Sanial
3758 DM
Scope
The motivation behind building Sanial
I want to build a world where my stories can be told. Sword and Sorcery has appealed to me since I was a child and the fantasy I've dreamed all my life have lived in that realm. Manga, Anime, Comics, Cartoons, Movies, and Books are all mediums that have told stories I aspire to match. I want a rich, in breadth and depth, world that can be the most fertile soil to plant stories in and watch them bloom into magnificent flowers, die, and become nourishment for the flowers that come after them.
The goal of the project
I want my characters to have a world they can live in. One that is both large enough that it continues on despite the characters and small enough that the characters with their choices are meaningful - in both the world on the tabletop and the world their players live in. One that can be home to the world behind my eyes that I visit at night when I lay down, on a plane when I shut my eyes and turn on my music, or rarely that I share with those close by. I want to feel like the wonders trapped inside my head have found a medium by which to escape and awe others in the way they've awed me.
Sanial's Unique Selling point
A world that doesn't sheer itself apart through contradiction. A world that, like ours, moves by great and immutable laws, but that unlike ours has magic and a multitude of intelligent races. A world of High Fantasy, but a world veiled in the first-person. Everything that is known about the world is known by at least one person, someone, anyone, in the world. Nothing is known to us that wasn't every known to them.
And the biggest difference - we learn about their world from them. Journals, notes, essays, and the like and the medium. Nothing is "created" by the author, only transcribe to our world from theirs.
And the biggest difference - we learn about their world from them. Journals, notes, essays, and the like and the medium. Nothing is "created" by the author, only transcribe to our world from theirs.
Theme
Genre
The genre is High Fantasy, the inspirations are Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Mistborn, and other juggernauts of the category.
It is a world with a hard magic system, much like Mistborn. Magic is not, and will not be deus ex machina for me. Magic is as much a science as physics, biology, or chemistry. It is a fifth fundamental force in this universe.
Technology, that is the other sciences, are not so far advanced as in this modern world for two key reasons. One is that with another vast science to study resources for research and development are split yet another way, meaning slower advancement overall. Second is that magic actually takes a larger share of what resources there are, since it is easier to see, develop, and apply magic that enhances quality of life and that mitigates threats to intelligent life. The world sits on the cusp of enlightment era tech, that is our worlds 1600s and 1700s, has for some time and will for a great deal longer (unless the players find a way to push us off the cliff and throw the world into the unknown).
It is a world with a hard magic system, much like Mistborn. Magic is not, and will not be deus ex machina for me. Magic is as much a science as physics, biology, or chemistry. It is a fifth fundamental force in this universe.
Technology, that is the other sciences, are not so far advanced as in this modern world for two key reasons. One is that with another vast science to study resources for research and development are split yet another way, meaning slower advancement overall. Second is that magic actually takes a larger share of what resources there are, since it is easier to see, develop, and apply magic that enhances quality of life and that mitigates threats to intelligent life. The world sits on the cusp of enlightment era tech, that is our worlds 1600s and 1700s, has for some time and will for a great deal longer (unless the players find a way to push us off the cliff and throw the world into the unknown).
Reader Experience
The world is to feel mystical, but not unknowing. It should fill the players' minds with sense of freedom and liberation. A chance for them to say "what if?" and the world to answer. And not just a chance, but a want to free the what ifs of their mind and set them in motion, for good or for bad. Also, importantly, is an oppertunity for me to say "what if?" a the world to be a framework to guide me in the search for an answer.
Reader Tone
The world is not illuminated uniformly. There will be places where the grim, horrid things live. There will also be sanctuaries of brightness where all is right and nothing can sully that. But largely the world is lived in shades of grey by ordinary people who have no heroic happens in their lives, and do not want any. Horrible and wondrous happens always bring difficultly, and the ordinary folk have a difficult enough time living and dying without adding anything extra.
Recurring Themes
The races are intertwined in their histories and their nations. Homogeneous families, towns, cities, districts, states, nobility, nations and even royalty are exceptionally rare, always intentional, states of being.
Magic works exactly the way to expect it to. It is not exempt from the world's logic - rather the world's logic has a sub-type that governs magic. NO DEUS EX MACHINA magic exists, nor should it.
Adventurers, Heroes, even Villains, often hear from the common folk, "Don't stick your troubles with me. Trouble sticks to trouble, and I have enough trouble living my life. You go live your life without me, and take your troubles with you."
The world is not linear. Characters live, and die, on their ability to determine risk and predict situations that will kill them.
Magic works exactly the way to expect it to. It is not exempt from the world's logic - rather the world's logic has a sub-type that governs magic. NO DEUS EX MACHINA magic exists, nor should it.
Adventurers, Heroes, even Villains, often hear from the common folk, "Don't stick your troubles with me. Trouble sticks to trouble, and I have enough trouble living my life. You go live your life without me, and take your troubles with you."
The world is not linear. Characters live, and die, on their ability to determine risk and predict situations that will kill them.
Character Agency
Player characters have a strong and far-reaching agency. They can reshape the world's history and set its course into the future should they ascend to such levels. They can make missteps and miss chances to do so. But most importantly they can choose not to. They can let the world roll on down its current path, and it will, or they can dictate a new path the world will conform to. In this regard it is much like our own world, except we have the benefit of looking in from the outside in this scenario.
Focus
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