Fun Stuff > CLIKC
D&D Pathfinder
Neko_Ali:
--- Quote from: hedgie on 09 Sep 2018, 09:59 ---Hmm. The Dark Sun setting had a giant sea of silt, and the desertification literally *was* that a wizard did it, or rather that all the wizards did it since arcane magic is the fossil fuels of the setting. Some of the old 2nd-ed books on that setting may have some useful info in terms of helping with the world-building. Then again, since I don't plan on publishing any settings, I figure I'll take anything that's not nailed down from anywhere.
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I steal heavily from all sorts of sources as well. Not only are the countries in my home brew world of Myrion drawn heavily from real-world European and Asian countries, I borrow heavily from other D&D settings and outside as well. For D&D I use a lot from the Eberron, Spelljammer and a little from the Dark Sun setting. One big influence outside D&D is the Warhammer Fantasy universe. I have a somewhat Egypt inspired country called Sekhaat which is an evil empire that uses undead (mostly skeletons) as their army. It's a little bit Egypt, a lot Dark Sun though it occupies the rough land mass of India and the Mediterranean. Once they were demon worshipers and a pact with Asmodeus brought about the tiefling race. One of the mages there got ambitious though... You might have heard of him. His name is Vecna.
A major component of my game is that gods are ascended mortals and extraplanar beings. When he was mortal, Vecna aspired to greatness. An arch necromancer, he became a lich and started drawing life from the land of Sekhaat, ala Dark Sun. He has a fair bit of Nagash from Warhammer mixed in... Eventually he mostly drained the life from Sekhaat, turning it into a massive desert. Not that he cared, since the undead could worship him just as well. The remaining mortals mostly live in city states, ruled with iron fists by their Sorcerer Priests. Worship of Vecna supplanted the worship of Asmodeus when he ascended, causing a great hatred between the two.
So yeah.. borrow heavily. Nobody's going to judge and when you use things people are already aware of you don't have to spend hours explaining every detail.
hedgie:
I've actually found that creating gods is the difficult part. Creating religious sects is easy enough, but a balanced pantheon, it's still very much a work in progress. I ended up firing up Krita so I could start drawing and not have to worry about having to scan something later (and crap, I'm rusty at drawing with a wacom tablet). So far, I've come up with a goddess of life and death who is the primary nature deity, and a deity of magic and artifice as the creator gods, and that the others were either created, or raised from being mortal as the need arose. It was actually easier for me to create religious cults (which may or may not follow an actual divine being) than it was the "lesser" gods.[1]
[1] Both the head gods are true neutral, the secondaries are some strain of neutral, then the more "extreme" alignments come from them.
Neko_Ali:
I'm mostly using the Dawn War deities from the DMG and a few traditional standards like Asmodeus and Lloth. I had originally thought to create an original pantheon for each nation but decided against it. Instead focusing on more immediate cultural, technological and magical concepts for the nations, as well as designing maps and adventures. Things that the players would interact with regularly. The god-building can wait until it becomes relevant.
I have created a few unique gods at this point, as they are relevant to characters or stories I want to tell. A lot of the existing countries have a specific patron deity that played a crucial role founding or shaping the coutry. Gods like the Everqueen, who founded Erawyn, my steampunk Victorian England style countries. Or the Green Lady, who guides the country Yvaine. Which is a Warhammer Bretonnia/Arthurian legend land of noble knights and Chivalry. And I already talked about what I did with Vecna...
Another thing I have done is use gods to memorialize certain characters. The god of good natured mischief in my world is a purple tiefling names Mollymauk.
Gyrre:
--- Quote from: hedgie on 09 Sep 2018, 09:59 ---That seems like a pretty cool idea, and I presume that either the lizardfolk or Yuan-ti would be considered the human analogue.
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I was thinking the lizardfolk would be the human analogue, while the Yuan-ti would be akin to elves. Kobolds would loosely equate to a mix of gnomes and dwarves, and dragonborn a loose mix of dwarves and goliaths in terms of equivalence.
As for the desert's explanation, it's based on an actual thing IRL (fluidized airbeds) to bring a bit more realism to it. It'd probably have to be the whole of the Underdark that's filling in though for it to have been a fluidized airbed roughly the size of Alaska for the past few thousand years. Maybe magic would just be a better explanation.
hedgie:
I think it's good that you're giving a nod to science and real world phenomena. It's like the lake of boiling water I mentioned from last game, when one of the clerics casts water walking on everyone, I had to pointedly ask about the whole convection issue. I think that you have a good instinct for where you want to take this, and both Neko_Ali and I were thinking of something that you might be able to poach extra ideas from.
Edit: I like using lizardfolk for humans and the yuan-ti as elves. I hadn't even thought about the latter.
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