Missed Settings
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I think about this all the time. If my health ever stabilizes, I’d really love to run a game again. Whenever I ponder settings, I always think “I should do something niche to be unique!” But then I wonder, “If this setting would actually draw players, why isn’t there a game for it already, or why hasn’t there been one?”
The settings I’d love to play or run, and that I’m genuinely shocked don’t have more games (or any at all), include:
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Historical World of Darkness, specifically Victorian Age Vampire.
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Gothic horror fantasy, along the lines of Ravenloft.
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Dragonlance.
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Transformers. I remember back in the day there were loads of them. Now there’s maybe one, and none are on Ares, which is really the only way I can play nowadays.
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Buffy. The setting is so great that I’m shocked there weren’t more of these games, and there aren’t any around today.
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Star Trek. Though after putting some serious thought into running a Star Trek game, I think I can see why there aren’t more of them.
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Historical Fantasy: either Pirates era or ancient Greece in that God of War style.
These are the types of games that are on my mind most, and I really wish there were more of them around today!
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@Raistlin said in Missed Settings:
Star Trek. Though after putting some serious thought into running a Star Trek game, I think I can see why there aren’t more of them.
Time was that you couldn’t spit without hitting a Trek MU of some kind. There was a resurgence, of a kind, when the first of the Chris Pine Trek films came about but then nothin’. I think ATS might still be bumpin’ along, but I haven’t even looked at it in years.
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Something inspired by the Temeraire series.
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@Raistlin said in Missed Settings:
- Buffy. The setting is so great that I’m shocked there weren’t more of these games, and there aren’t any around today.
I think this has the same problem that Firefly does: the characters are more of a draw than the setting is. For instance, I don’t want to play in the Browncoat-a-verse as much as I want to play with Jayne and Kaylie and the rest of the crew – and no, FCs aren’t enough. Likewise, I would want to play with Spike and Angel and Faith and Willow and Oz… more than in a generic-ish vampire-slaying modern (or '90s period piece) world.
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@Roadspike said in Missed Settings:
I think this has the same problem that Firefly does: the characters are more of a draw than the setting is. For instance, I don’t want to play in the Browncoat-a-verse as much as I want to play with Jayne and Kaylie and the rest of the crew – and no, FCs aren’t enough. Likewise, I would want to play with Spike and Angel and Faith and Willow and Oz… more than in a generic-ish vampire-slaying modern (or '90s period piece) world.
This is definitely true for Buffy. Without the characters and their brand of smart-mouthed teenaged attitude, the setting is basically just Hunters Hunted for WoD. I sort of disagree a bit on Firefly, because there’s still enough unique in the setting that I would still consider playing on a game in a FC-less Firefly universe.
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Oh crap, totally forgot this one:
LARP RULES WOD : WoD is super popular, and the LARP rules are built more for large groups of players, so it’s confused me to this day why no one has attempted to run a WoD MU using the LARP systems (with the exception of the original Masquerade ruleset, that’s hot flying garbage and so I understand why it never became a MU back then).
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I’m surprised, and have been for years now, that the Shadowhunters series isn’t a super popular world setting. It seems to have all the popular tropes… Vampires, Werewolves, Angels, Demons, Warlocks, Humans, and Hunters… It’s big on action and adventure, it’s full of epic dramas. It can be based out of literally ANY large and popular city. It always seemed to me like it would make a popular and easy setting, but I’ve never seen it done.
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@Jenn Yeah! There also was this big influx of games that were centered around YA fiction back in the day, which I feel like would have been shortly before the time that the Shadowhunters TV series came out. There was that The 100 MUSH, then someone did a Percy Jackson game a little while after the movies came out, it does seem like a missed opportunity with Shadowhunters. The whole Mortal Instruments universe has largely been missed altogether, really.
I also want to cosign the Fading Suns reference above, I would play that so hard I would be at an alpha build of the game and suffer through it to be able to play a Charioteer.
One thing that’s kind of a headscratcher, IMO, is the lack of a proper run at a Warhammer Fantasy or 40k setting. Age of Sigmar is also now pretty fleshed out to the point that you could have a solid fantasy experience with that.
And fantasy games in general, actually! And particularly for me, I think fantasy without the reliance on the L&L pastiche. D&D and Pathfinder were mentioned and, yeah, it’s kind of odd that there haven’t been a bunch of Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Golarian, etc. games. I seem to recall there was that one Dragonlance game back in the early 00s set in the Age of Mortals, and there was… Treywinter? Was that the name of it? It was a D&D 3e MUSH that was running around the same time.
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@Raistlin said in Missed Settings:
either Pirates era
The pirates we think of when we say pirates (“The Flying Gang”) were a very specific and brief period (about 1716 until quite specifically 1726) and very few people know this or understand what was going on.
(I am running this tabletop with CoC d20. But on a MU, the little history lessons are not so welcome.)
There’s also the whole “we’re on a boat!” problem. Which is a mild pain playing tabletop when one player can’t make a session and you’re wondering what the heck their character is doing, since they couldn’t leave, but is a constant challenge on a MU. At least, in a period setting where ships are just not very big.
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In the vein of Fallen London, Sunless Skies. It’s literally Fallen London IN SPAAACE! Empress Victoria got tired of being in the Neath. She also decided to build her own Clockwork Sun. Its light isn’t…right. Also, it hates us and is going insane. Spoilers: https://thefifthcity.fandom.com/wiki/The_Clockwork_Sun
Continuing down that avenue, Cultist Simulator! Let’s murder each other to gain immortality!
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I sat and thought about it for a sec, and wondered “why has no one made a Magic The Gathering MUSH?”
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@Hobbie said in Missed Settings:
“why has no one made a Magic The Gathering MUSH?”
My guess at an answer is: Because everyone on the game would throw a fit if they didn’t have a Planewalker Spark.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@MisterBoring said in Missed Settings:
- Zombie Apocalypse (This seems like a no-brainer, pun intended.)
I’ve always wanted to run a zombie game but feel people would get bored of it quickly.
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@catzilla I think you’d have to really really focus on the community building aspect of “this world has died, we must rebuild it” and less on the actual zombies. All of my favorite zombie media is just really interesting human drama and analogues to real world societal stuff punctuated by extreme gore.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@MisterBoring The first step would be finding or making tweezers so we can all have our generally attractive PBs.
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I am surprised there hasn’t been a primitive fantasy setting, a tribal culture trying to survive amongst the fantasy monsters and the ruins of previous civilizations. Though this would probably need to be more RPI-ish because it’s begging for coded survival mechanics, like hunting, fishing, cooking, weapon crafting, clothing making, etc.
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Along the lines of zombie apocalypse, Fallout.
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@MisterBoring said in Missed Settings:
@catzilla I think you’d have to really really focus on the community building aspect of “this world has died, we must rebuild it” and less on the actual zombies. All of my favorite zombie media is just really interesting human drama and analogues to real world societal stuff punctuated by extreme gore.
Yeah. And then you get to the problem. Because zombies are stupid and humans are clever. (How many seasons of
"The Squawking Head’‘The Walking Dead’ did we get before we saw somebody, anybody, make a zombie-attracting noise-maker pit-trap? It was kinda maddening.) So pretty soon the zombie MUSH would be ‘making up new recipes for dandelion greens in our walled village’ MU unless GMs make zombies a lot more formidable or add new adversaries all the time, or make PC plans fail because reasons-we-made-up-on-the-fly and no dice-roll or clever idea will make your plans ever work. -
Ghosts.
Just that. It’s a haunted town or something and some PCs are ghosts and some are not, and the ghosts do annoying ghost things and the living people are annoyed or frightened, or confused because they think somebody is not a ghost when they are, or vice versa.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Missed Settings:
Just that. It’s a haunted town or something and some PCs are ghosts and some are not, and the ghosts do annoying ghost things and the living people are annoyed or frightened, or confused because they think somebody is not a ghost when they are, or vice versa.
Strangely this is the exact plot of the last tabletop Wraith game I ever played in. It’s really really easy to ignore the Wraith metaplot and it basically becomes this.
