Working Title: RUINATION (feel free to change)

Inspirations:
-	How to Host a Dungeon by Tony Dowler
-	The Quiet Year by Avery Mcdaldno
-	Heavy is the Head by Simon Carryer
-	Downfall by Caroline Hobbs
-	Microscope by Ben Robbins
-	playing too many video games

The purpose of the game is to collaboratively create a fantasy setting with your fellow players and play out millennia of history and conflict in that setting. While there is war and conflict, it doesn’t occur between the players but between different fictional societies and subgroups that different players can direct at different times.

Natural Terrain

1. Basic Terrain

First, give each player a piece of blank paper (for mapping) and some lined paper (for keeping notes, since you don’t want to write much on the map). 

To begin, start by sketching out the basic natural terrain of a landscape, a specific swath of terrain that should form a semi-distinct region distinguishing it from the landscapes of the other players. Do this on your blank sheet. For example, decide whether your landscape is a series of rolling hills, forbiddingly mountainous, swampy and wet, dry and deserted, an archipelago in the sea, a series of cliffs and highland ridges, or something more exotic such as a floating island in the sky or the metal body of a giant ancient robot. Doodle it in.

In terms of scale, you’re going to eventually be drawing small cities on your map with distinct districts and large buildings that are visible, so don’t zoom out too much. A good frame of reference is that you are drawing a distinct region on a Zelda world map, if that makes sense. A large castle or fortress is probably the size of your thumb.

2. Key Landmarks

Next, take turns swapping maps with the other players, with each player adding or elaborating upon one specific feature drawn on every other player’s map. If you don’t already see something that sparks your interest, consider adding something that fits in with what’s already there: a river flowing through the low areas, a series of caves, a high peak, a strangely shaped boulder, a waterfall, an enormous tree, and so on. However, remember to be polite when drawing on someone else’s map: support what they’ve done rather than undermining or destroying it, and don’t use it as an excuse to simply impose your own vision all over the place.

3. Combining Them

Once you are done with this very basic sketch, tape your landscapes together to form a map of the setting that the game will take place in. Working together, make any adjustments or additions that you need to blend the landscapes together at the edges. Some overlapping of different types of terrain across landscapes is encouraged. Use combining the maps as an another opportunity to be influenced by what other people have done and to pull some of those elements into your own landscape.

The Golden Age of the Ancients

The next part of the game involves playing through the lost “golden age” that occurred long ago. During this phase, players take turns selecting one of the moves below and making it occur somewhere on the combined map.

A. Introduce a New Ancient Society

Add an ancient society to one of the landscapes, initially as a small community living close to a source of shelter and sustenance.

This new society is composed of (roll or choose):
1.	Spacefaring bird-folk
2.	Hyper-intelligent spiders
3.	Beings made of pure energy
4.	High-tech planar travelers
5.	Bizarre, angelic beings
6.	Hive-minded insect-folk

B. Expand a Society

This expansion happens because of (roll or choose):
1.	Population growth (move nearby and found a new outpost)
2.	Exiling criminals or heretics (move away, turn bandit or start a community)
3.	A schism in the society (move far away and found a new community)
4.	Search for sufficient resources (follow the resource and found a new outpost)
5.	Join a neighboring community (start an outpost among a different society)
6.	Merge with a neighboring community (combine two adjacent communities)

C. Add Buildings and Wonders

Add one of the following within or adjacent to an existing community (roll or choose):
1.	A technological marvel
2.	A site of great magic
3.	The entrance to an underground complex
4.	A domestication or harnessing of nature
5.	Preparations and instruments of war (allows a community to make war)
6.	A doomed project of hubris and folly (slowly brings about the end of the age)

D. Invoke the Power of Nature

Some kind of natural disaster occurs or the natural world otherwise impedes upon the activities and internal squabbles of the ancient societies. Note that such a disaster, like everything else in the game, CANNOT UNDO WHAT A PLAYER HAS DONE. Things only go forward, not back. Even if the ocean swallows an island community into the sea, it’s not simply erased but leaves behind refugees that must go elsewhere and ruins beneath the sea that someone may someday uncover.

Inflict one of the following (roll or choose):
1.	River, lake, or ocean waters rise in a particular area, due to heavy storms
2.	Mountains crumble or the land cracks from major earthquakes
3.	Monsters emerge from their lairs and attack ancient communities
4.	The climate shifts, bringing intense cold or heat, or destroying a key resource
5.	Mystic planar energy teleports a major feature to a distant part of the map
6.	A great plague sweeps across several adjacent communities, killing many

E. Make War [Once Instruments of War Have Been Created]

A community attacks either (a) another community or (b) part of its own community declared to be heretics and criminals.

As a result (roll or choose):
1.	Destruction (leave a community in shambles but no clear resolution)
2.	Imperialism (one community is now occupied by members of another)
3.	Rebellion (a related community arms itself for war and rises up)
4.	Destitution (destroy all resources in the area, have to bring in more or leave)
5.	Better Weapons (create more powerful instruments of war)
6.	[If a doomed project has been started] Advance the doomed project (add a tally to the record of the doomed project on someone’s lined sheet; once it reaches 3 tallys, the project is successful and the Golden Age of the ancients ends: decide how)

The Dark Age?
TBD

The Modern Age?
TBD