Questions about the game's world game

The title is a bit awkward (questions about the game's world game.) Something like, "Answer the game world question above," might work better? (As it is now, it's kind of confusing.)


Radiant Omen has mostly medieval-level technology. Magic has had its influence on the development of technology: what does a society need guns for if people can throw fireballs? What do people need construction equipment for if they can raise and tear down buildings with magic?

Magic - and technology - are different in different places, though. On the mainland, most of the technology is a similar level, but on the nearby island nation, certain types of magic are forbidden, and technology has evolved to compensate. In a country cross the sea (that the player will never go to but may meet characters from) magic is considered evil in its entirety, and their technology level is around that of the Age of Discovery.

Question:
So along the same lines... does your game world have any form of magic? How common is it? How is it taught and learned? How has it influenced the cultures and technology of the game world?

P.S. People interested in world building might be interested in 30 Days of World Building - 30 writing prompts centered on building the setting for a novel, but it works for anything where you need to do some world building. :3

(Psst, Cuth, you are supposed to ask a question. )

In most cases, I do. I'm especially OCD about getting rivers in the right places, since that's done wrong so often (even in commercial games, dear god. ) In the case of Radiant Omen... well... there are problems with magic being a tad too powerful. Not all of the geographical features are natural, and in some places, the weather has to be regulated because so much screwing with the terrain has caused weather patterns to change. (This is the reason that one region of the map is a desert, where historically it wasn't. Now I'm rambling, though.) The short answer is yes: although my knowledge of some of the subjects is a tad sketchy (geology fffff), I apply all the knowledge that I have to make a realistic world. (And often use it as plot points. :3)

Question:
What resources are most valuable in your game world and why?

This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Are you sure you're using the right terminology here? So, somebody gets a traditionalist opinion and immediately bursts into flame? ("No, I don't think changing the seating arrangement is necessary - *FWOOSH* ARRRRGH!")Also your casting of octopods as mindless conservatives offends me as an octopus.


Depends on your definition of a race. There are about three races of humans. If you mean fantastic sentient species other than humans, there are only the thadra, which are intelligent, magically-inclined animals. The only other sentient beings are otherworldly entities. (Gods, demons, etc.)

What is the scale of your game world? A mote of dust? An island? A continent? A world? A galaxy? A universe? Multiple universes?

Some of the things in this thread are really more deserving of proper threads to themselves (magic, technology, maybe geography and races). I'm not going to say anything here about them, because then I'd be here for hours writing. So, hum, precursor wars:

For a long time, another race, the bipedal horse-like Kiang (who, generally speaking, are proxys of Elves; magic-inclined, fairly nimble, and snooty as hell), were the dominant race, and enslaved Humans. Eventually, the Humans rebelled, and thanks largely due to some Humans who learned necromancy, they drove the Kiang to the deserts of Sapin, and eventually completely eradicated their race. The Kiang's ability to use magic to heal (and also to create false life [Golems], as opposed to the extended life of the skeletons) was lost as such. The necromancers were hailed as heroes, but as time passed, they slowly became tyrants, ruling over their fellow Humans with an iron fist. Or maybe more of a skeletal fist. Y'know. Another war broke out, ending with the necromancers killed and their brand of magic nearly destroyed; all that was kept was a few meager tomes locked deep within Sapin's magic academy. Damian and Roderick naturally found them, and in turn taught Lucy. I'm honestly not sure how the only other shadow mage, Bodhi, managed to learn it, though.

About four hundred years later, Draug enters the picture and we have the drawn out Estaria-Wuzeer wars. How exactly it went down (and, more prominently, how Draug actually died) depends on your decisions, but the one thing that's consistent is that Draug killed all of King Boris' offspring (of about six), except for one, who was still badly mauled. After Draug's death, the conflict between the two nations continues off and on for the next sixty years, but generally not much is mentioned about it, other than a few lines by Heath, Clair, and some others about skirmishes.

So, um.. question. Um... monsters. Random encounters and that sort of thing. Are they ever a visible nuisance to cities or travelers, or just the merry band of heroes? Are they intelligent? Can they be domesticated? Is it handwaved that all the gold they drop is from you selling their organs? ...yyeah, I don't have any particularly good ideas for questions.