1) maybe don't use numbers for measurements: Leagues and Leagues to a side, or "impossibly huge" or "the size of a continent" can easily convey what you want while side-stepping factual issues.
I'm changing that to roughly describing how large or small things should be instead of giving basic numbers.
2) Goblins aren't playable but Orcs are?
The reasoning for that is based on the fact that it never made sense to me that half-orcs are playable but orcs are monster-as-PC. Because of that it makes a lot of half-orcs that are PCs the products of tragic pasts, when a half-elf could have a troubled past, or not. Not to mention that because of the way races are done, if you're an orc or not, it's more or less random. So you can have orcs of any temperament or intelligence level, and half-orcs can be the products of happy or unhappy (or nonexistant) homes. Gnomes also sort of fill the niche that goblins do in a lot of campaigns (and, imo, goblin racials are way too good for any class with stealth/ride.)
3) Changelings are OGL? Neat idea, but make sure. Too good a setting to get dinged for that. Ditto mentioning 4e rules points, not sure how that works.
Well, they are, technically. WotC doesn't own the rights to the word Changeling, and they are available as a monster-as-PC race as prosfilaes said. I personally like Changelings, and they work well for more political settings where stealth and subterfuge are important, so it seemed like a good idea to include a shape-shifting race. Choosing the name changeling makes it easy for familiar fans to instantly know that that's a race they might pick if they want to play that style of character.
4) I like the art, mostly, at least some of them: the smiley girl with the third eye is great, but many of the racial pics could use more work (and are too far down the page as I'm scrolling).
Thanks, I'm doing all the art by myself in my free-time now. As I think I said before, if I get enough interest I'll definitely spring for better art by other people, but until then it's just me by myself.
5) Seems like a lot of detail on the pyramid, and the rest of the world is blank. I'd do most of my gaming outside the antarctic pyramid.
There's more information on various locations in the latter chapters (and the reasoning is because I was specifically avoiding filling in the world with too much detail outside of some basic threads to start a story), but I'm beginning to warm up to the idea of adding more locations and information.
6) Some of the races have alien roots. Why separate them from the aliens? Are they mutated humans, or aliens, or what?
They're just mutated humans, not aliens. I'll have to clarify that point. In a future book I'd definitely want to have a racial page for all the specific alien races, and their hybrids (and this is suggested in later chapters), until then it's just these races.
And how are the half-elves (who are offspring from humans and elves) the #3 race behind humans and dwarves? If they're derrivative, the elves would have to be up there.
Because my brain crapped out on me and I was thinking about how popular half-elves are with players without considering the mathematical logistics (a consistent problem I'm finding.)
I think lots of folks would be upset that the Accord destroyed the Earth without consulting humanity. I'd be annoyed. I'm all about Star Trek-style growth, or enlightenment, but if someone dumps mutations on my world I'd be like "hey!"
At least I'd have a lot of people who are NOT part of a faction: drifters, refugees, survivors. People who are just eeking out an existence as best they can.
I think Evil shouldn't just be "pragmatic". Why wouldn't they be the group that's aligned with the Void? Everyone else has Outsiders rooting for them.
The members of the Void aren't outsiders, they're more like that third superpower that wants to wipe out the other two. But I do like that idea. I'll think on it.
I really like the use of dying stars and black holes for powers. Interesting visual. Does space travel come into play? Where, then, does the Outer Plane fit?
Space travel does come into play, but that won't be in this book. This book is specifically concerned with what's happening on the planet Earth, but there are still adventures going on with the Galactic Accords and other forces in the universe. I avoided it here because I didn't want to do too much at one time, but I'm definitely interested in a Spelljammer-esque companion book that goes into that.
As for the Outer-plane it fits, but I've compressed all the planes into a single location (the Outer-realm.) You could conceivably shift into the Outer-realm and then back to the material plane somewhere else in the universe, however I should probably think up a stop-gap, setup by the Galactic Accord ahead of time, now that I think about it.
Reminds me a lot of Heavy Metal. I'm not sure you should constrict the setting to fulfil Pathfinder/D&D "isms". You don't need all the races, you could even have a method of making up new mutations packages, like through the PF races book. Unless they have cultures, that's what the races are: abilities packages. Currently it's just odd: are they mutations, or are they just the D&D races? Look up the d20 Future and d20 Apocalypse books. Really relevant to what you're doing, and you could likely port a lot over (OGL, I think, so good for your book).
You don't need the alignments: just use factions. It'll be less confusing, and you can be more specific. Why say "evil" when it could just be "Accord-aligned". Lawful implies organization, unlike "chaotic", which is really just "anti-accord" as opposed to "let's blow stuff up". Using a familiar name for something it isn't will confuse folks a lot, and make using the setting harder.
IMHO, of course, as are all my comments, and without much meditation on it. As you will, as always.
Otherwise, I want to see more!
Thanks for the info! I thought about scrapping the alignment system for a factions system, but it would up making things a bit more confusing, and spells like protection from evil or lawful circle unusable. I'll try to clarify rules like that a bit more.
In any case, there's no language on Earth that's 4500 years old in any sense. English, including Anglo-Saxon, is 1500 years old; the first scraps of Latin and Chinese are from 2500 and 3000 years ago. I guess the question is more aesthetic then factual, and aesthetically it rubs me the wrong way. Most science fiction tosses out Anglic (from Traveller) and Neo-Russian and readers accept them.
I actually think I'll switch to having a handful of common languages, and then the extra languages (draconic, infernal, aasir, etc). I can't have dwarven/elven/gnomish because those aren't separate races in the traditional sense (and the Shadowrun approach never really made much sense to me), but cutting out too many languages feels strange. I like the idea of having neo-russian or something, and giving players the opportunity to pick from a selection of languages that correlate roughly to where their PC might be from (maybe a gutter language for the folks who live underground, a south american language, etc).
Maybe some mention of times and travel methods will make it seem more real. I may just be too concrete to handle it, but giving travel times and how that's made possible would make it more believable to me.
I like this idea. Giving out lots of numbers doesn't do much to help people imagine the scope of something, and explaining size through example or how long it would take to cross something makes it a bit freer to interpretation, which I like.
