Building the Cosmology

I've started wok on the Cosmology of Dahara. In the 'Duke's War' campaign, there were, of course, the gods the characters knew about and were exposed to, but during the campaign they were also exposed to references to other gods not part of the dominant pantheon... something I had not developed at that time.

But other characters were exposed to even more gods. Gregg's character had numerous dream sequences (e-mails) with a mysterious woman, who hung out with a bunch of other folks inside a cabin in the wilderness. While it never was implicitly stated, it was obvious these were also gods of some sort, but what was their purpose?

Finally, there were the elves in the group, Kurik and Earithraldor. It was well known that elves practiced ancestor worship, and did not worship any gods. Why was that? I knew going into the campaign the reasons, but the characters were not in the campaign long enough to learn that reason.

Then came LaRue's character.

Because of the nature of his character (he was part druid), he required something different to be done. I'm not intimately familiar with druids, but I know their power and ability to unbalance a campaign, so this required me to bring into focus more about the nature of the world of Dahara and how it interacted with the deities. In Rick's case, I gave him membership in some mysterious "order" and had to leave it at that (with apologies to LaRue - one of the weaker points of that campaign IMO. Not his character, but my treatment of it). Further, using e-mails with LaRue, I ended up developing a bit more of this divine nature of the world forcing me now to tie it all together.

Which is where I am today. As I sat down I thought this was going to be tough, but it has turned out to not be nearly as difficult as I thought. In fact, as I'm writing what actually happened, it strikes me as weird how well it is all fitting together. Of course, maintaining the mystery of what really went on is going to require me to write a Player's Version of the events. This too, will be fun. When that's done, I'll publish it here.

Hey There...

It's been far too long since an update, but I have some fairly decent excuses this time. I've had some serious issues occur in Real Life, most notably with the passing of my mother. On top of that, I am in November, and when you work in TV, that of course means sweeps, and that is consuming a lot of time and attention right now.

That said, I have been doing some mental editing and with the help of listening to the Dragon's Landing Podcast I've been given some good direction as to how I should really proceed. If you haven't listened to this podcast, I highly recommend it. Very good RPG-related stuff. They are just mp3 files, so you can listen in any manner you choose.

So, expect some serious updates post-November, unless something else wacky happens to me.

Welcome Back.

Never one to do anything in any kind of order, I'm currently taking a look at Prestige Classes that will show up in the campaign. I'm into Complete Warrior at the moment, and I must admit, I've never really looked through this book thoroughly.

As I do now, I see that:
a) There are a boatload of Prestige Classes
b) There is now way I could allow all of them for PCs

But this does bring up an interesting point. There are some PrsCls that would make excellent opponents, but not so great character classes. So it's going to take some work there to lay out what is actually available.

In other developments, I've narrowed down the books for the campaign to be the PHB, DMG, and the various "Complete" books.

I've really got to tackle the cosmology next though. That was truly one of the parts of the first campaign that I knew what I wanted, but since it wasn't sketched out well enough, it didn't quite work as well as hoped.

I should try and set some internal schedule for developing this world though. It may be easier now than before, as this is likely to be my only gaming outlet for some time.

The first Dahara Campaign, The Duke's War, ended in June of 2005. In the months leading up to it, there were numerous questions as to what I was going to do after it was over. After much thinking, I decided that I did want to return to this world, but wanted to do it right. Make it a more complete world than what it was.

Don't get me wrong, Dahara: The Duke's War was the most successful campaign I'd ever run, and it was the only one that actually had a beginning and an end. I really enjoyed it, and felt that the world itself had legs to go in several different directions. The enjoyment from my players made me think so as well.

But like I said, I wanted to do it right. So that meant re-examining the entire world and rebuilding it from the ground up.

And that is what brings me to this blog. I thought it might be kind of fun to make the process somewhat transparent so that my process could be documented and commented on. Knowing that others have done world-building for RPGs before, they could offer numerous suggestions for things I've never thought of.

Now that I've spent enough time away from the world, I'm ready to return. Hopefully by building it up again, it'll be ready for another campaign within a year.

So, join me as we take a look into the land of Dahara.