Starting Anew

I'm running two different games right now, a Saturday game using Lamentations of the Flame Princess but set within the world of Prodigy, and a Sunday game using an admixture of Numenera and LotFP.  My Sunday players and I had a heart to heart and agreed that the world of Numenera has a lot of things at its core that are good, but the setting is riddled with problems of such a scale that to fix them would require redoing much of the world.  Beyond establishing and then abandoning a fascinating geopolitical conflict, Monte Cook simply never investigated how regular people survive in the world.  The answer to that question, however you answer it, profoundly change how the game world responds to the players.  If the world is a set-piece upon which I create dramas for my players, this is not a problem.  If I want the setting to be a source of drama, however, it is a glaring issue.

So, we have decided to begin anew.  Since I recently acquired Alexis' How to Run, I thought I'd experiment with making a setting along his guidelines.  I certainly know that while I have a good handle on how the world of Prodigy runs, I did not take anything near the most efficient path to get there.  So, we'll begin at the beginning.

I first laid out, and then brainstormed with my players, a list of core goals for the setting, preliminary design specifications.

Sandbox world - no rails anywhere
Fair and reasonable consequences for player actions
Deep rabbit holes at the heart of every venture
Impressive host of enemies arrayed against the players
Players always have several ways out
Players care about their characters
Players may align with one of (or multiple) factions and engage in interfactional conflict to advance their chosen group
Players may build something that will last - a location, an ideology, a faction, etc.
LotFP - brutal combat: combat as a last resort, not as an opening move
High degree of planning and preparation before engaging in a venture
Multiple ways to go at every juncture
Many adventure hooks
Choices the players make will affect the world - party reputation, the actions of NPCs
Emphasis on roleplay, interaction with NPCs
Making connections/allies/enemies


With that in mind, and hearing from my players that they wanted a modern-ish setting, I set out to create three different worlds to explore.  The first of which is the Demi-Monde.

The idea for the setting is stolen directly from the television series Penny Dreadful - there exists a demi-monde (half-world or shadow world) that overlaps the regular one.  There are creatures that dwell within the demi-monde that will encounter humans and change them.  The intersection between real and fantastic is strange and not understood, and little is known about the beings of the demi-monde, other than that they are creatures to be feared.

The players, then, will have characters that have somehow been made aware of the demi-monde's existence, and some dark need of theirs draws them towards it and the perils that lurk in its midst.

However, unlike the world of Penny Dreadful, I want this game to feel contemporary yet still evoke the same sense of wonder and mystery as 19th century London.  To do that, I turn to the lesser-known corners of the world: Tashkent, capital city of Uzbekistan, a large, mostly succeeding city after the collapse of the Soviet Union with a long and colorful history.