Thursday, September 23, 2010

An OSR Product I'd Like To See

I'd like to see a book of sandbox settings, similar to Points Of Light, but:

A) Ranging all over the place genre-wise, such as Mesopotamian, Sword & Planet, weird western in the vein of Stephen King's the Dark Tower, Transylvanian style gothick horrere, Lovecraftian colonial, fantasy Africa, Polynesian, native American, Viking Scandinavia, post-apocalypse, pre-Colombian mesoamerican, ancient India, southeast Asia, Atlantean, Rientsian gonzo fantasy, space station, age of cavemen and dinosaurs, etcetera, et al.

B) Being more "complete" with support material for the respective settings such as: one page dungeons, encounter tables, bestiaries, spells, equipment lists, and so forth.

Not only would this be a great resource for new campaigns but it would be great for extra planar travel, areas off of the known world of your campaign, other planets, cherry picking content for a campaign, and so forth.

Imagine such a product with the contributors being an all-star cast of OSTites!


11 comments:

  1. Sounds great... I think it's high time the OSR branches out a bit, too. We have enough "standard" D&D material to last several lifetimes already.

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  2. Sounds totally awesome!!!

    I just might spend money on a product like that. (yes, I'm very cheap. I hardly ever buy anything)

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  3. Sounds intriguing - could be fun to take part.

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  4. For a long time now I've hoped some creative types in the OSR would embrace Zulgyan's One-Page Manifesto and produce some Old School Sandbox Kits.

    http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=3775

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  5. I think the multiple (sub)genre settings is definitely a cool idea.

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  6. While we're adding all kinds of thing genre-wise, how about mechs/grav tanks? I'm thinking stuff like Battletech and Renegade Legion (bless old FASA games) not necessarily Gundam and other anime.

    FWIW, an excellent Mesopotamian setting appears in Minotaur Quarterly #8 http://mazesandminotaurs.free.fr/MQ8.pdf

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  7. A fantastic idea! I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I'd write it (or parts of it) if I had a few spare months of free time (which I sadly don't).

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  8. As it just so happens, I have been picking away at a couple of these with an eye towards far reaching travel. Sitting beside me are the bones of the eastern coast of a fantasy Africa, more than a dozen "Scandinavian" isles. Also, since no one seems to have done any straight up NEANDERTHAL stuff, I have a wacky little map with cave dudes, dinosaurs and winged serpent men (sound familiar?) and another that is for ice age cavemen with a huge glacier and lots of mammals.

    So, I suppose I had better get off my arse and write more. None of them quite have the detail of a PoL setting.

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  9. You guys have seen this, right?:

    http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-make-fantasy-sandbox.html

    and its continuation here:

    http://www.rpgblog2.com/2010/09/fantasy-sandbox-in-detail-part-xvii.html

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  10. My Gammafrost campaign was originally conceived as a Cavemen vs Mi-Go/space monsters/Gamma World mashup called Beast Lords of the Barrier Peaks, but morphed into something totally different.

    I should get back to that.

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  11. Thanks for all the comments guys! This isn't a product pitch or anything, it just seems like a great idea. Although I'm loving the ideas and examples presented, and I've had fun brainstorming about the different campaign ideas.

    I've got to throw up a quick post and get back to some work, I'll reply in detail soon.

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