[PR] Anubium Announces Harbinger: Dark Fantasy Roleplaying

[J Lloyd]

We're announcing our intent to release Harbinger: Dark Fantasy Roleplaying, a setting of sleeping empires, doom-haunted heroes, and pale gods that do more than just walk the earth. Inside this pale environment you’ll find your elves and dwarves, orcs and goblins, and many other familiar fantasy themes. But be warned—we’ve put a little twist on it all so there would be enough doom to go around. The release date is set for the 4th Quarter of 2003 (and our intent is to make it OGL but not d20, we shall see if this changes). More information is on our site….

We also thought it would be fun to have some company on our long road to Hell, so we invite you to come along on the journey! Today we kick off our Twisted-Monster design contest, which aims to find a truly hellish creature from one of the many talented writers in the community. The details of the contest is on our website.

In addition, we are putting out a call for writers who have an interest in writing dark fantasy for the d20 system. Excellent writers have a chance of becoming a part of the world’s development in the future. Both campaign material (dealing with such things like empires, cults, history) and game design are welcomed.

Questions and comments are appreciated. We would love to hear from you.

 

[cthuluftaghn]

I look forward to seeing the material you put together. Sorry... I'll be putting my best creative efforts into Sprawling Shadows... but, hey... a little friendly competition just gives our readers twice as much good material!

Best wishes!
--cheers
bd

 

[Yuan-Ti]

I have a quick question about the monster contest... the website says it has to be unique or near unique. So you want something that can only occur once or something that occurs so rarely that there is liable to only be one around at any given time?

Btw, that makes it really difficult to come up with something!

 

[J Lloyd]

... So you want something that can only occur once or something that occurs so rarely that there is liable to only be one around at any given time?

Yes, that's about right. We wanted to stay away from overly social creatures that might feel like orcs and goblins, or even mind flayers and aboleths. I think requiring that a creature be somewhat unique and solitary, or at best, a creature with a very small appearance rate, does two things: (1) intensifies the horror aspect when the creature's encountered and (2) helps the designer stay away from creating humanlike races (i.e., things that have families, hunt and create government, etc.).

It's hard creating a monster this way, but let your mind delve into the darkest recesses of your human psyche and see what monsters arise from it. Be sure and edit your monster entry if it's a little too creepy though.