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#561 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
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#562 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Mordor:
In Infinite Worlds this name was given to a world was a dream of a real world author except in this one Sauron found the ring and plunged Middle Earth into Darkness. If the Valar exist they have not shown up openly. The Dark Lord's tyranny rules all of Middle Earth and Elves, Dwarves, Men and Hobbits are helpless slaves. Infinity would rather NOT try to interfere but there are some who have said that the Dark Lord's capture of the Three can be perverted into giving him the power to jump worlds. In any case it is the PCs job to enter a world where the Dark Lord has lifted his hand over dead sea and ruined land.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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#563 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
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This is basically Bill Stoddard's "Under the Shadow" campaign with the addition of extra-dimensional refugees who wound up in the worst place imaginable.
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-- MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1] "Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon. Last edited by johndallman; 09-01-2024 at 06:06 AM. Reason: Layout |
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#564 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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#565 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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I've just heard Ray Harryhausen(sic) wanted to do another Sinbad film; SINBAD GOES TO MARS! Given the Medieval Arabic literary scholars knew of Lucian of Samosata's THE TRUE HISTORY and enjoyed that kind of over-the-top satirical fantasy, it would have been less of a crossover than it sounds.
Blending the tropes of the Arabian Nights with Pulp Sci Fi (which used the Arabian Nights as a major source of inspiration anyway) would be a blast. Lovecraft, who's DREAMQUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH involves very Dunsanyan reworkings of Arabian Nights tropes and Space Travel should be a useful resource too.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
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#566 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Elventower:
There is a mystical lighthouse. No one knows how old it is. It's light was made out of a crystal that reflects the firelight over miles. The fire burns continuously and no one knows what makes it work. The fuel is magic and no one in Mortalland knows anything of it, as far as we know. But it is running out. The last warden died months ago and it has continued working on it's own. But the m The secret is that this lighthouse is a passage to Elvenhome. The lighthouse was built by the Fair Folk in thanks to a mortal hero who had slain a Kraken that was troubling them and is powered by oil from the fat of that Kraken. Someone must go into Elvenhome and either slay another Kraken or find another source of fuel. To know how to get to Elvenhome one must look at an ancient tome in the towns archives-which contains nothing but riddles. But if this fails, the fishers will not be able to supply the town, the coasters will not visit with foreign goods, and the town will die.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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#567 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Try this idea. In traditional fantasy settings other species have hats. Elves have the wise, noble, ancients hat. (With merriment sprinkles). Halflings get the honest stalwart farmer folk hat. (With trickster sprinkles). We get gruff dwarves, brutal orcs, whimsical fairies, silly malevolent goblins, ect. Humans don't get a hat... normally.
But try this idea. The human that would be social skills. Most of these other species are rarely depicted living in cities. Only Halflings and Dwarves are routinely depicted living in towns. Picture a world were social skills above IQ-2 are only a human thing. Only Humans can found cities. Halflings and Dwarves can live in small towns. Elves and Faeries can live in courts that are basically large bands living comfortably because of magic. Humans having larger and more functional communities would be a massive advantage and explain human dominance in most fantasy worlds.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
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#568 | |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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(I'm not at all sure that Dunbar's Number is a real thing but it would do for worldbuilding.) Once humans become aware of this difference between the species they would start to show off and develop elaborate names for types of connections ("He was in my high school cohort but we're not actually sworn brothers." "She is my cousin twice removed...") They would also look down on/pity the poor sods like me who just can't remember people.
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Michael Cule,
Genius for Hire, Gaming Dinosaur Second Class |
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#569 | |
Join Date: Jun 2008
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So, your entire community has a minimum of Magery 0 (and usually higher) and averages IQ 11. Food and Plant magic take care of the obvious questions of food, clothing and shelter (or they can skip the latter two, learn the Warmth and Cool spells and go naked), more Plant magic can make any wooden tools they needed out of Essential Wood, Earth magic can make stone tools, and whether you'd make fine precision tools out of Essential Obsidian or learn metalshaping is up to you. Your basic needs are trivially met at zero infrastructure in a TL(0+4)^ society, leaving you with most of the day to spend on art, song and leisure. So what, exactly, do you need cities for? According to your tastes, you'd either live in a nomadic band or a small settled community (still a big band at most, though). You grow or conjure your food whenever you want and shape fine cotton into fancy, almost silky clothes (though your crazy aunt makes a point of "eating only air" and casting Monk's Banquet, and a lot of the younger elves don't see the point in clothing when the weather's always fine). Art's still a thing, so you might travel to gift some of your own art to someone else or petition an artisan for something fancy ("my brother lost his leg to a wandering monster, so we need to get him over to the woman two villages over who knows Regeneration"), but regular centers of trade make little sense (though there might be market-fair towns). Likewise, while people have children when they want to, children are not vital economic assets like they are for TL1+ human societies, and obviously contraceptive magic is going to be something every mother teaches her daughter. So fertility is much lower than humans. And then five hundred years later, the elves look over at those clever "humans" who'd been settling between those rivers last time they checked, and they start wondering how they bred so fast, how they put so many buildings in one place, and why there's hundreds of humans running at them with spears? |
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#570 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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The Wonders of the Western Wild...
When Seventeenth century English people started settling North America they reported many things we modern people dismiss out of hand. Unicorns were sighted in the Hudson valley, Tritons were seen in the waters off Cape Cod (Lovecraft had fun with that), one minister seems to have sincerely believed that the Native Americans were elves. Let's go with that. The Mesoamericans and the peoples of the Andes are ordinary humans however the Native peoples of North America north of Mexico are elves. Tritons (it's irresistible not to have them be Deep Ones) do live off the coasts and plot to bring ruin to the elves. However the elves have a plan. Turn the people coming to their lands from over the eastern seas into elves. To do this will require both far better knowledge of these "Englishmen" and the cooperation of a few friendly members of their people. The North America of this world has both the Dragons and Unions reported by 17th century settlers but also the Mammoths Thomas Jefferson thought lived out West. This is a print the legend version of colonial America.
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