Ideas for Yrth

[Dencat]

Yrth remains my favourite fantasy setting because of:
1) Religions are just that.
2) Not subject to stupid tropes like Plant College restricted to Druids.
5) Just as in real world, messy politics with no clear good guys.

What i don't like.
1) Far too few people and too long distances between locations)
2) Known world shaped and sized like US
J) weird lack of languages.

However. Based on personal experience, more widespread gunpowder is not The Answer.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

So, they'd run an anarcho-syndicalist commune, taking it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, and complain about how they didn't vote for the Emperor?

Yes, but it's the out of proportion reaction of the societal elites that makes the setting. In the real world, the reaction to the Diggers was insane. As late as 1760 an English Lord, who was the local magistrate, had a man flogged to death because the Lord thought the man was a digger. Although the whole thing was illegal under English law no one at the time seemed to care.

Basically, you're blending the paranoid fears of the 19th-century nobility into a pseudo-Medieval setting. Watch The Strange Door, The Black Castle and Jamaica Inn for violent corrupt nobles driven by paranoia and fear. Yes, all of those films are post Medieval, but the criminality and violence combined with a wounded sense of privilege give you the kind of horror setting I'm suggesting.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Dencat

Yrth remains my favorite fantasy setting because of:
1) Religions are just that.
2) Not subject to stupid tropes like Plant College restricted to Druids.
5) Just as in real-world, messy politics with no clear good guys.

Solid points, I have to agree.

What I don't like.
1) Far too few people and too long distances between locations)
2) Known world shaped and sized like the US
J) weird lack of languages.

However. Based on personal experience, more widespread gunpowder is not The Answer.

The first was a real issue in large areas of Europe and the Near East in the real middle ages. I remember reading about a forest with a brutal band of bandits that took twenty years for the king of England to suppress. Once I looked up where the "forest" was, I found to my shock the forest was within the borders of present-day London! In fact, suburbs swallow the area in the 18th century.

Hey, I want an "Age of Sail" to address the second one. And for the third, rules about local dialects and "patrois" should handle that.

[Rolando]

I think No. 1 is to hide dragons and other magical mysteries in the seams, overtly.

Banestorm must appeal to those looking for politics and society, and to those looking for adventures like Symbad and Arthurian legends, at least.

I think it is part of the fantasy of the setting.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Yes, but it's the out of proportion reaction of the societal elites that makes the setting. In the real world, the reaction to the Diggers was insane.

So the bloody peasants were being repressed, and people could come and see the violence inherent in the system?

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Solid points, I have to agree.
I remember reading about a forest with a brutal band of bandits that took twenty years for the king of England to suppress. Once I looked up where the "forest" was, I found to my shock the forest was within the borders of present-day London!

Do remember the classic answer to the question of why someone robbed banks. (Because that was where the money was.) That forest may have been dangerously close to where the royal forces were, but it was also doubtless an area where a lot of rich travellers were passing through. Not much point in being a brutal bandit gang in an area with no-one to rob, and nothing to buy with stolen money if you did make a score.

And we think of a city as a place full of cops. To the medieval mind, it was a place full of masterless men accustomed to telling royal power where to go.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Do remember the classic answer to the question of why someone robbed banks. (Because that was where the money was.) That forest may have been dangerously close to where the royal forces were, but it was also doubtless an area where a lot of rich travellers were passing through. Not much point in being a brutal bandit gang in an area with no-one to rob, and nothing to buy with stolen money if you did make a score.

And we think of a city as a place full of cops. To the medieval mind, it was a place full of masterless men accustomed to telling royal power where to go.

A solid point. But it still, a wild untamed forest so near a national capital of an established nation does suggest the population was very low.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

So the bloody peasants were being repressed, and people could come and see the violence inherent in the system?

It less that the peasants have a hard life than a general atmosphere of paranoia. Those who see themselves as privileged can be very nasty when you threaten their privileges.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

A solid point. But it still, a wild untamed forest so near a national capital of an established nation does suggest the population was very low.

Well yes. The Middle Ages. Though as I recall, highwaymen were still hanging around Hampstead Heath in the 18th century (and the Prime Minister got mugged in that same century within London). Autres temps, autres mœurs.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

It less that the peasants have a hard life than a general atmosphere of paranoia. Those who see themselves as privileged can be very nasty when you threaten their privileges.

This joke has hone on long enough. Relevant scene linked.

[LoneWolf23k]

So, something I thought about, was perhaps trying an "Yrth 2.0" thing, starting with a fresh, perhaps randomly generated worldmap, and redoing the Banestorm setting on it, with a "remix" of nations. Like, perhaps adding an independent Jewish kingdom here, a Chinese Empire there (giving this world's Megalos an equally powerful rival), and maybe a serpent-folk empire down in this southern continent.

I might try this in a new thread.