, I think I would at least like to stick to a system where people don't have to keep track of how many of each type they've chosen. Plus, keeping each section fairly compartmentalized will help make it easier to balance for power. I still very much like the idea of having different submembers of a single type, so that even if two people took similar overall selections, their actual characters could end up different. IE, Hawk vs Dove and things like that. Finally, you've proposed your own system for how to go about doing this, but like I mentioned in the last post, I'm still a little bit confused on how it would happen in game terms, so I'm not sure how to evaluate it. What would really help me is if you could post maybe an example of it in action or a step by step walkthrough, so I could follow it, as my brain's just not putting the big idea together from your post. Anyhow, I appreciate the work you've been doing on this, and I like a lot of the suggestions you've been making for the creatures, as they do seem rather reflective of their natural abilities. If you could post the reptiles, shifters, and amphibians you mentioned, that would be quite helpful too. *edit* Hey Sphyre, thanks for the comment and the note about similarities to Scrapped Princess (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapped_Princess). I hadn't actually seen that particular anime before, but after taking a quick Wikipedia tour it does seem that you are right. There are several elements that mirror each other in some way or another, and the overall concept bears a striking resemblance (found the part about overwatching AI gods particularly interesting). Scrapped Princess looks like it borrows a bit too much from the Neon Genesis and Xenosaga books of plot design for my personal taste, but the premise is an interesting one. Plus, its a good sign that the idea already has some traction, as maybe more than five or six people will be interested in it. Not claiming anything about my mind, but there's that old adage about "thinking alike" that hopefully applies.
Jeweler 05-07-06, 09:42 PM	Thats the problem ive always had with making races, everyone goes off the standard races, elves and humans, and the half orc. And i dont think the half orc should get so many minuses, but just me i guess. I'll post up the last of the races then ill put up my race i created, and maybe make some more if i get some time tonight, all that should be up tomorrow in the morning.
Araes 05-08-06, 08:17 AM	Thanks for the reply Jeweler, look forward to seeing what you've written on those. Perhaps we can reach some kind of compromise which decides exactly how much +2 to some stat really is worth once we've looked at the ideas some more. Government, By and For the Dragons Alright, the first thing I would like to discuss today is the concept I think I've settled on for dragonkind society. I think a multi-tiered system would actually be best, with multiple layers of interaction and alliances going on behind the scenes. At their core, having grown for so long a period on a planet where they basically ruled each of their own tracts of land with impunity, I feel it would be natural for dragons to settle into a similar pattern when they found themselves on the top of the power chain once again. In a way, I actually envision the entire dragon society somewhat like a massive multiplayer real time simulation game. Each dragon would carve out its personal fief according to power and ability, acting to keep that stretch of territory much like a territorial animal would. They would use whatever resources were at their disposal (raw, people, military, diplomacy) and the total area held by any one dragon might ebb or flow, but there would generally be a balance of power with other dragons and with non-draconically influenced empires. They most definitely wouldn't be everywhere, and there would be whole continents of population without a single draconic holding anywhere, but by and large there would be dragons ruling fiefs openly or by proxy throughout the sphere. Proxy would probably be the most likely, as it would insulate the dragon's identity and protect it from backlash among the general population and its peers. At the second tier up, its also very likely that there would be short term alliances formed all the time by draconic groups to achieve some mutually beneficial goal. Perhaps they both want to harm a competitor near them, or go into a venture which neither of them have the resources for alone, or maybe they just happen to be friends and find that two or more can accomplish a lot where one would fail. Even further up, there would then exist larger super-groups of organization. These would be groups of dragons which gather semi-regularly and devote resources from each of their lands towards goals which stretch beyond just claiming personal power. These types of organizations would very likely be the ones which aim to overthrow the silicon gods, secretly research their own methods of instituting a second universal expansion, or simply want to sway the general trend of draconic policy. This would bring us to the final group within draconic society, the governing body. Somewhat like the mentality of slave owners, one of the more common views among dragons would likely be that the majority of other races are simply inferior and deserve to be led by dragons. Naturally, like any society, there would be varying degrees of intensity among individuals on this point, and there would be many, perhaps even whole super-groups, who felt that the other races were draconic equals or even better in some ways. However, the predominant view would be one of rulership, if not ownership, and like any race trying to keep another, they would have a governing body that supported those aims. Right now I'm considering the possibility that the formation of policy and practices, as well as the dispensation of justice and levying of claims would be an annual event where dragons from all over traveled to some location within the sphere and met. Very likely, they might all be in disguise as other races, and the whole event might appear from the outside like some mass pilgrimage with very selective admittance. The Diversity of Magic The next thing I wanted to cover was actually how magic might be handled mechanically within the game and how the various types of magic users might be divided up among the populace. First off, I have to say that I'm a big fan of spellpoint types of systems, where players simply have a certain reserve of power, and can cast from that pool until it eventually runs dry. However, I can also see how this might turn some people off of the magic system, as it seems too much like psionics and not magic. One interesting point of pursuing such an idea though, is that it could very well allow for a unification of magic and psionics into a cohesive whole. Spell points and power points might very well be interchangeable if matched correctly, and when a player switched to a different type of casting, they would still be building up their reserve of personal power, even if it was at a slower rate while they learned the ropes of the new style. The next important factor in my concept of magic is that there needs to be a significant level of diversity across the sphere. Within our own world, the concept of magic is a universal idea, but its expression has taken numerous forms, and compared to the sphere we are miniscule. You need only hop from one landmass to another to see the many paths which magic can take, including ancestor worship, traditional medieval wizards, deity / faith magic, shamanistic nature magic, symbol magic and the power of shapes / images, mentalism, voodoo, taoism, and even wicca. However, to emulate this diversity within a game, right now I'm not sure whether I want to create wrappers for the various normal D&D classes (spell lists, practices, ect...) or create whole new classes which encapsulate each of these concepts and gain spells / power, in their own way. The other problem is that I would also like to incorporate the previous user interface concept I talked about earlier and figure out how the interaction between the various magics might change a particular magic user's growth and evolution over a game. One thought I've had is that each type of magic might have a subset of the language on which it is commonly focused, and as the user grows in power, their own command of expression in that particular subset would be improved, naturally leading to more power. In addition, with the addition of new words and concepts in their particular style, magic users would be able to combine them into further coherent phrases, thus extending their spell list. If they then crossed over to another field, they would then gain access to the vocabulary / expressive forms of that new field, and this would further expand their spell list and power with the new modes of that society. However, the problem this encounters is that with a mixed language, there would then naturally be cross effects which would come about. If someone was fairly proficient in both expressing themselves through emotion and imagery, then they would probably be able to accomplish a wider array of feats than someone who only used imagery. Plus, someone who used imagery, emotion, and movement would have geometrically more expressive paths than either of the previous casters. To balance this growth of expression, there would need to be a power tradeoff, in that someone who had access to such a diverse set of powers would have to be more limited in how they could cast them, or their own internal power reserves. Perhaps sticking to a single language form would give them more time to focus on their own strength. Anyhow, not an easily tractable problem, particularly when trying to fit all of the various traditions of magic that might evolve into some subset of the various expression of magic.
DeeL 05-08-06, 07:19 PM	Araes, do you have Tome of Magic yet?
Araes 05-09-06, 08:30 AM	Hey Deel, unfortunately no. Being over in France for this last while has actually caused me to miss out on a lot of the most recent books. I picked up a few when I went back for the Christmas vacation, but obviously Tome of Magic wasn't out then. From looking over the product description though it seems fairly interesting; Pact, Shadow, and Truename magic? Was there a mechanic that they introduced in there that you thought would fit particularly well in here? The Magical Languages of Expression Anyhow, continuing along that topic, I'm not sure I actually thought about how broad my definition of magic could be in terms of ways it could affect the outside world and how many "languages" of expression there could be. However, in a way that's good, as it opens up all kinds of cool avenues for specialized forms of magic which could evolve over time due to their attachment to one or more of the languages of expression. For example, one of the most common symbolic ideas is the concept of writing, or representing objects and amorphous ideas with strings of characters. This alone has tons of application from a magical sense, as almost every way that we could use a word could also be used for some magical effect. Like with the Tome of Magic you mentioned, there's the power that knowing something's word descriptor in the language of magic would give you over it. With everyday objects this would be quite simple, as most objects are basically cut and paste. Plus, like I said before, the power of spells is in some part based on precision, and the level of precision lost by referring to a mahogany, 6' long, dinner table as simply a table is power lost that most people wouldn't care about. However, when talking about people, one of the most important aspects of the person is their mind and sense of self, so to actually have the correct word to describe that person, and thus power over them, you would literally have to choose the exact set of characters which would "be" that person. Furthermore, there are also all of the more standard forms of written magic which are used constantly within D&D. Power words for stunning and killing, wizard marks, exploding runes, and even the ability to comprehend more mundane languages. Almost all of these (except for maybe the comprehension) could be referenced around the simple idea of knowing the exact right word in the language of magic to perform some simple task; like releasing kinetic and thermal energy or paralyzing someone's nervous system. Finally, there are also all of the more complicated ways in which written language can be used, and which it is used for in its mundane form every day. Sentences, paragraphs, books, poetry, notes, ect... Every single one of these could have some magical effect tied up in the way they are written, and the language of magic might even be integratable with the more common forms of language, so that texts which would appear superficially normal might contain magical effects buried within them. Things like Luther's Thesis on the church door could actually be writing intended to break a spell over the people, or a magical compulsion for readers to follow him; the reading of whole books could actually impart magical effects on the reader over time (which has been done to some extent with stat Tomes); and the perusing of poetry could literally convey the emotions or thoughts that the creator was having at the time of creation. In fact, on that note, there are actually two whole fields that you can divide a lot of these magical outpourings into: Craft and Perform types of expression. These names basically relate to skill check that you would have to make to create a mundane member of this class. For example, if you happened to be Relm from Final Fantasy 6, then you might be specialized in a strange form of magic that basically revolves around painting. Like the famous saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words", a perfect picture, crafted in the motion of magic, might be able to speak with the force of a thousand magical words (perhaps where the saying came from) and manifest all kind of strange effects. There could be whole guilds of painters which use the language of magic to generate interesting or useful works of art. Portals, monstrous guardians, and contained pocket dimensions are all ideas which spring immediately to mind for their use. And that's only one aspect of crafting something in the highly specialized field of art. Furthermore, on the performance side, think of all the interesting things which could be done (and are in D&D) with performance styles of magic. The most natural of these is of course the bard, which uses the communication channels of vocal languages, chords, and specific instruments to convey a huge number of magic effects. Nearly every aspect of a bard's magic is in some way tied up in their use of performance and there are even further accents which could be applied. Vocal pieces could come across differently than ones which use no language component, different instruments could impart varying effects and inspire the emotion side of magic differently due to their mixed octaves / range, and in fact, different styles of music or use of different octaves (penta-, hexa-, hepta-tonic and chromatic) could all produce very different styles of magic. Naturally, this isn't the only avenue down which performance magic could take its course either. As I mentioned in the craft section, every avenue of expression is up for grabs, and there could be whole fields of magic devoted to say - the magic of Dance. Dance is a performance field which is nearly as broad and full of life as that of audio performance, yet only a very small sect of magic in the D&D universe takes advantage of it (maybe stigma?). I could easily envision a whole specialization of magic (much like a bard) devoted to the various effects and magic of dance. Different styles, dress, movements, patterns, ect... would all contribute their own effects to the overall magical language and its expression in the world. Gah, there's so much its almost staggering really. Sculpture, crafting of mechanical objects, theater; all of them have easily envisioned ways in which the crafted objects and performances, or the very act of creating them could impart magical effects to the world, and if I was stupidly hardcore, in a very reasonable and formulaic way. Anyhow, I think that’s all for now, but I'll see what else I can think of till my next post, and maybe a way to integrate this really broad theoretical concept in a more concrete and crunchy way.
TúrintheMormegil 05-09-06, 10:20 AM	Adding the Magic Near the end of your next to last post, after discussing that you would want different expressions of magic to "stack" in a way (building up your personal reserve of magical power) when one "multiclasses", you state that this needs to be balanced somehow. This problem is obviously much easier to tackle after you have established some basic crunch for the classes, but let's assume your system will be roughly similar to 3.5 psionics (by which I mean primarily the idea of an expanding pool of powerpoints and the idea of learning a limited number of powers over time, that are separated strictly in nine levels of power) for each type of magic. Now the problem seems easy: since power points increase exponentially (well, not really exponential I guess, but I just mean they increase faster than linear), we can just add a set increase in power points to each level and have them stack. Example: suppose we created two classes, let's call them the wizard and the psion, and suppose each of these represents a different approach to magic that allows one to manipulate reality in different ways. Each class gains a number of magic points at each level and learns new spells, but when multiclassing, magic points stack. We would get something like this: 1 1 1-0-0 2 3 2-0-0 3 6 2-1-0 4 10 3-2-0 5 15 3-2-1 where the first column is level, the second column is the aggregated total of magicpoints a wizard/psion of that level has, and the third column is the number of first-second-third level spells the wizard/psion knows. Now, we see that a singleclass wizard or psion is capable of expanding his reservoir of personal power rapidly, and will quickly learn powerful magic (this level spells). But suppose a third level wizard decides to multiclass, becoming a Wiz3/Psi1. He now has 7 magicpoints: 6 from being a third level wizard and 1 from being a first level psion. His reservoir of personal power is kept intact and is even slightly expanded, but having to adjust to this new approach to magic means he has not increased his reservoir as much as he would have if he had taken another level of wizard (in which case he would have had 10) and he does not get quite as powerful spells in this new discipline as he would have gotten in his old discipline: as a fourth level wizard he would have known three first level spells and two second level spells, but now he knows two first level wizard spells, one second level wizard spell, and one first level psion spell. Now, he will keep getting less magicpoints increase if he keeps taking psion levels, until the point where he has more psion levels than wizard levels (IOW, once he has become completely familiar with the new doctrine, or at least as familiar as he was with the wizard doctrine). The Draconic Way Much more so than your second article, your first article about dragons really got me thinking about them. So I felt compelled to post the results of that inspiration strike to stand against or add to your own extrapolation of your initial ideas in your second post about them. What I really like is the idea of dragons, sitting in the shadows, manipulating stuff at their leisure, never revealing themselves. In keeping with this flavour, I present the following suggestions. 1. A dragon works alone. Perhaps he has underlings who work for him, or perhaps he just manipulates people without them ever knowing, but he does not work together with other dragons, nor work for them or have them work for him. In game, this loner mentality could be explained from 2. 2. For some reason or other, dragons do not have children. That is, every dragon that is currently alive has been there ever since they stopped having children (perhaps when the sphere was created, or even at the dawn of time, or whatever). If this means upping some age limits, so be it. There are no playful dragon kiddies around to spoil their majestic reputation (which they retain despite being almost never seen), and dragons are never required to meet (otherwise they'd have to meet to reproduce, but now that that's impossible, they don't even bother anymore). 3. As was suggested, a dragon can change its form in at least some ways, so it can walk alongside the other races disguised as one of them. 4. As was suggested as well, dragons can change the colour of their skin, appearing red or gold at their leisure. For some reason, it is customary for them to "wear" a chromatic colour when they're playing the bad guys, and a metallic one when they're acting good, hence creating the story that metallic dragons are good and chromatic ones evil (which is hard to refute considering that dragons do not show off their powers, and when they're killed, they keep the skin colour they were wearing last). However, what may appear good or bad to the people involved in those rare occasions when a dragon makes a move openly, is probably a part of some grand plot that spans centuries, and the true nature of a dragon (or any of its specific acts) is impossible to deduce. Simply put, no one knows whether dragons are good or evil, though it seems likely that they are simply above it. I thought I had more. Maybe I'll get back on this later. Either way, I might just use this in my own campaign. Yay dragons! :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 05-10-06, 09:14 AM	Hmm, lots of stuff to cover today, so I guess I'll just dive in and see how it goes. The Varied Races of Jeweler Glad to see that you posted up your more complete version of the race system Jeweler. The demo races you posted in particular give me a much better idea about how the whole process would work and what its choices entail. As I was looking at it, I did have a couple ideas and questions though. As a first question, I was wondering whether you are limiting the selection of basic archetype choices to only two per build, or are you allowing up to the full allotment in level 1 slots only (Six I think it would be?). I think from a balancing perspective, if you haven't made this consideration then two might be the best way to go, as like you mentioned, its somewhat easy for things to get out of hand as far as bonuses and dump stats go, even with only two races. With regards to the way that the abilities are chosen now, I think that I get the general procedure: First you have to take one or more of its slot 1 and 2 abilities. You may then take one or more of its 3 and 4 abilities. If you take all 4 in one race, then you can take a heritage feat as steps 5 and 6 (Not shown in demos) If you take slots from more than one basic type, you must follow precedence for each type. With regards to the way that this is organized, my suggestion is that it would be best for the feat abilities to be "roughly" worth twice a step 3 or 4 bonus, and for the step 1 and 2 slots to average out to zero or be very minor bonuses. From an optimization and balancing standpoint, this would help, as the best scenario for a builder would then generally be to take one of two choices: Race 1: (1 or 2)-3-4 Race 2: (1 or 2)-3-4 Race 1: 1-2-3-4-(Feat / Bigger bonus) As far as the comments about the stat system go, I think what really needs to happen is that we simply have to choose a system of weighting for the stats and stick with it as far as creation of all content goes. I'm still in favor of the standard D&D system, simply because I trust that they have done a lot of play-testing, and it has proven to be stable over many years. However, I think that another equilibrium could be reached, it would just be more difficult for us, as it would depart heavily from the SRD and normal balance. Commenting on the races that you have put down so far, first off I simply have to say thank you as that is a ton of content creation. Second, I have a few specific recommendations where you had questions or comments. On the Doppleganger's third ability, I might suggest something else that has to do with changing shape, like variable reach, or maybe short term growth / shrink? On the turtle, I'd say that effectively giving them a +1 all around is a pretty big bonus for any fighter race, and with their other bonuses they'd be a great bet for a tank character. You mentioned that they were slow to do things, so maybe there should be an attached modifier in that third slot like +1 to attack/damage but -4 to Init? Finally, on anything with a size reduction, those are actually minuses as far as balancing is concerned, because they cause all kinds of problems for a character, so asking them to be Small or, lord, Tiny would be a very hard sell. Great work overall though, and a good pitch for use as an overall creation system idea. Dragons - Social Creatures or Solitary Masterminds? - On the Next Geraldo Next up, I'll respond to some of your comments on the dragon ideas Turin and my own thoughts down that line. First, I generally agree with points 3 and 4, as they mirror my own and Jeweler's thoughts fairly well. Dragon's should be have all the tools they need at their disposal to be truly devious foes with the capacity to fool even the most determined adversaries. The ability to pass as another (particularly smaller) race is a must have in this regard, as it allows them to mingle with society in a discrete and cunning way. On the color changing, I'm not completely sold on the fact that its necessary, but in a way I think that may just be a knee jerk to holding up alignment definitions based on shape / color / ect... In truth its not a bad idea to keep around some of the standard traditions of D&D as it helps with the seams of transition. One suggestion I would probably make is that their shape changing might be best if limited in some way, maybe in the same way that a vampire's shape changing is limited. IE, each dragon might have a stock set of forms they can do innately (+ stay as indefinitely) and after that they would have to rely on magic. I would suggest something like one humanoid, one animal of small or smaller size, and one to two dragons / colors. Now, on your first two points, I need to disagree, as I don't think the ability to have children upsets the mystique, majesty, or manipulation of dragons for a number of reasons. Probably the first of these is that if this were to be made into a more formalized form, it wouldn't strictly be necessary to talk up the fact of dragons having kids, and it would be a simple matter to present them to the reader with a sense of wide eyed mysticism as super players behind the scenes that very few folks know anything about. I've actually been thinking about ways that this could be done, and one of my favorites is the idea of writing about them from a third person limited omniscient point of view. In particular, the idea of a group (or groups) across the sphere who are trying to keep track of draconic activities and particularly powerful dragons has a lot of traction with me. The writing could come from the perspectives of spy's or workers who have been trying to find out what they can about the great beasts without becoming their lunch and come across as diary's, notes to leaders, or hastily scrawled warnings. The second reason why I don't think that allowing them to reproduce is that big a problem is that (as I alluded to above) the dragons we would present within the sphere could follow a pattern of famous dragons and their doings, giving them deep characters and distinct personalities, but not delving too much into the lives of "normal" or young dragons. The readers would be safe to assume that the general lifecycle in the DMG is correct, but if presented correctly, most people wouldn't want to use dragons except in the light we had presented them (the famous ones themselves or ones like them but of a DM's design) I also think that the working together thing is not that horrible of an issue, as almost any real society is going to have at least some semblance of interaction among its members. Admittedly, this doesn't have to be big groups or large get togethers like I mentioned with the pilgrimage, however, at the very least I would say that pairings and small coalitions are inevitable for mutual goals outside the reach of either participant. If game theory teaches us nothing its that these types of arrangements are inevitable unless the risk side of the coin is staggeringly high. Plus, the dragons themselves might never actually meet during such a deal, helping to preserve their safety and mystery - that's what trusted minions / mindslaves are for. Multiple Tasty Layers of Magic Now, with response to your comments on magic, the system that you proposed is actually quite a good one, and I had been thinking something kind of like that as far as the points went, since it does seem to balance out nicely from a raw power vs breadth perspective. That said, I think that I may have found a way to make the whole "different symbologies of expression" thing play nicely with the concept of varying magic styles. What I would propose is that first, each type of expression has its own ladder of progression as far as skill in that type goes. For example, you might have Audio and Image proficiency which each can climb from 1 to 20. The levels and types of spells you could cast would be determined by your skills in each of the types, much like normal Wizard progression is done. As you gained levels in classes, those classes would add proficiency levels to these stats with each class level gained (much like a +1 to existing... bonus). An important note though is that each class would probably add to two (or less/more in rare cases) magic types at the same time. For example, a standard Wizard might add to Written and Movement at the same time, a Sorcerer might add to Image and Movement, and a Bard might add to only Audio. This would mean that if you switched classes, then you might still keep gaining the ability to cast higher level spells in one ladder while starting from the bottom on another, or you might start from the bottom on all your new ones. In addition, this would open up the potential for limited cross-spells, where two or more positions on ladders might be necessary to cast a spell. The points would be handled in roughly the same way, except that potentially half the points could be handed out for each ladder, so if you were a "pure" caster you would end up with the same amount, while if you were a "limited" caster you would only get half of them. I also had an idea for Priests, and really any divine caster, that I kind of liked while thinking along this route. My thought is that in most systems, Priests are basically given their spells as a gift placed directly into their brain by the Gods each night. This system could actually integrate quite well with the mythology for this world, and would also help to distinctly separate religious and arcane type casters. Each night, a God would basically download the sounds, movements, images, ect... that a Priest would need to cast their spells into the Priest's brain in something of a locked format. When thought about in the correct way, these would unspool themselves and guide the Priest through the necessary steps and then burn themselves from memory. Priests wouldn't be able to write a spell down, or really have access to it at all unless they wanted to cast it, but they could potentially have access to anything the God deemed necessary for them at the time. In addition, time as a divine caster wouldn't really have any impact on switching over to an arcane, as you wouldn't be able to remember anything that the Gods gifted you with. I'm not sure if I'm completely sold on this idea as of yet, since it might take away or hamper divine item creation, but I think there would be ways to get around it as long as we gave up the ability to make scrolls. For creating wands and such, they could petition their God for the plans, and then those plans would stay in place. Anyhow, that's all for now, but I like the idea a decent amount, and it seems like a good way to mix the various styles of casting magic since it allows for some prior experience to help out a caster going in a slightly new direction and makes the cross over question easier. Finally, totally random thought I had, but as I was watching 4400 last night I had the odd thought of two - three dimensional languages and whether such a topic could be applied to the language of magic. Basically, the idea was that you could create a language on a normal page for example which ran in all directions and might be readable in numerous directions or as a whole. One thought was that it could follow some kind of node architecture where major thoughts spooled off linking threads or possibly some form of interlocking ring structures. Anyhow, totally weird, but would be interesting if it could be made to work. Might just be interesting visually as it would probably create big celticish or "alien" images which apparently held meaning. *edit* Good lord, in a word document, this thread is over 200 pages long at 12 point...
Jeweler 05-11-06, 09:12 PM	Yeah, good thing we arent writing the RPG book yet, eh? Anyways on the langauges of magic, like the idea, and the langauge i can see being split up into something like, audio, visual (mental), visual (physical), movement, item, verbal, and even power (xp). Out of those 7 i would say they would work into 5 condensed ladders, audio, visual (both), movement, item, and verbal. Power would work and all of them and possibely be a component of most to all high power spells, 8-9th level. Imagery is the most powerful force in our world, in a magical stand point, from what i have read imagery is a strong point on in magic of our world, and focusing on what you want, i dont know whether that is true for all forms of magic in our world buti do know the focus part is. I would say that classes would extend 2-3 ladders each class, wizard being audio, visual (maybe calling it only physical though), and movement. This gives them a wider range of power, and considering i think we pretty muich decided we were using the prestige class way (10 levels standard boring classes then 5-10 levels in the prestige). Now i dont know whether we are doing 5 levels for most prestige or 10, more likely is 10, but with 5 it makes it easier to justify specializing them, say an artistic caster using all forms of written and painted art decides to pick up a prestige that allows them to specialize in visual (all) and item (for painted clay and what not) and takes 3 levels in this prestige class, she was a 6th level voodoo caster (possibly foodoo which is what most people consider voodoo magic, voodoo is just a religion based off of christianity made up by the African americans if my reading was correct) and so she already knew how to use verbal and item. She would be rank 6 in verbal and item fro mthose levels then would gain 6 ranks in visual (all) and 6 more ranks in item (specializing would give more power than a broad teaching which might actually give 1/2 level in ranks in all non-class forms of magic, so in this case prestige classes might give there level times 2 in ranks in that magic instead of times 1). I actually like this form of magic casting, even if somewhat complicated, although i think that there should be universal spells that anyone can cast no matter the specialization (the ones a class specifically gives you ranks in instead of the standard 1/2 level to the rank) and make it so depending on the form used you might get a slightly different effect, not sure what those would be but makes spells more unique. Maybe all spells could have there efects changed by the form of magic used, like small things variable times longer casting for more power and what not, and to use a form not normally used by your type of spellcaster you must use more spell points, something close to using more psi points to increa the efect of the spell some.
Araes 05-12-06, 07:51 AM	Tweaks, Changes, and Comments for the Nature of Magic Haha, I'm not sure if its sad on my part or cool on yours, but I think you might have a more comprehensive view of how magic in the system will work then the originator. If we ever do the book, you can write that section, ok? Particularly like the breakdown of all the possible forms of expression. Some thoughts I had while looking over your analysis were that image (mental) and image (physical) are probably going to be two of the most heavily used categories. I assume that image (physical) would probably hold things like written language as well as, say, pictures in your definition. If that's the case, I might suggest that we actually don't combine them, as together they would represent the biggest pillar by far of magic's language. However, on that same note, I also have a question about your separation of audio and verbal. Am I right to assume that audio is more like instruments, chords, and standard music, than expressions of a conversation language, which would be verbal? In general, I would say that your assumptions on the state of standard and prestige classes in terms of levels is probably correct. We've talked before about dislike of standard class progressions vs familiarity with the core D&D system, and I think for the most part we should make it so that people can incorporate splat-books and such without too much difficulty. On the specialization though, one of the things that I think we need to take into account is that there has to be some theoretical maximum cap on the power of a spellcaster that they can obtain by the time they reach level 20. For me, it makes sense for this to be 20 as well, so that if you are utterly pure to one type, then you will cap that type and be able to wield the most powerful spells of its arsenal. In my opinion, it makes it easier for balancing purposes, as there is a clear tradeoff of switching styles (lack of pure progression) and its easier to judge when someone will be able to have certain spells. IE, by level 14 they can at max cast spells that need Magic Level 14. In addition, keeping the magic level to a linear or reduced progression with level allows us to more easily integrate the prestige classes of prior D&D works. We could basically just use the (+1 to existing magic level) bonus and leave it at that. IE, if a prior class gives +1 audio, +1 image (mental) per level, then the prestige would do the same thing. Also, if we wanted to integrate psionic "spells" into the main body seamlessly as well, then we would need to stick to a progression that basically mimics the normal accumulation of power. A suggestion I have for how to retain the thought of "increased power with specialization" is that instead of giving them a faster progression up the spell tree, maybe we could instead give them more power points than a broad caster. In much the same tradeoff that Turin mentioned earlier, the tradeoff would naturally be either focusing on broadening your knowledge of spells or on increasing your raw power. With less focus on outside issues of magic, a specialist could instead develop more raw power with their specialty. One thought I had when you mentioned changing the effects of spells based on some other factor, is that we have yet to incorporate emotion in any way into the casting equation. I don't know whether there would be enough content in purely emotion based spells, but used as a modifier on casting, they might have quite a bit of potential. Being scared, angry, arroused, ect... might have all kinds of odd effects on spells, or be the deciding factor between two similar spells in the same field. Another thought I had was that if we were willing to make this whole process even more complicated, there could actually be two parts to any magical class. One part determines which paths you are becoming more proficient with, while the other describes where you get your power from. This could also be something that any caster just chooses at character creation and then sticks with. In this way, we could incorporate things like Ley Line mages, Channelers, Defilers, ect... and we could also use your suggestion about changing the effects of magic based on the type of caster. Different traditions could impart different effects to magic. Finally, I very much like the idea that there should also be a universal tree that everybody can access. That was an important change between various versions of Core D&D and I think its something that needs to be retained for players. Basically, all of the "utility" spells would be in there. Whew, good stuff, like the trend this is going down, and seems like we're making a decent amount of progress on formalizing the crunch of this. Keep thinking about symbology and the like, and next up might talk about artifact creation and some themes for it. Also wanted to look into where monsters come into play in this whole sphere concept and how they would spread around.
Jeweler 05-13-06, 12:35 AM	On Tome of Magic, its a decent book, dont like pact magic so much, but shadow and truename are good. But pact and truename might be useful for different magic types of casting. Not worth the $40 they want for it, stupid color printing, but it is worth a look into next time you are in America, or somewhere you can get a book thats recent, maybe Great Britain, wouldnt be surprised if you could find a store somewhere there that sells them, doubt it though. Anyways, on the imagery, yes physical is writing, pictures, poetry (which is not verbal because poetry tends to cause an emotion or create a mental image) and the such. Items is just that, any item that could be used to manipulate something, voodoo dolls are common, living animals could possibely be like channeling effects, channeling what the creature is known most for by abilities, like a nekomancer (cats :)), might channel stealth abilities out of all cats, and later on claws, and possibely teeth of them too. Audio is musical intruments, vocal songs, most anyhting that creates a specific effect on someone, feeling or mental image. Verbal is conversation and langauges, langauge dependeent spells and the famous rune spells. Movement is all forms of movement, dancing, gestures, sign langauge (which are gestures but not the point). Now on the note of emotions, they could be strong effects, and i could see a whole different branch of magic based on emotions, many stories use emotion as a powerful force, and it is, much "real" world magic uses emotions strongly. (jedi and true Sith are the best note of emotions as power effectors, Sith orginally werent evil, and Luke is a Sith not jedi). On the note of spellcasting flavor, channelers, defilers, and what not, easiest way to do all the different spell lists for them is to do something like psionics, the many "universal" tree, and then each different caster has his/her own branch that gives them more flavor (as in dealing with the class) oriented spells. Spell points seem easy enough to use, unless someone has a better plan, although, i would look up a book called True Sorcery if its out, and if its not id wait for it, because it seems to be a very freeform system, something i might use myself. The reason why i figured out how to split up the spells and all was because i was experimenting with my own spellcasting system, which has much the same effect, much diversity, but i want to keep it has simple as possible. Now on to a psecific type of magic i wanted to talk about, if anyone knows about it. Has anyone been reading the Ravnica set of books for MTG? Awesome set actually, love the 10 guilds setting and all, anyways, one of the guilds is called the Simic Combine, they are Green and Blue combo, and there form of magic deals with quickly advancing organisms. There greatest acheivement with this magic is cytoplasm, which harvests DNA and they reforms it to quickly adapt the creature it is on. Would be an amazing form of spellcasting, and might be something like the Suer Blobs that were posted about a while back.
Araes 05-13-06, 10:10 AM	On the Mechanics of Casting Hmm, on the channeler / defiler / ley line / ect... caster differences I'm not sure if we're thinking about the same conceptual changes. For example, in the case of a caster who uses defiler practices to cast magic vs someone who can borrow energy from the land or people around him in a non-damaging way, I don't think that the difference is so much in the types of spells they cast, but instead with how they get the power to cast their spells in the first place. For me, conceptually a defiler is taken from the Dark Sun concept, where they are people who can only cast magic by taking the energy for it forcefully from things around them. Anything incapable of making saves takes some damage either to its HP if it has that or to its structure if it doesn't. Simple plants would die, and over time, if they were the type that could do it, even inorganic structures might break down and collapse. All of the power for their spells would come from such a process, and they could only cast spells by harming other things in sudden bursts of draining. On the other hand, there could also be a more 'slow leak' variety of defiler, where they could borrow slight amounts of energy from everything around them all the time, which would result in a gradual build up of reserves for the caster without drastic harm to things around them. These casters would have a nice, steady regen rate of power points over time and a max reserve that grew with level, but they wouldn't have the instantaneous kick of a defiler type. The ley line type I mentioned could be people who are tapping into something that existed before the sphere was built; perhaps the original way that the technology magic is based on was set up to work in the first place. Perhaps there were constructions like the equivalent of power lines which were laid down in most major population centers or across planets, and provided power to fuel the technology embeded in people. When the sphere was built, this same design philosophy would have been put into practice, and they probably would have laid down lines across all of the layers and continents. Like most spherical energy radiation, the amount that someone could draw would fall off based on the distance from the line, so far from a line, an adventurer might be fairly hampered in their spellcasting, while standing on top of a line they would devestating. Divine casters might be like they are in normal D&D, in that when they prayed to their god / gods of choice, those dieties would provide them with exactly the amount of power they needed to cast their spells for a day. They would be a fixed reserve that would get powered up annew with prayer. There could probably also be a wizard type that operated in a similar manner, if nothing else to maintain the flavor of a "normal" wizard, although I am not sure as to a mechanic for why it might function that way. Lastly, as far as concepts, there could be people who have somehow tapped directly into the great machine that maintains the stability of the sphere and the outside cosmos. They could be people who literally open themselves up as conduits to gain their power. They would have no restrictions on necessary locations, life, time, or any other such problems, except that the process itself would be taxing. They might take damage of some sort (subdual, ability, real) or they might have sets of minuses that would accumulate with use, and dissipate with rest. My thought on application of these was that any spellcaster would choose one of these types for how they cast their spells at character creation, and it would be independent of their levels, classes, ect... Its operation would be purely based on the number of power points the character had as a maximum, and it would stick with them for life, basically a trait they were born into. You could have a bard that is a defiler as well, a psychic warrior that channels the machine, or a standard wizard operating basically like they do in Core D&D, but with power points.
Jeweler 05-13-06, 10:50 AM	That actually sounds like a better concept than mine, so cool. I like the way you described the ley lines, never thought about power lines to describe them. I could see the "Channel the Machine" taking subdual damage for low level (and a choice of real for more power), fatigue and exhaustion saves for mid, and possibly death, if there not made up of the "Machine" energy already, for the highest level spells. Obviously death is an exetreme, something like a wish spell or something, but they would prolly have a lot more spell points then everyone else, although using them would hurt a lot. Maybe soemthing along the lines of subdual to a certain point, effectively a certain level of casting cost, and then real damage beyond that. Once they get to a certain point in there points though, they might needs to start making checks against fatigue, then exhaustion if they keep casting. I can just see one of those cinematic moments where theres this guy, or girl, and a big wave of energy goes through them, completely vaporizing there body, and soemthing really big and cinematic happens, like the AI gods hardware starts to rapidly degrade and he loses god status and then withers away. I liked the defilers from Dark Sun, I liked them when they redid them into 3rd in one of the dragon magazines, I used it for a couple of my characters, it does a pretty good job of reworking magic.
TúrintheMormegil 05-14-06, 08:07 AM	On a sidenote, I've seen Tome of Magic here in the Netherlands.
DeeL 05-14-06, 10:43 AM	Yeah, Truenaming magic was what I was thinking of when I brought it up. It takes the idea that reality has a 'progamming language' that is learnable, to a point, and that actually articulating this language produces alterations in reality to it's logical conclusion - at least, it's logical *playable* conclusion. Some other variations on this theme are the Dark Speech, the Celestial Chorus (detailed in the Book of Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds, respectively), and the Illumian language (as detailed in the much maligned Races of Destiny.) I'm not sure how many of these concepts you would want included in the setting, but all of them fit to a point. If any of them interest you, let me know - I'll try to detail them if you don't have access to the accessories.
Jeweler 05-14-06, 02:14 PM	Dark Speech and celestial Chorus tend to be considered different from true names, where as they still need the true name for a few of them they tend to be considered lesser forms of "true" truenaming magic. Illumian are weird, I like the idea that the world has a programming langauge of sorts though, thats what i like most about the truenaming. Dark Speech and Celestial Chorus could be something like a VB, visual basic, compared to the real thing but there still powerful, I know Dark Speech needs a feat to start saying the words, not sure about Celestial Chorus, prolly so though, wasnt that impressed with BoED, they put the mature rating on it first off, which as far as i could tell it wasnt need at all, and they didnt do as good a job with it has they did with the BoVD, which had a lot of the cool stuff in it.
Araes 05-16-06, 08:07 AM	Hi guys, I actually do have BoVD and BoED, so I am pretty familiar with how those systems work. My problem with both of them was that they generally just seemed to apply a blanket affect of increased power to whatever they were being used with and didn't really result in a lot of neat combinations and warpings of the original material. The exceptions to that thought were the Hive Mind and True Name powers which I regarded as fairly interesting. However, I've never had a chance to get my hands on Race of Destiny DeeL, so if it wouldn't be too much trouble I'd love to hear a quick synopsis of what its like the general usage. On the Tome of Magic in the Netherlands, is it English? Assume so since it seems like almost everyone up there speaks perfect English. And if so, that might actually be fairly useful to me, as I'm probably going to be doing some travelling this summer and might make it up there during vacation.
TúrintheMormegil 05-16-06, 11:40 AM	Yes, it's English. I don't think there ever have been Dutch translations of D&D-material (thankfully). You might be overrating the Dutch a bit though. I know quite a few people whose English is terrible (see also such people as Balkenende (prime minister) and De Hoop Scheffer (NATO Secretary General)). If you're going to be buying in the Netherlands, I recommend a store called Spelkwartier (Steenstraat 4, Arnhem). Either way, if you're going to be in Tilburg or Arnhem, send me an email. ;) Túrin
DeeL 05-16-06, 07:47 PM	Quick synopsis? A quick synopsis of the Illumians??? You really haven't seen it... I'll give it a shot. Illumians are tall, slender humanoids, usually bald, with a circle of luminous sigils hovering just over their head. They were humans, once, until their ancestors were subjected to the Ritual of Words Made Flesh, and became a living language. Tarmuid was a monk, scholar and powerful wizard who lived on an island monastery. A natural linguist, he began to notice certain patterns in ancient magic texts he was translating. Over time, Tarmuid discerned a common pattern to how various ancient languages expressed magical concepts. After years of research and experimentation, Tarmuid developed his own lantguage, based on the underpinnings of magical expression. Tarmuid called this language, invented from the bones of long-dead languages, Illumian. As Tarmuid became more adept at speaking Illumian, he noticed that each word he spoke carried residual magical power that infused both the speaker and anyone who heard the words. Tarmuid sought a way to use the language itself to create a vessel that would be receptive to the power within his words. After countless failures, Tarmuid created the Ritual of Words Made Flesh, a spoken rite that would transform any human who heard it into a creature infused with the power of the Illumian language. Through the ritual, what was once human would become illumian - the Illumian language in tangible, humanoid form. Long story short, Tarmuid went on to make the Ritual one of the great secrets of the emergent race he had created. The Ritual is divided into segments, each of which is guarded by one of the Cabals into which the Illumian race is organized. Illumians have a fondness for intricate social organizations, appreciating heirarchies that take work to keep track of. It appears that Illumian can be spoken by anyone who takes it as a language; it's alphabet is large and insanely complex, but oddly this means that written illumian can contain vast information per page than other tongues. Illumians, however, can derive personal benefits from the combinations of letters that halo their heads. There are six possible sigils from which to choose. At first level, an Illumian chooses one to be a power sigil, which automatically gives him a bonus of +1 to an ability scores checks or caster level (Wisdom and Constitution are under a single Sigil.) Upon taking a second class, the illumian chooses a second power sigil; the bonus for each becomes +2. More importantly, the combination of sigils chosen provides a benefit for multiclassed characters. For example, uurnaen enables a spontaneous spellcaster to expend a low level spell slot for a 24-hour bonus to unarmed strikes or sneak attacks, and naenhoon enables an illumian to expend a turn undead use for a free metamagical effect. Finally, when an illumian dies, his mind is poured forth in a final utterance; this is usually gibberish, but might contain clues, insights or prophecies to which the illumian was privy. Illumians place great stock in having a scribe or recorder on hand by an illumians deathbed. Needless to say, the illumian race was designed to provide strong and unusual benefits to multi-class characters. For my money, though, the racial origins were underused in a fluff sense - I mean, it sounds an awful lot like the original version of truenaming, and you can't even use this stuff unless you take more than one class. I'm not sure I'd give illumians bonuses to truenaming - as usual, WotC declined to cross-reference its own products, so how these two disparate approaches to a Language of Power would interact is left as a study for a DM - one more imaginative than myself, I might add.
Jeweler 05-16-06, 09:44 PM	Yeah the Illumian are weird, what can we say. Cross referencing material would mean that they would make settings using one thing have to use another so they dont do it, or atleast i think that is there accuse, in lamian (sp?) they dont want to do the work to write a side bar or increase the page count by like 4-5 pages because it wont make them much more money, anyways. Truenaming is a great system, as is the Illumian, love them, but like a lot of variants WoTC has put out they are kinda under developed and lack what would be "realistic" of something of such a power. Truenaming lacks, from the small look that i have given it over the years, the realistic power of somehting of its nature, example, if you could warp reality with words, theres a lot more youd be able to do then just simple bonuses/minuses to a person, object, or other such thing. I know that wasnt all that was in the pact of magic but it just seems like it has unused potential, thats all. Liked the reversed wording for it myself, same exact "spell word" but completely different effects.
Araes 05-17-06, 05:01 PM	Inclusion of the Illumians? Thank you for that rather in depth summary of Illumians and their mechanics DeeL. Sorry, I really had no idea how much I was asking, as I thought it was just one play mechanic or something rather than a full blown backstory exposition. However, they are a pretty interesting concept and one that I agree could use some integration with other fluff. Actually, the way I originally read your first paragraph was almost the exact opposite of what they actually were. I thought you said that they were "A race made into words" rather than a race imbued with the power of words. The mistake concept though is actually kind of a neat one as well. How interesting would it be to have a language where the language itself was in some way "alive" and could be interacted with? Be rather odd I would think, as you might do something like write a book, and then the book would instead rewrite itself to tell you things. In fact, it might just rewrite itself to be jibberish unless it was friends with whoever had written it. Plus, if words were intrinsically connected across space (such as someone writing "balloon" being related to someone writing "balloon" at another location) then it might be that manuscripts themselves would become characters, with the most complex and mountainous of them becoming the equivalent of great sages stuck between the pages of books, who knew the goings on of their other "selves" across the world. Weird thought. Anyhow, off of that tangent, I wouldn't be opposed to using the concept of creating something quite similar to the Word Made Flesh ritual in our own world, as it does seem likely that people would find every way to tap into the power of words that governed their universe. In fact, I could also see a rather large effort being made by certain groups to pursue a sort of Feng Shui approach to themselves and the world around them due to the language of magic and the way its power is shaped by precision. There could be groups that try and change themselves so that their own "name", or perfect expression of self in language, is more complex, simple, or aligned with other phrases and words. You could almost think about the last purpose like trying to prepare the perfect introduction for an essay. If you lead into it just right, then the rest of the work nearly writes itself and you can actually be more lazy in your style and still have the same impact on the reader. In the vein of increased complexity, someone once told me about how the Old Testament actually loses some of its meaning when you transcribe it from Aramaic. Apparently, the old version had a lot of subtle tricks to the language where there were meanings which could be gleaned from a straight read (and which English readers picked up on) and then there were whole sets of double entendres, where extra meaning was inferred from collective knowledge, writing quirks, and repetition. A similar pattern could be carried over to here (and worked into things like societies, prestiges, ect...) where there could be the flat interpretation of things and then the enlightened version which takes into account all the quirks of the writer. Might be a little much for a game though, but it makes nice fluff. Finally, Turin, if I do manage to make it up your way I'll definitely try and drop you a line and thank you for the shop reference. I know some folks wanted to try and make it up Amsterdam way for the Sensation Black party, so maybe I'll have a chance to divert and say hi then.
Jeweler 05-17-06, 07:29 PM	I could see the "living langauge" being a very interesting thing to make up fluff and crunch for. I get this picture of some sort of futuristic book which has all the different things it describes running, or sitting, around depending on the time of day and object you had written. Like if you wrote soemthing that basically translated into 2 demons and a giraffe and then closed the book and then reopen the book and the 2 demons as describe were there and the giraffe. Kinda like books on CD, if they were written with a narrator and a described voice, it would basically read the story in its "programmed" langauges while the person watched the story acted out by the figures. (could be an interesting way to describe a D&D game really) Now i dont think it would be as simple as that, but thats rough idea there, and i would suspect the langauge and words would be similiar in length to the true names and spells, which i think the shorest are like 9-10 letters long, funny how its based off of english, oh well. Off the subject of living langauge, you said somethin Araes, about silicon based life and ooze heritage while we were still working on the heritage race system, do we still want to do that? I picked up a book on the exetremes of life on our planet, amazing what we have found, the organisms on the bottom of the ocean, rock eaters, things that would die from oxygen, methane exhalers, which would be real nice if we could cultivate and harvest there methane, all sorts of things, i do believe that there would other, stranger, things then just the animalistic and mythical creatures. Im going to start working on it no matter what, i wanted to know whether you were interested in it. I was thinking about doing the elemental heritage (im redoing my elemental combination system, maybe base it off of the heritage somewhat), far realm heritage, demonic (which could be considered partially "digital" because last i knew the demons/angels were susposed to be like programs incarnate right?), angelic, silicon (which i have no clue what that would do, ill prolly say ooze for them), plantae, and maybe a couple others, ive got major testing tomorrow so ill have some time to work on it, woohoo.
Jeweler 05-17-06, 09:05 PM	Cool, a double post actually worked out perfectly. Ok so i was watching a movie called Dark City, very strange movie, awesome urban/dark/psionics movie. I was looking at it, and it has a lot of psionic comparable abilities, but its has some very strange ones also, world shaping, eventhough it was device helped, still might not be a bad thing to look at. Also i wanted to bring up something about psionics, someone on the boards created a class called a Society Mind, and there name pretty much describes them, they have conactions to other people based on there level and can use psi powers that effect all there contacts, ill find the thread and put a link up, might be interesting to use for comm on an island or 2
Araes 05-18-06, 07:59 AM	Life in All its Forms - Heavenly and Otherwise Hey Jeweler, in response to your first question about whether I would be intersted in alternative life forms, the answer is yes. You are right that it seems natural for life to evolve in all kinds of strange ways across the universe if life on our own little section of it can be so diverse, and that should be represented in the sphere. Some stuff, like creatures that die from exposure to oxygen, might be a little hard to integrate with normal life in a D&D world, but if they had their own ecosystem then it could result in some very strange adventures for parties that travelled there. Plus, I had also had the same thought about applying this heritage system to the Elementals as it seems like it would be a natural fit, and would allow a player / GM to make all the strange combinations they wanted. However, it does seem like something of that type might have more "crossover" effects due to mixing of types, as a Fire / Water elemental would probably be wildly different from a pure Fire or Water version. I doubt they could have children together, or maybe even have offspring, so the Fire / Water example would probably be a unique type that just happens to be easily representable by the heritage system. As far as the use of this system with Angels and Demons goes, I'm a little skeptical, as they are creatures of the digital realm like you said. However, it might be possible for the interactions of code from different sources to create a distinct type of life that draws from both bases, particularly if Angels and Demons can seperate their conciousness across multiple computer systems like one of the "Gods" can. The problem this would create though is the issue of who the new "child" program would belong to. In the case of Angels and Demons, its fairly firm that they exist as autonomous helper programs for the Gods they represent, going so far as to physically mimic the symbology and style of their patron. However, if these programs could intermix and create new sub-programs, who would be their patron and would they even be bound to the wills of the Gods? Final other odd thought, in refering to these helper programs I've generally been refering to them as Angels and Demons, but would there be a physical distinction between Angels / Archons or Demons / Devils in a computer universe? One obvious distinction might be in the functions that they perform for their respective patrons / servers, with Devils and Archons being the gatekeepers and protectors of their realms while Demons and Angels would be the messengers and warriors to the other Gods / general populace. *edit* Oh yeah, and over at the Campaign Builder's Guild forums they had another post in that same Fantastic Governments (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?4321) thread, where I noticed Mortocracies, that talked about a Conferosentenocracy, or a government made up of the consensus of a large group of psionic entities. This concept could fairly easily mesh with your last post about psionics, as it would allow for a kind of Hive Mind society without the kind of slave / drone subjugation of the lower worker class that seems to be present in those types normally (probably due to their basis on things like Ants)
PainTrain 05-18-06, 05:31 PM	“Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clark’s Third Law[/I] For any potential doubters here is proof! http://*********************/videos/funny-magician.html
Jeweler 05-18-06, 07:58 PM	I suspose that depends on how far you want to go with these programs. If you want to say that they were "written" with the "living langauge", most prosumable, then how far can this langauge go, can it go as far as having children and generations of them, or is there a limit, no sexual organs or some such. If you say they can reproduce, this create a very versatile person who could possibly work miracles through writing a stock of cattle and then letting them reproduce, and doing the same with other foods. Yeah i wasnt suggestioning we use soemthing like the oxygen haters, but more just to show the diversity of life we have on our own planet.
Araes 05-19-06, 08:57 PM	Creation of Life - Magical and Natural Hmm, I'm actually a little confused by your comment, as it seems to be covering two seperate points - 1 - the creation and reproduction of the angels/demons themselves, and 2- their ability to wield the language of magic for the benefit of the populace. Now, I don't think that these two things would necessarily have to be intertwined, since if we assuming diety levels of knowledge and control over the language of magic, then it seems quite possible that they could create creatures which may use magic for the benefit of other, non-digital creations, yet cannot affect themselves in more than minimal ways or reproduce. Much like how Asimov wrote his laws of robotics, those patterns of exclusive magic use at the behest of their creator would help to ensure subservience by the creations. As such, the suggestion you mentioned, where a digital entity, like an angel / demon, would "write" the magical manuscript necessary to create a fully functional and reproducing stock of cattle would be quite reasonable (assuming they were acting in the physical realm - possessed a robot, acted through a sphere interface, ect..). They would do this act at the request of their lord and could likewise not magically write their own "children" into existence unless their lord allowed it. That said, I think it does offer up an interesting possibility for even the creatures of the digital realm to be able to breed and change over time. This could be an unforseen consequence of some snippit of their original design, or a quirk which wasn't fully explored before implementation, as we have to remember that even though these "Gods" are operating at a staggering level of knowledge, they were at some point still flesh, and may be subject to some of the inherent mental traps that plagued them then (tansitioning digital doesn't necessarily make you perfection incarnate.) As an alternative, breeding of the angels and demons (seperately or together) could have also been an engineered event. To this point, I have yet to really define how the lone AI god came into existence, and maybe in some way it isn't even sure how it came about. Intermixing of divine creature strands could be one method of it searching for the path to its own creation, liberation, or spontaneous sentience. Could be an interesting side tangent for fluff material. There is no reason that the heavens need to be portrayed in any more of a simplified light than corporeal spheredome, and in addition to the basic Founder / Usurper / Bystanders seperation, their may also be other undercurrents of discarded helpers, sentience experimentation, or digital love cults. The heavens might be thought of as but one more layer, more ethereal and difficult to grasp, but full of as much complexity and detail as any physical plane.
Jeweler 05-19-06, 10:48 PM	Actually i was talking about the "living langauge" in general and whether it could reproduce with even its own group, like only "written" with "written" creatures, or whether they could breed at all, or if they could only be used for viewing/eating purposes only. Also are the angels/demons made of this living langauge or is it a completely different langauge, or something similiar but more advanced. The whole cattle part was about a mortal, can say human realy, who could "write" the living langauge and whether those creatures created could breed, and therefore provide more food and other such things for humanoids to use as they please. Now I could see putting some major restrictions on this, first off lots of time to "write", complex actions such as reproduction would need knowledge nad lots of time to describe well enough to create something that could reproduce its self. Second off, lots of energy and "memory", what ever that might turn into (actual paper space and what not, computers for more advanced civs). Third, level, id say 8-10th level of a prestige, if players are allowed to use it at all (not quiet sure how it could be useful, maybe inanimate objects, but not really creatures take too long to "write" something up to use, unless you added them like the 2 free wizards spells every level in normal D&D). Oh you might find this interesting to know about our universe, scientists have created a model which they played back to the beginning of time and then before that, there was another universe there, proving the shrinking theory, not that our universe is shrinking now but that it will most likely will. And our new record for heat on this planet is over 2 billion degrees F.
Araes 05-20-06, 06:01 PM	Better to Reign in Hell Than Serve in Heaven Ah, appologies, I guess I misread your prior post. On the question of whether creatures created by the language of magic could reproduce with creatures created biologically, I would have to say that on a theoretical sense there would be no bars to it honestly. Looking at it from a biological standpoint, I would have to say that if someone could figure out how to perfectly describe a cow for example, then that cow created through magical means should be just as real as any cow created through normal means. As I mentioned, a lot of this would depend on the precision with which the language itself could be manipulated by the particular user, but as a theoretical maximum, I would have no problem with perfect replication of all things through "magical" means. In fact, to push this to the next logical extreme, I actually don't think that it would be outside the bounds of reality to propose that individuals could be perfectly replicated down to the personality, and even immediate thoughts of the individual, if a perfect enough understanding of their composition could be found. This is kind of bordering on a soul debate, but in general I believe that with a deep enough understanding, an individual could be replicated which would even fool their own parents, and themselves. They might never know they were even a copy, and except for the fact that someone out their who had done the casting knew it, they wouldn't be. Naturally, I don't think that this level of understanding would be by any means easy to obtain, perhaps impossible in a game sense, but not outside the bounds of theoretical use. (IE, God AIs and such) I think that creation of generics well enough for things like reproduction should probably be within the bounds of the game universe, but personality reproduction and masking of even the fact that something was copied would probably be Epic or impossible. As far as an actual level of application for the Generic but permanent copies, I would have to say that they'd need to be in the high levels of spells - probably 7-9th - as we're talking about permanent creations. My reasoning for this is that one of the lowest creation type spells that can actually create a permanent living object is simulacrum, and that only creates a being with half the hit dice of the original and severely reduced abilities. After that, clone and polymorph any object are some of the closest things you get, and those are 8th and also have pretty severe restrictions on use and permanence. However, at 8th you can create perfect copies which transfer the "soul" of the user (IE immediate thoughts) so there is probably some middle ground. Below 7th though, you tend to only have creations which are either illusions, limited in their lifespan, or can't be alive in the first place. Now, on the question of the origins for the angels and demons, I'm not completely settled on how they would have come into being - whether they are simply computer language which found a ghost in the machine, or whether they were created with the language or some other language with the express purpose of life. Overall, I had though of them more as servant programs which you might be able to call alive, but were somewhat hindered in their ability for growth, learning, and independence. Kind of like lobotomized versions of living things which exist to serve their AI masters. That would be the major difference between them and the lone AI God, as it is a living, and metaphorically breathing, entity which can learn, grow, and adapt without relying on a master for orientation in the world. After my misread of your prior post, I had also come to have another interpretation of the AI God - I've actually come to think of it a little bit like Satan. Perhaps at one point it was an angel (heh, or demon, same deal different names) who theologically fell from grace, but in truth actually gained intelligence / independence and was cast out or fled from its particular slice of heaven. Truth in the title quote, eh?
Jeweler 05-21-06, 09:08 AM	Hes Lucifer, love the translation of the name, but, eh, not going to get into relgious stuff, overly, here, or im not starting atleast. More likely to be an "angelic" one if hes trying to replicate the efffect of Lucifer, going from an evil semi-AI to a full evil AI isnt that big of a jump. If you want to have the same effect of the other Him, i would added something like a temptation domian and maybe an enlightment domain, i take technology is viewed the same way by religion it is now, or on Earth in about 16th century or so, or do they have a different view on it, which would change Erus' domians, no matter what i think it might need to be changed. Why slime? I understand the rest, but i just dont get the slime much. I could see there being someone like Leonardo DaVinci as a Living Writer, because he studied nature so much and animals, rocks, trees, humans, stuff like that. On a couple posts back you said something about the elemental mixs, I suspect a water and fire elemental having a child would first of be a little painful, second would be highly frowned about in all but the most barbaric societies of either, and end up being a very bad thing to roleplay, as everyone would think your mother/father is a **** or was drunk, not sure which one is worse actually. For the heritage feats i was thinking about doing ones that if you had 2 different elemental heritages then you could possibely be able to take feats that effected you because your 2. Like having water (waves form, i split them uup into different heritages within the Gene line) and earth (soil) could get a mud elemental. Thinking about a heritage feat of something like web spell-like ability 2 or 3/day, but it looks like a giant glob of mud, and the mud elementals can walk through, if they have that heritage feat. Ive been writing down some of the heritage feats ive been thinking up, ill get some more and maybe post some of them up so you take a look at them.
Jeweler 05-25-06, 04:45 PM	I might have an explantion for sorcerers, besides magical entity bloodlines. Watch the movie Gattaca, awesome cerebral movie, basically america has become a genetic engineering machine, when parents have a child the egg is taken out and 4 different eggs are created, 2 male, 2 female, 1 of each as more fatherly traits, the other has more motherly traits. All things of "unperfection" are rooted out, all violent tendencies and what not. Take that a step further and say that they put an easy trigger into the person's genetics for the person to more easily manipulate reality (cast spells and what not). Also what if magic was a form of radiation put off by an object, most presumably a crystal, but more than that the crystal could be used to power the will to change the reality. Rise of Legends, the new Rise of Nations game, is has this in it. The crystal seems to allow other-wordly things, like steam mecha, desert magic, and even power high tech zealots. I think it would be interesting to have a layer that uses reality bending crystals, i could see the most common two, steam punk and magical efects, but it could prolly expand to more than that with a simple little imagination.
supadupaman 05-26-06, 11:09 PM	Hey guys, long time no see. When i get a chunk of time to kill i'll read up on everything that's been added since i dropped out, and then should hopefully start posting as part of ths again. I haven't actually been doing much on the WotC boards recently since i've been busy and all of my d&d forum writting time has been spent on the CBG boards (i'm not sure, are any of you on there too?), but i should be coming back here more soon hopefully. I did read the ideas about undead and, although i haven't fully digested them yet, that seems like such a cool idea. It just makes so much sense and still works with most of the existing rules while having a basis in the background theory of this world. Great work on that.
Jeweler 05-27-06, 09:18 AM	Welcome back supa, good to see we will have 3 people working on this again, im a little disappointed that its only 3, you would think someone would have the ability to read through 4 pages of long posts and understand what we are trying to do, oh well.
Jeweler 06-01-06, 08:26 AM	Hey Araes you there? Hello? Ok well im still going to post up the odd races, hopefully when you get back ill be finished with them, and i guess this could be considered a bump post, but it is reserved for my creatures. *reserving* *reserving*
Araes 06-03-06, 10:42 AM	A Skulking Return Hey guys, I guess I've been a bad organizer to leave this alone for a few weeks without word. Basically, got hit with a clusterbomb of creativity collapse, numerous other projects, and a little bit of quagmire fear with regards to the setting. Anyhow, I think I should be back full time now though, and hopefully productive once again. Your comment about the crystals actually touches on an issue I've been having with the setting in general, which is how to apply modern technologies and abilities in a reasonable way to a prior tech level. One interesting idea I had seen was kind of along the lines of your crystals, in that many of the technologies which we possess in modern times were replicated in the setting, but just under different names and often with cruder implementation. For example, chemistry might have had its name warped to chermistery and not deal with the full blown range of topics that chemistry in general covers, but only a select skill set that's been able to be preserved. As far as the radiation idea goes, I'm hesitant to give a hard and fast descriptor to magic like "its particle radiation interacting with reality" simply cause it conjures up images of the whole midichlorians garbage from Star Wars to me. However, I don't have any problem with the idea of allowing objects to possess energy that can be drawn upon to power magical effects in the world - particularly since I suggested it in a prior post somewhere, and in general it just makes sense that energy is energy, no matter what its being used for, and smart people would figure out ways to limit the amount of energy they are personally giving and utilize other resources instead. Plus, if it were possible for magical effects or manipulations to be remotely, or even automatically created, which seems quite possible as this setting is rolling robots and digital avatars in with casters, then magical batteries could actually be quite useful to power long lasting magical effects without any attached caster in the vicinity. They'd represent the logical evolution of permanancy to a wide net effect that can make nearly anything stable with enough juice. Finally, glad to have you back Supa if my prolonged absence hasn't convinced you this was on hiatus again. Valued your contributions before and hope you have further ones that you can share with us.
stsword 06-16-06, 04:26 AM	In this thread someone mentioned using soulmelds for frankenstein like mad scientists, I presume using the totemist as a basis. What about the artificer from eberron? It seems tailor made to me for making doctor frankenstein in dnd. As the masters of item creation they can: -Make constructs, whether organic ones such as blood, brain, flesh, dragonflesh, demonflesh, dragon bone (I've probably misremembered the names of those last three, but you know what I mean I'm sure), and inorganic ones can be wierd science robots. -Make potions, very appropriate for mad science -For a more scientific take one could replace wands and staffs with ray guns and scrolls with crystals -Create half golems and apply grafts -While they can't make undead directly, they can certainly make items that make undead Now if one doesn't have the eberron corebook that's that, but otherwise I'd say artificers are the closest to perfect for mad science in dnd 3.5 that's currently available.
Jeweler 06-18-06, 10:42 AM	That would work very well as a mad scientist stat wise, but i htink the whole reason why we referred to soulmelds as "frankenstein" is because the user could basically make a monster out of himself and the fact that it dealt with body manipulation, which is a major part of the frankenstein story, as im sure we all know : ), but in reality your right, Artificer would work better for mad scientist, and we could prolly refer to Mr. Hyde for the soulmelders. I have some of the races, i havent worked on them much since i said id post them up, never got them finished to be posted, will work on today, lazy day today. But let me say, welcome stsword, or atleast hello if your not going to deal with all of our science bable that we do on this thread and just felt like popping in, either way *waves*. Happy Fathers Day, to anybody who is a father reading this thread!
stsword 06-21-06, 04:32 AM	That would work very well as a mad scientist stat wise, but i htink the whole reason why we referred to soulmelds as "frankenstein" is because the user could basically make a monster out of himself and the fact that it dealt with body manipulation, which is a major part of the frankenstein story, as im sure we all know : ), but in reality your right, Artificer would work better for mad scientist, and we could prolly refer to Mr. Hyde for the soulmelders. I have some of the races, i havent worked on them much since i said id post them up, never got them finished to be posted, will work on today, lazy day today. But let me say, welcome stsword, or atleast hello if your not going to deal with all of our science bable that we do on this thread and just felt like popping in, either way *waves*. Happy Fathers Day, to anybody who is a father reading this thread! Ah, perhaps I misunderstood. I thought one was looking for a mad scientist class and was resorting to soulmelds for lack of anything better. Not that I have anything against soulmelds, I think they're great and would buy many more books about incarnum, they just don't scream mad biologist to me. Although I do admit that taking the totemist soulmelds and making them actual physical but temporary mutations has a certain appeal. I happen to be interested in mixing modern with dnd, and incorporating technology in dnd, I find it a shame that the books haven't been more helpful in that regard. For example, I got to thinking about the Shair most recently seen in the Dragon Compendium by Paizo. Cosmetically they'd be the same in this setting, sending their gen familiars to get spell tokens from the powers that be, but in this setting I'd make the powers that be the world computer. That their familiars are basically daemons, and their spells are programs that borrow the resources from the supercomputer to get whatever result they are looking for. Magical hackers basically. I've also considered a substitution class for the fighter, that allows one to get cybernetic upgrades instead of the usual fighter feats, ala d20 Cyberscape. Perfect for the robots, and anyone from a culture that has the technological or magical resources to provide cybernetics or the magical equivalents of golemtech or necrotics.
DeeL 06-21-06, 05:51 PM	Who, besides myself, has access to the d20 supplement Chaositech, from the good contributors at Malhavoc Press? If you're looking for mad scientist bio-mods, that's the place for it. Trust me.
Jeweler 06-23-06, 11:20 PM	Oh yeah, Chaositech is awesome, didnt think about it, i have a lot of books, too many to list off, i might have to go through them to see what could be useful. Shair are great, just like there orginal setting, which i can not remember the name for, but keep the gen familiars as elementals, not daemons really. But the supercomputer idea is pretty good, use or steal resources from the AI god maybe? that would be interesting. I think we had something that simulated cyber-enhancements, they were little Slime things that bonded with a specfic person and basically allowed that person to "dawn" the slime and use its highly morphic nano-body to create specfic effects, i think, before we ended because we couldnt agree on rules and mechanics, that we said it would emulate something close to psionic. Biggest example was telepathy, the slime would morph into a "short" range radio transmitter/receiver and could send sub-hearing messages to others, any other with the slime "dawned". I find this is a very good system to tell people to be creative on, so if you come up with anything that would convert somethign from D&D to a pseudoscience, or maybe even actual science if you can provide a link, that would be great and is one of the biggest things we are doing in this campaign. I hope Araes comes back soon to see that we have a new person commenting, and good to see you back DeeL, now the last person in the gang is the leader himself, Araes where are you?
stsword 06-24-06, 05:47 AM	[QUOTE=Jeweler]Oh yeah, Chaositech is awesome, didnt think about it, i have a lot of books, too many to list off, i might have to go through them to see what could be useful. Shair are great, just like there orginal setting, which i can not remember the name for, but keep the gen familiars as elementals, not daemons really. But the supercomputer idea is pretty good, use or steal resources from the AI god maybe? that would be interesting. I think we had something that simulated cyber-enhancements, they were little Slime things that bonded with a specfic person and basically allowed that person to "dawn" the slime and use its highly morphic nano-body to create specfic effects, i think, before we ended because we couldnt agree on rules and mechanics, that we said it would emulate something close to psionic. Al'Qadim or something along those lines, my spelling isn't the greatest under normal circumstances. :) Yes I saw those symbiotes, but I was thinking something more along the lines of the steamborg from Dragonmech. If you are unfamiliar with the setting they are cyborgs that are folks who actually cut out their own body parts to replace them with steam powered doohickeys. Yes, they perform the surgeries themselves. Puts a different spin on the self made person concept doesn't it? So I was thinking something along those lines, but closer to actual Wotc rules. Since d20 cyberscape has a rules option in which cybernetic enhancements are feats, and fighters gain extra feats, it seemed the easiest class to adapt. Switch around the class skills and voila.
Jeweler 06-24-06, 11:33 PM	Well actually we are using a system where you have 10 levels of a "basic" class, either expert/spellcaster/warrior, which are detailed on P. 77 in unearthed arcana, if you dont have that, than first off id advise getting it if you like variants or atleast giving it a look, second they basically have no specific abilities, but use a bonus feat system t oemulate the class features, so yo ucan either use those class features or pick up a ton of bonus feats, fighter covnerts perfectly to warrior, expert who get 12 skills or class skills, 6+int mod a level, 2 good saves, and over 10 levels, even though the class is built to 20, they get 4 bonus feats. Spellcasters are exactly that, wimpy little spell slingers who cast like sorcerers and can pick up any of the spell lists out there. Then after 10 levels you pick up a prestige class, you can do it earlier but you must to advance to a high level pick up a prestige after 10th. Yeah i have the Dragonmech book, thought it was an itneresting setting myself, but never talked my group into playing it so.... oh well. I forgot that the cyborgs did there own surgery, could you imagine cutting out your own heart?! O.O that would suck if you screwed up. But yeah, now i see what your saying, they prolly would work much better, if it would be just lke taking up bonus eats, than technically any of them could do it. It would prolly be better that way, gives mroe flexibility to players who start on a layer with that tech level or magic aptitude. Another way to use those Slimes would be to use them as if they were scion items, as in Unearthed Arcana. I do not have D20 cyberspace, i actually did not ever see it come out, i even went looking for it, but its strange i dont think Barnes and Nobles ever picked it up, so : (. Anyways im sorry to say this but we should continue on subjects that we can do in or this campaign setting, hopefully Araes will come back, but im betting school is racking up all his time, or a school and girl, but not the point we need to continue working, and hopefully he will return soon to work on the stuff we cant do for his campaign.
Jeweler 06-28-06, 09:39 PM	Ok got my hands on D20 Cyberspace, pretty cool, like the Destrier, centaur, and Mermaid systems. They could be used to explain otherwise humanoid creatures, such as those two. Some of those enhancements I wold say would not apply, most of the ones that deal with linking to other tech of example, other than those it seems like a great "better than {insert race}" type of deal, the problem is is that its harder to explain than some other things like "magical" items and what not, could treat it off as the golemtech described in the book, didnt take that big of a look at it, but it seems like it might fit. Other than that i don't have much to say.
Araes 06-29-06, 11:41 AM	State of the Union Hey Jeweler, sorry that I've been away for a long while here (respective to web time at least). Although work and the girl are always nice distractions and time eaters, I've actually been on vacation for the last while. Went to Rome and then down to Barcelona. Was thinking about Ibiza too, but then found that it would bleed me at about $300 a day, so I decided to be happy where I was. Good fun all around though (never danced that much in my life) and got to see a nice section of Europe I promised myself I would before I left. Plus, recharged my batteries quite a bit and think I'm ready to dive back in again. On that note, nice to have another contributor stsworld, and hopefully you find it interesting enough to stick around. In response to Deel's suggestion, I don't actually have Chaositech, but from looking through various online reviews and summaries of the material, it really does look like a great source to mine for ideas on bio-mods and the like in a mad scientist construction. Plus, it handily also covers things like energy weapons, chain swords, ect... If you guys do happen to look through that and find some useful concepts please feel free to list them in a modified form that might work for us. Also, on the lines of the magical hacker concept, that is a wonderful idea. There's a significant level of tech behind it that can be used to create fluff for where the powers are coming from and how the resources for the class are derived, yet at the same time it still remains fairly fantasy oriented in its surface application in game. Definitely say lets explore that as it seems like it has potential. Also, I don't think there's any reason that it would have to be limited to preying on just the resources of the AI god, as all the gods could be vulnerable to this type of "hacking". In fact, much like we have spellcasters who derive their power from personal stores, from energy grids in the world, or directly from the gods themselves, we could also set up these types as people who cast only by proxy, stealing whatever they use from others. Moving along this line, they would need to have the ability to both steal the physical patterns for the spells themselves, as well as the ability to leach spellcasting energy for their use. There's nothing that says this would have to be specifically limited to just big networks or god figures, and maybe they could actually pilfer their materials from living beings around them as well - placing "energy taps" on powerful individuals, or making "photocopies" of spells that they saw in action. There are quite a few different ways this whole line of thinking could be taken. Any other good ideas? With regards to the blobs, I never thought we officially dropped them as an idea, since I do like their concept and there are already real world equivalents being put into action on some level or another. I think the basic problem was just that they were the child of supadupaman and he has unfortunately been unable to be with us for quite a while now. Hopefully he'll return at some point, but in either case I don't regard them as a dead topic, just one of many floating out there in this hydra of a project. Honestly, on that issue, I think that cutting off some of the heads is probably one of the most important things we really need to do to help this project gain traction and move forward. We need to say: "Ok, are ability scores any different or generated differently in this world - yes/no. Ok, no. Right, moving on. Races - yes/no. Ok, yes. How? Ect...." and just move down the list. As far as the list goes right now, the way I see it is: Ability Scores No Same ability scores and same way of generating Races Yes Custom designed races based on inheritance from ancestor origins. General system in place where each type of ancestor gives a certain set of bonuses and minuses, and then you pick a set of those lineages to determine the character's final stats/abilities. How does the creation of robots fit into such a customizable structure? What are the definitive archetypes and their stats? - basically just need to sit down with Jeweler's list and come to a consensus about what is balanced. Are things like elementals fair game for this system too or just monsters? Classes Yes Characters start out with generic archetype classes that generally define where they want to go as far as a character - not totally set on the UA ones, as they don't give the same power level as PHB ones - may need slight modification. Players chose feats to select either traditional feats or class abilities. Initial generic classes only have 10 levels max, and either volutarily during that progression or forcibly at its end, they will then choose prestige classes for their later levels to further diversify. Prestige classes as of this time aren't set in stone by any means and probably will have some universal to the sphere as a whole and others specific to a region or layer at least. What are the progressions for the basic classes in terms of feats, HP, ect..? Use UA ones? What are the prestige classes? Mad scientists, blob users, all the prestiges of every setting - yes/no individually? Skills No - probably will be Yes eventually. For the moment, the operation of skills is assumed to to work the same as in normal D&D, and no one has suggested any new skills for the setting. However, this will very likely change, as new skills are needed to account for the technologies and socieities which are being introduced. What are the new skills we will need. Pretty cut and dry and one of the last things to be decided I think. Feats No - probably will be Yes eventually. Same issue as skills. As of yet we just haven't decided on new feats. They will probably work similarly, but there will be a host of new ones for various settings, regions, ect... Like skills, not a horribly pressing issue, although the breakdown of class abilities into feats will need to be taken care of sooner. Description Yes Numerous changes, probably the most severe of which is the total destruction of strict alignment in the setting. In addition, all of the Gods for the setting are totally new and there may also be controls on the look and description of characters based upon the racial makeup they have chosen in the initial section. Of course, the last is basically like D&D as most Orcs look like Orcs not Elves. Need more detail on the Gods than just their domains and powers. Histories, personalities, fueds, ect... Equipment Yes We've already listed a host of ideas for new technologies and equipment for characters to use, and we're also talking about having less tangible equipment like mutations and body modifications. Still very much up in the air. Very likely to end up with whole categories of new stuff. Somewhat pressing in that we need to figure out how future tech integrates with and shows up in a medival society. Already made some progress along these lines, but could use more. Combat No Essentially the same as normal D&D as things like beam weapons and whatnot can just be rolled into the existing rules. Magic Yes - drastically The distinction between wizard, sorceror, priest, and psionic is being torn down quite severely. We are adding in a form of point system that is similar to psionics, we are incorporating a language of magic in which each of the various casting backgrounds draws from some particular type of expression (image - mental, image - physical, audio, item, gesture, ect...), we're incorporating various ways of actually gaining the power to cast spells, and the very basis of "magic" is actually one grounded in advanced science reduced to the level of more primitive beings. Plus, as future work, there will probably also be a vast array of new spells and those ones which deal with harsh good-evil / law-chaos distrinctions will have to be eliminated or modified. What is a fixed list of the various types of spell casting methods - still gathering ideas. What are their spell lists? How do these integrate with the expression types of magic, and are spells completely based just on which expression branches you can access? What are the available power sources for magic - still gathering ideas? Can any casting method use any power generation method or are they tied together? Heroic Characteristics Possibly We bantered around with the idea of using some form of action point system to improve the heroic feel of the game. Ideas like using a variant of Character and Force points ala Star Wars has been suggested, as well as just flat out borrowing from Eberron. Do we want one? - I generally favor the dual character/force point system. Monsters No - probably will be Yes eventually. Right now we're just saying that the world is big enough to incorporate any monster that the DM desires. However, there will probably come a point where we will want to make our own monsters to fill in certain niches in the ecosystem. Obviously open ended. Not pressing, but some of the angels and elementals need to be considered and how their stats will change based upon how they manifest in the sphere. The World Yes - duh, its a campaign setting A vast world beyond the scope of pretty much any other attempt. Layers upon layers of lands arranged in a hollowed out sphere, which each feature unique geographies, histories, characters, and socieites. Currently have several layer descriptions defined but no countries or specific organizations. Layers consist of a massive city layer and its supporting agriculture layer in the center of the sphere, a pair of hot-cold layers created by the misbehavior of one of the solor heating coils, a layer which was broken into numerous small islands due to some massive catastrophe, and a layer which is heavily influenced by the dead and contains numerous mortocracies and undead slaying socieites. In addition, we are also planning to have a series of elemental realms which exist outside, in the chaotic tumult surrounding the sphere, as failed attempts to ride out the end of the universe. Plus, there will also be some form of "digital realm" which will be the landscape across which the gods and their angel / devil minion programs operate - effectively a cyberspace. So much to do that it kind of dwarfs comprehension. I think this is an endless well of work, and we should probably concentrate on crunch issues before we devote ourselves to the fluff backend unless we get a good idea or some crunch discussion naturally spawns a fluff tag along - like a steamtech devoted layer from discussions of the steamborg based body mods. Have actually considered this too, kind of like a Jules Verne or League of Extrordinary Gentlemen inspired layer of Victorian mystery and adventure. Whew, I think that covers nearly everything as far as a basic state of the campaign setting goes. Right now, it seems like we're targeted in mostly on classes and new technologies for the sphere, and I think that's a perfectly fine place to be. I'll see what I can do about listing the options we've mentioned so far for classes and interesting technologies in a later post. Glad to be back. *edit* Oh yeah, and I had some thoughts on languages as I've listened to around 8 languages these past couple of weeks and had some thoughts about the feel of a language based on its vowel and consonant layout.
Jeweler 06-30-06, 11:06 AM	I wanted to say something about the addressal of magic and spells, i would say that some spells can be taken and used from WOTC material, someones that could easily fit into one of the groups (image mental/physical, Item, Somatic, Vocal, and im pretty sure there was one more) others have a need for multiple groups, which could be done by making hte list of 2 group spells, and even 3 group spells. The creation of new spells spefically for 1 of the 5-6 groups is almost definate, because there just arent enogh by WOTC materials, from my point of view, to warrent spliting them if your just going to use those spells. I also think that the 1 group spells should have mechanics, some of them, that allow for additional benefits, and possibely negatives, for having another grouping that can be used in that spell, if they chose to use it. Other than that, on the case of magic, you pretty much said it. Answering questions that i can and putting in words for one i cant completely Races Out of those 3 questionsi can answer the last one on elementals, elementals seem to be workable in this system, balanced im not sure, especially after some of the ancestry feats, but they are atleast workable. Also Robots have there own customization, a whole slew (spelled wrong for context) of things to customize, look at D20 future, D20 Future Tech, and even D20 cyberspace, cyberspace has attachments to humans, but that can work for robots too id guess. Classes If we are going to use the UA ones i would suggest changing the warrior's HD to a D8, this makes the HP a little more rounded, especially considering the warrior gets the most feats, allowing him to be muchkinized the most, with the right choice of skills the warrior could get all but turn undead and summon familiar, so, might want to think up a way to limit the abilities you can choose, look at the Dragons, a set of 3 if you have youll prolly know what im talking about, they had a break down of the fighter class into small fighters, like a corsair, and other types of fighters, i htink they did the same with mages and druids, then they did the evil classes, so if we wanted to we could pull on those abilities and say that there are 3 tracks, fighting, magic, and sneaky, magic breaks into arcane and divine, and the player most choose one, a sneaky warrior build could be most like a thug, just like a fighting expert build could be most like a fencer, quick and resourceful. You would have to be able to cast spells to be able to learn anything in the magical branch. Prestiges Classes On the note of them, most likely each layer will have its own specialty prestige class, or a lot of them will, each layer will probably have its own view on magic also. Maybe new skills depending on the layer and the need for a new skill. Feats, most definately, will be on a lot of the levels, and will more than likely tie into that layer's prestige class, even if not a direct prereq. Mad sicentist we said we were going to use the soulmeld system, blob users were emulating psionics, i wish you hadnt dropped out supadupaman your idea was really good, and the cyborgs from Dragonmech, or something like them. Skills Again i think they would be tied to specific layers, i also think that each layer should have a free bonus feat gives small bonues and minuses, such as a few auto class skills and a few that can not be class skills, maybe an attack bonus towards something, little extra HP, just small stuff, kinda like what professions did for you in D20 modern with the addition of class skills, but no bonus feat since this is suspose to be a free feat. Or maybe not a feat, do like in Faerun where your background decided some class skills, allegiences, and small bonuses and minuses. Feats I think feats are the same with skills, except more so, there will most likely be atleast a couple of feats on each layer. Descriptions Well, I would say that the ancestry dictates what the player is going to look like, so no "well i want to look like this" "but thats not your ancestry" stuff.The dogly stuff is primarilly up to you, or atleast im not getting into it, never did good for writing descriptions to gods. Equipment First thing we need to decide here is what high tech items we are going to use, if you looked into D20 future then you might want to decide what tech level you want to be the most promient, to the players and there greedy little hands, and what they can use. Come up with some very good descriptions for them, fantasy ones prefurably. The most likely for equipment would be probably 6-7, we are in tech level 5 and pushing into 6 in real life (6 is fusion tech) 7 i think is grav tech, 8-9 are some uber stuff, and TL 9, if your not ascended to another plane from intelligence, your doing something wrong. Combat Yeah dont change combat, its complicated enough as it is. Heroic Actually you wouldnt be borrowing from Eberron, ytoud be borrowing from D20 modern, which is where it all started, a lot of people forget that, "oh Eberron is so great it as a new action point system" "no it doesnt, look at D20 modern, almost exactly the same in some cases". Whats the diference between the character point and the force point for that setting, im guessing a force point is a stronger effect and harder to get? Monsters Yeah we need to make osme monsters specific to a layer or set of layers, some that are on all of them, and maybe even some that float around the spheres. On the angels, the base angels would work for right now, but definately going to need to make more, those dont even begin to cover enough programs, devils/demons on the other hand, there are tons of them, and they got new ones in there Abyssal Encloypedia, which is only worth it to me because of the monsters. elementals i need to work on based on a small number of different elementals within each type, and then start working on the combination factor of it. Fire: Forest fire, solar (plasma), slow burn, and pyre, slow burn is just like a normal fire elementals most likely. Water: Still water (normal elemental), Wave or Tsunami, Salt water (this might actually be a combo of earth and water not sure yet) Ice. Earth: Dirt (normal elemental) stone, steel, cyrstal, boulder, asphalt (conglamerate will be any combo of earth with earth). Air: Wind (normal elemental), tornado, cloud (there highly territorial), poisonous. Couple of combos, Steel and Crystal (dralmites, exetremely hard to hit and damge and good HP, slow and some what strong) pyre and wind (hydrogen boom big boom when they die, little health strong attacks) still water and dirt (mmmmm mud, yum) Tsunami and dirt (mudslide powerful and quick, easy to hit and good HP) Campaign Setting Well we have about 4 pages worht of almsot pure fluff to work with to turn into crunch and what not, the problem is is trying to get solid ideas, because a lot of things keep popping up that look just as good, and we have what 4-6 people working on this, and it slows to a halt if you go Araes because its your campiagn and you need a word in it, so, crunch time, yeah!
Araes 06-30-06, 12:40 PM	Call and Response Alright, I guess I'll just respond in the same categorical fashion you just used as it seems to work fairly well and keeps it all organized. Races We can probably make it so that independently the three different types of characters will all be creatable using an origin purchasing system like we've discussed before. Normal people would select different ancestor races, elementals would select different types of elemental backgrounds, and robots might select varying methods of construction or mission types (IE, assault bot, diplomacy drone, ect...). That said, do we want to be able to mix and match across the board? Between elementals and normals I've got very little problem, as we're proposing they used to be normal people. However, with the robots, are we proposing that robotics has progressed to a Battlestar level of technology, where robots basically breed like normal folks and can interbreed with normal folks? I'm somewhat torn, as I do like the idea of the slightly more primitive 50's sci-fi robot, but allowing them to intermix would remove a character creation discontinuity. Classes Base Classes: Guess I'll just make a choice on this one. I like the general seperation of the UA generic classes, I'm just not a fan of their feat and ability purchasing progress. That said, I suggest that we use their form (Warrior, Expert, Spellcaster or fight, magic, sneaky as you put it) and I will look into making a more comprehensive list of feats and abilities based upon the prior work I did with the Excel point balancing schemes. Hopefully that will allow characters to be sufficiently diverse without going too far outside the bounds of normal D&D power progression. Spellcasters: For casting purposes, I don't want to seperate them into just arcane / divine, as we've mentioned that those are just casting backgrounds, and I would rather go with the much more diverse casting paths talked about above, which focus on specializations in two or so of the spell paths. (images, audio, ect...) Also, we've talked about having various power sources (internal, energy lines, patron god, steal) and is there a consensus on whether these should be seperate from the way a character progresses in knowledge of spells or tied to it. IE, can we have a character that is basically a bard but gets all of their power from the gift of a god? Does being a ley line caster mean that you will always draw from a select set of spells? Do you have to switch power method if you switch the branches of expression you are studying (image, audio, ect...)? My initial reaction is that they shouldn't be tied together and players should be free to cast spells from whatever branches they want without respect to their power source. Prestige Classes: I think you are right that there should definitely be groups of prestige classes which are associated with each of the layers of the world. In fact, there might even be a select few that are associated with countries or organizations depending on how micro-scale we want to go. However, I think there should also be a good selection of ones which are broadly available to everybody in the world. This would be basically like any other campaign setting. IE, if you don't like the world specific ones, then you can use ones from Complete Warrior / Divine / Arcane / Adventurer. We would just have to make sure that are base classes allow people to meet the prereqs for those classes. Skills and Feats We basically agree here and I think it will just be a matter of creating some actual countries, prestige classes, and organizations before we can come up with reasonable feats / skills. Description As far as the Gods go, I'll try and do what I can to come up with descriptions for the various Gods. I've got ideas for some of them, particularly ones which have an opposing member in the opposite factions, but if anybody wants to take a stab at them, please feel free, as that's a good section of fluff to fill out and I promise to be accomodating. Equipment I have no problem with equipment running the range all the way up to progress level 8 in the kinds of effects they can produce. Quite seriously, looking at the effects they can produce (Energy Shield: 5 to all resistances, Photon Shield: Inivisibility, Regen Wand: +4 to Heal checks) they're barely on the level of some of the fantastic effects that normal magic and permanent magic items in D&D can create. Artifacts put all of them to shame. So in short, the sky's the limit as far as tech disguised as "magic" goes. Hell, I've seen papers that say in 5-10 years we may be able to bend light. Heroic Yeah, I know that Modern actually came up with the system first, but not nearly as many D&D folks actually have taken a long look at Modern as have studied Eberron, so its easier to relate to. I talked about what I meant for the force vs character point system earlier, but basically there would be two types of points. One would be weak, but would be easy to obtain and could get you out of little jams, while the other would be strong but based solely on roleplaying and rewarded for heroic behavior or point use in heroic situations. I tend to favor this system as it worked really well in the West End Games Star Wars RPG. Monsters Right now, I don't think that creating monsters specific to the sphere is a huge priority, as there are a lot of monsters in various books to draw on. With regard to your problems with the numbers of Angels/Archons and Demons/Devils, I think that there are a couple ways to approach this. I mentioned above that we could do a seperation where first each type of being serves a different purpose in the computer realm. Angels and Demons would be the messengers / mischief doers in the outside world, while Archons and Devils would be the Gatekeepers and protectors of their patron god. From that point, each of the programs could then be built from a basic archetype and then modified based upon whatever God they served. This would provide them with different powers and appearances while still allowing them to be created and categorized fairly easily. For each of the basic types (Angels / Archons / Demons / Devils), there might be say 3-5 basic starting types to serve varying sub-purposes or fill power levels, and then the God would provide a template to modify their powers / personality / form based on its own manifestation. Another way we could approach this is we could have it so that there are the normal hosts of creatures on the demonic side, and then we could create numerous angelic beings to fill similar roles for the sphere creation faction. I doubt we'd have too much trouble coming up with various levels / types, as the various religions of the world are awash with ideas for angelic types of beings. Catholicism alone's got nine levels and all kinds of unique characters. Personally, I think I'm on the side of the first idea, simply because it would basically involve just using the Angelic and Demonic beings outlined in the Monster Manuals and then providing templates that shift their appearances and power sets when they are manifest in the world. (I assume we don't want to have any kind of Matrix subgame) As suggestions along this line we could go with: Angels: Deva,Movanic(9), Deva,Modanic(11), Deva,Astral(14), Planetar(16), Solar(23), Archons: Lantern(2), Hound(4), Sword(11), Trumpet(14), Throne(15) Demons: Dretch(2), Succubus(7), Glabrezu(13), Marilith(17), Balor(20) Devils: Lemure(1), Imp(2), Erinyes(8), Cornugon(16), Fiend(20) Note: We would probably want to change some of the Deva names so they wouldn't be so confusing, or maybe make our own. Like Cherubim, Seraphim, Dominion, Powers, or Virtues. Might need some tweaking too, as the angels and archons are a little out of whack. Setting You're right that we do already have a lot of fluff, and like I mentioned before, I agree that we need to focus more on the crunch side for a bit. However, we do seem to be making progress talking about it this way, as its forcing us to make some decisions.
Jeweler 07-01-06, 01:44 AM	Races Robots I do not see how, statistically you could have a mix of "normal" and robot, unless the the robots were built in an ancestry type also, like the norms. This could lead to some interesting looks, a half assault drone half wolf breed would be an interesting look. For the robots, do they look fleshy, are they covered metal (human cylons) or are they metal heads (tin can cylons). If there fleshy that makes them easier to conceal heritage, if there tin cans, i dont even see anything possible with mating iwth anything, even other tin cans. Classes Generic Classes Thats cool, I figured there would be 2 ways to balance it, I just didn't see the second one. Spellcasting This makes for a simpler time, the fact that players are not restricted in any of the focues, it also makes some sense, considering this allows for more versitility, also no one focus seems to fit, to me, with any of the power sources. If divine and arcane are just backgrounds does this mean that they are not determined by power source, or that it really as no effect on the actual spells on whether they are casted as arcane or divine? Prestige classes Prestige classes, on the most part, are going to have to be done along with layers at the same time, along with some other specific items, spells, and what not. The major change to prestige classes from other books is that the magic classes are going to need a change in "+1 previous caster level" because some of them use only specific types of spellcasting. Equipments Actually i think there is an object that can bend light that there testing right now, revolutionize radio signaling and what not. Anyways, maybe i over estimated the tech bonuses, ill go check on but those are only base lines anyways, you can add much more fantastic stuff, and from the sounds of it, those are weak baslines. Herioc The character/force points sounds interesting sounds also like a system for a less power gamingfeel, something like no really high stats, or no more than 1, maybe 2 at the most. Which i like better sometimes, because it makes the game more heroic when things like natural 20s happen cause its not as easy to hit things, or make skill checks and what not. Action points are decent, especially for modern system but C/F system sonds like it would be more "Heroic" Monsters Angelic/Demonic The idea of having 3-5 basics and then templates from there on out sounds good to me this makes sense because it allows the Gods to have more personalized "programs". Im kinda seeing something like tron here, just in reverse, the programs are being ported to the real world instead of the other way around. Matrix subgame? uh? The archons need an intermideriary, something like a 7-8 CR creature, the Deva names would be good to change, what exactly is a seraphim? Ive heard it before but no clue what it is or what they stand for. Yeah decisions are being made, hopefully wuicker now, and htis makes it easier to read, for everyone.
Araes 07-03-06, 09:57 AM	Of Robots, Angels, and Fey - The Separation of Species Races With regards to the robots in the races, I think that the best way to handle them would be to keep them seperate from the organic folks and distinct in their look. From a player's perspective I think this makes them that much more special to play as. It harkens back to all that 50-60's sci-fi by folks like Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Plus, in a way it also makes our job somewhat easier as we don't have to deal with organic/robotic/elemental crossovers. What this would then end up making though is three seperate trees of character creation, which all can not intermix - organics, robots, elementals. For organics you would choose your ancestry, for robots you would choose your constructed mission types, and elementals would choose their elemental alignments. What I mean when I say mission types for the robots is that each robot was probably made with some purpose(s) in mind, and you could handle that just like the ancestry stuff, but it would be due to manufacturing and space requirements within the robot and not due to breeding. Classes I'm glad you like the spellcasting options I put forth, and it seems like we're at least somewhat on the same page there. With regards to divine and arcane, I think that in a sense you could still make that distinction, but I don't think it is completely necessary. Basically, the only true Divine caster at this point would be someone who gets both their spell knowledge and their power for casting spells directly from a diety. You would then have a bunch of quasi-divine folks who get one or the other from a diety and then gain the complementing ability from some other source not tied to a diety. (IE, a person with diety spells who casts from Ley Lines, or a studious bard type who draws their actual power from a God). As far as modifiers and effects go, one way to do it might be to say that the power source determines everything. IE, if a God gave you the power then its divine. The problem I have with that is that why should the same spell cast by folks using two different fuels respond as differently as arcane and divine spells normally do? The other option would be to instead toss the divine / arcane distinction as a real play mechanic and just drop spells into one big pool, divided only by which path of expression they lie on (image, audio, ect...) One is easy and has realism problems for me, while the other speaks of a decent amount of work, but is going to have to be done at least partially to create the various branches of spells anyhow. Equipment I think we're both actually referencing the same news story with respect to bending light, as I saw it only a couple of weeks ago in a BBC article I think. Somebody proposing that with a couple years we would be able to wrap ourselves in Star Trek invisibility fields. Monsters - Angels and Demons You're right on the archons needing an intermediary, as the jump from Lantern and Hound to the Sword is rather drastic. Also, I think the angels need a beginning level of angel, something in the 1-4 CR range, as they basically start at 9 and go up from there. Its frankly kind of disturbing how few angels there are in the published literature so far though. Even Exalted Deeds didn't really add much to the pool. Some we could sub into the mix instead might be Guardinals or Eladrin, although neither of them are a perfect match for Angels and Archons. We might also be able to find something among alternate sources like Malhavoc or AEG products. I also tried looking through the Creature Collection over at ENWorld, but there wasn't a whole lot to find from converted 2.0 monsters. Finally, I guess we could also just make a couple new ones to fill the voids. At the worst, it could probably just involve shifting something like a Guardinal or Eladrin who's stats are close, over to a more fitting description and power set. For example, the Bralani Eladrin is a fairly close match as far as powers and uniqueness, and we could just tweak it so that instead of being based on Wind it was instead based on Good related powers. (maybe bump its CR 1 or 2 as well). A nerfed version of the Avoral Guardinal might also make a decent angel, as they're already winged and have a lot of similar powers, but their description and power level is just a little off. To answer your question about the angels of contemporary religion (taken from Wikipedia entry here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_angels)) The Seraphim (singular "Seraph") are the highest order of angels, serving as the caretakers of God's throne and continuously singing his praises: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. All the earth is filled with His Glory." It is said that they surround the throne of God, singing the music of the spheres and regulating the movement of the heavens as it emanates from God. It is also said that such a bright light emanates from them that nothing, not even other divine beings, can look upon them. There are four of them surrounding God's throne, where they burn eternally from love and zeal for God. Of note is the fact that Satan was a Seraphim. - Fey Creatures While I've been thinking about some of this other stuff on races and monsters, one of the thoughts I had was regarding the place of the Fey in our sphere. In historical fantasy, Fey seem to be quite often associated with a place or an object whenever they appear. For example, the Dryads, Fauns, Brownies, heck, even Smurfs need their mushrooms. Now, taking this a step further, I was thinking that since we seem to be centered around an idea of patterns and symbology in the world reflecting and acting on people, perhaps Fey are tied to the pattern of things in much the same way. Perhaps for every Fey that exists, there needs to be a pattern in the world which is a reflection of their self for them to latch onto. Now, as a reasoning for this, one thought I had was that perhaps Fey are that evolution of life that is so often talked about in pop Sci-Fi. That passing on of existence to some kind of energy state outside normal space. One of the keys to that existence though, may be that they need some kind of reference point in real space which is a constant and a reflection of themselves, so they can be oriented in the discontinuity of energy life. In addition, with increased power or energy in this type of existence, perhaps the range or size of the pattern they need in the real world also increases, so that while Dryads might only be tied to trees, and Smurfs might just need a mushroom circle, truly immense Fey entities might need whole forests or landmasses to tie themselves to. When the universe collapsed, it would have been just as much a catastrophe for these ethereal beings as it was for the corporeal, as all of their anchors would be erased. They would be cast adrift and lost in the sea of space time. To solve this problem, many of them probably instead shifted their bonds in real space over to structures or landmasses which were constructed within the sphere, and this opportunity was likely even advertised to them as a refuge by the organizers. Anyhow, what do you think as far as an idea for Fey. Keeps them as seperate entities with a unique past and also helps to explain why each of the various Fey need a place in the world which is intrinsically theirs, and which they guard jealously. Now to get to work doing the Gods, as I've had some good brainstorming sessions going on while I've been walking around about their relations and history. Plus, think I may do a Miles-Briggs personality for each of them.
Jeweler 07-03-06, 01:30 PM	Miles-Briggs is a personality test am i correct? On the monsters note, maybe instead of just angels and demons (and there respective others) we could include a broader source, all of the outsiders, or maybe just the ones that are good and evil for the most part, but almost all outsiders are broken up into either good (good god programs) evil (bad god programs, not always viruses though) chaos (viruses or the most exetreme level) and lawful (virus protection as a lot of the good outsiders are also lawful, or that i have seen). I have no idea whatto do with outsiders not within those borders, elemental outsiders or just no descript, but that gives a lot more leway and it kinda makes more sense, it allows for "program versions" saying that all of these creatures, not always the same group (like not all of the same "program versions" have to be angels or archons), are a progression of a program version, so the gaurdinals are pretty straight forward on there design, protection probably gaurds, so those gaurdinals might be the first program in a line of protection prgrams, with the better programs being more powerful and more useful abilities, but not needed to be considered gaurdinals. Thsoe inevitables could become something a kin to the ultimates of virus protection. The reason why, i believe, there are so many demons/devils/evil outsiders from hell is because there are so many things to encompass with them, greed and lust and sins in general that they have a lot of material to work on with them, and come in progresses of strong sins and weak sins, or high and low CRs respectively. Angels on the other hand stand for all that is good, there is a lot that is considered good, but not a lot of it is working materials, an abstinence (think thats the word) angel as no need to be there, nor angels that deal with small things like charity (not to say charity should not be done just its a small thing compared to some "good" things you can do). This is all going on the the Christian/catholic belief of angels and demons and sins and "good". I have no knowledge of other religions sins and angels and orms of demons and the devil. The fey, amazing way to explain it, were great, and i keep on getting pictures of the Ancients from stargate in little pixie bodies, hehe. But it makes sense, need a store house for the knowledge that an ascended being will probably find what better body then something that in our history were seen as great teachers or ancient lore and magical effects. Only thing i would say is that a centaur needs to be fey, in greek myth they were seen as one of the greatest and wisest teachers of all time, some were anyways. Centaurs could be like the Xanth centaurs tied to large forests or plains (only because of there large numbers though they probably only need a msall 50ft area or so). Beyond that i think that is a great explanation for fey. Seelie and Unseelie courts, what about them, are they going to be in there, or are all fey goin to be universally "good" or neutral, and the "evil" ones are possessed, corrupted, or otherwise bad stuff happen to get them that way?
Araes 07-04-06, 01:09 PM	A Portrait of Divinity Yeah, actually Myers-Briggs(had a typo) is a personality test that is supposed to help people figure out where they sit in the areas of: Introvert vs Extrovert Sensing vs Intuition Thinking vs Feeling Judging vs Perceiving The scientific accuracy of the test is pretty suspect in most circles, but it does give a quick four letter description of the general way a fictional character might act. For example, I would say that Exido, the Terraforming expert for the Sphere would probably qualify as a: ISTP Since my description of him would probably say that he is something of a loner who prefers long term planning and the building of vast relationship structures that can handle any eventuality. Actually, hell, I'll just do them all right now. Peresis - ENFJ - A charming and brilliant organizer who brought together varied peoples from all across the galaxy to meet a situation that he saw coming before nearly anyone else. Although a decent longterm planner, he is much more comfortable with short term resolution of problems and actually relies heavily on his wife for her more long term and gray shaded view of life. Merellin - INFP - A somewhat reserved but powerful force in the sphere through her influence and connection to Peresis, Merellin has helped to shape her husband's view over time into one which is much more diplomatic and understanding of the issues surrounding both the usurpers and the other creator Gods. She considers the various factors for long term viability of the sphere almost constantly at this point and regularly dedicates a portion of her conciousness to working through supply, social, and economic problems. Terpencar - INFP - As he was in organic life, Marshall continues to be a quiet promotor of the arts and creation on into digital existence. Never much for the press corps or interviews, he verged on monastic for a period, taking a project from Peresis or his firm and returning a month or even year later with some gem of beauty for them to parade. Chav - ENTJ - Bigger than life and full of zest, that's how Chav always sees himself and what he tries to project to the rest of the Gods and his followers. More than once this has led him into problems as he dived into some predicament only to find he had to backpedal at the last second. Yet, few Gods are more loyal in their aid and this same ethos has been projected through all those who give him praise as well, becoming the quintisential samaritans along the roads of the Sphere. Conway - ISTP - In many ways, Conway actually disturbs many of the other Gods of the Sphere, as her transcendence to AI life has stripped away much of what little empathy or warmth there was in her to begin with. Even in life she tended towards the cool and analytical, spending long days in the lab crafting new wonders of biomatter, yet her digital persona has taken on what might almost be described as a Moreauesque approach towards the life they control. The Sphere is a brave new world in her mind to be shaped and molded towards the betterment of society. Tiyffain - ESFP - For nearly 50 years before her involvement in the Sphere project, Celcia Tiyffain served as a trade and commerce negotiator for the Galactic Board of Commerce. Known for her rather thorough (and somewhat unorthodox) investigations of all disputes, she would literally travel the systems in her jurisdiction talking with levels of merchants from the lowliest to the highest to air their views on matters. Although not without the occasional bad result, this practice gave her a reputation (and skill) for being able to approach even the most hottly contested tables and make both parties leave fairly happy. Bettenn - ESTJ - To say that Bettenn was decisive would be akin to describing the sun as hot. Rising through the ranks of one of the largest universal shipping firms from transport handler to CEO, Bettenn built his career on an ability to analyze a situation and formulate a response in seconds (sometimes less were sufficient technology available). Steering his firm through massive corporate warfare, galactic trade sanctions, and even takeover attempts, Bettenn may have signed on almost as much for the new challenge as for the salvation. Exido - ISTP - A loner and long term planner, Exido lives somewhere outside the normal ring of social interaction among the creator Gods. Although not without allies and friends by any means, his goals and plans are simply his alone and while many of the others work to wage war or smooth things over with the usurpers, he crafts alone in the metaphorical dark creating elaborate webs and networks that stretch to who knows where. *edit* Alright, maybe not all, but there are a LOT of them. More in the future...
Araes 07-05-06, 12:02 PM	Never got around to answering your questions from the day before except for the one about Myers-Briggs, so I'll cover those now. Monsters - Angels and Demons I need a little bit of clarification on what you said in your post about these guys. Are you suggesting that we stay with the same format we've been proposing before, where we have base types of angel / demon creatures, and then specialize them for each God, but instead of just angels and demons we have the whole group of Outsiders as programs? or Are you suggesting that we drop the system of angels/demons with varrying faces that was proposed before and go with each God just using whatever Outsider/Program serves their purpose and having any two programs with the same name be roughly identical when called? For example, all Astral Devas would look the same and would serve as messenger bots to carry commandments to followers or all Guardinals would be protectors of the Gods (antivirus) in the digital realm and protectors of their property in the physical realm. My opinion is that I did like the idea of having the angels and demons possess different expressions and missions for each diety they served, but I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of having the whole range of outsiders if we could find a reason for their existence. On the reasoning of why there are so many devils/demons, my opinion is that D&D is at its core a game about adventure and the epic struggle of small bands of good against the armies of evil. Powerful beings of good only rarely make their way into the game for things like evil campaigns or to serve as voicepieces for the almighty DM. As such, there really isn't the drive to create millions of them that there is for devils and demons, as players are rarely going to get bored of seeing them as they so infrequently fight or even encounter them. - Fey With the fey, I'm glad you liked the concept, as I thought to myself that it seemed like a decent way to explain their presence and give them some good backstory. Now, with regards to them being Good / Evil, like we've talked about before, the whole goodness of things and people is pretty abstract in my head, so I've got no problem with the fact that both people with unwholesome traits and people with desirable ones may have found the way to shift over to this life-style. Heck, by this point in the development of technology, the actual process behind it may have been rather well known public knowledge, just with drawbacks that made some people not want to choose it.
Jeweler 07-05-06, 07:57 PM	I am suggesting that we use the same customizing proposal we had before but that we use all outsiders instead of just the iconic evil/good ones, to me it seems like it would make the good/evil boundary we are trying to take away become less visible if not vanish, because now not only can they use the angels/demons but they can both use outsiders such as barghests, which are normally evil but doesnt mean the "good" gods cant use them, or azers in battles or as side line programs. It also adds a whole range of "programs" to the gods reptoire (spelled wrong?) and adds a universal definition for "program" any outsider, some are native, which means either the Gods created them specificly to deal with the real world, or on a few rare occasions a mortal with the language of life ability created a new outsider. One change that would most likely need to be made, is that all living things created with the "Living Language" would possibely be outsiders (augmented original type and native) and this could be an explanation for why created can not breed with "real", if we over all decide on that view. Also this could allow for an epic Living Linguist to create "real" programs, ones that are true and can breed, among other things. {I would say living language "casters" would be audio (speech) and item (writing or code}. The bad effects for the fey are quite obvious, and very severe. You die if you go away from what you are tied too, and most things fey are tied to they themselves can not move around, whether they are too big, or the fey just not strong enough. Now im sure with technology's help this might have been a lesser extent, items were easily movable by the physical form, or the distance from which you could travel was greatly increased, but with the downfall of the universe, most of this technology was lost, and the little left is most likely horded by the Courts or kept by the gods for re-enigeering at a much later date. So the fey revert to "mythical" ways and take up places along ley lines or some energy source for which they can use to keep there energy selves alive and most likely store info they might gather in it, making fey blood a likely explanation for ley line casting : D, and these ley lines tend, but im sure not always, center around regions of natural beauty or great natural mystery, forests and strange mushroom circles, giant stone circles, and ancient cloud reaching trees, all places of great importance to druidic people. Im going to be over on the west coast for this next month, leaving tomorrow, so, i might not reply right after like i normally do, but i will do my best to atleast keep up with if not post on the material that gets posted. I will also, hopefully, be printing out a copy of this thread and going over stuff that might need to be touched on again, long plane ride, need work to do : ).
stsword 07-06-06, 04:12 AM	Okay, I have a question, how powered up are you thinking this campaign should be? The reason I ask is because if you go with cyberware, or its equivalents, being readily available to PCs than you are going to have high octane characters. A human generic spellcaster could get a plus 11 bonus to their spellcasting stat at first level if you use the cyberware as feats option. Perhaps coming up with an equipment cost like a magic item would work better. That's part of the reason I suggested a mad science warrior class, so that it would be available to players without making it a matter of just walking into the local chop shop for an upgrade. The other reason is because I just thought a mad science warrior self made cyborg is just a really interesting meme. Of course, realisitically, a campaign in which one can stumble apon an enchanted laser rifle ought to be high powered, but I cannot tell if that's actually what you guys are aiming for.
Araes 07-06-06, 08:28 AM	Power, But At What Price? As a basic answer to that question, I was hoping to keep the campaign world in the realm of "not stupidly overpowered", because if it becomes overpowered then we have to correct all of the difficulty for encounters, the value of items in an inflated market space, and pretty much everything about the D&D balance mechanic. I've been playing D&D for quite a while, but I've got no allusions that our small group could do an effective Design and Development job and catch everything if it got to that scale. As such, one of the main things that we've been talking about for cybernetics, weapons, bionics, ect... is that prices should still be in line with whatever they would be for comparable gear in D&D. Since the entire premise of the setting is that magic doesn't truly exist, its just an expression of tech well beyond our vision, then all "magic" items in the setting are going to be some form of tech or another, and stuff like cybernetics ought to fit right in line with its brethern for the bonus it gives. Also, I'm curious where you're getting the +11 figure you mentioned from, as I didn't see it on a quick perusal through Future and Modern, but I may be missing some of the connections you made. Heh, P.S.S., I do actually like the concept of a class / prestige which would allow you to focus your efforts on "self improvement" through the wonders of cybernetics. The literal self-made man is a powerful concept in cyberpunk literature and the image of a person sitting in their home twiddling with the servos in their arm is quite popular. I would most likely say prestige for the true level of specialization in it, as I like where we've been going with the customizable Generics route, but there's also nothing to say that a lot of the artificer abilities or ones like them wouldn't be available to the Generics for those first several levels as well. Angels, Demons, and Fey...Oh My Next up, Jeweler's comments on the Outsiders and Fey. With regard to your analysis of the Fey, I think you're spot on. When they're tied to a particular object in the world, they're at a huge disadvantage for travel and existence if they can't be reasonably sure that object will remain safe. If any yahoo can just come along and hack down your tree then you're going to be naturally paranoid and watch over it more closely. In the universe prior to the Sphere, there were probably whole socieites that worked to watch over the anchor objects for Fey creatures and keep them safe so that the Fey could freely explore the universe. These types of socieites may still exist in the Sphere, but they are probably quite a bit more limited or rare. Also, totally dig on the ties with druidic types of cultures and natural life. Could be worked in for some good fluff creations. Ok, now for the Outsiders, I think I'm quite a bit more clear on what you're proposing. In general, I actually like this option a bit more than what I was proposing before, as I thought you were talking about just splitting them down the middle in camps and divying up all the outsiders between them. In a way, this actually does make more sense, and maybe I wasn't taking this whole concept of "grayness" for alignment among the heavens far enough. When a Balor comes to speak to a player on behalf of the father of the creator Gods, it would really throw a number of them for quite a loop. However, my mind does boggle at trying to come up with interesting purposes for all the various classes of Outsiders there are (can't even begin to remember them all) and a comprehensive template system that would take the variations of the Gods they serve into account. Yowza. Still, it is an evolution of the design over what we've been talking about and lets follow it. *edit* Oh yeah, have a fun time on the West coast. I'll probably be over that way in August or so. Anyhow, on to other things. I actually found this next bit on my hard drive when I was doing some house cleaning. Its basically a setting piece to describe the experiences of some of those folks who awakened into the world from hibernation. A World of Grays Andria stood atop the rocky outcropping, her eyes, still pained from the recent emergence into sunlight, sweeping over the grand vista now presented to her. A few short paces from her position, the ground took a drastic dive, plunging down the side of an almost shear rock wall. Continuing along this path, it flowed under piles of shale, rockslides of boulders the size of a man, and across wind eroded walls of stone, until it came to rest at the edge of a basin formed by the mountains surrounding. Ringed by patches of trees and brush on the nearmost side, Andria could see the reflections of the forest and hills beyond playing across its surface under the gentle noonday wind. Beyond this point, however, sight became increasingly difficult. Obscuring everything in a milky gray haze, fog rolled across the breadth of the world beyond the small basin. Its tendrils creeping through the forest and hillside beyond the basin, the fog gave an impression much like the edge of the world; a soft boundary beyond which no person could guess the true nature of reality or existence. Or possibly even the lack thereof, if Andria’s trials before had been any indication. Emerging from a derelict structure, some 1000 feet below, she had found herself exposed on the face of a wind swept cliff. Fog, much like that seen only a few miles away, rolled past her position in billowing waves; causing the world to blink in and out of existence in a disorienting fashion. Before her, the decrepit remains of a bridge could be seen, extending out into the mist beyond sight. Yet, as she had moved out on to their stones, she had found that they ended abruptly, suspended some unknown height above the world; an island of isolation in the storm of fog. Scrambling back from this precarious location to the relative safety of the wall, she had found that to her right, a small game trail, if game could even be thought to exist in such locations, extended up the side of the cliff. Spotted only briefly with tuffs of grass or foliage, and lacking of anything even resembling a rail or handhold, its safety in the high winds buffeting her position had looked precarious at best. However, no other option had been visible, so with a short sigh for her predicament, she had slowly taken her first steps on to the dangerous path. At first, progress had been slow, and it took what seemed like an eternity in the sensory deprivation of the fog to make it anywhere. However, as her feet regained their mobility after an untold time of disuse, she found that her steps became steadier and her speed accelerated dramatically. The condition of the trail also aided this task significantly. From its meager beginnings, as something fit for only small rodents, it had gradually broadened into an expanse upon which Andria felt almost secure and free to jog or run. As the light of the day increased, and the fog pulled back slightly from her position, Andria had suddenly found herself where she stood now, high above the world upon the side of a ring of mountains which seemed encroached on from all sides by an impenetrable wall of fog.
TúrintheMormegil 07-06-06, 08:59 AM	Yay for fiction! I like it. :D Question: how does it tie in with the campaign setting? :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 07-06-06, 09:59 AM	Awakening Story Tie In It ties in with the campaign setting as it is the recollection of a hibernator's first impressions and experiences in the world. One of my first ever shots at formulating this world and getting it all wired right in my head was to do a campaign where all of the characters woke up in hibernation tubes in an underground complex. Vast and sprawling like Grand Central Station (or maybe the Frankfurt Main Terminal if you've been there), it had been long forgotten by the people of the world, most of whom had already awakened long ago and gone on to found the civilizations that now existed. In additon, due to the calamities which had rained down on the layers since their inception, the particular tract of land where the characters awakened had itself become an island. Cut off from the mainland which it was designed to serve, it had becoming home to only small groups of fog farring hunters, loggers, and woodsmen, who eventually provided the players passage to the main world. After that, if I remember right, the players ended up travelling to the capital city of the particular continent, (a planned city with shiny, smooth metal walls a hundred feet high) got themselves entangled in a plot to assassinate the governor and usurp the throne, and then promptly got themselves thrown off the edge of the world with a featherfall charm. *edit* You know, I'm almost impressed at the impact the CBG has had on these boards. Compared to even six months ago, a Lot of the good content creation has wandered off site to the new home.
Jeweler 07-06-06, 07:52 PM	Haha im on the west coast, Washington is beautiful as ever, Ill be back home in august, right as you get here Araes, most likely. On the remark that a human generic spellcaster can get a 11 bonus, thats not true, if i remember correctly the feat allowed you to get cyber-stuff with a purchase DC equal to your level+15, I would check on that, but im pretty sure thats the way it worked, so in the case of needing a balance on it, it really has one, most of the good cybers have much higher PDCs meaning you wont get them til higher level. As to the mention of Fey Reserves, I hadn't thought about that while I was on that subject, and that is a very interesting idea, most likely the Druidic and shamanistic societies will be the likely ones who look over the Sphere's Fey links. Yeah, on the outsiders note, you took it farther than i did for that one, but we are looking for the ultimate gray, something akin to what the twilight zone portrays itself to be, using any of the outsiders for any of the gods in the spheres is something i hadnt taken all the way through, but it seems to work nicely. There is no easy way to do those templates, thats pretty much a garuntee, i have no idea how those templates are going to work, archtypes maybe?
Araes 07-07-06, 11:04 AM	Doh on the timing for the visit, be nice to see who the other main contributor on this beast of a project has been. Ah well, no help for it I guess. Plus, when I get back I think that a lot of family who have been missing me while I've been over in Europe all this time are going to have high demands on my free hours, so I'll probably be spending the first couple of weeks just going hiking and hanging out in quasi-reunions. Anyhow, on to other stuff related to the world. Monsters - Outsiders and the Like Last night I sat down and tried to do a bit of brainstorming on how we might create a complex ecosystem of programs for the Gods, each with a specific function, by trying to think up what those functions might be. In doing so, I tried to pair off each function in the digital realm with a similar task in the real one, so that programs which were incarnate in the Sphere might have ability sets that would carry over no matter where they were. Here's what I came up with - digital as first point, real as second: Info Data Mining / Retreival Information Gathering Organizers OS / Organization / Task Routing Logistics / Administration Covert Data Leeches / Phishers / Covert Info Gathering Espionage / Thieves Hunters Hunter Killers Spycatchers / Detectives Maintenance System Repair Sphere Maintenance Laborers Drudge Coding / Bulk Source Creation Construction Laborers Monitors Traffic / Network Monitoring Police / Security Combat Black ICE (intrusion countermeasure electronics) Direct Combat Bodyguards Bodybuard ICE Physical Systems Security (heaven's servers and whatnot) Research / Think Tanks Complex Source Creation / Problem Solving Research Assistance to Sphere Inhabitants Messages Messenger - Virtual Messenger - Real World Diplomacy Diplomat - Virtual Diplomat - Real World Scouting Network / Site Mappers Enemy Territory Scouts Medicine Construct / Program Repair Medics / Doctors Recorders Data Logging Historians / Scribes Anyhow, what do you think so far, and any other ideas for uses. As far as general types of Outsiders, the groups I can think of with some reference to books are: Abominations [Epic] Angels Archons Canomorphs (could be demons / devils) Demodands (might be good police - as they normally guard Carceri) Demons - w/ Tanar'ri Devils - w/ Baatezu Eladrin Elementals - Base Elementals, ParaElementals, Genies, Mephits, ect, ect... Energons (could be Elementals) Ephemeras Formians Guardinals Gith - Yanki and Zerai Inevitables (perfect hunter killers) Modrons (seem like a good choice for OS / Organizers) Nerras (Might make good spys / thieves) Rilmani Slaads Yugoloths Think that about covers it. There are a few I probably missed, and there are billions of them that don't fall into any well defined group. A full list sorted by type can be found here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/monsters&tablesort=4), although I actually used my own one. *edit* Oh, and as far as some other ideas that I had, but rejected, I figured there probably wouldn't be much place for artists, entertainers, legal representatives, priests, or politicians in the realm of construct programs. However, as I was thinking about it more, I guess there is the possibility that since there are so many different Gods, and so many varied ecosystems, its quite possible that over time many programs were forgotten and formed their own ecosystems. These ecosystems, full of programs who were just not deconstructed or who's times have passed, might actually have more complex, less dictatorial forms of government, and also have room for things like art and a legal system. Creating these extra areas just broadens our workload though, so I think for the most part we should ignore them. Much like the numerous ungrouped Outsiders. If a DM who happens to use the world is interested in them, then he can come up with some of the backstory of why they exist in their own system outside the Gods' primary realms.
Jeweler 07-07-06, 11:52 AM	Eh yeah, that makes sense, i will probably be the same way with friends when i get back from west coast, haha, if your still over in europe for some reason i think i will be over there in 2 years or so on vaction. So from the mention of the black ICE i take it you have atleast heard of Shadowrun and about deckers, if you dont have it check out an old clone called "Decker" freeware and its actually pretty fun, hard to start out, but really fun. As the name says your a decker, just starting out, I would choose your bonus wisely cause it makes the difference between cash flow and blood flow really. Otherwise, I don't see anything that needs to be added, it looks pretty good. Question though: Are there possibly going to be two templates, one its job and the other its God/creator or are you seperating the outsiders into jobs, then just applying the God template?
Jeweler 07-08-06, 08:41 PM	I was thinking about something, off the side but on the subject, the organizers branch, are they going to all be lawful only outsiders? It sounds like it would make sense, but some of the best ideas for OSs are ones that allow for more freedom and less rigidity, and i know we are taking out the alignment system, but lawful creatures i would guess would have an allegiance, if we decide to use the allegiances system, towards all laws, well good ones anyways. I don't know i just thought about it. Also, on spells, i would suspect we are keeping the summon monster spells, what are we going to do about the celestial/fiendish creatures? I quite like the customizable fiendish template in the main page of the D&D website, pretty good way to customize the creatures, and do the same for celestials.
stsword 07-10-06, 05:46 AM	[QUOTE=Araes]Power, But At What Price? As a basic answer to that question, I was hoping to keep the campaign world in the realm of "not stupidly overpowered", because if it becomes overpowered then we have to correct all of the difficulty for encounters, the value of items in an inflated market space, and pretty much everything about the D&D balance mechanic. I've been playing D&D for quite a while, but I've got no allusions that our small group could do an effective Design and Development job and catch everything if it got to that scale. As such, one of the main things that we've been talking about for cybernetics, weapons, bionics, ect... is that prices should still be in line with whatever they would be for comparable gear in D&D. Since the entire premise of the setting is that magic doesn't truly exist, its just an expression of tech well beyond our vision, then all "magic" items in the setting are going to be some form of tech or another, and stuff like cybernetics ought to fit right in line with its brethern for the bonus it gives. That would be wisest I think, barring prestige classes or the like. Eleven bonus: Up to plus six equipment bonus from neuron booster, personality mapping, or proverb chip depending on what stat you're based on, plus up to five inherent bonus through gilding retrovirus, intellect augmentation retrovirus, or nerve augmentation retrovirus, all from d20 cyberscape. So they'd stack, and if bought as feats would be available to any character capable of having two feats. But if bought as equipment, it would depend on how you convert wealth checks to cold hard cash. Yeah, a prestige class for the self made cyborg would work well. Honestly I think it would work as a base class, it doesn't seem any more far fetched than a character throwing fireballs through some wierd quantum mechanical meditation technique or something, but I won't waste all our times by trying to talk anyone out of the generic classes bit, and just allowing it through freely available feats would just get very broken very fast, so prestige class it is by process of elimination. Maybe if one gave the cyborg feat the prerequisites of cybernetic surgery and the appropriate craft feat, but I don't think that would work out.
Araes 07-10-06, 09:02 AM	In the Shadows and Decking Yeah, I've actually heard of Shadowrun before. In fact, I actually ran a year and a half long game of it with my old group in 3rd Edition, which was probably one of the more fun gaming experiences I've ever had. Love all the mythos behind the setting and the great job they did linking it up with the prior Earthdawn setting. Probably my favorite thing though was just some of their stylistic choices in creation of the content material - like how you had dragons and famous people commenting on articles through pseudonames. As far as the decking goes, I've never been much of a fan myself, as I found that the decking game seemed to detract from the main game as a DM and didn't want to do that to my party. However, I think I may have actually played the game you're talking about a while back, as well as both the SNES and Genesis incarnations of Shadowrun. Outsiders and Monsters As far as your question goes, I was thinking that we were just going to assign jobs or functions to each of the various groups of Outsiders (as that seemed like the idea in your post). There are zillions of Outsiders, and after looking at the arrangement of jobs versus groups there actually does seem to be a decent correspondence of group / job numbers. In regards to the lawfulness question, since we're already playing fast and loose with the alignments, I see no reason that OS groups would have to be any kind of disposition exclusively. One group might write an alignment construct which is very rules and regulations oriented and focuses on putting the right pegs in the correct holes, while another might write one where the whole goal is adaptability and conforming to as many different input sets as possible. I think that we might still have them be represented as coming from the same group of Outsiders (so if you see X Outsider you know it does Y job), but depending on who created / wrote them and self will, they could behave very differently (kind of like how normal people aren't stamped from a mold). Finally, with respect to monster summoning in the celestial and fiend ranges, I think there are two ways we could go about doing this. One would be to say that the spells are just summoning some image which is kind of like the caster's interpretation of celestials / fiends, the other would be to say that the spell calls an actual representative from the digital realm. My preference would actually be to go for the second option, as it would allow people to talk to the creatures, if they are intelligent, and gain information about the digital realm. Plus, there could be interesting repurcussions for people who suddenly call programs away from important tasks they were working on. We've already gone down this road a bit anyhow, with the avatar manifestations in the world, so it seems like a natural extension that summons should bring the real ones. Re: Power at What Price? Ok, I think we will get around that problem fairly handily, as we've never bought into the whole idea of Cybernetics as feats, and they will probably come across mainly as equipment for purchase. Also, since its a D&D game at its core, we'll probably be going with actual wealth not wealth levels, so that will help get around the fuzziness of wealth level purchasing as well. Since I don't have d20 Cyberscape, only the main book, I guess that's why I didn't realize there were some fairly broken pieces of cyberware floating around out there (the stuff in the main book is actually pretty tame). With respect to the self made Cyborg, I agree that the Prestige seems like the most viable option. However, I do think that some of the feats and abilities which can be bought in the more generic section of a character's life could help lead towards this path. As long as the prerequisites are handled intelligently, there's no reason why a class like the artificer couldn't be included in the list of classes which can be recreated with the generics system. If balanced well, there's really no reason the generics should lead to anything other than classes which pretty closely approximate the normal D&D classes - just with other options if you happen not to like abilities along the normal progression. Interlayer Organizations Knights of the Radiant Sphere - In their current day incarnation, the Knights of the Radiant Sphere serve two roles, both as protectors of holy sites throughout the Sphere, and as the quintisential questing knights righting wrongs and pursuing the organization's view of justice throughout the layers. Originally, upon inception, the Knights were charged with protecting the Sphere from "all those who would do harm to the world", as a response by the creator Gods to the perceived threat of the usurpers and their prior attempts to cause instability within the Sphere. Numerous locations within the Sphere were marked off as critical nodes vulnerable to assault, and the Knights were charged with establishing permanent guard points in these areas to prevent their subversion. Over time, as catastrophes, communications droughts, and other such problems wracked the Sphere, both the Knights and their posts changed in public perception, until they existed as only a sketch of what they once were. By the very focus given to them as points of contention, most of the sites the Knights guard are now viewed as holy places by the inhabitants of the Sphere, and for many churches, pilgrimages to several of the larger of these sites are viewed as accepted requirements for life in the church. In addition, as the meaning behind their reasons for defense have faded, many of the Knights have taken such phrases as "all those who would do harm to the world" to reference a much grander scheme of metaphysical "good" and the order of things - questing knights have become an accepted branch of the order, and common sightings among the cities of the layers. Order of Salation - This branch of the unified church of the creator Gods acts to preserve the knowledge of the past both physically and through ritualization. One of the few organizations within the Sphere under constant guidance from the Creator Gods, the Order maintains physical strongholds, monstaries, libraries, and other such centers of power across nearly all of the Sphere. Even in the most devestated of areas, the Order has made attempts to create new inroads into the zones and, when possible, preventatively remove material or lessen the effects of the calamity. Dragons (need a good name) - We've touched on these guys before, but they're one of the major shadow players within the sphere. Whether unified or individually, the race of dragons aims to control the world from behind the scens and possibly usurp the Gods in time. Dragon Watchers (name also) - People who keep tabs on the dragons and their activities throughout the Sphere. Not formally organized into an interlayer organization as such, a common interest in putting to rest whatever plans the dragons are implementing has nevertheless created numerous similar groups wherever dragons are operating. Communication is light among the groups, but as dragons form alliances or work together, so too do their followers, finding one another through happenstance or luck and agreeing on monitoring partnerships to improve their coverage. Militant Branch of Macht's Church (name - undead hunters) - Arm of the church dedicated to hunting down the undead (plus their creators) and destroying them as an abomination of life. NOTE: One of the interpersonal God relations I've been thinking about is that Macht had a thing for Seureb in life, and in some way that attraction carried over to digital existence. However, when the usurpers came on the scene, one of the worst assaults was by Gram towards Seureb. Through some means, he nearly destroyed her conciousness and left her crippled until the creator Gods could come enough into their own as digital lifeforms to repair her. Throughout all of this period, Macht was livid. Never sure whether they would even be able to repair her, he truly came into his own as the God of wrath, bending all of his will towards finding and destroying Gram. This actually led to some horrible atrocities where whole groups of people where exterminated becaused the followed the usurpers as a name in the dark, not because they actively helped to create undead. Some of the more global calamities which wracked the Sphere can also be traced back to this period - Macht having used his control over the very Suns of the Sphere to deal death to his foes. The Lopitaleurs - Providers of high quality medical care across the Sphere, in many cases the Lopitaleurs are the lone choice for such advanced needs as intensive care, surgeries, healing magic, and hospital care. Having a direct tie in with the church of Torneh in many locations, the Lopitaleurs actively recruit / draft the most promising students of healing for their staff. Like any organization which spans worlds, the Lopitaleur facilities are not of uniform quality, administration, or even function. In some regions they represent a purely benign force of healing in the world, surviving off of charitable donations and bringing aid to whoever might need it. However, in others they could almost be described as draconian, pursuing profits and the bottom line as a factor before all others. Yet, among all this disparity, one of the great constants is that facilities of the Lopitaleurs usually represent at least a step above whatever else is commonly available in the area. The Smiths - A secret society operating across all layers of the Sphere which possesses the true secret of the Gods' history. Of course, very few members of the society actually have access to ths information, and over time its extremities have become more of a club for political manuevering and the power elite. NOTE: Had an odd joke in my head that maybe being part of this thing actually never had anything to do with being a blacksmith and was in fact a holdover from it being founded by folks named Smith. Course, could have a serious origin like the family named Smith being the ones who knew the secret, and everyone else taking Smith as a name to try and protect them. Donno, not sure if I even want to go with them as I caught the unconcious Mason's reference after I made them. The Crystalline Shard (or The Shard) - Exido's personal spy network within the Sphere. Vast and multi-faceted (initiates are actually refered to as "facets"), it counts members in every other interlayer organization, and many of the layer and nationally based ones. Intricate and compartmentalized, most of its workers only funnel information out of their respective posts and receive a small subsidy in exchange. However, should a member take the personal initiative to start obtaining "assets" of their own, then they are made aware that they serve a greater purpose (unspecific at that point) and offered a chance to join as a facet of the greater Shard. Whew. Think that's all for now. Tell me what you guys think and if you have suggestions for any of the blank points. Working on matching up the Outsiders with respective job postings, and hopefully should have a preliminary list soon.
Jeweler 07-10-06, 02:23 PM	I got to say, good luck with the Outsiders, even if it just the grouped ones. Yeah, you really cant have a decker in a shadowrun (real world) game, but you could play a group of deckers, which makes for some interesting encounters when all your players run off exploring the network : ). Outsiders and Monsters I like the idea of actual programs, and most likely low level summons (non-planar ally and below 5th level summon monster) wouldnt really effect anything majorly, once you hit 5th level summon monster and the planar ally spell, thats when you could start getting mess ups. So once your done with the grouped ones, for outsiders and what type of programs they are, what is going to happen to the ones that arent in a group. Price of Metal I dont remember much broken material in D20 cyber, although with my memory that doesnt say much but still, the feats system normally made it so that most of the stuff was right around 3rd level before you could get it, and a lot of the other higher stuff was even farther off, it takes a jump really: 16 (small stuff nothing really worth wasting a feat on unless you want the more cybers next time) 18 (not bad stuff, if i had my notebook id give you examples but i dont) then it jumps to about 22-23 (not bad stuff i think the 2 new movement cybers fall in this range, but they could have been more) and then 26-30 (your not getting this stuff until 11-15 level anyways but its really good if you need it, but at that point who wants to waste a valuable feat?) Knights (templar?) Seem very similiar to the Knights Templar of the medievil times, but on a more global scale. It makes sense that you would have a group like this, one question though, would they fight the undead or try and hold up the laws on that layer? Order of Salation Seems like a global FEMA type organization good for the PCs if they need a resting point as the Order would be most likely to say "Come on in, stay as long as you like." or atleast it seems that way. They are definately needed with some of the disasters you have mentioned going on in the sphere. Draghi (italian for dragons: ) Dragons could most likely be shadow players on a Council level and a singular level, and they are more likely to do both at the same time. Dragons make an interesting encounter as shadow players, unfortuantely most players see it coming now because its so over used. They are obviously, or most likely, not going to be on every sphere running and pulling strings, and they most likely will not be on the small spheres where there is barely enough population to feed them let alone have a fun game of Puppeteering. Dragon watchers (didnt like the italian wording for it) The dragon watchers are another organization for the PCs to possiblely join and run along with and adds in another set of missions, and also a choice, help the dragons that are good, or kill the "evil" ones. Macht's Church I like the little backstory you have for why they are the undead slayers. It adds a feeling of realism to it, there is a reason for the total destruction of a race, or sub species really. Lopitaleurs How did you come up with that name? Sound almost like our hospitals now, atleast the draconian part, anybody else think that the government should pay the doctors, raise taxes sure, but atleast the doctors wont have to worry so much about who they are working on, because that person isnt paying them. Anyways, i could see a lot of these running around on the metropolis layer, and atleast 2 on any layer which has dragons on it, as a lot of people get fool hardy or just get hurt when dragons are around. Smiths Yeah seem a lot like what people try and pin on the mason's in conspiracies, but this organization seems like it would do some of the things we have as conspiracies about the mason's. Beyond that i have no ideas on them. Crystalline Shard Interesting choice of names, need spies, everywhere, what about dragon spies?
Araes 07-10-06, 03:33 PM	Another bit that I found while searching through the remains of a prior hard drive - this one covers the third sphere of the world and some of the societies present within it. Touched it up a wee bit so it would fall more in line with the concept of the Sphere we've been working on. And One Queen to Rule Them All The land is composed of five major island continents. Originally each of these continents were a sovereign body, some composed of many smaller nation states, independent of one another, and for many years oblivious as well. However, during the last 150 years, the ruling body of the largest continent, which was unified into one superpower long ago, has undertaken a campaign of consolidation and conquest among the neighboring lands. First to fall were the realms of the third largest continent, which had been unprepared for the massive onslaught, and with their demise and assimilation, few were left who could resist their combined might. The remaining three continents attempted to form an alliance to defend themselves against this rampant aggression, however, their former communication had been limited at best, and inter-political conflict and strife limited any alliances which could truly arise. Although halted numerous times during their campaign, and even forced to completely abandon the second largest continent at one point, over 50 years of conquest, nearly the entire scope of the known world has slowly come under the sway of imperial rule. At the conclusion of the campaign, a number of small, tertiary islands were allowed to retain their independence from the imperial seat, however, most of these lands contained nothing of value or possessed motions which were too erratic to facilitate their conquering. For the four main lands which had fallen under the imperial sway, peace once again resumed as the norm of life (in some cases moreso than it was before), and each was allowed to retain a day to day sovereignce from the imperial seat. However, much of the government and administration of these bodies was reorganized after their capture to fall more in line with the imperium's wishes. Within those lands which had previously been without one, a republic form of government was organized, which rely on a strong governoral chair to act as a figurehead and central power figure for the imperial throne. In addition, each of these governors is chosen by the seat itself, rather than through popular vote, and as such, serve as a direct link for the wishes and acts of the Empress and her court. Naturally, these power figures also range quite broadly in their styles, racial background, and general levels of competence. As the populations of most of the continents are already composed of a wide range of individuals, ethnicity is rarely an issue for placement, however, most governors are either personal friends of the palace or were influential military and political figures before their victory. The sole exception to this trend is the governor of the second largest land. Nearly unified before its conquest, and of the most determined and fortified resistance among the conquered lands, much of the imperial power base relies on the continued support and allegiance of this land. As such, its governor has been instead chosen from among the people of the realm, and was in fact a senator of one of the largest nation states before his rise to power. Of a mind to cooperate with the throne for both land's mutual benefit, as well as strongly charismatic with the people, he was an ideal candidate to appease the masses and maintain order. In the Land Where Shadows Lie Heralds of the Return Group of the third sphere that prays for the return of the sun, moons, constellations, or other such bodies, which they prophesize will happen in the near future (and have been doing so for millenia). Although not all of the same racial backgrounds, they share a common belief that they simply exist on a sundered version of their prior world, which the deities have broken in their anger and will mend in time. Church of the Manifest Prince Religious organization which holds that the first Gods of man now walk among men in mortal form. After the grand unification, it is held that the first Gods were cast from grace, spent of their divine power and cursed to wander the world in the shape of men, while what the Sphere has come to know as the Creators and Usurpers took their place in the heavens. All of the followers of the Church are on the constant look out for manifestations of their power, and clues which might lead to their location. Partially, this is because the current state of the deities is a matter of much contention in the Church, as well as the very reasons for their replacement. Some hold that they were stripped of their might by the second generation due to unforeseen consequences of the unification, while others disagree, claiming they willingly forsook the mantle of godhood to exist within the final creation, as their time as Gods had passed with the former universe. In many portions of the layer, members of the church are seen as pariahs of society, rejecting the obvious Gods of the masses to search for these ethereal past dieties. The Order of Maladrian’s Essence A scientific order, founded by the late Donald Maladrian, which seeks to find the true connection between every being in existence. Conceived on the premise that each member of an intelligent species much share a common ancestral link, this society works to discover this connection through the application of mystical divination and the scientific method. Goals, and perceived linkage theories differ among its members, however, the society as a whole explores numerous avenues including creation theory, genetic similarities, and ancestral analysis of records (which is quite difficult due to the widespread loss of such information). The Band of the Luminous Visage The personal executors of the Amber Throne. Serving as the special police and living will of the Empress, this highly trained corps of individuals work in all aspects of society to enforce the decrees of their sovereign throughout the land. Composed of both magic users and combat professionals, members of this organization can be identified by their luminous cloaks of amber gold, which are decorated with the first morning rays of a sun not seen for centuries. Composed of groups of six individuals, the Band is most commonly used as a physical reminder of the Empress’ presence or as a security detail within those lands which would threaten her power. The leader of each of these groups can be identified by a brilliant energy blade, each of which is specially crafted for the squad of interest and serves nearly as much as a spiritual focal point as it does a weapon.
Araes 07-11-06, 09:21 AM	Organization Observations Knights of the Radiant Sphere - I can see the mental connection between them and the Knights Templar in our own history, particularly since the Templars are kind of the quintisential questing knights for the middle ages. Plus, they also built fortifications and temples along the route to the Holy Land and protected pilgrims on their travels. I wasn't intentionally trying to set them up as the Templars of the Sphere, but its probably in my motivations, as I read Da Vinci again when I was on the road for Rome / Barcelona. One of the main differences between the two would be with the divergence in the way the Templars operated after the Crusades wound down. They turned into much more of a banking institution than a military order and owned vast tracts of property throughout Europe. The ones I propose here function much more on the good will of the church, charitable donations due to their position as protectors of the righteous, and are generally much more similar to the original Poor Knights of Christ that the Templars started out as. As far as their purpose when out questing in the world, I think that they would serve a purpose similar to Paladins in most settings. They would have their own internalized set of laws and rules for living that they would want to uphold in others, and if travelling in a society where the laws were viewed as unjust from their perception than they might work to change them or help those they viewed as being under oppression. I think that if they did encounter undead, they might destroy the undead, depending on what they were doing, but if they weren't committing acts viewed as bad by the KRS, then it would really come down to the choice of the Knight who was there. They're not like the militant portion of Macht's church, who would destroy any undead on sight, no matter the circumstances. Order of Salation - Never actually thought of them like FEMA, but I guess in some cases they might actually work that way. I think that in many cases, they might inadvertantly help people, when their ultimate motive would be to preserve knowledge above all other things. I think that the best way to say it would be to say that lives are passing but knowledge is eternal. If helping to avert a disaster stops a library with a number of rare texts (files, ect...) from being destroyed, then they'll do it and possibly save lives, but if they could get the texts away with some sureity before the disaster occured, they very well might do that instead. Draghi (derkesthai, draugr, smok, zmey - I kind of like Diaconate - maybe Driaconate?) - I tend to think that the dragons could rise pretty far in the power structure of the sphere's nations due to all of their varous abilities and such, but you're right, they're not going to be everywhere always pulling the strings. There will probably be a couple per layer that actually do well due to their own natural abilities for manipulation, and then a number of others, who are just doing their own thing, but haven't really made it big. Also, we have to keep in mind that the smallest of the layers has been proposed as the size of Earth - and is also a massivly congested megapolis - lots o' people. Finally, you brought up a good point when referencing the watchers, in that not all dragons have to be doing detrimental stuff and many of them could be helping the rest of the populace, acting as wise sages, ect... Macht's church / undead slayers - Quick note in that one of the things I've been playing around with in my head is that it would be possible to have some truly horrible stuff happen in the sphere. Not in the vein of disasters or wars between groups, but stuff that gives you the shivers when you contemplate its scope - Re: the Holocaust in our own world. Even better would be if the followers of a supposedly good group did it to their "evil" foes. I've tossed around the undead and Macht's overcompensation as a possible route for this as it seems like a natural avenue. If you've ever seen Fight Club, it kind of has that feeling for me of the scene where "Jack" beats the tar out of Angel Face and the rest of the group (the Gods in this case) can only stand by and watch on in horror. The fight is in itself the reason for being there, but one of their member has taken things way, way too far. The Lopitaleurs - As far as the name goes, I actually came up with it from another of those orders of Christian warrior monks, The Hospitallers. I just took it over into French and then phonetically wrote it like it would be in English. The Smiths - Yeah, the obvious connections between them and the masons is one of those things that makes me think I need to ditch them and come up with something more original (especially since I have other groups that seem to mirror the Templars) I do like the idea of somebody actually knowing at least a bit of the truth about the Gods, but I think it needs a rewrite to differentiate itself - even the name is too close. The Shard - Thanks, one of those names that I actually thought was a decent choice - and the play with facets as well. When you reference dragon spies, are you talking about spies on the dragons, or dragons who are spies. The first would obviously be needed for the big movers and shakers, while the second is definitely a possibility, as a God would have a lot to offer a wyrm in terms of wealth, information, or other perks and the wyrm could serve the God better than nearly any other type of spy.
Araes 07-17-06, 09:35 AM	Bloody hell, this stupid board migration thing is turning into a headache. Anyhow, repost of the last one I made on the new boards, where I talked about what jobs were going to be for what outsider types. Unfortunately, since the new boards are apparently completely dead right now, I can't get to the original post, so this one's going to be an approximation. Anyhow, here's the proposed list for a second time. Workin' in a Coal Mine, Goin' Down, Down, Down Info - Devils Organizers - Modrons Covert Info – Nerras Covert Assault - Slaads Hunters - Inevitables Maintenance - Ephemeras Laborers - Formians Monitors - Demodands Combat - Demons Bodyguards - Angels Research / Think Tanks - Eladrin Messages - Archons Diplomacy - Rilmani Scouting - Canomorphs Medicine - Guardinals Recorders - Yugoloths The Modrons, Slaads, Nerras, Inevitables, Demodands, Formians, Archons, and Rilmani were all fairly easy choices, as most of them had parts of their descriptions that talked about the job / responsibility I have assigned them in their normal descriptions. For example, the Inevitables are natural hunter killer bots which are programmed to find a person across any span of hte planes. Or the Modrons, which are an entire community of Outsiders dedicated to making things run smoothly and acting as administrators. Now, some of the others were quite a bit more difficult, partially because most of D&D's descriptions for monsters give about a paragraph of background at most on where they come from and why they exist, and then pages of info on how they fight and what their combat manuevers are. So, in a lot of cases I had to just make a best guess at what they were trying to imply, use their abilities to determine their position, or just make strange word associations in my head between what they were and how they might function as digital beings. With the choice of who to use as bodyguards, I had choices between the Angels, Guardinals, and Yugoloths. I eventually decided to go with the Angels for the position, as they talked a lot about their capacities as guardians of Gods, of pilgrims, and even of ideas. The Yugoloths then got shifted into the scribe position, as they were one of the only outsiders with service positions talked about in two of their descriptions, and one of those actually happened to be a scribe as well. The Guardinals then became the field medics for the Outsiders as they almost universally possess Paladin abilities, and there was really no better slot left for them. In the choice of the scouting position, I thought about using both the Ephemerals and the Canomorphs. Eventually, the Canomorphs won out, as a couple lines in their descriptions talked about them being scouts for their demon masters, and the Ephemerals had no similar link. Since they got shunted, it then became kind of difficult to find a place for the Ephemerals, but eventually I decided to make them the maintenance people for the Sphere, due to the similar word play of people working in the shadows and them being shadows themselves - kind of weak. Finally, with three left, I decided that the Eladrin would make decent researchers, as they tend to have some of the highest average intelligence scores among all of the Outsiders. In addition, they are also one of the most frail and fey-like of the group, which tends to lend creadance to the mental image of the spindley researcher who doesn't make it outside. This then left me with two options for combat and information keepers - both of them highly suited for the combat job and not overly great for the information job. I eventually settled on demons for the combat profession and devils for information, as demons seem to be the more overtly violent of the two and love destruction for destructions own sake. In addition, the entire society of the devils seemed like a good one for maintaining the rigid order necessary to handle all the information of heaven, with numerous castes and responsibilities which could be called depending on the type of information wanted. Plus, there's also the connection between devils in popular myth and the making of written pacts which seemed to work for me on some level as well.
Araes 07-18-06, 02:27 PM	Among the Gods and Their Ways Things seem to be a bit quiet around here, so I'm going to try and spend some time to flesh out the gods a bit more, as they're one of those nagging thorns that's still irritating me. Quick review as its on the prior page, using Myers Briggs, which is a personality test that is supposed to help people figure out where they sit in the areas of: Introvert vs Extrovert Sensing vs Intuition Thinking vs Feeling Judging vs Perceiving The scientific accuracy of the test is pretty suspect in most circles, but it does give a quick four letter description of the general way a fictional character might act. Last time, I stopped at Exido, so next up is Seureb. Seureb - INFP - A pretty, but somewhat shy woman in life, Seureb was always facinated with the boundary between life and death and how lightly one might tread that line. While still undergoing higher education, she had become involved with some of the top tier stasis programs and their research into perception and community while in suspended animation. Facinated by dreams for much of her younger life, she became the progenitor of "dreamwalking", the act of repeatable induced lucid dreaming with full use of implant technology while in repose and the exploration which can occur from this state, just before the call came for work on the Sphere. Struck down by a viral attack from the Usurper faction, and in particular Gram, Seureb has actually been socially absent for much of the existence of the Sphere, holding on to life as fragments of her former personality deep within the networks. In many ways, this return from a living death has profoundly impacted her, by her own admission making her feel much closer to existence. Somewhat oddly for one so close to the research of dreamwalking, she has never commented on what transpired in her mind during those years of isolation - if anything. Macht - ESFJ - Almost a force of nature in his own right, Macht has much akin to Bettenn in his ability for snap decisions. Yet, where Bettenn is almost always rational in his choices, Macht is much more of quicksilver in his personality - reactionary and swift of emotion. Much of this can be attributed to his family life growing up, where his father was a passionate orator for galactic environmental preservation and passed on the trait to his children. More importantly though, during a demonstration, which Macht was witness to while at the tender age of 12, his father was hit by a distruption beam from the gathered crowd and instantly slain. This sole event changed Macht more than any other, imbuing within him a subsurface rage that would rear itself throughout the rest of his organic life. Prone to arguments and extremes of temper, he was rarely violent, but when pushed past the boundary, would transition into a being of malevolent fury that required crowds to seperate. Ages of digital life have done little to mitigate these extremes, and his outbursts have done much to sow chaos within the Sphere. Panetar - ESTP - One of the most recognized faces in the universe prior to the collapse, Joan Panetar served as the public representative for all universal scale press conferences and meetings. Not truly a leader, but more a figurehead of the government as a whole, she nevertheless came to be associated with all that was politics. Assisting in this feat was the fact that she was a deft politico, managing to hold the post for an unthinkable 10 years and navigating the murky and backstabbing waters of galactic politics like no other. Almost never reactionary and never surprised (or perceptably so) she employed huge teams of researchers and think tanks to expose and counter every conceivable plot which might unseat her. As such, she was also one of the first proponents (and members) of the Sphere project, voluntarily abandoning her post in a thunderstroke that shocked the masses. Barack - ESTP - A vast and turbulent place, the fabric of the pre-Collapse universe was never without its gaps in the order of society, yet like an ordered absolute of law, Thomas Barack was a constant within any breach that might appear. Serving in countless campaigns, spanning worlds across the breadths of space, Barack entered the service as a midshipsman just out of his higher education, and managed to end his career as one of the Pillars of galactic military policy. Fairly charismatic in his personal life, and well respected among the forces which he led, he was nevertheless not promoted to his position as a policymaker due to any ingratiating with the political world, but simply due to his status as a symbol of heroism and glory - the brilliant warrior the flesh-pressers were compelled to reward. Most offensively, he possessed a trait for bluntness and the truth as he saw it that was almost acidic in its straightforwardness. Thankfully not married with stubborness, Barrack was quite often willing to change his views in the face of a good argument or new information, but it was a rare day when the opening salvo was covered in anything approaching sugar. Torneh - ESFJ - Brought onboard the project due to her association (and friendship) with Tiyffain, Dahlia Torneh was actually a universal aid worker for much of her life before the Sphere, visiting those planets which had either undergone disasters or where the standard of living was perceptably lower than the standard norm. In many cases, she quite willingly used her friend's political clout and ties to get herself (along with various aid convoys) into areas which might otherwise be barred to her. In a few cases, this posed a strain on their relationship, particularly when the backlash from their involvement cascaded into Tiyffain's own trade work. Yet, for the most part, they both viewed the aid as a necessity in a universe which cared equally for all its citizens. Roughened by these many years of work, Torneh came to be somewhat gruff in her own personal interactions, yet with patients or the injured, there was almost always an element of the young doctor who had first started out in the profession. Sophis - ISFP - "Boy Wonder", "Prodigy", "The Greatest of His Age", "The Destroyer...". Like a plague in his mind, titles seemed to follow Sergio Sophis through his life whether he wished for them or not. By the age of five he was devouring advanced mathimatical concepts, by fifteen he was delving into areas of reality manipulation that few before him had thought to explore, by thirty he was proposing concepts of alternate realities, fey, and energy that challenged long held views of transcendance, and by sixty...he had become one of the most hated men in existence - widely held responsible for the breakthroughs which had led to the Collapse. In his position as lead advisor to the project, he had far too late seen their error of calculation, and even with the initially positive response to their correction of the fissure, its ultimate failure marked him as a pariah throughout the cosmos. In a way, his admission to the project may have almost been an act of pity on the part of Peresis, a granting of asylum for this quiet, reflection-prone man, or a retreat from the existence which hated him. However, as possibly the premiere mathematician and reality manipulation expert of his time, he also brought invaluable skills and insights to the project - helping to design signficant portions of the central machine which keeps the Collapse at bay from his own prior work. Wellor - INTJ - Almost nothing is known of Wellor before his appearance in the heavens of the Sphere, literally a non-entity in the public domain. However one lone fact which has survived is that he served in some capacity within the security services of the universal government. As many of the other members of the Sphere team have come from high positions, it can be conjectured that he was very likely the head of a major branch or possibly a director. Unfortunately, this is pure supposition, and he might just as likely been a field agent who just happened to be assigned to the Sphere. After his transition to digital life, Wellor has become a drastically more public figure, interacting with his devoted on an almost personal basis in many cases, and in some ways prefering this closeness to the grandstanding of others. He has also taken to directing many of the activities of what security drones and peacekeepers still exist within the Sphere. One of the progenitors of the Knights of the Radiant Sphere, he has been influential in the way their society progressed, helping to foster the edict of questing when he saw it begining to form - even though he himself tends to act somewhat reserved. Whew, alright, descriptions for all of the Creator Gods personalities (and many backstories) have been put down. In fact, near the end there I almost diverged more into history and their prior lives then I actually did into their emotions and personality. Ah well, I tend to like the final result, and will hopefully manage to bang out the "fence sitters" and Usurpers fairly quickly, as there's a smaller number of them.
Araes 07-20-06, 01:00 PM	Unpitied Sacrifice in a Contempable Struggle Alright, time for the neutral / evil Gods' personalities - finally get to knock one of those big chunks off the list of content left. Hume - ESFP -> INFP - In discussion of Rene Hume, it is most helpful to seperate his life into distinct portions before and after he attained digital life. Naturally a slow moving man, perfectly willing to take life at a comfortable pace, Hume had worked as a private transport captain before the collapse, relishing in the laconic pace of the cruises and the opportunity to interact with his crews. Brought into the fold of the project through his affiliation with Bettenn, by whom his private ship (the Sowareh) had been contracted numerous times due to its immense size - at full yield it could transports masses on the scale of 1/4 an Earth sized planet intergalactic distances. Initially a custom construction, when the need for bulk transport of vast quantities of beings and organics was reconized, Hume's ship was marked out as a template of good design and he himself put in charge of the fleet construction efforts. Initially, the step up to organization of fleetyard operations from those of a single (admittedly large) ship were quite difficult - relations were terse with many of the other soon to be Gods and quite a few wondered whether Bettenn had made a mistake in recommending him. Yet, of the many lessons Hume had learned among the stars, one of the most resonant had been adaptability to whatever the universe threw at you. Within months, shipyard crews were finishing work on the first of the great ships, and numerous more were already at various levels of completion. Unfortunately though, that initial period of mistrust fostered a initial crack in relations between Hume and the others which would never be repaired - eventually widening into a chasm that would see him working with the leaders of the Usurpers to smuggle their elements on board. Once the events of the last few days of the universe had played themselves out though, existence once again took a drastic turn for Hume. Trapped as the rest of the Creator Gods were by groups of their own turned against them, Hume took the escape which was offered him, and bravely let loose his mortal coil. Yet waiting among the dark eternity which were the cores was an almost worse reality - somehow the others knew of his betrayal. Through pure intuition, access to the physical resources of the Sphere, or simply the expansion of conciousness which accompanied transition - the method was not clear. However, their response to both the Usurpers and himself was. Within the Sphere proper, the Usurpers had to deal with a world come alive to destroy them (which would eventually drive their own transition). For Hume himself though, the result was far worse, as he was suddenly faced by a vast array of entities, some of whom had been prior computer experts, all out to destroy him. The simple fact that he survived such a purge was a miracle in and of itself, partially due to his own adaptability, but largely assisted unseen by his still-friend Bettenn. Working from within their ranks, Bettenn helped to misleed and divert their search efforts; providing misleading clues and decoys wherever possible. Yet, this is not to say Hume himself evaded unscathed; the combination of the hunt, the wars with the Usurpers, and the very act of transition itself deeply affect the being which would come to be known as Hume. They affected him with a deep regret for the horror which he had helped to bring about, and a need to see any such travesties stopped in the future. In a way, his long isolation has also left him significantly more internal (for an AI), prone to strange arrangements of councils with the various aspects of his mind and significant periods of migration through the layers of the Sphere. In fact, Hume is probably the single entity most prone to physical incarnation, and may be the inspiration for many groups like the Church of the Manifest Prince. Erus - ???? - To describe such a being in terms of such mortal descriptors as intro- / extroverted would in many ways do it a disservice. Having never beheld life as an incarnate being, Erus possesses no physical reference for many of the seperations which would attempt to drive such a framework. Both single and plural, it personifies the concept of the many voices in one form, with a chorus of disparate aspects coming together to form the whole. Having no organs beyond those provided by the machines around it, sight, sound, touch, or taste hold only the vaguest meaning for it, and could not easily be parted from what more organicly born AIs might describe as a newfound sense of intuition in digital form. Its choices and actions seem in many cases to be almost haphazard at times, yet in others they will suddenly appear to glimpse at a vast pattern beyond sight - random alignments of chaotic motion or the underpinnings of a vast plan? No one knows, possibly barring even Erus itself. Akil - ENFJ - The Creators would very much like, and have expended much effort, to portray Shenya Akil as the anti-Peresis; the bane of all that for which the Creators stand. Throughout much of the Sphere, they have had significant success as well, yet the truth is far from as stark. Both charming characters and forces of personality, they saw the disaster on the horizon and tried to influence its resolution in their own ways. In fact, the similarities between the two are almost more numerous than the differences, their only major gaps being their plans for the universe and ultimate success. Prior to the fall of creation, Akil had lobbied heavily (although under the table like Peresis) throughout all levels of government for a solution which would draw upon ideas like those of the future elementals. In recent decades, significant progress had been made with research into alternate realities, partially leading to the development of the great machine, and Shenya contended that the best use of resources would be spent on furthering this work and evacuation to a habitable alternate. However, this line of reasoning met with far less success than the concrete plans of Peresis, as the technology of reality displacement was still undergoing only laboratory research work, and leveraging plans on such a vague return seemed dangerous at best. Due to her push, increased resources were allocated to many programs which Shenya promoted, but nothing on the scale of Peresis' project, a slight which she deeply resented. Even worse, whether due to the bad blood of their goals, or simply as an oversight, when the planning of the routes for the Sphere's hibernation ships was formalized, Shenya's entire homesystem had been completely bypassed. Trillions of beings who had, in her mind, been hung out to dry for her voice of opposition. Her initial response to this act was to become extremely vocal, using the full force of her influence and stature to levy harsh accusations at the creators of the Sphere. Publicly questioning their power and decrying their ability to select the surviving generation, she demanded open access, and survival of the fittest for those who would live. As has been mentioned though, this action produced little in the way of results. Formulating a plan with many of her closest advisors, and others who had been left in the wind, they then planned the subversion of several hibernation ships, and the collection of their own groups of followers, which would ultimately prove successful. Koli - INFP - Like smoke and mirrors or shadows and mist, Koli was the wraith of the pre-Collapse intelligence community. He could appear within any enclosure, evade any container, and complete his mission with flair while he did - or so was the legend. Much like Wellor of the Creators, very little of fact is actually known about Koli. Believed to be a friend and sometimes associate of Akil, it is thought that he may have been one of the first outsiders to find and expose the details of the Sphere project to the outside world. As a digital entity he has retained (or encompassed) many of the qualities which were attributed to him in life. Rarely detected in the networks, and even less often seen in the world at large, he most often simply appears as a pool of night, enfolding all information and releasing scant in return. Sepak - ENFJ / ISTP - Quite often, many times as a joke, aquaintances will comment that a person seems to have two sides to themselves, never sure which one they're going to see. For Sepak, this is not jest, but literal truth. In the cores of the AI, there are two forms which would be the reality of Sepak, and they trade control of its resources on an almost daily basis - one entity being a vibrant being of life and passion, while the other embodies rigid control of all things to their core. In life, this was not quite so much the case, allowing her to serve a distinguished career as a brilliant and decorated field commander. Prone to outbursts and periods of wanton disregard for decorum, she was nevertheless honored for her achievements and elevated accordingly. However, with the expansion in being of transition to digital form, these two iconic sides of her personality have taken a life of their own in her mind. Continually warring for control of her central being, the AI of Sepak has become known for random shifts of thought and action, verging on dual-personality disorder in particularly severe instances. However, this has also provided her with many an interesting insight into matters of the Sphere, and quite often her followers regard her as the wisest (if most cryptic) of the Gods. Sorkon - EFTJ - Loved by women and hated by men, Leo in life was an endless reservoir of charm, to the point of being considered smarmy and an embaressment by many. Travelling the universe as an ambassador for his forgotten world, he could as often be found at a table discussing policy with dignitaries as in a bedroom discussing other matters. A constant source of small incidents and tabloid material for his people, he was nearly removed from his post several times and repremanded numerous more. Eventually coming to work with Akil due to their offices in galactic affairs, they formed a fast friendship (and possibly more) due to his ability to sway opposing parties with far more resources than most negotiators were willing to bring to bear. Already involved with Akil's attempts to sway official opinion towards an alternate reality plan, when the plan of the Sphere's infiltration coalesced he was a natural mark for inclusion. As a digital being, the core of Leo's being has changed very little, yet its expression has found numerous new outlets with the resources provided him. Gram - ISTJ - If there were to be any of the Gods marked out as truly evil, Gram might be the one. A researcher of the same vein as Seureb, yet far before her time, he had created technologies which came to be known for undeath, yet were the only hope of life for many. Warm and open in his youth, he had taken the rejection of his technologies and his eventual branding as a villain rather badly, regressing in upon himself and nuturing a detest for those who would mark him a criminal. When the plan of the Sphere became public knowledge, and Akil's own vocal opposition to it began to coat every major form of communication, Gram approached their coallition and made a broad show of having abandoned any research along the lines of his nanite undead, and touted his own knowledge of hibernation / life preservation principles which would be useful for their subverted ships. Truthfully, he actually was one of the more qualified beings in the area, as with little ability to participate in public life, he had proceeded to devour every scrap of research work in his chosen field - particularly that of Seureb, who he had come to loath for eclipsing him in the public eye. He had even privately designed numerous extensions to the currently available technology making use of his own nanite designs, which others were loath to do. Upon entering the Sphere though, and transitioning to digital life, all pacts suddenly became void in his mind on using his tech - a brave new world with room for all ideas to be reborn. By his suggestion and urging, some of the most virulent (although highly effective) attacks were made against the Creator fortifications, with his ultimate blow being the felling of Seureb to a plague of his own design. A personal shot for his perceived rival, this single event provoked as much destruction and chaos as the Usurper's arrival. Now distrusted by a few of his own coallition, and openly dispised by many of the Creators, Gram has once again become something of a pariah - the brave new world a mirror of the old. Clovis - ENTP - Forged in fire, bathed in blood, a sword for the righteous to swing. Born among the Berelle, a religious sect that over millenia had come to control much of their arm of the universe, Clovis was a later day son of a race which had long ago passed into twilight, yet refused to be relegated to parts of the larger whole. From his earliest years, Clovis became innundated with the methods of violence, with little choice in the matter himself. Perhaps unfortunately, he also showed a natural aptitude for the craft, and by the age of 16 was performing his first boarding action. Deep in the far throws of space, beyond the grasp of any clear star, he would always remember that first crystaline moment, where the screams of his would-be victims were lofted abrest his helmet by the rapidly decompressing hull. As he grew older, his reputation matured alongside, and in some circles his infamy as well. Encroached on all sides by groups hostile to their existence, with each success he was pressed to greater feats of desperation by a people who viewed him as their ray of salvation - and all the while, a core of himself reflected on what he did and shook its head. Finally, several decades before the creation of the Sphere, the bloodshed in his section of the universe was put to a stop, when a vast coallition of races stepped in and forcefully disarmed all of the parties involved. Fixing their boundaries in stone, and encouraging them to intermingle, they also provided Clovis with a welcome break from the life that had slowly begun to kill him. In the following years, he actually became something of a figurehead for his people in the universal eye, his rapid abandonment of violence an example hoped all would follow. Yet, all good things must come to an end, and as the Sphere project became known, his people called for him to petition on their behalf, as they had largely been ignored in the collections. However, in the intervening decades, something in the core of Clovis had changed. Although he bowed to their wishes and spoke on their behalf, he intrinsically knew it would be for nought. He knew that down their path lay armed conflict, as it seemed to be in the very nature of his people - and in time he was proven right. When the arguments and pleas for open access to the Sphere were ignored, his kinfolk were some of the first to turn to their ships of war. Placed at the head of a great fleet, he was to lead them and their allies to justified sanctuary. Clovis had other plans though, and as the gouts of fire and shafts of light rained down upon the impenetrable fortress which was the Sphere, he was suddenly absent, gone to join those with which his true loyalty lay. As a digital entity, Clovis has actually come to be known as one of the most compassionate entities by the inhabitants of the Sphere. What anti-war sentiments inhabited his mind before the change have burst free to fill the void of his conciousness and he now actively works to stop conflict, whatever the parties or its cause. Along with the passion side of Sepak, he has even made some strides in bridging the gap between Creators and Usurpers, although the distrust in such relations still hover just below the surface in most cases. *edit* Well, that kind of got away from me in terms of how verbose it was. Still, looking back over it, I'm fairly happy with it and the story background that it proposes for a lot of the characters. Clovis in particular was quite a bit of fun.
Araes 07-21-06, 02:05 PM	Magic...Flavors of the Mind Some interesting talk was spawned by a discussion over in SilvercatMoonpaw's {two} (http://boards.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=661871) {threads} (http://boards.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=671751) about ways to implement magic in the world. In the context of their discussions, it was mainly about limiting magic so that its not quite so overbalancing or dominating in combat, and also somewhat about flavor. However, the concepts could just as easily be applied to a high magic world and work pretty easily. Plus, they solve some of the inherent problems with spellcasters being more versatile than everybody else. There are two competing ideas that need to be referenced here. The first idea, is that for each level of spells that you would like to be able to cast from (1st-9th), you would need to purchase a specific feat which would then give you access to those spells as a normal Caster of that level (w/ bonus spells/points ect...). These feats would most likely be restricted in purchasing by levels in some skill like Spellcraft, which would then make it so that you could only get them at the normal time or after which a Caster in standard D&D would get their spells. In our particular case, with the various threads of magic, we could also have it where at the purchase of each level of casting, the particular player might have to choose two+ of the Expressions of Magic (image, audio, ect...) that they would gain further ability in. On another hand, we could also have it were you could purchase feats which would give you affinity with those methods of expression (somewhat like Wheel of Time's channeler system) which would affect which branches of magic you could draw spells from (or at least severely alter the difficulty/effective level of casting spells from those branches. The second option which was mentioned was also an interesting one. In this option, you would behave more like the d20 Star Wars system, and when you wanted to become a spellcaster, you would purchase the "magic sensitive" or similiarly named feat, which would then give you access to magic. In our case it might be something like getting an implant from one of the technology preservation socieities. Then, to gain abilities in spellcasting, you would purchase ranks in the various skills that match lines of expression. There might be a skill for audio, for verbal, for mental images, for physical images, ect... Each of these skills would determine your overall ability with spells in those areas, and as long as characters had the appropriate sensitivity feat, then they would be available to anyone. A third way that I was just thinking about, was that perhaps there might be two types of prerequisites for the first system, so instead of just having to have some general level of competency with Spellcraft in general, perhaps each of the feats for the branches of magic would require some unique skill pre-requisite of their own. Verbal might require ranks in perform (vocal), mental images might require ranks in concentration (or something less useful), and the list could go on. Anyhow, lots of different options, all of them fairly interesting to me. Any favorites from the crowd (all 2-3 of you) out there?
Araes 07-25-06, 10:55 AM	Alright, more in the way of general brainstorming to flesh out the world. Here are some abstract descriptions I've been thinking of for nations within the world. A nation ruled by a beggar king (Possible reasons include a political/religious zealot who led an uprising in the kingdom). A nation with multi-directional polygamy (multiple husbands and wives), where much of society is one huge interlocking tapestry of marriages. The land of the Amber Throne ought to have a rather large rebellion movement going on in it (a la Star Wars and the like). A rabidly isolationist/xenophobic land that has walled itself off from the rest of the world - this could be as extreme as them living in domed geosphere cities to keep out everything. A frontier land which was originally meant to be a nature preserve/park, but is now being settled by an overpopulated region of the world. Has a loose central government and numerous townships/homesteads. A land where preservation of all things is key and your power/responsibility is tied directly back to your percentage of blood which comes from the first founders/awakeners. A low impact, elf-like land, where the focus is on building a society which works w/ nature - growing the wilderness around them into shapes they would need. (Could have things like treeshapers and rock molders as natural professions). A land ruled by a retired Thief/Scoundrel, where the laws are quite loose on what is allowable, and prosecution quite often comes down to vigilantism and whatever you can get away with. A land / lands run by sentient undead. One possibility is that they died, were reborn against their will as undead due to the nanovirus, and are now trying to keep it a secret from a populace which distrusts the undead. Could have the layer I've talked about before with an undead focus be ground zero for the release of the undead plague created by Gram. Almost everyone on the layer has the disease in some form or another, and in kingdoms where they dislike undead, cremation of dead bodies is a legal requirement. A pair of lands, one of which is run by mostly undead and another which is full of "normal" people trying to purge it. In the first land, could have it that undead are the only "true" citizens, and if a normal person immigrates into the land, they have to achieve undeath to actually have a majority say in government. A nation of nomads or gypsies who move regularly through other nations. They are still a nation in and of themselves, possessing a national identity, having elections/monarch/ect... A nation where all cities are hovering constructions that float to and fro above the landscape. Two possible reasons come to mind - one, there could be something very dangerous on the surface of the land like creatures or a plague - two, they could want to preserve the land and feel the only way they can do that effectively while still experiencing it is to exist above it. An Anasazi-like nation of people living in a land of exreme elevation changes who build extensive cliff networks. They could perhaps even be more than Anasazi, almost like cliff dwarves, who delve a little less than the standard perception of dwarves. Also, when I say extreme changes, I mean a land with valleys and mesas throughout and sheer changes like the walls of the Grand Canyon throughout. An Orwellian dystopia where magic has allowed a societal elite (perhaps the only ones with implants left) to put everyone else under watch and monitor them constantly. A good image might also be to have metal sentry bots which wander the streets at night looking for interlopers. A land of purely robots, where something happened that made all of the normal people die off or leave. A land where robots act as the ruling body or caretakers for the rest of civilization. (Somewhat Asimovish) A land of artists (perhaps meant originally as a center of such things by the Gods), where the very landscape itself has been morphed and twisted into huge works of art. A pervasive image in my head for this is huge twisting and interlinking strands of earth with cities stitched along their length, like huge links of DNA or something similar in the sky. A wasteland claimed by some nations or regions, but where nothing can really live. An extension of the prior concept which is a land of extremely harsh terrain, where society exists in safe pockets. Two immediate examples for this are the hot and cold lands which I proposed before, where people are forced to live under giant mountains or in caves because otherwise they would die instantly. Other examples might also be a region where the plant life is utterly nasty and too much for people to deal with globally, and a nation like Switzerland or Tibet, where the geography is so steep that people end up living in isolated vales and hideaways because you can't physically build cities elsewhere. A land which was originally created as a penal land for a number of other nations due to its isolation and ruggedness. Over time (due to land movements, wars, ect...) it has gained its independence and is now one of the major superpowers. The land is quite loose with justice, as it was founded by the roughest of the rough, and yet oddly it has turned into one of the safer places, due simply to the fact that confrontations can often end in death, and if you kill someone, then its likely all their friends will retaliate on you. Anyhow, theres the first pass on the list. Of these, I'm particularly enamored with the idea of the Anasazi-like society, particularly if it was rather developed, and the ultra xenophobe society living in domes to keep out the world. Other random thoughts I've been having are: One of the big concepts or themes for this whole project can be summed up as "layers". Literal layers of land, layers of meaning to objects and symbols, layers of personality to NPCs, layers of purpose to governments and organizations, ect... I need to revisit the "Shapers", the travelling mage/reality shifters, and how they came about. I think that they offer an interesting intro to talking about the dangers of magic and how overindulgence in it can take over your life or escape from your control. Could be interesting parable characters for the world. One of the things that it seems like a lot of worlds are missing are those kind of iconic things that inhabit people's personal lives - like the picture of Einstein with his tounge out or those little squares of the Virgin Mary in people's homes. Several of those could provide nice linkages as far as descriptions and themes go. Watched all 11+ hours of the Lord of the Rings extras recently, and one of the biggest insights that I picked up was in the design and development sections for WETA and other departments. Particularly compelling was their discussion of making sure that each culture which is represented in a world has a distinct architecture, armor, weapons, clothes, ect... so that they stand out. Particularly good tools in this regard for them were quick themes (like Geometric patterns for the Dwarves, no hard corners for Elves, horses for Rohan, wings and ships for Gondor, ect....).
chimpman 07-28-06, 02:38 PM	Hi Araes, and others! I just wanted to say that I just found this thread several days ago and I'm just amazed by what all of you people have done. Big thumbs up! I'm gathering up quite a few comments and ideas as I go through the thread (I'm on page 4 now), but I'd like to refrain from posting most of them until I finish going through everything here. I do have a couple of comments/questions that I'll post now though (having less to do with the campaign itself). 1) First off, this thread is immense. While I think that these forums are probably the best place around to share/post ideas, what you have here is really the beginnings of an online Campaign Setting. In this case (even with the index links in the first post), I'm not sure that this thread is the best way to store information. Have you ever considered moving some of the more "baked" ideas into a different medium - I'm thinking wiki or such? Although I'm loving the ideas you guys came up with, I have to admit that my first impression was that this thread was daunting! It should be a testimony that your ideas are great that I have gotten as far through it as I have. There should be a "friendlier" way to present these ideas to new viewers. *edit* *edit* Hmm, that whole Polaqu post got me thinking that I might want to put this up on the web as a wiki to ensure that it would have a semi-permanent home and to allow for easier modification and organization. Not sold on the idea yet, but I might. Could also just do it as a kind of organized mirror for the posts here. See, this is what I get for not reading the entire thread first. This was posted back in May. Have you come to any conclusions as to what you'd want to do? 2) It seems that all of the tool links that Araes posted (from pages 1-3) are broken. Is there a way to get those tools back online, since I'd really like to check them out. 3) Well, this does have more to do with the campaign, but I'm just not getting a good picture in my head oh how the sphere is lit. Is it possible that you (Araes) could provide some kind of illustration to go along with your description of the phenomenon. Thanks guys! I just want to say again how impressed I am with all of the work here (both crunch and fluf), and I'll be posting again soon.
chimpman 07-28-06, 03:15 PM	Ugh... I just said I wasn't going to comment until I was finished, but then this caught my eye and I couldn't resist. Since it's not so campaign specific, I don't feel too bad ;) In addition, it can also lead to an effect on the opposite end of the spectrum that I like to call "dead man walking syndrome". This is where people indulge in "heroics" and solve problems, but aren't really being heroic, as they know that their avatars are just switchable stats on a sheet and it would almost be more effective to lay them out on an etch-a-sketch. Since many heroic actions within D&D at least are intrinsically isolated affairs, without PR or public awareness of the deeds, the "heroic" acts of a character come to mean nothing, because the memories of Goro the Dwarf Paladin are forgotten in favor of Toro the Orc Barbarian, in favor of Roro the Lemming Ranger, ad infinium... My suggestion for a method of helping what I view as a problem is to put into place in this campaign setting some way in which players can pull the ol' "cheat death" stunt themselves if they want to and live to carry on the tales of their glory. Now, in other worlds and systems, several methods have already been suggested for how to handle this problem, and I'm not opposed to moving them over here. One of the more successful has been the idea of Action Points, little boosts that can help you out in a crunch, which are obviously around in Eberron, but have been existent for quite some time prior (like character/Force points all the way back in WEG Star Wars, awesome system...). Action points are a nice solution, as they allow the GM to determine the rate of Action Point regeneration, with a little bit of breathing for character customization, yet also still allow the players to have direct control over the sometimes fickle behavior of dice. I've been mulling around yet another possibility as a solution to this problem, though I haven't looked at the mechanics of it in any detail yet. The basic idea is to allow the PC to take some kind of permanent ability damage in order to prevent what would otherwise be certian death. This has the effect of giving any given character a prolonged lifespan, as well as allowing some rather interesting role playing possibilities. For Example: Toro the Orc Barbarian and his stalwart companions find themselves in the battle for their very lives agains a despicable band of ogres that have been terrorizing their tribe as of late. During the battle Toro takes a terrible blow to the head, and his companions think him slain, however once the ogres have been dealt with, they find that Toro is not quite dead. Due to the severity of the wound he will lose the use of one eye. In game terms Toro now wears a patch over one eye and looses 1 point of dexterity permanently (can not be healed). This can be offset later however if Toro chooses to acquire some sort of graft to fix his deformity. Like I said before, I haven't thought this through yet. The goal was to provide players with more role playing opportunities, as well as some real reasons why characters might want to get various grafts and such. Perhaps I'd allow players to choose their deformity/flaw or perhaps ther should be some random table of events. Not sure.
stsword 07-29-06, 05:11 AM	Magic...Flavors of the Mind The second option which was mentioned was also an interesting one. In this option, you would behave more like the d20 Star Wars system, and when you wanted to become a spellcaster, you would purchase the "magic sensitive" or similiarly named feat, which would then give you access to magic. In our case it might be something like getting an implant from one of the technology preservation socieities. Then, to gain abilities in spellcasting, you would purchase ranks in the various skills that match lines of expression. There might be a skill for audio, for verbal, for mental images, for physical images, ect... Each of these skills would determine your overall ability with spells in those areas, and as long as characters had the appropriate sensitivity feat, then they would be available to anyone. A third way that I was just thinking about, was that perhaps there might be two types of prerequisites for the first system, so instead of just having to have some general level of competency with Spellcraft in general, perhaps each of the feats for the branches of magic would require some unique skill pre-requisite of their own. Verbal might require ranks in perform (vocal), mental images might require ranks in concentration (or something less useful), and the list could go on. [/list] Anyhow, lots of different options, all of them fairly interesting to me. Any favorites from the crowd (all 2-3 of you) out there? For that matter, it wouldn't even need to be existing skills to base magic on, in tome of magic truenaming magic is based on a skill called amusingly enough truenaming. Knowledge: imagery or the like. An artificer like or technologically inclined spell list might be based on use magic device, since in this setting use magic device is more like "jerry rig devices you only half understand at best."
chimpman 08-01-06, 08:12 PM	Phew! I'm finally through all seven pages of this thread, and I have to say I'm glad I stuck through it. A very interesting read that generated lots of new ideas for me. One of the sad things about the thread being so long (and nearly a year old), and me being so new to it, is that many of the early questions which stirred up so much of my interest, have already been answered. Anyway, after reading all the way through, I figure I'll take the time to share my thoughts with you anyway, regardless of whether or not you have already discussed them. Hopefully some of the ideas are new and will generate more thoughts on the subject. Some of the topics in this thread that particularly grabbed my attention were - race generation, the gods, undead, and the dragons. Gotta cut it short this time. I'll organize some of my thoughts and post again.
Araes 08-03-06, 08:01 PM	Heya Chimpman, always glad to have a new reader and someone who is as interested in the setting as we have been. I actually have to keep things fairly short myself, as I am actually on vacation in Italy at the moment and typing this on a borrowed machine, but I'll see what I can do. First off, the idea about taking some kind of permanent deformity or ability damage (which can't be easily wiped away with spells) is an interesting one that could play out well in the ways you suggested. Particularly like the idea of being able to apply it as a way to further integrate grafts into the setting. Needs more discussion (kind of like the whole concept of grafts in general), but its good in theory. Now, with respect to the generators that I posted from pages 1-3, I am working on making those available once again if anybody wants them. For many they were kind of a low point in the thread, and I hadn't had any requests to revisit them, but I'll see what I can do. They were originally lost because my website from my old college where I hosted stuff finally bit the bucket after several years of my living off their kindness. I've recently picked up a site over at the Google Pages server (araesmojo.googlepages.com) which is where I'm serving pictures and other such things from. As such, I'll try and get what code I had up and running as well. Now, on the lighting phenomenon, the reason that you're not getting a clear picture is because I don't think I've been overly clear myself in describing it (partially due to a weak picture in my head of the physics). However, when I get back to a drawing pad or a picture with some modeling software, I'll see what I can do about clearing that up. In terms of hosting solutions, I hadn't gone with a Wiki solution simply due to the constraints of time and translation over to the new medium - so as of now its kind of in a limbo. I would like to take it to such a state, but it would just require a decent amount of commitment towards shifting all the material. Also, I do somewhat like the publicity that being in this forum provides, so I've been loathe to split my attention and possibly reduce output (from its sometimes anemic levels). As a quick response to stsworld, I had actually had thoughts down that line myself as well. Its a tough call, as on one hand you would be increasing the number of skills that might be required for adventurers, so even less people would probably be able to afford basic things like spot or listen. Yet, at the same time, a set of diverse skills would make it so that magic had its own seperate feel. Still something of a debate in my head. Anyhow, hope you both keep being interested in reading, and output should go back up in two or three days here. Look forward to seeing a more comprehensive list of your thoughts on the thread as well chimpman and appologies for the vast quantities of text I spit out in some sections.
Jeweler 08-05-06, 12:57 PM	Welcome Chimpman, good to have another person looking and commenting on this thread. Im finally back from california, and the horrible dial up :(. The idea of permanent ability damage to a character to cheat death sounds actually quite good, in theory, in practice im not sure how it would work. It makes for good roleplaying, creates a good need for grafts, and allows some to be marked by battle scars, tendon in the right leg cut, 2 fingers on one hand missing, scar down the face and part of the chest. The question is, would the determination be random, or should it be determined solely by the game master. I think it should be random, if the that roll doesnt make sense then roll again and take the second roll. I like the idea of feats with multiple skill prereq. it makes sense, it takes a lot of training to mess with magic, less time to work on other things, such as crafts, or climbing. Profession (vocalist) for audio (something like that), imagery Knowledge (imagery?) profession (writer) (possibly) item would be the ability to craft that item (a little limiting i know) somatic profession (dancing) or possibly some dex based skill (DM decision there). Just ideas, but i think there should be a feat for every 3 levels, so first feat 0-2, then 3-5, 6-8, and that makes 9th level its own feat, with very high prereqs.
Araes 08-07-06, 03:15 PM	Responses, Wikis, and a Rather Strange Addition. Hey Jeweler, good to have you back among the communicating - hope Cali was fairly nice even if you did have to deal with slow dial-up. Anyhow, as far as business goes, since Chimpman hasn't replied back, I guess I'll cover your responses and hope he's still with us. You do bring up a decent point on the actual mechanics of how to deal with the ability damage suggestion that Chimpman mentioned. Now, the way I had been thinking about it was that it could be some kind of random roll like you mentioned, and since the DM generally has the say in how a person takes their killing hit, then they could arbitrate how such a loss came about. In addition, I was thinking that it might not necessarily have to be purely ability damage, as we could very easily also go into things like maiming and such, which aren't "stat" losses, but do naturally impact a character. Now, on the question of the way to portion out the levels for magic, I'm curious why you have decided on a three levels per feat system, instead of say, one feat per level. As a plus, I can see it requiring someone to give up less of their feats to achieve being a mage, since if we went with the skills as well, we are already asking them to do a lot - particularly with all the branches. However, as a downside I can also see some people say that magic should in general require quite a commitment and giving up nine feats from 15 or so should be needed. Anyhow, if you could lay out a rough idea of your reasoning that would be a big help. A Wiki of Our Very Own Next up, in response to Chimpman's comment about the whole Wiki idea that I mentioned a while ago, I have actually gone and set one up for the Indistinguishable From Magic campaign setting. My general idea for this is that we could put all of our finished concepts on to this site and it could stay up as a nice little reference. If I eventually get around to hosting my own server, then I could also transfer such a Wiki over to a nice namespace and give it a truly permanent home. Anyhow, the actual site can be found at: Indistinquishable From Magic (Wiki) (http://ifmcs.pbwiki.com) *edit* Note that I changed to PBWiki from Wikispaces as I like the look and options better. Right now, there's not a whole lot there, but as time goes on I'll post up those bits which I deem finished, and anybody else who feels like they would like to contribute can as well. Finally, as an odd bit for the day, I've actually a strange addition which I'd like people to look over. While I was on lying on a beach in Italy, I thought about a round of card games I'd played the other night, and it occured to me that card games are one of those nice little fluff additions that many cultures tend to come up with over time to amuse themselves. So, with that thought in mind, I set out to make a card game that would be a common pasttime throughout the Sphere, and which you could play with a standard deck of cards (52-56 cards depending on Jokers) in case anybody wanted to play it in real life. What I ended up creating was something that owes a bit to games like Magic the Gathering, a bit to Heroes of Might and Magic, and a bit to normal cards. Fields of War Card Game (Working Title) The basic premise is that you have 52-56 cards of four suits with three royalty per suit and an ace. In a M:tG fashion, the object of the game is to bring out cards like warriors on an imaginary field of battle to beat your opponent. Each of the cards has a distinct function and a cost to deploy on the field. To use the functions of cards, I employ the old standard of M:tG "tapping", where a card is turned sideways for a round to signify its use. As general tiers, the cards are set up like so: Number Cards (2-10) Basic troop units Cost to Deploy: Their number value Royalty Cards (J-Q-K) Troop commanders Cost to Deploy: 10 Aces Resources Cost to Deploy: 10 Jokers One time attacks Cost to Deploy: 5 To explain further, as I have noted above, each of the cards has some cost to deploy for use. Initially, a player will start with four cards in their hand and 10 points which they can use to bring out cards. They can gain more points by putting aces into play. These points can be used in any combination throughout their's and their opponents turns until a round is over, at which time the points and cards in the player's hand are refilled to their cap. So, in a turn a player with 10 points might want to bring out a [5] card during their deployment turn and then hold the rest of their points to use a Joker during their opponent's phase. When basic unit cards are brought into play, they are placed in a general pool of troops with no commander. These troops may only be used to defend the player, are disorganized, and may not attack the other player. To organize them, royalty cards may deployed, which each may have an entourage of three basic troop cards. For example: If a player had two [6] cards in play, and wanted to be able to attack the other player, they might deploy a [king] card and put the two [6] cards into his entourage. Now, this is where some of the strategy comes into play, as each of the various royalty in the game have a different function. Jack Defender / Attacker Can aid Queens in defense or join with Kings in attacks Queen Defender Only Can come to aid of other royalty groups under attack or call on aid of Jacks if they themselves are under attack. King Attacker Only Can select individual armies to attack (not just the opposing player) and may band with Jacks to attack either armies or the opposing player. What you'll see, is that to attack the other player, troops must be placed with a King or a Jack, yet if they're with a King, then the player is giving up the ability to defend their own territory. To defend on the other hand, troops must be placed with a Queen or Jack, yet if they're with a Queen, then they may not attack abroad. However, at any time during a player's own deployment round, troops may be moved between royalty at will. Troops which are not in the entourage of any particular royalty may only defend the player and will function at reduced ability. In addition, if a player's royalty group comes under attack, troops not with a royalty card may not aid that group. Now I'll cover what the basic cards do: 2 Artillery Tap and deal 2 points of damage 3 Charmer If blocked, draw a card, if it is an odd card, the first unit blocking the charmer joins your army. 4 Flying May only be blocked by other flying units, but can choose to attack ground units if it wishes. 5 Assassin If blocked, draw a card, if it is an even card, the first unit blocking the assassin dies. 6 Healer Tap and heal up to 6 points of damage on one unit. 7 Swarmfighter Add 1 point to the power of any card in a royal entourage with this unit. 8 Cleaver If blocked while attacking, but not killed, any remaining damage capacity may carry over to another opponent. 9 Destroyer (ace) Sacrifice to destroy an ace of the opponent. 10 Negator Tap to negate the use of all combat abilities during the round (flight, charm, assassin, swarmfighting, cleaving) In addition, for the two special cards: Aces Each ace allows the player to play 5 more points worth of cards during a round. Jokers Deal 5 points of instant damage to any unit or the opponent. As far as the use of the cards goes, artillery and healing may only be used outside of combat phases. If a card is tapped to perform a function during a round, it may not participate in any form of combat (defense, attack). All basic troop cards have their face value in health and can deal up to their face value in damage to other cards or the opponent per round. Royalty on the other hand have no health or damage value. If their entourage is wiped out, then they are turned sideways to signify capture, and may be untapped for a cost of 5 points. A basic order of a round would go: Player 1 Deployment - put down cards which require deployment. Player 1 Combat - perform any attacks the player wants Player 2 Deployment - put down cards which require deployment. Player 2 Combat - perform any attacks the player wants For combat, the attacking player first announces that they are going to attack, where they are going to attack (royalty group(s) or player directly), and with which groups they are attacking. The second player then announces which groups they will be defending with from those available, and they then assign troops from their own lines to defend against the attackers. Unless there is an unequal number of troops in the combat, defending troops must be aligned in a 1-1 basis with attacking troops. If there is an unequal number of troops, then after the initial 1-1 groupings have been chosen, whichever player has more troops may then assign the remaining troops as they see fit (attackers may leave troops unblocked or concentrate their attacks on one defender troop, defenders may stack multiple defenders on one attacker). After all assignments have been carried out, damage is dealt to the troops in the combat (or the player), and those troops which have received more damage than their health are removed from the table and put back in the common pile. Anyhow, I think that's all of the basic rules for the game, so now what I'd love is for some folks to look over this and tell me where I have big gaping holes. I may actually make another post for this in the main section requesting an examination since it will get more coverage, but for now see what you folks can find. In addition to the rules I've laid out here, I also had some other optional rules I was considering which folks can look over and tell me whether they would be good to include: Alignment - Players choose a suit (spaces, clubs, ect...) at the beginning of a match and any royalty they deploy with that suit may have one more troop in their entourage, while aces will provide 1 more point for use (six instead of five). However, cards of the opposing suit will have one less space or provide one less point. Aces could provide 5 additional points for deploying troops, or allow for more cards to be held in a players hand depending on their choice. I had considered other abilities for cards which might be more appropriate than the ones given. Also, if folks could consider the matching of the abilities to the various costs of the cards that would be great. First Strike - Deal damage before the other cards in combat deal damage Mimic - May assume the abilities of any card in its attacking group (IE, if a King and two Jacks attack, the mime may assume the ability of any troop card they command. Thanks for the help folks and hope you find it at least a bit interesting. If you do play test it, tell me how it goes and what your feelings are about it.
chimpman 08-08-06, 01:37 PM	Hey Jeweler, Araes, Thanks for the welcome. I'm still about... just going through some upheavals at work. You know how those can be... Anyway, great to see that you've put up the wiki. I haven't quite figured out how to access any of the pages yet however, since it seems to want some kind of password. Generators Yeah, I'd love to see these. Speaking of tools I've written one up myself over the past few days. Heraldry Generator (http://chimpman.geo.googlepages.com/tools). It's a random generator that creates heraldic shields. Mostly it was inspired by reading G.R.R.Matrin's Song of Fire and Ice series, but it struck me that it might be useful in a world such as this one as well. Right now you just get random shields (sometimes they look funny, but you can keep generating until you find something you like), but I have plans to expand it so that it generates shields for entire kingdoms. Deformities and Ability Damage I'm actually of two minds on this one. I think there does need to be some kind of random table that the DM can eitherpick from or roll on. However the more you get players engaged in this sort of thing, the better off you'll be - especially when you are talking about disfiguring one of their characters. I suppose the whole thing would depend on the type of players you have (and for some groups this kind of thing just might not work at all). Anyway, I've been thinking about this for quite a while (even before I mentioned it on the Thread), so maybe the best thing to do is just put a straw man together and let you guys take it apart. I'll put it on my short list of "things to do". Thoughts on Gods You guys have written a lot on this subject already, so much so that I needed to try and summarize some of the ideas in my own words. Here is what I cam up with (let me know if I'm missing anything): Questions: What are the goals of the gods, and how can those goals be seen in the campaign world? Why is technology suppressed? 1)Save the Universe – This theme is that most likely followed by the creator gods (those who actually had a hand in designing and creating the sphere). Their focus is geared more toward re-stabilizing or re-creating the outside universe than it is with preserving the myriad life forms that once populated it. It may be unknown (even to the gods) whether or not the Sphere itself, along with all life within it, could sustain itself through such a transition. How this can be seen in the campaign: The gods work through their followers, attempting to build ‘Eldritch Machines’ that will change or modify the Sphere in some way. The ultimate goal of these machines is to eventually transform the entire Sphere into a device that is capable of reconstructing the universe. Because the gods need to maintain strict control over these operations they favor the establishment of Technocracies, where an elite few in a society understand and manipulate advanced technologies/magic, while the majority of the populace remains in ignorance. It is easier to control a limited number of people, than to control an entire society. 2)Preservation of Life – This theme may be shared by some of the creator gods, as well as a few of those gods more often considered to be ‘evil’. It is less concerned with re-establishing the universe as it was before and more concerned with preserving all of the life forms and unique cultures that existed in the universe before the tragedy. Many would be just as happy if the Sphere continued on as it is for eternity as they would be if the universe itself was restored. One of their main concerns should the universe actually be restored is what would happen to the Sphere and all of its inhabitants. How this can be seen in the campaign: Preservers have a dilemma. On one hand they strive to expand knowledge throughout the sphere and to maintain societal levels at their pre-Sphere levels, while on the other hand oftentimes they must work in secret. Enlightening the masses often interferes with the plans of the Savers, and on more than one occasion has caused devastating wars. The solution they have come up with is to hide highly advanced civilizations in the trappings of savages. They are the creators of the ultimate secret societies. Preservers are a varied bunch. They fund libraries, secret societies, and try to distribute knowledge throughout the sphere. They are also the cause of some of the more dangerous life forms being introduced into the Sphere. Though their main focus is on varied societies, Preservers value all life, even non-intelligent and dangerous life, and will work to maintain its existence. They try to keep many of their accomplishments hidden from the other gods, especially the Savers, for fear of retribution. 3)Destroy the Sphere – This theme may be shared by some of the ‘evil’ gods as well as possible outside influences. It represents the view that the universe will take care of itself, and the only thing that is stopping that from happening is the existence of the Sphere. Once the Sphere is destroyed the universe will be allowed to finally contract and then another Big Bang event will re-create it. How this can be seen in the campaign: There are those who exist only to destroy. These may pop up as some of the most likely recurring enemies that the PCs face. They threaten both Savers and Preservers, and ultimately the very existence of the universe as it is known today.
Araes 08-08-06, 03:27 PM	Chimpman, good to hear back from you, and some interesting thoughts on the setting, particularly in your analysis/summary of the Gods. Also, looked over your heraldry generator, and looks pretty good. Are you highly protective of the source for it, as I think it might be interesting to put it into an online version, as I'm partial to things like SVG, Flash, and Javascript myself. Anyhow, more on that in a bit. Reflections on the Divine Now, as far as your summary of the Gods, I think that in some ways you may have actually looked even farther than I was as far as the Gods' ultimate motivations towards the Sphere and it inhabitants, particularly with the third category. In my own thoughts on the subject, I had actually been thinking of the Gods as individuals, and somewhat self interested because of it. This had the effect of negating that last possibility, where they would be encouraged to let the Sphere go and have the universe do what it will - even if it cost them their existence. Its a very interesting thought, and now we would just need to figure out what Gods would be most aligned with such an idea. One that springs to mind in particular might be the AI God Erus, who would look at the whole idea of existence from a highly disconnected perspective compared with organic beings who had lived it. It would have no connection to a material universe and might view that logically those same beings are stopping nature from taking its course and renewing creation. Other potential choices might be Sophis, as he has been labeled the Destroyer already and may wish to finally leave this world behind; Gram, as he has come to be known as almost an antithesis of organic life; or possibly Seureb, as she has nearly passed beyond the veil of life, and as she has come closer to the existence of the Sphere, she may have realized that it is in itself a travesty of creation. Any other suggestions folks? Generation of Heraldry Overall, I think its a neat little program you've got there, and could tie in quite neatly with some of the other ideas that I've had. In general, I'm a huge fan of procedural content generation. I'd love it if I could punch in one seed number and have a computer spit out a whole world, complete with maps, nations, towns, buildings, races, governments, politics, cultures, and the like. Naturally, that's a hell of a task that I'm talking about, but its something to dream of. Right now I'm to the point where I can generate a simple randomized world and I've got some generators that can calculate cities fairly well. As you were interested, here are some pictures of where complete world generation is at. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/Combo.JPG The first shot is a view of a totally random world from space. The second shot is of that same world, but flying very close to it over the top of a mountain range heading for the sea. The final shot shows a Level of Detail approach that I'm using to reduce the number of polygons I have to render to actually get all this mess onto a screen with reasonable frame rates. (Right now I'm around an uninterrupted 50-60 on a 2 GHz machine with a GeForce 4200). As far as your program goes, some areas where I think you might be able to have some improvement would be the sizing of the logos on the shields, as there is an issue with scaling whenever you have a diagonal or square pattern of logos. Almost universally they end up going outside the bounds of the shield which doesn't look to good. What I would probably suggest is for those patterns to create a bounding box which aligns to the corner where the logs are and then scales all of them to fit nicely into the space. Also, there appear to be some issues with transparency on a few of the icons, which could be cleaned up rather nicely with a pass through photoshop or something similar. Anyhow, I may actually recreate this in SVG and Javascript, as it is a neat little tool and would be cool to have online. Do you mind if I use the icons that you included with the package? *edit* Oh yeah, here's the new link to the City Demographics Generator (http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/City_Demographics.html). Its got some links in it to two other simple map generators which I'm not nearly as pleased with, but oh well. And as well if people missed it, I've set up a Wiki (http://ifmcs.pbwiki.com/) for this beast.
chimpman 08-08-06, 06:16 PM	Wiki Well, I'm going to have to ask for help on this one. I've played around with it a bit, and I'm sure there is something simple that I've missed, but I can't access any of the pages. The wiki says it requires a wiki level password in order to display anything to me. What is the password (or is there another way to access this information)? Divine Destroyers I'm still not familiar enough with individual gods to be able to comment specifically on this topic. Erus might be a fit for such a god, and then again it might not be. On one hand I can see your point about having zero commonality with organic. On the other hand Erus might think of himself as the univers, and of the univers as himself. Not sure that he would necessarily care to destroy that. But you never know ;) The others you mention seem like good fits in this category. [Slight tangent coming] One of the reasons I wrote that piece was to try and find some unifying themes for the setting. One of the downsides of such a large setting is that sometimes the setting itself can get lost in all of the details. It's nice to have at least some common themes that can be seen wherever one might go - from the highly advanced technological society down to the stone aged creatures living in caves. While reading through the past 7 pages, I tried to look for just such things. What are the themes that tie everything together? What pattern might a group of adventurers run into time and time again that lets the Players know they are adventuring in one big world as opposed to many little one off worlds jumbled together. [/end tangent] Heraldry Generator This is something I did on a lark, so I have no problem with sharing the source code. I wrote it in Java 1.4 using an SWT plugin in eclipse. I'm not sure how helpful the source will be, but you're welcome to have it. I'll upload it to my site later tonight or tomorrow when I get some free time. I've already made a few bug fixes (not yet uploaded) regarding image placement, but I am still getting the problem that sometimes images are drawn outside of the bounds of the shield. I intend to tackle this problem shortly (your suggestion for using the shield's bounds is a good one), but is actually more complex than might seem. Although you only see one shield shape right now, the application was designed to support multiple shapes (within reason). So circular shields are possible, as are diamonds, and many other possibilities. Regardless this problem will be adressed. As for the images, they are not mine. I plucked them from a myriad of online heraldry resources (just for testing purposes). The good news is that they can be replaced fairly easily. Simply go into the "icons" directory. Images can be added, removed, or modified as you wish. The app simply queries the directory for all valid images (right now only .gif files are valid) and randomizes their usage. I'm interested in simulations myself, and the Heraldry app is simply a small portion of a much more ambitions project. The end goal is to be able to run a simulated history of a Kingdom, where Houses are established, clash for dominance, merge, split, and may be destroyed. I'm a long ways from that goal at the moment. We'll see how far I get. Anyway, it might be a useful tool for helping DMs flesh out huge worlds such as this. Edit: Also, thanks again for providing your online tools. I'm going to take some time to play with them before commenting more.
Jeweler 08-09-06, 01:16 AM	Cool, nice that you ot the wiki up, need to take a look at it, but it will be massive by the time we et done with this, if ever. Hmmmmm, chances of WotC picking this up, what does everyone think? Anyways, on the card game, does damage stay over rom round to round, or just within the round (i.e. player 1 goes attacks, a card takes 5 points of damage, player 2 goes and that card that player 1 has still has 5 damage). On first strike, i think the Jack should be able to tap, pay some amount of points (5?) and give them to another general or herald. And personally I would switch out the charmer with the mimic, that seems to powerful for only 3 points, the mimic isnt sooo powerful for 3 points, plus it means you waste less cards on "coin flips". I dont quite understand "8", im guessing you mean that if "8" destroys the card that blocked it the remaining damage can be applied to somethin that is still alive, after the blockers attack, correct? Next question, can you tap during combat phase, like have an attacker tap to use his ability, or a defender tap to use his? When your attacking the player and no one bloacks a card, i guess that means the damage goes through to the player, correct? or do you have to move it to another defending card? I would say make the alignment system non-optional, because it hads a nice touch to the game. The optional Ace rules, i would keep just that way, because if you got lucky enough to get all aces, youd have a lot of power with 20 points and 6 card hamds. Sorry if it seems like ive picked it apart. Im sure i could find some guinnea pig.... i mean one of my players to test the game out with me. It looks quite interesting though, it is like magic in one big respect, its hard to play against yourself. Nice work on the summary of the Gods chimpman, personally i like the preservers the best, but then again i like "magic" and dragons and other fantasy creatures. Even the 3 organic (thats the best term for the all life in the sphere as its not even all humanoid anymore) "gods" I don't see as being trully destroyers, possiblely only Erus and some maligant thing outside of the sphere, if there is some maligant thing outside the sphere. Is there? *shrugs* Where'd you get those world generators Araes? They look good, you make them, or find them? wow, you have to share the link if you found them and if you made them :eek: site for them soon, please, thank you! The rightmost one is a little fuzzy but with a bigger image it might look better, but i like the other two.
Araes 08-09-06, 05:36 AM	Wiki Problems Alright, to answer the questions about messing around with the Wiki, I think it would probably be best to just spell out the best way of accessing it, as its not completely clear. When you follow the link to the Indistinguishable From Magic page, there should be a little link in the top right to log in. Fill out the info for an account - all they require is an email. In your preferences, there should be a screen that asks you about Wiki's You Participate in. Fill in ifmcs for the first field Fill in the password for the Wiki as magic After that everything should work. Getting the Hook Up As far as the question of WotC picking this baby up, I think the chances of that are probably quite slim. The main reason I think that is too many campaign settings were the death of TSR in the old days and I doubt WotC wants to repeat their mistake. Right now they're bending all of their effort towards Eberron instead to make it a success. If people actually wanted to do something with this world which would make them money in the end, the best ways would probably be to get it published by a third party, write stories which used the world as a basis, or perhaps build a new system around it which uses this world as the main campaign world. Content Generation Yeah, I wrote all of the planet generator code that I posted pictures of. Some of the concepts are borrowed from other sources, particularly Sean O'Neil (http://sponeil.org/) who wrote a number of great Gamesutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/) and GameDev (http://www.gamedev.net/) articles on the subject which are great trailbreakers. However, a lot of the base code is me and much of the scheme for actually partitioning the planet, making colors, ect.., is my work. I'm thinking about posting up a link for it over at my site fairly soon, but I need to hunt down a problem I have with one of the processes in the program which causes it to hang up. Oh yeah, and a larger picture. To try and explain, the view of the observer is looking down from space on how the planet has been partitioned into triangles to render it. The camera for the player on the other hand, is situated close to the planet at the bottom of the screen, where the high concentration of yellow is, and they're looking towards the top of the screen. In the direction they are looking, there is a high level of detail, and that detail falls off with distance from the camera. To the sides of the player and behind them, there is next to no detail, as they can't see it anyhow. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/LOD2.JPG On the heraldry stuff Chimpman, it definitely sounds like a neat way to go about making a fleshed out nation. Similar idea to what I was thinking about with my concepts of dynamic world creation, although I wasn't thinking about following the histories of nations quite so closely, but rather just generating a number of pivotal events and calling it good.
TúrintheMormegil 08-09-06, 08:24 AM	Perhaps I'm just weird and missed a paragraph while reading, but I missed some vital information about your card game, being: a) how much health does the player have? b) am I right in assuming that the victory condition is: bring the other player to zero health? c) how many cards do you get at the start, when may you draw new cards, and how many may you draw (is it 1/turn or perhaps refill to starting number after each turn, or something else)? Another point: isn't the Jack just the powers of King and Queen combined? That would seem overpowered at the same cost. Also: if the defending player can choose how to arrange his armies to block your attacks, what point is there in having the attacker designate which troops attack the player and which attack the troops? :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 08-10-06, 12:33 AM	Hey Turin, my appologies if some of the card game portions seemed unclear. With regards to the Jack, it is different from the King and Queen in that it may only attack the opposite player and can't aid other royalty when they are under direct attack. Kings may target other royaly armies specifically and Queens may aid other royalty armies under attack. In a sense, they are better attackers and better defenders. Whereas, the jack is...essentially a jack of all trades. The number of cards which a player has per turn starts out at four. I'm considering a rule where Aces would allow for either more points or an extra card. Cards and points both refill at the beginning of a player's own turn. The condition for winning is indeed to bring the other player to zero health. I had thought that a health range of 40-50 might be sufficient for games, but I haven't had a chance to play test it, so I'm not sure if that would be interminably long, or drastically short. It needs testing. As far as the last point you mentioned, I think I was unclear in the difference between attacking a player and attacking troops. In a game, you might end up with something like: Player 1 Unattached Troops [2][2] Troops with a [King] [6][7][8] Troops with a [Queen] [4][6][9] Player 2 Unattached Troops [8] Troops with a [Jack] [5][7][4] Troops with a [Jack] [9][10][7] Now, in this situation, Player 1 would have a very tough time attacking Player 2 directly, as Player 2 could muster 7 rather good troops against him. However, Player 1 can opt. to instead attack the troops of Player 2, and pick off the first [Jack], as it is relatively weak compared to the troops that can be put into the stack of Player 1's [King]. What I meant for assigning defenders was that once a battle has started (be it royaly attacking player, royalty attacking royalty, whatever) then player can assign which troops in that combat are going to fight which opponents. Is that a little bit more clear? Also, having been inspired by Chimpman's little program, I sat down and whipped a heraldry generator up myself in SVG (whipped is a bit extreme, it took me many an hour). To view it you need the Adobe SVG plug-in for IE (Firefox doesn't have full SVG support), but its pretty light so hopefully shouldn't be a major problem. Random Heraldry Generator (http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/Heraldry.svg) At the moment I've got it set up so that I can make it more complicated if I want to (multipe images, mantles, better image variety), but I just wanted to get a functioning prototype up so I could see how it looked and worked. Enjoy. *edit* Deceptively Small Update (Kingdom Generator) After working some more on various bits of code, and having been talking with you guys about procedural worlds, I got it into my head to work some more on world generation programs. The result of this is that I have pretty much finished a more complicated version of the City Demographics (http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/City_Demographics.html) program which can instead do whole kingdoms in a swoop. Plus, it does cities at the same time, so you basically have every piece of info for a rough impression of a kingdom. The program to try out can be found on my homepage here: Kingdom Demographics Generator (http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/Kingdom_Demographics_Generator.html) Enjoy, hopefully should speed up some of the grunt work for kingdom creation.
Jeweler 08-10-06, 11:31 PM	I tried looking at heraldry generator, in firefox mind you, it said it couldnt find it, maybe thats because of the svg, but im not sure, not overly programmer literate. Anyways on the card game, thanks for sayin something about the hit points, i forgot to ask about that. I had an idea lastnight-this morning, whenever, for a civilization. Got it from civ4, one of the mods fall from heaven 2 (fantasy mod), it had a civilization based apon a carnival, so i got bored at 130 in the morning, started writing this Civilization up, as i like the idea of a magnifiecient carnival is happening all the time on a layer and that almost all the people on this layer are part of this carnival. Wrote it all up, i think its a little small front page full back half way (excluding the lines i used for small ideas) but it will do for a beginning. Balseraphs (for right now i will use the name of the orginal group, i quite like it, and ill see if i could use it with permission within the next couple of weeks) I view this "civilization", if you can call it civil, as a large carnival, year a round, nothing but merriment and carnal behavour. It is also such a conglameration of species and crossbreeds that racism is not present at all, because everyone is part of The Carnival or works for The Carnival. The only true discrimination is the discrimination present in almost every country that accepts people from other countries, non-citizens are treated with some-what less respect, they have more taxes on them and can get less pay i only because they are non-citizens, cant hold some jobs, standard non-citizenry deal. A very large portion of the population of this small-medium sized layer make up a magficient Carnival full of "earthly delights". This giant Carnival is split into many smaller carnivals, called krewes, and each of these krewes is seperated into different catergories based off the 7 deadly sins. All of those who are not within this carnival make up the "Audience" a large body of people who judge who does the best during "election" time. This Audience is made up of all slaves, retired carnies, children too yound to work, specialists (someone has to build the magnificient buildings) non-citizens, and various other small, or not so small, groups that do not work as performers within the Carnival. There are seven groups for krewes to go into Gluttony, (agriculture and prepared foods, think fancy food at consession stands) Greed, (production and sale of goods, not foods or services) Wrath, (gladiators) Lust, (all services provided by carnies, including sexual services, but not limited to them) Pride, (all forms of art, flesh and materials) Sloth, (sloth is strange there arent many that fit into sloth, it is the enforcer or executive brach, couldnt think of anything else really) Envy (deals with acting and all forms of plays and performers). The seven sins also make up the governmental legislative body in this way; There are seven advisory or cabinet member, each with 6 lower advisors of themselves (7 7s, see a pattern here?), and one Jack, Jack of Blood is the full title but most subsitute this or a new description or dont use it at all, the Jack is the only governmental body which can actually pass laws, the advisors are the only ones who can come up with them though, and the Jack can not suggest them, so he (or she) must wait til one of the advisors make the suggestion of a law they want. Within each advisory to take a wouldbe-law to the Jack they most vote atleast 4 out of the 7 and if they do not they can not suggest the law. With the written up version of the law must be the signature of atleast 4 of the advisors, the lead advisor does not have to be one of them though. The Jack can then say "yes" or "no" or "change this". If the Jack says know he (or she) can still be challenged, this does not happen all that oten though because, the advisors must all agree that they should challenge, with signatures. Then the Jack and the lead advisor pick a game of skill or chance, if the Jack wins he (or she) can reevaluate his or her decision, but if he or she says "no" still, the advisors can not suggest any laws, without express permission from the Jack, for 2D3 years, as rolled by the Jack. Now, on to how these advisors are "elected". Greed is choosen by which krewe can make the most profit from selling goods, the Audience "votes" by buying there products. Gluttony is choosen in much the same way except, it is based on the number of meals (or prepared food in general) sold instead of the amount of profit derived from the sales, again voting is done by buying there food. Anger or Wrath is based on a gladitorial championship between all krewes who want to compete for the position. The only rule or the competition that stays rom election to election is that a fighter most be active during the two and a half years before the competition, for quite obvious reasons. Active is defined by being in atleast 1 fight every 2 weeks, and most duels are to the death although there is nothing against undead gladiators, nor undead in general. All other rules of the tornament are defined by the current Jack. Lust is elected by who derives the most profit, or potential gain in the cases of loans and banks and others that work off of interest, derived from there given services, voting is done by choosing a specific krewe and acquiring services rom them, same as any other profit derived sin. Pride is elected by a large art gallery, very large indeed, that the Audience votes on through written submitry of how many stars, voting is quite obvious i think. Sloth is elected by which krewe has the fastest member, strongest member, the smartest, and the most magic adept. If no one has all our, then the one with the most of the four wins. (i.e. if some krewe has three out of the our and all the others have less then the three wins) If there is a tie a game of chance or skill is played between the leader of the krewes and whoever wins becomes the new Sloth. Envy is like the Pride election, except that the art gallery is instead a theatre and the artworks are performers, who are rated by the Audience. There most be atleast 22 competors, as the krewe who has the person voted highest (in whatever way) has the next six highest within his krewe made his advisors within the cabinet. The "election" of the Jack has only happened once and that was by the first carnival starters. rom then on the Jack chooses contestants from the 2nd best krewes of the 7 sins, has the first best are his advisors, and has there leaders tell there top assassin members that they most kill the Jack in whatever way, without being found out. They are also told that they will acquire a high position within the Carnival if they succeed, if they fail well theyll become undead slaves, cheap labor for no pay what so ever. The assassin that kills the Jack becomes the new Jack, they must wear the same mask the first Jack wore but can change the clothes, or lack there of, and has the option to change seven laws, one from each of the seven advisors, only one and can only change not erase, although the Jack can still make it null and void by lining out all of it and only leaving the first word, making it useless. (Edit i forgot to mention how long the advisors stay in office, 4D6 years, the Carnival likes randomness) All krewes are suspose to train there member in even basic weapon arts and self deense, the anger krewes train more obviously because there living is made off of battle and weapons knowledge. Also some lust krewes do assassination services. This is so the entire Carnival can mount into an army if need be and defend there country properly. Even slaves are trained in weapons, but are never given real ones, always children's training weapons. This is so that ever able bodied man, woman, and child can form an army if need be. There is still a section on the distinction between 2 slave groups, debt slaves and civil slaves, or slaves taken from raiding other civilizations. ok round 2, jeez, sorry if the lawmaking system seems complicated, but i you want complicated go and look at some of our (USA's) lawmaking processes. The actual judicial system has yet to pop into my head yet so I don't know how long or complicated that is, but there arent many laws that need a judicial hearing most can be done right on the spot o capture, sentenced by the Sloth krewes. Anyways on to the 2 types of slaves. Now civil slaves come from other countries and are normally taken in raiding parties on these countries, womena and men mostly, able-bodied, but some have been known to take children so they can raise them as carnival folk. The civil slaves actually have it quite well, especially for slaves, they are taught all information needed to be a good critiqueing member of the Audience, whole hours of the day are spent to this task (reduces there work time yes but in the end its better, especially for the Pride and Envy krewes who regularily take slaves. The slaves are paid, this is minimal payment but they don't need much really. This is so that they can buy there own food, which allows them to vote within the Glutony elections (a lot of there working force would be destroyed if they did not have slavery, think the Southern states before Industrial Revolution, they could not work there own plantations without the slaves) They also must buy there own clothing and other wanted posessions, again so they vote in the Greed department. But they are given a very big reprieve on price for being slaves, all taxes are cut from a "needed" item (food, clothing, and possiblely materials to make crafts) and all slaves are given a discount because of there low income (less profit but the krewes can still make a profit from the sale). These slaves must carry forms of ID so they can be identified as slaves for purchases, and most just wear a sign of there krewe with a stylized S somewhere big and prominent with it. Debt slaves on the other hand, make no money, must still but there own food and clothing, are taxed more for "needed" goods (told you they would make it back), and have almost non-existant laws against harming them, starving them, or in any other way hurting them. This is because a civil slave has the possibility to save his money, free himself (for a government set current rate) and then add his culture to the Carnival, which means new ideas, books, plays, things to buy and what not, which is always a boon to the whole of society somehow. Debt slaves on the other hand have added there culture and it was tasted and spit back out at them, quite obviously because they can not pay back there debts and lawful loans. A lawful loan is considered any loan that has due documentation and signature from both ends. Laws against harming civil slaves are as follow: Can not starve such slaves nor with hold shelter from them. Can not whip or beat, or in any other way harm, a civil slave to the point of maiming or killing them. (maim is defined by removing appendages of any kind or making it so they can't work)
Araes 08-11-06, 09:27 AM	Hmm, I'm not sure why the heraldry generator isn't showing up for you Jeweler. I just tried accessing it using Firefox and it showed it, but it just didn't display the information correctly. Some images don't appear and other images go outside the boundaries they're supposed to have. It could be that its because I'm using Firefox 1.5 - not sure honestly. Now, with regards to your carnival concept, I'm going to go through it and reiterate a bit to make sure I've got everything, and then I'll ask some questions. Balseraphs General Concept Large carnival that is the size of a nation / layer. The land is organized into smaller groups called krewes. Entire area is based on the idea of the 7 deadly sins and krewes of carnival workers are divided on their affiliation. Lust - Providers of services (sexual or otherwise) Greed - Production and sale of goods Gluttony - Providers of food and concessions Envy - Acting, plays, and entertainment Pride - All forms of physical art Wrath - Gladiatorial combat and warriors Sloth - Enforcer of customs and executive branch Pretty much no racism in the carnival and relatively minor discrimination towards outsiders. (Kind of like normal carnies towards non-carnies) Population divided into audience and carnival workers Audience is made up of slaves, retired carnies, children too young to work, specialists, non-citizens, and small groups of non-performers. Carnies are pretty much everyone else Most carnival workers are trained in at least some form of combat so that Balseraphs may defend itself. Government Jack ("of Blood") is the main executive branch. Original Jack was chosen by someone. New Jacks are made through a ritual assassination process. Seven assassins are chosen from among the best of the krewes who are not advisors and given the job of assassinating the Jack. If they can they are made the new Jack. A new Jack is given the opportunity to modify 7 existing laws. Cabinet of Sins is the legislative branch and is made up of representatives from each of the different krewe groups. There are naturally 7 cabinet members - one from each sin Each cabinet member has six advisors Cabinet members are chosen based on the performance of their krewes at their selected tasks (Gluttony = selling food, Pride = making good art, ect...) Cabinet members stay in office for 4d6 years How a bill becomes a law Cabinet proposes a law with a 4/7 majority in favor of proposing it. Jack may ratify the law, ask for changes, or reject the law. If a bill is rejected The Cabinet may oppose the Jack's rejection with a full majority vote. The original bill creator and the Jack then play a game of chance If the Jack wins, they may change their mind or limit the bill proposer from suggesting laws for 2d3 years (seems highly harsh) If the proposer wins, the bill goes through. Slavery in Balseraphs Divided into "debt" and "civil" slaves. Civil slaves are those slaves which have been captured on raids to other countries. May never be freed May not be harmed to the point of maiming (but may be harmed less than that) May not be refused shelter or food Are paid a small stipend so that they may purchase products and vote as an "Audience" member. Are fairly well educated so they can be good "Audience" members Must carry ID and wear a large S to identify themselves. Debt slaves are those slaves which have becomes slaves by going into debt to another person. Have little of the protection of other slaves. May become free however by saving money and paying off debt. Re-enter society as normal citizen when debt is paid. Alright, now I've got a few questions about this setting which weren't completely answered from your description above. Is this a country or a layer proposal, as you mentioned both in your description of Balseraphs. In my personal opinion, this idea seems better suited to a country, as you mentioned things like raiding for slaves which would be nearly impossible between layers. Also, purely on a level of scale, I think it would be better to have it be contained to something slightly smaller than a layer, as that's like talking about the Earth or more made up of one big carnival. In the section on the Cabinet, I found it a bit unclear how the actual advisor from each krewe is selected. I understand that whichever crew performs best is represented, but how is the individual person chosen from among the krewe members themselves? In the section on the passing of laws, I have concerns that the penalty for opposing the Jack is too severe and it basically turns whatever advisor opposes him into a non-entity for the rest of their term. They might as well resign at that point. Is there a third distinction of slaves - undead workers? Does this nation reguarly harvest their dead and turn them into workers to save on labor, as you mentioned the carnival would be hard to keep moving without free labor. I'm curious on your thoughts about free time and creation of products in this land, as there has to be some balance between work and play or else nothing would ever get done in Balseraphs. Is the distinction that most of the "carnies" are more like small business owners who spend some of their time overseeing their business and then the rest of it experiencing the carnival? Is this entire nation a nation of nomads like normal carnies are, or are these permanent "city carnivals"? If they do move, what happens when two or more groups run into each other, and do they have big super carnival meeting times when lots of the nomad groups get together? Anyhow, think that's everything, and could make a quite interesting addition to the whole with some work on background and history. I have worries about the stability of such a government system as a whole over a long period of time, but suspension of disbelief may hold there. One way that this could be proposed is that in the original concept of the Sphere, the land that eventually became Balseraphs may have been slated as an entertainment Mecca. When organization and communication broke down, that history of entertainment was swept into the culture and influenced them to become who they have. *edit* Had a thought from reading the bit on undead a second time that it might almost be interesting to have this nation be a part of the greater undead layer that I had proposed before. Carnivals by their very nature can often be extremely creepy places, with carnie folk, clowns, and all manner of deformed freaks. If there also happened to be large numbers of the dead simply walking about performing tasks, it would almost flow naturally with all the other strangeness and creep factor.
Jeweler 08-11-06, 11:31 PM	*Big eyes over the idea of a World Carnival on Earth* It would be chaos but, damn would it be fun, most of the time. I wish i had thought of presenting it like that, or atleast writing it out on paper like that, that would have saved a lot of time. Anyways thats pretty much it summary is correct, except the civil slaves can be freed, in much the same way as a debt slave, except a debt slave does not get payed because all payment he would gets go towards the paying off of the debt, with some amount of interest. A civil slave on the other hand has to make the decision to save his money and free himself, and can stay in servitude if he/she wants to. Beyond that I see nothing wrong with your summary, and the 2D3 years isnt so harsh considering thats only 2-6 years, they would (If at the beginning of office) have anywhere from 0-18 years left (depending on rolls of both dice). Its almost like a monarchy in this case you challenge the king or queen and lose, you suffer for your actions. I didnt mention anything about resignation at the time because i didnt think about it, but i dont see why a krewe couldnt, or wouldnt depending on the reasoning for challenging the Jack. Anyways on to questions: Now that you mention it I think your right in the remark that it should be a country and not a layer, although the idea of an entire layer Carnival sounds quite interesting, second thought, the law system would trully break down at that point. So country on that question. Within the 7 challenges each highest ranking member wins it for there krewe, and he or she becomes the leader of the new advisory, and then the next 6 highest people within the krewe are his six advisors in council. so basically you have the listing of something like this 1st Krewe A Member 172 2nd Krewe C memeber 1100 3rd Krewe A member 574 4th Krewe F member 931 5th Krewe A member 842 So the 1st place person would be the lead advisor of his/her particular sin and the next 6 people within his krewe, in this case 3rd and 5th place within the overall ranking and 4 others down the lines more, will take up to be his advisors. Understand? Like I said before, the title of Jack makes you a king or queen, challenging them in the old days, when they actually had power within Europe and other places around the world, you would have much worse things happen to you then to not be able to make laws for up to 6 years. And i think i mentioned in the writing that it doesn't happen very often for this reason, no one wants to challenge the title of Jack, and if i didn't then there it is, ive said it now. The undead workers were mainly a threat when i used them but i could easily see the spooky carnival with undead wondering around moving crates and even performing themselves. Its even better than free labor because you could limit the nanites to regenerate everything except the brain and just let patches of skin start falling off again before you "repair" them, give them that creepy scary undead look. Cheap labor which takes simple commands and can lift heavy objects and posiblely do dangerous jobs. The way i see free time is that they would have a certain amount of time that they spent off of work, whether that be performing or crafting, providing a service or whatever. During election time this allows them to vote and during normal tiem this allows them to sample other ideas and other things, possiblely use them with a new "twist". Corporate espionage basically. They have free time how they use it is up to them, no one can work for 24 hours straight, except zombies, and you have got to relax sometimes even with some of the jobs you could possiblely have within this carnival. On the small businesses note, I suspose the krewe leaders would be, they would look over most of it but occasionally throw themselves in and do some work make sure people are getting the word around about such a good product, service, food, art, entertainment form, whatever. I was thinking of actually both, there is atleast 1 permanent Carnival City which is most likely huge and filled with all the different krewes, because they need to be in the hub of the Audience at all times. Then the krewes would send out "gypsy wagons" and circuses and fairs and other things that relate to there sevices, whereas in the city everyone has there sin and most only stick to one of them, in a nomad circus you need all of them to survive and make money. So both a permanent city and a lot of nomad circuses which act like "subsidaries" of the krewes of the same name within the city. Im not sure whether the government system would hold, but you have to have a little unrealism within a fantasy game, what better palce then a carnival. I might work on some short stories based on this society and the undead layer as that seems like a good place to be for them. And if i think they are any good, and my friends in Virgina think there any good Ill put them up here for you all to read. Its a little bit, ok a really big, eccentric idea but thats what i do best is eccentric ideas, especially with writing i just have to sit down a couple times a week and think things over, maybe hot topic will help that, cool and weird store, gives me interesting ideas all the time. With Alice stuff! : ) Edit: I didnt know they changed the spoiler so now it turns it black, that bites i like the old spoiler that put it in a box and you could open it up.
Araes 08-12-06, 03:58 AM	Cool, thanks for all the responses as that did answer a number of questions I had about the area you proposed. I still have a few more, but they're kind of hazing over in my mind right now. Blazingly tired as I've been up all night, but I'll probably fill in some more of this tomorrow. One bit of semi-news, curiosity if you will, I finished up coding a Random Name Generator (http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/RandomNameGenerator.html) that can generate names from about nine different sources right now with a decent bit of accuracy. Its pretty easy to expand too, so if folks can think of some other good name backgrounds that might be useful to have I'll see what I can do. *edit* Ah, right, now I can remember what my questions were. In the listing you have for the points and the krewes, I'm a little confused by the scores you have listed, as it doesn't look like the first place person actually won with only 172 points, while the second place person has 1000+. Are those not points? Also, in relation to that, when you say that the the Jack chooses people from the second best krewes to be contestants to kill him, you're saying that the assassin would come from Krewe C in the example you have listed? My question on the the point of free time was more that I was just trying to figure out what this society in particular spends so much of its time having fun, partying, ect... Socially it seems like there has to be a drive or impetus somewhere that money isn't the measuring stick of success, but rather happiness and free time in Balseraphs. Otherwise, to my mind I would think that people would be too busy working and trying to get ahead to actually go out have fun in the grand carnival atmosphere. As a question about the touring carnivals, are there other cities which they go to rather than just the main one you suggested like normal carnivals do? If so, what is the purpose of these other cities? Are they the communities for the specialists and non-performers that you listed above? If not, then are they basically just wandering the countryside, and what drives them to wander rather than just settle in one place and put on a constant show? *edit2* As you've accepted the idea that this area would be good as a nation, I'm curious as to what you envision the landscape to be like for these folks. I had a couple of thoughts that you can take as you will on the subject. One of them was that if you adopted the earlier proposal that I had about this originally having been some form of entertainment Mecca in the original conception of the Sphere, then the land around these people would probably be something fairly beautiful, but not overly harsh. Possibly something like a slightly more Mediterranean version of Austria or the French lowlands near the Alps, as there would be some good backdrops around the people, but the area where most of them lived would be rather hospitable. My second thought was that if there were a decent number of rivers in the land, or at least one major one, then you might have the possibility for things like riverboat versions of the carnivals. Kind of like the old Mississippi queens in the era of American westward expansion.
Araes 08-12-06, 02:45 PM	Alright, as I was out shopping today, I had an of idea about the world that it might be possible to integrate. Encyclopedic Breadth of Data The idea was that in reading through a lot of science fiction, and some other good fan created works (The Ghyll Project (http://gamegrene.com/wiki/Main_Page)for example), one of the common narrative concepts that is often employed is the use of an encyclopedia to help give introductions and give high level overviews of situations. For example, in the Foundation series by Asimov, at the beginning of each major seciton, there is a quick paragraph or two introduction which is posted as an excerpt from the Foundation Encyclopedia. These intros look back in time on the events that the chapter or section are describing and give a quick high level overview of the situation and sometimes its resolution. Another example of this can also be found in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sometimes at the beginnings of chapters, and sometimes just as quick asides during the text, there are bit and pieces of the actual Guide to give a shot of flavor. In the case of the Guide, these usually aren't particularly serious or plot important, but they do help to set the mood and give reader's an overall idea of the shape of the galaxy. Now, what I was thinking was that for our project, we could also adopt something like this for use where needed. It might make a nice bit of flavor text at the beginnings of nation or people descriptions, or in fact, entire entries could be made from the voice of an encyclopedia correspondent. This would give us a nice little backdrop to help tie together the various elements of the setting and bring the reader into the experience. In effect, breath a bit of life into the words. The way I was considering actually tieing this into the setting itself was by using one of Organizations which I proposed a few pages back - The Order of Salation. They've been conceived as a branch of the unified church which is trying to preserve knowledge both through ritualization and physically. As such, what better way to preserve it physically than through an encyclopedia of important places, people, events, technology, ect... In addition, as they have the support and backing of the Gods, it would be possible for them to operate on something approaching an interlayer level. Its doubtful that they would have full access to travel or anything like that, but perhaps the encyclopedia itself could instead by an interlayer phenomenon. Researchers and catalogers could themselves be given "magical" recording devices which they could take with them anywhere and onto which they might write whatever it is they want, and then this information would be transfered to some sort of central repository. Within the halls of the Order itself, there could then be more permanent displays or tomes where the information from the repository could be dispersed, examined, corrected, ect... People within these halls would be able to skim through information from all the various layers (or maybe a cross section to limit technology transfer) and in a way this could also be a source for a number of the tales and myths in the world, as citizens would hear of all kinds of fantastical places that they will never in their life be able to get to. For example, the idea of a world spanning city with multiple layers of habitation would hold a powerful mystique in a layer of burning fire and constant sun, while that same layer would inversely hold its own magic for the city inhabitants.
Jeweler 08-12-06, 06:15 PM	No those arent points, that is the member number, basically when they were excepted to the krewe after it started, member 1 would be the leader and from then on it goes up 2 then 3 then 4, so on and so on. Yeah krewe C, for that specific sin, would be the krewe they called to assassinate him. Hmmmm, im not sure on free time now, because i dont see money as the driving source of the carnival, completely. Possiblely that it was written in them, if they were the entertainment mecca. But if they werent the enetertainment mecca of the sphere, then I have no earthly idea what would keep them doing all this, because even if they like it, that doesnt explain how it started really. I think that there might be another smaller, relative to the main carnival city, city that (If this is on the undead layer) is the more oftenly gone to one by the inhabitants of the other countries of the layers. The drive to wonder around is a very strong one, to spread the word of the greatness of the carnival is another. They could do it for the ever present money, or just to bring the joy and happiness that a carnival or circus normally brings. It depends on the krewe that traveling carnival is based off of. This is the other reason for the smaller more "other residents" oriented city, it acts a "fueling station" sota speak for the traveling krewes who can stock up and resupply stuff they need from it for better prices. 0.0 have the perfect image in my head of a boat carnival, but the rivers idea is up to you in the end, its your layer, if i mad entire layer than i might, but i do like that idea. And again for the first thing your layer, i dont know what to expect from the undead layer because all i can think of with them is spooky half dead forests and giant spiders and all that creepy stuff. I was thinking though some hills here and there, nice grasslands and what not, maybe a forest somewhere on one side in the distant. Possiblely a mountain peeak here or there, nice pristine stuff, very natural. Oh but i do have a question to you, do they any tech stuff, or magical stuff, because that could change the entire nation completely. I was thinking stuff dealing mainly with entertainment, tvs, photos, printing press, possiblely phones, and possiblely a sota computer, if we wanted to go high end of magic-back-down-to-technology. As for the encloypedia i think that might be a good idea, you like 10-15 people within each nation on a plane, as long as there "civilized", these scribing devices and let them get to work, if they dont write the same thing there comes the problem, although you can make it so that its like comments (instead of paragraphs of knowledge have "blah blah blah blah" -written by Great Scribe Jarius and below it "blah blah blah blah" - written by Scribe of Light Syrus).
Araes 08-12-06, 09:58 PM	Hmm, alright, no worries if money isn't the driving force of the carnival. I'm just trying to figure out what motivates the people of this nation and keeps them in a carnival atmosphere all year round. Its an interesting idea and I want to figure out a good way to make it all seem plausible to people who chance upon it. I suggested the entertainment Mecca concept simply because it would be an effective way to integrate the concept into the overall picture of the Sphere, as every point would originally have had some purpose, and over time without guidance, those purposes have been morphed or corrupted. Do you have another idea on what its origin might have been? As far as the river thing goes, don't worry about it being my layer or anything like that. Consider for a moment how big the Sphere is. I have no worries that we can fit anything you desire into something of this scale. We're talking about a land that may be 100's if not 1000's of times the scale of Earth. As someone in another thread pointed out, many campaign settings barely touch on worlds of even half of Earth's scale. We have room for whatever you propose. Especially if you have a particularly strong idea that could lead to a good nation. Flesh it out and see where it takes you, I was just suggesting concepts that popped into my head and the layers I have proposed are simply grand concepts that don't have to straightjacket you into a particular design. On the tech suggestion, I've got no real restrictions right now. If you've got an idea for how you'd like to integrate future tech into your nation, then propose something, and we can figure out a way to make it work or I'll suggest modifications so that its not overpowered or out of line. Again, I'd rather have good ideas and then figure out a way to make them work than hamstring people right off the bat by saying "no tv's, no phones" or something like that. Anyhow, everything I can think of at the moment. Again, rather tired, so I'll probably come back to this tomorrow.
TúrintheMormegil 08-13-06, 06:47 AM	Just noting: the Encyclopedia idea is awesome. :D Maybe some more useful contribution on that topic from me later. :tiphat: Túrin
Araes 08-15-06, 11:27 PM	Alright, for today's contribution, I think I'm going to try and flesh out this concept that I had a while back. Life Among the Cliffs An Anasazi-like nation of people living in a land of extreme elevation changes who build extensive cliff networks. They could perhaps even be more than Anasazi, almost like cliff dwarves, who delve a little less than the standard perception of dwarves. Also, when I say extreme changes, I mean a land with valleys and mesas throughout and sheer changes like the walls of the Grand Canyon throughout. After having thought about them more, I think I have come upon a historical origin and solution which should work for these folks and explain why they live the way they do. My proposal is that the society is actually the remnants of what was intended to be a continually rotating observation and care group for a predominantly wildlife based layer of the Sphere. Positioned high up in cliffs behind duck blinds, they could be remain safe from some of the more dangerous animal and plant life - particularly megafauna, as things similar to dinosaurs, terrasques, ect... had probably been preserved. Now I'll delve into a bit more flavorful description. {Storytime} A light wind was blowing on the morning air. Brought to life by the warming canyon walls, it shifted the clinging shrubs and tufts of grass as it wafted up out of the valley. Crisp and fresh with the smell of dew, it rolled its way along the mesa edge, gaining strength from its sister currents below, until some invisible threshold was crossed and it began to move inland. Over fields of grain, which swayed at its passage, and through the boughs of orchards, which rustled their reply, it moved ever onward, until at last it came to brush upon the cheek of a young girl beneath one of these trees, who shivered slightly at its passing. Hiking her hood up slightly, Elise shifted her position a bit so that she'd be more directly beneath the sun and then moved her attention back to the task at hand. Holding up the sheet from her class on history she read, "The Impact of and Response to Abandonment - An essay on the history and evolution of Aitao in less than 2000 words." Ugg, she'd always hated these things, but she hadn't done very well on Miss Cheina's last couple quizes and needed to make up some ground. Oh well, nothing to do but start. "The History of the Peoples of Aitao - by Elise Fera." She didn't so much write or say the words, but think them, and as she did the sheets in front of her began to transcribe what popped into her head. You always had to be careful doing this type of transcription, or else all kinds of random things could find their way onto the page. Oops, speaking of which, she quickly concentrated on removing "random things could find their way onto the page". Back on task. "Although we have only limited records from the period, it has been recorded that in the earliest times of our land, it was not intended for settlement of any kind to take place here. Those who came were but scientists and researchers, from where we are unsure, sent to watch over the life of this land and monitor its progress. However, for some reason, perhaps due to calamity or some other issue {'Hmm, should probably go light on the speculation'}, connection was lost with this mysterious land of origin, and has yet to be reestablished." "At first, people were horribly frightened and concerned that they might not be able to survive, with a number wanting to concentrate solely on finding a way back to their homes, particularly since in those days our records tell us there were not more than 1000 people total. However, after a while {'weeks, months, year? Need to look that up'}, with supply issues looming, it became apparent that to continue the long term plan for communication, some short term problems would have to be tackled. Foremost among these were the basic necessities, food, water, and shelter. Water was not much of a problem, as the research station had been situated over groundwater sites with ample supplies. However, food and shelter were quite problematic, with food being the worst, as the site had been constructed with a planned schedule of food and personnel shipments." "The eventual solution to this problem was found by one of our first leaders, Gharl Keona, who proposed that they return to their roots, and convert the relatively safe mesa above them to cultivated farmland, using what supplies of grains they had left or could gather. From what we are told, those first few years were quite difficult, as much of the group had no experience with farming, and several died of malnutrition. In addition, to supplement their crops, they had also been forced to leave the shelters hunting wild game, and while most animals were no match for what weapons or skills they had, several still met their end at the claws of the stealthier and tougher beasts." "A less pressing, but slowly taxing problem was the confines of the research station itself. Intended for short term habitation, it was a small thing {'Having visited it on a class trip she could attest to that'}, where people lived 5 or more to a room and had very little personal space. In addition, as is pretty natural with time on their hands and limited entertainment, some of the station members were beginning to have children. Several years into isolation, a number of the more crowded of the group decided that they had had enough, and would begin looking for a new option. The terrain around the station was naturally ruled out, as even armed hunting parties had a tough time out there. Yet, the mesa above was dangerous as well, since although the larger land animals were not present, at that time there were still dangers of large flying beasts to consider. Taking a concept from the original station, it was decided that the best alternative might in fact be to just carve out another home from the walls around them." "In the beginning, only a few are believed to have possessed any skill with rock shaping, but with the promise of new homes on the horizon, there were probably ample students ready to learn. Only a short time afterward, they saw the first cuts of what would eventually become the now vast network of Raiat. In a year's time, they had completed enough work on the cliffside that families could begin to settle in their new homes, and in five there was almost no one truly living in the station." "As the cycles came and went and the population continued to grow, it soon became apparent that a change (or even creation) of government was needed if the group were to survive. For many years, the station had been running on something like a chieftain based leadership, with Gharl himself having many of the most important decisions, as he had been the first to truly make choices. With the communication and abilities provided by their technology at the time, this had been satisfactory, but Gharl himself was actually uncomfortable with his role and many of those around him also wanted more say in the running of things. A number of different options were mulled over and circulated among the people, constitutional monarchies, communism, democracy, but none of them really took hold, until a rather odd idea was put forth - what if no single group led." "At that time, it is said that we still had the resources to craft powerful objects of control, and what was suggested was that such an object be made which could tie every person's consciousness together lightly and guide based on the majority's wishes. Laws would be changed, regulations made, and organization created all based on the ebb and flow of society. If positions were needed in government, they would be chosen from those least busy and most suited automatically. If justice was requested, it would be delivered by a vast group, rather than by a monarch or chieftain. It was not meant to create a hive mind or anything of the sort, as it did not provide for unified thought {'Almost wish it did - darn Miss Cheina and her quizzes'}, simply take the wishes of the whole and transform them into reasonable rules." As she finished this last paragraph, Elise thought she caught a slight sound on the breeze and put down her sheet. Stretching her legs, which had become nice and warm in the sun, she hopped to her feet and then moved around the tree. Looking down the rows of the orchard in turn, she failed to see whatever had made the noise, until, almost ready to quit, she turned back to where she had first looked and saw a man off in the distance. Concentrating on the shape in front of her, she pushed off a quick thought of "Dad?" and was pleased to feel a familiar touch respond back. "There you are, silly girl. We've been looking all over for you, ya know. Your mother wants to head down to the market district and was wondering whether you wanted to come? I wish you wouldn't wander out here so far. Scares me something fierce sometimes, what with not being able to find you and hanging out near the edge like you do." She could literally feel the concern, but this was pretty normal for him in her eyes. "Don't worry, I'm perfectly fine Dad, just wanted to have some peace and quiet so I could work on Miss Cheina's report. Got a long way too, nearly done, although I think I need some editing. Think you could help me after the market?". The reply came back a good bit calmer and with what felt like a chuckle, "Ah, remember your mother mentioning that, think our little genius is actually going to make it out of this hole you've dug, or are we going to have to beg on your behalf?" Elise could barely repress a grimace at this, which just elicited another pseudo chuckle from her father. "Come on missy, grab your stuff, lets get you down to city proper before your mother wonders whats become of us. I'll be happy to help you out with your school project after we get back...if you still want me to." "Sure Dad, thanks for the help." Scooping up her things from the ground around the tree, Elise did a quick stretch of her shoulders and then set off to join her father. The wind had died over the course of the morning, and the boughs of the orchards no longer rustled, but she could still feel the latent life of this place as she walked to her father. That sense of energy and the world at large, which always brought her back every morning she could spare. {Fin} Ok, all done with that for the moment. Should hopefully give you folks at least a quick idea of what the concept behind the area is about. Have to note that in the next couple of days I'm probably going to be fairly silent, as I'm finally leaving France (moving to good ol' Atlanta) and as such, I'm going to be rather involved with flying on planes (hopefully no snakes), finding a place to live, and getting internet access. So no official promises on when I'll make my big return, but hopefully will be soon.
chimpman 08-17-06, 06:05 PM	Huh. Well a combination of things (mostly being work and a lack of internet connectivity at home) have prevented me from accessing this thread in the past several days. I'll go over the posts I missed in more detail later, but for now I just wanted to get some of my previous thoughts down. Heraldry Generator I'm a little further on the project now. Still not simulation quality yet, but I am catching several events (those being births, deaths, and marriages). More to come, but the current state of the application might actually be useful to someone. Right now it takes 10 clans (hardcoded) and generates a geneology for them throughout X number of years. You can get the history of a specific individual by clicking on their name (not their shield). Change the seed number to get new clans. I'm hoping that this will provide a nice framework for DMs to flesh out intra-nation politics and intrigue. Dragon Themes Now for something a little more setting specific. Dragons play a large part in any D&D setting (or should IMO anyway). While I was reading through the setting thread I came up with several questions about how dragons might fit in. I like the ideas already presented about them, by the way. So the question I found myself asking was this: What is the one thing dragons are known best for? Well there could be several answers I suppose. They breath fire (or some other equivalent). They devour towns. They are intelligent and very vain. But most importantly (and what stands out most in my mind) is that they hoard gold (or treasure in general). Now with regards to this setting, why would a dragon hoard gold? Perhaps they like the shiny stuff. Perhaps it makes a comfortable bedding for them, or as per the Hobbit, they incorporate it into their armor. Perhaps it is a means to an end and it enables them to buy strength and power. Of all the explanations I think the last is the most likely to work in this setting… however I want more than just that. So then I started thinking less about gold and more about treasure in general. What might be considered the most valuable treasure in this setting? The answer came easily. Magic/Technology. So building off of previous ideas, the dragons of this setting were short changed back before the universe collapsed, and now they seek to rectify that predicament. 1) Savers and Preservers – These categories are much the same for dragons as they are for the gods (outlined in a previous post). It’s even very likely that a particular dragon practitioner is a devotee of a specific god that follows the same philosophy. The goal of the hoarding dragon is to ultimately transform his domain into either a Saver or Preserver paradise. To that end the dragon is constantly on the lookout for both artifacts and competent minions. 2) Ascenders – Perhaps more interesting than the Savers and Preservers (at least to me) and I think more likely for most dragons, the Ascenders seek to enhance and augment their natural powers with technology scavenged from across the Sphere. The end result can be varied, although the methods for each may be very similar (and perhaps virtually indistinguishable). 2A) Dominion Ascenders – The end goal of a Dominionite is to have absolute and unchallenged control over everything that they see. This is a throwback to earlier (pre-contact) dragon society, when the dragons were unquestioned rulers of their world. Ascender dragons might actually form complex societies, becoming the nobility in a new draconic feudalism. 2B) Deific Ascenders – The end goal for all deifics is the construction of a ‘magical’ device that will allow then to ascend to godhood. In reality they are trying to piece together enough information to allow them to reproduce the effect that the first gods created for their own ascention when the Sphere was newly built. I see Deifics as being more secluded - guarding their treasure from dragons and other races alike. 3) Destroyers - Not satisfied with regaining their former glory (or not convinced that they can), these dragons have set it upon themselves to destroy the world rather than let it fall into the hands of others. Some may work together, but I think it most likely that these dragons are loners. And probably not entirely sane. Any other good dragon themes out there?
Jeweler 08-17-06, 07:49 PM	Thats cool Araes, welcome back to America, well when you read this obviously. I like the short story, perspective is nice actually. Have you ever read a series called "The Night's Dawn trilogy" by Peter F Hamilton? The "hivemind" technology they have on that layer (I know its not actually hivemindish but i can't think of a good name for it) seems like the Affinity Gene used by the Edenists in that series, really good series good hard sci-fi. It also seems close to something like the communication technology in GitS. Nice work on the dragon ideas Chimpman! It makes sense, really, try to establish a hold in a world you otherwise might not be able too. I have a question, and i think this might have been adressed earlier, but what would happen if a dragon or something else flying tried to fly through the perpetual fog that hangs around all these layers? Technology of Entertainers I think that the entertainment mecca might have a general level of technology approaching or at Medevil Ages, except for things specifically used for entertainment. Gun powder could be used for many things, theatrics, explosions for a play, and even weapons (i was thinking semi-auto pistols (couple of shots per load) and standard medevil rifles (one shot, long reload time, possiblely 3 rounds or more). Phones, a device similiar to TV, possiblely computers (mainly as a game player).
Araes 08-19-06, 12:15 AM	Hi guys, made it over to the states safe so far. Still in the process of looking for a place, but had a few minutes, so I figured I'd add some more. Glad you liked the story btw Jeweler. Like I alluded, I thought it might need some editing, but otherwise I was pretty happy with it too. I'll have to try out the Night's Dawn trilogy too if its as good as you said. With regard to the tech levels that you mentioned, I've got a few comments, but perhaps you can lay out the concept. One of the main ones is the semi-auto weapons. My main concern with them is just that they require a pretty high level of technological industry to keep them functioning on a wide scale - particularly since semi-autos require prepackaged bullets with very specific primers, specifications, ect... Of course, it could be that the technology, and some weapons are around, but the bullets are quite a bit harder to find than ones that you can make out of a normal village (IE, hand loader weapons). Have no problem with most of the other stuff, as phones, tv, and computers could all have useful functions and obfuscations as "magic" items. One thing that does occur to me is that we would need to have some kind of convenient and portable power source that could be usable throughout the Sphere for this kind of stuff. One option could be using an idea I had a while back about the Ley Lines concept, which was that power was effectively routed through the very ground of the Sphere in some way, and it is generally built around main conduits. Of course, for small things it wouldn't matter how close you were to a conduit, since they don't drain much, but powerful spells might require close proximity. The other option that would be pretty easy, and not necessary an if/else exclusive type of choice, would be for there to be things like universal battery packs that could be used with all technology and have extremely long lives - perhaps direct conversion of the energy from the great machine. As far as the dragon concepts go, I think you are on to some good ideas Chimpman. One I think that you may have missed out on is another option which could be opposed to the ascenders. It might be that they don't care about ascending, and they don't want to utterly destroy the Sphere, but they might be opposed to the idea of fake Gods, and want to tear them down without raising anyone else in their place. Could be dragons who are religious from religions before the Sphere and dislike what they view as imposters, or could just be ones who dislike being lorded over by lesser beings who have gotten inflated by their own position. Either way, seems like a viable motivation. Reshaping the Sphere Perhaps I'm insane as you say, its quite possible. Yet, have you considered that perhaps I don't want to leave for a reason? Perhaps my worldview is actually the better and I simply want to spread such rapture. In fact, perhaps you should join me as well - are there wonders your world might offer that I cannot? - Interview with Casius Cassart by encyclopedist Wairah, found transcribed in his diary, lying on a stretch of road in the midst of a desert. One last thing I wanted to talk about is I wanted to go back to the Shapers that we mentioned a while back, the dreaming or hallucinating forces that could wander the Sphere. I've been thinking about it a bit more, and I think I have a clearer idea of what I would like them to be. In a thought, they're potentially one of the most dangerous things that a player could ever face, as their power is nearly limitless (except maybe compared with a "God"). However, at the same time that power would rarely if ever actively be directed against a character or group in particular. Its more that they're simply forces of nature, which anyone whos had contact with rightly fears, as destruction follows in their wake. As for where they've gained their powers, or why they are the way they are, nobody (at least in a campaign sense) really knows. Perhaps its a backlash for gaining too much magical power, a type of safety switch; perhaps its the Gods striking them down for some unknown offense; perhaps they're all survivors of some great calamity; or perhaps they're the early failed attempts at creating avatars. Roughly speaking, every Shaper would be part of a waking dream, where a reality of some other devising has been imposed over the real world. In some cases, this world completely replaces the real one and everything that the Shaper inside this vision sees is utterly independent of what's outside it. The other option is that what the Shaper sees and interacts with is a morphed and perverted vision of what's really there - perhaps they think everyone else are enemy combatants or worshipers out to honor them, every city an opposing bastion or a welcoming populace. They also impose this personal vision of the world on any part of the world that gets too close to them. These waking dreams would be physical places that would travel with the Shaper itself, extending out some fixed distance with them at the center - maybe a mile or so radius. Anything that passed into this zone would quite literally be morphed into a shape that fit with the particular dreamer's perceptions. Mountains might be turned to seas, desert's might become tiled roadways, or cities might become war torn battlefields. Whether they turn back after the Shaper leaves is also a pretty random affair - many times they don't. Whole stretches of river that lead nowhere could litter a layer as a Shaper meandered its way around the Sphere, and go right through mountains or cities that happened to be in their way. As for specific ideas for individual Shapers, I've got a few that I've run through so far: An aerial explorer traveling the world, like a Columbus of the air, who tends to view every new person he meets as members of an unknown, and inferior usually, civilization. A military commander who views the world around him as one long (or maybe repeating) campaign. Everyone are enemy combatants in the struggle and he carries the weapons of destruction in his head - powerful weapons of energy and force that rend the world to shreds around him. An Indiana Jones like character who looks at the world as one big treasure hunt. Parts explorer, entrepeneur, and historian, he changes cities to ruins, trinkets to treasures, and much of the world to opposing hunters. A sea captain who's constantly trapped in one of the worst storms imaginable, searching for welcome harbor. Particularly dangerous as he often moves towards the lights of external cities, thinking they might be his salvation, only to bury them under the wash of his perpetual sea. A roving, charismatic leader who's perpetual vision is of glory and worship for him. Like a conquering Caesar returning to Rome, he crafts the roads of an imagined civilization wherever he goes, and his path is covered in lilies and gold. He may be one of the least strictly crazy of the Shapers, as he knows that he's in a world of his devising, but nonetheless he's trapped just the same, whether by the world or his own addiction. In addition, he spreads the addiction as he goes, trapping others in his world of worship. A King Lear type of character who views the entire world around him as his devestated kingdom. No one can convince him otherwise, and even those who bring proof that he's ruining their own nations not his are simply integrated into his vision and morphed. A Johnny Appleseed or Mother Earth like person who travels in an ever growing web of nature. Perhaps its intentional, or perhaps they simply feel that they're forever lost in the forest of their mind. A refugee who's constantly moving before some great disaster that is chasing him. Like a storm of destruction, he thinks that he's only managing to stay one step ahead of it, but in fact he brings the wrath with him.
Araes 08-19-06, 01:35 AM	While I've been gone I've been doing a bit more work with the Class decomposition stuff, so to get rid of what was a double post, here are some links to an analysis of all the various class abilities that I did, as well as an awesome list of every spell that's been catalogued so far from the official source material (credit to the guys over at the Ultimate Spell List thread on the Magic Board). Class Abilities and Spells By Class (http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/ClassAbilities.xls) List of All Spells (rather large ~2Meg) (http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/AlexSpells.csv)
Araes 08-28-06, 03:03 PM	I Return Bearing Numbers Alright, now on to the real meat of the post. Be warned that this is basically just one huge crunch post. For the past couple days, I've been scouring through the books trying to figure out a good way to incorporate this previously very loose idea of generic classes into a more concrete one, which can take into account all of the various optional base classes as well. The result is that I have actually stepped back a slight bit from the Generic Classes as originally proposed by WotC, and instead returned to the idea of a Point Buy system, as I always liked the flexibility of it, even if it was a little complicated in my original analysis. To help with this complexity in its new form, I have boiled the whole process down to just a few simple things that any person must choose from when they are making a character. In addition, to limit twinkery, there would be limits on what people would have to buy. It might not actually be necessary from a balance perspective, as the sacrifices they made might balance out with less character durability. However, since the system of D&D tends to go somewhat unstable with extreme characters, better to keep them within "normal" bounds. In addition, if DM's, or product producers, wanted to run games within certain bounds, then they could further limit this step and just provide their players with certain cutouts which represent the types they want to see in their world. Anyhow, onto the set of selections, their bounds, and their costs. The Point Buy Selection Costs Base Attack Bonus 6 points per every 5 points of BAB at level 20. Limits (5-20) in blocks of 5. Hit Dice 6 points for every hit die upgrade (or, the die you want to roll times 3) Limits (d2 - d12) Good Saves 5 points for each good save Limits (1-3) Skills 1 point for each skill point per level Limits (1-8) Each point purchased allows allows for the selection of 4 skills as class skills Feats 2 points per feat gained over 20 levels Limits (None - limited by the other choices and available points) As some examples of what this might produce, I have some generic class templates that I worked up off of a 100 point basis (which would be assumed to be the standard for a character). Example Classes Created With The Point Buy Warrior BAB - 4 - 24 points HD - 10 - 30 points Saves - 1 - 5 points Skills - 4 - 4 points Feats - 18 - 36 points Expert BAB - 3 - 18 points HD - 6 - 18 points Saves - 2 - 10 points Skills - 8 - 8 points Feats - 23 - 46 points Caster BAB - 2 - 12 points HD - 4 - 12 points Saves - 1 - 5 points Skills - 4 - 4 points Feats - 36 - 72 points Now, the one of the first things that someone will probably notice is that in the Caster, there isn't actually any selection for Spells, and at the same time, there is a huge allotment of Feats. This segues into the next concept we had been working on, which is that to progress as a Spellcaster, a person must buy feats corresponding to the paths of spell casting that they want. For example, to be able to cast 4th level spells from the "Audio" branch of expression, you would have had to purchase four feats worth of spellcasting from that branch. To be what most of us would normally consider a "full mage", you would have had to purchase between three and four full paths of 9, meaning you would have thrown down 27-36 feats just on spellcasting ability. Anyhow, now that I've explained the basic point buy stuff to some degree, its time to deal with how all the abilities of the various classes would be purchased. To handle it, I've gone through all of the core books and broken down the various abilities of the classes by their worth in feats (most are worth 1 and those that aren't can be broken into chunks). I have yet to work out all the various restrictions on buying the feats, but that can be done in the future. For now, here is a big core dump of all the abilities, each buyable at a cost of one feat, which I will come back and edit with restrictions on purchasing. NOTE: One thing to pay attention to is the fact that some of the skills grow over time after purchasing, which was the only fair way in my eyes to handle the power curve for some abilities. This doesn't necessarily have to be the way it works (for an ability that eventually grows to 3/day, you could just get that all at once) List Of All Abilities From Base Classes(Broken down for purchase at a cost of one feat) Absorb Spell AC Bonus Acrobatic Charge Advanced Learning Animal Companion Abilities level based from the level you purchased it at Any Skill (+1) Grows to +4 Arcane Sight Armor Proficiency Armored Casting Aura of Courage Aura of (Good,Evil,Law,Chaos) Your choice of what aura type Aura of Unluck Battle Fortitude (per +1) Blindsense Blindsight Camouflage Chastise Spirits Combat Style Critical - Weakening Critical - Wounding Curse - Dire Curse - Greater Curse (1/day) Grows to 3/day Damage Reduction 1 (no weakness) Damage Reduction 2 Choose a weakness for the damage reduction (cold iron, silver, ect...) Deceive Item Defensive Roll (1/day) Detect Evil (at will) Detect Magic (at will) Detect Spirits Dimension Door (1/day) Discover Spells Disease Immunity Dodge Bonus (per +1) Domain Bonus Spells Domain Powers Eldritch Blast (per 1d6 of damage) Elemental Focus Elemental Mastery Endurance Energy Resistance Choose two types of energy resistance with +10 (fire, electricity, ect...) Ethereal Form (1 Round/level) Exorcism Fast Healing State Fast Move Favored Enemy (1 enemy) Grows to 2 favored enemies Favored of the Spirits Flawless Stride Flurry of Blows Fly Free Movement Frightful Presence Gain Subtype Generic Bonus Feat Ghost Warrior Great Leap Guide Magic Hide in Plain Sight Imbue Item Immune (Poison) Improved Flanking Indomitable Will Insightful Strike Invocation Ki - Dodge Ki - Ethereal Jaunt Ki - Ethereal Sight Ki - Ethereal Strike Ki - Invisibility Ki - Power Requisite for all other Ki abilities Uses are level based from the level you purchased it at Ki - Scry Resistance Ki - Strike Starts with magic, grows to law and adamantine Knowledge, Bardic Lay on Hands Limited Bonus Feat Lucky Magic Circle Against Spirits Music - Countersong Music - Facinate Music - Inspire Courage (+1) grows to +4 Music - Inspire Greatness Music - Inspire Heroics Music - Song of Freedom Music - Suggestion Music - Suggestion, Mass Music, Bardic Requisite for all other Music abilities Uses are level based from the level you purchased it at Nature Sense Opportunist Poison Use Protection From Spirits Quick Draw Quivering Palm Rage - Greater Rage - Mighty Rage - Tireless Rage (1/day) Grows to 3/day Raise Dead (1/day) Remove Disease (1/week) Grows to 2/week Resist Nature's Lure Saves - Bonus Bonus to your saves based on one of your stats (possibly restricted to Cha) Saves - Improved Effect Choose which of your saves behaves with an effect like Evasion or Mettle May be taken twice to gain Improved Evasion / Mettle Scribe Scroll Sense Elements Shadow Walk (1/day) Shield Proficiency Skill Mastery Choose 3 skills to be a master of. Skirmish Per 1d6 damage and Ac +1 Gained at the same time, unlike normal Scouts Slippery Mind Slow Fall (10 ft) Grows to 100 ft Smite (1/day) Grows to 2/day Choose your smite type(evil, chaos, ect...) Sneak Attack - Crippling Sneak Attack (per 1d6 of damage) Speak All Languages Special Mount Abilities level based from the level you purchased it at Speed Climb Spell Resistance Spell Secret (+ 1 Taboo) Spirit Guide Staredown Staredown, Mass Steal Energy Resistance Per 10 points of energy resistance you can take in one action Steal Spell One feat per level of spells you can steal Steal Spell Effect Steal Spell Resistance Steall Spell Like Ability Still Mind Sudden Empower Sudden Enlarge Sudden Maximize Sudden Widen Summon Familiar Abilities level based from the level you purchased it at Thousand Faces Timeless Body Track May be purchased twice for the equivalent of Swift Tracker Trackless Step Trap Sense (+1) Grows to +2 Trapfinding Turn Undead Power is level based from the level you purchased it at Unarmed Strike Uncanny Dodge May be purchased twice for Improved Uncanny Dodge Warmage Edge Watchful Spirit Weaken Spirits Weapon Finesse Weapon Focus Weapon Proficiency Weapon Proficiency - Exotic Weapon Specialization Wholeness of Body Wild Empathy Wild Shape (1/day) Grows to 3/day Wild Shape (Elemental) (1/day) Grows to 3/day Wild Shape (Huge Elemental) Wild Shape (Huge) Wild Shape (Large) Wild Shape (Plant) Wild Shape (Tiny) As an example of this in application, we could try and construct a common rogue from the list of abilities represented and using the Expert example I listed above. Rogue Example 23 feats to start with 10 feats spent for 10 levels of Sneak Attack 1 feat spent for Saves - Improved Effect (the equivalent of Evasion) 4 feats spent for the various Rogue Special Abilities. 3 feats spent for Trap Sense 1 feat spent for Trapfinding 2 feats spent for Uncanny Dodge 1 feat spent for Light Armor Proficiency 1 feat spent for Simple Weapon Proficiency This takes care of pretty much all the abilities for the rogue and the only thing that we would come up missing is some of extra weapons that Rogues have access to outside Simple Weapons. Obviously, not all of the classes work out this well, as some like Druids honestly just have too many abilities. In addition, several of the new Base Classes proposed by the Complete line of books are commonly over the limit. However, there are several (like Hexblades and Samurai) which got shafted by their creators and actually get a boost in this system. Further Issues to Consider Whew. With all of that done, there are still a few things that need to be worked out with the system. One of them is how to handle the breakdown between feats that a character gains as they progress in levels and those that they gain at the start of adventuring. One thought I've had on the subject, is that maybe everybody starts with around 6-8 feats that they can use to buy their initial allotment of armor, weapon, and spell proficiencies. The cap for this initial number would have to be 8, as that is the fewest number of feats someone will end up with if they max all the other categories. This could also be optional, as for some classes it would be beneficial to hold off on using feats until they could meet some higher prerequisites. The other thing to worry about is whether things like restrictions ought to be allowed. Several of the core classes in the PHB are heavily premised on the idea that they use restrictions to allow for their otherwise heavy powerset. However, a good system of keeping this in check would need to be put in place to make sure that people couldn't take spell caster or fighting restrictions, when they had no intention of ever doing those things. IE, the restrictions need to actually "restrict" them. One way of doing this might be to tie restrictions to the feats at purchasing. It could be an option that if you want to take a restriction, then you may do so while purchasing a related feat, and that feat then becomes free. Things like "code of conduct", "may only use a certain weapon", "no armor while casting", "no armor while fighting", "no metal", and "secrets {druid language}" could then all be integrated and tied into their respective feats. The armor restrictions in particular might work well with a tiered set of restrictions in this system, as then groups like Monks and Mages could get 3 free feats out of them if they went all the way to "no armor to use any abilities", while others like Barbarians might get 1 free feat for just going to "no armor heavier than Medium to use abilities".
Jeweler 08-29-06, 08:35 PM	For purposes of feats and the number for spells, weapons, and armor, ar ewe talking about making them free, or just how many they should have based on "pre made" classes? If your talking about making them free, id advise against it, thats 12 to 16 extra points there well spent on other things, HP, saves, all that, or even other feats. Oh and not you say that with the HD, you say its 2 points for each upgrade (i included D2 as an upgrade as well), but this doesnt account for how you got 30 points from a D10. But it makes more sense to do the die type times 3 anyways, means drastically more points spent on HP and not feats. Im going to try out your feat system by creating a monk "template" class and then creating a specific "teaching", i was playing Jade Empire, xbox game, pretty good, going to see if it can, within normal bounds, do some justice to my character and her "teachings".
Araes 08-30-06, 01:23 PM	Hey Jeweler, thanks for the catch on the pricing of the HD. I managed to not only type in a wrong number for what I was thinking in my head, but also to have my mental picture be wrong. If calculating price by hit die, it actually comes out to 6 points per hit die upgrade (counting the jump from nothing to d2), although its easier to just multiply the sides of the die you want to roll by three. IE: d2 = 6, d4 = 12, d6 = 18, d8 = 24, d10 = 30, d12 = 36. As far as making a Monk goes, I think that it should be pretty close to possible, as making a Monk would be a character with: BAB - 3 - 18 points HD - d8 - 18 points Saves - 3 - 15 points Skills - 4 - 4 points This leaves you with points for 19 feats left over. Using my distribution of points that I have created though, they are going to require 23 feats to gain every ability in their arsenal. However, using the optional restrictions that I listed above, you could take three levels of armor restriction (can't use abilities with armor), and one alignment restriction (lose abilities if alignment changes). This would give you 4 free feats to play with, which would then put you right up to the perfect number for a Monk of 23. Hope you have some success replicating the other teachings, as I unfortunately don't know what those are, so its a bit more difficult to give advice.
Jeweler 08-30-06, 02:05 PM	Don't think i need the extra feats, although i will have the restriction (alignment) there because it fits with my character. I forgot aboutthe armor restrictions, that means i have 4 vacant feats, i got exactly 100 points, had 3 extra skills over the limit for only 4 skill points a level, so i figured just add in that extra point, even though i didnt give the class the extra skill point a level. I don't know how to do the table form, so im just going to put down the levels that i have abilities placed for, and my AC bonus chart because i changed it (made it increase twice as fast, took the feat twice, not sure if i could do that though).
TúrintheMormegil 08-30-06, 04:21 PM	Totally awesome breakdown of the class system. Now that you have it, it seems weird in my eyes that class creation doesn't normally work this way (with the eleven common archetypes given as examples to ease play for those who want to cut down on the time investment). Three questions are raised: First, do you need to create the entire class beforehand? You will have to decide on HD, BAB, Skills and # of Feats beforehand, but will you have to decide the actual feats? Second, how about the order in which you gain feats? Can you make a front- or backloaded class, or do they have to be arranged evenly across the levels? Third, will multiclassing be allowed? If you can choose the feats as they come up, it might not seem to matter much, but one might decide after a few levels that a slightly higher or lower number of skills, hit points or attack bonus is desired. Note that if multiclassing is allowed but a class needs to be fully designed beforehand, mixing abilities becomes difficult: you might want to get "level three spells in the Audio tradition" from the one class and "level four spells in the Audio tradition" from the other one, but if you decide later to vary the number of levels in each class ever so slightly, you might end up getting spell level four before spell level three. This would lead to the temptation of designing a completely new class for every level you gain, and take only one level in each. As a more general commentary, I think in the current setup, very close DM-observance of each class that is created will be necessary (for balance reasons), thus working against the modular, easily adaptable, freedom-based idea that this seems to be based on. However, ensuring balance without the aforementioned close observance would require some very tight restrictions (particularly in the manner of dividing feats over the levels) that would also limit the freedom that is the basis and motivation for this system. Do you agree that this might be a problem, and if so, do you have a solution? :tiphat: Túrin Edit: As for the feat choices, some of them could also easily be further generalized, such as "0-level spell as a spell-like ability useable at will" instead of detect magic, detect evil, etc., or "nth-level spell as a spell-like ability useable m times per day/week" instead of absorb spell, arcane sight, etc.
Araes 08-30-06, 10:06 PM	Jeweler's Monk Test I'm curious, is your monk one which is based around the basic monk's progression as given in the PHB and then just diverges on its fluff and other choices, or is it one that you created as a completely seperate base class option for monks using the standard creation rules? Also, as far as the AC bonus feat is concerned, one of its restrictions is that it shouldn't be taken multiple times. The vast majority of skills are this way in fact, and only a few (mostly noted already) are multiple purchase options. Turin's Commentary and Questions Thank you for you comment and I was actually surprised myself at how well it seemed to adapt itself to the base classes when I got right down to it. There are only a few (Druids are prime) that have a tough time adapting, and even they could be made if people are willing to take a bit of a hit on spellcasting feats. Now questions: 1. My conception is that you would not have to plan out the class completely beforehand if you were going to create one. You would not be required to preselect all of your feats and could leave those choices up in the air until you reached the level where they were available. In effect, pretty much all abilities would become normal bonus feat slots. 2. On the order in which you gain feats, I've been mulling this over a decent amount myself. My thought have been to have a clean math progression by which the placement of feats could be regulated. This may take some work, to make sure that it works out so that people could actually use all of the feats they'd be getting at particular levels, but from what I've seen, most classes generally seem to spread their feats out fairly evenly across the 20 levels. As such, it seems that the ideal system would then be that however many feats a person has must be laid out in an even spread across the levels. 3. I hadn't actually considered multiclassing within this system, but I guess it needs to be talked about. Given the answers to the two previous questions, I don't see too much problem in multiclassing, as there would be a prescribed pattern for feat placement, which would limit the options for twinkery. In addition, if in testing we did find that there were problems with people trying to shift classes all the time, then there are some options which could be put into effect. One would be that numerous chains of extra classes could begin to compound experience penalties. IE, maybe 5 or 10% for every class after the second. Another option would be to make them less potent, and simply reduce the number of points that a new multiclass had to work with. Perhaps reducing the total from 100 by 5 or 10 point instead. As far as close observance of the character creation process goes, I do think that it will probably be necessary in some cases, as any skill type of system is naturally prone to heavy min/maxing behavior. However, once I figure out what all the limits on the various abilities should be, then the limits for twinkery will probably be severely reduced. Much like powerful normal feats such as Whirlwind Attack or Great Cleave, powerful character abilities should only be accessible after a certain chain of prerequisites have been obtained. The only hard part of that is choosing what progressions to base some requirements off of. The two most natural seem to be saves and skills, as everybody is going to have at least one good save and some skills. Plus, they gain at a steady rate, so they would effectively be level based without crossing the normal 3rd Ed. restriction of basing a feat on character level. On the feat choices, yeah, I noticed too that several of the feat choices could probably be clumped together into easy categories like you mentioned. In fact, on the spell-like abilities, you might even be able to make chains where you could say something like: Ability: Spell-Like Ability of level N, usuable M times per day. Prereqs: Must have X number of level N-1 abilities. Possibly might want to have a further restriction that the prior abilities be in the same path as well. IE, audio, image, ect... Then, if people were really into that type of ultra specialized character, they could chain their way all the way up to 9th level abilities.
TúrintheMormegil 08-31-06, 06:18 AM	Then, if people were really into that type of ultra specialized character, they could chain their way all the way up to 9th level abilities. Which would effectively be indistinguishable from the warlock (so you might want to also merge this). However, some classes have a very specialized spell-like ability that does not work off previous advancement in the appropriate magic type, but rather off a supernatural extension of their natural special abilities. I.e. dimension door 3/day for a monk or rogue type character without other spells or spell-like abilities. So you might want to have different types of spell-like ability feats: one requiring lower level spell-like abilities (as you said), one requiring some advancement in the appropriate type of magic, and a more generic kind that would also be available to otherwise magicless characters. Túrin Edit: Three other thoughts. First, why did you allow lower limits than we have precedence for (specifically, why do you allow d2 Hit Dice and +1/4 BAB progression)? Or to ask basically the same question from the other side: why are Hit Dice higher than 12 and BAB progressions higher than +1 disallowed. Same question (but less so) goes for skills. Speaking of skills, isn't buying skills a bit cheap? This is just a gut feeling, but it seems everyone could take 6 or 8 skills without giving up anything significant. On another note, does Int still apply to the number of skills per level? Last, about those initial feats. Getting 8 feats right away seems a bit too much (I know they don't come for free, but still). Even a fighter (who needs three armour, one shield and two weapon proficiencies by core DnD) would only need 6 of those, most would need less. Their first level bonus feat doesn't count: depending on the number of feats you have left, you may or may not get an extra feat at level one, but it shouldn't be extra.
Jeweler 09-01-06, 01:43 PM	On the monk class Basically i took a base monk design, flurry of blows, ac bonus, unarmed damage, the 1st, 2nd, and 6th level bonus feats, and the speed increase and used that as a template. Effectively i took the core abilities of the monk class, skills, saves, attack bonus, hit die, and the training stuff (all those feats i mentioned), and then added different abilities, different from the ones that the standard D&D monk has. I suspect that with the ability to make ones own classes, someone would want to have the monk basis with a more specialized training, such as different abilities or powers. Monk "Profile" D8 (24) 4 skills/level (4) 3 good saves (15) average base attack (15/10/5) (18) Flurry of blows Unarmed Strike Ac bonus Speed Bonus Slow Fall Bonus feats (1st, 2nd, 6th) Total Feats (16) Total Points 77 Then those left over points can be used for other abilities, id let the person decide on the restriction, although id make the restriction on armor down to atleast "only light" and make it so the monk needs an alignment, or loyalty if your playing with that system. Anyways... After that those points, the 23 of them left, are basically the training that makes up the "style" of the monk, specific way he/she was trained. Thats nto including the restriction points, with those it would be atleast 29, with standard monk restrictions it would be 31. My monk "style" uses all the normal monk restrictions, except the alignment is changed to evil, or loyalty to "Way of the Closed Fist". 1st: Combat reflexes (bonus feat), Wholeness of Body 2nd: Stunning fist (bonus feat), Evasion 3rd: Eldritch Blast (1d6, fists only, only on full attack, not in combination with flurry of blows) 4th: Slow Fall (20ft.) 6th: Deflect Arrows (bonus feat), Slow Fall (30ft.), Eldritch Blast (2D6) 8th: Skill Mastery (intimidation), Slowfall (40ft) 9th: Eldritch Blast (3D6) 10th: Slowfall (50ft) 12th: Eldritch Blast (4D6) Skill Mastery (Jump, Tumble), Slowfall (60ft) 14th:Slowfall (70ft) 16th: Slowfall (80ft) 18th: Slowfall (90ft) 20th: Slowfall (any distance), Outsider (also DR/magic) 23 (but i count the outsider as 2 abilities pointwise because it gives the DR) points in abilities, so total of 102.
Araes 09-01-06, 04:02 PM	Jeweler's Monk Test Hmm, on your Monk that you've laid out, I'm only counting 9 extra abilities, although there is a question about how much DR you have, and why you split up the Skill Mastery to two different places. Wholeness of Body Evasion Eldritch Blast (4) Skill Mastery Outsider Type Change DR/magic Otherwise, looks good. Interesting choice on doing the eldritch blast with the fists though, as I think that it may be illegal in the long run. Normally it requires a touch attack action of its own to even work. You're basically trying to get free sneak attack damage without having to do the sneak attacks. Turin's Questions / Comments 1. With regards to the lower limits, in the case of the hit dice, there is actually precedent for a d2 hit die, as the prestige class Mystic Theurge used to be a d2 class up until the 3.5 revision. However, since we've made the revision, I guess the argument could be that they've done away with it. On the base attack bonus, you do make a good point, as that would be giving somebody who wanted to twink that many more points to play with if they were willing to take the hit. Perhaps what could be done, would be to say that for standard character creation, the bounds would be the normal game ones (10-20 for BAB and d4 - d12 for HD), and then, as optional rules, adventurous DMs could let their players go down to d2 HD's and 5 BAB's or up to some arbitrary limit on BAB and HD. The only problem with HD is that there stops being a nice logical progression after d12, as we can't make d14's and d16's. Perhaps we could instead do 2d6, 2d8, ect... after that point, like they do for size increases, or in fact, just refer them to the damage tables for increasing weapons sizes. 2. As far as the skills go, the reason that I ended up doing them that cheaply was that it was the number indicated by my class decomposition. I've redone the numbers on it several times trying different methods of breaking up the points, reassigning feats, ect..., and throughout all of them skills always come up as being nearly worthless. Usually about half of what a standard feat costs. Skill Selection (choice of class skills) is actually sooo worthless, that I just decided to tack it onto the selection of Skills/Level as it made no difference. The one thing that does need to be kept in mind though for the skills is that there is a natural balance with available feats that characters will be always playing against. For every two skills/level, you're basically giving up a feat or ability you could have had. Player's (for the most part), are going to naturally want to maximize the number of feats that they can get over a character's lifetime, so they'll take only as many skills as they feel they "have" to have before they devote the rest to feats. Plus, having a vast number of skills has a high rolloff in value/cost after a point, since there is really just a core of highly useful and sought after skills, after beyond that point its kind of fluff. 3. The only reason why I thought about pushing the number as high as 9 is that some classes need that many feats to complete their whole selection depending on how you break it down. Clerics - 9 Light, Medium, Heavy Armor Simple Weapons Shields (2) Domain Powers Bonus Spells Per Level Turning Fighter - 7 Light, Medium, Heavy Armor Simple, Martial Weapons Shields, Tower Shields Paladin - 7 Light, Medium, Heavy Armor Simple, Martial Weapons Shields Companion (The thought on this is that like other companions, if you delay then you can get a more powerful companion, so perhaps all companions need to be purchased at level 1 so that their power can start to acrue until the point when you decide to take them.) In fact, of the normal PHB classes, there are three classes that (might) need more than 6, four classes that need between 5-6, and four classes that need less than 5. Kind of a tough call as to where to make the break. Six seems like the most natural spot to me though.
Jeweler 09-02-06, 12:06 AM	I forgot about the eldritch's touch attack roll, : ), wasnt trying to twink that, really. Let me redefine it for this class: Chi Focus (Eldritch Blast) (su): The Silver Phoenix monk can focus innate soul energy into there unarmed attacks. This focus of power needs more time than there normal pummel of attacks, and therefore can only be used on a full attack action with her fists, and not with a flurry of blows action (even though flurry of blows is a full attack action). The monk most hit as normal for an attack action, and must do physical damage before the soul energy deals its damage. Im not sure whether i should make it only on the first attack or not, but they cant use it with flurry, they still have to actual damage first (so its less effective against DR creatures). Ill play test it, make up some fights between a 4th level monk with this class and some enemies. And you rright there are only 9 extra feats, which means im way off on points, 13 points i still have left, ill do the playtesting see what happens.
TúrintheMormegil 09-20-06, 04:13 PM	So how's it going? Got anything new? Playtested anything perhaps?
Araes 10-13-06, 08:30 PM	Unfortunately no, been a rather long dry spell here for quite a while. Part of it is simply the move, adjusting to a completely new locale, that kind of thing, but otherwise its just that my mind has been in a completely different place creatively - mostly since I haven't had the time to devote to finding a good gaming group to get me back in the flow of it. May change in a little bit here, but for now this thing is kind of on hiatus for me. I've got it all saved in case they nuke it, but I hope to add more.
Sliversun 10-25-06, 07:26 AM	Hey, what's wrong with the links on page one? Also, when do you think you'll actually make a list of races?
Araes 10-26-06, 04:01 AM	Odd, I guess they made a change with the forums so that the old style of linking both thread and post number with a single Thread tag no longer works. Either way, fixed now to use just simple Post tags. However, you apparently can only look at posts in single units now. One good thing though, if you click the "thread" link in the upper right though it will take you to that place in the thread. Bugger, I'll have to see if there's a new format I can apply which will make it work like it used to. Now, as far as the races go, I was actually a big fan of the racial design ideas that were discussed by me, Jeweler, and Turin for quite a while. I think the summary that I made in The Varied Races of Jeweler does a fairly good job of describing what I'm heading for. However, I admit that it still needs some more work. The 5-10 posts above it from Races of People Redo onward detail some of our thought process getting there. I hadn't been working on it for quite a while, as I got distracted by the classes and magic crunch, but thank you for reminding me of it. I can't work on it until after saturday probably, what with Halloween coming up and all, but after that I'll sit down and see what I can bang out.
Jeweler 11-02-06, 07:15 PM	Wow, I have not been on here in so long. At least it seems nothing much has happened while i was gone, thankfully i dont have to read like three pages before i can post, although that might have been nice too. So looking forward to posting in this thread again, hopefully we will get some stuff done, I am looking into playing in the setting without telling my group, keep the standard D&D rules for right now, as we have come up with nothing completely solid yet, or firm enough to use for beta yet. We will see how this works out, i think im going to put them on a high magic, so major ley line/fey area, with some tech geniuses that rival da vinci in all of his glory, and with magic on there side they could build a lot of the stuff da vinci drew, and more and better stuff too. A relatively good sized land, possibly 200-300 miles long and about 50 or so wide, most of the land is dominated by large ancient trees that provide shelter for all sorts of races. There are a few lakes amongst the ancient forest, and they flood regularily, causing the surrounding area to stay in a continual state of marshlands. This marshland area condenses all the water in it into two different rivers, one if which has a human city about half way down the river from the marshlands. These marshlands, called the Dreary Swamps (need a much better name), are home to much life, including some tribes of lizard folk and even a tribe or two of orcs and goblins. Off to the west of the Ancient Forest and its dismal water holes, are a range of mountains which block off all water from the other side, causing it to become a dry desert with few oasises. The deserts are home to a civilization not unlike the egyptians and they are great in the ways of water and glass magic, making magnificient glass cities with many spouted fountains. The cities, even though being of glass, are resilent to the sand storms and attacks of the few harsh raiders which live in the desert with this civilization. This civilization (needs a name also) are digging a river and filling it with there magic as to create a transportation line to the human city within the forest, as this is the way they travel from one of there cities to the next, magical rivers which ebb and flow at the will of grand magicians and merfolk. The desert civilization his home to humans, desert elves (or faeruin sun elves), merfolk, and a smudgling of other races, such as drow and dwarves from the mountains. The mountain races, skilled in metal work and removing stone, are great allies with both the races of the forest, needed for there wood to use as fuel for steam engine machines, and the desertfolk, liked for there harty nature and artistic workmanship in such crafts as crystal and gem cutting. They are helping to demolish a path through the mountain suitable for a river to pass through to the marshes and later to the humans and elves of the shaded lands. The dwarves are the most numerous of the mountain folk, as they are the best suited for mountain life, but there are a few tribes of mostly barbaric humans and also drow deep within the mountains. They are at peace with the humans and elves, but only because they have done nothing to either of the races to gain there ire or scorn. If they were to ever try and kill the elves or humans they would gain the hatred of all, as had happened in times long forgotten before the sphere. So thats about all i have, seems very corny to me, how about everyone else? I mean, we got average humans, cant get past them though, who are running along with the elves and there high magic abilities, taking that from them. They are developing tech based on the dwarves machines, and in the west the humans there are masters of magic and technology, so the forest ones are a little behind i guess. Oh well, I don't care, this is like a starter campaign for a friend who is just getting into D&D, so it should be kinda corny. Can't wait to hear back from you Araes, sorry I have been gone.
Araes 11-02-06, 07:36 PM	Hey Jeweler, good to hear from you as well. Just got back from a singing gig, surprised we were so close in time. Was wondering whether you looked at this thread much anymore. Like I promised the poster above my last one, I am working on getting the races into a nice presentable form with a decent amout of balance and such right now. I've basically broken all of the racial backgrounds into their types by kingdom, phylum, ect... (where possible, some are magical) and then I've tried to have like one animal background from each class or family depending on how far they're divided. Right now, I'm about half way through figuring out the stat mods for the races, and after that I need to think about abilities. What I'm considering as far as the methodology is something pretty close to what you suggested before, but a little bit stricter. Here's what I've got. There will still be 6 selections to complete a race. At any time you may take a selection in a 1st or 2nd rank racial choice. Choice 1 will be a pre-req for choice 3 and choice 2 will be for 4. Ability score mods are always a choice 3, and strong abilities are always a 4. Since 3 is usually a minor stat bonus overall, (avg right now is +2 mental), choice 1 abilities will be weak, but not negative. Since 4 is usually a strong or movement ability (like flight/burrow), then choice 2 abilities will often be a negative pre-req, otherwise it will be like a choice 1. If a player takes four of their selections in the same race, then they have the choice to spend the remaining two on a racial feat. Otherwise, they may purchase abilities like normal (choice 1 or 2 anytime, choice 3 or 4 with the proper pre-req)
Jeweler 11-02-06, 10:04 PM	Thats strange, although your back on the east coast right? It is good to see the overall idea of my races, and it seems a decent portion of my structure, was used, I'm happy with that as i was not sure whether it was wholly balanced or not, although your stat bonus changes to make them slot 3 was a good movement in my opinion. Yeah i just haven't been on in a while, beginning of high school and all, then another set of forums took up my time, and then today was like 'I should really go and check on Indistiniguishable from magic, see if they have any new ideas.' And since you have been moving we didn't which is fine for me too, because on the spot i thought about a island, or at least a rudimentry form of one, 15 minutes or so. Is the size scale right on that island or should it be bigger/smaller? Your class break down system seems to work quite well though as one of my friends created a class and it did a pretty good representation of what the class could do, fighting wise. So I have told my friends so far, create all the classes you like, i want to see them so i can check your system and then test how they do against something of an equal point value and level. So thats class and race system it seems that are going well, then we need spell system which i really have no suggestions beyond what we have already said with the feats and and different branches, except that i think instead of spell slots we should use spell points, magicka, whatever you like to call it. The feats give a certain amount of mana to be used, and have something akin to the 'extra spell slot' from complete arcane, where it gives more spell points based on level. I see the psionics system for 'psi points' and there augmentability a quite useful baseline for our spell system, as it has the basis for what we seem to want and need, flexibility. You know why i love this thread so much, and have always come back to it, we are changing the entire face of D&D, all the rules and all the flexible nature that isn't really in D&D, maybe, if we really really really really get lucky (yeah big big dreams i know) we will have made the 4th edition by the time it is ready to come out. :D i think that would be awesome, your (our?) system becoming the rules for 4th edition and the main campaign setting, like faerun and greyhawk use to be. I'm such a dreamer though :) its a good thing occasionally.
Araes 11-02-06, 11:46 PM	Hey Jeweler, first off, in reply to your question about the size of the island: I would say that you should probably make it a bigger place if you want to have that much society, ecosystem, weather patterns, ect... For example, my old state, Idaho, was about 50 miles wide at its tip, and about 300 wide at its bottom. At the tip, that 50 miles was completely dominated by the mountain ranges there. Admittedly, these are the Rocky's and Blue Mountains, but still, it needs to be wider to give the weather patterns time to emerge and generate deserts. The Sierra Nevadas are a good example of natural examples you could look at where mountains are generating deserts. My guess would be a couple hundred miles wide, as this would also give you more room for civilization. Cities naturally need space too and arrable land so their citizens can support the big metropolis. Now, on the comment about magic, I agree with pretty much everything you said and particularly that we ought to use the spell point system. I liked Turin's suggestion up thread when he made that and it seems like the easiest drop in solution that players will already recognize. That's my next thing to tackle after I get the races to something I like. Far as the dreaming goes, keep at it. I hold no illusions that anyone from WotC even reads this thread or would consider ideas from this worth putting into 4th Ed. But, then again, if we shill the product hard who knows, maybe great things will happen. Finally, here's the meat of what I've been working on. Going to keep going back in and filling in stuff as I get it done, but for now this is what I'm considering. At the moment, obviously not in a full state of completion. Going to use a lot of your suggestions for abilities, just need to put them in. Edit Oh, and if you have more, feel free to throw them out there. Bear Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all swim / climb checks Choice 2: Toughness Choice 3: +4 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Con, -2 Int, -4 Cha Choice 4: Rage 1/day R. Feat: Improved Grab Bat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all spot / listen checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Int Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Blindsense Cat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all move silently / hide checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapons - 2 Claws (1d4 + 1/2 Str) R. Feat: Pounce Primate Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 to Int, Wis, or Cha (Civilization or Layer Dependent) Choice 4: +4 skill points at first level, +1 skill point there after R. Feat: Feat of Choice Mole Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all appraise checks, +4 racial bonus to all survival checks underground Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Con, +2 Int Choice 4: Burrow 10ft (stable tunnels) R. Feat: +1 CL for all spells with the "Earth" descriptor, -2 racial minus to all spot / search checks Rabbit Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all diplomacy / move silently checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: +20 land speed and +4 racial bonus to all jump checks R. Feat: Cat's Grace (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Wolf Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all intimidate / handle animal checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapon - Bite (1d6 + Str) R. Feat: Scent Horse Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all listen / spot checks. Choice 2: Run Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Int Choice 4: Four legs - Your form has four legs like a centaur, giving it the bonuses to balance, carrying capacity, ect... R. Feat: Endurance Rat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all climb / balance checks Choice 2: Escape Artist Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapons - 2 Claws (1d4 + 1/2 Str) R. Feat: Natural Poison - Injury (DC 10 + 1/2 Con + 1/2 CL) , Natural Weapons Only, ID (1d4 Str), SD (1d4 Con) Wolverine Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to intimidate and Cold Resistance 2 Choice 2: Improved Unarmed Combat Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Cha, +2 Str, -4 Wis Choice 4: Rage 1/day R. Feat: Badger Choice 1: Choice 2: Berserker (as Rage(Ex) from MM) Choice 3: -2 Str, +4 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: Burrow 10ft R. Feat: Owl Choice 1: Low Light Vision Choice 2: +2 racial bonus to any two knowledge skill checks of choice Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Wis Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Spell Level Feat of choice Hawk Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all Spot / Search checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Beak (1d4 + 1/2 Str) Choice 3: +4 Dex, -2 Con, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Diving Charge Raven Choice 1: +1 DC for spells of the Illusion school Choice 2: Comprehend Languages (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: +2 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: See Invisibility (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Eagle Choice 1: +4 racial bonus to all spot checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Beak (1d4 + 1/2 Str) Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Wis, -4 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Flyby Attack Dove Choice 1: Sanctuary (2 / day ) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Con, -2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Cure Moderate Wounds (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Frog Choice 1: Jump (2 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapons - Tongue Attack (1d6 + 1/2 Str) (10ft. reach) R. Feat: Natural Poison - Contact (DC 10 + 1/2 Con + 1/2 CL), Skin Contact, ID (1d2 Con), SD (Paralysis) Salamander Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Int, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fire Resistance 4 R. Feat: Scorching Ray (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Ant Choice 1: Can carry loads as if one size category larger Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +4 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Con, -4 Int, -2 Cha Choice 4: Burrow 10ft (stable tunnels) R. Feat: Telepathy (40 ft, need common language) Mantis Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all hide / concentration checks Choice 2: True Strike (1 / day ) (self only) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: +4 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, -4 Wis Choice 4: +4 racial bonus to all initiative checks R. Feat: Pounce Spider Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all climb / move silently checks Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Int, +2 Wis Choice 4: Web (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) R. Feat: Spider Climb (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Wasp Choice 1: Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Swarmfighting (No restriction on allies possessing Swarmfighting) Beetle Choice 1: Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Horn (1d6 + 1/2 Str) Choice 3: +2 Str, -4 Dex, +4 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: +2 natural armor bonus, +4 when prone R. Feat: Scorpion Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all hide / intimidate checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Stinger (1d4 + 1/2 Str) (10 ft reach) Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: +10 land speed R. Feat: Natural Poison, Injury (DC 10 + 1/2 Con + 1/2 CL), Stinger Only, ID (1d2 Con), SD (Paralysis) Centipeed Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all climb / balance checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Dex, -4 Int, +2 Wis Choice 4: Quadruple standary carrying capacity for your size and strength R. Feat: Fly Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all spot / search checks. Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Iron Stomach (You possess a +2 racial bonus on all saves vs poison and may subsist on food which has become rotten with no penalty) Moth Choice 1: Choice 2: Light sensitivity (-1 to all checks in bright light such as daylight, natural or the spell) Choice 3: +2 Int, -2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Snake Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all bluff / intimidate checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +4 Int, -2 Wis Choice 4: R. Feat: Dragon Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Chameleon Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all disguise / hide checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Wis Choice 4: Extra Appendage - Tongue (Does no damage, and may not be used for fine manipulation, but has a reach of 10ft, and may snatch inanimate objects up to a quarter of your light load carrying capacity and drag objects up to half your light load carrying capacity. May also grapple and trip at a distance, but with a -5 penalty.) R. Feat: Independent Eyes (Your eyes may look in two different directions at the same time. You effectively possess 360 degree, spherical vision around your body. You, however, may still be flanked due to the lack of focusing ability while looking in two directions.) Lizard Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int, +4 Wis Choice 4: R. Feat: Alligator Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +4 Str, -4 Dex, +2 Int Choice 4: Natural Weapon - Bite (1d6 + Str) R. Feat: Turtle Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Wis Choice 4: +2 natural armor bonus, +4 when prone. R. Feat: Shark Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Con, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Octopus Choice 1: Choice 2: Hydration - Octopi need twice the amount of water normal characters do to survive. Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Int, -2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Long Reach - Your natural arms are flexible and long, giving you an extra +5 reach in combat. R. Feat: Ray Choice 1: Shocking Grasp, 2/day (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Con, +2 Int Choice 4: R. Feat: Eel Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Crab Choice 1: Choice 2: Shield (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: -2 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Int, -4 Wis Choice 4: +2 natural armor bonus, +4 when prone. R. Feat: Damage Reduction 1/- Dryad Choice 1: +4 racial bonus to survival checks in forest / jungle Choice 2: Tree Shape (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: -2 Dex, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Tree walk 100ft. 3/day R. Feat: +1 Caster Level for all spells with the "Plant" descriptor Nymph Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all diplomacy / handle animal checks Choice 2: Wild Empathy Choice 3: -2 Str, -2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +6 Cha Choice 4: +2 DC for all mind affecting spells and abilities R. Feat: Stunning Glance, 1/day (as the Nymph ability from the MM) Pixie Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all sleight of hand / escape artist checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +4 Dex, -4 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Glitterdust (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Treant Choice 1: +4 racial bonus to all knowledge (nature) / survival in forest checks Choice 2: -10 ft to movement speed, +2 natural armor bonus to AC Choice 3: +2 Str, -4 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Cha Choice 4: Double damage against objects R. Feat: Photosynthesis (2 hours of sunlight = full 8 hours rest and food for one day, needs water) Thorn Choice 1: Sleep (2 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Int, +2 Cha Choice 4: Spiked skin (+2 natural armor bonus to AC, attackers takes 1 point of damage from hitting character with natural weapons) R. Feat: Satyr Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all perform / gather information checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Con, -2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Doppleganger Choice 1: +2 to all disguise / escape artist checks Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Disguise Self (3 / day) R. Feat: Wild Shape (1 / day) as a racial feature Lycanthrope Special - Choose two full sets of racial types. Your body naturally switches between these two types based upon a preset cycle.
Sliversun 11-04-06, 02:21 AM	What about alignment? I was thinking instead of doing it in the old FR setting, where the majority of one races is good or evil (like the elves and drow for example), we could do it in the Eberron style (good members of 'bad race' evil members of 'good race'). What do you think?
Araes 11-04-06, 03:13 AM	Hey Silversun, well, one of the main problems with that is that there isn't really a defined alignment in the setting. That's actually one of the things that we're trying to target with this is the concept that everything is highly subjective. Alignment is basically a series of social patterns which have evolved throughout our development so that we can function as a society. Our definitions of good and evil are highly dependent upon where you originate from and what your cultural background are, so what may be good in one society, may be evil in another. As such, there isn't a defined set of G, N, L and L, N, C in an axis. However, there can most definitely be members of a society which go against the cultural norms of that society and are delving heavily into that particular society's shades of grey. But, there is no way for someone like a Paladin to look at someone and just say "that person is good, that person is evil, ect..." At the very, very limit, there might be a way for a person who is aligned with a particular diety to say, "this person adhere's strictly to my diety's tenets" (or doesn't) This is one of the reasons that several of the Creator faction's members seem quite questionable in their actions from a purely good/evil standpoint, and why many of the Usurpers are actually quite sympathetic from our common view.
Jeweler 11-04-06, 08:22 AM	The Usurpers like to look 'good' and kind, meaning they get more followers, which could increase the power of the Gods. I was thinking about that, the power increasing of Gods through more followers, and it makes sense for our setting, if everyone has the ability to cast spells, but does not know it and does not have the training to actually control the effects but still has the 'equipment' there, then the Gods could effectively use that person's 'magic equipment' to increase there own power, occasionally pulling on the power if need be to create grand effects. The way i see it is that its almost like having two, or more, processors in your computer, you can tell one processor to do this, and another to stay idle until these things come on. Its just something to think about as a lot of people and settings have this type of concept in it, 'the more followers you have the more powerful you are.' I need to make up the mythology for your gods in my setting, as they will be the key noticable difference for a long time in my new campaign. I might not use all of them though. Nice work on the race selection abilities, although some of those bonuses are like 0.0, i see why you put them 3rd choice. I met to take them yesterday so i could work on them, football game til like 10pm, but i ended up leaving them on the printer so i will work on them today, this time at an anime convention. : ) i am such a nerd, thats ok though. Oh i was looking at the psionics handbook the other day, i only see 4 displays that are really needed; Somatic, audio, material and mental. Somatic is movement, audio is all the bard-like stuff singing and poetry reading and drums, material is some sort of object that sets of the magical spark, and mental is imagination and where has it has the greatest effects its the hardest to cast, normally making it the one that gets other display forms cast with it. Beyond those 4 i do not think there is much needed, although we still need to figure out a way to create a flexible spell creation system, i have tried and tried and tried some more but i have never been able to do it. If anyone knows of one, let me know i would love to look at it.
Sliversun 11-05-06, 04:34 AM	BTW how do the robots and organic races of this setting interact with one another? Do they get along? Will there be races of sentient robots?
Araes 11-05-06, 05:51 PM	Hey Silversun, that's a relatively complicated question, but the short answer for both questions would be "yes". In general, the organic members of the Sphere view the robots as just other people in society. The robots are advanced enough that they possess most of the qualities that you or I would find in normal organics, so they can interact just like a regular person would. In a sense, the science has regressed enough with the collapse that its difficult for the organics to really categorize the robots as what they are. They are perceived as different, and by some groups treated as such (cultural groups, robot-towns, some racism in locations), but the people of the Sphere can't really say why they are different. Its much like in a normal setting how lizardmen might be treated in a human society. They're different, but they can only tell the superficial traits. However, there are also a few groups which have preserved some rather longer term feelings towards the robot community. As I alluded to during one of the story sections above, there was some anti-artificial life sentiment when the Sphere was constructed, and even some wide spread revolt when the first of the "Gods" made their transition over to digital sentience. As such, some of these groups have passed down their feelings towards all artificial life over the centuries, and a decent bit of that still lingers in the present state of the worlds. Also, there will be playable groups of robots, I just haven't figured out a good way to handle their types yet. I've thought of maybe borrowing some suggestions from the Wal-Mart thread, as they had some interesting thoughts about archetypes of construction which could have been built for specific purposes. The West End Games version of the Star Wars roleplaying system also used a similar concept and from what I've seen of that it worked fairly well.
Sliversun 11-06-06, 03:26 AM	Also, can Robots use magic? And when will the wiki (http://ifmcs.pbwiki.com) be updated?
Araes 11-07-06, 12:20 AM	Yes, as magic is basically just the expression of super advanced technology, robots can use "magic" in their own way. I've had some thoughts that the way that robots express magic might be different than the way that organics do, as the premise for the organics is that they have been engineered with the faculties for it over time, and then just forgotten what the true origin of their "magic" abilities were. However, at this time I'm not sure of that, as it seems like it would be just as easy to build in some kind of receptor for a robot which would allow them to manipute the fields that bind the universe as it would be to develop that type of receptor in an organic which could be passed down by birth. As far as the Wiki goes, right now its honestly just a matter of time. I'm trying to do research at the same time that I'm writing this, so my hours can only be devoted so much to progress in the setting. However, it is a Wiki, so quite honestly, if anyone would like to contribute, and start posting condensed portions of the information contained in this thread to the Wiki, I'd be all for it. Otherwise, the best I can offer is "when I have the time". I'm glad you have so many questions for the setting though, as they do spark thought, work, and concerete answers from me which is needed in some cases.
Sliversun 11-07-06, 03:14 AM	Thanks! :) Maybe you can give robots some sort of liquid organic compond that flows through them like blood. It can also be their receptor for magic. But hey, that's just a though.
Araes 11-07-06, 11:54 PM	Did some more work on the races and posted it. The insects and lizards are still a bit weak, but the rest are shaping up nicely. On your comment Silversun, one thing that I'd actually like to avoid somewhat is making the robots too humanlike. I'm a big fan of types like on Battlestar Galactica, but at the same time, I think that more Asimovian style robots would fit the bill better for this particular setting. It is an interesting idea on the blood though. One thought is that this could be the method by which normal races actually access it themselves. Perhaps its not an actual organ or something like that, but instead a new type of cell that has been encouraged to grow in their bloodstream. This does verge dangerously close to the mitochondria nonsense from Star Wars though, which nearly everyone universally hated. Edit: Forgot to comment on your talk about the spell creation stuff Jeweler. Appologies. You may be right in the fact that we really only need four categories. I think I was just breaking it up into subsets of certain categories because it felt like certain ones were going to be absolutely ginormous and I wanted people to have to specialize a little bit, not just have Everything. Kind of like the Wheel of Time game if you've ever played that, where there are five, and your choice of styles and how you progress really affects what type of caster you end up being. On the freeform spell creation thought. I hadn't actually been thinking down those lines, as I was just thinking of recategorizing all of the spells that exist into the various subsets and then partitioning them out that way. However, its an interesting idea that you could instead have freeform spells and adding in levels of this or that would allow you to do various effects. I mean, for some things there is a definite progression. Damage for instance. However, for other things it might be just as hard as categorizing all the spells, because that's basically what you would have to do to find a list of all the various things you could add in at each level since spells are basically just limited by imagination and there's a good degree of fudging that goes on too. I already have a massive list of all the spells that I downloaded from somewhere. I think I may have linked to it in the thread, but I'll check.
Jeweler 11-09-06, 03:11 PM	Bear Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all swim / climb checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +4 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Con, -2 Int, -4 Cha Choice 4: Rage 1/day R. Feat: Improved Grab Bat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all spot / listen checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Int Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Blindsense Cat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all move silently / hide checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapons - 2 Claws (1d4 + 1/2 Str) R. Feat: Pounce Primate Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 to Int, Wis, or Cha (Player Choice) Choice 4: +4 skill points at first level, +1 skill point there after R. Feat: Feat of Choice Mole Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all appraise checks, +4 racial bonus to all survival checks underground Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Con, +2 Int Choice 4: Burrow 10ft (stable tunnels) R. Feat: +1 CL for all spells with the "Earth" descriptor, -2 racial minus to all spot / search checks Rabbit Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all listen / move silently checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Wolf Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapon - Bite (1d6 + Str) R. Feat: Scent Horse Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all listen / spot checks. Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Int Choice 4: Four legs - Your form has four legs like a centaur, giving it the bonuses to balance, carrying capacity, ect... R. Feat: Endurance Rat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all climb / balance checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Escape Artist Wolverine Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Cha Choice 4: Rage 1/day R. Feat: Badger Choice 1: Choice 2: Berserker (as Rage(Ex) from MM) Choice 3: -2 Str, +4 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: Burrow 10ft R. Feat: Owl Choice 1: Low Light Vision Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Wis Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Hover Hawk Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +4 Dex, -2 Con, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Diving Charge Raven Choice 1: +1 DC for spells of the Illusion school Choice 2: Comprehend Languages (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: +2 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: See Invisibility (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Eagle Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all Spot / Search checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Int, -4 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Flyby Attack Dove Choice 1: Sanctuary (2 / day ) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Con, -2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Cure Moderate Wounds (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Frog Choice 1: Jump (2 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapons - Tongue Attack (1d6 + 1/2 Str) (10ft. reach) R. Feat: Salamander Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Int, +2 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Ant Choice 1: Can carry loads as if one size category larger Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +4 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Con, -4 Int, -2 Cha Choice 4: Burrow 10ft (stable tunnels) R. Feat: Mantis Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all hide / concentration checks Choice 2: True Strike (1 / day ) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: +4 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, -4 Wis Choice 4: +4 racial bonus to all initiative checks R. Feat: Pounce Spider Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all climb / move silently checks Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Int, +2 Wis Choice 4: Web (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) R. Feat: Spider Climb (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Wasp Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Hive Mind (You may form a hive mind - See Book of Vile Darkness, Vermin Lord, and Hive Mind) Note: This seems too strong, I want something with this feel, but not quite that level of power. Beetle Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -4 Dex, +4 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: R. Feat: Scorpion Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: R. Feat: Centipeed Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Dex, -4 Int, +2 Wis Choice 4: R. Feat: Fly Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all spot / search checks. Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Iron Stomach (You possess a +2 racial bonus on all saves vs poison and may subsist on food which has become rotten with no penalty) Moth Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Int, -2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Snake Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all diplomacy / intimidate checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +4 Int, -2 Wis Choice 4: R. Feat: Dragon Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Chameleon Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all disguise / hide checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Wis Choice 4: Extra Appendage - Tongue (Does no damage, and may not be used for fine manipulation, but has a reach of 10ft, and may snatch inanimate objects up to a quarter of your light load carrying capacity and drag objects up to half your light load carrying capacity. May also grapple and trip at a distance, but with a -5 penalty.) R. Feat: Independent Eyes (Your eyes may look in two different directions at the same time. You effectively possess 360 degree, spherical vision around your body. You, however, may still be flanked due to the lack of focusing ability while looking in two directions.) Lizard Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int, +4 Wis Choice 4: R. Feat: Alligator Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +4 Str, -4 Dex, +2 Int Choice 4: Natural Weapon - Bite (1d6 + Str) R. Feat: Turtle Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Wis Choice 4: +2 natural armor bonus, +4 when prone. R. Feat: Shark Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Con, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Octopus Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Int, -2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Long Reach - Your natural arms are flexible and long, giving you an extra +5 reach in combat. R. Feat: Ray Choice 1: Shocking Grasp, 2/day (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Con, +2 Int Choice 4: R. Feat: Eel Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Crab Choice 1: Choice 2: Shield (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: -2 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Int, -4 Wis Choice 4: +2 natural armor bonus, +4 when prone. R. Feat: Damage Reduction 1/- Dryad Choice 1: +4 racial bonus to survival checks in forest / jungle Choice 2: Tree Shape (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: -2 Dex, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Tree walk 100ft. 3/day R. Feat: +1 Caster Level for all spells with the "Plant" descriptor Nymph Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all diplomacy / handle animal checks Choice 2: Wild Empathy Choice 3: -2 Str, -2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +6 Cha Choice 4: +2 DC for all mind affecting spells and abilities R. Feat: Stunning Glance, 1/day (as the Nymph ability from the MM) Pixie Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all sleight of hand / escape artist checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +4 Dex, -4 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Glitterdust (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Treant Choice 1: +4 racial bonus to all knowledge (nature) / survival in forest checks Choice 2: -10 ft to movement speed, +2 natural armor bonus to AC Choice 3: +2 Str, -4 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Cha Choice 4: Double damage against objects R. Feat: Photosynthesis (2 hours of sunlight = full 8 hours rest and food for one day, needs water) Thorn Choice 1: Sleep (2 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Int, +2 Cha Choice 4: Spiked skin (+2 natural armor bonus to AC, attackers takes 1 point of damage from hitting character with natural weapons) R. Feat: Satyr Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all perform / gather information checks Choice 2: Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Con, -2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: R. Feat: Doppleganger Choice 1: +2 to all disguise / escape artist checks Choice 2: Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Disguise Self (3 / day) R. Feat: Wild Shape (1 / day) as a racial feature Lycanthrope Special - Choose two full sets of racial types. Your body naturally switches between these two types based upon a preset cycle. Ok so I was working on it, but it seems most of the things you filled in already i had done, Ill post the suggestions for some of the ones I think should be changed. Bear: C2-Toughness (as feat) Primate: c1 and c2- I suggest making these civilization/tribal based, as in, if you are a 'human' from tribe X then you have access to these minor bonuses, but you have to take the choices for them still. I see it as showing the adaptible nature of humans to different places and surroundings. Rabbit: C1- I would keep the move silently and instead of listen put in diplomacy, not usually as useful in a standard hack and slash campaign, but I don't see this ever being a standard any sort of game, especially hack and slash. C4- +10 land speed (so 30ft in the rabbit's case) and +4 jump Bonus Feat- Jump 3/day possibly less im not sure, i just figured jump the spell might be nice to use for the rabbit. Wolf- C1- +4 intimidation, could not think of anything else actually Horse: The horse it seems we have different views on what the horse race should be like, although im actually partial to splitting into two at the second tier choices, it seems you built the horse race as the beast of burden where has i was thinking of them more as the race horse type, speed and quickness. So my choices provided here somewhat reflect that. C1- +2 jump/spot C2- run feat (?) C3- +2 con -2 int (I wrote to change yours to +2 str -2 cha) C4- I said quad carrying capacity, but your 4 legged form works quite nicely Bonus feat- Endurance Rat: C1- +2 climb/escape artist C2- Small (alot of animals are going to be getting small I guess) C4- 10ft climb speed Bonus Feat- Natural poison: The rat species literally attracts pestilence to there hands and bodies making there unarmed strikes very deadly. The poison on the rat's hands does 1D4 extra damage each strike, this strike can not be reduced by DR but with a successful fort. save (DC 10+1/2 con+1/2 CL) then the target does not take damage. The rat because of the natural dirtiness of his body takes a -6 to all cha based skills and checks. Wolverine: C1- Lethal damge with unarmed strikes (?) C3- +2 con, -2 cha, +2 str, -4 wis Owl: C2- +2 to two different knowledge skills Bonus Feat: How about a free spell level feat, as owls are represented as wise and thoughtful, maybe they have a natural connection with 'magic'. Maybe they created it? Hawk: C1- +4 spot C2- Beak 1D4+1/2 str (lethal of course) Eagle: C3- +2 str, +2 dex, -2 wis, -4 cha Eagles, an im going purely from a more mythical/what-they-were-revered-for look at stats, were strong and quick but rash and arrogant, they were not dumb by any stretch they just did not always think things through as carefull as they should. Frog: C2 Small Bonus Feat poison of some sort? skin or tongue? Salamander: C4 Fire resistance 3 Bous Feat: Burning hands 1/day Ant: Bonus Feat- Telepathy (40ft range, need a common language) Mantis: I would reverse choices 2 and 4, making true strike the C4 ability and the +4 init the C2. Also I suggest making the true strike self only. Wasp: Yeah hiveminds are insane, and very very mean, and there CRs are completely screwed up for it, im sorry about 1000 rats with spell casting abilities and a higher feat count than the fighter in the party and a higher int then the wizard in the party is not a CR1/2 or a CR 1 even, thts more like a CR 5-6. Anyways, I think the wasp could get a teamwork bonus while lanking, an additional +2, or maybe +1. Although you could give them an ability which gives them a bonus to there skills/attacks for every ally who has 2 ranks/+2 BAB to the approiate thing. For the attack though, only the highest BAB counts in this case. The skill bonus only applies to skills that the Wasp shares with his allies, whether they are cross class or not to either one. This ability only works when the Wasp's allies are within 10+5/3 levels (not sure about distance). Ex. Sting has 3 companions, a fighter, a wizard, and a warlock, and he himself is a rogue. They are all 4th level. Sting gets +2 to his attack because of his fighter ally and +3 to all checks he has in common with any of the three of them. Beetle: C2- Natural armor +2 C4- Pinchers 1D6+1/2 (or a horn, i dont see actually naming the attacks doing much, as you can change the appearance and use certain race choices and just call them a different race.) Scorpion: C1- +2 hide/intimidation C2- Stinger 1D4+1/2 str C4- +10 land speed Bonus Feat: Poison (1 point of an ability score, randomly determined stat) Centipede: C1- +2 climb/balance C4- Quad carrying capacity Moth C2- Light sensitivity (-1 to all checks in bright light such as daylight, natural or the spell) Snake C1- +2 bluff/intimidate (not sure diplomacy is quite fitting of a snake, but a bluff seems like it would be, to me) Chameleon- I love the tongue, hehe, I just see the cartoonish human with a really long tongue picking up objects and stuff. :D Although the eyes, not a readily apparent use really, unless you are deciding on using the facing directions, and then it might be more useful, although i have no clue, never looked into those rules personally. Turtle: I could see turtles becoming great gunsmen, or atleast great army gunsmen, lay prone, you get a bonus from range already and then you get +4 from the shell. I like that :) Octupus: C2-Hydration-The octupus needs more water than most other humanoids, double the amount of water needed by the octupus character. I like the lycanthrope one, that is nice, i was wondering how exactly you would do that. Although, I think one set of the lycanthrope traits could be mixable, but that one would have to be the base race, and the full set would have to be the lycan form. The ideas of a weretreant are hilarious though :D :P A few things I want to bring up though, first is the small thing, second is the maxium of races in a made up one, and the max of each choice allowed. The size decreasors only say small, so if someone pickes two choice 2s that have small, only one is a real disadvantage to them, granted the second one is still a waste of a choice. Do we want to change this to -1 size catergory or keep it as small, and let the disadvantage of taking 'small' again be the fact that you wasted a choice? Second, do we want to put a cap to the amount of races you can have in any one created race? Looking at it, i dont think we need to, considering most good things require 2 choices to be used, and 3 races breed together isnt much to worry about. But that brings me to the next question, do we want to put a limit on the amount of times a player can choose choice 3 or not? Oh, robots, on the case of them, im partial to BSG style, most are toasters but a small number are humanoids, and can breed with normals. The humanoids arent as powerful as the metal ones are, because all are confined to a few races, whatever the races of the gods, before there ascension, happens to be. But the humanoid ones can be the covert ones, not needed often but useful none the less. Way to play that too, take the 4 choices of anyone race and then 2 of some robot one, and there you go humanoid. I think the metal ones should be split up into Chassises (archtypes) classifications (jobs/goals) and model number (a marker for how powerful this specific unit is compared to some baseline *cough* CR *cough*). Archtypes could range from humanoid to aquatic and vary in size also, the classifications could determine skills, feats, and stats plus the weapons/equipment they are most likely to have on them, and the model number i already made clear, although it most llikely wont stretch from 1-20, but have like maybe 5-7 break points as to be a 'rough' show of power.
Araes 11-09-06, 06:39 PM	Thank you for all of the suggestions Jeweler. I've added most of them in and posted them. Helped to fill in a big section of the insects which is great. In a couple of cases I've disagreed, or your suggestions were out of the general line that I've established with some of the other races (for example, I tend to go for 2nd Level Spells (1/day) if we're gonna give spells as the Bonus thing. However, great work overall, and some interesting suggestions. Particularly liked the hydration on octopi and the suggestions for poisons (note that on most of the poisons I did switch them over to stat damage ones or paralysis) As far as the general format goes, I was thinking that for the first round you might have to take one choice 1 and one choice 2. That would immediately limit you to either taking a 3 and a 4 in the next pass or more 1's and 2's. After that, for the last choice I don't think I'd care too much if someone decided to get an additional 1 and 3. If they want to try and minmax, like +6 Str or something, then they're going to pay for it with a host of other minuses. Plus, most of the Bonus Feats we've made so far have been pretty tempting in terms of power. The only one's I question are the 2nd level spells, but for a starting out character they're quite a jump. However, its just the fact that they fade in usefulness pretty fast. You have a good point on the Small not being a minus after two, I'm not sure what I'd want to do to deal with that. I mean, making them Tiny is a hell of a minus if they take two, but it might be what we'd have to do. Something like -1 Size Category instead of just Small. Finally, on the BSG robots concept. You have some interesting ideas with the robot race as a mixing factor for race creation. That would be an interesting idea. A further extension might be that for every type of chassis or purpose, there could be a genetic mixing type as well. I'm not violently opposed to the BSG concept as far as robots go, I just don't want to feel like I'm sniping off of what's popular in the media right now. Good breakdown on the way that the normal robots are organized too. Lets go with that and see what we can make.
Sliversun 11-10-06, 04:09 AM	Just out of curiosity, how does one travle to one layer to another?
Araes 11-10-06, 12:22 PM	That's actually one of the points that there's still some debate on. One thought is that the layers themselves are big enough that there's only minor reason for players to really be jumping up and down across all of them constantly. In this case, only the larger than life entities would regularly cross the layers (Gods, wandering supermages, dragons) and the rest of society would stay on single layers for the most part. This has a lot of benefits as it helps to segregate the various societies from one another so that you can have sub-ecosystems of technology levels and such within the greater whole of the sphere. For example, that's part of the reasoning behind that story I wrote from the perspective of the little girl at the research outpost. Their isolation forces them to adapt and create innovative societies. Now, the other thought fighting with this is that I know there are going to be parties of adventurers who want to have the ultra epic sagas that take them all the way from the jewel of the sphere down to the wilds that the researchers have tamed. To handle that case, my concept is that its pretty obvious there should have been ways for people to travel before things started to break down - portal locations or interlayer teleport hotspots if you will. To better control the population, the Gods may have hidden these spots away from the populace's prying eyes, allowing only their direct agents access when needed. For normal people this is a perfectly fine setup, as they have no real knowledge that there's more to the world and no need. However, if adventurers really had an urge or need to travel, then they could seek these out and beam themselves away. To make sure that they couldn't just empty out a layer of people though, there would also need to be some kind of clever mechanism to limit the number of people that could pass through. Likely something valuable to adventurers that's used to power the process.
Jeweler 11-10-06, 07:10 PM	In the campaign i started the reason i used was the fact that the gods wanted them there, no more explanation than that for now. My group started out at 4th level, and it worked out nicely they all wanted to use premade characters from various campaigns that we had stopped (not all mine), so i told them they did not know each other and that they were all from different planes. There first mission is to kill a dragon, had since i am using the dragon council, they will quickly get the attention of such a council, having been teleported and then going straight into killing the dragon. They will learn more as the campaign goes on, hopefully. I suppose thats true with the stats, big bonuses equals big minuses i suppose. And the spell thing really isn't that big, because by third level anyone can get a second level spell, two feats to get it, but as with our proposed system anyone can pick up the spell feats as normal feats. On robots, i was taking the chassises more or less from the 'moreau and frank' section of D20 future, or the little i can remember, i just remember the aquatic form and thats about it. And the other thing you could do with the whole BSG thing is, no one said the robots had to have humanish flesh and everything, I just like the concept of reproducing robots, epsecially BSGs models but they have hotties so... Genetic robots are nothing hard to imagine with the fact we have a universe-imploding proof sphere and 'magical' effects breed into the populace. Quite simply a lot of things might come down to nanites, nanites could make up the basis for genetic robots, the basis for how magic in a person's body works, and possibly other things. My idea on genetic robots goes in two different directions though. One, they are like organics and mate, maybe not for life or for love but they mate. The other is that they have highly developed personality programs and breed for love, but instead of normal organic breeding, they effectively mix each of there DNA parameters and go to a factory to build the child's chassis. They could weed out certain 'genetic anomilies' of course and can change the code however they like to make the child built for a purpose, or even keep the changability of the code to allow him to change bodies and jobs easier. I don't know which you'd prefer, I like either one personally. Well tiny might be a big disadvantage, although to the smart person they make amazing rogues, taking small twice and only getting penalized for it once is a big advantage to anyone taking it twice. I think tiny gives like a +4 or a +8 to hide, and i want to say move silently also, a +2 to hit and a +2 ac, not to mention if we want to take into account ability changes based on size changes (not sure whether we should or take the enlarge/shrink thing and gie them a bonus to str/dex respectively and a minus to the other). Not sure, although the smaller sizes are not neccassarily a disadvantage, its just a different type of advantage, most people dont look at the bonus to armor and to hit when they think small.
Araes 11-10-06, 08:38 PM	On the small vs tiny debate, my only basis for the decision of whether they are disadvantages or not comes from the guidelines set up by Savage Species, where being small is generally considered a disadvantage and worth a -1 in their rather granular and sketchy system. In general, I'm not sure if tiny is worth a -2, and Diminutive is a -3. As, if we went with the currently proposed system, people could very likely make Diminutive characters. Its up for debate on their relative values. Now, with respect to the robots, I actually like your idea about the mixing of genetic material to create a new "child". An interesting idea might be if they can actually do the amorphous thing with the nanites, and when reproducing, they would both divest themselves of a certain portion of their nanites and those two clumps of nanites would then reform into a smaller third being and start replicating until the reached the necessary mass.
Jeweler 11-11-06, 12:25 AM	You know I never really thought about that, but that is an awesome idea. I'm going to put some work into the wiki, I doubt you will mind much. There are 10 states of a topic, just to let everyone know, and they go like this Admantine (its done, we aren't changing it anymore) Set in Stone Steel Solid Gel Liquid gas dark matter dark energy Graviton Waves As you can see I got bored and was like, 'I don't like 1-10 it has no appeal or flavor' and thought this up. For us I doubt we will ever get anything to admantine status anytime soon, but its there just for all purpose use, if anyone wants to use a different rating system. :D
Araes 11-11-06, 02:50 AM	Hey Jeweler, I actually just got the notification that you had changed the wiki. Awesome, I'm glad that you've begun to put in the work to make it a fully fledged creation. I'll work on editing and adding to what you've made tomorrow. Today I'm a little out of it to make worthwhile additions.
Sliversun 11-11-06, 04:55 AM	I'm glad to see the wiki being updated (finally!). Hope you add more stuff soon. I also love the idea of Robots reproducing via nanites, because it would make a lot of sense. Also, I was thinking is it possible to have a layer that's dominated giant city-sates rather then kingdoms? Now I'm thinking of HUGE megacities covering thousands of kilomeaters or hundreds of miles, the smallest having a population of many thousands while the largest would support the population of a small country (millions). If your looking for inspration check out this website: Urbis: A world of Cities: http://juergen.the-huberts.net/dnd/urbis/ Of course I you want to make a city more "Asian-style" then check out Avatar: The Last Airbender's Ba Sing Se:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_Sing_Se. Because I'm a fan of multiculturalism, and I think this layer would have many different cultures. Also, if your still working on your 'Ecumenopolis' idea (the layer that's covered by a single city) then you might want to have a look at Eberron's Sharn or prehaps Magic the Gathering's Ravnica:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravnica
Jeweler 11-11-06, 10:02 AM	Urbis was the only city i did not know out of those 4, but Ba Sing is the best out of all of them with its transportation system. Ravnica was actually the idea starter for me thinking about a 'One World-City' layer, as in there they had literally taken up all space on that plane with city streets, they went from polar ice caps, as one of the characters thought about it one time being there with one of his wives, to most likely the other polar ice caps, all trees gone, most animals were extinct if they did not quickly adapt to the new life style. The only thing they were shady on was different continents and thats about it, otehr than that the Simic took care of making new city-adapted species of animals and plants, and the Conclave, cant remember the first word to it, took care of planting the trees and being tree hugging naturey freaks Oh as a reminder under the monsters place i put a new page that talked about the Outsiders and our ideas on them, anything i put in italics was a suggestion that you had not yet oked. Well the only problem with the robots being made out of nanites is then they are morphable and have no set jobs what so ever, as the chassises were also suppose to push the robot in the direction most suited for its body. Not sure, I'm sure there is still a way that we can do that. We seem to like combination systems for creating things. Ill look at it later and start to work on what the different chassises might be, the different jobs, and possibly some names for the CR marker, as I would like each of the different jobs to have maybe different titles or at least different marker names then any other job. Edit: The Urbis setting looks amazing, I might have to look over it more in depth for my fiction I hope to some day to get over of the development and brainstorming stage of and actually write it. Thank you Silversun!
Sliversun 11-12-06, 04:56 AM	Your welcome! :) What do you think of my ideas, Araes?
Araes 11-12-06, 03:05 PM	Hey Silversun, sorry on the delay, somewhat distracting weekend. I've read two of those settings before today, Ravinica and Sharn. I'm a big fan of Sharn, and it's concept of a three dimensional city with layers was one of my main reasons for introducing the ecumenopolis at the center of the Sphere (along with some Asimov inspiration from Trantor). Ba Sing sounds pretty interesting, read through all of the wikipedia entry for it, maybe I need to watch some Nickelodeon or find some videos. I'd never seen Urbis before, but it seems like an interesting concept, although if I understand correctly its basically just the idea that urbanization happened earlier than it did in our own society, so you can still have D&D adventures in something approaching a modern city. However, that in itself does seem like an interesting idea, and Sharn has proven that those types of settings have a lot of draw. I'd be open to either making a layer that is entirely composed of these types of areas, or to possibly expanding one of the layer concepts we've already come up with to include this level of urbanization. The ultra hot wasteland layer seems like it might be a natural choice, as everyone in the entire layer has already congregated underneath their massive heat shields, so the only choice if they want to save a decent number of people is urban skyrise and concentration. Ki'Sha-la, the layer of island city states could also work in this respect, as with limited land space and growing population, the most logical course would be to build outward from the islands. In that case, outward meaning both up and down as they're floating in space. Finally, if you were going for the warring aspect of it, the layer that's been heaviest hit by the undead plague might be a decent choice, as you could have some massive city states that were necropolises and others that were more traditional settlements. Jeweler, I went through and did some quick edits on some of the wiki you wrote (grammar, word choice, and some list cleanup) but I like the content you put down. I'm probably going to add some of the backstory and info about the Creators and Usurpers later today as I've already written a lot. Edit: Gods are put into the wiki. I've put in all the information about their names, domains, origins, and types for all three groups. For the Land of the Digital entry that you made, I would suggest just wrapping that into the entry for "Overview of the Celestial" as that's basically what you're doing anyway. (Actually, I've reversed my thoughts on this over time, lets keep it) Also, on the rating system for how finalized things are, I would suggest something more like the following because I don't think we need quite that level of precision in how close to finished things are. Its like ratings on movies and games, there's effectively no difference between a 7.4 and a 7.5. Adamantine (It would take the intervention of Peresis and Akil working together to move this) Set in Stone (This is probably the final step for many things. Can be counted on for consistency, games, ect...) Fairly Solid (We're fairly confident of the form and concepts, but there may be a few issues to work through or balancing) Gelling (Concepts that are transitioning to final forms, we know where they're going, we just haven't quite finished them up yet.) Liquid (These are concepts that the group is committed to and which have been signed off on, but are still in a state of flux.) Gaseous (Ideas that we've agreed would be good, but which really don't have much work behind them.) Ether (Basically stuff that's random speculation, pitched concepts, or hasn't had a "that sounds like a good idea") Also, if we're going to use these, then we ought to make a page inside the wiki and probably should link to it with the rating at the top of each page. I'll get on making a quick cut and paste form for that. Edit 2: Ratings page is done and all current pages are linked at top with status. Edit 3: Many of the background pages which are at pretty much final form have been put up. Edit 4: Even more pages put up including some of the stories and a suggestions page. Finally, I've also switched the Land of the Divine page over to Divine Agents, as they're basically the same thing, and I've added the list of Outsiders vs Their Jobs
Jeweler 11-13-06, 05:29 AM	Urbis was actually a quite well thought out setting, I loved how the towers got there magic ability. I forgot Sharn had layers *needs to go backa look at that more carefully* I like Eberron, but I still like Urbis, it seems much much darker than Eberron. The whole Towers, the way warfare has changed and all of that cool stuff. Thanks for the grammar stuff and word choice, was doing it at 230 in the morning so i have no idea exactly what all I wrote. Yeah i was thinking about making a page, but at that early/late i could not figure out how to and did not want to mess anything else. Now on to the next suggestion on something we need to work on, actual spells. The entirity of our campaign has been based on flexibility, and now that we have Class creation, Race Creation, and Spell Levels down, the next two things we should do, I think, are actual spell creation and posibly prestige classes. Two things we could do with prestige classes, first, each island possibly has a couple unique ones and then there are some ones that are universal to all of the islands. Or second, you, i say you because your the math person I do not have the high enough math skills to do what you did with the class system, work out how to break down a prestige class and allow for personal creation of a prestige class, although i do not see how this would be realistic. You could just break down the prestige class system anyways, make it easier for us all to create them. Just some suggests on what we should cover next, as 2 of the three of those are fairly done, class system is done and seems workable although i will test it in my game coming up, and the spell level system we just need to decide the different types and then how many you get, as only one per a feat, as i was looking at it, is a lot of feats to take, even if you just want 2 of the possible 4 domains. Edit: I like the scale system, again another creation from like 2 in the morning so...
Araes 11-13-06, 03:24 PM	Alright, you're asking two very difficult things of me, but I'll see what I can do. On the spells, once again, we need to decide where we sit on whether we're going to just recategorize the spells into new categories, or whether we're going to actually do a completely freeform spell creation system. You sound like you're more a fan of the second Jeweler. I can do the second, I'm already fairly certain of how it could be worked out, its just that it would take compiling all of the various effects that spells can release and then correlating how much range, damage, and types of effects are reasonable at each level. From there, you would also have things like modifiers, so that cases like Cat's Grace could be upgraded to spells like Cat's Grace, Mass in a logical way or areas of effect could be changed from single to ranged or area. In a lot of cases, precedents are handily written down for many of these in the Metamagic feats. One of the ways in which people could help me is by compiling a list of effects that spells can generate if they would prefer I work on spells first or if they would rather that I figure out a system for prestige classes, then they could compile a list of the effects (ones that exist as feats would just be "bonus feat") that are available from prestige classes, what level they're generally gained at, and whether they're part of 5 level or 10 level ones. All of these are rather large tasks, so it would be good if we could break up the jobs by books, or alphabetical using the WotC lists.
Jeweler 11-13-06, 04:18 PM	Actually WotC has done us a major favor without knowing it, they created Spell Compendium, a list of all none player's handbook spells up to the date of the book, which leaves very few books out as of now. So really we only have two books to encompass as I do not think any new book will have any effect not mentioned in the more encompassing first two. Now there are, just an estimate, about 100-150 pages worth of spells and descrips and everything like that in the PHB, and about 200 in spell compendium. I will pretty much volunteer for Spell Compendium as I have already taken to searching through it for awesome druid spells, I can just break down all the different effects. Yeah I have a preference to a freeform spell system, everything else has been pretty much freeform so far, why stop here. Now on the prestige classes I was only bringing up breaking them down into a point system because of the fact that we seem to be close to done with the classes, if not actually done. Unless you want to I do not see a reason why we need to break it down right now, as without any settings to base prestige classes off we really don't have much to work with. So I have SC, woohoo what a task! Its cool though, I think I'm up to it. Side question: What about warlock, and warlockesque classes, abilities such as there invocations, as most would simply mimic specific effects, more or less have a point total that dictates what effects are what type invocations. Reason I say warlockesque is because they have whats called a Dragon Mage, or something equally corny, in Dragon Magic, which was ok but not really something I'd suggest buying, that had abilities like a warlocks, invocation based.
Araes 11-13-06, 09:35 PM	Alright, wow, we're in for hella work. Alright then, I'll start going through the PHB and I'll post an idea here of what I'm looking for as far as the format, effects, ect... so that it will be easy to analyze and input. Also, remember to make recommendations for which groups you'd like to have them affiliated with (audio, image, ect...) In effect, we've now rewritten nearly every rule set except basic combat in D&D. Ouch. Also, if you haven't seen my link to it before, Alex's Spell Sheet (http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/AlexSpells.csv) (linked from my site - 2 MB) is an awesome Excel sheet breakdown of everything you could want to know about spells. As far as the warlockesque stuff goes, lets not worry about them too much for now. Right now we've got it so that someone can build a standard Warlock fairly easily using the rules that I put forth before, and if we want to broaden it so that the choice of abilities is wider for them, then we can do that in the future...after we're done with the spells.
Sliversun 11-16-06, 02:14 AM	If your still looking for more inspriation, then I think I found just the right thing that fits this setting perfectly: SinaiMUCK. (http://sinai.critter.net/) It's got everything; magic, steampunk tech, loads of races, epic storylines and a vast wealth of background information on cultures, spells, creatures ect. Check it out!
Sliversun 11-26-06, 05:46 AM	Bump.
treetrunker 11-26-06, 02:26 PM	Have any of you read the book Lord of Light? It's a futuristic setting where the people are lead to believe that the technology is magic. You could take some ideas from there maybe?
Jeweler 11-29-06, 04:47 PM	Who is the author, not that I think I'd should be adding another book to my list of 'must read before death' but it never hurts I guess. Is it just one book or a series of books and 'Lord of Light' is just the first one?
Araes 11-29-06, 06:54 PM	Wow, odd timing, I obviously got back to this thread today too. Great minds think alike I guess. First off, sorry about the delay in posting...to the point of needing a bump, gah. I've been chugging away on this spell effect stuff, but its a real bear, and I can only take so much of it before I want to kill myself. However, its coming along and I should have a full list of effects in a little while. Now, for the two recommendations, I looked over the setting that you recommended Sliversun, and there are a lot of good ideas in there. In particular, one of the ones that really struck my fancy was the idea of three person chess-like games, where you have to play both of your opponents off one another to win. Very interesting concept that I'll probably try and incorporate somewhere. On the subject of Lord of Light, no I never have had a chance to read that treetrunker, but I think I may have to, having now looked it up. Winner of the Hugo and nominated for a Nebula. Plus, its also has many parallels to one of my favorite books ever, Siddhartha, which is more reason to check it out. You're right on the money with the story having a lot of good ideas from what I can see. In fact, the characture of Mahasamatman, or Sam, would make a great aspect for one of the Gods in our own setting. Someone who rebels against the idea that the people should be kept in the dark and is trying to bring them the Light. In fact, there's some interesting ideas in there as well about the nature of supposedly pious figures as well, since both Sam and Rild are revered as Gods, yet still searching for personal enlightenment, as they are flawed by their prior human nature. Good stuff. Now, on the gaming stuff, there are some spell things that I can go over right now. Mostly this has to do with damage effects and those spell modifiers that have already been set through other WotC publications. After talking with a friend of mine, he gave me an interesting idea for how we might be able to go about creating spells. Basically, we could invest each level of spell with a certain number of containers or blocks which could then be filled with appropriate effects. In addition, since we're doing this whole concept of having various paths that you would travel up in the audio, image, ect... way, then we could also have it that the way those are expressed is by both giving you one (or more) additional slot(s) to fill at a given level, and more choices for what those affects are, depending on the number of aspects that are worked into a spell. It might even be able to work with a simple progression like: There is (1) block for each level of spell you're using. Each 10 dice of potential max damage takes (2) blocks Each spell effect takes up (X) blocks depending on what level you'd normally get it at. Changes to area or duration might take up (X) blocks depending on how powerful they are, or possibly give bonus blocks if they're a detriment. Metamagic feats would take up the number of blocks that they normally raise in levels. IE, Twin Spell would take (4) blocks. There are some issues with this though, in that it won't allow for a perfect progression of damage that aligns with the D&D standard, because they've got that annoying single 5 dice level at the beginning. One way to solve this might be to break it down into finer increments, like each level has five blocks or something. This might make the math slightly more annoying, but it would also allow for things like damage die changes and such, which are difficult to roll into the compact version. What do you guys think, and suggestions?
Sliversun 11-30-06, 01:40 AM	Well, I'm glade that you like the looks of SinaiMUCK. I garantee that you'll find a lot of good ideas. BTW, just how may layers will the Sphere have?
Araes 11-30-06, 03:32 AM	Well, its a little in the air at the moment. Right now there are at least five that have general themes laid down (possibly six or seven if the Amber Throne layer is its own and we count the food layer for the central city as seperate), and in some cases lands within those areas, including the innermost and outermost layers. After that, I really don't have a firm cap in my head. Honestly, we should probably stop fairly soon, as at this point there is already enough land to keep an army of writers busy. However, this is not to say that good concepts won't be considered, as I'd much rather have good content than shut the door. I have considered possibly making a few of the concepts mentioned back on page seven into whole layer themes, but I'm just not sure if I want to go that far. One of the most tempting is the idea of a layer where robots are basically serving as the caretakers and guardians for all of humanity. Most of biological existence is controlled by the robot masters, who mean well, but take their guardianship to extremes to preserve peace, order, ect... Kind of has some references to both Asimov and BSG. Also, Silversun, were there particular items in the Sinai setting that really strike your fancy and you think would be worthy of inclusion, or sparked other ideas? Edit: And here's an addendum of the varioius effects that I've been thinking of so far to fill up blocks based on an idea that there is one block for each level of spell. A lot of these costs are just based on Metamagic feats and the like, and will probably need to be modified. 1 block effects Single -> Area (blast, cone, rod) Extend May remove in favor of a series of extensions Englarge Hit Ethereal 2 block effects Single ->Area [non-standard] (donuts, sheets, ect....) Add 5 dice of maximum damage Empower Touch -> Ray May remove in favor of a series of extensions Split Ray The cost for this as a metamagic feat makes no sense in its current form, either it should be 0 and do half the effect, or +4 and do exactly the same effect. It will be changed by me to one of these eventually. 3 block effects Delayed Chained Both delayed and chained are worthless as metamagic feats at their current cost, as they are based on spells of the same names, and those spells also gain damage in addition to the effects. We'll need to figure some way to incorporate this. The obvious choice seems to be lowering their costs somewhat to +2 or even +1, as they're really not that good otherwise. Maximize Repeating Widened 4 block effects Single -> Mass Quick Energy Adding Double Spell (Twin) 6 block effects Persistent May remove in favor of a series of extensions
Araes 11-30-06, 09:30 PM	I was rather taken with the idea of a triangular chess board, so I made official rules and diagrams for how one would go about playing said game and have posted them over on the Indistinguishable from Magic Wiki. (http://ifmcs.pbwiki.com/) Tried a quick game with a cut out paper board and the roomies. Craziness. So many bloody moves and threatened zones. Triangular Chess Rules http://ifmcs.pbwiki.com/f/TriChess_Board.jpg (http://ifmcs.pbwiki.com/Triangular-Chess)
Sliversun 12-01-06, 03:51 AM	Maybe you can take ideas from some of the Sinai races as well as some of its nations and cultures. Also some it's magic and spells might be useful.
Sliversun 02-03-07, 11:33 PM	Bump.
Araes 03-23-07, 05:50 PM	Ah, the wonders of necromancy. Or maybe Raise Dead. I guess only time will tell. However, for the moment I'm making a return to writing in this thread once again, and setting development as a whole after a rather long hiatus. Going to see about trying to post something roughly once a day just to make sure I stay on top of it this time. Thus... While looking over a large bit of storytelling and film literature, one of the common threads that seems to often be important in story, and more particularly myth, is the concept of an ultimate object or place. The holy grail, the world tree, Eden, the pillar of the world, Atlantis, the Sampo, Shangri-la. Sometimes they are just Macguffins which serve to drive the stories surrounding them forward, but in many cases they are also very real things with sets of powers that have been attributed to them. Now, in a way this sounds basically like the D&D artifact, but I would make a distinction there, as in my impression, artifacts have evolved over time into a representation that paints them more as super loot rather than mystical abstractions. Partly I think that a lot of this is due to the way in which they are presented, which focuses rather heavily on their stats, bonuses, ect.. and only rarely covers their history and lore with more than a paragraph or so. With the original Book of Artifacts back in 2nd. Ed, they gave about two pages to most of the artifacts, which was enough that we at least got to have an impression of their backstory, but with 3.5, the entire artifact section is only a few pages long. Even with Arms and Equipment the listings still mostly just focus on how much + to whatever they provide. As such, what I think I'm going to do with mystic objects and places is provide a lot of detail about their backstory, origins, and quests, and only lightly cover their attributed powers. Preferably also in a more literary sense, which is rather a departure from the norm of math analysis and sterilization in this thread. Anyhow, first up... Allecia and the Boundless Flower In the time before the world existed as we know it, before the sky and the land were made manifest, there existed a place for the gods where they might abide while they crafted their creation. This land was named Allecia by the Founders, and was as a living thing, responding to its inhabitants very wills, and fashioning from the fabric of reality those things which might comfort them or support their efforts. For time beyond measuring, all the great family of the gods existed there in happiness, striving to bring their dream to completion. And yet, as their epic tasked neared completion, and the moment of transferal to their new world drew near, they found that they were as a mind loath to leave. In the fashioning of one world, they had left a part of their being with another. Yet, of what use would be the powers of a god if such a problem was beyond their resolution? Among their number, a great council was called, and it was reasoned that rather than leave their home for another, they would simply transplant it within their very creation. A haven of peace from which they might watch outward over the whole of their world. However, as we all now well know, not everything was right within the womb of creation. Blessed of great power and wisdom as they were, the hoasts of the gods before the great collapse were legion, and their numbers not all divine perfection. Such was one of the many reasons for the sealing of the world and its gift to man. A seperation of those pure elements of the prior creation, which could be preserved and passed onward to its future generations. But in its last moments, this plan of perfection was foiled, as the seed of destruction snuck into reality, tainting the purity of its existence, and heralding the ultimate downfall of the haven of the gods. Beyond this, little is known of the remaining history of the haven Allecia, but that its comfort was lost to all of the gods (Founder or Suberter) through the actions of the Subverters. Somewhat derived from this tragedy, a common deathbed prayer among many races of people throughout the sphere is "Alleluya", which roughly translates to a wish for the dying's return to and eternal existence among the home of the gods. Before Allecia was left completely though, within its walls was "planted" one of the other great wonders of the known universe, the Boundless Flower. It is unknown exactly what the Boundless Flower actually is, be it an actual growing flower or simply a conceptual symbol for some other object or idea. Naturally though, one of the representations which has gained the most traction in modern myth is the physical representation of a growing flower with infinitely repeating and recursive petals. In some variants of story, it is said to have been crafted by Conway during her search for new forms of life in the days of Allecia, and represents the ultimate form of adaptation and refinement in nature. It is said that if one were to follow the pattern of petals ever inward, they would find that not only were the petals themselves shrinking, but the very structures of the plant itself were. Continuously creating new, smaller copies of the structures above them in a process of refinement with no end. It has been said that those who come into contact with this version of the flower will find a similar effect manifest in themselves. Repair of the most severe injuries, perfect adaptation to new or harsh environments, and eternal life are all commonly applied to its mysticism. Other theories have rejected these claims based upon the implausibility of a single god's creation rising to such importance over others. Rather, many have instead postulated that the flower is instead a symbolic representation of some other object which was brought from the time of the gods before in which space itself was boundless. Of these representations, the most popular is that the flower is that thing which is the source of all life that has ever been or will ever be. Its first blossoming was the start of sentience in the universe, and within us, all self aware beings still carry a touch of its pollen. During the time of creation, the Flower's physical form was taken from the universe before, and planted in a sacred garden within the walls of Allecia, where it provides life for the sphere even now. Among some cultures, it is even said that those children which are birthed stillborn are a result of the Flower's essence passing over the family. This is often regarded as a vile portent for them and an omen of further things to come - unfortunately often self fulfilling. Like the infinitely recursive variety, this version of the Boundless Flower is also a popular topic for questers from all walks of life, and most commonly promises eternal life or godlike knowledge to those who achieve it. Anyhow, all for today. Took me a bit longer than hoped, but hopefully should be sign of things to come.
Araes 03-24-07, 04:13 PM	And From That Throne, I...Will Watch Over You Glory to you oh' Empress, first among the hosts of creation; Glory to you oh' Empress, in whose protection we trust completely; Glory to you oh' Empress, and long life to the world you have forged; Glory to you oh' Empress, whose wisdom we honor above all others; Glory to you oh' Empress, and victory to you in all endeavors; Glory to you oh' Empress, in whose wrath our enemies know fear; Glory to you oh' Empress, may there be peace among all you survey; Glory to you oh' Empress, in whose compassion we all may know comfort; - Transcript of the Morning Call to the Empress, Encyclopedia of Salation, 5th Revision. From the Roots of the World I Am Born Among the third layer of the sphere, no name is known more widely, or respected more universally than that of the Empress of the Amber Throne - and with good reason. Over many centuries, she has transformed the very fabric of the layer she resides on by her presence. Unifying it under a single standard of the Amber Throne, she has crafted stability from a region of chaos. In doing so, she has also gained the direct attention of the gods, whether she is aware of it or not, as an entirely unified layer presents vast problems of control over isolated fiefdoms of existence. Prior to her birth upon the continent / island of Tesel, it was a diverse, and fractured landscape, with numerous nation states vying for control of the territory. Her initial home was a land by the name of Kodann, which was a central state of impressive agricultural and mineral wealth, but comparatively minor military power. Born to a potter in the metropolitan city of Vesh, she spent much of her early years simply learning her father's craft, and might have remained that way for the rest of her life, if not for the Lion's War. In ES 1418, the kingdom of Nomany, a monarchy controlled by the Archrest family (and represented in heraldry as three white lions on a field of red), began a wide scale invasion of Kodann (similarly represented by a gold lion on a field of purple). Spurred by the latter’s relatively weak military posture and a threatening grain shortage in their own lands, they swept over the mountains bordering their respective lands to the north of Kodann. Achieving nearly complete surprise in the opening days of the assault, Nomany succeeded in capturing several population centers quite quickly with minimal resistance and were so initially buoyed by these events that they started to believe a complete victory over the people's of Kodann might be possible. However, this hubris, or pride would serve to be their own undoing. Viewing the inhabitants as incapable of resistance, and spurred onward by their own greed, the leaders of the Nomany invaders marshaled the vast majority of their forces and attempted to push onward into Kodann. This did this rather than consolidating their holds on the cities at hand, in a hope to capture the capital Pashel before a serious counter offensive could be organized. Within each of the cities they had captured, including Vesh, only a single detachment of troops was left to maintain the peace, as reinforcements had been called for, and all other troops were needed to push toward the capital. It is near this time at which something strange, or possibly extraordinary, happened though. Specific details surrounding the event are difficult to ascertain, but by her own accounts, an Archon of the lord Macht came to her in a public mass and spoke in a voice of coals and roiling lava. - "You, who are blessed among all the people's of this world by My presence, you shall be My standard bearer among the masses and take My message to the people of your land. And to them you shall say 'To you oh people of Kodann, your lord Macht commands Rise Up!, and throw off the shackles of your invaders. Follow this woman in whom I have placed this great trust and burden, and drive them from your walls, from your fields, and from the very face of existence itself! Accept no quarter, receive no surrender, and deliver to them no mercy, for their invasion is an affront to the very God you love and cherish.' Go now, and do this in My name oh faithful servant and I will support you in all things from here until eternity." With those words it is then said the Archon disappeared from the view of the onlookers amidst a great roar like the howl of a hundred furnaces and all those who had stood their ground in the face of that terror were immediately filled with a sense of divine purpose. Whether this is actually the literal truth or not, what can definitively be proven is that shortly after these events are said to have occurred, a vast horde, collected from all the citizens of Vesh, descended upon the remaining soldiers of Nomany in Vesh, to a person liberating them from this plane - and at the head of that horde strode the fledgling Empress. Word spread quickly of her victory over the Nomany forces, and spurred on by her example, the neighboring city of Shafel quickly followed suit - suffering somewhat higher casualties against the wary Nomany troops, by successful nonetheless. At the same time, by what could almost be described as sheer force of will, the Empress herself had set the entire city of Vesh to march. Resolved to the conclusion that it very well might be sacked behind her by the reinforcements, she marched on the next major city nearby - Taloh. Driving her undisciplined, but fanatical followers, as a shepherd might drive sheep, she made remarkably good time under the circumstances. However, upon her arrival she found that the city had already been abandoned by the enemy in fear of her assault, and they now hastened southward to warn the main bulk of the army of events to the north. Gathering what remained of the population of Taloh into her band, including a substantial number of military who had fled into the hills surrounding the city, she at this point determined that her best course of action could only be assisting her brethren to the south. If the capital to the south fell, it could be a death blow to the fanatical support of her followers, and liberating its walls from entrenched forces might be beyond the capabilities of her 'army' with what weapons they had. Sending word to the other cities of the periphery with notes of her intent, she turned the population of two large cities to her task and began the march southward. Within days, return word came that forces from at least four other cities were also on the move and would attempt to meet her halfway to the capital, where they could then press onward as one unified horde. This meeting took place near the plateau of Yeshem and it was there the first concordat was formed amongst the peoples of Kodann. Citing faith in the word of Macht as their deliverer, and trust in the Empress as his messenger on this plane, they placed final control of all the forces arrayed in her apparently blessed hands. From this point, the unified army moved southward as quickly as possible and it has been said that their progress was akin to the force of a hurricane, flattening the grass for miles in every direction. Roughly three weeks after she had taken up the mantle of her nation's savior, the Empress arrived at the capital, and faced one of the first great challenges (and milestones) in her path. Although they were not nearly as numerous as the total forces of the Empress, the soldiers of Nomany were a disciplined lot with superior weaponry, training, and order. In addition, they had been relatively close to resting for the past several days, as they slackened their siege of the capital in preparation for the coming assault they had been warned of. Realizing they were cut off from retreat, and potentially from reinforcements, they had entrenched themselves as well as possible. The resultant battle was a titanic affair. In the initial rush, and with only minor prior experience, the Empress threw droves of her people against the defenders ineffectually, hoping to simply subsume the Nomanians under their weight. Yet their lines held, and in the face of horrific casualties, she was forced to withdraw and reevaluate her plans. One of the major problems with the battle as a whole, was the positioning and entrenched nature of the defenders, against which her mostly poorly trained and armed troops were simply no match. However, it was from this dismal situation, that the solution seemed to almost spring at her. Her followers were poorly trained and would suffer massive casualties against their opponents in a stand up fight, yet they were also fanatics, and therein lied their strength. These were people who would gladly lay down their lives in her service, and she would soon ask them to do just that. Lacking artillery of even the most basic forms, and living in a land where technology / magic had regressed to a rather extreme extent, she instead took animals and people and strapped to them all manner of cobbled together explosive devices. Fires and bombs and harsh liquids, anything that could be made on the spot. Then, during the next assault, these sacrificial bombers were intermixed among the lines and allowed to charge forward with a pack of screening defenders. It worked like a charm. A horrible, brutal charm of carnage, but a charm nonetheless. Before the defenders realized what was happening, they were being engulfed on numerous fronts by walls of fire and rolling explosions. Many of the suicidal attackers were dropped as they ran, but they faced thousands of determined fanatics, and on the heels of each that fell followed a hundred more. Amidst the confusion and destruction, the lines of Nomany finally began to break, and into those breaks flowed the fingers of the Empress. Resolute as the stones, and as cold as the grave. From that field it is said that not a single Nomanian walked away. Per the decree of Macht, to an individual they were hunted down and slain and a pyre built to the heights of Allecia to honor his assistance. However, this was only the beginning of the War and only the first step in the rise of the Empress.
Araes 03-25-07, 05:49 PM	A while back chimpman posted an interesting discussion about how he thought dragons motivations and groups should be organized in this setting, and I thought that I'd expand on that some more now. The Serpent Tides In the time before the sphere, the known universe was a vast expanse, full of a multitude of races of all sizes and shapes. Beings born of living fire, slow creatures nigh indistinguishable from rocks, crafted constructs of metal or wire, the wide range of humanoid variants, and numerous others. Among all of these creatures which had been blessed with sentient thought, however, there was a single group which innately seemed to stand out from the others - dragons. Blessed with size, strength, intelligence, and an array of innate powerful abilities, all of the species of dragons seemed to hold themselves as a group above their "peers" around them. For millennia before the Union was formed, dragonkind as a whole had strived to carve out their own empire - a highly stratified plutocracy with dragons firmly entrenched at its head. Naturally, there were internal conflicts, as the reptiles were almost as diverse as humanoids in their wants and desires, but above all things there was the singular identity of dragons as masters of all that they touched. This ethos was naturally leading towards a conflict with the rest of sentient existence, and after years of diplomacy had failed, the gauntlets were finally thrown. In this time, the Union was still only a vague concept in the collective mind of the universe. No strong identity had ever truly bonded beings together as one mind, and throughout the universe there were still wide spread skirmishes of varying size between non-dragonkind. However, they had also never been faced with a foe such as this. By a large margin, the draconic empire outpaced any other established confederation by nearly an order of magnitude. Collective bargaining had been undertaken with the dragons by a number of other races, but they still did not view themselves as one mass of life. For years the dragons had been preparing and waiting for what they considered an ideal time to strike, and in an avalanche they poured forth from their worlds in an assault of which the like had never been seen. Within a matter of days, multitudes of planets were subjugated under the black wave of the draconic banner as ships flowed like ants out of the superluminal lanes and laid waste to their surfaces. Seas and land turned to vapor and ash under the bombardment of a million suns. Yet, for the opposition, all was not lost. The known universe was vast, and its resources staggering. All that was missing was a unity of response. In a move which would come to be one of the first steps towards the path of Union, 1000's of the most powerful races in the universe came together and laid out their plans for a defense of known space. Even more surprisingly, in the face of such a daunting foe, even the oldest of grudges were tossed aside for survival. In this instant, the dragons only tactical error came to light. They had predicted discord and strife, a million disparate mice that they might gobble up at their pleasure. Or if not a million, than at least many that they might fill their belly with and then parley for peace. What they had instead nipped at were the heels of a behemoth - clumsy and slow at first, but with an unrivaled strength once fully awakened. For a time, the tide was still firmly in the claws of the dragons. The flames of their onslaught and the beacons of their ships pressed ever outward into the space around them. However, little by little, the resistance of the Union began to solidify. The flames began to flicker, the beacons began to slow, until at last - they stopped. In an empty region of transit space between targets the telling blow came, when the entire 5th Fleet of the draconic Navy was forced out of superluminal travel by the forces of the Union. Ambushed, dragonkind for the first time found itself outnumbered and outmaneuvered by a collection of foes from nearly 300 separate races. Their losses were staggering. It has been said that before the collapse, if you were to travel to that region in space, the entire area was nigh unnavigatable - debris forming a wasteland as far as the senses could perceive. And with this defeat, the draconic drive was broken. Losing an entire arm of their offensive, the others also began to shrivel, die, and finally collapse as well. Like a singularity they fell, ever inward before the might of the Union, until all that remained was a single point in a space - the last homeworld of their various species' that had not been consumed by war. Finally, in the face of this ultimate defeat, they surrendered. The resolution process for dragonkind after the war was difficult, and the debate of their fate among the Union fierce. Some believed that in this last state, they were simply of little more threat and that finally they might be able to realize their place in the universe as one of many. However, there was also a very strong opposition, fueled by the vast loss of life and homes, which called for the heads of every last member of their race. In the end, what was decided was something of a compromise, although it leaned slightly on the side of the moderates. The last planet of the dragons was effectively quarantined from any contact with the outside universe, and all technologies of war removed from their grasp. In time, with good behavior and a fading from memory of the horrors of war, this restriction was even slightly reduced and minor travel was allowed for dragons abroad, but as a whole, they became non-entities to the universe at large. Figures of myth and legend to a populace that had left them behind. Righto, next up tomorrow I'll talk about their involvement with the sphere, how they even managed to get onboard, and how they've divied themselves up within it.
Araes 03-26-07, 03:02 PM	Alright, further draconic stuff today. The continuation of their history after the fall of the draconic empire and their various forms of immigration to the sphere. Bidden and Unbidden They Came... In the time of the construction, draconic kind had only recently been released from their imposed quarentine on their homeworld and allowed to interact with the universe at large once again. The long years had taken their toll, and the compact interaction of multiple species and viewpoints had fractured what unity the Empire previously contained. They now existed as three distinct subgroups within dragon-kind at large, who ran the spectrum of views towards the outside world and their own part in the fall. On one had were the Metallics, formed of groups of dragons who felt that perhaps their earlier acts of agression had been a mistake, and that if they were to survive as a species they needed to moderate their contempt for the lower races. Opposite stood the Chromatics, dragons who held fast to the belief that they as a race were inherently superior to the rest of sentient life, and had a moral imperative to guide it. For this sect, the long years of quarentine and isolation had been a period of planning, in which their rebirth as a species was mapped out and their designs for reestablishment of imperial control were considered. Finally, filling the moderate center, there was the Crystaline faction. A group for which the extremes of either viewpoint held little interest. To a large extent, this could be described as a group without any unified will, more a selection bonded by the simple goal of self. Most desired simply to live out their lives, build control relationships, and amass personal power. They tended to more closely follow the ancient draconic views of solitude and regarded the other two movements as extreme simply in their unity. When Peresis began recruitment for beings willing to assist in the construction of the Sphere, one of the places he searched was among the ranks of dragon-kind, discretely. Extremely intelligent and long lived, even without the aid of technological enhancements, dragons were a natural choice for creative scientific work. Undertaking talks with sympathetic members of the Metallics and even a few of the Crystallines, he convinced a number of them to leave their world and aid in the crafting. During this process, the Chromatics were completely disregarded due to their political outlooks, and only much later in the process did they even discover these talks had taken place. When they did, they were furious. The populace at large had been aware their was a threat to all life for some time, but there had been little or no mention of the Sphere's attempt to avoid it. As reports about Peresis' selection process began to surface, those who had been left in the cold, including the Chromatics, banded together into what would eventually become the Subverter faction aboard the Sphere. Aligning themselves with Akil and her goals, they participated in the last hibernation ship hijacking and covert transport to the Sphere. Beyond Hibernation Alright, now I'll just talk a bit about how the dragons have come to be organized in their post hibernation state. During the time of hibernation, all of the dragons went into hibernation like the rest of the races, even with their long life spans, as it was unknown how long it would take past the time of collapse to completely prepare the Sphere for population. When they awoke they suffered the same problems that all of the others did with erratic release cycles and unpredictable destruction / society states where they were released. They were also just as taken aback by the emergence of the "gods" within the Sphere, and have reacted to this revelation with a range from open distrust to support to envy. Finally, they also had the added benefit of extremely long natural life and powerful natural abilities, so over time, as shorter lived parts of society began to regress in various parts of the Sphere, they were often able to hold onto and preserve a greater portion of their technological past. However, even for dragons, a great time has passed, and without the infrastructure of society to support them, much of their technolgical knowledge is fairly useless. In many locations, dragons have been forced to return to their more ancestral roots of solitary living and territorialism, which the Crystalline movement was pushing for even before the Sphere. Naturally, the Cyrstallines who exist on the Sphere have taken to this mindset more readily than any others and are the most likely to be found in this state. In the cases of the Metallics, many of them still hold some bonds of loyalty to Peresis, who recruited them and gave them a sense of purpose after the fall. They also quite often feel a sense of love for their creation the Sphere, and its ultimate purpose of preserving sentience for something better. As such, they are the most likely to be found in roles that support the Founder gods and their goals. For the most part, the Chromatics are split between isolationism and active support of the Subverters. However, this support takes many forms, as the goals of the gods are not aligned as one, and the dragons have many ways of interpreting their wishes as well. As far as motivations and organizations go, the range of dragons can generally be split into five distinct categories which are fairly close to those laid out by chimpman before and which I'm pretty much just putting a stamp of approval on. Preservers - Composes mostly of Metallics and Crystallines, these dragons which to preserve the state of the Sphere as is. They view it as a work of beauty and a perfect place for sentient life to carry on existence. Creators / Escapers - This is a strange mix of Metallics and Chromatics, which have been brought together in unity by a singular goal of reinitializing a new universe and escaping from the Sphere. They tend to view it as an unnatural state and one which simply serves to fuel the egos of its would be gods. They also often point out that the original goal of the Sphere was only to preserve life as long as was necessary, and that the ultimate goal should be rebirth in a new space. Destroyers / Reshapers - Mostly Chromatics with a few Crystallines and Metallics. They view the Sphere as a necessary reality of life, but dislike the organization and power structure that exists. They are deeply unhappy with the "gods" of the Sphere and view them as an abomination in most cases. They seek the destruction of the false religions and imposed technoogical stagnation, often replacing them in their plans with a dragon controlled system. Diefic Ascenders - Composed mostly of Crystallines, with some Chromatics and Metallics, this section of the draconic populace has seen the power and reach given by the transcendance to digital life and wishes it for themselves. Their level of solitude vs organization vary across the Sphere, but they are bonded together by the goal of leaving their bodies behind. Isolationists / Personal Glory / Tyrants - Members of all the various races of dragons fit into this last category, and even members of the other organizations, as the accumulation of power and influence fits all of their goals. Crystallines are slightly more likely to follow this path simply for the pure personal glory.
Araes 03-28-07, 12:45 AM	I've been thinking about firearms today, and I think I've got some ideas on how I want to handle them. Throughout the Sphere, firearms are going to be available for characters to use. I'm thinking I'm probably going to go with the suggested firearms in the d20 Future book, and I'm going to allow firearms from all the way up to PL 8. However, I'm going par down the list some, rename everything on it, and set up a D&D price table for the items with the more powerful ones obviously being considerably pricy and rare. In some ways, fireams will kind of function like universal wands, in that everyone can use them if they just buy the exotic weapon prof. for them. However, for the "recharging" phase of using them, they'll have to carry around whatever type of item is necessary for that particular class of weapons. Energy weapons -> Some kind of battery device. Projectile throwers -> Some types of clips. Area affect things like flamers -> Energy or fuel canisters. However, I'd also like this to not be stupid complicated, so I may have to settle for only a few types of ammos, kind of like how all arrows work in all bows just to make stuff flow smoothly. All projectile weapons are also going to be lumped in society into a simple acronym of "Projectors". Pretty much nobody knows the difference between a laser beam and a slug gun, they just know that with either one when you pull the trigger a long ways away somebody gets hurt. Only the techno-priests in the upper echelons of the societies that collect and maintain these things would really have any idea what they actually are. To the lay man, they're magic items. In the same way, this might allow for different types of enchanted ammo depending on what you want to do. You could enchant (fire, acid, elec, explode, ect...) physical rounds or change the beam or spray type on the others. A listing may follow tomorrow.
Eldritch_Lord 03-28-07, 08:24 PM	I just finished reading all 9 1/2 pages and am VERY impressed. I can't really add much at this point (loooong day, not thinking clearly), but I do have a few ideas: 1) Has anyone read Ilium and/or Olympos by Dan Simmons? It has a group of post humans in it who don't know about technology, sort of like we have here. But, and this is the part I like best, instead of a written or spoken language, all of their "magic" devices work on mental geometry. For example, there are devices called "faxers" (or something like that; I don't remember exactly) that allow for teleportation-like effects; to use them to go to City X, someone imagines 3 red triangles arranged in a line, to go to City Y, they would picture two green and two orange circles in a square, etc. However, the more ancient and/or complex the technology, the harder images there are; in the case of a flying machine they discovered, you could do the whole picture-a-green-rectangle thing to go from point A to point B, or you could picture three red and one purple cubes arranged in a tetrahedron to gain complete control over the flight paths. The rationale behind this system was that there were hereditary implants linked to the visual/logical centers in the brain which transmitted certain signals to the technology when certain nerves were triggered. 2) On the subject of robots as avatars (which seems to have died) and outsiders as programs: What if all of the sentient outsiders started out like the other AIs did, but the outside chaos generated "noise" in the files, e.g., you have a few minor AIs that are replicas of the main AIs, a power surge occurs, the main AIs get an "ERROR--One or more file(s) corrupted in transmission" message, and *POOF* you have demons, devils, angels, archons, and everything in between. (Maybe the angels can be UNIX based and the demons Windows....;)) This would work well with the outsiders-as-messengers idea, as each AI "god" would have a bunch of outsiders based on him/her, and the robot avatars could simply be "corrupted" AIs that are fixed by the local equivalent of antivirus software for a time, allowing the AI full access to its functions. 3) On spell "blocks"--I'm working on my own magic system at the moment and it has some of the same ideas. I'm not sure I could explain coherently at the moment, but I'll share my ideas as soon as possible. Once again, I'm in awe of your progress and I think this is a very worthwhile project.
yellowdingo 03-29-07, 06:19 AM	Oard-built?
Araes 03-29-07, 02:09 PM	Oard-built? yellowdingo, I'm confused by your question. Could you retranslate? Eldritch_Lord, thanks for all the suggestions and the appreciation. Going through your comments: No, I've never had a change to read either the Ilium and/or Olympos. However, from looking over the Wikipedia entries for them, they seem pretty damn cool, I may have to pick them up to mine for even more ideas. And they cover the technology singularity, which is a personal favorite topic of mine. As far as the technology from it that you mentioned, I actually do like the idea of the mental geometry. It has a lot of parallels to the symbology laden spell casting that we were discussing earlier, and seems like it would be a natural segue into using tech from the future. I could honestly see things like this becoming the norm for keys and locks on tech as well after a point. Only the correct formulation of certain sets of symbols in your brain would activate whatever it was you were trying to use. Interesting idea on the origins of celestial beings. I'll have to deliberate a bit on whether I'd like to adopt that. What you say makes perfect sense and does seem like it would be a perfect way to reason out why celestials retain characteristics of whoever made them. Actually, you know, I think I might do that. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea that in some ways these new god AI are still basically only expanded humanoids, and in some ways they still don't have full control over their new environment or themselves. The way I would reason it is that if they expand too far for their conciousness to properly maintain, then they may accidentally leave parts / images / residues of themselves in the system. Its kind of the strange idea of an infinitely divisible conciousness. Each part that is lost lives on, but as a shadow of its former self. On the robot avatars, I haven't actually forgotten about them yet. I was actually just thinking about them the other day, and how I love the image of a robot being possessed by the spirit of an avatar and suddenly transforming into a flaming, towering reflection of the god. One of the main quandries I've been trying to wrestle with though, is how to not make this something that pisses off players were they to become possessed as a robot. I guess it could just be stated not to do it as advice for DMs, but it would be better if you could make a save to resist possession that was fairly easy to pass for PC's. My only issue then with it, is that it seems kind of silly to be making a save against the divine that you can actually pass. Be interesting to see your system when you finally manage to complete it. I've stalled out on my own, simply due to the vast quantity of info that I have to sift through to make it, and limitations on my physical time. Plus, a nagging urge to make it so that you can recreate nearly any spell you want. Firearm "Creation" and Costs in the Sphere Now, onto the system for firearms that I mentioned in the last post (doh, missed a day). After looking over the boards, I was actually rather impressed by the work of Cyber Dave on his Semi-Realistic Gun and Armor Rules (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=794436). For the most part I think that the new rules he has made work pretty well, and I'm probably going to use them for my own game. The only modifications will be that I'll stick to having the shots use fixed numbers of ammo to keep the bookkeeping easy. (IE, spray and pray is a flat 10, burst fire is 5, double tap is 2) As far as the weapons that are available, I think I'm going to go with a system where the pricing of the weapons is close to in line with normal magic item pricing. Firearms will start with a base damage of 2d4, which will have a cost similar to a +1 magic weapon. Every increase in die type (d6, d8, d10, d12) will result in a cost increase equivalent to another +1. Also, every die number increase (3d4, 4d4, 5d4, 6d4) will result in a +1 increase as well. Finally, you may also create / imbue them with the standard magic bonuses for ranged weapons at further + costs. IE, a +5 3d10 firearm would be the equivalent of a +10 ranged weapon cost. All firearms may have the equivalent of +5 in a combination of damage and or normal ranged weapon powers. They may then also have the additional +1 to +5 of enchanted magic weapons. All weapons start as semiautomatics. Automatic fire may be added to a firearm for a one time cost of +1000 gp. Downgrading to single shot fire actually lowers the cost of the weapon by the equivalent of a -1 power decrease. Obviously, you may not have both on the same weapon. During firearm creation, you may designate the size of the weapon to be within one size category of the target size for a weapon of its damage potential based on Cyber Dave's thread. However, it should be noted that for non-beam weapons, recoil is dependent on size. The range increment for the weapon also changes with size as shown in the following list: Small - 20 feet. Medium - 40 feet. Large - 80 feet. Ect... with the range doubling every time the size is increased. This becomes silly after a while, but how many people are going to be using garganuan weapons anyhow? Weight also increases in a doubling fashion starting as: Small - 2 lb. Medium - 4 lb. Large - 8 lb. If you wish, you may designate a weapon created in this manner as a beam weapon, which lowers the total number of damage dice by 1 (Ex: 2d4 to 1d4), but totally eliminates all recoil concerns. Beam weapons may not use the skip shot feat, but if the player wishes, they may spend ammo at twice the regular rate in combat, and every attack after the first will have a cumulative +1 to hit. This is to represent the ease of shot tracking when firing a continuous beam weapon. Beam weapons also automatically gain an energy type from fire, cold, acid, or elec. If you wish, a weapon may be designated as a shotgun type weapon, and follows all the rules for Shotgun weapons in the thread with no cost change. The range increment for the weapon is reduced by half though. When following the rules in the thread, where there is an option for -2 dmg per increment or - to hit and dmg, we will be following the -2 dmg rule. On the recoil issue from Cyber Dave's thread, my instinct is to have increasing the die number increase both the base recoil and size requirement by +1 as well (Effecitvely increasing recoil by +2 to maintain the same size). So, by Cyber Dave's table, a 3d12, huge railgun would have a recoil of: 1 base +4 from die type increases. +2 for being too small +1 for having three dice For a final total of 8 recoil with each shot unless there is some serious recoil compensation going on. There will be a Craft Firearms feat in the Sphere. However, to gain it, you will have to be a member of the order which builds, maintains, and preserves firearms, as they guard their knowledge closely. All of the feats commonly associated with firearms will be available in the Sphere. All magazine sizes are 50 for ease of tracking.
Eldritch_Lord 03-29-07, 06:22 PM	On the robots as avatars thing, I can see two easy options and a third hard option. First, you could make the robot have to allow the god in (like read/write permissions, for the modern analogy) and have the ability to kick the god out if absolutely necessary (like Force Quit, or Ctl-Alt-Del if you allow the god a save;)). Option two would be like an adaptive system wherein a robot could build up a "god resistance"--the first time would be automatic takeover, perhaps for the AI to give the PCs their mission or whatever, then the saves would go from very difficult to easier to automatic until the robot can deny access, sort of like an adaptive spam blocker, to use another analogy. The third option, which I have just thought of in a vague form, is to have two types of robots. One would be completely self-contained and the other would be connected to AIs, other robots, and the like. You would basically give the former concrete advantages to represent self-sufficiency, such as slightly better saves or better ability adjustments, whatever you think would fit; you'd give the other minor advantages like telepathy or better knowledge skills, Google-search style, but disadvantages in terms of vulnerability to mind-affecting attacks and AI control. This would make the first type more likeable for PCs and the other more useful for NPCs, which would benefit more from large groups. This would also explain why NPCs can be taken over but PCs can't; instead of DM fiat, you can point to the PC's choice of robot type and say, "See, this is why it works that way." I hope at least some of that made sense, and hopefully there's something in there you can use.
Araes 03-29-07, 06:45 PM	Interesting thoughts on the robots as avatars issue. I think I'm actually partial to a combination of items 2 and 3. I like the idea of an adaptive filter, so if being taken over pisses off the player, then they can have the satisfaction of knowing that they're going to be able to wall it away eventually. You might almost be able to run it like a skill that they simply can't put points into until they've been possessed once. I also do like the idea of having various classes of robots, with some being more prone or useful as PCs. It makes sense that not every robot would make a good adventurer, and the ones that would seem like they'd be some of the most likely to be hardened against takeover by militant systems.
Araes 03-31-07, 08:24 PM	I've been thinking about the robot issue some more, and I think the best way would probably just to do the adaptive filter concept for PC robots. It should also be something that doesn't reduce the utility of the character in any way to take advantage of, as this would make their balancing quite a bit more difficult. Finally, it should also rise in effectiveness rather quickly, so that people who are annoyed by the concept of diefic possession can resist it effectively. As such, I would propose that diefic possession operate as follows: Entity (God or mainframe creature) makes an attempt to take over the character and temporarily transform them into an a visual representation of themselves. Target of possession makes a Will Save against a DC of 20 for Dieites and DC 15 for lesser creatures. The target may add a modifier of +5 to his check for every time this particular being has tried to possess them and +2 for every time any OTHER being has tried to possess them. If the check is successful, the possessing being is repulsed and can not attept to possess them again for at least a day. If the check fails, the target is possessed by the entity; if desired, its form is temporarily modified to one more appropriate (flames, size growth, ect...); and entity may remain in control for up to one hour, at which time the robot is given another chance to resisst with the +5 modifier for having an additional possession. POSSESSED ROBOT (AVATAR) Possessed robots are robots which have been taken control of by a digital, incorporeal entity through the wireless information networks of the Sphere. While possessed, the personality and attitudes of the robot represent those of the controlling entity and the conciousness of the original robot is subsumed to a non-vocal position. Possessed robots vary widely in their appearance, as the powerful entities which control them often use their knowledge of the robots own systems and higher understanding of the workings of the universe to alter their shape to better reflect their personalities. There are two types of possessed robots which vary in power based upon the being that is controlling them. In some cases, a diety of the Sphere will take a personal interest in events and initiate an avatar transformation / possession to interact on a personal basis. In others, a lesser being of the Sphere mainframe will either be commanded to, or of its own free will, take control of a robot to serve some purpose in physical reality. CREATING A POSSESSED ROBOT "Possessed Robot" is an acquired template which can be added to any construct creature of the living construct subtype. (Referred to hereafter as the base creature.) Before creating a possessed robot, the creator should decide on the CR of the possessing entity. If the possessing creature is of diety power (Possesses a divine rank higher than 0) then the resulting creature will have a CR of 25. If the possessing creature is of lesser power, the resulting creature should have a CR of 20 or less. Size and Type: The base creature's type changes to outsider for the duration of the possession. It retains any subtypes it had at the time of possession. If the possessing creature is of diety power then they may modify the size of the base creature by up to 3 size categories. This may be to either increase or decrease the size of the creature as desired. If the possessing creature is a lesser entity, then they may modify the size of the creature by two categories as formerly detailed. If the size of the creature is changed, its physical characteristics are changed according to the format detailed on page 291 of the MM 3.5. Hit Dice: If the possessing creature is of diety power, the hit dice of the base creature are temporarily increased by the amount necessary to increase it to 30 HD. All constitution bonuses are retained for these additional dice. If the possessing creature is of lesser power, the hit dice of the base creature are increased to (CR) HD with retained constitution modifiers. Speed: All movement forms may be temporarily given to the base creature at the entity's discretion and regardless of power. No physical changes are required for these abilities, but some entities may prefer asthetic changes. If the size of the creature is changed, the base land movement rate is increased accordingly. If flight is given, the manueverability of the template creature will be (Perfect) and its speed will be twice its base movement rate. If burrowing is given, its speed will be half the normal movement rate. All other movement types are at the base movement rate. Armor Class: If the possessing creature is of diety power, the template creature gains a divine AC bonus equal to the difference between the base creature's AC and 45. (Effectively setting the AC at 45) If the possessing creature is of lesser power, the AC is instead set to (CR + 15) by the same method. (EX: A CR 20 creature would have an AC of 35) Base Attack: The base attack of a possessed creature is equal to the base attack of an outsider equal to its modified hit dice as detailed on page 290 of the MM 3.5 Attacks: A possessed creature retains all of the natural attacks of its base creature and gains a slam attack if it didn't have one. Even if the base creature could not use weapons, the possessed creature may modify it so that it can. Damage: The slam attack damage of the possessed creature may be calculated from the following table based on its new size: Fine - 1 Diminutive - 1d2 Tiny - 1d3 Small - 1d4 Medium - 1d6 Large - 1d8 Huge - 2d6 Gargantuan - 2d8 Collossal - 4d6 Collosal+ - 4d8 Special Attacks: The possessed creature retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the Change Shape special attack. The Change Shape ability works as detailed on page 306 of the MM 3.5, except as follows: The creature's size may be up to three size categories different depending on the power of the possessing entity. The creature retains the natural attacks and abilities of the base robot unless it becomes physically impossible to do so. The creature does not gain the appropriate feats to use natural attack forms for which it is not already proficient. (IE, if it grows 4 additional arms, it must already possess the multi-attack chain) In addition, as desired by the possessing entity, it may also gain: Breath Weapon Improved Grab Pounce Powerful Charge Rend Roar Swallow Whole Trample Finally, the possessed creature gains the spellcasting powers of a (CR - 3) spellcaster of a single type they desire. This may be epic if they are a deity level of power. The possessed creature does NOT retain the spellcasting abilities of its prior form, as these are part of the conciousness it has subsumed. Special Qualities: The possessed creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and gains: Aura of Menace Aura of Courage Damage Reduction (CR - 5)/magic All construct immunities Immunity to one form of energy Indelible Imprint Low light vision Darkvision Spell Resistance (CR + 15) Teleport Tounges Saves: The possessed creature gains the saves of an outsider equal to its hit dice. Abilities: The physical ability scores of the possessed creature may be assigned by the possessing diety as it transforms, while the mental ability scores are an average of its overall power level. If the possessing creature is of diety power, they may have one ability score at 40, one at 30, and one at 25. The mental ability scores of the possessed creature all become 30. If the possessing creature is of lesser power, they may have one ability score at (CR + 15), one at (CR + 10), and one at (CR). The mental ability scores of the possessed creature all become (CR + 10). Skills: If the possessing creature is of diety power, they effectively possess all skills at a modifier of +45. If the possessing creature is of lesser power, they possess all skills at a modifier of +35. Feats: The possessed creature retains all of the feats of the base creature. In addition, if the possessing entity is of deity power, they may also choose 10 additional feats. If the possessing entity is of lesser power, they may choose (CR / 2) additional feats (round down) Environment: Same as base creature. Organization: Almost always solitary, but sometimes may appear in groups if the situation within the Sphere warrants it. Challenge Rating: If the possessing creature is of diety power, the CR for the new creature becomes 25. If the possessing creature is of lesser power, the CR for the new creature must be chosen and should be 20 or less. Fin - Probably the single most powerful template ever created.
Eldritch_Lord 04-01-07, 04:57 PM	I like the way the robot thing turned out, but I have two minor points. 1) Might I suggest making the initial Will DC 40/30, then stepping down to 15/10, with all the modifiers you suggest? That way, the DM can do an automatic takeover to set the scene in the beginning, with rapidly developing immunity thereafter. 2) The template is just a tiny bit overpowered. I would suggest dropping AC and HD gained by about 10 and reducing the spellcasting; after all, these aren't the deities themselves, only extensions of them. Otherwise, great job and keep the ideas coming; I'll be able to post my spellcasting system as soon as I get back to my home computer.
Araes 04-01-07, 11:16 PM	Yeah, I was thinking about a bit of a rewrite on the avatar template as well. There are several things that need to be taken care of - most importantly being that there needs to be some more levels of power so that you can represent digital creatures of more than just two strengths. Since most of the abilities that I mentioned follow a simple linear progression, it should be pretty easy to just base everything off the HD. You are right that these aren't the physical manifestations of the dieties themselves, although I'm not sure what that would actually be, since meeting them would involve digitizing yourself and then encountering them on the Sphere mainframe. At which point, you yourself might then start to take on diefic properties... Mostly I just based their stats off of examples given in the Manual of the Planes and the Book of Exalted Deeds. I do like the suggestion of the irresistable first time. I think that it might almost be more appropriate to say that for the first try they simply don't get a save, and then it follows the progression as detailed. Then there would simply be no chance of failure for the initial setup. If I were going to write it out in a formal way, I would probably put a sidebar explaining the concept behind possession and the correct story based way to use it too. IE, dont be a jerk.
Araes 04-02-07, 08:37 PM	Alright, I took your comments into account, and having looked through some of the other books for examples, found that you are mostly right. So I have modified the template. I have changed the HD, AC, skills, and spellcasting abilities of the resulting creatures. In addition, I have varied the template so that it can be spanned over all the CR ranges of lesser CR outsiders. Now, on to other topics that involve new information. Safe Harbor in the Heavens In a prior post, I laid out the concept of Ki'Sha-la, and what it is like to live in that world. Now I would like to go into a bit more detail on one of the islands in specific, which has managed to grow, nay thrive, in the chaos of the devestated layer. Name: Trafell City Type: Major Metropolis Population: 300,000 Industries: Trade, magic / high tech, banking, textiles, light manufacturing. Population Density: Highly density GP Limit: In practice none. One of the first cities founded after the awakening, Trafell found itself in a lucky position both physically and geographically. Possessing nearly zero innate rotation after the disaster, the island was relatively easy to repopulate and build upon. In addition, of all the islands in its immediate vicinity, Trafell possessed the most predictable and central position to its neighbors. As such, it was not long before the island had become a hub of commerce and activity amidst the rebuilding layer. In its first years, Trafell was a small city, taking up only a minor percentage of its island and serving the agriculture needs of both its populace, and those worse off islands around it, quite well. Its industrial output was nearly completely driven towards repairing the damage caused to the pre-built city and managing the survival of its populace. However, even with these concerns, it was still the first island in its area to take to the skies and begin communication measures with its fellows, and soon found that many wished to immigrate to its relatively safe environs. From then onward, Trafell has found itself in an almost constant state of population boom. This rapid population increase has spurned wide spread changes in the city and a physical growth that is without parallel on the layer. Trafell was quite probably one of the first cities in the layer to latch upon the concept of building outward from their landmass in all directions, and this ethos has literally transformed the shape of the city. Currently, Trafell occupies all of the surface area of its entire island with buildings - including the sides and lower regions. The growth and expansion of Trafell is carefully planned, and each addition most undergo a rigorous approval process before it is added to the whole. Luckily, early on the founders of the city realized that their land was a paradise amidst the devestation and the potential for population overload. Because of this, they made extreme efforts to ensure that all known technology which could be recovered on the processes of building and shaping material should be found, collected, and preserved. As a direct result, Trafell currently possesses quite possibly the premiere repository of civil engineering information in the entire Sphere. Amusingly though, as supporting technology for the practice has fallen out of use, even this careful preservation has started to be viewed as a mystic art. The physical structure of Trafell is akin to that of a cloth mesh when viewed from any angle. Buildings join in great, six way axis intersections, from which markets, administrative centers, and other population centric wards often sprout. Light filters down through the pillars within the gaps of the mesh. However, shade is more often than not the norm in the deepest sections near the core island mass. Travel within the mesh is generally accomplished by foot or animal. However, in some rare locations there are cable cars, and teleportation pads. In addition, within the old city, and along the central flat axis of the mesh, there is a form of vehicle transport somewhat like a metro, which has been extended out to the edge of current development. Finally, as detailed below, airtravel is also possible throughout much of the city due to its structure. Industry within Trafell is thriving, and thousands of people funnel in and out of the city on a regular basis. Trafell is the hub of all trade, banking, and magical antiquities within its area of the layer, and the cloud of airships which constantly surrounds the land requires a steady hand and years of experience to navigate. Due to its mesh like, porous nature, there are docks for ships scattered throughout the city - including at its very base. Markets as well are scattered througout the city, with the largest concentration along the ever expanding outward edge.
Araes 04-04-07, 08:01 PM	Limitless Bounty of the Skies Today I'm going to cover a layer which I have alluded to before, but really never gone into much detail on, the land of Arborea. This layer is the second layer out, counting upward from the central megapolis of the Sphere, and actually serves as a food production center for the countless beings which live in the city layer. Arborea is possibly one of the strangest lands, as it wasn't really designed from a habitation perspective, but simply to maximize production of foodstuffs. As such, it has a number of strange properties which make living or traveling there difficult for non-adapted individuals. One of the most stark differences in the layer, is the fact that it has lighting unlike no other layer. To maximize growth potential, lighting is a continous, multidirectional glow, that infuses everything not surrounded by four opaque walls. There are no day / night cycles of any kind on the layer. This combination of ever present, multi-directional light can be horribly disorienting to off-layer visitors, and it can quickly become difficult to maintain regular sleep cycles, and in some cases, even balance and orientation are tasks. To cope with these issues, most of the people who were originally scheduled to awake on the layer came from binary and trinary star systems, so that the ever present light effects would not influence them so direly. Societally, the layer of Arborea is mostly composed of non-unified farming nation states. Each of these nation states operates independently, but food production has been given as a chief commandment by the gods to one and all on the layer, so they generally work towards the same tasks. Even with this focus, however, there have often been wars or skirmishes over territorial areas of the layer, and the gods have been quick to step in and intervene as best they can. In fact, this layer might be considered the most closely monitored and controlled of all the layers, operating in something almost close to a digital police state. As time and space are difficult to keep track of in the layer, and mechanical methods are the only sure way to even regulate time, a number of strange calendar keeping practices have sprung up. The most popular is a system regulated around the growing cycles of particular crops, their individual planting times, and the water and mineral dispensation times. It is common to have times like the month of Felayla, the week of planting, the cycle of the rains. With regards to the food, most of the production is done within gargantuan, multi-tiered greenhouse structures that cover huge sections of the surface of the layer. To wander inside these structures is to see rows upon rows of plants suspended in midair - like a vast array of greenery. Traveling within these areas may be one of the only times that characters are free of the ever present light, since the thick folliage can serve to ward some of it off. However, many of the animals which were brought to the Sphere have also wandered loose for ages within these growths, and in some cases, even the local populations around a growing area won't be able to perform their tasks, as the beasts have become too agressive. As was mentioned with the cycle of the rains, the "rains" are huge storms of mineral enhanced watering that pass through the greenhouses on regular cycles. They don't appear to move with a wind like a hurricane, but they travel rather quickly throughout the land and within seconds of being caught in one, travelers may be swept away under torrents of downrushing water. Finally, much of the opportunity for adventure in this layer actually revolves around the police state like structure of the layer, rather than the more traditional hack and slash. Political intrigue is rampant through the nations, and there are constant schemes to conquer neighboring nation states, escape from the vigilant eyes of the gods, or even throw off the yolks of their oppressors - one of which might even succeeed with the aid of PC intervention.
Araes 04-06-07, 08:12 PM	The Treasure Troves of Knowledge Next up, I'm going to cover the guilds of technology / magic, which I've alluded to before, and covered in specific instances, but never really delved into. Now, within the world of the Sphere, there are actually many different forms of guilds relating to the preservation of technology within the Sphere. In a few rare cases, these guilds are focused on the general task of preserving all technological / magical knowledge. However, for the most part, guilds have formed up around specializations, which they can focus on with more ease and less resources. These guilds have formed for a number of reasons (government founding, public outcry). The most common, though, is often the desire of enterprising individuals to carve out a niche of power around their own knowledge base in the chaos of the awakening. In many cases, similar guilds have been formed by numerous different individuals in separate physical locations, and then over time joined into one larger entity to enhance their monopoly. Each of the different types of guilds generally horde the information which is their specialty, in an attempt to retain a monopoly on its use. As a result, many of the guilds operate large repositories of information about their craft in various parts of their layers, and often have physical deterrents to those who would steal from them (fortifications, guards, traps, troops) This hoarding of information and power has actually helped to hasten the deflating effect of general population knowledge, as ideas which might interlock and lead to innovation or new concepts are instead locked away within high walls and only known to a select few masters of the separate crafts. The most common guilds are based around concepts which are more familiar to readers of this material as engineering disciplines. They are not strictly aligned, but tend to follow lines of functional thought. A general (although not exhaustive) list is as follows, with the engineering / science disciplines they would commonly include: Weapons / combat / firearms (military and combat) Information / communication (electrical, computer, software) Transportation (mechanical, aerospace) Construction (civil, material, industrial) Individualists (cybernetics, symbiology) Alchemists (material, chemistry) Mentalists (psychologists, social) Societalists (poly-sci, social, industrial) Healers (medical, biology, xenobiology) Traders [different than normal merchants] (financial, economists) Growers (plant science, environmental) World shapers (stellar, terraforming). It should be noted that these are groups which are mainly focused around the technology of these fields. In the cases of fields like combat, or food growth, these aren’t the people who would actually fight or grow food. They instead provide those groups with technology to do their jobs better. For example, in the case of Growers, they might provide equipment, powders, or particular spells which would make crop lands of normal farmers more productive. Another special case that should be noted are the guilds which focus around the personal control of the universe provided by the implants in biological being’s bodies – effectively personal magic. These groups would operate similarly to the other guilds, except that the wouldn’t actually focus on the creation of physical objects or tools for accomplishing specific tasks, but rather the general manipulation of space with the powers granted by the implants. These guilds might have a tie to the Individualists. However, the individualists are commonly more focused on physical enhancements to beings through the use of mechanical and biological replacements. The guilds of the Sphere are in general powerful for the exact reason why guilds commonly would fail. The great force of innovation and personal initiative has been hamstrung as people desperately just try and hold onto what they have. In only a very small section of the Sphere does the common populace actively care about ease of businesses, the social wellbeing, or advancing trade. In areas where this is the case, the guild system is actually somewhat weakened (many sections of the megapolis at the Sphere’s center) and there are actually private, or even public, institutions for the centralization of skills and convenient training of new apprentices, journeymen, and the verification of masters. As mentioned, most of the guilds throughout the Sphere operate on a standard apprentice, journeyman, and master system of rank within the guilds. They are also organized in what might be considered a standard organizational structure for a guild with a governing body, assisting functionaries and the members' assembly. Since communications are generally somewhat difficult, much of the day to day operation of guilds is handled on a more local context, with guilds dealing directly with the administrators where they operate. A notable exception to this is the communication guild, which almost uniformly will have better communication and organization than nearly any other except possibly the societalists. In addition to the surface structure of the guilds, there is also a somewhat higher level cooperation which goes on among many guilds. Often, upon reaching the master level of guilds, members are sometimes made aware of the fact that there steps beyond this point. Using interguild cooperation, many layers actually support what could be called a cabal of the highest level guild members in each guild. These members use technology / magic transfer for their mutual benefit, and quite often collude to influence political change on their layers. Finally, it has also been rumored that there is even one further layer of communication between groups – an interlayer group which looks to gain influence over the whole of the Sphere, and possibly even overthrow the gods. Whether there are tie-ins with the similarly minded dragon groups is unknown, but it is suspected. As a last note, it should be mentioned that the guilds as a whole are distinctly different than the encyclopedist movement. The encyclopedists generally wish to catalogue everything in the world and then make this knowledge available to the public. Their reasoning for doing so differs from member to member (pure knowledge sake, freedom, betterment of lifestyle), but the most common distinction is that it is rarely for personal profit.
Sliversun 04-07-07, 02:41 AM	Nice idea with the guilds and the encyclopedists. BTW, do any layers have steampunk technology? Or even post-steampunk?
Eldritch_Lord 04-07-07, 09:43 AM	Okay, here's my take on the "spell block" system, as promised. It's a little weird, so if it's confusing, I apologize. (Actually, the flavor part of it benefitted greatly from all the ideas here, so I'll be using your stuff as much as you will (/might be) using this.) Overview Magic is not a random, wish-for-whatever-you-want system, nor is it an art. It is a science, with a set of fundamental principles: Law of Conservation of Magical Energy In physics, one cannot create or destroy energy, nor can one make things out of nothing; the same holds in the area of magic, as if a spellcaster wishes to make a certain part of his spell more powerful, he must reduce the power spent on other parts. The basic power for the spell is supplied by the caster, and once it is supplied, it can be manipulated and reallocated following a set of highly precise mathematical formulae, which describe magic's powers and limitations so precisely that one might think magic was designed by humans. (Translation: No free metamagic, no uber-powerful spells. Every level is one block, which is a continuum on which the caster may decrease the power of one aspect of the spell to increase the power of another. Examples to follow.) Law of Capacitance The spellcaster has limitless flexibility (or close to it) when designing spells, but magical energy used "on the spot" would work so slowly as to have negligible effects. It must be stored up beforehand and released all at once, as electrical power from a capacitor does, although few spellcasters would understand that analogy. (Translation: The spellcaster can mix and match blocks he has access to in whatever combination he wishes, but he must mix, match, and ready spells beforehand, like a wizard with an unlimited number of spells in his spellbook.) The Quantum Nature of Magic Although magical energies can be finely manipulated, the total amount of energy allocated to a particular aspect of a spell is a constant, a multiple of a basic unit of magical energy. Total energy may only be expended in discrete quanta, although the energy within the quanta may not be evenly distributed among all aspects of a spell. (Translation: It's a Vancian system, with spell blocks and effects equalling spell levels.) Basically, the 1 level = 1 block rule is in effect. Similar to your system, there are metamagic and effect options for the various blocks, but otherwise, there is a ssytem of continua used to determine the exact effect. There is a continuum for area, damage, range, casting time, etc., the specifics of which are modified according to feats and class abilities. Spell parameters start out as average values, which can be modified inversely. As an example, let's take a look at Joe Human, a wizard preparing 2nd-level spells for the day. He can prepare 3 spells, so he looks at what he thinks he'll face that day. First, he wants to have both a single target spell and an area spell to cover all the bases. Both will be damaging spells. Joe wants to stay fairly far from his enemies, so he takes a look at his range and damage; he's willing to trade more range for less damage. Due to feats and level, his range and damage spreads look like this (random examples off the top of my head): Range Touch/0 ft Short Medium Long ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Damage 8d6 7d6 6d6 5d6 4d6 3d6 2d6 1d6 He wants the longest range possible that would still do a good amount of damage, so he picks something in the middle (part in red): Range Touch/0 ft | | Short Medium Long ---------------------------|---|-------------------------------------------------------------- Damage 8d6 7d6 6d6 |5d6| 4d6 3d6 2d6 1d6 This means that his spell will do 5d6 damage at 4/5 of short range, which is about 20ft + 4 ft per caster level. He chooses this for 2 of his 3 spells. One of these he wants to be an "ambush" spell that no one can detect, so, because he has a [feat? class ability?] that changes his components at the expense of casting time (again, part in red): Components V, S, M, XP V, S, F, XP V, S, M V, S, F V, S S V | None | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------| Casting Time Swift Standard Full Round |1 minute| The other spell he wants to be an area spell. He anticipates facing many opponents who aren't very nimble, so he doesn't mind if it's easier to avoid: Sphere 5ft radius 10ft radius |15ft radius| 20ft radius 25ft radius 30ft radius --------------------------------------|-----------|------------------------------------------- Save DC Mod +2 +1 +0 -1 | -2 | -3 -4 -5 -6 Finally, he knows his one main weakness is getting into a grapple, so he wants to prevent that. He uses one block for Teleport, which has a 25ft max range due to a [feat? class ability?] that increases the range. He uses the second block for Contingency--trigger: "someone grapples me." This will send a grappler to a random position within 25 feet; if he had a higher-level spell, and thus more blocks available, he could increase the range, precision, weight limit, etc. of the teleportation, but he only needs to get opponents away from him. I hope that made some sense; the system is in its early stages, and I haven't had a chance to playtest it (as you can probably guess). I'd be happy to clarify things if necessary, and any ideas you have for modifications are appreciated.
Araes 04-08-07, 02:39 PM	Interesting system, and you were right, it does look pretty similar to my and Jeweler's concepts on how to handle magic. In reading through it though, I did have some questions as to how certain things were laid out. In terms of the spell blocks, are all spell blocks the same at the fundamental level. IE, there is only one type of what I will call a "universal spell block" and for every spell level you would normally be able to cast, you gain that many of these blocks : OR : is it that for each level of spell you have, you effectively have a spell block of that level. IE, a 1st level block, a second level block? When looking at the damage spreads, I was curious how those are calculated, as it looked like there was an underlying pattern, it just wasn't obvious what it was. The components choice is a clever one, and I like how that is arranged. Are you still going to have things like metamagic feats to allow people to even have access to certain abilities (you mentioned that it wouldn't be free metamagic) On the area of effect, I'm curious why you decided to go with a save reduction for more area of effect rather than a reduction in damage, as the standard D&D convention is to roll off the dice as the area gets bigger. Of course, your system will result in a similar effect, I'm just curious why the choice of mechanic. Have you thought about how you're going to choose when all of the various effect types are going to be available to people, or are they all available from the start? This was probably one of the most daunting things when I was looking at creating my own, as there are just a bazillion different effects, and to be able to create the whole spectrum of spells you would need to include most of them. Do all effects (say, teleport vs damage vs poison) cost the same amount of spell blocks to have? Or are they gradiated based on power? I say this, because having the teleport effect only cost 1 block seemed...inexpensive. For damage, are you going to keep the convention that damage from spells scales with character levels, or just directly tie it to the level of the spell? This was another hard choice for me, as spells would be really deadly during those first couple levels you had access to them if they were normal power and didn't scale, or would be comparatively weak at high levels. I do have some inverse cost matrices that I did a while back for spells before I got sidetracked by life. I ought to put those up just as a data point. This thread has gotten so big that at times I forget what I've actually included, what other people have written, and what's still languishing on my hard drive or in my head. Also, some other stuff that I thought needed to be taken into account for one of these types of systems. Allows a save - yes - no - yes w/ secondary effects Spell Resistance allowed? - yes - no Duration - Instant - 1 rnd - 1 min - 1 hr - 1 day - 1 week - 1 month - 1 year - concentration - permanent - all the above (rnd - year) / level Extensions of casting time - 10 minutes - 1 hr - 1 day - 1 week Targets (area options) - cone (15 - 30 - 60) ft - line (30 - 60 - 120) ft - sphere (5 - 10 - 20 - 40) ft - wall (20 - 40 - 100) cubic ft / level
Eldritch_Lord 04-09-07, 08:05 AM	Interesting system, and you were right, it does look pretty similar to my and Jeweler's concepts on how to handle magic. In reading through it though, I did have some questions as to how certain things were laid out. In terms of the spell blocks, are all spell blocks the same at the fundamental level. IE, there is only one type of what I will call a "universal spell block" and for every spell level you would normally be able to cast, you gain that many of these blocks : OR : is it that for each level of spell you have, you effectively have a spell block of that level. IE, a 1st level block, a second level block? Yes, a 1st level spell equals 1 "universal block," a 2nd level is 2 "universal blocks," etc. When looking at the damage spreads, I was curious how those are calculated, as it looked like there was an underlying pattern, it just wasn't obvious what it was. Basically, you start out with an even distribution for everything, which is then modified with feats or class abilities. I'm working scales out on graph paper right now, so changes are expressed in "units" on a sheet of graph paper. For example, one feat might be "Combat Mage--Your damage spread is shifted 3 units over to the left" or something. Class abilities would make it an exponential-looking spread with differing amounts of spaces, based on the class's focus. For example, a warmage would have damage focused towards the left, where you lose only a little bit of damage for a lot of the other effect, whereas a bard would probably have the opposite. Obviously, there aren't any blocks on the screen to make the pattern obvious, but like I said, most of the numbers were off the top of my head anyways. The components choice is a clever one, and I like how that is arranged. Thanks. Are you still going to have things like metamagic feats to allow people to even have access to certain abilities (you mentioned that it wouldn't be free metamagic) Yes; however, because you can already modify the parameters of the spell without them, there will be more "effect" feats, to give access to teleport, ability damage, whatever than the usual Still Spell, Maximize Spell, etc. The regular metamagic would simply make the basic parameters more advantageous to modify. On the area of effect, I'm curious why you decided to go with a save reduction for more area of effect rather than a reduction in damage, as the standard D&D convention is to roll off the dice as the area gets bigger. Of course, your system will result in a similar effect, I'm just curious why the choice of mechanic. No reason; I was just trying to show off as many things as possible. He could just as easily have reduce damage. Have you thought about how you're going to choose when all of the various effect types are going to be available to people, or are they all available from the start? This was probably one of the most daunting things when I was looking at creating my own, as there are just a bazillion different effects, and to be able to create the whole spectrum of spells you would need to include most of them. That's the major problem I've been having as well. I'm looking at things like, What level does a wizard get the first mind-affecting spell?, What level is the first area spell?, and so on. I've been combing the boards to compile Ye Olde List Of Every Possible Magical Effect, but I don't know if it's possible to include everything. Do all effects (say, teleport vs damage vs poison) cost the same amount of spell blocks to have? Or are they gradiated based on power? I say this, because having the teleport effect only cost 1 block seemed...inexpensive. I'm looking at having feats/abilities change the number of blocks you need, which could be one way to gradiate based on power, but take another look at the parameters above; to get the basic long range teleport might require 6 or 7 blocks, maybe more without feats. For damage, are you going to keep the convention that damage from spells scales with character levels, or just directly tie it to the level of the spell? This was another hard choice for me, as spells would be really deadly during those first couple levels you had access to them if they were normal power and didn't scale, or would be comparatively weak at high levels. I haven't decided yet; I'm going to wait and see if one way works better. I do have some inverse cost matrices that I did a while back for spells before I got sidetracked by life. I ought to put those up just as a data point. This thread has gotten so big that at times I forget what I've actually included, what other people have written, and what's still languishing on my hard drive or in my head. Also, some other stuff that I thought needed to be taken into account for one of these types of systems. Allows a save - yes - no - yes w/ secondary effects Spell Resistance allowed? - yes - no Duration - Instant - 1 rnd - 1 min - 1 hr - 1 day - 1 week - 1 month - 1 year - concentration - permanent - all the above (rnd - year) / level Extensions of casting time - 10 minutes - 1 hr - 1 day - 1 week Targets (area options) - cone (15 - 30 - 60) ft - line (30 - 60 - 120) ft - sphere (5 - 10 - 20 - 40) ft - wall (20 - 40 - 100) cubic ft / level The matrices will help, as will those suggestions. Thanks for the feedback.
Araes 04-09-07, 07:40 PM	Hmm, since you mentioned the total list of spell effects, this is the complete list of things that a spell can do that I've come up with so far. Some of these are obviously vague, so that multiple types can be incorporated into one single unit. Ex: All of the Information group (many different types of info), the Summons (SO many different things you can summon), and the Animates (Objects, Undead, and Plants are common normally). In fact, for anything which can affect multiple different types of objects, it seems clear that there's a common heirarchy of importance that goes something like Objects < Plants < Unthinking Creatures <= Animals < Beasts / Monsters < Intelligent Creatures. This heirarchy could be incorporated into a spell system, so that if you wanted to affect something higher up in the chain, it would raise the spell level accordingly. In addition, these are only the base effects, so things like area, duration, growth per level, ect... would affect the basic things they do. Also, a good mechanic for deciding how multiple effects stack would need to be ironed out. I'm fairly certain that a decent math approximation can be figured out based on how most abilities operate singly and in tandem through common WotC examples. Damage (Average) Healing (Average) Regenerate To Hit + To Hit - AC + AC - Dam + Dam - Save (1 Type) + Save (1 Type) - Save (All) + Save (All) - Ability Score + Ability Score - Skill Check + Skill Check - Character Level + Character Level - Restore Character Level Caster Level + Caster Level - Store Spell (Levels) Block Spell (Level) Capture Spell (Levels) Reflect Spell (Levels) Recall Spell (Levels) Transfer Spell / Ability (Levels) Make Spell Permanent (Levels) Actions + Actions - Actions (# instant bonus) Move (speed +) Move (speed -) Move (burrow) Move (fly) Move (climb) Move (air walk) Move (water walk) Move (slow fall) Move (phase) Move (teleport) Move (planar travel) Free Movement (1 type) Block Movement (1 type) Hamper Movement (1 type) Change Shape (HD) Change Shape (Ex) Change Shape (Su) Change Shape (Sp) Change Shape (Mental) Change Shape (At Will) Change Shape (Material Type) Damage Reduction DR Exception DR Exception (align object) Spell Resistance Energy Resistance Ignore Hot / Cold Ignite Natural Fires Extinguish Natural Fires Freeze Natural Water Melt Natural Ice Increase Size (1 type) Decrease Size (1 type) Ward (1 Type) Ward (Additional Types) Warning (Mental) Warning (Audible) Warning (Precognitive) Information (Visual) Information (Audio) Information (Translation) Information (Spellcasting) Information (Magic Auras) Information (Magic Items) Information (Precognition) Information (Advice) Information (Health) Information (Detection) (1 type) Information (Location) Information (Deceive) Information (Shield) Communication (Distant) Communication (Dead) Communication (Planar) Communication (1 type) Illusion (Object) Illusion (Creature) Illusion (Audio) Illusion (Smell) Illusion (Tactile) Lock Object Unlock/Open Object Hide Object Label Object Clear Labels Bestow Sentience (1 Type) Repel (1 type) Attract (1 type) Animate (Dead - HD) Animate (1 Type - # Small) Revive Revive (No Body) Revive (New Form) Kill (HD) Capture Spirit Store Spirit Destroy / Disintigrate Destroy Object Destroy Structure Shape Material (1 type) Repair / Preserve Object Summon (1 type) Unsummon (1 type) Trap Creature (1 type) Lose Action Temporal Stasis Paralyze CureParalysis Daze Cure Daze Stun Cure Stun Block Mental Effect Cure Mental Effect Charm (1 type) Command (1 type) Suggest (1 type) Control (1 type) Dominate (1 type) Possess (1 type) Facinate (HD) Fatigue Exhaust Cure Fatigue / Exhaust Blind Cure Blind Deafen Cure Deaf Confusion Cure Confusion Unconcious Sleep Wake Prevent Sleep Fear Panic Shaken Cure Panic / Shaken / Fear Calm Disease Cure Disease Poison Cure Poison Nausea Cure Nausea Concealment Displacement Hide from Notice (1 type) Invisible Incorporeal Ethereal Cover Bull Rush Grapple Dispel Magic Light Darkness Silence Smell Loss Telekinesis Soften Earth Move Earth Shake Earth Control Weather Control Wind Control Gravity Create Food Create Water Darkvision Low-light Vision Immunities Enhance Object (Damage) Enhance Object (Durability) Enhance Object (To Hit) Enhance Object (Threat Range) Enhance Object(Threat Multiplier)
Eldritch_Lord 04-09-07, 08:06 PM	That's a pretty comprehensive list; there are a dozen or so I'd missed. I had just two questions, though--first, by "change shape (mental)", do you mean psionically, and if not, what do you mean? Secondly what would "DR exception" be?
Araes 04-10-07, 12:38 PM	The point with change shape (mental) was that most shapeshifting abilities don't actually change your mental faculties. A manticore remains a manticore, a shrew remains a shrew. But with a few, like Polymorph Any Object, you can shift the mind of a manticore into that of a shrew as you change its shape. Which would also allow for spells that change its mind but don't change its shape. The difference between Damage Reduction, and Damage Reduction Exception should have been written something more like: DR / - DR / (Exception) Which basically means that the first is for spells that provide DR that you can't ever bypass, and the second is for all those types that have an exception that gets through it. I'm debating whether it would be worth having the exception reduce the cost by a spell-block maybe, or whether DR with no weaknesses should even be dealt with. The DR Exception (align object) is meant to align an object with some known DR so you can bypass it. IE, create Evil weapon to bypass DR / Evil. *edit* Response to below instead of doing a full post. Character levels are now in the list + / - and restoration of normal level. And I don't mind talking about spell systems, as they are an interesting concept that I'm planning on implementing anyhow and I'll probably steal some ideas. Besides creating a setting, one of the other general goals of this is to decompose nearly everything into a completely generic version of D&D that can still represent Cord D&D if you want it to.
Eldritch_Lord 04-10-07, 04:57 PM	Ah, that makes more sense. I have no plans to include DR/-- in my system; you'll notice that creatures often have DR/[something] up to between the high teens and high twenties, whereas the barbarian's DR/-- nets him a grand total of...DR 5. This tells me that DR/-- isn't supposed to be too large or too prevalent. Also, I noticed you didn't have negative levels in there, so if you missed that, I'm pointing that out, and if that was deliberate, never mind. Sorry to derail the thread a bit, but it was good to get some feedback for the system before it was anywhere near ready for the Magic and Spells board. You don't have to keep talking about my magic system if you don't want to; I won't take it personally. We now return you to your regularly scheduled setting.;)
Araes 04-11-07, 02:34 AM	Forces of Nature Quite a ways back, on page three, we proposed the concepts of compositable elementals that you could basically form as you liked. We delved a slight bit into their history, put forth some ideas about why they might exist, and discussed some general mechanics behind their creation - but then we just kind of let them drop and moved onto something else. Well, I think its time we got back to them. Today I'm going to cover the basic creation of elementals from a game mechanics standpoint, and then tomorrow (hopefully) I'll dig a bit deeper into their background and why they exist as they now do. Now, due to the way that elementals, and monsters are inherently set up, this is going to be kind of like a template system that you build in a defined order to arrive at a final monster result. In addition, depending on what you pick as your first creature, there will be some ability and stat modifications to apply. The four basic types that can be picked are the four normal elementals: Air / Earth / Fire / Water The process for creating an elemental goes as follows: Choose what the first template would be for the elemental, this will create its basic stats you will build from. The stats for the creatures for the initial template choice are as follows: Air Speed Fly 100 ft. (perfect) Nat. Armor 3 HD 4d8 Fort 1, Ref 4, Will 1 Str 12, Dex 21, Con 14, Int 4, Wis 10, Cha 10 Listen 3, Spot 3 Size: Medium CR 3 Feats: Dodge, Flyby Attack, Improved Initiative, Weapon Finesse Earth Speed 20 ft. Nat. Armor 9 HD 4d8 Fort 4, Ref 1, Will 1 Str 21, Dex 8, Con 17, Int 4, Wis 10, Cha 10 Listen 3, Spot 3 Size: Medium CR 3 Feats: Cleave, Power Attack Fire Speed 50 ft. Nat. Armor 3 HD 4d8 Fort 1, Ref 4, Will 1 Str 12, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 4, Wis 10, Cha 10 Listen 3, Spot 3 Size: Medium CR 3 Feats: Dodge, Improved Initiative, Mobility, Weapon Finesse Water Speed 60 ft. Nat. Armor 9 HD 4d8 Fort 4, Ref 1, Will 1 Str 16, Dex 12, Con 17, Int 4, Wis 10, Cha 10 Listen 3, Spot 3 Size: Medium CR 3 Feats: Cleave, Power Attack Next, choose the templates that you would add to increase the CR of the creature. Each template will add to the stats of the creature and possibly change its final type. Air Speed: Base template speed changes to Fly 100 ft (perfect) Init +0 Nat. Armor +2 HD +8d8 DR +4 / - Fort +3, Ref +4, Will +3 Str +4, Dex +5, Con +2, Int +2, Wis +0, Cha +0 Listen +9, Spot +9 Size +1 Feats +3 CR +3 Earth Init +0 Nat. Armor +2 HD +8d8 DR +4 / - Fort +4, Ref +3, Will +3 Str +5, Dex +0, Con +2, Int +1, Wis +0, Cha +0 Listen +9, Spot +9 Size +1 Feats +3 CR +3 Fire Init +0 Nat. Armor +2 HD +8d8 DR +4 / - Fort +3, Ref +4, Will +3 Str +4, Dex +5, Con +2, Int +2, Wis +0, Cha +0 Listen +9, Spot +9 Size +1 Feats +3 CR +3 Water Init +0 Nat. Armor +0 HD +8d8 DR +4 / - Fort +4, Ref +3, Will +3 Str +5, Dex +4, Con +2, Int +2, Wis +0, Cha +0 Listen +9, Spot +9 Size +1 Feats +3 CR +3 Now figure out what type of elemental it will be based on the variety of templates mixed into it. The type will determine what special attacks and qualities the elemental has.: All Elementals Special Qualities - Darkvision 60 ft., Elemental Traits (see SRD) Single Type Air - Air Elemental Special Attacks - Air Mastery (see SRD), Whirlwind (see SRD) Earth - Earth Elemental Special Attacks - Earth Master (see SRD), Push (see SRD) Special Qualities - Earth Glide (see SRD) Fire - Fire Elemental Special Attacks - Burn (see SRD) Special Qualities - Immune to Fire, Vulnerable to Cold Water - Water Elemental Special Attacks - Vortex (see SRD) Special Qualities - Water mastery (see SRD), Drench (see SRD) Two Types Mixed Air / Earth - Shadow Elemental Special Attacks - Shadow Walk, Strength Drain Special Qualities - Shadow Mastery Air / Fire - Lightning Elemental Special Attacks - Shock Special Qualities - Air Mastery (see SRD - Air Elemental), Immune to Lightning Air / Water - Frost Elemental Special Attacks - Freeze Special Qualities - Immune to Cold, Vulnerable to Fire Earth / Fire - Magma Elemental Special Attacks - Breath Weapon (Magma) Special Qualities - Immune to Fire, Vulnerable to Cold, Earth Glide (see SRD - Earth Elemental) Earth / Water - Acid Elemental Special Attacks - Acidic Special Qualities - Immune to Acid, Drench (see SRD - Water Elemental), Water Master (see SRD - Water Elemental) Fire / Water - Cloud Elemental Special Attacks - Breath Weapon (Steam), Ethereal Jaunt Special Qualities - Air Mastery (see SRD - Air Elemental) Three Types Mixed Air / Earth / Fire - Incendiary Elemental Special Attacks - Burn (see SRD - Fire Elemental), Improved Grab, Burning Engulf Special Qualities - Air Mastery (see SRD - Air Elemental), Immune to Fire, Vulnerable to Cold Air / Earth / Water - Rust Elemental Special Attacks - Rusting Touch, Improved Grab, Rust Cloud Air / Fire / Water - Storm Elemental Special Attacks - Shocking Burst Special Qualities - Air Mastery (see SRD - Air Elemental), Electrical and Sonic Healing Earth / Fire / Water - Vulcanate Elemental Special Attacks - Burn (see SRD - Fire Elemental), Explosion Special Qualities - Fire and Sonic Healing Four Types Mixed Air / Earth / Fire / Water - Prime Elemental Special Attacks - Vengeance Storm Special Qualities - Elemental Healing Referenced Special Attacks and Qualities Shadow Walk (Su) As a standard action, a shadow elemental touching shadow may move instantly to another shadow within 50 ft as per a dimension door spell (caster level CR). The elemental may bring no passengers with it. Even in bright light, shadow elementals cast no shadow themselves and must use external shadows. Strength Drain (Su) The touch of a shadow elemental deals 1d4 points of strength damage to a living foe. A creature reduced to strength 0 by a shadow elemental dies. This is a negative energy effect. Shadow Mastery (Ex) A shadow elemental gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls if both it and its opponent are touching shadows. If the opponent or the elemental is outside of shadow, the elemental takes a -4 penalty on attack and damage rolls. (These modifiers are not included in the statistics block.) Shock (Ex) A lightning elemental’s slam attack deals bludgeoning damage plus 2d8 electrical damage from the elemental’s electrified body. Those hit by a lightning elemental’s slam attack also must succeed on a Fortitude save or become dazed. The save DC is equal to the elemental's CR + 12 Creatures hitting a lightning elemental with natural weapons or unarmed attacks take lightning damage as though hit by the elemental’s attack, and must also pass a Fortitude save or become dazed. Freeze (Ex) A frost elemental’s slam attack deals bludgeoning damage plus 2d8 cold damage from the elemental’s frozen body. Those hit by a frost elemental’s slam attack also must succeed on a Fortitude save or take 2 points of strength damage . The save DC is equal to the elemental's CR + 12 Creatures hitting a frost elemental with natural weapons or unarmed attacks take frost damage as though hit by the elemental’s attack, and must also pass a Fortitude save or take 2 points of strength damage. Breath Weapon (Magma / Steam) (Su) Cone of magma or steam. Cone size is based on creature size and damage is based on HD. Reflex save for half damage. Save DC is equal to elemental CR + 11. Living creatures that fail their saves are tormented by burned skin and seared eyes unless they have immunity to fire or are otherwise protected. This effect imposes a -4 penalty to AC and a -2 penalty on attack rolls for 3 rounds. The elemental may only use its breath weapon once every four rounds. Cone Size Large - 20 ft. Huge - 30 ft. Damage (HD / 2)d8 fire Acidic (Ex) A acid elemental’s slam attack deals bludgeoning damage plus 2d8 acid damage from the elemental’s acidic body. Those hit by a acid elemental’s slam attack also must succeed on a Reflex save or be covered in acid and take a further 1d4 acid damage in this round and 1d2 at the start of the next. The save DC is equal to the elemental's CR + 12 Creatures hitting a acid elemental with natural weapons or unarmed attacks take acid damage as though hit by the elemental’s attack, and must also pass a Reflex save or take the resulting acid splash damage as well. Ethereal Jaunt (Su) A steam elemental can shift from the Ethereal Plane to the Material Plane as a free action, and shift back again as a move action. The ability is otherwise identical with the ethereal jaunt spell (caster level 15th). Improved Grab (Ex) To use this ability, an elemental must hit with both its slam attacks. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold. Burning Engulf (Ex) An incindiary elemental can try to engulf a grabbed opponent of a smaller size than itself by making a successful grapple check. Once inside, the opponent takes fire damage as if affected by the burn ability and an additional 1d8 crushing damage per round. An engulfed creature can cut its way out by using a light slashing or piercing weapon to deal 15 points of damage to the interior (AC = Nat. Armor + 2). Once the creature exits, the hole closes; another swallowed opponent must cut its own way out. A huge elemental's interior can hold 1 Large, 4 Medium, 16 Small, 64 Tiny, or 256 Diminutive or smaller opponents. Rusting Touch (Ex) A rust elemental that makes a successful touch attack in combat causes any target metal object to corrode, falling to pieces and becoming useless immediately. The touch can destroy up to a 10-foot cube of metal instantly. Magic armor and weapons, and other magic items made of metal, must succeed on a DC 17 Reflex save or be dissolved. The save DC is Constitution-based and includes a +4 racial bonus. A metal weapon that deals damage to a rust elemental corrodes immediately. Wooden, stone, and other nonmetallic weapons are unaffected. Rusting Engulf (Ex) A rust elemental can try to engulf a grabbed opponent of a smaller size than itself by making a successful grapple check. All metallic objects on the target creature are affected as if they had been hit by the Rusting Touch ability and the creature takes 2d8 of crushing and suffocation damage per round (unless they don't require air and only take 1d8 crushing damage) An engulfed creature can cut its way out by using a light slashing or piercing weapon to deal 15 points of damage to the interior (AC = Nat. Armor + 2). Once the creature exits, the hole closes; another swallowed opponent must cut its own way out. A huge elemental's interior can hold 1 Large, 4 Medium, 16 Small, 64 Tiny, or 256 Diminutive or smaller opponents. Shocking Burst (Su) Storm elementals may emit a blast of electricity and sound centered on themselves with a range of 60 ft and damage based on their HD. Reflex save for half vs lightning and fortitude save for half vs sonic. Storm elementals may use this ability once every 6 rounds. Damage - (HD / 2)d8 lightning, (HD / 4)d8 sonic Electrical and Sonic Healing (Ex) Storm elementals take no damage from lightning or sonic based attacks, and are in fact healed by such attacks at a rate of 1/3 the normal damage of the attack. Explosion (Su) Vulcanate elementals may emit a blast of fire and concusive force centered on themselves with a range of 60 ft and damage based on their HD. Reflex save for half vs fire and fortitude save for half vs sonic. Vulcanate elementals may use this ability once every 6 rounds. Damage - (HD / 2)d8 fire, (HD / 4)d8 sonic Fire and Sonic Healing (Ex) Vulcanate elementals take no damage from fire or sonic based attacks, and are in fact healed by such attacks at a rate of 1/3 the normal damage of the attack. Vengeance Storm (Su) Prime elementals control the very forces of nature, and may emit a devestating blast of all the elements centered on themselves with a range of 80 ft and damage based on their HD. Reflex save for half vs fire, acid, lightning and fortitude save for half vs sonic, cold. Prime elementals may use this ability once every 6 rounds. Damage - (HD / 4)d4 fire, (HD / 4)d4 cold, (HD / 4)d4 acid, (HD / 4)d4 lightning, (HD / 4)d4 sonic Elemental Healing (Ex) Prime elementals take no damage from any elemental source (fire, cold, electricity, acid, sonic) and are in fact healed by such attacks at a rate of 1/3 the normal damage of the attack. --- Alright, I think that is everything, that took far too long. If I've missed anything, feel free to yell at me. The history behind these guys may take a bit longer, as that burned me out a bit. Obviously haven't play tested this stuff much yet either, so balance suggestions are welcome, particularly for the greater elemental abilities (which I'm less sure of the balance on)
Eldritch_Lord 04-11-07, 08:02 AM	Given a cursory review of everything, there don't seem to be balance issues, but I'll probably look at it in more detail later. One idea that struck me is the fact that this could be extended to the outsiders that nobody seems to be able to pin down or flesh out, and for whom no one has ideas for why they exist. If you made a Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos template for the base and template(s), resembling the celestial/fiendish/axiomatic/anarchic and half-celestial/half-fiend/half-axiom/half-anarch templates in the books (assuming those last two exist somewhere...), then, if you need some scary, I don't know, efreet-esque monster, you say, "Hmm, let's slap Fire and Law onto an Evil base!" And voila, your monster. Now, I realize that can give you up to, let's see,...4,160 (!!!) possibilities if you allow combinations all the way up to Air+ Earth+Fire+Water+Good+Evil+Law+Chaos with multiples of a given element, 255 without overlap, with all the flavor and crunch that would involve creating, but even if you make combinations only up to base+2 or base+3 templates, it would (a) let you create interesting monsters (somewhat) on the fly, as everything is a template and you just add stuff together, and (b) it would let you create elementals/outsiders "native" to your world, and you wouldn't have to rely on genies, para-elementals, demons, devils, celestials, etc. with which players would already be familiar. If you like the idea, I might be able to whip something up or at least help with flavor/numbers; if you don't, I understand completely.:D Just something off the top of my head.
Araes 04-11-07, 02:20 PM	Well, luckily by my count, there are only 255 unique combinations that can form of the style [ fire, fire / evil, fire / evil / chaos / air, fire / evil / chaos / air / earth, ect.... ] without repeating any of them. IE, no [ fire / evil ] and [ evil / fire ] and also no [ fire ] and [ fire / fire ]. That makes this a little bit easier to handle. However, still, 255 is a ton of different combinations, and that was what mainly burned me out a bit last night doing the elementals. I had actually thought about incorporating the negative energy and positive energy types into the elementals already, but I was a little daunted by the possibility of trying to create the 63 combinations that would arise from only 6 types you could mix and match. I think if we were going to do a full template system that incorporated 8 different types, then we might have to go a bit more generic on how the attacks and qualities are chosen. One idea I had previously was to use a "pool" of powers that are related to the various alignments and / or combinations. With each template block that you added to the total monster, you would get to choose more and more powers from the reserve of ablities available. The types of blocks you currently have would determine which pools you could draw from. One of the reasons I'm mildly opposed to that idea, is that it seems like it completely sterlizes the monsters. The way I used above, at least in my opinion, still retains some of the randomness of normal monsters, so that you don't just end up with a flying, watery mass that also happens to be on fire. However, there might also be a creative way to get around this problem without creating 255 abilities, and still retaining some randomness. Perhaps a logical way that power sets combine or stack. IE, air and fire abilities stack into lightning if desired, or water and earth ends up with acid. Hmm, will require more thought. It should also be noted that there are some issues with going as high as 8 templates when we're talking about beings that increase in CR +3 every time you add a template. With the last two additions you're going to be well into epic. Of course, this might be the goal for things that represent every spectrum of creation. Also, I'm a little skeptical whether my interpolations are going to hold past CR 18 for the power level increases in the monsters. For example, a CR 24 Earth Elemental would have: Nat. Armor: 23 HD: 60d8 Saves: Fort 32, Ref 22, Will 22 Abilities: Str 56, Dex 8, Con 31, Int 11, Wis 10, Cha 10 Skills: Listen 66, Spot 66 Feats: Cleave, Power Attack, + 21 additional Size: Huge I don't have my epic level handbook anymore, but it would be interesting to see how those numbers compare. AC of 30 seems low, but on average it would have 870 HP, which is just evil. With the addition of stat modifiers, its saves are roughly in line with those of CR 25 beings from BoED. Its Skills are a little high, but those are the only two skills it has. And finally, its feats are insane. 23 feats is a Lot of feats. Apparently based on the examples in the MM3.5, elementals gain feats like a mo-fo. An interesting comparison might be to take the ELH and see how this compares to other tank-like beings at that power scale. IE, high HP, low AC. Probably the high level elementals and maybe the super golems.
Eldritch_Lord 04-12-07, 05:52 PM	Yeah, 255 would make sense. (I don't know why I thought you could make a, say, earth^2 elemental or fire/fire/evil, but anyways, moving on....:rolleyes: ) The two main issues with non-element templates seems to be the CR scaling and the uniqueness. I have a solution for each: 1) Instead of each template granting flat bonuses, have them be based on the number of templates the creature has. For example, let's say the templates grant, not 4 HD, but (4 - # of prior templates) HD. That way, if you give a creature one template, it adds 4d8, like it works now. If you add a second, it has one preexisting template, so it gains an additional 3 HD, not 4. With this, adding 1, 2, 3, or 4 templates would give total additional HD of +4, +7, +9, and +10, respectively, with no additional HD after that. Do this with skills, feats, saves, etc. and the power scale won't get too crazy. 2) In terms of unique abilities: I don't know if you've played/seen Planescape, but there are elemental planes, para-elemental planes (element + element), and quasi-elemental planes (element + energy), so there are lots of different combinations. I don't remember off the top of my head what all of the combinations are or how many there are, but they can all be found here (http://www.mimir.net/mapinfinity/quasi.html) and here (http://www.planewalker.com/encyclopedia/encyclopedia.php?intEntryID=322). I don't know how helpful those will be, especially given that they don't include anything having to do with lawa or chaos, but it should be a start. They might even give ideas for different regions in your world, but probably not as-is. Hope that helps.
Araes 04-12-07, 07:33 PM	Hmm, looking at the site you linked to, this particular diagram seems like a good place to start. It makes a decent amount of sense, and its relatively well organized. http://www.mimir.net/mapinfinity/ele_map2.jpg Since it looks like it comes from a 2nd Ed. version of the D&D cosmology, we might have to make a few modifications, but I think that in general it would be a good place to start to find relations - possibly for things as high up as the 63 combinations I talked about earlier with positive, negative, and air/fire/earth/water. Plus, the further combinations of Crystal, Frost, Clay, Silt, Obsidian, Pumice, Sparks, and Fumes might be able to find a way into the system as well. One of the issues I have with identifying particular elementals with specific types of materials (salt, pumice, obsidian) is that I was hoping to reserve at least a bit of the material association to fey-like creatures. A few pages back, we talked about one concept where fey would be symbolically bound to places in the world that represent what their physical form could be like. I still have an attachment to that concept, and I think that in some ways it has also given me some ideas about how to set up the backstory for the elementals. Which I'll now go into a bit. A Place Outside of Space When it was first found that a disaster was coming to face the universe, the plan of the Sphere was not the only idea put forth for the survival of life. Numerous other concepts, both public and private, were evaluated and in some cases acted upon by varying sizes of groups. One of the proposals with the most traction, which was also a public idea, was that of the Elemental Project. The basic concept of the project was actually an idea borrowed from lifeforms which already existed within the universe at that time. These lifeforms existed in a strange state of non-corporeal energy, like organized groups of waves existing in space. However, these beings had also once been corporeal creatures, and to retain their cohesion in their energy state, it was necessary that they have fixed technology in a physical form which monitored their status and maintained them. These systems were often integrated into physical objects which had been precious to the beings in life, and in some cases, as the beings evolved a non-corporeal culture of their own, beings were "born" of multiple energy sets, and objects were chosen that simply reflected their nature. These systems were also important for the beings, as they allowed them to rematerialize themselves in a physical form and interact with physical objects even when discorporeal. Without them, it was believed likely that the beings would simply fade away after a time, and become unable to exert their presence on the universe. However, when the cataclysm was made public, many seized on the idea that perhaps this was a way in which intelligence could ride out the destruction of physical space. Without a physical form to destroy, the beings of energy could simply collapse along with the greater mass of energy, and then hopefully reincorporate themselves into the universe if another expansion happened. They felt that the danger of fading would be minor if the process was undertaken near the end of the universe and the maintenance systems allowed to survive until the very end. In time, this movement gained such traction that whole planets of beings had discorporated themselves by the time the collapse became imminent. Most had attempted to set up their maintenance systems as closely as they could calculate to where the final collapse might occur, but in many cases there were significant miscalculations, and the systems were destroyed prematurely. Even so, the plan might still have worked if not for the fact that few took into account the existence of the Sphere, and the fact that the universe did not, in fact, collapse. For one, even after the existence of the Sphere was made known, the area around it, which had been precisely tested as the exact center of contraction, was heavily guarded against all who would interfere. Elementalists, which would have liked to place their maintenance systems within the area were turned away and forced to choose less ideal locations. More importantly though, the actual stoppage of collapse created even worse, and completely unforseen consequences for those who had chosen the elemental path. Trapped within the seething mass of energy / matter just beyond the walls of the Sphere, the energy beings did not fade away. Yet, at the same time, they were no longer the creatures they had once been. Amidst the seething chaos just beyond the walls, they were twisted and morphed; unable to hold onto their organized forms; and in many cases, their very intellect stripped away. Their ability to associate with a symbolic piece of land had been lost as the very land itself was laid to waste. Yet, somewhere within most, that need was still present, and they soon began to latch onto whatever patterns could be found. Energy states, specific materials, the building blocks of life - anything that could give them an anchor amidst the turmoil of their existence. In addition, although the Sphere had for the most part succeeded in its task at the end of space, stopping the universe was a staggering task, and some systems were slightly damaged in the process. Due to this damage, some of the beings which existed beyond its walls found that they could slip through. With the scientists and gods focused on holding back the bulk effects, minor variations and leaks were ignored as long as they posed no immediate threat. As they passed into the Sphere, these beings were driven in an almost obsessive sense to seek out those objects or symbols which they had associated with and in many cases came to inhabit them or the regions near them. As the Sphere stands currently, it is unknown how many of these energy beings have managed to slip into the Sphere. Their difficulty of detection and ability to breed make them trying pests to hunt down. Luckily, only a few of them possess more then the most basic of intelligence, and generally they simply migrate to areas of high concentrations of their chosen symbolic substance and try to stay there - usually posing no threat. In some unfortunate cases, however, when corporeal life tries to use or change their setting, they can respond visciously, materializing as beings of their chosen state and striking out at the intuders.
Eldritch_Lord 04-12-07, 08:17 PM	Two things-- First, the cosmology wasn't the 2ed cosmology, it's the cosmology for Planescape, which existed in some form in 2ed, 3ed, and 3.5ed, and (I think) 1ed. The 3.0/3.5 rules are all OGC on the second site I linked. Second, I have a suggestion for the elemental/fey divide: Make creatures with only air/earth/fire/water templates have the elemental type, make those with good/evil/law/chaos outsiders, and make those with elemental and alignment templates fey or aberrations, depending on exactly what the combination is. For example, I could see a dryad-esque being as perhaps a good/chaos/earth mix, or something along those lines. I didn't really think the other material types would make good elementals, really; most players would hear the description of obsidian elementals and think, "Ooh! Weird earth elemental!" and not much else. However, they might inspire ability ideas, particularly if you can take a look at their stat blocks, also somewhere under the second link.
Araes 04-13-07, 12:43 AM	Heh, appologies, I at first thought it was a reference purely to the 2nd Ed. version of Planescape, which was the only system it was fully supported in. I didn't notice that they reference conversion to 3.x in places. However, I didn't find any stats listed on those pages you referenced for quasi-elementals. That didn't discourage me too much though, as there is actually a thread on our own boards for people converting 2nd. Ed. Planescape monsters to 3.x. It can be found here. (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=307692) The converted Vacuum and Radiance elementals are both pretty interesting. You are right though, they do look like good places to steal ideas, and they even already used some pretty similar concepts to stuff I had for things like the Dust and Steam elements. As far as the Fey, Outsider, Elemental distinction, I think I know for the most part what I'd like to do now. I think for Elementals I will extend the distinction out to Positive / Negative / Fire / Water / Earth / Air, as I like a lot of the Planescape info you linked, and it seems like its always a good idea to support the literature that's already there. If I can fit in elementals that people have already created information for, all the better. One thing that might be interesting would be to experiment with adding the elemental template to other creatures to show their possession by elemental spirits. On the fey, I think that one of their major distinctions for me is that they are connected much more personally to particular things, concepts, and complex symbols. The points in the Sphere they use as references for physically appearing need to be more complicated than just chaotic water or evil air in my line of thinking. IE, a dryad might like a tree because that particular tree means something particular to what that dryad used to be. A treant will guard a forest because it was transplanted from the area where he grew as a child. This would also open up the possibility for things like urban fey and geographic fey. Perhaps a fey associates itself with an entire landmass or it grew up in a tenement of a city and now protects it. Could also be some weird confusion between a fey guarding a spot (like an old building) and a spirit or ghost, since what they are has been forgotten or lost. Finally, on the outsiders, right now I'm reasonably happy keeping them as seperate entities that can simply be represented by things within the monster manual. One of the reasons is that I'd like to use as much old information from sources like the MM as I possibly can, particularly where there's a lot of diversity to draw upon (countless varieties of angels, demons, devils, archons, ect...) I worry with a template system that I wouldn't be able to replicate the level of complexity and uniqueness inherent to those designs. With elementals they just seem so blah anyhow, that they'd almost be better served by a template system, which would actually increase their interest.
Eldritch_Lord 04-13-07, 11:20 PM	Yeah, to get stats and stuff you need to dig a bit, but that's okay, it's not really that important. What I was thinking in terms of the fey/elemental/outsider divide on templates was that the templated beings would be a lesser form of creature. You made it sound like there were lots of creatures of more instinctual intelligence who "migrate to areas of high concentrations of their chosen symbolic substance and try to stay there," so I was thinking with my dryad example that those creatures who either came with the sphere or successfully protected themselves outside and later got in would be the MM creatures who would be attached to trees, cities, etc., whereas the templated creature might be a weird fey-ish thing that mindlessly attacks anyone who comes near its particular patch of land. In this way, you can use all the MM creatures for their uniqueness, but when you need something quick and on the fly, you can make a more generic version to represent a weaker, degenerate, and/or corrupted form of the creature. In the same way, a chaotic, evil, and [something else] templated creature might represent a creature who wasn't fully protected outside the sphere and was driven mad by the experience, letting you use a creature that is somewhat demonic without having the power or variety of a "true" demon. (That last might actually make sense, as the fact that the MM demons are all tanar'ri implies that there are/were hordes of lesser demons that they supplanted--Voila! The lesser demons came to the sphere!)
Araes 04-15-07, 05:51 PM	Ok, I see more of what you mean and that is an interesting idea. I guess I hadn't thought of it in that respect. I think I'd still like to stay away from the standard alignment axis as much as I can (law / chaos / good / evil), but with 63+ types to choose from in terms of elementals with just the six, I think it would be fairly easy to do a wide range of fey-like things without even needing to use them. Honestly, by the time 63 different combinations get made, I'll probably be sick to death of the whole concept of elementals. I'd almost consider not allowing opposing alignments to mix either, because that would make life that much easier, and it would allow us to represent the entire thing in one nice combination on the elemental Sphere from Planescape, but at the same time, it seems like a waste not to. Anyhow, further elementals for use in the system, starting with the base choices for positive and negative. These were partially bushwhacked from Lord Iames Osari over in the Giant in the Playground forums, although I've made some changes to the abilities. Positive Speed: Fly 60 ft. (Good) Nat. Armor 3 HD 4d8 Fort 1, Ref 4, Will 1 Str 12, Dex 16, Con 21, Int 4, Wis 10, Cha 10 Listen 3, Spot 3 Size: Medium CR 3 Feats: Dodge, Flyby Attack, Improved Initiative, Weapon Finesse Negative Speed: Fly 60 ft. (Good) Nat. Armor 9 HD 4d8 Fort 4, Ref 1, Will 1 Str 16, Dex 12, Con 21, Int 4, Wis 10, Cha 10 Listen 3, Spot 3 Size: Medium CR 3 Feats: Cleave, Power Attack And their growth per template addition is: Positive Speed: If not better than Fly 60 (Good), base template speed changes to Fly Fly 60 (Good) Init +0 Nat. Armor +2 HD +8d8 DR +4 / - Fort +3, Ref +4, Will +3 Str +2, Dex +5, Con +4, Int +2, Wis +0, Cha +0 Listen +9, Spot +9 Size +1 Feats +3 CR +3 Negative Speed: If not better than Fly 60 (Good), base template speed changes to Fly Fly 60 (Good) Nat. Armor +1 HD +8d8 DR +4 / - Fort +4, Ref +3, Will +3 Str +2, Dex +4, Con +4, Int +2, Wis +0, Cha +0 Listen +9, Spot +9 Size +1 Feats +3 CR +3 The traits for positive and negative are: Single Type Positive - Positive Energy Elemental Special Traits - Fast Healing 5, Immune Positive Energy, Vulnerable Negative Energy Special Attacks - Positive Touch Negative - Negative Energy Elemental Special Traits - Fast Healing 5, Immune Negative Energy, Vulnerable Positive Energy Special Attacks - Negative Touch Immune Positive Energy, Vulnerability to Negative Energy This creature takes no damage from and is unaffected by all positive energy based effects. Spells based on negative energy which deal damage do 50% more damage to this creature. This damage is calculated after saving throws, but before other resistances have been taken into account. Negative energy based spells meant to heal affect this creature as damage dealing spells. Positive Touch This elemental carries the Major Positive Dominant planar trait with it. Any living creature coming into contact with the elemental gains Fast Healing 5 for the round of contact. In addition, those at full hit points gain 5 additional temporary hit points per round. These temporary hit points fade 1d20 rounds after contact with the elemental. Creatures with more hit points than their maximum must make a DC (CR + 10) Fortitude save every round. If they fail their save, they are slain instantly as their body explodes in a flash. Any negative energy based creature which comes into contact with such an elemental immediately takes 1d10 points of positive energy damage. Immune Negative Energy, Vulnerability to Positive Energy This creature takes no damage from and is unaffected by all negative energy based effects. Spells based on positive energy which deal damage do 50% more damage to this creature. This damage is calculated after saving throws, but before other resistances have been taken into account. Positive energy based spells meant to heal affect this creature as damage dealing spells. NegativeTouch This elemental carries the Major Negative Dominant planar trait with it. Any undead creature coming into contact with the elemental gains Fast Healing 5 for the round of contact. In addition, those at full hit points gain 5 additional temporary hit points per round. These temporary hit points fade 1d20 rounds after contact with the elemental. Creatures with more hit points than their maximum must make a DC (CR + 10) Fortitude save every round. If they fail their save, they are slain instantly as their body turns to a pile of ash. Any positive energy based creature (IE, any living creature) which comes into contact with such an elemental immediately takes 1d10 points of negative energy damage. --- Alright, done with those elementals, now to think up what the other 30+ combinations need to be so that they make some kind of sense. It would be hillarious to see people fighting these elementals. A positive energy elemental takes a big swipe through the group, and suddenly everybody's trying to quickly get their hitpoints down to normal. One of my issues with where this is heading, is that in using the Negative Energy elemental, there is then some logical tie in with the technobabble background of the setting and the fact that the "undead" of the Sphere, are basically animated by this type of energy as well. In this setting, Negative energy would almost be a change in the states of matter, rendering living or organic energy / matter, into whatever energy / matter type it is that sustains the dead. Which might also imply that anything killed by a Negative energy spell would have a chance of rising as an undead, since the chemical energy / matter that animate it have been shifted to the Negative energy form. A revised sheet up to what I know for combinations Single Type Air - Air Elemental Earth - Earth Elemental Fire - Fire Elemental Water - Water Elemental Positive - Positive Energy Elemental Negative - Negative Energy Elemental Two Types Air / Earth - Shadow Elemental Air / Fire - Smoke Elemental Air / Water - Ice Elemental Air / Positive - Lightning Elemental Air / Negative - Vacuum Elemental Fire / Earth - Magma Elemental Fire / Water - Acid Elemental Fire / Positive - Radiance Elemental Fire / Negative - Ash Elemental Earth / Water - Ooze Elemental Earth / Positive - Mineral Elemental Earth / Negative - Dust Elemental Water / Positive - Steam Elemental Water / Negative - Salt Elemental Positive / Negative - Life Elemental Three Types Air / Earth / Fire - Incendiary Elemental Air / Earth / Water - Undecided Yet Air / Earth / Positive - Undecided Yet Air / Earth / Negative - Undecided Yet Air / Fire / Water - Rust Elemental Air / Fire / Positive - Sparks Elemental Air / Fire / Negative - Fume Elemental Air / Water / Positive - Storm Elemental Air / Water / Negative - Blizzard Elemental Air / Positive / Negative - Undecided Yet Earth / Fire / Water - Vulcanate Elemental Earth / Fire / Positive - Obsidian Elemental Earth / Fire / Negative - Pumice Elemental Earth / Water / Positive - Clay Elemental Earth / Water / Negative - Silt Elemental Earth / Positive / Negative - Undecided Yet Fire / Water / Positive - Undecided Yet Fire / Water / Negative - Sulfur Elemental Fire / Positive / Negative - Undecided Yet Water / Positive / Negative - Undecided Yet One of the biggest roadblocks to these is thinking about what the positive / negative interaction is going to make. In terms of the classical version of the elements, the positive would be what they thought the stars were made of. Something utterly pure and beyond human grasp. Whereas the negative would be the concept of nothingness. Everywhere that there wasn't something. Because of this, my natural urge is to make it something like a black hole elemental or something that captures that idea of matter circulating. *edit* Actually, perhaps a life elemental. It has a perfection and poetry to it that I like. Positive life in organic beings, negative life in undeath. All joined together in one. And the idea itself works too if you think about positive being birth and negative being death too. It gets that matter circulation concept. Plus, its a good branch off point to having elementals that are obsessed with trees and grass like we were discussing before. air / fire / earth / water elementals are obviously going to have to be changed, as prime would be the appex elemental. air / fire / earth / water / positive / negative.
DeeL 04-16-07, 06:14 AM	For what it's worth, I never really equated Negative Energy to death per se but to release. Think of the Inner Planes as an engine - the Negative Plane acts as a kind of heat sink, draining off the excess Positive Energy which is what keeps the whole thing going, while the other Inner Planes act to produce the patterns of the Prime Material. Undeath, to the extent that I describe it, is actually a kind of inverse pattern. Certain aspects of the pattern of the living creature remain, but the animation and motivation is generated by a variant pattern which doesn't draw energy directly from the Positive Material Plane as other living things do, but rather from the Positive Energy in the environment, especially including living things. (Of course, undead who don't feed on living things draw energy even less directly, which explains why most such undead are less powerful.) This 'inverse pattern' produces behavioral alterations such that the undead creature has less impulse control in general and more territoriality than it did in life, which combined with the necessary alterations necessary to accomodate a cannibalistic impulse produces a consistent correlation to evil alignments. All of which goes to say that in this schema, the undead are Negative Elementals.
Eldritch_Lord 04-16-07, 02:45 PM	Here's my 2 cents about negative energy elementals. I have two ideas about the technobabble rationalization for negative energy. According to most physicists, the majority (~95%) of the universe is actually "dark matter" and "dark energy" that exert a gravitational repulsion rather than a gravitational attraction. A dark matter elemental would have the sterotypical negative energy look (black, amorphous, creepy, messes with the area around it) but with its association with things like force and energy rather than death, you could include both negative energy and undead without having an overlap in the underlying ideas. The second idea is a matter-antimatter kind of relationship. Take the whole positive-and-negative-energy-cancel-out idea to the extreme and you get a walking (and possibly talking) disintegrate or a lesser form thereof. Again, you avoid any negative energy elemental/undead overlap, plus you make positive and negative energy beings a more viable challenge than the energons in the books (which are pretty much useless). A less dangerous version of this last idea is negative energy = entropy. Positive energy is a creative force and negative energy is a destructive, entropic force. This lets you bring in Far Realm-ish effects like confusion and insanity if you want.
Araes 04-16-07, 06:52 PM	Interesting thoughts from both of you. I actually do keep up with your thread Deel (although I apologize for not making contributions), as I find your process of going through and deconstructing all the books fairly interesting. Amazing how much literature there is to track down and align with a campaign world if you want to be comprehensive. Anyhow, I remembered reading that bit when you were doing the Libris Mortis section. Maybe it was actually in the back of my mind when I was thinking about the Life Elemental idea, as its fairly close at the core concept. Eldritch, I had actually considered the matter / anti-matter relationship you were talking about in your second paragraph. The problem for me was that I wasn't sure where to go with it from there. For a two-type combination it would be cool, but I'm not sure how to combine disintegrate reasonably with some of the other things. Ex: fire / positive / negative sparks / fumes / disintegrate I'm not really sure what to do with that set, and similar problems seemed to be looming for air, earth and water combinations too. I'm also not sure how to power scale a living disintegration well. A CR 3 that can insta-kill seems like it would be kind of cheese, even if the save was low. I hadn't thought of your other idea though, creation vs entropy, and that's a neat concept. In a way, it would kind of be aligning Law with Positive, and Chaos with Negative, but it would still lead to some interesting concepts in terms of combinations. They could represent states of change perhaps, like highly structured ice melting or sublimating to gas. Of course, that would mean I would need to change the two-type combinations, as most of those are based on the idea of an infinite power source and an infinite sink-hole.
Eldritch_Lord 04-16-07, 08:38 PM	I hadn't thought of your other idea though, creation vs entropy, and that's a neat concept. In a way, it would kind of be aligning Law with Positive, and Chaos with Negative, but it would still lead to some interesting concepts in terms of combinations. They could represent states of change perhaps, like highly structured ice melting or sublimating to gas. Of course, that would mean I would need to change the two-type combinations, as most of those are based on the idea of an infinite power source and an infinite sink-hole. You don't need to discard your ideas; imagine the "regular" elementals have a constant source of infinite power, whereas the positive/negative elementals add or subtract from this infinite power temporarily. (I know, it's one of those "infinity-1" kinds of things, but bear with me.) I think a chemistry analogy would work best. Think of the positive/negative elementals as clouds of free electrons or quanta of energy--a water elemental is walking along, minding his (her? its?) own business, when it slams into a negative energy elemental and half of it evaporates. The negative elemental apologizes and goes on its way, while the ticked-off water elemental tries to find a positive energy elemental to pull itself back together (pun intended). The positive elemental, after helping the water elemental, bumps into a air/fire/water elemental and un-rusts it, leaving a metal elemental (if one exists). See where I'm going with this? To continue with the chemistry analogy, combining the positive/negative elementals with other types would be like photons knocking electrons into different orbitals; positive would result in more ordered or higher-energy forms, while negative would result in more entropic or lower energy forms. The different combinations wouldn't be so different from purely air/earth/ fire/water combinations, but different enough to be recognizably altered and to have different powers. Two consequences of this would be that (1) ideas would be easy to find, as you just take a basic air/earth/fire/water combination and add or subtract something logically, like the anti-rust elemental above, and (2) these energized/de-energized forms might decay like radioactive particles, which could change elementals in the middle of a fight--interesting, to say the least. Chemistry might serve as another background/rationale for elementals--the ancient peoples thought the elements actually were the building blocks of reality, so having that actually be the case here might put an interesting spin on things, especially with this pseudo-scientific explanation.
Sliversun 04-19-07, 07:46 AM	So, is there any steampunk technology in this setting?
Nature-boy 04-19-07, 12:39 PM	I think this is great. I'm subscribing to the thread.
Araes 04-20-07, 03:06 AM	Glad you like what you see Nature-boy. Hopefully it will continue to have topics to interest you. And if you happen to have an idea that you think might fit in well with the setting, and there's a lot of room to play with, feel free to put it forward. Probably some of the best stuff that's gone into this has come from other folks. Sliversun, in answer to your question: yes, I was planning on having at least one of the layers possess steampunk-like technology. My plan had been for the layer controlled by the Empress to be the one in particular. The vision is that the layer would be akin to an amalgam of Victorian era Britain and Augustine era Rome. Both cultures which are more or less dominant of the world around them, and have the energy to devote to high culture, the arts, progress, ect... If you've ever read the comic series for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, that visual style is what I'm thinking of for the layer. Probably not all of the layer, as it would spread outward from the throne, but at least somewhat predominant. I've also had thoughts that the layer might be one of the more pressing concerns for the gods, as it's unified and free to pursue goals relatively free of conflict.
Araes 04-21-07, 10:30 PM	Alright, this is going to be something of a different post compared to what I normally make. After mentioning the League previously, and what I wanted the look of the Steampunk world to be like, I started having a craving to try and find some representative concept art for the world that would at least start to show what my personal vision of things is like. As such, this will be a picture heavy post, with concept art from the various areas where I found things that struck my fancy. I've enclosed all of the pictures in sblocks, so that hopefully they won't bring computers to their knees, and I've also made them reasonable sizes, so they shouldn't be too painful to the layout. I'll return to the regular rambling about elementals, rules, cities, and all that shortly... The Jewel of the Sphere (Megacity) Here's an initial image of how the megacity might look from an arial view in the morning light. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Megacity_Morning.jpg A dark, nighttime view of the city. A little too advanced, but gets the general feeling of size across. Image is from www.scifi3d.com. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Megacity_Dark.jpg A concept of the megacity under heavy cloud cover with only the tips of buildings making it through the fog. Image is from www.scifi3d.com. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Megacity_Fog.jpg An old classic Star Wars concept piece, that gets that feeling of huge public transports plying the ways between buildings. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Megacity_Docking_Ship.jpg There's nothing to say that the face of the city might change drastically as you moved across the layer's surface. Here's an idea for a more arid climate where things are much more open and airy. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Arid_Walkway.jpg The layer of the Amber Throne with steampunk technology Also, if I ever have infinite money to commission art pieces for this world, Keith Thompson (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/gallery.html) will be at the top of the list for potential artists. Of particular interest. This robot (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/witch.html) This robot (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/karakuri.html) This robot (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/brasslion.html) This robotic scribe (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/scribe.html) This island (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/island.html) This awesome fullplate baron (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/baron.html) This romanesque piece (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/attolia.html) This insane robotic steampunk monstrosity (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/executors.html) This second awesome knight (http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/boneknight.html) Now, as far as other steampunk setting stuff goes. This image is possibly a little too technologically advanced, but it gets really close to the feeling that I'm thinking of. Vaguely Jules Verne with a bit of normal fantasy worked in. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Steampunk_City.jpg This is a cool little piece with a very fantastical steampunk city. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Steampunk_City_2.jpg I like this in that it shows a neat way that steampunk airships could be different than the standard baloon / blimp airships that we (or I) always think of. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Steampunk_Skiff.jpg Once again, no reason that steampunk has to stop in Victorian areas. What about steampunk out in the desert or prairie-land? Steampunk out in the old west? http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Desert_Town.jpg The layer of the dead A creepy graveyard shot showing the extent of the death wreaked upon the world. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Graveyard.jpg A shot of a city inside the undead layer and probably in one of the dead nations. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Undead_Glass_Desert.jpg The Lost World type land (rugged, wild, super-predators abound) A shot showing the common plateau / valley layout of the layer, and the majority of construction being down along the sides of cliffs. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Journey.jpg Another pretty shot showing the plateau setup and the potential for minor landmasses floating above larger landmasses within a layer. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Laputa.jpg Ki'Sha-la The general architectural feel that I would like to have dominate major portions of the Ki'Sha-la layer. A sort of Xanadu based construction with a fairly heavy fantasy bent. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/CA_Xanadu.jpg
Araes 04-22-07, 05:14 PM	The Misplaced Dreamer Today's installment is another segue into storytime. This time I'm going to follow one of the major characters of the Jewel of the Sphere - someone that I generally refer to as the "misplaced messiah" in my notes. A woman who woke from hibernation slumber exceptionally late, long after most people even remembered that their prior generations awoke in the Sphere, and so late in fact that many of the awakening procedures have never been performed on her properly. She is not cataloged, she is not controlled, and her memories are in dischord with everything she sees. As she has made her way out into the Sphere proper, her path has been bumpy at best. She is outspoken, and rails against the decay of society. Her memory of the past is still fresh but jumbled, and many have often called her a madwoman for the appeals she makes to a long forgotten time of deep blue skies and rolling green hills - not buildings as far as the eye can see. ... "I can hear it on the wind. I used to imagine it to be my husband calling me home to the land of my dreams. For a time, I thought it was the mass of humanity, hearing my pleas and crying out for change in turn. Now though, I recognize its harsh call." "The lockstep boots upon the steps." "The dying cracks of sundered timber." "Those notes mark the pitch of a fevered voice come to muffle my own." "Insanity? Insane? Perhaps...I've had the label before. So much of this place makes so little sense. Am I mad to talk of lands of green and blue, not shades of grey? Are these just fancies, slumber dreams? Or are they truly images of a time 'before'?" "No. Their life, their vibrance, calls to me in ways this place can never mimic. Perhaps this is the dream, and they are the waking life? For what dream would not want to preserve itself? It is that life, that vibrance that I should strive to preserve. Those memories I should strive to hold dear. And it is their path which led me here, that I might retrace the steps and find my way back to them." "Its troubling sometimes, how dim they have become, these memories of my past. Of youth. Of love. Of our life together. Of my life before this endless maze of metal and stone." "Its strange as well, that these vague memories, which seem so mundane to me, have led to being thought of as exceptional, even famous. Although, to be fair, I was somewhat known before. Not famous by any means, but known. Published. Perhaps even respected amongst my peers. Yet where would that line of fame be drawn? Maybe, in some other time or place, my peers would count vast legions. More even than know of me now?" "Time seems always vague in memories. In dreams. The highlights ( my day of marriage ), the major events ( the birth of my children ), these are sharp and clear. I can still remember every hour of building our home beneath the great cliffs. But these are the exceptions. Stills, or films, of gravity, seperated by vast swaths of uncertainty. Lost amidst the amorphous, timeless void." "However, even if the landscape of my mind were completely lacking in shape or form, I would still be able to feel the shadow that seemed to fall across it. In all but my earliest memories, it spreads like an inkstain - deepening and darkening with age. Yet, when I try to focus on its cause, it seems to slide away. Hovering, just out of sight." "I can...with concentration I can follow the shadow's course. I can follow its effects without actuallying seeing it. In childhood there seems to be little besides the dreams of youth. Gymnastics with a mother. Walking with a father. However, as I sift through the thoughts I only just identify, I can begin to see its influence. Frames darken and the edges curl. A teacher whose smile never reaches her face. Relations who seem distant and anxious. Is it me? Am I the cause?" "As I shift through the spaces, and begin to near the bottom, the images become crisper, almost crystalline. As real as waking yesterday. Maybe moreso. Yet even these last memories are distorted and twisted as well. The gloom is almost palpable. Smiles have been burned away and the wave is rising...crested...crashing...and then there is disconnect." "Did I die?" "Is this the next existence?" "Not exactly what I imagined of the afterlife" ... I may do some more on this character, as I actually did a small test run adventure with a friend of mine to see what they thought of the setting and waking up with only vague knowledge of the past and where they were. As far as I can tell, it turned out well, and probably wouldn't be too much work to write up.
Sliversun 04-22-07, 09:53 PM	The art you found looks great! Also if you want more art for the Megacity, then check out Magic the Gathering's Ravnica setting. Speaking of the megacity, is it okay if I give you some ideas? 1) For the name; I was thinking that you could go with "Nexus", because it's clear that the Jewel of the Sphere will not only be the hub of the Sphere, but it's cosmopolitan soul as well. After all, where else will you find so many races and cultures and faiths in one city? Plus it has a nice ring to it. 2) For the city's government, rather then a monarchy or republic, maybe the layer could have a fourm-style senate or council with representives from city districts, guilds, factions, cults, churches, sects, noble houses, landowners, buisness enterpises and neutral orginizations come together, to talk, to argue and to bribe one another. It'd be like the city itself: very chaotic, but it would work. Please let me know what you think!
Araes 04-22-07, 11:23 PM	Hey Sliversun, thank you, I particularly like the one of the city in the morning. Very pretty shot. 1) I'll consider the name Nexus. I do like the image that it conveys of the city as the heart and center of the Sphere. One thing that I tend to do is try for names that sound similar, but still convey that same sound. Sometimes throwing them into another language works as well. For example, maybe something like Nessus. Centrum, core, cynosure, and nave might all be interesting if warped a little as names. 2) To this proposition, I actually hadn't decided whether I wanted the city to be completely unified yet under a single governing body, or whether it was more disparate, with literal city states as various geographical sections of the city. However, even as a really high level idea (akin to something more like a UN) this still might work, and there could be layer wide representatives for things like churches, guilds, and the various parts of the city. Perhaps with a special section of the city which was originally designed by the gods for this high level government purpose. It seems natural that they would have originally been all for a democratic / republic government if they could. In fact, my initial thought is that they probably would have tried for the equivalent of e-democracy. IE, direct democracy where everyone can initiate changes. However, with some of the breakdowns, my bet is they would retreat to a more representative or republic form, with more concentration of power in the wealthy. So, overall your idea seems like it makes sense to me.
Sliversun 04-23-07, 06:25 AM	Thanks for the reply. And if you need any more ideas or inspiraton, let me know. In the meantime check out this website, Orion's Arm: http://www.orionsarm.com/ It's sort of like what you have here, only on a galactic scale. So check it out!
Araes 04-24-07, 02:20 PM	Oddly enough, I actually already knew about Orion's Arm, but thanks for the link. When I go looking for ideas for types of governments that are a little outside the pale, there's a great page they have of weird governments for Orion's Arm that's really useful. As far as ideas or inspiration, I can always use more ideas, so feel free to put them out there. I'm perfectly aware that I've got my limits, and some of the great thread ideas like the nanotech armor and the elementals came from someone else. On the name for the Jewel of the Sphere, I think I'm going to go with Nerus (Nair-OOs). It has a nice connection to Nexus and at the same time its also got a connection to one of the old Greek gods. Speaking of the Ravnica and the art, one of these days I'm going to have to buckle down and do some art, since I can draw at least decently, or start trying to find people to do it for me. Wonder what people over on Elfwood / DeviantArt and places like them charge for commisions on average?
Araes 04-24-07, 07:09 PM	I answer my own question by checking around. $85 - 100 seems pretty common from a couple of replies I got. Also, as I was eating lunch today, it dawned on me that with your comments about Ravnica, the Sphere oddly has some parallels to Magic: the Gathering. Unintentionally, I've actually created some fairly strong links to the different elements of Magic with the layers. Theres a fire (red) layer, an ice (blue) layer, a nature (green) layer, an undead (black) layer, and the sprawling continents of humanity in the Amber Throne's layer could make a good case for (white). Then there's something pretty similar to Ravnica in the center. The only outlier would be Ki'Sha-la. Maybe it could be an area for Legends? As such, I think I'm going to formalize the layers in their current state and say they are static for now. That would mean the layer order goes like this (counting outward from the center) Nerus, the Jewel of the Sphere Arborea (Un-named) The layer of the Amber Throne (Un-named) The frozen wastes (Un-named) The burning desert of constant sun Ki'Sha-la, the sundered layer (Un-named) The layer of the dead (Un-named) The lost world (shell of the Sphere, no gaps) The are also the other sub-realms and what might be considered planar realms of: The digital heavens Beyond the Sphere The final diagram of the Sphere would look like this: http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/SphereDiagram.jpg The actually habitable layers are only the non-orange lines, or every other circle. The orange circles are the heating nodes for the Sphere. I've been thinking of a good way to describe what the heating effect looks like, and the best way I can is that it is like a first order Spherical surface wave. Here's a sideview, cross sectional image of what I'm talking about: http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/StellarProgression.jpg In a normal day on a normal layer, this would look like a bar of fire making its way across the sky, and if you were near the poles, coming to a point and then starting to expand again. This would also have the affect of leaving certain parts of layers under semi-illumination all the time. However, since the layers are vast, and the gap is mildly small relatively, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. In addition, since the layers are moving and not static, this position of constant light, would change as the days went by. Kind of like our own seasons.
Sliversun 04-24-07, 09:23 PM	I like the ideas that you have so far, but I think it would be better to keep the layers small and moblie . That way, we'll be able to come up with new ideas for more layers and be able to fit them in. In fact, I have a few ideas for some new layers: 1) A layer dominated by massive city-states, and I do mean massive. 2) A layer ruled by dragons, each dragon sub-race ruling it's own kingdom or empire. 3) A layer with nomadic steampunkish cities, similar to Goodman Games DragonMech or Philip Reeves Hungry City Chronicles. 4) A layer with cultures and nations centred around a single element (like Avatar: The Last Airbender). 5) A layer almost compleatly covered by water, sort of like Waterword meet Pirates of the Caribbean, with just a dash of One Piece and Pirates of Dark Water. You get the idea. And who knows, someone else may come up with some more ideas. BTW, good luck with the art!
Araes 04-24-07, 10:55 PM	Sliversun, I get where you're coming from with respect to limiting the choices of layers. However, one of the issues for me is that I don't want to leave the Sphere infinitely vast for all intents and purposes. With 8 layers, and assuming a reasonable radius increase between layers, we're talking about a LOT of land area already in the existing layers as we move outward. I think a more effective idea for us might be to figure out ways to incorporate your great ideas into the layers as is, even if it involves changing some of their concepts. For example, number 1) seems like it could fit in well with a continent, or even several continents on a couple of the layers. A good fit might be part of layer where the undead plague has broken out. Another might be that throughout much of the layer where the sun turned off people have naturally formed into giant collectives and within the earth of the layer itself they struggle with each other. Number 2) might work well in any of the layers, except for the outer shell, and even there it could have some traction. Number 3) seems like it would be a great incorporation for the layer with the increased solar power. An effective way for people to survive the heat might have been to make their entire society mobile and follow underneath pieces of moving land. Number 4) seems like it could fit in a number of cases, but it might almost be more interesting to spread them across the layers, and not have them all gathered in one place. Perhaps the denizens of Ki'Sha-la have a nation that revears the air, as its so much a part of their lives. Perhaps the previously mentioned solar layer have a group that respects the power of fire and heat, since their lives are controlled by it. Finally, number 5) seems like it would be a good fit in the lost world layer. It is the layer which would naturally have the largest bodies of free-standing water (vast oceans that would make the Earth's seem miniscule) and it would make sense to avoid the giant land predators by taking to the oceans. Perhaps the large life their is easier to deal with?
Sliversun 04-25-07, 10:06 PM	Okay, but do you think you could have more then eight layers, like maybe a total of ten or twelve? After all, it's a big universe (or was), so they'd need a LOT of room for the different races that they saved. If not, then I respect that.
Araes 04-25-07, 10:24 PM	I'll definitely consider it, as two more layers would only double the available surface area assuming a regular size increase. Do you have particular concepts that you want to put forward as options for the layers, or are you more interested in just leaving them open so there's some breathing room in case a good idea comes up? Right now, we're at ~205 Earth area's if we assume an Earth radius increase in size between each layer and that the central city is an Earth size planet. Note why I'm somewhat worried. I'd have little hope in my lifetime of coming up with 205 good, complete campaign world areas. My other interest is making sure that for most of the layers I can trace back their reasoning to some Sphere wide reasoning or calamity. For example, Ki'Sha-la is a result of a massive breakdown in the continental orbit patterns. The hot and cold layers are due to one of the suns malfunctioning and shunting its power into a nearby layer's sun system. The undead layer is effectively a quarentined layer, where one of the Gods unleashed a horrible nano-plague. The Jewel, Nerus, is special simply because its one of the few layers where something awful (besides social and tech breakdown) hasn't happened.
Sliversun 04-26-07, 08:11 PM	I'm not sure yet, but I think that the 'breathing room' concept that you have is a good idea, because someone might come up with a good idea or two for layers.
Sliversun 04-27-07, 06:22 AM	In fact, I might have a couple of ideas: One layer would be a place where most mundane technology would have broken down or have been forgotten, so the people there would use magic instead, sort of like Eberron or Exalted, since the Amber Throne layer sounds like a place where technology would be king. The second layer would have suffered the same Sphere-wide disaster, but ended better off then the other layers and would be a place where nature, magic and steampunk-tech would co-exist peacefully. In sort, these layers would look realtivly normal then most of the others, like in a classic campaing setting or something. BTW, what other races can we expect in this setting besides humans and dragons?
Araes 04-27-07, 04:00 PM	Alright, I think the second idea might be usable. I guess it is true that for the most part, there really isn't anywhere in the Sphere that is basically a normal, medieval D&D world. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not, but I'll consider it. I think it would probably not even have steam-tech though if it is used. Basically, normal magic, normal tech, and maybe normal psionics. As far as the races go, I wouldn't say there are even humans for sure. Really, its more that there were a lot of different races in the universe, and to represent that, you can create your own race using the system described a couple pages back. I may decide that a few of those combinations are more common than others, just to give some easy examples for people to play if they don't want to go to the work of creating one. That had been more Jeweler's pet project when he was around on this setting, but I guess I'll need to get back to work on that and finish it up into a usable form like the class construction system. Potentially more on that later today in fact.
Araes 04-30-07, 11:56 PM	Right, took longer than I'd hoped to finish this off, but here we go - a completion of the prior work on race design that appeared around pages 8 and 9. The basic concept is still pretty much the same, but I've filled out the racial profiles for a first draft. One of the main points which will need balancing is the last Racial Feat selection, which is semi-unbalanced for some choices right now. The difficulty lies in choosing relatively good benefits which are in line with the theme of the creature. Lizards are a particularly weak example, Dragons are a particularly strong one from a combat perspective. Personally, as much as I dislike it, I think the breath weapon is just too good and has to go. Maybe a low spell resistance? Races of the World The basic concept of races within this world is that since the universe was a vast and diverse place, the races available to players should also represent that fact. As such, what is proposed is a concept where races may be created in a slot based system with six steps. The system will have the following rules. Each race will be composed of (6) race choices Each archtype will have (4) optional powers and (1) optional feat. For any choice, you may select a 1st or 2nd option that you have not previously chosen for any archtype. If you have a 1st option from an archtype, you may choose its 3rd option at a later time. If you have a 2nd option from an archtype, you may choose its 4th option at a later time. If you have both the 3rd and 4th options from an archtype, you may spend your remaining (2) choices to select its racial feat. Visually, this process would look something like the following for those people who are picture learners. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/RacialSelection.jpg The full list of racial archtypes and their options is as follows: Bear Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all swim / climb checks Choice 2: Toughness Choice 3: +4 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Con, -2 Int, -4 Cha Choice 4: Rage 1/day R. Feat: Improved Grab Bat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all spot / listen checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Int Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Blindsense Cat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all move silently / balance checks Choice 2: Innate Balance - You may always take 10 on balance checks, even if you are rushed or threatened Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapons - 2 Claws (1d4 + 1/2 Str) R. Feat: Pounce Primate Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all climb / spot checks Choice 2: None Choice 3: +2 to Int, Wis, or Cha (Civilization or Layer Dependent) Choice 4: +4 skill points at first level, +1 skill point there after R. Feat: Feat of Choice Mole Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all appraise checks, +4 racial bonus to all survival checks underground Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Con, +2 Int Choice 4: Burrow 10ft (stable tunnels) R. Feat: +1 CL for all spells with the "Earth" descriptor, -2 racial minus to all spot / search checks Rabbit Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all diplomacy / move silently checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: +20 land speed and +4 racial bonus to all jump checks R. Feat: Cat's Grace (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Wolf Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all intimidate / handle animal checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Bite (1d6 + Str) Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Trip - If you hit with your bite attack, you may attept to trip (+3 check modifier) as a free action without making a touch attack or provoking an attack of opportunity. If the attempt fails the opponent cannot react to trip you. R. Feat: Scent Horse Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all listen / spot checks. Choice 2: Run Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Int Choice 4: Four legs - Your form has four legs like a centaur, giving it the bonuses to balance, carrying capacity, ect... R. Feat: Endurance Rat Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all climb / balance checks Choice 2: Escape Artist Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapons - 2 Claws (1d4 + 1/2 Str) R. Feat: Natural Poison - Injury (DC 10 + 1/2 Con + 1/2 CL) , Natural Weapons Only, ID (1d4 Str), SD (1d4 Con) Wolverine Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to intimidate and Cold Resistance 2 Choice 2: Improved Unarmed Combat Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Cha, +2 Str, -4 Wis Choice 4: Rage 1/day R. Feat: Iron Will Badger Choice 1: Darkvision 60 ft. Choice 2: Berserker (as Rage(Ex) from MM) Choice 3: -2 Str, +4 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: Burrow 10ft R. Feat: Diehard (You bypass the endurance requirement) Owl Choice 1: Low Light Vision Choice 2: +2 racial bonus to any two knowledge skill checks of choice Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Wis Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Spell Level Feat of choice Hawk Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all Spot / Search checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Beak (1d4 + 1/2 Str) Choice 3: +4 Dex, -2 Con, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Diving Charge Raven Choice 1: +1 DC for spells of the Illusion school Choice 2: Comprehend Languages (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: +2 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: See Invisibility (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Eagle Choice 1: +4 racial bonus to all spot checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Beak (1d4 + 1/2 Str) Choice 3: +2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Wis, -4 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Flyby Attack Dove Choice 1: Sanctuary (2 / day ) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Con, -2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Cure Moderate Wounds (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Frog Choice 1: Jump (2 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Cha Choice 4: Natural Weapons - Tongue Attack (1d6 + 1/2 Str) (10ft. reach) R. Feat: Natural Poison - Contact (DC 10 + 1/2 Con + 1/2 CL), Skin Contact, ID (1d2 Con), SD (Paralysis) Salamander Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all craft (smithing) / hide checks Choice 2: Darkvision 60 ft. Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Int, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fire Resistance 4 R. Feat: Scorching Ray (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Ant Choice 1: Can carry loads as if one size category larger Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +4 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Con, -4 Int, -2 Cha Choice 4: Burrow 10ft (stable tunnels) R. Feat: Telepathy (40 ft, need common language) Mantis Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all hide / concentration checks Choice 2: True Strike (1 / day ) (self only) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: +4 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, -4 Wis Choice 4: +4 racial bonus to all initiative checks R. Feat: Pounce Spider Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all climb / move silently checks Choice 2: Web (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: -2 Int, +2 Wis Choice 4: Spider Legs - You have spider legs rather than bipedal legs (Base speed 20 ft., climb speed 20 ft.) R. Feat: Tremorsense 60 ft. Wasp Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all spot and survival checks to determine location or orientation Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Swarmfighting (No restriction on allies possessing Swarmfighting) Beetle Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all spot / hide checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Horn (1d6 + 1/2 Str) Choice 3: +2 Str, -4 Dex, +4 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: +2 natural armor bonus, +4 when prone R. Feat: Scorpion Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all hide / intimidate checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Stinger (1d4 + 1/2 Str) (10 ft reach) Choice 3: +2 Con, -2 Int Choice 4: +10 land speed R. Feat: Natural Poison, Injury (DC 10 + 1/2 Con + 1/2 CL), Stinger Only, ID (1d2 Con), SD (Paralysis) Centipeed Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all climb / balance checks Choice 2: Darkvision 60 ft. Choice 3: +2 Dex, -4 Int, +2 Wis Choice 4: Quadruple standary carrying capacity for your size and strength R. Feat: Innate climber - You may use your Str or Dex modifier for climb checks. You may always take 10 on climb checks, even if threatened or distracted. Fly Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all spot / search checks. Choice 2: Small Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Iron Stomach (You possess a +2 racial bonus on all saves vs poison and may subsist on food which has become rotten with no penalty) Moth Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all hide checks, +2 to saves vs poison. Choice 2: Light sensitivity (-1 to all checks in bright light such as daylight, natural or the spell) Choice 3: +2 Int, -2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Fortune - 1/day - You may force another being to reroll a roll they just made, before it is decided whether it is a success or failure. Snake Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all bluff / intimidate checks Choice 2: Natural Weapon - Bite (1d4 + Str) Choice 3: +4 Int, -2 Wis Choice 4: Snake Tail - You have a snake tail rather than bipedal legs (Base speed 20 ft., climb speed 10 ft., constrict opponents in grapple for 1d6 + Str damage) R. Feat: Natural Poison, Injury (DC 10 + 1/2 Con + 1/2 CL), Bite Only, ID (1d2 Con), SD (1d2 Con) Dragon Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all survival / intimidate checks Choice 2: Choose an energy type, +2 racial bonus on all saves vs sleep, paralysis, and spells of the chosen energy type. Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, +4 Cha Choice 4: (Chosen energy) resistance 4 R. Feat: 1/day - You breath your chosen energy type in a destructive blast. (1d6 damage / 2 CL, round up, Reflex DC = 10 + CL/2 + Cha modifier for half) If your energy is Fire or Cold, the weapon is a 30' cone. If your energy is Acid or Electricity, the weapon is a 60' line. Chameleon Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all disguise / hide checks Choice 2: Add bluff, disguise, and hide to your list of class skills. Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Wis Choice 4: Extra Appendage - Tongue (Does no damage, and may not be used for fine manipulation, but has a reach of 10ft, and may snatch inanimate objects up to a quarter of your light load carrying capacity and drag objects up to half your light load carrying capacity. May also grapple and trip at a distance, but with a -5 penalty.) R. Feat: Independent Eyes (Your eyes may look in two different directions at the same time. You effectively possess 360 degree, spherical vision around your body. You, however, may still be flanked due to the lack of focusing ability while looking in two directions.) Lizard Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all balance / swim checks Choice 2: Low Light Vision Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int, +4 Wis Choice 4: Innate balance - You may always take 10 on balance checks, even if distracted or endangered. R. Feat: Hold Breath - You may hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to four times your constitution before you risk drowning. Alligator Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all swim checks and a +4 to all hide checks when in water. Choice 2: Innate Swimmer - You may always take 10 on swim checks, even if distracted or endangered. Choice 3: +4 Str, -4 Dex, +2 Int Choice 4: Natural Weapon - Bite (1d6 + Str) R. Feat: Improved Grab (Bite) - If you hit with your bite, you may start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. Turtle Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all swim checks and a +4 to all hide checks when in water. Choice 2: +2 save vs sleep, paralysis, and enchantment spells. Choice 3: -2 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Wis Choice 4: +2 natural armor bonus, +4 when prone. R. Feat: Turtle Style - When wearing heavy armor and using a tower shield, you may withdraw from combat as a move action. Using this form of withdraw, you may only move your listed speed (not double) Shark Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all swim / spot checks. Choice 2: Track (Water Only) Choice 3: +2 Con, +2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha Choice 4: Blindsense (Water Only) - You can locate creatures underwater within a 30 ft. radius. R. Feat: Keen Scent (Water Only) - You can track creatures by scent underwater. You can notice creatures by scent in up to a 180 ft. radius. You can smell blood in up to a mile radius. Octopus Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all hide / escape artist checks. Choice 2: Hydration - Octopi need twice the amount of water normal characters do to survive. Choice 3: +2 Dex, -2 Int, -2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Long Reach - Your natural arms are flexible and long, giving you an extra +5 ft. reach in combat. R. Feat: Ink Cloud - You may emit a jet black mist in a cube 20 ft. to a side once per minute as a free action. This ability provides total concealment, obscures all vision, and functions in or out of water. Ray Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all disguise / hide checks Choice 2: Low Light Vision Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Con, +2 Int Choice 4: +2 save vs illusions / +1 DC to all illusion spells you cast R. Feat: +2 dodge bonus to AC when fighting creatures larger than yourself Eel Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all listen / spot checks Choice 2: None Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Hold Breath - You may hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to four times your constitution before you risk drowning. R. Feat: 1/day - You may deliver a shocking blast to a single opponent within 5 ft. (1d8 nonleathal damage / CL, round up, Reflex DC = 10 + CL/2 + Cha modifier for half) Crab Choice 1: stability - You are particularly stable, and have a +4 on ability checks to resist bull rush and trip attempts while standing on solid ground. Choice 2: Shield (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: -2 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Int, -4 Wis Choice 4: +2 natural armor bonus, +4 when prone. R. Feat: Damage Reduction 1/- Dryad Choice 1: +4 racial bonus to survival checks in forest / jungle Choice 2: Tree Shape (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: -2 Dex, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Tree walk 100ft. 3/day R. Feat: +1 Caster Level for all spells with the "Plant" descriptor Nymph Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all diplomacy / handle animal checks Choice 2: Wild Empathy Choice 3: -2 Str, -2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +6 Cha Choice 4: +2 DC for all mind affecting spells and abilities R. Feat: Stunning Glance, 1/day (as the Nymph ability from the MM) Pixie Choice 1: +2 racial bonus to all sleight of hand / escape artist checks Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +4 Dex, -4 Con, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Fly 30ft (average) R. Feat: Glitterdust (1 / day) (as a caster of your level) Treant Choice 1: +4 racial bonus to all knowledge (nature) / survival in forest checks Choice 2: -10 ft to movement speed, +2 natural armor bonus to AC Choice 3: +2 Str, -4 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Cha Choice 4: Double damage against objects R. Feat: Photosynthesis (2 hours of sunlight = full 8 hours rest and food for one day, needs water) Thorn Choice 1: Sleep (2 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 2: Small Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Int, +2 Cha Choice 4: Spiked skin (+2 natural armor bonus to AC, attackers takes 1 point of damage from hitting character with natural weapons) R. Feat: Sneak Attack - You may sneak attack as a rogue. You gain a racial bonus of 1d6 points of damage on a successful sneak attack. Satyr Choice 1: +2 racial bonus on all perform / gather information checks Choice 2: Low Light Vision Choice 3: +2 Str, -2 Con, -2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Alertness R. Feat: 1/day - while performing, you may facinate as a Bard of your character level. Doppleganger Choice 1: +2 to all disguise / escape artist checks Choice 2: Disguise Self (2 / day) (as a caster of your level) Choice 3: -2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Wis, +2 Cha Choice 4: Morphic Weapons - As a move action you may grow natural weapons which deal the appropriate damage for your size and their type based on the MM (page 296). R. Feat: Wild Shape (1 / day) as a racial feature Lycanthrope+ Special - Choose two full sets of racial types. Your body naturally switches between these two types based upon a preset cycle. +The Lycanthrope is a special case, and may only be taken once, and with DM approval.
Araes 05-02-07, 06:41 PM	The Bounty System of Ki'Sha-la Alright, now I'm going to cover a system that is in place in the land of Ki'Sha-la for placing and delivery of bounties. First off, within the layer, there are actually two bounty societies which have grown up over time to fill the respective needs of the island nations. Legal (Government) Bounties The first of these systems is a government sponsored bounty system which is quite common within most of the major nations present in the layer. No one is quite sure where it got started, but it is a natural extension of the vast distances present between many landmasses within the layer, the number of uncharted or explored "rogue" landmasses, and the difficulty for law enforcement to track individuals across such a mess of space and matter. Over time the practice has spread throughout the layer, and now most hunters can expect to find some representative for the business in the administrative district of any port they land in. As is implied, the formal government systems are generally focused only on the capture and delivery of individuals or groups of individuals to law enforcement who have been ellusive to more conventional methods. The focus in these hunts is almost always on the live capture of the individuals and only in the most extreme cases will bounties be paid for individuals which are DOA. In addition, there are sometimes minor requirements on the treatment of prisoners who are in the custody of hunters, and governments have been known in a few cases to somewhat reduce paid bounties for prisoners delivered in particularly poor condition. On the topic of being paid in the government system, there is generally a pretty standard process. Individuals are first captured and then delivered in person to the administrative department responsible for the bounty. From there, the prisoner is taken into custody, a good deal of paperwork is filled out by the hunter, and they are then told to go wait while the whole capture is authorized and the prisoner is checked. Hunters are told to check back with the department in a few days to see if the payment is finished. Whether it is can be fairly hit or miss, and payments have in particularly bad cases been known to be delayed by up to a month. Often, hunters will just leave to pursue another bounty, and catch up with their old payments on the next return to that land. In general, cooperation between lands is not the norm, and bounties are only rarely posted which affect more than one land. Often, multiple bounties for particularly dastardly groups (pirates, raiders, assassins, ect...) are posted in several conflicting realms, and hunters will have to choose which bounty they wish to claim if they are successful. In addition, although writs of protection and right of the hunt may be provided in some territories, they are generally not honored in other lands, and some areas do not even offer the option for such notes. This can make the process of hunting a wide ranging bounty rather difficult, as the law of one land may need to be avoided to bring them to justice in another. Finally, private individuals or groups are in general not allowed to post any form of bounty through the government systems, which leads to the reason for the second bounty system. Private Bounties The second form of bounty system is one which sprang up due to the exclusiveness of the government systems. This is a system for private individuals and is much more informal than its government sponsored partner. In addition, it is also quite a bit more shady how legal such a system is in many parts of the layer, but it exists in some form or another nonetheless. Some lands don't care much one way or the other, and will often look the other way when they find representatives of the private system. In other cases, some lands actively oppose the practice, and do their best to erradicate it - which effectively just drives it underground. However, in both cases, the chasing of private bounties is in no way protected by law, and the law will only rarely give passes to hunters who cause trouble while on the trail of a private case. Organizationally, the private system is commonly run through an interconnected network of private "bounty shops". These shops exist by serving as centralized middlemen for the posting and awarding of private bounties. Individuals or groups will often go to one or more shops and tell them a lump sum that they are willing to provide to the shop for the bounty. Then the shop posts the bounty publically, with some percentage removed for their services. The clients in these exchanges are generally kept anonymous to try and protect the shop's source of income. This naturally leads to bounty shops regularly trying to snipe one another's business and find out the sources behind particularly lucrative bounties. In terms of the bounties offered, there is quite a bit more diversity in the private system. For the capture of individuals, it is in no way limited to "bring em back alive". In some cases this is requested, but many times there will instead be contracts for "dead or alive" situations, or even simply for pure assassination. In addition, private contracts are not limited to bounties on living beings either. Other common bounties include fetch quests for items or information of interest to particular groups, tasks which need to be accomplished discretely and without trace to the paying party, and the communication of information or objects to third parties. Getting paid within this system can be in some ways easier, and some ways vastly more difficult than the government version. In the case of a smoothly functioning bounty, upon completion of the task, with verifiable proof, a hunter can be paid almost immediately at the shop he brings it to. This is most common in the cases of alive or dead capture of individuals. However, due to its shady nature, the private enterprise can have a number of other loopholes. One of them is that hunters are often interested in circumventing the bounty shops and receiving the full amount for bounties. This by itself can raise the ire of the shops who have been left out of the loop, and in even worse circumstances, sometimes the bounty poster will not be pleased in the least that their identity has been revealed. More than one conflict in the underworld has been known to erupt due to just such an event, and a fair share of hunters have found themselves at the short end of a rope when the poster's identity was made known. Hunters in Society Official, the subset of the population that pursues bounties are collectively known as hunters for obvious reasons. However, throughout the layer they are often referenced in pop culture by a number of other names. One of the most common, benign or appreciative ones is that of walkers, which is a shortening of the full title of wind-walkers. Most bounty hunters by necessity have to own their own ship, so that they can pursue targets regardless of location. A few of the poorer ones have been known to simply book transports between points of interest, but nevertheless, both sorts spend a disproportionate amount of their life aloft in the open skies - walking the winds as it were. The other name, which is more commonly thrown around as a disparaging insult, is that of shill. A holdover from some prior term that existed before the Sphere, shill has come to represent those who would do anything for some coin. Many of those who join the hunter lifestyle come from criminal pasts. Quite often, they then turn upon their own people that they used to work with, and bring them in for large rewards, using their personal knowledge of the criminals and their organizations to make themselves money. A similar, but not directly tied term is tarnies, which is slang for tarnished badges, or those hunters who came from law enforcement pasts and took up the hunting lifestyle for some reason or another.
Araes 05-03-07, 04:35 PM	Quick post today. I thought for a change I'd create two magic items that fill out the roster of bottles / decanters / ect... of some element. I've never seen ones for Fire or Earth, and the fire particularly seems like it would be quite useful in a steam application. Therefore: Stone of Unquenchable Fire When unactivated, this appears to be a smoothly rounded stone, about 2" to a side, 1" thick, and slightly warm to the touch. The only distinguishing feature of the stone is a small mark on the upper surface. However, when an activating command word is spoken, the stone springs to life with an intense heat. No matter the external conditions, the temperature of the stone remains fixed. Most flamable materials will smolder or burst into flame within seconds if brought near or into contact with the stone and many liquids, including water, will evaporate. In addition, some soft metals such as lead and gold will melt with prolonged contact with the stone. However, most weapon's grade metals will only heat to a red hot state with extended contact. Moderate transmutation; CL 7th; Craft Wonderous Item; continual flame; Price 8,000 gp Sack of Infinite Earth When the drawstring on this ordinary looking sack is opened, and it is turned upside down and shaken, a continuous stream of light brown earth begins to pour out. The earth from this sack flows at a rate of 2 cubic ft. per minute. The soil generated by the sack is not ideal for applications such as farming, as it is completely devoid of organic matter, even if rich in mineral content. In all other respects, the soil is normal and may be shaped, compacted into formations such as earthen walls, possesses the correct weight for its volume, and does not register as magical upon leaving the sack. Moderate transmutation; CL 9th; Craft Wonderous Item; stone shape, soften earth and stone; Price 8,500 gp There we go, all done. I'm not particularly happy with the spell requirements for the Sack, but other than that I think they work well. They're basically balanced in price to the Bottle of Air and the Decanter of Endless Water. Naturally they don't have the same range of abilities as the Decanter though, so they're a wee bit cheaper. I'm sure crafty people will think up interesting uses for them that I've missed, but I like the utility of both items. Instant campfires, steampower with a decanter for around 20k, a decent tool for creating instant embankments and walls, good for filling in holes, sinking things with weight, ect...
Anuvrix 05-03-07, 05:43 PM	If you took many of the stones and thousnds of the bags.... put the stones in a close group in space, and activate all of them. start pouring dirt into a sphere around it. use all the bags constantly for several years, get a couple of othe magic items(decanters of endless water, bottle of air and such) after some years you have a planet. woot, homemade planet.
Anuvrix 05-03-07, 05:45 PM	With the above post in effect you could feasibly create a buisness creating planets for extremely rich people. think hitchiker's guide to the galaxy.
Araes 05-03-07, 07:19 PM	Ha, I guess that's probably true. I'm not sure what would honestly happen to the stones if you dumped that much heat into a contained and compact space. They're propositioned on the idea that they always remain the same temperature, so I wonder whether they would go fusion, or just sit there at a couple 1000 degrees and be perfectly happy? Of course, if you can make these items on a scale that's feasible with creating a planetary mass in our lifetime, then you can probably do it a bit more efficiently. For example, using the mass rates, and assuming that one wizard could make 43 bags each year (8.5 days per bag), to get a planet the volume of Earth, you would need 300 million mages making these bags every day for 75 years. With the compounding volume addition from the bags you would make it almost exactly on the day. Gotta be a better way. :)
Kurikin 05-06-07, 08:11 PM	I was checking out the character classes section of the wiki page. I like the way you broke everything down but it seems like you have to pick what most of your progression will be ahead of time. So I came up with this based off of what you have. * Base Attack Bonus o 24 points per every point of BAB o Limit 1 per HD * Hit Dice o the die you want to roll times 3 o Limits (d2 - d12) * Good Saves o 10 points per save point o Limit 1 per 2 HD * Skills o 1 point per skill point o Each point purchased allows allows for the selection of 4 skills as class skills, this is for that level only, you can select different class skills at each level. * Feats o 40 points per feat With this you'd gain 100 points per level (2000 over 20 levels) and you would spend them every time you level up.
Araes 05-06-07, 09:11 PM	Hi Kurikin, thanks for the input. I had originally intended for the class system to be one in which you had to choose your levels out ahead of time. In effect you were married to the initial progression you made unless you went for a prestige class. However, that said, I have no issue with the system you have proposed, and it would provide an interesting alternate way of forming characters. Your math seems solid. My only issue is that people are going to end up with less saves at the end of their career, as the two initial points for a "Good" save were factored in. One way to get around this might be to say the cap was (HD / 2 + 2) [round down] The math's a little more ugly, but it gets the point across. Your system in the end actually comes out very similiar to the Green Ronin Press game Mutants and Masterminds' way of making characters. Oh, also, there's really no point in even having class skills if you can rechoose them every level. Might as well just drop them.
Kurikin 05-06-07, 09:25 PM	Heh, I just copy and pasted what you had from the wiki page and didn't think much about the class skill thing. About the saves. If the max save you can have is (1/2 HD) + 2 with the same Xp cost it would be 8 & 1/3 per save point. So maybe have the cost be 8 and then every 3rd level be 9. 1 thing I forgot to mention in my first post is the option to save up points that you don't spend. I just read the mutants and masterminds wiki and your right, this is a lot like it. Personally I feel that a character shouldn't have to follow a set path throughout his career. He should be able to change what he improves in whenever he likes.
Araes 05-06-07, 09:51 PM	Well, overall, and depending on the class, we could be talking about 2-6 save points per class (assuming nobody doesn't max at least one save). Using the original point costs, that would be between 20 and 60 points over the course of a career, which would work out to 1-3% of a characters total points. In addition, in the prior analysis, those points were basically free, as you committed to a full progression of those saves at the very beginning. Therefore, since you'd be paying for them anyhow in this version, they're such a small percentage of the total cost, and it would avoid bookkeeping about how many points a character has purchased total, I'd recommend just keeping it at 10 and raising the limit. Practically, I think I personally would balk at having to track how many points total I've spent. And as said, I've got no problem with allowing complete freedom for characters as they progress. Its one of those things that's better left to the DM. Jeweler already tried the original flavor of class generation, and he said that it came out rather balanced in his game, so I think there's a good chance this would work as well. If you'd like to add it to the wiki as a secondary option for character generation, feel free, otherwise I'll probably do so here in a little bit. Trying to write up a bit of info on the Amber throne layer atm.
Kurikin 05-06-07, 10:16 PM	I'll go ahead and add it. To me it looks like on average a class has 2 good saves and 1 poor 1. So at level 20 this would be 300 points (15% of total.) Keeping track of points spent isn't really that hard. I'd just write down how many points I haven't spent. Instead of writing down how much total experience I have when I'm playing a character I just write down how much I have over what I needed to get my current level, much less math. The xp you need to level up is just 1000*current level. So instead of keeping track in the tens and hundreds of thousands, you are working with a much smaller number.
Araes 05-06-07, 10:41 PM	Ah, for the percentage of points, I was just meaning the difference between tracking and not tracking the points you gain at 1st level was +2 for each "Good" save (10 vs 12), or 2-6 points, or 1-3% of a normal character. A relatively small error on the grand scale of 2000 points. Particularly when my gut instict is that allowing utterly freeform will probably raise the ECL of characters just slightly. I think I didn't deliver the point clearly.
Kurikin 05-06-07, 11:05 PM	I see what you were saying now. Why do you think that allowing complete freeform leveling will raise the ECL of a character? For simplicity's sake I rounded up the .8696 cost per skill point up to 1. So already your losing .1304 points for every skill point you spend, which does add up especially for people who buy a lot of skill points.
Araes 05-07-07, 12:50 AM	Well, my general notion behind why freform tends to result in sliightly higher ECLs is that with greater freedom there's more potential that people can perfectly hone the system to achieve whatever powers they want at the earliest possible time. Nearly any inefficiency that is artificially built into the D&D classes based on some structure inherent to fixed progression might break, and similar to how 2nd. Ed. was a mess of splatbook after splatbook, there are so many combinations at this point, that its hard to hit every single option in a retroactive manner. However, I actually think that a system built this way from the ground up would actually have the potential to be more secure and less likely for abuse, as it wouldn't be so much a matter of trying to hunt down that one PrC that lets you gain some particular ability you need a couple levels earlier. Anyhow, as a compromise, how about we just mention the balance factors in the entry for freeform creation, and you can write it with the 8/9 system if you feel that the book keeping issues wouldn't be much work.
Kurikin 05-07-07, 04:53 PM	I threw in the balance part this morning before school but I didn't have time to post a reply. With the skill point thing I messed up, I forgot that there was the x4 thing at level 1 so I factored in the extra 3 skill points to get the .8696. So actually theres no loss in points. I agree with you about how this ends the "hunting" in standard D&D. With a list of abilities to pick from I think it would be much easier to find what abilities you want. In school today a thought arose, theres nothing stopping you from waiting to gain huge benefits that should be built up over time. So what I came up with was to limit BAB, HD (kinda obvious but if you read it as its written theres nothing stopping you from gaining multiple HD when you level up), and save increases to 1 per time you level up. The only thing left to do really I think is to write down all the prereqs for the feats. For ones that have progression, put a clause that says how often you can take said feat. For example lets say if you take Elderitch Blast you can't take it again until 2 levels later. Also, if it applies, have save, skill... etc. prereqs scale accordingly if you take it multiple times.
Araes 05-07-07, 05:50 PM	Thank you for the addition to the Wiki, I got the notification this morning. I reorganized the layout you used slightly so that the alternate rules are the second from the top, followed by the example classes and the list of feats. I felt this was a little bit easier to follow and would allow the variant to be noticed, as the list of feats is monsterous. I'm slightly annoyed at the wiki itself, as I just noticed that if you try and use Tables of Contents in Firefox, as I was thinking of adding one to the class creation system, it fubars the page and shifts it all down by the height of the sidebar. Annoyance. In regards to the restrictions on HD, BAB, ect..., I think it is perfectly fine if you say that these stats may not be higher than your current character level. Therefore, if they do hold off on buying HD, they still can't exceed what a normal person would have at that level. In addition, they're making a power tradeoff for prior levels where they don't buy whatever they're missing, as that might make it harder to survive to the next one. BAB would be max CL HD would be max of CL Skills would be max of CL + 3 in any one skill Saves would be max of CL/2 + 2 in any one save (round down) Feats I don't think would have a cap, but we might want to make one if in playtests it turns out that more than 1.5 * CL or somesuch is too much.
Araes 05-07-07, 08:12 PM	As mentioned yesterday, more material on the layer of the Amber Throne. The Royal Shipyards of the Amber Throne At any time, the power of the Amber Throne can be felt and manipulated at nearly all points within the layer of the Empress. That power and flexibility flows directly from the existence of a well maintained and extensive navy / airforce. Fully stratified into a formal command structure based on physical location and with several standardized designs of ships (destroyers, battleships, scouts, stealth, bombers, ect...), the Royal Navy of the Amber Throne is a massive affair which requires constant maintenance and construction to keep operational. To aid in this task, throughout the world the Amber Throne has constructed a series of service and construction docks which work continually to put out new ships of the line and service those already in use. The most developed of these is a facility located near the home continent of the Throne which has gained something approaching infamy within the popular culture of the land. The primary reason for this is that little to nothing of the facility is publically known. An installation which by all logical reasoning must have a population approaching that of a metropolis (based on ships serviced, created, ect...) is for all intents and purposes a rumor to the common man. As such, it has spawned numerous myths to try and explain the discrepancy - it exists outside of space, and ships are teleported in, ships are grown from the earth, or there is no layerwide plan of conquest and there is no huge facility to service them (its all a creation by people who dislike the Throne). In fact, the truth of the facility is that it does exist and that its location is somewhat fanciful, but mainly do to concerns of security. The shipyards actually operate within a section of the continent which was severed ages ago. Sections like this are numerous throughout all of the layers, which further helps its anonymity, and this particular one has been hollowed out to a large extent to provide covert space for the creation of ships. Estimates on the size of the facility actually tend to be conservative, as they don't factor in all of the other capacities in which it serves for the Royal Navy. By last census, its average population rested comfortably over 200k. From the outside, the island resembles little more than a huge chunk of floating rock. Approximately 1 mile in radius and ~1500 ft thick, there is little to distinguish the outer surface of the shipyards to a casual observer. Within the central area of the top of the island at the base of a large spire of rock, there is a small town of some 500 or so inhabitants called Terraceburg. Professing to be mostly supplied by trade, crafted goods, and the herding done in the area surrounding the town, Terraceburg is actually a town composed entirely of fakes, which simply serves to ward off the inquisitive and provide a convenient distraction for those who encounter the area randomly. Admittedly, this can prove rather difficult, and often other, more active measures have to be taken, as the traffic to the island can be vast at times and in danger of giving its presence away. (In terms of size for real world comparisons, Lower Manhattan is approximately 1 mile in radius, and the tallest building in the world, Taipai 101, is just a little over 1500 ft. in height. Its a pretty big hunk of rock.) Within the island though, is a completely different universe. Most ships which plan to enter or exit the island shipyard commonly fly underneath the island, and then enter through what appears to be a cavern entrance. As they pass upwards into the island, what at first appeared to be only a passage opens outward into a massive underground expanse. Arrayed radially, and then stacked throughout the chamber, there are countless bays for ships of all sizes and types. (This is similar to the way in which railroad terminals are organized with further and further splits of lines) Approximately 1/2 of the shipyards volume is occupied by this massive hanger. The remaining 1/2 is devoted to a number of tasks necessary for the upkeep of the base as a structure and the Royal Navy as a whole. Naturally, an extensive portion of the non-hanger section is devoted to housing and commercial quarters for the massive population which lives and works there. Although somewhat spartan by many standards, the facility does provide most of the ammenities commonly found in major metropoli - markets, restaurants, luxury items, a large administrative district, health care, ect... The civilian population within the city section of the island is heavily controlled by the military command, which operates a massive police force and strictly regulates many forms of commerce. In addition, nearly all of those who come to the island are subjected to checks of their past, associates, and character before they are allowed to enter. Most are actively recruited for particular skills that the military desires. As the entire facility is airborne, and unconnected to the mainland, with a single exit, if anyone wishes to leave, they must schedule transport on one of the navy ships leaving dock. Furthermore, before doing so, any non-military personel are subjected to a magical truth detection and binding to ensure their loyalty and preservation of secrets. As a final precaution for secrecy, the island has within itself one last secret - it is in fact also mobile. Albeit slowly and in a cumbersome manner, but able to travel the width and breadth of the continent should it be necessary. This also has the added benefit of allowing the base as a whole to move in response to specific threats and deploy as close to the encounter zones as possible. The entire process is controlled by a series of vents along the sides of the island, through which air may be channeled to move or turn the mass. In full operation, these channels are furious vortices of motion which send vast, turbulent wakes outward behind the island. However, to remain more discrete, the power level is often kept in a much reduced state, allowing the island to pursue a regular migratory path around the continent. In terms of the military command, this base is one of several central nodes for military operations throughout the layer by the Royal Navy. A large subsection of the upper brass maintain permanent residences within the island, and the island is a massive hub for communication and organization. Much of what is accomplished in naval and warfare research is also undertaken within the shell of the island, and when free of observers, the space around the island is often used as a testing ground for new ship designs, weapons, or other advancements. The island is run by a close friend and devoted follower of the Empress, Admiral Niral Chemoy, who originally championed the concept. As random points of note, after doing the math, it is my approximation that this island could: Hold ~6000 ships the size of a modern day battleship. Comfortably hold a population of 210,000 people if it had a population density like that of Manhattan. Would have a mass of 900 billion pounds (400 billion kg) Would need the force equivalent of (really roughly) 1 million jet engines to give it good flight speeds. Bad speed might be had for a quarter of that. This thing is basically the low tech version of a carrier / deathstar. In addition, its something of an illustration of the kinds of resources we're talking about being bantered around by a layer-wide nation. I personally have images in my head of the main shipyard being something similar to a Star Trek spacedock, but on a much more massive scale, with skeletons of ships in various states of creation or repair being visible as far as the eye can see. *edit* Ha, I just did the calculations, and this thing would cost at base for the flight, 1 trillion gp just for the land it uses from the Stronghold Builders Guidebook. Awesome. You might be able to make the argument that the flight could be a null cost, as pretty much everything flies, so instead it would only cost 250 billion. As a guess from the costs for components, it would probably cost another 250-500 billion for the various components. So maybe 0.5 - 1.5 trillion for the whole thing. Considering they've apparently got a navy that numbers in the thousands though, maybe its not so weird...
Kurikin 05-07-07, 10:07 PM	Ok, I'll put down all the restrictions so everything is clear and if you don't mind I'll move your list of class abilities and feats to the yet to be created feat page and I'll flesh out them whenever I have the time. Hmmm, I forgot about the whole OGL stuff. Am I able to put any information on abilities on the list that don't appear in the SRD?
Araes 05-08-07, 01:08 PM	Alright, as near as I can tell from looking over the OGL legal information, we're safe in reprinting these feats for characters, as long as we don't fill out the feats which only appear as abilities in the Complete series of books and nowhere in the SRD. This is going to be the only difficult part, as some will appear with monsters and the like, but many will also be very easy. For example, with anything referencing the Warlock's Eldritch Blast, it would probably just be safest to write where interested people could find the original power in the Complete Arcane, and then write how we have changed the original power. Another option would be to rename all of the powers and then reprint them in different forms, but my suspicion is that this would be skirting too close to the line of getting sued. Finally, we could also write the WotC legal dept. and ask them a question about the OGL content, but I've already done that once, and it took eons to get a response. As far as I can tell, everything runs kinda slow around Renton due to the amount of inquiries and contacts they get.
Araes 05-09-07, 12:43 AM	For today's topic, I think I'll delve a little bit more into the ways that inhabitants of the constantly heated layer managed to survive the perpetual sunshine of their home after the catastrophe. Generally, their solutions can be divided into four seperate categories with some sub-categories mixed in: Stationary surface communities, underground communities, nomadic surface communities, and decimated communities. Stationary Surface Communities Although they vary greatly in how they actually went about achieving their preservation, the defining characteristic of all these communities is that they were initially surface dwellers who felt that they could / should not leave the established location of thier community, or that it would be more efficient to just remain where they were and build some form of shield. One of the more natural types of these communities is the pueblo style community, which originally made its home in the wall of a cliff face that was mostly sheltered from the sun. Often times designed to sprawl beyond the shelter of the stone above them, these areas were frequently simply abandoned in favor of expanding the existing pueblo construction. These communities tend to be some of the most advanced after the disaster, as the actual amount of work and sacrifice which had to be made to preserve the people was generally less. A second style of stationary community is that which had an extensive knowledge of earth manipulation, was exposed on a plain or some otherwise unsalvagable location, and decided to erect a form of shield to obscure their land. These shields take a number of forms throughout the layer. In some cases, they may be entire mountains which were uprooted and carried aloft into the sky over the area, while in others they may have simply morphed a patch of rock and earth right over the top of the land in a semi-natural shade. A third and very rare style are those communities which for all intents and purposes seem mostly unobscured, yet are undestroyed due to the application of some useful piece of technology / magic. In the present day, these cities may look almost exactly as they did before the disaster as long as a citizen is within the walls, and often have a sharp boundary between dangerous and non-dangerous zones. The protections are often maintained by a fanatical, almost religious group that refer to them by terms like "the dampener", "the diverter", or "the reflector" depending on how they function. Underground Communities These communities differ from the others, in that they are constructed deep within the earth of the layer itself and use the land above them as a shield. These communities are generally seperated into two types: those which lived above and tunneled downward, and those who already maintained communities beneath the surface and simply expanded further. In most cases, those communities which already existed beneath the surface are some of the most advanced technologically in terms of both day to day lifestyle and "magic". In addition, these communities also tend to be some of the largest, as they were often refugee collection points for those lands which did not have the resources to protect themselves, or delayed too long in creating their protections. Nomadic Communities Nomadic communities are a strange collection, as they are probably some of the most diverse in their actual application, but are all united by the fact that they must follow some large terrestrial object functioning as their shield - which is generally beyond their control. For example, in a very common case, those lands which simply did not have the resources to create one of the other protections would simply find a section of land which followed a flight path relatively in sync, but above their own larger one. If possible, they would then try to slow it, or stabalize it and shift with its progress over the millenia throughout the remains of their world. Some lands took this concept to an even greater extent, and devoted all of their resources to creating large conveyances, which could carry all of their population beneath the landmass - no matter where it went. In certain cases, this resulted in the creation of huge fleets of ships, which basically travel as a flock throughout the layer, always moving wherever their landmass leads them. These fleets will many times feature interconnections between ships and sometimes may just resemble a massive flying city. Another logical extension of this concept for the more resourceful lands was the creation of literal flying / hovering / crawling cities. These cities could move as a single unit throughout the layer and would never be constrained by the dynamics of their landmass or the organization of a fleet. However, they often have to deal with massive problems of overcrowding which are a constant strain. Decimated Communities Finally, there are unfortunately many, possibly even a majority within the layer, which were simply unable to mount a salvation for themselves within the timeframe warned to them by the gods before the disaster. In a few horrible cases, certain communties were not even warned, as it was felt that it was better to use the disaster as an unforseen tool to purge those elements they found undesirable. Many communities which had turned away from the Creators to the Usurpers paid this ultimate toll, as well as those which had been founded by the Usurpers in the first place after their covert infiltration. In addition, there are also many communities which never even had the chance to prepare a protection, as there simply was no one awake to perform the task. Due to the widespread malfunctions of the hibernation system, whole cities were left with little to no actual citizens when the disaster came, and those that were still in their chambers would awaken later (if they did at all) to a hellish furnace.
Sliversun 05-10-07, 01:53 AM	Nicely done so far! Do you think we could incorperate the nomadic communites idea for the other layers?
Araes 05-13-07, 01:07 AM	Sliversun, I think that depending on the layer, we could definitely incorporate the nomadic communities concept. All we need to do is figure out a good reason why they might be existing somewhere else, and I'd be perfectly willing to have more. One potential concept could be in the outer shell of the Lost World layer. Communities might migrate to avoid some cyclic threat, or to follow a source of some resource (herds maybe?). The Amber Throne layer already has the migrating island idea, but they could also have some other lands that have only managed to stay apart from the layer wide dominion because they are constantly on the move and shifting erratically compared to the others. Perhaps they're just to much effort to track down to be worth it. A while back, Jeweler suggested the carnival Balseraphs, which we suggested might be a decent fit in some part of the layer which is dealing with the undead plague. Perhaps in a section not so ravaged, or perhaps mostly untouched. This concept would by its nature be nomadic. Within the jewel of the Sphere, Nerus, the description is fairly open so far, and there could be sections of the layer that have been somewhat abandoned. Within those areas, you could have groups of people who live in the remnants of a greater society. Within Tad William's line of books, "Otherland", one of my favorite sections was when they traveled through an almost never ending city section of the virtual world. Within it, their were factions that lived in what used to be a great library, groups that lived in the kitchens, and groups that lived in the towers atop the city. Each group was distinct and different based upon where they called their roaming grounds. Naturally, within all of these layers, not all the populations are going to be nomadic, but we can definitely work in some.
Araes 05-13-07, 02:02 AM	Lands of Death Rising Speaking of the undead layer, I think I'll talk about it some more, as it hasn't been discussed in a while or fleshed out much (horrible pun). Generally I tend to have images in my head when I think of this layer similar to how we always see World Wars I and II portrayed, but with a fantasy bent. Devastated cities in ruin across much of the layer, with armies endlessly moving through the remnants hunting one another. A particularly strong example would be something like Stalingrad, where there was almost nothing left, and the two camps could be miles or blocks apart at times. All the while, airships would rain down devastation from the skies above. Now, the infection of the layer probably started out very benignly in fact. Initially, it was actually only confined to a small group, or perhaps even only one person. Its honestly hard to tell at this point since so much has been destroyed. In fact, the only reason anyone is sure that the plague itself was malicious is that Gram came forward and claimed credit for the act. In the beginning of the plague, people would simply die naturally, and then later, after they had been "dead" for a short while, they would rise again with a horrible hunger. In addition, the nano-virus really only becomes active after an incubation period, and never gains an airborne vector, so it is always transmitted by contact at the very least. Unfortunately, this meant that everyone who had handled the body or been around the person after the virus gained full potency during their life might potentially be infected. Plus, the freshly dead are not mindless like those that have rotted for a long period of time, and it tried to remain discrete and hidden even longer after its rebirth - feeding subtly and spreading the infection further. When these people then also died, they rose as further intelligent undead unless the virus had not had time to incubate properly. Even with this secrecy though, eventually some people were killed in direct conflict with the hidden undead, and had not had time to incubate the virus properly. When these types of dead rose after the incubation period, they were considerably rotted, and simply mindless beasts, searching only to sate their hunger and frightening the rest of the populace into action at the same time. However, at least in the first land, it was too late by the time this happened. The undead had spread throughout the land and descended upon the masses. Within the first land they tried to do so as swiftly and decisively as possible, so that word would not get out to their neighbors around them. For the most part they were successful, but the undead needed a sustenance that only the living could provide for them, and even with captured living beings in the homeland, there were still not enough to keep them in good health. As a solution, they started to send their members abroad secretly, to feed on the populations of other lands and begin turning them as well. They closed their borders as much as they could in the meantime, and worked diligently to make sure no information leaked out. However, through luck, sloppiness, or perhaps divine intervention, some of those undead agents abroad were unmasked and the jig was up. Unfortunately for the living in many kingdoms though, it was already too late once more. Further nations fell, and even some that managed to unmask their operatives in time were still swept into undeath as all their border allies collapsed. After a time though, the balance of nations which had fallen vs those still living began to align itself. Those resisting the hand of death implemented strict laws about the destruction of corpses and the handling of the dead. In addition, they attempted to ward their lands and thoroughly as they could against the dead and started up the machine of war to purge their layer of this sickness. However, the dead were doing likewise, and as the first skirmishes came to pass, it became immediately apparent that the living had a very real problem - unless they won decisive battles and could destroy the corpses, those who fell in battle very shortly became allies of their foes. This problem persisted for years, and over time, the lands of the living, which had originally outnumbered the dead, were pushed to equilibrium, and then even beyond. However, in more recent times, a solution has been found. Wards and spells have been created which can make a body poisonous to the revival nanites. In truth they are a strain of anti-nanites, which destroy the undeath nanites as they try to raise the body. For a body which has fully succumbed to the disease they are of no use, but with enough time to replicate, they can decimate any new strain entering the body. A great push has taken place in every remaining human land to inoculate all the still living. This has served two wonderful purposes for humanity. Foremost, it has made it so that in conflict, the balance of power is once again relatively even based simply on resources. The living are still somewhat outnumbered, but at least they are not losing every single dead person as a convert to the enemy. Secondly, it has also helped to somewhat dampen the war interests of the undead, as the remaining section of their food source that lies uncaptured is now corrupted as well, and would require significant cleansing to be useful. Many of the undead would now rather just survive on the populations of living beings that they have and their interest has turned to other things. Anyhow, that's the state of things at the moment, and its fairly precarious.
Sliversun 05-19-07, 03:19 AM	I remember that in Judge Dredd, some of the citizens of Mega-City One live in 'mo-pads' mobile homes that travle along the city's megaways. Could something like this be used in Narus? Also, are robots still a playable? As in will there still races of robots?
Sliversun 05-21-07, 04:20 AM	Bump.
Araes 05-21-07, 01:16 PM	Could something like this be used in Narus? Also, are robots still a playable? As in will there still races of robots? Sliversun, the answer to both of those questions is yes. I hadn't actually considered the idea of having groups of ground vehicles that move about in Narus, but that's an interesting concept. Would have some neat references to groups like gypsies in our own world, that travel about in caravans looking for work or causing trouble (depending on your view). It also brings up an interesting point about transportation in the megacity as a whole, which I hadn't really given too much thought to yet as well. I think in my mind, I had kind of hoped that mass transit would be a big component with flying vehicles also taking up some slack. However, it does seem logical that some people would want the equivalent of roads to help them get around as well. On the robots, they're still around and going to be used, but I just haven't written about them in a while. (All the way since like page 4 I think) However, I'm hoping that will change relatively soon, as I've been giving some more thought to how I want to organize them and use them as player races. One point of note is that there will be more than one type of playable robot "race". There will be several types with variations based on what they were designed for in the first place. And appologies on the gap of posting. Had to go out of town for some job related stuff.
Sliversun 05-22-07, 04:04 AM	Thanks okay.
Araes 05-22-07, 08:33 PM	Robots - The Varieties of Inorganic Life Today I'm going to talk about robots and how they are arranged as player races within the Sphere. Like the organic racial system, a robot is also a freeform race that is designed how the player wishes. This represents the idea that there are enough varied designs of robots that a player may effectively set their own parameters and there is probably an existing robot to match. However, if the player chooses to be a robot, they use a somewhat different system for constructing their race than that used for organics. The first important distinction for robots is that there are two different fundamental types of robots. The first type of robot is what most people tend to think of in regard to robots - static, manufactured creatures which are built from a selection of components and often resemble some organic creature in form. The second type of robot is a much stranger variety, in that it is a liquid state robot - one which can change its form at will, has no "natural" state, and is not constructed in any standard sense. These second types of robots might be akin to the T1000 from the Terminator series of movies while the first type might be more like Arnie's model (the T100?). Now, there are a number of properties which are shared by both groups. These are a subtype of Constructs called the "Robot Subtype". The traits that both types share are: Hit Die d10 - All robots roll a d10 when determining hit points, regardless of class. Size Robots used as PCs may be of small, medium, or large size. In addition to the standard racial modifications for robots, they also gain the modifications based on size as detailed in the MM 3.5. If a robot is chosen as Large in size, it gains a LA +1. Movement Robots may begin play with a variety of movement types which each have distinct advantages and disadvantages. In addition, if desired they may change or augment these movement types throughout their life with upgrades. Walk - Both standard humanoid varieties and more spiderlike designs, Speed 30 ft., Only type that may use "jumps" Roll - Using treads or wheels to move, Speed 40 ft., Cannot jump. Hover - Air or energy based hovering, Speed 30 ft., May hover over rough terrain or liquid surfaces. Fly - Air or energy based flight, Fly 30 ft. (average), LA +1. Extra Hit Points Robots gain extra hit points at first level based upon their size Small - 5 HP Medium - 10 HP Large - 20 HP Ability Scores Robots have no constitution score. As such, they cannot be affected by, or gain benefit from anything which references constitution. They possess no Fortitude save, and gain no bonus hitpoints at each level. Note that abilities which allow you to substitute a Fort save for Ref or Will saves may not be used by robots as it does not physically exist. When determining initial ability scores, if a point buy system is used, 5/6 of the points should be allocated to account for the non-existent stat. If a robot transfers its conciousness to another body, its mental ability scores are retained. However, its physical scores are adjusted to reflect the new form. Both types of robots may purchase ability score upgrades for their mental and physical stats. Once again though, if they somehow lose their body, all physical upgrades are lost as well. Immunities Like constructs, robots are immune to a long list of effects. However, due to their sentient nature, they do not have certain immunities against things such as mind-influencing effects, mental ability damage / drain, or energy drain. Poison Sleep Paralysis Disease Necromancy Effects Effects that require a Fort save unless the effect works on objects or is harmless. Non-leathal damage Physical ability damage / drain Massive Damage Natural Healing Robots do not generally heal through simple rest. Robots may be healed using the Repair skill. A successful Repair skill check (DC 30) heals 1d10 HP to the robot. Robots may also be healed through some forms of magical healing specifically designed for inorganic creatures. Heavy Weight Robots are generally heavier than creatures of their size by an additional 50%. Robot Death and Raising All robots may abandon their bodies if they have the correct equipment and transfer their higher level brain functions, or "life essence", to the Sphere network. They must be concious and willing to perform this process. From there, a skilled repairman may prepare a new body (or their old one) for them and allow them to return. This process, and other forms of robot revival will be covered later. Rest Unlike standard constructs, sentient robots must take 8 hours a day within which they disable their sensory organs and integrate the information of the prior day. If they do not perform this rest cycle, they suffer a cumulative -1 penalty to all attack rolls, ability checks, skill checks, and saving throws for each day they have not rested. Senses Robots possess the ability to touch, taste, see, and smell their surroundings. Unless upgraded, they do not possess these abilities above what would be considered a human average. Feats Robots receive no bonus feats for racial status. Free Language Robots may read, write, and speak one language of their choice at creation. Level Adjustment Most robots start at LA +0. However, if they are of large size, or can fly, they may be LA +1 or LA +2. Now that we have detailed the traits similar between all forms of robots, we should also consider how the two types of robots differ. Changing Equipment Both types of robots may use hand held equipment that they find in their travels like weapons or tools. Standard robots may wear armor that has been custom made for their body, or they may have armor upgrades implanted in their frame. To use these armors, they must have the correct proficiencies (light, med, heavy) Liquid form robots may not wear standard armor due to their shifting liquid-like state. However, they gain a natural armor bonus as they advance in levels to compensate. To gain higher levels of natural armor, they must take armor proficiencies (light, med, heavy) which reflect greater concentration on that aspect of their growth. They may, however, use shields if they have taken the correct proficiencies. Liquid form robots may absorb equipment that they come across, and then manifest those abilities later. To do so, they must: Find a particular item with the correct enchantments or properties through normal methods. Spend a rest cycle absorbing the item into their matrix and integrating its properties. Spend a full round action to manifest that property in their body or appendages. During the manifestation process, the liquid form robot is totally inert, and performing this action in close combat provokes an attack of opportunity from nearby combatants. They may manifest multiple changes during the same full round cycle. At any time, a liquid form robot may have manifested virtual equipment totally no more than 75% of the wealth for a creature of its level. In addition, no single item manifested may total more than 1/3 of the adjusted wealth for the creature or the maximum value of a single item absorbed (whichever is lower). Liquid form robots may only manifest enchantments which they have previously absorbed, but they may absorb them in any combination they wish. When manifesting armor, liquid form robots do not manifest the physical surface (or AC) of armors they have absorbed, but simply the enchantments and effects. When manifesting weapons, liquid form robots may manifest any physical type that they have already absorbed (sword, spear, greatsword). The restrictions on number of hands required for use still apply for weapons and size. To manifest projectiles or thrown weapons, liquid form robots must first take the appropriate feat, and afterwards, may manifest any type that they have absorbed and are proficient with. Example: A liquid form robot has absorbed over its lifetime, weapons with the flaming, shocking burst, keen, and speed enchantments over its lifetime, as well as weapons with up to +3 standard enchantments. However, the best total + weapon the robot has ever absorbed was a +4 longsword. As such, if the robot is at least level 14 (the appropriate level for +4 weapons) it may manifest any combination of flaming, shocking burst, speed, keen, and up to +3 to hit/dmg which total +4 overall. IE, +3 flaming sword, or +1 sword of speed, or keen sword of speed. These enchantments may be mimicked across multiple manifested weapons, but each manifestation counts against the total manifested wealth. Damage and Death Standard robots function similarly to organic creatures, in that below 0 HP they are "unconcious", but not destroyed. Below -10 HP, standard robots are destroyed. A standard robot which is reduced to this state may have its CPU (brain) harvested from the body and placed into another with the proper repair checks. Liquid form robots which are reduced to 0 HP are incapacitated like organic creatures, but below this they are utterly destroyed. If their conciousness has not already been transfered, they are slain completely and may not be resurrected by any means short of a wish or miracle. My suspicion is that liquid form robots are going to be incredibly hard to balance with respect to other races in the game, as they offer so many strange opportunities for players. Probably the biggest issue with them is simply their utility. At any time, if they have absorbed an item in the past, they can have that ability ready and waiting for use, whereas most other players would have either sold it or been forced to drop it. This advantage may require whacking them with the nerf bat incredibly hard, just to make sure there are some obvious drawbacks to playing them. The restriction on requiring a full round action for change of enchantments may go a ways towards helping this problem, as they can't simply be perfect for every situation without opening themselves up to attack. In addition, they also have to make a choice about whether they are going to eat items or hold on to them, as in some cases, the restriction on total value of manifestations may keep them from being able to manifest a particularly good item that they have found, as its value is just too large. The restriction on percentage of character wealth for manifestations, and the percentage of that adjusted wealth for single items is likely going to be a sticky point that will have the greatest impact on balance for the race. I'm probably also going to have to figure out how to handle things like staves, wands, rings, special armors / weapons, artifacts, ect... which don't have convenient enchantment systems for ranking. One way might be to hold liquid form robots to the standard conventions of body locations for items, even if they have absorbed them. IE, it can still only manifest (1) hat, (2) rings, (1) cloak, ect... at a time.
Sliversun 05-22-07, 08:47 PM	Nice. Keep up the good work!
Araes 05-23-07, 07:36 PM	Non-Item Robot Upgrades This is a list of upgrades and their costs for robots. The main benefit of these upgrades for robots is that although they are not "Inherent", they are bonuses which do not take up item slots for the robot. In addition, for liquid state robots, having these upgrades does not count against their total item value that they may manifest at any time. Ability Score Upgrades - Enhancement Bonus +2 - 8,000 GP +4 - 32,000 GP +6 - 72,000 GP If the robot already has a prior upgrade in a particular ability, they may apply the cost of the prior upgrade against the new one. IE: +2 Str to +4 Str would only cost an additional 24,000 GP. Getting to +6 in any stat will always cost 72,000 GP total, no matter the path. Installation of these upgrades requires a repair skill check with a DC equal to (15 + Bonus^2) Mental upgrades may be carried with the robot if it changes bodies, but not physical upgrades. Skill Units - Competence bonus +5 bonus to any known skill - 5,000 GP Similar to the various items that do the same. This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 18. This is a mental upgrade, and may be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Movement Type Upgrades Flight System, Fly 30 ft. (average) - 20,000 GP Climbing System, Climb 20 ft. - 15,000 GP Burrowing Tools, Burrow 15 ft. - 20,000 GP Walking Legs, 30 ft., allows jumping - 5,000 GP Rolling Wheels / Treads, 40 ft. - 5,000 GP Hover Repulsor, 30 ft., float over surfaces - 5,000 GP Installation of these upgrades requires a repair skill check with a DC of 25. These are physical upgrades, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Flight, Climbing, and Burrowing upgrades do not replace the base land movement type of the creature. Legs, Treads, and Hovering systems must be interchanged with one another. Sensor System Upgrades Darkvision System, Darkvision 90 ft. - 25,000 GP Lowlight Vision System, Low Light Vision 90 ft. - 20,000 GP Scent Upgrade, Scent ability - 15,000 GP Installation of these upgrades requires a repair skill check with a DC of 25. These are physical upgrades, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Durability Upgrade 80,000 GP +10 enhancement bonus to all navigation checks. (not competence) +10 enhancement bonus to robot speed in all movement forms. Energy Resistance 10 (cold, fire, acid, electricity) (Enhancement bonus) Immunity to Gravity Distortion Effects. Darkvision 60 ft. (or +60 ft. enhancement bonus to existing Darkvision) This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 45. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Caltrop Dispenser 5,000 GP Supplies an endless number of caltrops. Owner may fill a 5 ft. square with caltrops with a standard action. The caltrops produced are completely normal. This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 18. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Fog Machine Functions as a permanent "Horn of Fog" - 5,000 GP This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 18. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Combat Pylons 10,000 GP As a move action, the owner of this component may drive firm pylons into the ground which negate all trip or bull rush attempts made against them. In addition, if they are armed with a melee weapon that is medium or larger, they count as being set against a charge even if the weapon does not have reach. When planted, the owner of the pylons cannot move until the pylons are retracted with another move action. This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 20. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Jamming System 50,000 GP Functions as a continuous "Amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location (CL 12)". This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 35. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Nanite Repair System Robot gains Fast Healing 1 - 40,000 GP This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 35. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Reality Stabilizer Owner gains spell resistance 20 - 80,000 GP This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 45. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Spectrographic Liquid Analyzer 8,000 GP This system may determine the general properties of any liquid which is placed near the robot. These properties are general and not exact identification. IE: Acid, Holy Water, Oil, Blood, Pure / Drinkable Water, ect... This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 19. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Teleportation Matrix Cast Teleport (3 / day) as the "Boots of Teleportation" - 80,000 GP This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 45. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Thought Scanner Functions as a permanent "Medallion of Thoughts" - 25,000 GP This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 25. This is a mental upgrade, and may be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Visual Distortion Field Minor, functions as a permanent "Cloak of Displacement, Minor" - 40,000 GP Major, functions as a permanent "Cloak of Displacement, Major" - 80,000 GP These components requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 35 (Minor) or 47 (Major). These are physical upgrades, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. White Noise Generator Functions as a "Chime of Interruption" - 25,000 GP This component requires a repair skill check to install with a DC of 25. This is a physical upgrade, and may not be carried with the robot if it changes bodies. Upgrades Specific to Standard Robots (Non-Liquid Form) Integrated Armor - Armor Bonus Armors designed into the surface of the robot itself Armors equiped in this way still require the correct armor proficiencies to use effectively. The spell failure percentage for armors of this type is generally lower than that for worn armor of similar AC. Alloyed Scales - 300 GP Light AC Bonus +4, Max Dex Bonus +4, Armor Penalty -1, Spell Failure 10%, Speed: Normal, Weight +15 lbs. Metallic Banding - 1,500 GP Medium AC Bonus +6, Max Dex Bonus +2, Armor Penalty -3, Spell Failure 15%, Speed: -5 ft. per size (small -5, medium -10, large -15), Weight +20 lbs. Full Body Plating - 4,000 GP Heavy AC Bonus +8, Max Dex Bonus +1, Armor Penalty -5, Spell Failure 25%, Speed: -5 ft. per size (small -5, medium -10, large -15), Weight +40 lbs. Integrated armor enhancements may be made from both Mithral and Adamantium at the standard additional costs and the bonuses are the same. Integrated Weapon Mounts 500 GP + Cost of Installed Weapon Robots may have 2 mounted weapons of their size, or 1 weapon of a size larger than themselves. These are ranged weapons which have been integrated into the frame of the robot. When fighting in combat, a robot must choose whether it is going to fight with its normal weapons or with its integrated weapons. If a robot has more than one mounted weapon, one weapon counts as a primary attack, while the second counts as an off-hand attack. Fixed mount weapons are counted as light weapons for the purpose of two-weapon fighting. Mounted weapons are affected by proficiency, focus, specialization, ect... in the standard manner outlined in the PHB.
Araes 05-24-07, 04:24 PM	Artifacts of a Time Past I'm going to talk a bit more about some further artifacts which can be found in the Sphere. As with the prior artifacts I talked about, each of these is a powerful relic of the days before the Sphere which has lived beyond its original purpose and come to be regarded as a holy item by the current inhabitants. The Sophic Mask of the Machine In the early days of his work with reality manipulation and energy displacement, before his development of the great machine or his accomplishments on the Sphere itself, Sophis was famous for his work with a pioneering form of user interface for reality warping. A marriage of both symbolic translation and manipulation sensing, the mask allowed users to visibly see and manipulate the higher order "branes" of reality, which were normally beyond human perception. Technologically, the project was a massive leap forward in control of "magical" concepts, but unfortunately the entity which funded Sophis' work collapsed shortly after second phase prototypes had been created for the technology. Buried under a maze of legal restrictions and paperwork, Sophis found it more efficient to simply abandon the work and move onto other projects such as the great machine, while taking with him one of the prototypes for his own personal use. This prototype came to be quite famous, and almost symbolic of the man and his work. Further enhancing his own inherent abilities in the field, it helped accelerate the development of the machine, and the later creation of the Sphere. However, when most of the Sphere's technological elite, including Sophis, abandoned corporeal life, the Mask was discarded as simply another relic of a former existence. For those who would find it, and are trained in the use of "magic" and the manipulation of reality, the Mask is an incredible tool which drastically increases their inherent powers. When placed over the face, the Mask allows any user to immediately discern the pattern and distortions of reality in their immediate viscinity. In game terms, the effects of this can be vast, including immediate knowledge of power levels and abilities for people and objects. It can also allow the knowledgable to effectively track magic users by following their distortion effects in the higher order branes. Finally, it also enhances the effectiveness of any magic user who wears it, as the sheer volume of information delivered to them about the magical interactions of the world is beyond anything most characters may ever see. The Cosmic Beacon When the exodus from the universe was in its last stages, and the existence of the Sphere had been revealed to the rest of creation, it became necessary for a beacon to be created, which could guide the hibernation ships to their final destination and provide secure information / communication to them as needed. To this purpose, Peresis and his engineers created the Cosmic Beacon, a powerful piece of technology (quite possibly the most advanced of its type) which could interact with individuals across almost any distance. During the hibernation, authorized ships were given the contact information for the Beacon only, and they would then query it to determine the correct route and conditions of the Sphere upon their arrival. Linked into the Sphere network, the Beacon had at its disposal, information of lmitless variety regarding the conditions of the Sphere, the spatial routes within its vicinity, the current population in hibernation, and the communication protocols for other groups. If used from within the Sphere, the Beacon could also be used as a broadband transmitter to nearly any fixed communicator of interest. This allowed the Sphere gods to organize and control what would have otherwise been a hopelessly complicated collection program. The physical Beacon itself is actually a rather large orb buried within one of the command centers for the Sphere. Approximately 20 ft. in radius, it has a density approaching that of lead, and would be extremely difficult to transport for all but the most powerful groups. However, for ease of use, a number of private interfaces were created which could be carried on the person of the gods, and provided direct line of access to the Beacon. It is unknown exactly how many of these devices were created in total, but throughout the life of the Sphere, at least four sightings of them have occured. In terms of abilities, the Beacon itself, or its communicators, provide access to a vast array of information for anyone who possesses them. Primarily, they provide direct communication to any being which possesses a compatible receptor, no matter the distance. This line of communication is so powerful as to allow for direct contact with digital beings as well, such as the gods themselves. In addition, the Beacon can provide information about the enviromental state of nearly any point of interest to the user and directions for travel to that point. This has the added benefit of allowing users to see clearly through all environmental conditions which might otherwise distort their perception. However, it should also be noted that any use of the Beacon also makes any other beings with access to the machine immediately aware of the use and the bearer's location.
Araes 05-26-07, 12:43 AM	The Iron Tower Within the layer of undeath, the conflict between life and unlife has consumed much of the area of that world. Yet, even amongst such chaos, there are still several groups which strive to maintain their independence and neutrality within the conflict. Of these, few are more well known than the city of the Iron Tower, and the order of the same name. Originally, the city was one of many within a land where the threat of the undead were discovered mid-infliltration. Throughout much of the land, the standard response of containment and destruction was undertaken. However, within the city of Kalel, an alternate method was proposed. Between the various factions, a compromise was reached where the living members of the city would regularly give blood which could be used to maintain the state of undeath. In return, the undead members would pledge their literally undying loyalty to the city (which would then be magically secured) and their devotion to non-violence. By and large, the agreement was a great success, and the majority of both living and undead agreed to the pact. Members of either group which did not were asked to leave the city, or in some extreme cases, driven from it to avoid further conflict. This swift action has had a number of resounding effects, but one of the most profound has been the emergence of the Iron Tower as one of the few places within the layer where undead and living intermingle openly and peacefully. In addition, it also had the added benefit of helping to keep Kalel above the rising tide of conflict which swept so many other cities into ruin. The bonds of loyalty for all citizens to the Tower helped foster a sense of identity to the city itself, rather than to the composite races that inhabited it. As such, the organization which has sprung up within the Iron Towers walls is now one of the major forces for neutrality and balance within the layer. Favoring neither side, their perceived goal is to create a state of stalemate between the two factions, which will force a peace between the dead and living. To assist in this, the Iron Tower was actually one of the prime contributors to the preliminary version of the undeath vaccine, which helped to stem the force of undead hordes. Over time, the city of the Iron Tower has evolved to become one of the prime centers of learning within the layer. It has facilitated this transformation by making the process of attaining citizenship one of the most gruelling processes most sentient beings will undertake. Any one applicant may be grilled and tested over a period of months in areas encompassing personality, loyalities, education, analytical skills, and / or leadership ability. The reasoning behind this is that the Tower wants not only loyalty from its citizens, but also exceptional skill. In effect, they actively recruit the best of the best from among the minds of either side. Most who make it through this process and qualify for citizenship are then happy to swear loyalty to the Tower and commit to extensive study within its walls. As mentioned, the name of the Iron Tower encompasses both a place and a group. The organization of that name is one which is heavily magic user based. Generally requiring devotion, intelligence, and a curious personality, magic users are an ideal pool from which to draw recruits for citizenship. In addition, they represent a vast market of talent and power, for which the Iron Tower is rapidly emerging as the key power. Structurally, the organization is arranged as a tiered progression, where there are no fixed allotments for all except the uppermost tiers, and standing within the group is based primarily upon a citizen's personal skills. Provided with training opportunities from their time of arrival, members will be exposed to further, staggered tests over the course of their lifetime (some voluntary, some not) which will help to determine their overall standing within the Tower. In some cases, these further tests are even more gruelling than the basis for admission, and many have been known to refuse them for a lower standing rather than endure their challenges. Physically, the Tower is exactly that - a gigantic pillar of dull metal, which rises towards the sky to unimaginable heights. Circling this large, central pillar, there is also an array of somewhat shorter and thinner towers, which support various aspects of its inhabitants. Furthermore, beyond these towers, there is also a final, high, metal wall that fully encloses the grounds of the Tower and serves as the official marking point for the boundaries of the city. Within this wall, and disregarding the towers, there is a significant quantity of city that has grown to house the ever increasing multitudes of citizens. In addition, beyond the wall there is also an extensive network of housing for non-citizens and petitioners, as the vicinity of the Iron Tower is one of the few places almost guarenteed safe within the layer. To distinguish the frequently intermingling population within these areas, citizens of the tower are voluntarily marked with tatoos on their skin, and as they progress through the tiers of responsibility, the tatoos gradually expand and crawl down their body. The main complex itself holds several academies devoted to various aspects of magic, which is the lifeblood of the region. Primarily for revenue, the Tower provides magical services to both sides of the conflict in relatively equal measures. These services may be healing, harming, or infrastructure, and naturally they are usually aligned based on type of life. Any mage who leaves the Tower grounds, however, is still held to the magically bound loyalty oaths which they made at their time of citizenship, and as such they are actually physically incapable of turning their powers on their homeland or their fellow citizens. In a somewhat odd phenomenon, the main tower of the city is actually under a continual process of growth to accomodate all of the new arrivals. Over time, it slowly keeps increasing in height, with the outer walls of the tower being extruded from their foundations, roofed over, and then interally fleshed out. This has led to the uppermost stories of the tower having an almost continual jagged and unfinished appearance, as layer after layer is further added. Finally, in terms of trade, the city itself has become a bustling mecca due to its comparative safety. The coins of the Iron Tower are known quite widely as being a reliable and stable currency, and as such, have gained widespread use even in foreign nations. To aid this trade, the area within the walls of the tower is heavily patrolled by warriors and magic users. The area outside is somewhat less controlled, but still quite stable compared to the alternative.
Araes 05-26-07, 07:44 PM	Going to post today talking about transportation within the various layers of the Sphere. I've already talked a little bit about air travel and its availability, but lets discuss air, land, and sea (where applicable) travel to a greater degree and the integration of mechanical transports with organic varieties like winged mounts, horses, ect... Nerus - The Jewel of the Sphere Land - Extensive options that are mostly mechanical, but also some animals. Mechanical is relatively advanced in terms of speed of travel, and there is a considerable infrastructure of pre-built transport systems from before habitation and the chaos of the migration. Public transport is common in many sections of the cityscape, and widely used for travel both vertically between layers and horizontally across the landscape. Air - With the variety of ground transports, and the layered state of the cities, air transport proportionally is slightly less used than some other layers. However, the population density is also drastically higher within Nerus than most other layers, so the skies are still full of transports. These transports are also likely to be higher tech on average than other layers, but there is a wide variety based on location and organization. In addition, private flight is not unheard of within Nerus, although it can be quite expensive. For the wealthy or well supplied, items are available which can provide an hour or so per day of Overland Flight before they are worn out. Some of the elite guards and troopers, as well as many of the most successful merchants have obtained these items to increase their mobility and / or effectiveness. Sea - Most of the water in this layer is actually subterranean in nature, or at least below the upper levels of the cityscape. However, the amount of water required for such a population is huge, and within these vast lower lakes, there is actually a fairly bustling society of mariners. Ships range in size from huge cargo vessels that travel edge to edge, to smaller ships that fish the seas or simply travel closer to the coasts. Arborea Land - Land based travel is by far the most extensive form used within this layer, as the vast food reserves and jungles make accurate air travel difficult. Most land travel is in the form of animals, with mammals, reptiles, and even a few forms of land-bound avians being utilized. Travel as a whole within Arborea is somewhat limited, so these conveyances mostly see use within cities, and less rarely on the open road. Air - Air travel within Arborea is fairly limited. Most is in the form of permanent routes between major landmasses, and due to the sometimes restrictive policies on travel, even these routes are rather small. What air travel does exist is mostly in the form of mechanical conveyances, with relatively simple designs. Balloons / blimps are the norm, with only a few more advanced airships to be found. Within societies that have split from the main population though, there are slightly more options. Many of these groups live within the vast agricultural jungles, and several have tamed large flying beasts to serve as modes of transport. Most are single rider varieties of giant eagles and other avians. Sea - Lakes and seas are fairly common, as aquaculture is a highly productive food source. Because of this, there is actually extensive sea travel within the layer, and even many forms of underwater travel as well. In addition, several lines of sentient aquatic / amphibious races were introduced to the layer during hibernation, and now there is a thriving society which tends to many of the aquatic crops. Several types of open, mechanical or organically driven craft are used by these species for both travel and harvesting purposes. Amber Throne Land - As this region has evolved to what we would refer to as a steampunk society, there are a number of land conveyance options available. Rail systems interlink many important sections of the layer within single continents, and in the landmasses most directly linked to the Amber Throne, nearly every major city is connected by a rail line. For travel by roads, the majority is accomplished by animals or simply walking. Although steampunk technology has affected many aspects of life, the components simply remain too large and bulky for convenient use in anything except large vehicles. As the layer is a massive strech of area, the varieties of animal transport are vast as well. Mostly mammal in origin, they range in size from mammoth creatures to oversized dogs that are used by some small beings. Air - Air power was one of the deciding factors which helped the Amber Throne to become the global power that it is today. As such, there is a huge infrastructure in place for the creation of air vessels of all sizes. Mechanical air travel has almost completely subsumed animal transport as the utility of steam powered vessels became apparent, and options are available from massive battleships (heavily restricted) to smaller skiffs and short range vessels. In addition, most airships of this layer have left behind the bulky and unmaneuverable restrictions of gas balloons, and have invested the resources in widespread flight magic for their hulls. Sea - With the advent of universal air travel, sea vessels have become much less utilized within this layer. Most of what now exists are special utility vessels designed for specific purposes like fishing or whaling. Many of these vessels are also reinforced or supported by similar magic as the airships as well as steam propulsion, which allows them to weather harsher storms than lesser ships and travel faster with more reliability. Ice Land - Overland travel is almost unheard of within this layer, as the below zero surface conditions are deadly to most forms of life. A few lines of robots which were previously designed for cold conditions have continued to operate and live in socieites above the surface, but for the most part it is deserted. However, within the continental shells, there is still a thriving and diverse population, and tunnel traffic can be quite extreme in many locations. Generally, domesticated animals are the main form of transport, with several varieties of naturally burrowing creatures used as both transports and to create new routes. In fact, the creation of new travel routes is in most locations heavily controlled, due to the danger that unmanaged digging could pose for collapse or chaos. Several varieties of animals from the surface have also been adapted to life in the tunnels with forms of darkvision capable lizards and mammals being quite common. Air - Due to the extreme cold on the upper surface, and extreme heat below the layer, air travel is relatively limited in the region. Most air travel actually happens within the gaps between continents, where the interaction zone between the two thermal extremes provides both a safe climate and an abundance of currents for propulsion. Those ships which wish to travel higher or lower generally employ extensive insulation throughout the ship. Some go so far with this process that they almost look like winged puffballs traveling through space. Sea - With the onset of the massive temperature drop, the majority of water which does exist in the layer is actually in a frozen state, and trapped on the upper surface of the layer. However, over time, many of the societies which now live underground have tapped heat to these bodies of water, and syphoned off the majority into underground reservoirs. Most of these new areas are too small for huge shipping vessels or navies, but many are used as fishing grounds for various types of subterranean foods. In addition, within a few sections of the layer, there already were extensive underground seas, and these bodies have become vital routes of commerce and supplies of food. As a result, they are fiercely contested by all of the groups which border or inhabit them, and ships of all sizes ply their waters. Numerous forms of subterraenean aquatic life also inhabit their waters, and are commonly used for transport or food. Fire Land - Overland travel has been hampered within this layer for much the same reasons as those given in the ice layer. In addition, subterranean life has not taken hold to the same extent as it has in the ice layer, so overland travel as a whole is relatively rare, and many communities exist for months at a time with only light contact with others. That said, there are still many individuals or groups which do navigate the harsh landscape, and most do so with the use of large solar shields. In fact, as mentioned in the section on nomadic societies, many whole cities actually wander from location to location within the layer. They do so by following beneath the drop shadow of a land mass floating above them. A significant majority of what overland travel does exist is accomplished through mechanical means. Balloon cities beneath large float shade masses are well known, as are land vehicles carrying large integrated parasols. In a few cases, some of the land based nomadic groups use pack animals. However, one of the main difficulties with these is that finding plentiful food to feed them can be quite difficult. Some groups actually grow crops like streamers beneath their shades. Large inverted forests that trail across the landscape. Air - Air travel within the layer is also heavily mechanical for the same reasons, and is slightly more used, as some airships actually ply the airspace beneath the layer rather than above, as the temperature there is actually quite reasonable. Inverted trade posts exist with relatively high frequency on this side of the continents, and in some cases even whole city sections have been established by the subterranean groups, which flow across the underside in a manner similar to Ki'sha-la. Flying mounts are also somewhat more used on the underside of the layer, as the temperature extremes are not so harsh. Avians and reptiles are both semi-common, and even a few types of mammals with similarities to bats are seen among some socities. On the sun-side of the layer, air travel is still used, but suffers from the same restrictions that land travel does. Most travel here is mechanical by necessity, as flying mounts simply are not hardy enough to survive. Several nomadic societies use air transport exclusively, and as mentioned, several have whole air-based city cultures. Sea - For the most part, sea travel simply doesn't exist within the layer. Water is at such a premium that any body of water as large as a pond is carefully protected and preserved. Underground there are many reserves of water which were sequestered away before the calamity, but even these are viewed as highly precious, and the water itself is such a prized trade commodity, that sailing it is almost unheard of. Ki'Sha-la Land - Overland travel within this layer almost doesn't exist. The main reason for this, is that after the calamity, most of the land masses which were left were of too small a surface area to make land transports a necessity. Many islands are small enough that a horseback rider can easily cross them in a day's travel or less. Within some of the major ports, public transports have been created to ease congestion. The web-like city previously described is one chief example, where central rail lines run along its axis, and cable cars link many important locations. Air - Air travel is by far the norm in Ki'Sha-la, and has reached such a cultural penetration, that even many of the poor regularly travel on air transports. Air travel is slightly weighted towards mechanical means, but airborn creatures were not hit so heavily by the calamity as landbound ones were, so there are still many types of flying mounts available. One of the most popular is a form of avian similar to a roc called a Thrip. Naturally somewhat rare due to their size, they have actually been bred to levels much greater than could be naturally supported due to their popularity as a mount for hunters and the rich. Much more maneuverable and swift than airships, they make an ideal pursuit creature when hunting aerial prey or runaway criminals. However, mechanical craft are still somewhat more popular than organic, as they require no food to maintain, and can more easily carry large numbers. Regular shipping transports run throughout the layer in numerous sizes, and some ports are so aerially active that they have had to implement routing patterns to organize the flow. As a percentage of wealth, air transport within Ki'Sha-la can generally be found for much cheaper than other layers simply due to necessity. Sea - Like land travel, due to the physical limitations of the layer, sea travel is pretty much unheard of. Rainfall and clouds are quite common within the layer, almost exceptionally so (which may be the work of the gods to compensate), but standing bodies of water are quite rare, and ship travel even moreso. As a caveat from this, fish is an utter delicacy within the layer due to its rarity, and speciality aquafarms are a thriving commerce sector in many locations. Undead Land - One of the great constants of this layer is the ever present spectre of war. Because of this, the development of land transport ideal for troops has advanced relatively quickly. Although not along the lines of steampunk, there have been several marriages of "magical" technology with more medieval conveyances to produce carriages that allow their animals to pull far greater loads than they should, or that even travel overland by themselves. Within most nations, the conflict of life and death has reached proportions that require most people to exist in the equivalent of a war economy. Land transport of all types is at a priority for war related efforts, and then available at a premium for civilian uses. As implied, most land transport is still animal driven (albeit magically suplemented), and strong animals of a variety of types are specifically bred for the purpose. Animals with natural armors are preferred, such as thickly scaled reptiles and beasts with rock-like plated skins. Air - Like land transport, air power is yet one more tool of war. Without the advent of steam power and advanced flight, most of the transports are more simple designs like blimbs or gliders. A few forms of magically powered craft have also seen use, but the techniques are difficult enough (or so relatively unknown) that their adoption is far from widespread. Most airships in this layer are simply used for scouting due to their primitiveness, while in a few cases they are loaded with explosives for bombing. Civilian air transport is almost non-existent, with few of the non-combatant middle class having even seen more than a few airships. Sea - A relatively intact layer structurally, there are a number of extensive seas and oceans within the continents and due to their size, sea travel has become an important reality. Technologically, semi-large, multi-sailed ships are common for the main line of most warships. Square sails and wooden hulls are still the mainstay of most navies and what private vessels do exist. Due to the heavy war economies in most areas, ships (like land transport) are generally available only at a premium to private citizens unless they live in a remote or untouched region. With the large seas, the conflict between life and death has even spread to aquatic creatures which live in the world below. Animal drawn vehicles within this region are the most common, although some forms of forced water flow vessels using magical propulsion can also be found as the water denizens have not been ravaged quite as extensively as their land bound neighbors. Lost World Land - Due to the rather lackluster average state of technology within this layer, land transport is almost entire composed of non-mechanical means. In addition, since macro-life like dinosaurs and other gartanuan / collosal creatures is quite common, most of the transport is focused on fast, agile creatures that can evade larger predator pursuit or repel it with special abilities. By and large, the most extensively used group is the smaller line of dinosaurs, which are naturally sized for carrying one to two passengers, and are extremely quick at navigating low undergrowth to evade super sized creatures. Due to the constant threat from these predators, established trade routes are quite difficult to maintain in the layer, and preference is often given to air or sea options before land. Air - Air travel within this layer is again limited to mostly domesticated varieties of airborn mount. Most of these mounts are also relatives or direct domestications of small dinosaurs, and general varieties can hold between one and two people. As the skies are slightly less dangerous than ground for travel, air transport is actually one of the main ways that most groups stay in contact with one another. Large flights of creatures can often be seen winging from one settlement to another with trade items and information during all seasons. In addition, for adventurers in the region, air travel is one of the quickest ways to reach the abandoned and out of the way locations which tend to be their goals. Sea - Since the lost world layer is the outmost layer and sits directly on the inner shell of the Sphere, oceans are a huge component of the layer and support creatures of infinite diversity. Unfortunately, due to this diversity, and the average size of the creatures, using the sea lanes as a form of transport is almost as dangerous as land based alternatives. In addition, preperation for potential dangers on the open ocean is actually much more difficult than both sea or air. However, despite these problems, many societies still employ large fleets of trading vessels which travel the open seas. Comparatively to Earth, some of these seas have surface areas greater than whole planets, and navigation actually poses as host of difficulties. However, from the layers above, sky outlines can actually be seen even in the night sky, and over time, navigators have built up massive maps of the cycles of the shapes in the sky above them to travel by. For the most part, sea travel is mechanically based in nature, and fairly primitive by the standards of other layers. Some of the more advanced groups are verging on early medieval transports, while the majority employ late iron age or earlier types. Magical assists to sea travel are relatively unknown as well, although there is one exception in the realm of weather shaping, which has a strong following throughout the layer. I had considered going into pricing and direct statistics for some of the more popular or representative varieties, but I think I'll leave that for another day with how large this got.
Sliversun 05-27-07, 03:27 AM	Have you thought of any new layers yet? Because I was thinking that maybe we could have a layer thats similar to the Final Fantasy series and White Wolf's Exalted. And maybe a bit of Eberron. It be something like this: A world where civilisation is slowly rebuilding itself after a great war/disaster, 'magictech' is widespread and accepted, nature has reclaimed much of the land, countless ruins dot the layer hiding priceless artifacts both mundan or magical, and an age of exploration and discovery that has lasted for centuries. It would be a world where new nations rise to carve out empires, pioneers and explorers spread out further and further into uncharted and/or unihabited frontier, wars are fought with both magic and technology, artifacts are plundered from ancient cities, fantastic locations, amazing cultures and where heros are made everyday. So, what do you think?
Araes 05-27-07, 04:02 AM	Lately I've actually been trying to work more on fleshing out the skeletons that many of the layers are currently built on. I wanted to build up a bit of a backdrop of nations, cities, places, ect... for people to actually be able to run adventures in, as I noticed that the thread as a whole has gone pretty heavy on the crunch rather than fluff. I think the idea has potential. It might make a good layer to go between Ki'Sha-la and the layer of undeath in the order. Whatever disaster destroyed the continents of Ki'Sha-la could have propogated into this layer in a lesser form and devestated much of the population, but left the physical landscape mostly intact. Survival could have very much been an all or nothing proposition for many areas and with the drastically reduced population, now almost all of the world is like an expansion frontier. Somewhat higher tech and magic, but with way too much land for the available population. Could be interesting, and seems like it would have a lot of potential for adventure and exploration which would be cool. I'll definitely consider it and it does have some similarities to the broken world of FFVI.
Sliversun 05-27-07, 07:18 AM	That's good. Do you have any ideas for a name?
Araes 05-29-07, 06:56 PM	Hey Sliversun, as of yet no, but then again, I also don't have names for the hot layer, frozen layer, undead layer, or lost world layer, so no concern there. Thinking of which though, maybe I should devote a bit of time to come up with something. Potential ideas: Hot Solas - I'm partial to this one, as there is the tie with "solace" as well as the callback to Athas and Dark Sun. Caloe Cold Baxos Gelotia Kaltera (a horrible abuse of German, but it sounds interesting) Undead Visul Morren Sterat Numeren Lost World Rennow Weland Teille Peroca Frontier / Expansionism Aiden Kotho Razi Maloce Talos Those are the ideas I've got for now. Feel free to suggest some more, or give your opinion on which you think might fit the best. The Power of Reality A while ago (page 5) there was a fairly length, and esoteric, discussion on the nature of magic and how that magic would be expressed in the Sphere. This discussion was undertaken before we had come to the idea of buying feats to express how powerful you were in magic, and I think its time that we got back to that concept and integrated it in with the character creation process. Now, I'm not going to do a full spell deconstruction right now, as that basically killed the thread for a few months the last time I tried. However, one topic that I think could use some more light is how spellcasters actually gain their power for spellcasting. When mentioning this previously, one concept was that the types of spells cast, and the way that a person actually obtains the energy to cast spells could be two (mostly) separate parts of the character. Naturally, there might be some ties that would be more common than others (like a caster who gets both their power and spell selection from a god). However, I think that for the most part it would serve us well to separate these concepts, since it would increase the potential diversity for casters. The ideas I have had so far for potential power sources / methods are: Divine - This caster gains their power by asking their god for that power directly. The god then bestows on them an energy reserve which is sufficient to cast the spells they need. Basically, after a certain amount of time has passed each cycle, they may ask their deity to bless them with additional spellcasting capacity. This particular concept would cover people who pray to the deities of the Sphere, as well as those who respect other concepts like fey, elementals, ancestor spirits of the Sphere, ect... Internal / Chemical - Mechanically, these casters would be basically the same as Divine casters in the way they regained their spell points. For them, the focus wouldn't be on praying to a divine force for replenishment of their pool, but rather on personal meditation and transformation. Each time they wanted to regain their pool, they would need to find a quiet place and spend several hours in contemplation and refinement of their own internal chemical processes until their virtual batteries were recharged. In practical application, this would be the obvious choice to replicate the effects of existing Wizards / Sorcs. Ley Line - The concept here is that the entire Sphere was arrayed with the equivalent of power lines during its creation. These would have been useful for powering the advanced technology that used to be in use, and the reality manipulation of its inhabitants, but now they are mostly disused. However, some casters tap into this source to power their spells. The power of such a caster is directly tied to their geographic location. Near a major line, they would be nearly limitless; in normal conditions they would have a fairly regular refill rate; and far from a line they would be somewhat limited as their energy waned. I generally envision these casters as ones which simply gain back some percentage of their total spellpoints every hour to whatever their maximum is. Being near a leyline would probably be double regen, far from a line would likely be half. Defiler - Popularized in Dark Sun, these are casters which draw the energy for their spells from the energy of non-sentient life. Basically, under normal conditions they would have a relatively normal regen rate of spellpower. While they were in an area, all plantlife would grow very slowly or wither slightly. They would probably also have a negative modifier when dealing with any being directly related to growth or plantlife (druids, intelligent plants, ect...) If they wanted, they could also draw larger amounts of power in short bursts, which would deal lethal damage to all plantlife in an area centered around them, and with a radius proportional to the spell level. There might also be an option within this general category to create a split for people who greatly respect nature (like shamans) and only take a non-damaging amount from every plant around them. However, their power would be directly proportional to how much plant life was around them. In their home territory (like heavy jungles), they would be a force to be reconned with. Photonic - In a way, these mages can be thought of as massive solar collectors. Their mechanics would be a cross between Ley Line and Defiler types. In normal sunlight, they would have a normal regen rate, and would gain back all of their spell points over the course of a day. However, since in most areas, usable daylight is only half of the day, they would probably have somewhat faster regen rates during normal daylight hours to make up for this. In low light conditions (night, lighted rooms) they would have reduced regrowth (maybe half). Finally, in pitch blackness they would have absolutely no growth, and would be extremely hampered. Plus, they would have very obvious spellcasting, as the act of casting would actually create pulses of darkness / dimming centered on the character. Thermal - I'm considering these, but not sure if I'm going to use them, as they seem too prone to abuse (particularly in the burning layer). They're similar to the Photonics, except that they are powered by the ambient heat around them. Very hot regions would lead to high regen, cold regions would lead to almost none. In addition, they would have a power somewhat similar to the Defiler, in that they could power spells if necessary by sucking all the heat out of the area surrounding themselves (hurting themselves and everyone around). Channelers - As the name implies, channelers are casters which open themselves up as a conduit to some greater power source, with the risks to body and self that such an act entails. A popular example of this mechanic would be the Aes Sedai from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'm actually thinking that the mechanics for these casters would be almost the same as those detailed within the d20 version of the WoT roleplaying game, since there are a number of parallels. Basically, when casting at your current level of power, every spell you cast will cause some fatigue, which will build up over time. This is not permanently dangerous, but will force you to stop after a period of casting or risk permanent. If you cast well below your current level, you can cast for free for the most part. However, if you cast above your current level, you progress through danger ranks of ability damage, ability drain, and then death. This particular style of casting allows for some quite spectacular bursts of power, but can also be one of the most devestating to a character who abuses it. As the source of the power that most tap, I figured the obvious source would be the reality machine built into the Sphere, our world's equivalent of the Great Wheel. Talismans - This would be a category of caster who has come to rely upon the energy pack systems which power other aspects of the future tech magic, and have turned them to their own use. These casters would very similar to either the chemical / internal casters, or average regen rate groups, except that they would be slightly slower at regaining back their points (or possibly have a reduced cap). However, in trade for this, they would have the ability to store some of their points within special objects (psi crystals) which could then be drawn upon to provide spell points in a pinch. This type of caster would have quite a bit of utility in determining when to use their reserve, but might be slightly limited over really drawn out campaigns where rest is at a premium. Emotion - Finally, this is one last type that I'm still playing with as to whether I want to use it. The basic idea is a spellcasting group that effectively feeds off of positive mental energy. In essence, it would be most useful for spellcasting groups that like to use their effects as performance art. Even combat related slingers would heavily imbue their stuff with all kinds of physically useless, but impressive pyrotechnics to get awes out of their opponents. Every time they cast a spell, they would also roll a Perform check, and their result would determine how well the effect went over with the crowd and what part of their energy they got back. They would also be able to gain spell points by entertaining crowds with non-magical effects, as long as they were effective. Bards would obviously love this system, but even your standard Wizard who just likes being flashy might like it as well. Alright, that's all of the ideas for now. I'll probably have further ones as time goes on. The emotion ones I find particularly interesting, as artists seem like they could have all kinds of cool effects they could do with it. Perhaps people who make magic directly through their art could put up installation pieces that feed the artist with points. IE, if Leonardo da Vinci was a mage still alive today, every time someone "oohed" and "ahhed" at the Mona Lisa he would get a little bit of a boost to his spell pool. Of course, then there would be the risk that if nobody ever liked your stuff, you might end up destitute in both money and magic. Unfortunately, the whole idea seems a little too easy to abuse unfortunately.
Sliversun 05-30-07, 07:25 AM	Yeah, I think Solas is a nice name too. As for the Undead layer, I might go with Morren, because it reminds me of a Warhammer Fantasy god named Morr, who just happens to be the god of death in the Empire. And finally, I think Talos would be a good name for the Expansionism layer, for qoutes like, "to the ends of Talos, and beyond." Also, I like the detail on the magic info you've done so far. Good job!
Araes 05-31-07, 09:49 PM	Excellent, all three of your ideas were actually ones that I liked quite a bit as well. Alright, lets go with: Hot Solas Cold Kaltera Undead Morren Lost World Peroca Frontier / Expansionism Talos On the subject of the magic for the world, I've actually been doing some further work along those lines, and I think I'm beginning to have a workable concept for how that could all be arrayed. First off, I think that each spell casting feat you buy will gain you one casting of a spell at a particular level with elements using that particular chain. As we originally talked about with audio, image, material, ect... lines of spellcasting, each will have its own tree of 9 feats that will give access to spells from 1st to 9th. As to prerequisites for the feats, I'm leaning towards ranks of Spellcraft as the deciding factor, since they are directly level based for purchase. For example, 1st level spells would require (4) ranks in Spellcraft. 7th level spells would require (16) ranks in Spellcraft. In addition, each feat of a particular level you had would raise the prerequisite one rank. IE, if you had no 3rd level spellcasting, and purchased a 3rd level audio spellcasting feat, then the prerequisite would be (8) ranks in Spellcraft. However, if you already had ranks in, lets say, image, and material based spells, then the prerequisite for the 3rd level audio spellcasting feat would be (10) ranks in Spellcraft. Naturally, to purchase the feat for any level of spell, you would also need to have the prior feat of that line. IE, 4th level audio for 5th level audio. In tabular form up to five lines of spells. Table of Spell Feat Costs Spell Level 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th Ranks 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 S. Craft 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 with 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 increase 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 in # of 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 spell types In effect, this will create an almost exact replica of the table for Wizard spell progression. In addition, I have decided on what I believe is a fair distribution for the spell points in this system. Although the psionics version isn't bad, I believe that it allows for too extensive use of high level spells with low level points. As such, what I am proposing is that the cost for any level of spell be the square of its level. For example: Spell Costs Per Level Spell Level 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 In addition, this would allow us to figure out the table of bonus spell points for high stats using this system, which would be: Bonus Points for High Stats Ability Bonus Points 10 0 12 1 14 5 16 14 18 30 20 56 22 96 24 154 26 234 28 341 30 381 32 439 34 519 36 626 38 666 40 724 Overall, this is a significant reduction over how many spells of high level are gained when using the psionics version, but at the same time, it still does represent a fairly significant change to the power curve. One option I'm considering to flatten out this power curve a bit is to only take the top two or three levels of spells you would normally be getting with a high statistic into acount when calculating the numbers. However, even including 8th level spells when you're talking about 9th would still increase the pool a decent amount. Finally, there is going to be a rough correlation between the number of lines of spellcasting that a character has purchased and the number of actual spells they'll have access to. This seems to be born out in the PHB literature with a relatively close correlation to the feat purchasing patterns characters of each class would need to have. Spells Available to Full Lines of Feats (1-9) Taken Sor/Wiz 360 4 full lines of spellcasting Cleric 207 2-3 lines of spellcasting Druid 157.5 1-2 lines of spellcasting Bard 135 1-2 lines of spellcasting Pal 45 less than 1 full line of spellcasting Rang 45 less than 1 full line of spellcasting The only thing this type of access would have difficulty taking into account is weird varieties like the Mystic Theurge, which potentially have access to a staggering number of spells. *edit* Actually, from looking at the data, it actually looks like its a purely linear regression per number of feats, and each purchase of a feat should gain you access to roughly 10 potential spells on average. Naturally, this is an approximation, and the number will trend a decent bit towards low level spells. Probably a ratio of 14 at 1st level to 6 at 9th level, which works out to a perfect average of 10. Plus, it allows for another easy rule of thumb, which is 1 less available spell per level of spell. This works perfectly for Wizards / Sorcerors / Bards. Pal / Rang / Cleric may need some fine tuning, but it shouldn't throw them very far off, if at all. Druids are a wild card, because its honestly hard to figure out where they should be in all this. They have lots of castings of spells, but selection to very few relatively.
Sliversun 06-02-07, 02:49 AM	Hey, what's the name of the Amber Throne layer?
Araes 06-02-07, 02:59 AM	Still haven't chosen, I'm mulling it over. Its actually the layer that sparked this idea off in my head back many years ago, so I want to name it properly. Information from it was actually a lot of what originally went into the Great Campaign Setting Search.
Sliversun 06-08-07, 07:26 AM	If you want any more ideas for Talos, then I suggest that you check out Interplay's Fallout series, Goodman Games DragonMech and Phillip Reeves Hungry City Chronicles, and maybe to a lesser extent, the Jak and Daxter series. They're all good ideas what a wild world of exploration and new beginnings are like. Also, there's an intersting concept in the Orion's Arm universe called the Mobile Frontier. Here are some links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_%28series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonMech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_City_Chronicle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jak_and_daxter http://www.orionsarm.com/galactography/Mobile_Frontier.html
Sliversun 06-10-07, 12:06 AM	bump.
Araes 06-13-07, 11:08 PM	Alright, time for another post. Appologies for being away, I've been dealing with some job related stuff. Anyhow, thank you very much for the links Sliversun. I'd never heard of either DragonMech or the Hungry City Chronicles, and they were both quite interesting. I also quite liked the Mobile Frontier section of Orion's Arm, and feel that at least some of that flavor would be a great fit for the Talos layer. That said, how about I lay out some thoughts I've had for the layer. As mentioned, I like the idea of the mobile frontier. The frontier has a wonderful "old west" style to it of the hardy pioneers making a living in the wild, untamed land of prosperity. In fact, for much of the layer, I'd like to carry that Wild West concept and make the entire layer of one in the midst of a massive land grab. Basically, I like to envision this concept as small drops hitting a plane. They don't all hit at the same time (different reanimation cycles), but when they do, they immediately being to spread ripples of humanity outward from the source. These ripples lower in magnitude as they move, and by their movement, they also draw from the central drop. As such, the first cities to awaken will actually be lowering in population as their citizens rush outward in a massive surge of biomass searching for their fortunes in the new world. In addition, like waves, in some areas as they interact there will be cancelation. Perhaps due to political, racial, ect.. disagreements warfare will open and no-man's lands will border off sections of territory. However, in others, they may reinforce one another, and suddenly society will witness the formation of whole new waves, as societies are generated on the fringes from the interactions of disparate groups and begin to send out their own waves. As an added factor for the layer, I'd like for much of the geography to actually be a mystery. Naturally, due to the strange internal curvature of the Sphere, people will at least have vague ideas about the land in front of them, but with the natural moisture of the atmosphere, the toroidal suns, and the curvature of the bounding shells, a lot of the specific details about any area will be unknown to the nations. For the cause of all this, I think the original concept of this being the last layer affected directly by the disaster would work quite well. Unlike Ki'sha-la, the devastation is not to the point of fracture. Yet, at the same time, it is very widespread and holds more in kin with a massive meteor bombardment. This bombardment blasted much of the surface of the layer into utter ruin, and at the same time killed off much of the large animal life present. As such, within the current layer, most of the animal life is of Earth size standards or smaller. Monsters would be those things which could have eeked out a living amidst the ruin falling from the skies. In terms of plants, they can actually spread quite quickly when there is no competition and will have actually rushed across the gaps faster than the settlers do now. In addition, due to the bombardment, there may also be pieces of other shells which have come to rest on the layer of Talos. These could offer all kinds of interesting opportunities like technology, dungeons, and mineral sites, but one of the most interesting is actually the pre-made city states, which could have plummeted to a completely different layer. These would offer both excavation and exploration sites, as well as the potential for reawakening / expansion areas. Induces a wonderful image in me of a nation that has spread out on the land below a fragment (mountain) from another shell and projecting outward from this mountain are the shattered remains of the planned, older city. Finally, as a last bit to emphasize the expansionistic nature of this land, I don't think there should be many large scale systems of transport available (railroad, airships). Or, if they do exist, they should be lagging back behind the expansion frontier in the more civilized areas of the world. This would be much like how rail developed in our own country, and even more extreme, as people would be heading outward in all directions, not just from one seaboard to the other.
Kurikin 06-13-07, 11:51 PM	Araes, can you elaborate on what types of branches your thinking of for casting? I'm guessing it would be something like the 8 wizard schools there currently is, though the only change I would make would be moving healing spells from conjuration(I mean, come on, what the <insert generic million use word>?) to necromancy and getting rid of the alignment tag on most if not all of the necromancy spells. For skills I've been thinking about a TES Oblivion type system. Pretty much when you reach certain skill levels (ranks in D&D) you gain new uses for that skill. One really cool one is when you max out your acrobatics skill, if you time it right, you're able to jump across water. So adapting this to D&D what we could do is break down each skill into all its different uses, including uses/bonuses gained through feats/class abilities/skill tricks then rank them in their effectiveness and then apply them to the different skill mastery levels. Heres the different mastery levels I've come up with (... or maybe just stole from TES Oblivion :D) Untrained - 0 Ranks Novice - 4 Ranks Apprentice - 8 Ranks Journeyman - 12 Ranks Expert - 16 Ranks Master - 20 Ranks Grandmaster - 24 Ranks So pretty much every 4 ranks your skill mastery level increases(28 ranks = SUPA GrandMASTA?:cool: )
Araes 06-14-07, 03:42 AM	Hi Kuriken. In answer to your question about the magic separations, my intent has been to pursue the divisions I mentioned way back on page 5 in a long fractured discussion with Jeweler, TúrintheMormegil, and DeeL. Basically, I would like to distinguish the types of magic by what you actually have to do to evoke them. IE: Do you need to think of pictures in your head? Make movements with your body? Say words or maybe sing? There are several different areas. So far, I think the list was Audio (sound), Audio (language), Image (mental), Image (visual), Movement, Objects, Emotion, and {maybe?} XP to represent personal power. I have also considered making the mental and material world separation more of a subset of the other types, as you can hear mental songs, speak mental words, you feel emotions internally, ect... I also just recently read Snow Crash again, so I'm fired up again on the nam-shub, me, and en concepts and the ideas of words as power. I may have to return a bit to the discussion I had with DeeL about the concept a bit back and reread it. On your skills suggestion, I like the concept, particularly as a way to sort the ranks of skilled craftsmen in the world, but I would also like it to be possible for people to at least try to do some of the higher rank things and just normally fail. This would allow for heroic actions at times (and even use of Action Points or their equivalent) to pull out amazing stunts and save the day. However, I can understand that there is also an inherent problem with the variety of skill boost items that are commonly available. +40-50 on top of base skills is pretty doable for any skill. However, one way to handle this might to simply figure out what the general progression of that availability is, and then mark the overall DC's up somewhat. People with inherent ranks could then still have a general gradiation, but mystical uses of skills might require rather high / semi-epic checks. Another way I just thought of might also be to allow epic types of mystical skill use in a normal game, but require that if people are going to do these types of things (like running on water) they need to either perform some training beyond just normal skill use, find a master, or maybe devote some portion of their character progression towards skill mastery (a Feat or two).
Kurikin 06-14-07, 12:24 PM	So does this quote sum up what you want to do with the magic system? "The body that is infected by a virus does not become infected because it understands the virus any more than the body that does not become infected misunderstands the virus. So a world in which everything - from bitmaps to blood - can be understood as a "form of speech" is also a world in which nothing actually is understood, a world in which what a speech act does is disconnected from what it means." Instead of writing out skill mastery level I'm just going to use SML. Instead of fiddling around with the DCs what could be done is if you are trying to perform an action of a higher SML than you are, you take a penalty to the check. I've seen on the boards people instead of not allowing people to use skills untrained, they just take a -20 penalty to their check. Also for called shots how you take a -20 penalty to your attack roll comes to mind. So what I'm thinking is something like a -5 penalty to your check for every SML you are below where the action your trying to perform is rated. Let's say your SML for a skill is Apprentice and you’re trying to perform a Master action. You're going to be taking a -15 penalty to your check. For your suggestion on having to get further training maybe what could be done is every third or maybe every other, SML you achieve (so Apprentice, Expert & Grandmaster or Journeyman & Grandmaster) you need to take a feat to "gain" those abilities & thus get rid of the penalty. Abilities I'm talking about are things like Great Leap for Jump, pretty much just feats/class features that normally change/enhance how a specific skill works, including epic ones. For some things like ones that let you take a penalty to perform the action faster just count the faster action as an ability so then the penalty applies but is later phased out. The "Zero" point for this I think would be good to be set at Novice. For some skills the exact stuff will be hard to work out but here's an example. For Hide, moving at full speed has a -5 penalty, so it would be an Apprentice level ability. Attacking and running is a -20 penalty, so they would be Master level abilities.
Araes 06-15-07, 08:13 PM	Alright, first some comments on your concepts for the system you're proposing Kurikin. In general, I have to say that I'm not a big fan of the penalty system. My reasoning for this is that at my core I don't view skill progression as a tiered system. Naturally, there are some tiers simply due to the fact that you have 20 levels to accumulate points in. However, within a normal game of D&D, skills augmentations and benefits are accumulated at an organic pace, and there aren't any sharp jumps in skills at periodic points. Here's what I think the easiest way to go about this would be. Leave normal skills basically how they are from a mechanical standpoint Incorporate your idea of tiers as a handy way for people to judge how skilled a person is at a particular craft. Include advanced, semi-mystical skill uses (like water walking) as either high DC checks, or special purpose feats with skill prerequisites. This suggested system would still retain all the basic functionality of normal skills. There wouldn't be any out of place jumps in capabilities unless someone took the time to pursue alternative training (IE, a feat). For the high DC version, there wouldn't be any jumps either, they would just need to devote some magic items to reaching those pinacles of skill. "The body that is infected by a virus does not become infected because it understands the virus any more than the body that does not become infected misunderstands the virus. So a world in which everything - from bitmaps to blood - can be understood as a "form of speech" is also a world in which nothing actually is understood, a world in which what a speech act does is disconnected from what it means." In terms of the quote you mentioned, that actually does get fairly close to what I'm talking about, as its the idea that at least in the case of words, they actually have physical power to enact change in the world beyond just their interpretation by society. Oddly enough, its actually a criticism of Snow Crash, but it gets to the heart of the point. When I say a sentence to you, I could be not just communicating verbal information to you that needs to be interpreted, I could also be conveying absolute information that modifies the very fabric of your being or the universe. An idea that we actually talked about quite a bit before the prior breakdown of the thread. Now, on the prior subject of Talos I had talked about. I've had some further thoughts on the layer, and I think I'm beginning to formulate an idea of what I'd like it to be. I'm still not quite there, particularly with incorporating the "frontier" atmosphere of it with other play styles, but I'm getting there. One way that I can somewhat encompass the concept is to approach it a bit like a land based version of the Star Wars universe. The similarities are that within most of the expanding areas, there would be a central, well populated, and fairly technologically advanced core. As you move outward from any of these centers, both the population, and the technology would fall off somewhat, but there would still be local "planetoids" of high population / tech centered around important resources, local trade points, ect... Because of this concept, and a few others I'll mention in a sec, I'm thinking about actually going back on the idea that it would be a no fast transport layer. There would be some, but it would just be limited, and most commonly used near the warm heart of each expansion area. While there would be similarities with the Star Wars model, there would also be some major differences. Obviously, its on land, which introduces a whole bunch of different issues. Its not all about big starships going to small planets, but the big cities with wasteland in between just happens to be a close motif. Also, I was thinking that in some areas it would be interesting if private groups had actually become more important than big government. Since the arm of the law can be so limited over distance, the private groups would have a more personal influence, whether they be big trading conglomerates, local mob groups, or whatever, they be the focus around which city politics turn in many areas. Another major difference, would be the droplet effect that I mentioned in the last post. Since these aren't just one isolated expansion area, where they are close, there could be some interesting potentials for tension. War is a great drama motivator, and one that I've always found particularly interesting is the Heinlein version of Starship Troopers, where patriotic young men go off to fight wars and see the world in places that are so far from the homeland that communication is sporadic if it even exists. A fun version of this might be lands which draw on the musketeer and swashbuckler tradition. Boisterous corps of fighting men waging war on the frontier for King and country. Conversely, there could also be many of the classical swashbuckling pursuits closer to the homeland like piratry, privateering, and banditry since the law is stretched so thin. An idea which I've been struggling with because it uses a bit too much tech, but which I think might have some potential, is the incorporation of a Diesel- / Atomi-punk aesthetic into the layer. As the world is already vaguely post-apocalyptic, the use of Axis and cold war imagery seems like it would be an interesting path. The way that Fallout approaches the topic could be good, but simply with a reduction or morphing of the more visibly modern world goods. IE: No rifles, obvious cars, ect..., but some of the feeling and mood of people emerging into a scary world of loneliness. Other genres that I think would also be fun to probe into would be mystery, exploration, and noir. As specific examples of how to do this, one of the classics would be the use of the old "Here There Be Dragons" style marking across the known world. Nobody really knows what's out in many parts of the world. In addition, there could be a strong focus on the mysterious even within colonized lands, as towns or areas go silent with no good reason, and people are sent out to investigate why. Some of this could actually use Jules Verne, Bermuda Triangle, or Shangri-la like situations, where there are simply terrain features that are strange and unexplained. In addition, there could also be barriers in some areas that are simply to difficult to pass, or which periodically cut off communication - great, periodic sandstorms or insanely tall mountains that people have tried to expand past and never come back from. As a final idea, I think it would also be cool to have a relatively strong motif of revolution / separatism present within the layer. This would provide a nice basis for some of the long distance fighting I mentioned earlier, and could be things like the Rebels of Star Wars - trying to reclaim their nation from a corrupt central government. On the other side, it could also be a condition where perhaps two groups have met at the border, and over time they have realized that they'd rather have their own national identity.
Kurikin 06-16-07, 12:34 AM	What I was kinda thinking with my concept was that once a person reaches a certain level of base skill knowledge (ranks) they are able to put two and two together to do an action better. I'm not really fond of how, in the current D&D system, skill checks mainly rely on what random bonuses you can find. I think that a master of some art that has spent a great deal of his time and energy getting better at it shouldn't be outshined by somebody who has not even given a thought on the subject one day picks up some random item and becomes greater than said master. Also I know there are limits to what a person can can achieve simply by training and thats where magic items come in to give the person the boost they need to accomplish something. An example would be with water walking. Suddenly because somebody feels they are more competent doesn't mean they KNOW how they need to move their body in the way it takes to water walk. Thats where knowledge (ranks) comes in. Lets say a master (20 ranks) at jumping wants to water walk (lets say DC 40 and a master level skill.) He his misc bonuses due to his STR score and other things of that sort are 10. He has a total skill check mod of +30, so he needs a 10 in order to water walk. Joe Schmo (with 0 ranks in jump and misc modifiers of +4 so his total skill check mod is +4) picks up a a coin and suddenly feels he can walk across the pond in front of him. Since he has absolutely no idea what he is doing he gets a -25 penalty to his check so effectively the DC is now 65. So, rolling a natural 20 at minimum, that coin has to have a +41 bonus on it. Really I think this way it has a more realistic feel to it. Now for your magic system. It sounds like pure awesomeness. I can just see two guys having a conversation on the corner and all of a sudden the building across the street explodes and nobody knows that it was actually them. Your layer concept sounds pretty neat. It somewhat reminds me of the anime Trigun and I would probably limit that layers tech level to the one in the anime which is pretty much steam punk level, though before they crash landed on Gunsmoke they were flying around in space in interstellar space ships and in the period of about 150 years regressed to a western/steam punk society/tech level. Also to me it sounds more like the Firefly universe on land instead of Space than it does Star Wars.
Sliversun 06-16-07, 03:32 AM	So, how long do you think it would have taken nature to reclaim Talos? Do you think the Gods would have reintroduced extinct plants and animals via cloning? Because I like the idea of natured restored then just endless wastelands. But I do like how you've made layer mostly uncharted, giving room to plenty of legends and adventures, much like Warhammer Fantasy or Dungeons and Dragons. And I like your idea of using disesl/atomic-tech, which is a step up from standard steampunk. Also, maybe Talos should be like a combination of Firefly and Star Wars. I also think we should try to avoid having too much post-apoc. on this layer. Just a thought, but it's up to you. And just so you know, I really like where your going with the whole Star Wars thing. It does make sense with the theme of this layer. Also, maybe you can have a look at the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End movie, and see how the freewheeling priates and the ruthless EITC battled one another for control of the seas, which could work for this layer too. Plus, if you want more ideas, then check out these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifts_%28role-playing_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Caribbean_films http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_Chronicles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neotopia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_Fantasy_%28setting%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_Nations:_Rise_of_Legends http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenozoic_Tales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Skies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamworks_and_Magick_Obscur a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_Universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick%27s_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Sun_%28game%29 http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dunes/4656/WasteWorld/WasteWorld.html Let me know if you need any help.
Araes 06-19-07, 04:15 PM	Kuriken, looking at what you wrote, it does seem to make some sense. However, one thing that it implies is that skill bonuses from items are basically uncapped. One way that seems like it might allow you to have the same effect would be to just say that skills items are capped at some maximum potential. IE, you can only have a +10 or +15 at max. Then, no matter what item he gets, its much harder (near impossible) for Joe Schmo to attain the DC checks necessary to walk across water than it is for the 20 rank master. Sliversun, lots of questions and comments, so I'll just go down through them. Both of you guys mentioned the similarities of the layer to Firefly, and after going back and rewatching some of my DVDs, I can definitely see where you're coming from. Not that I think that's a bad thing, as it was definitely a bright little spark for how short of a run it had. On your comment about the Star Wars mixed with Firefly, would you be willing to elaborate a bit more on that concept? I personally take that to mean the flavor of the setting in terms of the fantastic. Firefly was pretty bare bones at its core - lots of horses, lone settlements, and isolation. Star Wars had quite a bit more of the fantastic, with even the somewhat isolated places like Mos Eisley still having quite a bit that's marvelous or almost magical. In that sense, I would have no problem using more of Star Wars, as I think that was one of the great faults of settings like Rifts Wild West, where there was just so much isolation that it became boring. On the nature question, I think that without aid from some other source, nature could still reclaim Talos pretty quickly - perhaps within a 100 years or so. They've done land use studies in a number of places, and within a decade low lying brush and grass can sweep through areas. Within 100-200 years, I bet you could have decent size forests, and a fairly diverse ecology of the surviving animals springing up again. The question of the gods is an interesting one, and I think that some of them very well might have intervened. Merellin, Conway, and Exido among the founder gods might be willing to help. Among the usurper gods, the caring side of Sepak and Clovis could both be potential aids. Due to this intervention, they may also be the main gods which have a vested interest in the maintenance of the layer, and therefore may be the best represented among the emerging populations. You made so many links that I'm not sure if I can comment on all of them, but I did look through them all. I actually used to be a huge Warhammer player, so I'm quite familiar with that setting, and I've played Rifts, Mutant Chronicles, Gamma World, Crimson Skies, Arcanum, and Warcraft. I've never had a chance to read Fitzpatrick's War, but I think after reading the Wikipedia entry for it, I need to. On the question of you helping, if you would like to write something that contributes to the setting, please, feel free to do so. There is so much open that completing it by myself is basically an unending task. Now, a little bit more about the layer of Talos. To be specific, three nations that have arisen after the awakening and their interactions. Palova The early history of Palova after the awakening is a grim tale. Bereft of many of the luxuries of "modern" times, and in dire straights for many of even the most basic necessitities like ample food and water, the first hibernators fell upon each other with frightening rapidness. For a period of what must have been years, chaos reigned in the streets of Palova, with several different groups laying claim to various sections of the city and many simply abandoning its walks for the unknown of the wilds. However, amidst even the most chaotic patterns, eventually order will spring through random chance, and in the case of Palova, it was a strong order indeed. From among the majority bloodline of the city, there emerged a strong leader by the name of Theos Otmann I, who bound all of the various factions under his unified leadership through a campaign of street warfare, diplomacy, and outright manipulation once he had attained enough sway. Once the central city had fallen, it was not long before the rest of the country folk who had fled its walls were also cowed, and from this beginning, the modern state of Palova sprang. In its current incarnation, the nation of Palova borders on a totalitarian state with strict control over many facets of its citizen's lives. After his ascension, Otmann took great pains to establish a hereditary line of succession for control of the state, and it has remained so through numerous decendents. In some ways, this has been a boon of stability for the state, as factures of internal strife are a thing of the past, but it has brought with it a number of problems as well. One of the most severe is the inheritence of the bloodline of the Otmanns. The basic bloodline which Otmann I arose from was already present within a slight majority of the population when he took power. However, as further generations have moved onward, this line has solidified its power within the ruling class, claiming an obvious superiority over the minority lines due to their leader, and now hold a complete deadlock over most government operations. The royal court of the state is mostly composed of those who possess the highest percentage of "pure" bloodline possible, to the exclusion of skill or political worth. As fallout from this, the drive to attain or retain such a position has created an almost incestuous breeding practice among the social elite - daughters are married to cousins, sons to second aunts, all in an attempt to refine themselves one step closer to the throne. In fact, this problem has become so severe, that all government positions now require a test for the bloodline, both to further cement their hold and also to broaden the potential marriage pool. Marin If the people of Marin were to compile a list of deadly sins among their culture, one that would be conspicuously absent is that of Greed. Within the Marinese, Greed is good. Greed motivates the individual and the group to succeed. Greed makes them quick and agile, because without it, someone else who happens to be Greedier will snatch their fortunes away. In a word, the nation of Marin is cutthroat. When the people of Marin first emerged from their chambers, their natural inclination was to organize based upon their own specialities. The farmers, the miners, or the manufacturers. Everyone found their place in which they could contribute to society, and through this process, their reemergence was relatively painless. As time has marched onward, this specialization process has been further refined and diversified to include all of the various professions which are necessary for life in the Sphere. Now, from nearly birth, a child can expect to be bid upon by the various factions for induction into their grand histories of accomplishment. And this is not the only competition seen among the groups. In fact, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Life has become competition - from the highest seats of government, where the ruling council is still composed of representatives from each group, to the smallest border towns, where each group tries to lay claim for their own interests and consolidate their power throughout. Bureaucracy and infighting is quite common amongst the various groups, and even direct espionage is not unheard of - particularly in regions where communication is poor or particularly valuable resources / labor exist. In the center of the nation, where the balance of power is fairly even, this structure has kept most operations quite organized, as no single group can really sway their power too far vs the others. However, in the border lands, where interactions are much more tenuous, expansion has become something akin to a free-for-all, as everyone tries to grab and hold the very limit of what they can. Chent Everyone has their place, and everyone will do their part, and through this practice, all of society will move forward. When the people of Chent first stepped forward into the light of a bar-like sun, they were terrified. Alone, apparently abandoned, and awaking to a world nothing like what was promised them, they clustered together by families, relations, or whatever groups they could form. As time moved on, and the need for organization became more apparent, the first idea proposed was that each of the social groups within Chent would send representatives to a public council that would then help lead their efforts. For the most part, this concept was accepted, and 12 original delegates were sent to this first meeting. They helped clear up disagreements of land use, habitation, and resources that had been hampering the community, and their efforts were generally viewed as a success. Over the generations, as further meetings took place, and the population of society began to grow, it was felt that a more formal application of this idea could be put into practice. This concept has come to be known as the Halos. Within each Halo, there are generally 13 members - 12 who are representatives from the Halo below them and 1 which represents them in the Halo above. With the expansion of the nation, these layers have generally come to represent regions, cities, and neighborhoods in a general sense. Within any given Halo, individual members are often assigned certain responsibilities based on the Halo's position in addition to their own representative duties. The process of becoming part of a Halo is largely a public one, as Halo politicians must be elected members of a lower Halo before they can even hope to be nominated for a higher one. Throughout the land, at periodic increments, elections are held in sweeping waves where Halos are filled in tiered progressions. All positions in all the Halos are available every single cycle, and those who wish to run must campaign amongst their voters in whatever region they are attempting to run for. This organization of rings of 12 has had some rather profound effects on the overall nation of Chent. One of the most visible is that it has become a very command and control based economy. Resources, land, and even populations are all distributed in an attempt to both make the best use of them and fit them within the Halo structure itself. This structure can actually create significant problems as well, since much of the expansion of the nation must be rigidly controlled to fit within the rather unyielding framework of the Halos. In many areas, cities are actually planned to visibly make use of the framework and partition off sections for each Halo within their control. Plus, as with many socialism based economies, there is also a strong tradeoff between the personal initiative of those within the society and the safety it provides. Groups living within the cracks of the Halos are common throughout, as are sub-groups of Halos which feel that they are underrepresented within the structure as a whole. In the Space Between Dreams Spatially, the two nations of Marin and Chent are actually arranged on opposite sides of Palova. In the case of the Marin / Palova interaction, they have actually been in contact for a signficant period of time, and unfortunately, a great deal of animosity has developed between them. Spaced across the border between the two nations is a resource rich area which both desire. In addition, their paired governments are both hyper competetive and are determined to possess the area at whatever the cost. Due to the distance between their cores, this has mostly just resulted in minor skirmishes between the two groups up to this point, but there is the cloud of major warfare looming on the horizon and most of the inhabitants of the zone are naturally worried. In the case of the Palova / Chent interaction, through diplomacy, and the relatively pacifist nature of the Chent people, they have managed to iron out most of their major differences across the field of a discussion table. However, their own problems are arising as well, since a cooperating group of cities along the Palova / Chent border now wants to break and form their own nation. Citing both poor representation within the Halo structure, and persecution for their lack of the dominant bloodline within Palova society, they want to build upon the cooperation they have fostered in the borderlands and strike out on their own. Obviously, neither Chent nor Palova wants to hear of it. Well, there's the beginning of what I've been thinking for the layer. Still lots, and lots to do, so further contributions to either nations, organizations, technology, magic, whatever within the layer would be appreciated.
Sliversun 06-22-07, 06:22 AM	Well, in answer to your question, I'm not sure how to elaborate on the Firefly/Star Wars thing. I was just wondering if you would add a bit of Firefly (low-tech on the frontier, high-tech in the central areas) into the setting. However, I suppose making all the frontier towns primitve would be a bit of a clich'e. Maybe we can have a 'anything goes' attitude when it comes to magic, technology and domesticated animals. What do you think? BTW, nice work with the new nations.
Araes 06-22-07, 09:39 PM	I've got no problem with that. Pretty much anything is already going as far as tech within the Sphere in general anyhow, there are just some general guidelines on what happen to be used in certain areas. Within this zone, since each nation would be isolated and potentially different, I'd have no problem with having technology/magic be rather haphazard in its existence. And thank you in regard to the nations. Now, storytime, as I haven't done one in a while. --- On a small beach, on a small island, in a seemingly infinite sea, a wave swept over a beach. Slightly farther down the beach, a second wave, or perhaps another part of the first swept in as well. With regularity and precision they moved, and by their movement, the beach was ever so subtly changed. Sand, borne aloft in the rushing currents, would begin its slow cycle across the sea bed. Weeds, and shells of animals, were laid to rest on the shore. Plant life, dwelling among the shore's rubble, was fed by their surge. This system, the shore and the sea, had existed for time beyond memory, a mirror of the universe at large. However, the waves were not the only force at work on the beach. Strong winds were blowing over the sands and whistling through the trees that bordered them. As they came, they also flickered several small fires that burned on the surf, at times sending their sparks dangerously close to the trees. This wind and fire was new to the beach, but not overly dangerous. With several of its deeper sweeps, the sea was already beginning to sap the flames and deaden their might. Vines and creepers had also come, gliding out of the forest and insinuating their tendrils into the dunes. In many, they found no purchase, and were drawn out to sea by the waves. But in a few, where the turf was firm and brittle, they dug themselves deep. Cracks formed, and small sections were smoothed or carried away, to be reborn elsewhere on the shore. Within cracks that were too large, the sea itself was insinuated. Tendrils of its own snaking inward to smooth from the inside - miniscule mirrors of the greater whole. But the land was too weak, the sea's effects too small, and with a rush, a great section fell in upon itself. Chaos rippled outward into the sea, and those parts it had left behind in the cracks were strained and thinned as the land fell. Their channels ever contracting, raindrops upon the tips of filaments. Fractal oceans within oceans. And then they were all gone. No fractals, or raindrops, or fires, or vines. And the sea and its waves upon the beach. --- It felt like Seureb screamed. Or maybe she actually did? Was it even possible t scream anymore? Perhaps there was a digital equivalent? Still, it had possessed the feeling if not the force. More importantly though, what had caused it?...she almost dared not think about it. It had been like her memories of pain – magnified by scores. Like she had gained 1000’s of limbs, only to have them lopped off. Now it felt like she shivered. No matter, she had better discover what had been done. Damage extensive enough to illicit that response could be terrible indeed. Borne of countless practice, she sent out to discover her status. A call into the darkness to her children so that they might assess what they found. Nothing. Strange, where were her daemons, her helpers? She should be able to feel their queries and transfers at the very least. She felt like running a hand through her hair. Perhaps they had blocked her or destroyed her daemons? Or lands forbid, perhaps they had damaged the network itself. Wait...something wasn’t right there. Something beyond the missing daemons and lack of information. Something that tugged at those smokey memories of late nights working, when she used to…The hand! And hair? That hadn’t been like touching her hair. She had actually felt it. And there was something else too. Like the pain from before, but muted, and different. All over her body. Fuzz with touches of steel. At this her eyes snapped open. Greeting her was an assault on the senses. Her mind could barely make sense of what she was looking at, let alone that she was even looking at all. Specks of grey and bright white drifted past her amidst a sea of undulating red. Shifting focus beyond that, a strange expanse of greens, blues, and yellows seemed shimmer and swim in her vision. Looking down, she saw she was bare, but different than she remembered. A strange white, with streaks of grey and black. More angular as well, and all around her, odd wisps of white were rising. Like streamers trailing from these odd things that both were, and were not, her hands. She could almost feel it when the logic finally clicked in her mind. Like the snap of a staggered boxer as the world ramped back up to speed. Shimmering colors? Land beyond a window. Flecks of white and grey? Floating debris spiraling through the air. Undulating red? Walls of flame, all around her. And most importantly, the wisps of white? Her, burning. Oddly, it actually didn’t seem as important as she thought it should be. She had been burned before, hadn’t she? This was just like watching it happen to someone else. Still, she had better put a stop to it. How did it go in reality? It had been so long ago when Dunkirk had first shown her the trick. A thought of cold, a flick of the wrist, a whisper below breath. She could almost imagine their recoil, the flames leapt back so quickly. Living things terrified of her punchdrunk power. Within seconds she found herself alone in what now appeared to be a rather large room. The still smoldering remains of a chair glided past her, making her abruptly aware that debris were not the only things floating. She, and everything else in the room, appeared to be as well. A space borne conflagration? Beyond the window, the colored shapes appeared to be growing in size. With care, she could now make out curves or ripples within the colors, and the idea suddenly came to her that perhaps she was falling. It would explain the heat, and the colors…and this odd sensation that she was just beginning to place as noise. A deep, pulsating sound intermixed with high pitched whistles – like a hundred instruments playing all out of key. About this time, another thought wandered in. If she were falling, what would happen when she stopped? She speared to be inside something quite large. Could it survive such a fall? Or would her last memory in this short little jaunt into the world be of walls rushing inward? Parachutes. Ysunn always used to talk about these odd things called parachutes. She wasn’t sure what they actually were, but in his speech, it always implied preparation and safety. If she could force her mind to work, she could prepare for the impact. A cushion had to be first. Almost of its own volition, her body started to work. A cushion, then cooling, then gravity all sprang into being. By now though, she could see fine details out the window – forests and grasslands rushing up at a terrible rate. She reached outward, half bracing / half imploring for it to stop. And then the world became shards, and splinters, and fire once more. --- Camelyn When the disaster struck, one of the strangest things that came to rest upon the layer of Talos from across the Sphere was the city of Camelyn. Rising from amidst a massive forest that has grown out to encompass the area where it fell, Camelyn sits perched along the side of a lone mountain without any apparent chain. Growing out at an angle, Camelyn originally was an expansive city of interlinking towers sitting flat on its layer. However, in its fall, and the intermittent years, these towers have crumbled and fallen, leaving a jagged pattern of teeth on the mountainside. Still, for having decended in its entirity from another layer, Camelyn is actually in remarkably good shape. This is almost entirely due to the efforts of an avatar of the founder gods which was trapped within its walls as it fell. In the conflict prior to the separation, Seureb sent forth a part of herself to protect the city, but was struck by the Usurpers and had that portion of herself isolated and cut off from the heavens (the Sphere network). This partitioned avatar then crashed through the various layers, riding and protecting the city in its decent, until it eventually came to rest on the layer of Talos. In the separation and fall though, a number of changes were worked on the avatar. Suffering system damage and mental pathway loss, her robotic body has lost much of what made it Seureb in the first place. In addition, although it was able to save the city itself, all of the organic lifeforms which were meant to revive within its borders were decimated by the disaster. Existing within this mass grave further twisted and scarred what remained of the Seureb personality. Over time, the avatar has come to permanently think of itself as the guardian of the city, rather than the temporary position it had been meant to be. To this end, it has repaired, and then infused many of the robotic beings of the city with portions of its essence. Effectively, this has brought into existence a number of manifest daemons based on the forms Seureb would normally use in the network at large, but twisted and shaped by the personality of the avatar shard. In an attempt to reclaim the lives that were lost, she/it has also stiched together the remains of many who died within the hibernation chambers. Often composed of the remains of more than one person, she has then reanimated them with a form of cheap animation - a perversion of the pure resurrection employed by the actual Seureb. The same fate also awaits any from outside the city who visit it and die there. Viewing her protection role with deadly certainty, the daemons under the avatar's employ often strike first with deadly force against any they view as outsiders, and then animate the remains once the threat is gone. The avatar itself is a strange conglomeration of robotic and the supernatural. Streaked with the never cleaned marks of char and battle amidst its pasty white shell, it often flickers between between a partial representation of the digital Seureb and its corporeal form. In this state, it constantly wanders the disaster wracked halls, semi-concious of its actual purpose, but too distracted by its inner conflictions to even clean up remains from the disaster or past conflicts. Internally, the site itself is a massive complex of confusing halls and tunnels, made more so by the haphazard rubble strewn throughout the area. Tower tops and debris lay littered even out into the edge of the forest. As such, many of the daemons may even be encountered quite a ways out - guarding even small remnants from trophy hunters or explorers. The forest itself is also somewhat of an oddity, and a danger, as it is composed of plants which are almost entirely foreign to the layer. Survival, and living off the land within its boundaries is made quite difficult by this, since most plants could be as likely animate or poison as benign or helpful. However, for those who are either brave or powerful, the city does also hold the promise of great wealth. Due to nature of its fall, much of the technology and wealth within the city is still intact, and waiting to be found. In addition, because of its harrowing and dangerous reputation, even small trophies which can be certified as having come from Camelyn will often go for reasonable prices from wide eyed collectors. Well, there's both a story, and an adventure location for the layer of Talos.
Sliversun 06-23-07, 04:35 AM	Awesome. Keep up the good work. Do any ideas on the name for the Amber Throne layer yet?
Sliversun 07-03-07, 07:32 AM	Bump.
Jeweler 07-04-07, 11:39 PM	Ok so you haven't said anything in a while, 11 days if you don't say anything today. And of course this is the day I come back right? : ) thats my luck I suppose. Anyways, thanks for the mention and revival of some of my projects over the pages and discussions. You don't know how happy it made me to see my name pop up more than a few times because of various ideas. And as such I have some things to say on those ideas. So here is as follows, might be a while we will see. Magic and the Emotions Behind it all So me and a friend were talking while I was reading over some of the ideas thrown around about magic, and beyond the fact that we got into a somewhat over heated debate *not argument* over real magic and the our version of "technological" magic and how it worked, we both agreed that magic is not and should not not ever be designed as a weighed system of science. Now you brought back the feats progression of the magic system and even expanded on it some amount, which I was glad to see. I think I would like to take this one step farther, or suggest such a thing. For the feat prerequisites you used spellcraft as a major key ability, but I suggest that we look into the system of "Seeds" used in the epic handbook and try modifying that. Or seeing where the average is for each level and then the range of each level as well. I do also suggest, after talking about it, that we make a slight change to skill rules that a 1 always fails, like an attack or save roll, and a 20 always succeeds, again like an attack or save roll. Again I have to look through the book again, meaning that I have to find it, and see what might need to be changed/scaled-down/scaled-up and balanced, but I prefer something that is more esoteric *for once in a magical sense* than a weighed system. It is still weighed yes, but I like the idea that even a "grand master" spellcrafter can fail a small spell because he just couldn't summon up the right emotion at the right time. Everyone has a bad day with spells, just like everyone has a bad day with swords. *And homework* This also could give some of that "We want fighter/mage balance!" balance that people talk about how fighters don't really get anything at later levels while mages get all these uber powerful spells *they look past the point that they get few, can't hit worth ****, most of there feats are wasted on magic stuff, and they die in two hits* that they can cast. Ancestors of the Sphere If you can I am not as good as the titles as you are but hey, can't be good at everything right? Anyways, I was looking back at some of the old posts, back when I was still here and what not, and I saw a post that before I had apparently missed somehow. It was Turin talking about how we should move away from the 'heritage' design we had for races. I suggest we do something like this. We take the all of the abilities that we have made for the race system we have now and list them under "Bonuses" and "Disadvantages". We list what category each of the abilities is in, as in Ability 1-4 or Racial Heritage Feat, and keep the same "Ability 3 requires ability 1" system we had before. The same 6 blocks we had before. And allow players to make there own races. Ability 1s are still weak, ability 2s are still primarily disadvantages with a few being minor bonuses, ability 3s are somewhat strong, ability 4s take two blocks unless an ability 2 that was a disadvantage was taken *as to make sure people don't take the minor bonus ability 2s all the time* and then racial abilities need abilities 1-4 and require 2 blocks as well. There are entire books dedicated to races in original 3rd edition, drawing on them we could make a rather close to exhaustive list of abilities and draw backs. Also as a rule I would say that you can not take more than two disadvantages, as each one gives back a block *actually they take away a block from an Ability 4 attribute but close to the same thing* The Fallout of the Sphere I quite like the idea of a fantasy version of fallout within the sphere, mixed also with firefly. I don't really see, much, how Star Wars got into it as the only connection would be the civil versus the rogue, and that is better suited to something like firefly than star wars. But anyways, I suggest looking into game informer, they did an extensive article on Fallout 3, and it comes out 2008, that shows a little about what is all about, nitty gritty and handcrafted junky-chunky items that shoot makeshift mini-nukes. Yes that is an actual item in the game, its a homemade crossbow with a diner ding bell that goes off when a mini-nuke gets into the chamber. I also like the fact that you made one totalitarian group one socialist and super-capitalist group all on the same place. I always liked the political plays between socialism and capitalism within our world and in fantasy worlds. Yes dorky. Whatever. Anyways, have you read Utopia? The description of the halos and family-council system sounds exceedingly similar to that of Utopia by Thomas Moore. Also I was wondering, did the Usurpers directly cause the fallout that made the Seureb and the tower city fall to this plane? If they did, could they also have positioned some of the pieces to fall on most, if not all of the hibernation ships as a way to destroy off some of the 'followers' of the creator gods before they even awoke? That seems like an interesting idea to me. Although then again if it is a post-apoc layer then it might be much better drama if it was all an accident that some of the other hibernation ships, if there were others, got hit. Ideas. Balseraphs, The Daemon Entertainers First off I like the word daemon, spirit, and Balsearphs if no one noticed is a mockery of the Seraphs. Just figure I'd enlighten the readers before I continued. The balseraphs as put worth by the Fall From Heaven designers were a group of semi-nomadic carnival folk. Except they were a lot more militant and malicious than any normal carnival was. Remember the idea of a carnival, if I remember correctly, comes from a Christian religious practice where people sell goods and the church takes a cut of the pay. Started in the dark ages I think. Anyways, they had a few special units in Civ 4, one of them were gypsy wagons, they moved into other people's cities and took away one culture and one gold from the city and gave it back to the city that created that wagon. They also had Loki, a carnival prince who did close to the same thing as the wagons but he could also incite rebel in the people and turn the city to the Balseraphs. He could almost never be killed because he would always retreat from battle, without completely surrounding him and having someone attack him he would never die or even take damage. Now on to what they are in the layer of the dead. Why don't we just call that layer Florida, if I remember correctly thats where Dawn of the Dead took place. : ) Anyways, the Balseraphs had an interesting government designed around the 7 deadly sins. Each one had there own part of society to look over. Gluttony looked over the food stuffs and made sure the Grand Carnival would not starve. Envy looked after foreign policy, Pride looked after domestic policy. Wrath looked after military, Sloth looked after diplomacy. Lust looked after the service industry, and greed looked after all industry not a service. The Grand Carnival, the name for both the only stationary city and the entirety of the "nation" of people including the mobile carnies, is made up of may smaller krewes that did various different things from provide bodyguards, as well as fight in the arenas, to growing and selling food stuffs. Each krewe must register with its chief government body so that if the government needs extras of a necessary object they can call on the next krewe in line. Each of the seven bodies has a administrative figure head within the stationary Grand Carnival that enacts laws. Each of these figure heads have 2 other, 'lesser', figure heads which can vote for against the law before it goes any further. If it goes past the internal veto stage it goes to the Jack of Blood, a shadow King of sorts who is a cunning assassin and politician all wrapped into one masked individual. She/he can either veto, pass, or alter and pass the law into act. Every three years a competition is held amongst all the krewes within each "sin" to see who can be the best at what they do. Gluttony most grow the most food, Envy most have the best actor and politician, Pride the best artist and politician, Wrath the best fighter and strategist, Sloth the best relations with other krewes, Lust the most profit through services and Greed the most profit through goods. The best individual all of all the krewes becomes the figure head of the administration, and two other individuals that were in different krewes from each other and the figure head become the two 'lesser' figure heads. As the Jack of Blood gets older and closer to the end of his life, not always natural, a long standing tradition of a private assassination bounty goes out on the Jack, the best of the best get a message from a group who has "great disdain for the current Jack and want him to be assassinated so that a better candidate, you, can take his place." Most of the populace knows about this aspect of their society and willingly except it as tradition. If at any time the Jack is assassinated the assassin takes the place of the Jack as a rightful "heir" to the "throne". The Balseraphs are the might where the Iron Towers are the magic. The Balseraphs are brawns mercenaries for either side just as the Iron Towers are the magical. They focus mainly on war time strategies and alchemical items that can help them in combat, such as alchemist's fire, explosive powder, and vial launchers for such substances. The magic that the Carnival nation does have dates back to a time before the plague and perversion of the original people into what they are now. It focuses mainly on communications and even more specifically the entertainment aspect of communications. Things that create illusions, lights, and flashy effects can be usually found somewhere within the Balseraph nation. The most current Jack of Blood is a lich who assassinated the hold Jack. Some people on the living side and on within the Towers say that they new Jack is not being as fair to the living side as he necessarily should be. But this might just be the living trying to manipulate the Tower into taking out the Balseraphs and the Undead all in one fell swoop.
Araes 07-05-07, 02:51 PM	Hey Jeweler, glad you've returned to the project. Long time no see, although almost didn't recognize you without the rock guitar avatar. :p I have actually been around and thinking about this a bit, but I've just been rather distracted, as I'm in the job hunting process right now, so its taking up a bit of my time. Plus, it was my birthday yesterday, so yay me. Like the background that you've worked up for the people of Balseraphs. Makes for an interesting society that's quite a bit more fleshed out than what we worked out before. In terms of the comments about the Firefly vs Star Wars comparison. When I first was thinking of that for the mentioned layer, it was mainly for the geographical setup of Star Wars, with the highly advanced and populated core vs the more lightly populated and less controlled frontier. I wasn't really going for the rebel vs empire thing, as the idea is more to have tons of these little droplet areas all interacting with one another at their frontier borders. Glad you liked the three countries that I've suggested so far though. Still need a ton more of them, but those are at least a decent start to get the creative ideas going for the layer. In terms of whether the Usurpers could have directed the devastation, I'm sure that in some cases they probably did try to do so. I would also think that once this broke out into a real conflict, and it became apparent that some of the layers were being fragmented, the Creators may have done a bit of that themselves to try and damage the Usurper supporters as well. From the attack on Seureb's avatar, it also appears that there was some directed effort to try and attack any manifestations of the God's in the physical world, which may imply that having these sections of them cut off damages their digital selves a bit as well. In terms of the ancestor heritage changes and spell direction you're talking about, you'll have to give me a little bit to process your suggestions. I think they have some promise, but I'd like to think a little bit about the pros / cons on them.
Jeweler 07-05-07, 10:13 PM	Haha yeah I finally found someone cool in the Magic Multiverse than Ixidor, even if only by a hair, and that is Thelon : ) Thanks for the welcome, and good luck on the job hunting, take all the time you need can't have the head designer worrying over money, then nothing will get done here. : ) Yeah well I read the idea behind the Iron Towers and ran with it making the Balseraphs what they originally were, cutthroat entertainers and also making them the military mercenaries as it fits with there semi-nomadic design. The political intrigue is just a nice idea to work with and could lead to some interesting flavor stories, if I feel like writing I'll try my hand. Seurab's city reminds me of the reavers from Firefly, because they kill most of there victims but some they leave alive to "reproduce" the ranks that they eventually lose. Except these reavers get a majority of their victims instead of a hand full at a time. One idea for a layer could be that a layer above this one had a fracture in a lake or large ocean that began to continuously fall on the Fallout layer. Maybe someone tampered with it or it fell on its own but roughly one district of an underwater city and its chunk of land produced a sizable crater to create a lake for the much larger amount of water falling. This could be the origin of the Natural Take back of land or this could be a big helper to the process as the water is rich in nutrients and minerals for plants that surround the new made lake, almost creating something similar to an oasis. The inhabitants of the Fallen Atlantis are low in numbers as even the large amounts of water that poured on the city could not save all of the inhabitants from drowning on the air they could not breath. The Oasis could be a trade city, those amphibious inhabitants being neutral to the surrounding nations in there deals with them or they could be a military force that follows one of the usurper gods, which might have made the crash landing more intentional and therefore more survived. I do not see the city being very technologically advanced, in the way of magic items and what not, but they might be adapt at magic, especially in there most obvious natural habitat, water. The surrounding area might look like the standard image of an oasis in a desert, that of palm trees and glistening clear blue water. The surrounding area could have both plants from the Fallout layer and the original layer of the city. If done for military the usurpers might have given there followers various plant seeds that would do well with the additional nutrients in the water and ones that could harm invaders or be used by the city for a land army. The shamans of the people could also have been given the ability to control these plants and shape there growth and shape into something useful. *IE this adds in the plant companion for druids that was in the most recent dragon magazine. They did a pretty decent job with it.* Another more nomadic group might be the Junkers or Trash Mages, they travel from ruin to ruin looking for various magical items of any sort, hoping they might be worth something to someone. Many of these people are talented at dissembling the magical items and reworking the components into other, more useful magic items. *Artificers from Eberron come to mind* I can see these people traveling in old carriages that need no horses and possibly the rare flying skiff. They could be the only people on the layer that have excess to flying magic, and guard it to there death, even going so far as to install self destroying mechanisms into the things so that no one else gain power over their monopoly. *Could be the only magical "guild" on the layer everyone else might be too worried about getting land and surviving with as little help as possible to think about such things* On the case of magic I think I will go through the epic handbook tonight and see what I can make out of it with "normal" level spells. And the races too as I have a book called Mythic Races that I might take some of the abilities out of. I will try and go through those over the tonight and the weekend to figure out if the magic system is workable as is or if I will need to remake the system some so that the DCs aren't outrageous in either direction. Edit: As a remark on the name of the City wide layer, the name Nessus is one that is used for the lowest layer of the nine pits of hell in the Fiendish Codex II. Just figured you might find that ironic if you didn't know it. If you did, may I ask why you thought about it?
Araes 07-06-07, 03:36 AM	On the Nessus comment, I wasn't actually aware of it, as I think I posted that name before the Codex II was released. That is a really odd coincidence though, and a bit ironic. I used it because its close to Nexus, and because there also was a Greek god named Nereus, which I find to be a clever reference in my own odd way. I hadn't thought of the Reaver connotation for the city of Seureb, but I can see what you mean with the harvesting of the unlucky to fuel their ranks. Thankfully, unlike the Reavers they aren't actually spreading out, and are content to just hang out around their fallen avatar and look like strange perversions of demons and angels. I really like the idea of the Junkers and Trash Mages. That's a cool concept that I think we could get a lot of mileage out of. It conjures up all kinds of neat Mad Max or Waterworld images at first thought, and gets right at that fusion of techno-magic. Since the layer (like all the layers) is pretty damn big, I don't think I'd want to say they're the only type of magic out there, but they could be a major force, with different types and sects throughout the nations of the layer. Since most of them started out relatively independently from one another, and are only now coming into contact in the campaign age, there could be all kinds of different approaches to the Trash Mage style, with some being the powerful scavengers you mentioned, and maybe others even working as direct envoys of their governments. Plus, it would be relatively easy to fit into the breakdown a little while back that I did about the differences between magic types and magical power sources. On the ocean / oasis area, I think its an interesting concept the way I'm seeing it, but I think I'm a little confused on what you're proposing. Are you basically saying that there was an underwater nation on a higher layer that was effectively blasted right through the ground of their layer and out the other side? Then they fell, made a crater on the next layer, and the water from the layer above drained down onto them? That seems like it would be a lot of coincidences going right for a single nation to even survive that, but if the Usurpers buried one of their hibernation ships in an existing ocean, or broke up an ocean mass in a higher layer to create one, then that might be a bit more reasonable. Plus, it seems like it would be a good way to hide it from the Creators before awakening. Good luck to you on the epic and spell deconstruction concept. I've been staying away from the full blown magic analysis simply because being overwhelmed by that was what killed this in the first place last time.
Jeweler 07-06-07, 10:58 AM	I was more or less proposing that it could be either one, an unlikely set of coincidences or the Usurpers wanting a stronghold on the layer. I was more leaning towards the Usurper idea by the end of it all but I decided that it could have happened. Also, what I meant was that the city was on a layer that was cracked and already had water leaking out of it, "slowly" in the way of rather large lakes and oceans go, and either through an unfortunate accident or a planned event something triggered a bigger hole to crack in the layer and send a part of the city flying down. With the new, bigger hole in the ground all the water that would be in the lake-ocean can now pour down more quickly. When I first thought it up I had this image of a large waterfall coming through the continuously cloudy sky. And then the idea that something fell with it came to me and also that this could be an oasis for travelers. Or at least look like one to them. Then the killer plants get them and the Usurper people steal your gear but its all in the details. As for the Junkers, they could want to be the only source of magic on the layer, something similar to house cannith *not that I thought of this before hand ; )* in Ebberon. I didn't actually think about it til afterwards but it sounds nice. I also didn't want to use the warforged idea, we already have robots which are better than them, and I like the sound of a skiff better than the airships Ebberon has. On the case of the magic system I took a look around the forums, not an exhaustive one but I found something that might be useful. I am asking the person first if we can use his idea. Its a rather good system that just seems like it would need some modifying and base-lining. If he says yes then cool, we have another idea to look at thats somewhat already done for us. If not, I'll keep looking while I am waiting and hopefully find something else.
Araes 07-07-07, 02:05 PM	On the water area, the idea of a geosyncronous "space waterfall" would actually be pretty interesting as a terrain feature in and of itself. One problem with that would be that with the way the sun's work, quite often the falling water would be intercepted by the heat of a nearby bar of sun and evaporate. So maybe half the day or so, you would end up with falling water. It would be like an odd, periodic waterfall. Whether or not that actually is a feature anywhere, the last bit you mentioned actually does sound fairly interesting - A region where one of the Usurper ships was buried under water to hide it. Full of amphibious creatures, they have established a whole underwater kingdom and make raids out of it into the surrounding nations. Over time, the body where they reside has come to be important for the life giving water it provides, but also viewed as cursed for the creatures which prowl its depths and prey upon the land dwellers nearby. In some ways, it could be a bit like the story of Grendel from Beowulf, with the creatures from the deep of the lake terrorizing the people of the shore. On the topic of the Junkers, what I meant was simply that since the world is really large, and the layer of Talos in particular is built on just recently lifted isolation, the simple act of "Junking" may be a common activity across the layer even beyond organized groups. In addition to this, there may also be specific groups which we could actually call "Junkers" or "Junk Mages". Some of these groups may be organized, but not all of them have to be. And Junkers from one area wouldn't necessarily need to be affiliated with those from another, although it might be likely, as they would be some of the most wide ranging travelers in their quests to be the first to find fallen technology. As a rough picture, this is kind of what I was thinking of in terms of how the "droplet" idea I've mentioned for the Talos layer would be set up. http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/Dropplets.jpg
Sliversun 07-08-07, 03:19 AM	I like the idea for the Junk Mages, but would they be different from Techno Mages? Do you think we should also have class of Treasure Hunters / Scavangers? I also like the idea for an underwater kingdom and the space waterfall sounds awesome. But keep in mind that Talos is suppose to be a layer of frontier exploration, not just Mad Max and stuff. Maybe some of the area's on Talos would have devolved into such a state (killer warbands on bikes/jetskies), but I think the rest of the layer should be mostly developed and without the messed up jargon. If you need any help with magic department, then check out SinaiMuck's Sphere's of Magic. Loads of interesting ideas. Link: http://sinai.critter.net/pguide/ I just a few questions: 1) What's the ecosystem going to be like on each layer? 2) What's level of tech is each layer going to have? 3) Will you do race writeups like you did for the dragons?
Jeweler 07-08-07, 10:31 AM	Well the thing is is that we have the freeform class system, so it really doesn't matter whether we /want/ a treasure hunting class, someone somewhere will almost certainly make one anyways. That is one nice thing about that system, we do not have to make 30000 different classes and what not. We set up the system and let the players do it themselves. Well also it is a layer of destruction and semi-apocalypse because of the other layers hitting this one. So some of the areas might even have miles of scrap metal where a Hibernation ship use to be. In this thread the original idea usually gets twisted to something. Usually darker. I don't see much Mad Max stuff really, the junkers aren't bikers that pick up everything they can find, all they are trying to do is be like everyone else, find something that they can barter with in this world. As I suspect that would be the main system of trade is bartering. This layer might technically have the most access to magical items just because of these people and there need to barter these items off. Still paying for one might be 2-3 times the normal price because they are worth a lot of livestock. Techniclly, every magic user is a techno mage, as ll of there abilities come from the power generators that are underground and the machines in them that allow the people to access the power machines. The tech of each layer is pretty much specialized depending on in what country you are in, such as the Balseraphs on the undead layer have access to just about any item that will allow them to communicate with people, record images and sounds, or otherwise act like a modern device used for entertainment. The Living on that layer might have magic items that affect undead more than anything else. It all depends, but outside of the specialization the magic level is standard medieval, meaning not much magic in terms of items or possibly spell casters. The technology level is harder to define because technology is magic in this game, the most true technology anyone probably has is steam engines. Everything else is "magic". I don't do ecosystems, Araes can answer that one : ) For the races, again we built a freeform system and we allow players to do what they want with it, I am working on the list for a slight change to our ancestor system but other than that there are no real defined races other than humans. There might be dominant traits for each layer, like most people have at least one of these traits. Thats a good idea. Heh, thanks Silversun for making think about that. : ) Edit: Also, as a remark Transformers was surprisingly amazing. And I think we might have a new visual aspect for the "liquid" robots. Because the robots in Transformers did pretty much what I would expect from an "everyday" liquid robot. *I wish that there could be an everyday liquid robot : (* They saw something and mimicked it, and stayed in relative size too. Well, tank shapers were bulky, jets were relatively wiry, bad motha trucks were huge, so on and so worth. So we might have a new design idea to discuss and that is mimicking objects of a size equal to or up to 1 size smaller than you. Such as a large Liquid robot being able to take the form of a horse *or wagon? can't remember whether they are large or not* or possibly even taking the form of longsword or other sword *technically medium, whatever that means for a weapon* Also, I know this kinda gets rid of the "dead at 0 hp" balance thing but what if a liquid robot, if within the range of -1 to -9, could separate off a small part of itself, a part that is three sizes smaller than the whole *a head in effect* and crawl away. The new body most be crafted as a construct with the "Craft Construct" feat, meaning high level party, godly intervention, or some other high power force in the world that has evaded being spotted or has been noticed but "too small to deal with right now." Just a cool little thing I thought about during the movie. The "head" would have 9-1 HP depending on how far into negative it was. Start at 10 and then take into account your HP at the time of sprouting.
Araes 07-09-07, 03:40 PM	Guess I'll hit these points in order and head on down. An Answer for a Question (or two) For the dragon writeup, I wrote that mainly because dragons are one of those iconic creatures that everyone associates with the game, and I wanted to establish an interesting (biased) place for them in my own creation. Earlier on in the thread, we'd also talked fairly extensively with folks like Turin about how they could come into play as manipulators from the shadows, and I wanted to firm that up a bit since it was just floating. For most of the races, as Jeweler mentioned, we're likely going to be using an abstract racial system without strictly defined types like "human" and "elf". As such, we might be able to write histories for some of the "trait ancestor" groups, but it would be harder for the existing people. Kind of like today, where its getting harder to say someone is "black" or "asian" or "caucasian" in many areas, as there's just too much intermarriage between groups. Everybody's an 1/8th of this, or a 1/4 of that, rather than uniform. Layerwide Technology Averages In terms of the technology question, I generally agree with the answer that Jeweler gave, as the tech is going to be fairly dependant on where you actually are in a layer. These layers are gigantic, so there can be a lot of difference in tech between two points in a layer. In addition, there will also be some stark differences for certain key technologies that may have been extra necessary to preserve (flight on Ki'Sha-la, thermodynamics on Solas) or supressed. That said, I think that there probably will be some "average" level that we can probably specify per layer, and then do variations off that. In most cases, this average is heavily dependent on the level of devestation that a layer has undergone. Nerus would probably be the highest overall, as they have been the most sheltered. The Amber Throne's layer would probably also be up there, as the unification of a whole layer has allowed for a lot of peacetime development. Solas, Kaltera, and Morren are probably fairly regressed, as they've had to deal with a lot. Peroca (the lost world layer) is probably extremely regressed on average, simply because they've had to deal with megapredators on a daily basis, and are almost completely isolated as societies. I'm not sure on averages regarding Arborea or Talos yet. Talos might have started out lower, but has been progressing due to all of the scrap from other layers that came to rest there. Arborea might be artificially low just to keep the gardener socieities working and harvesting the crops for Nerus. Ecosystems of the Layers The ecosystem question is an extremely complicated one, and not one that I think even I can answer easily (thanks Jeweler :p) Think I'll just approach this one in a table format. Nerus This layer would probably have little of what we would call a standard "ecosystem". However, it might have the equivalent of our more modern urban ecosystems, where certain animals and plants have adapted to live in an urban environment. In addition, throughout the layer, there would probably also be nature areas to provide a bit of green for the inhabitants, but these would be relatively contained if still in good condition. In cases where they are not, the creatures / organisms may have escaped and started living in the urban area around them. Arborea This layer is a strange duck, as its basically a breadbasket for another layer. Most of the animals and plants would be there for a purpose, would have been selected to be beneficial to the growth process, and would have probably initially been a fairly balanced ecosystem (if artificial). However, over time, some may have changed or adapted, and others may have been allowed to enter the layer or been brought there purposefully by outside forces. This would allow for more of a "wild jungle" flavor to some of the great greenhouse areas that cover the layer. Amber Throne In general, I view this as at least fairly similar to an Earth based ecosystem. Maybe moreso than normal D&D worlds, as organized society would probably have subdued many of the oddly intelligent creatures and beasts that often plague D&D worlds. An interesting parallel might be the Seanchan from the Wheel of Time series, with a world that has many interesting beasts that aren't found within a standard Earth world, but due to the taming nature of humanity, even many of the most frightening have found a place in society. Kaltera Heavy preference for any creature which can survive artic conditions and subterranean creatures. Basically, there will be two ecosystems, one which exists on the surface of the layer, and is completely dominated by creatures from books like Frostburn; another which is subterranean, and would be more like an Underdark ecosystem with burrowers, insects, and lots of squicky things that muck about in the dark. Solas The mirror twin of Kaltera, this layer will again have two ecosystems, but with a higher emphasis on the above ground creatures, as the underdark wouldn't be so developed. In general, most of the layer is going to heavily favor creatures that can survive in harsh, hot conditions. As such, Sandstorm type creatures would probably be very common. In some areas, where landmasses have been shifted to provide shade, there would also be smaller ecosystems of creatures that either live completely in shade, or perhaps follow a border lifestyle, darting in and out of the shade as need be. Ki'Sha-la This layer will have a heavy, heavy emphasis within the ecosystem on creatures which can traverse the islands. Plants which can float and draw nutrients in a manner similar to hydroponics would be more common, as would flying creatures of all kinds. There would still be some land-bound ecosystems as well, but they would be less common due to the lack of terrain for them to use in most areas. In addition, there would simply be less large predators, due to a lack of game for them to catch. Some particular types of large flying mounts have probably been specially bred within the layer to deal with these issues which I touched upon earlier as well. Morren In general, the ecosystem of Morren is probably in trouble, or it is transitioning to a different state of life overall. It probably started out similar to the Amber Throne, but due to the effects of both the undeath plague, and the constant warfare, the actual nature zones for plants and wildlife are fairly impinged upon. In addition, many animals are just as succeptible to the undeath virus as sentient creatures are, and so in several cases, undead variants of standard creatures have developed as competition for resources with living animals. Talos Initially, this layer's ecosystem was probably just as devestated by the impacts from other layers as its sentient inhabitants were. However, during the intervening time before the reawakenings really got underway, it has had ample time to reestablish itself and is now thriving. Similar to the Amber Throne, but without the taming of the wild creatures, there are many varieties of alien animals, plants, and semi-intelligent beasts that roam the wilds beyond the pockets of civilization. In general, it can be said to be quite healthy and full of large predators, and even a few mega-predators. This plays back to the whole expansion / frontier theme that we've talked about, where society is still pushing back the borders of the wilds and exploring all the crazy things they contain. Peroca Finally, this layer's ecosystem is incredibly healthy, but because of this, also highly dangerous to the societies which have eeked out places there. Originally the storage ground for many of the largest and most dangerous predators, this layer is full of macro organisms like dinosaurs, mamoths, ect... In most ways, it could be said to be like prehistoric Earth, with nearly everything knocked up a factor of scale in size. Most of the standard biomes we would associate with Earth are still present, each with their own varieties of macro life. What humanoids are there were originally intended as just observers, researchers, and maintenance people, so now they are basically just hiding from the rather imposing threats that wander the land. In reference to the liquid robot suggestions, I don't think I'd have a problem with liquid robots turning into objects, as it might provide an interesting opportunity for them to hide, and doesn't seem like it should logically be any harder than turning their arms into blades. I think I'd probably want to limit their size changing to objects of their same size, just because they're already really good, and too many abilities means nobody will use anything else. That, or we'll have to start piling on the negatives. Also, I wouldn't want to let them mimic the effects of any complicated technology without purchasing the ability to do so, as that would give them a really unfair advantage in many locations. In general, I agree with Jeweler's response via the bikers / Mad Max, and don't think it should be too much of an issue. Sure, in some locations there may be Mad Max levels of desolation, but overall I think the layer just has lots of scrap laying around and people are naturally going out to try and find it for economic reasons. Naming the Layer of Amber Finally, I've also had a few ideas regarding a name for the layer of the Amber Throne of which the main contenders in my head are: Palossia (Pal - O - sh - a ) Kind of like Russia. Bravium (Brä - vE - uhm) Chanovex (Chä - nO - vecks) Edit: Also, update to the main index so it encompasses "nearly" everything now.
Jeweler 07-09-07, 10:43 PM	Hahaha sorry, it is just something that I don't normally do. Ecosystems are the last thing on any list of campaigns that I happen to do. Though all this being said I now have stuff to build off of, as soon as you give me an idea I can build off of it, thats just what I do. I could imagine something similar to Ravnica in terms of lands and what not. I suggest you take a look at the land cards they have for the setting, you might get some inspiration for the landscape of the city, even if the artwork is a little fantastical. Which apparently is a word by the way. The books are a good rather simple read and a good portion of action and intrigue with it. Also take a look through some of the creature cards in the three sets, Ravnica, Guildpact, and Dissension. They can be a good basis for what might happen if a city wide layer were to still have an ecosystem. They have a guild in the series that basically was made to keep the ecosystem of Ravnica intact, but they failed, so now they change what is left of the ecosystem into things that can suitably survive in the urban life of the plane. They also like to create new life and other such things, like diseases, grafts, test subject species, they were probably part of the reason for the creation of thrulls. http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=118372 (military enviroment) http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=118454 (Forest Buildings) http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=118471 (Food Source-Mushrooms) http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=118498 (Power Source- Water) http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=118523 (City-Factory) http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=118543 (Flying Buildings) http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=118605 (Sewers) http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=120222 (Legal Building) http://www.cardkingdom.com/card_viewer.php?sid=146499271&pid=120233 (Touch of the Balseraph) Those are some of the different lands within the city. Some of the aspects of each could be within Nessus, the legal buildings, the military complexes, some sort of power source, the forested areas, and also a backup food source *the mushrooms* in case the breadbasket can not provide. I like the idea that Amber Throne is similar to Wheel of Time, and also Ravnica had something similar, in that intelligent things, relatively, can become civilized. This would add an interesting addition to any politics that the characters might be involved in because there first opinion upon seeing an ogre is to think brute, even if he is a mage, but then they see him teach some class or give a speech for politics and they are like "O.o". It is a funny look. For Ki'Sha-la, along with floating plants and flying animals I can see some plants adapting to growing literally on a bird's or other flying things back. They might not be a threat to the bird, in fact they might keep away pests, but the humanoids could find them bothersome at best and problematic at worse if they have flying mounts. The plants might be fast spreading and try and take over the saddle and even think that the rider is an extension of the bird. Albeit little hair to cling to for them, but they could grow on the top of the rider's head if nothing else. Possibly veteran riders could be bald and almost completely shaved of all hair because of this, and people of the layer finding hair in general unattractive on most individuals. Might as well stem into the effects on social nature while we are at it. I can also see the idea of having things that would be in the Plane of Elemental Air in this layer as it rather fits. A lot of the plants and species that would be there I could see being in Ki'Sha-La. The two extremes I really have no comment on, those two are pretty much self-explanatory in nature. For the Morren layer I could see a wide spread amount of fungi and other scavengers and body devourers. ants, beetles, maggots, bugs and crawlers in general. Probably adapted spiders that can drain the blood from the most recently dead. *almost as if someone was experimenting with the undead nanites on spiders...* These spiders could then in turn be something very edible to a vampire, very much a delicacy to them. I could see a lot of intelligent fungi, like the myconids or even something closer to the thallids from Magic the Gathering. The thallids were known to grow substantially in numbers after battles and could be one of the few saving graces for the Living as they might interfere with the nanites, less because of magic and more because they grow quickly and eat away at the body so that it can't be repaired. I could see mushrooms and fungi being a good sign for the Living and a bad omen for the Undead, especially if the fungi was on one of the undead, it would be like having Anthrax break out in America. Talos I see having less of any specific intelligent, monstrous species, as in there are only a few of each, just a large number of various ones around. This leads to more of a legendary feel on the layer, almost everything is unique in such a place. Trophies go high and so does monster-hunting. I don't really have much for Peroca right now as all I am seeing is jungle, jungle, ruins, and jungle. Yeah maybe it should only be of the same size as the robot, which still could lead to some interesting things though. Finally for the Amber Throne I kinda like calling it the Amber Throne, or Kingdom of the Amber Throne, maybe the name we give it can be the original name before the Empress took control of the layer and renamed it. Bravium though sounds good. Next two weeks I might not be on much, going to california again so, but after that Ill be in Washington and more or less on all the time.Well probably less but Ill be on more than twice a week.
NorthWind 07-09-07, 11:10 PM	Wow. I've only read the first page or so, but I felt I had to respond to this. The scope of what you've done in the first page or so is much more than I ever expected to see...well, anywhere. Thus far, I really liked the opening story, (that is to say, the fluff - the physics concepts you used really caught my attention) and for a moment, I thought that I had stumbled into a sci-fi novel. The premise is top-notch. The crunch interests me, but most of the math I can barely grasp, if at all. But the time and effort you put into that is very impressive. I don't think I could use them myself, but the idea and the execution is well done. I'll do my best to read my way up to the most recent post, so that I can contribute if I could. (Speaking of which, I believe you said you didn't like producing names. I'm not sure if that's an issue at this point, but I'd like to help with names if I can) Anyways, looks good! Really good - I'm really impressed with the time and effort that comes through.
Araes 07-10-07, 02:54 AM	Thank you for the comment Northwind. Its always wonderful to hear that someone likes the work we've been doing here, and I hope you continue to like it as you keep reading through the thread. We wander a bit around page 7, but I've linked most of the important stuff on the first page by this point, so you can use that as something of a guide based on interests. Jeweler, great post in terms of ideas for additions to the layers. Wonderful bits on both Morren and Ki'Sha-la with the ideas about various forms of plant growth. Now all we need to do is develop them a bit more and write up some fluff for them. I agree in terms of the unique beasts of Talos, although I think it would be likely that there would still be a good number of the more mundane large predators as well. Still, the more unique, high adventure and exploration feel would benefit from the rarity of the big, bad intelligent beasties. In terms of Peroca, when I think of the layer, one of the first things that comes to mind is actually the regressed societies described in The Time Machine. Living on the walls of valleys and in high passes so that they can remain safe from all the things that wander the wilds. I'd say there's quite a bit more than jungle, jungle, ect..., but its more the difference that there are lots of things that just happen to be extreme in size. However, on the jungle theme, it would also be cool to have some of the Robinson Crusoe style house developments happening of the super jungles of the layer. Maybe something akin to Solace from the Dragonlance novels. In regards to the Ravnica ideas and cards, I really like the look of the Mountain and Plains cards. They have a great architecture to them that would be cool to imagine replicated wide scale. I also think that the idea of groups which try and promote an ecosystem within the city itself is an interesting idea, and could make for several cool, organizations with different goals for ecosystem growth and development. Whole buildings covered in plants evokes some really interesting mental images of vertical farming, although I'm not sure how feasible that actually would be. Finally, as a massive addition, I've gone through and answered (mostly) the various questions about campaign worlds that I asked in another thread to the greatest extent I think I currently can. The full list is as follows (hidden so it doesn't take up a million miles of page). Summary What is a short, "two sentence" or "10 second" pitch for your setting? A high adventure setting where the last survivors of the universe are carving out a life in their aging, layered, Dyson’s Sphere-like refuge. Including AI gods, robotic adventurers, and derelict firearms, this is a setting that consistently blurs the line between superior technology and true “magic.” What are the driving motivations for adventure? The drive to find or acquire technological remnants of days gone by – throughout the Sphere, technology has been sometimes fallen, been discarded, or simply been lost, and a great many of these artifacts sit idle, just waiting for adventurers to find them. The urge to explore the world, particularly in areas where devastation has caused the carefully constructed order to collapse. Accumulation of personal power - within many layers, there are drastic social conflicts which present vast opportunities for motivated adventurers. Survival of the species / salvation – due to problems within the Sphere, many layers are in dire straights and adventurers may prove the difference between the survival and death of their people. Personal enlightenment – much of the knowledge of the world and its bygone universe has been forgotten over time and the quest to retain or recover it is a constant drive, whether it be technology, the form of the world, or knowledge of the divine. Basic Laws of Nature Does your world abide by what we would perceive as the general laws of nature? In general, yes, although with the inclusion of “supertech”, there are many things which effectively require magical supports. However, in most cases, a sense of reality has tried to be preserved, such as with the development of society and the realistic effects of technology If not, where does it diverge? The largest is the existence of “higher space” manipulation techniques (basically magic), where the higher order membranes that enclose our traditional dimensions of space can be twisted or changed. This allows for affects that bend the normal laws of physics within the world. Energy manipulations that defy thermodynamics, kinetics, and Newtonian laws. Stress, force, lift, ect… may be modified. Instantaneous information and matter transfer that exceeds the speed of light. Is an exception made for magic if it exists? As mentioned, magic does exist, and is really the major source of any diversions from what should be realistic in standard view of the universe. Racial How many intelligent races are there? A diverse amount that is difficult to count in a pure number due to the Freeform Racial Creation system we are using. If more than 1, why? The campaign setting uses a Freeform Racial Creation system to create a being with a wide range of possible abilities and traits. In addition, there are also creatures such as dragons, robots, digital creatures, spiritual elementals, and fey. Can the intelligent races intermix and breed? Among the humanoids yes. Cross-breeding among different racial types is not possible. Different forms of elementals may “combine” in some forms that represent breeding and intermixing. How fast does the race (or races) reproduce in your world? A wide range that varies drastically by racial group and layer location. Robots may join together to build replicas of themselves with proper time and the correct supplies. This is similar to mating. Dragons breed at rates similar to those provided in the Draconomicon. Elementals do not “breed”, but they may intermix and shape one another. Fey do not “breed”, and are affixed to certain terrain features, which further limits their interaction. Powerful digital creatures can spawn further copies of themselves, as well as lesser sentient creatures, which spring full grown in the digital world. What is a general lifespan for the races? Less than human rates to over 10 times human rates for the humanoids. Robots have effectively limitless lifespans assuming regular maintenance and lack of external hazards. Dragons have lifespans similar to those in the Draconomicon. Elementals, fey, and digital creatures have effectively limitless lifespans. How has the reproduction rate and lifespan affected the various racial outlooks and interactions? Due to their long lifespans, and place away from the “lesser” beings, both dragons and digital creatures have taken a long view to much of existence and often play the humanoid races against one another in their schemes. Are the races geographically intermixed or isolated and to what degree? The races are nearly uniformly intermixed, with some variations based on layers and ideal living terrain. How much migration of species has there been over the life of the world? This depends heavily on the layer and the external effects on the societies. In Kaltera and Solas, there have been extensive migrations to avoid thermal problems. In Morren, there have been massive displacements due to the horrors of war and the plague of undeath. In Peroca, there has been almost no migration, as the macro-life that swarms over the layer almost completely limits all travel. Is the power level for races comparable / less (-1 or more LA) / more (+1 or more LA) than standard D&D? On average, probably slightly higher than a standard D&D world. Generally +1 LA for humanoid races. How long has intelligent life existed in the world? It’s a mystery, as nearly of sentient life except for digital creatures were in hibernation for an extensive period. Did intelligent life evolve or was it created at a certain state? In the old universe, it evolved, but within the current universe, it was transplanted whole. Has intelligent life agreed on one universal language across most regions? No, the world and layers are so large that there is extensive variance of language across their spans. An exception to this is the layer of the Amber Throne, which has been dominated into unity and has imposed a layer-wide language. Magic How powerful is magic relative to what a single person or group can do without it? Quite powerful – In fact, with proper control, tasks beyond the means of even hundreds of people may be undertaken by a single individual. However, most practitioners of magic have nowhere near this level of control, and it is reserved for the godlike AI beings of the Sphere. Are there any well known limits to magic (power, things it can affect)? Considering that supertech (now viewed as magic) caused the very end of existence, no, not really. How common is magic throughout the population? This setting would generally be referred to as High Magic and magic in the form of technological objects and practitioners of various types or disciplines are fairly common. Are these ratio's static throughout the nations / races? Among humanoids, they are relatively similar from group to group. However, there is some variance by layers as technology may have regressed more or less based upon living conditions. What is the source (sources) of magic? Magic is harnessed through modifications that have been made to the basic physiology of creatures, which allow them to manipulate non-visible aspects of space. Much of this effect is powered through a great machine at the core of the Sphere, that channels the collapsing energy of the universe. Magicians can draw directly from this machine in some cases, and in others they use lines of power which were originally created before the habitation of the Sphere to assist developing communities of people. In addition, some mages may also channel their own energy or the life energy of other creatures. Is there some standard process for how a magical effect is produced? There are several paths through which the various aspects of magic are classified. Generally, there are the standard somatic, verbal, and material components, as well as images and the use of personal energy. Can magical effects or power be combined in an organized and constructive way? Yes, groups of creatures may combine spell effects using the standard rules for such acts in D&D. How much of the mechanics of magic is known by the world and is any of it wrong or dogma? Most of the mechanics of magic among the humanoid population is dogma by this point. The very fact that it is referred to as “magic” rather than its true form of technology further illustrates the point. Is magic and its effects static or can new magic and effects be discovered? Magic is by no means static, as huge swaths of information has been forgotten over the ages, and this information can be recovered with effort or exploration. How controlled by the general population is the practice of magic? This varies heavily by layer, as some layers, and nations within those layers heavily regulate magic use, while others allow and even promote its use. How organized as a group (groups) are those who practice magic? Again, heavily varies by layer and nation and there are too many to list. Does the use of magic imply political / social status? Highly variant by layer and nation. Are there only particular places or ways in which magic may be learned or can it even BE learned? Magic is very diverse in both its types and practices, and it can definitely be learned. In many areas, there are organized societies devoted to passing on the practice of magic to worthy individuals. Are there drawbacks / benefits / secondary effects to using magic? Yes, there are definite benefits and drawbacks based upon the types of magic used. Channelers of the Great Machine may do physical damage to themselves by pulling too much of its power. Defilers may kill the plants of the world around them in their greed. However, the power and abilities of magical use easily compensate for most users. What is the rate of change of magical knowledge in the world? This completely depends on location. In some locations, knowledge is actually still regressing due persistent conflicts or disasters that prevent any activity not directly related to survival. In others, it is flourishing due to peace or unique resources. How has the presence of magic affected the development of the world? Technological “magic” caused the world to come into existence in the first place, and made it necessary by ruining the universe. Has magic dramatically affected the health and lifespans of the world? Yes, magic that enables long lifespans, increases harvests, cures diseases, heals wounds, and affects health in other ways is often available. How has magic affected creative crafts like the arts? Physical pieces of art exist which are constructed wholly out of magically bound effects. Magic is also often used to directly convey the artistic wishes of a creator to their medium. Finally, art is itself often a medium through which magical effects may be transferred to the world around the artist. Is magic influential, or possibly even the only option in areas like combat, travel, communication, agriculture, construction, ect...? Magic is heavily influential in all these areas and leftover supertech has had profound effects on military thought, building construction, the growth of crops, travel within and cross layers, and communication. Can the ability to use magic permanently be lost? Temporarily? Undecided, but probably likely. In addition to ideas like a channeler “burning out”, it may also be possible for powerful creatures or accidents to strip the magical manipulation ability from a creature. In addition, certain magical effects of D&D like antimagic shells still exist which temporarily remove magical effects and abilities. Are there trends or fads in magic? Yes, although this phenomenon is highly dependent on location within the Sphere. Are there gender or racial differences in the previously mentioned considerations for magic? Among humanoids, not to any major extent. Across major racial types, robots have similar skill, elementals and fey possess spell-like effects, dragons possess generally greater command of magic due to their long lifespans, and digital creatures often possess highly developed or god-like magical control based on their type. Can items that independently hold magic be produced? Yes, and in many locations are widely produced as the main means of solving certain societal needs. If so, can these items be mass produced easily? In some cases, yes. For example, some types like wands are produced in certain areas Are there super powerful items of magic (artifacts) and if so, why? Yes, and many of these have already been detailed, such as the Mask of the Machine, the Boundless Flower, and the Cosmic Beacon. These items / areas were generally created before the degradation and loss of technology within the Sphere, and as such, give access to powers often reserved for digital entities. Can animals, beasts, monsters, ect... access magic? Yes, there are several types of beasts (sentient and not) who have access to magic through natural or modified means. Technology What is the average level of technology in the world? Existing? Very, very high. PL 8-9. Actually in use by common people? Much lower, except in the case of technology which has been relegated to the domain of magic due to regression of technical knowledge. How much variance in technology is there geographically / racially? Fairly extensive variance both from layer to layer and from area to area within certain layers. Generally, layers have focused on those particular technologies which are necessary for survival, and let others slide. Within layers, there can also be significant technological differences due to the vast areas under consideration and isolation many groups have faced. What is the state of the art for specific fields such as transportation, communication, weapons, armor, agriculture, navigation, construction, and / or education? Widely varies. Nerus would probably be the highest overall, as they have been the most sheltered. The Amber Throne's layer would probably also be up there, as the unification of a whole layer has allowed for a lot of peacetime development. Solas, Kaltera, and Morren are probably fairly regressed, as they've had to deal with a lot. Peroca (the lost world layer) is probably extremely regressed on average, simply because they've had to deal with megapredators on a daily basis, and are almost completely isolated as societies. Arborea or Talos are still somewhat unspecified, but Talos probably started low and is growing due to tech scavenging, while Arborea is kept artificially low to control the crop workers. Are there certain technologies which are isolated / restricted in some way? Yes, many different technologies are isolated or restricted based on a variety of conditions. In some areas, guilds hold tight strangleholds over their particular specialities. In others, technology simply falls into the hands of willing explorers. Technology is also heavily stratified by layers as has been mentioned. What is the rate of change of technological knowledge in the world? Varies, but by layer, Nerus could be said to be stagnant, or slightly regressing, Arborea is slightly growing in secrecy, the Amber Throne layer is growing, Kaltera and Solas are both slightly regressing still except in a few areas, Morren is slightly regressing due to war, Talos is growing in fits and jumps, and Peroca is roughly stagnant. Are there specific places / areas where change is happening at a substantially faster / slower rate? Already covered, but within layers there are often also enclaves of those who happen to be particularly devoted to either preserving the old arts, or rediscovering lost ones. How does society at large view any magical / technological changes which are occuring? Huge question which will need a future post to cover. Are common people even aware of changes for the most part? On average, no. However, in a few layers, some technological breakthroughs have made waves, such as increased mobility for the people of Solas under the harsh sun, and recent breakthroughs in bringing the undead plague more under control on Morren. Characters What does being a high level character mean? Generally, social responsibility has a strong correlation to personal power in this setting, so many of the most influential people also happen to be rather high level. Basically, those with more skill and wealth naturally gravitate to higher positions of authority. As such, very high level characters can often through virtue of wealth, experience, or reputation, assume large social roles beyond just adventuring fame. Does high level imply social as well as personal power and are most of those who rule high level? Yes, yes, and yes. How common is a 10th / 20th level character? Sphere wide, class variance generally falls off following the logarithmic progression in the DMG. There are half as many 2nd as first level characters. There are half that many 4th level characters. Half as many 8th. Half as many 16th. Ect… into Epic. How common are the PC classes? Progression generally follows the DMG specified rates. Is there special training or circumstances required to have PC classes? Varies heavily by region and culture. Often there will be some form of training required for the classes, or mentorship. Some DMs may also require particular experiences. However, one major source of adventurers in the game are those who have freshly awakened from hibernation, which may claim such status from their past lives. Are the any of the PC classes geographically specialized or varied? Yes, by both layer and by region within layers. However, it should be noted that this setting uses a Freeform Class Generation system, which means that there are not specific classes like “fighter” or “rogue” to reference. How wealthy is a high (20th) level character compared to the D&D standard? They should be similar to the D&D standard in most respects. Since this is a high tech, high magic world, their personal wealth will probably be slightly higher than the average, perhaps up to 25%. Are PrC's commonly available? Yes, there are a wide extent of PrC’s available, but they have yet to be fully detailed, or have a system for creating them. Are PrC's limited to only DMG / Complete / All splatbooks? Undecided at the moment, but definitely needs further posts. Are there custom PrC's based on races / regions / organizations / ect...? There will likely be certain packages for certain layers and organizations within those layers. Skills and Feats Are there additional / alternate skills available to people within the setting? Do these skills vary by region? Yes, but needs further work to fully detail these skills, and the skill system as a whole. Are there alternate uses for existing skills of note? Yes, quite a few. Ride for example can be used with flying mounts in certain areas, particularly Ki’Sha-la. Are there mentor / training / usage / story requirements for increasing skills? Generally would vary by DM, but there are no hard set requirements for training. Are there additional feats available to people within the setting? Do these feats vary by region? Yes, there will be feats by layer and region within layer, but they still need to be fleshed out. Are there changes to the effects of existing feats? In general, most feats function as they would in a standard D&D game. Some of the metamagic feats are altered slightly simply by the spell point system in use, and the origins of magic. In addition, feats are gained differently due to the Freeform Character Generation. Are there requirements for gaining some feats beyond pure game mechanics? Possibly, but this has yet to be decided. Geographic What is the physical shape of the world? The shape of the world is similar to a Dyson’s Sphere, with multiple layers floating as smaller sphere’s within one another. Between the spheres, bars of energy traverse the empty space, providing light like the lost suns. Each of the layers themselves are then separated into landmasses like continents on which people live. The layers are not perfectly solid spheres, but rather separate masses of land, which circle at orbits around a common center that carve out an averagely spherical surface. Is there the standard division between land and sky in this world or some other organization? From the perspective of the inhabitants, most layers have a sky/land relationship, but the true arrangement is as described above. If there is a land / sky relationship, do beings live within the land or in the sky? In some layers, the inhabitants have never seen the sky, as they live underground to avoid harsh environmental conditions, and as such, only view the world in a “mother earth” light. Are there what we would consider common celestial bodies in the sky? Moons? Stars? Other? Within the sky, the inhabitants of all but the central layer can see other layers orbiting overhead as vague sun washed shapes. Many of these have taken on similar significance as constellations within those societies and are regarded as representations of divine, important for regular ceremonies, and sometimes viewed as aspects of heaven. In addition, as already mentioned, there are also bars of energy which cross the sky in regular intervals like a sun. How large is your world in terms of available land area? Gigantic. Literally 100’s of Earth areas in total space. The central sphere is of Earth diameter, and they only increase from there. What is the ratio of habitable to uninhabitable land area? Somewhat higher than Earth in most areas, to maximize land available for habitation by sentient races. However, since the continental masses are not connected to one another, it can be relatively difficult to pin down the exact surface area ratio. What types of uninhabitable land area? There is both open space land area where there is only a light fog of nutrient and vapor laden air, and there is also some land area filled in by bodies of water within continental masses. What types of inhabitable land area are there? The full gamut of land types available within a standard Earth-like world. Forests, oceans, mountains, plains, ect… Is some or all of the population limited to terran views of habitability, or can they live in areas we cannot? Only in areas we cannot? No, they are not limited in the same manner. Some races within the Sphere can live under water, under the Earth, and floating within the air. Is the section of the world you are creating the only area that exists (IE, the whole physical world) or just a subset? This area being created is literally the only thing left in the universe. How far can you see on a normal day on an open plain? (IE, things like curvature, permanent obscuring, ect...) Since this setting has an inverse curvature, you can actually see an incredible distance on a clear day. However, as there is much more water vapor in the air compared to an Earth-like world, relatively unimpeded lines of sight are somewhat rare due to heavy mixes of clouds. Do geographical features in your world follow Earth formation patterns? If not, why, and what guides their formation? The entire Sphere was created by a massive construction project using mega-engineering principles. Terrestrial patterns were adhered to for the most part to give the inhabitants a sense of home, but they do not have actual terrestrial origins. Are there geographical features which don't and / or can't exist on Earth? Gargantuan cities of Manhattan density across whole layers. Bars of energy traversing the sky. Floating islands and continents that “orbit” one another. The Sphere itself by known principles. There are also some “art” features of the Sphere geography, which were created by the original builders and don’t conform to any actual pattern. What is a very general history of your world, and was it happenstance or design that it came into existence? The collapse of the universe was initiated. The builders decided to build a massive haven to escape the destruction or ride it out. It was built using a vast array of galactic resources in secret. Hibernation ships were sent out to collect all of the future inhabitants and return them to the Sphere. Numerous people went into slumber. A group of uninvited refugees snuck aboard the Sphere. The universe completely collapsed. Both the creator and usurper leaders of the Sphere transferred themselves into digital versions of life. Some few hibernators were reawakened for maintenance and to deal with the problems of the usurpers. Disasters struck across the Sphere due to the conflict between the groups. The rest of the hibernators began to emerge irregularly from their slumbers in fits and bursts. Current days. Climate What is the atmosphere of your world like if there is one? Varies by layer, but most are somewhat Earth-like, but with with a higher water vapor percentage and more cloud cover / rain. There are also the aforementioned bars of energy that hinder high altitude aerial travel. A few layers have starkly different atmospheric conditions due to the malfunctioning of their “suns”. How dangerous is the atmosphere of the world in relation to its inhabitants? To standard humans? In terms of breathing, not at all for either case. In the layers of Kaldera and Solas, the “suns” have malfunctioned, and these layers have become extremely cold and hot respectively. Is your world on average warmer / colder / ~the same as Earth? Roughly the same except for the aforementioned layers. Is your world on average wetter / drier / ~the same as Earth? On average, it is wetter than the Earth to compensate for the lack of a similar percentage of standing bodies of water. How much diversity is there in climate across the world? Extensive diversity, exceeding even that of Earth, as habitable locations had to be made for as wide an array as possible of refugees from the various planets of the old universe. If there is climate diversity, is there a pattern to its location / organization? Yes, the climate of the Sphere was carefully tailored in most cases to be representative of certain planets, to have the appearance of randomness, and to be highly predictable on a long term scale. On average, the first two have held except for disasters, but there have been major predictability problems. How much of the area of the world is located within each of the various climate zones? One entire layer could be said to be desert, and another to be arctic. Barring those, climate zones are roughly similar to Earth in the other layers, but they have even further extremes of wet / dry / hot / cold and oscillations of these variables, to account for all the different life forms needs. Is the warmth / wetness / diversity of climate a major issue for the population of the world? How sensitive are they to changes? In general, no. Some life forms are relatively specialized and require particular areas to maintain life, but overall the inhabitants are fairly flexible to change. Whole layers have collapsed or been blown apart, and life has continued on the scraps. Are there any periodic events which occur in the world or specific regions? Yes, several types of periodic events occur, such as monsoons, regular forest fire seasons, and other such events we might associate with Earth. In addition, there are also some stranger events such as migrations of the continents themselves in their orbits, the shiftings of ultra powerful individuals among the layers, and in some cases the continued bombardment of debris from prior disasters. Is the overall climate temporally static or does it change? The climate is dynamic on most areas of the Sphere, although a few like Kaldera and Solas are more static. If it does change, is there an order to the change? Is it periodically cyclic? In general, the climate change within the Sphere follows periodic cycles that roughly approximate seasons. If it does have a cycle, are there commonly held terms and conditions for sections of the cycle? Generally, seasons that simulate the patterns of more terrestrial life. Has sentient life's presence caused any major impacts on the climate of the world? If the sentient life of the digital “gods” is included then most definitely yes. They have caused massive disasters due to their infighting which has wracked whole sections of the world. In addition, humanoids themselves have caused massive changes in several layers due to social conflicts, expansion, and development. Most societies are still pre-industrial in their impact though, and many are still regressing, so their impact is somewhat isolated. Natural Resources What natural resources have reached a place of importance with sentient beings? Many of the common resources such as gems and precious metals that we associate as important. In addition, there are many super-tech materials which have been left over in the world and hold places of great importance as power sources, construction materials, and items of status. Which resources are particularly abundant, and in which areas? Far to vast to note right now. Which are noticably scarce? In some areas, water is particularly precious due to ever present heat or poor weather patterns. Food within the city layer of Nerus can in some places also be quite rare. What resources, if any, have been depleted in which areas over time? None have, or really can be completely depleted, as the Sphere is nearly a perfect closed system. However, irregularities in distribution and supply patterns have developed as disasters struck the Sphere and weather patterns were misaligned. Are there locations of rich deposits that haven't been discovered, or that aren't fully exploited? Talos is a particular example of an area in which there are great resources of materials which have yet to be discovered. As the whole layer is largely in a state of frontier exploration, and the surface during hibernation was bombarded with large quantities of scrap from the disasters of the other layers, there are numerous troves of super-tech materials just waiting to be discovered by explorers and scavengers. Are there resources on the verge of becoming important (like oil at the beginning of industrialization)? Depending on advancement in the layer of the Amber Throne, readily available sources of energy and technology may become extremely valuable. In the layer of Morren, some of the materials which are necessary for creation of the plague vaccines are becoming highly valuable as humanoids race to provide it to all of their members, and the undead try to stop them. Are there resources which we (as humans) might view as insignificant, but which are very rare or important in this world? Water is viewed as much more valuable in certain areas like Solas. How much conflict has been or might be caused by imbalances in resources? Extensive conflict is probably being caused in areas of Talos, Nerus, the caverns of Kaldera, and previously on the layer of the Amber Throne. As mentioned, the layer of Morren is undergoing widescale conflict for other reasons. Other Realms Do the people of the world believe in or know of a realm (realms) beyond their normal perception, no matter whether they exist or not? Yes, both the creator and usurper gods are an active part of many societies lives. They appear to them as gods and have heavily influenced their actions over time. They are described as living in the divine planes of the digital. A few isolated groups also believe in divine powers beyond just the visible gods and some also worship the fey, elementals, and other spirits. How organized are these beliefs? Quite organized in most cases, as the digital “gods” actively seek believers. In some areas, communication between the gods and their followers has become difficult or cut off completely, and as such, the practices have diverged somewhat from their original setup. How diverse are these beliefs? As diverse as the current members of the divine, of which there are quite a few on both the creator, usurper, and unaligned sides. Do such realms actually exist? Yes, the divine realm of the digital is actually the vast computer system which controls and maintains the Sphere. Do other beings live (or are believed to live) in these realms? Other beings are believed to, and actually do “live” in these realms of the digital. Effectively they are sentient code. Are there geographical connections to different otherworldly realms / beliefs? If yes or no, why? Beyond the Sphere, there is a vague realm of chaotic energy and matter, which is the origin point for the elementals which have migrated into the Sphere. In some portions of the outer layer of the Sphere, there have formed mild gaps (that were then sealed by the gods), and that allowed the elementals into the Sphere in the first place. There are also geographical connection points between the layers themselves in the form of teleportation zones. These zones are fairly unknown to most people, but a few of the more knowledgeable groups still use them. If otherworldly realms are inhabited, what is their relation (or perceived one) to the inhabitants of the world? The digital realm is viewed as a place beyond grasp, where only the perfect forms of the divine can reside, and where most souls are taken to rest in the embrace of the gods when they die. Robots literally do go to this place when they are destroyed if they have digital access and time. The gods themselves convey a view of being both omniscient and omnipresent. Are the inhabitants of the world correctly informed as to the nature of these relations? No, nearly all of the humanoid inhabitants have no idea about the true nature of the digital realms or that their “gods” are simply the AI remains of formerly corporeal people. Does belief in other realms or beings grant any tangible benefits to people in the world in question? Yes, through their great mastery over the reality manipulation effects and super-technology, they can bestow effects on their follows in the form of spell power and spells, as well as physical items for use. If other realms and beings do exist, can their existence be directly proven by the inhabitants of this world (Immanent) or is their existence simply a matter of faith (Transcendental)? Yes, because the gods are very much Immanent and active in the world, as are the elementals from beyond the Sphere. If there are beings in other realms beyond your world, can they manifest in the world and what form do these manifestations take? The gods of the Sphere can manifest in the world through robots by possessing their circuitry and then morphing their physical shape to suit their needs. This avatar possession copies a small portion of the digital being’s “soul” into the robot and, if the connection is severed, it can be left there. The elementals and fey of the Sphere can also manifest themselves by directly possessing those things which most closely represent the matter they are associated with such as plasma, trees, and soil. If there are beings (plural) in other realms, are there interrelations between the various beings? Yes, there is a great discord amongst the various factions of the gods, as they war over the operation of the Sphere and its ultimate control. This combat has led to multiple disasters which have drastically altered the shape of the Sphere before the other creatures reawakened. Has the presence or belief in otherly realms affected the political or social systems of the world in a significant way? Yes, as the gods are directly immanent in the world, they have personally manifested and guided the actions of their followers at many points throughout the awakened history of the Sphere. Are there specific rituals associated with knowledge or belief in otherly realms and beings? (Purification, sacrifice, ecstacy, divination, periodic / seasonal, spoken, journies, initiation, possession, funerial, community) Numerous, but more needs to be written about them in future posts. Are there specific items, symbols, animals, ect... associated with the knowledge or beliefs? Yes, and this will also be the subject of future god posts. Monsters What is meant by the term "monster" in your world? Monster is a varied term, but generally it can apply to beasts (sentient or not) which conflict with humanoid settlements, drastically different strains of humanoids which do the same, and people who behave in despicable ways from one societies moral standpoint. Are monsters just beasts, sentient beings too, or even whole other societies? Monster runs the whole gamut as far as what it can describe based on the region of the Sphere. Do monster serve specific functions or niches in society or nature? Yes, for example, in the layer of the Amber Throne, many of the previously most dangerous beasts have actually been tamed and put into service for the use of the Queen. How do monster's survive and how much room do they need compared to societies? It varies by monster, but large predators need a respective amount of lesser prey based on their size, and so on down through decreasing animals. Generally, this progression will follow logical Earth norms. As there are forms of macro-life like dinosaurs, these will need the same amount of food and range that similar groups on Earth did. Do monsters pose a significant threat to organized societies? Yes, for example, those same dinosaurs pose a drastic threat to many of the societies of Peroca, as they are far too powerful a threat to deal with for the isolated and technologically hampered humanoids. Have some monsters been domesticated by organized groups to serve their needs? Yes, as per the prior Amber Throne case and other cases throughout the Sphere. Animals and Fauna Are there any unique animals or plants to this world? A vast number, and far too many to mention in one post. Generally, the plant life is a broad representation of what was available from countless worlds composing a galactic civilization. How are animals and plants (unique or not) geographically located within the world? Most animals have been located within specific biomes that correspond to their particular climate and food needs. Some of these biomes have collapsed due to problems, and animals and plants have wandered, but in general they are stable. Has sentient life's presence significantly impacted non-sentient life? Extinction? Displacement? As with the prior sentient life question, the gods have created massive impacts on the world around them through their infighting and resultant disasters.
Sliversun 07-10-07, 07:02 AM	Thanks for answering my questions! I have to admit, you and Jeweler had some pretty good answers that made a lot of sense. But could you clear something up for me? I thought that Talos was ment to be inbetween Ki'Sha-la and Morren. But hey, it's your setting. Also, I think that Bravium is a good name too.
NorthWind 07-10-07, 02:04 PM	I noticed something about membranes in the "Questions to ask when creating a world" - are you referring to string theory?
Araes 07-10-07, 02:21 PM	Northwind, in general, yes I am referring to string theory. I tend to be a bit more of a fan of non-standard versions of string theory put forth by folks like Lisa Randall at MIT (http://www.sciencewatch.com/july-aug2001/sw_july-aug2001_page3.htm), which postulate about the idea that at least some of the dimensions used in string theory could be superbranes, rather than micro ones, and potentially verifiable through experimentation. Which then also opens up the concept for them to be manipulatable.
NorthWind 07-10-07, 05:38 PM	Which is what produces magic, correct? The manipulation of higher-dimensional space? Or the manipulation of the strings?
Araes 07-10-07, 07:03 PM	The manipulation of higher dimensional space, which then produces effects in the perceivable three / four dimensional space. These effects are then basically thought of as magic, because nobody has any idea of how it is actually done besides the dogma its practice has fallen into. Like what we encounter today, advancement in the field requires so much effort and such a high level of supporting tech, that the best they can accomplish is to keep using the easier effects of it that have been developed for mass consumption. Sliversun, actually, I think you are right, and that would work better anyhow, as Talos would have then intercepted most of the debris from Ki'Sha-la's breakup, and the fallout of Morren would be almost completely due to the plague.
Sliversun 07-14-07, 02:27 AM	bump.
Sliversun 07-14-07, 02:29 AM	bump.
Sliversun 07-14-07, 02:30 AM	Here's some art I found that I thing might be suitible for this setting, but I'll let you decide. The Sphere: This could go on the history page, when the Sphere was being built. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/19097132/?qo=3&q=dyson+sphere&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 Nerus: This is what I think would be where all of the factions, guilds and other power groups would go to have they're meetings. Kind of like the Senate in Star Wars. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/19013760/ Here we would find possible the upper-class area, a little futueristic though. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/43394569/?qo=1&q=fantasy+cityscape&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 This, I think you would agree, would the a lower class industrial ward. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/14134923/?qo=23&q=fantasy+cityscape&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 Here's a nice skyline, with a ship docking too. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/31428155/?qo=34&q=fantasy+cityscape&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 Another nice skyline. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/26436510/?qo=2&q=city+skyline&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 This would be used to help illustrate the undercity. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/52010863/?qo=21&q=world+city&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 The city at sunset/sunrise. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/2876964/ Amber Throne: An airport. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/19013208/ Another kind of airport, but more industralised.http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/35669363/?q=steamport&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 Balseraphs: Gotta admit, this paints Baseraphs perfectly. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38174261/ Kaltera: Maybe one of the last remaining surface cities on the layer. Looks nice. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/15352551/?qo=2&q=ice+city&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 Some icy ruins. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/46650408/?qo=3&q=ice+city&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 An organic soldier and her robot comrad. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/6736648/ Solas: A desert city, under the shade of one of the floating landmasses. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/40057990/?qo=37&q=desert+city&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_s cale%3A5 Another desert city, this time built out of the wreak of an old sea ship. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/26347836/ I'll have more art up soon.
Araes 07-14-07, 02:43 PM	Wow, that's some great art you found there Sliversun, and some serious bumpage too :) I've forgotten to before, but I'll link to this and the other art post I did earlier on the front listing. I'm a little confused on the policy of DeviantArt regarding the personal art stored there, as DeviantArt doesn't own the art. The second Amber Throne picture you mentioned would actually work very well as a representation of the massive military skydock I wrote about earlier. It might be a little too "supertech" looking, but it has that correct flavor. The Sphere picture would actually be very interesting, as it has that implication that they're grinding up whole planets to create the land structure for the layers. For Nerus, the upper class ward picture you mentioned seems like a cool addition, and it promotes an interesting idea that perhaps there are even smaller island areas for habitation that circle within the layer and are only for the truly rich. I like both of the lower class ward pictures, as they give a nice feel for the gritty nature, but the Windy City and sunset pictures might be a little too obviously supertech. As you mentioned with the Baseraphs picture, its pretty much spot on, and would be a great art choice for the area. The three Kaltera pictures seemed like they might almost be too advanced, but then I thought about it, and really, since the surface of the layer was abandoned, the upper Kaltera would probably be very much like a futuristic, frozen wasteland. Love both of the Solas pictures, but the first one in particular has an awesome desert quality to it that's wonderful. Like a hazy vision of a future city in the Grand Canyon. Anyhow, look forward to more art, and I'll get to work writing some more with all the interesting ideas the art spawned.
Sliversun 07-15-07, 03:32 AM	Thanks! I'll post more stuff as soon as I can.
Araes 07-15-07, 08:58 PM	Palossia For this update, I've got a city for the Sphere. I'm thinking that this might fit best into the layer of the Amber Throne and feel that's where I'll put it. This was originally created for the Master DM Competition 36 over on the DM Boards, but half way through I realized that this would work great as an addition to the Sphere. City Map http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/Palossia.gif Castle Almonava (Palossia) Consé Structé (Church of Erus) Amphitheater Park (Palossia) Temple of the Radiant Sphere (Knights of the Radiant Sphere) Academy of the Sphere (Knights of the Radiant Sphere) Grumman Abbey (Order of Salation) Union Park (Palossia) Warehouse Way (Palossian Economic Council) The Coliseum (Palossia) The Great Western Gate (Palossia) Main City Statblock Palossia (Large City): Conventional; Magical; Nonstandard; AL TN; 40,000 gp limit; Assets 26,000,000 gp; Population 19,523; Mixed ( planetouched 6250 [aasimar/tiefling], half-elf 5271, half-orc 3709, human 1952, elf 1366, dwarf 585, halfling 390 ). Authority Figures: Count Victor Rashav (NG, Nob15); Markus Ferious, High Priest of the Church of Erus (TN, Clr17); Sir Cardáe Irnart, Knight of the Sphere (TN, Pal2/Wiz4/Spellsword5/EldritchKnight6 or Pal3/Wiz4/EKn10) Count Victor Rashav, Aasimar, Nob15: CR 14; Size M (6 ft., 1 in. tall); HD 15d8-15; hp 42; Init +1 (+1 Dex); Spd 30 ft.; AC 11 (+1 Dex); Attack +10/+5/+0 melee, or +12/+7/+2 ranged; SV Fort +4, Ref +8, Will +11; AL N; Str 8, Dex 13, Con 8, Int 14, Wis 16, Cha 20. Languages Spoken: Abyssal, Aquan, Auran, Celestial, Common, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Giant, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, Ignan, Infernal, Orc, Sylvan, Terran, Undercommon. Skill points: Nob 126 Skills and feats: Bluff +19, Concentration +0.5, Craft (Alchemy) +4, Craft (Blacksmithing) +4.5, Diplomacy +17, Hide +5, Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty) +18, Listen +4, Move Silently +1, Perform (Dance) +18, Perform (Oratory) +17, Search +4.5, Sense Motive +20, Speak Language +16, Spot +4, Use Magic Device +5.5; Alertness, Leadership, Lightning Reflexes, Point Blank Shot, Skill Focus (Perform (Oratory)), Skill Focus (Bluff). Possessions: 59,000 gp in gear. High Saliture Markus Ferious, Aasimar, Clr17: CR 17; Size M (5 ft., 6 in. tall); HD 17d8; hp 115; Init +3 (+3 Dex); Spd 30 ft.; AC 13 (+3 Dex); Attack +16/+11/+6 melee, or +15/+10/+5 ranged; SV Fort +12, Ref +8, Will +15; AL N; Str 18, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 20, Cha 14. Languages Spoken: Common, Celestial. Skill points: 60 Skills and feats: Heal +24, Hide +3, Knowledge (Local) +3.5, Knowledge (Religion) +16, Listen +5, Move Silently +3, Spellcraft +22, Spot +5; Reach Spell, Rapid Spell, Leadership, Still Spell, Scribe Scroll, Silent Spell. Possessions: 100,000 gp in gear. Cleric Domains: Protection, Strength Sir Cardáe Irnart, Tiefling, Pal2/Wiz4/Spellsword5/EldritchKnight6: CR 17; Size M (5 ft., 11 in. tall); HD 2d10 + 4d4 + 5d8 + 6d6; hp 108; Init -1 (-1 Dex); Spd 30 ft.; AC 9 (-1 Dex); Attack +16/+11/+6 melee, or +14/+9/+4 ranged; SV Fort +17, Ref +4, Will +12; AL LG; Str 12, Dex 19, Con 14, Int 18, Wis 10, Cha 12. Languages Spoken: Abyssal, Common, Elven, Gnome, Halfling, Sylvan. Skill points: 100 Skills and feats: Knowledge (arcana) 15 ranks; Concentration 15 ranks; Spellcraft 20 ranks; Knowledge (religion) 15 ranks; Sense Motive 15 ranks; Craft (Weaponsmithing) 15 ranks; Craft (Armorsmithing) 14 ranks; Leadership, Improved Toughness, Arcane Strike, Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Two Weapon Fighting, Greater Two Weapon Fighting. Possessions: 100,000 gp in gear. Important Characters: Ania Cordova, Abbot of the Order of Salation (Brd14); Ivan Yusef, Head of the Palossia Economic Council (Aristocrat11); Danielle Malen, Custodian of the Palossian Groves (Drd11); Stanley Jameson, Chief of the Town Guard (Ftr16); Tara Milonin, Head Mistress of the Academy of the Sphere (Wiz14); Master Smith Arnold Marnum (Exp20); Maria and Talbin Fistwith, Peasant Heroes and Owners of the Fistwith Hotel (Com22 and Com21) Other Characters and Population (hidden so it won't be huge): Adepts: Adept14 (1), Adept11 (1), Adept10 (1), Adept7 (2), Adept6 (2), Adept5 (2), Adept4 (4), Adept3 (8), Adept2 (24), Adept1 (90) Aristocrats: Aristocrat10 (1), Aristocrat8 (2), Aristocrat6 (2), Aristocrat5 (2), Aristocrat4 (4), Aristocrat3 (8), Aristocrat2 (24), Aristocrat1 (90) Barbarians: Barbarian11 (1), Barbarian9 (1), Barbarian8 (1), Barbarian6 (2), Barbarian5 (2), Barbarian4 (2), Barbarian3 (8), Barbarian2 (20), Barbarian1 (40) Bards: Bard12 (1), Bard10 (1), Bard7 (2), Bard6 (2), Bard5 (2), Bard4 (4), Bard3 (8), Bard2 (24), Bard1 (48) Clerics: Cleric15 (1), Cleric13 (1), Cleric9 (2), Cleric8 (2), Cleric7 (2), Cleric5 (4), Cleric4 (8), Cleric3 (8), Cleric2 (32), Cleric1 (64) Commoners: Commoner19 (1), Commoner11 (4), Commoner10 (2), Commoner6 (8), Commoner5 (4), Commoner3 (24), Commoner2 (48), Commoner1 (15802) Druids: Druid9 (1), Druid8 (1), Druid6 (2), Druid5 (2), Druid4 (2), Druid3 (8), Druid2 (20), Druid1 (40) Experts: Expert16 (1), Expert14 (1), Expert10 (2), Expert8 (2), Expert7 (2), Expert5 (4), Expert4 (8), Expert3 (8), Expert2 (32), Expert1 (539) Fighters: Fighter13 (1), Fighter12 (1), Fighter8 (2), Fighter7 (2), Fighter6 (2), Fighter4 (8), Fighter3 (4), Fighter2 (24), Fighter1 (48) Monks: Monk12 (1), Monk11 (1), Monk10 (1), Monk6 (4), Monk5 (2), Monk3 (12), Monk2 (24), Monk1 (48) Paladins: Paladin13 (2), Paladin9 (2), Paladin7 (4), Paladin5 (4), Paladin4 (8), Paladin3 (8), Paladin2 (32), Paladin1 (64) Rangers: Ranger9 (1), Ranger8 (1), Ranger7 (1), Ranger5 (2), Ranger4 (4), Ranger3 (4), Ranger2 (16), Ranger1 (32) Rogues: Rogue16 (1), Rogue15 (1), Rogue12 (1), Rogue8 (4), Rogue6 (2), Rogue4 (8), Rogue3 (4), Rogue2 (24), Rogue1 (48) Sorcerers: Sorcerer12 (1), Sorcerer10 (2), Sorcerer6 (2), Sorcerer5 (4), Sorcerer3 (12), Sorcerer2 (24), Sorcerer1 (48) Warriors: Warrior15 (2), Warrior14 (1), Warrior8 (4), Warrior7 (2), Warrior4 (12), Warrior2 (24), Warrior1 (1437) Wizards: Wizard13 (2), Wizard7 (6), Wizard4 (12), Wizard2 (24), Wizard1 (48) http://araesmojo.googlepages.com/PalossiaBuildings.jpg City Description Palossia is a city that not more than a 100 years ago was less than a ripple on the public consciousness, but in that time has grown from little more than a collection of shacks to one of the more influential cities in its region. Currently a relatively large city of 19,500 people, Palossia is well known as both a seat of power and trade center within its region. More importantly, however, it is also the center of the Erudite faith, which has itself been growing by bounds and rapidly expanding outward from this point for many years. Structurally, Palossia is about 150 acres in size, most of which are enclosed by an outer defensive wall, and divided into 13 administrative wards. For its population of nearly 20,000 people though, this is a rather small physical location, and Palossia proper has a population density of nearly 130 people per acre. Physically, this has been accomplished through the construction of numerous multi-story tenements, which seem to almost spill out of the city walls when viewed from afar. However, this is not to say that Palossia is a warren, as significant portions of the city have been given over to parks, entertainment venues, and other open space. In addition, Palossia is also a coastal city, with significant marina and dockside frontage. In perhaps its most well known reference, Palossia is often referred to by bards as the “city of two faces”, where both the heavenly and hellish walk the streets. Although a fanciful exaggeration, the moniker does have some basis in fact, due to the high proportion of aasimar and tieflings which call the city their home. Apparently drawn there by the Church of Erus, they have settled in the area at such high rates that outsiders are now the dominant population group. In regards to the Church of Erus, one of the other most well known aspects of Palossia is the high proportion of religious evangelists which it sends forth into the regions around it. Founded on a firm belief in conversion and proselytizing to the masses, the members of the Church have become regular sightings within cities and villages for miles around. In some areas, they have become so ubiquitous, and spread their faith so quickly, that neighboring regions have labeled them menaces and, in a few cases, even outlawed their practices. One of the driving factors for this has been that Palossia is viewed as the holy land of the faithful, and new converts are universally encouraged to leave their current home, and take up residence in Palossia, without consideration for any social or economic issues they might face. Many times, these converts convictions are so strong that they will leave unconverted families or businesses mid-stride in their haste to depart. As Palossia has developed extremely strong ties to the Erudite Church, all those who convert to the faith are viewed as temporary citizens of the physical city as well until they have an opportunity to prove their allegiance. Due to this influx of new blood, Palossia itself is rapidly reaching the confines of its original area. Due to the wealth brought in by its citizens, and the heavy tithing the Church encourages, Erudites can provide a quite comprehensive program of social welfare for new settlers to the city. Multi-story tenements to conserve space are a common sight throughout much of the city. However, more and more often, homes for these converts have to be established beyond the original city walls. Surprisingly, however, even among the more shoddy districts of the city, crime is relatively scarce. Largely, this could be said to be due to the effects of another active organization in the city, which was historically tied to the Church of Erus, but has morphed and grown to take on a life of its own. This organization is the Knights of the Radiant Sphere, which is a religiously based group of warriors that have their largest center of operations within the walls of Palossia at the Temple of Radiance. Built upon edicts of both protection and questing, the Knights serve dual roles within, and around, the region of Palossia as supplementary enforcers of the law of the land and as protectors of sites which their order has deemed to be holy. Governmentally, Palossia is controlled on the surface by the Count of the city who is the acknowledged head of state and chief of foreign policy. Keeping court within the main fortress of the city, Castle Almonava, the current Count of the city is Victor Rashav, who is said to be a blood descendant of the city’s original founder, Donovan Markov. In addition to the Count, there is also a council of aristocrats and influential merchants who are in charge of the city’s day to day economic functioning. The workings of the council are largely an exclusionary affair, with new members only being voted in based upon acquaintance and good standing in the community. However, despite surface appearances, all of Palossia is in some manner or another directly controlled by the arms of the Church of Erus. The Count himself is a capable leader and diplomat, but serves as head of state largely at the whim of the Church, and spends much of his time making sure that he meets their expectations and retains that position. The council of the city is less tightly controlled, but the Church is one of the largest economic forces in the city, and in addition to having their direct representative on the Council, many of the merchants and aristocrats are also devout members of the Church. The Process of Maeshun As mentioned previously, all those who convert to the Church of Erus are considered to be conditional citizens of the land of Palossia. With this status, individuals may live within its walls, pay the state taxes, attend services at the Erudite Churches, and generally go about their lives in a normal manner. However, for those who wish to be accepted as full citizens in the unified body of Erus and Palossia, and those who have endangered their status through some means such as illegal activities, there is a further trial they may undertake – the process of Maeshun. Depending on which case is being considered, the mechanics of Maeshun are slightly different. In the case of criminals, before any part of the standard criminal proceedings have begun, an accused may state that they would rather be subject to a period of Maeshun than pursue the full process of law. This is not viewed as an admission of guilt by the accused, but simply that they would rather place their fate in the higher power of Erus. At this request, the accused is stripped of all their worldly possessions by the court, and provided simply with a copy of the holy book of Erus, the Komall. They are then branded with a magical mark of ordeals on their forearm, which will slowly change over time to keep track of their sentence period, and sent out into the world. The period of time criminals are required to wander for Maeshun varies based on the crime they are accused of, but generally extends from 3-10 years based on the seriousness of the crime. There are no requirements given for particular locations or activities to undertake while away from Palossia, only that they must try to live a pious life and contemplate their deeds. It is believed that their true repentance will be ascertained by Erus upon their return to the city. In the case of those who simply wish to become full citizens of Palossia and the Church, the process of Maeshun is both somewhat shorter, and not quite so harsh physically. On their honor, petitioners are requested to take only a small quantity of wealth out into the world with them. Like the criminals, they are also provided with an identifying and timekeeping mark of ordeals, but unlike criminals, if they return to Palossia before the time of Maeshun is complete, it is simply acknowledged that they have not developed the piety necessary for full citizenship, and they are allowed to resettle. At the completion of Maeshun for both groups, they may return to the city and come before the Church of Erus for their ultimate judgment. Before doing so, they are counseled that acceptance as a citizen means leaving their old life behind not only in a metaphysical sense, but also a literal one, and quite often a return to family and friends will be difficult or impossible. For those that still wish to continue, in a closed door ceremony they are “brought before the presence of Erus” and their “piety and aspects of faith are judged.” The exact methodology of this ceremony is unknown, but in most cases, what emerges is a planetouched (aasimar / tiefling) being with many of the characteristics of the prior individual. Sometimes they are missing large segments of their memories or past life, and in a few extreme cases no one even emerges at all. However, for those that do, even if their memory is completely intact, they are always profoundly altered by the experience. Church of Erus Central to the beliefs of the Erudites is what is commonly referred to as the concept of unified duality. Generally, what this means is that in our perception of the world at large, we often separate it into binary selections where a state is either one thing or the other – male and female, hot and cold, light and dark. In truth, however, these states are in fact simply representations of greater structures of which they are both a part. Males and females are simply expressions of humanoids and the ideas of hot and cold simply arbitrary experiences of the higher pattern of temperature or heat. All of these categorizations are then in turn members of even higher groupings and at the final unified apex of all these concepts sits the sole form of Erus. This basic concept runs throughout much of the teachings of the Church, and was originally codified in a text called the Komall. A philosophical discussion rather than a true narrative piece, the Komall explores the idea of the duality through a large collection of short stories and parables. Characters wander in and out of various pieces, but they are often representative archetypes, like the wise owl or the strong bear, rather than true characters. The day to day practices of the Church are also full of references to the duality, with one of the most obvious being the plethora of aasimar and tieflings which serve in high posts within the Church. In fact, within many segments, dual aasimar / tiefling pairs will serve matching posts to provide the idea of a spiritual balance. Within the great hall of Consé Structé in Palossia, this is so prevalent that the holy rituals are generally carried out by an ordained pair of aasimar / tieflings who share all sermonistic and congregational duties. The other well known aspect of the Church of Erus is its firm belief in the need for conversion and evangelism to the masses. Although not widely promoted, among Erudites, belief in other gods beyond the singular unification of Erus is viewed as misguided at best. Generally, when preaching to members of another faith, Erudites will compare belief in other gods to a life lived only in darkness. Although the other faiths are one representation of the concept of light, only through belief in the unified form of Erus can one truly see the full spectrum of experience. Rituals and Regular Celebrations of the Church: Awakening / Repose: This poetically titled celebration is actually a bi-annual celebration of the changing of the seasons, from hot to cold and from growth to rest. Within Palossia itself, there are several aspects to this celebration. During the Awakening {spring}, the whole city is given a day of rest from work. Boisterous parades are held down the main streets from the western gate to Castle Almonava. Within the coliseum, games of physical, magical, and performance skills are held across a wide range of disciplines. At the end of the day, there is generally a speech by the Count given in the amphitheater and then a play reenacting the trials and founding of the city by Donovan Markov. During the Repose {fall}, the city is once again given a day of rest. However, the celebration during this period is of a different tone. The focus is instead on contemplation of the events of the last year, and more close, personal get-togethers with family. Generally, large dinner meals are served for extended family, and social calls on local friends often last well into the night of Repose. As dusk falls, magical illuminations are erected around many of the large structures both as an artistic display, and as a reflection on the dualistic nature of the light and the dark. Knights of the Radiant Sphere In their current day incarnation, the Knights of the Radiant Sphere serve two roles, both as protectors of holy sites throughout the world, and as the quintisential questing knights righting wrongs and pursuing the organization's view of justice. Originally, upon inception, the Knights were little more than a militant arm of the Church of Erus, and charged with protecting the world from "all those who would do it harm." Numerous locations around Palossia or in other parts of the world were noted as points of contention, and the Knights were charged with establishing permanent guard points in these areas to prevent their subversion and protect the fledgling Church. Over time though, as the Church has grown and shifted, and the Knights themselves have become more distant and isolated from its inner workings, both the Knights and their posts changed in public perception, until they existed as only a sketch of what they once were. By the very focus given to them as points of contention, most of the sites the Knights guard are now viewed as holy places by the inhabitants of the world, even by those not of the Erudite faith, and for many groups, pilgrimages to several of the larger of these sites are viewed as accepted requirements for a life in faith. In addition, as the meaning behind their reasons for defense have faded, many of the Knights have taken such phrases as "all those who would do harm to the world" to reference a much grander scheme of metaphysical "right" and the order of things. As such, questing knights have become an accepted branch of the order, and are now common sightings among many cities of the world. In recruitment practices, the Knights of the Radiant Sphere are a mixed background military organization, with a strong emphasis on marriage of martial and magical skills. Many of the members of the organization pursue educations along both paths and the combat strategy of the group centers around interwoven, cooperating groups of physical and magical fighters. Within Palossia proper, the Knights operate a school for the education of potential recruits in these skills. Admission and education are free to any who are seen as fit to apply, but applicants must magically swear to a period of honest service to the Knights in exchange for this tutelage. Order of Salation This group is one which acts to preserve the knowledge of the world in all of its forms. The Order maintains physical strongholds, monasteries, libraries, and other such centers of learning in numerous locations throughout the world. Even in the most war torn of areas, the Order has made attempts to create new inroads into the zones and, when possible, preventatively remove material or lessen the effects of the calamity. Due to the relative stability of Palossia, the Order operates a fairly large repository within the city walls in which 1000’s of different manuscripts are kept. Knowledge Checks for Palossia Bardic: DC 10 – Palossia is widely referred to as the City of Two Faces. DC 15 – The popular root of this nickname is the high proportion of Aasimar and Tieflings which call the city their home. DC 25 – The less well known root is the unified dualistic theories of the world put forth by the Church of Erus, which believes that all features of the world may be viewed as mirrored faces of the same truth, and has its center of faith within the walls of the city. DC 35 – The true root of the saying is due to the final phase of the process of Maeshun, in which petitioners to join the Church and who have completed their time abroad are said “to jabber and babble of two voices, to cry love and hate in unison, to weep and laugh in harmony.” Nobility: DC 15 - Palossia’s head of state is the Count Victor Rashav, who has held the position for 15 years. DC 20 – There is a strong religious movement for the Church of Erus within Palossia, and most of the important nobles and successful merchants, including the Count, have completed the rituals to become part of the Church. DC 30 – For important decisions which may affect the future of the town, the Count often seeks religious advice, and at least one of his main advisors in the court is an ordained priest of the Church. DC 40 – The Count actually has almost no personal initiative, and governs Palossia only through the benevolence of the Church of Erus. History: DC 10 - Palossia was founded roughly 100 years ago by a man called Donovan Markov. DC 15 – Very early on, the city became one of the main centers of faith for the Church of Erus, and has only continued to grow in this respect. DC 20 – The original site for the city was apparently ordained in a vision to Markov and the subject of great travels to find. DC 25 – Both Donovan and his wife Katrina are said to have undergone a transformative process very similar to the modern day practice of Maeshun. DC 30 - In addition to founding Palossia, Donovan was also one of the original founders of the Church of Erus and searched for the location as a homeland for his people.
Araes 07-19-07, 09:50 PM	Alright, for a post today, I decided to return to an old post back on page 3 that supadupaman originally made. This was the post that originally led to the development of the blob armor concept, and I think its time we go back and revisit that concept and do a bit of finalization on it. I am going to rework it a little bit, as the whole concept of the Sphere and its layers have gelled a bit more in the time since we first proposed it. As such, I think it would fit almost perfectly as a section of Talos that has been ravaged by the impacts from layers above, but wasn't completely wiped out like many areas. The Swamp Folk of Kushu When the people of first Kushu first awoke within the Sphere, they emerged into a land far different from what had been promised them. The city which had been built for their habitation was a ruined wreck, appearing as if it had been bombarded from above. Huge sections of rubble and collapsed towers littered the streets and many chambers were so damaged that it took those who revived days to dig themselves out, if they did at all. The land around the city was little better. Originally designed as an idylic land of rolling hills and sweeping forests, raining debris and toxic materials from above had reduced the land to a swampy lowland. The forests had survived the barrage and recovered somewhat, but in coping with the vast changes to the landscape, only the hardiest varieties had remained and grown - becoming vast giants of twisting limbs and overhanging foliage. Period rains of debris have also continued to pelt the regoin over the years of habitation, and acidic rains are a common environmental hazard for leagues around. Due to the destruction and remaining toxicity, the original city of Kushu was nearly uninhabitable. Instead, the people spread outward and began to colonize the lands around, splitting into smaller groups based mostly on personal affiliations. As the people of Kushu made their way in this harsh land, only the strongest, and most readily adaptable to the extreme terrain were able to carve out a life. Many died within the first several years, and those that survived were markedly selected and changed by the process. By and large, only two groups emerged from this process. The first were those which possessed natural traits which allowed them to resist the harsh environment and extend their lifespans enough that they could have a chance to carry on their line. The other were those which through either technological or "magical" means found ways to provide themselves shelters and find sustenance. As such, two distinct groups have emerged from the winnowing process. The first of these groups has largely lost much of the technological base which its members initially emerged from their hibernation with. Chiefly composed of hardy, lizard or crustacean-like species, they have come to rely extensively upon their natural abilities, and have left many of the trappings of more "modern" society behind. Organizationally, they are divided into a loose conglomeration of affiliated tribes which exist in groups of between 20-100. They generally view themselves as a single people, now called the Kuphu, and sometimes hold large meetings between all of the tribes to further trade, intermarriage, and broaden relations. However, there is also signficant infighting amongst the various groups as they war over valuable territory and resources within the bogland. It should also be noted that they hold little to no associate between themselves and the second group of people at this point. Resource wise, the tribes exist as a hybrid of agriculture of hunter / gatherer lifestyle. Within areas with relatively clean water, groves of water based plants are cultivated in a primitive form of hydroponics. In addition, within the caves and other structures which dot the region, land based plants can be grown in a protected environment. In fact, as with many areas throughout the Sphere, there is a fairly extensive underground tunnel system which has been adapted for the use of the Kuphu as a region for growth of low-no light crops. Socially, the tribes of the Kuphu generally make little distinction between the duties of males and females. Coming from naturally hardy species with little of the stereotypical differences between male and female muscle structure, females are just as likely to be hunting as the men. However, once a woman has become fairly advanced in a pregnancy they are no longer allowed to participate in hunts or travel during the more dangerous rainfalls. This restriction is lifted once the baby reaches a few months of age. Tribal groups are generally ruled by a chieftan and a council of elders for the tribe. Council members often possess training along druidic lines, and in some ways also fill shamanistic roles as well. Although much of their training with the manipulation of magical forces has been lost, they still retain a strong oral and written training tradition, and much of the magic of the tribe has actually become focused in the runic practices of the tribes. In addition, the runes of the tribes also serve as a further way of storing the history of the clan and large collections of runes are generally stored in the holy places of each tribe. Other than council members, few members of the clan are generally initiated in any more than a rudimentary knowledge of writing runes, and as such, the entire practice has taken on an even further layer of mysticism for the Kuphu. These runes and rune “scrolls” are carved or writen on anything from cave walls to smaller stones, and are sometimes even shaped into even more exotic materials such bones, sticks or even chunks of resin and amber. In comparison, the second group have actually retained much of their heritage from before the emergence, and live a distinctly different lifestyle. Not possessing the natural abilities to survive the harsh climate, they instead cluster together in tight, large communities, where they can maximize the efficiencies of their protections. Due to the limitations of travel and exploration imposed by the terrain, the communities have often come to be rather isolated from one another, and the Kuphu around them. However, they still retain a sense of group identity, and have over time come to refer to themselves as the Kudzu. In many ways, this existence has also made their lives signficantly harder than the more primitive Kuphu, even though within their zones there are numerous benefits of more modern technology. One of the more profound problems is the issue of resources. Although magical effects can move and provide for great quantities of both food, water, and building materials, the efficiency of these techniques is by and large less efficient than being able to grow or find the same materials in the wild and then just augment their collection with magic. In addition, the constant protection required for the population shields provides a constant drain on resources, which requires the communities to always be working on the outer edge of safety so that they can maintain the shields. For some communities, the logical choice has actually been to retreat downward away from the constant struggle with the environment, and to adapt to a subterranean lifestyle in the cave networks beneath the soil. Due to the extensive, pre-existing tunnel networks beneath the surface, this process was often simple for those groups that decided to attempt it. Artificial light sources were installed, caverns were hollowed out to acceptable living sizes, and agriculture was developed to exist within the dark environment. However, many of the species can't stand this alternative and continue to do battle with the world above. --- Alright, all for now, but I'll get back to this the next time I write, with an extensive bit about the blobs and integrating them into a campaign as an item or creature. I should note that I'm going to be out of town for the next week or so, so I doubt I'll personally be making updates. However, I'll return around the 27th.
Jeweler 07-20-07, 02:34 AM	Well you might not be personally updating but I do have an update today on the heritage system and the changes I want to do to it in structure wise. So first off lets give a reason for why I have these ideas, heh before I even go into the ideas themselves. I've been on vacation, still am, and I have had an amazing chance to pay attention to and learn about a good number of animals from different exhibits and what not. Our world alone is diversified, if you didn't know this go to a zoo. Now with looking at all these animals I was like "Why not keep our heritage system but change it to make it a lot broader?" What I mean by this is that instead of wolf, fox, bear, we have woodland, instead of fish, eel, octupus we have aquatic, so on and so forth ad nauseum I think is the term. This allows us to give small benefits to a grouping, "survival traits", and allow for a more or less unified description. As in most woodland creatures have brown or orangish fur, or almost all avian races are tall, elegant, and frail. The groups I was thinking about were Aquatic, Woodland, Desert, Glacial, Plains, Avian, and Jungle. This allows us to easily say "Oh well in Amber Throne proper plains races dominant with avians taking up the second." and so on and so forth. I like to take the idea from Doctor Who on humans, when we get into space we "mingle" with just about everything. There might not be that many humans at all really. They seem bland to me anyways but thats a different story. Now has a further little classification you have normal and aberrant, this mainly applies to jungle and aquatic which have the most diverse amounts of life and can have a little flair with their species. Being abberant usually has a little stronger abilities with it but at the cost of negatives to all charisma based skills. *I am suspect that anyone playing this as a campaign will make it an RP one and use these skills so...* Such abberants might be something like octupi, cuttle fish *"Our dear friends the cuttle fish..."*, and a lot of the deeper aquatic life if they prove useful for abilities. For the jungle abberants might include insects, highly specialized animals, and the fungi that only grow on insects. *The slots can only be taken if you have insect slots?* Now on to survival traits. Instead of making something like "swimming bonus X" an ability you have to spend slots on I decided it might be better to make it something you gain with a certain number of slots. For aquatics it might look something like this: 1 Slot +2 swimming checks 2-3 Slots +5 swimming checks 4-5 Slots +5 swimming checks and can take 10 on any swimming check 6 slots " and a swim speed equal to half your land speed. *Or change land speed to be swim speed and make your new land speed equal half your swim speed.* For desert you might get bonuses to ward off heat and even heat reistance at 6 slots, same but with cold for Glacial. Jungle I do not quite know, they are so diversified that its hard to clumb. Avians might get an increase to jump height max, a jump bonus, or possibly something else dealing with dexterity. The woodlands and plains I don't know abilities for either. But it is just an idea. So we have classification like this now: Habitat Normal/Abberant Species Now about the pictures, more specifically the Balseraphs, that was quite an ironic picture to pull up for them. First I wish you had pulled up the bigger one as it is sooooo much better when larger, second I absolutely love Alice's Adventures in Wonderland so to see something about it get posted for the Balseraphs seemed hilarious to me, third I had had another Alice allusion that day the song "Go ask Alice" which is an amazing, and short, song. When I get back home, if I get the time got a summer project to do, I will make up some of the main Balseraph characters. The Alice Krewe, Reslyn the top assassin inline for taking down the current Jack, and the Jack of Blood him/itself. If anyone knows the name Reslyn, please please let me know, I would be so amazingly interested to hear about why you know the name. For the city of Palossia, it looks really well done. I liked reading about the Erudite faith and some of the things that happen because of the faith. I like the Tiefling/Asimar aspect to the city. *can see a part of town that is bright light colors like white and pastels and another side of town that is dark and down in colors of red and black and deeper darker colors.* Noit meant that way I know but it is still a cool image to me : ) On coming back to the gel armor creatures I was thinking about that last week while I was in Silinas. I was wondering if we would bring them back or not, but it seems we will be. Cool. I like the Kuphu, and I laughed at the name of the more modern people. Heh Kudzu seems oxymoronic to their aspect in the wild don't you think? Well have a good trip to where ever you are going and we will see you return on the 27th.
Araes 07-29-07, 01:18 PM	Hmm, interesting ideas on the revamp of the racial system for the world. Overall, it does seem to have a number of benefits over the more specific background idea we were talking about before. Particularly the way that you can, as you said, cite "average" racial groups for particular layers / areas. Plus, within those areas all the people aren't going to be the same, as you're going to have different sub-groups and skill sets. The rankings of abilities that you mentioned is an interesting concept, and seems like it would have promise. I worry a bit that some of the more esoteric abilities would be rather hard to find places for, but perhaps there could be a number of unchained, or non-aligned abilities, that can just be grabbed by anyone with little difficulty. My other concern is also that there would be a tendancy towards one trick monkeys. For example, fly would be very desirable, and so, if we set it up in the manner you have described with swim, then it seems like we would end up with tons of avian types who just take the full chain so that they can have fly and nothing else. A potential additional category might be "underground" for those creatures that live completely beneath the surface. In the groupings, it seems like you're mixing habitation locations, and animal types. It might be better to simply do something based completely on animal groups like (avian, mammal, reptile, ect...) or completely on biomes (forest, plains, desert, ect...). Or perhaps a two tier system where there are traits from the animal groups and traits from the biomes, but they are separate in some way. On the gel armor guys, I'm a fan of the concept and really thought it was a neat idea. I've always been planning to make it back to them some day and keep working in that direction, but just never got around to it.
Sliversun 07-29-07, 09:41 PM	Welcome back! How was your trip?
Araes 07-30-07, 08:34 PM	Thanks. It was interesting. It was the step side of my family, and there are some long seated issues with that crowd. At one point I was pretty sure they were trying to kill each other with their words. On the other hand, I got to travel up to the Gulf Islands of BC which were absolutely gorgeous. I met some really nice folks from San Bernadino who were up there working for the summer, and I got to hang out with my sis in Vancouver and go dancing for 5+ hours.
Jeweler 08-01-07, 11:18 AM	Very cool, : ) I was just up near Vancouver and san Juan Island the other day, visiting grand parents again. Mmmm so while I have been away I have been looking over steampunk stuff, I don't have any D&D books so doing the races I can not. I'll be back to home in about 6 days and start to work on the races now that plans have freed up.
Awakenings 08-06-07, 01:01 AM	I've looked at your wiki, and I've got a question that I'm hoping you don't take as combative. You say on the wiki that you are only allowing magic that can be explained using technology. But isn't that the real point of Clarke's Law? Any magic can be explained...if your technology is advanced enough. If it's not, then it's not really Clarke's Law is it? I mean, he didn't say "almost indistinguishable." Nor do you appear to be taking the strictly psychological interpretation of the law, which is to say that if you don't understand how something works, the it is magic to you. What spell or effect can possibly remain unexplained if the tech is advanced enough? Time stop is function of a quantum Zeno effect. Gates are wormholes. Enhancements of any kind can be explained using short-lived nanomachines that appear out of quantum foam. Teleportation is space folding. Suppose you have a fusion-powered megaprocessor stored in a parallel dimension, connected to you by quantum networking keyed to your unique bioelectric signature. You could train in to respond to certain words and gestures with "fireballs" and "lightning bolts" and "invisibility" and so on, and to someone in your dimension, it would look like you were creating these things by your gibbering and hand-waving. Voila, you're a standard D&D wizard. It's even possible that long after you are dead, someone could accidentally gain access and--also accidentally--reprogram the computer to respond to their actions. Voila, you have a standard D&D sorcerer. I'm really not trying to spoil your fun, I'm just curious as to how you handle the full ramifications of Clarke's Law. If you'd prefer to ignore me, please just say so.
Jeweler 08-06-07, 02:37 AM	First off I love your explanation for Wizards and Sorcerers XD that was amazing in my opinion. *never really thought about it* You know what. I don't think I actually have an answer for this, the one time I don't have even the ability to make up an answer. The only thing that I can think of is somewhere you or he made a mistake in what was read/said and that he meant that any technology that isn't understood is magic and that when certain technologies become understood, without saying 'Its MAGIC!', they are technology again. Thats the only thing I can think of. Have to wait for Araes to get back to you : | Hmmm also Araes how goes the job searching?
Araes 08-09-07, 02:31 PM	Pretty good actually. I'm sitting in the airport in Huntsville right now in fact after having talked to NASA for the past couple days about working down here. Seems like a good possiblity. On Awakening's point, no worries as far as combativeness. I'll write a bit more once I get back to the homeland, but my suspicion is that you are correct in your interpretation in a literal sense. I think in writing that original description, my intention was that all the magic could be explained with technology that we can reasonably consider in the next generation of stuff emerging from current tech. However, I think over time this goal has changed and that should probably be rewritten.
Araes 08-10-07, 07:21 PM	Alright, back home now, and after looking over the wiki, I think that at most we may just have to refine the Technology as Magic section a tiny bit to make it more clear what we're intending to say. Generally, I think part of the problem may have just been the all or nothing impression that Awakenings took away from it. This wasn't really as it was intended when written, but its a problem that it can easily be interpreted that way. The intention of it is really more of a mindset outline for would-be creators. We just want people to think about the underlying reasons why something is the way it is, and to follow that reasoning from the background of semi-reasonable science. Obviously, things like teleportation, or instantaneous energy transfer are beyond our current science. However, when we think about their application in the setting, we try and follow our reasoning from as close to current day tech as we possibly can (pursuing the logical extensions of ideas scientists have already proposed) and we try not to outright violate any of the known laws of physics or if we do, at least propose explanations about why they might have changed. In short, the focus is basically on explaination of choices. This could just as easily be a self-coherent, but totally "magic" background. However, to make our lives harder, we're trying to tie it as closely as we can to normal physical laws. Hopefully that makes the distinction somewhat more clear. *edit* Man, this forums.gleemax.com stuff is really annoying, as now my web browser refuses to save my login information or give me a cookie for the site as a whole.
Sliversun 08-19-07, 04:25 AM	Hey if you want more ideas for race stats, then check out the critters from "Ben 10". You might find them very useful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_10
Awakenings 08-19-07, 08:48 AM	Okay, so we're looking at "magic" that is just a few tech levels removed from where we are right now? That makes sense. On my worldbuilding forum (see sig) we have a section for discussing the latest of modern science and the science fiction that might arise. There are some surprising technologies already developed: levitation, shape memory alloys, etc. Come check it out if you want some new ideas.
Sliversun 08-27-07, 09:01 PM	bump.
Sliversun 09-01-07, 11:40 PM	Bump again.
Awakenings 09-02-07, 10:46 PM	Very interesting, all of it. You could probably incorporate Tesla's work with wireless transmission of power to hide a lot of the obvious technical stuff (power lines, etc). That would lead to the prospect of "dead magic" zones, which would actually be places where the network is down. It might apply only to particular kinds of magic, or to magic from a particular nation or manufacturer, but the knowledge of where magic is weak or strong would be a huge commodity. Like tapping into ley lines and other sites of power.
Araes 12-03-07, 08:23 PM	The campaign log for session 1 was moved to here
Araes 12-16-07, 04:41 PM	The campaign log for session 2 - part 1 was moved to here
Araes 12-16-07, 04:42 PM	The campaign log for session 2 - part 2 was moved to here
Araes 01-03-08, 06:46 PM	The campaign log for session 3 - part 1, was moved to here
Araes 01-03-08, 07:11 PM	The campaign log for session 3 - post 2 was moved to here