Use 6 Themes to make a setting, Veeky Forums!

What if the beings that control the robots never show themselves. Maybe their gateway in and out doesn't let organic/living beings through?

>OK, this world is Chilly and Cold, Taoist philosophy is the most common, if not the only philosophy. Nomads and Raiders are extremely prevalent. Sci-Fi clashes with High Fantasy, and Robot/Droid Armies might have something to do with that. The world is filled with New Frontiers to Explore.
Screams to me of some kind of space mongolia.

I'll toss you an idea for free:

Seed Ships are colony ships that contain no living crew. They are pilotted by AI and run by AI once they reach the surface. They are launched in preparation for a second, larger ship to arrive a few hundred years later. The seed ship's role is to seed the planet with Terran life. They also contain thousands of cryo-frozen human embryos to be awakened once the foot colonists arrive, to rapidly populate the land.

But when the seedship crashed on X planet, the AI went rogue from its mission and nurtured the embryos to adulthood. Without culture or knowledge of their own, they knew only what the AI taught them, and formed into primitive hunter-gatherer bands, but armed with the ship's high-tech weaponry.

Centuries later, the second wave of colonists would arrive. Seen as outsiders, the first generation settlers would attack and enslave them

The "fantasy" world, is the world of the tribal hunters, seen through the lens of superstition.

The monsters are planet's native life, and whatever mutants were caused by leaking drive radiation.

The AI, now dead, is venerated as a god.

The outsiders are basically seen as Phyrexians, with advanced technology and legions of droid machines built in the manufacturing facilities of their huge orbital-based mothership.

I like the idea more that this is one plane among many, and that the robots are like the Combine from Half Life in that they; Invade the planet (or plane in this case) enslave the natives and harvest the resources in order to repeat what they are doing

I don't know if it would be too on the nose, but maybe make some "holes" into areas that would be "behind the scenes" that resemble something out of Tron or somesuch.

Oh, and maybe throw in a grey goo-styled virus halted by the natural cold of the planet, painting some ruined regions monochrome and casting nonfunctional failed replications of the virus as miasma to the winds.

OP here, back again.

I'm glad you do.

Ooh, I like this idea, I like it a lot.

This is a great idea too, it reverses a few tropes, and adds a nice, vaguely apocalyptic, primitive-futuristic feel to the setting.

I like it, but I don't know how well their worship of the AI ties in with the Taoist Philosophy theme. What if they believed in it some kind of natural force that permeates the world, and all of its children? That would mean to the primitives, the settlers weren't people, which adds to the clash of ideals.

I like the idea of the monsters being indigenous species, or mutated creatures.

I like this too, but it's not easy to capture the New Frontiers to Explore Theme with Robots/Droids doing the exploring.

> Let's settle some things.

> Are we going to go with an advanced Sci-Fi civilization, clashing with superstitious primitives, or are we going to go with an advanced Sci-Fi civilization, clashing with a High Fantasy civilization?
> Personally, I like the idea of the indigenous peoples being superstitious primitives better than just making another Eberron.

> Is the world a planet, or a completely separate dimension? If it's a separate dimension, how are the colonists reaching the world?

What do you mean by holes? I'm curious.

The failed nanovirus idea is brilliant.

The idea of high fantasy vs all-consumingscience abominations in a plane-hopping universe has been done already, in the Magic the Gathering universe. It doesn't bring anything entirely new to the table, except the themes of cold and chinese philosophy (which haven't been fleshed out yet).

The scifi universe involving primitives vs advanced civs idea is kind of similar to Avatar, but it inverts the tropes, with the natives being the aggressors in a sense, and the spacefaring newcomers being the victims. Though in a sense, both are victims... One side sees the world as a sacred homeland, the other has literally nowhere else to go, since a 10,000 ton spaceship that travelled 500 years in deep space can't just turn around and go back to Earth.

As for the themes of cold... perhaps the planet doesn't rotate as Earth does. There are days and nights lasting years, so the nomads just follow the rotation of the planet to stay in a comfortable zone, while the settled humans hunker down through the nights and starve, then suffer nomad raids in the days.

The nanovirus was supposed to be a terraforming agent that was corrupted and became a grey goo.

There is part of the (long) day, where the nanovirus's "breeding ground" comes to the full light of the sun, and begins expanding rapidly.

The natives try to control its spread by clearing all life from the perimeter while it is still in a low-energy state; while the settlers know it's an almost guaranteed doomsday scenario, and are trying to collect samples and perform research on it.

The final twist of the campaign:

The world is an illusion, a simulation, performed by the glitching supercomputer AI. He wanted to see what would happen if he raised the human embryos to adulthood (instead of letting them simply die as the fuel leaked and the reactors failed).

In the end, he realizes that (depending on player actions):

A) It would lead to the end of all human life on the planet
or
B) It would lead to a new era of human understanding and benevolence.

And either terminates the embryos or raises them, accordingly.

This is in response to this:
>I don't know if it would be too on the nose, but maybe make some "holes" into areas that would be "behind the scenes" that resemble something out of Tron or somesuch.

Small, localized warpgates, usually laying down and leading through the ground, only found if you either stumble into them trying to look around or if you know where to look for them, leading to an area the natives firmly believe to be the inner workings of their world, guarded and maintained by glowing creatures of light and information.

Twist being that it might just connect to a barely functioning holodeck or something similar.

Or , but again, maybe a bit too on the nose. We may have accidently created one half of a nobledark Fairune.

The nomads follow elders well versed in astronomy and with a finely-honed sense of location and direction. They navigate across the entire circumference of the world, while avoiding dangerous terrain, dangerous alien flora, and keeping ample distance from enemy clans (while also knowing where to find them at any particular part of the year if they want to launch an attack). A system of "right of way" may have even developed, with the more powerful clans being given first right of passage through an area, and first rights to all the hunting.

The Taoist principles that govern their lifestyle and relationship with nature are what is guiding them to their war against the outsiders. "Dao" literally means "The Way", and in a quite literal sense, their "Way" is being disrupted by human settlers who claim large swaths of territory and drive out nature in order to create agriculture farms. These invaders are destroying the natural harmony of the universe that had sustained them since the birth of their culture, and is threatening to throw their entire society into chaos and a new era of infighting, unless they unify against a common foe.

While the Day/Night cycle has themes of cold (the harsh, frozen nights that the nomads fear), it also has themes of light and dark, yin/yang, and ties in as well with the Taoist philosophy.

>by human settlers
or, just settlers... since both races are human

During the campaign, a crazy Second-Wave general tries to weaponize the nanovirus against the First-Wave colonists, and seeds it across the planet, kicking off the doomsday scenario into the 11th hour.