Welcome to the Stone Among the Divine blog, I'll be using it to write about the OSR (mainly the GLOG) and probably also will put some of my session reports from my 5e game here as well. I've been wanting to start a blog for a while now but haven't really been too sure what to write about, but I think I've written enough about random things that I could probably compile some of it for a blog. That, and I figured I should start just writing even if it's not great... So, this first post is going to be a overview of the settings that have been filling my headspace.
The first will be the one I’ve actually played with, and that’s “The Original D&D Setting” (http://initiativeone.blogspot.com) using my own OD&D rules (fighter and magic-user only, rules additions from Delta and a few other places). I played “In Search of the Unknown” with some of my friends, placing it in the south end of the central-north mountains, and I think it was fairly enjoyable but certainly not to the taste of my friends. I’d like to return to this and I do think about it from time to time but don’t really ever work on any developments for it.
The next one is quite detailed, I think, but only in very random areas that I don’t think really help with playing the game. The overlong gist of things is that in the far future the “gods” are summoned from some source (something like scientists found “divine essence” or AIs became so advanced they copied our myths from long ago and started warping reality), this eventually lead to a war between disbelievers and the faithful which lead to a mass reality reset. The new world is a fragmentary echo of the old, the war still continues but now the disbelievers have become demons and monsters with a few of the strongest having had merged into “Chaos”. Meanwhile, the faithful awoke as divine servants and stewards to the new humanity as celestials and goodly-fey (or non-human sapient beings). There are now infinite versions of earth and its various regions, all separate by thick fog and mists. It is possible to traverse between the various Realms by boat (since there’s black waters at the “bottom”) but without any of the normal ways of navigations it is a perilous journey; however, occasionally there’ll be markers to lead the way from one Realm to another and those who do traverse the fogs know what to look for (or must learn).
I’ve come up with a few Realms that have differing amounts of work done:
· Pretannia: This is mixed form for what the Romans called the isles beyond Gaul (the Britons called it Pretanī and the Romans called it Britannia). This Realm is ruled by Arthur, the Overking of the Britons, Eire, Scots, and the Germanic Invaders. He is a powerful fey and has the ability to control the events of the Realm but doesn’t often interfere (he also has a different name/title but I figured that’s the easiest and most recognisable...). There are roughly 13 kingdoms and quite a few different petty-kingdoms that truly rule the isles of Pretannia, with five of them being the kingdoms of the Germanic invaders (the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes). The other eight and most of the petty-kingdoms are held by various Celtic people (the Britons in Wales and Cornwall, the Scots in Scotland, and the Eire in Ireland). They both worship the same pantheon but favour different gods (to some extent, haven’t really sorted it out), the pantheon is a crude syncretisation and reconstruction of the various Indo-European pantheons and beliefs. And just in case it’s not obvious, it’s based roughly off of the English Isles during about the late 400’s to about the 700’s, and with no Christian influence
·
The True
World: This Realm’s region is the whole of earth, with everything in their
early stages (roughly Copper or Bronze Age). Probably not the best name and I
think it’s one of the titles used for a D&D setting (Maztica
I think...) but I figured it kinda fits since it’ll use the whole world as its
region. The idea is to use authentic fantasy/myths from each region (I realise
it’ll be a huge endeavour... so, it’s mostly just a pipe dream...) and then
kinda blend it together and put my own spin on things. So, here’s a brief
overview
o Proto Indo-European peoples have stayed mostly in the steppes of Ukraine and Russia, somewhat having had spread out east to Iran. They worship the crudely syncretisation and reconstruction pantheon I mentioned earlier. They like to be speed-demons in their fancy Spoked-Chariots
o Mesopotamia is just Sumer, however, sadly this means removing a lot of later developments of the Akkadians and Babylonians which leaves a lot of things kinda vague. Oh, and its cool thing is that it’s contained with a three layered sphere floating in the air – harkening to their belief that the world was encased by three different substances. The walls of the sphere don’t block sight and allows movement through it but only those granted access by the Sumerian gods
o Europe is still the Neolithic farmers that lived there before the modern Europeans drove them out/conquered them/whatever happened. This one’s basically entirely fictitious, it’s believed they were a peace-loving matriarchal society (or was, by one lady in the 20th century, not sure if that’s still the consensus). They’re ruled by a caste of priestesses who lead the common folk in worship of their agrarian goddess – I’m not really sure what else to do with them beyond this really... I was kinda also thinking that they’d have male land owners as the electors and women as the politicians/rulers
o I was going to write an overview of how I'd possibly do other places but it turned into "Oh, yeah this place. It'd probably just be how it was but with myths."
· Other Realms would be various weird versions of places, like a heavily forested France plus Germany as just an island filled with beasts and monsters but is being explored by travellers of the fog (OK, that’s not that weird... I dunno, the Realms can be whatever and this concept was taken from a RPG called “Saga” by Bruno Pereira)
The last one is really just a sentence, “What if Narnia was set in my hometown” – I got nostalgic looking some at pictures of my hometown a while back and started thinking about my childhood, it kinda made me want to use it as a setting. I’m not sure in which order it was, but I was also reading some stuff about Oz, so it either enforced this idea or was what started it... dunno. So, yeah, Narnia + Oz + Wonderland with the “place of normalcy” being something akin to rural central British Columbia, the players would then find portals going through various places like the farm’s bog or deep in the forest or a wardrobe and whatnot. They’d be transported to this other world and like in Isekai (“To Another World”) anime they’d gain character classes and thrust into fantasy shenanigans and then when they’re done they could return home for some rest. OK, so more just than a sentence...
Oh, and actually, the real last one is “The Forgotten Realms”, which I’ve ran one campaign*, a few short games, and a couple of one-shots for it, and then have played in three campaigns* set there (one’s still unfinished, probably never will be). I feel about it the same way I do about 5e (well, similar), it’s got a lot of stuff I can mess around with but also needs a lot of work but if I just kinda don’t think about it then it’s great. Have been playing in it with 5e which my friends/players really enjoy, so I think that’s good enough for now.
*Campaign roughly meaning the game covered levels ~1-10 (usually a bit more) and ran for at least 6 months of 1 week, 4 hour sessions (averaging things out)
I’d like to write something like this but for the system I’d run the setting with, but as soon as I start thinking about different systems it becomes a rabbit hole... but basically:
· The Original D&D Setting: OD&D and classic D&D (but OSE, ACKS, my own horrible thing? There’s too much...)
· Pretannia for a time was using my OD&D hack but then I felt it start chafing against D&D’s assumptions and decided to move my rules to the setting above, and now I’ve got the idea to use some sort of “Free Kriegspiel Revolution” type stuff for it but I honestly don’t know...
· “Hometown in Narnia” will probably use some sort of GLOG but again, too many options...
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