Listing of Famous Fantasy Kingdoms and Empires for Mods (help)

Good ideas Raven X.

AD&D realm using the Greyhawk world of course!

much better (IMHO) than FR. Maybe it shows my ancientness.

Link

Another excellent option:

Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East series. An excellent series and based upon a post apocalyptic world where magic is now prevalent.

Link to books and info

I will probably be doing mods on both of the above.

Those are both great examples ThreeKings, thanks. What I'm looking for though are specific faction ideas. I could do a couple "Greyhawk" factions though I'd have to dig out my books on the world which are packing up outside in my shed somewhere. Back when I was youngster and first started playing D&D we used Greyhawk too. Damn....now I feel old too

Ahh ok. I will have (actually have already done one in the BETA) a faction based on the Empire from Fred's novel.

GreyHawk:

Scarlet Brotherhood

Against the giants module would have an interesting faction, The giants and the drow and all their slaves.. will work on this one too.

edit - re: old LOL, now I will have to go home and check all my old greyhawk settings manuals and books..  all stored in the garage somewhere.

well i know you asked for fantasy based civs, however im a huge dune fan! ever read them? and as i consider dune to be much more of a scifi/fantasy as the tech tends to be very low key. plus all the strange and semi mystical abilities exhibited by the various factions. combat is usually done hand to hand due to the use of personal force fields and then theres the pesky lazer+shield=catastrophic BOOM!!! and space combat is virtually non existent. any hoo id love to do a full dune mod but am woefully lacking in the necessary skills... so ive made due thus far using the unit editors trying to get the feel of a few favorite factions. any way..

Leto 2's empire was dominated buy a pseudo religious organization composed of all female warriors called the fishspeakers. males occupied less visible positions, bureaucrats, city guards, administrators ect.. it functioned as an agrarian society people stuck to there home planets, relatively low tech travel, was on foot vs vehicles. with the near immortal Leto as god emperor.

the bene gesserit an exclusively, for the most part, female order. they had many talents masters of diplomacy, negotiation (arm twisters extraordinaire), all forms of government, philosophy, and of course theology (most importantly spirituality/myth as a means of manipulation)then theres their physical abilities, prana bindu muscle training (super fast, super deadly) manipulation and control of their own bodies (resistant to most poisons and diseases, able to suppress physical needs, oh and they are really good at sex! increased population? hehe) the higher ranking sisters, called reverend mothers can also accesses a sort of unconscious reservoir of knowledge from the past. they are ruled buy a mother superior. they see humanity as a vast reservoir of genetic potential that only needs to be cultivated, and diverted to strengthen their order and hence all of humanity. ultimately they see them selves as teachers, of humankind. working to separate humans from people.

the tleilaxu may be a bit more difficult to adapt to fantasy as they specialize in biology and cloning. thought their axlotl tanks are decidedly low tech and quite twisted once you find out what makes em tick. they employ armies of face dancers(shape shifters) as well as clones and other modified humans, for just about any purpose one could think of. most people are disgusted whit the tleilaxu (for good reason) thought their cheap cloned body parts are used through out the empire.

then theres the houses, but i could go on and on. so i hope i at least gave you a few ideas, as i know you were looking for more fantasy based factions.

I too love Dune, Ziktur. Unfortunately I never read the books, but the first movie is one of my all time favorites. Honestly though, in my opinion, I classify Dune as being strictly Sci-Fi. You are correct that it does have more then a few mystical/magical things in it. Still, with space ships, lasers, machines, vehicles...and all that stuff, I wouldn't ut it in a "Fantasy" mod. I wouldn't mind seeing a pure Dune Mod though. I think that would be cool.

Anyone else have any race/faction ideas? I'd like to put together as large a list as possible.

The Dark Empire of "The History of the Runestaff" by Michael Moorcock? One of my favourite books and really liked those orders based on animals.

Melnibone sounds interesting too but not sure if there is enough info to create a whole and detailed faction? (at least I haven't read enough beyond Elric' chronicles and those from The Eternal Champion)

Actually, if you set apart LotR, the best saga for inclusion within existing Elemental framework ( with the whole esence/sovereigns/powerful individuals etc. ) would be the Malazan Book of the Fallen from Stephen Eriksonn. There's plenty of interesting factions and powerful individuals in there that would fit the game straight out of the box ( three Tiste factions would be interesting to see for example ).

I would love to see a mod based on the "Wheels of Time" book series.  Trollocs anyone?

LoL that's one hell of a last name. It sounds like he was named after a porn actor...RofL.

The Wheel of Time is a great series. Isn't that the series where the author died before he could finish it?

I would like to see some of the major lord of the rings factions also I would like to see evil human knight factions that apear to be good. A gray world were you cant really tell the difference between good and evil. Also maybe some roughly based on real world civs like France, England, Mongol like faction, maybe an aztec based faction, native northeast americans various greeks and some nords kind of a civ versus fantasy magic. Intermingling of faction races. Race atributes. Now mix all that together, thats what I would like to see.

Also alot of different armors, plate chain, a ton of helmets based on real world. Heraldy, crossbows, board sheilds, pikes, maybe some basic unit formations like spear wall phalanx and variations of armor roughly based on the real world. Also I want to see alot of specialization of builings to build variations of weapons so people have to make choices how thier armys turn out.

I also really want some kind of fort/fortifications.

you would also need plenty of creatures and monsters.

That's true, but it's also arguable and/or comparative. My goal with the "Raven's Epic Fantasy Wars" Mod will be to pit races and factions from different stories and universes against each other while creating them as accurately as I can in the Elemental environment. I'm probably over looking a whole bunch as well. Maybe I should start looking at cartoons for inspiration as well. Maybe add in He-Man and Skeletor factions (though they too use some technology). The Drow are definitely in, as will be Dwarves and regular Elves as well. For the Mod it's not so much about making races as it is factions from everyone's favorite literature and stories. Because I plan on having so many which is why some stories will only be getting two factions a piece to represent both the good and evil sides from those universes. I could fill the whole Mod up with just LotR factions or just Dragonlance Factions, but this isn't a pure LotR or Dragonlance Mod. It's a mixing of universes. I hope that clears up a little better what I mean.

Hoooo boy.... what an idea. It's like a Super Smash Brawl for Strategy games.

Lessee... I guess the first thing that comes to my head is various factions from the Warhammer universe. I'm only saying because someone is bound to make a warhammer mod and you can steal things from them.

Less predictably, I'd like to see some of the View from a Mirror races. The Charon would make an extremely interesting faction, as would the Aachim and the Faellum. I haven't gotten far enough in the books to know whether the old humans would be interesting to play, possibly Yggur's army. If you could balance the magic system well enough... it would be incredibly bad-ass.

Quoting GCFL,
reply 8
I would love to see a mod based on the "Wheels of Time" book series.  Trollocs anyone?


The Wheel of Time is a great series. Isn't that the series where the author died before he could finish it?

 
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Yeah thats the one.  I believe he got up to 11 or 12.  His name is Robert Jordan. I have read the first 3 so far.  I may actually start out with something easy first like make a map and then go from there.  I read a lot of fantasy series and this is definately one of my favorites.

great idea BTW.  Going back to my other post...we need Trollocs and Fades!!!

Especially considering I'm doing a pure LotR mod

I think I didn't see it mentioned already but Warcraft has some pretty famous lore

That's a really good idea Civfreak. I can't wait to see what they've done with the race faction creator and how many various art assets we'll end up with. They've said that we'll apparently be able to make our own Orcs and Elves and everything like that without the need for major graphic editing, so making a couple factions from Warcraft may not be all that hard.

Nice idea Raven X! 

I think Wheel of Time would provide you with much faction fodder.  Including a sea going faction (Atha'an Miere) and a strong naval power in the Seanchan.  And much much more... The Aeil, Aes Sedai, WhiteCloaks, Ogier, Trollocs and Shadowspawn, Forsaken, ....

The Shannara series, written by Terry Brooks also comes to mind.   

Robert Jordan wrote books 1-11 as well as the prequel "New Spring".  Aware of his impending death, he attempted to complete the story, but in the event he didn't make it, he wrote a great many notes as well as leaving behind detailed audio tapes.  Before his passing, he wrote a number of completed chapters including the ending sequence.  Brandon Sanderson writes what Robert couldn't.  Brandon completes the epic in the way that Robert envinsioned it. 

The second book of the final trilogy, "Towers of Midnight" will be released Nov 2 of this year.  The final book in the series "A Memory of Light", is scheduled for a fall release next year.  I also read a fair bit GCFL, mostly from the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres; The Wheel of Time tops my most favored list.  I've read the series many times over.  And will read the series in its entirety many times more. 

Thank you my friend. I'm glad the idea is catching on. I can probably work on some of these factions while I'm working on the Dragonlance Mod. By the time I'm ready to release the Epic War Mod we'll have everyone's favorite races and factions from everyone's favorite stories all in the same game. Here's a question though, as the Wheel of Time seems to be very popular and I didn't read the books:

If only two factions could be chosen from the Wheel Of Time series, to represent the best of the Good and the best of the Evil, what two factions would those be? <---That's aimed at all you Wheel of Time fans out there.

I could also use some info on those factions. Names of the races involved and names of the leaders of each faction. Also the names of any people I could use for those factions as "Champions/Heroes".

I will definitely make sure the Wheel of Time series is represented. My goal is to pick the most popular races and factions from the most popular series of the Fantasy genre. Encompassing books, games, movies, folk lore, mythology. Though I consider myself equal part both Fantasy and Sci-Fi fan, honestly a lot more Sci-Fi things come to mind which is why choosing and making custom factions came a lot more naturally for me in GalCiv2. My main two sources of fantasy inspiration to me would be Dragonlance and the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table I read growing up. It's odd. When I was 15 years old I was the only person in my school that I knew of that read the book "Le Morte d'Arthur" which was written by Sir Thomas Malory and first published in the year 1485. That's right my friends I said 1485!!! It's a great story, well, compilation of stories actually. It's a wonderful read full of the views of chivalry though it's safe to say many of the stories are solely legend and even for their time they were "romanticized" a little to spice things up.

In it's time Chivalry was an ideal of virtue and a code of honor, but, in reality knights did not practice the virtues but rather used them as a means to propagate wars while giving the outward appearance of doing right by the code of honor and by doing right in the eyes of God. For being such a virtuous code though, a knight could challenge another knight in battle for a ladies "Honor" and if the challenging knight won the fight the woman was his...to do with as he pleased...without question. Some great code of honor huh? I can see it now..."Squire, go fetch my Rape boots. I'm going jousting for wenches this eve!"....LoL <--- messed up aint it? Knight's could get away with both murder and rape and it was mandated by the church and the code. That doesn't sound very chivalrous to me. Our ideal of a knight today is in fact based off the romantic ideals of chivalry and the legends written around it, which in historical fact never really existed. Back in those times being "chivalrous" was just a way through politics to convince the common people that the upper ruling class was doing right.

For the Mod though I'll go with the Knights of Legend and not so much the Knights of fact lol. I think it would be cool to put some purely historical factions in as well though. It would be interesting to see how a real world non-magical faction would function in a world of magic. Maybe I could balance it by giving them really high magical resistances as they "don't believe in magic", but the trade off would be they can't cast any spells either and would have to rely solely on medieval technology. No muskets, sorry. Maybe some gun powder cannons, but I don't want guns in a game of magic, at least not in this mod anyway. If I did bend on that and include units with guns in the game, I would be very hesitant to make them too strong and would keep them rather weak as early muskets in those days weren't very accurate and took a long time to reload. As we all know gun powder didn't really become a dominating force on the battle field until closer to the late 1600's and 1700's when the technology was more readily available to mass produce flint-lock rifles.