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So I'm working on a weird sort of science-fantasy hybrid setting for DnD (think Eberron with cyberpunk elements) where there's a sort of glamorous upperclass moon hosting a dystopian ecumenopolis orbiting a more traditional DnD fantasy world it exploits for energy and food production. The fantasy world was colonized by the moon-city in the past but a successful yet disastrous attempt to harvest energy from the planet's core (it's not a normal real-universe planet but a core of pure magic) has left the planet literally fractured as the ritual involved merged parts of the feywild and shadowfel into the prime material plane and left the planet fractured (like a quarter of it is a massive crater and there's giant fissures crisscrossing the surface) and colonization attempts were scaled back leaving the magitech stuff behind. Thoughts? I'm mostly trying to figure out how to make the moon-city as interesting as the main planet, as a sort of high-level area players could potentially access.
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May 18, 2019 23:24
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Cantorsdust posted:To complicate matters, there are different factions in the moon city representing the various attitudes towards colonialism in general. The default seeks to "uplift" the natives as "the moon-man's burden" while heavily exploiting them in the process. But others argue for stopping such exploitation altogether--even if it means a decline in living standards/loss of power in the Capital. Still others seek to not just establish colonies for resource exploitation but ultimately annex and incorporate them into the Empire as true Imperial provinces and Imperial citizens, not just second-class colonists. Others are more xenophobic and would like to eliminate all life on the planet entirely, paving the way for its "resettlement" with proper moon folk. Dude yes! Ecoterrorist infiltration and stuff would be amazing. Why didn't I come up with that? Cantorsdust posted:The moon city needs something from the planet--magical energy/crystals? slaves for blood magic rituals? more mundane raw resources?--and it's up to the players and others like them to go get it. I like where you went with the magical energy. My original conceit had been that the energy was directly harvested from the core and just like directed along some leyline type conduit to the moon but it makes for more interesting resource dependency if I make it a mined crystal. So instead I think the conduit directly harvesting the core was the plan but it failed and caused the planet to be cracked but it did createdmagic crystals that can to be mined and are basically magic batteries. I originally only had food as the primary exploitation motive but more resources makes for more interesting things. Plus it'd be interesting loot for a party, especially as someone who isn't a fan of giving out fat piles of gold. More interesting to give out valuable things that aren't really useful directly and need to be liquidated or traded or something along those lines. This even goes further and lets me structure the basic progression of a whole long-term campaign: players start out planet-side, basic-rear end nobody PCs with a license to prospect for crystals in frontier areas (most of the planet at this point, since the lion's share of colonies had been abandoned for reasons I will need to re-assess given these changes), they progress along low-level-type content and dungeon crawls and maybe get noticed by someone important and end up getting involved with the moon-city to a greater degree. Eventually they could even get access to travel there (expensive and difficult because I don't like no-strings-attached teleportation - I could outline how it works in my world if anyone is interested) and that'd setup some higher-level stuff. You asked the right questions to get me moving forward in a good direction. Resting Lich Face fucked around with this message at 22:12 on May 19, 2019 |
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May 19, 2019 21:54
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