STILL Not Dead (Terrors & Tactics Updade)

Dark and Superversive aren’t mutually exclusive, so all your elements fit into it just fine. Superversive isn’t the same as Saccharine.

Actually, I’d even argue Superversive is the opposite of Saccharine, because Saccharine is also the opposite of reality. It sells the idea that great things can be achieved without struggle or effort. It’s hard to be heroic when everything is easily overcome.

Put another way... there’s nothing I’m changing about my setting. It’s already Superversive... Cataclysm and The Shadow and all. The story of the poor bastard who caused the Cataclysm to save the world is perfectly Superversive... the man is heroic and basically good (as are most of the survivors who band together to survive), has true love for his daughter and, despite the darkness, good wins (the world isn’t completely destroyed) and there is hope for all the people who lived because of his sacrifice.

So, here's the Superversive intro and the section I'm calling "Greater than the Sum of Their Parts"

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What is Superversive?
Superversive may be a term you’re unfamiliar with. It certainly was for me when I first encountered it. You’re probably more familiar with the word subversive; to change something by undermining its foundations. That’s been the norm for a while now in sci-fi, fantasy and superhero genres; heroes are portrayed as unheroic, people are only out for themselves, the world is a terrible and ugly place, crimes go unavenged and those who believe in something have their hopes dashed and their efforts often end in failure.

Those who embrace that style call it ‘realistic’ and that could be. But even if it is, if you were looking for realistic, you wouldn’t be looking through a book about fantasy heroes overcoming great obstacles.

You’re here for an escape from real life. You’re here looking for a way to have fun spending time with your friends. You’re looking for a world where heroes are heroic, where people are basically good (and those that are not are villains you can defeat), where courage, honor and virtue matter, where true love and beauty are eternal, hope is real and, even though it may struggle and stumble, good will always triumph in the end.

That what Superversive means; to inspire with things that, whether they’re really true or not, are worth believing in; and that is the world that Ruins & Realms aims to provide you and your fellow players.

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Greater than the Sum of their Parts
When your group is making their characters you could all make your own concepts independently of each other and then work out how they come to be part of a group who goes on adventures with each other. Alternately, you might discuss with your group about finding a common theme that unites your PCs before the campaign even begins.

Here are a few possibilities for creating a more unified group;

Family: You may not always get along, but you are kin and in a dark and dangerous world you can rely on each other when the chips are down. You may all be siblings or cousins, or a multigenerational group that includes one or more parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles. Obliviously you’re likely all of the same species, though humans can produce offspring with dwarves, elves, fetches, humanoid eldritch and malfeans. So depending on how you choose to be related there are options. Foundlings and orphans are also common and may allow a player to play a very different species if they desire.

A variant of the family is the Noble Household. In addition to immediate family (who almost certainly have the aristocrat background), some players may choose to play various retainers (captain of their guard, court wizard, etc.). If you coordinate your background boons the noble household could begin with a number of retainers (bodyguards, men-at-arms, loyal attendants, etc.) or even a small keep to call your own.

Another variant is the barbarian clan who work to survive in a hostile world.

Typically, families end up in a life of adventure out of desire to have a better life than their previous circumstances allowed. You could be refugees looking for a new home or homesteaders seeking to clear a plot of unclaimed land and make it their own.

The Order: The players all belong to an organization dedicated to some purpose. This order might be secular or religious, but the with its common purpose you can indicate to the Game Master the type of adventurers you’re looking to experience.

A variant of this would be The Company, where the primary motivation is profit. The company could be merchants, mercenaries or for-profit archeologists/ruin explorers.

Outlaws: The characters are united by falling outside of civilization’s normal protections. This may be because of legitimate crimes or because they’ve fallen out of favor with corrupt officials. A variant would be The Rebels where the PCs are members of an organized resistance against a corrupt government.

Both sections look good - the part in the Superversive entry about wanting an escape from the world is especially relevant these days.

Especially relevant perhaps, but honestly, never NOT relevant.

Every time and every generation has its struggles and that's what makes certain themes and the need for escapes from the struggles of the day timeless.

Heck, even before there were towns and cities there were people escaping their daily lives through stories told around the communal fire to educate and entertain. RPGs are just a continuation of that ancient activity with multiple storytellers working in unison.

As well as various tactical video games might do it faster, there really is nothing that can compete with a real RPG for both the social aspects of teamwork and also the ability to 'break' the game with a lateral move that a computer would just not allow, but a thinking breathing GM can roll with and in accord with the players' actions and the dice can create truly unplanned and amazing "crowning moments of awesome."

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Progress report... with those sections I posted last out of the way, I'm back into the meat and potatoes of the Region Creation rules and expect to have a new update with the previously mentioned changes and what I do have of the Region rules in it compiled over the weekend.

Very true, on both counts. I'm looking forward to the update.

Mid-weekend Writing/Compilation update; I’d had a day or so last week of just not being able to get anything written, but I had a flood Friday (four pages) and Saturday (six pages) so the chapter to be integrated is currently sitting at 18 pages and I’m feeling confident I can at least finish out the realms section of the Region Building chapter and start into the “Settlement Creation” section (basically Old Praetoria is the Region, The Free Cities is a Realm and Blackspire is a Settlement).

After Settlement Creation is “Ruins & Lairs” (admittedly a larger one) and finally “Events” and then I thinking it’s done save for maybe padding the monster section with a few more critters and/or duplicating the Glossary appendix at the back of the GM’s Guide for easier reference (minimal duplication is not the same as NO duplication) depending on how the final page count shakes out.

Oh, speaking of appendices and duplication, one other minor tweak to the Player’s Guide is that I adjusted the basic mercenaries found in the back so they’re all their own thing rather than a duplication of a GM’s Guide opponent... because minimal duplication means duplication only when absolutely necessary.

I’ll be starting the compilation this evening once I finish writing for the day so the new version should be up Monday morning.

Cool! I'll look it over tomorrow when I get the chance.

Okay, little break here, but thought I'd share something unexpected that came out of the Realm building rules (and providing examples thereof) that really makes a LOT of sense in explaining how the rebellion against Malcer went the way it did.

I just got done with the "realm military" section where the military force is based on two factors; the percentage relative to the overall population and their level of training.

Just so this will make full sense let me preface this with this... normal troops means grunt-level opponents, veterans are standard opponents and elites are, well, elite opponents.

So, the Free Cities are pretty typical. I went with the typical military size of 1:100... so 350 troops (of a population of 35,000). Now, because of the rebellion just over a decade back I decided they also probably had veteran readiness (which means of those 350 about 70 veterans and 4 elites). In an emergency they can call up about 3650 conscripts (level 0 grunts).

This probably also means that prior to the war they probably only had typical readiness as well... which would have just 35 veterans and 4 elites. All well and good.

But then I got to the Toria Tribes. They're tiny (12,000 total), they're scattered into small villages, they have no standing army... but because they live in the wilds where they hunt monster haunted forests for food they also a full-on elite warrior society which means, if they can organize, they've 1200 warriors, of which 240 are veterans and 24 are elites.

So when Blackthorne was actually able to unite the Toria Tribes against Malcer's regime (no small task), he had almost as many veteran and elite troops on his side as the entire Free Cities had in total soldiers.

No wonder Malcer basically panicked and did a mass sacrifice to resurrect the Dreadnaught Golem.

And, side-bar... this actually makes the Toria Tribes the MOST terrifying fighting force in the entire region... IF you can even unite them.

El-Phara? 60,000 people, 300 troops (60 veteran, 6 elite). Culturally cannot fathom even the concept of conscripts.

The Bloodspear Empire? 20,000 people, fully militarized with 1000 troops (100 veterans, 10 elites) and close to 2000 goblin slave soldiers, but also split into four war camps.

Its just an interesting insight into the military dynamics and why no one is any hurry to try and conquer the Toria Tribes (largely because they just can't).

Re: the war against Malcer: To reverse Stalin, quality is a quantity on its own, and while you can throw enough bodies at the problem to make up the difference, Malcer didn't have those bodies, and even if he pulled it off, he'd still have the problem of the elves, orcs, and various wild monsters to deal with. If anything, the rebellion had him bent over a barrel in terms of both quality and quantity. The Dreadnought Golem wasn't just a last-ditch effort, it was the only answer he had.

Onto the other factions - if somebody pulls a Warclaugh and unites the four camps, then the orcs are going to be the big players, and would most likely force the Toria Tribes and Free Cities to join forces again. Either way, each war camp is going to be a threat in its own right to the other nations, and it's the other three camps that are providing a counterbalance to each camp.

Going by numbers, El-Phara's an afterthought - they can go up against the Free Cities if the latter don't employ conscripts, but the El-Pharan inability to field conscripts (because those conscripts might get ideas like "hey, if we can fight our enemies, we can fight our overlords") is going to shoot them in the foot in any big conflict. Granted, numbers aren't everything, and as previously stated, quality counts, but quantity also matters. El-Phara's on its way to irrelevancy outside its own borders, good only for launching raiding parties on whatever poor dark elf enclaves might exist. Unless the El-Pharans can field phantasmal constructs the same way they're using illusory constructs to prop things up like you mentioned a while back.

Yeah, El-Phara starting to be outclassed is deliberate and plays into one of my rules for world-building that really annoys me in some other settings;

“You aren’t just building a world, you’re building a particular point in time in that world.”

Way too many settings just build stasis into their settings so the same kingdoms have existed at the same relative strengths for centuries or even millennia.

By contrast almost all my hard and fast history (not legends and origin stories) spans just 200 years and the particular moment I chose is because it’s the most interesting one.

Prior to 200 years ago there were no elves, fetches or mutants running around and the Eldritch mostly hid on the edges of the maps. Prior to about 300 years before there were no golems. 3500 years ago no beastmen, 5000 years ago no dwarves or malfeans.

1000 years from now mutants and dwarves will be in steep decline (each species is diluted every time it mates with a human; dwarves view half-dwarf children as blessings because they’re immune to their wasting affliction). Elves, Fetches and Eldritch will become ever smaller fractions as mortal population growth overtakes their static numbers. Beastmen, only a competitor to humans in aggregate, will likely be extinct in a few thousand more years. Golems (including the Forge golems that build them) will eventually wear out unless humanity resumes production.

Malfeans are about the only species that, due to the corruption always breeding true, might be able to continue amidst a resurgent humanity (and human fear of allowing that corruption to overtake humanity will mean they’ll continue to be oppressed)... but even that is contingent on the timing of the Promise’s fulfillment. Depending on its timing and nature the entire Malfean species might one day just become ordinary humans en-masse (realistically I see it as when it’s fulfilled all new births would be fully human even if both parents were malfeans).

But that’s the future. The PCs exist in a present where all of that is a hundred generations removed from their problems today where El-Phara’s problems are breeding fanaticism among its upper ranks as ever more of the lower castes abandon them and where the internecine conflicts of the orc warlords spill out on their neighbors and whole armies are are counted in just the hundreds of warriors.

Which honestly is pretty accurate to the real Dark Ages. Only the largest kingdoms had more than a few hundred thousand subjects and could only afford for about one man in a hundred to be a warrior (300,000 subjects meant about 150k men or about 1500 warriors). It wasn’t until the centralization of the High Medieval period that armies of thousands became the norm.

The Free Cities, El-Phara and the Bloodspear Empire are deliberately on the smaller side precisely to have a heroic PCs matter more (each starts about equal to an elite warrior) and to provide lot of wilderness for them to explore and/or establish their own realms in if they desire.

Further highlighting the nature of the setting, the next part I have to write is on a realm’s “unrealized resources.” Basically, every realm is presumed to have resources in its borders that are going unused for some reason. This section figures out those resources and what obstacles are keeping them from being used... thereby providing opportunities for enterprising PCs to overcome those obstacles and gain those resources (either for the good of the realm or simply to enrich themselves).

One of the Free Cities’ is just the sheer number of ruins it’s built atop. Steel from collapsed pre-Cataclysm structures is so common that you can barely give mundane salvaged weapons and armor away. A lot of ruins just got buried and forgotten about (or their upper levels cleared away to plant fields) without ever being explored.

Welcome to your relatively safe low level dungeons where retreating back to town is just a few miles of jogging and where reinforcements if you come across a threat too severe are similarly close by.

In fact that’s the last part of the realms section before I move on to designing individual settlements.

I’ve still got a lot of dayjob cutting to do tonight so I’m hopeful I’ll get realms completely done before I call it a night.

And the new version is up... another minor update to this version is I finally figured out how to get separate page counts for the Player's Guide and GM's Guide sections.

First pass and everything looks good so far. I noticed that you didn't have Kratocracy in there, but that's probably just a variant of autocracy anyhow.

Yeah, there's a note under Autocracy that anarchies tend to devolve into autocracies ruled by the strongest, and as much as I like the term Kratocracy, there's only so much room on a page.

That said, I do like the term Kratocracy enough that I rewrote the Hostile Realm Meritocracy descriptor to "as above. If the merit is raw power then it is a kratocracy." This also allowed me to use that descriptor for the Bloodspear Empire's government as well.

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Another slight writing diversion today based on a feedback request that, while singular, I don't feel harms anything... so I'm adding an "example structures" section to the Structures part of the equipment, with a particular eye towards the types of structures you could afford with the aristocrat's Stronghold boon (i.e. 15,000c or less).

I've got two done already this morning;

- Yeoman's farm (a relatively inexpensive home and barn on 15 acres of farmland that can support a single family; 1830c for the buildings, 7500c to own the land)

- Fortified Manor (main building 50'x20' w. 30'x20' second floor all out of 6" hard stone with stone roof surrounded by a 6" low hard stone wall for cover and a 30'x20' cellar; 14,510c or just under the Aristocrat budget)

Next up will be basic square keep that I'll try to keep to 15,000c and probably a couple of castles based on multiples of 15,000c (in case players want to collectively own a larger structure... so a 30k, 45k and 60k most likely).

Having the multiple sizes of castle is a good idea, in case the players are doing the familial shared origin and want to pool their stronghold boons.

Indeed, there are some rather interesting things you can set up with a family of aristocrats; particularly given the Lord of War, Court Schemer and Dilettante options making it almost three separate backgrounds, particularly if go with a species that gets a bonus boon.

For example, by level 5 a lone human could gain; a Fortified Manor (stronghold), a squire (bodyguard), a lance of men-at-arms (men-at-arms; sidebar, in medieval warfare 2-5 yeoman archers or infantry was the number a knight was expected to muster with in addition to themselves and their squire to form a feudal army... so 3 men-at-arms works well for that), three household servants (loyal attendants; a butler, maid and scribe being good choices for a landed aristocrat) and sufficient allowances to spend 150c a week on goods and services (stipend; which depending on your own food and shelter needs, could be used to hire on a number of laborers, professionals or mercenaries).

That's one PC. Four starting human PCs who focus on troop strength and fortifications could easily have 20 men (Bodyguards or Ruthless Enforcers or Medics depending on specific sub-background plus Men-at-Arms, Band of Thugs or even Warband again depending) and a 60,000c castle.

At typical levels of militarization that's enough to protect a town of 2400 (24 w. PCs x 100 people)... at level one.

Also worth noting with this in the "depending on how you want to play" category is the rule that...

"You can spend actions, focus and surges on companion commands even if you are unable to take that action yourself during a turn (i.e. you are dazed, compelled or even dead)."

...and the interpretation that your PC not being present means you can't take actions yourself, means you could theoretically run the companions independently from the PCs engaging in activities elsewhere (ex. the PCs are off on an adventure when the manor comes under attack with your companions still there... two minor action attacks do about what a main action attack does combined so freed of the need to use your own, even more effective main actions, they're NOT horrible on their own... which is also deliberate in case a PC gets put out of action, giving your full action economy to the companion makes them a solid second-stringer for the party until you're back on your feet).

So if the players really wanted to, they could go full old-school D&D castles and army management. Well, old-school D&D as it exists in the minds of certain folks. I think you mentioned a while back that if a PC lord tried to rest on their laurels, monsters would wreak havoc in the PC's new kingdom.

Yeah, in AD&D there were checks made every month to see what wanders into the PC’s territory. If they didn’t deal with it, the wandering monsters killed X people before being driven off. Continuing to disregard such things would quickly get you into negative population growth (people leave for safer places).

The primary reason for this is to basically give the adventurers keep having things to do even as they settle into the “end game.” It’s also worth noting that the fighter getting so many troops was basically it’s primary feature to balance wizard spells.

Also of note is that thieves, assassins, clerics, paladins and rangers all got followers via various means (the Ranger’s were actually among the more ridiculously broken... you didn’t get many compared to the others, but nymphs, dryads, satyrs and even dragons were on the list of random companions.

In AD&D Charisma was also anything but a dump stat as it determined the number of henchmen and hirelings you could retain (and how loyalty they’d be) so Paladins with their minimum 17 Charisma could get a LOT of very loyal followers very easily.

And yeah, army management is definitely a route you can go. It’s the reason I added that “managing larger battles” section into the mix.

So, update for the week... The Settlements section is now complete with categories for;

- Confluences (what caused the settlement to be located where it is and what sustains it).

- Advantages (what unique things does the settlement have that sets it apart).

- Points of Interest (things that don't necessarily grant and advantage, but are noteworthy about the settlement).

- Services (how many of the mundane things like taverns, inns, smiths, merchants, etc. does the settlement have).

- Obstacles (what sort of problems does the settlement have that may require the PC's involvement).

So, for an example; Blackspire;

Population: 15,000 (5600 humans, 3300 dwarves, 3000 mutants, 1400 beastmen, 800 malfeans, 350 elves, 250 fetches, 200 golems, 80 eldritch, 20 gnomes)

Confluences: Blackspire, the largest city in Old Praetoria, is so because of a number of important confluences. It is where the refugees of Stormhold found Castle Blackspire, a massive Pre-Cataclysm tower located on the extremely defensible peninsula between the Hydra River and Lake Blackspire (this is both pre-existing structures and natural defenses).

Third, its shores along Lake Blackspire are a virtually perfect harbor for shipping. Finally, it lays at a crossroads of trade between the Toria Tribes, Riverhold, Ironhold and the lands of Bestia to the east.

Advantages: Blackspire has a number of advantages that make it particularly useful to adventurers. Shortly after it was settled, a teleportation circle was recovered from nearby ruins and relocated just outside Castle Blackspire. Another early addition was adding gantries to one of the upper floors of Castle Blackspire to allow airships to dock. Its primary advantages are the presence of First Warden Blackthorne and his heroic allies, and the mix of wyvern cavalry, warcasters and mutants in its armed forces.

Points of Interest: The first point of interest is Castle Blackspire itself, a massive pre-Cataclysm tower that, despite having 50 of its floors sheared off in the Cataclysm, still stretches 24 stories into the sky with a footprint of nearly two acres. It’s home to a third of the city’s population, with each story its own neighborhood with homes and shops built floor to ceiling.

The most obvious to those approaching by water is the ‘Monument to Freedom.’ To mark the end of the rebellion against Lord Malcer, the Dreadnought Golem (p. XXX) he unleashed was dragged and raised upon a pillar at the mouth of Lake Blackspire so that all could see the husk of the mightiest weapon of war and know who had overcome it.

Lastly, there are the hanging gardens, four acres worth planted along the south, east and west faces of Castle Blackspire to provide herbs, spices and scents to the city.

Services: 10 inns, 40 taverns, a main temple devoted to the Via Praetorum (20 religious) and smaller temples to the Old Faith (10 religious), Bestian (6 religious) and Astral Court (4 religious), 60 merchants (30 general, 30 specialists), 20 smiths (10 specialists), 2 foundries, 15 mills, 40 food suppliers (bakers, butchers, fishmongers, etc.), 30 construction (carpenters, masons, etc.), 3 banks, 5 moneychangers, 80 scholars, a university, 40 manufacturers (potters, textiles, baskets, etc.), 10 healers (religious, apothecaries, doctors) and 40 local specialty shops (many maritime related; net makers, shipwrights, import/export, etc.).

Obstacles: As a locale intended to be a relatively safe home base for PCs just starting out, the obstacles faced by Blackspire are relatively few and trivial.

The first is that the entire Free Cities has a bit of a bad reputation in that in its entire 200 year history it has not once managed a successful transition of power. The initial leaders of the refugees of Stormhold who founded it were conquered within five years by the elven kingdom of El-Phara who made it an “elven protectorate” for 150 years until attacks against El-Phara by the Bloodspear Empire led to their withdrawal of troops.

In their wake Lord Thaddeus Malcer became its autocratic ruler for nearly 20 years until he and his heir were both killed in a hunting accident whereupon his youngest son, the acolyte of the Via Praetorum Verik Malcer was installed and brought his fanatical beliefs with him, persecuting all those who either would not convert or that he believed were cursed by the gods. After a dozen year reign of terror he was overthrown by Kel Blackthorne and his allies who instituted the new elected representative government.

After a dozen years in office, First Warden Blackthorne has announced his intention to step down from the position in two years in an effort to try and allow a peaceful election to transfer power from one leader to another for the first time, but whether it will succeed remains to be seen.

Blackspire’s second obstacle is that it suffers from a higher degree of class strife than the rest of the Free Cities. Prior to Blackthorne’s reforms, the elite of society were used to the level of authority granted them by the Malcer’s and the El-Pharan governor before them. First Warden Blackthorne’s insistence that the lower classes have an equal say in how the city and the Free Cities as a whole are governed has led to tensions in places where the lower and upper classes of the city often cross paths.

I like it - it covers the useful high points of a given settlement and gives the player room to insert their own factions and players as needed.

Interesting to learn Malcer's given name, as well as his dad's name.

***

As a side note, a couple of posts back you mentioned the probable fates of the different species a thousand years down the line. One, I noticed that you had all mutants' bloodlines dilute as they bred with people, not just orcs. That's an interesting bit of trivia. What I also noticed is that you said about 2000 years down the line, the beast men will be mostly extinct. Is that because each individual beast man variant can't maintain a sustainable population (because the variants can't breed with each other, and each variant is much smaller in number than beast men as a whole)?

Regarding Beastmen; yeah, that's one element I was thinking of. But there's also the adaptation element of environmental pressure I was thinking about.

Humans are generalists; we excel at adapting to different environments. We'd expanded to every continent on Earth save Antarctica before we'd even developed a written language.I

Beastmen were literally designed to be specialists; each was meant to serve a particular purpose within the First Empire of Man. Drop them into conditions they're not specialized for and they'll have a lot harder time adapting to it than humans will... and the Cataclysm was one giant condition change.

That's why, even though the Beastmen won their rebellion, a thousand years later and humans were again ascendant; having even adapted the beastman's own religion to better serve humans.

A lot of beastmen naturally organize in ways similar to the beasts they were created from and its hard to compete with humans when your predisposition is to band into nomadic herds or predatory packs that cast out the adolescent males as soon as they might threaten the alpha.

Now, certain species will fare better than others. The kobolds are small and adapted to living in the spaces between the larger folk and were engineered to squeeze into tight spaces and work in teams to fix things. They have probably the most adaptability and ability to work with humans without being in direct competition with them than any other beastman.

By contrast, free goblins, at least in Old Praetoria, have already been hunted to near extinction by the orcs and their goblin slaves have been inbred for generations to be barely more than feral beasts.

Most beastmen fall somewhere between those two, but kobolds are more the exception than the rule.

And the only reason why we don't have cities on Antarctica is because there's very little there that's worth our time. About the only animals that could really compete with us were wolves, and we ended up domesticating them.

I think that if the orcs hadn't committed their atrocities on the goblins, the goblins could have done well in human civilization for the same reason as the kobolds. But the orcs gotta be orcs, apparently.

Orcs are adrenaline-fueled hyper-predators. They're stronger, faster, can see in the dark and track by scent and have little interest outside of combat (their build gives them no starting boons) and prone to wanting dominate everyone and everything around them.

That's ultimately intended to be their downfall. Without that weakness they'd too easily outcompete humans. Their overtuned aggression makes them act recklessly and gets them into fights where they're outmatched. Throw in smaller numbers and that mutants don't breed true outside of other orcs and while it will take some centuries, they're basically in the same boat as beastmen, except that as their numbers dwindle you'll start to see more half-orcs and, at a certain point, half-orcs will probably be the only orcs left... then just orc-ancestry humans and finally, just traces like Neanderthal DNA in modern humans.

Because I don't operate on the "history is static" model of world-building. If you're writing a wargame, you set it during a war. If you want a fantasy adventure series, you set during a point in time where there's a lot going on. Imagine what Middle Earth would look like a century or two after the War of the Ring; no more elves, wizards, trolls, goblins, orcs, barrow-wights or ring wraiths. Just humans and dwindling populations of dwarves and hobbits. Or Prydain after all the events of its Chronicles (the Black Cauldron, et al) where after the magic left it became historical Britain (Prydain is an older version of the word for Britain).

The best fantasy worlds seem to have a time limit and be set near an important time of transition. One of the things that 4E does very well with its Epic Destinies is convey the idea that the PCs will forever leave their mark on the world. That something will never be the same.

The only problem was that it was hidden all the way in the least played part of the game (level 21+). In retrospect, I think epic destiny would have worked better as a series of choices made throughout the PCs career almost more like a talent tree. Your first choice puts in one group of epic destinies, but closes off others (ex. you're a mortal, not a semi-divine being). Your next choice narrows it further (your compassion is more legendary than your skill with a blade), etc. until you reach the end of that character's story and know which destiny they have won for themselves.

Sidebar: I just got smacked with a VERY intriguing concept regarding player motivations that I think might be worth adding to those entries... specifically are you playing for Tempering feedback or Therapeutic feedback.

Tempering feedback is where you put yourself under stress to see how you handle it. Overcoming it makes you stronger, failure teaches you how to do better next time.

Therapeutic feedback is specifically to relieve yourself of stress by having situations where you don't have to risk anything you value.

So, for example... The Challenger and Tactician especially are definitely after the Tempering feedback. They want the reward of proving their build or tactics is stronger than the opposition. Putting them into situations where they can't test themselves is going to be robbing them of fun.

The Punisher and Compatriot by contrast are there for therapeutic feedback. They want to blow off steam or hang with their friends respectively. If they have strong attachments to their PCs then putting them into Tempering Feedback situations (particularly ones lethal to the PCs) is the opposite of the feedback they're looking for.

Of course no one is entirely one or the other, but its definitely something you want to be aware of to the point I'm thinking I may add something about that either to the "serious vs. silly" section of setting the tone or maybe even its own section.

Too many authors get attached to their setting, so they want to maintain the status quo, without realizing that the status quo is always in flux - nothing lasts forever. It's the same problem that the comics industry has - they won't end their stories and they don't want to kill their villains, so they turn the whole exercise into a pointless farce. It's a big part of why the Punisher has as many fans as he does - at least his villains rarely come back.

As to the orcs, yeah, I can see their hyper-aggression being a detriment - they've got a cultural mentality ingrained in them that's going to get them in deep trouble - they're going to piss off everyone around them and end up on the dustbin of history.

***

That's a very good point with regard to player feedback. I'd say that it's worth making a sidebar separate from the other motivations, to give the players something to think about. Another way to approach it is to combine the two types of feedback, to alternate them. For example, a Punisher player may view tempering feedback as the work they put in in order to achieve the reward of the therapeutic feedback, sort of a delayed gratification effect.

I also wonder if the various player motivations could be put on a Tempering vs Therapeutic feedback spectrum.

I've been wondering that myself.

Explorers for example get their feedback more from getting answers than having to go through hoops to get them so they probably lean more therapeutic. Actors probably lean more tempering since they're trying to push themselves more into their character's shoes.

Instigators are a weird case in that their goal is to CAUSE tempering feedback, but their motive is generally "watching others react to the fallout" which feels more therapeutic... they relieve stress by inflicting it on others.

Narrators though are probably the hardest to fit. They want stressful events to happen because they make a good story, but their reward comes more in weaving a story out of it and so the events can't be so great that the PCs can't overcome them (therapeutic/stress relief) because "and the heroes were roasted alive by the dragon on round two" isn't that great a story.

* * * *

As to nothing lasts forever, that's probably been the biggest advantage of playing through a number of multi-generational campaigns.

My Mage campaign has now spanned 25 years with certain stories reaching ends, but remaining part of the history for the next group.

My main 4E campaign started with young heroes and ended with those heroes as parents and leaders of realms and the follow-up in Ruins & Realms now sees their kids (who were 4-8 years old at the close of the 4E campaign) now young heroes themselves (ranging from 16-20 years old).

I've also seen a number of great settings destroyed by the refusal to let some stories end. Not just comics, but the universe in Star Wars Legends was gutted by its utter refusal to let Luke, Han and Leia's kids take the reigns as the next generation of heroes.

I don't want to make that mistake.

To be fair though, one of my methods for avoiding that fate is to work on creating other parts of the world. Old Praetoria will be set up in its present, with potential future fates laid out... then I intend to move on to Bestia, to the Endless Archipelago, to the Sun Empire and Star Kingdoms, to the Vaults of the Steam Lord.

At best I may pull a Rifts and go with the idea of a narrator-figure (probably Jack Knave; he of a thousand stories... some of which by sheer law of averages must be true... maybe) to add some coherence to them... but for the most part I really want to keep the setting in a sort of static present as a starting point for PCs.

And if I ever get far enough along in it, it may be time to do Robots & Rayguns and explore all new worlds (I've got a Star Trek-ish concept and a more Mecha themed concept I'd love to work up someday).