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Old 05-22-2019, 09:40 AM   #51
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Modular Cidri

I've used TFT extensively for campaigns set in Middle Earth, the Hyborian Age (i.e., Conan), and quasi-historical renaissance Earth, with no presumption that the players were really on some part of Cidri (though of course if we changed our minds if we wanted that to be the case and that would be fine too). I view Cidri as sort of like TFT's equivalent of the half-articulated default world assumptions implied by much of the material in early editions of D+D: The game is easily pruned and adapted to other settings because the default setting is really just a sketch, but lots of people find it fun to just relax into that sketch.
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Old 05-22-2019, 11:23 AM   #52
JLV
 
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Location: Arizona
Default Re: Modular Cidri

Quote:
Originally Posted by warhorse11h View Post
As my old first sergeants used to say, "If this doesn't apply to you, ignore it."

Some of us need to get a grip. This is supposed to be a game that we play for fun. If it irritates you this much, maybe you should fine another source of recreation.
/\ THIS /\

Seems to me that insisting on a particular approach to the game is simply self-defeating. EVERY LAST ONE OF US has a different approach to the game, and the last thing I need is a stifling set of "rules" dictating what can or cannot be on MY Cidri. I've used TFT with everything from the Wilderlands, to Banestorm, to Oerth, to the Free City of Haven and Thieves' Guild and it's all been just fine. And, as far as I'm concerned, on Cidri, they're all just a couple of months worth of sailing (or a gate) away.
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Old 05-22-2019, 12:20 PM   #53
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Modular Cidri

I think the main reasons for the Cidri setting are:

1) To welcome GMs to freely make their own campaign settings.

2) To allow GMs to use the setting details provided in ITL as a starting point that has many details filled in (e.g. races, bestiary, guilds, jobs, equipment, magic system, with consistent interrelated values).

Point 1) is why Cidri is big enough to fit everyone's campaigns. While yes, other games welcome people to all run their own versions of the same worlds (and ITL does too with the Duchy of Dran), Cidri invites and encourages GMs to map out their own parts of Cidri, and also invites thinking logically and filling in blanks in ways that other settings instead fill in for you and/or expect you to buy the official content.

Point 2) also provides a high-level concept where it makes some sense that the setting details in ITL might be the base-line for many people's different campaigns.

Also, it seems clear to me that Cidri is a meta thing, not a literal thing. It's an invitation to use ITL to do whatever you want, not a detailed logical framework to actually explain how everyone's campaign relates to everyone else's.


And so for that last reason, I disagree with Charles G.'s conclusion that there needs to be an official word about what Cidri is. I think that would be a mistake because the cat is out of the bag and people have already made their own very different Cidri campaigns with vast cosmological differences from each other, and I think it's a very positive thing that there is room for that kind of creative detail, and also that there is no need to think about it when starting play.

However I also think most of the other thought in Charles G.'s post is some of the most interesting and best though-out in this thread, and that it points to valuable insights that are valuable for world building and for GM-ing.

It is true that players may eventually naturally and innocently run into in-play paradoxes or cosmological issues a GM may not have thought through well enough, that can come to a head in problematic ways. I certainly prefer and appreciate it when a GM does some clear thinking about consistency rather than relying on belief that nothing needs a reason because it's fantasy. However I would also observe that in most campaigns I've played in, such issues rarely come up at all.

Sometimes as a player when the GM has paradoxical views about his own campaign universe which he doesn't see, I find that it helps me enjoy the game if I decide that the GM may be wrong, and/or that most characters have inaccurate cosmological views and experience their lives within them. After all, even Steven Hawking didn't know the actual complete truth - there have always been cosmological truths to discover.

Personally, I think the one that works best for my own sensibilities is that while many people think of Cidri as one impossibly huge world, it must really be many, with some M'noren (and some post-M'noren) gate connections. To me, that explains almost everything that I want/need it to explain.

Another explanation I like that is even more all-inclusive, is that Cidri is some sort of mass illusion or dreamscape or Matrix-like phenomenon, because really, that's what it is - a metaphor for GM's making and running campaigns.
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Old 05-25-2019, 11:56 AM   #54
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Modular Cidri

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Originally Posted by Charles G. View Post
OK, OK since you can't tolerate a single contrary thought I'll stop posting on these boards.
I don't think that's necessary. We all have different views and can play the game in our own way. Just because someone doesn't agree with your way of playing or thinking about the game doesn't invalidate it at all. Keep posting!
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Old 05-25-2019, 02:38 PM   #55
JLV
 
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Location: Arizona
Default Re: Modular Cidri

Boy, I don't know. The post he was responding to was pretty offensive too, as I recall. Fortunately it seems to have been deleted. Maybe we should all just calm down; this is supposed to be a fun game, not something to get into a fight over.
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Old 07-02-2019, 05:56 PM   #56
ColinK
 
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Default Re: Modular Cidri

My brothers and I started by ignoring most of the Cidri "world details" and enjoyed exploring the realm of the Thorsz. Tollenkar's Lair was somewhat battered and well-traveled by the time we moved on to other places.

We occasionally applied some hand-wavium to the Dyson Sphere idea, built in the system of a binary star pair, one of which is inside and the other on the outside. That gives enormous volumes of space for as many Hells as anybody could imagine, plus a surface world that has atmosphere, stars at night and more than enough land/sea area for endless adventure.

If you are looking for examples of world data products I've spent money to acquire, GURPS is a great place to start. I really like the historical dives into Constantinople, Venice, etc. Then there are the HARN encyclopedia books for those who want LOTS of detail. We had great fun there for several years.

Of course, we created some of our own places as well. Our humans tended to live in Renaissance towns and cities, with rural villages ranging from early Medieval to very strange.

I could easily imagine some adventure books/PDFs featuring well-developed villages, surrounding forests, lakes, fields and "places of interest". Certainly, BUYING those adventures would be easy, writing them, not so much.
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Old 07-04-2019, 06:59 PM   #57
JLV
 
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Location: Arizona
Default Re: Modular Cidri

Quote:
Originally Posted by ColinK View Post
My brothers and I started by ignoring most of the Cidri "world details" and enjoyed exploring the realm of the Thorsz. Tollenkar's Lair was somewhat battered and well-traveled by the time we moved on to other places.

We occasionally applied some hand-wavium to the Dyson Sphere idea, built in the system of a binary star pair, one of which is inside and the other on the outside. That gives enormous volumes of space for as many Hells as anybody could imagine, plus a surface world that has atmosphere, stars at night and more than enough land/sea area for endless adventure.

If you are looking for examples of world data products I've spent money to acquire, GURPS is a great place to start. I really like the historical dives into Constantinople, Venice, etc. Then there are the HARN encyclopedia books for those who want LOTS of detail. We had great fun there for several years.

Of course, we created some of our own places as well. Our humans tended to live in Renaissance towns and cities, with rural villages ranging from early Medieval to very strange.

I could easily imagine some adventure books/PDFs featuring well-developed villages, surrounding forests, lakes, fields and "places of interest". Certainly, BUYING those adventures would be easy, writing them, not so much.
I totally agree with you (and clever use of the Dyson Sphere concept there!). Alas, I lack the real creativity to come up with the kind of modules you're suggesting. I'd sure want to buy them, though! ;-)
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