Preamble
So I've been writing up these tables, and it's been a ton of fun, and personally rewarding, but I realize that there's a lot going on with this setting, and that the tables provide no real frame of reference, which can make it difficult to keep track or make sense of the setting. On the one hand, Weird & Wonderful is what I'm all about, and I like the idiosyncrasies, the things that are intriguing but under-explained, that make people have to think about a setting. At the same time, you have to be invested enough in the first place to delve into the arcana of it all, and I want you (yes, you) to want to do that.
I've considered writing detailed writeups for each species, class, mythic being, creature, place, faction, and so on, and if I ever want to make this a book I'll have to do that, but I'm not sure that will really solve the problem of "pitching" the world in the first place. I've also considered writing some short fiction, which I think would help and would also be personally rewarding, but I'm struggling with where to even start with that.
So for now, I'm just going to talk about:
Phantasmos: The Big Picture
Phantasmos is a post-post-apocalyptic weird science fantasy setting. It's Heavy Metal Magazine, Moebius, Jack Vance, Grant Morrison, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Phillip K. Dick, Neal Stephenson, Charles Stross, Neal Gaiman, Jack Kirby, Pendleton Ward, Justin Roiland, Dan Harmon and everyone and everything else that's ever influenced me, and a little bit of my own weirdness as well.
I want you to come out of reading my Phantasmos works thinking "Wow, that's really cool, and I've never seen anything like it". I know that there's no such thing as true originality, that everything is just a rehash or combination of something else, but I hope that Phantasmos is more than the sum of its parts.
So what actually is it though...
It's a fantasy world with fantastical beings, but these aren't your typical orcs, elves, dragons, and dwarves, and hopefully, it doesn't just read as porcs, shmelves, dragins, and bwarves.
Instead, you'll find a kafka-esque bureau-industrial complex of mutants, cannibal ghouls giving each other skin-gasms in the positronic remains of an ancient civilization, zen fascist raptor-men...
Warriors who bend spacetime, coder-mages, BDSM science witches by way of Michel Foucault, particle-to-wave Heisenbergian roller-punks, free-loving necromancers (neck-romancers), bio-punk immunologists, multi-dimensional mystics inverting the abstract concept of "self" vs. "other" along its axis...
A "paraverse"- like a multiverse if every moment of space and time (along dimensions known and unknown) interacted like a connectionist neural network defying laws of linear causality as we understand them...
Elements like a spectrum running perpendicular to electromagnetism representing the metaphysical concept of qualia, a substance beholden to principles of logic fundamentally incompatible with Shannon entropy...
At this point, you are probably totally confused and either A) intrigued and maybe a little aroused, or B) annoyed and totally checked out. This means either I've failed to convey my thoughts into written words, or this just isn't for you.
But if this seems as rad to you as it does to me, then I hope you'll stick around!
As someone who enjoys the sci-fi madness of everything I've seen from Phantasmos so far, my biggest question is: how will you render these fantastic ideas in a way that is tangible and usable by the prospective GM? I, too, enjoy the idiosyncrasies, but there is some large, central thing that needs to be put in place to turn Phantasmos from a rich, inventive idea garden into a place that someone could enter and explore.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to seeing more as it develops. Especially a session log from a playtest.
To me, there are potentially several through-lines which ground the setting, but I've been struggling with how best to present those things :/. At some point I'd like to do more detailed posts about some of the more fundamental and/or unique qualities of the setting, like what the Paraverse is, and what the Astral Plane or Yellow Plane are, as I think those could be conceptual entryways into the setting. I've also thought about doing more of a history of the setting / lore dump, but there are certain things where, even though I may have my own interpretation of that history or lore, I want it to be mysterious and something where a GM or group could make it their own. There are also certain subtext / themes I've tried to explore within the setting, that also might be useful for someone coming into the setting, but I don't think it is necessary to the setting to explore those themes, I think any themes could be explored.
DeleteI like your idea of a session log! It only took my players one or two sessions to "get" the setting, and I think the emergent stuff in play really helped ground it for them. I obviously write GM notes and usually some post-game notes, but I've never written or recorded a proper session log, although it's something I've wanted to do for a while. My group hasn't met in a while due to summer scheduling difficulties, but next time we play I'll try to think about this!
Also, thank you for your compliments!