Isle of the Weird - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Dreamstryder Sep 26, 2014 20:12:20	In the mood for dinosaurs, pirates, and wrecked spaceships, I’m repurposing the Isle of Dread map to make my own wonder-isle sandbox described by its ecclectic mix of inhabitants. Each islander group has: potential as both friend and foe some scenario hooks some established interactions with other groups on the isle. (PS: This thread is basically my brainstorming and developing a setting complete with hooks and some NPCs. Don't let that stop you from chiming in with questions, ideas, or gonzo stories of your own!) Pirates There are wrecks from varied civilizations around the isle, and these treasure-hunters and technology-scroungers are the likeliest to know how to use a weird item or use a combination of magic and technology to build ghost forcefields and flying ships. Their “natural” predators are undead found in the wrecks, not all of which are from this planet. Some aren’t even filled with safe atmosphere. Expect firearms in their peg legs (heavy crossbow) and extendable prosthetic arms (whip, grappling hook), various mecha (AC 12, 50 hp, giant hand 1d8, +3 Str). Neanderthals In the blizzard-smitten highlands inland, strange, isolated creatures live in the harsh environments and in the volcanic thermal valleys. The scattered tribes of neanderthals in this area live by herding wild animals into traps. In the middle of the isle, they could be traders and guides; their main challenge: to find resources. Cats The housecats of the isle are people. Some practice dark sorcery, able to disguise themselves as other races or raise undead. They hire out their services as ninja by varied parties. Supposedly, hidden villages of them exist. Dinosaur knights These castle folk (humans?) mine the mountains and train the terrible beasts of the lowlands. Some demand donations from the surrounding tribes from driving off large predators during their hunting and capture excursions. Each castle is a different country. One fort is under attack from a fearsome dragon because a they stole its eggs to raise dragon mounts to defeat their enemy, the Great King Barf, tyranno-rider. However, they have no one who can defeat an adult dragon. Merfolk The most elaborate culture is the great merrow domain of the surrounding waters, full of traders, guides, and artisans. They are biologically unable to return to underwater life without their distinctive garments (you can find merrow refugees in other places). ~Wandering NPC ideas~ Young giant come of age to strike out and seek her fortune. I wonder if she shipwrecked here, but the isle has enough food on it for her to take time planning her next move. Most dino-knights think she’s a monster, but other groups might worship her or be simply unfazed by her size. She carries a (giant's) cask full of gold “filings”: coins, bullion, nuggets, trinkets. For all the clout she could offer the PCs as a courier, guard, or hired arm, she can't enter cramped dungeons for obvious reasons. The errant robot knight is the epitome of high-efficiency chivalry. He bleeps antiquated poetics, is rocket-powered, and avoids the sea. I assume he wants to discover why he was made, but I may make that question allegorically unanswerable.
#2 iserith Sep 26, 2014 20:59:17	Taken from the awesome blog The Dungeon Dozen: Features of the Pleistocene Island d12 1. Titanothere-driven city on colossal stone wheels 2. Smilodon-riding sub-goblins 3. The mountain of 10,000 terraces 4. The invulnerable caveman who walks through the air 5. Benevolent wandering reptile-man missionaries of the Old Religion 6. War between the wooly rhino matriarchy and the host of the mammoth lord 7. Flightless bird-riding proto-kobolds 8. Giant cave halflings 9. Levitating pyramid: yeti holy site reachable only by esoteric transcendental discipline 10. A viking-style longship converted into lodging for neanderthal clan equipped with rusty viking-style gear 11. Hovering platform of the sky gods: plainly visible in good weather, UFOs come and go routinely 12. Abandoned terrestrial bio-lab of the sky gods from which all manner of strange and terrible creatures stagger forth to menace the world
#3 Dreamstryder Oct 10, 2014 15:24:04	Great site, Iserith; I'd forgotten it. As the game itself is delayed until more people have free time, I'm still trying to further develop this (and updated the OP with material and explanations). I thought it would be fun to have housecats as an NPC race at all, but I'm not sure I have fun ways they could interact with the PCs. I'm also not sure what the merrow could add to the setting in general.
#4 Dreamstryder Oct 25, 2014 10:50:08	Faced with silence from beyond, I'll just build by myself here, and anyone's welcome to watch or join in (maybe it will be useful to somebody). Let's start with the Neanderthals: Subject matter is only as interesting as it give the players a new dynamic with the game's world, so I'll change the very things adventurers are bound to deal with: Settlements: Nomadic villages of 8-25 individuals who interact with other villages. Wealth: the neanderthals trade in service and kind; coin is only decoration for them (all coins = cp). Gods and Magic: Most established powers in their world are not even humanoid, so neither are their gods. Ape charms (for good luck?). Cordyceps god: inhale the spores, get its power, you will become a new piece of the god someday. One village's braves gave themselves to the cordyceps god to fend off dino-riders; they succeeded, but everyone is now haunted by what remains of these warriors. The sentient symbol: It molds all in its image. Don’t get close. It’s the god of some aliens who left it here and no one here has the instruction manual. Gods from whom you can steal power: crashed alien ships, derelict labs. Robots (see monsters): Offer the robots specimens in exchange/apology for taking some of their cool tech toys? Equipment: no large blades or metal armor. They might have shields. I’d like to give them gliding pterosaurs, saber-toothed cats and drake hunting companions, giant goats or lizards that can scale sheer cliffs with rider, and titanic war beasts. Concerns: resources, weather, beasts, natural disaster, raiders. Monsters: Not limited to the expected prehistoric animals. Terrestrial anglerfish (bullette variant?), undead tribesmen who were lost in the snow, cults of the fungus god, and the robot “gods”: drones around space wreckage sites who observe life forms and collect samples for their now derelict ships’ labs. Scenarios: In the cold mountains, new volcanic activity creates thermal oases. There, an ancient civilization of Intelligent dinosaurfolk awakens from hibernation and drives the villages away. They remember ages ago when they entrusted humans with some of their gift (see dino-rider magic below), and wars broke out, almost destroying their ancestors. Never again! A leader among them wishes to reclaim past lands from the villages, perhaps even wipe them out. A race of robots emerges from a derelict lab and tries to communicate to a nearby neanderthal village that some horrible robot entity from "the day after the day after tomorrow" is following the robots and the villages must take precautions to survive. Too bad no one speaks binary. Some village chieftans with close encounters with strange meteorites or robot labs have returned with strange powers. They wage raids on nearby villages. Something has been picking off villages this winter, leaving behind sweeping yet intricate geometric marks in the area. Some traders have been circulating pieces of a strange object one village (the first to vanish) found in the depths of a mountain cavern. "This strange material passed through all the villages destroyed thus far, but we still have it! Lucky, huh?" Alien abductions? Eldritch horrors? Last stand of the mammoth knights! The mammoths themselves are forgetting their powers or armorcraft and speech, but their last matriarchs and patriarchs still remember war, and do not appreciate the mammoth hunter village's autumn raids.
#5 Dreamstryder Nov 01, 2014 22:41:30	Time for Dino-riders! These guys are inspired from a lot of things, mostly old video games; I'll let them speak for themselves. Settlements: Walled towns of earthen houses. A few small towns and a big one or two, each their own country. They farm, raid each other, and trade. Protected by dino-riding warriors. Gods: The dinosaur gods: depicted but not physical beings, stand for abstract societal concepts to live up to, not necessarily things you pray to for luck or magic. Magic: Each regent has a cloistered community of seers and wizards who perform miracles for the country. These mystics are all of an endangered, magical race who look like the other humans except for some tell-tale sign (ie a jewel embedded in their body, a tail, or other distinct, yet concealable sign; I'm undecided). I'm also unsure if magic is in their culture, blood, or both. They swear allegiance to their dino-riding regent, but many may actually be allied with each other against their dino-rider conquerors (depends on how they view themselves in relation to the dino-riders). Rumor has it there are scattered mystics in other areas of the isle, but they are always rare. If the regents hear word of any of them, they ride out and claim them (by force, if necessary) for their country’s prosperity. Concerns: wealth, farmland?, mystics Scenarios: A town is under attack from a fearsome dragon because a they stole its eggs to raise dragon mounts to defeat their enemy, the Great King Barf, tyranno-rider. However, they have no one who can defeat an adult dragon. Rumor of a miracle-worker among a certain neanderthal village has reached the ears of King Barf, and town knights have been trying to find if there is a genuine mystic to be claimed before their rivals. Can the village survive without their mystic? Is there only one? Would one pose as the “only one left” so the rest of them can remain? No one, by law, is supposed to mistreat a member of these mystics, and enemy mystics are to be taken alive to preserve the secret arts, but a new ruler could emerge who decides to put them all to the sword out of fear of their magic, or decides to destroy them if they won't ally with the country. Perhaps a regent is conducting research into mystics to give all high officers their power; will that country's mystic community then be inducted into the power circle or be seen as an alien liability and purged? The dino-riders near the rift where small isles drift in the sky is attacked by wyvern-riding knights of a kingdom hidden in the depths of the rift. Are they competing for the mined ore or crystals therein, or is the rift a holy ground to them? Does something terrible sleep in the rift? Or does some now threatened blessing or technology keep the isles of the rift afloat? The beloved royal member of a subterranean dino-rider kingdom is captured by a clan of fire-breathing, curse-flinging monsters that live in the deeper depths lighted but by magma flows and ghostly flames. How many castles does the monstrous clan have down there, and which one holds the captive? What civilization built all these tube passages they’ve been using, and where do they all lead?
#6 Dreamstryder Jan 16, 2015 20:12:07	Robots Settlement: A crashed fortress in the desert populated by a robot village. These, like other robots on the isle, are not necessarily human-shaped, but could be shaped like xorns, centipedes, or be immobile walls or pillars specialized to their hive. There are also the ghosts of robot villages who did not survive, hidden in the wastes, working as normal, but not unresponsive to non-ghostly phenomena. Perhaps they landed in another plane, because they do respond to other ghostly beasts of the wastes, like the rotting dragon phantasmagoria and the strange lights that race across the skies in patterns at night. There is also a geothermal lab in the cold lands where neanderthals and robots have mingled to create a society of mechanically gifted mystics and robotically augmented warriors. Concerns: Maintaining facilities, harvesting ore. Scenarios: An academic has marked many of the patterns of the ghostly lights above the wastes, and theorizes they lead to wrecked ships, buried ruins, or contain a drawn plan or message. Some robots are trying to either bring the ghostly robots over to this plane or escape to the ghostly plane, reasoning they would all benefit from further collusion, or of the mind they were all supposed to be in one plane or the other to begin with. They point to fragmented records of fortress fleets and the architectural similarities among their and the ghostly cities. (The reality could be the fortresses were friends and foes in a forgotten war.) There are strange storms of "magic" in the desert that enchant those caught within. The robots have discovered ways to shield themselves from storms, but the weather is getting worse of late: dust storms that petrify those caught within, waves that turn the sand into slippery glass beneath travelers's feet, and lightning without rain, all seemingly originate from strange structures in the desert. As you can read, some ideas I brainstormed in the OP I've since dropped or rewritten, and I've been keeping a list fo all the areas required by the scenarios so that I can later place them on the map (which may differ quite a bit from the Isle of Dread, now that I look at it). I suppose this is the end for the thread. I don't know if anyone has been reading this but me, but here it is. This project’s Appendix E: Chrono Trigger Secret of Evermore E.V.O.: Search for Eden the fiction of Clark Ashton Smith Joust Golden Axe Black Tiger Breath of Fire Wonder Project J2 Legend of Mana

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

Dreamstryder

Sep 26, 2014 20:12:20

In the mood for dinosaurs, pirates, and wrecked spaceships, I’m repurposing the Isle of Dread map to make my own wonder-isle sandbox described by its ecclectic mix of inhabitants. Each islander group has:

potential as both friend and foe
some scenario hooks
some established interactions with other groups on the isle.

(PS: This thread is basically my brainstorming and developing a setting complete with hooks and some NPCs. Don't let that stop you from chiming in with questions, ideas, or gonzo stories of your own!)

Pirates

There are wrecks from varied civilizations around the isle, and these treasure-hunters and technology-scroungers are the likeliest to know how to use a weird item or use a combination of magic and technology to build ghost forcefields and flying ships. Their “natural” predators are undead found in the wrecks, not all of which are from this planet. Some aren’t even filled with safe atmosphere.

Expect firearms in their peg legs (heavy crossbow) and extendable prosthetic arms (whip, grappling hook), various mecha (AC 12, 50 hp, giant hand 1d8, +3 Str).

Neanderthals

In the blizzard-smitten highlands inland, strange, isolated creatures live in the harsh environments and in the volcanic thermal valleys. The scattered tribes of neanderthals in this area live by herding wild animals into traps.

In the middle of the isle, they could be traders and guides; their main challenge: to find resources.

Cats
The housecats of the isle are people. Some practice dark sorcery, able to disguise themselves as other races or raise undead. They hire out their services as ninja by varied parties. Supposedly, hidden villages of them exist.

Dinosaur knights

These castle folk (humans?) mine the mountains and train the terrible beasts of the lowlands. Some demand donations from the surrounding tribes from driving off large predators during their hunting and capture excursions. Each castle is a different country.

One fort is under attack from a fearsome dragon because a they stole its eggs to raise dragon mounts to defeat their enemy, the Great King Barf, tyranno-rider. However, they have no one who can defeat an adult dragon.

Merfolk

The most elaborate culture is the great merrow domain of the surrounding waters, full of traders, guides, and artisans. They are biologically unable to return to underwater life without their distinctive garments (you can find merrow refugees in other places).

~Wandering NPC ideas~

Young giant come of age to strike out and seek her fortune. I wonder if she shipwrecked here, but the isle has enough food on it for her to take time planning her next move. Most dino-knights think she’s a monster, but other groups might worship her or be simply unfazed by her size. She carries a (giant's) cask full of gold “filings”: coins, bullion, nuggets, trinkets. For all the clout she could offer the PCs as a courier, guard, or hired arm, she can't enter cramped dungeons for obvious reasons.

The errant robot knight is the epitome of high-efficiency chivalry. He bleeps antiquated poetics, is rocket-powered, and avoids the sea. I assume he wants to discover why he was made, but I may make that question allegorically unanswerable.

iserith

Sep 26, 2014 20:59:17

Taken from the awesome blog The Dungeon Dozen:

Features of the Pleistocene Island

d12
1. Titanothere-driven city on colossal stone wheels
2. Smilodon-riding sub-goblins
3. The mountain of 10,000 terraces
4. The invulnerable caveman who walks through the air
5. Benevolent wandering reptile-man missionaries of the Old Religion
6. War between the wooly rhino matriarchy and the host of the mammoth lord
7. Flightless bird-riding proto-kobolds
8. Giant cave halflings
9. Levitating pyramid: yeti holy site reachable only by esoteric transcendental discipline
10. A viking-style longship converted into lodging for neanderthal clan equipped with rusty viking-style gear
11. Hovering platform of the sky gods: plainly visible in good weather, UFOs come and go routinely
12. Abandoned terrestrial bio-lab of the sky gods from which all manner of strange and terrible creatures stagger forth to menace the world

Dreamstryder

Oct 10, 2014 15:24:04

Great site, Iserith; I'd forgotten it.

As the game itself is delayed until more people have free time, I'm still trying to further develop this (and updated the OP with material and explanations).

I thought it would be fun to have housecats as an NPC race at all, but I'm not sure I have fun ways they could interact with the PCs. I'm also not sure what the merrow could add to the setting in general.

Dreamstryder

Oct 25, 2014 10:50:08

Faced with silence from beyond, I'll just build by myself here, and anyone's welcome to watch or join in (maybe it will be useful to somebody).

Let's start with the Neanderthals:

Subject matter is only as interesting as it give the players a new dynamic with the game's world, so I'll change the very things adventurers are bound to deal with:

Settlements: Nomadic villages of 8-25 individuals who interact with other villages.

Wealth: the neanderthals trade in service and kind; coin is only decoration for them (all coins = cp).

Gods and Magic: Most established powers in their world are not even humanoid, so neither are their gods.

Ape charms (for good luck?).
Cordyceps god: inhale the spores, get its power, you will become a new piece of the god someday. One village's braves gave themselves to the cordyceps god to fend off dino-riders; they succeeded, but everyone is now haunted by what remains of these warriors.
The sentient symbol: It molds all in its image. Don’t get close. It’s the god of some aliens who left it here and no one here has the instruction manual.
Gods from whom you can steal power: crashed alien ships, derelict labs.
Robots (see monsters): Offer the robots specimens in exchange/apology for taking some of their cool tech toys?

Equipment: no large blades or metal armor. They might have shields. I’d like to give them gliding pterosaurs, saber-toothed cats and drake hunting companions, giant goats or lizards that can scale sheer cliffs with rider, and titanic war beasts.

Concerns: resources, weather, beasts, natural disaster, raiders.

Monsters: Not limited to the expected prehistoric animals. Terrestrial anglerfish (bullette variant?), undead tribesmen who were lost in the snow, cults of the fungus god, and the robot “gods”: drones around space wreckage sites who observe life forms and collect samples for their now derelict ships’ labs.

Scenarios:

In the cold mountains, new volcanic activity creates thermal oases. There, an ancient civilization of Intelligent dinosaurfolk awakens from hibernation and drives the villages away. They remember ages ago when they entrusted humans with some of their gift (see dino-rider magic below), and wars broke out, almost destroying their ancestors. Never again! A leader among them wishes to reclaim past lands from the villages, perhaps even wipe them out.
A race of robots emerges from a derelict lab and tries to communicate to a nearby neanderthal village that some horrible robot entity from "the day after the day after tomorrow" is following the robots and the villages must take precautions to survive. Too bad no one speaks binary.
Some village chieftans with close encounters with strange meteorites or robot labs have returned with strange powers. They wage raids on nearby villages.
Something has been picking off villages this winter, leaving behind sweeping yet intricate geometric marks in the area. Some traders have been circulating pieces of a strange object one village (the first to vanish) found in the depths of a mountain cavern. "This strange material passed through all the villages destroyed thus far, but we still have it! Lucky, huh?" Alien abductions? Eldritch horrors?
Last stand of the mammoth knights! The mammoths themselves are forgetting their powers or armorcraft and speech, but their last matriarchs and patriarchs still remember war, and do not appreciate the mammoth hunter village's autumn raids.

Dreamstryder

Nov 01, 2014 22:41:30

Time for Dino-riders! These guys are inspired from a lot of things, mostly old video games; I'll let them speak for themselves.

Settlements: Walled towns of earthen houses. A few small towns and a big one or two, each their own country. They farm, raid each other, and trade. Protected by dino-riding warriors.

Gods: The dinosaur gods: depicted but not physical beings, stand for abstract societal concepts to live up to, not necessarily things you pray to for luck or magic.

Magic: Each regent has a cloistered community of seers and wizards who perform miracles for the country. These mystics are all of an endangered, magical race who look like the other humans except for some tell-tale sign (ie a jewel embedded in their body, a tail, or other distinct, yet concealable sign; I'm undecided). I'm also unsure if magic is in their culture, blood, or both. They swear allegiance to their dino-riding regent, but many may actually be allied with each other against their dino-rider conquerors (depends on how they view themselves in relation to the dino-riders). Rumor has it there are scattered mystics in other areas of the isle, but they are always rare. If the regents hear word of any of them, they ride out and claim them (by force, if necessary) for their country’s prosperity.

Concerns: wealth, farmland?, mystics

Scenarios:

A town is under attack from a fearsome dragon because a they stole its eggs to raise dragon mounts to defeat their enemy, the Great King Barf, tyranno-rider. However, they have no one who can defeat an adult dragon.
Rumor of a miracle-worker among a certain neanderthal village has reached the ears of King Barf, and town knights have been trying to find if there is a genuine mystic to be claimed before their rivals. Can the village survive without their mystic? Is there only one? Would one pose as the “only one left” so the rest of them can remain?
No one, by law, is supposed to mistreat a member of these mystics, and enemy mystics are to be taken alive to preserve the secret arts, but a new ruler could emerge who decides to put them all to the sword out of fear of their magic, or decides to destroy them if they won't ally with the country. Perhaps a regent is conducting research into mystics to give all high officers their power; will that country's mystic community then be inducted into the power circle or be seen as an alien liability and purged?
The dino-riders near the rift where small isles drift in the sky is attacked by wyvern-riding knights of a kingdom hidden in the depths of the rift. Are they competing for the mined ore or crystals therein, or is the rift a holy ground to them? Does something terrible sleep in the rift? Or does some now threatened blessing or technology keep the isles of the rift afloat?
The beloved royal member of a subterranean dino-rider kingdom is captured by a clan of fire-breathing, curse-flinging monsters that live in the deeper depths lighted but by magma flows and ghostly flames. How many castles does the monstrous clan have down there, and which one holds the captive? What civilization built all these tube passages they’ve been using, and where do they all lead?

Dreamstryder

Jan 16, 2015 20:12:07

Robots

Settlement: A crashed fortress in the desert populated by a robot village. These, like other robots on the isle, are not necessarily human-shaped, but could be shaped like xorns, centipedes, or be immobile walls or pillars specialized to their hive. There are also the ghosts of robot villages who did not survive, hidden in the wastes, working as normal, but not unresponsive to non-ghostly phenomena. Perhaps they landed in another plane, because they do respond to other ghostly beasts of the wastes, like the rotting dragon phantasmagoria and the strange lights that race across the skies in patterns at night.

There is also a geothermal lab in the cold lands where neanderthals and robots have mingled to create a society of mechanically gifted mystics and robotically augmented warriors.

Concerns: Maintaining facilities, harvesting ore.

Scenarios:

An academic has marked many of the patterns of the ghostly lights above the wastes, and theorizes they lead to wrecked ships, buried ruins, or contain a drawn plan or message.
Some robots are trying to either bring the ghostly robots over to this plane or escape to the ghostly plane, reasoning they would all benefit from further collusion, or of the mind they were all supposed to be in one plane or the other to begin with. They point to fragmented records of fortress fleets and the architectural similarities among their and the ghostly cities. (The reality could be the fortresses were friends and foes in a forgotten war.)
There are strange storms of "magic" in the desert that enchant those caught within. The robots have discovered ways to shield themselves from storms, but the weather is getting worse of late: dust storms that petrify those caught within, waves that turn the sand into slippery glass beneath travelers's feet, and lightning without rain, all seemingly originate from strange structures in the desert.

As you can read, some ideas I brainstormed in the OP I've since dropped or rewritten, and I've been keeping a list fo all the areas required by the scenarios so that I can later place them on the map (which may differ quite a bit from the Isle of Dread, now that I look at it). I suppose this is the end for the thread. I don't know if anyone has been reading this but me, but here it is.

This project’s Appendix E:
Chrono Trigger

Secret of Evermore

E.V.O.: Search for Eden
the fiction of Clark Ashton Smith
Joust

Golden Axe

Black Tiger

Breath of Fire

Wonder Project J2

Legend of Mana