G75 Challenge: Week One of Zorn

     For anyone unfamiliar, the Gygax 75 challenge is a free zine based on an article that the titular person wrote in 1975. The original article encapsulates how to best get your own tabletop campaign setting off the ground and the zine presents a guideline and challenge to get it done within five weeks.

    I decided it'd be pretty awesome to do this for Zorn.

Week One

Pitch Points:

• A Mysterious Island has appeared, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. It’s rumored to be covered in new and wondrous plants and animals, and some even claim that there are ancient civilizations and evil cults that reside here too, This island’s name is “Zorn”, after the German word for “Wrath”, the only guaranteed thing an adventurer is sure to find there.

• The year is 1936, World War 2 is about to start and tensions are rising. Various World powers are sending and funding private expeditions into the wilderness of Zorn.

• Survive the harsh elements, thick jungles, scorching deserts, snowy mountains, and deep caves; this is uncharted land, far from civilization, and surviving here will be harsh.

• Discover ancient, twisted magic in forgotten ruins; Strange ruins have been unearthed on this new continent, and even stranger relics and books have been found and studied from within these ruins. Rumors have been circulating that the scholars closest to these projects have been gaining strange supernatural abilities. Though powerful, these abilities come at a cost, insanity, curses, and mutations abound those who do not take heed.

• Hunt monsters with WW2 era firearms and whatever else you can get your dirty paws on for exotic reasons. Gain mutations from their flesh, upgrade your armor with their bone, fuel your magic with their very soul.

• Gain a variety of mutations from this bizarre land, eat strange monster flesh to benefit from their abilities (or be cursed with their afflictions), use horrible magics to twist your form in ways it was never meant to. Desperately cling to your humanity, or give into otherworldly temptations for cursed power.

Sources of Inspiration:

• Indiana Jones, the classic pulp fiction series, definitely lends some cool vibes with subtle magic, nazi fighting, and hidden temples

• Ultramarine Magmell, a similar concept with some interesting monster/plant ideas

• Toriko, for the concept of eating monsters to get stronger, and some interesting monsters

• Call of Cthulhu, those who delve too deep or study the deep abyssal magicks that reside in Zorn’s many lost ruins may suddenly find themselves insane, mutated, or suddenly outright inhuman. Monsters are deadly and in the face of an unprepared adventurer, unstoppable

Week Four  Week Three  Week Two