Been into Mystara lately

[dorchadas]

I've been doing some RPG tinkering lately--slightly modifying True20, which hits my sweet spot between complexity and ease-of-use--and when trying to find a good setting to run with it, I've been looking at my old Rules Cyclopedia and the twenty years of fan work up on the Vaults of Pandius and I'm realizing that Mystara has the combination of interesting fantasy and totally crazy sci fi nonsense that I love in RPGs while also avoiding a lot of the problems that people have with standard D&D settings. For example:

• Elf, dwarf, and halfling nations, but also groups of those peoples spread out throughout the world. The largest city in Alfheim is 80% non-elven!


• Animal people! Lupin (wolf people), Rakasta (cat people), Tortles (turtle people), etc


• A country of ruling wizards where being religious carries the death penalty!


• An empire of dimension-hopping refugee wizards engaged in a Cold War with most of their former colonies!


• Underground-dwelling elves who are ghost-pale, avoiding all "Why do all the evil subterranean versions of races have dark skin?? 🤔🤔" questions!


• an ancient civilization that rocketed to prominence after discovering the remnants of a crashed alien starship, building a massive empire and even creating interplanetary colonies before wiping itself out in global thermonuclear war! (The colonies, cut off from the resources of the empire, died out afterward [OR DID THEY??])


• Almost all of the deities are ascended mortals, explaining why the gods play favorites and have a special interest in various species!


• Clerics can also gain power from their philosophical outlook instead of just from a god, so you can be Brother Theobald of the Church of the Solid Bro and cast Cure Light Wounds thereby!


• Takes evolution into account! Millions of years ago the world was riven by an apocalyptic war between two civilizations of psychic dinosaur people!


• Elves were created by a treant who ascended to godhood! Dwarves were created by a Neanderthal who ascended to godhood!


• Orcs, trolls, etc were created by an evil goddess who recycles the souls of evil mortals to make them, explaining why they have a generally unsavory temperament but you can still play or meet good orcs!


• The world is hollow and the inside is a lost world of dinosaurs and megafauna under a eternal red sun, a preserve for civilizations wiped out on the surface world!


• The Hollow World was created by an intelligent psychic T-rex who ascended to godhood millions of years ago!


• Counties influenced by real-world civilizations but not in a 7th Sea "We have basically the same map and just changed all the names" way!


• Plenty of mysterious nonsense! The Nithians (Pyramid-building desert people) had the rain that fueled their civilization stolen by the elves and turned to worshipping Thanatos for power, eventually decided to transform the whole civilization into undead monsters to conserve resources, leading to the gods not only wiping out the country but also purging all memory of it from everyone in the world! Nithia's overseas colonies woke up one day like "What the...who are we, why are we here, and who built these weird pyramids?"


• Nithia is preserved in the Hollow World! Along with neanderthals, Stone Age tribes, high tech elves from the technological civilization (with robots, cornucopia machines, cybernetics, a culture of laser pistol dueling, the works), a group called the Merry Pirates, the Greek-inspired Milenian Empire, the genetically unstable Beastmen (ancestors of orcs, trolls, goblins, ogres, etc), nomadic Kugel Orcs, the human-sacrifice-happy Azcans, the lederhosen-wearing yodeling Kogolor dwarves, etc! Plus dinosaurs!


• Rapier-duelist Spanish elves called the Belcadiz!


• The underground elves are inspired by Jews--monotheist, exiled from their homeland to which they long to return, follow a numbered list of commandments, etc!


• Rafiel, the god of the underground elves, used be named "John Rafiel" back when he was a nuclear physicist during the ancient technological civilization before he ascended to godhood thanks to a lab accident!


• An invisible second moon filled with samurai cat people!

It honestly all sounds like the kind of fantasy that would be the background of an isekai anime series, which makes since because anime fantasy is based on 80s D&D through computer games like Wizardry and Japanese TTRPGs like Sword World. Low magic, humanocentric fantasy is out, kitchen sink fantasy is in. A town street with wolf people hawking wears, a group of elven tourists, a wizard doing magic tricks for money...and honestly, you could even have some guy from Japan who was magically transported there after being hit by a truck. It'd all fit.

This seems to be keeping my attention for longer than usual. What I really need is to be running an actual game so I can devote my creative energy toward that.

Comments

[anxious_songbird]

This sounds amazing to hear about! I'm sure your players will have lots of fun!