Tuesday 1 September 2015

Back to the Golden Lands

Due to their very nature, the two regions of the Odd World that I've written least about are the Golden Lands and the Polar Ocean

They're the place you go when you want to get really far from civilisation. When you have a place so weird you can't just put it in the Underground, or out in the furthest part of Deep Country. This place needs an ocean between it and the relative normality of Bastion. 

It would be impossible not to draw a parallel to our own world. I've been guilty of simplifying it to being the New World of this setting. But just as Bastion isn't London or Paris, the Golden Lands aren't the Americas or Africa. The name certainly doesn't help with that association, and in the supplement it might get a new name. The previous name of the Far Lands almost feels more suitable as I explore ideas. 

If you want a desert or jungle, you can put that in Deep Country. Same if you want to go down the route of having distant human cultures. Deep Country is big and the people at the far ends don't know about Bastion any more than you know about them.  

The Golden Lands are less like going to another continent, and more like going to another world. Maybe a dash of the magic of planar exploration. 

While I've previously spoken about them separately, the principles of the Golden Lands and Polar Ocean were always the same. 

Distant place where you throw whatever crazy thing you like. 

So the Polar Ocean is just a piece of the bigger canvas. Yes, there's an ocean where you sale into mist until everything gets weird, but all of the Golden Lands have an element of that. 

As you may have noticed I've been writing about other worlds a fair bit lately, so I don't know why I hadn't thought that some of these might have a better home the Golden Lands. 

With that in mind, here are the revised key principles.  

Key Principles of the Golden Lands
1. They draw you in.
2. They feel like an alien design.
3. The laws of nature don't apply. 

If you entered the Odd World and arrived in Bastion you'd think it was a crazy metropolis.
If you then went out to Deep Country you'd look back on Bastion fondly and say "At least they were sort of modern!"
If you then went to the Golden Lands you'd look back on Deep Country fondly and say "At least that felt like a real place!"


d12 Rumoured Golden Lands

1: The Breathing Marshes


2: The Desert Under The Low Sun

 3: The Blasted Giants

 4: The Hell of Emerald Lights

 5: The Poisoned Walk

 6: Parasite's Landing

 7: The Sealed Cities

 8: Diamond Range

9: Pillar of Injustice

 10: Incineration

 11: White Hole

12: Dropped-Space

2 comments:

  1. They draw you in?

    Do you mean to imply that every locale in The Golden Lands would offer PCs reasons to remain and live there? That might be amazing, but it would also make The Golden Lands a rare destination for PCs because it would be difficult for GMs to come up with temptations that are strange and horrible and enticing enough for Into the Odd adventures.

    I don't know if you like that it would be difficult to come up with new and interesting and horrible transhuman ways to "go native", or if you intend to come up with something to help us brainstorm ways that different places might "draw one in". Either way, I have to say, I like where this is going.

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    1. I don't know about drawing you in to stay there. More that they give you a reason for wanting to explore them.

      Hopefully this section of the Supplement will help with ideas!

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