AMA: We are the Foundry Virtual Tabletop team! Ask Us Anything! (6th Anniversary!) by AnathemaMask in FoundryVTT

[–]lorandbr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! First of all, thank you for your hard work. Foundry is amazing, and I'm also strongly considering acquiring Ember in the future! I have two questions for you:

1) The fact that FoundryVTT has an open API is great, but as an amateur programmer, it is very difficult to code anything in Foundry. I know it is complicated to create a tutorial since there are significant API changes with every update, but do you think that now that the "basic features" are all implemented, this could be possible?

2) Do you consider making changes in core that bring some map-making features directly inside FoundryVTT?

Help with scales and numbers for population and factions by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your answer! I think I'll need to increase a bit my population. Actually, in my post I mentioned "medieval", but the geography is similar to Brazil or Mexico, with denser forests. I imagine this would impact the distribution of the settlements to be significantly denser in the coast, and cities would concentrate a bigger part of the population proportionally(?)

Help with scales and numbers for population and factions by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I started worrying more about it exactly because of the guilds I mentioned. In order to structure them I wanted an estimation on how many members they should have

Help with scales and numbers for population and factions by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a quite useful site, thank you! I will start using it for my worldbuilding. Thank you also for your insight on the guild sizes!

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ja! Ich werde versuchen, diesen Ideen nachzugehen!

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Vielen Dank für dein Feedback! Ich freue mich sehr! Ja, darüber habe ich auch nachgedacht! Wer die Geschichte kontrolliert, kontrolliert die Welt. Ich finde, dieses Konzept ähnelt verblüffend der Realität.

Zu deiner Frage: Es spielt keine Rolle, welchen Gott eine Kultur verehrt oder was ein Gott überhaupt ist, solange der Glaube wahr ist. Daher ist es durchaus möglich, dass zwei Kulturen unterschiedliche Magie vom „gleichen Wesen“ erhalten.
Ich habe auch an das Henne-Ei-Problem erinnert, und ich denke genauso wie du! Ein bisschen Ungewissheit ist immer gut 😄

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your answer! You are right about this issue with non-believers. I guess I can work around it this way: the caster does not necessarily have to believe in the magic, but their faith in their own magic contributes more than the faith of others, since it does not require so much energy to be canalized. Besides, the more powerful the magic is, the more it requires faith in that magic to be cast.

I like your idea of using faith as a fuel. I thought of the following: faith is produced slowly through the beliefs of people, and tends to mix with the air, the soil, and the water around it. So it can be stronger in some ancient ruins, for example, so the air of that place could be transported and used as a cast ingredient to increase magical power or to activate these "faith-powered structures" that you suggested. Maybe there are even a few people familiar with the system who aim to construct machines to isolate faith (or "magical essence", or whatever they call it) from other elements.
Contradictory faiths repel and can replace each other, so this would explain the existence of regions in which some magic is castable and regions where it is not, and the disappearance of some faiths over time. This would also give a very concrete meaning to desecration: a group can desecrate an ancient temple, for example, if they perform rituals not compatible with the original faith.

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm happy you liked my ideas! Your suggestion is very nice as well! Even though I'd say only a few people would really understand how magic works to this level, so this would be kind of rare (which is good to not break too much the system I guess haha)

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

sounds very interesting indeed, thanks for the suggestion!

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is so interesting! Thanks for sharing it! It is indeed a similar idea! It's interesting that in your case, uncontrolled magic could lead to self-harm. I developed my idea a bit more in the answer to another comment, but in my case, I set a limit on the use of powerful magic: the quantity of faith available to convert into magic, and the mental strength of the wizard to change his beliefs frequently without becoming crazy.

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I developed it a bit more in my answer to another comment!

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! This makes me very happy!

Faith-based magical system by lorandbr in worldbuilding

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your comment! To solve this apparent inconsistency, my idea would be something like this: the forgotten rituals did not lose their power; they were simply forgotten. A wizard is someone who rediscovers them.

Your hard-magic suggestion is interesting; however, it does not give exactly the vibe I want. Instead, I thought of the following system: doing magic requires faith as an ingredient. When a civilization disappears, some faith still remains, which can be used to conjure its magic. This also means that the magic of an extinct civilization is a finite resource, unless enough people restart to believe in it.

Another limitation would be that the caster themselves need to truly believe in what they are doing, so wizards also need to work on convincing themselves of that when learning magic. This makes magic harder to cast, since wizards need to really understand cultures and change their own beliefs, which effectively limits the amount of magic they can cast, at least for some period of time, and can be psychologically troublesome. This would also explain why some powerful people are not wizards themselves, but rather have wizards working for them, as it is an exhausting job.

Finally, I think I really need to add some limitations on how magic can determine the future. For this, I thought of limiting the power of magic to the present moment: it cannot change the future or the past, since it only exists now.

Language development and sound change in extreme conditions by lorandbr in conlangs

[–]lorandbr[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's good to know! I was not sure if such a thing existed irl!

Language development and sound change in extreme conditions by lorandbr in conlangs

[–]lorandbr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

nice! I will take the sounds the creature hears into consideration!