Fantastic Locations: January 12, 2012 Roundup

Here is this week’s roundup for the RPG Blog Carnival: Fantastic Locations.

Erik at Wampus Country tells us of the Vulture-Men of Buzzard Gulch (because really, where else would you expect to find them?).  On the face of it this is a place made special by those who live here, but there is a deeper secret that is not spoken of.  He also tells us of the Sobbing-Stone of the Disappointed, a sad place inspired by a comment from his son on his parents exhibiting some romance.  The comment was funny (I have kids too and have heard similar), and while the place Erik describes here isn’t funny, it is fantastic.

Berin Kinsman has his first post for this carnival, describing how to use abandoned and ruined places in world building.

Ravyn of Exchange of Realities comes in with yet another post, Impractical Applications (In the… Er, Corpus… of the Beast).  I thought I had a place of necromantic fun in the Ghost Hills, but I may have been outplayed for weird here.  I must admit that I love the description, “Some kind of demented Magic School Bus trip” (why yes, I do have kids, why do you ask?).

John at Sycarion Diversions tells a brief story about The World Beside, a fantastic location you visit without necessarily going elsewhere… but you can still get lost forever.

Fictivite at Between are the Doors is back with information about the University of Gothmagog, a minimalist approach to location description that has enough color to be interesting and distinct, while leaving ample room for improvisation.

Jonathan at Nevermet Press writes about Agharta and the Hollow Earth.  The original hollow earth, complete with miniature sun, alien Secret Masters, and host to conspiracies galore… and according to some people today, it is real.

Finally, Dennis at The Spirits of Eden tells us about the Vagarasi Dig Site.  The entire setting is unusually convincing and fantastic, so it is hardly surprising that a long-lost, buried city of forgotten artifacts is itself a wondrous place.  The amount of supplementary information (items found, factions represented, people present) is even larger than the description of the site.  I’d almost rather see the relationship map showing how everything interacts than a mere picture of the site… especially once I got to the plot lines and adventure ideas.

I didn’t get time tonight to work on the follow-up to Rime Tower, Part 1 — Inspiration (working title Rime Tower, Part 2 — Perspiration, where I make it all fit together).  However, I did get a few posts of my own in this week:

  • Fantastic Locations: Sources of Fantastic Elements identifies references I use for effects used to define and describe fantastic locations.  I provide something of a review, if not a formal one, of a couple of the more useful books I use.
  • Fantastic Locations: Places of Power briefly describes places of power (which often are fantastic locations) and includes semi-reviews of several more references I use for manifestations of power.
  • Fantastic Locations: Resources for the Lands of Chaos gathers the various material I have in these references from the previous two posts, to illustrate the range and nature of the information present.  That… was a lot of work, even just gathering it without integrating or tidying it.  I’d still like to build a full reference set for all sorts of powers, or better yet set up an online repository of related ideas.  Let me know if anyone’s interested, because this would be a very useful thing, I think.
  • Fantastic Locations: On Holy Ground describes holy sites, one of the more common types of places of power.  I like powerful holy sites to be very distinct from one another, well beyond what the hallow spell can do.  Thankfully, I’ve got a fairly large (demonstrably so) set of resources to use in describing them.  This post gives some indication of how I might actually apply the various traits and manifestations in describing a holy site.
  • Fantastic Locations: Rime Tower, Part 1 — Inspiration is almost my last post on the topic for this week (and is the last serious one).  I have talked about the resources I use, and a bit about how I use them, but I wanted to demonstrate how I go about devising a new fantastic location.  This post takes me from a blank sheet of paper to some initial ideas and direction for implementation (and a stack of other ideas to pursue later as they become relevant).  To be honest, I didn’t know a place like this existed in my campaign, but I like where this is headed and suspect this may see use sometime soon.
  • Fantastic Location: TV Tropes… that site seems to bend the laws of biology and time, and is a black hole to productivity.  Go ahead, tell me it’s not a fantastic location!

That seems to be it for this week, look for my next weekly roundup next Thursday.

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2 Comments

    • You’re welcome, Dennis. It’s good reading and all, but I can easily understand not having time to do it. I’m working on ways to make it more efficient for me.

      I currently have over 250 blogs in my feed list. I don’t read all the posts, but I skim the abstracts and do end up at least looking at somewhere between half and a third… closer to the half than the third. Most are good for a skim, maybe a chuckle, and I move on, but the ones I find interesting enough to spend more time on tend to end up in my weekly roundup. In this case I’m hosting a carnival, and as I told Jonathan at Nevermet Press this would be ugly if I waited until the end of the month to collect them all.

      I don’t want to just be a link farm, so I try to comment on the links I pass on.

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