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Lots of things to talk about here
Geography
My thoughts: don't define any geography at this point! Keep things as vague as possible and let the randomly-generated settlements slowly fill in the blanks of the world. I feel that a concrete geography should take shape as we stitch together different contributions. I feel that the most important rule we should embrace here is that this world doesn't have a unifying theme or structure, it is stitched together from many disparate ideas and concepts.
I'd also like to see the world broken up into regions. As I posted in the previous thread, the world could have six regions: North, South, East, West, Central, and Peripheral. No description of these regions would be given, and when generating your settlement you'd roll 1d6 to determine which region it was in. The region would take shape as more people added settlements and described what features were present.
Settlement Governments and Qualities
I'd like to reiterate my earlier request for research aid in locating newly published Settlement Governments, Qualities, and Disadvantages. These do not appear to be collected anywhere, and exist in a smattering of appendix entries and campaign setting books. I've already found many in the Iron Gods AP and in Distant Shores, but AP's and campaign setting books is where my collection is sparsest so my ability to research this is fairly limited. I'd like to have at least 30 qualities before putting together a random table to roll on. Any help in this research would be appreciated.
Settlement Generation - Size
I just want to float the following table for generating settlement size:
Roll 1d10
1 = Village
2-3 = Small Town
4-5 = Large Town
6-7 = Small City
8-9 = Large City
10 = Metropolis
This keeps Thorps and Hamlets (which wouldn't even be listed on a map anyways) out of the random generation process, and weights small villages and large metropoli lower than the medium-sized cities. What do you guys think of that table?
To be clear, the random placement would apply only to the broad region you generate on your 1d6 roll. Two settlements in the "North" region could still be far apart, and the contributor could choose (after seeing all their rolls) how to write their idea and fit it into the forming world. The idea is that we don't lay the framework at the outset, we let the contributors figure out how the pieces fit and the framework will form as they do so.
With that said, "wildly disparate cultures" is probably unavoidable with dozens of contributors adding settlements with randomly-generated qualities to the world. We should embrace that and figure out how to use it, rather than resist it.
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Point being if you have at least some really broad area 'themes' then the random settlements can still be random, but the writeups can be tinged so that there is at least some regional cultural cohesion. Even if its as general as "This area is vaguely eastern european." this area is vaguely Mongolian, etcetera.
Our disagreement is less over that premise, and more how it should be addressed. You are advocating to define these things at the outset, I am advocating to let it come together organically as people add their randomly generated cultures.
From my perspective, I feel the lack of a guiding over-arching theme (other than what random chance may bestow) is the very defining aspect of this project, and I'd like to keep it as much as possible. Heck, in Golarion if you want to go on a crusade to fight a demonic incursion you could easily end up passing through a land filled with techno-sorcerery. I sincerely doubt we'll end up any more disparate than that.
Also, the D20PFSRD page on settlements is woefully incomplete. It has content from the GameMastery guide and one third party product, but doesn't have other Paizo-published settlement qualities or governments. I need help finding those since there doesn't seem to be any online source that has them listed.
Settlement toolMight that help? In the pulldown menus it mentions a bunch of choices, and it will also do calculations and produce a settlement statblock after you enter the choices in.
It's a great tool, but unfortunately the options it lists are homebrewed. I'd like to do for settlement qualities exactly what we did for deity domains: gather together all the Paizo-published options, and put 'em on a random table.
That's the problem I'm having; the Paizo-published options don't appear to have been collected anywhere so I need help researching them all. I've already gone through all my books, but unfortunately the campaign setting line and adventure paths (which is where these things are to be found) is where my collection is sparsest.
My main thing is if some regions have a general theme, or even if you sort of know some of the main themes around there can be slight cohesiveness while still keeping randomness primary.
My position is that we shouldn't be deciding that theme at the outset, and should instead let it develop on its own as people add settlements.
Currently, based on the settlement government and quality rules I've collected, these are the tentative random tables. I've decided not to include "Mythic Oligarchy" as a government form since it's left rather vague as to what that actually means in Distant Shores, and it would be rather problematic if 1 in 6 villages is ruled by a mythic character...
Governments:
Roll 1d5 (or 1d6 reroll 6's)
1 = Autocracy
2 = Council
3 = Magical
4 = Overlord
5 = Secret Syndicate
Qualities
Based on settlement size, roll for 1-6 of these (rerolling duplicates).
1d23 (or 1d100/4 reroll 24's and 25's)
1 = Acadameic
2 = Holy Site
3 = Insular
4 = Magically Attuned
5 = Notorious
6 = Pious
7 = Prosperous
8 = Racially Intolerant (pick a race)
9 = Rumormongering Citizens
10 = Strategic Location
11 = Superstitious
12 = Tourist Attraction
13 = Mythic Sanctum
14 = Darkvision
15 = Militarized
16 = Resource Surplus (pick a commodity)
17 = Wealth Disparity
18 = Restrictive
19 = Supportive
20 = Adventuring Site
21 = Rule of Might
22 = Artifact Gatherer (pick one: magical, technological, psychic)
23 = Timid Citizens
I generalized the "Silver Surplus" quality from Radripal in Distant Shores to just be a resource surplus, and the contributor can pick which resource best fits their concept. Similary, I've generalized the "Technological Gatherer" from Starfall in Iron Gods to potentially apply to items of magical or psychic origin instead of just technological. I feel that 30 qualities is the minimum to have on this table before we proceed, so I'd really appreciate if people could crack open any books they have and look for additional settlement qualities. I'm thinking disadvantages should be purely optional, but if we do roll for them it should only be a small chance of getting one.
The sources for these qualities come from the following four places:
GameMastery Guide
Distant Shores
Iron Gods: Fires of Creation
Iron Gods: Palace of Fallen Stars
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I made a city with the current generation method, and had a good time with it.
Also, while the 1/6 villages being ruled by a mythic totally makes sense from both a balance and versimillitude perspective, I'm sad to see it go as it does seem vaguely appropriate to this world. :)
As for actually contributing to the search, I can look through RotRl in a week or so, and the first three issues of Hell's Rebels.
I made a city with the current generation method, and had a good time with it.
My concern is that we could get a lot more repetition with only 23 qualities. A metropolis gets 6 qualities total, which means with the current list of 23 any given metropolis has a quarter of them. I'd like to at least get it on par with deity domains. Surely some of you guys must own some AP's or campaign setting books that I don't and can find a few more settlement qualities?
Also, while the 1/6 villages being ruled by a mythic totally makes sense from both a balance and versimillitude perspective, I'm sad to see it go as it does seem vaguely appropriate to this world. :)
I didn't get rid of the "Mythic Sanctum" quality, so it's still there... just not a 1 in 6 chance.
If there is any randomization of settlement size it needs to account for increasing rarity of larger and larger cities.
On the other hand, bigger settlements are more likely to be noteworthy than smaller ones. What are peoples' thoughts on this; how would you like to see it weighted?
I played around with a couple different tables for generating settlement size, as well as the question of whether Villages should be excluded like Hamlets and Thorps. Feedback on which of these tables is preferable would be appreciated:
Roll 1d10
1 = Village
2-3 = Small Town
4-5 = Large Town
6-7 = Small City
8-9 = Large City
10 = Metropolis
This is basically the "balanced" option that makes most settlement sizes equally-likely, with only the biggest and smallest options being weighted up or down respectively.
Roll 1d20
1-7 = Small Town
8-13 = Large Town
14-17 = Small City
18-19 = Large City
20 = Metropolis
This is a more heavily-weighted options to keep the biggest settlements rare. Villages are eliminated from this weighting since towns are already weighted very heavily here.
Roll 1d20
1-6 = Small Town
7-11 = Large Town
12-15 = Small City
16-18 = Large City
19-20 = Metropolis
A more forgiving weighting if we want to see more big settlements. Again, no room for villages in this one.
Roll 1d20
1-5 = Village
6-10 = Small Town
11-14 = Large Town
15-17 = Small City
18-19 = Large City
20 = Metropolis
Basically the "I love villages" table, and is the most extreme weighting I think we can do reasonably. This will make larger settlements relatively uncommon, and I personally don't like this table as a result.
1-2 = Village
3-6 = Small Town
7-11 = Large Town
12-16 = Small City
17-19 = Large City
20 = Metropolis
The "I like medium-sized settlements" table. Keeps villages present, metropoli rare, and heavily biases towards large towns or small cities.
Thoughts? Other ideas for tables?
Dotting in~!
Oh, and, by the way, we might want to raid this thread a little for "unique" monster ideas and designs, based off the randomized ones. It's a way of adding unique fluff and lore to the setting, while still functioning relatively cleanly, mechanically speaking.
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Good news: I found another settlement quality when I stumbled across a book I forgot I owned!
Broad-Minded
The citizens are open, friendly, and tolerant, and react positively towards visitors. (Lore +1; Society +1)
Source: Reign of Winter Snows of Summer
Bad news: I've literally gone through every single Paizo-published book I own looking for these. Twice. I'm going to need other people to help me out in this from here on.
Based on what I've seen in the books I do own, I'd estimate there are in the range of 10-30 more settlement qualities that Paizo has published in various books that I don't own. The more qualities we have, the better this will be! So please help out, take a few minutes to skim through the books you own and see if new rules options for settlements slipped in under the radar.
While I'm a bit hesitant to proceed without having a few more settlement qualities, I think it will be alright to get started now and keep adding more as the research comes in.
I took some time this evening to write a document detailing how this project will work and the process of creating a random deity. Please let me know any feedback; I'll probably get a thread started Friday morning if everyone is okay with this.
The only thing I'm unsure about is governments. Should we weight the rolls? Overlord, Autocracy, and Council should probably be a bit more common than Magical and Secret Syndicate. What do you guys think?
I would also probably weight at least slightly against 'huge metropolis' on city size- there are only so many of those around.
I might also be using the random PC background generator to create some npcs for any city of mine.
I've actually weighted very heavily against metropoli. You only get to do a metropolis on a natural 20. I decided to remove villages entirely, since settlements with less than 200 people aren't very notable.
That sounds like a fine way of doing NPC's ;-)
For the idea of world building. I think it is a good idea for each 'region' to have a loose 'theme', and then people can pick a region for their randomly rolled community and try to fit it to the theme.
For example, for my one god, it would great to have a region that is 'perpetually war-torn'. Then everyone who rolls a community could decide to plop it in the war torn region (or alternatively have a random roll that throws it into the war-torn region) and fit the other random rolls into the theme.
I don't know how many other 'region qualities' we would want.
We need a map though and maybe use Civ like 'terrain types' and people can decide where to throw their setting.
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Terrain_(Civ5)
Does anyone have Civ or a game like that that has good world building tools? Hell you can get pretty much any Civ game to randomly generate a world based on set parameters and we can just use that at least as a base. God Bless Computer Games.
Edit: After reading the thread I realize that at least some of my ideas are completely contradicting Dasrak lol :). I'm good with any approach really.
For the idea of world building. I think it is a good idea for each 'region' to have a loose 'theme', and then people can pick a region for their randomly rolled community and try to fit it to the theme.
RDM42 and I already touched on this a bit. My position is that the theme of each region should be determined by the settlements that are written for it. A region isn't war-torn because we say it is, it's war-torn because the settlements written for it said so. Also, the regions would be fairly large so there could be war-torn areas and more peaceful areas. As for picking regions... I feel that if we aren't going to enforce randomly-generated regions then there's no point to having them at all. Just like we can get deities of War, Madness, and Healing, we can get peaceful settlements that somehow end up surrounded by war and disaster. Think of it this way: by taking away your choice, I'm forcing you to use your creativity to reconcile apparent contradictions. This lead to unique deity designs that we might never had thought of otherwise, and I feel it can do the same thing for settlements.
I also feel it's very important to avoid any one voice having too much influence over the broad direction of the setting as a whole. That goes double for me given the leadership role I've assumed here.
We need a map though and maybe use Civ like 'terrain types' and people can decide where to throw their setting.
Again, I feel that having a map at this stage is premature. I'd love to map this world eventually, but again I feel the map should be built to service the randomly-generated settlements and not the other way around.
Edit: After reading the thread I realize that at least some of my ideas are completely contradicting Dasrak lol :). I'm good with any approach really.
Hey, I'm not a dictator. Everything I say is up for debate.
Speaking of which, in case anyone skimmed it and missed it, I have a draft document for the random settlement creation rules. Feedback is encouraged. Unless there's an objection, I'll create the thread tomorrow. Still 50/50 on whether I'm going to weight governments.
It would make sense that Magical and Secret Society should be less numerous than the others?
The Council government type is the one that could be flavored as Democratic right?
Can you please put up a link to the god Google doc?
It would make sense that Magical and Secret Society should be less numerous than the others?
I agree, the question is how much. Maybe 1d12
1-3 = Autocracy4-7 = Council
8-10 = Overlord
11 = Magical
12 = Secret Syndicate
Does that sound about right?
The Council government type is the one that could be flavored as Democratic right?
Council and Autocracy are the two that can potentially be democratic. However, there is no requirement for them to be democratic. An autocracy could be an elected mayor or a governor appointed by the king. Same goes for councils; could be an elected body, or it could be a private club that decides if and when to admit a new member.
While we're on the subject of democracy, it's worth mentioning that in historical democracies voting was almost always restricted to landowners only. The idea of "one person, one vote" is actually quite modern. That's not to say you can't do that, just keep in mind if you go that route you're writing a settlement that is extremely liberal and egalitarian by the standards of a medieval fantasy world.
Are we going for standard races? Maybe looking at the various PC races (even featured and uncommon) would help flesh things out a bit?
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Might you have a 'dominant race' randomizer. - maybe based on the reincarnation table or something?
I considered that, but I wasn't sure how to do it fairly. I don't want to preclude uncommon races, and the weighting of whatever table is used will functionally determine the racial composition of the world. I definitely support people who want to pick a dominant race randomly, but I'm hesitant to mandate it.
I'm going to sleep on this, and if there are no objections this will go live tomorrow morning. I can always update the rules document if we decide something should change, and I certainly hope to find more settlement qualities to add to it.
Lots of things to talk about here
Geography
My thoughts: don't define any geography at this point! Keep things as vague as possible and let the randomly-generated settlements slowly fill in the blanks of the world. I feel that a concrete geography should take shape as we stitch together different contributions. I feel that the most important rule we should embrace here is that this world doesn't have a unifying theme or structure, it is stitched together from many disparate ideas and concepts.I'd also like to see the world broken up into regions. As I posted in the previous thread, the world could have six regions: North, South, East, West, Central, and Peripheral. No description of these regions would be given, and when generating your settlement you'd roll 1d6 to determine which region it was in. The region would take shape as more people added settlements and described what features were present.
Settlement Governments and Qualities
I'd like to reiterate my earlier request for research aid in locating newly published Settlement Governments, Qualities, and Disadvantages. These do not appear to be collected anywhere, and exist in a smattering of appendix entries and campaign setting books. I've already found many in the Iron Gods AP and in Distant Shores, but AP's and campaign setting books is where my collection is sparsest so my ability to research this is fairly limited. I'd like to have at least 30 qualities before putting together a random table to roll on. Any help in this research would be appreciated.Settlement Generation - Size
I just want to float the following table for generating settlement size:
Roll 1d10
1 = Village
2-3 = Small Town
4-5 = Large Town
6-7 = Small City
8-9 = Large City
10 = MetropolisThis keeps Thorps and Hamlets (which wouldn't even be listed on a map anyways) out of the random generation process, and weights small villages...
This has been successfully several times. My favorite is still World of Creation. If you repost this as the beginning of a topic, it can be a good "How to guide". Here, the OP is just going to keep reporting you till the topic is strangled by it's own limits.
I once took the map of England, set the game in a medieval version of that where all the legends were true. I used some of the city names as towns. I placed modules on the map. I called it Mage Earth.
Well, could have it mainly by category. Human, other core race, unusual race, etcetera, and 'just pick one of these'
On the other hand 'just pick' is liable to end up dominated by the outrè and strange.
Have it predominate race.
1-9 normal core races,10 exotic character race table(inclusing winged elves, cat people, ect.)
11-19 typical monster races, and
20 exotic monster races(including Lamia athiest state, fugitive town including Driders, goblins who read, ect)
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For government type:
I agree, the question is how much. Maybe 1d121-3 = Autocracy
4-7 = Council
8-10 = Overlord
11 = Magical
12 = Secret Syndicate
Do you really want Council to be the most likely outcome? I would either give Autocracy the one roll bump (so 1-4 Autocracy, 5-7 Council... etc.) Or
a roll of d20
1 - 6 = Autocracy
7 - 12 = Council
13 - 18 = Overlord
19 = Magical
20 = Secret Syndicate
Makes Magical and Secret Syndicate less likely but ensures all the others have the same likelihood of occurring. Also the person who gets a natural 20 for settlement size AND for government type gets to go crazy with a huge metropolis run by a secret syndicate!
Well, could have it mainly by category. Human, other core race, unusual race, etcetera, and 'just pick one of these'
On the other hand 'just pick' is liable to end up dominated by the outrè and strange.
Have it predominate race.
1-9 normal core races,
10 exotic character race table(inclusing winged elves, cat people, ect.)
11-19 typical monster races, and
20 exotic monster races(including Lamia athiest state, fugitive town including Driders, goblins who read, ect)
I would say make normal core races for more likely. Shouldn't say.. 75% of the world be from core races? (roll 1 -15 on a d20)
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Lots of great feedback!
Well, could have it mainly by category. Human, other core race, unusual race, etcetera, and 'just pick one of these'
I like this approach. It still has the tricky part of having to decide on a table, but I agree it seems most reasonable.
How does the following table sound:
Roll 1d20
1-10 = Human
11-16 = Other Core or Featured Race of your choice
17-19 = Your choice of any Paizo-published race without racial hit dice
20 = Your choice of any Paizo-published race
20 exotic monster races(including Lamia athiest state, fugitive town including Driders, goblins who read, ect)
One thing I will note is that this isn't Golarion, so we're not necessarily bound to Golarion lore.
Do you really want Council to be the most likely outcome? I would either give Autocracy the one roll bump (so 1-4 Autocracy, 5-7 Council... etc.) Or
Yeah, that was a mistake on my part; I meant to make Overlord the most common, but by the time I noticed my error it was too late to edit the post. The table I want to go with is:
Roll 1d12
1-3 = Autocracy (25%)
4-6 = Council (25%)
7-10 = Overlord (33.3%)
11 = Magical (8.3%)
12 = Secret Syndicate (8.3%)
That pretty close to what you've posted.
Anyways, keep the feedback coming. I'll hold off on posting the main thread until there's general consensus on these last few issues.
Lots of great feedback!
Well, could have it mainly by category. Human, other core race, unusual race, etcetera, and 'just pick one of these'I like this approach. It still has the tricky part of having to decide on a table, but I agree it seems most reasonable.
How does the following table sound:
Roll 1d20
1-10 = Human
11-16 = Other Core or Featured Race of your choice
17-19 = Your choice of any Paizo-published race without racial hit dice
20 = Your choice of any Paizo-published race20 exotic monster races(including Lamia athiest state, fugitive town including Driders, goblins who read, ect)One thing I will note is that this isn't Golarion, so we're not necessarily bound to Golarion lore.
That's good for the central gaming area. As the adventurers strike out into the wilderness they are more likely to run into crazy stuff like goblin villages, or underground dwarven cities, ect.
Sounds good Dasrak.
For Central vs non central areas. Maybe we can add a 'Fringe' Region where the race table would be weighed differently. Then leave it up to people where the Fringe exactly is. That's probably the limit of how complex it should be but it's a good wrinkle.
Keep in mind most of the really odd stuff that comes up could just be assigned to the fringer areas.
Indeed; the individual regions can be as big or as small as we want them to be, so there can absolutely be remote settlements in any of them.
I did have a fringe region in my first draft (I called it "peripheral", implying it's at the edges of the world) but I kinda felt it was one too many. We can always change this stuff later if we feel it's appropriate to do so, and new regions are actually the easiest to add in so I'd rather err on the low side.