Puck

I am looking forward to it. I cannot believe how well you do with English when it is your second language. I had no idea at all until you mentioned it a while back. I saw that you ordered BRP 0 edition so you should be able to start soon. I am dieing to get my hands on a copy but I know as soon as I order one the new edition will come out; on the other hand if I don't order one the final copy won't come out till september. >:-> Magic will be a big issue. I still do not have a firm grasp on what that will be like. One thread mentioned it is like stormbringer and I never had a copy of that.

Thanks again, your encouragement helps a lot to keep this going. How is the work on the water-world developing? I have been toying with another idea for the shared world: When I first mentioned the Green I was thinking about including a group of men, traders, who were coming into the green from the back... from the gates in the mountains. I was going to port in one of the key players of my old homebrew: the Merchants Guild or simply the Guild. I do not know if they would work in the shared world though as they would be major players and may goof up other peoples visions. The last empire in the history of my world was a Rome-like entity that counted on its cavalry rather and legions. When that empire fragmented, much like Rome herself did, the merchant houses who were based in the colonies rather than the Catholic church stepped in. Through time they formed the Guild. The Guild was a cross between the God Learners, the Spacing Guild in Dune, the Italian republics of the renaissance and maybe a bit like the post-Rome church . The Guild first and foremost acted as bankers and they continued to coin money when the Empire ceased (giving a pretty much universal coinage). They claimed neutrality between the kingdoms and were allowed to set up markets in different realms. They also would finance roads and ports in different kingdoms. They arranged ransoms and treaties as well. The Guild’s neutrality was not always evident of course and they tended to take over kingdoms from within. Once they made a kingdom addicted to trade and wealth they would begin to assert leverage. The Guild was not as unified as they seemed on the surface either. They had many factions and sub-guilds. There were the Mariners, the Alchemists, the Merchants guard, and the Caravaners. One of the things that may screw up the shared world is that the Guild had found the secrets to gunpowder and used primitive firearms, usually matchlocks and very expensive wheel-locks. Gunpowder was a super refined substance that only special alchemists could whip-up. The primary substance was called Dragonsdung ( a term I realized that I had stolen long ago from the Fantasy Trip and then forgot where the idea came from so it would need a new name). This substance was only found in mountains of a pretty dangerous desert and mining it was a bit of a hazard. The guild was a great boon to role-playing as they often hired adventurers, barbarians and mercenaries to do their dirty work for them. Often they were the patrons of adventurers and just as often they were bad guys who were power hungry and hatching plots against the adventurer’s homelands. The inclusion of the Guild would generally give the shared-world a renaissance feel rather than the bronze age feel of old Runequest. They could be very interested in the lost magic of the gates and sponsor magical reseach on them. Even though they know that this is a more than a little dangerous the ability of quick travel may outweigh the perils. Would the Guild or some derivative work in the shared world?

I very much like Soltakss centaurs. Familiar, but with just enough added quirks and details to make them unique.:thumb: It got me thinking a little about beast people in general. Would it be possible to have some way of attaching the beast people thoughout the shared worlds to one of the moon wives of the myths. I am not a master of myths like Soltakss, but in my old homebrew goblins were always tied to one of the moons. I think I kind of borrowed this idea from an old Kull comic book titled Under the Goblin Moon. Also from the Werewolf stuff. Maybe when this particular moon is full or lines up properly, the beast people have special rites, bang bongos, and possibly even kind of go wild and nuts. Their magic may work better at these times. Could one of the moon wives "awaken" the beasts? Any ideas? Note: A moon connection may be able to tie in with the centaur's scythes.

If not there is a great glossery in the back of any of Colleen McCullough First Man in Rome books. She also adds a bunch of other terms that are great for roleplaying including really nasty Latin insults for characters to sling around at each other. >:-> You can probably find one of these books cheap at used bookstore.

Looks nice. :thumb: I don't think the green needs to be on the same continent as Portal. The green should be somewhat difficult to get to depending on the sea-going technology. For instance India, Africa, possibly the Americas to a Europe-centric world. This would keep it a little more wild and mysterious.

Are there other game worlds where that was done? And to what extent did the mounts have control? The reason I ask is that this comment here got me thinking a little about the lizard man/orm/dinosaur races we have been swaffling around. None of them are particularly strong or unique. What if we were to mash all these Ideas together with Rurik's mount controling master idea. Has this kind of thing been done before?

Thanks, I am hoping to write more up on the Soolie presently. Soolie just came to mind as a name, it seems somehow familiar, I hope I am not borrowing other peoples names, I have a habit of doing things like that. Whoops, Nifara or Nifarites are the same, just slightly different names for the same people. Nifirite is just a spelling mistake.

Just added Nifira to the Green. Also it contains materials that could be ported to the Peoples of the Green or Trade and Trade goods.

Wew! Big big question there. I think it is extremely important for the shared world. Riding strange creatures is a staple of high fantasy worlds. It was one of the first things that caught my eye with Runequest and I have never lost my love of the Praxian nomads. It is important to make sure ours are somehow different though, perhaps here more than anywhere. I thought of people riding large almost monkey-like creatures in the Green and then shied away. Seemed a little to much like the Star Wars thing in Jabba’s basement ( I think the novels had people riding them in swamps or jungles). Instead I think those hippo-like water lizards may work the best: (humpback lizards). When I get a chance I will write them up. I like the Mammoth rider idea. One idea for barbarians would be to ride Rams (I think they are actually called big horn sheep). They are very sure footed in the mountains and look cool. Another Idea is to have people ride land dragons( natural creatures, not real dragons or orms), big, long, drawn-out, tailed, camel (for lack of a closer animal) looking lizards, with legs down for striding rather than splayed like a real lizard. Two or three people could ride them and they could strap all their living essentials to them. These would work well for plains type nomads or even merchants and caravans. Possibly the same as above, but a hairless mammal with skin like a rhino or elephant instead of a lizard. I have always liked the idea of a bipedal lizards as a primary mount. Side note: I never found many details on the bolo lizard people in Prax. Are there any pictures of them anywhere? I agree that how we present these mounts and wrap them into culture is just as important as what they look like physically. Weird beasts would not have to be reserved for barbarians either. For instance, we could make the lizards, bipedal and land dragon, the preferred mount of civilized people, horses or mammals could even be uncouth barbaric beasts. When inventing new creatures, it sure would be nice to have a good artist doing concept sketches. When I am reading stuff like this in game-books one good inking will sell me hook line and sinker.

I think things can work pretty well together though. Right from the start I was making the Green as a small place, about the size of Dragon Pass with an open ended southern part for future growth. On the world map the Green was much much larger than I originally imagined though. That allows plenty of space for it to grow into details. The volcanos and the more developed areas fit there very nicely. I will kind of focus with variable ideas on the northern-west corner which is futher from civilization. :thumb:

Nope, I am just telepathic. It is amazing how ideas and thought tend to come together that way. A week ago I would not have even thought of it. But after reading your myths and stuff, it just seemed to kind of match up. Amen. I had a scanner and I could just make a rough outline, scan it, make a few copies to play around with, rough drafts as it were. Now it seems every time I need to change something I've got to retrace the entire map. The Scanner seems to have died though.>:->>:->

I very much like the lay and feel of Frogspawner's map. I would prefer to juggle Europe and the Mediterranean so It was not so noticeably the real world (maybe have different, more interestingly shaped protrusions instead of Spain, Italy and Greece), but that is just my personal preference. The idea of two continents coming together from the northwest and southeast works very well, particularly, with narrow waterways widening to seas between the two. This can allow for all sorts of civilized and rival future write-ups. That Icelandic island would work nice as a home for Viking types when the Brp Vikings book comes out. For the Green, Rust has it dead on. I was thinking that north-western corner would be kind of hooked and heavily pressed between the mountains and the sea. As it fades to the southeast it would broaden allowing for greater variation. I was hoping the mountains could be very high and rise up steeply like the Himalayas. It would be nice to have a very large, intense, somewhat mountainous desert behind the Green as the mountains suck the moisture form the sky. This would be fun to work on as a possible future project as well. As for sun mountain, I kind of liked the way it was central and yet very hard to reach, strange that it is in the north and not the south though. Just an idea: What about placing sun mountain on a plateau or several plateaus of higher mountains kind of like a Natural god-made ziggurat. People traveling there would have to climb cliffs or mountians with each level One level could be a burning Desert the next plateau where water vapour rises to the air could be very steamy. Sun god temples could be ziggurats in miniature and their temple rites could be mini hero quests of climbing to the sun. This stuff is really Soltakss’ specialty though, I do not know what he has planned.

HMMMMMN. Great for a sci-fi version, for the fantasy version I was thinking of something more ... magical. May still work though as I let it sink in a little. It has a nice ring to it. This is were the two concepts diverge a little. I was thinking that the Fantasy version would have secret magic means of boiling and transforming the gums, resins, saps and such, whereas the sci-fi version would of course have more chemical, scientific processes. Alchemy vs. chemistry. The products could work identical in both worlds though.

Reader friendly I have attempted to do this, I hope somewhat successfully, by allowing for a western corner of the Green,where I can kind of muddle around with my own ideas, and a greater common or eastern Green that is closer to civilization (the Green of Soltakss' excellent peoples of the Green article). The two may eventually become one, as ideas co-mingle with others. Where I was in a bit of a quandary was where I should place the new stuff I was writing, knowing that it may vary somewhat from Soltakss vision and description. I will attempt to do this. The other thing to keep an eye on is that it remains somewhat reader friendly for other people who come to the shared world wiki to see what is going on. BY the way if anyone has any ideas for different names for races or places please let me know. Sometimes I have just used place-holders so I can go on. Also if I have made confusing grammatical or word choice errors on the wiki please feel free to change them to prevent my embarrassment. Right now I am particularly trying to find a cool name for Tree-alchemists or resin-tappers, who work with tree resins, potions, poisons and stuff. I just cannot think of a fitting name that rolls off the tongue.

Just knocked down the old the old Mrq Trogod notes(only intended to see for people to see what I was talking about) and replaced them with more Green-friendly write-ups. I am not very familiar with the organization of Wiki's and am not sure how to proceed. Should I place all my stuff for the Green under "The Green" in one long wiki post or should we have sub-catagories? Should I add ideas to other peoples sub catagories (content may not mesh perfectly) or should I create new one's?:confused:

God Forbid you get someone's name wrong:) It is very cool seeing the myths come together and seeing bits and fragments of old familiar stuff wound up with the new rope. :thumb:

O.K that last one did it! I think the first deity for the Green will be a Totemistic, Trogod, two headed, frog god. One head is called Frogspawner who represents Amphibian fertility, the other, Frogskinner who represents Amphibian death.

I have several in the oven, but was waiting to see how these first ones kind of turned out. Lizard men and Elves are still kind of loosely floating about. I do not mind them as you have them here (I very much like your lineup, a lot of them are familiar, yet just different from the norm), but others may have Ideas. The other unbroached topic is the presence of chaos. I have alway thought chaos very cool, but again very, very overdone. Is there a different twist on the whole matter to make our little creation a little unique. I have mentioned that I used to use the idea of the Created (Kraecheeth)( name could be different though, perhaps something meaning "twisted"). One of the old nasty magics along with necromancy and summonings was to mutate or genetically change creatures. This allowed for a series of malevolent, mutated, beings that could be different in different parts of the world (each would builder could add their own). Could it be something related to the gates? I have a series of creatures planned that pretty much need something like this. Any ideas? note on the Kaecheeth: If you recall the Kaecheeth were created by the Azchirgnoth in ages past. By the time characters were actually role playing the Kraecheed had been pretty much hunted down. There was a ceremony type spell though that unscrupulous spell users could dig up that would muster Kraecheeth. A green writhing glow would kind of light the night skies like the northern lights. People would sleep poorly and have horrible nightmares for miles around. Kraecheed would begin to gather in the area around these spells thinking their Azchirgnoth masters had returned. This lent itself to some very nice roleplaying.

That sounds very interesting. I would love to take a gander at that. The Brom artwork alone created so much mood to that setting.

Cool! I keep getting distances and sizes all messed up in my head. When I drew that original map of the green up I was thinking of a whole different scale(much) smaller. Then I look at the world map and how big it and Oy! The Green is as big as Europe. :shocked: Big is good though.

I was kind of thinking that the Green might be a ways off from the heart of the civilized part of the world. The pirates would sail seasonally great distances for raiding and traiding and then retreat back to their hidy holes in the swampy vastness of the Green. Soltakss Discussed having several cities in his post on the Green. Maybe the eastern Green could have some cities while the western hook area would remain rather unexplored and isolated...good place for pirates to hide.

Whoops! sorry bout that:o I'll try to get a little bigger pic here. I have been squishing the picture size down to upload them. I have always had a scanner, but after years of no use, all of a sudden it has gone haywire. Instead I have used a camera and that takes quit large pictures. I was afraid they would overwhelm the download size. The map is about the third one I have done and the Shape should be about right for the western half of the Green. to the south east, off the edge of the map the green should widen a great deal even though it looks like it is narrowing on the map.

Are you going to redo the map Frogskinner posted or are you going to do a whole new one? I also believe the green will need to be quite large. I kind of made up the sketchs with the impression that it would be quite small about the size of European country or American state. It kind of grew though. Now, I was thinking of keeping the far Northwestern corner as my little corner of the Green, further away from civilization. To the east the Green could widen out and become much more vast and full of peoples, more like Soltakss' Peoples of the Green write-up. In the original frogskinner map the western section section of the Green kind of expands and the mountain fade up towards the north. Could that corner be narrowed somewhat instead and have the mountains hook back to the sea. I attached a photo of a quick rough. I don't know if you can tell what is going on there, but that may give an idea of the basic shape.

Looking forward to it.

Thats the way we will do it then. :thumb: Later on, when both settings develop a little more, we could write a senario incorporating both worlds. As for the the Ashuli Tree Kraken thing, I think they both work fine. I like the idea about mixing players up. By the way, on the Wiki, would it be possible to change my original posting/labeling of "the green" to "The Green". As it is, it looks kind of dorky. I do not know how to change it though.