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[DiasExMachina]

Let’s talk competition.

I began working on an entry dealing the origin of Amethyst. It got to three pages and decided I would break it up for future posts.

I have often fielded comments comparing Amethyst to a variety of other fantasy/science-fiction settings including Rifts, Shadowrun, Final Fantasy, and Arcanum. I have often found it odd that my friends and I differ on what franchises we defend Amethyst against. I guess it depends on what we take personally. The first accusation (and the most prevalent) was Shadowrun, a game I never actually played. Not only that, I never even read any books on it. I was aware of the setting and knew it was a fantasy/cyberpunk. The concept is neat but it’s not Amethyst. The big difference being is the stark division between science and fantasy. Disruption is a core pillar of the Amethyst setting. The fantasy side was a true-to-book mystical world against the bastions of technology trying to survive. Like Shadowrun, it was set in the real world but Amethyst takes it to a level of detail reaching an obsession. There is a difference between a story being set on Earth and a story being set in the real world. Everything in Amethyst had to make sense and be plausible. Amethyst was not only Earth, but also our world—a world with D&D and Lord of the Rings, a world with increasing ethnic violence and greed over dwindling resources. Amethyst was going to inject a side of philosophy and symbolism in its setting readers could discover if they looked beyond the first later. I always found the Shadowrun accusation more bothering than the others did did.

Now Rifts is also set on Earth and set a long time in the future, enough time for the world to forget how it was before (same as Amethyst). My friends never liked Rifts but I always thought it was neat (though I never really ran it enough to even justify the cost of the first book). When comparing it to Rifts, my friends would often be the ones getting bent out of shape. Rifts still had a merging of technology and fantasy in some areas. There was still not the divide that Amethyst was boasting. Rifts was also a dark cyberpunk-styled world and Amethyst was promoting more of a world of wonder outside the walls of technology.

Few people ever made Final Fantasy comparisons. Even more than before, Final Fantasy always had a mixing of magic and technology where Amethyst had none. Now Arcanum….man oh man. I never even heard of this game until a few months ago. Hell, I never even played Fallout (same developer). Arcanum is a PC game that was released in 2001. It was a fantasy RPG set in a fictional world. Now this game does have fantasy and technology and actually has disruption. Here was a similar setting I am willing to admit, albeit coincidentally. Where Arcanum differs is that their setting is a fictional world where magic dominated and technology has emerged in its infancy and as it grows, magic fades. Amethyst is the mirror opposite in application. Once again, it is set in the real world and magic is returning to it after man had reached a significant level of technological development and has been fighting a losing battle ever since. Because of my obsessive compulsion about detail, Amethyst also deals with layers of philosophy, chaos theory, particle physics, racism, sexism, and various other issues being tossed around a lot these days. It actually contains sidebars where scientists try to explain the outside world and how it interacts with what they call “reality.” I am hoping people who play in the setting try to make something more out of it other than a simple dungeon crawl. The races are presented to be more than a listing of stats. As stated with a previous post on Damaskans, there are benefits and consequences to every race in the setting. Not only that, but a principle pitch of the setting is the asking of a simple question: Would you give up? Central heating? Internet? Cable TV? Automobiles? Refrigerators? You would have to if you wanted your elves, magic, and dragons. Suddenly, the setting forces people to look at the real-life consequences of their actions. On top of this, you have the world of fantasy broken into a one of chaos and one of order where the order is the corrupting force of evil and the force of chaos is the power where all magic and life stems from. You wrap that all up together; you have a setting, which, I hope, people will look to for something beyond a simple dungeon romp.

Of course, if you still want to buy it for you dungeon romp, that’s ok to.