Tuesday, February 4th

The Daily Report

I'm having a pretty good day today, albeit one with a bit of a slow start, as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing this report at noon. It's a slow brain day, but not a bad brain one.

Yesterday, I started a writing blog. It's still developing, but the main focus is on the act of writing more so than things like the development of story, characters, or plot. I'm taking a very Bob Ross approach here: everybody who wants to write should be writing, should feel allowed to write and should have the time and space and tools to do so.

That's not to say that none of the tips I post will touch on things like world building or story... I especially plan on doing character-building exercises later. But even then, my focus will be more on "here's how to do this thing when you feel like you can't" or "here's a place to start" than anything else.

For now, I'm building a basic repertoire of tips and premises that I can then refer back to in future posts. Once that's done, I'm planning on doing "virtual workbooks" that basically take people through the process of writing short-short stories/scenes/vignettes, with the idea that this will hone skills that will help them put together larger works.

Or not. My premise is that if someone wants to write, any writing is better than no writing.

The State of the Me

Doing okay. A little slow today, like I said.

Plans For Today

Block 1 is kind of passed. I did some writer-blogging.

Block 2, I'm going to be writing some side stuff.

Block 3, major writing day for the next chapter of Tales of MU.

Adventure Song: World Building

Adventure Song is envisioned as a spiritual descendant of D&D 4E, and so the setting has some things in common with 4E's "points of light" campaign (which also influenced to a lesser degree the setting of AWW). This is an example of why I'm working on re-inventing 4E: there were a lot of good ideas there. A lot of thought went into figuring out why "the D&D world" would be as it was, with scattered duchies and dominions, countryside full of monsters, and ruins littered with powerful magical items and vast stores of treasure.

Building your setting on the ruins of a fallen empire also helps to explain the "medieval flavor" of "medieval fantasy"... the medieval period in European history comes after a classical period that ended with the waning dominance of vast empires.

With that in mind, here's a brief history of Cadran, the setting of Adventure Song:

A thousand years ago, the city-state of Cadria was the center of a vast empire that spanned continents, straddling a quarter of the world. The Cadrian Empire was also called the Empire of Dragons, as the secret of controlling dragons was the source of their power. This secret was jealously guarded, known only to the reigning emperor and a few trusted advisors and generals.

The Cadrian Empire did not fall so much as splinter when wars over succession led to dragons fighting dragons. The number of the great beasts fell dramatically as the number of hands that held the secret of their control rose. This began the Age of the Dragonlords, where a handful of would-be emperors and empresses divided the remains of the empire among themselves, warring with their neighbors and treating their own dominions as their personal playgrounds. No Dragonlord could make a decisive blow against the rest, for none would risk using their most valuable and precious weapons against a foe who could destroy or capture them.

The Age of the Dragonlords lasted a scant three centuries, during which many of the advances in art, trade, and learning achieved at the height of the Cadrian Empire were lost. The rule of the Dragonlords came to an abrupt end when one of their number, attempting to create a curse that would wipe out the rest, unleashed a plague that killed most of the remaining dragons along with a great number of wizards and creatures of magic.

Those begun the Lost Ages, a time when the rule of magic gave way to the rule of superstition in the lands now known as Cadran. The dwarves retreated into their mines, and most elves who could fled to brighter lands under other suns. The gnomes hid in their shires and largely forgot about the outside world, which was quick to return the favor. Only the races of humanity remained at large in Cadran, to toil and work and re-build as best they could.
The Lost Ages persisted for six or seven centuries, but in that time the world has continued to change.

In the vacuum created by the absence of strong magic and strong government, religion stepped in. New gods—or old ones suppressed by the previous orders—have come forward, gifting their servants with supernatural powers to heal and inspire.

New wizards have been born over the centuries, and though the marvels of past ages are far from commonplace, many of the arts that were lost in the dragonplague have been painstakingly reinvented or rediscovered.
The creatures of magic that were not wiped out have had time to repopulate, though in some cases the lack of a previous predator or food source has substantially altered their range, behavior, and population patterns.

Dragons are still rare, of course, rarer than ever. But here and there, rumors pop up concerning lost clutches of eggs, still viable a millennium after the fall of the empire that stockpiled them.

The Dragonlords are gone, but many of the dominions they founded live on as the strongest kingdoms among a thousand petty kingdoms and fiefdoms. Being able to claim descent from a Dragonlord or a Cadrian emperor or general is often used as a source of perceived legitimacy for the scattered aristocracy of Cadran. The strongest rulers have had centuries to consolidate the holdings around them and to form alliances and trade agreements with the others. Roads have been rebuilt. Shipping lanes reopened. People are beginning to travel more, and take more of an interest in lands further distant the next hill.

This is the world of Adventure Song, a world torn apart by ancient wars and ancient greed, littered with the ruins of a lost age of marvels. It's a world that had great magic that it just beginning to find again. It's a world where people like elves and dwarves and creatures like dragons and unicorns are both the stuff of legend and real beings of flesh and blood.

One unique touch here not present in the setting that inspired it is a touch of "the magic mostly went away, but now it's coming back". This is meant to explain, among other things, why you can *find* magic items that can't be made or bought on the market. Which is a bit of a departure from 4E, but more in the original spirit of D&D.