General questions of scale

I have a few questions for Oralordos (or anyone who is a GM here) about the setting of the game.

• First: What is the size of the land? What's the scale of the map https://i.servimg.com/u/f70/16/20/04/92/turn_110.png? Is this an island, a small country, or a continent?
  
• Second: What are the technology levels? Are we planning to fight with clubs, swords, cannons, tanks, or lasers? What technology do we start with? What should be the average? What should be the maximum?
  
• Third: How powerful is magic? How common are magic-users? Should we be thinking of Dungeons and Dragons (any adventuring party has a dedicated mage, who is about evenly matched to the others) or Eragon (magic users are demi-gods who can take on armies)? Can one use magic to teleport, or to jump dimensions? How does magic interact with technology?
  
• Fourth: How much divine intervention are we allowed? Dreams and Ouija boards? Talking directly to our followers? Appearing physically? Lightning bolts? Fighting wars alongside our followers? And what are our powers inside the mansion?

Hello and welcome to the forums. Let me see if I can't clear a couple of those questions up for you.

1. The map is designed so that each tile represents around one month's travel for an average marching army. The tiles on the map shows what most of the stuff on the tiles is made of but there can be other stuff on a particular tile. Like there can be a mountain in the middle of a forest area.
   
2. The technology level is designed for medieval or fantasy level of technology. The particular amount of technology is dependent on your Race Magic Potential. Races with smaller magic potentials can have more technology to keep them competitive with the other races. Races with larger magic potentials should have less technology to make up for it. As the game goes on the technology level of the setting can increase, but it shouldn't get to modern times for a very very long time. (Sorry if you wanted nuclear weapons.) The gods can see all dimensions though and know about all technology.
   
3. Magic should be around the Dungeons and Dragons level of magic strength. The magic potential of your race should show in general how much of the population can wield magic, ranging from only heroes blessed by the gods can use magic to everyone but that one weirdo over there can wield magic in some way. Teleportation through magic for your race should be a major magical ritual. Maybe taking a 4-5 months of game-time to set up and cast. You would need a lot of mages too so the start point needs to be a bigger city as well. Range for said teleportation should be worldwide though, and trying to go to another city where a receiving ritual can be cast shouldn't take quite so long to setup. Going to other dimensions doesn't work. Both for the people in the world, and for the gods in the mansion. The gods in the mansion can travel to the world but they're stuck in the mansion/world as well. The reasons why they can't leave are unknown. As for how magic interacts with technology, it should work provided it remains balanced. A crossbow that summons it's bolts directly from the supply wagon as it's wound is fine. A sword that can wipe out armies in a swipe would not be.
   
4. Minor miracles that don't really affect anything should always be allowed on the field. You can show yourself however you want to your people. Magikarcher comes to mind for one way of communicating with his people. You can make up your own way of communicating with your people as well, walk around the town market telling everyone you meet good morning if you want. Other minor things like giving a water bottle to a favored mortal who is stuck in a desert or something is fine too. Unless said mortal is stuck in the desert without a water bottle for a reason in the game where he's supposed to be dieing of thirst. More major miracles are less likely to happen. If you try to perform one like sending a plague on someone's people, you may find that it spreads to your own people and affects them more. If the miracle is balanced, then it should work as intended, Rule of Cool and advancing the plot will allow you to get away with more. Using miracles that fit in your spheres of influence will be allowed to happen more. Major miracles should be very rare though, defiantly ask me before you attempt them. You can fight wars with your followers if you really want. I would recommend against it though unless you want all the other gods doing the same. Lucky things might happen to whoever comes to stop you as well. Your powers in the mansion allow you to do pretty much whatever you want. The other gods and whatever they are holding is immune, and you can't seem to teleport or dimension travel at all. But other than that, anything goes. No you can't use this as a way to get out of the mansion, you will always find your way directed to the game room if you try to find a way out. If you just try to explore though, you can find other rooms with whatever weird stuff.

A couple things I want to point out that were in the rules thread.

• The mansion's layout and design changes depending on the onlooker. This includes the game board interface. Magikarcher has a nice house with lots of books and the game board has an advanced magical interface. Another person might see the mansion with lots of fountains everywhere and the game board as something akin to chess. Someone else might see everything as a high-tech laboratory with the game board being a computer game.
  
• Time is in flux in the mansion, this is to show that this is a game and some people have more time to play on these forums than others. If you miss a large portion of game-play, you will be given a limited opportunity to adjust what you were doing during the time you missed, like saying your army here moved there while you were gone. Anything that has already happened is stuck in stone though so no going back in time and changing things.

I'm glad you asked this, it's good for me to have answers to frequently asked questions written down where people can see them.

A tile is one month's travel at a slow march? That's about 2000km then, or the size of a big country. The map you posted is 30 by 26 tiles, so slightly larger than the entire Earth. Sounds a bit big to me. EDIT: The map you've drawn also makes no geographical sense if it's that big. You've got a single mountain range that covers half the landmass.

One more question that I forgot: What time scales should we thinking about here?

Well considering it's a created world, it doesn't have to make geographical scene. I was mainly trying to make it so that it takes a long time to travel across the world. And so that there would be plenty of room for other features in a tile. If we want to it can be decreased to one weeks travel. The time scale for in the world would be around one turn being enough time to travel one tile, for the average army. In the mansion, considerably less time per turn.

I'm not particularly concerned about it making geographical sense. I'm worried that it's just too big. We're expected to start with no means of high-speed travel or communication and still build an empire that obeys the rules of logic. We won't just have one tile each; there's plenty of room for other features around the place. But if it takes 30 turns for us to move our army from one end of the map to the other, this game will take a very long time to finish. Especially since this forum seems rather slow to start with. (No offence.)
I propose that we define one tile to be 50 km. That's enough for a reasonably-sized city plus suburbs or a giant city without suburbs, and is two days at a forced march for humans - four if you want them in fighting condition afterwards, or if you want to travel more than one tile. The entire map would be about 1000 km across, the size of France. One turn is enough for an army to cross the entire map, but that doesn't mean wars won't still take a long time. Ever heard of the Hundred Years War? That's exactly the scale we're talking about here.
World Wars didn't start until 1914, after all.

What you're not using your god as an instant messenger service? You're weird. Joking aside, arguments about scale is a good thing to do now while everything is in flux, rather than later. I think it shouldn't quite be small enough to travel the entire map in one turn though, need to have some use for teleportation. But I'm open to changing it.

Well, a lot of the map is mountains which you could argue would slow us down. And my earlier figures are only for military types who've trained in long-distance marching. And they don't account for miscellaneous delays: bandits stealing your stuff, stops along the way to resupply, etc. And even then, it would take four months to cross the entire map at a normal marching speed (I said one month in my last post, but I was wrong.)
I'm mostly considering this from the "each city takes up one tile" angle. Obviously, there needs to be a justification if each city is surrounded by several months of wilderness. And allowing several cities on a single tile means we'll have to consider the geography of individual tiles - which rather defeats the point of having tiles at all.

Maybe if you made a turn take less than a month? Lots of important actions can be done faster than that. Battles could take as little as a day. And we won't be at war for the entire time - even when we are, there will be long periods where we resupply and recover in which not much happens. There will be long periods of time that can be more-or-less skipped over.

Oralordos wrote:

The technology level is designed for medieval or fantasy level of technology.

I'm guessing steam punk is a little way off then

Snowyowl wrote:

We're expected to start with no means of high-speed travel or communication

For communication at least could we use messenger birds of some sort? They could be supplied by the gods (us) to make it more realistic.

Oralordos wrote:

need to have some use for teleportation.

Even with a smaller map teleportation would still have its uses, for example moving a battlegroup from one of your cities to another when there are enemies in between.

Also, could we highlight each persons settlements on the map in a different colour?

Omegatron wrote:

I'm guessing steam punk is a little way off then

With your level of racial magic potential, steam punk would be fine. Nothing too crazy though.

Omegatron wrote:

For communication at least could we use messenger birds of some sort? They could be supplied by the gods (us) to make it more realistic.

Communication through magic is possible. Not that that helps your race with it's magic potential level. And yes messenger birds and the like would work.

Omegatron wrote:

Even with a smaller map teleportation would still have its uses, for example moving a battlegroup from one of your cities to another when there are enemies in between.

That is a good point.

Omegatron wrote:

Also, could we highlight each persons settlements on the map in a different colour?

Each person will get a unique character/color combination to represent their cities and major groups of units. I'll get an image of the available options up here soon.

Have we reached a conclusion on the question of scale yet?

I think the scale of one tile being 50 km seems best.
Crazy Achron people who want realistic stuff from everything.

I'm a fan of a time travel science fiction game currently playing a god trapped in a mansion in charge of a small civilisation. Realistic I ain't.

That totally sounds like something Kron would laugh about.

Oralordos wrote:

That totally sounds like something Kron would laugh about.

Slightly related, are we meant to assume that our race has a similar sort of map that we have and if not can our characters supply them with one?

Yes that is a good assumption.

How is the time scale of the game? How many turns will mortals approximately live?

I don't know about yours, but I intend for my mortals to live fairly short lives. About 20 years with their current state of medical technology - 40 when they reach more advanced levels near the end of the game. Which is still a long time, since a turn is one month.

Sounds like an answer was already given.

Also, sorry for not posting that much recently. I was sick and couldn't think that well and figured it would be better to post less than post weird stuff.

I dont know whether this has already been asked or if it should be posted elsewhere, but are you gong to post a thread which is the map, as shown on one of your posts but with all the symbols etc on it? it would be better than having to look at a player then go to the map and try an remember where everyone was, you are probably already working on it and i know you are sick so no pressure.
=3