Stargates of Legend

I love my dreams. They give me ideas - like The Blood Path, Walking Type II Civilisation, The Seer Princess, The Garden of Obsidian Statues and The Waiting Stars.

This morning's one was hilarious - A group of people in Legend setting, standard pre-industrial equipment, leather and plate armour, swords, bows, discover a Stargate and organise a band of explorers to see what worlds they can find. Their first foray sees them emerging in the SGC, surrounded by half the USAF pointing P90s at them.

The use of the Stargate setting would involve prohibitively expensive, volatile licenses - but there's no reason why Legend can't have these sorts of plot devices to allow transportation between worlds, facilitating grand adventures of exploration and, of course, epic threats. There are other settings and series featuring such portals, from Star Trek to Doctor Who, The Time Tunnel, Sliders, Godstones in N Robin Crossby's Harnworld setting and of course the Gate spell in the old Call of Cthulhu RPG. It wouldn't take much effort to conjure up some sort of proprietary brand of portal for Legend*.

While the sort of stories posited by Stargate SG-1 aren't the preferred cup of tea of Traveller next door, I'm sure that the core concept can certainly be ported quite happily to Legend.

*Gate
This Sorcery spell enables the creation of a Gate to facilitate transportation between two locations. The spell creates a Gate at the other end, whose location must be known - or at least previously observed through means such as the Project (Sense) spell or some sort of mindlink with someone at the receiving end.

The locations at either end must be large enough to accommodate the Gate openings.

The Gate accommodates up to 3 SIZ per level of Intensity at a time. Larger Gates may require concert casting to accommodate transportation of people or objects with a bigger SIZ.
 
Gates, rifts, portals et al have been a mainstay of many fantasy and some horror settings (Feist, Gemmel, Lovecraft) so would be really easy to incorporate into to a legend game, i am surprised no body has suggested on these forums before, it is something i used in RQ2 a while back, and evidently never mentioned on these forums under the assumption that is was nothing new.
 
With Legend, all that is old can be new again. And even rewritten to give an entirely different slant altogether on what would be a tired old trope in earlier incarnations.

It all depends on what you do with what is available - what you decide for your setting.

For instance, in the setting the devices which activate and control Gates could be small, metallic cubes resembling Rubik Cubes, each face bearing 27 distinct symbols: solving the puzzle (taking 1D6 minutes) opens the Gate. The destination depends on the character's skill in Sorcery (Grimoire of The Gate), which includes addresses for thousands of locations - including a whole bunch of unexplored worlds.

Perhaps your villains could be possessed by malign spirits - and their henchmen could be Ogres from Monsters of Legend. Anything is possible.
 
The ability to travel between different worlds or dimensions is a fantasy staple.

Heck, "the Arduan Grimoire" was for old AD&D and it used the concept of Gates between alternate Prime Material Planes.

If I was to incorporate a Gate into my Legend game, I would probably create a couple of complimentary spells (perhaps all tied to the Grimiore of the Gates) including spells for viewing alternate dimensions etc.

The location of a gate should be very important. In a fantasy setting I would make it near a source of power (magical or otherwise) that would be the power source for the Gate. Thus Gates cannot be created just anywhere, they have to at Magical Nodes, or where Ley Lines cross etc. These magical hot-spots are important for other magical uses as well as for Gates so there are likely challengers for that piece of property.

This would also be a good background explanation for why there are so many intelligent races on a single world...

I like the idea of using "runes" to determine the Gate address of the other worlds. For simplicity sake, you could use a series of D10s and have each address be a series of numbers: 280032 is a different world than 280023 for example.
 
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
The ability to travel between different worlds or dimensions is a fantasy staple.

If I was to incorporate a Gate into my Legend game, I would probably create a couple of complimentary spells (perhaps all tied to the Grimoire of the Gates) including spells for viewing alternate dimensions etc.

The location of a gate should be very important. In a fantasy setting I would make it near a source of power (magical or otherwise) that would be the power source for the Gate. Thus Gates cannot be created just anywhere, they have to at Magical Nodes, or where Ley Lines cross etc. These magical hot-spots are important for other magical uses as well as for Gates so there are likely challengers for that piece of property.

This would also be a good background explanation for why there are so many intelligent races on a single world...

I like the idea of using "runes" to determine the Gate address of the other worlds. For simplicity sake, you could use a series of D10s and have each address be a series of numbers: 280032 is a different world than 280023 for example.
I had the idea of the dialling device looking like a medallion of undefined metal bearing runes in three concentric dials, which you rotate back and forth to create the address of the world you are aiming for - and each address being nine numbers long.

I kind of like the idea of the addresses being naturally nine digits long. And 000-000-000 either does nothing, or it opens a Gate back to the last dialled address - which, you hope, had better be your home plane.

Oh - And also, once a Gate has been formed and travelled through, the device automatically goes inert for a time to be specified by the GM, though I'd recommend a table such as:-

d100 - Inert Interval
01-40 - 1d6 hours
41-70 - 1d6 * 10 minutes
71-99 - 1d6 * 1 minute
00 - As long as the Games Master likes

The setting I am thinking of is one in which Gate travel becomes a core element of the chronicle; the characters' story arcs centre around their being Gate travellers, quite possibly doing work assigned to them by an authority (their guild or order or whatever) and defending their world against attacks from an enemy authority (rival state, enemy Gate travellers etc).
 
Sounds like a bold idea that will need a LOT of world building!

At least you wouldn't have to create the entire world, just the region around the gate, in detail, but you would have to have broad strokes for the entire planet/plane/world.

Another idea, might be to have different rules/laws in different places. A world where magic doesn't work; a world where everyone does magic, a world where Divine Magic doesn't work etc. You could even have worlds with different technology levels - Stone Age, Iron/Bronze Age, Steam Age, Modern Age, etc.

LOTS of SF/F literature out there that tap into these ideas.

A Sorcerer on a Starship!
 
And you know the best part of this idea?

Remember how half of the explorations of SG-1 seemed to involve delving into archaeological ruins? You could have scenarios where your characters are sent off on missions to explore this old temple, that old cave network ... Making gate exploration a core element of the setting actually justifies plain old dungeon delving and tombraiding in Legend! :D
 
Gates ... one of my settings has a gate as its main plot device.
A magician discovered an ancient gate to another, far away pla-
net and began to explore it. When his people got into serious
political trouble, he led the refugees to this planet, where they
founded a colony. Basically my standard space colony setting,
but with medieval technology and magic instead of high tech-
nology and fantasy creatures instead of science fiction aliens.
Worked quite well indeed, with a feeling more of "Aeneas and
the Trojan refugees found Rome" than "Space Colony Alpha".
 
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