Thursday, May 22, 2008

Ritual of Links # 6: Detailing the Setting (Inspiration)

“DMs can fill in the details as needed.”- Monte Cook

I am working on detailing one region of the diamond throne setting, So I thought I would pass along some inspirations and some ideas so that you could detail your little corner of the Diamond Throne setting (or maybe just a new AE setting). We start with inspiration.

MOVIES: A rare gem that I think can give you a good idea is The Warlord

TV: normally I would promote babylon 5, but a rarer gem is Robin of Sherwood

BOOKS: Monte has been quoted directly as crediting Stephen R. Donaldson, Micheal Moorcock, and David Zindell;

GAMES: Penumbra series by Atlas games: a lot of their piecemeal campaign pieces and campaign style books are wonderful for developing a region of the diamond throne. In my humble opinion Crime & Punishment by Keith Baker is a must read.

PLAYERS: Similar to character driven campaigns let the players create characters, using the Themes of AE as guidelines, and let the world be created by their needs and desires.

REAL WORLD: Take a fantastic real world place,Then add a fantasy element to it, like adding a Genius Loci to Sigiriya

REAL LIFE: Forget X-files, try a real conspiracy!

MAP: you can draw your own, or you can just steal maps piecemeal

2 comments:

Grotski said...

huh, i've never really thought about adding stuff that the players want specifically. Thats a really good idea.

sounds a bit selfish really, doesn't it.

Unknown said...

Yeah

You should always remember that your playing a coopretive game, so why not make the setting more co-oprative, I would also add a secret to make the setting piece even a bit of a suprise to the player who gave you the idea.

Just remember to adapt thier ideas to the themes of Arcana Evolved.

Trust me I made this mistake for a long time before I started doing this.