From seasoned veterans to total beginners, everyone will be able to experience adventure as fantastic characters in an in-depth fantasy world.
Overview
Realms of Caelum (R.o.C) started out as just a Senior capstone about a murder mystery in a tavern, but has changed and grown over time.
Through dozens of iterations it has become a fully realized fantasy tabletop RPG (TTRPG): easy-to-play and learn, 9 playable races, and a 50+ page world lore document.
Playable Version
I've got the playable documents! You can find links to all the necessary documents below.
In addition, I've included the following spreadsheets for other information.
Game Modules
I've included a few of my finished modules below:
The Players are recruited to an archeologist's expedition to search for an long lost village through the treacherous jungles of the Thicket.
3 -4 Players / 18+ Hours
The Players take an easy job of recovering the stolen merchandise to allow a new dumpling shop to open.
1 -2 Players / 3 Hours
The Players are recruited to covertly investigate a research site that has stopped reporting back. *Body Horror warning.
3 -4 Players / 12+ Hours
Narrative
The Setting
Realms of Caelum uses a traditional fantasy setting, however I didn't want to just mimic the world of D&D or the other many fantasy worlds out there. As such, I worked from the ground up to construct my own realm with these tenants in mind:
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Diverse group of races with less of an emphasis on humans or human half-breeds.
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A unique history of each race as they developed from ancient tribes to more modern towns.
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Actively avoiding using racial tensions as conflict in favor of other conflict and threat points.
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This world should be currently stable: no cataclysm, no active dark lords, no stewing rebellion. It will open with a world that has potential for instability.
These tenants formed the baseline of how I would go about designing and redesigning my world and allow me freedom to explore new ideas while still constraining myself to a consistent theme and direction.
The World
Caelum, the name I gave this realm, was the start. This consolidated area of many different biomes: from the middle of the Northern Desert to where the Thicket touches the ocean. It served as a sandbox experimentation so no biome was off the table. However, as I refined locations to give them personality and match the history, I had ideas that didn't fit: barren ice lands, red mesa deserts, marches and low lands. As such, the world expanded: the sun scorched towers of the Red Desert and Rusted Hills, the frigid lands of Erebus and the surrounding wastes, and even the tropical archipelago of the Pleuro Isles off the coast of the Thicket. Caelum the region still exists, but now there's more beyond leaving room for future characters or adventures.
The Caverns mirrored this, my little experimental cave biome: dank, dark, twilight all the times and home to my more insectoid race. The drab look however called for a redesign, focusing on using mushrooms, lichen, and other darkness loving "plants". Transforming this cave into a weird cave themed forest: mushroom trees, glowing groves, faintly luminescent water. It gave a totally new life to the region and a reason to explore it.
The Races
As I stated, I wanted races that were familiar but not a repeat of the formulaic: humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs.
My experimentation left me with 9 races with an admittedly heavy lean on bestial races. However, I provided quirks where I could to give their cultures more depth than just being the cat race or lizard race.
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Caras - The fanged races and the most populous of my world as my surrogate "average humans". Instead of picking one species, I made this a large group focusing on fanged, furred mammals. However, to add more unity to such a varied group there are Northern Caras raised in the powerful family lord structure while the Southern Caras were brought up in a more lax and open-minded area.
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Ophis - The lizard race. With the Ophis, I wanted to defy the "mindless tribal" aesthetic by making them a more normal race. Their breeds are still varied but simplified into: scaled, leather-skinned, and smooth along with bipedal and naga forms. They received the same cultural differences as Caras: Northern Ophis facing percussion at the hands of the Northern Caras, while the Southern Ophis blended in with the more friendly Southern Caras.
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Humans - The human race. With a few races created, I had a better direction with where to go with humans: "friendlier, tannish orcs". I molded humans into these thick-skinned, stoic ogres with a focus on strength and a mild distaste for magic. This gave humans more personality than the usual "normal" race they serve as. After all, in this world of fur and scales, they were the unusual ones.
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Elves - The Elvin race. I attempted mashing elves together with dwarven archetypes: lanky humanoids with a penchant for earth magic, fine arts, and living in mountains. Isolation being a theme of many races, I kept it but wanted it subverted: instead of living for centuries, their race just developed earlier and treated others as beasts. The subsequent revolt of the beast races caused the Elvin exodus into the mountains and established their fear of the outside world.
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Secmet - The insect race. The Secmet were interesting as they both: lived in a culture vacuum and had a consistent ruling body. This allowed me to develop a society in isolation and experiment with a monarchical society like your standard medieval fantasy. Their concept remained pretty consistent throughout.
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Arborian - The tree race. The Arborian were always my "strange" race: tree people who are born from the mysterious Grand Elm Forest, a place all creatures are kept from can entering. No recollection of their birth but knowledge of their world and a random town; they were a species that added some fun mystery to the world.
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Exuade - The horned race. The Exuade were originally global antagonists, but were toned back to just a race with a history of strong wills and violent tendencies. It was they who drove the Elves to the mountain and they who endured the Distress to remain in their homeland. A fun, dynamic race in a world of stability.
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Vermil - The diminutive race. The Vermil I saw as my mouse and rabbit species before finding their identity. I took the isolationism present early in history and ramped it up, a people hiding in the shadows unwilling to interact. With my thematic push of cooperation following the Distress, they added more foot dragging.
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Kobolds - The fledgling race. Kobolds were probably my favorite. They are the "youngest" race, only 80 years of sapience. Accepted as equals but often viewed as beasts. This culture split of their more tribal habits and their more sophisticated draconic study makes them really fun in the scheme of how they integrate with the others.
The Cultures
It was during the 2nd lore review that I really doubled down on giving culture its just due in my world. This involved providing multiple layers of influences: a Secmet raised in a Secmet community in the Northern Deserts would be very different to a Secmet raised by Southern Thicket Caras in the west of the Verdant Cradle in the midlands. I accomplished this by naturally intertwining 3 influences:
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Racial History: Each species has its own history, account of events, and tastes that are shared amongst the species as a whole.
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Geographic History: Each region of the world has a history and personality. From the inhabitants, to the towns, to any natural disasters.
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Current Events: The importance of local events shouldn't be ignored: local heroes, the small shrine amongst the hamlet, the tragic death known to only a few.
As I branched that out in the world of cultures, I was able to better examine the type of governments I'd established in my world. While my plan didn't include political intrigue, I acknowledged that I couldn't let it slip by: I reaffirmed the history of the Caelum Regional Council and the lengths of its authority, described the deep roots of the Caras and Ophis ruling families of the North along with their antagonistic behaviors, and explained the growth of the Secmet monarchy.
Riding the momentum of this, I took a review to the various organizations I'd developed: the typical Mage Society and Merchant's Guild, but also the Dragon Scholar who worship and study these mythical demigods, and the elusive Iron Lads and their fascination with mechanical augments. The devious Infested Followers who seek immortality at any cost continued to exist, and the Dusk Bandits and their tenuous ties to the ruling families, and updated the history of the Followers of Innovation, their start as the noble Engineer's Guild and their tragic spiral into madness and disgrace.
The Goal of all this World Building
What's all this planning and specifics for? Just another fantasy world? All this culminates my ultimate goal: to have a living, fleshed out world that has potential for the players to make use of.
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Potential to have new, exciting characters who could make sweeping change to the world.
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Potential for archetypes and classes to be made
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Potential for new stories and narratives to be p
To reiterate in a less fanciful way, 123RPG's world building was purposed to be a guided sandbox: open and free to allow players and game masters to develop their own unique stories and characters, but with enough built-in structure, lore, and support that they have guidance for how to develop those.
Design
My Design Goals
My goals for Realms of Caelum came about because I'd only played DnD twice at the time, and I spent more time being walked through character creation than actually playing. These experiences and a few others led to the creation of my goals:
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Easy to understand rules, even for someone completely new to RPGs.
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Character creation can occur within 20 minutes to get to the fun faster.
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Character creation is free form, allowing for class and archetype mixing.
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Robust enough to allow an advanced player to create a handmade archetype.
These were great goals that I was able to eventually reach, but not with a lot of research, trail and error, and missteps along the way.
Design Challenge: Too Much Jelly
During college, my professor explained to us the "Infinite Jelly Shelf" problem. It stated: if a shelf at a store has every flavor of jelly, though very convenient for the shopper, it prevents the shopper from making a decision as they have too many choices: there's always another new flavor.
During the development of Realms of Caelum, I initially wanted a huge library of abilities for the player to create their character. Tons of choices to bolster what is a relatively simple RPG action system. I had 3 pages of Archetypes and 9 pages of individual abilities. Theoretically its great, but in practice it was paralyzing. In my attempt to empower the player's choices, I had crippled them by offering nearly 12 pages of excel cells to read through. The infinite shelf problem in action.
My other issue was how I was handling "classes". I wanted to avoid traditional class-based level up systems and stick to this skill-based idea, but trying to fight against using them was a losing battle. Trying to explain a knight or monk archetype without relying on traditional fantasy themes was a self-imposed blocker that made things more difficult than necessary.
I wound up doing a mix of both. I provided the player 3 steps to creating their character:
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Selecting a Race and a Birthright which are tied together to allow your choice of race to mechanically impact the gameplay.
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Selecting a starting Archetype/Class that mimics some traditional fantasy roles: knight, fire wizard, archer, etc. This allows players to better understand playstyles.
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Choosing one additional Trait, a free attribute that can further push the customization and finish off the player's desired skill set.
My final decision was to further refine my Gem Stat System, where all of their choices would end up with 5 Gems of varying colors which would determine skill and proficiency rolls.
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Birthright gives 2 Gems
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Archetype gives 2 Gems
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Trait gives 1 Gem
By mixing and matching these 3 curated sections, players could create all sorts of different types of characters with differing skill sets. In addition, this same process can be used when creating custom or homebrew characters built from the list of abilities and skills to ensure they aren't over or under powered. Just like I originally wanted!
Advanced Customization
As I said before though, the system needed to be robust enough for an advanced player to create a much less curated character. That's where my full lists come back into play. Advanced Players can browse the list of abilities, items, and weapons to build out a character of their preference but still following the listed Gem Stat requirement. This opens up a whole world of possibilities without as much risk of an over or under powered character! What types of characters?
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A Barbarian Necromancer who uses bones to create giant arms.
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A Witch with a rocky familiar whose patronage has given them a new bestial form?
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A Mime who is able to create tangible objects, invisible to the common observer?
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A Brawler with cursed cestus gauntlets that can't be removed but give you dark powers?
All possible with by using the right combination of abilities and items as building blocks.
