There are few Sci-fi settings that would make great fantasy settings, esp. for an RPG campaign. This is one:
The Integral Trees
The Integral Trees
I need D&D planets.
Some from fiction:
ERB Venus - Forest / swamp world, trees are huge holding human cities in their branches, and it could take a day or two just to walk around their bases. At those bases, swamp land and gaints...everything.
ERB Moon - world of vast caverns, rulled by cave dwealling centars
Crypt - planet of ruins and undead.
ERB Venus - Forest / swamp world, trees are huge holding human cities in their branches, and it could take a day or two just to walk around their bases. At those bases, swamp land and gaints...everything.
ERB Moon - world of vast caverns, rulled by cave dwealling centars
Crypt - planet of ruins and undead.
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Herobizkit
Adventurer
And don't forget those loveable Ewoks.
Except make them Grippli, instead.
Can't go too wrong with the Maztica setting. It should be fringe enough that most players only know it as "The Aztec setting". Fill your dense jungles full of odd midlife, giant insects, and it give you an excuse to use a Couatl.
Except make them Grippli, instead.
Can't go too wrong with the Maztica setting. It should be fringe enough that most players only know it as "The Aztec setting". Fill your dense jungles full of odd midlife, giant insects, and it give you an excuse to use a Couatl.
Dragonhelm
Knight of Solamnia
Have you checked with Beyond the Moons? It's the uber-Spelljammer fan site.
Celebrim
Legend
I should probably fork this thread, but this is the challenge I've always had with Sci-fi. "I need... planets.", indeed. I'm barely able to fill an area the size of south carolina with a reasonable amount of detail, and you want whole planets?? You want an entire galaxy???
It just can't be done. Any planet you devise will be in practice shamed by the Earth in its detail, scope, and diversity of ecologies, land forms, cultures and geology. Most sci-fi planets are little more than a few square miles of the Earth (at most!!) tiled over the entire planet.
Which would be my first suggestion on how to form fantasy planets. Take few square miles of the world and tile it on that theme. Your players are never going to get to know more than a few square miles anyway, so you don't need to worry about the fact that your whole planet is really a few acres of the earth. The same can be done with any invented literary or game planet. Alternately, you can have the planet be highly inhospitable and reduce the whole planet to a castle or dungeon - I mean mining outpost/research center/penal colony/ancient ruins/ect.
It just can't be done. Any planet you devise will be in practice shamed by the Earth in its detail, scope, and diversity of ecologies, land forms, cultures and geology. Most sci-fi planets are little more than a few square miles of the Earth (at most!!) tiled over the entire planet.
Which would be my first suggestion on how to form fantasy planets. Take few square miles of the world and tile it on that theme. Your players are never going to get to know more than a few square miles anyway, so you don't need to worry about the fact that your whole planet is really a few acres of the earth. The same can be done with any invented literary or game planet. Alternately, you can have the planet be highly inhospitable and reduce the whole planet to a castle or dungeon - I mean mining outpost/research center/penal colony/ancient ruins/ect.
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TarionzCousin
Second Most Angelic Devil Ever
Would this count as a D&D Planet?
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You could surf Obsidian Portal or other user created campaign material, that way you are using stuff that probably hasn't been seen before your players which gives you a little more flexibility.
If you want to use my campaign at: Eyru. for fodder feel free. The campaign info there is very old and only details the first few years of the campaign. The campaign world was divided into two sections by a planar barrier. The plan was to go toward something like Planescape as the "big bad guys" were extraplanar nasties essentially mining the planet for magical ley lines and reidrecting the magical energues for their own use.
On the previous comment, I don't necessarily agree it is impossible. Having recently run a Serenity game (with the Cortex Rules) and mostly allowing players to sandbox things for a good chunk of the game, it is a bit of a challenge, but as long as you are comfortable just making it up as you go along then your set. The setting of course had a whole "galaxy" described in mostly very general detail and of course a little more detail was available if the planet happened to be deatured on an episode of Firefly.
Heck, you could use the 'Verse from Serenity - just change where it says "Reavers" to Orcs or something; "Blue Sun" to "Mordekainen's Magic Emporium"; the Alliance could be a consortium of Humanoid races (who recently quelled a resistance form the "Brown Cloaks"), the Tong could be an underworld of Monstrous Humanoids, the Hands of Blue guys Mind Flayers ("Tentacles of Purple....hmmm needs some work), Mr Universe a High Level Diviner and the Cortex a netowrk of magical Ley Lines whose power is somehow wrangled and manipulated by those in charge.
Ok, a bit cheesy, but you get my point. Sets an interesting base for a game I think and you've already got some published stuff to sort of template and take ownership of (so you minimize arguments with the various published setting "experts".)
If you want to use my campaign at: Eyru. for fodder feel free. The campaign info there is very old and only details the first few years of the campaign. The campaign world was divided into two sections by a planar barrier. The plan was to go toward something like Planescape as the "big bad guys" were extraplanar nasties essentially mining the planet for magical ley lines and reidrecting the magical energues for their own use.
On the previous comment, I don't necessarily agree it is impossible. Having recently run a Serenity game (with the Cortex Rules) and mostly allowing players to sandbox things for a good chunk of the game, it is a bit of a challenge, but as long as you are comfortable just making it up as you go along then your set. The setting of course had a whole "galaxy" described in mostly very general detail and of course a little more detail was available if the planet happened to be deatured on an episode of Firefly.
Heck, you could use the 'Verse from Serenity - just change where it says "Reavers" to Orcs or something; "Blue Sun" to "Mordekainen's Magic Emporium"; the Alliance could be a consortium of Humanoid races (who recently quelled a resistance form the "Brown Cloaks"), the Tong could be an underworld of Monstrous Humanoids, the Hands of Blue guys Mind Flayers ("Tentacles of Purple....hmmm needs some work), Mr Universe a High Level Diviner and the Cortex a netowrk of magical Ley Lines whose power is somehow wrangled and manipulated by those in charge.
Ok, a bit cheesy, but you get my point. Sets an interesting base for a game I think and you've already got some published stuff to sort of template and take ownership of (so you minimize arguments with the various published setting "experts".)
Ahzad
Explorer
Here's a list of the official and some unofficial crystal spheres from my now defunct webpage that has been preserved by the Spelljammer Beyond the Moons webpage. Spelljammer: Beyond the Moons (For all your Spelljamming needs)
Crystal Spheres
Hopefully those will be a good wellspring of ideas.
Crystal Spheres
Hopefully those will be a good wellspring of ideas.
Viktyr Gehrig
First Post
Most of those are kitchen sinks, which I've already got covered. I'm probably going to use elements from each of them, but all that is taking place on the main planet-- before the characters get out to the stars.
Yeah. The more I think about it, the more I want to use Maztica influences for my jungle planet, along with a lot of reptiles. Figure populate it with Maztican Humans, cannibal halflings, and both barbarian and civilized ssurrans. Want to involve the Giff with this planet, but I'm not sure how.
Need to do this. I'm going to ditch the Mario world, but there are elements of it that'll still show up in the air world-- cloud castles, beanstalks. Got aarakocra as an aerial race, and they also show up on Athas... not sure what else. Probably a lot of immigrants from other worlds.
Every Sphere should have a water world. I don't like aquatic people, but having all sorts of terrible sea monsters to threaten ships that try to replenish their water supplies here...
I was thinking a world covered in thick, dark clouds where the various Underdark races live on the surface. Probably never discovered spelljamming on their own because they've never seen the stars, but as soon as spelljammers discovered them, all of the horrible races there plot to escape and wreak havoc on the multiverse. Frame the entire world around the conflict of the Drow and their Evil Outsider allies and the Illithids with their Aberrations. The Gith would obviously have an interest in the world, and I like the idea of having Gnomes caught in the middle.
This is nice. I would have never imagined something like this on my own.
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