Author Topic: Xai -The Dragon's Egg  (Read 1386 times)

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Offline Vladimir

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Xai -The Dragon's Egg
« on: January 21, 2022, 10:46:53 PM »
  I enjoyed over two decades playtesting a game system in a universe that contained a cosmology that started with the Big Bang, which was a mass outward migration of massive dragons that originated at a single point at the center of the universe. The flaming dust that trailed from the wings became galaxies and the dragons were so massive that at light speed, it would take one centuries to pass, if the energy of their proximity didn't vaporize you.

  Xai was a Dyson Sphere created by one of the earliest intelligent races. The Sphere was constructed to contain a trinary of stars, smaller than Earth's sun. The internal surface area of Xai is the equivalent area of about 30 million Earths with every form of terrain imaginable, including immense cities with greater area than Earth and tens of billions of people of all races who managed to migrate to Xai over its ten billion year history.

  Magic and its use is universal. The basis of Xai magic is CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation), a relic of the Big Bang.

  The GM/Designer worked as an architect and was able to create fantastic, table-sized maps upon which we adventured and he spend days mapping labyrinthine dungeons in which the party could adventure.
One of the city maps:
   
  Xai's cities were vast with hundreds of playable races, from primitive barbarians to near godlike beings to undead. The cities were home to spires towering into the clouds, each a small city in themselves. The cities were run by gangs and organizations of varying sizes and strengths and one of the GM's friends took the concept and designed a computer game based on the struggle for control of one of these cities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Overlords

  The underlying theme of Xai was Chaos: "You can only own what you are ready to fight for." Might made right and the only limit to players' actions is the ability of another power able to impose that limit. One of the facets of playing in Xai was the party being an active faction with its own, individual name and some of the party names were included in the computer game. We used party names like "Peking Orphans", "Ground Zero" and "Those Guys".
 
  In addition to magic use, the players used various forms of magic enhanced martial arts, The GM/Designer was one of my fencing students and he adopted many of my examples of martial arts moves into the combat system, as well as a lot of what I learned in US Army field training to gameplay.
  With billions of years of history, the timeline of Xai is dotted with millions of years of literally nothing of note interspersed with massive genocidal wars and alien invasions. Since Xai is so vast, many of these wars and invasions are unknown in other locations, save for the City of Clockworks, where there are inhabitants who know of everything significant that takes place Xai wide.   
  The shell of the "Dragon's Egg" is a metallic structure dozens of kilometers thick with layers of labyrinths that serve as home to races that avoid the light of Xai's triple suns. Some of the layers house factories and machinery of no known purpose.
  The exterior of Xai is covered with layers, mountains and plains of of gravel and powder of crushed asteroids, planets and suns that have collided with Xai over the ages. Except for the volcanoes indicating the remains of star and planet cores, there are also many cities that dot the dark exterior of Xai, which floats in the vast darkness of open space between galaxies, which contains more stars, planets and material than all of the existing galaxies combined. The outer shell of Xai is the home to many undead, demons and intelligent machines who endure the often freezing environment and thin layer of atmosphere.

  Physics in Xai is one of its mysteries. There are no known openings for vehicles to enter Xai yet vast fleets of invading alien ships have appeared, as well as a small number of random vessels, including a Solaran colony ship, which is where all of Xai's humans are said to have descended from.
  In parts of Xai, if an item or person exceeds the speed of sound, they could be randomly teleported thousands of kilometers in any direction, even to Xai's exterior, which makes travel and simple forms of teleportation very risky. In a world so vast in size, a lot of study has been devoted to dimensional travel, which has its own risks but is somewhat safer.

  The campaigns were fun and challenging, we would rotate the locations and game from noon to midnight with players showing off their cooking skills. I miss those days and have been advising on the GM/Developer in just publishing the volumes of materials for the world and dozens of scenario books for dungeons and adventures. I'd like to see his rules published as well but he's a perfectionist so he may never be happy with it...

 

 
 
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
-Lao Tzu

Offline EltonJ

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Re: Xai -The Dragon's Egg
« Reply #1 on: February 12, 2022, 06:35:55 PM »
Looks good.  Are you adapting this?  Although it seems too big to handle.

Offline Vladimir

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Re: Xai -The Dragon's Egg
« Reply #2 on: February 13, 2022, 01:36:33 AM »
  No, this is just an example of a game I've played for decades. Coincidentally, the GM/Designer recently sent me the rules and world book, some 300+ pages of information, with maps and illustrations.

  I'd run a campaign but I'd use the Xai rules, as no set of rules or magic system would work with the original races, of which there are over a hundred playable races. The skill-based system has no levels and the culture of the world is based on magically enhanced martial arts and gang warfare.
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
-Lao Tzu