Genesis Journal #18 - Describing Worlds, 1st Person FTW

So, I have been rethinking how I want to describe my new setting. Let's just say that I really like writing letters, which is a bit of a problem in this day and age, when we never really write letters that much anymore.

One of the interesting points in my setting, which I may not have pointed out before, is the nature of the foreigners, the outsiders, that come to the world and have a part to play in the world. Given the fact that that the setting is taking a very, very Japanese style the farther into setting development that I get, I thought that the best way to develop this, outsider, is by modeling them after another well known human empire, the Romans.

I wouldn't call this race of interplanar visitors as being necessarily good, or evil, or even human, but I like the way the Roman Empire offers up images of Order and Power, two things that I want this outsider race to bring along with them to the world of the Mad Lands.

Getting back to the point of this post, I think that describing this world in the 1st person sounds like an interesting prospect, especially when you describe it from the point of view of that outsider, who is just as foreign to the world as the reader is; I think that gives them a way to connect. The reason I say all of this is because I will be posting these letters up on the blog from now on. They will be going on Obsidian Portal as well, for good measure, but I want to put them up here too in order to get feedback from all of my readers. Comments are always appreciated.

Genesis Journal #17 - What would happen if...

I was listening to the Tome Show the other day. One of the episodes that I happened to hit was #156 - World Building with Kieth Baker. Not only was I really fascinated by his Have Dice Will Travel project (I sent him an e-mail to see if he was interested in coming out to Japan soon after listening), but the approach they talked about in world building I think is really great. Kieth talked about how Eberron was essentially born - that the setting was the logical conlusion of what would happen if you let magic be used to develop the world to a more modern era. The main point of their discussion was the idea of focusing on one thing and extrapolating from that until you pretty much have an entire campaign setting. I really like this macro approach.

So, that got me thinking, there are a lot of things that are going on. I guess I went more with the Dark Sun approach to world building and thought about 10 major things that are going on in my world, but I failed to really define that 1 central thing that makes that world grow. I have been having a lot of writers block lately with my world building project; maybe going back to the start and trying it his way may actually not be such a bad idea.

The core idea that I had for this world in the beginning was: What would happen if you put the internet into a fantasy setting. Given all of what I have been talking about over the past few months, I guess you may not even be able to draw a link to that core question that I posed at the very beginning of it all. I think that core, "What if...?" question got lost somewhere along the way. I need to really go back and redesign some of the fluff of the world before I continue to move forward. I really want this core concept to be the foundation upon which everything gets built. Time to head back to the drawing table...

Genesis Journal #16 - WoW, Amethyst, Mystical Mounts vs. Motorcycles

I have been reviewing Amethyst: Foundations for a bit over a week now I think. It takes me quite a while to get through a setting bible like this one. It is really detailed and has some awesome content. I really liked the images and content they presented in the vehicles section. Awesome stuff.

But, getting onto my World Building Journal for the day, I wanted to go back to the Mount issue that I brought up when I went exploring World of Warcraft. I love mounts, and I love having players that use them. I really think that Mounts open up the world for the players and having cool mounts really adds flavor to the character himself.

World of Warcraft has some steam/mechanical elements built into it. If you take the Engineering Profession, you can build yourself a bag-of-holding full of mechanical mounts. Just off the top of my head, you can get yourself a Motorcycle as well as a Gyrocopter. I have always wanted to take a character to the maximum Engineering profession level just to get my hands on those mounts. But wait! Are those really mounts at all? In the typical D&D world, Mounts are intelligent, and often Mystical/Magical. Giant Birds, Dragons, Gryphons, Flaming Horses, etc. are mounts, but a Motorcycle?! That isn't a mount, its a vehicle!!

In my Amethyst review this week, I brought up the Organizations section that players can join and talked about how much I liked that setup. These Organizations give the PC's a reason to be together; the benefit that you get for this sometimes comes in essentially loaner vehicles that you get from the Organization to which you belong. In WoW, you can earn all kinds of different Mounts by gaining Reputation with certain groups. Some of these Mounts essentially mark you in the world as an incredibly lucky, or dedicated individual, but in general, they are just a more flashy way to get around.

So, what I arrive at is an idea. Since I am building a sandbox world, that I honestly want my players to be able to explore, I would love to give them exceptionally speedy mounts at or around their first level. I want them to be able to experience open world content in a Table Top game. But, just giving my players really fast horses seems a bit underwhelming. If at all possible, giving them some type of conveyance which not only is awesome, but also adds flavor to their character and the game world in general, is something that I feel I should be aiming for.

So, where am I? Well, I think going the way of Amethyst and WoW and allowing my players to either join or work with a particular organization at 1st level is a great idea; the benefit for joining one of these organizations: a vehicular style mount. Since my world isn't pure fantasy, but falls somewhere in the steampunk/cyberpunk categories, I feel that 1st level characters with Motorcycles, or Jeeps, or Ornithopters, would not only be a very cool way to give flavor to the characters, but also give me the opportunity to open up the world and make travel more realistic.

Genesis Journal #15 - World Changing Disasters

There have been a few posts around the blogosphere these last few weeks with regard to natural disasters in your game world and the effect those disasters have on the world itself. But, not only that, but reading through Amethyst: Foundations over the last couple days has really spiked my interest in how natural disasters effect your game world.

Amethyst went the way that I want to go - a massive heavenly body falls from the sky and really screws up the planet. I really, really like these kinds of disasters and I have wanted to use a meteor impact in my game setting since I started thinking about building this setting.

But, what I am most interested in is how one uses a natural disaster in the ancient history of your setting. The meteor impact that I want in my world is happening about 10,000 years ago. How would you leave the scars of such an event on your world?

Genesis Journal #14 - WoW Factions?

I really like the way that WoW did its factions. Having primarily two sides which the players can join in the fight limits how that player is going to start out. They might be able to join smaller factions as they progress and gain honor or reputation with other groups, but they always remain a member of eiher the Horde, or the Alliance.

I think we get this in Dungeons and Dragons for the most part going back a long ways, but probably not so clearly stated. You usually see a strong alliance between the majority of humanoid races i.e. humans, elves, dwarfs, halflings, and even half-orcs. The rest of the world is pretty much on the other side of the wall and may or may not be all on the same side.

Sure, in D&D things are more complicated. Individual kingdoms have their own agendas, politics, blah blah blah. However, if the far realm were to invade the world, these kingdoms would probably put their problems behind them in order to fight off armies of Mind Flayers.

These racial alliances really boil down to factions. I want to establish these racial factions in my game to make it clear to the players and to people looking at the world, who likes and dislikes who, from a very wide and general point of view. If you look at L5R, you get this to some extent with each of the clans. Maybe it is a bit different in terms of flavor, but you can see these same Large scale alliance coming into the picture there.

The Lore of the World at this point stands with the various humanoid races at the center of the world aligned together for the last few millenia. The Beastfolk Noble Races were, at the beginning of this alliance, all united into one. However, What I want to see happening is having these beastfolk races gradually growing apart and warring against each other. The fracturing of the Beastial Alliance begins the factioning process and several factions (maybe 3 or 4 racial factions develop).

What do you think about my analysis of the factions idea and about how I would use it in my world?

Genesis Journal #13 - WoW and less Punky Steam Punk

My current examination of World of Warcraft will be ending very soon. My poor Toshiba netbook which I have with me here in Japan decided that it no longer likes to run World of Warcraft now that I have installed the new expansion for the game; perhaps they upgraded the graphics, or, perhaps it is because my netbook seriously lacks the necessary RAM to keep the game from crashing the entire system through the floor.

All this really doesn't matter to my current campaign setting journal at hand.

One of the things I really like about WoW is the integration of technology into the system. Guns, Gizmos, Steam powered gadgets, magical machines, and even mecha all make an appearance in the game. But.... the game is definitely NOT steam punk.

So, what I have been thinking about is the integration of steam powered weapons, gizmos, etc., without entering into the Steam punk genre at all. In other words, if WoW can build a Punk-less Steam integrated universe, then I think just about any good role player or world builder could do the same thing.

Given this analysis, I really feel like my setting is leaning much more towards the WoW feel. The feel I have for the setting is more of a fantasy world with steam powered stuff populating it. I mentioned earlier in my post regarding Steam Punk and Cyber Punk that I was aiming for something in the middle of these two genres. Since my return to WoW, I think that I could easily put all kinds of steamy stuff into the world without turning it into a "Steam Punk" universe.

I really want to make the Mad Lands more of a Mad, Mad, Mad world kind of Mad Lands, then an upset and angry Mad Lands. I think that in doing something like this, I am more interested in making the game fun and whimsical (at least for the imagery) than in making the game world punk and edgy. I think I would put my setting more into the category of Fantasticaly, Steamy, Cybery Whimsy, than into any of these categories alone. This isn't to say that I want this setting to be funny; I just want it to be way over the top and filled with fun cool stuff and interesting stories, and some serious global plots.

Genesis Journal #12 - Who is the foreigner? - Blending Cultures

After thinking A LOT about the Meiji Revolution and about how the world works in general, something very obvious hit me in the face like a whip cream filled water balloon. In order to achieve something like the Meji Revolution you really have to have a foreign nation which can influence said nation of focus.

The Meji Revolution was the Meji Revolution because the people of Japan were drastically changed through their contact with outside forces from other European countries, as well as contact from America, and Japan's imperial push into China.

I am having trouble visualizing a stand-alone setting, like I want, which is dominated entirely by a quasi-Japanese, quasi-European look and feel. So, what do I need??? A foreigner, or a couple countries full of foreigners.

The grand map of Sigilsval which I drew up in the past was dominated by a massive land mass in teh center, but what I have decided since then is to open up this map and expand it. What it really needs is another half, another whole map to represent the other parts of the world which have influenced the world in general.

At this point, I am totally unsure of how I am going to accomplish this, or if I am even going to worry about it. I think referring to some ambiguous 'other' country during the design process is acceptable (as long as I get back to it in the end).

Does anybody else have any experience of this kind?? I would love to find out.

Genesis Journal #11 - Caste Systems

My homebrew world uses a caste system which is loosely based off of the four-tiered caste system which was present in Feudal Japan and the Floating World period up through the 1860's. I would love to explain this all, but I have found an excellent source which can do it for me, so I will defer here to this article by Kallie Szczepanski.

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"Between the 12th and 19th centuries, feudal Japan had an elaborate four tier class system.
Unlike European feudal society, in which the peasants (or serfs) were at the bottom, the Japanese feudal class structure placed merchants on the lowest rung. Confucian ideals emphasized the importance of productive members of society, so farmers and fishermen had higher status than shop-keepers in Japan.
At the top of the heap was the samurai class.
The Samurai Class:
Feudal Japanese society was dominated by the samurai warrior class. Although they made up only about 10% of the population, samurai and their daimyo lords wielded enormous power.
When a samurai passed, members of the lower classes were required to bow and show respect. If a farmer or artisan refused to bow, the samurai was legally entitled to chop off the recalcitrant person's head.
Samurai answered only to the daimyo for whom they worked. The daimyo, in turn, answered only to the shogun.
There were about 260 daimyo by the end of the feudal era. Each daimyo controlled a broad area of land, and had an army of samurai.
The Farmers / Peasants:
Just below the samurai on the social ladder were the farmers or peasants.
According to Confucian ideals, farmers were superior to artisans and merchants because they produced the food that all the other classes depended upon.
Although technically they were considered an honored class, the farmers lived under a crushing tax burden for much of the feudal era.
During the reign of the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, farmers were not allowed to eat any of the rice they grew. They had to hand it all over to their daimyo, and then wait for him to give some back as charity.
The Artisans:
Although artisans produced many beautiful and necessary goods, such as clothes, cooking utensils, and woodblock prints, they were considered less important than the farmers.
Even skilled samurai sword makers and boatwrights belonged to this third tier of society in feudal Japan.
The artisan class lived in its own section of the major cities, segregated from the samurai (who usually lived in the daimyos' castles), and from the lower merchant class.
The Merchants:
The bottom rung of feudal Japanese society was occupied by merchants, both traveling traders and shop-keepers.
Merchants were ostracized as "parasites" who profited from the labor of the more productive peasant and artisan classes. Not only did merchants live in a separate section of each city, but the higher classes were forbidden to mix with them except on business.
Nonetheless, many merchant families were able to amass large fortunes. As their economic power grew, the restrictions against them weakened."
*****
you can find the full text of this article here: http://asianhistory.about.com/od/japan/p/ShogJapanClass.htm

Genesis Journal #10 - Thinking About Numbers

I have been playing a lot with numbers lately. This may sound very odd, but, I guarentee that everyone thinks about numbers in some respect when it comes to playing D&D or just about any game in general.

However, I am not talking about math. I am not even talking about numbers from a combat standpoint. What I have been thinking about is the impact numbers can have in your campaign and what images, impressions, or power those numbers might have on your players.

For example, since I brought up the Dragonmarked houses from Eberron in a recent post, let us take a look at their number: 12! A very important number: Jesus had 12 disciples, there are 12 months, the 12 zodiac signs, all very important 12's.

It doesn't stop there though. Just about every number (at least up through the teens) has a substantial ammount of literary work/historical precedence from which your mind may be drawn to if you start to homebrew with it.

1 - the loneliest number that you will ever see, that ring
2 - only a little better than 1, a pair, twins, etc.
3 - the holy trinity, a crowd
4 - the directions on a compus, zelda: 4 swords.
5 - L5R, the five rings, etc.
6 - (actually having trouble thinking of anything off the top of my head)
7 - the lucky number, the number of clans in L5R, Jesus's favorite number
8 - the number of Bhuddhist Protectors which guard the 12 beasts of the zodiac
9 - ring wraiths

the list just keeps going and going and going.
I think it actually is a really important decision when making a story to think about numbers this way. I want to leave an impression on my players and the people that read my work, so I actually give this a lot of thought. Am I going crazy, or do other people think this way too?

Genesis Journal #9 - The Noble Clans of Sigilsval

So, I have really been playing around with the ideas of corporate nobility a lot. I think what I have decided to go forward with is a group of about 5 Mega-Families, who are the oldest, strongest, and most diversified, globally. Each of these Noble Houses is responsible for controlling a signficant portion of the world's wealth. They each have different specialties and backgrounds. They are involved in various industries and deal primarily within the family for gathering of materials, resources, etc. as well as the sale of their goods and resources to the public.

However, in addition to these 5 Large Noble Houses, very similiar to Conglomerates, There will also be a, yet to be determined, number of other smaller Noble Families, each with varying levels of business-mindedness and essentially making up smaller corporate entities.

There will also be another noble caste within the upper echelons of the world, represented by the Beast Folk, who have decended from the Great Beasts of legend, and are respected, for the bloodlines, throughout the world. Think Minotaur, Naga, Kenku, etc. These races will be more closely tied to the upper elite, and will possess a great deal of respect, but not so much on the corporate side of things.

Genesis Journal #8 - The Keiretsu vs. The Family Business

I have actually been going back to my business classes in order to get a better idea for the feeling of the Noble famalies and their clans which I want to build into my setting. I majored in International Business, specializing in mainly Japanese business and economics.

As many of you are probably not familiar with this world, i'll give you a bit of a summary. Prior to World War II, the Japanese economic world was dominated by the Zaibatsu, vertically integrated family corporations, which locked down and controlled Japanese industry. The Zaibatsu controlled each step of the product manufacturing process, from harvesting raw materials, to selling that product.

However, after the war, the Zaibatsu were forcibly disbanded and the Keiretsu were established. These corporations were not that much different; instead of being vertically integrated, they were horizontally integrated conglomerates. There may have been many companeis in many industries all of which resolved around a corporate bank and shared control of each other. Many of these conglomerates were also based off of the earlier Zaibatsu.

You might be familiar with the company Mitsubishi - one of the biggest and most well known of the Keiretsu. This company has its hands in numerous industries and has the power to loan itself money through its own bank.

If you compare these giant corporations to the family businesses in the rest of the world, you get a very different image in your mind.

The reason that I am writing about this is because I want to create an image of the Noble families of Sigilsval as being these giant Keiretsu spanning multiple industries and having their hands in a lot of different businesses. I hope the summary above is enough to provide an illustration of what I want to accomplish.

Genesis Journal #7 - Examining the Dragonmarked Houses

The way I want to present the Noble Families in my campaign setting is somewhat similar to the way Eberron built up the Dragonmarked Houses, but with several distinct differences.

I thought I would take a closer look about what I like and dislike about the Dragonmarked houses and explain the way that I am going to go with it.

In Eberron, there are 12 Different Dragonmarked Houses. Each one is essentially a massive extra-legal corporate entity which wields a great ammount of political might. Each of the dragonmarks manifests within a single race, but sometimes manifest in other races out of some strange historical cross-breading. They also set the standard for each of their specific talents.

My Thoughts...
12 Houses is a good round number. I like it. But, in my setting, it seems to be significantly too small.
The Corporate nature of these houses is exactly what I am going to try and go for with my Noble Families.
The Political power element is interesting, but I want to go further with it.
They create a standard for each of their specific talents, but these talents are quite specific. I want to make my Noble families more broad.
I don't really like the racially specific nature of the houses, but I understand the reason that it exists in the game.

I am going to be doing something very different with the Noble Families in Mad Lands. You'll see. It is coming soon.

Genesis Journal #6 - Geography and Nation Building

After the last adventure, in which the players finally fought off the advancing horde of Orcs, Ogres, Dragonborn, and Dragons, which had attacked their train bound for the capital of Jiyuland, the players have now exited the linear section of adventure that I had planned out. The literal railroading which I had plagued them with is coming to an end and now they are moving into the open world.

This is the scariest thing I have had to deal with as a DM up until now.

The problem I have is that we are playing in a world that isn't finished; it is my homebrew setting and it is very much still under construction. However, now that the player's have a bit more freedom and are able to roam around, the ball is now in my court to make the world vibrant and complete enough for them to have fun in it (well, at least the little corner of the world which they are in).

I drew up a map of the world a long time ago. You might have seen it on my blog or on Obsidian Portal. It took a long time and I am very proud of it. Now, I just need to flesh that map out.

I have a general idea of where things are and how things will work, but putting my thoughts down on paper is always harder than I think. Right now, even figuring out how to format a nation as I am writing it up is a real challenge. I have been looking at the older published settings and the newer ones in order to adapt the kind of information I should present.

Knowledge about the area should come first, followed by Important Places, and then finally leading into Organizations, NPC's, and finally into Adventure Hooks. But, looking at the 4e settings of Eberron and Forgotten Realms, you really lose some of the most important summary information that you had back in 3rd - i.e. Population, Ethnicities, Languages, Governmental Structure, Capital City, etc. I will be including these things as well.

The first area that I will be working on is the biggest, most prominent country in the Southern Kingdom - Jiyuland. From there, I will work on the border countries of Trobosk and Harinval. Although I chose to have a bit of an asian influence when it comes to look, I decided that sticking with fantastic names seemed like a better idea (just because the setting is inspired by the Far East of the Real world, doesn't mean it all has to sound the same).

Am I forgetting anything? Let me know.

Genesis Journal #5 - Crafting Steam Punk Mechanics

I have been toying with mechanics for the last few days. There are two a couple things that I have been having problems with, lately at least, is the way in which Mechanics can or must change in order to fit the flavor of the campaign setting.

Steam Power - I am looking at you.

I really like 4e Game Mechanics. I think it has been a pretty big improvement over 3x and I really want to maintain these mechanics as much as possible. The game is great. I don't want to break it.

But, at the same time, it is difficult when working with something like Steam and where to put it into the mechanical (in terms of rules) world. Will Steam go into the class powers? Will it get its own class? Will it get its own race? What about Items? How far can steam powered items be taken? If you create steam powered items, how far are they going to go? How will Steam Powered items interact or replace Magic Items?

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Here is the way that I see Steam power, especially when you apply it to adventurers.

Although Steam power in the real world was always more tied to manufacturing and industrialization (in addition to transportation to some extent), the way Steam gets tied into fantasy is really on a personal level. You see images of people wielding Steam Swords, or Steam Gatling Guns, or Steam Axes, etc. The imagery for Steam Punk is really inspiring to me when it comes to finding the fit for Steam in the world of Mad Lands.

Steam in the Mad Lands is not a complete replacement for Magic. It may be trying to do that, but it hasn't gotten there yet. Magic is the old way and still has a huge presence in the world. So, I don't see Steam replacing magic items outright. In fact, I feel like Steam Power and Magic can work together to some extent. Not necessarily being the Techno-Magic that you see in Eberron, but more of like Magic Weapons that are outfitted with Steam power-ups.

You will see what I mean by power-ups in some of the posts coming up on my blog. I think you will enjoy them.

Genesis Journal #4 - Writing Ancient History

In my ongoing world building endeavors, I have come up on a Task which keeps on breaking me down; that task is the writing of ancient history. I keep hitting a wall whenever I try to record how the world is created, but I feel like I need to do it.

Why is it so daunting?
Well, after looking over Eberron and Forgotten Realms, I realized that we are talking Millions of Years of History. That is a lot of time to cover. So far, It seems that I have several millenia all crammed into a single paragraph of history. I guess to me it just seems to be, well, not detailed enough.

The other problem I keep having is whether or not to divert or align with the some of the currently accepted D&D setting universal elements, or go about doing it all myself. When looking at the current history, there are Primordials and Gods doing battle during the Dawn War. Do I want to keep this idea in my setting? I am just not sure. It seems like something of a good idea so that I don't have to rewrite everything (i.e. the planes and the gods etc.) but at the same time, I want to be original and the Dawn War just doesn't seem to flow with how I see my setting playing out.

Anybody have any ideas?

Genesis Journal #3 - Asian Inspired Steam Punk

Taking a good look at steampunk is a lot of fun, but one thing I noticed is that I don't really like the way the Victorian style plays as a fantasy world. Specifically, the world is just not colorful enough. For some reason, I tend to associate Victorian England with boredom. I hope that doesn't offend anyone.

I live and work in Japan. I speak some Japanese. (If you notice my picture though, you may notice I am probably one of the whitest kids you know *not a member of the group*). I studied Asian Culture at the University and know a little bit about history as well.

So why not have an asian inspired steam punk setting? I am not the only one who has thought of this idea; there is a lot of great inspiration out there.

This website, 'the Art of Steampunk', did a great job writing an article on Asian inspired Steampunk. They even have some fashion pics included as well (though i don't know that I would go that direction with my game). http://artofsteampunk.blogspot.com/2010/09/fashion-as-steampunk.html
This image better depicts the kind of fell I am going for. It is of an airship, drawn by the artist James Ng. You can visit his site here - http://www.jamesngart.com/. This is the kind of artistic inspiration I am looking for for my setting.

However, you don't even have to go that obscure. If you look at stuff like Avatar, the Last Airbender, you can find in the fire nation, a very asian steampunk quality, which also happens to be very fantastic in nature.

In conclusion, why tie Steampunk to England? Asia can do it too.

Genesis Journal #2 - Finding Inspiration

I, for the last few years, have been working on a home-brewed D&D 4e setting based on a post-fantasy steam punk world which is on the verge of jumping straight into futuristic elements. With diversity like this, it is difficult to find the right kind of inspiration. However, in my head, I have been trying to pin down exactly what kind of image I want to have for this world. Here are some of the anime sources I have been drawing inspiration from in creating my world:

Studio Ghibli Flicks - "Howl's Moving Castle", "Laputa", "Kiki's Delivery Service", etc.

I think that these movies show exactly the kind of images that I want to evoke in my world. I want to make a world that is vibrant and colorful, not simply grey and rusty. The steampunk vision I have for the world is less about grunge and dirt and more about imagination and possibility.
Ruroni Kenshin - this great samurai epic is set during the meiji revolution. This seems to be the kind of environment I am looking for.

Steamboy - Yet another great piece of anime film. Very cool movie. I will definitely be looking at this again and again over the course of this project to make sure that I get Steam Punk done right.


Escaflowne - I really believe that this anime, and associated film, really captures how magic, fantasy, and giant robots can be well mixed. I would like to try and imitate this in a game setting as best I can.

I am sure that there are various other sources, probably too many to name, that I haven't mentioned here, but I am sure they will come up later. For now I will leave you with this: Always keep your eyes up for old ideas that you can make into new ones; you never know where inspiration might come from.

Genesis Journal #1 - Mad Lands Characteristics

I have been going back and looking at the published Wizards of the Coast Campaign Settings Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun, in order to better model my setting after these sources. Looking at the '8 Characteristics of Athas' section of the Dark Sun Campaign book has proved to be a very rewarding experience.

I previously posted a few Important Facts about the setting I am currently working on and after revising these facts, to some extent, I have flushed them out and come up with 10 Characteristics of the Mad Lands (the workding title for my current setting).

#1 - A World in Transition

#2 - Steam is IN

#3 - Magic is OUT

#4 - The Alien is Among You

#5 - Azatar's Power is Leaking

#6 - The Gods Have Declared War

#7 - The Industrial Revolution has Begun

#8 - The Age of Great Adventure is Over...?

#9 - The Aristocracy Rules Supreme

#10 - The Great Beasts are Awakening

Now, at this point, to you, these may seem like just teasers. However, I promise that over the next few days I will explain what all of these mean and how they will be represented in the world.