Re: Game Ideas
Mmmm. Midnight good.
Looks like enough interest from folks to proceed to serious brainstorming. If no one minds, it's probably easiest to do that here. If folks would rather we don't junk up this thread, I can create a separate thread for just those interested.
So, opinions on initial direction here? I'm of two minds.
OPTION ONE
I roll out my old medieval fantasy background that's very western Europe flavored -- Cambrae, I think I'd called it, Dirigible. The basics:
-There are three main countries occupying a small-to-medium sized continent. Here's the Western Europe theme -- think rich farmlands, wooded valleys, misty vales, rugged mountains, dense forests and the like. Cities are few and far between, towns and villages are much more common. Cities are walled affairs, though in many cases they sprawl well beyond their walls in terms of markets and the lower classes.
-There is a serious class system in place. Again -- medieval. The lords own the lands, the serfs have the right to work it. There's a burgeoning merchant class, but the wealth and power is still firmly in the hands of the nobility -- and the church.
-Ah, the church. Drawing inspiration from Game of Thrones (and, in fact the way Christianity spread), there's a schism between the 'old ways' and the new. Old ways = a large pantheon of gods, all with relatively small spheres of influence. (Battle, the sea, healing, fertility, revenge, etc.) Then there's the Church of Aon -- the one true god. It's been a hundred years or more since Aon's religion swept the land, and virtually all civilized folk are now members of his church. Thing is, each of the three main countries (names are subject to change, as I've never settled on anything I like, but something along the lines of Roan, Merlais and Brynder) views the Aon religion (and life) quite differently. This has been the source of much conflict.
-I liken Merlais to Louis XIV France. Think opulence. Extravagance in the extreme by the nobility, and a badly downtrodden populace. Incredible culture abounds (music, plays, books), but the golden apple is rotten at the core. Knights gild and paint their wives, their homes and their armor -- the culture is all about opulence, about showing your neighbors what you can afford. The church is extremely powerful, and suffers from the same love of wealth and excess. Think idolatry, collecting from the masses so the priests can wear robes of woven gold, etc. Magic is tightly controlled by the church.
-Brynder is at the other end of the spectrum. It is still a society of haves and have-nots, but they have rejected the excesses of the Merlaisians and build their entire nation on the foundation that one needs to be humble, unpretentious, indeed, even meek to be close to Aon. Over time, backed by humble but solemn, ruthless monks from the church, the Brynder people have been ground under foot by these notions. It has been a joyless society, where inebriation, dancing, singing and all other forms of outward joy are considered ungodly. Think Cromwellian England. The brute squads roving the lands, looking for sinners. Magic is one of the gravest of sins, and its use is punishable by death. Think witch hunts, and not the Salem kind -- the real
-Roan is, naturally, somewhere between the two. A nation where the merchant / middle class is on the rise, it is more tolerant of a wider range of behaviors than Brynder, but lacking in the appalling hubris that characterizes so much of Merlais. These guys are the moderates, the sane voice in the room. The church is still present here, but -far- less powerful than in the other two countries. Geographically, it stands in part between its neighbors -- meaning it is often forced to be involved in their frequent wars. Magic is carefully controlled by powerful and secretive guild.
-To the north are the wild lands (they need a name). There are rumors of graul (orcs), ogres, giants, dragons and worse -- but day to day, no one sees or experiences these things. They are largely thought of as fairy tales intended to scare childten.
-From the north west, across the sea, come Viking-like raiders, Stormlanders. They pillage and loot the poorer provinces of Brynder, and are among the fiercest warriors in the land. (These are my barbarians.) Magic is more druidic / shaman-based, and these boys and girls don't follow Aon. One of these days, Brynder, Roan and Merlais might just team up and send a fleet to wipe out these heathens once and for all.
-To the south, across the sea, is a blazing desert, but one rich in culture, and... er, riches. Saladan -- an ancient kingdom of sorcerer-kings who once ruled the land, but who, legend has it, got too big for their britches and lost control of their demon servants. Think stereotypical Arabia in terms of culture -- minaret-rich cities, thieves in the night, assassins, black magic, alchemy, necromancers, fabulously wealthy merchants, exotic poisons, sultans, slaves, harems, war galleys and all the rest. They are a broken, ruined nation now, but power still lurks here, biding its time. They do not follow Aon, and there have been multiple crusades over the decades to try and wipe out convert these folks.
Anyway. That's more than enough to give a flavoring. Unfortunately, most of this is in my head, but I'll get more of it formalized if there's interest. I've been wanting to run a game about a witch (magic user) and his or her friends on the run, about someone hunted by the Brynder brute squads, about -- well, any of the hooks you see up there.
Please note that I -know- some of that stuff is borderline offensive in terms of being stereotypical. It's purposeful -- in that I find it allows new players to relate to the setting immediately, to "get" what it's about. I do the same thing with my supers background, and it's seemed to work very well over the years at its intended purpose -- getting everyone on the same page in terms of tone, reality levels, etc.
OPTION TWO
Oooooor... we can scrap all that and I'll consider running something more dungeon-delvy, complete with elves and dwarves and gelatinous cubes and giant rats and spiked pit traps and rooms full of treasure and twenty floor wizard towers that get harder as you go and such.
Ja? Ja.
Please forgive typos. Blasted this out stream-of-consciousness style pretty quickly.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:34, Fri 22 Aug 2014.