Art that makes you want to run a campaign

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Currently working on my campaign for this.

There's a half buried skull of a giant, dragon-like monster in the middle of a spooooky desert in my setting. It's one of the very few landmarks in the desert and is a sort of halfway point checkpoint for those crossing the desert. I know how hard it is trying to impress upon the party what scale is, because they've all heard, "it was big! really big! no bigger than that! keep going!" before. So I just showed them this picture. That got the point across.

Unfortunately the skull is a random detail added when map making and not actually plot relevant. I should work on that.

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of course i forgot the pic.

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Pretty much everything on there effectgames.com/demos/worlds/ and there effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/

These four come as a set. Basically the same thing from different angles.

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Sorry about that, connection had a bit of a stumble.

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This one comes with its own story. I found them yesterday, don't know where they came from originally.

"Throttles forwards, afterburners on, and the thrust kicked him back in his seat as the needles climbed. The counter ticked down to zero and beeped, and he pulled back on the stick, keeping the throttles pushed forwards, every muscle protesting against the forces.
Another beep, and he pressed the button. The antique aircraft shuddered with the release, and he eased the throttles back. He saw the decades-old missile streak off ahead of him, heading up out of the atmosphere.
He relaxed. The satellite the missile was locked onto was an ECM rig, and had been alternately jamming his crew's links with the outside world, and overpowering them with german scat pornography.

The corps had found their hideout, and now there was no mistaking their presence. But for a glorious few days, everyone could talk again. And he'd just cost the corps billions.

An insistent beeping sounded behind him, and he realised he'd just cost himself a similar amount, expended a literally priceless missile, and had just missed his window for being able to steer a priceless antique back down to earth. He'd now have to wait until his ballistic arc brought him down to where there was enough air for the controls to actually work. And his engines had just flamed out. Fighter jets weren't known for their ability to glide.
He shrugged, and reached under his seat for the manual. With any luck, he could figure out how to restart the engines before he actually needed to."

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God half of this is just "le epik fantasy background"...

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ITT: we post bizarre world types and think about how they work
Anyone who posts a ringworld gets mercilessly mocked

Does this count?

Hell yes. Source?

No idea. Found it on here in a biomechanic art thread.

why is giant ancient abandoned machinery so cool?

Turbofanatic, 12/16 is something to go by, at least.

turbofanatic.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/

That was easy, don't know why I haven't done this before.

>implying anyone posted a ringworld yet

aleph.se/andart/archives/2014/02/torusearth.html

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What I would do is have the desert with the skull in it be a former seabed, with the skull being that of a colossal sea creature.

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"Something very good, or very bad, is about to happen"

how do you get to the structure on the left?

With a trebuchet.

that's not the story of that image but ok

Looks like art from Kamigawa.

? Do tell, user. Seriously, I wanna hear.

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I'd love to run some kind of setting with ships like this and bigger, stellar engines and such.

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Bigger than half of an entire star system being made into a spacecraft?

Keep talking.

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that ship is only as wide as earth orbit at most, it the ring names don't seem to refer to orbital distance, seeing as the mars ring is closer in than the earth one. I picture this sort of ship as a sort of light hugging forcefield-ramjet sort of ship full of posthuman crew as pictured relaxing on the orbiting bubbles and presumably in the ornithopter. There could be pretty huge stellar engines and stuff like constellations of shkadov thrusters pushing massive multi-stellar extragalactic ships.

My god. What need would there be for such a thing? Where would it go?

to go to other galaxies, take their stars, and see if there's anything interesting beyond the visible universe. I don't really know, maybe to explore highly developed galaxies studded with cities like the one in Blame.

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Speaking of taking stars, I found the artist who made your thruster.

Do you think it'd ever be possible for our descendants to build stuff like this?

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This is the most beautiful piece of warhammer art I think there is.

Unfortunately I don't have any friends who like warhammer, roleplay or otherwise, but I just had to do something with it so instead of running a campaign I wrote a story. But still, maybe one day...

oh, and the dead youtube link was a remix of 'How To Be Eaten By A Woman' by the Glitch Mob.
youtube.com/watch?v=cgQWp_Hlius

with really high automation it doesn't seem too impossible, and orbital habitats are much more reasonable than billion Km stellar engines.

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Yeah, some of the stuff in here looks relatively feasible, like this skyhook, but other stuff (like the thruster, the lifter and this Alderson disk thing, which looks sweet) are probably going to have to stay as fantasy.

Then again, I've always said; man's reach should exceed his grasp, or else what's a heaven for?

>priceless antique aircraft
>decades-old missile
>overpowering them with german scat pornography exactly like Independence Day

you don't say, user

Well, storm back off to Tumblr and bitch there. Be sure and slam the door on the way out of the thread too.

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10/10

I want to set a campaign in kind of universe that has these in it but I've got absolutely no idea where to start with it.

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What a great face on that dragon. much better than generic angry lizard or Smaug that looked like fucking Boss Nass. Like a shrewd cat or something.