CWBP 2 : Determining the genre and era

[Azélor]

It does not need to be generic. I know my description was pretty generic, yet there is room for other ideas.

hum how about reincarnation instead of resurrection?

Guilt that haunts: good idea: bad deeds could create the evil monsters that roam the world. I think I already saw this idea somewhere, but I think it could be a good idea.

[gspRooster]

Falconius's reasoning is fine by me in regards to the navigation system.

Maybe we're sticking unnecessarily close to morality when we think of the word "guilt" though if we want to play with that aspect. Perhaps we should think of it in terms of criminality.

If the idea is that the world is being haunted by its guilt, if you view that in an aspect of criminality it becomes easier to justify some of our ideas. Perhaps there are these magical fonts of power throughout the world. They are so important they are used as navigational sources, as well as the stars. But perhaps these magical sources also grow powerful off of the abundance of magical energy that flows "free form" in the world by absorbing it. So when someone dies, and their magical essence is released back into the world, it is drawn to these magical power sources. A mirror world, or an other-dimensional world that could be connected to this one BY those magical power sources, could have discovered how to cross over into this world using those magical power sources, but only if they have sufficient energy.

For every living being that dies, the power sources are able to absorb that newly freed magical energy, and the beings in the other realm prey on that power to come over into this world and cause problems. Conflict fought within the world essentially becomes doubly self destructive, as it makes the magical power sources more powerful, allowing in more demons from the other world. And perhaps we can say that the demons, when "killed" in this world, don't actually die. They're tethered to this world through the magical power sources, so when they are weakened to the point they can no longer maintain that tether, they get sucked back into their own world. This actually weakens the magic sources because it draws energy whenever a demon is kicked back. So a collective effort to eradicate the demons would potentially work....temporarily... until people forget to stop killing each other over petty nonsense and the world goes back to the ways things were. So when the world is at peace and the population is steady or growing and there are people addressing the demon problem, the demonic influence subsides. When it is at war and death tolls are high, the demonic presence grows and makes matters worse.


Thus, "the guilt that haunts the world" isn't necessarily morale guilt. The guilt that haunts the world is forgetfulness and failure to learn from its past mistakes.

[gspRooster]

Here's my 2 cents.

Setting:
Mid Fantasy
Medieval + Hints of Renaissance
Astrophysics - Don't care. So long as it's practical.
Navigation by Starcharts/Magic Power Sources - Practical, possible, and ok by me.
Atmosphere - Eh... personally I'd prefer to stick with "Earthly" and blame magic for any flying of objects that shouldn't otherwise fly.

World Building - I prefer option 2.
A pangaea world could be fun to an extent. I would prefer a pangaea in addition to a few small outlying landmasses.
If I were to claim a piece of it, I think it would be really interesting to work with a Pangaea style landmass that had been split from a smaller piece of itself at some point by an angular impact crater which subsequently filled with water. I'll claim the southeast part of the Pangaea for that. Something like a peninsula that had been struck and separated by the primary landmass by an asteroid... maybe creating a large island and a few smaller ones and forking the land at the impact site. Perhaps this part of the world is also on its own tectonic plate, and it's got some mountain ranges on the western and northern borders, and a series of mountainous folds in the northeast that cause a locking in of moisture and wet weather patterns for that area, making the north shore swampy and giving the mountainous terrain plenty of rainfall, but the south shore doesn't benefit from this and stays fairly dry, with the west shore a comfortable middle ground. Domesday book demographics suggest six major cities. I'll say 4 coastal, 2 inland.
Something like this... would be an interesting place to develop.






Map Divisions - Squares are easy to work with, and practical. If needs be, someone could take more than one square to get the territory they want.

[Ghostman]

Just going to drop some ideas here, latch on to any or all of them as you please:

• Elaborating on the idea of reincarnation suggested by Azelor: this could be an interesting feature if your past life affects your present life in some profound way. The simplest option might be having memories of past lives, but it could also be that the things you experienced, learned and/or accomplished in your previous life affect you physically and mentally. For example, a patient person is someone who died after a long life, while an impatient one is someone who died young. Someone who died with deep regrets or having failed to fullfill their role in life might be born "incomplete" in some way, such as blind or deaf or albino. An open-ended mechanism of reincarnation, that allows completely new people (with no past lives) to be born as well as some souls to disappear entirely from the cycle would be ideal, since it avoids the issues that would arise from growing or declining world population.
• Some kind of karma could be a thing. Imagine if the karma one accumulates had a visible impact on their person? Perhaps you'd grow taller, or change your hair color, or cast a deeper shadow, or display a visible aura around you?
• Order and Chaos as real but impersonal metaphysical forces. To borrow heavily from Moorcock, either force is detrimental when it's present in excess: Too much Order brings about stagnation and infertility, resulting in a dead world frozen in time. Too much Chaos brings about perpetual destruction, resulting in a world where nothing is constant or predictable. This idea could potentially have major impact on the geography of the world, as the history of shifts in the metaphysical balance might leave imprints on the lay of the land.
• Magical Gates that permit near-instantaneous travel from one point to another. Think stargates, except they're all present on the same planet. With there being a very limited number of these gates, no way for people to construct more of them, and no way to change which gate is linked to which other gate, the expansion of and interaction between various civilizations would be affected in interesting but reasonably simple ways. Geographic obstacles and distance would still be major factors, with the gates providing a few shortcuts here and there. Consider, for example, a pair of linked gates that connect a subartic region with a tropical region. How would a civilization situated in the proximity (on both sides) of this gateway evolve? What about a gateway between a desertly landlocked region and an archipelago of little islands in the middle of a vast ocean?

[Azélor]

Falconius:
I think that the guilt things is complicated the way you see it (or maybe I just find it too odd) I see it more like karma, bad deeds generates : problems/demon/monster/negative energy...
Reincarnation: I was more thinking of it as a religious aspect like in Buddhism. It would not have a real impact on the world. It is more a belief than a fact (the way I see it).

Rooster:
That would be a good start for a small continent or part of a larger one
Pangea was just a suggestion someone made a while back. I think if we go with this either if will be a fragmented bunch of close continents or a massive continent that include lots of inland seas or sort of. My best pick would be a mix of big and smaller contient. I prefer more variety.

Ghostman: I like the Order and Chaos idea because it's less related to good vs bad.

[Falconius]

Ghostman: I like the Order and Chaos idea because it's less related to good vs bad.

I appreciate it it for that reason too, but is Order vs Chaos really that much better? It is also very well worn, and perhaps not as rewarding as something as simple and natural as good vs bad. I'd prefer we find some other sort of diametric concept, or avoid a diametric opposition altogether. Though I'm not sure what would occur in its place.

(I'm also pretty sure I'm looking for a word other than "diametric", but it works for now.)

[rgcalsaverini]

or avoid a diametric opposition altogether.

I agree, extreme manichaeism could easily lead to poor stories and cliches.

[gspRooster]

I agree, extreme manichaeism could easily lead to poor stories and cliches.

My elaboration on the "guilt" and "death" mechanics that I posted directly before Ghostman's post deal with that by eliminating the good/bad aspect altogether. The magic and demons become more powerful simply through the very natural process of death. And they can be removed from the world. But natural disaster, plague, famine, and war are all things that could bring them right back with a significant resurgence in strength that is outside their "normal" level of presence that has nothing to do with good and evil. It's related simply to the raw magical energy released when living creatures die. Larger, more magically inclined creatures would release more energy and power the crystals more, letting more demons through.

This could lead to any number of storylines that make the whole point of good and evil totally ambiguous. Perhaps a kingdom establishes a religion that deifies these demons as a natural part of existence and has blood sacrifices to deliberately let them into the world in small enough quantities that they can be managed. A neighboring kingdom may view this practice as evil, and misguidedly go to war to end this practice, oblivious to the fact that the death toll their war is causing is actually throwing an uncontrollable fuel on the fire. Who is the real evil then? The one trying to moderate the process, or the one making it worse by trying to stamp it out?

[rgcalsaverini]

I'm sorry if that's already established and I'm just being counterproductive here, but I think that a low magic setting could be really interesting and allow deeper, better written scenarios where magic isn't just an easy way out and creative shortcut. I find fascinating the scenarios where the very existence of magic is questioned.

I like ghostman's suggestion, and the Guilt that Haunts idea is a promising concept, but I think that this dualism could impose severe limitations and produce poorer stories.

I think that we should make decisions collectively, but unless we are able to really organize things (with clear due dates and legislative-chamber-like procedure), it isn't practical to apply this to the every single detail. I think that we should be objective and vote on the most important features, otherwise we will spend way too much time on the details and never actually get to mapping.

[gspRooster]

I will second calsaverini's post in regards to putting a procedure together so that we can actually move things forward, vote on the important things and let the minor details sort themselves out through individual mapper's own creativity.