Re-Designing an FRPG World

The older incarnations of Telrhin were a rehash of the Tolkien story: once mighty civilizations, tarnished and diluted over time from change and the emergence of "man", battling an ancient evil in the form of the Black King, Talon.  There were gods and a cosmic struggle layered into this, and later in 'mark iii' the idea of a crossroads of fate emerged, determining the future paradigm.

Mark IV
In addition to the purge of borrowed or uninspired elements, I wanted to re-invent the world, take from it what was good and cast it into a new mould.  All the work before was incremental, and it was time for a complete overhaul.  Where to start?  Naturally, with the premise.  Re-examine the nature of gods, good and evil, magic, choose a degree of fantasy that matched my wants.  But that's par for the course when designing a world.  What I needed was a story.  Something to breathe life into the structure.  Going over all the old notes, ideas and adventures from before, I kept finding traces of a beautiful story, tragic and romantic, elegantly complex.  The question was: how do I weave the world around it?  The answer came in the form of the Tale of Two Queens...

(to be continued)