Setting: Temples, Sites, Ruins, and Empires

[Username17]

After doing a rethink, I think heroes should count as sites for most purposes like creating armies and items long term affects on an area if they create an appropriate structure. So, Mages create longstanding magical effects by building mage towers that look like crystal flowers and warriors create societies by building fortresses and inspiring people to organize and be productive.

This way we can have heroes leading armies away from their sources of power, but don't have to deal with the problem of creating sites. This also means that the Temple of Bhaal can just be under the City of Lights because there is a powerful Priest of Bhaal who lives in it.

I completely disagree with this. I think they should be able to march the power around yes, but the power itself should be in ass random places to start off with that they should have to fight for.

The Black Tower should not set itself up somewhere based on mundane concerns such as access to water, iron, and arable land. It should set itself up in some completely arbitrary place based entirely on Feng Shui and then have to go conquer areas that have those mundane resources.

Heroes should build their crystal flower citadels on appropriate nodes that they can find because they are heroes. Not just where-ever they happen to find a defensible spot.

Temples of Bhaal should exist under the Citadel of Light by phone phreaking the main node or occasionally finding another node buried underneath.

-Username17

[K]

1204090862[/unixtime]]

After doing a rethink, I think heroes should count as sites for most purposes like creating armies and items long term affects on an area if they create an appropriate structure. So, Mages create longstanding magical effects by building mage towers that look like crystal flowers and warriors create societies by building fortresses and inspiring people to organize and be productive.

This way we can have heroes leading armies away from their sources of power, but don't have to deal with the problem of creating sites. This also means that the Temple of Bhaal can just be under the City of Lights because there is a powerful Priest of Bhaal who lives in it.

I completely disagree with this. I think they should be able to march the power around yes, but the power itself should be in ass random places to start off with that they should have to fight for.

The Black Tower should not set itself up somewhere based on mundane concerns such as access to water, iron, and arable land. It should set itself up in some completely arbitrary place based entirely on Feng Shui and then have to go conquer areas that have those mundane resources.

Heroes should build their crystal flower citadels on appropriate nodes that they can find because they are heroes. Not just where-ever they happen to find a defensible spot.

Temples of Bhaal should exist under the Citadel of Light by phone phreaking the main node or occasionally finding another node buried underneath.

-Username17

I think the whole idea of "finding" sites is unworkable for a setting. I mean, a site should be spawning monsters regardless if someone is tapping it, so you know where it is if you walk by.

Also, once anyone in the setting gets powerful they really will just sit on the known sites and cock block and there is no reason why you wouldn't know all the sites since they are spawning monsters. Sure, the Cave of Red Crystals might only make fire drakes when no one is around, but if someone moves in and starts making troops the Sun Emperor is going to send in his troops before that someone builds up an army. There is no reason why all the sites in the world aren't blocked down.

Also, allowing for "wholesale site reformatting" is just bad design. The Grotto of Black Roses is awesome and all the time spent building up all the unique material for it is a waste of time if you let a Necromancer burn the roses and set up a basic tower of bones. Your setting is defined by these kinds of elements and you let players unravel that setting if you let them change them.

Allowing heroes to make sites means that your considerations don't have to be the ones for "setting up a settlement." The Black Tower doesn't need to be near water or arable land because the Lord of the Tower sustains everyone from a pool of blood in the center of the tower, he doesn't need iron because he enchants bone weapons and armor, and both of those things work because the total compliment of the tower is like a hundred guys. He is out of the way because if he was near the Sun King that guy would come and get him.

Not letting heroes act as sites means that there are no independent mages making items or casting spells for hire, no bandit lords training a thieves armies, and generally no independent powers in your setting. I mean, you can make a campaign where everything is hidden and the whole campaign is about finding sites, buts thats not a setting that other people can play in (including you, since once the campaign is over you can't make another in the same setting because all the sites have been found). I just don't see any good reason to do it.

[Neeek]

Any thoughts on granting the ability to draw more power from a site temporally in exchange for a subsequent power down and increased chance of monster attack?

[Orion]

I always figured monsters and armies just spawned at power sites. Monsters tend to hang around there and soak up power, but if you raise an army from a site, you can send them out into the world, can't you?

[Crissa]

I think finding is fine, since it's the DM's part of the story, anyhow. And it means that sites, for the most part, are not something the player gets to choose. You play the hand of cards you were dealt, it's not go fish.

Heroes are independent from sites. They don't need a site to do their thing, their powers don't come from a site - they come from something within, access to artifacts, willpower, having been blessed by a site, or extraplanar (hum, I guess the latter is kinda like a site). I just don't think they need to be spawning monsters or making the great lakes by rolling around in the mud. That's kinda silly.

NPCs should be able to trade power for the penalty 'only works here'. It gives them a reason to have minions and why they're so darn hard to kill. But that mechanic is lame for heroes. It's not heroic.

-Crissa

[SphereOfFeetMan]

I think the whole idea of "finding" sites is unworkable for a setting. I mean, a site should be spawning monsters regardless if someone is tapping it, so you know where it is if you walk by.

Also, once anyone in the setting gets powerful they really will just sit on the known sites and cock block and there is no reason why you wouldn't know all the sites since they are spawning monsters. Sure, the Cave of Red Crystals might only make fire drakes when no one is around, but if someone moves in and starts making troops the Sun Emperor is going to send in his troops before that someone builds up an army. There is no reason why all the sites in the world aren't blocked down.

...

Not letting heroes act as sites means that there are no independent mages making items or casting spells for hire, no bandit lords training a thieves armies, and generally no independent powers in your setting. I mean, you can make a campaign where everything is hidden and the whole campaign is about finding sites, buts thats not a setting that other people can play in (including you, since once the campaign is over you can't make another in the same setting because all the sites have been found). I just don't see any good reason to do it.

I think there may be a solution to most of these issues. That being, that power sites are unpredictable in their magical supply. Sites function for days, months, years, decades, centuries, or millennia, and then for some reason they stop. And then for some reason after they have been dormant for a suitable amount of time, they start back up again.

In many cases that suitable amount of time is long enough that everyone in the setting has given up on it, or at least it has proven unprofitable to sit on it for an extended amount of time. If a level 1 power site has been been dormant for 100 years, then the emperor sitting on his level 5 power site has no interest having his troops 'cock block' the level 1 site.

By extension, you just need to have enough power sites that go active/dormant that it becomes unprofitable to guard dormant sites. For example, the emperor might be sitting on his level 5, century old power site, and have half a dozen little power sites guarded by his minions. But as soon as one site stops working the emperor pulls all his troops. Why? Because there is no evidence that the power site will start working again this millennia.

Instead the emperor sends his troops (adventurers and Pc's) to go find old power sites (ruins of old civilizations) that might have started up again.

___________________

An additional possible reason that dormant sites are not guarded is because they are inherently unstable upon becoming active again. It would be disadvantageous to have your troops stationed there when it reactivates. People don't guard the dormant Citadel of the Magma Rift because when it reactivates, creatures near it randomly spontaneously combust or turn into fire elementals. (In this way certain areas could always be predisposed to be ruled by certain creatures if you wished.)

A final reason for people not to guard dormant power sites is that there are false-starts. It might appear that a power site is becoming active again, but in fact only the negative "tremors" (the spontaneous combustion or fire elementals) are occurring. After the Citadel of the Magma Rift spits out a hundred or so fire elementals, it calms back down to dormancy.

[Maxus]

I'd be inclined to say that there are many, many sites that are naturally occurring, but people can create them if they know how, by 'luring' magic with the right acts and so on.

To elaborate, sincerely consecrating a temple would turn that temple into a site. Gaining a lot of worshippers would draw more magic to the site.

Conversely, a huge battle where a level 19 wizard wiped out all of one army and half of another with just a few spells would become a node. A site of a foul crime, or the place of a great act of good, could also become sites.

Why?

Well, the scholars have a lot of different theories, but they're afraid to say what they suspect the answer really is:

Magic likes drama, and has a well-developed sense of theatrics.

Therefore, if something remarkable or exceptionally placed on the Good/Evil continuum happened there, then in all probability, it is a special place and has a reserve of magic centered on it.

Sites occur naturally, in response to the shifting of magic as it moves along the leylines (or whatever), but they can also be made, although it's damn hard to make a strong one in a convenient amount of time unless you get a divine revelation to happen there, in front of several thousand people.

Although this is getting close to the Discworld theory of narrative causality.

[Username17]

I think the whole idea of "finding" sites is unworkable for a setting. I mean, a site should be spawning monsters regardless if someone is tapping it, so you know where it is if you walk by.

I think the best example is the Well of Pestilence. The area around it fills up with suck and shades wander the lands making things suck even more. People don't live there if they can help it, and just looking at the province tells you that there's a Well of Pestilence somewhere. And if you happen to be a necromancer, you can track it down, and then you can tap it for power and cut down on the monster rampages once you fight your way to the center.

Anyone who has played Dominions and Master of Magic can follow things at this point.

---

But regardless, one of the things which should make it a little bit less like Dominions is that even without being a Necromancer you should be able to wander around the area as a hero until you run into the Well of Pestilence itself. Then you can fight the boss battle and then attune the node to yourself like you were in Master of Magic.

Once you have the power, you should be able to channel it elsewhere. When you've attuned the Canyon of Black Roses, you should be able to build a temple complex elsewhere to mail the power to. But your temple complex should have to be built on a power site as well. In short, once you have the seat of your power on top of a potential monster gate, you should be able to capture other power sites and leave them essentially as-is while you rake in the benefits.

But at no time should you be able to just opt out of the whole dungeon delving experience by building your own Hall of Flayed Skins somewhere that happens to already have pretty girls and a nice climate.

Running around awesome terrain in the middle of the howling wilderness while being attacked by monsters is the gods given right of every adventurer. And they should seriously have to do that if they want to increase the power base of their empire.

-Username17

[virgil]

Wasn't there an earlier idea mentioned about the setting using Points of Darkness? Large tracts of generally safe & civilized territory, with places like the Forests of Teeth being places people don't go to?

That kind of set-up encourages kingdoms to station guards around nodes within their borders, either to safeguard and use its power or to mitigate the damage it causes (assuming it doesn't surge too big).

If you limit the range on a node's power siphoning for fueling armies, this puts a significant cap on how far out a kingdom can reach. Sure, a kingdom can maintain borders beyond the reach of the Legions of the Crescent Sun, but those hillbilly zones are unable to be properly protected if a node erupts without warning.

Not letting adventurers be walking nodes can still work as long as you keep nodes sufficiently stationary. Independent powers can still exist when this is the case, as their influence extends potentially up to the red lines surrounding each node as the general limit of their influence (and that's as a direct military threat, they can overlap if they're subtle).

Throw in any kind of chaos with waxing/waning nodes, especially if multiple nodes do so in tandem and the politics that can domino from such, and I think you can still have a dynamic setting where adventurers can get their own nodes at high level.

Edit: Isn't part of K's concern in that any proper setting with this set-up, there will have already been someone who jacked enough nodes into his private server and used the continuously expanding power to more and more easily conquer every unclaimed node on the planet until there are barely a handful of mega-kingdoms that have a stake on all of the nodes?

[CatharzGodfoot]

It would be interesting to see ways of sabotaging connected nodes. So if you break into a satellite node, you can start channeling destructive or corruptive power down the dragon line.

Alternatively, maybe it's possible to directly sabotage the pipeline (which means that not only will an emperor build fortresses on distant nodes, but he'll also build long chains of outposts down the lines.

In addition there can be use of controlled nodes as gates, letting the emperor (and possibly his army--but that might be too stabilizing) pop out at whatever node he likes.

[the_taken]

1204132410[/unixtime]]It would be interesting to see ways of sabotaging connected nodes. So if you break into a satellite node, you can start channeling destructive or corruptive power down the dragon line.

Alternatively, maybe it's possible to directly sabotage the pipeline (which means that not only will an emperor build fortresses on distant nodes, but he'll also build long chains of outposts down the lines.

In addition there can be use of controlled nodes as gates, letting the emperor (and possibly his army--but that might be too stabilizing) pop out at whatever node he likes.

Kinda like LoZ:OoT. Gannon's got a bunch of dungeons loaded with power fountains, and Link has to cut each one before he can take on the BBEG? And while he's at it, he's attuning them to himself by setting up The Sages? Awesome.

[Manxome]

I do agree with K that you shouldn't be able to just torch a Site and turn it into whatever style of Site you prefer; probably different Sites are producing different kinds of magic power (some may produce a spectrum of types) and the Site on which the Grotto of Black Roses is built will just never be suitable for a Temple of Ra, no matter what you do to it.

If there are also restrictions on what types of Sites can be networked together, then you end up with powerful empires occupying land containing a whole mess of Sites that they can't actually use. Then, they either permanently station troops there and fight regular uprisings of monsters for no tangible gain--or they just tear down the site, wall it in, and forget about it, at which point it's free to become a plot device, either because of a sudden monster surge that breaks free, or because a rival snuck in and set up shop there.

You can also end up with unstable alliances between differently-typed overlapping networks, which of course cause all hell to break loose when they turn on each other.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I believe that we had 'color' or 'alignment' stuff for that...

But yea, they need to fade in/out and be able to be cut.

Cutting - powerful magics in the area (temporarily drains site of magic production, maybe knocks it down from a L5 to an L2?
Opposite magic in the area (brought in from adventurers)

[virgil]

I do agree that being able to turn sites into Voltron sets itself up for monolithic empires in a manner not unlike Shadowrun. You can make and play characters that make a difference, but you can never actually fight society. Sure, you can assassinate the president or the high priest of the mega-node, but the system itself would just adjust, crush you like a bug, and put in a new face.

I'm working on the understanding that we want players to eventually be able to influence empire-scale situations on their own, which means that no single empire can hook up multiple nodes (maybe if they're almost identical to begin with) to form a super-empire that would snowball over the world given time.

This means that an empire which consists of multiple nodes basically consists of multiple alliances, which isn't something that encourages a mega-empire that can be formed by brute force.

Of course, if you make the connection between nodes sufficiently fragile, then you end up with the same effect because of the ease of sabotage.

[Draco_Argentum]

Sphere, max and virgil make good points.

I think its also important that node sitting be a poor way of reaching the maximum power level that PCs can hit. Being the emperor sitting on a level 6 node is a great way to hit level 6 and a supremely poor way of hitting level 7. Gaining power the PC way lets you get to 20 but its slower and more dangerous. So there shouldn't be many level 20 nodes and you shouldn't be able to link a bunch of weak nodes until you've got a level 20 one.

[Username17]

I do agree that being able to turn sites into Voltron sets itself up for monolithic empires in a manner not unlike Shadowrun. You can make and play characters that make a difference, but you can never actually fight society. Sure, you can assassinate the president or the high priest of the mega-node, but the system itself would just adjust, crush you like a bug, and put in a new face.

I see it very differently. While in Shadowrun killing the President of a nation or the CEO of a corporation is often pointless as those people are simply and easily replaced, the node system involves large power swings every time an important boss gets wiped out.

If you take down the Empire's Frost Jarl, the node on Winter Peak changes hands. The Empire no longer gets that power influx, and their dominion effects in the province shut off. They might be able to recover, but basically it involves re-invading the Permafrost Taiga. Small surgical strikes (like those done by heroes) can and do cause massive power swings.

And small surgical strikes happen spontaneously from monster surges. Basically what you're looking at is a system in which large empires can rise or fall in a short period of time (like say, a campaign). This means that rationally speaking we'd be expecting there to be a lot of ruins and fallen empires all over the place. Which is awesome.

-Username17

[virgil]

And that sets up the tenuous enough connection where the very large influence of sabotage can keep a mega-empire from going Katamari on the world for any real length of time, which I mentioned (just not in so many words, especially in comparison to Frank's stuff).

[Fwib]

Must sites be stationary, or can they move about? (presumably slowly, like feet to miles per year) When sites restart from dormancy, must they always restart at exactly the same place?

[CatharzGodfoot]

1204215261[/unixtime]]Must sites be stationary, or can they move about? (presumably slowly, like feet to miles per year)

If I was going to have site drift, I'd make it like continental drift and have it take the land it's tied to along for the ride.

When sites restart from dormancy, must they always restart at exactly the same place?

Who knows? Is there any way to tell if it's an old site that's restarted in a new place or an entirely new site?


I actually kinda like the way Eberron does it, with planes waxing an waning, except in this case rotation might describe it better. Think of it as passing over a region of volcanism. The ley lines form spontaneously and are a part of the manifestation of the other worlds on Sumeru. As power sites wax and wane the ley lines snap around like magnetic field lines during reconnection.

[Fwib]

1204219350[/unixtime]]

1204215261[/unixtime]]Must sites be stationary, or can they move about? (presumably slowly, like feet to miles per year)

If I was going to have site drift, I'd make it like continental drift and have it take the land it's tied to along for the ride.

If Mohammed won't go to the mountain, the mountain must go to Mohammed.

Sounds like an adventure: Find the way to stop the Wandering Black Mountain from destroying the fertile fields of Greendale, and then crushing the city.

[Crissa]

Continental drift means that sites based upon hot spots, magnetic fields, etc, means the 'spot' wanders when the continents wander. That's one way we know how drift works. If they followed the continents, that'd be... Umm.. Well, the same as not moving at all.

-Crissa

[CatharzGodfoot]

1204266898[/unixtime]]Continental drift means that sites based upon hot spots, magnetic fields, etc, means the 'spot' wanders when the continents wander. That's one way we know how drift works. If they followed the continents, that'd be... Umm.. Well, the same as not moving at all.

-Crissa

That's very philosophical of you

[Crissa]

Yeah, but people move with the continents, too! The spots would have to not move with the continents when they move to be noticeable.

@-@

All movement is relative, right?

-Crissa

[technomancer]

I dunno, I kinda like the idea that ley line drift doesn't have to correspond to continental drift, with magic towers and mountians of doom wandering the countryside.

[Username17]

Time could adjust itself at mana points faster than other places and than for other things. So when the magic volcano moves it has always been there,

-Username17