A Brand New World

[Prisoner6]

I'm thinking about putting together a new game world for a fantasy setting (probably some form of D&D). I just started brainstorming on "New World" and I thought ... hey, why not take it literally. Imagine a world that is only a few hundred years old. In fact, it's still being built (or rebuilt) by fickle young gods who view the universe as their sandbox. They slap up mountain ranges one day, but change their mind and drop in some tundra two months later.

Here are a few ideas I have:

+ The world is young, very young, perhaps less than a thousand years old.
+ All races are few in number, perhaps only a few hundred. Each major race resides in a single town.
+ Magic is everywhere, yet undeveloped.
+ No spells exist beyond level 4. (It hasn't been discovered/invented. Maybe the PCs will invent it).
+ Magic items are rare, but all unique, and often “glitched”.
+ There's one kooky artificer somewhere who makes magic items, but it's all very experimental.
+The gods and goddesses are all children. They're avatars are children. They act like children. They have very short attention spans.
+The gods are currently building the world, which they thing of as their “sandbox”. Terrain is constantly changing on the whim of the gods.
+Creatures called the Gid work on building the world, yet they word independent of the gods. The Gid are hairless, yet squirrel-like. When killed, they explode, making a sharp squeaking noise. Sometimes this happens spontaneously.

I'm looking to bounce some ideas around about a "brand new world". I don't mind a little silliness or weirdness. In fact, weird might be good in this setting.

[fba827]

sounds like a cool idea.

* Keep in mind that since communities are relatively young, and terrain keeps shifting, established roads and trade routes will be few.

* No boats or such since they'll be too busy still exploring their surroudning lands before turning to water exploration (or time to make the boats)

* most young civilizations generally have their major (and religious beliefs) center around natural phenomenon first and foremost. so you'll probabloy want to upplay the gods that can have a season, weather, or sun or moon spin... OR have the magic items and spells related to such things be more common than the other subjects of magic.

* do the people know about the Gid? And about their origins? Has anyone tried to capture one - someone is surely foolhearted enough to do that? If so, what became of him/her? It could be the start of some legend, adventure, or a new race created once the gid get a hold of the person and reform him/her...


(if i think of something, will add more later ...)

[Reveille]

Originally Posted by Prisoner6

+ Magic is everywhere, yet undeveloped.

In this case you might want to restrict metamagic feats.

Originally Posted by Prisoner6

+ No spells exist beyond level 4. (It hasn't been discovered/invented. Maybe the PCs will invent it).

In this case, if you wish to abolish spells beyond level four you might want to think about running an E8 game.

Originally Posted by Prisoner6

+ Magic items are rare, but all unique, and often “glitched”.

Reminds me of the quirks of Potions 2E had. You might want to look into acquiring the Enyclopedia Magica PDFs froem RPGNow

Originally Posted by Prisoner6

There's one kooky artificer somewhere who makes magic items, but it's all very experimental.

This is fairly straightforward. No magic item creation feats allowable for the PCS until they reach epic level (considering if you are going to run an E8 game).

Originally Posted by Prisoner6

+The gods and goddesses are all children. They're avatars are children. They act like children. They have very short attention spans.
+The gods are currently building the world, which they thing of as their “sandbox”. Terrain is constantly changing on the whim of the gods.

Considering this, clerics prayers for spells might not always be answered so you might want to enforce clerics to retain spells for the long haul and encourage them to use their spells sparingly. You might want to consider taking inspiration from 4E and allow character healing surges considering this.

Also, considering the altering and morphic landscape you might want to consider giving the Prime Material Plane the Divinely Morphic planar trait.

RE: Healing surges

• Your class and Con mod dtermine how many healing surges you can use in a day. (I'd say as a rule of thumb to allow 2+Con mod surges per day, possibly deigning a feat to allow extra surges per day if the characters want it.)
• When you expend a healing surge, you regain one-quarter (you might want to scale this back to one-eighth for a 3E/E8 game) your maximum hit points, rounded down.This number is called your healing surge value. You use it often so note it on your character sheet.

Originally Posted by Prisoner6

+Creatures called the Gid work on building the world, yet they word independent of the gods. The Gid are hairless, yet squirrel-like. When killed, they explode, making a sharp squeaking noise. Sometimes this happens spontaneously.

I'd possibly take a page from Ptolus and put the 'world' on the Ethereal plane, with ether mist being workable by these creatures and give them the ability to use the Genesis spell-like or psi-like abilkity.

As per their exploding I'd be tempted to treat it like a fireball.

[Engilbrand]

What edition is this game?
I would actually recommend incorporating some aspect of permanence, or the players won't have any sort of connection to the world. Maybe there's one day every month when the gods have a moment of clarity and "finalize" an area.
Let's use states as an example. Pretend for a moment that the gods are currently playing around with the entire world, but they already have Ohio finalized. They're focusing their "play" on Indiana, but still doing whatever to the rest of the planet. The special day hits, and the gods finally decide to mold Indiana into what they liked from the last month. Ohio and Indiana are now "fixed". Without all of the gods agreeing, none of them can make permanent and major alterations to Indiana or Ohio.
This would allow the players to have something that is concrete and easily understandable in your world. As they adventure, they may even get the chance to put in recommendations for certain features.
The other option would be to have an area survive the last Calamity. The old gods died and were replaced, but a few of them sacrificed themselves for a few areas of civilization and to keep some things, like magic, in the world. You now have a Points of Light setting that could definitely be done with 4e.

[Prisoner6]

I'm not sure what edition the game will be. At the moment I don't have a group for RPGs. Right now I'd just like some general ideas that I can stat out later once I get a game rolling.

What I've found is that there are usually lots of people who want to play, but nobody wants to DM, so I'm trying to whip something up to attract players.

Honestly, I'm not sure this is the right setting to achieve that. At the moment, however, it's a fun mental exercise.

[dan89156108]

I like the idea of only a few hundred of each race. This makes npc creation fairly easy as there aren't that many people. Also have extermination of a race as a possibility, since there are so few of a race, say a d&d monster manual race kobolds. If the party kills 100 or however many of each race there are, have it so the race is extinct. Just a fun little idea to toy around with.

[fba827]

Also keep in mind that some races are very long lived. So some elf's grandfather may have been the very first elf, where as the humans have had several more generations since the start (presuming that the common races were created around the same time).

[Judou Ashita]

A very interesting idea. The notion of a world in the making as setting for a whole campaign does pique my interest, and I'll admit it is something I never thought of.

So, I'll definitely be watching this thread. You got some good ideas here.

[Leif]

I agree. Excellent idea! If I was lucky enough to play in a game like this (crossing my fingers) my first inclination would be to play a wizard. But that class, all by itself, raises many, many questions. Here are just a few, as a small sample: 1. Where did wizards get the knowledge that spells even COULD be written down, much less the arcane formulae to actually do so? 2. What metamagic/item creation feats are there currently, or will the pcs have to "invent" them? 3. Have stable spells even been created yet, or is magic still shapeable by the subjective desires/wishes/whims of the individual practitioner?

[Danforthe]

It might be that the Gods, even if they have short attention spans, can be manipulated by mortals. By showing their devotion, prayer or other means they might get a God's attention long enough for them to create (as permanently as possible) something that they need. If the Gods take such an interest it could greatly benefit one racial group, or region, over their neighbours and rivals.

If this was the case then priests or others who could focus their God's attention would be incredibly powerful. The PCs might take on such quests to curry the favour of the Gods or to spoil that of rival factions. If the Gods were to do things like change climate or the path of mighty rivers it could easily destroy a fledgling society.

And for the reason of the fickleness of the Gods you might find quite a few nomadic cultures springing up, to link other cities or simply because their homeland ceased to be land and became a volcano due to divine whimsy.

[Reveille]

I hope my input has been helpful Prisoner6.

[Leif]

Obviously, this thought was inspired by the handle of the Starter of this Thread, but have you thought about how the newness of the world will affect things like laws and law enforcement? At this point in the world's development, is, say, murder even against the law? Do the people have enough experience with it to even know this yet? Or, conversely, did one of the young gods use his/her divine wisdom to write a code of laws for the people? What about different races? Do they each have their own laws, or do some operate with no artificial structure to their societies at all? Maybe just one Law Giver gave differing/conflicting laws to different races. (A reflection of the immaturity of the God?)

And, take this a few steps further: what about Wars on this nascent world? Ooooh!

[Prisoner6]

Originally Posted by Leif

Obviously, this thought was inspired by the handle of the Starter of this Thread, but have you thought about how the newness of the world will affect things like laws and law enforcement? At this point in the world's development, is, say, murder even against the law? Do the people have enough experience with it to even know this yet? Or, conversely, did one of the young gods use his/her divine wisdom to write a code of laws for the people? What about different races? Do they each have their own laws, or do some operate with no artificial structure to their societies at all? Maybe just one Law Giver gave differing/conflicting laws to different races. (A reflection of the immaturity of the God?)

And, take this a few steps further: what about Wars on this nascent world? Ooooh!

These are good questions - ones that I hadn't thought about. Although there are many ways to go, I think it might be "coolest" to allow for some "lawlessness" in the campaign. Right now I'm leaning toward "old west" style rule of law. People have a basic idea of "what's right" and "what's wrong", but when somebody does "something wrong" the chosen method of setting things right might be dueling, or getting together a posse.

I don't think wars, as we understand them, are feasible just because the populations would be too small. Maybe villages going to "war" against other villages would be the only thing around.

[Leif]

Good ideas. Of course, it's your world, so whatever you decide will be the best. But, I am glad that I was able to provoke some new thoughts.

[Paul_Klein]

I've had a similar idea. The world isn't new (nor are the cultures) but the Gods are new, having just arrived, replacing the older Gods (or maybe there weren't any Gods before). And also, like your Gods, these Gods are young, immature, and childish. I like having their avatars be those of children too.

So these new Gods have their own ideas of the world and set out making those changes. But by having the world be old, you don't have to worry about the tons and tons of anacranisms that might crop up (like discussed above: roads & trade routs, sea travel, law enforcement all not truely existsing, etc.).

[Ydars]

Hi Prisoner6! A nice idea indeed; I especially like the young gods. It reminds me of reading parts of the Silmarillion, when the Elves awaken before even the Sun and Moon have first risen.

A few questions for you, to get your creative juices flowing.

If the world is only a thousand years old, what level of technology and sophistication will the tiny kingdoms have? It would take more than 1000 years for natural languages to develop, so who has acted as the teacher or teacher of the races to get them to the state you want the world to start in?

If the land is morphic, why does it not change the creatures of the world and their settlements as well? Engilbrand has sort of alluded to this but without some areas where there is stability, any form of life we would recognise would be impossible. How can the players identify morphic and non-morphic areas and are there laws (e.g. morphic only at night or a mist springs up and when it clears, everything is different) that will allow your players to interact with the environment as if is were a real force?

Can anything live in a morphic area and if it can what is it like? Is it a being of matter or energy? Are these things older than the other races or are they just wild, like elementals?

What natural forces or elements that we take for granted are also morphic or not completely formed; I mentioned the sun and moon not having risen in Tolkien's mythos, but you could easily invent others? I have run games where the sun stays still in the sky and so in one part of the land it is always day whereas, as you move towards the edge of the world, it becomes progressively darker and colder. Or where days last months and so do nights. This kind of simple physical cue keeps reminding the players that the world is not yet fully formed.

How would ordinary people/mortals be affected, in terms of their world-view, by constantly witnessing miracles and having direct experience of godly power?

[ajanders]

There should probably be a few ghost towns (read Dungeons!) where, for example, there used to be a river that nourished an agricultural community.

Every-day life is an adventure when you don't know what color or how many suns will come up in the morning...or if it'll be the same number at the end of the day. NPC's are probably middling to high level.

LOTS of survival skill needs: the party started off in the desert, got stuck in a swamp, and bedded down in the tundra...and that's while they were staying in one place to receive long-term care. The unreliability of magic tends to suggest rangers are common.
Check the extreme environmental challenges out.

In keeping with the divine mutability concept, perhaps clerics should be allowed to change their domains at every level?

Random bits of weirdness should occur periodically. Like whale bones bleaching on top of a high mountain...an ice covered palm tree that's very popular as a landmark...a flash flood resulting from an iceberg appearing in the tropics and melting. Possibly bringing along yeti, who are absolutely miserable and would probably serve any character as followers if he could find a magical air conditioner for them....or even just give them a crew cut.

[Quartz]

This sounds very much like the start of a 4e world: the gods are battling the primordials.