Gods be good

Unlike other settings, my cosmology does not segregate gods by alignment. Gods are, by definition, good, not deaf to humanity's suffering, or play some key role in maintaining reality. They are the protectors and allies of the cosmic balances.

Cycles of the soul primer

ADDENDUM 9/27/2018: I have slightly revised this post to reflect what I have learned since.

Mongoose Publishing published a few books about the planes. Two of them dealt directly with the passage of souls into the afterlife. In this post I will briefly compare them and then try to synthesize them into one.

Whither dungeon?

Many settings are content with including dungeons infested with monsters without explaining where the dungeons came from or how they continue to exist. Here I present some brief options as to the ecology of dungeons, including both gygaxian naturalism and mythic underworlds.

Elemental Lords and Beast Lords

The material world is composed of four elements: air, earth, fire and water. These elements occurs in both their raw forms and in more complex forms within living creatures. The elements not only form the basis of the four humors, but the temperaments of living creatures.

The elemental planes have multiple governing bodies, just like the material plane. These governing bodies act as a series of checks and balances on one another’s power, preventing any one party from overwhelming the interests of the others.

Spirits primer, elementals expanded

5e doesn't have a spirit type, despite spirits being a more or less universal concept. I have now expanded elementals to fulfill the same role. Some explanation, mostly quotations from and references to OGL sources, follows.

Reimagining the elemental planes

The elemental planes are generally presented as infinite featureless expanses of their element. The plane of fire is the sun, water the ocean, earth the compost, and air the sky. These portrayals are quite boring and do nothing to make players want to actually visit these planes. Which makes sense because the elemental planes were originally meant to explain where spells drew material from and not places to visit until the Manual of the Planes fleshed them out. I, on the other hand, would prefer an approach similar to that of The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire...

Ecology of the Dupli-cat (Coeurl)

Coeurl, Final Fantasy X

Nomenclature: black destroyer, coeurl, displacer cat, dupli-cat, greymalkin, missing lynx, pard, phase panther, phase tiger, shadow stalker, tangtal.

Description: a feline predator that exists slightly out of phase with reality, thereby concealing its position and evading attacks.

Plane of Agony

What is a "monster"?

The word "monster" (with or without a capital M) has any number of definitions in the context of fantasy roleplaying games:

Why is dragon a type?

Dragons are not beasts or monstrosities. Why do they have their own type? What makes their essence unique? Why are reptilian monsters like basilisks, behirs, chimeras, cockatrices, hydras, etc not considered dragons?

What are fey?

Fey have never been well defined in the many editions of D&D. There seems to be a vague idea of them being nature spirits, but what is classified as fey or not has never been very consistent. Blink dogs and hags are labeled fey, but they do not resemble nature spirits. So I have decided to adopt a clear definition of fey from The Complete Guide to Fey by Goodman Games, which to my knowledge is the only source book that has ever given the fey a clear definition.

Beasts versus monstrosities

Many tabletop games treat magic as separate and self-contained from the "normal" physics of fantasyland. I believe that settings may be enriched by removing such arbitrary distinctions, hence my introduction of magical background fields underpinning reality. Continuing that line of thought, I would tackle the magic versus mundane argument as it applies to animals.
UPDATED 10/20/2017