Ginger Stampley’s running a writing exercise for gamers off her gaming weblog. This week she’s asking about ideas for settings inspired by books, tv, film, and other sources:
I’m a big fan of alternate history as a setting for games. The campaign I’m playing now (the first in fifteen years) is an alternate 14th century CE North America Vinland, where peoples from Iceland have settled the Hudson River Valley.
In John’s campaign, the last longship from Europe came 50 years ago, even before my character Poul (older, short, and widowed) was born. Now I thought that segued in nicely with Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent novel The Years of Rice and Salt that starts with the Black Plague wiping out everyone in Europe. It’d certainly explain what happened to the Long Boats.
There are several settings in Robinson’s novel that would be fun to build out into settings. The Chinese colony in Marin appeals to me since it’s a setting you can grab USGS maps, and local players know the land. John’s using 2.5 mile topos in the V&S game, great stuff.
The Samarqand section, with the alchemist turned practical inventor, would be good for military-oriented campaigning, with the NPC inventor supplying new gadgets for PC officers to try out on the battlefield.
The resettlement of al-Andalus, or Spain, would make a great exploration-oriented campaign with lots of ruined Christian and Muslim town to stumble upon. I’m reading Maria Rosa Menocal’s The Ornament of the World to learn more about the Caliphate of Abd al-Rahman at the end of the first Millenium CE.
By the way, if you want to read great alternate history, go seek out Howard Waldrop’s stories.
