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| Art by Bruce Pennington |
Some Dying Earth stories have more than a touch of the Gothic to them (Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories immediately come to mind), so this is really a natural. As the sun dimmed and sputtered, the Dark Powers grew stronger and fed upon the energy of the planet, slowing leeching it of life. Replace the sorcerer-kings with the Dark Lords, and (probably) loose the mists. Some tweaking of the domains might be in order, to make them a little less Dracula and a little bit more Vathek, but that's up to you.
Each domain is a world, and the mists and phlogiston are combined into one. Maybe give Spelljammer more of a 18th Century or even Victorian vibe: Combine Kipling (his sci-fi stories like "With the Night Mail" and his horror yarns) with Stoker.
And why limit myself to AD&D settings?
I'm thinking ditch most of the Hollow World idea, except for it being the repository of things preserved from the outer world. Take it back to it's Burroughsian roots and have a land of dinosaurs and mostly primitive peoples, except for these areas and mists containing weird, otherworld realms of madness. Probably the realms of dreads should be a bit smaller, maybe just a castle and a village in some cases. Like Turok meets Dracula.
Back in the day, I ran a Mystara game where someone got ported to Ravenloft. Committed suicide On arrival rather than get level drained. Player was a weird chap.
ReplyDeleteThe Dark Sun/Ravenloft mash-up is kinda canon: Ravenloft pulled a bit of Athas into the Mists and now it's a domain ruled over (supposedly) by a Dark Lord who was a Sorcerer-King. (If I'm remembering right, the Sorcerer-King's chief templar is the real Dark Lord.)
ReplyDeleteThat's really good. The best part for me is the final note on scale. If the entire world shrinks to a castle and a village (and maybe an underground complex) you get a great claustrophobic expressionistic effect . . . we have always lived near the dungeon, for the world is hollow & I have touched the sky. It also makes resources count a lot more because much of it is non-renewable except under certain rules and you can't just hit the road if you screw it up. Thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was one of the planks of my re-imagined Ravenloft pitch: make it just one valley: one Gormenghastian castle, one small village.
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