Worldbuilding Part 13: Dominoes and Always In Motion

So, I've gathered all of these posts together, cleaned them up, added a short final thought, and published the darn thing. This sets a record: I have never released two products on the same day before. I've got it up at DrivethruRPG as a pay what you want, but I'll be posting it to Amazon once I figure that out, and it will be a dollar there, but might reach a larger audience (crosses fingers). At least, I might be able to get my non-gaming friends to buy a copy; they know Amazon; they don't know no DrivethruRPG. If you are willing to throw a dollar my way, I'd prefer you wait and get it on Amazon... then you can leave a review :)

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Eventually, you will begin to see your setting as interconnected pieces of a large puzzle rather than as individualized pockets of information. This ‘independent nation’ here is not truly independent; they rely on the money that wealthy uplanders bring to their markets. When the nation of the uplanders is defeated, it is going to have an effect on that independent nation, whether they like it or not.

      To me, this is key to what makes the MCU so good, but it is also going to ultimately consume it. The Thanos snap, even though they eventually reversed it, had profound changes on the MCU. It was an event that mattered. Characters die, and they don’t come back. It’s why I love the battle between the two Captain Americas across time so much: we can see in stark contrast how much this character has changed because of circumstances. This is the problem the most recent Spider Man movie ran into; where do we go from here? The answer: backwards. We do a hard reset.

      That’s not an answer. That’s trying to get more movies out of this franchise. A Golden Age is a golden age because, as Robert Burns tells us and the Outsiders reminds us, “nothing gold can stay”.

      ‘And they lived happily ever after’ can only happen when you’ve decided to retire from the writing life and you no longer have any stories to tell, at least in this setting. For an RPG, this is most challenging, because the PCs are the ones who are going to go mucking about. However, when they take over that little keep on the borderlands and declare marshal law, there are going to be consequences, and some of those are going to be unintended. They didn’t realize that the baron had an agreement with the goblin tribes to never cross the blood river, but now that he’s dead, they no longer believe the contract valid? Too bad, so sad for you. There is no ‘undo’ button.

      As Ferris Bueller tells us, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Once you get your setting going, it should keep on moving forward.