The Campaign Builder's Guild

Salacious Angel,
This is the first chance that I have had to read Dystopia and I have to say my brain hurts, but in a good way! I couldn't stop reading once I started. Your cosmology and Great Spheres completely fascinated me and then the fiction evoked such images that I could picture it vividly, especially the one with the whelp.

As someone else said about wanting this as an illustrated coffee table book I completely agree.

But to your question. The omnipotent narrator will give you the ability to describe/tell everything and let you have the subversive atmosphere for things not told, but my question is this. What type of things will this narrator be able to tell us about the areas that you have already described that the current narrators for those sections haven't told us, or could tell us? The way you have it written now is beautiful. Is the point of breaking the fourth wall to add that subversive text to the setting, or are there pieces that the current narrators cannot tell us?

Either way you go I will be eager to see what else you write!

I'm of two minds about this.  First I would point out that an omniscient narrator doesn't have to "break the fourth" wall in the traditional sense of the word (all stories have narrators, but not all narrators address the audience directly).

That said, I can see the desire to reveal to players and GMs (etc.) details that might not be known by any particular character.  That's the advantage of the omniscient narrator.  On the other hand, I think part of Dystopia's appeal is mood of madness and discord, and I think that can best be conveyed with the emotion of first person.

We talked a little bit about this when you were reviewing Kishar, but maybe what you need is a narrator that does know way more than a person.  An ancient wizard, a powerful entity, a fallen angel, or whatever.  In my case, I have the nearly omniscient aeon, Theletus, (though the narrator is actually a human telling what she had been told by him, for reasons I think you understand).

A powerful being still allows you to intersperse opinion and clearly suspect information, but also to relay larger amounts of secret knowledge than any mere mortal has access to.  Plus, the archetype of the unreliable narrator does have its merits in fiction.

A nearly omniscient in-world (or in-game) narrator seem a bit bromidious and overdone to me. A reason for them to exist in the world needs to be fabricated and put into place, and a reason for them not to have any particular bias on top of that. It is my opinion that such as thing can only be done so many times, without becoming quite stale.

It seems that if you want to give more of an "information dump", than is possible through narration by individuals, the solution of a 'divorced from Dystopia, but still with motives' narrator is somewhat half-assed. I don't doubt that you would do amazingly with it, but it still presents the problems of other narrators, simply on a higher scale.

I think I agree with you folks.  An omniscient narrator isn't necessary, particularly given the apparent effectiveness of my current set-up.  However, I do know how I would go about doing it, if I did (and therefore don't see it as being nearly as half-assed, bromidious or overdone as Jaerc does) - nevertheless, I am aware of the different manner of issues it raises and would rather stick to my winning formula.

(If it ain't broke...)

Hoorah!

Though my heart sings with praise
When Dystopia passes by my gaze
It leaves me melancholy and sad
That updating this setting is no longer a fad
And has been this way for over two hundred days. :(

Jeez, that's a pretty freakin' long time.

Funny thing, I was recently rummaging through my archives and came upon a quaint little summary of one of the setting's early incarnations.  The setting has diverged significantly in tone since then, but it was a pretty profound reminder of why I'm writing this thing in the first place...

Dystopia

Entropy.  A weary-eyed child, stirring from slumber in the heart of a crumbling concrete jungle, peers through fractured panes of a soot-laden window to behold a sky thick with sickly russet darkness.  An aging warrior in a very different jungle sights an unfamiliar beast, which slithers, bounds and wings all at once, and melts the very air with its gaze.  A timeless earthen Magister swathed in trembling subterranean darkness peers into the very fabric of time and causality, and notes an ill pallor, a subtle fraying of the edges of reason'¦

These are ill times.  Famine and greed propel the pirate war-engine of Das Dramurr into an ever more desperate frenzy of conquest and destruction; in the depths of the Murkwater and Iounennion Seas, the cephalopod nations plot nameless designs amidst the ruins of fallen empires from aeons past; in the silence of a forest older than age itself, the enigmatic sidhe whisper maddening prophesies and promise illumination or damnation to all who hear their call'¦

Dystopia is a mix of Lovecraftian horror and swashbuckling heroism, with apocalyptic overtones.  It's a world headed in the wrong direction, and rest assured, this will not end well.

Points of Interest

Exotic Locales: Cathedrals the size of cities, mountains with minds and motions of their own, shadowed oceanic corridors, ancient ruins teeming with alien fiends, and lands of pure antireality'¦ fun for the whole family!

Truly Villainous Villains: The IoValde sealed shut the gate to the Daemonic Realm two millennia ago, but every doorway has a key, and what lies on the other side knows only the ways of agony.  Of course never underestimate the mortal capacity for horror; even without daemons, devils and other plane-hopping monstrosities, terror always finds a way.

Weird Technology: Bio-manipulation, anti-causal energies, pure chaos power, perception-dependent psionics'¦ the world is full of breathtaking technologies.

A Potentially Non-existent Cosmology: Yeah'¦ it's there, but it kinda isn't.  Go figure'¦

And plenty more!  Horrifying, tantalising, and about a trillion points in between, Dystopia is a wonder to behold, in all its facets.

My Dystopia entry for this month's contest will be up in a couple of days.

I need to hear more about the Lunatic Dark.  Yes, need is the appropriate word to use in this instance.