As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I’ve decided to start giving The Toonaria Campaign Setting some time in the spotlight. So far, QT Games has been focusing almost exclusively on our Cosmoverse Campaign Setting, but as Toonaria is linked to the Cosmoverse in several ways, it has popped up in some of our fiction as well. (Yes, it’s possible to crossover between the two distinct universes, however doing so does have its consequences—more on that in a future post!)
I’ve written a lot about Toonaria over the decades, including many short stories and even a few children’s books—picture books if you will—essentially short stories with pictures for both adults and children alike. And as I’ve said before, I’ve made tons of board and card games based on Toonaria, the best of which I will begin to start publishing before long. As some time has passed since designing them, I want to revisit them, polish them up some more, redo all the art, and do some more playtesting to ensure you’ll have a blast!
Toonaria is a special place with unusual creatures, all of them infused with magic, thanks to an epic arcane storm called appropriately “The GodStorm”. The “gubbling” pictured above is a magical creature with numerous abilities, one of which is the ability to talk their way out of trouble. There are plenty of opportunities for combat in Toonaria (and I’m not talking silly combat, though it will be cinematic), Gubblings are able to defend themselves with more than mere words, but they do have a gift for gab. When done right, social conflict can be just as exciting as physical combat!
Gubblings, like all of the core species that will appear in the initial release of the Epic Destinies RPG can focus on their species talents, if desired and find loads of options there to make their heroes exactly the way they want. They can continue to customize their heroes and add new species talents and other talents over the course of their lives.
I wanted to touch on a couple important concepts in adventuring in Toonaria. In most tabletop rpgs, the only way to improve your character mechanically is to kill lots of monsters and take their loot. There will be plenty of opportunities to take on the bad guys, no doubt, but as in real life, true personal growth will come through hardships, even more so than successes. You can learn far more from losing than winning, and it is when times are rough that people and monsters alike have the greatest potential for change. As such, we won’t just be rewarding characters for winning, but losing too.
There are many dangers in Toonaria, but death itself is less common. The bad guys are more interested in other sorts of consequences, most of which result in new adventures (such as escaping the dark lord’s prison or trying to get out of being forced to marrying his raving mad daughter.) Death itself is called The Great Sleep, but it’s pretty final for most, and those that push their luck too far will indeed reach The Great Sleep.
In Toonaria, you can actually go on exciting virtual reality adventures, dream adventures and physical adventures, and all of them equally rewarding. I once ran an entire game session in the Cosmoverse in which the characters were all asleep around the camp fire. The players had a blast, but sadly received no leveling benefits because it was just a dream. Dreams work very differently in Toonaria and sometimes you can even walk away with real treasure and you are always rewarded for such adventures. Of course most of their adventures will be in the “real” world. More on how all that works later.
If you like creative options . . . if you enjoy blending genres together, don’t limit your adventures to playing in a campaign setting that is too narrowly focused.
If you’re in the genre box, climb out, step off the beaten path, and check out our upcoming campaign settings. Chomping at the bit for blended-genre adventure right now? You can read fantastic blended-genre fiction over at QT Games. Some of it’s free, even! Questions? Throw ’em at me, folks! Thanks, and see you in a week!
Oh, and don’t forget you can get a FREE fiction novella set in our Cosmoverse just for
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