What is this Angstrad thing anyway?

But first! A video.

Amon Duul II, Archangel Thunderbird


Ah, the places this song takes you...

Angstrad.

What I want Angstrad to be is a world that is absolutely full of stuff. There is always something new around every corner. You could wander in every direction forever and find new stuff. North, south, up or down. Always places to go and get into trouble in. Always new people to meet. Most importantly, as a GM, always something for me to make up on the fly. Almost equally important, there is always room for players to contribute.

I want a world that is crowded. Like what you find in the Groo the Wanderer comics. No matter where you go, there are people. Masses of them doing stuff people do. Mostly doing as you would expect. You also find the strangest of customs brought about by the most unusual of environments like what you would find out of Dying Earth stories or Michael Shea's Nifft the Lean.

This is a place where life is cheap and often gory. A place where the gods don't appear to exist and those that call themselves gods really aren't. There is a feeling of missing history; as though the current world was dropped onto another and the old one sometimes pokes through in places. It isn't all that bleak tough, I would hope. There's also room for humor and whimsy. Look at Lewis Trondheim's Dungeon comics.

So that's what I'm hoping to get at. A good old Sword & Sorcery/playground/sandbox/Schrödinger's Cat like/D&D setting.

Bonus video! There seems to be some kind of problem with the above clip (at least for me it keeps cutting off around the 3:00 mark). So here is a Ladytron video. I think something like that could happen in Angstrad.