"But Star Wars will be done my way! I don't care what you (Disney) have to say!"

Star Wars: once loved and adored as the modern mythology, now reduced to a punchline and cautionary tale of corporate greed, mishandling and misplaced politics from the people involved. What happened to the Star Wars we used to know? Well, it's dead and gone. At least as far as 'official' material is concerned.

"No, I am the correct line. Not 'Luke, I am
your Father', damn it!"

The thing is, Star Wars is the modern myth and Disney has no power over me as a tabletop Game Master. They can burn, they can destroy, corrupt and revise the lore as much as they want. As long as someone, somewhere, still has a copy of the original trilogy out there, Star Wars will live. We're not yet at the point where Disney can destroy people's old copies. I'm sure eventually they will be as insane as to remake Episode 1 through 6 and corrupt and twist every character but we're not there yet. I'm lucky enough to have been old enough to remember a time before even the Prequel trilogy, where my father rented the VHS of the original trilogy (in its old, slightly crappy French dubs) and sitting on the couch being blown away by that line. You know, "No, I am your your father!". There was a time where this was still something a kid would be able to watch without knowing it was coming. But enough of more of my 'premature old man shtick'.

You Can Run Star Wars Without $$$

As I was pointed out on MeWe today, there's Mini Six: Bare Bones edition. It's a slimmed down, free version of the Open D6 System, itself derived from the classic Star Wars D6 by West End Games. It comes with a stripped down version of Star Wars, or rather Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off. Why get a copy of Edge of the Empire or anything owned by Disney? You don't need it. What, do you need the 'lore'? The lore is available on Wookiepedia, be it the movies lore, the early WEG proto-Expanded Universe, classic Expanded Universe or the Disney garbage if you feel like a masochist. It's all written down by obsessive fans already.

Of course, in my personal opinion a more 'proper' Star Wars game would require a much more 'minimalist' approach to lore. This isn't me agreeing with the dickweeds at the modern Lucasfilm-Disney about canon. These people are idiots anyway. No, the issue is that while the EU has pretty good stuff its also quite messy. A GM is much better served by sticking to the movies and extrapolating from there, only adding any WEG/EU/whatever else lore if it benefit their game. The appeal of Star Wars originally wasn't in dozen upon dozen of metric tons of lore. I'm aware this may piss off EU fans and I understand, but the reality is there is such a thing as 'too much lore' when it bog downs your game or create arguments with players about what model of gun Storm troopers use or something along those line. To me, the most important lore elements are in the big lines, not the small details. So to recap, what you'd need:

• An internet connection.
• Mini Six (Free or a printed copy for about 3$).
• Maybe a printer, some sheet, pencils and dice.

Now considering most people in this hobby have a ready accedes to paper, a printer, a computer and all that it mean you can basically run your dream Star Wars game for under a few $. I guarantee you whatever the hell you run has a good chance of being more true to Lucas' original vision. It's about the spirit of adventure and cheesy scifi-meet-western-meet-fantasy. Now, to be fair, the prequels had a very different focus and a lot more politics but I'd argue the prequels are material for a group more focused on RP than raw adventure.

Still. Not a penny spent on new Star Wars material. As for my players, I'd encourage them to play into the archetypes. Now obviously, trying to directly copy Luke or Han is a bad idea, but there are many, many archetypes out there in fiction. Not everything needs to be some fancy, fart-huffing deconstruction. Let heroes be heroes and villains be villains, not everything need to be 'deep' (or a faked attempt a depth). Sometimes you just want to have space samurai cutting off space villains with laser swords. There's nothing wrong with mixing your inner child with time-honored mythological archetypes: that's the very thing one should strive for in terms of style and tone.

Game Concept: Warhammer 25 000

It is the 26th Millennium. For more than two thousand years, Mankind's fate

in the galaxy seemed to have been in a state of decay and uncertainty.

Once it seemed as if mankind was poised to conquer the stars,

even in the shadow of the Eldar's galaxy-spanning Empire.

From their humble beginning on Earth, the human race has expanded

into the great void of space and mastered nearly all areas of science

that they could ever hope to discover with their mortal minds.

In their folly, the greatest minds of the past unleashed what could have been our doom.

The birth of Artificial Intelligence, now deemed Abominable, was both a blessing

and a curse. With their aid mankind expanded ever further. And, for a time, it was good.

This age of artificial evolution has come to an end in the devastating conflicts.

Mankind emerged victorious but diminished. For a brief moment it seemed as if

the horrors of the past would have been put behind us. We were wrong.

Earth has grown silent. The invisible, immaterial realm of the Warp is stirring.

Mankind is on the cusp of either a true rebirth as a Psychic species or, perhaps

at the very edge of a damnation we cannot even fathom the depths.

To be a Man in those times is to live in uncertain times. It is a life focused on rebuilding

what has been lost while fearfully looking to the future without a clue on what it may bring.

To stand in the sunset of Mankind's greatest era and to fight to keep Old Night at bay.

These are the tales of those times. Preserve the power of Technology and Science,

for so much more risk being lost every day. Cling to the promise of progress and

understanding, less savages we become. For in the dying light of the future, there is

only uncertainty and the stirring of thirsting Gods.

Art by Adrian Mihai

Call it a silly pipe dream if you will, but one idea which has long haunted the wildest dreams was to run a tabletop campaign set in the Warhammer 40 000 universe, albeit away from the two major eras of the timeline, namely the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy, set in M31, and the 'modern' 40k set in M41 to M42. Its been a long established fact that giant chunks of the lore remained (thankfully) unexplored. Being a big fan of Kevin Crawford's work, I've realized that a lot of the material present in Stars Without Numbers seems rather similar to what we could extrapolate to have existed near the end of the Golden/Dark Age of Technology and the beginning of the Age of Strife. While any mention of crunch here mention Stars Without Numbers, this could easily be ran with a very heavily modded Dark Heresy or even GURPS.

There's going to be quite a bit of 'headcanon' going on here. I don't claim to be an expert who know all the minutiae of 40k lore down to the very last bit. In addition, since this is an era which will likely forever remain shrouded in myth, it means a lot of assumptions have to be made. As a final note, the tone of such an era is different from 40k. Because that's the point. To showcase the galaxy-that-was.

Can 'Stars Without Numbers' support such an era?

Most worlds which have not
degenerated would be TL4, with
some TL5 (but not all)

In my humble opinion, yes absolutely. In fact, it was looking at the Tech levels as outlined in the game that I realized that TL4 and TL5 would be fairly close to the level of technological prowess of post-Men of Iron humans. Most, if not all of the things outlined in there do in fact already exist in Warhammer 40 000 and have existed for most of the game's history. They simply represent forms of technology which aren't mass produced for consumer and civilian use but exist in extremely limited forms across Imperial technology:

• Cybernetics: These are extremely commonplace in Warhammer 40k, just in a somewhat more clunky form than they would be in the past. The Imperium and the Mechanicus make use of robotic limbs and cybernetic implants all the time. However they are rather ugly, bulky and baroque things full of wires and tubes. If I was to theorize, I personally believe a lot of the Mechanicus tech isn't so much the most advanced as it is the most rugged and versatile, able to sustain itself with minimal maintenance for centuries. Late Golden Age technology in this area is likely somewhat sleeker. However the most advanced designs are now lost tech and the implants are changing, increasingly devolving toward the clunky, techno-gothic style we all know and love.
• Genetic Manipulation: We know for a fact that, by around M22 the Navigators were deliberately genetically engineered. With that in mind we can assume that, prior to the initial phase of technological decay, humanity was reaching well into TL5 (if not TL6 of 'techno magic'!) areas of biological engineering. If anything, with the increase in Psyker population, the stirring of the Warp likely increasing mutation chances and the need to further engineer populations to better thrive on alien worlds (now that Earth has been 'lost'), this is one area which is likely currently thriving. It is likely most Humans by M26 descend from genetically augmented stock, healthier and engineered to reduce the odds or to eliminate genetic defects and diseases. It is my theory that this engineering, still existing within the genome of the Imperial population, can and does go 'haywire' due to pollution and other degradation, explaining why so many mutations in older 40k books seem so random. Not every mutation is Chaos (although many are). Some could be long dormant, spliced genes going crazy and suddenly expressing themselves.
• Near Immortality: This one would be 'lost technology' right from the get go, but there is some lore evidence to suggest that aging could have been, at the peak of the Golden Age, a thing of the past for the elite. Considering that 'Juvenat' treatments exist in 40k and that the Space Marines and Custodes are near-immortal, the posthuman elites of the Golden Age could have been able to indefinitely suspend aging.
• Localized Temporal Manipulation: These exist in 40k too, going far back into the lore as the Stasis Grenades. This type of technology is called Stasis Fields and they are still in use in the modern Imperium.
• Artificial Intelligence: This one is a no-brainer, as we know that the creation of the Men of Iron is what led to the development of the STC and the true dawn of the Golden Age.

Art by Tim Razumovsky

As one can see, much of this technology has long existed in 40k lore. The key differences, however, are in two things: how common is it and how is it treated? A game set at the start of the Age of Strife would see everything listed under T4 as commonplace on any sufficiently large and industrialized world which isn't too damaged by past centuries of war. The overall standards of life would be massively improved over the basic Imperial menial and these worlds would be, in many aspects, closer to our time. Personal computers used for both work and entertainment, a decent access to medical care (which, even in a highly diminished state, would surpass our current medical technology) and more would be the norm whereas in the Imperium these things are at best used only by Nobles. Even on a planet which spent centuries rebuilding from the conflict with the Men of Iron, technology would still be beyond that of the average Imperial world.

Secondly and, most importantly, much of this technology would still be understood. Maybe not completely, as the massive databases and the complete STC have been lost but much would still remain. These people would not regard technology with superstition. Now obviously these people would know and understand that things used to be better, that in the days of their great grandparents there used to be inter planetary transit on a much larger scale before these warp routes were lost, that people used to live several centuries more and that machines automated even more to the point it was a near utopia. However there would be none of that superstition which is built into the 'cargo cult' of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

The Gene-Wars and Psychic Abominations

Art by Vlad Bolotov.

One of the greatest dangers of this dwindling age, beyond the isolation of entire systems or planets by the Warp, is the threat posed by rampant genetic engineering and the growth of the 'Psyker' phenomena. Psykers were recorded among humans as early as M22 but they would presumably only explode in numbers around the start of the Age of Strife. But why are these two factors so important to the downfall of mankind? Codex: Custodes states the following:

"Thinking machines and the development of ever more esoteric weapons and transportation technologies played their part, but the single greatest factor to drive this expansion was the ability – and the reckless will – to manipulate human genetics. Utterly certain of their own primacy, scientist-kings and techno-demagogues followed every strand of curiosity and exercised powers of creation that made them seem like gods. Ultimately, their hubris led them to catastrophe, and onwards to the very brink of extinction. Worlds were overrun by bloody uprisings within their own populations, much of which were mutated beyond sanity and recognition. Gene-wars consumed entire star systems, while a psychic apocalypse drowned the stars in fire. The vast empire of Humanity was shattered amidst horror and anarchy, and the oppressive shroud of Old Night settled over all."

My personal theory on the matter is that, since Mankind could not rely on thinking machines as much they sought alternate ways to expand their power. With true artificial sentience outlawed/destroyed on any surviving world, power hungry individuals had to find something else. The human body and mind provided the right 'canvas'. The increased rate of mutation attracted scientific curiosity and, as with all things, someone somewhere will see it as a mean to gain more power. At first there would not really be anything seen as truly malicious in this, as humanity would already be used to posthuman modifications. However, humanity in that era was also quite naive and the powers of the Warp were misunderstood and the full ramifications of tapping into the Immaterium would not be immediately clear.

Fear and loathing of the 'mutant' would not be universal, especially on still well developed worlds. There would be a certain naivety to it all, as players could be allowed to take Psychic or even Arcane Foci. It would be treated no differently than any other technology. At least, until someone somewhere had a particularly bad roll. Human variations would also be commonplace and no one would really blink an eye, unless they were particularly repulsive or hostile. However, in the slums and former war zones the first true mutants, as modern Imperials would recognize, are being born. Without the full knowledge of ancient sciences, many anomalies are growing inside the human genome. These, in time, could create divergent strains of humanity which would unfortunately be exterminated by the Legiones Astartes five thousand years later. Other, more stable breeds would become the Ogryn, Ratling or the infamous Squats.

Another area of divergence to take into account is that of pre-Warp travel human civilizations. In the Warhammer universe, humanity was already spreading across the stars far before they ever invented primitive Warp Travel (around M18) or the Navigators (estimated M22). Even before the true dawn of the Golden Age they had already been colonizing their own solar system and nearby (or even distant) worlds for a very long time, using generational ships filled with enough raw material to enable self sufficiency for the colony. These worlds, assuming the colony did not die, would develop radically different ways of life or even biology. According to the old lore of a 1991 issue of White Dwarf, Mars' terraforming began (and seemingly, somehow, ended) in M3! In other words, it began in our own millennium. This means that by the start of the Golden Age, where Warp travel began connecting all these worlds, that humanity already had existed in isolated pockets outside of Earth for about 15 000 years.

Posthuman Augmentations

Art by Josiah Duncan.

For players, genetic engineering and biomechanical augmentation are a viable option when it come to increasing the capabilities of their characters. While the most advanced of genetic augmentations are now considered lost following the destruction of the Men of Iron and the most technologically advanced STC patterns (which logically would include medical data) and while the Emperor hasn't yet obtained the greatest troves of knowledge left on Terra to combine with His genetic material (to make Custodes, Primarchs and Astartes) this hardly prevent now stranded human colonies from creating super soldiers. True, they will never rival the future Astartes but we know from established 40k lore that genetic enhancement to make bigger, stronger, faster soldiers do exist. These type of people still existed early into the Great Crusade, before either falling in battle or being assimilated into the greater Imperial populace. In addition, with Psykers on the rise and the abilities of Biomancy, warp-fueled genetic modification is an area where the maddest of genius would dare to go.

• The Diehard and Iron Hide Foci from the Core Book, as well as Arcane Mind and Arcane Physique can all represent different expression of the Transhumanism used at the start of the Age of Strife. This can range from being born from a genetically engineered sub-species/ethnic group within the sector the game is set (whose descendants would one day be classified as Abhumans by the Imperium) to simply being an elite soldier or special agent whose rich and powerful masters have allowed access to permanent augmentations. Others might be Warp-tained and not even aware of why their bodies and minds are enhanced and the full extent of their degeneration has not manifested yet.
• Alternatively, these augmentations could be mechanical in nature. While the Mechanicum currently doesn't really exist in anything resembling its future form, it isn't as implausible as it sound for select individuals on these far off worlds to be implanted with mechanical augmentations which are similar in function or even directly based off the design templates which form the full range of Mechanicus implants, if not for them to carry augmentations which are lost in the modern Adeptus Mechanicus. Possibly, the Hacker Foci could be restricted to those whose bodies are implanted with these augmentations as they are able to more easily plug into the Noosphere, which would presumably also exist on these worlds through all the wireless technology which still exist.
• Playing a member of the Navigators is also an option. Presumably they are not quite as inbred and monstrously deformed in those days. With the Warp storms growing in potency, the Navigators cut off from Terra have settled on worlds which remain relatively stable and have become a local nobility of sort, sometimes attempting to mount reckless travels to reach nearby worlds and obtain rare resources. Navigators would use the Starfarer or some similar Focis to represent their Warp eye. However they would only ever be able to reach the nearest of star systems and only under considerable strain.

In the 26th Millennium, overall the nature of 'humanity' would be a lot more open ended. Being set in an era where genetic engineering is still commonplace means that the fear of mutants is not quite ingrained into humanity yet. While there are monsters and abominations lurking, the full scope of the isolation of Old Night hasn't fully taken hold yet and Abhumans don't exist so far. The worst is also yet to come on the subject of Psykers and Warp taint.

Familiar Foes

Were you expecting something else?

One of the reasons to set something within the Warhammer 40 000 universe is to, after all, make use of pre-existing material. While many of the game's factions would not exist in M26, there's still a pretty good amount of critters and aliens which are indeed recognizable from the lore, especially Rogue Trader-era lore.

• The Orks: An ever-present menace, the Orks have been a blight on the galaxy since times immemorial. At the height of the Golden Age, the superior technology of mankind kept the monsters at bay, destroying entire Waaaaagh!!! and leaving behind, at worst, scattered pockets of Feral Orks growing from the spores. However, in this period of isolation, instability and technological decay the Orks are growing bolder again. Space Hulks emerge from beyond the veiled Warp routes. Rumours are spreading that the green tides seen in past centuries were but minor incursions. The Orks encountered in the sector where my game would be set would be, as a nod to 1st edition lore, mostly of the Blood Axes clan and an overall more intelligent, sneakier lot. There is also a nod to the Beast Arise series, which depicted Orks as more intelligent and organized when under the influence of so-called Prime Orks, who will still be alive in those days. Overall these would be full of nods to 1st and 2nd edition Ork lore.
• The Eldars: As of M26, the empire of the Eldars has not fallen yet. The race has not yet splintered into Craftworld Eldars, Dark Eldars, Exodites or other groups. Their race is very powerful but also incredibly corrupt, as they are on the downward spiral that will eventually lead to the Fall of the Eldar. The best one can hope of the Eldar is that they simply leave humanity alone.  It seems most likely that Eldar machines were more often seen and interacted with than an in-the-flesh Eldar so overall the race remain mysterious.
• The Necrons: Initially it may seem silly. However, there indeed was Necron activity before M41 as there are mentions of Tomb Worlds slowly waking up during the era of the Great Crusade. There is so much we don't know about Necrons that they can still fit within such a 'prequel'.
• The Slanni: The reptilian Slann date back to Warhammer 40 000: Rogue Trader and were essentially the Lizardmen analogues before 40k reduced the amount of races it had that were copy pasted from Fantasy. The Slann encountered in M26 would be greatly diminished tribes of reptilian/amphibian creatures with ties to the Old Ones.
• The Hrud: The nomadic buggers have been around far before the time the Imperium ever found out they existed. Indeed, they most likely predate the rise of humanity as an interstellar species. It is likely they existed beneath mankind's notice, much like how mankind was beneath the notice of the Eldars.
• Warp Predators: There are creatures from the Rogue Trader book which still exist within the lore and would be around in this era, such as Enslavers, Vampires and Psychneuein. With the unregulated and misunderstood psychic powers going wild, these creatures could pop in anywhere.

Overall, not a bad list despite the lack of any Imperial factions, Chaos (beyond daemons) and Tyranids. Obviously Tau also be completely out the picture as they are still busy banging rocks together trying to figure out fire. Same with, presumably, the Kroots.

Madness & Damnation

Art by Johan Grenier.

One addition built into such a campaign would be the Sanity found in Silent Legions. Now, unless the characters are civilians generally speaking there shouldn't be too much that put a strain on their sanity. As the past centuries have had plenty of wars and societal decay at some point or another, soldier, assassins and mercenaries know what to expect. After an encounter or two with some Xenos, things get pretty easy to process, as these people aren't as brainwashed as modern Imperial citizen.

However there is one aspect of the universe the mind is not ready for yet and that is the Warp and Psychic powers. At this point, humanity knows that the Warp exist (having used it to travel since M22) and Psykers are becoming more common. The problem which is arising is that of Daemons and Warp Predators increasingly being attracted to the growing psychic potential in humanity. When the fabric of reality gets torn asunder and some Daemon of Tzeentch or some other ruinous entity emerge and start murdering people and eating their souls, this is where madness come in.

And yet, Hope?

Art by Sergi Sokolov.

However in the end things are not Grimdark. Not yet. Within the life span of the player characters, things may not look so bad. The best analogue for this era would be a game set during the fall of the Roman Empire. No one could predict how long the fall would last and how much time it would take to climb back to the heights of such an era. Five thousand years is a long time. Ultimately, this is an era which, while connected to 40k lore, in many way still draws more upon classic space opera and pulp scifi. Humanity isn't yet this degraded, crazy, superstitious and hateful thing whose sense of idealism has been utterly crushed. Yes, things will one day be truly terrible. The Grim Darkness of the Far Future will come but not today. Not tomorrow. It isn't here yet.

Time to hold back the darkness. One day at a time.

Game Concept: Scifi Television On A Budget

This one is a bit unusual and quite a bit of game gimmick that does not really rely on any system of choice or, indeed, even genre. However for the purpose of this idea I have chosen Science Fiction, as being locked down as made me binge back some old scifi ranging from Classic Doctor Who to Star Trek. Watching so much of it makes you see the idiosyncrasies and the silly elements born of budget constrains.

My Game Has Limited Budget

A mundane, wooden box is a lot cheaper on the budget
than a 'proper' space ship.

Its an odd restriction, when tabletop RPG allows one to use their imagination as much as they want. You don't need to bother about budget. Some people might, a bit, if they insist on using miniatures for Dungeons & Dragons but in my experience that rarely is enough of a limiting factor: people will repurpose a mini and go 'Okay I know its a bandit, but its a hobgoblin'. Most people who use mini and map nowadays use some mat where they can erase and draw at will. Only those gifted with time and skill usually bother to build elaborate sets, unless they are war gamer who can reuse terrain. As a result, the idea of 'budget' is a non-issue for tabletop. Even in an era of supplement creep, there are things like the SRD/OGL and Pathfinder has a wiki where all the info is available. There's no need to buy books.

Overall, anything can happen. A game can be set in any number of villages, cities, biomes or planets with only the GM's words to change the setting. Fantastical monsters can be dime a dozen, spaceships can show up as massive fleets and action scenes can be as overly detailed with flourish as much as one choose to elaborate upon. But what if it wasn't so?

Suppose my game was based off televised Science Fiction, from the sixties to the late nineties. This was the era of televised episodic budget science fiction: immensely popular, yet still not quite mainstream in the way they are now. These shows were often very ambitious but sadly lacking in budget. This is the era of Classic Doctor Who, of the original Battlestar Galactica, of Star Gate, of Babylon Five, of Star Trek from the Original Series to the end of Voyager. Television budget was often a mess. Computer generated images weren't a thing yet or, if they existed, were extremely primitive and limited until the tail end of the nineties. That's why aliens looked like 'men with weird foreheads in funny clothes'. There was no budget to allow twelve feet tall, four armed reptilian creatures or floating psychic amoeba, at least not in any form which would age well visually. Aliens were usually just people in funny clothes, maybe with some makeup or at best some 'rubber suit monster'.

Not only that but the action was limited by budget too, as was every aspect of world building. Most (in)famously is the example of the ubiquitous Transporter technology in the original Star Trek. It existed because some cheap sfx trick was much cheaper and easier to do than build the following: a shuttle's interior, a shuttle's exterior (with launch pad/hangar bay), a shuttle model for it flying in space and maybe oversized parts of the Enterprise's back showing said model landing or launching from the ship itself. It was just easier to add some bad sparkly after effect and make people vanish into thin air, the same way it was easier to make the Tardis magically look like a police box. Both elements would end up becoming so iconic to their respective universe its basically impossible to imagine the settings without them.

What Would It Affect?

Vasquez's Rocks aka 'Kirk's Rocks' aka 'every single
rocky alien planet ever'.

So if a game was ran to emulate this era of television, what would it be like? How much would it change? Would it fundamentally alter tabletop RPG? No, not at all the core elements are still there. This is more of a 'cosmetic' thing and a set of restrictions on the Game Master's part. It would be best suited to episodic games (granted, given my pacing, something closer to a classic Doctor Who serial) to fit the style of the era.

• All aliens would either be humanoids or rubber suit monsters. The former would range from the obvious cop out of 'human aliens' to 'rubber forehead aliens' while the latter would be better suited to something that's less of a person and more some monster, as it would not be able to convey emotions properly due to the bulky suit.
• There would be very little, any animals shown especially not alien wildlife. This is too costly. Any set in the wilderness would be some quarry or random forest which just so happen to look very conveniently like Earth. There would be very little exotic environments without straining an episode's budget or trying to get creative.
• Sets would be quite limited and reused as lot, so if the game is focused on a ship (the Enterprise and the Tardis are good examples) or space station (like DS9 and Babylon Five) it would make heavy use of the same major reused locales as much as it can. When a new set need to be used, the descriptions would try to mention as many reused elements as possible to show its the same old sets with a few pieces added/removed and maybe a coat of paint.
• There would be a very commonly recurring caves, a bunch of desert rocks and/or a quarry set for any kind of mine shaft, alien tunnels and long lost civilization ruins. That they all look the same would just be a happy coincidence. These desolate locations would be heavily abused as any kind of evil lair or dangerous location.
• Props face a similar situation. If an adventure showcase some ancient alien artifact which take the form of bronze colored geometric foam and cardboard shapes topped by a crystal, then a later adventure might conveniently happen to have an alien ship control's be a stack of geometric shapes, but in green and grey.
• Many minor NPC would be recurring actors in different makeup, so some element of their physical descriptions and mannerism would be repeated as the same guy in one episode plays an asshole security guard who gets murdered by an alien and 3-4 episodes later plays an alien trader in makeup.
• Spaceship action would be kept to a bare minimum, as the budget cannot sustain massive space battles, those requiring too many models and/or CGI. If the game is text-based then as many 'shots' of recurring spaceships would be reused as stock footage. Heavy kitbashing of ships may occur if the game use space ships a lot.
• Finally, action scenes would be somewhat limited to basic action stuff with some added 'pew pew' laser effects for the guns. This is not the kind of setting where advanced weapons, power armor and complex shields effects can be used. This will result in the characters being a lot more 'grounded' with little to no display of any kind of superpowers, with even supposedly fearsome warrior races displaying little super strength beyond tossing someone to the ground. Psychic powers, likewise, will be mostly effects-less. They just happen without any description of glowy lights and sounds and tend to be abstract. In other words, it isn't Warhammer 40 000 , Mass Effect or Halo, with big spectacle of military scifi and/or space magic.
• This would also mean monster's abilities would need to be abstract, such as mind control or death rays as graphic things like acid or melting people is not only out of the budget but also not allowed on television.

Dungeons The Dragoning Redux: The Immateriums, Chaos, Daemons and other nasties

Yes, I'll keep posting Dungeons The Dragoning 'remake' stuff because it amuses me. There is just something so stupid, so hilarious but also so liberating in just saying 'screw it, let me be silly' and imagine a universe where the basic D&D stuff co-exists with the properties of Games Workshop, White Wolf and others. This is basically the tabletop equivalent of picking your favorite toys and smashing them into each others, creating a weirdass story where Optimus Primal team up with some Pokémon and three or four Power Rangers...from different teams across several season.

Hey, look: while I was a very lucky kid when it came to toys I sadly never got to have a full Power Rangers team due to how quickly these toys went off the shelves and were replaced.

One thing I have noticed as I get older is that, paradoxically I care less and less about trying to be mature, at least not at all times. Elfgames are inherently stupid/silly and even in today's era we would still be scorned as weirdoes by anyone suitably older and un-nerdy to have no damn clue why all of a sudden the dorky stuff has entire industries built on exploiting the money of hipsters and aging neck beards alike. Its just silly, its just fun and I need to stop feeling so insecure damn it!

A Dissection of the Immaterial

The ancient form of the Immaterium, its most primordial and ancient form was not the churning chaotic mass of the Warp but rather the impossible Wyld. To most people not very well versed in the natures of the Realm of Souls it would seemingly appear as completely identical: both are chaotic endless expanses of thoughts, souls and potential matter and energy constantly churning. The Wyld still exist but it only exist in the deepest regions of the Immaterium, having been tainted and corrupted into the Chaotic expanse (note the capital C here!) of the Warp: its energies corrupted and tainted to be tinged with all the fear, madness, rage and possibly bodily fluids of countless lives collectively crapping their pants at the War in Heaven and Usurpation of the Old Ones.

The Immaterium, as a dimension, encompass the entire galaxy and far beyond it. It is composed of the following parts:

• The Ethereal Plane is the part closest to the Materium, created from the immediate thoughts of all life forms. It is a boring, grey reflection of the material world and generally isn't very useful for long distance travel. There are entities which have the ability to phase into it and switch between a material and immaterial form such as Phase Spiders. The Old Ones (and several other beings) call it The Umbra or The Shadow.
• The Shadowfell is a specific part of the Umbra which has morphed into its own thing primarily due to the use of necromancy. It can be accessed through the Ethereal Plane or the Material Plane and exist as a dark realm of death and gloom, inhabited by the fossilized form of souls: what we would call ghosts. It is also called The Underworld.
• Within the Warp are other self-contained Realms, which are often the domain of beings who have ascended to become Gods. While many beings claim to be Gods, for the purpose of this section it will refer to potent spiritual beings who have become one with the Immaterium but are distinct from Daemons.
• Around and constantly gnawing at these parts of the Immaterium is the infamous Warp, which is the corrupted and twisted Chaotic mess which most people are familiar with. The Warp is the domain of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos and of their Chaos Daemons. Its energies induce madness and uncontrolled mutations.

The Ruinous Powers

You know them well! Except Malal, of course...

While they are called 'Gods of Chaos', these beings are both much more than Gods but also less. The oldest Dragons and other survivors of the War in Heaven sometimes call them the 'Heads of the Wyrm' for they are all conjoined and part of the same ultimate, undivided Chaos even if no Chaos God would ever concede such a fact. The concepts they embody are fundamental and were always part of the Wyld when it first formed. Once corrupted, however, these concepts slowly coalesced into malignant entities of which the main pantheon is composed of four and an additional member. They are:

• Khorne, the Blood God: Embodiment of rage, bloodlust, strength and survival among other things. This guy needs no introduction, being obsessed with war and destruction as well as the shedding of blood in all forms.
• Nurgle, the Lord of Decay: Embodiment of pestilence, plagues, decay, entropy and corruption. Kind of a nice guy by comparison.
• Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways: Embodiment of change, mutation, fate, hope and general RNG fuckery. He also the Chaos God most associated with magic and sorcery even if he lacks monopoly on it. If anything has a % chance of failure you could blame it on him.
• Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure: Embodiment of passion, lust, desire and general obsessions that turn a bit too grim or self-destructive. Slaanesh is generally the Chaos God most associated debaucheries that turn a PG-13 rating into something that makes the MPAA kill themselves.
• Malal, the God of Team-Killing Fucktards: Also called the Unspoken God, the One-Who-Doesn't-Exist, Malice and 'That Asshole'. Malal is the embodiment of Chaos own self-contradiction and self-defeating douchery.

Below each Chaos God is an innumerable host of Daemons, ranging in power and intellect between mindless and useless slug-daemons to towering Daemonic Nobles (sometimes called Daemon Lords, Daemon Princes, Archfinds and more) who is each an endgame boss who can devastate entire worlds on a whim. Adding to this are endless permutations of cultists, madmen, mutants and other Chaos-aligned horrors.

The ultimate goal of a Chaos worshiper is Apotheosis into a Daemon Prince (again, title may vary): in doing so they become infused with a portion of the Ruinous Powers, shed their mortal form and become immortal beings of immense power. Each of these beings is a dreaded monster of legend: former tyrants, impossibly skilled assassins, twisted necromancers and more. Some ascended during their life time through service to Chaos while others found themselves rewarded after their death even without having ever known of the powers of Chaos, having caught the eyes of the Dark Gods who didn't want such a gifted (unwitting) servant to pass on when they could keep doing what they were doing for eons to come.

The ranks of Daemon Lords are vast and include many horrid figures such as Orcus, Daemon Lord of the Undead who serves primarily (but not exclusively) Nurgle and Tzeentch as a patron to all manner of undying abominations as well as their potential creator. Just as he spread a Chaotic sickness and corruption he also is a patron to Necromancers, imparting upon them foul sorcerous secrets to transcend life and death. Doge Klypse, the Archbishop of Madness scribbles mad texts which may or may not hold horrific prophecies involving even the end of Chaos itself while the Knight of Entropy exist to only end things, turning the entire world to dust and ash as it bring about the annihilation that ultimately is Chaos. Meanwhile, Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine and (Self-Proclaimed) God of Tyranny exist just to show how confusing Chaos is. Having been infused with the power of Malal, Asmodeus turned Chaos against itself and created a Realm which combine the twisting and corrupting powers of Chaos with an iron-clad, terrifying rule of tyranny and he now wage a never-ending war against Chaos with his armies of Devils.

The Gods

Sigmar in his Age of Sigmar depiction.

There exist in the Immaterium beings of immense power which are not the Ruinous Powers or their servants. The process of their ascension, in many ways, echoes that of Daemon Princes but the ways it was achieved are different. The Gods (sometimes called the Incarnae) are powerful and unique beings, possibly creations of the Old Ones or possibly purely through the will power and belief of life itself. Like Daemon Princes they shed their material form, becoming indestructible beings who dwell within the Immaterium. However unlike Daemon Princes these creatures neither obey the Ruinous Powers nor do they resonate of its energy. Perhaps, in ancient times, before the Immaterium became tainted by the Warp this is what happened to truly exceptional mortals and not the birth of a Daemon Prince.

Wielding the power of an Incarnae as a Cleric is far less dangerous than channeling the corruption energies of Chaos but also much more difficult. It requires a special gift, a sense of communion with beings greater than oneself whereas everyone and everything can fall into Chaos in due time. Because the Gods represent Order (or at least, Neutrality in the Law/Chaos axis) they have a harder time interacting directly with the World than Daemon Princes since they innately try to preserve and maintain the fabric of reality to some degree whereas servants of the Ruinous Powers simply want to break things and care not if oxygen molecules become tiny shrimps that shoot rainbows from their eyes...rainbows that melt your brain, of course.

Godbound In Space: The Arcem Sector, Part 5

More Space Godbound weirdness for the Arcem Sector or beyond.

The Ascended Masters - Not-So-Omniscient Smugness

"Ooh aren't I mysterious?"

The people of the Arcem sector (and beyond) know that the soul is real. The soul, combined with the mind and body, form the multi-dimensional 'data' which compose a being. It can be changed by soul-alterations and graft, additions of soul-genes and deliberate cultivation of psionic powers. The soul-data can far exceed in volume it's original size. There are those who grow in spiritual power so much that when they die the sheer mass of their souls does not dissipate and/or isn't gobbled up by the datastream of the Celestial Network to be take elsewhere.

The Ascended Masters have transcended life and death, becoming soul and mind singularities. Each time they die their minds reincarnate into a new body of a near-human xenotypes (often of the same type/species but this is hardly an unbreakable rule). As they age they reawaken to past lives, becoming ever more potent. The Ascended Masters have reached such a level of enlightenment and power that they mechanically are Godbound. They have escaped beyond the wheel of life, death and causality. They are statted as Undestined. Their reincarnation ability is not a Gift simply because it take so long that it merely is a plot device with a payoff within the next few decades.

There is no central agenda to the Ascended Masters: they can go entire incarnations without meeting back with their allies or enemies. Most are incomprehensible: they call this transcendental wisdom but saner beings just call this 'bullshit': most of what comes out of an Ascended Master is complete bullshit. It isn't that they're pathological liar it's just they've become more often than not incredibly detached from mortals or even other transhuman gods who are limited to existing in mostly three dimension and a single, linear existence. Trying to explain to an Ascended Master that one need answer about a currently ongoing situation can be a headache because they've set in motions plan they think will only pay off in the next thousand years. Of course there is also a good chance this otherworldly goofyness is also a ploy on their part to hide a real agenda.

The Techno-Liches - Immortality At All Cost

Lich Cyborg by Jaro313

Death sucks, hat much is obvious. Nobody wants to die yet we all eventually do. Or, at least, that would be how it is but technological and theurgical means have long allowed individuals to far exceed their extended lifespan through gene therapies, organ replacement, synthetic enhancements and even full body cybernetic replacement. There is also cloning and memory copying as forms of immortality if one see it that way. For some people that's not enough, however.

The Techno-Liches are not a unified group in origin nor purpose, they're merely a category of similar beings. There is only so much genetic and synthetic enhancements can take someone and quite a few powerful individuals came to dread their own death: at best they could hope for a lineage of clones and genetically-engineered descendants maybe overseen by an AI copy. All these things are obviously of questionable legality in the Arcem Sector so ambitious people must turn elsewhere. Becoming an Arrayed is an option but there are limits to the process and many ambitious, rich individuals find themselves turned down by all experts as being unsuitable to the process. Some pay anyway and die doing so. And some...find other means.

These beings use the Lich Lord Concept Word from Lexicon of the Throne. When money, ambition, madness and resourcefulness meet the end result might sometime enable one to finally ascend to the form of immortality they always wanted. Of course, its all a sham. These beings are biologically dead and twisted. What one need to do, to become a Techno-Lich, is essentially put their bodies and souls in some kind of messed up quantum state. They are not alive and they aren't dead either. Most of them look horrible and disgusting, rotting corpses, cyber-skeletons, twisted mass of necrotechnical life support or worse.  None of these process are safe. None of them are suitable but the important thing is that they work. The question worth asking is: was it worth it to 'bug' oneself out of the cycle of life and death?

Despite what one might think, the Techno-Liches don't really need to rely on the Word of Death. Nothing in their creation and existence mean they need to be able to influence Death itself, as they are the result of forbidden and twisted science that doesn't necessarily have to include necromancy or even spellcasting (via Sorcery) in their power suite. While some absolutely are necromancers others are byproduct of more technological means.

Dungeons The Dragoning Redux: Ancient History Of The Wheel

The history of the Great Wheel is a great sprawling tapestry, embroidered in blood and steel and gold, stretching from the furthest reaches of the distant past to the current hour. Near-immortal wizard kings once shaped the Wheel to their will and made it a place of miraculous splendor. Today, men fight with sword and bolter in the ruins of ancient glory. However, the story of the current era cannot be told without a look to the deep past...

Primordial History and the Old Ones

Slann may or may
not be Old Ones.

They have been known by a thousand name by a thousand cultures which were but infants when the age of Gods came to an end. They've been called Precursors, Progenitor, Preservers, Syrne, The Ancients, The Endless. For simplicity sake we will call them The Old Ones. They emerged, the first race to progress in magic and technology enough to become part of the larger universe. They were almost immortal, patient and wise.  Or so the story goes. The Syrne were potent mages who routinely used the powers of the warp for a large variety of applications, constructing the Portal Relays.

But the Syrne were not alone in this young galaxy. While they may have been the first mortal race to ascend to such height, sentience had evolved elsewhere in the galaxy in a completely different form. Vast creatures of great power, with many souls, the Primordials (or Yozi) claimed this young galaxy and took offense at the Syrne’s preposterous idea of supremacy, for the Syrne were at that time still and nowhere near the peak of their power. Nevertheless, the Syrne found allies in the Primordial known as Autochthon, the great Maker (sometimes known as Primus). A thinker, a builder and peerless engineer, Autochthon had more in common with the ambitious and industrious Syrne than his destructive and abusive brethren. The war between the Old Ones and the Primordials was a long one, with both side unleashing powers which at the time were new to the nascent universe but in the end, the Syrne won against the legions of the Primordials: elementals, giants armed by a race of stunted elemental humanoids called Earthen. The Yozi were defeated, imprisoned and in some cases mutilated and altered, the mechanism of their existence laid bare for the young Syrne, which led them to become the mighty Old Ones of legends.

The Deliberative

You could also call them 'Orokin' and it would
still work because of how cliché 'precursors' are.

Mighty in power and unchallenged, the Old Ones ruled all of creation, for a time, even if that time was eons. The greatest of the Old Ones were God-Kings who ruled entire crystal spheres, warriors leading armies pushing back creatures of primordial darkness and scientists and mages who controlled existence on a level unmatched even to this day. Countless races were created in this era to serve the Old Ones. The Dragons were forged from the essence of an elemental Primordial known as Gaia, while countless mortal races were designed to populate the Great Wheel. Some say the oldest deities in the cosmos were creations of the Old Ones or members of that race which ascended to a level of power to transcend mortality. No one knows for certain.

Progenitor Races

How did the great wheel develop so many forms of life...and why do so many share an eerie similarity between each others despite being light years apart? The Old Ones did it, of course! This is the current, leading theory on the origin of so many vaguely-similar life forms across the galaxy. The Old Ones created and uplifted many life forms, that much is known but some believe that beside the ancestors of all Elvenoid (The Eldarin) and Orkoids (The Krork) there were other progenitor races such as the Aeree (ancestors of Avian sapients), Sarrukh (ancestors of reptilian Sapients) or even the potential ancestors of Humans the Archaen.

The War In Heaven

The War In Heaven....pretty much unchanged.

Eventually, a great conflict later known to the Eldarin as the War in Heaven arose between the C'tan, immensely powerful, incorporeal beings composed of pure energy who existed solely in the material universe, and the Old Ones. At that point, the Old Ones had grown somewhat complacent and some say, weak. The Old Ones, physically weak and few in number, uplifted the Eldarin to serve as their soldiers. In response, the C'tan enslaved the Modrons, almost elemental creatures of pure order, bonding them within geometrical armored shells of a living metal called necrodermis. The C'tan directed the Modrons into Great Marches of all intelligent life. In response to this threat, the Old Ones created the Orks (or rather their ancestors, the Krork) to wage what would seem like an eternal war. How the war ended isn't known. The Modrons were forced into stasis in Mechanus and other forgotten clockwork worlds. The C'tan were put into hibernation.

The Usurpation

The remaining Old Ones were not the same creatures as they had been before the War in Heaven. Some stories speak of a curse, one last act of vengeance from the defeated C’tan. Others say the curse was given to the Old Ones by the Primordials, having taken eons to mature. A third version of the story claim that the Primordials and C’Tan were, somehow, one and the same as a species. Whatever the case was, the remaining Old Ones were a dying, paranoid and misguided breed. The Dragons, greatest of the creations of the Old Ones, slew their masters and assumed their place as the rulers of the known universe, forming a Draconic Shogunate. The Old Ones were rendered completely extinct, the Portal Network shut down while the Webway began its long decay.

When the Old Ones were lost, their other creations were left to their own devices. The Orks immediately turned on themselves, the joy of combat all they desired in life. Some of the Eldarin escaped their Crystal Spheres and constructed giant worldships, Craftworlds, to sail through the astral sea. They repaired and opened many Portal Relays, and found the city of Sigil. The Lady of Pain was, even then, the ruler of the city, already sitting on the throne of blades before the Eldarin arrived. Scattered across the Great Wheel were the Hedron, ancient monoliths of great power designed to help bind the fabric of reality and ensure nothing from the Far Realms entered the galaxy. With most of the Old Ones presumed dead, these constructs begin shutting down, weakening the barrier, allowing something from the outside to slowly make it’s way toward the Great Wheel.

The Corruption of Chaos

Prior to this, there had only been the Realm of Souls. However all the cosmos-shattering conflict which had occurred from the rise of the Old Ones to the Usurpation began to take its toll upon the Immaterium. Negative thoughts and ideas had a bad habit of sticking to together like space magic psychic bullshit being pulled together like atoms, slowly coalescing into increasingly complex singularities of pure spite and madness. These imbalances corrupted and twisted it with all the ill will, fears and general lack of common fucking decency that life now collectively experienced. This is what spawned the Gods of Chaos, living embodiment of all the nasty things that ever existed.

Ancient History and the Draconic Shogunate

An ancient, shiny dragon looking smug.

The first dragons were not natural creatures: they were the result of complex techno-arcane biological and spiritual manipulation. The ancient dragons (or Elder Dragons) were near-immortal creatures of vast power, a power which would only increase with age. Unfortunately, with the death of their Old Ones creator, the dragons were quickly met with the problem that they could not create more of their kind directly through such ancient science. They had to resort to naturally reproducing, which immediately began the dilution of their blood and power, which account for the variety in draconic shape, appearance and abilities in this day and age, from the noble and pure (but rare) gold dragons to the bizarre and degenerate Howling Dragon to even more obscure breed of dragons which exist only on a single world.

To fill their ranks and build an empire worthy of their might, the dragons began experimenting on various saurian life forms, leading to the creation of races such as the Kobold and Dragonborn, amongst others. These mortal races carry within them the gene of the dragons. The shogun of the dragons was Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon. Powerful, wise, noble and perhaps a tad bit too haughty, Bahamut held his rivals in check. That is until he was betrayed by a fellow warlord: Tiamat, the Five-Headed-Dragon. Tiamat waged war on Bahamut, nearly half of the living dragons siding with her. The two armies clashed, and on the slopes of Mount Celestia itself, Tiamat was struck down. But the Draconic empire was shattered. Several of the immortal Elder Dragons fled to Sigil.

The First Hive-Fleet

Omnomnom...

The arrival of the Great Devourer in the Great Wheel is quite ancient but only recently has it been understood. Where they came from, none can say, but these creatures infested every corner of the galaxy, falling upon the weakened Draconic Shogunate like hungry locust. Fortunately for the galaxy, this was a small hive fleet, seemingly only scouts and ill-prepared ones at that, but their impact upon the galaxy is one which is still felt today. Like a cancer, these organism would develop into the countless Aberrations. Separated from the hive mind, the confused aliens which had remained on countless worlds were forced to adapt. Some became lone predators, such as the dreaded Fenrisian Kraken, others reformed a primitive hive society, such as the weak Kruthik. Countless species of alien monstrosities can trace their ancestry to those early invaders of the Great Devourer. On the moon of Ymgarl, however, something different was biding its time… 

Formation of the Realm of Arkhosia

Using a forgotten Old Ones weapon known as the Sword of Creation, one dragon disrupted the hive mind of the alien invaders. This dragon then went and crowned herself the Scarlet Empress, forming her own empire of dragon blooded creatures. The Realm, while powerful, was a shadow of the Shogunate and a mere speck of dust compared to the Old Ones Deliberative. The Great Devourer had, in many ways, somewhat wiped the slate clean. For the first time in untold eons, the hand of the Old Ones was missing. The dragons were still around and the Realm was slowly and carefully building its power but nonetheless, this era was marked by the emergence of many new forms of life who began leaving their homeworlds and spreading across the Great Wheel.

Bael Turath and Asmodeus

Lord Douchebag McAsshole
the First! aka Asmodeus.

In those times a race of humanoids, possibly distant relatives to Humans, had developed into a small but extremely ambitious empire on the planet Korriban which started to clash with the much more powerful Realm. While genocide is never a good thing, one could argue that had everyone known what would happen next in their centuries of war then everyone involved would have rooted for the dragons and their servants to wipe these upstarts off the face of the galaxy.

The God-Kings and sorcerers nobles of that realm, Bael Turath, were powerful and dreamed of complete galactic conquest. Something which would obviously never happen. Inside their twisted minds, dark desires festered until they began to hear the call of a power which had been growing stronger and stronger with each century: the power of Chaos. The mightiest of Bael Turath's God-King slew his brother Ihys and took absolute control over their council, setting himself as the Lord of the Nine. His name was Asmodeus.

The war between Arkhosia and Bael Turath lasted centuries and had untold casualties on both side. In time, Bael Turath's tyrannical rulers lost more and more their grasp on their people until a single Crystal Sphere remained under their power, known as Baator. In the final days, Asmodeus chose to damn his entire people and utterly dedicate each and every single one of them to the power of Chaos but not before betraying Chaos itself by choosing to align with a renegade Chaos God known as Malal, god of trolling, backstabbing and general team-killing fuckery. It was thus that the Baatezu, or Devils, became creatures of (twisted) Order as one last middle finger to their benefactor, wielding the power of Chaos to enforce an iron rule, because Asmodeus is just that much of a dick.

Worldbuilding Resources: Youtube Channels

Just figured I'd post some of the Youtube-related resources which have helped me flesh out things for games. Some of these are fairly obvious and well know, others maybe a little less so. Keep in mind quite a few of these include writing advice, which isn't quite relevant to Tabletop RPG but they are here on this list because they discuss matters of world building in some shape or form or because they include information on the how and why of reality. These are put in no particular order.

• Stoneworks World Building: General purpose world building and history.
• James Tullos: Worldbuilding and literary critiques. Good to see the glaring worldbuilding pitfalls before crashing right into them.
• Artifexan: Include not just world building and science fiction but also Conlang.
• Invicta: Lot of good historical information about the lives of ordinary people and how it worked.
• Kings and Generals: More historical matters.
• Terrible Writing Advice: A self explanatory name using sarcasm and self-deprecation to explain the do and don't.
• Isaac Arthur: In depth, but very approachable and easy to understand discussion of plausible hard science fiction concepts.
• Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell: More science-related videos.
• PBS Eon: Videos about prehistoric life and evolution. Good if you want ideas for plausible creatures to throw at the player which would still come off as strange, like a crocodile with hooves.
• Ben G Thomas: More videos about paleontology as well as some related to speculative biology.
• Trey The Explainer: Even more paleontology, anthropology as well as more odds and ends including discussions about mythology in relation to their history and development.

Dungeons The Dragoning Redux: Remaking The Clusterfuck

If you are confused by this insanity of a crossover, I've written about Dungeons: The Dragoning 40 000 7th Edition here. Its a brief intro but it should explain what this insane mess of a game is.

Getting Back To More Solid Roots

Dungeons The Dragoning is a ridiculous concept. Its 'official' releases (if we can even call them that!) consist of only two books, the core book and the expansion called 'For A Few Subtitles More'. This would be the end of the publication of this monstrosity of a game but homebrew beget more homebrew: as a result, a game that itself is a mash up homebrew of references had a very active community which added an utterly humongous amount of homebrew races, exaltations and more to the setting. While this is all fine and dandy it made the game, at least in my opinion, lose its identity. This may seem contradictory but the original game was clearly based off a few major IP with references to others added in there. The homebrew crowd for all the good it did basically went and crammed every single thing under the sun.

This made the game lose its identity.

Without the 'core' fusion of Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, World of Darkness and Exalted it seems to me the setting lose what makes it a silly, funny crossover in the first place. D&D alone has had so many settings and re imagining under its brand that there is a massive wealth of content to base a silly, crossover space fantasy setting around it. The rest still has room to exist as dumb in-jokes or genuine (as much as such a silly game can be genuine) setting elements. As such the key settings here are:

• Dungeons & Dragons 4th and 5th Edition: Yes, really. The 3e era is arguably so much like a poor man's Planescape in some aspects that by comparison 4th and 5th stand more as their own thing.
• Planescape: The massive universe, the factions and of course Sigil.
• Spelljammer: The concept of fantasy+spaceships and the Crystal Spheres model is used here, albeit with ships looking more like spaceships than whatever the hell Spelljammer vessels were.
• Star Wars D6: The Star Wars of the early days of the Expanded Universe, before it was all defined and then thrown away to be defined again.
• Warhammer 40 000: Forms a massive portion of the lore and setting metaphysics as well as the setting history. Most of the setting's scifi window dressing take heavy inspiration from Warhammer. However, rather than the 'grimderp' Warhammer of modern times I'd rather take as many cues from the sillier Rogue Trader era.
• Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Oooh this one is going to get so much crap! That said, while it came after DTD was released there are a few elements of AoS which seems like they came out more of the space fantasy DTD than the grim fantasy world of the classic Warhammer.
• World of Darkness and Exalted: Much like how Warhammer Fantasy and 40 000 were connected, these two settings share a common root, a common publisher and many setting elements in common despite being separate. Quite a bit of the setting history and metaphysics take from these two.

The Materium

The name Great Wheel is the modern name of the known universe. It has had many other names for every culture, every species has called it something or other throughout their history as soon as they glanced upward and saw an endless sea of blinking lights where the Gods were said to live. In term of size it is massive, dwarfing our own Milky Way and is said to hold so many worlds as for them to be uncountable. The Great Wheel is also said to have four poles, based on the outdated model developed by ancient Dragons. There is some truth to this elemental models, however. The 'south' of the Great Wheel (its all a bit relative) is in fact home to much warmer crystal spheres and burning stars which can tear even shielded spelljammer vessels, for example.

Most worlds are found inside Crystal Spheres, which usually house a sun (or some close analogue) and has one or more habitable worlds inside. I'd say orbiting but that implies that a heliocentric model would always be accurate: it isn't. It is not unknown for some of these spheres to have their own oddities when it come to the laws of reality but the vast majority of them are considered to be stable and non-hostile to most known forms of life. Some spheres have air inside them, allowing people to breathe in space beyond the confine of a planet inside it. Most don't, however. Beyond this is nothing but airless void but this is hardly the end of our exploration of that universe.

There exist a massive, impossibly vast network once built and inhabited by the Old Ones and later the Eldars. It is called the Webway and sometimes the First World or Feywild. Some parts of it are small enough to exist as passages for individuals while others are impossibly vast caverns filled with glowing, alien life and some other parts are so larger as to be able to hold entire Crystal Spheres. Most of it is unexplored and dangerous, filled with fickle and ageless creatures engineered by the Old Ones. Even the passages explored and used by the ancient Eldarin have crumbled and those that remain are jealously guarded by them.

Like this but bigger.

The Immaterium

When people speak of the Immaterium, in hushed tones I should add, they usually speak of The Warp:the hellish dimension of Chaos where Daemon dwells. However this is not the only part of the Immaterium, the realm of thought, souls and ideas. In ancient times it was the Realm of Souls, the Supernal Realms or The Wyld: an endless expanse of possibility and thoughts. The growth of Chaos and its ravenous powers has tainted the Immaterium.

The shallows of the Immaterium are called the Umbra or the Ethereal Plane: it is a reality which exist overlaid the Materium and is where lesser spirits, daemon and ghosts exist. This reality can be entered through astral projection or the use of spells. Deeper in the Umbra still exist certain domains of powerful beings which might be entire Planes of their own. A domain which exist parallel to the material world is the Underworld also known as The Shadowfell.

The Abyss is a massive rift in the Materium where the Immaterium (especially all the Chaos-ey and tentacle-ey parts!) is leaking. The worlds trapped inside this anomaly exist in both the material and immaterial and they are terrifying places where  Daemons roam free, chaos cult is the only law and madness and mutation are a constant.

"I feel the Warp overtaking me!"

Magic, The Warp and Trying Not To Explode

Most forms of Magic derive from the Warp (or rather, the Immaterium as a whole) in some form or another. This is both extremely useful, as it allow to bend the material world to one's will but it is also extremely dangerous. Psychic abilities have existed in most lifeforms in some shape or another and that power is both feared and revered in equal measure. The four most common forms of Magical powers are as such:

• Wizards, sometimes called Thaumaturge, Arcanist or Magisters rely on complex and ancient formula developed by the Old Ones (and later Eldarin and other races) which allow one to bend the forces of the Warp (sometimes called Winds of Magic) in a mostly safe and non-corrupting way. While the method itself is extremely safe and clean learning it is a whole different ordeal and requires keen intellect and solid memory.
• Sorcerers, sometimes called Psykers or Witches rely on pure will and desire alone to channel raw Warp energy. This make them the magic-users most apt at utterly spamming their powers to no end. Obviously this has a major drawback: their innate power is exceedingly volatile and an unprepared mind will find itself consume by the powers of Chaos. Having an innate connection to the Warp is a dangerous thing and often seen as a sign of mutation.
• The third major category is the one with the most names: some are called Clerics while others are called Shamans, Druids or even Warlocks. Rather than learning to channel the Warp through complex multi-dimensional formula or through innate ability they acquire their ability through some patron and higher power. This power is given and further augmented and sustained by belief and some form of code or behavior. Their abilities vary immensely depending on this outside power source.
• Finally there are Adepts: they channel the energies of the Immaterium through their bodies and mind in a more esoteric way which is both simpler and strange than the spell formula of the Wizards or the surge of power of the Sorcerer. These include the likes of the Monks, the Psion and the Paladins among others.

Most spellcaster classes are mechanically a form of Magister with the exception of most type of Wizards. There are possibly classes which, lore-wise, are Wizards but mechanically function like an Magister. The War Mage of the Codex of the Black Sun is an example which fit right in unchanged in lore or mechanics.