CWBP 2 : Determining the genre and era

[gspRooster]

I agree, extreme manichaeism could easily lead to poor stories and cliches.

My elaboration on the "guilt" and "death" mechanics that I posted directly before Ghostman's post deal with that by eliminating the good/bad aspect altogether. The magic and demons become more powerful simply through the very natural process of death. And they can be removed from the world. But natural disaster, plague, famine, and war are all things that could bring them right back with a significant resurgence in strength that is outside their "normal" level of presence that has nothing to do with good and evil. It's related simply to the raw magical energy released when living creatures die. Larger, more magically inclined creatures would release more energy and power the crystals more, letting more demons through.

This could lead to any number of storylines that make the whole point of good and evil totally ambiguous. Perhaps a kingdom establishes a religion that deifies these demons as a natural part of existence and has blood sacrifices to deliberately let them into the world in small enough quantities that they can be managed. A neighboring kingdom may view this practice as evil, and misguidedly go to war to end this practice, oblivious to the fact that the death toll their war is causing is actually throwing an uncontrollable fuel on the fire. Who is the real evil then? The one trying to moderate the process, or the one making it worse by trying to stamp it out?

[rgcalsaverini]

I have a suggestion regarding procedure so we can move forward. I think that we should split each major topic into separate threads and give it a tangible amount of time (say a week) to assemble the purposes, trough guild members brainstorming, just like we are already doing. After this period is over, someone get all the purposes and create a poll for a few days (say four) so people can vote on the ideas presented. After the voting is over we have a winner idea and move on to the next topic, we could have several topics simultaneously being addressed/voted following a schedule.

This way we know how long the deliberation process will take and have a sure way to please as many members as possible while taking as many ideas as possible.

Right now we seem to be debating a huge range of issues with little order and perspective of resolution

[Falconius]

We've had very poor experiences with time limits so far. I definitely think that a week or a few days is too short for development or voting. The reason being is that we are not a concentrated and focused group working only on this. But you are right, we need to narrow down all this stuff to something manageable.

[rgcalsaverini]

We've had very poor experiences with time limits so far. I definitely think that a week or a few days is too short for development or voting. The reason being is that we are not a concentrated and focused group working only on this. But you are right, we need to narrow down all this stuff to something manageable.

Right, but we could still follow that with different time constraints that better reflect our needs. I just used the number as examples.

[Falconius]

Yes of course, however I think we should perhaps see how these major topic threads are going before determining the limits. Or perhaps let them mature enough and develop to a point where we feel we can do the votes. I'd also like to see time limits of course as I believe it would help provide much needed impetus to the project, but so far time limits have seemed to close off and confuse rather than strengthen. Maybe we need a critical mas of people regularly contributing before polls and time limits become effective in the way we want.

[rgcalsaverini]

That sounds very reasonable. So should we proceed into dividing the issue into smaller more approachable units and debating them on separate threads? What are the topics?

I'll put something here just to start the discussion:

Part I - Basic Settings:
A) Scenario
A.1 Era: When our scenario will take place, low middle ages? renaissance? Something different than earth's eras altogether?
A.2 Magic Setting: Source of magic, how common is magic, what can magic do and what are its interference on the day-to-day life.
A.3 Major driving forces / Uncommon effects / Themes: Like the Guilt that Haunts, reincarnation

B) Physical Characteristics
B.1 Basic world shape: Pangea? Craters?
B.2 Physics/Astrophysics: Is the world round? Does it spin? Have seasons? How many moons? Etc

C) Technical Details
C.1 Mapping approach: Who can map? How are we going to assign maps?
C.2 World division: How will we divide the world for mapping?

[gspRooster]

My thoughts...
A)
1 - Mid-fantasy setting similar to earth's middle ages with some magical elements.
2 - All living beings possess some inherent "magical" aura, but physical manipulation of magic is very difficult and requires training, practice, and tutelage. A small percentage of sentient beings (15%?) would be capable of parlor tricks through natural affinity. Anything beyond that requires work, training and concentration most don't have access to. Maybe 3% of the population is capable of some sort of magic that could be considered "wizardry".
3 - Driving forces would be the magical fonts located throughout the world that are used for navigation. These magical power sources are also responsible for passively collecting and absorbing free form magical energy in the world that gets released when living beings die. As the fonts absorb more magicka, they become attractive to otherworldly beings that use the magical energy to project themselves into this world. Slaying these beings banishes them temporarily from the world and temporarily drains the magical sources of energy.

B)
1 - I'm inclined to go with Falconius and say multi-continental world. I will be detailing a kingdom shortly in the other thread I started.
2 - Round, rotates, 4 seasons, 1 true moon and maybe an tidally locked asteroid or two.

C
1 - I can map.
2 - As people come up with kingdoms and cultures, they'll probably have a predisposition as to where these places belong and want to map those areas.

[Azélor]

my preferences:

A) Scenario
A.1 Era: Middle to end of the middle age with castle, cathedral (or something similar), caravel...
A.2 Magic Setting: I like the idea of GspRooster: magic is everywhere in a more or less scarce quantity but only few people really know how to use it. A part of the population can learn simple magic trick with effort and training and it's considered an achievement for the untrained. Those that specialize in magic often beging training in their childhood. By the time they grow up, they become much better than the average folk they are still level 1 mage; so no fireballs. Others more lucky, but far less numerous recieved the gift of magic at birth. They don't have to learn it but they still have to master their power.

So the way I see it:
50-70 % of the population can't do magic at all, even with basic spells with scorlls or whatever. ( dnd: they don't have ''use magical device'') It can also be because they don't know how to read or because they don't have the money for it.
15-30 % can do 1 or 2 little magic tricks often with the help of items
around 10% of people can do magic on a more or less daily basis, they are not all magicians but they have potential

those that received a gift would be less than 1 % of the population but these people have more chance to become proficient with magic.
Thta was the question of magic potential but some have more talent/ trains more than other. The less powerful the spell, the more mages will know how to use it.

A.3 Major driving forces / Uncommon effects / Themes:
B) Physical Characteristics :
B.1 multi-continental
B.2 pretty much like Earth. I would like to have a binary star system, even if it's just in order to have a very bright star in the sky at night and even during the day. it might even be brighter than our actual Moon. So the planet would orbit around the star at 149m km and another but smaller star (maybe a red dwarf but the difference in mass does not need to be important. If the difference is small the two suns might need to be further apart to avoid shattering the planets orbit) would orbit around the same star at billions of km.

C) Technical Details
C.1 and 2: I can map too ! Use an easy way to divide the map such as squared plots, possibly with buffers (I haven't made up my mind about this point yet). People should be ree to decide what area they want to map.

[Falconius]

Garg, this feels like filling out a government form (of course it may just be that I'mm doing that a lot lately) but it seems to be the thing to do so I'll go with it.

A) Scenario
A 1 and 2, High to mid fantasy. meaning really a mish-mash of various things, a little bit of the beginning of Renaissance but still without gunpowder, dragons, a plethora of other fantastical creatures, war technology is up to fancy ass plate armour for those who have the means, and of course everything leading to that. Shipping and navigation is of course without cannon and really would only be just beginning to be exploratory in our world, but is kind of moot because of the existence of magic. Magic would be ubiquitous as in most people think they have probably encountered it in their lifetimes, but the vast majority of sentient beings (other than those of a magical nature) are really unfamiliar with it and have very little understanding of it. I'm more inclined really to borrow the magic elements from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stuff and Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicle series.

I think that with the other elements like Ghostmans locus points and the Guilt that Haunts ideas there is going to be a fairly obvious magic element regardless of how much one wants to minimize. I also don't want to see arbitrary limitations such as those found in dnd ideas about skills (no offense, love dnd nostalgically, but it's arbitrary and bureaucratically mindless take on things is what drove me away from it in the end), that doesn't mean though that those with access to magic aren't a limited set. It'll be limited by knowledge, experience, availability (money, rarity etc.) and innate ability. That said if Peggy Sue the farmers daughter comes along and happens to find a button operated wand lying on the side of the road, I still want her to be able to accidentally blow her own head off.

B) Physical Characteristics (I think we should limit this part of the discussion to the map thread so as not to cause a traffic jam here) Part C is also extensively covered in that thread.

[Ghostman]

A) Scenario
A.1 Anything pre-gunpowder goes for me.
A.2 I'd rather not state any source of magic. Because "magic" shouldn't be a singular thing but a rather a catch-all word for all kinds of supernatural actions. I'd prefer magic to be rare and have little to no impact on the daily lives of common people, but have the potential to have extreme impact on the magician's own life and those who (s)he directly interacts with.
A.3 I'll repeat my proposal to feature a small number of fixed gateways between select locations. Because this is something that would actually show on the maps, both via the placement of the gates themselves as well as the expansion and migration of peoples and kingdoms.

B) Physical Characteristics
B.1 I'm good with anything that provides an interesting variety of terrain and climates.
B.2 Similar enough to Earth that we don't have to reinvent how nature works.

C) Technical Details
C.1 I can map.
C.2 Right now I'm in favour of a hex grid on a Mercator atlas with reasonably small sized hexes, with limits set on how many hexes may be claimed for a single map.