synthesizing Evening Bell (FT) ideas / setting and worldbuilding

[hengest]

Post 1: purpose

I have a few separate things now and I can kind of see that they are all of a piece.  While I like them to be modular and usable in pieces of any size, lately I've been moved to try to bring some of them together in a suggestion for a larger setting or for interacting settings.

Here are my things I'm trying to tie together.  Not to force it, but because it makes sense to me...at least in my head.  This thread will be to see if I can make it work for anyone else.

This thread has the basic "graded fairy-tale" workup I've been thinking about for a few months.

This thread has a record of the "town" posts, few in number but still not too bad, as it seems to me.

My postal service thread and manikins.

So I'm going to describe a way for these things to work in the same world, even in the same general area of a landmass.  

[hengest]

Post 2: central area

First, I want to imagine a central and "normalish" area.  In terms of my world-spectrum, it's between 7 and 8 but closer to 8.  Magic is very limited and local, may not even be thought of as magic as we know it.  I want more than one culture and language group here, and more than one military / political power, but they don't have to be gigantic empires.  I suppose I'm thinking of something like Eastern Europe between 500 and 1000 AD.

So with just dregs of "magic," it's largely familiar medieval fantasy technology that people have at their disposal.  Nothing worldshaking here (although I want the cultures to be distinct at least on paper so they can react differently to what happens), as I want the tension to be what happens on the edges of this whole area (see below).

The area should be large enough that there are areas at either "side" of it that have little directly to do with each other. This will allow that, if your campaign starts in one place and all the aspects of that area begin to get familiar, there is a whole related world just a mountain range away. But confining this area to part of a continent rather than planning an entire planet at once will allow you to make good use of the possibility of "bands" of world-spectrum values.

[hengest]

Post 3: WT values and dynamism

The pressure element that gives some oomph and dynamism to the setting is the world-type creep moving from the direction (ideally, from opposite the sea).  That is, kind of compressing the existing cultures and giving them nowhere to go.  

What do I mean by this?  I mean that if the area is reliably 7.8, we start getting off to the west 7.5...which when moves east.  And behind it come bands of 7.2, 6.8, 6.3, maybe a deeper patch of 5.2...

What begins as odd happenings becomes bizarre tales and then frightening facts, but without a military face, seeming to threaten everyone equally.  

"Chunkier" bands or non-banded variation (perhaps values radiating from a central point as from an invisible earthquake) may be used as desired, depending on world size and other factors.

[hengest]

Post 4: WT-creep

World-type creep flows across land but not at a perfectly even rate.  Artificial areas (such as cities and dungeons) are penetrated by "lower numbers" somewhat raggedly, although ultimately the levels even out.  But an area can remain in a state of unevenness for decades or longer.  

What does this mean?

A city, where everything is "stirred" by activity regularly, may hold out for a while as a cultural unit against the encroaching "lower numbers," but will tend to be homogeneous within its own boundaries...mostly.  

A dungeon that has less hivelike activity, however, may be seriously uneven, having patches of its former number durrounded by areas of various lower numbers, up to and including the target "invader."  What does this mean?  Say a dungeon was an area of solid 6 ("gaming) and from the west there is a heavy "front" of 4 coming in over a couple hundred years.  The 'terminator line' of this 'front' may be fairly deep and slow-moving.  That is, a dungeon in or just behind that area could have rooms ranging from 6 (normal gaming) down to 4 (mythical and magical folktale, timeless or implicitly cyclical narratives).

What would one do with this?  It could serve as a stimulating way to generate or re-generate dungeon rooms, first of all.  Doing so on the fly during an adventure might be combined with pre-determined rooms, so that something is in place, but something is still new for the ref.

Ways to do this will occur to any interested reader, but simply for example, if one had a dungeon complex or even a level that looked like this:



then one could simply roll for each room and hallway on a table like this:

1d12

1	4.0
2	4.2
3	4.4
4	4.6
5	4.8
6	5.0
7	5.2
8	5.4
9	5.6
10	5.8
11	6.0
12	roll twice again and split the room in some way

(This is with even chances, of course you could easily weight it in favor or lower or higher numbers.)

Having generated such values, one could then be inspired for ways for the rooms to interact or for "powered up" versions of what is in them that has been "soaked" in this deeper number over time.  I would not advise treating this simply as a power-up for spells and magic items.  The idea is going to be treated idiosyncratically by each ref and understood idiosyncratically by each player or PC.  There would be endless variations not only of applications, but even of ideas about how to apply this notion to a room.

A very simple one: a room of 4.2 is generated in a "base 6" dungeon.  That area is heavily weighted towards cyclical narratives and magical folktale.  If it was once a temple or some kind and a significant wedding was held there, that union might be somehow ever-present there, disturbable, but with serious difficulty.  This could give some meaning to the level and influence interpretation of other rooms, placement of treasure, even the origin of the entire dungeon complex.

A 5 is rolled in the same dungeon.  The ref might place a magically hibernating monster here, one whose nature (if not personal status) make it an encounter "not unbecoming men who strove with gods" (never mind that the PCs are likely not of this stature!).

Note: Character values, which you may read about here, may be considered as an alternate overlapping spectrum and can easily be used to generate special places, bands or rings of land, or simply unique and exceptional spots aboveground or below.  The topic of the various interactions between these spectra will be addressed in the future.

Variations abound and can be discussed on this thread if anyone desires.

[hengest]

Post 5: tying things together

The last few posts should give a general idea of using random, semi-random, or non-random methods to generate a kind of topography of WT and Character for a landmass, which "map" should offer a somewhat different set of features and interactions to stir the imagination.  Thinking along these lines, it is now very easy to imagine a landmass that has room for all the following and much more, without the "kitchen sink" magical background that is desirable for some, but not all, game settings. 

(links below repeated from above, but descriptions edited)

1) This thread has the basic "graded fairy-tale" workup -- and this continues to be the basic idea here, along with Character.

2) This thread contains The Town.  As originally conceived, the Town is more or less normal at the top, but becomes more nightmarish as you head downward into the tunnels and chambers.  The nightmare below the Town may be thought of now as descending from (roughly) -1 to -8 or even lower in Character values.  WT might be stable as you descend, or might descend from 8 to 5.  The two values do not need to descend at the same rate, and one might go back up. 

Example, continuing the Town discussion above with a bit more description: descending into the earth under the Town, you might find that Character also descends, as the "dungeons" become ever less wholesome.  You might find that WT descends as well, the space becoming ever more like "myth."  The logical "bottom" of this, then, is some sort of "deeply mythical horribleness," but that is not the only way to play it.  After all, WT might keep descending, while Character at some point reverses its direction.  There might be, then, well below the Town, a sort of "peak" of nightmare which is followed by spaces that continue to grow ever more mythical but also more wholesome.  

Why there should be such an arrangement can be left to the ref's imagination, a geological / topological /mythological history or map of values changing through time, perhaps for a reason we can understand and perhaps not.  

3) My postal service thread and manikins.

Such a setup might easily be justified with a WT-style topography that accounts for the interactions of variously 'magical' races, and could even be in the same campaign setting as the Town, despite the tonal differences.  

Final notes (for now): the spectra should not be known directly to PCs or players and should be felt only through their "effects" after some time exploring the campaign world.  It is easy to conceive of introductory "sandbox areas" that use a difference in WT or Character to some effect, and just as easy to think of how an initial area might be all of one unremarkable type with the possibility of play being drawn into another, which might encourage engagement for the characters and players.

Finding a pair of values for an area is just the beginning of determining what that area (room, dungeon, wood, kingdom, island, continent) might be or contain.  Anyone who wishes to use such spectra as a tool in worldbuilding may find it helpful to make a set or sets of "daughter tables" to generate rooms, items, encounters, or even adventure hooks consistent with the nature of the area.  

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I am off to sleep, so I will only say tonight, that is a sweet looking dungeon, did you draw that or snag it somewhere, that really looks sharp!

[hengest]

Aug 13, 2021 1:52:57 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

I am off to sleep, so I will only say tonight, that is a sweet looking dungeon, did you draw that or snag it somewhere, that really looks sharp!

Swiped, I will send you the link if it is not accessible.

Edit (Aug 13 2021): the above map that I linked to (purely as an example) is from this blog post by ClawCarver, whose work looks quite worthwhile.  He also has some old hand-drawn maps that look pretty cool, interested parties should check him out.  

[hengest]

I really went nuts with this stuff this year and then did not follow up at all. I suppose it was all for people to riff on, but now I'm far enough from it that maybe I should just riff on it. I don't even know what to make of some of this material. It seems like it could all be interpreted as simply a kind of inherent "mana" but that is not how I want to take it.