Quote from: James Gillen;660025Sounds more like Feng Shui than Marketplace.

Yes it does. Which was an accident... I actually got the idea from Far West. I'd never heard of wuxia until then.

So I read up on it and roughed out a setting, The Matrix meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, essentially.

Then I ran across Feng Shui. And there it was. Wow.. separated at birth (sorta, in the general concepts).

But it didn't bother me. Nippon Tech as the FS cosm? I'm okay with that.

You can do the same thing with several of the other cosms — Aysle's D&D, Victoria is Space: 1889, Tharkold is Rifts. The matches aren't exact, but they're close enough.

Quote from: James Gillen;660025Which is not a bad thing.

I agree. It's a lot cooler, to start with. If you're going to have martial arts, they should be flashy and impressive. They should make mages say "Woah. You know kung fu."

(And if you read that quote in Keanu Reeve's voice, then you know exactly what I mean.)

Is there such a thing as a "good" High Lord, from a reality where the ideals that life normally beats out of everyone exist and are worked for?

Quote from: CRKrueger;660099Is there such a thing as a "good" High Lord, from a reality where the ideals that life normally beats out of everyone exist and are worked for?

Well, I could plumb the metaphysics and explain why, but this is the short version:

In order to become a High Lord, a person needs to have caused an immense amount of death and destruction, all for their own personal benefit (typically to gain power, prestige, or money). Any major conqueror — Alexander, Napoleon, Genghis Khan — would qualify, as would nearly any modern dictator.

Again, the reasoning is peculiar to my modified metaphysics, but that's the upshot.

The Living Land is the Lost Worlds reality. It is a technologically primitive, post-apocalyptic world, inhabited by tribal bands who worship the Goddess Lanala.

Part of their strategy for gaining Supporters is to encourage belief in the breakdown of civilization and technology. Media like "Mad Max", "After Earth", "Revolution", "Oblivion", and the fictional "Aftermath" all qualify.

Enter Tharkold.

Tharkold is the chief enemy of the Living Land and, in my campaign world, steals California from the Lost Worlds reality. But how is this possible? If High Lords needs Supporters to invade — and they do — where does Tharkold get its Supporters from?

Well, Tharkold is also a post-apocalyptic Reality. So, all the effort and energy the Living Land put into creating people who believe in such things, also created Supporters of Tharkold.

So when Tharkold invaded the West Coast, there were enough Supporters to support the realm.

Nessie... in the North Sea?

Jan. 5, 2015 | 6:07 am

Aberdeen, Scotland (IPA)

The video was one for the ages, at least on NetTube. Three drunk fishermen, casting at midnight off the coast of Scotland, singing old sea chanties and having a grand time... until a massive wave nearly swamps their boat.

Posted just after 3 am, the video went unnoticed until someone made note of a scaly fin in the water behind the drunk lads. Soon after, it went viral with more than 9 million plays in less than 24 hours.

Responding to numerous twits about the video, Aberdeen policemen detained the three suspects, pending an investigation into the nature of their nighttime excursion.

Video embedded below.

See Also:

Pub Ban Blamed for Drunk Driving Accidents
Editorial: Lads at Sea — Is Prison Enough?
MyFriends Rally for the Aberdeen 3

Share: MyFriends | Tweeter | Gaggle+ | Email | Print

[Retrieved 18-JUL-2015 from web.archive.net. Original source: //www.latribunejournal.com ]

I hope you are going to add new Realities, and not just rehash the old. I recommend a Faeirie realm. Have it like the old stories, not the Disney versions. Mabb and Titania (or whomever), both super-powerful, also generally just not interested in humans, other than as an experiment. Of course, this brings in trolls, goblins, elves, boggans, etc.

Quote from: danbuter;660322I hope you are going to add new Realities, and not just rehash the old.

There are 8 primary invading Realities, divided into two factions. Then Core Earth (of course) and Orrorsh.

Faction A — The Original Invaders
The Living Land: The Lost Worlds Reality
Nippon Tech: The Wuxia Technothriller Reality
The Cyberpapacy: The Cyber-Religious Reality
Kadandra: The Cyber Pulp Reality

Faction B — The Spoilers
Tharkold: The Techno-Horror Reality
The Nile Empire: The Pulp Supers Reality
Aysle: The High Magic Reality
Victoria: The Gothic Steampunk Reality

Each of these Realities has either been revamped (keeping the same concept, but re-implementing it), redesigned (around a whole new central concept), or (in the case of Kadandra) built from scratch. (And even Kadandra borrows elements from existing Realities, in this case the Space Gods.)

So, there aren't any wholly new Invading Realities. However, the Living Land has Lost Worlds, which are literally pieces of cosms they invaded. Since the Living Land has invaded around a hundred cosms, there are plenty of novel Realities there.

(Faeries are a large part of Aysle. I'll touch on them later.)

I'm just waiting to see what the Nile Empire looks like.  

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;660430I'm just waiting to see what the Nile Empire looks like.  

The Nile is coming up.

High Lords should be brutal and effective villains, the kind who've read the Evil Overlord list and never do a single thing on it. (Whereas, in oTorg, the High Lords had all read the Evil Overlord list, and did every single thing on it as often as possible.) A lot of my effort in building the setting has been to make High Lords the dastardly villains they should be.

And I'm about to break that.

You see, this was an accident. Just an accident.

A Draconis Aquatica, an Ayslish sea dragon, was en route from Point A to Point B and accidentally capsized the boat. (Or nearly so.) It wasn't part of some grand scheme, it wasn't part of a secret plan to make people believe in magical monsters, it was just an accident.

Which happens. After all, even if the High Lord is a canny, ruthless, cunning villain, not all of his subordinates are. And even canny, ruthless bastards who have literally Conquered the World — more than once! — can make the odd mistake. Which is what happened here.

Ooops!

I won't lie - I wasn't terribly interested at first, Torg seeming like something that's just not my cup of tea. But you've pitched my interest, should I ever wish a truly gonzo game. Good entertaining marketing, so to speak .

Quote from: Rincewind1;660583I won't lie - I wasn't terribly interested at first, Torg seeming like something that's just not my cup of tea. But you've pitched my interest, should I ever wish a truly gonzo game. Good entertaining marketing, so to speak .

Thanks. Though you should know that all of the setting details in the thread are from my revision of Torg, not the original game. So, there's that.

Though, were I running the company making Torg, I'd definitely do a Countdown to Armageddon in the months leading up to releasing the game. Builds excitement, teaches people the setting, explains the concepts behind the game. As you said, entertaining marketing.

Quote from: danbuter;660322I hope you are going to add new Realities, and not just rehash the old.

I actually want to talk about this.

Back in the day — over a decade ago, when all this began — I was originally going to create a slate of wholly new Realities. I read a lot about different genres, identified ones not used in the original game, brainstormed, even created several.

But none of them quite worked. And, as the years have gone on, I've found myself turning back to the original cosms.

For example, I made a world called "The Wastelands". It was a lost worlds Reality, ruled by inhuman maltheistic deities, where people could call on them for power, but doing so warped your body. I created several World Laws detailing how this Reality worked. Eventually, I just let it lie fallow because it wasn't working.

Fast forward to last year. Someone asked about the Living Land, and how we would change the World Laws. I realized the Wastelands World Laws would be a perfect fit for the Living Land. So I posted a cleaned up version, and they were. They made the Living Land into a cool and interesting setting.

Writing a whole new Reality prompted me to create material that could improve one of the original Realities. This has happened again and again, right down the line.

I never made a big, dramatic decision to stick with the originals. In fact, in the beginning my Storm Knights project was defined by its rejection of the original cosms. Having struck out radically on my own, the cumulative effect of several small decisions lead me back to the original Realities. Each tiny improvement took me further away from my own stuff and back to the canon.

So, that's why I'm rehashing the originals — nothing else worked. And the revamped original Realities work well.

"Murder, Cannibalism, Terrorism"

Interrogation Transcript, Royal Malaysian Police
Location: Kuala Lampur, Malaysia
Suspect: Kembang Bisa
Charges: Murder, cannibalism, terrorism

Recording Date: Jan 6, 2015
Transcription: Jan 10, 2015.

DHS International Anti-Terrorism Liason Office
# # # Classified # # #
# # # Unauthorized access is a violation of applicable Federal statutes and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. # # #

Participants
Voice #1, Male: Unidentified Criminal Investigation Division investigator
Voice #2, Male: Detained suspect Kembang Bisa, suspected J-I/KMM associate
Voice #3, Male: Unknown, possible UNGERIN intelligence officer

- - - TRANSCRIPT BEGINS - - -

Voice #1: Why the lies? We know you were there. Confess your crime, and God will forgive.

Kembang: [Distressed] I would never hurt the child. It was a lang suir. [Vampire] She attacked the child.

Voice #3: Come, Mr. Kembang, do you expect us to believe that? That it was a demonic woman who attacked the girl?

Kembang: I saw her. She had long nails and held the child up to her neck and was drinking the blood.

Voice #3: Now.

[Loud crashes and a yell.]

Kembang: [Unintelligible]

- - - TRANSCRIPT ENDS - - -

# # # Classified # # #
# # # Unauthorized access is a violation of applicable Federal statutes and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. # # #

[Retrieved 22-JUL-2015 from dhs.gov.]

Love this stuff.

Reminds me of CP2020's newspaper stuff and the better GURPS sourcebooks and that's a compliment!