If I were to design a gameworld for Dungeon Fantasy

[b-dog]

Because GURPS has so many good historical books and it has a lot of detail in them. I think that I would sort of pull a super power Banestorm to bring creatures from every myth and legend and even story into the Dungeon Fantasy gameworld. This way players could play just about any kind of character they could imagine. Of course there would be some races and monster that would be more common, like humans, orcs, elves, dwarves ect. but there would also be alvar (from Norse myth), serpentmen (from Conan), centaurs (from Greek myth), and any other races that are from myths, legends or stories.

I would also include all of the gods too. Players could follow Thor, Odin, Zeus, Apollo, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and any other fantasy or real religion. I would also have spirits of all kinds; angels, djinn, faeries from all over the world, animal spirits, ect. I would even have lands where the gods and spirits who are dominant sort of control the way magic works; like in areas with chinese gods rule, vampires are formed when moonlight touches a corpse. This should not interfere with a priest of Zeus who is visiting but the rules of magic would be different being who live there.

Also, it is much more satisfying to have real mythic artifacts and real mythic villians. It would be sort of fun to have priests of Loki be the bad guys of a dungeon, rather than just some made up villian. Of course there would be many made up creatures and gods as well but there would also be a lot mythic beings to fight and mythic artifacts to find.

Just my 2 cents...

[Randover]

I kind of run a similar cross-over champaing for about three years. I get messy. Especialy the nice touch about how magic works differently in different circumstances. Fine if these things do not fight each other, and it could work for dungeon fantasy as it is somewhat specific as you do not have to handle racial hatred, politics etc.

The reason why it is fun to come with something from myth is that you are using players imagination in different way as completely made up guys lack the deep backgrounds.

I met a GM that set a completly new myths from sratch, it was a hard work, and part of the group realy didn't like it in the end, as they forgot halve of the details. But she managed to implement those myth so some players realy feel positive reaction toward an NPC that they were getting hints about for 8 games prior, and they could tell that this guy done nothing bad all the time.

[tratclif]

I had done some notes on a Dungeon Fantasy timeline for Infinite Worlds that I wasn't too happy with when someone in GURPS World's Largest Dungeon thread brought up the idea of Dungeon Plane. I really like that idea. On any mana-positive world, someone digging in a buried treasure room or catacomb can break through into an apparently endless warren of 10 foot wide tunnels.

If I push the Dungeon Plane off into Yetzirah from GURPS Cabal, the genre conventions of dungeon fantasy actually make sense. You don't need to worry about ventilation or water tables if you're in a realm that's built on dream logic, as do the stereotypical roles.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by tratclif

If I push the Dungeon Plane off into Yetzirah from GURPS Cabal, the genre conventions of dungeon fantasy actually make sense. You don't need to worry about ventilation or water tables if you're in a realm that's built on dream logic, as do the stereotypical roles.

I agree with that, and it's part of my approach to Dungeon Fantasy.

Dungeon Fantasy as a sort of Otherworld makes some sense placed in non-ordinary worlds as Yetzhirah. That shares the approach of many weird happenings and strange quests in mythology and in knightly literature.

However, even if you use Kabbalistic cosmology, there are two points worth of thinking about:

• GURPS Cabal isn't generic, it is supernatural horror genre. Dungeon Fantasy is another genre, and it isn't contained by the horror one despite it having too some horror elements inside.

• Kabbalistic cosmology (along with the vertically aligned worlds of Briah, Yetzirah, above the earth or Assiah) really has nothing to do with Infinite Worlds or parallel worlds. The "Worlds Within Worlds" cosmology of Kabbalah is entirely independient of that.

Here is a thread where is discussed the intrinsic incompatibility between vertical worlds cosmologies and parallel ones.

On the other hand, for a Dungeon Fantasy world, I don't like cross-over messes with the typical badly worked syncretisms. I think a treatment with a recognizable degree of fabulisimilitude would work much better.

Originally Posted by demonsbane

That is the reason why GURPS Infinite Worlds fails in trying to be a "universal generic setting" for GURPS.
_____True, GURPS is a universal multi-genre roleplaying system, but it needs to take each setting and genre separately, not all of them simultaneously. Fantasy, being the modern fictional expression of most ancient world-views, along with its characteristic Worlds Within Worlds vertical cosmology -shared by Kabbalah-, can't be consistently combined with Science Fiction approaches. Not in the same setting.

But overall, I think Dungeon Fantasy is better without a definite setting for each one developping it in different ways without officially clashing with others.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by b-dog

(...) I would also include all of the gods too. Players could follow Thor, Odin, Zeus, Apollo, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and any other fantasy or real religion. I would also have spirits of all kinds; angels, djinn, faeries from all over the world, animal spirits, ect.

But b-dog, that would transform Dungeon Fantasy in another Banestorm . . .

I think there are already a few threads around here for combining both.

[b-dog]

It doesn't necessarily need to be a Banestorm, there could be endless gates to other worlds as in my favorite game, Elric. This way your character could go to ancient Greek mythic times or to Norse mythic times or even Middle Earth. Anyway, the main reason I would like something that has things directly from other worlds is so they would be authentic to their culture.