Original settings in RPG game

[octavius]

Hmm...suddenly it dawned on me that Jekyll is very close to the Swedish word for devil: "jäkel". Coincidence?

 

[Marat]

Yeah but the game was terrible once you leave Lisboa so I can’t recommand it to anyone.

True enough. However, the part of the game in Barcelona (not Lisbon) was sufficient to convince me the devs were trying to make a good game, but they clearly run out of money rather early into the development. And then again, we're not recommending games, but naming those with interesting settings and I remember that one making an impression on me.

 

[vazha]

I think we had a wonderful article on Dex here about the woes of Lionheart development, a retrospective from one of the devs iirc.

 

[Casual Hero]

Might and Magic: Worlds of Xeen is one that I don't see mentioned enough. The game takes place on a planet that is shaped like a coin, so it has two sides. You start on the light side, and it feels like your typical M&M whimsical fantasy adventure, but at any time you can travel to the Darkside of the planet, and you can notice some stark differences. The sky is a dark orange, and the music takes on a darker tone. Okay, let's see what the first enemy encounter will be:

Wait... those are goblins?
Everything on the Darkside feels twisted and alien; it really feels like a whole different world (but it's not, it's the under-belly of Xeen).
And the sprite work is gorgeous. Just look at this:

Spoiler

Still one of my favorite settings in an RPG ever.

 

[FritzedProcess]

Both shadowrun and Bloodlines settings are pretty rare. One is fantasy cyberpunk, with orcs and magic shit living alongside megacorps and cybernetics, all set in a dystopian future. It doesn't even look ridiculous somehow.

Shadowrun isn't original, but a crude pastiche, a Zeitgeist of the 80s in fantasy, proto-grievance studies, new-age occultism, and science-fiction.

It does look ridiculous the moment you have some technological and geopolitical knowledge. Then, it looks like the ravings of a bunch of new-age obsessed liberal fogheads whose understanding of the world beyond the borders of the US (or south of the Mason-Dixon line, for that matter) comes entirely from a handful of 19th century travel books and Hollywood stereotypes.

On the technological side, they had a nebulous understanding of BBSs when they first wrote the setting and it didn't improve much beyond that in successive editions. It's cyberpunk for people who don't like cyberpunk.

Compare that to Cyberpunk 2020, with well written sourcebooks covering most of the world and beyond ("Deep Space" being the polar opposite of what Shadowrun is).

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it for what it is, knowing that it's crap.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Shadowrun also has shapeshifting lizardpeople that hoard gold and control all the most powerful corporations and governments

 

[FritzedProcess]

Shadowrun also has shapeshifting lizardpeople that hoard gold and control all the most powerful corporations and governments

Hmmm, I guess I have to give them that for verisimilitude.

 

[Technomancer]

Shadowrun isn't original

Eh, it's still pretty rare. Blend of cyberpunk and fantasy is a clunky idea I agree, and the resulting hybrid could be done better.

BBSs

What's that?

Compare that to Cyberpunk 2020, with well written sourcebooks covering most of the world

Cyberpunk 2020 is godlike. I read it for fun sometimes.

 

[JarlFrank]

BBSs

What's that?

Bulletin Board Systems

The early internet's (80s-early 90s) version of forums.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

BBSs

What's that?

Thanks for making me feel like a dinosaur

 

[FritzedProcess]

BBSs

What's that?

BBS stands for Bulleting Board System. It's a 70s and mostly 80s computer thing (most of them lasted well into the 90s, and there are some still around). Before the WWW there were BBSs (there were Newsgroups also, but that was another matter entirely). They were servers running a bulleting board system (something like the software that is used for this forum, but more archaic, and with some functional differences). You'd need to have the correct number to dial, and since it was a phone call (actually, a modem call) you'd be charged accordingly (and your phone line would be busy, you could get disconnected if someone called your number in the meantime, etc). If you were in the US there'd be workarounds so that you wouldn't be charged for an out-of-state call. If you were from Spain, like yours truly, you'd be hosed as those bastards at Telefónica would charge even for local calls. The French had it better, they at least had Minitel, but I'm digressing.

The thing is that the idea the Shadowrun team had of the matrix was informed by this state of affairs in the mid 80s (mostly by War Games, I suspect, which was a somewhat realistic hacking film as far as films go) and by Neuromancer (and Tolkien), it was an idea that managed to survive the obsolescence of the systems it was inspired on due to those not being so long ago by the time the mid 90s hit, and the bit about the direct neural interface. But it didn't survive the introduction of wi-fi and smartphones, and by 4th edition they introduced the wireless matrix (with a stupid gamey mechanic called "noise", because those guys don't know what a repeater is) and a couple of flip-flops regarding the fuctionality of commlinks (i.e., futuristic smartphones). The thing is that for a hard science-fiction genre they didn't have the technical aspect nailed and they relied too much on magic bullshit to advance the plot.

And so as to avoid derailing the topic, I'd recommend Degenesis as an original setting. It's set almost 500 years in the future, 400 years after an impact event. Everyone knew the meteor was coming and there was a plan to nuke it, but a computer virus from a party interested in rebuilding society according to its ideas made the missiles hit. The meteors carried an alien lifeform that can infect plant and animal life, and infected lifeforms become the agents of an alien intelligence to unknown ends, and there is a conspiracy that has been running for 400 years at the same time. All of the PDFs are free to download at the official site

 

[Technomancer]

The thing is that the idea the Shadowrun team had of the matrix was informed by this state of affairs in the mid 80s (mostly by War Games, I suspect, which was a somewhat realistic hacking film as far as films go) and by Neuromancer (and Tolkien), it was an idea that managed to survive the obsolescence of the systems it was inspired on due to those not being so long ago by the time the mid 90s hit, and the bit about the direct neural interface. But it didn't survive the introduction of wi-fi and smartphones, and by 4th edition they introduced the wireless matrix (with a stupid gamey mechanic called "noise", because those guys don't know what a repeater is) and a couple of flip-flops regarding the fuctionality of commlinks (i.e., futuristic smartphones). The thing is that for a hard science-fiction genre they didn't have the technical aspect nailed and they relied too much on magic bullshit to advance the plot.

That's usually how it goes. If you can't predict the future accurately enough you will be stuck with obsolete systems in the setting. They usually continue struggling with it, too afraid/lazy to modernize it with a massive retcon. Sometimes that is not even possible.

I'd recommend Degenesis as an original setting.

Intuiging but I think OP is not interested in the tabletop. I would like to see CRPG based on Degenesis.

Thanks for making me feel like a dinosaur

Coming to terms with our own mortality is everyone's struggle. I hope that people of this century are the last of us who can't say no to death, and aging is defeated forever...for a price of course.

 

[Lawntoilet]

Also, alongside Game of Thrones RPG, it has the best video game bromance ever.

True, it's too bad they decided to go with prequels instead of more fun Arkail and Styx stuff.

That game doesn't have a bromance, Alester is a ratfink.

The expansion has a bromance between Gorold and Mors (the expansion is pretty shitty though).
I tend to agree with you, Alester has understandable motives but he betrayed my boy Mors and that can't be abided.

If action games with RPG-lite element count, The Cursed Crusade is set during the IVth Crusade (yep, THAT ONE) and you get to assault Contantinople, among other things. Everything else is cliche, including the demon-possession plot etc, but I dont remember than many games that had Byzantines and the Varangian Guard in it.

I know not everyone considers CK2 an RPG but obviously it's a good Byzantine almost-RPG.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Hmm...suddenly it dawned on me that Jekyll is very close to the Swedish word for devil: "jäkel". Coincidence?

The name Jekyll is apparently of Breton origin and passed into English by way of French and the Norman conquest. There's a Jekyll Island in Georgia (the US state), named for an Englishman who financed the colony.

 

[Marat]

Shadowrun isn't original, but a crude pastiche, a Zeitgeist of the 80s in fantasy, proto-grievance studies, new-age occultism, and science-fiction.

Hardly anything is original or not a "crude pastiche" and creativity is only an art of hiding your inspirations. If you have a semblance of knowledge on the subjects of engineering, natural sciences or geopolitics you'll be able to freely poke holes in just about any universe that you so desire and that doesn't necessarily mean "it's crap". It's simply a wonky setting that has the same feel to it as those images from mid-1800s about what life is going to be like in the future and that's what it should be taken for. When I first learned of Shadowrun, I thought that it could not possibly work, but when SR came out I tried it and enjoyed having my elf save the world from evil bugs from another dimension. It clearly doesn't take itself too seriously and if it's amusing then that's all you can expect.

Returning to the subject of original settings: how 'bout Pathologic (1&2) (is that even an RPG? [actually, dont answer that]). Whatever it is, I ain't never seen anything like it.

 

[new fucking guy]

I think we had a wonderful article on Dex here about the woes of Lionheart development, a retrospective from one of the devs iirc.

That article was so good it got me on codex
https://rpgcodex.net//content.php?id=10505

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I have yet to touch it, but there's a game set in the world of exploitation film studio Troma called Toxic Mayhem. It looks like its that special kind of awful that you either find really amusing or not at all.

 

[laclongquan]

BBS is 4chan without all the graphic. Exactly that.

 

[Arbiter]

Can you recommend any Dark Sun novels? Is Prism Pentad any good?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Aside from the original Dragonlance novels by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Chronicles and Legends trilogies) and some of the short stories published by TSR in anthologies (e.g. the Dragonlance Tales series), you'll be hard-pressed to find anything that rises to the level of being worth reading. Although the success of these original two Dragonlance trilogies led to TSR's output of D&D/AD&D novels swelling from 1987 onward, few of the writers were anything but deeply inferior to the combination of Weis & Hickman, who soon departed TSR to publish fantasy novels unrelated to D&D. Even the Weis & Hickman novels were intentionally created as Tolkien-derivatives (consistent with the series of 12 adventure modules they accompanied) and the setting was designed by committee, so the first-time reader shouldn't expect anything terribly original.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

BBSs

What's that?

Bulletin Board Systems

The early internet's (80s-early 90s) version of forums.

I got a $900 phone bill once from using a BBS in the 90s. Got an IP server re-direct from my landline. Ended up being connected to a server somewhere in South America for several hours. At any point I would have appreciated an operator ask me if I wished to accept the call. I would have gladly said NO.

 

[octavius]

Being an Internet addict was rough in the 90s. First day I got connected I stayed up all day and night surfing porn, and could hardly keep my eyes open when I went to work.
I once got a phone bill about the same size as my monthly salary before taxes. So at least some things have gotten better the past decades...

 

[FritzedProcess]

I got a $900 phone bill once from using a BBS in the 90s. Got an IP server re-direct from my landline. Ended up being connected to a server somewhere in South America for several hours. At any point I would have appreciated an operator ask me if I wished to accept the call. I would have gladly said NO.

That sounds like someone got you to use a dialer, which was a very common scam in the 90s. When I was visiting a friend of mine (one of the first in my high school class to get an Internet connection at home) he boasted about this "free porn" thingamagig he had downloaded. He showed it to me, and lo and behold, at the bottom of the screen, in tiny print it read "By clicking on accept you will be dialing a 906 number and charged such and such amount per minute". I asked him whether he was aware of that, and the panicked look in his face was quite telling: "but... but... I have been using this for the last two weeks!"

So he was paying through the nose for a proxy that only made a TGP site portal his home page.

Btw, I never found out how much that month's phone bill was.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

I got a $900 phone bill once from using a BBS in the 90s. Got an IP server re-direct from my landline. Ended up being connected to a server somewhere in South America for several hours. At any point I would have appreciated an operator ask me if I wished to accept the call. I would have gladly said NO.

That sounds like someone got you to use a dialer, which was a very common scam in the 90s. When I was visiting a friend of mine (one of the first in my high school class to get an Internet connection at home) he boasted about this "free porn" thingamagig he had downloaded. He showed it to me, and lo and behold, at the bottom of the screen, in tiny print it read "By clicking on accept you will be dialing a 906 number and charged such and such amount per minute". I asked him whether he was aware of that, and the panicked look in his face was quite telling: "but... but... I have been using this for the last two weeks!"

So he was paying through the nose for a proxy that only made a TGP site portal his home page.

Btw, I never found out how much that month's phone bill was.

I believe it was. The dialers used at the time would often 're-connect' in a way that would mimic a simple disconnect/reconnect to the ISP, however instead of going to a local area code number/server it would dial out to a chosen number from a list. Not all that different from something like AOL's or Prodigy's old dialers, only more nefarious. If you weren't paying attention to that fine print, you definitely would be paying attention to the huge ass phone bill later on.

 

[Ranarama]

Can you recommend any Dark Sun novels? Is Prism Pentad any good?

I think Rise and Fall of a Dragon King is the best, shortest and most compact lore dump you can get out of one of the Dark Sun Novels. None of them are that great. They're definitely TSR books written in the 90s. And the Tribe of One feels like the guy read the Drizzt books first.