Lost Sepulchers of Venus: The Basics

As I said last post, I've been cooking up yet another new setting for use with my own "hack" of White Box OD&D. Tentatively titled Lost Sepulchers of Venus, it takes place, as you may have guessed, on Venus. Prior to the first probe encounter with the planet, science fiction writers had a lot of leeway with depicting the topography of Venus, since the only thing we can tell about it from Earth is that its surface is covered in clouds. According to Wikipedia, most tried to account for what a planet covered in thick layers of cloud would be like, and thus depicted it as either one big ocean, an arid desert, or a humid ball of swamp and jungle something like prehistoric Earth. I'm going with that last one.

It's a science-fantasy setting, obviously. At this point in time, the Venusian populace is sparse, spread amongst a few meagre kingdoms, all around the technological and societal level of 14th century Europe. At the edges of these kingdoms lie a great frontier, once the territory of an enormous Empire, technologically advanced and sorcerously powerful. These very sorceries brought about its downfall, some centuries ago, and now the ruins of its cities, outposts and machines lie scattered all throughout the vast wilderness. Only recently have some shaken off the powerful superstition about the place, and begun to venture into these ruins, to see what marvels might lie waiting to be unearthed.

At this point, I'm thinking three races: green-skinned native Venusians, red-skinned Martians, and pink-and-black-and-whatever-else-skinned Earthlings. How the Martians and Earthlings got there, I have no idea yet. Subject for another post.

Class-wise, I'm thinking: Fighting-man, Thief, maybe some variation on the Cleric but I'll have to think about this, and then the Witch I mentioned last post in place of the Magic-user. I've already got some ideas about who (or make that what) Witches make their dark bargains with. More on that another time.

Speaking of magic, I may also incorporate something like Carcosa's rituals (minus the ickier stuff) that any class can perform if they really want to Fuck With Things That Shouldn't Be Fucked With. The one thing I really like about the rituals is many of them require specific items and/or need to be cast in specific locations. It really adds an extra layer of meaning and impetus to exploration.

Play-wise, I'm conceiving of this as something of a hex crawl with small to mid-sized dungeons scattered throughout the ruins, and probably one legendary megadungeon, the location of which wouldn't be known at the outset.