Appendix N for The World of Tomorrow

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.

In collage form.

Science fantasy campaign with floating islands, quick notes

Floating islands are cool. I want a science fantasy campaign, a big hexmap, with, like, five islands floating above it, each with its own quirks and behavior. Of course, there is Skyrealms of Jorune, I'm intrigued by it, but I cannot use settings so dense (and I envy Samwise who can grok it and runs a BRP Jorune campaign!).

Anyway, in this campaign I envision, the Referee would have to track the movements of the floating islands, which could be a hassle, but perhaps could be done in weekly turns. 

The islands would be like wildcards, most of them moving around randomly. Due to the randomness, they could crash into each other, into the ground, or tall mountains. And some islands would have environmental effects. Obv. all of them would be adventure locales with ruins and dungeons and treasure and conflict and peril.

Something along these lines:

Floating island	Movement	Special
1, Inhabited by monsters	Immobile	Weird weather magnet.
2, Inhabited by sentient beings, split into two warring factions	Controlled by dominant faction, 1 hex/day or 30 degree turn/day	Mostly functioning tech and ecosystem.
3, Inhabited by monsters	Erratic, roll 1/week	Corruption field. If the island stays on the same hex for more than 1 week, the hex becomes Corrupted.
4, Inhabited by a single sentient being and a bunch of monsters	Continuous, roll 1/week	Transporter beam. Every midnight, a 30’ diameter column of red light projects from the lower tip of the island, stays for 1 minute, then teleports everything in its reach to the island (incl. a hemisphere of ground below).
5, Inhabited by sentient beings	Continuous, roll 1/week	Crumbling. There is a chance of either a rain of small debris or a large chunk falling down from it.

Movement types:

	Erratic	Continuous
1	Turn clockwise
2	Descend 1000’
3-4	Move 1 hex	Move 1 hex
5-6	Stop
7	Ascend 1000’
8	Turn counter-clockwise

Bonus Lin Carter quote: