It was late 2005 and I stumbled across a DVD called Zu Warriors at a local Best Buy. It was a film from China director named Tsui Hark. The cover caught my interest right away with the phrase “Master the Sword, Rule the Universe.” I was sold. I bought it immediately and went home to watch it.
I had already been a fan of Kung Fu and Wuxia movies for a long time, but Zu Warriors was something different. It was Epic in scope. The characters were Immortals high above the mortal realms and had the power to destroy mountains with a swipe of a sword. Now, I had already read the Journey to the West, which is a classic epic tale of Chinese Myth, however, Zu Warriors was a visual medium and the special effects were actually pretty good. It leads me to find translations of Chinese Xianxia novels on the internet. Which led to the seed of The Sands of Destiny world.
In addition to Fantastical Wuxia and Xianxia fiction, I’ve always been a fan of ancient mythology. The Ancient Mythologies that most interested me were those of China, Egypt, and India. The myths and legends of these three cultures have always fascinated me to no end. They’ve all had a heavy influence on the world in Sands of Destiny.
I’ve been writing aspects of this setting for a long time and have stacks of notebooks with ideas, concepts, and details of the world. I’ve even attempted to translate the setting into playable for using several tabletop RPG systems. None of the systems I used ever really felt right for the setting, however.
I had given up on trying to write a game for Sands of Destiny. Then I found Cortex Prime. I had seen previous iterations of the Cortex system, however, I never really had much interest in the games released under it. Then the makers of DnD Beyond bought the system and released a new version of the system handbook and I checked it out….and fell in love with its narrative first approach. I almost built the game using that system, however, I quickly realized I need to custom build mechanics to suit what I wanted to do which led me to making a custom system from scratch.
So, here we are at the beginning of the new Sands of Destiny Roleplaying Game and the creation of my own system to power it, The Mythos RPG System.
Feel free to join us on this journey on Discord! http://www.sandsofdestiny.com/discord