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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 5789872" data-attributes="member: 6957">Aye and aye. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Last year I was hired to do a bit of world building for a friend in the Army. (I was paid with his just finished computer - he decided that it was too danged large to haul around when he was reassigned. Gotta love the barter system.)I know exactly what and when the genesis was - I mentioned a song whose title I could not remember on the discussion area of the webcomic 'Narbonic'. One of the readers recognized the song, which led to <a href="http://www.mulesong.com/songs/B.Cure_mod1.mp3" target="_blank">this</a>. The Boatman's Cure.The penultimate verse led to the idea of just how scary the French & Indian War might be in a fantasy setting - with Orcs & Elves replacing the French & Indians:I fought all through this wilderness in ’59;I still fancy I see shadows movin’ time after time,Fancy I see shadows movin’ time after time....    If it doesn’t lift your spirits, well, it leaves you numb,    Best cure for shadows is a bottle of rum,    Only cure for shadows is a bottle of rum.Orc barbarians and elf rangers, firing from the darkness that is as day to them. A human soldier that saw a shadow moving might never live to see the light of day. (Some of the earliest recorded instances of what is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder came from the French & Indian War.) The setting changed in several ways as the writing progressed - among other things I realized that Witches from the APG made sense as the default spellcasters in the setting, with hedge witch becoming the most common.Ultimate Combat added official rules for guns, the basic weapon of the setting. (Guns everywhere was the choice.)One change from history was the dwarfs replacing Hessians - and the dwarfs still wore the back & breast armor, since dwarfs do not suffer the downside of being armored.The orcs began taking scalps - the elves paying bounty on the scalps taken.The elves bought slaves from orcish raids into the human colonies. (Yes, the French really did that during the war, there is even a musical titled <a href="http://www.hankbeebe.com/molly.html" target="_blank">Hold On Molly</a> - based on a true incident of the taking of one woman and her rescue.)After it was finished I sent some revisions - my favorite being a region between the two warring groups of colonies called Arcadia, an area largely populated by half-elves. Over time, beyond the general scope of the setting, these half elves developed their own culture, distinct from either parent.Also over time they moved from the timber country of the north into the swamps of the south, and their name softened and shifted - going from Arcadian to Acadian, and from there to 'Cajun'.Also beyond the scope was the eventual rebellion of thirteen of those colonies, with general officers that began their careers in that war between the humans and the elves with their orc allies.So, yeah, I like having the tools to customize my own worlds.The Auld Grump</blockquote>

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