There are a few works that have left their mark on my Antediluvia game world more than anything else. A lot of them are currently a part of AD&D 1E's Appendix N already, but they come into focus more sharply for me with this game world, and I've read them all recently (or re-read them, as the case may be with some). Even though some of the below are post-apocalyptic, they also apply in a waking, birthing world like Antediluvia.
Sterling Lanier's Hiero books
Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories (these are especially important)
Classical mythology (Antediluvia was built on the bricks of my old Hellenista campaign)
Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories
Robert E. Howard's Conan stories
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Venus and Mars stories, as well as his lost world stories
Jewish and Muslim folklore of pre-flood Earth, as well as the Bible's accounts
Various encyclopedias and dictionaries of angels and demons
The current working idea behind Antediluvia is "what if I took the strange cultures Jack Vance liked to outline in Dying Earth, and constructed a sort of pre-Flood Earth with them, leaning into the whole humanity was extremely wicked angle?" And the geography doesn't have to match it at all - parallel world so to speak. I also borrowed the "points of light" idea - the world is mostly unsettled, with self-governing, almost Greek-like city-states, and no nations (yet), just regions that are named. Each city-state has a very distinct and alien culture, none of the likes of which exist today. I'm staying away from the typical "proto-medieval" default of D&D, except where weapons technology is concerned. Magic is Vancian in nature (right down to forcing spells into the mind, and their erasure after being cast). Vancian magic makes a lot more sense now, in the way that D&D manifests it, now that I've re-read half of the stories. However, magic is still going to be a rather dangerous practice (even as it was in Vance's novels with some wizards - they lose their conscience, it seems, in their pursuit of power). The world has two moons, which both happen to be inhabited, unbeknownst to the populace of the world, which is where E.R.B.'s works factor in. Add, then, the heroic tone of R.E.H.'s work, and voila, a mish-mash is born. Weird advanced science could play a role as well, with certain devices perhaps mimicking spells with their operation, or existing magic items.
I'm having fun detailing the world. It's languished as a work in progress for a decade, with no active game going on within it, since I've never thought what I had i s something that I'd like to run. But now, however, it's coming together. The kids are almost grown, I moved to Detroit, and began to buy all the products that I can get that I missed out on in my youth. It's a good time to be a DM, and I intend to be again. All the creativity spawned other campaign ideas, like:
Dark Appalachia (Appalachia removed from Earth in the early 1900s)
Dungeonworld (where I take published dungeons and populate an otherwise barren world with them, making them the feature and not the bug)
Hunters of the Apocalypse (a post-apocalyptic Biblical and Supernatural crossover)
Weird Science & Sandals (where I lean into a classical Bronze Age world with weird science and advanced technology)
Gonzo Fantasy and SciFi (where any fantasy idea from any book and any supplement in the rules system I select is fair game to use, even if the DM doesn't own the book)
(There may be more to come.)
For Dark Appalachia, Hunters of the Apocalypse and Antediluvia, I'm using BECMI, mostly as-is with Antediluvia, but for Dark Appalachia and it's historical-modern setting will require a few house rules. I may use 2nd Edition for the Weird Science & Sandals campaign, and that would mean OSRIC and 1E materials are in as well, since they're quite compatible, to expand the options classes-wise or elsewhere.
For the Gonzo Fantasy and SciFi campaign I believe I'll use d20/3E/3.5. I have a ton of works for that system, and with so many varied settings published for that chassis, and oodles of classes, it will make a super-fun anything goes atmosphere. I'll back-convert Pathfinder stuff as well. The power levels are close enough that I don't care which version of the system it comes from, and I'll use 3.5 to adjudicate. Most of the time, it's just the skills and some methods of resolution that are different. It would be mechanically easy to drop a d20 Modern character in beside a Traveller d20 character along with a straight 3.5 sorcerer and a Pathfinder 1E fighter. The feats are mostly self-contained and affect what the character can do without affecting others, and base attack bonuses and saves are largely worked out the same way. Any incompatibilities can be worked through on the fly. The idea for this came from reading Philip Jose Farmer's Dungeon series, where over five novels with multiple writers they develop a fantasy world where people find their way to these kind of planes-like worlds called the Dungeon, and are all from vastly different cultures and worlds and technology levels. It lit me right up.
I apologize for the rambling. But you can see my brain is on fire with ideas right now. Now, back to writing.
