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View Full Version : Neverwhere/China Mieville campaign ideas?



JonestheSpy
2009-08-10, 02:28 PM
Hey folks,

I'm starting to prepare a new campaign set in Un Lun Dun, China Meiville's twisted morrior version of London. It's a lot like Gaimen's Neverwhere for folks unfamilair with Mieville's work (I recommend you fix that asap, btw), but a LOT weirder - more it's own alternate dimaension than a city-within-a-city. i'll be incorporating elements of both works plus whatever other interesting thing that seems to fit.

I'll be using 3.5 rules with a bit of this and that from the supplement books - definietely nothing that's too far outside of Core (though players can chhose psionic classes if they want), and even though it's present day the modern elements won't be that big a part of it.

One thing that I think will be fun is that players can choose to play almost any race they can imagine, as long as it's no more than 2nd level equivalent starting out, and it can pass for human if doing the ol big-coat-and-hat trick. One character in Mieville's book is named Skool and moves around in an old-fashioned deep-water diving suit. We later find out that the suit itself is filled with water, and Skool is actually a bunch of different fish who live inside and manipulate the suit to get around on land...

If you've got an inspiration for an adventure, creature, location, whatever, I'd love to hear it.

Myshlaevsky
2009-08-10, 02:30 PM
Pretty much got to have living gargoyles & chimaeras, Gog and Magog and some kind of supernatural Jack the Ripper. I'd also like to see some kind of enormous zoo or bestiary.

JonestheSpy
2009-08-11, 12:54 PM
Definitely gargoyle creatures, though probably in unusual forms.

Once it's established that the most dangerous predators in the area are the herds of carnivorous giraffes (the long necks are for getting into second story windows, as well as being able to wave the skins of their prey around), there's a pretty high bar on the weirdness factor.

RTGoodman
2009-08-11, 09:27 PM
I don't anything about Mieville, but for Neverwhere I BELIEVE Vorpal Tribble did either a shortish campaign setting based on it, or at least several homebrew things related to it. You can probably find those via Google.

Alternatively, I suppose if you wanted to try a different system, d20 Modern (http://www.12tomidnight.com/d20modernsrd/Home.php) with the Urban Arcana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Arcana) campaign setting could work really well for this kind of thing, I think.

The Vorpal Tribble
2009-08-13, 04:19 AM
I started on the project a bit at least...

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4041590

Jastermereel
2009-08-13, 08:19 AM
If you're interested and can track it down, Dragon Magazine #352 had a lot about converting Bas Lag and the races there into D&D terms.