TRPG General Chat

7:20 AM

Good morning cat

(the joke being, "chat" is French for "cat")

BESW

7:55 AM

That's from the Katzenklavier short film right?

Welp, seems to be. And it's just "Cat piano". I wonder why the German name popped up in my mind first.

8:31 AM

Hello people! Is there anybody here who knows the ins and outs of the Forgotten Realms setting?

9:14 AM

I don't, but I'd reckon if you ask, somebody will eventually know.

9:40 AM

@Zachiel I know a fair bit.

@Miniman Well, better try here first, but I'm ok with creating a question to earn you some points. I just don't know what to ask precisely yet.

@Zachiel I'm happy to help you figure out what you're trying to ask, and hopefully even answer it!

A friend of mine Always wanted to play Curse of the Crimson Throne, a Paizo adventure path set in Korvosa. This would be one of the most detailed cities in that setting. It has the classical wealthy/poor divide, values ostentation of power, wealth and knowledge and really likes predictability. It is a frontier city and one of the oldest at that and it was founded by the Kingdom of cheliax, a devilocracy based on italian renaissance.
I'm trying to fit it on the realms. It should face the sea, have barbarian tribes and orc raiders nearby and an evil empire wouldn't be bad.

Hmmmm. Calimport or Memnon are close in some ways, but the "value predictability" thing makes them a poor match.

Pretty much any of the candidates I can come up with are too chaotic to really match your description.

9:58 AM

I was thinking about setting the country in some other continent, maybe Matzica.

Oh, also needs a close stretch of desolation. Somebody suggested playing above the moonsea

Do you have any particular Realms era in mind - pre-Spellplague, post-Spellplague, post-Sundering?

pre-spellplague, post-time-of-troubles

for post-spellplague there's plenty of places imported from Abeir that could fit.

post- Sundering, I don't know the setting at all.

there's no devil empires in Faerun, just the daemonfey, right?

Thay is probably the closest.

And not much of an empire, sadly.

Yup.

10:05 AM

The main enemy of my game will be Loviatar, let's see what I can do near the Crinti...

5 hours later…

2:36 PM

TIL Loviatar is the alternative name for Louhi, a character in Kalevala

She seems to have a lot of weirdly contradictory themes associated with her. Older poetry has her literally give birth to various problems of the world, but in Kalevala her daughters are beautiful and talented

@kviiri I suppose the name comes from myths. D&D authors are famous for incorprorating such things in their settings. I don't know if Louhi is a goddess/god/demigod of pain but I had been told already that it's not an original name.

@Zachiel Loviatar is one of the names associated with her, although she's just Louhi in Kalevala. She's best known as the antagonist in Kalevala, where she is the more like a witch than a deity, but I think classifying her as a god of pain is more close to older myths about her.

2:51 PM

Also a feminist IIRC

I'd guess Ilmater's name is also borrowed from Finnish mythology, from Ilmatar (roughly "Lady Air"), but his characterization is more like Jesus.

And Mielikki is an actual forest god too

Yeah, Ilmater has a Jesus-like feel. And he (Ilmater, not Jesus) is the biggest enemy of Loviatar

The one thing I like about Loviatar is that she's not cruel like "let's stab things", she's more "accept pain, it's a part of life. Learn to love pain. Teach pain. Make Others feel good too, then suddenly stop and be unpredictable about your gifts.

@Zachiel I never bothered to learn the lore, but that sounds pretty awesome

3:38 PM

I think I mentioned it here before, but I started DnD with 4e where Tiamat is described as the god of Wealth, among other things. That made my imagination race, since it's an ostensibly positive quality for a god that's nevertheless capital-E Evil. So Tiamat became a sort of "affable Evil" god in my games, her cults working through money, diplomacy and subversion rather than direct confrontation.

When I learned that Tiamat is a huge dragon best, I decided she has two tiers of cults dedicated to her - the outer circle which is all about the money and retains a lot of the aforementioned personality, and the inner circle which is more aware and interested in her connection to dragons.

David Coffron

4:19 PM

@kviiri I like that idea. Mind if I co-opt it? I'm starting a campaign where knowledge of gods is low and having a two pronged cult of a newly discovered god of wealth who is secretly a dragon is super interesting

@DavidCoffron I certainly won't :)

I struggled a bit to reconcile the fact that Tiamat would supposedly be worshipped by traders, bankers and the like with the fact that she's also supposed to be the pinnacle of draconic greed. In my last campaign I used the compromise that the outer circle regularly sacrificed to her, believing that every coin given to Tiamat would eventually return to them tenfold or such.

"Tiamat will bless our trade" or somesuch - and it could even be true. I didn't really explore that bit :)