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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MulhorandSage" data-source="post: 340484" data-attributes="member: 751">Here, as promised, is yet another setting proposal that didn't make it.And by the way, congratulations to the winners - hope you've got some cool stuff for us in the next few rounds.Scott Bennie-----AVATAR1. Core Ethos Sentence. A sword and sorcery world in which the heroes are us.2. Who are the heroes?Like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court run amok, Avatar’s most powerful heroes are actually people from our world who have managed to project their minds into the bodies of the world’s inhabitants and become the land’s greatest champions. Avatar is a relatively low-powered world (by 3e standards); for only “visitors” are able to advance beyond 12th level in a single class.The heroes can be “visitors” (from our world) or “denizens” (native to the world of Avatar) who travel to the world during periods when they’re unconscious (typically while they’re dreaming or comatose). Once a person enters the world of Avatar, they remain there until they regain consciousness in the “real” world, or die.Prominent NPC heroes include Lord Jake Greer (who’s really a doctor from New Jersey who’s introducing modern medical theory and technology into several city-states), Captain Michael duul-Savratine (a British army captain who brought gunpowder technology to the world and is transforming a small city-state into one of the fiercest fighting forces the world has ever seen), Gareth Robinson-Smith (the oldest known visitor, a 16th Century buccaneer who’s desperately trying to stay in this world rather than return to his dead body in our world, where he’d die), Evan Stamatopoulos (an Athenian pickpocket who’s now an assassin who hunts and kills his fellow “visitors” for fun), and Ingrid Ferris, (a bard who’s introduced (and taken credit for) the entire canon of the Beatles).3. What do they do?The heroes attempt to understand the mystery of how they were brought into this world, and struggle for survival (and eventually power) in a world of magic and violence, while transforming its medieval society by introducing modern social concepts. They do so by banding together, using scientific methodology to examine the world, and acquiring sufficient skills in sorcery and swordplay to survive.4. Threats, Conflicts, VillainsThere are a number of themes in play in the world of Avatar, most of which involve what happens when a society is rapidly transformed by the introduction of new technology and social ideas.The villains of the world are manifold, of course. There’s one religion throughout the world: the God of Nine Faces (each face of which corresponds to a different alignment) which has evil priesthoods who can conjure devils to do their biding. Dragons may be spontaneously born in “magic-quakes” (shifts in the world’s magical fields) and lay waste to vast regions. There are vast areas of wilderness that were once occupied by the elves, where the great Troll-Orc overlord Krukar Hellgauntlet consolidates an empire of Orcs. And there are, of course, other Visitors, many wishing to control the flood of “immigrants” into the world.5. Nature of magicMagic is ever present and abundant, but not evenly distributed. It’s concentrated around dimensional bridges, the places where people are most likely to be “inhabited” by visitors. Magic schools and effects that involve access to other dimensions (especially summoning, teleportation, and necromancy) are limited to areas around the bridges.6. What’s new? What’s different?I’d hope this would be apparent by now. Well, for one thing, this is a world where the anachronisms of the average D&D playgroup make sense. It’s also a world where we could spill the conflicts over to the Astral plane (as people attempt to prevent their enemies from snapping their silver cord), and perhaps even take it to a d20 Modern setting as characters returning from Avatar attempt to kill each other in the real world (where they’re weaker), although that doesn’t have to be an essential part of the campaign.7. Created by:Scott Bennie</blockquote>

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