Pre-industrial Fantasy STGOD OOC/Rules Thread:

[Simon_Jester]

We'd love to have you; do you have a nation concept? We might profitably slot in you in in place of absentee players in a few other spots. The northern part of the US's Atlantic seaboard is free, as is the area around Texas... There may be some others, too. Check the links in the Maps thread.

[Abacus]

Well, I can do pretty much cover any of the usual fantasy elements. I didn't see any thread details the races being used, but I'd be just as happy to do dwarves, elves, humans, or even vampires.


EDIT: Looking at the map, what players are those that are inactive?

[madd0ct0r]

In the last three pages of this thread: active players:

Eternal Freedom
Simon Jester
Raw Shark
UPCinnabar
The Romulan Republic
Esquire
Zwinmar
Beowulf
Crazedwraith
Abacus

[Abacus]

What are the usual hazards you might encounter in the wild hinterlands between civilized spaces, btw? Are there roaming, dangerous magical creatures? Are there rabid orc or goblin clans?

Just how *powerful* is magic?

[Simon_Jester]

The level of hazard you'd encounter probably varies wildly. It would depend on what part of North America you're talking about; large parts of the continent are effectively undefined because the players running those areas packed in and never did anything other than plop down their rudimentary exercise in nation-building.

Most nations are playing at what I'd call medium-magic. It's not high-magic, in the sense that technology, weapons, and logistics are mostly defined by mundane constraints. On the other hand, you have the Aztecs whose gods actually walk around screwing with people on a regular basis, and even the 'low-magic' nations tend to do things like enchant their cannonballs to hit harder.

However, almost arbitrarily powerful magic can fit into the setting, and several nations combine (pre-1800) technology and magic in interesting ways. My own country is one of the lowest-magic nations in the setting, and gets away with it because its star-worshipping religion works well enough for active divine intervention to block most uses of magic against the Ohioan people.
_______________________________

As to who's who... of the players who have at least done something active enough to be noticeable and really considered a player in my personal opinion...

Maddoc is playing savage hyenorks who live north of the Arctic Circle, mostly.
Zwinmar is playing the Thyrs in the central part of the OTL Great Plains.
The Romulan Republic is playing elves in OTL Vancouver, roughly.

E_F is playing Orion in OTL Quebec.
I'm playing the Ohioan Empire in the midwestern parts of the OTL United States.
Esquire is playing the Ottomans along the west bank of the Mississippi
Beowulf is playing the Dragon Kingdoms (?) which cover the OTL Deep South of the US, and much of the Caribbean.
Raw Shark is playing the Aztecs in OTL Mexico

Crazedwraith, UPCinnabar, and Abacus... I do not think they've clearly defined what they want to play.

All the nations above, except for the elves in Vancouver, the hyenorks in the far north of Canada, and the thyrs of the Great Plains (think WoW orcs with iron discipline) are basically human.

There is at least some prior information affirming the existence of goblins and dragons. Anything is fair game, really. I have referenced there being, in various times and places, ogres, mermaids, giants, extraplanar demons, and probably other creatures unknown and unknowable. And that's just me personally- but I tried to be nonspecific as to where those creatures resided and so on, so as to leave others' options open.
__________________________________________

As to holes in the map...

We've got Imperial528 who says he's playing a confederacy of nation-states around the Pennsylvania/New York/Massachusetts/Vermont/New Hampshire area, but he has literally never done anything I can remember to interact with other players. I'd be in favor of replacing it with a new player nation-state if you seriously intend to participate; it'd help fill in a major gap.

We've got an NPC (orphaned player state) centered around the Chesapeake Bay, but it could be brushed aside if you want to use that real estate.

Another hole in the map is down by Texas. AMT staked it out but never did anything with it that I can recall.

And yet another, west of Lake Superior, including the Dakotas, parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and stretching north into Canada. That used to be the player nation-state of Assiniboia, but that has gone defunct even when I repeatedly contacted the player running it asking for information pursuant to an attempt to collaborate.

Jub is playing the Sylix, magic-empowered Native Americans, in the northern reaches of the Rockies. We haven't heard from him in a long time either.

Panzersharkcat had something going in southern Alaska- again, incommunicado... pretty much everything more than a few hundred miles west of the Mississippi has just about dropped out, really.

I forget who's playing Fusang, or the goblins of the Rockies, or the necromancy-dominated state of Tarn that was supposed to be around in the Colorado Plateau. All those are pretty well abdicated, I guess.

Formally TRR is the mod for this game, but I thought I'd fill in on the facts.
___________________________

Map here.
http://imgur.com/DGx7x7I

[Abacus]

Awesome, I appreciate the info-dump. I'll sift through some ideas for a bit. I've got some ideas tinkering around, but I want to take a look at a few more things.

[Abacus]

OK, some last questions:

(1) How many points do I start with for creating my nation, it's military, etc? I'm seeing some conflicting numbers.

(2) Does the topography, natural resources, and climate from the IRL North and Central America exist in ours or is there any change?

[Crazedwraith]

I'm not an active player. Though I did define the goblin nation have dropped the occasional comment in to the ooc thread.

[Abacus]

Also, going by the last post in the map thread, I'd like to take over that "orphaned" territory...from virginia beach, eastwards to Roanoke river and the Roanoke Rapids lake (my southern border), the far south-western corner of which will be the Smith Mountain Lake. Then heading northwards, along what would be the IRL border between Virginia and West Virginia (but cutting directly north, so there is no rump of West Virginia "in" Virginia), to meet the straight-line border of maryland and west virginia, and cutting north-and following along the Casselman River, continuing up the tributary Coxes Creek, and continuing into the East Branch of Coxes Creek, until reaching Lake Somerset....and you know what, maybe it'd just be easier to show you a picture.

MS Paint Is My Friend

[Abacus]

The Appalachian Mts. would act as a bit of a barrier between you and I, Simon_Jester; with an extra bit of wild breathing space in between.

[Simon_Jester]

[snip double post]

[Simon_Jester]

Awwwh. I had some plans for how to run that NPC in a conflict with E_F...

But seriously, that's fine- a real player there is much better! I see no fundamental obstacle to you taking that land given that you plan to do something with it.

At this point, breathing space is not necessarily good news; we have more problems with the low level of player interactions than we do with people grinding up against each other. Then again, a thin strip of neutral territory with people on both sides of it can be, if anything, more interesting than a real border.

You may 'inherit' a conflict with Orion, but that's a good thing in that it gives you both something to do.

OK, some last questions:

(1) How many points do I start with for creating my nation, it's military, etc? I'm seeing some conflicting numbers.

Your military is allowed 300000 points, with one point being the overall military value of a reasonably well trained and well equipped fighting infantryman from the Age of Gunpowder. There are some posted orders of battle you can look at for examples.

The rest of your nation does not have a point cost- it is whatever you say it is. The reason we have points is simply so that military conflicts can be defined and we don't bicker uselessly about what will happen if, say, my tercio of twelve hundred men encounters 800 rampaging hyena-monsters.

You do not have to spent points for a reasonable level of fixed defenses, though some kind of super-fortification that makes a particular location more defensible than the global norm (e.g. a nearly impregnable fortress guarding the only good approach to your capital) might be worth points.

Points 'recharge' at 30000/year, so you have an ongoing budget.

(2) Does the topography, natural resources, and climate from the IRL North and Central America exist in ours or is there any change?

You can assume them to exist for world-building purposes unless it suits you to change them, at which point you can change them in whatever way you see fit, so long as other players are not harmed thereby. We already warmed the climate of the northern part of the Atlantic seaboard for the sake of E_F's nation and making it more viable, or instance.

I go with a pretty purist interpretation of the resources and geography of my own territory because it helps me define things; I know where the major cities, canals, and fortifications of that territory are. But that's me.

[Abacus]

I'll have to look into Orion's nation/kingdom to figure out what that conflict might be.
---------------------

So 300K for the military of the nation. Gotcha.

------

Cool.

I'll get to writing then.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, as I see it, it's more that he wants to go fight someone or do something interesting. You and him batting back and forth would be interesting.

Digging through E_F's posts in this thread would help. His story posts, likewise.

[Abacus]

One question: while the points system is good and all, especially for a baseline confirmation, I'd also hope that the story, tactics, and such would also count for something in the scales.

[Simon_Jester]

Well yes- the points are there to provide a basis for comparison so we can say "wow, that's a big army."

Armed conflict is still a matter of RP.

Look at my "Pike and Shot" sequence of story posts and the commentary that was going on during the same timeframe for an example; I'm not sure anyone else has done much with battles.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Indeed, if you want to nab that territory and have a little war with Orion, I'd be delighted, if not, we can always RP some last-minute diplomacy to stave things off.

For a brief summary of Orion: technologically advanced (for the period) atheist Empire, been around for ~3000 years or so. One in five of the population have mage abilities, which we use to improve our artillery (we freaking love artilllery) or improve our troops fighting skills, or provide communication, or low-to-moderate level healing abilities.

We're not expansionist, mostly, but if we see an opportunity we take it. Hence my intended war with the former Chesapeake bay nation, or my sorta plan to annex Imperial528's city-states.

[Abacus]

Cool. I figure that a pretext for any conflict would be that pirates and bandits are constantly harassing your nation -- even if they're not supported by my own kingdom, they're not being suppressed either.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, Orion is not nice about pirates. Look at the very first few posts in the story thread; one or two are about that.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah, my hatred for piracy is something I carried over from the previous SDNW game, where the Kingdom of Orion had similar attitudes to terrorists as well.

But seriously, you not doing anything to suppress pirates/bandits etc that are clearly based in or near your territory would be a suitable pretext.

[Abacus]

Seeing as it's what sparked my interest and because it's my host country, I'm going to create a late medieval, Japanese style nation. Their likely to have slightly better hand-held matchlock muskets than yours (maybe?) Eternal, but we're sorely lacking in heavy cannon (lots of small, swivel guns though). I'm also going to base my nation's magic a bit on shamanism and Shinto. It's going to be interesting....

*goes back to typing*

[Eternal_Freedom]

Sounds interesting, though I would point out that we agreed a 1750's-era level of technology, so pretty much everyone else will be using flintlock muskets, not matchlocks. Just FYI.

[Simon_Jester]

Note that there are plenty of ways to justify a technological gap and compensate for it. But you want to have a plan for what happens when other people show up in ships of the line with magically enhanced heavy guns of their own, or if their idea of "well fortified" is the trace italienne while your nation's is "a big castle."

There are plenty of ways to cope, as I say- it's simply that you want to know what you're dealing with.

May I ask if you're planning any specific backstory for how your people came to be there? Are we going to be seeing lots of Japanese-ness?

Or did the society grow up to resemble feudal Japan, allowing you to use what you know in a different setting with different terrain and natural resources, without somehow magically having all the exact same linguistic and ethnological traits as feudal Japan?

Personally I feel the latter approach is more creative, and reduces the impulse to use gratuitous foreign language, but that's me.

[madd0ct0r]

Meh, we've had the nation of Fusang (chinese settlers) and the Ottoman's(army teleported by magic, then over time adopting shamanistic works), an outbreak of japanese on the east coast isn't unreasonable. And Orion's ancestor worship and delicate court politics could be Japanese as much as French

Abacus - you might need a couple of lines about shortages of iron or coal to explain the route technogically 'recognised' as Japanse. Big forests and hills too, no big battles on the open plains. (or, start as Japanese and give them a few generations of adaption).

purely on the points wise, I use this generator when generating random encounters for my Hyenorks to fight. It's good for adding the first layer of detail to spin off actual ideas from. Like everything I say in these threads, you are free to ignore it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[Simon_Jester]

RE: NATURAL RESOURCES

I'd like to hear what Abacus thinks about this; there's no reason he should 'cheat' himself of the natural resources that in real life exist in that area if he doesn't want to; we can always work out a way to hybridize a recognizably 'Japan-ish' culture onto more open terrain and less crappy iron if need be.

RE: CULTURE

See, I don't want to act like some kind of gatekeeper here, saying "you must have this much backstory to enter," because that would be wrong and dumb.

But I'm a believer in the idea that good (not 'voluminous,' good) backstory makes for better art, eases collaboration, and allows people to concentrate their creative energy on things that are likely to be good.

Fusang, dormant though it is, is a nation with a straightforward explanation for how its people came to be where they are. The Ottomans, likewise- the explanation may be supernatural but it is straightforward.

Ohio has a fairly straightforward explanation, too. That explanation doesn't explain why they wind up combining a culture like 17th century France and a religion like nothing in real life, but I can create deeper levels of explanation as needed to help resolve that.*

So the question I'm really asking Abacus is:

...

"What will your culture be like, and what explanation is there for how it came to be that way? Are they literal Japanese people or a close copy thereof, magically transported to this place from the other side of the world? Are they colonists from a fantastic version of Japan who somehow, counterintuitively, wound up on the east coast of North America? Are they an 'indigenous' society which grew organically from the local cultures, and which just happens to strongly resemble that of medieval Japan? If so, how strongly- does it just have the same structure as medieval Japan, or does it also share specific details of language and culture such as elaborate tea ceremonies? Does it even share vocabulary?"

Being able to answer those questions helps us think about how your nation fits into the matrix of the nations around it, and creates a sense of living, breathing world-building.

===================================

FOOTNOTES (Ohioan history and further comments to Maddoc)

*For one, the idea of Atlantean ancestral culture that serves as the equivalent of proto-Indo-European culture in this world. So that the reason you have European-ish cultures in North America is that, instead of being descended from European peoples, both Europe and North America have shared cultures descended from a lost common ancestor.

For another, the idea that these quasi-European cultures mingled to varying degrees with existing 'Siberian' cultures (the ones that we would call 'Native American' in real life), which when combined with the fact that this is a fantasy setting, helps to explain how the Ohioans wound up combining female-led star-worship (a practice of the mound-building hybrid culture that lived in the Ohio valley roughly 1500 years ago) with an otherwise largely patriarchal culture that practices ancestor-veneration (the customs of the pastoral hybrid culture that lived along the Mississippi at that time and migrated east to conquer the mound-builders).

All of which helps me think about how this society came to be as it is, what 'sister cultures' might exist in the surrounding area, what conflicts might exist within the society between different institutions, and so on.

And, maddoc, honestly I disagree about how Ohioan culture 'could be Japanese as much as French.' there are major differences. Off the top of my head:
1) Ohio has a very different version of 'honor culture.' This affects how its fighting men view themselves and how they fit into society at large.
2) Organized religion plays a much stronger role in Ohio. It has considerable influence over government at the top levels, and also has an impact on gender roles.
3) Ohio is different geographically. Instead of forbidding hills and mountains with an all-encircling ocean connecting things, Ohio has lots of relatively flat land, easy to travel across even if much of it is forested. The whole is tied together by rivers and (in the past few centuries) canals. As you allude to, this changes the way people move, the way commerce is practiced, and so on.