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Other than vaguely European medieval fantasy...
- Thread starter Desdichado
- Start date
Or you could take Tolkienesque fantasy conventions and turn them around a bit.
1) No ÜberBBEG & Empire of Darkness.
2) Elves, the first of the Fallen Fey have been in the world for longer than any other race, and it is their world. They are masters of magic, and that mastery has given various Elf-Kings powerful empires.
3) Dwarves are the Children of the World, and are often in conflict with the Elves.
4) Gnomes are Fey who have entered the world voluntarily, in order to protect others from the Elves. They, too, are masters in magic, but not in the same schools as the Elves.
5) Humans are at the bottom of the "totem pole"- newcomers to the world, they are enslaved by some Elves, looked down on by all; Dwarves see them as short-lived nuisances, and Gnomes see them as short-sighted. Their civilizations are largely stone age, except where insightful leaders have stolen or learned from the Elder Races (as they call everyone else).
And so forth...
1) No ÜberBBEG & Empire of Darkness.
2) Elves, the first of the Fallen Fey have been in the world for longer than any other race, and it is their world. They are masters of magic, and that mastery has given various Elf-Kings powerful empires.
3) Dwarves are the Children of the World, and are often in conflict with the Elves.
4) Gnomes are Fey who have entered the world voluntarily, in order to protect others from the Elves. They, too, are masters in magic, but not in the same schools as the Elves.
5) Humans are at the bottom of the "totem pole"- newcomers to the world, they are enslaved by some Elves, looked down on by all; Dwarves see them as short-lived nuisances, and Gnomes see them as short-sighted. Their civilizations are largely stone age, except where insightful leaders have stolen or learned from the Elder Races (as they call everyone else).
And so forth...
Silvercat Moonpaw
Adventurer
You know there's a setting called Welcome to HAEL (that's the actual spelling, in case you're confused) which features a fantasy world where the orcs and the gnolls "won" the whole "these kind of humanoids fight those kind of humanoids" conflict, and now they're the big important races, with half-orcs being an accepted part of orc society, and humans and halflings being savage barbarians. There's also a four-armed race that doesn't really have much of a role, and then two newly-arrived alien (very alien) races, one of whom is pretty set on conquering the place and destroying the other alien race. As far as I can recall the orc society sounded vaguely like Imperial British.
Some representative sources of ideas:
All sorts of stories can rub shoulders in the Commonwealth of Letters, a la Silverlock (John Meyers Meyers).
High tech works in some neighborhoods, magic in others, and swords everywhere in Cynosure (John Gaunt/ Grimjack's hometown, from 1980s comicbooks).
Tekumel (world of the Empire of the Petal Throne game) is both on another planet and in the very distant future. The human cultures are slightly reminiscent of pre-Columbian America, also of ancient India. See also Dancers at the End of Time, Dying Earth, Majipoor, Urth of the New Sun, Long Afternoon of Earth (a.k.a. Hothouse), Instrumentality of Mankind
There's the old time jumble, a la October the First is Too Late (Sir Fred Hoyle) -- somewhat evoked in the game Torg.
Everybody who ever lived can live again (and again) in a world of resurrection, a la Farmer's Riverworld.
Or they could be Heroes in Hell.
There's always a multiplicity of worlds, a la Farmer's World of Tiers, Zelazney's Amber, or Tom Moldvay's Lords of Creation game (which includes a brief write-up for a world based on the visionary poems of William Blake).
There can be adventures inside a sentient world, as in John Varley's Titan/Wizard/Demon.
There's room for many (billions of?) Earths on Niven's Ringworld.
All sorts of stories can rub shoulders in the Commonwealth of Letters, a la Silverlock (John Meyers Meyers).
High tech works in some neighborhoods, magic in others, and swords everywhere in Cynosure (John Gaunt/ Grimjack's hometown, from 1980s comicbooks).
Tekumel (world of the Empire of the Petal Throne game) is both on another planet and in the very distant future. The human cultures are slightly reminiscent of pre-Columbian America, also of ancient India. See also Dancers at the End of Time, Dying Earth, Majipoor, Urth of the New Sun, Long Afternoon of Earth (a.k.a. Hothouse), Instrumentality of Mankind
There's the old time jumble, a la October the First is Too Late (Sir Fred Hoyle) -- somewhat evoked in the game Torg.
Everybody who ever lived can live again (and again) in a world of resurrection, a la Farmer's Riverworld.
Or they could be Heroes in Hell.
There's always a multiplicity of worlds, a la Farmer's World of Tiers, Zelazney's Amber, or Tom Moldvay's Lords of Creation game (which includes a brief write-up for a world based on the visionary poems of William Blake).
There can be adventures inside a sentient world, as in John Varley's Titan/Wizard/Demon.
There's room for many (billions of?) Earths on Niven's Ringworld.
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I'd have loved to do a Spelljammer-esque campaign set in a gas torus like in Larry Niven's Integral Trees novels or a similarly populated nebula...a FRPG set in a habitable, gaseous Dyson Sphere.*
*No, not the ones on the vacuum cleaners- that's a Dyson Ball. Spheres are like this.
*No, not the ones on the vacuum cleaners- that's a Dyson Ball. Spheres are like this.
TarionzCousin
Second Most Angelic Devil Ever
All the characters are amoebae in the world-sized petri dish.
Beware the evil anti-bacterial ooze!
Beware the evil anti-bacterial ooze!
That would almost be James Blish's "Surface Tension", the third of his Pantropy stories.
I ran a long campaign (11 years) from 1st to 27th level Rolemaster set in a fantasy East Asia. For setting elements I used a mixture of Kara-Tur, Bushido and my own knowledge of Asian history and Buddhist philosophy.
Some of the issues that I wanted to come out in the game included (i) the relationship between mortals, spirits and gods, (ii) reality and illusion, (iii) the role of karma, and (iv) questions of freedom versus obligation more generally. These issues obviously interrelate in various ways.
An East Asian setting isn't the only way to deal with this issues, but it has some obvious elements that help put the players in the right mood: lots of spirits and spirit courts; heavenly judges who oversee reincarnation; pacifist monks who are expert martial artists; family loyalties and politics; daimyo and samurai; etc.
From fairly early on in the campaign, the PC party had solidified around: two samurai from a fallen family trying to reestablish their family and personal credibility; a former animal lord banished from heaven (fox shapechanger); the son of a merchant family sent to serve with the two samurai in order to raise his station, who was more interested in (i) mastering the arts of Taoist sword fighting and (ii) winning the love of a celestial dragon; and a pair of Buddhist monks, one Pure Land and the other more esoteric, trying to stop incursions of demons and similar "things that should not be" and also trying to transcend the dictates of karma, in the first case out of a desire to relieve others' suffering and in the second case out of a desire to achieve enlightenment.
If you have PCs whose them and flavour is integrated with those elements of your world that are intended to deliver your desired feel, then I think you're well on the way to getting that feel. Conversely, I think it's hard to get the feel if it's not being expressed via the PCs - because the PCs are (at least in my experience) 90% or more of the screen time.
Some of the issues that I wanted to come out in the game included (i) the relationship between mortals, spirits and gods, (ii) reality and illusion, (iii) the role of karma, and (iv) questions of freedom versus obligation more generally. These issues obviously interrelate in various ways.
An East Asian setting isn't the only way to deal with this issues, but it has some obvious elements that help put the players in the right mood: lots of spirits and spirit courts; heavenly judges who oversee reincarnation; pacifist monks who are expert martial artists; family loyalties and politics; daimyo and samurai; etc.
From fairly early on in the campaign, the PC party had solidified around: two samurai from a fallen family trying to reestablish their family and personal credibility; a former animal lord banished from heaven (fox shapechanger); the son of a merchant family sent to serve with the two samurai in order to raise his station, who was more interested in (i) mastering the arts of Taoist sword fighting and (ii) winning the love of a celestial dragon; and a pair of Buddhist monks, one Pure Land and the other more esoteric, trying to stop incursions of demons and similar "things that should not be" and also trying to transcend the dictates of karma, in the first case out of a desire to relieve others' suffering and in the second case out of a desire to achieve enlightenment.
If you have PCs whose them and flavour is integrated with those elements of your world that are intended to deliver your desired feel, then I think you're well on the way to getting that feel. Conversely, I think it's hard to get the feel if it's not being expressed via the PCs - because the PCs are (at least in my experience) 90% or more of the screen time.
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