Random Chatter: Welcome

[Vardaen]

Holy crap! Alot of things. First, my Bittorrent of the "Empire" set of books was started last night, so should be done when I get home so I'll take a look at these. On to the dwarves, easy things first.

Names...many of the names were made long ago for the other campaign and there were no dwarves then in the campaign. I basically have taken the shape of the world (I'll get a map up eventually here) and will use that but most other things are gone, so I have used all the old names as placefillers at this point. I'm all for making the names match up, and I feel as strongly as Wulf does about making them all mesh right.

My take on Wulf's name comments.

'¢ Thain the Troublemaker
Why not make him Thain the Troublebrewer? Seems more '˜dwarven' to me.

- Love it.

'¢ Hafur the Kragbrewer & Thangik Stonecleaver
Their Last names seem similar in meaning so why not make them brothers and change their names to something similar sounding like:

Hafrik Kraghewer and Thangik Stonecleaver?

- This one you took Kragbrewer the wrong way, the point is he is a brewer, not a kragger. So I was going for the father of Beer here, not the other way around. Hafrik and Hafur sound fine either way, but I want Kragbewer as the surname.

'¢ Karbur Dragonhammer
If you changed Hafur's name to Hafrik, this is pretty much alright, though I might add a '˜the' in this one's name as it sounds more professional.

Karbur the Dragonhammer!

- Either way

'¢ Muric Greyshield
This one already sounds great. No problems there. Sounds regal and pious too!

'¢ Grogdin the Aledrinker
A simple adjustment to Grogdin Aleswiller and presto you got a drunken dorf ruler!

- Love it.

'¢ Dursir Deepforge
I Really like this one, almost as much as Muric!

'¢ Balwain the Ashbearded
Remove '˜the' and '€"ed and you have Balwain Ashbeard leader of dwarves!

I was shooting for about 3 names with "the" in them.

---

Dwarven Fathers
Thain the Troublebrewer
HafrikKragbrewer
Thangik Stonecleaver
Karbur the Dragonhammer
Muric Greyshield
Grogdin Aleswiller
Dursir Deepforge
Balwain Ashbeard

[Vardaen]

Like I said I have plenty of ideas, but haven't put anything down here yet. I'll touch on other topics now.

'¢ Who or what the heck is Araw and what does he stand for in the game. Is he the dwarven god of creation much akin to Moradin or even Odin the Allfather? Or is he perhaps the Elemental Entity of flame and stone that first breathed life into dwarves to begin with? I reckon that you need to develop a basic deity portfolio of what he represents to the dwarven society, how he is portrayed amongst his worshipers, and of course what he looks like and if he has any family, etc. as there are MANY outlooks on dwarves, their gods, and how they came to be '€" most of which of course involve them being first born underground!

Unlike most Fantasy games where there are 80 various gods and goddesss I was shooting more for a single type of cosmology. This means that Araw is the everything, the allfather, the creator and the destroyer, the one true and only god. To the dwarves this mean he is.. well God, in a more Chirstian/Jewish sense. This also means there are some various outlooks on how he should be worshiped and there are plenty of factions out there that worship him in various way. In game terms these various factiosn would prepresent different access to different domains. The Church of Araw in Kardolinw would be very different than how he's worshiped in Argothain, or even in Tol Jarad at this point with the comming of "Oythic" (need a need name for him).

Next would then be that of how the Church of Araw is headed up and governed. Do they hold ultimate power over the existing government, are they the existing government, or are they merely pawns that try to fix the existing governments various wrong-doings and what not. I reckon what I am trying to ask is simply, how much influence would the Church of Araw and as thus our being connected to it have over the overall plotline.

The Church is a corrupt (for the most part in the higher up levels) Vatican like organization with control over the goverment. The church's control over the government is very tight, a stranglehold, with politicans working to try and undo this, as well as good guys fromt he inside perhaps working for the same thing. Not everyone is evil or corrupt of course, but it would be hard to seperate Church and State here. In further reaches, on the fringes, things would/could be different of course. So to move against the church is to invite political retribution. The Inquisition would be a state backed secret police, the priests would have poltical leverage and ambassador like status throughout the cities, etc.

A new foe showing its face is all fine and dandy, but make sure that you have some working grasp of what it is, how powerful it is, and if it is indeed a new threat or merely the cleverly disguised form of an older and more ancient rivalry, enemy, etc. I reckon what I am trying to get at here is how significant would this new threat be and how bad are the existing threats already?

I have a very solid grasp on this, this however is one of those things that is better left to RP discovery, however. The forces of Drakkar have overrun and occupied (raping the land and enslaving the people of Argothain). They are military threat to Kardolin and boarder skirmishes are starting now. This threat is backed by a Necromancer of emense power, and of course a false god (demon, devil, or actual demi-god, or god). Its kind of a Mordor vs Minas Tirith situation. We see the first real rise of undead among Drakkar forces, plus Hobgoblins and the first appearance of Humans in the "west"

[Vardaen]

Sisth Mul I'm still kicking around ideas.

I've always had in my head that they were more tricksters and magic oriented there. I'm not keen on another 6 armed goddesss in my games (Mahasarpa!, LBS). Perhaps however an Aztec type feel for the area might work. I'll have to check out the book I have it. This one is in the air, but I'm leaning more away from the 'creator' as I really see Araw as that.

And I'm willing to check out the dwarves of other splatbooks. The core of Kardolin however should be a more Roman Imperial, High bred, noble elagant style. Something rarely seen for dwarvesn in my opinion. Dwarves in other regions, Tol Jarad and Argothain would be best fit for sub-races, or perhaps the purest bloodlines from the Fathers might have different options.

[Vardaen]

Okay so with some limited time coming up in a month for me (Winter Court is Nov9th to Jan 9th about) I don't think I'll really have time to do too much work on this. I want to do something else, I really like the idea where, but as we all know its a ton of work.

What would you guys think of, instead of trying to make this world, we explore the Pathfinder Campaign world?

[Vardaen]

Hmmm maybe not. At first I thought I liked the Campaign Setting, but reading it makes me less and less impressed.

[Trogdor]

I haven't really read much about the Pathfinder world. Is it really that disappointing?

[Vardaen]

The book is available, well you know where...

It looks really nice, and seems very complicated and detailed.

I was reading the timeline and it wasn't grabbing me. I haven't really gotten into it to far, which is perhaps my problem.

So I don't know really. Not sure what I want to do, working on a world is alot of work, but I want to try a Pathfinder game... I'm rather excited about Savage Tide and thought that the Paizo folk probably made a nice setting with adventures to boot, and it could be fun.

[Eanwulf]

Yeah, Pathfinder's world is rather generic and blah. I don't like their naming system at all - but do find some aspects intriguing. Overall it is pretty much atypical.

I thought about running a game set in Green Ronin's world of the City of Freeport (former pirate haven gone legit & privateer). The setting itself is set in a major trading hub and is somewhat self-contained as it is located in an island chain that was once a prosperous empire thousands of years ago and in turn would allow me to play Pathfinder in their world - but without having to succumb to the stuff that I didn't like there!

[Vardaen]

Yeah you hit the nail on the head, the names are sort of all over the place, and it seems kind of Blah. There are a lot of great names involved in it, and the foreward suggests they all brought things they had been working on and mushed them together into one setting.

I don't carefor FR, or Greyhawk or Dragonlance much myself, not as far as wanting to run a game there (I enjoy the games I'm playing in there because of the GMs and the adventure itself). When I read Eberron setting I fell in love with it right away, Pathfinder aka Golarion hasn't done it for me. However the Dwarf racial entry is pretty intersting. I did like their mission to dig to the Sky, that was a neat idea.

So after considering. I'll stick working on this if you guys want to keep helping out.

[Eanwulf]

Don't mind helping when able. Just be mindful of Gary Gygax's ideology when it comes to making game settings.

"Start SMALL and then work from there!"

He used to love making simple dungeons and a nearby city/town and then have players go and explore them. Once done, something the heroes found during their exploits would then move them on to another location, etc. and eventually to a new region, etc. Before long the DM had quite a bit of source material to work with!

Broad 'Concepts' are fine and dandy as they give you an idea of what/who goes where/when. But start off small ok? Give us a generic location and idea of what the hell we are going to be doing so we can best aid you in your rather long term quest!

From there, we can enjoy an adventure or two within that region, gain some helpful reference material to other locations/factions, and then move on to the next mission, etc. - traveling about the world during the process!

This is really how I wanted to create my own campaign setting and have kicked myself in the ass for not ever trying to get motivated about again!

<- gots LOTS of source materials just never enough time!