Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

[Yora]

While I previously thought about making masks a common feature of armor or priest robes, it was entirely by coincidence that I ended up with 12 out of 20 images showing people with obscured faces. But I think it's something that should definitly be given a very strong presence.

Religion

Creation: Before the world existed, there was only primordial darkness, and within the darkness were barren rocks rising out of a stormy sea. Where water erroded the rock, it turned into coastal plains of wet sand, and from this came the first soil that was the source of all life. [If darkness is primordial, something must have led to the creation of the sun and moon, but right now this is a huge glaring gap in the whole mythology.]

Cult of the Sea: There are spirits for all rivers and for lakes, and therefore there has to be a spirit for the great ocean as well. With civilization being coastal and travel and transportation being primarily across the sea, this spirit of the ocean is of huge significance in addition to any local spirits. It's a god prayed and sacrificed to to ask for safe journeys and protection from storms, but also for prosperity, especially by merchants and fishermen. It is seen as a potential bringer of great fortune, but its wrath is unpredictable and devastating, and greatly feared for very good reasons.

Cult of the Moon: The cult of the Moon is less about praying for safety and gifts and primarily a philosophical tradition. It is a cult centered around mysticism, meditation, knowledge, and ultimately wisdom. The Moon is worshiped as a divine teacher who gave philosophy and mysticism to mortals, but it doesn't grant any gifts other than assisting in the understanding of spiritual problems. Most common people never have any direct dealings with its temples, but they tend to be very rich and majestic buildings dominating the cityscape.

The Keepers of the House, the Fields, and the Herds: The worship of local spirits of the land provides many immediate benefits for the people living under their protection, but they offer very little in regards to questions of spirituality and morality. For most people, this part of religion is adressed by the cult of the Three Keepers. The mythology surrounding the keepers is not fixed and varies sometimes greatly in detail between different places. In some lands they are seen as virtuous mortals, in others as fully formless spirits, and very often as something inbetween of one kind or another.
In a world where the main concern of all people is to ensure the preservation of the small patches of farmable land against countless threats from the wilderness and there is no promise of opulent afterlives, fields and animals are regarded at the highest value, and great significance placed on the house both as shelter and a symbol for cooperation among the family. These things are treated as equal to gods or even gods in themselves, and as such are represented as actual beings. The cult of the Keepers also puts them in direct opposition to the three great ills of greed, hatred, and pride.
The Keeper of the Fields is the protector of crops, patron of agriculture, provider of food, and also guardian of all people working in the field. The Keeper is often represented as a woman but in various places also a man. The keeper of the fields provides the people with grain, fruits, and vegetables, which she readily shares in many stories about here, which makes her the counterpart of greed.
The Keeper of the Herds protects animals and herders from predators and other hazards and guards the herds against disease. The Keeper of the Herds is also seen as a wanderer and therefore a messenger and explorer and a watchful guardian over the whole of villages with their people and houses. Herding is a traditionally male task in most cultures and therefore the keeper is always portrayed as a man. Since the task of herding is often dull, miserable, and lonely, the Keeper of the Herds is seen as standing for humility and opposing pride.
The Keeper of the House is the provider of shelter and patron of community and commonly represented as a woman. Her primary symbol is the fireplace, but she is very much not seen as a deity of fire. Instead she is known as the tamer of fire, who has taken the fire from the realm beneath the earth and brought it into the home to provide warmth and cook food, but who also confines it and who keeps it from destroying the house and harming the family. The Keeper of the House represents hospitality, which is opposed to hatred.
The relationship between the three keepers differs greatly between places. Sometimes they are regarded as siblings, other times they are married with either the Keeper of the House as matriarch or the Keeper of the Fields as patriarch, and countless other variants.

Water: Water is an extremely significant substance in the lives of all mortals. Even though most civilization is located on the coasts and almost all land covered by trees, sources of drinking water can often be quite scarce in most places away from the great rivers. For most people, drought is a much greater concern than flooding. In addition to being the source of life, water is also revered as being purifying. [I find water fascinating to begin with, but you really start to appreciate its wonder when you work ten hour shifts out in the sun for months on end. It's wonderful to touch, look at, and even wonderful to smell. I want to make this a major element but don't have any specific plans yet for how.]

Fire: Fire is not regarded as a force for good. It has great benefits for the lives of people but it is also very dangerous and agressive and regarded as being not part of the natural environment that consists of forests, mountains, and the sea. Fire is seen in nature only during wildfires and when it spews from the ground in volcanic erruptions and can cause great distruction and severe immediate threats to life. Even though fire comes from the Realm Beneath the Earth, fire is not evil. But it certainly is alien and always to be feared.
Because fire is associated with the Realm Beneath and sorcery comes from the Realms Beneath and Beyond, fire is very often used as a symbol of sorcery. This association is even used in visions send by spirits of Mountain, Water, and Tree to warn against sorcery. The image of something covered in flames almost always indicates a sorcerer or something being under a sorcerous spell.

Ash: As fire is widely recognized as a symbol for sorcery, ash is commonly used as an image to represent the dangers sorcery poses to the environment and civilization.

Trees: Trees are the universal symbol for the wilderness and all the many spirits that inhabit it.

Roots: While trees are generally a positive or at least a neutral symbol, roots are often used in imagery or speech to refer to the slow consuming nature of the forests that will reclaim cleared fields and crumble and burry buildings.

Red Hearts: People don't usually have a concept of Evil as an objective cosmic force. Instead bad people and behavior is classified more by specific actions. People who are being described as having a red heart are dangerous and cause suffering because they are controlled by anger and have fallen to the great ill of hatered. They are people who are prone to violence and wish to cause harm and fear in other when they don't get their way.

Black Hearts: While people with red hearts are understood to be dangerous, those described as having black hearts are feared and dispised even more. They don't have any drive to cause harm or gain any satisfaction from it, and instead just have an utter disregard with the wellbeing of others. They care only for their own benefit and don't show any concern about any harm that comes to others because of their actions. Unlike people with red hearts, who have no control over their actions and who are easy to predict and trick into mistakes, people with black hearts are consumed by greed and often go to great lengths to keep their true intentions hidden when it would benefit their goals.

[Xuc Xac]

How is "Kaendor" pronounced? I can see several possibilities:
The "ae" is an English "short a" ligature so it sounds like "candor". The "ae" is like in Latin so it sounds like the English word "kinder". The "ae" is the German "ä", which unfortunately sounds like "kender", one of the most despised things in D&D.

Is it one of those or something else?

[Yora]

Mostly Kendor, I would say. Couldn't help myself getting a bit unnecessarily fancy there. But as long as there aren't any apostrophes, I think it's permissible.

[Yora]

I had somewhat of a paradoxical thought: Even though the setting is a forest planet and its culture is shaped by the fact that the forest restricts the growth of cities and can easily burry them, the forest environment itself doesn't seem to be really that important. It feels like it should be the dominant central feature of both the setting and a campaign. But trying to use it that way had always failed in my past campaigns. When I think about stuff happening and discoveries being made in adventures, it is related to ruins, caves, and camps that exist within the forest, but are not part of the forest environment itself.
You can make overland travel a complex thing with plenty of rolls and resource management, but what does that have to do with making discoveries, learning about the world, and encountering supernatural beings and phenomenons?
I tried to have fun with wilderness travel and it really wasn't. And by now I no longer even think it matters. The forest is not inherently interesting. It's only the specific things that can be found inside it.

Now in a desert campaign you can do plenty of fun with managing water and finding shelter, which forces the players to interact with encounters and obstacles in new and interesting ways. In an ocean campaign you get sea battles, which fight quite differently from land battles. But forests really aren't that interesting by themselves. Maybe there's less room for long range archery, cavalry action, and large formation battles, but these are alteady absent in most campaigns anyway, even those set mostly in open plains. Being in a forest doesn't really change anything in ways that require different approaches to obstacles and problems.
Simply going with woodland encounters and heavy forest visuals in location designs seems the sensible way to go. Unless anyone has any great suggestions on how a mostly forest based adventure plays diferent from the default.

[Xuc Xac]

@Yora: You're probably limited by thinking of forests as the well maintained, coppiced forests of Europe, which have been effectively "manicured and groomed" for centuries. You're saying "wolf" but thinking "shaved and perfumed poodle".

A real wild forest is thick with undergrowth and low hanging branches. You couldn't ride a horse through it. You couldn't even walk a pack mule through it without getting stuck on something.

In WWII, the battle of Hürtgenwald featured tanks and trucks. Imagine how different it would have been if Hürtgenwald was as thick as the U Minh jungle in Vietnam. Or consider the movie "Predator": even if the predator didn't have near invisibility, it would still be very difficult to see or get a clear shot at it.

[Yora]

All very true. And in the beginning I specifically set out to make a world that is very much unlike the suburban tree plantations of Central Europe. It's a huge difference, but what impact does it have on play? You can set slower movement rates in combat and additional penalties to ranged attacka at medium range. But doea that change the experience of the players in any way?
Can you play with a forest? Can you make use of it or can it be used against you? With the way encounters are generally handled in RPGs, distances don't really matter. They are already very close by default. You could contrast a forest from plains by actually making use of the wide open environment of plains. But forests only force encounters to play out in the way encounters already play out most of the time. In a campaign of all forest environments, I don't see how it could be made distinguised. A woodland theme for encounters, but that's it.

[Max_Killjoy]

@Yora: You're probably limited by thinking of forests as the well maintained, coppiced forests of Europe, which have been effectively "manicured and groomed" for centuries. You're saying "wolf" but thinking "shaved and perfumed poodle".

A real wild forest is thick with undergrowth and low hanging branches. You couldn't ride a horse through it. You couldn't even walk a pack mule through it without getting stuck on something.

In WWII, the battle of Hürtgenwald featured tanks and trucks. Imagine how different it would have been if Hürtgenwald was as thick as the U Minh jungle in Vietnam. Or consider the movie "Predator": even if the predator didn't have near invisibility, it would still be very difficult to see or get a clear shot at it.

There are some old growth forests where swaths are so shaded and the decay layer so thick that the undergrowth is suppressed.

For the most part, you are correct, those European forests so popular in film and photo, with the nice open areas under the tree, are often the result of centuries of human management.

[Arastel]

What a thread! I'm currently developing a setting which sounds incredibly similar to what you're working on Yora. I'm wanting to focus on the exploration of ancient ruins, but I've taken more inspiration from Dark Sun and am going with the desert wasteland instead of a jungle. Even my ideas for how most things are controlled by spirits is quite similar to yours.

With regard to the woodland scene not influencing play much, perhaps you could invert what my experience of normal play is. Usually when you are in ruins or buildings the spaces are very tight and movement is limited. Perhaps you could make the ruins feel spacious by turning your jungle/forest encounters into a sort of guerrilla warfare with very dense undergrowth, lots of trees and branches providing cover, and muddy ground providing poor footing. Ambush and stealth are the name of the game unless a creature is so strong it can simply run over all the obstacles which most enemies (and the players) normally use for cover.

Doing this would probably slow down play if the players are trying to figure out where their targets are and then out manoeuvre them without giving away their own positioning. Maybe it would give you the sufficiently different feel to gameplay which you're looking for?

[Yora]

That's really not a bad idea. Both around cities and within ruins there is plenty of open spaces. Making use of them by letting players get a decent look at encounters while still having time to not enngage them, and using ranged attacks and intimidation over longer ranges would make the forest paths more claustrophobic in comparison. There creatures and NPCs could pop up right in their face, or even already surrounding them. The deep unexplored forests could be approached more like dunngeons than outdoor areas. Navigation by anything but paths and rivers would be pretty much impossible anyway.

[TheStranger]

I've been thinking about how forests could add something to a game, because I love forests. Having spent a lot of time in some pretty wild places in North America, I can say that forests are dynamic and engaging in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, none of those ways really translate well to a RPG, because they boil down to pretty basic skill checks.

In practice, the biggest challenge posed by forests is navigation. It's amazingly easy to get thoroughly turned around when you can't see more than a few hundred feet. Even following what should be major landscape features like rivers and ridgelines can be surprisingly challenging when you can't see the shape of the land. Thanks to a combination of heavy underbrush and even heavier rain, I once managed to walk in a circle on a piece of land not much bigger than a football field. But in a game, all of that is just a Survival check and a reduced overland movement rate, and the DC is trivial if somebody is keeping it maxed.

The other challenge I've faced in forests is weather. Forests happen in places with a decent amount of rainfall, which means you can find yourself very uncomfortable if you're not careful about keeping yourself and your gear dry. Again, setting up a dry camp and starting a fire with wet wood is just a basic skill check, though. But you could do something with traveling in inclement weather where a failed skill check results in fatigue or other penalties. You could also have enemies attack the party's gear to wear them down, or have spirits manipulate the weather to make things more difficult.

I think treating a deep forest like a dungeon is a good idea. Forest encounters have the potential for some interesting tactical combat, because a lot of the battle area would be difficult terrain or provide cover. It actually makes abilities like woodland stride tactically very useful. There's also the potential for balance checks in combat, if the party is attacked while fording a stream, clambering over a blowdown, picking their way across mossy rocks, etc. Enemies familiar with the forest should know where the PCs will be disadvantaged by the terrain and plan accordingly.

[Mechalich]

A real wild forest is thick with undergrowth and low hanging branches. You couldn't ride a horse through it. You couldn't even walk a pack mule through it without getting stuck on something.

This sort of thing depends, immensely, on what the local fire regime looks like. While jungles - which have very restrictive fire regimes in which a 'big' fire might involve flames less than a foot in height that move at rates of 1-2 meters per hour - have extensive undergrowth that is very dense, forests in areas of greater aridity may have much more regular fires and clear out the undergrowth on a regular basis. Since large trees can easily survive small fires, something that only becomes more likely as the trees grow larger and it becomes more difficult for the fires to crown, it is actually quite possible and even likely to have a forest with massive trees but a surprisingly open understory. For example this is what natural Ponderosa Pine forest looks like in the absence of fire suppression.

Since a fire regime can vary widely over relatively small spatial scales due to differences in the species composition, microclimate, and seasonal impacts, it is possible to have the conditions of your forests be very different due to changes in the fire ecology.

[Saintheart]

I've been thinking about how forests could add something to a game, because I love forests. Having spent a lot of time in some pretty wild places in North America, I can say that forests are dynamic and engaging in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, none of those ways really translate well to a RPG, because they boil down to pretty basic skill checks.

In practice, the biggest challenge posed by forests is navigation. It's amazingly easy to get thoroughly turned around when you can't see more than a few hundred feet. Even following what should be major landscape features like rivers and ridgelines can be surprisingly challenging when you can't see the shape of the land. Thanks to a combination of heavy underbrush and even heavier rain, I once managed to walk in a circle on a piece of land not much bigger than a football field. But in a game, all of that is just a Survival check and a reduced overland movement rate, and the DC is trivial if somebody is keeping it maxed.

The other challenge I've faced in forests is weather. Forests happen in places with a decent amount of rainfall, which means you can find yourself very uncomfortable if you're not careful about keeping yourself and your gear dry. Again, setting up a dry camp and starting a fire with wet wood is just a basic skill check, though. But you could do something with traveling in inclement weather where a failed skill check results in fatigue or other penalties. You could also have enemies attack the party's gear to wear them down, or have spirits manipulate the weather to make things more difficult.

I think treating a deep forest like a dungeon is a good idea. Forest encounters have the potential for some interesting tactical combat, because a lot of the battle area would be difficult terrain or provide cover. It actually makes abilities like woodland stride tactically very useful. There's also the potential for balance checks in combat, if the party is attacked while fording a stream, clambering over a blowdown, picking their way across mossy rocks, etc. Enemies familiar with the forest should know where the PCs will be disadvantaged by the terrain and plan accordingly.

A bit off-topic, but when it comes to dealing with travel through any sort of terrain including forests, I like the Angry GM's ideas about overland travel which is to turn it into a bit of a minigame.

The key way he hacks overland travel for fifth edition (and it's easily translateable back to 3rd ed, indeed I think the upcoming Pathfinder videogame uses a version of it) is to make two basic changes:

(1) Make sure the players are travelling somewhere, give them a choice about which path to take (the choice being between "shorter but more dangerous route" vs. "longer but slower"), and then let them define how quick a pace they want to set. You assign a period of time the journey will take (say, 3 days), and then the players set out. You also set a Navigation and Forage DC for the terrain they're passing through. (Angry GM specifies some straightforward ones for "forest", "plains", "mountains" and whatnot, but weather conditions can quite easily slot into this - rain as described, and in more evil mechanics-specific terms, fog -- which 3.5 seems to presume is always a pea-souper that renders everyone invisible more than about 5 feet out.) And have the party assign a navigator, usually the dude with the high Survival score or a WIS bonus if none are available.

(2) At the end of each day, you make the party's navigator the subject of a secret check conducted by the GM, and don't tell the players the result, but adjust the encounters and the adventure consequent on that choice. If the player navigating passes the check,they gain a day on the required number of days the journey is set to take - though again you don't tell the players this. Obviously, if they pass the Navigation check three times, they reach wherever they were going.

However, if the player navigating fails the navigation check, they don't gain any days towards the 3 days the journey is set as taking. They have, in fact, become lost. The joy of it, though, is that, just as in real life, under this system you often don't know you're lost until you twig that something's not right - for example, you run into a landmark that you shouldn't have, a river that wasn't on your path, or you find you've journeyed longer than the trip was expected to take ("Hey! We've been on the road four days, this trip should've taken three!") Then the party has to start a fresh journey to get back on track, which is also handled by these same rules.

And what's happening on those days of travel? In short, three other factors: risk of a wandering monster (dealt with a bit differently to how 3.5 deals with it), chance of discovering something interesting along the way which the party can investigte if it wants to (e.g. a small ruin, statue, etc.), and a Forage check, i.e. everyone has to go and find food for themselves. If at least one person succeeds on the check, people's waterskins are refilled, but if you fail a Forage check for yourself, it's time to mark off one portion of trail rations for the day. And if you get to the point where water and/or food runs out, Fatigue rules start to set in. The party's chosen pace also affects the Forage and risk of wandering monsters - if you're setting a fast pace, it's harder to navigate, you basically can't forage at all, and monsters get a higher chance at detecting you. Where journeys are time-sensitive through dangerous areas, this actually gives the players something to think about and weigh up the risks of going faster or slower.

The beauty of this system is that it still makes travel granular enough to make things interesting but doesn't require you as a GM to map out every damn weed between here and the Lost Ruin of Whatever. Better still, it allows the party to get progressively better and better at navigating the wilds as they level up -- as they should, as their Survival or WIS scores get better. Thoroughly recommend this system, it's an elegant idea, if expressed a little too much in stream-of-consciousness on Angry's website.

[Yora]

It's the kind of resource management minigame that I decided to drop from my campaigns. It doesn't really add to the exploration of strange places and encountering weird supernatural things.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yora -- I like what I saw so far, let us know if you have any more brainstorming needed or ideas you'd like to bounce around.

[Yora]

I am on it. No worries. Right now I am digging deeply into Apocalypse World 2nd edtition to see how well a simple reskin would fit this setting. And I think it would do really well. I already got a couple of ideas back when I first read it a year ago, but I was never quite sure if I really understood the game from the 1st edition book. A good number of them are already part of the setting.
Apocalypse World is a system that is build around the assumption that the PCs live in a lawless hostile wilderness populated by crazy people fighting over resources and control. And there's magic. The rules are based quite heavily on the assumption that most of the PCs have people woring for them, sometimes in very considerable numbers, and that they are interested in defending their turf. Or they fight to maintain their freedom against gangs and warlords trying to establish their own control. This is obviously not quite a perfect match.

But Kaendor is a setting in which people live in precarious settlements on the edge of a strange wilderness that is home to dangerous barbarians and spirits, and who are vulnerable to prophets and sorcerers using supernatural powers to take control of the city states from the inside. While food and water are generally available, magical relics and ancient scrolls are very rare and can lead to significant shifts in the power structure. Which is a very considerable overlap.

So the campaign idea I am bouncing around now is like this: A new city has been founded on the ruins of a previous forgotten civilization and in the 80 years that have passed the people have build stable farms and defenses and established trade with other cities. Now that the immediate struggle for survival has passed, some people are starting to look at the wooded hills surrounding their small coastal plain and are wondering and worrying what other ruins might still be out there undiscovered. There are things that could help the city state, and things that could be of danger to it. And various other people who would really love to get their hands on them.
The instruction to the players would be to create characters who have decided that they want to go and take a look, for whatever personal reasons, and that they all know each other as people who could help them with that.

What makes this different from a regular dungeon crawl campaign is the types of characters that players can pick from in Apocalypse World. There is already a fantasy reskin of the rules called Fallen Empires, and I am taking the names from it as a starting point here. The game is intentionally made to leave a lot of room to flesh out specific details, and my descriptions already include good amounts of my own setting specific flavoring. Fallen Empires is more dark fantasy Sword & Sorcery, so I'm not quite happy with some of the names. I could really use some suggestions for those:

AW Characters
The Bonepicker (???)is a herbalist and healer who has a special supernatural ability to pull people back from death. He is a witch doctor who does not simply treat injuries but rather connects himself and his patient with the spiritworld, which grants him some deep and strange insight into the patient's soul. He can have his own special healing place and assistants, and even learn to make contact with spirits through a dying body.
The Child of Battle (???) is a troublemaker and wildcard. This character has an amazing ability to sense threats and survive dangers.
The Mesmerast (???) has a number of different mental powers. He can read memories and control thoughts and even cause real harm with just his mind.
The Wolfshead (???) is the leader of a gang of riders. By default bandits, but the customization options allow for somewhat disciplined rangers as well.
The Swordmaster (Blademaster) is a warrior. This one is all battle and can gain a gang of followers or a small stronghold.
The Strongholder is the leader of a big home base consisting of a hundred workers and a few dozen warriors to defend it. Could be a minor warlord, but also the owner of a big farm or trading post.
The Hocus (Prophet) is the eerily charismatic leader of a group of loyal followers. Could be a prophet, a priest, a cult leader, or spiritual teacher. With the help of the followers, the Hocus can learn to summon spirits.
The Mystic (Shaman) is a person who has a strong connection to the spirits and can get visions and insights, always be at the right place at the right time, and work with magical relics and make various amulets and talismans.
The Nightshade (Scoundrel) is basically a bard. A deeply charismatic artist of compelling personality.

Apocalypse World also has two more characters that were not converted for Fallen Empires, but I think they would actually be great for Kaendor:
The Helmsman (?) owns a ship or boat. He's a traveler who has a far reaching reputation and learned to get out of dangerous situations. And can also upgrade to a warship.
The Trader is someone who can get everything. Be it goods or information.

Sailors and merchants are actually extremely important people in Kaendor. They connect the many distant places and conduct the trade that allows them to survive. Since AW already has a driver and an entrepeneur, it would be really wasteful not to convert them.

All characters start with two abilities from their own class and can later learn two more, plus two more abilities from any other classes. Which considerably blurs the lines between them and makes the whoole system more or less classless. And while a Swordmaster and a Mystic seem straightforward enough, their overall personality and appearance is completely open ended.
Gangs work as a single entity in a fight or conflict and are actually handled like a weapon. Commanding your gang is like using a weapon or piece of equipment, so in actual play leading a gang should not be any more complicated or slower than just playing a single character.

AW Magic
Magic in AW is the weirdest part of an already weird game. But it actually directly inspired my own approach for what magic in Kaendor can do and can't do. With some setting specific reflavoring, it's actually straightforward enough.

One use that is open to all PCs at any time is to reach out with their mind to the spiritworld. It allows you to ask for a piece of additional information that you don't currently have. It's an ingame mechanic to get a hint. Though if you fail your roll, the GM will come up with some kind of bad consequence appropriate for the situation. My approach to this is that all characters can call upon the spirits to get a vision about something. To do this, the character has to perform some kind of simple ritual like chanting, looking into a fire, staring into the waters of a pond, or eating or burning strange herbs. After some time the character will get a vision that might be more or less useful or have terrible consequences, depending on the roll. The way the system works, a failed roll might actually give the player a vision that is totally true, but it's about something that the GM makes up right now to add a new complication to the adventure. Rolls don't really determine success or failure, but whether the consequences are good or bad.

The other use of magic is the ability Augury, which can be learned by the Mystic, Hocus, and Bonepicker, and is actually misnamed as anyone will notice who knows what augury means. I think for this setting, it would actually be better called Summoning. First, it lets you make a spirit come to you so that you can talk to it. If you want to make it do something for you, that's a separate action just like convincing anyone else. Second, you can remove the influence of a spirit from a person, place, or thing. And third, you can inform the spiritworld of something you want to spread. Could be true or could be false, but the spirits will now be aware of it. Some might react to it.
By default, the ritual reaches only lower ranking spirits within the area you are in, works only for as long as you are performing it, and all spirits and mages might sense what you're doing. If you roll well, you can make it either reach spirits of much greater power or over a much larger area, it stays in effect for longer, or you can hide what you're doing. If the roll fails, the GM comes up with appropriate unfortunate consequences.

I think this could actually lead to pretty great fantasy campaigns that are about exploring strange places without being about fighting monsters and collecting loot. Even characters like the Strongholder, the Hocus, and the Wolfshead (that one really needs a better name) make a lot of sense in an exploration of wilderness ruins if they think their people are threatened by something lurking in the wilds. Having a home base to safely return to and get supplies, healing, and protection, or being able to gather a bunch of armed men when needed can be very valuable additions. Even a helmsman can work without trouble. Since the city states are all on the coast, the wilderness can be islands off the coast just as well as forests in the hinterlands.
I think it's not just a system with potential, it actually provides frameworks that could really help with making a fantasy wilderness campaign different from a hexcrawl.

[Rusty Spoon]

Just wanted to chip in and say that your world-building threads are always great to read. Kaendor has particularly peaked my interest, and I had a couple stray thoughts in general, as well as giving the class names below a shot.

First up, salt water. Salt is anti-spirit, but seas and oceans have some of the strongest spirits? It's not necessarily a contradiction though. Maybe water is the only element that can dissolve/overpower salt. Maybe there's a rock/paper/scissors going on with water, salt and iron. Maybe the ocean spirit is just so powerful he can screw the rules, he has green hair.
Or, maybe, there is no ocean spirit, because of the salt. And open sea travel is dangerous because you can't get spirits to protect you from monsters, storms and etc.

I also had a stray thought that PCs could be descended from god-kings/whatever, but bloodlines can't mix so they tend to weaken over generations, leading to the need for adventure to harness/strengthen their latent power.

AW Characters
The Bonepicker (???)is a herbalist and healer who has a special supernatural ability to pull people back from death. He is a witch doctor who does not simply treat injuries but rather connects himself and his patient with the spiritworld, which grants him some deep and strange insight into the patient's soul. He can have his own special healing place and assistants, and even learn to make contact with spirits through a dying body.

Healer, herbalist, alchemist, witch doctor, witch, pharmakis.

The Child of Battle (???) is a troublemaker and wildcard. This character has an amazing ability to sense threats and survive dangers.

Not really sure what this archetype is - rogue, scoundrel, trickster?

The Mesmerast (???) has a number of different mental powers. He can read memories and control thoughts and even cause real harm with just his mind.

Mentalist, mind-taker, hypnotist, magnetist.

The Wolfshead (???) is the leader of a gang of riders. By default bandits, but the customization options allow for somewhat disciplined rangers as well.

Ranger, general, cataphract, outrider.

The Helmsman (?) owns a ship or boat. He's a traveler who has a far reaching reputation and learned to get out of dangerous situations. And can also upgrade to a warship.

Mariner, captain, sailor, navigator. I actually quite like helmsman though.

[Max_Killjoy]

System wise, just something to take a look at, the new game I mentioned earlier is available for order now.

Spoiler

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https://thelostagegame.com
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[Yora]

Helmsman isn't quite snappy, but it comes with just the right conotations. A sailor works on a ship, a captain commands a crew. The helmsman makes the ship move and controls where it goes. The Driver class has abilities like Eye on the Door, Weather Eye, Daredevil, and Reputation. It all implies a person constantly on the move and ready to leave at any time.

I quite like Outrider. Ranger sounds too much Tolkienian and my idea of Marauder clearly implies a criminal. Outrider sounds like someone who is roaming the borders, which is just where I can see this character work. Not as battlefield cavalry or mounted police patroling the interior.

Herbalist I also had in mind. It doesn't have the creepy implications of Bonepicker or my first idea of Surgeon. But I had planned to make potions and "magical" plants a prominent part of the setting. Making the class more herbs-themed could actually be a great addition to the setting. The abilities go way beyond what herbs would usually be able to do, but the herbs could be a big element in enabling supernatural abilities in an expert who knows how to use it. The ability Detachment allows the character to use the stat sharp (intelligence) instead of weird (supernatural sense) to get visions of helpful information. This can easily be ammended with only allowing this switch if the method to get a vision involves using various herbs. If the character for some reason has no herbs available right now, the roll has to be made with weird as usual.
Mechanically it's trivial, but it adds some nice flavor. (The herbs don't allow other characters to roll with sharp, as they lack the experience to think rationally while being stoned out of their minds.)

I just discovered that there's a recent (half a year ago) version of the Fallen Empire reskin by the Apocalypse World creator. If you're interested, here's the classes. (I believe "do not redistribute" means "don't upload elsewhere", it's an openly available file on the official website.) Though I think much of it won't make much sense if you don't know the game.

[Max_Killjoy]

Someone who communes or bargains with spirits for healing and guidance might be called a Shaman -- it describes what they do.

E: just noticed you have that as a subheading for the Mystic.

[Yora]

I decided to change the name for the Nightshade to Temptress and instead use Scoundrel for the Child of Battle. Which makes the current lineup look like this:

_ the Herbalist uses herbs, mushrooms, and potions to heal and revive the dying and to hear the voices of the spirits with an uncanny clarity.
_ the Scoundrel possesses an unmatched instinct to sense trouble and exploit it.
_ the Outrider leads a gang of mounted warriors who roam the edges of the wilds.
_ the Helmsman is most at home on the waves and always manages to get away when things turn sour.
_ the Blademaster is a veteran warrior of unmatched skill.
_ the Strongholder runs a border stronghold, trade post, or farming village.
_ the Prophet leads a group of followers and has a hold over the masses.
_ the Trader hears and sees everything and can get anything money can buy.
_ the Shaman listens to the spirits and speaks to them, knows much that is hidden, and makes charms and amulets.
_ the Temptress has a hold over anyone nearby and bends the will of others.

Which leaves only the Mesmerast, of which I don't even have a clear image yet. A purely telepathy focused class seems somewhat out of place, but I like some of the abilities too much to ditch it entirely.

[Yora]

I think I found a good inspiration for how the telepathic powers of the Mesmerast could be flavored in this setting.

• The Force is strong with this one: you get +1weird (weird+3).
• The Force can have a great influence over the weak minded: when you try to manipulate someone, roll+weird instead of roll+hot.
• I can sense your conflict: when you read someone, roll+weird instead of roll+sharp. Your victim has to be able to see you, but you don’t have to interact.
• I find your lack of faith disturbing: you can roll+weird to get the effects of going aggro, without going aggro. Your victim has to be able to see you, but you don’t have to interact. If your victim forces your hand, your mind counts as a weapon (1-harm ap close loud-optional).
• Your thoughts betray you: when you have time and close contact with someone you can read them more deeply than normal. Roll+weird. On a 10+, hold 3. On a
  7–9, hold 1. While you’re reading them, spend your hold to ask their player questions, 1 for 1:
  - What was your character’s lowest moment?
  - For what does your character crave forgiveness, and of whom?
  - What are your character’s secret pains?
  - In what ways are your character’s mind and soul vulnerable?
  On a miss, you inflict 1-harm (ap) upon your subject, to no benefit.
• You don't know the power of the Dark Side. I must obey my master: when you have time and close contact with someone you can plant a command inside their mind. Roll+weird. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7–9, hold 1. At your will, no matter the circumstances, you can spend your hold 1 for 1:
  - Inflict 1-harm (ap).
  - They take -1 right now.
  If they fulfill your command, that counts for all your remaining hold. On a miss, you inflict 1-harm (ap) upon your subject, to no benefit.

Darth Vader is a Brainer/Mesmerast. As is old Obi-Wan. (Yoda is a Shaman, though, that's what taking abilities from other classes is for.)

It doesn't solve the question how to call the character and I won't be using these ability names, but it's a great way to introduce and describe the character and NPCs with the same powers.

[Yora]

When you listen to the spirits...

I don't quite remember when, but at some point I had the idea to describe getting messages and information from the supernatural world not as images but as words. I think it was in part inspired by Bloodborne, where the scholars who researched the supernatural beings described their process to change their conventional thinking and perception as "lining their brains with eyes". And the game is loaded with monsters with lots of eyes, characters with covered eyes, and hidden images of eyes everywhere. I like the use of symbolism in Soulsborne games (like the fire and ash in Dark Souls) but I don't want to just copy the symbols and images they already used. And since Bloodborne has such a major theme of eyes, I want to go with hearing instead.
Which at first was actually quite challenging. Our entire vocabulary of getting information from supernatural sources is based around seeing. It's "seeing things", and you get new "insights" from an experience that is literally called "visions". And the spirits are "showing" you things, often in the form of visual images. A few days ago I even wrote that making use of the move that gets you additional knowledge in the AW system has the character stare into water or a fire because it came intuitively to me that it should look like that.

But shifting it all towards hearing does work as well, once you put some effort and thinking into it. Spirits do not speak in words and have no language, but communicate in concepts and emotions. It is telepathic in nature, but to people the best way they can express it in words is that they are hearing the thoughts of the spirits in their own minds. Normally people are not aware of other thoughts around them, but they can use a form of meditation in which they concentrate on the sounds of the environment around them. And once they have made contact with the mind of a spirit, it seems as if there is meaning in the sounds of the wind, the rushing of water, or the cracking of a fire. But it even works in the complete silence of a deep cave, as if the silence speaks to them, as it is really telepathy that is going on.
Commonly, visions are described as images that are symbolic for things that spirits can not express in words, which can be very difficult to interprete. Hearing the spirits communicate in concepts and emotions can be much more precise, but comes with other challenges as well. Since spirits don't use words, they can not describe what something looks like. They can describe very well what someone is doing and planning and the relationships between the people involved, but they can not describe what a person looks like or give any names. Instead of giving a warning that a specific person is dangerous and planning something and the character having to find out what is about to happen, spirits in Kaendor can give warnings about what someone wants and is planning to do but are unable to tell who the people are and where it's going to happen. I think that should lead to some very interesting investigations.

When you listen to the spirits, roll+weird. On a hit, the GM tells you something new and interesting about the current situation, and might ask you a question or two;
answer them.
On a 10+, the GM gives you good detail.
On a 7–9, the GM gives you an impression. If you already know all there is to know, the GM will tell you that.
On a miss, be prepared for the worst.

In this case, "the worst" commonly means one of the following things:
Announce off-screen badness. You learn that something bad is going on right now in another place, disrupting your plans or requiring your immediate attention.
Announce future badness. You learn that something bad is going to happen at some point in the future. It could mean that you have to take immediate and drastic action to prevent it, or that a new threat is approaching to you right now. Like sensing some kind of creature being close by.
These are things that wouldn't have been happening (at least for a while yet) if the character had not tried to listen to the spirits and failed the roll. In AW, rolls are not made to determine success or failure of an action, but whether the results work out in favor for the characters or not.

I don't feel it would be fitting to have the character take actual harm from the process of listening to the spirit. But when characters are alone, they might be losing track of time and their surroundings and could find themselves ambushed by some threat.

[Yora]

Beasts of Kaendor

These are some animals I created a good while back, which are also present in this setting.

An arag is a large predator somewhat smaller in size than a lion that looks like a powerfully build giant otter with huge teeth. They hunt in packs throughout all the forests of the continent and while they usually stay well clear of settlements they often attack travelers in the wilds.

A droha is a big reptile that is bred in many places as a pack animal that can carry great loads even on difficult forest paths. It growth to the size of a camel, which makes it a quite expensive animal to maintain and they are kept mostly by traders and kings. Only the wealthiest farmers can afford keeping just a small handful of these huge beasts of burden, though they are very usefull for loggers.

The gren is a forest predator that resembles a spider, a scorpion, and a crab and grows to the size of a large dog. Young grens wave webs to catch insects and small birds, while adults attack larger animals or feed on carcasses left over from other predators, using their webs only to store food away from the ground. When overpowered in a fight, gren often try to escape by climbing trees, which they do very quickly despite their large size and weight.

A heor is the most common mount for scouts and hunters. It's a large type of deer bred for being less skittish and having smaller antlers to reduce the danger for any riders. A heor is very fast and can run at great speed even in deep forests but lacks the stamina of other mounts which makes it less useful for covering longer distances quickly. As they are rarely used for work, heors are even more rare than drohas, which makes them a great sign of prestige for their owners.

The kina is a flying reptile that grows to about the size of a small eagle. They primarily feed on fish and are common sights on the coasts and islands. Killing a kina is widely considered to be bad luck and most people would never eat them unless truly desperate.

A krat is a reptile even bigger and much heavier than a droha. These animals grow to the size of elephants and roam the southern forests in small groups. Young krats can be captured and tamed and trained as incredibly powerful beasts of burden but they are a very rare sight that only the wealthiest kings and merchants can affort.

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 can 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.

The oget is a large and sturdy breed of goat that is big and strong enough to be used as a pack animal and can even be ridden by a small rider. Ogets are very common farm animals that produce wool, milk, and meat and can also be used to pull plows in pairs.

A streig is a huge flying reptile that preys on large animals like drohas and even young krats. They have relatively slim bodies and enormous wings and use both their teeth and the claws on their feet to kill their prey.

The swamp beast is a huge type of squid that hunts in the shallow waters of swamps While they have huge jaws that can break through any bones, they usually kill their prey by dragging it under the water to drown it. The full creature is rarely seen, usually only the many black tentacle coiling around its prey before it disappears under the murky waters. Sometimes they even drag down smaller boats and then go for the occupants left flailing around in the water. (Giant monsters aren't animals, they are spirits.)

The swamp eel is a large aquatic creature the length of several men that is home to many of the great swamps found along the coast of the mainland. They have thick bodies covered in dull dark gray skin and smooth blunt heads that seem consists of just a huge mouth filled with teeth, with which it often swollows smaller prey in one piece. Swamp eels will try to eat almost any large creatures and sometimes will drag prey down into water in groups of two or three together. The best way to avoid getting eaten is to stay out of the water, as they are very difficult to spot until they are about to strike.

[Yora]

I was watching something about the design of Fallout 1 and 2 and there was a quote from one of the main designers that they wanted "to explore the ethics of a post-apocalyptic world, rather than designing a better railgun". This really resonated with me. I did dungeon clearing adventures in the past and they never were able to create any sense of the inspirations I had for the world. For years, my efforts had been focused on trying to design better ruins and monsters.
But as I mentioned earlier, the sources that really inspire me are the characters and their situations in Princess Mononoke, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Witcher, combined with the idea of an eternal frontier that never manages to push back the wilderness. I very much like Dark Sun, Fury Road, Stalker, Metro 2033, and the idea of the first Fallouts (though the gameplay never won me over). I like the setting of small settlements enduring in an untamed and untamable environment, but I am neither a fan of desert landscapes nor industrial ruins, and I also really don't enjoy the psychotic cannibal rapists that are the stock villains of most of these settings. I get that they are meant to be repulsive, but I find them to be both too unpleasant and too unbelievable even for settings that aim to be dark and gritty. And Kaendor isn't meant to be either, even if I am very attracted to moments that are tough and creepy.

Looking particularly at Princess Mononoke and The Witcher, the deeds of the characters are interesting because they take place in settings that have a strong underlying struggle. It goes for all the works I mentioned that staying at the safety of their homes is not an option because everyone's homes are inherently not safe. Business as usual always means that things will be getting more dangerous. Threats keep showing up on the horizon and action has to be taken to fight them off. Which is why I think post-apocalyptic desert settings are so popular. Food, water, and other key resources are very much limited and only going to become more rare, so some people will be falling off the edges and it better won't be you. It's an easy conflict, but one that doesn't really translate to a setting of forests and rivers.

The Kaendor setting does already have limits, in the form of available farmable land in the lower river valleys, but it doesn't really have any persistent active pressure. The vague initial idea was that patches of farmland can be shrinking as the forest reclaims it, but I feel that this is still too vague and too localized. If you set a campaign in a region while it is collapsing, it's an event limited to one place and time, but it doesn't seem like something that is a regular concern for people's lives throughout the entire setting.
I think this is a serious hole in the setting that still needs to be adressed, though I am not really sure where to go with it. Does anyone of you have any kinds of suggestions.

[Yora]

Some more rambling on the subject:

I am currently training as a gardener and want to go back to university next year to study horticulture, with my eye on sustainable food production and the wider field of ecology. My other great interest of the past years has been the everyday life of ancient people, particularly in pre-civilization tribal societies and the very first emergent cities. Which actually have considerable overlap as they are both concerned with land management, the fundamentals of human economy, and people's perception and relation to nature.

Without getting into all the ecological, economical, and sociological theory behind it, I am of the opinion that true sustainability is only possible if the rich countries cut down on their wastful luxury. All our efforts to be more environmental friendly really just shift the environmental cost to places where we don't see it. Like building clean electric cars with extremely dirty produced batteries. In theory, technological progress enables us to get the same stuff with less resources, but in practice we just keep using up more respueces to get even more stuff. If we really want to reduce the pressure on the environment, we would have to accept living with less stuff.

So why am I talking about this? Given the setup of the setting, exploiting the environment is not an option. The spirits only give the people so much land to farm at any given time, and they are too powerful for people to do anything about it. The decision to limit their resource consumption and environmental impact has been made for them. Now they have to live with the consequences. In short, ethics.
Given that resources are limited and that populations will alway grow to the maximum size these resources can sustain, economy becomes a zero sum game. If someone wants to gain something, then someone, somewhere will have to lose something. Is it okay to take this thing when I have the opportunity and deny it to someone else? Am I justified to keep hold of this thing even though I could make do without it? These are practical ethical questions and they are analoguous to how I think people in rich countries should think about wealth and consume. "I can have as much cheap coffee as I like, because some coffee farmer was paid so little for it that he can't afford electricity at home." And I can afford this computer to write on, because lots of people were paid really poorly to produce it. But I still don't want to work in a copper mine for $1 per day and not have a computer or all the other comforts I enjoy, even thougj that would be objectively fair.
I can make rock solid arguments while all people in the world should live at a standard that is significantly lower than mine, but much higher than billions of people have to live with. But I don't want to do it myself As Spock would say, this is illogical. Which makes it an interesting ethical question.

In the Kaendor setting, this can be engaged with in an abstract way. Raiders stole resources from the neighboring village. Do we share our resources with them? Do we help them get the resources back? Do we help them destroying the raiders' village and split all their resources between us two? What if we don't help them and they start raiding us because they need to get the resources they are missing?
Start with a status quo where all settlements can sustain themselves through their own production and trading their surplus for things they need but can't make themselves. Then make one settlement unable to sustain itself anymore. See where it goes and let the players deal with the consequences. Place thia all in a fantastic environment with various additional factions and I think this could be really interesting and fun. It's a bit like the typical post-apocalyptic setup, but it doesn't rely on horribly evil maniact who are moatly into raiding for the fun of slaughter.

[Max_Killjoy]

I was watching something about the design of Fallout 1 and 2 and there was a quote from one of the main designers that they wanted "to explore the ethics of a post-apocalyptic world, rather than designing a better railgun". This really resonated with me. I did dungeon clearing adventures in the past and they never were able to create any sense of the inspirations I had for the world. For years, my efforts had been focused on trying to design better ruins and monsters.
But as I mentioned earlier, the sources that really inspire me are the characters and their situations in Princess Mononoke, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Witcher, combined with the idea of an eternal frontier that never manages to push back the wilderness. I very much like Dark Sun, Fury Road, Stalker, Metro 2033, and the idea of the first Fallouts (though the gameplay never won me over). I like the setting of small settlements enduring in an untamed and untamable environment, but I am neither a fan of desert landscapes nor industrial ruins, and I also really don't enjoy the psychotic cannibal rapists that are the stock villains of most of these settings. I get that they are meant to be repulsive, but I find them to be both too unpleasant and too unbelievable even for settings that aim to be dark and gritty. And Kaendor isn't meant to be either, even if I am very attracted to moments that are tough and creepy.

Looking particularly at Princess Mononoke and The Witcher, the deeds of the characters are interesting because they take place in settings that have a strong underlying struggle. It goes for all the works I mentioned that staying at the safety of their homes is not an option because everyone's homes are inherently not safe. Business as usual always means that things will be getting more dangerous. Threats keep showing up on the horizon and action has to be taken to fight them off. Which is why I think post-apocalyptic desert settings are so popular. Food, water, and other key resources are very much limited and only going to become more rare, so some people will be falling off the edges and it better won't be you. It's an easy conflict, but one that doesn't really translate to a setting of forests and rivers.

The Kaendor setting does already have limits, in the form of available farmable land in the lower river valleys, but it doesn't really have any persistent active pressure. The vague initial idea was that patches of farmland can be shrinking as the forest reclaims it, but I feel that this is still too vague and too localized. If you set a campaign in a region while it is collapsing, it's an event limited to one place and time, but it doesn't seem like something that is a regular concern for people's lives throughout the entire setting.

I think this is a serious hole in the setting that still needs to be addressed, though I am not really sure where to go with it. Does anyone of you have any kinds of suggestions.

First thought, it sounds like you're not going for horrific, repulsive, ugly landscapes... but rather "terrible beauty". Even a desert should be majestic and impressive, rather than simply a wasteland. Marshland should be lush, not mucky. Dragons are awesome in the older non-slang sense. Etc.

Second thought, agreed, you need a way for nature to be threatening or actively pushing on "civilization" without being evil or maniacal. Intelligent beings, other "humanoids" or whatever, who cannot be negotiated with in any way are become either a mutual existential threat in a kill or be killed conflict, or cartoonish in their implacable hostility.

Brainstorming part 1... the numbers and power and ferocity of "monsters" increases when mankind pushes too hard on the boundaries of the wild. The spirits and ghosts of the wild places must be placated, negotiated with, etc, to maintain peace, and clear-cutting or burning out a lot of land at once breaks down those relationships...

Brainstorming part 2... the nature-based version of Dragon Age's Blights, with greenspawn instead of darkspawn. They're humanoid, and cunning, and fight with weapons, but they're just the manifestation of the wild's anger and they aren't an actual civilization or society, just a sort of natural disaster like a hurricane or earthquake, but with spears and armor.

[flyinglemur]

The Kaendor setting does already have limits, in the form of available farmable land in the lower river valleys, but it doesn't really have any persistent active pressure. The vague initial idea was that patches of farmland can be shrinking as the forest reclaims it, but I feel that this is still too vague and too localized. If you set a campaign in a region while it is collapsing, it's an event limited to one place and time, but it doesn't seem like something that is a regular concern for people's lives throughout the entire setting.
I think this is a serious hole in the setting that still needs to be adressed, though I am not really sure where to go with it. Does anyone of you have any kinds of suggestions.

I don't think the idea that nature always reclaims the city is a bad one, you just need to really make it impactful. After all, these people have lived their whole lives under the protection of their local spirit, if their spirits power starts failing for some reason it could throw their entire lives into chaos. It doesn't seem like the cycle of history would be super evident to the people within the setting, since they way you've described it doesn't seem like most people would've come into contact with the various ruins.

Maybe start the campaign with some dark omens appearing in the PCs' village. A large tree grows overnight in protected farmland, the village leader's prized animal dies suddenly even though the spirit has guaranteed the protection of his herds etc... Given the dangers inherent in the wilderness, it seems like even a light sign that it's intruding on the city would cause mass panic.

You've said the PCs will have some understanding of the spirits and monsters of the wild, this could work well with that idea in mind. The PCs get called in by the local priest or elder to help figure out what's going wrong, which could be any number of interesting things. Maybe the locals have offended the spirits or broken some small part of the deal, forcing the PCs to fix the ways of their countrymen. Maybe the local spirit's power is failing, and the PCs have to search through the ruins to find anything that could preserve their city for another generation or two. Maybe a sorcerer is afoot and the PCs have to prevent him from corrupting their homes.

Dealing with spirits would of course be highly important in this. Maybe the local spirit refuses to communicate with the PCs, or is in denial about the whole situation. This would force the PCs to brave the wilds in search of answers or spirits who might be able to help them. This seems like it could fit those goals you had for the setting. The PCs wouldn't be flashy heroes so much as mystery solvers, who want to find every scrap of knowledge about the spirits they can. After all, the more they know about the spirits the more likely they'll be able to save their home.

I don't know if this is what you're going for, but this setting seems to have some interesting themes of tradition and innovation. Tradition seems like it would incredibly important for these people, especially given that deviations could upset the spirits. But at the same time, it seems like making pacts with spirits is a waste since it will eventually fail. This could be a very interesting conflict for the players, should they try to maintain the traditions as best as possible, or is it worth trying something new. Maybe the people would be better off making a pact with a different spirit, or migrating to another more stable city. And of course sorcery is always an option. Of course that's super dangerous, but it also seems like it would be the only way to make real progress in this setting. It could be a really interesting ethical dilemma, if the players manage it they could make their lives and everyone else's lives far better, but there's a huge risk of destroying everything. Then again, the players may wonder whether their current lives are even worth preserving, since they have to live under the spirit's yoke forever.

[Rusty Spoon]

As well as all the great suggestions above, how about an ever-changing landscape?
You've got the encroaching forests, but an encroaching sea could work just as well, constantly eroding shoreline. Or tidal waves every now and then.
And if you're okay with super-supernatural forces, encroaching mountains and/or volcanoes.
Taking this theme and running, semi-regular earthquakes and meteor showers.
Too many great spirits to all be appeased at once, eventually you'll run out of luck and suffer a catastrophe. It's not the lack of resources that's the issue, it's the overabundance!

[Yora]

The idea that the environment changes and people have just move out of the way where it happens is a good one. And also, they might have to adapt, to be able to sustain themselves in the new conditions. Many very interesting periods throughout history (which generally also means horrible) are closely linked to environmental changes. It is highly likely that the Bronze Age, and certain that the Middle Ages came to an end after disruptions by weather patterns. For the Bronze Age, this coincided with increased earthquake activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, while for the Middle Ages it overlapped with the Black Death. Which might even have been gotten the help it needed by the general malnutrition of the population, and likely increase in migration.

Making it not just gradual climate changes and fully natural disasters but clearly supernatural events could really give the setting it's unique character. And "the spirits are angered" is a classic thing in ancient and prehistoric stories. Solving the spirit trouble of the week could get a bit stale after a while, but combining it with other people causing you trouble because they have spirit trouble adds some variety. But I feel there needs to be a reason why it's not always the best and obvious option for heroic players to solve the spirit troubles of the enemies so that they stop troubling the PCs home.
And here I am again intrigued by the idea that you always have to give something away so that someone else can gain something. If it will cost the players more than just their time and will somehow hurt their home to some degree, things would get more interesting.

[Max_Killjoy]

The idea that the environment changes and people have just move out of the way where it happens is a good one. And also, they might have to adapt, to be able to sustain themselves in the new conditions. Many very interesting periods throughout history (which generally also means horrible) are closely linked to environmental changes. It is highly likely that the Bronze Age, and certain that the Middle Ages came to an end after disruptions by weather patterns. For the Bronze Age, this coincided with increased earthquake activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, while for the Middle Ages it overlapped with the Black Death. Which might even have been gotten the help it needed by the general malnutrition of the population, and likely increase in migration.

Making it not just gradual climate changes and fully natural disasters but clearly supernatural events could really give the setting it's unique character. And "the spirits are angered" is a classic thing in ancient and prehistoric stories. Solving the spirit trouble of the week could get a bit stale after a while, but combining it with other people causing you trouble because they have spirit trouble adds some variety. But I feel there needs to be a reason why it's not always the best and obvious option for heroic players to solve the spirit troubles of the enemies so that they stop troubling the PCs home.
And here I am again intrigued by the idea that you always have to give something away so that someone else can gain something. If it will cost the players more than just their time and will somehow hurt their home to some degree, things would get more interesting.

* Climate could be affected by supernatural forces, leading to faster and more stark climate changes than we'd see in our world. Rain patterns shift, turning a fertile plain with gentle seasons and reliable rain into a marshland or arid scrub in under a generation.

* I like the idea of limited "resources" on a larger scale.. the PCs try to help a community that has lost the favor of "the spirits", only to realize that their own home area's recent good fortune is because the same spirits have shifted their favor there. The PCs are left with a choice, and it will illustrate who each PC is as a person/character. One PC might say "obviously our home was more pious/reverent/observant, and the favor of the spirits reflects our greater moral character", another might say that a balance should be struck, another might point out that the person/people who offended the spirits have been dealt with and it's only right to restore the old order of things now, others might take other positions.