Editing User:Bill/Buckle Your Swash! (section)

==Setting==

As long as I was reimagining the core game balance in favor of dex based characters, I decided I'd try my hand at a totally custom world as well. This wasn't really my first try at this sort of thing. I have a degree in sociology and I've previously attempted to apply my knowledge of how cultures interact with themselves and others to game design before. This is, however, the first time I bothered to keep the notes. I haven't really got a name for the world in which this would be set or even any countries yet, but I can slap something together pretty quickly if called to.

===Villains and Factions===

Heroes are defined by their foes. D&D traditionally organizes itself around tougher and tougher monsters encountered in a dungeon. Sometimes even venturing into the realm of politics. I prefer to flip that around and make politics the core organizational principle and make dungeon crawling an uncommon aspect of the game.

===Political Hierarchies===

As far as anybody knows the divine right to rule was bestowed upon certain men at the beginning of time. Every faith acknowledges this as fact and the divine right manifests itself in the form of a nimbus of light and a healing touch. Some faiths attribute the divine right to the blessing of the royal family’s progenitor and others believe that the royal family is actually descended from their gods. The truth is unremembered and impossible to determine. The divine right normally passes from father to son,though in some cultures it passes from mother to daughter. Some stories are told of it passing to other family members not directly in the line of succession. There are even rumors of black rites that can be used to force the divine right to pass into specific people.

This makes the setting ripe for political intrigue of a most diabolical nature. Only by controlling the person who possess the mandate of heaven can the obedience of the people be assured. The common people, who believe in the righteousness of their gods, will not normally rebel against their divinely appointed rulers, making coups and other direct routes to power very difficult, if not impossible.

Being an adult king or queen is very dangerous after an heir is born. By killing the adult ruler the divine right will pass to the child and whoever can place themselves in the position of regent will shape the empire until they are of age to take over. Possibly longer if they can cultivate the dependency of the child and shield them from other influences.

Keeping all that in mind imagine a court made up of noble families bound by blood to the ruler, sorcerers, scholars, and clerics, all of whom are vying for influence over the regent or ruler. They conspire against each other at every turn attempting to improve their positions and place themselves to become regent when the king, queen, or current regent finally dies. This will be the political situation in any nation with a ruler sanctioned by divine right. In nations that do not, strength of arms, money, and charisma will also play a role.
===Religions===

I don’t think a creation myth is really necessary for a RPG. In fact giving away too much of the ancient history will cause the game to be trite and without nuance in my opinion. I would rather do something more like the real world; full of uncertainty and doubt. To that end regardless of the god or pantheon that a cleric, healer, priest, paladin or other divine spell caster may worship, they will in fact be drawing their power from the aligned power source rather than an actual being. So, a cleric of Yama-ruti may make blood sacrifices to an evil deity, but he’s actually drawing his power from plain old evil. If he claims to be speaking with Yama-ruti then he’s probably just crazy. In other words, there are gods but they don’t normally talk to mortals. Nobody knows why. To gain Exalted feats will generally require that a character meet a god.

Every major geographic area will have its own pantheon, as will every race living in that geographic area. So the total number of religions will equal regions multiplied by races. That’s a lot of faiths to keep track of and the further away from home a character is the greater the difficulty will be on any Knowledge Religion rolls.

Interfaith hostility will arise from conflicting views on the nature of the divine right and the purpose of existence. Holy wars may even occur if the anointed leader of the people starts taking his or her faith too seriously.

Atheism, while potentially a viable option among cultures who have no divinely appointed ruler or priests that are able to heal through divine inspiration, is unlikely. There is simply too much evidence of divine will in the world to make it a widespread belief. 

===Monsters===
After establishing the social backdrop of the game, I began going through the list of monster types from the Monster Manual and deciding how I wanted them to be different; essentially working out how the encounters would be different. For the most part, this was an effort to express my personal preferences in the fantasy genre while further differentiating the setting from stock D&D. Several of my decisions will require CRs to be reevaluated, but the gun rules do that as well. What appears below are my notes on monster types.

'''Aberrations'''

Aberrations are not as uncommon as in normal D&D. Because undead and summoned beings are rarer and weaker, several schools of magic dedicated to altering living creatures for use in battle have taken their place. Apply the Spellwarped (MM3) template to normal creatures, or customize. Few of these warbeasts should be intelligent.

'''Animals'''

Standard.

'''Construct'''

Full constructs are not very common. Those that do exist are mostly remnants of ancient civilizations left to guard hidden tombs and temples. This is due to difficulty associated with summoning Outsiders; golems and other constructs are animated by spirits from the elemental plane of earth. Half golems are somewhat easier to create for reasons unknown. Their mental instability makes them risky to employ, but it has been done. The process of creating half-golems has been codified into a number of manuals that include spells that enhance character’s Will save.

'''Dragons'''

Dragons are extremely rare and reclusive in general. With few exceptions the entire species is over five hundred years old. The territories of a couple dragons are known and recognized as their own nations by neighboring empires.

'''Elementals'''

Extraplanar entities like elementals and outsiders are substantially weakened for unknown reasons. Halve their hit points, natural AC bonus, Strength, and Constitution.

'''Fey'''

The Fey are almost always bound to specific locations or objects. They can not willingly leave and they cannot be forcibly removed from the location or object. Any attempt to do so causes them to instantly teleport (as dimension door CL 10) back to the center of their territory or to their object. Destroying the object or sufficiently damaging the location will kill the Fey. If the Fey are aware of how this situation came to be, they are not telling.

'''Giants'''

Giants are mostly extinct. The rare representative of the species is most likely to be encountered raiding homesteads, farms, and villages for food. The jotunbrud (half-giants) are descended from several subtypes of half-giants. This is occasionally expressed in unusual abilities.

'''Humanoids'''

Standard.

'''Magical Beasts'''

Standard.

'''Monstrous Humanoids'''

Standard.

'''Oozes'''

Standard.

'''Outsiders'''

For an unknown reason, creatures possessing the Outsider type are unable to cross onto the material plane unless summoned by a spellcaster native to the material plane. Additionally, being present on the material plane substantially weakens them. Halve their hit points, natural AC bonus, Strength, and Constitution. Several types of Outsider are actively trying to gain access to the material plane in an effort to destroy whatever barrier prevents them from moving freely on or off it. Others are attempting to dominate or gain control of mortal empires in an effort to become gods or for other more sinister reasons.

'''Plants'''

Standard.

'''Undead'''

Because the divine right may only be held by the living, few powerful undead aspire to greater positions than vizier or regent. Most cultures also practice cremation in an effort to limit potential resources that necromancers could use in a bid for power.

'''Vermin'''

Standard.