...well I don't know what I get, but doing something like this has been on my mind for a while. So I wanted to get people's opinions on what they thought about it. Tell me what you think
...well I don't know what I get, but doing something like this has been on my mind for a while. So I wanted to get people's opinions on what they thought about it. Tell me what you think
Wasn't one of the Ravenloft Domains from Dark Sun? I think it was Kalidnay or something... but I could be wrong. Anyhow its a cool idea - both of those were awesome settings. There was also a city covered by the silt sea that spawned legions of undead if I recall... Anyhow, those would both be good starting points to look at. I think the gritty survival theme works very well for a horror setting. The idea conjures all sorts of scenes of undead rising from the sand, mad spellcasters going blind staring at the sun for arcane guidance, and Clerics of fire ritually burning themselves in furious religious ecstasy.
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Wasn't one of the Ravenloft Domains from Dark Sun? I think it was Kalidnay or something... but I could be wrong. Anyhow its a cool idea - both of those were awesome settings. There was also a city covered by the silt sea that spawned legions of undead if I recall...
Yeah, there was a domain from Dark Sun, and I believe you are correct that it was Kalidnay (though I don't have the book handy)...
That city by the silt sea was cool! I loved that boxed set...
It was ruled by the undead dragon (so Dark Sun really had two dragons, one alive, one undead)...
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
Kind of reminds me of a much less cheesy version of Resident Evil 3, where they're trying to survive in the desert, and the caravan gets attacked by an undead swarm of crows that can infect and/or blind the living and make them undead.
Maybe include mummified templars, dessication beetles, and madness inducing psionics.
Ahhh, the days when the feel of the game and the story mattered more than the rules and the crunch.... those were some good times. I would love to get into a setting like this, but it's hard to wrap your mind around crazy off the wall ideas as you get older. So sad...
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...well I don't know what I get, but doing something like this has been on my mind for a while. So I wanted to get people's opinions on what they thought about it. Tell me what you think
Kind of makes me think of my crapsack world setting that I never got to use.
The sun itself is scarred by blasphemous seals and runes, deadening and tainting its light and letting vampires and their ilk walk freely beneath it. Great deserts of chalk white sand that have a faint light of their own under starless nights, inhabited by albino human tribes who craft all their armor and weapons(and more) from bone and eke out a constantly dangerous existence hunting the dangerous native monsters and interloping mortals that pass through their lands. Immortal elves used as comatose, never-ending fonts of lifesblood for towering vampire citadels. The gods of good having been slain(and thus the gates of any good afterlife being slammed shut and sealed off, condemning all who live to the Lower Planes, which leads to people embracing evil to get a "better deal" down there) and torn to pieces, their mummified remains hidden away waiting for heroes in a hopeless world to revive them.
It veered more towards Dark Sun and an overall "well the world sure has gone to hell" feel rather than omnipresent pervading dread though.
You get a game I would play in as those of two of the best settings ever. And ya y'all are right about Kalidnay.
I love me some Athas.
"GWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
<Athasian halfling goes back to picking and eating his fleas.>
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...lots of cool stuff!Sounds like a right fine setting you got there! Though can't say I care for the name "Crapsack" much... ;-P
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
Heh. Nah, I was just using the trope to get across the state of the world in that setting. By no means an official name. Actually, I don't think I ever really come up with a name for it.
Still have the notes somewhere around here.
It is a period of civil war.
Rebel gamers, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Wizard Empire.
So what if I made it that the world/setting the time of day was eternally at dusk/early everning. They would never have sunrise or complete darkness. Never to bright, never to dark, but dark enough for vampires to travel outside during the day and PC/NPC with abilities or powers that only work at night could work thei all the time. Gladiator pits full of undead fighting the living. What do you think?
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So what if I made it that the world/setting the time of day was eternally at dusk/early everning. They would never have sunrise or complete darkness. Never to bright, never to dark, but dark enough for vampires to travel outside during the day and PC/NPC with abilities or powers that only work at night could work thei all the time. Gladiator pits full of undead fighting the living. What do you think?
Not bad, maybe call your new game Eternal Twilight or Life in Dusk. Or perhaps have the capital of the land be named "Dusk". Who knows?
Undead Duskblade Gladiators!
Or get rid of the sun entirely, and just have the moon. It would wane and wax normally, so sometimes it would be pitch black out, and other times, bright enough to read by.
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So what if I made it that the world/setting the time of day was eternally at dusk/early everning. They would never have sunrise or complete darkness. Never to bright, never to dark, but dark enough for vampires to travel outside during the day and PC/NPC with abilities or powers that only work at night could work thei all the time.
You can really evoke some stong imagery and themes building off of that. How would that affect the cultures, religions, general outlook of the populace, etc.?
Just throwing this out there, but one of the biggest issues for me when combining Dark Sun and Ravenloft is keeping up the pervading sense of dread. Dark Sun's grit and manliness seems to short circuit it at times, but it has worked before in Deadlands to a degree.
This is just one particular flavor of dread and a fairly unelegant one(by Ravenloft standards), but what about playing off the primal fear of predators. You've got these desolate wastelands and deserts. Doesn't seem to be a lot for predators to hide behind. But what about the sky? What about the ground underneath your feet?
What if there was an omnipresent(or at least widespread) threat of strange things that descend from the pitch black sky at night to fall upon those unlucky enough to be outside shelters and without light? What if there were entire swaths of land that it was considered certain death to set foot upon, for fear of whatever horrors lurked beneath the sand(or it could be the sand itself, sentient and actively desicating and absorbing organic matter in a slowly spreading ooze of a desert)? People might whisper of other cities that have disappeared beneath the sand, fearing that that fate might yet befall them as well.
(just realized that kind of plays into some Pirates of Dark Water imagery; the world seems to be getting devoured from one of two directions, above or below)
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Mikaze i like both your ideas
yes, you are right to do a right combination you need both the grim... and a moment of peace
enought horror makes people so jadded that they won't care... but the constant fear of not knowing what is going to happen next is good...
as you mentioned while i read i was thinking from small towns to citadels where people aglomerate themselves, iw would leave the normal day cicle... burning days and freezing nights, nights without stars telling the poeple all gods are dead... this ios the only live... when you are dead you are doomed to come back (sorry i realized this was one of Midnight ideas when i finished writing it) or if they are brun their souls fade to nothiness or maybereturns to the reincarnation cycle.
towns and cities are saffer than the desert, still some venture to the towers and temples of old mad wizards and clerics, that died when they defied the gods and now they exist eternally restless, uncaring of the living, but knowing that somehow they failed their tru purpose.
water so scarse that some people would kill... or worse for it, small town fighting thigs, brigands and creatures of the desert for the right to have it... but some... have adapted to drinking the blood of thir own race, human cannibals and vampires taking what they can from the meager existence laid to them. when water is a commodity... blood take its place quite well.
Old cities aparently safe, stalked by mad creatures hidding under the skin of the humans they have killed, but when revealed they are dried husk of what could only be thought of former humans, maybe the descendands of an old race.
Caravans disapearing under black storms never to be seen again...until someone pases by night by the same place and the deads of dozens or hundreds of caravaners leaving the sands to make them join them
So for a setting like this, what would be a big "No-No"?
Sounds like a cross between Pitch Black and Tremors. Can't be out in the open sky, can't be walking on the sands.
But what else is living in the caves???
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...well I don't know what I get, but doing something like this has been on my mind for a while. So I wanted to get people's opinions on what they thought about it. Tell me what you think
If you could somehow toss in Planescape, you would have an unholy union of the three best campaign settings in D&D history.
Then again, thinking back, Birthright was pretty awesome too.
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...well I don't know what I get, but doing something like this has been on my mind for a while. So I wanted to get people's opinions on what they thought about it. Tell me what you thinkIf you could somehow toss in Planescape, you would have an unholy union of the three best campaign settings in D&D history.
Then again, thinking back, Birthright was pretty awesome too.
Planescape would be a No no...
why?
part of the horror of Ravenloft is that you are stuck in there... you have no easy way out... also how horrible would be a world if you could escape whenever you want
OK, then who would you want to write this project?
Ravenloft and Dark sun combined? Why not just called the "Land of No Player Characters" and be done? No PC is going to survive that even using Dark Sun's level jump and character tree.
Lich Nightmare Beast anyone?
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Ravenloft and Dark sun combined? Why not just called the "Land of No Player Characters" and be done? No PC is going to survive that even using Dark Sun's level jump and character tree.
Lich Nightmare Beast anyone?
thatnis the issue
you have to make some areas survivableits not a gtothioc theme if there is no way people could survive
life has to be harsh, difficult, close to the point of dying continually
but survivable in some way
who could write any of this?
Either Monte Cook o William C. Connors (original developer of Ravenloft)
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Who could write any of this?
Either Monte Cook o William C. Connors (original developer of Ravenloft)
Well, it was Connors who wrote Forbidden Lore, and Kalidnay (which was brought up at the start of this thread, then quickly dropped for some reason) was in Forbidden Lore, so one could say, he already wrote a Ravenloft/Dark Sun hybrid...
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
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Who could write any of this?
Either Monte Cook o William C. Connors (original developer of Ravenloft)
Well, it was Connors who wrote Forbidden Lore, and Kalidnay (which was brought up at the start of this thread, then quickly dropped for some reason) was in Forbidden Lore, so one could say, he already wrote a Ravenloft/Dark Sun hybrid...
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
mmm good point indeed
Kalidnay
mmm don't remember it... but i think i haven't read Forbidden Lore (i bought it used a couple of years ago, me bad)
but either way *winks* lets rememberpart of Ravenloft's beauty is that in the demiplane you can get any kind of islands to torment your players... no problems involved in that.
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but either way *winks* lets rememberpart of Ravenloft's beauty is that in the demiplane you can get any kind of islands to torment your players... no problems involved in that.
Indeed...
I bring Kalidnay back up, because whenever I attempt to create a new Island of Terror (or almost anything else for that matter), I want to see any examples of what has already been done/created on the subject (so I can then pilfer them for good ideas or other "crunchy bits")...
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
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...well I don't know what I get, but doing something like this has been on my mind for a while. So I wanted to get people's opinions on what they thought about it. Tell me what you thinkIf you could somehow toss in Planescape, you would have an unholy union of the three best campaign settings in D&D history.
Then again, thinking back, Birthright was pretty awesome too.
Planescape would be a No no...
why?
part of the horror of Ravenloft is that you are stuck in there... you have no easy way out... also how horrible would be a world if you could escape whenever you want
Unless you just think you've escaped, but all you've truely done is simply left one horrible place to go to another horrible place.
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Unless you just think you've escaped, but all you've truely done is simply left one horrible place to go to another horrible place....well I don't know what I get, but doing something like this has been on my mind for a while. So I wanted to get people's opinions on what they thought about it. Tell me what you thinkIf you could somehow toss in Planescape, you would have an unholy union of the three best campaign settings in D&D history.
Then again, thinking back, Birthright was pretty awesome too.
Planescape would be a No no...
why?
part of the horror of Ravenloft is that you are stuck in there... you have no easy way out... also how horrible would be a world if you could escape whenever you want
Ha, and if I remember correctly, Planescape material actually refers to Ravenloft as scaring the hell out of experience planewalkers.
"The place is more of a trap than Sigil...."
Still, having the Ravenloftish setting noticably being in a much greater macrocosm does encroach on the mood a bit if you're trying to keep the focus on that setting.
It was Kalidnay. Darksun/Ravenloft sounds cool. Already I'm thinking of near naked halflings with skeletal body paint, working voodoo-like magics while barbecuing mul hearts, or maybe a powerful noble is holding a grand party in a major town, but is actually using the guests as a great sacrifice in his quest to transcend into a dragon...or maybe, a formerly slumbering t'liz wakes up and botches his plans, corrupting his magic and reanimating all who were slain by the spell as wights...the possbilities are endless.
or...
A thri-kreen ranger or rogue reanimated as a devourer that stalks about rooftops at night, killing heroes and stealing their souls...
...must...stop...now. Concept...too...good.
or...
A thri-kreen ranger or rogue reanimated as a devourer that stalks about rooftops at night, killing heroes and stealing their souls...
...must...stop...now. Concept...too...good.
Sounds like Jack Half-A-Prayer from Perdido Street Station.
I just had an idea, instead of it always being at dusk timewise, how about there at two times of day: Dusk and Nightwall. Dusk is all day long (think early evening during Daylight Savings Time) while Nightwall can happen any time and can last from an hour to several days. During Nightwall you can only see with darkvision and torchlight, light spell or any kind of illumination gives illumination of only 2o feet. Also during Nightwall all undead monster become "super powered" like increasing their CR by +2 or more and gaining more abilities like detect living within 60 feet. Stuff like that. What do you think?
I just had an idea, instead of it always being at dusk timewise, how about there at two times of day: Dusk and Nightwall. Dusk is all day long (think early evening during Daylight Savings Time) while Nightwall can happen any time and can last from an hour to several days. During Nightwall you can only see with darkvision and torchlight, light spell or any kind of illumination gives illumination of only 2o feet. Also during Nightwall all undead monster become "super powered" like increasing their CR by +2 or more and gaining more abilities like detect living within 60 feet. Stuff like that. What do you think?
I once ran a campaign that took place on a moon. It had 7 days of a normal light/darkness cycle, followed by an eighth "day" of night (actually a 36 hour period of darkness). The longnight occured when the moon was eclipsed by the planet it orbitted.
Well I have had a few ideas for a few races in this setting, which I am calling Obsidian Twilight, that will give it a Ravenloft/Dark Sun mixed feeling. Here we go:
Half Caliban: Obsidian Twilight version of Half Orcs based off of the Caliban from Monster of NeoExodus: Caliban.
Harrowed: Think Blade of the Blade movies. Undead/Human Hybrid.
Half-Giant: Per the SRD
Dromite: Per the SRD
I would like to have a total of 6 new/revamped races for this setting on top of the standard fantasy SRD races, but this kind of gives you an idea where I am looking to go with it.
I think I read in a friend's Ravenloft 3.0 or 3.5 campaign setting that they also have Calibans, which are cursed or twisted humans that have all the stats of half-orcs without the orcish blood.
If you're going for a quasi-Egyptian feel, maybe use some animal-headed humanoid and monstrous humanoid races, like kenku and gnolls, and possibly even minotaurs and yuan-ti. I personally like to give kenku flavor similar to the kif from C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series, even if it would be kind of ironic (kenku have the heads of crows, which feed on carrion, but kif have delicate constitutions that can only feed on freshly killed or still living creatures).
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If you haven't, try checking out the Library section of the Fraternity of Shadows website, especially the Quoth the Raven netzine. Issue #14 has an article called "Twisted Races" that may spur some ideas, and issue #8 has an article that revises the caliban race into 5 subraces with different possible mutations. Pretty good, IMO.
Race-wise I am thinking about adding Gnolls to the standard playable races to this setting. Gnolls fit very well in both settings so that have a very natual place in Obsidian Twilight.
If you haven't, try checking out the Library section of the Fraternity of Shadows website, especially the Quoth the Raven netzine. Issue #14 has an article called "Twisted Races" that may spur some ideas, and issue #8 has an article that revises the caliban race into 5 subraces with different possible mutations. Pretty good, IMO.
Thanks for the link! I found something very usual for my NeoExouds: A Hose Divided setting and some great stuff for Obsidian Twilight. Thanks again!
I think I read in a friend's Ravenloft 3.0 or 3.5 campaign setting that they also have Calibans, which are cursed or twisted humans that have all the stats of half-orcs without the orcish blood.
The Half-Calibans we created have a few interesting abilities like Smell Blood/Living at 60 feet
If you're going for a quasi-Egyptian feel, maybe use some animal-headed humanoid and monstrous humanoid races, like kenku and gnolls, and possibly even minotaurs and yuan-ti. I personally like to give kenku flavor similar to the kif from C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series, even if it would be kind of ironic (kenku have the heads of crows, which feed on carrion, but kif have delicate constitutions that can only feed on freshly killed or still living creatures).
Gnolls seem the best to use so far. They fit so well in Ravenloft and Dark Sun. Now we just need the right artist and writer to help build Obsidian Twilight from the ground up.
New ideas are great but I would like to see some of the projects I've already paid for get released...Sidetrek Adventure Weekly 2: The Undead Chronicles hasn't had an update since #3 The Strangulating Rill on 08/06/2008.
OK here is the real deal on my current product schedule. I just moved in with the new wife to her place with her and her mom. Since moving out of my apartment, I have diassembled my computer and have not assembled it in the new place due to a space issue. So with that, I am currently without access to my computer (I am using my wife's to check e-mail and make posts but all the LPJ Design stuff is on mine).
BUT I "hope" to have the new furniture in the house and my computer up and running releasing products as early as next week. Besides the SAW 2 #4 to release I have 3 other product that are just in limbo. All this waiting has been to the wedding, honeymoon, moving out and getting adjusted. This is completely MY FAULT and you will be getting the remaining 3 episode of SAW 2.
Sorry again about that.
The thing that keeps coming to mind when I saw this thread was:
Psionic Mummies.
For me it a Psionic Vampiric Lich.
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For me it a Psionic Vampiric Lich.The thing that keeps coming to mind when I saw this thread was:
Psionic Mummies.
Everyone see "the Mummy Returns"? How about mummified/undead cannibalistic halflings guarding an ancient city or pyramid? Or animal-headed, undead warriors of a dead god (or sorcerer-king, as appropriate)?
Everyone see "the Mummy Returns"? How about mummified/undead cannibalistic halflings guarding an ancient city or pyramid?
With blowguns! They have to have blowguns. That just makes it crazier!