Akadimía

Created by

Jeff Vance

VorpalPooh

Writers Team

Girlthrower

Jess002

Strider_Prime

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Scope

The motivation behind building Akadimía

I'm developing this world to explore complex societal issues and their effects.

The goal of the project

I'm hoping to immerse my children in the complex issues through their characters and allow them to test the choices they make.

Akadimía's Unique Selling point

Avoiding the conflict between multiple monotheistic religions. While the tension between athiesm, polytheism and monotheism is real, I don't want this to be an alternate history of earth.

Theme

Genre

High fantasy with a touch of grit. There are several tweaks to the traditional fantasy role playing game settings (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons 5e) that allow for characters to have less visual racial markers. That is Dragon Scions in this setting, unlike Dragonborn in 5e, are not easily distinguisable from other humans, elemental scions or nymph scions. The bloodline ties to the "powers" and backgrounds rather than overt physical differences. This isn't to say that it's a homogonized society, there are plenty of differences between the ethnicities based on the original imported human populations. But these should be differences of appearence and ethnicity, not overt species differences.

Reader Experience

Players should feel the marvel at the natural world and the beings within it similar to the Classical and Iron Age periods. While set approximately in a timeframe that's more appropriate to 9th century Earth, we use many of the myths and fantasy elements of the setting to ensure that the consolidation that occured during the Macedonean era and Roman era did not occur in this world, leaving the more accessible city-states and tribal structures as the dominant forms of governments. While a nacent empire does exist, it acts as a adversary or foil for the majority of the civilizations. The wide assortment of cultures should give readers and player several options that they may become attached to or choose to play. The multi-cultural starting point should allow these characters to interact freely, constrained more by caste than ethnicity or nationality.

Reader Tone

The tone of the world should begin with a slice of life, and move on to a more exploratory then epic plot sense. There are many layers of conflict that allow campaigns (or storytellers) to work at local, regional, intercontinental or cosmic levels of conflict -- or escalate up the spectrum. The threats at the local and regional level should be driven more by human nature, allowing the storyteller to determine how they want to balance along a spectrum that could include comedy, drama, tragedy or even horror. The global threats tend towards the more dramatic and tragic elements, with set pieces of localized humor and horror to create variety and balance.

Recurring Themes

See Themes.

Character Agency

The characters should have a tremendous amount of independent agency, but constrained within a much larger moving set of events. As a group, using others they should be able to change the universe. Alone or just as their group they will fail.

Focus

The first focal point is on the impacts of class on interpersonal dynamics, and how to manage and overcome those challenges.

The second focal point is on the impacts of inter-family, inter-tribal levels of conflict. How do you develop your independence from your tribal groups and establish your own identity, perhaps working with members of other families or tribes.

The third focal point is on the policies of the local city-state, and whether these policies align with the characters beliefs. Concepts such as slavery, democracy, and equality come into play and need to be navigated by the characters. If the current world isn't idea, what does that new world look like?

The final areas focus on global and cosmic elements of the setting. Will they seek a world where they re-integrate the native and younger races? Will they seek to confront the rising power of the primary adversary? Will they seek to withdrawal, or dominate international politics -- or will they seek a new balance of power in between.

Drama

The primary drama point begins with the struggle of class amongst the Drákon League. All the characters begin with similar levels of being "special" though their priveledges may not apply in the current situation. The politics within families within a polity, and a sense of despite the inter-personal conflicts, each actor also has their own conflicts they are dealing with. The threats at this level are personal to the character. Combat at this level should be reasonably frequent, but easily overcome. This allows the characters to build confidence, develop healthy interpersonal dynamics within the group, and have clear personalities expressed.

The second stage shifts to the regional levels, focusing on the conflicts between families within a city-state, and that city-state's or tribes position within a confederation of city-states or tribes. This allows us to introduce new organizations, larger magical effects and greater threats into the mix. The greater threats require the characters to come together with other prior competitors or adversaries to solve a greater threat. At th is stage, characters should be forced to confront their own biases and "othering" and re-assess what it means to work for a greater good.

The third focus shifts to international conflicts. The group of collaborators that developed with the second focus point now must confront larger plots between their various homelands and other powerful parties. This drives ever increasing conflicts that raise the stakes and risks of survival of the new group. They risk being eliminated or subsumed back into one faction of these larger conflicts. Maintaining their independence will be critical.

At this stage the characters must set aside their firmly held nationalistic or tribal beliefs and find their place on the public stage. This much more overt role makes them players in a larger game with higher stakes. They must find a way to not only assert their independence, but to build a sufficient base of power that enables them to operate as a participant at this level.

The background of the cosmic Great War and the presence or absence of the powerful races of Dragons, Giants, Elementals, etc. from the surface should come out slowly and develop after the third focus point. Determining how to re-integrate the two worlds should be the next major conflict. This should force the group away from the direct participation in their new power base, delegating that to others. They will need the space available to act as agents on this larger global stage.

The final element should be the involvement and resolution of the cosmic drama outlined in the Great War. Whether they choose to re-seal or eliminate the threat, allow the seal to be broken and engage in a larger planar battle, or some idea not yet discussed, this transitions to the endgame type scenarios.