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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Yora's Avatar

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    Default The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind and Planescape

    Some people can't help themselves, it seems. I had been working on my previous Ancient Lands setting for about four years and some here might remember it. (Though I just discovered an even older thread from 2009 in which I used the name, but the content is almost unrecognizable, even to me.) I had tried to build a setting structured like Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Tamriel, but about a year ago I started to shift from RPGs to fiction writing and from that I learned a lot about different ways to design a setting and how to bring things to life. And so, here I am again.
    Now I am thinking of worldbuilding much more along the lines of what you see in the original three Star Wars movies (excluding all Expanded Universe material), the John Carter books, or Final Fantasy games. Overall a much smaller design that is really focused on the adventures of a few heroes and not an encyclopedia of everything. As a result, I did such extensive reworking of the setting that for all intends and purposes I consider it a completely new world that merely recycles a few names (because coming up with good names is damn hard!) and ideas for cultures I never really got to develop. "The Old World" is only a working title based on the previous one, but it doesn't even make sense anymore. (But as I said, creating names is hard.)

    The Basic Concept of the Old World

    So, what is the Old World? As anyone who knows me will have guessed, it's a Sword & Sorcery setting in the footsteps of Conan, Elric, Kane, ...and Darth Vader. As mentioned in the title, I am going for a style and atmosphere heavily inspired by the videogame Morrowind, the D&D setting Planescape, and the comic series Hellboy. With some aestetic influences from the movie The Empire Strikes Back, and the videogame Mass Effect 2. I am also drawing on several conventions from the Chinese Wuxia genre, which in many ways is Asian Sword & Sorcery.

    The kind of worldbuilding I am doing focuses on establishing the rules of the world and the culture of the people who inhabit it. Some general regions are broadly defined in their landscape and inhabitants, but specific places like towns, fortresses, ruins, and caves will be created specifically for each adventure. This is not just very time and work saving, I also believe that it creates an atmosphere where both as a GM and as a player there is a much greater sense of vast world full of potential wonders to be discovered. In terms of books, it's not a world for a trilogy of 400 page doorstopper novels, but a world for 40 shorter stories of 20,000 words each. In an RPG, it's a world for campaigns that are a series of 2 or 3 session adventures instead of a big continent spanning quest to save the world.

    Since I've been back to reading more fantasy again, I have made the unfortunate discovery that most books I really like are pretty old stuff from the 30s or 70s, and that pretty much nothing written in my own lifetime adresses the things that really appeal to me in fantasy. Someone suggested to me that the history of western fiction appears to be a constant back and forth swinging between periods where rational calculation and careful planning is in fashion, and periods where everyone is on board for stories about big emotions where things have to feel right first and logically make sense second. And it seems that for the last 20+ years we're once again in a period of rational fiction. Which isn't exactly my cup of tea. Instead I a big fan of passionate fiction, like the Pulp and Noir styles of the 30s and 40s, and the earlier movement of Romanticism. It's not necessary to be deeply familiar with those, but when you think Morrowind, Planescape, Hellboy, and Star Wars are special because they are imaginative and gripping, you probably know what I am talking about. Or rather feel what I am rambling about.
    Over the last 10-15 years there has also been a renewed interest in Weird Fiction; stories that deal with encounters with the bizare and incomprehensible, which seem to follow similar sentiments. But most of it seems to be pretty bleak and cynical with a pervading mood of corruption and decay. With the Old World I want to do something more positive and satisfying. It's meant to be a world of great danger and terrible horror, but at the end of the day the heroes can be thrilled and happy that they did acomplish something that really makes a difference for good; a theme that is at the center of my love for Hellboy and Mass Effect (and Indiana Jones). But there will be pain, there will be blood, and there will be death. And fear.

    The Core Elements

    A Bronze Age World: The primary cultural and technological influences of the world come from the mediterranean Bronze Age, which is roughly the period from 3,000 BCE to 1,000 BCE. But it's not a setting about big empires like the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, but of tribal clans and tiny kingdoms like the Minoans or Trojans at the most. There are no two-handed swords, crossbows, mail armor, or siege weapons, and people write on scrolls instead of using books.

    Points of Light: I am not a fan of D&D in general or of 4th edition in particular, but I think whoever came up with this paradigm hit gold. It's exactly what I need for my setting. The Old World is a relatively small coastal region on the western end of a continent, somewhat similar in size and climate to the region of China, Korea, and Japan, with the edges of Russia in the North and Vietnam in the South. To the people who live in this region, this is the full extend of the known world. How far the land stretches to the east and how far the ocean reaches to the west is a complete mystery to everyone.
    Civilization is always small and widely dispersed. Most towns and the small handful of actual cities are ports directly on the coast or along the major rivers, but most people live in clusters of small villages that are closely tied together through intermarriage. Usually these connected communities consist of only a few tens of thousands of people who live in relative isolation from the rest of the world. Almost everything they need for live they produce themselves, but there are traveling traders who trade in bronze, salt, pelts, and fine cloth.

    A World of Wilderness: Outside these small islands of civilization the Old World is a vast wilderness that is effectively uninhabited and almost completely unexplored. There are no roads except between the biggest cities and nearby towns, and almost all long distance travel is done by boat along the rivers or over the sea. Once one travels beyond the most outlying farms one has effectively left the civilized world. It's a world ruled by beasts and spirits and travelers are completely on their own. Except for the greatest mountains, almost every space of land is covered in trees and home to many dangerous animals.

    A World of Spirits: The Old World is an animistic world and really everything that exist has a spirit. A single flower or a small rock is "alive" in that sense, but has no mind. They are more like bacteria or insects at the most. But a lake, a large hill, or a 2,000 year old tree has a very powerful spirit that to the people who live near it is considered a god. There are no personal god like in most fantasy settings, though of course the spirit of the ocean or the spirit of the sun are incredibly powerful. But to them mortal people are like ants and it's impossible to communicate with them or get even the most remote understanding of their minds. They simply are. In everyday life, people mostly care about the spirits of the land they live on. The spirits of the rivers and fields and the mountains. These are able to notice and pay attention to the actiivities of small groups or even individual people, but their minds are still very alien and you can't chat with them as with normal people. Only shamans have the knowledge and training to understand what the spirits want and the ability to make the spirits understand the needs and troubles of the people. Few spirits are outright hostile, but there is an unlimited amount of ways by which a spirit may be offended, and so most places have many specific rules and rituals to make sure there won't be any accidental conflicts. Even if the spirits of a place are generally considered friendly, there is always considerable danger that they might somehow cause great harm for reasons known only to them, so usually people try to stay away from places known to be home to powerful spirits.
    There are some unusual and dangerous animals, but generally speaking all true monsters are spirits of some kind.

    Mysterious Magic: Magic is a force that plays a very important role in the life of all people (though spirits and shamans), but outside the understanding of almost everyone. Magic is never mundane and it is never a tool. It's never a science but a divine force of the universe. The spirits are magic, and when a shaman or a witch uses magic they are still only dealing with a very small piece of a much larger thing. While magic is natural, it is not normal. It does not follow any rules that are familiar to normal people, which makes it unsettling, unpredictable, and dangerous. When dealing with magic, only shamans and witches know what's going on, and even those usually just have a general idea. Encountering the supernatural means that you can never be sure what to expect and have to think on your toes to hopefully get out in one piece.
    For a game, this means that player characters can not be spellcasters. To cast spells there need to be clear rules what can happen in what situations and that conflicts with the mysterious nature of magic. In turn, NPCs can't just throw around spells left and right as they please either. Magic is primarily about rituals, dealing with spirits, and interpreting visions.

    Exotic Wildlife: In the Old World there are no dogs, bears, horses, or cows. There are stil cats, deer, goats, and birds but also many kinds of big reptiles and insects. They are still normal animals, but going with creatures that don't mirror the common animals of Europe and North America makes it all feel different and exotic. There are also many really huge trees and giant mushrooms like in Morrowind.

    A World without Time: The people of the Old World live as their ancestors did for time immemorial and there isn't really any science or engineering going on. Sages contemplate the nature of reality and argue morality, but there is no such notion as progress. Nobody is doing research or laboring in workshops for the betterment of all mankind. At the same time, there is very little keeping of history. Things are pretty much as they have been forever, but forever may only be two or three thousand years. There are old tales of the deeds of great ancestors, but those are about slaying monsters or founding new villages. Little that would shed light on how the world changed. And nobody is expecting to see any change either. Villages are destroyed or abandoned all the time and the survivors move to other places and build new villages. Often new villages are build in places that have been inhabited before and its not uncommon to see buildings that are extensions of ruins from a previous settlement. Everything that mortals do is temporary and will eventually end, only to be followed by other people whose work is just as temporary. Trying to create things that will last the ages and making permanent changes to the land is generally considered foolish and a sign of madness.

    Alien Ruins: However, people know that there are ruins in the wilderness who were build by people who no longer exist and could not be the work of any mortals that are currently alive. But as alien as many of these look, they are just empty walls and tunnels and there are no lost technologies to be found anywhere. They are still of great interest as they are often on the sites of great magical powers like healing springs or places where divinations provide extraordinary insights. Some also hide relics made from the horns and bones of animal spirits, wood from tree spirits, or crystals taken from the mountains of powerful earth spirits. These relics can greatly enhance the powers of a shaman or witch and their presence can bring supernatural protection or disaster to a whole area. These are obviously the most valuable objects in the world and outright priceless.

    Unique Culture: A fascinating aspect of both Planescape and Morrowind is that the people of these world have some unique customs and concepts of the universe. It's a bit tricky to create, but after having seen it a few times its not very difficult to get accustomed to it. In the Old World, there are distinctive concepts of "justice" and "evil" which are very much unlike our modern western ideas, since there is no divine authority that would judge right and wrong. There are also unusual concepts of "soul" and honor.
    Last edited by Yora; 2016-07-21 at 07:30 AM.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

    Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying

  2. - Top - End - #2
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    All this stuff that follows here is about the internal logic behind the supernatural that will be encountered by heroes. Player Characters wouldn't really know about almost all of it, and players wouldn't have to either. It's primarily a tool to create some consistency between supernatural events and to provide a framework around which adventure ideas can be built.

    Cosmology and Magic

    In the Old World, these two are really the same thing. People usually think as the world consisting of the World of Mortals and the World of Spirits, and sometimes also an Underworld that may or may not be distinct from the Spiritworld or part of it. But in reality there is only one world.

    Mortals percieve the world with their senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Anything around them that can be explained by processes that they can feel, see, hear, smell, or taste is considerd to be normal. Some things like gravity or bouyancy are so omnipresent that they are simply taken for granted. While nobody really knows why things fall or float, it always happens in such a consistent way that it is completely reliable and predictable. But sometimes things are happening that can't be explained simply by observing them with the mortal senses and seem to happen for no apparent reason. All these things fall under the term magic.
    The truth about the nature of the universe is that even the things mortal people perceive in the world around them have many more qualities than just feel, look, sound, smell, and taste. But since these can not be perceived, people think that this is all there is. As real world examples, we know that things can be magnetic, electrically charged, or radioactive, but as far as our biological senses are concerned these qualities might not exist at all. It's only when we have two magnetic objects and bring them close together that we see and feel things happen that are seemingly unexplainable and happening for no reason at all. People in the Old World know that there are such additional qualities and that all the beings that fall under the term "spirit" can somehow interact with them. When a person falls mysteriously ill or is unexpectedly healed, it is because a spirit did something to a part of that person that can not be felt, seen, heared, smelled, or tastes. This is what most people believe and how they think the world works. But in their minds they are aware of 5/6th of the world with 1/6th being invisible to them.

    But shamans and witches know that this is not true. The truth is that mortals only see maybe 5/100th or 5/1,000th of reality. Like in the Platonic Cave, people only shadows of things and believe that these are complete things, and they are unaware that there is a whole world outside the cave. (As much as I think Plato was wrong about pretty much everything, this is a really cool concept for a fantasy cosmology.) Spirits act in such seemingly bizare ways because their reasoning includes many more aspects of a situation than are perceivable by mortals. And even for the most benevolent spirits it can be very difficult to explain things in mortal terms because that means completely ignoring half the relevant facts or more. As such, spirits and magic are ultimately incomprehensible to mortal minds.
    In reality, space also has more than three dimensions and so it's possible that sometimes spirits seem to be made of flesh and blood and a moment later they are invisible and can walk through solid walls. It didn't actually change form, it just stepped into a spot that is invisible to mortal perception. In truth almost all spirits spend almost their entire time in these spaces, which are vastly larger then the space in which mortal bodies exist. This way it is possible to get several giant creatures into seemingly tiny boxes. There's a lot more space inside when you take all the additional dimension into account.

    Through the use of potions and meditation and a great amount of training, mortals are able to expand their five senses to a few more. These people are the shamans and witches. With their additional senses they can see connections where there seem to be none and understand the missing links in a chain of cause and effect. But even they are only aware of perhaps 8/100th or 9/1,000th of the true nature of reality. However, they can not only passively perceive some additional qualities, but also actively interact with them. When they do, it is called casting magic. This can be a purely mental process but can also include the use of tools. Substances like iron, silver, and salt have some qualities that are completely invisible to the mortal senses but interact with other invisible things. To ordinary people looking on, it looks like things are happening on their own with no cause, or a witch is doing things that don't seem to have any effect at all. It's a bit like using a remote control. You press a button on a thing that seems to do nothing, but on the other side of the room the TV turns on. Magic!

    Souls and Undead

    Strictly speaking, there is no distinctive souls inside mortals. There is always only a single being and its many aspects are inseperable. If a person dies in the conventional sense of the term from disease or injury, then all of that person is gone. Normal death means that all the aspects of the being end simultaneously. Therefore you can't contact the dead in the afterlife. There isn't any afterlife.
    However through magic spells or the actions of spirits, it is possible that a creature loses only some of its aspects while the rest remains. A person who lost its aspect of touch, smell, and taste is a wraith. The look and sound still exists, as do the majority of its many invisible aspects. What you're left with is this thing that only partly died but still is partially around and obviously completely mad. All that can be done is to kill the remaining parts as well, but there is no way to restore the missing parts. If you have a being that also lost its look and sound and is now nothing but invisible aspects, then it's going to be really difficult to figure out what's going on. Some kind of haunting, but it can be incredibly abstract.
    Another case of undead are wights and ghouls. They still have all their five normal aspects, but are missing some of their invisble aspects.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

    Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying

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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Old World Heroes - The Traveling Mercenaries

    I always had trouble with the question of why heroes do heroic things. Especially the life of the common adventurer seems rather insane, as they are living on the road and constantly fight extremely dangerous creatures but never really seem to enjoy their spoils. With my previous setting I had planned to make the heroes warriors protecting their home village from various threats, but that really only works two or three times before it becomes implausible that so many terrible things happen and it's always the PCs who have to fix it.

    So for the Old World, I came up with something new. The common hero of the Old World is a mercenary who takes medium to long term contracts of several months to a few years to help protecting a village or castle during times of crisis and great danger. Under normal conditions the men of the village or the lord's warriors are able to defend themselves, but when they come under a greater or prolonged threat, they need additional backup from true professionals. Especially when that threat is of the supernatural kind and none of the locals has any experience with it.

    For these mercenaries such employment can be pretty cushy. All they are expected is to hang around at the castle and be ready in case something happens. And most of the time it doesn't. But when signs of trouble are showing, everyone is looking at them to be the first to go check it out. If some of your mercenaries die you can just hire some new ones. They were expected to leave next spring anyway and now you don't need to feed and pay them. But if you lose some of your own men it can mean difficulties for decades to come. So let the strangers do it. They are getting paid after all. Basically the Seven Samurai as a long term career path.

    While being employed by a lord or elderman, the mercenaries are staying at his home so their reputation as heroes is important. Those who get known as troublemakers might not be welcome by most potential employers. But when their record is good they are not treated as suspicious rabble from the street. When they come to a new area the local patriarchs and chiefs will compete over which of them will have the honor of having these reknown heroes as guests in their home before employment is negotiated. This always works pretty well in many wuxia stories.

    I think this setup is extremely helpful as a template for heroes as it makes more sense than standard adventurers and is much more flexible than professional soldiers:
    Unlike adventurers who work for three days and then spend weeks on the road wasting away all their recently found gold, a hired guard has a much more stable life. They only have to fight during actual attacks and the rest of the time they live the good life at the side of powerful and influential people. It's considerably safer and also much more comfortable. It also means that there's a much better reason why people would come to them with their problems. Hiring some random murderhobos from the street to help with important or personal trouble is a somewhat risky undertaking. People who are eating at the lord's table whose sole reason for being there is to help with such problems is much safer and more reasonable. As they stay much longer, there is also time to build a reputation and word will spread about their good or bad service. And when you start an adventure with "You're in the employment of the local lord and being paid to protect his land from threats" it's much easier to get everyone motivated then with "You're sitting in a bar and some mysterious stanger approaches you." Their job description is not just monster killing and treasure looting, but actually acting heroically. And you don't need people to accept some arbitrary code of honor. Being heroic is a job.
    Compared to characters who are professional soldier there's the big difference that the characters are in a much better bargaining position with their employer. It's not a simple "Yes, sir" where they have to do what they are being told or get thrown in prision, but they can argue about better pay or leaving or try to convice their current boss that they need a different strategy. Because they are not just some shmucks, but professionals who have been hired for their expertise and because they are better than the average clansman. And when after three or four adventures you think there's not a lot of interesting conflicts to be had in a place you can just have the heroes pack their stuff and move on to a new town or castle that could be in a completely different part of the world.

    Of course, this is not a strict neccesity. People like this are common in the Old World, but they are not everywhere. So any time you feel like doing something with a different cast of heroes, that can be done as well. It's simply that currently there are no such mercenaries available to the local leaders and so someone else must deal with it.

    Player Characters
    I think a campaign of this type is best suited to games such as Barbarians of Lemuria, Fantasy Age, or Basic Fantasy and Lamentation of the Flame Princess (both B/X D&D clones). The later three at low to mid levels. In turn, NPCs should all be very low level so that the PCs will all be at the top of the heap from the very start. Level 1 is not so bad when all the regular warriors and raiders are level 0 and there are two or three sons of the chief who are 1st and 2nd level.
    As mentioned earlier, adventures are generally about supernatural threats and the heroes are not meant to have a full understanding of the situation and what they are dealing with. As such wizard and priest characters would not normally be well suited. But since they are the people who are being called to deal with hostile spirits and witches they still have more knowledge about these matters than the average person. Some points in the Sage or Priest career (BoL) or taking a Focus in Arcane Lore or Religious Lore (FA) would be appropriate for many characters.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    You really can't help spinning of new settings, can you Yora?



    I, for one, am glad of it. I don't always agree with the design choices you make, but they're always well reasoned and a fascinating read. Thanks for sharing.

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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    It's a continous process. I think I am still working on realizing the same initial vision I had some 5 or so years ago, but continually learning more about the inner workings and nature of the works that inspired it, and seeing how my previous efforts worked out in practice and how they can be improved.
    In the last one and a half years I've learned so much about classic Sword & Sorcery and the roles and functions of monsters in fiction. And the TSR/WotC/Paizo style of campaign settings really isn't something that works for the style of adventures I have in mind.

    This post will be all about the philosophy of the people living in the Old World and how they directly influence character behavior and the kinds of conflicts that are being fought.

    Beyond Good and Evil - Red Hearts and Black Hearts

    In the Old World there is no creator god or supreme deity and as such there is no higher authority to dictate rules to mortals. There aren't any empires either and the few kings have little power beyond being the elected leaders of a council of chiefs. As such, all customs and traditions are either ancient agreements with local spirits or the invention of normal people. Because of this, there are no concepts of Good and Evil. There are only things of which the community approves and things of which the community disapproves.

    A common standard that is almost universally accepted is to differentiate between actions that ease suffering and actions that cause suffering. The former are seen as good, the later seen as bad. But of course, the Old World is a world of danger and scarcity and many actions that harm a few might greatly benefit many others. Finding a kind of balance between the two that will lead to long term peace and stability is a great responsibility and seen as the mark of a great leader.

    But it is also understood that sometimes the causing of suffering only leads to causing more suffering and this is what for people in the Old World is the closest equivalent to Evil. People need an explanation why such things are done even though they don't benefit anyone. And in the Old World it is believed that there are two main sources for that. Red hearts and black hearts. Having a red heart means to be overtaken by anger and seeking satisfaction by seeing those who caused the anger suffer. Many people have this on a few occasions and it is widely seen as a flaw of character and shameful. But for some people this is a regular state and they are called redhearted. They are seen as dangerous and not entirely trustworthy people.
    People who have a black heart are those who only see the benefits of their actions but don't really care about the suffering that it causes to others. Some are greedy while others simply lack empathy or compassion, but for people in the Old World they are all blackhearted.
    Redhearted and blackhearted people are seen as the source of all unnecessary suffering. It's not that they are violating any rules, but they are a danger to those around them and a problem for the community. The important difference between red and black hearts and the concept of Evil is that these are not black and white and reduce villains to a single trait. When we say a wizard is evil or a group of orcs or bandits are evil, then i's very easy to not think much more about their motives and personalty and just have them be all around despicable and be killed off by heroes in passing. When we use the term Evil in western culture, we exclude those people from the rest of "normal humans" and demote them to monsters who don't think like us and don't deserved to be judged like us. With the red and black hearts I find it much more easier to create antagonists who are still full people with friends and family, who might have positions of high respect and influence. Most of the time they are just like other people except for those moment when they do something redhearted or blackhearted. And it also leads to more complex ways to dealing with them. In a D&D game you might introduce an NPC who seems very nice and the players like him and think he's a cool dude and good ally, but then they find out he's evil. Since they are good there's a strong implication that he fooled them with his fake friendliness and they now must be enemies. But with red and black hearts, you could instead have reactions like "Never ever include this guy in sensitive negotiations" or "Damn, our friend is a ticking time bomb. I hope we can get this under control." I've been playing The Witcher 3 lately and the game is full of characters who are really sympathetic and always a blast to have around, but they also do things that are just awful without showing any regret. But you can't really hate them because other than that they are great. I really like that.

    Red heart and black heart are tools to come up with complex antagonists and ambivalent allies without putting everyone into neatly divided Evil and not-Evil boxes.

    Hospitality

    In a world like the Old World there are only few people traveling between distant settlements and as such there is no need for inns or something like that. Those travelers who do come through a village have news from other places, about which the locals are usually very much interested. As such, there is a strong incentive to invite travelers into your home.
    But even beyond this, hosting travelers as guests is also a great way to gain prestige. After all, only one household in the village can have the guest so there's a competition. But having guests also means that your house needs accomodations for them and they will eat your food. This means hosting guests is expensive and when you do so willingly, you're showing off your wealth to your neighbors.
    And on top of that, when the travelers move on, they will tell tales about their stay in your home and that makes your name known in other villages as an important person.
    As a guest, one must not be selfish and so it is proper to give gifts to the host in gratitude. Technically this is not payment for your stay, but it does lessen the economic burden on the host. As a guest you can be cheap with your gifts, but like everything else, word about this will spread and when you come through the area again you might not get offered such nice accomodations again and might have to do with the invitation of a less wealthy host who sees an opportunity.
    All this means that it's generally pretty easy to find accomodations when coming to a new settlement as travelers. But it's going to be a very different experience from renting a room in an inn for a night. The really famous wandering heroes are rarely referred to as hired mercenaries. Instead they are honored guests and good friends of the host. Even if they just met a day or two ago. Still works the same way: A decent bad, regular food, and getting gifts from the host that are more valuable than the gifts you give him in return.

    Vengeance

    The Old World is a world without states and there is no form of police to protect people from crime and punish the guilty. The means to keep people from comiting crimes in vengeance. In a world like this, it's not so much about wanting to see someone suffer because he hurt you, but most foremost about preventing future crimes.

    In an ideal case, you get the person who commited the offense and he has to pay reparation, gets whipped, or executed and that would be the end of it. But nobody really lives just by himself and there's always a couple of brothers, cousins, sons, and uncles who will defend their own people from some outsiders making wild claims. But if an offender could just run back home after commiting an offense and be left of the hook, there is nothing to dissuade him or others from commiting such an offense again in the future. The answer is to get reparation from a relative or kill a family member. This has two effects: First the offender now suffers because his family is now poorer or one of his close relatives is dead. But in addition to that his own family members might now very well want to punish him as well as nothing of this would have happened if he had behaved.

    Another thing to consider is that nobody ever really acts fully alone all by himself. When offenses are commited, there is usually a brother or cousin nearby who should have tried to interfere and prevent the offense. And it is also the duty of the older family members to raise their children to behave. And if they notice that one member of their family is perhaps not completely right in the head, it is their duty to watch him so that he doesn't cause any harm to others. So in this kind of society, the idea of collective guilt is not entirely unjustified and the concept of collective punishment not completely unreasonable.

    However, this does not mean that everyone has to like it. Sometimes you know exactly whose fault it was and you know which of his relatives are completely innocent and so you might not want to harm them in revenge. But even if this family promises that they will never allow something like this to happen and you believe that they say the truth, all the other families in the area are watching you and what you do. If you let one offense against your family go unpunished, it makes you look like an easy target. And the next time a criminal is chosing who will be his next target, your family will be high on the list. Because of this, no crime can go unpunished. It's just too great a risk.

    All this doesn't mean that every crime has to result in a feud that lasts decades until one of the families is completely annihilated. The most simple and straightforward option is that the offenders family casts him out and hands him over to be punished. If his guilt seems certain and his relatives are horrified by his actions this is one way to partially satisfy revenge. But that still only punishes the offender for his crime while his relatives are still guilty of not sufficiently controling him.

    The primary means to solve such a conflict is to pay reparation. Since all the animals, grain, and so on are shared by the whole family and are not the personal property of any single person, it's the entire family that is paying. And as mentioned above, they might be pretty angry with the person who caused all this. If the amount of reparation is sufficiently high, it can really hurt the family who has to pay. It's better than having a few members of the family killed, but it still hurts and can be a strong incentive for people to make sure none of their relatives commit any crimes.

    But sometimes you have the situation where the family won't hand over the criminal for punishment or won't pay the demanded reparation. Then things get ugly and you start injuring and killing relatives, steal animals, and destroy crops instead. Now they will say a crime has been commited against them and they have to strike back to avenge it and you got yourself a nasty feud. A feud can go on for a very long time and span many generations, but usually it doesn't. More often people on both sides get very fed up with the whole killing and burning and just want it to be over. In that case, it's not actually necessary that both sides caused the same damage to the other until they are even. When every act of revenge is seen as unjustified and needs to be avenged in turn, you can never get even. The main requirement to end a feud and make peace is that you have clearly shown to everyone that messing with your family will hurt them a lot. Even when you know that seeking vengence will really hurt you and you won't gain anything from pursuing it, you have little choice in that regard. Losing three men now is better than being the preferred target for everyone else for decades to come.

    Revenge in a tribal society is not simply about the red heart. It's not for satisfying your anger or relieving your pain. This certainly plays into it most of the time, but most importantly it's a matter of survival and self defense. Vengence is not a choice, it's a necessity. Even when you know it will cost you dearly, and even if you mean the other side no ill will.
    Which I think can make for some really awesome adventures very much unlike what you usually get.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Someone told me a quote from some old French guy that perfection is reached not when there is nothing to add, but nothing to take away. And the word refinement literally means the removal of impurities. So what years back had some two dozen kinds of humanoids is now down to only four.

    Elves
    Elves are the most numerous of the humanoid peoples of the Old World. They regularly reach ages over 300 years but are fully grown in their mid-20s. Elves stand between 1,60m and 1,80m tall, have strong cheekbones, flat noses, pointed (but short) ears, and large eyes that show little white. Northern elves have light brown skin and black to chestnut brown hair. Southern elves have dark gray skin and hair in shades of gray ranging from almost white to almost black.
    Most elven settlements are found along the coasts and on nearby islands, and all the major cities and towns are ports.

    Spoiler: Somewhat like this
    Show


    Kaas
    Kaas are big humanoids who stand 2 meters high and taller with faces that somewhat resemble lions or bears and small goat-like horns. They have short sand colored fur and thick dark brown manes. They have very powerful arms and legs and can climb very fast even on very difficult mountainsides and jump considerably longer distances than expected for humanoids of their size.
    Kaas live in the mountainous regions in the north and in the colder woodlands away from the coast where most elven civilization is found.

    Skeyn
    Skeyn are small people who stand about 1,20m to 1,30 high and have light green skin. They have large heads with big eyes and ears but small mouths and noses. Because of their small size and lower strength, skeyn rely greatly on stealth and deception when dealing with other people. Their homes are build into hillsides and cliff faces and have small doors and very narrow windows that are easy to defend against attackers from outside. They are usually very reserved around outsiders and try to obscure their full strength and goals, which makes them very difficult to read. When they get drawn into fights they fight very dirty and exploit every possible advantage so many people never fully trust them. If they decide that they want a fight, they are not letting their enemies know in advance, which gives them a deserved reputation for being backstabbing.
    Skeyn run almost all of the big mines for tin, which makes their main strongholds famously wealthy, as the rare metal is indispensible for the making of bronze for weapons, armor, and tool. They are also the only ones who know how to turn iron ore into a workable metal. While the wrought and cast iron is much lower in quality than bronze, it's much cheaper and good for pans or nails, as well as blades that hurt spirits.

    Yao
    The yao stand in height between elves and kaas, being between 1,80m and 2,00m tall, with a broad shouldred stature that is more close to the later than the former. The skin of yao is colored somewhere between gray and ocher and more leathery and thicker than that of elves. Both their hair and their small eyes are a very dark brown. Most yao that reach adulthood live to an age between 60 and 80.
    The yao are the least numerous of the four humanoid races of the Old World and are native to the mountains between the lands of the northern and southern elves. They also are the least technologically skilled and their bronze weapons and armor are mostly traded or captured from other peoples or made from molten down scraps. A smaller group of yao lives far to the north in the Witchfens where they worship strange spirits and are enemies with all their neighbors.

    Other humanoids
    Trolls: Trolls are big humanoids with thick gray skin and with shoulders almost as wide as they are tall when they are standing at rest. Their eyes, noses, mouths, and ears seem almost tiny for their big heads and their faces appear rather flat and featureless. They are somewhat more simple minded than the other humanoid peoples, using only stone and bone tools and living in caves which they often dig into the earth below the roots of big trees that hold the ceiling up. They rarely speak languages other than their own, but some skeyn and kaas have learned the language spoken by local troll clans.
    Harpies: Harpies are small humanoids that stand somewhat taller than skeyn but are of much more slender build. While this makes them somewhat similar to small elves in stature, they have wings for arms and claws in place of feet. There are three small claws on the outer joints of their hands which they can use as fingers but they are not good with tools and rarely use anything more complex than sharp rocks for cutting. They don't use any clothing, armor, or weapons, but in addition to the large claws on their feet they also have very sharp teeth for humanoids. Harpies are found in many lands, but they are never very numerous and usually stick to hard to reach places where elves or yao can't reach them. They are more intelligent than trolls and some of the smarter ones learn bits of the languages of their neighbors.
    Lagura: These fish people live out in the open sea but often come to the beaches on remote uninhabited islands. They are similar in height to elves but heavier. They are a dark turqouise blue on their backs and lighter on their fronts, with bright red or orange crests on their heads and spines. Their heads look very much like fish but sit on short thick necks. Their wide mouths have teeth like those of sharks. Lagure are rarely seen and only very few witches know their language.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Old World Animals

    There are no stats for any roleplaying game attached to them at this point, but to help getting an impression about their strength, each is given a threat class ranging from 0 to 6.


    The arag is a predator about the size of a large dog. Their appearance is somewhat similar to reptiles and weasels and they are covered in sleek gray and brown fur. They have a very wide range and are found in almost all parts of the mainland, but are rare on smaller islands far away from the coast. Arags usually stay away from settled areas, but have little fear of single travelers in the wilderness and will sometimes even attack small groups. (Class 2)


    A draga is a big reptile about the size of a lion but of a more slender build. It’s tough hide is a deep emerald green but tends to be more brown in regions where forests are less dense and there is less vegetation and shadows. Arags are usually solitary but sometimes hunt in groups of three or four, which are able to kill almost anything they come across. (Class 4)


    The droha is a big reptile found in all the tropical and temperate forests of the Old World, except on smaller islands. It’s about the size of a camel and has been domesticated in many areas as the main beast of burden. Drohas often live in herds of one to three dozen individuals. (Class 2)


    The garai is one of the largest predators found in the Old World. It’s a huge lizard bigger than the largest crocodiles and found throughout most of the southern regions. They are not terribly fast and rarely chase their prey far, but are surprisingly adept at hiding in the underbrush despite their enormous size. (Class 4)


    Giras are one of the most common large herbivores in the Old World. They can grow to the size of drohas but are usually somewhat smaller. They can run faster than drohas but carry less weight and they are also less docile and requite more care and attention, which makes them less popular as pack animals. (Class 2)


    Gren are dog-sized creatures seemingly related to crabs, scorpions, and spiders. They make their homes usually in rock caves or in large tunnels dug below the roots of big trees, but will also build nests in the underground levels of old ruins. Nests consist of about a few dozen individuals, but gren are usually encountered alone when out hunting. The tail of gren does not have a sting, but their bite is poisonous. Nests are build from a material similar to spiderwebs, but they don’t use webs for catching prey. (Class 2)


    A handak is a big rodent the size of a small dog that can eat almost anything. They are very good at digging tunnels through dirt and can gnaw through thick roots and even wooden planks with little difficulty. In areas where handaks are common, people usually build their storage cellars with stone walls to keep the pests out. (Class 1)


    Heors are a large type of domesticated deer that has been bred primarily for riding. They are stronger than most other deer and have smaller antlers that makes it easier to keep them in stables and safer for riders. Heors are quite fast over short distances and well suited to running in forests, but they lack stamina and over longer distances tend to be even slower than a man on foot as they require regular periods of rest. They are still greatly prized for travel as they can carry much greater loads than people. Heors are still relatively rare as they are expensive to maintain and need a lot of training to be ridden. Usually they are used by scouts and messengers, but are mostly unsuited for use in battle. (Class 1)


    The kina is a large winged reptile aboutthe size of a big eagle. They are found on all the coasts and islands of the Old World. (Class 1)


    A krat is a large reptile somewhat similar to a rhinoceros. Young krats can be tamed and are sometimes used to pull heavy carts or drag large logs. They are not well suited to long marches and requite a great deal of attention from their handslers and so are rarely used by traveling merchants. (Class 3)


    A ksan is a reptile found in the warm jungles of the south that is greatly feared by the local elves. A ksan has a very long neck and legs, and claws that can be used like hands. Most people of the south believe that they are one one the most intelligent kinds of beasts and might even be able to talk with each other. They are mostly found in the highlands away from the coasts, so they are rarely seen, which increases their mysteriousnes. (Class 3)


    The liak is a small deer about the size of a goat. They are impossible to be kept fenced in but are commonly hunted by elves, kaas, yao, and many predators. (Class 0)


    A mora is a large predator resembling a huge weasel or very slender tiger with a pelt like a bear. Mora are very rare and highly dangerous, but they can be tamed and trained to carry a rider. They are fast and agile and easily kill a man, but require a great amount of experience to control. Unlike warriors mounted on heors and drohas, mora riders are not able to use their weapons while mounted and rather serve as handlers for their war beasts. Keeping a mora is very expensive as they eat mostly meat, and they require a great deal of care, which makes them very uncommon as trained animals. Even in the wilds they are rarely seen. (Class 4)


    Ogets are goats that have been bred by skeyn to be beasts of burden and are used for carrying loads and plowing fields. They lack the speed of heors when loaded but can be comfortably ridden by skeyn at walking speed. Larger ones can carry most elves, but they are too small to carry kaas or yao. Ogets are very hardy animals and produce milk and wool, which makes them common on farms in all parts of the Old World, except the jungles of the south. (Class 0)


    Straigs are winged reptiles much larger in size than kina and are known to kill droah and young krats. They have very long serpentine bodies and their narrow snouts have poisonous teeth that paralyze a victim within minutes. As they usually hunt large animals, the bite of a straig is almost always lethal to elves, yao, and skeyn, though kaas have occasionally survived even without the help of potions. (Class 5)


    A taun is a pig-sized animal with green-brown hide, short legs, and a head that somewhat resemble a turtle. They are slow creatures and when raised on farms generally peaceful around people. They can eat a great variety of plants and as they always stay very close to the herd and don’t wander far, they are usually left to roam free at the edges of village and droven back to their stables or enclosures for the night. Since they need a lot of food they are only found in woodlands and are absent in the far north and the higher mountains. Tauns are mostly kept for meat and leather. (Class 0)


    An uba looks like a creature somewhat between a rhinoceros and a hippo with two big horns above its eyes. Uba spend much of their time in shallow water and live in small groups. They don’t eat meat but quickly get aggressive when approached. (Class 3)
    Last edited by Yora; 2016-04-11 at 07:32 AM.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Today I remembered an interesting and somewhat strange rule from the D&D Companion set, that aside from BECMI players probably not many people know about. This edition had the oddity that elves, dwarves, and halflings didn't pick classes but had fixed classes built into them. Dwarves and halflings basically fighters, and elves fighter/wizard. Cleric spells were available only to humans. So in the Companion set there was an introduction of relic keepers. A relic is a powerful magic artifact that projects a permanent turn undead effect in all directions, but the keeper in charge of it could also draw on some of its energy to cast cure serious wounds, cure blindness, cure disease, and neutralize poison. This temporarly causes the undead protection zone to shrink a bit, but it recovers one point of energy every day.

    I thought that was an interesting idea, but didn't really do anything with it when I was still usings a Force/Chi based magic system. But now with the new magic system it becomes a lot more interesting again. Now my new idea works like this:
    Shamans only have the power to see spirits and magic but can not manipulate it. They can communicate with spirits to ask for help in the form of healing the sick or driving away invaders, or to ask for guidance in the form of divinations and visions. Anything else would be the use of potions and powders which anyone can prepare and use.
    Originally I had thought of spirits of the land as beings that live in a sacred place a good distance away from the village that would only be visisted to make offerings and sacrifices to pray for protection. The god would have a big domain in the wilderness and a small patch of land on the edge would be given to mortals to build their homes and fields, but leave the rest of the domain untouched. But now I really like the idea of the turn undead effect being a general shield of protection against monsters. This would really make the world a Points of Light setting, with the light being the protection of a local god. Instead of gods being distant, they would now be very near and constantly so. Civilization only exist because the gods are creating areas of safety where farms can be build. The gods make civilization possible. The gods can be huge trees, mountains, or islands, but they could also be nymphs or titans and the villagers have to build them a palace where they live and be their servants. Which is of course a lot like the Sorcerer Kings from Dark Sun, and a bit like the Tribunal from Morrowind. Both two settings that had a huge effect on the style I was trying to mimic but I was never able to capture their weird supernatural atmosphere. Having the gods living on a hill towering above the town is perfect to that. And of course the gods don't have to be all benign. Some could be tyrants. To quote my favorite game: "You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it." Religion now dominates everyday life and since gods can be killed there's a huge potential for stories. Maybe someone wants to kill a good god. Or someone already has killed a good god and now the monsters from the wilderness can swarm in. Or even someone wants to kill an evil god. Lots of potential.

    When shamans are not actually casting spells, this also has implications for the people who do. Shamans are respected members of the community who play a vital role. Witches and sorcerers do not. They are now very weird and mysterious people with unique and unnatural powers. They are both more and less than mortals. Think Rasputin from Hellboy, Cain from Command & Conquer, the Lich King from Warcraft 3, or even Karrigan from Starcraft. Or Darth Vader, "more machine than man".

    I really, really like this idea. This gives the world a very unique style with a huge potential for new adventures. It's a lot weirder than most fantasy worlds I've seen, without having to become grotesque.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Very nice setting. I like the ideas here, especially the extensive list of non-traditional animals. I think that really helps it feel like another world.

    One question, though. How does this new "gods are sanctuaries against monsters" work with the "wandering mercenaries" paradigm for heroes? Are the heroes being hired by the gods? If the gods keep the villages safe, why do they still need mercenaries? Also, I wonder if having every village have a definitively real god with obvious effects will mess with some of the mystery around spirits and magic that you seem to be going for here. Finally, how are new villages founded and old ones destroyed if the gods are what protects the villages? I like the ideas in this latest post, but I don't really see how it fits with the rest of the setting you've established.

    Just my 2 cp.

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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    You are raising very good points there.

    Having a Galadriel or Almalexia who is basically queen of the land and its people is a cool idea, but it really would have to be a very rare and highly unusual exception. Or it basically turns into Dark Sun sorcerer kings. It also makes shamans mostly redundant.

    Regular gods need to be very impersional and hands off to make it all work. The gods enable villages and towns, but running them needs to be left entirely in the hands of the population. They create a zone that is relatively safer than the wilderness, but it's not like there's a magic force field that keeps everything out. And against humanoid attackers the gods might not even take direct action at all. The scene in Lord of the Rings when Elrond commands the river to carry away the ring wraiths could be a good example of how a shaman might get direct help from the local god in an exteme situation.
    But mostly the gods need to be hands off, concerning themselves only with preventing draughts and avalanches, or ending a disease that is affecting the population or the herds. But when small groups of raiders occasionally rob the outlying farms, that doesn't even register with them. That's just mortals doing mortals things. And more powerful creatures might be immune to being strangled by a vine or smitten by a bolt of lightning from the sky. The protection offered by the gods needs to be primarily supernatual or very vague. Dealing with specific human still falls completely to warriors, mercenaries, and witches.

    I think it's probably also better to have the idols or temples of the gods being close and visible from the village, but not actually right in the center of them. A big magic tree surrounded by houses between its roots can work once or twice, but isn't a good default model. Having a temple or tree on a hill, or a small island out on the lake, which is only visited by shamans or on special celebration maintains a greater distance between mortals and spirits. From everywhere in the village you can see the home of the god, but not the god itself. And of course, even within the sanctuary the gods are invisible with their bodies, if they have any, being in the Spiritworld and only manifesting in very special situations.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is gaming. There are rules!

    I decided to think about adapting the setting to an RPG system. One option is always Barbarians of Lemuria, but I really have no experience with making NPCs or creatures for that system and it really is very rules light. I like the comfort of character classes and levels and believe that one of the best RPGs I've ever seen is the B/X edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It has two big flaws that make me not want to use them, of which one is the way attack rolls are made. Both Basic Fantasy and Lamentations of the Flame Princess use the d20 way of rolling attacks by default. The other one being the magic system, which I will have to completely replace either way.
    All things considered, LotFP is the system in which I would not change anything else, so this is the one I am going with. The main differences between other OSR games are that only fighter increase their attack chance as they gain levels and that the thief skills have been greatly simplified to use a d6 instead of a d100, but also allow customization as in AD&D 2nd edition. It also has an incubrance system that only counts how many items you have and not how much each of them weigh, which is really nice. And the weapon and armor list is much shorter.

    Races and Classes
    There are four races in the Old World and none of them are humans. Since I was never a fan nonhuman races as classes, characters of any race can take any class. Any characters can attempt using a specialist skill with a 1 in 6 chance. Each of the four races has a 2 in 6 chance for one skill instead. (Or starts with a 2 in 6 chance in the case of specialists.)

    Race Skill Bonus
    Elf Search 2 in 6
    Kaas Climb 2 in 6
    Skeyn Stealth 2 in 6
    Yao Bushcraft 2 in 6

    There are only three character classes. Fighter, Specialist, and Witch. Shaman is simply a role and position and the rituals can be performed by anyone who knows the procedures. Most shamans are specialists, but they can be of any class.
    Tinker is not available as a skill for specialists, but I am thinking about introducing alchemy instead.
    And I also think there should be a way for fighters and witches to improve skills. +1 skill point every two levels (instead of +2 skills points every level for specialists) should do the trick.

    Where I am still completely undecided is a maximum level. Since characters don't gain Hit Dice after 9th level and fighters no longer increase their attack bonus, it could perhaps be uncapped.
    Witches need to get a completely new magic system anyway and that could also be designed to level out at 9th level.

    Equipment

    Equipment in LotFP is already very brief and adapting it for the setting makes it even more so.

    Armor Cost AC bonus
    Leather scale 50 sp +2
    Lamellar armor 200 sp +4
    Shield 25 sp +1 melee/+2 missile

    Weapon Cost Damage
    Dagger/knive 5 sp 1d4
    Sword/axe 10 sp 1d6
    Kopis 20 sp 1d8
    Glaive 20 sp 1d8
    Spear 3 sp 1d6
    Bow 25 sp 1d6
    Sling 1 sp 1d4

    Hirelings
    Since the default role of player characters is as elite mercenary guards working for the local big men, any assistants they might need on an adventure aren't hired but called together from the local population. I think it would probably be best to come up with a simple roll to "get some strong boys" instead of recruiting each one individually. It wouldn't cost any money, as they are called to help protecting their village, but need to be newly assembled each time the PCs leave the village or are preparing for a fight.

    Experience
    Here I am still very uncertain how to handle this. In a society that is mostly without money and in which the PCs are tightly integrated into the community, awarding XP for treasure doesn't make much sense as a primary mechanic for character advancement. But basing it entirely on defeated enemies isn't a viable alternative either.
    It really might just be easiest to have everyone gain a level after completing a major quest. If an adventure takes 2 to 3 play sessions, that would be about 25 sessions to reach level 10, after which advancement mostly levels out similar to an E6 campaign. I've never played in a campaign getting anywhere close to 25 sessions.

    Witchcraft
    I am quite a fan of the idea behind the magic system from Exemplars & Eidolons. The system I have in mind for the Old World is like this:
    A 1st level witch starts with 3 spell points and 3 known spells. Every time a spell is cast, 1 spell point is lost, but it returns at the end of a fight. Spells that have a duration can be kept active for as long as the witch is awake, but the point will only return once the spell ends. (Dismissing an active spell during combat still only has the point return at the end of the fight.) With each new level a witch gains one additional spell point and learns one additional spell.
    Greater spells require one or more spell points and these will only return after the witch has slept. (Which can be done only once per 24 hours.)

    In Exemplars & Eidolons many spells don't have any cost at all, but I think when modifying a game in which 3rd level magic-users have only 3 spells per day, giving a witch 3 spells per fight is already quite generous.

    Not a huge fans of the actual spells in E&E, though, so I will be making my own. These will be all quite open ended but also low powered, so it won't be a problem if they could be cast all day. Anything that gives control over other creatures or magic barriers is an ongoing effect and as such makes the spell point used to cast them unavailable for any other fights.
    Last edited by Yora; 2016-04-13 at 03:51 PM.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Today I worked on deciding what kind of spells I want to be available to witches. On the one hand, spells that are open ended allow for a lot of customization and for characters to be versatile with a small number of spells. But on the other hand, such spells tend to be very generic and there is little mysterious about them.
    When I still wanted to use a magic system inspired by Avatar and Star Wars, that was okay, and basically as intended. But now that I want to go with a system of magic that is about circumventing the normal laws of nature and utilizing forces from other realms of reality, a standard fireball, swarm of icicles, and telekinesis just won't do it anymore.
    Going with very unique and specific spells means that you can create cool imagined images, but I was never happy with how spells worked in D&D. In practice those spells are too specific and seem like a science or technology instead of a supernatural power that even its users only half understand.

    So a middle ground has to be found. Something that isn't too specific, but also doesn't follow generic RPG wizard patterns. I've come up with 26 spells. That's enough to keep a level 24 witch occupied and I don't think I'll ever actually go above 12.

    Charm: Give orders to a person or creature. If a point is spend for the rest of the day, the target will obey an order for as long as it takes to complete.
    Stun: Makes one or more creature lose the next turn.
    Sleep: Group of targets falls asleep.
    Hold: Group of targets can not move, but which has to maintain control the whole time.
    Read Mind: Allows to sense the presence of creatures and reading a mind. Can change one memory for spending a point for the rest of the day.
    Fear: Makes creatures flee in panic.
    Walk Unseen: The witch is ignored by everyone unless loud noise is made or a fight starts.
    Heal: Grants new saving throw against poison and disease and heals some hit points. (Healing hp always requires spending a point for the rest of the day, so no unlimited healing.)
    Drain Life: Touch deals damage and heals the witch by half the amount. (Healing hp requires spending a point for the rest of the day.)
    Summon Spirit: Summons animal spirit or elemental to fight.
    Banish: Forces one spirit back to the Spiritworld for a day or creates a zone that spirits can't enter.
    Dispel Magic: Ends a spell cast by another witch.
    Control Animal: Makes an animal obey orders. If one point is spend for the rest of the day, the witch has full control and can sense what the animal senses.
    Swarm: Summons a thick swarm of insects or bats that attack everyone in the area.
    Flame: Makes one object catch fire. If a point is spend for the rest of the day, the target takes 1d6 point of damage every round for as long as the witch concentrates.
    Resistance: Makes one target unaffected by heat, cold, and wind, or creates an area of protection around the witch.
    Fog: Creates a cloud of thick fog or of choking smoke.
    Growth: Makes plants grab a creature or creates a thick wall of vines.
    Wither: Destroys one object made from wood, stone, or metal (but not gold, silver, and bronze) or deals 2d6 damage to a living creature.
    Shapechange: Allows the witch to take another appearance (but not copy another person) or turn into an animal.
    Bark Armor: Raises the armor class of the witch.
    Water Breathing: Lets the target breath under water.
    Spider Climb: The witch can crawl on walls and ceilings.
    Light Step: The witch can jump great heights and distances, or run on water.
    Darkvision: Lets the witch see without light.
    Gateway: Allows the witch to step into the Spiritworld, or to open a gate for others.

    In addition, many other things can be done with more elaborate rituals, in particular curses and divinations.
    There are no blasting spells, as magic is not for shooting and explosion. Also no stat enhancing buffs, because they are boring and annoying to track. No necromancy, because undead are completely unnatural and requires full blown demon magic. Also only one spell that overlaps with thief abilities (walk unseen). A witch is a very useful addition to the party but can't replace fighters and thieves.

    These spells are still pretty generic stuff and there isn't anything weird or creepy about them by default. But almost none of them are fire and forget spells where you just say "I cast x" and roll a dice. Once I have the mechanical effects for all the spells figured out, the full description will also include details of how castin them can look like and feel like. And of course all characters can have customized versions of the spell they know.
    Mid level witches only have 8 or 10 spells they know, so I think they are much more like superheroes with a couple of special powers instead of access to all the forces of the universe. By creating NPC witches with 3 or 4 primary spells, they should all be quite distinct individuals. Especially in the absence of fire and lightning. And of course, this is just the simple magic on the tip of a finger. The really creepy stuff is meant to be done in big rituals that create monstrous servants, disasters, and curses. The real threat of a witch does not come from being zapped or blown up, but from someone in the background starting to unravel reality and calling forth beings from the Outer Realms.
    PC witches can benefit from rituals that gain useful information from spirits or that counter a curse cast by an enemy. But I am not sure if there's much sense in making up specific rules for that which players can study in advance.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    A great read. I'm going to brain-dump some questions as a go along. These aren't criticisms, but questions to help you/help me understand.

    A World without Time
    I wonder why there is no science, engineering, or greater control of magics being sought. Are there external pressures that prevent greater civilization?
    Do people seek to unite the mountain people under one banner (for good or ill)? Do they want to build Towers of Babylon? Do they want to rescue/heal/woo another, and willing to go to any lengths to do it? I feel that an upward/toward urge is natural (?), and that this leaves an indelible mark on the world.

    Spoiler: A lengthy note on Romans and Medieval Times
    Show
    This is a note, not something you need to change: most fantasy worlds I run into have a great civilization in the past. World of Time, Sword of Shannara, Lord of the Rings, even Star Wars boasts a greater civilization that the present-day people look back on for stories, knowledge, architectural achievements, and grand power. This comes in large part from medieval history - they looked back on the Romans in wonder for all of these things. It is only in the last 200 years that the West has really changed, looking forward to their children instead of back to their ancestors. Stories were always tracing the ancestry of their heroes back to Troy, and therefore Rome (Mallory's Arthur).

    You take a striking middle ground - the world is unchanging, and eternal. There was no great civilization, there is no greater future. Some would find this depressing (me), but others would find it comforting.


    So for the Old World, I came up with something new. The common hero of the Old World is a mercenary who takes medium to long term contracts of several months to a few years to help protecting a village or castle during times of crisis and great danger.
    This reminds me of a Beowulf-like feel for the setting. Scattered villages, and few/singular protectors of the weak from supernatural threats.

    For these mercenaries such employment can be pretty cushy. All they are expected is to hang around at the castle and be ready in case something happens.
    Are these mercenaries expected to go to war for their employers?

    Red Hearts and Black Hearts
    Where do some of my favorite villains fit into this-
    Ozymandias/The Agent[Serenity](doing it for the greater good)?
    The Joker (doing it for the laughs, or to reveal society to itself)?
    Fred [Handmaid's Tale] (doing it because society says its okay)?

    Vengeance
    You mention at one point that there are castles, implying greater governmental organizations to build them. What happens when a smaller, weaker family claims vengeance against a larger, stronger family? Does a local king have say in the outcome of a conflict, or power to say which side is correct (who should pay reparation)? Does a chief have power of life/death over those that harm the community, rape a daughter, steal a chicken, or kill a neighbor?

    I suppose that I see a rise of governments inevitable. Vengeance can still be an important quality, but someone ends up wanting to control which way the vengeance goes, who gets to kill who, or make them and theirs invulnerable to vengeance claims.

    Just a few thoughts. Cheers.

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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Quote Originally Posted by zeek0 View Post
    A great read. I'm going to brain-dump some questions as a go along. These aren't criticisms, but questions to help you/help me understand.
    Questions are good. They help noticing where weaknesses are in the concept and which things really need adressing. Questions are even better than praise.

    wonder why there is no science, engineering, or greater control of magics being sought. Are there external pressures that prevent greater civilization?
    Do people seek to unite the mountain people under one banner (for good or ill)? Do they want to build Towers of Babylon? Do they want to rescue/heal/woo another, and willing to go to any lengths to do it? I feel that an upward/toward urge is natural (?), and that this leaves an indelible mark on the world.
    The intention is not really about a world that is static. It's more about societies that are not aware of progress. Villages and fields first appeared 12,000 years ago and then progressed very slowly until the beginning of the Bronze Age 5,000 years ago. Then it was another 2,500 years until Antiquity started in the Mediterranean. And technological progress that you see happening and changing life during your lifetime is someting that started just some 500 years ago. We are dealing with vast time scales while at the same time there is no recording of history and no pursuit of archeology. Progress may or may not happen, but it's so slow that nobody is seeing it. And because people don't know about changes in the past, they are also not expecting change in the future.
    The setting is deliberately designed without a timeline to make this sense of timelessness more pronounced. History is living memory, everything before that is time immemorial.

    It also is very much designed to be a Points of Light setting from the start. While bronze and iron technology exists, the society is actually quite neolithic. Except for a few goods like salt and tin, most communities are highly autonomous and there aren't any large scale power structures. There are a handfull small city states but these are really more fortified towns of just a few thousand people and their kings only rule as far as they can see from outside their front door. All the other castles are villages with a pallisade and a big house in the center. The Rohirim town in the Lord of the Rings movies is a good example of how these look.

    This reminds me of a Beowulf-like feel for the setting. Scattered villages, and few/singular protectors of the weak from supernatural threats.
    My inspiration was wuxia, but Beowulf is a very similar character from European tradition.

    Are these mercenaries expected to go to war for their employers?
    Yes, that's even the most common reason why they are hired. Monsters and witches are the source for good tales, but the bread and butter is really reinforcing the defenses of a town against hostile neighbors.

    Where do some of my favorite villains fit into this-
    Ozymandias/The Agent[Serenity](doing it for the greater good)?
    The Joker (doing it for the laughs, or to reveal society to itself)?
    Fred [Handmaid's Tale] (doing it because society says its okay)?
    Redheart and Blackheart are not meant to be an alignment system. They are just two common forms of how people start to cause harm to others. A person is not "evil" and a person is not a "villain", and there are no other objective categories like that. Redheart and blackheart are two patterns of thinking and feeling that lead to a high potential to causing suffering.

    I am not too familiar with any of those three characters, but I think within the setting they would all be seen as blackhearted. They harm others because the pain they cause doesn't affect them. For them suffering is something abstract that perhaps can be counted and redistributed for some greater good. For normal pain exists only here and now and that's the only thing that matters when making decisions about violence. The good of the many and making sacrifices for the future are things that people understand rationally, but a healthy mind still feels reluctance and revulsion when it comes to doing it. The absence of such revulsion is the essence of blackheart.
    I think the Joker probably is also redhearted as well. He enjoys causing suffering.

    You mention at one point that there are castles, implying greater governmental organizations to build them. What happens when a smaller, weaker family claims vengeance against a larger, stronger family? Does a local king have say in the outcome of a conflict, or power to say which side is correct (who should pay reparation)? Does a chief have power of life/death over those that harm the community, rape a daughter, steal a chicken, or kill a neighbor?

    I suppose that I see a rise of governments inevitable. Vengeance can still be an important quality, but someone ends up wanting to control which way the vengeance goes, who gets to kill who, or make them and theirs invulnerable to vengeance claims.
    As mentioned above, society is very small scale Points of Light. There is mediation of conflicts by respected individuals of the greater community, but no impartial authority that suppresses violence. If you interfere, you are taking sides and become a party in the conflict. Inside a large town or city the warriors of the chief or king can assert some authority because they have sufficient strength to crush anyone else and nobody would stand a chance to attack them. If someone has the power and infuence to risk such a confrontation, you still get a feud. It's just called a war then. The Trojan War was basically a feud between two very extended families.

    State government is far from inevitable. Many parts of the world still don't have it yet, or lost it again. To have a police, the state needs a monopoly on violence. And if ordinary people are not allowed to use violence at their discretion, the state has to have a police and military presence everywhere. In a society of autonomous farms spread over a huge area this simply is not possible, logistically and administratively. When everyone is armed and officials would take days or weeks to respond to an emergency, police is not possible.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Spirits

    These three creatures are the three primary races of humanoid spirits. They are the primary non-mortal antagonist of the setting. They all have physical bodies and can be killed with weapons, and like mortal creatures they are born and will eventually die, but this can take well over 1,000 years.

    Like all physical creatures from the spiritworld, they have the following resistances:
    • Half damage from bronze, stone, and wood weapons and natural attacks.
    • Full damage from iron weapons.
    • Half damage from cold, fire, and lightning.


    Spirits can always see the Spiritworld and the world of mortals simultaneously. They are always aware of any naturally occuring or magically created portals that allow creatures to physically move between the two worlds. (Or more accurately, locations which shift a creature from one stage of being to another.) Unless they know spells or have a magical relic, they can not create such gateways through their own power.

    Naga

    Naga are large reptilian creatures with human chests and arms and the heads and long lower bodies of a snake. They are usually over 5 meters long and stand two or three heads above an average elf when raising themselves upright. Naga live mostly in the south and on the southern islands where they have big citadels and cities in the jungles of the Spiritworld, but they also have some strongholds in the world of mortals. Old naga ruins can be found in many places in the south.
    Naga are the original creators of sorcery, the magic art of exploring the Outer Realms of reality and studying their powers and creatures. Most powerful naga leaders in the mortal world are sorcerers, which are almost nonexistant in the Spiritworld. Naga in both worlds are served by the serpentmen, reptilian humanoids that are believed to have been magically created from elves thousands of years ago. Naga strongholds in the mortal world also often have large numbers of dark elven slaves. The naga sorcerers of the south are in an eternal war with the dark elf clans, especially those led by powerful with queens.

    Naga
    Armor 15
    Move 120'
    Swim 90'
    Hit Dice 5 (22 hp)
    Attack Large Sword +5 (1d8)
    or Bow +5 (1d6)
    or Bite +5 (1d4 plus 2d6 poison)
    Morale 10
    Special Control Snakes: As the control animals spell, but only affecting snakes.
    Gaze: A naga can attempt to stun any nearby creature it can see. When using this ability the target creature must make a save against Magic or be compelled to turn its gaze at the naga and remain where it stands or sits, unable to move or take any action. This effect lasts for as long as the naga maintains eye contact, which makes the naga unable to make attacks or cast spells against any other creature. If the naga stands right next to the target it can attempt to read the target's thoughts and memories. One question can be asked each round (Who are you? Why are you here? Who send you?) and each question allows the target creature to make a new save against Magic. If the save succeeds, the effect instantly ends.
    Poison: A creature hit by the bite of a naga must make a save against Poison or take 2d6 points of additional damage. Another saving throw has to be made at the beginning of each of the poisoned creatures turns. On a failed roll it takes another 2d6 points of damage, on a successful roll the poison immediately ends causing no further damage.
    Stealth: Naga have a 3 in 6 chance to use Stealth.

    Raksha

    Raksha are big and very powerfully build humanoids that appear in many ways similar to trolls. They are about 2.5 meters tall and all exceptionally strong, but vary greatly in body shape. Their brown-gray skin often has shades of red, yellow, blue, or purple and their hair is either pure black or a bright white, though sometimes a striking red or orange as well. Raksha are violent creatures who fight with savage fury, but much smarter than trolls. Their chiefs are usually experienced war leaders who share their power with old crones knowledgable in witchcraft called hags.
    While extremely dangerous, rakshas are not always outright hostile to mortals and often willing to talk when not threatened or on a raid. Many are easily bribed with food, though it usually takes considerable amounts to get them to agree to anything.

    Raksha
    Armor 15
    Move 120'
    Hit Dice 6 (27 hp)
    Attack Large Sword or Axe +6 (1d10)
    or Large Bow +6 (1d8)
    Morale 9
    Special Raksha are immune to charm, sleep, poison, and paralysis.

    I think the raksha could well use one or two more interesting abilities, though at this point I am not sure what would fit and be interesting and not overlapp with the naga and shie.

    Shie

    Shie look very much like exceptionally tall elves on first glance, but all of them have some strange features like horns, hooves, tails, and even wings and no two have the same shades of skin and hair. They have the ability to take the form of an elf, yao, or kaas but are unable to mask their unusual eye colors like purple, emerald green, or obsidian black.
    Shie are rarely found in the mortal world but are the most numerous of the fey races in the spiritworld. They often gather in groups of two or three dozen but most such groups are highly irregular with members constantly leaving and joining. Occasionally a highly charismatic and ambitous leader keeps a large group together for the building of castles, but most bands live in caves, halls woven from magically grown trees, or the many ruins that have been left behind by their predecessors over the millenia. At some point in the past many such castles had been built in the mortal realm, but not even the shie remember how long ago that was and for what purpose.
    While neither as tyrannical as the naga or as violent as the raksha, the shie are still greatly feared by mortals as they usually have a complete disregard for the wellbeing and vulnerabilities of mortals. For people who have stumbled into the Spiritworld and are unable to find their way back, the shie are the best hope at finding help, but many of them find an early end from careless accidents caused by the shie or end up cursed or murdered in a random act of cruelty. People who have returned from their camps often describe them as very strange being whose thoughts and actions often make little sense to mortals. Even shamand consider dealing with them as highly stressful. They are beings with little inhibitions who let themselves be controlled by their impulses and care little about the effects of their actions on others, which is a major part for the instability of their bands.

    Shie
    Armor 15
    Move 150'
    Hit Dice 4 (18 hp)
    Attack Large Sword +4 (1d8)
    or Bow +4 (1d6)
    Morale 8
    Special Change Shape: Shie can assume the form of any humanoid creature they desire.
    Charm: Shie can attempt to charm any creature with their gaze and voice. Any creature can be affected by the same shie only once per day, regardless of whether the saving throw succeeds or fails. A charmed creature can make a new saving throw once every day.
    Stealth: Shie have a 3 in 6 chance to use Stealth.
    Last edited by Yora; 2016-04-24 at 03:19 PM.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Armor Cost AC bonus
    Leather scale 50 sp +2
    Lamellar armor 200 sp +4
    Shield 25 sp +1 melee/+2 missile

    Weapon Cost Damage
    Dagger/knive 5 sp 1d4
    Sword/axe 10 sp 1d6
    Kopis 20 sp 1d8
    Glaive 20 sp 1d8
    Spear 3 sp 1d6
    Bow 25 sp 1d6
    Sling 1 sp 1d4
    First, you do know that bows are made of wood, right? And it's pretty much an ordinary wood that stays more flexible than oak or pine; many kinds will do. There is little reason for a bow to cost more than a spear, since the bow doesn't have an expensive chunk of bronze on the end, and only requires a little more care in crafting to the limbs don't twist as they're bent.

    Likewise a shield is just made of wood that doesn't split easily (limewood or linden was preferred in northern Europe), with a rawhide cover glued on that provides a composite toughness.

    Armor, too, can be made of such wood.
    {/pet peeve}

    Second, is the lamellar armor bronze? Scale or brigantine type is easier to make and more ancient in design, going well back into Bronze I.

    Third, linothorax is another ancient, low tech armor. We only see it in one cultural group, but mainly because iron is cheap.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    You don't just pay for the raw materials, but also for the labor. A good bow is not just a stick, and the skills and tools to make one are probably rare enough for bowmakers to get away with a a slightly higher price.
    But I admit, given the other prices, 15 sp would probably be more in line.

    Though I think prices are actually rather irrelevant, as there's not really anything else expensive that could be bought. Probably easier to just let players pick whatever gear they want and not bother with money at all. All the good special stuff isn't for sale.

    Lamellar could be either bronze or iron. For this type of technology even poor quality iron should perform just as well as high quality bronze. It would be a lot cheaper though, which makes it more common.

    Cloth armor exists. If you want to you can call it "Leather scale or cloth armor". Just didn't feel like mentioning it specifically.
    Last edited by Yora; 2016-04-28 at 05:54 AM.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Equipment (Expanded)

    Wealth and Availability of Items
    People in the Old World rarely use money and any piece of regular equipment the player character's might need is of trivial cost to people of their station. As such, there are no prices indicated for any of the items available to the players. Players can pick whatever weapons, armor, arrows, tools, ropes, torches, blankets, tents, and any other items like these they want to have. The only limitation is how much they are able to carry.
    If large quantities are required to equip guards or armies, some kind of agreement has to be reached with a settlement that can provide them, which generally takes the form of barter for valuable goods or resources that the player characters or their current lord control. Since this is something that occurs rather rarely, no specific rules to estimate the values of such transactions are given here.

    Armor AC bonus
    Leather scale +2
    Lamellar armor +4
    Shield +2

    Weapon Damage
    Dagger/knive 1d4
    Sword/axe 1d6
    Kopis 1d8
    Glaive 1d8
    Spear 1d6
    Bow 1d6
    Sling 1d4

    Mounts
    Mounts are much more expensive than any other items except for lamellar armor and players can not simply get one by helping themselves to their lord's armory or asking some locals for a favor. Mounts are acquired either as gifts or rewards, or taken as loot from defeated enemies. As they are quite rare even in larger towns, stolen mounts might be recognized by their owners and their theft is usually considered a great crime just as bad as kidnapping or even murder.

    Mount Item Load
    Droha +25
    Heor -
    Oget -25

    Encumbrance

    (This is pretty much the standard Encumbrance system from LotFP, but I realized you can get exactly the same results with only half as many tables and without a need to convert between items and encumbrance points. I also converted from feet to meters but kept miles.)

    Character Encumbrance
    Items* Encumbrance Exploration Combat Running Miles per day
    0-10 Unencumbered 40m 20m 40m 24
    11-15 Lightly Encumbered 30m 15m 30m 18
    16-20 Heavily Encumbered 20m 10m 20m 12
    21-25 Severely Encumbered 10m 5m 10m 6
    26+ Overencumbered 0m 0m 0m 0
    *Kaas and Yao characters add +5 to the amount of items they can carry for each Encumbrance class.

    Mount Encumbrance
    Items* Encumbrance Exploration Combat Running Miles per day
    0-50 Unencumbered 40m 40m 80m 24
    51-75 Lightly Encumbered 30m 30m 60m 18
    76-100 Heavily Encumbered 20m 20m 40m 12
    100-125 Severely Encumbered 10m 10m 5m 6
    126+ Overencumbered 0m 0m 0m 0
    *Drohas add +25 to the amount of items they can carry for each Encumbrance class. Ogets subtract 25. Larger animals like krats or giras add +50.

    (Like almost all RPGs, LotFP completely misjudges the endurance of horses. They are very fast in a full run, but actually have worse endurance than humans over long distances, so by the end of the day they don't really get any farther. I cut all Exploration and Daily distances down by half to match that of characters.
    I also somewhat increased the distances that can be moved per round in the conversion from feet to meters, as dividing by three doesn't work as well when dealing with increments of 10 instead of 30. Say a round is 10 seconds long instead of 6, and a turn is 6 rounds instead of 10, and it should all cancel out.)

    Oversized items
    Any item that takes up two hands to carry or is larger than the person carrying it is oversized and counts as 5 items for calculating Encumbrance. (Though items like spears or glaives might be counted as only one when carried by large animals like drohas or krats.)

    Riders
    An elf or skeyn character riding on a mount counts as 20 items each, plus any items they are carrying themselves. Kaas and yao characters count as 25 items each.

    Recording the Character's Gear
    The easiest way to track a character's Encumbrance Points is to write down every item the character is carrying on an inventory sheet with each line being numbered to easily see the total amount of items. Elf and skeyn characters can carry 10 items without being encumbered, kaas any yao characters can carry 15. Every additional 5 items increase the Encumbrance Rating by one.
    Clothing and leather scale armor do not count towards encumbrance when being worn. Lamellar armor and heavy winter clothing always counts as one item each, whether they are worn or carried. Spears and glaives are oversized items and count as five items each. (Put a dash in the four lines below such an item to indicate it taking up five lines on the inventory sheet.)
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    This is awesome, bro. I can see this as being kinda Dark Souls-y when finished, which is always cool.

    I do, however, have 2 very minor suggestions - more of a matter of preference than anything.

    1) Almost every creature has a unique name, except for a small few. If you were to minorly shift the names of elves, trolls, harpies, etc. (possibly craobh, trauls, and karaks), it would make them seem slightly less like their common counterparts, esp if you gave them other minor, more alien cosmetic features.

    2) Dragons. I could see a lot of potential for them in such a setting as this, especially as rare, godlike beings. Hey, they could even be the "gods" of many parts of the world.

    Again, this is just my preference. Even if these don't change, still a great world.

    10/10, would read through again.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    The matter of naming elves elves is one I've been thinking about a lot for a very long time. And there are a lot of good arguments to be made for various different approaches.

    The reason why there are so many new names is because there's a lot of new creatures for which there isn't a real established name. But at the end of the day, an elf is an elf and a troll is a troll, and everyone should immediately be able to see that. And giving something a made up name just for the sake of giving it a made up name just somehow doesn't sit right with me. I also do some fiction writing in addition to RPGs, and it's just my general style to use simple words when simple words will do, and to just call things what they are.
    I do however like to refer to people by their culture instead of their species. In practice, people don't call other people elves. They will be called Keyren or Neshanen, and that will be applied not just to elves but also other people who have somehow become integrated into a Keyren or Neshanen clan. Group membership is always much more important to people than species.

    Dragons are another thing I've been thinking about a lot for a long time. Dragons do certainly exist, but I am still not 100% sure what exactly they are. What I can say for certain is that they won't be D&D dragons. Not the mastermind sorcerer type.
    I am mostly leaning towards big beasts that can talk when they care to, but their personal interests and priorities just don't overlapp much with those of people. They are intelligent and know a lot, but normally live completely disconnected from humanoid society. Bit like beholders from D&D. Though I might also go full out divine with them and do something like Chinese dragons.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Amazing myself, I think I have completed the stats for all the creatures I want to be in the setting. At around 80, it's a good number to populate adventures, but really not too crowded.
    Unfortunately, most are still just stat blocks with the explanation only existing in my head as of now. Still, I think this list is already looking pretty good.

    Humanoids
    Elf
    Harpy (Winged humanoids without special powers)
    Kaas
    Lagura (Fish men)
    Serpentman (Servant race of the naga)
    Skeyn
    Troll
    Yao
    Fire Newt (Tropical, red scalled lizardmen)

    Beasts
    Arag
    Cat (Leopard and Tiger)
    Crocodile (Normal and Giant)
    Darkling (Humanoid Underworld predator)
    Dragonhawk
    Droha
    Garai
    Gira
    Gren
    Handak
    Heor
    Kina
    Krat
    Ksan
    Liak
    Makai (Blue-gray monkey creatures with black manes)
    Mora
    Oget
    Owlbear
    Snake (Colossal, Giant, Python, and Viper)
    Streig
    Taun
    Uba
    Carrion Crawler
    Draga
    Manticore
    Great Forest Beast (Semi-humanoid giant monster)
    Swamp Beast (Huge squid creature that lurks in swamps and rivers)
    Swamp Eel (Three meter long black water serpent)
    Swamp Strider (Giant crab on 6 meter tall legs)

    Spirits
    Dark Tree (Evil tree that grabs other creatures with long vines)
    Dragon
    Elementals
    Giant
    Guardian Beast (Rhino-sized beast made of vines and branches, can control plants around it)
    Naga
    Raksha (Intelligent troll-like creatures who love fighting)
    Shie
    Spriggan
    Sleepvine (Plant that paralysis its prey)
    Stranglevine (Plant that strangles its prey)
    Treant
    Wisp (Tiny ball of semi-intelligent light)
    Blight Swarm (Telepathically connected spirits corrupted by sorcery)
    Crow Lord (Humanoid spirit that can turn into a flock of crows)
    Mermen (Humanoid spirit that can change between aquatic and land form)
    Moon Moth (Giant butterfly that stuns victims with the glow of its huge wings)
    Nymph
    Shapeshifter (Humanoids with the soul of an animal-spirit that lets them change shape)

    Ancients
    Anathema (Humanoid mortal permanently possessed by an ancient spirit, often sorcerers)
    Ash Demon (Demon possessed cloud of ash and smoke)
    Battle Demon (Pieces of armors and bones possessed by a demonic spirit hungy for battle)
    Dread Warrior (Corpse possessed by bloodthirsting spirit)
    Drider
    Ice Demon
    Shadow Demon
    Rock Demon
    Tar Demon
    Aboleth
    Ghost Squid (Incorporeal blue spirit that swims through air)
    Flying Squid (Large telepathic and telekinetic squid that floats through the Underworld)
    Giant Mantis (Horse sized insect that attacks anything for fun)
    Swarm Beetle (Huge swarms of dog-sized beetles who think as one and build gargantuan nests)

    Undead
    Corpse (Dead body animated by sorcery)
    Ghoul (Living person warped by sorcery)
    Shade
    Wight (Sorcerers turned undead from using sorcery for decades)
    Wraith

    A few still need a better name, and I am not entirely happy with the special abilities of each one, but so far this is looking really good. I could run a campaign with this.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Spirits
    Dark Tree (Evil tree that grabs other creatures with long vines)
    Dragon
    Elementals
    Giant
    Spirit type dragons! Hell yeah, dude.
    May the gods watch over your battles, friend.

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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Main reason is that there's only five categories, and having special powers and intelligence excludes dragons from the beasts.

    But when you live a thousand years, fly despite the massive size, and breath fire, being classed as a supernatural creature is entirely justified. I also got a good reason why they have treasure: They don't care about riches, but decorate their lairs with the corpses of killed warriors, still in their armor and everything. If you find something nice in a dragon's lair, you have to peel it from rotting skeleton first.

    My idea for giants is something like mythological jotuns. Their general shape is the only thing that is really human-like. They outlive any elves, are again able to move around easily despite their huge size, have a lot of occult knowledge, and their elders are powerful witches.
    Thinking of it, the methods of working iron could be one of their secrets, as it's the spirit-slaying metal. The skeyn didn't discover it themselves but learned it from a giant, which surely is a great story to be told throughout the ages. (Something Prometeus-like would probably be great.)

    I love talking about these things. I always get my best ideas when explaining what I have so far.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    I am finally making some progress on spirits by rethinking some of their basic facts.

    The first thing is that I will demote several creatures from spirits to the new category of Fair Folk. Shie, naga, raksha, mermen, and giants are all creatures from the Spiritworld, with magic powers and strong resistances against the dangers of the Spiritworld, but they are born, age, eat, and sleep, as their bodies are their true forms. Dragons should probably also be here, as are manticores who would fit here quite well instead of with the natural beasts.
    True spirits are different and nothing like mortal creatures. They are manifestations of places created spontaneously by the Spiritworld as reflections of the environment. They do not age or need sustenance, but change over time as the environment changes. These are elementals, wisps, spriggans, treants, and the countless unique forest gods.

    The other big change would be about the ancient spirits and the Underworld. I created the Underworld first as a solution to an Underdark that would not be completely flooded by water or run out of oxygen. If it's in the Spiritworld these things no longer apply.
    But now I think about making the Underworld not a high level adventure region but treating it as off the map of reality. It's kind of a return to the Void I had scrapped a while back. If I have need for a huge magic cave, it can simply be a huge cave in the spiritworld inhabited by spirits. This has a very big practical advantage for me: I don't have to make a whole ecology for it and I don't have to worry about the true appearance of demons. Demons can only ever appear through possession of either humanoid or animal bodies, or as paraelementals. (Ash, ice, tar, rock, shadow.)
    The Wilders still worship the ancient spirits, but the Underworld is more a concept they use to visualize this other realm of existance, not an actual description of underground caves. But as before, deep caves and the bottom of the ocean are still more in tune with the primordial chaos, so demons can appear there more easily. They make pilgrimages to shrines in such caves and many of them hope to find a way to travel into the Underworld to their gods, but such a journey would not be in their physical bodies. (Great, justification for insane suicide rituals. Always a lot of fun when you have crazy cults.)
    Probably the biggest influence for the demons are two monologs from the Mass Effect games. (Which were so cool that whatever explanation they could come up with for the third game could only be disappointing. Such things need to remain unexplained.) "You touch me mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it." "A god — a real god — is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does. The god's mind is gone, but it still dreams."
    I also like the quori from Eberron and the idea behind the daedra from Elder Scrolls (though in practice they are just regular demons). Something like that just doesn't work if you can walk into their homes. Any confrontations with such beings would be in border zones where the mortal world and the Void are overlapping. You could talk with them, but not visit their world. In the same way, they can talk to mortal minions and give them magic aid, but only enter the mortal worlds in highly weakened form by possessing bodies that can easily be destroyed. (If you can defeat them in a fight.)

    The one thing that needs still fixing, and has always been the main problem with this whole topic, are aboleths. They never fit neatly in whatever scheme I come up with. I think I make them just spirits of the deep sea and flooded caves that have an interest in demon lore. Giant telepathic catfish who are also ancient master sorcerers are still damn freaky, even if they are just fish spirits.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    The one thing that needs still fixing, and has always been the main problem with this whole topic, are aboleths. They never fit neatly in whatever scheme I come up with. I think I make them just spirits of the deep sea and flooded caves that have an interest in demon lore. Giant telepathic catfish who are also ancient master sorcerers are still damn freaky, even if they are just fish spirits.
    To jog your fancy on aboleths, here's an example of something I did with them once (they didn't keep the name, BTW). Instead of brilliant schemers, they're incredibly powerful eaters of willpower and they need the wills of others to maintain their own drive to live. Those tentacles? They're not tentacles, they're tongues. And skum are the husks left over after an aboleth is done feeding off of someone. There's a lot more about them that I could rant about, but this is a thread for your setting, not mine.

    Basically, if the idea for a creature just doesn't work out, don't just reskin, completely sever the mechanics from the fluff and see what you can come up with. That's at least what I do.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Cosmology and Magic

    *snip*
    This reminds me loosely of how magic works in Norse tradition. Is that where you got the inspiration for this?

    Also, about morals in the world, I get what you're saying about lacking objective standards for morals, but wouldn't they at least have the concept of good vs. evil in the sense of pious vs. impious? After all, it's supposed to be really powerful spirits that help maintain habitable lands and those spirits can still potentially be offended by set circumstances for no apparent reason. So if painting squirrels blue runs the risk of that big spirit ditching you, then by golly are you going to make sure that no squirrel is painted blue!
    P.S. If you did not receive this post, let me know and I'll re-send it.

    Quote Originally Posted by BilltheCynic View Post
    *And now I have an image of an animated suit of adamantine armor, complete with armor spikes and a wicked scythe, wearing a top hat. And it is awesome.
    *"Nowhere that I am, everywhere that I am not."

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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    The cosmology and magic is actually based on Quantum Field Theory with influences by Hindu-Buddhist cosmology. If some concepts ended up in Germanic cosmology it wouldn't surprise me much, as they have a shared origin.

    As interactions with spirits go, I am drawing mostly from Shinto, where faith is not really much of a thing. It's not assumed that the spirits know best and have the interests of humans in mind. You can make ethical arguments about not defying the spirits and provoke retaliation, but there's not much of a moral element to it. Spirits can be stupid, selfish, and mean, and not deserving of admiration. But if you want to avoid trouble with them you still worship them and give them offerings. Not because of faith, but because of convenience.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    A little tale of sorcery

    I am not a big fan of long and elaborate history, but vague ancient myths are great to give a setting scope. At least for relatively small settings like this.

    Very long ago in the Age of Ancients, naga witches in a city called Sarhat (or perhaps Satal, the accounts disagree) discovered the existance of the Void and developed the arts of sorcery. They became extremely powerful and ruled over a large realms for a very long time, but eventually the city was lost. Nobody knows its location, not even the sorcerers of other naga cities that still exist. There are many stories about what happened to it, but most of them seem to be pure guesses with no basis at all.
    But what all people agree on is that any sorcerous knowledge that could still be found in the ruins would have unimaginable value for sorcerers. But centuries of searching by mortal sorcerers have not produced anything, and naga sorcerers have been looking for the city much longer than that. Of all the ancient ruins it is by far the most famous and quite possibly the most valuable. If there even are any ruins. And even some naga have doubts if there ever was such a city at all.
    Sarhat is the ultimate discovery that would make treasure hunters immortal legends in their own right.

    Searching for Sarhat is also widely seen throughout the Old World as the ultimate fool's quest. Nobody has ever produced any find that could lead to the city's location and anyone who went to search for it came back with nothing or not at all. And in addition to that, nobody has any idea what would be found there. There might be some treasures, but more likely all kinds of unspeakable horrors awaiting treasure hunters. As legendary as the city is, bringing anything of value back might just as well be even more difficult then finding it, and sorcerers are not easily found and neither are they trustworthy business partners. Treasure hunters looking for Sarhat are notorious for not having any plans for what they would do with their discovery, and as such the search has become a popular symbol for fool's quests. Any big undertaking that has an unclear goal or lacks a clear plan for how it will be completed is a Search for Sarhat. Talk of being led to Sarhat is usually the last big sign that a leader is about to be deserted by his warriors and mercenaries.

    My default stance on Sarhat is that it can never be found and has no real location on the setting map. For a very long running and epic campaign I could consider using it as the location for the big finale, though probably only if some of the players know it from other campaigns in the setting. But even then the ruins would just raise more questions and answer nothing.
    Another detail that would be reserved for the biggest of reveals would be that the naga of Sarhat had dealings with aboleths that led to their discovery of sorcery. And some aboleths remember it. But even they don't know what happened to the city thousands of years later.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Old World Chaos Index

    The adventure Slumbering Ursine Dunes has an interesting little optional mechanic called the Chaos Index. The Dunes are an area sitting between the regular world and the Mythical Wilderness and when the players do certain things in the region it either increases or decreases the influence of that supernatural otherworld.
    I first thought I could use this as a way to repesent Blights caused by sorcerery corrupting the environment, but I always thought of this more as a kind of radioactive contamination. But for the Spiritworld this is actually perfect. My idea is to create such a Chaos Index for the Old World with a Chaos value of 0 meaning that the spirits are completely quiet and there aren't any kinds of disturbances, and a Chaos value of 15 meaning that the whole region gets sucked fully into the Spiritworld. Between these two extremes are four degrees of spirit activity.

    0 or lower: The Spirits are asleep. Random encounter rolls that indicate spirits lead to no encounter instead.
    1-2: The Spirits are quiet. Nothing unusual happens.
    3-5: Light Spirit activity. If a random encounter happens, the roll for selecting the creature increases by +n. (Normal creatures are at the bottom of the list, spirits at the top. How big n is depends on what die I'll be using for those lists.)
    6-9: Medium Spirit activity. If a random encounter happens, the roll for selecting the creature increases by +2n.
    10-14: High Spirit activity. If a random encounter happens, the roll for selecting the creature increases by +3n.
    15: Consumed by Nature. The border between the mortal world and Spiritworld disappears completely. Random encounter roll that indicate creatures other than spirits are rerolled until the number of a spirit encounter comes up.

    In addition to that, I want to make special random event tables for Light, Medium, and High Spirit activity. These are checked once per day (or twice on the High list if Chaos at 15) and happen independent of random encounters. Since the Spiritworld has extreme natural forces, many of these random events will probably be supernatural weather, but strange animal attacks might also fit in. The Spiritworld is a very hostile environment for mortals as everything these is just so damn dangerous. When the influence of Spiritworld increases, places can become too dangerous to live in. But aside from that, I also want it to add increased weirdness.

    I am thinking of rolling 1d10 to see which event happens. At low activity nothing happens on a 1-3, at medium acticvity at 1 or 2, and at high activity at 1. Otherwise one of nine things will happen:
    1. Nothing happens.
    2. (Nothing yet, only happens at high activity.)
    3. Portals: When a random encounter check comes up with no encounter, there's a 25% chance at medium activity and 50% chance at high activity that the party accidentally moves through a portal into the Spiritworld. (Nothing happes at low activity.)
    4. Fog: For the whole day, fog limits vision to 20m, 10m, or 5m depending on the level of activity.
    5. Flooding: Extreme rain for many hours that floods rivers. (Not sure about effects yet.)
    6. Thunderstorm: Heavy wind and lightning. (Not sure about effects yet.)
    7. Earthquake: (Not sure about effects yet.)
    8. Extreme Heat/Cold: There's a 75% chance that the temperature will fit the season and a 25% chance that it's the opposite. In either case, people outside without protection take 1d6, 2d6, or 3d6 points of damage very hour depending on activity level.
    9. Animal Attacks: One settlement in the region is attacked by animals. Pick one group of animals from the random encounter table and roll for the number of creatures one, two,or three times depending on activity level.
    10. Polar Lights: Not sure what exactly happens, but I think some kind of light madness would be great.


    The other element of the Chaos index is a list of events that will increase or decrease the Chaos value for the region. What things I'll be putting on it I am not entirely sure yet.
    But I think things that would increase Chaos would be disturbing a holy place or the creation of sorcerous blights. Things that decrease Chaos would be performing rituals to appease the spirits, the death of a major spirit, stopping a shaman from maintaining a major curse, or destroying a source of sorcerous power.
    It's not a matter of good or evil or of harmony, but depends on how much supernatural activity is going on in the region.
    Last edited by Yora; 2016-05-29 at 10:03 AM.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Time for some more wild unstructured rambling.

    Yesterday I read a post from Zak S. about Lovecrafts Fear of the Unknown really being at its core nothing but a Disgust of Life. The actual horror his characters experience is not about learning about a greater uncaring cosmos, but about coming into contact with things that a dirty, slimy, loud, and chaotic. It's not a fear of being killed that drives the story, but panic about being touched by things that are more actively alive than Lovecraft can handle. Reproduction and disease all blurs together and there is nothing more abominable than a hybrid. Slimy tentacles are likely a representation of organs that should always stay inside the body and never be seen, their very presence and function being revolting.

    I find it a quite compelling interpretation and it got me thinking about something else that's been on my mind for a long time regarding my worldbuilding. In university I've taken classes on the sociological elements of many different religions, and one thing I noticed is that almost all of them regard the body as a bad thing. The path to salvation is almost always to free ones mind from physical sensations and transcend a bodily existance through death where full purity will be achieved. Why this is the case I don't know, and there are probably many smaller religions where that is not the case. But for the major ones (not sure about all groups of Hindus) salvation lies in transcending the flesh. And it's not like humanists as a whole are great advocates of physical sensation either. Neither were most ancient philosophers. The only exceptions I know are Epicur and I believe two thousand years later Sartre and Beauvoir. (I actually have not read either of them yet.)

    When it comes to creating cultures for the Old World (and those are really the heart of th setting and not the geography) I want to base the various belief systems around the idea that bodily existance, physical sensation, and emotions are good. They are the essence of being a person. This is also the reason why the setting never had an afterlife and people don't have a soul. The body is not something that can be shed. The body is the true self of a creature.

    One philosophical consequence of this is that people are not in any way different from beasts. The question of what separates humans from animals was always a subject of philosophical discussion throughout my whole life in school, but my own personal opinion had been very early on that this is already a nonsensical question. Postulating that humans are qualitatively different from animals always seemed to be an unfounded assumption that the discussions never questioned. But it seems to be very much in line with many shamanistic religions that have stories about animals being the ancestors of various ethnic groups. That works perfectly for a setting such as this.

    Today I've been scribbling a brief list of things that could be symbols for growth and the processes of life. Not just the passive state of being alive, but the active process of remaining alive. And one curious thing I put on the list is meat. Killing an animal seems like a pure expression of death, not life. But eating meat is not about the end of a life, but the active process of transforming and maintaining life. It's also all the things that disgust Lovecraft. Hunting, butchering, chewing, digesting. To people like him, and to a lesser degree modern society as a whole, active life is gross. But people don't have to see it that way. Preparing and eating meat can just as well be seen as indulging in life. And following that thought, blood can be a symbol of life instead of death. Not a passive, static state of being alive, but the active act of living.

    I've long had a fascination with blood magic, but unlike Dragon Age I didn't want to make it unambigously evil. I wanted it to be a source of power that can be used for good and ill, but people treat it as the work of evil sorcerers because it's agonizing and gross. It's painful, exhausting, and incredibly gory. All around unpleasant. I never got around to develop the idea into more than that initial idea, but I think it really could be a major element in the cultural landscape of the setting.

    Another group of people where the idea of life-affirmation is already strongly included are the Sakaya, the monastic order or workers and warriors. Their rituals are based around fire, which is a symbol and an idol for strength and determination. They are strongly inspired by the Qunari and Mandalorians and believe that a good life comes from doing the things you're good at and trying to do them as well as you can. (There's some Zen in it as well.) They are disciplined and orderly people, but they crave sensation and physical activity and mastery of th body are center pieces of their believes.

    One of the major style element of the Old World is Sword & Sorcery. And one of the greatest quotes about the spirit of the genre comes from a short monologue from granddaddy Howard himself.

    Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.
    This puts me in very good company as a worldbuilder.
    But one thing about Sword & Sorcery that defines this style of fantasy are the elements of horror. But the horror of our times is almost always based on Lovecraftian Disgust. How do you do revulsion, terror, and blasphemy in a setting where sex and nudity are virtues and growth and feeding are sacred? The standard fantasy demons that want to corrupt and degrade humanity really don't work at all. There's nothing really deviant or abominable about the standard demon stuff to people of such a world.

    The first thing that comes to mind is that a major element of the setting is the Spiritworld, which is the natural world taken to extremes. The weather there is absolutely lethal to mortals and the spirits seem both unpredictably violent and mad by mortal standards. I had long planned to make spirits unsettling by playing out their volatiliy, and I think that could be a nice starting point to create horror for this setting. Spirits and the Spiritworld are both too much alive for mortals to handle. Life is good, but too much of it leads to self destructive excess. When you live every day like it could be your last, also live it in a way that you won't have a problem when it isn't.
    Too much life is certainly a good sounding basis for spirit horror.

    Another thing relates to the meat I mentioned above. Eating meat is a pure act of life, but you're not always the lion, sometimes you're the goat. I have long been highly fascinated by Tigers. Europe has been a safe place for centuries, but when you go outside in many parts of Asia, there is a real existing creature in the dark that is much bigger and stronger than you, can not be seen or heard in the darkness, has huge claws and fangs, and sometimes eats humans. It's an actual monster. And there's nothing supernatural about it. But when you're alone in the jungle at night, that doesn't make any difference. A Tiger wouldn't be any more scary if it had magic powers.
    So what I am thinking about is using some really big and mean predators that can kill and eat even mid-level characters. Having them just jump from behind a bush and starting combat wouldn't be horrific, though. That's just a standard fight. The terror comes from being hunted. Not sure how well that can actually work in practice. When you're used to demons and undead, a wild animal just doesn't seem that impressive. You'd probably have to pull off some additional tricks to make it work.And yes, there is nothing existentially horrific about it. It's a plain and simple,standard fear of death. But I think this could potentially still work as a source of dread.

    Undead have always played a minor role in my worldbuilding, but given my already existing concept for undeath they could perhaps become a lot more important. Undead are the result of a living creature having part of its whole destroyed. There's no single indivisible and immortal soul, but a living creature has still many different components beside the physical body that can be touched and seen. These parts are normally invisible to the senses, but when they are damaged or destroyed, the rest of the creature changes drastically. And these changes are always irreversible. They may look like people who once lived or talk like them, but they are only the remnants of a dead person that don't stop moving. I think to people who put such an emphasis on the act of living, the idea of beings that continue to exist even though most of their selves is gone should be quite horrifying.
    Walking corpses, shades, and wraiths are all creepy enough, but I think ghouls and wights might be good starting points for major monsters of the Old World.

    Edit: While going to bed I was thinking of movies and books I could look into to get a better idea of horrible things that are too alive. I had been thinking of Predator, but obviously there's also Alien.
    You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies.
    People always say it's a movie about Reproduction Horror (which is exactly what I don't want), but that really starts and ends with Kane. The rest of the movie and all of the next one is pure Predation Horror.

    I think I'll also have to rewatch Them! and The Thing. Again, nice cases of too much life. The Thing has all the blood and tentacles of Lovecraftian Disgust, but even more important is that you just can't kill it.
    Last edited by Yora; 2016-06-01 at 04:12 AM.
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    Default Re: The Old World - A setting inspired by Morrowind, Planescape, and Hellboy

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora
    I find it a quite compelling interpretation and it got me thinking about something else that's been on my mind for a long time regarding my worldbuilding. In university I've taken classes on the sociological elements of many different religions, and one thing I noticed is that almost all of them regard the body as a bad thing. The path to salvation is almost always to free ones mind from physical sensations and transcend a bodily existance through death where full purity will be achieved. Why this is the case I don't know, and there are probably many smaller religions where that is not the case. But for the major ones (not sure about all groups of Hindus) salvation lies in transcending the flesh. And it's not like humanists as a whole are great advocates of physical sensation either. Neither were most ancient philosophers. The only exceptions I know are Epicur and I believe two thousand years later Sartre and Beauvoir. (I actually have not read either of them yet.)
    Here's the thing. If this life is all there is, and the ultimate goal is to get out of it everything you possibly can: the best food, the best entertainment, the best sex, etc. because there is not and can never be anything more, then there is no religious class. Gilgamesh (or alternatively Genghis Khan) is the ultimate expression of life and is doing everything the gods or spirits could possibly want. In such a world the moral philosophy of Conan is entirely correct.

    In a fantasy world where this is manifestly true, there are no priests, no philosophers, and no higher authority. Shamans may exist and negotiate or enslave spirits, but these beings simply have different powers, not any moral authority. In fact there's no moral authority at all and everyone is aware of it. Only strength matters.

    Such a world will be astoundingly violent - you're talking about a world with no justification for moral restraint and vast magical powers. The bloodshed would be on a shocking scale and would be equally pointless to most readers. I don't know if you've read the Malazan Book of the Fallen novels (if you haven't, don't, it's several months you'll never get back), but that's the kind of world you're talking about, only worse, one that makes Game of Thrones a paragon of civility and restraint by comparison.

    Most of the history of human civilization has been attempting to find ways to philosophize this kind of world as horrible and awful - mostly because this kind of philosophy is inimical to the existence of fixed agricultural civilization which requires the existence of a basis of authority beyond 'I'm the biggest guy with the biggest sword around.'

    Note, I am not saying that its a bad thing to build such a world or that it wouldn't be fun to adventure in - in fact the average group of players may react quite happily to a world where 'murder everyone' is the good and right solution to all their problems (though some will absolutely be squicked out hard if you take it seriously). Just that such a world doesn't mix well with the idea of 'civilization.'
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