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<blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8792649" data-attributes="member: 70468"><p>Reflecting on what I’ve run over the years, I think there’s a through line of cynicism. I’m not a big fan of heroes or presuming that the PCs are necessarily the good guys. In my first D&D campaign, I played with and subverted alignment at times because I thought the way my first group handled it was silly. Follow up campaigns naturally featured unscrupulous adventurers guilds and the like. I think I’ve mellowed out a bit on that as I’ve gotten older, but there are still elements of that reflected in the setting of my homebrew system.</p><p></p><p>My homebrew system’s setting has gone through several iterations (and will probably go through one more). One aspect of influence is D&D itself. I don’t like the humanocentric aspect that’s assumed (particularly in older D&D), and so my setting started from an explicit rejection of that. There are still humans (called yuma to avoid clashes with tags in PF2), but they’re meant to be just another kind of monster.</p><p></p><p>JRPGs are a big influence, and <em>Final Fantasy XIV</em> in particular. I really like the idea of fantasy as pastiche rather than presuming the setting must be medieval (also some fantasy anime here). There are also a handful of kemonomimi ancestries entirely because they’re there in FFXIV. If you were to ask me what the aesthetic I have in mind, it’s definitely JRPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. In particular, <a href="https://twitter.com/shukei_CO" target="_blank">Juhyeong Kim</a>’s Final Fantasy commisions.</p><p></p><p>Literature has had a more subtle influence. I really like how Sanderson does magic in the Cosmere. In particular, I liked his commentary in <em>Warbreaker</em> where he discussed how certain scenes played out a certain way because that’s what the magic system implied. I’d like to call my setting hard sci-fi because I try to build from the implications, but I’ve not done the math beyond trying to determine how big the disk would need to be.</p><p></p><p>Speaking of disks, the system is set on an Alderson disk traveling at relativistic speeds where the universe has died, but that information has not caught up with the disk completely yet (but the stars are gone, so it’s only a matter of time). This idea of exploring life after the universe has died comes from from <em>The World at the End of Time</em> by Frederik Pohl, but there’s also some vance. I probably need to do another iteration of the setting to make sure the implications are properly foregrounded.</p><p></p><p>I also use Richard Joyce’s ideas on fictionalism to explain how clerics can cast spells in a setting where the deities don’t exist (and entities that do exist that are worshiped don’t actually grant spells). Even if they know the truth of the setting, as long as clerics behave as if their (false) beliefs were true, they can continue using their magic. I’ll also add another game influence: clerics are portrayed more like watchdogs from Dogs in the Vineyard. I find that provides for more interesting potential than the typical treatment of clerics in popular fantasy RPGs.</p><p></p><p>Actually, DitV influenced some of the dice mechanics too. It’s a bit silly, but somehow “large and high quality” became a meme in my group. In DitV, your things have better dice if they’re big or excellent. I’m not even sure how it turned into “large and high quality” …. Anyway, when you give up something in my system to improve your odds, you make the roll at +1d6. You can gain additional dice if it’s large (+1d6), high quality (+1d6), or both (+2d6). <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" alt="😅" title="Grinning face with sweat :sweat_smile:" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f605.png" data-shortname=":sweat_smile:" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kenada, post: 8792649, member: 70468"] Reflecting on what I’ve run over the years, I think there’s a through line of cynicism. I’m not a big fan of heroes or presuming that the PCs are necessarily the good guys. In my first D&D campaign, I played with and subverted alignment at times because I thought the way my first group handled it was silly. Follow up campaigns naturally featured unscrupulous adventurers guilds and the like. I think I’ve mellowed out a bit on that as I’ve gotten older, but there are still elements of that reflected in the setting of my homebrew system. My homebrew system’s setting has gone through several iterations (and will probably go through one more). One aspect of influence is D&D itself. I don’t like the humanocentric aspect that’s assumed (particularly in older D&D), and so my setting started from an explicit rejection of that. There are still humans (called yuma to avoid clashes with tags in PF2), but they’re meant to be just another kind of monster. JRPGs are a big influence, and [I]Final Fantasy XIV[/I] in particular. I really like the idea of fantasy as pastiche rather than presuming the setting must be medieval (also some fantasy anime here). There are also a handful of kemonomimi ancestries entirely because they’re there in FFXIV. If you were to ask me what the aesthetic I have in mind, it’s definitely JRPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. In particular, [URL='https://twitter.com/shukei_CO']Juhyeong Kim[/URL]’s Final Fantasy commisions. Literature has had a more subtle influence. I really like how Sanderson does magic in the Cosmere. In particular, I liked his commentary in [I]Warbreaker[/I] where he discussed how certain scenes played out a certain way because that’s what the magic system implied. I’d like to call my setting hard sci-fi because I try to build from the implications, but I’ve not done the math beyond trying to determine how big the disk would need to be. Speaking of disks, the system is set on an Alderson disk traveling at relativistic speeds where the universe has died, but that information has not caught up with the disk completely yet (but the stars are gone, so it’s only a matter of time). This idea of exploring life after the universe has died comes from from [I]The World at the End of Time[/I] by Frederik Pohl, but there’s also some vance. I probably need to do another iteration of the setting to make sure the implications are properly foregrounded. I also use Richard Joyce’s ideas on fictionalism to explain how clerics can cast spells in a setting where the deities don’t exist (and entities that do exist that are worshiped don’t actually grant spells). Even if they know the truth of the setting, as long as clerics behave as if their (false) beliefs were true, they can continue using their magic. I’ll also add another game influence: clerics are portrayed more like watchdogs from Dogs in the Vineyard. I find that provides for more interesting potential than the typical treatment of clerics in popular fantasy RPGs. Actually, DitV influenced some of the dice mechanics too. It’s a bit silly, but somehow “large and high quality” became a meme in my group. In DitV, your things have better dice if they’re big or excellent. I’m not even sure how it turned into “large and high quality” …. Anyway, when you give up something in my system to improve your odds, you make the roll at +1d6. You can gain additional dice if it’s large (+1d6), high quality (+1d6), or both (+2d6). 😅 [/QUOTE]
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