Lindel

Ooh, that's an interesting concept, I like it!

They are created by the mind of the Dreamer. They are self-aware. For all intents and purposes, they are "real" people, and getting any further into the question about the nature of their existence and whether they have "souls" is something that can't be explained even by the "science" of their world. I have my own theories, but I'm choosing to leave that as an open, unanswerable question. Typically, the Dreamer doesn't directly control the shaping it of the world, it takes shape based on their mind, but they don't actively, consciously create anything. In many cases, the Dreamers themselves aren't fully aware of their role in the world that's been created around them. In Stratvale, the space faring sci-fi Anomaly, the Dreamer is reincarnated throughout the history of his world, but he basically becomes a new person each time, without any memory of his past lives. In the high-fantasy D&D Anomaly, Eovale, the three Dreamers became the original gods, called the Old Ones. They originally held onto some of their past memories, and they actively shaped the world within the bounds that was set at its inception. Their active role in the Anomaly is part of what made it especially vulnerable to metaforms. As millennia passed within Eovale, the Dreamers started to forget where they had come from and what they had once been. In comparison to eons as omniscient gods, their previous lives as mortals faded. In my current campaign, taking place in the Anomaly I'm calling Duskvale, the Dreamer is schizophrenic, and has become infected by two metaforms, Dusk and Onyx, which are at war inside his mind. He's aware that the world seems to revolve around him, but doesn't really understand why. So, to answer your question, it really just depends. Each Anomaly is fairly unique in most aspects, with certain connections and shared rules.

Haha, yeah. And of course, that brings up the question, if entire worlds can be created inside people's heads, why assume that the "real" world isn't just in someone's head? I'm actually playing with the idea of eventually implying that every world we've played in, including the "real" world, might really just exists inside my head as the DM and in the heads of the players. So, maybe our real life selves are literally creating those worlds by imagining them. And if a character somehow became aware of that... That's what I call trippy. Yeah, the high-fantasy D&D world was actually shared by three Dreamers originally, who took the role of the original gods of the universe, but two of them are kinda dead now, and the one survivor has been completely consumed by the metaform Onyx, and has become its primary host. I'm actually still trying to decide if each individual Dreamer normally forms their own Anomaly, or if each Anomaly is formed from a collection of minds, with one or a couple that are at its core. If each person forms their own separate Anomaly, that's a whole bunch of worlds that were formed just to die within a few weeks of real time. Unless the Anomaly continues to exist independent of its creator, in which case there are billions of mental universes "out there" that have no ties left to our world. I suppose every Anomaly wouldn't necessarily have to be a fully fleshed out universe either, some might only encompass a planet, a country, or even a small town. Hmm...

Okay, here's where it might get a little strange. This is all built to work as a shared cosmology for my past roleplaying campaigns, which have had various tie-ins and references from one to the next. It's evolved over time, but what I'm settling on now is that the connection, despite each campaign seeming to take place in entirely different worlds, is that each of those worlds is an Anomaly in Neurospace. So, basically, the Anomalies are fantastical worlds based on the imaginations of the individuals, and can take many different forms. Each Anomaly works as a world in which I can have a fair amount of worldbuilding freedom. Also, time doesn't work the same way within the Anomalies, just like time in dreams doesn't always correlate to time in real life. For example, one Anomaly centers around an earth-based space-faring civilization that has hundreds of years of additional history, even though in the real world it's only existed for thirty years. In that Anomaly, they've also started to discover their own version of Neurospace, which gets rather complicated. Another is a high-fantasy world of gods and demons that's been around for thousands of years of its own time, based loosely on the D&D 4e cosmology. Another one is based on a Magic: the Gathering fan's ideas about the plane of Zendikar. The continuity comes in the form of these strange, alien parasites, unnamed as far as my players are concerned, which I'm calling Metaforms. Basically, these metaphysical parasites exist somewhere out there in the universe. They feed on the consciousness of other beings, and the Anomalies have created weak spots that they can exploit. A particularly aggressive Metaform known as Onyx completely consumed the first Anomaly he first entered, and by the end of a recent campaign, it had all but destroyed "Eovale", the high-fantasy D&D world. The problem is, the players have little to no idea about any of this behind the scenes stuff so far. They just know that there have been a lot of loose ends.

Haha, pretty much. Physically, they end up in a coma, basically. Actually, more like a vegetative state, no sign of any awareness. An fMRI would mainly only pick up activity in the brain stem. Their consciousness, independent of their physical brain, becomes completely detached from the physical world, so all their higher thinking ceases to have any direct connection to their original brain. They pretty much just exist in the Anomaly. At least, that's how I'm currently thinking of it. But in-world, most people would only have theories and guesses, not the actual explanation.

My most recent project is something I'm calling Neurospace. Basically, it's a shared mental world, a sort of collective unconscious, that's created by people's concepts and beliefs about the world around them. Thoughtforms are "objects" in Neurospace that reflect specific concepts. Facets are layers of related thoughtforms within Neurospace. Up until a recent point in human history, which I've set as 2018, (yes, I'm totally embracing the Twenty Minutes Into the Future trope), Neurospace existed entirely unknown to humankind. A few people had at times inadvertently tapped into it through the use of psychedelic drugs, but until March 9th, 2018, such incidents had never received massive public attention. On March 9th, a group of college students in Washington, mixing LSD and marijuana, fell unconscious and shared the exact same dream. The dream had the same odd features, the same events, and the students were able to provide consistent details completely independently. They also claimed that through their conversations in the dream, they had learned things about each other that they apparently had no other way of knowing. If that was true, then it would mean their minds had literally interacted directly in a way that had never before been thought possible. Governments and independent groups around the world began working to try to replicate the results. By the end of the year, several groups had claimed to have replicated the event under experimental conditions, however, mixtures of existing psychedelic drugs were inconsistent and had undesirable side effects. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology began creating a new drug which would minimize the side effects and which they hoped would consistently tap into the "collective unconscious". Eventually, they found a formula. They named their new drug Sickle. As the secret for refining Sickle leaked out, access to Neurospace became widespread. Governments began to try to regulate the use in response to serious security threats posed by a drug that lets a person see inside other people's heads, but they came into the scene too late. An unstable period of mental terrorism and espionage ensued, leading to massive conflicts between world powers, many of which took place entirely in Neurospace. Then, as people slowly began to develop a unique concept of Neurospace itself, as a separate entity from the physical world, facets in Neurospace began to manifest in response to these concepts. Regions of Neurospace became dissociated with the physical world, twisting and warping into Anomalies, completely cut off from the world that spawned it. The Anomalies took shape based on people's concepts of other realities and parallel worlds, trapping the minds of those who had inadvertently created them. By 2027, two thirds of the population had become trapped in the Anomalies, and civilization as we know it had collapsed. Most of these "Dreamers", unable to feed themselves, simply died. A handful were kept alive by groups that hoped that they might be able to discover more about the Anomalies and prevent them from spreading. But anyone who entered an Anomaly became trapped there, making it impossible to determine much about their nature. That's the basic summary of the setting. I'm planning to use this for a roleplaying campaign with my D&D group, but I have a problem. I need more specific rules about how exactly Neurospace works. As in, what it actually looks like, how it works, what you can and can't do there, etc. Any thoughts? Sorry if this is a bit scattered, the concept is rather half-baked at the moment.

Nearly a year ago, @Left gave me a bit of advice on this thread—and it worked. Just wanted to say thanks!

These are fantastic. I absolutely love the creatures from Shallan's sketchbook!

You see? Nothing's ever been real. Death by tedium—that's my fate. Newborn souls have a marvelous color. The smell kinda grows on you... Once you grasp this, everything changes. He wasn't the most eloquent demigod.

As I understand it a planet only has a presence in the cognitive realm if it's inhabited, hence why you can just walk from one Shardworld to another. So why would you expect the gas giants, which aren't inhabited, to be accessible?

I like this a lot! The prose is tight, the descriptions are interesting. I'm intrigued by the character, and interested in seeing where this goes. It does seem a bit heavy on the abstract, especially for an opening chapter. I didn't mind it, for the most part, but I did notice that it wasn't very grounded in anything concrete. The description of the cold, the snow, and the surroundings did help, though. The reason a lot of epic fantasy begins with an action sequence is not just because "that's what's done", but because it avoids dropping a bunch of proper names and such, which helps to smooth out the learning curve, hooks the reader's attention, and gives clues about the character, setting, and conflict in a few words, through showing, rather than telling.

"They created weapons they didn't understand, unleashed power that could not be contained." "Few can forget the day the Travelers grew. . . hungry. They day they began to feed."

Oh, that's fixed now, thanks. I've mostly played Casual in the past, but this will be Modern. Definitely not optimal, cause I don't have that kind of budget, but it doesn't have to be ultra-cheap either. Just don't want to break the bank on this. Ideally it'll hold its own in a semi-competitive setting, but I'm not expecting it to compete with top Modern decks. EDIT: "Hold its own" as in not dying a swift, pathetic death.

I'm thinking about getting back into Magic, cause it's been a while since I really played, and I want to see if I can get a decently competitive Modern deck up and running on a budget. What I have so far is a pretty straightforward Izzet Delver deck. Here's a link, if anyone has thoughts, they'd be greatly appreciated.

Seems likely, since I'm pretty sure he drew some inspiration for Vorinism from ancient Hebrew practices.

It's called a chiastic structure. It's actually quite prevalent in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, as well as other ancient literary works, such as the Odyssey.

Fair enough. There were some major discoveries that happened in the US, but I suppose the assumption is that they would've happened somewhere else? I just figure that the timing, location, and precise nature of these discoveries and innovations would change things up, but I haven't decided how.

I'm looking for some realistic ideas on how technology could've developed differently if the United States weren't a single, powerful nation, but instead was divided into several countries following the Civil War. Since the United States played a big role in the industrial revolution, I figure it would have some kind of impact on the technology we have today. Aside from just slowing down technological progress in general, any suggestions for what might be different about the nature of technology if you remove the United States, and potentially WWII, as factors? I'm looking for something other than Steampunk or zeppelins. They don't seem like the most logical extrapolations to me, not to mention they're awfully cliched in alternate universe fiction. Any suggestions?

I've got this concept that revolves around beings, called Incarnates, which are the manifestations of the "soul" of a community. Households, dynasties, cities, significant geographical areas, nations, and so forth would all manifest Incarnates. Incarnates can only be seen by the Speakers (the magic users), and appear as anthropomorphic animals. They are shaped by the identity and ideals of the community they're tied to. Speakers are the only people able to see and communicate with Incarnates. The magic is based on temporarily altering history within the Incarnate's sphere of influence. First, a Speaker and Incarnate must come to an agreement about what is to be changed. Once the Incarnate has given its consent, the Speaker may invoke the Incarnate's power through spoken words by crafting a story, or Myth, that tells how things might have gone differently. Once a Myth is invoked, it bends reality in the Incarnate's sphere of influence to fit the premise of the story. Similar to Forgery, the more detailed and believable the story, the better the changes will stick. If the story is consistent enough with the place it influences, it can even alter the inhabitant's memories for the duration of the Myth, though this requires extensive study and a lot of work. Depending on the power of the Myth, it may last a few minutes, weeks, years, or even a lifetime. Even the most powerful Myths will die with the Speaker who invoked them, though there might be some ways to get around that.

In a good way, or just a boring way? Haha, fair enough. Shattered States actually does sound pretty cool! EDIT: Storm it, I used up all my reputation-giving last night, and it's still counting it for today.

I've been working on a method of categorization for my recent alternate realities world-building project. The categories are based around how much impact the divergences between realities have had on the present day up to this point. It's like a branching tree, where a combination of the distance and significance of the divergences together determine the level of similarity between two realities, and groupings of sufficiently similar realities are given specific designations based on their level of divergence. Analogs are realities that are virtually identical to each other in every way. They're only distinguished by minor, inconsequential differences, and aren't distinct in the grand scheme of things. An analog of our world today could be a reality in which I wore a different color of shirt on Tuesday, or missed the bus, or any number of insignificant differences. Divergences exist, but for all intents and purposes, they have had little to no effect on the world. Parallel realities are realities that are mostly the same as ours, with the exception of key differences in the recent past that have had a fairly significant impact on history. Divergent analogs are somewhere between analogs and parallel realities. It's a specific designation given to analogs that have divergences that are minor, but considered notable enough to warrant a unique designation. The exact definition of a divergent analog is somewhat subjective. It's a relative term, often given because the divergence is closer to home. Divergent analogs can eventually evolve into parallel realities, though the time it takes for those ripples to spread varies. Sets of parallel realities are grouped into Cosms, vast collections of realities which all share a history that's roughly the same. Cosms typically diverge from one another in the more distant, historical past, and are vastly different from each other in huge, world-altering ways. Cosms are further grouped into Metacosms, which are clusters of Cosms that are tangentially similar, but diverged in untraceable ways millennia ago. The Metaverse is the entire expanse of Cosms, Metacosms, parallel realities, and analogs, and it encompasses the complete scope of every possible outcome of every choice that could ever have been made, and every instance of random chance that might ever have occurred. EDIT: To clarify, I think I meant to be saying that bordering Metacosms might be tangentially similar, but they diverged from each other millennia ago in untraceable ways. Cosms in the same Metacosm will typically have clear divergences dating to specific points in recorded history, whereas separate Metacosms have histories that are almost entirely unique from one another.

I'm undecided. If it's common, then it could be based on people thinking that you're more powerful than you really are. In this case, you really can do magic, and they know you can, but you use illusions to embellish on your powers, making them believe you're a more powerful magician than you are, and thus maintain your power through deception. It's a balancing act between going too far and breaking the illusion, and reaching high enough to maintain your power. Or it could be a secret power, based directly on what people think you can do, so everything you can accomplish with the magic has to start with a convincing, but entirely mundane illusion, and the belief is what makes it real. I'm trying to decide which is better. Is that in reference to something specific, or just a cool sounding name?

I'm undecided. If it's common, then it could be based on people thinking that you're more powerful than you really are. In this case, you really can do magic, and they know you can, but you use illusions to embellish on your powers, making them believe you're a more powerful magician than you are, and thus maintain your power through deception. It's a balancing act between going too far and breaking the illusion, and reaching high enough to maintain your power. Or it could be a secret power, based directly on what people think you can do, so everything you can accomplish with the magic has to start with a convincing, but entirely mundane illusion, and the belief is what makes it real. I'm trying to decide which is better.

I've got this magic system concept that's been bouncing around in my head for the past couple days. It's based on actual illusions and magic tricks. Basically, your power in the magic is based on other people's beliefs about what you can do with the magic. It grows as people's subconscious "awe" for your power grows. The more people you can trick, and the more convinced they are of your powers, the more powerful you become. So in order to gain more power, you have to continuously create the illusion of doing more with the magic than you actually can do. People must be convinced that you're more powerful than you really are. The most powerful magician's true level of power is cloaked in mystery, and they have to continuously race to outdo themselves, always trying to pulling off more impressive tricks and illusions in order to exceed their reputation. Also, on a different note, I'm working on a world building project set in an alternate reality where the Union lost the American Civil War, and the United States splintered into several nation states, with the District of Columbia ending up in control of just a few States in the North East. It'd be a ton of research to do this well...

Haha, yep. I've found myself googling a lot of things that are worryingly similar to many of those... XD