Right, I know I’m still working on Esoterica but had some ideas for this paradigm (which is slightly influenced by Ravenloft...) so I thought I’d jot it down before continuing with Esoterica…

What about a smaller setting in a strange country, surrounded and cut-off from anywhere else by and endless dark, twisted forest…

• The forest never seems to end and people who venture too far into the forest don’t return. It could be a region of dark faerie tales…
• Perhaps the country has an 18th century Russian feel to it?
• Most settlements are peasant villages with some small backwater towns
• There’s only one big city, but it’s HUGE and notable because it plays host to just about everything that was unpleasant about historic cities: dark, dirty, dangerous, corrupt, diseased, impoverished.
• Dark lords reign supreme over feudal societies
• Perhaps a little bit of weird science (but not too much) for the Frankenstein-o-philes.
• Lots of fog, rain, storms, decay and ruined castles.
• Perhaps the majority of the day is night time, with only a few hours of daylight per day.
• Night is definitely a time to stay indoors! Perhaps all evil things take a mandatory advantage that ‘empowers’ them at night and all good things take a mandatory complication that ‘weakens’ them at night?

Finally, If you wanted to create a link to Esoterica, perhaps this is a Plane that has been twisted & corrupted by daemonkind…

5lippers, 2009/11/20 07:40

I like everything, but the one huge city thing raises some playability concerns for me. Part of Gothica is dark forests and distant castles of evil lords and crappy little villages plagued by supernatural threats, and so forth as you also note, so the one big city idea seems to run counter to that. Maybe I'm not understanding you clearly though.

The night part -> I would just build the characters normally, and deal w/ sunlight aversion as susceptibilities, physical lims, psychological lims, etc for the most part. There might be specific exceptions to accommodate things lifted from genre fiction (like Vampires extreme aversion to sunlight). The overall gloom and power level of the supernatural threats should be sufficient without mechanicing it further. Any such special rules applied with create friction for using the material in a cross=region fashion as people traveling to and from Gothica would actually be built differently.

I definitely like the idea of Gothica being known by 'Tweeners. However, instead of Daemon touched, i think it serves better as a realm being lost to Necrotic powers.

Killer Shrike, 2009/11/20 10:37

Hi Shrike, I agree with you about the city – it was a bit of an afterthought (with more ‘after’ than ‘thought’! ;-) ) and mostly to satisfy anyone who wanted a location where ripper-characters and Dracula-like monsters stalked the streets after dark. I like the idea of necrotic-based corruption as well as ‘moral’/daemonic corruption and think I might try and work this into the corruption bit in Esoterica somehow (yet to be written!) 5lippers, 2009/11/23 01:45

There's nothing wrong with having a really big city. Just make it not the 'only' city.

Imagine the world happens to have for instance two mountain ranges that divides the main continent into three, the three sections not easily reachable through the mountains, but with the two ranges converging at a single point where they 'can' be easily traversed. That point happens to be unusually fertile as each of the three continental sections have a major river that flows there, making that point exceptionally easy to reach for trade. It also happens to have an extremely nice natural harbor which lends good access to a few smaller island continents on that side of the main continent. It is an inevitability that that spot would give rise to a true metropolis, easily the largest city on the planet. Think medieval Constantinople.

For the dark being exceptionally dangerous, I agree with KS that one should not impose penalties on PCs and normal characters, lest someone coming into that realm find themselves 'less' disadvantaged than the inhabitants. However there is nothing stopping you from defining the denizens of the dark in that realm as having enhanced abilities/stats 'only usable at night'. That in addition perhaps to aversions to sunlight, etc..

Personally I have a hard time not thinking 'Lovecraft', when I think of horror. Perhaps the ancient Deep Dark was awakened in this realm at one point and it truly became a total hell. But that was a long time ago. Now the Deep Dark slumbers and the world has greatly improved. But the lasting taint of it has allowed the necrotic and other horrors to flourish.

But sometimes, the Deep Dark dreams...

Panpiper, 2009/11/23 10:32

With the city, I guess I was thinking along the lines of lots of small, extremely poor & vulnerable settlements, most of which are hamlets & villages with a few small towns and that there’s only really one settlement of city size: maybe it’s the fabulously wealthy capital of the Gothica country and there’s some sort of corrupt/evil/tainted/mad God-King (or God-Queen) on the throne here who cares little for their subjects so long as the luxuries keep flowing in to support their hedonistic lifestyle?

I’d definitely be up for a bit of HPL in this setting. I was sort of going down the D&D route with “The Beyond” in Esoterica playing host to these types of being (e.g. the Beyond is an alien place that is essentially the antithesis of the multiverse and therefore a fertile spawning ground for things that just shouldn’t be). I like the idea of tying to tie in Lovecraft horrors to this realm. Perhaps the fabric of the multiverse was weakened somehow, allowing unnatural and evil things like daemons, undead and Cthulhu slip through?

Hmm, the city-thing's got me thinking of another possible Esoterica dimension...

5lippers, 2009/11/24 00:30

I prefer Clark Ashton Smith over Lovecraft, but yeah.

However in the spirit of Generica, I would prefer to see a generic-HPL/CAS, generic-Romantic/Gothic (Stoker, Shelley, etc), generic-Victorian/Edwardian Horror mashup. Mixing the most recognizable and playable elements of each, giving none of them ascendancy or primacy over the others.

As to the Beyond...I thought it was just another term for the 'Tween. Did I miss something?

Killer Shrike, 2009/11/24 10:55

Hi Both,

I’ll check my terminology and change if necessary. Noting what you said above I just spotted this in the APG and thought it was pretty cool:

Curse Of The Night: Unluck 3d6 (15 “Active Points”); Only Applies At Night (-1). Total value: 8 points.

5lippers, 2009/11/26 23:27