Thanks to everyone who came to my aid after Friday's post and offered suggestions of settings to riff on. I actually might wind up dabbling in more than one as so many good suggestions were offered. First though, I think I'll start with Minaria, the setting for the Divine Right board game.
It turns out there is actually quite a bit of background for Minaria if you take into account the articles written by the game's author in Dragon. I've only read a little bit of that, but there's good stuff there. Still, I think I would like to go with the map itself--evocative of so much "pre-D&D as genre" fantasy--and the slim setting information in the rules and game components.
The art on the personality cards supports the older fantasy feel of the map. None of the characters look "cool," rather the art makes me think of classic illustration in older fantasy works like the works of Cabell, Dunsany, or Eddison. Also, the humor in some of the naming in the map puts me in mind of some of those works as well.
So in broadstrokes, Minaria (from this material) strikes me as a place of Medieval(ish) lords and nations jockeying for power through warfare and intrigues, not unlike Game of Thrones, but with the slight humor Dunsany or Byfield's The Book of the Weird.
More to come!
This should be interesting. I'm a big fan of Divine Right/Minaria and seeing a new take on the setting will be novel, hasn't been much done with it in decades now beyond the reprint edition.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that does make it different than GoT is the presence of many distinctly non-human polities, from the fairly traditional elves and Dwarves to the disorganized trolls to the goblins of Zorn (who are much bigger and tougher than your standard D&D goblin, more like bugbears or burly hobgobs). Add to that two major players whose power stems from magic rather than might of arms (the Eaters of Wisdom and the Black Hand) and the political game has quite a bit more "weird" in it than GoT did, even if there are fewer dragons flitting about.
If you want a good site for synopsis of the canonical nations, I recommend this one:
http://mraaktagon.com/minaria/minaria_gaz.html
This is great!
ReplyDeleteIf you're wary of getting stuck in known lore, I wonder if we could track down a copy of Scarlet Empire for you. Not as much of the deep development cruft that accumulated around the main continent over the decades, plus some unusually weird factions and terrain.
@Dick - Found it already. :D
ReplyDelete@Bombasticus - That would be interesting!
I have been recently looking at the old Karmeikos box set sitting in storage and wanting to use it as a setting for a Joe Abercrombie 'First Law' style campaign. Using Tombpunk or Cairn as the engine to run said game. It's been decades since I opened the box but I am sure it has all sorts of campaign hooks ready to get grimmed up.
ReplyDeleteThe Known World Gazeteers are good stuff.
ReplyDelete