I never named mine, so I'm good with whatever vis-a-vis the name.
Hey, where was that post you made where you described each city, with a little bit of information and real life culture themed to each city state?
It might be the first? I've linked a couple of wikis in the Campaign Info that have extensive treatments of this kind of detail. There's also a gazette in the conversion document. Let me know if you need help finding info about something.
I'll take another look.
Raam is clearly intended to be based on Arabia/Persia, as we already noted based on the sorcerer-queen's title of Grand Vizier. I'm going to steal some stuff from Al-Qadim like Assassin Mountain if we end up going there.
I was looking through some of my Dark Sun stuff, and I think it would be helpful to summarize the historical analogues I see for the different city-states. I'm basing this off of canon, but am also going to expand it
Tyr -- Phoenician city states of the Levant. This will include being enterprising traders, as well as some customs based on Carthaginian precedents -- most notably an ancient elemental fire ritual for burying infants who die before their age of maturity.
Urik -- Early Sumerian city states. The Sumerians, in contradistinction to the Semitic Assyrians, were a southern Mesopotamian people who had their own cultural complex. From this I will take the concept of Emesal, the women's dialect, which Hammanu uses with his all female Templars. There will also be diving rituals based on Sumerian precedents.
Gulg -- The Africa of Nubia and Mansa Musa's Mali (Timbuktu). I'll have to think some more about how this will work. Probably also some voodoo/Yoruba influences.
Nibenay -- Chinese/Manchu. I'm sort of inspired by the forbidden city concept, and Shom of House Shom sounds Chinese, as well as the monasteries in the city. Probably some Japanese influence as well.
Draj -- Aztec and Mayan.
Raam -- Persanified Mughal court laid over northern Indian substratum. There are two populations -- the indigenous Indian-inspired, caste-based city dwellers that used to be ruled by a race of ogres known as Yaksas. These were genocided by Alabach-Re, whose armies were composed of a horse warrior culture from the eastern steppes known as the Temujin. She installed herself as the avatar of Badna, one of the deities of the original population of Raam, and also uses this group for administration. The descendants of the mounted warriors of the Temujin kurultai are the muscle that keep the citizens in line.
Kalidnay -- South Indian/Gupta. The sorcerer-queen Kalid-ma possessed an order of assassins like the Thugges.
Balic -- Classical Greece and Rome.
I think I also have a away to link Araska and Ja'far's stories -- the elemental that imbued her with power might have been a refugee from the early days of the order to which Ja'far belongs. Let me know guys if you want to explore that as a potential connection.
The idea I currently have for Kuro, Gaanon, Araska, and Memnon's village is that it is (was) known as Amlitkayek. It was one of four villages that together formed a small confederation, each venerating one of the primal elements under the guise of a great drake. Amlitkayek was the village with the shrine dedicated to Ymeri the Queen of the Fires. The other four were destroyed in various calamities. The Pterrans of Cloudbreather's clutch were drawn to the town because they associate Druthaga the Earth Drake with their conception of the Earth Mother. The town was ruled by a council which included the elemental clerics of fire that tended the eternal flame of Ymeri's shrine, as well as warriors who had proven themselves in battle.
Just checking -- I'm waiting for Tkk-Tkk, Araska, Ja'far, Shizuka, Memnon, to potentially walk outside along with Rokan, Kuro, Gaanon, and Malkaer (we're going to assume per player request that we bot him and he moves with the crowd).
I just want to make sure I'm not deciding something for everyone else, but also we're not held up b/c people are waiting for me to post...
Derp Derp, I wrote this response a couple hours ago and forgot to click submit.
I need to be up in 4 hours for work, I'll make sure to post during the day when I have a break.
No worries, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't holding anything up.
Just so people can visualize this -- I posted an overview map, but it might help for me to describe it. Destiny's Chariot looks like a big platform with wheels -- basically a huge tank without a gun. There are ramps on the side and within that lead upwards. There is a flat platform on top that has the palace, which is basically a courtyard surrounded by rooms. The 'observation deck' is basically a raised platform in the courtyard, like a gallows, from which the riders can see out over wastes. Because they're already a couple of stories up, and this is even higher, they can see quite a far ways.
I'm going to wait for everyone to finish posting to move the scene along, and use this weekend to develop some details of Amlitkayek, and the secret society of which Ja'far is a member, as well as some more details about Raam and Kalidnay.
As to answer to your pm you sent me, yeah I have no problem collabing with you. We'll take more to hammer out our ideas.
I’m back! Could I get a quick summary of what I missed so I can jump in as I catch up?
Slavathras told a story about an ancient thri-kreen ally of Rajaat, was interrupted by Garavel inviting everyone to view the ruins of Kalidnay
Sorry I didn't post over the weekend. Usually I'm able to make one or two posts but this weekend was killer overtime in my company. I'm good to go with the shared backstory.
Okay, thanks for the responses everyone, I'm going to work on a little synopsis of Almitkayek for all the town natives. Let's work on why Kuro doesn't want to be recognized -- this is a very interesting plot twist!
I have a map of the Kalidnay ruins posted, but I'll update it with some more features later -- there's an enormous palace complex near the lake and some huge pits I need to add.
Araska, Ja'far, and Malkaer, we're still waiting on your Perception checks if you decide you're outside on the viewing platform with the rest of the group.
I'm still working on village details, I'll try to get that posted in a day or so.
and I'm back now.
Just a heads up, I'm starting a new job tomorrow. One which has quite an opportunity for overtime, so my posting may suffer somewhat. Bot me as needed if it does.
Congrats on the new job!
B/c of the way we're doing xp, we can either bot you or have your character go off on a solo quest for a while, whichever you prefer.
A solo quest is probably not necessary. I didn't mean to suggest I might be gone for weeks at a time or anything.
Malkaer, we still await thy post!
Sorry! Studying for bar exam and a loving (but needy) family dragged me away. Will get my head back in the game.
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No worries, just checking in, I'm enjoying the game a lot and hope everyone else is having fun too. Things are about to get even more interesting.
I came up with some awesome ideas for Amlitkayek, I'll try to write something up tonight.
Just by way of encouragement, I want to see three more posts from some friends who haven't posted as much to get us to the 4th page, and then I'm going to throw in another delicious plot twist/complication...
Just to throw this out for discussion -- I wonder how people would feel about using the consolidated and grouped skills options from Unchained -- or perhaps just using that for knowledge. I'm realizing in practice some of the distinctions between different kinds of knowledge are sort of arbitrary, and difficult to adjudicate. RAW some of the knowledge categories seem rather useless.
If we did this, when I level you up (which is coming soon before you enter the ruins of Kaliday), we'd reassign the skills.
I have no problem with it in principle. Because psionics is 3P and not accounted for in Unchained, there is the matter of what to do with the psionics skills (Knowledge (psionics) and Autohypnosis).
Option 1: fold them into spellcraft (because spellcraft is used for both spellcasting and psionics)
Option 2: new skill "Psionics" (but what to do about spellcraft? include psionics-related uses here instead?)
Other options?
In this system I'm thinking of, all knowledge is folded into one skill, so that would just include psionics.
That works too!
The basic idea is to consolidate 35 skills to 12:
Most knowledge basically becomes part of the 'Society' skill.
There's an additional option to gather these 12 skills into a couple of groups so that you don't have to subdivide your skill points so much. Look at the bottom of this page:
I like those rules. So many skills which are never taken in pathfinder.
Also I’ll have a post incoming soon. :)
I'm iffy on the consolidation, too many 4e flashbacks.
My issue is what someone's supposed to do with some of these checks -- like what is a natural 20 for geography for a historical location?
That you uncover tons of information about the exact coordinates of the rock formations in the area?
How would that even be useful? The only time is if you're lost and don't have a map.
Even revealing names of locations starts to get into history -- so is it just lots of information about the height and composition of the nearby mountains? How is that different from nature or knowledge (local)? Or knowledge (nature)?
I've researched a couple of these questions and the answers seem either arbitrary and/or confirm my suspicion that some of the knowledge skills have no in-game use 99% of the time.
I'm iffy on the consolidation, too many 4e flashbacks.
That's one of the reasons I like consolidation.
When has anyone ever put skill points into escape artist?
Personally I like 5e skills. Enough that you can’t have them all. Few enough that your character can be good at what he should be good at.
^^
When I play small or dex characters.
I was never a fan of skill consolidation, I don't even like pathfinders skills to be honest. I'm a diehard fan of 3.5 system including skill synergies.
Can we do a compromise by consolidating some of the skills?
The main thing I want to consolidate is the knowledge skills.
I'm really finding the existing set up with the many useless and several others overlapping or unclear in their referent arbitrary and unhelpful for this campaign.
Just for the one example -- what is the purpose of (geography) for an historical location like Bodach vs. (history) or (local) or (dungeon (since it's a ruin?)). I feel like I'm having to just hand wave a lot of the potential distinctions to give some information. How would you segregate history from arcana for a city famous for arcana? Same for psionics? I feel like I'm going to have to basically DM as if the skills are consolidated even if we preserve the RAW concept that there are different knowledge skills for some of these cases.
For ease of use how about we allow GM consolidation for plot purposes?
Whatever you decide is fine by me. I see the issue with the knowledge skills. I think if you look at which ones are listed as “background” skills in unchained, Paizo is basically admitting this about those skills.
Personally I think background skills are enough to make use of the less commonly used knowledges. I'm also not really fond of changing rules once we've already started playing(even if we are early in the game). So if this a vote, mine is 'Jo's. It is up to Sebecloki though and ill live with it if we do consolidate.
I think the easiest thing to do then is to slightly reassign what each skill covers based on what snippet of a book you get.
Geography gets a place entry, like what I gave Malkaer -- so that's the 'Bodach' entry in the campaign setting.
Local can only be used on a site you are next to, but covers the same information.
History would be the timeline chapter from the campaign setting, plus maybe a snippet about the place you're think of -- it is focused on an event instead of a place.
Nature gets a creature entry from a denizen of the place, plus a geography snippet.
Arcana gets a relevant magic item entry,
Religion a relevant deity entry, and so forth.
So there will be basically overlap, but a difference in emphasis. This is slightly different from RAW, but will be consistent, is everyone amenable to that?
I'm going to go back and add some material to a couple of replies in that case to be consistent.
Do any of my knowledge checks turn up anything?
Oh, I know we don't know their motivation for sure. I was speculating.
Same.
Who dropped out?
Araska
It happens. We still have enough :)
Agreed, although if we wanted more players. Weren't there a couple of people in the beginning that made characters bit never submitted? Why not take from that reserve pool?
No, I there were a lot of people who never finished characters at all -- I took everyone who made a character.