What's Mystara's Hook?

[Ariosto]

Don't forget Mystara's Mantra: "X (nation on Mystara) is like Y (real world culture) except with elves and magic."

Yep! Also:

"Fluffy, not stuffy." I'm not big on the island tourist trap for would-be adventurers, but I like Trollhattan and all that. YMMV, but -- starting with the crazy geography -- this is pretty far from Underfellshadowdark: the Pretentiousness.

 

[JustKim]

Norworld? Where high level PCs relocated to build their domain.
Karameikos? Beginning your career in a culturally divided nation where a neighboring empire has colonized. Locals are resentful, restive, and rebellious.
Glantri? "Alpine" nation ruled by wizards, clerics are outlawed.
Darokin? Merchant-based realm beset by the Master of the Desert Nomads.
Northern Reaches? Vikings . . .
Minrothad? Sea campaigns . . .
Thyatis? Eternally doomed struggle against the dreaded wizard-ruled empire of Alphatia.
Ylaruam? Arabian nights long before Al-Qadim was dream.
Ethengar? Adventures among the Mongolian horde . . . long before FR thought of The Horde.
Sind? Adventure in the mythic Indian subcontinent.
Savage Coast? Find the cure to the Red Curse in a world evocative of Earth's Age of Exploration.
Hollow World? The Immortals' extinct people museum, ancient history without the time travel conundrums!
Shadow elves? Albino subterranean elves, and not necessarily evil either!

It's all in one world. So?

This thread was already making me nostalgic, after a post like this I am going to have to run another Mystara game. One of my players suggested dropping the Nentir Vale in Mystara. I wasn't sure about the idea, but I'm liking it more and more.

 

[hailstop]

Maybe Mystara as a whole doesn't have a hook, but I'd think a Hollow World campaign setting would.

 

[Estlor]

One thing to keep in mind is "Everything goes" in Mystara means something different than in other campaigns.

"Everything goes" in Eberron means if it's in D&D, it's in Eberron.

"Everything goes" in Mystara means if it's in history, literature, or cinema, it's in Mystara.

Get out your checklist and see how many things I mention are in FR or EB.

• Hidden valley of degenerate humans.
• Subterranean elves with a deep religious background... that are building a nuclear reactor.
• Albino French werewolves.
• Biplane flying gnomes on a rocket-powered island.
• Scattered pieces of an alien spaceship that turn up from time to time.
• (And while we're at it) A magic-draining artifact made up from an alien spaceship's warp engines.
• Extraplanar, empire-building, humanoid wizards of two different, distinct flavors.
• A kobold wizard-prince that may or may not be a hideously deformed elf depending on the sourcebook.
• An island that's basically Magnum P.I. in the middle ages.
• A massive, inner-earth nature preserve.
• Astrologist aranea that accidentally devolved an entire race. (Oops! My bad!)
• Bargle.
• Bearded, Spanish elves.
• Scottish liches who are liches because of exposure to intense nuclear radiation.
• Underground, inverted pyramids.
• Explicit drug use in the sourcebooks. (Mmm, zzonga.)
• Slavic, European, Roman, Arabic, Venitian, French, Polish, Scottish, Mongolian, Indian, Native American, and Nordic cultures (all as neighboring countries).
• An elevator from a plateau top to the center of the earth.
• (And for that about it) An indestructable, inescapable inn that exists out of time itself (and at every time if you go through the gate in the cellar often enough).
• A nation of wererats in the sewers (beneath "Rome").
• Weresharks and werejaguars.

 

[OchreJelly]

I have to confess I never heard of Mystara, and I came up with the hobby full-on during the 80's. While I was reading these I was mentally parsing Mystara as = to Maztica, and I wondered why people cared so much about that setting. Wikipedia has corrected me.

 

[rogueattorney]

The hook problem with Mystara is that you can't sum it up in a sentence... e.g. "Spelljammer is D&D in space."

Instead, proponents sound like a hyperventilating ten-year-old trying to explain to his bemused grandparents the plot of all the cartoons he's been watching over the last 15 hours...

"...And then the jackal headed people who's pyramids exploded tried to take over the valley of the weird barbarian people, but they were saved by the gnomes in the big flying airplane and taken to the place where the vulture people used to be, but the vulture people got expelled, and some of them now live with the gnomes on the big flying plane, but others live in the desert with the evil desert nomads, not the good desert nomads who fight against the evil fire wizards who are looking for the exploded jackal-headed pyramids..."

...and I mean this in the most positive sense possible.

EDIT - and I suppose I should add, that's why a new Mystara sourcebook is as fascinating as it is unlikely. I'm just not sure how anyone could adequately capture the essence of it in one hardback. But if it could be done, it'd certainly be something to see.

 

[Maggan]

but I like Trollhattan and all that. YMMV, but -- starting with the crazy geography -- this is pretty far from Underfellshadowdark: the Pretentiousness.

Things like Trollhattan and Sundsvall broke my suspension of disbelief. It's difficult to feel a sense of wonder when confronted with names of places ripped from an ordinary map of Sweden. Rather boring names, as well, IMO.

Give me Shadowfell any time. At least it's not the same name as a city making headlines in Swedish news because of massive layoffs in the car industry. To me it's like naming a fantasy city Detroit.

IMO and YMMV and all that.

/M

 

[Maggan]

[*]Scottish liches who are liches because of exposure to intense nuclear radiation.
[/LIST]

So where were these? I'm itching to check them out!

/M

 

[OchreJelly]

To me it's like naming a fantasy city Detroit.

IMO and YMMV and all that.

/M

Hey I'm from Detroit, and parts of it are fantastic, like Gamma World.

 

[Alikar]

Wow. Never really paid attention to Mystara when I heard about it, but hearing about it now in this thread makes me really interested to see if I can read up more. I think I'd be interested if Wotc really did release this as a setting.