Chimerical Realm

The Kickstarter campaign for Rifts for Savage Worlds has launched.  Since Requiem has completely turned me off Vampire for a while, my thoughts turn to this other odd love of mine. Like many, certain parts of the game always bugged me. One of the big ones is the economy of the damn setting. For example, I just don't see how Triax can afford to manufacturer and sell a suit of power armor in North America, and get 100 million credits for it. NO ONE has 100 Million Credits. Even for the CS, that's a term used for accounting in national budgets, not something available in hard currency. In fact, I don't buy much of the "mass manufacturing for credit" economy. Instead, land and people are the key to wealth, and most equipment is custom made by skilled artisans. Yes, even Power Armor. Now, from a macro-economic view, this is incredibly wasteful in time, labor, and material; but the economy of Rifts Earth doesn't really work well on the macro scale. So, ...

My recent Dark Ages: Vampire game ended recently, thanks to an ambush that went horribly wrong and ended in the entire party getting killed. I’m still rather bummed about that, but I've instead decided to move on with a new game. I've decided to try my hand at one of the more elusive games I've ever done, which is a Super-Villains game. I've been in a few games that have tried to make this genre work, but it’s never really worked out. But, I think I have an idea. The basic setup is that the world is a fairly classic 4-color superhero world—you have heroic capes flying around beating up super-powered psychos, bank robbers, and the occasional alien invasion. Most villains are of the classic mutant extremist/bank robber/crime lord type. The PC’s, however, are different. They’re mercenaries, Villains for Hire, who travel the world looking for the best jobs, and getting paid well for their dangerous and highly specialized work. The game so far is called “Hero Hunter...

An old friend of mine is starting up a new AD&D campaign, here are the initial thoughts: General theme This setting (as yet unnamed) is one that rethinks the hackneyed genre of D&D campaign settings. We have become used to a particular feel in campaign settings, ones where fantastic worlds increasingly look like our own. Fantasy cities are places where half-orcs rub shoulders with halflings in ways that we wish various cultures did in our world today (much less in a previous time). Heroes with glittering magical swords stroll peaceably in full plate mail through city streets, and magical spells are routinely cast in a shower of colored lights. Taking a cue also from computer RPGs, disposable monsters pop up in creepy settings to be dispatched over and over again. But if we return to fantasy literature, none of this  feels  right. Tolkien is the inspiration for most of us who are fantasy fans – indeed, the Fellowship of the Ring feels like most adv...

I’m starting a new game soon for a new group of players.  Well, they’re fairly new—they played a few games of D&D a few years or so ago, but it’s a group I haven’t played with in a while.  I’ve decided to run them in Vampire: The Masquerade, which is one of my favorite games of all time.  Two of the players were cool with “whatever” and they just wanted to play.  The other one is slightly leery of non-D&D games, due to experiences he had with his previous group from a while ago, but is willing to give it a shot.  I told him that if we weren’t all loving it after two or three sessions, we’d wrap it up and play D&D instead.  Now, I’ve had an idea for a setting in mind for a while—a “Casablanca” like setting.  A “Sanctuary City.” A place where criminals, anarchs, traitors and diabolists have gathered after being exiled from their homes.  I had ideas for a complex social structure and for a different take on the World of Darkness, on...

When I first started this blog, it was intended merely as a work space as I practiced my world creation skills.  It was never really intended to be anything more than some random game musings, and would never get larger than a handful of posts. I pretty much accomplished that with my first series, which were based on the World Builder’s Handbook .  However, I have two new games that I’m working on, and I intend to use this space to both develop these settings as well as being my own record of these games.  So, the focus is going to shift a tad from pure world creation to actual games.  The first game is FATE/Diaspora game based in the Mass Effect world.  As is usual for FATE games, this setting is actually co-created with the players, so I’m hoping to get them to do some posts as well for the game.  The second…well, I’m not sure what it will be yet.  Might be D&D, could be Vampire.  Might be something else…the players and I are still...