#I swear it’s gotta be some sort of arcane spell

[lloydofhyrule64]

The Boy

[mantis-lizbian]

i’m working on a setting for a gestalt Pathfinder campaign i’m gonna be running, and here’s what i’ve got so far. (below the cut)

my primary inspiration is the New Weird genre. i wanted to come up with a setting that is immediately distinguishable from typical fantasy settings. ergo no elves, no dwarves, no orcs. i’m keeping Pathfinder’s goblins because they’re fun and actually feel like they fit pretty well into this newly budding setting. to be honest, i’m a bit disappointed with myself for how much i’m kinda cribbing from Dark Sun, Saga, and Planescape, especially given that i’ve only actually interacted with one of those, i swear. the other two, i basically only know by the summaries on their TV Tropes pages (not the actual trope entries).

i first came up with a framework for classes. off the top of my head, all the classes should be compatible with the setting, though the spellcasters are going to have varying degrees of refluffing. first off, psychic magic is going to be the primary type of spellcasting in the setting. secondly, there are no gods. divine spellcasters exist, but their spells are either drawn from animistic spirits or from their own willpower or something. haven’t quite decided yet, but something along those lines. as for arcane spellcasters, for the most part they’re going to be refluffed as being more like gadgeteers who build little contraptions that produce the spell’s effects. wizards carry around thick books of schematics that they study as they build their contraptions ahead of time while sorcerers just memorize a few schematics allowing them to be built on the fly. (no major mechanical changes, somatic components carry over to needing to withdraw and deploy the contraption and verbal components represent the command words needed to activate it). bards and summoners will probably just stick to run-of-the-mill arcane magic. more or less. and i’ll probably play witches up as being more related to divine spellcasters who just take a slightly different approach to how they draw out their magic. black magic versus white magic, pretty much.

the setting will have an anachronistic hodge-podge of technology levels. some clockpunk, some steampunk, even a bit of dieselpunk (motorcycles for sure), to help support the simultaneous existence of swordsmen, wizards, and gunslingers. alchemists even add a splash of biopunk to that, so... and the Instant Runes i’m picturing that are involved in wizard/sorcerer “spells” give them a certain cyberpunk veneer... i may have gone a bit overboard...

as for races, it’s going to primarily be the anthropomorphic animal ones: catfolk, kitsune, grippli, lizardfolk, gnolls, ratfolk, etc. decided to only go with lizardfolk over serpentfolk, nagaji, etc. just to help cut down on overlap. though if a player really wants to play one of those, i’ll probably allow it and just refluff them as being an offshoot of lizardfolk. also using trox, bugbears (gotta have something big, ugly, and brutish... with eyebrows *looks sidelong at trox*), kasatha (probably), and i might even replace humans with refluffed tieflings. but then i’d really be ripping off of Saga...

especially considering how i’ll be following in the grand tradition of New Weird (isn’t it odd that a genre pretty much defined by its obstinate refusal to conform to fantasy standards already has outlines of its own standards?), the world (or at least the part of it that the party will be starting in) will be dry and sandy. though more scrubland than full-on desert. and rather than being to evoke a dying world, my thoughts are more wide, open horizons. also i just love dusty bazaars full of a milling menagerie.

...although the claims that this isn’t meant to evoke a “dying world” feel are undermined by my decision to make it so that death isn’t instant, but rather when you die your soul leaves all at once, but it takes a while for your body to get the memo. for a few days, maybe a week your body continues to go through the motions of the sorts of things you did in life, especially if it was fairly routine. however, with your soul gone the actions are... well... soulless. so an artist continue to sit down at his desk every day, but just sluggishly scribbles random marks than actual drawing. this is just the way things have always been, so no one considers it weird.  in spite of how it might seem, i kinda want this to remain a background element, though...