This week I’ve been writing about the government and politics of Parsantium and describing the key NPCs, including the Basileus, Corandias the Lion-Blooded, his scheming wife Thecia, and Bardas, the seemingly passionless Prefect who runs the city on a day to day basis.

I’ve also spent some time working out who looks after each aspect of running the city state, and who reports into who. There has always been a tribune in each quarter, but I have now added the office of the Royal Exchequer (controls the finances), the Strategos (commands the army and looks after Parsantium’s defences), and the Praetor (heads up the judicial system). The Prefect, Royal Exchequer and Strategos form a Triumvirate of senior officials reporting into the Basileus; then, the Praetor and three tribunes report to the Prefect. Beneath all these senior officials is a vast, bloated bureaucracy of civil servants (many of them eunuchs) pushing paper around to make sure the city runs properly (if not that efficiently). These bureaucrats often have absurd job titles and wear special hats denoting their position. Of course, there are quite a few intrigues and plots going on among the various NPCs, and I’ll be adding more as I work my way through the first draft of the book to give DMs some fun adventure seeds.

I’ve also written about the Parsantine armed forces with some helpful advice from Gavin (one of my players and a keen wargamer). In keeping with Parsantium’s multicultural feel, the army includes heavily armed knights, Akhrani horse archers, halfling slingers and gnoll mercenaries.

The government section came to around 1,700 words. These early sections are taking longer than the city locations will (I hope!) as I am writing almost from scratch. In most cases, I have only a handful of bullet points to go on compared to the more detailed notes I’ve written for, say, the Winking Vixen brothel. Hopefully I will be able to cover more ground faster later on.

Next up is the Law & Order section, including the courts, crime and punishment and the City Watch. If you have any fun ideas for crimes or punishments to go into the Codex of Imperial Law, let me know in the comments! I might cover some of the criminal bosses and gangs of the Old Quarter under this section too. Not sure yet, though – there’s an Organizations section and they might sit better there. After that, I’ll be moving on to customs & superstitions, including the calendar, festivals and entertainment, food and drink and so on.

This week, I finished off the first draft of chapter 1 of the book, which is currently coming in at 5,500 words, 1,000 words above my initial target. Having already written the overview and the history sections for this chapter, I’ve been working on the People section which describes the five main human cultural groups (still called Batiarans, Akhrani, Sahasrans, Tiangaons and Urskovians for now) as well as the various non-human races, including dwarves, elves and eladrin, halflings, half-elves and half-orcs.

For the “regular” D&D races, I’ve tried to explain how they fit in to the city so that anyone making a character has a good starting point for their PC. I deliberated about whether to include gnomes as I’ve never been that keen on them, but one of my design goals is to include the core races from D&D and Pathfinder, so they’ve made it in. I’ve divided them into two groups – goodly folk who’ve lived in the city for a while who make toys and clockworks and nasty little recent arrivals from the Feywild, complete with blood-soaked red caps, who like to cause trouble.

If you’ve played in either of my two Parsantium campaigns or follow any of the campaign write-ups, you’ll know that dragonborn, gnolls and genasi all live in the city as well as the more traditional races – if I remember correctly, there have been one gnoll, two dragonborn and four genasi PCs in the two games. Centaurs, minotaurs, tieflings and vanara (the monkey-like humanoids from Indian myth that appeared in the 3e Oriental Adventures book) round out the racial mix. Parsantium is a melting pot after all, so a wide variety of races makes sense.

Next up is the Life in the City chapter which covers Government, the Army, Law and Order, Customs and Superstitions, and Trade. It’s a meaty section, about 5,000 words, and should be a lot of fun to write.

For one reason or another I haven’t got as much written this week as I wanted to, but I have finished the History section for now. This took me a bit longer than I thought it was going to but I’m pleased with how it’s turned out.

As I started writing it, I realised I had a cool origin story for the ancient city of Dhak Janjua which became Parsantium, but only a few lines about the next 2,000 years! I didn’t want to write pages and pages of history but I did need to fill in a few important blanks to explain how the city of today is the way it is. These key events, often several hundreds of years apart, include the arrival of the Akhrani, the change of name to Parsantium, the conquest of the city by Corandias the Magnificent and its subsequent fall to the hobgoblin army of Kalgroth Ironheart, and the Great Crusade which allowed it to become a powerful Free City and trading centre again. I’ve fleshed out all of these, explained who Hulieman was at long last, and changed a few things in the process as I attempted to pull together a coherent flow of events. Advice from ulthar01 on how the Batiarans were most likely to have taken the city in war was much appreciated!

While I was writing all this, John Pope wrote an interesting post on Daily Encounter about campaign histories and timelines. His view is that a fluid narrative is better for the reader and more flexible for the DM than a timeline. I’ve done both, but am still deliberating whether or not to include a short timeline in a sidebar. It seems to me this could help the reader get a good overview of the key events at a glance. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.

Next up is the third and final part of the first “overview” chapter. This is on the inhabitants of the city, covering the major human cultural groups (Batiarans, Sahasrans, Akhrani, Tiangaons and Urskovians) and the various non-human races. At some point I’m going to have to replace the names I stole from Guy Gavriel Kay, Margaret Weis and others with my own but the original names will do as placeholders for now. After this, I will be moving on to Life in the City, starting with the government and the army.

Well, I said at the end of 2012 my plan is to self-publish Parsantium as a city campaign sourcebook this year. So, what have I managed so far?

The first thing I had to do was to get all the material I had written for my two 4e campaigns over the last five years into Scrivener, the excellent writing software I am using for the book. Scrivener allows me to have the actual manuscript, as well as notes, research materials and so on, all in one place, and has a built in outlining function, using a virtual corkboard. It is very cool. Once I’d done this, I organised everything I had into a rough outline for the book – you can make each section a separate document and have the program compile it all at the end. This makes juggling stuff around really easy.

Then, I sat down with my collection of D&D city supplements, including Ptolus, the Zobeck Gazetteer, Waterdeep, Sharn, Freeport and Bluffside, to see how other writers and publishers had structured their urban sourcebooks, and what they had covered. I found this really useful and interesting, and it helped me tighten up the outline, coming up with ways to amalgamate sections, as well as prompting me to add some topics I hadn’t thought about. Some things I’m not sure about yet. For example, is it better to have all the NPCs in one chapter, or attach them to the locations where they might be found? Most of the books I looked at went for a combination of both approaches, with the more important characters in a separate section and the minor ones described with their place of work.

Once I’d done this, I did some rough word count targets for each section. At the moment, I am planning the whole book to be 40,000 words but this could end up being way too few or too many. I’m not sure yet!

That’s it for preparation for now. My aim is to complete the first draft in 15 weeks, writing around 2,500-3,000 words per week. Since I already have a fair bit of material to work with for some sections, certain chapters will go quicker than others. I’ve completed an initial overview of the city setting, including Six Things You Need to Know, and have starting working on the History section. I need to get this bit pinned down as this will help inform many of the details of each quarter of the city.

I’m really enjoying this so far!

The last D&D book published in 2012 is an odd one – very good, but odd nonetheless.

Way back in January, I thought this book would be for 4th Edition D&D, but it later became apparent that it would be edition-neutral. Billed as Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster’s Forgotten Realms, the initial pre-publicity then made me think this volume would be Ed’s own version of the Realms, showing us the direction he had taken the world in his own campaigns since 1987’s Grey Box. I was expecting entries on Waterdeep, the Dalelands, Sembia and Zhentil Keep to give the reader an alternative view of the setting through the eyes of its own creator.

Elminster’s Forgotten Realms isn’t this kind of book. There are no entries on the cities and countries of Ed’s own Realms. Instead, there are loosely-themed chapters on general topics such as Life in the Realms and Money Matters. Each one is something of a grab-bag of unseen Realmslore, all written in Ed’s rich prose style that readers of his work for TSR and Wizards will be familiar with.

Every page of the book is liberally sprinkled with rumours, adventure hooks, and snippets of the Realmspeak that makes the setting so unique – we learn that a barfly in the Realms is known as a “hard jaw”, that the Watch of Waterdeep wears an “undress” uniform of “grayweave” and the best route to becoming a noble in the City of Splendors. Ed’s conversational style makes the book a delight to read – written with true enthusiasm, he talks about how he has used the material in the book in his own games, and providing tons of hints and tips on how to run a fun game. RPG books should provide ideas and inspiration to the reader and this is exactly what this book does.

The first chapter, Life in the Realms, talks about such diverse topics as Realmspeak, times of day, books and literature, events and festivals, the theatre, medicine, drugs and poisons. This is followed by the Laws and Orders chapter, covering nobles, justice, property and trade laws, the city watches of Waterdeep and Tantras, the War Wizards of Cormyr and the Zhentarim. Hearth and Home is probably my favourite – perhaps because I’ve written about taverns this year for Raging Swan –and includes types of heating and cooking fuel, “handfoods” (street food), regional cuisines (with recipes for baked cockatrice and stirge on toast!), drinks, fashions and even underwear. Money Matters has a section called Day Jobs For Adventurers that broadens out to cover rooftop chases and burial customs (!) as well as others covering guilds, merchants, coinage and trade goods, including the wondrous products of Lantan, children’s toys and slaves.

The lengthy Gods and Followers chapter kicks off with some general information on why evil temples are allowed to exist and how the inhabitants of the Realms view the gods, before giving each well-known Realms deity his or her own entry, talking about the god’s creed, the secular aims of the church and famous priests. Much has been written about the gods of the Realms before, most notably in the excellent Faiths and Avatars for 2nd Edition, so I wasn’t so sure about this section. However, there’s a lot of interesting stuff packed into it – we learn about the sinister secret agenda of Gond the Wonderbringer’s priesthood, and the Bloodhunters of Malar being paid to hunt down “undesirables” among many other things. In the final brief section on The Art, Ed writes about portals, alchemy, bardic colleges and elven music – all good stuff, but I thought this chapter could have been longer, and the Gods chapter shorter.

Interspersed between the pages of new material and high-quality art, we also get to see facsimiles of the original Realms manuscripts that Ed sent into TSR for the Grey Box and later publications. For long-time Realms DMs, these pages brought back fond memories of the Halls of the Beast-Tamers and the Zhentarim. We also get to see Ed’s original maps and sketches, and his handwritten submissions after his typewriter finally gave up the ghost. It’s easy to forget these days that in the late 80s, game designers had to send their typewritten manuscripts through the post!

My overall impression is that of a lovingly-put together tribute to the Realms. It wasn’t what I was expecting but Elminster’s Forgotten Realms serves as a fantastic 25 year anniversary celebration of one of D&D’s best loved settings. I would recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed playing in the setting or who wants to understand how to really bring out the sights, sounds and smells of a fantasy world in their writing.

This is a guest post for the #5eplanes blog carnival by the Ashes of Athas admins: Teos Abadia (@alphastream), Chad Brown and Derek Guder. Check out the Ashes of Athas events at Winter Fantasy.

The aspect of cosmology that is most certain in canon sources is that getting to Athas is very difficult. Unlike other campaign settings, planes such as the Astral, Ethereal, and various outer planes are largely inaccessible. Instead, the harsh desert world of Athas is only directly touched by two planes. The Gray is the Athasian plane of the dead, where all dead beings go. Most are slowly dissolved over time, though undead and powerful spirits may survive for a long time. The Black is similar to the plane of shadow and deep within it is the Hollow, a demiplane holding the terrible creature known as Rajaat.

Various supplements and versions of the campaign setting make it clear that Athas is closed to planar travel. Spelljammer sources describe the crystal sphere as similarly closed. However, the extent to which Athas is closed is unclear in official canon sources. Demons and devils can exist on Athas and somehow be summoned to it. A number of sources make it clear there are portals to the elemental planes, typically in very inhospitable places (volcano, Sea of Silt, raging sandstorm, etc.).

The sourcebook Defilers and Preservers provides several possible explanations and illustrations for planar layout, but makes it clear that all of the presented options are wrong in some way. The book contains the most useful description of the Gray and Black, suggesting the Gray wraps around Athas somehow and impedes planar travel, while the Black is within Athas, as if it were under its surface. However, these ideas aren’t really present in other sources.

Earth, Air, Fire, and Water describes the elements, para-elements, and the priests devoted to these elements (in Dark Sun priests were either elemental clerics or servants of the powerful and evil sorcerer-kings). This is one of my favorite sourcebooks, as it provides tremendous flavor for the setting. The elements are depicted as forces that care only for the preservation and growth of their natural/pure form. The environmental devastation of Athas has thrown these forces into opposition. As with second edition cosmology, the para-elements are created when two elements mix together. For example, Sun exists between Fire and Air.

In creating the Ashes of Athas organized play campaign we really liked the concept of the struggle between the elements. We particularly liked the idea that there could be conflict and confusion between worshipers of the pure elements and the often destructive para-elements. This honored the concepts of EAFW pitting priests against one another, but made the battle lines clearer. In Dark Sun power sources (such as psionics and arcane) can often be combined. So, we also liked the idea that the elements could be further corrupted. What would happen if you added the taint of the Black or Gray to Fire, Sun, or Magma? You might get Ash, which would devastate Athas even further.

Based on these concepts we threw around some ideas regarding the right positioning of elements and resulting para-elements. In a few cases we changed things from what had been suggested previously. Because these elements and the struggle over them are a big part of Athasian life, we placed them directly on Athas rather than trying to show separate inner planes. The creation of para-elements would usually be harmful to Athas. Magma, Silt, and the far too intense Sun were destructive. Only Rain was beneficial, but was extremely rare.

We then surrounded Athas with both the Gray and Black. While D&P establishes the Black as existing within Athas, we particularly liked it as existing deeper within the Gray. If the Gray surrounds Athas, then within it exists the Black.

Finally, we had the rare situation where the elements and para-elements combined with the Gray (or Black). In this case Ash, Smoke, Dust, and Salt were created. These might be planes, but they could just be forces created in the rare occasion when the planes touch.

Here is what we drew up to capture these concepts:

Athas exists, surrounded by the Gray (and within the Gray, the Black). The planes of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water all manifest on Athas, but due to the raw and unbalanced nature of Athas they can form unique para-elements that are often destructive. The elements and para-elements aren’t planes to visit, but rather forces on Athas. The forces are in opposition. Earth and Water struggle against the encroaching Silt, for example. Priests of para-elemental forces tend to be evil and often seek the destruction of the world. Priest of the elements are more restrained. They wish for their element to be strong, but still desire a world where nature can exist. Truly evil forces seek to corrupt the elements, creating a more vile version of Athas than even the one existing today.

We like the flavor behind this cosmology. It isn’t quite canonical, but we think it does a great job of capturing what the various canonical (often conflicting) sources are striving to achieve.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.

About a month ago, a number of us chatted on Twitter about the D&D cosmology and where it might go with D&D Next. If the Great Wheel returns (as it looks like it will), does that mean that the Feywild disappears? What about Hestavar, the Elemental Chaos and the Domains of Dread? This looked like a fun subject for a blog carnival, so the “If I Ruled The Multiverse” blog carnival was born, in which various D&D bloggers, wrote about what they would do if Mike Mearls gave them the job of coming up with the D&D Next cosmology.

The carnival has been running for the last two weeks, and ended yesterday, so I thought it would be a good idea to list all the cool posts in one place.

Mordicai Knode’s post on tor.com includes the Parallel Planes of Faerie, Shadow and Ginnungagap, a Spelljammer-influenced Prime Material Plane and Outer Planes featuring Pathfinder’s Four Horsemen and chaotic good guardinals.

Robin Stacey (@greywulf) argues that the nature of Mythological Multiverses varies depending on who you ask. To a halfling, the planes are hunks of meat and veg floating in the gods’ own stew.

Rafael Romo (@rrockman) wrote a whole series of interesting posts on the World of Cthon, in which the ancient planes of the First Age, including the Abyss and the Far Realm, are buried deep beneath the earth. Check out his summary post here.

Midgard Bestiary co-author Brian Liberge takes a toolkit approach in his post on Stuffer Shack, covering demi-planes, the Phlogiston and the Elemental Plane of Wheat.

Bill Olander’s post Sailing the Starry Sea pays homage to Spelljammer and 4e’s Astral Sea, adding a swirling Maelstrom and reimagining the other planes as planets.

Gonzalo Campoverde takes inspiration from both Eberron and Magic the Gathering’s Dominaria in his post.

Finally, my own post, keeps the things I like from 4e and incorporates them into a slimmed down Planescape-inspired multiverse with Sigil back on its Spire in the centre.

EDIT: I got a last minute post from Teos Abadia this morning on the cosmology of Athas.

Thanks to everyone who took part, and to Symatt for the awesome logo and the picture in this post! There are some very interesting and fun ideas here – I hope Mike and the WotC crew have a read! Judging by James Wyatt’s recent Wandering Monsters columns, the D&D planes and their inhabitants are still a hot topic of conversation.

I've just spent a very enjoyable morning at Dragonmeet, browsing the various trade stands, including an amazing stand selling older D&D material, Chessex, Pelgrane Press and others, and chatting to other gamers. Unfortunately today Palace play Brighton so I had to rush off to get to the match and didn't have time to play any games. If it were any other team, I would gave stayed at the con.

As well as buying some cool stuff, I also went to a very interesting and fun seminar with Ian Livingstone & Steve Jackson. Rather scarily, Warlock of Firetop Mountain (which I bought at Games Day in 1982) is 30 years old this year. There were lots of good stories but my favourite was how their order for 6 copies of the original D&D boxed set was enough to get Games Workshop 3 years of exclusive distribution rights for in Europe!

The Great Hall at Dragonmeet:

Ian & Steve now:

Ian & Steve then:

The original Games Workshop in Dalling Road, Hammersmith:

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