Taran Awakens…
Sharing…
- Grabbing a hook for your fantasy.
- Dodging the big first mistake.
- Making some basic decisions.
Tal’Daryn
Hook
Making an imaginary world come to life is one of the most difficult tasks you face as the Dungeon Master. The more unique and interesting your world, the easier it will be for your players to accept its reality. A good “hook” goes a long way toward immediately signaling the world’s unique characteristics to the players. Think about your favorite fantasy worlds from books, movies and games and try to identify what it is about each of these settings that makes it different from all the rest. Try to express these differences in no more than a paragraph or a few sentences. This is exactly the sort of distinguishing characteristic or hook you need for your own world.
Tal’Daryn is one of the twelve faces of Taran, a unique world formed by the Creator God and shaped as a giant dodecahedron (12-sides). One sun lights the sky and one Moon eclipses the sun completely each day, forming a time of night.
At the heart of Taran is the Engine of Creation, a massive living force which sends out a continuous flow of energy upwards towards the surface of the 12 faces. In-between each face, which is essentially a 5-sided flat-world, the waters flow down into the Engine, only to be pumped back up through the lands by the energies within.
Tal’Daryn has been through several cycles of civilization and destruction, each caused by the ill-advised obsession that the Peoples have made regarding magick.
Magick, the manipulation of the energies from the Engine of Creation, is the ability to shape reality in conformity with the users’ Will. Inevitably, as each civilization has grown in power, there has come a time when the power outstripped the ability of the Magi to contain it.
Civilization has been ripped asunder by awesome energies running out of control. The world, however, lives on. Energy flows back through the whole system and equilibrium returns.
Big Mistake Avoidance
Don’t do what I did. My next move was to choose a game system and try to work towards creating my first hero for the setting. Big mistake… it just wasted a chunk of time that would have been better spent working on more details.
Making Some Decisions
Three tips for keeping it rolling:
- Don’t think about the system yet.
- Answer the question, “What is the state of the world right now?”
- Answer the question, “How did the world get to be this way?”
