Author Topic: Brainstorming  (Read 11735 times)

Offline dna1

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #20 on: July 28, 2013, 09:59:36 PM »
Some more stuff you should know. The illithids I think are basically going to come from a future Greyhawk setting. They come from the original Greyhawk setting. Part of the Greyhawk setting is actually this problem of magic weakening and draining away. Some philosophize that the more mages use magic, the more it's used-up, so to speak. Boccob, who as I recall can time travel, never finds the solution to this problem. I was going to have it be a result of the fundamental supernatural laws Greyhawk was built on when Jeriah Chronos initiated its timeline. It might have something to do with Greyhawk not having a weave which holds magic together. In any event, magic disappears in Greyhawk's future, and this allows for the rise of technology. Eventually, psionics also develops, as there is still supernatural power concentrated in the individual soul even if Greyhawk doesn't have a weave. This results in at least one serious change with my game from published material - my illithids are not at all sorcerous. They are all psions or martial types. I always thought it ruined the flavor to not have them be psions anyways. In any event, one additional major reason for why they're so threatening is because they reached their power level only on psionics. Now they've gone to the past and to other worlds entirely where magic still/always functions. If they had mastery over psionics and the various forms of magic, they would be incredibly powerful. There is a league of individuals trying to oppose the illithids, largely composed of spellweavers, and needless to say one of their main objectives so far has been to keep the illithids far away from learning any magic. Up to this point, they've been mostly successful. But the occasional multiclassed illithid wizard can be found.

The illithids traveling back in time was how psionics and advanced and modern technology were introduced into our timeline. Gnomes claim to have invented some advanced technology of their own, but for the most part they've just been lying to people with their superior illusion magic, lol. To their credit, though, the gnomes have been the best reverse engineers for mass producing advanced technology. The illithids would have rather kept this unique power sources to themselves, but necessity has forced them to trade with the drow and others, so a fair bit has disbursed to the general population. Mind, technology is still rare enough that it's expensive (as it should be, because it's generally more powerful) and that it doesn't change the essential high fantasy setting. So it's like high fantasy infused with Final Fantasy.

Concerning the name Jeriah, I agree it doesn't have the greatest sound. That's simply his parent-given name recorded in the history books. It means "taught by God" which I thought was rather appropriate. We could say for that reason, and because it is a humble name, that he always hated that name and took simply to calling himself Chronos. In most ancient cultures, individuals only had first names. At most you would have a first name and then "of [your city]." Like "Josh of Vancouver." So Jeriah may have been named Jeriah Chronos by his Netherese colleagues to distinguish him from other Jeriahs. But he may have preferred another name entirely, or later he may take on another name entirely for the sake of anonymity. Anyways, open to input there.

K that sounds cool we can work with that. As for the name it doesn't really matter I suppose. We can call him what ever. I like the idea of a kind of.... chrono trigger meets final fantasy campaign. Which is what I'm feeling we are kind of getting at here.





What I was hoping to achieve with the map is to have all the layers fused into one jpeg except the sewer tunnels and stories 2 and up. Obviously, from a bird's eye view, we can only see one level at a time, so I want that to be the ground level to start with. I would still like to see all the sewer access points if possible, but if that involves tediously separating them from the sewer PDF layer, then don't worry about it. I would like to have all the other label layers though. Obviously these will be painted away before players can see them, but while we're still building the map it would be nice to have them around so we know what areas need to be populated with artwork and what kind of artwork we should be using.

So, with what I've said above, I was intending on granting access to all officially published campaign settings and mechanics, including d20 Modern, d20 Future, and Pathfinder, in all mediums - books, magazines, and web. The easiest stuff to access is stuff from the core books and the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. OP things and things from other settings are harder to find, but they're still not considered homebrew.

K that will take some time, but we have plenty of that so it shouldn't be a problem. I can do up the maps anyway we like, and it will be easy to make a player version and a GM version. So no worries there.
For the d20 modern etc I have never actually played it. I know its very similar to regular D&D, but I do know there is some major differences as well. I think we could just use the weapons/armor stuff from those books as opposed to player material. Or we could homebrew some stuff...



So how I was thinking of handling homebrew is, you decide at character creation whether you'll use homebrew material or not (either way we'll have to give it the clear, of course). If you don't use homebrew, you gain another benefit instead. I was thinking that would be special knowledge. Maybe one item of special knowledge per level - that might be too much though, IDK yet. What I mean by special knowledge is a way to bypass knowledge checks to get access to OP stuff. In other words, normally you would need a high knowledge check to know the Wizard's College is experimenting on students. But if the DM writes into your story that one day you noticed said experiments while walking along, then you have the knowledge in spite of a check. So we might put players in libraries and have them luckily read exactly the right book for their characters or whatever. Then they know how to become a circle mage or something.

You're allowed to populate some of these other worlds if you want, but I was going to focus on the main timeline in Faerun and leave the other players to homebrew worlds if they liked.

So I suppose part of what's needed at this point is the decision to go or not ahead with these premade campaigns. That would require me to read them though, lol. I'm so cramped for time ATM. I might be able to read them in a couple weeks, but no sooner. They obviously won't already have an overarching quest, so we'll still need to figure that out. But it's hard to figure that out without know what they are about.

K so this is actually what I have kind of been talking about with factions and multiple worlds. I think that for any characters selecting homebrew, or anything other than the basic setting we should use one of the other multiple worlds. Then bring the characters to ForgottenRealms.
The characters already from waterdeep, should have the option of starting as part of a faction, or maybe the 1-4 levels would be them joining a faction. Then said faction will have its own benefits. Like in my High Arcana game, the Delver faction had lots of resources for dungeon crawls and fighter type stuff. They had maps and even certain "safe houses" near dangerous areas. For important members that went missing they would even send Rescue teams. Where as The Inverted Pyramid was a group that specialized in information. Players who choose the inverted pyramid have easier access to magic goods, and information in general. A lot of times I would eliminate certain knowledge checks that had to do with things that faction covered.

I wold say lets not use the lower premade stuff, like adventure to under mountain. Or we could take ideas and form our own goodness from them, kind of like what I'm doing in my RL game. I think the only problem with premade adventures is some players will look up the adventure to see whats going to happen. Such as Andrew in your pbp currently.
So I think we should adapt anything premade to fit our own badassery
Roses are Red. Gaming is fun. You're over encumbered and cannot Run.

Offline professorgear

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #21 on: August 02, 2013, 07:19:45 PM »
Hey Tyson, I was skimming through your links on your High Arcana setting and couldn't find anything on your guilds. When you get the chance, could you post that material?

Offline dna1

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #22 on: August 02, 2013, 09:53:35 PM »
i did already! its in the other thread
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Offline professorgear

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #23 on: August 03, 2013, 12:10:51 AM »
Is this what you're talking about?

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=6048.0

How much of this is sirpercival's work? He won't mind if we use it, will he?
« Last Edit: August 03, 2013, 12:17:10 AM by professorgear »

Offline dna1

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #24 on: August 03, 2013, 02:33:26 AM »
Roses are Red. Gaming is fun. You're over encumbered and cannot Run.

Offline dna1

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #25 on: August 03, 2013, 04:50:25 PM »
and to answer your question- no i don't think he will mind. i can't remember who came up with what, but i know i did a lot of it. after he took over he changed things. his version has expanded things a bit, he added more guilds also.

thats why in the other thread i linked the old original version of the high arcana setting. because thats what i had worked on. but as i mentioned we can refluff things as needed. adding or taking ones out idc.. this is just a good already thought up basis to start from on the guilds.
Roses are Red. Gaming is fun. You're over encumbered and cannot Run.

Offline professorgear

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #26 on: August 18, 2013, 04:00:50 AM »
Hey Tyson,
I've been working on a system of morals for the game, but before I make a post, it would be good to know what common ground I can reference. Are you Christian?

Offline dna1

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #27 on: August 18, 2013, 06:43:04 PM »
Yo~

sorry for the lack of posting, I'v been working like 50+ hours a week. plus moving into a new house this week.

umm i don't really fall into any one religion i guess. although i do know quite a bit about a lot of them. like i've read stuff from a bunch of them. i tend to like what they are trying to impart on people, not the organizations so much.

so feel free to post from the christian perspective.
Roses are Red. Gaming is fun. You're over encumbered and cannot Run.

Offline dna1

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #28 on: August 20, 2013, 08:40:04 PM »
Hey dude for some reason I can't access the pbphud off of my new internet.. its giving me this.

SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Access denied for user 'pbphudsite'@'localhost' (using password: YES) [1045]

An sql error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact an administrator if this problem persists.


So now I'm confused  :P
Btw nice post on alignments, I will reply soon.
Roses are Red. Gaming is fun. You're over encumbered and cannot Run.

Offline professorgear

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #29 on: September 21, 2013, 03:27:12 AM »
I'm gonna make a post here, but mainly because it's become a repository for the Waterdeep campaign. If you want to comment on it, feel free, but it mainly concerns world history that will never be known by the PCs.

Because the spell weaver Ma'kar was central in Kyuss's ascension, it is important to explain his motives and designs. In trying to do this, I read all of the little lore there was on spell weavers. One of the few things that is known is that they habitually steal magic items. They only give magic items away when the item is likely to ruin the wielder and his civilization. Meanwhile, Ma'kar gave Kyuss the first Kyuss worm. The description of Ma'kar's interaction with Kyuss was that it was an exceptional case where a spell weaver was not acting ethnocentrically but was helping another rise to power. This absurd exception begs for an explanation. Then it suddenly occurred to me, that for any intelligent victim, a spell weaver who gives him a ruinous item is also going to have to give him an "official story" that convinces the victim that the gift will not ruin them. That story is what's recorded in the lore. But of course what really happened is that Ma'kar was acting in perfect accord with his species. The gift of the Kyuss worm would not only ruin Kyuss's civilization, but also every other civilization, including the Illithids', when Ma'kar's plan finally came to fruition.

But there's still more that needs explaining. In reading the spell weaver lore, I came across something called the Code of Revision. The spell weaver civilization itself was ruined ages ago in an unknown experiment that ended in catastrophe, as was their ability to use the Code of Revision, which apparently was some time travel ability. While the code is described as being designed as a fail-safe against the cataclysm, it never rules out (and I assert) that while it could be used specifically to revert that event, it was used before that on a regular basis to basically reset the clock on the spell weaver civilization. Kind of like a Narnian wardrobe, the spell weaver civilization could study magic and experiment for millennia but only take up decades in the world's timeline. But according to the lore, spell weaver time travel is particularly nefarious. The original timeline is annihilated, leaving only the destination timeline in tact. But I'd like to go further and fill in some gaps in the lore. Counterpart beings in the destination timeline are switched to the original timeline right before it's annihilated, thus annihilating them as well. In other words, when George the spell weaver goes into a past when he existed, then younger George is actually switched with older, time-traveling George. Older George then is in the past while newer George has been switched to the future where he and it are annihilated. This is also a convenient explanation of how the Amulet of Second Chances works. And as a spell weaver time-travel artifact, access to it should appropriately be severely limited.

Now, as for the civilization-ending cataclysm, I'm thinking the spell weavers tried to divorce Mystra from the Weave. I've always thought if I were a mage in a fictional universe, I would be rather disappointed if there was a god of magic. The reason of course is that if there's a god OF magic then there's a god OVER magic and that means that mages are beholden to a god, which is, in my mind, exactly what mages shouldn't be. So, if I were the ultimate magical being in the Forgotten Realms, a spell weaver, I would desire that the Weave functioned independently of Mystra. Of course, I could imagine all sorts of reasons why an attempt at such a divorce could fail catastrophically. So we now have the reason why the spell weaver civilization collapsed.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2013, 02:01:03 AM by professorgear »

Offline dna1

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #30 on: September 27, 2013, 12:17:03 AM »
Well if it's history that the PC's will never know we don't need to flesh things out 100%.


I like your take on how time travel works. It's kind of similar to how real theorys of time travel and multiple universes go. You probably are familiar with them so I will keep this super short.
Imagine a drop of water in a pond. At the center where the water drops it spawns ripples that go outward.

Well imagine your world is the center drop, and each ripple going outward is a different world. The further they get from the center the more different they are.
Its assumed that since the next few worlds are so similar, the you in that world is time travelling as well. So when you time travel, your just jumping over to the next ripple, not actually going to your own.
And the you, that was in the world over, just jumped into your original world.
Does that make since?


Thats kind of off topic for dnd I guess but ya.  :lol
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Offline professorgear

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #31 on: October 04, 2013, 11:48:04 PM »
After a discussion with a couple different people, I think an episodic rather than overarching plot would be better. Admittedly, there would be no signal for when the party as a whole should be retired, but individual characters at least could be retired when their so-called "internal plots" are resolved. Of course, if the party as a whole takes on a character of its own, then it could be retired when its internal plot is resolved. The reason why I think an episodic rather than overarching plot is better is because episodes let characters shine, while an overarching plot defines and therefore dominates or even subjugates characters. A classic example of this is Harry Potter. Pretty much from the moment of his conception his purpose in the world is to defeat Voldemort. While this makes for a good story, I think Harry Potter is actually the least interesting character in the Harry Potter series. Furthermore, at the end of the story, I found myself (and I know others have as well) feeling quite depressed. In Harry Potter, just like any other story, the reader mentally puts himself in the shoes of the protagonist. We feel what Harry feels, and if Rowling were true to Harry's character, Harry would feel depressed at the end of the story as well. Why? Harry has defeated Voldemort, and there's now no further reason for his existence. His purpose is done; it therefore matters little whether he's alive or dead. If Harry had been more than this story, however, this problem wouldn't exist. The advantage of episodes is that they basically function like science experiments with the party's characters being test subjects in petri dishes. Each character undergoes the same test (goes on the same adventure), but each one reacts to the stimulus differently, because each character has a different composition. The results of the experiments (adventures) then are revelations of character. This emphasizes character development, and I think is therefore better.

Offline professorgear

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #32 on: October 17, 2013, 02:43:09 AM »
Note to self: Epic Expanded Knowledge can be taken by the arch-villain to access 9th level spells. Chameleon Crafting also would work in other contexts.

Offline dna1

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #33 on: November 28, 2013, 05:29:24 PM »
Hi Josh!

How goes it sir? Still crackin away at it?
I'd like to jump back in the brainstorming session here ASAP. But I've been so damn busy. Maybe after December...?
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Offline professorgear

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Re: Brainstorming
« Reply #34 on: January 13, 2014, 03:27:47 AM »
Sorry for the late reply.

Yeah, I'm still working on this game even though I haven't posted in awhile. Let me know how you want to get involved and we can do some work.