Can we talk about Let's Build a Setting threads?

[DuctTapeKatar]

I think we are tripping up on some really simple problems that could be easily cleared with the whole "Let's Build a Setting" thing. I joined up around the time Caligoven and the Toxic Seas was still a thing, and since then, two others have propped up (Diskos and the Flare Tower, respectively). However, despite attempting to set some ground rules to remedy the problems that cropped up in Caligoven, I think we also dropped the ball on something somewhat important. Not to say that the settings are bad, but as it stands, I think that these settings will lose a lot if I don't get this out here as soon as possible, so here is a couple of things that I think we need to take into account if "Let's Build a Setting" is to continue.

1: Is Caligoven a gothic-horror story, or a swashbuckling adventure?

When we start up a campaign of our own, we often decide how we want to run our game. Now, as it stands, I have not seen any evidence that anyone knows where they are going with any setting they established in Let's Build a Setting.

When diving headfirst into Caligoven, I thought it was a world filled with terrifying monsters, mysterious goings-on between kingdoms and companies, and horrors beyond imagining lurking underneath a sea of poison -- a world of gothic horror, not taking into account that it might be a world of adventure, interesting characters, and clever bargaining between trading companies attempting to overcome a supposedly impassable obstacle. Looking back, I think that some of my additions may have dragged down the setting and may have eventually killed the thread (sorry 'bout that, by the way. I freaking loved what we were doing with it, and it pains me to realize that I basically choked it to death). I think that setting a distinct theme in the beggining of these threads might be a good start.

2: ... I thought it was just a giant tube pointing toward the sun...

This goes for the Flare Tower and Diskos especially. Both settings have interesting concepts, but I think that there was too much detail put into the world and not the world. The Flare Tower, I think, started out OK, I mean, look at the title of this section. Then we started getting into... layers? Gravity? I'm not sure what was going on with that (look back at teh title, bro). With Diskos... There is literally nothing to add on to. We have a specific planet with a goofy shape and strange astrology that, due to the rules, we are not allowed to change. The fact that spirits are chaos incarnate with little to nothing being comprehensible on both the characters and the people playing them makes it practically un-roleplayable (I barely even contributed, and I'm considering taking those back).

Basically, the settings established became too convoluted to follow. With Caligoven, the setting was easy to follow: The world is covered with green gas, you die if you breathe too much in. Good luck. If you're going to make a neat setting, go ahead, but if you want people to contribute, then make it so people can contribute. There's no fun in inviting people to a world-building party with half the world already finished. Just build the skeleton, let everyone else take care of the meat.


I just wanted to get that out there. Sorry about all the toes I just stomped on, but I needed to vent. I was planning on throwing out my own concept out there for a "Let's Build a Setting", but then there'd be three "Let's Build a Setting"'s active, so I'll hold off on that one.

[Newtonsolo313]

So with the spirits in diskos they don't need to be role played because they aren't like people they don't speak there more like machines who always do x when y happens that's it. They don't give the players quests they don't negotiate with the players they just perform a set of predictable behaviors under predictable conditions.
But yeah I agree with the preset geography thing

[GorinichSerpant]

Yeah, the spirits are as much characters as dry ice is a character and throwing water at it is interacting with it. The fact that the spirits look vaguely humanoid at times doesn't mean that they have any consciousness. They are impersonal forces like magnetism and gravity and so forth are in our universe that can be but have the aesthetic trappings of occult ritual and demons. As such they can be understood through something like the scientific method, as opposed to most magical entities in fiction which you bargain with for favor. They are more like plot devices and resources for the use of the PCs then people to interact with.

Honestly as a person who contributed a bit to the Diskos thread, I don't understand how the astronomy of it works.

I think the theme there even if it's not explicitly stated by Xuc Xac (go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong) is to present a weird world with a atmosphere similar to a Beksinski painting. Where everything is on the uncanny edge of the imaginable.

[DuctTapeKatar]

I think the theme there even if it's not explicitly stated by Xuc Xac (go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong) is to present a weird world with a atmosphere similar to a Beksinski painting. Where everything is on the uncanny edge of the imaginable.

That's nice and all, and it certainly is a good jumping-off point, but that isn't enough to drive it. For example, in one of my settings I'm working on as a side project, the main theme and drive of the setting is a complex government-system surrounded by people wanting to tear said system down for their own reasons, as well as internal problems caused by the internal bureaucracy and the remnants of old tyrants that used to rule the people.

With Diskos, just saying that there are alien spirits and weird shenanigans isn't enough. I interpreted it as HP-Lovecraft style horror in an inhospitable world, but I have no idea what other people are thinking -- there is no established sense of what is supposed to be added, nor is there any idea what to do with the world because Diskos basically was already made.

[Newtonsolo313]

I like the magic system that diskos uses because
1. It's way more of a science than an art
2. PC's aren't limited in spirit selection but there gonna need to prepare stuff to summon spells
3. Healing magic is limited(so far I think only soop and the monarch can heal and that's a niche case) so an actual healing system is needed
4. Stealing secrets from others is a legitimate way to get stronger
5. There is pretty much no randomness
6. It rewards good planning due to not being an instacast problem solver
I don't like the setting because
1. Its small
2. It's requires like modeling software to map
3. I don't get the astronomy
4. Too grimdark for my tastes

[noob]

It is not really grimdark except for the hard conditions of life but prehistoric era was grimdark with that criteria.

[Newtonsolo313]

It is not really grimdark except for the hard conditions of life but prehistoric era was grimdark with that criteria.

I don't want to play in the prehistoric era either

[Xuc Xac]

1: Is Caligoven a gothic-horror story, or a swashbuckling adventure?

When we start up a campaign of our own, we often decide how we want to run our game. Now, as it stands, I have not seen any evidence that anyone knows where they are going with any setting they established in Let's Build a Setting.

When diving headfirst into Caligoven, I thought it was a world filled with terrifying monsters, mysterious goings-on between kingdoms and companies, and horrors beyond imagining lurking underneath a sea of poison --

My original idea for the Toxic Seas was "What if you couldn't swim or sail on the seas but could only walk across the bottom with special suits like old deep sea divers. The first responses to the thread added the ridiculous Balloon Corp and made descender suits into rare magical artifacts only used a few times by people who never talk about what they see down there. That painted the world into a corner and completely changed the focus. I lost interest after that.

2: ... I thought it was just a giant tube pointing toward the sun...

This goes for the Flare Tower and Diskos especially. Both settings have interesting concepts, but I think that there was too much detail put into the world and not the world. The Flare Tower, I think, started out OK, I mean, look at the title of this section. Then we started getting into... layers? Gravity? I'm not sure what was going on with that (look back at teh title, bro). With Diskos... There is literally nothing to add on to.

For Diskos, you're not supposed to add onto the geography. The geography is already set. Inhabitants are what the world needs. The first post described the shape of the world and the limitations on supernatural power and ended with "Go! So who lives here? What do they want and what do they do? What are the races of the inhabitants? What are the factions and conflicts? What are all those little bits and bobs on the maps? Can you add another spirit to the taxonomists' catalog?" There have been some new spirits added but for the other questions all we have so far are "there are oilbloods and waterbloods" and "the Cavern of Spires is located here".

Diskos is basically a large dense city, but unlike a normal city, it can't expand outwards. Nobody can say "I'll just build a new tower out in the suburbs". If the middle ages took place here, the towers wouldn't be castles, they would be peninsulas. Feudal lords would try to take over a tower the way they would take a fief. They wouldn't just say "I'll go build a new piece of land over here and make my own barony... with blackjack! And hookers!" There is only so much land and nobody is building more. Complaints that the world is too small ring hollow when nobody has done much to fill it yet. I would take those complaints more seriously if we were quickly running out of towers that haven't been detailed yet. So far we've added one room inside the pyramid that almost nobody has ever seen. We're hardly running out of space. The problem isn't that too much is defined; the problem is that you keep trying to define things that have already been done. If someone says "here's a map of Greyhawk: tell me about the wizards and priests and fighters who live here", don't be surprised when "There are sorcerers and psionics and incarnum too" is not a good answer.

I was planning on throwing out my own concept out there for a "Let's Build a Setting", but then there'd be three "Let's Build a Setting"'s active, so I'll hold off on that one.

"Toxic Seas" wasn't the first "Let's Build a Setting" thread. We used to have them fairly regularly. "Toxic Seas" was an attempt to bring them back. There's no reason we can't have several running at once. I was thinking of adding some more in different styles for people that like world-building but don't like "Toxic Seas", "Flare Tower", or "Diskos".

But yeah I agree with the preset geography thing

I wanted a limit to the geography, so people would add more detail to the setting instead of just making up new things in the middle of nowhere that aren't connected to the rest of the setting. If there's a hard edge to the map, people have to zoom in and dig deeper. If not, the setting starts shallow and the shallowness just spreads out wider and wider as people tack on more shallow bits to the edges. Just look at the difficulty in mapping Caligoven: almost nothing says what's nearby because everything was made up in a vacuum.

Honestly as a person who contributed a bit to the Diskos thread, I don't understand how the astronomy of it works.

There are two suns. The disk orbits them like a coin sitting on a turntable. If you're toward the bright edge of the disk, the sky mostly looks like dawn or dusk (reddish with a few bright stars peeking through). If you're in a deep shadow or on the dark edge, the half of the sky away from the suns has a night sky with stars. There are 7 other planets out there that can be seen moving against the background of the stars. The five moons orbit the disk by passing "over" and "under" it. That's pretty much it.

I think the theme there even if it's not explicitly stated by Xuc Xac (go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong) is to present a weird world with a atmosphere similar to a Beksinski painting. Where everything is on the uncanny edge of the imaginable.

Definitely dark and baroque, but less "nightmarish hellscape" and more "kinda creepy".

[GorinichSerpant]

There are two suns. The disk orbits them like a coin sitting on a turntable. If you're toward the bright edge of the disk, the sky mostly looks like dawn or dusk (reddish with a few bright stars peeking through). If you're in a deep shadow or on the dark edge, the half of the sky away from the suns has a night sky with stars. There are 7 other planets out there that can be seen moving against the background of the stars. The five moons orbit the disk by passing "over" and "under" it. That's pretty much it.

So, the brightness level of any side of the slope never changes? I'm still having trouble imagining this. Can you draw this in a diagram that shows what rotates and in which direction if that isn't to much trouble.

Definitely dark and baroque, but less "nightmarish hellscape" and more "kinda creepy".

I keep forgetting that it's only Beksinski who thinks that his works are humorous and optimistic.

[DuctTapeKatar]

"Toxic Seas" wasn't the first "Let's Build a Setting" thread. We used to have them fairly regularly. "Toxic Seas" was an attempt to bring them back. There's no reason we can't have several running at once. I was thinking of adding some more in different styles for people that like world-building but don't like "Toxic Seas", "Flare Tower", or "Diskos".

In that case, I guess I'll send my idea out, then. Welp, let's see what happens, then...

[Lleban]

For what its worth I think Caligoven: The Toxic seas, despite its issues was actually rather successful since we managed to make a coherent setting with a little over 250 idea's and it lasted about 11 pages.

[Xuc Xac]

So, the brightness level of any side of the slope never changes? I'm still having trouble imagining this. Can you draw this in a diagram that shows what rotates and in which direction if that isn't to much trouble.

I'll stick some diagrams in the Diskos thread. I just noticed that I had the wrong direction labeled on the moon map so I'll update that too.

[Zorku]

Part of the beauty of these kinds of forum-game-threads is that nobody knows if this is gothic horror or adventure, so you end up with an unpredictable mashup of whatever ideas people got in their heads, but tried to leave kind of vague in case the setting is actually something else.

We've seen a couple of threads pop up and wither quickly now, and whether that's because the corrective measures that everyone takes were misguided, or just because the forum is kind of fatigued when it comes to this whole business, (or because I should absolutely not be allowed to ask for clarification,) it's not quite working out like the old days. Or it is working out like the old days and we just have weird expectations for the population this place currently has. Toxic Seas did get rather heavy participation, while the flare tower, storm lands, and diskos have seemed to run out of steam much faster.

The [Say "yes, and"] advice isn't the be all end all of advice for this kind of endeavor, but I think some aspect of that hybrid rule of improv is eluding us. We know that these kinds of threads can work, but so far none of the original posters seem satisfied with how their threads turn out. The old rules were kind of set up to stop an author from setting the direction of a thread, but nobody really understands why they developed that way.

[GorinichSerpant]

Part of the beauty of these kinds of forum-game-threads is that nobody knows if this is gothic horror or adventure, so you end up with an unpredictable mashup of whatever ideas people got in their heads, but tried to leave kind of vague in case the setting is actually something else.

We've seen a couple of threads pop up and wither quickly now, and whether that's because the corrective measures that everyone takes were misguided, or just because the forum is kind of fatigued when it comes to this whole business, (or because I should absolutely not be allowed to ask for clarification,) it's not quite working out like the old days. Or it is working out like the old days and we just have weird expectations for the population this place currently has. Toxic Seas did get rather heavy participation, while the flare tower, storm lands, and diskos have seemed to run out of steam much faster.

The [Say "yes, and"] advice isn't the be all end all of advice for this kind of endeavor, but I think some aspect of that hybrid rule of improv is eluding us. We know that these kinds of threads can work, but so far none of the original posters seem satisfied with how their threads turn out. The old rules were kind of set up to stop an author from setting the direction of a thread, but nobody really understands why they developed that way.

Well, there were the quote threads where one person posted a phrase then the next person attributed it to someone and wrote their own phrase. Those generated a lot of material that then became difficult to sort through and catalog. I think those had great success because you had a springboard with every post being part of a chain.

I remember a thread that was themed around everyone having a conversation at a tavern which lasted a while, I think because of the fun rp theme.

[Zorku]

If we said that you should try to quote an entry and describe you entry's relative relation to it after 2d4 islands/families/dungeons/etc had entered the thread, it seems like that might stifle a thread, but is there some way to pull that off with more subtle manipulation? If some of the folks that feel familiar with these threads just started doing that, would a lot of people follow suit?

[Xuc Xac]

How about starting with a map like Diskos or Eldan's "Short and Sweet" thread but with a grid for reference? Maybe a hex map with numbered hexes. When you make an entry, you can describe one hex but you have to include at least one line about how that hex views or interacts with the six neighboring hexes.

[Lleban]

How about starting with a map like Diskos or Eldan's "Short and Sweet" thread but with a grid for reference? Maybe a hex map with numbered hexes. When you make an entry, you can describe one hex but you have to include at least one line about how that hex views or interacts with the six neighboring hexes.

6 neighboring hexes might be a bit much. It also might be a tad restrictive unless there are a lot of hexes. Good idea though.

[DuctTapeKatar]

I personally think that a definite map actually could hold back a lot in some scenarios. When someone makes a map, adding things becomes a chore, because either something has to be added to the map that someone made, meaning it has to be updated, or that the addition has to be small enough that there is no need to warrant it on the map (think tiny island at most. Even the addition of a random mountain could drastically change things).

[Zorku]

If you're just doing some 6 mile hex in hexographer type map then that would be easy enough to keep up with, but I've got a lot of medieval demographics type sensibilities, so I'd probably find if really frustrating when people plop down cities 6 miles apart from each other and have rivers branch and flow uphill.

This is definitely the kind of thing that can work as a forum game, but I'd almost want a bunch of dice rolling or something to keep it from looking like random noise.



If folks wanted to do it anyway, the big feature I would suggest is zoom levels. Start with hexes that are like 200 miles wide (216 is a power of 6, if you're into the six mile hexes,) and basically describe one or more countries worth of stuff inside that hex*, then when you've got a handful of stuff present a 36 mile hex map and try to place those things in relative positions (or just reasonably scattered around,) and try to then flesh out each of those hexes, then zoom in again to 6 mile hexes for some of the more interesting 36 mile segments. Short of magical maps, nobody in the world is going to have anything so accurate as a 6 mile map (and they may well have to use rutter style landmark directions,) but this level of detail may be desirable to a DM.

*200x200 is about as big as most countries should ever get, and your setting will probably be more interesting with like 4 or 8 countries in as much area.

Bunch of resources for this kind of stuff online, but the Welsh Piper site has a nice article for rolling terrain types, so that if you zoom in on a fields hex the smaller hexes end up mostly field, and no isolated pockets or tundra or whatnot, but reasonable variety within reason. The Hill Cantons site has a nice article about how interesting any 1 mile wide patch of land is, but if you've got google earth installed you can skip and that basically just flick the globe to any old place that people live to see how the land is divided up and what kinds of ruined structures dot the landscape. You probably don't want to actually map out 1 mile hexes until your campaign actually has the party scouring some place to try and find a needle in a haystack, but this sort of thing is good reference for the kind of variety you should expect to find over 36 miles.


You can make hexes work for various world configurations, but anything other than a flat world is going to be kind of messy to explain. There's a nice way to do it in computer-y language for spheres, and any hex grid that's a multiple of 2 hexes wide with wrap nicely into a cylinder, but if you want to actually capture the bulge of something like diskos (from a top down view the hexes should appear to shrink near the edges, since they're tilted away from the observer,) I don't know how to do that effectively. I could do kind of a hack job of it with photoshop, but I'd be eyeballing is and just twisting knobs blindly until the result looked pleasant.

[Eldan]

Note to self: include rivers flowing uphill in setting. (Drunk river spirits?)

[Zorku]

Note to self: include rivers flowing uphill in setting. (Drunk river spirits?)

A couple of my players wold love to find a booze river flowing uphill, but that comes with infinitely more explanation than maps where somebody figured out how to draw a squiggly line and ignored the elevation of the land and made t branch every so often without recognizing what direction the water was going at that branch.

[Eldan]

HEheheh. I once had a geology student in my group and made a river flowing in a circle just to mess with him. It wasn't immediately obvious, either, there were branches going into and out of that circle.

[VoodooPaladin]

From what I read in the Toxic Seas setting, it seems to me that your threads are suffering a bad case of Painting-Yourself-Into-A-Corner-itis. One guy phrases his idea a certain way, and now everyone ends up straitjacketed by conceptual dogma. It doesn't even have to be on purpose, it just seems to happen when every idea thrown at the board is allowed to stick.

Perhaps adding the capacity for [Yes, but...] might work better? For example: Let's say the Balloon Corp holds a massive monopoly on air travel. [Yes, and...] can only expand upon this idea, but is limited in its ability to change it. [Yes, but...] can say that factional fractures and air piracy have turned monopoly into a bigger joke than SPQR in the fifth century AD.

If you want to not have your threads reach critical mass after a couple hundred ideas, you need to build the editing stage into the discussion. I believe that the editing stage is the part that adds character and construction to a design, as it's based on compromise instead of dictation. I also believe that the process of eroding old ideas with new ones is a necessary evil for ensuring that themes shine through, as clutter is forgotten easily, but ideals and inspirations are not.

Has this already been considered? I truly am unaware of any discussion of the subject, if any has occurred? What are your opinions on this idea?

[Zorku]

From what I read in the Toxic Seas setting, it seems to me that your threads are suffering a bad case of Painting-Yourself-Into-A-Corner-itis. One guy phrases his idea a certain way, and now everyone ends up straitjacketed by conceptual dogma. It doesn't even have to be on purpose, it just seems to happen when every idea thrown at the board is allowed to stick.

Perhaps adding the capacity for [Yes, but...] might work better? For example: Let's say the Balloon Corp holds a massive monopoly on air travel. [Yes, and...] can only expand upon this idea, but is limited in its ability to change it. [Yes, but...] can say that factional fractures and air piracy have turned monopoly into a bigger joke than SPQR in the fifth century AD.

If you want to not have your threads reach critical mass after a couple hundred ideas, you need to build the editing stage into the discussion. I believe that the editing stage is the part that adds character and construction to a design, as it's based on compromise instead of dictation. I also believe that the process of eroding old ideas with new ones is a necessary evil for ensuring that themes shine through, as clutter is forgotten easily, but ideals and inspirations are not.

Has this already been considered? I truly am unaware of any discussion of the subject, if any has occurred? What are your opinions on this idea?

As I understand it, that sort of thing became problematic in older threads, where people would get overzealous about their "yes, but..." and turn it into more of a "no, actually..."

A couple of the threads have included a "balloon corp clause" as a sort of inside joke about toxic seas, where they simply say "don't do that," but I think it might work better to combine these ideas:

If you make sweeping statements that xyz has a monopoly, or is the best in the world, or is incredibly rare and expensive; then future entries should tack on complications to that and/or contradict it, as other people see fit.

There's probably a better way to say that, but the idea is that we should let people declare monopolies, but they have to make them interesting enough that other people with ideas on that subject want to (and can,) play along with it.

[Jonagel]

Not to hijack the thread, but....

Has anyone ever done threads like "Let's Build a Magic System" or "Let's build a fantasy race/species"?

Aside from these being fun ideas on their own, they could help really jump start a build a setting thread if they can be tied together maybe.

[Zorku]

You get posts in here with that subject matter, but at least in the newer batch of Let's forum, nobody's really made one thread as the staging platform for another thread.

[Knaight]

To some extent the settings are inherently incoherent, and to actually use them you have to choose what parts to keep and what to break. I actually just finished a campaign in Caligoven, but there were major changes made to make that happen (not least adding a whole new element to the setting because players wanted it, breaking the Balloon Corp monopoly while keeping them as a major power with a lot of economic clout, breaking the large animals over the sea detail, systematically purging the demi-humans from the setting, and adding a fair amount of new stuff). Still, A Fisherman On The Toxic Sea worked as a campaign, and there are plans for a sequel involving a dive team. Clearly the setting worked for at least one person, and it worked for my players as well, so that brings the minimum up to six.

[JoshuaZ]

To some extent the settings are inherently incoherent, and to actually use them you have to choose what parts to keep and what to break. I actually just finished a campaign in Caligoven, but there were major changes made to make that happen (not least adding a whole new element to the setting because players wanted it, breaking the Balloon Corp monopoly while keeping them as a major power with a lot of economic clout, breaking the large animals over the sea detail, systematically purging the demi-humans from the setting, and adding a fair amount of new stuff). Still, A Fisherman On The Toxic Sea worked as a campaign, and there are plans for a sequel involving a dive team. Clearly the setting worked for at least one person, and it worked for my players as well, so that brings the minimum up to six.

Can you maybe list in more detail on what changes you made? Preferably with explanations (I'm particularly curious how why you removed the non-human species).

[Knaight]

Can you maybe list in more detail on what changes you made? Preferably with explanations (I'm particularly curious how why you removed the non-human species).

Sure.

• First thing first - I wasn't running D&D. The setting was never D&D specific, but D&D assumptions crept in, and I made a point of getting rid of them as I wasn't running D&D and didn't like those assumptions. I'm sick of dwarves and elves having to show up in every setting, of the traditional role of the monster, etc.
• The Balloon Guild no longer holds a monopoly. They're an extremely powerful global conglomerate that has explicit special treatment established at most cities, but independent fishing and trading vessels are very much a thing. The main reason I did this was to set up the group as a fishing vessel, which is what the group of players wanted. The other reasons were to establish the Guild as an antagonist with limitations and because it was just more interesting.
• Magic users were cut. The group consensus was that they weren't particularly interesting, and the players were interested in the idea of monster tech, so all magic went to them, and even then it was generally subtle, with most of the monsters working just fine without magic. The one big exception was the burner turtle, a turtle that constantly radiated heat from its shell and was used to heat the air for the balloons (and for cooking).
• In keeping with the monster tech, there were bigger creatures. The balloons were pulled by draft wyverns, there was an established shrieker network as one of the guild advantages, there were massive tunneling creatures used in mining, etc. Most of the monster tech was on the small side (cutting beetles, floatsnails, the aforementioned shriekers), but the albatross size limit was thoroughly broken.
• I ran Imtara and the architectural college from memory, and often ran things more in terms of broad setting trends rather than exact locations.
• The specific chemical composition of the fog introduced by tantric was thoroughly ignored, because I thoroughly ignore everything that user says and nobody who had good ideas in the setting built on it in any way.

[DuctTapeKatar]

Sure.

• First thing first - I wasn't running D&D. The setting was never D&D specific, but D&D assumptions crept in, and I made a point of getting rid of them as I wasn't running D&D and didn't like those assumptions. I'm sick of dwarves and elves having to show up in every setting, of the traditional role of the monster, etc.
• The Balloon Guild no longer holds a monopoly. They're an extremely powerful global conglomerate that has explicit special treatment established at most cities, but independent fishing and trading vessels are very much a thing. The main reason I did this was to set up the group as a fishing vessel, which is what the group of players wanted. The other reasons were to establish the Guild as an antagonist with limitations and because it was just more interesting.
• Magic users were cut. The group consensus was that they weren't particularly interesting, and the players were interested in the idea of monster tech, so all magic went to them, and even then it was generally subtle, with most of the monsters working just fine without magic. The one big exception was the burner turtle, a turtle that constantly radiated heat from its shell and was used to heat the air for the balloons (and for cooking).
• In keeping with the monster tech, there were bigger creatures. The balloons were pulled by draft wyverns, there was an established shrieker network as one of the guild advantages, there were massive tunneling creatures used in mining, etc. Most of the monster tech was on the small side (cutting beetles, floatsnails, the aforementioned shriekers), but the albatross size limit was thoroughly broken.
• I ran Imtara and the architectural college from memory, and often ran things more in terms of broad setting trends rather than exact locations.
• The specific chemical composition of the fog introduced by tantric was thoroughly ignored, because I thoroughly ignore everything that user says and nobody who had good ideas in the setting built on it in any way.

That sounds like it was pretty sweet. Got any specific moments you could share? I'd be interested to see how this was run.