LetsBuild5e:Questions
Currently voting
History and Mythology
Which of the following propositions do you support or oppose?
1: The hero of Myth III was the child of the hero of Myth II. III follows II.
2: The hero of Myth II was the child of the hero of Myth III. II follows III.
5: The hero of Myth VII is the same as the hero of whichever of Myth II and Myth III comes later.
6: Myth IX occurs as an interlude in Myth VII, before trickster-god joins the quest, and stars the same hero.
How long-settled is the region?
(Question from Kelly Pedersen)
1: It's a wild frontier, being inhabited for the very first time. Adventures in the area are heavily weighted towards exploration and dealing with wilderness threats.
1b: As above, except that it's a frontier being re-settled after a very long period of being uninhabited. Adventures like the above, but with a salting of "exploring ancient ruins" and "figuring out why the region wasn't settled before."
2: The region has been settled for a few generations, but the frontier is still close by. Adventures can involve exploration and wilderness threats, but they also feature the growth and development of society and the interactions between communities.
3: The region was settled many generations ago, and is far from any frontier. Adventures usually involve the interactions between well-established communities, with feuds, old grudges, long-standing alliances, and known quantities featuring heavily.
4: The region is a cradle of civilization of the overall area, with settlement stretching back to the beginning. Adventures can involve interactions between established communities, but these relationships are so stable at this point that the outcomes of conflicts is often pre-ordained. Many adventures will instead involve exploring various relics of civilization - the tombs, fallen temples, or burned palaces of those who have gone before.
Geography
A possible region map is under development. More details soon.
Politics and Society
How numerous are the PC races? 19 points to distribute across these races:
Humans Orcs Dwarves Elves Gnomes Halflings Dragonborn
Miscellaneous
What is the campaign's starting level?
(Question from Metal Fatigue)
A: 1: I like the full zero-to-hero experience, and don't mind how squishy 5e chars can be at first level
B: 3: I like zero-to-hero but let's start with our archetypes picked out and slightly less squishy
C: 6: It's the next triangular number after 1 and 3, and also a good midrange level
D: Something higher
For each language out of Common, Dwarvish, Orcish, Old Imperial, and Elvish, what is the naming convention?
1: Personal names only
2: Personal name plus family name
3: Personal name plus clan name
4: Personal name, clan name, and nickname
5: Personal name plus patronymic/matronymic
6: Personal name plus chosen name, changed at marriage
7: Personal name plus family name, changed at marriage or adoption to show fealty
8: A series of acquired personal names representing achievements
9: Something else
What forms of religious expression are prominent in the starting region?
(Select as many as you like.)
1: Pantheistic worship of the gods
2: Individual worship of the gods
3: Propitiation of domestic spirits
4: Oracular utterances by holy hermits
5: Politicised religious groups promoting new scriptures
6: Politicised religious groups protecting themselves against perceived threats
7: Philosophical movements teaching courses of moral or spiritual action
8: Ritualists maintaining ancient customs for obscure reasons
9: Something else
Open for discussion
History and Mythology
Which of the following stories should be added to the timeline?
- The great conqueror's empire broke up when the conqueror died; the conqueror's lovers divided it acrimoniously.
- The great conqueror's empire broke up within a decade or so of the conqueror's death; the conqueror's generals went to war for it.
- The great conqueror's empire lasted another generation; the conqueror's grandchildren partitioned it amicably.
- The mage-guilds began to be a political force when several of them gained sanctuary in the elf-dominated north-realm during the half-orc conquest.
- At one time, a major nation from the northeast overran the area; but the conquest was halted for reasons of internal politics, and never resumed.
- Under the rule of the mages, the starting nation took a province from a neighbour in a war that was provoked by a forged courier message.
- The starting nation once lost a province to a neighbour in a war that started with a bandit attack for which no-one has ever taken responsibility.
- The starting nation was one of the first to throw off the regime which succeeded the half-orc empire; the current rebels hark back to this previous success.
- The half-orc conquest was brutal, but the conqueror went on to abolish most forms of slavery.
- A senior clerical position currently operates in exile due to a hostile government in its former home. (Maybe their base in exile is in the starting nation; or perhaps the holy place is here, and the rule of the mages is what drove the clerics into exile?)
- A province was once completely obliterated by a vengeful army; its former population became permanent exiles, and all its cities are ruined to this day.
- The steppe-riders were never fully part of the half-orc empire, but they served as mercenary shock troops for it.
- The development of trade with the insect-folk has led to the establishment of great earthworks; this has made siege tactics harder as time has gone on.
- There hasn't been a stable centralised currency since the days of the conqueror; hoards of old coins get bought up really quickly and melted down to make debased local currency.
Further proposals are welcome!
Geography
What's the nearest large city like?
(Question by Unka Josh)
1: A military base left behind from a great war, its civil officers all bearing honorary military ranks, its mayor called a "General" despite having no military command, its fashions based around imitating mail and plate with cloth.
2: A floating city formed out of a vast armada all chained together, with different neighborhoods formed by ships of a style of a given nation.
3: A city built out over the Tallest Tree in the World. Living in its shadow is a slum of exiles from the city; refuse from the city above rains down on them, and they live in perpetual shadow.
4: The Bonehunter City, built next to a chasm that's full of the stony bones of long-dead animals no one has seen before. Scholars and necromancers are constantly digging more of these bones, or paying workers to do the digging for them... or paying adventurers to steal prize specimens from each other.
Politics and Society
Which PC race is unusually unpopular, and why?
1: Dwarves. It's generally held that the dwarves left the current dark side swiftly and in good order without helping the other nations; dwarves are often blamed for the resulting hardship and death.
2: Dragonborn. Dragonborn are new to the area in any significant numbers, and tend to live apart from the warm-blooded species. They're also popularly associated with the tyrannical elder-dragon-god - according to legend, the dragonborn were already on the light side when the warm-blooded elder-race tried to tunnel through.
3: Elves. The elves had a great empire on the current dark side when it was last the light side. They've never let anyone forget it, and recently an irredentist movement has emerged, arguing that elves should rise up and take land and resources on this side in preparation for a glorious reconquest of their ancient empire.
Which two PC races or subraces are rivals, and why?
1: Humans and elves. Hard-line elves view humans as a danger to their dwindling numbers, both stealing their land and parenting half-elves in place of 'true' elves. Some humans view elves as aloof and uncaring towards shorter-lived peoples.
2: Halfings and wood elves. Halflings keep calling for forests to be cleared to make way for ranching, smallholding, transhumance and logging. Elves want the forests retained for fruit-growing and hunting.
3: Dark elves and high elves. The dark elves were a caste within elven society that specialised in various subtle arts. At the rise of the half-orc conqueror, many of them defected, and have remained allied to mainly orcish and human realms ever since. The high elves have never forgiven them.
4: Halflings and gnomes. Halfling culture has long valued practicality and simple pleasures; gnomes favour baroque complexity and exotic novelty.
5: Dwarves and gnomes. The two races maintain virtually identical versions of the Great Pit legend, but each ends with a claim that earth-god specially favoured one race over the other.
Is this much political and philosophical strife enough?
Miscellaneous
How do the various druid circles, paladin oaths, monk orders and barbarian paths fit in?
Coming soon
History and Mythology
Geography
How many other nations immediately border the starting nation?
Politics and Society
How much ideological difference is there on this world?
(Question from Yadal)
1: Almost none: Everybody has the same basic ideas of how things should be done, or everything is very clearly Good v.s Evil. This would be like a typical feudal state or fantasy setting, but limits opportunities.
2: Live and Let Live: There are a lot of well known differences in the world, and plenty of anatagonism and debate but a fundamental unity of enough assumptions (except for maybe the cliched Evil) to keep things working. A good comparison would be the Left v.s Right political differences in a typical modern Nation State.
3: Major differences: This would involve two or more ideologies with differences comparable to Capitalism and Communism, or the French Revolution v.s traditionalist conservatives. Basic assumptions are shared (like the equality of women in one case, or the existence of fundamentally different nationalities in the other) but ideologies are nonetheless opposed.
4: Radical: Ideological difference level of two or more ideologies is more like United States v.s ISIS, with comprehension difficulties accordingly. Not necessarily factions which are ISIS evil, but ones which share almost no basic assumptions.
