One of my favorite game mechanics in videogames in Insight from Bloodborne. You increase your character’s Insight by encountering weird alien shit for the first time, or by consuming the Madman’s Knowledge item. As your Insight increases, you gain the ability to see more supernatural stuff happening around you that would otherwise be invisible. But as you are pulled into the world of eldritch beings, you also become more vulnerable to their strange powers.
For a campaign in which the player character’s are on a journey to visit sacred shrines of supernatural power to gain greater wisdom and enlightenment from personal encounters with cosmic forces, an Insight mechanic would be just perfect.
In Dragonbane, this is a perfect case for introducing a secondary skill. That is, simply a skill that isn’t in the main rulebook for the game. Assuming the campaign begins with the PCs already having done a circuit of the regular pilgrim’s path but still craving for greater understanding from more out of the way and controversial sites of power, all PCs would start with Insight as a trained skill in addition to the starting skills of a new character. Which means it starts at a rank of 1 to 7, based on the character’s Willpower attribute, corresponding to a 5 to 35% chance at making a successful skill check.
Insight checks are rolled when touching a supernatural object, entering a supernatural area, or first interacting with a supernatural creature to gain a first impression of what’s going on. It might also be rolled in secret by the GM to become aware of a hidden presence. And in turn, an Insight roll might need to be failed or otherwise supernatural beings take notice of the PCs entering their vicinity and come to investigate. (That part is admittedly still very vague at this point.)
As with all skills, a roll of a 1 or a 20 marks the Insight skill for advancement at the end of the game. Once the game ends, players make a skill check, and if the check fails, the skill advances by one rank. The sacred shrines that the characters are seeking and visiting count as a teacher for for the Insight skill. Spending a full shift in a sacred shrine and contemplating the experience lets players make a skill advancement roll with a boon (roll twice, take the better result).
The main challenge for me in imagining fantasy adventure stories has always been the motivation of the adventuring heroes. Oldschool D&D was before anything else a tactical dungeon crawling game. It wasn’t even called a roleplaying game for some time. Just a fantasy adventure game, that had evolved out of wargaming. Characters were play pieces for the players. Both disposable and replaceable. The game is being played to have fun interacting with the challenges. It was not a game about experiencing the heroic journey of memorable characters. In that context, people just picking up a rusty sword to walk straight into monster-infested hellholes and to their pretty certain death was not an issue of narrative dissonance.
But very few roleplaying games that succeeded early D&D since the mid-80s are anything like that. They are not dungeon crawling tactical games. They are roleplaying games about characters with personalities, motivations, and ambitions. But in the typical fantasy adventure game, they are still walking straight into situations that should be certain and immediate death on a regular basis. Real people do significantly dangerous things as a job, even if the pay is poor, because they want to help people in danger and believe that this is worth the risks they are taking. But these people usually go to incredible length to mitigate all the possible risk to themselves and rely on extensive support structures to fund and equip them. And even then, there is regularly a point where they concede that there is nothing they can do because the risk of becoming additional victims that need saving is just too high.
Fantasy is fiction of the impossible and magical. But when it comes to the risk that characters take in fantasy adventure scenarios, and the possible gains they expect from that, my brain just can not believe that a person with a mind that works in similar ways to real humans, would make decisions like that. (Let’s not even touch on the whole genre of JRPGs and Shonen anime.)
We do have many fantasy protagonists who go on adventures outside of games, and many of them were the direct inspiration for dungeon crawling games in the first place. But old king Conan does not go on adventures. He rides out into battle to defend his country from invading armies. Ending up in dungeons and fighting demons was never his plan. Young man Conan does go dungeon crawling many times. But his motivation is that he thinks killing, stealing, and intimidating people are the most fun passtimes one can engage him. Not exactly a model for the typical fantasy game player to emulate.
Elric and Kane frequently find themselves in adventure situations, but adventuring is not what they set out to do. Most commonly they are on a journey to get a thing that is important to them or will be a valuable tool for their goals. And along the way, an adventure happens to happen by accident, and is something they would rather have avoided.
I don’t think any of these characters and stories make for good models for player characters in roleplaying games. And that is probably at the heart of why all my campaigns in the last 10 years have felt to me like a compromise to just have something to play, rather than nothing. But the adventures as a whole never felt meaningful to me.
But thinking about the topic again over this weak did lead to an idea that could be interesting to pursue further and build a campaign around for the Iron Lands.
Characters on Pilgrimage
Why would people go on adventures? That does depend on what even is an adventure in the first place? In the context of Sword & Sorcery tales, it’s pretty much a given that it is about characters on a journey during which they enter at least one exceptional, and often supernatural, location and face off against a significant, and usually supernatural, threat. But why do they go to the place, and why do they risk facing the threat? And for a campaign, why do they keep doing that over and over?
Self-preservation and defense only works so many times. By the third time the heroes’ home gets attacked by demons, the believability breaks down. Seeking an opportunity to get rich quick or die trying does work structurally, but that just goes completely counter to any themes I find worthwhile to engage with. And traveling heroes for hire who ask around in every village they come through if they have any monsters they want to be freed from just doesn’t pass my personal checks for a plausible world.
But here is one new idea! What if adventuring is basically a religion?
The idea is that there are many kinds of mystic cults and societies that seek to gain understanding or enlightenment about the reality of existence and their own being through personal experiences of the supernatural or divine. Living a rural life in the natural world only lets you experience a small fragment of what reality in its entirety really is. Studying tomes and listening to the words of mystic teachers in great metropolitan cities will only get you so far. To truly gain enlightenment and real understanding of the world and being, people have to experience the supernatural as well. And to that purpose, followers of these religions go on pilgrimages to visit many holy sites, and experience the presence of supernatural phenomenons and beings for themselves.
For most people, these pilgrimages are just that. A year, or maybe two, visiting several revered shrines and sanctuaries, and returning to their former lives as a grown person with a greater appreciation for the world and life. But some pilgrims feel that there is still more for them to learn. Greater truths and more revelations that are just out of reach and prevent them from returning home just yet. Many great and most revered mystics continue their pilgrimages to more distant and remote sites for decades or their entire lives.
And off the regular pilgrimage routes, on rarely travelled paths deep into the wilderness, pilgrims can often find themselves in the presence of forces far from the serenity of the more famous sanctuaries. And on these journeys, some people discover that they have it in themselves to face the supernatural even when it is frightening and hostile, and to keep going forward into the unknown when most others would turn back. Warriors and mages who have stepped on the pilgrims’ path are often found among those who have both the courage and the compulsion of curiosity to push on on these darker paths. But they can also be found in the most unlikely people who have never considered themselves as being particularly brave or thirsting for knowledge. And it is these people that many remote settlements, that have no experienced priest or shaman of their own, put their hopes on when they are struggling with the dark forces from below and beyond. And in many cases, pleas to take a look into these strange and rare manifestations of the supernatural are too tempting to resist investigating.
In Dragonbane, professions for new player characters cover the typical fighter, hunter, mage, and thief. But they also include scholars, merchants, artisans, and mariners. People without any special martial skills or magical powers, who really would have no qualifications to leave their homes and clear out bandit lairs, goblin warrens, and haunted tombs. But going on a pilgrimage to visit holy shrines? Sure, why not. Lots of ordinary people do that. And as their journeys go on, asking other pilgrims if they can tag along to visit some of the more dodgier and out of place sites is not much of a stretch. The professions are also only a template to speed up character creation. Once play begins, character advancement is entirely by using skills and receiving skill training from instructors. Who your characters will become depends entirely on their experiences during the campaign. This seems a really nice mechanical fit for a world in which characters become adventurers during their journey, instead of chosing it before they set out.
This setup also provides a nice default action for sandbox campaigns, for when an adventure is wrapped up with nothing else for the characters to do. Just take out the map again and look if there’s any other pilgrimage sites in the area. And if that turns out uneventful, continue on to the next one until something extraordinary disrupts the quiet journey again.
This is a new idea I just started thinking about. But I think this could be something really interesting to use as the centerpiece to build a fantasy world around.
Among all the GMs on the internet, I should be remembered as the guy who’s always been super excited about planning for big sandbox campaigns and Sword & Sorcery, and whose actual games never turned out as delivering either. After two years in the wilderness, the ancient call sounded again on the wind, and I am back to thinking, “Man, wouldn’t it be cool…?”
I now believe that probably the biggest thing that always got in my way was that I really wanted to make a beautiful world first, that is magnificent in itself, and then somehow adapt a game system to match the world, and create campaigns set in that world. And the world that I was dreaming up just wasn’t really well suited for Sword & Sorcery adventures and sandbox campaigns. No amount of retooling was actually helping with that.
But now, I am once again here thinking how could it would be to really take a proper shot at that kind of campaign I’ve seen people talk about over many years. And I feel that probably the best shot at making this actually work for once, is to start with a game system and campaign structure that have worked for many other people first, and then build a world around those. And the system I am thinking about is of course the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons Basic and Expert Rules by Tom Moldvay and Zeb Cook. (Actually Old School Essentials Advanced Rules but that’s 98% the same thing.)
And instead of making the world some new take on the old concept with recycled places and cultures from Kaendor and the Ancient Lands, the plan here and now is to really start with something new from scratch, going all the way back to the original references and sources.
Sword & Sorcery & Sandbox
The starting point for this campaign idea is to take the Basic and especially the Expert Rules as they are, and not make any attempts at improvements and streamlining, like retooling the saving throw categories, modifying the experience point reward system, or changing the spell lists to fit a different image of what magic is in the world. It should be just B/X with a few additional custom classes. (And the modern way to calculate attack hits after the d20 is rolled, because it’s just so much objectively better!)
But what is very important to make clear is that I have no intention of planning the campaign and populating the world to be a hexcrawl. The players picking one of the five unexplored hexes around their current location and with luck finding a hole in the ground in an area of forest covering five Central Parks, and maybe killing a dozen goblins for 3 copper coins sounds as dull to me as it is to apparently a very large number of players. My idea of sandbox campaigns is to have the players get involved in conspiracies against some minor king, find the hidden temple of a high priest kidnapping princesses, destroy the pirates sinking merchant ships and following them to their volcano lair on skull island. With the players making the choice which of the rumors they encounter on their travels they want to follow, and what sides they want to pick, and what kind of ultimate outcome they want to see. (This is one of the reasons why B/X is such an attractive pick, as it’s a system that allows preparing NPC leaders and their minions, or maps for lairs and ancient ruins very quickly to be ready to play within five days.)
The main works I am drawing ideas from for the game world are the classic 80s Sword & Sorcery movies Conan the Barbarian and Fire and Ice. But also the interpretation of the Young Kingdoms in the Elric RPG Stormbringer, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy and Planet Algol, and the post-post-Apocalyptic sandbox game Kenshi. Given the classic depictions of Sword & Sorcery scenes by the most famous artists of the genre and the highly fragmented state of civilization I want to go for, I would roughly place the cultural state of the setting in the mid-Iron Age. That’s the time where Greek city states were starting to make their comeback and the Phoenicians and Etruscans were doing quite well for themselves, but still a considerable time before the Romans and Achaemenids became major players in the cultural and political landscape.
The Iron Lands
As a start, I grabbed this map from the internet to have a first reference for the geography of the setting.
But in particular this area.
This area here covers roughly the size of Asia Minor, Greece, and Mesopotamia. That’s more than enough room for a decently sized Iron Age population, with a vast interior remaining for numerous nomadic tribes and all kinds of great and strange beasts.
The world of the Iron Lands is very much not planet Earth. The mountains, forests, and islands are recognizable enough, but the wild beasts and even domesticated creatures are more like prehistoric creatures from hundreds of millions of years ago, and the the monsters have only very little overlap with the generic D&D creatures.
In the very ancient past, some 10,000 years ago, the continent was home to strange inhuman civilizations. These Ancients have been long gone, and little has been left of their empires other than a few overgrown ziggurats made from strange green stone or purple glass, hidden deep in the jungles and mountains.
Long after the Ancients were gone came the age of the serpentmen, who build numerous large kingdoms across the coastal lands, ruling over great populations of human slaves. Their civilization eventually fell as well a thousand years ago, but a few half-abandoned cities still are clinging on in the jungles to the east.
After the serpentmen were gone from the Iron Lands, most of their human slaves dispersed into the highlands and forests, but eventually some clans began to rebuild abandoned cities or build new ones of their own. 300 years ago, a powerful sorcerer king conquered most of the city states of the Iron Lands. But even with his magic, he eventually died, and his 100 year long empire fell soon after, as his governors were overthrown by the people one by one. The rivalry between the many petty kings has diminished trade and education noticeably since the time of the Empire, and their individual power rarely extends for more than a three days march around their cities. The hills and many of the smaller islands are home to countless minor lords who are often little more than mercenary captains who moved into border forts abandoned by the Empire or the Serpentmen.
After the great wars of the Old Sorcerers had left the victorious armies badly shattered, and the surviving sorcerer kings ravaged in body and mind by the corruption of the demonic powers they had unleashed on their enemies, a great revolt led by the priests of the moon goddess Temis spread over the coastal cities of Kaendor to overthrow the evil tyrants and banish their demonic servants for good. After thousands of years of despotic rule by the Tower Builders, the Naga, and the Old Sorcerers, the mortal peoples were finally freed of the corrupting influence of demons. The ancient cults of the gods reemerged from hiding, and numerous new kingdoms were established under the rule of wise priest kings.
Though the tyranny of the Old Sorcerers and their demonic servants had been broken, sorcery had never been fully banished from the world, with many sorcerers fleeing to hidden lairs deep in the wilderness, and scattered secret cults pledging themselves to demons for personal wealth and power. And among the priests of Temis, many realized that they would have to dedicate their lives to eternal vigilance to prevent the return of demons taking a hold over the people. The Cerulean Order traces back its lineage to the old priests who led the people in revolt against the sorcerer kings,and all its members of the order are ordained priests of the moon goddess. However, the order exists separate from the hierarchies of any of the temples and is not under the authority of any high priest. Priests of the Cerulean Order follow the same traditions and use the same symbols shared by all the temples of the moon goddess, and most people are not aware of any difference between them and traveling priests from other temples. However, their robes typically include very little white and instead are made almost entirely from shades of dark or medium blue, and they are most clearly identified by blue tattoos covering their hands and wrists.
The Cerulean Order sees itself as a group of scholars first, and priests second. Their sanctuaries are usually closed to visitors and they rarely perform any public rites and ceremonies, though as ordained priests of Temis they have the power to do so. As the old priests who led the revolts against the sorcerers, the order sees its role as that of guides and advisors, and inquisitors who seek to uncover the influence of demonic magic wherever it is hiding, rather than as warriors who purge demonic cults and slay corrupted sorcerers themselves. By the very nature of the order, its members are always suspicious of possible demonic influence and looking for signs of corruption wherever they are traveling, and have somewhat of a justified reputation as being prying and a nuisance. However, the deep respect given to all priests of the moon goddess gives them a certain leeway not typically granted to visitors at courts or other outsiders. When direct warnings or appeals from members of the Cerulean Order go unanswered by a king or lord, they typically bring their concerns to the local priest or high priest. Such situations often put the priests into awkward positions that don’t help with the orders complicated reputation among the priesthood. But when a member of the order calls upon the name of the goddess to assert their certainty of a demonic or sorcerous threat and that they are not acting on mere suspicion alone, their warnings or accusations are typically taken extremely serious and the leaders of the local temple will use all their reputation and their entire influence with the local lords to see the threat purged.
In Dragonbane: Priests of the Cerulean Order are typically trained in both Animism and Mentalism and at least know the spell Banish or even Purge. Farsight, Divination, and Scrying are also commonly used spells, as well as Dispel, Protector, and Magic Shield. Their priority is to destroy demons and undead and protect those who are fighting sorcerers and demons from their magic.
Looking proudly at the sandbox map I made over the last two weeks from first rough layout sketch to mostly finished version, I made the disappointed realization that I had once again prepared a D&D campaign. Despite my joy at having found a game in Dragonbane that is free of the underlying mechanical framework shared by all D&D versions and with a bit more substance than Barbarians of Lemuria, and writing a whole post about needing to approach sandbox preparation differently, I was still falling in the old established patterns that I’ve trained myself to adopt for the last ten years or so. Trying to fill the new sandbox with all my favorite D&D dungeons that I always wanted to use one day and taking a new shot at the old Forest of High Adventure concept surely didn’t help with that.
I feel a cleaner break is in order. To really approach a Dragonbane campaign with a fresh perspective on Kaendor.
Seven years ago, I wrote Project Forest Moon, a list of new design principles that I wanted to put at the center of the worldbuilding for a Sword & Sorcery wilderness setting. Which I still consider a huge success and my biggest breakthrough in really finding the right focus and tone for my following work. I think writing down a similar updated concept paper might be really quite useful for me now. When I think of new ideas how I can manifest the style I am aiming for in concrete setting elements, I often remember that I already did come up with something great a few years ago, but it somehow slipped from my mind at some point and I didn’t do anything with it. This post is a collection of many of these ideas for myself, to look up again when I’ll inevitably get lost in the weeds again.
From Nate Simpson’s Nonplayer.
Tone and Style: One thing that has always been core and center of all my worldbuildilg is that I wanted it to be a big forest setting from the very start. And it soon developed into a desire to give it somewhat of a pulpy lost world style. Influences have come and gone over the years, but I think a really good foundation for my own mental image as I further develop environments and cultural elements is “a Sword & Sorcery jungle world collaboration by Frank Frazetta and Moebius”. If they had painted and drawn such a world, how would I translate what I see into descriptions and scenes? Another huge influence I mention all the time is of course Morrowind, which really set the standard for me for fantasy settings that feel like different worlds than slightly rearranged versions of European folklore. And more recently, Kenshi has become a major influence on what I want to accomplish with the setting. While not actually a fantasy setting and very much a desert world, it’s such a fascinating example of small warlord societies on a desolate alien planet.
The Forest Moon: The term Forest Moon comes of course directly from Endor in Return of the Jedi. The visuals in that movie and The Empire Strikes Back have left a giant impact on my imagination since I saw them for the very first time. There are no sci-fi elements in Kaendor, but a lot of classic pulp art blended fantasy and space elements together with no clear separation, and the idea of Kaendor being an alien world around a huge gas planet really resonates with me to evoke that amazing pulp style. It means very little in practice since conditions on the moon are identical to Earth and nearly any fantasy world, but one way in which such a setup would logically manifest itself is in frequent and long-lasting eclipses. I did work out a complete 16-year cycle calendar with 24 months of 16 days and three leap years of 23 months, that also indicates likely eclipse days at some point. I think I need to make renewed efforts to incorporate this into the culture of the world. At least the eclipses that can happen multiple times per year should have some dramatic impact.
Permian Pangea: Dinosaurs are extremely cool. But they also kinda on the nose. Barbarians riding on dinosaurs can be great pulpy fun, but they don’t really evoke a sense of a plausible alien world. I found that a great solution to this is to instead populate the world with animals from the Permian and Paleocene periods directly preceding and following the dinosaurs. They are still very realistic animals, because they actually did exist, but are mostly unknown even to people who can name dozens of dinosaurs on pictures. They seem like they are made up to most people and a bit alien, but nothing exceptionally weird. I think I worked out the main predators and livestock animals for Kaendor years ago and still don’t feel like there’s any more work to be done. Just make frquent mention of drohas and krats as pack and farm animals in places that the players are coming through. I only need to stat them for Dragonbane, which is really quick and simple.
Human Civilization is new and small: I don’t really believe in the idea of lost golden ages and actually find the concept somewhat offensive. It’s the conservative moaning about a better past that never was, and a rejection of change as a matter of principle. But impressive ancient ruins are really cool, and post-apocalyptic anarchy can be a lot of fun. To eat my cake and still have it too, I very early came up with the idea that the past great empires that build monumental castles and made the magic treasures were otherwise actually really terrible and their disappearance a good thing for the world and its people. Kaendor is full of ruins and treasure hoards from the naga and shie who enslaved the early humans or drove them into the most remote regions of the wilderness. Now that they are mostly gone, humans can build civilizations of their own, but they are way too small to fill out the vast territories ruled by the elder peoples, and so numerous huge, empty ruins still cover what is now again wilderness. Still largely untouched and unexplored. Human civilization consists only of a handful of relatively minor city states, separated by vast stretches of wilderness full of terrible beasts.
Nature Always Wins: People always seem to think of themselves as the masters over nature who have taken control over the world they live in. But that perception is simply the result of a limited perception. They see the changes to the environment within sight of their homes and think of history on the scale of decades and centuries. But on the global scale, and the cosmic scale, none of the works and accomplishments of mortals mean anything. Eventually, everything will be reclaimed by the wilderness and forgotten, leaving behind only a few mysterious traces that hint of something that came before. And even those will completely fade away eventually, when the mountains still stand and forests still grow.
Bronze Age Technology: Bronze age weapons and armor, and architecture and administration. Because it’s a cool style.
A World of Demons: Unlike many other fantasy worlds, Kaendor has a clear separation of the natural and supernatural. Creatures are either ordinary animals, even if huge and deadly, or they are supernatural monsters. For many people, the common term for the later beings is demons. They don’t come from some other dimension or realm and are creatures of flesh and blood that are born, need to eat, and can be killed. But they do have magical powers and age very differently, if at all. Another class of creatures does exist that are pure spirits without physical form that come from another world, and they are typically referred to as demons as well, but they are actually a completely different type of beings.
A World of Heroes: Just as there is a clear difference between ordinary animals and monsters, there is a clear distinction between heroes and ordinary people. Like monsters, heroes are in some way connected to the supernatural. There are countless different beliefs of what makes a person a hero, from being blessed by the gods or chosen by fate, to circumstances of birth and the heroism of ancestors, or that it is something that can be attained through devotion to the divine or a form of enlightenment. None of these might be true, or all of them might. What is clear is that all heroes are destined for greatness, be it for good or for ill. And it usually does not take long for people to recognize heroes for what they are. All PCs and mages are always heroes, as are many kings, chiefs, and warlords. Rulership is often inherited in the lands of Kaendor, but close relatives who show the traits of a hero are almost always seen as more legitimate successors than those who do not. (In Dragonbane game terms, all PCs and all NPCs who have Willpower Points are heroes.)
Sorcery is corrupting: Magic is a power that does not come from the natural world but from outside of it. It is not inherently evil or destructive, but it is not bound to respect the natural laws that govern and sustain all living things. In the presence of poorly controlled magical energies, living things become corrupted and warped from the inside out until they become sickly and twisted and eventually die, or continue to exists in a state between life and death, sustained by the very magical forces that are destroying them. Even rocks and metals can become brittle and crumble after long exposure to extreme corruption. The spells most commonly known and taught by most mages are the result of many centuries of careful study and research and dangerous and costly experimentation to minimize any unintended corrupting effects on their surroundings and nearby creatures. But those with the ambition to explore and discover new and greater magical powers rarely take the caution to have the care and patience to keep their work from corrupting their surroundings and themselves. Making ambitious sorcerers seen as very dangerous and rightly feared.
Everything is a Cult: In the lands of Kaendor, every gathering of people with a common purpose prays to one or several gods to protect them and bless their efforts. In some places, all groups, factions, and organizations might pray to the same god worshiped in the local temple, while in others there might be dozens of different gods and spirits, which might be so obscure that barely anyone outside the group has ever heard of them. But every group has some kind of altar in their main gathering place, and members show their status as initiates with talismans displaying the symbols of their cult.
Gods are not People: I have still not yet fully decided on the actual nature of gods in Kaendor, but while they might be depicted as such in iconography, they are definitely not people or even individuals. They are more like divine forces or powers that are believed to have a real influence on the world and who can be influenced through worship and rituals, but they are not beings with a defined shape or who exists in precise locations, and won’t directly communicate to mortal creatures through words. Ultimately, priests with magical powers are mages who have studied and mastered spells just like sorcerers do, but who pursue the advancement of their magical skills within the teachings and philosophies of their faith.
