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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 342398" data-attributes="member: 7177">OK, here is mine:------------------------------------Urbis1. Core Ethos Sentence: Urbis is a world of towering cities awash in magic, where heroes battle ruthless lords and scheming merchants with magic, weapons, and intrigue to determine the fate of millions.2. Who are the heroes? Noteworthy heroes are Lord Amrast, the paladin ruler of the city-state of Logos, Roderick Ardan, the head of a very large merchant house, and the Piper, a mysterious pipe-player clad in rags who seems to have been around for centuries.3. What do they do? Lord Amrast seeks to maintain peace, freedom from tyrannical rule, and prosperity for as many people as possible, and maintains a careful diplomatic web of treaties and alliances, and a powerful military to this end. Roderick Ardan wishes to save people from the worst life-draining effects of magical architecture, and has created a large network of spies and smugglers to rescue people from cities where the rulers get too greedy for magical energy. The Piper seeks to bring down the magical architecture of tyrants. For this, he uses a variety of disguises to sow confusion and chaos in the city to distract the city’s guards and make the wealthy and powerful distrust and attack each other until the city is in such disarray that the rulers can only watch as the Piper plays his pipe and uses the very magical energy that the architecture has gathered to destroy it.4. Threats, Conflicts, Villains: The League of Armach is a military aggressive and strongly expansionist alliance of city-states bent on conquest. Last Rest is a city-state ruled by the undead, which uses magical architecture to suck the life force of its inhabitants and create vast amounts of necromantic energy. Its agents constantly roam the world to kidnap people and bring them to the city to fuel its hunger for life force. Shaprat, the Last City is an otherworldly metropolis that seeks to draw people, buildings, and even entire quarters of cities in the Material Plane into itself. Most people who visit this city are never seen again. Its aims are unknown, but it is worshipped by a large cult with adherents in most cities, which follow it in exchange for magical powers and hold rites to make it easier for the city to connect to the material world.5. Nature of magic: Magic flows from the very soul of every living being, expressed as its force of personality (Charisma). Sorcerers and bards have learned to tap into this energy freely and spontaneously. Wizards know how to use their personal energies with increasing efficiency, allowing for spectacular effects thanks to long preparations. Clerics and druids tap into the life force of their patron deities and spirits. Magic is relatively common - almost everyone has seen someone work magic at some point in their lives, and most cities have schools for magic.    One type of magic that has shaped the setting like no other is magical architecture. When buildings and monuments are placed at the right spots, and built in the right ways, people who control certain nexus points can draw upon the life force of everyone who lives nearby and control vast amounts of magical energy, depending on how closely the buildings are created and placed according to the mystics’ advice, and on how much life energy the controller is willing to draw upon - from a slight drain that is hardly noticed and soon regenerated, to one that will leave the inhabitants apathetic and weak-willed, to an overpowering one that will cause every living being to die within a few years. Almost all new cities are built according to magical principles to allow this, and many older cities have been significantly altered for the same reasons.6. What’s new? What’s different? Most traditional fantasy settings with a medieval technology base have only a few cities, and most of those only have small populations. The land they hold, and not the cities define the power of feudal rulers.    In Urbis, the situation is different - the magical power available to those who control cities built according to magical principles caused most rulers to create cities that are as large as possible, once the principles themselves were understood. Migration to the cities was encouraged, as it increased the magical power available to the ruler, and the countryside was only interesting as a source of food and raw materials. The end result is a large number of huge city-states dotting the landscape which are often continually rebuilt to focus magic more efficiently, with powerful rulers backed by strong magic, wealthy merchants trying to profit in any way they can, and a large underclass which is often only respected as a source of cheap labor and magical energy. The countryside is treated protectorates divided up between the various cities and exploited as much as possible to fill the needs of the cities, while the overgrown ruins of older settlements that weren’t build “the right way” give a silent testament to the past, only to be disturbed by the occasional treasure-hunter.-------------------------------------------------------OK, proposal over. I've had two design goals with this:1.) Cities. Many fantasy cities have huge cities, but they often don't have a good reason for them. Huge cities existed in our history (Rome, many Chinese cities), so they are possible with a medieval technology base. Even more so when you are throwing magic into the mix.And the whole concept of "gathering life force for magic" gives me an excuse to have really large cities in a fantasy setting. I am talking about populations counted in the millions.Why such cities? Because cities are cool. I've been primarily inspired by certain Belgian artists like Schuiten and his <a href="http://www.urbicande.be/" target="_blank">"Obscure Cities"</a>, plus some real-world reading about the undergrounds of Rome and Moscow. But "urban fantasy" is a versatile genre, and offers many possibilities.2.) Creating a setting in which the D&D rules actually make sense. This isn't readily apparent from the proposal, but I was planning to work out all the ramifications of things like commonly-available ressurrection spells, zombie sklave labour, and so on. And my "default assumption" for all the monsters from the MM was: "All of them exist in this world. Now how can I make it interesting - and yet make it fit together?" The Destrachan and the Yrthak, two monsters with sonic powers, originally came from another planet in the same solar system until some mages teleported them in. The same goes for several other non-outsider critters that are too weird to have evolved naturally on an Earthlike world...I've put a lot of thought into this since I first submitted my proposal, and I will continue to do so. Not because of any hopes of seeing this setting published, but mostly becaus I am currently writing a Neverwinter Nights module that takes place in that setting. And perhaps I will use it as a game world for my group one day as well...</blockquote>

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