Past Setting Vibe Recap

Setting Tropes for My Major Setting Areas
A thing I want to do to describe my settings in these d12 tables & summaries
Each line will be a kind of setting trope 

Torg has stuff like this baked into realities, and different worlds had different magic or power axioms - I wouldn't go that far. 

I would like to revise some of these (especially a few i used AI on and regret) - maybe Planet Psychon on drivethrough for its 10th anniversary. Current projects on Patreon include Anuranomicon, Chagrinspire Vol4, EMO rulebook updates, Ethyria and project X.

So you can dig through my old posts and patreon for these.
If anything gets interest i might take it up again.
I will be running either Auldwood or a Maritime campaign 2026

Stone Age Sorcery - like cave people, but really it's post-apocalypse
Ancient Exilon - Bronze Age civilisations
Exile Island & Shadelport - a horrible city on a wild, dungeon-filled island
Auldwood - a decayed forest kingdom is coming to life
Anglersland - a forbidden island isolated by a demented fish god who eats ships and whales
Scarford Reef - islands, undersea kingdoms and vast ruined civilisations deep in the earth
Chgrinspire - exploring a wasteland after the apocalypse and an 18km tall gigadungeon
Planet Psychon - a far future fantasy in a world under constant automated reconstruction
Broken Hill - a more traditional gonzo post-apocalypse setting in outback australia
EXOCOM - special force kill teams vs the dungeon dimension 

Exocom and my homebrew were the first things that got me back into D&D, and some people asked me to run stuff, so i wrote a retroclone while bedridden from memory. I'm still writing the homebrew after 13 years. EXOCOM had within it dungeon zones, and once thought I'd do a book on my 12 dungeon zones (which i have revised). Most zones ended up as books, and I've moved goalposts over the years. Id rather crank out stuff lots than refine and edit stuff as much as it needs. EXOCOM whas why I started d100 tables to define genre and settings.

Stone Age Sorcery and Ancient Exilon are in my settings past

Shadelport is part of Exile Island.

Anglersland and Scarford reef are in straits between Exile Island and the continent, where Chagrinspire, Auldwood, and Sour Hill are.

Planet Psychon is a separate thing, and Broken Hill uses lots of the same content but a bit more straight - it can be a zone on Planet Psychon or its own thing. I have a proto psychon setting somewhere.

Xor is a living cosmvore that can interact with other planes (hmmm, Krynn looks tasty) and make them more awesomely oldschool with fleshy mutant apocalypse

My EXO-COM special forces vs the dungeon dimension. The dimension might be part of hell or like Xor eating and contaminating other worlds. EXO-COM teams might turn up in some fantasy world 

Incomplete large projects not compiled or finished
-roadwar 2000 dark future setting - lots of this. I found BRP better than gaslands
-spiral path: a replayable escape from hell source book and possibly a solo aid or DMless

I will try to republish more comps from some of my rare stuff.
A large amount of my work has bootlegs available, so I dont feel precious about keeping old versions available

Stone Age Sorcery
The world is in recovery from an apocalypse after an aeon of darkness and dark magic.
Two civilisations based on wizards arose and were destroyed (Necromancers & Elementalists)
Humans are a minority and re-learning the basics of fire, stone and bone craft

I ran this a few years ago to Level 20 and even used some of Janell's work for TSR. It was a lot of fun and lots of good content for this in the book.

Players are explorers who discover new technology and culture for their comunities

d12 Stoneage Sorcery Rumours
1 Ancient glaciers are melting, and lowland floods are driving people to the frozen lands 

2 Remnants of a sunless & sinister age of magic are everywhere and are forbidden

3 Last of the great beasts and many strange humanlike peoples competed with humans

4 Humans are struggling to survive, and an aeon away from being as common

5 Heroes discover new skills and knowledge, and bring the benefits to the tribe

6 Heroes meet strange new people and might shun, join or fight them

7 Heroes fight mighty beasts and explore shunned places too dangerous for normal people

8 Heroes leave a legacy of descendants into the future of the tribe

9 Spirits worship is commonplace, with the shaman being the premier magician school

10 Wizards and literacy are shunned due to the sunless age and various fiendish magicians who copied the forbidden lore of old and had to be destroyed

11 The sunless age called on powers of the outer void, and some of these beings are imprisoned, dead or dormant now

12 Beastmen and monsters serving evil gods ruined the world in the sunless time, and humans who used their knowledge became evil spell users and tyrants

Ancient Exilon 
Bronze Age city-states and emerging mighty empires dominate civilisation
Each city is dedicated to god, and the empires are forming pantheons for unity
Remnants of pre-humans and the previous ages are buried everywhere

Players explore ancient ruins and fight monsters. Bring glory to your clan and city and nation and work your way into nobility

I ran this a few years ago, but also ran RQ3 Babylon for 4+ groups for about 10 years. This ran with the d&d style superheroism. I regret only getting to about 12th level but they did help wipe out Necromancers and made a strong alliance so it was a comfortable game to run. I might do it again, but it involves travel to an Egyptian-like location.

d12 Ancient Exilon World Rumours
1 Mighty empires and coalitions of city-states are always at war with someone

2 Each city has a favoured god and perhaps some of their kin as allies form a small pantheon. Empires, metropolises and coalitions might intermarry gods and make pantheons 

3 The age of Exilon is thousands of years old, and ruins are everywhere. Bronze still dominates iron and the only steel salls from the stars

4 Beyond the frontier are barbarians and hidden non-humans who resent the ascendancy of humanity

5 Heroes fight for glory for their family, city, their gods and their rulers

6 Heroes fight frontier barbarians and monsters for the common folk to  live in peace

7 Heroes make great works to preserve their name's legacy in future generations

8 Heroes  fight for the gods by slaying ancient blasphemous cults and monsters

9 Ancient evils from before the flood are still ruling city-states, Death Templars, Elemental Templars and Dragon Templars. Are they nearly finished or planning a return

10 Barbarians conquer soft cities, then in three generations become new soft targets. Barbarians come to tolerate luxury, writing, and non tribal magic

11 Gods send monsters and demons to torment the wicked, devils are doing their job, but demons, daemons and elementals might serve them as mercenaries

12 Gods curse the wicked, then later use heroes to end the curses, usually through violence

Exile Island & Shadelport
World's oldest city of vice, piracy and corruption, ruled by the Immortal Baron
Old city has prehuman ruins, sealed prehistoric wizard towers, and idols of monster kings
The rural frontier is crawling in cults, secret dungeons and remnants of ancient people

Players are refugee adventurers out for money in the ancient ruins of the wilderness or the world's most horrible city.

This was my default setting I have been writing here for since 2012 when i got back into gaming while sick and I wrote my own retro clone from memory while bedridden. The Eflmaids & Octopi (EMO) world and retroclone. Many of my other settings are a part of this or connect with this. It is made to be, in part, a comment on D&D tropes and some more Wikipedia faerie lore and mytholgy. Influenced by Origional Dragon Warriors RPG books, Fighting Fantasy and UK grim fantasy. Plus lots of filthy history, especially from London.

d12 Exile Island World Rumours

1 The world's greatest pirate city is built on older prehuman ruins. There are sealed towers and things in sewers over ten thousand years old from the sunless age

2 The Baron never removes his helmet and has ruled for over 800 years. His secret police may spy on or tax adventurers

3 Most of the Island is wilderness and occupied by non-humans, giants, trolls and worse. Under the island are layers of dungeons dating back to the earliest years of creation

4 The city is a sprawling haven of homeless murderers, mutant gangs and cults

5 Heroes start poor and might be exiles or refugees from the continent or other lands

6 Heroes can explore ancient ruins, strange wilderness or vast seas of mysterious islands

7 Heroes gain fame and glory, business opportunities in Shadelport are limitless

8 Heroes have a region of villages to explore with long-settled colonies from lands of the continent. There are secrets and vice everywhere, but some villages are horrific

9 Planar and faerie beings and ruins dedicated to them are all over the island

10 Petty gods are only uncommon, and you can meet them on the road, in villages or in the city or in dungeons. There are immortals, too and shapeshifting changelings and beings hidden among folk

11 The city before humans was part of a global and planar slave trade that lasted an aeon. They say prehistoric wizards still dwell in sealed ancient towers

12 Hidden in the structures of city walls, sewers, bridges, and the oldest buildings are hidden chambers and dungeons.  

Auldwood
Knights control every village territory, roam the roads and challenge strangers at crossings
The dark forest is haunted by elves and spirits and wild sylvan people, so never go alone
Strange customs, curses and monsters are commonplace for the woodland peoples

Players explore the woods, meeting strange knights, faerie folk and witchcraft

This setting was made to include all of my Threefold land and Auldwood 3folds series and a book (which i will redo as it used AI and the novelty of that is dead to me now). It's for more spooky forest horror + Arthurian knight and faerie tale stuff.

d12 Auldwood World Rumours
1 Villagers are isolated and underpopulated, some abandoned to the woods and wilds 

2 Decades of war has depopulated regions, and the population has plunged until now

3 Places isolated for decades have become open again to travellers and merchants

4 Beware taking the wild trails of animals or faerie beings of the well-trodden paths

5 Haunted crossings are shunned by night as spirits, and some prehuman roam such places

6 Faerie folk can be heard dancing or singing or celebrating but shun the urge to see them

7 Faerie offering to be your lovers are best shunned as they enslave foolish mortals

8 During the hard times, some villages did not survive and are now haunted ruins now 

9 During the hard times, cults thrived in isolation, and the church lost contact 
10 Beware if you hunt or travel the Auldwood for its inhabitants have many odd laws

11 Beware of goblins selling strange succulent fruits or operating their weird night markets 

12 Auldwood will not let you just plunder its treasures; it will take from you in kind from your soul

Anglerslund
An island isolated by a fish god that keeps residents backwards and ignorant
An island haunted and cursed, mist-shrouded and crawling with strange secrets
Villages all have their own unholy taints and strange customs

Players explore this isolated island and find fortune or even escape

This was for a zine i did for a year on my Patreon, a self-contained island between two of my other setting land masses. It is next to Scarford Reef Islands too so it is part of a huge chokepoint for marine trade, menaced by pirates mostly. It was a fun project and id like to run it through properly one day. It was a companion to a marine theme book i did.

d12 Anglersund Rumours
1 Sometimes the fish god is busy trying to get a beacon so traders can come and go briefly

2 Weather of the terror straits strands many ships here, and locals are cannibals and wreckers

3 Fishfolk have their hidden signs everywhere on the island, and secret hybrid cults

4 The isolated, inbred noble families are all mad and decadent and best avoided

5 The island is occupied by cultists, cutthroats and witches 

6 The mists bring monsters, from the black waters or hidden places, so stay on roads

7 The fish god is a hungry, idiotic thing circling the island, eating ships, whales and rocks

8 Many treasure ships have been sunk near here, and they say some can be found here

9 Many who were shipwrecked here never escape, but the mugglers might help for money

10 The population must be dwindling as ruined and haunted buildings are everywhere

11 The church has lost contact with this island, so the people are cut off from salvation

12 All kinds of scum and pirates wind up here and manage to survive the hellish place

Scarford Reef
A chain of islands in a notorious reef with bad weather and strange, isolated islands
Secret caves connect the islands and the mainland undewr the strait
In ages past, the gods buried the remnants of the age of darkness under mountains

Explore the islands, find the secret tunnel routes and underground civilisations

This was for a project, Tenkars Landing on G+ years ago. As it has been quite a while now, i put it into my campaign and it could probably have a book. Elements like the citadels influenced Chagrinspire. The islands vary in how safe they are but the underland is vast and multilayered. All the files used to create this were lost on a computer, and the drives were lost. I have text but not the map files with layers.

d12 Scarford Reef Rumours
1 Countless ships are swept her yearly and most are destroyed on the reef

2 Smugglers and secret societies use the underground routes beneathe the sea

3 An Amazon citadel from ancient times survives here from the age of Exilon

4 Some of the isolated villages are strange but some are cannibal cultists

5 Sea monsters, storms and savage teefs make the strait shunned by sea travellers

6 All the islands had lighthouses once but only one still operates; the rest are lost ruins

7 Shipwrecks are everywhere but so are giant squid and fishy fiends of all sorts

8 Several islands are brilliant green pastures with quaint wind swept cottages

9 The seas here have several kingdoms of faerie sea folk who are waging war

10 Many civilisations of underground dwellers have died out under the islands and seafloor

11 In the deep, orcs live in citadels of the monster kings, in a great cavern under the sea

12 In strangely lit caverns in the deep, there are secret kingdoms of witches

Chagrinspire
An 18km high tower was built by a gnome cult to uncreate all reality to end suffering
A vast battlefield wasteland surrounds the tower, full of curses and remnants of war
The apocalypse war, where every nation and faction on earth waged war on the tower

Players explore the ancient battlefields of an apocalypse to recover fragments of their arcane technology and knowledge of the Black Sphere

This was to be a super over the top world to outshine mere megadungeons and mere grimdark settings. Its a vast gigadungeon. Some elements of this appeared in Scarford Reef and Psychon. Psychon we generated a few memorable decopunk locations and players didnt want to leave. This happened a few times. I did a bunch of ww1 for call of cthulhu too and this was folden into the mix too. Metropolis + Gammaworld?

d12 Chagrinspire World Rumours
1 The pre-apocalypse decopunk civilisation exploited the world with airships and machines

2  The apocolypse nearly happened, and the allies saved all existence

3 In the war, Chagrinspire captured and killed some gods, and the rest fled the world

4 Vast rings of walls, trenches and hill fort lines surround the tower,s crawling with undead

5 No-mans-land between the Allied and Chagrinspire trenches is cursed and polluted

6 Somehow, scavenger guilds live in the wastes ,but some are tainted mutants 

7 Small farm villages somehow survive by strange crops and huge mud hogs

8 There are ancient tunnels where machines used to carry travellers underneath the wastes

9 Chagrinspire used to plunder exotic goods and materials from across the world

10 Many machines and automatons of the ancients were actually free-willed golems 

11 The ancients grew millions of abhumans, orcs and human clone copies for the war

12 Some say there are strange bunkers or upper floors of Chagrinspire still active

Planet Psychon
In a far-forgotten future, machine gods rearange the world at will for their own reasons
Animals, plants, minerals, atmosphere and people all come in 12 sacred colours
The ancient ruins of old earth do exist but mostly fakes made by the gods

Inspired by art of Roger Dean, pre ww2 pulp sf like Flash Gordon, Heavy Metal magazine, Prog rock and Gammaworld. i wanted to play gammaworld and D&D. Anomylous Subsurface Environment was good. I was happy to see a few ppl suggested it as a MCC setting as the book of that game implied setting more than had one. Players enjoyed it and utterly strange things happened. We had a mutant class and a robot class and a few Tako characters. An artist came to a 4th lv game and offered to draw characters and he couldnt. The characters were so brain-breakingly freakish. I demonstrated you could just run D&D with Gamma World elements as if it was a sourcebook.

d12 Psychon World Rumours

1 The old world and its peoples have been rewritten so many times that history is meaningless

2 The gods may form ancient ruins with new lost languages of non-existent civilisations

3 The machine gods terraform the world constantly, recycling any life in the way

4 Time or space travellers on Psychon are transformed and wildly mutated

5 The world is divided into hexes, each a local experiment subject to change   

6 Hexes are divided by geography, but all kinds of other perils stop hex cross-contamination

7 History, your memories and bodies are playthings for the gods to recycle as they will

8 Wildly different levels of technology exist from stone to superscience

9 The various humanoid species were once human or created as labourers or soldiers

10 Magic is all the will of the gods, and spell users interface with magic in differnt ways

11 Mutant and cyborg beings are commonplace among people, wild animals and plants

12 Machine intelligences vary from ancient worker robots and vehicles to godlike powers

Wizards upload their spells from their source into their augmented brains, and casting them deletes the spells as the wizard's brain is damaged from shock when casting them
Sorcerers have spells configured in their nervous systems and brains, and access energy through their patron power (by ritual or bloodline)
Priests have a crystal implant that channels the power of their god through them as miracles
Druids are infused with nanites and biological material from their divinities

Broken Hill
After atomic, biological, chemical and psychotronic weapons, this old town still thrives
In the ruins of this ancient Australian mining town, is a thriving marketplace town
Years' worth of ruins are still untouched, and there are many sealed bunker complexes

Explore the ruins and establish a safe home and strategic alliances

A more gritty post apoc well more like a traditional gammaworld setting. I did enjoy Beaver island Bunker setting but wanted to do my australian setting. Was lots of fun and a regular back up game. One of my better books and enough art and content for a second book. I should try and merge with my roadwar game.

d12 Broken Hill Rumours
1 The warlord keeps squdrons of cars and armed maniacs to maintain order

2 North of the city is a famous raider cult centre where the warlords of the waste meet

3 There are famous trade roads to Radlaide, Smogbourne and Sin City 

4 Before the end times, many rich bunkers were built in the region with government aid

5 Canetoads comandos are creeping in from the north, more every year as we get wetter

6 Giant bugs, lizards and rodents are crawling in the ruins, but many unique mutants thrive

7 There are mutants, robots and gangs in the ruins, and combat is commonplace 

8 If you shelter under the warlords domain, he may insist on trade for your best weapons

9 There is a huge market in an ancient hardware store with traders from the whole continent

10 They say their are intact bunkers of ancients, people will be keen rob them if found

11 Individual AI have manipulated their bunkers into dangerous doomsday cults 

12 The hills are riddled in mines and tunnels with subterranean mutant cannibals

Xor the living Land of Flesh
A living, hungry world that devours and digests other worlds, survivors live as parasites
Tribal people live off the land and make tools from it, if harvested the wrong way Xor reacts
Strange beings live on and inside Xor, even lost civilisations or demonic infections

Survive as strangers in a strange land, possibly as a survivor or their world now inside Xor

Xor was an attempt to make a weird setting with strange hazards and asthetics. Probably a few comics have done ideas like this but also Jonah and the Whale or depictions of people living inside or on sea monsters. Xor could be used to start a strange surprise setting or an  adventure to stop Xor or a way of rebooting some boring world.

d12 Xor Rumours
1 Xor has a vast digestive tract where wolds are digested and some inhabitants survive
2 Creatures of Xor tend to be hairless but forest of hair grows on some of Xor's surface
3 Xor opens a small portal first and sends its spoor through to infect new worlds to eat
4 People live on the surface of Xor and have adapted to life as vermin 
5 Some people have managed to grow plants on Xor
6 If you overharvest the flesh of Xor, antibodies will grow to protect Xor
7 Some wizards of Xor graft flesh and new body parts to heal the sick, bald and toothless

8 Animals that adapt to Xor become meat eaters or graze on hair and shed skin

9 Strange explorers from other worlds come here to explore or harvest free meat 

10 Demons seek to form invasion gate points on infected and diseased areas of Xor

11 All kinds of strange magic items are commonplace on Xor made of meat or grown

12 the animus id a non-material presence of Xor that observes invaders and enemies of Xor

EXO-COM 
Secret bases around the world send special combat teams into a vast dungeon dimension
At first it was science and then profitable, then incursions outside the gate have began
The soldiers in the forward base are also quarantined as the dungeon changes people

Players are soldiers or specialist experts sent on missions to explore and contact xenos through the gate

So this was my take on Long Stairs and F*ing Fantasy Vietnam and Into the Jungle that got me back into D&D. I ran this at cons and was my first character funnel type game. Id happily run this for a while and have increasing outside the gate missions. Tomb of Horrors vs SAS

d12 EXOCOM Rumours
1 Forward base is also quarantined as the dungeon changes people who stay too long
2 Teams record finding lures for traps seemingly from their own thoughts & longings
3 Some lost soldiers go native in the dungeon and change to adapt, gaining paranormal abilities
3 Orcs and goblins constantly wage war on our positions, mines and machine guns work so far
4 Some sort of paranormal intelligence directs dungeon forces
5 Look out for possibly friendly Xeno's who seem to also be trapped in the dungeon
6 Regions of the dungeon appear as wildly different dungeon zones with own ecologies 
7 Report any suspicious activity on base as some xenos specialise in infiltration
8 If xeno corpses cannot be transported, samples and field dissections are encouraged
9 Treasure found helps fund Exocom and provide valuable information
10 Physical contact with Xenos is best avoided; personnel have birth control implants
11 Some monsters and humanoids have paranormal abilities they refer to as magic
12 Information of the dungeon ecology and architecture helps international cooperation

Players start 4 zero level characters
can be soldier or specialists (doctor, scientist, film crew)

After time one each becomes 1st level character and your surviving zeroes become followers