Portraying Other Worlds
Considering how to make worlds that are different but feel coherent within the same campaign - what are the dials you twiddle and what stays the same?
This is an idea I am road testing with my 2d20 Lizard Kings campaign; the core theme of it all is that the scalyfolk are in a post-imperial expansion - but have just retrenched not gone away. There are tons of things littered around from different eras of their imperium, representing different ideas they had - including their push to their nearby worlds.
This is a live, relevant question because I am returning to Corrus, the world of the Lizard Kings, where one of the core setting ideas was the concept of Near Mars and Far Venus - a thinly atmosphered world nearer the sun and a thickly atmosphered one further out would cancel out to be roughly habitable - making three worlds in this system operating on a John Carter-esque sword-and-planet paradigm. Inter-planetary escapades were always intended as part of the mix - but now I have the wisdom to front-load the good stuff and thus I ought to be figuring out that world-striding aspect of things.
Original system sketch from ~ 2019
It may be smudged and barely legible but those notes read "Near Mars, Ancient civilizations, canals" and "Distant Venus, Jungle world w/ Saur Cavalry [crocodile worshippers?]" and I have some more notes that tag distant venus with giants and dinosaurs, near mars with Dune-esque deserts, gnolls, crystal forging, miners and alchemists with great tree.So how to make these three worlds - tentatively named Nemas, Corrus and Favens - feel coherent, yet different?
I've had some thoughts before on distinguishing mirror worlds with house-rules and modified rules for those worlds feels like a good idea but one tool in the box but it does not go far enough. Mirror worlds should be very similar, with a twist, these other worlds should feel distinctly different within a shared milieu.
I want the 'Still Here' motifs of the lizardfolk across all worlds:
- lizardy deep time nonsense
- a multiplicity of heat cults
- nature-bending
- same general pantheon
Traffic between them has been complex but achievable for a good long period of time - so like very distant continents, semi-legendary lands that few have actually been to and many disbelieve exist.
Common across them all will be relics and ruins of the 'high tide' of the lizard imperium - portals within those ruins will be the easiest means for the unofficial travel of adventurers.
Rapidly filling out worlds
With whole other worlds to play with, I think batching some off-the-shelf ideas by theme might be good to start.
Nemas - all of the desert tropes, harsh, high entropy system of sandstorms burying and uncovering the past - al Qadim, John Carter, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Painted Wastelands, Nagash-type undead, Skorne of Iron Kingdoms.
Favens - giants and bigger dinosaurs - stranger jungles, fungal, seas and swamps - highly contested, previous inhabitants have not gone quietly - Lustria, Thousand Thousand Islands, Yoon Suin, Moonsoon. The core world already has deep, hot jungles in the abyssal dry sea - some dinosaurs already live there. Perhaps dinosaurs are an invasive clade here that has thrived?
Binding worlds together
To pull all this together I need some coherent overlays to allow them to form a connected scale-and-planet setting. Thematically this is how an empire falls apart in three bits:
- on Nemas, the fading remnants of the old ways persist amid the shifting sands and along with the remnants of others
- on Corrus, the rump empire continues, retrenched to the deep abyss - here mammals contest them
- on Favens, invigorated but chaotic - the lizardfolk thrive but have slipped the yoke of empire and all sorts of polities are active
The driver for all lizardfolk is heat - such as the sun; Favens was the original homeworld of the lizardfolk, the thick atmosphere retaining the dimmer sunlight; Corrus is where they found a balance of heat and space, Nemas borders too hot, but the solar cults thrive here. Nemas has more weird arcano-tech, Favens has mutants and war-beasts plus the original homelands of the lizards.
Culturally Nemas is a split between true believer solar cultists who are willing to suffer for proximity to the sun, the remnants of the colonial lords and their holdings and a strong culture of xeno-arcanists who pore over the magical secrets of the ruins and ancient cultures here. The other antique cultures also persist - insects, trilobites, liches of all sorts.
Favens is dominated by strong and highly splintered culture - many subspecies of lizardfolk, serpentfolk, grippli - it is as Africa to humans, the font of diversity, many languages and peoples, along with scalykind analogs of giants, dwarves, etc. With dinosaurs and giants thriving, settlements are clustered in defensible positions with large parts of the world 'wild'.
We also have multiple spiritual poles - on Nemas, closest to the heat of the sun, it is the promised land. On Corrus, there are the most diverse of all the cults with many of the non-solar heat-worshippers present as well as the largest realm with the old orthodox solar religion as state religion. On Favens there are the sacred origin sites and a plethora of traditionalist sects and non-solar cults as well as the current reformed heat-cult.
Wrap-up
Falling back on my 'Azgaars' factors of culture, nation, biome and religion we have more or less dinged all of these giving us a decent enough framework to work within. The same generic encounter table combined with the planet-appropriate filters would allow different-but-coherent encounters to be generated for those other worlds. With more time, tailored encounter tables would be good to have but until it is clear that planet-hopping is imminent I am going to focus prep elsewhere.
For locations, I will do the sweep up of sources mentioned above, note a dozen or so interesting ones for each worlds and then use that as the structure to build around.
Together those would give locations and encounters specific to the worlds and then I can drop the players into some sort of coherent sandbox should they manage to find an old interplanetary portal. Which can also be phrased as "I now have license to drop functional interplanetary portals into the campaign" because I can catch them on the other side should they choose to step through.
