This post is not really to do with videogames, or anything else, but I wanted to post this up for some critique, and wasn’t going to go out of my way to find somewhere else to put it. If you’re interested, you can continue after the break.
If you wish to critique it, I’m more interested in the general ‘feel’ of the piece, instead of the specifics of spelling and grammar. I’m especially interested in opinions on the overview of the Atlant Campaign, as it is probably the most involved part of the whole thing. Probably needs a bit more talk about the world itself, is my only opinion (that I’m going to share).
Introduction to Dreams of Atlant.
This book contains a collection of short-ish stories, focused on various characters. Each one is completely self contained, but the stories are presented in the order that I believe makes them read the easiest for readers not familiar with the world of Atlant, or the various characters that comprise the stories in this volume.
As you might of guessed by the book’s title, Dreams of Atlant, the stories presented within this book are not explicitly canonical, and focus on the characters and how they perceive the world around them, and the people in it. To aid in the comprehension of each story, a short piece on the perceiving character introduces each story, introducing the basic facts about the character, and more importantly, how they live in the ‘real’ world.
The remainder of this introduction is a piece on the history of Atlant, both from a real world point of view, and information on the setting itself.
Atlant was originally conceived early in 2004, as the setting for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that was going to (originally) be run over 2005. To get a ‘feel’ for the world, I started to write a story, the enigmatic Tales of (or as it is occasionally known, A Tale of) Atlant that was primary used as a vehicle for exploring the world, and more importantly (to me) the cities and cultures of a fairly vast area for the PCs to explore.
It was heavily inspired by a number of different fictional sources, but largely by the worlds of Anime/Manga, and to a lesser degree, Japanese Mythology as a whole (but only vaguely, there are more Nordic/Greek/Roman influences than obvious Classical Japanese ones). More importantly were the influences of various Videogames, especially the “old school” RPGs, such as Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, the Gold Box series, and the Japanese RPGs, especially FFs 6, 7, 8 & 11.
The most unexpected influence, that vastly shaped the world in a serious way, was a fair number of assorted High School anime that I watched. These were probably a driving force behind the evolution of the ‘Academy City’ at Abilene, which is undoubtedly the most fleshed out location in the whole setting. Originally a school created by one of the greatest Magi ever to live, eventually it grew a city and town around it, and had become the place for young Nobles (and the vast number of less privileged students) to learn various combat techniques, strategy, and magic.
Fast forward two years, and 200 – 300 pages, later, we finally get around to starting the Atlant campaign – we never really get a chance to finish it, but after figuring out that we’d never finish it, I write a canon ending to it, which I’m unsure if I ever shared (before now). In this, the PCs are students at the impractically big (from a logical point of view, but it had already become ingrained as an integral part of the setting by then) Academy of Abilene. They partake in a number of apparently simple adventures early on in their careers, but stumble upon a map to a secret temple where they accidentally get caught up in a war between the gods. (I never said it was groundbreaking story wise)
They find out, that to save the world from the God of Chaos from becoming all powerful and doing random (but evil) things to every mortal being, they have to travel to the Isle of the Gods, and stop him from completing the ritual that will allow him to absorb the power of the other gods.
So they make their way there, fighting a ton of dudes, and then fight a ton more dudes getting to the top of the world (it was the top of an insanely high mesa, that was the tallest point on the planet) where they confronted him and eventually defeated him, but at a ‘terrible cost’. To be able to defeat him properly, they needed to complete the ritual, and destroy him before the divine essence finished collecting itself, and he became impossibly strong.
The story that inspired this (which has been heavily modified, and is here as Sami’s story) was set immediately after this encounter, in another instance of the world. Once I had written that story, I was inspired to write the remainder of the stories in the collection, each one focusing upon how a character perceives themselves and the world around them.