![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
7:32am - Well I came out to the McDonalds, since I felt like working and didn't want to stay at home. I'm not sure what to do with myself though. I mean, I could keep on programming up that Roguelike I've been working on, but I feel like if I don't know where I'm going that I'll just make some random mess.
I've heard some people say before that you should get a game working before you start sticking story and meaning on it, but I don't really grok that. I think that things like theme and character can shape the design of systems and if I go in there making something that could be anything, I might limit myself unconciously.
I'm not entirely sure what I want to make, though.
I'm thinking about a fantasy world that's internally consistent, but that can be very difficult to build. Especially the further it goes from the real world. I mean, in the most basic you could make a 'fantasy earth' that was just basically historical earth during some period. But if you add anything you have to consider the ramifications it would have on anything else. You can make that easier by making it less like earth in the first place, but it's still difficult to maintain both a sense of realism, that it could be a real place, and consistency, that it all obeys the same rules.
Ultimately you can throw things out using the Deus Ex Machina, or just the Deus part, by having a God or some Gods or something in your setting that take an active part in the world. In D&D, in the Forgotten Realms, the magic system works like this. A god did it. Even if you're using 'Arcane' magic, it's all Mystra, a God.
I like deities in fiction but I'm not a big fan of them getting tied up in the physics. Still, I like the idea of them sharing power with their followers. So I'm not adverse to having them, or having them play in the magic pool.
I definately want magic in my fantasy world, but I don't want it to be normalized. I don't want it to be reliable. Fuel burns reliably, like wood or coal. Magic should be unreliable for constant force, or dangerous in some way. Maybe it attracts something or detracts something else. Maybe it has an unreasonable cost.
But then I think back to deities, angels and devils and so on. They are magical in their very being, and rely on constant power. Maybe that's why they're always alien and come from 'outside'...
I kind of like the idea of the world being a magically unstable place, inside a multiverse of greater magic.
I've toyed before with the idea of the world being like a dream that is so consistent that it's indistinguishable from reality. It's an interesting thought for regular dreams to be more like real 'reality' than the constancy we expect from our own world.
So maybe the world is the dream of a single great power, and the people who live in it are dreamers who are overwhelmed by that great power, who can only escape to their personal dreams when they sleep or meditate or otherwise go 'inside themselves'. Gods and Angels and Devils would be powerful beings from outside the main dream, who might have their own worlds and subjects.
Perhaps the belief of the people in the 'real' world that their world IS real is the force that gives it so much power to stabilize.
So much for keeping gods out of the physics though. Heh.
I suppose that's always going to be a problem with magic and having gods in the first place though.
So the World of Thardomhainn may be the dream of a powerful entity or God, or it might just be a single shared dream that's kept 'real' by group consensus.
What happens to people when they die? That's a big question that's especially important to games. In most Roguelikes death means Game Over, and in our world it's something like that as well. But a lot of people believe in an afterlife, either as a place or as a system. In some fiction, angels and devils are eternal, regenerating when slain.
I have an idea that Gods, Angels and Devils could be seeking souls to pluck from the great dream and join them as their followers in their own dreams or as independant servants. So that would give them a reason to deal in this world where their powers are muted.
But alongside the powers gained from these alien beings, people would be able to draw on their own individual power and internal world to affect the outside world.
I think that gives me enough range to have several kinds of magic while also having magic be anathema to the world and thus unreliable for everyday use. But that can be a problem too.
There's usually magic items in fantasy worlds, not just magic people. Where do the magic sword and healing potion come from? And what impact do they have on the world?
It makes a certain sense that magical beings can impart some of their power to mundane objects, giving it a sort of 'life' and its own microcosm, but their powers would still be anathema to the world. They'd be too reliable and make people question their reality. Unless they were such a staple of their reality that they're accepted as part of it, and that changes everything. Makes magic more common and reliable. It's a difficult balancing act.
If magic can do powerful things like heal wounds, raise the dead, and explode people's houses, everybody would want to do it, so what keeps magic both relevant and rare?
I'm thinking there would be normalizing forces at play in the world. Let's try to think of some!
Spirits or daemons gather and attack or do mischief around strong magical sources.
Using magic causes pain or physical harm on the person who uses it.
All magic requires some of the inner magic just to get started, so not just anybody can do it.
Magic twists reality and the more powerful the magic the more dangerous these twists become, allowing otherworldly entities brief access, killing plants and animals, causing bizzare side effects, that sort of thing.
True Ressurection requires Human Sacrifice.
With all of that, there'll be a stigma to magic. Not everyone can do it; most people are too grounded in reality. It causes supernatural problems and even disasters, and the people who can/will do it are strange and peculiar, ostracized both rightly and wrongly by people.
All that makes magic rare while maintaining the potential for power. But what about those Healing Potions? What do we need in order for them to be common for adventurers and uncommon for hospitals?
Well, I want this world to be one in which several civilizations have risen and fallen in the past, leaving deep ruins underground, so there will be knowledge of medicine in the world. I think it'll also be in a Renaissance period rather than a Dark Age. So there'll be doctors and hospitals and midwives and things for 'normal' medicine that are more effective than they were in our renaissance period. So there's less need for magic potions in everyday situations.
Magic potions are also dangerous, like all magic. Carrying them can draw unwelcome spirits and magical beings to you. Yet, they aren't uncommon in ancient ruins and wizard's lairs. The ancient people were destroyed by their hubris with magic and they left behind many magical artifacts. Wizards today still make new magical artifacts, and have them in their lairs. They trade them with those brave or desperate enough to seek them out.
Magical Weapons are generally made by the ancient peoples. They don't oxidize or rot so they're easy to recognize in ruins, but they haven't all been claimed because so many people are afraid of the ruins. They're made by modern wizards as well but less often and usually for personal use.
So magical items are dangerous, and the more you have the more dangerous it becomes. So, that's a ward against hoarding as well.
So what about other fantastic things? If this world is based on everyone believing the world is real, what about Dragons? Dragons kind of break the mould. I'm thinking maybe they're like Gods and Deities that have their own reality 'bubble' that let them do powerful magical things, but that would mean they're anathema to the world and would be ejected from it or eaten away at until they're nolonger so powerful, or otherwise they'd suffer the other effects of magic constantly. So how do Dragons do, and where do they come from?
Maybe they are aliens and they don't come from 'the world' but still persist in it thanks to their power, and they accumulate magical items in order to boost their own reality and stick around longer?
Maybe they are the results of ancient efforts to make living weapons, and they somehow survived the ages unharmed and alive?
Maybe both occur? I think those options satisfy me for Dragons as well as other 'monsters'. There'd also be the third option of creatures that appear as a result of too much magic or magic gone awry.
Now what about fantastic things that are less fantastic, like animal people (furries!) and other non-human races. Where do they come from and how do they work?
I think for this one we need to also determine if humans are the basic unit of personhood in this world.
Furthermore we need to figure out the origins of life and where do babies come from.
I'm thinking I want to keep reproduction to something close to what it is in the real world, with a variety of forms but the main one for large multicellular life being bigender sexual reproduction. But what about interspecies relationships? Can they produce children? And would they be pure or halfbreed?
I dealt with this a long time ago and many times over the years trying to figure out how to sort furries into any setting. It's bad enough with the dozen races you get in D&D to start with, but if you allow any animal to be a furry that's a wide variety.
I think one of the best solutions is to make a single race that has much more variety of form. So, all of the sapient people or "Folk" can interbreed and are essentially the same species, but have many varied appearances. Children tend to favor the appearance of either parent, rather than being a mix, so that a single shape doesn't become standard from interbreeding.
The trouble is how does such a creature originate with different shapes?
I think this world is more fantastic than ours by far in this case. Instead of diverse species, creatures are normally varied in form within a single species. So instead of things like Canary, Jay and Raven there's just Bird, but because they have certain forms in certain regions they are still Canary, Jay and Raven.
Different forms survive better in different environments so you get dominant traits from ecology rather than genetics, and sapience defines the folk apart from beasts.
I think that works pretty well.
Where do humanfolk fit in I wonder? Hmm, that I'm not sure of!
Maybe humanlike folk will exist in places were being covered by fur or feathers or being cold blooded and scaly aren't good choices? Maybe in hotter biomes. That said, there's plenty of furry critters in deserts, and plenty of humans in cold regions. Well, we'll see how it goes.
So now that I've got all that, the world doesn't seem very traditional fantasyish. I wonder if I should change the name? XD
Nah I'll keep it. It still fits.
I'm not sure there's anything else I need to patch up in the world to make it realistic and consistent. It's very surreal to human eyes but I think it'll be fun.
The tricky thing will be coming up with the world, the history and the cultures of the various folk! XD
They've lived for at least three world-spanning, dungeon-digging civilizations though. I know at least that much about the world.
Hmm... I suppose that's an important question though, that I can't put off. Why do the ancient civilizations dig dungeons?
10:01am - Oh geez I've been working for two and a half hours already. Just realized that and wanted to put a note here so I know.
So yes, why did the ancient civilizations dig dungeons?
The first thing I can think of given how I've described magic in my setting is to make distant cloisters for magic users to live in and study magic away from people. But why make them so deep and filled with danger and treasure?
10:34am - I just read through one of my books on dungoneering and it had some interesting ideas on dungeon design and purpose, so that's good. I think I'm lacking a really good reason for a really deep underworld though. One potential reason I've just thought of though would be Underfolk, or dwarves, or mole people. Folk who live underground and dig out deeper and deeper homes. Then there could be all sorts of different places underground...
That makes sense, tying that in with the other reasons for making dungeons, I should be able to explain all of them. Plus there will be dungeons that have been taken over by monsters or modern wizards as their place of seclusion.
11:01am - Well I got a bit distracted discussing dungeon design on a discord but I think I'm satisfied.
So, now I think I know what I need to know to make the game I was working on grow.
But I've been working on this so long, I'm not sure what to do now! I'm not particularly tired yet but I'm a bit out of it. I think it's time for a break.
11:51am - Alright I had a discount burger for lunch and a drink refill and enjoyed them thouroughly. Now I'm ready to continue, but ha ha! Now I'm tired. ;.;
Well, now that I think of it there were a couple of things I wanted to do today that I can't do at the McDonalds, so I'd better head home for now and do them.
Thanks for reading and your support!
I've heard some people say before that you should get a game working before you start sticking story and meaning on it, but I don't really grok that. I think that things like theme and character can shape the design of systems and if I go in there making something that could be anything, I might limit myself unconciously.
I'm not entirely sure what I want to make, though.
I'm thinking about a fantasy world that's internally consistent, but that can be very difficult to build. Especially the further it goes from the real world. I mean, in the most basic you could make a 'fantasy earth' that was just basically historical earth during some period. But if you add anything you have to consider the ramifications it would have on anything else. You can make that easier by making it less like earth in the first place, but it's still difficult to maintain both a sense of realism, that it could be a real place, and consistency, that it all obeys the same rules.
Ultimately you can throw things out using the Deus Ex Machina, or just the Deus part, by having a God or some Gods or something in your setting that take an active part in the world. In D&D, in the Forgotten Realms, the magic system works like this. A god did it. Even if you're using 'Arcane' magic, it's all Mystra, a God.
I like deities in fiction but I'm not a big fan of them getting tied up in the physics. Still, I like the idea of them sharing power with their followers. So I'm not adverse to having them, or having them play in the magic pool.
I definately want magic in my fantasy world, but I don't want it to be normalized. I don't want it to be reliable. Fuel burns reliably, like wood or coal. Magic should be unreliable for constant force, or dangerous in some way. Maybe it attracts something or detracts something else. Maybe it has an unreasonable cost.
But then I think back to deities, angels and devils and so on. They are magical in their very being, and rely on constant power. Maybe that's why they're always alien and come from 'outside'...
I kind of like the idea of the world being a magically unstable place, inside a multiverse of greater magic.
I've toyed before with the idea of the world being like a dream that is so consistent that it's indistinguishable from reality. It's an interesting thought for regular dreams to be more like real 'reality' than the constancy we expect from our own world.
So maybe the world is the dream of a single great power, and the people who live in it are dreamers who are overwhelmed by that great power, who can only escape to their personal dreams when they sleep or meditate or otherwise go 'inside themselves'. Gods and Angels and Devils would be powerful beings from outside the main dream, who might have their own worlds and subjects.
Perhaps the belief of the people in the 'real' world that their world IS real is the force that gives it so much power to stabilize.
So much for keeping gods out of the physics though. Heh.
I suppose that's always going to be a problem with magic and having gods in the first place though.
So the World of Thardomhainn may be the dream of a powerful entity or God, or it might just be a single shared dream that's kept 'real' by group consensus.
What happens to people when they die? That's a big question that's especially important to games. In most Roguelikes death means Game Over, and in our world it's something like that as well. But a lot of people believe in an afterlife, either as a place or as a system. In some fiction, angels and devils are eternal, regenerating when slain.
I have an idea that Gods, Angels and Devils could be seeking souls to pluck from the great dream and join them as their followers in their own dreams or as independant servants. So that would give them a reason to deal in this world where their powers are muted.
But alongside the powers gained from these alien beings, people would be able to draw on their own individual power and internal world to affect the outside world.
I think that gives me enough range to have several kinds of magic while also having magic be anathema to the world and thus unreliable for everyday use. But that can be a problem too.
There's usually magic items in fantasy worlds, not just magic people. Where do the magic sword and healing potion come from? And what impact do they have on the world?
It makes a certain sense that magical beings can impart some of their power to mundane objects, giving it a sort of 'life' and its own microcosm, but their powers would still be anathema to the world. They'd be too reliable and make people question their reality. Unless they were such a staple of their reality that they're accepted as part of it, and that changes everything. Makes magic more common and reliable. It's a difficult balancing act.
If magic can do powerful things like heal wounds, raise the dead, and explode people's houses, everybody would want to do it, so what keeps magic both relevant and rare?
I'm thinking there would be normalizing forces at play in the world. Let's try to think of some!
Spirits or daemons gather and attack or do mischief around strong magical sources.
Using magic causes pain or physical harm on the person who uses it.
All magic requires some of the inner magic just to get started, so not just anybody can do it.
Magic twists reality and the more powerful the magic the more dangerous these twists become, allowing otherworldly entities brief access, killing plants and animals, causing bizzare side effects, that sort of thing.
True Ressurection requires Human Sacrifice.
With all of that, there'll be a stigma to magic. Not everyone can do it; most people are too grounded in reality. It causes supernatural problems and even disasters, and the people who can/will do it are strange and peculiar, ostracized both rightly and wrongly by people.
All that makes magic rare while maintaining the potential for power. But what about those Healing Potions? What do we need in order for them to be common for adventurers and uncommon for hospitals?
Well, I want this world to be one in which several civilizations have risen and fallen in the past, leaving deep ruins underground, so there will be knowledge of medicine in the world. I think it'll also be in a Renaissance period rather than a Dark Age. So there'll be doctors and hospitals and midwives and things for 'normal' medicine that are more effective than they were in our renaissance period. So there's less need for magic potions in everyday situations.
Magic potions are also dangerous, like all magic. Carrying them can draw unwelcome spirits and magical beings to you. Yet, they aren't uncommon in ancient ruins and wizard's lairs. The ancient people were destroyed by their hubris with magic and they left behind many magical artifacts. Wizards today still make new magical artifacts, and have them in their lairs. They trade them with those brave or desperate enough to seek them out.
Magical Weapons are generally made by the ancient peoples. They don't oxidize or rot so they're easy to recognize in ruins, but they haven't all been claimed because so many people are afraid of the ruins. They're made by modern wizards as well but less often and usually for personal use.
So magical items are dangerous, and the more you have the more dangerous it becomes. So, that's a ward against hoarding as well.
So what about other fantastic things? If this world is based on everyone believing the world is real, what about Dragons? Dragons kind of break the mould. I'm thinking maybe they're like Gods and Deities that have their own reality 'bubble' that let them do powerful magical things, but that would mean they're anathema to the world and would be ejected from it or eaten away at until they're nolonger so powerful, or otherwise they'd suffer the other effects of magic constantly. So how do Dragons do, and where do they come from?
Maybe they are aliens and they don't come from 'the world' but still persist in it thanks to their power, and they accumulate magical items in order to boost their own reality and stick around longer?
Maybe they are the results of ancient efforts to make living weapons, and they somehow survived the ages unharmed and alive?
Maybe both occur? I think those options satisfy me for Dragons as well as other 'monsters'. There'd also be the third option of creatures that appear as a result of too much magic or magic gone awry.
Now what about fantastic things that are less fantastic, like animal people (furries!) and other non-human races. Where do they come from and how do they work?
I think for this one we need to also determine if humans are the basic unit of personhood in this world.
Furthermore we need to figure out the origins of life and where do babies come from.
I'm thinking I want to keep reproduction to something close to what it is in the real world, with a variety of forms but the main one for large multicellular life being bigender sexual reproduction. But what about interspecies relationships? Can they produce children? And would they be pure or halfbreed?
I dealt with this a long time ago and many times over the years trying to figure out how to sort furries into any setting. It's bad enough with the dozen races you get in D&D to start with, but if you allow any animal to be a furry that's a wide variety.
I think one of the best solutions is to make a single race that has much more variety of form. So, all of the sapient people or "Folk" can interbreed and are essentially the same species, but have many varied appearances. Children tend to favor the appearance of either parent, rather than being a mix, so that a single shape doesn't become standard from interbreeding.
The trouble is how does such a creature originate with different shapes?
I think this world is more fantastic than ours by far in this case. Instead of diverse species, creatures are normally varied in form within a single species. So instead of things like Canary, Jay and Raven there's just Bird, but because they have certain forms in certain regions they are still Canary, Jay and Raven.
Different forms survive better in different environments so you get dominant traits from ecology rather than genetics, and sapience defines the folk apart from beasts.
I think that works pretty well.
Where do humanfolk fit in I wonder? Hmm, that I'm not sure of!
Maybe humanlike folk will exist in places were being covered by fur or feathers or being cold blooded and scaly aren't good choices? Maybe in hotter biomes. That said, there's plenty of furry critters in deserts, and plenty of humans in cold regions. Well, we'll see how it goes.
So now that I've got all that, the world doesn't seem very traditional fantasyish. I wonder if I should change the name? XD
Nah I'll keep it. It still fits.
I'm not sure there's anything else I need to patch up in the world to make it realistic and consistent. It's very surreal to human eyes but I think it'll be fun.
The tricky thing will be coming up with the world, the history and the cultures of the various folk! XD
They've lived for at least three world-spanning, dungeon-digging civilizations though. I know at least that much about the world.
Hmm... I suppose that's an important question though, that I can't put off. Why do the ancient civilizations dig dungeons?
10:01am - Oh geez I've been working for two and a half hours already. Just realized that and wanted to put a note here so I know.
So yes, why did the ancient civilizations dig dungeons?
The first thing I can think of given how I've described magic in my setting is to make distant cloisters for magic users to live in and study magic away from people. But why make them so deep and filled with danger and treasure?
10:34am - I just read through one of my books on dungoneering and it had some interesting ideas on dungeon design and purpose, so that's good. I think I'm lacking a really good reason for a really deep underworld though. One potential reason I've just thought of though would be Underfolk, or dwarves, or mole people. Folk who live underground and dig out deeper and deeper homes. Then there could be all sorts of different places underground...
That makes sense, tying that in with the other reasons for making dungeons, I should be able to explain all of them. Plus there will be dungeons that have been taken over by monsters or modern wizards as their place of seclusion.
11:01am - Well I got a bit distracted discussing dungeon design on a discord but I think I'm satisfied.
So, now I think I know what I need to know to make the game I was working on grow.
But I've been working on this so long, I'm not sure what to do now! I'm not particularly tired yet but I'm a bit out of it. I think it's time for a break.
11:51am - Alright I had a discount burger for lunch and a drink refill and enjoyed them thouroughly. Now I'm ready to continue, but ha ha! Now I'm tired. ;.;
Well, now that I think of it there were a couple of things I wanted to do today that I can't do at the McDonalds, so I'd better head home for now and do them.
Thanks for reading and your support!
