Does your setting have a richly developed and interesting history...

"You could make a religion out of thi-"
No don't

I along time ago in a galaxy far far away a species called the Rakata discovered the Force.
whats the force?
The force is a mystic energy field that binds all life and can be tapped into via large concentrations of mitochondrial symbiotes in our cells.
You could make a religion out of this!
in fact, several religions!

oh no it's the fucking
>ABOLETH'S AGAIN

>[aboleth count = 4]

How are you supposed to protect your shit? From Criminals?
>Hiiiire a Shadowrunner!
Everyone hired Shadowrunners!
>Note: Only rich important corporations could afford to hire shadowrunners, people who could not afford to hire shadowrunners did not hire shadowrunners

Remember the Sith?
No, Not those Sith, THOSE Sith
They're Everywhere, and Killing Eachother

So a Sith Lord named Darth Bane Declared "I have a plan to stop all the sith from killing each other all the time"
and he stopped them, by Killing them, well except this one guy, He'll teach him until he userps him, the plan is to have a constant line of succession so each iteration of backstabbing sith is better then the last, he called this
>THE RUUUULE OF TWO!!!

Knock Knock, Its Deathwatch, they're here to make Mandalor Mandalorian again

Knock Knock, it's the Sith, they're here to make Mandalor rubble again.

It's not my setting, it's my setting of choice. I think that Rageaholic did a pretty spectacular job of summing it up. No jingles though.
youtu.be/h92N63ElI4s

So a long time ago there was a god but we don't really care because that god exploded and became
>GOOODLY SPACEDUST
Now some of that spacedust comes together into the goddess we care about
>SOLARI GODDESS OF THE SUN
She makes god children from the spacedust that's spinning around her
>KETHONIA
>GEOMORA
>CIMULUS
Geomora and Cimulus are sort of stuck together as
>ETERI
Oh look now there are little people on Kethonia and Eteri!
And they have bits of spacedust inside them!
>SOOOOULS
You could make a religion out of this!
Hey this one ape on Eteri has more spacedust than anyone else
>KARA KALIMA GOOOOD OF THE APES
Meanwhile on Kethonia there's a dragon
Where did that come from?
>SOMEWHERE ELSE
"My name is Emerra and I am a god"
said the dragon
"Okay we don't like you"
said the people on Kethonia
Except some of them who said
"You could make a religion out of this!"

I'm lost, what setting or is it yours

It's mine

heh, sounds fun

Give me ten minutes... Or more. This may take a while.

Oh boy!

My setting needs a bit more fleshing out in the history department, but I'll give it a shot

>A long, long time ago before people even remember and history wasn't history there were two really big rocks in the ocean, on an even bigger rock in space
>people only lived on one of the rocks though because they were really far apart so no one cares about the other rock
>these people worshiped things like trees and spirits and stuff
>they believed so hard they made gods exist
>these gods went over and said "hey we're cool"
>the people agreed and said "you're so cool we want to worship you"
>and so they did
>except some people, they still believed in rocks and stuff
>this made the gods angry
>"believe in us!" said the gods
>"no" said the rock worshipers
>so the gods made them look ugly
>the now ugly rock lovers got really sad for a long time, but then a smart person realized the gods left this cool thing called *magic* behind
>the ugly people are now beautiful
>this made the gods angry so they cursed them . A lot. Sometimes they almost didn't fail!
>They were so angry they forgot that killing most of the world was bad and smashed the two rocks together.Then they left.
>a really long time later they came back and saw that some people were still alive.
>"sorry" they said, not really sorry, "we'll make things better."
>so they did, and now people live all over the two rocks, which are now fused together (but only the left half)
>some people even got cool things, like horns and tails and stuff.

(1/2 I guess)

The problem with a rich history is you don't really want to overwhelm players with lore and put them off. In my rpg choose your own adventure setting I'm trying to introduce the lore of my land bit by bit.

youtube.com/watch?v=wMOPI-Cz4c0

>these new people forgot all the other stuff happened and the gods got bored and left.
>for a really long time things were great and people made a lot of religion and art and stuff.
>way over here (the west) these people called "humans" discovered cool things like "farming"
>now that humans had a lot of food they ran out of place to put themselves and decided to go east
>after some walking they met people with really pointy ears called elves, who had cool things like gunpowder and silk and lots of land
>"hey give us your land" said the humans
>"no" said the elves
>then they fought each other for a bit
>the humans won and kept walking
>after some more walking they meet short people with long beards and drinks made of potatoes, called dwarves who also had lots of land.
>"give us your land" said the humans not asking so nicely
>"no" said the dwarves
>then they fought for a bit and the dwarves lost
>with all this nice new land the humans thought that having EVEN MORE land would be really cool and made themselves really big
>all the other people got together and made a really big team to fight the humans.
>the humans and the other people fought for a really long time but they didn't get anywhere
>then this guy, St. Roland, shows up and he's got the power of god and he says "I'm gonna stop the fighting by winning the fight." and he almost did
>but then this girl, Nahmaah, a succubus thought he was really cute so she beat him up and tried to have his baby, but he died in the middle of it
>without their really cool guy humanity decides "hey we should stop"
>and they did and everything was cool for a long time
>humans now lived all across the world and made friends with everybody after a long time of not being friends
>thanks to new friendship science was made and cool things like medicine, cars and planes were invented
>but all this cool stuff made everyone realize "we need more land"
>so a bunch of people pack up and go east.
(2/3 i guess)

>they go really far and find these really big mountains in the way from when the two rocks crashed into each other.
>trying to climb the mountains doesn't work because really big monsters live in the east unlike the west where really small monsters live
>but it's okay everyone keeps going and some places get founded
>eventually some person invents a thing in some place in some time and everything gets better.
>oh and the rock people are still around but no one knows they are.

(3/3)

It has the most richly developed and interesting history.

You see, it develops richly as the plot progresses. The players find it interesting because it is relevant to the game going on.

It got "eaten", blown up, split into two different universes, and the survivors of the original aren't welcome in the new two, so they went off into god knows where. The plot isn't about the two universes, it about they guys from the original and their wacky multiversal hijinx. No one ever gets to see the two new ones, despite wanting to.

Once upon a time there was a continent, a pretty big continent called
>EORM
And it's got all kinds of cool stuff, like forests
>*dink*
and mountains
>*doink*
and rivers, islands, deserts and badlands and stuff
>*donk*
And more importantly, it's got these weird, hairy, two-legged things who hit things with rocks and aren't quite smart enough to figure out how to not be kinda-sorta-animals and start being people. Now watch closely, because
>SHIT'S ABOUT TO GO CRAZY~
See, way deep down underground and also above ground and also not in the ground at all, but sorta just 'there' and also not there at all, there's this stuff
>magical
stuff. And this stuff is kinda like the weather, because sometimes it's nice and calm and very occasionally it goes completely nuts and just hurricanes all over the planet, following these invisible lines that criss-cross everything. So the not-quite-people are hanging out, eating bugs and nuts off trees and stuff when whoosh! This huge magical storm smashes across the entire planet! In fact it smashes so hard, it breaks its own lines and now no storm that big is ever going to happen again. Ever.

But it kind of left a mark, see? Now all those not-quite-people are people! And not only that, they're all kinds of different people! Some are big and tough and really strong and grew these gnarly teeth and grey skin and those are the
>ORCS!
Then there's these short guys who kept more hair than everyone else and kind of don't give a shit if they don't get to eat or drink for a while.
>DWARVES!
There's these guys, who hung onto more of the magic than the rest and have really good senses and relfexes. Also they're kinda pretty and are called
>ELVES!
There's also these guys. They don't really do anything too well, but they get a low-fat version of the cool stuff the other guys got.
>THAT'S A HUMAN PERSON!
There's also some other guys, but either they're not that important, or they show up way later, or in other places, so they don't matter.

So now there's all kinds of these people all over the continent and they're kinda just chasing their food, or waiting for it to come to them, or picking it off the ground and the trees and life is pretty good for about 10,000 years. The rocks people are using slowly get pointier and the groups they're living in slowly get larger until-
>WHOOO BROKE THE THERMOSTAAAT~? (Holy shiiit pass me a sweater!)
Suddenly everything's really, really cold and also a lot dryer. Now the dwarves don't mind too much, but for everyone else, this is reeaally bad news, as the animals and plants are dying, so they don't have anything to eat, also water is way harder to find and soda hasn't been invented yet. So the humans and the orcs start rounding up bunches of animals and taking them with them as they keep looking for new food for the animals, so they can eat the animals.
>ANIMAL HUSBANDRYYY!
The elves do it differently and start making sure their plants have plenty of water and soon start growing them in rows and trading grain with the humans in exchange for animals.
>THAAAT'S AGRICULTURE AND ALSO TRAAADE!

Meanwhile the Dwarvern Waifu Wars are going on. This guy (Porokos Shatterbeard) is fighting this guy (Retis Stonehand), because this guy (Gengos Halfstone) stole this guy's (Kimgrik Highammer) wife, who is in love with this guy (Ingos Cliffsplitter). And everyone who's friends with them gets involved and they all have a bunch of fights and then their kids all fight, then THEIR kids fight and their their kids KIDS fight until eventually this guy (Dendros Stonehand) figures out you can mix
>tin
with
>copper
and make
>BRONZE
and he lucked out because there's copper everywhere and some tin is right next door. But it belongs to the elves. Bummer. Well what if he told them how to make bronze and then they traded a bit of the copper for a bit of the tin. Then everyone's happy!

>THE HEATER'S FIIIXED!
Oh hey all the glaciers have melted and also farming is much easier now.

2/?

>when you try but user does way better than you do

I don't have that much story, but I can do some memes from random periods

In the year negative a billion,
>Sardus might not have been here
In the year negative 100 thousand,
it was here, and you could walk to it
And some people walked to it, and others went even further to
>[The Continent of Moravia],
Like Elves, and Halflings, and !!The Humans!!
Others just decided to chill out in this sweet, warmer region
>Then it got warmer, some icebergs melted, it got warmer, it became an island and now there's lots of Trees! (because it's warmer)
>Well I guess we're stuck here now

[Many Thousands of Years Later]
Ding dong! It's the Outside World (Wood Elves), and they got really good metal (Bronze), and Crazy Imperialism

>Knock knock, get the door, it's The Not Roman Empire!! (Osca)
>The new king wants everybody to try this hot new religion (Totally Not Olympian Religion) with the help of one of the sexy looking gods
>"Please try his religion", the god said
"no", said everybody
>"try iit", he said, plaguing the country
"no", said everybody again, quieter this time
And so the religion was put into place, and all the rules that came with it,
And with that the government was replaced by another clique, who made some reforms, like "Making the government govern more" and "Making the government more like Osca's, which is a government that governs more"

So the dwarves all stop fighting for a while and decide making stuff with bronze is
>COOL AS HEEELL~
And the elves decide the same thing. Everyone takes up farming (except the orcs, who are really long way away to the south and also west and haven't heard of it yet) and villages start springing up, with leaders and people who don't spend all day farming, but instead make stuff and then other people buy the stuff with money and things get way more organised.
>IT'S THE ELDER BRONZE AAAGE~!

The elves have become lots of smaller kingdoms and cities and the dwarves have done the same, because everyone has a ton of food now
>HAAAALLELUJAH~!!
Oh the Best Thing Ever
>(tm)
just happened and the dwarves figured out how to make beer. Also they're chopping the area they live in into big steps to grow the grain to turn into beer. Now everyone can get drunk and the dwarves are everyone's best friend. Hooray!

Meanwhile, the elves are figuring out how to use magic. Turns out there's three types. One kind uses general good feelings to make people better, but it sucks in places where a lot of bad stuff has happened. The other type kind of focuses on doing crazy stuff to a person's body and sometimes gives them insane power, but also breaks them. The dwarves really like this kind. The final kind uses the broken bits of those invisible lines to do cool stuff to mess with nature.
>You could make religions out of these!
So the elves use their magic and also their sweet bronze weapons to make a bunch of kingdoms, which then get run over by their neighboring kingdoms, which then get run over but THEIR neighbors and this goes on for a couple of thousand years then Feil Gwenieth tames a bunch of gryphons and also bribes a dragon to be his friend. "And now I'm going to conquer all the elves," he said and almost did, before someone who worked for him killed him and his entire empire fell apart.

3/holy shit

Aww don't by like that, user! I'm sure yours is good!

Which is it? And who's is better? I'm sure it's not.

> better, stronger, harder, faster

youtu.be/xuCn8ux2gbs

I'm

But in the meantime, the humans have figured out how to make bronze and also that they really, really like writing stuff down.
>THE YOUNGER BRONZE AGE~
So one group of humans (Yensaer) makes a big library, where they can store all the stuff they've written down. The another group of humans (Orgothi) burn it to the ground. But it's okay, because everything was written on clay, so instead of being destroyed, the records all just get hard and the librarians who are still around decide maybe keeping all the writing in one place is a bad idea, so they start teaching everyone to read as much as they possibly can and start making copies of everything they wrote down, so all the people that can read can buy them and show off how smart they are.
>"Man, clay's really heavy and hard to move around"
>"Fuckit. We write on papyrus and parchment now."

Everything is pretty chill for a while, but bronze is hard to make, because the tin is starting to run out.
>*dun dun dunnn!*
What was that? Oh it's the Iron Brotherhood, a bunch of elves and humans who have discovered how to use iron, which is way easier to find and they want to take over the world
>You could make a religion out of this. But not a very good one.
And they almost take over the world and accidentally genocide the goblins. Who are the goblins? No-one knows; they don't exist anymore. But then the Iron Brotherhood starts fighting over who gets to control the best bits of the world they're about to conquer.
>Sarcus the Elder
>"Hey, maybe we should finish conquering the world first, before we start fighting over who gets the best bits?"
>"Nah, what're they gonna do? Stop us? We've got all the iron, bitch! Also, we don't like you and we killed your son."
>"What?! Why?!"
>"The gods said to."
>"That's bullshit. This is bullshit. Fuck you guys. I'm going to go teach everyone how to make iron."
>"Uhoh."

4/lots

So the Iron Brotherhood gets its ass kicked, but surprise! Just before they all died, the Brotherhood got orcs attention by offering to pay them to fight for them and now they're going to be a pain in everyone's ass for the next forever.

So the dwarves just started digging into the mountains and living IN the mountains, rather than just living in the mountains and the elves had the idea of thinking about stuff and also about math, astronomy, medicine-
>IT'S THE ELVEN GOLDEN AAAGE~
Everyone wants to be like the elves, but a lot of people are jealous that the elves are getting all the attention and make being an elf illegal. Then other people copy them.
>"Fuck you!"
said the elves, deciding other races are a bunch of dicks.
>NEW KINGDOMS EVERYWHERE~!
These kigndoms sure do a lot of fighting.
>"Heeey!"
said the orcs
>"If you pay us, we'll do your fighting for you!"
>"Seems legit,"
said a bunch of kingdoms, but they soon ran out of money to pay the orcs.
>"Hey, uh, we don't have any more money, so could you all please go home now?"
>"Yeah, that's not gonna happen,"
said the orcs, trashing the place and stealing farming.
>"Hey stop you can't do that! I've got an army that says you can't do that!"
said Harold II and with some help from a bunch of elves, he chases the orcs back out of the human kingdoms and gets made an emperor too.

For a little while it looks like the elves and humans are going to make up-
>*Argh!*
Whoops, millions of people just died
>(Weeping Plague)
and the elves get blamed for it!
>"Wait what, that wasn't us, we caught it too!"
said the elves.
>"We don't believe you are are gonna kick your ass!"
said the Flamstren Empire
>"Oh yeah? Bring it,"
said the elves.
>youtube.com/watch?v=_D0ZQPqeJkk
>GLADE WARS

5/Jesus Christ

Here is my setting's distribution of focus:

>60%
The Great City of Desmon, Home of a Thousand Saints.
>20%
The Principality of Capre, where Desmon is.
>10%
The nations surrounding Capre.
>10%
The rest of the world.

Personally I think this gives far more focus and a better overall feel for the setting. The players don't know the whole world, they know a single city, and that's fine.

>"Yeah, uh, we just accidentally dropped half a mountain in a major river and caused a drought. Our bad." (dwarves)
>"Aha! See? It was totally them and not us!" (elves)
>"Wait what?"
>GLADE WARS II: THE EMPIRE STRIKES THE EARTH
War turns out to be kinda expensive though and so everyone eventually decides to call it quits, but not before everyone figures out how to make steel.

So everyone goes home to try and relax when surprise!
>THE ORCS ARE BAAACK~!
And they have a nice time fighting with everyone. The orcs are still pretty nomadic, but have made a couple of big cities, with farms, so there's a lot more of them now.
>"Fuck off!"
said the Flamstren Empire
>"Sure thing, but first we're gonna break you into lots of little pieces,"
said the orcs, breaking the empire into lots of little pieces and then fucking off.
>"Hah! Sucks to be you!"
said the elven kingdoms, conquering a bunch of the little kingdoms.
>"Heeey, back again. We forgot something,"
said the orcs.
>"Like what?"
said the elves
>"Elf slaves,"
said the orcs, enslaving a bunch of elves
>"Fuck OFF!"
said the elves and together with the humans, successfully made the orcs fuck off again and even cleared up that whole misunderstanding about the weeping plague. Speaking of which,
>OH NO THE PLAGUE IS BACK~!
>"Hah! Not this time!"
said everyone, using magic and really harsh measures to make sure it doesn't spread. Millions of people still die, but not as many as last time. Instead, the plague hits the dwarves, who didn't get it much last time.
>"Okay, we can see why you were pissed, this SUCKS,"
said the dwarves, as their civilization kinda collapses, but then puts itself back together.

Hey check out this sweet boat that just appeared out of no-where.
>"Sup" (lizardmen)
>"Holy shit, what are you?!"
>"Leaving, that's what."
>"Well that was a thing that just happened, I guess."

6/why did I do this

Oh hey, the dwarves just figured out how to make a blast furnace. They keep it a secret from everyone though.

These islands are getting really rich and a bunch of the richest people are looking for a way to become immortal. They try magic and create a whole bunch of horrible monsters, which they dump on the mainland. Then they try
>Crazy awesome mad science alchemy
and accidentally invent bombs, which really helps them do the opposite of making people immortal and smash all the castles they'd built by being super rich. The survivors flee and spread gunpowder to the mainland, which really helps kill those monsters they dumped there before.

Everyone seems to be doing really well. Guess that means it's
>TIME FOR THE ORCS AGAINNN~!
>"We're really starting to get tired of this"
said everyone.
>"Nah it's cool,"
said the orcs,
>"We just heard you were all getting crazy rich and thought you might want to hire some mercenaries."
>"Oh okay."
So a bunch of wars happen. For like 40 years. It was the
>GENERATION OF WAR~
Then everyone chills out, but the orcs are still around, being a nuisance, but not enough of one for everyone to team up and kick them out again.

>COOL SHIT'S ABOUT TO GET INVENTEEED~!
Like weaving machines and windmills and better boats and planting crops in more fields and rad new farming tools. Now everyone can grow even MORE food with less people, which means more people can work at making money and inventing new stuff and getting an education so they can learn to make even more stuff and it's the
>AGE OF ENLIGHTENMEEENT~!
>"Wow"
said the orcs
>"That sure is a lot of neat stuff you've got and a lot of not-slaves you've got. Mind if we take some?"
And they start stealing and pillaging enough to piss everyone off.

Armies are getting better, but only if you're human. Elves don't like standing in lines and catching musketballs with their faces and dwarves are kind of isolated up in the mountains, so they mostly stick with the old ways

7/saveme

History of magic I guess

So everywhere in the universe there's always energy appearing out of nowhere.
Positive energy and negative energy.
Normally they destroy each other as soon as they are created.
But some people know how to grab the energy first and use it to do... well anything!
>THAT'S MAGIC
Now, when the energy pops up inside a god, the negative part is destroyed by the god.
And then the god can use the positive part!
>DIVIIIINE MAGIC
Because this happens all the time, it means gods have
>LOTS AND LOTS OF MAGIC
So their followers can link their souls to the god and use some of that magic.

But... okay look.
Sometimes when a god dies it doesn't explode into godly spacedust.
It just kinda collapses into a
>BLACK
>HOLE
In a black hole, positive energy is destroyed.
And the negative energy just piles up until it forms
>A DEMON
Because this happens all the time, it means space is full of
>LOTS AND LOTS OF DEMONS
Good thing they are far away from he - Oh some people are summoning them.
To
>KILL THEIR ENEMIES
or
>USE FOR MAGIC
or
>HAVE SEX AND MAKE HALFDEMON BAAAABIES

The orcs are out of control, so a bunch of human kingdoms get their fancy new organised armies, with kickass pikes and muskets and start kicking the orcs ass, chasing them into the elf and dwarf kingdoms, who team up and get THEIR armies together and chase the orcs back into the humans, who kick the orcs even harder than before!
>"Fuck off and this time STAY fucked off!"
said the humans, murdering the orcs so much and so consistently that the orcs all run right back to where they came from where they'll never bother anybody ever again
>*Ominous flag glow*

Meanwhile, more cool shit's being invented and the dwarves accidentally let people know how to make a blast furnace. Now everyone can make a ton of steel, really quickly!
>"Hi, I'm going to discover a lot about how we get sick and hopefully make medicine suck less,"
said Ji Hoo-Song
>"Really? Well I was planning on doing a bunch of complicated math and figuring how to build really cool buildings,"
said Wen Yu-Wen
>"Aw shit, you guys too?"
said Impandra Gushep
>"I was thinking of working out how magic really works!"
>"And I was going to study the natural world when I'm not inventing standardised measurements!"
said Velethia Silondre
>"We should totally make a university together!"
And so they did.
>CLOUD LAKE UNIVERSITYYY~

Meanwhile, fashion is getting out of control and a bunch of people start claiming it's gonna cause the end of the world.
>You could make a religion out of this. Not a very big one though.
Oops, turns out they were kinda right, as the
>IRON BROTHERHOOD IS BAAACK~
But this time they've been working on their image and trick everyone in high society into loving them. Then people start finding out they're sacrificing people to their gods and kinda using magic to turn into vampires and decide to kick their ass. They have a big naval battle, so big that it stains the shoreline red with blood and a whole town is built out of the wreckage.
>FLOTSAM CITY~

8/fuckinghell

The Iron Brotherhood is gone, for good this time. there's still the occasional vampire around, but don't worry about them.

>LUCEN HAS FIGURED OUT STEAM POWER~
Now everything is getting made faster and new machines are made that makes stuff EVEN FASTER! It's a revolution! The
>Industrial Revolution
Everyone starts industrialising, even the elven kingdoms and dwarves. There's not really been much change to governments though and this little city (Glimsenen) wants to throw out its king and rule itself and it does!
>"Hey check it out, we can totally run ourselves!"
they said, trying to get everyone else to copy them and be the hot new thing.
>"Nah thanks, we're good with our kings,"
said everyone else. Glimsenen got pissed and tried to declare war on everyone. They failed, but the war took waaay too long and some people started thinking they had the right idea, so a bunch of different places started trying out democracy. People start expanding and looking for new land. Some sail over the ocean and discover other continents. Others push south and west and start building forts. Looks like the orcs fucked off even harder than everyone thought. Then just as everyone is starting to sort out if democracy is good or bad-

>youtube.com/watch?v=J8hzw3Lpk9Q
The orcs are back. And they're organised. They've been quietly trading and stealing ideas from everyone and becoming nation-states. Now instead of a bunch of little tribes, there's three big, organised, constitutional, military empires and they don't like all these settlements in their land. They enslave the settlers, then burn the towns and forts. Then they use modern guns and tactics to kick the ass of the smaller, less organised kingdoms that try to stop them and invade. Now there's orcs pushing through the kingdoms and nothing seems to be able to stop them. People are starting to get together to stop them, but the orcs are smashing any armies before they can meet up with their friends.

9/nearlydone

There are rifled muskets and light infantry now. Maybe these chosen soldiers can slow down the orcs by fighting behind their lines, skirmishing and sabotaging them, until the rest of the armies can get their shit together and fight back. Maybe they can't. I guess we'll see.

>THE END~

Holy shit that was WAY too long, mostly made up as I went and skipped WAY too much!

Hey dude, your shit's cool too! I was just way more bored than you!

Already been done.

Also it follows the same pattern as any Veeky Forums thread discussing history

youtube.com/watch?v=JhrD5SVo3OU

>Spend ages making up and writing wall o' text
>Proud of result!
>One reply
Okay... I guess that's how it goes...

Actually not bad. Plenty of bits I wish I knew more about though.

>one reply
As harsh as it may see, it's probably worth considering that the notable length of what you wrote may have contributed in part to the lack of replies.

I'm in the midst of trying to rework Shadowrun's Euro Wars so they make sense. The framework I have in mind is something like this:

In the wake of the first Crash and the Yakut rebellion, the Russians are looking for resources, and they're sniffing hard in northern Iraq. A booming Turkey is flexing its muscles in the area, backing Sunni factions. Shit hits the fan in Kurdistan, and Iraq violently dissolves. At first it's Shia and Kurd militants loosely cooperating against Sunnis, but it rapidly turns into the Turks and Saudis/Caliphate fighting the Russians and Iranians (both aligned with India, the real power of the three).

Turkey,still a NATO member, shows signs of calling what's left of the alliance for help. The Germans are pretty demilitarized and the Anglo nations have long since quit, so the Russians take a big chance and invade west to strike first. It almost works, as France has to use everything up to and including tactical nukes to slow the invasion, but they're not very effective against heavily armored and motorized Russian forces.
The Russians make it almost to Paris before they start to run out of resources (as being short on stuff is how they got themselves into this) and momentum and get pushed back.

Meanwhile there's a couple of other minor fronts in play. The Russians have made an ally out of Greece as a result of Greek debts and Grexit, and have a significant military presence there, so there's a significant amount of Mediterranean fighting between Italy, Greece and Turkey. The Balkans have their typical ethnic meltdown, with the Serbs trying to handle both Muslims and pro-Western Croats coming at them. Israel is aligned with the Eastern powers, and ends up doing a lot of fighting in Syria and on the water, but Jordanian and Egyptian neutrality is sufficient to keep them from fighting the Saudis directly.
(con't)

Egypt has stayed neutral, but basically plays the role the US did in WWII before Pearl Harbor. Egypt's ruling military doesn't have to risk its own assets, but it's happy to crank out hardware for the Western allies and to let jihadists and pro-Western liberals alike that might otherwise threaten the regime go off and fight for Western and Sunni armies.

India and Pakistan play a slow game of chess, as Pakistan is so close that a major nuclear launch could devastate India (France didn't have the same strategic sword of Damocles over the Russians in this way). India tries to ship supplies up through Turkestan to its allies and there's a bit of a proxy war there, while growing skirmishes occur with Pakistan itself.

The endgame is threefold. First, in a boon for the East, India's slow picking away at Pakistani assets eventually allows them to make a largely conventional first strike on the Pakistani nuclear war machine, as well as a silver or lead offer to the generals who run the country. Pakistan collapses militarily.

Second, as India begins to be able to supply Iran directly, Turkey's forces start to be overwhelmed. This provokes a political collapse, a falling out between what became secularist West Turkey and jihadist East Turkey.

This is all dire for the West, or would be, except the French have pushed the Russians all the way back into Poland. The spectre now looms of French and Indian soldiers fighting directly on the Russian steppe and the eastern Turkish desert/mountains. Neither France nor India wants this, and things move towards the negotiating table. France comes away a cultural martial titan the way they were in some previous centuries, the Russians come away indebted even further to India, Turkey enters sociopolitical convulsions that continue to reverberate, and Pakistan is essentially a failed state with a corporate and Indian puppet government. Egypt also comes away looking pretty good.

Does this sound good and/or reasonable? I just couldn't handle the idea that Aden destroys Tehran and the Sunni Arabs...hate it? Like, they'd throw him a party. And the Nightwraith incident, like, no one can guess whose fighters these are? Really? And I wanted to make the Russian invasion and the Jihad connected in a fundamental way, and to make India more relevant in the setting (it's the most populated remaining nation by like five times and outside Shadows of Asia people act like it doesn't exist!)

The hardest part is trying to fit it in without actually making a 10 minute video with jingles in it. I wonder what you want to know more about though now

I could, but I have no video-making or computergraphic skills whatsoever. Hence, I play tradgames.

A long long time ago there was a great big continent. And also there were gods. And there were some people too. And the gods ruled the people. And everything was
>GREAT
Unless you were a orc or goblin or something.
And then some time passed. The gods built a huge city. A bunch of people lived in this city.
"hey gods, you mind if we rule ourselves for a little?" said some people.
"lol no you'd die" said the gods.
"okay" said the people.
Then a guy was born called the
>AAAARCHMAGE!
He invents a thing called magic, to help people
>NOT DIE WHEN THEY RUUUULE THEMSELLLLLVES!
"hey gods, can we rule ourselves now?" he asked.
"stop it, you're ruining everything," said the gods.
And then the archmage and the gods had a
>DECADES LONG ARCANE BAAATLE!
The gods were really strong, but the Archmage was super smart and kept winning all the battles. Finally, he got to the big city where everyone lived.

and then the city where everyone lived exploded. nobody knew why. except for the church and the mages.
"it was the mages," said the church.
"it was the gods," said the mages.
meanwhile the continent started to crack apart, the gods left, and a bunch of people died.

meanwhile, a hobgoblin named Kier wants a nation, because the gods didn't give orcs or goblins anything neat.
"i'm gonna make my own nation, because the gods didn't give orcs or goblins anything neat," he said. so then he did.

and then things started to calm down a bit, and people started to die less often. but it's still pretty bad. bye.

If it makes you feel better, I'm REALLY glad I kept this thread open while I was at work. Pretty great.

It is a nice thread, though it made me realize I'm more or less the odd one out running a contemporary fantasy setting.

Pretty cool setting 10/10 would definitely want to play in

Most of the time, the players don't really need anything but the most recent history, which should still be given to them in bite sized portions when they go looking for it. Not as exposition to be forced down their throats. And most often, depending on the setting to a degree, most of the rest of the history shouldn't be available to them even if they do go and look for it.

How should you handle it in a more contemporary setting where people are going to know a good bit about recent history all over the world? Especially in a setting where the world is pretty small thanks to wonderful things like racial intermingling and the internet.

Characters know more than players in all settings. Just give bits of info to the players when it becomes relevant or when they ask about it (if their characters would know the info, of course).

That's true. Unfortunately I've not been doing too well on that front as my players are still treating a race in a way that'd be odd for (most) of their characters and I'm not sure how to curtail it.

My setting can be described as "Greek city states + Low power Xianxia".

>richly developed and interesting history
>Can you sum it up in the form of a fun viral video script
Either it's rich, developed and interesting OR you can make a 5 minute video about it.

Well I mean, just because it's developed doesn't mean you can't make a meme video about it, just do what Bill did and make it like a 20 minute video.