Eight Sages: Pre-Build 2

One of the things that stand out to me right now is how critical a foundation is for a world to develop.

By definition this means defining some general rules on how the universe the world exists in behaves; fortuantly I am no Creator/Creatorix like Jenni-chan is. (See the Jenniverse link in the sidebar.) We define this world, the place where the stories of the Eight Sages will rest, as being similar to our own Mundis Mundis, as the terminology goes. Magic exists, of course, and the natural order of beasts and beings has been altered. The world, a typical 'Eden' for its type and similarity of Terra, including a bright yellow sun and a single moon revolving around it in a cycle of 13 30-day phase similar to our own. (The Aztecs figured this one out. Stupid Spainards.) The only difference lies in fauna; I have no desire to play with the natural order of flora. Too much complication for me.

Now here's a snag: while I have planned out the eight sentient species of the region, I'm not entirely sure about the beasts. It's obvious that there should be derivitives, but to what degree has the ecology been changed? The animals that became sentinent chose to step into the highest ranking spots; what fills the void? And before you say 'dinosauria', Jadeclaw already did this. I want to take a different, if possible, approach to this.

Responses are welcome while I puzzle this out...

(Note: Jordan Greywolf's Jadeclaw art is a good inspiration for the project, although I have to think carefully about comissioning him for further work for the book, if I desire.)

Eight Sages: Pre-Build 1

Need to get my ducks in a row on my HERO project, "The World of the Eight Sages." Since I've gotta start somewhere, I might as well pull an outline out. Nothing hard and solid, but something that I can use as a guideline.

I. Introduction
   1. Short Story, based in the world
   2. Basic Outline, explaning each section
II. Character Creation
   1. The Eight Races
      a. Dragon-kin (Heaven)
      b. Fox-kin (Fire)
      c. Hawk-kin (Wind)
      d. Horse-kin (Mountain)
      e. Rabbit-kin (Earth)
      f. Rat-kin (Thunder)
      g. Tiger-kin (Lake)
      h. Whale-kin (Water)
   2. Basic Skill Templates
   3. Equipment
III. The Nation
   1. History According to the Empire
   2. An Overview of the Kung Empire
   3. The Five Regions of the Empire (tenative names)
      a. Tet'su Province (The Gates of Heaven)
      b. Gengsu Province (?)
      c. Lengsu Province (Land of Rivers)
      d. Zungsu Province (?)
      e. Dengsu Islands (Pearls of the Empire)
   4. The Imperial Lands
IV. Magic
   1. Explaination of Chi Forces
   2. Sample Magic Listing
V. Martial Arts
VI. Playing a Hero in the Empire
VII. The Celestials
   1. Creation Story
   2. The Court of Dawn -- The Heavens
   3. The Abyssal Kingdom -- The Hells
   4. Playing a Celestial in the Empire
IX. Legends of the Empire
   1. The Sword of the Seven Heroes
X. Outside the Empire's Reach (optional work)

ATM, I plan on making feelers for artists who might be interested in making artwork for the sourcebook. But that's a good deal away from now, unfortuantly. We'll see.

The Wizzard Is In

I've been messing around for some time--reading stuff (particularlly The Register, The Darth Side: Memoirs Of A Monster, and An American Schoolteacher In Japan.)

Lately, some discussions between me, Heckfire, and KingRoan off the TKT forums resulted in an interesting project: Monster World. We're still hashing out the bare outlines, and scribbling up ideas for designs, so don't expect me to be detailed here yet. I've offered to organize the material, and I'm working out thoughts on how to present the material on Biolante.net (my server)--I have a few pHp projects* of my own, and I want to see if I can't interigate some of that to make adding and linking data easier.

Other discussions in the HERO Games forums have re-ignited my interest in "The World of the Eight Sages," a campaign setting based off Jason's suggestion of a Usagi Yojimbo-like world to play in. At the moment, I will only say that it is a Middle-Kingdom inspired furry world with a Dark Wuxia bent, with mortals/divinities/demons attempting to swing a world currently in a recceding Age of Shadow into their favor. I have the eight races in mind already, but I have yet to solidify some bare details about the world itself, such as its creation, history, regions, and important personages/groups.

Other than that, there's characters that I still need to write up for Ebberon's Mark of Heroes living campaign that I'm interested in--I've got ideas for a journal written by one of them, a warforged ranger named Mithral Forgedhand, since the viewpoint of a 'forged is ideally unique for me to pratice with. (Although I could also do 'reports' from the newly revitalized Legends of the Shining Jewel living campaign--I managed to snag an auction win of $150 to Red Cross for the right to play an Amythorian Noble. But that feels like it lacks character, as Tierdal Perrault isn't that noteable, really. My other PC has more creative flair than him.)

And then there's figuring out which Digital HERO adventures would be suitable to introduce players to the system for my FRAG group. I'm leaning on "Dreadwood, Missouri" Western game and "Project PREDATOR" Champions game, but finding out if the other listed adventures are self-contained adventures is proving rather difficult. The forums aren't helping, either.

Back to other things... I've been playing some new PS2 games--Phantom Brave, Samurai Legend Musashi, Megaman X8, and Megaman X Command Mission. They're all pretty good, in their respective areas. Of course, more games means less time to play the other stuff--I do need to get back to Grandia, FF9, FF10, and Jade Coccoon 2. Not to mention play more Saga of Ryzom--that MMORPG needs more tuning on progression levels than gameplay, really. The Fyrosen will arrive to help others someday, I swear to it...

I've got lots on my plate--later!

---

*(One is a spinoff of the wiki idea--a 'wikicell' that works in reverse; instead of creating a link to make new data, you create data to link to using a [cell] call. Granted, seeding it is a little sporatic in pratice, but I feel it works better. I can always elaborate by perfoming search-and-replace calls, but once you reach more than a 100 pages of material, you have to re-define the paremeters.)