Staying busy with other stuff (including gaming sessions), the blog has suffered from me having a lack of time to cogitate sufficiently for many posts on new ideas. I thought it might help to go back to the old standby of riffing off an existing setting. I find constraint sometimes stimulants creativity and placing boundaries on things limits the number of tangents that can distract you.
So, I thought it might be interesting to take some older setting that was perhaps open-ended in its approach or sparse in its presentation and see how I would develop that. At least, it's an idea to consider; whether I get around to it or not is another matter.
But what setting? The perennial favorite to "make one's own" is the Wilderlands. But there are two published, individual visions of that, and blogs with other good versions (and some good versions on blogs that are now lost as Atlantis). I don't know that I have anything to add there without getting really variant, and I've never really got the Wilderlands in the way these folks seem to, so I would really be riffing off them to some degree.
Another setting similarly sparse in its original presentation is the Greyhawk folio. The later box set, for that matter, is only a little more detailed. While not as popular as the Wilderlands for this sort of thing, certainly folks have offered there own take on it to--here's Evan again.
Beyond those, what else? The Known World (pre-Gazetteers) is terse in its original presentation in The Isle of Dread, though the helpful (for the neophyte GM) cultural references might hem it in more than the ones mentioned previously, despite it's shorter length. Is there anything else? Powers & Perils' Perilous Lands, or does in that way lie madness? (It's not really terse at all, but curious unspecified in some ways.)
Maybe Arduin, Hargrave-only version?
ReplyDeleteThat's a thought! Though is there anywhere the setting is concisely explained or is it all implied?
ReplyDeleteNot concisely. As far as I recall.
DeleteSince you mentioned Powers & Perils, what about its cousin Lords of Creation? There were several settings broadly sketched in the core box that could be expanded on and/or ported to other rule sets. One was remarkably similar to the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett, that might be a good one to play around with. What would a Darcy-esque world look like with a different lens than mystery/espionage?
ReplyDeleteOr maybe expand on the setting from the old Runequest Questworld boxed set? Although someone's probably done that already.
Another thought, what about some old boardgame that has enough "flavor" to to become an RPG setting? Divine Right and Dragon Pass have been done to death, but AvHill's Dark Emperor might work, or Dwarfstar Games' old Demonlord or Dragon Rage or even Goblins minigames.
TSR's "Divine Right" board game has an excellent map with a lot of evocative place names, but I'm not sure if there's any additional description there for you to build on.
ReplyDelete(D McG thinks it's overused, but unless you're so familiar with the other fan elaborations that they'd influence your own version, I don't think that should stop you.)
In the past, you've had some good posts going through the species of Talislanta and offering up your own redesign ideas. Is there a larger setting there you could work with?
Thanks for the suggestions, guys!
ReplyDelete@anne - The problem (and it's entirely self-imposed) with meatier settings, is that I am really potentially doing a variant rather than simply fleshing it out in my own way. Also, I really like to do research when their is more to it. The reason I stopped my Talislanta posts was that it was taking a lot of time to read all those supplements!
@anne There's actually quite a bit of info out there on Minaria, which had regular articles detailing the world in Dragon Magazine way back when. You can still find most or all of it online if you poke around a bit - this link is a decent nexus site for that:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4696
Why TSR (or WotC, for that matter) has never done a proper RPG setting book for Minaria remains a mystery to me, although I suspect there's some legal complexity involving ownership of Divine Right.
I second (well, third) the Minaria suggestion. There is a reasonable amount of lore written for it, but it's largely open-ended, especially if you only go by what's in the rulebooks themselves.
ReplyDeleteThough part of me would love to see the Star Wars counterpart to Solar Trek fleshed out more - I love the idea of brave Pan-American rocketeers battling the Death Star as it slowly descends towards the secret rebel base on Venus.
You may get your wish! Jason Sholtis has been after me to put together a zine-size thing on some of my settings, and that certainly is one worth doing more with.
ReplyDeleteAnother one you might consider is the Frontiers of Alusia, the setting for the SPI DragonQuest RPG. I can't say anything about it more thorough than this guy: https://dqmusings.blogspot.com/2017/02/geography-of-frontiers-of-alusia.html
ReplyDeleteYou could always try combining generic Dungeon Magazine adventures into something. I've wanted to do something similar but I have no imagination or artistic skill to try to combine the maps from early issues.
ReplyDeleteI would *love* for you to take on Greyhawk! There’s so much implied setting there, ready for a take from the Sorcerer’s Skull. I’d really look forward to your perspective in Iuz, Scarlet Brotherhood, the Great Kingdom and Oerth’s gods.
ReplyDeleteI love that sort of game! It's fun to have a place to start with to riff on. In my own campaign I've done that a couple times w/ Portals of Torsh by Judges Guild (the other Portals settings have potential too), Averoigne from Castle Amber, and currently working on turning Court of Ardor (from MERP) into a stand alone setting. All compelling settings that have a lot of white space to add your own spin.
ReplyDeleteReworking the MERP version of Middle Earth has been something that occurred to me to.
ReplyDelete