Origins of a setting

[Ry]

I think most people are voting "ageless cyclical" because it's more novel.

That makes sense - I thought the more familiar one would be the safe harbour, but I'm delighted to see both 1) clarity in the breakdown of which one is ahead of the others and 2) something unusual to sink my teeth into.

But I'm trying not to speak too soon, as the poll has only been open for a couple of hours.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Does anyone have an idea of what they consider the world of choice A?

Moorcock's multiverse is cyclical.

 

[Ibram]

Ageless cycles.... with Lovecraftian overtones. When viewed on a geological scale all the history of the mortal races (starting with the Troll Kingdoms) has as much permanace as the morning dew on a cactus.

 

[Treebore]

But isn't the truth, in this situation, that there is no beginning? That the past stretches out behind just as the future does in front? At least, that's what I thought when I posted it. Of course, it's going to be CC, so if you want to do it differently, after I write it up you can put any origin story you want right before the most distant element of the campaign's timeline.

Well, let me try to explain what i have done with my "world". I put all the settings I like, and weren't complete worlds on their own, all on the same planet.

Which in turn gave me huge cultural, and game, diversity from region to region and continent to continent.

Plus I can hop from one setting to another by getting the PC's to travel. So I get more use out of more of the settings I own.

So to make this all work I have been creating facts and myths passed back and forth between the different areas, such as Greyhawk and Erde.

This has led me to also consider which of all the creation myth's are true? Are any of them? Is it a bit of this one and that one?

So that is where I am coming from.

 

[Ry]

Thanks for the responses - I'm now calling it for the Ageless Cyclical World.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Example 1 of Ageless Cyclical World: Our World. There are tons of creation myths in the world (for the purposes of this example, Big Bang is equally a myth as Judao-Christian's "In the Beginning..." as is Buddhism's "Om" [hope I referenced buddhism's creation story correctly]) but no one knows for sure which is correct. (For the record, I'm a christian and believe the christian version, but for purposes of RPG setting creation, I"m not going to put my own beliefs ahead of anyone else's.) In this world, there can be competing myths, each tied to a particular god or pantheon. Here, religion wouldn't be a question of "Do you worship god A or god B?" but more a question of "Do you worship my god/pantheon or no?" And as in our world, some would be passionate about their god and would want everyone to worship their god while others would be more respectful of another's beliefs.

Example 2 (for creation purposes only): The Dark Crystal/Castlemourn In The Dark Crystal, we know 1000 years before start of the movie, there was a powerful race that cracked the crystal, but we know of nothing before then. Aughra knows about what happened before then, and probably the Mystics/Skeksis know as well, but all others in the world don't appear to. In Castlemourn, there was a great and terrible change that happened a few hundred years ago and no one (even those old enough to have been alive back then) remembers what happened before then. A world using these as inspiration could simply be that the "actual" creation of the world is simply not addressed. Various religions and philosophies can claim to know the truth, but there is no "be all and end all" answer stated.

thoughts?

 

[GreatLemur]

Honestly, I've never thought that a definitive creation myth was very important--or even necessarily desirable--for a campaign setting. A hell of a lot of settings start off with the old "In the beginning, there was nothingness / darkness / chaos / a big cosmic sandbox..." bit, and then drone on about the soap operas of the gods for a few pages, and I really haven't been able to see that stuff as interesting for a long, long time.

The players characters are presumably going to be mortals, so I think it's a lot more worthwhile to start from a mortal's eye view: history, not mythology. You can get into the supposed origins of the world later on, in the religion section.

This isn't a complaint about rycanada's purposes or methods, here (certainly, a DM oughta have some idea where his world came from, and that goes for setting authors, too). I'm really just bitching about tendencies I've seen in setting presentation throughout the hobby.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

As a rule, the more distant and aloof the gods, the better.

 

[Ry]

This isn't a complaint about rycanada's purposes or methods, here (certainly, a DM oughta have some idea where his world came from, and that goes for setting authors, too). I'm really just bitching about tendencies I've seen in setting presentation throughout the hobby.

I think we're on the same page all along - as you can see from my sig I'm not much for game content that doesn't hit the game. The origins I put out really go a lot further than just floating creation myths, though - any of the options really sets the tone of the setting:

If you want conflict among deities to be one of the major problems, option #5 is for you.
If you want a struggle between Lovecraftian monster-gods and a divine challenger, #2 is for you.
If you want planar conflict, #4 is for you.
If you want relics of ancient conflicts, and a sense of really, really long history, then #1 was for you.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, I think this creation myth actually helps shape what sorts of adventures -- and what sort of setting -- we'd be looking at here. Ancient empires, races that were ancient before the PHB races first appeared, etc., it's got it all.

In fact, the antiquity of the world plays in to the PHB races: Where do each of them stack up against the aboleths and other races of the ancient days? Are elves millions of years old, as a race? How many cycles have they seen of civilizations rising and falling? How do dwarves and gnomes fit in with the antiquity of the world? Might they be holdovers from an ancient time now passing away for good?

Lots of good hooks here.