Hey all!
Since we've all been getting sick of selling our own organs for APs and new systems that the group gets sick of within a session, my gaming group finally had a sit-down and discussed what we wanted to... well, do. What we ended up with was a fantasy-western-political intrigue-Mass Effect 2-cosmic horror thingy. At first glance, this monstrosity seems destined to crash and burn. Yet, strangely enough...
IT'S BLOODY AWESOME!
While our resident DM (who has about eight years of experience on me) is running this-and doing a FANTASTIC job, I might add-I'm making a contingency once he starts getting burnt out, so he can step aside and make sure the game remains fresh and exciting for everyone involved while I DM something else.
My high concept started with a fairly simple, FUDGE-like dice pool system-5's and 6's are Victories, 1's are Mishaps-with an ME-style six class system (in case you haven't figured it out already, our group ADORES ME and Bioware in general). There are 12 specializations, which are shared between classes. Mechanically, I think it's pretty sweet. I've got most of the stuff hammered out, so no need to worry about that. What I'm worried about... is maybe I've gotten a little *too* crazy with the setting.
A few cliches I immediately set out to avoid is the Mysterious Precursors and the Humanity is Top Dog tropes. The Mysterious Precursors in of itself isn't a problem, but it can cause lazy explanations (well, the Precursors had really advanced magic/technology, so that thing works despite the internal logic of the universe), as well as quite a lazy way to get the players hooked in (well, you all got this dream from the precursors telling you to go to this place...), so I generally like to avoid the "Mysterious" part of the trope. The actual Precursors part, though? I love subverting the hell out of that.
On Aviros, the Brix (think Beholders except not evil and with arms instead of extra eyes) are directly responsible for the three main races' existence (more on them later), and indirectly responsible for everyone else on the planet, whether through their devastating experiments turning an area the size of Eurasia into sand with wild magic storms coursing through it, or accidentally giving some plants sentience when a professor overloaded their Overmind with too many micropersonalities (basically getting high) and decided to do it for a lark. The tweeest is... they never disappeared. In fact, they're gleefully watching their experiments from space, constantly making notes and discussing what will happen next. This is common knowledge. There are even a few on the surface who wan to see things up close and personal! So there. Trope subverted.
Another trope that grates on me is the Humans Are the Top Dog. A race of squishy, somewhat intelligent monkeys who figured out how to smelt iron live among tough-as-nails tunnelers who, to every man, woman, and child, are combat trained, and nigh-immortal, graceful, intelligent humanlike creatures who command enormous supernatural power. And that's just the standard fantasy setting. But, somehow, they end up dominating most of the world, driving the elves to the forests and the dwarves underground. Sure, this is waved away with the standard explanation of how humans breed like rabbits and we have a special kind of willpower, but this always felt kind of weak to me. I mean, if we had such amazing willpower and determination, we probably would have colonized Mars a generation ago. So I decided to turn that trope on its head: among insanely intelligent robots who view everybody else as pawns in elaborate games of power, infernal mad inventors and magicians who are tearing the fabric of reality apart, insectile krogan-mixed-with-vorcha, except with above average intelligence, lumbering, sentient, flying elephant-sized plants who can make the landscape bend to their will with but a word, it made sense to me that that humans were the default slave race. Eager, disposable, breed like rabbits, able to get the job done no matter what... Only recently (a dozen years ago), did humans manage to finally break free in a rebellion that annihilated two-thirds of them, and even still most humans live as scavengers (their former owners are too suspicious of them now to reaccept them as slaves) or nomads rather than trying to build their own nation. Their only marginal allies have a mess of problems of their own as well as being disregarded as oddballs by everyone else.
Okay, pretty much out of time. I'll update with more setting info later. What do you think? Future subversions include: All Races Are Humans and Universal Technology Levels.
Sounds kinda cool, but one question: Are our minds doomed to be forever shackled to that tiresome, fountainhead-of-imagination-corking "Tropes" website?
Eh, I view it as more of a creati-DON'T LISTEN TO HER! THEY'VE GOT ME TRA-ve aid, but yeah, TVTropes is pretty much omnipresent.
Now, where was I? Ah, yes, the ever-frustrating, "All Races Are Humans" trope. Again, because most writers are human and tend to make humans the Mary Sues of the place, they tend to model all other races to fit in their image. Dwarves, elves, everything in between, they all look like humans but with a few basic tweaks. Yeah, I really don't get that. Handwaves can be used to explain that the first god looked like a human and created humans and all other races in their image, but that's always felt like a cop-out to me. So, I'll walk through what races look like humans, and which... don't.
- The Navara: Originally created by the Brix as artificial intelligences to serve as top strategists against the Elder Dragons, after an incident wherein a navara wiped out an entire colony to destroy two dragons, the Brix realized that their ruthlessness would better serve them as battle tacticians and elite soldiers. The brix outfitted the AIs with the ability to interface with "Shells," specialized combat platforms, and gave them ability to form new Shells in case of emergency. Although quadrupedal platforms, in both tauric and animalistic types, had the stability to fire extremely heavy weapons, the navara's combat role was often far more subtle. Their stealthy approach favored bipedal, small mechs, and soon this became the norm for the navara. After all, simpler AIs could pilot heavy platforms and shoot things. Once the brix began the lose and they retreated to Aviros, however, the navara ancestral memory core was destroyed in the retreat, leaving them with no cultural identity except a sense of ruthless cunning and a desire for power once they landed on Aviros. Some part of them still remembered the bipedal mechs, however, and that became their favored form. (In case you're wondering how the navara survived for so long with the technology to build mechs, the brix gave them telekinetic drives in the cores to allow them to build Shells out of low tech materials if needed.)
- The Humans: As the war against the Elder Dragons raged on, it quickly became apparent that creating new artificial intelligences and heavy mechs for them to pilot consumed too many resources. The brix then devised a solution-a quickly breeding, adaptive race. They needn't have too many natural defenses, since they would mainly be piloting much less resource-intensive power armor. The humans quickly became the cannon fodder in the war against the Elder Dragons, accepting it as their role to fight and die for others greater than themselves. When the brix retreated to Aviros, they let the humans spread like a swarm, due to the fact that high technology or magic would attract the Elder Dragons, in hopes of natural selection breeding stronger, faster, and smarter humans.
- The Kasharn: Generally seen as Humans 2.0 by the brix, the kasharn are the only race that was engineered after the brixes' loss against the Elder Dragons. Hundreds of thousands of generations passed and the humans showed no signs of becoming what the brix needed them to be, even as the navara were growing more and more advanced-and enslaving the humans. In rare brash move, the brix took a risk and captured a third of the current population of humans and used their organic matter to make them smarter, stronger, and faster. The kasharn, as they later called themselves, ended being seven foot tall red-skinned monstrosities, with curling black horns and ebony growths jutting out of their skin, their eyes blazing with light. Ironically, despite their purpose, the kasharns' faces look somewhat draconic. However, their brutish look underlies a manic intelligence, always building and modifying. Although the brix did not expect this outcome, they accepted it nonetheless, and unleashed the kasharn upon Aviros, eagerly watching them breed, adapt, and create, heedless of the damage they were causing.
Alright, those are the humanoid-ish races, and reasons why they look humanoid-ish. Now for the races that don't look so humanoid-ish...
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