>>15681622
The realm is full of a corruption that twists bodies and minds into warped abominations. The players are relatively immune to this, unless they die, whereupon they are reborn elsewhere with a changed physical structure and mindset. As these changes are so unpredictable (and never beneficial), there is no limit to what they will be reborn as. As the players wander the strange landscapes, they will likely meet others who have accepted their fate to die and be reborn or adventurers who vainly continue their struggle despite their hideous mutations.

The twisted forms that have sprung up sometimes bear a twisted resemblence to their former occupations or lives. This figure was a guard before coming to this world, and now is rooted to the spot after suffering an unfortunate mutation. It now functions as a motion sensor would, moaning when living beings pass within its sensory area.

Even stranger, some mutated entities seem to be part of the "natural" state of the world, like these gardeners that tend the flesh-plants. They can be found in many pseudo-urban areas, and they all look exactly alike.

Cities are far and few between, and maps are not readily available in most areas. Sometimes, knowledgeable beings may function as guidestones in exchange for new information, a meal of fleshplant, or a trinket that interests them.

Many of the inhabitants know the roads just fine, and there are occasional traders and caravans who exchange goods of most conceivable types from city to city.

Of course, almost everyone but the players is mutated, so they are going to have a hard time making trips from city to city without aid or good navigation skills.

>>15681906
Of course, most goods are not what normal people would consider trading material back home.

Guidestone beings can also form as an anchor between different areas of the world.

>>15681970
But then again, even going through a door could send you to places that not even guidestone beings know about.

It's rumored that buildings that bear strong resemblances to those in the normal world could be used to escape the realm's horrors, but no one knows who started these rumors or if they have any basis in truth.

Militant members of the Hooded actively attempt to track down and slay unmutated individuals, or torture them into insanity.

Some once-humans attempt to eke out a living by bartering for goods.
Others fall into old patterns which are useless in the ever-changing realm.

The Mirrormen allow the mutated beings to see what they once looked like for a price.

The strange faces that appear in many places are treated as part of the way the realm works. After all, why bother to explain anything when nothing makes sense anyways?

[Feel free to add your own content if you want, just keep it within the theme.]

A great Lord dwells within the Pyramid in the Wastes. No one knows whether he lives or has become locked in his mind.

>>15682247
It is rumored that the Lord has knowledge of something that would bring about the purification and rebirth of the Realm... but this is likely a myth.

The farther one moves from the tundra and grasslands, the more frightening and deadly everything becomes.

Dead cities are one of the areas that only the foolhardy venture.

A powerful weapon. Could the players restore it to working order?

So, this is Beksinski the RPG?

Pretty cool, but what's the main gameplay element here?

>this setting

This is brilliant.

I have no idea which rpg system you would use to properly convey the bleak horror of this world though. I think you'd probably want to try and keep any games relatively combat-light.

Use Noumenon system but with Beksinski paintings instead of surreal short stories for every scene?

>>15682270

This reminds of the browser game Nexus War. Basically, when people in our universe die they go to a dimensional nexus built from the cast-offs of past universes. There, they battle to decide which aspect of the universe is dominant in the next universe.

The game was taken down a while ago, but wiki is still up. You could use it for inspiration.

Survival in a harsh and forbidding world.
Exploration of places so strange and frightening that the players are unnerved.
The experience of being in an utterly alien world that forces the players and gamemaster to be creative and twisted.

Also I was inspired by the Roguelike "Baroque."

>>15682317
I imagine it like Myst with a few enemies and a much darker tone.

>>15682335
Chaosium's basic role-playing works well for this sort of thing, especially with its handling of sanity (although you may wish to tone them down).

Less focus on investigation, more focus on survival and exploration.

And hey, if they get out of Bekinski-land, you can throw them into innumerable other surreal worlds.

>>15682392
Actually, few enemies is kind of the opposite to what I had in mind from Bekinski's paintings, as many of them depict massive amounts of entities. Stealth and misdirection as well as the aforementioned elements would be an ideal way to go about it.

>>15682247

Your theme is pretty awesome -- been monitoring for a while but didn't want to interrupt. Sorry I can't contribute, pre-occupied and can't do this thread justice. Please continue so I can check back in an hour!

...lets say that "pic related" is taking shelter in a rare spot of sanity amongst a nightmare-scape of horror and wonder. A "frontier" of relativity where he can breathe easy before venturing fourth again into the storm-front of sanity.

>>15682451
Yes, this fits in well with the setting.

Additional ideas will be posted with the tripcode above.

Do we at least have a name for this setting?

I'm partial to Empty Eternities.

rolled 91 = 91

Ruby Quest+Ravenloft?

>>15682549
That's the idea.

You know you've happened upon a strange world where death is desired and, surprisingly, not easily attained.

When death is beyond your grasp, the next best thing to do is pretend. The graveyards have become metropolitan as of late. Those who remember their past lives of nobility and grandeur seeking to regain some level of opulence with fashionable coffins made of whatever the world provides.

>sigh

Why do they try so hard?

We need a Polish name for this. Something along the lines of "Phantasmagoria" as it refers to frightening projected images.

Czarnosc (Blackness). Sounds similar to Charnel.

Let it be said that not all inhabitants of the Realm are not without a sense of morbid humor. This area is called "The Headlands," much to the annoyance of the cranial entities that live there.

There are nomadic tribes that wander the fluxing wastes. They are not large (often smaller than two dozen individuals), nor are the tribesmen related in any biological ways. They merely share similar shapes, skins, mutations. The groups stem from the inner need to be accepted by similar individuals, a desperate attempt to hold on to something 'normal' or to accept their own alieness.

Many of the tribes formed due to shared hardships. That tribe has learned to sustain themselves and communicate without the mouths they came here with, while this one has the shared difficulty of losing their feet to mutations. A given tribe will accept members for as long as they share their most meaningful mutations.

Other such tribes become warlike and xenophobic, having evolved specific mutations (such as armored skin or poisonous spines) which allow them to enact spiteful violence on those that remind them of what they once were.

>>15683228
The mutations are random and always debilitating. Also, mutations are WEIRD. This doesn't particularly mesh with the setting.

http://zdzislawbeksinski.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-03-21T14%3A36%3A00-07%3A00&max-res
ults=5

This page has absolutely everything made by Bekinski (I think).

ALMOST EVERYTHING that was made by Bekinski:

http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com is a great site for additional monster-related and surreal material. I recommend using this when creating worlds other than bekinski's own.

>>15683116
How about "ziemi mroku" polish for 'land of gloom'?

Czarnosc (Darkness): Beksinski-land

Перевал (Passage): Anatoly Fomenko-Land
Here's a 30-minute animated feature in Russian based on Anatoly Fomenko's work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PhN9HamfbuY

>>15683176
Residents of The Headlands live a harsh existence, those few gifted with a means of moving themselves spend their time herding their fellows into safe havens from the elements and away from predators. There are many philosophers amongst their number, other minds have become focused on whatever stimulation they can receive from their vantage points, till they can predict the weather infallibly or give detailed accounts of the local flora and fauna. Their kind are gifted/cursed with remarkable memory. A relatively sane Cranial can find employment as a static guard, storyteller, or advisor.

There are also the hollow minds, whose fleshy ears soak up all that they hear, whose mouths mutter snippets of conversation from across the lands. These are occasionally sold to passers-by, or stolen(kidnapped?) by unsavory sorts. With the right conditioning, the right stimulation, emptyheads can be used to record sounds or even transmit messages.

>>15683379
Hmm... It's cool. Might be a good name for the base setting.

We can call the realms the following name:

Czarnosc (Darkness): Beksinski-land

In addition, an alternate campaign setting or place for the adventurers to go to after escaping Czarnosc...

Перевал (Passage): Anatoly Fomenko-Land

Here's a 30-minute animated feature in Russian based on Anatoly Fomenko's work of the same name:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PhN9HamfbuY

>>15683316
I thought I'd covered that. If there is a group of people that don't have mouths/teeth/jaws, chances are they'd hang out together because learning to chew with your fingers isn't something people normally have to do. A tribe wouldn't all look identical, they'd just have similar handicaps to overcome.

>this thread
ALLOFMYMONEY.jpg

how can I contribute?

uh, does the Dreamlands supplement for CoC sound appropriate to deal with this setting?

This thread pleases me in dark ways

also, ambient music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCh8O3aem5s

bump, fuckdammit shitcunt!

Should we introduce gods in this setting? Because it's pretty much the ideal place to have a talk with a lovecraftian Outer God or something similar. It could also introduce some danger and actual antagonists, to diversify the game from survival and investigation.

rolled 54 = 54

>>15683831
just things that consider themselves to be gods would be better

>>15683838
the difference between actual and pretend-gods would be completely irrelevant anyway, I guess.

What about Art? I mean, In-universe.

I remember about characters from a Lone Sloane comic that called themselves the Blue Barons, who were glorified art collectors acting like a council of kings or a secret society. They were also sorcerers that believed in Art Above All and drew their power from it, which also reminds me of the Monster Tetralogy by Enki Bilal, where a mutant Andi Warhol creates surrealist, terrorist artworks that literally defy reality, such as a thing of pure evil that kills thousands of people before disappearing and looks like a black cloud.

So, I think that using art as an alternative form of magic/weaponry for a certain faction could work. Amirite?

>>15683726
The whole thing sounds like Dreamlands, with more surreal, and less "indescribably unfathomable horrors beyond the reckoning of man"...

because the last bit is a copout and so vague it could describe two of my exes and my old college dorm room.

>sin onershme
Also, captcha writing on the walls... everywhere.

>>15684174
what if Captcha was an actual character? what would she look like? How could the players interact with her?

>>15684202
BAM! Delivery!

>>15684238
not exactly what I had in mind, but I guess that she could be one of those guides/seers, and that she could only answer questions by writing the answers like she usually does.

also, Inglip.

>>15683831
Have gods that cannot directly communicate with your denizens; they can only interact symbolically but no one knows this. This lead to weird cults and manners of worship. For example, there is this goddess of shoes and bread; all over her worshippers are fatalistic, self-flagellants as she is a vengeful and cruel god. But actually she is the goddess of commerce and farming and her vengefullness is just her trying to get people to worshipping her by setting fire to old boots and bread crusts.

>>15684306
>to *stop* worshipping her

>>15684306
Sounds really good.

An idea:
Not all of the natives despise their new forms. Sometimes, beings with completely different forms band together and actually cling to one another, forming mobile caravans. What might appear to be a singular beast lumbering upon fat wheels might actually be a cluster of what passes for merchants in the realm. Four or six or twelve or whatever rotund creatures might gripp their lanky peers like wheels on an axel, as a few of their flat friends act like a combination of sails and rudders.
---
Gods? Imho, that would be kind of, I dunno, pointless. Maybe you could find their fossilized remains or something.

An English name I just came up with is "Strange Sun". How would that translate?

How advanced would technology be? What would it be like?

I'm imagining even basic tools and stuff as just growths on some man-thing's arms.

Bumping for justice.

>>15684380
>>15684400
that reminds me of Barlowe's hell, where souls are used to craft tools; and souls look like bodies of the dead, simply; so, tanks are a few dozen of souls compressed together into a warmachine, and so is pretty much any tool.
In his universe, it's accomplished through sigil magic, for example.

So, yeah, I'd say that using bodies as a construction material could be interesting. Kinda like in the Chimeric Brigade, where, by making a lot of people believe they're a tower, Mabuse can effectively turn them into a tower. Same thing with this:>>15681819


But as there seems to be indigenous parodies of real-life objects and buildings, I think they could also be used; except that they cannot be used properly, and have to be re-purposed.

you know, this setting reminds me a little bit of the comic Glimmer Rats, but not in a bad way. And with all the sci fi removed.

but essentially glimmer rats was all about a bunch of political prisoners and convicts given shit tier gear and forcibly sent by a particularly unfriendly government through a slowly growing portal that a scientific mishap made in the vain hope that they'll figure out how to destroy it from the other end, but for the moment are content to use it as a trash bin for people they don't like.

once there its a fleshy pusfilled landscape that changes when you aren't looking, and only the insane can reliably navigate it, and it is constantly cooking up new and interesting ways to kill you horribly. And even dying doesn't free you, it just makes you part of this place. About the only consolation is that human consciousness when around a given area for a significant amount of time, starts to normalize an area a little bit. But other than that, you will die there. horribly.

an idea about weapons:

a mass of bones, dead wood and rust in the shape of an AK 47, that doesn't shoot bullets, but makes holes appear into the target instead. Doesn't need to be reloaded, but fed with the appropriate materials.

Effectively does what a gun does, but isn't a gun and doesn't work the same way.

>>15684447
looks legit,

be right back guys, i'm going to get us some artifacts

>>15684511

Remember the monkeys from Parasite Eve? If not, there was a monkey enemy with a massive right arm it could launch like a boomerang. Perhaps a PC could develop a boomerang-arm as a projectile cudgel?

Another weapon idea: rock spoon. It's a fleshplant (plantimal?) in the form of a stalk you can pluck from the ground. The stalk terminates in a scoop that resembles an ear. A rock can be placed in the ear-scoop; swinging the rock spoon overhand sends the rock flying with great force, at the least stunning whatever it hits.

Corpses of gods sound like a good idea. They could even be whole locations that span across dozens of kilometers. And of course, some guys are trying to resurrect them.

then, there are things that are alive, that could very well be gods, but who know after all? Who know if those giant corpses are really the bodies of dead gods anyway?

I'd really like to include Inglip in some way; he's exactly the kind of god-like being that would fit in perfectly: his commands are akin to surrealist poetry and all attempts at interpreting them may be completely pointless and erroneous. And Captcha is His prophet.

as for technology, dunno, in some very isolated places it could even be BLAME!-level superscience, except that it doesn't work like it should.

For technology, we could just stick to fleshcrafting and crude metallurgy. I think gunpowder weapons would be too advanced - the theme is supposed to be on par with survival-horror.

Also, Tarkovski's movies could be a great source of inspiration, at least visually.

you know, for whatever anyone's opinions are on the band Tool's music, many of their music videos make pretty good visual reference for this setting.

>>15684720
Sticking with something that specific? Nah, too restrictive. Anyway, it doesn't make much of a difference how tools are obtained, only the way they're used and what they can do is important.

take that tank here:>>15682309 what tells you it can even move or shoot? But maybe it can spew an edible goo out of its "cannon", or maybe its wheels can be used as mills, or maybe it would simply make up for a good shelter. Maybe it's actually the reflection of a house, that happens to look like a tank (and to be able to move and shoot stuff).

See where I'm going with this?

This really reminds me of somewhere the gatekeeper would fit in (from the shivering isles). I love his design. Evokes a feeling of insanity and bloodlust. (Love your world, keep at it!)

>>15684785
definitely.

if there exists high-tech devices and locations, they should look like Giger designed them, after all, he's a surrealist painter as well.

landscapes that defy reason, bizarre geomatric shapes on the horizon that never seem to come closer no matter how long you move towards them, structures that might only be visible from one direction, plants that give birth to insects. giant worms the size of mountains of which the tail and head cannot be found, just an infinite length.

>>15684866

FUCKING GIGER

How have we not mentioned him already?! Giger dump!

I propose that Giger-esque landscapes are truly the "no man's land" of this terrible place. The most powerful and evil reincarnated beings dwell in techno-flesh palaces of their own will, ruling over lesser metallic imps and torturing visitors for amusement. . . or absorbing them into the horrible mind they have gestated.

The Watchers lie silent and seemingly comatose until travelers approach. . .

It is said they await and watch for the coming of one who will cure this nether land. But he never comes. . .

I had a strange idea for a wandering creature that is actually a compilation of others' bodies. Instead of all these bodies cooperating together to make, what is essentially, a much larger being, as someone suggested earlier, the victims become absorbed by force.

The creature takes the bodies of its victims and uses them for its sins, corrupting the souls of all those it enslaves and rapes.

The Biomechanoids, alien even to most un-humans, are so mentally powerful that glancing at one could potentially enslave an onlooker.

Of course, they are very curious about anyone resistant to their wiles. . . and very willing to offer prophecy or knowledge to someone who will pay the right price. Sometimes it's a foot. Other times it's all the memories of anyone you ever loved.

Other times it's your future itself.

>>15685129
no man's land? On the contrary, it could be a very closed, but very proficient society. If you've seen Metropolis, yo may understand what I'm aiming at: living machines, factory-temples where thousands of workers are sacrificed every day to hungry furnaces or end up merging with the machinery. Day after day, they manufacture even bigger machines which purpose is only known by a few. Maybe it actually has not point, but the fact is that if you have the resources and the wits to subvert and operate something that comes from there, you can get serious shit seriously done.

>>15685173
dunno, everyone in this place could be biomechanoid in some measure, but only the rulers would be as you described them.

Seduction, rather than grotesquerie, is the weapon of the biomechanoid arch-things. They do not overcome you with force so much as. . . grant you understanding. Understanding of the world you live in now. Of your place in it. Of theirs.

It is no coincidence that so many Arch-thing victims become slaves to the creatures, and are killed over and over until they join the metal-people's ranks. Some truths are too deep to leave a human soul in the wake of their passing.

>>15685239
good.

music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxWlzzCP7QE&NR=1

>>15685221

This is probably more like what Geiger envisioned, yeah. (Fuck the Alien movies, dumb bastards raped a good artist's vision.)

For example: the fuck are these things? No one knows. They occasionally belch exhaust or whine plaintively, and can be found growing on top of Biomechanoid factory-phalluses. They might be larval Biomechs.

Or they could be infants transported to the nether realms, fusing and breathing through the nearest thing when they die. . .

The Skitters are your mildest fears made flesh. But if fed, they can grow to incredible size and blinding speed.

Try not to get too nervous.

>>15685273
You know, if we're really lucky, Prometheus might be closer to Giger's vision than any Alien movie ever was.

The arch-things could be either beings that look like Space Jockeys, or sensual androgynous monsters (the whore of Babylon, again) or a bit of both.

Archive this fucking shite already, I'm using this in my next Dogs in the Vineyard game.

>>15685293
I like this.

So far, we mostly have small or medium-sized abominations. But what this setting is perfect for is absolutely gargantuan monsters, the kind that doesn't even notice it when it stomps on an army.

>>15685311
it's archived already.

>>15685309
>>15685309

Really? Damn. I'm hopeful.

So, mutations occur upon resurrection? Are the mutations affected by what killed you, or do they happen because of where you were killed? Or where you were resurrected.

Take the Headlands. Lots of disembodied heads littering the landscape. Do things that die in the headlands come back like this, or if a Head kills you do you come back as one? If you get decapitated, does your head wake up here?

Granted, it sounds like for non-PCs, mutation happens all the time. A person might wake up with a different number of limbs than they fell asleep with.

Are there entities that understand the mutation factor, and how to make it work? Is there a faction of wierdly beautiful creatures who manipulated themselves that way?

>>15685469

there certainly are things that understand how some mutations work at some places, at some times, but nobody except maybe a god (if they exist) would completely understand it.

as for beautiful creatures, certainly, even if their understanding of beauty might be quite twisted, since, to understand how to manipulate themselves, they have to be completely insane already. That would work with my idea of a people/caste/community of art-wizards.

How do players WIN?

By which I mean, in this setting, how do they make local, temporary successes? By screwing each other or the other residents over?

>>15685520
it really depends, I'd say. They could be sent on a quest by local people, and try to figure out how to fulfill it (everything would be an enigma, actually, kinda like a Wonderland) and they would get some help as a reward.

Dunno, finding the location of a city, killing a beast, bringing back an artifact, your usual fantasy quests, except that, every time, there are a lot of twists that wouldn't normally be possible otherwise.

for instance: the beast that threatens a city is actually the creator and original ruler of this city, and the players can ally with it instead of killing it. Which sends them on another quest. Or the artifact they have to find is actually a location made out of all the people that were looking for something that can now be obtained thanks to this very "artifact", and to use it, the players would have to risk being absorbed by it. And then, they can give the location to their quest-givers, who will either be trapped in it, or trick the players into doing what they need at the cost of their lives.

Use your head, dunno.

actually, the hardest, as a GM, would to resist the temptation to be a dick with you players, because in this setting, everything is possible, and all of your tricks and dickeries to piss off your players are totally believable.

You manage to kill the Hooded that has been following you through the Ribcage Hills. His blade, a jagged purple leaf that was harder than steel, has already begun to molt and whither as it's linked soul has returned to the Cycle. With no small amount of disgust, you stomp your axe further into the Hoodeds' torso, brace your foot against his throat, and twist the haft. His empty chest cracks open like a fleshy walnut. You pull his Hood from the mangled skin that passes for a face and tuck it into your pack.

You empty his pockets, finding seven triangular coins, a bloated tongue wrapped in canvas, and a string of three eyeballs with twitching ocular muscles. So that's how he found your trail.

Standing, you pull your hair away from the side of your left and carefully press the smallest of the three orbs into the empty socket there. Around you the landscape brightens, colors bleeding from object to landscape to sky. Your footsteps as well as those of the Hooded glare blandly from the ground around you, retracing your earlier combat before heading off into the night.

Yanking your axe from the corpse, you make new tracks to the North towards the Bloated Nostrils of Kevrol. The new eyes will make finding supper easier for the next few nights, an advantage you'll need to stay ahead of the Hoods. If you've had to kill him three times already, he's probably going to start bringing friends.

>>15685683
brilliant

So, basically, Planet Silent Hill.
Fuck yes.

>>15686517
that's aiming a bit low, man.

>>15683316
>>15683332

bump

trekking through through the blood geysers flats was a bad idea. Not that the blood from the geysers is in and of itself all that dangerous or even hot, but it is fairly viscous and it never actually returns to the ground, just forms a strange suspended brown lake in the sky. "The thing known as paul" and "Klick Klack the fishhook man" both were too close when one of those ground vaginas erupted nearby and the massive clotty gout adhered to them and sent them into the lake above. They're still up there flailing pitifully, but there's no getting them down now...

>>15686968
Cool, a palm tree.

Maybe we can use it as a boat if we put it upside-down. But first, we have to catch it, and we better be quick, because the damn thing runs fast and I don't want to drown when the soil starts oozing rain again.

>be Skinless Folk
>go take a shower because you're thirsty
>find a nice geyser about to erupt
>shit doesn't work
>kick it
>it spurts a Maiden of the Tears of Rust
>she's still oozing molten iron, not solid yet
>wat do?

bump

On your fourth day of travel, you happen upon what seems like a mutilated corpse of your late friend. As you near the corpse, you see it begin to twitch and lift itself off the bloodied ground. Limbs, now tatters of flesh and bone, reach out and try to see if you are another vision; you hear soft murmurs, sounds resembling speech mixed with gurgling.

What about introducing twisted versions of common fantasy races (elves, orcs, dorfs and whatnot)?

Immediately thought of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCMHmDnfD6I

This is how I imagine a society of mutants would operate.

>>15687341

This is a HORRIBLE idea. Do not do this.

The whole appeal of this setting is it is so alien from every other RPG setting. Throwing in 'evil' versions of generic fantasy races is a terrible way to do this.

The mutants in this setting are just twisted, corrupted humans. If you have to use generic fantasy races in this setting instead of utilising basically ANY variation on the human form, then your imagination is severely lacking.

>>15687398
I agree.

Any one here read The Night Land?

If not, do so, do so now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gUyvyquLXQ

This is your sondtrack.

>>15687341
nonononononononono
this shit is not gonna happen
it destroys the originality of the setting
nor are we gonna turn this into yet another 40k
there are too many of BOTH of those

>>15687458
>to make the setting interesting

fuck you

>>15687447
no, it doesn't feel awe-inspiring at all, it's just a vaguely strange rock tune, a bit psychedelic, but if you want to go this way, I'd rather have some King Crimson.

also, SUNN O))

>>15687490
the setting IS highly magical by our standards. Introducing magical girls in this would be like introducing, say, a contemporary hacker kid in BLAME!

>>15687507
what made madoka interesting to me is when they put dark lovecraftian shit in the glittery cute world of that genre. But it worked because they made it blend in perfectly. If you want to introduce magical girls, go on, but make them fucking weird.

>>15687494

I think it's the right brand of depressing/discordant. The other song posted was too active.

>>15687507
>>15687490
>>15687458

I like oreo chocolate shakes and i like tuna in oil & tomato sauce. But i don't go and start tossing aforementioned tuna into my blender when i make shakes.

i.e. quit shitting up a perfectly good idea with magical girls

>>15687440
I wouldn't really recommend reading the whole thing(and just skip the first chapter entirely). But it really is one of the first books to explore settings like this one.

>>15687507

I respect your opinion on what makes things interesting, but I disagree with you. This is why.

Adding a "cute" element, I feel, is playing into an aesthetic that I consider overplayed, and rote imitation of that aesthetic to engender the same emotional reaction is something I find disgusting.

This is mainly because the emotional reaction all this moe magic girl thing engenders is dangerously close to fap material. It's emotional fap material, engendering a fascimile of emotions of wanting to protect, and wanting to care for something small, cute, and oppositely gendered.

It only takes a small nudge to bring that over to actual fap material.

I speak from experience, someone I know does this.

It's pathetic.

>>15687542
he may be trolling, too, but just in case he isn't I'll simply tell him to avoid making it too discordant.

Magical girls would be seen as complete monsters in this realm.

>>15687557
okay, you definitely ARE trolling.

The only way I could possibly see anything even approaching "magical girls" in this setting is some kind of mutant vampires, draped in cloaks of flesh, that hunt other mutants for soul energy. Keep your cute moeshit out of my surrealist grotesque.

>>15687553
...I'm going to be honest here.

Those magical girl posts weren't trolling shit, but more of a litmus test to see how /tg/ would react to placing creepy, hackneyed, pedophilic anime moe shit into the first genuinely interesting homebrew I've seen on /tg/ in three years.

Your response has singlehandedly restored my faith in this board.

I will delete the magical girl posts.

I thank you, dog scientist poster.

From the bottom of my black heart.

disregard cuteness

embrace your inner humanoid abomination beyond all logic, morality, reason, time, and space.

cause seriously, magical girls is an even stupider idea for this game idea than the idea of having fantasy counterpart races. Plus it also makes you look like a massive flaming weeaboo, the kind who'd wear kendo gear in public or have anime girl body pillows.

>>15687572
Of curse, your so called litmus test might fail horrible in an hour or two, or the next day, or in another element.

You're just an asshole who thinks he's some kind of /tg/ quality control expert, like all those shit-spammed threads trying to 'innoculate us against trolling'.

>>15687572

So instead of contributing something constructive you decided to shit up the thread. Way to go, Einstein.

So, what kind of system should we use for this? I feel it should be very easy to die, and magic should be wild and unpredictable.

>>15687572

You're welcome.

As you walk into the castle to escape the sandstorm, you see a knight standing at the end of the hall. As you get nearer you realize he isn't wearing armor, but his flesh has formed into a shape that looks like plate armor from a distance. His sword appears to have an organic blade, expanding and contracting slightly like it was breathing. He speaks in a gurgling voice "Welcome! It has been so long since I had visitors! The King of the Demon Desert will be eager to see you!"

Okay, getting back to business, right?

Since many people here like scary angel-things, I'd say one of them could be a nice BBEG. I mean, a towering thing made of marble chips/feathers with an eyeless head, that sings like an old lady and bleeds light from its gaping chest. completely harmless, impossible to kill, and grants a temporary immunity to mutations (like, 9 lives without mutating) if you drink its "blood"; the downside being that it will command you to do weird things, and that you CANNOT disobey it as long as you are still immune to change.

And of course, its mooks are the largest population of unmutated humans in this part of the world.

>>15687594
Lemme get this straight, you're actually DEFENDING magical girls?

What the fuck, dude...

>>15687641
IT WAS A TRAP!

oh, well, maybe the king is a pretty swell guy after all. and I'm a giant mushroom made of dust and vapor, anyway.

>>15687644

Interesting. Suggestion: Angels bleed, but not if you stab them. Rather, the way you get an angel to bleed for you is if you undertake a quest on its behalf.

>>15687648
obviously, he isn't.

>>15687659
you have to obey it to gain immunity. I like this.

>>15687658
I was considering adding a bit showing the knight escorting you to the throne room, where a large pile of gristle vaguely resembling a chair lies, with the upper body of a giant with a crown like head emerging from it. He would offer shelter, but refuse to let you leave his castle as he is rooted to his throne and is desperate for companionship, as only him and a few servants live in the castle.

>>15687659
they could either be questgivers or BBEGs depending on whose side you are.

>>15687688
and maybe he actually wants companionship so eagerly because he knows that he is going to die soon. Not because of old age, but because some abomination is out to get him (the daemon desert itself, maybe, eroding the walls) and you could escape either by solving his problem, or by finding a way to escape the sandstorm/living desert after it has destroyed the castle and the king.

whatchathink?

>>15687648
No, I'm stating that trolling /tg/ as a litmus test only proves the situation for that one time. He could have used furries, WH40Kid shit, or any number of other ideas and he'll get wildly different results in a matter of hours.

Relying on /tg/ to be consistent for your "tests" is sheer idiocy.

reminds me of a dream I had.

Post-apocalyptic, but set in a huge building. I won't go into details, but I had to use the elevator to go down to the 3rd floor. As I was going down, I started hearing stomps coming from the 4th floor. as I was near the 4th, I knew from the sounds alone that this floor was filled with thousands of monsters jumping, stomping on each other until they're all dead, but without any other noise. Stomping almost rythmically, like something that is supposed to pass out as music but is not quite music. As I reached the 3rd floor, the noises were louder than ever. I made a few steps forth, and became sure, absolutely SURE that if I wandered further, the noises would drive me insane, and that I would die from the noise alone. So I went back and escaped.

i don't really think that for this sort of game that you can really quantify having BBEGs for in the first place.

i mean, what is evil in the first place? what could even threaten such a place? there is no day to save. There is only madness and the vain desire to retain one's sense of self in the face of it.

morality has no meaning when its simply a matter of course for shambling things with no eyes to harvest mewling babylike grub things that grow off of tree dicks and chuck them into giant toothed machine vagina monster that shoots out fire and excretes the grinded refuse into a river of blood that seems to flow into the sky. and there is no apparent purpose to this, it just is, and has always been.

having any particular villain or anything that you could clearly label as a bad guy in charge of things, just doesn't sound like a good fit for such a setting.

A variety of drugs and enhancing products would be interesting, too. Produced by the art-wizards, for instance, and sold in small amounts to a few people.

Makes you mutate, but the way you want.

I have seen many unpleasant things in my time in this Realm some call Czarnosc. A mountain range of torsos and limbs melting as if wax onto the landscape, the severed heads of their former . Giant metal faces, their rusty mouths covered with the silhouettes of the incinerated. Massive emancipated, corpse-like demons, their bony hands and pale skin containing strange, almost cartoonish faces that ooze vomit and feces.
But never have I seen such an ugly site as these two motherfuckers getting it ion.
I mean God damm.

>>15687892
moar liek-

Some shittering thing that looks like a cross between a cenobyte and coatrack wrapped in razorwire seems to somehow indicate (via various tones and notes made by sliding its wire coils around its thin body) towards a large prefectly smooth square box, it is full of fist sized skittering black things with too many legs that are trying unsuccessfully to climb up the insides of the box. The number of legs they seem to have seems to change whenever you lose your focus on any one of them. The vendor thing intonates that you are supposed to swallow them whole and alive to gain their benefits, and always 2, so they can mate inside you.

I know it's been said before, but this thread NEEDS to be Archieved. Hopefully in suptg if possible!

>>15687950
or, for something more traditional: a long, coil-like pipe with a small bladder full of gas at the end. You have to squeeze it and then to drink the droplets that condensate in its coil.

by the way, did you know that ducks have a coil-shaped penis?

>>15687967
man
>>15685341

What looks like a pig on stilts thats been roasting at 1000 degrees for a week with assholes where its eyes should be appears to be hauling a lumpy burlap sack with some effort. its looks at your group, unhinges its jaw, and makes a sound like tv static, and then continues on its way without looking back.

Fuck Mr Marblenipples, he isn't progressing.

Okay, who's up for a drawing stream?

pic attached is the kind of shit I fancy doing.

>>15687978
Under which Taglines?

>>15688051
on the fucking front page

"surreal" "world" "fantasy"

here, you lazy bastard
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15681622/

and you know, to find the archive of the thread you're in, just copy/paste the OP post number instead of the one at the end of the address of any archived thread.

>>15688061
Tanksalot. I knew it was archieved by testing. Just needed to find the taglines for manual searchin'.

bump.
no stream?
'kay.

...Let me put it this way. Imagine a man, or a woman doing a handstand while naked in front of you. Now remove the head. Don't put anything there, just remove the head and let the blood trickle into the floor. Now, as a bonus, give the headless guy or gal what looks like skin cancer, and maybe some 3rd degree burns or two. Now give the asshole of this person teeth. Not normal teeth, by the way, but teeth that are yellowed and blackened. The body still has hair, by the way. It's not like those plastic things you see around these parts; you can tell that they used to be human. Now, imagine putting some bugs inside of it, so that when it cuts open, a swarm of them come out. Oh, and remember the gonads? Yeah, those shoot what amounts to hyperconentrated drain cleaner now, the kind so low on the pH scale it will burn through your skin and muscles like that! *snap* Although, that is a bit of an improvment, verses some of the queerer stuff you could make. Plus it's got the strength of ten men, pardon the cliche, not to mention you can always replace the limbs with your favorite weaponry. Bring it back to proper living and you've got yourself an attractive and effective addition to your guard detail. I call it Mooncheeks.

>>15688208

Oh? Huh.

Well, what you do with it is your buisness.

I'm getting to that. Anyway, since there arn't exactly a lot of humans here; no offense buddy, but our numbers are pretty stinking low. So you've gotta make these things reproduce. The best way, I find, is get one of those wizard-type people to do it for you. Your "necromancy" crap isn't going to be enough here. Anyway, might as well tell you how they do it, so, you know, your prepared. Well, when one of the things gets, yknow, aroused, they do the normal human stuff, but the also go in like a homing bomb and pin the fellow. Now, Mooncheeks still do the whole bodily functions things, so it has to eat, so what normally happens is that it just eats the guys face off. Now, it takes about a few minutes for the poor little guy to get to the brain, so I woulden't make these fellers your main attack dogs. Anyway, they pin him or her down and shit down their mouth. Now, this isn't normal poop; remember the bugs I reccomended earlier? You see, these cute little guys eat the guy inside out, and then make a nice little nest, with some pupa inside. After a few days; or a few weeks, if the guy was skinny.

What? Violation of Conversion of Mass? What the hell does that mean.

Whatever you say. Point is, after that time, the baby Mooncheeks are born. They're born full-grown, so you don't need to worry about growing the fellers up.

There you go with physics again. We are on a floating island made of bone and veins, OK?

Entry 1 Day: ?

It has been some time since I've found myself in this twisted land I've recently come to find is called Czarnosc. I've seen the planes in their myriads, weird alterations but this is beyond anything I could even begin to fathom.

Entry 2 Day: ?

I suppose it is by habit that I bother to put the days...The "sky" darkens and brightens with no particular pattern as does the ground in certain places. I could have been here a 100 years and never realized it by now...But I digress..About what?

Entry 3

I've come to a city? I guess I can call it that, the inhabitants are a freakish monstrosity that skit about this place with light coming from pulsing cones spiting gouts of noxious flames.

(barely legible writing till end)

CAnT...Writ...HANDS....NOOOO

>>15687659

I like this picture. Conjured up an image of the PC's managing to make their way through a mountain range (That appeared to be made of masses of tumourous bones fused together into peaks and valleys) only to crest the final ledge and look onto a huge expanse of black and white tiles stretching off in every direction with no signs of life (or unlife) anywhere in sight.

>>15688286
>NOOOO

dammit, man, it's like you've never seen Holy Grail. Why would he write something he would rather shout or say? it doesn't make sense!

>>15688397
To confuse his readers!

>>15688420
maybe it's a location, or a name, or maybe both. Like, the "Realm of NOOO" and maybe it pronounces N-OOO instead of "nawww"

I think an important point to consider now is how a campaign would be run in this setting. It's reasonably well fleshed out now to probably take a stab at this.

The idea of the characters being 'amnesiac' is a good hook as you'll not only have them exploring this strange landscape, but also who they are. Or you could just never address how they got there or what they did before to keep the nature of the realm a mystery.

I imagine the goal for the PC's would be to exit the realm somehow, or achieve 'true death.' I think the best way to spin that out would be to make it unclear if one is actually the other. I'd say a perfect ending to a campaign would be to have one of the PC's being told by another character how to 'escape' which involved killing themselves during some sort of ritual. The PC kills themselves and you as GM are just like "Congratulations! You won!" and then refuse to tell the PC if they died or escaped. Who knows, if you've run the campaign correctly they might not even care?

Taken from Some Notes about the Realms, by Avtor S Vstavki

...The truth is, it doesn't take magic to turn a block of stone like the one you see here into some freaky thing with a mouth. Nor do you need to take drugs to get multiple fingers or be turned into >>15682428 this ugly thing. But it helps if you think that. It helps to think that there is some great evil here, and if you slay it, the whole of this realm will change back to your definition of normal. It helps to think you can curse some wrathful god for damming you to this hell. It helps to believe that one day, after years of starvation on the endless plains of the Headlands, where the silent screams of the still-living heads rot and fall apart, or after being stuck impaled on an icy peak, with your entire body frozen, eternal numb pain your only other solace, with your body so altered by cancerous mutations you are less human than the ground you crawl upon, blind, deaf, and utterly at the mercy of every living thing, to think you may one day finally die. It helps.
But it's not true.

>>15688606
truth or untruth are irrelevant, dude

I'm back, I archived this fifty posts in last night. Have some random encounters.

1- A Hooded enforcer has been tracking you for the past few days (nights? hard to tell), and his calculations have led him to consider you "impure". His right arm bears a stout blade of veins, his left hand is a fluttering attack-creature.

2- A bush of what appears to be clawed fingers quivers near the road you're on. It uproots itself - a scream muffled through the ground - and tumbles toward you, its roots consisting of a ring of toes. Held within its mass are trinkets and stranger things. It wants to do business with you.

3- A meteorite of copper slammed into the ground, leaving a wound filling with blue blood beneath it. It also landed in the middle of a village of sorts. The locals are all identical - ivory women with platinum hair and eyes thrice as far apart as they should be. They're picking away at the meteorite. A few of them have bellies that rapidly distend and contract, releasing little copies of themselves.

4- What was once a pig is now a tank of sorts. Legs warped into irregular wheels, it snorts and plows through the ground, scavenging hands nesting on its back. It's hungry and thinks you're food.

I think you could totally steal one of the bits of weirdness from China Mieville's 'Kraken' novel for this: A soothsayer who reads the future in the guts of the land itself. Literally a shaman of sorts who when asked for advice pulls a knife out, cuts a gash into the ground and then reaches into it and pulls a mass of entrails out and begins to probe them with their long bony fingers.

rolled 31 = 31

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQO-aOdJLiw

and to think this is tame in such a place

>>15688849
Some more encounters:

5- The trading post consists of a single building, a giant, hollow molar. The merchants visiting resemble starfish, with each limb being a two-elbowed arm, each hand bearing two opposing thumbs. On top of each merchant is a clay pot containing its wares. One wishes to sell you an auger crab. What's an auger crab?

6- Much like Little Bo Peep, a herdsman's flock has gotten loose. Problem is, the flocks consists of biped bloated with blood and capable of knocking down a grown man with a mere tap. Their blood makes great sausages but is toxic when uncooked. Managing to cut one of the rubbery brutes will result is a spray of the stuff, a potentially lethal affair on both sides.

7- Two once-men stand in the middle of a town square, bickering over some trinkets and baubles. They need a mediator before the argument comes to blows.

i think you could salvage a lot from the shadowmanuniverse.
its full of twisted flesharchitecture, corrupted souls and deathvodoomagic.

>>15688939
In other settings, this would be totally ridiculous.
In this setting, well, it's still totally ridiculous, but that's because of a serious lack of blood and gore, not because it's illogical or anything.
Possible encounter?

This is brilliant!

I'm listening to Tool and Led Zeppelin right now and fuck you guys.

>>15687644
Holy crap, I have that pic!

Bumping this. So what are some good mutation ideas for those who pass on? What are some good first encounters to acclimate people to the setting? How do I describe this setting without telling to much because I want to play this.

>>15691981
Just imagine something slightly minor going wrong each time they resurrect.
Like first time they have the vestigal remains of a sixth finger, second it grows longer, they start to grow teeth on their chest, third their face begins to migrate (sans eyes) to their neck etc etc

This might be a little too corny, but would Slendermen fit in this setting?

Also, you could have the characters be shaped by their actions; self sacrificial deeds would slowly turn the individual into a skeletal yet angelic figure, becoming attached to material possessions becomes quite literal if one isn't careful, etc.

Does anyone remember the ruined lands of Dr. Suess' "The Lorax"?

We need an area like that. So thoroughly polluted and covered in bizarre pipes and oily factory skeletons that it is utterly uninhabitable, even by once-men.

Although they say a Once-ler lives there. . . which begs the question--what the hell is a Ler?

Alright, we need to nail down what fucking system goes with this shit before the entire thing 404's.

Suggestions time. I propose that this horrible land could easily fit into the cosmology of Geist: the Sin-Eaters, simply due to the trippy cosmology of the Underworld. The dead could mutate each time they are "killed" again until only screeching abominations remain.

Alternatively, it could be a location in 40K's Warp, a pool of relatively stable chaos where a Rogue Trader or Inquisitorial squad might become stranded. Dark Heresy, as I recall, has a convenient mutation table for such a place.

>>15685154
The pilot is one of my favourite works by Giger, if not one of my favourite overall.

>>15682364
Another Nexus fan! Have you tried Nexus Clash, its successor game?

Something else to keep in mind.

Most of the structures that you find, make them seem as ageless and inscrutable as possible. as if they either grew out of the ground, or simply fell out of a different dimension and landed here. In either case there is no normal way of accounting for how it came to be there. Its simply there.

Upside down roaming pyramids comprised of wire and meat that carve a ditch wherever they silently roam.

roman style columns that litter the landscape, upon closer inspection, they are not carved from stone, but bone.

idyllic looking farm houses that look perfectly normal aside from being larger on the inside than they should be, and the furniture is trying to eat you when you aren't paying attention.

I actually did a surrealist game at one point based on Stalker. Basically, the players were all involved with a government sponsored research facility that managed to create its own version of the zone.

I think one of my favorite points was when they encountered what should have been an empty hangar bay but instead found shitloads of transformers with weird bits of flesh attached to them and lightning arcing between them, slowly humming away like it was a natural occurrence. The part which filled my heart with joy was when one of them suggested that there was no point bothering with them because "they're getting on fine without us." That moment of realizing that they probably wouldn't understand all of the weird stuff here and just decided to head on to their destination was perfect.

It's not really fear, it's just the knowledge that whatever's going on is so alien to you you probably can't do much more than touch the edges of it.

>>15693139

>and the furniture is trying to eat you when you aren't paying attention.

/tg/, I fucking love you.

This is the Skin-Eater, a rare predator.

It eats skin.

What? Were you expecting a weakness of some sort? Tricks for defeating it? No.

It's going to stalk you, and wait, and then it's going to eat your skin. And you're going to scream. There is nothing else.

Bump. C'mon /tg/, give me a fuckin' ruleset for this madness. Don't make me go all Plane of Dreams on this one. My PCs might never sleep again.

>>15693589
I suggested this earlier.
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12877.phtml
Players reincarnated from... somewhere else and trapped in a dream (or nightmare) world of inexplicable surreal things, often terrifying? Check
Mission: Escape? Check
Surreal as fuck? Check

It's just not quiiite as creepy.

>>15692723
Not40k not40k not40k
For christ's sake.

>make fort save
>you failed?
All of the sudden, cats, cats everywhere.
You open up the door-cats into the next room-cat. as you walk along the catwalk (strangely made of cats that are walking), you lean against the railing-cats to get a better look at what's on the floor-cat below. There doesn't appear to be much except for a few cat-crates filled with cat-god knows what. As you peer around, you spot a set of cat-stairs leading down from the catwalk to the level below. You descend, making sure to grip the cat-railing as the cat-steps are slippery.As you get the the bottom, you see a cat-door across the way. As you approach you notice a cat-button, most likely to activate the cat-door. As you press it, it mews at you cutely.

Take 14 insanity points.

This thread is good nomnoms for a kitty cat. Bumping for more.

>>15692723
>Alternatively, it could be a location in 40K's Warp

GO
FUCK
YOURSELF
546/10 MADE ME RAGE

>>15692723
You can use Dark Heresy as a system, yes. But I object to letting it take place in 40k.

40k is grimdark, but with a bolter you can pretty much blow apart the grimdark around you.

That's not the atmosphere we want.

You could take Drunken Bear Fighter's system and readjust it. Hell, make up a mutation table for it. The rules already in place are simple enough.

>>15693754
Oddly, something I enjoy... but of course, totally fucking unrelated to this thread

COMPILED GUIDE:

Mutations: Random and NEVER beneficial.. None of them are beneficial. The DM decides what's appropriate. Look at Beksinski's figures for inspiration. Too many of them and the player is either insane, immobile, or ineffective.

Story and Setting: Be as vague as possible when describing the patterns of entities. Giving it a surreal, dream-like feeling is ESSENTIAL to a good playing experience. If you can, avoid assigning human motives or reasoning to non-humans, as it helps convey the surreal mood.

Environment: Decayed cities, organic growths, plains, plateaus, canyons, and impossible architecture are only some of the things the players will encounter.

Survival: When the characters aren't looking for pockets of normality or advancing the main plot in the surreal world they inhabit, they should be focusing on survival. Players may not to eat or drink in the realm, but they will still feel thirsty and hungry, even if going without food or water for weeks. This makes the primary concerns of the players the following things:

INSANITY: The realm is full of strange terrors and things out of a nightmare, which means exploration must be paced in order to keep one's wits.

SHELTER: Many of the beings in Czarnoc are hostile, and so is the environment. The players must eventually rest and recuperate. This means finding safe places or sites to set up temporary camps.

ESCAPE: Whether to escape from Czarnoc or escape a hungry once-human, the players must be on the move if they hope to get out of this place alive.

I think that the setting shouldn't have Gods, personally. I don't see it really adding to it.

As for tech...I like the idea of there being twisted, broken remnants that look like modern tech. Like that tank, or the cities. But tech that can actually work should be extremely scarce.

Only weapons I can see being produced are large bore/caliber airguns and crossbows. That's about as advanced they should get for locally produced things. I think that generally speaking, it should be pretty hard to be able to put a mark on the world as if it's a 20th century realm, 22nd century realm or whatever.

Civilization, IMO shouldn't exist much beyond MAYBE a village. The world should have a sense of...isolation. It should be unnerving. There shouldn't be a place you could just 'set down' in.

>>15693790
Those rules seem simple enough to work in this setting. We shouldn't go too rules-heavy since rules give the world consistency and consistency is what we don't want. The world is so alien that very few things follow any comprehensible rules.
The only thing I would add would be a mechanic for sanity. Though we should think of a different effect for sanity loss. After all, hallucinations aren't that much of a problem in a world where headless-teethmen are common and bleeding mountains made of cancerous bones are the paragon of normality and going insane is meaningless where the whole of reality has gone insane.

>>15693875
Setting should have religion. Strange processions wandering the wilderness and such.
It should be very ritualistic, very cultish, and very creepy.
But whether or not their gods actually exist should be debatable. The very nature of the realm should tend to encourage belief in a shaping force, just one that is seldom overtly apparent.

>>15693875
Please, please, please avoid the "postapocalyptic wateland" cliche in any way you can. The idea if no references, no bearings. Better to have a half-finished arcology teetering at the edge of a cliff, threatening to fall at any minute and crush the Iron-age structures a mile or more below, etc.

No familiar context. No room to breathe. This is unreal. This is surreal. This is my whole life. So no remnants of the modern. Please.

If the players ever escape, they'll find themselves horrible mutants in a normal world.

Most strangely, they'll be able to watch (if they're discreet enough) their regular selves, living out the lives they would have lived.

COMPILED LIST PT. 2

Gamemastering Entities and Entity "society": NEVER MAKE THEM TOO HUMAN. The game's aim is to simulate a nightmare realm, and as such, dealing with most entities is vague and often confusing. Keep exposition from them brief or even nonexistant, even make them actively ignore players that try to talk to them. The average entity wants little to do with the players, who are likely dangerous outsiders and will not help the players even if they try to force them (which is a terrible idea and will get the players killed faster than you can say "ROCKS FALL").

Names of recurring creatures should also be appropriately vague or bland to emphasize the fact that these creatures are simply part of the setting. The bandaged creature that appears again and again in any thread with beksinski could simply be called "Bandaged Crawler," a name which is succinct and ominous.

"Society" is more of a misonomer than anything, as the cities are either abandoned or decayed. No real order exists, and death or suicide are commonplace. Only one thing is constant: Hostile actions by the players in any city that aren't in self-defense will result in a grisly and horrific death.

In summation: Keep non "monster" entities alien in thoughts and actions, keep their motivations vague, and use them (at least) as window dressing for the players travels through a frightening and hostile world.

>>15693934
OP HERE: I like some of these ideas, so if this thread is archived, I'll pick them out and refine them.

>>15693664
Anti-dogscape? Instead of everything being one huge dog, everythings a million cats?

http://beksinski.pl/
This should give you more of a feel for the setting with its animated prints and creepy music. (Click on the dots for different music and stuff)

I am going to have the weirdest fucking dreams ever tonight.

(I love you, /tg/)

>>15693901
I like the idea of Gods' corpses. You see a procession of once-men walking around the corpse of their god. The body is huge, so big it could be mistaken for a mountain and the procession just keeps walking around it. Forever. Is it actually a god? who knows? it doesn't matter.

>>15687440

Verily Forsooth MUTHAFUCKERS!

>Begin Snippet.

The first "night" in this place is the worst for a new arrival. The day might have been fulled with horrors which one know will bleed into your dreams but the time of rest draws near and you will be so very tired.

Dreams come, with even the familiarity of home, concepts and places which you have breathed in all your life, but what now? They change. Morph into something slightly different, maybe an idol or hero lived longer and you can now remember their glory which never was.

Your own life is treated as such, people and places are interchanged at such ease within your dream. Numerous changes, infinite new connections, your life as you remember it shuffles and grows.

And you awake.

And you wake, in that haze, dreams still real as your old life. And you remember it all. All of your dream is remembered and none of it is distinguishable from memory. Your old life is lost, drowned in nightmare and fantasy.

- Saul The Lair

>>15694198

Cause I got high last night, woke up this morning and for about a half hour could have sworn the Spice Girls had released something excellent recently.

Hey OP! Played baroque too!

Some elements that could be interesting to steal.
In baroque, reality is completely borked, so your own psyche can generate mutations. As seen in the game, these aren't really beneficial. However, some types of insanity or delusions or extreme dedication can produce interesting mutations. In baroque, the Archangel (actually just a scientist) thought himself a savior to such a degree that he mutated wings and looked like an angel.

If players show attachment, dedication, or obsession with something, they could gain mutations 'in theme' with their obsession. A personal weapon or object they hold on to? It begins to fuse with them, going to far they'll eventually be a monstrosity taking shape of the object.

If they are obsessed with escaping, they could take the form of endless wanderers, maybe a just a head with dozens of feet sticking out, always wandering looking for a way out. Retaining sanity could be mechanic to avoid mutations.

>>15694307
Psyche could be a central mechanic, balancing between Depression, Obsession. Any too extreme mental state can cause mutations. Say witnessing events or failing things give you depression points, one can take solace in a personal object, memory, friends, or what have you. This alleviates depression, but gives obsession points.

imagine,

a hillside covered in mouths of all shapes and sizes, they speak beautifully and choir-like in a language you can't quite understand, but you can tell that it is all lies.

seemingly mindless pale genderless hairless rubbery skinned creatures devoid of identify seem to arrive in ones and twos whenever from the surrounding area to skitter up to a massive nonreflective black prism shape of an indeterminate number of sides to dash their heads upon it. There is a massive rotting pile of these things at the base of it, each time one of these things bashes it head open upon it, it grows in height a little.

A massive wormlike creature covered in anemone-like fillaments, it is several hundred feet in width and seems to slowly unscrew itself in a straight line from the ground in a perfectly 45 degree angle, up into the smoky sky, endlessly. like an infinite barbershop pole made of tentacles. Crowded at its base, crowds of beings hack away at emerging form, hoping to grab themselves a chunk of writhing severed fillament for food, the clumsy among them are grabbed by the worm's filaments and dragged along into the sky.

At some point you may find yourself in an infinite parking lot at night. It is cracked and filled with potholes and the sodium lights create small islands of light. There is not a single car or vehicle located anywhere within it as far as the eye can see. Somehow though no matter what direction you travel, you will arrive at a seemingly normal, if abandoned Dairy Queen fastfood/ice cream place. The lights are on, the machines are on, everything is clean, no one is home. Stay there long enough and one might notice the parking lot lights on the horizon start switching off, in the direction of the DQ, from every direction.

I prefer the idea that "whatever someone chooses to worship is a god".

Some cultists worship their death gods and hold ceremonial funeral processions and sacrifice prisoners and themselves in an attempt to achieve true death.

Abstract creatures that resemble fallen angels claim divinity.

Colossal mammalian beings the size of entire landscapes exist, their rotting cadavers and entrails providing homes for the indiscriminate, who often worship their shelterer.

A beast that preys on any it can catch is worshipped by peasants, who offer sacrifices and pray it will not take them.

The Masked worship a grossly distorted version of christianity. They believe that God will save humanity. So, they flay pure humans and wear their flesh over their own mutated bodies to hide their deformities and hold a desperate, paper-thin masquerade.

etc.

>>15694507
"Dogscape" is one such landscape that stretches on miles and miles, possibly without end.

Strange writings appear across the plains of Inglip. Seemingly random phrases or made-up words. As the plains shift, so to do the messages change. The Philosophers are a cult dedicated to recording deciphering these messages and fulfilling their deity Inglip's will.

>irdiab believe

"As you approach the shadows, you can hear the whimpers of the purest form of terror you can imagine. Do not be fooled, these creatures were once human, but no longer, indeed they do not look human any more. They are shells. Forever trying to hide, forever trying to avoid the horrors this place has presented them. Should you get too close, their unbearable screams of pure terror is enough to unnerve even the most hardened wanderer. They are usually harmless, as they will flee in terror at anything they see, retreating to the shadows, whimpering. However, should you corner one, you may not get off as easy."

They must be taken to the lighthouse. What was once whole, must be made whole again. Beware... There are those who revel in this madness. They would keep them from coming together at all costs. Now that you are a Holder, they will come for you too.

"Some say that it's not the place itself that's so disturbing, that it's a reflection of the minds of the people that inhabit it. Indeed, even fanatical orders are dedicated to change the minds of people in order to turn this place into a paradise. Whatever the case may be, people do have an effect on this place... Those who go insane often degenerate and mutate into all manner of creatures, one of the more disturbing being the creatures carrying around corpses of those who have tried to reach the final death. Some say these are reincarnations of those people seeking out their own corpses in an effort to regain what they lost. If there's a lesson to learn from this, it's that death, at least in the manner that you know it, is not the way out..."

>>15693934
Perhaps some fallen angels have the ability to release people from these planes, though they do so grudgingly and only after a great service. By swearing loyalty to one of these and fulfilling its will, the players will be released, and find no solace in their freedom. Upon being slain, they simply return here.

>>15694507

I only worship one god.

His name is Blayne. Look at him go!

And he only has one hymn. . .

So far I'm loving this setting. I'll try to play it when (if) I find a group willing to. Hell, I may even join an onlne game, even though I've never played online before.
So, anyways, I think we should put this setting into 1d4chan for future reference. Also, should we crosspost this to /x/ so we can get more suggestions?

>>15694902
Are you referring to Blaine? If so, I've never seen that picture of him.

>>15694978
/x/ is not what we'd want for this at all.

There are dozens of them. Facing different directions so they can watch each others backs. Creatures, eyeless. They sit in their chairs whose eye on the crest is how they see. You'll find patches of them. They don't know what is behind their chair and see only forward. Sometimes wandering to the very edge of their visual field to patrol their turf. They tend to lure others into the area in hopes of tying them to the back of their chairs so that they'll signal any attack on their weak rear.

bump

Standing before you seems to be a forest of bodies. Each figure reaching about 7 or 8 feet tall, hidden within large robes that seem to fuse to the ground. All of them gray and faceless, no arms can be seen within the voluminous robes, although, some stray bandages seem to trail from something with in the sleeves of the robes. An unseen breeze seems to stir the bandages every now and again, making it seem they have a life of their own.
As you walk between the rows of bodies familiar scents assault you as whispers come from the motionless figures;drawing you closer and urging you to stay awhile. Standing within a few inches of the figures you can now feel the breeze that stirs the bandages, it's pleasant and warm. As you enjoy the breeze you start to forget why you were here and staying seems like the most wonderful idea in the world. You brush against one of the bandages and in a flurry of motion the spring to life and wrap around your arm, pulling you closer, as more bandages snake out of the sleeve and entangle you. You struggle at first but the pleasant feelings and lack of caring makes struggling seem bad. Sitting here being cradled in the warmth with the familiar voices and smells seems like the best place to be right now.

This music seems oddly appropriate for this thread that has so damaged my sanity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5WpsMRWUtg&feature=related

Not sure if its funny, depressing or just plain nonsensical.

This is a Knower. They may collectively know all that is knowable but not in any order individually. And the knowledge that they have has driven them incurably insane. It is almost certain that one or more of them has the knowledge of how to get out of this place but they are too hopelessly mad to act upon it.

Any measure of information they gift you with comes with a generous helping of madness, and there is no way of telling in advance if the knowings they grant you with contains the information you wanted.

That ball is knowledge. you eat it and go mad.

the city. It sees what you are doing

Are there any oceans and seas in this setting?

>>15696973
Ships made of living corral that dock with floating crystal cathedrals. The ships are nourished by their pirate crews who slit the throats of pilgrims and wanderers ans smear their blood over the ship's hull.

>>15696984
Sorry. Forgot my pic.

THE GREEN WITCH
A woman who cackles that her mutations have only been discoloration, bumps, and slightly stretched body parts. She mocks the players for having body parts drifted, being fused with something, missing limbs, etc.
Claims to have had a near-death experience, and is in denial over her lack of legs and ability to float.
SLUMPED WOMAN
A female figure that walks in an extreme slouch. Her breasts have migrated and now rest upon her shoulder blades.
Likewise, her face has migrated. Skin has grown over where holes for the nostrils, eye sockets, and mouth. While the silhouette-shape of the skull remains the same, facial features have moved to what would be the top of the head.
An extra pair of eye sockets.
A flat area with holes for nostrils.
The entire skull splits crocodile-like for the mouth, which still only houses as many teeth as a regular human mouth.

This would go remarkably well with some Oöphoi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCb4Umryd18

Good Dark Ambient. Some of the saddest music in the world.

I'm not good at this but:

"I'm starting a diary, for my own sanity, or as a guide for others should you find this. I don't know the date, but the year should be 1826.

My name is Domenic Felip, I was an entrepreneur, and I had a bachelors degree in law. I don't remember many specifics, this place makes your memories fade if you aren't careful. It's as if my former life was a dream and I've woken up in this place.

Everything is changing. Not only the landscape, but everything. I've seen people change, physically! I can even 'feel' myself changing, but I've been able to resist it so far. I think the change comes from your head. If you allow yourself to slip, if you allow your... 'identity' to be controlled by the things you experience, you'll find yourself changing to reflect whatever this world seems to 'think' you are. I won't claim to fully understand this... but staying sane, staying STABLE (!!!) seems to be the key to retaining your humanity.

There are other reasons for this diary. This place, is - 'dreamlike'. I've seen people and 'creatures' not being able to distinguish their dreams from actual memory. They even deny it after I confront them about the possibility! It feels that real. It tipped me off to the possibility that it was happening to me to. I began recording important events from each day in my journal, to my horror... the results confirmed it. I've been having dreams ingraining themselves as memory - I guess this is why so many people lose themselves. I suspect this diary will become invaluable to me. I've suggested the idea to other people though some of the poor souls are illiterate - I can do nothing but pray for them.

I am in relatively good spirits. I shall explore this place further, lest it consume me. May God help me."

>>15697692
I think I might've pulled an anachronism with the bachelor degree thing... I was thinking of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalaur%C3%A9at

The idea of year struck me late in the process.

>>15697731

Well, it suggests that the narrator is unreliable. The language you use is pretty modern as well, indicating that the narrator may not remember anything real about his life. Maybe he was a historian before coming to Czarnosz. Or maybe he just fixated on that date.

>>15697569

Still pushing for Geist here. Or maybe 3.5 Heroes of Horror. Neither fit very good, though.

>>15697780
This could work with the anachronism. He could encounter different people with different ideas of what year it is. It's implied he has already spent some time prior to recording events, leaving plenty of time for his dreams to alter his memories and removing real ones.

>this thread

bump, because this thread is made of awesome

You wake up in your room but something is odd, you can't quite place it, then you look out of your window... the view is alien as you step up from the door, you realize part of what was your building has fused with other structures, standing in a wicked tower like monolith. There are other people like you in that place, all confused from this. As you step out of the building it starts to crack and crumbles in to a pile of rubble.

You are on your own now.

I am absolutely loving the idea of this setting. Imagine a world where you can come across stuff like pic related and it feels almost commonplace.

Anyone interested in this should totally take a look at Beksinski's officia website as well like >>15694046 said. Browsing through the images whilst listening to the music should put you in the right mindset to think about this setting... or drive a sliver of insanity into your brain, one of the two.

There is no other name for these strange things other than 'The Sky Fingers'.
And yet they do not grab or grasp anything, they simply seem to grow, like plants, from the clouds above.

Some have climbed up them to see their 'roots' as it where... they had never returned.

The Watchers of the Lake let none into their strange, dark cathedrals which they build along the edges of the Everdrop waterfall.

They are sometimes spotted however within the windows or along the walls. Terrible, gaunt things with heads wrapped in bloody, infected bandages and long, multi-jointed six fingered hands that hold spears of flesh and bows and arrows crafted from hair and teeth.

Some say that to build such weapons, the monks must supply their own building material.

i highly recommend people here to read Frank by Jim Woodring

Every morning I've woken up in a different place then I've fallen asleep. I've hidden in the gangly roots of the cadaver tree and woken on the shores of a lake of flesh. I found a head of knowledge and he told me that i must have a dream dragger. It follows me out of sight during the day then picks me up and carries me off where ever it fancies as I sleep. I can't stop it unless I'm awake and it won't come to me unless I'm sleeping. I have no idea what to do and I need to get to the other side of the valley of breathing bushes before it becomes another month of nightmares below the shadowline.

>>15693139
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcdO9tipNIg

>>15699521
All of the players find themselves in this monolithe, regardless of where there rooms were before. Some were in their rooms in a house on a cul de sac. Others were in an aparment. There was even a person who was in their school's bathroom when it was transported.

Give the players a time limit. Either have it by amount of turns passed or set an actual timer. When time runs out, the building begins to crumble. If they die from it, that's their first experience with mutations.
They might even encounter others who did not make it out and ended up dying and mutating at some point in the game.

>captcha:
>-borne enteder
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/entender
Perhaps one of the inhabitants knows where they have been borne to?

She was once lovely. Or so the she to the left tells me. A creature with three heads covered in thready "hair" that moves in time with the overhead oceans. Her body is frothy like seafoam somehow colored the deepest red, but holds roughly angled shape as if she was solid.

She on the bottom clicks and dribbles a bit, leaving a small puddle of ash. Then they leave.

A breeze with a sickly smell passes by and flutters the ash, revealing a small collection of pebbles. Are they pebbles? They're stirring and moving... Perhaps some sort of eggs...

I peel some of my companion's paper-skin from him to collect the gritty eggs and add them to our collection. If we can ever find one of those travelling merchant groups again, I'll need to ask what these do...

we've got to move. The overhead ocean has become too still, and I can't risk another party member being doused in it's eruptions. Who knows how it will change us this time...

I could think of nothing else to do except to drown myself in the Sea of of Pouring cups...At least that's what I've come to call it.

I thought that if I drown myself than perhaps, in some vain grasp of hope, I'll finally die and be free. The land can't take me when I've given myself to the waters.

I closed my eyes for an indeterminate amount of time and opened them again to a sight I knew was to await me. Bubbles. I hadn't died as I thought, as I hoped.

Who knows how far down I've gone, or if there even is a bottom but after a time I begin to wonder if I'm floating up as a light can be seen boarding the barrier of pitch black darkness.

It's strange and frightening considering how drap my existance has been...It's bright! And there are things floating and flittering about!

I somehow feel....Strange...As I draw closer to the light I look at my hand and see it is gone, the bone grey ashen skin melting away into flittering..Fluttering...So...me..th..-

Bumping this while I read it.

Incidentally, I always thought The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson was effectively Beksinski: The Book.

>Error: Duplicate file entry detected.

Well shit. Looks like someone thinks the same. This is why I fucking love you, /tg/.

Ok, so your bodies do not longer function the way they did even if they are not mutated. You do need to sleep, eat or breed. However you feel the need to. If you fail to the illusion you can die. Heck you won't die even if you are cut in half and will regenerate to your normal self. However if you surender to the pain and lost grasp on yourself the land will take you, and give you its gifts. Verry few newcomers know this and by the time they get it, usually it's too late.

>>15705644
I thought of it more like, if you get cut in half, then you're cut in half, and unless there's a wizard or someone like that to fix you, you're fucked. Either that, or regeneration takes years or decades, and by then you'll have tons of mutations. Therefore, people who can heal mutations are highly prized by what few villages and hamlets exist in the Realm. That would explain why so much of the terrain is alive or made of flesh of some sort; it's made of humans, who over time just
decomposed into flesh. The only way to "kill" something is to incinerate it completely; it's still alive, it's just going to take decades or centuries to regenerate. And even then, it wont be the same thing.
Of course, this is all just me wanking off, so whatever.

>>Captcha: theory Farfetched
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

(You can barely contain your joy see the doorway to the frontier lands, where reality is less random. There, you might find food and water. In all respects, you should have died of hunger and thirst days ago, but the dark magics of this forsaken land have served as unlikely blessing. More than once, you feared yourself mad, but now, here, lies rare safety.)
(Suddenly, a horrendous creature rises up in front of you. It is a sick, pulsating thing, with no arms and a large spiked tail, and, even more disturbingly, a bloodstained phallus. The creature's mouth was horrific beyond description, seeming more a violation of reality itself than anything the devil could think of. Just the very thought of devils would have chilled your skin, before; now you feel only fit to laugh at them. You raise your sword, now covered with rust as a result of the accursed cave you had to trudge through and their unholy magics, and brought it down onto the beast, cutting it cleanly in half. The body writhed for minutes after, it's insides spewing out and staining the ground beneath it a dull grey. Strange things, like eyeballs with the legs of an insect, squirmed away from the fetid corpse. You took it upon yourself to crush of the once-sickening things, in the case they might be eggs of some sort. The task now done, you see the creatures footsteps having originated from a shack in the distance. Despite the ease at which you slay the trifling thing, you cannot help but feel sympathy at the possible fate of other souls less fortunate than yourself, you venture over to the cabin, which you find, to your surprise, is actually made of wood. You step through the door, sword at the ready.)

(Surprisingly, and somewhat to your disappointment, the cabin is empty. To your further surprise, the cabin is perfectly normal, the first normal thing you have seen in this realm. As you look closer, though, you see strange oddities. There are no books on the shelves; only metallic objects that are warm to the touch. There are ropes made of a strange substance, connected to a what appears to be a box of ivory with a pane of glass covering the front, stained black. This, and other strange things, make you wary; this may be another form of unholy corruption. Next to it, you see a piece of paper with a fleshy lump attached to it. You cut off the pulsating meat and pick up the paper, before dropping it as it spasms on the ground. After the paper thing has expired, you gingerly and cautiously pick it up, and read the text.)

(As you read the the letters get progressively more illegible until finally being replaced with what appears to be an attempt to draw a face.)

(You stash the sheaf of papers and leave the cabin, hurrying back to the path. You soon forget all about the incident.)

The cabin and the papers disappear, to be replaced with more of the strange oddities and horrific structures of the Realm known as Czarnosc.

>>15706009
I thought of the death thing more along these lines: You get cut in half, you die. But then, you suddenly regain consciousness in a different place (though not so far away most of the times), reborn but with you body changed in some horrible way, since your new body came from Czarnosc. Your corpse remains where you died, feeding and forming the land. It may eventualy gain a "life" of its own but it will be as a creature of Czarnosc, without any remnants of humanity, driven only by basic instincts and a caricature of your motivations in life. So, if you spent your time hunting "monsters", it will be a killer being; if you spent it trying to build or searching for something, it will make elaborate but useless constructions or become a wandering entity.

>>15706099
I just killed a mutated once-man and the cabin was his home he was defending from me, didn't I?

Maybe. Maybe you are actually a heavily mutated human who has gone insane, and thus sees non-mutated humans as monsters. Or maybe all the (You) crap was just inside the mind of the once-chick who wrote that letter. Or maybe you are actually a giant brain, drawing people to you with illusions and living out the last moments of their lives as food.

Or maybe you're a octopus. I don't know.

bump b4 sleep

That demotivator features what is unambiguously a picture of a metalworking lathe.

>>15706139
The corpse can become anything. That's part of the beauty. But, he doesn't even need to die, if he falls into repetitive patterns, he can mutate into reflecting the pattern. Say he decided to construct things to take his mind off of the world, then his mind could deteriorate and he could grow mutations like extra arms shaped like tool, or more horrifyingly: become a giant construction himself for adventurers to explore.

Thx for the inspiration OP.

Believe it or not but my current RPG is disturbingly similiar to yours maybe a bit more limbo like with close connections to religous themes and such.

But apart from that we are pretty close: Ever changing planes, mutations that depend on your sins, psycho reactive environment, planes that are made of people's emotions and thoughts.

It's frightening. ;_;

Bumpin with some Barlowe