Been working on a heinously crunchy ruleset and also on automating the actually frustrating math components so that neither I (the GM) or players have to worry about things like "Square roots" and "calculating percentages".
Anyways the system is for a dark fantasy setting of sorts. Vaguely inspired by the Fear and Hunger games, sort of alternate-historical not!Earth setting with very 1:1 cultural stuff BUT still juuuust odd enough that nobody is quite like their historical groups.
Major Places
Note these names are generally the Evrosian common names for them. Some places dont have endonyms because they're fucking enormous or they have too many to list.
Also as a note, all of these places are intended to be as detailed as each other. I just, sadly, have limited time and sort of need to figure out if my typical way of making names for places is alright.
(Several of these are taken from either historical names for their real world equivalent, or then have their phonetics exchanged for sounds that are produced by similar shapes of the mouth. I think this is alright but I do want to run some of these by some folks)
- Evrosia: Europe-analog. Initial setting. Roughly a thousand years from the collapse of the Remulan Empire that conquered most of it. Most developed as this is initially from an Evrosian (Remulan) perspective.
- Iberia: A pinensula largely under the control of the Nightborn Confederation
- Gaullia: Western-continental Evrosian region. Heart of the Nightborn Confederation.
- Germania: Central continental Evrosian cultural region. Largely controlled by the Nightborn.
- Remula: Pinensula into the Centelluric sea. Seat of the Remulan empire.
- Borea: Northern continental Evrosia. Separated by a small sea. Home of the old Vykr (raider) that a few short centuries ago devastated large regions of Evrosia. Minimal nightborn political presence.
- Baltia: Isolated evrosian cultural center. Largely pastoralist and farming tribes. Small nightborn political presence.
- Albion: Island tightly controlled by the Nightborn. Cultural variation exists, despite this.
- Eirie: Archonites, Devotees of the Old Gods and so on. Never had Remulan occupation or significant nightborn presence.
- Panaustralis: Africa-analog. Fucking enormous. There's more nations here than people you've met, so the saying goes. Generalizations will fail in reference to anything here, but it has been identified as the birthplace of humanity far earlier than in the real world.
- Akssonia: Most well known nation in Panaustralis to the Evrosians. Rich, powerful, first major nation to adopt the Demiurgic Church as its principle religion. Ethiopia/Axum analog.
- Berla: A large western Panaustralic empire. Has truly tremendous wealth and political clout. Currently ruled by Musha-Marruk, "King Marruk", the single richest human being on the planet. Mali analog.
- Alharia: Asia-analog. Also enormous. Derives from an Aurishik term that basically means "The silk place", in reference to the vital trade routes (both on land and sea). Difficult to summarize, but includes analogs to most broad cultures you may be familiar with.
- Parradat: India-analog. Part of Alharia to an extent but exists on its own subcontinent. Parradati cultures are broad but semi-unified by a handful of historical and cultural factors. Local nations form a large council of mutual defense and support. Local governance varies.
- Aurishia: Broad cultural region analogous to the Muslim cultural regions. Alharian, Evrosian and Panaustralic regions are included in this. The "golden age" has led into an extended proto-industrial society. They have indoor plumbing in cities. Largely independant of each other, split into innumerable "Houses", quasi-royal families that are more akin to trade unions or local governments. Broadly have a somewhat static class system, but that still does vary.
- Mu: Australia analog. Mostly unknown to non Muric folk, due to the environment being extraordinarily hostile if you don't know what you're doing.
- Amphimu: Technically part of the Muric continent, but culturally distinct. A series of very large islands many kilometers off the eastern coasts of Mu. Notably explorers from here have reached Antipodus. They did not stay long.
- Lemuria: What if Madagascar was really big? Largely analogous to Madagascan cultures but with a bit more variation simply due to increased scale.
- Vesperland: North america analog. Endonyms for it exist but are different across various cultures. Coastal cities, advanced broad scale farming methods, and so on.
- Mekhaxi: Mexica-analog. Has all the expected ethical variation of a large empire, though are somewhat more justified in the eyes of their enemies by their opposition to the Setak.
- Meryin: Maya analog. Extremely old. Have had cycles of inhabiting and abandoning cities for a time, seemingly due to circumstantial means. Has colored the culture a bit.
- Setak: Xenophobic and inbred "Wodewose" and "Giant" folk of Vesperland. Not intrinsically evil or anything but... Culturally pretty shitty. A threat a lot of nations have been unifying against.
- Apiyata: South american analog. Name derives from a specific cultures term for their lands, but has been adopted broadly. Largely unknown to Evrosians, but consists of many cultures just as its northern cousins.
- Imtchi: Inca analog. A huge mountain based empire, politically and economically powerful. Very good surgery and horticulture. Birthplace of the "knot-writing", the Apiyatan and Vesperian analog to paper and its associated writing, which in this world has been adopted much more broadly due to coincidental factors.
- Nisia: Broad name for islander cultures that are only extremely distantly related to each other. "Oceana" for this world. Derives from a Graeic word for "Island". As expected, generally are highly advanced in sailing and fishing technologies.
- Euborea: The arctic circle. Largely mirrors its irl equivalent by being hostile to almost all life and home to people who are very good at making that seem untrue. No broad-scale urbanized societies or even nomadic ones, but that serves the folk there just fine.
- Antipodus: Antarctica analog. Bleak, barren and blighted. Dotted with ancient inhuman ruins. Not for humans.
- Onyx City: An enormous city carved from dark rock. Active. Possible human inhabitants.
- Thalassia: The sunken continent. Verdent and living. Has living cities and cultures. Not for humans.
- Atalati: Largest settlement. Home to Thalassids. Consists of mostly aquatic areas, but with some air-exposed caves and buildings for metalworking.
- Laputa: The flying continent. Legendary. Unseen. All facts speculative. Not for humans. Only rumors.
Peoples
Affinity just refers to what things they double (or more). Almost always just doubling.
- Humans: 99.99% of the population, with a few notable exceptions. This is a historical fantasy, until it isn't. Affinity for focus and stamina. Gain some extra exp too.
- Thalassids: Thalassia-folk. Deep ones. Breath air and water and have some resistance to toxins.
- Wodewose: Hairy, tailed, often horned and sometimes hooved wild-folk. Tough, and have more protected heads. Live in isolated communities in deep forests.
- Giants: Big people. Size and degree of affinity depends on how big/"pure" they are. Look like mildly to moderately deformed humans. Healthy. Vitality, Strength and HP affinity. Armor generally isn't made with them in mind.
- Morlocks: Underground people with ape-like and bat-like features. Blind but can navigate via smell and hearing. Thus immune to most blinding conditions but defeated by different things. Perception and Speed affinity.
- Eloi: Other underground people. Batlike features makes them seem elfish instead. Can see infrared (basically can use warm bodies as torches and see further with torches and lanterns). Affinity for Charisma and Agility.
- Cynocephalics: Dog folk. Not just the head despite the name. Claws, teeth, and affinity for a lot of things. Basically really fucking tough and hard hitting but have a lot of trouble interacting with society.
Probably more later.
Other Shit
- "Nightborn" are vampires. You can play them. They're not a race, they're more a thing that happens to people. Nightborn society is split into three estates with internal rankings. Nightborn, Duskborn and Dayborn.
- Dayborn: Humans. Serfs. Livestock.
- Duskborn: A kind of intentionally vague category. Supposed to refer to altered humans or partial humans, but technically means "Anyone a Nightborn has bestowed the title of duskborn."
- Nightborn: Vampires. Immortal rulers of nations large and small.
- Religiously they revere "Mother Night" or simply "Night" as a God. Not clear if this is an actual entity puttering around, but it works as a religion.
- Magic involves rituals and is mostly dealing with otherworldly entities. In some cases its commanding them. Other times its replicating their power and infusing into yourself or other stuff. It uses my Arcana philosophy with vibes that hopefully lie somewhere on the spectrum of Fear and Hunger, The Bartimaeus Sequence and the SCP foundation. Ive been watching the Owl House so that might rub off some too. Who can say?
- There might be more lost or undiscovered continents. Its a globe but... Maybe not just a globe.
- Counter-Earth (Counter-Tellus?) could be a thing.
- Archonites are "Christian" analogs that revere Ialdaboath, the ascended form of a (maybe) once-mortal. I haven't decided if this setting ties into my previous ideas of divinity or not.
- Aurishi is the Islam analog. The reason they're technologically advanced was I thought "what if the golden age didn't stop and kinda started to push into some later stuff that happened irl". Vibes wise its a bit different. A lot more "pneumatic" tech than the irl industrial revolution. Honestly this isn't that impossible. There's a world out there where something like this happened.
- They pulled a bit more religious inspiration from the "Henosis" concept in this reality than Islam did irl. Also not super unrealistic. Theres a lot of fans of neoplatonism among muslim philosophers.
- I didn't mention it but the Judaism analog exists. Yeshrim/Yeshrimi. They're a notable subpopulation in Evrosia, northern Panaustralis and Alharia and as diverse as expected.
- Apparently Yeshrim is close to the title of an actual text written by a Rabbi. Hopefully this doesn't become confusing.
- Traveller cultures in general exist in Evrosia and other places. They tend to avoid the Nightborn Confederation and similar places.
- My technique for making names is usually grabbing historical ones and/or taking real names and scramling their phonetics to get names that feel kinda similar. Sometimes it is just vibes based though. I try to avoid that because that way lies issues and poorly-thought-out names.
- All of this is subject to change lol.
