That’s a great comparison! : )
I see Carl the Wolf King - I mean, Apex - isn’t on this list. I take it’s because there’s not much practical difference between this version and the main timeline?
(Likewise for Nightmist & Alpha, I imagine)
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And Gloomweaver! He’s kind of a given to fit right in this setting.
Also, Allcastle/Terror Tower team-up plz!
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Gloomweaver is actually surprisingly out of place in a fantasy setting; all the pieces work, but the general vibe of a Louisiana-style bayou voudoun cult just feels like it should exist as a deliberate anachronism among the malcontents of the modern era. I would suggest refluffing him as more of a lich-king type, substituting “swamp” for “ice” as his milieu, with open servants rather than a cult, and renaming the Relics to Phylacteries or something.
Apex, on the other hand, yeah not much needs to change. Alpha will take some thought though, as “reporters” weren’t really a thing in the middle ages. A royal herald or town crier is about as close as you can get.
Correct on all accounts.
Well, if I ever decide to tell any stories in this setting, I’ll keep that in mind. ; )
I respectfully disagree. Just replace bayou and voodoo with swamp and dark magic, and Gloomy would work just fine. Sure, he’s less unique in a more magical setting, but there’s no way around that. And changing him into a lich king actually removes his main defining feature: that he is practically omnipotent, but is stuck in another realm.
Agreed. Hmm . . . I’d probably go with an inquisitor or a scrivener with her, depending on what I wanted to emphasize. I suppose both might work?
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I would suggest making Gloomweaver a living mortal wizard.
Who would then “comes back” as a lich in the information age future of this world just like the evil wizard(s) from Marvel Connan/Red Sonja comics that showed up to fight Marvel superheroes.
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That concept has never really worked for me (at least not in EE; the new version seems a little closer. If Gloomweaver is in another dimension, then why can Legacy punch him? Even on Advanced he’s still vulnerable to nine of the eleven damage types. Maybe the idea of a non-target villain hadn’t yet occurred to C&A when he was designed (particularly given that he was a guest character from another designer), but if he’s meant to not be here until summoned, then it seems obvious he ought to work like Miss Information or Kaargra Warfang. Instead, with the mechanics he has, it fits for him to just be some wizard looking for ultimate power.
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Hmm . . . interesting, I suppose. My concern is that it still leaves him rather bland in the medievalesque age. Additionally, I don’t think that this timeline will ever actually get an information age. In my mind, this world is much more attuned to magic than to science and technology, so the closest it would get is perhaps some sort of magitech Eberron-esque setting.
You do have a point. However (if I may borrow your schtick for a brief moment) I think that I could justify it. The GloomWeaver HP pool could represent lots of other things, like the enchanted idol that it does in DE, for instance. Or it could be a portal or altar that the heroes have to destroy. Or, Gloomy could be only partially manifesting on the Prime Material Plane — half here, but also half still in the Realm of Discord.
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No, see, what you need to do is fight the Terror Tower in the Ruins of Allcastle environment, with your lead hero being King Aldred (who is actually an enchanted suit of armor which originally sat on the throne at the Allcastle’s heart, but came to life and believed itself to be King Aldred reborn after the Castle’s original defeat).
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You know, I said it in this thread but I wouldn’t mind hearing a canon story of something like the Terrorform being corrupted by Omnitron code or controlled by Chokepoint. I don’t know if there was opportunity for either of those to happen. Really just any story with the Terrorform at this point.
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I like the concept, but I’m not so sure about the name.
If my memory is serving me correctly, the Terrorform debuted in the ‘00s (or maybe the ‘10s?), which I believe is when Omnitron-IV and X/U are the only active versions, but I think that Chokepoint could work.
Well we can’t exactly call him Allcastle-X, now can we? Time travel in general is very off-theme for a fantasy setting, so rather than having the hero associated with the Allcastle be an evolved future version of it, it is instead the magical “heart” of the castle, which was initially expected to rule the kingdom (“if King Arthur did not exist, we would have had to invent him”). In fact, it would make a lot of sense to reverse the causality behind King Aldred’s guilt, and say that the Allcastle didn’t rise and go on its rampage until after the “golem” who sat on its control throne, and was crafted by the Aldred Order wizards for the purpose but was never intended to be sentient, woke up and went off by itself, leaving the Allcastle as essentially a hungry beast with no conscience to guide it. The animate armor, with its false memories of being a flesh-and-blood king named Aldred, wandered like Frankenstein’s monster in the wilderness, but eventually learned of the Allcastle’s attacks and went back to stop it. When he sat on the throne again, however, he had changed and grown so much that he could no longer fully control the castle, and could only disable it for long enough that it could be destroyed, and him along with it. Alas, the heroes didn’t fully understand how the wizards had designed it to rebuild itself; the ruins were thought haunted for a while, but eventually the castle rose again, stronger than ever, having absorbed much of the King’s mind. Only an expert golem-crafter could recover the shattered armor from the ruin site and rebuild King Aldred, so he could again go and confront his other half.
I think that’s the best I can do to tie together Omnitron, Cosmotron, O-X, O-U, and O-4 without using any science fiction tropes.
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Mark Twain would like a word… He did it before H. G. Wells!
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Connecticut Yankee isn’t fantasy. It’s time travel to the actual middle ages, not to a quasi medieval kingdom with magic and monsters and such.
Uh… Arthur? Merlin? Sounds like fantasy to me.
I take some of it back, though. Apparently Wells and others had stuff before Time Machine that pre-dates Yankee.
Of course, this thread is all @fjur’s brainchild. They can have time-travelling sci-fi dragon wizards as they see fit.
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And I will call them science fantasy, if so.
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Close, '99 based on the Kickstarter reveals.
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Your reasoning for King Aldred makes sense, @The_Justifier. Although I’d probably call him King Aldred X (pronounced the Tenth rather than ecks). Or maybe just Aldred the Tenth?
How I see it is that A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is both science fiction (the science-based time travel) and fantasy (the magic). And I suppose that it then could also be called science fantasy.
I do think, though, that a solely fantastical setting could have time travel. Just make it powered by time magic rather than a time machine.
I sure can! Except I won’t, because the point of this is to be solely fantasy. Superhero comic books already have cyborgs and sorcerers together in the same setting.
Also, thanks for the correction, @Samantha_The_Demoncat!
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You’re quite welcome!
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I don’t really see time travel as that off brand for high fantasy RPG settings. Chronomancy is a school of magic after all… or before all. or something.
Before you get to the time travel villain, I would like to remind you that in many high fantasy RPGs (both pen and paper and video games) there is already a high amount of anachronism for “pirates”. the world seems like King Arthor until you get on the high seas when it suddenly seems more like Francis Drake.
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