Overarching themes

[DM Quietus]

Vethedar has always been intended as a world where survival is difficult, either requiring some sacrifices be made to provide easily, or struggling to provide for oneself under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, this will not easily apply to adventurers, since they aren't farming every day of their lives just to keep food in their stomachs - rather, they are putting their lives on the line in a much more active, and generally more lucrative, manner.

The question becomes, then, how to apply these themes to the PC's? The easiest way, as I see it, is to create the world with this in mind, and have many, if not all, interactions the PC's come across create sympathy with the world. To this end, I'll need to create a careful balance between cliché standards which would remove the suspension of disbelief, and truly terrible situations which most people would find abhorrent. The goal, after all, is to create a world that has broad appeal, not one that only appeals to strict, dark-theme-loving simulationists.

At this point, I believe the best way to do this is on an area-by-area basis. Vethedar will follow D&D 4e's "Points of light" model; That is, it is a large land, with few settlements, generally with large expanses of land in between. Outside of large, settled, civilizations, the wilds are dangerous. The Central Plains contain all sorts of dangerous creatures such as dinosaurs, the Kommal Woods contain, among other things, Kobolds, and the mountainous areas are home to Trolls and other Giants. Survival in these areas is generally a matter of combat, fighting to keep the natural inhabitants from taking what they want, be it "shinies" or your flesh. In civilized areas, things are decidedly different, and each city or settlement will have its own individual issues which will lean toward the feel.

[Deleted]

What might be interesting is to have some settlements out in the middle of nowhere, with people just trying to get by and hoping that nothing truly unfortunate notices them. Then, if players encounter the settlement and make themselves too noticeable, maybe the settlement finally gets noticed (and pillaged).

[DM Quietus]

I do have small settlements; Crossing, for example, is *technically* an annex of Vaeles, but it's a full tenday (by foot) away from the city. Vaeles' presence there is rarely more than a half-dozen mounted guards. The city itself consists of an inn, a barracks, and maybe a couple other buildings (including at least a storehouse for food, since the land isn't exactly easily workable there).

Lanestown is slightly larger, what one might consider a village, and again, is a good distance away from other places; A tenday each way to reach either Resta, Fograd, or Crossing. It's large enough to provide some of its own food, but really, it's maybe the size of a small modern city's downtown, and serves more as a trading hub for the three major cities.

I'll definitely have smaller areas that are sprinkled about; I'll probably use Eleak and have his little roadside inn somewhere, on its own without any outside support. It relies on food coming from Vaeles to keep itself above water, but provides a nice stop on the trading route. Eleak himself is a low-level adventurer, and can generally stop small raids (probably with assistance from those he works with), but any honest attention brought on the place will overwhelm him.

[Deleted]

What is the general level of technology? How much of that is affected by the level of magic in society?

What would you say is the general wealth distribution? What percent of people don't worry about putting food on the table?

What is the most common form of entertainment? Do people bet on horse races? Are there street performers?

[DM Quietus]

I rather dislike putting it this way, but the general level of technology is "the D&D standard" - that is, low. How to elaborate on that...

Working iron/steel into weapons and armor is common enough knowledge that it's the standard. Running water is uncommon, and expensive enough to be limited to high-end businesses and wealthy individuals. The filtration for such things is provided by magic (essentially, purify food and water "traps" at a bottleneck in a given city's water system). It's unheard of in smaller cities such as Crossing and Lanestown, while Resta would rely more on magic, and Fograd less. The farming communities such as the one outside Vaeles would have no chance of having running water, and would need to have someone going to the nearest body of water and collecting buckets worth, augmented by what's collected in rain barrels.

Waste disposal follows the same basic trends, but is much more expensive. Only the obscenely wealthy can afford to have full in-house disposal; The well-off might have the equivalent of trash bins that keep the contents from smelling bad. The average person wouldn't even have that. Cities generally provide garbage service, in the form of several horse-led carts who travel the streets picking up what's been left behind. Garbage day is not a pleasant smelling day in most places. Again, farming-level communities would be behind even this, typically using what they can for compost and burning the rest.

General wealth distribution.. very good question. Your typical farmer would need to hope he got a good crop to be able to feed himself and those that work on his farm, while those that are "state-approved" to have what are essentially criminals working as slave labor to pay off their debt to society would have an edge. That state approved title would be highly sought after, and difficult to get. Humans would have the poorest representatives, as many of their farmers are literally working to feed themselves, while Elves more commonly have druids to aid their farming efforts, and Dwarves have less to worry about in terms of weather changes. This is decidedly something I need to put a little more thought into, though, as now that I think about it, I'm assuming there's enough trading activity to support an entire Docks district in Vaeles, and while yes there would be a great number of fishing vessels, the general amount of trade I had in mind moving in and out of the city simply isn't supported by my current vision of the overall world. At its most basic level, I'd say : Humans tend to struggle (at least, at the lower end of things), while Elves and Dwarves are typically capable of providing the necessities of life. So essentially, Elves and Dwarves have a fairly even distribution of wealth among their people, while with humans, 10% of the population controls 90% of the wealth. Adventurers being exceptions to those rules, of course.

Common entertainment would depend entirely on where you were, or rather, which nation you were within. Humans tend toward street performers for daytime entertainment, who are essentially living off the results of their Perform checks, with the more wealthy being more picky and seek forms of entertainment closer to what Elves enjoy. The Elves tend toward more sophisticated things, like theatre and the pursuit of swordplay as an art, rather than as a combat form, as well as what we'd recognize as art galleries - they also tend to be more active in the creation of art, rather than just the consumption of it. Dwarves concern themselves less with entertainment, though when they do let loose, it typically involves great amounts of alcohol, and the telling of stories that have been passed down through generations. Favored stories generally involve epic battles, or tales of lost treasure troves/ancestral heirlooms being recovered.

Yes, I need to develop human entertainment habits a bit more; I've simply not built a lot of infrastructure for it within Vaeles, which will be something to tackle at some point.

[Deleted]

I feel like one interesting aspect of entertainment would be taverns. As far as I can tell, it's fairly standard for the place with alcohol to be the center of activity outside of work. I figure that if the number of people with magical abilities is high enough, most taverns or inns would hire someone to entertain the guests. Maybe if there aren't that many magic-users naturally in the world, the much higher concentration of magic around mage universities could still provide that type of environment. Plus, a mage-in-training could probably use some spending money.

Also, with such a large percentage of the population living off so low a wage, there is probably a big market for low-cost booze.

[DM Quietus]

Hence the Post; It attracts the people who can't afford full-cost booze, but also tends to be the rowdier of the "named" taverns. I don't like to inundate the cities with too many drinking establishments, I think two - the Post and Tranquility Inn - will be fine for Vaeles. It's not an exhaustive list, of course, but those are the two that I'll be putting in that are fleshed out.

As for most places hiring entertainers - I think it makes sense to have the taverns be the center of the "average" night life (read : a typical night out), with some of the street performers coming in to try and make their money there. Some might have regular performers who either get paid by the establishment to come in, or can earn a night's stay in exchange for their talents - and yes, the more charismatic of spellcasters, who can make a show of their magic, could make a Perform (Magic) check with the use of things like Mage Hand and Prestidigitation to get the same sort of results as someone who uses Perform (String instruments) or the like. Higher-level spells would provide varying circumstance bonuses; Prestidigitation might be an "Improvised tool" for a magic show, while Major Creation would be "the perfect tool for the job". Very little is more impressive than actually creating involved, detailed, incredible objects from raw materials in six seconds. I might make it "Spell level / 2" as the circumstance bonus on Perform (Magic) checks, with more spells being burned being worth larger bonuses. It's something I'll have to work on for balance.

[Deleted]

Do you still have that big map of Vethedar?

[DM Quietus]

Unfortunately, no. I thought I had that stickied when I wiped the forum, and the computer it was saved on died a while back. Someone may still have a copy somewhere, but if not, I'll just have to remake it.

[DM-Delfon]

It seems that I don't have a copy of your map saved on my computer. I thought I did, but I've only got LOI's maps.

If you want to use John Smithe, I can see him running a trade caravan between Crossing and Vaeles. I saw the opening when we were doing the PBP thing before. Crossing could use a regular trade merchant... That and he tells one hell of a story when he visits town.

[DM Quietus]

I've actually been putting a lot more work into recreating the map recently. Something of a pain in the ass, to tell the truth. Lanestown doesn't line up nicely with the routes it's supposed to, meaning I'll be expanding the world's settlements. That's not really a big problem, I was planning on doing it anyway, it just means that I'm going to have to reason out why they are where they are, and what their primary purpose within the world is.

A quick peek at what I've got so far (unlabeled, sadly, but hell, it's a work-in-progress, what'cha gonna do) : img98.imageshack.us/i/vethedartestcopy.jpg/