KhorasForum

I always use the metric system when playing, as I'm used to it.
Since I mostly read English sourcebooks, much of my knowledge about the rules is feet-based, like movement and range.

Unfortunately, the 5-feet increments translate into increments of 1.5 meter, which is a bit awkward.
But when describing any distance or size, I use the metric system.

Converting from feet to meter would just add an operation that does not add to the game - in the best case.
In the worst case, someone miscalculates and acts on the "wrong" number.

Why do I say it does not add anything?
- my game world might have a medieval tech level, but that's it. There are gods that were not worshipping in historical medieval times, and there is magic that historically never existed. So I don't feel too obliged to historical measurement.
- if the characters were born and raised in the game world, I don't think it makes sense to use a system that feels unusual. Might be an interesting story aspect if the come from somewhere else. But for me,  "the creature is about 10 feet tall"..."ok, just a moment, that's 3 meters...wow" is not how a medieval person perceives a medieval world.

15 years later, here's my idea of the role of assassins 
I'm not saying it's the "right" way for all worlds - it is what adds most flavor as I like it.
And what I look forward to discuss with you guys.


Assassination is integral part of a system.
Murder is illegal - even if reality might mean no plaintiff, no judge.
Where killing someone is accepted by might making right, the term "murder" does not apply, as I understand it.

Assassination...is different.
I see two ways:

1) in a system of opposing nobles/guilds/..., in the past too often rivalry escalated into open violence, so now, in a cynically pragmatic way, assassination is the less violent solution.
In such a system, between the factions there would be rules - spoken or unspoken - and if I comply with them, assassinating me would justify retaliation, so it's not done lightly.
As soon as I break the rules (which might include getting too powerful), I'm no longer protected by them, so assassinating me would be generally accepted.

In some way, assassination is a balancing factor, and accepted as such (at least unofficially, between those who know what's going on).
It might even be viewed as a courtless law system. Not necessarily a fair one...I might be framed, and the rules and their interpretations might be arbitrary.
Just like I could be framed into prison or death sentence in any corrupt system.

Hey after all, there's a reason why no roleplay takes place in a constitutional democracy with checks and balances and all the boring stuff 

2) Religious assassins would be just another continuation of diplomacy by other means.
I.e. it is directed outward, as a display of power.
Dying after the assassination would be the highest deed the assassin could imagine in life. He might stab a political leader on stage, and offer no resistance to be hacked to pieces by the guards.
Actually assassins could even be expected to be this kind of "one hit wonder"...the seeming inefficiency is more than offset by the terror this disregard for their own life inspires.

I think there's a scene in the Conan movie where The Evil Guy just handwaves at some followers, which instantly jump from a cliff.
THIS display of power, plus taking out an important figure.


Come to think of it, the video game Skyrim features a pretty cool third idea:
Religious and pretty close to the idea of a guild with assassins for hire.

But I never claimed to give a complete list of what's possible 

Thanks for your answer - and wow, that's the coherency and consistency for which I love this site 😎
Everything fits together.

This is another question about how you see/handle it, rather than about what's "right/wrong"...and maybe no one besides me sees any point in asking 😅

I'm wondering who, if anyone, would use the term "Khoras(ian)" within the game world.

Would "why on Khoras" be the equivalent of "why on Earth"?
Would it be a technical term for the planet, used by astronomers, unknown to commoners?
Would it be an eponym? Named after whom/what?

Or is it more like a metagame term that does not appear within the game world?

Well, more precisely I'd compare roleplaying to improvisational theatre.
And while I've certainly watched great movies and plays about delicate topics, there are good reasons not to recommend those topics for an improv setting.

After all, acting within the setting requires a consensus about the setting, which is much harder for "evil" or dystopian settings, lest they turn into shallow parodies or "because I can"-actions without in-character motivation.

Reading this topic again made me remember some ideas I'd like to share:

Maybe 10 years ago, some friends and fellow roleplayers and me went on a hiking trip, and late at night around campfire, we had a discussion about moral values of Orcs.

I claimed that "the history of Orc and Men is a history of misunderstanding".
I elaborated that Orcs are a bit like wolves...they have deadly weapons, so among themselves they develop a culture of NOT using them lethally.
Survival of the at-least-not-that-stupid...

So the Orcs have developed almost a language of its own in ritualized presentation of weapons. One way of holding a club could be translated as "I accept your claim on this territory, but will pass through it as I please", another gesture as "nobody defies my will".
Unfortunately, the rudest gesture of all Orcish gestures is - waving a bare hand. An Orc will translate it as "I do not consider you a warrior".
Unfortunately for those Humans that thought they'd be polite.

But Orcish reputation for attacking helpless travellers in wild fury has now been established as Human history.

I often thought that news/rumors about successful Huridian translation would make for a great adventure hook - or for a great background for a "sequel setting" some decades later!

I guess if Duthelm made serious progress, or even succeeded at translating, this might trigger a huge war, either with Duthelm attacking with new force, or by a huge anti-Duthelm alliance attacking.

Or rather the plot of the hapless commoner/thief/... stumbling upon a vital key to translation, not recognizing it as what it is, ending up hunted by agents from countless factions?

I guess if I was to implement such a setting, I would use the Mandalar (like I often would)....they guard the secret without knowing it, and now just about everyone wants to invade them...

Khoras is a world full of inspiration

Wow, thanks a lot, this is really informative, once more I'm deeply impressed by the coherency of your creation, and how it all fits together, even if I don't grasp it at first glance (to be honest, often not even after 10+ years of glancing).

Should you ever need an idea for a future spotlight, I totally encourage you to incorporate this into the site, as I did not find such an exhaustive overview.

And I had similar thoughts about classification, I already considered asking about the classification as lesser versus greater race.
I noticed some lesser races seem to be variants (aberrations) of other races rather than races of their own, and while I admit that it doesn't really matter (after all, lesser versus greate race seems to be a metagame classification rather than an in-game aspect), I did e.g. not quite understand what makes ogres a greater race, and orcs a lesser one...numbers? Whether they have their own society or blend into other races' societies? Maybe a bit of all, and yet a lot more to consider?
Also right now there's a page for lesser races and a page for greater races, plus a page for an overview with a list of some of either.

While in itself, the classification lesser/greater would not have been important enough for me to really be an issue, I would really be interested in reading anything you publish about origin and classification of races

I think I forgot to consider the "single genius explanation", which seems to be a common narrative aspect (not only) in fantasy.

If as an analogy, we assume that Alrem Evarel combined the genius and ideas of Newton, Planck, Einstein, Heisenberg and others in a single mind, in a scientific background struggling with Copernicus, it seems plausible that nobody else understood his ideas, so they never became actual scientific theory.

I got the flat Khoras belief from http://www.khoras.net/chat/index.php?topic=28.0 where you stated that most commoners, serfs and mariners believe Khoras is flat.
I thought it was a bit odd, considering that over 2000 years ago, the Greeks already tended towards a round earth.

But then again, when I say "the Greeks", it probably actually means a few philosophers/scientists, not the commoners (although I don't know for sure).
Also Khoras had some tremendous backlash, the Sundering, which goes far beyond any real-world equivalent, so I considered a widespread flat Khoras belief somewhat conceivable.


I think what fascinates me most:
While the general technology on Khoras is obviously (more or less) medieval, there are some achievements that even go beyond what modern science could achieve, by means of magic.
Like the creation of the secambru, the morphians or the phellysians.
Or the stiffening. It seems beyond plagues available to modern biological warfare.

And since "Magic is a force of Nature. Like gravity or inertia, it is bound by physical laws as are all aspects of the universe" (as stated on the article on magic), In my imagination, those creation acts were scientific achievements, based on profound scientific knowledge.
I tend to assume that if a modern scientists was to examine Khorasian life forms, he would find an equivalent to real-world DNA, and live would be based on cells, even if nobody on Khoras knows that.

So I just imagined that to create the secambru, you would need knowledge as sophisticated as CRISPR or the like.


While this might not be of any interest for most campaigns, the implications are totally intriguing for me as a World Builder.


And of course this would be knowledge of the past, which now is lost.
I just wondered how much is lost, and what remains.
And how it would differ from historical reference, which has no such advanced knowledge in the past (unless this knowledge is lost in a way we don't know about it....but of course many cultures had an astounding knowledge on astronomy, line the Maya).


But none of what I assumed, wondered and imagined is a necessary conclusion within Khoras ;-)

Just wondering if you got a more recent number...would be interesting to see how it developed.

Also I'm not sure if I understand the challenge of counting words...with all html files in a directory (or its subdirectories), I think it shouldn't be too difficult via bash/cygwin.
Getting those files in a directory in the first place... don't know about that...

But maybe now, 13 years later, a Notepad++ plugin could do it...

Assuming the term race as "defined as any intelligent species which has developed language and culture" I'm uncertain about which (if any) races came into existence "naturally" on Khoras and before the sundering.

Elves, dwarves, ogres and others "splintered" from humans due to massive radiation after the sundering.
Other races where created/bred by human magic (i e. not "naturally"), like saurians, baenites, mandalar, secambru.
Not sure about vaullians, or saridians.

And some races came from other planets or dimensions like the xorian.

This seems to be summed up as "Originally, only humans lived in the world."


But at least one race seems to have developed on Khoras independent from humans and before the sundering - the sarthak/trossoli, as they are described as the only race not to change their calendar after the sundering.
And as I understand it, when the (maybe not-yet) dwarfs met them, it was a first contact, they were unheard of.

Did they still evolve from humans, and if so, when did they seperate?
Or is it truly seperate evolution? If so, when did they first exist?


Or the thallasians....they "seem to have evolved from a crustacean life form".
Also after the sundering?

While the Khoras page seems to be written for people with our modern western knowledge about science, I wonder what scholars and commoners within the game world know (or believe) about such topics

For example I read in another thread that most people believe Khoras is flat rather than spherical. So they probably don't know about plate tectonics.
How would they explain tidal patterns?

And I guess they don't know about a thing such as an atom model...what would they believe instead?

Or do they know about evolution, do they know/believe simple life forms started in primordial soup, and more complex life forms evolved from them?
Or do they believe live forms where created the way they are now? Designed to develop into what they are today?
Do they even have a biological taxonomy, or would they for example think rats, bugs, worms to be of the same "category vermin", without further classification?

In our world, people long believed in (what we today call) abiogenesis, i.e. non-living matter turning into life forms, like cheese actually turning into maggots (if I remember correctly, some scholars even stated that native Americans grew out of the soil this way, but this might be a myth in itself).
The idea that living things come only from living things (or cells only from cells) is a historically rather recent one, so might not have yet come up in Khoras.


I'm not expecting a definite answer for every Khorasian society - I'm mainly fascinated by thinking about how people in Khoras would explain certain things, based on what they observe.
I think it's possible to have a lot of (maybe a bit nerdy) fun with outdated knowledge, or even made-up yet plausible in-game explanations, in a pseudo-historical fantasy world..


Oh, one final notice: What I wrote is pretty eurocentric - when I say a theory/discovery is rather recent, I'm implicitly limiting to "in western society" without adding it every time.
And even so, I sometimes might be wrong, and being corrected is appreciated as a chance to learn 

Well, the more I think about it, the less I think the D&D scenario ist fitting for what I aim for - and I tend to assume you will at least have to go for either a rather complicated system, or a thoroughly reduced world.

Of course I do not have the factual knowledge you have, not even close, so please correct me where I'm wrong:

I think that the armor and weapon choices of D&D and similar systems represent rather specialized unit types meant to be deployed in squads in a stone-paper-rocks-logic.

Spears and lances would be erected against charging enemies, two-handed swords could chop of the heads of erected lances, axes would chop down wooden shields, maces or hammers with a spike are devastating to armor.
Those unit types where not meant to be fight in mixed teams like a party, which would be closer to a modern small team of elite forces.

So I think many weapon-armor-combinations do not make much sense in an "open" setting of "one weapon fits all", to be employed against a wide range of threats.
D&D-like systems tend to pitch opponents from different historical and geographic settings, but aim to be "balanced" by doing so.

Things get even more complicated when non-human opponents are involved.
I guess from a historical realistic point of view, there's close to no evidence of fighting a pack of lions or wolves with a two-handed sword, so a "realistic" system should exclude many fights from happening in the first place.
Even more so for beasts like horse-sized spiders or a hippogriff or a Hydra.

In a world where ogre raids are common, ogres would not be fought with melee weapons, but by archers on horseback circling around the brute, never allowing it to get close... totally different unit types and fighting styles would develop rather than applying historical units against in non-historical fights.

I think this is a common problem of many fantasy settings...the world looks pseudo-historical (the "typical" look most people associate with a castle is an idealization of later ages anyway, like slim marble towers reaching into the skies), and then the fantasy part introduces components that make those elements close to obsolete.

I'd be interested in seeing your thoughts about a different combat system, as I have many problems with the D&D combat system.
Essentially I consider it
- stationary
- repetitive
- unsuited for duels

a) combatants don't seem to move much. They seem to stand where they are and exchange blows. Monks don't fight like Bruce Lee, swashbucklers don't fight like Jack Sparrow or D'Artagnan, Samurai don't fight like in Tiger&Dragon. A giant with a club doesn't chase light-armored combatants all over the place, an agile swordfighter doesn't tumble and dodge through a horde of minor opponents, hitting all of them. There's no jumping on tables, no staying out of reach and jumping in for the deciding attack...
b) Most often, if a strike with an axe and an arrow don't fell a giant, many blows and arrows will. There's no waiting for and preparing the one tricky, coordinated attack.
c) as a result, combat effectively means piling on damage. There's no point in "step back, let me handle this guy". There's no honor in a 1-on-1 the fighter of a party and the opposing chieftain, it's always encouraged to fire arrows from the second row (piling on damage).

Those might not be realism issues but rather narrative issues. But for me, roleplaying IS a narrative issue.
Tastes differ, but I once said "a good roleplaying fight ist a Fight I'd like to watch in a movie", and I couldn't name a movie where an interesting fight boils down to reducing hit points step by step.

Of course aa good DM can turn D&D fights into interesting fights, but most of the time, he does so by going beyond the rules rather than by applying the rules...