I call it GRAVELAND. It's a place of many undead, horrid gruesome landscapes, and mighty castles. It's a land of lost magic artifacts, hidden ancient secrets of the demonlords, and keys that unlock doors to the planes of hell. A land of danger and doom. A blackened bright starfield may light up the sky, other times is a wall of blackness. The wizards of the Black Allegiance have a strong portal there, and there is few outcasts that abandoned the order to regain sanity in the Order of the lightbeards.
-Arcanum. A pretty awesome mixture of steampunk and fantasy, and a surprisingly well-rounded setting for a sadly underappreciated PC RPG. I mean, ogres with top hats and monocles. Do I need to say more? Less fantastic than Castle Falkenstein, however.
-Mass Effect would be nice. Though I do fear it might suffer from excessive focus on the game's protagonists.
-The Exile/Avernum series. An entirely subterranean world where everyone is a criminal/heretic/enemy of the state and there are all manners of monstruous creatures and aliens.
-Planescape. SOMEONE, BRING IT BACK.
I am very tired of copy-paste settings taken heavily from Earth history. This is the Middle East, this is France, this is Italy, this is China & Japan mixed together etc. I want more of the oddness and far imaginary that you get in sci-fi. The culture novels come to mind.
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I call it GRAVELAND. It's a place of many undead, horrid gruesome landscapes, and mighty castles. It's a land of lost magic artifacts, hidden ancient secrets of the demonlords, and keys that unlock doors to the planes of hell. A land of danger and doom. A blackened bright starfield may light up the sky, other times is a wall of blackness. The wizards of the Black Allegiance have a strong portal there, and there is few outcasts that abandoned the order to regain sanity in the Order of the lightbeards.
Sounds part Castlevania, part Ravenloft and all good. I've got a region sketched out a bit like this.
Niven's Integral Trees/Smoke Ring. Not sure what PCs would do but...it'd be cool.
Thundarr. Guess you could do it in Gamma World, but I'd like to see some setting info.
The Chanur setting might be cool.
M
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Homestuck.
Good luck GMing that game. ;D
I am very tired of copy-paste settings taken heavily from Earth history. This is the Middle East, this is France, this is Italy, this is China & Japan mixed together etc. I want more of the oddness and far imaginary that you get in sci-fi. The culture novels come to mind.
I agree and disagree.
Where those things are useful is in the touchstones. Instead of trying to explain an entire culture, which itself could be several volumes of an encyclopedia, using some familiar lets a reader/roleplayer have some of the blanks pace already filled in and as a writer/designer you need only portray the really unique aspects.
So I agree, I'd like to see more experimentation and variety in settings, but I also see the value of using some real world similarities to work with as the base. I think the trick of good writing/design is to use those touchstones without being too obvious.
Mmm, well I've had to fill in some places for the setting I've dragged the players into as their dm, and there was this one place that comes to mind. I could have copy pasted something from our world, but I thought I'd do things a bit differently.
So, it is a great source of sorcery (sourcery?), and humanoid sorcerers living out in the dank and dangerous wild swamps, mentoring the next gen of sorcerers do make up a minority of the population. The majority though are Otyugh's of an old democracy. Somewhat of a confederacy, not especially tribal, because the otyughs are far more individualistic than most and prone to their wanderings. So yes, the otyughs are the originators of democratic rule and grand forum meetings (in wide ponds) in this setting. They also love the taste of lizardfolk and are the constant enemies of those tasty morsels. The city states of the lizardfolk are actually the modernists of the setting, pushing rhetoric, science and domain clerics of city philosophies.
Sometimes I get carried away.
I'll probably want to work on my homebrew setting.
Gave it the name Mystralas, but I dunno if I'll keep it.
I couldn't find a name working for the world. Humans aren't in total control, so they can't spread their view on what the world is and their terms of it. Old species have been knocked off or lost their former heights. Monsters have a lot of power, and they have their own ideas on what the world is (and they aren't unified all-together either). So taking a bit from a strong influence, the game Dark Souls, the age is far more important in defining the world, where it is at, where it is going. Below the age, are the regional powers, the macro politics, some of the enduring barriers of the world. Quite happy with the setting so far.
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Mmm, well I've had to fill in some places for the setting I've dragged the players into as their dm, and there was this one place that comes to mind. I could have copy pasted something from our world, but I thought I'd do things a bit differently.
So, it is a great source of sorcery (sourcery?), and humanoid sorcerers living out in the dank and dangerous wild swamps, mentoring the next gen of sorcerers do make up a minority of the population. The majority though are Otyugh's of an old democracy. Somewhat of a confederacy, not especially tribal, because the otyughs are far more individualistic than most and prone to their wanderings. So yes, the otyughs are the originators of democratic rule and grand forum meetings (in wide ponds) in this setting. They also love the taste of lizardfolk and are the constant enemies of those tasty morsels. The city states of the lizardfolk are actually the modernists of the setting, pushing rhetoric, science and domain clerics of city philosophies.
Sometimes I get carried away.
Nothing wrong with any of that, I like it actually, it's stuff you don't normally see. I've had a soft spot for otyughs ever since I noticed that they could speak common, years and years ago.
As for the lizardfolk, I immediately see a base similarity with the Greek city states, at a very basic level, the organization combined with the emphasis on learning and knowledge. When figuring out details for them I'd totally use the Greeks as a baseline, but turn a few things completely on their head and push it in their own direction as well. The Greeks would serve as a basic compare and contrast model, not as a copy/paste replacement, if that makes sense.
I've grown to like campaign settings that break preconceived notions. I also don't care if they make sense from a physics perspective. There's a swashbuckling setting I like where the ships can float in the air, they still operate like sailing ships, but they're made of a wood that can float in certain places. The nations are floating cloud islands and the world is actually shaped like a snow globe, so some islands are at a higher elevation than others.
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I remember a setting the opposite of the default goodly celestials evil demons thing. Everything got turned around. So goodly demons and devils and evil as hell celestials. Plant creatures rule the realm together with neutral and good aligned undead. Creatures with living anatomy were regarded as extremely suspicious. Instead of people freaking out the slumbering person took a bolt in the temple and kept going, now its folk or I should say plants and undead freaking out that these "disgusting" creatures are leaking blood and juices everywhere. Alot of players weren't interested in the campaign initially but that changed after the first session. Vampire knight issuing challenges and fighting honourably, blighted spawn burning lay on hands. Fey marching in orderly fashion and following orders etc. It was so odd, it stuck for a long while.
Yeah, plants, fey and shapechangers are one of the strongest alliances in my imagining. The centaurs and zebrataurs are another faction that has a lot of territory, and keeps some human lands from expanding. The centaur buffer zone.
One dm I know removed alignment entirely. In his world, the only true evil were undead. However, the undead were also a more natural part of the world. He didn't like questioning of this, death was evil, so there! That same dm gave me the idea of a strong fey power, but fey really need some others to really get going as a force, unless they are going to have a lot of redcaps.
He didn't like questioning of this, death was evil, so there!
>_<
"Death gods/entities/death itself is evil" is one of my biggest pet peeves in settings, stories, anything really. The only place IMO that gets away with it is CastleVania, where "Death" is just a name for a specific creature, rather than the actual concept/anthropomorphized personification of the concept of death.
Honestly, I think Death is evil. I don't get the idea that he's neutral just because he doesn't care about "the mortal concept of morality". He's committing genocide. :P
I don't believe death is evil, just neutral. He doesn't do the killing, just collects the souls.
I don't believe death is evil, just neutral. He doesn't do the killing, just collects the souls.
Technically, that's just one type of representation, and I agree that it isn't evil. But actual death (as in the force/being that comes to us all in the end and plays chess with Swedes) is.
I second Girl Genius.
Some good sword and sandals type settings.
Randomly, I'd like to see ONLY the Chinese fantasy world from the 90s anime Fushigi Yugi. It was really cool. But without the annoying schoolgirls.
And on the subject of anime, for a modern/superpower/sci-fi/action/espionage game, there are a very large number of favors or services I would be willing to perform if someone would design/run a game set in the Read or Die universe.
In other news, at some point amid a million other "I want to..." projects, I want to design a steampunk zombie apocalypse setting. I know both are going out of style, but still.
I second Girl Genius.
Some good sword and sandals type settings.
Randomly, I'd like to see ONLY the Chinese fantasy world from the 90s anime Fushigi Yugi. It was really cool. But without the annoying schoolgirls.
And on the subject of anime, for a modern/superpower/sci-fi/action/espionage game, there are a very large number of favors or services I would be willing to perform if someone would design/run a game set in the Read or Die universe.
In other news, at some point amid a million other "I want to..." projects, I want to design a steampunk zombie apocalypse setting. I know both are going out of style, but still.
I know a guy who does a Victorian style steam punk game with lots of undead in it, I played a session it was pretty fun. He's also the reigning champ of Iron GM.
I want to try to run a "To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" themed steampunk setting, giant robot vilian, Pathfinder adventure.
I would so play in that game and I am dead serious.
Irontruth, your game sounds awesome too, but damn. :)
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I don't believe death is evil, just neutral. He doesn't do the killing, just collects the souls.
I think he's pissed off with the living because (a)they are the source of all the dead people and (b)They defile and desecrate the dead.
For the Aboriginals of Australia The Wulgaru are evil giants who abduct those who violate tribal taboos, drag them to their cave, and kill them/eat them, but also the Chief Wulgaru is guardian of the Dead.
Lawful-Evil because killing is evil and they represent the absolute nature of the law.
Poke'mon. Wouldn't really want to play it myself, but I think it would be a good way to introduce the younger kids to table top RPGs. As for settings I would want to play myself, I've got to second Mass Effect. Funny enough Fallout was actually the first table top rpg I ever played.
Hasbro did release a simple Pokemon roleplaying game about the time 3.0 was hitting really big. It was based on the first episode of the cartoon series and the player took the role of Ash. I can't remember the dice mechanic, but it was pretty simple and easy to learn. My son still has a copy of of it buried away in his book collection (he's 19, now). I think it was meant to be part of an ongoing series of stories you both read and played, but only the first book was released (that I know of).
I heartily endorse a Fool Wolf setting. Certain elements from those novels made it into my homebrew setting long, long ago and I've always wanted to just play in the realm. Also, The Master Li and Number 10 Ox series.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Chronicles-Master-Number-Ten/dp/0966543602
Sorry for the long link. I can't find my cheat sheet on how to linkify them. If someone would be so kind as to fix this I'd appreciate it.
Just stumbled upon the Japanese anime Last Exile series.
Giant airships, smaller "vanships" dieselpunk vibe. Sounds cool!
How about a revival/re-imagining of Fantasy Flight's Dragonstar?
+2. Great setting.