Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Eldan]

Yes, I've used them a lot. I've started to use them to replace various spells, too. But then it morphed into my own ritual casting system and bears little resemblence, now.

I don't actually like psionics, though, so I've just split the spell list. All the most powerful spells and most utility spells become rituals.

[Tzi]

Yes, I've used them a lot. I've started to use them to replace various spells, too. But then it morphed into my own ritual casting system and bears little resemblence, now.

I don't actually like psionics, though, so I've just split the spell list. All the most powerful spells and most utility spells become rituals.

I've kinda settled on Psionics as being the most common form of doing supernatural things. Peoples own latent power and ability, however magic I kind of want to keep more mysterious, unusual, dangerous. And thematically and mechanically kinda more occultic.

Using Incantations to do things like say, necromancy, binding and summoning, or even communing with Gods... ect. Were you might need a large number of people, or people with specific abilities, sacrifices, ect. Or having to make deals with beings beyond the mortal plane.

The idea being "The more we do this the greater the risk the Universe will become aware of us." Which may or may not be a bad thing.

[Eldan]

Quite. Really, the most fun thing was coming up with lists of bad stuff that could happen if you screw up a certain ritual.

[Tzi]

Quite. Really, the most fun thing was coming up with lists of bad stuff that could happen if you screw up a certain ritual.

Any examples?

I'm kinda making a table for incantations depending on what they are.

Like well also making differing degrees of incantation. Like Minor Arcana and Major Arcana. So like Minor Arcana Necromancy ritual would be like using a Spirit Board to communicate with the dead. So perhaps maybe you get the wrong person, or at worst summon a wraith or something.

Major Arcana would be like actually bringing a dead person back to life. Were they might come back as something akin to a Necropolitan or a fully living person.

I might also see how I can combine and enhance Alchemy for these rituals. For example some require Alchemical ingredients or maybe even machines and delicate instruments.

[Eldan]

Look at the ritual system in my signature. It's under "Arcane Magic", about the fifth post in that thread. I especially like Planar Binding, but Shadow Walk and Animate Dead are fun too.

[00dlez]

I usually avoid psionics in my campagins, mostly because its another layer of mechanics, but also because I've always just viewed the sorcerer as a psionic - unpracticed, usuing force of will alone to reshape the world. I get the difference between the arcane and psionics fluff wise, I just never found it compelling enough to drag into my settings.

[Eldan]

I just don't like the psionic mechanics very much. Power points are terribly uninspired for a mechanic.

[00dlez]

Meh - the mechanic doesn't bother me so much. I mean, if power points were the original mechanic for spells and psions used "Psionic Level Slots" which do you think people would think is more cumbersome?

I just didn't ever buy into the NEED for psionics... What would be wrong with just fluffing a sorcerer to accomplish the same feel? I mean, other than to sell some new books, spells, abilities, etc.

[Eldan]

Honestly, elegance or simplicity for a mechanic is often quite secondary to me. Sure, power points maybe simpler to understand. But to me, at least, prepared slots just lend themselves very well to writing fluff about them.

[Tzi]

I usually avoid psionics in my campagins, mostly because its another layer of mechanics, but also because I've always just viewed the sorcerer as a psionic - unpracticed, usuing force of will alone to reshape the world. I get the difference between the arcane and psionics fluff wise, I just never found it compelling enough to drag into my settings.

Well in my setting i just ax'd all the arcane/divine traditional magic.

So classes like Ranger, Paladin, Sorcerer, Wizard, Druid, Cleric, Oracle, Witch ect... (Yes running Pathfinder) are replaced with Psion, Soulknife, Marksmen, Wilder, Vitalist and a few homebrew and archetype classes.

Psionics are the main "Supernatural," ability. With Magic being kinda more occultic and involving the invocation of mysterious forces and intelligence's.

So I've avoid the "Another new mechanic," but ditching the original mechanic.

[Yora]

I simply renamed psions "adepts", gave oracles the spellcasting of psions and call them "shamans", and use rangers that just don't get any spells (10th level is maximum anyway), and that's pretty much it.
Barbarians, fighters, and rogues are also available, and that covers anything I really need to represent all characters that could exist in the setting.

I am willing to use almost any spellcasting system. As long as it is not spell slots.

[Tzi]

I simply renamed psions "adepts", gave oracles the spellcasting of psions and call them "shamans", and use rangers that just don't get any spells (10th level is maximum anyway), and that's pretty much it.
Barbarians, fighters, and rogues are also available, and that covers anything I really need to represent all characters that could exist in the setting.

I am willing to use almost any spellcasting system. As long as it is not spell slots.

I adopted that somewhat, well the idea of Psions and Psionic powers as simply adepts. These are people with supernatural power and with training can grow in it.

"True Magic," often comes naturally to these types as they have the intellect and force of will to practice it. However the danger in my setting is that these incantations and invocations over time run the risk of "Making the universe aware of you." Which can be terrifying if your accustomed to being a simple person on your pale blue marble. XD

[Everyl]

I've had a psionics-only setting on the back burner for a while now. It's also tentatively E6, meaning that the ritual magic system from UA would be really handy if there are any high-level effects I want to still be available in the setting. I don't think of the ritual system as something inherently different, but rather as the way that psions in the setting work together to accomplish greater feats. I've been working on ways to make the six discipline-focused psion subclasses feel philosophically and thematically distinct from one another, and this is reflected in the rituals they create. For example, the culture that specializes in Telepathy tends to create rituals that involve organized singing or music-making - things that actually cause people's brain activity patterns to synchronize in the real world. Shapers, on the other hand, tend to work together on making a device or construct that can accomplish their goals.

The slot-based casting system used in most editions of D&D to date feels cumbersome and awkward to me now. Maybe I've been playing too many other RPGs over the last few years. Why mess with the details of preparing daily spell lists or tracking up to 10 separate pools of different powers if you can just say, "This is what you can do, this is your fuel for doing it," and get on with the game? It was the realization that I could chuck the slot-based casting system entirely that got me interested in running D&D again. Furthermore, since I've moved far away from the hardcore gamers I used to play with in my college days, I think it will help my efforts to recruit newbies if I use the point-based system instead.

[Tzi]

Everyl, that is mainly my big love of psionics, I think points is simple and more intuitive then spell slots. Beginners will understand it easier.

Bringing another topic,

Orcs, how to have them in a campaign world? Or more specifically playable Orc's. I've recently decided to incorporate some sort of Orc like race. Though I'm using Pathfinders Half-Orc's for a statistical base. And it is set that they don't call themselves Orc's but instead have legions of names for themselves based on language of the group.

However the major temptation with Orc's is to make them either bestial evil marauders.... OR.... proud warrior race/noble savages. Neither of which appeals to me. I do have an idea of making them akin to say humans at the dawn of civilization. Have several erecting say giant stone monoliths, building cities, say Aztec/Maya style pyramids, Ziggurats, Easter Island heads, ect.... a decidedly "Early culture" but that is doing well until encountering these other races whom in my campaign world have been living "Off world." in one way or another and essentially emerge and encounter these much more primitive societies and largely decimate them sending them into crisis.

There might also be differing Orc's. For example the Mainline playable Orc's would have Half Orc Pathfinder stat bloc's. They would be culturally similar to Ancient Humans, then there would be an offshoot race or cousin race with actual Orc stats' akin to say Neanderthal's or differing branches of the Orc family tree.

[QED - Iltazyara]

That bestial marauder/noble savage problem got me too for a while. Due to Warcraft orcs and the D&D orcs it can be hard to figure out what to do. Eberron did them better than most, but didn't expand on them much.

I've ended up going with a brutal warrior society, for one group anyway. I think one of the best ways to make a race more playable is to make it diverse, with multiple cultural groups.

I'm using them as a threat, but as they are a Big Threat towards one of my Evil Nations it's kinda hard to say if they're a good threat or a bad one. Then again, my whole setting is designed to make that distinction difficult, painful and likely to stab you in the back later.

My personal views on orcs as a warlike race came out in one of my setting quotes, here;

“Orcs, history calls them brutes, beasts and cruel beings uncaring for anything save war. To our more modern eyes, enlightened by society this is true. But remember, once we were savages, raiding and pillaging the riches and glories of a society a thousand times greater than ours. Those civilisations are long since destroyed, gone to dust and ashes as we rise upon a pearly towers above the Orcish hordes. We were once as they, and one day they may be as we, fight to survive, but do not claim righteous justice; only the right to survive.”

Humans replaced elves, who replaced dragons, who replaced some long dead great race... And humans will get replaced by orcs, maybe. I think the quote fits what you're saying anyway.

[Tzi]

That bestial marauder/noble savage problem got me too for a while. Due to Warcraft orcs and the D&D orcs it can be hard to figure out what to do. Eberron did them better than most, but didn't expand on them much.

I've ended up going with a brutal warrior society, for one group anyway. I think one of the best ways to make a race more playable is to make it diverse, with multiple cultural groups.

I'm using them as a threat, but as they are a Big Threat towards one of my Evil Nations it's kinda hard to say if they're a good threat or a bad one. Then again, my whole setting is designed to make that distinction difficult, painful and likely to stab you in the back later.

My personal views on orcs as a warlike race came out in one of my setting quotes, here;

“Orcs, history calls them brutes, beasts and cruel beings uncaring for anything save war. To our more modern eyes, enlightened by society this is true. But remember, once we were savages, raiding and pillaging the riches and glories of a society a thousand times greater than ours. Those civilisations are long since destroyed, gone to dust and ashes as we rise upon a pearly towers above the Orcish hordes. We were once as they, and one day they may be as we, fight to survive, but do not claim righteous justice; only the right to survive.”

Humans replaced elves, who replaced dragons, who replaced some long dead great race... And humans will get replaced by orcs, maybe. I think the quote fits what you're saying anyway.

I'm thinking of making "Orc's" the main indigenous race to the world. While the world was dying, and being terraformed back to life the creatures called "Orc's" endured and colonized the world while the other races had not dared to trod upon it. The other races are races that have been "reintroduced."

Orc's had begun developing their own civilization on a world that was entirely theres as the only real sapient species on the surface. The were discovering metallurgy, astronomy, mathematics, psionic powers, building cities and practicing agriculture. Another race, the Tyr Elves arrived and obliterated many of these primitive civilizations. After all the Tyr had alchemical weapons, black powder (Tech akin to the Iron Kingdoms campaign world).

They are actually only called Orc's by the Tyr Elves, whose ancestors the Sylvan Elves used as a general word for savage feral creature. The other race is the Azaren whom are the descendants of Humans whom fled the world during its dying days to settle within one of its moons. They eventually became vampiric (I was inspired by Pandorum XD ) Whom have incredible psionic abilities. Several Azaren even pose as God's to the Orc's whom are swayed by their incredible powers and longevity.

Their main advantages are that biologically they are very resilient to pain, disease, and in times of great crisis their females can induce themselves to be able to have 5-7 children in one sitting. Meaning that in spite of the calamities they are very difficult to completely wipe out.

[Yora]

I've been pondering the issue of orcs for quite some while. And in the end, my solution was not to have any orcs in the world at all.

There is a race that is 95% Warcraft orcs and looks a bit like a blend of hobgoblins and shifters (Eberron), but I think the only really important change is to not call them orcs. For the kind of world I have in mind, orcs are just too simplistically evil.
How simplistic they are really becomes apparent when you start to think of enemies for low-level adventures or big war campaigns. Every ten steps I find myself wanting to just place a band of orcs and be done with it. If you don't have orcs to use and have to make the NPCs humans, dwarves, or maybe elves or halflings, the whole dynamics suddenly change quite substentially.

I do have goblins, though. However, I made them a race that is entirely subterranean and serves the role of intermediaries between the normal humanoids of the surface world and the really weird creatures of the underworld. They usually don't raid surface settlements, but are rather the first beings one encounters when descending into the Underworld. And being still relatively familiar, they can also be guides to introduce PCs to this very new world they are about to enter.

I'd like to mention here that the problem of having orcs as simply evil masses even caused some headache to Tolkien, the man who pretty much invented them. A race of thinking mortals that are still evil by nature and not by choice was actually quite a serious problem to the way he thought a well thought out fantasy world should be like. He just had painted himself into a corner and couldn't really do anything about it after he had his famous novels published.

[00dlez]

One of my groups is starting a homebrewed setting wherein orcs are actually the worlds saviors. They are "cursed humans", having taken on a very ugly form after a past apocalypse type event. Mechanically they are the same as the MM would depict them, and in many regards are still savage fighters, but the greater fluff behind them, I think, gives them a fresh new look.

Rather than raise hordes to pillage human lands, orcs now stay put on ancient, sacred (and to the rest of the world, secret) sites and protect them in order to prevent a second apocalypse event.

[Eldan]

My main solution to the "orc problem" was to make sure that differences are more cultural than biological and that neither side is clearly evil. It makes things complicated to write, of course, but much more satisfying in play.

In one world I once wrote, two societies were mainly at odds over how magic should be used. At the most basic level, almost everyone in both populations had some telepathic ability, enabling them to get a vague sense of where others were and how they were feeling. Their power got stronger when they got more familiar with someone, up to enabling full mental communication and a host of other small magics.
The first society was mainly based on farming. They used their ability to openly communicate in groups. Their society was democratic to a degree: to make decisions they sat in circles and debated until everyone felt that everyone else was happy with the decision to a degree. However, due to this, they saw anyone who wasn't participating in group activities as a giant problem. They did everything in groups, to strengthen their group telepathy, their entertainment was a kind of entrancing dancing and singing in groups, they lived and slept in communal huts, they never worked alone. The very idea was abhorrent to them and Solitaires, as they called them, were exiled from their tribes very quickly, often as children. In war, they fought in phalanxes.
The other society were mainly nomadic wanderers. Hunting trips often involved small bands of four or less people with their dogs, as did their raids and warbands. Their society was strictly hierarchical and leaders would establish their dominance by subduing others with sheer telepathic power, often rendering them unconscious. Telepathic power was strictly regulated: leaders were feeling everyone's emotions, but even accidentally sensing what your superior or elder was feeling was a grave faux-pas. Close telepathic connections were only allowed between siblings, married couples or members of the same warband and had to be based upon years of trust and oaths. Unlike the first group, however, they allowed connections to their dogs and horses.

Now, there's plenty of cultural points for friction, without ever mentioning species. The farmers think the nomads are cold, brusque and brutal. The hunters think the farmers are uncivilized morons who are constantly shouting their emotions at the top of their telepathic lungs, so to speak, and never learned proper focus. The very idea of bonding to animals felt unclean and wrong to the farmers and was utterly normal to the hunters, after all, you need to communicate with your hunting animals somehow and shouting or whistling would scare your game. For the hunters, telepathic connection is a sign of intimacy and deep trust. For farmers, not immediately opening your mind means you have something to hide.

[Tzi]

Currently I'm making Orc's almost fulfill the role of Humans in a sense since my world lacks Humans.

Well they fulfill many roles.

A big one is they provide the world with ancient ruins and landmarks more recent. Were as true human ruins are going to be mostly these cities of twisted metal and rubble, Orc ruins would be the traditional "Ancient Temple filled with treasure and traps." ect style ruins.

In a sense they are a race of diverse nations all with the same problem, other races have displaced them to one degree or another pushing them to the extremes and unto lands that are often harsh and unforgiving. So there is evidence of great culture and civilization but now crisis has destroyed that leaving holdout city states and societies, and mostly nomadic bands struggling to adapt to this new world and upset at the loss of ancestral lands and glory to what amounts to invaders from the sky.

[Everyl]

I've worked on two different settings in recent months, and I used two different solutions to the "orc problem."

In one, I simply decided that it's a humans-only world, because there's plenty of room for conflict and warfare without needing to make different "races" to fill different roles. This is a simple and clean solution, but many players prefer worlds with the traditional Tolkien-esque races in them, so it's not for everyone.

In the other, I embraced the dizzying racial diversity of D&D, but in a different way from the core books. I wanted to create a setting vast enough that there could be more than a dozen different races, and each and every one of those races could have multiple distinct cultures and societies. Thus, there is no "typical" orc any more than there is a "typical" human IRL. Races still get stereotyped by other races, but those stereotypes tend to reflect whichever cultures have met one another thus far. Orcs as semi-nomadic hunter/raiders do exist and have given their cousins a bad name in some circles, but orcs living in lands more capable of supporting agriculture and settled lifestyles are as prone to seeking out those stable lifestyles as any other race. Racial alignment in this setting doesn't exist, and pretty much every race has its more Good-leaning and more Evil-leaning representatives.

[Vitruviansquid]

I think our problem with traditional fantasy orcs stems from misunderstandings about proud warrior races and marauders. Throughout real world history, there have been cultures that value warrior ideals and peoples for whom raiding is a viable, even lucrative economic activity. In fact it's been so common to kill people and take their stuff that I would even consider it unrealistic if your setting *didn't* have a race of marauders and warriors.

However, portrayals of orcs frequently get a couple things wrong about these societies.

1. The people from these societies would not make war on other people if they didn't have a large advantage of some kind. It makes no sense for you to try to rob someone when you're weaker than they are, but this happens a lot in depictions of fantasy orcs. Orcs are portrayed as having no magic, no strategy, poor leadership and discipline, and then attempting to take on human, elven, or dwarven neighbors who have those in spades, which is totally like the weak bookworm trying to beat up a football player for his lunch money. Broadly speaking, raiders in the real world often had some sort of transportation advantage over the people they attacked, such as the Vikings' ships and Asian steppe nomads' horses. At the same time, they generally had some kind of technological advantage in actual warfare (Conquistadors) and more sophisticated military methods than their victims.

2. The people from raider societies generally have other dimensions of their lives than raiding and fighting. Of course your life is going to be ridiculously short if you fought a battle every day or every week, even as a member of a warrior society. Raiders often raid as a supplement to another, much more pedestrian economic activity, like farming or herding. As well, raiding societies can also have poetry, manufacturing, law, philosophy, innovation, and everything that we consider a part of a complete culture. A lot of raiding/warrior societies can even treasure peace and hospitality because societies are made up of many different, sometimes contradictory impulses. Just look at your own society and try to sum it up with one value.

[urkthegurk]

In my campaign, Hobgoblins are the first ones with access to large-scale 'teleportation circle' tactics, using scry-and-die tactics on enemy settlements, etc. And Orcs are the first to start really effectively using Gate. It helps if you re-write Orcs to not have the Int penalty... I gave them a Dex and Cha penalty and left it at that.

[QED - Iltazyara]

The problem with a lot of these ideas on changing Orcs is that, well, they stop being Orcs.

There are three things that define Orcs in my mind: Strength, Green, Not Civilised.

Orcs using Gate? That looks rather like the product of socially advanced wizardry, it doesn't feel... Right. The Int minus is part of the Orc just as much as the Str plus, they are big and strong, but not that bright.

Vitruvian has it very well put, warrior societies aren't all about battles. My main region's Orcs, rampaging hordes of death that they are, are only that way for a reason. Overpopulation. Orcs live shorter lives than humans, (In my view, anyway), but breed faster. In the mountains they control there are only so many resources, but because of some level of unified religion they don't fight each-other. Instead attacking the nearest owners of arable, fertile land, a human nation.

They aren't "Orcs are raiding, because Orcs" but instead "Orcs are raiding, because they have too many hungry, lusty, angry young males." And such raids only happen every four or so generations, letting everything repopulate.

I don't think the solution is to change what Orcs are, because they may as well be called Tal'var, or whatever, because they don't fit what people think of as Orcs. Better to instead figure out how Orcs, as seen by outsiders, really would work.

Then there's my position of; Orcs are no more evil than humans, they're probably just more hungry, and humans are in fact on the menu. Evil is by perspective, to humans Orcs are really bloody evil, to Orcs humans are really bloody greedy, all those sheep and cows wandering around that they won't share.

[Tzi]

The problem with a lot of these ideas on changing Orcs is that, well, they stop being Orcs.

There are three things that define Orcs in my mind: Strength, Green, Not Civilised.

Orcs using Gate? That looks rather like the product of socially advanced wizardry, it doesn't feel... Right. The Int minus is part of the Orc just as much as the Str plus, they are big and strong, but not that bright.

Vitruvian has it very well put, warrior societies aren't all about battles. My main region's Orcs, rampaging hordes of death that they are, are only that way for a reason. Overpopulation. Orcs live shorter lives than humans, (In my view, anyway), but breed faster. In the mountains they control there are only so many resources, but because of some level of unified religion they don't fight each-other. Instead attacking the nearest owners of arable, fertile land, a human nation.

They aren't "Orcs are raiding, because Orcs" but instead "Orcs are raiding, because they have too many hungry, lusty, angry young males." And such raids only happen every four or so generations, letting everything repopulate.

I don't think the solution is to change what Orcs are, because they may as well be called Tal'var, or whatever, because they don't fit what people think of as Orcs. Better to instead figure out how Orcs, as seen by outsiders, really would work.

Then there's my position of; Orcs are no more evil than humans, they're probably just more hungry, and humans are in fact on the menu. Evil is by perspective, to humans Orcs are really bloody evil, to Orcs humans are really bloody greedy, all those sheep and cows wandering around that they won't share.

Well in the context of the game world, creatures called "Orc's" are done so by outsider. The creatures in question never even heard of the word until outsiders introduced it to them. They simply use words that basically mean "Person," In fact in the game world context (My setting) these creatures are somewhat hinted to be the descendants of Humans whom survived underground, only re-emerging after a great cataclysm had past to settle the now empty surface.

Statistically I use the Pathfinder Half Orc stats for these creatures so they don't necessarily have a minus to any stat.

[Tzi]

In my campaign, Hobgoblins are the first ones with access to large-scale 'teleportation circle' tactics, using scry-and-die tactics on enemy settlements, etc. And Orcs are the first to start really effectively using Gate. It helps if you re-write Orcs to not have the Int penalty... I gave them a Dex and Cha penalty and left it at that.

The Orc's most capable of marauding and raiding are actually those whom have been gifted incredible technology by another race that has posed themselves as God's to the more primitive Orc's. Basically think "Chariots of the Gods," Or the Cuotl from Rise of Legends.

I use the Half-Orc Stats for the things called "Orc" in my setting so they just get a floating +2 to any one stat.

[urkthegurk]

Gate is 'advanced' but its not necessarily 'socially advanced', whatever that means. They could just be ripping open the fabric of space/time, or using ancient rituals, but whatever it is they can take spellcasting levels just like the rest of us. That's one reason I nixed the Int penalty, so they could advance as wizards.

[Yora]

It's a common misconception that a penalty to an ability score means the race is incapable of using that ability score.
Orcs with Int scores of 19 are just as common as humans with Int 21. An orc wizard 17 would get three fewer bonus spells per day and -1 to all save DCs. He's still throwing 9th level spells.

[QED - Iltazyara]

Good thread is slowly falling down the page! No!

On a reasonable note, I do actually have something to post.

Recently I've been going over my pantheons, the greater world one and the regional one I'm focusing on. In doing so I've realised something, I have no sodding clue what gods are expected by people beyond the most obvious ones. Those being God of Magic, Death, War and Cheese (Note to self, need a god of cheese).

I'd like to know what everyone here thinks are the important gods, and what ones are more superfluous and secondary.

I should probably stop using indirect questions. What type of gods do you think are the important ones? Racial gods, elemental gods, conceptual gods or otherwise.

[00dlez]

^

I'd say a great deal of this depends on specific settings and the fluff that surrounds them. As a perhaps obvious example, a setting that takes place entirely below ground (for whatever reason) will have little/no use for a sun god, where as other settings feature them prominently.

As an indriect answer to your indirect question, I'd say the most important gods are those that have the most direct impact/appeal to the populations in your world.

A world run by orcs is going to favor Grummish types and other strength/war deities. One domianted by elves might focus more on arts, music, and other sissy stuff.