Friday, February 19, 2010

Kitchen Sink: The Setting

I had an idea to create the most Savage setting I could recently. I've got a rough concept going on, so here are some of the notes I made:

  • I don't want PCs that move between multiple universes, because I want to create a single setting people can exist in. Easier that way.
  • There will be zombies.
  • Strong pulp elements.
  • I want everything in the core rules to be represented, from the much-maligned Superpowers AB to the powered armor. This means we need a mix of fantasy, World War II era technology, and future sci-fi.
  • Strong weird elements (should be obvious by now).
  • Enough horror that the Guts skill is necessary.
  • Should take place on Earth...but not necessarily in real cities. We might see a guest appearance from Arkham, for instance. Maybe "Paragon City" fills in for New York while "Lakeside" fills in for Chicago.
  • Should have clear-cut heroes and villains. Any anti-heroes or persons in a morally gray area exist to either redeem themselves and become heroes or slide down the slippery slope to villainy.
So here's what I'm thinking:
In the war-torn land of Avalon, a desperate King Arturian III orders his most skilled sorcerers to cast out the plague that has infected the dead of his land...but something goes horribly wrong. The disease was more invasive than anyone realized and had infected the whole of the land, not simply the bloodthirsty zombies that roamed about. The world shifted, becoming whole again only at the most convenient point...a realm known as the Waygate...or to its inhabitants, Earth.

For millenia, Earth had been the nexus of thousands of multiverses. The Waygate lay at the center of a thousand universes, each stranger than the last. Earth's convenience made it a prison for pandimensional alien gods, a visiting point for sorcerers and mystics, a battleground for the forces of Heaven and Hell, and imbued many of its artifacts with a fraction of power. The Waygate suddenly found itself merged with a strange parallel universe.

The change was instant: Wherever the Mists of Avalon spread, the dead would rise and otherworldly creatures would emerge - the elves, dwarves, and other creatures of myth. After only a few months of such things, tales spread of another wave of visitors, these from the stars above...these "starmen" wield strange technology and vast knowledge. Little is known of their agenda, save that the Starmen are sworn to exterminate the undead scourge.

Meanwhile, rumors abound that the Nazi party in Germany is beginning to learn how to harness the power of the Mist. Can the heroes stop them, before the Waygate is torn apart?

Elf, human, dwarf, orc, halfling, and starman must take up arms against zombies, gangsters, survivors, the KKK, and Nazis in this two-fisted, pulp-splatterpunk, free-for-all. If it's an RPG trope, it's included.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey! I love me some kitchen sink fantasy, and this is a game pitch that would definitely get my interest!

One issue I can think of... power armor might be far and away the most desirable piece of gear in the game, at least in the core book. You might want to limit it's usefulness without removing it. Here's another blog post I found awesome about the same issue, different game:

http://www.jasonrichards.net/2010/02/knights-in-shining-power-armor.html

Then again, if I remember my SW, there's some mentalist/magic powers that don't give the target the benefit of its armor, so maybe that's a non-issue. Maybe zombies (or packs of zombies?) can use a power that lets them make an attack that's non-armor based, which would keep them dangerous no matter how cool your tank or power armor is.

I'd definitely roll up a long haired Norseman-type who could throw Hitler over the battlements into a horde of ravenous zombies!

Theron said...

I think powered armor will be so rare that it won't matter a lot, probably worn by an NPC villain or two. Otherwise, I have an ability to add to plague zombies I call "monster mash," which adds AP equal to the gangup bonus. Zombies also won't have an upper limit on gangup bonuses.

A pack of 7 zombies is dealing 2d6 damage with a raise at +6 AP and +6 to hit - plenty of trouble for a Starman in powered armor.