Taking a page from Scott's Wilderlands OD&D--and since I'm shifting the setting over to a new system--I've decided to put my own personal spin on the world of Rifts, making it a bit more "Gamma World" in flavor.
For one thing, I've decided to have the timeline reflect the "post-apocalyptic" calendar literally--it has been only 100 years since the Great Cataclysm, rather than the 100 years plus the three to four century "Dark Ages" in the canonical setting. The more I thought about it, the less need I saw for those Dark Ages, and placing the Cataclysm closer to the current time allows a distinctly more post-apocalyptic flavor to overshadow the game, definitely a good thing in my book.
I'm also playing around with the world's geography. I've decided that Atlantis shouldn't have all fun, and to bring back all the legendary sunken lands of myth: Lemuria (which I'm placing in the Pacific, near Easter Island), Mu (in the Indian Ocean), Ys (off of Brittany), and Lyonesse (a new addition to the British Isles). With all these new land masses, I went ahead and raised the water level that much more, resulting in a satisfyingly re-made coastline.
I also decided to make a proper sand box map, with 100 mile hexes that I can then detail individually using the good ol' Wilderlands hex maps. The results:
I'll post more thoughts on my changes to the world as I get into my conversion work.
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I'm eager to see what you come up with for the new (errr... old?) land masses.
ReplyDeleteKeep the updates coming!
Love that map! That looks like the standard worst-case-scenario maps for the melting of the ice caps. Or is it something else entirely?
ReplyDelete- Brian
Looks excellent. No doubt you're looking forward to making specific areas in a higher scale, huh?
ReplyDeleteI'm curious...have you decided to make flora, fauna, tectonics and so on commensurate with the various regions?
trollsmyth: That's basically what it is. I Googled around and found an excellent site with a 100 meter sea level rise, which is what I was aiming for, so I took that and added a couple tweaks of my own (like turning California into an archipelago).
ReplyDeleteAlexis: I am indeed planning on zooming in on a few of the hexes and using these hex maps to flesh out details.
As for keying the different hex regions, I'm definitely going to do that as far as utilizing random encounter tables and so forth. Beyond that, I haven't yet decided how much detail I'm going to get into. Part of the problem with a science fantasy setting is that, unlike your standard D&D tech level, the PCs can feasibly hop in a vehicle that will whisk them over the terrain at 300 mph, thereby bypassing all my careful mappings and keyings, to coin a word. We'll see.
the hex map of rifts stuff is really good! check out my rifts blog.. Im always collecting good maps for rifts the canon palladium ones are weak
ReplyDeleten00m: Thanks for the link! I think some of those maps came up when I was searching around for fan-created maps a while back. Good stuff!
ReplyDeleteI also liked the SDC conversion rules. I'm always on the lookout for good stuff like that since I haven't totally abandoned the idea of using my Rifts setting with the Palladium system but heavily house-ruled.
Great job! Those maps are great resources. Awesome!
ReplyDelete