Fantasy HERO Setting -- World of Generica

[shadowcat1313]

not a big fan of gunpowder weapons in fantasy campaigns, but its a controllable option if allowed. considering the unreliability of early firearms, it could still be doable on a limited basis.

what about setting a historical baseline techwise?
say 12th century real world europe just as an example, just pulling a time period out of my hat. you could define the availability of certain technology
that way.

[gojira]

Cool world, with only as much history needed to tie things together and provide adventure opportunities. The more specific / detailed we are, the less generic the setting becomes which defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place.

OK, this begs the question of how generic are we being here? Do we want defined kingdoms or coutries with names and defined locations on a map, or are we doing a series of loosely connect modules that could be stitched together as needed? (So for the modules things like Elfholme, Central Kingdom, Fort on the Borderlands, Northern Snow Barbarian Village, etc.)

[Killer Shrike]

A little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.

Defined / named entities but very broadly brushed.

As far as a map, my thought was we'll do a round of nation building in silos then review them for synergy deciding which would clearly make sense to be linked / geographically close or distant, and then start dropping in shapes on a map working outwards from a center point. After we get to that point, we'll do a second pass and add on enough inter-stiching to tie various regions / nations together including enough history to back it up.

If we do it properly, the result would support either usage --> the silo'd original content is usable as stand alones, to be stiched together as is convenient to a user, and the linked extra content is available for those that want a little extra structure.

[shadowcat1313]

ok, I like what we've got so far, where do you want to go next with things?

its nice to see a fantasy setting without dark elves, and without the typical
AD&D style elves[skinny etc]

one idea
1. once we get our major political entitities decided, what about assigning each to a primary contributor, and going from there?

[Killer Shrike]

Give me a few days to hash out a framework for us to work in; the interrogatives will sort themselves out once there is some structure in place.

[mayapuppies]

You couldn't have done this a couple of years ago? Really? Every fiber of my being is being sorely tested not to jump in on this.

[gojira]

You couldn't have done this a couple of years ago? Really? Every fiber of my being is being sorely tested not to jump in on this.

I'm sure no one would mind...

[Killer Shrike]

Got a rough campaign definition document up; its not 100% in stone yet, but the basic idea is there:

World of Generica Paradigm

[shadowcat1313]

I like the ideas so far, are we still debating allowing gunpowder?

[Killer Shrike]

I like the ideas so far, are we still debating allowing gunpowder?

Yes. Really, more broadly, debating technology level.

[Shadowsoul]

If it's going to be a generic fantasy setting then why not have the base setting as pseudo-medieval and then have someone add some notes on what the setting would be like a few centuries later i.e. during an analogue of the renaissance or the napoleonic era.

[Killer Shrike]

That's assuming an Earth-normal technology progression. I'm referring to the trend for more modern High Fantasy settings such as Ptolus, Eberron, etc to include a level of technology up to and including guns and warmechs while maintaining the other tropes of High Fantasy as is.


I'm not fond of the practice myself, but its not a show stopper for me.

[Killer Shrike]

I've been tooling around with the wiki code I dug up, and have it formatted and whatnot locally.

The challenge is that it was written a certain way that makes it not real friendly to parallel deployment with the existing web app which is killershrike.com. They wrote it as a ASP.NET Web Site vs a ASP.NET Web Application and it has a lot of assumptions that it is the only handler sitting on a domain. It also uses global.asax instead of a HttpModule for its wiki call intercept logic.

Normally I'd just convert it over to a Web App model, but I have a hunch that its relying on the dynamic compile capabilities of the Web Site model to allow user created pages to be accessible without restarting / recompiling the entire app.

I'll need to block out some time and rip the engine out to mock up a test to exercise my assumptions / guesses.

[Ninja-Bear]

Another thought, are you going to restrict weapons to European model, or can we use others if cool. I always thought that dwarves should have the repeating crossbow!

[Killer Shrike]

Another thought, are you going to restrict weapons to European model, or can we use others if cool. I always thought that dwarves should have the repeating crossbow!

Basically aside from some broadstroke setting-wide stuff that needs high level decisions we're working on a silo collaboration model at the nation level.

For instance, technology in a broad sense is setting wide, but within the agreed upon tech level you are free to do whatever in your contributions.


If you develop a nation with Dwarfs, you can have them use whatever weapons you like. If you sell others on it, they might include it in their nations too.


We're working on the "coolness" collaboration principal --> we all contribute whatever, it goes around and all the participants that care to discuss / editorialize, and in the end stuff that doesn't fly or catch on just won't make the cut.

The guidelines are --> how generic and reusable is it?

If its very generic and can be dropped into examples, existing campaigns, or whathaveyou without placing a lot of requirements upon the consumer then its successful and belongs in the World of Generica.

If its very specific and ensnared in exposition and other concepts then its not easily consumeable and it doesn't really belong in the World of Generica, or perhaps tucked away into some out of the way corner with little to no linkage to the other broadly useful material.

Save your best ideas for your own settings / games. We're looking for the well-worn, tried and true, proven ideas that have wide appeal. We're looking for genericized versions of your cool ideas that lack deep hooks and driving forces from your specific customized setting. We're looking for the material you could explain to someone in an elevator at GenCon. The Readers Digest version. The universally comprehensible version.


If you can pull off Dwarfs with repeating crossbows and people are like, "yeah, ok, that plays", without needing a page of historical exposition describing how it works or how it was created or its role in the Thirty Fourth Grand Orc-Smashing War of Grudgebearing Vengenace -- then go for it.