Design Philosophy

Design Philosophy

Some information on the design philosophy of the game.

The World/Setting itself is the Main Character

Simply put, player characters in this setting are not the protagonists of a linear story where they are destined to ultimately succeed at whatever they set out to do. The game/world/setting is not always going to accommodate their plans. NPCs are not required to suffer foolishness from PCs simply because they are dealing with PCs. Some plans are going to fail, some goals will remain unrealized, some antagonists will succeed despite opposition, some villages will get destroyed, some monsters will remain unslain.

In the same vein, player characters are not meant to be the ultimate powers of the game world. There won't be any god-slaying or ascending to the cosmic power scale here, no establishing new nations of adoring followers, no being appointed as government leaders. The idea is to see how these player characters struggle and deal with living in a dangerous hostile world that they ultimately have relatively little control over and virtually no hope of fixing on a significant scale.

There's always going to be a bigger fish than the player characters, and not all situations are going to be resolved by player characters simply overpowering the problem, if they're even meant to be resolved at all. If there's a giant colossal beast stomping across the wilderness causing destruction, the players might end up having to treat it as a natural disaster whose effects must be dealt with rather than assuming the beast can be slain with enough firepower. The Headless Lord isn't a seasonal world boss to be teamed up on and defeated each year, but rather is a part of the world and lore that must ultimately be accepted as being just part of the way things are out here in the Lost Lands.

The setting is an apocalyptic one, and the aesthetic is meant to be both grim and gritty

Not to say that the people in the Lost Lands can never have any occasion to be happy or have some nice things, but overall the setting is meant to be one that highlights grim determination and rugged survival in a world that is unlikely to ever get better. Despite the valiant efforts of various people and organizations rallying against them, the nether and dangerous nethrim are rampant, the resen-infestation is everywhere, and both are spreading ever further. Groups of bandits or brigands or other hostile self-serving peoples have no intention of being reasonable and every intention of preying on the rest of humanity to get what they can while it's still possible before the world completely crumbles.

Player characters are meant to be part of a small remainder of humanity that's just trying to survive in the world they've found themselves in - there's no real hope of fixing the Lost Lands and returning it to what it was. The people aren't expecting to cleanse the Lost Lands (unless you listen to those Lapisians, but they're not a player character faction). They're just trying to keep on immediate damage control and hopefully retain a small space in which humanity can survive somehow. (Corvites aim to adapt to how the world is changing in their own way, also not entertaining any hope that the world will go back to how it was before.)

Given all of the above, luxuries are scant in the Lost Lands. The settlements are under frequent attack and many resources are difficult and dangerous to acquire, leaving little room for spending them on fancy niceties and frivolities. Yes, it might be a nice thought to propose improving a town by building a fancy luxurious ballroom, or a beautiful park with a tiered fountain and trimmed topiaries and elegant benches, but odds are that even if the resources and know-how and labor and space are available to build such a thing, the local government and majority of the citizenry would insist those efforts and resources instead go toward more practical things to help them stay alive.

There's also the matter of a lack of specialized tools and facilities and knowledge that would be required to produce some of the "fancier" goods. Ultimately, the game's setting is not one that is going to accommodate a lot of luxury items and finery. Some such elements have been introduced in the game's history but they've always ended up feeling significantly discordant with the setting's overall theme of apocalyptic survival, and have historically had a notable effect of watering down that feeling and so tend to eventually be removed.

The setting is not desperate to explain everything about itself

This world environment was designed to have several mysteries, and many of them are likely to remain unsolved. While it's a lot of fun to leave clues, evidences, and even the occasional expositional document or NPC to offer potential explanations to some of the intriguing mysteries of the world, there is no intent for every single mystery or metaphysical detail to be wholly explained to the players.

What's behind that big metal barrier in Shadgard and who is that statue in the Commons meant to represent? There have certainly been some interesting theories. Are the Immortals really out there and true to the commonly-held beliefs about them? Most of their own adherents admit they don't have all the answers and find it strange how generally uncommunicative and hands-off their patron deities tend to be. Precisely how and why does magic work? Having a thorough logical Sandersonian explanation and understanding of magic systems can be great in settings where it's intended, but this isn't one of them - while magic has its own rules it must abide by, to players it's still meant to be a mysterious occult force that's not well-understood.

Overall, the lack of concrete answers is intended to cause people to wonder, theorize, and speculate. That's part of the fun!