World Wanderings -- An Itinerary

Part of my interest in gaming is exploring worlds, and perhaps reshaping them or adding something to their history. As part of my efforts to focus my gaming writings (aside from reviews and news), I'm going to try to focus on specific settings tied to an RPG system or genre.

Fortunately, I already started on the 'kitchen sink setting' series to get me started, and I plan on continuing it (though the HERO Universe setting certainly made me question my sanity). My approach here is to tie the settings more closely to a system or genre that I'm interested in and explore it from there. Unlike the 'kitchen sink setting' series, I hope to hop back and forth between these settings for a while.

Current World Wandering Itinerary:

Mystara - no surprise here. I've been writing about this for a while now. This time, though, I hope to come up with a series that allows me to go through the setting in more depth -- but I haven't found the right hook or angle yet. Perhaps by a travelogue, or sticking various D&D modules and mini-settings from all editions into it will be my approach.

Enigmundia - originally inspired both by Mystara and the shared fictional universe of Hinirang, I hope to further define it beyond history by using RuneQuest 6 -- character templates, types of magic, and so on. At the same time, I hope to gain inspiration not only from the older versions of RuneQuest and the Gloranthan setting, but also from Cthulhu Invictus -- perhaps the sword and sandal elements will mesh nicely in my version of the Hollow World in Enigmundia.

Earth 641 - a new entrant, this is essentially a brainstorming exercise for the super-hero genre. I hope to flesh out some of my ideas for a combined DC / Marvel Universe (perhaps an outgrowth of the JLA/Avengers series in 2003) from the Cosmic Egg born from the brief union of the two universes. I'll be throwing in some stuff from other source material too, of course -- even RPGs. It'll be defined largely using Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, as well as through short essays and timelines on this setting

I'll do some experimentation in the PBEM that I'm running, but I do enjoy playing with super-hero mythology.

Fading Suns - In the absence of the revised version of Fading Suns, I'm picking through various storytelling systems like FATE as well as some interesting systems like True20 and Unisystem might provide a welcome alternative. The thing is, I want something to deal with the psychic abilities, theurgy, and the big SF stuff -- which means I either go narrative, or start crunching the numbers with something like HERO. We'll see.