The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: NomadicIf that doesn't drive your players to want to rip out the BBEGs still beating heart and beat him with it till it stops beating, than said players have no soul.

Or they've gone numb from having disturbing imagery shoved down their throats by everyone from a method-describing-GM to the guy who writes those TV crime dramas.

I stopped hating the people who do that sort of thing after a while.  They're so common I feel like the disturbing imagery is a part of nature, like a plague.  I can't hate nature.  I can only either avoid it or embrace it.

Since I generally make even my fantasy rather science-y I avoid alternate realms of existence out of it being easier than trying to work them into a science framework.

One thing that bothers me about the way many RPGs do cosmologies is they make this huge expanse of different realms of all different sorts............and then for some reason it all relates somehow to this one, small material realm of mortals.  It feels very screwy.  I prefer my Mortal Realm-related stuff to always feel smaller than the mortal world, as it feels more logical that you wouldn't need a place to keep the bureaucracy running the mortal world that's bigger (and thus feels more important than) than said world.  Or at least keep the size vague or something.

Size really does overwhelm me: I hate alternate universes for the fact that it means there's another huge expanse beyond the one I'm already dealing with.  I even thought up the idea that if I need an alternate Earth or something I just place it in the same universe as the first one and then make up some babble to explain how.

That's really okay:  It was more of a curiosity: could the trope be somehow completely inverted rather than averted.

Ah, thank you, Nomadic.  You've been very, very helpful.

That certainly helps with the issue of cannons, but I'm still wondering if you could make the barrels of the various X-lock type guns out of bronze.

Having read the tvtropes page on Fantasy Gun Control I thought about what would happen if your reversed that normal way the guns tend to get introduced to D&D-like faux-Medieval settings which is after the trope page proposes they should based on the setting's resemblance to Earth history.

If you flip around "all historical tech except guns => guns" you get "guns before history had them".  I'm a real amature at this, so this may be completely inaccurate, but my guess is that you only need two things to have guns:
1) gunpowder, which I'm guessing doesn't require a very advanced technology level to possibly create.
2) a material that can be made into cannons and gun barrels and doesn't then get destroyed when used.

It's #2 that I'm asking about: in terms of the evolving use of metals by Earth cultures (which I think goes: copper > bronze > iron/steel > better quality steel) what level of metal do you have to reach to make reasonable A) cannons, B) gun barrels?

Feel free to correct me on anything I got wrong.  The real point of the question is "What's the absolute earliest a culture could invent guns?" but I thought that might be too hard to answer in that form.

I choose answer Nomadic: welcome our new Martian overlords!

You are a god about to make your first people.  What do you make them out of?

An attractive member of my preferred gender. :band:

Atlantis, real, imaginary, or most famous example of overblown geek trivia ever?

Now that I have time for a longer response I can give my (amature) careful analysis of these two:

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowArctic Environments: Post-apocalyptic worlds always seem to take place in the desert. What about a frigid wasteland for once? Or just a world with focus on the subarctic instead of the subtropical where snow is more common than palms.
 Anthropomorhic alternatives: Canines and cats have been done before. Where are the slugs? the bacteria? the platypi? There are millions of animals which could provide rather interesting templates for a new race.

I say they're both a manifestation of attractiveness: if we're going to have to be seeing this setting and these people in our minds we want them to look nice.  Now I realize "attractiveness" can be subjective, but I know a lot of people like mammals more than other possible anthropomorphic templates and I'd be willing to be warm landscapes are often preferred to cold ones.

Quote from: beejazzReversed Lovecraft: Either the alien beings from beyond the stars wish us well....

I've always personally wished for this.  I think that the fear directed at Lovecraftian "outsiders" feels overdone.

Quote from: Elemental_ElfI've never understood how anyone can just make up words and use them in a setting...

The alternative is to use real words.  Which, if the person couldn't figure out don't go together made up, they might make the same mistake on.  And if they do catch on using real words can they choose the correct words to sound how they'd like.  Or do those words even exist?
And if you stick to words you know well enough not to make mistakes on your setting might get boring as every place name starts to sound too similar for vastly disparate cultures.
Given all that I think builders can be forgiven for deciding to just do what they feel like.

Names halt me up all the time.  There are just some sounds I don't like and so I tend to have a limited phonetic vocabulary.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowAnthropomorhic alternatives: Canines and cats have been done before. Where are the slugs? the bacteria? the platypi? There are millions of animals which could provide rather interesting templates for a new race.

Steerpike. :cool:

Except Creation and Destruction are human concepts, the application of images of form from human minds onto the world around them and naming the transitional phases between images.  And in fact whether something is termed Creation or Destruction relies on a certain point of view.

Carving a statue from a block of stone?  Creation because you've imposed a new shape.  Destruction because the block of stone no longer exists in its original form.
Killing an animal for food?  Destruction because the animal now no longer exists.  Creation because now there is food for people.
And then what is the overthrowing of a cherished tradition?  Destruction to some, Creation of new opportunities to others.

When humans invoke the language of Creation and Destruction they try to impose hard and fast rules of states on a world that doesn't quite work like that.  In the real world Destruction leads into Creation, and Creation results from Destruction.

Your analyzation of Alignment via Creation/Destruction is a good one, since that is how humans tend to see the world.  But like all other Alignment systems it's obvious it's not a system of the non-human world, that it's an imposition and that it would not exist if the world operated according to the real non-human rules.

Quote from: Ninja D!

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpaw(in the sense that you might say a kind of food is strong)

If used in the context of food what does the word "strong" mean to you?  To me it means a kind of intensity, not a harsh kind of intensity like chili peppers, not a sharp kind of intensity like lemons, but a weighty kind of intensity like you get with certain cheeses.  I'm trying to metaphore a concept which I don't know the words to.