See tagged statuses in the local bookrastinating.com community
another perspective. could be used for a #ttrpg campaign I guess. maybe we need to rename the cities a bit. one article I read proposed just using names of less known Greek cities instead of the known ones, so players would not cotton on to where the campaign was set (in that case a map of greece turned by 180 degrees)
@juergen_hubert Even gods know that SOMEONE has to work in the administration for the Church and having a holy (or unholy) compulsion to do things which are a significant distraction from looking after Church business is no way to be successful.
This applies even to evil Churches.
Logically, then, when there is a choice the number of those who choose the trait has to be significantly less than those who don't. That's not to say elements of those traits aren't important social elements within the group, but they aren't compelled. Those churches are probably among the larger and more successful, from an organizational point of view.
The deities which don't have choice in the matter probably are less interested in running centralized, controlled Churches and more perfectly happy with cell-oriented cults-of-personality, where zealotry comes before Church organization. Unless that Church has a significant external support from a larger secular …
@juergen_hubert Even gods know that SOMEONE has to work in the administration for the Church and having a holy (or unholy) compulsion to do things which are a significant distraction from looking after Church business is no way to be successful.
This applies even to evil Churches.
Logically, then, when there is a choice the number of those who choose the trait has to be significantly less than those who don't. That's not to say elements of those traits aren't important social elements within the group, but they aren't compelled. Those churches are probably among the larger and more successful, from an organizational point of view.
The deities which don't have choice in the matter probably are less interested in running centralized, controlled Churches and more perfectly happy with cell-oriented cults-of-personality, where zealotry comes before Church organization. Unless that Church has a significant external support from a larger secular power who can do the organizational work (like a State-supported religion), you can think of their operations as a distributed set of cult groups who get up to their own thing.
These things are dangerous/useful in different ways.
Some deities sanctify their clerics and similarly devoted followers. This gives the follower the holy or unholy trait. The holy trait (page 456) indicates a powerful devotion to altruism, helping others, and battling against unholy forces like fiends and undead. The unholy trait (page 462), in turn, shows devotion to victimizing others, inflicting harm, and battling celestial powers. Deities that list “must choose” mandate gaining the trait and those that list “can choose” give the devotee the option to choose the trait or not. You can have the holy trait, unholy trait, or neither, but can never have both the holy and unholy traits.
— Pathfinder Player Core by Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland , and 1 other (Page 36)
As the #Pathfinder 2E #ttrpg no longer uses alignments, the "holy" and "unholy" traits are the closest substitute (since blasting demons with "holy power" is just too much fun).
But I wonder about the social and religious context for religions where the clerics can choose to have these traits. Is a cleric of Sarenrae who doesn't become sanctified as "holy" seen as insufficient committed to the cause? And what about priests of Abadar? They can choose to be "holy", "unholy", or neither. Does this correspond to different factions in the temple hierarchy, and if so how do they view each other?
I'm not criticizing here - I am genuinely curious how this works out from an in-setting perspective. #worldbuilding
Now that I am slowly getting back into #ttrpg #worldbuilding , I should probably read the latest edition of the game the world will be designed around.
Remember to include little human touches in your work so that it breathes. Random bits of humour. Rude or angry graffiti. Kids playing with a rock.
(The trapped mason from Abbey de Sainte Foy, France, c.1050.)
#WorldBuilding #writing #ttrpg #dnd #AmWriting #WritingCommunity
I have a tendency to hoard obscure travel guides I find in public bookshelves ("Little Free Libraries" and the like) - not only because I am interested in the regions in question, but also because I want to use them as inspiration for #ttrpg #worldbuilding .
Of course, this would require that I actually read them instead of just hoarding them...
I'm working a bit on the neighborhood of Knoutside tonight, and I swear to jebus it isn't _intentional_ irony (for once) that a neighborhood named "Knoutside" is one of the warmer and more sentimental parts* of #Hammondal ... on the other hand, it's also the butchers' district, so it smells to high heaven.
* It's where 3 of the 4 clashing Dwarfy nations have the fewest brawls and the most drunken hugs and dances.
Here's a #worldbuilding thing I have been thinking about for my #ttrpg #osr campaign: there is a single church that trains clerics. They are a polytheist church though, and their priests are trained to deal with all kinds of different cult roles a community might need. Which is why all clerics have the same spells.
They accept the existence of all kinds of gods, even though some are banned from worship (e.g. Orcus).
Now what would be a good name for such an... let's say "all-embracing" church?
"I wonder if this 1000x600 mile map size might be too small to really convey the massive scale of that forest wilderness I want to present to players?"
Nope. It certainly is not.
about the Brontës and their paracosms, the imagiNations of Glass Town, Angria, Gondal and Gaaladine. this sounds very much like something we might be familiar with as #ttrpg players
Ideas about sky islands and how to get them into the game
The Pastel Dungeon: Floating Islands Should Be Weird
https://thepasteldungeon.blogspot.com/2023/07/floating-islands-should-be-weird.html
This quotation, written in the context of a discussion of language in worldbuilding, helps me to understand why I find it necessary to construct languages myself.
#ursulakleguin @bookstodon #books #bookstodon #sciencefiction #sf #fantasy #fantasyfiction #worldbuilding #languageconstruction #conlang #conlangs #conlanging #alwayscominghome
We found this Italian translation of Tolkien’s ‘Tree and Leaf’ in our Airbnb in Palermo.
#tolkien #jrrtolkien #treeandleaf #fantasy #fantasyfiction #worldbuilding #books #bookstodon @bookstodon
#WorldBuilding #WritingPrompt:
Alternate reality where Earth's gravity is upside down.
Life evolved in cave systems.
What happened when the first humans made their way out of the caves?
Did they ever develop structures to live on the "ground?"
How?
What is their religion like?
What does outer space look like with negative gravity? (Is it negative only on earth?)
Is space travel unidirectional?
What is architecture like?
spontaneously decided to tackle the calendar in my #ttrpg #worldbuilding project. For ease of use decided to use 365 days because it's the most familiar one for Earth humans, but then decided to set year end at winter solstice.
then decided to make months 30 days long and just have the solstices as markers for that.
then I got the ideas that lunar months occasionally don't have a fixed duration because the moons might be actually different for mystical reasons.
