Yesterday, I made a post about world building. Today, I'd like to talk a little more about this world I'll be developing for my future OSR gaming. In this post, I want to present some basic assumptions about the world that will hopefully guide my design. I do not want to define any game systems or rules at this point. I'm hoping to use this world for a variety of gaming opportunities for years to come. Heck, I don't even have a name for this place yet. Different campaigns and one-off sessions could take place in different regions and times, and development would progress as necessary to the players interests.
Anyway, on to laying out some of the assumptions:
- Gritty post-apocalypse fantasy
- A single point of light with much surrounding darkness
- Isolationist, self sufficient city-states.
- Deities are aloof and uncaring, if they exist at all
- Demi-humans are rare, but not unheard of, in human civilizations
Posts
How gritty is gritty?
ReplyDeleteWhy is it just one point? what happened to the others? You do mention other city-states so obviously there must be other cities, why arent they points of light?
Oh..there are other points of light all over the world, they are just going to be few and far between, at least in the region where the players originate. The players just aren't going to know a whole lot beyond their home town and surrounding region. I talked about it a bit more in the post for the next day.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the "gritty" comment....I just want to make sure the adventures stay deadly, I guess.
Well gritty and deadly dont have to mean the same thing. For example one good gritty combat I've heard was the Fear the Boot "Skies of Glass" combat where a guy exploring a sewer ended up wounded and picking up a limp with his character. Another is what Ive seen of the Dark Eye where wounds caused by damage in combat give stat penalties until healed. To me gritty combat is the combat where even winning can carry terrible lingering consequences, whereas a deadly combat is just that, much like Battletech where anyone can die every time they go into battle.
ReplyDeleteBut thats me
Oh yeah...I see your point. I'm still really in the general thoughts mode. It looks like this project is going to be in the background for a little while, since I'm going to be trying out HEX and probably Savage Worlds in the meantime.
ReplyDelete