Design Goals for Rolling Up a Sorq of Your Very Own

 SORQ anti-canon Oops all tables all the time idea

All of SORQ can be generated procedurally at table or in mini-games. Encourage sharing DM duties, rolling up new regions and springing them fully stocked and brimming with science-fantasy early-modern bureaucratic adventure.


Generate world: session 0 with full table, all players and DMs

Detail regions: each tableer takes homework, responsibility for rolling up one region;

or table picks one region of interest to start with, and the Lifetime DM will begin to stock this home region. 


Planetary regions come in bands around the globe.

Equatorial sea, islands Weather, ships, sea monsters, shipping lanes

Shore lands — civilized in seven conventional regions (tables of names).

City-states of note: metropole, large, ordinary poleis (tables of population and notables) [the poleis will receive substantial detail]

Hinterlands inland from coastal poleis:

, estates, reserves, parks, underworld access lands

Scattered archaic and Abated sites, from the many species and occupations of Sorq before the current batch of species, and the current old, old, very old civilization.  


Ruins, barbizans, remote temples and martial wizarding establisments.


Villages, villas, exurbs, retreats, monasteries, sports lodges, military centers.

The Northern and Southern Discontinuities: the Muration

ways over or around the Muration, ostentatious Wall-top towers and prominences reaching well above the atmosphere: your polis tax money is supporting that one, you know, are you happy about that? 

Boreal Waste, northern polar landmass: monsters, rogue wizards, Wyrm, glaciers, ice creatures, winter wonderland, serious fuckin mountains. 

The Wyrm, what if polymorphose perversity but also weaponized. Records grudges and scores settled using modular epigenetic memory: 'We call this new talon-arm "General Staff Order 41 in Re Wyrm Operations'". Our offspring shall use this talon-arm, and their offspring and clones and buds, and so on until vengeance function registers replete in every wyrmling's third heart," the third, backup heart traditionally dedicated to such cognition. 
Wyrm tables.

Means of travel, settlements, food, customs, surface-breaching underworlds...

Austral waste, southern polar landmass: the lich principalities. thaumaturgic industrial hell; volcanism and the legacy of extractive volcanism; polution, smog, soot, despair, more skeletons.

zone of most frequent actual military action: battle/raid/retreat/covert strike/defeat encounters

Undead magics, Lich/mummy/ghost gestalt relations, 
Can I Animate That? [Of course you can, did you see that skeleton allosaurus? Can you control it, more important question; because the answer being "no" is how you get Lich Principalities]


Tables for names, features, products, religions, celebrities....


Chargen, still session 0. 

Each player and DM rolls up three characters to generate social context of the party:

social circle: family connections; friends; old partners; old lovers; patrons... this needs muuuch detailing,

rivalries

Old Biz Yet Undone,

Debts aand quests

Bequests, treasures, and property out of town, from family/academy/initiatic society/blood lottery.

Rumors (fleeting) and current events:

Vibe in the region: tension rising, falling, slack

Strange things from the sea / the Wall / underdark / underworlds / temples / moons...

Turmoil, scandal, unrest, renewal in:

home polis / praefecture / satrapy / vicegerency / entire Aequatorial League


Tensions, Strange things, and Turmoil/Unrest feed different kinds of reaction tables:

people are scared, introspective, sad, ironic, pious, extroverted, leap at new biz, eager for risks, withdrawn, demand debts paid, in hiding....


Regional problems: these include: crime, decadence, deprecation of values, screaming at nightmares, extremist cults, fanatical militia agitation, riled-up sword-dorks;

dangerous animals, 

[rogue/bands/migrating/invading inimical sophonts] skull-frogs, beastmen, Nexus ecstatics, manslaughter birds, faulty automata, galavanting trees, free-roaming ghosts, cruel and corrupt retainers of rulers....


Problem magnitude (use this to determine how many and how ornery are the skull-frogs, how often do the cultists take their party to the streets, etc.)

0 great shape, boringly safe, remember those manslaugher birds? they were magnificent really.

1: things amiss because attention is elsewhere, resources or engagement slipping (check Malfeasance & Betrayal table)

2: the country is disturbed, more and worse encounters, more frequent checks

3: insurgency, minor plague or drought, wanton political oppression

4: full war, the moons are failing, underworlds are breaching the surface and becoming mere dungeons, mass revolution.


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