Fantastica

Basic Information

Fantastica is the setting of most of the children's novel The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. See gateway fantasy.

List of Locations

List of Characters

• Childlike Empress
• Gmork

List of Races

• Werewolf (The Neverending Story)

List of Artifacts

• AURYN

List of Concepts

• Nothing (The Neverending Story

Sources

Bibliography

1. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

Game and Story Use

• Taken on its own, Fantastica would make a fun and fascinating fantasy setting in its own right.
• If the GM can figure out a plot device that lets the player characters cross over to Fantastica as a group, they could play the part of saviors of Fantastica similar to Bastian Baltasar Bux - or otherwise use this world as an alternate plane of existence for an urban fantasy game.
  • Unless the GM is very sure of himself, he probably shouldn't give them artifacts as powerful as AURYN, though.
• According to Gmork the Werewolf, there are humans in the human world - whom he calls the "Manipulators" - who are aware of Fantastica and what happens there - and want to destroy it. They also had some kind of power - whether material or supernatural is unclear - that tempted Gmork to join their side. The PCs could attempt to fight these "Manipulators" in both worlds.
  • Given that Michael Ende experienced the Third Reich, and his father was forbidden to work as an artist during that time, it is possible that he equated the "Manipulators" with Those Wacky Nazis.
    • This just begs for a game set in the period where the PCs are daring archeologists, Office of Strategic Services agents, and similar people who fight the Nazis with guns and fists during the day, and their supernatural agents in Fantastica by night.
    • If Gmork the Werewolf was an agent of the Nazis, then does this have any connection to the Werwolf resistance fighters the Nazis wanted to organize to fight the occupation of Germany?
• Gmork also mentions that there are "many worlds" that werewolves can travel between, allowing for the existence of an entire multiverse connected to both Fantastica and the human world.