worldbuilding Fantasy World planning

[Turtle373 he/him]

We could have different characters join the group at different times, for instance I Mac's character, I think it was Mak?, and one or two others could start at the academy, then leave to investigate something, then different people join as they go along.

I haven't had a lot of time to work on the Gods yet, though I'll get to it soon.

EDIT: 500th post! It actually makes me really happy it was on this thread

Edited March 11, 2019 by Turtle373

[+Sorana she/her]

Will there be a summary of what was decided, that I have something for orientation when I create a character?

[kenod]

10 hours ago, Sorana said:

Will there be a summary of what was decided, that I have something for orientation when I create a character?

We've got a google doc with all the information:

On 3/8/2019 at 4:36 AM, ZincAboutIt said:

Oooh thanks I'll take a look now. 

Meanwhile, I created a Master Planning Google Doc that we can continually reference and edit as needed. It's open-edit so be honorable everyone  

Also, can you add this to the OP @xinoehp512? It would make it easier to find.

Edit:
I got bored and designed a board game (read: chess variant) that might be played in Kuria (with variations likely being played in different countries).

Spoiler

Kurian chess:
(for people who like chess, this is basically a chess variety combining pre-chess, fairy pieces and different mate rules)
A board game played in Kuria, with variants existing in other countries as well, though with differently named pieces, sometimes using different movement rules as well.
The rules are somewhat similar to normal chess, though with a few differences.

The pieces:

Spoiler

The Pawn:

Spoiler

Same as normal pawns, rules about promotion and capturing other pieces en passant are the same as well, with the exception that a pawn can only promote into a Chancellor if the original one has been captured.

The Tower:

Spoiler

Basically a Rook, with the same movement rules.

The Mage:

Spoiler

Functions similar to a Knight, but capable of jumping three steps vertically and horizontally as well.

The Ship (Rider in other countries):

Spoiler

A Bishop, moving only diagonally, but when capturing other pieces, it'll jump over said pieces, landing on the square behind it. This square needs to be free for the piece to be able to capture a different piece.

The Chancellor (Heir or Queen in other countries):

Spoiler

Moves the same as a queen.

The Doge/King (what's our ruler's title? Basically has the piece has the local country's ruler title as name in every country):

Spoiler

Basically the same as the king in normal chess.

 

Special rules (assume normal chess rules unless noted otherwise):

Spoiler

Board setup:

Spoiler

When setting up the pieces, the players decide on where to place their pieces themselves, with the limitations that the second row consists of the 8 pawns, and that all other pieces are on the first row. Another limit is that both Ships are on different colored squares. When placing the pieces on the first row, white will start out, followed by black. Pieces are placed one at a time, with the other player placing their next piece after the first player has placed one of their own pieces.

The king's death:

Spoiler

If the king is in check, the player isn't required to get it out of check if the Chancellor is still alive. If the player doesn't get the king out of check the opponent can capture the king. When this happens the Chancellor will immediately turn into the new king, their move set changing as well to reflect this. If the king is in check while the player doesn't have a chancellor normal chess rules will apply instead.

Castling:

Spoiler

Since the Tower's and King's starting positions might be different, castling works a bit different as well. The final positions of the pieces will be the same as they would be when castling using normal chess rules, but all spaces between the start and end positions of the Tower and King need to be free and cannot be under attack, not just the standard castling spaces. (for more details look up the chess960 castling rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960#Castling_rules).

 

 

 

Edited March 11, 2019 by kenod

[+Sorana she/her]

Wow, you have done a great job! I really like it a lot!

I thought about playing a travelling journeyman. And I ended with some questions. If it's too early, then just ignore it, until you're ready.

1) Are there journeymen and exists the whole medieval craft system in general? You wrote that you took medieval europe partially as a rolemodel, but as that's really specific I wasn't sure.

2) What about gender equality? Can I play a female journeyman, or should it be a man?

3) Can I use innate magic to heal, or is that only with ritual magic possible? If it's not possible with innate magic, is it possible for someone to have no investiture at all? The whole circle drawing doesn't fit the person I have in mind.

[kenod]

12 hours ago, Sorana said:

Wow, you have done a great job! I really like it a lot!

I thought about playing a travelling journeyman. And I ended with some questions. If it's too early, then just ignore it, until you're ready.

1) Are there journeymen and exists the whole medieval craft system in general? You wrote that you took medieval europe partially as a rolemodel, but as that's really specific I wasn't sure.

2) What about gender equality? Can I play a female journeyman, or should it be a man?

3) Can I use innate magic to heal, or is that only with ritual magic possible? If it's not possible with innate magic, is it possible for someone to have no investiture at all? The whole circle drawing doesn't fit the person I have in mind.

1) I guess so? Additional opinions might be nice, but it seems logical to me.

2) That's an interesting can of worms, and something that would probably need a bit of debate. Personal opinion combined with some justifications, I'd say we'd have a bit of artistic license here and say that gender equality is a lot better than medieval Europe, and woman can have jobs too, although it would probably depend on the culture as well, with some cultures being better at this than others. Here we have the benefit of a navy trade kingdom, which means that other cultural influences (like gender equality) would spread more easily, and a lot of sailors and merchants would mean that their wives would manage finances and shops a lot, which would probably make them a lot more independent, and things like female gods would help as well. On the other hand, I think some degree of bias would still exist, and a lot of things would also depend on which job a woman has, with certain ones probably being more acceptable.

3) I don't think so. Natural magic might work though, through your character being somewhat renowned for their abilities, and gaining a supernatural ability to heal people, though I'm not sure how likely this would be for a journeyman. Another possibility would be for them to use healing herbs, which would be less effective (probably) than Ritual-based healing magic, but would require less study and be much less expensive, since you don't need Investure crystals. For this, Innate magic might help identify these herbs and their abilities, as well as (possibly) see a person's ailments.

 

Edit:
Different topic, but do we have a specific region or style in mind for local names? It would kind of make sense for people from the same region to have similarly styled names.

Edited March 12, 2019 by kenod

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

Re: gender equality, I would largely agree with kenod that we can - and should - take some liberties on how closely we follow a traditional medieval/Renaissance Europe feel. Ritual magic seems like a practice that everyone should be able to seek out and learn, and therefore it would not be unseemly for a woman to be a ritual mage or to study magic. Women being deified into goddesses would also increase equality across the board, since everyone could, in theory, become divine. I do, however, enjoy putting limits on a society if only because it is fun to find ways to circumvent them. If we do come up with gender rules and prohibitions, I think that there should be some put on each group.

[ShadowLord_Lith he/him]

13 minutes ago, ZincAboutIt said:

Re: gender equality, I would largely agree with kenod that we can - and should - take some liberties on how closely we follow a traditional medieval/Renaissance Europe feel. Ritual magic seems like a practice that everyone should be able to seek out and learn, and therefore it would not be unseemly for a woman to be a ritual mage or to study magic. Women being deified into goddesses would also increase equality across the board, since everyone could, in theory, become divine. I do, however, enjoy putting limits on a society if only because it is fun to find ways to circumvent them. If we do come up with gender rules and prohibitions, I think that there should be some put on each group.

If we wanted, there's an interesting way I can divide Innate magic that would make female Innate more valuable to Ritualists than males, while giving the males some odd quirks too. 

1. Why not?

2. It depends on if people like my Innate idea- giving them more power and influence would automatically increase equality in such a trade-centered, Ritualist dominant society. 

3. Not as it is now, though that also depends, as if one had training an Innate could power the circle they see around a person relating to hair health, or do the same to a plany making it instantly more effective as a healing herb. It depends. 

[kenod]

3 minutes ago, ShadowLord_Lith said:

If we wanted, there's an interesting way I can divide Innate magic that would make female Innate more valuable to Ritualists than males, while giving the males some odd quirks too. 

Can you post it? I'm interested now.

1 minute ago, ShadowLord_Lith said:

3. Not as it is now, though that also depends, as if one had training an Innate could power the circle they see around a person relating to hair health, or do the same to a plany making it instantly more effective as a healing herb. It depends. 

I think your auto-correct did some weird stuff here?

[ShadowLord_Lith he/him]

16 hours ago, kenod said:

Can you post it? I'm interested now.

I think your auto-correct did some weird stuff here?

1. Sure, just a minute. 

2. Yes. I meant 'their' and 'plant' respectively. 

[kenod]

37 minutes ago, ShadowLord_Lith said:

1. Sure, just a minute. 

2. Yes. I meant 'their' and 'plant' respectively. 

Nice, thanks.

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

I just realized no one addressed your question about language/naming conventions, @kenod, but it's a good one. Since the parent culture of the countries around Kuria is Rusanic, and the city names sound relatively Slavic, I've been considering using naming conventions that sort of echo that culture. However, depending on what kind of feel we want to give the Kurian Bay (Mediterranean was a suggestion) we could alter that. Thoughts?

[kenod]

29 minutes ago, ZincAboutIt said:

I just realized no one addressed your question about language/naming conventions, @kenod, but it's a good one. Since the parent culture of the countries around Kuria is Rusanic, and the city names sound relatively Slavic, I've been considering using naming conventions that sort of echo that culture. However, depending on what kind of feel we want to give the Kurian Bay (Mediterranean was a suggestion) we could alter that. Thoughts?

There's also the issue nobody involved is Slavic as far as I know, so coming up with names could be difficult. It also depends on the character I guess, since as a trade hub people from the major cities could have any name, since there are a whole bunch of different cultures.
My guess would be that either Germanic or Latin/Mediterranean names would probably work the best, since most of us will probably be at least somewhat familiar with them, and they can both fit with the whole medieval fantasy theme.

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

17 minutes ago, kenod said:

There's also the issue nobody involved is Slavic as far as I know, so coming up with names could be difficult. It also depends on the character I guess, since as a trade hub people from the major cities could have any name, since there are a whole bunch of different cultures.
My guess would be that either Germanic or Latin/Mediterranean names would probably work the best, since most of us will probably be at least somewhat familiar with them, and they can both fit with the whole medieval fantasy theme.

This is fine with me!  Easy is usually good.

[kenod]

3 minutes ago, ZincAboutIt said:

This is fine with me!  Easy is usually good.

So which group will we go with?

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

Just now, kenod said:

So which group will we go with?

I'd go Germanic probably. It doesn't matter all that much to me though.

[kenod]

2 minutes ago, ZincAboutIt said:

I'd go Germanic probably. It doesn't matter all that much to me though.

I personally prefer Germanic as well, since I know it better. It would be good to keep in mind not all names might work that well though, since a lot of the later names came from Saints, which might be a bit weird (though we could just ignore that. I don't think most people would notice or care).

Edited March 13, 2019 by kenod

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

2 minutes ago, kenod said:

I personally prefer Germanic as well, since I know it better. It would be good to keep in mind not all names might work that well though, since a lot of the later names came from Saints, which might be a bit weird (though we could just ignore that. I don't think most people would notice or care).

Yeah, so many of the names that are common in English-speaking countries are derived from Saints, which is both cool and frustrating. I'll link some name etymology sites into the Google doc to help people come up with something Germanic if they need it, though I agree about ignoring Saint names.

Edited March 13, 2019 by ZincAboutIt
changed a word

[+Sorana she/her]

I could also make a list with some examples, if that could help people choose a name.

[kenod]

I could probably add some Dutch names to the list as well, though I'd have to go and look up their origins first.

2 minutes ago, Sorana said:

I could also make a list with some examples, if that could help people choose a name.

Do you know any female German names involving plants (specifically flowers)? I'm looking for one for my character.

[+Sorana she/her]

43 minutes ago, kenod said:

Do you know any female German names involving plants (specifically flowers)? I'm looking for one for my character.

I do actually.

Jasmin, Rosa, Erika, Lilia, Viola, Alissa

[Steel Inquisitive he/him]

Is there anything that people think we MUST get done before we can start RPing? I feel like we've got the magic explained pretty well, we have a map, and we're figuring out the cultures, which I feel like we will always be working on. 

[kenod]

1 minute ago, Steel Inquisitive said:

Is there anything that people think we MUST get done before we can start RPing? I feel like we've got the magic explained pretty well, we have a map, and we're figuring out the cultures, which I feel like we will always be working on. 

Decide on an actual plot, and make sure everyone has characters?

[ShadowLord_Lith he/him]

Suggested fix to the innate in response to a common concern:

Spoiler

One potential option to add to the innate is that women can see whole circles, and men can see individual runes. Using this, women can understand ritual circles and how they will function with a glance while men need to interpret every individual rune and work out the whole circles purpose from there- though this means that men are better at experimenting, women have stopped many otherwise disastrous experiments from causing unfathomable destruction. As such, women are also the only ones who can see the flow of the ley lines, whereas men can only see that they exist. This means that women can draw circles that draw on ley magic directly, and are capable of drawing on it themselves. 

 

[Steel Inquisitive he/him]

12 minutes ago, kenod said:

Decide on an actual plot, and make sure everyone has characters?

I believe @ZincAboutIt and @xinoehp512 were working on the plot. I think we had decided to let the plot develop organically with those two planning out a few big events to tie things together and shepherd it to the end.  

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

4 minutes ago, Steel Inquisitive said:

I believe @ZincAboutIt and @xinoehp512 were working on the plot. I think we had decided to let the plot develop organically with those two planning out a few big events to tie things together and shepherd it to the end.  

I’ll talk to @xinoehp512 but I’d also like to know a bit more broadly what types of things people are interested in for big plots. There’s tons of potential in a world like this - what do you think would be fun? Suggestions will help us narrow down, even if we don’t reveal the main large events outright.