As old timers will know, in the module "S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" and in the original Blackmoor campaign with the alien City of the Gods and Egg of Coot, Greyhawk has had high-tech weapons and gadgets from sci-fi settings bleed into the campaign.
Anyway, I was wondering how people have treated this material in their campaigns and, indeed, how future publications on Greyhawk will treat this. I don't know much about RPGA's Living Greyhawk but I was wondering if they have, or are going to, address these issues; or do they choose to convieniently ignore them because "sci-fi doesn't mix with fantasy".
In my Greyhawk campaign this is certainly true: sci-fi doesn't mix with fantasy. Therefore, I chose to pretty much ignore the high-tech gagets illustrated in canon material. The farthest I will go is steamtech-type technology or maybe stuff from Monte Cook's Chaositech sourcebook; but straight sci-fi does not mix with my Greyhawk.
So what have other people done with this material? Do you have starships zipping around and strangers from distant galaxies roaming the Flannaess wearing jet packs and weilding laser guns?
I'm not ridiculing the sci-fi element introduced in older "canon" material. I think these ideas are very evocative and would be heaps of fun in a campaign. It's just that they wouldn't be suitable for my Greyhawk (in fact, I'm almost disappointed they wouldn't be suitable).
Well, as to how we've treated it, our group running around Oerth have not been through S4, and I don't think the DM intends to take us through it. I have a brother-sister team in this group, the brother Tarn having shown up later in the campaign. The DM has made reference to strange things Tarn has seen, of which he does not speak. And he owns a funny gadget from this strange place. He never shows it, uses it or discusses it. Only once has he mentioned it to his sister after she tormented him over his whereabouts before he joined her adventuring party. Apparently, this place....S4 dealt a rather mind jarring blow to him with the things he saw there. So our dealing with it was, oh, yeah, Tarn's been there, but wild horses will not drag from him what he saw and did there.
We have the same outlook you say you do, Baggins. Fantasy and Sci-fi don't really mix, in our own opinion, mind you. So we've stayed away from S4 and other such adventures or resources that are out there.
Funny you brought this up as our group was discussing a few weeks ago about the fighter never telling us about this supposed strange and odd place he'd once been to.
GH of old always had a wry-comic twist to it. I think Living GH tends to be serious and 'not cheesy' whenever possible. So I can't see any future work done to advance these elements, unless its from a writing her in CF. Personally I've played out the sci-fi-ish angles IMC and figure they are good once or twice but should never be a regular part of the overall GH storyline.
I remeber when S3 came out many many moons ago. We played all the modules that came out in those days except that one. We could not bring ourselves to introduce Sci-fi into GreyHawk or any of our D&D sessions. I remember playing Gamma world but that was kept totally separate.
Today I writing a campaign were the party need to go to a plane were there are High tech bad guys fighting low tech magic using good guys. It uses much of the ideas from the movie Wizards only without the Mutants. In fact the one groups of bad guys are all blue eye blond hair types. The high tech weapons will not be able to cross into other planes for various reason but mostly they are tied to plane in which they were created.
I think using high tech items can be fun when used very infequently and do not become weapons for any of the players. But having to deal with the unknown and very strange is what D&D is all about.
IMC, as I've posted and pestered in the GreyTalk, forum, the space-ship in S4 became temple of Murlynd and one of our party's fortresses. Instead of going in the way "Assumed" by the module's writer (Gygax), our party scouted around like good paranoids. Eventually, we went through the cargo hatch. The DM thew the bullette at us, and we wedged the door open with a wall of force. Running like sissies from the cop 'bots, we hid in a cargo hold, where we found the android bodyguard. He proceeded to give us a guided tour. The tour was of course peppered with phrases like "I apologize Sir, it appears to have malfunctioned" and "I don't remember the botany display being quite so... humanoid". We each got a grey card, and the android got the Security Chief's extra uniforms and the position of being our viceroy! The bots, of course, suffer the dahlek syndrome: running on broadcast power, they are unable to exit the ship.
The party uses it as a temple to various gods of reason, technology, and law, as well as creation, agriculture/botany/druidism (the zoology level), and education. Plenty of adventuring opportunities spawned from there, as those who against such things seem to send spies on a regular basis.
We find it a good space to have, because having secure base is good to have, and having The Worst Reason Ever to Adventure is prevented ("You have your goods stolen and/or taxed away. You are now poor, and you need money.")
I must admit I've looked over S3 but never played it. I have thought it would work quite well in a DragonStar game - as a prelude to an invasion force for example - but won't be dropping it into my current game.
I seem to recall one of the first Living Greyhawk Journals having an article about the Barrier Peaks, and some strange metal place buried in rock. Maybe there was a door exposed, with a lock that no one could pass... And there is some guy that found some sort of 'special golem'. I believe there was something about some weird sickness that people got if they hung around there too long(radiation?).
I thought S3 was a fun departure from the usual Fantasy, and the player's battery packs didn't last too long after the module.
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