The Create-a-Setting Thread: Dinopirates of Ninja Island!

[barsoomcore]

Hurrah! Nfft -- I love those races.

I'm on the "play it straight" bandwagon -- which is not incompatible with the "over-the-top goofy" bandwagon, by the way -- it can be uber-goofy AS LONG AS the goofiness is treated with respect. Great comedy has to played straight or else it's not really funny.

Toy Story -- the idea is completely ludicrous but it's played totally straight in that the characters are honest and their reactions to the goofiness are completely real -- and THAT'S what makes it so funny.

So yeah, we can have giant stone heads that say "ZARDOZ" for no reason -- but the people who live nearby have to deal with it in SOME believable manner.

JPL -- thanks. Very generous of you.

Nfft -- limited palettes, deep colour. Well said. It's like musicals -- you won't buy people singing and dancing if there isn't some wicked melodrama to support it.

I created a yahoo group -- dinopirates-discussion. If we want to move the discussion there, we can. Not sure if we need to do that yet or not.

I have a very very very strong urge to manage projects, especially projects that involve smart creative people, which this one so far seems to, so unless people start objecting, I'm going to start fussing about and trying to keep things organized. I promise to stay out of everyone's way as much as possible -- to me, project management is about making it easier for smart creative people to be smart and creative and have fun.

Feel free to contact me if I'm stepping on toes or anything. I don't want to tell anyone what to do -- I just want to make it easy for us to work together.

Dinopirates of Ninja Island. It's so cool.

 

[Nifft]

Hurrah! Nfft -- I love those races.

Thanks! Those races (except the Ogres) are part of my setting. They're hereby officially available under the OGL.

I just joined the yahoo group.

-- N

 

[Dark Jezter]

I authorize the use of the few contributions I've made to this thread.

 

[kenjib]

Hurrah! Nfft -- I love those races.

I'm on the "play it straight" bandwagon -- which is not incompatible with the "over-the-top goofy" bandwagon, by the way -- it can be uber-goofy AS LONG AS the goofiness is treated with respect. Great comedy has to played straight or else it's not really funny.

Toy Story -- the idea is completely ludicrous but it's played totally straight in that the characters are honest and their reactions to the goofiness are completely real -- and THAT'S what makes it so funny.

So yeah, we can have giant stone heads that say "ZARDOZ" for no reason -- but the people who live nearby have to deal with it in SOME believable manner.

Okay, that sounds about right to me. The only thing I'm leary of is the idea getting bogged down in unecessary details for the sake of verisimilitude. I don't think the setting would really benefit from a lot of concern over political complexity, economic coherence, and geographical accuracy. The typical target audience for this game, I would assume, would be people who want to play something for laughs for maybe 1 to 4 sessions for a little break from the usual stuff. I don't expect this to be a full campaign setting for anyone but the most foolhardy. As such, I don't think the setting really needs to worry as much about the type of content that provides long term depth for extended campaigns.

Now, I could be wrong, but I thought it might be worthwhile to at least bring the point up so we can consider exactly what the goal of the setting is, who might want to use it, and for what. It can help focus the energy.

It also helps determine how big the setting should be geographically. You only really need a small handful of islands if it's just for some quick yucks. A smaller area also has the benefit of being easier to complete. You can always expand it later by adding more islands over there, especially if you just vaguely hint at some of the forthcoming material here and there so it's more backward compatible. So, for example, there could be samurai that come to Ninja Island looking for the secret ninja dojo so they can destroy it, but not detail where they come from until you want to add more later.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think it should be pretty straight.....but I also don't think we need many islands, either. It'll allow us to go more in-deapth on the few we do....

So, as a rather arbitrary starting number, does 7 sound about right? Maybe less?

 

[thullgrim]

Another vote for the pretty straight camp. Rather than measuring a starting point as a number of islands, why not say 7 cultures. The initial setting blurb (see dark jezter's sig) references an Empire and one island is not much of an Empire.

can someone post a link to the yahoo group page I can't find it....
Thullgrim

 

[Matafuego]

I've been following this with great attention
I love the idea and I've also commented with my players about playing in it and some of them seem pretty interested (there's another one that... well let's not discuss it here...)
I think the idea of some small islands is great always leaving place for more islands
And I think there should be a lot of importance in the number such as..
There are X islands
and X Ninja Clans
and X Pirate Groups
and X Days a Week
and X Weeks a Month
And the next thing you know X is everything and everything is mesured in X
"Oh, the ship measures 3 times X long and 2 times X short"

I don't know, just throwing ideas that seem fun to me

 

[I'm A Banana]

Maybe the Great Empire is a landed nation, whose peninsula extend out to near the fringe of the Ninja Archepeligo?

 

[thullgrim]

Coule be. Could be a continent, and maybe the Empire is also the Ninja Homeland, though personally I would prefer to see the Empire as being an island nation while the original home to the Nina originated on a continental land mass.

Should it be decided that the Empire is actually a continental mass, there still needs to be a presence in the islands beyond the presence of ships. I am thinking something along the lines of the Rock of Gibraltar in the Med, a fortress and resupply point for Imperial ships in the isles. I would even call it The Rock, a combination fortress, prison, resupply point etc, for Imperial Ships cruising the sea lanes in the islands.

Thullgrim

 

[I'm A Banana]

Here's a few more Random Ideas R Us:

1) Races: Human, Monkey, Turtle, Rat, Robot, Sauroid, Fish-Folk, Alien. I think we don't need any more than that, and it'll give us a nice water/jungle division. There can be other sentient races, but they'll be mostly monsters. Indeed, we could use some D&D 'monster' races as the races from here -- kobolds = sauroids, locathah = fish-folk, for instance.

2) Classes: Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Rogue, Sorcerer; add Ninja, Pirate, Shaman, Islander, Professor, Rocker. We should use basic d20 magic, but play up the role of divine magic instead of arcane (the Prof and the Sorc are maybe the only arcane casters).

3) I think we should definately rely on a minimum of house rules, and none that drastically change the game -- if this requires a lot of conversion to get into, no one's going to want to bugger with it, as a lark, or as a more permanent campaign.

4) Nations: I think a Ninja-Land, a "Lost Island of Cannibals" Land, a Pirate-Land, and a "Western-ish" Land should be basic; we can elaborate as we need to, ne?

I'm working on the races and classes as we speak.