Beyond Thundarr But Not To the Cold End of Space Itself

While working on both GenCon scenarios and something called "A Game of Tombs" as its working title, planned for Halloween, I read Luther Gutekunst's posting at Archon's Court about his OSR "Sunless Horizon" campaign notes. I do love keeping up on ppl's "Far, Far Future Fantasy." This is my name for fantasy settings set a few million years to a couple billion years into the future. Nate Treme's Ghost Star  mini-setting is a good example. John Tarnowski(sp?), the RPG Pundit's "Last Sun" releases are fun. With elements of post-apocalypse tropes and themes but so far in the future one has a totally foreign world (or world-ship, or worlds), these mind trips try to go places so gonzo that alien is a better word.

Of course, I am making notes for myself as well. Ever since Glow I have been playing around with the same sort of vein of RPG.with notes on the Earth about a million and half years in the future. Now while this is not after the red dwarfing of our star and definitely no where near the heat death of our universe, it's still a pretty far out place to be. Take a look at the life on Earth 1.5 million years ago and compare it to now. From woolly mammoths and more than few hominids living around each other in terms of time and space, to one human species and pets leaving plastic covered tech for an epoch to come. So what does my FFFFRP setting look like?

Well there are the Nimby. The perfection of humanoids able to take and hold the lands not radioactive or chemically tainted from ages gone by. We'd recognize ourselves somewhat in the four-toed Bagger, that pretty much populate where humans once did in larger numbers. Often the Bag, a diminutive of Bagger, are subservient to Nimby families. And then there are the Imby, small and nimble and evolved to "smell" radiation and poison so are somewhat able to survive in the wastelands that pock various spots on this new Earth.

A Nimby and its Bag slave

At the same time, in the more wilder parts, raccoons are evolving into an intelligent species and seeking out plastic-coated old human tech which they know how to power up to get a technological edge over the now abundant populations of baboons that scour almost everywhere on the planet. Along the coast lines where most human populations appear to have lived below the surface of, intelligent squids brave the plastic-filled and chemically soiled waters to find technologies of their own.

After my own notes on this for gaming, I've not used it as such. Instead I have been writing fiction in this epoch of weirdness. We'll see what comes of it.