Curufea

Mana and magic is fuelled by belief and worship in Western Shores - there's a high level of religiosity in the general populace and churches for the same (or similar) deity will generate the focal points of the ley lines, which stretch in a network (ie all the Loki churches are connected to each other by ley lines). Clerics are the dominant form of magic user, the Church oppresses all secular magic (wizards and such). Clerics have more power, but are pretty much limited to the kinds of spells relevant to their particular order and which deity they prefer in the pantheon (they can only use one flavour of Ley Line). Wizards can tap any ley line and have a more diverse range of spells (and don't require duties to any particular deities). The distance from a place of worship or a ley line has an effect on the skill you use to power your spells (ie this bit https://www.curufea.com/doku.php?id=roleplaying:hero:ws:casting_spells ) There are Ley Lines almost everywhere in the heavily populated human dominated areas. They're sparser elsewhere. Clerics have real problems if they visit cultures with very different religions - missionary work is almost all about establishing the equivalent of an embassy for their deity, just so they can get their magic working. I've only run a couple long campaigns in the setting - one where the PCs weren't spellcasters and the other was in the alternate timeline of the Golden Age of the Elves, so sadly there's been no playtesting of this yet. There needs to be default packages/templates that differentiate secular from non-secular magics - Clerics get easier rolls for more powerful, more limited spells and everyone else is more versatile but less powerful.

Mostly I want to tidy it to make it reader friendly. Rules wise ideally I want to: Create paradigms for designing spells and items (or modify existing) to fit how magic works in this setting. It is specifically based on ley lines and mana weather. Code a character creator in the form of choice or random picks from locations, species, culture and profession packages that have been tweaked to fit the setting.

back in 1996 I modified the then current setting for Fantasy Hero (2e, 1990), Western Shores. Adding to it again in 2006. I'm now thinking of updating and improving it to 6e Hero System as I may run another campaign using it. This thread is for feedback and ideas on what I've done so far and what folk might like to see (and if anyone actually would like it to be done). Locations to find this setting: The Western Shores Campaign (1996, 4e Hero System, note the elite level HTML use) The Western Shores (2006, 5e Hero System, some issues with transitioning wiki markup from the RPG.net site) WS:Index (same as above but hosted on the RPG.net wiki) In it's current state there are some areas with lots of detail not particularly well organised (because that's where the PCs were) and some areas that are not detailed at all.

Re: Not D&D True, and to use my example from the maltheistic thread - Ravenloft has no religions either, although there are special rules for religious characters that come from other settings.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished "Feet of Clay" again, I'd forgotten the Robocop hommages I'm now starting Marsden's "Tomorrow, When the War Began" as the movie is out soon, and it is classic Aussie Lit that many, many YA have read already - so I'm thinking I've missed out on it when it came out (but when it came out I wasn't really into YA fiction, I was all into big fantasy novels). It's written in the style of first person, the main character (Ellie) writing it after the fact.

Re: Not D&D Virtually every science fiction setting ever published. As to fantasy settings - it's a bit more difficult because magic and Gods are so tightly intertwined in "unthinking explanations for the unknown" - and has been previously pointed out, magic is often thought integral to a fantasy setting, hence it brings with it often Gods and Godesses as a possible source for magic/miracles.

Re: Your "2010" Pet Gaming Projects Finish putting all the rules into the Metascape 2 mediawiki. Run a campaign of DWAITAS, preferrably a Faction Paradox one. Possibly try some Hero System at some stage.

Re: Malthesitic Fantasy Universes

Re: Not D&D

Re: Promoting Other Cool Game Stuff: TOWN Nice find! Although now, having read the fief sample - I'm a bit worried about the various forms of penance for types of bestiality...

Re: Humans Need Not Apply: Campaigns Without Humans It would be cool to have an all-Dwarf game set in the world of Dwarves and War of the Dwarves by Markus Heitz...

Re: Not technically HERO Related... Nice! I'm a big fan of props in gaming

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans Weren't the serpent people? Or was that just rumours?

Re: Not D&D Religion could exist in the setting - but be completely background to the game. There are plenty of fantasy books that make no mention at all of religion. Not because the setting doesn't have religion, but because it is completely unimportant to any of the characters or the plot.

Re: Humans Need Not Apply: Campaigns Without Humans I ran an Elf only (plus one Lizardman) campaign as my first Fantasy Hero game. It was set in the Golden Empire of Elves, where they'd basically conquered the entire Western Shores. The first multi-part adventure the PCs went on was on behalf of a treacherous Human - a mage of the Elven high king. In that setting all Humans were second class citizens (or worse). On the completion of the adventure (we didn't finish), the PCs would have gathered all the parts for a magic item, that causes their ancestor - who is the one solely responsible for the Empire, to have never been born. In order to gather the parts, they were given protective necklaces, which also had the property of protecting them from the effects of the device when activated as a side effect. This basically meant that all the Elvish PCs ended up in an alternate reality that was the Western Shores with multiple racial kingdoms. Some of them survived and still wander the Western Shores (as the Weeping Prince and the Great Dragon in the mythos for my setting). At least one of them took off their necklace and ceased to have ever been born.