Other Settings to TfT - Any Interest?

[Todd Roll]

I will be starting a TFT campaign set in HPLs Dreamlands. I plan to tweak the setting a bit doing away with sanity blasting monsters and will probably limit the gods to the likes of Nodens, Hastur and Nyaralthotep in the form of the Black Pharaoh. Will include the Men of Leng (spiders too), ghouls, zoogs, and moon beasts. I am not sure about Gugs and other Dreamlands creatures.

My intention is to make it a high fantasy world not a sanity blasting survival slog.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by Todd Roll

I will be starting a TFT campaign set in HPLs Dreamlands. ...

Hi Todd,
That sounds really interesting. Are the players spending all the time in the Dreamlands, or is it a dual campaign where they have real lives and dream lives?

Warm regards, Rick.

[Jim Kane]

I believe I had answered this before on another thread about using MicroQuests as a product vehicle to specifically introduce new settings for TFT, complete with counters and maps. Here were my suggestions:

• Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age (Conan series) Low-Fantasy
• J.R.R.Tolkien's Middle Earth (LoTR trilogy) High-Fantasy
• Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom (John Carter of Mars series) Science-Fantasy
• Edgar Rice Burroughs' Hollow Earth (Pellucidar series) Prehistoric Science-Fantasy
• Lin Carter's Lemuria (Thongor series) Low-Fantasy/Sci-Fi

JK

[Anomylous]

I once played through a TFT adaptation of LotR. It worked great, but only because the GM added a "Will" attribute (used to resist the lure of the Ring). I think any Middle-Earth campaign would almost have to adopt that, given Tolkien's constant emphasis on temptation and corruption (and it's not just the Ring...look at the downfall of Númenor, or basically the entire story of the Silmarillion). IQ just can't be used to serve the same purpose, q.v. Saruman.

(If it was just a military campaign centered around some Gondorian scouts in Ithilien or some such, you might not need the Will attribute...but since Tolkien is so much about fighting *evil* as opposed to fighting "those other guys", I think I'd include it anyway, and have the scouts face moral dangers in addition to physical ones.)

To broaden the point, I think that TFT could quite handily be adapted to serve a lot of settings – but might require significant modification to accurately capture the "flavor" of many of them. I'd like to have a campaign set in Earthsea, for example, but the magic system is pretty different from vanilla TFT - and likewise the world of the Kingkiller Chronicles.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by Anomylous

I once played through a TFT adaptation of LotR. It worked great, but only because the GM added a "Will" attribute (used to resist the lure of the Ring). I think any Middle-Earth campaign would almost have to adopt that, given Tolkien's constant emphasis on temptation and corruption (and it's not just the Ring...look at the downfall of Númenor, or basically the entire story of the Silmarillion). IQ just can't be used to serve the same purpose, q.v. Saruman.

(If it was just a military campaign centered around some Gondorian scouts in Ithilien or some such, you might not need the Will attribute...but since Tolkien is so much about fighting *evil* as opposed to fighting "those other guys", I think I'd include it anyway, and have the scouts face moral dangers in addition to physical ones.)

*This* is an amazingly insightful and cogent post - a true pleasure to read.

JK

[The Wyzard]

Originally Posted by Todd Roll

I will be starting a TFT campaign set in HPLs Dreamlands. I plan to tweak the setting a bit doing away with sanity blasting monsters and will probably limit the gods to the likes of Nodens, Hastur and Nyaralthotep in the form of the Black Pharaoh. Will include the Men of Leng (spiders too), ghouls, zoogs, and moon beasts. I am not sure about Gugs and other Dreamlands creatures.

My intention is to make it a high fantasy world not a sanity blasting survival slog.

That sounds fantastic.

[Buzzardo]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

I believe I had answered this before on another thread about using MicroQuests as a product vehicle to specifically introduce new settings for TFT, complete with counters and maps. Here were my suggestions:

• Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age (Conan series) Low-Fantasy
• J.R.R.Tolkien's Middle Earth (LoTR trilogy) High-Fantasy
• Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom (John Carter of Mars series) Science-Fantasy
• Edgar Rice Burroughs' Hollow Earth (Pellucidar series) Prehistoric Science-Fantasy
• Lin Carter's Lemuria (Thongor series) Low-Fantasy/Sci-Fi

JK

Jim beat me to it. I immediately thought of both John Carter of Mars and Conan when I read the original post.

[malchidael]

I've always thought that the old Judges' Guild Wilderlands of High Fantasy would be a good campaign world for TFT.

You already have your "ancient race" of high-tech beings (Markab as opposed to Mnoren - or perhaps they are Mnoren), artifacts laying around waiting to be discovered, and of course, an "invincible overlord" who hires mercenaries, and would probably want to test them, so it seems like a good fit.

And I agree with Todd - a high fantasy/swords & sorcery campaign in the Dreamlands would rock. At one point, I was running a similar idea through my head - the player characters wake up with no memory of who they are, at the 70 steps of light slumber.... and are pursued by un-nameable foes.... The basic premise is that they were assassinated, and the campaign takes place in the last moments of their life. Over the course of the campaign, they gain clues to this, and can look for ways to either stay in the Dreamlands or return to life to gain revenge.

I figured my players wouldn't enjoy the plot twist, so I never really pursued it.

[The Wyzard]

This is going to sound bug wild, but

My dream campaign to run would be a sort of 70s-era dark urban fantasy/psychic horror deal. Draw from stuff like Phenomenon, Carrie, Firestarter, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Scanners, Trancers. Bikers, hippies, occultists, and witches straight out of The Wicker Man or Rosemary's Baby. No cell phones, but muscle cars and pay phones. Probably some alien invaders from space and other dimensions. Some kung fu drama, all that good stuff. Because it's me, I'd draw from a lot of random horror movies. The balance would change somewhat because of the lack of common medium-to-heavy armor, but a leather motorcycle jacket is a decent substitute for leather armor. Not quite realistic in terms of it slowing down bullets, but whatever, I'd let it pass.

I've been kicking around some ideas about an IQ-affecting equivalent of Fatigue for horror/sanity damage, but I actually dislike the way Call of Cthulhu does things, so I'd want to make sure it doesn't resemble that in any way.

[Todd Roll]

Originally Posted by The Wyzard

This is going to sound bug wild, but

My dream campaign to run would be a sort of 70s-era dark urban fantasy/psychic horror deal. Draw from stuff like Phenomenon, Carrie, Firestarter, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Scanners, Trancers. Bikers, hippies, occultists, and witches straight out of The Wicker Man or Rosemary's Baby. No cell phones, but muscle cars and pay phones. Probably some alien invaders from space and other dimensions. Some kung fu drama, all that good stuff. Because it's me, I'd draw from a lot of random horror movies. The balance would change somewhat because of the lack of common medium-to-heavy armor, but a leather motorcycle jacket is a decent substitute for leather armor. Not quite realistic in terms of it slowing down bullets, but whatever, I'd let it pass.

I've been kicking around some ideas about an IQ-affecting equivalent of Fatigue for horror/sanity damage, but I actually dislike the way Call of Cthulhu does things, so I'd want to make sure it doesn't resemble that in any way.

Oh.. that sounds so incredibly cool! Might I suggest looking at the film The Legend of Hell House as well? Maybe Kolchak: The Night Stalker or The Norliss Tapes. Now I want to run a game like this as well.

Cheers,
Todd