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I am really impressed with the turnout for this Carnival.  I make it forty-one forty-four posts (it seems I missed a few, including two of my own!) from twenty-one blogs.  I think the weekly roundups were a good idea, I just have to collect them all and I’m mostly done.

This has been a very busy month for me, and honestly I stayed up way too late finishing my last post to be clever in writing a closing vignette.  Pretend the old guy who greeted everyone at the beginning is musing on the broad and surprising nature of the posts seen this month, and musing what question to raise for the next one.

Because I plan to do this again.  It was more work than I expected, but I had a great time.

Thanks for coming out, everyone.

Complete List of Carnival Posts

… at least as far as I know it.

I suppose alphabetical order of blog title is as fair as anything.

Continue reading“RPG Blog Carnival: Fantastic Locations, Final 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.

Continue reading“Fantastic Locations: January 12, 2012 Roundup”

Don’t mind me, just fixing the year in the date.  Not 2011 any more…

I anticipate a fair number of posts for this carnival, so rather than waiting until the end of the month for a roundup I think I’ll aim to do one every Thursday.  I’m having a lot of fun reading these posts, thank you to everyone who has written and made me aware of them.

Runeslinger is first out of the gate with a brief treatise (but medium-long blog post 8-) ) about how a place can be fantastic due to emotion and perception more than inherent properties of the place itself in Fantastic Locations & the Fantastic Things That Happen There.

He didn’t beat Dariel Quiogue by much, though, who provides a selection of Fantastic Locations in the Jangalan Isles.  The Hari Ragat setting fascinates me, and I understand there’s a FATE version coming — exciting news.

The Black Campbell has stepped up with an article on how to choose locations that can be described in an evocative way, and then provide your players with the tools to add the awesome needed to make the locations fantastic.

VBWyrde describes Weeleena’s Tea House, a place that reminds me somewhat of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories in its sheer alienness-as-human-convention.  I want to find out more about this place, but I think I almost don’t want to understand it, it might be better suited to remain something of a mystery.  I’m impressed.

Ravyn at Exchange of Realities has a couple posts so far.  The first is on Fantastic Location Essentials, identifying the things she expects from a fantastic location as opposed to just another place.  In Ravyn Freewrites: Location? Location! she talks about how things and places become wonderful, the events and circumstances behind the fantastic.

Fictivite tells us about the Gulldaw Amphibious Prison.  Brick and mortar prison?  A oubliette dug deep into the floor of a cavern?  Those are for normal prisoners, this is a place that rescuers probably would want to ask just how badly they want to rescue their friend… and I’m guessing it’s not a very popular guard assignment.  Another example of why ‘fantastic’ doesn’t need to mean ‘I want to go there’.

I’ve had a couple of posts on the matter myself.  In the first I ask What is a Fantastic Location? and describe what I look for to answer that question.  The second was to forward a link I found of the Weirdest Cities People Actually Live In.  Finally, so far, today I posted a description of the Ghost Hills, the site of one of the more unfortunate events in the history of this part of my campaign.

I have to thank Fustians So Sublimely Bad for this one.  The linked Cracked article describes some of the stranger places people actually live.

In descending order:

6. Neft Dashlari: A Russian oil rig that got out of hand
5. Manshiyat Naser: Cairo’s garbage town
4. Miyake-jima: A Japanese volcano town that is frequently covered in deadly sulfurous gas
3. Yellow Fleet: A small fleet of abandoned ships in the Suez Canal
2. Dwarf City: A Chinese city full of little people
1. Kowloon Walled City: An anarchic city of 33,000 in 0.01 square miles that apparently actually worked for thirty years, until the Chinese government tore it down.

If you’re looking for inspiration for a cyberpunk or distopian future setting, I’d start my research here.  Wow.