tEN
Mischief Maker
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2015
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I have a number of original works that I've started and haven't really gone anywhere. I want to buckle down and work on one of them, but I'm not sure which one to tackle first. So here I am checking in on which one people find the most interesting. Feel free to ask me questions and get more details before weighing in.
First off we have the prose.
Talented: Additional Playtest is set in a world where your soul allows you to do magic based on your personality or fated inclination, or whatever, exact details are unnecessary, but the point is, if you have a soul, you have one magical talent you can leverage into as many different spells as you can wring out of your conceptual bullshit reamer. This will follow a detachment of Crafted Ones, basically magical robots designed for war. The leader's talent is metalworking. I might do this one as a quest.
Obscured Multiverse is a world exactly like our own where some people happen to have magic, and if you do not have any you are incapable of remembering that magic is a thing. People have affinities for different kinds of magic, built up by both natural inclination and repeated exposure. When an affinity gets strong enough, you develop a manifestation, a physical change to your body that makes you even more in tune with your affinity. Every magical race is actually a group of humans with a manifestation that breeds true. Magic also only really works right on people who have magic, but having magic cast on you raises your connection to magic. So if you are the victim of a magical spell, you will become magic enough to remember that magic is a thing. This would likely be a detective novel following an infomage whose first exposure to magic was a memory spell, trying to figure out who stole what from them and why.
And then the RPG Settings. I'm calling my universe as a whole Spellweather.
Spelltide is set on a single continent cut off from the rest of the world by some pissed off gods. The ocean around the continent is heavily charged with magic that has severe and unpredictable effects, and is called the Changing Seas by the inhabitants. Thousands of years ago, all elves were wizards and had an empire where anybody without spells was basically a slave. Between human monks and halfling armsmen (a unique base class focused around improvised weapons) a rebellion was eventually staged that overthrew the elves and chased them up into the mountains. Many of them fled deep under the mountain, while others collapsed the tunnels and staged a last stand which ended in something of a stalemate. Today, there are two major kinds of elves: the dark elves, the descendants of the elves who bought time for the escaping crowd and have been living on mountaintops with tons of sunlight ever since, and the pale elves, who fled underground and ended up with albinism. Dark elves are your generic fantasy elf, while pale elves have slightly different stats depending on which house you belong to. Being known as a practitioner of arcane magic in most human controlled lands these days is a good way to wind up with a case of the dead, and even divine casters are looked upon with suspicion if they stray from their temples. Instead, there is much more reliance on non-casting magic crafters, which there are actually a fair number of.
Spellwind is set inside a magically crafted full size dyson sphere, where the original creators have left and the spells maintaining it have begun to go a little wonky. As a result, it has developed "poles" and an "equator", with gravity being a little heavier towards the equator and lighter towards the poles, as well as magnetic winds that cause any compass to point vaguely "east". There are three major terrains: deserts full of mineral creatures that will kill and eat you for your bones, rainforests that are relatively safe as long as you move quickly through the peat bog at ground level but become increasingly deadly as you hang around or climb until you breach the canopy and the sky is full of horrible monsters, and calm fairly safe seas with floating towns and the occasional pirate. You can live a calm and peaceful life in a floating town, and they get most of the wood they need through deadfall and driftwood off the rainforests, but you can also make a good, if short, living as a lumberjack. Most adventurers are lumberjacks. There are also a few places where the wonky spells have opened planar rifts which generate other kinds of terrain based on what's on the other side. A rift to the plane of earth, for instance, could easily give rise to a mountain.
Any questions?
[V] Talented: Additional Playtest
[V] Obscured Multiverse
[V] Spelltide
[V] Spellwind
[V] Start work on a whole new Spellweather setting
-[V] Spellrain
-[V] Spellstorm
-[V] Spellquake
First off we have the prose.
Talented: Additional Playtest is set in a world where your soul allows you to do magic based on your personality or fated inclination, or whatever, exact details are unnecessary, but the point is, if you have a soul, you have one magical talent you can leverage into as many different spells as you can wring out of your conceptual bullshit reamer. This will follow a detachment of Crafted Ones, basically magical robots designed for war. The leader's talent is metalworking. I might do this one as a quest.
Obscured Multiverse is a world exactly like our own where some people happen to have magic, and if you do not have any you are incapable of remembering that magic is a thing. People have affinities for different kinds of magic, built up by both natural inclination and repeated exposure. When an affinity gets strong enough, you develop a manifestation, a physical change to your body that makes you even more in tune with your affinity. Every magical race is actually a group of humans with a manifestation that breeds true. Magic also only really works right on people who have magic, but having magic cast on you raises your connection to magic. So if you are the victim of a magical spell, you will become magic enough to remember that magic is a thing. This would likely be a detective novel following an infomage whose first exposure to magic was a memory spell, trying to figure out who stole what from them and why.
And then the RPG Settings. I'm calling my universe as a whole Spellweather.
Spelltide is set on a single continent cut off from the rest of the world by some pissed off gods. The ocean around the continent is heavily charged with magic that has severe and unpredictable effects, and is called the Changing Seas by the inhabitants. Thousands of years ago, all elves were wizards and had an empire where anybody without spells was basically a slave. Between human monks and halfling armsmen (a unique base class focused around improvised weapons) a rebellion was eventually staged that overthrew the elves and chased them up into the mountains. Many of them fled deep under the mountain, while others collapsed the tunnels and staged a last stand which ended in something of a stalemate. Today, there are two major kinds of elves: the dark elves, the descendants of the elves who bought time for the escaping crowd and have been living on mountaintops with tons of sunlight ever since, and the pale elves, who fled underground and ended up with albinism. Dark elves are your generic fantasy elf, while pale elves have slightly different stats depending on which house you belong to. Being known as a practitioner of arcane magic in most human controlled lands these days is a good way to wind up with a case of the dead, and even divine casters are looked upon with suspicion if they stray from their temples. Instead, there is much more reliance on non-casting magic crafters, which there are actually a fair number of.
Spellwind is set inside a magically crafted full size dyson sphere, where the original creators have left and the spells maintaining it have begun to go a little wonky. As a result, it has developed "poles" and an "equator", with gravity being a little heavier towards the equator and lighter towards the poles, as well as magnetic winds that cause any compass to point vaguely "east". There are three major terrains: deserts full of mineral creatures that will kill and eat you for your bones, rainforests that are relatively safe as long as you move quickly through the peat bog at ground level but become increasingly deadly as you hang around or climb until you breach the canopy and the sky is full of horrible monsters, and calm fairly safe seas with floating towns and the occasional pirate. You can live a calm and peaceful life in a floating town, and they get most of the wood they need through deadfall and driftwood off the rainforests, but you can also make a good, if short, living as a lumberjack. Most adventurers are lumberjacks. There are also a few places where the wonky spells have opened planar rifts which generate other kinds of terrain based on what's on the other side. A rift to the plane of earth, for instance, could easily give rise to a mountain.
Any questions?
[V] Talented: Additional Playtest
[V] Obscured Multiverse
[V] Spelltide
[V] Spellwind
[V] Start work on a whole new Spellweather setting
-[V] Spellrain
-[V] Spellstorm
-[V] Spellquake
