The Lives of Mortals

[Arc]

This'll be an improtant aspect to this project for sure. This is where we'll write about the settings on the Realms, What life is like there, what's different, what's changed, what's the same.

To start off, I'd like to note that this is sort of the end of the sequence, being the culmination of all the other threads... But don't worry, the intent is to work forwards AND backwards, starting at either end and explaining how it happened or what it did.

So when I was imagining this new realm I had sort of imagined a more extreme version of any given european fantasy... meaning more like the feel of Ebberon or Ravenloft as compared to the typical Dragonlance or Greyhawk. So, that being said, I've thought some (and am thinking here on it still) about how we can accomplish this. The first easiest way is to write in background about it, then if we REALLY want it to be dark, we could even include Sanity scores or whatnot. I'm not entirely sure that I want to take it that far though. The Term I have used before has been "hardcore" meaning that the settings are more deep and generally darker and more personal to the characters than your typical duneon crawl. I want to see tragic figures and heroes driven by *loss* rather than fame. I want a more HUMAN campaign world, where problems are often solved (or created) through roleplaying the flaws and merits of a character. I want people to FEEL their characters.

That being said, I think it might be useful to have players write down a list of characteristics that their character has, that don't equivocate to rules. Just certain things about the character that give more roleplaying oppertunities.

Does Alignment hold a bearing on this? I'm not sure of that either. Are Good people usually happier than Evil?
Are Neutral people just bland no names? Negatory. Although, I do think that Chaotic people may tend to be more "active" about their emotions (although not neccisarily in a positive way) while Lawful people are generally in control of their emotions more often.

I think having Alignment and Emotion seperate is an excellent idea. A Neutral Good character could often end up more sad than an Evil counterpart, due to that character's attachment to others... But obviously this is not a rule.

Another aspect of how to create more emotion and thus a darker and more emotive atmosphere would be Traits as presented in the Unearthed Arcana. However this option is a little set in stone. It would be too complicated to ba able to remove a trait once you have it than just to make the character with strenghts that can be explained...

So we'll think on that one more I guess.

[Arc]

another thing we can do to affect the mood and scene of the game is to replace the usual mundane things like the usual European society, foods, animals, products with slighty different versions of themselves.

So for example: the Analog to a chicken might be a Gualf, a small lizardine creature with tufts of feathers that spends most of its time eating things. A cow might be a large furry ox-like creature called, say, a Ku. And so forth. At some point I'll think up a list of things and post it, but not right now. My brain is on a different track.

[Seraphine]

A more fantastic world eh? More character into your characters eh? Well I remember talking to you about how D&D, and a lot of the time D20, is not a ROLE-playing system, it's more of a combat system. Something you'll notice is how most of the stats, skills, feats, spells, etc are all designed around some combat application. Even bards who sing are there to bolster the moral of those who fight, not those in who come in after a long days hard work and just wants a drink with the pretty lass by the bar.

One thing I would suggest is to have more non combat stats or skills(Willpower not just as a save, knowledge and perform are good 'cuz they split into areas but are rarely used in game.), maybe combine some others(Tumble, Jump and climb similar to athletics), redifining some (craft for arts and stuff not just arms and armor).

I think the most important part is to list examples what can be done and how the GM can allow gamers to use that. A lot of the time when I roleplay I feel like I'm being lead by the GM toward some point, there needs to be a general coaching guild to how to let the plot slide and form around what the characters do as appose to any set story the GM originally wanted to tell.

[Arc]

An aside: Sanity scores? What am I? Nuts? Thats WAY to combat oriented as oposed to rolebased. I'm still working on how to get this a more touchy feely setting, but for now, I think I'll take advice from sera and myself:

Backgroundbackgroundbackground, and explain---
new idea in mid sentance:

An entire series of sections on "ROLEPPLAYING a Game" about how to make your character more interesting without having to do it with combat abilities. Yeah? Yeah? Sounds good to me, I can easily insert Italic text into this if we make it a book, that explains how to use each section of the book and world to your character's advantage in the guts department. Gawd I feel wordy.

[Arc]

Things in Aemona are a just a little more desperate and a little bit more impending for the citizens. With the Gods so close, and cataclysms visible in the sky, people become much more aware of their mortality. A quite viable reason for adventure is to see the world before one passes on. Many feel like they are wasting what little time they have.