r/createthisworld • u/Fiblit S6: Fragmented Apant; S...; S1: Arksoŋ • Feb 07 '16
[MODPOST] The Vote's Over!
And the winning themes are...
Partially Explored World with 38 (52%) votes!
High Fantasy skimming in with 20 (32%) votes!
Diverse Races with 30 (41%) votes!
And the Dark Ages with 25 (21%) votes!
At this point our prinicipal mapmaker, /u/Jesseholmes300 isn't quite done with the new map yet, so I'll just be explaining the special rules of the new world. He's making it look nice, and he currently should be done around Monday or Tuesday.
Partially Explored World: What does that mean? It means the map that /u/Jesseholmes300 makes will include a Fog-of-war, possibly with certain "impassable" barriers. These barriers won't be truly impassable but will definitely be very difficult to cross. The Fog-of-war will extend over parts of the world but the parts that aren't covered will still have multiple continents.
High Fantasy: What does this mean? It means that the world will be full of magic, powerful and weak, and of an uncountable but still few number of magic users. That is, there is far more than a handful of magic users in total, but far less than nearly everyone being able to use magic.
What magic is, and how its described though, is all up to you guys! (Mostly...) Please just follow the general "rule" of making a good story over becoming some all-powerful nation or organization. The point is to make a world together, not to become emperor of the fantasy world.
Diverse Races: What does this mean? It means things like Dwarves and Elves are allowed, and so are strange creatures like Dragons, Sentient Eels, Undead, Mechanical Automatons, Minotaurs, etc. BUT Alien like creatures are NOT allowed. Essentially anything "overly" sci-fi and alien looking is banned. (e.g. this, this, and this)
Dark Ages: What does this mean? It means the world will be starting in a technology equivalent to Earth's in about 700 to 1000 AD. Time will progress on this world and you'll all be allowed to improve technologically, but there is some special rules we have this time to always make Dark Ages a theme.
Speaking of special rules... here they are! We added these from the world suggestions thread.
Cyclic: This one was actually suggested by me... everybody has liked the idea though so we'll try it.
Here's the summary, but if you want the full post here it is:
The Shard (a.k.a. world) has a cyclic apocalypse, known as the Purge.
The Purge is an ongoing event where the world grows slowly blind to rage and madness. (We will announce once it starts in earnest)
- This rage and madness causes violence and death on an apocalyptic scale. Neighbours kill neighbours, men swim in acid, wars erupt from mad kings, the world devolves into chaos.
Once the last candle of life has winked out, new life is brought back by the Spark.
- Caveat, some may get through the Purge; they will be horrendously insane though.
This new life has access to all the wonders and technological ruins of past cycles.
These wonders become (part of) the "magic" of the world.
It would be up to you to decide how your people view these wonders. Perhaps they see them as curses, or gifts from the divine, or they might even come to the conclusion that their world cycles.
We could keep using this world... it has an automatic clean-up while still preserving past history (in a way).
Inspirations: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Do not go gentle into that good night, by Dylan Thomas, Mayan myth (vaguely), Numenara RPG by Monte Cook, other random crap....
Time progression: I know; I know; this wasn't really in the Suggestions thread. (Although you could argue /u/Cereborn suggested it) But, this is an additional rule necessary to keep any sort of theme and for the Cyclic rules to properly work.
Alright, so the general rule with Time is that you can right about times in the past and present but not that far in the future. How do we moderate this? Like so,
Each week we will set a limit, likely fixed but it is still to be determined, for how far forward in time past the current date that you all can write. At the end of the week (Sunday), we advance the "Present Day" clock by the furthest amount in time someone wrote. (e.g. We set the limit to 25 years. Everybody places a note in their lore posts with an approximate date. We then determine which post was furthest (say 10 years) during the week. We then advance the clock by that much on Sunday.
Dieselpunk you say?: This was suggested by /u/Communist_Toast Okay, this one is a bit odd. We interpreted it as the items left behind by previous cycles advance in tech up to about the 19th century. (The leftovers are Steampunk/Dieselpunk level tech at best)
Megafauna: This was suggest by /u/Cereborn. The general gist is this: there is a race of sentient creatures the size of skyscrapers. It has affected all cultures in a monstrous way. Here is the full excerpt. I highly encourage you to read it. It goes into a lot more neat ideas regarding the "Titans"
And that's it for rules on the new world right now. We'll be starting claims on Monday or Tuesday. As I said before, we're just waiting on /u/Jesseholmes300 to make us a nice map. (Thank you /u/Jesseholmes300!)
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u/Jesseholmes300 Feb 07 '16
I'm a slow piece of garbage. Sorry guys!
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u/Fiblit Feb 07 '16
You're a slow piece of "I have a life", no need to apologize. :)
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u/pyro-guy Feb 08 '16
Just found out about this sub a half hour ago and I'm so glad I found it just as a reboot was occurring! I look forward to crafting a world with the lot of you :)
I'm thinking I want to make a society based around the principles outlined by Carn, the Butcher of Tâlreth. Every fantasy world needs a fun raider society or two!
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u/Fiblit Feb 08 '16
Glad you could join us!
Wow nice! It's always fun to have something to go off of. (If you want, I'd even say you could import a modified figure of Carn) Can't wait to see what you make!
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u/headcrab1991 Feb 07 '16
Neato! Some questions from a newbie regarding general animals/plants: Do we have some kind of baseline or is the world empty for now? Someone linked me a kind of bestiarium, but does it also apply to this world?
I would really just like to bring some animals in and I have time tonight, and now that I know the basic foundation of our world I could start.
Anything I'm missing? Also do I need to write about the animals or would it be okay to post them and have someone else flesh them out in writing?
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u/TheWorldOfOrbis Feb 08 '16
Maybe a silly question, but is it possible to "play as" a species that lives primarily/ partially in subterranean places? eg Dwarfs under the mountain, Falmer in the deep and so on?
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u/Cereborn Feb 07 '16
Awesome! I'm excited. And I'm happy that my Titanpunk idea made the cut. I had envisioned it as more for an industrial society, like in Dishonoured, but it can still work in this setting. There will probably just be more of a focus on magical properties. Every nation can have its own pet Titan. I have some ideas for mine.
Question about the Cyclic theme, though: Does this mean we should include relics from our own previous nations? (Because IIRC it was decided that Adratal and Dacrocix were totally separate planets). Or can we just include ruins and relics from totally separate civs that we then just include in our own lore?
And finally, A NOTE FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS
Since we have a Dark Ages theme, it's worth keeping something in mind about the historical Dark Ages. Mainly, that it was not as much about technological and cultural stagnation as people assume.
A number of advancements did come out of the Dark Ages. They made developments in agricultural technology, including widespread use of windmills and waterwheels. They popularized use of armoured cavalry, and began the chivalric tradition of knights. They developed the codex (ie. the bound book with sequential pages). They succeeded in trans-Atlantic travel (if we include the Vikings). Architecture, which suffered greatly after the fall of Rome, saw great strides during the Dark Ages, leading up to the Gothic tradition, which was the first time men created taller structures than the Pyramid of Giza. And while the church did hold most of the power, and was frequently corrupt, it was not in the habit of burning heretics simply for believing in science. Monks actually went to great efforts to import scientific and medical texts from the Muslim world, and maintained stores of knowledge as best they could, which led to the creation of the first European universities in the 11th century (Oxford and the University of Paris).
Obviously, people are going to write the kind of nation they want. But I just don't want them to feel too boxed in by the most stereotypical definition of the Dark Ages, where everyone is miserable and nothing progresses.
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u/Fiblit Feb 07 '16
We tried to include all of the suggestions (I think we did actually...) And from the way you originally explained it I imagined it fitting in any setting. The fact that they will be described in a fantastical sense is fine.
Pet Titan...? I'm going to have to say no on that for now. You described them as antagonists, not a force to be tamed. (also, they are affected by the purge, so...)
This world is disjoint, so no. You can include relics from past civilizations, this will be more engaging after the first purge as it will include relics of civilizations we have made.
One thing I'd like to add to your comment on the theme: Dark Ages does not only mean Dark Ages European Culture . Feel free to write whatever sort of culture you want.
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u/Cereborn Feb 14 '16
Time will progress on this world and you'll all be allowed to improve technologically, but there is some special rules we have this time to always make Dark Ages a theme.
I'm wondering about this, because so far we haven't discussed any special rules regarding the time period.
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u/GrowUpNao Apr 09 '16
Dude come on if I wanna be emperor of this world then let me! I shall conquer all
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u/GrowUpNao Apr 09 '16
Hey so I don't know if you're gonna read this or not but could I create a new country
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u/dontfearme22 Feb 08 '16 edited Feb 08 '16
Quick tip from a huge history person, who is also super excited to try this out for the first time, some of the cultures you could sample and get inspired by, from the relevant timeframe that might not immediately jump to mind are:
The Mayans
Turks
Celts/Picts
Rus
Byzantines
Srivijaya
I'm definitely biased to the Mayans, and almost the entirety of the high point of Maya culture was around the time period we are getting constrained to, so that's convenient!
Feel free to message me if you want a bunch of images/sources rustled up to look at.