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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Morris" data-source="post: 2034942" data-attributes="member: 87">Well, after about three weeks of mulling in the back of my brain while the front of my brain was working on reviews code I've decided that I will relaunch the setting.  Unlike the previous two editions, I'm not going to develop it in secret. Instead I'm going to hash it out more or less publically.  If enough interest develops to warrant a seperate forum I'll reopen the appropriate forums, but for now the thread will drift around here.I want to return to the starting point. Retain key concepts, characters and features perhaps; but I'm open to recasting pretty much anything if the results are more interesting and vibrant. Near the end of it's 3rd edition Dusk stagnated and became a hardly more than "yet another fantasy setting."  Well, after setting it aside 6 months and working on other things it's time to change that - and hopefully with help.What is Dusk?The story of the Kingdom of Dalsundria - more or less.  Dalsundria is a land caught in civil war which, at campaign's opening, has been going on - sporadically - for 200 years.  It is not a medieval setting, rather it is a bronze age culture that has arisen in the shadow of a dimly remembered conflict.The setting has a rich and complicated history, but that history only pertains to the last 400 years or so.  Much of what came before isn't well remembered or understood so it's rarely discussed.The Dusk setting was first put online in November 1995, some 10 years ago.  It began as a 60 page collection of notes.  All the notes and incomplete books I have on file now total well over 400 pages - but I'm willing to cast most if not all of it away to start again.  With that in mind, if it's not in this thread, I may not include it.What changes?Ok, let's step back and deal with some ideas and changes in d20 that the setting will require to some extent.  Previously I've tried to keep the setting as close to the PHB as possible.  While this is has worked up to now, there are directions I want to go that preclude this.MagicI tire of the sometimes artificial dicotomy of divine / arcane magic.  The line is so blurry now, what with bards casting cures and priests somethings getting offensive spells through domains, why bother with it.I want a system of five magics not unlike Magic: The Gathering.  Each type of magic has two allies and two enemies.  The very energies themselves oppose and attract.  They further spill into alignment - creatures in the setting are aligned just as spells are aligned. This affects how well magic functions for and upon characters.Rather than use cleric / druid / sorcerer and wizard - allow three methods to cast based on the divine, arcane or the self.  The allows for clerics, wizards and the like in title, but rather than balance the spell lists of the classes - make sure the classes are balanced against each other regardless of their spell list.  The reason is that I want magic acquisition to be more fluid (though perhaps not as fluid as Elements of Magic) A character can learn a wide variety of spells or focus on a tight selection of spells - the idea being that while any character can learn any spell this cannot be achieved by any one character at any one time.  Learning one type of magic precludes learning the magics opposed to it.Classes which are secondary casters (bards, rangers, paladins) become prestige classes as per Unearthed Arcana.I want to be able to keep fighters, rogues, barbarians and the like unchanged.SettingI want to move to an Early Greek / Mycenian model for the setting's technology and attire, though slightly modified to reflect Telzoa's cold and inhospitible climate.  This arrangement should mesh more tightly with the polytheistic setting as opposed to the unique juxtaposition that D&D has with a polytheistic medieval world where historically it was monotheistic.  Indivudual deities and the like will be touched on - I want to allow this part to remain largely unchanged because the mythologies of Telzoa are a dear spot to my heart, and it was a lot of work to reach the point that they are now.  I'll have to make some changes though to lock more tightly to the new 5 point alignement system as opposed to the 9 point they were designed under.With bronze age comes bronze weapons, yet in the south the Estarian empire has and should continue to have iron technology, though in it's infancy.  Couple of rules that don't over complicate things need to be thought up when dealing with bronze v. iron. Ok, I'm going to rest a bit before typing more.  Note to the Mods. For the moment, this thread is at a conceptual stage.  No direct game mechanics - yet, therefore I placed the thread here.</blockquote>

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