Developing the right mood

[Nomadic]

Bare with me here, I think I caught whatever Snargash has and feel the urge to assail you all with a mighty wall of text. Don't worry though, it will be over in time. I just felt my system needed a shift and the best way to do it is an a place where I can get some feedback on that. I would use the tavern but I am afraid with all I have to say I would break it (and I don't want to get pistol whipped by a turtle).

Anyhow laying on my bed I got to thinking that despite all I am saying and thinking, the Unconquered Realm really still comes across as classic fantasy. This is all well and good if that is what you want. However, it is not what I had in mind for UR. The realm I envisioned was always a bit bleaker than it has come out to be and while at first this was simply to satiate my hunger for a grimmer world it has developed into something new.

I have come to realize that UR really is a platform with which to fully acknowledge the human condition. It has the right background and style to really shine here. It isn't yet there though. Again I feel it has come across a bit too light-hearted (maybe not the best word but I cannot think of a better one). I desire to change this as I feel that an exploration of humanity in all it's facets would make for a wonderful game (both for the laid back gamer and the intrigued intellectual). True indeed much of classic fantasy is an exploration of this through the races and conflicts. It doesn't explore it though like I feel I need to. To do this I feel there are a few places I can begin.

Firstly, the Maeri. Originally I had them simply as a little easter egg, a bit of a nod to classic fantasy and a chance for the players to be different (something I have found many enjoy immensely). In the back of my mind though it always rubbed me the wrong way. They came across as a bit too fey-ish a race. In fixing this issue I feel it is best to go back to my main point. This being namely a focus on humanity itself (both it's greatest atrocities and greatest triumphs). For this reason I am bringing the Maeri out as a known race, a known branch of humanity to be exact. I am also putting them in the race boat so to speak. This is again a darker game and I feel racial tension will serve to again bring out the best and worst in people. I want players to be able to play all sides of the conflict. Indeed it won't just be limited to Maeri/Non-Maeri as the myriad city states and cultures makes a great breeding ground for racism. I think it would be an interesting point to take, having the players explore it fully. Feel what it is like to be on one side or the other of racial prejudice. I suppose it is an experiment of sorts for me. This partly because throughout all my gaming career I have very rarely witnessed players dealing with true in game racism. Sure you have elves and dwarves, or elves and humans, etc etc... but I have never seen something where that divide truly strikes home and explores it to the extent found in the real world.

Next I think that things are coming across as points of light. I never wanted this, and while it is true that part of this is due to me not finishing up the cities just yet, it is also because I have made things a bit too stable. The wilderness doesn't have the ability here to support massive open warfare, that is just a fact. I however think that I haven't fully taken advantage of the powerful tools I do have at my disposal. One of which that I just through off to the side being raids and raiders. Sure I talked about it but I didn't really flesh it out well enough. I feel I should make raids a devastating thing and something that often happens between conflicting city states and tribes. Going on that venue I feel I made the tribes too isolated from the rest of society. Sure they are a society unto themselves but I think they have not yet reached the potential for conflict that I could take them too. As always looking to delve into the human mindset here I can take from history. True the tribes are more advanced than say the Native Americans were, but that does not mean that there foes are unable to consider them as a savage race unfit to own the land they live upon. In this case the land being those precious safe routes through the open wastes coupled perhaps with legends of treasure that the natives are keeping hidden for themselves (myths of El Dorado anyone?). So expounding upon this I want to fully develop the intertribal/intercity relations to fully explore the conflict. I also want to explore the friendship as well and the motivation for those friendships (after all this is an examination of the human existence... not some emo fantasy where nothing good ever happens). In regards to city raiders I think I may draw from ancient sources (a good place to draw city-state inspiration from anyways). To be exact I am drawing ideas from the concepts of what happened when raiding groups hit an enemy city or conquered a settlement. Pillaging, burning, the rape and slaughter of the defeated was not an unheard of thing when you considered your enemies inferior (a nod to the earlier comments on racial prejudice). While this isn't just a campaign on needless gore and revolting violence I do think it should take the path of a more adult venture. I don't plan to shy away from the darker topics.

All of this being said though I do plan to outline the triumphs I talked about. Great alliances bringing hope to the battered, friendship over personal gain, etc. I hope to include this in equal measure, a look at all of humanity. It is in all this I feel that the players can truly experience the heights and depths of the human condition. All this being said and done though, I am in fact not done. I have more thinking to do on the subject about what I can and should change to better reflect what I want in my setting. For your part as the reader (if you have managed to stay with me this far I thank you for your patience) I ask only that having read all this you reflect upon it (and perhaps upon my earlier topics regarding UR) and give me your opinion. What do you think on the matter? What do you feel could be changed to better reach the goal I desire? Again thank you for bearing with me, more to come as I get your input and think of my own input (also I promise to add more to the cities thread soon... I got sidetracked... but it's almost my birthday so I claim the right of laziness via celebration of ones date of creation :P ).

[Pellanor]

You seem to have some really good ideas. I haven't read your CS yet, but from what I see here you've got a good idea of what you want and how to go about accomplishing that.

In particular I like the idea of the Raids along with the devastation they cause between different ethnic groups. That's certainly something I'll be stealing for my setting.

[Raelifin]

Good ideas and whatnot. I applaud picking something a little more specific that vanilla fantasy.

Just as a suggestion, you may want to post something like this as part of the setting discussion thread/whatever, rather than starting a new thread. It's disorienting for those who aren't familiar with UR.

[Nomadic]

Thank you, both of you. It is good to know that I am not totally running off on the wrong tangent here.

In regards to posting it in my setting discussion thread... I don't actually have one. My mind works such that creating a point for all my ideas to congregate holes me in. I find it is much better to take it one part at a time and then pull it all together. Though I should probably start including links somewhere for people.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Dear God Nomadic and Pellanor, your names just confused the hell out of me....

[/off topic]

[Nomadic]

I am cabbage... I have spoken!

[LordVreeg]

Mood is a tough one to create.
You have all these great ideas in your head, as a DM, and spend tons of time working on all this peripheral material to create the right ambience, yet all it takes is a few misplaced words and players can get totally the wrong feel for the setting.  So it's good you are taking the time to worry this out now.
I remember someone asking me about the overly urban feel of Celtricia due to all the time and effort I was spending on Igbar, whereas Celtricia (as you have ben finding out) is mainly empty spaces with populations centers.  But I found out a lot of people were just reading into the material I was writing, about the factions and the interactions, and geting this idea of major population due to what I was saying, and NOT saying.


I applaud your use of roleplaying to deal with real historical problems.  My Gartier PCs have found it very difficult to be slandered on sight by some of the Older Igbarian families, as well as mistaken for a prisoner of the rest of the PC's out near the Herb Lands.  
Make sure the PC's have a very strong racial history to go along with the curent mood.  Today's headline of Obama refuting slave reparations is an instant and timely example of what racial history means, as everyone's racial history feeds into their current identity.
I know I go overboard with all the historical notations, but I believe that there is not better way for a DM to give the PC's a feel of a three dimensional world than to make them feel the deep and moving history of eveything they touch.  In Igbar, the old families with ties back to the last regime or the PC's finding out the sunken boneyard of Igbar was actually once a pleasure garden for an old Astrikon country manor, this makes them feel a part of a vibrant, moving world, not like they are on stage with cardboard props.

In terms of your raiders and population centers, and the warfare, I would look to the preroman and early roman period of Italy and the grecian city states.  They, too, thought of themselves as tribes, and raided each other.  Also, might want to look at the LAter Roman expansions versus the european tribes.  Just an idea.

Anyway, questioning the mood you are creating now, versus finding out later from your PC's, puts you way ahead.  Keep it up.  

[Acrimone]

I've only given your world (UR) a brief look over, so I'm going to address my comments primarily to the issue of mood -- specifically "getting it right."

One of the important things to remember is that the right mood for a fantasy setting can mean a couple of different things.

*  There's right for your actual, real life players -- what is going to be most enjoyable for them?

*  There's right for you in terms of correctly conveying exactly what it is that is in your head.

*  There's right for you in terms of what makes you happiest.  Not always the same as the preceding.

*  There's right for you in terms of what makes the most sense given the decisions you've already made about the world.  For instance, one could not create a setting plagued by constant and brutal warfare and expect the mood to be one of carefree frivolity.  Even if the PCs adopt such a mood, the NPCs will have a harder time of it, at least if you wish to maintain any consistency.  You might put a lighthearted and carefree culture or race amidst the dark and pain and ouch, but they would be there as an exemplar and an exception.

In other words, "the right mood" is going to depend greatly on what it is that is being done with the world, and who is making the evaluation.  I have found in my years of GMing that what I want out of a world, or even just an adventure, is not always the same as what my players want.  I often want my mood to be political and conspiratorial, with a sense of impending doom at every turn and an overarching theme of desperation in the face of despair. But my players are often more in a "heroic" mood, and wish to focus on triumph and moral choice.

My own tactic is generally to give my players what they want, and to work my world around their desires, expectations, and ideas.  In that sense, my game materials that I have developed are utter betrayals of some of my original visions.

But with the gifts of hindsight, I'd say they are better than they would have been had I been 100% true to my vision -- the same core is there, but I've realized that it can be dressed up in innumerable ways.  And my players are happy,  so I guess I've made the right decisions.

Lord Vreeg said that you are doing well to question your mood now rather than wait for your players to question it.  There is some wisdom there, but there is also some wisdom in letting your worldbuilding be an essentially collaborative process, with your role being solely as chief architect and executive.

The other bit of advice I would give is this, and it cannot be said enough: SAY WHAT YOU MEAN.

People (particularly people in the 14-24 age bracket, but not by any means exclusively, and I don't mean to imply that you are necessarily in that bracket) have an abominable tendancy to say something other than what they mean... to dress their words and ideas up as something else that they think sounds more interesting.

But the bottom line is that the main ideas get lost, and coherency suffers.  Young attorneys make this error ALL OF THE TIME.  And so have you.  How do I know this?  Well, in the first place, I make this mistake all of the time, too, so I recognize it.  In the second place... well, let's look at what you said:

"Next I think that things are coming across as points of light. I never wanted this"

If that was what you didn't want... why on earth did you put the following in the front page of your world wiki?

First paragraph:
Outside of the bastions of civilization, nature is the master.
"Bastions" of civilization?  Why would you call them that if they weren't isolated sparks surrounded by barbaric wilderness?  That's what a bastion is, after all, a piece of a fortress projecting out from the rest of the fortress into "not part of the fortress" territory.  Metaphorically, it's used to describe highly salient focuses and gatherings.

Second paragraph:  
Within the massive walls of the city...
Just by itself, this prepositional clause orients the reader to expect something very different within the city than without.  By itself this doesn't convey "points of light" -- but it does serve to strengthen any moves you've already made in that direction.

The clash between the upper echelons of society has spread even to state versus state relations (though the harshness of the wilds have limited this to mostly raids on each other).
This sounds like you're describing the "points of light" idea almost deliberately.

The third paragraph suffers from the same problem.  And this is the first page of your world.  Everything that the reader is going to encounter is going to be shaped by the preconceptions made in the first few paragraphs, and you're screaming at the top of your lungs "THIS IS ABOUT ISOLATED CENTERS OF CIVILIZATION IN A VAST WILDERNESS".

Now, there's nothing wrong with that.  I happen to like the idea.  I thought it made your world kinda swell, and it made the Traders Guild even more important than it might otherwise be -- sort of like the Spacing Guild in Dune.  But if it's not what you want to say, then you need to stop saying it.  Words mean things.  Choose your words carefully.

Anyway, those are juse some thoughts.  I love what you've done, and if the last half of this post is a little polemical, I blame my legal training and the fact that I've spent hours of my life explaining the same thing to undergrads and young attorneys.

[Nomadic]

First things first here. I don't have players. I am not really what you could call a DM (at least I haven't been for years). Where I live doesn't put me in a position where I can do this except with the online medium, and I have gotten a bit tired of that. At best you might call me an over-DM. Someone who creates the world so another person can pick it up and run with it. For this reason UR is to get technical more of a template than a campaign setting (however there is some in depth stuff that is going to be wrapped up into a finished product block for more lazy DMs). I can't know what the DM and his players are going to like, that is why I am leaving alot of stuff wide open. Therefore all I can do in that regard is follow my ideas for a good setting and leave it open to others to decide if they like it.

In regards to your final point I think you might want to re-read the whole first post and get the point behind it. This is me fixing my setting, in other words none of my UR stuff right now is confirmed. If you will notice I specifically mentioned the fact that it was partly my fault for not making things more clear. Sure there are cities, but they aren't points of light. That would be like saying Detroit is a point of light in its surrounding landscape. Again my fault for not saying that which is the WHOLE reason I made this thread. To discuss fixing my campaign and clarifying issues that I hadn't before. As an aside you should disregard the wiki right now. I haven't used it for awhile because I am focusing on fixing things here.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

Your initial histories had homogenized the city states culturally (or at least seemed to) as well as stabilizing the region more than you intended. You addressed the latter as you began to look at them as city states rather than cities within broader domains - as you look at your cities individually further I think you will be able to expand on that by differentiating them culturally. LV's suggestion is a good place to look at, although a lot of the Hellenic city-states still tended to get along better than yours would. Additionally you might do very well to look at the internecine politics of the renaissance Italian city-states. If you haven't read Machiavelli's The Prince I would highly recommend doing so. It's a pretty short read, and loaded with historical examples - the majority of them relatively contemporary to his audience. The rather cut-throat interactions will be sure to provide you with plenty of grist - even if you don't have major families in multiple cities. (A few in some of the cities can give you a lot to work with though.) Raiding would definitely have a devastating affect - leaving survivors in an awful position if they are decimated to the point of not being able to defend themselves from environmental threats. (A lot of "post-apocalypse" style sci-fi movie settings can offer much toward the feel of that.) Siege magic can elevate this significantly - brief attacks meant to weaken, leaving significant breaches in a city's walls and defenses can serve numerous strategic purposes. Swift structural assaults on the outworks in particular can produce costly vulnerability of the surrounding farmland they enclose and protect. (See my last in Anatomy. . .City thread for some further considerations.)
City states with cultural/ideological/religious conflicts; patron deities a la the Hellenic city-states in conflict with each other could make this even more pronounced, even mandated, beyond crusades spawned by human conflicts of culture and ideology arising from their ethea. Essentially, to produce much of what you're wanting to bring into play, you're going to need to create excuses for a variety of prejudices they would be acting out. I would recommend to get a start simply listing your cities and ascribing a few key words to each that characterize them in general and illustrate the reasons for their various alliances and antagonisms. There is also huge potential in all of this for a wide variety of mercenary careers and I would recommend giving some serious thought to the roles and influence of mercenaries in the setting (as well as to what Uncle Nicky had to say about them). Blank-liveried contract raiding units could play a major role by permitting the various powers to engage in a great deal of anonymous aggression toward neighboring enemies. I would expect mercenaries to be primarily engaged in offensive roles while the cities see to their own defenses, although merchant houses would certainly employ them defensively in addition to conducting raids (while disguised as nomads?) upon the competition. There's actually serious potential for a lot of covert warfare, double dealing and backstabbing - much like corporations in Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. Shadowrunning (a very ancient profession actually,) could likewise have some serious career potential here, although that statement equally reflects my own leanings. . .

[Nomadic]

Good ideas yes. I will look into the histories on those particular city states (I have also been researching Mesopotamian and other Middle Eastern city states). I never even thought about religious rivalry. Well, I did but I never truly scoped it out. That is a good way to increase the conflict. Mercs disguised as nomads is also brilliant. I am going to have to go over all of this and take note.

Like I said I technically don't have too much for the overview. However as the module is vital to those that are too lazy to create their own world I will relate to it more.

I don't think I want to list all the cities right now as that could take awhile. Let's focus on a couple. Perhaps you have some ideas for flavoring them well. I will give a few key words and a short description to back them up and fill in the feel. From this then I think I could get a feel for the other cities.

Palaoyr - Trade, Influence, Prominent
The trade capitol of the known world it is home to the Karrosian Merchants Guild and is ruled over by a senatorial government. Common imports: nearly everything; Common exports: nearly everything and then some.

Pikes Point - Efficient, Crafts, Realist
The first true settlement in Karros it is an experienced maker of metalcrafts (especially blacksmithed items) as well as other various tools and goods. It is overseen by the currently elected head family (clans are a prominent feature in local politics). Common imports: raw materials; Common exports: finished goods.

Kaman - Royal, Naval, Opulent
The largest city on the continent in both area and population it enjoys a standard of living better than most (with exception to the battered low class). The noble families have always believed that a show of splendor is an important thing. Any visitor would be hard pressed not to admit that the city comes across as somewhat royal. It is (of course) ruled by a monarchy. Common imports: silks, spices, precious metals, slaves; Common exports: anything the current nobles don't want.

Dalesbend - River, Beauty, Quiet
A quiet (compared to the other cities) place, Dalesbend is a smaller city state located on the Plaedin River. It encompasses both sides (positioned at a narrow section of the river) and while not as opulent as Kaman is also quiet grand in its displays. The local look though takes on a more natural feel with trees and gardens and large smoothed stone archways. Common Imports: animals, seeds, tools; Common Exports: fish, lumber, cut stone.

[LordVreeg]

actually, to get a look at a truly convoluted socio-religeous hitorical backround, go take a look at the CeBeGia thread, under the Empire, and look at the posts where S&M and I were going back and forth with the Saintsanists and the Empire and the Old Families and the Trading Guilds and the Bardic Orders.  

[Snargash Moonclaw]

I may well be snagging bits out of that myself. Retooling to GURPS promises also to provide a lot more freedom with the straitjacket constraints produced by classes out of the way, esp. regarding magic.

Ultimately with any sort of complicated "web" of interrelating but discreet social units I've found charting the relationships extremely helpful if not an absolute necessity. Way back when I was running a Forgotten Realms campaign I ended up doing so with all the gods in a pseudo graphic object freeform "database" program. Those explicitly serving another were in the same circle listed (on the same line together) just below the leading deity, with any serving them further below. Otherwise each was in it's own circle with different colored lines between them to indicate alliance, (less formal) cooperation, opposition, competition and outright conflict (neutral relations were ignored for visual clarity, being assumed by the absence of any lines). The whole chart fit on a single page (screen actually) so it provided a lot of info at a glance - and would also do so for the cities here. Varying line texture would be necessary as well to indicate public and secret relationships - whether alliances or covert war - some may even be conducting covert ops *against* public allies. . .