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Sept 4, 2011 17:21:05 GMT -8
Post by Daos on Sept 4, 2011 17:21:05 GMT -8
I first created Amtar when I was 13. Suffice to say, it had a lot of problems...although we did squeeze a lot of fun from it, I think.
Then I created Cradle, in hopes of learning from my mistakes with Amtar. But I created new mistakes in the process.
So now, I'm attempting to merge and reboot the two worlds, taking the best from both and learning from all previous mistakes.
Anyone who wishes may participate in the process, and that is the purpose of this forum.
So, to get the ball rolling, I first ask this: What did you like best about Amtar? What did you like least? Same with Cradle--best and worst? What worked and what didn't? What had potential but never got utilized? Feel free to speak...well, freely.
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Sept 4, 2011 17:55:00 GMT -8
Post by HorizonsDream on Sept 4, 2011 17:55:00 GMT -8
I like the multiple Gods in Amtar compared to the one God in Cradle. Though, I did like how each race had a different way of worshiping that one God. For example, the gnomes sort of too the Buddhist approach to worshiping the Arbiter. I figure we could still use that, just with multiple Gods rather than the one God. I hope that makes sense.
Personally, I don't think I like how races are all on this one big continent. I know that it makes it easier for you, but I liked how Amtar was separated by continents or islands. I would move the islands a little closer together, like close enough were you could connect a bridge to them or something.
That is really all I got so far.
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Sept 4, 2011 18:10:59 GMT -8
Post by Daos on Sept 4, 2011 18:10:59 GMT -8
I was thinking of somewhere in between, in regard to gods. Not one, but not twenty-six, either.
I also want to discard the idea of 'racial gods.' That is, a god of elves, a god of dwarves. Some races will be drawn to certain gods, of course. But an elf should be able to worship the god of metal, and a dwarf should be allowed to worship the god of music.
Further, I do like the idea of having different sects following the same god, like with the Arbiter. A god of love, for instance, might have a sect that believes in romantic love, another in lust, and yet another for the love between family. A god of war might have a sect that believes in mindless carnage and bloodshed (CE) and a sect that believes in only using war to protect the innocent (LG). Keeping things open like that means I don't need a huge pantheon. I could probably get away with 5 or 6 gods, tops.
As for the landmasses, that is more or less what I was thinking. The five landmasses of Amtar will be smaller and closer together. They'll also hold more kingdoms. Renosia, for instance, won't be one really big empire with four sectors (Necros, Daemon, Legar and Bloodtooth), but rather four separate nations.
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
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Reboot!
Sept 5, 2011 6:10:57 GMT -8
Post by Airellian on Sept 5, 2011 6:10:57 GMT -8
Yeah, five landmasses close enough to connect bridges between them is super unrealistic. I think your problem was that none of the nations even had a way to travel outside of their own landmass, that was readily apparent, except for Octhania. Even then, those guys never went to any of the other landmasses in any of the campaigns.
Frankly, I think five separate landmasses is a mistake, even if they are smaller and closer together. It's simply too much real estate to have any justifiable conflict between peoples, even if you make them smaller and closer together. What you should go for is a mixture of large landmasses and small landmasses, maybe one large one and two medium or small sized ones and a couple of island chains, and have multiple nations scattered throughout those, as defined by geography. Sometimes nations are divided by a sea on separate landmasses, sometimes there's only a small river to define the border, or a high mountain range, or sometimes no natural land border is apparent and only an invisible line divides them. Maybe there's an isolated island empire.
Just remember that a nation of people are defined by multiple factors. Part of that is the geography they live in and the people that surround them. Korea and Japan were partly defined by the all-powerful China sitting next to their doorstep. The rugged men of the Scottish highlands were defined by their land and by the Romans occupying their land. The Mongols of the Steppe were defined by their horses, and the sterile grasslands they roamed. Part of the problem with Amtar and Cradle was that everyone was too isolated from one another. There was no way for them to bump heads with each other. That's why I think you should forget about five landmasses all separated by sea, and stick with two or three and jam as many nations as you can imagine into those lands.
I liked how the setting in Cradle changed. But, in reality, it didn't really change all that much, only slightly. The humans learned culture from the halflings, but the borders of their lands remained static. I think the new setting needs to allow for the possibility of drastic, irrevocable change. Perhaps a culture gets wiped out. The borders between nations shift and move. One nation gets occupied by the other. A god dies. A new god is reborn. Things like that need to happen, in my opinion, and not as a result of any DM planning. Maybe not on a continual basis, but at least often enough that the setting does not feel static.
Frankly, I disliked the monolithic cultures of Cradle's races. Cradle humans were originally roving bands of nomads, but they pretty much acted the same and possessed an identical social structure. It was only through outside influence that they fractured and started differentiating between tribal and civilized humans. We need to have a larger mix of different cultures, and frankly, not all of them need to be medieval-based.
I liked how Cradle saw way more divine intervention, in the form of the white cat, than Amtar did. I think it would be interesting to have these gods act as actual distant but dramatic characters with motivations, plots, et cetera driving the story of the campaign.
I think it's a mistake to already start thinking of gods in terms of concepts like "metal" or "love" or "war". If you're going to have very few gods where multiple interpretations are possible, you're going to have to have expanded personalities and portfolios. They need to have history with each other and with their creations. They need life put into them beyond the lens of a single concept.
If you're only going to have five or six gods, tops, then you should start with five unique personalities and the story of how they create the world, rather than start with, "This guy is the war god, this guy is the metal god, this guy will be a girl and will be the love god" and so on and so forth. I think that approach is boring, and pretty much a rehash of what you already did originally with Amtar. Instead, a different approach might be better.
I have more ideas forthcoming, but I think this is long enough.
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Sept 5, 2011 14:55:51 GMT -8
Post by Daos on Sept 5, 2011 14:55:51 GMT -8
Well, actually all five kingdoms had ships that could travel between the landmasses. (And Cryzza and Gontoria actually were connected by land.) It just never really came up.
Yep, I'm hoping the use of my Worldbuilder's Guide will help me in making things a little more realistic in terms of geography and political borders. In Amtar, it was especially bad. I'd plop down entire towns in the middle of nowhere for no discernible reason. With Cradle, I was a little better, in that I tried to place settlements near sources of fresh water (rivers and lakes).
Also, I should have been clearer, but when I said I wanted to make the five nations smaller and closer together, what I meant was I was hoping to consolidate them a bit. I wouldn't use all five landmasses again. Octhania, for instance, would be broken up into several islands off the coast, instead of being a large Australia-sized landmass. Maybe Renosia and Rabbah could be merged together, instead of being separate landmasses. That sort of thing.
Actually, all of the changes that occurred between campaigns on Cradle were a direct result of PCs' actions. I didn't really plan anything. Things like the formation of the Raptor Empire and the birth of the three human nations happened because of what the PCs did (or didn't do).
In fact, I didn't expect the Raptor Empire at all. I had figured the party would fight the raptors, possibly wiping them out. I never expected them to parley with them, and then negotiate with the humans into giving them equal standing among the tribes.
Well...technically, the humans were fractured before meeting the halflings. They were made up of numerous tribes that constantly warred with each other. The tribes did have their differences in terms of beliefs and philosophies, although I admit there were a lot of similarities between them, too.
I agree completely, though, in having different cultures and not all being medieval based. I really liked how the gnomes in Cradle had a much more eastern flair than the western halflings and humans, for instance. I've been reading up on other cultures, hoping to get some ideas on how to expand on that.
I liked that, too. On Amtar, the gods never intervened or made themselves known (although that was intentional and written into the overall plot). I actually wanted to take divine intervention further in Cradle--beyond the cat, but I chickened out later. It seemed like whenever I used any sort of divine intervention, it utterly destroyed any and all player agency. "Okay, let's drop everything and do whatever our god's agent wants us to."
I had really wanted to build the world on the idea of player agency, that the party could decide their own agendas and goals, and then pursue them. It's hard to say no to a god, especially if it's the one and only all-powerful kind.
Basically, I need to find a way to allow divine intervention without it turning into railroading.
Oh, absolutely. I was only speaking in generic concepts because there's nothing concrete to talk about just yet. But I definitely want my gods to have distinct personalities and agendas, much like in Dragonlance.
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
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Reboot!
Sept 5, 2011 15:48:47 GMT -8
Post by Airellian on Sept 5, 2011 15:48:47 GMT -8
I liked the differing technology/magic levels of each of the races in Cradle. I think that should continue, but within reason. I mean, if you have a group of stone age nomads next to a nation of medieval knights, the stone age group should probably get steamrollered, unless there's a good overriding reason.
When I say I want more divine intervention, I mean I want them to actually be there on the world, directing some things in some way. It should be less like Dragonlance's Paladine, and more like the Iliad.
The thing I liked least about either of your worlds was scope. Nothing was ever big or grandiose. When we attacked the Nightmaster's temple, he had a couple of priests and zombies defending the place. When we ambushed Overlord Quar'toth, he had only fifty troops. I really want to put the henchmen rules in its paces. I want my character to rise to a high enough level that he could conceivably, I don't know, command something that could actually be called an army.
And maybe Cradle was different in that respect, but to be honest, I never saw any of it.
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Sept 5, 2011 16:13:01 GMT -8
Post by Daos on Sept 5, 2011 16:13:01 GMT -8
I like that, too. But it's difficult to justify for very long. If two cultures come into contact with each other, and one is advanced (technology wise) to the other, usually one of two things happens.
Either the advanced culture teaches the primitive one, trades with them, bringing them up to their level (like the hobbits did with the humans in Cradle) or the advanced one 'steamrolls' the primitive one, either wiping them out or conquering them and absorbing them into their own culture.
I'm sure a culture can remain primitive outside of being completely isolated, but it will be tricky.
So instead of one god directing things, we've got possibly half a dozen of them, all directing things and likely in different directions. And the poor mortals get caught in the crossfire. Yeah, I like that idea.
Yes, I did tend to be guilty of scaling down encounters to match the party's level, even if it didn't make a lot of sense.
But as for the PCs, well we never ran a game that reached the level necessary to build a stronghold and acquire followers (which is usually around level 9, depending on the class). But I'd love to see something like that, too.
Like with Cradle, I really want to see the PCs shaping things, for better or worse, throughout the setting.
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
Posts: 1,284
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Reboot!
Sept 6, 2011 9:40:52 GMT -8
Post by Airellian on Sept 6, 2011 9:40:52 GMT -8
What did the DM like/dislike about Amtar or Cradle?
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Sept 6, 2011 23:51:40 GMT -8
Post by Daos on Sept 6, 2011 23:51:40 GMT -8
With Cradle, I liked that the players' actions had consequences that carried over to new games. I liked the variation in culture and that religion played a bigger role in things. And I liked the removal of class/race restrictions.
The problem with Cradle is it went too slowly, I think. I had planned on all five races being introduced in the first game. When that didn't happen, it left us in the bronze age far longer than I wanted with only two races to work with. Also, things were too focused in one area--the free plains. The Empire and Deltalands didn't get any development at all, as a result.
The problem with Amtar was it was too big, and so no matter what we did, it had minimal impact on the rest of the world. Too many sub-races, too many gods.
But Amtar was more fleshed out. Well, probably because I spent more time on it (years, in fact). But then, because I built it when I was so young, it was a bit shoddy, too.
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Nov 27, 2011 17:31:25 GMT -8
Post by Daos on Nov 27, 2011 17:31:25 GMT -8
Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I've either been busy with other things or been working on stuff that isn't really worth discussing (for instance, making copies of the transcripts of the old games, so I can make room on the old site for the new adventures).
Just wanted to let you know I'm still here and working on it, though.
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Dec 18, 2011 14:57:14 GMT -8
Post by Daos on Dec 18, 2011 14:57:14 GMT -8
I've decided that instead of updating the Lost Souls site, I'm going to just remodel the Fate Weavers site instead, then delete the original Lost Souls site. Why? Well, I had a much better idea of what I was doing when I made the FW site than when I made the LS site. The LS site is cluttered and badly organized. The only way I could really revamp it would be to delete the whole thing and start from scratch anyway. By remodeling the FW site instead, it will save a lot more time. I'll make records of everything from the FW site first, of course, before deleting it. For the time being, I've updated the main page and the rules page. I'll start work on the rest soon.
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