Planeforger 2: Electric Boogaloo

Rolled 1 + 1 (1d6 + 1)

Guess I'm doing this myself.

Rolled 8 (1d8)

Plains it is

Rolled 20 (1d20)

Rolled 5 (1d6)

And so it grows.

I remember this thing. It was fun. I still got the map saved and the various bits of art I drew.

I was always wanting to run a quest on the planeforged world... Too bad at round about the time I was thinking about it /qst/ happened.

Rolled 5 (1d6)

You know there is this myth about a mountain called the Baboquivari. It was a peak at the center of the universe, and is where all men came from, after being lead out through the roots and caves of the infinite black underworld by animal spirits.

Not anything particularly relevant. Just wanted to shoot ideas about while rolling dice.

Though I guess I should've rolled a d20 there eh?

Digging through old drawfaggotry.

Rolled 16, 15 = 31 (2d20)

sorry messed up my roll.

Either way, rolled the same thing for that first one.

I was part of those threads from really early in, and I had tons of fun with it. I also remember your art from it! Welcome back!

An interesting idea to start with, reminds me of mesoamerican myth.

Rolled 5 (1d8)

>An interesting idea to start with, reminds me of mesoamerican myth.
You're not wrong. It's from the Tohono O'odham. They're a tribe that lives round about southern arizona and northwest sonora. Though I think its a motif that recurs in other Americas mythologies.

Rolled 4 (1d6)

Yeah, it reminds me primarily of one of the Aztec entrances into a new world (I think the third world, I can't remember), mixed with Hopi emergence tunnels.

Rolled 2 (1d6)

I'll try and draw things when its a little less midnight.
And when we got a little more ideas floating about.

Rolled 2 (1d20)

no problemo! I'll take your land type roll too, since we need islands anyway.

Alright, collating all of my posts and actually putting a name on this.
These were me.

At the moment, this is our plane.

We have a roll up for the next type from mine as mountains, but if someone wants to reroll that I'm good with it.

Rolled 5, 3, 9 = 17 (3d36)

actually, you know what, just roll 3d36, it gets a slightly larger number of squares, and I can do the math to convert for land type and direction.

Rolled 10, 19, 7 = 36 (3d36)

And I'll do it once more, so there's something worth posting.

Alright after this one I'm going to start putting it into higher gear, and just rolling a bunch of times.

Whoops, forgot image.

Rolled 33, 25, 31 = 89 (3d36)

Quick bump/roll before breakfast.

Wow, a whole bunch of colorless to the south!

Maybe its some kind of glimmervoid-esqe artifact area, or maybe a dip into the blind eternities?

There are a couple more variations for colorless lands now other than wastes or void.

Deserts in the recent set just got some variety added into the land type.

Rolled 7, 9, 21 = 37 (3d36)

Fair point! Guess we'll have to roll some more before we get some real decisions on what kind of terrain we have.

What was once a small bunch of island/lake/water terrain has now become a slightly less small amount of water terrain.

Rolled 21, 29, 19 = 69 (3d36)

A nice little copse of forests to add.

Rolled 5, 29, 10 = 44 (3d36)

As the title says. Looks like we're getting a little continent set up.

Rolled 9, 30, 8 = 47 (3d36)

So, what do we want the colorless to be?

Honestly when I first saw it I was thinking some kind of artifact land, maybe like a junkyard or something, but I also like the idea of deserts.

Considering our current glut of blue and green, maybe have the landscape be kind of "tropical oasis" like? I'm thinking somewhere between the galapagos islands and sub-saharan africa.

Rolled 6, 12, 28 = 46 (3d36)

I do like a tropical oasis approach

Lots more plains, so if we go oasis, what do they represent? Scrubland? Savannah? Grassland? Mirrodin-style Razorgrass?

Rolled 15, 10, 29 = 54 (3d36)

Going a bit along with the theme of hot places etc., as well as the W/G element, I'd suggest a savannah.

Rolled 28, 24, 26 = 78 (3d36)

Those are some lonely pair of mountains in the east.

Finally, swamps!

Alright, so we've got so far a kind of tropical/hot places vibe for this plane. Lush rainforests, rolling savannas, tranquil oasis, and whatnot.

Bearing that in mind, what should our mountains be? Just regular mountains, or more like steppes? So far this whole place is feeling very flat and rolling to me.

We're getting pretty lush so far. I like it.

Rolled 1, 14, 34 = 49 (3d36)

If those mountains are so little i would suggest a volcano. Unless they get larger

Rolling hopefully

I think we might have found where our white mana civilization might be based.

>steppes
I think so, but perhaps they are gigantic and huge mesas that lead to a secluded coast on one side, and slope gently down the other. Iquique comes to mind. Its a city in chile with this big mountain/sand dune behind it, pretty much a 70 degree incline. Cerra Dragon I think it's called.

Ooh, I like it a lot!

>Cerra Dragon
Dragons live underneath sand dunes, using the heat from the sand to insulate their heat and conserve energy. When they surface for food, they do so in a spray of glass and fire as their emergence cuts a vulcanized hole in the landscape.

Rolled 15, 14, 29 = 58 (3d36)

I still live in hope for our dear tiny mountains.

Rolled 21, 29, 6 = 56 (3d36)

I like that, seems like a fun idea. Perhaps I'll try drawing it when I get the chance today.

But dragons in the plains/deserts, could that suggest a general trend of "colorshifting" the big creatures of each color?

Dragons are traditionally red, but here they're white?

What about Sphinx, Angels, Demons, and Hydra?

Looks like we got another "wedge" in mardu colors.

Ooh, colorshifted archetype creatures is something I very approve of. Also it means we can jokingly call them Serra Dragons.

I guess for our colorshifts if we follow the same pattern of white dragons ,we would have blue hydras, red sphinxes, black angels, and green demons.

In other news, the mountains finally stop being so lonely.

Whoops, forgot the picture.

Just spitballing an idea here, but for red sphinxes what if instead of knowledge they hold inspiration?
They're half leanan-sidhe, half classical sphinx, where instead of knowledge to prevent you getting eaten, its creativity, spontaneity, and artistry. They're chaotic and active compared to blue sphinxes sedate knowledge hoarding, and in terms of cards probably have lots of "discard then draw" effects.

Love it. Something that comes to mind is that they could have a part to play in some creation myth. especially since these mountains were "the first land". Were they the mythical entities that led civilized societies out into the world?

Just threw this together. Was going for a bit of a horned toad vibe.

Awesome!

>Sphinxes sung the world into form, but the dragons gave it structure. The hydras plucked from the waters the secrets of the world, and the demons let the world grow with their touch. But it was the feathers of an angel that first created the tribes of the world.

I feel that so far if we gave this world a concept, like how Zendikar was "adventure world" and Innistrad was "horror world" this would by "Mythic world"

This is a place of legends, knee deep in its own age of heroes, where the world is reshaped and rewritten as actions change the fabric of legend. Stories are power here, songs and ballads strong enough to sway armies and change the fabric of the world. If there are gods, they are not great beings, but forming concepts. This is a land of heroes.

I was figuring demons would be the similar "embodiment of selfishness and self interest" except with a more primal Enkindu vibe, IE let us be as the beasts in nature, follow your instincts. They may have been responsible for growth and the proliferation of plant and animal life, but its all brutish, and savage.

pic unrelated. Its a horned toad.

Rolled 12, 7, 29 = 48 (3d36)

but I digress. Rollin!

I like that. So if we keep that kind of reasoning for each archetype, the "the same concept, but through the lens of a different color" it gives some interesting ideas.

Dragons are the whole "free to do what I want, because I 'm a dragon" but instead of going against the world, the force it to conform to their own order.

Demons are primal self interest, uncaring and selfish in regards to the natural world.

Hydras are...unchecked growth applied to knowledge and thought I guess? Their heads giving them extra brains and extra storage capacity? Maybe include some of the snakeskin-spellbook stuff from Zak S.'s Vornheim for added crazy.

Sphinxes are then knowledge and wisdom entirely focused on creative pursuits. I'm picturing a sphinxes lair looking like a cross between an art gallery and a bazaar, covered in color and ostentatious design.

I'm not entirely sure what angels are yet, since their whole deal with this would be "order and harmony" projected through black mana. Seems very ends justifying means.

Also hell yeah horned toads. Those eye-blood shooting bastards are awesome.

Also here's the update from that roll.

Rolled 14, 16, 25 = 55 (3d36)

Perhaps the angels could represent something like will? Dragons enforce their ideals, demons tempt with freedom from civilization, hydras seduce with forbidden knowledge (Could go for a kinda "Adam & Eve & The Snake" thing here), and sphinxes burn others in their chaos, both literally and metaphorically.

But angels give the ability to resist, to choose, to forge your own path through a realm of chaos and wild magic.

Angels represent the most selfish path, as fitting with black mana. The path of Self. To follow an angel's path is to fight against everything that would influence you otherwise.

Also I love the idea of hydras being this weird knowledge based equivalent of the biblical snake. Hydras know for the sake of knowing, for in knowing they grow and grow and know.

Rolled 24, 17, 3 = 44 (3d36)

Now the question is, "What does colorless mean, terrain/theme-wise?"
Since this is supposed to be a 'mythic' world, maybe something to do with formlessness or raw, primal magic?
Not necessarily 'void' or such, more like 'untapped potential.'

if we keep the idea of stories or songs being super important, I would suggest having it be something described as "Unwritten" or "Unsung", where it's basically raw magic

Untapped potential is a great way of describing it.

Rolled 34, 7, 8 = 49 (3d36)

I'm quite liking this plane so far. I'm getting some heavy mystical vibes. I felt that Theros had a bit of a "DreamTime" vibe going on, albeit focused through a greek lens, Dreams and collective unconscious of mortals created sentient dreams by way of the gods in the night sky. This might be more readilly expressed in the waking world instead.

Passing through lets say a in the desert reflects as a sort of "imagining of the viewer".

>To follow an angel's path is to fight against everything that would influence you otherwise.
If they express willpower and the self, that might seem as an almost phyrric task, to follow an angel to know yourself. Can you truly forge your own path if you are being guided? Do angels even guide people, or are they simply "followed"?

>If they express willpower and the self, that might seem as an almost phyrric task, to follow an angel to know yourself. Can you truly forge your own path if you are being guided?
That's the self-destructive and hypocritical part of black my man

Black mana at its finest.

Also we just got our second batch of Unsung land.

Rolled 28, 11, 33 = 72 (3d36)

Hmm, we have the faction basics semi-set, gotta think about the magic system now. So something to do stories and songs, what can we do with that?

Song magic can probably take a bunch of different ways, but its primarily about resonating with the raw, still relatively unstable mana of the world and shaping it via that resonance. You can do it with the structured, predictable strains of an instrument, the wild war bellows of a battle-bard, the harsh cutting prose of a vulgarist, the unraveling mysteries of a poet, or the strange and unknown counter-songs of resonant throatsong.

Either way, where other planes have mages that cast using mana ties, these mages make those ties on the fly and pull the raw mana from the plane itself as it remains mutable.

Rolled 3, 32, 23 = 58 (3d36)

Consider me interested so far. Not sure if I'm doing this right, but have a white dragon to help.

Oooh, I like the glowing!

Rolled 25, 17, 21 = 63 (3d36)

So regarding the colorless regions, if this plane is still unstable and raw with its mana, perhaps those are the "unformed" areas. A vast expanse of teeming, roiling landscape with no discernable features. Living there is difficult at best, and trying to cast spells is near-impossible because colored mana hasn't reached those regions yet. Native creatures to the expanse are as mercurial and dangerous as the landscape itself.

I picture it as kind of half way between a desert and a fog bank, swirling vapor on top of strange opalescent sand and soil, and the perfect place for an Unknown Shores card.

Rolled 24, 31, 2 = 57 (3d36)

If we're talking terrain, I think red landscape should be towering "painted" canyons, like in this pic, and the landscapes could have an "ancient near-east" theme, a la mesopotamia or israel.
Blue could be something like oasis-es, such as it was suggested earlier.
White would be deserts, but I'm not sure for Black or Green.

Oop, forgot pic

This just added two tiny mountains to the end, so I'll hold off on posting the map again.

That said, I love the idea of the painted canyons. For forests, I was thinking maybe a kind of cambodia/india style banyan jungles and ruins, with maybe swamps being marshy river deltas and grain patties. I keep picturing angels wearing straw rain hat style halos, and walking somberly through the water.

Rolled 11, 19, 31 = 61 (3d36)

I think it'd be cool to continue with the semi South-American theme we have going with the canyons/mesas and maybe add some Amazonian flair to the jungles. Also more rolls.

Ooh, I second that. Especially considering the amount of water we have via the island terrain, the jungles can be lush and dangerous compared to the more arid plains and mountain-canyons.

Are these factions or are they were some of the "big things" in the world. I think each of the big beasts' philosophies may play into the factions, the creative energy of the Sphinx, may inform some tribe of people to be not so much "wild and rowdy" but more in tune with the avant garde. They like newness and to be surprised. A group of explorer nomads.

I picture a "Hydra Philosophy" group as being very much into the "Know More Grow More" choosing to be less spontaneous and stay in one place, but to really heavilly gaurd that place and imprint their knowledge into it. Creating a living library across an island, taking cavepaintings and writing them large? Like Nazca Lines and whatnot?

That's an interesting way of delineating our tribes and cultures. Instead of the usual magic "goblins go here, elves go here" we can do kind of a weird monocolor Khans style coalition, where diverse groups follow the example of these five archetypal creatures.

I think that idea for the hydra group is awesome, and I'm picturing them doing the equivalent of scandinavian runic architecture, but with their hydra-based nazca-line language. They hide their knowledge in EVERYTHING, from their clothes and jewlery to their buildings, to the land itself.

I figure the "Dragon Philosophy" is highly autocratic, specifically to whichever dragon rules at the time. The dragon impresses laws into reality, and then its servants use those laws to fuel their music-magic. Effectively, Dragons make time signatures.

>Middle-east
>South American
>Indian
>Straw Hats
Quite the hodgepodge of influences.
But following the mythic theme, maybe we have a Dominions thing going on here, with various mythic creatures trying to get the early inhabitants of the world to follow their form of "reality."

Rolled 7, 28, 9 = 44 (3d36)

While it is good to have the cultures draw some ideals/direction from these mythic creatures, I'd like to see those civilizations develop their own identities in turn. Outside of the tyrannies of the dragons, it'd be easier for them to create their own tribes and city states. And that brings up the question of smaller races - elves? Goblins? Merfolk? Vedalken? There are a host of options.

What if that's the major conflict? The major tribes are all independently searching for the Worldsong, the magic that brought their plane into being from the blind eternities, but was cut off before it could finish forming everything. Whoever gets it and plays it can impose their idea on what the unfinished parts of the world should be onto the plane, and change it towards their goal. Whoever are our protagonists and antagonists are all trying to find the part of the story that's missing and write it themselves, changing the world..

Rolled 6, 14, 15 = 35 (3d36)

Definitely agree with you there, I don't think the big monsters rule the small races, well perhaps outside of maybe a few jerks. I like to think of them as kind of filling the same role as animal spirits. These big creatures could, in the "Exodus from the Underworld" cosmology, have been responsible for leading sentient people to the world above. The tribes/groups' value systems coming from what creatures helped them escape from the "center of all things" perhaps.

Variations on a Coyote style myth, where he plucked his eye out and made it the moon, so that he could look over all.

Perhaps "Dragon" cried angry tears of flame that lit the way, and when he was done showing these puny people where the exit was he went under the sands and slept. Dragons follow basic rules, and stick to their guns, and are wont to stay in one place, for the sake of structure. Their civ took to these rules and set up a similar kind of structure.

Perhaps similar ideas would follow for each other faction and its exodus myth?

As for races, a quick question; should humans exist or not? Last planeforger plane was distinctly post apocalyptic and didn't really have humans, but did tacitly imply the remnants of them were these weird biblical style inhuman angel things.

Rolled 27, 30, 13 = 70 (3d36)

That sounds like a pretty good source of conflict. Though I wonder if the place will be one big continent or if we'll be adding in oceans at some point.

Rolled 7, 35, 19 = 61 (3d36)

I dunno about actual races, but I think constructs can pretty big for Red, following in the style of the sphinxes by making freakish art-project golems.
Plus, if we make Red middle-eastern-esque, it ties into the actual Golem of Jewish lore.

Ooh, I like the mythic idea. I think that we should make this continent a little bigger, and then maybe add oceans not of water, but of unsung wasteland. Since the world isn't done yet, it doesn't really have intercontinental oceans.

I think we should have humans, but I don't think they should be anything special. I kind of like the idea of the various species of humans, goblins, vedalken, elves, and whatever else we have being weirdly non-tribal. They're allied by their beliefs and stories, not by whatever species they are. Also, it can give a kind of fable-like feel to it when you can have elven sages and goblin warlords walk down the street together on the way to see the vedalken seer.

Hrmm, golems could be cool. I like the idea of them all being crazy surrealist or cubist art projects too, it could give them a really cool visual appearance.

Rolled 6, 10, 13 = 29 (3d36)

I'm thinking humans exist in most colors, as well ask
- Desert dwelling white Viashino who worship the dragons (Possibly a few red-aligned apostate clans elsewhere)
- Thick-scaled blue fish people (maybe typed as merfolk but more distinctly fish-y) that dwell in the lakes and rivers, with some black-aligned fish in the marshy swamps
- Red-aligned goblins living among the mountains and acting as attendants or collaborators in the great works of the sphinges
- Green-aligned elves deeply connected to the jungles like the Xapiri Thëpë or "Spirit People" of Amazonian myth. Slightly more like dryads in terms of their bonds. Possibly some blue-aligned ones near the coastline.

I think that works, and it actually makes sense for the semi-anarchist angels to not have a race mostly aligned to them. Or maybe humans have the majority of black-aligned people, and a good amount in the other colors?

Mainly-black humans certainly works well, perhaps the least organized of the groups as they tend to be individualistic thanks to the influence of the angels. And of course living in shitty death-swamps doesn't help form community either.

Alright everyone, I've gotta go but I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, here's the newest map and quick notes on how I roll em.
1d36 is for color, divide it by six, and six is colorless.
1d36 is for degree of motion in relation to the starting point, I mostly just eyeball it.
and 1d36 is the number of hexes filled.

Go forth!

Rolled 34, 24 = 58 (2d36)

Rolled 7, 11, 18 = 36 (3d36)

Alright let's see if I can do this right. In the meantime, any thoughts from people regarding the technology/artifacts of the plane? As a relatively new one I imagine it couldn't be too advanced.

Think I did that properly. A lot of white going around.

Rolled 32, 15, 6 = 53 (3d36)

I imagine bronze age, probably. Would best fit the "creation myth" tone, iron age is too advanced, stone age is too regressed.
Also in the meantime we should come up with the cultural themes of the major tribes. I'm thinking something like this for Black and Red
Black: South Indian style, rice marshes, angels' path of individuality could be somewhat Buddhist based. Songs are mostly somber hymns with loud wailing mixed in, perhaps focuses on the "soul" more than any other tribe. (If they even have one, and aren't just a loose coalition.)
Red: Ancient Near-East, colorful canyons and plateaus as the landscape, gets along with Black the most out of any tribe. Songs are harsh and guttural, but strangely symphonic as well.
Any ideas for the other 3 colors?