Och wow. First of all, I really like it. There is barely a sentence where I don't want to know more or ask questions like "how?" and "why?". That's a great thing and quite frankly your ~5 pages made me more engaged that whole Forgotten Realms main setting book. Pros: - Names are meaningful. Personally I would take "The Reformed God Slayer Kingdom" than some "Gaholaugh" or whatever fantasy authors would want to roll from random syllable table ;). Even the non-English ones are actually pronounceable. - Races are close to their popular trope, but each comes with enough distinct traits to make them feel different. I especially love the Elf description. Orks have relatable and very 'human' reason to produce half-breeds instead of being barbarians on the rape spree. - The fact that all magic stems from divine source and is very rare really resonates with me. Even as someone fairly new to RPGs I managed to already get bored of Weave of Magic, Winds of Magic, Magic Field of Magic etc that seems to just exists and act as a safety net for situations where something would not make much sense. - Your map has actual roads! Cons: - None so to speak at this point, maybe aside of the typos that I think that I have spotted below. Shouldn't this be "affect"? "as a part" instead of "as apart"?In fact Dwarven metabolism is dependent on alcohol, which does not mentally effect them.
rooted in seeing themselves as apart of the forest and not as distinct entities
Thanks for the input! - None so to speak at this point, maybe aside of the typos that I think that I have spotted below. In fact Dwarven metabolism is dependent on alcohol, which does not mentally effect them. Shouldn't this be "affect"? rooted in seeing themselves as apart of the forest and not as distinct entities "as a part" instead of "as apart"? I'd be surprised if that was all typos I made. :( I put those so I could exclude them from the Refuge. The elves might follow foot paths and deer trails, but build roads? Nope. It definitly isn't a safe thing to use in this world. Part the reason I'm looking at using the ruleset that I am is that it already has rules that make magic harmful to the caster. It costs health to cast, and casting too much of it too quickly can corupt a person's mind. I figured everyone would read the list of races in the world and pick up those tropes, so I let most of it stand. But I want to hack out anything that would stop someone from feeling empathy with them. They should all be compromised in some way, but I haven't managed to make that happen yet. That's part of my Dwarffortress background coming through. I'm a lot more rooted in that than in actual fantasy fiction. The non-english names came about because I was listening to the Brexit ballot results and reflecting on how place names often don't make any sense unless you know the backstory to them. I'm not sure if I'll leave those names in or swap them out. I'd love to have a Dwarffortress-esque utility where english words map to syllables in all the languagues of the world and I could feed it "The Vale of the Giggling Creek" and it would spit out a word(s) in Elvish or Dwarven or what-have-you, but I don't see myself making that happen.Cons:
- Your map has actual roads!
- The fact that all magic stems from divine source and is very rare really resonates with me. Even as someone fairly new to RPGs I managed to already get bored of Weave of Magic, Winds of Magic, Magic Field of Magic etc that seems to just exists and act as a safety net for situations where something would not make much sense.
- Races are close to their popular trope, but each comes with enough distinct traits to make them feel different. I especially love the Elf description. Orks have relatable and very 'human' reason to produce half-breeds instead of being barbarians on the rape spree.
- Names are meaningful. Personally I would take "The Reformed God Slayer Kingdom" than some "Gaholaugh" or whatever fantasy authors would want to roll from random syllable table ;). Even the non-English ones are actually pronounceable.