creative-cauldron

[creative-cauldron]

This popped up in one of my FB groups and I thought it was rad!

[creative-cauldron]

Cardinal Pt. 2

So the magic of Cardinal, the promise that I’m going to try and keep after so long. How does it work. The idea is to let it fall on a line between abstract and mechanical. The magic needs to have importance in the game and grounded in a set of rules because the means of attaining success are so open ended. Otherwise it would be to easy for certain players to attain an unfair advantage. Let’s face it open ended games are hard because players want to win, and sometimes if there is an advantage it can be hard not to take said advantage.

So ultimately the magic breaks down into two halves, the powers and the fail saves. The powers are perhaps the easiest to explain as they quite simply magical powers that can be used whenever you wish. Each Sin has a number of powers some of which are pretty open ended and self explanatory such as Fire, Invisibility, and Teleportation. Everyone knows what invisibility is that doesn’t need any mechanical explanation. Fire might just need to be specified as the ability to control fire. Other’s like the Pride power of Shrug Off have a bit more of a mechanical implication, although the complete list of powers still needs work so I’m not ready to explain out every power yet. Shrug Off though will allow the player to ignore physical damage and instead take mental damage.

Each power has a rank though, currently floating between 1-4 (numbers will definitely needed to be tuned). At character creation each player will have a number of points, let’s say 7 for now, to spend on buying these powers with the cost equal to the rank. Additionally, to have a power you need to the corresponding Sin Value to be greater than or equal to the total ranks in of Sin Powers for that Sin. So you can only have multiple powers for say Greed such as Metal (rank 2) and Duplicate (rank 3) if your Greed is high enough. In this case your Greed needs to be 5 or higher. A list of every power will hopefully be finished eventually.

Now onto the other half, the fail safe, otherwise known as the Sin Rush. In Cardinal you have Wounds, physical damage, and Stress, mental damage. you can take up to 3 of each before your in danger of dying. However, unlike in D&D, you don’t fall unconscious when you are in danger of dying. Instead you enter a Sin Rush, a sort of super powered state. At character creation you choose which Sin is tied to your Wounds and which is tied to your Stress, and that Sin is the one that gets the major power boost when you’re in danger. So if it is Wrath, you are really going to hulk out. So what happens during the Rush?

First of all, the chosen Sin, automatically gets double favor while the Rush is active. Just a fun, boost in your chances of success when using a specific Sin. Influence to behave and act a certain way. Secondly each Sin has a special bonus that activates for it. Once again I don’t have every special bonus for each Sin but I’ll give you a couple as an example. During a Greed Rush for example you gain the ability to use any Greed Power for the duration of the Rush. A Pride Rush meanwhile will give you a +1 to the result of the dice roll for any Sin until the Rush Ends. 

As for the Rush ending well their are two ways to end it. The first is death. If you take a fourth Wound or Stress you die. It is a fail safe, a last ditch effort in the face of great obstacles, even if that obstacle is a particularly furious debate. Maybe, it isn’t death exactly but more like Dread, where your character is just written out, maybe they’re dead, maybe they’re just crazy. The other way to end is when the “Scene” ends. Whether that means you are no longer fighting or whatever, the point is getting to the catharsis. The natural end of the scene for when your character can take a breath and either realize that they have achieved what their immediate goal was or realized that it is not attainable. 

These bonuses and the powers are fun to design, still not done with them but fun regardless. They are the perfect culmination in my interest, designing mechanics that generate specific narrative feelings. Each Power has to relate to the Sin and that relation needs to make sense. Powers like invisibility would definitely not be Pride, while I could see it being Sloth, I found it fit Envy the best. Fading into the background and observing others. Each set of Powers sort of focuses on themes that are derived from the narrative representation of each Sin. Similarly each Sin Rush must feel mechanically greedy or prideful. It is such a weird and fun problem, although admittedly I never thought I’d be trying to design lustful mechanics. 

[creative-cauldron]

Inter-party Conflict, the Horrors of Bleed, and DM-Style

I know I promised more on Cardinal but I got a few specifics to figure out and something happened that I wanted to talk about. So, I’ve been participating in some one-shots recently and what happened occurred at the one I played in this past weekend. It was D&D 5e with the DM running a mystery-horror setting, basic set-up being a random spooky mansion in the middle of the woods filled with death traps and strange magic. Fun right. It gets better because it turns out the place is a home to a lich who is trying to bring back his long dead family through various necromantic experiments. We were a party of three; me a halfling arcane trickster, the elven trickery cleric, and a human fighter (forget the subclass). All character were pre-made by the DM at level 7.

Me and the fighter had good banter going with both of us playing our characters as sort of goofy characters who are constantly making jokes. I think we both just subconsciously decided that we were going to play that type of character that makes light of any situation. The cleric though was being played by a player who had only played in few one-shots and didn’t keep up with our character’s humor. Whether it was a a character choice or not I’m not sure, but I don’t think it was. Not a big deal though me and him formed what seemed at first to be some fun friendly rivalry, when I told him to go first walk across a trapped puzzle floor citing age before beauty. The fighter also joined in on this but kept repeating the more targeted jokes and started only referring to the cleric as age. Why didn’t I disable it as the rogue you asked, well because it turns out that my rogue didn’t have thieves’ tools, something the DM made sure of when making the character. 

This was the first flag, and issue that I had with the DM. They designed the characters with the goal of making them unsuited for the one-shot. Another example being that there was Deep Speech everywhere and they said they made sure that none of the character options knew Deep Speech and no one had access to Comprehend Languages. Now there might have been some item or something in the mansion that would allow us to read Deep Speech but I kinda doubt it. Our characters were almost designed to fail, something I felt especially when I realized that all of my spells didn’t work against Undead or Constructs which were all that we were fighting. The exception was Invisibility which when I cast it on myself was useless because the creature I was running away from didn’t rely on sight. I was frustrated but it was a one-shot. Our cleric was not so accepting go. It didn’t help that this was his first time playing a full caster and he blew most of his spells on a homebrewed golem with magic resistance. 

Things got worse for him when we encountered the Lich. I had maintained my invisibility and was scouting but it didn’t matter because I forgot that Liches get truesight. So I was captured and, using my brains, suggested he question me about why we were in his house while being magically prevented from lying. The reason why was because well we had technically done anything that wrong, we were a little railroaded with the way our characters were designed and surprisingly, our characters were invited into the house by a mysterious voice, we didn’t just barge in. After that the rooms were basically just one after another each with really only one door, and no details were given about the room until we asked to perceive the room. We didn’t even know there was a door, just that this was a dining room, a parlor, or whatever have you. Anyway during the questioning I accidentally lied because when he asked had I touched this NPC boy he had kidnapped I said no because I forgot that one round of combat when another player “put him on my back” before taking him back the next turn. 

So I was in the hands of a deranged Lich who I just accidentally pissed off as he marched after the aforementioned child. The fighter was in another room with the child who we find out was getting the soul of the Lich’s son put into him and the two souls were fighting but the Lich’s son had just one. The fighter had been really good about building a relationship with this boy before the “personality change” and then went on to build a great relationship with the new child in the few second before the Lich arrived, somehow (mostly dice rolls, but also a little of the DM’s showing a slight bit of favor). Due to his relationship with the boy and the fact that he had actively worked to keep the child unharmed, the Lich was okay with him, and you guess it, the fighter starts to betray the party. The cleric meanwhile, was in a little girl’s room and soon discovered the zombified daughter of the Lich, then starts playing dolls with her, then realizes that the dolls were former intruders into the mansion who are still kinda sentient but tortured. Then when the Lich entered, with me in his grasp and the fighter following behind, the daughter decides she wants the Cleric as a new doll.

This is were things really go downhill especially for our. The Cleric is put in a cell, the Fighter got the Lich to let me and him leave, but I don’t want to leave the Cleric behind. So the Fighter is talking with the Lich and the Zombie while I try to get the Cleric out of the cage (I eventually found Thieves’ Tool in the mansion). However, as the Fighter is talking he officially accepts a job as the the kids nanny, which means he’s gonna do whatever it takes to make the kids happy. If you haven’t put it together yet that means stopping me from getting the Cleric out of there. So now I and the Cleric are fighting our Fighter while the Cleric is still trapped in a cage which the Fighter is keeping held shut. I’m happy at first because I can start using my spells since they work on the Fighter, but get annoyed when they don’t really work. The sleep was my fault for using it too early, but the charm person was him trying to find a loophole which I’m a little upset the DM allowed. Basically I told him to stop holding the cage door closed and let the Cleric out. He stop actively holding the cage closed and instead just leaned up against it. 

Meanwhile, the Cleric was having horrible rolls to attack the fighter and was getting frustrated. Luckily the Lich wasn’t paying attention to us because it got distracted by his ghost wife who had been helping us. So our boss battle was us trying to kill the Fighter while he tried to keep us distracted long enough for the Lich to turn the Cleric into a necromantic doll. What was annoying was the whole time Fighter kept making jokes about how he was trying to help the Cleric achieve immortality. When the lich finally got back to us he decided he was done playing around with us. I got my soul put in a gargoyle which was apparently always sitting on fireplace mantle which was always in the dining room we walked through before. The DM was running theatre of the mind, which is fine, but my problem with them is that they never truly painted a well enough picture of the scene to do that. I eventually managed to escape back to my body and get out though. Meanwhile, the Cleric was sent to a room we have never been in before and strung up awaiting to be turned into a doll. He does manage to escape and after asking to perceive the room notes that there is a closet and hides in it. The fighter eventually comes in following the daughter and immediately goes for the closet. 

This is when the player playing the Cleric gets real mad and start telling the Fighter to stop meta-gaming, claiming he had been doing it all night. Had he been, a little, nothing major. It made sense for Fighter to check the closet when he found the room empty, but he did have the luxury of not having to ask if the closet was there in the first place. He was getting the benefit of slight favoritism from the DM because he was a source of constant weird and interesting ideas. The problem ultimately was poorly managed bleed. If you don’t know bleed is when emotions, skills, and thoughts carry over from player to player character or vice a versa. The Cleric was feeling betrayed and so the Cleric’s player was feeling betrayed. I picked up on the favoritism the DM showed to the Fighter’s player and it annoyed me as a player and I’m sure the Cleric’s player picked up on it. That frustration mixed with the in character frustrations, the frustration at the poor rolls he’d been having, and he boiled over. The DM did defend the Fighter’s player, which I wish wasn’t the first thing out of their mouth, but ultimately they helped the Cleric deal with their frustrations in character by coming up with creative solutions to their situation. Luckily the session ended soon after and we talked a little about the tension before packing up. 

Ultimately, emotions are weird and difficult. People have enough trouble with emotions when they only have their own to control. I don’t hate the DM, they had a style that worked with players who are used to them but if you aren’t it is a little clunky to work with. Narrative heavy which is great but super fluid, they didn’t even use initiative for turn order so that it doesn’t break the narrative flow of the scene and everything was time sensitive so if you want to stop in think, you can’t. It was cool to play with I just wish they toned their style to the table and were a little better at reading and addressing the problems that were forming. All-in-all though not sure I would have done better but I know I would have done it differently and maybe our Cleric needed different, maybe not. 

[creative-cauldron]

Cardinal Pt. 1

So I meant for this to originally post this with the last post, but I rambled in that. Then I meant to post it earlier but I got busy and the idea still isn’t technically finished but I’m going to talk about a TTRPG System I’ve been thinking up called Cardinal. Note that it is Part 1 because like I said the system is not finished.  The basic idea in Cardinal is that everything is themed around the Seven Deadly Sins, otherwise known as the Cardinal Sins (hence the name). So you don’t have stats like Strenght, Dexterity, or Intelligence. Instead your stats are the Seven Sins, Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, and Pride. Then each sin has a value from 1-7 because well why not keep the narrative theme going.

To check success of your actions you first choose the sin that is motivating it. The thing is, the same action could be motivated by different sins.  For example, if you are stealing something you’d probably think you would have to choose Greed, but maybe you decide Gluttony works here or perhaps Lust. The question is why are you taking this action, what is the emotional state of your character in this moment? Am I stealing because I want riches, or perhaps I’m stealing because the object belongs to someone I idolize so then I could use Envy.

Once you have decided what Sin to use you roll a d8 and you succeed if you roll equal to or lower than the value of that sin. This way there is always a chance for failure since no Sin every reaches a value of 8. However if you ever roll a 1 on the d8 you can increase the Sin used to a maximum of 7. Consequently at any point when the GM believes you are acting particularly virtuous they can tell you to decrease a particular Sin but only by 1 at a time. 

As for varying difficulty of different challenges, the GM can decide to give a player Favor or Disdain, which if you are familiar with Advantage and Disadvantage in D&D 5e it is basically the same. Basically if you have either Favor or Disdain you have to roll multiple dice and take either the highest roll (if you have Favor) or lowest (if you have Disdain). Unlike the Advantage/Disadvantage of D&D the GM is allowed to give a number Favor or Disdain and the two cancel out. So say they give you 2 Favor, you’d roll 3d8 and take the highest roll, but what if you also gain 1 Disdain from some other factor than you’d only roll 2d8. 

The Favor and Disdain was the part when I first ran into a problem with this game and while there will be multiple parts. It is intended to be a narrative heavy rules set but I don’t have a strong sense of what the world is. I want the GM to act as a God like character much like how in Paranoia they are The Computer. I want to create a thematic religious setting without making it too Christian. It makes me wonder if I should play with the Sins that I am using. Further it would lead into what would be Part 2, the magic of the Sins in Cardinal.

[creative-cauldron]

TTRPG Design Ideas and Experiences

So, none of you really know much about me but I majored in Game Design and for my senior project I did a TTRPG. I don’t want to talk about it’s mechanics here because I could talk about it endlessly and probably keep working on it even more. Yeah, I fell deep into it, and it got complicated. Beyond that I have also worked on a few other table top projects including a murder mystery LARP system. Of course there were also video games in there, which ultimately is kinda the direction I want to go in for my career. So why did I make my senior project, the crown jewel of my academic career, a TTRPG if I want to go into video games. Short answer, I had worked on the project as an earlier final and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Longer answer, I love TTRPG’s and wanted to explore the medium which can honestly feel bloated by a lot of the same mechanics. Which is odd because most people who enjoy the genre only do it through one game, Dungeons and Dragons. There are plenty of systems out there that do cool things and I wanted to work within this medium and try and derive some uniqueness from it by trying to create a narrative impacted rule set. Did I succeed? Well, partially. I drew a lot of inspiration from various systems, and the rules can generate interesting situations, but the mechanics are not overly unique. They are also complicated, a consequence from my choice of theme requiring a lot of rules that I started adapting from Survival and Horror video games. So, partially. 

Regardless of the difference of the medium of video game and TTRPG I do find that they can very easily sort of inspire each other. Like, I said I drew inspiration from Survival and Horror games and D&D inspired many popular video games. In fact without it the entire RPG genre likely would not exist. RPG’s in general tend towards complex rules and systems from which are derive emergent game play because of D&D. One of my goals for my senior project (there were several okay) which I ultimately had to abandon was to avoid so much crunch and dice math. My biggest regret was choosing not to adapt something like 5e’s Advantage system since it eschewed a lot of dice math for conditional affects on challenges. So I think I’m gonna start posting some ideas for rules-light TTRPG’s that can achieve this goal.

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Items at Hand in D&D

So this may have taken longer than I hoped to get this out, but here is my first real post in a while. I decided to make it about a rules adaptation to D&D that I’ve been considering for a while that has to deal with the equipment a player is carrying. Now few players really like managing their equipment and I feel like 5e has recognized that. The fact that the carrying capacities is just naturally so high means that you never really have to focus it except in the extremes. After all so long as you aren’t taking any negatives in your strength you’ll be capable of carrying at least 150 pounds. It is such a large amount that in some cases outweighs the character themself that for convenience sake no one pays any attention. While I haven’t played every addition of D&D I know that equipment managing is one of those facets that got heavily abstracted and even the weight you could carry was scaled way down.

I may have gotten off topic because my idea is about how much a Character carries but where they are carrying it. Primarily it deals with the idea of the Use Action as a free action when doing something as part of another action. The examples given are drawing a weapon as part of an attack and opening a door as part of your movement. It is that first part that has lead to me to develop this idea largely from the near constant arguments about these free actions. Owing to the ambiguity of the RAW my player’s often think that any piece of equipment might be at hand but if we are being honest that is likely not true, especially with them carrying over 150 pounds of equipment. Usually I rule that, yes, they can draw or stow one object once as a free action but if they want to do it twice in one turn they will have to use their action. This means that if they want to pull out a potion they might have to do something about that sword and shield in their hand first, usually by dropping it. Then what ends up happening is that my player argues that sliding a sword in a sheath isn’t time consuming and the potion is probably on the top of their pack and easy to grab. Is it? What if it bounced around and fell deeper? Then the fighter who’s playing the archer gets confused because they have to draw their arrows which is technically drawing an item.

Now my idea, which I’ll call Hips and Shoulders, is intended to settle these wishy washy situations. Basically the player has four spots on their body Left Hip, Right Hip, Left Shoulder, and Right Shoulder. Each spot is basically a quick draw spot where drawing and stowing their specified items from these spots is always a free action. Each Hip spot has a max space of 1 and each shoulder has a max space of 2. The handedness of the weapon determines how much space each weapon takes up, unless the weapon is light and then it takes up .5 space (so dagger throwers can shove two daggers at their hips). Optionally, you could have versatile weapons take up 1.5 space if you wish. Then items like the mage’s spellbook, torches, a healer’s kit, a quiver, potions, etc. take up 1 space. Meanwhile a rope with a grappling hook, a shield, or other large items take up a space of 2. 

The players then get to decide which items they keep close at hand and in some cases certain containers (like the aforementioned quiver) let you carry a more of a specified item (in the case of the quiver, arrows or bolts). Ultimately you would have to weigh on what various items will take up what amount of space and something like potions might need a character to have a bandoleer to hold the potions. This allows players to prep what they keep close at hand which will probably be their most useful equipment for emergencies and clears up this weirdness of the backpack full of 150 pounds of gear with the item players need just perfectly on top. Is it needed? No. It was just an idea that came to me to simplify equipment management while keeping it impactful on the gameplay and could even extend to roleplay because different characters like to keep different things close at hand. After all, how many torches does a human need, well if their scared of the dark it may be a lot. Perhaps, your character is a hopeless romantic and a poet so they keep their journal close at hand in case inspiration strikes them in the middle of combat.

[creative-cauldron]

Rising from the Dead

So I’m restarting my old tumblr. I doubt most people saw it and it existed primarily for class assignments (because teacher’s thought it was fun to have us do assignments with social media). Regardless I was always bad at social media and now where I am in my life I need to get better so here I am. I removed a lot of stuff that only pertained to those assignments but kept some stuff that I still like. Why is it so important that I get good at social media? Well because I want to sell myself as an artist and a game designer. I’ll be offering up stories, world building exercises, game critiques, D&D stories and even some of my homebrew. If all goes well I’ll even add updates about some of my current game projects that I’m working on to better my portfolio. So you out there are my motivation. Can’t wait to see what I get cooking.

[creative-cauldron]

Churning through the Cycle

The order I went through is just one example of how the cycle is ordered, in fact sometimes you don’t always hit the parts on one round of the cycle. Most of the time you will and you should try to hit every part. Your first go through the steps, is just the first of an near infinite times you can and should do. That first go through will only give you a handful of details to go off of. So by repeating the cycle and starting with any details you already built (general or specific) you can expand upon your world. However, every time you carry out a cycle you must make sure that it all relates back.

For example:

As a genre let me choose Fantasy

Physics are Magic determined by bloodlines and there is Medieval kingdoms  with medieval technology

Geography: Rough landscape divided into five kingdoms, three border the see, the one to the north is covered in mountains and snow but runs along the sea, the one to the west is a peninsula, the central one is small but shares a border with all other kingdoms and the sea, the one to the south has many woodlands, and the land in the east has been transformed into steppes so that there is room for agriculture

Civilizations:

North: Has a small population but they are a fierce and proud people, conditioned by the difficulties of their environment. They trust each other but are slow to trust members of the other kingdoms.

Central: A melding pot of different people, densely populated and easy to recreate oneself. Placed in a perilous position where they have to try to passify all of there neighbors, however they tend to regard members of the other kingdoms with a lot of racism. As a people they are often progressive, ambitious, and cunning.

East: Mainly comprised of farmers who really on their role as food suppliers for the other kingdoms instead of an army to ward off invasion. Simple folk who take a liking to almost anyone and look for the best intentions in others.

West: Split primarily between two groups, the merchants who trade goods with far away countries and the pirates who steal the goods. For the most part the Kingdom is a despot for criminals and has a very large underground network and black market.

South: A secretive king who fight from the safety of the shadowy trees. Rarely make contact with outsiders save for a few trusted ambassadors and merchants. Mysterious and mystical

Characters:

Protagonist: Eastern Farm boy who travels to Central in order to find some sort of higher calling but he is very naive. As a result, he quickly runs into trouble when he heads to the wrong part of the city. Has dangerous magical powers which are kept suppressed by a family heirloom. He is unaware of his power and if he ever lost his heirloom he would not be able to control his power.

Antagonist: Central general, who plans on defecting to the North Kingdom to ruin relations between them and Central so that they will launch an invasion and he can seize power.

Possible love interest: Thief from the west who can use magic to manipulate shadows. Steals heirloom from protagonist at some point and by accident gets captured by antagonist. When protagonist saves her after seeing how cruelly she was being treated she feels like she owes.

So that’s a start but how does it cycle back. Well my genre is fantasy so for my physics I started with magic and kingdoms. So for my geography I created five bordering kingdoms with slightly different terrains. There terrain and locations then influenced the type of people who lived in each kingdom. After that I generated three characters who would fit into this world and were somewhat defined by where they came from and since they were made to fit into this world some of them had magical power which cycles back to my genre of fantasy and the established physics. From here I can go through my cycle maybe create more characters, perhaps a gang for the love interest. Maybe I want to add more detail to the physics of how magic worked in this world or maybe add in religion since I skipped that part this time. I think you get the idea of how cycling works but let me just say one last thing. It always helps to write down your ideas and talk with others. By doing either of those activities you force yourself to think about these other details that are more ambiguous and before you know it, you would have filled them in.

[creative-cauldron]

So now you know about several of the core aspects of world building but you are probably wondering, just where in the world are you going to come up with ideas? Well the truth is anywhere. Take your inspiration from your own life and your own experiences if you so choose. In fact that is probably the best place to take inspiration for character interaction. We as humans crave interaction with others, we want to talk with other people to hang out and share ideas. So if we want to create characters that seem human we need to indulge in one of our most primal desires. There’s more to it than that though, remember when I was talking about characters about how you can place characters in different situations to try and figure out how they would behave. Well most of the time it is best to start by placing that character in a situation you’ve experienced, since you have first hand experience. In essence your experiences can become the experiences. Plus you can go further, you can use the experiences and personalities of other people, such as your loved ones, to base your characters of off. But other than that your inspirations should come from everything you’ve read or seen. Use other worlds as inspiration, and this doesn’t just mean you have to read a lot of books. By all means read if you please, but worlds are exhibited through many mediums. You can find great ideas in movies, television, video games, and even just in simple pictures and sculptures. You may not necessarily think of those last two as being able to show story or lore all the time but by studying all types of art you can understand culture and history of people. What was important to them and what defined them? On a more personal level, emotions are communicated through all artistic mediums. The link above will bring you to Daily Inspiration, a site that promises to add new and fresh art daily. Sometimes the best inspiration comes to you when you aren’t looking for any and that’s why I wanted to include this sight because you don’t always know what you will come across when you visit. There are many other sites like this out there full of different ideas and sometimes like the Daily Inspiration they might be prone to include the thought process behind it all.

After experiencing those other worlds what you might want to try as sort of an exercise is to combine aspects of two worlds. One example I like to give is Harry Potter and Spongebob. They are two completely different worlds but imagine if you could combine them. Fish wizards, underwater magic, and many other possibilities. Over time you’ll become better at generating worlds and your inspiration will seem to be more readily available. However, what is really happening is that your creative mind is simply finding inspiration where you’ve never seen it before.

[creative-cauldron]

Characters

Perhaps it is finally time that I talk about creating the actual characters that will populate your world. Whenever I start designing characters I always like to think of a possible protagonist first because they will probably be the character that is both the most influenced by your world and will influence your world. First and foremost, the main character has to unique in some way. They have to stand out from their society in some way. Think of some of the protagonists in popular works. Harry Potter is the only one to have survived against Voldemort, Luke Skywalker was a Jedi in a time when there was only a handful of them left, Superman is the sole survivor from planet Krypton, and Pinocchio is a living wooden puppet. What makes them unique doesn't have to be some sort of power but can simply be they have a different viewpoint or upbringing. Ultimately this difference should place the protagonist in the center of the plot. Maybe they do have an unique power and they are being hunted because of it or perhaps their ideology is making them oppose a corrupt government. Then you may want to think about how the protagonist takes being different. Do they take it in stride or does it make them feel like they don’t have a home?

If I don’t start with the protagonist when I’m making characters then I’ll try to think of an antagonist. This is also a very good place to start designing your characters especially if you already have an idea for a central conflict. The antagonist has to be creating or participating in the continuation of the conflict so just what role they play becomes very clear. They might be the corrupt politician demanding taxes, the dictator seeking world conquest, or a madman seeking vengeance. Additionally, if you already have your protagonist figured out then the image of your antagonist should be much more clear because they will have a very important connection. This connection, however, can take one of two main directions, either they have the exact opposite ideology and background or they share many similarities but the antagonist was pushed onto a slightly different path. That first option is easy to understand but the second can be a little tricky. Again I’ll look at Star Wars for an example, if we look at Luke Skywalker as the protagonist of the second trilogy then we’ll either say that Darth Vader and/or The Emperor are the antagonists. Luke and The Emperor do have radically different ideologies and personalities so that will fit into the first category. Although, Darth Vader is not only Luke’s father but he has been motivated by his desire to protect the ones who he loves. It is why he joined The Emperor, to gain the power to save his loved ones. In fact The Emperor manipulated the younger Anakin Skywalker into betraying the Jedi and becoming the feared Darth Vader. However, Luke’s whole reason for fighting is to stop the tyrannical Empire from oppressing the galaxy and hurting his loved ones.  Supporting characters can help, hinder, or remain completely passive to the protagonist. Normally, they don’t require as much detail into their character as the protagonist and antagonist would. Although, it is smart to add more detail to a character that has a larger impact on the plot. Creating deep back stories for your characters could only make it easier to figure out how they will behave. Plus, it is a lot of fun to figure out the lifestyles of your characters. If you are having trouble you may want to try what I call making or breaking the stereotype. There are a lot of stereotypes for different kinds of characters, friendly giant for example. Now you either choose to make the stereotype, meaning making the character that matches the stereotype or break it and create a character that is the opposite. Of course if you are working with races you created it may help to create some stereotypes for that race that will serve as a basis for your average member of that race. Making a stereotype is often better for a minor character since it is much more expected.  No matter who you try to make just make sure that your characters have enough detail to further your plot. It may help to even start planning out specific scenarios that your characters might be placed in and plan out how the scenario would play out. Who might lose there temper and start a fight, who might be the one to spot an ambush, who was the character that went to a bar to have a good time. Personalities are complex but by creating scenarios you can create a guideline for your characters behavior and who knows those scenarios might even evolve into a scene of your story.

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So why the slew of religious symbols? Well, I thought I would talk about making a religion for your world. Now as with every step you can do this at different stages and depending on how important religion may be, it may actually be one of the earliest. Of course you can just use any current religion as well as any ancient mythologies that you may know but I personally have always found creating a religion to be a very interesting experience. The main reason why is because of the fact that gods are all powerful and pure beings. Keep in mind that pure doesn't necessary mean good, but rather absolute in what they represent. 

Of course one of the first things you should probably do when crafting a religion is decide whether or not it is a polytheistic religion or a monotheistic one. From there, start thinking about the aspects of your gods, and how it drives them. If your religion is polytheistic create a main pantheon that is seen as the most powerful and the most commonly worshiped. When crafting these gods you want to think of their domain, since most polytheistic religions give some gods a domain especially some of the most important ones. These domains may be different planes of existence or rather may simply be celestial bodies. Then, you need to balance your religion. Every religion whether monotheistic or polytheistic seems to have some representation of good and an opposing force of evil.  God and Satan for example. The devil isn't a god but he is often used in Christianity to represent evil and all manner of chaos.

Although, and I may say this a lot for this section, don't be afraid to do something completely out of the box. Many religions have very little proof of their reality and rather call upon their followers to simply believe. When crafting a religion you don't necessarily give a concrete reason for anything that your occurs within your theology. You may want to, in fact I would encourage it because it can give you a little more basis to go with for your religion to affect the world. That, however, brings me to the second big part of religion.

Ask yourself, is your religion real? Can the gods, or god for that matter, actually affect what is happening in your world? Are they the source of the central problem that will be prevalent in your world? By answering yes, you now have a very powerful force that can suddenly change the world and the direction of the plot. If you opt to make your religion real you need to make sure that they don't seem to appear out of nowhere, well so to speak. What I mean is that they can't just appear towards the end of your plot to save the day. Rather there should be some sort of gradual build and depiction of there power. Find small and creative ways to make you immortal forces show their power in small ways.

As I mentioned before, religion could be a very early step if the right set of conditions line up. Those conditions would be is the religion real and do you want the possibility of visiting the gods's domains. In this manner part of religion falls into the geography of your world and you may want to consider how these domains are connected to the earth, or whatever your planet is called. Then you have to think about what exactly these domains look like. This is another opportunity to go way out the box. You could make the geography of the different domains be whatever you want them to be. 

My favorite part of making a religion though, is the creation myth. Every religion has one and some religions have similar aspects. However, you need to decide where your gods came from and where did your world come from. Did your gods make the world or did another force make them and the world? Going out of the box again, maybe the world somehow made your gods? Anything you want goes and you have the chance to really be creative. Plus, if you are ever finding yourself having a bit of a block, there are so many different religions to research.  You have ancient mythologies, current religions, religions in fictional works, and even "fake" religions that have sprouted up due to the new generation just being rebelious, such as pastafarian, to research and draw upon.

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People: Where History and Biology Collide

So in the last post I showed a map of the world that I've been building alongside this blog. Now these countries need a society and culture to go with them and I began to discuss some possibilities and simple descriptions of what those may be. However, say you aren't really sure how a society should work to fit a specific role, what do you do? The answer is actually quite simple one and is done quite often in many popular worlds. I warn you though this is where history comes and if history isn't your favorite thing, just bear with me. Ultimately, you don't need to know the actual hard facts and names, you just need to know the basic of how an past civilization functioned. Say a very lawful and powerful Rome, the disordered nature of the Germanic tribes, the ferocity of the Zulu, the fascist, world-conquering disposition of Nazi Germany, or Industrial England with a booming economy and rapid scientific advancement. Anyone recognize that last one? By doing this you can avoid having to completely build a civilization from scratch and, providing you are willing to do some extra research, there is plenty source material you can use to inspire how that specific civilization might fit into a story. Source material such as the kinds of allies they chose in a war, how the government or the people rose to deal with poverty, etc.

But before you get into any of that there is normally one very important question to answer. Are they human? Once again your world should be whatever you want it to be, so there isn't really anything stopping you from adding other sentient races. Sure you could look at the the normal elves, dwarves, fairies, and orcs that appear in most fantasy stories. While you are free to add those races and they are a good start, I have always found it quite entertaining to create my own. Now we get into the biology of the people, which can ultimately leads us to much more research. Although, I find some of this research fascinating. Some of the things you may want to look for is why different organisms might have evolved the way they did. For instance, a prehensile tail is common in animals such as monkeys, who spend most of their times climbing trees. Some traits may even develop for different causes, such as an exoskeleton. The aquatic organisms with exoskeletons developed them to help withstand the water pressure. However, animals in hot and arid climates may develop an exoskeleton to help retain water. These adaptations have repercussions on how the society may be structured. A sentient race with an exoskeleton probably wouldn't be as cautious of injury because they literally have permanent armor. 

One important thing to note is that while the biology of a species can determine their society and culture, it normally only does so on a small level. Normally the biology only changes some smaller aspects of their society such as their clothing, how they reproduce, or the location of their homes. Many of these aspects, while technically important to the race, they are more of extra flavor to your world. The only time they are important is if your main character isn't human. However, their tends to be problems when making your main character come from a race other than a human. The reasoning is that they are harder to relate to and understand for your readers, because your readers can only be human. That doesn't mean you can't make a main character that is from another sentient race, but generally you should try to avoid anything to drastic. Essentially, don't do something like give them two heads. 

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Here is the map for the Steampunk world that I have started building to help explain the steps for this blog. You can see how I created a island nation above the main continent know as the United Islands of Kanor or UIK for short. Coming up with names for anything in your world should always be taken seriously. You need the right name that gives off of the correct feeling.

To reach the desired affected I often try to combine multiple words as a new mixed word with a few filler letters to. For example, look at the country Antorigista. I wanted a country that had represented strong military threat with a desire to conquer the world. To reach this effect I started with the words "terrorist" and "antagonist" because both words helped to represent aggression and a violent entity. I took the An- from antagonist, the -t- and -or- from terrorist, and both words had an -ist- in them.  Then I simply added in the letters I, G, and A to better connect the sounds as one fluid word.

Other times the name comes from something that already exists. Take a look at the country Goiter, the name of which is an actual word. A goiter is an enlargement of the thyroid gland that can be seen as a large bump on the throat. I chose to call this small country Goiter because it is essentially a bump out from the country Varsille. Most of the names for the UIK follow this same pattern with the Thames Island being named after the real Thames River and the Island of Wallace being named after William Wallace.

As I drew this map I began to think a little about the people who would inhabit each country. I already said that the people of Antorigista were going to be violent and that would likely affect the lifestyle of other nations. The main nation it influences is Leyuse. Notice how Antorigista practically wraps around Leyuse, which could have been in result of Leyuse being conquered and dominated by Antorigista. Meanwhile, the people of Varsile are going to live under a corrupt society and are mostly poor, like the French Citizens prior to the French Revolution (can you guess what inspired the name). I decided the people of Narcortis would be self centered (like a certain Greek Mythological figure), maybe a very wealthy and greedy too. Then I decided that the people of Esseppe would be friendly and well natured. In some way the people of Ormunis needed to be strong in order to withstand the aggressive people of Antorigista,  but I decided that they were more noble and reserved with their strength. Perhaps instead of conquering for resources they did it by honest means like mining and farming. For the citizens of the United Islands of Kanor (UIK), they will be undergoing an industrial revolution much like the United Kingdom (UK). The only country left is Thelios, which I decided was a nation of great scholars. 

Did you guess what some words I might have used for inspiration for these names? Stumped on a few? Well you should be because some of the names were just sounds I combined together, like Esseppe.

Regardless by identifying the lifestyles of the average person in these countries and building upon the culture further I can refine and determine the different struggles of the world. For instance a war between Ormunis and Antorigista, a revolution in Varsile or Leyuse, an poor thief going to Narcortis to steal a fortune, or the advent of some new world changing discovery in the UIK or Thelios. All of these are options for a story. Development of more key story aspects will be discussed in the next post

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After deciding a genre I like to go onto the geography of my world because it is the actual location where the story will take place. Geography as a step, however, can actually serve as a starting point and is can be down in a bottom down or top up approach. The best way to approach geography, at least for me, is to start with a general phrase. This phrase should answer questions about the basic layout of your world. Will there be multiple countries. Will it be a group of islands or a large continent? Is the region mountainous or flat? 

I can never seem to get away from drawing a map, it requires a lot of detail but it is quite enjoyable. For me it all comes down to is patterns that can be seen in our world. It allows me to easily visualize and reference what my world looks like later on. The best part though, is that when you draw a map no one knows what it is should look like so even if you are a bad drawer you could just pretend the mistakes were intentional. Besides, you don't want to force the way the countries are shaped too much. Whenever I draw a map I grip a pencil loosely and move it along in bumpy line a general direction. This creates a more natural appearance and if there is ever a moment where it didn't turn out how you want just erase and pick up where you left off. 

More often than not, countries are divided by natural borders such as mountains, rivers, canyons, or oceans. This is simply because that if these borders make it more difficult for people to cross and can prevent civilization from taking hold along these natural borders. That is the first of the patterns. The second one, which you may remember from a biology or environmental science class, is that there is a very specific way that the land changes. What happens is that tall mountains tend to block rain from passing creating a very fertile region on one side while a dry region (desert) on the other side. As you get farther away from the mountain the desert typically changes into a grassland or plain and then into a forest. Other tall obstructions, such as tall trees can also block the rain from passing. It is also worthwhile to note that the farther North or South one gets from the equator the colder it gets. However, the world builder reserves the right to change these patterns and will likely due based upon their genre and the any changes to the physics of the world they want to make. For example, if I were to make it so that the sun was larger and much hotter, it would make logical sense that the planet would be more dominated by hot and dry climates. This would change your geography by making it be that there would be more deserts and fewer forests. 

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Whenever one starts world building they have to extremes of how they approach the matter which are top-down or bottom-up. In the latter, you start with a very specific detail while the former the world builder in question starts with something much more general. Recently, I have found myself doing the top-down more often when I'm starting a new world. However, I have also built many worlds by starting with something specific.

Going back to how I have been world building recently, whenever I want to start a new world I start it by thinking of a genre I would like it to exist. Personally my favorite genres are Science Fantasy and Steampunk. What does choosing a genre actually do for you though?

Well let's say for example I decided I wanted to create a Steampunk world. First of all, technically Steampunk is a subgenre of Sci Fi where you are placing more modern technology into a past setting (normally Victorian England or in Industrial era like setting) but with a few twists. Everything is very mechanical and industrial, think moving parts for the machinery. Normal objects that we consider our modern technology may exist but in a very different manner (look at the scope on the rifle, the watch, or the bike) and there is nothing there for safety or aesthetics. The way it works is that all of these technologies are very new and experimental, often there will exist an alternative energy source that could be volatile. One Steampunk game that I loved is called Dishonored and uses refined whale oil as its main fuel, so feel free to get creative with it. Additionally, the technology in the world could be completely original. The people will often dress as it was common in Victorian London and behave similarly. 

None of this compares to what the genre really offers. Steampunk at its core is gritty industry, that means it is very likely there will be a high polarization between the upper class and the lower class giving for one possible central problem that exists within your world. Without any problems occurring in your world there will be no strife and the world will lose its entertainment value. That is why I like to start with a genre, it narrows my focus for the world and gives me many places from where I can work off of. In case your wondering, Steampunk also lends itself quit easily to corrupt governments and plagues (medicine doesn't usually fall into the modern scientific advances brought back to the past and neither does hygiene).

One last note, never so closely adhere to a specific genre, use it as a guideline. The idea is always to try and find something new so you could feel free to mix genres. For instance that video game I mentioned earlier, Dishonored, while marketed as a Steampunk game it is also a Science Fantasy world in the way that magic does exist. For Science Fantasy just think a mix of Sci Fi and Fantasy, a world where super science and magic coexist. Usually, one explains the other such as genes that give people magical powers or magical energy used as a fuel source for technology. If they don't coexist to well, well then you'll usually get an all out battle between science and magic.

P.S. I found these pictures on line.

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What is World Building?

So for some that is the big question, what is my blog about? Maybe people were going through the recesses of the internet and found my new little haven here and have no idea what my title even means. That's okay, I'm used to having to explain my little hobby to people. Quite frankly I love explaining it almost as much as doing it.

So, the answer to the looming question, what is world building? Quite simply it is building a world but not in such a literal sense. You see, for every book, movie, play, television show, or essential any fictional work there needs to be a place in which the events of that story take place. Sure if you are doing something that is realistic fiction world building wouldn't require much from you, because it would happen in a world exactly like ours. Everything else though, say Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Super Mario, Teen Wolf, Harry Potter, or anything else often required a lot of work before the actual writing of the story happened. In world building you define the limits fiction for the world that you want your story to function. Things like government, culture, technology, and if you so choose, how your world was created. 

Before I get into some of the ways that I've been world building and continue to do so I want to set a few guidelines to always remember.

You can do it anyway you want. My way is my way you don't have to do it even remotely close to the way I do it if you don't want to.

You can make it whatever you want. Living clouds that can shoot lasers, why not.

Take inspiration from EVERYWHERE.

Don't be afraid to talk to people about it. They can give some really good compliments or some criticisms, both help.

Only you decide when you are done.

So that's it for now, I'll be back soon though to let you explore my little haven a little bit more.