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Need help... World rules

Hey, I'm 17 and I'm writing my first fantasy series. I'm having a hard time defining clear rules for my world.
What I have so far is this -- The universe is created by a powerful being known throughout different worlds as different titles and names.( For the world my story takes place in it's known as the The Origin) The Origin created the universe in the form of a game, with the ultimate goal is peace. Every world is made with the time limit of Ages and there are a total of 8 Ages in the life of a world. In this "Game" each Age is a new beginning brought on by a cataclysmic event that cleanses the world.

There are 3 rules to the game.
1. The Resources of the game must be kept to a certain number. (meaning that humans who die must be reincarnated into new forms of life, magic must stay consistent,etc.)
2. The players must not know of the game for it will change their choices.
3.If you cannot win within 8 Ages the world will be forever cleansed.

The Origin created a group of beings to control the game and keep balance called the Ethereal.( powerful magical beings)

The world itself: In my world there are many magical creatures and races. The Ethereal, the demons, dragons, and the mortals plus other minor races. The mortals would be like humans but all of them have magical powers known as Traits.
 
So, who are the players? If they aren't people (who are resources) then are they gods? Who are the protagonists of this series?
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
The criterion I use for a world is to see whether a compelling story jumps from the pages. The lore here sounds very interesting, but it sounds more like deep mythology than a world and a story. It sounds like the big reveal in the middle of a Final Fantasy game, and that can be excellent if I see a character wrapped up in it. I don't see that character yet. I see a world in which people are living their mundane ordinary lives and having their wars with no idea about the deep mythology behind their world.

The heroic party has to circle the world in an effort to achieve peace, or else the world will be destroyed. Great, maybe.

It would be easier to set the tenor if we had an idea about the technological and political sophistication of the "players" in this world, as well as a quick picture of the people involved. Now that you have an outline of what's going on in the deep-background, we need to see a clear picture of the foreground and work at tying them together.
 
Sorry it took so long for me to reply, i can only go online during classes... Devor your out look was completely right the players don't know of the game yet and it's stays like that for while. The way I see the story following is like this: the players are all the races of my story like the gods, mortals (humans) , dragons , and demons ( the list goes on). They are living in a world where these organizations called guilds are common and almost everyone is apart of them. These guilds are groups of people that come together for the same purpose be it a trading guild or whatever else they want. The people in these guilds work together and are like family.
They live their lives as anyone normally would but the tension between races makes it hard to even think of peace ever happening. The demons exist in a tainted realm that was cursed by the gods for their lack of loyality and thus the demons aren't allowed to leave this realm for too long or it slowly kills them. In there search for a way to the realm of the gods they have to take over human bodies to extend their time in other realms of the world. This makes the demons and human natural enemies. Then the condescending gods believe they are above everything and everyone(because they are) this has stopped the humans from worshipping them. Add in internal conflict with kingdoms and wars between races the game is going pretty well.
The Ethereal over look this game which is other peoples' lives and try to keep it within the rules i posted before.

My main characters come in as part of a trading guild and are sucked into war and death. They learn of this game through a man cursed to live through all the games for his crime of revealing it's existense in his own Age. They try to get the world to head toward peace but it's not working for too reasons.
1. they know of the game so the peace they want is not natural
2. the world is at war with itself
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
My main characters come in as part of a trading guild and are sucked into war and death. They learn of this game through a man cursed to live through all the games for his crime of revealing it's existense in his own Age. They try to get the world to head toward peace but it's not working for too reasons.
1. they know of the game so the peace they want is not natural
2. the world is at war with itself

Who would punish a man for revealing information by giving him the chance to tell more people? It sounds ominous, listening to someone talk about the game, but Fantasy readers can be smarter than average. You need to work that one out. I would have thought one of the Ethereals might be a better opening. Maybe one of them has a falling out with the others or starts to care for people in this Age, or is for whatever reason trying to break the rules.

You do raise an interesting point, and that's the history of previous ages. You can and should find a way to make the previous ages relevant, even apart from the context of the game. Maybe there are ruins or artifacts or secrets buried within them which might have interest. If the last age was caught cheating, then maybe there could be just one large big ruins which had a legend of having wiped out or absorbing all of the other nations to achieve their peace. Since they were obliterated for cheating, you could create a scenario where the heroes get exactly the wrong message.

I'm not sure how you plan to get around the problem that knowing about the game is cheating. I keep thinking about Final Fantasy X, a very bizarre game filled with these big reveals. But I keep thinking that they discover the big reveal in the very end and then have to slay all the Ethereal and sever the world's connection to the people running the game and prevent the impending "change of Age" in order to save the day, with some moral that wars can be about standing up for yourself and putting down evil while peace can as easily be about cowardice and surrender. But that's just me.
 
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Who would punish a man for revealing information by giving him the chance to tell more people? It sounds ominous, listening to someone talk about the game, but Fantasy readers can be smarter than average. You need to work that one out. I would have thought one of the Ethereals might be a better opening. Maybe one of them has a falling out with the others or starts to care for people in this Age, or is for whatever reason trying to break the rules.
That is true, i should rethink that part. At first i was going to have him be a mute character but then i thought about how to fit that into the story and it was a struggle. The ruins was a great idea and i could use something from another Age for information about the game. The secret of the game should be recorded somewhere but wouldnt the Ethereal have detroyed it? I'm thinking that a few pieces of information slipped by them and the few that know of the game are hidden from the Ethereal working behind the scenes.( is that a good way of going about that?) Plus there is another enemy to the game and the players. They are known as the Devourers. These are beings that have a hunger like a bottomless pit ( while at least the younger ones hunger is never gone) they can eat anything be it magic or matter or souls but each can only eat one type of thing. So far i have one that eats magic, one that eats non magical matter, one that eats souls, and another who feeds on emotion. Each of them are younger Devourers and can't stop their seemingly endless hunger. They are humiod with gray skin and have mouths on their palms and sharp teeth that can break almost anything. They are one of my sub plots and do a lot of damage to the world. When they start eating human souls and magic the rules of the game are being affected. ( They aren't from the world and are not outside influence in the game and are stopping the cycle of life and death in that world, plus magic is slowly being absorded and not let back out into the world.) Anything you can find that doesn't add up please point out.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
The secret of the game should be recorded somewhere but wouldnt the Ethereal have detroyed it? I'm thinking that a few pieces of information slipped by them and the few that know of the game are hidden from the Ethereal working behind the scenes.( is that a good way of going about that?)

Sooner or later you're going to have to add complexity to the Ethereals. They can't all be single-minded. That doesn't mean one of them has to turn against the others, but they have to argue about something. Off the top of my head, they might argue about whether the Age is ready to end and which method they should deploy in wiping it out. Maybe some Ages are "closer" and more worthy and allowed to have survivors or leave relics to influence the next age. Maybe some have to be obliterated completely. Maybe they can only use each land-wiping technique once....

Which leads into the next point, you should reveal the big reveal in layers, not all at once. You might have remnants from multiple ages. The last one could've been very close and left survivors. The one before that? Cheaters, obliterated for finding out. That kind of thing. With each new discovery you bring the readers closer to understanding why the Ages are being wiped out. Perhaps some of them have writings about the Ethereal and talk of threats or fears.

Maybe one of the Ethereals did do the turncoat thing but it was in a previous age that was wiped out, and now that Ethereal is dead/missing/imprisoned/repentant member of society/etc. It could be recorded somewhere. That kind of thing.


Plus there is another enemy to the game and the players. They are known as the Devourers. These are beings that have a hunger like a bottomless pit ( while at least the younger ones hunger is never gone) they can eat anything be it magic or matter or souls but each can only eat one type of thing. So far i have one that eats magic, one that eats non magical matter, one that eats souls, and another who feeds on emotion. Each of them are younger Devourers and can't stop their seemingly endless hunger. They are humiod with gray skin and have mouths on their palms and sharp teeth that can break almost anything. They are one of my sub plots and do a lot of damage to the world. When they start eating human souls and magic the rules of the game are being affected. ( They aren't from the world and are not outside influence in the game and are stopping the cycle of life and death in that world, plus magic is slowly being absorded and not let back out into the world.) Anything you can find that doesn't add up please point out.

It's not necessarily bad, but now it really is starting to feel like a video game. You can't actually reach Final Fantasy heights in a novel. Maybe in a lengthy, well-planned series. You need to leave yourself space to develop the characters and you can't have them fighting new monsters at every turn. You need to look at the foreground, the characters and their main setting and their main day-to-day conflicts, and then decide whether or not there's really going to be room for more. You have enough going on in the deep background for the moment, you really need to look at your characters.
 

TWErvin2

Auror
A questions/comments:

What would be the definition of peace? All the races living in harmony. Or, what if one race or a coalition of races banded together to wipe out/conquer the other races? With them under the victor's thumb sufficiently (or eliminated), then there wouldn't be war. Is an absence of war considered peace?

Also, the scope of 8 ages for the game to proceed is pretty massive for a novel, and what will the reader 'know' of this 'game'? Will it be revealed as the reader reads (through novels in the series)? If so, this can make things pretty tricky for anybody to pick up a novel in the middle of the series and understand what's going on and why. Not impossible, but quite difficult.

Just a few thoughts.

Terry
 

mirrorrorrim

Minstrel
Your world sounds really interesting! I think I'd really enjoy reading a story like this.

I think Devor brings up a lot of good points. Instead of repeating anything he said, I'd like to focus on what, to me, seems to be the key component to your end structure: the game.

You have three great rules, but I'd like to see them fleshed out a bit more, particularly with application to the story.

I'm going to write this based on the assumption that the Origin is omniscient, in addition to being omnipotent. In other words, I'm assuming she is completely aware of everything that transpires, and has the power to directly intervene at any instant. I will also assume that, by and large, he rarely exercises his power. Instead, for her own purposes, she leaves the duty of maintenance of her universes in the hands of the Ethereal.

If any of these assumptions are inaccurate, please correct me.

The Ethereal, then, are basically the referees of the game, and, like all referees, I presume that they have their limitations. This is implied by the existence of the Devourers. Here we come to our first conflict—clearly, the game does not end if a rule is broken, but for a rule to have any real meaning, it must have consequences. What are the consequences for the first rule being broken, and whom are these consequences directed towards? What of the second? And, if the first two rules can be broken, is it possible to break the third one, too, and have a world without peace live beyond its eighth age? I can see these answers going in several directions.

It seems clear that none of the players are capable of breaking any of the three rules on their own. Thus, they must have been written for others outside of the game. Who are these others, and why would any of them want to go against the will of Origin? The most obvious group, of course, is the Ethereal. Is there, as Devor suggested, friction between different members of the order? Do some believe the rules are outdated, and need revision? Have some grown to love the players too much to let them struggle alone? Have some grown to resent them for thanklessly usurping all the Ethereals' time and attention?

Another obvious group that are outside the bounds of the game are former players themselves. What actually happens when a world wins the game? Do they become immortal? Do they become Ethereals? Or do they merely go on living in an endless cycle of reincarnation, never freeing themselves from its karmic wheel? Can victors from one world travel to worlds that have not yet won? Could the Devourers themselves be former winners? Is there any reason one group of winners would want to stop anyone else from winning the game?

If you keep them, I think the Devourers will need to be a key component to the story, not just a subplot. Are the Devourers a cause, or a consequence of one of the rules being broken? Are they there because the man told others about the game? Are they simply the cleansing force that arrives once the eight ages are over, who have arrived a little too soon? If they're not the first, then how (if at all) are they punished for breaking the first rule of the game? And are the players in any way compensated because of this imbalance (for example, by being given extra time, help, or knowledge)? If they are not a normal part of the game, then why are things changing, and what will it all lead up to? Is the game itself going to end and be replaced with something else?

I think this last question is the one that needs to be answered first: are your world parameters constants, or can they change? If they are going to change, then your story eventually needs to be about these changes. That means you'll need to firmly establish what the nature of your world is relatively early, including reasons why the world either should or should not continue to exist as it now does. Unless it's a long series (which, for your first book, I would discourage), this means it can't be a surprise reveal near the end. Then you'll have to establish why it changes—what happened to disrupt a system that had been going on for thousands of years, and what was the motivation for such action. This can be revealed a little later, but you'll need to be hinting at it pretty early on. Finally, you'll need to describe how the world is different than when you began, which can come as late as you want, depending on the effect you're going for. If you want the Bold New World vibe, you can even wait till the very end, or not even describe this much at all.

If things aren't going to change, then your story has several other options: it can be about how it the world is preserved, which is basically the same process as the above, minus the last step; it can be about discovering the nature of the world itself—if you choose that path, you'll want to have as few exceptions to the rules as possible, meaning you'll probably need to either make the Devourers fit within the three-rule framework or cut them out entirely; finally, it doesn't need to be about the world at all, but if you choose this, you'll need to find a way to keep your world from crowding out your actual story. If you choose this last option, it might be best not to directly reveal your universe framework to the reader at all. You would know about all of these rules, and your events could be shaped by them, but they would always need to stay in the background of the actual story. Obviously, this would require you to entirely redesign the nature of your story.

The last option doesn't mean you need to abandon your original plot forever. Tolkien had much of Middle Earth envisioned when he created The Hobbit, and I'm sure that's a lot of what gives that story the depth and power it has. But at its core, The Hobbit is a simple adventure to discover lost treasure. When this basic story proved successful, Tolkien was then able to expound on many of his deeper world themes in The Lord of the Rings.

I think simple adventures are a great gateway into deeper, more complex worlds, and are also a lot more approachable for both reader and writer. If successful, they can easily be followed up with something grander. The simplicity of the first serves to amplify to the majesty of the latter.

At least, that's my opinion!

*looks at post* Wow, this got a little out of hand, didn't it? I'd revise it, but...

TL;DR

:p
 
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Devor you are total right when you say its time to add some depth to the Ethereal, in fact i was going to bring that up on the previous post but i was out of time. You have some great ideas that have helped me greatly, to tell the truth i wasnt even thinking of how the past ages would influence each other and that is something i'll really have to develop on now. The series is planned to be fairly long but if i'm going to do this the way i invision it then it's worth the time and effort. The characters and their everyday lives are a major influence on the plot and i glad you pointed that out.
TWErvin2-- What is peace? A great question to think about, what is the meaning of peace for the game? The 8 Ages are like 8 different games, when ever you play a board game you take away the pieces before you start again, this is the same. This series is about one Age out of the 8 i havent thought of if this is the winning Age or not but its not going to go 8 Ages.(I agree that would be massive.) To make each book with enough stand alone will be diffcult but what's the point of me putting the ideas together if i quit when it gets more diffcult, right?
mirrororrim-- Umm yeah just wow. Your ideas are wonderful, the former players idea was great. I can use that to fit in characters i was thinking of droping and it's perfect for the Devourers. The Devourers do have a greater affect on the story then i first thought of so i agree they will have to be more in the forefront then a subplot. Can the world change? Most definitely, i haven't decided the end of this as of yet but that question is one of the first i need to answer.
I have few characters i would like to talk about but i'm out of time right i'll have it up next post. Thanks guys you really are a big help.:D
 
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