Beyond Terra Firma

Originally, this was going to be a blog for me to lay out the specifics for a fantasy roleplay setting. Considering how long it's been since my last entry and how little I've been thinking about fantasy roleplay, I think I ought to open this up to roleplaying in general. Currently, I've got one ongoing game in action and another waiting to get started.

In Dark Heresy, I'm playing Haxtes - a tech-priest and former acolyte of Inquisitor Karkalla. I say former because Karkalla met an unfortunate end during the events of the Tattered Fates adventure. We've picked up where that adventure left off and our GM is running us through a homebrew campaign. After a rigorous Inquisitorial investigation, our group was assigned to Inquisitor Octus Enoch and his Interrogator, Vanir. We are on a mission to Tigris IV to not only investigate a possible incursion by the Ruinous Powers, but also to prove ourselves free of the taint that claimed our former master. I'll get into what's been going on with DH in a later entry, but suffice it to say that I am very excited to be playing Haxtes again and I absolutely love this game.

I'll be stepping behind the screen for Rogue Trader (another Warhammer 40K rpg) later this month. I picked up a copy of The Frozen Reaches last week and have been feverishly going over it and getting more and more excited. My last endeavor to run RT was a module and it went...ok. My players seemed to enjoy themselves, but I consistently felt unprepared and ill-equipped. I'm attacking this campaign with a lot more fervor and attention to detail. Rogue Trader is easily my favorite of the three 40K rpgs and I really want to do it justice.

So basically, I'm opening up this blog to all of my roleplaying proclivities. Hoepfully this means I'll be posting much more often and that I'll have a sort of living record of my various campaigns and ideas.

The world with no name

As I write this, I'm thinking about the notebooks of handwritten scrawl that I have peppered throughout my bedroom. For the past 6 years or so, I've been slowly coalescing ideas for a fantasy setting. My notes on this world range from organized descriptions of elven social interactions to drunken sentence fragments about "totally awesome dino-riders". The point of this blog is to bring all of these notes together and try and make a cohesive whole.

Originally, I'd wanted to introduce this world to the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 scene, but I never quite felt it was ready. The only time I attempted to run a game in the setting, we stalled out during character creation because I didn't feel like I had enough info for my players. With the release of 4th edition D&D back in 2008, I dug up some of these notes and started making adaptations to include Eladrin, Dragonborn and Tieflings. Unfortunately, those revisions just didn't feel right and I went back to the drawing board with some of my core elements -

• Humanity is at the bottom of the totem pole - savage tribesmen living far to the northwest


• Goblinoids are everywhere and are a constant nuisance


• Dwarves live almost exlucsively in the vast and winding halls of Karaz-Garak - a mountain unlike anything on Earth (think Olympus Mons)


• Elves are jungle dwellers with deep ties to the forest


• Dwarves and Elves have a vehement hatred for one another and have only just recently called a ceasefire to their multi-generational war


• A great desert south of the human territories is guarded by eternal sentries and is a breeding ground for undead


• Dragons are nowhere to be seen, but are persistent in every race's legends and mythology

Nowadays, I have no definite system in mind for playing in this setting. Hell, the world doesn't even have a name yet. Still, I feel like there's a lot of potential here and I want to start bringing my notes together. Hopefully a little focus and a solid foundation will get the juices flowing.