Reference Points

"Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model."
-Vincent van Gogh

Catching the Edges of the Map

As the world of Imagination grows, like crystals forming, the realms of un-touched cliche shrink. Outside the known Dorklands there lie more than a few Reference Points. Places where games of Titanic rank shimmer in the light of adoring nerds. While not of the same close-knit nature that the Dorklands have, the Reference Points are often just as well known.

There are two types of Reference Point:

Outworlds are realms set up just like the Five Starts. In fact there are some that would argue certain Outworlds should now be considered part of the Dorklands proper. The debate seems eternal.

Iconic Realms are inevitable for the fiction-found reality of a collective Nerd culture. It's impossible to seperate Gaming from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix and other classic forms of geekery.

It might be that you're a pure-bred Traditionalist, not just looking for something of a particular system, but as close to the setting as you can get. Be it as old as Star Trek or as shiny as Firefly, there's an Iconic Realm of your theme out there somewhere.

It also might be that you're a hardcore Gamer of one particular setting for your signature Dungeon Crawl. Or severely addicted to even the trashiest, fan-sub, VHS, sea-shipped anime you can procure through half-japanese written emails. Either way there's an Iconic Realm with you kind running amok.

The Reference Points, in short, are the "Other Starts" that sometimes get as much attention or more as the Five originals that swept the sub-culture in mass-marketing glory.

A List of some of the more common Reference Points.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License