New and Upcoming Settings

I get the feeling they may be thinking of retooling some of the scifi aspects. I think one of the challenges is keeping the secret tech layer plausible:

Originally the idea was that gods are actually AIs...but why would an AI decide to oversee the portfolio of a nature god?

Spells come from AIs that alter probabilities to reshape reality...why would AI do this for humans mages waving their hands around while chanting?

Similarly, nanotech connecting all living minds making psionics plausibe...why would a civilization do this?

I admittedly like the idea of an advanced tech civilization being responsible for a great deal of the fantasy elements, but think it might work better if the technology was of a magic wielding race like the spellweavers.

eta: Even better would be the magitech civilization that invented the Doombringer.

I thought about the OS interaction - but why would you then have material/verbal/somatic components?

Outside of the D&D system, magic actually has some rules ("like affects like", "a piece connects to the whole") that I don't think necessarily work under the AIs-doing-magic-for-you idea.

What I think a magi-tech civilization gives you is a bit more wiggle room, especially if you tie to the idea of information - like Warren Ellis once said, magic is the cheat codes to the universe.

I think you can still have AIs as gods, but make them overseers of various aspects of the world that essentially become gods over time. If the "bits" related to war are overseen by one AI, then since those "bits" would touch battles, soldiers, weapons it sorta makes sense in a pseudo-scientific way why that AI could become the god of war.

Similarly, information also helps explain the rules of magic. Like affects Like and Part connects to Whole work because in both cases the bits connect ->

Guano has "bits" that connect to gunpowder, whose "bits" connect to explosions and that's how you get to a fireball.

The "bits" of my hair connect to the rest of me, and that's how you get Part connects to Whole.

Of course, the reasoning for why this manipulation of "bits" needs magic to work the D&D way is still unclear...

I kinda figure technology would rely on magic, Eberron style. It is also possible that the D&D Multiverse obeys fundamentally different laws that only seem to match ours.

The book Prospero Lost actually posits that our world only works the way it does because Propsero made alliances with the spirits of electricity and such. Without those bargains, no technology would work.

Mage: The Ascension had a similar idea, that the Technocracy shifted reality so that reason and the scientific method could actually yield results.

=-=-=

More new setting stuff ->

Shanna Germain on designing for Monte Cook's Numenera setting:

http://shannagermain2.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/why-i-love-building-the-n...

Transmissions from the Ninth World, a Numenera Podcast:

http://transmissionsninthworld.blogspot.com/

Also, as long as I'm here, images from 13th Age:

http://aamcconnell.com/13th-age-gallery/

Game Mastering Numenera:

http://www.montecookgames.com/game-mastering-numenera/

"...it’s the lengthy Running the Game section of Numenera that really helps someone understand how to use this ruleset the way it is designed to be used. In other words, how to assess the difficulty of actions, the capabilities of NPCs, and how to use these things and the other tools at hand to help facilitate the creation of a cool story.

It is, in a very real way, a guide to how I like to run game sessions. While I’ve written about running games extensively in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, in Dragon Magazine’s Dungeoncraft, in Kobold Quarterly’s Game Theories, and in dozens of other essays I’ve penned over the years, it’s Numenera that actually comes closest to revealing how I personally run games..."

New Shadowlands Website:

http://www.saemyyr.com/

"The Shadowlands is an intentional blend of fantasy and science fiction. It is a post-apocalyptic world so advanced that it appears magical. Part of the realism of the Shadowlands is to re-imagine a world where the possibilities of fantasy are in fact possible, a remembrance of futures past, and to provide a narrative way for players to engage that. Accordingly, it takes inspiration from a number of different sources. The far-future stories of Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, A Canticle for Leibowitz and the Culture series of Iain M. Banks provide the science fiction foundations of our setting, just as heady films like Inception, Cloud Atlas, and Equilibrium paint images of what it’s like to exist in a world where magic and psionics are fundamental and also controlled!

Finally, the classic Dungeons & Dragons settings of old like Planescape, Ravenloft and the original Dark Sun give a sense of the ways that beliefs, ideologies, motivations, and factional affiliation can affect and encourage great roleplaying!"

13th Age: The New Tabletop Game From The Lead Designers Of 3rd And 4th Edition Dungeons And Dragons

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/05/20/13th-age-review-the-exce...

"This is an especially interesting game both in terms of its mechanics and its creators.

13th Age represents the game these two designers wanted to play—the game they sit down to play at their own table rather than a game designed by a corporation. (Both Tweet and Heinsoo have quite a lot to say about this in the below video interview, actually."

Rob Heinsoo: Five 13th Age Progressions

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=11316

Pre-Order 13th Age From Your Retailer: You Get The PDF, They Get a Discount

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=11650

If you’ve been waiting to order 13th Age because you want to support your local game store, your long and honorable vigil is over!

You can pre-order 13th Age at your favorite game shop now, and get the finished PDF from us that same day. Your retailer also gets a discount if they pre-order copies, so you’re doing them a double favor.

Here’s how to order 13th Age from your retailer and get the PDF now:

If you retailer is a member of the Bits and Mortar program, place a pre-order with them and they’ll give you a code to download the PDF.

If your retailer is not a Bits and Mortar store, email a scanned image or a legible photo of your receipt to Cat Tobin at [REDACTED], and we’ll send you a link to the PDF.

HEX MMO Trading Card Game

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cze/hex-mmo-trading-card-game

http://hextcg.com/story/history/

"A massive crystalline meteor hit Entrath near its northern terrestrial pole. It struck with such force that it traveled through the core of the planet...After exiting the opposite end of the planet, gravity captured the meteor...

What seemed at first to be a potentially world-ending calamity actually became the defining moment of Entrath’s future existence. When the meteor hit, most of its outer core shattered into countless gems that were scattered throughout the surface and underworld of Entrath...

...Unlike the rare and secretive practitioners of wild or blood magic, nearly anyone could extract potent sorcery from the Hexing Gems with study and practice."

"Amidst the great necropolis where the humans kept their fallen heroes in carefully constructed stone vaults, the Hexing Gems somehow caused the dead to awaken. The risen corpses, who called themselves the necrotic, were the first sentient race on Entrath created by Hex, and their existence and motivations remain mysterious. Fresh necrotic were “awakened” by socketing diamond Hexing Gems in the eye sockets of dead humans, who would arise with no memory of their former lives and an entirely new sentience....."

In depth 13th Age review, might be worth taking a look at:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15892.phtml

As I understand it the PDF isn't coming out on its own until September?

-Sci

Numenera for Educators:

http://www.montecookgames.com/numenera-for-educators/

"As promised, Monte Cook Games, LLC, will donate up to 300 copies of Numenera to educators or librarians.

• To be eligible for this donation, the recipient must be a teacher or librarian. To the best of our ability, we will verify that each requestor is a teacher or librarian

• This offer is valid worldwide. The only cost to the recipients will be the cost of packaging and sending the book to them.

• Interested teachers and librarians must simply complete an online form."

Ah missed this...but coincidentally that's the setting I'm coming here to post about:

Primeval Thule might be the Conan meets Cthulhu RPG the world needs

http://io9.com/primeval-thule-might-be-the-conan-meets-cthulhu-rpg-the-8...

"RPG veterans and Wizards of the Coast alumni Richard Baker, David Noonan and Stephen Schubert have teamed up to create Sasquatch Game Studio. Their first project? A multi-system campaign world called Primeval Thule that blends the sword & sorcery of Robert E. Howard with the cosmic horror of Lovecraft. This heady blend of pulp action and horror will be available for Dungeons & Dragons 4E, Pathfinder, Pelgrane Press' 13th Age, and the Call of Cthulhu RPG. If you order a pdf of any version (available now through their ongoing Kickstarter), you'll get pdfs of every version."

I got the Numenera setting book yesterday. ($20 pdf from DriveThruRPG) It's essentially science fantasy, the idea being that characters are surrounded by technological wonders but most assume them to be magic items.

Initially impressions are favorable. I didn't even read the rules, just looked over the setting material. On an Earth that might be in our universe, there were 8 great civilizations that disappeared, collapsed, or were destroyed. No one really knows.

One billion years separates the new, Ninth World, from our present day.

A few things these civilizations did was have an intergalactic empire, alter the planet and the sun, traverse new dimensions, set up a satellite based data-web, and advance nanotechnology.

I'd say the setting's scifi is akin to the more fantastical aspects of Star Trek, along with comic book science. Psionics, dimensional rifts, rules of reality altered. It's not Hard SF, but I think this helps the setting rather than hurts it. The way the Monte describes it is that while most of the magic has a scientific basis, you could turn it around and say the tech foundations are rooted in magic.

For fans of the New Weird, comic book mutants, and Book of the New Sun - there's a lot of good stuff in there.

Might be awhile before I use the rules to play a game, but I think people looking for a new game should at least seek out playtest reviews. If anyone just collects settings like I do, I'd say it's worth reading.

Images from the Hex MMO setting:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cze/hex-mmo-trading-card-game

Dragon Kings:

http://www.dragonkingsproject.com/

"The benevolent Dragon Kings who once ruled over Khitus have inexplicably vanished, leaving once-powerful nations at the mercy of foul creatures unchecked. Cold Skins and Krikis grow numerous and bold. Desperate cities of the Old Countries struggle against savage marauders who stalk ever closer to their crumbling walls. Ancient wizard schools guard their tomes more jealously than ever, essential to their dark sorcerous bargains, while the followers of a mysterious prophet rekindle the magic-that-is-not-magic. The essential materials of life and civilization are being ruthlessly plundered by the mysterious Pretenders in their Black Fortress, leaving the southern lands, especially, in dire straits."

This is really cool, thanks for the heads up!

I like the conjecture in the KS comments that Earth itself is just another recursion of a Prime.

Unwritten, a Myst based RPG using FATE:

http://www.unwrittenrpg.com/

"What many of our most brilliant physicists have long suspected is, in fact, true: beyond our universe, there are limitless others in mind-boggling variety. But humanity had never realized that the secret to those worlds was beneath its feet. For ten millennia, the D’ni lived in great caverns, ignoring the savages on the surface. Using their linking books, they built an empire that spanned dimensions. Its glory was ended abruptly a few centuries ago, and their city has stood empty. Until now.

Small groups of humanity have discovered the secret of the Deep City. Some have come to explore, and others have come to exploit. Some have been called to D’ni by a feeling they can’t describe, and try to make it their home. Others look out to the Ages, the universes suddenly open to them, and see opportunity and hope. And there are those among the Ages who are not happy that D’ni has begun to breathe again.

The D’ni civilization is no more. But the ending has not been written."

Lots of cool Naga ideas and images in the new 13th Age Bestiary preview:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=967

"One of the nagas’ biggest mysteries is their creation. Some legends about the pursuit of magic offer the naga as a cautionary tale. It’s often accepted that too much time spent consulting ancient tomes eventually warps the body as well
as the mind. The pursuit of knowledge can lead to breaking off relationships, changes to mind and body, and hoarding magical items. So perhaps nagas were created from obsessives who wore their magical items while they slept and spellcasters who never let enchantments end naturally. Of course, nagas
spit on such notions. . . .

Other versions of their origins suggest nagas choose to shed their original bodies. The humanoid form can only conduct so much power into spells. The naga form is able to absorb, store, and release much more arcane energy. Nagas are known to be
powerful ritual casters. Compared to the things nagas can do with enough time and energy, the effects of humanoid spellcasters are mere tricks of the light and illusions to fool children. The naga know where the true power lies and are willing to sacrifice
anything to achieve that power.

If they are not the result of a curse or the drive for knowledge, how are they born? There is no evidence of nests to reflect their serpentine heritage. Nagas seem ageless. “Naga eggs” sold as spell components by unscrupulous market dealers
always turn out to be the eggs of other supernatural creatures marked up for the rubes. Nagas killed in battle disappear in a flash of energy. Are they reborn? Is there a limited amount of nagas in the world? Perhaps the icons know the answer to this
question but haven’t told anyone..."

TimeWatch RPG:

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=13628

"The world has changed. Again.

China wasn’t supposed to colonize 15th century North America, right? And yet you find yourself being attacked by eunuch swordsmen in what should be San Francisco. Some time traveler told the Golden Fleet about the Pacific oceanic gyre that would lead them to a rich new land. Someone you’ll have to stop.

Welcome to TimeWatch."

~~~~

"In TimeWatch, paradox is handled through an ability called Chronal Stability, which takes the place of Stability in other GUMSHOE games. Cause paradox and you lose chronal stability; lose enough chronal stability and you become unanchored in time. This allows fun flexibility when solving missions; you can time travel forward to check the work of historians fifty years hence to figure out what happened in this timeline, or even have your future self leave you a cryptic note about what happens, but doing so risks chronal instability. You can plan your investigation accordingly, solving conundrums while keeping paradox to a minimum. Whether you’re dealing with a rogue time traveler who gave Hitler nuclear weapons, or mongols who sacked and burned all of western Europe, you may want the extra help.

The biggest change between TimeWatch and other GUMSHOE games are stitches (as in “a stitch in time”), an action point mechanic that rewards fun play and allows players to decide for themselves when to refresh their ability pools. If you find yourself getting nervous about how many Shooting points to spend because you can’t predict when they’ll come back, you’ll want to give stitches a try."