Creating a new world

It comes with just a single question. What if? What if I started a new blog? What if we talked about fantasy fiction? What if the stories told coincided with a role-playing game? What if I set myself back two decades and cracked open Dungeons & Dragons again?

bard-dave
Every storyteller needs their tools – a good mug, a notebook (or netbook), a satchel for tokens and memories and a block of cheese maybe some sausage, and a trusty sword.

What if the themes were strong adult subject matter that made for gritty tales of life, death and heroism? What if magic was real? And the gods could talk, but then they stopped?

What if the continents were small, the peoples plentiful and not all human? What if humans didn’t believe in magic because it had disappeared in the only continent they know? How about making it so they are defined more by their cultures than by their phenotype?

Have they stopped believing in themselves, in their gods? Do they see good and evil? How?

Is there slavery? Why? Is there nobility? Can someone be both?

These questions and the cascade of answers start to form more questions. It’s a nearly infinite series of responses. World building, particularly the creation of a world that breathes, is hard. Crafting a world-space that can withstand episodic gaming is harder.

Take chunks at a time. That’s what Full Moon Storytelling will be. Small chunks of content for use in a campaign setting, built around a custom set of rules adapted from 5th edition D&D, but with accompanying tales. If the setting says “The Necromancer is just someone trying to be good” there will be a story that explains how that happened.

As The Worthing Saga took a novella and broke out portions into branch stories, Full Moon Storytelling takes a campaign setting, rule set and crafts micro-fiction, short stories, plotless narrations and episodic adventures within the World of the Everflow.

Maybe that’s where we start, not with a character, but with a story about a fountain that flows from a cliff and diverts along two paths – the Font of Two Paths, the Two-Headed Spring, Pool of Life, Lake of Wonder. The Everflow influences the western peninsula of Kin, is clearly unnatural and …

This is Full Moon Storytelling. It’s a way to share writing, writing process and to think aloud, while words spring forth from tiny digits. Things will happen live, in front of you. Process will be as important as output. Creation is play. Come, join me at this fire under a full moon with clear sky as we look up through trees staring towards the open world of wonder, knowing that behind those trees at your back is whatever reality you can imagine.

2 thoughts on “Creating a new world

  1. Pingback: Developing a calendar, because your players demand it | Full Moon Storytelling

  2. Pingback: Lore Collage: Dungeons & Dragons movie adds another big name, new product announced Tuesday, and dozens more items to read and watch | Full Moon Storytelling

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