Kenjib - Nice setting

[Terradyne]

Kenjib posted this setting from the WotC contest earlier. Man, I really like this ( yes, even though it is a water-world ). See comments below.

Haalyr: Adventures in the Dream Seas
1. Core Ethos Sentence
Radiating out from the Old Kingdoms on the largest islands, innumerable smaller islands grow more and more strange the further one sails until at the most distant reaches of the seas it is said that the very fabric of dreams and reality collides.

2. Who are the heroes?
The Old Kingdoms, called the cradle of civilization, are embroiled in never ending conflict. The most recent great empire of man is in the process of collapse under the weight of rebellion, an unwieldy and utterly decadent bureaucracy, and the steady economic pressure brought to bear by the powerful ancient houses of the great elven merchant kings. For all recorded history, great kingdoms and empires have risen and fallen through the actions of determined heroes. Perhaps the most famous of all of Haalyr’s heroes, however, are the daring explorers and adventurers who take to ship and seek fame and fortune in the distant, uncharted, reaches of the seas. Those who have returned from distant travels have been among the most famous and influential people in all of Haalyr’s history.

3. What do they do?
Great battles waged on land and sea, secret political wars fought from the shadows, levies, mercenary armies, divine and arcane power, and the ruthless struggle to maintain economic supremacy are just some of the many tools used in the epic struggles of the Old Kingdoms. Those adventurers who prefer to avoid the perilous and convoluted intrigues of the Old Kingdoms, however, often take to the seas. The great seas of Haalyr are filled with remote islands, many still uncharted. Those who have traveled farthest have reported the most amazing sights and perilous enemies. They have also returned with the greatest wealth.

4. Threats, Conflicts, Villains
The Old Kingdoms are filled with scheming nobles, treacherous outlaws, ruthless generals, and inscrutable people of all types. As one sails further from the Old Kingdoms, the nature of villains encountered changes: Reclusive wizards performing sacrilegious experiments on lonely islands, mad cults worshipping dark gods in the ruins of forgotten civilizations, ancient horrors sealed in warded crypts, and countless other dangers await.

5. Nature of magic
In Haalyr, magic is the ability to break through the barrier between dreams and reality. By manifesting the dream, one can exert one’s will upon the tangible world. Understanding that this barrier is only an illusion is the first step toward mastery. Dreams and reality, however, co-exist in a fragile and strained duality. The use of powerful magic runs the risk of upsetting this balance and destabilizing reality itself. In the end, there is little that a powerful practitioner of magic fears more than her own nightmares.

6. What’s new? What’s different?
The journey of the hero from the familiar to the unknown and back again is one of the oldest and most enduring motifs in myth and fantasy. The history of Haalyr has been shaped by countless generations of such heroes, who undertook epic journeys into the unknown and returned with great power to shape the course of history. At the center of Haalyr on the largest isles in the great seas lie the Old Kingdoms. Even with their constantly shifting allegiances and power centers, the Old Kingdoms are a bastion of stability in an otherwise wild and unpredictable world. From there the world of Haalyr expands, becoming less and less familiar.
The journey into the unknown sings a primal song that dances to the fierce rhythms of the beating hearts of great heroes. Once this ancient melody is heard, it drives the soul onward, unable to rest until it can claim the greatness of kings or the oblivion of an unmarked grave thousands of miles from home.

I just really like it. I love the magic system - sure it akin to "Mage's", but I would sure love to see it rendered in this setting for D&D. I actually like the fact that it is not too specific. that makes it wide open and more importantly it offers a lot to do. It is simple and does not force a huge metaplot on you. All it needs is a few good hooks to lure the adventures out to sea.

One of my other thoughts was what about the ships of this world? Kenjib want to enlight us? Were they going to be typical D&D ships? I would think that a world like this begs for something a bit special - but not too over the top. After all, the ships would need to be as exciting as the locations, especially since sea-borne adventurers would be spending a lot of time on it. Maybe something like Magic: the Gathering's Weatherlight, blending wooden hulls, some metallic devices and some arcane magical works - only not flying.

Kenjib, If you had some more specific details for this world figured out I for one would love to hear them. In fact, if this had been produced I would have bought it. At least based upon what I have read already. Great work, maybe you can shop this around - you never know...

 

[kenjib]

Wow - thanks for the comments! That's very kind of you. The proposal was a bit of a modification of a setting I've been working on to spice it up. It was largely inspired by the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Clark Ashton Smith's world of Zothique/Hyperborea, Robert Howard's Hyborea, and HPL's dream world fantasy (prosaicly horrid though this last influence may be). By deciding how far from the Old Kingdoms you want to have the campaign focus, the world can run the range of style from traditional gritty, political, low fantasy to Dali surrealist stream of subconscious madness high fantasy.

I would see ships in a similar manner to the way in which the world works. The ships of the Old Kingdoms would be traditional faire, however I was thinking of a bit of anachronism. I don't want gunpowder, but ships are more fun when they get more towards the age of exploration. Hence, you would have galleon era ships, but they would be mounted with ballistae and catapults. There may be a rare magical armament as well. For example, the legendary flagship of the imperial navy has a massive iron reinforced ram and the ship shoots massive spouts of deadly fire. Magic like this is not very common in the Old Kingdoms though, and the mere mention of this ship brings dread to the hearts of even the toughest pirates and privateers.

Now, ships get more strange when one starts getting further from the Old Kingdoms, but such ships are rarely seen in the more civilized regions and quite a spectacle when they are. The basic idea behind the setting is that the inner core is a more traditional medieval fantasy world, somewhat low magic, but as you get further out really anything goes since the world becomes more and more dreamlike toward the edges: A great white ship with billowing sails that cut through the water with no wake and always seems to follow it's own wind, a ghost ship that returns to port once every 6 years on the anniversary of the day it left for a travel to explore beyond the furthest reaches of the dream seas, the arcane imbued ship of a master wizard, and the like. However these are all mythic experiences that only extraordinary people will ever experience.

It's a world where there are many things that are completely one-of-a-kind, as at the edges of the world, sheer force of will can shape reality into the strangest shapes, all tied to the ego of their creators -- and every ego is unique, after all. It's a literary metaphor as well. As a person travels to these outlands, he essentially redefines his ego by realizing the power of will (this is what I really meant by what magic is like), thus when he returns to the Old Kingdoms he has gained the vision to attain true heroism beyond the myopic view of those caught up in the petty mundane affairs of the world. It is a transcendant voyage. Leave a lowly sailor, come back a king in the making.

Did you ever see the Gumby episode where gumby goes into outer space and there's this boy playing piano on a lonely asteroid? Gumby greets him in a friendly manner and then suddenly the boys totally freaks out, turns into a nightmarish freak "Large Marge moment" wolf beast and says something like, "This is MY planet. Get off of MY PLANET!!!" Gumby goes totally apesh*t and runs away as fast as he can.

All of this weirdness, however, is set to the backdrop of a very typical fantasy world, the Old Kingdoms, where people live their squalid, grey, lives, and the stories of the dream seas are just distant legends and bedtime tales.

I probably didn't go far enough explaining it in my submission I'm afraid.

 

[kenjib]

Oh, and one other thing is that the area encompassing the Old Kingdoms includes a single landmass bigger than Europe, so it's not completely a waterworld. I suppose "island" might not have been the correct word to describe it in my submission.

 

[Terradyne]

...I probably didn't go far enough explaining it in my submission I'm afraid.

Thanks for the additional thoughts, kenjib. I am sure that it was very, VERY tough to try to whittle down your descriptions of such unusual concepts to fit in your one-pager. I think a lot of folks will have had the same problem. Maybe the contest would have been better served in some respects by starting with a higher page count. It would have allowed the really good ideas to be more fully fleshed out and served as sort of a test of the writer's resolve and ability to produce detail.

I would fully agree with the "no gunpowder" thing. I never felt that it belonged in most fantasy settings anyway. I figured that you had more traditional ships in mind. I was just struck by the idea that settings that revolve around a lot of vessel travel often are greatly enhanced by having really unique and special vessels. Some quick offhand examples - Moya from Farscape, the awesome Trimaran from Waterworld, The Millenium Falcon, and almost any ship from Spelljammer. These vessels say things about the setting in their very design and add a ton of "coolness" to boot.

Its funny, from my initial read-throughs of your submission I never really felt like Haalyr was a pirate setting. After thinking about its obvious sea-based connections a bit later, I began to suspect that perhaps it was meant to use a "pirate" motif a bit more.

I would say that your space limitations definitely hurt your ability to properly pitch such unusual concepts. I really thought that your ideas for your magic system didn't come though quite as strongly in your one-page as well as your more "literary" and "surrealist" ideas. This was surely a difficulty faced by everyone who envisioned a more ambitious and less cliche-driven setting.

Thanks again,

-Terradyne

 

[Dr. Zauberei]

Wow, this setting does sound neat! I started wading through the settings posted here on ENWorld but quickly got bored. I didn't make it down to Kenjib's!

I think you should consider one of the other publishers other than WotC and submit again! I'd love to see this done up in a full color hardcover world book!

 

[kenjib]

I was just struck by the idea that settings that revolve around a lot of vessel travel often are greatly enhanced by having really unique and special vessels. Some quick offhand examples - Moya from Farscape, the awesome Trimaran from Waterworld, The Millenium Falcon, and almost any ship from Spelljammer. These vessels say things about the setting in their very design and add a ton of "coolness" to boot.

That's a great point. In campaign setting form, I could see the whole book wrapped around by an iconic type character and his incredible ship. There could be the tales of his fabled nine voyages and the marvels he's seen in the far reaches of the seas that others fear to travel. Parts of the campaign setting could be written in the form of what he saw on his travels -- i.e. the actual regional detail for the dream sea itself (but not the Old Kingdoms, which would be presented more traditionally). Hmm...I really like that idea. It would leave the descriptions of the remote areas more vague and undefined, as they should be, since the travel logs would show many things but always leave open the fact that there is so much more out there yet to be discovered.

Thus the DM could insert his wildest imaginings somewhere in the Seas without worrying too much about how it would fit in with the rest of the world. Do you want the edge of the world to drop off into an abyss? Resting on the back of a turtle? A great sea serpent that devours entire islands in a fruitless effort to appease it's unquenchable hunger? A man who built his own cosmic godhood through sheer force of will over the primitive tribes that now worship him? A lost civilization that exists in an alternate reality, only to phase into this world once every thousand years? It would be easy to insert any of this if the peripheries are left vague.

I think there is also lots of room to play with notions of whether we are fated or drive our own destiny, and how a person's beliefs in this are self-fulfilling. That's what the voyage of self discovery is about.

Regarding pirates, I think they would have a strong place in the setting, but just as one more element among many others rather than being a key element. Since pirates live on the periphery of civilization, it seems natural that they would have a stronger connection with the mysteries of the far reaches, as they are forced to head into remote areas to hide from the laws of civilization. Not only are they an untrustworthy lot, but some of them have seen things. *Interrupt the groom with tales of doom-ridden transcendentalism right before his wedding begins here* Hehe, I really love the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. That and Clark Ashton Smith's "The Voyage of King Euvoran" are really at the heart of the idea. Do you think there is a way to run a game in a more metaphorical fashion than the typical game?

Anyways, I ramble... Thanks for the encouragement from both of you! I'll definitely have to expand more on this.

 

[MulhorandSage]

Wow - thanks for the comments! That's very kind of you. The proposal was a bit of a modification of a setting I've been working on to spice it up. It was largely inspired by the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Clark Ashton Smith's world of Zothique/Hyperborea, Robert Howard's Hyborea, and HPL's dream world fantasy (prosaicly horrid though this last influence may be). By deciding how far from the Old Kingdoms you want to have the campaign focus, the world can run the range of style from traditional gritty, political, low fantasy to Dali surrealist stream of subconscious madness high fantasy.

Actually, what it reminded me the most of was Voyager of the Dawn Treader... which was perhaps my favorite childhood work of fantasy, and which quite endeared me to your submission.

Scott Bennie

 

[kenjib]

Actually, Narnia was on my mind as well. The concept of leaving the familiar and entering the unknown is central in Narnia -- especially in the narrative structure of the characters leaving the real world and entering the fantasy world. It's the same literary effect you get with Tolkein's shire and in Harry Potter with the Muggles as well. It's all over the place in fantasy -- even in scifi with Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and the like. In part they are a way for the reader to better empathize with the protagonists by making them similar to the reader. I think it helps the reader to fully connect with the sense of wonder invoked by a strange world when the book starts out in a relatively ordinary place. I think that's key to the fantasy experience. It allows the reader to attain a transcendental experience. Those kinds of "familiar" bookends that Narnia and Middle-Earth have really serve to heighten that effect.

I find that if everything is fantastic, then nothing really is.