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[Fniff]

There is such a thing as too big. When you're building fifteen whole civilisations, that would be going overboard in a fantasy novel. If it's not too big for you, it might be too big for your players. Think about it from their perspective: all that background is a serious effort to learn.

Maybe you should consider tightening the scope. From experience, it makes things way-easier. You want feudal intrigue? You can achieve that if you focus it on one barony and its court. Those civilizations can be the guilds of the town.

Here's the clever thing anout this. Even if you work insanely hard at it, building a whole continent is going to fall flat because you have to spread the details so thin. But if you expend the same amount of effort on a small play-area, it will be an incredibly interesting place by contrast since every part of it has a personality. It's like the difference between Oblivion and Pathologic; the former is huge but dull, the latter is small but intricate.

[Elephant Parade]

image

That looks pretty great, though I'd need to scale the tiles up a bit; as it is, there isn't enough room on them for names.

Some of them, could easily be fixed with a few edits (like making that road 1-tiled), but many more can't. You also don't want to build any too many cities, as most houses have about twenty tiles, give or take. Though any "existing towns", can easily be dl-ed as a screenshot, and layered under a grid.

Yeah, the size of multi-tile buildings could be an issue. I was planning to set my game in a Mystery Dungeon-style world where humans don't exist, but I recognize that not everyone will want that—my long-term goal is to create a FEF-style rulebook that other people will be able to use—and buildings need to not take up half the map.

It's an issue of scale, I guess. Still, those tiles will be great for small-scale stuff!

To cut it short: The tilesets and icons are nice - real nice, in fact - but would they be worth the possible work-over of your rules / the lesser options that would stem from taking these tiles as basis?

My rules don't rely on scale at all. Using those tiles wouldn't require a rework—I'd just need to assign bonuses/maluses to different tiles, which I haven't even done for my current tiles.


Probably going to launch Pokemon Tactics as an SG, since that way

• People will be able to play without reading through through the entire rulebook
• I can reveal the rules a bit at a time, concealing the fact that they aren't actually done yet
• I won't feel bad about nerfing stuff
• It'll be significantly less work

Fifteen kingdoms sounds overkill, unless you're planning to have a heavy focus on travel.

[heydude6]

Building on the idea of trimming the fat, I think 8 is a good number to settle with, perhaps even less.

[Yoink]

-snip-

The main problem I can see is that you just spoiled the major twist right off the bat...
I think fifteen kingdoms would be doable, although perhaps it would be a good idea to keep some/most of them quite vaguely defined, and perhaps let players decide on certain details as they write their backstories. That way you could cut down on your own workload and the amount of reading required to join.
RTDs often do something like this, letting players help in the worldbuilding through their bios.

Of course, if you wanted to you could then flesh out a couple of the kingdoms a lot more, presumably the most plot-relevant ones, or the ones the players are intended to spend the most time in.

[Tawa]

-snip-

You have a point... I guess I don't really have to define all of them to their full extent. A good six of those are going to be the East Asia and Africa stand-ins, and the other ones are split roughly three a pop to three different cultural groups (Western European, general mix of Scandinavia/Eastern Europe, and the last one I'm thinking either Balkans/Byzantines or Italy with Spanish elements.) To keep with the general feel of the game, I could have the East Asia and Africa stand-ins remain mysterious and ill-defined, with the extent of development being basically limited to each country's name and a vague idea of what differentiates each one from the other ones. Most of the European and Middle East-style countries will probably manage to be visited through the course of the story, and any of the ones that don't can get fleshed out through player or NPC backstories anyway.

Anyway, from the perspective of somebody who isn't me (I literally make D&D character sheets for fun when I'm bored sometimes), is the prospect of creating two characters in two different time periods intimidating at all? I was thinking that the end of the prologue wouldn't really have to be the end of the first character, because they could be posthumously fleshed out by the person playing their descendant.

As for the plot twist thing, I suppose that having a plot twist in this sort of massive time-skip thing is kind of assumed anyway, but the whole "cliché adventure" doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. It can still be interesting and do its job of setting up the rest of the plot, and if I miraculously manage to improve my writing skills on the spot I might manage to save it through fluff alone.

Now that I think about it, I don't really have to set it up that way anyway...

Hmm... I think that instead of cliché dungeon crawling, I'll set up something concerning minor political intrigue and have the far-reaching future changes come about through ye olde butterfly effect. Plus, that gives me a legitimate excuse for having the characters be famous and also like level 3, since they'll just be shanking guards and political rivals at best.

[Parsely]

If you really want to do a whopping 15 kingdoms, only name them at first, and describe them in detail as they become important. If it's not pertinent to their situation even the most attentive player will just forget what you've told them anyways. That'll save your players from info overload and you from exhaustion.

Preferably the GM is the only one who has to refer to a lexicon and then only when he's preparing for a session. This makes for the smoothest type of game.

No doubt they'll start in one country, then hop to the next one after some time. And not only that, they don't have to visit every corner of the globe. You can give the players an impression of the size of the world you envision without breaking your back explaining every last insignificant detail of it to them.

[Rolepgeek]

Also don't forget that there were a lot of super-similar countries that only got united comparatively recently. Culture groups are really what you gotta look out for, that and the places the PCs actually give a shit about. But you already knew that.

[Tawa]

After careful consideration, I've decided to drop the prologue bit entirely. It would work in, say, a video game or a movie, but in a tabletop game it'll only make everything take even longer and add comparatively little.

Oh, and I think I'll bump it up to late-1800s instead of early-1800s/late-1700s. this is in no way influenced by reading Dracula or Hound of the Baskervilles

[High tyrol]

w

[Harry Baldman]

Should I start a FG?

Do you have free time?

Do you have a concept?

If yes to both, feel free.

[Parsely]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Your name is Sirus. You are 27 year old trucker from Illinois. You've been doing the job for years and are pretty good at it, taking week long trips every month and getting a decent paycheck in return. But none of your formerly average life would matter soon enough.

---

Sirus hopped up the steps to his second-floor apartment and unlocked the door, stepping over the threshold and kicking the door shut behind him with the heel of his foot. He flipped the lock shut with his left hand and let his overnight duffel bag slip off of the opposite shoulder. He walked even as it thumped to the floor, pulling off his belt and unbuttoning his pants as he strode to his bedroom, his keys still hanging off of one thumb; he lived alone so modesty wasn't a concern.

Sirus yawned as he opened the door to his bedroom. At this point his pants were completely undone and in some danger of slipping off of his hips, his boxer shorts showing slightly. It was during this moment of vulnerability that he was accosted by a crab-man!

The creature was humanoid. It had a chitinous exoskeleton that was white-orange on the ventral side and transitioned to bright red toward its back. It's head was flat with a pair of protruding eye stalks. It's hands ended in three, ribbed manipulators that didn't look very flexible. It wore a black, heavy, sleeveless vest covered in pockets and his legs were clothed in matching cargo pants. It wasn't wearing shoes. It flung open Sirus' bedroom door and rushed towards him.

"What the hell?!" Sirus screamed. He backpedaled into the hallway as the crab thing rushed forward, it's right arm whipping upwards. It clutched a device; it was oddly-shaped in order to fit into its fist. Sirus slammed into the wall behind him and the crab pressed the gadget against Sirus' forehead, hard.

"Fuck, that hurts!" He tried to squirm out from underneath the device, pulling on the crab's arm with both hands to try and relieve the pressure. The crab cocked it's head. Sirus grit his teeth.

I'll show you, you smug prick.

Sirus pulled himself up by the crab's arm and lashed out with both feet, connecting with the crab's chest. The crab grunted and shifted slightly from the blow, which was enough for Sirus to slip away. Sirus ran for the door but the crab was too fast. It seized him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him into a nearby wall. The crab kept the gadget trained on Sirus even as he bounced off the wall and landed hard against the carpeted floor.

"Gah! Shit! What the hell's your problem pal?!" Sirus decided to stay on the floor.

"This is a gun you stupid alien fuck." The crab's synthesized voice bellowed. It had a neutral American accent and sounded masculine. Sirus grimaced and rubbed the growing lump on his forehead.

"Are you going to listen to me or do I have to blow your head off?" He said (Sirus decided it was a 'he'). Sirus sat up calmly and thought.

The crab was probably far too strong to fight one-on-one, not to mention he was armed. Sirus had never had need of a gun but he wished he owned one now. It seemed the only choice was to talk. Sirus forced a smile.

"Whatever you're sellin', it seems I got no choice but to buy." Sirus held up his hands and shrugged. The crab thing lowered it's gun.

"Wise choice, alien." It holstered its pistol, then pulled a small rucksack from it's back and dropped it in Sirus' lap.

"Open it." It crossed its arms. Sirus looked at the crab quizzically while he untied the simple drawstring bag and looked inside.

It was a trucker cap, one adorned with a strange antenna crowned with a yellow foam ball with a placid smiley face on it.

"'The legendary hero will use the Cap of Time to travel back to the past and defeat the Great Evil before it consumes the universe.' That's a legend that I've been taught since I was an adolescent." He shook his head and began to gesticulate.

"The computers told our scientists that you're the legendary hero. Many lives were lost to get me here so that I could give you the sacred Cap. I sacrificed everything. My life, my family, my home-" He had unfastened his vest and the body armor underneath and let it fall to the floor. Sirus' heart turned cold as he saw the scars that covered the crab man's chest. Portions of his flesh had been substituted for robotic replacements.

"-all forfeit. My men, some of them my lifelong friends, gave their lives down to the last to bring this here. They were some of the best truckers I ever knew..." Sirus blinked.

"You're a trucker?"

"Yes. My species is- Was, a race of truckers." The crab hung his head. Sirus sat, stunned at this strange creature's surprisingly sad story

"Whether it was worth it or not is yet to be determined. Sirus, go back to your '16th century'. Find the one known as 'Xanmyral' and destroy him before he has gained the power to bring darkness unto the space time continuum. You have exactly six 'months' from now to prepare for your journey. The Cap of Time, use it." Sirus looked at the cap, then back to the crab.

"My job is done." The crab man raised his head as he said it, looking Sirus in the eye.

"Goodbye." The crab muttered. Sirus started as he realized something, but it was too late. Then the crab man calmly pulled his gun and pressed it against the underside of his head. Before Sirus could protest the crab man's head disappeared in a flash of blue light, his lifeless body toppling to the floor. Sirus frowned hard at the crab's corpse, blood leaking from it's neck.

[StrawBarrel]

Very interested. Would be pleased to see more hilarity and good writing. My incomplete sentences bother me.

[TheBiggerFish]

PRAISE O'SIRUS \O/

[Tawa]

After discarding like five different campaign settings and plot ideas, I've finally settled on one I'm happy with.

What I'm looking at here is a game set in a fictional, Victorian Britain-esque country, in a slightly steampunk, pretty magical setting. Drawing vague inspiration from various sorts of literature from the period (Sherlock Holmes in particular), I'm thinking I'll have a crime-themed campaign where the players investigate all sorts of mundane and magical criminal activity in their efforts to take down a criminal mastermind. It'll be pretty RP-heavy and put at least as much (if not more) focus on the investigations, puzzles, and deductions as the fights. Definitely going to run it in Pathfinder (with strict gentleman's agreements on the more broken character classes to prevent the intrigue of the setting from being shattered in two by, say, divination spells.)

There's interest for this sort of thing, right?

[FallacyofUrist]

Would anybody be interested in a Wikipedia Wars like game, but using TV Tropes instead?

I'm running a test game for this in my sigtext.
~~~
Interesting, definitely. Something I would play? No- not my sort of thing, but good luck regardless.