/tg/ - Traditional Games

No.

No

In a fantasy game? Sure why not.

In anything that takes reality and the science and natural laws that govern it into account and treats them seriously? No.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you're talking about gaming, because I'm not on /fringe/ right now.

So sure. It's a very rich concept, and there's a tonne of potential there.

If you want something with a bit more depth (har-de-har) than just having the material world is literally hollow, then you can spin it in a spiritual sense. Real-world shamanic traditions maintain that by reaching a trance-like state of ecstasy (typically in the dark, assisted by sense-dulling drumbeats, fevered dancing or singing, or natural psychedelic plants [though not necessarily- plenty of ancient shamanic practices seem to have emerged in isolation from psychoactive compounds]), one can visualise yourself journeying 'down the rabbit-hole', so to speak, and emerge into a 'lower world' that is simultaneously outside, and far underground.

If I were going to fictionalise these ideas for a campaign, I'd probably justify it with a symbolic connection between the deep Earth and death. All living things die, and return to the Earth (often literally, but otherwise just metaphorically). Then, by some mystical mechanism (or, for my own lack of a better idea at the moment, just the gravitational attraction of the planet's core), the spiritual component of all these deceased lifeforms is drawn downward, coalescing and condensing around the planet's core, and manifesting as a 'living' magical/spiritual fantasy realm which may be visited and explored.

>>227485

>one can visualise yourself journeying 'down the rabbit-hole', so to speak, and emerge into a 'lower world' that is simultaneously outside, and far underground.

Same Anon, here. Just thought I'd ruminate on this thought a little further.

I have no idea if Lewis Carroll was at all familiar with the beliefs of any shamanistic cultures, but if you read about these sorts of things, it's an interesting parallel to ponder. He was a self-admitted believer in the existence of hidden powers of the mind (particularly telepathy and automatic-writing, which both crop up in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass), despite being a mathematician and a sceptic by-and-large.

Of course, the reasonable explanation is simply that 'tumbling down the rabbit hole', and other associated motifs from Alice, are really rich in all kinds of symbolism, and you can draw all kinds of associations which may not have been intended by Carroll. That's just literary nonsense as a genre, I suppose; you're not supposed to understand it in real terms. It deliberately resists being pinned down and analysed into oblivion.

Sorry to ramble. I'm interested to hear what other thoughts and ideas people have about the hollow world as a setting or device. I seem to remember hearing that Genius: The Transgression has a Hollow Earth filled with Nazi super-scientists (I really do need to finish reading Genius, it sounds like a fascinating fansplat).

>>227485

>I'm going to go ahead and assume you're talking about gaming, because I'm not on /fringe/ right now.

Can we pretend we're on /fringe/ right now?

>>227488

> I seem to remember hearing that Genius: The Transgression has a Hollow Earth filled with Nazi super-scientists

Just gonna confirm this for ya. G:tT has these things called bardos, which are effectively worlds that assert their existence after their widely held model/philosophy has been disproven. So you get Martians who spontaneously exist because some normie scientist sent a probe to Mars and saw that it was desolate, at which point the Martian Empire was like "fuck your shit saying we don't exist", came into existence, and declared war on Earth.

Now, each bardo has a specific way to enter them. Mars is still a wasteland, unless you approach it from just the right angle. Hollow Earth must be entered from either the North or South pole, or a few other locations, following specific directions.

While the bardo entry for Hollow Earth doesn't explicitly mention the Nazis, later chapters talk about the Hollow Earth Nazis, including the Storytelling and Antagonists section explaining how they came to be.

At the end of WW2, the idea of Nazi science was crushed as the cruelties behind it were revealed. Ironically, in destroying the real Nazi scientists' utopian dream, they caused the forming of the Ubermenschen, a bunch of Ayran sorcerer-scientists, who fled with some of the real Nazis into wherever they could, the Hollow Earth (which they dug to from Antarctica). The Thule Society members are capable of creating Atrocity Halls, allowing them to torture people for mania.

>>227491

It doesn't seem like a bright idea.

/fringe/ is about 30% role-players (the bad kind, mind), 30% trolls/loosh-farmers, 30% lunatics who have lost the capacity to apply reasonable doubt and critical thinking to what they see, and (generously) about 9% bona fide magicians and occultists with varying levels of practical knowledge.

I don't know about the remaining one percent. Probably extra-terrestrials.

Seriously though, the /fringe/ library is really its only redeeming resource.

>>227498

Honestly though that would sound like a good place to get ideas for a campaign and stuff still.

>>227501

Sure. My level of appreciation for certain esoterically-sourced ideas that crop up in all sorts of fiction and RPGs has increased since I began reading and intermittently practising material from the /fringe/ library, and my homebrews that draw ideas and concepts from this stuff consistently leave my players hungry for more.

Whether or not you believe in a spiritual or metaphysical side to things, certain occult symbols and ideas are far more pervasive in the arts (and I dare say in the sciences too) than most people realise. The more you learn about this stuff, the more you recognise it; and this certainly extends to our hobby too (beyond the plainly obvious examples like xWoD Mage).

I'm just saying that, despite its subject matter, /fringe/ is still shit for various reasons. Although many of these are the same reasons why any other board can be described as shit, so maybe I am just giving them a hard time.

>>227485

You could sort of steal from Beast (I know it's shit but listen) and Genius and have places around the world have entrances to the spirit world via Egregores (secret realms that resonate with mythological power.)

The spirit world is conquered by a cabal of witches called the Graeae who desires to keep it in eternal stasis and control.

The PCs are part of a secret cabal of Hunters whose goal is to free the spirit world from the old stories and legends of the past and give humanity back its free will.

Beasts and Heroes are servants or victims of the Graeae who are under their control to an extreme degree.

>>227575

Even better, steal from Ascension.

The Hollow Earth exists, and unlike the other Spirit Realms, it's reachable by normal humans. Whether you dig too deep, or you explore an ancient endless cave, or you go down an unremarkable elevator, or even a flight of rickety stairs, it's possible to enter the Hollow Earth. That's what makes it fucking scary - anything leading down might take you there.

Once you reach it, you're going to run into dinosaurs. And mammoths. Cool, right? Except somehow, everything long gone manages to end up here - and that includes eldritch abominations, horrors from beyond and so on. Things that should've died aeons ago. Secrets best kept buried. And yet here they are, alive and kicking. And angry.

Oh yeah, and every ancient civilization also somehow managed to get down here. Atlanteans, Shambhalans, all of them and more. All of them decked with arcanotech that makes the impossible possible. And to top it off, the Nazi occult division is around as well, experimenting with ancient technology and dinosaurs.

And of course, you can step up and join them. Or fight them. Or forge your own empire.

Have I mentioned Ascension is awesome? Because Ascension is awesome.