Our Sphere

For #NaGaDeMon 2022, I worked on an Into the Odd hack called Our Sphere, the same name as the setting I've been tinkering with in my spare time over the past year or so. I came up with it while walking my puppy and needing something to distract myself.

I ended up releasing a playtestable ruleset in an A5-size zine-style pdf, titled Our Sphere: A SWORDDREAM for Into the Odd. It contains some notes on what guided my thinking as well as what I call the "Quick-Start Guide", the "Host Guide", and a brief section called "On the World".

Since the setting is an attempt to provide a fantasy theme park with all the necessary magitech/gaslamp/steampunk possibilities, it's hard to summarize.  There are Elves and Dwarves and Giants. There are Gnomes & Ogres, lots of them, because I think they're neat. There are Bird-people who can fly. Vehicles are common because the horses are all members of the International Union of Pack Animals. A cult of the Dragon Emperor are trying to resurrect him and take over the world.

You know: the usual.

However, given the anticanonical leanings of the SWORDDREAM, I tend to provide descriptions that are metatextual or paratextual, & that's why I call it "Our Sphere"; my version is no more valid than yours.

If you have any feedback on any of this, feel free to share it here, on Mastodon, on my Tumblr (linked above), or on the NSR Discord, where I regularly lurk. I still plan on releasing a few things:

• A small one-shot hexcrawl-with-a-dungeon, tentatively titled Lights in the Bog
• A partial atlas, titled Cosmographical Meditations upon the Present Arrangement of Our Sphere (edited by Gardenwarder, published by the International Society for Magical Studies)
  

Thanks for stopping by.

Postscript: Olivia Hill Rule

Any work found here is provided under the Olivia Hill rule, which states:

No fascists

If you’re a fascist, you’re not welcome to play this game. It’s against the rules. If you’re reading this and thinking, “You just call everyone you disagree with a fascist,” then you’re probably a fascist, or incapable of drawing inferences from context and acknowledging a dangerous political climate that causes the oppressed to be hyperbolic. Don’t play this game. Heal yourself. Grow. Learn. Watch some Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood or something.