[Gatejammer] Finality: Brainstorming

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[Gatejammer] Finality: Brainstorming

Post by virgil »

Finality
"The End of your journey. But perhaps the beginning of Another."

Finality is a planar metropolis, a massive city on the world of Clangor. The distant blue sun around which Clangor revolves is called Avalas, and it is in the Acheron gate cluster. The city of Finality sits in the middle of a barren wasteland and subsists on trade. It is an important planar metropolis for people of the material world because it is relatively easy to reach, and also because the merchants of Finality are very interested in buying what the people of the Primes have to sell. They want the turnips, they want the gold, and they want the people themselves – both their bodies and souls.

And so it is that people come through the portals night and day with carts laden with goods. And they leave through those same portals day and night with carts laden with different goods. And the city lives and eats because each cart that leaves has just a little bit less on it than when it came in, and sometimes a person doesn't come back at all. But these costs of business are nothing to the people from far away compared to the tantalizing chance to acquire goods from other worlds. Things that command prices back home that are unbelievable and easily worth the prices and taxes demanded by the merchants of Finality.

Finality's famed Portal Nexus has gateways both numerous and large that connect to many worlds. And they are in near constant operation. Finality is in many ways closer to a dozen cities on a dozen worlds than it is to any other settlement on Clangor. Over a hundred million tonnes of freight enters and leaves through its portals every year. While some of that freight has Finality as its true final destination, the considerable majority is destined to be resold to caravans headed for worlds where the demand for such “exotics” is high enough that the taxes of Finality are considered a small price.
While the focus will be on Finality, we need context for Finality's role in the multiverse. So the first order of business is the setting at large.

Planar travel can only reach adjacent worlds. Gates are two-way, permanent, tied to exactly one other, and immobile. They are generally large enough for an elephant to comfortably walk through, though there exist larger and smaller gates. They are inordinately expensive to produce, and even then only by those who can cast gate under their own power. Gates have the advantage of ignoring planar distances, able to bridge the distance between two worlds that would ordinarily require a dozen separate jumps.

Anything making a jump, via spell or gate, will carry with it lingering energy from the action. Until it dissipates, a period of time unmodified by size or nature, that item cannot make another jump. Gates lead to the actual other side in a totally mundane way, spells fail or just leave the tainted cargo behind, etc.
Image

Here is an example of how the known multiverse would be laid out, before Gates are incorporated.
Image
As of right now, since this is a D&D setting (roughly), and we're focusing more on Finality than Gatejamming, spelljammers are going to be ignored. As there isn't a functional system for their use, that will add quite a bit of additional rules and such to incorporate, crowding out the focus of Finality itself. If people travel the planes without gate towns, then they'll use planar roads like the River Styx or mini-gates into the Plane of Shadow; which will see some focus.
Last edited by virgil on Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Obviously, Finality's political factions are going to be drawn up. Since we're not doing Great Wheel horse shit, we don't need to figure out places for Chaotic Evil people to sit in town hall meetings. If we wanted to systematize them, the obvious way to do that would be to either have 6 issues or 4 issues that factions took one of two positions on. The first would give 15 factions, the second 24 (assuming that every faction had two platforms).

So with the six issue model, you might have some list of options like:
  • Reduce Taxes
  • Deregulate
  • Militarize
  • Public Works
  • Expansion and Colonization
  • Social Spending
And thus if a group wanted to Militarize and Expand, they would presumably be in favor of marching army men over and taking stuff on other worlds, while if they were in favor of Public Works and Reduce Taxes they would want to cut everything out of the budget except roads and portals and stuff that they would want to pump more money into. Or something like that.

For the 4 split issues thing, it would be something like this:
  • Low Tax <-> Increase Revenues
  • Brutal Justice <-> Merciful Justice
  • Autonomy <-> Welfare
  • Colonize <-> Isolation
And that's really 8 issues, which would be 28 possible mashups. But four of them would be contradictory, so you'd have 24 real possibilities (no faction is going to be increasing and decreasing prison sentences).

But I actually don't think it needs to be that procedural. Every faction needs to meet some playability standards, but other than that they can and should be fairly out there. There needs to be ways to put factions into the story as protagonists or antagonists (preferably but not necessarily as both). And one of the best ways to do that is just to have a lot of issues running from narrow to broad that factions have various opinions on that range from mild to extreme and are held with convictions ranging from tepid to burning. The 2012 Republican Party Platform is a fifty page document, and while a lot of it is vague maxims there are a lot of issues in there. Issues can include stuff like "foreign relations with Nishrek" and "legal status of sentient necromantic servitors".

Basically, a faction needs:
  • A locational powerbase. There are 20 Precincts, and the faction headquarters is in one of them.
  • A demographic powerbase. The Faction recruits from wherever they can, but they presumably grew out of some population group and have a "generic member" stereotype based on that.
  • A persuasive philosophy. More than just "we gonna stab you berk", the faction has to be able to say things that sound like they make sense to somebody.
  • Plot hooks. Plot hooks. Plot hooks. It's a storytelling game, each faction has to tell stories.
  • Political opinions. They have to have enough things they want and don't want that you can imagine them allying with or against multiple other factions to accomplish or thwart goals.
  • Temporal power. What landmarks and civic institutions are under the control of or influenced by members of the faction?
Basically every faction needs to do all of those things. So the Dustmen would not be an OK faction because they don't have any political opinions or plot hooks and the Anarchists would not be an OK faction because they don't have any temporal power or locational powerbase and the Transcendental Order would not be an OK faction because they don't have a philosophy or demographics.

So for example, we might have a faction like this:
Guardians of Order

"We fear change."

He Said/She Said:Behind every great fortune, is a great crime.
In Their Own Words wrote:For all the bellyaching and utopian dreaming, the fact remains that objectively things work pretty well. Basic needs are for the most part met. Security and stability are maintained. Wealth is created. There is no need to change anything. More than that, any action no matter how innocuous may have unintended consequences. Even a change perpetrated with the best of intentions may be the seed of ruination. The worlds are littered with fallen civilizations, empty ruins gathering dust on the remnants of forgotten empires. And all of them fell because of some idea which at the time probably sounded good enough to put into practice. Only in hindsight can the terrible error be identified, and by then it is far too late. The risk of any act of defiance to the current order may seem minuscule, but the tail is long. We must protect the status quo. To do anything else is to court unthinkable disaster and the pointless deaths of millions.
The Guardians reflexively oppose any and all changes. They vote against pretty much anything, unless that thing is a motion to continue as before or to repeal something recently put in place. Once a new change has been normalized and becomes an old change, Guardians will move on to protecting that status quo. The Guardians sell their ideas with scare stories of truly horrendous – if probably remote – possibilities should the current order be altered in the slightest. This resonates strongly with people who have a lot to lose, and the Guardians find themselves bankrolled heavily by richer denizens of Finality – especially those with family fortunes.

The first chapterhouse of the Guardians is appropriately in the Castle Precinct: Precinct One. Old money runs deep there, and the Guardians of Order are able to raise funds easily amongst the well heeled. Their ranks boast many of the winners of Finality society, those who fear a loss of their current status more than their ambition and envy propels them to grasp after the status of others.

The Guardians of Order also operate insurance systems. Actuaries calculate the real risks of various events and they allow people to protect themselves from various disasters by paying into a fund that will bail them out should the insured disaster come to pass. They insure against more than just the chances of caravans being claimed by pirates or ships being lost at sea, but even esoteric threats such as death. Holders of a death insurance pact (called a “Guardian Angel”) can be assured of being brought back from the beyond should their body and soul be recovered and reunitable. Insurance bears a more than passing resemblance to gambling, and they also perform some bookie functions – the Guardians of Order are more than happy to insure you against the pain and suffering you will experience if your favorite sport team loses an important match (which is very much like betting on the opposing team, save that is legal to do so in Precinct One).

Some forms of insurance are more proactive than others. The Fire Guards will actively fight fires in buildings that have insurance contracts with them. They are also willing to sell such contracts to uninsured people whose houses are already on fire, though the expedited processing fees are tremendous. Rumors that the Fire Guards sometimes start fires to drum up business are of course vigorously denied. As the Fire Guards are not the only fire fighting gang in the city, there are sometimes heated exchanges or even fisticuffs in the street over who gets to act in saving an uncontracted building from an inferno. The Fire Guards have a police charter that is valid in Precinct One and are able to make arrests there, which may be why they are the only group providing fire protection in Precinct One.
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Post by hyzmarca »

FrankTrollman wrote: And that's really 8 issues, which would be 28 possible mashups. But four of them would be contradictory, so you'd have 24 real possibilities (no faction is going to be increasing and decreasing prison sentences).
You could probably have a three-way battle between the sodomize prisoners with rusty spikes faction (Tough on Crime, Harsh Punishment, Long Sentences, no education), the Restorative Justice Faction (Long Sentences, community service, prisoner education),and the Swift Rehabilitation through the use of Cursed Headwear Faction (place Helm of Goodthink on prisoner's head, immediately release prisoner).

I'm not sure if brainwashing all criminals using magical cursed helmets would be considered soft or tough on crime. Both of their opponents would have cause to call them too soft or to call them brutal monsters.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Sat Mar 23, 2013 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by sabs »

A place like this needs rival Necromancer factions. Both offering municipal funeral services and hard labor forces for things too dangerous even for prisoners.

One Faction covers itself in civic duty. They offer undead protection, and dealing with negative energy issues. The other is actually a mutual benefit society for Necromancers. They buy/trade/sell necromantic components, parts, and servants. They trade necromantic magic items, spells, scrolls, etc..

And their entire "political mashup" might be rights for undead/necromancers for one faction, and tough on crime, trying to push a municipal policy of turning dead bodies into undead bodies.
Last edited by sabs on Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

hyzmarca wrote:I'm not sure if brainwashing all criminals using magical cursed helmets would be considered soft or tough on crime. Both of their opponents would have cause to call them too soft or to call them brutal monsters.
This is a powerful argument to not try to do issues as things which factions either support or don't support, nor to do them as "right vs. left". But instead to embrace the fact that there are more than two parties and thus there can be more than two or three positions on each major issue.

So let's take the issue of slave labor. Slavery is legal in some precincts of the city. Most notably the precincts with major trade portals to places on other worlds where slavery is an institution. But in precincts where the guilds are stronger and there is more manufacturing, slavery is banned. No one wants to compete against laborers who don't get any wages. But it goes beyond that, where some Precincts go so far as to forbid controlling undead and golems in order to protect employment for free living citizenry.

Or the issue of taxation. While there are some people who simply want to cut taxes wherever they can or to raise taxes on anything they can think of (depending largely on whether they personally get to play with primarily public or private money), most people want to tax people and things that they don't approve of and to lower taxes on things they want to incentivize. And of course the Guardians have an argument that changing the tax code in any way creates uncertainty that can potentially destabilize the economy.
Sabs wrote:A place like this needs rival Necromancer factions.
It would be hard to make a necromancer faction that was more boring and useless than the Dusties. Factions that stress not giving a shit are absolutely dreadful for story telling. You'll note that in Torment, they were the first faction you dealt with, and basically all they brought to the table was cool looking architecture for you to wander around in. That's terrible.

But yes, in a city whose original selling point was that you could enter early stage post-gold economy via soul trading, it is imperative that there be necromancer factions. Necromantic banking. People with the really really long term on their mind. Necromantic evangelists, who are trying to slip a vampire apocalypse under everyone's nose by growing slowly but surely.
Sabs wrote:Both offering municipal funeral services and hard labor forces for things too dangerous even for prisoners.
Let's consider the industries of lead smelting and tanning. Just being in the buildings where those things are done is incredibly bad for you. But not having metabolisms, zombies can do either without getting porphyria. But then, so can golems. And for that matter, slaves can do that work if you don't care if they die. So the "hard work" issue could be a big one: who exactly is supposed to do the stuff that no human or goblin in their right mind would agree to do? The Necromancers and Artificers both have answers to that question, but the Slavers do too. And you could have a nice three way economic fight over exactly how to do that. After all, the slavers suggest that working people to death in lead foundries is actually a public good (in that it creates a "worse option" that you can use to intimidate and threaten people with).

In order to "take over" a precinct, it seems to me that you have to have control of a certain number of the Landmarks in that district. These are things like the Hall of Records or the Armory that are major locations of the city. If you control all the landmarks of the precinct, then you have essentially undisputed control of that precinct. This can drive intrigue and be used to resolve coups. The main city government itself has landmarks that count for the entire city. Off the top of my head, the "City Landmarks" would be:
  • The Council Chambers.
  • The Central Bank.
  • The Newspaper.
  • The Tabloid.
  • Portal Pentagon.
  • The Armory.
  • The Castle.
And of course, each of those landmarks is also a landmark for the precinct they are physically in.

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Post by Lokathor »

One of the things that I liked a lot in Planescape: Torment was that there were some portals that weren't well known at all, and you'd just discover them "on your own", or they'd be known to a few people. They weren't all wagon sized major trade passages, some of them were just quiet out of the way doors that led to secret places where secret people did secret things. Additionally, such portals are naturally inactive, and the key to make them open can be very simple or quite strange.

I think that the ability to potentially have secret, quiet, potentially criminal, potentially quite sinister sorts of portals is also important to things. Not necessarily just for Finality itself, but for the game world as a whole.

Perhaps a very simple rule like, "portals that move you to other places on the same plane/planet don't interact with your inter-planetary travel cooldown" could suffice.
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Post by Username17 »

The city of doors is Sigil's shtick. That being said, I don't think that all of Finality's portals should be in Portal Pentagon just as I don't think that all of Clangor's portals should be in Finality.

So the city layout itself should be filled up in a chart form. I figure ultimatley each of the 20 Precincts should have at least 3 landmarks in them. Here's an example of how the chart might fit together, obviously it isn't done and there is a lot of room for more factions to be written up:
DistrictMain Faction(s)LandmarksNicknameNotes
1Guarians of OrderThe Castle
The Actuarials
Guardians of Order Chapterhouse
Castle PrecinctOld money
Lots of Fiends
2The Council Chambers
3Planning Department
Hall of the Scribe's Guild
4Bank of Finality
Hall of Records
5Portal Pentagon
Inspector General's Office
Flesh Market
Mostly Warehouses
Few Residents
6The Academy
7Brotherhood of BloodThe Paper
Exhibition Hall
Blood Manse
8Eye of FuryThe Aqueduct
The Incinerator
Bridge to Scourgehold
Little NishrekMany Orcs
Kind of a Slum
9The Foundry
Metal Worker's Guild
10
11The Armory
The Temple of Silence
12
13
14The Tabloid
15
16
17
18Speakers of the DeadThe Mausoleum
19Apostasy Prison
20Mad Wizard's Guild
The Tanning Vats
Sewage Treatment
Smells extremely bad

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Post by Grek »

For factions, off the top of my head we want at least the following (names subject to change):

The Abolitionists: Anti-Slavery, Anti-Undead, Anti-Construct, Anti-Soul Trade, and Anti-Prison. Frees slaves, smashes golems and breaks people out of jail.
The Guardians of Order: See Frank's post. Opposed to anything new, offers insurance, fire fighting and resurection services.
The Lich King's Bank and Trust: A bank run by an Lich who specializes in protecting valuable objects (such as phylacteries) inside massive dungeons. Also rents out undead laborers.
The Necropolitan Society: Sticks up for the rights of the dead and undead, free-willed or not. Competes with the Guardians of Order for Death Insurance contracts.
The Assassin's Guild: A group of mercenary assassins with a thinaun foundery and very strong opinions about extradition treaties with other planes being bad.
The City Prison: Run by an expedition from Carceri, probably has portals to Carceri inside. Wants everything to be illegal and every crime to be punished by being sent to their prison.
The Artifactors: Pro-business construct makers. They support golem-labour, military expansionism and diverting public funds into the construction of murderbots.
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Post by zeruslord »

I don't think we want the Lich King's Bank and Trust or the Assassin's Guild per se to be factions. We can have factions that everybody knows are just astroturfed by the Lich King or the Assassin's Guild or whoever, but that's a bit different.

I also feel like there shouldn't really be The Paper - there should be at least a couple of papers with city-wide distribution, and then smaller ones put out by the radical factions, like the Abolitionists.

Some more faction ideas (because I like fantasy socialists):
The Clangor People's Front: want to seize the means of productions, including zombies and golems, create a worker's paradise, the system cannot be changed, it must be smashed. Main power base in a slum district, probably bordering on a university. probably in favor of using mindless undead and constructs to better the lives of the proletariat.
The Unionists: trade unions, pro-worker's rights, against the use of undead and golems (the ultimate scabs). base of power probably in an industrial district, maybe the same as the Artifactors for union vs. management conflict
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Post by Username17 »

Brotherhood of Blood

"Communication is the Lifeblood of Society."

He Said/She Said:If you don't read the papers, you're uninformed. If you read the papers, you're misinformed.
In Their Own Words wrote:It is absolutely essential above all other considerations that the public be informed. While it is destiny that the strong crush the weak and the clever outwit the dull, the natural order can only flourish in the presence of equality of opportunity. The truth may be out there, but it seems perfectly content to stay hidden in the dark. It requires the agency of people to spread the truth, and doing so is good. Information doesn't want to be free, but it should be. Our civilization is at its best when it is led by its best. And its best are the best when they are recruited from as large a pool as possible. And the largest pool possible is the sum of everyone.
The Brotherhood of Blood is dedicated to getting information to the public so that each person can attain their true potential. It is also a recruiting arm of a clan of vampires and werewolves, who recruit from those people who attain a potential which is a cut above the norm. Step one is to make sure that everyone gets access to opportunities to rise into the elites. Step two is to give even more power and eternal life to those who actually do. Step three is... well... they don't tell outsiders what step three is.

Brotherhood funds support public education in several forms. The Bloods are not democratic per se, but believe that the aristocracy should be open to anyone and the opportunities to join it be genuine and fair. Slavery is not opposed by the faction doctrines, but generational slavery is – the Bloods support freedom and citizenship for the children of slaves. At the base of all of this is the fundamental assumption that knowledge is power and that people can maximize their potential as long as they have sufficient training and education. That there might be extrinsic factors other than a lack of access to information holding individuals or society back doesn't seem to be something the Brotherhood thinks is worth considering.

The editorial staff of Finality's most prestigious newspaper is made up of Brotherhood plants. The Finality Herald has earned itself a reputation as a fair source of facts, in no small part because the editors seem willing to go after people regardless of how powerful they are. The thinking is that many who have power don't actually deserve it, so if you get caught in a scandal you're probably one of the undeserving. The Herald is thick and sends reporters off to the edges of the multiverse to investigate stories. The Brotherhood also sponsors the Exhibition Hall, which is used by the city as a convention center and museum – bringing people and ideas closer together.

The faction headquarters are the Blood Manse. It is a sprawling estate surrounded by an ornate wrought iron fence. The manse itself is a five story mansion where many members of the faction dwell. Fancy dress parties are thrown there many times a month, and important people from all over are invited. Being seen at a party at the Blood Manse is a good way to show that you've become a big name in whatever it is that you do.

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Post by Ancient History »

I'm going to suggest that instead of your typical quasi-medieval coalition of guilds or barons, or your quasi-contemporary coalition of political parties, that Finality be an incorporated city whose voting members are a weird mix of city functionaries, landed nobility, and special seats reserved for mostly apolitical individuals - so, basically like CHOAM in Dune except partially merged with a Roman Senate or UN-style deal so that the head of every major election gets a vote in the Council of Pontiffs and the Supreme Pontiff gets a vote in the council kinda deal. Because while it's fun to play fantasy socialist worker parties, those are usually best when they do not have any legitimate political power (it makes them more disenfranchised), and guild-stuff like the Lich Bank gets to be more of a power-behind-one-or-more-seats. Plus you get to have a duke or baron whose fief consists of an entire world, and that's kinda cool.
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Post by Username17 »

My suggestion is that the Council is one representative from each Precinct, except that it was defined a long ass time ago when there were less Precincts so that only 11 Precincts get a councilor and the others can go pound sand. Maybe run the council out to 13 by having a slot for the priest of a religion that used to be the dominant local religion and a slot for the eldest descendant of the line of dukes who used to run the place. So there are 11 precincts where dominating politics there will get you a vote on the council that makes city wide laws, and 9 precincts where you don't. And 2 council votes are small fries who might as well be appointed by lottery and are easy to bribe or threaten.

On the Newspaper thing, I figure there are two major papers: one is respectable and the other isn't. Like the New York Times and the New York Post. Also of course, almost every faction has their own newsletters that they try to get people to read. The Herald and the Tout. The Herald has a team of investigative journalists and does tough reporting and challenges the powers that be with truth and stuff. The Tout is a glorified gossip rag, and is perfectly willing to put unsourced allegations on the front page in 64-point font followed by an exclamation mark or 3.

I'm not sure how to do the factions that have the backing of the Central Bank or the Trade Unionists. My initial thoughts on the banksters is that they should be a mafia backed by a dragon, and that the trade unionists are mainly concerned with smashing the Guilds that prevent them from working. With fighting slavery and rich people a secondary concern.

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Post by K »

The key to making factions is to not go for the easy association. It's unmemorable and people will forget about it.

So don't make a necromantic society that cares about undead rights. I can swing a dead cat in the FLGS and hit five books that have a necromantic society that cares about undeath.

Do something interesting. Make a necromantic society that cares about personal freedom and runs the gladiator pits. Make the hedonism guild the keepers of lore because they steal memories. Make the pro-war chaos faction the hardcore banksters who make their money by looting the treasuries of governments and selling war bonds. Make the hardcore spellcaster guild a cartography society and social club. Make a spiritual monk society all about imprisoning people without their weapons and spellbooks because they only believe in personal power and that stripping people of their tools is the only way to empower them.

You shouldn't even associate them with jobs in the city. The police force can just have necromancers and hedonists on it who war within the department for control of policy. That's what real politics looks like, and not the "we have high-power fantasy armies and fortresses and we hand out flyers on the corner" because organizations with armies don't need to soft-sell any of their agenda.
Last edited by K on Sun Mar 24, 2013 12:31 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

How much should we focus on current political events? When I write up a new city for my games as someplace plot happens, I usually try digging through history books and finding an interesting conflict with more than one reasonable side to show up in the news. But that means a possible decrease in the freedom of MCs to use the city write-up to create different stories.
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Post by Lokathor »

A backstory of political events is necessary. However, the "what's happening now" section should be more like a list of things that'll be happening "very soon". Then leave the exact order of probable events up to the MC; they can place them in any order or they can skip on all of it and come up with their own events.

Like that list of 100 adventure hooks that the DMG or DMG2 had, but probably less than 100, and probably more detail than a single sentence on each one. They don't even all need to be equally well presented. Groups don't always meet under the same conditions week to week, sometimes people are missing or tired, and you want a 'simple' plot for a while. Some of the hooks can be one sentence 'monster of the week' example hooks, while other ones are a full paragraph that names key personalities and what they want to do and how and so on.
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Post by Username17 »

K wrote:The key to making factions is to not go for the easy association. It's unmemorable and people will forget about it.
I agree here, to a point. Each faction also needs to be short and punchy enough to explain what they are about in a sentence or two ("The Brotherhood of Blood are vampire reporters. They want equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcome."). Further, the total needs to have a coherent story and not be a LOL Random set of disparate traits (so the Sigil Heartless for example, are bad because "The takers have no respect for laws or traditions. They lie, cheat, steal, and forge contracts. Also they get upset if people take things they didn't earn. Also they keep all the records and collect city taxes. And their leader is Chaotic Good." is just a complete catastrofuck of random that doesn't make any internal or external sense).

So it has to be off-beat enough to be memorable, but not so off-beat that it's hard to give someone a pithy short version and not so off-beat that the players can't make sense of it.

There's another issue where no faction can be so "obviously correct" that every player supports them by default. No faction can just be "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" because introducing a faction that you'd have to be a dick to not work with severely limits the playspace. It's OK for there to be factions that are obviously wrong that exist as antagonists, but it's better for each faction to be on the right and wrong side of a bunch of issues so that they can show up as player factions and as antagonist factions.

That being said:
K wrote:Make the pro-war chaos faction the hardcore banksters who make their money by looting the treasuries of governments and selling war bonds.
I like this one a lot. People always portray bankers as conservative, but really their job is all about risk management, and the coke snorting banker with a fast car and a god complex is actually much more plausible. Their entire job is about trading risk for profit and aggregating risk into bundles such that the failure rate doesn't fully offset the profitability of the enterprise. I could totally see a central bank that was all into spreading chaos to reap big profits.
K wrote:You shouldn't even associate them with jobs in the city.
I disagree with this a lot. While I agree that the Sigil situation where you were automatically a Police Officer if you joined the Harmonium (and thus had a day job and couldn't go adventuring) was extremely terrible, I also point out that the New World of Darkness Covenants who didn't control anything were extremely terrible. Factions should control various city landmarks and civic functions, because that is a thing that players can get for moving up the ranks in a faction. Working your way up the Eye of Fury chain of command eventually gives you control of the Aqueduct. Working your way up the Brotherhood of Blood lets you influence what goes into the newspaper. And so on.

If factions don't have things that they control, then it's just like moving up the ranks in the Invictus in Vampire: the Requiem. Being Duke is just like being vice president of the anime club and no one fucking cares. Every faction needs to not have a 1:1 correspondence with specific jobs, but every faction needs to have real landmarks and institutions under their control. Because that provides a carrot for player characters to gain faction rank.

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Post by Red_Rob »

FrankTrollman wrote:I could totally see a central bank that was all into spreading chaos to reap big profits.
I thought this was supposed to be a fantasy setting.

Would this version of Finality still be in Acheron? Because it being surrounded by constant warfare and mainly home to demons would seem to be fairly important.
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Post by Lokathor »

Finality should still be in Acheron, though the Great Wheel itself should be dispensed with almost entirely.

The planar system should be a series of nodes either with routes between them that you can spelljam along, or with "open space" between them that you can spelljam around in.

Each planar system is home to one or more planets and/or things of interest. Most planes would be Planet of Hats worlds out of mythology, some of which can be based on previous "Outer Planes", some of which we'd just come up with.
  • The Mythos world
  • The world full of giant gears and full of robots
  • The world where most all matter is melting into other kinds of matter half the time that's full of crazy frogs
  • The viking world
  • The world based on Dante's Inferno
  • The prison world full of rooms that are all rewards or punishments for various things, but all of it's a prison, even the 'reward' rooms.
  • The world full of tunnels and caverns that are so windy you can hardly hear a thing
  • The world full of metal polyhedron "asteroids" that have people living and warring across the surfaces and sometimes they crash into each other and cause even more war.
  • The Elemental Plane worlds
  • The desert world with impossibly large sandworms
  • An inside out world with gnomes living all along the inside.
  • etc, etc
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Post by Username17 »

All the various outer planar names are taken from public domain sources and are thus public domain. Yes, even Mechanus (which is among other things, the homeworld of the Mechanoids from 1960s era Dr. Who). Hasbro only claims copyright on the long form name of "The Infernal Battlefield of Acheron" and "The Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus". Hasbro does not and cannot own Infernal Battlefields, Nirvana, Mechanus, or Acheron. You are even allowed to call your stuff "Acheron: the Infernal Battlefield", since they don't actually own any of the words or concepts, just the exact five word constructions of the longform of the planar titles.

That being said, what Acheron is is a river of the underworld. In Dante's Inferno it is described as being a river which flows all the way around the nine rings of hell. I could easily see the "Acheron Gate Cluster" as being those worlds which had the River Acheron flowing through or around them. That would imply a Styx Gate Cluster, a Lethe Gate Cluster, a Phlegethon Gate Cluster, an Eridanos Gate Cluster, and a Cocytos Gate Cluster. It might also imply the existence of an Ifing Gate Cluster that includes Asgard and Jotunheim, an Anahita Gate Cluster that includes the Sixteen Lands, a Vaitarna Gate Cluster that includes Naraka and Preta Loka, a Gihon Gate Cluster that takes you to Nibiru and and possibly even a Malvam Gate Cluster that includes Duat.

Some worlds would have multiple magic rivers in them, and would therefore be in overlapping gate clusters.

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Post by Red_Rob »

The whole magic river thing seems kind of at odds with the rest of the setting. A river in historical terms was a trade route and a fast mode of travel along it's route. Well, we already have two things that facilitate that in this setting - Spelljammers and Gates. Rather than an actual river the Acheron should either refer to a series of gates linking these worlds, or be some kind of quick Spelljamming route between them that functions like a river in ancient times.

The Styx is about the only one iconic enough to be an actual river, due to it's memory loss schtick. I could see an actual river Styx on one of the worlds, but other than that I think it mixes metaphors too much.
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Post by Whatever »

Red_Rob wrote:The Styx is about the only one iconic enough to be an actual river, due to it's memory loss schtick.
You're thinking of Lethe. Styx is memorable because it's the border to the underworld, and you have to pay the ferryman to cross over when you die.
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Post by Ancient History »

Maybe the magical rivers are "water gates" originally created by the R'lyeh precursor civilization to facilitate travel by aquatic and amphibious beings.
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Post by Parthenon »

With the talk of rivers I'm suddenly thinking of gates being like locks on canals where the water level is at a different height so you had to spend a while pissing about with moving water around so you can continue on your journey. But, it was still way more efficient for transporting goods than walking or coach.

Similarly, the gates are machines for changing the amount of X in the area so you can continue on your journey. The X tends to flow in a certain route which is called a River, and you tend to have cities like Finality at branches of the rivers or where several rivers are close together.

One side effect of this is that it would be much easier to travel one way through a gate than the other way which is an interesting limitation.
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Post by Username17 »

Whatever wrote:
Red_Rob wrote:The Styx is about the only one iconic enough to be an actual river, due to it's memory loss schtick.
You're thinking of Lethe. Styx is memorable because it's the border to the underworld, and you have to pay the ferryman to cross over when you die.
You're thinking Acheron. The Styx is the river in the middle of the Underworld that all the gods swear on.

I just want to point out: two people in a row just stepped up to explain what the "iconic" nature of the River Styx was, and both of them named the properties of a different magical river (Lethe and Acheron respectively). I would submit that actually the Styx is probably not more iconic than the other rivers of the underworld (although I will grant that it has a cooler name than Oceanus or Alpheus).

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Post by virgil »

Red_Rob wrote:The whole magic river thing seems kind of at odds with the rest of the setting. A river in historical terms was a trade route and a fast mode of travel along it's route. Well, we already have two things that facilitate that in this setting - Spelljammers and Gates.
I wrote:As of right now, since this is a D&D setting (roughly), and we're focusing more on Finality than Gatejamming, spelljammers are going to be ignored. As there isn't a functional system for their use, that will add quite a bit of additional rules and such to incorporate, crowding out the focus of Finality itself. If people travel the planes without gate towns, then they'll use planar roads like the River Styx or mini-gates into the Plane of Shadow; which will see some focus.
Now, your earlier mention of Finality being surrounded by warfare and home to fiends is a valid point; though it if anything encourages the war-mongering banksters. While we don't so many fiends so as to essentially put a "you must be this tall" sign for adventuring in Finality, they need to be a large enough demographic. This means there can't be one faction for the fiends, but a majority of them need to be at least friendly to demonic membership.

Planar Pathways
These are a natural form of gate in the multiverse, connecting adjacent worlds in a series, and are the primary means of travel for the cluster of planes they connect to. While a planar pathway only joins adjacent planes, adjacent planes do not always connect with a planar pathway. Whether a planar pathway forms a circle is dependent on the pathway itself.
Water Gates
The most commonly known pathway, these meandering waterways are generally in a world long enough for the flowing water to have dissipated their lingering energy from the last jump, but longer streches are not rare. Ships and ferries, aside from being constructed of hardy material to survive any of the worlds on the river's route, have the advantage over artificial gates in that they can transport a large amount of cargo in one go without having to fit it one wagon at a time. More than a few, taking advantage of the captive audience between jumps, provide all manner of distractions and means of amusement.
  • River Acheron
  • River Oceanus
  • Vaitarna River
  • Aredvi Sura Anahita
Climbing Gates
These are the oft-cursed planar pathways, ones that require climbing. Some argue that it's a standing spell that requires the somatic component of a climbing motion to complete and then transfer to the other side, but those have so far been proven to be petty arguments by mundane climbers who cannot fly nor levitate; although the mountain-based climbing gates are known for their treacherous winds that do make flying near the edge hazardous. What is known is that the pathway transfer point is a general 'zone' around a local peak, always near its surface (so fliers have to stay close), that requires one to ascend through to reach the other sides. Worlds connected via climbing gates are some of the more isolated amongst the multiversal community due to the efforts required to cross over, especially if location of the next peak in the mountain range isn't well labeled on the map.
  • Mount Olympus
  • Yggdrassil
  • Mount Meru
  • Seven Caves of Chicomoztoc
  • Kunlun Mountains
Last edited by virgil on Sun Mar 24, 2013 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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