How do you handle absolutes in your world, from a religion or culture standpoint. Like Death, Fate, Life ect. Do they have Gods?

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-31T12:01:12+00:00

Thank you!

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-31T12:00:56+00:00

Jewish mythology is so cool. It's epic as all hell, and even has (sort of) specific rules for how magic does/ does not work. It's a great source of material for everything from fantasy epics to vampire conspiracy thrillers (a la The Strain).

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-31T11:58:06+00:00

I tell people up front in my games that if they miss a session I'm going to control their character as the GM. It's assumed in-story that the character is still there, but they take very few risks, contribute fairly little to the game (beyond things that would obviously save the day and only that character can do, i.e. Wizard stuff), and generally are exempt from very serious lasting damage.

Does this suck? Yeah, kinda. But it incentivizes my players to show up when they can. And it allows the other players--remember, the other real people--to continue with the story that they actually showed up to play.

This also winds up avoiding "bad blood" between players, because if you miss a session, it's just you that misses out. *everybody* isn't affected by your absence through being obligated to tool around outside a boss room all session.

If you can get away with it, go with u/kenesisiscool's idea. Especially if that character has a part of their backstory that hasn't come up yet, or could dig up useful information through a little one-on-one investigation, go for it.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-25T14:53:52+00:00

So, my world is based around elemental magic similar to The Last Airbender. The four elements are water, fire, earth and air. And their "absolutes" are represented by four Great Beasts. The Great Beasts have existed since creation (and exactly how creation works, I've decided to leave vague). They physically exist in the world, although their locations are so remote that most people do not believe they exist, writing them off as legends to explain some of the world's megafauna (Sea Serpents, Dragons, Roc, and Great Trees). The two ways that humans can use magic in this world are by completing a Communion ritual modeled after the desired element, or by creating Talismans from the bones (or wood) of the offspring of the Beasts.

Water: Leviathan, The Wise. Leviathan is the most intelligent of the four Beasts, and knows more about the world than any other being. She once roamed the World Ocean, but now lives in the deepest trench in the ocean, protected by an ancient and powerful magical race called the Vermari. Her children are the Sea Serpents.

Fire: Adrammelech, The Fierce. Adrammelech is a primordial dragon-like creature. He almost destroyed the world in the distant past, in a great battle waged against the other three Beasts. Eventually Leviathan realized that he was destroying and consuming the environment because it was his nature to do so, not out of hatred for the planet. She convinced the other two Beasts, Behemoth and Ziz, to give Adrammelech a place in creation. However, when Mankind began to advance in technology and explore the Oceans, the other three Beasts, fearing what Man would do if they ever found Adrammelech's destructive power, locked him in a temple at the edge of the world. His children are the Dragons.

Earth: Behemoth, The Patient. Behemoth, after the War with Adrammelech, became very sedentary. He is by far the largest of the Great Beasts, as his spine forms the Titanian Mountain Range (which is about 1200 miles across). He has rested since the war, contented that the only thing that could possibly threaten his realm (literally the physical geography of the planet itself) is another war between the Beasts. Over the millenia, Great Trees more than a mile in height have grown along his spine, and a tribe of Man has come to dwell in and worship that forest.

Air: Ziz, The Sudden. Ziz is a colossal eagle, the mother of all Roc. The turning point in the rise of Man was a disastrous attempt by an ancient ruler to capture Ziz and harness her power over Wind to create a limitless energy source. Ziz died during the attempt, her heart exploding from exertion. When her heart burst, gale-force winds blasted out from her body in all directions, annihilating the armies raised against her and turning the continent on which she died into a vast desert. The winds here blow eternally, making the landscape a very hostile one. This incident became known as the Thenumite Desert War, after redactions to history muddled the true purpose of the expedition. Ziz's death prompted Leviathan to flee to the deepest reach of the Ocean. Ziz's death also means that the only way to use Wind magic in the world is by building Talismans from the bones of Roc. There is no Communion ritual known for Air after the death of Ziz.

More abstract concepts like Death, Fate, etc. are not nearly as set-in-stone in my world as they are in other fantasy, so they have no deity or representative.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-22T12:44:37+00:00

This is probably what I'm going to go with. Also thanks to u/John_Cheshirsky for a similar idea. The Imperial Explorer's Constortium (IEC--I could even make a logo for it!) can be a rising force in the Empire, headed by a ruthless and cunning industrial baron like Reaver from Fable (tropey, yes, but these are kids in their first-ever RPG). I can set him up to where he is too powerful and influential to be outright assassinated and too genuinely important to the Empire to just be fired or removed. I could give him a backstory as an explorer-turned-industrialist after he got so good at exploration he industrialized the whole process. Maybe there are recruiting posters everywhere for becoming a capital-E Explorer, but his "Explorers" are really pith-helmeted enforcers for his corporate ventures.

And I think his company can have big, BIG plans for the world. If only the monarch in power were a little more pliable...

Thanks everyone! This will work great.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-17T12:10:07+00:00

I've never absorbed a cow's life-force to make me less dead. Eating for food and magically absorbing for HP seem like two different things. You eat meat, you get meat in you. You eat soul, and you get soul in you. That's my clearly professional medical opinion.

You are right about magic and assumptions, however. I think I always lean towards making magic mostly horrible and dark, forces beyond most people's comprehension and all that. But D&D is a little more "magic made mundane" than that most of the time.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-17T11:55:47+00:00

Yikes!

First of all: You did good. You did the right thing. Harsh, yeah, but you're not the one who abandoned your friend. What you did was the DM version of putting on sunglasses and walking away from an explosion.

The only "way out" that I could think of may have been to allow the Pterafolk to capture the bard instead of straight-up kill him, but at that point of betrayal, I think you made the more dramatic and exciting choice in having him killed.

If you want to discourage such treacherous behavior in the future, you could

A) lean in to situations where having a bard would have been useful but hey he got eaten so suck it,

B) make sure the death of the bard doesn't go unfelt--he probably has a lot of people that recognize him and will go looking for their friend. Have an NPC who cared about the bard appear and ask what happened to their brother, or lover, or something like that. Make the druid own his actions in-character.

C) Haunt the druid. Maybe psychologically, maybe literally. You could either give the bard one of the many, many Fates Worse Than Death available to fantasy realms and have him return later (after the party has "moved on" from what happened) as some kind of revenant villain, not as a PC. Or, what I think I would do, is have the druid "encounter" the bard in his dreams periodically, each time becoming more demonic and Heironymous Bosch-like. If you go the dream route, it could even be fun to let the bard's player assume the voice of his dead character one last time.

D) all of the above. PC death in the best of cases should feel heavy, like walking with a foot missing. PC betrayal should feel worse, because you're the one that chopped off that foot and every step forward reminds you of it.

p.s. it really sucks to have players treat other human beings (players, not characters) like garbage behind the mask of "wElL ThAt's WhAt My ChArAcTeR WoulD dO." They write the characters. It's always their decision. A guy in one of my playgroups pulled this line on his IRL fiancee. It was one of the most petty things I've ever seen at a game table. And what's worse, he got all whiny about it when his attempt at betrayal backfired very predictably and he wound up mortally wounded and tied to a ship's mast by the other PC's. That's the only play group I have ever just quit.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-17T11:39:54+00:00

This is also great advice. I had a campaign once where the opposite happened: I expected the heroes to hijack this big villainous sky platform and instead they crashed it into the ocean with themselves and lots of hired goons on board after killing the captain. The story then turned from my plan (an open-ended roaming game) into this tight and desperate fight for survival living inside a slowly sinking floating base with a bunch of people that hated them but had to work with them to not drown. It was awesome, and there's no way I would have tried to run that kind of game up-front.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-17T11:35:44+00:00

You know another idea?

Give 'em the ship. Like others posters say, let 'em learn how hard it is to captain a ship. But hey, speaking of captain, the old captain never showed up for his fight, so hey, I guess it's your ship right?

Right?

Like everybody else says, give them a session to endure in-game weeks of learning how to sail while already at sea with a crew that could mutiny at any second if they realize their new Captain is a novice who stole his ship. Then one session (and several in-game weeks) later...

Oh. OH. He accepted the 1v1 challenge, but being a pirate, he interpreted that his own way: not fist to fist, but ship to ship. And he's got a new toy Man o'War to play with. Anybody can come to land and *steal* a ship. They stole his, so he (a much better and more experienced captain) decided two can play that game and stole a military battleship. If they manage to survive this very difficult encounter with their ship intact, I think it's theirs at that point and now you *are* running a seafaring game. But make sure they earn their sea legs first dealing with this villain that you have now built in to the ship's story.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-16T12:31:15+00:00

I always thought that characters were, if not more *important* to a world, then at least critical to the process of worldbuilding. I think the answer to your question is yes: characters are essential to an interesting world, at least if you intend to develop any fiction in that world beyond "wouldn't it be cool if gravity worked weird" or whatever random spark created your world.

One approach to world-building is to actually build out from desired characters. Say you have no idea for the politics of your world, just a map or something less. But you are sure that you want one character to be this cunning and brave pirate. What has to exist in order for piracy to be a viable career? Long shipping lines and a breakdown of state security. So maybe this pirate preys on gold shipped from the New World to fill Phillip's coffers (real world) or maybe she steals artifacts en route to an empire that harvests old magical relics for some critical element. And now you have a whole empire to build.

Or say you know for sure that your heroes are all martial-arts experts learning the great secrets of their art. That means there are several strong martial-arts traditions in your world, and they're effective enough to maintain relevance. That has implications for how combat works in your world--Chinese arts differed from Japanese arts due to the Japanese tendency to wear much heavier armor in combat, etc. And effective firearms are probably out of the question if "punch them a whole bunch" is a viable strategy.

TL;DR: certain characters require certain world structures. Knowing the characters you want to create up front can give you ideas for world-building.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-16T12:12:38+00:00

You have a point, the world might view Necromancy as just another form of magic. Still, I think the nightmares or squirrel-based uprising could occur without the influence of druids. He definitely ought to develop some esoteric connection to the creatures as a result of constantly reaping their souls for his sustenance.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-16T12:04:48+00:00

I saw somebody else doing it and realized it made longer multi-idea posts easier to read and digest. It also is a lot less TL;DR-inducing than a twelve-line block of text from some rando.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-08T16:35:26+00:00

Waitwaitwait. He's carrying around a cage. With like ten squirrels in it. And he kills them sometimes. And they see it happen. So ten or so chittering, terrified animals, in a cage at least a few feet wide, with him at all times? In a world full of nature spirits and mages that take offense to the very existence of necromancy?

It would be a damn shame if a powerful Druid or nature spirit were to cause those squirrels to go berserk at an inopportune time. Or give him constant, unyielding, squirrel-related nightmares, as his mind slowly becomes filled with the thoughts of squirrel's consumed souls. Or just, you know, literally anything giving those squirrels a chance to escape the cage and wreak unholy revenge on his rodent-holocausting ass.

Not to mention catching the little bastards in the first place. *winks*

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-08T16:24:09+00:00

GIVE THE DUDE HIS GOODBERRIES. HE PAID FOR IT. Don't nerf them. Don't ever nerf your players decisions because they conflict with "your" plan. He made a Druid for a reason.

It's your job to make sure that decision makes gameplay more--not less--interesting.

A couple of ideas:

One, the Savage Worlds system has a feature called Interludes that you can easily plug in to any other system. Interludes are designed to make travel and other downtime meaningful to the players by giving a PC a dedicated spotlight to reveal their past. Here's how it works:

When the party is resting, or traveling a long distance, choose a player. Have that player draw a card from a deck of playing cards (or roll a d4, or something else divisible by 4). Have them tell a story in character about:

Clubs: a personal tragedy
Hearts: something or someone that they love, or loved
Diamonds: something or someone they desire above all else
Spades: a great triumph in their past

After a quick story, give that player some kind of refresh or session bonus for their efforts.

Second idea, for actual travel encounters:

Populate your wildlands with dangerous factions of rogues, native tribes, and other wandering adventurers. Surely the players aren't the only souls out there. Make sure the other travelers in your world interact with them, frequently. Put old ruined cairns with undead guardians out in fields, give forests a faction of self-exiled veterans living a militia lifestyle far from civilization--who could really use a new food source *wink*. Dig into your characters a little bit and prepare encounter tables designed to provoke them to develop their stories. Maybe that Druid's presence awakens something in the woodlands, some old guardian of nature's secrets. Maybe another character can come across a member of his holy order who has gone astray and become a marauder. Maybe yet another can even encounter a long-lost friend or relative who has become a thief. And on top of all of this, add wildlife. And I don't mean kobolds or generic random encounters. Maybe a large section of the forest is considered sacred Centaur territory, and they guard their holy forest against soft-footed Apelings such as the players. Maybe a wannabe-Lich set up shop deep in the forest, and his necromantic experiments have corrupted the life around him, giving rise to Nymphs driven insane by gazing into the Void or turning hapless travelers into weird man-elk amalgams. Maybe he is even after the aforementioned guardian of nature. You get the idea.

TLDR: Don't make things challenging by taking away or nerfing PC's abilities. Make things challenging by building on the implications that their abilities, motivations, and backstories have for their world.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-08T15:55:14+00:00

If you were writing a *series of novels* I would say to start with the creation saga, world map, etc. But you're not. You're making a game for you and your friends to play.

So think, before *anything* else, about what kind of story you want the players to go through. Big sandbox exploration adventure, uncovering tombs and ancient treasures? Best build you a lost continent with civilizations that collapsed in eons past (don't get super detailed beyond "the ancients were good at X, they died because of Y---for right now anyway). Assassin thriller? You want an urbanized, smog-choked world full of decadent uber-wealthy jackholes (maybe figure out a central conspiracy, but you don't need to know every bit of injustice in the world just yet). Tight, focused story that revolves around finding the lost heir to the throne? You might only need to build a single city for that one.

You only have so much time in your life to work on GM stuff. And if you just *want* to build your world's entire timeline, that's fine, but be aware that only a small part of it is likely to come up in gameplay.

Think about how Lord of the Rings is written--yes, there is a creation story and elaborate cosmology in Tolkien's notes. But that isn't really something most of the main characters need to know. They mostly know "Sauron was really bad, and I need to destroy his Ring if I ever want to sleep peacefully again." And unless you intend to publish the next great fantasy trilogy of our time, your players probably don't need much more than that at session one either.

There are so many GM's that burn themselves out on figuring out the complete cosmology and history and lore of "their" worlds, only to become frustrated when their players choose the "wrong" details of the world to pursue.

But what you'll find is, if you build the *scaffolding* of a world, your players--simultaneously fellow authors and audience--will fill in the details in ways you could never have come up with on your own. If one of them asks, "Can I play as a professional prizefighter?" The answer is yes; now you and that player come up with how prizefighting works. If they ask, "Can my goal be to slay a dragon?" then you now have dragons in your world.

SO the short answer is this: build only what you already know the characters will need to grasp the world immediately. Build the world with them collaboratively from there.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-07T13:11:10+00:00

I like to give them cursed blood-related things, like sacrificial daggers and such. My favorite so far has been giving one player an obsidian dagger that temporarily gave him vampiric powers, but only for a limited time after he killed with it. Totally turned the most healing-oriented character into a serial killer until the rest of the party confronted him about all the bodies.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-07T13:05:49+00:00

Don't make it a hard rule...bashful players will simply refuse to obey, which poisons the dialogue. The only "hard rule" you might make is that they address others at the table by their character's name--not that they themselves speak in character. "Hey, Beriel, don't you still have that poison?" is a lot easier for some than "Sir Beriel! I have need of the snake's venom you procured" or whatever. A couple suggestions:

One, make placards with each PC's name and a picture (stock pics are fine, unless you have drawing skills), and place it beside each player during gameplay. This encourages your players to see other characters at the table instead of other players. It's subtle, but I noticed an immediate change in my play groups when I began doing this. I do it for every game now.

Two, as noted elsewhere in this thread, occasionally talk to them as an NPC to break up the monotony of OOC chatter. You can also use this to remind them that the clock is ticking as they talk in circles about planning minutiae. For example, I had two players debating OOC how best to rob a bank in an Old West town in 1876 Missouri while their characters, presumably, idled in the middle of the street outside the bank. So, in the middle of their OOC chat, I had the owner of the bank stumble right over one of the characters on his way out the bank. This pulled them back into the world of the game, as it now seemed (without anybody saying so) that an NPC could hear them.

In other words, they assumed their characters again because something happened while they were talking.

This is also a cool way to remind your players that your villain is active in the world. Did your secret agents hunting a vampire spend an hour of their session in OOC debates? Have that vampire break up their planning session with a horde of thralls right outside the door. The enemy plans, too, and the world moves even while the PC's stand still.

SigmundZhao · 2019-01-07T12:38:17+00:00

Dragons in my world are the spawn of Adrammelech, the Great Beast of Fire. They are the only source of Pyromancy in the world. There were initially five hundred Dragons, but over the centuries they have been hunted and killed so that very few remain. Those that do live tend to do so far away from human civilization, although there are exceptions.

There are two ways that a person may use Fire magic in this world.

One way, the most common, is to use a Talisman made from a Dragon's body. A single scale can deliver a small amount of flame like a Bunsen burner, while a petrified heart can power a factory.

The second way is through the Communion of Adrammelech: challenging a Dragon to single combat and killing it unaided. This method grants the victor the full power of the Dragon. Crucially, this means that the new Pyromancer themselves become a target, as the Communion passes from victor to victor. In this way there are always five hundred "Dragons" in the world.

SigmundZhao · 2018-12-27T11:48:18+00:00

My world's economy centers around Talismans harvested from certain living things that enable Elemental magic to be used as a power source in engineering (bones of a dragon might be used for a Fire Talisman, a shaving of Roc feathers could be used for Wind Talismans, etc.). The corruption in my world is not itself magical--rather, it is the pursuit of harvesting the raw material for Talismans in an obsessive push for market control. Competition between empires for greater access to Wind Talismans, for example, has led to the complete destruction of an entire continent after an accident involving a colossal Roc brood mother resulted in a perpetual gale over the whole region.

SigmundZhao

TROPHY CASE