This will be the last offshoot thread on my homebrew system for a while. I'm reluctant even to start this one with the way school work is piling up (not sure how far I'll get). That said I do want to remember what I'm thinking about.

Anyway, I want to make the setting to match the system somewhat, and to match with my own "Appendix N" style inspirations. Part of the goal is genericism (there should be familiar touchstones) and part of it is updating (the look and feel might be borrowed from comics and animation more than older illustration in this case).

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Appendix N:

Fullmetal Alchemist the first TV series of this has always been a big gaming inspiration. This was one of the big inspirations for sorcerers and ritual magic. I loved magic as science and research. And I loved its treatment of magic as a weapon. Also the power level roughly fits, in that it's not the kind of thing people have to "run out of" in order for them to resort to other means than magic. And of course you couldn't have FmA without a wound system of some kind.

Setting-wise there's may be less of this in there. FmA kind of posits this oppressive setting-spanning regime that wouldn't work well with the sort of wide open wilderness and many factions I'm after. There will probably be conspiracies similar to the central one in that show however. Mass human sacrifice and people looking for shortcuts to apotheosis (or something close) both fit with the genre I'm after.

Princess Mononoke is really an awesome anime. This has themes of civilization vs the wilderness, multiple competing factions on either side, quests for personal power, binding an outsider (I need to get into the binding magic system soon), and something like domain management for a few of the higher level characters. It also has magical locations and phenomena (magic in D&D can sometimes be unfortunately reduced to something casters and items have and not much more IME).

Hellboy is one of my favorite comics. I'm taking a bit of my treatment of outsiders (fey, angels, demons, djinn, and aliens) from the look feel and tone here. Moreover, there is more concrete binding-based stuff, more concrete boon-like stuff, more concrete handling of magical locations, and even examples of characters in command of their own worlds.

So Hellboy's sort of cosmology was an inspiration in this setting. Planes are all (relatively) accessible from the real world. Sometimes they bleed through. Really powerful entities can enchant locations or rule their own little domains. All this applies for both casters and outsiders. And then casters can bind demons (or whatever) into their service, while just about anybody can bargain with devils for power (and of course there's a price for that). Another nice bit is that as casters go further down the rabbit hole they'll become more like the entities magic binds and serves.

Samurai Champloo is another favorite of mine, and a good look at the model for low-level play (except that central characters die more and there are dungeons). It's all about vagrant sellswords just trying to get by. I really really want to get the wealth system tuned such that the low levels play like this. Also the yakuza stuff from this show will probably inform how I handle organized crime. Additionally it gives me a few ideas of how to de-Christianize a feudal setting in ways that make some amount of sense. One peeve of mine is the pseudo-Christian values in a polytheistic setting.

Avatar: the Last Airbender was again a mostly systemic influence, in that it inspired big portions of the magic and combat system. Like the alchemists, the benders were a big influence on the sorcerer. Also the idea of fight-centric mages plays into the way (I hope) the druid will play.

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Continuing later.

While I like and am familiar with everything but Hellboy beyond the movie I have to say some of this stuff probably won't mesh well. Fma is a more "sciency" stting though I like the powerlevel it represents. Howeve rit doesn't have the "supernatural" thing to it. What's more is that I believe what people are doing in the kind of outstrips the antics of Samurai Champloo (except for that bit with the guy who cut cut people from a distance) and Princess Mononoke. In a mesh up I can't reallly imagine how it'd work out but to start what do you DEFINITELY want in the setting?

With its flexible approach to setting Tenra Bansho Zero may be a good fit for this mechanically - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diamondsutra/tenra-bansho-zero-an-art-and-culture-rich-rpg-from.

Quote from: MGuy;580248While I like and am familiar with everything but Hellboy beyond the movie I have to say some of this stuff probably won't mesh well. Fma is a more "sciency" stting though I like the powerlevel it represents. Howeve rit doesn't have the "supernatural" thing to it. What's more is that I believe what people are doing in the kind of outstrips the antics of Samurai Champloo (except for that bit with the guy who cut cut people from a distance) and Princess Mononoke. In a mesh up I can't reallly imagine how it'd work out but to start what do you DEFINITELY want in the setting?

The point is mainly to mix the magic as science / magic as fighting (FmA and AtLA) with the magic as supernatural and dealing with approachable (in power level) gods (Mononoke and Hellboy).

Samurai Champloo isn't meant to be the look and feel at all levels, but minor running on walls and exotic weapons are cool (I see the kusari fundo as an "answer" to the sort of levitation wizards can use in this game, for example) as are constant poverty at low levels and the presence of organized crime. Levels 1-5 should be very Sam Champoo and non-main-character FmA power-level wise.

Also like I was saying with Mononoke, an army is a big damn deal in this game. Between active defense and wounds, numbers of combatants can matter a hell of a lot more than personal power. At least on the statistical side of things.

I'll be getting more into the general themes, cosmology, history, and tone next post. Gotta gather my thoughts a bit though.

Quote from: Skywalker;580252With its flexible approach to setting Tenra Bansho Zero may be a good fit for this mechanically - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diamondsutra/tenra-bansho-zero-an-art-and-culture-rich-rpg-from.

Mechanically what I'm working on is more of a tactical RPG in the genre of 4e and related games. This looks a tiny bit more narrative than what I'm after for this project, though it's interesting for its own reasons.

S'cool.

General Themes
I've only got a handful of these mapped out. Many of them are typical of this or that iteration of D&D, but again I'm after a distillation, minus contradicting elements etc. My game isn't the flagship of the hobby, so I'm free to focus on what I like and discard the rest.

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Civilization vs its Opposite
Civilization is in conflict with the chaos that came before it. This is not about the wilderness or some notion of "savagery."

Basically the conflict is between monsters and gods who rule by individual strength vs humans, who rule by collective (if still sometimes militant) strength. Humans have banded together to push back the dark and the old gods, and the darkness and the old gods aren't happy.

There was a setting-spanning empire that fell apart, not because the darkness bumped back, but because of simple human failing. Still, the darkness and old gods have crept back into some of their old haunts. The world isn't as safe as it once was.

The Old vs the New
As in Greek and Norse myth, the old generations of gods have been replaced by newer younger ones, but the old gods push back. Likewise, religious and political power has changed hands, but there are holdouts. Druids and cultists and people who claim imperial lineage. Things like that.

I'll flesh this out more later.

Fragmented Power
No empires, no all-encompassing power within kingdoms, no setting-wide religion. It's not a power vacuum, but it's close enough that the PCs have a niche to step into by deposing a small baron or whatever when it comes time to deal with domain management.

The Quest for Personal Power
Really obviously there in the level-based system, but more than that I wanted to build opportunities for advancement into the setting wherever possible.

Feudalism
I'm going to play up the weirdness of this.

People aren't inherently valuable. They're valuable based on who they belong to or who belongs to them under a system of fealty. I want to kind of play up what a big shift that is compared with humanism of any kind (where people are inherently valuable). I don't want to make this always bad (a lord will protect his subjects, and that's part of what makes him a lord). However it will be strange when people pay the victim's family after a murder (because a human life has an actual specific value to the people to whom they belonged). And the bad stuff (tyranny, slavery, bloodsport, and prostitution) is all in there too.

I'm also going to play up some of the weirdness of the de-Christianization of the setting. Yes there are protecting/healing clerics. But the faiths of the setting probably won't have the same Christian values. I've considered basing the post-pagan faiths on mystery cults from ancient Rome, Legalism, Confucianism, Gnosticism, maybe even Buddhism.

Emanation
Basically, all the planes have infinite layers. At the uppermost end is the source of all (whatever) magic, and it gets weaker and weaker until it gets to the material plane, nearly gone. It's sort of a corruption of other versions of this (where there's a single source) but I'm pretty happy with this.

Additionally, each kind of magic has a natural master, a mage, and a minion (and they're based on the M:tG themes sorta).
Black: Demons>Warlocks>Undead (corporeal)
Blue: Aliens>Wizards>Humanoids
White: Angels>Clerics>Undead (incorporeal)
Green: Fey>Druids>Animals/Plants
Red: Djinn>Sorcerers>Objects

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That may not be all, but I'm done for the night.

Quote from: MGuy;580248While I like and am familiar with everything but Hellboy beyond the movie I have to say some of this stuff probably won't mesh well. Fma is a more "sciency" stting though I like the powerlevel it represents. Howeve rit doesn't have the "supernatural" thing to it. What's more is that I believe what people are doing in the kind of outstrips the antics of Samurai Champloo (except for that bit with the guy who cut cut people from a distance) and Princess Mononoke. In a mesh up I can't reallly imagine how it'd work out but to start what do you DEFINITELY want in the setting?

The original appendix N was pretty varied in this respect, if i recall. The original DMG actually drew on some pretty different genres (i believe at one point Gygax even mentioned running an Alice in Wonderland style campaign.

Well, there is Adventures in Dungeonland module, which pretty much is "AD&D does Wonderland".

I'm actually working on an homage to Wolf, Richard's request for a higher tech D&D along with Pundit's frustration with Blue Rose's tyranny of the deer in socialist utopia. I'm shooting for also throwing in other conflicting tropes just to see what I can cook up. So far:

Forgotten Realms, continent of Osse, Australian Aboriginal culture, socialist egalitarian political structure, co-op communal economy, high tech (with "fiber optics" and "opals as integrated circuits"), vegetarian + insectivore (primarily alga and brine flies), urban, nomadic, nomadic cities, fish nets & Boyle's gas law as tech basis for weaponry and home living, and complex cultural structures using moieties.

I've actually drew up two pages of work already since two days ago that inspiration hit. I'm using Guugu Yimidhirr as this culture's linguistic basis, so I already have things named -- in circumstantial voice no less! I'm already fleshing out the border suzerains of one based on sound tech using didgeridoo and bullroarer harmonics, and the other is an underwater coral realm ran by sentient jellyfish and sea anemones. I think I'll put a topic here once I make more material...

It's basically an experiment to see how grounded I can make this, and at the same time see what point people's consciousness rebels at the mere thought.

Quote from: beejazz;582326The Old vs the New
As in Greek and Norse myth, the old generations of gods have been replaced by newer younger ones, but the old gods push back. Likewise, religious and political power has changed hands, but there are holdouts. Druids and cultists and people who claim imperial lineage. Things like that.

Umm... your plans seem really interesting, but as someone that knows about myths and such, i really must point out one thing:
In Nordic Myth, the "Older gods" was never really replaced by the new, like what happened in greek and several others ... Unless one considers that Idun used to be foremost, and then got the backseat towards Odin, and later got even more backseated towards (and almost replaced by) Freya.
The rest of the Asgardian Gods ended rather up on "equal standing" with the Vanir, so no real replacement took place then: They rather joined forces.

And no, as far as i know, there is no documentation(runic inscriptions) that Ymir nor the other giants were ever woshipped as gods in nordic myth.

Quote from: Catelf;582430Umm... your plans seem really interesting, but as someone that knows about myths and such, i really must point out one thing:
In Nordic Myth, the "Older gods" was never really replaced by the new, like what happened in greek and several others ... Unless one considers that Idun used to be foremost, and then got the backseat towards Odin, and later got even more backseated towards (and almost replaced by) Freya.
The rest of the Asgardian Gods ended rather up on "equal standing" with the Vanir, so no real replacement took place then: They rather joined forces.

And no, as far as i know, there is no documentation(runic inscriptions) that Ymir nor the other giants were ever woshipped as gods in nordic myth.

I was referring more to the first generations of giants. They were never worshiped as such, but they rivaled or exceeded the gods in power.

AFAIK the titans were never really worshiped either.

You're right that the Greek pantheon had more proper "replacement" with the titans more or less out of the picture by the end, but since my setting kind of mixes properly banished Old Gods with those that are still active, using both for comparison seemed valid.

Also I was referring to a larger general trend. Greek myth had Giants that attempted to overthrow the Olympians and failed IIRC. Point is the outcome isn't as important to me as the nature of the conflict and the tropes that surround it.

Old material from the old iteration. Kind of a dump while this sits on the back burner (thanks to school). Everything up for revision.

First is some rough info on a dungeon I plan on packaging with the system.

QuoteI'll start with why there's a dungeon out in the middle of nowhere and move on to what's in it and why the party should care I guess.

Before there was anybody...
Back when the first gods were working on the world and magic was wild, all was not well. For some reason I haven't figured out (though there doesn't need to be much of a reason) awful things with godlike power and the intellect of an insect existed whose only desire was to eat and eat and eat and whose very presence warped magic and the minds of those nearby. For some reason (again I haven't figured it out yet) the gods and creators sealed them down deep in the earth (rather than just kill them), and set their guard dogs (not literal dogs, but more lovecraft ripoffs) up around the area to make sure that no one released these things from the outside. The guard dogs are hibernators and have been asleep since. They'll look like large rocks covered in moss and/or fungus until they are woken up.

In some ancient forgotten kingdom...
People worshiped one of the "guard dogs" closest to the surface as their god. There was a grand temple up in the mountains where they would offer sacrifices to it. The prestigious dead were kept under the temple in a system of elaborate catacombs riddled with traps and now haunted.

When that kingdom was burned to the ground...
Invaders saw the religion as blasphemous. They lopped the faces off the relief sculptures on the wall, cut out certain words from inscriptions on the wall, burned scrolls and texts, and did their best to make the temple inaccessible to outsiders. They made scarce progress in the tombs, where the last of the priests holed up, and instead closed them in from the outside and starved the survivors.

Much much later, during the war...
Goblins reopened portions of the temple and even the tomb for use as a makeshift fortress for a small band operating behind enemy lines. They stayed there even when the war was over, on orders to spy for the goblin kingdom.

After the war...
A certain decorated hero asked for a land grant that happened to include the goblin fortress. He established a manor, had a daughter, and retired.

Years later, a dwarf visited for a month or two before both the knight and the dwarf vanished without a word or a trace, never to be seen again. The knight's daughter was left in charge of the manor.

The dwarf and the knight knew about the goblin fortress, and together with a little hired help took it over. They've forced the goblins to mine within the complex, and are seeking to take advantage of the horrible thing sealed away under the temple (to be more accurate, it's the dwarf mage that wants to take advantage, and he has manipulated the human knight into helping him).

Enter the party...
The king of this small country is a cruel paranoid twelve year old who I really hope gets overthrown by the PCs and friends in the long run.

He sent a loyal supporter (the knight's daughter) a shipment of weapons that was stolen in transit, and he fears revolt. He's even more nervous because the shipment was supposed to be secret. His regent will hire the PCs to investigate the region, looking for bandits or any others that might have stolen the arms shipment. If they don't convince him the knight's daughter isn't a traitor, he'll probably ask them to bring her in and have her executed.

Just a little glimpse of the dungeon and how it might fit into the campaign.

QuoteThe first adventure
I'm probably going to start the playtest campaign with the characters being hired by the king (not directly but maybe through his regent). Yes it's a bit railroady, but it gets everybody on the same page to start with, and will show them how a quest works (and I'm not saying they can't start with other quests, pick up some in the course of play, and forget to complete this one). So everybody starts with the quest "investigate the missing arms shipment and report back to the king."

The king sent an arms shipment out, including lots of guns and heavy armor, to a loyal supporter of his in secret. It was stolen and its guards were never heard from again. The king isn't well liked and is justifiably paranoid, so he's worried who wants these weapons and for what... and how they knew about the shipment... and whether his loyal supporter is really a loyal supporter.

So the characters will probably go out into the mountains to the manor of this loyal supporter (the daughter of the old knight described above in the dungeon description) and she'll blame bandits or some such who have been raiding occasionally since she inherited the place from her missing father. She may point them to the old ruins she thinks they use for their hideout, leading the party to the dungeon crawl. Now, if the party wants to mill about in town before heading for the mountains or if they want to investigate the manor and the situation there more thoroughly they may not get to the dungeon in the first adventure, and I'm going to fill in some details for both later. For now I'm going to continue assuming the players go for the dungeon.

The Dungeon (NPCs)
I've gone into a lot of detail on how it got there. But for now I'll get into what's really going on with the "bandits" and the lost weapons shipment. To start with, I gotta introduce you to the 4 main (living) movers and shakers down there.

Deposed Head Goblin: This was the guy who was in charge of the goblin fortress before the mutiny and the hostile takeover by the knight and the dwarf mage. When the war ended, the goblin nation gave the goblins orders to stay and spy on the humans. They then promptly forgot about the hidden fortress and sent them no further supplies or anything. The head goblin didn't want to raid for supplies for fear of betraying their location to the humans. He was deposed by the second in command, and imprisoned with all who were loyal to him. The fortress became more of a bandit lair, with the remaining goblins stealing and pillaging under the leadership of the second in command. They did give away their location, as the deposed head goblin predicted, leading to the later change in leadership and mission.

The deposed head goblin is still imprisoned along with some of his loyal goblins in an abandoned shaft. The players may convince him to help them in exchange for his freedom. He is loyal to the goblin nation however, and if freed he may report the presence of the monster at the bottom of the dungeon back home.

The knight: The knight fought in the war way back when, and got a land grant in this area because of it. He had a decent life after that, got married and had a daughter. A year or two after his wife died an old war buddy came to visit (the dwarf). The two disappeared and left the daughter in charge of the area. They and a small group of mercenaries were able to take control of the dungeon from the second in command, who surrendered when they convinced him they aimed to mine for gold there and promised him a share.

The knight believes the thing at the bottom of the dungeon calls to him and wants to be free. The knight is pretty much crazy. Truth is though it isn't the thing at the bottom calling him. The dwarf is just drugging him and using suggestions and such. If the party kills the dwarf but leaves the knight, the knight may still feel compelled to free the thing at the bottom.

Dwarf Mage: The dwarf mage is the guy that's really behind it all. He wants to bind the thing at the bottom of the dungeon so he can use it as a weapon later. He's driven the knight mad and bribed the goblins with promises of gold. He's also experimenting on goblins in the prison, warping them with the local wild magic or something (I'm still working on what's going on in this part of the dungeon). The only person who knows what he's really up to is the deposed head goblin, who's figured it out somehow.

The dwarf mage will do whatever he has to to get what he wants, and will especially try to lie to or manipulate the PCs to accomplish it. If he gets what he wants, he'll probably feed everything in the dungeon to the monster at the bottom... Partly to appease it, partly to tie off loose ends, and partly just for fun. Chances are the thing will just break loose and eat him too though.

Second in Command Goblin: This guy mutinied against the deposed head goblin and has forced those loyal to their original leader to work in the mines. He thinks they're looking for gold. He's the one that stole the weapons shipment, entirely by accident, and is hiding it outside the dungeon. He plans to kill off the human and the dwarf and their hired mercenaries and take the gold the minute they find it.

The next bits have more to do with cosmology and stuff. There are some bits that I'll almost certainly ditch or modify, and some bits that basically refer to old system stuff, but otherwise it's still pretty solid I think.

QuoteContinuing with my break from the dungeon and immediate setting, I'd like to talk about gods and religion in my setting. The first is getting fleshed out a little in my mind... just a start mind you, and I may go another direction with it later. The second not so much.

See, all I know of religion is that the entire region of the setting shared the same or a similar pagan faith (like Rome did) before the empire collapsed. Towards the end there were many mystery cults (again like in Rome) but no one cult gained dominance in the entire region (which is where this goes a little religious alt-history). The original paganism was banned or marginalized in most places in favor of more recent religions endorsed by the state(s). New, predominant religions share more in common with monotheistic faiths, eastern philosophy, or gnosticism.

I don't know much about the new faiths I'm going to have in the region, but I do know a little about the pockets of the old faiths I'm going to be working with.

The Gods
The pantheon is going to pull cliches out of many polytheistic pantheons, but especially the gods of the fertile crescent (the Babylonian/Sumerian/Akkadian stuff), the Norse pantheon, and the Greek pantheon.

Two ideas I am definitely stealing are  me (in this case I'll modify them heavily, but the important thing is that the powers of godhood can be transferred and/or stolen) and  the tablets of destiny (currently not in the possession of any god, but in some place that even the gods fear to go... play for years and maybe your character can bring these back and rule the universe).

I'm taking other ideas as well.

-Gods are also places sometimes. The planes are sometimes either the corpse of a god, the body of a living god, or the domain of a god.
-There are multiple generations of gods.
-Generations of gods don't get along (the Titans vs the Olympians, the Cyclopes, and the Hecatonchires or the Aesir-Vanir war)
-Older gods are more forces of nature; newer gods are more civilized. Older gods are more powerful, distant, and likely to be dead; newer gods are more involved in human affairs.
-There are redundant gods for specific aspects of the same thing (an old god of the sea and storms... a new god of the sea and sailing).
-Unlike in many RPGs, where good people worship good gods and bad people worshiped bad gods, people who worship gods at all worship all kinds. Praying to a bad god is more of a "please don't kill me" thing.
-Many monsters are descended somehow from the gods.
-There are monsters the gods don't want to mess with out there (Typhos).
-There are smaller local gods. Local traditions will vary based on local gods or spirits.
-People's understanding of the gods and what they actually are won't match up 100%. Local traditions will vary depending on how they see things.

Oh, and while one of the gods might have taught magic to humans (and is probably still being punished for it), since then, humans don't get their powers directly from the gods the way clerics do.

Specific Gods
I should warn you I'm not terribly sure about anything I say below.

I'm pretty sure the first two gods will be Time (the original owner of the tablet of destiny) and Chaos (the only thing in the cosmos that can both create and destroy me... there's gotta be a better name for that stuff).

They'll probably be followed by Earth, Sea, and Sky. In order to rebel each will ask Chaos for a companion. Air gets Death, Water Pestilence, and Earth War.

Death will remain neutral, while the other two new gods are split (one will defend Time and Chaos, the other will rebel with Earth, Sea, and Sky).

At the end, Time loses and is stripped of the tablet. He's imprisoned somewhere, but his escape will mark the end of the universe. Being unable to decide who should take it, the rebellious gods give the tablet to Death. Chaos may be left in Death's care. Whichever companion defended the old gods might be forgiven.

Death isn't any more deserving of the tablet than Time it turns out. The Earth/Sea/Sky bunch keep trying to make new gods with each other (or maybe Earth with War and Sea with Pestilence... maybe even Sky with Death), and each time Death takes them. So they talk to War and Pestilence. And War and Pestilence talk to Chaos. And they ask Chaos for something truly horrible to stop Death.

So now there's something truly horrible running around, and nobody wants that. Death has to use the tablet to seal the potentially universe ending thing away. As revenge, Death puts out a great feast for the gods and tricks them into eating their children. (Children in the earth, sea, and sky are sort of lesser abominations in the world) Death gets sealed away in her own domain pretty quick after that. Chaos too is cast out by the gods, but there's only so much you can do to keep chaos at bay.

And that's the story of the oldest gods at least. I may work on the rest later.

EDIT: Ah crap... forgot to mention why the first rebellion happened. Another stolen idea, time eats any new gods that come from Earth Sea and Sky. There's a whole pantheon of monstrous gods that are eaten by him and taken back after he is defeated. They play a minor role, if any role at all, in the second rebellion. However, they'll probably take over after the second rebellion.

QuoteI need planar spells, but first I need to figure out what my planes will be. I'm thinking there should be about two planes for each spellcasting school. My cosmology's a little different in that there's no shadow/ethereal/astral and all planes are transitive planes at the low level. Without further ado...

Planar Terms
The shallows: The lowest level of any plane is coterminous (is that the right word?) with the material plane. That is to say that while it has the traits of the plane it belongs to, most things in the real world have corresponding objects or locations in the shallows. There are artificial structures in the shallows that do not exist in the material, however.

Layers: Layers are series of worlds within a plane. Lower levels are closer to normal. Higher levels get more and more intense. They aren't actually physically above or below each other. You can't fall from one plane to another except through a portal. But most planar magic once you're in the plane works to shift you higher or lower (deeper or shallower if you prefer).

Demiplanes: Some demiplanes are unique and not attached to an existing planar structure. Such demiplanes are harder to reach than the standard planes. Some demiplanes are merely offshoots of existing planes and their levels. The domain of an individual god, for example, is usually a demiplane.

Portals: I think we all know portals.

Projection: Sending an echo of yourself through the planes instead of your physical body. If your echo is killed, your body returns to consciousness. If your echo is severed from your body, your body dies and your echo is stranded. Your echo can not return physically to the material plane. Usually, unless you find a way to get your soul and body rejoined, your echo will simply forget itself and dissolve over time, like one of the dead.

Planar Bleeds: When a plane, layer, or demiplane's magical properties seep into the material world.

That's about all I can think of for now.

Planes
Dream (blue): Dream is an exception to most of the planar rules. Everyone can project there freely in sleep. Most of Dream is composed of demiplanes, some of which might theoretically be deeper or shallower than others. Most people have powers like gods over their own demiplanes (though because people aren't usually lucid in dreams, they don't exert their literal will). Demiplanes come into and out of existence as people sleep and wake up, though individual dreams last for minutes, hours, sometimes even days after waking. Theoretically there may be portions of Dream not generated by dreamers in its deepest parts, though these may simply be the dreams of immortal sleepers. These native portions of dreams/dreams of immortal sleepers have native, alien life that few would understand or wish to interact with. Dream has no shallows.

Void (blue): At its shallowest, Void is filled with simply nothing. Its shallows do not have echoes of physical objects, but you can see the material plane faintly through the shadows (shallow Void is the closest thing here to the ethereal). There is no ground, but one can will oneself to move on most layers and demiplanes. Deeper Void has a few connections with Sheol and Dream. Deeper void tends to take on strange traits: color shifts, series of milky intangible membranes, large rootlike structures, and eventually, native fauna that clearly does not belong in our universe (aliens and aberrations... Lovecraft stuff).

Tartarus (black): A plane of destruction, its shallows are filled with the wreckage of this world, plus darkness, dust, and ash. As one goes deeper, one finds tartarus the home plane of all fiends.

Sheol (black): The plane of the dead. In the shallows are the recently dead, still hanging around where they did in life, watching their loved ones on this transparent plane (like the shallow Void, the shallow Sheol shows some things from the material... mostly the shadows of the living). As one goes deeper, one finds fewer and fewer dead, who tend to remember less and less of their true selves, until finally they simply vanish. Going deeper and deeper, one finds less and less, but may be more and more affected by the same danger. Deep sheol will make you forget yourself and eventually vanish. Sheol is not the home of celestials, but it is guarded by them, to the ire of necromancers who would tamper with the place.

Heaven (white): The plane of celestials charged with protecting the proper order of the universe at all costs. The deeper one goes, the bigger and badder they get. The bigger and badder they get, the more annoyed they tend to be with you. Both for your intrusion and because they tend to know more about your private life (the near omniscient top dogs are really creepy, really angry, and almost wish they weren't required to protect such a rotten imperfect world).

Source (white): The plane from which life flows. It's effectively the positive energy plane, except that overdosing on life energy doesn't make you explode. The plane does have unfortunate addictive qualities though. People who go here to heal up may find it hard to leave after a while. Also if you hang out here too long it will grow you. There are twitching continents of meat that used to be people deep in this world.

Faery (or whatever I call it) (green): The world of fey, not yet fleshed out fully.

Elemental Chaos (red): The elemental planes / D&D Limbo. Again not terribly fleshed out.

Just posting a rough flowchart of that intro dungeon (see the attached file). Arrow direction indicates the easiest routes through the dungeon. I've made a note on any up-only arrows why it's harder to go one way rather than the other. Each level will have loops and branches within it unless there's some reason why it shouldn't.

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The temple is unoccupied. It's the easiest to see entrance (being above ground) and has access to both the tombs and the goblin fortress.

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The tombs are haunted. The priests got sealed in there with their followers and got cannibalistic in order to survive. The priests who engaged in cannibalism became ghoul-like, the dead followers' bones are in a pit and will animate if disturbed, and the honored dead and priests who abstained from cannibalism will haunt the place as ghosts. There may also be traps, enchantments, and haunting by the knights who sealed the congregation into the tombs.

I'm planning on treating the haunting in a trap/puzzle sort of way in some places and a monster sort of way in others. Also I may write in some illusions of the awful things that happened here, or even have places where the party "flashes back" to how things were back then for a while. Sometimes this may allow them access to places that are currently blocked off.

The tombs provide a sort of back way into the fortress. Goblins avoid the tomb, but they know the things that live there can't leave. So that route is less guarded than the front ways in.

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The fortresses are occupied by goblins. They'll be using portcullises, arrow slits, improvised traps and fortifications, and chokepoints and spears to their fullest effect anywhere they can. The front entrances will probably be hard as hell to get into.

This will also be the most reactive section. Foes will fall back to increase their numbers and improve their odds, or will rush in to fortify an area being hit badly (in response to alarm bells and such).

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The prison is basically just abandoned mineshafts filled with dissidents.

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The mines are exactly what they sound like. They're shafts reaching down to the lower levels in search of gold (for the goblins) or that horrible thing at the bottom (the real objective). The goblins here are a mix of slave labor and task masters (hence the tight security and being on the other side of the prison and at the bottom of a deep shaft) and the danger here is as much from structural instability, cramped space, and long drops as it is from any combat.

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The water levels are filled with the horrible sleeping things that guard the thing at the bottom of the dungeon. I've determined that they'll probably be kept dormant by spells and runes that if disturbed will free them. So part of the challenge will be bypassing these runes. Since the dwarf put this stuff here and may not have explored the entire level, there may also be monsters that are not dormant wandering about. Otherwise, the party will have to deal with the typical water hazards, including currents and totally submerged passages, as well as foes that could drag one down into the water.

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And the worst is the thing with the hibernating god in it. Not yet sure of the details of this final section.

Quote from: beejazz;586858Just posting a rough flowchart of that intro dungeon (see the attached file). Arrow direction indicates the easiest routes through the dungeon. I've made a note on any up-only arrows why it's harder to go one way rather than the other. Each level will have loops and branches within it unless there's some reason why it shouldn't.

If you can shoehorn a few minutes into your schedule (I am under the same schoolwork pressure these days), Tufts offers one of the best 'mindmapping' programs out there.  Discussing its usage for various aspects of design and actual play over on G+.  It exports the maps as png images, so no worries that only people with VUE can see them.

Visual Understanding Environment

Thanks for that. I've seen stuff like this before but never got into it. I'll be sure and give it a closer look later.