Sundragon2012
First Post
Joshua Dyal said:
No, not yet.
I am creating the setting as we speak. Well putting it together into a publishable form is a better way to look at it. In many ways it is the culmination of 19yrs of DMing experience and a labor of love for myself and my best friend who has been a gamer nearly as long as I.
The goal is to have a highly internally consistant high fantasy setting with middling amount of magic (more Dragonlance than FR as an example), the grittiness of George Cornwall (The Warlord Chronicles), George R.R. Martin (Song of Ice and Fire), Robert E. Howard or Moorcock married to the more enchanted quality of Tolkien's or Marion Zimmer Bradley's (Mists of Avalon) work. Its a dark world in which there will be maturely presented adult themes but a world where there is also great good. Using alignment at all is still up in the air. Perhaps the alignment system will be presented as optional.
Its going to be a world in which there are powerful good NPCs but they will not be so numerous so as to have the PCs still shining some old wizard's boots when they are 15th level. PCs will matter and there will be rules for reputation to reflect that PCs are really heroes.
There will be new classes, new twists on old classes, new races and new tweaks on familiar races. The word is going to benefit from the comfort of familiarity in regards to certain archetypal classes, races, etc. but will be variant enough to have a very distinct personality. Not as alien as Dark Sun but not as utterly familiar as FR.
In this setting, because there aren't archwizards on every street corner selling magical toys magic is going to be magical and some variations on the amount of magic in the setting will be presented to the DM. While at the same time PCs and NPCs will benefit by having certain exceptional qualities, increased skills, increased feats, etc. to offset the somewhat lower level of magic in the setting (somewhere between 50-65% of standard).
There are going to be good, solid, playtested changes that will take the setting back to a previous era, when settings seemed more based on literature and good stories than videogames.
The cultures, religions, races and peoples will all be very well defined. Some will have strong similarities to earth cultures of the past while others will be more purely fantasy.
A main setting sourcebook, a regional sourcebook, a races sourcebook, a bestiary and maybe an NPC sourcebook are all planned. It will probably be a year or so before the sourcebook is ready for publication.
Over the weeks and months to come I will be posting some things to get feedback and insight. Plus when it is nearly done I will need some playtesters and rules lawyers to help me tweak it because I am more a storyteller/setting designer than a rules detail man.
More to come.
Chris
