How this whole crazy thing got started

The short version:

Samurai barbarians fight paranormal entities that re-animate the dead, mutate the living, and twist reality--among the ruins of an advanced civilization on a planet that orbits a dying star.

How we got there:
So last summer the incomparable Jeff Rients (not worthy! not worthy!) came up with a neat formula for creating campaign settings. I'll let you read up. Done? Okay, so this was my proposal. And it's been stewing in my brain for a while. Actually, I've written quite a bit of the material, and I'm using this blog to begin fleshing it out. Anyway, the original idea is listed here, but now I can explain myself a bit:

1. System: Ruins and Ronins version of S&W Whitebox (technically cheating I guess)
I wanted something decidedly Asian and the R&R version of Whitebox was enough of a departure from the regular rules and added enough flavor that it was an easy choice.

2. Supplements: Oriental Adventures and Expanded Psionics Handbook
I'm not sure exactly how much I'll need from OA, and technically I should have varied it a bit more from the rules I chose, but I figured it would bolster my Asian-inspired setting. I wanted this to be very science fantasy, in the sense that the magic is really based on sci-fi conceits. For that reason, and also because I planned to include a strong psionic element from the beginning, I went with the EPH. To be honest, any solid psionics material will work, this one was cheap and easy to obtain. I've also had my eye on the next revision of X-plorers which might possibly include psionics.

3. Fluff: A Princess of Mars, A non-fiction book on exo-planets; and Ghostbusters, the movie
So the John Carter and Exoplanets material is to help broaden the scope from a mere "realm" I wanted a very solid planetary feel with strange beasts exotic locales, plus some more basic sci-fi tech (hover skiffs and ray guns). The people on Keturo are also a near-barbarian equivalent. They're re-discovering their ancestors' more civilized, bushido-like ways, but they have to make do with the ruins and remnants around them. I liked how the Tharks and Red Men of Mars lived among the ruins of much more advanced society, I envision the Keturo living the same way. The exoplanets book helped inform that the world was an old one--that came with all the problems of a world orbiting a dying star (like Jack Vance's Dying Earth series) but this helped mitigate all of the source material which seemed like baggage to me at the time. As soon as you say "Dying Earth" that leads into a whole setting already well established, and while I like it, I needed to push away from it.

Ghostbusters is the key to the whole thing. I wanted the people on this planet to be outnumbered by the dead, simply because the world was so old. The dearly departed have remained so, but a strange otherworldly anomaly has awoken them--and worse yet begun mutating them and the living. The result is a waking nightmare. To stem the tide of ghostly and re-animated weirdness, teams of demon hunters have been formed to exterminate. Ghostbusters made the grade. Within the ghost-busting teams (just like in the film) we have a mix of warriors and investigators. It was important that they try to learn as much as they can about the phenomenon behind the weirdness so they can be more effective at routing it.

But after doing this exercise, I realized I would need to break Jeff's cardinal rules (keeping the supplements limited) because I had an over-arching story developing. So I need to add to more to the fluff list:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Akira
• Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke
• Cthulhu, minus the tentacles
• Smallville, minus the emo teenagers

I know what you're thinking: where the hell is this going? No worries, I've only been cherry-picking a few ideas from each. I don't want to go into detail as to why (it would spoil the details at this stage), there's clues in each of these in regards inspiration/influences.

So how's that for genre-bending!

Keturo, a sword and planet/science fantasy setting

This blog is for my Keturo setting for Ruins & Ronin written by the talented Mike Davidson, a supplementary setting for Swords & Wizardry. He's done a wonderful job of creating a modified ruleset for S&W that's Asian inspired, instead of the typical Western fantasy/pulp that is so pervasive in D&D clones.

I wanted this campaign to be more than just a fantasy RPG setting though. It's more of a science fantasy or sword and planet setting. Think Edgar Rice Burroughs world of Barsoom (Mars) with a Japanese influence. The planet itself is very old and circles a star that's near the end of it's life. As a result of wars and ecological disasters (natural and manmade) the planet's populous has met with catastrophic loss. Eons have passed and now the remaining people are near-barbarian-like, but are still cohesive enough to continue a dark ages civilization. The dead greatly outnumber the remaining people of Keturo.

This world, which was already "on the ropes" as it were, has been assailed by a powerful entity that's re-animated their ancestors and twists their reality to it's strange will. They're looking for a way to defeat the entity or face extinction in the face of a growing army of dead.

Nine Against Us

The nomadic tribes have traveled across this dying world and it's long-forgotten ruins for longer than anyone can remember. We've made a life for ourselves in pockets here and there, hunted the wild herds for food when necessary, and done our best to till what little life is left in the soil. It's in the ground that we find things: remnants of a thousand great empires--their writings just gibberish. These "ancestors" have left many signs of their societies, and brag from beyond the grave about the lives they lived in luxury and with magics we could never comprehend...but they've been gone for so long that the continents have shifted, burying their sins for we, their children to find.

And still we dug, looking for--I don't know what. Until we found something--an ebony orb, that seem to be made of mist, but harder than diamond. It was silent at first, but when our backs were turned it broadcast terror so cold and cruel that it did terrible things to our minds and our bodies. It twisted some of us into monsters--unrecognizable in form and spirit. And those that succumbed became its hateful children, laying waste to their brothers and sisters without memory or compassion for the meek. Soon it it used our ancestors--our long dead forefathers and recently passed brethren--to do it's malice against us also.

Our world wasn't our own anymore. And that was just the beginning...

There were eight more, just like it.