subtitle
A High-Fantasy Campaign Setting
fromThe inspiration for this setting:
Chronicles of Magnamund is a fantasy campaign setting for Saga based on the world Magnamund, a setting made popular by the Lone Wolf series. Any fan of fantasy who grew up in the 80s must certainly know about the Lone Wolf Lone Wolf gamebooks. They definitely helped shape my childhood. Lone Wolf is the longest running and most popular gamebook series ever made. Currently (2010), there is a Lone Wolf RPG being produced, but the roleplaying game and its system, much like the series and the world it's set in, has many shortcomings.
fromAnd the setting itself:
…this adaptation of Magnamund has a number of important changes and improvements. A few new races have been added to the world for diversity, and the races that have been borrowed from Joe Dever's books are less rigid and polarized: some Dwarves are miners, true, but some are also scientists and wizards, and they don't all wear beards; some Giaks are powerful warriors, but many others are mathematicians, priests, diplomats, and thieves. Also, no race is inherently good or evil. Individual members of races perform good deeds and act evilly, while others remain neutral in most cases, and walk the fine line of ethics that makes them neither good nor bad. There are also new religions in the following pages, unlike the Lone Wolf novels, which feature one religion with two
ideologically opposed gods.
Weapons, armor, magic and psionics have all been adapted to fit the Saga core rules, making combat much more realistic and deadly than in the Lone Wolf books. Professions are also less racially-restricted. Giaks traveling to Dessi can become magicians if they enroll and learn the proper skills, and lizardmen of the swamps who travel to Sommerlund can become Kai lords if they enlist at the Kai monastery.
Countries and regions have also been diversified and made more realistic. There is a huge variety of political structures, and not all of the nations and people of Magnamund are civilized. There are still indigenous “primitive” cultures characters can play as, ally with or against, visit, or ignore entirely. These peoples are brutally oppressed by the civilized nation states that want to conquer, destroy, convert, or enslave them, providing a wholly new socio-political element that the original Magnamund couldn't
dream of.
