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Hi All:
I'm creating a PA homebrew using the Pathfinder system. I've taken a map of North America and modified it to fit the campaign; so far I've expanded and widened the Mississippi River, and enlarged and activated the strato-volcano found at Mt. Rainer. I'm still working on the geography of North America, especially the coastlines and the Gulf of Mexico. As of now I've decided not to include the standard fantasy races found in the core book, and will instead create my own (humans will the most populated). I do plan to have magic as it's considered the new technology, not sure on psionics just yet (not real keen on the third-party book). Religion I'm still working on; do I bring back gods from myth and legend? Do I use the monotheistic faiths currently found in NA? Not sure just yet. If you have any suggestions, comments, or questions, please feel free to post them. I've been playing RPGs off and on for about twenty years, but this will be my first time creating my own campaign world. Thanks in advance!
DK
I've been thinking about creating a similar game world myself but other things have got in the way.
Personally I was going to go the other way and have only psionics (but then I really like the rules) with a bit of a modification to the classes and possibly keep Witch/Druid/Alchemist for variety.
As for religion, it depends on what has happened in your world to cause the disaster and when. If its a recent thing then the real religions in the world would surely still be present (new ones might have sprung up too- see Shadowrun).
Check out American Gods by Neil Gaiman for an interesting take on the 'god' idea which I think would work really well for this campaign. If you go down this route, you could in theory mix in real religions (past present and mythological) to make it more interesting.
Good luck with the campaign :D
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I would personally ditch magic altogether. Technology should fill the role of magic - again of course this would depend on the pre-fall tech level of the world. If it's more or less our tech level at the fall some items may or may not seem so magical (again, a large amount of time after the fall could fix that perception). If on the other hand the world was a little more advanced (beam weapons, robotics, cybernetics) tech as magic works a bit easier (nano-tech induced powers, genetic engineered creatures, etc).
Again, I would hate - absolutely hate to play a PA game which is just a re-skinned version of Pathfinder - not the rules mechanics mind you, but same powers, magic items, etc. Just seems pointless and not very creative.
As far as faiths are concerned I would make them up. Gamma World had some good ideas for power groups and cults - here are some examples:
-Mutants who worshipped radiation/mutagenic materials or radioactive weapons
-A religious order that abhorred ancient technology, they actively hunted down relics and destroyed them.
-A cult that worshipped computers and took orders from them.
-A death cult that venerates entropy and seeks the annihilation of all life on earth and the cessation of mechanical activity
-Various racial organizations comprised of Pure Humans (Knights of Genetic Purity), Mutant Humans (Iron Society) or Mutant Animals (ALF), Artificial life (The Created) who all want to wipe out the other races
Beyond basic concepts (and old world religions) I wouldn't make large churches or faiths. Some basic concepts may include a god of the Underworld and carrion, worshipped by cannibals and their cannibal descendents as a great provider.
If the gods are not from man's past or follow a very common theme (Death, the Sun, etc) then I like to make my PA gods very local.
- A tribe of humans who live in a large complex underground may grow to worship the food dispenser in their home. A simple computer that grows mold cultures and reprocesses waste products into food may be looked upon as a great provider. One day it may start to run out of resources and ask the tribe to go out and get something for it (more parts as it is breaking down, or if you want to be a bit more sinister it could be asking more bio-matter for the recycle waste processor). This could be a good group for the PCs to fight (since they are raiding towns for parts or people) or an interesting home base for the players to start out - and to see how they deal with the demands of their god.
I was planning on writing up a Fallout setting (super-mutants, nuka-cola, vault-tech and all that cool jazz) only set in and around Toronto, but never got around too it.
In terms of religions, I had two ideas for my setting, which, I'll be honest, were really silly, but I thought they were great.
-First one was a cult that worshipped a giant statue of a pudgy man in overalls holding up a meal consisting of pieces of sliced meat and vegetables between two slices of bread. Imagine their hymns:
Priest: 'And so the big boy declared that the fifth combo of truth would cost three and ninety-nine.'
Followers (in unison): 'Would thou liketh fries with that.'
-The second was my favourite. A cult that found a series of recordings of 'the great handyman'. The colours of his faith were green and red, and they spoke of his travels with saint Harold and his adventures with the one known only as 'Bill'. His followers are the keepers of the holy 'duct tape', and are relied upon by nearby communities for their amazing abilities at repair and jury-rigging. (100000 points to any of my american friends who get the reference)
I've played a similar campaign that was metamorphosis alpha meets gamma world, the idea of 'gods' were different things. Mostly I had raw elemental entities appear, Rad, God of the Eldrith Glow was a entity born of raw radiation. He was served by mutant human priest and psionicist, a few animal mutants who were 'blessed' by rad appeared, some humanoid and some feral with sentience and when those who used 'magic' cast a spell it warped the terrain in the manner of defiling. I introduced old cults littering the gulf coast since I'm a Floridian by birth, and in the older versions of gamma world the gulf coast rose from polar ice caps melting so the gulf coast in my games were mostly boonies and stilt homes except a Innsmouth of the gulf coast obsessed with breeding a adaptive race called Deep Ones. I also introduced 'Immortals' similar to those found in Mystra, they were people who became gods through unnatural means.
To explain outsiders mas being literal outsiders who were thrust into the wasteland from their home dimension and they bred with people creating Tieflings, Sorcerers, Aasimar, Suli, elemental blood races, and in my game I had entities who were of pure primal chaos and resembled reptilians with either humanoid or serpentine traits with the ability of manifesting warping effects. Conjurers and Summoners dip into their blood and called out their 'blessing' or 'taint' to create rifts so their kin can come to their aid temporary.
The use of anthro races from the Bestiary work well for P-A, ratling inhabit ruins of the Ancients, catfolk scour ruins for artifacts and act as scouts for traders, grippli could be jungle dwellers common in the gulf coast swamps or the jungles of south america, gillmen could be proto-deep one hybrids, kobolds and lizardfolk are a easy genetic cocktail because reptilian DNA is quite easy to manipulate, same applies to plants so with the ARG you can create such.Goblins might be little green men from space with orcs being their elder kin, or they're mutants who just appeared.Dwarves might be a group of vault dwellers who have been rarely seen and build technological wonders.
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To build on Freedoms post, if you really want to use the Pathfinder mechanics the Advanced Race Guide could be your best friend.
As far as mutations you could have a point-buy type system for all mutants at char gen for mutational powers (similar to limited use SLAs or spells) and then a point progression for mutational advancement as they level up. Mutations would basically be spells - and as such you would have to rank various mutational powers. That could be a pain in a level dependent game like PFRPG.
If you have Pure strain humans in your game you can up their feats, toughness, general knowledge (legacy) and they would get access to starting technology -while everyone else is stuck with bows and spears. They also use old tech better (if you have rules for learning how to decipher artifacts pure humans should do it better), so they get better effects (ex - old medical devices being used on an unmutated creatures vs. a mutated one, the device may heal the former and possibly kill the latter), do more damage with weapons, use ancient armor unmodified, etc.
Depending on the tech another balancing point between races would be to restrict the high-tech equipment from mutants (human or otherwise) by neural/bio-interfaces that best work best with pure humans. That way humans can advance with tech, powered armor (if you have it in your game), body comps, interaction or assisting droids while mutants can advance with mutational power plus some ancient relic gear (weapons mostly).
Again, these considerations are just if you want a variety of races with different kind of power niches. Humans being higher tech, smarter and tough (for surviving unmutated), mutants with their variety of powers and other races somewhere in-between. Maybe have mutant animals have some mutations but not as utility or psionic as mutant humans but they may get a really good package on the physical activity side: nightvision, natural combat, climbing, etc. Ex - think catfolk with fixed physical mutations and enhancements: high dex, low-light vision, natural attacks and a few mutations, whereas mutant humans would probably have more utility mutations but may not be as strong in the physical dept (mentalist).
Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.
I would look at Darwin's World by RPG objects to see if it would be easier to convert their 3.5 stuff over to Pathfinder. It's a pretty dark and grim world and the mutations do not scream "Superfriends", some are pretty screwed-up real world defects in fact. But it's a solidly written game with it's roots in Gamma World and some influences from Wasteland and Fallout PC games. Plus being 3.0/3.5 it shouldn't be too hard to adapt.
Auxmaulous brought up some good points and I agree with the looking into of Darwins World, the classes could easily be converted or adapted into Archetypes. The use of a point based system might do, possibly make it the summoners evolution list. Also for players who want to play sentient animals the Noble Wild book is a great resource, just make some classes to represent a mutant animal and the mutations. Noble Wild has classes to represent basic variants of normal creatures. There is a Engineer Class, it has two archetypes so far. A Artificer for the magical folks and a Tek-Warrior that gets a weapon instead of automaton, good for a tech enhanced warrior with strange bits and pieces.
Also curious how you will handle tech, will it be weird science as in lasers and holograms? Are you using the rules from pathfinder that makes technology essentially re-skinned magic items? For constructs do you place the (robot) subtype on it? How will you explain 'magic'? Will you look into Dreamscarred Press for psionics, their works seem very well adapted from 3.5. Soulknives can easily be reskinned making mindblades/holoblades through tech or bio implants, psions and wilders are normal, Dreads could be those toched by madnss manifesting.