I've often thought that Mongo would be a good setting (or at least good close inspiration) for a D&D setting. Ditch Flash Gordon and visitors from Earth, and (for maximum ease), replace comic derived cultures with analogous D&D "races"/cultures: So the Magic Men of Azura's subterranean kingdom become drow, and maybe the half-orc gets reskinned as Lion Men.

That could certainly work, but this guy went an adapted the most recent Flash Gordon rpg to 5e, so if you want to play in the "real thing" you can.

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around April 23, 1981. 

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the party trying to find a way to free Queen Desira of Virid from the influence of the shadow man. They have no magic with which to uncharm her and it doesn't seem reason alone will do it. Not wanting to fight the shadow man and his magic-using victim, the party retreats to the castle to seek the advice of Glafko.

Glafko is not particularly helpful, offering to write a strongly worded missive to his Queen making the party's points forcefully. Just as they are about to return to the garden folly and resort to violence, Glafko suggests the crystal winged horse Zephyrus might be helpful. He has freed her from magical influence before. The majordomo summons the crystal horse and he agrees to help.

Back in the garden, the shadow man isn't pleased when he sees Zephyrus, but contact with horse does the trick and Desira falls unconscious. Then, the fight breaks out with Erekose whipping out the ray pistol he got from the future, and blasting the shadow several times. Kully forces the shadow to retreat further with dissonant whispers, but that may not have been the best move, because then he's hidden in the deeper shadows of the garden.

Black tentacles erupt from the ground and grab Waylon and Erekose. Dagmar casts a light spell and reveals the shadow, and Shade puts two magic arrows in him. The shadow disappears. It's unclear whether he is dead or he just fled, but they can't find him anywhere and the tentacles are gone.

They return to the palace and find the Queen is still sleeping. They establish a watch, using Celestie (Waylon's owl familiar) as a window guard. 

During the night, Desira awakens and summons the party via Celestie. She appears to be her normal self again (as much as they can determine that). She listens to what they have to say with interest, particularly when she shows them the Triumph of the Wizard of Azurth volume. She tells them she believes the book to possibly be connected the the Pleasure Dome of Yai--or at least she believes that is where they are likely to find out about it.

To make her point, she has Zephyrus bring out a device. 

And produces a thin black box and puts it in the machine. He makes images of a play where actors appear to be portraying them appear! Desira says she got this from a demon who said it was from Yai and called it a "bootleg." The party is intrigued, to say the least.

The party stays the night and samples the local cuisine in at the Silver Unicorn Inn. In the morning, Desira sees them off, offering to take them to the entrance to Subazurth so they can pass through the kingdom of her friend Prince Gheode, ruler of the earth elemental fae (kobolds or gnomes they are called), which she believes will ultimately be the safest way to the Noxian northern border.

The Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Marva and Wanaxar is the remnant of an ancient, inhabited world shattered in some cataclysm. The nature of calamity is unknown, though an encounter with contraterrene matter is a possibility.

The mineral wealth of the asteroid belt has drawn prospectors from all over the System and the fragmentary remains of the progenitor planet's civilization have drawn scientists and researchers. Despite these visitors, the Belt remains a relatively lawless frontier. Zerene, the largest of the worldlets in the Belt, is famed as the raucous port of pirates and smugglers.

Art by Jordu Schell

A particularly rapacious group of outlaws are the mysterious Gith. A species of folk seemingly native to the Belt, these marauders are fearsome in appearance: skeletally thin, with parchment yellow skin, and emaciated, corpse-like faces. The Gith. seemingly materialize from nowhere, gutting ships and taking no prisoners, then vanish--sometimes while still in the scopes of pursuers.

There are rumors of a related group of beings, the so-called adepts of asteroids, who tend to remain hidden. They are less aggressive, but not much more friendly to outsiders.

It has been suggested that the Gith races are the descendants of the people of the lost progenitor world, but the iconography of large-craniumed, tentacle-mouthed beings found in the ruins on some asteroids is puzzling, if that's true.

Verdis, second planet from the sun, is closest in many respects to New Terra (and Old Earth), but has a slightly thicker atmosphere, higher average temperatures, and more area covered by water. Its polar continents (without ice caps) are the most comfortable place for human visitors. Though there are reasons for humans to visit the marshy, equatorial islands (the collection of plants for sale to pharmaceutical companies being a major one), the climate and local lifeforms insure that few reside there longterm.

Though Verdis has at least two intelligent species, it is the hadozee humans think of as Verdisians. They are tall, thin humanoids who largely resemble earthly primates except for the flying squirrel-like patagia. The cradle of hadozee civilization is centered in the forests of massive trees on plateaus on the south polar continent. These trees dwarf the mighty redwoods of Old Earth. The the hadozee have built cities among there branches.

The hadozee were mostly pre-industrial at the time of first contact with humans but with some advanced knowledge they claimed to have acquired from the "Sky People" from New Terra, presumably the Precursors. The hadozee clans were frequently at war with each other, but gradually formed regional leagues to protect certain sites of significance. These leagues eventually coalesced into larger structures and eventually a council of leagues, loose enough to bring in more clans as time went on. The death of council leaders as a potential  a loss to all the clans of in a dissolution of the council has insured that any attempted violence on their persons is punished severely. Despite the volatile (from the human perspective) nature of hadozee, this system has worked.

The vast seas of Verdis are home to an aquatic species, called Mer-folk by humans and "Deep Hunters" by hadozee. Little about them is known, as they have mostly resisted communication, though some hadozee island dwellers have been known to trade with them.

Art by Tony Moore

I was talking with Jim Shelley of the Flashback Universe blog yesterday about the Planet of the Apes franchise (a not uncommon occurrence), and I suggested to him a way though prequel series from the 21st Century could be merged with the original series of films. Well, actually a couple of ways, but I'm only going to talk about one here.

The "original" timeline, is the story presented is definitively present in Rise of the Planet of the Apes through War for the Planet of the Apes. An experimental Alzheimer's drug inadvertently leads to an increase in simian intelligence and a super-flu. These events lead to conflict between humans and apes.

In the end, the apes have defeated their foes and migrated to an isolated place to build their city. Their leader, Caesar, first of the intelligence apes, dies.

Rise in passing mentions the Icarus spacecraft was lost, allowing for the possibly that it will return to earth at some point in the far future and events similar to Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes play out. Not identical perhaps, but similar.

Somehow, Cornelius, Zira, and Milo manage to go back in time as shown in Escape the Planet of the Apes to 1973. Much of what was depicted in this film would work exactly, as it posits an Icarus which had launched prior to '73, but a group of apes coming to Earth in an advanced spacecraft and revealing things about the future could. These events change to timeline.

This altered timeline ironically accelerates some events people were trying to avoid, leading to the events depicted in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes and limited nuclear war.

So there you go. Like I said, it's rough, but it works if you don't sweat every detail. For a much more detailed timeline (though not taking into account the newer films) check out Timeline of the Planet of the Apes by Rich Handley.

Since my goal is to read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis, why am I talking about Marvel Treasury Edition #28? Well, that's because the title of this issue is Superman and Spider-Man. Released around April 28, 1981, this is a follow-up to Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1 from 1976. It is the last issue of Marvel Treasury Edition.

Distant Vurania is cloaked in impenetrable clouds, but is known from two recorded Terran expeditions to have a surface capable of supporting human life, at least for a time. It is warmed by volcanism and radioactive elements, and is aided in retaining the heat these produce by it's thick clouds. The light from these sources plays luridly in the gray-green fog, but only partially relieves the darkness. No light from the sun or stars penetrates the gloom, and indeed the atmosphere is opaque to sound and electromagnetic waves in a fairly sort distance. Vurania holds on to its secrets.

There is little life beyond the level of arthropods apparent on the surface of Vurania, though there is evidence that intelligent life once resided there in the form of crumbling monumental structures believed to be temple complexes. Some are decorated with images known from subterranean Precursor ruins on New Terra associated with the worship of the "Spider Goddess." The prevailing theory is that these were built by Precursor dissidents who fled to Vurania following a war, but why Vurania ought of all the worlds in the System is unknown. Scholars who disagree with this theory point to the lack of any apparent buildings beyond the temples in the (admittedly limited) explored areas of the planet, and suggest this was a religious site, and possibly the source of the Spider Goddess cult.

Vurania might be a tempting haven for interplanetary outlaws, but its environmental conditions and distance are factors against it. The everpresent fog has probably contributed to the frequent old spacers' yarns that paint it as a haunted world, a sort of purgatory where crews unlucky enough to stop there may be held forever by the ghosts of their own misdeeds.

Fantasy rpg settings usually make-do with Bullfinch’s Mythology derived/inspired pantheons, monstrous deities of the Lovecraftian or Howardian variety, or the occasional monotheism. Nothing wrong with those, but looking to the pages of comic books suggests some interesting variations:

Space Gods
Kirby’s Eternals posits that those classical pantheons were just misidentifications of a subspecies of humanity uplifted enigmatic aliens. In the fantasy context, maybe the aliens are some sort of elder gods (recall that Lovecraft’s Elder Gods felt unaccountably protective to the gods of the Dreamlands) and the Eternal stand-ins could be something like the Menzter’s Immortals. The other option would be to play up the science fantasy aspects for the full von Daniken. “A sufficiently advanced technology, etc., etc,”--maybe the world only appears to be a fantasy world and alien super-science is the order of the day?

The Endless
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman strips down the pantheon idea with the Endless. Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire, and Delirium are (as their names would imply) personifications of concepts. Marvel Comics has a similar (though less developed) class of beings like this: Eternity, Oblivion, Lord Chaos and Master Order, and again Death. The Endless fit into the mythologies of various cultures in various ways, but they don’t have mythology of their own really, just personal history. A group of beings like the Endless could be the sole deities of a world, just worshipped under different names by different cultures, or (like in Sandman) these sorts of personifications could be an order of cosmic beings separate and “above” the usual pantheons with whom PCs could interact.

New Gods
“There came a time when the old gods died!” as Kirby told us in New Gods #1. As the title suggests, Kirby started in with the exploits of the New Gods--and Grant Morrison gave us even newer new gods in Final Crisis. A world could be post-god shift, adding some interesting background, or the setting could be in the midst of the “godless” period, post-Götterdämmerung but pre-reemergence of the new gods. Players might actually have a roll in finding/shaping the new gods that would appear.

 Further developing this idea.

Art by Matt Hilker

Wanaxar is the fifth planet (currently), and the largest in the System. The crushing gravity and terrible atmospheric pressure make whatever surface might exist inaccessible to most denizens of the System, but Wanaxar is not uninhabited. Floating cities drift through its colorful, poison clouds and ride its frequent storms.

The Wanaxarans (Giff or Giv, in their language) are a broad, powerfully built people, adapted to their homeworld's high gravity. It has been suggested that they resemble anthropomorphic hippopotamuses, but in truth, no living human has actually seen these fabled beasts as they did not survive Old Earth, if they ever existed at all. The source for this reference is a popular animated character inspired by archaic children's books.

The Giff are not native to Wanaxar. Their own legends say their ancestors came here from one of Wanaxar's numerous moons fleeing a rapacious invader that they never saw in the flesh but whose warships laid waste to several worlds. It is the memory of this event that likely led to militaristic bent of Wanaxaran cultural today. Indeed, the entirety of their society is organized along military lines, though obviously not all serve in a combat-related capacity. Still, Wanaxarans find it usual to contractors of other species to perform tasks they consider beneath them, and aliens on Wanaxar can be found in positions form menial laborers to city administrators.

Wanaxarans can be rather stiff from the human perspective, governed as they are by complicated system of military courtesy, but they can be quite affable once initial formalities have been honored.

 This is a follow-up to this post.

Merkuro is the closest planet to the sun and tidally locked, so that it has a searing Dayside where temperatures climb high enough to melt lead, and a frigid Nightside that's cold enough to chill oxygen to a liquid. Only the narrow band of the Twilight Belt is close to habitable, and it is a badland riven by canyons and caves, wracked by storms. 

Human explorers would have been surprised to find life here, had the Vrusk of Marva not tipped them off. Liquid gases flow underground from the Nightside and melt to provide breathable, if rarified, air for cave complexes and even deep canyons in the Twilight Belt. Here peculiar invertebrate life developed, amorphous like amebae, but multicellular. One species (if such a term has any meaning with these lifeforms) developed sentience. These unlikely, elastic creatures, the plasmoids, would become one of humanity's best allies in the System.

Plasmoids are somewhat mysterious in that while they did not have particularly advanced technology at the time of human first contact, they possessed the theoretical framework to understand advanced concepts, and took to modern technology easily.  Some have proposed that plasmoid knowledge, perhaps even plasmoid sentience, may have come from consuming earlier interplanetary explorers (perhaps members of the Precursor race that inhabited New Terra before humanity's arrival) and absorbing their knowledge. It is a credit to plasmoid broadmindedness (and perhaps their renowned sense of humor) that they do not find such speculation offensive.

There is a human-operated spaceport in the Twilight Belt, called Solar City. This is a mining and broadcast power planet for New Terra. Most of it's inhabitants are roughnecks, miners, and technicians who do their hitch and then return to New Terra with a big paycheck. There are naturally ramshackle saloons, gambling houses, and other places of entertainment that tend to grow up around such camps to separate the workers from their money.

I've been thinking about a campaign setting that would utilize a bit of material from Spelljammer, a bit of material from Star Frontiers, and then some reconfigured stuff from D&D in general. The ruleset would be 5e (it's what the group I would likely play it with knows the best), but that would allow me to draw from Rocket Age 5e and other sources saving me some work. 

I sketched some of the bones last week, and it would conform to some of the particulars I outlined in this alternate Spelljammer idea, here. The basic idea is that humanity, fleeing some cataclysm on Earth, wind up either in a distant star system or either an alternate universe (I don't know if the players will know which or if it will matter) where the solar system is uncannily like a pulp version of our own. The laws of physics will obviously be somewhat different here, but I don't expect that to be a focus of play.

Technology will conform to pulp sci-fi standards, with rockets with some sort of atomic powered aether drive playing their way through the system. Swords of some sort will be present side-by-side with rayguns, but I haven't decided whether they will be or everyone or particular characters, or whether they will be normal swords or something special. Psychic powers will take the place of magic.