GYGAX 75: Week 1 CONCEPT

 

Dungeons & Possums raised the flag on the Gygax 75 Challenge on Twitter. This is a method by which Gygax outlined the creation of a campaign setting in 5 weeks. 

The Otus guided workbook for the whole thing is awesome!

Dungeons & Possums outlines the reasons over here and I pretty much agree with them all: 

• I do pretty well when given a direction to focus my energies, especially if the schedule is relaxed.
• I find the older dungeon-centric campaigns charming and fruitful, and sort of nostalgic and cozy.
• I thought it’d be neat to have a reason to make something like this.
• I will have an excuse to make a silly PDF or something like that to give away.

As I said on Twitter, if I was a great judge I would do a concept with Mothership or Call of Cthulhu. But I am a good judge so I might stick with BX D&D. I've already done something like this in my "cleric campaign", but it will be interesting to do it from the start. I've also always wanted to run The Barrens of Carcosa and I like the way Vaults of Vaarn present all the materials needed therein-- tables that flesh out a world. 

But I will admit that give Anne's excellent overview of the Gygax 75 Challenge, "dying sci-fi world" is hardly novel. But neither is "fantasy adventure setting" so once again I reach a conclusion that play in a world is more important than novelty of said world.

V'COSA

PITCH

• V'COSA has been wracked by centuries of mistreatment. The serpent empire brought chromanity here and cracked the earth with arcane hubris. Strange minds, bereft of bodies, arrived through tears in the horizon and occupied whole cities. Divine emissaries came to the land, but even those titanic heralds fell into despair at the sin of its peoples and went silent to their platinum congregations. In the recent decades, the night glitters with Gith hard-light cannons and their fallen crystal fortresses poison the exhausted land.
• Multi-hued chromanity seeks to restore their connection with the old gods. And endeavors to build the Divine Chime which will signal chromanity's readiness to return to Grace and be delivered from the purgatory of V'COSA.
• New-beasts and the mutated view themselves as rightful heirs of V'COSA as the children of this wrecked land. They seek to unite the cities and throw off the heavy hand and judgment of chromanity. Knowledge should be gathered so the land can be born again.
• The Platinum Congregation, the caretakers of the divine emissaries, now curse the idiot gods above. They long for purpose. Some seek refuge on the crystal fortresses. Others seek to bring back the Founders- the progenitors to chromanity before the serpent empire. Some want to restore the exhausted sun.
• V'COSA will be a sci-fantasy RPG focused mainly on hexcrawling azure sands under a pale green sky. A key component will be negotiating the insular communities dotting the land each with a primary problem. The central question for the players will be, "What do 

INSPIRATION

The recently purchased Vaults of Vaarn. But I also have Ultra Violet Grasslands and The Barrens of Carcosa that I have wanted to use. As well as having some great experiences with Lair of the Lamb which always felt to me like a sorta phantasmagoric Swords & Sworcery bent.

I am also a big fan of the new Prophet run which depicts a fallen earth empire built on mutating and genetically engineering clones of almost the same one human to fill all manner of niches from organic transport ships to centepede-like building machines.

Gus L.'s Crystal Frontier adventures especially Broken Bastion.

Books: Book of the New Sun, Fighting-Man of Mars, Elder Being, Gun With Occasional Music, Dorohedoro