Frankensetting!

[jdrakeh]

I had a kind of crazy notion this week and, while I'm sure it's nothing new, it's certainly something that doesn't get mentioned a lot. I want to try my hand at creating a new setting using old parts - that is, in the tradition of Dr. Frankenstein, I want to take a collection of setting elements from many different bodies of work, stitch them together, and bring them to life as a single entity.

This really strikes me as a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to not creating stuff from whole cloth, but rather, thinking of new ways to re-use the tried and true in another capacity. For example, what was an isolated, dinosaur-infested, isle in an old TSR module may, with only a few small changes, become the savage center of a stone-aged mega-civilization in the Frankensetting.

Has anybody else ever created (or rather, assembled) an entire setting in this manner?

 

[BOZ]

it's something i would like to do if i had an unreasonable amount of free time.

 

[jdrakeh]

it's something i would like to do if i had an unreasonable amount of free time.

I think that my unreasonable amount of free time may be disappearing, if these last two days have been any indicator. I still plan on sitting aside a few hours a week to work on this, though, because I've realized that if I spend all of my time focusing on my RPGNow duties, I'm quickly going to run out of places to hide bodies

 

[jester47]

I once figured out a way to cram greyhawk, 3e FR, Wilderlands and Blackmoor all onto the same globe.

I think it would be fun to use different parts to make a setting. I would use the Red Wizards, Rary the Traitor, A bunch of individual locations (not nations or regions though) from FR and GH. I would pick favorite gods, and some characters.

But then I would not b playing in the Wilderlands.

Aaron.

 

[Teflon Billy]

"Well, whattya know! Mos Eisley Spaceport, right here on the outskirts of Aquilonia"

 

[jdrakeh]

I think that I may start with bits and pieces of the Isle of Dread, Barnicus: City in Peril, and Ruins of Myth Drannor. I plan on uploading a read-only wiki for Frankensetting (which may also become Frankensystem). I'll post the link when I get it set up.

 

[jester47]

"Well, whattya know! Mos Eisley Spaceport, right here on the outskirts of Aquilonia"

If imagination translated directly to political power, you would rule a large chunk of the world.

 

[Psion]

My kitbash setting (see here) was more conceived because of my limited free time, not despite it. I figured tapping into published sources was the ticket. At the time it was theorized, Necropolis, Bluffside, Freeport, Mindshadows, and Mercenaries were major components, and since then I notionally saw places for Hamunaptra and others.

The world sort of went to the back burner/became just one world of many when I went to my river of worlds game, but I still toy with it now and then.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I just can't lift geography, organizations, or history right out of someone else's work.

On the other hand, I absorb ideas and themes automatically; I'm combining a handful of "ethnic D&D" setting toolkits, some Victorian pseudo-science, my Louis L'Amour collection, and every space opera trope I can consciously recall to put together a kind of Magical Space Western/Steampunk campaign setting.

For awhile, I was rather determinedly trying to take two whole settings-- Star*Drive and Planescape-- and merge them into one Frankensteinian beast, but I kinda lost my steam on that one.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Let's see.. in the FR setting, north of the Moonsea, is a place called the ride with dangerous horsemen. I used the Horsemen of Vangal from the SL for that.

One of the cities, I think Tantaras, I had the Mithril Golem be in as that fight in my setting took place during the Avatar Crisis and the Golem was Torm's avatar. With all the paladins in that setting, it seemed a natural.

The shadowmages were an escaped branch of Thayian wizards.

Other bits here and there.