Background

[Anthile]

Everything about the politics, physics, history, flora, fauna, geography, etc. will be discussed in here.

 

[Weliddryn]

World history scenario one

Stoicists, Empirists, Subjectivists, Existencialists, Monolartists, Rationalists.

-AI vs Heroes
-AI + Hero merge
-Heroes go into a stasis
-The world moves on

The Stoicists and the Monolartists should be enemies, due to ancient legends depicting more truth then would be reckoned. Unless all the races are intertwined, now. Either way, towards the "beginning" the races of been split up- divided.

The Monolartists are simply the descendents of the Heroes- the race they were of was once more powerful, but over time their power decreased, etc. Perhaps there was a backlash from the encounter with the AI that ended up weakening the power of the race and now the present generation must seek power from their ancestery, i.e. the Heroes. OR. The Monolartists could simply have been normal people who figured out how to use the power of the Heroes. The heroes could have been Subjectivists. Two possibilities there.

The Stoicists seem like they could be primary factors in the creation of the AI- perhaps it was a weapon gone wrong?

This would, of course, mean that there were politics going on before. I would imagine the Subjectivists strongly disagreeing with the Stoicists who may have been quite powerful at the time. There was, perhaps, a Golden Age for them, due to their technology and one for the Subjectivists who would have been powerful, anyway, due to the nature of their power. So, two of the toughest guys on the block face off, or consider each other a threat and launch the world into a war. The AI is created as a secret weapon and the World verges on the point of destruction until a few select warriors from the Subjectivists agree to assassinate the AI. After it is destroyed (much of the world along with it) the Golden Age passes (needless to say) and the world suffers through a dark age. The Races slowly become intertwined and the Stoicists loose their knowledge of technology, at least to the extent that it was during their Golden Age.

I've got more, but I'll leave it at this for now.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

You seem to be depicting each philosophical belief as a faction or race (reminds me of Star Trek) which for the former could work, however the latter would limit the race choices to more of a choice of culture rather than species. Personally having thought about how each philosophical belief could determine each player’s core abilities and I’ve concluded that we would need to create such a system from scratch and somehow weed out all possible imbalances & exploits, i.e. it’s simply impractical.

Now I’m not suggesting we drop the philosophy idea completely, just that perhaps it could be used better as a sort of class or alignment system… a mental class system perhaps to work alongside the typically physical classes which determine one’s role in battle. So for example a nihilist could use the “depressing speech” ability to attempt to debuff opponents but an absurdist counters with the “ludicrous perspective” ability to evade it. Perhaps players can just make up these abilities during the game, with the only limitation being the extent of their chosen philosophy and how often this trick can be pulled, once per every 10 rounds maybe? Anyway, now the GM has to play storyteller and decide how such a clash of philosophies would play out. Clearly in this situation you’d expect the absurdist to have been successful and the GM will tell a little story about how the speech failed because the absurdist kept poking fun at the nihilist, or something to that effect. Naturally the better one’s made up ability fits within their chosen school of philosophy then assumedly the better the PC implements it and thus more likely that fate (the GMs whim) works in their favour.

Oh, I’ve just had a great idea.
Philosophy Class: Totalitarianism.
Description: I’m right and you’re wrong. (Now isn't that unfair)
Weakness: Ineffectual unless played from a tactical advantage.

…this post should probably be in another section, I’ll quote it there.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

Now getting back to purpose of this thread; before we can start discussing world history at anything deeper than a purely thematic level (utopian, dystopian, decaying world, etc) several key aspects of society will need to be addressed.

-The world itself, how dangerous is it, how untamed, can people venture outside at night?
-Race relations and do they live in a mixed society or in separate communities?
-The political environment, what nations/countries exist if any & what type of government?
-Level of technological advancement and how is it that steam-tech is so practical?
-What's the deal with magic/psychic abilities, how do they effect society?

@-Weliddryn
I like the idea that the creation of AI has been a big recent historical event with far reaching consequences (perhaps creating a power vacuum?) but we must consider how exactly this AI has influenced the world. The idea of a god-like software entity suddenly causing massive change is very much a cyberpunk theme and with reason; in the absence of the internet or any sort of global IT structure an AI is effectively trapped in one body, at best it’s just a highly skilled individual.
However if many individuals existed, perhaps as some sort of robot slaves, then theoretically any changes to their role in society would have the far reaching consequences necessary to destabilize the world power balance.

 

[Anthile]

I'd vote for a pre-French Revolution kind-of dystopia where the nobility exploits the poor commoners and more than one organization plans "the revolution".
Inside of the cities it is not nice but safe and in the wilderness there is freedom but basically everything is trying to kill you there, beginning with simple bandits over to gigantic psionic caterpillars and culminating in parasitic cyborg dragons [which smoke cigars - surfboards are optional].

I think especially in the big cities races live together, they leave their homes and dream to become rich easily. Of course this works rather bad and thus social problems like crimes, drugs, involuntary prostitution and racism appear.

That one is hard, I'd like to draw a map first and then we'll do the rest. I think city states are the most successful model in this time and nationalism may arise soon.
The city states may be allied in different leagues, a RL example might be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

- ~1800 RL technology, steam is so useful because it produces more energy than in our world. They don't have petroleum.

-Psionics is the academical term while commoners often just call it magic. In some regions psionics are completely prohibited and illegal usage brings you directly to the local prison.
Scientists try to reasearch how it works but especially The Guild has the most knowledge about it. Psionics users are rare and people either fear or marvel at them. Some psionics users think that those without psionic powers are inferior and dream secretly of a fascistic world.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

I'd vote for a pre-French Revolution kind-of dystopia where the nobility exploits the poor commoners and more than one organization plans "the revolution".

...I like it, sounds like a duality between a gritty struggle for survival and the refinements of a absurdly rich upper-class (party employers perhaps?) whose ancient claim to power is decaying.
Oh, such potential for things to go horribly, horribly wrong
Imagine mercenaries in a lord’s employ during the revolution, a very bad situation.

Inside of the cities it is not nice but safe and in the wilderness there is freedom but basically everything is trying to kill you there

Perhaps the cities contain another form of danger like professional crime syndicates and political espionage/assassination; players will need to be careful what they say and where the say it, a nice change from the usual situation where an NPC is treated like crap because they're seen to be ineffectual.

parasitic cyborg dragons

You do realise that when applied to parasites the term "giant" tends to mean about 2 inches.

I think especially in the big cities races live together, they leave their homes and dream to become rich easily. Of course this works rather bad and thus social problems like crimes, drugs, involuntary prostitution and racism appear.

Gritty, I like

That one is hard, I'd like to draw a map first and then we'll do the rest. I think city states are the most successful model in this time and nationalism may arise soon.
The city states may be allied in different leagues, a RL example might be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

That works.

~1800 RL technology, steam is so useful because it produces more energy than in our world. They don't have petroleum.

A new type of coal perhaps? This is actually theoretically possible, there are certain metal alloys used in sword smithing that are simply unavailable in their raw form today as they've been mined out completely; it wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine some form of methane enriched coal (or something, I'm no chemist) providing a cheap and powerful energy source.

-Psionics is the academical term while commoners often just call it magic. In some regions psionics are completely prohibited and illegal usage brings you directly to the local prison.

Firstly, there's a cool game dynamic there.
Secondly, I'd like to make the distinction between regular magic that enables stuff like fireballs (and makes no sense whatsoever) and psychic feats like telepathy, illusion, mind control, telekinetics (that's pushing it), psychic empathy, direct mind-to-mind combat, psychic attacks aimed to cause pain or inhibit one's faculties in some way, etc.

Some psionics users think that those without psionic powers are inferior and dream secretly of a fascistic world.

Naturally, with the ability to read minds and such how could they not become narcissists; although I'm pretty sure anyone could choose to develop down this path, few are willing to risk insanity and fewer still are willing to blatantly break the law.

 

[Anthile]

I hope it's alright this way.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

Cool map, so much water... already I'm imagining giant ships of wood & brass.

It's topographical I assume?
If so we will need forests, rivers and such marked out next.
Then cities, towns, ports, etc.

Where'd you get Ignis?

 

[Anthile]

Yes, it is topographical. I can also deliver one with clima or temperature. Actually, I'm trying to create a better one with two continents but that will take some hours.

The high percentage of water (80%) is intentional because the more landmass the more lore we have to create.



Ignis is a horrible pun on Terra, since the people of the antiquity thought that earth is the most common "element". And how could one better symbolize that this world is just an exaggerated version of our own world than to give it an even wronger name?

 

[Anthile]

I made a better one:

 

[Artifice Orisit]

Alright now your just showing off

 

[Weliddryn]

Now we must develop countries, no?

In deciding this it may help to determine if there is going to be one country in particular causing all of the mischief or if it is going to be caused mutually between the lot of them. Also, what government systems will be predominate throughout the world? Where are the world super powers? Where is the "Known World" or is the world in its entirety discovered already?