Potot Anon
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This article or section is about a topic that is particularly prone to Skub (that is, really loud and/or stupid arguments). Edit at your own risk, and read with a grain of salt, as skubby subjects have a bad habit of causing stupid, even in neutrals trying to summarize the situation. |
While in general, /tg/ is a Warhammer centric board, the interests can indeed branch off into other games or universes if they are well built enough. Worldbuilding general threads exist and they are very helpful for DMs and aspiring DMs to make their worlds more interesting for players.
One day, a strange OP posts a generic thread (albeit, a relatable one nonetheless) where he complains that his players asked for a "non-traditional setting" for their future games, to which OP complied by creating one, and ends up with disinterested players who do not understand his setting. Doesn't sound like much, huh?
WRONG.
See, this OP came up with the most skubtastic setting that makes Dune sound like the most down-to-earth sci-fi novel out there. His setting is so alien, so strange, so out-there that it can only cause fa/tg/uys to either love it or hate it with passion, along with the obligatory calling OP a faggot.
Let us introduce you to a new piece of recent /tg/ history, an anon who made a world which reputation is already legendary. We bring you the tale of Potot Anon.
The world of Potot anon[edit]
Oh dear Emperor, where do we even start?
The tales and legends of Potot anon are set in Javadah, a nation primarly composed of giant mangrove trees atop a "sea of dust", which is a massive desert. Surprisingly, life is somewhat abundant in this foul desert, as it turns out that people live inside the gigantic trees.
The trees themselves aren't your average wooden organism to which elves are regularly attached to, but actually creatures made of flesh (and bone?), sometimes described as "vampire squids", called Potots (hence the name of anon). Now, what the hell is a ten-miles long, fleshy giant squid doing in the middle of the desert? Well, simple, it's looking for moistured areas deep within the sand, using its tendrills (which are the "roots" of the "tree") to suck any water or material that could feed the squid. Now why do people live on those? Well the dust sea is so large and... Potot anon forgot that mentioning how people got to the giant squid trees was kinda an important detail.
First, there are the Dust-Eaters, the true vanilla humans who live on the Potot. Unfortunately for them, the dust sea's particles have the abilty of severwly damage their lungs, but fortunately however, the Potot provides through its glands a source of water and "moisture". Matter of fact, all of their tools, weapons and other building materials are provided by the creature itself. They also grow their farms atop of the Potot and obtain metal through the many creatures that the giant squid has for prey. In other words, the squid provides everything if they're willing to live in symbiosis with the beast, and also have their lungs busted by the sand.
But these aren't the only "humans" that live on Potots. A caste of off-shoot pale men called the Nitabah, who do not suffer from the damage caused by the dust-sea and have completely embraced their symbiosis with their Potots. As a result, they've grown addicted to the secretions of these giant isle-monsters, and have grown huge tumorous growths. Contrary to Dust-Eaters, the Nitabah live inside the largest internal chambers of the Potot, whereas their non-mutated counterpart have to live in smaller caverns and other cavities. They occupy an important role in the life of the Potot itself, since they swore to respond to any of its needs, and assure its well-being and good health, a necessity when said creature is the one thing that keeps an entire tribe alive.
Due to their relationship with the Potots, the Nitabah are considered nobles amongst their peers and thus are allowed to keep some sort of menagerie of fortune-telling purposes. With the ability to predict the future, the Nitabah have learned to adapt themselves to whatever prediction being made, and thus this foreseeing menagerie somewhat dictates their lives. In return, as part of an unknown ritual, the Nitabah drug their fortune-telling cattle. What for? Only Tzeentch knows.
What is this menagerie composed of? Well, of the many native inhabitants of the Potot (yes, those things are really, really huge). They are sinewy (in every sense of the word), centauroid creatures who live in the upper brain sections of the Potot. While they're not technically slaves, they are the subjects and, as explained above, the fortune-telling material of the Nitabah. They foresee things such as the next harvest, the future attacks of parasites that could severly damage the giant squid-tree, and even the next sieges of rival Nitabah cliques.
You read that right: there are wars in the world of Potot anon! But how do the Nitabah and the Dust-Eaters fight each other? First off, the Nitabah consider the concept of war to be sacred, and thus partake in Ritual Wars. The cabal fight other mutant-nobles in duels of all sorts, displaying costumes and weapons in a very spectacular and staggering fashion, so to enhance the ritualistic aspect of their conflict. War is an art, but also a cunning game of anticipation and strategy. Sometimes the Nitabah will send an "Arapesh", some sort of spying parasite, to destabilize enemy Potot communities and generate chaos before the war even begins. Although note that this is usually refered to as a cowardly move among the many Nitabah tribes.
The Potot themselves aren't interested in conflict, so the Nitabah tried to figure out a way to wage conflict between the giant creature-worlds. But since the squid-lads can't fight for shit, along with the fact that damaging them would lead to their own demise, the mutant cabal came up with a great idea; on top of using their menagerie of fortune-telling centaurs as soldiers, they shall also use bio-engineered parasites!
Those parasites come in all shapes and size, the Nitabah either use them as armor or body-enhancers, so to impress their enemies, but also as weapons of mass-infection, so to disturb and severely damage the enemy's Potot. Probably the worst thing you can do to a members of the Nitabah, since their primary role in society is to attend to the very needs of the Potot. The Nitabah cliques don't even hesistate to use chemicals to damage the organs and inner-workins of a Potot.
Bear in mind that we had to SERIOUSLY SHORTEN the length of this description, because yes, the lore is that intricate! Looks like we have another Tolkien right here.
Wait until Potot anon gives more details and you'll see how ridiculously detailed his universe is.
About campaign writing...[edit]
After reading all of that, you must be either fascinated, or you must be asking yourself "what's the point of making an article about this?", and rightfully so. The skubby nature of this setting aside, Potot anon's introduced /tg/ to his creation in a very specific context; his players wanted an original universe for their next game, which he understood perfectly, and he ended up making a universe alien and so bizarre that his players were very much off-put by its strangeness. Well, in all due respect to Potot anon, he did say that they weren't paying a lot of attention, but with that aside...
Potot anon isn't the only one on /tg/ to experiment a little more than usual and create new and exciting universes for their players. A lot of them get really excited and end up doing extremely complex worlds with intricate politics and a rich history with dozens of races, and inevitably cause their players to sort of shrug and wonder how their characters will ever fit in this huge, gargantuesque setting. A lot of anons also just post world-building related questions on the board because they want to create an interesting setting for their fantasy novel. But in the context of writing a setting for a campaign, most of them get it wrong. The manner of which one introduces somebody to a fantasy universe depends on the medium, and in the context of a GURPS or DnD game, it is better to propose an alternative to the usual type of classic fantasy universe, but have its difference explained in just a few sentences or words.
Of course, don't just make a simple fantasy world with all the generic elements with slightly different creatures and races, but rather, give your players some sort of premise to start them off so that they can have a clear idea of what kind of world they'll be dealing with, and then slowly introduce them to the more original elements of your setting. There is no better way to really tell you how to get your players engaged in your universe, and if they don't feel like spending too much learning about it, then they'll be pleased by the adventures they'll have in it. The point of a DnD campaign is not to learn about a new, eccentric and fantastical world, it's live adventures in a wondrous universe. Your world will grow with the players, getting more and more lifeful as your send them on ventures each more exciting than the last, and with the little interactions that your players will have the NPCs and your setting, the mythology, societies and characters that you've created will get more substance.
So if you begin your game, or the now famous "Session 0" with a massive two hour lore dump on one specific character, or even trying to explain the very base of your entire setting using a extremely precise terminology that requires extended knowledge in a specific field of education to even understand what's going on, it's highly likely your players won't be interested in playing. They'll just overwhelmed with information to remember from the get-go and have a harder time adapting to this new environment. Especially if you're not familiar with the players themselves. Also remember to KNOW your players, be aware of the type of public you'll find yourself with, if they're not autistic enough to partake in such weird and alien journeys into eldritch and never-seen-before worlds, then they'll probably drop the game off.
Potot anon's problem could be summarized like this; his setting sounds great for a book series, but not a campaign. His world is complex, but explained in such a confused manner that it only complicates the comprehension of such a setting. He created an extremely detailed and intricate world with a lot of interesting ideas, but one's left to wonder how Potot anon's players could possibly interact with some of his setting's elements, as his world is extremely alien and unlike anything /tg/ discusses on a regular basis. Just take the wars that the Nitabah wages on rival cliques, they are as intricate as a medical surgery, highly ritualized and cautiously prepared, and oftentimes riddled in a multitude of religious practices that it differentiates to the idea one would make of what a battle should look like!
It should also be noted that Potot's anon setting is filled to the brim with fluff and not enough crunch.
Potot anon's world isn't bad either, matter of fact, it is extremely original and could be even the subject of a great book! The only reason why some people are thrown off by it is mostly because of the lack of direction. They wonder what one could do with it and how a party can possibly play in such a setting if they have to learn everything about a Potot's inner workings to even possibly understand what's going on. But Potot anon managed to find its public and some people have recently praised his originality, perhaps a sign for the future of his bizarre and strange setting. Perhaps people will enjoy a campaign in his alien world. For the time being, Potot anon posts sporadically on world-building threads, not talking about game balance and gameplay elements of a potential campaign (although it might be easy to set up with a system like GURPS, but he's still there, popping on and off /tg/, talking about his fantasy world, and the only thing we can wish for him is to keep polishing the Potot world and tap into its great potential.