The New Frontier - a Community Project
Posted 3rd July 2008 at 12:00 AM by Jürgen Hubert
Updated 4th July 2008 at 09:45 AM by Jürgen Hubert
Updated 4th July 2008 at 09:45 AM by Jürgen Hubert
My recent review of Blue Planet gave me an idea for a possible new community project - a new setting which I will tenatively call "The New Frontier". The basic idea can be summarized like this:
We start out with a very normal fantasy world - one that is accurately described by the D&D 4E Core Rules (i.e., all the standard races, classes, creatures etc. exist and more or less fit their usual description - though this world is a bit more civilized and urbanized than the implied "Points of Light" setting and does have a few large-scale nations). About a century ago, a wizard figured out a ritual that opens up a portal to another world - one that largely has the same physical laws and environs as our own, but which has a completely different ecosystem - different plants, animals, and so on. It doesn't seem to have any native intelligent species, although there might be a few borderline cases, and it certainly has no shortage of ferocious monsters. I will try to create the fundamentals of the ecosystem with the help of GURPS Space.
For most of this century, this other world received little attention. The ritual was quite expensive and there was little of interest there to anyone except a few scholars and explorers who had seen everything in this world. A few cults and other groups of people who wanted to cut off all contact with the rest of humanity quietly moved over there (sometimes because they were persecuted - or perhaps because they had a bounty placed on their heads because of past crimes) and vanished into the wilderness to build their own communities.
Then, five years ago, someone discovered that there was a rare but naturally occurring substance in this world which stopped the aging process of anyone who imbibed it - for a time. Suddenly, everyone wanted to get to the other world and make a fortune. Despite the high costs, large numbers of people made their way through the portals and created new settlements. Even some of the larger nations sponsored settlements there so that they could tax and profit from these settlements - and possibly gain new territory in a new world. But the conflicts of the old world - whether political, religious, and economical - continue to plague the settlers in the new, and it's only a matter of time before armed conflicts break out between the new settlements. Whill the nations be able to remain in control of their frontier tows, or will those settlements eventually become independent? And just what lurks in the wilderness beyond? What happened to the older immigrants? Are there other sapient beings out there, and will they be hostile to the settlers?
The default assumption of the setting is that the player characters are new arrivals to this world who have just came out of a portal and own nothing more than what they can carry - and now seek to make a name for themselves on the new frontier.
My plan would be that this will be a community project, stored on the upcoming ENWorld Wiki and organized through the blogs. Others can post contributions to their blogs for general discussion, and then copy the results to the wiki. I will try to post general guidelines once the wiki goes online.
I have participated in community projects before - especially the old Tempest Setting - but interest always fell off after a time. But maybe the larger user base of ENWorld - in combination with both the ENWorld Wiki and the ENWorld blog system - will make it possible to sustain interest for longer.
Anyone interested in joining up?
We start out with a very normal fantasy world - one that is accurately described by the D&D 4E Core Rules (i.e., all the standard races, classes, creatures etc. exist and more or less fit their usual description - though this world is a bit more civilized and urbanized than the implied "Points of Light" setting and does have a few large-scale nations). About a century ago, a wizard figured out a ritual that opens up a portal to another world - one that largely has the same physical laws and environs as our own, but which has a completely different ecosystem - different plants, animals, and so on. It doesn't seem to have any native intelligent species, although there might be a few borderline cases, and it certainly has no shortage of ferocious monsters. I will try to create the fundamentals of the ecosystem with the help of GURPS Space.
For most of this century, this other world received little attention. The ritual was quite expensive and there was little of interest there to anyone except a few scholars and explorers who had seen everything in this world. A few cults and other groups of people who wanted to cut off all contact with the rest of humanity quietly moved over there (sometimes because they were persecuted - or perhaps because they had a bounty placed on their heads because of past crimes) and vanished into the wilderness to build their own communities.
Then, five years ago, someone discovered that there was a rare but naturally occurring substance in this world which stopped the aging process of anyone who imbibed it - for a time. Suddenly, everyone wanted to get to the other world and make a fortune. Despite the high costs, large numbers of people made their way through the portals and created new settlements. Even some of the larger nations sponsored settlements there so that they could tax and profit from these settlements - and possibly gain new territory in a new world. But the conflicts of the old world - whether political, religious, and economical - continue to plague the settlers in the new, and it's only a matter of time before armed conflicts break out between the new settlements. Whill the nations be able to remain in control of their frontier tows, or will those settlements eventually become independent? And just what lurks in the wilderness beyond? What happened to the older immigrants? Are there other sapient beings out there, and will they be hostile to the settlers?
The default assumption of the setting is that the player characters are new arrivals to this world who have just came out of a portal and own nothing more than what they can carry - and now seek to make a name for themselves on the new frontier.
My plan would be that this will be a community project, stored on the upcoming ENWorld Wiki and organized through the blogs. Others can post contributions to their blogs for general discussion, and then copy the results to the wiki. I will try to post general guidelines once the wiki goes online.
I have participated in community projects before - especially the old Tempest Setting - but interest always fell off after a time. But maybe the larger user base of ENWorld - in combination with both the ENWorld Wiki and the ENWorld blog system - will make it possible to sustain interest for longer.
Anyone interested in joining up?
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