New Fantasy Setting Seeds.

[lugaid]

Originally Posted by dcarson

I'd say yes on the cannibal apes. Any pulp writer will tell everything is better with monkeys.

That is a point well-taken.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

It used to be another one of those states where the common folk toiled under the yoke of masters who had power.

Then the common folk......left. Just gave up on all the ties that held them to the land and the cities and traveled "away", wherever that might be.

And as their population of easily-exploitable workforce slipped out of their grasp -- unable to be dissuaded even by force -- the "masters" turned to the magics of animation. Automatons, elemental spirits, undead -- nothing was out of the question if it meant keeping their lives of leisure on the backs of others.

And the "masters" turned inward, letting all ties to the outside world fade. All anyone has seen in a generation is their "servants", who have become increasingly hostile to intrusion.

GM's Note: I'm imagining a small sandbox, populated by unliving enemies, with rumors of treasure and fantastic magic plus a mystery.

[Astromancer]

The Newer Age

It was not long after Nixon resigned. We were still celebrating his disgrace when Crazy Maisy brought in some new weed. Maisy claimed to be a witch from the first I knew her. And that was back when the Beats were a thing. Maisy said she'd crossbred good old "Mary Jane" with a plant her uncle brought back from the South Pacific were he'd been in the Marines.

We all tried Maisy's new weed.

After we got back from the Moon, we all agreed, this time Maisy had something.


Basically, a bunch of New Agers and leftover Hippies have discovered a way to achieve Magery . Now, several thousand people throughout the incipient New Age movement have real magical powers. They also lack anything like an awareness of just how dangerous magic can be.

Neither the FBI nor the elder gods are ready for this group.

[jason taylor]

The White Tower:

On mystical sounding name rock is the White tower. Tended by the same family for as long as can be remembered. It shines lights to mariners all about. No one knows how the lense works but it is better than any light known to man.

What is known only be a few is that the mer folk come ashore to dance. They are friendly to children and to lost mariners. They are shapechangers living in the form of any being which they have seen. What is known to even fewer is that this place is a portal to Otherworld.

One day the light of the tower shuts off and no one knows why. The princess of the Merfolk tells you that an offense has been given in some way or other. To rectify that they will have to go on a quest for a fire that will relight the lantern.

[Astromancer]

Third session of the fantasy campaign.

Realizing that the party was getting tired of the tower and its mysteries I gave the party a few more clues. I had the apartments get grander as they climbed higher.

I also introduced the idea of armorial quarterings and mentioned that the heraldic shields painted on the doors had scary large numbers of armorial quarterings on them. They soon came up with the idea that what ever happened to the kingdom was caused by the nobility becoming inbred and decadent. I'm stealing that.

I tossed out clues from mottos on the armorial shields. "Rosey head dreamer you sleep as if dead/ while worlds within worlds revolve in your head." They are wondering if Sleeping Beauty was a lich.

Two more clues. "...to strike the sleeping world awake." And "the fitful slumber floats and flows/ about the tangle of the rose "

When they got to the Library it wanted a deal. It would give the ship all the tower's riches in its command if the crew would take all the conscious objects with them. The Library knew the tower was sliding into madness.

The Library then gave the party a magical Atlas that could always tell people were they were. The Library also offered them the chance to study the local area through a crystal ball.

For inexplicable reasons the party declined to use the opportunity. Go fig?

The Captain of the ship sent the PCs to explore the forest road while he took the first load of Living Objects back to the community the ship had come from. The Captain gave the PCs amulets that would let the Captain easily find the PCs again. Each amulet had a magic feather that would block one fatal attack. The Captain also gave them backpacks of food and camping gear holding. Other items kept their full weight.

After a quiet first day in the forest. They came to an obnoxiously cute little house that offered more clues.

One area of the forest marked "Airy Mountain" and/or "Rushy Glen" had the additional message. "To watch her till she wake."

By an island in a lake was scratched "I wept to dream again."

An area of the forest was marked "Leucrotta."

Deciding not to risk the rapids marked on the map the PCs took the forest path. After trying to lure the PCs away from the path. The Leucrottas decided to attack in the middle of the night. The PCs did very well against equal numbers of Leucrottas.

They decided to travel by water to avoid the Leucrottas. Reasoning that Leucrottas were desert animals and might not swim well. (I'm going with their judgement).

They are now dealing with an island filled with seductive illusions. A very odd Harpy (the bird part of her body was a gigantic dove, and the human part was a beautiful young woman) warned them that the island was brutally dangerous. Though unlike other fairy islands the food and water were always safe, but anything else could be deadly.

I don't think they registered that the Harpy said "water" and not "drink." They seemed more interested in the family issues of a Lawful Good Harpy.

When we ended the session a child was trying to get the PCs to take some flowers with them.

They noticed the child's teeth were rather long and sharp.

[Astromancer]

The Quest of the Rose

Our new navigator is both a Navigator and a Mage. She is well trained in exploratory symbolism.

We'll need this. We seek the long lost Rosa Mundi the long lost planet Earth!

Basically, cross the grail quest with Star Trek. Swashbuckling Hermetic Starship Sorcerer Adventurers.

This idea pulls off of The Roads of Heaven a Space Opera fantasy novel trilogy. The magic system feels better fleshed out than the technology in most Space Operas. Star Trek always had a kick of mysticism in the sci fi.

More later I must go.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Quest of the Rose
.

Could you not use that pink highlight please? It makes things very hard to read.

[adm]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Could you not use that pink highlight please? It makes things very hard to read.

Agreed, it is unreadable on a 22" monitor.

[ajardoor]

Faust Patrol (Couldn't think of a better name)

The year is early 2021, the place is a formerly private (its owner was devoured three years ago) island off the coast of Scandinavia, less than 350 miles from The No-Man's Land in Eastern Europe. The island has been converted into a last chance home for refugees fleeing the aftermath, all from around the world.

Remember Einstein's joke about how he knew that World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones?
Turns out World War 3 started out being fought with conventional non-nuclear weapons in 2014, and then eventually magically conjured supernatural creatures.

It is generally agreed that WW3 began when Russian aggression drew retaliation from NATO, setting off the next World War. Thankfully, by some miracle, nuclear warheads were not used in the ensuing conflict even as the Russian forces and their allies reached the western end of Poland and overran Finland.

There is less of a consensus about when and where the first use of the summoning ritual was. Most say 2016, when the prime minister of Norway died of a mysterious stroke in a suspected assassination plot. Some claim warlocks managed the feat of opening the breach in 2010, but those guys are clearly cranks. An interesting theory believes it only happened when the Gate of Chaos opened in 2017, on Walpurgis Night, when news of a wave of "demons" hit the public news for the first time. The first wave of "demons", that is. Many more came into our reality shortly after that faithful day, most from the newly opened Gate of Chaos in Siberia. World War 3 ended 13 months later (everyone lost), but our troubles did not.

Once a "demon" is summoned, it can either act on own whimsical initative or be "tamed" - bound - by a human charming or willful enough to forge a magical pact with the creature. In the later days of WW3, it was a common sight to see whole squads of summoners and their "pets" on the front lines.

After that, the cat was out of the bag, and World War 3 took a backseat to the chaos unfolding as humanity learned true magical rituals could be used to summon otherworldly creatures who would then serve (or, just as commonly, attack randomly) people. Governments are trying to put the (sometimes literal) genie back in the bottle, but suppressing the knowledge of summoning and outsider pacts is minimally successful at best.

The "demons" are more accurately described as supernatural creatures resembling various folklore monsters, cryptids, angels, faeries, spirits and devils from all the different earthly nations and religions. They are not really "good" or "evil" by our moral standards, merely mildly alien. They are not necessarily hostile to humanity, but it cannot be denied they might harm us for one reason or another. A person can only summon the creatures, the human race has no innate magical abilities (it's believed the ritual is not magic but instead some sort of calling whistle for supernatural creatures), but the "demons" do. (Supernatural tricks like breathing fire, flying, seeing the future or invisibility are apparently genetic tools to the outsiders, like your sense of smell or thumbs.)

WW3 left stretches of the planet in deep trouble as humanity struggled with the supernatural and even "tamed" it to an extent...as all-new weapons for their conflicts. The No-Man's Land (remnants of civilization where the governments fell) is thick with both supernatural creatures and the more mundane marauders - reports tells of military weaponry falling into the hands of bandits and rogues summoning outsiders as attack animals.

The player-characters are refugees from the chaos and war, having moved to the island as regions of the world report encounters with the "outsiders". They have a job as semi-mercenaries, acting on behalf of their community of refugees to protect the borders of the safe zone and travel into No-Man's Land for scavenging, fighting evil and rescuing whoever they can.

To help in this task, the PCs have the option of recruiting "demons" in pacts, either encountered on patrol or summoned directly in a ritual by the community's shaman. The pact is modeled in game mechanics as first the perk Outsider Contract (one per discrete outsider tamed), and then either Ally (Summonable, Special Abilities) and/or magic-as-powers with the Pact and/or Requires Reaction Roll limitation/s. What magical abilities this grants or lends depends on the "demon".

Basically, the setting is one part Shin Megami Tensi, one part Devil Survivor, and one part Twilight 2000. Maybe a little bit of STALKER, but replace the artefacts with unnatural creatures who might be willing to ally with humans like Pokemon.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by adm

Agreed, it is unreadable on a 22" monitor.

It's unreadable on my 32" monitor. I do find if I select the pink text it's readable.