Or: The setting of my current game described by the like four book series I’m stealing from.

Bandwagon issued forth from beyond the lands I know, I saw it from Appendix N, Appendix R, Appendix V, Appendix W.

I also plan to write this post in 15 minutes – as this is a hazardous topic to think on for too long. But I’m not too worried because that which I write is a fairly transparent remix of allready existing material – I am once again saved by the fact that my players haven’t read all of these so they think my setting is very original.

Thankfully I am able to lay out my appendix in a very linear manner, because this is how I invented this setting:

What I was Inspired by
The Silmarillion by JRRTolkien

Specifically that bit around the first age (I think) before the War of Wrath when Melkor is besieged in his fortress of Angband by the amries of the elves for I think literally a thousand years (could be very wrong there, I’m doing no research).

This just happens in middle earth of a major part of early recorded history, and Melkor is there inventing new monsters and sending them out into the countryside and the other Valar presumably have other things to do so the elves are just sitting there waiting for the literal most powerful evil the earth will ever see to run out of food or something (spoilers he doesn’t).

I just thought that was an insane setting that not enough people know about so I ripped it off.

Where It’s set
Letters from Father Christmas by JRRTolkien

It’s a very vivid and alive north pole with goblins and cave paintings and santa who is basically a wizard. I made mine the south pole because southern hemisphere is best hemisphere.

Fun fact before this my world was a disc because of Discworld – which is not on this list because it’s not inspiring my current game. But now my setting is a sphere I guess.

Melkor is now the god Winter, the army of elves are still an army of elves. Angband is now the South Pole, which like in the Letters from father chistmas is a literal pole. People around here herd musk oxen and seem to be somewhat resistant to the cold given how cold it is and how not dead they are.

Who is Fighting
The Eternal Champion by Moorcock

You know what’s more fun than besieging Melkor? half of the players besieging Melkor while the other half try and to covert ops behind enemy lines! This is something I can do because of how many players there are. Also given my pre-existing setting it was always going to be a LAW vs CHAOS thing. Winter is Law and his enemy is the Armies of Chaos – the Chaos gods are far away in much warmer climes, and are the Valar in this equation.

Much Elric-type bullshit is going on in the actual game, because it’s a dnd derived game and therefore very pulpy. Like the silmarillion everything is probably doomed – but because it’s an rpg the players have a chance of causing good things to happen. Most of them just want to get rich before the Pole is inevitably rendered uninhabitable by the war.

Ok but Who is Fighting?
Black Company by Glen Cook

I mean sometimes it’s a moorcock style demon or a tolkien style elf or maiar, but most of these stories don’t have very well fleshed out armies. I’m doing black company style immortal wizard generals and predominantly human soldiers. It just makes everything more fun.

About half of these guys are also elves – which makes everything super fun.

Additionally
A lot of what’s going on amongst the humans is kinda conan-coded

A lot of the ideas are stolen from other people on the glog server and the people they stole from that I haven’t read. There’s a big undercurrent in my game that Winter and the Armies of Chaos are having a sci-fi magic war and the humans are just being told where to go and what to do which doesn’t really come from any of the above sources so I don’t know where that came from, probably reading too mahc Lanthanine Horizon and Black Company too close together.

A bunch of the classes are inspired by specific works as well but I won’t go into that here.