In the last post I mentioned my newly minted setting of Dorisea. The post before that was an in-character lecture from the same world. Consider this post an introduction to the various settings I’m working on, either passively or actively.
Dorisea: My personal “generic OSR fantasy setting”, laced through with hints of the Weird. Immense fonts of magical power lurk just outside of visible reality, and ancient empires made a habit of tapping them. The fingerprints of this hubris are smeared across the earth, bleeding adventure where the nails dig into sweet Dorisea. Crawling boneless things from below, clouds of pearly fire from above, and monsters of all kinds from within the dreams of men. The spirit world, glimpses of which appear in sleep, works through its loyal Witches to remake itself in the waking world. The devils pile the silos of Hell high with souls, waiting to loose them onto Heaven, which watches the madness below with quiet curiosity. The Emperor, the first and the father of mankind, reckons with the ruin he invited to Eden. The unclaimed souls of the dead wash into the ocean, where they sink and congeal into nameless shapes. Yet, for all these discordant tones, life on the surface is peaceful. Unseasoned food tastes good, even the drabbest weather is sublime, and those who keep away from monsters and fairies tend to live quiet lives. This is not to say tragedy or terror is absent, but Dorisea is a phantasmagoria, and the world above ground is beautiful. The world below can be too, but dungeon-crawling is the drain of Dorisea’s misery and painful reality. The drowned above are Ophelia. The drowned below are bloated and worm ridden. Think Moebius, think 80s fantasy art and movies. Mix in occasional hits of the surreal, psychedelic, or horrific. Adventures are primarily about exploration, whether that be of striking landscapes or ancient dungeons. Dorisea also allows for caravan-style play and the ever-dreaded “pirate campaign”.
Sole Firma: An upbeat sci-fi setting I’m toying with, though I’m still shopping for a system. Untold millenia into the future, humanity has abandoned the curdling Earth for the luxury Dyson-Sphere Megastructure that has captured the sun. Though the energy budget of humanity has skyrocketed, so has their skill at hoarding. The colossal dyson-city of Sole Firma is divided up between vicious Sun-Barons, their styles ranging from elaborate corporate abuse to tanks of laser-sharks. The city itself is equally piecemeal, with Sole Firma able to contain genres from cyberpunk to space opera, and everything between. The scope of the setting is contained within the solar system (for now), but that doesn’t mean any lack of sentient life. Post-Earth civilizations of crows and octopi have just crossed the border of free thought, and Europeans (the aquatic inhabitants of Europa), Saturnians, and the Mindworms of Planet X are all common sights on Sole Firma. Humans now come in bizarre shapes, with genetic modification and cybernetic augmentation reaching technological fever-pitches. Artificial Intelligence is just as sophisticated, though bizarre. “Lower” AI are robots with chat-bots stapled onto them, while “higher” AI are digital prophets with unparalleled abilities of justification. Adventures on Sole Firma (and the wider world), are free-form, focused mainly on the mad whims of the players. Every single building on the sun is a possible payout, and the proper application of cybernetics can turn any first-rate security system into putty. Of course, any mistake can turn a wannabe robber into ash and giblets.
Spectral USA!: A pseudo-setting for the FIST rpg, dosed with heavy helpings of Hellboy. Spectral USA! takes place either sometime during the Cold War, or in the “modern day,” depending on the campaign. It’s a very loose setting that encompasses aliens, demons, mad science, urban legend, and anything else that can go bump in the night. The name refers to a brand of travel brochures with a habit of suddenly appearing in unsuspecting hotels and rest stops. Unlike other such “haunted” guides, everything in the devil’s trifold is unquestionably real. It’s a fun framing device, a way to work in plot hooks, and a personal touch on a world without rigid focus. One campaign in Spectral USA! might involve preventing an alien invasion of Portland, the next may be exorcising the Pope in Secret Rome. Beneath it all, the simmering nuclear tension of the Cold War lurks. Even the “Modern Day” in Spectral USA! is a bit of an illusion. The Cold War ended in 1985, when Frank Oppenheimer detonated his brother’s experimental “T-Bomb” and split the Chronon. Though the entire world believes it to be 2025, it is really 1986. The 40 decades collectively physico-hallucinated in a single terrible instant have drawn the attention of many inter-planetary, trans-dimensional, and noo-organic auditors, all of which are very eager to know exactly whose fault this is. Not all earthlings have been duped though, and the Frozen War continues to build tension in the upper echelons. Spectral USA! is zany. There are very few other words for it. It’s 50 states (and more!) of unrestrained nonsense, ready to throw player characters through the ringer.
Galisemni: Those familiar with Pathfinder 2e will recognize this, and those who aren’t might best think of it as Pathfinder’s “Sigil”. It is the economic center of the planes, the great trading post at the center of all things. It is a chaotic city stained with the effects of countless planes, each of them pulling and tugging for the grim power it represents; millions of planar castaways seeking coin and bread. I’ve created a Galisemni of my own, with nine surreal districts chock-ful of adventure sites. One can dine with faeries in the morning, spend the day in an interplanetary bazaar, catch a vampire-produced ballet in the evening, and end the night bleeding out in an overgrown alleyway. The multiverse beyond has also sprouted brand new arms, both additions to classic pathfinder concepts, and wholecloth novelties. Dearest to me are the serpent-folk (a disparate diaspora of ophidian ancestries, united by the deaths of their many gods), and Sundered R’yleh (a jungle drowned in godsflesh, the dinosaurs within growing fat and strange off divine blubber). My take on the Pathfinder cosmology is expansive, and I’m working on a rough atlas of it to share here.
There have been others before and there will be others after (dabbling with the ideas of sci-fantasy or weird-superheroes), but these are my current avenues of exploration. If any of these settings sound at all interesting to you, subscribe! There will be more coming for all of them, and the best way to hear more about something you’re interested in is to let me know. I also believe the best time to come up with interesting parts of your world is when you’re put on the spot with questions, and since juggling that many campaigns isn’t within my capabilities, I’m crowdsourcing setting questions from you, dear reader.
As an extra bon-bon to top off a nonstandard post, I’d like to offer a fun little “bizarre transdimensional animal” table I made after reading Slugblaster recently. Set your players against Time Falcons. Ride into battle on a Post-Horse. Flee from the horrifying Vorpal Louse.
| D8 | Modifiers | Animal |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Time-Temporal-Chronal | Shark |
| 2 | Psychic-Psycho-Phrenic | Squid |
| 3 | Meta-Quantum-Ur | Crab |
| 4 | Eternal-Infinite-Post | Louse |
| 5 | Cosmic-Void-Abyssal | Wolf |
| 6 | Laser-Doom-Ontophagous | Falcon |
| 7 | False-Mock-Fool’s | Horse |
| 8 | Vorpal | Mole |
Seaside Cyclops 
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