The Campaign Builder's Guild

Heck, why limit myself to one world.  If my ideas vary as much as they do expanding this setting so that it can include anything just gives me a place to put them.

A focus for the current region: Fantasy Pulp.  Eberron was a nice try, but just didn't do it for me.  I'm imagining that in there somewhere is a world with huge skyscraping darkened cities drenched by rain, and I've already described a world with desert ruins and mysterious islands, I can have jungle worlds full of dinosaurs, I can have worlds where the "magitech" and sword-wielders from other worlds gives me a "sword & planet" vibe.  And the best part is I have multiple surfaces to build on, no getting stuck with an eerie magical wasteland right in the middle of the only civilized part of the world.

An idea about how magic would work:

You can only ever hold one spell.
This isn't one spell like D&D's single-effect system.  These would be spells with more flexible application.  Ex. your "fire spell" would let you throw fire, create intense flares to blind, burn the air out of an area to suffocate someone, and maybe even summon a fire elemental.  But you couldn't control lightening at all.
The reasoning is that each "spell" is a piece of magic so powerful that mortals can't hold more than one at a time.  If I were inclined toward having D&D clerics these spells would be the sort of things gods grant in their domains.

For the "One spell idea" you might want to look at some of Jack Vance's ideas. Read Tales of the Dying Earth.

I don't think that's quite what I mean:
You don't hold one spell at a time and then lose it in a casting.  You hold a spell and then wield it like a Swiss Army Knife with a certain selection of tools.  If you ever want to have a different tool selection you have to banish the spell you have and take in a new one.

Another idea is physically-derived magic, similar to the stuff presented in high-powered martial arts animé or the show Avatar.  In a sense magic requires you to be a very physical person and costs physical movement to work.  I don't think this would be all the magic in the setting, however, as I just don't see it working for things like illusion.

Possibly combine the two ideas: there is physical magic of which you can learn any and all kinds but is very tied to physical movements, and "spells" of which you can only hold one but can be wielded without movement and which typically have more subtle effects.

Inspired by a couple of video games and a past idea I'm still attached to I've got the basis for a setting outline:

"A long time ago the world was connected to others so that one could simply sail between them through special passages.  At this time magic was easily touched, easily reshaped, easy for all to use to change the world.  But the Witches coveted the power for themselves.  They learned that the magic flowed into the world through the passages.  And so they worked a ritual to bring all the passages together and trap them within the Witches' island.  And so the people were trapped on their world, and no more could they touch magic themselves but only with the help of power items.

At least that's what the legends say............"

The world is made up of oceans and islands, nothing that could be called a continent.  There is more than one sentient race but a distinct lack of racial divides and enmity.  Magic is present in nature -- some creatures have natural magical abilities -- but cannot be influenced by normal people without the aid of Power Items.

Another idea on magic (and no, this is not inspired by the CCG game of the same name): magic schools by environment rather than by what the spell does (as in D&D).  So you'd have desert magic, swamp/wetland magic, mountain magic, ocean/lake/river magic, forest/jungle magic, grasslands magic, etc.  (I can't decide if there's urban magic, the question is how often urban is its own environment as opposed to just a slightly different kind of another.)

The idea is to take magic away from its current status as a force of the distant "cosmos" and bring it down to ground level.  And not people level, but actual ground level, the level of the mud and the muck.  You can read all you want to about magic in big tomes in your comfortable library, but if you actually want to do magic you have to go out and get dirty.

So is magical a universal force that individual environments effect, or does each environment have its one "mini-universe" of magic with its own rules, laws, etc.

First has to be answered the question of whether "magic" is its own force or whether it is simply other forces interacting in a way that leads people to misidentify this interaction as its own thing.  (In my universe everything is natural to the universe, there is no "unnatural" and so magic must, of course, be a natural thing.)  Personally I prefer the answer of "I'm not sure".  The people within my world aren't going to be able to see the laws from the outside, so they're always going to have doubts, and I rather like being in the same position as them in regards to most of the knowledge of their world.

Having answered that question I can focus on how the environments work.  "One force modified" vs. "places with their own rules".  A bit of both: it's based somewhat on how environment determines what creatures can live there, how those creatures' lineages have to change to survive in that environment, and then once you take those creatures out of that environment they don't immediately take to the new one.  Not exactly the same, but similar.  The idea is that "magic", whatever it is, if it spends long enough in a place it changes to conform to all the interactions of that place, becomes "adapted".  This process takes a long time, long enough that if you take a piece of that magic out of its home environment it will take generations of mortals for it to change to suit a new environment.  So meanwhile it can be persuaded to do the sorts of magical things it became good at in its natural environment.

Ex: What does a piece of desert magic do?  Creates whirlwinds, shifts sand around, makes mirages, that sort of stuff.  Take it on an oceans voyage and you can get it to do all those things for you, whereas the ocean magic will only do what it normally does.

UPDATE: Or would it work better if I just didn't say?  Because sometimes I find something isn't nearly as interesting after I've explained it.

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawUPDATE: Or would it work better if I just didn't say?  Because sometimes I find something isn't nearly as interesting after I've explained it.

haha, I totally hear you on that dude.

This reminds me of the jar of dirt from Pirates of the Caribbean... carry a bit of the desert with you and you can access its powers.

Quote from: Cataclysmic Crow'¦'¦carry a bit of the desert with you and you can access its powers.

Also explains mages having familiars so often: an animal's part of an environment.  And if the mages didn't know that much about their magic they might decide that they have to stay dressed in "appropriate" garb, thus explaining "theme" wizards.

A lot of what I think about in terms of magic (and I think about magic quite a bit) is changing it into something inherent in everything.  As opposed to how most settings deal with it which is to have magic as something that can only be injected into the setting via certain means, generally all related to spellcasters.

I think I've got the idea now:

It's a fantasy alternate world to a sci-fi planet.  The two worlds do not have any sort of public relationship or knowledge of each other, as per the standard way these things are set up.  There are occasional visitors from the sci-fi world, but they never have any significant impact on the fantasy world besides the usual defeat of an Evil Overlord.  And there is a very good reason for why this is, as well as why the setting has stayed at relatively the same fantasy level for a long time: there are beings actively working to keep it that way.

This alternate world status actually has one additional effect on the fantasy world: there are no humans (though some of the more recent visitors from the other side have been).  If the fantasy world is a reflection then it's not reflecting (most of) our views on traditional fantasy settings.  (Translation: shameless excuse to mix and just make up what I want; I'm not the type who could stand making or reading about a truly alien setting for long.)


Now that I've gotten the self-satisfying plot-point out of the way...........
The world is definitely warmer than most fantasy settings.  I'm trying to start small this time so I don't want to say too much about the larger focus region other than it's two stretches of coastline across a sea with lots of islands in it.  There are deserts, arid scrublands and grasslands, tropical/savanna grasslands, tropical jungle, near-tropical rainforest, and tropical swamps.  Plus the sea in the middle and various islands.
Races are humanoid or half-humanoid in body type, what I've re-coined "panian".  Their faces are all more or less hominid (i.e. human-like), though ears, even if they stick out to the side, resemble the smooth and pointed ears of predatory mammals rather than the rounded, convoluted ears of a hominid.  The races are:
A centaur race (or possibly just an equine version of the other races).
A feline race.
A canine race.
A bovine race.
A draconic race.
An aquatic serpentine race.
A winged griffonic race.
(There's also the possibility of including a version of an RPG elf race, but somehow I wonder if I need it.)

Seems a bit limited to have all your races be overtly anthropomorphicalized (mythical) animals?
Of course, if that's what works for your setting.
Why the dual world? What point does it serve?

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowSeems a bit limited to have all your races be overtly anthropomorphicalized (mythical) animals?

I basically have 5 choices when I make race decisions: standard near-humans, overtly anthropomorphicalized animals, anthropomorphicalized animals, talking animals, and shapeshifters (which isn't really a choice since they're just going to spend time looking like one of the other four).  (One could also have "really weirds", but I generally don't find something that fits in that category all that interesting for long.)  I just didn't want any near-humans this time, but was trying to avoid going too far into the animal look as a style consideration.  Trying to bring the humanoid form into the animal realm rather than the animal form into the human realm.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowWhy the dual world? What point does it serve?

A realm of odd elements to introduce.

I just basically feel that pure fantasy gets stale way too fast for me.  Injecting someone from a different sort of world, one we can relate to from our modern context, pumps the flavor back in through the contrast of perspectives.

Plus I do have a plan to write stories using the sci-fi world as the place where the characters live, but the fantasy world being a place to visit and which ultimately begs the question of "why is it there?"