#Science-Fantasy

[renegadesector]

Reavers of New Rome is Out Now!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1360160/Reavers_of_New_Rome

Itch: https://malec2b.itch.io/reavers-of-new-rome

A century ago, your ancestors were Senators of New Rome. However, when the Emperor took over, they were exiled.

Now, 100 years later, under the tyrannical reign of Emperor CRaC, New Rome is in poor shape. The powerful prey upon the weak. The depraved rulers of use the once-great city as their playground while the poor suffer and buildings crumble into ruin.

All the while, the exiles have been lying in wait...

Though your great-great-gand-parents left New Rome as Senators, you now return upon its shores as a Barbarian at the Gates.

Reavers of New Rome is a 3D Action-Adventure Game. Take on the role of The Reaver as you invade the crumbling glory of New Rome. Explore the city, battle the Emperor's Legions, and defeat Emperor CRaC's Praetors, and eventually challenge the Emperor himself.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Roger Elwood (editor) - Flame Tree Planet - Concordia - 1973 (cover photo: The Brass Shutter)

[shukkou-da]

Echoes of the Seven Sisters - Part 1 (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1531375613-echoes-of-the-seven-sisters-part-1?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=LeslieCook937 🌌 When the stars call, will humanity answer-or destroy itself trying? Dr. Elara Voss, a brilliant but broken astronomer, stumbles upon a signal buried in the Atacama Desert-one that doesn't belong to Earth. It leads her to a crystalline artifact humming with alien resonance, and to them: the Pleiadians, ancient cosmic guides who once walked among us. But their return isn't a salvation. It's a test. As governments weaponize the artifact and shadowy agencies hunt her, Elara uncovers a truth that could heal humanity... or fracture it forever. The Pleiadians' message is clear: Harmony, not control. Yet with her grief over her daughter's death clawing at her soul and a sarcastic tech-genius ally, Javier, risking his life beside her, Elara must confront a choice. Will she reignite humanity's connection to the stars, or let fear drown the cosmos' song? ★★★★★ Perfect for fans of... - The cosmic wonder of Arrival meets the raw emotion of Station Eleven. - The high-stakes tension of The X-Files blended with the philosophical depth of Contact. - Stories where the stars weep, flowers bloom from tears, and first contact begins within. ✨ Why You'll Love It: - A shattered scientist grappling with loss, and a wisecracking hacker hiding his terror in memes. - Ancient alien cities buried beneath deserts, bioluminescent flora that maps the future, and a sentient artifact that mirrors humanity's light and darkness. - Twists that crack like thunder: Betrayals, sentient stardust, and a love letter to Earth's fragile beauty. 🔥 Start Reading Now If... - You've ever felt the Pleiades whisper your name. - You crave stories where science and soul collide. - You believe the universe is not just out there-it's in us. The stars are singing. Are you ready to listen? --- Tags: #SciFi #FirstContact #Aliens #EmotionalJourney #CosmicMystery #FoundFamily #ClimateHope #PhilosophicalFiction #WattpadMustRead

[piscesangelpurr44]

my wattpad story im working on i wanna post it here too!

[the-brankster]

www.tumblr.com/blog/songofvakoth

just started a proper blog for my science-fantasy setting! i'm hoping to maybe put out a lore blurb every week at minimum, but for now only the intro post is up. go check it out!

[mask131]

Read-list for an "old school D&D" fantasy (plus bonus)

This is a remake of an earlier post of mine, that I decided to update (some additional books were suggested to me, others I found out about later).

This is a reading-list of various literary works that heavily inspired or were heavily used in the creation of the first editons of Dungeons and Dragons - and thus, reading them will allow you to plunge back into what the original D&D was meant to look what/what it tried to emulate.

J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit". No surprise here, Tolkien's works were the start of modern fantasy and thus the main source of old-school D&D. In fact, D&D was originally created to be just a Lord of the Rings role-playing game - or to be precise a LotR wargame. This was the original intention. Which is why, quite famously, the very first version of D&D included elements such as the hobbits, the mithril and the balrogs. And when the Tolkien Estate pointed out the consequences of what was plagiarism, D&D changed these concepts to... "halflings", "mithral" and "balors". The only Tolkien-element D&D could preserve vaguely unchanged were the orcs, because the Tolkien Estate could not prove Tolkien had invented the term "orc". But even beyond that, D&D's dwarfs and elves and ents (sorry, treants) and wights and rangers all were heavily inspired by Tolkien - the gods of the orcs even use symbols such as an "eye of fire" and a "white hand"...

Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions". Poul Anderson was quite influential on early 20th century fantasy, and this specific book influenced D&D in three ways. On one side, it was one of the two sources for the "Order versus Chaos" conflict of D&D (the other being Moorcock). On the other the D&D trolls were inspired by the Three Hearts and Three Lion trolls. And finally the Paladin class was inspired by Anderson's Holger Carlsen character (the same way the Ranger was Tolkien's Aragorn). [This book also seems to have had some influence over the Fey of D&D?]

Michael Moorcock's "The Elric Saga". With Anderson's work, it was the other main source of the Order vs Chaos, Lawful vs Chaotic division of the D&D game. It also served as the main inspiration behind the D&D Drows, due to the Elric Saga shaping the original image of "Dark Elves" in fantasy, through its Melnibonéan Empire. D&D also originally collected references to the Elric world - creating many variation of Elric's evil magical sword Stormbringer through a variety of cursed soul-drinking weapons.

Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian". The source of heroic-fantasy the same way Lord of the Rings influenced epic fantasy, the world of Conan was also a huge source of inspiration for D&D - the most obvious reference being the Barbarian class, shaped for those who wanted to play Conan.

Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser". Originally intended as a parody of the Conan-style heroic fantasy, but promptly becoming a serious and admired work that created its own sub-genre of fantasy (the "sword and sorcery" genre), they also were inspirational for the first editions of D&D. Sometimes it is indirect - the "Thief" or "Rogue" classes were inspired by Leiber's Gray Mouser character - other times it is MUCH more direct. For example, among the numerous pantheons you could choose to use in early D&D, one was the various gods of Newhon and the city of Lankhmar, the universe of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. And the fantasy trope of "Thieves' Guild" made famous partially by D&D was originally an invention of Leiber.

Jack Vance's The Dying Earth. This emblematic series of the "science-fantasy" genre offered to D&D its magic system, which is generally known as "vancian magic". It was Jack Vance who had the idea that a wizard had to learn/store spells in their mind, with a limited number of spells they could carry in their brain, and that once cast the spell had to be re-learned or restored. Several spells and items of early D&D were also directly taken from the Dying Earth books - the "prismatic spray" or the "ioun stones".

H.P. Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos". No need to explain how Lovecraft's brand of eldritch horror and alien-fantasy shaped the creatures and deities of early D&D, to the point that early on the deities and monsters of the Cthulhu Mythos were part of the pantheons you could chose to use - listed alongside the Newhon gods of Leiber, or the gods of the Conan universe.

While not fantasy works, the most famous creations of Edgard Rice Burroughs - Tarzan on one hand, and John Carter of Mars on the other, were claImed by Gygax to have been very influential to his creation of D&D.

Another author Gygax mentionned as being a huge influence for D&D was Fletcher Pratt - through his Harold Shea fantasy series, about a main character being carried away in various magical and fantastical worlds very different from each other, in which he has to adapt himself to new settings and learn new rules to avoid dangers and threats... Sounds familiar? The idea of world-travelling might also have been inspired by the science-fiction series by P.J. Farmers' World of Tiers: the rules of travel in D&D between the various planes of reality seem to have been inspired by Farmers' own rules for dimension-travel.

One of the lesser known influences of D&D is the fantasy series "Kothar" by Gardner Fox: Gygax explicitely said that the idea of the "Lich" as a D&D monster came from Fox's Kothar series.

Not a book, but movies: the Sinbad movies of the mid 20th century were influential on early D&D. Various monsters and creatures referenced pictures such as "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" or "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad".

"The House on the Borderlands" by William Hope Hodgson was explicitely referenced by Gygax's 1979 module "The Keep on the Borderlands", and it might have heavily influenced the original depiction of the D&D orcs as pig-men...

The Shannara series by Terry Brooks has also been pointed out as an influence on D&D - while not on the very first edition, elements of the Shannara world seem to have influenced later ones...

Mind you, this is but a fragment of a much longer list known as the "Appendix N" composed by Gygax, and that lists all the books and pieces of work he took inspiration from when designing D&D. Beyond the most famous works evoked above he also listed:

Poul Anderson's "The High Crusade" and "The Broken Sword"

John Bellairs' "The Face in the Frost"

Leigh Brackett's works

Fredric Browns' works

I evoked before Burrough's Mars series, but Gygax also listed his "Venus series" and his "Pellucidar series".

Lin Carter's "World End" series

L. Sprague de Camp's "Lest Darkness Fall" and "The Fallible Fiend" and "The Carnelian Cube"

August Derleth's continuation of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Lord Dunsany's writings, of course.

Gardner Fox's "Kyrik" series

Sterling Lanier's "Hiero's Journey"

A. Merritt's "Creep, Shadow, Creep", "Moon Pool" and "Dwellers in the Mirage"

Michael Moorcock's "Hawkmoon" series (which is technically part of the wider universe of which the Elric Saga is the central piece)

Andre Norton's works

Fletcher Pratt's "Blue Star"

Fred Saberhagen's "Changeling Earth"

Margaret St. Clair "The Shadow People" and "Sign of the Labrys"

Stanley Weinbaum's works

Manley Wade Wellman's works

Jack Williamson's works

Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series, and "Jack of Shadows".

In 2007, Gygax even updated his Appendix N with a handful of new titles reflecting elements added to later editions of D&D:

Sterling Lanier's "The Unforsaken hiero"

Piers Anthony's "Split Infinity" series

And of course, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series

And since this post is all about updates, I will also include a list of works that were used as inspiration for current day/modern D&D - especially the fifth edition. Like that, you'll have the evolution of "old school D&D versus new school D&D". This list is taken from fragments here and there of interviews given by Mike Mearls, the Appendix E "Inspirational Reads" of the fifth edition, and Rodney Thompson's interviews.

Appendix E replaces several elements Gygax talked about in interviews or in his Appendix N: Leiber's work, Burroughs's Mars series, Howard's Conan, etc...

Appendix E adds among other things China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station", and Elizabeth Bear's "Range of Ghosts".

Mike Mearls said that what inspired him in his design work of modern D&D was Ursula LeGuin's "Earthsea" series, Patrick Rothfuss "The Name of the Wind", Saladin Ahmed "Throne of the Crescent Moon" and Octavia E. Butler's "The Parable of the Sower".

But Mearls also repeated several of the picks already used by Gygax. He invoked again The Elric Saga, and Roger Zelazny's Amber series, and Tolkien's Legendarium of course...

Rodney Thompson rather insisted on returning to the Anderson roots of the D&D fantasy: mostly "Three Heart and Three Lions", but also "The Broken Sword".

[diannestorytime]

Poems of This and That - 12 Those Crazy Days (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1525351012-poems-of-this-and-that-12-those-crazy-days?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=Diannestorytime Poetry that fires the imagination, awakes the senses and fills the mind with wonder. Enjoy and cry with me.

[synodic-link]

[8/11/2024] Synodic Link update, 6 pages

[esosazuwawrites]

City of Bearers and Beasts | WIP INTRO

CITY OF BEARERS AND BEASTS

Black Panther x Arcane

CW: Sickness, murder, and violence.

STATUS: Drafting

PLAYLIST || PINTEREST

GENRE: Science-Fantasy/Steampunk

AUDIENCE: Mature Young Adult/New Adult

TROPES AND THEMES

Futuristic steampunk, based on Nigeria, everyone is a bit morally gray, everyone is also a bit of a criminal, found family after everyone stops trying to kill each other, magic is illegal, a quest to a lost city, corrupt government, love triangle, slow burn, monsters roam the lands, reluctant heroes, the intersection of capitalism and magic, false antagonists, airships and clockwork towers, POC rep, LGBTQ rep, and disabled rep.

PREMISE

In the enigmatic city of Ojuwele, ruled by seven governors of the Convocation, the capital jewel Miamene and its sinister twin city Glaro, stand as the contrasting pillars where power, corruption, and technology converge in shadowy abundance. Daran Adami, a young high-ranking officer with a powerful lineage as the son of a Governor, secretly works as a member of Miamene's most shadowy and notorious gang, the Black Sun who bring justice to Ojuwele. But when a mission goes awry, Daran faces the choice to protect himself or loyalty to the gang headed by the girl he loves. But his fate takes a cruel twist when his capture leads to exile in the dreaded Outerlands, a desolate wasteland once home to an ancient tribe, now overrun by ruthless monsters. But in a desperate struggle for survival, dormant powers suddenly awake in Daran, which could hold the key to concealed truths and even his own past. In a narrow escape, Daran finds a young woman with a mysterious past and a charismatic religious leader he finds himself unexpectedly drawn to. With nothing to lose and a united purpose, they venture out into the ruins of a lost city which could hold the key to disurpting to social order of Ojuwele for good. But lurking in the shadows is an ancient evil that closes its grip on Daran's newfound power. In a race against time, Daran and his new allies must learn to protect their people, even in a country that has long forgotten them.

CHARACTERS (intros coming soon)

Daran Adami: 17. He/Him. Officer.

Illeara Umad: 20. She/Her. Circus performer and reel.

Siha Umad: 21. They/Them. Hacker and rebel.

Naade Oka: 18. He/Him. Religious scholar.

Abeti Musi: 19. She/Her. Magic weaver.

Taglist (if you interact positively with this post you get added to the taglist) (ask to be +/-)

@cryptid-s-wips @stardustspiral @chayscribbles @leadhelmetcosmonaut @apocalypsewriterss @stormharbors @littleredhatwriting @the-orangeauthor @emelkae @ashen-crestt @alvfr @drbibliophile @lunarmoment @raevenlywrites @thatprolificauthor @muddshadow @violetliddell @shiloh-is-typing and everyone else who wants to join!

[eric-mrozek]

Independence (Maereath: The Fiean Revolution, #1)

Try out the disturbing first chapter of Independence right now over on Wattpad!

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Science-Fantasy / Autum 1952 by Michael Studt Via Flickr: Science-Fantasy / Magazin-Reihe > J. M. Walsh / The Last Fifty Years and the Next > J. T. McIntosh / Stitch in Time > E. Everett Evans / Was Not Spoken > Circus / Peter Hawkins > E. R. James / Not As We Are > Alan Barclay / Enemy in Their Cover: Gerard Quinn Editor: John Carnell Nova Publications Ltd. / U.K. 1952 Reprint / Comic-Club NK 2010 ex libris MTP www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?60508

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Jack Wodhams - The Authentic Touch - Curtis - 1971

[filipmagnuswrites]

Greetings, brothers. Welcome to this short report on the quality and quantity of our brother, Lieutenant Titus’s single-player campaign. The short of the short report? The Emperor provides! In this case, he provides a good, six-seven hour campaign filled with adrenaline, amazing vistas, and no end to cannon fodder for a trio of brave space marines. Faced with endless hordes of tyranids, Titus…

[anarchistbanjosworld]

Anarchist Time Knights-Day 3: Hound of the Nexus (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1523061148-anarchist-time-knights-day-3-hound-of-the-nexus?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=anarchistbanjo [Image: Twilight haze over a jagged forest, Valentine, golden dog with astral snout, bounds ahead-Tobal with scarred face, short dark hair, blue militia coat, grips glowing medallion-Lucas in black tunic, short black hair, astral sheen, stands firm-OAK Nexus rift pulses, reptilian shadows creep-vivid, gritty]

[kittybombshell-blog1]

Alien Dive - Find Pink (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1502059493-alien-dive-find-pink?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=klalampkins1 It's the year 2140, a massive war had broken out between humans and aliens. The war was over in 2 years. Aliens had won forcing humans into slums while they live in the capital . In the slums meet Artemis Rose, a sixteen year old girl who will go on a long quest. To find her missing father and secrets about her mother with her sister and new friends and topple an alien dictatorship and save the world.dive In with alien dive