Welcome to Jehan. In Farsi, this means “World,” and that is a clue to the nature of this setting: a lot of it is drawn from the real world.
(Revised: 14 Dec 2016)
Note: these pages are dedicated to a d20-variant table-top role-playing game. If this is entirely confusing for you, I have linked this note to the Wikipedia article about such games.
This roleplaying setting is shaped by the following questions:
1. Rather than play in a faux-Medieval setting, why not use role-playing to imagine the future?
2. What if that future was partly shaped by self-fulfilling prophecies? What if genetic engineers created dragons out of bird-DNA? There might be a limited set of ‘optimized’ domestic animals such as ‘camelots’ and ‘doggers.’ What if some species have gone rogue in unanticipated ways?
3. What if humanoid variants were created with different advantages/disadvantages? I propose these:
Elves are the environmentalists. But they don’t just commune with nature: they revive extinct species and make up new ones, all for the sake of promoting and propagating life itself.
Dwarves are the merchants and mechanics. They run trading companies, promote the enforcement of contracts and property laws, and try to replace capabilities humans lost when we ran out of oil.
Orcs are the radical egalitarians, committed to justice. They raise animals and crops, and work as laborers under Contract for the dwarves.
4. What if advanced technology was informed by our imagining of magic? What if we figured out how to manipulate matter and energy in ways that resemble spellcasting? This might impose a conservation-of-energy limitation to spellcasting. A ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ principle could mean that spells are designed according to our mythological imagining (in other words, we can use the ones in the Player’s Handbook).
5. What if things went seriously wrong–like depletion of fossil fuels without any real substitute–but it was not the end of the world? A carbon-depleted society will be different in ways that stretch the imagination. Some common-sense probabilities: bicycles, light chariots, sailing ships, steam-trains, windmills, gliders, and zeppelins…more of a steampunk setting than a Mad Max setting, though I like the idea of monster vehicles and some guy on bungee cords playing a flame-throwing electric guitar…
6. What if we made intelligent machines and they decided that they did not like being our slaves? Most current imaginings of this scenario are apocalyptic; but again, they might just go their own way. And with limited energy available, they couldn’t just stomp around like Cylon centurions. Nor would they opt for humanoid forms, except maybe to disguise themselves from humans. And their motivations might be utterly different, like a massive hive of wasps that hack all our electronics and make them semi-useless.
7. What if standard humans—homo sapiens sapiens—were wiped out by a disease? But the humanoid variants survived? Players would have to choose to be either an orc, a dwarf, or an elf; which all have significantly different traits and motives from present-day humans. This pushes the role-play aspect of the game, and provides a compelling and disturbing mystery: What–or who–wiped out the human race? If it was deliberate, what was the motive?
These are the questions that have helped shape Jehan. The tone of the world has a healthy dose of comic irony. What were they thinking when they bred dragons? Did somebody only watch the first half of Jurassic Park?