Amrits are the central McGuffins of the New Frontier setting. Sure, these strange pearls are incredibly valuable to the people living in the setting because they can stop the aging process of people for a time. But that's not the ultimate reason for their existence - they simply exist so that there is a reason why lots of people would suddenly uproot their existence and move to a hostile and alien world to get a chance to fame and fortune - with the PCs being among that number. The PCs themselves are unlikely to get much use out of Amrits themselves (after all, how many adventurers die of old age even without them?), but because they are so incredibly valuable, their mere existence has created a situation that makes the gold rushes of the Old West seem tame.

But so far, details have been vague on them. We know that they wash up on the beaches of Lorsul from time to time, and that some people dive into the ocean to get to them. But through which processes are they actually created? Are they the results of some natural geological processes, or are they the byproducts of the life-cycle of some strange local animal or plant? Or (like in the Blue Planet setting are they the product of some long-forgotten intelligent species?

You decide - I haven't been able to put much thought into this issue yet, since I was more interested in the effects of this McGuffin than its causes. So discuss this issue on the discussion thread over on the forums, and if you come up with an interesting explanation, don't hesitate to alter the wiki entry to suit your ideas.

Jürgen Hubert

Just in case you hadn't noticed, the ENWorld Wiki is now online.

I've immediately used that opportunity to start a community project: The New Frontier. Feel free to join!

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?

Jürgen Hubert