Re: Setting request: melancholy sense of wonder

In article <1134171405.793102.136930@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
madafro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...

> > As I imagine it, this would be a world where "everyone" knows that all
> > mirrors must be covered (because of the Adversary, y'know)... until you
> > go to the next settlement 100 miles away and find out they use mirrors
> > for communication. Or better yet, that one people's Adversary is another
> > people's trickster folk hero, the wizard which led the Mirror Rebellion
> > against the evil empire next door.
>
> So you're going for very insular, remote settlements; each one would be
> the "whole world" to its natives, who never seem to go far afield?

If it works for Vance... :)

> You wouldn't want crowded city-states,

They're not excluded, but they wouldn't be the norm.

> but maybe a cluster of people who
> live in what's left of a giant colisseum in the middle of the ruins of
> a city-state?

That would be closer to the norm.

> Now I'm thinking of the people in the canyon in Beyond Thunderdome.

I've watched it long enough ago that I don't really remember this.
Anything particular you have in mind?

BTW, I must note that I don't really like your typical post-apocalyptic
feeling with the leather and the spiked hair, and the deserts, and the
roving tribes of raiders... something like Silveraxe writes about is
more my kind of post-apocalypse.

> > Did you read Wolfe New Sun or Vance's Dying Earth? Those worlds feel so
> > old that you can't really dig deep enough to find the foundation. You'll
> > find no true original Adversary, not even hints of him, since your puny
> > human faculties cannot possibly look far back enough.
>
> Never read them, so I'm usually handicapped in these discussions. :)
> I really should get off my ass, I suppose, especially where Vance is
> concerned.

That depends whether you think you'll like it. He's... quirky. Quirky,
florid language, quirky, weird plots. But if that's your kind of thing,
he can be really excellent.

Also, it was reading Vance which teached me to love spell preparation
and stupid spell names. :)

> Do you want the PCs to actually glom on to the history of the world as
> a campaign theme, or will their investigations pretty much be
> self-serving, largely heedless of the truths uncovered? Or is that up
> to them?

Up to them, mostly.

This concept is a result of several lines of thought: one, lately we've
been talking about how we all really want a bit more roleplaying in our
games, mostly in response to a Planescape game becoming a pure random-
monster-killfest. Exploration and interaction with the natives would be
two big themes in this game. Also, the PCs would have to find their own
things to care about, since they won't be busy saving the world.

Two, I've noticed that I never finish settings I start making because I
burn out making sure everything fits with everything else perfectly. In
this setting, the idea is that things don't fit, since they're pieces of
many different, worn-out puzzles, so no need to rework them endlessly:
if a neat idea occurse, just use it.

Three, I've been wanting to experiment with system a bit, either by
trying something else instead of D&D, or trying out in practice all the
things I usually don't use in D&D. Subsystems like psionics or incarnum
(if I get it), classes like warlocks or spellthieves, wacky races like
dromites.


--
Jasin Zujovic
jzujovic@xxxxxxx
.

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