This evening’s work was about correcting a few issues.
The Syllabary was set up to use existing fonts, but I ran into the issue of their not being able to handle the special characters, which is seriously annoying, so I suspect I will have to go into draft mode and create some of my own. Which is annoying and time consuming.
The worst thing was that a little voice in the back of my head kept jumping up and down and saying no, no, no to a couple of ethnicity names, so I took out Prussia and Thule, and went with Lyonesse and Cibola instead — though changed for the phonic aspect.
Languages are still in flux as I toy around with stuff in the ethnicities — they tend to be very organic in their creation — and heaven knows what will come out.
I am probably going to redo the complexion chart from scratch. Aside from wanting to introduce more “weird” colors, I want to save orange for an additional “evil” race I have in the back of my head that will almost certainly arrive on the scene sooner. That catch is figuring out what the hell Pallor wants.
Killed the Encyclopedia. Essentially I moved its intended content other than active adventures into The Wyrlde Book. This will allow me to set up the adventures independently of the setting information. Since it is absolutely certain I will be making additions to the setting information along with minor tweaks here and there as I go along, it just makes sense right now.
Down the road, it might be wiser to move some of it around a bit, but for now, at this stage — still over six months away — it makes the most sense.
The changes to the city names mean reposting and updating f pretty much all the information here. When I do that, I will likely set up tags for each of the city names to use if a city is mentioned in a different article.
This site is going to focus on player side content for a long while. The individual parts of each adventure will go up as modules, though I have to come up with a P word for them, lol. The outline for the whole thing is currently looking at 90 pages. Grabbing little bits from one and dragging them into the earlier ones is proving an interesting experience — there is foreshadowing elements, but also flat out hooks that have to pop up when least expected. And they have to be obvious, not subtle.
The rather creative use of the Dreamscape for the first adventure is, I think, one of my better solutions to a pretty big problem if you think about it. First level characters up against a demon? It also let’s me draw from Nightmare on Elm Street, and test the player’s mettle as roleplayers right out of the box, while keeping both risk and safety in mind.
It will also bump them right to 2nd level, just in time to wake up for the next adventure. Deus Ex Machina still, yet one I can live with.
I did a lot of rearranging the last couple nights. Order of sections in the Ethnicity descriptions, renamed the Artificer to Mekanik (it just works better for me), worked extensively on the magic items listing. I removed the existing artifacts and specialty magic items entirely, then took out three that are problematic, but broke the rest up into a system of five classes that will allow me to deal with rarity and the source of the magic for them, while still not screwing over the artificer class.
That meant ensuring the planes were all aligned, so the entire cosmology bit will be revisited here as well.
The magic item stuff will go up once i get around to incorporating the XGE stuff into the tables.
Going through the book to look for comments about time is a nightmare — one I did to myself that is having some interesting effects, lol. The really long days — 33 hours — and the really long years tend to throw a lot of stuff off; Turns out Elves are the closest to humans in terms of aging the way we do under that calendar. Living 380 years is still a long ass time. Even if the calendar only records it as 100.
I am interested in seeing what the final population tally for the continent looks like, with regards to the Bright Lands. The Ethnicities are giving me cause to assign a general population each time.
I have to come up with a role for ogres and/or giants. Will probably use a “small giant” for the solution to a couple problems. I did come up with a way and reason for the Underdark, though.
Getting a copy of the slave lords module is a bit of a challenge — I do have one, but it sits in another state in a storage unit. I may take the time to run and get it and some of the other older stuff — if nothing else, it might make this task easier. Trying to do the set up from memory is not a fun thing.
I may do complete tables for each ethnicity regarding starting equipment — one perhaps just do one that has varying prices for each region.
For travel to and from — the adventures do cover the breadth of the world — I set up a die roll for travel in an airship or by train. Train is the safest. Not many of the warmachines are going to go after a train.
The dragons will go after the airships, though.
I have to deal with the undersea community at least a little — I used to get the slave lords and saltmarsh modules mixed up, and there is some of that still going on, so who knows.
Insects. Bugs. That can be the Orange race. Pallor would love that.
Reminds me I thought about the official colors for the gods only briefly — I still have to write them up proper, as right now they are only in table formats. Orange and Black will def be Pallor’s colors, though.
Having a society where super wealthy families control everything, that builds with bamboo, likes snakes, and then giving it a southern accent is easily one of my favorite things right now.
That Shangrila will have a british accent is going to be rather interesting as well. I keep finding myself drawn to doing odd stuff with them, since they are the “Center of learning” and all that rubbish. Uptight magical bastards need a comeuppance of some sort.
Started on Dorado. There are going to be Posse’s there. They will function like factions or secret societies, though. the anti-mafioso’s of the Syndicates in Durango. Wild West versus hard boiled Gangsters.
I do need to do some work on language. One of the reasons I wish I had my folder on the stuff I did in the past. Now that there are generators out there I can use, if I can recall the basis of the prefix and suffix systems, I can generate a dozen languages almost overnight that are all partially intelligible to each other, have quirks, and meet my needs.
Well shit. Just realized I can use the apostrophe as a schwa. Duh. Four more useful diacritics and I can set up a decent font based writing system, and possibly even do the needed 0 and 10 figures.
Ok, that’s enough for tonight. Going to bed.
