Dev Blog #2 - The Number 4

Forgive the rather confusing title, it will make sense, I promise.

The number 4 is a sacred number to those who in habit Easthalen,for many many reasons. There are 4 continents, the gods are arranged around groups of 4 etc.

This is the rule I’m having to keep in mind when working out the details of the game world. This is not a hard and fast rule.

So far there is :

4 Continents (major islands not counted and neither are the minor islands). This will have a major impact on the size of the world. The ratio of land to water is about 50/50, but this does not take into account the as yet undesigned minor and major islands. As I’m adopting what is called a “bottom-up” approach to design here
Each continent has approx 4 major powers
4 Major political factions
4 Major cities, although of them is now, shall we say, missing
The gods are arranged with 4 Major deitys for each Divine Faction, each of them having 4 minor deity under their command

The only major point I’ve yet to decide on is regarding race. So far i have two options:

Only have one major race, like say humans, being native to the world. This does not stop other races being in the game, just rare. The explanation being that they are stable mutants or have come from other realms
Have several major races(Back to the 4 again)

So far I’m leaning to the first option, but this needs to be decided and added to the brief before much more can be done, as it will shape the world and it’s denzins

The design reason for this approach is that it helps me to focus and cut down what is needed, plus it does give me flexibility if I feel that say more gods are needed or less major cities.

World Brief can be found here

Latest copy of Setting/rules can be found here