I would like to know about "The Wellspring of Creation" please.

[Stone Dog]

I have searched the threads that come up about it and I don't have enough info.

I have checked out Google, and I remain ignorant.

It seems to be some sort of fantasy setting in Old Pyramid that is unavailable through legal channels.

I seek coherence.

EDIT.

Okay, I got this from the author...

A DF-leaning fantasy world, presented in an article I wrote close to the end of Pyramid's web run. It was essentially a mashup of every (well, almost; one or two were omitted by oversight) location-centric Pyramid article published up to that point, or a framing device to turn large swathes of Pyramid into one great big fantasy campaign.

But since I already started this thread to avoid derailing the other one, I'd like more details here and brainstorming if at all possible.

It sounds like a good concept and I'd like to explore it a bit more.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

The overarching idea is that a world with a lot of magic may be exciting, but it isn't necessarily a particularly stable place to be. That's a longue duree issue, but it does serve to rationalize many of the tropes of the DF genre. Civilizations arise, accumulate a lot of magic, become wealthy and powerful, and wipe themselves out in spectacular manaclysms. The gods and natural creative forces are also in full effect, so life is also continuously being created and recreated in uninhabited areas, and there's a constant stream of spontaneously generated new monsters and barbarian tribes.

So, then, rising and recovering civilizations try to expand into unorganized regions, but there's a never-ending supply of monsters to face, and there are always dangerous hordes threatening to burst out of the nearest steppe, desert, or forest. Newly created intelligent creatures come into being speaking a single "universal" language, so there's a ready-made "common tongue." Technological progress is brought to a screeching halt every few centuries, so while fancier gadgets (like gunpowder weapons and steam engines) aren't explicitly ruled out, the inability to build up infrastructure create a practical cap of TL4. And, of course, there's a landscape littered with the remnants of many, many generations of lost civilizations (and their plentiful magical items and old buildings which are now often underground dungeons), so there are countless places for adventurers to explore in search of treasure.

The rest is pretty much just pointers to specific locations (that is, other Pyramid articles) and a little bit about how they fit into the big picture. For example, someone inclined to mix politics into their DF campaign might do something with the tensions between the various undead nations (a cluster of expansionist vampire kingdoms described in one article is constrained by their ability to create an area of permanent darkness, a growing zombie horde which will clearly come into competition with the vampires is described in another, and an isolationist city-state of undead ruled by a powerful but lethargic lich-king is in a third).

[Stone Dog]

That sounds like it would be a great offering to be worked up for e23. I would certainly buy it!

[nanoboy]

I too would buy this product. That sounds like an interesting fantasy setting.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

It would be fun and interesting to write, certainly, since GURPS lacks a purpose-built OTT high-magic setting, though I'm not entirely convinced that DF really and truly needs a setting book as much as it needs adventures and generic locations [1].

On the other hand, there's a long, long history of high-level setting books outselling adventures. So. Well, then.




1. Plus I've already got a number of things in my personal queue at the moment: standing by for comments during the editing phase of LT, awaiting comments and/or playtest for a first draft of another project, awaiting word back on another proposal, and I started scribbling notes in support of yet another thing I may propose and ended up writing half of it. Which is very bad practice and I emphatically do not recommend it.

[Stone Dog]

From what I can tell, you've already done most of the actual work for the Wellspring and it just needs updating to 4e with a bit of fleshing out with some DF rules.

I wish the old Pyramid article was available though. I could use something like that.

[thalassogen]

I just checked my pyramid archive and noticed that it only contains HTML files but no images. Is there a chance to get the map of the wellsprings?

[SCHIFTY]

I'm intrigued by your point of view, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Stone Dog]

Originally Posted by thalassogen

I just checked my pyramid archive and noticed that it only contains HTML files but no images. Is there a chance to get the map of the wellsprings?

That would be a nice minimum, if the whole thing wasn't available.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Stone Dog

That would be a nice minimum, if the whole thing wasn't available.

The map would be meaningless without the article, unfortunately, and the article wouldn't mean a lot without the linked articles.

(And as for the map, I fear that train has sailed. There is currently no way to get anything from the old Pyramid. If it appears again, it'll be in some other form.)