Discussion of Scotley's upcoming 4e Swashbuckler Game

[Insight]

How about Avalon for the Eladrin, Alba for Dwarves (likely dwarves quite different from the ones in Germa...I mean the holy dwarven empire) and England (suggestions on a name? Britannia?) for the Elves?

I don't know if it's a good ideal to have the dwarves have such a large chunk of property equivalent to the Holy Roman Empire. In the 1700s (which is when I imagine this takes place), the Holy Roman Empire controls about half of Europe. It seems to me that humans should have that amount of property, unless we want to go away from the traditional "humans are the most populous" fantasy model.

One possibility is that dwarves of "Germania" entered into an alliance with humans from "Italia" and formed this empire. Still not sure about the name, though.

I suppose if the "Holy" part comes from the equivalent of the human "Papacy" in Italia, then maybe we can make it fit. In the real-world Holy Roman Empire, the emperor was crowned by the Pope. This gave the empire its divine right legitimacy that seemed lacking in an empire without a clear bloodline of ascension. We could have a situation similar to that, but put german dwarves in the place of the "viking stock" that made up a bulk of the HRE's northern populace.

In this case, then, we have dwarves being scandinavian in origin (migrating down to Germany and also to Scotland and Ireland via viking invasion and saxon invasions). This makes sense, but also puts a lot of dwarves in our world. If the big three "cultures" in Europe are the Gauls, the Romans, and the Vikings, we could make the Vikings being Dwarves, the Romans being Humans, and Gauls being Elves and Eladrin.

If we accept this general principle, and agree that humans, dwarves, and elves/eladrin are the "big three" races, we can extrapolate where these races would live in our Alt-Europe.

Given this basic idea (and please, this is just me throwing out ideas), the "Isles" would look like this:

Avalon = Ireland (?) = 90% Elf/Eladrin, 10% Humans
Alba = Scotland = 70% Dwarves, 15% Humans, 15% Elf/Eladrin
Caledonia or Britannia = 20% Dwarves, 70% Humans, 10% Elf/Eladrin

and our "Continent" would look like this:
Espania = Spain/Portugal = 70% Elf/Eladrin, 30% Human
Franzia = France/Belgium/part of Switzerland and Germany = 30% Elf/Eladrin, 70% Human
Holy Dwarven Empire = Holy Roman Empire = 60% Dwarves, 40% Humans
Italia = Italy = 100% Humans
Norseland = Scandinavia = 100% Dwarves

and we can figure out whatever else

As for the other PC Races, if we can come up with real-world equivalents for them among the people of Europe, it would be fairly easy to figure out where they might be. For example, if the Drow are our Jews (and please, this is a historical discussion, not meant to be political or religious), then they are scattered throughout our "Continent". Their presence in Europe is welcomed, but they are not given a homeland of their own. Their presence would be acceptable because of their ties to the current "deity / deities" and also because they were pushed out of their homeland by our equivalent of "Muslims" who took over the "Holy Land". This all gets fairly complex, so it might be best to scale this back a bit.

EDIT: It might make more sense for the Drow to be Moors. Not just the skin tone, but the concept of the Drow not being very welcomed in Europe would fit right in with the Moors. In this case, the Drow would have a significant presence in "Espania" and thus, a homeland of sorts.

Yes, it is slow at work.

 

[Rhun]

I think he looks pretty cool. As others have said, you should focus a bit more on STR and maybe look at that last feat. To get max benefit from the Tempest stuff you are limited to chainmail or lighter armor.

I was planning on chainmail or such for him...seems to fit the swashbuckling archetype the best.

 

[Scotley]

Looking over the submissions, it looks like we have 9 PCs so far: 3 defenders, 2 leaders (both bards), 3 strikers, and a controller. Not a bad mix for 9 PCs, but I have a feeling Scotley may not want this many PCs in his game.

I'm still considering myself in lurk mode, especially given how many submissions this has gotten.

Happy to help people out, though. This looks to be a fun game.

Not really much difference between 8 and 9, besides I like your character.

Isn't Leif's paladin a leader too?

 

[Scotley]

So can we pick a theme? What's our starting wealth so I can flush out my build?

I believe someone addressed the wealth issue. Standard is an item of level, and item of level +1 and an item of level -1. So a level 3, 4 and 5 item. Plus, you get coin equal to a level 3 item which is 680 I believe. Many people end up spending that on another item of low level and some standard kit.

 

[Scotley]

I'm learning a lot just reading what you guys are posting, so maybe my "4E baptism by fire" won't be as bad as I'm thinking.

Yes, we seem to have amassed quite a brain trust here. Imagine what we could accomplish if we set our minds to bringing peace to the middle east or addressing world hunger instead of playing games. Of course it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

 

[Scotley]

So
The Isles:
Avalon = Ireland = Eladrin
Alba = Scotland = Dwarves (might make sense to put Goliaths here too since its mountainous)
Britannia or Caledonia = England = Elves

The Continent:
Holy Dwarven Empire = Holy Roman Empire = Other sorts of Dwarves
[sblock=Slightly Annoying Historical Analysis]I don't know if it's a good ideal to have the dwarves have such a large chunk of property. The Holy Roman Empire, around the 1700s (which is when I imagine this takes place) controls about half of Europe. It seems to me that humans should have that amount of property, unless we want to go away from the traditional "humans are the most populous" fantasy model.

One possibility is that dwarves of "Germania" entered into an alliance with humans from "Italia" and formed this empire. Still not sure about the name, though.

I suppose if the "Holy" part comes from the equivalent of the human "Papacy" in Italia, then maybe we can make it fit. In the real-world Holy Roman Empire, the emperor was crowned by the Pope. This gave the empire its divine right legitimacy that seemed lacking in an empire without a clear bloodline of ascension. We could have a situation similar to that, but put german dwarves in the place of the "viking stock" that made up a bulk of the HRE's northern populace.

In this case, then, we have dwarves being scandinavian in origin (migrating down to Germany and also to Scotland and Ireland via viking invasion and saxon invasions). This makes sense, but also puts a lot of dwarves in our world. If the big three "cultures" in Europe are the Gauls, the Romans, and the Vikings, we could make the Vikings the Dwarves, the Romans the Humans, and Elves and Eladrin the Gauls.

[/sblock]
Espania = Spain/Portugal = Humans / Drow (?)
Franzia = France = Humans
Italia = Italy = ?
Norseland = Scandinavia = ?
Where else?

Yeah, don't worry too much about the size of kingdoms. Remember we are talking points of light here. The dwarven empire may claim half the landmass, but figure most of it is really dangerous wilderness overrun with humanoids. I was thinking we'd make the vikings tribes humanoids like orcs, giants and goblinoids. That explains the points of light thing. The elves and dwarves in this world have just done a little better job of keeping them out.

Maybe we could make the Hapsburgs necromancers or something interesting. What about the ottomans? Certainly, we could have Italy be human even though part of the Empire. The traditional intermarried royals of real world Europe don't work as well with all the races involved.

 

[Shayuri]

There's no reason that every place should follow the '1 nation 1 race' rule. Dwarves might be the dominant force in "scandanavia," but they could have humans there too. But culturally, it's dwarven. The humans follow dwarf gods, speak dwarven, generally follow dwarven ways...etc.

Just like Caledonia, or whatever, has lots of humans...but they tend to follow the elf/eladrin "example."

 

[Insight]

Check out my edited post for some more clarity on the subject

 

[Insight]

Not really much difference between 8 and 9, besides I like your character.

Isn't Leif's paladin a leader too?

Paladins are Defenders with a tiny bit of leaderyness (ie healing)

 

[renau1g]

I was planning on chainmail or such for him...seems to fit the swashbuckling archetype the best.

If your Dex is going to be 16 or higher than it's about the same whether you select Hide or Chainmail, but Hide doesn't affect your speed, while Chainmail does impose a -1 penalty to speed.