D&D General Mystara Musings [Discussion]

[overgeeked]

I love Mystara so much.

Mystara didn’t have much of a theme outside whatever the designers wanted to include at the time. It was the original kitchen sink and it didn’t shy away from the goofier aspects of early D&D nor did it shy away from including sci-fi elements at times.

A second, invisible moon with samurai cat people living on it. An ancient crashed spaceship. A buried nuclear reactor. An ancient Blackmoor device exploded, tilting the world. The Hollow World. The spell of preserving. Kalaktatla, the Amber Serpent...aka Ka the Preserver...an Immortal T-Rex who preserves ancient civilizations by moving them to the hollow world, including faux Romans and faux Aztecs. Flying continents. Flying cities. Crashed flying cities. Flying ships. Flying gnomes. A city of Immortals on the moon. Vast galactic empires. Time travel. Aliens. Genetic manipulation. Alternate dimensions. Thar. All the unique races and monsters. Immortals. Slowly dying magic. Shadow elves. The denial of the Hin. Bargle. Threshold. The Isle of Dread. The modules. I could almost swoon just thinking about it all.

 

[AnotherGuy]

A second, invisible moon with samurai cat people living on it.

If you can remember where does this pop up (in the Mystara products) ?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I love Mystara so much.

Mystara didn’t have much of a theme outside whatever the designers wanted to include at the time. It was the original kitchen sink and it didn’t shy away from the goofier aspects of early D&D nor did it shy away from including sci-fi elements at times.

A second, invisible moon with samurai cat people living on it. An ancient crashed spaceship. A buried nuclear reactor. An ancient Blackmoor device exploded, tilting the world. The Hollow World. The spell of preserving. Kalaktatla, the Amber Serpent...aka Ka the Preserver...an Immortal T-Rex who preserves ancient civilizations by moving them to the hollow world, including faux Romans and faux Aztecs. Flying continents. Flying cities. Crashed flying cities. Flying ships. Flying gnomes. A city of Immortals on the moon. Vast galactic empires. Time travel. Aliens. Genetic manipulation. Alternate dimensions. Thar. All the unique races and monsters. Immortals. Slowly dying magic. Shadow elves. The denial of the Hin. Bargle. Threshold. The Isle of Dread. The modules. I could almost swoon just thinking about it all.

Wow, it sounds fire!

I've never read even one of these. What's the best one to start with - maybe it's on Drive Thru RPG?

 

[overgeeked]

If you can remember where does this pop up (in the Mystara products) ?

Dragon Magazine 160.

Wow, it sounds fire!

I've never read even one of these. What's the best one to start with - maybe it's on Drive Thru RPG?

There was never one campaign setting book or box covering most of the setting, so it’s piecemeal. Most of the B/X and BECMI stuff is set in Mystara. Most of your classic old-school modules.

The Hollow World got a boxed set. Most of the setting was fleshed out in the Gazetteer series. I’d start with the Hollow World Campaign Set and GAZ1: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos.

Check out Mr Welch’s videos on YouTube and the Vault of Pandius.

Mr. Welch

An old school Grognard talking about Mystara, greatest Dungeons & Dragons setting ever created, random RPGs I played and whatever else strikes my fancy. Questions and comments regarding business matters please email me. Serious inquiries only. ravengames@gmail.com If you want to help the...

www.youtube.com

Mystara - Vaults of Pandius - the Official Homepage

pandius.com

 

[Byrd]

I think The Principalities of Glantri (GAZ3) is a good place to start. (ISBN 0-88038-485-9)
Should be available through DTRPG.

ETA: The Shadow Elves (GAZ13) Is a favourite of mine. (ISBN 0-88038-846-3)

 

[Tonguez]

If you can remember where does this pop up (in the Mystara products) ?

Voyage of the Princess Ark - Myoshima, its inhabitants are Rakasta

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think The Principalities of Glantri (GAZ3) is a good place to start. (ISBN 0-88038-485-9)
Should be available through DTRPG.

ETA: The Shadow Elves (GAZ13) Is a favourite of mine. (ISBN 0-88038-846-3)

The Shadow Elves are so much more interesting than the drow, IMO, and have a great 1970s sci-fi feel to them.

 

[The Glen]

Got a lot done on the DMG, with new art coming in. This is a WIP from LC Freitas, showcasing an Atruaghin making an important discovery in the markets of Darokin

 

[haakon1]

Since the topic requested musings, I'll oblige...

One of the reasons that Mystara is cited as a setting that WotC probably can't revisit is that many of the nations in Mystara hew a little too closely to the "real world" for comfort. Much virtual ink has been spilled on the Broken Lands supplement "Orcs of Thar" and how a lot of people find the content of that Gazetteer racially insensitive for modern gamers, but let's set that particular element of the setting aside for the purposes of this musing, please, because that's its own separate ball of wax.

Many of the "human" nations in Mystara are fairly obvious analogs of real-life fantasy cultures - often amalgams of several cultures. For instance, Karameikos' native elements (the Traldarans) have many Slavic analogs (though I see many of the names in Karameikos and they are clearly derived from Hungarian names, and Hungarians aren't Slavs, but you get the idea); Thyatis is the Byzantine empire (though careless players will probably see "Ancient Rome"), the Ylari mirror aspects of middle Eastern culture, the Northern Reaches are clearly Viking-inspired, the Ethengar Khanate reflect steppe nomads like the Huns, the Magyars, etc.

Mark Rosewater (head designer of Magic: The Gathering) did an article on lessons in game design ten years ago called "20 Years, 20 Lessons" (Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons—Part 1 | MAGIC: THE GATHERING) and two of the lessons that I think is useful here is Lesson #3 "Resonance is Important" and Lesson #4 "Piggybacking" - the quotes I think are relevant here are:

"Your audience has a deep deposit of emotional equity in preexisting things. As a game designer, that's a tool you should make use of and build upon. This lesson is that some of your tools come from the players themselves."

and

"Piggybacking is a term defined as "the use of preexisting knowledge to front-load game information to make learning easier.""

Last time I ran a campaign, I ran it in Mystara - Karameikos in particular. My players were young (college age) and brand new to D&D. After a couple of campaign sessions, one of them expressed something to the effect of, "I get the political tension here; the Thyatians are the Romans trying to assimilate a conquered people ... the Ylari guy we just met; he's kind of like Arabian, and that's why his customs seem so different from everyone else's, right?" This might not have been politically correct, but the real-world analogs allowed him to quickly understand the setting; I hadn't explicitly pointed out "the Ylari guy's customs are different" I simply said he brewed up some coffee and offered to share it while he and the PCs discussed matters (I said it as though it was the most normal thing in the world) but remembering that in the previous session, there were suspicious looks in the tavern when a Thyatian walked in, and everyone in the tavern ordered ale, the detail of "coffee" was enough to make him realize this was a foreigner and they needed to be mindful that his customs - and motivations - were different than other NPCs'.

So I guess my musing is that the parallel to real world culture can be a trap if done poorly, but if done correctly can very quickly enrich the world of Mystara. Make sure you're getting the "enriching" version.

Great post.

I’ve been filling in the Greyhawk planet (Oerth) for my campaign with other settings, often abandoned settings, that are arguable Greyhawk related, such as the Chainmail (2002) setting, which was explicitly west of Greyhawk, and Raging Swan’s setting, which has a very Greyhawk feel.

One principle I have is it can’t be a real world place in all but name. So no Zindia, Erypt, or Celestial Empire, though those appear on some wider Oerth maps.

It’s interesting you found doing real world places (more or less) by other names worked for your Mystara campaigns. The older name Known World is what I like to call it, and perhaps that fits!

I do plan to have Wa & Kozakura from OA (not originally intended for FR) out deep in the ocean, far from a nonexistent for me China copy.

Polynesia/Hawaii is the other real world culture I think would be intriguing to sneak somewhere deep in he ocean, but I haven’t found a source for that that I like yet. No 80% “Pirates of the Caribbean” with 20% Hawaiian stuff - I want my “Chief of War” without the Western contact.