Absolutely massive, intricate, fractal procgen world with also a lot of political/relgious/mercantile/etc groups vying for power.
The game is a series of delivery quests that take advantage of the worldbuilding/lore and *particularly* transport networks and an early prototype of the shatterloop relationships system.
That's it, that's the whole game -- just a massive sandbox of Questing. The challenge comes from navigating the serpentine clusterfuck of transport networks and in gaining reputation with various groups so you can do higher and higher tier quests.
Along the way, the lore and the procgen systems that build on it should be uniquely immersive. The game should feel alive.
To give myself more freedom, the setting is a fantasy world that's on the cusp or industrialization -- magic is in use practically rather than just by those trained in it / with some inborn talent, and the technologies are accessible.
Various fantastical creatures are domesticated and farmed rather than being accessible only by adventurers. Those products go off to other places where they get refined.
The reason the Civilization is only on the *cusp* of industrialization is that magic is finicky and takes humans to actually manipulate it -- getting spells to go in loops is something that's being developed but it's highly unpredictable. And because of the use of magic, earth-based industrialization is outside the realm of probability -- there's no concept of using steam for mechanical work or gears in any capacity since magic is a much more effective way to mill grain or whatever.
In the world of Courier, magic is a technique of using something called mana to produce various effects. Mana is stored alongside a spell (a form for it to take) in something called an Instrument, which can then exploit it and release the spell and its stored mana.
A good example is a Scroll, which when burned will release the spell within, making them single-use.
People who are trained can use some light magic themselves, as the human body is capable of storing some amount of spells and/or mana, though this is very low relative to Instruments. Creatures in the world don't have this problem as they've evolved to contain much larger amounts, however humans aren't originally from here and never figured out how to alter themselves in that way prior to the destabilization of their high-tech society.
Most human magic in this society, therefore, is done to release other sources of magic. Highly skilled practitioners can release a spark of their own fire which is enough to set Scrolls on fire, but there are better ways to do this.
The following are the steps needed to prepare a spell for mass consumption, say a Wand that releases 500lbs of pressure onto an object:
Spell creation -- This is generally skipped as spells already exist and are mass-produced, but they had to have been created at one point.
Material sourcing -- Instruments are built from Materials which are variously better at storing spells or mana, combined together in a useful form. Spells store best in earthy materials like metal or Crystals, while mana stores best in biological materials found within the world. There are different processes to extract both of these and prepare them for Instrument creation. I'll cover these later, since they're relevant to the economy.
Instrument creation -- Instruments are a collection of things that store mana, something that stores the spell, something to focus the spell (unless it's a general thing) and possibly other subcomponents depending on the actual Instrument, such as those designed to auto-charge mana from specific environments once depleted. The prototypes here have to be created by hand, though "by hand" is somewhat loose as you can levitate objects and move them around precisely with other Instruments. As mentioned, Automation is too finicky in its current form so prototyping an instrument definitely requires a certain amount of work.
Spell Transmutation -- Spells that have been created in one medium (more on that in the spell creation section) have to be transmuted into the Spell component of the Instrument. This process takes a good deal of mana and a very specific set of spells that move the mana currents through space and time. It's possible to do this on your own with enough reserves of mana, but it's generally done in larger group environments because of the easier access to large amounts of mana.
Testing -- obviously you need to be able to test if the Instrument prototype works as expected. There's a lot of rigorous testing that goes into the creation of highly specialized Instruments, as well as specific spells that help immensely.
Replication sourcing -- Here you need to get large quantities of the materials needed for the instrument and position them in such a way that they can be individually summoned easily.
Replication -- while automating a single prototype is inordinately difficult, assembling a clone of an instrument is relatively easy because of the nature of biological materials to self-assemble and earth materials to crystallize when given the right instructions. In this case the prototypes Form is the instruction set and given large enough quantities of the materials needed new Instruments can be assembled with the appropriate summoning/cloning spells. Spells contained within biological matrices will automatically transfer to the new materials as well -- the only caveat is that Living materials can't be replicated in this way, as their own mana currents interfere with the processes here. So no cloning of people or animals!
Delivery/Distribution -- Items which are created in bulk then need to be shipped off to whoever is buying it, and similarly they will have their own distribution networks. Transferring materials directly (via warping) is a gigantic waste of mana -- it instead makes more sense to make use of Couriers. Before I get into this section, a basic summary is that Couriers have manipulatable localized pocket dimensions where the shipments can be stored, moved and then unpacked. There's a lot of trust involved, based around a kind of universal Reputation system that's part of the infrastructure of this world (more on that in a bit). This then allows groups to hire Couriers as needed from the surrounding environment.
Before I get into spell creation I need to get into what both mana and spells *are* and the relationship between the two.
The world of Courier has a bunch of alternate (generally single-material or single-force) planes which are casually unconnected but which occasionally intersect our own. Consciousness here is built on those intersections and produces a kind of looping force that it can then manipulate to interact with those planes by choice.
Mana, therefore, is the potential for interacting with those planes (and spatially/temporally offset ones), while Spells are the actual movements and actions of those connections. Since entities like humans are conscious, they're able to interact with those connections, as it's the basis of consciousness in this universe.
Looping actions form a kind of quasi-consciousness and the basis of a spell, however if not under conscious control it is itself a conscious entity and will do its own thing, which is likely to eventually lead to its dissolution or other really chaotic behavior. This is fixable by setting it inside a suitable biological construct (like a Phoenix feather for fire spells), as then the conscious entity there will take on personality traits fitting the original organism and will maintain much more stability when not under conscious control.
Care must be taken when storing spells for long periods of time, as the lack of interaction with other conscious entities will cause them to go off on tangents related to the biological organism of choice rather than what you'd want the spell to do, or alternately will cause them to resist manipulation by other conscious entities, depending on just how rebellious the parent entity is -- plants tend to be waaaaay more compliant but are also more prone to wild tangents, and vice-versa with animal extracts.
The best solution is to consistently recycle spells, jumping them back and forth between substrates, though over a long enough timespan they'll get used to their various "bodies" and you'd need to bring in fresh substrates. This part is definitely a bit tricky and so there's a whole section of the economy devoted to spell storage and Instrument repair when the spells therein become faulty via storage.
Ethically speaking, Spells are only quasi-conscious so their exploitation / destruction isn't seen as morally unjustifiable. They have a variety of limits that fully conscious entities lack, such as the ability to expand their consciousness or transfer to other substrates. Spells won't run away and become fully functional ghosts, even complex ones, but they will definitely evolve and change within their substrate.
It's theorized (but not proven, particularly in those post-high-tech society) that individual molecules are actually just plane intersections. For example, there is definitely a Gold plane that contains nothing but an infinite amount of gold, so the thinking is that gold here is an intersection with this plane.
These theoretical intersections can be widened, so you can turn gold into more gold, however this process is unreasonably slow and requires exponentially more mana to attain higher production. It therefore makes more economic sense to mine gold. The only time Duplication is relevant is with highly rare or exotic materials, and then you run into the issue of the cost being so high to produce them that the economy finds other ways around whatever the exotic material is useful for.
For example, there's a native material that has a very very high mana charge capacity known as Conden, several orders of magnitude higher than Diamond per cubic inch, however it is extremely rare, found as a natural impurity in naturally occurring crystals at a ratio of like 1 molecule per square meter so you have refinement issues right off the bat, as a square meter of crystal is highly valuable and you have to basically destroy it to get at the Conden.
Then because of how slow the duplication rate is, you'd be better served selling the crystal you destroyed instead.
That said, in that particular case, Conden is so potentially valuable that various groups spend a lot of money and lost profits to gather and experiment on it, trying to find a set of complicated spells that make its mass production viable.
The world is a big Conical Ark -- these things are like 1/8th the size of a planet, so they're pretty big. You have various artificial lights that rise and set known as "Astra" such as a Sun-equivalent, Moon-equvialent, and a large red "star". These collect ambient energy and mana and radiate it down in a more controlled and focused way. Obviously, none of the Lore here is available from the outset -- like other universes in the dodecaverse, the formerly high tech society has crumbled away into something that takes more advantage of this universe's properties, particularly with various issues and wars cutting the population down. The old civilization managed to do several large things however:
Obviously get the landmasses and overall civilization started. Largescale terraforming is definitely outside the realm of possibility for these people.
Put the Astra into place and make them self-sustaining indefinitely. They're in cyclical entropy loops, so whatever way they get damaged they'll just self-organize back into order over time.
Bioengineered various animals/plants into ones that are able to evolve faster and take advantage of ambient mana. This is the source of the various mythological creatures.
Made sure humans are bioengineered enough to survive and reproduce in this universe. The immortality thing doesn't work super well in this environment, but overall lifespans are longer, vary a lot, and the potential is still there.
Surface -- where the civilization is. Up here, the Astra provide light for crops and mana for a magic-based society to thrive. There are also oceans and weather systems and such. This was all put into place thousands of years ago.
Tunnel -- A big largescale tunnel goes deep into the rock, with a lot of branches into useful locations. This is sometimes used for Mining by the topside Civilization, as it's super convenient, however the scope is absolutely massive. As you go further down you'll find remnants of the original civilization, which have also fallen technologically but not as gracefully -- a lot of old tech is still in play and there's a lot less magical proficiency, and the tunnel-dwellers have very limited contact with the surface civilization.
Port -- The former home of everyone. The corpses of gigantic self-contained cities, motherships that contain them, various infrastructure, etc. Based on the Conical Ark mythos. These are largely abandoned, as their energy sources have died out, all useful materials have already been extracted, and the tech is super wonky. Nonetheless, there are still definitely people down here for one reason or another that eke out some kind of living.
Except in areas close to the surface, the Tunnel and Port lack the surface world's infrastructure. Too much of the society is reliant on collecting a steady stream of mana, so warp gates don't make economical sense. There are old passageways that are accessible but meant for vehicles that no longer exist -- their energy sources dried up, they were not able to tap into mana, and they were full of useful materials so they've also been mined.
The Tunnel and Port should have their own fractal worldbuilding going on and should be absurd mazes that are very very easy to get lost in. To maintain societal sanity, the entrances to the Tunnel are guarded and people going below have to have specialized equipment that allows them to return to the surface easily, so in your case if you do get lost you can return at any time.
The wall -- the world is carved out of a kind of crater, with a big wall about a mile high made of thick bedrock surrounding it, which serves to keep the oceans / weather systems in. Fields from some ancient cyclical entropy loop tech also help push water molecules back in and down, so if you're on top of the wall the climate is extremely dry. The wall is around 20 miles wide at the largest point, and 5 miles wide at the smallest. It isn't uniformly smooth, it is based on the geographical features of the old world, so there are the shapes of hills and mountains here. The highest point is a mountain known as Mons Ultima -- this has a city on it by the same name with lift-type infrastructure connecting it to the rest of the surface. It's conveniently attached to the largest continent, so has the most economic wealth to support it.
The other two continents have their own respective Mons settlements at their own highest points, with the smaller continent also having a reasonably sized outpost a bit further out because of the presence of a large Gold pillar known as a Pivot that they've been mining extensively. This Pivot is the exposed surface of some of the technology keeping the world from crumbling -- in fact there are actually six of these, but the other five are buried and pretty inaccessible regardless due to the size of the world.
I'd like to set up this project in the following way:
Obviously I still need to create more content -- the way the magic system works in detail, smaller maps, etc.
Maps below that level should be procgen, with the settlement taking on whatever specialties and sizes make sense, with some noise for fun. Idk how many levels down this goes, but the world should be *huge*.
Flesh out the kinds of buildings a settlement has in it and how they connect together.
Handcrafted faction questlines, like a *lot* of them. The game is basically all lore, so having handcrafted quests would help a lot.
Start in Mons Minima, rather than Schoolshore. I think that area would be easier to get started, and I also like the proximity to more interesting locations like Cape Gale, Monkey's March and Covenant.
Overall Game Goal
The overall game goal has changed as well -- you or your team or whatever is trying to put together a Gallery of the world and its history. This is what you're doing in the world anyway so it fits, but it also means I can import mechanics from Junk Museum and it gives the money earned as a Courier more utility.
So you need money to build rooms, and unique items to display, and also a lot of information. All of this combined is what you're doing in the game anyway, so it feeds back into the gameplay loop.
It should always be very obvious how much more you have to do within a city -- there shouldn't be secrets that you have to explore to find, largely because free exploration with the scope of this game would be an exercise in madness. Instead, the exploration is geared towards specific goals that you pick out yourself and I guess running around in procgen rooms if you really *want* to.
Display items on the other hand should be more free. There should be a fuckton of items to find or buy with varying rarities/values and you can replace things in various exhibits to get a better "exhibit score". So this definitely gives you a reason to go deep into procgen rooms (and collaborate with other players), but it isnt an explicit goal.
Given your Guild affiliations, you can just pick up single items with carte Blanche, but the best ones are going to be locked away behind faction questlines. If you gain enough favor with a local guild, maybe they'll let you have something pretty rare that reinforces that piece of story.
Having a higher Exhibit Score in some City increases your Reputation therein -- this makes Courier quests more profitable and also makes it easier to break into its different factions. Which in turn makes it easier to build a great exhibit, so it reinforces its own gameplay loop.
Reputation might also influence the types of items you can actually pick up -- like I'm sure that mineral refinement facilities would be pretty pissed off if you took their main Mortisangual Instruments, but if your Reputation is higher they might allow it.
