With the Ravenloft campaign having collapsed due to taking 2 months off (you can't keep up with the tension and people forget small details that matter in a Ravenloft game) we decided to do a new one, based on randomness.
So we randomly rolled out the starting place, the kingdom, some of the history, the character backgrounds, the whole nine yards. It ended up with a lot of laughter and some really funny stuff.
One of the characters, a half-elf, is the daughter of a wealthy human former adventurer who possessed Mythic Power for a period of time, married an elven woman, who was killed the "The War", who has 12 step-siblings, 8 blood siblings, and a massive extended family.
Another one, his mother was an artist and play-wright, his father was a male concubine and composer with 6 sisters and three brothers (IIRC).
One of the PC's is the family's "trouble-shooter" in training, who's background stated that she has flat out committed murder and feels no regret. That led to us deciding that dueling and assassination are acceptable tools of politics and trade.
The whole group got nobility or upper class merchant/tradesmen/craftsmen families.
All of the effected by "The War". Which we haven't really figured out what we're going to do about.
We determined that the nation is a Republic ruled over a dragon God-Emperor who has been asleep for 400 years, with a senate that rules in tandom with guilds and unions. Each of the 14 city states are ruled over by his children, massively ancient dragons. "The War" we haven't fleshed out, but recently the dragon in charge of the city-state the PC's are from died under suspicious circumstances.
Doing some random stuff and collaberating, we determined that kobolds recently came out of the caves and woods, and immediately began joining guilds and unions, even forming their own unions. This has led to "Gangs of New York" styles of violence in the streets where kobolds wearing tunics with stuff like "STREET SWEEPERS LOCAL 422" brawl with the other union in broad daylight, while the rich and powerful look on with amused glee at the spectacle.
We were using dice on roll20 and some of the background rolls got double-ought or zero-one, meaning that the PC's come from lines with Mythic Power in them.
We decided that jewelry and clothing didn't count against the PC's wealth per level unless they tried to sell it for it cash. Same went for any *minor* magical item that enhanced appearance (not stats) or made visual effects to the clothing, hair, or makeup.
We had a really fun time doing Republic and city-state demographics, doing a little background on magic. For example, magic generates heat and consumes massive amounts of calories, so most mages who aren't working or just got done working are pudgy and wear outfits they can easily pull layers off of to mitigate heat. We also decided that the magic bleaches people into albinos (arcane magic). Psionics have weird looking veins on their head and bulging eyes. Divine casters are covered in ritual scarification and tattoos. We also decided that arcane power can render someone sterile (not impotent, although the dice roll was close), more women then men have arcane ability but more men are psionic.
We're going to start with what went on with the world soon, and if the dice are as weird as they have been then we're probably going to see some wild stuff. The racial stuff already is kind of funny.
Elves are either back to nature hippies (and eco-extremists) or decadent hedonistic quasi-nobility.
Halflings live in shires and produce 80% of the food (and 90% of the luxury crops) for the Republic, so they have VAST political power.
Orcs came out of the woods and wilds because the permafrost is creeping south, driving their prey animals south. They got their shit pushed in by the Republic Armies (we deliberately avoided the old Roman legions and went with Egyptian chariot forces) and a warlord brought them into civilization 4 generations ago.
Half-Elves are somewhat common, although they are considered foul and unnatural by the hippy elves.
Kobolds believe they are descended from the Dragon God-Emperor and are the primary demographic of his church now. They group in Guild, Union, and Priesthood groups rather than clan groups.
Gnomes are (demographically) gifted engineers, gem-cutters, and metal-workers. Building clockwork and air-ships and the like.
Dwarves are stone-workers, engineers, and the like (demographically) but also big on being bureaucrats in the government.
Cat-Folk are hedonistic artists and the like, mostly in the big city-states, who claim to be descended from a forgotten god.
Basically, we're trying to collaboration to see what kind of Frankenstein's Monster we're going to end up with, then trying to play in it.
The players are hyped, and I'm pretty aware that in a setting like this if I devise some intricate and involved adventure full of interesting NPC's, complex political plots, and all of that, they'll just ignore all of that to go do some stupid shit.
Since I gave them my promise I wouldn' t do the "typical GM' thing of holding their family for ransom or killing them off for stupid reasons (Well, kidnapping is considered part and parcel, but it's highly formalized) they've mentioned they want family to act as the "Guy comes up to you in a bar to offer you a job" type of thing just to switch things up.
Welp, guess I better start reading Johanna Lindsey and all that, LOL.
