What Campaign Setting for your Module?

[manikus]

Well, it looks like I have something to do this evening.

Any particular kinds of robots in mind? (Humanoid, flying, tank treads, etc)

[Uatu]

Probably one of the simple-looking ones (like a tin barrel with arms and legs)

But about campaigns again...

There are a lot of interesting mini-campaigns in the Forgotten Realms. Besides the well-known Kara-Tur (and Horde), Maztica, and Al-Qadim campaigns (the last has quite a lot of material on its own), some lesser ones include Old Empires (Egyptian/Middle East), Great Glacier (Inuit/arctic), and Chult (African/jungle). Anauroch (Bedine/desert), Calimshan (another Arabian-esque locale), and other places also make interesting campaigns on their own as well. Some interesting material in all (interesting priesthoods, arctic dwarves and jungle dwarves, weapons/armor, etc.).

[manikus]

I"ve been thinking about Old Empires, as I really want to do something with an Egyptian flavor.

In my search for robots, lasers, etc in AD&D I've only found one mod so far - Expedition ot he Barrier Peaks. I'm just getting warmed up. I keep distracted by interesting articles about eh history of the game. That, and reading a lot about the first edition of Gamma World.

[Uatu]

Yeah, they had Gamma World and such as well, of course (never looked into it much, so I don't know much about it, except that stats/rules seem to be different).

Yup, Expedition of the Barrier Peaks (Greyhawk) is one of 'em. City of the Gods (Blackmoor, published for basic D&D) is another. I can't think of any others, actually, although I think they are out there... Did L11 Needle have some? I forget...

[manikus]

I've found one more - Temple of the Frog. I've now looked through an incredible number of module descriptions, and as I don't own of those three modules (right now), I can move on to the Dragon magazine articles after getting some school work done today.

[Uatu]

Hmm - were there any robots in that one? I don't remember any (I had this module a long time ago)... Maybe they had some as a preview to the next module (City of the Gods)?

[Uatu]

Also, I11 Needle has a "tin man," which is described as a golem, but seems more like a pseudo-robot to me (There are some futuristic elements in this module, and the tin man can't really be killed except by melting, although it can be "deactivated" or immobilized by various means (command words, ice/water, pummelling))

[SilentThief]

I remember seeing a Dnd boxset module that had a giant clockwork "robot" swinging his fist at and breaking a castle tower on the front cover of it, but I have no idea what it was called.

There is problems for campaign continuity when having futuristic elements in a fantasy campaign. If you have chemical/mechanical(clockwork)/electric systems then you have to have the potential for pcs to be capable of interacting with them (possibly learning how to do manufacture them if the knowledge is still available). However, if pulled off properly this can add some flavor to the campaign. For example, I had decided in my Pnp Dnd campaign (that I am trying to put into DC) that there were technological accomplishments that the dwarves had learned in a past historical age and the technology almost brought about the destruction of the dwarven folk. Now, they have rudimentary knowledge/technological abilities but the vast majority of it is deemed evil/taboo and joined the ranks of "dark knowledge" such as necromancy and demonic ritual.

ST

[manikus]

I think futuristic tech can go very nicely in a fantasy campaign. The late, great Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In the three mods mentioned above in my post (I don't know about I11 Needle, as I haven't looked into that yet) there are are robots, laser guns and communicators. PCs can find and use the weapons, but they never manufacture more...if I found a laser gun right now, I could shoot things with it, but I know I couldn't reverse engineer it, and I'm willing to bet that no one in Blackmoor or Greyhawk could either. It wouldn't be worth it to invest too much, I mean a magic missile can do the same thing, and it never misses.
Gygax was a huge sci-fi fan and intended for sci-fi to be able to be brought into AD&D, I mean he did write Touble at the Barrier Peaks, and his partner in crime, the other founder of AD&D, Arneson wrote the other two. Mordenkainen appears as an NPC throughout Blackmoor b/c that was Gygax's character and according to the two, when Gygax wasn't DMing, Arneson ran him through the adventures that were published as the DA series.

And then there's Gamma World. It came out as an RPG after D&D and didn't do so well at first, but Gygax liked it, so worked with the company that put it out to release using the AD&D 1e rules. There was even some discussion, though very unofficially, that Blackmoor was the very ancient world that would one day become the Gamma World setting. Here's some trivia- the first version of Gamma World used AD&D rules and is the remade version of the game Alpha World.

So, if you see Optimus Prime popping up in one of my adventures, we'll both be very surprised, but if the king has some type of dreadnaught robot as his personal guard...well, you never know.

[Uatu]

I guess you could "wish" for another one... well, maybe...

There are some rules in the DM Guide I think for converting PCs from Gamma World (or maybe Alpha World) to AD&D... The numbers seemed to be a bit different, but I dunno.

(Optimus Prime... sort of ruins the fantasy atmosphere, I think )