Chimerical Realm

I’m finally ready to move on to the final “real” section of the World Builder’s Guidebook —History.  There’s a bit after this, but it’s more about general advice and picking which optional or house rules to use and the like.  After this section, I’ll be more or less done. As I went through each step of the world creation process, I also developed bits and pieces of the history of the world.  For example, the rise and fall of the Elven Empire, the destruction of the Dwarves, the coming of the barbarian humans, and the like.  But this is the point where we start giving things dates and figuring out what else has happened. The WBG divides history up into three sections—Ancient, Middle, and Recent.  Ancient are the events that took place millennia ago, so far in the past that no one can truly verify what did or did not actually happen.  Only the greatest and most significant of events are still remembered even by the learned sages of the modern day....

I think I’m pretty much done with the gods.  Sure, there are a bunch more deities I could detail, and it would certainly be fun.  But I honestly don’t want to get bogged down into too many details at this point, and I’d like to leave the rest of the Pantheon relatively undefined so I can approach them as needed in the game.  I might even work with a player if they want to play a cleric to come up with their particular cult. But, there’s still two more things to do—Cosmology and Myths.  Cosmology is the physical layout of the solar system, while Mythology is the tales of the gods.  I’m not entirely sure how important Mythology is, at least as a bedrock of world creation.  Generally I like to work in the myths of the gods based on the adventures I’m working on, and I love having them be mutually contradictory.  I have a general idea for a gods war and creation, but I doubt that’s ever going to come up.  In fact, I’m going to skip this part—not beca...

I’ve been doing a bit of work on the gods.  First and foremost, these deities need names.  One of my weaknesses as a GM is coming with cool and interesting names.  I also rather despise typical fantasy names, with all the weird apostrophes that end up looking like unpronounceable gibberish.  So, I steal. Between Google and Wikipedia, I’m able to find the names of various gods from Greek, Semitic, Etruscan, and Canaanite sources.  Some sync up pretty well (I choose Adoni for my Fertility/Death God.  It’s derived from Adonis who was a dying plant god, and also means “Lord” in Canaanite), others I just grabbed because they sounded cool—I mean, come on, “Moloch” is just a bad ass name.  Type # Portfolios Name Gender Great-Power 3 Fertility, Mischief, Death Adoni Male Great-Power 1 Competition Calane Female Great-Power 1 Moon Celene Female ...