Starting The Age of Heroes

I've finally started the Age of Heroes with my group. It's not the group I originally thought it would be, but it's been fun nonetheless. I didn't have the random domain draw that I originally planned, instead we took turns picking our domains. We didn't get through the entire setting creation process in one day however.

Dawn of Worlds is broken up into three ages. The first age is about creating the geography of the world by shaping land, terrain features, and climate. Other things such as creating races can be done, but they are discouraged through having a high point cost (each turn a player gets 3d6 points plus whatever they saved from the previous turn). The second age is about creating the races, and subraces. The third age is when the various civilizations are supposed to interact through technology, commerce, war, etc. Today, we had 3 rounds in the first age and 2 rounds in the second. Next weekend we will continue where we left off in the middle of the second age.

Here's some of the highlights.
The Pantheon:
Talamour – Change/Freedom/Chaos, Cities/Manufacturing, Lightning/Air
Aramandia – Love/Lust, Life/Healing, Glory/Hope
The Grave Keeper – Death, Luck/Fate/Trickery, Earth/Farming/Stone
Xasthura – Sun/Light, Moon/Darkness, Animals/Plants
Soraka – War/Tactics, Strength/Protection, Knowledge/Skill
Visour – Destruction/Murder, Fire/Hearth, Law/Resonsibility/Justice
The Sleeping One – Water/Ice/Sea, Wealth/Commerce/Greed, Travel/Commerce

There was supposed to be 6 players, but one of my friends woke up about 3 hours into the session due to a late night. Thus The Sleeping One became the god of leftover domains. I was playing The Grave Keeper.

First Age Highlights:
Lots of terrain building. Some of the more interesting terrains were geyser fields, magnetic storms, a giant tree growing out of the ocean, storm breathing sea serpents, an iceberg filled whirlpool, and several other terrifying bits of terrain. It became clear quickly that anyone interested in specializing in ships was going to have it rough.

The Grave Keeper made a realm where the evil souls go to be buried alive for eternity (with a pit in an oasis leading down to it), while Aramandia made a paradise like afterlife for the good souls. Visour made a judicial realm where said souls are judged. Soraka created a realm that was entirely an academy. The picture that Soraka's player drew to represent the realm looked like the gun space in The Matrix but with books. This lead to jokes about "Books. Lots of books." and "I know Calculus." Xasthura made the moon a realm that was also a paradise, and made the sun into an avatar.

Second Age Highlights:
Suddenly, race! Thousands of them. Most people had saved up a lot of points at the end of the first age because we weren't sure what else to do with them. So the first round saw the creation of 9 races and 1 subrace. The races were varied with a sentient fungus, tree wolves, evil sand fleas, evil fairies, mist people, mountain dwelling humans (the subrace being those that moved to the desert), short long-armed telepaths, lizardmen, and hairy humans that evolved from moles.

These races were accompanied by avatars (except the humans) and technological advancements. The mole people took up ship building and agriculture, the telepaths protected themselves from reptilian raiders, and the fleas learned gymnastics.

Things really started to get interesting towards the end when Xasthura created a 500 year long solar eclipse while the desert dwelling humans build a fortress around the gate to the underworld. The reasoning being that they saw how balanced life and death were and decided to protect that balance while worshiping Aramandia and The Grave Keeper. Since they were the only ones worshiping The Grave Keeper, I created an event where the dead would rise from their graves to kill the living and let them know of the Grave Keeper. This happened right at the end of the game so the fallout from the walking dead appearing after the eclipse should be interesting.

So far everything has gone wonderfully (aside from my one friend not showing up) and I can't wait to finish and start RPing in the setting.

EDIT: I spoke with one of my players who is the resident expert on Dawn of Worlds. He said he was feeling fatigued from playing which never happens to him and he couldn't figure out why until later. He realized that until the very end there was no motivation behind the actions of the gods. All the terrain created was stuff that was either "needed" (such as rivers), or "cool" (like the magnetic storms). We were playing it as players rather than the gods we were supposed to be. I agree with his diagnosis. I think if I mention this next session this will be remedied.