Ok, motherfuckers,  now its the Pundit's turn!

You see, I have a "wierd world" of my own. To me, it isn't nearly as wierd as some of the ones I've covered, but there are certainly some people who tend to see it as very wierd indeed.

So this is the thread where I express the fact that I love the Hollow World, I think its awesome; and where I try to address other people's questions or objections to the museum of wierdness that is the hollow inside bits of Mystara!

RPGPundit

I assume they haven't read Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Hollow Earth is great, though I didn't like the in game explanation for why nothing changed, but the writer clearly had a good feel for the genre.

It's just not as well known a genre as it used to be.

I was trying to think about how it was weird, but aside from being a world carefully nestled inside another world, isn't the setting just Lost World meets Pre-Columbus Mesoamerica? Not really that odd IMO.

The setting is a bit more than that; its a kind of crazy quilt of settings.

The premise is that the Immortals would yank away parts of surface-world races, cultures, or civilizations that were on the brink of extinction, and put them in the Hollow World below, in a place that is magically protected so that these cultures are frozen in time at their current point of development.  The whole place is basically the Immortals' museum or preserve for cultures that were wiped out on the surface.

The premise is very good at explaining why you can have prehistoric-tribesmen living next to Aztecs, and Ancient Egyptians, and Classical Greeks, and crazy Snow Elves, and not have them end up robbing the others' technology or ideas.

Its a geographically huge setting with incredible variety.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditThe setting is a bit more than that; its a kind of crazy quilt of settings.

The premise is that the Immortals would yank away parts of surface-world races, cultures, or civilizations that were on the brink of extinction, and put them in the Hollow World below, in a place that is magically protected so that these cultures are frozen in time at their current point of development.  The whole place is basically the Immortals' museum or preserve for cultures that were wiped out on the surface.

The premise is very good at explaining why you can have prehistoric-tribesmen living next to Aztecs, and Ancient Egyptians, and Classical Greeks, and crazy Snow Elves, and not have them end up robbing the others' technology or ideas.

Its a geographically huge setting with incredible variety.

RPGPundit

I LOVE that setting!
It was written by Aaron Allston. He also wrote "Lands of Mystery" which was a Lost Worlds campaign supplement for HERO's Justice Inc. Pulp game.

Lands of Mystery in my opinion is one of the best supplements ever written- the work just oozes flavor!  

Allston was certainly in his element when he wrote Lands of Mystery and Hollow World.

I love Hollow World, but I never quite felt that the connection to Mystara worked.  But then I still tend to think of Mystara primarily as the Known World with later accretions.

A lot of Mystara fans feel that way; but personally I've always felt like it does fit in quite well with all the other gonzo stuff of the setting. I mean, if there's room for Blackmoor to be part and parcel of Mystara, not to mention flying ships, there's room for Hollow World.  Frankly, HW is just slightly more "Patchwork" than the Known World itself, where you have vikings living next door to Arabs who live next door to Romans.

Unfortunately, in my last Mystara campaign the players never got a really good chance to experience all of the Hollow world, just one tiny, particularly savage part of it.  Someday I want to run a campaign based on the Hollow World.

RPGPundit

Well, I kinda feel there's two very different perspectives to the setting, that would lead to at least two very different feelings. There's, for once, the aforementioned "crazy quilt", the patchwork-style civilization mesh, that may be used in a really pulpy-styled, Turok or Pal-ul-don kind of thing, the dinos thing and all, sort of really fast-paced Jurassic-Park-meets-Indiana-Jones kinda thingie. In the other hand, you could focus on the most creepy aspect of the setting, the neverending day, the reddish hue, the creepier civilizations, cannibals and all, ancient and mysterious demons, you know. It could very well house some kind of light Lovecraftian plot, some of the darker Conan Doylesque moments. The one time I actually played in the setting, we were confronted by some old ugly deformed indian shaman fucker, and he kinda got forgotten after a while. I mean, you could have a whole campaign starting with and around the old fart.
Just my two copper pieces.

As much as I feel a disconnect between Karameikos and the Hollow World, I think a campaign entirely set in the Hollow World would rock on toast.  Especially if all the starting PCs came from the Known World.