Category: worldbuilding

If at fourth you don’t succeed… (and why system does matter)

Last month I finished my fourth campaign in which I tried to bring my ideas for a Sword & Sorcery wilderness setting to life. While the campaign was overall a great success, and by far the longest of the four, the way the setting came to be actually realized in practice was not at all what I had been aiming for.

I believe I first had the idea for a Bronze Age Barbarians & Dinosaurs setting some six years ago after reading Robert Howard’s Conan and Kull stories and Edgar Burroughs A Princess of Mars, and remembering my old affections for Morrowind and dinosaur books.

The first attempt was Ancient Lands, which I ended up using in a short lived Pathfinder campaign. Not being happy with the result I tried reworking it as Lands of the Barbarian Kings for the low-level E6 variant for D&D 3rd edition. Still unhappy with the results, I brought back the same basic ideas when I got interested in rules-light oldschool RPGs as Ancient Lands (v.2), first for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea and later Basic Fantasy. After that campaign I threw a lot of material and ideas out once again to get a better focus on the elements that really mattered for my core concept in the form of Green Sun. Which I wanted to run in original B/X, but convenience at the moment led to me giving it a shot with D&D 5th edition instead. Which again, also didn’t really lift of, ignite, or whatever other metaphor you want to use.

Some of the players actually really tried to dig into the setting that I had outlined in a basic overview file. Which I really did appreciate, but at that point, the events of the campaign and goals of the party had already set the future adventures down a pretty clear path. And I didn’t feel like I wouldn’t be able to keep the great quest coherently together if we were to set out to new unrelated detours. Maybe it would have been possible to do, but at that point I was already clear on not wanting to run D&D 5th edition any more than necessary. Keeping a straight heading towards the ultimate goal of the party to conclude the campaign and then start over with something else seemed the much preferable option to me.

Looking back at all the campaigns now, it seems pretty obvious why each one only brought a slight incremental improvement towards realizing my concept, but never making an actual breakthrough. Each time, for reasons of convenience, I ended up running some variant of Dungeons & Dragons again. And at the heart of all the sweet, sweet awesome ideas I have for a Sword & Sorcery campaign in a Barbarians & Dinosaurs setting, is that I want it to be specifically not like Dungeons & Dragons.

I don’t have anyone to blame for this but myself, but still, curse the tyranny of market leader!

At first I was genuinely thinking that my ideas should work with D&D without problems. Dark Sun did it, right? (I’m not sure, I never got to actually see Dark Sun in any kind of prolonged action, and lots of settings look much better on paper than in play.) Going from regular Pathfinder to E6 with limited classes and my own bestiary seemed like a sufficient solution. Looking around on my site, it’s actually been almost exactly two years since I had great ideas for trying make the setting concept work better with Apocalypse World. But at some point I got interested again in the dungeon and wilderness exploration system of B/X and thought that would work just as well. That I thought 5th edition could be a suitable substitute when response to a B/X campaign invitation was muted is just my own damn fault. I got seduced by the warlock class.

I think the problem is not just strictly with the mechanics. D&D and it’s derivatives all circle around the permanent hunt for XP and climbing the ladder of level advancement. And the way the combat systems are designed, they are really made for lots of smaller fights rather than the occasional big ones. It’s also, which might be even more important, that playing D&D brings with it huge amounts of expectations from the players. And as a GM, I am always very conscious of not acting like the kind of jerk GM who tells the players how to play the game correctly, even if I had something else in mind for how the tone and dynamics should play out in action. I understand the role of the GM to be an entertainer, not a conductor. I make it possible for the players to play their story, I don’t direct them to play my story. With the group I had for the Inixon campaign, the players really were interested in exploring the world that I had prepared, which makes me feel that I am at least on the right track with my ideas. But I just never could consider telling them to stop playing like it’s D&D. I invited them to play D&D and they joined the game being excited to play D&D. That’s just not something you do as a GM.

But now the campaign is concluded (actually concluded and not just sputtered out and abandoned), and while it wasn’t the epic grand finale that you always imagine to get, it still ended with fighting a giant snake on the roof of a tower rising above a ruined city, it’s shattered body being slain by arrows and magic bolts, in mid-transformation into a sorceress after being blown over the edge by one of the warlocks. That’s still pretty metal.

After having distracted myself for a couple of weeks with the preparation for a Star Wars d6 campaign (which still has to wait until later this year), I am still drawn back to the lizard infested jungles to once more try it better. I had considered Barbarians of Lemuria several times over the years, but with the many lessons learned from the Inixon campaign, I now feel more certain than ever that I really should go through with this. It’s a rules light game that is very quick to set up and easy to learn, giving it a very low entry barrier for new players. And if any players bring existing assumptions about a BoL campaign with them, it’s probably something like Conan the Barbarian, which in this case suits just fine. Maybe it will be a bit of an uphill battle to get even just three or four players together for that, but I now feel that this will be necessary to make the setting concept work, and there are no easy shortcuts around that. D&D is no longer an acceptable substitute.

Dusts of Minethys

The petitioners of Minethys are miserable; they’re greedy sods, and they won’t share anything with anyone unless they’re paid for it. Since there’s not much use for jink here, they barter for services and rags for protection against the wind. The strong are those who manage to gain the services of many: their sand-built huts offer the best shelter from the wind, though this means nothing in the path of the tornados. They’re a hard lot, and they’ll bob a body for all he’s worth, if he lets ’em.

Honey Caves Harvesting

One of the major parts of food production in Kaendor is the harvesting of honey from giant bees. Giant bees construct their hives in cave systems and abandoned burrows of large animals, but in some places have been successfully lured into artificially dug tunnels. Hives generally consist of a small number of brood caves where larvas are being raised, and several storage caves where honey is being kept.

Giant bees are highly protective of they honey and quickly attack any intruders they perceive as a threat. To safely harvest the honey, workers protected by armor take buckets of honey contaminated with a fungus that is deadly to giant bee larvas and pour it on the floor of a storage cave. Worker bees quickly detect and identify the fungus and use chemical markers that make the entire cave off limits and abandon all the honey stored in it. Within a day or so, the cave becomes safe to enter and the honey can be harvested, with the giant bees having no more interest in it.

While seemingly easy work, harvesting honey is a highly skilled occupation. Not only is preparing a storage cave for harvesting extremely dangerous, with death a constant threat, but the leader of a harvesting group also has the great responsibility to prevent the fungus from accidentally being spread to other caves, potentially killing off the entire hive in a matter of weeks. As such, giant bee keepers are often highly respected people in their towns, like millers, smiths, and shipwrights.

Giant Bee

Small beast

Armor Class 11
Hit Points 4 (1d8)
Speed 10 ft., fly 40 ft.
STR 8 (-1), DEX 12 (+1), CON 10 (+0), INT 1 (-5), WIS 10 (+0), CHA 3 (-4)
Senses passive Perception 10
Languages —
Challenge 1/8 (25 XP)

Actions

Sting: Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 3 (1d4 + 1) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw, taking 7 (2d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. If the poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but poisoned for 1 hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way.

The Mythic Fantasy campaign style

Mythic Fantasy frequently gets mentioned in passing in listings of various fantasy styles. The Dungeon Master’s Guide for D&D 5th Edition describes it like this:

A mythic-fantasy campaign draws on the themes and stories of ancient myth and legend, from Gilgamesh to Cu Chulainn. Adventurers attempt mighty feats of legend, aided or hindered by the gods or their agents – and they might have divine blood themselves. The monsters and villains they face probably have a similar origin. The minotaur in the dungeon isn’t just another bull-headed humanoid, but the Minotaur – misbegotten offspring of a philandering god. Adventures might lead the heroes through a series of trials to the realms of the gods in search of a gift or favor.
Such a campaign can draw on the myths and legends of any culture, not just the familiar Greek tales.

Sounds good, makes sense. Barely anyone ever seems to use it. And when you see it show up somewhere, the vast majority of it seems to be indeed mashups of Greek gods, heroes, and monsters. What you get is a fantasy version of Greek myth, sometimes with names switched up, but you will have a really hard time to point out original fantasy that is inspired by mythic themes, motifs, and narratives. There is of course The Lord of the Rings, that was specifically written to be mythic in style, but even though elements of it have been copied thousands of times, the mythic aspects seem to have been lost to the imitators. If you dig in really deep, you might have some luck with lesser known novels, but it seems to be very much absent in movies, RPGs, and videogames. It’s an idea that sounds really good, but I never was able to identify good references for how that could look like. Except of course for the fantasy versions of Greece.

But today I was seeing a trailer for the new From Software game Elden Ring and took a glance at what some people think about it so far, and I finally got it! The whole Soulsborne series is mythic fantasy. This is how it can look like in practice. Is Lord Gwyn a bit like Zeus? Yes, of course he is. And he brought the Age of Fire to humans, like Prometheus did. But other than that, nothing about Dark Souls feels like a retelling of Greek myth. Bloodborne of course does nothing to cover up its imagery that is taken from Gothic Horror and Eldritch Horror, but it doesn’t feel like a Lovecraft story or a Lovecraft setting. It still is it’s very own thing.

But what is it that makes these games and their setting feel mythic, and how is this different from other types of fantasy?

I think the first thing that stands out are the boss monsters. They are not simply just boss fights. With some exceptions like the Capra Demon, most of the prominent ones are unique beings with a specific backstory and context. And equally important, they have powers that make them stand apart from other monsters and a very different kind of threat. When you take our own everyday world as your frame of reference, then a minotaur, centaur, or satyr would be an amazingly strange creature and great threat. But when you are already in a fantasy world, then even a minotaur doesn’t have anything supernatural or divine about it.

The other main thing that contributes to the mythic feel is that these are stories that explain how things came to be the way that they were and the transformations that the world is currently experiencing. They are stories that lift the veil from how the world works. They give you insight into the powers that control the world, why they do what they do, and how they are limited in restricted in what they can do.

Perhaps mythic fantasy is ultimately about the supernatural and divine forces that shape the world, and the potential and limitations of human agency. It’s about dealing with situations that are beyond anyone’s fault or control, with mortals having no choice but accepting the changes forced on them and somehow finding ways to live with them. That isn’t to say that heroes would be passive. Far from it. But fate plays a huge role and heroes often have very little choice in playing their part in events that are inevitable. Even when the ultimate outcome is not predetermined, there often can be only two ways for things to end, and it is up the heroes to make the one decision that makes all the difference.

There surely is a lot more to it than just this, and I am not even certain that these first observations are fully accurate. But I feel like this is a first insight into what this particularly elusive form of fantasy storytelling might actually be.

Swamp Sage

I saw this picture and had to turn it into a creature. Took just an hour to create this.

The swamp sage is a spirits that lives in swamps, marshes, and other wetlands. Its body consist of a large shell that often looks like a boulder overgrown with moss and lichen and can easily be mistaken for such when its small crustacean legs are tugged in below it under the water. There is a small opening in the shell at the creature front that houses its face, which consists of four small black eyes and its maw. Swamp sages are reclusive and rarely seek interaction with people, but are of a calm and nonthreatening demeanor and occasionally come together to consult with each other when something is causing disturbances in their territory. They usually try to avoid fights and use their fetid cloud and entangling plants abilities to retreat from attackers. If forced to defend themselves, they can spit a spray of acid from their mouths and strike out with one of their four long tongues.

Swamp sages know almost everything that is going on in their homes and know much about a swamp’s or marsh’s history and inhabitants. If something is threatening their territory, they usually prefer to advise others on how to deal with the situation than engaging threats themselves.

Swamp Sage

Large fey
Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 78 (8d10 + 24)
Speed 20 ft.
STR 17 (+3), DEX 8 (-1), CON 16 (+3), INT 15 (+2), WIS 17 (+3), CHA 14 (+2)
Skills Stealth +2
Damage Resistances bludgeoning, piercing
Damage Immunities poison
Condition Immunities charmed, poisoned
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages telepathy 60 ft.
Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)

Special Traits

Amphibious: The swamp sage can breathe air and water.
Magic Resistance: The swamp sage has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Innate Spellcasting: The swamp sage’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 12). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no components:

At will: dancing lights, druidcraft
1/day each: commune with nature, confusion

Swamp Camouflage: The swamp sage has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks it makes in swampy terrain with ample obscuring plant life.

Actions

Multiattack: The swamp sage uses either its Acid Spray, Entangling Plants, or Fetid Cloud, then makes a tentacle attack.
Tentacles: Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) bludgeoning damage.
Acid Spray (Recharge 6): The swamp sage spits acid in a 15-feet cone. Each creature in that cone must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw, taking 10 (3d6) acid damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
Entangling Plants (Recharge 5-6): Grasping roots and vines sprout in a 30-foot radius centered on the swamp sage, withering away after 1 minute. For the duration, that area is difficult terrain for non plant creatures. In addition, each creature of the swamp sage’s choice in that area when the plants appear must succeed on a DC 13 Strength saving throw or become restrained. A creature can use its action to make a DC 13 Strength check, freeing itself or another entangled creature within reach on a success.
Fetid Cloud (Recharge 6): A 15‐foot radius cloud of disgusting green gas extends out from the swamp sage. The gas spreads around corners, and its area is lightly obscured. It lasts for 1 minute or until a strong wind disperses it. Any creature that starts its turn in that area must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned until the start of its next turn. While poisoned in this way, the target can take either an action or a bonus action on its turn, not both, and can’t take reactions.