Interesting moon RPing ideas

>Moon tethered to the planet
>Not interesting
How do the PCs plan to scale a 200km chain?
Who the hell managed to tether the moon?
What happens if someone breaks the chain?

this is genius, but what sort of inhabitants would you give the moon(s)?
I want the party to meet and have interactions with npcs monsters and the like
lel i said it was an interesting idea
my question was on how I could keep the tethered idea
but still have it functionally appear as a normal moon until the reveal later in the campaign

>lel i said it was an interesting idea
Apologies, reading comprehension.

With inhabitants of the moon, I would imagine it would be largely mechanical caretakers. Little spider-crawlers cleaning up dust and detecting damage, larger ones with welding mandibles fixing up broken pipes and walls, big ones striding over the surface dredging up refuse from below. Of course the main danger is the AI itself trying to slam doors on players, flood rooms with radiation, waste water or vaccum, ect. Prehaps it could, when desperate, command the caretakers in clattering swarms to 'dissasemble' intruders - you could find corpses where the body has been carefully cut into all its muscles and organs and layed out neatly. It could also manufacture freaky humanoid drones to fight players, sometimes using bits of previous intruders to make up on missing parts. Prehaps as it loses its sanity its creations get more and more deranged.

In regards to the second point, I'm not sure how you could keep it a normal moon but why would you need to? Prehaps the normal moon(s) you see in the sky broke their chains or were too far away, and there are multiple left on the surface.

Some might even have crashed thousands of years ago - imagine a wasteland filled with biomechanical monstrosities trying to repair a moon-sized computer that was ripped apart in the impact and spread over hundreds of miles.

You could pull some Lovecraft and base it on the moon from the Dreamlands Cycle. It's perfectly inhabitable, and can be sailed to when it's near the horizon.

Horrible amorphous moon-beasts optional but recommended.

>get to the moon
>realize it is giant mimic
>secretly the moon has been the mother mimic all along
>realize that mimics are an alien/extra-planar species
>realize they have come to take over your world and devour its inhabitants, as they have countless times before

would the earth have to be flat for you to sail to
how would that work?
would it submerge itself in the ocean at night and resurface at the other end in the morning?
what if you were a mimic the whole time?

>shoreline cities have been problems with creatures washing up during the high to low tide transition
>they hide in the sand then kill any passersby
>more advanced versions (doppelgangers and the like) wash up and replace the dead
>these 'mimic children' bring the sand mimics into the city and coax them into changing forms into common objects
>replace city objects to kill more and to grow their populace
>soon the whole city is mimics
>deport mimic objects and immigrate dopplegangers
>mimic population continues to grow
>sensing enough of their 'children' are alive and spread across the planet, the moon awakens, and makes it's way down to consume the planet
>makes it down, consumes as much material and energy as possible
>sends off large chunks of itself into space as it eats the planet
>these chunks go to other planets, eat as much as it needs before birthing mimics into the ocean and taking place in orbit once again

And that's how mimics became the most successful species in the universe.

>The earth is a powerful nature spirit
>It has powerful magic that it instinctively uses to protect itself from the mimic queen
>The mimic children must build powerful conduits to suppress the earth's defenses

So, Mimicnids.

This.

The surface of the moon is incredibly hostile to all forms of life because the moon itself is a living lifeform made up of pure terror. Any unprotected lifeform that is exposed, instantly dies and decomposes and becomes part of the planet. There are forests of prehensile tentacles that rip people apart and the planet itself uses tricks: illusions and false sounds to lure people into traps.

You got earth cultists (Druids) and moon cultists (Alienists/wizards). While the Demon-Pacters and the Holy Orders oppose each other whenever they can, the Druids and Alienists occasionally get along in the defense of life.
The schism between the followers of Earth and Moon is this:
Earth Cultists and their not-Gaia goddess revere the sun as giver of all life
Moon Cultists and their Tentacle-goddess know that the Sun is just a star like all the others
The avatar of the sun is in the pantheon that the Holy Orders serve.
The Holy Order dogma is that if you serve the gods/avatars, you serve your fellow beings.
Common knowledge among Demon-Pacters is that when a demon serves you, it's actually serving itself.
Some paladins of the sun hate the followers of the moon for the lack of reverence.
...
Shit, I just created a boot-leg copy of the Dark Souls universe.

I had a similar setting for my vidya, see pic related game

>gods create two worlds, earth and the moon. Both with people on them. Earth is the world of "matter" and its people are hardy. Moon is the world of "magic" and its people are frail but intellectual.
>One day the gods dissapear without a trace and with no explanation. Magic dissapears with them. Both worlds are thrown into chaos. People are starving without the magic they used to produce crops, and wars for survival break.
>The moon is turning baron and dying because it literally ran on magic. Crossing between the two worlds is no longer possible without magic either.
>The lunarians panic and assume that the gods abandoned them in favor of the earth (not knowing the same predicament faces the earth). They turn to an old, heretical legend for salvation.
>Once every aeon, a mysterious third planet, said to be the origin of gods and all life, crosses by both the earth and the moon, appearing in both skies as a bleak red star. On this planet dwells beings that men, in their cosmic ignorance, call "demons", though they are not.
>The day is actually approaching, a mere 3 days after the disappearance of the gods. The lunarians make contact with the demon world.
>The "demons" answer their prayers for survival, granting them various "gifts".
>*cue body horror*
>The lunarians become horrific magical monsters, and invade earth. Devouring and infecting all in their path.
>The battle awakens a sleeping divine dragon, the last servant of the old gods, who (out of love and loyalty for his old masters, not mankind) proceeds to push the lunar demons back and immolate the entire fucking moon with his divine breath of judgement in order to contain the infection. Afterwords, he disappears without a trace, nobody knows his fate.
(P 1/2)

(P 2/2)
>The moons surface, once a lush paradise, becomes a barren lifeluss husk. However, some lunarians who were only partially infected, manage to survive on the fiery caverns underneath.
>Having been only partially tainted, they gain some demonic features, horns and such, without having actually become insectoid/daemonic lovecraftian horror tanks.
>The Earth assumes a feudal system, based on mortals with some small trace of divine blood. Hence "the divine right of kings" becomes literal.
>The void between worlds no longer cross-able, moon becomes a mythical hell to the people of the earth, populated by "devils", and the events pass into legend.
>Both worlds form new religions, with the legendary dragon as their centerpoint. On Earth, he is saviour and god. On the moon, destroyer and evil.
>many millenia later, a demon king on the moon figures out how to cross the void...

The thought occurred to me to try running a game based on this setting one of these days, but I've never gm'd. And I've never written much world building for the setting beyond the basic plot outline above.

>we like the moon

Funny you should mention this! In my setting the three moons were created by super-powerful beings before the world was formed for some unknown purpose, but they all left the world long ago before they (or anyone) figured it out. So the moons are all actually made of marble and were once home to great palaces and magical whatsits, but now they're all sitting silently and untouched.

Of course, as far as anyone knows, they're just naturally occuring satellites, but perhaps the PCs meet someone who knows better...

Oh and also one of the moons is a phylactery for a powerful lich. Good luck figuring out how to blow up the moon!

use this video, but tweaked for a fantasy context;

youtube.com/watch?v=mw_HKzo9Ync

so basically the Invaders from Getter Robo Armageddon then?

Make the world where everything happens the moon, and the planet barren and lifeless.

so... just a big moon?

The moon was once another world, where a great battle was once fought for the fate of all existance. So great was its fury that the land was scorched to white salt, and craters the size of cities and nations littered its surface. The last hero of this war, in a desperate bid to save his realm, brought his entire world to another plane, where it now rests in orbit above your setting.

The people of this world now number but the size of a nation, and when they finally awaken from their magical slumber, they will need a new home... And of course, their enemies won't be long to follow.

In Destiny, the moon was willingly handed over to The Hive in order to prevent them from furthering their advance on Earth. The Hive hollowed the moon out and built temples beneath the surface, which they had done to thousands of other worlds, all which were consumed by the Darkness. They have tombstone-shaped ships and the archive that your Ghost finds this information out from is called The World's Grave. You also find and destroy this black sphere which is connected to a power source outside the solar system that The Hive was using, and you find them using a tainted shard of The Traveler in their rituals.

The game might have been mediocre, but the lore is actually solid. And there is way more to it than that.