New guy in town! New idea!

[Luy22]

Hey guys, I'm Luy, 18 years old, and have come up with the setting of my RPG world...

Alrighty, so, the game is pretty-much based on Earth, but before time, much like Tolkien's Middle-Earth or Robert H Howard's Age of Conan universe.

This is the timeline...

Ancient Age: Humans are barbarians wandering the continents of the planet, sharing it with dragons, dinosaurs, trolls, orcs, etc etc. Shamans harness the powers of Magic.

Age of Humanity: Humans rise, grabbing their footholds, living in different forts and guilds throughout the world, setting up their own cities. Arc, a young man, comes across the Emerald Sword of Emperors, of which, when he finds it, the gods tell him he is to unite all of humanity in one great Empire.

Empire Age: (The age that my RPG is primarily set in) The Empire is a fledgling civilization, as Arc became Emperor, ascended the throne built for him in Arcydia by the Dwarfs that live far to the north. He still has much work to complete. By this time, the Dark Kingdom, made up of the southern barbarians who used dark magic for evil, and led by the Dark King, prepare for a horrid and long period of war.

Age of war: This age lasts ten years, and spans the dark war waged between Arc and the Dark King. At the end, when all hope seemed lost, the Dark King gathered all of his shamans, and used their power to suck up all magic in the world, allowing the entire mass of the Dark Kingdom to teleport away into the Otherrealm.

Cataclysm: Due to the teleportation of the Dark Kingdom, a great cataclysm occurred. It wiped out most races upon the planet, and killed off all Dwarfs and Elves and Dragons and dinosaurs (ETC ETC).

Age of Darkness: This is the age when what humans were left figured all was lost; all technology, records, journals, weapons, everything. It lasted two decades.

Then came the Ice Age, and thus, history began...

This is also apart of my sci-fi universe, of which I am currently writing a 'novel' for, and am planning on having an RPG supplement with that as well...

I've got everything figured out.

[whiteknife]

Sounds good. Me and the others here at the forge would be happy to look over any rules you might have, or answer any questions about things that you might have questions about.

So, um yeah. Welcome to the forge. Good luck with your game.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Cool. Now, do you have any ideas for the actual game? What do you want help with?

Oh, and another thing.  Why not start a thread in Actual Play where you tell us a little bit about some good (or bad) roleplying experiences that you've had in the past? That would help us understand your preferences. Yes, posting about some particularly good or bad experience of roleplaying is actually going to help people here help you.

Best wishes,

[Luy22]

Yeah, I've still gotta write out some rules (gonna get some friends to help with that part, too.)

I'll post my experiances in a bit, gotta do some stuff today.

[David C]

Luy, there's a couple things every "new guy" goes through, and the sooner you know about them, the better off you'll be.

• Dark kings, dark magic, dark shamans... When explaining to us that some people are "malicious", these words are fine.  If you write your fiction saying "dark" (or "shadow" is also common) you risk sounding cheesy.
• Be sure to leave enough room for players to play their story in the game, not just a script you've written for them. 
• Novels and games are practically opposites, they take different skills and have different goals. I would figure out where your skills lay and what your goals are (to play a fun game with your friends or to write and share a story) and focus on that, THEN move onto the other project.

Also Luy, if you tell us about your own play experiences (who you've played with, what you've played, what you feel has gone right and what you feel has gone wrong), in Actual Play, you'll learn a lot about playing and actually have more fun as a result. I know I did.

[Vulpinoid]

Here's the cynical response.

Why not just tweak the setting a little bit, and just play Exalted?

Developing a setting is quite a bit different to developing a game.

V

[Luy22]

Luy, there's a couple things every "new guy" goes through, and the sooner you know about them, the better off you'll be.

• Dark kings, dark magic, dark shamans... When explaining to us that some people are "malicious", these words are fine.  If you write your fiction saying "dark" (or "shadow" is also common) you risk sounding cheesy.
• Be sure to leave enough room for players to play their story in the game, not just a script you've written for them. 
• Novels and games are practically opposites, they take different skills and have different goals. I would figure out where your skills lay and what your goals are (to play a fun game with your friends or to write and share a story) and focus on that, THEN move onto the other project.

Also Luy, if you tell us about your own play experiences (who you've played with, what you've played, what you feel has gone right and what you feel has gone wrong), in Actual Play, you'll learn a lot about playing and actually have more fun as a result. I know I did.

It's still just a baby. For now it stays the dark kingdom until my mind can come up with something better.