World Building part one

Greetings...

For those of you following my stories I must hang my head in shame. The marginal amount of work I have done is by no means enough for a chapter on either. To make matter worse is this blog which clearly informs you that my creative thoughts are not even going in that direction... shame on me

So What Am I Doing?

Making a world/setting...

Smartassery aside it will be a setting for me to run a game or write a short novel. I have found over the course of my works that I seem to have a disdain for writing works with another's ponies (or any character really). So I am starting from scratch as this will both make a clean slate and make it unnecessary to fill in plot holes that, I at the vary least, consider too important to not get right. And on that word right it also means I can make my own head cannon work instead of working against it.

So I guess the broad strokes of it needs to be established. Humanoids will not be a thing so no minotaur(s). Since I will be using Ponyfinder I won't need to worry about balance (though I think I will keep Gem Knolls/Diamond Dogs but not for players) which also makes it cross compatible with any system compatible with Pathfinder as long as you don't think too hard about where the ponies are getting their hands/fingers. This gives me about a dozen pony tribes to pick from and half a dozen other races not counting their variants. So we already have a melting pot of races so we are already on track for generic fantasy setting. Instead of using the kingdom building rules in pathfinder (henceforth shorthanded to Kingmaker) I will instead be using the D&D 3.5e 3rd party book "Fields of Blood, the Book of War" for anything requiring kingdoms. Stating the kingdoms of the world is more for my sanity, the setting's stability and potential player's immersion not for the players to play.

If all the kingdom's produce X and each kingdom only has resources Z + Y = <X then the world will have consistent rules and I won't have merry sue moments with kingdoms (if it happens then someplace somewhere is going to be missing crucial assets). Consistency is vary important and establishing that early and keeping with it will make it more believable. Fortunately enough in Fields of Blood is hand waved in regards to the fine details of the villages with each village only producing a set X modified only by a short list of modifiers. Unlike Kingmaker which puts detail on what kind of buildings are in each specific village but hand waves battle and what happens when an army sits in a town that is not theirs. They could have such a good system for Kingmaker but beyond making alliances, exploring and building a city so much is hand waved that the DM has a lot of work. But for a DM with a bunch of players wanting to rule the same kingdom it is invaluable.

Another difference that actually helps me out here is the division of time. While Kingmaker divides the turns by months (12 a year) Fields of Blood does it by the season (4 a year). That is something I can work with. One of the things I like about Equestria is the duality of Celestia and Luna and by extension sun and moon. So instead of copying Equestria I'll instead have four Princesses with each one representing a season. Though having the main Princess switch every few months will be a pain for everyone... just beginning and already we have conflict; perfect!

Why not just use Everglow and be done with it? Good question and the answer comes down to tone. Ponyfinder follows Pathfinder and the others down the M rated road. Sure most gaming groups play to a more T rating which is likely where I will be sitting too but Ponyfinder is not as faithful to the source material as I would like to be. Which means I am going to have to hombrew some of these things and hope for the best which is good as the people as Pathfinder did leave much wiggle room for modibility between their race creator (in Advanced Race Guide) and 3.5e's extensive work at formalizing class creation. neither of which is an exact science and if writing novels only it won't matter too much if one race or feature of over/underpowered so long as it is consistent.

So What I Have?

1. Four Princesses
2. A narrowed down list of races
3. A general tone for the setting
4. A vague impression of pony society

So What Happens next?

narrow down the races (or justify inclusion)
decide the general state and shape of pony kingdom
name things (what joy, but naming convention is already done)
Perhaps build an Alicorn template.

see you next week!