WorldMaker: Settling on Setting and Merging Ideas

Hey everyone!  I hope your 2013 has started off with great games, or at least the anticipation of them.

In my last WorldMaker post I talked about having two world ideas that were competing for my immediate attention. One being my take on an all-comers D&Desque world, and the second being a more intimate setting focused on intrigue. I decided to begin developing the second world. I'm calling it Drann. Oh, and Drann is on Aedora (my D&D world, a-yeh-dora). THAT'S MADNESS!!! Probably, but there's actually a solid reason for it. Drann fits perfectly into Aedora's prehistory.

A bit on Aedora's creation: it was formed by an overdeity. This overdeity was a PC of mine long, long ago that gained omnipotence. Once that happened he ceased being a PC or even an NPC in that GM's cosmology. No record of him ever existing because he never did as far as the current fiction of those realities are concerned (though our gaming stories certainly say otherwise). He became the overdeity of my cosmology. He has complete agency and omnipotence in my world, though he lacks omniscience. His name is Tsalmaveth (sal-muh-veth).

As he created the universe in which Aedora exists, he created for himself a companion named Naldrea (nal-dray-uh). He creates a celestial plane for her to live in, gives her the essence of Creation, and then leaves “for a short while” (eons and eons, but what's that to an eternal agent). Naldrea, feeling the instinct of motherhood, creates a race of beings called the oestaua (oh-es-ta-wa). After millions of years the oestaua plan a conspiracy to claim Naldrea's godhood for themselves. Upon Tsalmaveth's return...well, let's just say bad things happen to them. It's the fallout from this that creates the New World, elves, man, dwarves, gods, planes, dragons, magic; all that good stuff that we already know and love.

While this will still technically be the same planet, the two “worlds” will be very far apart in time and tone that each one could be ran for a number of years in real time and would never intrude on one another. The biggest mechanical change will be in character options which right now are ideas that have not yet been given form by way of mechanics.

Now I've settled the wheres and the whens. Next time I'll start lining up the things that I'm looking to do in building the race and giving the different bloodlines some thematic and mechanical distinctions.

WorldMaker: In Which I Mull My Two Competing World Ideas

I've neglected this blog with its..both posts for far too long. And since I'm in need of a creative outlet I'm resurrecting it to write about some world-building I want to do. I've tried this kind of thing before on another blog that I failed to update (breaking the cycle!), but I think I'm in more of the headspace (pardon the pun, or don't) so I'm taking another stab at it.

I have a couple of different world ideas that I've recently been considering. The first one is my White Whale, Aedora. It's a world I named better than 10 years ago, but never really gave it “final” form. I've drawn and redrawn maps. Developed and redeveloped its origin. Drafted lists of deities. Redrafted lists of deities. Same with races and nations and magic, etc. And each time I decide that this is it, I'm going to finally sit down and make this thing work, I go back to the ever-growing notebooks-turned-computer-files of notes. Each edition's worth of notes being added to the collection. The idea is that with enough time and drafting I can turn it all into a cohesive thing.

My problem is one of scope. In its current form Aedora has three continents, all three with their long histories, kingdoms, legends, myths. Well, that's the idea. I don't actually have them. I want it to be my iconic world, my Forgotten Realms. I want to make that world that my friends and I are still playing in when we're in our 40's and 50's (since we're all in our early 30's now, with one guy being in his early 40's). I'm not under any illusion that this is going to be some huge, published phenomenon. I just want a huge tapestry to call my own. Realistically, I'm approaching it wrong and I know that. My biggest stumbling block is the fact that I have no restrictions. The canvas is wide open to do what I want with as many little building blocks as I can get my hands on, but the sheer number of options is overwhelming.

The second of my ideas is really just me stealing a bunch of stuff from other people (which is pretty much what having an idea is anyhow). The scope of this world is far, far smaller and is happy to be about one thing to the exclusion of all the other types of fantasy. It's essentially what I imagine Houses of the Blooded more or less is in tone based on what I've heard and what little I've read. Take in some of the structure of Vampire: The Requiem, and shades of A Song of Ice and Fire (or Game of Thrones by its more popular name) mix it all up and that's what you get.

From Houses I'm taking the idea that the PCs are playing a literally superior race. They're smarter, stronger, (you can make the argument that they won't be wiser). From Vampire I'm taking the notions of Clans and Covenants. Though I'll probably use the term bloodlines instead of clans, royal families will have some kind of powers prescribed to them on top of having superior stats. Covenants are something that I really like from VTR. They are the political and philosophical affiliations you have. There's so much potential in pitting characters' personal beliefs and affiliations against family obligations in a culture where bloodlines are ostensibly the thrust of political power (which is where you get your Game of Thrones).

Those are the two competing ideas I'm thinking about right now. The first one is largely inspired by my gaming history. My cousin was (and still is) my GM, and he's got 25 years worth of binders full of histories and gaming sessions to fill out his worlds. Huge, epic stories full of fighting gods, becoming gods, destroying and birthing planes, getting duped by demons, become Dark Lords (and thus becoming NPCs). And I know these stories start small and end up huge organically, at least when you're building worlds for the purpose of campaigns. The second idea is designed to ratchet up the intrigue. It's not meant to be an expansive world. On the power scale it's much smaller. Grounded in the real with just a touch of something extra. One built on plot, the other built on relationships.