The Gygax 75 Challenge: Halas, Week 1

I'm doing Ray Otus' Gygax 75 Challenge.

I've had it in my itch.io library for ages; can't remember how I learned about it. The goal is to end up with a usable dungeon, town, and some mapped countryside.

I don't think it's a stretch to say I'm pretty good at coming up with setting ideas. It's kind of my brain's default resting activity. Themes, broad-strokes concepts, histories, aesthetics, I can do that for days. Where I always struggle is with the small-scale stuff, the locations and NPCs and challenges and everything that makes a setting usable for an actual game. This seems like a good way to work on some of that stuff.

I'm going to be using my personal B/X hack, Under Stone & Over Hill, as a baseline ruleset. I don't think it'll matter too much. The only thing that seems really relevant is that there are no clerics, just mages.

The Challenge

The book is free on itch, but for those uninterested, the process goes like this, week by week:

1. The Concept. Articulate the big ideas and gather sources. Coming up with the broad themes, look, and feel of the setting.
2. Surrounding Area. Map the land around the dungeon and town. The immediate, adventure-sized area; Otus supports Gygax's recommendation of 1-mile hexes, or 6-mile at the absolute largest. I'm not sure which I'll do, I'll have to see how I feel next week.
3. The Dungeon. Draw and stock three levels of your dungeon. I'm probably gonna stick to just the three.
4. Town Features. Detail the town where the characters will retire to heal and carouse. This also includes NPCs, hirelings, and rumors.
5. The Larger World. Round out the setting with some meaningful details. This is a bonus week, since you're supposed to have a playable setting after week 4. Otus provides a broad menu of further prompts and suggests you do at least three.

If you fall behind, Otus suggests leaving the loose ends from each week and not coming back to them until after the whole five weeks are up.

Week 1: The Concept

This is, as mentioned, the easiest part for me; I've basically already done it for the setting I'm using. Still, it's nice to have a motivation to commit this stuff to writing. I expect things to get harder from here.

Task 1: Get/create a notebook.

As recommended, I'm doing this hardcopy. Otus allows digital alternatives, but writing by hand is good for me. You'll be getting transcriptions.

Task 2: Develop your pitch.

"Write down 3-7 (no more!) well-crafted bullet points that will “sell” the world to your players. Each bullet should be concise and focused – a few clear sentences for each is plenty. Emphasize the most essential bits for establishing excitement, expectations, and tone. Your pitch will give players an idea of what they can expect to find (or not find) in your setting and will help them create suitable character concepts."

Halas, the Land of Five Towers

• The land is ruled by five immortal sorcerer-kings and queens, the Deathless Lords. They rule from five ancient Towers, said to be relics of the primordial First Ones, eldritch edifices full of strange magic. They hold Halas in a grip of tyranny, bleeding the people of tribute and demanding to be worshiped as gods.
• PCs are human. The only other sort of people are the raun, a sort of minotaur-cat-folk with jaws like Halo elites. Halas is also home to strange and deadly predators, inscrutable daemons, and more unusual beings besides.
• Ruins litter the landscape, from the time of the First Ones and other ages lost to memory. Deadly creatures and traps lie within, but also lost treasures and ancient magics waiting to be recovered.
• Magic is a mighty force in the world, but out of reach for the common people. The Deathless Lords and their servants hoard their magical might jealously, bestowing it as gifts to their willing minions and hunting mages who refuse to bend the knee.
• There is no alignment. If cosmic powers attend to the actions of humans and raun, they’re subtle about it. Whether PCs bow to the worship of the Lords, venerate the First Ones or the raun gods, or cast their lot elsewhere is their choice to make.

Halas is "secretly" a science fantasy post-apocalypse. It's located on an alien planet in the distant future; the raun are the indigenous inhabitants, and the First Ones were humans who came from offworld before some mysterious collapse wiped out most of their history. It's not really meant to be all that big of a secret--if the setting were published as a book, all the art would have a clear lost hypertech vibe to the magic stuff--but the text wouldn't come out and say it, and I wouldn't either if I were running it. Lost golden ages of magic and wonder are a core tradition in D&D, this is just that played a little more on-the-nose.

Task 3: Gather your sources of inspiration.

"List them as an annotated bibliography – citing the name, author, etc. and a sentence or two explaining what each source brings to, or supports within the setting. Cull your list so that it has no more than 7 entries. Check to see if they are referenced by your pitch points in some way. Sources are for you; they do not need to, and perhaps shouldn’t be shared with players."

• The Dying Earth, Jack Vance. Classic post-post-post-apocalyptic science fantasy.
• Kill Six Billion Demons, Tom Parkinson-Morgan. Aesthetics of magic and weird stuff, anti-authoritarian magipunk themes.
• Infinity Blade, Chair Entertainment and Brandon Sanderson. Post-apoc fantasy vibes, aesthetics of advanced tech masquerading as magic and medieval trappings.
• Elden Ring, FromSoftware and George R. R. Martin. Aesthetics of hyper-scale Gothic architecture, landscapes that feel lively and vibrant but also forlorn and ruined.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo. More good sci-fantasy tone inspo, more colorful ruined landscapes.
• Dungeon synth music by Vindkaldr, especially the album Enchantments of Old Lore. Beautiful, mournful, yearning for something lost and hopeful for something like it to come again.

Extra Credit: Assemble a mood board.

I’m not fully satisfied with the mood board. I feel like so far it's come out a lot…paler, colder, more washed-out in terms of palette and feel than what I want. Maybe? I don’t know, I guess I do feel drawn to the sort of clean, cold, smooth white look for a lot of things. In a way it feels magical and alien, like, it’s so different from anything you normally see in a grungy medieval sort of world that it naturally stands out as special. But it also feels, y’know, not very vibrant or lively, and I do want Halas to feel both of those things. I looked at a lot of character and background art for Kill Six Billion Demons, and I love it, but the chaotic, organic energy it has is so opposite from the kind of imagery I can come up with on my own.

Am I just a cold, sterile sort of person? Fuck, I hope not. I don’t want to be like that.

Tune in next week for some fun with maps.