This relates to my world that I started describing in another thread. I post it here for visibility and because it's still very unfinished. As soon as it's mostly done, I'll copy the reworked version into a new comment over there. Comments and creative ideas are more than welcome.

Some background

The Immaruk are a river valley civilization similar to real world Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia who believe in two deities:

• Shuramud, the desert sun whose aspects are day, sun, light, heat, passage of time, growth and the inevitable death of all living things.
• Iwaspat, the shapeless darkness who represents night, darkness, soothing coldness, the ground, stability and a resistance to change.

The realm is ruled by diarchs, two equal rulers who each represent one of the deities and also act as their high priests.

Death rites for common people

With Shuramud being the deity of death, they are naturally responsible for guiding the deceased out of the world of the living. Those who feel that they are getting old and weak travel to one of the shrines at the the edge of the northern desert. In the early morning, they pray, say their goodbyes to their friends and relatives and undress to leave all earthly possessions behind and offer every bit of their body to the sun's heat. Eventually at sunrise they walk out into the desert to die.

Once they have succumbed to Shuramud's gaze, their souls leave their body and rise up to the sky. While most souls are invisible, those of people who had been especially dedicated to Shuramud take the form of soul birds, flaming creatures with human bodies but the head and wings of a bird. There are very rare stories of soul birds who didn't directly rise up to be united with Shuramud but instead flew back to the land of the living and stuck around for a few hours or even days, presumably to fulfill one last task in service of their deity.

Not being able to have your soul collected by Shuramud is seen as a great misfortune, so the bodies of those who die before they reach the desert are carried either by their family or by priests and shrine guardians. If there is no body to bring to the desert, for example if someone drowned and got carried away by the great river or got eaten by an animal, a small statuette that resembles the deceased is made and displayed at their home for a few days to catch as much of their essence before it's taken to the desert instead of a body. I'm not quite sure about this last point yet but I think it fits

The Mirror of Shuramud

Centuries ago, the Shuramud cult lined a natural crater with reflective bronze (or gold?) that focuses the sunlight at a single spot, essentially turning the crater into a giant solar oven. Apart from being used as a furnace to create religious items, it's also where the diarchs who represent Shuramud are taken when they die. Being burned by concentrated sunlight is said to give them a higher chance of forming a strong soul bird than merely being out in the desert on their own.

Priests of Iwaspat

While Shuramud and Iwaspat are mostly seen as equal but opposite aspects of the world who keep each other in balance and should both be worshiped, it would still be seen as improper to give the soul of someone in the higher ranks in Iwaspat's cult over to Shuramud. Instead, they are entombed in a system of natural caves at the northern bank of the great river. There, their souls can forever stay in the embrace of the cool ground, never having to fear the change that leaving the mortal world would be.

For the diarchs who represent Iwaspat, this protection from change goes even further. Unless they die prematurely from an accident or violence, they can eventually retire to a chamber deep inside the caves where they can live on forever. Their bodies don't age anymore nor do they need to consume food. They spend most of their time motionless and in silent dialogue with Iwaspat but if needed, they are valuable advisers to their successors.

During the Eternal Night

Recently, the sun has stopped rising (see main thread), Shuramud has seemingly disappeared and walking into the now-cold desert probably won't free your soul from your body anymore. Those who can afford it, use the dwindling supply of firewood to have their bodies cremated but for most, this is becoming a big problem. Many still follow the old rites but their souls are trapped in their rotting bodies until there is a new sunrise. For gameplay, this could give me the chance to have zombie-like undead if I need them.

Once again, this is all work in progress and I would love to see your ideas. How can I flesh this out or can you think of alternatives that would fit the setting even better?

Recently came across this post on writing up a redacted document of all of the important info related to the world / story, and un-redacting things as the PCs discover. This lets them know what they don't know, and kind of the shape of what they don't know. https://ttrpg.network/post/20269477

Which reminded me of this well-known write up, Don't Prep Plots, which, while not entirely incompatible, is at least a very different approach.

Got me thinking of the way I do things, and a mix of all of the different things I have read. I try to run a pretty sandbox style game, but still have a lot of stuff going on in the world for the players to follow. In many cases the players will go towards something I haven't prepped or thought much about, and that improvised collaborative story telling lets me as the GM find out new information about the world right alongside the players.

I have started to think of this kind of gm prep as "Mad libs prep"

Mad Libs is a game where there are pre-written sentences, with blanks that need to be filled in by the players. E.g. "We get into our and to the beach" - players don't know what the sentence is when picking the words, so you can end up with that becoming "We get into our toaster and sleep to the beach". The idea is to have enough existing structure that things can get where they need to be, but with enough unknowns that can be filled in with whatever the players (who don't know the whole story) throw out there.

For GM prep, this can be knowing that there is an evil wizard who wants to take over the kingdom, and he needs to do it. The missing noun can be filled in by the players without them knowing.

For example, they become very interested in hunting for ancient magic artifacts? The essential is a legendary amulet and now the PCs are in a race against the mad mage to decipher its secret location.

Or maybe the PCs become monster hunters for hire, and the is the scale of a dragon or something similar, and the PCs run into the evil guys and uncover the plot.

Or perhaps the PCs really latch on to a side NPC that doesn't have much background fleshed out and becomes this person, who has some previously unknown connection to events that is discovered along the way (e.g. Martin Septim in TES IV).

The idea in general is to have enough material to know interesting things will happen, but not getting hung up on having every detail filled in. This also can be holding the things you do have prepared loosly, so maybe you had planned for the BBEG to have a secret lair in the mountains, but the PCs are really into a swampy forest area and end up wanting to spend all of their time there. Rather than "Ok, the BBEG has been up here uncontested the whole time and now the world ends, you all die" - the of evil layer is now deep in the wilderness, which can lead to a lot of changes, creating new lore, creatures, quests, etc.

Maybe all of this stuff is obvious but I am a relatively new GM and have mostly been figuring it out on my own. I'd love to hear other prep methods and tips!

I'm trying to build this as a quick oneshot to try out DC20. Mostly just looking to test it out but their default campaign is soooo cheesy.

For those unfamiliar, The King Dressed in Yellow is a play, and anyone who reads the script for this play goes mad. So the idea is that people who went mad reading the script are trying to perform the play to summon the King Dressed in Yellow. (which would be bad)

I have a rough outline of

• quick skirmish at the start in the guardhouse (the fantasy equivalent of the DMV)
• leading the adventurers to where the cultists are having tryouts for roles in the play (small "dungeon"), where they find some prisoners being forced to become actors
• leading to a final boss fight that I want to have on stage during the play to a whole audience of enthralled patrons about to be sacrificed to the King Dressed in Yellow

Mostly I'm looking for ideas for theater cultists, and the boss fight. I don't want them to fight the King Dressed in Yellow, (it's a level 1 oneshot) but I was thinking about some ways to make the fight interesting and most importantly stop the play so he isn't summoned.

I was kinda thinking they walk in from stage right and a big fake foyer is on stage while the King Dressed in Yellow is trying to enter the world. I figure there will be some baddies, three of them holding props, and after every round of combat after everybody had their turn. The King Dressed in Yellow knocks on the fake front door from another plane of existence and the right prop holder has to say the right line and then the script continues. Three correct line deliveries and the adventurers lose, The King Dressed in Yellow enters the world and causes havoc. So they have to kill/steal from/silence the correct actors and stall the play while the fight is going on.

any ideas/questions would be welcome.

This is fortuitous, session zero for "my" new campaign is next week, and the format is a bit wonky so any guidance or advice from anyone who's tried to do similar would be helpful.

4-5 person table, we're starting a GURPS 4e magic campaign. Fantasy setting, think like Hogwarts but community college. This isn't super important, but gives some context for the format.

Here's the wonky part:

I want to rotate GM every session. My plan is for each player to build a student who will be their PC, and also create a professor who will be their main "quest giver" when they're the GM. The idea is that each session will be a different class period taught by one of the professors, GMed by that corresponding player.

They give an assignment which is basically a one shot: "Get the imps in the walls out", "Get to the top of that mountain and back in 3 hours", "Find the center of this maze", "Kill this spectral dragon", "Find the herbs to make this potion", that kind of thing. Or they can string all their sessions together into a mini arc, whatever's clever.

The other players will be students in the class for this session; the GM's student character either took this class already, doesn't need it, or can be a TA NPC for that session. We'll cycle through everyone a few times, and maybe collaborate for a "Triwizard Cup" sort of finale.

For several players, this will be their first time GMing. I think this format could prove to be an excellent way to let players dip their toe into the GM space: they get 3 or 4 sessions to plan, they're exposed to multiple other session ideas inside the setting, they still get to play most of the time.

I think the school setting in particular is well suited to this format, though I'm a bit on the fence about TA NPCs; I don't want to encourage bad habits.

What do you think, does it have legs or is this doomed to failure? Is it already a thing, and I'm just not familiar with the term?

My ongoing work on this world is basically the reason I created this community. Feel free to give feedback, both positive and negative. I honestly have no clue if this is interesting to anyone but me.

I plan on creating a conlang for this world, following Jesse Peterson's amazing guide but I'm not done by far, so most names in this post are placeholders in either English or the proto-version of the language.

Premise

The Immaruk are river valley civilization similar to real world ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. According to their legends, they descend from two tribes that were both led by their respective deity to the fertile lands along the great river. Shuramud is the god of the sun, daylight, sky and growth but also desert heat, merciless passage of time and eventual death of all living things. Iwaspat is Shuramud's exact opposite, representing the night, darkness, nothingness (this world has no moon) but also soothing coldness, stability and the ground.

The Immaruk's culture is centered around the duality of these two deities. All things in life are attributed to one of the two but there is an understanding that a balance between them is needed for life to prosper: for example, grain needs both Iwaspat's fertile soil and Shuramud's light to grow. Of course, this balance is not always perfect but over time, it evens out. Every morning Shuramud's sun rises and gives life to the world and every evening Iwaspat banishes it behind the horizon, providing much needed refreshment and calming down the bustle of the day.

But now, after centuries of this constant meandering, the world has gotten out of balance. First, there was a long period of constant daylight and after Iwaspat's priests managed to depose the leader Shuramud's followers, it has in turn been cast into a seemingly eternal night. Nobody knows exactly how long it's gone on as timekeeping mainly relies on the passage of the sun but it feels like months or even years now.

More to come

Translating all my notes from German and turning them into a post that makes sense takes a while so I'll probably add comments for individual topics and link them here.

• Campaign outline
• Death in the world of the Immaruk (separate thread for now, will be copied into here once it's a bit further along)