[M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

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EpicEclipse
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[M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by EpicEclipse »

I am pondering a fantasy-themed game. Not thinking of a published setting, but one of my own which is fairly generic, but has particular features to be followed, more to do with races and magic, magic being differently structured than stuff like D&D.

Lore-wise, the world you live in was created by a convergence of energies from 6 Gates, each leading to another realm/plane. These 5 realms, at the time, were at war with the 6th and eventually overcame it and the 6th gate is largely believed lost with no evidence to the contrary. The world was created as a battlefield for that war, but when it ended, the land remained and despite the scars of war, people from the other 5 realms because to colonize.

The five Gates are Celestial, Infernal, Elemental, Wild and Shadow, each with a world beyond with its own people, many converging into this new world now known as Nexus and intermingling. Over time, native of the outer realms have become less and less and the current inhabitants of Nexus are considered native into themselves after centuries of mingling bloods.

The 6th gate was the gate of Void. As mentioned thought gone and destroyed for centuries, though there are some cults that believe it to still exist and worse, trying to locate or reconstruct it.

Magic in the Nexus is tied to the gates. ALL people have the capacity for some level of magic, some able to learn no more than minor, but useful magic, others able to learn far greater feats, but to be able to draw on more than one gate of magic is VERY rare.

The Celestial gate is the magic of creation and mending matter.
The Infernal gate is the magic of entropy and time.
The Elemental gate is the magic of energies.
The Wild gate is the magic of life and living things.
The Shadow gate is the magic of illusions and the ephemeral.
The Void gate is the magic of nothingness and the natural antithesis to all other realms. Void magic is thought long lost, but some still believe it exists, and if it does, then so to does the Void gate survive.

If a gate were to be destroyed, the connection to the magic it provides would be severed and no longer available.

For races, each gate produced it's own races attuned to the gate's realm, and over time these race bred and blended so there are no true pure bloods native to Nexus (though they can still come from beyond the gates). Natives of Nexus have a difficult time in the outer realms that do not correspond to the magic they have an affinity for but the reverse is not true since Nexus has all 5 realms' magic within it.

Celestial are fair-skinned human-like people. Infernals are bronze to reddish skinned human-like people with horns and a tail (very much like tieflings in appearance). Elementals are elf-like and venerally have a leaning towards a specific energy type which is evident in their appearance. The Wild are a beastial looming people with a wide variety depending on their tribe (which generally falls under typical animal types, including what we know are mythical animals and dinos). And Shadows are dark skinned humanoids with slender frames, soft voices, favoring sign language and just generally quite mysterious.

All natives of Nexus are some cross breed of these races, though almost always have a dominant genus, which is to say they look more like one parent or the other, so will look at the very least mostly like one of the races native to the gates.

No one living can say for certain what race cake from the Void gate or what they look like, but there are rumors they were like phantoms, ethereal beings that should alter their form. Others claim from the Void gate came abomination creatures whose form defied conventional description.


So.... thoughts? Questions? Interest? I was thinking of using this as a backdrop for an adventure-based game with one main city as a sort of base of operations with the characters setting out from there for various adventures.
RainOnTheSun
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by RainOnTheSun »

I'd give Celestials a distinguishing feature to set them apart from humans, myself. I like the idea of a fantasy campaign that operates out of a big city. Any specific tone or atmosphere you want to establish?
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Doctor Malsyn
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Doctor Malsyn »

Sounds like a unique sorta setting. I could imagine a number of nations might pop up on Nexus with ties to a particular gate myself, but I of course don't know your plans regarding national borders and such. Are there any more monstrous races around, such as things akin to orcs or giants? Dangerous magical beasts left behind by the great war and having carved out their own ecological niches? Things of that nature- I'm curious to know what things the group might be going up against, and more about this world too. :D
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EpicEclipse
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by EpicEclipse »

RainOnTheSun wrote: Tue Nov 21, 2017 5:32 am I'd give Celestials a distinguishing feature to set them apart from humans, myself. I like the idea of a fantasy campaign that operates out of a big city. Any specific tone or atmosphere you want to establish?
The idea is specifically for them to be "vanilla" humanoid. As I said, all natives of Nexus are some degree of crossbreed and you can blend elements of the various races. The only place pure blood Celestials live is within the realm beyond the Celestial gate. And to be fair, they are distinct in their lack of particular physical distinctiveness. ;)
Doctor Malsyn wrote: Tue Nov 21, 2017 7:49 am Sounds like a unique sorta setting. I could imagine a number of nations might pop up on Nexus with ties to a particular gate myself, but I of course don't know your plans regarding national borders and such. Are there any more monstrous races around, such as things akin to orcs or giants? Dangerous magical beasts left behind by the great war and having carved out their own ecological niches? Things of that nature- I'm curious to know what things the group might be going up against, and more about this world too. :D
At the base of each of the 5 Gates is capital of a nation, the largest cities in Nexus. As for mapping Nexus out, I haven't really done that yet, but there are resources that can be sued for that.

As for monstrous races and dangerous creatures spawned of war, more the latter, not so much the former.(Though "giant-like" creatures could be classified under the former)

With the variety of people that can be created using mixed traits of the 5 "pure races", there are loads of different types of peoples. There are bandits and that ilk, cults of Void, people that use magic to act the tyrant or despot over others, other yet that have managed to get control over one of the aforementioned beasts of war and so on.
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Camus
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Camus »

Interesting setting combining many different slices of things, I like it. Would it be possible to play a Void descendant? As per your description, they could pass by as Shadow descendants I guess.
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Spectrum
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Spectrum »

Are there rampaging hordes of bro-barians drinking and whoring from tavern to tavern, leaving empty barrels and naughty waitresses in their wake?
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EpicEclipse
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by EpicEclipse »

Camus wrote: Tue Nov 21, 2017 12:51 pm Interesting setting combining many different slices of things, I like it. Would it be possible to play a Void descendant? As per your description, they could pass by as Shadow descendants I guess.
Well, the obvious answer is a hard no. Reviewing the lore, the gate war was centuries ago with the Void gate vanishing and presumed destroyed. And those FROM the Void are unknown of appearance. The phantom and abomination thing was what scholars believed those people to look like, based on limited to speculative evidence.

The way I set the races up was for each of the pure races (which are completely playable. They just aren't native to Nexus) are the more or less basic races of humans, devilings, elves, beast people and shadowy mysterious people which can be mixed and matched to make all kinds of hybrid races. But if you want to play a regular human, play a purebred celestial. If you want to play something like a high elf without the elemental influence, play an elemental mixed with maybe a celestial or a shadow for a more drow like appearance.

Void is the antithesis of everything else, so logically, they could NOT breed into anything. And since they are a thought lost race, gone beyond the lost void gate, a defendant of thay race would make no sense.
Spectrum wrote: Tue Nov 21, 2017 11:04 pm Are there rampaging hordes of bro-barians drinking and whoring from tavern to tavern, leaving empty barrels and naughty waitresses in their wake?
There sure could be. Probably packs of Wild tribes mostly.
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Camus
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Camus »

Ok
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Camus
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Camus »

so we can start throwing things at you? Like, characters?
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EpicEclipse
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by EpicEclipse »

Camus wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 1:29 am so we can start throwing things at you? Like, characters?
If you want to pitch concepts. Figured people might have more questions about how I would be ask8ng for races or magic to be built and such since it's not your average d&d magic standard and is a lot closer to Mage the Awakening from While Wolf
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Doctor Malsyn
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Doctor Malsyn »

Ive had some thoughts, actually. Do you think that with 'elves' and their various natural affinities, they might have adopted a tribe-like stance rgearding their racial cultures? I was thibking of names that some of them might have as well. Earthborn, windswept, firesoul, Waterfolk, etc... What do you think?
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Camus
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Camus »

EpicEclipse wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 2:12 am
Camus wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 1:29 am so we can start throwing things at you? Like, characters?
If you want to pitch concepts. Figured people might have more questions about how I would be ask8ng for races or magic to be built and such since it's not your average d&d magic standard and is a lot closer to Mage the Awakening from While Wolf
I got that impression, but since you mention it, how much do you want player to match your planned ideas for the Charater design?
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Camus
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Camus »

I was planning of a full shadow Wanderer, relying heavily in magic
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EpicEclipse
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by EpicEclipse »

That is a fair question, and an important one.

My only real focuses for specifics is races and magic, and even then, the races are set up to allow all kinds of hybrid and while everyone has a dominant genus (you can tell clearly what they are dominant) they still can have features of another race or even a tertiary recessive trait of a third race.

Magic on the other hand is very specific. All people have an affinity to ONE gate. You can't just learn other gate magic. You can either access a gate's magic or you can't. The gate should line up with one of your lineages, but really with all the interracial blending, most of Nexus has lineage with all the purebred races at some point or another (though some families might have some point of pride having extremely limited branching if you want to play that angle)

Having an affinity to more than one gate is possible but RARE. Exceedingly so. And learning magic from two different gates obviously takes twice as long. As such, anyone wanting to utilize two gates will need to keep those magic separate. No arrays that have elements of more than one gate magic in it. Yes that could get expensive point wise, and that is the point. As I said, it takes more effort to learn magic from two different gates. You would also have to have Benefit: Multiple Gate Affinity. It will have other possible benefits beyond just having the ability to build in effects from different gates as well, but not so mechanical benefits.

I'll probably put a lost of specific pertinent Benefits thay will actually be useful and come up in game.

I was also considering something Miracle seemed to be going for where PL will be less prevalent after construction with devices and equipment being bought with currency, so I will probably put up an equipment list as well and a price guide for devices (which would be magic items)
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Camus
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Re: [M&M 3E] Sword and sorcery idea

Post by Camus »

Good.

Ok, then I think you'll find my idea, at least within the confines of your rules.

Noble from the Shadow gate, betrayed, cursed and exiled to the nexus. He found that wandering the lands looking for ancient arcane secrets was after all his calling, so he has been doing that for many years now. He wears a mask to conceal his face, deformed by the curse. He has wandered through many places, and the people of the land call him the Yellow Pilgrim
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