I've read a few stories about the Forces of Evil trying to overthrow Heaven. What about a world in which they succeeded?
I want a high mag bias world. Or perhaps it was recently low to medium, and the New Owner raised it. Yeah.
I don't know how theologically sound this is, but I'm going for a kind of individualistic monsters on the loose chaos.
One the one hand, Medieval would be nice, and OTOH, modern....so why not both? We've got rips in space-time and different time areas butted up against each other. Sometimes its accidental, sometimes its a deliberate bit of pot-stirring as when one formerly genocided group is set down next to the descendants of their killers.
The FOE was able to get a vast array of Darkforces together, and arrange a very dangerous surprise attack. He hit Heaven with a comet that had mystical significance for one thing. The Maker and his closest advisers were forced to flee, and are now hiding somewhere in the reality. They have enough power to make hiding not that much of a problem.
The FOE have very loudly announced their victory with Dark Trumpeters appearing in the skies at dawn for fourteen days straight over every major city in the world and blaring out the new ruler's glory and his doctrines.
So far he says 'do what you want except worshipping the Loser.' He has rescinded Authority from governments.
The world was an Alliance world and now its Anarch so there's been a -40 swing in doing Alliance magic. He hasn't powerblocked anything yet.
However, there are a number of monsters being revived, and let go, and tearing off on a rampage. Other monsters are being created.
Evildoers are charging around wildly doing all sorts of crazy things.
There are elements of stability. Most people want the Maker back. And they want to live. People try to hold things together in their communities, and they hope that the Dinosaur/Giant Fire Elemental/Dark Angel with a taste for scientific experiments leaves them alone for one more day and passes by.
One of my arguements was that Satan could not be in charge of the world because we're still alive. This world is like that. The FOE is in charge, and he's letting his troops party, and they are ripping the place to shreds. This dimension has perhaps another year before it disintegrates into sub-quarkial particles.
Now a question: Is the Maker bluffing? Does he actually have the power to take things back at any time, and he's merely testing people? Or is there some special limitation that the FOE took advantage of, and caught him off guard?
The FOE is arguing that he's the rightful ruler now, and so his rules are law. Is that true? Or is he still merely a usurper?
Let me toss some questions and thoughts for clarification.
I'm assuming that "the Maker" is a created deity, something like Gaia in Orc Rising or Bah Tor in Bah Ke'gehn, a being created by The Creator God who was given the power/authority to create and rule a universe.
I'm wondering "where" "heaven" is in this scenario. Is this a battle taking place in a border supernatural realm, or did The Maker make heaven part of all he made? If the latter (which has a lot of advantages) it would be somewhere like Mount Olympus, but that raises the question of whether these are sub-universes (such that people can travel between them but the biases might be different), related universes (such that very few can travel between them but they are connected somewhow), or whether heaven is simply a "geographical" region of the universe, a specific place where the Maker held court.
If the anarch power can change the affiliation of the world, then he has genuinely ceased control somehow. Same on the biases. How he ceased control is more difficult. I can think of a couple possibilities.
One is that this was never a "single ruler" scenario, but a parliamentary sort of rulership. That is, there was a pantheon/panel of deities who were given the authority to rule, and The Maker emerged as the leader. The FOE now has succeeded in some sort of military-political coup, that as a faction within the ruling council it has silenced all opposition to its positions and thus taken control.
The other is that the Maker determined in making this world that he would vest the authority to control the world into some object or space--whoever sits on this throne, or holds this sceptor, or rules on Mount Olympus--and that the leader of FOE has seized that. This has its own nuances, in that it means there cannot be shared power (which might have been one reason for designing it so initially). The ruler may have advisors, but only he can make decisions. Why design it thus? It might be that the Maker thought it would demand too much of his power for the authority to be vested in him directly; it might be that he wanted to be able to step away from that position and leave someone else in control, to have a trusted lieutenant rule the universe while he made personal investigations into how things were going, for example. It might have been a mistake, that he simply said something that vested the power in the chair, and he didn't realize it until after it was accomplished.
Your rips in spacetime pose separate problems, but they might be managed without creating severe temporal anomalies. I think I would create the effect not by having rifts in time but by having sub-universes with distinct biases, particularly in the tech area. If in Avalon they can't make guns and the guns they import are extremely unreliable, but they can create magic swords of great power, they'll use the swords; if in New York fifty miles away those magic swords don't work well but they can build and use a great assault rifle pretty easily, they'll favor that.
Those are my first glance thoughts.
--M. J. Young
I'll make a South Pacific island to be Heaven. This is an integrated part of the local reality although there are those who still don't believe as its not easy to get to the Joyous Island what with the magical aversion spells (3@10 skill with 3@10 attribute to back it up).
The local deity, the Starmaker, is Alliance and kindly intentioned toward Humanity. He is a strong believer in letting people have what they want and them learning from getting what they want. He's also in favor of enjoying life. So, on occasion he does visit the Outer World, and leaves a deputy in the Throne of Heaven which means whoever sits in the Throne rules.
He had one deputy who kept bugging him to have a chance in the Throne, but the poor Being was simply inadequate for the task. However, the Starmaker let him have his shot and went to visit a book store in Me-Ami.
The FOE attacked with a mystical comet and got himself on to the Throne.
Now the Starmaker awaits a sign that his people really do want him back, and are willing to deeply sacrifice for what is right.
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In this Post-Comet world, there are numerous communities trying to hold things together, but day by day bad things happen. Here's a list of twenty...
1-5. Praise the Starmaker, nothing bad happens other than the typical current grind of trying to find food as the trade links have collapsed.
6. A hungry dinosaur(s) drops by. +1
7. A storage facility or other supply runs out (food, water, or medicine...). +2
8. Suicide attempt in public (if this is re-rolled, the second time its a suicide cult.) +1
9. Dark Angel visits and engages in scientific experiment (How are humans affected by Ebola? How long can a human survive if the stones in a ten block area spontaneous heat up to two hundred degrees?) +2
10. Sea Monster attacks (if community has no sea, well now it does.) +1
11. Community Leader dissapears with valuable resource +2
12. Riot +3
13. Fire Elemental wanders by, and burns stuff.
14. Raiders from another time come by and raid +2 (if not sufficiently discouraged, the second time around they will occupy. Otherwise, its merely another raid.)
15. Some type of plague breaks out. +3
16. Contagious madness. People lose their grip, and other people who are already stressed join them. +2
17. Tornado +1
18. Volcano +2 (Its relatively small the first time this is rolled. Yes, a large volcano might kill everone. The +2 assumes most survive.)
19. Flood with land-travelling pirahna. +2
20. Two for the price of one.
Eric, why can't you have a modern medieval setting? Knights jousting on motorcycles. Gladiator combat between slaves and warriors live on CNN. Knights in Iron Man style power armor. Things like that. It might sound kind of corny and not what you're going for, but you gotta admit, it could be interesting.
You certainly could have such a setting. I think I might go for a new world with this in it. Have something happen that pushes tech forward, and social progress backwards...
I note that your d20 list really has only 14 items, all bad, the best thing is nothing happens. I also note that there's nothing that says when the die is rolled against the list. Now, that's certainly a way to do it, but perhaps you might consider converting it to a GE roll, in which those are the (carefully ranked) bad results, maybe something like this:
- 3 Maker visits community and helps the people
- 4 Entire community holds time of prayer and fasting
- 5 Local religious group holds time of prayer and fasting
- 6 Miracle-working preacher arrives in town
- 7 Local charitable group forms to help alleviate suffering
- 8 Local preacher takes to the streets to call people to the Maker
- 9 FOE makes a mistake that strongly alienates his local supporters
- 10 Aid arrives from outside source
- 11 Corrupt official is ousted
- 12 Nothing happens, but hope is growing
- 13 Nothing happens, but there is a faint sense of hope
- 14 Nothing happens
- 15 Nothing happens, but mood is not positive
- 16 Nothing happens, but mood is depressed
- 17 Community Leader disappears with valuable resource +2
- 18 A storage facility or other supply runs out (food, water, or medicine...). +2
- 19 Suicide attempt in public (if this is re-rolled, the second time its a suicide cult.) +1
- 20 Riot +3
- 21 Raiders from another time come by and raid +2 (if not sufficiently discouraged, the second time around they will occupy. Otherwise, its merely another raid.)
- 22 Tornado +1
- 23 A hungry dinosaur(s) drops by. +1
- 24 Sea Monster attacks (if community has no sea, well now it does.) +1
- 25 Some type of plague breaks out. +3
- 26 Fire Elemental wanders by, and burns stuff.
- 27 Contagious madness. People lose their grip, and other people who are already stressed join them. +2
- 28 Flood with land-travelling pirahna. +2
- 29 Volcano +2 (Its relatively small the first time this is rolled. Yes, a large volcano might kill everone. The +2 assumes most survive.)
- 30 Dark Angel visits and engages in scientific experiment (How are humans affected by Ebola? How long can a human survive if the stones in a ten block area spontaneous heat up to two hundred degrees?) +2
This was done rather quickly and arbitrarily; I'm sure that a better order of "best to worst" could be developed, and some of these things could be improved or replaced.
--M. J. Young
True enough about the twenty being fourteen. My being lazy and realizing after the fact that not every day should be horrible, some should be merely bad.
The GE roll or D20 chart is to be rolled once a day.
The +X is the counter toward Community/World Destruction. Give the Community a rating, say 15. When it counts up from zero, the place disintegrates in some fashion. Perhaps the next monster that comes provokes everyone to run screaming and become refugees. Or perhaps civil order collapses entirely and its every man for himself.
With this, if the Maker shows, then it would be -3 which would help the community stay together just a bit longer.
"History has lessons to teach us about first encounters between civilizations. As a rule, the less-advanced civilization is either exterminated or enslaved."
From The Day the earth Stood Still. I thought it might be appropriate to what you're going after here Eric.
(Doing Therapy)