Primal Conundrum

Open fantasy world

There's a starting quest line that will group everyone up and a lure to follow, but if everyone chooses to not follow the bait then that's fine too.

Custom races are probably okay, just run them by me first!

Open fantasy world

The asian themed thing is just to give a feeling of some degree of cohesiveness to the setting- a grab bag of western styles will generally mesh a bit more believably than a random assortment of themes from around the globe.

The starting point for the plot, which we are free to branch off from, is that our characters wake up in a dungeon after being kidnapped by cultists. Working together they can escape, forcing them to learn to trust each other to an extent, and from there giving them the potential goal of pursuing the cult that kidnapped them.
...or we could wind up doing what so many D&D groups I've been in have done and say "fuck that I wanna go ________", where blank is anything from "be a pirate" to "take over towns" to "light random things on fire". Generally speaking, that last option usually leads to fairly predictably short campaigns :P

A Sci-fi Special Forces RP interest check and discussion.

I guess I'm just curious about why you would plan out the ending. I dunno, to me it feels like it cheapens it for the players- no matter what they do, how well or how poorly they play, the ending is already set in stone. All they need to do is hang around long enough for it to happen.

I don't mean to be a jerk or anything, I'm just curious.

A Sci-fi Special Forces RP interest check and discussion.

I remember the last time you posted this, and it sounds like you have the same key story points decided on and you're just not saying as much about it this time. Why not leave that stuff up to the RP? It sounds almost more like you should be writing this as a story instead of playing it as an RP if you already know what you want to happen.

Open fantasy world

OOC IS UP

The world is old. Very, very old. Civilizations have risen, peaked, fallen, been forgotten, rediscovered, and then the civilization that discovered them in turn rising, peaking, falling, and being forgotten. There are no nations these days, just scattered villages and fortified city-states. There is more legend than actual knowledge of the world, most old records having been lost. Even accurate maps are hard to come by- the world is a dangerous place, and being a cartographer is a risky occupation.

~~~

So the idea here is that it's a bigass world that isn't clearly defined- there's no map, no list of races, no codified magic system, nothing. You make a fantasy character in the style you want as long as it's at or below a certain power threshold, and you're fine. I will ask that people keep it to more western fantasy in general- everything west of Eastern Europe is fair game for inspiration, but I'm not really looking for any asian-themed stuff for this. That's kinda the only limitation though.

I have a plan for how to start the game and a direction to go with, but it's a fairly open world and if we all decide to pursue other objectives then that's also fine. You're free to toss out ideas for races, cultures, locations, ruins, etc, and unless I think it'll be game breaking or just really, really dumb, then it's probably fine to include.

Any takers?

EDIT:
Okay, because I'm not in the market for a furry RP, I'm going to lay down a few more rules for the setting: I'm not allowing races that could be described as "a humanoid version of _______", because so far it's just been furry race after furry race. Now, if it's a fantasy staple, i.e. minotaurs, then I'll allow it, but otherwise just leave it alone.

The same goes for vampires and werecreatures, since they are either broken overpowered if played properly, or really really stupid if played improperly. There's not really a balanced ground for them.

Sorry to put these rules down, but the RP was starting to look like a shitty forum version of Furcadia.

Epic of Adarea

That may be, but it's not a type of magic that I've generally been too fond of in any place where I've seen it, and if it really is the only kind of magic available, then I'd rather just not use it. It kinda excludes the entire spiritual side of magic, and means that divine spellcasters aren't using magic because of the grace of their patron god, but because they know how to speak a limerick in the Ancient Language.

Would Gnolls (hyena folk) fit into the setting at all?

Epic of Adarea

Xzayler said
So basically, Warlock sort of things. You can manipulate that as you want. The spirits have to be called and ordered. How? Ancient Language. What the spirits do is up to you.

Really not a fan of the ancient language stuff, I might just see if I can think up a different character that doesn't use magic.

Epic of Adarea

Xzayler said
Hm...*Xzayler blows air out of his mouth, letting a long hiss*Well, agh dammit. Could Runes be an option? Dolls with runes inscribed with Ancient Language and able to bring effects?EDIT: The thing is, if you mean Voodoo dolls like you chose a person and if you put the doll close to fire the person will feel heat and if you break the doll's arm off the guy's arm comes off? That's like, pro assassination from long distance.

Dat ain't how da voodoo works, mon.
Seriously though, it's easy to limit the power of what can be done with voodoo dolls, and that aside you need to have a piece of the person / creature that you've worked in to the doll in order for it to work on them at all. The level that you're talking about is like the kind seen in the movie Stardust, which I agree is broken OP and not at all what I want to do- if my guy wanted to tear someone's arm off, he'd just go grab their arm and tear it off himself. He's a swamp Narven after all, they aren't exactly above brutality. The stuff I had in mind wasn't even so much about that kind of overpowered stuff though, but generally just dark spirit magic- kinda a much more religious / spiritual bent than truename magic. The idea with it is that the power doesn't come from the caster so much as the spirits that they invoke, and a caster being 'powerful' really just means that more spirits listen to them.

Epic of Adaera [Massive High Fantasy World]

Xzayler said
That magic is way more customisable and adaptable than any other kind I think. Letting you for example use words like stop (letta) and a lift (reisa) which are verbs. Any kind of "other" magic is more limited. You can even have Necromancers using this magic, so basically if you want voodoo rite sort of things. You can make your Navren say a couple of words which he either does or doesnt know the meaning of. Maybe making the spirits come and kind of posess the heads, or making the heads straight up sing more words of the Ancient Language which then causes something to happen.Honestly, with the Ancient Language you can do everything that you can do with other magic.You just gotta figure out how you'd go about making it work

Oh, that's not what I meant. I realize that you can use that system to do a whole ton of stuff, it just seems to me that it would make most of the magic be kinda same-y, whereas part of the fun of looking at real world magic traditions is that they vary so hugely. Besides, the voodoo stuff I had in mind was really more akin to poppet magic- doing stuff with dolls, like-affects-like and that kind of stuff. Likely not much in the way of words at all, really.

I get that the truename magic stuff is more versatile, but often I find working with limited power to be fun since it forces more creative solutions to things.

Epic of Adaera [Massive High Fantasy World]

Out of curiosity, why is there only one type of magic? That kinda kaiboshes my character idea, and it seems kinda limiting for all spellcasters to use one type of magic.