I figure since b/x and becmi are some of the most popular games in OSR, i'm trying to like Mystara so I wanted to get some reason why I should play it. How immersive is it as a setting, is it consistent? Like does it work as a world or does the logic break down quickly if you think about it too hard. Also the immortals in practice it seems they can be a bit overshadowing over the world.
Also why are there so many god damn furries
I never can make up my mind on Mystara. There are pieces of it I enjoyed. I've run Isle of Dread multiple times in at least 3 different systems. However, it seems uneven to me. Glantri just leaves me cold for some reason.
When I look at the maps of Mystara what it makes me want to do is start from scratch in the Worldographer map-making tool and build a similar map but with more consistent ideas about how everything fits together. Though it would be pretty cool to just recreate the Mystara maps in such a tool, but then rename all the places and groups, too.
Read it and make up your own mind is the best course of action. No one is going to write something in a couple paragraphs to make u like or understand the setting.
Right now I haven't quite figured out my own homebrew setting and was thinking if I had a premade setting that was "standard" for lack of a better term for D&D what should be my to setting. There is always Greyhawk, but they also have silly elements like the space ship, plus this Council of Nine which to my understanding ends up being a sort of emergency button for the DM to bludgeon players with if they do anything too disruptive. Plus inclusions like Melf the Elf etc, or that deity with a revolver.
3rd parties are great and I really do enjoy a lot of low fantasy but most groups I play with really do like high fantasy games that play with a lot of the core assumptions of D&D. Forgotten realms for me is out however, I really dislike that setting with a passion. I thought maybe Mystara could do it but I can't seem to find anything I really like about it. The immortals come across as too involved, and i'm really not a fan of anthropomorphic races in general.
Though I guess for here my biggest question is does the setting follow it's own internal logic, with the core assumptions of the universe is it plausible or is my immersion going to come to a screeching halt when I discover something like this civilization could never have developed naturally. Like Golarion in pathfinder so patchwork that you're better off treating each region as it's own setting, Eberron that somehow never developed firearms despite being basically 1920s game, or having a nobility despite not actually having a social caste system or even a feudal society.
I can't see myself talking you out of something that might be really awesome for your game.
My suggestion is to download the free .pdf of the Mystara Player's Guide by Glen Welch, that he has posted on this very forum a couple of days ago. Read it and see if you like it. Even if you don't go full Mystara, perhaps there is something that you will love to put into your game?
Link to post:
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/mystara-player-s-guide/
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 01, 2021, 02:39:42 PM
I never can make up my mind on Mystara. There are pieces of it I enjoyed. I've run Isle of Dread multiple times in at least 3 different systems. However, it seems uneven to me. Glantri just leaves me cold for some reason.
When I look at the maps of Mystara what it makes me want to do is start from scratch in the Worldographer map-making tool and build a similar map but with more consistent ideas about how everything fits together. Though it would be pretty cool to just recreate the Mystara maps in such a tool, but then rename all the places and groups, too.
"Isle of Dread."
Still one of the best modules ever written.
Quote from: Ocule on September 01, 2021, 02:30:01 PM
Sell me or Unsell me on Mystara
It is a kitchen sink of ideas which could potentially sell or unsell you.
And you can potentially play a shit ton of PC races which is triggering for some DMs.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 01, 2021, 02:39:42 PM
When I look at the maps of Mystara what it makes me want to do is start from scratch in the Worldographer map-making tool and build a similar map but with more consistent ideas about how everything fits together. Though it would be pretty cool to just recreate the Mystara maps in such a tool, but then rename all the places and groups, too.
Are you familiar with Thorfinn's Atlas of Mystara?
https://mystara.thorfmaps.com/
He's gone through a ridiculous number of maps from all the rulebooks, gazetteers, and modules and reconciled them.
Gedyur ozz ta da hollow vuhrlt! Neeeyigh.
(https://c.tenor.com/uX6IIbanrDcAAAAM/get-your-ass-to-mars-total-recall.gif)
Quote from: Ocule on September 01, 2021, 02:55:39 PM
Like Golarion in pathfinder so patchwork that you're better off treating each region as it's own setting
That definitely describes Mystara/Known World. I think the Gazetteers are brilliant, but they definitely do not describe a coherent setting.
Wow :o. You have done a great job. I can't even believe that it was all done by one person. I definitely want to try this :)
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on September 01, 2021, 04:56:54 PM
I can't see myself talking you out of something that might be really awesome for your game.
My suggestion is to download the free .pdf of the Mystara Player's Guide by Glen Welch, that he has posted on this very forum a couple of days ago. Read it and see if you like it. Even if you don't go full Mystara, perhaps there is something that you will love to put into your game?
Link to post: employee monitoring software (https://www.worktime.com/)
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/mystara-player-s-guide/
Mystara is a love it or hate it thing. I didn't mind the Expert sets and early modules, but once someone tried to make sense of it all in a cohesive setting it wasn't my cup of tea.
Mystara/Known World was my first D&D setting (even including homebrew) so I will be biased.
I think the biggest plus for Known World was the vast variety of cultures. You can have a mysterious magocracy (Glantri) right next to the Mongols (Ethengar). There were countries just for swashbuckling on land (Darokin) or at sea (Minthrod Guilds). You can two massive empires fighting each other for influence (Thyatis and Alphatia) or you can run in the D&D equivalent of Dune (Ylaruam). This is just the tip of the iceberg and does not even cover 2/3 of the Known World nor the Hollow World.
That being said, I think the best use of Known World is actually starting point for homebrew. As mentioned above, these areas are better treated as separate settings for campaigns or better yet, locations for various adventures much like how Conan would a pirate in one story and then the next be a ranger on the frontier in the next.
Full disclosure, I am very fond of the Pathfinder setting as well. Just not the company and the rule set.
Biggest attraction as well as what puts people off is the real world expies of nations. If you want to play a Mongol, a Viking, a centurion, a Comanche, or a Highlander this is where you want to be. If you want more fantasy elements then there's other settings.
Think of the entire setting as basically DND Australia. It evolved separately from the other settings so it have a lot of unique aspects that you're not going to find in greyhawk or the realms. There's only one type of playable dwarf because all the rest died from radiation. Our gnomes are actually competent. There's only one type of halfway because solidarity is their defining theme. The elves very from stereotypical Tolkien completely off the wall. Somewhere one of the designers said "you know what Zorro needs? Pointy ears." Even our Subterranean pointy gits are nothing like the drow, being in the naive cave fish stereotype.
Do you want to play anachronistic historical equivalents fighting some nightmare inspired bad guys? If you do, then play Mystara.
If Mr Welch can't convince you, no one can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrIbBixP5dU
Quote from: Starglyte on September 02, 2021, 08:31:39 AM
That being said, I think the best use of Known World is actually starting point for homebrew. As mentioned above, these areas are better treated as separate settings for campaigns
This is my feeling - choose one Gazetteer and build a campaign off that. Assume the other areas are more or less compatible backdrop areas to your star area.
I did this with
Dawn of the Emperors - Thyatis & Alphatia, pagan Romans vs Magi. Then 20-something years later I did it with
Grand Duchy of Karameikos, quasi-Christian Byzantines on the quasi-Balkan frontier. Two completely separate campaigns, both starting in 1000 AC and running for ca 30-45 in-game years.
It does not actually make any sense to have 3rd century pagan Imperial Rome next door to a 14th century Christian Byzantine colony, so you either ignore the huge worldbuilding gap*, or you choose your 'star' area, and you make the other areas compatible with it.
*Given that both Gazetteers were by the talented Aaron Allston, I suspect this approach was deliberate.
Mystara is where lots of gamers cut their teeth. It's hyper generic lands because it's for beginners to fill in the details themselves. Also your campaign was probably my campaign back in the day.
Clear out the Caves of Chaos.
Hunt down that rascal Bargle
Go to the Isle of Dread
Face of that loon Xanathon
Investigate and then kill the Master
Discover ol Palpy clone (the Master) somehow survived and has launched an assault on the known lands. (the War Machine/Battlesystem module)
tons of fun, good times.
I think it was a fantastic setting for my young adult self who had no conception of how anything in the real world worked. That's not intended to disparage the setting at all just a comment on what is and isn't in it. What I think makes it appealing is its potential use as an underpainting for your own home creations. Take a module or a region and draw it out your own way to suit your needs. You get a rough cultural template for any region and get to say the bad guys come from places with names you didn't have to come up with. Another fun thing you can do is mix in something like Birthright - do some cultural region matching and squish the two together. You get a bit more detail to work with.
Curious were alot of these more exotic and anthropomorphic races actually playable in the basic sets?
Quote from: Ocule on September 03, 2021, 10:33:54 AM
Curious were alot of these more exotic and anthropomorphic races actually playable in the basic sets?
No, the standard races from the first Basic set through the Rules Cyclopedia and the black and white boxes were the dwarf, elf, and halfling. The alternate races (and alternate classed versions of the 3 standard demihuman races, because Basic used race as class) were scattered among the Gazetteers and were a prominent feature of the Creatures Crucible series. Many of those alternate classes were questionable, from both a conceptual and a mechanical standpoint.
You can take this as an attempt to unsell: If I wanted to grok something as formidable as Glen's Mystara sourcebook, I would probably just pick up the Guide to Glorantha (regardless of what system I planned to run in it), or some other classic Glorantha setting books.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQPXbAIKA94
From what I hear, Glorantha would definitely tick the boxes of being both immersive and consistent.
Quote from: Ocule on September 03, 2021, 10:33:54 AM
Curious were alot of these more exotic and anthropomorphic races actually playable in the basic sets?
They were not added until later. The 2 biggest races in the Lupin and the rakasta didn't appear until they were added in Dragon articles but they were done clumsily. A good chunk of the races were put in with the creature crucibles, with varying results
I haven't played it, but I read that it was the first setting to make the elemental planes remotely interesting by giving them actual geography. Also, Dark Dungeons X is a retroclone that includes rules for space travel.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 03, 2021, 01:08:01 PM
I haven't played it, but I read that it was the first setting to make the elemental planes remotely interesting by giving them actual geography. Also, Dark Dungeons X is a retroclone that includes rules for space travel.
The elemental planes in BECMI were slightly different from the vague abstractions in AD&D, but they were still vague abstractions.
Quote from: Pat on September 03, 2021, 01:30:19 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 03, 2021, 01:08:01 PM
I haven't played it, but I read that it was the first setting to make the elemental planes remotely interesting by giving them actual geography. Also, Dark Dungeons X is a retroclone that includes rules for space travel.
The elemental planes in BECMI were slightly different from the vague abstractions in AD&D, but they were still vague abstractions.
Yeah, I'm probably mixing it up with DDX's refinements and the atlases on pandius.com. Long story short, the idea is to take the geography of the prime material plane and then make it themed after an element. Makes you wonder whether the elemental planes are necessary to have at all.
Oh man, yeah. I have a deep fondness for this setting. It was our default for many years.
What I like about it:
Voyage of the Princess Ark
The Hollow World
Heldannic Knights
Duchy of Karameikos
Black Eagle Barony
Blackmoore
The Immortals from Wrath of the Immortals
What I don't like:
The whole day with no magic every year - but WotC says it ain't canon so you should be good/s
Glantri is meh for me - if you wanted wheelchairs of diversity it'd be here hehehe
and that's about it. I'm sure I can find other stuff the longer I think about it.
Would I play in the setting today, sure. But I just run stuff in my homebrew setting where I liberally steal from everywhere else.
I think of fondness of the poor wizards almanacs - man so many good npc's
Ah, good times.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 03, 2021, 02:12:14 PM
Quote from: Pat on September 03, 2021, 01:30:19 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 03, 2021, 01:08:01 PM
I haven't played it, but I read that it was the first setting to make the elemental planes remotely interesting by giving them actual geography. Also, Dark Dungeons X is a retroclone that includes rules for space travel.
The elemental planes in BECMI were slightly different from the vague abstractions in AD&D, but they were still vague abstractions.
Yeah, I'm probably mixing it up with DDX's refinements and the atlases on pandius.com. Long story short, the idea is to take the geography of the prime material plane and then make it themed after an element. Makes you wonder whether the elemental planes are necessary to have at all.
I've been doing that for decades. And I get rid of gates. You don't suddenly appear in another world, you just walk. Walk into the volcanic badlands to find the City of Brass, step off the top of a mountain onto a cloud to find the realm of cloud giants and djinn, climb into the primal mountains to find the scheming dao, and discover the marid under the clearest seas. Not every mountain or sea has such realms; you need to know which areas are most imbued with the primal essence of the element. And while you can walk there seamlessly instead of teleporting, these are secret ways to otherworldly realms, and the world shifts around and becomes more representative of the element as you walk.
You need a guardian who casts magic mouth on a fearsome golem that says "Answer me these riddles three ere ye pass or else be gone. Answer well and the lock falls free. Answer them poorly you shan't travel on! If you want to offer an answer true then heed ye well this subtle clue."
Then the party kills it for XP with a stone to mud spell and beat the guardian up ordering him to summon more golems for you to kill as a level up scam until he is out of spells. Then they sacrifice him to a neutral deity.
------------
Sphinx : What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the noon, three legs in the*...
Monk : Quiveriniiiiiiiiing Palm!!
Spinx: X X P
Monk: : KRUNCH! It takes three licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop.
Cleric : What praytell is a tootsie pop wise sage from afar?
Monk : Stop role playing. DM gib XP NAOW! Pizza will be here soon.
DM : I HATE YOU GUYS! READ A BOOK!
Greetings!
I would say that unless you have a well-developed home-brewed world you have invested in, Mystara is a good selection. Mystara is as good as anything--standing I think in good company with Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or anything else. Mystara is certainly a kind of Gonzo, "Kitchen Sink" kind of world. I would think for the people that hate that kind of approach--are definitely more suited to just designing their own home-brewed world. I think Mystara has its charms, though, and while seeking to provide a Gonzo world that is suitable and attractive for new gamers and DM's alike--much like Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms--it does so with its own sense of style and flavour.
As S'mon mentioned, each gazetteer can definitely function as a entire campaign setting. A group of players starting out in Karameikos, or Ethengar, can easily be entertained and occupied without ever leaving such an area. The Bruce Heard expansions dealing with the Princess Ark adventures are very entertaining, fun, and inspiring. I used to read them regularly, and I don't even run a Mystara campaign.
Honestly, Mystara really is great! It offers endless variety and possibilities for virtually any kind of campaign. I think it is important to rememeber that it is not likely that a player group is going to be extensively exploring six or a dozen different cultural locations or gazetteers in a campaign. Chances are they will focus on far fewer. Certainly one, and maybe one or two beyond that. The DM should narrow their lens so to speak, and develop the areas with far more detail and depth. As I alluded to earlier, for example, if you are playing as a Mongol warrior in Ethengar, a well-developed campaign can keep you busy there for an entire campaign, with not much need to go beyond its borders and parameters. The same could be said for most any of the Mystara gazetteers.
In developing my own world of Thandor, I came to grips with many of the same dynamics found in Mystara, or Greyhawk, or Forgotten Realms. And I actually downplay or avoid much "Gonzo" elements, instead preferring a more unified, historically-inspired Ancient World/Dark Ages themed world. Even in my own development, for example, as I detailed my own world's Norse environment--in doing the research and incorporating much of that into my own world--I was blown away by how enormous, how diverse, how wondrous such an environment is. A Norse "Bronze Age" environment or iron-age environment has so many different Norse tribes; some are coastal sea-farers, while others live deep in the forests. Meanwhile, other Norse tribes live in the hills and mountains, and herd animals. Then there are long-distance trading by both land and sea with Britons and Celts, Germanic tribes, Baltic tribes, Slavic tribes, as well as Finnish people to the east. Add in a few Siberian/Asian migrating tribes, too. Fantastic elements include various kinds of undead, as well as werewolves and other lycanthropes. Giants, ogres, goblins, dwarves, gnomes and elves are all readily included. Then you can have lots of elemental creatures and spirits of earth, air, water, and fire. And of course, Dragons. Later in the campaign, players for example can perhaps run into Roman-like people, Greek peoples, Scythians, Asians, or eventually even Persian-like peoples. The variety is staggering, even from a more historical-minded approach. Add in fantastic elements, and yeah, an enormously rich and deep campaign can be created for the players being centered on some no-name coastal Norse town in the Dark Ages.
That same kind of richness, depth, and variety can be achieved also with a Mystara campaign.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: BronzeDragon on September 02, 2021, 09:48:56 AM
If Mr Welch can't convince you, no one can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrIbBixP5dU
Legit. If Mr. Welch doesn't get you hyped for Mystara, nothing anyone here says can or will.
It's such a fun setting. There's literally something for everyone, and TONS of space left for you to make what you want. Read GAZ1. When you're done with that one you're probably know if you want to read more.
So I've binged on mr welches mystara videos and the one I think was the most helpful was actually the video on tying it all together. It confirmed my suspicion that the world was a bit patchwork and that the authors of the various nations didn't really talk to each other. Idk if it'll be go to for me but I think it's cool.
I did have an idea though to take Thyatis and take inspiration from elder scrolls in terms of how to tech up their empire to be a little less out of place
Mystara is a hollow world with more nations hidden inside the planet, and it is hinted that it may be a heavily modified Earth after a cataclysm or other event and the cultures may have been seeded at some point by colonists following particular ancient traditions rather than societies form from peoples developing cultures naturally which is why they are sorted into zones that seem arbitrarily defined. Or at least that is how I remember it being explained when they tried to tie it all together. It looks like a giant revivalist Disney World type park/preserve that went native over a long time following some disruption because it sort of IS!
BTW, if you've not seen it, here's a really cool blog by Lawrence Schick about how he and Moldvay came up with Mystara together, before it was ever the official B/X setting: http://www.blackgate.com/2015/02/07/the-known-world-dd-setting-a-secret-history/
Neat stuff.
Wasn't there also a connection to Blackmoor?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 10, 2021, 11:36:09 AM
Wasn't there also a connection to Blackmoor?
Yes. Blackmoor is canon Mystara. It existed thousands of years before the "current" time (~1,000AC), blew itself up and altered the planet and pissed off some elves.
Quote from: Mithgarthr on September 10, 2021, 12:10:16 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 10, 2021, 11:36:09 AM
Wasn't there also a connection to Blackmoor?
Yes. Blackmoor is canon Mystara. It existed thousands of years before the "current" time (~1,000AC), blew itself up and altered the planet and pissed off some elves.
The prehistory of Mystara seems to be the result of massive overdoses of crack and LSD.
I mean hell, the only reason there's magic in the world is because a spacecraft crashed in the mountains thousands of years ago and the reactor's leaking.
Sounds delightfully 80s