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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Apr 2010
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    Default An autumn nation.

    I'm currently running a solo campaign for a friend. The world is just a general concept, with the main continent being divided into fourths. Each quarter is permanently a season. North is winter, east is spring, south is summer, west is fall.

    I have concepts for the first three seasons. For example, the north isn't exactly organized, and is sparsely populated with frost races from frostburn. East is run and populated by a lot of fey and nature stuff. South is run by Asherati from Sandstorm, and is basically a desert.


    The one I can't think of is the autumn. I can't exactly think of an iconic race or monster to be the main power there. So I come to the playground, with their knowledge of creatures and their collective creativity.

    So. Anyone have any ideas?

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Orc in the Playground
     
    flumphy's Avatar

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    Jul 2011

    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    How about undead? Autumn is all about Halloween (and its pagan precursors) and harvest and, well, death.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Titan in the Playground
     
    PersonMan's Avatar

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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    Another could be disconnected city-states of halflings/gnomes/whatever, playing up the whole 'food is plentiful and everyone jumps into piles of leaves' aspect of fall(although, in perpetual fall, would the crops be constantly being harvested or just dead?).
    Not Person_Man, don't thank me for things he did.

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  4. - Top - End - #4
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Apr 2009
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    Surrender Monkey Land
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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    Autumn is the season of harvest. It is the season that allows settled civilization to thrive. I imagine the West to be a fertile land, with a temperate climate and no shortage of water. If you want your traditional medieval societies to live somewhere, it would be there and nowhere else.

    I would expect the populations of the West to be highly xenophobic. Their realms are surrounded by (and occasionally encroach on) the frozen North, the scorched South and the untamed East. As a result, they feel in constant threat by those inhospitable lands and their barbaric inhabitants. Think about how frost, drought and wild beasts could disrupt an agrarian society, and multiply it tenfold because of all the supernatural influences around them.

    By the way, Westerners would probably be hostile to the supernatural in all its form. Magic is seen as witchcraft, and (all? most?) spell-granting deities as demons. As you might expect, that doesn't stop the West to be infested with dark necromancers and evil death cults. Bolstered by the high density of humanoids in the region, and even more hated than outsiders, those inner enemies add to the toil of natural epidemics by spreading the plague of undeath.

    Basically, you just take a mundane Gothic setting and push it to its logical extreme, where the supernatural is a reality, walking skeletons are not just a metaphor for the Black Death, and all the various xenophobic fears are actually justified. Build your Western country around the association of fall with agriculture and civilization, pit it against three regions themed around the three other seasons, sprinkle some fantasy, and all the negative connotations of decay, melancholy, old age, exhaustion and general spookiness will appear of themselves

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ogre in the Playground
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    May 2011
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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    In my campaign setting, the seasons are elements. Autumn represents Earth and rules over [Earth] and [Acid] effects. People associated with that element tend to have serious, responsible personalities. Harvest is another element, that rules over animals, plants and transmutation effects. People associated with that element tend to have generous, giving personalities.

    If I had to divide them into nations, I'd go with dwarves for Autumn and elves for Harvest. And if you combine them into one, go with both. The dwarves dwell below the earth, mining and forging, while the elves tend the fields, forests and gardens above. This would lead to the West becoming the main source for metal, clothes, food, rope, daily amenities and maybe even wood (if the East isn't keen on chopping down its precious trees). This forces the West into becoming really good at commerce, since they literally control over 90% of all trade routes (simply by virtue of most of them originating with them). This is a good place to put halflings and gnomes, too. Halflings would handle shipping and transporting, with their itinerant ways, and gnomes would handle the actual commerce and the establishment of trading routes and deals.

    You can replace elves with humans if you've shifted Elves to the East, obviously. And you can put half-elves in charge of commerce and shift gnomes to technology, alchemy or even the noble class.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    Wow, fantastic ideas. I'll definitely incorporate all of them into the nation when the player enters it. I really appreciate the help, guys.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Titan in the Playground
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    Feb 2009
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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    Yeah, how does harvesting work in a land that's always autumn? That seems like it would really influence this sort of thing.
    In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

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  8. - Top - End - #8
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    I honestly didn't think of the whole harvest thing. I'm thinking that the part of the nation closer to summer will be eternally harvest, while the part of the nation closer to winter will be the more barren, dead kind of autumn.

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Magic Myrmidon View Post
    I honestly didn't think of the whole harvest thing. I'm thinking that the part of the nation closer to summer will be eternally harvest, while the part of the nation closer to winter will be the more barren, dead kind of autumn.
    No, they mean "how can people know when it's time to plant and when it's time to harvest?"

    Either you make it so that plants grow at an exponential rate and are perennially ripe and ready to be picke (with fruits growing overnight, or perhaps very quickly) or make it so that plant growth takes the same time but the people use their own calendar because they obviously have no seasons to rely upon.

  10. - Top - End - #10
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Apr 2010
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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    Well, the nations are permanently seasons because of ancient artifacts of sorts, so there's all sorts of magic stuff going on. As such, the plants would just kinda grow on their own, no planting needed. If the artifacts are removed (which is the bbeg's goal), things would be normal, and planting would be necessary.

    As for a calendar... I suppose that the people from before the artifacts could have left a calendar. Which could work into some belief that each nation is favored by the gods at certain times of the year, since most people wouldn't know that the seasons used to change.

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Titan in the Playground
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    Feb 2009
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    Default Re: An autumn nation.

    Well, I see three (and a half) options for an always-autumn land.

    1) Always harvesting. Food is plentiful, and they probably supply the bulk of the food for the other three nations. Crops grow [overnight/every week/faster than you can harvest them; pick one and think carefully]. There's gotta be some reason (magical, societal, or otherwise) as to why everyone keeps harvesting all the time, but they'd be very wealthy.

    2a) Just harvested. There's food that magically appears in the larders, but probably not enough to be a major trading breadbasket. This does open the question as to where everyone else gets their food, though.

    2b) Post-harvest. Nothing's growing. Everything's already dead or dying (insofar as trees "die" in the winter . . . you know what I mean).

    3) "Normal." People plant crops, they grow for a few months, and then they harvest them. They might stick to crops that grow better in cool weather compared to the spring and summer nations, but it's still pretty much the same. I don't much like this one personally, since it really relegates the seasons to just palette shifts, but it might be the easiest in terms of social and economic implications for your world.

    Seasons are pretty much inextricably associated with food and crops, so you really have to think hard about how this works if you want it to make any sense. Magic can get it started and explain why you've got perma-seasons, but you have to think about what happens after that.
    In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Doc Roc View Post
    Gentlefolk, learn from Zaq's example, and his suffering. Remember, seven out of eleven players who use truenamer lose their ability to taste ice cream.
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