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From The Hidden Room
Summary
This is a setting that I have been running games in since 1988, mostly using various editions of Dungeons and Dragons. It has the following traits:
- Inclusive representation: The game strives to accommodate a wondrous variety of fantasy concepts that represent the diversity of our own imaginations. People of color and LGBTQ identities are the majority of inhabitants of the setting. Furthermore, the setting avoids normalizing the tropes of patriarchy, misogyny, and bigotry, except as sources of unambiguous villainy.
- Ethnolinguistics inspired by the real world: The setting draws inspiration from real world cultures to portray its variety of languages. I hope the setting does this in a respectful and celebratory way. The most common language inspirations include: Albanian, Ancient Greek, Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, Hebrew, Japanese, Latin, Nahuatl, and Norwegian.
- High fantasy: Magic is powerful and common in this setting.
- High power scale: Heroes in this setting can not only shape the stories of their characters, but also regions, kingdoms, and even the universe itself.
- Magitech flavor: As the name of the setting may suggest, much of the magic of this fantasy setting is steeped in a technological flavor. Crystals that store data like a computer and complex clockwork mechanisms are not uncommon.
- Themes of desperation: The universe of the setting is almost always teetering on the brink of cataclysm. There are complex histories between factions of the setting, creating challenges to overcome these shared fates of disaster. Moral quandaries and impending disaster are common conceits to explore themes of justice and cooperation in the setting.
Cosmology
There are four categories of the setting's cosmology.
- Integrum: The ordered realms of natural laws, where concepts like gravity, life, death, light, dark, heat, and cold function in a consistent and predictable fashion. This is where most typical stories in the setting are told.
- Fury: Chaotic pockets of elemental dominion, where the natural laws are subject to the fiat of powerful elemental lords that rule there.
- Strange: Realms where natural laws defy conventional intuition, manifesting from dream-logic at best, or maddening nightmares at worst.
- Void: That which is outside of all and threatening everything else that exists.
Rules
- Character Creation: Steps for creating a player character
- Ability Scores: Description of core abilities
- Player Races: Rules for playable races
- Player Classes: Rules for playable classes
