Idea: Imagine for a moment a setting where the humans are all descendents of Earth Colonists. For two thousand years their tech advanced to the stage that they managed to build a machine that can control certain enivronmental factors (i.e. Weather) by using power from an otherworldly source (the Etherial plane).
They activate the machine, and the whole seven colonies rejoiced. However, something goes wrong and the attempts to control the weather with Etherial energy is blundered. Instead of bringing the weather under their fine control, they cause a massive storm Ala the Day After Tomorrow. But that was only a side effect.
The machine explodes, causing Etherial energy to wash over the whole planet and expand, changing the physics around that particular solar system and creating a Aetherial Sphere that goes out for five light years.
Also, large concentrations of Etherial Energy created gates into other worlds, bringing other peoples, other races from their homelands.
After it was alover, an Ice Age begins and mankind and everyone except for three cities suffer a Dark Age. Knowledge and science are at an all time low. But it wasn't a stagnation, but a digression of knowledge and science. Everyone fell back to the Paleolithic Age.
For ten thousand years, everyone creeps back. Except for three nations and the Fabled Shipyards of Earth; most everyone is Renaissance Tech or lower.
The races have changed too. The group we call Drow live among and under one of the major human nations. They are known as the Shadow Tribe.
Dark Elves are a group of elves that developed a strong concentration of melanin in their skin and they resemble Africans or Indians of Southern India. Wood Elves are the most primative of them all: something like Conan's people.
The Dwarves hide in the Mountains (as usual), the halflings have taken the plains, and the elves find the thickest forests (as usual). The orcs live in the jungles or marshlands and compete with the lizardfolk.
And there are numerous human tribes and nations. The largest and most advanced human nation, Althania, is made up of thirteen tribes of humans and the Shadow Tribe. Althania is so advanced, in fact, that their society mirrors ours. Except that they managed to domesticate most dinosaur species, use ships capable of flying or skimming over land and water. They are protected not only by an air force, a Mecha Force, and an army, but also by a cadre of elite psionic knights.
Their main perceived enemy is the lizardfolk tribes that menace overland trade routes, and the Amazon tribes that live to the south of them. Each lizardfolk tribe, however, is different from each other. But the true threat are the Shadow Tribe of Drow.
===================================
Most of my inspiration is coming from the artwork at:
Barbarian's Keep and this Norwegian Conan Site.
Warning, the last site has a lot of artists that focus more on women than on the Barbarian himself. I'm also taking visual inspiration from the Frazetta Art Gallery. I wanted my campaign to have an ancient, primal feel as if Frank Frazetta did art for it but mix in 12 Century Persia, Sengoku Japan and Tech for a few places and you have a great underlying clash.
Conan the Barbarian for Third Edition was also helpful and inspiring for the Low Fantasy. The middle of the page details conversions of the classic REH stories from Weird Tales magazine; including the covers. When I saw the third edition conversions, I told myself that I have to have the book that contains these tales. So, it's on my wish list at Amazon.
=============================
his going to take a while, but I think I can pull it off.
I have an idea which is basically Firaxis' Alpha Centauri meets REH's Conan the Barbarian meets Plato's Atlantis meets El-Hazard meets The Wilderlands meets Blue Planet, as a summation. An ingenious combination of the five.
So I guess Morrowind was useful. This is going to be a low fantasy setting for Big Eyes, Small Mouth d20, or more commonly, Ad20. Why low fantasy? Because I liked my first Basic D&D Set, the Red Box, that I got when I was 12.
It's going to have tech, dinosaurs, psionics (yes, Fort, psi. Bite me. >: ), different cultures, magic, different races, fun stuff. I writing a short story and an adventure to go along with it (or is it the other way around) as it stews in my head, but this one is a winner. Tell me what you think, although Dragonlancer has already said it was cool.
They activate the machine, and the whole seven colonies rejoiced. However, something goes wrong and the attempts to control the weather with Etherial energy is blundered. Instead of bringing the weather under their fine control, they cause a massive storm Ala the Day After Tomorrow. But that was only a side effect.
The machine explodes, causing Etherial energy to wash over the whole planet and expand, changing the physics around that particular solar system and creating a Aetherial Sphere that goes out for five light years.
Also, large concentrations of Etherial Energy created gates into other worlds, bringing other peoples, other races from their homelands.
After it was alover, an Ice Age begins and mankind and everyone except for three cities suffer a Dark Age. Knowledge and science are at an all time low. But it wasn't a stagnation, but a digression of knowledge and science. Everyone fell back to the Paleolithic Age.
For ten thousand years, everyone creeps back. Except for three nations and the Fabled Shipyards of Earth; most everyone is Renaissance Tech or lower.
The races have changed too. The group we call Drow live among and under one of the major human nations. They are known as the Shadow Tribe.
Dark Elves are a group of elves that developed a strong concentration of melanin in their skin and they resemble Africans or Indians of Southern India. Wood Elves are the most primative of them all: something like Conan's people.
The Dwarves hide in the Mountains (as usual), the halflings have taken the plains, and the elves find the thickest forests (as usual). The orcs live in the jungles or marshlands and compete with the lizardfolk.
And there are numerous human tribes and nations. The largest and most advanced human nation, Althania, is made up of thirteen tribes of humans and the Shadow Tribe. Althania is so advanced, in fact, that their society mirrors ours. Except that they managed to domesticate most dinosaur species, use ships capable of flying or skimming over land and water. They are protected not only by an air force, a Mecha Force, and an army, but also by a cadre of elite psionic knights.
Their main perceived enemy is the lizardfolk tribes that menace overland trade routes, and the Amazon tribes that live to the south of them. Each lizardfolk tribe, however, is different from each other. But the true threat are the Shadow Tribe of Drow.
===================================
Most of my inspiration is coming from the artwork at:
Barbarian's Keep and this Norwegian Conan Site.
Warning, the last site has a lot of artists that focus more on women than on the Barbarian himself. I'm also taking visual inspiration from the Frazetta Art Gallery. I wanted my campaign to have an ancient, primal feel as if Frank Frazetta did art for it but mix in 12 Century Persia, Sengoku Japan and Tech for a few places and you have a great underlying clash.
Conan the Barbarian for Third Edition was also helpful and inspiring for the Low Fantasy. The middle of the page details conversions of the classic REH stories from Weird Tales magazine; including the covers. When I saw the third edition conversions, I told myself that I have to have the book that contains these tales. So, it's on my wish list at Amazon.
=============================
his going to take a while, but I think I can pull it off.
I have an idea which is basically Firaxis' Alpha Centauri meets REH's Conan the Barbarian meets Plato's Atlantis meets El-Hazard meets The Wilderlands meets Blue Planet, as a summation. An ingenious combination of the five.
So I guess Morrowind was useful. This is going to be a low fantasy setting for Big Eyes, Small Mouth d20, or more commonly, Ad20. Why low fantasy? Because I liked my first Basic D&D Set, the Red Box, that I got when I was 12.
It's going to have tech, dinosaurs, psionics (yes, Fort, psi. Bite me. >: ), different cultures, magic, different races, fun stuff. I writing a short story and an adventure to go along with it (or is it the other way around) as it stews in my head, but this one is a winner. Tell me what you think, although Dragonlancer has already said it was cool.
Last edited:
