At the beginning of my last Castles & Crusades game, the party departed Ye Olde Fantasie Worlde (the generic proto-Tolkien ripoff setting I had whipped up in an afternoon) via the World Portal (aka, Stargate) to go and find the MacGuffin of the week with their Wizardly Patron and his Trusty Sidekick.
Unfortunately for our Intrepid Heroes, the World Portal they were traveling to had been severely damaged some unknown time ago by a pair of wizards dueling it out at the Portal site, and the strain of holding open the gate long enough for the whole party to get through was too much. With a clap of thunder and a blast of stone fragments and magical energy, the World Portal shattered. All the PCs made it through (albeit injured), but all they found of their Patron was a neatly severed arm lying in the smoking rubble.
Welcome, Rosy-Cheeked Heroes, to the World of Thraxx.
There aren't that many published campaign settings, at least that I'm aware of, where the Bad Guys have already won. Your typical D&D campaign world has Good Kingdoms and Bad Kingdoms and Evil Woods and Happy Woods and Skull Mountain and the Happy Hills, blah blah blah. And some of the more "epic" settings like Dragonlance are set during the time of a great struggle between Good and Evil, where the actions of the PCs may tip the balance and let Good Ultimately Triumph.
But what about those worlds, those sad, suffering worlds, where there was no Ragtag Band of Plucky Misfits to save the day? What you might best describe as Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy, where the Epic Battle Between Good and Evil has already been fought and Evil stomped on the throat of Good and took a wizz on it's still-smoldering corpse? Where are the games set on these worlds?
Dark Sun was one of these Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy worlds, and while DS has a strong, dare I say, "Cult Following", it didn't survive the TSR/WotC rollover, and I don't believe it was ever anything more than a niche setting. I've already written one column about this, so I'll just leave the Dark Sun discussion with "how much fun can you have when your big reward is that you didn't die of thirst before the end of the game session?"
And so...Thraxx. A generation ago, a being now known only as the Archon conquered the known world and cracked open a Gate to Hell. Merciless armies of evil humanoids, hordes of aberrant daemonic creatures, bizarre chaos-infested warp-spawn, and legions of the restless dead walk the earth, systematically enslaving or exterminating humankind and the other "good" races (Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, etc.). Civilization as it is normally conceived of is gone, baby, gone. There are only a handful of free, hidden refuges left - pockets of resistance scattered in the most shadowy corners of the map where the tread of Evil hasn't yet reached in force...but it is only a matter of time.
There is no friendly Magick Shoppe, no benevolent Wizard's Guild. No cheerful rustic blacksmiths willing to put a new edge on your long sword and take the dents out of your plate harness for a handful of gold coins. No warm taverns with a gaggle of stereotypical peasants and a bosomy barmaid walking around with a foaming jack of ale in each hand. All that pleasantly conventional tripe has been ground under the gore-stained boot heels of a thousand thousand minions of Pure Evil.
And the real zinger is, there is no One Ring to toss into the volcano. No unshielded ventilation shaft you can shoot a torpedo down and cause a chain reaction that'll blow the whole thing up. No secret Sword of Power that'll allow the Champion of Good to save the day. The puppy hasn't just been kicked, it's been stomped to death with soccer cleats, doused with kerosene, and set on fire so the bad guys can roast marshmallows.
I'm not sure how long this campaign arc will last. The players will have their victories, but sooner or later, they are going to realize that no matter how many battles they win, the war has already been lost. The question will then become not how do you win, but how do you live with failure? Do the PCs simply try to go down swinging? Do they try to save their own skins and find another way off this world, or do they try to be Heroes still and, if nothing else, find a way for as many refugees as possible to move to another world? Or, do they try to find a way to take down the Archon, seal of the Gate to Hell, and win the no-win scenario (hints of Captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru, for you super-nerds out there)?
As a final note: Masakari kindly pointed me to the "Midnight" setting by Fantasy Flight games. I hadn't actually seen this when I laid out for myself the original Thraxx premise, and while there are some similarities, I do want my setting (and especially the gameplay) to go in a different direction - but I am going to read through the wiki and see what can be gleaned from this material.
Unfortunately for our Intrepid Heroes, the World Portal they were traveling to had been severely damaged some unknown time ago by a pair of wizards dueling it out at the Portal site, and the strain of holding open the gate long enough for the whole party to get through was too much. With a clap of thunder and a blast of stone fragments and magical energy, the World Portal shattered. All the PCs made it through (albeit injured), but all they found of their Patron was a neatly severed arm lying in the smoking rubble.
Welcome, Rosy-Cheeked Heroes, to the World of Thraxx.
There aren't that many published campaign settings, at least that I'm aware of, where the Bad Guys have already won. Your typical D&D campaign world has Good Kingdoms and Bad Kingdoms and Evil Woods and Happy Woods and Skull Mountain and the Happy Hills, blah blah blah. And some of the more "epic" settings like Dragonlance are set during the time of a great struggle between Good and Evil, where the actions of the PCs may tip the balance and let Good Ultimately Triumph.
But what about those worlds, those sad, suffering worlds, where there was no Ragtag Band of Plucky Misfits to save the day? What you might best describe as Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy, where the Epic Battle Between Good and Evil has already been fought and Evil stomped on the throat of Good and took a wizz on it's still-smoldering corpse? Where are the games set on these worlds?
Dark Sun was one of these Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy worlds, and while DS has a strong, dare I say, "Cult Following", it didn't survive the TSR/WotC rollover, and I don't believe it was ever anything more than a niche setting. I've already written one column about this, so I'll just leave the Dark Sun discussion with "how much fun can you have when your big reward is that you didn't die of thirst before the end of the game session?"
And so...Thraxx. A generation ago, a being now known only as the Archon conquered the known world and cracked open a Gate to Hell. Merciless armies of evil humanoids, hordes of aberrant daemonic creatures, bizarre chaos-infested warp-spawn, and legions of the restless dead walk the earth, systematically enslaving or exterminating humankind and the other "good" races (Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, etc.). Civilization as it is normally conceived of is gone, baby, gone. There are only a handful of free, hidden refuges left - pockets of resistance scattered in the most shadowy corners of the map where the tread of Evil hasn't yet reached in force...but it is only a matter of time.
There is no friendly Magick Shoppe, no benevolent Wizard's Guild. No cheerful rustic blacksmiths willing to put a new edge on your long sword and take the dents out of your plate harness for a handful of gold coins. No warm taverns with a gaggle of stereotypical peasants and a bosomy barmaid walking around with a foaming jack of ale in each hand. All that pleasantly conventional tripe has been ground under the gore-stained boot heels of a thousand thousand minions of Pure Evil.
And the real zinger is, there is no One Ring to toss into the volcano. No unshielded ventilation shaft you can shoot a torpedo down and cause a chain reaction that'll blow the whole thing up. No secret Sword of Power that'll allow the Champion of Good to save the day. The puppy hasn't just been kicked, it's been stomped to death with soccer cleats, doused with kerosene, and set on fire so the bad guys can roast marshmallows.
I'm not sure how long this campaign arc will last. The players will have their victories, but sooner or later, they are going to realize that no matter how many battles they win, the war has already been lost. The question will then become not how do you win, but how do you live with failure? Do the PCs simply try to go down swinging? Do they try to save their own skins and find another way off this world, or do they try to be Heroes still and, if nothing else, find a way for as many refugees as possible to move to another world? Or, do they try to find a way to take down the Archon, seal of the Gate to Hell, and win the no-win scenario (hints of Captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru, for you super-nerds out there)?
As a final note: Masakari kindly pointed me to the "Midnight" setting by Fantasy Flight games. I hadn't actually seen this when I laid out for myself the original Thraxx premise, and while there are some similarities, I do want my setting (and especially the gameplay) to go in a different direction - but I am going to read through the wiki and see what can be gleaned from this material.
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