Tonight I'm pulling it all together on one of the tiny city's tiniest neighborhoods, Wighthaven, home of The Zorya (Hammondal's largest theater), Saint Kendan's, and Bowerly House. I guess it's kind of a Bohemian neighborhood, and it's home to a mildly famous heresy.
With just seven named streets and a dozen keyed locations of note, it's a gentle entry into assembling a complete neighnborhood chapter.
@golgaloth as always comes up when someone posts this, it's not true that "literally nothing happened". Something DID happen: one of the journalists who broke the story was assassinated.
This is, of course, completely the wrong sort of something to happen. And meanwhile literally nothing happened to the people the article was about.
I'm seat-of-the-pants about #WorldBuilding in some ways, but there's some arbitrary math guiding the scope of #Hammondal. The most important is probably the 1/8th rule, which says I cannot explicitly describe more than 1 location in 8 ... for every building/etc I describe, I need to leave 7 for the GM and/or later development. This is both a maximum and my target, so I'm trying to get very near to that 7:1 ratio but without exceeding it, price-is-right style. [continued] #TTRPG#TTRPGDesign
A second numerical rule is the "Five Excitements" rule, which says that, for each of the neighborhoods, there must be a bare absolute minimum of five reasons I'd be personally excited about PCs visiting there. This one isn't like the 1/8th in that it's not also a target; it's just a ground floor that I'm happy to exceed by as much as possible. Mainly it's to remind myself that even the smallest neighborhood needs to deserve its pages or else be made to sit in the corner until it apologizes.
I have an idea for a get-rich-quick scheme: using the Bessemer process to create massive amounts of high-quality steel. However, I'm sure my #DM has not given a single thought to this (because I know her) so I'm worried that this might give God fun #worldbuilding ideas to fuck with our party. How do I tell my group my plan, without having the industrialized slave company I know is on the other side of the map spontaneously develop a similar process?
I don’t necessarily think those things follow. You can’t build CRIPSR in game because half elves have a human and an elf parent, because half elves imply inheritability which implies DNA.
The rules are the rules. So you might assume oxygen exists because your character needs to breathe, and you might assume metallurgy exists because the rules say you can mine, and forge.
But you can’t just say “with this facet on industryy characters downtime will be more productive than the book says”. If the book says you can mine 10gp worth of ore a day, or turn 10gp of ore into twenty a day… Then that’s what the rules say.
Obviously none of this would survive rigorous scientific method as dnd is not a science simulator. Once upon a time I wanted to use Minecraft as a science simulator… Alas…
As a DM: Trying to sneak such an idea by me and trying to exploit the world with knowledge that doesn’t fit are two surefire ways for you to get that idea blocked completely with no chance to ever use it again.
If you want to introduce that technology to the world, talk to the DM, tell her that you would hate for that idea to be used by the enemy company and work out a way that makes it fun, but not completely game breaking for this to appear.
Seriously, how come people still don’t get the number one rule of playing a COOPERATIVE game?
@pionoplayer For me, I like to know about the economy/trade relations, religious influences on the culture of the region, unique magical practices, historical heroes and villains...That's what I can think of at the moment.
@pionoplayer I like reading about about how common stories (histories or fairytales) diverge in similar cultures or in cultures who live close to each other. As well as hearing similarities in such stories or in common social niceties in cultures which are far away from each other and don't have (or aren't known for) having a connection which would explain it.
@golgaloth I translate German folk tales, and the most interesting one I have come across is:
"Venetians are all secret mages who come to the German mountain ranges in order to harvest gold, silver, gemstones, and other riches with sorcerous methods!"
Surprise! Scientific Research Finds Assumptions About Ancient Gender Roles Are BS
"...women regularly hunted in 79% of documented researched hunter-gatherer societies. Also, most of those societies specifically trained their female members to become hunters."
@golgaloth But I've been assured, assured I tell you, by very sensible-looking 'evolutionary psychologists' with well-subscribed YouTube channels that women were the gatherers and men were the hunters. That's why women prefer pink, so they can see berries better, and men are good at rugby, because they evolved to throw spears.
What is your justice system like in your fantasy world? Do sheriffs patrol your lands? Do knights take care of the crime? Does an inquistion or religious group? If there is a famous (or infamous) group or person taking care of justice, tell us about them!
Join our group @allstartrek for updates. I try to post the schedule daily. If you are a voyager fan, that comes on at 11:00 Eastern on the H&I channel. But even if you don’t have H&I you can stream along