Musings on the Laverian Chronicles
I keep mentioning a darkish fantasy setting that I've had going in my head since about 2001 or so. It started when I was bored while working at the computer lab (bow to your mighty ACS Computer Lab monitor overlords!) while skipping between the 3.0 D&D books and Heretics of Dune.
The notion of clerics being concrete proof of divine power clashed with the various factions of post-scattering Duniverse advancing their political and religious agendas at the same time. I got to thinking about taking the concrete proof of divinity out of D&D and setting it as a religious war between (mostly) civilized nation-states and mad, slavering cultists that worshipped abhorrent demonic and/or lovecraftian entities.
Then, being the godless liberal that I am, thought about non-religious people getting caught in the crossfire. So I added more ideas to the pot about the growing power of science! Most notably, the advent of reliable gunpowder weapons within a few years of the campaign start.
Then I thought, okay, why are the only paladins presented Lawful Good tin-cans? Why can only "good" religions have holy warriors? Answer? They didn't. So I re-worked the notion of the paladin into the Zealot.
Spells per day? I've hated that since day one. I understand its use as a balancing mechanic, but I hate it. I hate it with a flaming, burning, fiery passion that can not be described without rupturing the eardrums of everyone in a six-hundred-sixteen-meter radius. Moving on.
So I let it percolate. When I got the psionics manual, I decided that all psionic characters will eventually go crazy. After awhile, I got my hands on Blue Rose, my thoughts on which you can read here. I decided that the setting irritated me enough that I wanted to make a bleaker setting where religious zeal had a reason and magic had consequences. Deadly consequences. Going back to my earlier views, I decided that, in my setting, untrained "wild" magic leads to madness. Always. No exceptions. The only way to avoid madness is to "muzzle" magical talent through learned study and various magical traditions by which magic could be safely directed and excess mana "grounded". (I know, I know, Warhammer had the idea long before I did, but then again, Realms of Chaos was actually my introduction to the Warhammer world lore, so that probably had a subliminal influence.)
I was also heavily influenced by the political machinations of A Song of Ice and Fire and Final Fantasy Tactics.
So. Warring aristocratic factions. Religious fervor. Dangerous magic. Rise of scientific thought.
(Sheeyit, why aren't I playing WHFRP again?)
So, we come to the present. I've recently gotten a good look at Swords and Wizardry and like the simplicity of it. Which naturally brought me around to how to hack it to the setting.
So, to sum up, I'm going to try to type up some of the various notes about the background that I've been sitting on for so very long.
The notion of clerics being concrete proof of divine power clashed with the various factions of post-scattering Duniverse advancing their political and religious agendas at the same time. I got to thinking about taking the concrete proof of divinity out of D&D and setting it as a religious war between (mostly) civilized nation-states and mad, slavering cultists that worshipped abhorrent demonic and/or lovecraftian entities.
Then, being the godless liberal that I am, thought about non-religious people getting caught in the crossfire. So I added more ideas to the pot about the growing power of science! Most notably, the advent of reliable gunpowder weapons within a few years of the campaign start.
Then I thought, okay, why are the only paladins presented Lawful Good tin-cans? Why can only "good" religions have holy warriors? Answer? They didn't. So I re-worked the notion of the paladin into the Zealot.
Spells per day? I've hated that since day one. I understand its use as a balancing mechanic, but I hate it. I hate it with a flaming, burning, fiery passion that can not be described without rupturing the eardrums of everyone in a six-hundred-sixteen-meter radius. Moving on.
So I let it percolate. When I got the psionics manual, I decided that all psionic characters will eventually go crazy. After awhile, I got my hands on Blue Rose, my thoughts on which you can read here. I decided that the setting irritated me enough that I wanted to make a bleaker setting where religious zeal had a reason and magic had consequences. Deadly consequences. Going back to my earlier views, I decided that, in my setting, untrained "wild" magic leads to madness. Always. No exceptions. The only way to avoid madness is to "muzzle" magical talent through learned study and various magical traditions by which magic could be safely directed and excess mana "grounded". (I know, I know, Warhammer had the idea long before I did, but then again, Realms of Chaos was actually my introduction to the Warhammer world lore, so that probably had a subliminal influence.)
I was also heavily influenced by the political machinations of A Song of Ice and Fire and Final Fantasy Tactics.
So. Warring aristocratic factions. Religious fervor. Dangerous magic. Rise of scientific thought.
(Sheeyit, why aren't I playing WHFRP again?)
So, we come to the present. I've recently gotten a good look at Swords and Wizardry and like the simplicity of it. Which naturally brought me around to how to hack it to the setting.
So, to sum up, I'm going to try to type up some of the various notes about the background that I've been sitting on for so very long.