Thursday 12 September 2013

Prequels, preludes, prologues

JK Rowling returns to the Harry Potter universe with her first film script, about Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, set in the 1920s starting in New York.

So that’s Roaring Twenties Monster Hunters. Okay. Fingers crossed for Tommy guns versus dragons.

It’s a pretty distant part of the setting to pick up - nearly a century ago, in a country barely covered in the canon so far (of course also the country the studio is based in) and possibly a shift in genre from a largely serialised epic to monster of the week (or monster of the film) adventures. And will she write the novelisation? She’s always been wary of other people writing in the setting, which is the cited reason there’s no Potter RPG.

What would a similarly out-there bit of backstory for your setting be like?

Who wrote the Watchers’ VAMPYR book? Who invented the lightsaber? What happened to the seven rings for the Dwarf lords? There are answers in the various settings’ spinoff novels, but never mind.

What was Sigmar really like? Is Caine real? Who killed Slider? - And if you’re playing Aberrant, this is like running an Adventure! session mid-series to give the players a different perspective on Divis Mal.

Who was the first superhero in your setting? How did first contact between your main alien species go? Who founded the city-state the PCs hail from? How did the War begin?

2 comments:

  1. The 7 dwarven rings? Good grief, now I want to run MERP! What have you started?!

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