The Campaign Builder's Guild

Normally when I come up with a setting I write a bunch of stuff up on a thread in the Homebrew and then wait for a response.  And don't get one or much of one.  And I think I understand why: I'm not posting anything people find original and/or creative enough that it's worth peoples' precious time to read.

So rather than do that process all over again this time I want to present the main ideas and see if they intrigue people, and if not find out what I might do to change them to make them more interesting.  I really would like questions and critiques of these ideas.

Multiple worlds linked by a ground-level method: One world feels claustrophobic, and just doesn't have enough different places to draw adventures in/from.  Can't do space-travel because space feels too open and empty.  That leaves travel by portal.  I kinda like it because it eliminates the need for the whole spaceship industry and it suggests that people (and characters) might not be able to just hop to whatever point on another planet they like, as with spaceship travel, or hide out in the vastness of space.
The portals would be naturally occurring because I like the idea that people aren't the ones responsible for creating the most important element of their universe.  However there's something to be said for people having some control somewhere in this travel method, so I'm thinking that while the portals occur naturally they have to be "activated" somehow, so they generally wouldn't open on their own.  To keep having a portal from giving you access to everywhere I'll say that most only connect to one other point.
The impact on society and economics is not something I can figure out: would it really be that different from having one world, just a huge lot more places in it?

Impersonal, unintelligent magic: I like magic.  But there's something I hate about it when it operates according to the worldview of people.  I'd rather have it work its own way and people have to figure out it, they way they have to approach science.
Also I don't like there being an intelligent force behind or controlling magic.  This applies both to gods and the "minds/souls" of people, and even to the idea that magic understands "words".  Magic should be a natural force, and like all natural forces it doesn't have an intelligence.
I like magic, and I like it this way, but I wonder if I've taken all the bits out of it that really interest other people.

High-tech and magic coexist and complement one another: This setting still advances science even with magic around.  In fact they can use magic to help science, to help technology do more incredible things and to study something with precision science alone can't match.

Magic is a part of the natural world: None of this "magic is separate/comes from another dimension" stuff.  Or the "magic is unnatural" stuff.  Magic is an integral force to this universe and allows for quite fantastic things to be part of the natural order.

Practitioners of magic fight about it's proper use: Flashy Summon vs. subtle Alter; emotional Primal vs. disciplined Soul; cyclic Green vs. draining Black.  These are a few of rivalries and conflicts that have sprung up in those attempting to understand the ways of magic.

Sentient species who look kinda weird but aren't incomprehensible: Aliens with incomprehensible minds and that look really weird are okay for authors that want to show that kind of stuff, but I need the species of this universe to be able to come to understand one another (and for the players to be able to play them) and to generally have forms that people dealing with the setting will understand and will invoke associations with similar looking things on Earth.  This doesn't mean that all sentients would be humans with funny foreheads or even obviously something ripped from Earth, but could be described by referring to Earth things.

Conflict happens, but mostly locally: If something like a war starts somewhere the bottlenecking nature of the portals usually means the war itself doesn't go farther than its own planet.  Other aspects, such as spies and terrorism, might, but it's really difficult to control that anyway.  And reprocussions of the war, such as disrupted trade and refugees, might go very far.

There isn't anything that can threaten the multiverse as a whole or even large areas: No apocalyptic evils or wars that span a large number of planets.  I think this sort of stuff should exist on a bit more personal level.  And it keeps the setting intact.

Old but not stagnant: The civilizations of the multiverse often have roots that trace back ages, but that doesn't mean they've been the same all that time: technology, science, magic, and society have progressed from the ancient days.

Full of secrets and people who know them: There are secrets everywhere from the olden times.  But the multiverse is so vast that you'd lose the pieces if you searched yourself.  Fortunately there are groups that have sprung up, from societies of conquest or hording lore to one of travelers and their waystations.

Here are some responses I got when I put this on my note thread, as well as my responses:

Quote from: SteerpikeFor the multiple worlds thing I suppose portals could work but they're going to be pretty darn crowded, and will totally revolutionize the way commerce works (imagine London, New York, and Tokyo being instantaneously connected).  The portals would have to be housed in massive buildings (like airports) and would be dominated by vast amounts of cargo being shipped constantly in and out.  The instantaneous travel-method would lead to the formation of inter-connected super-cities which, while technically not existing on the same planets, would overlap and become essentially continuous.  Cities would of course be built around the portals: they're the most sensible places to start building.  The military implications also boggle the mind, as does the potential for terrorism.  The whole overlapping cities thing is a cool idea in and of itself, but perhaps not what you're going for??

Actually that all sounds perfectly fine to me, even the military and terrorist implications.  For those last two I should remind you that you can't just create portals anywhere, so unless there's one you haven't found you can pretty much control what gets onto your planet.  And the idea that the bad guys could find one you don't know about and start covertly moving in has good adventure potential.
Also in a version that actually appears in the first post of this thread the portals come in pairs that only connect to each other.  So you can't find one portal and then have access to the entire rest of the multiverse.

Quote from: SteerpikeI have three suggestions that you might want to ponder about this one:

1) Have space-ships but emphasize the ships, not the space.  Travel could be accomplished on huge spaceships that resemble cities/luxury ocean liners.  All of that darkness/emptiness/void stuff could be played down, and travel could even potentially be glossed over almost completely.  Think Indiana Jones but with the red line on a star-chart instead of a planetary map.

2) Have a big planet with lots and lots of moons, a planet absolutely enormous but low-density and thus earth-like in its gravity.  Travel between the moons could be very quick, and would be much more visually appealing than the blackness of space since the view would constantly be dominated by the surface of the planet or the moons themselves, as opposed to the abyssal void.

3) Go the Dune route and have traveling-without-moving or foldspace technique, tesseracting basically, which has to be accomplished by a trained navigator-psychic or powerful computer or something.  In Dune of course the Spice gets involved, but I get the feeling the implications of something like that wouldn't be up your street.  Foldspace technology would work similarly to portals but still requires a ship in orbit and makes travel somewhat more difficult, evading the potential problems of the overlapping-cities inevitability if you have land portals.  You could I suppose work this in with wormholes ("rifts") although the idea that all of the rifts are close to planets seems a little too convenient to me.

For your three space suggestions they're each good ideas but I don't think I'm going to use any of them.  Each has aspects that don't quite work for me
Suggestions 1: I tried this in the earlier version of Pulp-Dream, but it's just not enough of an elimination for me to feel comfortable.  Plus I do like how the portals eliminate the need for people to have their own ships in order to travel how they want.
Suggestions 2: This one is actually really, really intriguing, and I'd use it, but I feel like it eliminates the adventure possibility of finding totally new or forgotten places that you have to have multiple unconnected points for.  It seems to me that a civilization with space-faring technology would have been able to explore the surface of an entire planet, even a giant one.
Suggestions 3: I actually had a version like this at one point, where you had to get on a ship, go far enough from the planet, then "jump" or whatever.  It just seems silly when I don't care about the intervening distance.

Quote from: SteerpikeFor the magic thing, this sounds totally cool to me, and frankly not all that uncommon an approach.  I've personally encountered lots of settings where magic isn't a sentient force and isn't particularly human-centric, but is treated like a form of energy, magical study becoming a science.

Good.  The whole point is that magic doesn't need to be this restrictive thing like the laws of physics, but that like all natural things people can only manipulate it, not control it.

Quote from: SteerpikeCould magic actually form part of the standard interplanetary travel-method?

In fact in the very first version of all this, way back when, the multiverse's earliest method involved special mages who could open the portals, and this was the only way until someone found space-warping ore that could create portals.  At that point in my process there wasn't the "you can only open these in certain places", but that was back when being able to travel was more important than the implications of that travel.

Quote from: NomadicTotally off topic but I just had an awesome thought pop into my head. Something bad is about to happen, perhaps someone is about to set off a "nuke" in the city or something similar. The players hijack a small air speeder and barrel it through the portal buildings big front window and fly it through the portal right before the bomb goes off.

And this has been another edition of 'crazy things PCs would totally do'.

Yes, they could do that, so long as they don't mind blowing up whatever's on the other side. :P

But I can see that if I'm sparking those sorts of ideas I do have at least a grain of something good on my hands.

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawImpersonal, unintelligent magic: I like magic.  But there's something I hate about it when it operates according to the worldview of people.  I'd rather have it work its own way and people have to figure out it, they way they have to approach science.
Also I don't like there being an intelligent force behind or controlling magic.  This applies both to gods and the "minds/souls" of people, and even to the idea that magic understands "words".  Magic should be a natural force, and like all natural forces it doesn't have an intelligence.
I like magic, and I like it this way, but I wonder if I've taken all the bits out of it that really interest other people.

Magic is a part of the natural world: None of this "magic is separate/comes from another dimension" stuff.  Or the "magic is unnatural" stuff.  Magic is an integral force to this universe and allows for quite fantastic things to be part of the natural order.
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Sentient species who look kinda weird but aren't incomprehensible: Aliens with incomprehensible minds and that look really weird are okay for authors that want to show that kind of stuff, but I need the species of this universe to be able to come to understand one another (and for the players to be able to play them) and to generally have forms that people dealing with the setting will understand and will invoke associations with similar looking things on Earth.  This doesn't mean that all sentients would be humans with funny foreheads or even obviously something ripped from Earth, but could be described by referring to Earth things.
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There isn't anything that can threaten the multiverse as a whole or even large areas: No apocalyptic evils or wars that span a large number of planets.  I think this sort of stuff should exist on a bit more personal level.  And it keeps the setting intact.
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Full of secrets and people who know them: There are secrets everywhere from the olden times.  But the multiverse is so vast that you'd lose the pieces if you searched yourself.  Fortunately there are groups that have sprung up, from societies of conquest or hording lore to one of travelers and their waystations.
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I don't quite understand this part, could you explain it a bit clearer for me?

Dude, I had such a very similar idea not to long ago. You should email me and we can work on it.

Not to get all "stargatey" on you. When asking about the implications of using a portal system. I think of the episodes with the "Ashin" who offered high technology, extended lifes, free from disease or illness, but insidiously causing sterility. After a single generation as a close portal partner, the Ashin take over and make the world into another farm or resource to exploit.

Huge vehicles with tons of grain was poured into horizontally placed portals to some bin receptacle to catch it on the otherside. They used the stargate portals to the most efficient and xenophobic process.

That doesn't mean a more conventional war could not occur, but I agree with Nomadic that since portals are choke points, thus would be a single incident then a cold war by not using that Portal between places, each heavily guarded awaiting the next incident. However, terrorists and inter-portal espionage provacateurs using the portal system would be more likely, offering limitless game scenarios because of it.

I could see a Church considering it divine magical portals and becoming those airports, and toll collectors for all transport between planets. Becoming fat, wealthy and exploitive with too much power, causing political strife so the war is not between planets, but with those trying to control the portals between them.

Thoughts?

GP

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawNormally when I come up with a setting I write a bunch of stuff up on a thread in the Homebrew and then wait for a response.  And don't get one or much of one.  And I think I understand why: I'm not posting anything people find original and/or creative enough that it's worth peoples' precious time to read.

Impersonal, unintelligent magic: I like magic.  But there's something I hate about it when it operates according to the worldview of people.  I'd rather have it work its own way and people have to figure out it, they way they have to approach science.
Also I don't like there being an intelligent force behind or controlling magic.  This applies both to gods and the "minds/souls" of people, and even to the idea that magic understands "words".  Magic should be a natural force, and like all natural forces it doesn't have an intelligence.
I like magic, and I like it this way, but I wonder if I've taken all the bits out of it that really interest other people.
[/quote]
Magic is a part of the natural world: None of this "magic is separate/comes from another dimension" stuff.  Or the "magic is unnatural" stuff.  Magic is an integral force to this universe and allows for quite fantastic things to be part of the natural order.
[/quote]
Sentient species who look kinda weird but aren't incomprehensible: Aliens with incomprehensible minds and that look really weird are okay for authors that want to show that kind of stuff, but I need the species of this universe to be able to come to understand one another (and for the players to be able to play them) and to generally have forms that people dealing with the setting will understand and will invoke associations with similar looking things on Earth.  This doesn't mean that all sentients would be humans with funny foreheads or even obviously something ripped from Earth, but could be described by referring to Earth things.
[/quote]
There isn't anything that can threaten the multiverse as a whole or even large areas: No apocalyptic evils or wars that span a large number of planets.  I think this sort of stuff should exist on a bit more personal level.  And it keeps the setting intact.
[/quote]
Full of secrets and people who know them: There are secrets everywhere from the olden times.  But the multiverse is so vast that you'd lose the pieces if you searched yourself.  Fortunately there are groups that have sprung up, from societies of conquest or hording lore to one of travelers and their waystations.
[/quote]
the portal idea sounds good. and no, it wouldn't be much difeent from just having one big world. it just makes drawing maps harder.^^

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawHigh-tech and magic coexist and complement one another: This setting still advances science even with magic around.  In fact they can use magic to help science, to help technology do more incredible things and to study something with precision science alone can't match.

Practitioners of magic fight about it's proper use: Flashy Summon vs. subtle Alter; emotional Primal vs. disciplined Soul; cyclic Green vs. draining Black.  These are a few of rivalries and conflicts that have sprung up in those attempting to understand the ways of magic.
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Conflict happens, but mostly locally: If something like a war starts somewhere the bottlenecking nature of the portals usually means the war itself doesn't go farther than its own planet.  Other aspects, such as spies and terrorism, might, but it's really difficult to control that anyway.  And reprocussions of the war, such as disrupted trade and refugees, might go very far.
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Old but not stagnant: The civilizations of the multiverse often have roots that trace back ages, but that doesn't mean they've been the same all that time: technology, science, magic, and society have progressed from the ancient days.
[/quote]
Full of secrets and people who know them: There are secrets everywhere from the olden times.  But the multiverse is so vast that you'd lose the pieces if you searched yourself.  Fortunately there are groups that have sprung up, from societies of conquest or hording lore to one of travelers and their waystations.
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sounds all right. basically it's adventurers' guilds, isn't it? some formal corrections: "horde" is a lot of people, "hoard" is a lot of stuff. people always get that wrong. It's a universe, not a multiverse. Multiverse implies several universes touching or intermingling. "olden times" is one of those phrases you shouldn't use lightly.^^

Quote from: NomadicThis is totally fine. It worked good for the early episodes of stargate. You just have to remember the impact it will have (yes it will be massive). When people, material, and ideas can move between worlds in the blink of an eye it is going to shape things in certain ways. It will be less like a bunch of different worlds and more like one gigantic slowly changing world. The differences from one world to the next will be minor (outside of climate differences and such) though because portals are generally only two way the separation between worlds not directly connected will create a difference. So while a visitor from world A going to planet B might not notice any real difference, they would notice a big difference after they did a number of jumps and wound up on Planet S.

That's what I'm going for: the fact that the worlds are linked so closely would eventually form giant shared cultures with pockets of individualization.  I think it's useful for storytelling in that if you set up the shared culture of one region you can then shift around that region and don't have to continually update the readers/PCs on an entirely new culture, just some small differences.

Quote from: NomadicThis is something I agree with in terms of the current setting I am designing. I actually explained magic in a scientific form because I needed to know how it actually worked for such a setting. If you're curious enough I could post a summary of it here.

That would be nice, thank you, though I do have my own ideas.

Quote from: NomadicWhile my setting isn't high tech it does blend technology and magic. Things that would normally be handled in a mundane fashion can be done much more efficiently with magic, thus they are done so.

I'm not supposing that everyone can necessarily do magic, and/or that they can't all do all the same magic.  So technology allows those who can't to catch up.  Also it seems to me that technology is a very good 'backup' or 'crutch', so that you don't always have to rely on magic.

Quote from: NomadicInteresting stuff here, I am curious as to what exactly some of these groups are (though I get the gist of most of them). In my setting this sort of rivalry is in full power. Many groups argue over how exactly it works, both the scientifically minded as well as religiously minded.

This thread is just to try to gauge what I have in terms of what people think of it.  So there was less reason to detail these groups than provide enough examples that people understand that there's rivalry.
As for you religion comment: I did have some ideas that maybe in a universe of this sort of diversity the fact that magic is shared would make it a logical choice for holding peoples' religion (while still having a secular angle, possibly leading to an extra part of every conflict when the secular and religious aspects of a magic also fight each other).  I know when I first thought up Summon and Alter they had quasi-mystical meanings associated with them.

Quote from: NomadicI might still suggest that you think about how an interplanetary war might play out. The portals would act as chokepoints so it would be a matter of who struck first and who was able to hold the portal. I personally think this would make such conflicts very quick and heavy handed (like the German blitzkrieg).

I have thought about these, and you're right on.  The thing I think about a big war is that if a side managed to control all the portals of a planet they're insanely fortified.  To hope to stop them you'd either have to launch heavy (and possibly suicidal) attacks against a portal, or cut off their trade and hope they don't have the resources to hold out.  Multiply that by a large number of controlled planets and you're talking an almost impregnable force.
The implications are that people are going to want to avoid letting anyone get that much hold.  Also this raises the importance of small strike forces and spies in case that happens (insert PCs).

Quote from: NomadicHow old are you thinking, might there be ancient ruins? Perhaps even entire abandoned planets with the remains of dead civilizations.

Really old.  I'm even thinking there should be multiple ancient civilizations that stretch the timeline back eons.
And yeah, it's like having a 'lost world' on Earth, only bigger. :D

Quote from: NomadicI don't quite understand this part, could you explain it a bit clearer for me?

Whoops. x. I got caught up and probably should have put more into that.  I was basically trying to point out that there's a lot of stuff for the PCs to find or me to base adventures off of, and lots of multiplanetary groups that they might either be up against or join.  I know other GMs consider these important factors for a setting.

Quote from: Gamer PrintshopNot to get all "stargatey" on you. When asking about the implications of using a portal system. I think of the episodes with the "Ashin" who offered high technology, extended lifes, free from disease or illness, but insidiously causing sterility. After a single generation as a close portal partner, the Ashin take over and make the world into another farm or resource to exploit.

Huge vehicles with tons of grain was poured into horizontally placed portals to some bin receptacle to catch it on the otherside. They used the stargate portals to the most efficient and xenophobic process.

I don't quite know if that sort of thing could spring up in this multiverse.  I don't think a single species could get that far by science or magic before getting connected to the rest of the multiverse and having to eventually give up their xenophobic ways or remain completely isolated.  For one thing they'd be playing catch up with a society who's diversity would be condusive to innovation and who has been at it longer.  If an 'Ashin'-type civilization found some ancient artifacts maybe.
Plus a whole culture of xenophobes strikes me as too monoculture cliché.  It seems to me that somewhere along the line some part would start not to like what's going on and might shatter the society.  Especially the further spread out they got.

Quote from: Gamer PrintshopThat doesn't mean a more conventional war could not occur, but I agree with Nomadic that since portals are choke points, thus would be a single incident then a cold war by not using that Portal between places, each heavily guarded awaiting the next incident.

No offense, but I'm having a hard time reading those last two clauses.

Quote from: Gamer PrintshopI could see a Church considering it divine magical portals and becoming those airports, and toll collectors for all transport between planets. Becoming fat, wealthy and exploitive with too much power, causing political strife so the war is not between planets, but with those trying to control the portals between them.

That sounds like a very good idea for having a war-torn place, which is useful for all sorts of reasons.

First off you might want to check you post, I couldn't see any of this till I hit 'quote'.

Quote from: Scholarthis is called "passive-aggressive". it's a dirty trick. :)

Yeah, I have problems sometimes.  I'm attempting to learn not to have them.

Quote from: Scholarthe portal idea sounds good. and no, it wouldn't be much difeent from just having one big world. it just makes drawing maps harder.^^

That's okay, I can't draw.  Plus I like it when stuff doesn't have a concrete locations.  I'm very much a fan of the 'it's over here, somewhere, does it really matter' school of location.

Quote from: Scholarso, magic is the nephew of gravity? is magic so scientific that someone could major in philosophy, linguistics and applied thaumatology? how hard is it to do magic? what is there that magic can't do? these are two very important questions, because magic can do everything and everyone can do it, there's no need for real work, technology or other sciences. i'm not spending 8 hours a day at a factory when i can just summon some magical servitor or animate a construct to do it. nor am i spending two weeks at a library to do my term paper when i can just do some clairsentience and let magic ghostwrite my stuff. :)
'¦'¦'¦'¦'¦'¦
see my last point. if magic is too convienient, scientific progress becomes obsolete.

Hmmm, so the first thing is that I'm not sure I want to get down exactly what magic is.  It's probably more condusive to study and debate (as well as some mystery) that there be some room for interpretation.  But you can major in studying it.
Can anyone do magic?  My idea is no, at least not all kinds of magic.  There might be kinds of 'magic' that are really asking something else to do the magic for you, but real magic is an inborn ability to work with its energy.  This doesn't mean having the potential guarantees you'll be a mage: you might be born with it but it gets stunted by something during your growth, you might not get the full version, or you might have all the potential but never get the training you need.  Like any inborn talent there are going to be a variety of factors to how it plays out.

Quote from: Scholarlike the Force? can animals use magic, too?

If magic is impersonal than it doesn't distinguish who can use it by sentience or lack of.

Quote from: ScholarJedi Knights versus Magic the Gathering? ;) are these purely academic conflicts or real conflicts like "my pokeymans are going to kick your meditative ass into next tuesday!"

I'd say they range, even among the examples I've given.  For instance both Green and Black have members who see the other as dangerous and to be eliminated, but not all of them do.  Soul practitioners often see Primalists as 'misguided'.  Summon and Alter are actually wrapped up in old ethnic conflicts.

Quote from: Scholarmind you, i'm not trying to be hostile, but you could just have shortened this down to "furry space aliens". cbg is one of these sites where you won't be trolled for it.

I'm not worried about trolling for liking to use furries.  I'm trying to give justification for why my aliens aren't logically 'alien'.

Quote from: Scholaras usual, you don't have the mindset for this. ;) portals are a general's wet dream come true. as long as you're attacking, you can have your war effort on your own world, safe from artillery or airstrikes, and at the same time it's right on the front lines. if you attack, you just lob a few canisters of chemical warfare agents through a portal and send in the chemotroopers. or send some poor bastard with a suitcase nuke. when portals are the cornerstone of interplanetary commerce, that means that they are a focal point for settlements. an attack via portal could be devastating.

You're right, I don't have the mindset for it.  I'm too peaceable.

I do have a few responses I've thought of:
1) Who in their right mind would let a war/dangerous enemy get so close to being able to cross over to their world?  I think if anyone had a reason to fear war spilling onto their planet they'd send some troops over just to keep the peace.
2) If you had a war/dangerous enemy on the other side why wouldn't you do everything possible to cap off the portal?
3) Based on the last two it would have to be a surprise strike.
4) With the range of species you'd have to be sure that chemical could work on all of them.  Plus with the technology and magic around could you be sure there isn't a countermeasure to both methods.
5) It probably wouldn't work more than once and would end the war for your side: unless you have a stunning way of blocking communication and move quickly to keep conquering everyone's going to know what you did and probably come down on you like a meteor strike just so you can't do it to them.  And they design the previously-said countermeasures while they're at it.
So you're right, it's a great tactic.  But I don't see how the portals make it a better tactic than it would be just used normally.

Quote from: ScholarWhat about entropy? The heat death of the universe comes for everyone and everything. ;)

I like to think of entropy as a necessary part of nature and not an enemy.  Plus for the time scale of people it doesn't act fast enough.

Quote from: Scholarhow long? progressed from where to what?

I mostly wanted to assure people that I wasn't going to route of '10,000 of Medieval Europe' sort of thing.  I haven't gotten far enough to answer your question yet.

Quote from: Scholarsounds all right. basically it's adventurers' guilds, isn't it?

Some are, some are other sorts of groups.

Quote from: Scholarsome formal corrections: "horde" is a lot of people, "hoard" is a lot of stuff. people always get that wrong.

D'oh. x.

Quote from: ScholarIt's a universe, not a multiverse. Multiverse implies several universes touching or intermingling.

Can I use 'universes'?  I just don't want to repeat 'multiverse' over and over.

Quote from: Scholar"olden times" is one of those phrases you shouldn't use lightly.^^

Why?  Again, I was trying not to repeat myself.

Hmm, this is confusing reading with all those quests and invisible posts :P
Anyway, here are my thoughts.
Portals are cool, but i think i'm missing some points. They seem to be ground-based, but are they artificial or natural? and if it is the first, are they made with current technology or ancient unknown technology? If made with current tech, how do you decide where they go?
Your magic sounds cool and i agree with many of your points. Questions though: How do they manipulate this if it is a natural force? What can they do with it? How does magic show in the natural world as a free force?
The premise sounds good, but it seems to lack the "twist". Of course, you might have something up your sleeve or some interesting worlds or something. But just thought i would mention it.

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawI'd say they range, even among the examples I've given.  For instance both Green and Black have members who see the other as dangerous and to be eliminated, but not all of them do.  Soul practitioners often see Primalists as 'misguided'.  Summon and Alter are actually wrapped up in old ethnic conflicts.

Quote from: ScholarWhat about entropy? The heat death of the universe comes for everyone and everything. ;)

I like to think of entropy as a necessary part of nature and not an enemy.  Plus for the time scale of people it doesn't act fast enough.
[/quote]some formal corrections: "horde" is a lot of people, "hoard" is a lot of stuff. people always get that wrong.[/quote]
D'oh. x.[/quote]

Quote from: Scholar"olden times" is one of those phrases you shouldn't use lightly.^^

Why?  Again, I was trying not to repeat myself.[/quote]
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it's just something we get a slap on the wrist for in text production. it's purple prose. ;)

Quote from: Crippled CrowHmm, this is confusing reading with all those quests and invisible posts :P

I'm open to suggestions if you have any.

Quote from: Crippled CrowPortals are cool, but i think i'm missing some points. They seem to be ground-based, but are they artificial or natural? and if it is the first, are they made with current technology or ancient unknown technology? If made with current tech, how do you decide where they go?

It actually says in the first post that they're naturally occurring, but require some sort of activation to open.

Quote from: Crippled CrowYour magic sounds cool and i agree with many of your points. Questions though: How do they manipulate this if it is a natural force? What can they do with it? How does magic show in the natural world as a free force?

Just because it's a natural force doesn't mean it can't be bent and redirected.  If gravity can bend light than it's possible that magic users can bend magic's course.
For what they can do I lean toward the idea that simple, straightforward things are easier to accomplish, and if want to do something with more parts it gets harder to do.  That still leaves you plenty of things to do, from teleportation to changing matter to blasting stuff.
I'd say magi shows up in the natural world by allowing things to happen that can't under normal physics.  Floating islands, magical beasts, that sort of stuff.

Quote from: Crippled CrowThe premise sounds good, but it seems to lack the "twist". Of course, you might have something up your sleeve or some interesting worlds or something. But just thought i would mention it.

You're right, it doesn't have much of a twist yet.  Being honest I can't guarantee that I have one or can make one, but I'll try.

Can portals be deactivated? If so the easiest way to win a war would be to lob a nuke through a portal and then close it.

Quote from: Scholarbut it does, if it's academic. the only animals allowed in the university are seeing-eye dogs. ;)

Point.  I think the best way to put it is that the ability to do things impossible under normal physics can be born in both sentient and non-sentient life forms, but sentient life forms can train to know how to use it creatively.

Quote from: Scholarare these concept names or are there actual organisations called "green" and "black".

Those are the names given to the types of magic.

Quote from: Scholarnormally, one of the hardest things in military campaigns is protecting your supply routes from skirmishers and air attacks (depending on the tech-level). you have much shorter supply routes when you can hide them behind a portal you control.

You're so right.  But that works for everyone, so it really restricts how far a war can get.  Also if you try to circle "around" and enemy that might be a very big "around" if all your other portals don't lead to any planets directly connected with your enemy.

Quote from: Scholarthere *are* chemical agents that kill off mostly everything. things like sulphrous mustard or sarin. if it has skin, or mucous membranes and a respiratory system, it's gonna die. in a really gruesome way.

Wikipedia-ed......................... :wtf: .  Yeah these would do it.  Though isn't there also something called a Neutron Bomb?
But if you have magic, I'd bet you could come up with something even worse. ;)

Quote from: Scholaryou're getting better at war-think, tho. :)

Makes my brain hurt. x.

Quote from: Gnomish CheetosCan portals be deactivated? If so the easiest way to win a war would be to lob a nuke through a portal and then close it.

Ah, I see where I must be falling down: when I say "activated" I mean "you have to make them open and stay open".  So yes, you can shut them down.  My bad. :hammer:

And what is it with you people and nuking everything?  You're wasting precious nuclear material.  Irradiate a dragon, stuff it through, and then sit back with some popcorn as it breaths radioactive fire all over the place.  (Sorry, couldn't resist. :P)

I understand why you keep mentioning these things, but the way you make war out to be it seems that no setting with this level of technology should ever survive, portals or no.