I'm back!
Sounds good. I was thinking of what came before wizards. Like fire before we locked it away in stoves, the first users of magic were channeling forces they neither understood or controlled. That's why wizards and other casters have mind engrams built in their minds to contain just the triggers for the spells.It's rather obvious what came before wizards, sorcerers, and then adepts. At first magic was only the provenance of lucky mutants, until others found a way to replicate what sorcerers did innately.
That and the identical nature of sorcerers, magus, and wizard spells, tends to apply a Platonic interpretation of magic. One that says that the spells of the arcane have always existed in fixed forms, awaiting discovery, and that the creation of a new spell is nothing more than the discovery of a unknown Form.
That's not what we were going for, but I can completely see how you could come to that view point given what information we've revealed and how the Pathfinder spellcasting system works.
Our original idea was to have a free flowing magic system. Casters could cast spells on the fly, and the difficulty of the spell would be based off how many effects the caster wanted to include in it. We only ever sketched it out, and never got workable rules down for it. The problem we decided was that it conflicted with the rules set we were using, which was d20 and 3.5 at the time, and made a lot of unnecessary work for both us, but the players. Having to learn a completely new system, complete with spell mechanics, classes, and magic items. What we are doing now with it still stretches things a little, but not so much that it isn't workable.
Using the spells as they are in the core rules makes the most sense. It helps get the players into the world a little faster, and means we mostly have to work around the flavor of the spells, and not the actual mechanics (mostly). I believe that having a system to come up with new spells (as far as research, or gaining access to new ones) is still an idea we would like to do, but it would be optional, not the core.
The primary theme is that magic can and is affected by emotion. It's how we explain the flavor of supernatural abilities, and some extraordinary abilities in Desylinn.
So I know it took awhile but we finally changed the background on the blog.
I know we did churches already but there is a slight difference between the Gods themselves and the mortal churches that worship them.
Next part of the Winding Road Sunder Zool Swiftblade. (He might be my favorite.)
Myth Monday! Creation of the Dwarves
And it's another Myth Monday
And I spaced putting up the Next Chapter of "The Winding Road".
Next Chapter of the Winding Road: Careful
We return to Malleck's perspective and finally meet the beautiful Liara, the beloved tyrant of the Merchant's Guild.
Our take on Snakefolk. And one I'm a little proud of honestly.
And it's the next Chapter! Homecoming Staring our wonderfully crazy wizard.. Lazeron Pi.
Next Chapter of the Winding Road: Zool!
Doesn't everybody secretly desire a bunch of anarchistic singing frogs?
Next Winding Road
Next Winding Road! Dab Koom's escape from the Brute Squad prison.
Took a week off, but we're back! And have the long awaited Dwarven Overview.
The Long Awaited Human Overview!
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You really can't be "pre-Good and Evil" unless you're pre-sentient. Good and Evil come into play when you have beings that can make choices beyond that of pre-programmed instinct. It's what people miss most often of the Eden metaphor. The line of Genesis which reads after Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. "the scales fell from their eyes and they perceived their nakedness". Adam and Eve are more defined by this transition, than by anything else in the Genesis story. I highly recommend the book "Broca's Brain" by Carl Sagan, for those who wish to pursue this topic further.
Good and Evil are a function of being self-aware. Of being able to make choices beyond that of immediate survival, or the propogation of your gene pattern. Good and evil reflect that many of the things that animals do without concious volition, are acts that would give us pause at the very least.
Bah, that's a very black and white view of the world. Some entities exist on a blue and orange morality system.
And quit trying to shove your little god into a game where he'd just be one among dozens, if not hundreds.
Kthulhu: I've never actually seen that blue and orange. It made for interesting reading.
Also The Next Winding Road!!
A New Open Call. We want to see your best stuff. We want to see what you can do. Show us! Wow us!
Far and away my favorite chapter of the "Winding Road" so far. Just beautiful stuff.
Something new from our good friend GmSolSpiral.
The Kobolds. They're shiny. But not really.
Here's something I'm personally very proud of. It's not something I originally intended to fully flesh out but I'm really glad I did.
Ladies and Gentlemen... I present to you:
The First War!
Introducing our newest writer! He does fine work, and we're looking forward to see what he does with what we've given him.
The City of Tari Dar. The Sacred city of the lizardwomen.
We've begun our line of Iconics starting with
The next Winding Road! Kings Ransom
The Sewer King may be my new favorite villain.
The next Iconic.
Clerics are a rare breed in this world. But that makes those few with Faith strong enough to wield the magic much more impressive individuals.
The next chapter of the Winding Road.
No post today. But Happy Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day!
Our Iconic Fighter! One of mt favorite burly lizardwoman.
Next Winding Road! Dab punches things. And it makes me happy.
Our Elemental Alignment System
Here's some of the stuff we're working on. Any thoughts anyone?
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It looks like you've included both positive and negative personality traits in each of the elemental alignments, which I definitely approve of. In my experience, most things not on a Good/Evil axis tend to benefit from at least some form of Positive/Negative aspect.
To polish it up a little, you might want to look at each of the traits and see how they'd match up on a morality axis. For example, what sorts of things would you expect to see with a "Wind/Manipulative" character who was basically good, neutral, or evil. If players will be picking from the lists, then the options should be able to fit a variety of character types.
How you go from there is up to you. Personally, I'd suggest having every trait be applicable to any segment of morality or have one unambiguously good and one unambiguously evil trait along with four neutral ones on each element. Either option is workable, but if you've got a lot of options, then it might be helpful for the players to have a bit of backbone within the system itself.
Of course, a truly creative player can make just about anything work in any morality, so I don't know that any of this is perfect... but I hope it helps! ^^