Relic Hunters: Ifrits and Living Spells

Pieces of sapient chaos given shape, they can give life to your wildest dreams...or your worst nightmares.  Are they the ghosts of powerful sorcerers and the remnants of relics, or are they something else entirely?

Relic Hunters Inspirations: "You Call This Archaeology?"

Relic Hunters, like any setting, came in part from everything I was watching, reading, or taking in at the time.  I've tried to identify some of the major influences here.

Relic Hunters: Desert and Empire, plus, the Value of Open Spaces

The blasted remains of the Empire of old are now barren and lifeless, reduced to lone and level sands.  Once, it was a single nation whose boundaries once stretched so far that the sun was always overhead somewhere.

Relic Hunters: Chaos and Sorcery

Unleashed on the world with the shattering of the Rod of Judgement, nothing is safe from its corrupting touch.

Relic Hunters: Beastmen

Nomadic tribes devolved by the touch of Chaos. The tainted desert holds their holy sites, and many relic hunters fall to tooth and claw and obsidian blade.

Relic Hunters: Airships

Cantankerous engines salvaged from the floating cities and vehicles of the first age bear these ships aloft, where everything from muscle power to sails to burning coal propels them on their way. Faster than a caravan, airships are the lifeblood of long-distance commerce and travel.

Relic Hunters: Characters

One of the strongest tools for a GM in getting across the feel of a setting is the choice of character types available. Compare these lists of character archetypes and see what comes to mind about the settings they represent:

• Fighter, Magic-user, Cleric, Thief
• Barbarian, Sorcerer, Cultist, Assassin
• Musketeer, Scholar, Priest, Spy
• Street Samurai, Decker, Streetdoc, Fixer

Relic Hunters: Stories from the Bazaar

Almost exactly a month ago, I had some big words about setting design and promised (or threatened, as appropriate) to show you how some of how I do things.

Setting Design, or, Why I'm Probably Not Old School

As you can tell by the list over to the right, I read a lot of RPG blogs, many of which have some kind of connection to that nebulous school of thought called the "Old School Renaissance".  They're a continuous source of interesting thoughts and inspirations, but there are times when I'm brought up short by the vast gulf between the Old School and…whatever mishmash of schools I have wound up as.