Small World

Small World

"They say there is more."

All of them looked at him in wonder. Gilbert, Sullivan, Bruno and Frog. They always did. In a cave as small as theirs any news is big news. There would follow days without news. Well, not considering miss Blake's gossip that is.

"But how could there be more? Why haven't they found it? Why haven't they discovered it yet?". Sullivan wanted to believe that there was more. But he also believed that if there would be more, it would have been found by now.

Frog sighed. "The Surface. The rumored realm of light. It must be so great up there!", he mused. You could see him stare into his own imagination, trying to imagine the fabled sun in it's radiant light, or the mysterious moon, with it's army of stars, ruling that fabled thing called night. "Ah the surface. How great it would be."

"And how can we trust you?", Bruno piped in. "We don't know if what you say is true. There could well be nothing, or just more dirt or maybe something else completely! Like ... like Plogh*!"

"Then their seems only one solution", Gilbert said. All eyes were now on him. "We need to go ourselves and find out."

* A bit of explanation would be required for our readers. They would not know the Plogh. Plogh are creatures that live in constant tension with our friends, the Klem. Plogh constantly steal Klem goods and prey on their weak, stealing their joy and happieness.

Basically this world revolves around mystery, wonder and belief. It keeps things fuzzy and unknown. Is their really a surface? What is the sun? ... Of course in the Multiverse any of the possibillities are true somewhere.

I think I got a bit tired of seeing almost only political based worlds and worlds based on "earth". I tried to create a world that resolves more on emotion, feeling, ... And less on description and knowledge. It's symbolic. And as it is stated here, it can be used for highlighting about any worldview allegorically.

Despite the lack of detail I am highly attracted to this world, mostly because it's built up like a story. I might make a solo-adventure from it. Pick and choose. So that I too, with the characters, can discover this strange world, and see whether or not there is a surface.

We have a lot of variety in the archives. Perhaps two hundred Multiverser worlds have been made, if not more. That said, IMHO, Multiverser NEEDS a LOT more.

I'd play to expectations but twist them. The player is going to think, yeah, surface, sun...a reflection on the wonder of ordinary things....cool enough. Instead, have the Sun be a giant telepathic ball of burning coal (with a smoke plume), and the surface is something equally weird and fantastic. The birds are photosynthetic and the plants sing or something, and the mountains are...the nests of giant rocs who bury their eggs for a century in the dirt thus creating a small mountain.

I admit that most worlds I run are "earth-like" in some way; but then, you need a point of familiarity. The two that are most different are NagaWorld and Bah Ke'gehn. I have never run NagaWorld on a forum or at a convention, because I still regard it as the appropriate starting point for new players and I don't want its secrets spilled to the world; even in the novels, all the verser characters mention having started in NagaWorld, but none of them tell more than a few hints about what they found there. I had a couple players in Bah Ke'gehn here on the forum a few years back, but you don't stay in the same world forever.

Also, it depends on what you mean by "like earth".

• The parakeet valley is "like earth" in that
  • there are trees, crops, mountains, lakes, streams and rivers, fish, and other familiar animals;
  • there were once cities constructed of stone, although these are now in ruin;
  • the day/night cycle is about twenty-four hours.
  But it's also unlike earth in that
  • its moon got too close to the atmosphere and broke up, creating a ring;
  • several times a week meteorites rain down on the surface;
  • there are several very dangerous creatures very unlike anything on Earth;
  • there are no mammals--the highest life forms are avian;
  • those intelligent avians who still survive have developed potent psionic abilities to protect their otherwise primitive lifestyle
• Tristan's Labyrinth might or might not be like earth. The player character cannot escape the endless maze of caverns, and the creatures with which he does battle are all created by the maze builders. However, it really plays better live than on a forum.
• Mary Piper is earth-like in that its people are human and its technologies (whether in the sailing milieu or the spacefaring one) are familiar, but they are in a universe in which Earth does not exist.
• The Dancing Princess, too, is in a world populated by humans but not really Earth, a fairytale kingdom that never existed here.

The more elements of a scenario are already familiar, the easier it is to run--and that's significant in a forum game, where communications are already significantly hampered. Thus futures, mythical and real pasts, and alternate moderns make good worlds, while the fantastic surreal landscapes of places like NagaWorld and Bah Ke'gehn are exceptional.

But being earth-like doesn't mean it's like earth, either. In Musical World, if you want to travel somewhere, you have to board your transport and sing a song, because the trip will last as long as the song, so while it looks exactly like earth, it's a very unreal reality in some ways. That's the way many earth-like worlds are: unreal in some ways. The world you're in right now, Orc Rising, has humans working on a ranch in a primitive pre-gunpowder world, and much of what you see is the mundane--yet every day you are dealing with orcs, and to some degree with goods that were manufactured by dwarfs, and sometimes with products from the elves. You are in an earth-like world, but you I think are acutely aware of ways in which it is not earth.

Incidentally, the notion of everyone living under ground and questioning whether there actually is a surface was done in The Industrial Complex, but that is conceptualized as a future earth, and the population is human. Maybe I should send you there next....

--M. J. Young

Heh, yeah, as I was thinking about it yesterday at home and typing up my thoughts about what this world should be (after I posted on here) I got a bit more distinct in what I want. I realized that Orc Rising is actually a bit like I was going after, and that it can be done in practically any world. The concept is that it is small scale a village or community that is on it's own and little, so that fairly soon you know it all and it would be familiar.

Now, it being familiar tends for it not giving new and interresting impulses, hence the desire for adventure rises and people will go out, wanting to explore and discover. However, those are usually few, since most people are happy in their routines. That's why I called it 'Small World'. What you know is small and the rest is virtually unknown.

As to Eric's reply. It can be, thus far, it's up to you. The quartet from the intro could be entirely wrong! Nothing is knows, nothing is proven.

This is what I came up with as an explanation yesterday:

The allegorical world of Small World is a world where the emphasis is on personal contact, wonder, surprise, mystery. The known world is small, as the title suggests, yet there is a question as to whether there is more. And that question is left open. The game, the game-master and player, will decide upon that. More then just this it is also or can be allegorical. The factor of belief can be adressed, or the factor of freedom vs. conservatism or maybe something else. The smallness combined with the added mystery creates an atmosphere where a lot of emotional play can be found. It could also try to learn us something. Do we want to know what's out there, or are we afraid of the unknown. Maybe we don't believe there is anything outside what we know. It could handle trust and suspicion. There are a lot of possibilities. I'd like it if it came across slightly like the books and stories of Dr. Suess. Wonky and sometimes completely bereft of logic (or more akin to child-logic), but on an emotional level it usually all seems to fit. (More or less)

I will start out by providing what is known. That is the little village. This village will be worked out while there will be little hints or suggestions to things that lay outside of it. Later on. Maybe. They need to have some mystery and unknown atmosphere, even for the game-master. It will hopefully be filled in by imagination.

The village

This is where we start. The home of Gilbert, Sullivan, Bruno and Frog. It is a complex of caves. It's underground (but then, that would only be so if there is something as above ground, which is unknown. But just to make it clear, it's in the ground. It's surrounded by rock and earth. As far as known.) It has everything a village would have.

Central Square
The main cavern of our village is a big hall. In this hall there is a clearing around which some buildings are huddled. We will look into them later. This clearing is the centre of the village, and its hub of activity. The market is held here, as well as special feasts. The mayor brings his special chair outside to hear the people and solve their problems. Well ... he at least tries. It's the place where people generally hang out.

Market
Every morning until noon the villagers put up their booths here and sell their goods. Don't ask me how they measure time, and why they use such terms as morning and noon in their cave. I simply don't know. They just do. The products are not quite as they are with us. Their are no cows underground, you know, and thus the cheese has to come from something different. It comes from house-rats. Their are few vegetables, and those that are there, are vastly different from ours. It's mostly some kind of moss. There is also a big amount of fungi to get. There is lizard meat, snail-juice (which, surprisingly enough, tastes like strawberry!) and some other stuff which you wouldn't know. I knw I don't anyway. Take for example this Bullgrox. It's round with spikes, purple and gold-specled and it seems that you've got to smash it against a ledge so as to break open the stony shell and drink the milky white liquid that comes out. There are more such things, but I will not bore you with that.

Very good. You started addressing my first questions immediately--questions about food and drink in this underground world. I'd still be interested in whether there was a well, or spring, or some kind of river or stream, and whether there are "fields" in adjacent caves where food is grown or, conversely, whether the locals forage over many miles to bring back their valuable produce. ("Village" suggests that there is something here that everyone needs and can share in common. This in turn suggests that they are not foraging, because hunter/gatherers are the most mobile of cultures, followed by herdsmen. Thus the things that spring to mind as most likely providing the reason for the village to exist are:

• Agriculture: they cultivate fields or vines or something in the immediate area to get maximum yield.
• Water: good water sources are scarce, so whether this is a river or a well or something else, it is a focal point. If water is plentiful, springing up or flowing everywhere, this would not be a sufficient reason to gather here.
• Power: if there is any kind of manufacturing/production, even so little as gristmills to grind grain, a source of power to drive the machines would become a centralizing point.
• Light: I thought of this when I was going to say I knew how many things there were, because ultimately if we're in an underground complex either we can see in the dark or we have a light source; if we have light, we have to explain it, and the presence of photoluminescent chemicals in one particular area (whether biological or mineral) is easier to explain than the same phenomenon everywhere.
• Trade: In particular, if this location is positioned such that others would pass through it, that would make it a viable spot for a settlement. Thus if the moss grows mostly in the north and the bullgrox in the south and the food the rats eat in the east, and all the tunnels converge here, the village would exist supported by the traveling tradesmen. This, though, is inconsistent with your intended feeling of isolation, as such a village would be more cosmopolitan, getting information about the rest of the world from the travelers.
• Defense: If there are dangerous creatures or enemy persons, people would gather like herds for mutual protection. Obviously if there are enemies of a sentient sort, that again suggests that there is information about "out there"--unless the village was formed in a time when there were such enemies who no longer exist, and these are the descendants of the original villagers who simply have never considered moving away.

That should give you something to consider--more than I was going to write, but hopefully it's useful.

--M. J. Young

It's very good, thank you!
I thaught about several of those but have not yet made something concrete. Light could be darkvision or some other source but I haven't defined it yet. I know that when you're writing up a world you need to define it all, but that sort of gets the mystery part down, and the wonder. I'd like it to have a child-logic to it, such as there is light, naturally there is light. Where does it come from ... I dunno, it's just there!

But I will provide some more, since it would also make kids think and reason and learn them to make more use of action-reaction or action-result, or in this case: origin, result. There is light (result), so there needs to be an origin, a place where it comes from, a scource (or sources). It will probably have something to do with the farming of glowworms.

MJ's talked about chaotic worlds which end up being all the same. Of course, you have a guiding principle...child logic which could provide some sort of skeleton. I think you have to have some sort of skeleton.

It doesn't have to be obvious or easily understood, but you have to have something.

One solution I've considered to your world is potentially three step.

1. Make a list of all the various questions in the world. Like 'where does light come from?"
2. As the player's ask, the GM rolls (unless he wants to know beforehand and describe it as he goes) on a chart, and you get the answer.
3. Make a bunch of charts.

What's the Surface?
1. Normal beautiful temperate zone wilderness.
2. Telepathic coal burning suns.
3. Surface? There is no surface.
4. Its an irradiated wasteland populated by cannibalistic mutants.

And so on...

What's the light source?
1. They all have dark vision.
2. There's this giant crystal which gives off light (that's the answer used in Menzobarrazan, city of the Drow)
3. Everyone glows.
4. Photoluminescent minerals.

And so on. Make about ten answers to each question.

My preference is to have those answers in advance--particularly for the obvious questions, because they're going to come up fast.

For example, where does the light originate? Eric has offered four answers, and Nikolaj one; but in each case, those answers will have to be known before the player character hits the ground--because we're talking about how this world is perceived by a human from earth who is transported into it.

Even if you're writing it as fiction, there is a degree to which this is true, although by telling it through the eyes of an indig you can to some degree delay the answers--but not entirely.

If they farm glowworms, then the light is going to be in scattered patches that slowly move, as presumably the glowworms will graze over the walls; it might also mean a speckled appearance to the light. Light will be relatively faint, but fairly evenly spread.

If they all have some kind of dark vision, then the verser does not and is blind from the first moment. He never wonders where the light originates, because there is no light. He wonders how the indigs manage to function in the dark. You also have to raise the question of whether the verser's light source (as he is almost certain to devise one somehow) interferes with the indigs' vision at all.

If there is a single light source, it is going to be the bright focus of attention, probably the bright object that is too bright to view directly; there are going to be sharp stark shadows streaming out from all solid objects, and probably very dark darkness within those shadows.

If everyone glows, then the verser is going to notice immediately that everyone glows, that the light is around each individual; he's also going to stand out as the one who does not glow.

If there are photoluminescent minierals, it must be determined whether they are spread evenly, focused in a central location, or found in patches. This would be like the glowworms, but that the patches probably would be more solid and they would certainly be more stationary.

So the problem is that some answers to these questions would be so obvious that the verser in the midst of the situation would never wonder them, because he would see them immediately, and would in fact base at least some of his actions on those observations--turning on a light if it's completely dark, collecting a few glowworms for a lantern if they're the source, or finding a way to disguise his lack of illumination if everyone else glows, for example.

For this reason, the referee has to know the answer before the player character hits the ground, because those answers will shape the way he describes the world to the player as they attempt to agree on the content of the shared imagined space.

--M. J. Young

I agree. I'm working on it :) Slowly things are shaping up. So far I've shaped up the market and re-written some of the Central Square stuff. I also edited out spelling mistakes from the intro.

All this new info raises new questions which will slowly form the village and characters. I will dedicate some work to the Klem and the Plogh. It all looks way nicer in the Word Document, because I can format more then here. But here goes. (next post)

Small World

"They say there is more."

All of them looked at him in wonder. Gilbert, Sullivan, Bruno and Frog. They always did. In a cave as small as theirs any news is big news. There would follow days without news. Well, not considering miss Blake's gossip as news that is.

"But how could there be more? Why haven't they found it? Why haven't they discovered it yet?” Sullivan wanted to believe that there was more. But he also believed that if there would be more, it would have been found by now.

Frog sighed. "The Surface. The rumoured realm of light. It must be so great up there!” he mused. You could see him stare into his own imagination, trying to imagine the fabled sun in it's radiant light, or the mysterious moon, with its army of stars, ruling that fabled thing called night. "Ah the surface. How great it would be."

"And how can we trust you?” Bruno piped in. "We don't know if what you say is true. There could well be nothing, or just more dirt or maybe something else completely! Like ... like Plogh*!"

"Then there seems to be only one solution", Gilbert said. All eyes were now on him. "We need to go ourselves and find out."

* A bit of explanation would be required for our readers. They would not know the Plogh. Plogh are creatures that live in constant tension with our friends, the Klem. Plogh constantly steal Klem goods and prey on their weak, stealing their joy and happiness.

•

Introduction

The allegorical world of Small World is a world where the emphasis is on personal contact, wonder, surprise and mystery. The known world is small, as the title suggests, yet there is a question as to whether there is more. And that question is left open. The game, the game-master and -player, will decide upon that. More then just this it is also or can be allegorical. The factor of belief can be addressed, or the factor of freedom vs. conservatism or maybe something else. The smallness combined with the added mystery creates an atmosphere where a lot of emotional play can be found. It could also try to teach us something. Do we want to know what's out there, or are we afraid of the unknown. Maybe we don't believe there is anything outside what we know. It could handle trust and suspicion. There are a lot of possibilities. I'd like it if it came across slightly like the books and stories of Dr. Seuss. Wonky and sometimes completely bereft of logic (or more akin to child-logic), but on an emotional level it usually all seems to fit. (More or less)

I will start out by providing what is known. That is the little village. This village will be worked out while there will be little hints or suggestions to things that lay outside of it. Later on. Maybe. They need to have some mystery and unknown atmosphere, even for the game-master. It will hopefully be filled in by imagination.

•

The village

This is where we start. The home of Gilbert, Sullivan, Bruno and Frog. It is a complex of caves. It's underground (but then, that would only be so if there were something as above ground, which is unknown. But just to make it clear, it's in the ground. It's surrounded by rock and earth. As far as known.) It has everything a village would have.

Central Square
The main cavern of our village is a big hall. In this hall there is a clearing around which some buildings are huddled. We will look into them later. This clearing is the centre of the village, and its hub of activity. The market is held here, as well as special feasts. The mayor brings his special chair outside to hear the people and solve their problems. Well ... he at least tries. It's the place where people generally hang out. It has a fountain. And high up there, on the most central and conveniently biggest stalactite, the great clock is mounted.

Market
Every morning until noon the villagers put up their booths here and sell their goods on Central Square. Don't ask me how they measure time, and why they use such terms as morning and noon in their cave. It’s not yet time to talk about that. We will discuss the Great Clock later on. All products are local. Should a trader happen by, it would cause quite a commotion! It must have been fifty years since the last trader passed by.

The products are not quite as they are with us. There are no cows underground, you know, and thus the cheese has to come from something different. It comes from house-rats. There are few vegetables, and those that are there, are vastly different from ours. It's mostly some kind of moss. There is also a big amount of fungi to get. There is lizard meat, snail-juice (which, surprisingly enough, tastes like strawberry!) and some other stuff that you wouldn't know. I know I don't anyway. Take for example this Bullgrox. It's round with spikes, purple and gold-speckled and it seems that you've got to smash it against a ledge so as to break open the stony shell and drink the milky white liquid that comes out. There are more such things, but I will not bore you with that.

Depending on whether or not the Klem have need for clothing there will also be clothing sold here. Either way, I think that even if they don’t need to wear clothing, they would still do so. The reasons are different. Some, Mrs. Blake for example, will do it out of the desire to be more beautiful than the others (or at least more beautiful than their neighbours, the Flopsicle family), others want to stand out. Those are usually the young ones (though grandpa Miff is also good at it!). Some will on the other hand want to wear clothing to ‘fit it’, to not look different. The reasons are manifold.

Clothing is available. Some clothes are made from the finest spider silk, making beautiful, yet sticky clothing. Others are woven from the fur that’s shaven from dust bunnies. There are other ways of manufacturing clothing, but they tend to be more boring. Like mushrooms. Mr. Grubbles, the mushroom farmer, knows all about it. To him, the mushroom is good for everything. Yes, everything. He almost married one!

There are other craftsmen on the market too, providing stone cups and cutlery, glassworks... And, once every month (do they have months too? I don’t know yet, maybe they do, but this is for our time-sense) the inventor comes along to display some of his oddities. People tolerate him; some even buy stuff from him. He provides the village with some mechanical beneficial mechanical contraptions. Some of these are the Great Clock and the Waterworks, near the lake. (A lake? There is a lake now? Apparently so!)

Shops and other Oddities
Surrounding the Marketplace are several buildings, some of them shops, others just houses and again some others are more remarkable buildings. Some of the more remarkable ones are listed below.

“Mister Jugg’s Illuminated Glassworks”, that is what one of them says on the window. It’s painted on masterfully. The letters twirl and twist and curl and spring. The gold paint sparkles, suggesting that there might be some real gold in there. But every Klem knows that it just means that they sell light bulbs. And that, indeed, is the most commonly sold article there. But contrary to what you an me call a light bulb, these light bulbs are glass shapes that have been filled with fireflies. And behind the counter there is a door that leads to a storage room. In that storage room there are two doors. Behind those doors there are tunnels that lead to two very needed places. One leads to the glass blowers’ workplace and the other to the firefly farm.

But they don’t have just one kind of light bulb. They have small ones and big ones, wide bulbs and small bulbs, straight bulbs and curved bulbs. There are ball, cube and pyramid shaped bulbs. There are bulbs for the ceiling (mainly chandeliers) and there are bulbs that stand on the floor or on your bedside cupboard. There are also bulbs you can carry, such as lanterns. There are bright bulbs and dim bulbs. There might be more, but these are the main variety of light bulbs in the shop.

---------------

And this solves the problem of light. It's about what I had in mind from the beginning, but things need to mature and ripen in my head. More is to follow. Like the Inventor's place, but that is a little distance from the village (and thus somewhat more unknown and mysterious. Everything that's worth or needed to be described will hopefully one day be described. There'll probably be a ratfarm somewhere, for the cheese manufacturing. But for now, I'm working on 'Cental Square'.

The Klem

If I would bet, I would bet that you imagined Gilbert, Sullivan, Bruno and Frog were some human or humanlike creatures. That is what we expect. And in a way they are, but in another way they are not. They do not look like humans, except for maybe their faces, but they do act like humans. As some would say it, they are the same on the ‘inside’. They have human character. Let’s leave it to the writer of the adventure what that might mean. We would get some different creatures, depending on how some people imagine human nature is. But let us talk about how they look. About their ‘outsides’.

Imagine a ringworm standing 4,7 foot tall, with two legs and six arms (all symmetric to the point of equal division amongst left and right at almost the same height). Imagine that completely covered in fur, except for the face, hands and feet. The face is as that of a human, but distorted in cartoon-like, caricature-like faces. They have big ears, noses, mouths and eyes, or very small ones, or combinations of that. Their faces are also very flexible. It’s not as if there is a separate head though, the body just begins (or ends, depending how you look at it) in a face. There is no real neck.

They are about 4,7 feet tall when they sit up. They will then sit up on their hind legs, a bit of their body’s end resting on the ground and their six hands free to handle whatever it would need to handle (or just to relax). This is their normal pose. They sit like this and talk like this, embroider like this, hammer like this, paint china like this, etc, etc.

But they can, if excited (in all ways, positive, negative or neutral) extend their bodies up to 7 feet or above. If they move though, they go on their hands and feet, using only their two front hands and arms to manipulate things. It’s amazing. This way they can fit through any hole that’s as small as their head. Their body, much like the body of the ringworm, is very flexible. It seems to be able to bend any way. And in fact ... they can!

Can they be cut in half and regrow?

So instead of lighting lamps, refilling oil, etc., they have to feed the fireflies, and/or tap the glass to get them awake?

I'm reading "4,7 feet" to mean four feet seven inches, which I would write 4'7" (unless I had to use it inside a string of code). Is that correct? Also, that's rather precise; most would say "about four and a half feet" (which is 4'6"), so I'm thinking you did a conversion from a metric value to get that number--but I don't think that's exactly one and a half meters, which is closer to 4'10.5" (in my head and rounded).

For psionic purposes, are you thinking that these creatures have "human" minds or "humanoid" minds? The difference is that with human minds they are exactly like humans internally and are treated as humans for psionic skills, whereas for humanoid minds there are minor differences which make it a bit harder for humans to understand them.

It is interesting to note that in human perception the "beautiful" face is the one that most closely approximates all the averages--eyes neither too close nor too far apart, nose neither too large nor too small, face neither too thin nor too wide, neither too square nor too round, and so on. Your description suggests that these creatures tend toward the extremes. Does this mean that the averages are unlikely combinations, and if so is it because the creatures are attracted by the extremes such that wide faces marry wide faces to produce even wider faces, and so on? The genetics of it aren't consequential, but I'm trying to grasp whether there is some reason why the average face does not exist.

You've described eight appendages, two of which function always as feet and two always as hands, and the middle four as both hands and feet. I am wondering whether those limbs are compromised, neither as good for manipulation as hands (for which the two good hands are used as primaries and the lesser ones for assistance--e.g., I use the lower hands to hold the work while the upper ones do the detailing) nor as good for standing and walking as feet. I'm also wondering whether they have a different name (whether it's something simple to remember such as fands, hoot/heet, foonds/feends, hants, or something entirely different, maybe a word drawn from zoological anatomy or something invented from whole cloth.

Obviously the hips/shoulders tuck into the body as needed.

Those are my initial thoughts.

--M. J. Young

To Scott: Yes, exactly! And they might even have a union, if the GM decides that is needed or usefull or just plain fun in play. I'm working on it :)

To MJ:

About the sizes, yeah, four and a half.

About their minds, it being able to wield six arms in concert might mean that their brain is more partitioned than the average humanoid. Consequently, their musical instruments can be very complex!

About the facial features: I want to go for a more caricature face. The normal human face would be weird to them I think. That besides, looking at cartoons it is just an exaggeration of certain parts of the face that make it a caricature. You can even caricaturize beauty. That would mean thick red lips, big eyes and lashes and probably a very thin nose. Looking at some people today who do that to 'look beautiful' I'd say that their norm differates from our norm. The gap between beauty (as advertised by media) and ... I like to call it character, in a face is bigger. Most of all, the intent is that this makes more for a cartoon storybook kind of world but also, with everything, that it might provoke discussion, and questions such as the one you just made. What is beauty, what is norm?

There might be clans with certain features. The bignoses and the longchins or something like that. It can be, that would be a choice any GM can make I think. I wouldn't set it to stone. If there are, some sort of Romeo and Juliette story could be used to drop a character in while it could also take on a more religious thing (like not marrying out of tribe). Tribes however, are suggesting that they are big. They can be, and then racism and other things can be the theme of your game, but I mostly see them as a relatively small, yet fully self sufficient sociëty.

About the foot-hands, good idea! They might call them like that. Foot-hands, fands in short. I like that. It adds to the quirkiness. However I thought them to be able to use all six hands equally well, however four of them will undoubtebly have more callus on them.

Good thoughts. Thank you!

2nd post

The entire thing about "Mister Jugg's Illuminated Glassworks" is ready at last.

“Mister Jugg’s Illuminated Glassworks”, that is what one of them says on the window. It’s painted on masterfully. The letters twirl and twist and curl and spring. The gold paint sparkles, suggesting that there might be some real gold in there. But every Klem knows that it just means that they sell light bulbs. And that, indeed, is the most commonly sold article there. But contrary to what you and me call a light bulb, these light bulbs are glass shapes that have been filled with fireflies. And behind the counter there is a door that leads to a storage room. In that storage room there are two doors. Behind those doors there are tunnels that lead to two very needed places. One leads to the glass blowers’ workplace and the other to the firefly farm.

But they do not have just one kind of light bulb. They have small ones and big ones, wide bulbs and small bulbs, straight bulbs and curved bulbs. There are ball, cube and pyramid shaped bulbs. There are bulbs for the ceiling (mainly chandeliers) and there are bulbs that stand on the floor or on your bedside cupboard. There are also bulbs you can carry, such as lanterns. There are bright bulbs and dim bulbs. There might be more, but these are the main variety of light bulbs in the shop.

How the lamps work: Inside the lamps the fireflies live. It’s needed to buy food for them (in little packages) and supply them with it three times a day (or at least that’s what the union leaflet says that comes with it). A signal of tapping the glass is used to make them know you want light. Union rules regulate it that they cannot work more then eight hours a day, so you will need to buy some extra lamps to switch when time is up.

Some of the ultra specials are illuminated glass-in-lead windows depicting various things, some of them the surface or things related to the mythical surface. (Or what they think they know of it) The pictures are somewhat weird. There is a depiction of what they call ‘the tree’, but it’s not what you would call a tree unless you depict some poetic definition literally. Basically, it’s a pillar of brown with countless little green hands reaching for the clouds while standing in a sea of green. They have no idea what clouds are but if they would leave them away it would seem silly as the hands have nothing to reach for. So they thought hard as to what could replace these clouds as something to be grasped. It had to be something that would be worth grasping. They decided on seeds, which they find very valuable. The seeds fly with batwings (as they probably have never seen any other kind of wings, except for insect wings)

There are other more ordinary things to be found here, like drinking glasses, little glass statues (a hobby of one of the workers) and glass barrels.

Mister Jugg’s Glass Blowing Workshop
As described above, one of the doors in the storage room (which is a room where all glassworks and supplies of firefly food are stored in shelves and cupboards) hides a tunnel, which leads to the glassblower’s workshop. This is where the glass is blown (obviously), which means that there is a kiln with a fire in it. It’s not any ordinary fire. The enterprising mister Jugg had some workmen dig a little canal from a nearby lava stream so that it filled this basin that has the name to be a kiln. This workplace can have up to 3 Klem working in it.

There are three glass blowing tubes and three workbenches as well as a rack with various pigments for colouring the glass of some of the more extra-ordinary glassworks. Most pigments, except for brown, are very expensive. They have to come from the scarce plant life or from precious stones and metals. Various boxes of firefly food are stacked up on each desk next to the desk lamps. (Optionally a degree of approval from the Union of Light* might hang on the wall to signify that the fireflies are well treated)

There are large canvas sacks on the ground with the word ‘SAND’ printed on them in bold lettering. The sand for blowing the glass is obtained in two ways. Most sand comes from the ‘sand mine’, where rocks are ground to sand as a daily job. But on other occasions, when sand is needed quickly, they go up to the lake and shuffle the sand from it’s beach into the sacks. They do this only in dire need, as they don’t want the beach to disappear by lack of sand.

They can make normal glass, but also, though it takes more work and expenses, they can make rock-proof glass. This is used for the fire brigade’s water containers, for example.

*The Union of Light defends the rights of the Fireflies used for lighting the lamps. Further description is given below under the heading: ‘Mister Jugg’s Firefly Farm’.

Mister Jugg’s Firefly Farm

The other door in the storage room, as we already know, leads to Mister Jugg’s Firefly Farm. Here you have several tables and shelves full of them. They all have little families in little houses, as the Union of Light* sees to it that there is no abuse of the poor creature’s life. There is also a nursery, where the larva can hatch. It is covered by a big glass bowl, which has several lamps on it to regulate temperatures.
As soon as a larva is hatched it moves in with its family, so that it has a family environment. The Union* sees to that.

Huge supplies of firefly food are stored here for use in this room. The store also sells the firefly food, however, the convenient store also sells it.

There are several different kinds of fireflies that can be used to fill the lamps. It ranges from ember-flies to inferno-flies. The difference is mostly in the intensity of the light. To the curious reader it can be stated that it might be so that they have specifically been bred this way, yet nobody seems to remember much of it. It doesn’t seem that important.

*Should the Union of Light option not have been chosen, things might still be pretty much the same, or entirely different. That is up to the game master and his definition or choice of how he wants to play ‘human nature’ out.

The Unions (optional)

The Union of Light was started and is being led by Miss Blake. It looks to the well-treatment and working conditions of the fireflies. Miss Blake’s involvement in it makes other people think twice before mistreating their fireflies. She is ... very persuasive, in an umbrella* kind of way. When around her, people take care not to use their lights excessively. Since, in strict terms of the work, they are employing the fireflies to work for them and are thus in Union Territory. Because of this miss Blake is constantly keeping an eye on everybody (or she started the union so she could have an excuse to spy on everybody, as some men, mostly the employers) would say)

She’s also responsible for the Union of Silk, which protects the Spiders’ rights concerning their work. This is less taxing then the union of light because by carrying spider silk you are not oppressing the spiders, so only the production needs to be monitored.

*Umbrellas are needed to cross the Stalactite Cave whilst remaining dry. The cave, in turn, leads up to the lake, which Miss Blake likes to visit frequently. But that’s another story entirely.

3th post

The Klem also have been re-written as to MJ-s questions:

The Klem

If I would bet, I would bet that you imagined Gilbert, Sullivan, Bruno and Frog were some human or humanlike creatures. That is what we expect. And in a way they are, but in another way they are not. They do not look like humans, except for maybe their faces, but they do act like humans. As some would say it, they are the same on the ‘inside’. They have human character. Let’s leave it to the writer of the adventure what that might mean. We would get some different creatures, depending on how some people imagine human nature is. But let us talk about how they look, about their ‘outsides’.

Imagine a ringworm standing four and a half foot tall, with two legs and six arms (all symmetric to the point of equal division amongst left and right at almost the same height). Imagine that completely covered in fur, except for the face, hands and feet. Their face is as that of a human, but distorted as in cartoon- and caricature-like faces. They have big ears, noses, mouths and eyes, or very small ones, or combinations of that. Their faces are also very flexible. It’s not as if there is a separate head though, the body just begins (or ends, depending how you look at it) in a face. There is no real neck.

They are about 4,7 feet tall when they sit up. They will then sit up on their hind legs, a bit of their body’s end resting on the ground and their six hands free to handle whatever it would need to handle (or just to relax). This is their normal pose. They sit like this and talk like this, embroider like this, hammer like this, paint china like this, etc, etc.

But they can, if excited (in all ways, positive, negative or neutral) extend their bodies up to 7 feet or above. If they move though, they go on their hands and feet, using only their two front hands and arms to manipulate things. (Their other hands are called ‘foot hands’, or ‘fands’ for short) It’s amazing. This way they can fit through any hole that’s as small as their head. Their body, much like the body of the ringworm, is very flexible. It seems to be able to bend any way. And in fact ... they can!

Optional: Depending one the theme of the game, clans/tribes/families may exist depending on the look of the creatures. The caricature-features of the parents are likely then, to surface in their children. Thus the Big-noses, Pointers, Flappers and other families may exist depending on the shape of nose, ears, eyes... or combinations of all that.

4th post

This is the most I've ever written for a game world I think. The word document (which is a lot nicer to look at) contains 3222 words and is eight pages, of which a page and a half is a list of things mentioned but not yet worked on. But I'm liking it :)

Some of MJ's and probably mine published worlds are of that length or less. Of course, there are other worlds which are far longer. It really depends on the world, and what it needs to be playable.

But JohnA1Nut, see the advantages of following a keep it short and sweet approach for the beginning game designer. You're always going reach a point as a designer where you're tired of a world. Far better to reach it when you're ninety percent done, than when you're ten percent done.

I can see why you would mistake me for john with the multiple postings, but it's Nikolaj here :)

Well, I'm liking it so far and I have plans with it. It actually kind of writes itself. I mention something fun, and new places or characters are mentioned which could be worked out. Like, miss Blake having an umbrella made the Stalactite Cave come into the existence, since I really wanted her to have an umbrella and thus I needed a reason for that.

The most work is the village though, since most of the stuff outside the village is unknown. A few places are known, like the Lake, where the waterworks are, the inventor's place, ...

No mistake. I figured John would read this as well, and its a point I've made to him several times.

It's looking very nice, Nikolaj.

It is very much a story book world; that doesn't mean it's not a role playing game world, but it opens some questions concerning how you envision it working in that context. The big one is--hard to state, so I'll approach it from the perspective of the options.

You could create this as a game world in which the players play these creatures. That raises questions concerning what sort of adventures creatures have in such a world, but you've certainly got possibilities for that. There is an inherent undercurrent here that the indigs don't travel far from home and aren't really curious enough about other places to put the effort into discovering. That means you would have to make the player characters "odd", indigs who are interested what lies beyond the known. Your casual references to the question of whether there is an "outside" are certainly good fodder for such a group, but that's probably something that should be clarified at some point: the player characters are inherently misfit, wanting to know what the others think is interesting fairytale stuff.

The primary alternative is to make this a culture visited by the player characters. In Multiverser, that means visits by versers, most of whom are recognizably human. It's not impossible for this to be a culture deep under ground in a fantasy adventure world such as Dungeons & Dragons, although n that case you will need to consider what protects them from the many much more dangerous creatures that tend to inhabit the underdark; or they could be residents of the caves of a newly-discovered planet in a science fiction game. It also means that you should consider how your indigs will react to those who discover them.

With Multiverser you also have the possibility of using the Zygote Experience to arrange for a player character to be born as one of these creatures, with knowledge of who he was before. That's tricky, though, and there's not that much demand for worlds in which the verser is born as something different--and quite adequate supply. I'm running the sprite world right now for Maxx, and I think someone has run The Lion King that way, and I'm sure I could identify a lot more stories that would work extremely well if the player is born as a creature of the type that lives there. Best if you plan the world for the arrival of outsiders and consider the indig's reaction to them, and let the referee decide whether he would rather have the verser be one of them.

--M. J. Young

In an answer to that, there are plans for guardposts that guard against the occasional monster, and more importantly, the (as far still invisible) threat(h?)of the Plough, which I have not yet defined. (I haven't even put them on my list yet! Maybe they don't exist? (optionally that is, just like "Snowball did it!". (I've finally read Animal farm :P) More to my taste they would represent sin or struggle in the life of the christian or not-yet christian while struggling to get into the Kingdom of God)

Now, as this is develloping I'm much in favor for playing an indig and also I have plans of first translating it out of the multiverser context into some kind of board/card game, where the four starting characters are played, and each character has his own options as how to deal with situations. But that's still far away plans.

I might also just turn it into a storybook :P

Summer Queen also had my character arrive in a world in which you could not verse into. Instead, you took over the body of a being from that universe.

While I agree that non-Zygoted worlds are in greater need, I would never say we had an adequate supply of anything at this present time. When there are a thousand worlds, then I'd be willing to say such. Keep in mind that under the 'vampires' tag there are something like fourteen different types of vampires (and thats not gettting into floating heads or stuff like that.)

I hear what you're saying, but my feeling about the Zygote Experience is that it generally works once for a given gaming group, not even so much as once per player character within it. Running a second player through another Zygote world--well, I would at least wait a couple years. We've joked about having a Zygote Gather, in which mom has sextuplets and they're the six player characters or the PC and his associates (particularly irksome to the player of one of the associates is spouse and now sibling), but that's still running it only once for the group. Most of it is about fetal and child development. Even when, as with Maxx, you create a scenario in which you have a not-human birth and thus something of a storyworld approach to plot (there is a situation into which he has been born which I anticipate him addressing when he is old enough, although he is accelerating his knowledge of the world sufficiently that he will know a lot about it long before he is ready for it), there is a lot of play that is about growing up, and it's really interesting once. I would seriously hesitate to put any player through it twice, unless I've put him through thirty or forty worlds between.

So I don't see a lot of demand for Zygote-based worlds. They're too special a case.

--M. J. Young

Good points.

Another thing you can use zygotes for (which you've done) is the 'let's put you in a totally different mindset'. Have the character become a 14th century American Indian, or an alien from Arcturus. Its a way to really immerse the character into another culture.

Another thing you can do is to put the character into a different biology. Create a biology which is weird (say a Ba'kegn....), and have the player live with his strange urges. You had to find a way to live with the 'narrowness of Fluffy's brain' which did not support adequately your mind.

This also offers a chance for horror as the kind he verses into might be something with natural homicidal urges that are very strong....it would be terribly mean to verse Nikolaj into some Uber-Destruction Creature of seven foot tall, fangs and claws with its biology tilted toward 'kill everything', and then he would have to spend his time fighting his biology...especially if a bunch of human explorers on a spaceship decided to land on the planet, and all the rest of the UDC's in Niko's new tribe were bent on 'destroy now!'. Heh, heh.

Lastly, the GM might decide to only run one Zygote for the reasons you've stated, but he could then have a choice of say five differing zygote experiences which are designed to be initial experiences instead of the more involved ideas I've listed above.

Niko/UDC idea=Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk.

or it's Jeckel and Hyde :) (or however it's written)

I'm reading up on this again. I'm not sure if I still have my file of this, but most is in this thread anyway. I don't have enough time to put an immense effort on this as I have classes to prepare while also having another job and running a bible study group (besides attending two others) and helping in a food shelter. My weeks are pretty full and I'm finding out that having to start from scratch for three classes to teach them Protestant Religion is a lot of preparation, certainly as I want quality over quantity.

I must say, I like the childlike wonder described in this world. I like the idea of things being the way they are because they are the way they are, but this small group of visionary kids (Frog, Bruno, et al)wonders if there is more. It sounds like a charming exploration world. I did skim through some of the later posts-I gotta run.

Cool, that's the feel I was after. Thanks!