I have a re-skin idea brewing… The basic concept is to use indigenous cultures, based on real world ones to some degree, and living spirits instead of ghosts (think animism).
Basically, the great nations came together, in a holy place, and the shamans worked together to preserve that place for their people at the “end of the world.”
The factions would be the various smaller tribes that make up each great nation. Your crew would be a new tribe, of the nefarious sort (re: war-band or raiders).
I’m not sure how far I want to push the theme yet. e.g. Leviathans could be left mostly the same, or could be a heard of some sort that are tracked and hunted (re: bison).
Anyone care to poke holes in the idea, or suggest further reading?
Sounds like a cool idea, just be careful that if you base it on real cultures, you use the actual cultures instead of racist caricatures.
Without more information, that’s really all I can say.
Sounds a bit like Runequest
Sebastian Baker : That’s absolutely a risk. I really enjoy learning about/from aboriginal peoples. I grew up reading Native American and Mexican history books, and as an adult became fascinated with aboriginal Australians, Pacific Islanders, and so forth.. so I absolutely want to do this with respect to them rather than as a caricature of them.
Someone in another discussion asked about guns. I have two directions I could go here.
1.) I’ve played with the idea of a pseudo-euro-culture that was colonizing the world prior to the cataclysm. They were more advanced, but they also didn’t fare so well in the fallout. They might be extinct, a threat outside the city, or an available ethnicity to play (with the tables turned and them now representing a marginalized culture). Either way, the cultures of the game were exposed to guns and now have access to them.
2.) These cultures need not be exclusively inspired by Native American peoples (though that was clearly where the idea started). Mongols were using black powder in the 13th century. It’s entirely possible that our fantasy cultures developed firearms of a sort entirely on their own.
Thoughts?
Making the European-inspired cultures the marginalized outsiders could be an interesting twist. You could even have the “black powder” be something similar to electroplasm, a supernatural material with a variety of uses including a power source and weapons propellant, and have that connect to why the culture that developed and most widely used firearms was also the one hit hardest by the cataclysm.
Sebastian Baker this somehow bring to mind “Ghost Rock” from Deadlands.
It’s been ages since I played, but I seem to recall Ghost Rock was basically evil coal, which in turn connected the railways with all sorts of horror.
Renaud van Strydonck I was thinking of a coal-analogue too, possibly made from demon bones.