Post Dwindle Setting

 Luckily TroubleShooters was the chosen focus for our next campaign. This is good for a few reasons. The first is that it lends itself to episodic play. With 6 players and myself, scheduling a full group will be rough. The second reason is that it lends itself to TechNoir style plot building. I can easily roll a few items off of a table, throw in PC connections, and build a case to be solved. The third is that TroubleShooters can fill many niches. They might be collecting bounties, solving crimes, or performing a heist. Finally, it is a settingless concept, so I have a lot of freedom to create the world for the players.

Here is a quick rundown:

Vaeth

This is a cyber-fantasy world. The world has an energy emanating from it, known as Vaethir. It began as a standard fantasy world. Some people are able to tap into Vaethir to perform what we would call magic or psionics. Some cultures vilified these people, others worshiped them. We will use Sorcerer to describe these people for now.

Later, people learned how to harness this power in technology. This came in the form of self-recharging batteries. This caused an explosion in industry, expansion, and electronics. 

The energy, Vaethir, keeps a fairly consistent coverage of the world, however, it does become weaker at altitude. This means mountain settlements and aircraft are rare. There are also Ley-lines that cross the world. These lines, for whatever reason, have greater output of energy. These have become the pathways that people follow, as they keep technology running longer and better and make the sorcerers more potent.

These lines cross at junctures, places of power where great cities, and greater empires have been born.In the past 50 years, there have been flickers in the Vaethir. At first, they were so mild, only the most sensitive scientific instruments could observe them. Now the flickers are so powerful they are visible to normal vision.

There are superstitions and conspiracy theories around the flickers. Some say they are caused by spirits entering the world through the leylines and junctures. They claim that Vaethometers can record spiritual presences during flickers. Others say they are caused by governmental experiments of tapping more directly into the leylines, and that the Vathir will run out. A few claim it is due to cults of sorcerers attempting to bring about the end of the world.

People of Vaeth

As a fantasy world, there are many species available. I am still internally debating which species to include. Here is my current thinking.

I would love to have a whole slew of nonstandard species, but I'm afraid they may not be appealing to the players. So I should probably stick to standard fantasy.

Still No Humans, and I'm leaning towards having no standard elves. I would prefer only one of the human adjacent species (human, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome) as they all have a lot of sameness in my mind.

• I want something reptilian, Kobold, lizardfolk, dragonborn. But no breath weapons.
• I want something insectoid/arachnoid. Drow from Spire, myriad of insectoid species from various games. I don't care if they have 2 or 4 legs, but if they have 4 arms, 1 pair should be mostly vestigial. Maybe like the Shireen from Starfinder.
• I want something fuzzy. Lannossee from other brainstorming, the Yordles from League of Legends,
• I want something horned, like satry, draenei from World of Warcraft, tieflings.
• I want something greenskinned, like a goblin type of species. Something toothy and off kilter. They could even be plant adjacent.
• I will allow a Human adjacent species, probably more akin to Dwarf or Gnome.

That will present the players with 6 species to choose from. I am currently thinking of using a Y0E/TechNoir hybrid system, and letting the players add a die to their pool if the species would apply to the roll.