New Map

click to embiggen

"New" might not be the most appropriate word since I designed the first draft of this one while on my Might & Magic kick.  Still, I have repurposed it to serve as a map of the area surrounding Ilion.  I'm still not entirely happy with it, but thought I'd let you guys have a look at it.

Unfocused Thoughts on Greyhawk Folio

I've been sitting on these half-hatched ideas for over a week and I thought I needed to get them out in some form, so here they are.  Some of them will be elaborated on in more coherent and better formated posts as I continue to develop this project.

• Based on the names on the map and a cursory skim of the book itself I've picked out a few places I may want to focus on.
• The Shield Lands immediately jumps out at me due to its name, the fact that it neighbors the similarly awesomely named Bandit Kingdoms, and the description itself.  The Horned society sounds kinda lame, but I like anybody whose religion is described as "deviltry."
• I also like the Hold of the Sea Princes, which I imagine as a combination of Venice and King's Landing as portrayed in the Game of Thrones HBO series.
• On that note, I essentially want this setting to be one part Hyboria, one part Newhon, and one part Westeros, with some middle ages thrown in for flavor.
• My other choice for the focal point of the setting is Greyhawk itself.  One thing I've been missing in my current campaign is urban adventures, which I'm a big fan of.    I'll likely be using Zak's urbancrawl system to flesh it (or any other city I have to detail) out.  Not sure yet what to do about the infamous ruined pile if I pick this location, but we'll see.
• The Sword Lands is the one that is most obviously in my wheelhouse (knights fighting Satan), but that may be the best reason not to do it.  Still, I like knights... a lot.
• Religion is proving to be an issue.  The original folio lacks any details on the Greyhawk pantheon that I know through the 3e core books.  I don't want to use those because that strikes me as lazy, but when reading the folio I get a very clear image of a society with a pseudo-Christian dynamic.  Theocracies, intolerant of old religions, sacred orders of knights who oppose the Adversaries, and so on populate the folio.  Unfortunately, I already have that setting.  I want something with paganism.
• Maybe I could do some kind of old gods vs new gods thing a la Game of Thrones, where it's much less confrontational than the pseudo-Christian idea.
• I also want to use some of the Newhon stuff from DDG in my campaign.  Kos, God of Dooms, is awesome.
• Right now my rough equivalents for the different ethnic groups are as follows: Suloise = Phoenicians, Oeridians = Indo-Europeans (particularly Latins and Greeks but the farther from Aerdy you get the more they look like Germans), Baklunish = Turkic peoples, and the Flanae = Finno-Ugric peoples.  This breaks down in certain areas, particularly the Yeomanry, and I probably need to think about it a bit more.
• I imagine The Great Kingdom as being rather like 6th century Byzantium, but more evil.
• I may steal some ideas from my Might & Magic project, including making Oerth really be some kinda spaceship.  Not 100% on that, or really anything else on this list, though.

Well that's about it.

Sorry about the light posting recently, but I kinda went into a coma after the semester was over.  It should pick up more in the coming days before returning to normal.  

Next week I'll be in Hattiesburg running another quick side game.  Not sure what it's going to be yet, but I need to figure it out shortly.

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

This post is not about the Star Trek episode; sorry to disappoint. 

In the responses to my recent poll, I’ve seen a number of people who are fine with Science Fantasy, as long as it is presented as such.  However, if a hypothetical DM were to pitch a high fantasy setting, only to rip off the curtain at the end to reveal aliens or weird computer-gods, I get the feeling these individuals would be a tad pissed. 

I must say then that I am public enemy number one for these people, as about 90% of the settings I make are ostensibly high fantasy (or sometimes low fantasy) with quasi-science fiction explanations.  While my presentation of Uz makes it very clear from the start that the setting is a post-apocalyptic Earth, IRASS is by design a more subtle creature.  My goal would be that any players who had not read this blog would think of it as simply a fantastic planet until the hypothetical end game.

This is not the first time I've thought about doing this.  My version of the Wilderlands was actually a ring world colonized by Star Trek's Federation (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) and got separated during some war with the Markabs (demonic entities).  Even my first game, which was a railroady mess, was really just the collapse of the Roman Empire with magic, but the "angels" the main church worshiped were really the aliens who colonized the planet.  Indeed, this seems to be my wheelhouse, with the Dark Country being a tad out of the box for me.  That's probably not entirely accurate, but I've done way more "high fantasy with secret ray guns" than "middle ages with a fog machine" settings.

Part of this is undoubtedly due to the Might & Magic series.  They were the height of fantasy gaming to me at age 12.  The typical course of events in an M&M game begins with you trying to take down an evil wizard or cult, and ends with you descending into an alien hive-fortress with a blaster rifle.  While the Heroes series largely lacked these elements, they were almost included in Heroes III, but apparently fan outrage kept this from happening.  (I find this odd, since it's a natural continuation of M&M 7's plot, but I'm sure you don't really care about that).

There is obviously some precedent for this sort of thing in D&D:

from the first module published by TSR: Temple of the Frog

this one should be obvious

Both of these include saucers and ray guns in what are otherwise typical Tolkienian (in Blackmoor's case) and Gygaxian fantasy.  Neither of their respective settings state on the box "this has fucking rayguns in it!" so I suppose I'm participating in a long D&D tradition.  Of course, thats not why I do it.  I do it because I like it.

One thing I'm interested to know, though I got some ideas from the response to my poll, why do those of you who don't like this particular embodiment of the mixture dislike it?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two tangential notes:  First, I've often wanted to run a Star Trek game in which the away team gets stranded on the Wilderlands planet and has their ship stolen.  They have to find a spaceship and get it operational again while fighting the Orcs of the Purple Claw and a myriad of other Wilderlands threats.

Second, most of my early campaigns were very railroady, but almost without exception they crashed and burned really quickly.  Then, rather than running the game "I most wanted to run" I decided to run the game I would most want to play.  Thus I started running sandboxes and thus I learned that I was wrong about what I most wanted to run to start with.

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.

IRASS Map Take II

click to embiggen

Heres another attempt at a map of the "planet" of IRASS.  This one is more closely based on the World of Xeen maps, with each of the corner being associated with an element.  In this case it's because the Star Lords (what I've decided to call the Immortals) erected gates to the elemental planes there.

I haven't really assigned the locations for the various factions yet, but I like where the map is much better now. 

Unfocused Thoughts on Might & Magic Inspired Setting

This has been kinda running around my head for a few days, and I thought I'd get it out of my system.  It's unlikely I'll end up doing much more with it than making a map or two, but it might make a cool place to adventure in if a TPK happens in Nightwick Abbey.  That'd depend on the players of course, and I rather like the Dark Country (obviously).

• The world is flat with two sides that are unaware of eachother.  There is a massive web of underdark style tunnels that ultimately connect the two, but the core is thick enough and the path dangerous enough that it is extremely rare that someone make it from one side to  the other.  The players will most likely do this at some point.
• The world was created thousands of years ago by a group of Immortals using both science and sorcery in order to examine how life ultimately develops and other such inscrutable things.
• In the center of both sides of the world is a giant Mountain that contains two computers (one for each side) that make sure everything is working right.
• The most holy artifact of [insert lawful religion here] is actually a key card that allows access to the computer.  No one in the religion knows this.
• There is one Lawful kingdom of Humans (called the Realm of Man) ruled by a king or queen.  It uses a fantasied up version of the feudal system that still allows for social mobility.  Individual lords are whatever alignment is most appropriate for them.
• At least one lord is secretly working for [insert badguys here].  Most likely it's more than one.
• Other kingdoms include: a fairy realm, a land ruled by wizards, a land ruled by warlocks, a stinking mire controlled by necromancers, and a barbaric wilderness
• The fairy realm is ruled by a (perhaps the) Sorceress.  It includes both Elves and Dwarves as well as a number of other creatures in a manner similar to the way the Narnians are portrayed in the second move
• Humans can be found in all the realms, including in leadership positions
• The Wizards, Humans, and Fairy races will occasionally team up to defeat especially arbaric Barbarians, especially warlock-y Warlocks, and especially dead Necromancers
• Evil lords rarely work together, but they often employ lots of different types of evil minion
• One Warlock knows about the computers and wants to destroy them.  He believes this will cause clerical magic to disappear
• "Demons" are actually invaders from space who want to turn the world into a base from which they can take on the Immortals.  (Thats possibly why the Warlock knows about the computer)
• Halflings are a servitor class for the Wizards.  Many have escaped into the Realm and made hillside villages there.
• Orcs were created by some Wizard who really liked boars before he decided to become a Warlock instead.  The ones who are friendly with the Barbarians escaped captivity.
• Necromancers don't like anybody.
• PCs who are awarded Immortal status get to live on their kickass spaceship.  They have a foosball table.  It's totally rad.  The Demons are jealous.
• The world is positively littered with gates that transport you to other areas, other worlds, or even elemental planes.
• The worlds name is probably Xenroth, but may be Xerathia, or Irass (I.R.A.S.S. -- It's Really a Space Ship).
•  The Realm is possible having a succession crisis when the campaign starts.
• Lands surrounding gates to the elemental planes are obviously affected; covered in lava, crystaline, filled with permanent storms, that sort of thing.
• Most adventure locales will be discrete things, but I might through Stonehell on there for shits and giggles.
• I'd try to do something similar to Jeff Rients's Epic Sandboxery.  Mostly a sandbox, but if your cleric wants to keep their magic it wouldn't be a bad idea to knock that Warlock over the head and take his stuff.
• Possible name for the concept: Steel & Sorcery

Well, there you have it.  Again, at most I'll make a map for this thing, but I thought I'd ruminate on it anyway.