My roleplaying setting scrapbook part 2

Throughout this piece, I have scattered AI-generated Artwork that I think captures something of the spirit of the kind of setting I’m trying to create- magically supercharged, alien, and hauntingly familiar, and charged with a sense of the divine, even at low levels. The title of each piece is the phrase I used to generate it. There’s not much effort here, to be sure, and six months from now when AI-generated artwork is everywhere they will look like trash, but for the moment I think the results are cute.

You can read part 1 here. These posts are generally less proofread than my essays- it’s a scrapbook after all.

Defining the philosophy of the setting

Succinctly:

1. Lean into classic D&D setting tropes, especially for high-powered settings.

2. Find a way to make them novel through leaning into them, rather than by trying to avoid them. Turn the tropes up to 11.

3. Supercharge the mythopoetic. To be pretentious: this is a world of pure archetypes acting out yearning.

4. Without having a philosophical, ethical or political agenda, make people think about philosophy, ethics and politics through their play

Gestalt rules

A gestalt character is a character who effectively “levels up” in two classes at once. So for example a 4th level gestalt character might be a 4 Wizard (school of evocation) / 4 Cleric (life domain).

Some features are combined, whereas for others you take the better of each. For hit die, you take the larger hit die (in this case cleric’s d8). For multi attacks you take the larger number of attacks etc. There are many different possible exact configurations of rules, and many possible balancing rules. For example, to avoid punishing players who take x2 martial options, I like to replace redundant extra attack features with an extra ASI (albeit one that can only be spent on an ability increase, not a feat).

But the details are somewhat beside the point here. Given that the setting is meant to be high powered, I thought it would be a perfect setting to debut some gestalt rules.

The cool thing about gestalt rules is that it avoids power creep for the sake of power creep. Including the artificer, there are 169 possible class combinations, each with interesting synergies and fascinating backstory possibilities. When we add in subclasses and multiclassing (yes you can still multiclass with gestalt classes) the possibilities become exponentially vaster. It adds a richness to character design that was previously somewhat lacking in 5e.

The right question to ask after this is: how would the existence of Gestalt classes affect things in universe? I’ll keep pondering this as I build the setting.

“The Oceans Were Aflame”

A morphic, destiny charged world

• Things can have “destinies”. Attempts to escape that destiny might incur disadvantage, attempts to conform to it might give advantage.

• Destiny tends to push things more in the direction of being more narratively coherent as if the world is fighting for events to form a satisfying arc. Some characters know their destiny, others don’t, but players always know their character’s destiny.

• But there are elements of the world that root for those trying to escape destiny and give them advantages to- so having a destiny you are trying to escape might actually be a mechanically attractive option.

• To use the language of D&D, the plane of existence of our setting is partially morphic that is to say that it is at least somewhat responsive to the will and desire of its inhabitants.

• Everyone can slowly create and alter objects, so long as they are not made of metal. This is why food, housing etc. are not issues.

• The morphic character of the world gives everyone spell-like abilities

• Every character has three non-damaging cantrips they can cast innately, chosen at character creation and changeable during levelling up.

  • To compensate, actual spell casters additionally get their regular cantrips, plus these bonus cantrips, plus unlike non-casters they can change their class given cantrips on a long rest.

• Everyone can levitate

• Given a week of concentration for at least an hour a day, anyone can change their appearance to another member of their species

• Everyone can fly at the same speed they can walk at level 10

• Everyone can use dimension door at will at level 13

• Everyone can use teleport at will as of level 17 (however the ubiquity of teleportation means that means to block teleportation are also ubiquitous)

The Counter-Hegemonic peoples

In a world of post-scarcity where anyone can make what they need, one kind of government/culture that is relatively common is the counter-hegemonic republic.

In a classic paper the anthropologist Boehm talks about counter-dominance hierarchies. Despite their egalitarianism, hunter-gatherer societies are intensely political, argues Boehm. In particular, their politics is oriented around maintaining egalitarianism. That means that there are institutionalized forms of behavior- even bullying- that are aimed at those who are thought to be at risk of getting “too big for their boots”. For example, successful hunters.

Under conditions of abundance, there’s a question of what happens with hierarchy. Is the absence of practical, material needs an inducement to abandon hierarchical organization? Or is it an inducement to create even more complicated hierarchies, with humanity’s desire for status competition freed of practical restraint?

Both happen in our setting in different societies and to different degrees. The counter-hegemonic peoples are one end of that spectrum- they are the people who choose to resolve this dilemma by trying to retain perfect political equality. However they do not retain it passively, but rather through active safeguards meant to ensure that no one has too much political sway.

Naturally, if your characters become level 20 heroes they might fall afoul of this. How will they navigate a complex social scene, designed to stop people like them from becoming tyrants?

We are to the Fey as Demons and Angels are to us

My idea for the fey.

Consider an angel, demon, devil, modron etc. From our point of view these are disturbingly simple creatures, sapience reduced to a single philosophical standpoint. From our point of view they’re one dimensional.

We are to fey as these kinds of creatures are to us. To the fey we look morally and spiritually one dimensional in exactly the same way an angel looks morally and spiritually one dimensional to us. Our persistent moral cores, ongoing values etc. seem to them to make us hopelessly cartoonish. Where is the depth? Where is the complexity? The fey even argue among themselves as to whether, in light of this simplicity, we can even be truly considered sapient.

Moieties and other complex kinship structures

A lot of people are vaguely aware that in non-western societies there have often been complex kinship structures. For example, moieties- society is divided in half. Each person can only marry a person from the opposite moiety of the one they were born in. Failure to do so is seen as a breach of incest taboos, even if the couple is not biologically related.

I would like to explore societies with complex kinship rules, including moieties in societies with elaborate technologies that otherwise consider themselves quite “liberal”.

The Order of the Scorned Truths

Not a major part of the setting, but…

There’s an order of preachers whose sole role it is to turn up at places that have only just suffered a disaster, and preach that it was the sins of the suffering that bought this upon themselves.

They’re widely loathed- especially by almost all other priests and clerics who see them as cruel and theologically unsophisticated. As those who listen to their sermons often remark if they’re so good at spotting sin and its relation to disaster, why don’t they turn up before the disaster?

Generally the effect of their preaching is:

1. To multiply sorrow in the already sorrowful

2. To turn people against religion

3. Occasionally, to give people with preexisting prejudices a rationalization to hunt those who they now blame for their affliction.

At the highest levels they’re secretly controlled by The Wicked Ones. The continued survival of this sect is baffling to many, given how many enemies they have made both mighty and low. A DM could use this sect either to comic effect, or to explore deadly serious themes.

“An End Has a Start”

Look to the intersections

D&D monsterology has traditionally been defined by types: fey, fiend, celestial, undead, dragons, elementals, and aberrations to name just some. Now a defining feature of our setting is trying to go beyond tropes by leaning into them. Rather than try to invent a new type or try to move beyond typologies altogether, I thought it could be interesting to intersect types. What does a fey undead look like? A celestial elemental? Focusing on these combinations seems like a promising wellspring of interesting ideas, with a solid tie to the classics. I don’t just want to use this as a monster generation strategy, I want to use it as a faction generation strategy to. Role some dice, create combinations, then see if I can work backwards into coherent philosophies.

Some possibilities are really interesting to me here. For example fey aberration. Fey in a lot of traditional stories and modern fantasy are aberrations, just without the fleshy tentacles. They have the blue & orange morality, the go-mad-from-the-revelation quality etc. etc. Plus I think there are potent ideas for visuals here as well.

War by assassin & war by culture

In a post-scarcity world in which it is possible to create food by thinking about it, fortifications are exceedingly difficult to break by siege.

This tips the balance of power to defensive warfare, and makes conquest by conventional means exceedingly difficult. The result, though, isn’t the absence of warfare, rather warfare tends to take other forms:

1. Cultural warfare. Rulers will attempt to take territory by persuading the citizens that they should flip allegiance- making pitches based on ideology, national allegiance, bribery and other complex factors.

2. Assassination, especially by special forces.

An overflow of gods

This isn’t original, at all, but it’s a flair I like, and I’d like to double down and make it more explicit than some others have. Like in a lot of D&D settings there are a lot of gods in this setting, so many that even if you were to restrict yourself to gods that are still worshipped, few would be able to name all gods. Instead, the nameable unit which everyone is expected to know is pantheons. There are about two dozen pantheons, including at least one for every space on the alignment grid. The setting book might name an average of four or five key books per pantheon but, each pantheon contains scores or even hundreds more. Generally, it is assumed any given individual will worship a pantheon instead of a particular God and having a particular favored god is often seen as a sign of piety.

One interesting feature of pantheons is that although many have an alignment that they are mainly or primarily connected to, almost all have at least some gods from across the alignment space, bound to their pantheon despite philosophical differences through thematic, blood or relational ties.

“The Light of God”

Random lore- species origins

I think a powerful sense of uncovering secrets, learning about the structure of a vast fictional. Playing with the histories of races is a great way to do this.

Dwarves are the descendants of gnomes and orcs. They bear the same diversity of skin color of orcs- reds, greens and blues. Their hair is always metallic in color, but otherwise reflects the brightness of gnomes.

Elves often seen as one of the more fundamental or ancient races are actually the descendants of gnomes and humans- they are intermediate in height and slenderness. Unlike gnomes they are not immortal, but they are long lived. Envying the long lives of their gnomic progenitors, 20,000 years ago or so Elves made a pact with the land which means that when they die, they are reincarnated rather than passing on, retaining a goodly chunk of their memories. The accumulation of experiences is slowly splitting them in two- some souls have developed a benign, tired wisdom, others are becoming increasingly violent and impulsive.

Gnomes are a branch of hominids evolved in dangerous forests, where there their small size afforded mobility, and their illusions protections from predators. Their bright colors reflect this ancestry.

Orcs are a branch of hominids who evolved in cold mountains, in a range since lost to time, where the wall between worlds was thin, and truck and barter with spirits was essential. They may be slightly infused with troll blood, even specialists are not sure. Orcs tend to be more violent than other races not because of any bloodlust, but because their spiritual connections mean they don’t see death as a big deal or the end- just a continuation of life in a new form. A heroic death is kind of like a sensible career move. They’re not wrong about this. Orc souls tend to be reincarnated

Humans are a branch of hominids who evolved on the savannah. Early humans constantly heard the voices of gods in their consciousness, but three millennia ago these voices just stopped, causing mass panic and the death of up to half the human population.

Random lore- the Slumber Bear

It looks like a cross between a very large dog and a bear, though really it is neither. It spends virtually all its life sleeping and dream. It hunts and gains its sustenance in the dream world too. If attacked in the real world it will defend itself in its sleep. It deals with mating, migration etc. you guessed it- by sleepwalking.

They are prized as pets. While they are not very active in the real world they will, if they are well taken care of, visit their owners in dreams and protect them. On the other hand, if they are abused they will maul their owner in dreams. Long-lived, the slumber bear’s suitability as pet is enhanced by the fact that they require neither food nor drink.

Superpredators

One thing that has always bothered me about D&D settings is the ecology. At minimum, most D&D settings have ten distinct species of Dragons, ten or so distinct species of Giants, etc. etc. Numbers like 100 species of gigantic predators can be reached pretty easily. These are apex predators among apex predators and would each require vast ranges, and would probably aim to take up larger ranges than strictly required. At a minimum a species needs around 50 individuals in the short term and 500 individuals in the long term for sustainability. There just isn’t the space for it.

I want to tackle this in a couple of ways:

1. It’s a big world, with roughly x10 the landmass of earth. Only a fraction of it will be mapped officially, most left to DMs.

2. I want to emphasize that gigantic creatures like this tend to be plane hoppers, they belong to gene pools spread out over much more than just one plane. They’re an easy “entry level” plane hopping plot hook for the DM.

3. I’m interested in exploring the idea that there is quite a bit of genetic flow between different “species” in many of these categories. This is a common feature of many settings, but I want to draw out, for example, the consequences of dragons, despite their massive disagreements, forming a single breeding population.

4. We world is startlingly fecund, even in its deserts.

5. I think the massively stretched-out populations of these species keep in contact with each other and form some kind of society through secret ways- underground passages, transcontinental portals, sky paths built by giants. We discuss this a bit more in the next section

“She Loved Oblivion”

A lattice of interconnected biomes

There’s an interplanetary network of gates that connects regions- generally ecologically similar regions- together. The relative ubiquity of these gates means that you in a sense always have two locations- your geographical location (“East of the capital of Afar”) and your biome location (“In the jungle”). It also means that all biomes of the one type essentially form a mass. It makes sense to talk about being in The jungle, because all bits of jungle are interconnected by numerous spirit gats.

Because of these interconnections, any given biomemight also be quite small. A one mile patch of rainforest is possible, and might contain staggering diversity, so long as it contains at least one link to a larger jungle.

A Spirit Haunted Climate

The climate of our setting is going to be driven by an underlying ecology of weather and elemental spirits that means that climate and geography bear far less relationship to each other than they normally should in world-building. There are lush jungles next to deserts. The apparent length of the day in a region often has little to latitude- rather it is determined by balances of power and politics between nature spirits.

More on Fiends

In the previous entry, we talked about devourers, the neutral evil fiends of the setting. In this entry, I want to talk about devils and demons.

A demon, as in other settings, is a being of pure chaos and evil, fair enough. But I don’t buy the usual idea in most D&D settings that there are demon “lords”, “princes” and “realms”. There are two bases of cooperation between sapient beings: honor/honesty/reciprocity (lawfulness) and kindness/mercy/grace (good). Demons, are a zero on each. They’re not even that great at self-preservation. Thus they will have no organization whatsoever. The idea of demonic “cities” is ridiculous, they’d burn down in minutes. They’re beings of pure sadism and impulse, actively adverse to keeping promises, let alone keeping the peace. Every demon is their own sovereign. A demon might briefly bully a (literal) handful of other demons into doing what it wants, but very soon the slaves will kill the master, or the master will kill the slaves out of boredom or sadism.

But, you object, how is this compatible with fun gameplay? If Demons don’t cooperate what do they look like as enemies? Demons don’t form armies, but the kill or die nature of the demonic realm means that surviving demons are typically very strong- far stronger than the typical devil. A lot of demons are end game level bosses for that reason, as powerful as as a small army of devils or devourers in their own right.

But some demons aren’t just as powerful as an army they are an army. Though demons do not cooperate with other demons, many demons in order to survive in the abyss have become extended entities with multiple bodies. You could spend a whole campaign fighting “drones” that reflect parts and fragments of one powerful demon

Devils, on the other hand, are perfectly lawful but evil- prone to both perfect unity and selfish fragmentation. How does this work out in practice? I think here used to be one hierarchy of devils, with a single lord over all devils who had three lieutenants. In a freak happenstance- really no one’s doing- this devil god died. His three lieutenants all tried to take his place, for he had left no will, confident of his own immortality. None of the devils would yield, so a civil war started, and Hell was split into three hierarchies. Thus it has always remained, for whenever one of the lords looks like winning, the other two gang up. Three rigid, very similarly structured hierarchies, three ideologies, almost identical to outsiders, but with vital differences to the participants.

Many an overconfident adventurer has thought this would enable them to play one devil off against another, but the devils are very skilled bargainers…

A Draconic Ecology

In the world I’m working on I think there are a lot of dragons. I know what you’re thinking “it’s already called dungeons and dragons, how can this possibly be original?”

In this world, dragons are a whole biological taxa unto themselves, like birds in our world and just as common. Most are very small. The smallest are about a third of the length of your shortest finger. The largest dragons (interstellar dragons) are the size of large mountains- miles long. We have all the usual variations, but with the degree of diversity turned up to 11: Aquatic, burrowing, intertemporal, interstellar, undead, fey, aberration, psionic, elemental/

They hate birds. Birds hate them. Great birds like Rocs war with ancient dragons in the sky. Hummingbirds duel the smallest of dragons.

Even in this form it’s not massively original, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s fun.