Hacking Mythic Bastionland for a sci-fi adventure

Mythic Bastionland was released this year, and I got a physical copy of it some months back. It’s a fantastic read with beautiful illustrations and the typical Chris McDowall terse prose. It’s obviously going for something Arthuriana’ish, along with sensibilities from Pendragon and developments from the “Into the Odd” world. So naturally, I thought, “why not make it sci-fi?” 

More specifically, I wanted to try to adapt the myths into a sci-fi context. Mythic Bastionland is a tight product, with a very neat interplay between the concept of Knights, Myths, People, the Sandbox and the passage of time. My own gut instinct told me that taking any one part from this design would probably break on its own. But breaking things is how you learn to put it back together or appreciate loss. Or you can pick a sci-fi subgenre that could plausibly be close enough to rhyme a bit with Mythic Bastionland. 

For my part, I’ve longed for a particular franchise in RPG form - the game series called Homeworld. I kind of unexpectedly got it with Homeworld Revelations by Modiphius, but it’s a kind of roleplaying game that I’m not into. It’s trad’ish, heavy on rules and spanning hundreds of pages. So I figured I’d have to do something myself. 

Why Homeworld? 

It’s not really just Homeworld, but like a cloud of different inspirations. Sort of how Bastionland is the city that’s like a dream city, seemingly familiar to your own hometown, but different. This brain cloud I have going, draws on Homeworld, but also Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek and even Babylon 5. It’s a mess, but primarily among these inspirations, there is Homeworld because of what I consider its mythical and spiritual presentation. 

For those who never experienced Homeworld, it’s basically realtime strategy game series about a people that were displaced a long time ago. Exiled to a planet called Kharak. The people lost their history over the centuries, or maybe millennia. By the time they were able to regain space flight, the stories of their exile had been reduced to myths. Scientists had determined that they were not from Kharak, so it begged the question, where did they come from? The answer came from a piece of stone with a galactic map carved into it. The Guidestone. And from there, the people of Kharak set out to find their titular homeworld. 

Homeworld feels like one of those settings that just stand out from other science fiction video games. It was one of the first to utilize 3d space in space combat. It featured a campaign where the fleet persisted from mission to mission. It felt like a hero’s journey, like the Odyssey, through the “underworld” that was the great unknown galaxy. All you had to guide your fleet was a stone, wrought many centuries. Due to this “mythical” feeling, I think it’s actually kind of appropriate to draw on Mythical Bastionland. 

What to hack? 

What I enjoy in particular about Mythic Bastionland right now is the procedures for sandboxes and sites, as well as the way myths work. I was thinking to basically port those into a science fiction context. For my next campaign, I plan to run an adventure set on a world with a similar framing to Kharak. It’s called Kitrinox and its people, the Kitiri, struggle with the harsh realities of a collapsing climate. Like with Kharak, Kitrinox has several derelict starships scattered near its equator. How they got there is unknown. What secrets they hold are also, for now, unknown. 

Land

So, to start with, I wanted to create a “realm”, mostly following the procedure on page 14. A space of land that’s about 1200 by 1200 kilometers. To give a sense of how big that is, most of France fits inside a 600 by 600 kilometers rectangle. This is perhaps one of the bigger divergences from Mythic Bastionland, and more will come. For terrain types, I just came up with what I considered typical terrain for the region on Kitrinox. Dunes, basalt flats and ridges, brine lakes and bogs, oases, etc. 

Holdings

Next came the holdings. In Mythic Bastionland these are “castles, walled towns, fortresses, or towers, held by Knights or influential Vassals” (MB p.14). I interpreted these as settlements with some degree of power projection, with varying amounts of residents. I made four holdings. 

The Idon Mobile Survey Base (A) is an expedition sent by a distant alliance. They are in the region to study the starship wrecks and uncover the stories of the Early Civilization. 

Ma’pos (B) is a settlement in an area of verdant oases. It’s the trade hub of the region, where several Ukirid tribes visit each year to trade, exchange stories and perform ceremonies. 

The Outcast Enclave (C) is a settlement of refugees, displaced peoples and outsiders. They recently settled a long abandoned town in the Basalt Ridges. 

Finally the Aerodrome (D) held by Clan Sibis. Clan Sibis is considered an aeronaut clan which enjoys neutrality across Kitrinox. They offer long distance transport, provided it is non-military in nature. 

Myths

The myths in Mythic Bastionland are quite fantastical in nature. They cause omens to occur, which increasingly develops the myth and eventually concludes the myth in some fashion. I like this pattern a lot. Basically, as the players explore the realm, they will gradually be made aware of the myths. It’s tied into what passes as an encounter system. 

For my sandbox, I wanted something similar, but perhaps less fantastical in nature. I felt the Plague myth was easy to adapt. In my own notes, I renamed it into the White Lung Plague, which I wrote up “omens” for in a similar fashion:

1. The Seeker. The players meet a traveler seeking a cure for the White Lung. The traveler left their village some days ago, visiting many communities in hopes for an answer. 
2. The Dying. The players discover a small homestead. Inside are two dying elderly. Their home is strangely white or desaturated. 
3. Quarantine. The next settlement the players visit has enacted quarantine policies. Tents and shacks have been built at safe distances, where visitors must stay for two weeks if they intend to enter the settlement. 

These events will establish the presence of a plague, and if the players pursue it, they will probably find the cause of the plague too. 

I wrote my own myths loosely based on the pattern of what was in Mythic Bastionland, but I made them more grounded and appropriate for the sci-fi setting. Thematically, I made them often appear as one thing, while its true nature would be something else. Each myth basically holds a “twist” in my sandbox. 

Landmarks

For landmarks, I ended up making 24 different landmarks - 4 of each type. After putting them in the sandbox, i noticed the map was getting quite crowded. In typical Chris McDowall fashion, he gets a lot of punch with a handful of words where I need like dozens. Here are some sample landmarks I made:

Meteorologist Station (Dwelling) - A small outpost for a team of meteorologists that take measurements and relay forecasts.

Monestary (Sanctum) - This monestary is highly regarded by the Ukirid tribes. 

Pillar (Monument) - A massive black pillar stands high over the ground. At its base is inscribed praise to King Irsus the Waterbringer. 

Acidic hotsprings (Hazard)  - This land holds many pools consisting of water and acid.

Magnetic Pillars (Curse) - This area holds many naturally formed magnetic pillars that distort radio signals and confuse compasses. 

Ravaged Derelict (Ruin) - A Ranger starship lies broken over a ridge. Centuries of erosion, salvagers and desert weather has taken its toll. 

Adventure in the Desert

Although Mythic Bastionland goes for adventures about knights and otherworldly forces, I’m gearing up for something else. I’m setting up an adventure about exploration in harsh conditions. The desert holds many secrets about the Early Civilization. The starship wrecks cast long shadows. I imagine the PCs will be a mix of archeologists, soldiers, explorers and mystics, driving around in rugged vehicles. 

I have imagined basically an OSR-style sandbox, but with a few twists. At Idon MSB, they pay the players for discoveries, ranging from sites, to artifacts to data. Basically a vector for XP for gold (only credits in the sci-fi world, of course). They can also discover locations (landmarks) and resources that support their exploration efforts. Such things can yield fuel, water and food, or information, such as locals advising about safe paths through treacherous terrain. 

Another “twist” is that I have no intention of placing monsters in this sandbox. There are lots of factions, some less friendly than others. But violence is not a default expectation. Rather, the big threat to the players will be the risk of losing water and fuel, stranding them somewhere in the huge sandbox. 

Conclusion

Overall, I think the realm creation procedure in Mythic Bastionland helped me a lot. It provided structure and shaped a lot of my decisions about what was in my sandbox. Initially I had an idea of a giant desert with a single ruin in the middle, but not much else. This procedure really helped me generate roughly 28 elements to populate the sandbox with. 

Again, Mythic Bastionland does lean into a genre and has some setting assumptions in it, but it didn’t take much creativity to port it over to another setting environment. I’m excited to see where I can take this. Have you tried hacking Mythic Bastionland? Let me know how it went.