Degrees: The One-Hundred and Ninety Designs for EverythingSo everything has to be created. Those who created existence itself were known by many names to those like you or me. The Gods, The Creators, little is known so far as details go. There were more than one of them and they are responsible for our existence, the rest seems a bit trivial.
The first design was a horrible failure. The designers quarreled over everything and before they knew it existence was crammed with an impossible mess of a thousand different ideas all trying to coexist. In a short amount of time everyone had something to complain about so it was agreed that a fresh start was in order. Despite most everyone's best efforts a design just couldn't be agreed upon. What was agreed was that it would be best if everyone just made their own designs and kept them seperate. Of course keeping them seperated didn't last long and that's how we have got where we are today.
Travelling through Degrees isn't all that difficult, at least for someone from the Tenth like myself. Sure it has its risks but so does everything. A lot of numbers got thrown around at first but I'm happy with what they're all saying now. One-Hundred-and-Ninty. That sounds about right.
- B.S. Nyson, The One-Hundred and Ninety Degrees of Everything: A Guide
Degrees is an RPG setting for no particular system that I began working on in December. The idea is that I have tonnes of little ideas and concepts for worlds but I rarely follow them through, this was going to be a dumping ground for all these little ideas and eventually form a ring of existances that could be travelled around.
But then I chose 190 as the number of worlds, or degrees. This is a lot and since the conception of Degrees I've begun work on another project and generally had a busier life, so it's not getting done. I'm opening this project up to you guys because let's face it, we're all pretty awesome.
The Degrees Wiki can be found here and I'd love it if you guys could help me get a short description down for every single degree. Some are done, so leave those as they are, but feel free to add new ones. On top of this each Degree will have it's own wiki page going into more detail, feel free to do this too. Just leave The First Degree to me, as I already have an idea for its history. Besides that you can go nuts.
I'm going away until tommorow so I look forward to seeing what's been dreamed up in my absense. If you're short on ideas perhaps stick your own fantasy setting in there as a Degree. The only real limitations I was thinking of were keepint it
somewhat serious but also have Degrees that are light-hearted too. A Degree covered in sentient rocks is ok but I don't want those rocks to be Elvis impersonators or shaped like giant dicks or anything. Also no high-tech stuff, it's all pre-gunpowder. I haven't gone into any depth about travelling between degrees just yet, as I'm not sure how I want that to happen. All I know is that it won't be easy, you'll only be able to travel maybe two or three degrees a day before you have to stop and rest, the process is straining on the body as people aren't
supposed to be able to do it. For Joe Average travelling between Degrees isn't a big part of their life and they might only really be aware of the few degrees either side of them. Long Distance Travellers and Mappers of the Degrees are somewhat rare.
As of Monday I'll be in #bombfell if anyone wants to come and bounce ideas with me. Enjoy!
http://degrees.pbwiki.com/
Password: december21
Posts
Keep 'em coming.
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It was based on a campaign I was in set in a sort of vauge Earth timeframe, except all the D&D races and monsters existed. We were based in England, but we also went to the Roman colliseum, with gladiatorial contests still going on. Gunpowder, steam, and all those types of technology were just becoming popular over magic. But I just whittled it down to elves, Englishy, magic VS technology.
I'll try to think of some more strange things.
The rest of you: Get stuck in!
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Zombie-ish occurance that is spread to the two nearest worlds. The infected were too weak to go any further, I thought. But I picked a spot with two open areas on either side, just in case.
I noticed after I was halfway done that it was similar to 67. I thought of adding it to one next to that, but I didn't want to infringe on that idea. Hope it's not too close.
Works? Or is it too close to that or are zombies no good? Or is that much travelling by one world not good?
Well, pick and choose what you like.
(Should I be putting Travel and Traveller in capitals like that? I feels like I should.)
Having zombies spread across those three is fine, especially as they're three different degrees rather than "ZOMBIES FOR THREE DEGREES FROM HERE". This is about as far as I'd like things like this to be pushed though. I want inter-degree interaction to be somewhat low. Some examples of the level I'm looking at would be 45 and 46's ongoing war, 51 dumping their worst criminals into the hell that is 50 and one of the larger scale interactions is 90 using 91 as an outpost and launching a crusade throughout the others.
I wouldn't worry about stepping on 67's toes, that's really on a much smaller creepier scale rather than full on outbreak. It's not a huge degree and it's mainly creepy abandoned villages that you can probably explore for a while before the locals set upon you.
My Schedule has just freed up somewhat so when I make time I'll start dipping back into this. If you want to start a page for an existing Degree then go for it by all means. I don't think a consistant template is in order as some degrees will require different amounts of explanation and depth to others. An idea I like to use for inspiration is thinking that many of the Gods, Creators, whatever were pretty inept. Some of them have made creations that are much akin to when you first started using an editor for, say, Unreal or Neverwinter Nights but with ultimate freedom. Some would just fuck around and make something marginally retarded and then give up. 62 is an example of someone who never got past their first room, 89 is the guy who made a glitch filled nightmare that just doesn't work and 134 just seemed to have a fixation with creating a really powerful boss and never got much further than his room.
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I was trying to keep the mini-description down to just two lines, but those spilled over into three. Hard to summarize it down to such a short sound bite that gets the point across.
I was telling a friend about this, and he said he might take a look. He's the kind to come up with a world or town for an adventure, then only run it once, so he can create a new world for next time.
I got the idea from the tower in Wheel of Time, and this crazy skyscraper they're building somewhere in the Middle East. Anyways, how are you doing? Strange that nobody else is interested...or maybe they're adding things and I just don't see it...!
I like the idea that if you fuck up the step to the next Degree by either trying to move across too many in one day (the laws of physics don't like you doing it) or just through bad luck, you can end up anywhere. This shall prompt the invention of the D190.
Love The Tower Of, the "create one awesome thing and then... bah, fuck this" attitude seems to be apparent in a few creators and can help explain why every Degree isn't a vast varied universe like our own. I'm determined to get a few huge varied Degrees in there though.
We must be near the halfway point now, I'll count the Degrees later on.
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Edit: Wha? All the bolding is backwards on the main page now. Who's this c.john.f that just made some weird formatting changes and put in exlamation marks?
Oh, also password is case sensitive and all in lowercase. Corrected the OP.
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Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
I think that would work if it's sorta a weird blip in the way things work. People trying to go from 65 to 66 would instead end up at 67, and vice versa.
I will try to think of more when I am bored...!
It's pretty plausible that the only local means of Degree travel on 65 and 67 (the inhabitants of 67 seem to have turned into ghouls of a sort, but their travelling circles, or whatever, may still be around) simply hop through 66 along with any means posessed by the party themselves. Might be best to think of it like as soon as you're on 66 you've triggered whatever you need to jump to the next degree and you're just there. It'd feel like two jumps but you'd have no chance of "getting off" on 67. Because of this falling would be the only option, as that dumps you anywhere rather than the known destinations of normal Degree travel.
I really hope all that made sense.
Also, Rose, 66 isn't showing up for me at the moment because I did a revert, but I'll copy it across shortly.
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Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
It seems every time I leave the wiki for a bit it ends up in the weird formatting it's in now. Exclamation marks everywhere and the bolding in the table of degrees gets flipped. The edits are down to a "c.john.f". Is this any of you guys and why?
Edit: Killed the random exclamation marks and weird bolding. Will just have to leave the bold out of the table for now until I can go back into an older version and pull the table from that, adding in the new degrees since then.
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As added motivation, when all degrees are drawn out I'm planning to run a somewhat experimental one-off session using the setting. It'd be as much for the benefit of the setting as for the players, as I think you need to dive into the world, even in a very unfinished state, to get a proper feel for it and see if any major problems arise. Rules would be as light as I could manage.
I'd roll a D190 to determine the home Degree of the PCs. Rerolls may be necessary.
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So if you do run a one session thing (or if it evolves into a longer thing) then count me in.
Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
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Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
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#75 is one my friend did. The page for it has her listed as the "author" I guess would be the right term.
Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
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Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
Also, depending on how the Myth thread works out I may try and rip it off (with permission) and use it as a degree. The idea of multiple gods creating a world may go against the setting but I could easily explain that away by stating that the "mini-gods" that we play are merely splinters of the same God. Yeah, that works.
I've also decided on an awesome way to begin a game, so I'm spurred on to create more degrees today. I'm going to try and fill all the gaps from 180 to 190 to get the back-end completed.
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Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
SoogaGames Blog
Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
Will flesh out 14 later on, it may or may not be horribly tacky but I've got some cool ideas for the relationship between 14 and 15. Guess you can't pick your neighbours.
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