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Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Conceptualizing the 'Gods & Monsters' Sandbox, Part 3

Now its time to pull back from the divine matters, briefly, to focus on the more 'ground level' matters of the world of God(bound) & Monsters: the daily lives of its mortal inhabitants. This is important, as it is easy to forget that most NPC encountered will be mortals and not gods and that for all the power gods may wield, the most important people in the world are the mortals. Should I call them 'humans'? Maybe, maybe not, but I'll get back to this idea later on.

Rockfield People, by Phoebe Herring.
In many ways, the people of this nameless world (maybe its just called 'The World'?) are very much inspired by the neolithic and early bronze age people. The vast majority of them are still tribal. Agriculture has arisen (Possibly thanks to the gods...or did the humans create the gods of agriculture? Food for thought) but communities remain starkly primitive even compared to the most rugged of fantasy settings, relying still on animal hides, stones and mud for their dwellings. Clothes aren't much different. Bronze is the main innovation when it come to weaponry and armor, but it is not a universally-shared discovery as the most far-out regions still rely on bone and stones. This isn't too much of an issue for player characters, however, being Gods but it does affect the threat level of mortal opponents a little bit.

The main cultural inspiration for these humans, especially those around the First City (more on that later), are the Mesopotamian with the rest of the world being a loose, somewhat anachronistic mixture of various bronze age and stone age cultures. Historical accuracy is not important or relevant here, after all and this isn't Earth anyway (or is it?): rather, having cool locales with exotic people encountering equally exotic gods is far more important. Still, setting up the basics for what life is like is quite important in 'nailing down' the aesthetic and function of a setting.

The naming convention of the more civilized folks draw inspiration from the Mesopotamian too, with hints of other ancient languages such as Tamil and Sanskrit. Their names sound like Akum, Themud or Midha. The people from the open plains, or the jungles or the ocean coast draw upon different inspiration filtered through a fantasy lens. Its not uncommon for people to have very simple names meaning simple things like 'grass', 'sun' or 'three' (being the third child to reach adulthood, for example).

Mammoth in Blizzard by deskridge.

Megafauna such as mammoths still exist and so do dinosaurs, or at least dinosaur-esque beasts. This is in complete disregard to science but science is hardly a factor in myths, which are full of wondrous and impossible beasts. These creatures are a dying breed, however, safe for the massive megafauna to the furthest north where humans dare not go. Some beasts are not ordinary animals, but rather some form of divine creature or living phenomena, more rampaging abomination or gigantic kaiju than animal: some are the spawn of gods, some are former gods (who became monsters) while others simply are a fact of life. They exist because they do, embodying some primal element to nature.

Character God of Nature, by Alessandro Tedesco

But where did this world come from? From nothing, clearly. A nothing made into something by Thought and Word, which signaled the beginning of What Is. To the people of this world, this is a fact of life, an accepted truth (even if the details invariably deviate from story to story in a myriad ways): after all, Gods, Monsters and Spirits walk the land. Most people live in a region with one or more associated spirits and most likely worship them in some form. These beings need not be the original creator or inhabitants of that region. In fact they most probably aren't, as the 'first gods' and primordial entities which shaped the earliest world are long gone or beyond human perception, having faded from active reality as they became the very flesh and bone of creation. Or so some story go, at any rate.

The gods have helped shaped the world but humans have shaped the gods too. They are increasingly more like humans and less like true, faceless primordial forces. The chaos of creation which birthed them is solidified into thoughts, ideas, concepts and archetypes which inform the god's identity.

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