Constructing Cosmos: Part 6, World Map

So... as this journey takes us to the sixth and final episode of Explore Cosmos, let's figure out what I actually know about Cosmos, as far as the big picture. Simply put, we know that the heroes of any given story set there are probably adventurers. If we assume that to be a not-unusual concept, well, that implies the sort of fantasy world that's very unsafe for travelers, where the kingdoms serve as beacons of civilization and safety in an untamed world. Where civilizations have fallen, and the world is full of ancient ruins filled with unclaimed treasure.

These are all very baseline assumptions about D&D worlds. It certainly doesn't sound much like a fairy tale... or maybe it does. Fairy tales are teeming with giants and witches and trolls, after all. One gets the impression in fairy tales that these encounters are very unusual circumstances, but... what if they're not? Well, then our fairy tale setting swings back around to being a high fantasy one. Logically, if monsters are about, well, you have to be pretty badass if you're gonna be, say, a farmer. Cottages out in the woods? Those can't contain any ordinary granny.

So, you know, something to think about. The main cast of The Choices find themselves traveling through, perhaps, an unrealistic percentage of the world over the course of the five story arcs I have planned for them. But I haven't the slightest clue what exists outside of the places they go. And by that, I don't mean that the only cities I know about are the ones they visit, I mean that I don't know what's beyond a twenty-foot radius of their position. Every city, dungeon, and wilderness area they visit contains only what they need to advance the plot, so... let's get to work on filling in the rest of it, because theirs isn't this world's only story, not by a long shot.

Before we get into this episode... well, we had a rather bizarre shakeup the other day. These blog posts have primarily been for the benefit of one guy in particular, who's been looking them over and helping me brainstorm. Before that, he played a part in writing one of the Explore Cosmos episodes, the one we're about to talk about. We were in the TAPAS chat room discussing the Cosmology blog post that just came out, a task he'd been particularly looking forward to, when suddenly... he was gone. Only a few hours later did I realize he hadn't just gone offline, he'd quit the server altogether.

I went to DeviantArt and asked him what was up, and he said he had no further interest in my project, my organization, or me, for reasons that were none of my concern. So... I left him to it. I'm incredibly wounded and confused. What could I have said to make the guy go from enthusiastically swapping world-building ideas with me to never wanting to see me again in the space of twenty minutes? Everyone else in the chat room can see the conversation we had, and none of them can figure out why he so abruptly chose to ditch us all either.

I just hope he didn't block me. You know? I hope he gave me the chance to prove that I can respect his wishes and not contact him again. Which I won't, gonna leave him be.

The show must go on, I guess, but I don't know who I'm gonna talk about these blogs with now. Hmm. Whatever I did, he doesn't want to be affiliated with me anymore, so I guess he doesn't want his name on this episode or any other part of this he helped with...? Heck if I know. I suppose if this content ever gets released and he wants his due, he knows where to find me, and I'll be happy to comply, because, well... he didn't do anything wrong, he's still pretty much cool in my book, he's guilty only of being... incredibly confusing. It's the absolute strangest thing, it truly is.

Episode 6: World Map - written by Sage Mann, Dakota Umlauf, & [redacted]

I don't remember the exact reasons for who got writing credits on the previous episodes, but for this one, I do. When the time came to put together Cosmos as a world, I started off with a list of eighteen countries. Each one, I chose to base upon a real region of the world. Then, I distributed the eighteen countries evenly over three regions, each one ruled over by one of the three pantheons. Eventually, I ended up with this map, crudely slapped together on some mapmaking website or another:

Someday there'll be more to it than just continents, oceans, and borders, but mapmaking is so not my area of expertise that it's not even funny. Gonna find me someone who actually knows how to make a fantasy map, and we'll figure out how to add rivers and mountains and islands and lakes in a manner that makes for, you know, the potential for good stories being told in these locales. Climates and landscapes that actually make scientific sense? We might do that, but it wouldn't be much of a fantasy world if we did. And while we're at it, let's make the coastlines and stuff a bit less... square. They're a bit square.

Anyway, as far as writing credits: Dakota helped me kickstart the actual geopolitical situation of Cosmos by, completely unprompted, providing me with a ton of ideas for how the three regions can each be unique -- not all of it was viable, but I jotted it all down and most of it can be found sprinkled throughout the descriptions of the various nations.

Then [redacted] and I went down the list of countries one by one, he threw out a bunch of ideas, and I ran with them. We didn't finish working on that, so this episode of Explore Cosmos was the only one that was never completed; the identities of the southern regions of the world are still mostly unfinished. Not sure why we stopped. Presumably because I lost the bulk of this year to the worst depression of my life. I'm probably better off for it; word on the street is that this year hasn't been very much fun, probably for the best that I don't remember most of it. Anyway, since evidently [redacted] isn't gonna be the one to help me finish writing about the south, let's just... see what we've got.

COSMOS

To discuss the global political situation in Cosmos, one must start with the gods. The three pantheons discovered each other at some point, and decided to distribute the world amongst themselves, each pantheon sticking to its own territory to avoid violent conflict that would result in mutually assured destruction and a lot of collateral damage. The northernmost region, Disvik, belongs to the Asgardian gods, the eastern region of Samea belongs to the Olympian gods, and the southern region of Tsir belongs to the Pharaonic gods.

The Choices, and presumably most other Cosmos-set stories as well, begins in the year 3065, counting the years since the magical harmonic convergence which, among other things, brought about the existence of fairies. In the status quo of the year 3065, each region happens to have six major geopolitical powers.

DISVIK

Disvik, often plain and simple called "the north", is ruled over by the Norse god and, with that association, is the home of many tough and proud warrior cultures, with whom the gods take a very hands-on approach, often going on adventures of their own.

Athundoft: A kingdom in the frozen north taking the heaviest inspiration from the Norse. The northern point of Athundoft is where the Bifrost is, the rainbow bridge that'll take you to Asgard. The king of Athundoft isn't a huge deal due to the close proximity and heavy involvement of the gods, but he's a nice guy. The country is full of hardships and violence, and you have to be tough to survive, but the Athundor people aren't grim about it -- they enjoy fighting monsters.

Sheafell: The place from which three of the main cast members of The Choices hail, and where the first season of the story takes place. This three-island country takes inspiration from those two disproportionately-influential tiny islands that make up Britain and Ireland. So, quite a bit of Arthurian influence in its history, I should think. Some of the greatest kings and queens of all time hail from Sheafell, along with some equally famed heroic knights and one particularly legendary time-traveling archmage. Modern-day Sheafell is now in the hands of the prime minister, but the royal family remain beloved celebrities.

Underheim: This small country has a surplus population of goblins and kobolds... so being a farmer, an even bigger deal than normal, as I alluded up top. Underheim is big on meritocracy: the weak die, and that's their problem. You'd be hard-pressed to find a charity or social institution there, only ways to work your way up. The original inspiration was Germany, so I imagine similar levels of anger and bitterness... and art direction matching that of Snow White and Tangled, Disney's films based on German fairytales. Being the studio's first film and their first CGI princess film respectively, they really went all out, so, might as well reflect that and make Underheim friggin' gorgeous.

Strumvik: Another, much larger, frozen north kingdom. Currently ruled by the czar, who presides over the advanced capital city, while everyone else in the rather large country live in smaller, more primitive tribes -- those tribes being the descendants of the native Strumvians, while the czar and others in the capital are descended from conquerers from, oh, let's say Magnae. The czars over the generations have always been advised by a council of thirteen undead generals, one of whom is the real emperor. As you probably gathered, cultural motifs are Russian, with the oppressed commoners being more Central Asian.

Gyanshi: A vast and proud empire, inspired by China. A big part of the world's economy and trade; they're willing to buy and sell with anyone, though they see anyone not from Gyanshi as barbarians. Though they lake some cues from the northern gods, their culture primarily revolves around ancestor worship, praying to them for guidance. The elites who can learn advanced magic, or pay someone who knows it, directly summon their ancestors from beyond the grave for advice.

Nixi: A republic made up of dozens of tribes, each with their own rulers, but all answering to a democratically-elected chief elder and his hand-picked parliament who set the parameters for the republic at large. Inspired by the various indigenous nations of North America, with some extra technological advancement and unity. They're famous for their horse-mounted mercenaries and their talent for elemental magic, acquired from a dangerous magical rift in the earth, left behind long ago by a meteor strike.

SAMEA

Samea, or simply "the east", is ruled by the Greek gods, who are described as creative and free-spirited, their influence giving the entire region a reputation for pioneering developments in art, technology, and political rule.

Magnae: The location of Mount Olympus and, as a result, the country taking the most inspiration from Greece, most ancient and modern. The gods lack the influence they may have once had, when the philosophers of Magnae discovered scientifically that the gods are not as divine as they had previously claimed -- for instance, both the Olympians and the Asgardians have a guy who pulls the sun along in a chariot, while the king of the Egyptian gods does likewise in a boat. The discovery of these three contradictory stories and the true nature of the sun, that shook the mortal world's faith a bit, though not a ton, as the gods still plainly exist and are plainly super-powerful. And it's still largely thanks to the gods that Magnae has a very good economy and high standard of living, with wizardry being a very common practice there. The ruler of Magnae is an elected monarch; the people choose the king or queen after a long campaign, but it's regardless a lifetime appointment with virtually absolute political power.

Nastiin: Taking inspiration from a region of the world that's, well, not often made an inspiration of in the fantasy genre: the sinking ship that is the United States. Nastiin has the best education and medical care in the world... if you can afford to pay for it, which you probably can't. Too on the nose? Don't care, it's true. Nastiin was originally settled by those few Magnaeans who were far more offended than most about the gods' deception, and sought to escape their influence, sailing north to the massive continent where Nastiin is now. They conquered it, and the republic was developed by immigrants from all over. Hmm, who lived there before? That's something to examine. Nastiin is possibly the most powerful geopolitical entity on Cosmos; Nastiicans as a culture still hold some bitterness and resentment toward the gods and reflexively seek to defy them whenever possible, and despite their rich melting-pot culture, have grown somewhat isolationist in recent years.

Onnecco: Onnecco is a collective of city-states; the capital city, whose ruler gets to govern the entire country, changes every few years based on the winners of an athletics competition held every five years. Their complex culture takes cues from the eastern gods, but reinterpreted their teachings for the nation's personal tastes. Their magic and infrastructure rivals the glory of that of Magnae, but the culture is plagued by practices such as trial by combat, slavery, and rampant corruption and nepotism. Cultural motifs are a mix of ancient Roman and modern-day Italian.

Pontou: A very magical place, inspired by France and the Disney films that are set there, some of the most glorious in the Disney catalogue. It was in the place that is now Pontou that the first fairies appeared during the harmonic convergence, and magic continues to run wild there. Pontou recently declared its independence (hmm, that's an interesting idea that I don't remember having -- independence from whom?), and are ruled by a benevolent family of sorcerers descended from the fair folk. Ooh, that's right! I had forgotten about that idea about "wild magic" sorcerers, that they're descended from fairies, that all fairies are, technically speaking, wild magic sorcerers themselves, they're just not all obligated to follow their true nature, they can learn to take on any class. Thank goodness for that reminder of a little tidbit to put under "fairies" and "sorcerers" in the real Cosmos encyclopedia. Anyway, Pontou is known for its gorgeous architecture, master classes in wizardry, and harmony with nature.

Khuvira: Fun fact to open with: I originally called this country Khufira. Google Docs spellcheck wondered if maybe I meant "kufira", so I looked up that word. It's Swahili for anal sex, and that, boys and girls, is the best example ever on why you should always Google the names you invent for your speculative fiction. There are only so many combinations of sounds in the world, you gotta make sure it's not already out there somewhere, or that if it is, it doesn't mean anything silly. Thank you, Google, for your apparently bizarrely comprehensive spellcheck database. So it's Khuvira now, a word which I'm pretty sure doesn't invoke anything except for Kuvira, Zelda Williams's character in The Legend of Korra. Solid upgrade. Anyway, Khuvira is inspired by the Middle East. The data we have: it's mostly desert, the civilized part centralized in a vast "sea" of trees, where olives and pistachios grow. Its capital city is regarded as the most romantic city on the planet, with glorious golden architecture, libraries of ancient lore, and lots of coffee. Elemental magic flows freely in both the lush and barren parts of the country, while the desert is home to some of the deadliest beasts in the world: giant worms, whose corpses, if you're a mighty enough hero to actually slay one, provide the perfect fertilizer for delicious and juicy cactus fields.

Mabayashi: Inspired by Japan, as was probably your first guess, given the blatantly faux-Japanese name. Described as a place where technological wonders meet an ancient culture of honor and etiquette. The emperor is a samurai warrior blessed by the gods; his undead skeleton has continued his reign many centuries after his death, but don't worry, he's a good necrocratic emperor, very good at taking care of his people and even better at defending them. Villages in Mabayashi each operate as tiny countries all their own, each with a completely different climate (because magic), and largely self-contained economies, infrastructure, and culture, each with a different approach to the use of magic and technology.

TSIR

Tsir, or simply "the south", is the domain of the Egyptian gods, is described as being more varied in its cultures than the other two regions, and exotic to northern and eastern eyes.

Akhmis: The largest and oldest empire in the world. An empire of merchants, Akhmisian explorers and traders are responsible for the entirety of Cosmos being mapped. The nation is also responsible for the most in-depth studies of magic, unlocking many secrets of the practice and all its forms. Currently, Akhmis finds itself a bit degraded; the gods and the royal family (led, naturally, by a pharaoh, whose coronation is subject to the approval of the gods) keep things running pretty well, but local nobility and elites are rather hedonistic and leave their people in extreme poverty. Akhmis's geography and culture are inspired by Africa -- which is, of course, a continent, with uncountable cultures contained within, but that's to be reflected by Akhmis. Akhmis is an empire, after all, and a really big one in a world that lacks fast travel (well, there's teleportation, but that's hard to come by), so there are tons of different cultures and climates throughout.

Mahanja: Inspired by India and other South Asian places, Mahanja is a very old kingdom currently in the grips of a slow-burn civil war. Tribes and civil leaders often find themselves in opposition to the royal family, whose political sway is weakening. Which side is in the right, and which will be backed by the gods, remains to be seen. And that's all we've got, we didn't finish working on this one, we need a little more.

Tehuaco: Didn't get to dig into this one. I know it's a monarchy, and that its inspiration comes from Spain and Portugal. It plays a part in the history of the next country, Itaxan, and I'm going with an idea Dakota had of a country that's "secretly" run by criminal cartels.

Itaxan: Inspired by pre-colonial Mesoamerica and the modern-day Latin America that replaced it. Latino culture is a pretty cool mix of the Christian traditions of the European colonizers and those of the indigenous people, plus all sorts of tidbits from every ethnic origin imaginable. Itaxan is an empire founded by immigrants from Tehuaco, who overthrew the empire that lived there previously, a regime that was said to be fascist and tyrannical before the Tehuagans came along, but you know what they say about who writes the history books. While technically all of the big worm-shaped island belongs to Itaxan, most of the important stuff there is within a week's travel of the capital. Fine stone roads connect the capital to the outlying villages and farms, but beyond that, you'll find a low stone wall surrounding the civilized portion of the country, easily stepped over but marking where the land gives way to the thick, treacherous jungles of the isle. All of this was in place before the colonization, and the Tehuagan colonizers found the roads impressive enough, and the border wall a good enough marker of when it was too dangerous to venture on, that they didn't change a thing.

Keyfell: Another one I haven't had a chance to develop. I know Keyfell is based on Australia, and I get the vibe it shares the same relationship with Sheafell as Australia does with England -- a prison colony for Shea criminals. I originally planned it to be a republic, but I might go with something a bit more fantastical, maybe taking a lot more cues from the Aboriginal equivalents. One of the last world-building ideas presented to me, back in June before I fell into a depression and TAPAS as a whole went on sabbatical for a couple of months, was when [redacted] pitched to me the idea that Keyfell sets up a lot of temporary coastal settlements for the purposes of whaling, showing me a photo of such a place in New England.

Wogo: A nation of many islands -- presumably way more than just the eight big ones you see on my crude map -- inspired by the Polynesian parts of the world, a region and ethnicity which wasn't often on my mind before Moana came out. I fell in love with the region, not from the movie (though I adore the movie), but from learning about the research that the filmmakers did to make sure they were capturing the place right. Notably, Polynesian culture is where we get the word "mana", a concept often employed in modern magic systems, so perhaps mastery over our world's magic system started in Wogo. Wogovians are masters of the oceans, and presumably on good terms with the people of the neighboring Keyfell. I imagine the region has a singular king -- something that resonated with me from those Moana special features was someone saying that Polynesians see the ocean as something that connects their various islands, not separates them.

So, those were the six episodes of Explore Cosmos, which I put together not so much to educate viewers about the nature of Cosmos, but to educate myself on the subject, having found the story I'd been writing thus far lacking in any kind of world-based uniqueness.

Three more of these Constructing Cosmos blogs to go -- first, I'll be looking at the WorldAnvil wiki where I was previously attempting to compile what little I knew about the world. 

Then, I'll be organizing all the data I've collected from watching my Disney collection for the past... wow, exactly two years to the day, according to my Facebook memories. I compiled a list of over 200 Disney films and have been watching them in the order in which they were released, mining each one for ideas about how to make Cosmos stand out as a fantasy setting.

And then, finally, I'll be digging deep into the archives of my old writings, looking into all the notes I had on Christalss, the first fantasy setting I created, to see which parts of that world are still worth visiting.

Any one of these three pursuits, of course, might end up the same way that Explore Cosmos did, having way more data than I gave myself credit for and have to be split into multiple parts. That seems to be the way things are going for me these days.

Constructing Cosmos: Part 5, Cosmology

You know, I'm actually starting to feel pretty confident about this whole thing? I've prepped the rest of this now nine-part project thingy and the ideas, once I start organizing them properly over on Campfire Blaze, actually generally seem pretty good. There's some gaps to fill, and I still don't know how any of this stuff is going to make it into any of the stories, but we'll get there -- I'm even starting to get strokes of inspiration for how the gameplay might work.

Episode 5: Cosmology - written by Sage Mann

Here's the D&D cosmology as it stands in 5th Edition -- essentially, it's the classic version with a few minor touches lifted from 4th Edition; if I haven't mentioned this already, 4th Edition is just so wildly different from any other form of D&D that basically the whole reason Pathfinder was created was to be a 4th Edition that actually felt like D&D. I was a huge 4th Edition fanboy for many years, but I eventually got tired of it and wanted to tell more versatile stories and 5th seemed to be the way to go there, but let's never forget, there'd be no 5E without 4E -- they brought back D&D in its classic form, but they distilled the good stuff! I really mean no disrespect to 4E, like I said, I was a 4th Edition devotee for years, it was an attempt at something new, I for one enjoyed the emphasis on pulse-pounding action sequences, and I genuinely adore the 4th Edition cosmology, I'm so glad bits and pieces of it made their way into this one.

So, let's look at this model of the D&D universe, from the inside out. At the center, we have the Material Plane. Just the normal world where people live. Coexisting with the Material Plane are its "echoes", the Feywild and the Shadowfell, parallel dimensions to the material world, introduced in 4th Edition. The Feywild is the light side, a realm of nature and magic, while the Shadowfell is the dark side, the domain of death. Then we have the Ethereal Plane, which... I don't really get, I guess that's where like ghosts and stuff exist, and they sometimes cross over into the Material Plane? Do we really need an Ethereal Plane and a Shadowfell? Seems a bit redundant.

Then we have the Inner Planes, better known as the Elemental Planes -- air, earth, fire, and water, entire worlds of just... that stuff. And more interesting stuff where they meet, like slimy swamps where earth meets water, volcanic mountains where earth meets fire, and frosty landscapes where water meets air. The Elemental Chaos is what replaced the Inner Planes in 4th Edition; it represented a world where all the elements raged on all the time, instead of the more structured division. Having both is a pretty good idea.

Then we have the Outer Planes -- the realms of the gods. Each of the sixteen Outer Planes is based on one of the sixteen ways you can combine D&D's alignment system -- all possible combinations of Good versus Evil and Order versus Chaos. The seven planes with elements of Good in their nature are the Upper Planes, and the seven with elements of Evil are the Lower Planes. The two on the horizontal axis are the two with neither good nor evil, Mechanus representing pure Order, and Limbo representing pure Chaos. The Outer Planes that people tend to care about are pretty much just the Abyss and the Nine Hells, as those are where demons and devils come from, respectively.

Incidentally, I am extremely attached to the alignment system. Sure, it serves no real purpose, and 5th Edition made sure that no actual rules apply to it except for those related to roleplaying. But it's an interesting philosophical template and an excellent way to start developing a character's personality, a culture, or a system of government.

Back to the Outer Planes, the Astral Plane is the way one travels from one Outer Plane to another, sort of the magic version of outer space. Not depicted here are the Outlands, sort of the seventeenth Outer Plane, a neutrally-aligned realm. On the edges of the Outlands are the sixteen Gate Towns, each one connected to an Outer Plane; in its center is a massive stone spire atop which sits Sigil, the City of Doors, a city built on the inside surface of a ring-shaped parallel dimension. The doors that Sigil is named for can lead you anywhere, and when I say anywhere... well, I'm not actually sure if this is actually canon or just my personal interpretation, but I get the feeling that, as many D&D universes as there are, there is only one Sigil, and by finding the right door, you can travel to any universe.

And then on the outermost edges of this model there's the Positive Plane and Negative Plane, I don't know anything about those, I think maybe they're not places, per se, just representative of positive energy, which heals the living and harms the undead, and negative energy, which does the reverse.

I'd also like to discuss the 4th Edition cosmology, which kept things simpler while also being rather inventive; as I mentioned, the Feywild, Shadowfell, and Elemental Chaos debuted there. In 4th Edition's universe, there were basically six places. There were also only six creature types in that edition, each creature type corresponding to one of the six worlds of the setting.

You had the Material Plane, the Feywild, and the Shadowfell, respectively the homes of natural creatures, fey creatures, and shadow creatures. Above the world (metaphysically speaking) was the Astral Sea, and below it the Elemental Chaos. All of the Outer Planes could be found in the Astral Sea, as scattered islands dotting the plane rather than a neat ring -- all except the Abyss, that is, which could now be found at the center of the Elemental Chaos. Creatures of the Astral Sea were immortal creatures, and creatures of the Elemental Chaos, including demons, were elemental creatures.

Then there's one more plane that you won't actually find on any map of the universe -- the Far Realm. The Far Realm is a separate universe, one beyond mortal comprehension. In the distant past, there were portals to the Far Realm, where aberrant creatures came through, along with the alien magic that sometimes gives people psychic powers. Generally, no portals to the Far Realm exist in modern D&D universes; just as well, as a single glance at the place would instantly break the brain of any mortal.

So, that was D&D Cosmology 101, now let's talk about how I planned it out for K&K. For one thing... I don't like using the word "planes" to describe these places. In my D&D campaigns, I've always called them "worlds" instead, and referred to the Material Plane as simply "the World", and occasionally I drop terms like "realms" and "dimensions", but I dunno, I don't like "planes". Maybe because it feels a bit too sci-fi? Of course, that's also true of "dimensions". I dunno, I'm fickle and I don't understand my own opinions half the time.

The short about cosmology begins with, well, an acknowledgment that Cosmos suddenly becomes a pretty confusing name for a planet once you start also talking about the cosmos. It discusses the material plane, Cosmos itself, and then the ethereal plane and astral plane. These two planes are generally used for fast travel. The ethereal plane is described as the easier of the two to reach (which isn't saying much, most people go their entire lives without getting any inkling that there are other planes); its utility might be to get from point A to point B without being detected by any other living soul, the risks being that you might meet a ghost or a giant dimension-jumping spider or some such. The astral plane, as you might imagine, is reached via astral projection, which is incredibly advanced magic; but then once you're in the astral plane, you can walk to anywhere in the universe, providing you know the way.

Then the Feywild and the Shadowfell are discussed... now, those names aren't part of the Open Game License, because the 5E OGL only includes 5E rules that are either, A) absolutely necessary, or B), were in the 3E OGL, while also being C) not trademarked product identities of the D&D game, and as mentioned, these two dimensions were invented for 4E. So I don't think I can call these places the Feywild and the Shadowfell, as much as I'd like to, but I simply must keep the concept: two worlds parallel to the material world, one of light, magic, and nature, the other of darkness, death, and negativity. One thing established in this short is that between the world and its two echoes, geographical landmarks are recognizable. Say somewhere in the world you have a massive ancient oak tree. In the Feywild, that same tree also exists, but is like a super pretty magical fairy tree! While in the Shadowfell, it's all gray and gnarled and has no leaves, but even though it looks dead, it grows along with its material-world counterpart. And this carries over to all changes in the landscape... if you bulldoze a hill to build a freeway, the corresponding hill in the Feywild and Shadowfell will also vanish, and perhaps some magical semblance of pavement will grow in its place. This portion of the short is narrated by Cristela, whose personal goals in The Choices relate to finding the Feywild. So such a place definitely needs to exist. Just needs a new name.

Then, the short discusses the Elemental Planes and alludes to the Elemental Chaos. These realms are described as being bigger, more extravagant, and more beautiful than anything that can be found in the material world, both in terms of the natural landscapes and the civilizations there.

Then we come to our equivalent to the Upper Planes, identified in the short as the "celestial realms" or "heavenly realms". I never intended to use the sixteen Outer Planes of D&D, which is good, because they're trademarked, I would've been disappointed. Instead, there are only three of them: Olympus, Asgard, and the Offering Fields, one for each of the three pantheons. The heavenly realms are, in a sense, rather easily accessible, as you can walk there from the material world without using any kind of magic; you can climb Mount Olympus in the center of Magnae, cross the Rainbow Bridge in the northern reaches of Athundoft, or enter the great pyramid in the northern deserts of Akhmis. Of course, you're unlikely to make that trip without being noticed by some sort of divine being, so, have an excuse ready. Most of the gods live in their respective pantheon's celestial realm, each having their own territory there, and there's also a lot of heavenly geography to explore and celestial creatures to meet, like angels and ponies and stuff.

Then we discuss the hell dimensions, our equivalent to the Lower Planes. Not in very much detail; all that's said is that they're where fiends come from, that travelers who find themselves there don't live for very long, and that for all intents and purposes there are an infinite number of such places. Then we allude to the Far Realm by mentioning that aberrations are from someplace beyond the hell dimensions, a place that residents of Cosmos probably can't even look at without their minds snapping.

And that was it, it was a pretty short... short, I guess. Final note: Keys & Kingdoms definitely has a multiverse, Cosmos is not the only world that exists in the franchise, there's definitely a couple more that I have in mind and I'm excited to incorporate maybe a few worlds created by some other people! Just need to think of a way to connect them apart from Sigil, Sigil is also trademarked.

Constructing Cosmos: Part 4, Religion

At this point, I have people wondering why I seem to think I need help with this world-building stuff. After all, I'm presenting heaps of information here.

Well, here's the thing: setting aside the fact that most of those heaps of writing are about trying, and not succeeding, to think of ways to make my world-building different from the default assumptions about Dungeons & Dragons, of all the information on the world that I have come up with... well, none of it matters.

I've been begging people for ages to help me out with this world-building, and they all tell me, world-building arises naturally from the telling of the story. Thing is, I have the story; at least, the first story set in this world. I wrote it. It's been written. It is done. And it takes place in a terrifying empty void instead of a world. Because no matter how much world-building I do, nothing I come up with is anything approaching relevant, none of it could possibly be important to a story... at least not in any way I can figure out. So that's why I started writing these educational shorts about the nature of the world, because even though I know the story from beginning to end, that story does not at any point cross paths with the world it takes place in. And that's unacceptable. This is a fantasy story, the world has to basically be the main character, not a complete nonentity.

So... I'm furious with myself, but for once, it's not because I've lost something. I used to read books by the truckload, now I just stare blankly at pages for hours. I used to be charming and entertaining; now I'm invisible, and even my loved ones only notice me when I'm miserable, at the end of my rope, and literally begging for someone to validate my existence. I used to be a renaissance man, writing hundreds of pages each week, composing songs, drawing the characters. I can still write. These blog posts are, after all, extremely detailed expressions of my thoughts which... seem pretty well-written, I think, maybe even excessively so. And my stories, mm, they need a couple of dots connected, I need help with them for sure, but I still have it in me to come up with a story and construct it fairly well. Music and art, however, are lost to me, the holes drilled into my brain by so many years of depression have taken them away from me forever... a loss that causes me untold pain every day.

But I've always been terrible at worldbuilding, in the exact manner in which I'm struggling with it now. I have a number of speculative fiction stories to my name. I have my world of Christalss, the first high-fantasy setting I created... abandoned it several years ago, but it may make a comeback as a Keys & Kingdoms campaign setting, distinct from Cosmos. I have Iris, my take on the young-adult dystopia genre. I have Mina, my fairy-themed stage play. Like Cosmos, these settings have quite a bit of meat-and-potatoes to them: countries and cultures, species and races, histories, religions, magic systems, historical figures. And just like The Choices and a few other small attempts I've made at telling stories on Cosmos -- at no point in the story of Mina, or the story of Iris, or any of the four or five stories I've written set on Christalss, has any of that world-building ever made its way into the story.

Because the only way I know how to tell a story is with characters; who they are and what they do, and just setting them loose. And I know what you're going to say: to lean into that, to just tell stories with characters. If you were paying attention, I told you I've already done that. The story is told, the characters are amazing, but the setting is nonexistent and that's not okay. A story needs a plot, characters, and a setting; I learned that on the first day of third grade and I assume you did too. Quit trying to wriggle out of helping me with my setting, you said you'd do it.

To sum up: I have a world. I have a story. Both are extremely unfinished and can't be fleshed out by me alone, but more importantly, the two have never met and I can't figure out how to introduce them.

Episode 4: Religion - written by Sage Mann & Archer Slam-Bam

In the early days of conceiving of Keys & Kingdoms, probably around the time I started watching my inspirational Disney collection and took note of the scene in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in which Snow White says her prayers before bed, I started thinking about the religion of Cosmos. The conclusion I came to was that the world should be led by three pantheons: the gods of the Ancient Egyptians, the Ancient Greeks, and the Old Norse.

Soon I discovered that there was a D&D supplement, 3rd Edition's Deities & Demigods, that included a "Fantasy-Historical Pantheons" section with instructions for integrating these exact three pantheons into your campaign (and just those three; they had also wanted to include a section on Celtic deities, but it wasn't in the budget, which, hey, works for me). Not all at once, though; the section was about creating a D&D world ruled over by one of these three pantheons; a world that includes all three of them I had to figure out on my own. Which is good; that's what RPG gamebooks should be for, helping you come up with ideas that are all your own.

Stacy spent a year or so on a commissioned project, drawing all 53 fantasy-historical gods depicted in that book, seen here in family tree form. A key to reading the family tree:

gold border: king of the pantheon

red border: greater god

green border: intermediate god

blue border: lesser god

purple border: demigod

red line: marriage

green line: siblings

blue line: parent and child

Which gods are deemed important enough to make it into the pantheon as anything more than "quasi-deities", and how they relate to each other in terms of power and morality, well, I'm just gonna lift all that straight out of Deities & Demigods and work from there.

Before I start talking about the information given in the "Religion" short film, there's something I have to mention before I forget: one thing I haven't thought of a whole lot is the role of these deities in a world populated by people other than humans. Deities & Demigods contains a few suggestions on the subject, indicating which deities would be worshiped by dwarves, elves, and so on. For instance, in a world ruled by the Greek pantheon, dwarves would probably have a fondness for Hades, due to his connections to wealth and earth, and Hephaestus, for obvious reasons. And, er, that's all I can remember, I'll check that book again, and hopefully, you know, also have some ideas that are actually mine. Percy Jackson is probably a good place to work from, since that series acknowledges that satyrs and centaurs and stuff are people too and have a role in this world of gods and heroes.

When discussing my world-building woes with Christine, she offered a significant contribution: the notion that long ago, dwarves were digging at the foot of Mount Olympus, like ya do, and ended up digging too deep, like ya do, finding themselves in the kingdom of Hades. That of course was an amazing idea, a perfect example of mixing modern high fantasy with classical mythology, and is now absolutely, most definitely, a thing that happened sometime in Cosmos's distant past. But, as we've established, I can't conceive of any situation in any story set on Cosmos that would provide anything resembling a reason to bring it up.

There are a lot of things storytellers do that I can't comprehend, just don't see how they're possible. Incorporating a world's history with the story being told now is one of those things. It just blows me away, because it's beyond the grasp of my mind how people even come up with the idea to do that. But what I do know is that all these things I can't wrap my mind around -- which range from foreshadowing and callbacks to catchphrases and meaningful echoes -- are all absolutely necessary components of a story. That's why I need help.

The Three Pantheons

The short film addresses some misconceptions the audience might have about religion in Cosmos based on their experience with modern-day real-world religion, in which every denomination believes theirs to be the one true religion and everyone else to be doomed to hell. Not a great way to live, I don't recommend it.

So, the gods of the three pantheons are described as "indisputably real as fuck". They are compared first to celebrities, in that no celebrity can sign every autograph or answer every piece of fan mail; likewise, while prayer works and each god can hear every prayer directed at them (and comprehend them all at once thanks to godly brainpower), they can't possibly answer every one even if they wanted to. Then they're compared to political candidates, in that people are encouraged to choose the one whose morals and ideals most closely match their own... and also that no matter which one you pick, you're never gonna find one who's 100% morally upright.

Finally, it's established that the gods have existed for approximately 12,000 years, roughly the lifetime of the universe Cosmos calls home, and therefore had free reign for a good 2,000 years before mortal civilization happened.

The Asgardian Pantheon

The Asgardian pantheon, also called the northern gods, can be found in the heavenly realm of Asgard, reachable by crossing the rainbow bridge in the far northern reaches of the country of Athundoft. It's established that we'll only be talking about the really important gods -- the ones who, on the family trees above, have red or gold borders -- because they have the most impact on everyday life and are most often on the minds of ordinary people.

• Odin: The king of the Aesir. A wanderer, a seeker of knowledge and a purveyor of victory. I included a reference to a rather amusing discovery I've made when promoting Stacy's artwork: evidently there are a whole lot of Odin fanboys out there, who claim there's so much more to Odin than just being the king of the gods that apparently it's somehow inaccurate, or something, to display him alongside Zeus and Re-Horakhti. I still don't get what any of these guys are trying to say. He's the king of the gods. The other two are also kings of the gods. That is a very cool job, you don't need to object that there's more to him than that. I'll accept opinions that Odin is the coolest of the three, maybe even agree, but how does that make me somehow wrong for displaying them all together? Friggin' nerds, man.
• Frigga: One of Odin's wives, presumably his favorite as she's the one who gets to be the queen. Goddess of love and motherhood, but also vicious animal life with cruel shredding claws.
• Thor: A son of Odin (but not Frigga), the most popular god among the common people and an adventurer in his own right. Armed with his mighty hammer and the power of storms, he is a champion of the people and a peacekeeper.
• Loki: A frequent companion to Thor on his adventures, of unknown origin and unknown motivation. Thieves and tricksters pay tribute to him.
• Frey: A member of the Vanir, former enemies of the Aesir who now live alongside them. The most popular of the Vanir due to his association with agriculture and the harvest, which are, you know, kind of a big deal.

The Pharaonic Pantheon

Also called the southern gods, this pantheon can be found in the northern reaches of the sprawling empire of Akhmis. Near the mouth of the largest river in the world stands a great pyramid, and beneath it is the entrance to an underworld, the Offering Fields, where these gods dwell.

• Re-Horakhti: The current leader of the pantheon and god of the sun; once called Horus, he ascended to his current form when his ancestor, Ra, retired to seek true perfect enlightenment far from the mortal world. The pharaoh of Akhmis is crowned in Re-Horakhti's name.
• Osiris: Father to Re-Horakhti, the undead god of nature and life, who supervises the Offering Fields and the lands of the dead just as his son oversees the southern lands.
• Isis: Sister-wife to Osiris and mother to Re-Horakhti, with dominion over fertility and marriage (kind of a common job title for those who are queens of their pantheon, ain't it?), as well as magic. Hot but crazy.
• Set: Brother to Osiris and Isis, the god of darkness and one of the most powerful forces for evil in the world. He unleashes sandstorms and pestilence across southern lands, and his cults are a constant, global force of corruption and temptation.

The Olympian Pantheon

The eastern gods, who live atop Mount Olympus, a supernaturally tall mountain in the dead center of the island kingdom of Magnae.

• Zeus: God of the sky, king of the pantheon, and leader of the twelve Olympians. Rules in the style of a stern, distant father... and in fact is a literal father to many people in the east. Legendary for his amorous encounters with all sorts of women, an ever-expanding roster of godlings, monsters, and exceptional mortals are his children.
• Poseidon: Zeus's brother, who lives in his undersea palace but sits at Zeus's right hand at meetings of the Olympian council. Poseidon reflects all aspects of the sea, sometimes being peaceful, bountiful, and full of life, other times full of destruction and death.
• Hades: The elder brother of Zeus and Poseidon. He keeps to himself and does not sit on the Olympian council, living beneath Mount Olympus instead of upon it... I put the underworld directly beneath Olympus. Instead of... where was it in the myths, I want to say you got there by sailing out of the Mediterranean, and then instead of the Atlantic you end up in Hades? Or did I make that up? Anyway, Hades (the guy, not the place) has dominion over earth, death, and wealth... which I just kinda like reiterating. Lots of "eath" words.
• Hera: Sister-wife of Zeus (I give points to the Norse gods here for nobody being married to their sister), seated at his left hand, the goddess of marriage and political intrigue. A jealous goddess, ever seeking to regain her former prominence in the pantheon. 
• Athena: Seated at Hera's left, the favored daughter of Zeus, with a rather inexplicable origin. The goddess of civilization, who favors mortals with her inventions, creations, and strategic wisdom, making her largely responsible for the advancement of Magnae in particular and the east in general.

Better than a Sponge

Well, this blog post begins the same way as the previous one: a Monday evening emotional breakdown upon realizing that this week's to-do list would never, ever get finished. That I don't know how to do anything. That I've lost the mental capacity to learn how to do anything. And that nobody in this world has the time to spare to give me the help I need to survive.

People think I'm too hard on myself and I set my sights too high... and I honestly have no idea where everyone gets that idea, because the only thing I want from myself is to be a human instead of a sponge. And I'm not. I've always been a sponge -- I've always been perfectly content being a sponge, in all honesty; I like life best when I'm a sponge, but capitalist society won't let me just be a sponge. I'll be kicked out, left on the streets. So, I devote my days to trying to be better than a sponge.

But... I'm not. I'm not better than a sponge. I'm just... not. And every time I try to rise above that level, I end up hating myself because all the evidence indicates that I just can't do it. The only time I don't hate myself is when I don't try anything. Because trying things... it never ends well. That nasty voice in my head constantly telling me that I'm incapable of succeeding is proven more and more correct with every passing day.

Monday blues aside... tomorrow we're watching The Princess Bride, and the week after that, Little Shop of Horrors. Those two videos will probably be out before the Killer Bean Forever video we made last week, because that one's going to take a lot of audio mixing, to make sure every moment in the movie is audible, and every moment of our commentary is audible, and... I have absolutely no clue how to do that, so I've gotta find someone who does. Editing the other two videos, the videos in which we'll be cutting down the film to a highlight reel of 15 minutes or so, will be much easier for me, I imagine.

Hmm. Apparently not. We couldn't watch The Princess Bride. No one I was watching it with could actually see the film, nor could my screen-recording software. I was so sure Zoom watch parties were a thing, a thing that people actually do, with real movies... but apparently Zoom does not beat copy protection. So I guess for now, we're only watching things we can watch for free. Until we figure out how it works. Lots of people do reaction videos, and when they do it looks a heck of a lot better than when I do it, so there's got to be a way to do it and a very easy way at that, you see so many morons out there with professional-grade, well-edited reaction videos, it can't be that damn hard but I just can't figure out how it's done! You know, the same thing happened when I first started trying to record Let's Plays on my PS4; I couldn't beat copy protection. And I just don't get it! Everybody else does it.

So... one of these days we're gonna do Princess Bride, and Little Shop, and it's going to actually look and sound good, damn it -- I just need to figure out how every joker on the internet with a camera can do it while I have to break my brain figuring it out. So, that? That attempt at filming a Princess Bride reaction, just... completely wiped me out, emotionally. So awful. I'd so been looking forward to it. What is wrong with my life? Everything just goes bad like old food. I never get a phone call back from anyone, I can't draw a straight line, or record clean audio, or keep things clean, or make a paper airplane, all my life everything I do has always been just off enough to leave me... constantly frustrated.

And, hey, while you're here -- subscribing to the blog, is that a thing you can do? Down at the bottom, after the comments section, there should be a follow button; and then below that, a place to enter your email address so you can follow the blog even if you don't have an account. I have two followers at the moment, but some people have said they haven't figured out how to follow the blog. Please try to do so, and if you can't, let me know what you're seeing so I can figure out what's going on. Or maybe I never will. Because everything I do goes wrong, in ways no one can explain.

Constructing Cosmos: Part 3, Creatures

This one should be much shorter -- let's talk creature types. As I said in my most recent podcast, while I'm working to excise the D&D stuff from this setting and start being inspired by Disney like I was supposed to, one place I can't really do this is with monsters. Disney films don't really have much to work with as far as monsters. I'll certainly try to work with every monster Disney has, but primarily we'll have to populate this world by creatures drawn from D&D.

Incidentally, while talking to Rob, I think I finally came up with a way to explain the concept of Keys & Kingdoms that won't be immediately met with the question of how I'm going to avoid being sued by Disney. Namely: I'm creating a fantasy world and roleplaying game that feels as if it's taking place in a Disney film. Feels. Just feels that way. Actual Disney characters are not appearing anywhere, stop asking how I'm gonna pull that off.

It's definitely not a crime to project an atmosphere that feels like you're living in a Disney film. To wit, look at every 2D-animated feature film ever made that wasn't made for adults; they look and feel an awful lot like Disney films, don't they? Disney didn't sue any of them. Except Filmation, but they were trying to pass off their Snow White and Pinocchio films as actual sequels to the Disney versions, so, you know, really shouldn't'a did that.

No judgment on other companies from the 2D era for using Disney-esque designs and animation, incidentally; it's the only animation style I actually like. I freaking miss it, man.

Episode 3: Creatures - written by Sage Mann

In this episode, the characters introduce the fourteen creature types. These are, naturally, exactly the same as the fourteen creature types in D&D 5th Edition. It's a really good system, I don't really want to mess with it too much. Here are the fourteen types, in the order in which they're described in the short I wrote:

Humanoid: Basically, people. A flesh and blood creature with a human-like body plan, a language and culture, and not a huge amount of inherent magic -- that's a humanoid. In the short, most of the races described in the first episode are displayed; but not all! I'll get back to that in a moment. We also see some imagery of assorted other humanoids: a gnome, goblin, orc, gnoll, kobold, lizardfolk, and sahuagin.

Gnomes are worth mentioning: they've been a core race in D&D from the beginning, but nobody ever really knew what to do with them because they were the only core race without a Tolkien counterpart. They've evolved over the years into a combination of elves, dwarves, and halflings, with a few unique traits such as their tinkering with steampunk technology, their affinity for illusion magic, and, basically, their overall silliness. I didn't make them core races in K&K, but I definitely plan to incorporate them... in the style of a traditional pre-D&D gnome, about a foot tall with a short white beard and a pointy hat, since we need more creatures who can operate on the scale of the myshkas and pixies. Still have no idea how to make that work gameplay-wise, you know, it's gonna be more interesting, surely, than just everybody in that situation having one hit point. As for the others besides gnomes, you know, just your basic D&D opponents. Goblins and gnolls appear in (the current version of) the first season of The Choices, so I wrote 'em up for the WorldAnvil blog, we'll talk more about them in that entry. Or entries.

Beast: Described in the D&D book as non-sapient creatures that form part of the natural ecology. Put more simply, if it's an animal that exists in real life, or used to, it's in the beast category. With a couple of exceptions, such as fictional "dire" or "giant" versions of real animals, and, for some reason, the stirge. The stirge is basically a giant mosquito, but different enough from one that I wouldn't have put it in the beast category were it up to me.

In the short, Zaya demonstrates beasts by displaying a tyrannosaurus and a frog, respectively the strongest and weakest beasts in the game rules. Well, maybe the frog isn't the weakest; it's one of two creatures in the game that have what I call a "00" challenge rating -- a creature that not only has a challenge rating of 0, but also grants 0 experience points for defeating it since it's completely incapable of causing harm. The other is the seahorse, and a frog is more versatile than a seahorse, can go on land and jump and stuff while a seahorse can do nothing but, you know, swim slowly. So, if we're tiering the 00s... you get it.

Dragon: Definitely important enough to merit their own category! Half the title of the game, after all. In D&D, there are ten types of true dragons: the five kinds of chromatic dragon (white, black, green, blue and red), who are usually evil, and the five kinds of metallic dragon (brass, copper, bronze, silver, and gold), who are usually good. Each has their own unique breath weapon (yes, only a few of them in fact breathe fire), a unique type of habitat where they like to make their lairs, and a unique culture and personality -- it's all rather impressive. The dragon category also includes most creatures that are vaguely draconic, such as the pseudo-dragon, the faerie dragon, the dragon turtle, and the wyvern.

Giant: One might assume that giants could just go under the humanoid category, I'm pretty sure Pathfinder did that, but I like this, I think giants have a bit of magic to them, plus they have a caste system that includes all giants and only giants, so it makes sense for them to have a cut-off point where one is in fact a giant rather than just a really big humanoid. As with dragons, there's a lineup of the true giants -- storm, cloud, fire, frost, stone, and hill, pretty sure I correctly ranked them top to bottom there -- plus an assortment of other people who qualify for the giant category, such as the ogre, troll, cyclops, and ettin.

Monster: Actually, in D&D 5E the word used is "monstrosity", but I find that an unnecessary amount of syllables and, you know, a bit excessively mean, so I refer to creatures of this category as simply "monsters". Of course, in D&D terminology, any creature you can encounter is called a monster, but, well, that's why we have the word "creature". In D&D, the monstrosity category is basically the "other" category. Effectively, a creature can be classified as a monster if it's a creature of flesh and blood -- whether or not it has origins in nature -- but doesn't fit into any of the above four categories. In the short film, I illustrate this category by displaying a minotaur, a griffon, a basilisk, and, in one of the few strokes of originality in this episode, a cecaelia. Cecaeliae are very obscure mythological creatures; only one member of this species has made any particular impact on world culture, namely, Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Ursula being a very prominent Disney character, her people should have a fairly prominent place in Cosmos.

Fey: Creatures with strong ties to nature magic and the wilds. Displayed in the episode to demonstrate are a satyr, a dryad, and, for the darker side of fey folk, a hag. There are never very many creatures in this category, for whatever reason, seeing as arguably most creatures in mythology belong in this category. Now, here's an interesting thing: in D&D, all playable characters go under the "humanoid" category -- I think the only exception is one elf subrace who are close enough to nature to be replaced in the "fey" category -- but in K&K, two of the core races, the fairy and the pixie, are most definitely fey. And I think it would be really cool to think of playable characters of non-humanoid categories. The cecaelia is a good example, maybe the ogre as well. Some other fey? We'll see.

Ooze: An iconic creature type in D&D, not exactly prominent but so freakin' weird that they have to have their own category, they just don't fit anywhere else. Amorphous creatures made entirely of digestive acids, most famously the gelatinous cube, which actually managed to get itself a cameo in a Disney film earlier this year. The gray ooze, the ochre jelly, the black pudding, and... that's pretty much all of them. There used to be a green slime, but I think that's a kind of fungus now, not an ooze. That's too bad, I liked the green ones.

Plant: Any plant or fungus creature falls into this category, regardless of how sapient and humanoid it is, such as the myconids, giant mushroom people, or the treants, Tolkienesque giant tree guardians. Good place to stick some playable peeps.

Undead: A pretty easy category to identify; any time a dead thing is reanimated by dark magic, it ceases to be the creature category it was before and is now an undead. The undead can be divided into two basic subcategories: the kind that are effectively walking corpses, from the lowliest mindless zombie to the dominating vampires and liches, to the kind that are incorporeal spirits, like ghosts, banshees, and shadows.

Construct: Creatures made out of raw materials and then shaped and animated by magic. Most famously, the golems, which come in four basic forms: flesh, clay, stone, and iron. Me, I like coming up with new things to make golems out of, I wonder if I still have my old Christalss notes on the subject. Most constructs are essentially mindless, but in this short, I was sure to mention that some have enough capacity for independent thought to essentially be people, something I wanted to establish early to foreshadow what I've been calling "heart constructs".

Or was it "soul constructs"? Meh, I dunno. Anyway, before I came up with the myshkas and syrsas, the ten core races were filled by two other kinds of characters, and one of these was the heart construct, meant to be the race representing any constructed character, be they made from magic or art or science, granted sapience and morality by the love of their creator, a race that could represent Disney characters as diverse as Pinocchio, Tron, Olaf, or Baymax. It just wasn't working out, as far as figuring out the mechanics for a single race that in fact could encompass all these characters... so they won't be a core race in 1st Edition Keys & Kingdoms, but such characters absolutely have to show up eventually.

Elemental: Creatures of the elemental planes, who embody air, earth, fire, and water in their purest forms. There are the four kinds of true elementals, and some other creatures that have four varieties, such as genies; and plenty of other creatures who embody only one element or two, or stuff that's vaguely elemental, such as ice or storms, or combinations of two elements such as magma (fire and earth) or smoke (fire and air). Plenty of those. Elemental creatures include phoenixes, gargoyles, salamanders... again, genies... and that's about it for the creatures that'd be recognizable to non-gamers. K&K's gargoyles are, of course, humanoid, not elemental. And I have all sorts of ideas for depicting genies, seeing as there's a fairly well-known one in the Disney catalogue that you might remember.

Fiend: Fiends are creatures of evil, hailing from what the D&D cosmology calls the Lower Planes. I think in K&K, I'd call such places "hell dimensions", a la Buffy. Most fiends are either demons or devils. What's the differencce? Well, demons are chaotic and devils are lawful. I like the alignment system, though many find it philosophically obsolete. Basically, demons want to destroy the universe, while devils are more about gaining power and influence through trickery and deception -- two different flavors of evil.

D&D's reputation for evilness in the late 1980s caused them to remove explicit mention of demons and devils from their pages -- so, D&D's 2nd Edition, which was current from 1989 to 2000, instead referred to demons and devils with the totally awesome made-up names of "tanar'ri" and "baatezu", respectively. These terms are no longer in use in modern D&D, but I still use them in my own D&D campaigns, because they make a demonic or devilish villain's boasting so much cooler. Can't use them anywhere else, though; still trademarked. The yugoloths, neutral counterparts to the tanar'ri's chaos and the baatezu's order, are still called yugoloths, because as it turns out, their former name of "daemon" is actually pronounced the same as "demon". And apart from those three categories, there are plenty of fiends of other origins. All evil and from evil places.

Celestial: Celestials are the opposite number of fiends, hailing from the heavenly realms, or Upper Planes, instead of the hell dimensions, and are pure embodiments of goodness -- though, it's acknowledged, it's slightly more heard of to find an evil celestial than a good fiend. There are very, very few celestials found across the various D&D monster books -- after all, most creatures in the book are for the characters to fight against, and most heroes don't spend very much time fighting the forces of good.

In all the 5E monster books I have, of which I've made a list for use in my campaigns, among all the hundreds of creatures, only eight are celestials, and three of those are different types of angels. Other than that we have the pegasus, the ki-rin, the unicorn, a couple of more obscure things. I personally would have made the unicorn a fey, not a celestial, but I actually like it better this way. Unicorns are awesome and super-important, I should think. They represent not just nature, but the gods of nature. That's way cool.

Aberration: And finally, the aberrations. Effectively, they're the fantasy-genre version of aliens, creatures from the stars and from other dimensions outside the normal cosmology, who have found themselves in D&D worlds. Tragically, D&D's most famous aberrations who so often serve as villainous masterminds -- the mindflayer and the beholder -- are trademarked, while the one really famous one that isn't trademarked, the otyugh, is a simple predator, not really villain material. I been thinkin' that Disney films such as Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet have a ton of neat alien designs (which come with absolutely zero alien lore) so they can probably provide some inspiration for original aberrations.

And that's it for the short film and the creature categories that currently exist in 5E. There's another thing I wanted to look into: the creature categories that exist in 5E's predecessors, 3E and Pathfinder.

• Aberration: In 3E, whether a creature went into the "aberration" or "magical beast" category seemed to be almost entirely arbitrary. Granted, every confirmed alien went into the "aberration" category, but so did a lot of creatures that were not aliens and are now, rather sensibly, in the "monstrosity" category.
• Animal: The animal category was used for all modern-day animals and their "giant" or "dire" versions whether such things existed in real life or not.
• Beast: The beast category was used for creatures that don't exist in real life, but have animal-like behavior and no particular magical powers, such as the ankheg, griffon, and hydra. Dinosaurs, weirdly enough, also went in this category. Pathfinder retired this category, instead placing dinosaurs in the "animal" category where they belonged and all fictional animals under "magical beast" regardless of how magical they actually were.
• Construct: A distinct category that's gone through no particular changes.
• Dragon: As it is now, this category was used for both true dragons and for dragon-like creature. Back then, any creature that was half-dragon (dragons enjoy shapeshifting and apparently get laid a lot when they do so, and the offspring always looks like a half-dragon version of itself) was also designated with the "dragon" category; they don't do that anymore, in 5E a half-dragon still has the creature type of the thing it actually is. Oh, hey, you wanna know something else crazy? In 5E, all of the true dragon species come in four age categories: wyrmling, young, adult, and ancient. That way you can fight a dragon at any stage of your adventuring career... which kind of misses the point of dragons, if you ask me, they should really be saved for later in your adventuring career, I don't see anything honorable in fighting a child, even if it is a dragon child. But 3E? It had stats... for all ten species of dragon... at twelve friggin' different stages of life: wyrmling, very young, young, juvenile, young adult, adult, mature adult, old, very old, ancient, wyrm, and great wyrm. Like.... WHAT?! In what universe was that necessary? We did not need one hundred and twenty different sets of dragon stats. A few other creatures in the manual had two or three age categories, but... seriously, yeah, what the heck was this? I still kinda think that the four sets of stats 5E has for all ten species is a bit much. Plus, as Order of the Stick author Rich Burlew points out, it means that statistically speaking, a lot more dragon children got killed over the history of 3E's existence than the children of any other creature...
• Elemental: A very underused category... it seems that what elemental creatures went in the "elemental" category and which went in the "outsider" category was, once again, completely arbitrary. Pathfinder did away with the elemental category altogether and put all elemental creatures under "outsider"... more about why I think that was a misstep a bit later.
• Fey: A small category then as now, and back then was more focused on the benevolent fey, as hags at the time were classified as monstrous humanoids.
• Giant: This category hasn't really changed from the 3E version, though, as I mentioned above, Pathfinder decided to do away with the category and just classify giants as humanoids.
• Humanoid: A fairly empty category in these two editions... I suppose you were supposed to just give every humanoid creature class levels and stuff and figure out for yourself whether your creation was a balanced encounter for your heroes. 5E gives you a bit more to work with, not only providing a whole bunch of humanoids, including some stats for chieftains, captains, elite warriors and stuff, as well as a whole bunch of generic NPC templates that can be applied to any humanoid character.
• Magical Beast: The magical beast category consists of creatures that are animalistic but also magical... though I'm a seeing a few that don't seem to actually be magical at all, so it seems that once again, we have two categories, "beast" and "magical beast", in which creatures were assigned at random. Most magical beasts have animal intelligence, but the sphinx also went in this category, among other creatures.
• Monstrous Humanoid: Pretty much exactly what it sounds like. In 5E, some formerly monstrous humanoids, such as the kuo-toa and grimlock, were reclassified as regular humanoids, while others, such as the centaur, minotaur, medusa, and harpy (all the Greek ones, apparently) went into the monstrosity category -- it seems the modern-day monstrosity category is an amalgam of the former "magical beast" and "monstrous humanoid" category... though, you know, I kind of actually liked it better when that category was divided into two? I don't like any of the names used, not "monstrosity" nor "magical beast" or "monstrous humanoid" either, but it would be kind of helpful if there were two categories to distinguish which monstrosities are sapient and which aren't, y'know? But, I suppose looking at individual entries is just as well.
• Ooze: Well, as this category in the 3E Monster Manual contains the exact same four creatures as in the 5E one, I guess oozes remain about the same.
• Outsider: Yeah, this? This was kind of a mess. In 3E and Pathfinder, every single creature that comes from the Inner Planes or Outer Planes was given the "outsider" category (except, again, those few Inner Planes creatures that were arbitrarily assigned "elemental" instead). This resulted in an extremely bloated and rather uninformative category. Now in 5E, the outsider category has been split into three: creatures from the Inner Planes are elementals, those from the Upper Planes are celestials, and those from the Lower Planes are fiends. Works much better that way. That being said, there's one tiny problem. See, the Upper Planes are of a good nature and the Lower Planes are of an evil nature, but there are two Outer Planes that are neither good nor evil: Mechanus, the plane of pure law, and Limbo, the plane of pure chaos. Mechanus is inhabited by modrons, who in 5E get the "construct" category as they are essentially robots; Limbo, however, is inhabited by slaadi, and 5E had to make the call, with no "outsider" category anymore, to categorize the slaadi as "aberrations", which doesn't quite fit right, as aberrations are generally from, or at least related to, the Far Realm, the universe beyond the Outer Planes. But ultimately, there's just no better place to put slaadi; by their very nature as being from Limbo, a slaad is neither fiend nor celestial, and a bit too extradimensional to be a monstrosity. Of course, that's not really our problem -- slaadi are trademarked, as are the proper names of the Outer Planes, and I don't intend to use the D&D "rings" model of the universe anyway. More about that later.
• Plant: No notable changes to speak of. Once again, all creatures of a vegetable or fungoid nature go in this category regardless of how ambulatory and/or sapient they may be.
• Shapechanger: Well, that's a pretty silly creature category. Lots of creatures can shapeshift, and they could probably be easily placed into some other category. A few creatures known for shapeshifting did end up in other categories instead of this one. I can see why Pathfinder didn't bother with this category -- indeed, even D&D 3.5 ditched it.
• Undead: Another one that hasn't changed in the interim. Quite simple; if it's undead, then it's in the undead category, regardless of what its creature type was before it became undead.
• Vermin: This rather odd category was reserved for, well, bugs. If it's an insect, arachnid, or centipede, it goes in the "vermin" category, whether it's a swarm of regular-sized bugs or some sort of giant bug -- but not if it's a magical bug, those go under "magical beast". Pathfinder also included jellyfish, anemones, crustaceans, worms, and gastropods in this category. (Pathfinder apparently had a thing, to rival my own such thing, for putting exotic real-world wildlife in its fantasy setting) Cephalopods, however, went in the "animal" category, because one of the rules for the "vermin" category was that they had no Intelligence score, and intelligence is one of those things the octopus is known for. Kind of emphasizes just how little sense this category made in the first place, and in 5E, bugs of all sorts go in the Beast category same as all the other animals.

One final word before I go on with my day: I mentioned the heart construct as one of two core races that I shifted out in favor of the myshka and syrsa. The other? The Nemo. Maybe should have talked about this in the Peoples entry, but meh, that one was running long.

The Nemo was inspired by the Nobodies of Kingdom Hearts. In Kingdom Hearts, a Nobody comes into being when a person's heart (heart in the metaphysical sense, not the organ) is extracted or devoured or lost -- sort of a regular thing in the KH universe, at least in the stories set in that universe that we the audience follow. If that person has a strong willpower, then their body and mind continue to act of their own accord -- alive but without a human soul. Nobodies are super-powerful, each defined by an elemental (or elemental-ish) attribute which they use in combat. While they revel in their power and, with a few exceptions, tend to ham it up and enjoy their villainy -- experts on the subject in-series claim that Nobodies have no emotions, and all appearances to the contrary are faked by a Nobody simply acting the way they remember they would act back when they could feel things, which gets called into question a lot and eventually debunked, but that's not important right now -- but regardless, the Nobodies wish to become whole again and are willing to murder millions to accomplish this, as they're tormented by the horror of their own metaphysical nonexistence and, implicitly, the "uncanny valley" vibe they give off in social situations.

Which brings us to the Nemo. In my reinterpretation, a Nemo is a person who is resurrected from the dead -- again, not a normal thing in D&D-esque universes per se, but at least normal in the stories set in this universe that we witness, because they're about badass adventurers with access to some powerful magical mojo. If a person is resurrected, but their soul is unavailable due to having been trapped somewhere or turned into an incorporeal undead creature, they are raised as a Nemo. So they're alive again as planned -- conscious, ambulatory, just as skilled an adventurer as they were before -- but they're not really there.

I removed the Nemo from the core race list because, well, they don't really work as a core race. Becoming a Nemo is a thing that happens to an incredibly tiny minority of people, and a thing that can happen to a person of any race -- clearly, it's more of a template. In addition, I couldn't really think of the game mechanics for being a Nemo. It requires a recipe that eludes me: one, reasons that it'd be pretty cool to play as a Nemo on a long-term basis; and two, a strong incentive to hunt down your own soul and get it back so you can become normal again.

For the first one, like I said, there's those elemental-ish powers I talked about. But those can't be truly extraordinary, not enough for the Nemo to overshadow their fellow party members... maybe some teleportation via shadow? Nobodies can open Corridors of Darkness, after all. But the incentive? Got me. There has to be some drawbacks, and not the roleplaying drawback of "you have to play your character as a clinical sociopath until your soul is restored" -- that's not exactly very much incentive for players to want their soul back, especially if it comes with a power boost. Depends entirely on the kind of player, of course.

So, sure: your character doesn't technically have emotions for a while, and everyone they meet is vaguely creeped out by them even though they don't know why. But what are the mechanical drawbacks to having no soul...? Gotta figure that out. No idea.

As for those elemental-ish powers, well, let's look at the ones possessed by the thirteen Nobodies who populate the Kingdom Hearts series' first story arc, each having a unique attribute:

• You've got the actual classical elements in there: Wind, Earth, Fire, and Water
• Plus some natural extensions, non-elemental things you often see as damage types: Ice, Lightning, and Light
• And then some fookin' weird ones: Nothingness, Space, Illusion, Moon, Time, and Flower

Constructing Cosmos: Part 2, Classes

Well, the plan was to do one of these "Constructing Cosmos" dealies every other day; it's been three weeks since the first one. Typical, really; the podcast I posted last night was also two weeks late. In fact, it was a couple of hours late to being a day late to being two weeks late.

I've been in contact with game designer Rob Heinsoo, who was indeed willing to give a few game-building tips to his cousin's best friend's nephew... have I done that joke already? I can never remember what I have and have not already said on the blog. Heck, I think I may have done that joke twice in my emails to him alone.

The first insight he had to offer once I pitched the premise to him was that Disney films tend to be about the development of one character or a pair of them, growing and proving themselves, while the dynamics of a mainstream RPG are of an ensemble of adventurers, so he wondered if there was some indie RPG system I was drawing inspiration from in order to reproduce the Disney formula. And then, well, I gave him a bigger pitch about how, no, I'm putting the ensemble-driven atmosphere of your standard RPG into a world that feels like that of a Disney fairytale.

Later, he wanted to arrange a meeting with me to discuss game-building (for just a couple of minutes, he's a busy guy, apparently more so than usual recently, so nice of him to keep checking in with me anyway!) and... I wasn't prepared, because I hadn't yet finished this thing I'm doing here, re-building the world. Rob assured me that thinking I need to design the world before I start making the game is a fallacy that often prevents erstwhile gamemakers from ever getting around to making games. I have no doubt he's absolutely right! So... I had to search myself, and it's clear: Keys & Kingdoms is a world for telling stories in first, an RPG setting second. Playability is definitely in the back of my mind with every creation, but how to actively come up with a world that's playable? No clue.

I'll get to the RPG part sometime later, and see what Rob can tell me about where to go after I'm finished with this seven-part blog.

Episode 2: Classes - written by Sage Mann

Okay, lots of thoughts about classes. I first considered making up my own, but D&D just has such a good array of options that are so great at providing choices for being whatever kind of character you want to be. I decided that the Keys & Kingdoms class list would consist of every class which has been in the core rules of more than one edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Conveniently, this turned out to be the exact same class list that 5th Edition uses, so when transferring over to using the 5E Open Game License, that was easy.

• Debuted in 1E: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard
• Debuted in 2E: Ranger, Paladin, Bard, Druid
• Debuted in 3E: Barbarian, Monk, Sorcerer
• Debuted in 4E: Warlock

A really cool thing about 5E is that every class includes at least two subclasses, or archetypes, which you choose sometime from Level 1 to Level 3. Is your fighter the kind who hits really hard, or the kind that uses tactics and finesse? Is your rogue the kind that orchestrates elaborate heists, or the kind that infiltrates and assassinates? Your archetype determines this. Now, while every class includes at least two archetypes in the core rules, and many more in expansions, the OGL only includes one archetype for each class, to encourage being inventive and original, making up your own. I sorta-kinda worked on that a little bit. Now that I'm no longer directly lifting from 5E rules, I need to come up with new ways for classes and subclasses to work. And, again, maybe not calling them classes anymore. Final Fantasy calls them "jobs". That's stupid. "Profession"? Not exactly accurate. "Archetype", as used by Pathfinder 2? Eh... don't like it, works better as a term for a sub-class.

Another question would be whether there should be an Explore Cosmos episode about classes. Classes are a necessary game mechanic, but would they be a thing in-universe? I guess there's a pretty quantifiable difference between a wizard and a sorcerer, but is the difference between a fighter, a rogue, and a barbarian really perceivable in the context of the fantasy world? Hard to say.

Barbarian: Famed for its primo alphabetical position on the cast list, the concept of the barbarian derives from "blood and thunder" literature, and represents a warrior character from a tribal culture and an untamed land. Its main gimmick is going into a battle rage that makes the character strong and resilient, but not particularly careful, while fighting. I see that in the short films, I vaguely alluded to the various homebrew archetypes that the crew and I had brainstormed... I was never particularly happy with those ideas. So, I decided to look at some archetypes that currently exist in the 5E metagame -- not all of them, just the ones from the core rules and one of the earlier expansion packs, Xanathar's Guide to Everything -- and think about how to go about making up my own list of archetypes.

• Path of the Berserker: Barbarian subclasses in 5E are called Primal Paths. The subclasses are flavored like that. Anyway, as mentioned, the barbarian has its battle rage gimmick, and the berserker really leans into that; it doesn't have any supernatural powers, it's just really, really good at the raging part. Works for me.
• Path of the Totem Warrior: The other option in the 5E core rules, the totem warrior is even more customizable than most archetypes, as not only do you choose to become a totem warrior, you choose an animal totem, each of which grants different supernatural powers themed off of the animal. Some expansions offer new totems in addition to entirely new archetypes. So, yeah, I can see us doing a thing like this one as well.
• Ancestral Guardian, Storm Herald, and Zealot: The three archetypes introduced in Xanathar's Guide. The ancestral guardian can call upon the spirits of their culture's ancestors, the storm herald has... storm powers, I suppose, and the zealot... er, I gotta look it up. Okay, the zealot serves a very angry war god who grants them divine power when they rage. Mm, not really vibing with the zealot, but those first two are cool are worth adapting. Ancestral spirits, and storms. Both very, you know... primal.
• Other: While some pals and I were brainstorming archetype ideas -- at the time, we weren't aware of any subclasses outside of the core rules -- one idea we had was the Primal Soul... rather ill-defined, kind of combines aspects from all three Xanathar's archetypes. And another was the Noble Savage, someone from a barbarian culture who's learned the ways of the city folk. Kind of like Tarzan... original novel Tarzan, not Disney Tarzan. Tarzan did that in the books, right? He went back to England, did aristocrat stuff? I dunno. Anyway, I'm not sure what kind of game mechanics the noble savage would have had, seems to me that if a barbarian wanted to combine his skills with those of city folk he'd, you know, multiclass.

Bard: The bard is, well, a bit of an odd duck. I'm not sure where they came up with the idea of this character archetype. A bard, after all, refers to a reader of epic poetry. But in D&D, a bard is the ultimate jack-of-all-trades. They take some aspects from all four of the classes that debuted in 1st Edition; they have some fighting skill, some thieving skills, some arcane magic, and from 3rd Edition onward, also some healing abilities. But ultimately, they were never as good at any of these things as a class specializing in one of these things, and were best served doing the one unique thing the class had: singing. While the bard was singing, all of their allies got a minuscule bonus to combat and other skills... and the bard was completely incapable of doing anything else while singing. Not really worth it. Then came 5E -- in 5E, the bard is easily the most powerful class (well, maybe not "easily", but the case can be made), the simple reason being that they've been changed from the secondary spellcasters they used to be, and are now primary spellcasters. (I don't know how official the terms "primary spellcaster" and "secondary spellcaster" are, but I'm using them) The subclasses are called Bard Colleges.

• College of Lore: Essentially the default bard, this bard specializes in knowledge, the most notable trait of that being that they can learn spells from other class lists, largely contributing to the bard's status as the maybe-strongest class. Now, I'd want all my subclasses to be described with relatively simple nouns rather than the more flavorful descriptions given to some but not all of 5E's subclasses. Not sure what noun to give to this one, as it's basically just your default bard. Let's go with "Loremaster" just as a placeholder.
• College of Valor: The other core-rules bard subclass, the College of Valor was about combat and swordplay. Rather unpopular, as it's not a super-great idea for a primary spellcaster to enter combat with a sword. Such a character, a bard who also specializes in combat, is often called a Skald.
• College of Glamour and College of Swords: Two of the new subclasses in Xanathar's Guide; Glamour bards use their magic to captivate and hypnotize, while the College of Swords strikes me as an attempt to patch the College of Valor to make a better version of the fightin' bard, a College of Swords bard being called a Blade. Don't really strike me as being interesting enough to rip off...
• College of Whispers: The other new subclass from Xanathar's. I'm not really clear on what their powers are, but the sinister bent of their description intrigues me, I like that they seem to produce bards with a more sinister bent; I'll have to look into that.
• Other: The 2nd Edition-based game Baldur's Gate II gave most of the original eight classes three subclasses to choose from in addition to the option of being just the vanilla version of a class. In the bard's case, their three subclasses were the Blade, the Skald, and the Jester. The first two we've already talked about, but I was always fond of the Jester. In Baldur's Gate II, the only actual difference between the jester and the regular bard was that the jester's bard song, instead of bolstering allies, confused enemies. Pretty uninteresting excuse for a subclass, I'd want my jesters to have all sorts of comedy-themed powers.

Cleric: The cleric is a primarily spellcaster whose magic comes from the god they serve. Their archetypes are called Divine Domains.

• Divine Domains: Divine domains were, I believe, introduced in 3rd Edition. Every god had a handful of domains to their name, and every cleric chose one of the domains as an aspect of their deity to embody, and each domain had a number of exclusive bonus spells. 3rd Edition had a bazillion different domains, exemplifying every possible thing a god can be a "god of". 5th Edition's core rules cut back to only eight domains: Death, Knowledge, Life, Light, Nature, Tempest, Trickery, and War. Every god in all the campaign settings could be put the umbrella of at least one of these domains, it's covered pretty well.
• Forge Domain and Grave Domain: These two domains were added to Xanathar's Guide, and... I don't really think they were needed. In the core rules, forge-related deities like Hephaestus were put under the Knowledge umbrella, that was baked into the Knowledge domain's original description, and the Grave domain was a less-villainous version of the Death domain, dealing with preserving the dead and protecting them from undeath. Yeah: I think these two domains are just way too specific and totally unnecessary.
• Other: I have one criticism about the original eight domains: that the only option for a number of evil deities was the Trickery domain; surely clerics of these deities can specialize in something more evil than that? I had two ideas for domains that are a bit eviler: Darkness and Inferno. Hmm, I feel like the Death domain covers Darkness pretty well, and the Light domain basically has all the fiery powers I wanted from the Inferno domain, just with different flavor. So, this'll take some thinkin' about, for now I'm just gonna put on the record what we originally came up with for our OGL plan: twelve domains. The original eight, but with Nature replaced with Forge... huh, why'd I do that? And then four others: Darkness, Inferno, Earth, and Arcana. Arcana Domain is definitely also in 5E somewhere. Oh, and since I wanted all K&K subclasses to be nouns referring to a person, I came up with a whole bunch of synonyms for "priest" and appended them to each domain: apostle, chaplain, curate, deacon, elder, bishop, friar, vicar. Not ultimately super-satisfied with the results; like I said, I'm gonna have to think about it.

Druid: The druids are like shamans, primary spellcasters rather similar to the cleric but taking their magic from nature spirits far older than the gods. For whatever reason, such entities are never given nealry as much focus as the gods in these games... druid subclasses are called Druid Circles, each circle a different organization of druids with a different opinion on how best for sapient people to coexist with nature and civilization.

• Circle of the Land: The default druid subclass. When you take Circle of the Land, you choose from the game's list of natural habitats, getting various bonus spells depending on the biome you pick and... other stuff. I might call such a subclass the Preserver. But... nobody ever picks this one. Why? Well...
• Circle of the Moon: All druids can transform into animals; druids of the Circle of the Moon focus on it, able to transform into more powerful animals sooner than other druids, and eventually into elementals as well. Druids of the Circle of the Moon are right up there with the bards of the College of Lore as the most powerful characters in the game, largely because if a druid dies when in animal form, they instantly return to their normal form in full health; a mercy when you're morphed into a tiny animal that can be killed in one shot, but just plain cheesy when you're shapeshifted into something that's actually powerful. And since everybody loves animals in role-playing games -- whether you're befriending them, summoning them, shapeshifting into them, or, depending upon your play style, killing every one you see -- everybody goes with the Circle of the Moon instead of the Land and is nearly invincible for it. Another thing I don't like about druid shapeshifting in 5th Edition? Well, the higher your character level, the higher the power level of animals you can change into, with druids of the Circle of the Moon being able to access a much more powerful repertoire, but regardless of how powerful the animals are that you can become, you can't become an animal that can swim until you're level 4, and not one that can fly until you're level 8. I know that's for game-balance purposes, but it just makes no sense from an in-universe logic standpoint, there's really no reason that a master of nature magic who can turn into a lion wouldn't be able to turn into a bird. As for the name of our own interpretation of this subclass, seems only natural to go with Shapeshifter.
• Circle of Dreams and Circle of the Shepherd: The two new ones from Xanathar's, with Dreams being about fey magic, and the Shepherd seemingly being about summoning animals instead of shapeshifting. The latter is similar in tone to my own druid subclass idea of the Totem Keeper... the Dreams one seems like a pretty fair idea too. I was also interested in creating a druid subclass called the Warden, based on the 4th Edition class of the same name, who transform themselves into guardians of wood or stone or wind, crap like that, I forget exactly how it worked, only that I thought it was real cool.

Fighter: The most common class, the fighter is... exactly that. They fight. And they're good at it. Generally, more about equipment and expertise than the barbarian. Their subclasses are called Martial Archetypes.

• Battle Master and Champion: Two of the three fighter archetypes in the core rules. As I alluded above, the Battle Master is the master of tactics, techniques, and finesse, while the Champion is about physical perfection. I kind of found myself with a "D" theme going, renaming these archetypes the Duelist and Defender respectively... those are a bit too specific, not quite "archetypal" enough, but the basic "strength vs. finesse" deal is definitely a necessary feature for two archetypes.
• Eldritch Knight: The third core archetype, which turns the fighter into what I like to call a "tertiary spellcaster", supplementing their battle skill with rudimentary wizardry, mostly of the offensive and defensive nature. I kept this one in the "D" theme: the Dragoon. That one, I'm gonna keep -- in the short film, I allude to the dragoons as a specific order of fighters or knights. And that's what my crew had for archetypes, just "D" renames of the existing core archetypes. Let's see what Xanathar's had.
• Arcane Archer: Elite warriors who follow an elven tradition of mixing magic with their ranged weapon attacks. That seems awfully specific, but it goes way back. I like how two of the three Xanathar's fighter archetypes would seem at first glance to be an archetype of a different class, in this case because archery is usually associated with rangers.
• Cavalier: When I think cavalier, I think one of the paladin subclasses from Baldur's Gate II -- I don't know how faithful these Baldur's Gate II subclasses are to D&D 2nd Edition, as subclasses are only in Baldur's Gate II and not in any of the other 2nd Edition games made by the same company. The cavalier was super good at slaying demons and dragons, with all sorts of great powers and immunities and stuff... that's what I'd continue to do after calling an archetype a cavalier. The 5E cavalier is, let's see, a noble knightly type most comfortable on horseback. Hmm. Not exciting enough.
• Samurai: Well, that's certainly a cool thing to call a fighter subclass. Let's see, what do they do, by the book? "Tireless resolve" seems to be the main theme here, with a little bit of courtly manners. Neat! Sounds a bit too much like the Cavalier, flavor-wise.
• Other: This seems like a good place to mention two classes that were invented for Critical Role and have seen a bit of popularity in mainstream 5E circles: the Gunslinger, a fighter subclass invented so Taliesin Jaffe's character Percy, who invented firearms in his backstory, could make the jump from Pathfinder to 5E, and the Bloodhunter, an entirely new class invented for CR's second campaign so that Taliesin could once again play a character unlike any other. I like the idea of fantasy worlds having a small handful of very special people running around with guns. As for the bloodhunter, people who it seems draw power from shedding their own blood, effectively sacrificing their own hit points for more offensive power... meh, it's just... way too specific? To be its own class? Maybe if it was a barbarian subclass.

Monk: The monk class represents a mastery of Eastern martial arts, fighting without any armor and either bare-handed or with the simplest of weapons. A class that's very hard to master and scarcely worth anything if you don't play it exactly right.

• Way of the Open Hand: Basically the default monk, without any quantifiable supernatural powers, just total perfection of the body. Still, of course, able to do things like paralyze you or kill you instantly with a single strike of their hand. I'd refer to a member of this flavor of subclass as simply a Master.
• Way of the Four Elements: Seemingly inspired by the benders of Avatar: The Last Airbender, this subclass offers a load of interesting options for martial arts attacks that release elemental powers. Your Four Elements monk can choose powers related to only one element, or they can mix it up a little. I knew this had to be a monk subclass long before I started reading 5th Edition and learned it actually was one. I'd call this subclass the Elemental Bender. You know, just so it's clear what we're talking about.
• Way of Shadow: Ninjas. Just ninjas. With actual mastery of shadowy dark magic, and presumably some assassination-related techniques if I had to guess. Go ninja go ninja go.
• Way of the Drunken Master and Way of the Kensei: Two from Xanathar's Guide which are seemingly also non-magical, the former being a very bobby-and-weavy style of combat that's very distracting and unpredictable, the latter representing a spiritual connection with one particular weapon. Neither of them really impress me, conceptually.
• Way of the Sun Soul: This Xanathar's monk subclass was the very thing that made me realize that I simply had to start using 5th Edition content outside of the core rules in my own campaigns, because this subclass is apparently inspired by Dragon Ball -- not Super Saiyan stuff, but the sunlight-themed techniques Goku learns before discovering he's a Saiyan. I... don't actually know squat about Dragon Ball, I've only ever seen the Abridged Series, but I just thought this was a damn good idea and decided to call practitioners of this subclass the Guiding Light.

Paladin: The paladins are holy knights, champions of the gods, bound by a sacred oath, which is how their subclasses are flavored: as Sacred Oaths. Paladins are secondary spellcasters with powers similar to the cleric in addition to their battle skills.

• Sacred Oaths: The core sacred oaths in the game are the oaths of Devotion, Vengeance, and the Ancients. As I understand it, Devotion is about, like, bringing the light to the people, healing and protecting and stuff, Vengeance is about smiting monsters and villains, and the Ancients is about, like, defending nature, I think? And then Xanathar's includes two more: Conquest and Redemption, which, well, sound self-explanatory.
• Oathbreaker: The Oathbreaker is one of two subclasses which are in the core rules, but in the Dungeon Master's Guide instead of the Player's Handbook, because they work best for villains (the other being the cleric's Death Domain). If a paladin breaks their sacred oath, they get this assortment of evil-themed powers until they redeem themselves. Of course, paladins can also be evil in this edition, so if they swear their oath to an evil deity they don't get the evil-themed powers until they break it. Semantics.
• Other: So, again -- nouns. The nouns I originally came up with were: Redeemer, Cavalier, Inquisitor, and Blackguard. Redeemer... don't like the name, first of all, but I figured it would be similar to Devotion, maybe a bit of Redemption? Cavalier, well, I described that back under fighter, it's all about killing the scum and evil of the world. Inquisitor... I don't remember what I was going for? Maybe it's all about redemption? And the Blackguard, well, it's a non-oathbreaking version of the Oathbreaker, it's all about conquest and darkness and death.

Ranger: The ranger is basically the warrior of the wilds, living outside of civilization and protecting it from the very dangerous world which is definitely out there in any sort of fantasy world where there are a lot of adventurers. The archetypal ranger either wields a bow, or two swords. They're also usually secondary spellcasters, with powers similar to those of the druid, which... makes absolutely no logical sense to me, how does a person whose upbringing presumably consists of just knocking around in a forest and learning to survive there suddenly acquire nature magic upon hitting level 2? I don't get it. Their subclasses are simply called Ranger Archetypes, because I guess they ran out of ideas.

• Hunter: The subclass of basically every ranger who goes by the core rules, for reasons that'll become clear. Basically, the Hunter comes with a whole ton of various options about killing monsters, highly customizable. I like that; I would have had one subclass for dual-wielding and another for archery, but the Hunter archetype allows you to be both and focus on the heart of being a ranger rather than a single combat style.
• Beast Master: 5E has made a number of attempts to design a subclass with mechanics for the ranger who has an animal companion. They've all sucked. This core rules subclass and everything they've ever tried to patch it with, it's all been terrible. Just incredibly restrictive; you have a very limited number of options for what kind of animal you can pick, and the rules on the combat utility of your animal companion are so heavy that the pair of you are destined to be almost completely useless. How I'd handle this, well... no rules about animal companions, plain and simple, I'd just encourage GMs to let rangers befriend animals the way you'd befriend any NPC, and with that animal in the party, the GM adjust encounter difficulty to account for the additional party member. Granted... inevitably, any animal companion will simply become too outmatched by the horrible monsters that higher-level characters have to fight, get killed, the ranger will have to get a new one... but maybe that's just the way it goes.
• Gloom Stalker, Horizon Walker, and Monster Slayer: The three Xanathar's ranger archetypes. They sound pretty self-explanatory, and I'm not really interested, I feel like the Hunter basically takes care of how to be any kind of ranger you want to be. But we can't have a class with exactly one subclass, so, I think how I'd handle ranger archetypes would be as follows: the Hunter, which focuses on the combat and the killin', the Stalker, which has more focus on the stealth and wilderness travel parts, and the Archer, with more hunting skills and trick shots.

Rogue: The rogue (formerly "thief", but changed in 3rd Edition because people didn't like it when their group's thief, under the impression they were obligated to do so, stole from their fellow party members... gamers make weird assumptions, sometimes you have to remind them that genocide is bad) is a versatile specialist with a variety of absolutely necessary dungeon-crawling skills that no other class can match. The subclasses are called simply Roguish Archetypes.

• Thief: While every rogue is all about those aforementioned skills -- picking locks, picking pockets, disabling traps, moving stealthily -- this archetype focuses on these skills over combat, along with other stuff like, I dunno, climbing walls.
• Assassin: These guys deal in, well, death. The 5E version specializes in poison and infiltration as well as heavy damage-dealing attacks; I think one or two past versions of the subclass (sometimes a class in its own right) also heavily relied on dark magic. Lots of directions I could take the K&K interpretation of this subclass.
• Arcane Trickster: The third of the three core rogue subclasses; like the Eldritch Knight, this one turns your rogue into a tertiary spellcasting, in this case specializing in illusion and, er, one other thing, I forget.
• Inquisitive, Mastermind, Scout, and Swashbuckler: Xanathar's gives us four new subclasses for the rogue, more than any other. The Inquisitive is like a detective, the Mastermind is best at intrigue and social manipulation, the Scout does roguish things outside of cities, sorta-kinda doubling as a ranger, and the Swashbuckler is your classic dashing swordsman, like a dread pirate or musketeer. I think I'd just start with the core three and the Swashbuckler, I've always liked swashbucklers (technically my first D&D character ever was a swashbuckler, if you count my first Baldur's Gate II character as a D&D character). I also considered inventing two others: the Bounty Hunter, one who excels at tracking and setting traps, I suppose that might be covered by the Scout; and the Scoundrel, who relies on intimidation, thuggery, and torture. ...Needs a better name, all rogues are scoundrels.

Sorcerer: The sorcerer is someone who is born with magical power. When the class was introduced in 3rd Edition, they had the exact same spell list as the wizard; this was altered in the next two editions to better reflect the fact that their magic is something that simply happened to them, rather than something they've learned, making their spell list a little bit more primal than the carefully-crafted magic of the wizard spell list. The subclasses are called Sorcerous Origins, reflecting where they got their powers.

• Wild Magic: The sorcerer gains their magic from the chaotic arcane energies of the universe. Their gimmick is control over probability, as well as the fact that everytime they cast a spell after using one of their special abilities, there's about a 5% chance that something weird happens, that "something weird" being randomly generated by a big chart of 50 different options -- things like opening all doors in your vicinity, turning into a sheep, or, I dunno, maybe your head exploding. Well, I made that last one up; modern D&D is never so merciless. I for one love the Wild Mage as a character type, but I'd imagine it's not much fun to actually play, just too many variables.
• Draconic Bloodline: The sorcerer has power due to being descended from dragons. This was the default explanation for where sorcerers come from back in the old days; in these days, dragon sorcerers not only have breath powers but also very visible dragon scales that provide them with natural armor. Mm, proper noun. Dragon Mage, maybe?
• Divine Soul, Shadow Magic, and Storm Sorcery: The three origins provided by Xanathar's Guide. Magic respectively granted by being a favored soul of deity, something about the Shadowfell, and I'm guessing something elemental? I dig all three of these, and I was at a loss for ideas about any other sorcerous origin other than the main two, so that's good.

Warlock: The newest of the core classes, the warlock gains power by making a bargain with a powerful supernatural entity, who may or may not care about them or seek something in return. The subclasses are called Otherworldly Patrons, and describe what sort of creature the warlock gains their power from.

• The Fiend, The Archfey, and The Great Old One: The three core options. Exactly what they sound like; you might get your power from a powerful demon or devil, or a powerful member of the faerie courts, or an eldritch abomination. So what kind of entities can be responsible for these pacts in the K&K universe? I've made up a couple of fiends for the setting... haven't made a full list yet, don't really remember it, the most prominent being Maldiabos, a gigantic demonic whale inspired by Disney's Monstro... he doesn't seem like the type to make bargains. The archfey, well, I'm going to start with Shakespeare's Oberon and Titania and work from there. And the great old ones, well... I like Cthulhu. As I understand it, Cthulhu is mostly in the public domain (not because he debuted in 1928, but because Lovecraft deliberately made his continuity open-source), but not free to use in tabletop RPGs, the creators of the Call of Cthulhu RPG have exclusive rights to that. However that works.
• The Celestial: One of the new Xanathar's options. Gotta say, that's certainly an interesting way to be a warlock, having your pact be with an angel. I really think when it comes to celestials giving people arcane magic, I don't think we need a Divine Soul sorcerer and a Celestial warlock...
• The Hexblade: Well, this subclass doesn't even describe the patron, it describes the warlock themselves. A hexblade warlock wields a magical sword infused with dark magic. ...I don't like it, I don't like theme-breaking. Though I'm given to understand that the Hexblade is the only warlock subclass powerful enough to actually be worth playing. That being said, the Hexblade's magic comes from a creature from the Shadowfell. I've never really been clear on what kind of creatures come from the Shadowfell, but I definitely had it in mind for coming up with a new, original warlock subclass. Oh! And when I was coming up with the original four warlock subclasses (the core three and one shadow-related one), I decided to give each one a truly evocative and scary name, much like the names of the warlock powers in 4th Edition. Respectively: Conscript of the Legion, Otherworld Scion, Prelate of Cosmic Horror, and Reaper of Gloom. Meh, not really all that good. Maybe we can do better.

Wizard: And finally, the wizard: the geniuses who study hard and prepare their magic every day, the most versatile and awesome spellcasters in the game world. The wizard subclasses in 5E are called Arcane Traditions, but wizard subclasses go way back further than those of the other classes.

• Schools of Magic: Since the earliest editions of D&D, every spell was marked with what school of magic it belonged to: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, and Transmutation. In 1st Edition, these meant nothing. ...Gary Gygax was a weird dude, 1st Edition was absolutely nonsensical, and 2nd wasn't much better. Things started making a little bit more sense in 3rd. But anyway: in 2nd and 3rd Edition, the schools of magic were more than just a bit of flavor text that give you a very, very vague idea of what a spell does. There were a couple of actual rules related to the schools of magic, and wizards, the first of any class, were granted subclasses related to specializing in one of the eight schools, so you could be an Abjurer, a Conjurer, and so on. However, there was absolutely nothing about being a specialist wizard that made you actually special in that school of magic; instead, you were just able to learn and cast more spells per day than a non-specialist wizard, at the cost of being completely unable to learn spells from one or two of the other schools. In the very first TAPAS project that was ever made -- the first video of my Icewind Dale playthrough -- I commented that if it were up to me, I would have made specialist wizards somehow actually be better at their chosen school instead of only noteworthy for what kind of spells they can't use... but I had no idea how to go about that. 5th Edition figured it out, giving each wizard subclass a couple of cool features that make their specialty actually stand out. And I'd follow their lead there; for the sake of the shout-out, I would make the eight schools of magic the eight wizard subclasses.
• War Magic: The one new wizard subclass appearing in Xanathar's Guide. They didn't need any. They had eight. The eight schools of magic. That's... perfectly sufficient. War magic ain't a school. Stupid.
• Other: Here in the wizard section, I'd like to talk about two D&D classes that never appear in the core rules of any edition, but always turn up eventually. First, the Artificer. I believe that in 5th Edition, the Artificer started out as a wizard subclass but eventually got a release as a fully separate class. ...I've tried, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what the deal is with artificers. I think they use arcane magic and apply it to gadgets and magic items, and then fight with that? Or something??? I really can't figure it out. Then we have the Psion; D&D has always had some mild science fiction elements, in the form of otherworldly portals through which aberrant creatures from the cosmic horror genre enter the fantasy world; and the energy from these alternate dimensions can give people psychic powers. In 5th Edition, I don't think they've made the Psion a playable class yet, but several creatures have psionic powers, which use the same mechanics as any other magic, but are marked "psionic" because, allegedly, psionic magic has a few unique rules that apply to it, though... none that I've ever seen. I imagine they're saving that for when the rules on playable psions come out. No intentions for psions or artificers appearing in K&K, just wanted to bring them up.

Almost done, I swear. I remembered something while writing this post today, specifically where I got the idea of calling the default monk subclass simply the "master". It's something I renamed the monk class loooooong ago.

The first fantasy world I ever created, which I worked on throughout my teenage years, was Christalss. And one thing I did once was set up a class list... specifically, 40 different classes, figuring it could be some sort of videogame action RPG where you pick your various special abilities off a menu, like those two Kingdom Hearts games that use the "Command Deck" feature, or, well, D&D's own 4th Edition. That class list, split into four categories of 10 classes each... well, it's got some originality to it and might be a helpful way to come up with some original classes and subclasses.

The four categories... well, they used to have names, but those aren't on the copy of the list I found. As far as I can tell, the first category focuses on direct combat, the second category more on skirmishing in combat, the third on a mix of magic and combat, and the fourth purely on long-range magic. And so... I would like to present the Christalss class list I found -- I'm not sure how long ago I compiled it, just that I've still been using it in Christalss-related material as recently as, hrmm, I think the last time I looked at a Christalss project was in early 2016. I think I'll just present it without any comment or modification, and then we can think about it later.

Category 1

• Soldier: Expert in all weapons and shields; very accurate.
• Knight: Armored warrior with some divine magic.
• Sentinel: Expert in armor, stone wall.
• Cavalier: Dragon and demon killer, resists elemental damage.
• Executioner: Massive damage dealer with huge weapons.
• Undead Hunter: Area of effect attacker, best vs. undead.
• Vermin Chaser: Low damage disabler, best vs. giant bugs.
• Berserker: Fast, unskilled brawler, often unarmed.
• Crusader: Anti-magic warrior.
• Centurion: Speedy reach-weapon user with arcane magic.

Category 2

• Ranger: Fast and stealthy warrior, some nature magic.
• Thief: Sneaky with lots of skills.
• Archer: Ranged specialist, some nature magic.
• Swashbuckler: Acrobat, stuntman, swordsman.
• Assassin: Backstabber and poisoner with dark powers.
• Trapmaster: Drops mundane and magical traps.
• Lurker: Stays hidden, charging massive damage powers.
• Blade Dancer: Dances to evade and defend, some arcane magic.
• Mechanic: Inventor, tinkerer, and artificer.
• Master: Unarmed warrior with elemental bending attacks.

Category 3

• Priest: Healer, warrior, and caster of the gods.
• Druid: Healer, warrior, and caster of nature.
• Mystic: Magician and warrior.
• Alchemist: Fights with potions and other creations.
• Transmuter: Modifies the environment to fight.
• Shapeshifter: Changes into magical or natural forms.
• Totem Keeper: Summons natural creatures to fight.
• Beastmaster: Fights alongside animal companions.
• Warlock: Fast-paced zapper and disabler, some melee capability.
• Bard: Musical controller, buffer, disabler.

Category 4

• Wizard: Widest variety of spells, from a book (mostly area).
• Sorcerer: More primal, wild spells, from blood or breath (mostly single-target).
• Conjurer: Summons spirits to battle.
• Necromancer: Spells of life, death, and the undead.
• Protector: Powerful healing and abjuration.
• Oracle: Divination and illusion spells.
• Psychic: Unstable and scary mental powers.
• Prankster: Humorous and pop-culture laden magic.
• Spellslinger: Speedy spellcaster capable of occasional melee.
• Wild Mage: Huge and fast spells, off-chance something weird happens.

Okay, I do have one comment, that being that I was sure there was an Elementalist class in there somewhere... I must have replaced it with something else, apparently having had a better idea, figured Elementalist was the one that would have to go in order for there to still be exactly 10 in each group.

Been thinkin' about Christalss since yesterday; Naty and I were talking about a whole bunch of our projects, those that aren't important or developed enough yet, I decided to add every one we could think of do our to-do list, under "Appendix G: super-low-priority projects", including Christalss. I was thinking, we have Keys & Kingdoms, we have Whirlwind, we have Irregular Fantasy, I really don't think we need any additional high-fantasy worlds to our name, but the way I see it, maybe Christalss can be another Keys & Kingdoms campaign setting just like Cosmos. So... yeah, I'm gonna go find the world-building info I have on Christalss, there's a bit of it here in my computer and probably quite a bit more in an actual folder I've been carrying around for a decade, see which bits of it can be filtered into the overall Keys & Kingdoms multiverse. So, yeah, this will be an eight-part blog series!