Corvus
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The "Design a Setting" Thread!
This is something I've been wanting to do for a while. I first found the concept on RPGnet, and it's had surprisingly effective results, so I'd like to try it here.
The purpose of this activity is to design a setting, for stories or gaming, as a group. Rather than doing things by committee, however, the process is quite simple: each person adds one setting element per post. The only rules are one element per post (though you can expand that element as much as you like), and no post may contradict a previous post.
There are some general etiquette guidelines, of course:
* This is a group effort, so anything you post will be open to expansion by other members participating in the activity.
* Try to stay in-theme with the original post; for example, if the activity is to design a desert world, it makes little sense to begin developing an ocean, mermaids and a chain of tropical islands.
* It helps if you leave a few things undeveloped or unanswered so other people can have more things to latch on to and design.
* If someone's idea shots a big hole in something really cool you had been developing, it's okay to ask that person if maybe they could change what they posted to work with your idea. If someone asks you about changing something, listen to what they have to say first. An example of this from a thread I participated in was when a poster stated that almost all humans belonged to nomadic tribes, when I wanted to start working on cities in the setting. I politely asked him if he could scale that back to "some" or "many" to leave room for cities, and he agreed.
* Don't be afraid to be original and creative! If you have some off-the-wall ideas, try them out and see if others can help you develop them.
* Lastly, post as much as you want, but try not to completely overwhelm everyone else. If you find you've got ten posts in a row, you might want to hold some of your ideas for another day, just to let other people have a shot.
And now, here's the seed idea to get everyone started:
The world as it is known to the various peoples is a dry, hot place. Encircling the entire known world is a ring of impassable, vaulting mountains that pierce the hard, shimmering skies; no one knows for sure what lies outside this ring.
Dry scrub plains, rocky badlands and searing flats make up most of the vast land. There are few rivers or large lakes; oases are far more common, and very valuable. Rain is an occurance so uncommon that people often use the number of rains they've witnessed as a kind of social ladder, and the years from the last rain as a convenient unit of time. Still, life finds a way, and the known world is still full of vibrant diversity. The strong survive.
Last edited by Corvus, 1/14/2008, 11:58 pm
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1/11/2008, 6:47 pm
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Corvus
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
When the sun rises each morning, its burning light paints the world in brilliant tones of bronze. As the sun climbs into the sky, the colors of the world fade through copper and brass into a pale gold at midday, then slide back down as the sun drops to the other horizon. The sky itself transforms from night's darkness into the colors of flame, which fade into an intense blue as the sun rises toward noon, and then return to flame and darkness as evening descends into night.
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1/11/2008, 8:43 pm
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furrysaint
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
The Silma are a small reptilian race that inhabits the rocky, forbidding terrain at the base of the World Wall mountain range.
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--John F. Martin
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1/12/2008, 4:56 pm
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QS2
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
The tops of greatest of the towering peaks are white and seem like another world from the shimmering heat at the base of them. The ones in the south are the tallest and hold by far the most snow and ice. These great peaks feed most of the few streams, rivers and lakes, but most dry up before penetrating far in to the lands below..
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1/12/2008, 5:10 pm
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Charlemagnex
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
in the plateaus on the Ring mountains, are a collection of fortress cities, whose wealth is earned from the aquaducts that stretch forth into the snowy peaks.
Last edited by QS2, 1/12/2008, 5:48 pm
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1/12/2008, 5:37 pm
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Firlefanz
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
Some cities exist at the base of the mountains where water is more plentyful than in other places, but deeper inside the desert, settlements can only grow around small oasis.
--- - Firlefanz
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1/12/2008, 5:46 pm
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Corvus
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
The cities in the somewhat fertile lands at the base of the World Wall ring are held in something like fealty to the Water Barons above them. The reason the Water Barons' holds are fortresses is to protect themselves and their sources of power from the jealous and angry people in the dry lands below.
Each Water Baron holds power over the cities his or her water supplies. The cities pay tribute, and the water flows. The cities also agree not to molest the water caravans that the Barons send into the vast interior, bringing water that is guaranteed to be fresh and pure to those places that do not have ready access to a trustworthy water source.
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1/12/2008, 5:50 pm
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QS2
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
Deep in to the dry lands, there is a single large and very salt lake, far below sea level, that mysteriously never dries out. Around it extend vast salt plains where near nothing will grow or live.
On the lake a single small city lies, supplied by the water barons to mine the salts and send them back to them. When the caravans do not come they live on their supplies as long as they can. Not far away lies another small city half buried in salt and sand, abandoned and empty.
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1/13/2008, 5:01 pm
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Corvus
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
The silma and humans of the dry lands have a long and complex relationship. It is told in some ancient tales that humans came to this place from somewhere else after a long passage through the Underworld, and that the silma taught the humans to survive under the unblinking eye of the sun. But the silma also raid human settlements, sometimes taking captives along with water and supplies.
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1/13/2008, 6:05 pm
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David Meadows
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
The great trees that can be found at an oasis are vital to the survival of the settlements that cluster beneath their shade. The fruit is highly nutritious and can be dried for long journeys, yarn can be spun from the tough, fibrous leaves, and even the sap can be boiled into a paste that dries as a strong, durable material. But the living wood is never used. The trees are slow to grow and too precious to cut down. In the interior, wood is literally worth its weight in water.
I'm not sure if it's a bit too extreme to have a society that functions without wood 
Last edited by David Meadows, 1/14/2008, 11:22 am
---
"You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public." -- Scott Adams
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1/14/2008, 11:20 am
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QS2
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
The lakes and rivers hold a few fish species, though their populations are fairly sparse, on the banks birds some times flock to try and catch some.
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1/14/2008, 9:16 pm
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Charlemagnex
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
Besides the threat of water embargoes, the Barons enforce their will with armies armed with some of the best iron and steel weapons available.
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1/15/2008, 12:07 am
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tryingtowrite
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
The people of the water caravan are tough and hardy. They have to be to face the perils of their lives. Before the children are acknowledged as adults they under go the Test.
They are sent out, alone, into the desert with a skin of water and their knowledge of desert plants and animals. If they return they are welcomed into the caravan, if not...they were weak.
---
I'd procrastinate now, but it would be easier tomorrow.
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1/15/2008, 12:43 am
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QS2
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
In the great southern rim mountains, are ones that spew forth fire and molten rock, sometimes flash floods happen through the riverbeds when such mountains burn and destroy the glacier atop of them.
Thanks to these mountains and most of the rivers in the entire region being in the south, this is where the great free cities lie, with walls to protect them from attack and fertile soils to use to feed their people. Some of them holding perhaps thousands maybe even ten thousand people, some times.
However, they are also very dangerous slope and many a city has fallen or perished when one of the mountains erupts or a great flash flood destroys all their food.
Last edited by QS2, 2/3/2008, 5:19 pm
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1/15/2008, 11:21 pm
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Corvus
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
Creature: Vylex
One of the greatest hazards of the great sandy desert is a beast called the vylex. This coldly efficient predator resembles a cross between a snake and a centipede, ten meters long with a body three quarters of a meter in diameter.
The segmented body of the vylex is radially symmetrical, giving it a tube-like shape. At its fore is a rounded cone "beak" of chitin that splits open four ways to reveal the creature's mouth, a ring of razor-sharp serated fangs that sink into prey and force it into the vylex's gullet. At the other end, the body tapers into a highly-flexible, almost prehensile whip with a slender spike that is used to deliver a paralytic agent into prey. This paralyzing poison is fast-acting, rendering prey immobile within thirty seconds -- faster for smaller prey animals.
The vylex moves by swimming efficiently through sand using oar-like limbs. These limbs are arrayed in pairs, starting several segments behind the creature's "head" and ending just before the body narrows into the spike-whip. Each pair alternates orientation, so that from a head-on view the limbs form a four-armed cross. This allows the vylex to swim through the sand from any orientation of its body.
The vylex surfaces only rarely to absorb oxygen directly from the air, and is capable of "holding its breath" for great periods of time so long as it does not undergo any strenuous activity. When moving from place to place, the vylex can be seen occasionally breaking the surface to breathe like some sand-going cetacean or sea serpent. It spends most of its time lying in wait below the surface of dunes, waiting for prey to pass by. In this way it conserves energy and preserves the balance of its wasteland environment. A vylex draws all the water it needs from the prey it consumes.
A human-size creature is sufficient prey to content a vylex for quite some time. Caravans will sometimes keep sacrificial goats -- or human prisoners -- which are marched ahead of the caravan to catch the attention of any vylex which might be in the area.
Last edited by Corvus, 1/31/2008, 4:48 pm
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1/31/2008, 4:46 pm
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Pastor Rick
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Re: The "Design a Setting" Thread!
creature: Bracue
The Bracue is a crablike creature about a foot long with a clear chitinous shell. The Bracue lives and lays its eggs along the edges of the deserts salt flats and has a brief 4 week life cycle. One female Bracue will lay up to 1,000 eggs (each about the size of a pea) during her life cycle. The eggs lay dormant and are highly poisonous until rain comes to the desert at which time they hatch and after two weeks reach full maturity.
The meat of a Bracue (when cooked) is very tender, non-poisonous, and with a taste somewhat like spiced shrimp, a true delicacy.
The eggs poison is brownish in color, tasteless and odorless. It's toxicity can kill a person if ingested in large doses (5 or more eggs) and has a paralyzing property which can last up to 24 hours in smaller doses.
The chitinous shell is extremely thick and hard but can be broken into small hexagonally shaped pieces which turn a milky white color similar to that of a pearl, highly sought after in sizes suitable for jewelry in the mountain cities.
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6/3/2009, 3:55 am
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