More Thoughts on M&M Inspired Setting
- Definitely going with IRASS.
- I would probably use Labyrinth Lord and the AEC plus the DMG and no other sources. I thought about using the RC instead, but M&M definitely has a race/class split.
- Three point alignment: Good, Neutral, Evil.
- I like how small the map is. The whole world is only 1250 miles across. I think it makes it a great deal more fantastic than most of my worlds.
- The Demons are totally modeled after the Slayers and the Beast from Krull. Some may look like more typical demons.
- The Realm was only recently unified by a strong willed lord. He recently died of old age (or perhaps he was poisoned...) and his two sons are gearing up to fight eachother over the throne. Various lords have used this as an excuse to assert their indpendence.
- Some of these lords are warlocks and necromancers. Most of them are just plain old knights.
- The Demons live in a pyramid made out of a bizarre, cobalt-colored metal. It is impervious to magic and mortal weapons.
- Clerics venerate the Star Lords as a big group rather than individual deities. I won't be describing the religion much more than that.
- Druids worship a strange entity which taught the first sorceress the arts of magic. It claims to be the deity that even the Star Lords worship.
- Some clerics get their powers from demons, or various petty gods.
- The elemental planes are actually strange generators created by the Star Lords. Elementals and various other such creatures evolved inside of them.
- The Star Lords are pale, hairless humanoids of enormous stature. Their eyes appear to be fields of stars. None of the clerics know this.
- Cyclops are the degenerate descendants of another star-faring race.
- The horrible monsters the Warlocks employ are actually summoned from the dark side of the planet.
- There was a Roman style empire that existed long before the realm but was destroyed by some sort of catastrophe/invasion.
- Wizards still dress like they're members of the empire, only with more pointy hats.
- Most elves have skin colors similar to humans, but this is due to inter-breeding. True elves from this side are blue with white hair, while ones from the dark side are red with white hair.
- Mixture of passive and active sandbox: there are several baddies pursuing badguy goals, but the only one who threatens to destroy everything is the one the PCs get tangled up with.
WHen I saw the headline, I thought you were making a campaign about M&M candies.
ReplyDeleteI've often been struck by the fact that classic PC fantasy games achieved better tone with a few flavor paragraphs, an in-game tidbit here and there, and some crappy CGA/EGA graphics than certain publicly-traded corporations can do with volumes of fluff and an art department. This fact (and it *is* a fact) informs most of my projects these days.
ReplyDeleteVery cool! I haven't played the M&M series much, thinking about giving it a shot this summer. This Star Lords idea is interesting, is that from M&M?
ReplyDeleteM&M has the "ancients" and there servants the "guardians." One of the guardians looks like this: http://images.wikia.com/mightandmagic/en/images/0/00/HeroCorakMM5.png
ReplyDeleteThe name Star Lord for my version comes from the terribly awesome Luca Turilli album Prophet of the Last Eclipse.
Based on this and the last post, my ideas have been as follows.
ReplyDelete- "Planet" may not merely be 2 sided, but can have many identical faces. I'm partial to a 20-sides setup myself, purely for the joke.
- Each "face" of the "planet" serves as a test group. One is a control, the others each have some kind of experiment going on. Kinda like the Fallout vaults. Otherwise, the geography should be identical. This will multiply your effort in the long run, allowing you to tweek one default map, and lets you play with the mirrorings.
- The volcanoes at the center of each test chamber serve as both an exhaust for the great machine that is the planet and a "reset" system in the event that any of the test chambers is compromised or needs a new test run in it. (This can lead to obvious climactic scenarios or be a focal device of a campaign)
- Demons are traditionally associated with fire and hell is thought of as existing below ground. Thus, your "demons" may live in the inner workings of the "planet." They may have been placed there by the Star Lords to prevent the residents of the planet from exiting one test chamber and entering another.
- "Star Lords" are the key to the religion, and celestial beings, so they fit into the "Angel" archetype from M&M easily.
- The "Demons" & "Angels" need not actually be in enmity, though the "Angels" would likely have the residents believe this to be so, if only because they present themselves as the ultimate good, while the demons would be the ultimate evil - as they exist purely to scare the shit out of them.
-The Demons may not be aware of their role in things, and need not even be intelligent to serve in this capacity.
- As the foundation of the major religion, the "Angels" can establish for the church certain scientific morays intentionally designed to prevent the residents from ever discovering the nature of their world. The affect of this would be to permanently pause the test chambers, or at-least the control group, in a medieval period. (Or at-least, deny them a reasonably sophisticated understanding of Astronomy and Physics)
- Your elemental gates can be an easy explanation for the extreme climates in such close proximity. Basically, the "Angels" have used them to establish a scale model of a terrestrial eco-system which would not otherwise be self-sustainable.