UREALIZ WORLD PRIMER WIP V1.2

homebrew
inspiration
question

#1

Ciao people!


A traveler arriving to Iris

So, a few days talk about he setting i’m writing. Here i add a PDF with some context, history and the region of Lucaris.

I also add a guide for character creation, optional rules, rewrote some lore and add 3 regions from the Nexus.

Introduction
First, indicate that I am fascinated by psionic powers in fiction. The fact is that there are a variety of settings with their own magic systems, and psionics elements added later as an afterthought. Psionics as such seems to be set aside in fantasy, unless it is inherent in setting as Dark Sun and Eberron. That is why it occurred to me to put aside traditional magic in favor of psionics in Uraliz.

*Game Expectations
What do you want to play this time? Urealiz is a vast world recovering from the fall of the greatest civilization in its history and its spoils lay all over the place. A setting where different types of players can live incredible adventures, whether traveling the world and knowing the different emerging nations, hunting psionic creatures and monsters in wild areas or wastelands. The classic dungeon with a science fantasy aesthetic inspired by Numenera, Hop, or movie Thor’s Asgard. Save the world from the machinations of secret organizations, the villain of the day, or stop an apocalyptic beast from the past. Geo-politic intrigue, conflict of interest between the most important factions, a war campaign, betrayals and the secret weapon/heir. Or even an adventure for children in high school, learning to manage their powers while trying to save their school, their families, and their grades.

Here’s the link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KUOWy2RGLa61qq1ytlXk5hrJ4k88optv/view?usp=drivesdk

'Till later, people.


#2

Very fun outline. The history is nebulous and we don’t know what they ate, what resources where common or what their magic did.

What factions formed and why???

When faced with adversity cultures react differently to the same event. Modern day is a terrible comparison to other times. The Spanish arrived in the America’s with cannons, flint locks, and decent steel, at a time when the entire American culture did not have any literacy. Yet had advance observations, and recorded them.

One culture was in the Stone Age, the other in the steel age. 4000 years of steady advancement, encountered each other.


#3

I think the setting sounds great! Very intriguing.:herocoin:

I guess the next curiosity I have is, from your opinion, what is the underlying theme that you want to reinforce with your setting? Like are you intending players to experience the rush of high technology or more along the lines of a dystopian future where players are just trying to get by in a broken world?


#4

Thanks for these questions guys

Do you mean about the Commonwealth, right @Paxx ? I’ll add some notes about the differences between them and the rest of the world. Also, I didn’t talk about the psionic energy, very important in my setting.
About the time between the Collapse and the or days, i need more time to write it down. What I want to leave clear is that the Commonwealth got fucked up pretty well long time ago. A post apocalyptical world where psionic people can change the world.

That kind of answered @KaneDriscol 's question. I want a setting were people can play any kind of adventure they want. Exploration of dungeons and ruins, never-old adventure through the world, political conflicts in the Nexus Region, monster hunting with zai’nihitas, a war campaign in the Barukia Empire…

I’ll add some initial nations next edit.

Also, also, consider that this is just some kind of general knowledge people in Urealiz has about where they came from.

'Till later


Ruins of the old world


#5

Awwww geeeees. I wrote out a huge post…and the server ate it, and told me it was to similar to a recent post, so I thought it posted…Bullet points

  • Great looking visual art!!!

  • Truth, history, legend, lore, heritage are all different things that people often think of as the same thing or totally different…except for concrete truth, the rest are stories, some with more or less evidence, but evidence does not equal truth.

  • I am using the word magic, for anything that does not follow understood laws in reality( warp speed, the force, laser swords, A.I. With above human intelligence yet with human motivations) all magic.

  • ICRPG seems going in the direction is less is more, let the table create more by describing less and motivating more.

  • the designers need truth for consistency, the GM needs history for motivation, the players need legends and lore for aspersions.

  • information did not spread in the world as it does today. Technology often took hundreds or thousands of years to spread. Trade routes made it faster, books made it faster, videos made it faster, the internet has made it incredibly fast, yet we don’t have more truth as a percentage of idiocy…just more information.

Perhaps the bullet points will help you more then my way too long post.


#6

A new day begins. Thanks @Paxx for taking your time to write it again.

The God of Internet may want a sacrifice for it hehe.

It does help a lot the bullet point formating.

I know!! Man, i got some other artwork i’ll be using. I’ll add the autors as it correspond.

Hmm here i assume rewriting the text to make it look like “We THINK this is happened, buuuut we’re really not sure. There’s lot of tales about the old days” will help. Was thinking of a section call “Origins” in every region talking about how it was established should work fine.

The psionic related topics are kind a note to myself. This is where the loot comes from after all. The technological advancement of the edhinn’te are what help spread the information/knowledge in the past. I’ll talk about it later.

And this is why we love it. I’ll put a PDF following the formating of WORLDS and BEARCATS, thou i’m doing everything from my cellphone. At least now, the writing stage.

Thanks for the tips, man.


#7

PDF added to the post.


#8

Really good Primer…

add character building notes, mile stones and we have a new world to play in.

Add some more feel of a particular place, and we get an understanding for that corner of civilization. (day to day living or an adventure there)

Add a few Loot menus and we get a feel for what is around in the world. and a glimpse of how it interacts.


#9

It’s on the way. I’m thinking in a combination of the way @Ardon creates PCs and charac creation in other rules lite RPGs.
It make take me a while, but tables for every psionic school are coming too.


#10

Alright!! I’m adding a new PDF in the OP. If you guys are interested, I’ll appreciate your feedback.


#11

I like the optional character details you provided. Its like a kitchen sink of every character creation game I know, Black Hack, Cypher System, OSR, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World… etc. Nice job summarizing them into a short and sweet thoughts.

I noticed there are no classes, bioforms, or milestones. Do you want the reader to use the CORE character classes and bioforms?

A good example of this is CHAOS MODE. Cool ability/rule. But, is this optional, or does every class have access to this rule? Is this a LOOT based ability or a natural PSIONIC power? Although very powerful, it seems bolted on and not a part of the setting. Maybe make it a universal milestone that everyone can choose for PSIONICS. It seems awfully overpowered, even with EXHAUSTION tag.

just my two cents, this is your world, and if that’s what you want, then maybe you need to explain how it fits into your world a little more; just one or two sentences.

Additional Rules, Optional Rules, Psionics, Rules, etc., etc.… What do you want us to use as required for your world primer and what are optional ideas you suggest? More clarity or organization would help… Maybe 2 sections, New Rules and Optional Rules. This would be my suggestion.

Occupation Weapons and Gear charts are short but sweet. Love them!

In Psionics, your ruleset is concise. Very nice work. But you dont explain how you use Energy points. I assume you use the suggested mana points rules in MAGIC. But its not stated in your document.

Same with Sanity Points. Dont assume the players know the rules. At minimum, reference a page number or at least the book they can reference to.

Connections Bonds and Complications are all nice character options. While these optional rules are nice to see, in terms of organization, i would recommend you make Optional Rules and New Rules either in different sections or note them with subscript or footnotes.

“if you don’t like the rule, just use what you like.” Is probably what you are thinking, but we are going to do that anyway, so it’s best to give the readers your vision of the world, so we know what it’s supposed to play like, and then we can choose what we want to hack… just a thought.

The World, and its histories are good reads. They add a lot to the flavor. Check you spelling and use of english. Some sentences could use some clarity.

The Nexus, I love the short 1 sentence descriptions of the various institutions and factions. I know this is a work in progress but you have a lot of stuff waiting to written in this section. I can’t wait to read some more!

Lucaris, Canaaz, Sinna, and Kyrios, boy does these description make me want to play in your world. Very good ideas for adventure seeds. Love them all. Especially the name chart… nothing gives a world more flavor than a list of common names.

All in all, it’s a great World Primer, and I can’t wait to see what else you come up with. Simple Psionics methods, cool art, and some nice adventure seeds makes this an interesting read… I may have to get this to the table to see how it plays!

Nice work, @Angram091Game On!


#12

Thanks for these suggestions. It does mean a lot.
I like those system you just mention. As i said before, @Ardon has a nice way for character building. He deserve the credit.

I didnt talk about bioform as i think of Urealiz as a human only setting. Of course, that completely my take on it and everybody can add all the bioforms from CORE as they want. I’ll make it clear in the next correction, as well with the rules section. It does a better organization. And for archetypes/milestones, i’m looking for inspiration right now, in possible and suggested Powers more than loot.

Hmm. I’m thinking of a combination of chaos mode from Darksiders and a Super Saiyan’s transformation, but it should leave you very vulnerable. Get all the power, but get all the risk. Of course, the villains are capable of these. It needs a rewording hehe.

Those are just samples hehe. Full-page charts are coming too.

I must confess that I’m basically using Google Translate to translate everything! Not the best tool, but the best I have at the moment. I’m sorry for those whose eyes bleed after reading the PDF!! I’m doing the best I can.

I’ll continue working on the primer. Thank you again for the suggestions and compliments.


#13

You are doing fine. I didn’t know you were translating the world primer. Now it makes sense to me… If you need some help with the World Primer or just with the editing, let me know. I would love to help you. … Game On!


#14

Really cool! It’s clear you have a great vision and it comes out in the doc!

My feedback:
<<100% based only on my own SUBJECTIVE taste: You’re world book - your rules!>>

Additional Rules Nice, they look fun!
Active Defense: Cool! I like! What is Energy? How does it work? This should be explained in Additional rules section.
Armour Points: Just call it “Armour”. B+S uses “Armour Points” and it means something else, so that is confusing. Also I think “Damage Reduction” is clearer than “Damage Absorption”.
Chaos Mode: Love this :smiley: I’d consider just EASY instead of DOUBLE EASY (really you have to test to know for sure). Change “6 rounds/1 minute” to 1 encounter. Like @Ezzerharden said, not super clear who this is for.

Character Creation
Overall, I like this all a lot! You certainly took my version of character creation and made it totally your own! nice! :slight_smile: However I did find a few things a bit confusing for 2 main reasons: Classes and Background layout/categories.

Classes?
So there are no classes, or occupations are classes? Or are occupations more like backgrounds? Are all characters Archons? Is progression based on milestone rewards? Do players design their own “class” with the gm in the form of milestone rewards?

Layout
“Background” section is little confusing. It has Personality tags, items, weapons and occupation (=class??) all together - which for a lot of RPG players is not what they understand as “background”. I think you need to fix the layout a bit. For example, maybe there should be 2 sections: BACKGROUND/TAGS and ITEMS?

Figure/Stature
Personally, instead of figure/stature table, I would just say “give 2 TAGS to describe your appearance” and then give some examples (One-eyed, bulky). This way the player is only writing tags that really trigger their image of their character. (Tables at the end of the book is always nice though ;))

Age + Complications
The age/stats/complications thing is awesome - I will steal this!
+2 or +4 stats is really strong and story complications are fun, (and affect the whole party anyway). So I see little incentive to ever play a young character. Instead of complication, I’d make it a character FLAW (eg. Bad leg, “Don’t call me chicken”, alcoholic, bad memory, colour blind, adrenaline junkie, etc), remember the GM can make ANY TAG a story complication anyway (“those guys who gave you that bad leg have come back”). I’d still have complications, but as an extra thing any character can have.

Descriptor
It’s not clear why “descriptor” is an Item and not a tag, is also seems to overlap with Personal Oddity. I would just call it PERSONALITY or TRAIT “1 or 2 TAGS to describe your personality or quirk that identifies you”

Love, Hate, Fear
Hehe, this is fun. But I would caution you of having too many personality TAGS. As a player I’ve found it can be overwhelming to have too many cues in the beginning. Maybe suggest that the player can use just ONE of these? Or even better, players can find out what these are through playing and add them later!

Items/Weapons
Cool! I like the list, it gives a feeling of the world. I want even MORE! :stuck_out_tongue:
Maybe suggest players can make up an occupation and choose 2 appropriate items as well :slight_smile:

Connections
Both Bonds and Complications are really nice.
I would make complications something any character can have (not just oldies). Maybe through playing adventures in the world, players will get new complications! Maybe they can choose to start with a special/nice Item, but it comes with a complication?
You could also add “contact” if you want, 1 or 2 people they know in the world.

<<I’m not 100% clear what you mean by “complication”, maybe I’m misinterpreting you. Give an example? Examples makes things real clear :slight_smile: I really like examples in RPG books!>>

World Primer
My overall suggestions is LESS = MORE. You have SO MUCH good material here that it’s a bit TOO MUCH. I really liked that you start by saying the Origin is unknown. As a player and GM my imagination is ignited and I’m thinking “ooh this is mysterious”! But then it goes into a lot of detail and history, which is hard to follow and makes the world less clear in my mind. Remember, a World primer’s goal (in my opinion) is to communicate the FEEL of the world. Too much detailed history/background dilutes this.

Ask yourself: what is the MOST important info to communicate? What communicates the idea to the reader in the shortest/clearest way? This will transmit the idea in your head to me most effectively. Too much text dilutes the feel of your world (this is a really hard skill I struggle with as well, but I think it is why ICRPG is so great for example).

The Nexus section is rather confusing. It is straight after the “history” section, and then continues the history. I’m not really clear of what the Nexus is.

Make subheadings that are easily understood. I don’t know what “Primarita” or “Zai’Nihitas” means when I first read this book. When I read a subheading, I should immediately have an idea of what this is about. Eg. “Primarita, a new energy source!” or “Zai’Nihitas: Psyionic Creatures”

I think your location descriptions are GREAT! Really cool! Love these a lot. My only suggestion is to make an extra section called “Places of Interest”, because there are too many points under “lay of land”.

Just to be clear: I really like critical feedback, so that is what I usually give. But this is just my own subjective opinion (ie. it means nothing). You should do what feels true to your idea! Overall this is an original and interesting campaign setting I’d be excited to play in. Great job!!


#15

Thank you!! With the help of these observations I’ll work on the document to get a better layout of the info. I want to make a long answer, but I guess it’s better if I begin now with the modifications.
I will upload a better version again in the (I hope so) near future.
Thanks!!