Most Unusual and Interesting RPG Setting?

[AMFV]

As the title suggests, I'm looking for what settings people have found the most innovative or interesting to play in. We do a lot of gaming in fairly standard fantasy worlds (not that there's anything wrong with that). But there are so many types of settings we never get to explore. So I'm curious who's played in some other interesting settings. This is partially inspired by the Roman setting thread. Or alternatively what sort of settings would you like to see that don't already exist.

As for me personally, I'd love to see a setting based on Polynesians in the pacific with fantasy elements, or older cultures (before the D&D-esque Middle Ages). I'm sure that these have been done, but they might be really interesting to explore.

[Florian]

Too many to count, actually. Real world history alone provides so many examples to work with, you´ll never have the time to play them all.

Classic greek period, biblical time, ancient rome, you name it.

[Mr.Sandman]

I worked on a setting that started as pretty standard fantasy, until the demons attacked. When no angels showed up to be their opposite numbers, one kingdom made their own. In the form of magically powered fighter jets. Unfortunately the game never got off the ground.

[JAL_1138]

Planescape and Spelljammer.

[Khedrac]

As the title suggests, I'm looking for what settings people have found the most innovative or interesting to play in. We do a lot of gaming in fairly standard fantasy worlds (not that there's anything wrong with that). But there are so many types of settings we never get to explore. So I'm curious who's played in some other interesting settings. This is partially inspired by the Roman setting thread. Or alternatively what sort of settings would you like to see that don't already exist.

For me that would be Glorantha (the RuneQuest game world).
Why? - because I like the idea of a world where multiple different mythological histories can all be true even when they contradict each other!
Also, originally the cultures were not supposed to have real-wold parallels, though humans being humans, that has rather been reversed over time as others have helped develop the world.

As for me personally, I'd love to see a setting based on Polynesians in the pacific with fantasy elements, or older cultures (before the D&D-esque Middle Ages). I'm sure that these have been done, but they might be really interesting to explore.

For the Polynesian-style check out the Makai Islands in the D&D (BECM) Mystara setting. Admittedly there's no support for them, but that is how they are described.

Pre-middle ages have quite a lot of support - Greek/Roman, Norse and Egyptian being the most common forms (OK the Norse are pushing it to be pre-Middle Ages, but most D&D is really post Middle Ages).

In many ways Dark Sun is probably both very unique and pre-Middle Ages - without ever having played it I am guessing, but the city-states and low metal setting sounds more Sumerian to me.

[Quertus]

Planescape and Spelljammer.

Woot! I'll second the Spelljammer. Sorry, berks, I never did have much luck in Planescape.

... Is this thread meant to be specific to fantasy settings? To published settings? Or would a homebrew reality-hopping genre that I loved be appropriate to mention here? Because, um, I guess I kinda already did. ;)

[AMFV]

Woot! I'll second the Spelljammer. Sorry, berks, I never did have much luck in Planescape.

... Is this thread meant to be specific to fantasy settings? To published settings? Or would a homebrew reality-hopping genre that I loved be appropriate to mention here? Because, um, I guess I kinda already did. ;)

Mention away! Even hypothetical settings are included.

[Arbane]

As the title suggests, I'm looking for what settings people have found the most innovative or interesting to play in. We do a lot of gaming in fairly standard fantasy worlds (not that there's anything wrong with that). But there are so many types of settings we never get to explore. So I'm curious who's played in some other interesting settings. This is partially inspired by the Roman setting thread. Or alternatively what sort of settings would you like to see that don't already exist.

As for me personally, I'd love to see a setting based on Polynesians in the pacific with fantasy elements, or older cultures (before the D&D-esque Middle Ages). I'm sure that these have been done, but they might be really interesting to explore.

Glorantha (the setting for Runequest) is an interesting one - it's a flat world floating in an infinite ocean, where all the myths and legends are literally true. It's mostly roughly Bronze-Age. (And I got ninia'ed.)

[JoeJ]

I'll agree with Spelljammer as well. The elven space fleet, gigantic planet eating turtles, beholder civil wars, illithids with official embassies, a beholder bartender, a mummy pirate captaining a flying pyramid, barbarians riding space whales, giant space hamsters, gnomish weapons technology, miniature giant space hamsters…

When it comes to unusual and interesting, Spelljammer sets the bar pretty high.

[ElFi]

I once had an idea for a Power Rangers-style campaign where the PC's are paranormal protectors who battle creatures on alternate layers of reality that normal humans can't or won't perceive. It's inspired by Megatokyo. The idea may or may not get off the ground depending on my players' opinion of it.

As for established settings, I'd have to say Numenera. Post-apocalyptic wasteland meets medieval fantasy meets HP Lovecraft, and did I mention that one of the established civilizations in the setting is a gigantic living plant that people live inside?

[Bulhakov]

Earthdawn is an interesting twist on fantasy, it's basically as a "post-apocalyptic fantasy". A magic equivalent of nuclear war wiped out the stereotypical fantasy civilization, now it's getting rebuilt by survivors who hid in underground "vaults" / dwarven cities.

[Anonymouswizard]

Planescape and Spelljammer.

I'd say to add Dark Sun, but it's really half-standard fantasy anyway. Still, my personal favourite, it's one of the two games I hope to run this summer (the other being Qin: the Warring States). Nothing in it is the same as it is in 'standard fantasy world', elven aloofness is not portrayed as endearing and they will just leave you to die if you can't keep up, dwarves have an extraordinary ability to focus, and we all know what the halflings are like. Plus, I never considered non-mammal races until I saw the Thri-Kreen.

[Donnadogsoth]

I'd say Call of Cthulhu 1920s. It's set in two worlds. One is a world very much like our own, but with myriad little differences. And the other is this world of chaos and evil that impinges on the first world. I can't think of anything that is more subtle and more weird simultaneously.

[Arbane]

That reminds me, the old RPG Kult is apparently getting a new edition 'soon' - it's pretty much a 90's modern horror setting best described as 'Gnostic philosophy by way of Clive Barker'.

[Lacco]

I loved the Darklands PC game. Medieval/gothic Europe, with real cities/map, however with werewolves, witches, etc. I would like to play that as a tabletop RPG.

And then there is the Noir York city from Max Payne games - that one would be also interesting. Maybe even switching between a real New York during the day and Noir York during night...

...however, I am fan of the "generic" fantasy settings

[Comet]

Yet another vote for Glorantha. If you want weird, Glorantha can give you weird. It can also give you pretty down to earth adventures, but if you want to ride earthshaker dinosaurs into a rival tribe's settlement to interrupt their ritual to enter the realm of the gods to retroactively change mythical history, go ahead. Just watch out for baboons and their angry ancestor ghosts. Or death-cult duck swordmen.

It doesn't have to get all that crazy, but if that's your jam there's nothing stopping you.

[Logosloki]

I love the bleak hopelessness of Athas. The fact that they live on a dying world that has been forsaken, that they cannot leave, where entire civilisations have fallen, their relics lost to the sands of time and that the last vestiges of anything resembling order is in the hands of an insane group of ancient relics who would rather die than help each other. A world that has been consumed already, stripped so many times that it cannot regrow in any meaningful way, where magic only works by sacrificing what little is left and metal is so scarce that it is worth more than its weight in water, a resource so rare that a house sized oasis would probably net you enough pull to build an entire fortress around it...if you didn't get killed over it.

[Arbane]

Tekumel is an odd one. It's (to oversimplify) what you'd get if J. R. R. Tolkien had been more interested in Mesoamerican mythology than European - a Aztec-ish Weird Fantasy setting.

[Sam113097]

Sundered World is pretty cool. It's set after a wars between gods and titans, in a universe that has been shattered into hundreds of smaller pieces. The gods are dead, but their powers live on in weird ways. The remnants of the planes are all smashed together, leaving floating chunks of planets, the bodies of gods and primordials, broken stars, and other wreckage drifting through space, with people flying around in airborne boats. It's different from anything I've ever seen.

[nedz]

Alpha Complex.

also

I did come up with an interesting idea for an Aztec game, but I couldn't get any of my players interested. Stone age-ish, where you don't get spells per day but rather spells per human sacrifice. Fighters got replaced with war leader types - who have a number of mooks. Wars of Flowers. ... and then the Spanish arrive.

[AMFV]

Tekumel is an odd one. It's (to oversimplify) what you'd get if J. R. R. Tolkien had been more interested in Mesoamerican mythology than European - a Aztec-ish Weird Fantasy setting.

I'd love to try that one at some point, but I'm not sure if there's ever been a really good game done using the system, and it seems pretty intensely mapped out (which isn't always a problem, but it can be). I've just not had time to actually read through it.

I love the bleak hopelessness of Athas. The fact that they live on a dying world that has been forsaken, that they cannot leave, where entire civilisations have fallen, their relics lost to the sands of time and that the last vestiges of anything resembling order is in the hands of an insane group of ancient relics who would rather die than help each other. A world that has been consumed already, stripped so many times that it cannot regrow in any meaningful way, where magic only works by sacrificing what little is left and metal is so scarce that it is worth more than its weight in water, a resource so rare that a house sized oasis would probably net you enough pull to build an entire fortress around it...if you didn't get killed over it.

I always thought that Athas was kind of a Dune Fantasy analogue, or that was the general idea.

[CharonsHelper]

Chthulutech - hands down.

It's a sci-fi mecha/Lovecraft setting. The world is really freakin' sweet in an over-the-top sort of way. Unfortunately... the mechanics are pretty weak, especially for combat. They're far too random & swingy.

Plus - while the backdrop setting was awesome - the designers rather blatantly screwed up nitty gritty things like the weight/power of various mecha and didn't understand cube to square ratio for weights etc.

[Lord Torath]

Death Gate is a pretty interesting setting. You've got four worlds for each of the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water), each of which is an interesting world by itself, even ignoring the Sartan and Patryn superbeings. I'd say the Air world is the most interesting all by itself. Everyone lives on floating, porous islands, with high human wizards living at the highest level, elves and humans fighting over the mid levels, and dwarves maintaining an ancient artifact under a perpetual storm at the lowest levels.

I don't know if it was ever turned into an RPG, but they made a compute game about it a while back.

I also have to second Dark Sun and Spelljammer as great, non-standard settings.

[Anonymouswizard]

I always thought that Athas was kind of a Dune Fantasy analogue, or that was the general idea.

That's sort of true, but it's really doing Dark Sun a disservice. They both share desert-planets and sandworms, but as far as I can tell there's little in common after that.

The main thing that makes Dark Sun interesting is, and always will be, defiling magic. I don't think any other setting has ever tied magic so closely to the state of the world (my interpretation of how the ash circles work in the original boxed set is that magic doesn't care, it will pull that life energy you need for the spell to work, even if it has to reach across the world).

Elemental priests and Templars are also interesting, but less so.

Athas also has the weird suggestion, due to how defiling magic works, that large areas of the planet may have recovered to their life-giving state (I believe 'decades' is how long it normally takes for soil to revitalise from defiling magic), but due to the fact that the Tyr region is surrounded by massive wastes (and will be unless defilers are eliminated) nobody there will ever be able to discover this. Of course, because the book never says any of this, it's my own extrapolation of the mechanics and fluff for defiling (takes at least one year to become undone, normally longer), and the fact that the Tyr region has essentially been stagnant for centuries to millennia (as well as possibly the only location with a self-sustaining population), meaning that, without the massive numbers of defilers that existed during the [spoiler] in modern Athas, although the sun might not recover, there could be large areas of green (and maybe water).

This is all based off of the original 2e boxed set, of course, when defilers still created ash when casting and so on, and before any 4e retcons.

Chthulutech - hands down.

It's a sci-fi mecha/Lovecraft setting. The world is really freakin' sweet in an over-the-top sort of way. Unfortunately... the mechanics are pretty weak, especially for combat. They're far too random & swingy.

Plus - while the backdrop setting was awesome - the designers rather blatantly screwed up nitty gritty things like the weight/power of various mecha and didn't understand cube to square ratio for weights etc.

I've heard really bad things about Cthulhutech *cough*it'streatmentofsexandallthatstuff*cough*

I mean, I like the core idea, except that I think mecha sort of make the mythos become uninteresting. I do plan to write up a homebrew setting that includes a few ideas from CT, but without the mecha or the Nazzadi(spelt right?). Humans are starting to harness magic and get more effective firearms, but thankfully none of the big mythos entities have turned up at all.

[CharonsHelper]

I've heard really bad things about Cthulhutech *cough*it'streatmentofsexandallthatstuff*cough*

*shrug* Maybe. I never got beyond the core book. I really liked the vibe - but after a couple of games I gave up on it due to the awkward mechanics. I can't think of anything too bad in the core book though.

I mean, I like the core idea, except that I think mecha sort of make the mythos become uninteresting.

I'll be the first to say that most stuff with mecha - at least the ginourmous ones - are silliness. The mecha in C-tech are actually done reasonably well (the fluff - not the mechanics). They have new tech for a decent reason that it's not stupid, they fight gibbering monstrosities, and the most potent have a psychic link with their pilots - pretty obviously inspired by Evangelion.

[Fri]

I mean, I like the core idea, except that I think mecha sort of make the mythos become uninteresting. I do plan to write up a homebrew setting that includes a few ideas from CT, but without the mecha or the Nazzadi(spelt right?). Humans are starting to harness magic and get more effective firearms, but thankfully none of the big mythos entities have turned up at all.

I understand people who dislike the premise, but that's the basic premise of the setting, there's mythos horror, there's mecha, they fight. I remember someone who find himself playing cthulhutech and find the premise stupid and keep snarking at the gm for trying to make it serious game and such . From all of his gm's fault, that one is his own fault, if he don't find the premise interesting, he shouldn't have played it.

Anyway, for my addition, Chuubo The Wish Granting Machine.

[Anonymouswizard]

I understand people who dislike the premise, but that's the basic premise of the setting, there's mythos horror, there's mecha, they fight. I remember someone who find himself playing cthulhutech and find the premise stupid and keep snarking at the gm for trying to make it serious game and such . From all of his gm's fault, that one is his own fault, if he don't find the premise interesting, he shouldn't have played it.

Eh, I actually like the core premise of the setting (an outright war between a Mythos power and humanity), I just think the execution is severely lacking and although it seems to have the 'anime' side worked out fairly well, as far as I can tell it fails at the 'Cthulhu' part (but at least keeps the actual gods mostly unbeatable). I'd personally never play it as-is, and the setting premise isn't enough to really interest me in the system (I can whip up something I'd prefer in GURPS in about an hour), but people who like the setting can feel free to enjoy it, I was just stating what turned me off of it.

[JoeJ]

Four-color superhero settings like Green Ronin's Earth Prime are well known enough that people might not think of them as unusual, but combining magic, space aliens, Atlantis, other dimensions, mutants, psychic powers, super science, radioactive monsters, superintelligent talking apes, "theme" criminals, masters of ancient weapons, robots, dinosaurs, robot dinosaurs, ancient mythology, demons, angels, and pretty much everything else anybody has ever heard of is incredibly bizarre. Especially when all those things can easily occur in the same city, in which life, nevertheless, mostly goes on pretty much like it does in the real world.

[Grod_The_Giant]

My favorite was a homebrew one my group came up with last summer. The basic idea was that the world was inhabited by a race of giants (who may or may not have been us), who built great cities and skyscrapers and strange (modern) technologies and then perished in some sort of apocalypse. Now the surface of the world is cloaked in a perpetual miasma made of their ghosts-- anyone down there for long is either driven made or killed by a sometimes-literally hostile environment. Our (the players') civilization is built on the backs of great beasts called Goliath. No-one knows where they came from, and no two are alike-- there are walking trees, giant turtles with shells full of ocean, spiders with islands webbed to their backs, and more-- but they're big enough that their inhabitants are lifted above the miasma. The tech level was set to around WWI, with a bit more of an age of sail feel-- civilizations kept in contact mostly via airship. The setting's mages were all necromancers, essentially, commanding ghosts (mostly human) to possess people, animate objects, scout for them and so on.

[Arbane]

Eh, I actually like the core premise of the setting (an outright war between a Mythos power and humanity), I just think the execution is severely lacking and although it seems to have the 'anime' side worked out fairly well, as far as I can tell it fails at the 'Cthulhu' part (but at least keeps the actual gods mostly unbeatable).

It may have done the anime thing TOO well. I remember reading a review of one of CTech's adventures and thinking "did they REALLY take a plot device from Urotsukidoji?" (Do NOT Google that name at work - it's a hentai anime.)