The World of Tomorrow, our science fantasy campaign, is pretty much built with a kitchen-sink approach. The initial pitch can basically double as the Appendix N: “moebius jodorowsky tangerine nightmare oranssi mutant pazuzu heavy metal barsoom carcosa acid police surf”
The main
rules are: If it could be published as a DAW book or an ACE Double… if you can
imagine it on a sick space/psych/prog rock album cover… if there is a
conspiracy theory about it… then it fits.
Due to its
eclectic and expansive nature, I could probably list off every piece 1960s-1970s
sci-fi and dystopian fiction and every krautrock album ever. But that would
defeat the purpose. So I will try to limit myself to a couple of key entries
for each category.
Books: the
biggest influence is Fred Saberhagen’s “Empire of the East” series. It’s
chock-full of COOL SHIT that you can steal for your post-apoc sci-fant games. “The
Elephant”? A must. Radar stations as scrying magic. Nuclear demon lords and their
satraps. Good stuff. Read them if you can. The main protagonist is kinda bland…
But the world is great. Add Lin Carter, Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson's early stuff...
Movies: oh
boy… Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes + Beneath the Planet of the Apes, 2001:
Space Odyssey… Hard to narrow this down. Phase IV too, for sure.
Comics/art: yeah, Moebius is the big one here. No explanation necessary. Mike Grell's Warlord, another great hollow earth weird fiction title. A lesser known entry would be the stuff from Planet Comics, in particular "The Lost World" which ran in #21-69 (1942-1952).
Other RPG
stuff: McKinney’s Carcosa (I use a bunch of tables for robots, weapons…), Gamma
World, Mutant Crawl Classics – actually, from these last two, I borrow very
little specifics, but definitely lean into the same atmosphere.
Computer
games: Fallout 1 & 2, for sure. The most powerful motif for me is the Vault
suit, which always marks the wearer as either/or a weirdo, a demigod, a target.
Last, but
not least: history/non-fiction… I use my science-fantasy Frankentable extensively,
so many characters have names from ancient cultures (Egyptian, Akkadian, Greek…).
There are lot of ziggurats, statues, artifacts, stuff that comes from my academic
interests. And my non-academic interests in weird shit, conspiracies, cults.
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| In collage form. |
