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Posted

As a geographer, I would also appreciate a map. I'm not even totally sure which hemisphere the Dyrwood is in, nor the name of the continent it's on.

 

And the White March bugs me. Why is it so much colder than the rest of the continent, when it's to the -east-? The mountains sure would be part of it, blocking the warm rain-carrying winds from the sea to the west, but other than that, the White March could only be that cold if either it was at a really high northern latitude or a really low southern latitude. It would probably also have to be in the middle of a much larger continent, with no large bodies of water around to help regulate temperature. Like Siberia.

 

Also, Aedyr. It's tropical. Most ethnic groups that come from tropical and equatorial regions have darker skin, but according to the wiki, the most common human subrace in Aedyr is the Meadow Folk, who all have paler skin. They'd have to have migrated into the region. At least the wiki page on humans does correlate this, stating that the Meadow Folk migrated southward over a long period of time, but I'm not sure how much of that is canonically cited somewhere, and if so where it is.

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Posted

Pillars of Eternity already significantly changes how basic foundations of its physical world function. Why assume that the rest functions like our reality?

 

It's the sort of thinking which always bugged me when it comes to fantasy - let's keep fantasy fantastic. Yes, I know I'm saying this about Pillars which is as close to generic as you can get. Still, it's fantasy - artistic license is always going to be more important to me than how realistic is the world.

Posted (edited)

As a geographer, I would also appreciate a map. I'm not even totally sure which hemisphere the Dyrwood is in, nor the name of the continent it's on.

 

And the White March bugs me. Why is it so much colder than the rest of the continent, when it's to the -east-? The mountains sure would be part of it, blocking the warm rain-carrying winds from the sea to the west, but other than that, the White March could only be that cold if either it was at a really high northern latitude or a really low southern latitude. It would probably also have to be in the middle of a much larger continent, with no large bodies of water around to help regulate temperature. Like Siberia.

 

Also, Aedyr. It's tropical. Most ethnic groups that come from tropical and equatorial regions have darker skin, but according to the wiki, the most common human subrace in Aedyr is the Meadow Folk, who all have paler skin. They'd have to have migrated into the region. At least the wiki page on humans does correlate this, stating that the Meadow Folk migrated southward over a long period of time, but I'm not sure how much of that is canonically cited somewhere, and if so where it is.

 

It's in the Southern Hemisphere.

Edited by anameforobsidian
Posted

 

As a geographer, I would also appreciate a map. I'm not even totally sure which hemisphere the Dyrwood is in, nor the name of the continent it's on.

 

And the White March bugs me. Why is it so much colder than the rest of the continent, when it's to the -east-? The mountains sure would be part of it, blocking the warm rain-carrying winds from the sea to the west, but other than that, the White March could only be that cold if either it was at a really high northern latitude or a really low southern latitude. It would probably also have to be in the middle of a much larger continent, with no large bodies of water around to help regulate temperature. Like Siberia.

 

Also, Aedyr. It's tropical. Most ethnic groups that come from tropical and equatorial regions have darker skin, but according to the wiki, the most common human subrace in Aedyr is the Meadow Folk, who all have paler skin. They'd have to have migrated into the region. At least the wiki page on humans does correlate this, stating that the Meadow Folk migrated southward over a long period of time, but I'm not sure how much of that is canonically cited somewhere, and if so where it is.

 

It's in the Southern Hemisphere.

 

THANK YOU. That makes things a little easier.

About midgame, if you check your quest journal, you should be around the late spring/early summer seasons. But if you visit the White March during this time (because the White March is designed to be visited during the midgame) locals of Stalwart will talk about it being during the colder seasons. Southern Hemisphere makes it all make sense.

(Unless the seasons were designed by someone living in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case summer should be summerlike for Dyrwood, and winterlike for the Northern Hemisphere....)

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Posted

Pillars of Eternity already significantly changes how basic foundations of its physical world function. Why assume that the rest functions like our reality?

 

It's the sort of thinking which always bugged me when it comes to fantasy - let's keep fantasy fantastic. Yes, I know I'm saying this about Pillars which is as close to generic as you can get. Still, it's fantasy - artistic license is always going to be more important to me than how realistic is the world.

Yeah, I know, but I can't help it. Geography's my passion, and once I graduate in May it'll be how I make money.

Suffice to say that while Eora is pretty good as-is, it would still be REALLY COOL to get a geographer on board for the short-term, and regardless of whether or not Obsidian does so, geographers like myself are probably going to nerd out about it anyway.

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Posted (edited)

 Simple work map I made:

 

Eora2.png

 

EDIT: I just noticed I had forgotten to mark Old Vailia, but it should be between Eastern Reach (Dyrwood, Republics, Readceras) and Aedyr Empire, south-west.

Edited by White Phoenix
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Posted

I know you super don't care because it's just an MS paint map, but an Archipelago is a set of islands.  And Old Valia is a set of islands too.  It's weird that the big continents are relatively unsettled, but the small islands are not,

Posted

There's also the point that magic doesn't automatically obviate all other rules of the universe, and that suspension of disbelief is easier if the divergence from reality is structured.

Well put.

Posted

 Simple work map I made:

 

Eora2.png

 

EDIT: I just noticed I had forgotten to mark Old Vailia, but it should be between Eastern Reach (Dyrwood, Republics, Readceras) and Aedyr Empire, south-west.

Oh no! The picture is broken for me! I wanted to see! D:

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Posted

 

 

 Simple work map I made:

 

Eora2.png

 

EDIT: I just noticed I had forgotten to mark Old Vailia, but it should be between Eastern Reach (Dyrwood, Republics, Readceras) and Aedyr Empire, south-west.

Oh no! The picture is broken for me! I wanted to see! D:

 

http://eternityproject.pl/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Eora2.png

 

Thanks!

It's a good starting point! (Though again, I'd make the continent the Dyrwood is on larger so the White March is a little more plausible, but that's me.)

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Posted (edited)

There's also the point that magic doesn't automatically obviate all other rules of the universe

I would argue that other rules of the universe are clearly different because the world is structured in such a way that's close to impossible in ours. I do get the argument about suspension of disbelief tho. Edited by Fenixp
Posted

 

There's also the point that magic doesn't automatically obviate all other rules of the universe

I would argue that other rules of the universe are clearly different because the world is structured in such a way that's close to impossible in ours. I do get the argument about suspension of disbelief tho.

 

I dunno, man. The whole Wheel of reincarnation thing has an impact on magic and culture, but I'm not seeing much of a magically-induced suspension of other rules. Like, y'know, physics.

So, magic and physics are probably working in tandem, taking a middle road between fantastical and mundane, so that while a world like Eora may *technically* be close to impossible, it doesn't *feel* that way.

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Posted

 

There's also the point that magic doesn't automatically obviate all other rules of the universe

I would argue that other rules of the universe are clearly different because the world is structured in such a way that's close to impossible in ours.

 

Right, but here's the thing: when the changes to reality's underlying rules cause a fictional universe to become totally foreign to our own experience, we lose the ability to apply that experience in any reasonable way. A setting's creator needs to make departures from reality (relatively) clear-cut, or else the setting becomes so totally unfamiliar that literally any sequence of events would make sense within its context. If somebody wants to say, "oh, and in this fictional universe, objects are formed out of the dream images of primal totems, instead of molecules, and therefore points X, Y, and Z are different," great, that's fine - but it shouldn't be a reason to assume A through W are also suspect. If it is, we got us a varmint problem.

 

Specifically with regards to Eora, this means that while there are wizards and monsters and junk, I feel I should generally be able to expect that universe to behave like our own unless otherwise stated. Food rots, things fall when you drop them, people bleed when they are cut, and so on - these are things we expect to be true, and when they're not true, we demand explanations for them. If these things don't make sense in the context of what we're familiar with, there must be internally consistent reasons why they make sense in the context of PoE's universe.

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Dark green, on the other hand, is for jokes and irony in general.

Posted

Eora does have a feel it's a physical world. I would like they write out the world in PoE2 in richer and detailed  way. I BG,Planescape universe there are subdimensional worlds as planes. Theese subworlds add to the overall athmosphere with variety of monsters and strange environments. I would like to see equivalent subworlds in PoE2.

Posted (edited)

I don't think subworlds is the best thing for this setting.  While it works really well in Planescape or Spelljammer (make a Spelljammer game devs!), it doesn't work well for every setting.  

 

A large strength of Pillars as a setting is that it's fairly realistic.  The actions of the characters are fairly grounded within the setting.  Alternate dimensions are necessarily disjunctive and usually caricatures of the existing setting or otherwise hyperbolic.  By their nature, they could take away from the strengths of Pillars as a setting.

 

Furthermore, DnD in general is fairly religious and hierarchical.  Pillars has analogs for Humanism, worldliness, and the triumph of the secular over religious.  This means that other realms, especially divine realms, is antithetical to the themes of Pillars.

 

 

 

All of that said, there's nothing saying they can't use the technology or rules from Pillars to create a very different setting.  Or they could buy the rights to Paranoia.

Edited by anameforobsidian
  • 7 months later...

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