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Old 04-01-2019, 07:43 PM   #21
Gold & Appel Inc
 
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Default Re: Fantasy Worlds

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Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw View Post
I've always wanted to create a fantasy setting that's advanced to modern times so I can have modern action using fantasy creatures and magic.
It's a very popular theme in fiction and gaming. Did you have anything specific in mind?
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Old 04-02-2019, 05:37 AM   #22
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Default Re: Fantasy Worlds

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Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc View Post
It's a very popular theme in fiction and gaming. Did you have anything specific in mind?
Not exactly. I mostly just like modern times better than the pseudo-past of most fantasy settings, so my thought process is "Take typical fantasy > replace past stuff with current stuff > ? > GAME!" The main gripe I focus on is that it can't be urban fantasy because that tends to be too restrained (just adding magic and fantasy species to Earth tends to cause people to forget all the other gonzo stuff that can exist in fantasy like weird terrain).
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Old 04-02-2019, 06:35 AM   #23
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Default Re: Fantasy Worlds

Our main fantasy world is 'Halfallaan' which is a world with some differences from our own, such as a moon with two small moons, slightly less landmass than Earth (in three main continents and many island chains), yet has something the 'sun runs on' people call 'the arch' or 'the iron ring' depending upon local belief.

Essentially, the idea is that earth-history-like cultures exist, (Celto-Viking, Russian-horse barbarian, Chinese, 'Arabian', etc.) but always have a twist.

Many cultures have a familiar group of gods, virtues or principles who can be recognised by travellers as being similar to their own, but with relative importances, etc. varying according to location.

The new monotheistic religion worships the sun and is centred on a state modelled on the later Roman empire, as if it had grown up around great Zimbabwe in Africa rather than Constantinople.

There has been an earlier race or culture that seems to have retreated somewhere, localities of power that appear to breed strange creatures, and ancient towers, fortresses and deserted cities to be shunned or explored by the brave.

Oddest of all (to this player), there exists a cult / legend / way of living that seems to have it's centre in the belief that the world itself is alive, controlling fate and destiny, that is variously worshipped, followed or persecuted differently around the world.

While we began in a Celtic Myth-style game, the availability of ocean-going long-ships means that we have explored and discovered that their are places and peoples with higher technology, while the 'Mad Northerners' who we represent seems to have the best handle on knowledge of 'the truth of the world' that many scholars seek.

It's been a blast, really suits our group who try hard to place their way of thinking in alignment with their character's knowledge and world-view, as well as playing being guardedly surprised by things such as a ship with a dragon inside that boils water to turn paddlewheels, this dragon being served by an 'engineer', a word we recognise as one from a tale where our ancestors became 'the Gods' when 'The Wolf' (the aforementioned principle that represent the life of the world) used his 'engine' on them.

Phew.

So far we have had four or five campaigns running in semi-parallel, with rare cross-overs, but the intent is that knowledge of the future (gained from investigations into the fate and destiny of individuals) will guide us all into a confrontation with the Three Dark Gods in their Tower at the Top of the World at some future time.

That the whole place seems also to be a colony world in the far future, perhaps being controlled by a race bank or some-such that imprints individuals with talents or functions before they are born is icing on the cake, from my position.

Hope this inspires!
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Old 04-02-2019, 03:44 PM   #24
DAT
 
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Default Re: Fantasy Worlds

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No it isn't. Shield volcanoes don't have cliff faces. Their slopes are quite gradual. What you describe is a plateau although in reality they can't get quite that tall under earthlike gravity.
I was going to point out Olympus Mons, but I see RyanW already did.
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Old 04-02-2019, 03:49 PM   #25
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Default Re: Fantasy Worlds

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Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw View Post
I've always wanted to create a fantasy setting that's advanced to modern times so I can have modern action using fantasy creatures and magic.
So like the Technomancer/Merlin setting? Maybe advanced a few years.
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Old 04-02-2019, 03:52 PM   #26
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Olympus Mons is a shield volcano with a steep escarpment, but that was produced when the volcano got so large its expansion was more snowplow than accumulation.
Exactly. In this case much of the upthrust is from what is contained inside/under the volcano, in is main magma chamber.
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Old 04-02-2019, 04:09 PM   #27
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I just put Sanctuary from the 1981 Thieve's World set by Chaosium into my alternate Traveller universe, magic and all. Does that count?
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Old 04-02-2019, 07:27 PM   #28
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Default Re: Fantasy Worlds

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So like the Technomancer/Merlin setting? Maybe advanced a few years.
As I said earlier: No Earths. Writers tend to restrain themselves too much when they do that.
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Old 04-08-2019, 06:30 PM   #29
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I've probably made dozens of throwaway worlds, but the one I've stuck with and kept fiddling with I refer to as Corteagne. I think I first started working on it in 1996 so it can legally drink now.

It started out as an exploration of what a TL3 high mana society would really look like, sticking as precisely to RAW (3e) as I was able. It quickly became an exploration of transhumanism through a magical rather than technological lens. You've just taken control of a new stretch of fertile land and have no one to populate it. Sure, you can wait a couple of peasant generations for population to expand and migrate, incidentally raising people's expectations...or you can just shapeshift that flock of sheep into humans, explain to them that they are your serfs and this is their village. 20 years later, you acquire some new human peasants (from a long line of humans) in need of a home. Do you just break the spell and turn them back into sheep? What about the children who've never been sheep before? Your Knight-Commander keeps giving you magical upgrades...increased strength, talons, scaly dermis, nictitating membranes and dark vision...at what point do you stop being a human being? How about mental alterations that increase your memory but (rumor has it) also make you more obedient? If social interaction is fundamental to being human, is a person who can use mind control easily no longer fully human since they engage in no sincere, equitable intimate relationships? How about mind reading? The lower nobility live for about 300 years. The upper nobility live forever, by extracting lifetime from their peasantry. How human are they? And on and on.

The world is divided into sixteen cultures, some of which have organized states and some not so much, of which Corteagne is the one I choose to focus on most. Cultures tend to be defined by their definition of "human", which in turn tends to be dependent on their Great Magical Works. For example, Meru thinks reincarnation should be a thing, when objectively it isn't. So they built their Reincarnation Engine, which gives immortality of a sort to even peasants by causing their souls to be reborn in new bodies, giving each soul more time to engage with and understand the Real. To someone who has Mage Sight, the Engine looks like all the concertina wire in the world having a seizure. One of my favorite scenes was the people of Meru talking up how good reincarnation was and how the didn't travel much because they were terrified of dying beyond the reach of the Engine...and then the first time the PCs watched a person die in Meru, their soul float gently out of their body...and an (invisible to most) barbed, glowing tendril shoot out of nowhere, impale it, yank the impaled soul off and slam it into a new body. The most common sort of Great Work is actually a ban, preventing a sort of magic the local populace considers problematic from working at all, that expands beyond the intended target because magic is funny and interconnected in ways even the best (in game) theorists don't fully understand. In the Integral Forest, necromancy is impossible...but apparently the same work prevents magic items from being a thing at all. The items resume working again when removed from the forest. In the Republic of the Veil, mind control, mind reading and divination are impossible (as all of these would render elections a farce, and the Veilers really like the idea of being an egalitarian democracy)....but it also prevents a lot of weather control magic and lightning bolts. (Veilers are another group that doesn't travel much, being disturbed by the possibility of mind control in other cultures). The Swarm has flying castles. Not for any terribly logical reason, the Swarm just thought flying castles would be cool. Maybe don't attempt to fly a Swarm castle over the Integral Forest, that might be very bad. And so on.

Most of the games I've played with Corteagne have been political, with the PCs being investigators, ambassadors or hatchetmen for a Lesser or Greater House of Corteagne nobility. It gives them a chance to dive into a lot of those weird questions about what is and isn't a person that magic brings. There is nothing that is definitely sapient but definitely not human, unless you count demons from the Gulf of Shadows or a Swarm Ascendant, and the latter is, as with so many other things, debatable.
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