PD: Me too, me too. Though having humans be the up-and-coming race solves a lot of “well, why do they allow humans/follow human customs/etc here?” ”

Me: I have to say I really hadn’t thought of that! That does make some of those problems a lot easier to deal with… or you could just say everyone has very similar “human-like” customs

One off/unrealistic feeling from the current events I got was that there are too many clashes/battles/wars going on or immediately anticipated…

Here I’m following in the tradition of Tolkien and many other fantasy writers of having a “time of conflict”, when the whole world seems poised on the brink– it’s a deliberate decision to create a world where Heroes can change everything, for good or ill, through their actions.

If it were me, I would probably get into the races even more (because biology interests me) and make some more non-humanoid types, like lizard-people or mer-people or such…

Part of the exercise in the Risen Lands is writing to justify existing fantasy tropes. If I re-wrote it now (and I may), I’d probably ditch some of the bog-standard races and add some variety. I’m a fan of radially symmetric species, myself.

I really do like having a LOT of races intermingling, with no insane amount of human dominance.

Me too, me too. Though having humans be the up-and-coming race solves a lot of “well, why do they allow humans/follow human customs/etc here?”

What I enjoyed most were actually the creation myths of the different races — this is probably playing off of my love for Greek/Roman mythology in general. But it was interesting thinking of the different amounts of water, earth, etc., each race would be made up of (in a pseudo-scientific manner). And about the races — I noticed they’re all pretty “standard” fantasy races except I’m not familiar with Ellyl or Kin. Doing a google search, I found Ellyl in some mythologies being faerie-like creatures — is this what you were thinking of? Also, did you make up the Kin race completely, or was this based on something? (Also, would be really nice to have descriptions of at least these last two not-so-standard races — you say in text that they will come, but looks like you didn’t get around to it )

If it were me, I would probably get into the races even more (because biology interests me) and make some more non-humanoid types, like lizard-people or mer-people or such… though I realize that wasn’t your interest. In my mind it just makes it a more “complete” fantasy world — why would all of the sentient beings be humanoid anyway?

I also enjoyed the world history a lot too, though the current time kind of snuck up on me — I thought it’d be set in a time more like our present time, though the time you picked does make more sense. One off/unrealistic feeling from the current events I got was that there are too many clashes/battles/wars going on or immediately anticipated… though I realize you want lots of conflicts (or about-to-be conflicts) going on to draw upon when making your campaign, it seemed a bit forced. Basically, I was surprised that there weren’t more nations _not_ having bad things going on with them or preparing for bad things to come.

Nice simple character creation and stat-checking system! Yay!

Overall I really enjoyed your sharing Risen Lands with us. Have you thought about running a campaign using it? I think it’d be a lot of fantasy, adventurey fun! If you ever want to flesh this out more, I’d love to try and help

Doesn’t BESM use a “roll over target number” mechanic though?