Beyond Yttarria [Banestorm]

[Astromancer]

Like the title says, what to place beyond Yttarria (which is the main continent described in GURPS: BaneStorm).

I'd like to see other continents with different mixtures of fantasy races and different Earth cultures. For starters I'd like to see a continent were the humans came mainly from Africa. You could use real African history to build a series of fantasy kingdoms. A much easier task than writing a GURPS: African Kingdoms.

Island Kingdoms with Indonesian cultures and fantasy beings would be cool too.

What would you like on Yrths other continents? Do you even want there to be other continents on Yrth?

[Bruno]

Other continents would have had a particularly rough time of things since they would have been even more surprised by the Banestorm than Yttaria was, and would have had to rely on Divinations to research what happened after everything went "boom".

They should have less problems with null and low mana zones, I get the impression those were caused in areas that were "ground zero" for the Banestorm ritual.

I agree that sub-saharan Africa tends to get the short end of the stick in gaming; and nearly always suffering from the usual European-oriented problem of making it all one blobby amorphous "country called Africa". Sahaud is the same eurocentrism applied to "Asia", although the Banestorms do at least provide a reason for everything being mixed up together in a syncretic hodgepodge.

Aside from Africa, I'd kinda really like to see a region that was largely populated with Australian Aboriginals. With better accessible resources and with actual continued contact with other societies rather than being isolated on an island-continent that is then further partitioned by mountains, desert, and dramatic ecosystem changes.

[Polydamas]

A forumite worked out an African-influenced continent for Yrth, and posted a large part of it on his website. Searching the right keywords should turn it up.

[Jürgen Hubert]

How about using arrivals from different Alternate Earths, like it is hinted at in GURPS Banestorm?

I think Nergal would work especially well - a nasty, magic-using empire which will nevertheless be quite alien to people from Ytarria, and which is unlikely to travel beyond its home continent.

[ericthered]

Polynesians would be fun to play with, particularly in context with the other fantastic creatures. How do you survive on a small island with merfolk, sharkfolk, and Sea Elves around? Do you still like the ocean?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Other continents would have had a particularly rough time of things since they would have been even more surprised by the Banestorm than Yttaria was, and would have had to rely on Divinations to research what happened after everything went "boom".

They should have less problems with null and low mana zones, I get the impression those were caused in areas that were "ground zero" for the Banestorm ritual.

I agree that sub-saharan Africa tends to get the short end of the stick in gaming; and nearly always suffering from the usual European-oriented problem of making it all one blobby amorphous "country called Africa". Sahaud is the same eurocentrism applied to "Asia", although the Banestorms do at least provide a reason for everything being mixed up together in a syncretic hodgepodge.

Aside from Africa, I'd kinda really like to see a region that was largely populated with Australian Aboriginals. With better accessible resources and with actual continued contact with other societies rather than being isolated on an island-continent that is then further partitioned by mountains, desert, and dramatic ecosystem changes.

What I find funny that people who make an issue out of Africa and Asia being lumped together rather consider that the default gaming setting actually does the same thing with Europe, grouping together folk tales, technologies, and social elements that are historically separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Ytarria already has this whole "Renaissance fair" shtick, so you might try something different for the other continent.

Let's say that another continent gets Banestorm victims from Africa. Let's also say that the locals lucked out with finding local high-yield crops (unlike real world Africa) - or maybe they just learn to make heavy use of Plant spells, which allows them to support much bigger cities than in history.

Eventually, they learn to make use of gunpowder, develop a TL4 civilization, and now their first transoceanic ships are ready to make contact with Ytarria.

For added irony, you can have them sell their guns to Ytarrian warlords in exchange for human slaves.

[patchwork]

I've tinkered quite a bit with trying to add a China-based continent to Yrth, but it runs into massive problems with the primary setting. The Song Chinese already had gunpowder and crude firearms and were very pro-technology and pro-exploration; it's hard to come up with good reasons why they don't have a world-spanning technological empire if they dodge getting sacked by the Mongols. I suppose we could put them in some radically different physical environment, such as a desert...hm.

I suppose a Mongol-based landmass could be interesting too.

[David Johnston2]

I'm not sure that's really an issue. The Song dynasty's forward-looking tendencies would have been in the cities and the odds are against a banestorm abducting a chunk of a metropolitan center. You'd almost certainly get peasants, and a very small seed population of them to boot. There's no way that China Outremer would make significant technological advances for centuries after arrival. Magic and alchemy will still suck in most of their best brains. Also of course, China never really got the hang of blue water sailing, and Yrth oceans are a heck of a lot more dangerous than ours.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I'm not sure that's really an issue. The Song dynasty's forward-looking tendencies would have been in the cities and the odds are against a banestorm abducting a chunk of a metropolitan center. You'd almost certainly get peasants, and a very small seed population of them to boot. There's no way that China Outremer would make significant technological advances for centuries after arrival. Magic and alchemy will still suck in most of their best brains. Also of course, China never really got the hang of blue water sailing, and Yrth oceans are a heck of a lot more dangerous than ours.

OTOH, it would do some very interesting things to the culture if the Taoist alchemy and magic actually <i>worked</i>. The Song dynasty was already very pro-Taoism, so you might well get a major magical power rather than a technological one. I'm envisioning an immortal alchemist emperor (elixirs of youth, anyone?) presiding over continent-spanning magical bureaucracy (not Ytarria, obviously). Could be quite a shock to the Emperor of Megalos when contact is established.