Nah, not rule of cool.
So what is Age of Sail ?
Age is sail is a collaboratively constructed conworld set in some fictional planet. In it, large preindustrial mercantile powers compete for economic and political hegemony, directly affecting almost every other human group in the planet. Geographically, the planet is made up of smaller continents than Earth, spread out over a large area. Technologically, while there is the diversity that can be assumed in any reasonably realistic world, the great seagoing powers of the time are around the level of the mercantile Europpean thalasocracies. While all cultures are different, the main seagoing powers of this time are characterized by:
- Advanced Sailing; this means, advanced carpentry, cartography and astronomical navigation.
- Primitive Gunpowder coexisting with swords and the like: muskets and pistols, perhaps some rifling being explored, while pikes, crossbows and broadswords are still in use
- Mercantilism
The planet is mostly covered by water, with small islands here and there.
- Capture.PNG (37.59 KiB) Viewed 3760 times
There are more detailed maps in store, but don't worry, this should be more or less enough. Mostly water, random islands.
Who am I? I'm the guy who puts together the collab, sort of a moderator, if you will. the idea is that the world be a coherent whole, as opposed to collection of personal projects. this means that some discussion on the state of the conworld is to be had.
So, I'm thinking of the following conworldological parameters:
astronomical setting: single planet, couple'o'moons, earthlike planetology, good ole yellow sun. 30 hour days, 27° axis tilt, the works, though the debate is certainly open to weirder planetologies, let's start under the assumption that it's relatively plain and terran. earthlike gravity, earthlike atmospheric density, perhaps a bit denser.
economical: a global economy is starting to develop. for the first time in the history of the planet, moving huge quantities of value-dense merchandise, like spices or gemstones, halfway across the globe is cheap enough to be a way to make a living. The last frontier, the ocean, is no longer a frontier, it's a highway.
metaphisical: I think the best thing here is to go for an ambiguous approach, agnostic, even: maybe there's magic, maybe there isn't, there certainly are folk who dedicate their lives to it, but its not like people throw fireballs and stuff.
zoology: realist to quasi-realist. maybe there are large ridable tortoises in some archipielago, but there's no dragons.
botanical diversity: earthlike, though I think one can go crazier with it: invent new kinds of cereals and, hey, maybe there's psychotropic tobacco with uses against erectile disfunction, who knows.
rule of cool in moderate effect.
Sooo yeah, that's the map.
Order of Business
Let's talk! about what you want this world to be, and your place in it, of course. Does everyone want to have their own pet superpower, for instance? or does anyone prefer the notion of lording over some traditional society, maybe a bronze-age culture fighting against the unrelenting advance of a modern invader, like the American Indians, or struggling to integrate new ideas and their own identity, like the Japanese or the Siamese. Maybe we want the situation to be one large superpower and a lot of smaller societies.
Sooo, yeah, what are you intending to create?
[and if you want to pick a bit of map, go for it, post a pic with your piece highlighted or something. ]
) would be how the various powers would be balanced in this conworld. Are we aiming for something like real world history (or rather the popular imagination of it) where we have a bunch of European colonial powers, some established Asian/Middle Eastern empires/states to trade with, and everybody else as either colonized or tribes about to be colonized? Or will the concultures be more even, where we might have, say, Asian-esque and African-esque concultures colonizing those primitive disease-ridden Europeans? Or will it be just a free for all sort of thing?
