Crimson Planet! is a roleplaying game in the style of the “sword and planet” stories of the early 20th century. Development is ongoing for this project, but here’s some basic information about the setting.
· The world, Deshaar, is an arid planet. Great metropolises are scattered here and there across Deshaar’s surface, built up around vast engines known as “hydrodynamic cycling cores,” which concentrate the rarified atmospheric moisture into potable water. These machines were built in some prior age by an unknown race, and they are slowly failing, despite the best efforts of the technologist-priests who maintain them. As these last known hydrodynamic cycling cores gradually succumb to the march of time, life on Deshaar becomes ever increasingly difficult, and vital resources more hotly contested.
· Three of the four most populous races of modern Deshaar are native to the world: the elegant violet deshaarans, the sturdy gray deshaarans, and the serpentine seshereth. Humans, legend tells, arrived nearly eighteen-hundred years ago from the blue-green world known to the natives as Saduus, as refugees fleeing an apocalyptic war.
· The level of technological advancement on Deshaar is difficult to place. A swordfight may, for instance, take place between two levitating magnagrav vehicles, racing side-by-side over the dusty plains, while a horde of raiders sitting astride riding beasts fires off a volley from protonium rifles at the combatants. In the tradition of the classic planetary romances, the science of the setting is meant to evoke a sense of wonder and otherness, rather than being in any way realistic or factually accurate.
· The default level of civilization in the setting echoes the empires and kingdoms of the ancient world, up through the end of the Middle Ages. Empresses and high-priests, rather than modern-day politicians, rule the nations of Deshaar, and they rule by the sword, the nucleon cannon, and – in many cases – hundreds of generations of unyielding tradition.
· For the most part, heroism and villainy are typically fairly black-and-white concepts on Deshaar, though allowances are certainly made for the occasional rogue with a heart of gold, and perhaps even the rare antihero struggling toward proper gallantry.
· The world, Deshaar, is an arid planet. Great metropolises are scattered here and there across Deshaar’s surface, built up around vast engines known as “hydrodynamic cycling cores,” which concentrate the rarified atmospheric moisture into potable water. These machines were built in some prior age by an unknown race, and they are slowly failing, despite the best efforts of the technologist-priests who maintain them. As these last known hydrodynamic cycling cores gradually succumb to the march of time, life on Deshaar becomes ever increasingly difficult, and vital resources more hotly contested.
· Three of the four most populous races of modern Deshaar are native to the world: the elegant violet deshaarans, the sturdy gray deshaarans, and the serpentine seshereth. Humans, legend tells, arrived nearly eighteen-hundred years ago from the blue-green world known to the natives as Saduus, as refugees fleeing an apocalyptic war.
· The level of technological advancement on Deshaar is difficult to place. A swordfight may, for instance, take place between two levitating magnagrav vehicles, racing side-by-side over the dusty plains, while a horde of raiders sitting astride riding beasts fires off a volley from protonium rifles at the combatants. In the tradition of the classic planetary romances, the science of the setting is meant to evoke a sense of wonder and otherness, rather than being in any way realistic or factually accurate.
· The default level of civilization in the setting echoes the empires and kingdoms of the ancient world, up through the end of the Middle Ages. Empresses and high-priests, rather than modern-day politicians, rule the nations of Deshaar, and they rule by the sword, the nucleon cannon, and – in many cases – hundreds of generations of unyielding tradition.
· For the most part, heroism and villainy are typically fairly black-and-white concepts on Deshaar, though allowances are certainly made for the occasional rogue with a heart of gold, and perhaps even the rare antihero struggling toward proper gallantry.