Urbis - Once More, with Footnotes

[Jürgen Hubert]

After more than a year, I have to admit that Eruvian.Com simply isn't working out as the home of Urbis. It had some great ideas - such as allowing other users to submit their own material - but for all intents and purposes the site now seems to be dead.

So now I'm in the process of moving the setting to another site - this time, a wiki at Wikidot.com. And I'm using this opportunity not just to make some adjustments to fit the setting better with 4E, but also to make some general changes in the way I present the material:

1. Because of GSL restrictions, all the material presented in the wiki will be rules-free. Any playtest material for the 4E rules (as well as conversions for other systems - I'd like to do a GURPS conversion at some point) will be uploaded to the members-only section of the Urbis Mailing List.
2. As with Eruvian.Com, it is possible for others to submit their own material. Joining the wiki can be done here, which unfortunately involves agreeing to a rather annoying legal disclaimer - but I don't see any other way of allowing both user submissions, and publishing the setting commercially later on while protecting myself from lawsuits. There's an important difference in the way the submission process works, however. At Eruvian.Com, I had to review every new submission personally before it could be seen by others - which sometimes took me a long time to get around to, and thus was unfair to the other contributors. Now contributors can use special wiki tags which cause the text to be displayed in green, and thus mark it as "non-canon". Once I get around to reviewing it (and make the necessary changes), the text will be displayed in blue, which will mark it as "canon material". The main page of the wiki explains the details, and I hope that this will make submissions a lot easier.
3. Many entries now has its own "Designer's Notes & Resources" section, which explains what I (or the other contributors) intended when writing the entry (the "Races" entry is a good example of this), as well as occasionally giving links to other useful resources on other sites (as seen in the entry for the dragonborn).
4. Furthermore, each entry now has its own subsections for adventure seeds, which contributors can fill up with their own ideas.
5. The wiki has its own, dedicated forum, and users can discuss each page in its own forum thread simply by clicking on the relevant button at the bottom of the page.
6. Finally, the wiki layout is much better for finding the information you want - it has a pull-down menu for the main sections, a tag cloud for various keywords, a dedicated search function, easy placement of internal links, and lots of other nifty tricks which I'm still exploring.

Right now, I'm preoccupied with porting all the old material over - both from Eruvian.Com, and from my own, private notes. By my own estimate, I've moved about 10% of all the material written for the setting. This includes:

• Alliance of the Pantheon - a fragile defensive alliance founded by diverse religious refugees now facing an unexpected enemy.
• Avareen - a forest realm of elves and eladrin reenacting the darker kind of fairy tales - and who are gradually discovering that they aren't immune to internal socio-economic pressures.
• Desert of Thunder - a nation of cities in the middle of a harsh desert ruled by an extended clan of blue dragons.
• Races - the "standard" player character races of Urbis and their role in the world.
• Solar System - the planets orbiting the sun of the setting - which are accessible thanks to magic, and now boast their first human colonies.

Furthermore, I have also come up with some new material, such as my new take on devils and their home plane of Sheol, which I am rather proud of.


I'll be posting updates periodically whenever I have ported significant chunks of material over to the wiki. In the meantime, I'd appreciate any feedback you can give me for making the Urbis Wiki more interesting, more functional, and more fun.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've finished porting the Eternal Storm section over - though I was reminded how incomplete this regional description is while doing so.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've ported the single most detailed region of all - the Flannish Cities. Not only does it have the "sample city" of Dartmouth, but also Praxus - the only city not actually developed by me, but by another fan of the setting!

I hope more will join him in the future.

 

[marcoasalazarm]

I have to admit that this looks like a pretty interesting setting.