Brainstorming: Lord of the...WTF?!?!

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, any analogy eventually fails at some point, but I think the U.K. & French thing holds pretty well for purposes of this campaign.

I think echoing The Boomtown Rats’ lyric, “the silicon chip inside her head had switched to overload” would be a fun nod, with the mortal races’ rings transformed into magitech chips connected to the One Ring analog.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Darren Watts ran a Golden Age Champions game, in which the Tunguska Event also involved Baba Yaga. I think it knocked her for a loop, then she revived in 1939, but I forget the details.

Several players in that group also had roles in his acquisition of Hero System in order to publish 5E. I was, briefly, vice-president of the corporation, and co-signed one of the key contracts. Optimus was my PC, largely inspired by Ozymandias but with a rather different moral compass.

Cool!

Gotta say it- if I haven’t yet- HERO is my favorite RPG system, bar none. Played it since Champions 1st.

 

[Riley37]

Well, any analogy eventually fails at some point, but I think the U.K. & French thing holds pretty well for purposes of this campaign.

I suggest, instead, that the UK, the French and the Germans are all "dwarves", in the sense that they were offered technology which allowed each of them to greedily acquire wealth; at the cost of hubris, moral downfall, the mutual devastations of WWII and the loss of their colonial empires. Dragons devoured "rings" in the London Blitz and the firebombing of Dresden.

The "elves" should have no such blood and dirt on their hands. What humans have the least blood and dirt on their hands? They might be a mystical society or tradition other than a nation-state. If they have a homeland, it should be as daunting for normal humans to visit, as Lothlorien or Imladris. Tibet? - Does the Dalai Llama hold one of the Three Rings? - does Tom Bombadil dwell among the "pygmies" of the Ituri?


If this were a Gaiman or Moore comic, “the silicon chip inside her head had switched to overload” could be an issue/chapter title.

How many humans, actually have silicon chips inside their heads, might be an issue. Did smallpox immunizations also carry the nanites which assembled the chips in your head and mine? or is that a rare thing, just the Nine and maybe a few other cyborgs?

I would love to introduce you and Darren someday, over a cold one. Actually, he would be an excellent participant in this jam. He'd probably try to add lucha libra to the mix of martial arts disciplines.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Like I said, analogies always break down at some point.

While the Elves were relatively non-aggressive, they were also part of the major “good” cultures of Middle
Earth, in all senses of the word. They may be distant and insular, but they’re still nominally allied with humanity, dwarves, and so forth against the forces of darkness. There really isn’t a country on the face of the earth that can be said to walk that line. With their emphasis on neutrality, the Swiss are probably closest in many ways, but they lack the huge cultural impact and military prowess of the French.

On silicon chips vs nanites: I know nanites we’re starting to show up in written science-fiction in the early 1980s (like Greg Bear’s “Blood Music” in 1983), but it hadn’t really reached the broader audience of TV & movie outlets.

Chips and other, larger implants, OTOH, show up in alien abduction stories going back to the 1930s, and in sci-if movies as early as the late 1950s. So I’d prefer to stick with chips for maximum congruity with the setting conventions.

Even so, the implanted chips in question HERE will be rare. There might be some prototypes and less functional ones around, but the ones that matter- the ones infused with magitech and linked to The One- will be as rare as the rings that inspired them.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

FWIW, “Luchadors of the Ring” would probably be a blast of a setting, too! Very cinematic, I’d imagine: a great journey to destroy a darkly magical luchador’s mask...






(I just don’t think it would shoehorn into my mess all that well.)