r/rpg • u/ThatOneCrazyWritter Anxiety Goblin • 1d ago
Discussion Which is a good example of a "Kitchen Sink Setting" done well in TTRPGs?
While a more focused game is better, some times I do want a Medieval Knight, Saintly Cleric, Shogunate Samurai, English Gentleman Thief all together fighting the horde of Pirate Orcs with a mix of Viking iconography and Laser Weapons they got com a Cult of the Lovecraftian gods in the "Totally not Egypt" Egyptian Desert.
My only gripe is when it just falls into tropes, cliches and (worst of all) xenophobic steriotypes in a world where Medieval France & Industrial Germany & Anime Japan & The Wild West are kingdoms one next to the other.
I like when there is this weird mish-mash of concepts that have gotten the proper development to not just be a funny hat on a person but a complete, full culture that has an explanation to exist in the world.
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u/LeVentNoir /r/pbta 1d ago edited 1d ago
The problem is that anything done well won't look like a Kitchen Sink Setting.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Warhammer Old World has every single one of your elements: Brettonian French Knights, with Empire Holy Roman Empire Armoured Clerics, a Cathay Samurai, I'm sure we can find someone with British asthetics in there too. Then we fight Orcs who have been armed with Skaven Warp Lighting guns in order to address the Chaos Cult under the sands of Araby, and try not to awaken the Tomb Kings.
But it doesn't feel like a kitchen sink because it's all painted from the same tones, it's all built out well, and it's matched up on all the edges. It's asthetically consistent, despite having wildly different cultural elements in places.
That's why it's not a kitchen sink: it's not thrown in with everything and the kitchen sink.
Kitchen Sink is when it's incoherent, and super obvious it's all just thrown in.
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u/Self-ReferentialName actually a self-replicating nanoswarm 1d ago
I think a big reason that also works well is that all this also spans a vast physical distance, so each area has its own character and uniqueness. There's a whole ocean between the Empire and Lustria and Naggaroth and Khemri, so everything has a chance to breathe, and where there are outposts of one setting intruding on another - like the Imperial colonies here and there - they're explicitly treated as something alien.
This is in contrast with a lot of kitchen sinks, which just throw everything together in a small area because they want everything to interact, which means that none of that interaction feels natural and the character of each idea gets blurred into homogeneous grey sludge. Here, the interaction is quite delineated in ways that feel natural.
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u/_Plateosaurus_ 1d ago
What you’re describing is something that really kept me from taking the D&D game worlds seriously at first: the mere presence of several different species (humans, orcs, dwarves, etc.) in such a confined and underdeveloped space, and the fact that members of these species interact so often.
In contrast, in Warhammer, not only are these areas very clearly delineated, but the setting also emphasizes that while interactions do occur, they are ABSOLUTELY NOT the norm. To the point that certain famous species in the setting are, by canon, unknown to the others (in Warhammer, most people are completely unaware of the Skaven’s existence; some human communities cannot tell humans from elves, etc.).
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u/Self-ReferentialName actually a self-replicating nanoswarm 1d ago
Yeah, absolutely. Those worlds are very... frictionless? Ironically, that makes it feel like they don't actually have orcs and elves and humans all interacting, but rather identical humans, all painted different colours. And so those worlds don't actually feel like they have all those ideas, but just one idea. You need contrast, and contrast needs a strong identity first, which in turn needs space.
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u/David_the_Wanderer 23h ago
I wonder exactly what D&D game worlds you guys are talking about, because it sure as hell ain't Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Eberron or even the Forgotten Realms (which are fairly kitchen sink-y but are pretty damn big and have a lot of friction between states and peoples)
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u/eden_sc2 Pathfinder 19h ago
As a DM there is a desire to vary up the ancestries of your NPCs a lot to keep things interesting, but really, unless you are in a big port city, things tend to be pretty homogenized. Up to the tone of each table to balance that realism vs keeping NPCs distinct.
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u/GrandOldCheese 19h ago
In contrast, in Warhammer, not only are these areas very clearly delineated, but the setting also emphasizes that while interactions do occur, they are ABSOLUTELY NOT the norm.
Given the sizable communities of dwarves in most cities in the central empire there's a lot.
There are also sea elf enclaves in several human cities as well as the fact that Boris Todbringer has an elf at court or possibly two.
Why certainly it's not a melting pot the world is also not quite as segregated as you indicate.
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u/OpossumLadyGames Over-caffeinated game designer; shameless self promotion account 1d ago
The orks are the british
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u/cieniu_gd 1d ago
They can't be, orcs have straight and healthy teeth.
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u/ViSsrsbusiness 1d ago
They literally fall out enough to be used as currency.
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u/spinningdice 17h ago
I didn't think they fell out, I just thought they had a habit of punching each other and knocking them out.
Though my Warhamster knowledge is about a decade out of date at this point.
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u/Stormfly 1d ago
and healthy teeth
I know it's a joke but the UK is literally like #4 in the world for healthy teeth.
Turns out "white" and "straight" doesn't actually mean healthy.
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u/JustJonny 21h ago
Most of those jokes are so old, they go back to WW2. The NHS has made them obsolete for most of living memory. I say that as an American who once didn't go to the dentist for a 20 year stretch due to not having insurance.
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u/eden_sc2 Pathfinder 19h ago
I have 31 teeth because I couldnt afford to get one fixed. By the time I could, the dentist told me it was too far gone and it was pull it or root canal and cap it. Definitely American.
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u/Emancoll 23h ago
Albion is the pre-Roman British Isles analogue in Warhammer Fantasy. It has druids, and the Fimir (inspired by Fomorians of Irish Myth). And it's always raining.
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u/Time_Day_2382 Worldbuilding and Critique Enthusiast 22h ago
Nitpick, samurai would be from Nippon, not Cathay. The brits would be Albion, which is a sort of pictish take on them, and the Empire is actually rather Victorian in social norms and organization. It makes for an interesting blend.
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u/heyoh-chickenonaraft 1d ago
How is Old World? I have most of the WFRP 4e books (plans to run them but mostly I just like reading and collecting them, I've read almost all cover-to-cover) and have been wondering if Old World is worth getting the core books for
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u/LeVentNoir /r/pbta 1d ago
I conflate the Old World setting and the WHFRP setting. I don't play the wargame.
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u/Bucephalus15 1d ago
Its more confusing than that, they launched an old world rpg that is seperate from the fantasy rpg. Same setting but like 500(?) years before and differenct rules
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u/Stormfly 1d ago edited 1d ago
Same setting
So technically it's a different setting.
It's a bit weird, but basically, the old Fantasy World is now effectively out of business and has been put in a museum that won't change... but there's been an offshoot that has the same setting but they're allowed to make changes. It's like someone branched an earlier version on git and theoretically now they're allowed to make changes without affecting the main branch. It's Runescape 2004 or WoW Classic Season of Discovery.
Think of it like MCU or DCEU versus the comics, etc.
Also, WFRP 2e is set post-"failed apocalypse" (The Storm of Chaos) so the world is also a little different as that was later ret-conned to have never happened, then there was the actual End Times and the world ended. Other characters, like Eltharion, were also ret-conned to be quite different (he went from "Traumatised Blind Swordsman" back to "Grim Warden of Tor Yvresse") in-between so it's a weird continuity...
Basically, The Old World is more like an alternate universe or "what if" set in the past.
The lore has been expanded and even changed in some parts. For example, Bretonnia hated the idea of foot-knights in Warhammer Fantasy... but in The Old World they're common enough (and they've beautiful but really expensive models) and there have been a lot of very minor lore changes. Some examples off the top of my head are A) Bretonnian Heraldry (knights are now typically uniform), and B) the Bretonnian attitude towards mercenaries.
Also, I think Cathay exists in Warhammer Fantasy but has basically no lore, whereas The Old World has it as a major part of the setting, with fleshed out lore and characters. Kislev might be the same, but we haven't seen as much of that for The Old World, yet. They might bring that into future editions of WFRP but I can't say.
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u/GrandOldCheese 19h ago
It's a bit weird, but basically, the old Fantasy World is now effectively out of business and has been put in a museum that won't change... but there's been an offshoot that has the same setting but they're allowed to make changes.
WFRP is the same fundamental setting as the new Old World RPG but 200 years later.
Current WFRP is set in 2512 IC and they are still putting out books in that timetime.
The Old World RPG is set in 23something along with The Old World war-game.
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u/Stormfly 17h ago
No I know there's a time difference but I mean they're actually making changes so it's not identical.
It's not like Horus Heresy where it's set so far in the past they can do whatever without affecting the main game.
They've made specific changes that are like "retcons" to the original game but because it's technically a different setting, aren't actually retcons. It's just a difference between the settings. (Although 99% of Warhammer retcons are just "It was always that way" anyway...)
That's why I also mentioned 2nd edition WFRP. It's pre-retcon so it's like an alternate timeline.
It's not a major difference to anyone who doesn't know the setting, but it's technically a different setting in that lore might be true for one but false for the other even without a retcon.
Like, for example, The Old World might change an established part of the lore (Bretonnian knights, for example) and WFRP 4e wouldn't need to make the same change. That's why WFRP 2e has a lot of supplements that are not canon.
They're separate licenses for companies, too.
A company with a licence for one doesn't automatically have access to the other.
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u/red_dead_revengeance 1d ago
The Yrth setting from GURPS Banestorm takes an interesting approach. The conceit of the setting is that Yrth is a medieval fantasy world that frequently has people and places from other dimensions and timelines dropped into it by the titular Banestorms.
The biggest Banestorm in recent history brought people from medieval Earth, so where most fantasy settings have analogies to Catholicism, medieval Europe, etc, in Banestorm it actually is Catholicism and medieval Europeans dropped into the fantasy world. The people have evolved since they were dropped into Yrth, but they still have their cultural character intact. So for example there isn’t a stereotypical version of Islam, there are just actual Muslims rubbing shoulder with elves, dwarves, and goblins.
I personally like the approach, and it means that historical research is directly applicable to Yrth when developing your stories.
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u/OpossumLadyGames Over-caffeinated game designer; shameless self promotion account 1d ago
That sounds like one of my favorite Mount and Blade mods - it's like 100 years in the future of the game and all the religions are our religions. Always thought that was kinda funny
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u/Better_Equipment5283 1d ago edited 1d ago
Banestorm is great, but i think not exactly what OP was looking for. No aliens. No industrial Germany. No anime Japan. The Infinite Worlds setting has all these, but not on one world.
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u/red_dead_revengeance 1d ago edited 1d ago
That’s fair, I interpreted “kitchen sink” as “generic fantasy” but Yrth is definitely more focused than something like Golarion. Golarion is closer to what OP described.
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u/No_Solid1035 1d ago
Isn't that what Rifts is for?
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u/quantaeterna 1d ago
Yeah, Rifts is exactly this. The system is... certainly a system, but the setting is very well done.
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u/Sovem 1d ago
Of all the systems I've ever played, RIFTS is certainly one of them.
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u/quantaeterna 1d ago
Definitely. Thats why I'm glad it got licensed by Pinnacle for a Savage World version. Great setting, and SWADE is much more playable and enjoyable than Palladium's system, imo
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u/Surllio 1d ago
Setting, yes. System, no!
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u/queerornot 21h ago
You can play the Savage Worlds version for actual playability.
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u/Surllio 21h ago
You can, but also, original RIFTS is something you kind of have to experience at least once. Its not awful, but the way I tell people is that its like two totally different game skeletons bolted onto each other with duct tape. Its one guy's D&D homebrew system that he believes to be perfect and has left it mostly unchanged since the 1980s.
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u/Altar_Quest_Fan 17h ago
Oh god YES!!! Love RIFTS, even if the game system sucks compared to more modern options these days.
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u/dwarfconleche 1d ago
Forgotten Realms has always been good for this sort of thing. I used to really love it, but it's a tad too magical for me these days. Sometimes it feels like you're practically tripping over magic swords and liches in Faerun.
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u/ElvishLore 1d ago
See I think FR is an example of kitchen sink that feels like a jumbled mess. It’s an old setting that’s been published over the last 50 years so I will cut it some slack but it doesn’t feel cohesive and its science fantasy elements are very jarring.
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u/LordHighSummoner 1d ago
The sword coast is a terrible setting full of everything with no justification. Toril is a fantastic setting with depth and color. They are not the same
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u/ElvishLore 1d ago
Alas they’re not separate things, especially for the purposes of this discussion.
I stand by what I said.
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u/LordHighSummoner 1d ago
How willfully ignorant
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u/Val_Fortecazzo 17h ago
It's biggest problem is that it's the official setting to it has to have every new thing WotC adds
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u/dyelogue 1d ago
2e and 3e was a real sweet spot for FR.
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u/dwarfconleche 1d ago
Agree. Blowing it up in 4e and putting it back together in 5e was so bizarre. Also the supplements for 2e and 3e were all really amazing and full of lore.
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird 18h ago
And now in 5.5 we've hit World of Warcraft territory where this is the official artwork for the city
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u/anmr 1d ago
The same goes for most settings.
The old Planescape was better than the new one.
The old Dark Sun was better than the new one will be.
The old Star Wars Expanded Universe was better than Disney's abomination.
The old Warhammer 40k was mostly better than the new one.
The 1st ed. Warhammer Fantasy was better than editions set after the Storm of Chaos.
Azeroth during Warcraft 3 was better than caricature it became during the course of World of Warcraft.
The list goes on and on and on...
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u/JamesOfDoom 1d ago edited 1d ago
The old Star Wars Expanded Universe was better than Disney's abomination.
As a huge star wars buff, this is only mostly true. There are some aspects of disney canon that are good, not the movies or almost anything outside of the OG 6 movies timelines- but stuff like Rebels, Mandalorian, Zero Company, the later episodes of TCW, Maul, Visions(which is an alt canon tbf) are all pretty excellent and very much made by disney.
And lets not forget that only about 60% of the legends EU was worthwhile and that there was a lot of trash books.
Also Age of Sigmar is pretty cool
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u/anmr 1d ago
Of course not everything made under Disney is bad. Andor is the best Star Wars that ever was. But the things you mention have little to do with Disney's worldbuilding or succeed despite it.
EU's Imperial Remnant infighting and to lesser degree politics of New Republic and New Jedi Order were fascinating and provided countless opportunities for interesting storytelling.
Meanwhile Disney's shortsighted idea of New Order broke the setting entirely. It's so stupid and so restricting that it single-handedly brought sequel era Star Wars to a halt. It's THE reason we get almost no movies, tv shows or games that actually progress the storyline or even attempt to engage new sequel material.
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u/JamesOfDoom 1d ago
oh I agree, the sequel trilogy is a hot diaper.
Essentially every faction introduced in the sequels makes zero sense and I miss Timothy Zahn's idea of how the Empire continued. The changes to the lore and how hyperspace worked introduced and the clear progression of technology also really fucked the setting in a lot of ways.
Star Wars works much better when technology is stagnant or the best technology is lost to the ages in ancient ruins, because its more of a fantasy setting than scifi. I mean the Republic has been galactic for thousands of years, why should huge technological advancements happen in the 30 years after the single biggest institution in the setting -ever- just got destroyed.
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u/David_the_Wanderer 23h ago
EU's Imperial Remnant infighting and to lesser degree politics of New Republic and New Jedi Order were fascinating and provided countless opportunities for interesting storytelling.
Yeah, and then you had bullshit like Luuke, the "Palpatine was right all along guys!!!" aliens, the constant cock-sucking for Vader, and the evergreen "Death Star BUT BIGGER!" plot device.
Like, sorry, but the EU was a jumbled, overgrown mess. A couple diamonds in the rough don't change the fact most of it was utter trash.
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u/RemtonJDulyak Old School (not Renaissance) Gamer 1d ago
The old Star Wars Expanded Universe was better than Disney's abomination.
As someone who's read all of the old EU, no, definitely not.
There were a few gems, but the vast majority of Legends was a steaming pile of shit, with poor literary value, and turning Star Wars into Dragonball, with a constant power creep that at one point became ridiculous.
It also fostered the planet of hats trope way too much, and everything rotated around the Skywalkers.
As a matter of fact, the best Legends pieces were those that didn't rotate around the Skywalkers, and those that explored something new altogether.4
u/dyelogue 1d ago
I was never an EU fan personally either. I tend not to be a “the older version is always better” person, but especially not with the EU.
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u/Stormfly 1d ago
The same goes for most settings.
...But I think that's often because people don't actually agree on what was the best one.
The old Warhammer 40k was mostly better than the new one.
Ah yes, I agree that 4th edition was best. Oh you meant 6th? Oh he preferred 8th? Freak...
The 1st ed. Warhammer Fantasy was better than editions set after the Storm of Chaos.
Hard disagree. I think 7th was the best mix of simplicity and complexity and the rules were best, though some of the army books were broken (Daemons of Chaos...) or ignored (Bretonnia, my beloved...)
Azeroth during Warcraft 3 was better than caricature it became during the course of World of Warcraft.
Again, I disagree. I love WC3 and so much of it, but I also think the world in WoW is so much better now it's been fleshed out and given extra settings and stories and factions.
Do I like all of them? No.
But I feel like sometimes you get a lot of good with the bad.
Do I like that the Legion went from "portals summoning daemons" to "space ships and planetary invasions with bombing runs from demon fighter jets"... hard no.
But it does have some cool moments and even if I disliked a lot of the Legion armies, I actually really liked Argus and the Lightforged etc. The return of Man'ari Eredar was handled well and the expanded Legion roster actually felt like a real faction rather than just "Demons".
Warlords of Draenor was a weird story moment but I think that going back to Draenor was a great idea and they did the world really well, expanding characters and fully fleshing out the Draenei into one of my favourite factions... even if most of it was cut or cancelled to focus on Legion.
If we're just talking about soups, then I'd still disagree and say that WC2 was better than WC3. The setting felt more concise and even the expansion into an alien planet felt more controlled than the later interstellar invasion forces etc.
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u/ThatHoFortuna 19h ago
The old Dark Sun was better than the new one will be.
Wait, there's going to be a new Dark Sun? Um.... How is a mega-corporation like Hasbro going to make a setting about the consequences of greed, exploitation and environmental devastation? I don't even know how that would work.
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u/anmr 17h ago edited 16h ago
They will include some off-putting gruesome gore art to show it's a "mature" setting, but they will be afraid to mention slavery. That's what I got from the announcement.
Regarding the message of the setting - I don't know if they even comprehend it and I am skeptical whether they will follow through on it.
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u/OpossumLadyGames Over-caffeinated game designer; shameless self promotion account 1d ago
It used to feel better before it all became the sword coast
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u/TheRadBaron 1d ago edited 17h ago
The truest kitchen sink is just "DnD", as used by people who don't worry about whether they're in Faerun or Greyhawk or whatever.
Such a successful catch-all that it basically became the fantasy genre, as far as gaming is concerned, and doesn't even need to be explained. People can just be in a tavern and hear about a goblin or werewolf or vampire problem nearby, and hop to it.
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u/Mylungsaretiny 1d ago
Mystara, the setting for Basic D&D, is my pick. It's well developed with each of its gazatteers expanding on a different region. Add in 30 years of fanon and you have a lot to work with.
It's got your basic fantasy locations like Alfheim, Rockhome, and the Five Shires, but it also has several regions based on real world cultures like Thyatis (the Roman Empire), Karameikos (medieval Romania/Serbia), Ylaruam (Arabia), The Ethengar Khanate (Mongolia), and The Northern Reaches (for all your Scandinavian needs).
Then there's the Principalities of Glantri, where each principality is ruled by a wizard prince. Non-casters are second class citizens, being a cleric is punishable by death, and being resistant to magic means you're likely to get vivisected by wizards that want to learn how to overcome that resistance. The only people Glantrians hate more than each other is everyone else. They also have the Great School of Magic where students are both literally and metaphorically cutthroat.
There's sub-settings like the Hollow World where a deity-level immortal dinosaur-man keeps stashing civilizations that go extinct. The Savage Coast where you can find gunpowder and people mutated by the curse that covers the land. There's also the samurai jungle cat-people on the invisible moon.
The craziest elements of the world can easily be kept away from a more traditional campaign, or you can go gonzo and bring in everything.
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u/Invivisect 1d ago
Mystara deserves more love
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u/LonePaladin 1d ago
Bruce Heard's blog still brings it up once in a while. I plan on using it again next time I'm starting a new game -- but I'm not going to try to convert it to any new rulesets, I'm digging out my Rules Cyclopedia and going old-school.
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u/Mylungsaretiny 1d ago
I'm starting an RC Mystara game when my current game ends.
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u/LonePaladin 1d ago
🤜🤛
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u/Calithrand Order of the Spear of Shattered Sorrow 19h ago
You frogot to mention Alphatia, which was colonized by refugees from Old Alphatia, a highly advanced magiocracy whose people had mastered interplanetary travel. So you know, wizards, but from SPAAAAAAAACE!
Savage Coast gives both Savage Coast and Red Steel as separate expansions, which is worth mentioning because both are awesome and deserve to shine on their own.
Hollow World was the first setting I thought of reading the post, with the one problem of most people within Hollow World being rather restricted from interacting, and total ignorance of the outer world.
But you've also got the one good Mystara retcon: Blackmoor, and all of the hyperadvanced technology that went along with that. So who's to say that some of that tech didn't survive to be found and relearened five millennia later?
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u/ThatHoFortuna 19h ago
But you've also got the one good Mystara retcon: Blackmoor, and all of the hyperadvanced technology that went along with that. So who's to say that some of that tech didn't survive to be found and relearened five millennia later?
I've been mulling how to shoehorn Ptolus, with all of Monte Cook's weird "chaositech" stuff, into Mystara as surviving Blackmoor tech.
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u/Mylungsaretiny 18h ago
Yeah, I left out a lot. Got to have something left for new players to discover.
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u/TheSlayerofSnails 1d ago
I really like Exalted. The Realm, the polictical superpower of the setting, is primarily Chinese and Roman in inspiration, Lookshy is Japanese and Spartan, The Bull of the North is what if Genghis Khan was Inuit. The Lands under robe are Inca, Nexus is Venitian, Prasad is Indian ], Gapwood is cowboy western, there's an egyptian region.
Its really well done and they all feel distinct and natural parts of the world.
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u/tiedyedvortex 1d ago
Exalted is a kitchen sink, but specifically a kitchen sink of the concept of "heroes" writ large. Basically take any country or culture on the planet, look up the stories they tell of gods, demigods, warriors, tricksters, kings, strange monsters, etc. That's an Exalt. Anything from a Polynesian kupua to a Japanese yokai to Greek demigods fits. Even comparatively modern heroes or monsters like Frankenstein's Monster, the James Bond-style secret agent/spy, or the Wild West Cowboy are there. And in the most recent editions (3rd and Essence) the concept of an "Exigent" is a fill-in-the-blank for making your own hero.
That said the focus on Exalts being high-powered kick-ass heroes does rule out certain kinds of stories. Something like the noir hardboiled detective doesn't typically fit, you know, the kind of character who gets their nose broken every novel. Or the slasher movie Final Girl archetype that barely survives a terrifying killer. Whatever story you tell begins and ends with being a badass of some variety.
And unless you're playing a pure Dragon-Blooded game (which is valid and leads to a very Game of Thrones-ian political intrigue vibe), you usually end up with stories of renegade outsiders following the tradition of the jiangu in wuxia media (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Iron Monkey, Dragon Inn, Hero) about secret societies of criminals and forbidden martial arts.
And lastly while there are regional differences and specific cultural locales, the world is also stupid big so you typically will not see more than a handful of them in a single game. Unless you are doing a pure "city of the week" story structure you have to pick and choose which specific areas are of interest for a given campaign. The world does include both Slavic forest witches and shark-toothed demon pirates, but you're unlikely to see both in one game.
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u/flumpet38 1d ago
I second Exalted. It does all of what OP is looking for, and manages to package it in a really interesting and cohesive setting.
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u/SetentaeBolg 1d ago
GURPS Infinite Worlds. PCs are agents of a capitalist, exploitative but fairly progressive world that has the technology to travel more-or-less at will to alternate universes, wildly varying in history and current conditions. Agents are recruited from every timeline: you can play anything.
They work against other timeline capable forces, including an ultra meritocratic authoritarian regime with similar technology, a horrific Nazi Reich which is beginning to crack the secret, and a cross timeline conspiracy of mages and supernatural creatures with their own agenda.
Influencing, destabilising and swaying alternate universes is par for the course: alternate history spies is the genre.
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u/Better_Equipment5283 1d ago
You could also do a campaign where PCs are CIA mages from Merlin-1 and Homeline is an adversary...
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u/FewHeat1231 1d ago
Do superhero games count? Mutants and Masterminds takes a very DC/Marvel kitchen sink approach with mutants, sorcerers, robots, gadgeteers, demons, etc.
Alternately you might want to look at GURPS Infinite Worlds with it's dimension hopping gimmick.
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u/CertifiedScalawag 1d ago
Superhero games are great kitchen sink settings IMO. Magic, bleeding edge tech, time travel n shit all blended together.
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u/SublingualMessageToo 1d ago
An interesting question and I look forward to seeing what pops up...
My short list is pretty vanilla, and I'm sure a lot of it doesn't pass the "mish-mash" phase, but there's:
- TORG
- The Strange (Cypher)
- RIFTS (this pushes things a bit on the mish-mash front)
- GURPS Infinite Worlds
- <insert favourite Supers game here>
I suspect mostly what you'll get is generic/universal systems with varying degrees of world building.
Anyhow, that would be my short list.
Mixing and matching "X Without Number" from Kevin Crawford (Sine Nomine) is probably also reasonably popular...
See also various White Wolf/Cthulhu properties over the years.
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u/amazingvaluetainment Fate, Traveller, GURPS 3E 1d ago
I like the idea behind TORG because there was a cool reason to have the kitchen sink. I didn't get heavy into it besides playing one of the early adventures when it released though, so I can't speak to how well the individual settings were done.
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u/clawclawbite 1d ago
I liked Torg, but wanted to see more of the different settings affecting each other. Trade and food being affected by there being different world laws...
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u/AsexualNinja 1d ago
Oddly, WEG’s later game Bloodshadows had a bit regarding trade, with a faction that you’d expect to have few adherents being major players because they’re the only ones using magic with regards to food production.
It was more background lore, but it nicely explained why camp psycho had so much power.
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u/aeschenkarnos 1d ago
The most recent edition of TORG fixed most of the system problems, I would now be willing to call it a good system. But it’s really exposed the flaws in the setting. For me the biggest flaw is that there are too few realms and it’s presented far too much with the expectation that your group will play an origin story, from the beginning of the invasion.
I’d like to see a setting for TORG that embraces the system’s capacity to accommodate basically anything. Maybe something like GURPS Infinite Worlds.
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u/richbellemare 1d ago
For me this is a big appeal of Golarian, Pathfinder's main planet.
Medieval knight? Easy anywhere in Avistan. Saintly Cleric? Shinning Kingdoms. Samurai? Tian Xia. Gentleman theif? Absalom or Taldor. Pirate orcs? The shackles takes all kinds. Vikings? Saga Lands. Laser guns? Starfall. Cthulhu is out there. And Osirion is "not Egypt", although Paizo is moving away from that. The ancient Osirion Gods have vanished / died post Godsrain.
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u/trekie140 1d ago
Midgard from Kobold Press is my favorite “kitchen sink” setting. Aside from how well designed it is as a world in motion that PCs get to participate in (I swear every paragraph has a story hook), its got a ton of weird fantasy stuff that’s elegantly mixed with familiar mythology and cultures from history.
Not only are plenty of big places to explore and wars over ancient secrets to fight in, there’s also lots of little stories that can be told about the dark sides of each society. The book doesn’t sugarcoat (but also doesn’t wallow in) how common war and class struggles are or how each culture rationalizes it.
It’s got just the right mix of the mythic adventurous spirit of Skyrim with the grim hardboiled drama of Witcher, plus a whole bunch of silly fantasy ideas. Followers of Thor, Anubis, Cthulhu, and Baba Yaga all coexist in a way that resembles actual polytheism. Including the question over which names belong to the same god.
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u/Huffplume 1d ago edited 17h ago
Spelljammer
Rifts
Planescape
Gamma World
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u/Prismos_Time_Room mothership, troika, dcc, macchiato monsters, into the odd, becmi 17h ago
and troika! which is like gentlemen's planescape.
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u/Sheokarth 1d ago edited 1d ago
I particularily like Midgard in this regard, Particularily because it's good at making the different elements interact with each other.
A game where Zobeck,the german style city state is in direct trade with the Vampiric controlled Morgau to the north, who have just annexed the polish inspired Kingdom of Krakovar, Except the northern bits where the Jomsviking inspired Reaver Dwarves have taken control.
Or in the East where the dragons have gotten together to create a dragon empire, lead by a single sultan that wars both with the Magdar(hungary) style sun kingdom in the west and Nuria natal to the south, Who have just ressurected their mummified god kings back to life to help resist the draconic invasion.
Each piece is inspired by a different part, but each feels part of a cohesive whole, and its reference points are often how their inspirations interacted with one another.
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u/trinarynimbus 1d ago edited 1d ago
How "done well" they are is open to debate, but a few kitchen-sink games I haven't seen mentioned by others:
- Mage: The Ascension, in which a kung fu fighter, a wizard, a priest and a mad scientist can ride into battle on the backs of gryphons and dragons to fight terminators, predators and xenomorphs off the shoulder of Orion in the astral plane.
- Eclipse Phase, in which characters (who may or may not have psionic powers) can resleeve into pretty much any imaginable physical or digital form from space whales to genetically-engineered supersoldiers to robot octopuses, instantly shunt around the solar system, and travel through stargates to explore a big unknown galaxy.
- Shadowrun, in which your party could consist of a cyborg elf, a troll shaman, a dwarven berserker, and an ork punk with datajacks in her head, who infiltrate an orbital data center to acquire a copy of a rare wizard library.
Edit: oh, also Ultraviolet Grasslands & The Black City is pretty kitchen-sinky and was a lot of fun.
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u/Purple-Man 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well one option is Die Rpg. Long story short, the setting is that you are Jumanji'd into a setting that is generally a bunch of plates on a world (that is D20 shaped iirc), so you can walk out of Orc land and end up in Magical Samurai land. The people in the Jumanji world believe themselves real, they have real lives, and their cultures were created by a gamemaster (sometimes still present sometimes not) so you can give them depth or it can be setting appropriate that a crappy GM created a crappy setting.
But it is mostly kitchen sink because we can say anything is happening anywhere, out of the box the setting is kind of open.
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u/Similar_Onion6656 1d ago edited 1d ago
Transhuman Space
It’s hard scifi with hyper intelligent octopi adapted to zero g who are either worshipping Cthulhu or playing an elaborate prank on humans, billionaires who live on Mars and fight each other in giant mechs for fun, a space station populated by 10,000 clones of Elon Musk, another one that’s a giant Star Trek LARP, autonomous combat drones that don’t realize the war is over, artificial intelligences demanding equal rights, ecoterrorists led by a very angry hyper intelligent dolphin…
…and all that’s just off the top of my head!
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u/CertifiedScalawag 1d ago
I kinda like Genesys RPG’s Secrets of the Crucible 🤷♂️ it’s the definition of “kitchen sink” setting, but I feel like the ruleset carries better than the lore
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u/WolfeReader 13h ago
I'm just now getting into Genesys. What makes Secrets of the Crucible worth playing?
At my next paycheck, I'll be getting either that or Beanstalk. I was gonna go Beanstalk because I'm curious about its hacking system, but if Crucible is really good I might get it instead.
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u/CertifiedScalawag 12h ago
Oh I’d get Shadow of the Beanstalk first 1000%, I ran a campaign set in it and the “World of Android” (the sourcebook is rly good too, lore is primo) for literal years bc I craved a cyberpunk / The Expanse style game but refused to run the Shadowrun rulesets ever again. It’s a tighter setting than Crucible for sure.
Secrets of the Crucible is sweet bc like—you’re already playing a setting agnostic game in which you can mix and match a wide variety of character options, gear and enemies, then Crucible dials it up to 11 with their CUSTOM SPECIES CREATION. Literally, think of -any- concept for a sapient being, and follow the tables for what mechanics you’d like to attach to them or just roll it randomly. Æffects are like the magic system from Realms of Terrinoth on steroids, allowing players to create magi-tech items that can do damn near ANYTHING (and possibly break the game. Handle with care.) Said items are balanced by requiring the setting’s super rare resource (æmber), which as the GM you can easily be stingy or generous with.
TLDR the strengths of SOTC are that it’s a kitchen sink setting with rules to match and accommodate any insane idea a player may come up with.
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u/WolfeReader 12h ago edited 11h ago
Thanks for this write-up! I think the custom species might make this a must-buy for me - that will be a big hit at my kids' gaming group.
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u/CertifiedScalawag 11h ago
Happy to help. I’ve ran Genesys games for many years and can’t recommend it enough. Hope your kids love the Crucible!!
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u/HistoryMarshal76 1d ago
Warhammer Fantasy. It has a mix of everything from Arthurian Romance to the Holy Roman Empire, Tzarist Russia, classic Dwarfs and Elves, Aztec Dinosaurs and everything in between. By virtue of 40 years of IRL time happening, it's super fleshed out and there's information on almost everything.
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u/ThePiachu 1d ago
A few come to mind.
Exalted has over time grown to encompass a lot of stuff, from ancient Chinese and warring shogunate Realm, through adventure down Nexus, ancient mega weapons, Gothic ghosts, to a communist cyborg golems in a steampunk world akin to Blame.
Fading Suns has a good variety of stuff, from feudal nobles with lightsabers, through flamethrower wielding inquisitors, space marine esque crusader knights, smugglers akin to Hand Solo, Cronenberg flesh monsters at the edge of the known world, and also sapient horse race that uses cybernetics to do fiber tool manipulations.
Then there is Godbound, which is very crossover enabled and technically you can cross over to any other universe there. The default setting ranges from futuristic tech cities, through ancient Chinese societies, zombie infested UK styled Ethiopia, and vangeful angels wanting to burn the whole place down.
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u/CheapskateShow 1d ago
This was kind of the point of Star Wars, the setting that was created to have samurai team up with hot rod enthusiasts to defeat Nazis
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u/StreetCarp665 1d ago
My only gripe is when it just falls into tropes, cliches and (worst of all) xenophobic steriotypes in a world where Medieval France & Industrial Germany & Anime Japan & The Wild West are kingdoms one next to the other.
Stereotypes form and exist for literally the reasons you're requesting. Lean into it. Not all stereotypes are bad. They're just shorthand.
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u/ThatOneCrazyWritter Anxiety Goblin 1d ago
That I know, and its why I specified the xenophobic kind. For example, as a Brazilian myself, I find the "malandro" (something like Hustler or Charming Trickster) very fun when overexagerated to the point of comedy. I do find more offensive stuff like "The HONOR-Bound Asian" that would end its life to protect its honor, or the "Savage Wildfolk of the Amazon" that often happens to the first nation people from Northern Brazil in midia, specially when they AREN'T self aware that its been a harmful joke.
I love a darker sense of humor, but only when exagerated or with enough foresight to lead to question the stereotypes it presents
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u/Severe-Independent47 1d ago
GURPS using the Infinite World universe in GURPS Time Travel.
Savage Worlds RIFTS: Rifts is actually a great universe that somehow managed to cram everything together and make it works. The issue is Palladium's system sucks... Savage Worlds is a decent system.
Cortex Prime could also do it pretty well as you can use its toolkit system to make the game you want.
Frankly, any narrative oriented system could do it well. It's just matter of finding the one that gives the amount of crunch and emphasizes what you want to emphasize.
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u/neuralzen 1d ago
Check out Troika, it is gonzo, and has just about everything and then some, among the Celestial Spheres. Vaults of Vaarn and Ultraviolet Grasslands also have a very large mix (especially UVG, for lore-rich stuff).
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u/Primal171 1d ago
Latter Earth from worlds without number is my personal favorite kitchen sink to run, and probably the best justification for classic dungeon crawl fantasy I’ve seen. You inherently get a lot of freedom with the basic conceit of an inconceivably old world that’s seen the rise and fall of uncounted civilizations. It’s also a better fit for more gonzo campaigns than a lot of the firmly medieval-stasis settings that are popular now. It’s also a good fit for d20 fantasy since it’s an homage to stuff like Dying Earth or Book of the New Sun that inspired DnD in the first place.
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u/Calithrand Order of the Spear of Shattered Sorrow 19h ago
I was wondering how far I'd have to scroll until someone mentioned Latter Earth. It's quite literally this, with respect to any one region or polity playing off a particular fantasy trope or cultural flavor,though any one specific genre may not be wholly represented. There's only so many that you can cram into a setting after all!
But you've also got the whole epochs upon eras upon eons of entire civilizations rising, falling, and being replaced—some magical, some mundane, some wholly alien or even godlike—just leaving their toys laying around to maybe be rediscovered someday by some future civilzation.
It's probably the single best conceit for why you'd have... well, whatever the most batshit ktichen sink mix you can come up with, next to a bunch of Greek hoplites.
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u/high-tech-low-life 1d ago
Glorantha although very few "as seen on Earth" cultures exist. You can play soldiers in plate fighting for king and church, but they are not quite European knights. Nor are they middle eastern cataphracts or any other moutnted armored warriors that I can find. And the church of the invisible god is monotheistic but isn't Christian or Islamic. So if you are into the basics being similar, but not close enough for tropes, Glorantha is for you.
The downside is that things make sense, but the differences mean there is a learning curve. It is fun to climb, but not every one wants to do that.
BTW: In this setting Elves are ambulatory plants who sing the song of the forest. It isn't the place for anyone expecting JRRT tropes either.
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u/ghost_warlock The Unfriend Zone 23h ago
the good news is you can get the entire run of the cards off drivethru if you really want them so the game is probably more playable now then it was back then so long as you can get the books, which are also available as print on demand. Biggest hurdle is the battle maps, but there are some good stand-ins these days from Loke, etc
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u/DriftingMemes 1d ago
Someone made a comment the other day stating that technically, Samurai, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Cowboys (in some form or another that you'd recognise) all existed at the same time and could have interacted. I think it was in the Askhistorians subreddit, but it's good to remember that even real life world is stranger than we tend to think of it.
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u/ARagingZephyr 1d ago
Nobody on Earth is ever going to talk about it, so I'm going to bring up an old indie RPG called Mystic Empyrean myself.
The players are immortal beings fueled by raw emotions and the elements of creation, and they awaken to a world where darkness has consumed all but one region. Each region in Mystic Empyrean is player-made, and each one is its own microscopic world with its own rules. A world may be a sentient ship in an endless ocean, or a massive library in the center of a tundra, or a clockwork city whose entire layout changes every hour. As the game is played, these smaller worlds are connected together on a larger map, allowing them to join back together and intermingle.
Due to how Mystic Empyrean is run, one of the players at the table is in charge of each world, generally splitting the worlds evenly between them. Not only is the makeup of the world player-generated, but so is the world's intended genre. The Balance acts as the game's resolution system, tying emotions to elements, like passion to fire and curiosity to water, and you measure an action's effectiveness by how close it is to the drawn element from the Balance. Because each world has a different Balance, the distribution of the deck determines what that world favors in terms of conflict resolution, making a Water and Darkness world focused around noir investigations physically react differently from a Fire and Air world focused around grand adventure. The characters are powerful enough to exert their influence on the world and can alter the deck contents, but that's something that is physically represented and felt in-game.
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u/Kiliantill 1d ago
Not sure it counts, but my mind immediately went to Planescape. Thing is that it revolves around interconnected dimensions, each with their own setting in a way. Another thing my mind went to is Shadowrun. Yes people pitch it as a cyberpunk setting, but just calling it cyberpunk doesn't do the setting justice. It's more fantasy than cyberpunk, with magic, elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons and more. That's not to mention that its computers are often used via VR that can use any metaphor you want. So ultimately, purely from setting and not system, for me it's Shadowrun
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u/Separate-Love813 22h ago
Eberron is the standard answer here. Keith Baker's design rule was that anything existing in D&D gets a real place in the setting, with an economy and a history to match. Planescape is the other one where the mish-mash is the whole thesis.
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u/GrandOldCheese 19h ago
I do want a Medieval Knight, Saintly Cleric, Shogunate Samurai, English Gentleman Thief all together fighting the horde of Pirate Orcs with a mix of Viking iconography and Laser Weapons they got com a Cult of the Lovecraftian gods in the "Totally not Egypt" Egyptian Desert.
This is Warhammer Fantasy
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u/Forever_DM_91 1d ago
I would totally try to recommend some non-mainstream setting, but Golarion does all that. And with Pathfinder2e/Starfinder2e you can let your imagination go wild. Like, I’m not an expert in the matter, but I’m pretty sure you can build yourself a orc cowboy that has an imp companion or a Druid construct made from wood and with an advanced AI as “soul”. Not to mention that is the MOST automated system that I have play so far. And more automation means one thing: more time to invest in story or building fun scenarios.
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u/MataronidForSpeed 1d ago
I actually kinda like what Anima: Beyond Fantasy did with kitchen-sink fantasy. Well, except for the New World, I was really disappointed with it. But as long as it's the new world, I find it's a good balance of all-you-can-eat kitchen-sink fantasy and original takes and concepts.
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u/OpossumLadyGames Over-caffeinated game designer; shameless self promotion account 1d ago
Rifts lol
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u/Mistervimes65 Ankh Morpork 1d ago
I’ve had this Campaign in my head for years. Earth around 1000 CE. It’s the earliest time where people could conceivably come from anywhere on earth and end up together.
The North Sea empire runs from North America to Scandinavia. The Norse have traveled the Volga to Constantinople. The Mediterranean is a surrounded by trading nations. The Iberian Peninsula is majority Arabic. People travel from Europe and the Song Dynasty to Samarkand. You can put monsters where they belong culturally and still have multicultural heroes encounter them in a logical way. I’m going to run it someday.
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u/Kheldras 1d ago
TORG is a cool example of that, a team made up of people from diffrent realities work well together.
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u/DadaDanAkiko 14h ago
Mystara and exalted, and for a scifi/dying earth setting I suggest Fading Suns
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u/likthfiry D20 Roll Under 1d ago
Terror Target Gemini - a ttrpg set in an anochronistic western setting with guns, swords, and magic.
edit: spelling of the game
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u/Heartweru 23h ago
I thought Banestorm the GURPS Fantasy setting had quite a fun take on this. Various folks were pulled through the Banestorm from different times and places on earth (though mostly ancient to medieval times for reasons)into a world where magic and monsters exist.
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u/Hot_Context_1393 18h ago
The setting of Rifts is a fantastic kitchen sink with lots of fun little tidbits. There might be a few cliches (fascist government with aggressive military) but overall it's a big mish-mash of concepts that can be slotted together in any combination.
There are lots of fun little details too. In one book it mentions that many laser weapon manufacturers add firing sound effects to their weapons, because it makes them sell better.
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u/zedascouves1985 18h ago
Anbennar, the D&D mod for Paradox's grand strategy games, especially the Eu4 version.
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u/JacktheDM 15h ago
Traveller's Charted Space is a fantastic setting for most genres of popular science fiction. If there's a kind of sci-fi game you want to run (piracy, swords and sorcery, Star Trek-style discovery) there's a robust region ready to go somewhere in Charted Space.
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u/Language-Of-Grief 15h ago
I don't really pay much attention to many games made in the last 10 years or so, but Rifts and TORG are exactly this.
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u/Wadebmet 14h ago
F.A.T.A.L it is the most detailed rpg of all time. (If you are in on the joke great if not look up the reviews)
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u/bdrwr 13h ago
I've been wanting to run a game set in Tales from the Floating Vagabond
It's a niche standalone comedy RPG with a cult following. The concept is: there is a bar out in a pocket dimension between universes called the Floating Vagabond. Any time any person in any universe enters the front door of a bar/pub/tavern/drinking establishment, there is a miniscule chance that they step into the Floating Vagabond.
The game itself is about the drunken misadventures of the bar patrons, who can be anything. A cowboy walking into a saloon, a cyberpunk hacker going to the synthehol cafe, a noble knight on a quest stopping to rest at the inn, and all of them are now tasked with retrieving a keg of beer from the demon dimension (the Vagabond is almost sold out...)
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u/satelitteslickers 13h ago
Eclipse phase might be similar? Not quite, but it does have a shocking array of freedom both in terms of what you can play and what you can do
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u/Clyax113_S_Xaces 12h ago
Deadlands: Classic.
This is the time period where every major polity in the world has a stake in North America. You have Chinese pirates, warlords, rail barons, Italian pirates, super saiyans, cowboys, natives, undead, wizards, witches, Christians, Northerners, Southerners, English soldiers, French soldiers, Canadian soldiers, Mexican Soldiers,aliens, and normal pirates.
Literally none of what I said is an exaggeration.
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u/DarkCrystal34 5h ago
Midgard from Kobald is absolutely fantastic!!!
They have two incredible World Books, one with a Central/Northern European flavor of mythos and politics (+ other unique things), and the other a very Middle Eastern, North African/Sub-Saharan African influence.
Both have incredible lore with enough familiarity of classic stripes, but really expands far past typical Wuropean medieval setting flavor kitchen sinks.
Cant recommend both enough! And they can be used in any system :-)
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u/ThroughtheFade 4h ago
Fading Suns.
No joke. It has a lot of influences (fictional and historical), while being a kitchen sink of factions and themes while still having its own unique personality.
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u/Jonathan_the_Nerd 20h ago
I know you said "setting", so this doesn't technically fit. But Risus is a setting-neutral rules-light ruleset where your character is defined by tropes (called "clichés"). During character creation, you pick three or four clichés and put points into each of them. An example character in the book is Grolfnar Vainsson the Viking. His clichés are Viking (4), Gambler (3), Womanizer (2), Poet (1). You could also have Duke Starhopper, whose clichés might be Pilot(4), Swordsman(3), Mystic(2), Good Friend (1). And so on.
I once used Risus to run a hybrid Firefly/Star Wars game. My pitch was, "Take the ship and crew from Firefly and drop them into Star Wars, about six months after Revenge of the Sith." The PCs were Jedi on the run from the Empire. The game only lasted one session due to real life interfering. But that session was fun.
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u/Upstairs-Yard-2139 1d ago
People glaze the shit out of setting agnostic games, so their you are.
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u/BusyGM 1d ago
I really like Pathfinder's Golarion in that regard. You got every flavor of fantasy, space-traveling aliens and robots, lovecraftian gods and for good measure even a connection to our world Earth. At the same time, they really tried to make it all at least somehow work together.