When I have designed campaign worlds in the past, I start with the gods. The personality and style of the gods directly informs the character of the setting.
Consider the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance. Sure, both are primarily recognized through their respective DM-PC mascots (Eliminister/Drizzt and Raistlin/Heroes of the Lance). Though these characters are mortal, their antagonists are often deities or otherworldly powers. Takhisis. Bane. Bhaal. Sometimes there are “helpful” deities as well. Paladine. Mystra. Clearly, a core component of these ultra-successful settings are well characterized and recognizable deities.
There is a strong literary precedent for this kind of thing. The mythology of the ancient world is full of gods interacting with heroes, or even having adventures themselves. Greek mythology. Egyptian Mythology. Summarian Mythology. All of these religions have anthropomorphic deities - powerful yes, but prone to many of the same faults as human beings. Sacred Soap Operas if you will. This is great fuel a game of fantasy, legend, and myth-making.
Terra Incognita will be sparsely detailed by design. If you prepare too much, the directions the game might grow will be limited. I want to believe that you can and should come up with a limited cosmology in a sand box game, if only for the purpose of verisimilitude. You don’t necessarily need to hand your players a list of gods and say “pick one.” I think you might throw out some ideas though.
I’ll be posting some of the powers that I plan to introduce to Terra Incognita. These detailed descriptions are notes only - I will not introduce that much information into the game. Just cause you imagine it one way now, you must leave room for things to go in another directions. That is the Tao of the sandbox.
Chaz
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