Rurik

Well I don't think any firm decision has been made regarding the races, throwing in with the project certainly gives you some say in the matter. I'd like to get a very rough draft of a map started, and with your permission would like to put The Green in, based on what you outlined below - this will be a very rough starting point modified as other world pieces fall into place. I don't know how worried we need to be about real world weather patterns - the world may end up being flat (or worse :eek: ), only time and the group will tell (but there is no harm in conforming to them none the less). I'll try to fit that - does anyone have anything they might like to add thet fits on the borders of The Green or fits in some other way (pirates perhaps?) I think The Green would fit in great, so if you don't mind I'll try to fit it somewhere. I'm getting pumped up myself, and am ready to jump in. Lets not let the enthusiasm wane.

Are there problems with the CC license? Has Gwenthia experienced any limitations to it in practice? It seems well suited. While I fully acknowledge the need for a good license, I admit researching good licenses is not my primary interest in the project. If CC has worked for a shared project in the past, I'm all for using it. As much as I'd like to have the setting integrated with the rules, the lack of an open license for BRP kind of prohibits that, so rules free setting material under the CC and rules specific game packs under the OGL seem the way to go.

Well no idea is too far out for this thread so far. Actually, I had another stationary sun/moon idea where the sun fades at night and actually becomes the moon, and at dawn brightens back into the sun. It could be quite possible to get the moon and walk on it and have adventures at night time, but it would be highly advisable to get off of it by dawn. I am not adverse to a sci-fi tint to the world (I indeed hinted at the possibility that the founders of Portal were not of the world in my Portal pitch - and in all honesty I had never decided if they came from the same world or not) - but I think presenting the world as straight fantasy will give it more appeal up front. I think Jorune suffered from the Sci-Fi/Fantasy background, it was a bit too odd for many to get a grasp on (on the other hand it is still a beloved setting long after being out of print). I will go with whatever the group decides, and can easily work with any of the ideas thrown out so far - they are all great and I hope for many more. I feel it may be better to put a Fantasy face forward, rather than a mixed one. None of which to say none of these backgrounds can't be true, and even explored in adventures as the game develops.

True, but Glorantha has long suffered from scale problems tied to it's board game hex map roots. Grazelanders as nomads in the area of a (not so big) county, the Great Lunar Empire spanning, well, maybe the Mississipi valley. I'm of the school to say "It is just a game, who cares if there are some scale problems as long as it is fun to play". I like the approach of coming up with the core cultures, figuring out roughly how they fit, and coming up with a map that accomodates those needs, leaving some open spaces for future development.

Well there are some pretty far out ideas, and we may not ever end up using them, but let's not stop them from coming! If we need to scrap them or tone them back that is fine - If they don't make this world they may well make another one. I am not afraid of the the fantastic in my fantasy. I think it is in the presentation. I originally envisioned a gritty world, and it can still be presented that way even with some pretty fantastic elements. The reasonings would be mythological, as clearly some of the ideas presented preclude any possible scientific presentation (though a stationary sun on a flat world surrounded by an 'endless' oceans could easily be part of a ringworld).

This is definately being put out there as a starting point for a shared project, and in doing so I realise it may be taken far away from my original concept; I am fine with that. I'm excited to try a shared world and offered this up to to see if there was interest and maybe get the ball rolling. Already on the Geography thread some pretty wild ideas have come out and I love it - even if many or even all of them never get used for this shared project I think the brainstorming has been great. As a setting it has been kicking around for well over a year now looking for a home - it was originally going to be a setting for MRQ, but then for a couple of reasons I moved away from that, BRP never being far from my mind as a home for it. I have a bunch of notes on the city, cults, a couple of cultures, and a fairly detailed campaign arc, but I have not put so much effort into it that I don't mind seeing it go in a different direction. The name Portal is completely new - I came up with it when I decided to propose this as a starting point for this project (it seems to fit well).

Clearly there is a need to turn to cold hard sceince to solve this debate, as numbers do not lie. If we simply give mathematical values to linear and non linear and compare them we will have a clear cut winner. First, we simply use the time honored method off assigning a numerical value to each letter so that A=1, B=2, C=3, and so on. Using that sound methodology we can see that Linear has a value of 59, while Non Linear has a value 102. So clearly Non Linear is superior. However, if we hyphenate Non-Linear that changes the formula a bit, since the hyphen is really a minus sign. So non-linear works out to (43-59) or -16, clearly inferior to Linear. So there you have it, simple, clear, and decisive. Thank you science.

I am all in favor of a flat world - or some other shape, though I think the old flat with falling off the edges works fine for a fantasy world. Rivers of mercury, upside down mountains and the like are all good. Perhaps the sun does not rise or set, but fades in and out for the day night cycle, remaining stationary. The lands directly under the sun are hottest (possibly uninhabitable - by normal beings) and the world gets colder and darker in all directions outward. Stars as holes in the sky is cool (must be bright beyond it though - perhaps it is night on the other side of the sky when it is day on this world so the stars are not visible until it is night here and day there). Bridge (or tower?) to the moon is cool too. I'm no great mapper but I have campaign cartographer and there is a style from last year's annual (which I also have) specifically for maps in the style of the old one Triff posted - I like it too for ancient worlds (though it is a style that arose around the 15th-16th century if I recall right).

Yeah, I forget those things too sometimes. :ohwell: I was jesting too - sort of. :eek: Many of us yanks really do have a much shorter sense of history, as our national identity only goes back a few hundred years. COuple with the fact that the whole universe revolves around us and really none of that other stuff matters. And we are predisposed to think large landmasses are inhrerently better than islands. >:-> Now :focus: :thumb:

Thanks for the good feedback. The setting seemed like a pretty easy fit to many of the ideas going around. It was designed around oppurtunities for adventure (ancient ruins and wonderous artifacts) and even had gates (well originally one), and a reason for them to be mysterious rather than easily controlled. Well I must admit that the original campaign arc idea may have involved a couple minor plot devices involving the weakening of the wards on the demon gate and the return of the ancients... Surely you mean ancient sleeping magics?

A few hundred years? That is the entire length of history over here...

Here is an idea I'll through out for as a starting point for a shared world. It is actually based on an idea I've been planning on for a bit - first for MRQ, then having decided that that system wasn't quite right I've been keeping it on a back burner waiting for BRP. It is based on a city with a mix of cultures and a nearby ruin fouled with evil, and was already had gate openers - though in the original setting they only opened one gate - as the setting was originally titled "The City on the Edge of Hell" I'll let you guess which one. There is more to it than just this summary - I've developed some of the cults and have some notes on nearby cultures, and actually have some good ideas for human cultures that sprang from the human only/fantasy races discussion. Gates could easily exist to ther parts of the world as well. So without further ado here is the pitch: The city commonly known as Portal has stood on the banks of the River Jule for as long as any of today's people can remember. It had been ruled since before known history by the ancient and now dead race called the Akershule, and they called it Asherayne. The Akershule were powerful sorcerers, and knew ways of opening gates to other worlds. Some say that they were never of this world, and came to the world from one of the gates, but know one knows for sure. Though they built great structures and knew great magic, they never expanded their control over the primitive peoples around them, ruling only over their city and the surrounding lands that supported it. They traded with the barbarian cultures around them in times of peace, and were brutally efficient at defending their lands in times of war. And always the markets of Asherayne were filled with wonders from beyond the gates. Then, many hundreds of years ago, they opened a gate to somewhere they should not have. Hordes of demons poured through and overran the part of the city west of the River Jule, besieged the rest of the city, and spread out to the surrounding lands. For over a decade they besieged Asherayne but could not overrun it's fortifications. Eventually, the surrounding peoples united against the evil that the Akershule had unleashed, and drove it back and lifted the siege. The Akershule let the barbarian armies into their city and united they attacked across the remaining bridges into the west city and drove the demons back into their gate, and the Akershule cast magics to try and seal the gate. Once the enemy from beyond was defeated the barbarian armies inside the city walls turned on the Akershule and attacked them, killing as many of them as they could and driving the rest out to their keeps in the mountains north of the city. There the surviving Akershule, their civilization all but destroyed, entombed themselves in mountain catacombs and committed suicide. They left inscriptions on their tombs promising to return to right the wrongs of the past - though no one knows if they mean the wrongs committed upon them by the young races or the wrongs they committed by them upon the world by unleashing hell. Today, the city is called Portal by most, and the east city is ruled by the descendents of those who conquered it. It's population represents all nearby cultures, though the natives themselves are mainly an urbanized people, a mixed breed of all the surrounding peoples. The gates still stand, and though cults have arisen around these mysterious portals, no one truly understands their working. The West city is still abandoned and haunted by evil things, a great ruin where the demon gate still stands. Hellish things seep through it still to haunt the west city and surrounding lands, though the ancient magics have held back the hordes of demons - so far. Any feedback, thoughts, or cool ideas?

I kind of like option 2 for a fantasy world. I am fine with mythic explanations for things like geography and weather, though option 1 is o.k. by me. I'm not as big on all islands, each with its' own author for a couple of reasons, first that it kind of defeats the purpose of shared world generation, and second that it really just moves many of the geopolitical issues (who's powerful compared to who econimically and militarily) to the naval power area. Aditionally, islands limit many terrain/culture types (great plains or deserts and nomads for example) unless they approach the size of small continents anyway. All of this is not to say that there couldn't be 1-2 continents and a bunch of islands, allowing those who want to work on the relatively closed system of an island to do so but also allowing work on part of a larger land mass.

I think the devolpment of this shared world has already moved past the development of the MRQ shared world. Thougth that one did have a map...

Would producing the setting as 'systemless' onder a license like the CC work, and then produce statistic packs for individual game systems? Kind of like what Green Ronon is doing for Freeport (though for different reasons)? For example, produce a city detailing a town, all it's major personalities, etc, but with no rules, so no outside license is required. Then produce a stat-pack under the OGL for MRQ (easy) and BRP (which is where Chaosiums restrictive licensing comes into play ). Such an approach could work, though I see 2 problems: 1) What to do with new rules as part of the setting, such as new spells or agic systems? I guess those could be treated like the stat packs though. 2) I would really like a tight integration of setting and rules in some areas, such as the CUlt writeups, where spells and game effects particular to cults would be included in the cult writeup.

I am all for fantasy. I am strongly interested in the concept that started this whole discussion - trying to recover some of the setting flavor from BRP's infancy, namely a gritty low tech magic rich detailed fantasy world with character. Not to say a couple of different projects couldn't come out of all this, but fantasy is what I am interested in.

It could be a nightmare. I'm all for jumping in and finding out how bad of one it is.

Hey why don't you just make your sig: "236/420. Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!" And save us all some math?

I'm all for a shared world. Gates is always an option, people can plug their world/universe by gates in pretty much at will, but I'm into the idea of one world co-operatively developed.

A couple months shy of 38 then.

But D&D has been the most played system for over 30 years, and has continously been the system new (read young) roleplayers are exposed to. BRP has not been a major player in recent years, so mostly older players have fond enough memories to do things like hang out on boards for unreleased games and buy pre-release copies. The number of high school kids learning Stormbringer is probably pretty limited, and while CoC is popular there are many other horror alternatives these days and many young gamers probably don't realise it is part of a once proud (and hopefully soon to be again) stable of games united under the BRP name.

Where is the pie option? As much as I like polls, I kinda think this, or future polls related to the early formation of the project, should maybe not be actual click the option forum polls - but instead be 'post your opinion in the thread polls'. It is too easy for people who really aren't that interested in project to just vote in a traditional poll, making it hard to filter out the 'serious' votes.

Physical Age or Maturity?

Yeah, we know you are just trying to scare off the competition. (seriously though thanks for the input - you obviously have the experience in this area) How many people are serious about this? I've been busy lately but see my free time returning. Other than a couple of projects simmering on the back burner I've already got some ideas, some based on earlier plans and some sparked from this thread (the human only idea is growing on me). Sow how about a roll call - who seriously wants to take a stab at this? If there are enough participants to get rolling maybe our benefactor can create a sub forum so we can have threads on the different issues we will be tackling.

I want pink powder weapons.