Some Feedback

I've gotten some good (quality, not quantity) feedback so far at other locations, so I figured I'd put it here both for the purpose of consolidating thoughts as well as sharing it with others who may agree/disagree.

Firstly:

From me:
Most of this I love. Problem being, how many elements can you have? 5? Maybe 6 on a good stretch? That makes maybe 8-9 races at the start (currently Gith, Elodrian, Minotaurs, Humans, Dwarves, Salandross (lizardmen), Elves, and Orcs). Where do the rest come from? What idiot god would come along later and just randomly create halflings? There are obviously some kinks to work out here.

And the return commentary:

Evolution and perversion will help you determine some of the different races. Lizardmen, Minotaurs, halflings, or Centaurs may all be born from some god's luring of an animal or human to mate with. Also a yeti or bigfoot are just environmental differences evolved from the common troll. So you start with your 6 races but the gods and the environment create sub-races that have been given their own race over time. You go from 6 to 12 to 24 and so on pretty quickly that way.

Absolutely agree. I think the main crux of the issue here is to determine what the original races were, with which to provide the derivatives. This past game, I used 3 originals: The Minotaurs (creatures of untamed nature), the Elodrian (creatures of law - ancestors to elves, dark elves, etc), and the Gith (cribbed from the Githyanki - with muscles and bigger teeth) creatures of chaos and destruction. While I like those pretty well - I'd like to hold off on changing anything until this cosmology is redefined.


Again, with me:

There are a couple of things I'm set on:
1. It appeals to me, the idea that a God is only as powerful as his followers. Well-known Gods can squash forgotten Gods, and gives reason to the spreading of religion. However, I can't think of a mechanic to settle this: "My super-YouTube-God-of-Infamy casts a level 8 spell of BlowShitUp that cancels out your weak-ass-2member-blog-god's spell of BlowShitUp and proceeds to kick your ass!" Just doesn't work right.

And the feedback:

Your trick here is finding a way to balance the Pros and Cons. "Super god" might eventually offer more power but he also has thousands of followers garnering for his attention. It will take a cleric much longer to level up as a member of that god's house. His prayers are less likely to be answered unless it directly serves his god's interests.

On the other hand "Joe Schmoe god" might not have unlimited powers, but he also has less followers. So a upstanding member of his church might be given greater rewards more quickly. For gaming purposes this might mean magical weapons or tools.

This will balance out as players make their decisions and character choices for which deity they may or may not choose to serve. Serve "Super god" and you may have the power of a tidal wave when you need it most. Serve "JoeSchmoe god" and you may have a magic hammer capable of detecting rubies, but never able to over power a Super tidal wave. Also, turn down the wrong deity or offend them in some way and you may also suffer their wrath. This means the characters will be more likely to obtain their quest item from "JoeSchmoe god's" temple and might not from "Super god's".



I really, really like this idea. Of course, it requires me to stay on top of my God's a little more, but it provides for a) better storytelling, and b) it allows me to constantly shake up the pantheon, and keep the player's guessing as to real vs. false religions.

Lastly:

On the planes - I agree that summoning can come from the same plane. Kind of like the elemental was hanging out at the elemental bar, and got pulled into the fight at your summons. If you need to keep them separated for some reason, put them into "zones" on the prime material plane (The great volcano, the deepest trench in the sea, the place where the wind starts) that the elementals/animals/outsiders can't leave without weakening themselves. They'll generally stay in that place unless forced out or summoned, and will go back to that place when they can. (The ones you might find elsewhere may have been banished, or couldn't find their way home after a summoning.)

If you need alternate planes, but don't want them - try using alternate dimensions, where everything is exactly the same as the prime material plane, and the same pantheon has sway, but instead a particular plane element has control. So say you are lawful good, there might be a chaotic evil version of you in another dimension and that might be where you summon a particular thing from.


I guess this moves me to the question of what the purpose of a plane should be? Last time around, a large foundation of my (weak) cosmology was that other planar creatures coveted the material plane. This implies that first, the material plane has things to covet, and second, that the other planes inherently suck, even for creatures that inherently inhabit them. Bleh. As players, what would you want to see in a planar structure? Should I simply go material and astral and leave it at that?