Designing settings
Dec. 19th, 2018 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethTumblr is just not functioning correctly. I'm not the only one now saying their dash is acting up. It isn't showing things in the correct straight time line, it skips hours in one direction sometimes and on mine the Previous arrow only ever leads to Now. It needs to sort itself out or everyone will miss a lot of posts and not even know it.
I was thinking about settings for RPGs or TV shows, or both. I like some bits of GURPS Banestorm, like you can skip the logic of having -alike socities because you just use the banestorm to import them. But I don't like the exact moments they imported. Cliche. Standardised settings, patriarchy edition. So I'd want to pick up the times and places that did things Different, like specifically pasting together socities with models that got ate by the patriarchal empires. And if you're going to do that, you could say it's by design? A refuge world. I was thinking of starting off in Mercia, but fantasy Mercia obviously, imported to a world where magic really works. Start with the moment the Lady was leading them and just assume equality took. Go around the world looking for places and times like that. And make it an in world theory that there's some merciful force deliberately curating places and peoples that would otherwise be lost.
You'd get pockets of Arthurian, but as if Morgana was rightful heir. You'd get maybe Islamic kingdoms, but with women founding universities as their defining moment. History as it actually happened, Rejected Princesses style.
Which would make it a more interesting and varied setting already.
But then as the story progressed and you start to believe the idea this is a refuge and doomed peoples got brought here
there's a gigantimous banestorm, huge, crossing the entire world
and when it clears there are a mess of our cities.
And then the story is a tangle of learning how to get along with the new neighbours and figuring out how to get back. Or if back is even an option. If this place is the Ark, do you really want to portal out of it?
... also, if this alternate Earth hasn't had an industrial civilisation on it before, there's a lot of advantages to staying. Detailed mineral surveys of resources that haven't been tapped yet, sort of thing. The Pratchett books with the walking between infinite Earths covered this, but it would be different with a one way trip to a single earth.
Also, if magic is real, and the banestorm can change the natures of people caught out in it, there's plenty of room for sudden urban fantasy.
So I'm wondering how much landscape you'd have to bring to get a city and it's water supply and a reasonable chance of a power supply.
It'd be fun though if you handwave some of the details, you set up this world and then set up this event and then suddenly anyone playing can be like 'hmmm, now MY city is here, with all its stuff, and without supply lines'. It's kind of post apocalyptic but with wizards around who can take offence if you try anything. I don't know, I think there was that one series about a small town getting cut off?
... the basic problem with doing it at any scale is the world is so interconnected now the first wave of effect would be, like, all the four horsemen come out to play, rapidly.
... sudden humanitarian efforts from your new neighbours, the orcs, would be an interesting story though. I mean, how many new people can magic support? however many you handwave, obviously.
If you move them to somewhere with Divine magic then you've suddenly moved a very, very, rich resource into reach of whatever pantheons operate in the new setting. You might get some miracles to keep the city going, specifically so the city can start to believe in miracles. New souls for the faith...
I don't know, Banestorming an isolated farm gives you a good excuse to bring whatever high tech you want into your newly medieval world. Bringing a whole city is more of a mess of problems. First contact, epic refugee crisis, lots of big stuff.
So, bunches of plot bunnies, potentially.
But not ones that fulfil the genre expectations set by existing stories, so, probably no one is just sitting around waiting for this particular set of stories.
portal fantasy for one person tends to have one set of themes, but what if like your entire town also goes through the portal? sudden colonisation. epic mess.
and you'd be importing a lot of Wrong Genre Savvy people too. I mean all the different gamers who think they know what Orc means...
many stories, much thinking, possibilities.
I was thinking about settings for RPGs or TV shows, or both. I like some bits of GURPS Banestorm, like you can skip the logic of having -alike socities because you just use the banestorm to import them. But I don't like the exact moments they imported. Cliche. Standardised settings, patriarchy edition. So I'd want to pick up the times and places that did things Different, like specifically pasting together socities with models that got ate by the patriarchal empires. And if you're going to do that, you could say it's by design? A refuge world. I was thinking of starting off in Mercia, but fantasy Mercia obviously, imported to a world where magic really works. Start with the moment the Lady was leading them and just assume equality took. Go around the world looking for places and times like that. And make it an in world theory that there's some merciful force deliberately curating places and peoples that would otherwise be lost.
You'd get pockets of Arthurian, but as if Morgana was rightful heir. You'd get maybe Islamic kingdoms, but with women founding universities as their defining moment. History as it actually happened, Rejected Princesses style.
Which would make it a more interesting and varied setting already.
But then as the story progressed and you start to believe the idea this is a refuge and doomed peoples got brought here
there's a gigantimous banestorm, huge, crossing the entire world
and when it clears there are a mess of our cities.
And then the story is a tangle of learning how to get along with the new neighbours and figuring out how to get back. Or if back is even an option. If this place is the Ark, do you really want to portal out of it?
... also, if this alternate Earth hasn't had an industrial civilisation on it before, there's a lot of advantages to staying. Detailed mineral surveys of resources that haven't been tapped yet, sort of thing. The Pratchett books with the walking between infinite Earths covered this, but it would be different with a one way trip to a single earth.
Also, if magic is real, and the banestorm can change the natures of people caught out in it, there's plenty of room for sudden urban fantasy.
So I'm wondering how much landscape you'd have to bring to get a city and it's water supply and a reasonable chance of a power supply.
It'd be fun though if you handwave some of the details, you set up this world and then set up this event and then suddenly anyone playing can be like 'hmmm, now MY city is here, with all its stuff, and without supply lines'. It's kind of post apocalyptic but with wizards around who can take offence if you try anything. I don't know, I think there was that one series about a small town getting cut off?
... the basic problem with doing it at any scale is the world is so interconnected now the first wave of effect would be, like, all the four horsemen come out to play, rapidly.
... sudden humanitarian efforts from your new neighbours, the orcs, would be an interesting story though. I mean, how many new people can magic support? however many you handwave, obviously.
If you move them to somewhere with Divine magic then you've suddenly moved a very, very, rich resource into reach of whatever pantheons operate in the new setting. You might get some miracles to keep the city going, specifically so the city can start to believe in miracles. New souls for the faith...
I don't know, Banestorming an isolated farm gives you a good excuse to bring whatever high tech you want into your newly medieval world. Bringing a whole city is more of a mess of problems. First contact, epic refugee crisis, lots of big stuff.
So, bunches of plot bunnies, potentially.
But not ones that fulfil the genre expectations set by existing stories, so, probably no one is just sitting around waiting for this particular set of stories.
portal fantasy for one person tends to have one set of themes, but what if like your entire town also goes through the portal? sudden colonisation. epic mess.
and you'd be importing a lot of Wrong Genre Savvy people too. I mean all the different gamers who think they know what Orc means...
many stories, much thinking, possibilities.