worldbuilding

Sand as far as the eye can see

In recent weeks, I’ve once more become very interesting in sandbox campaigns. My last campaign never got to the point where the players could really set out to pursue their own goals as most of them were new to the game, so my own experience with running sandbox campaigns is still very limited. And so, once again, I went out to search for more helpful material on the topic on the internet.

And one thing that I noticed, and that I had been struggling with two years ago, is that despite the very considerable number of guides and tutotrials on the subject, almost all of them are limited to the making of a hexmap. How to make your coastlines, where to place mountains, how to draw rivers, roads, and borders, and long elaborations on how characters travel from each hex to the next and why you need random encounter tables. And then somewhere near the end, there’s a throwaway sentence like “Oh yeah, and then throw in some towns and dungeons and you’re done”.

empty_quarter_yemen — “I don’t like sand.”

Well… no. You’re not done. Maybe it’s my own familiarity with geography, but drawing the overland map is really by far the easiest part. Once you know the basics you can get something very nice done in two hours or so. Slap a hex grid on top and you’re done. Now these guides are not actually bad. If you know nothing about geology, climate, and ecosystems, these are all great resources to making maps that are geographically plausible. But as I am seeing it, this is all still just step 1 of 12. Even when your campaign is a hexcrawl, and not every sandbox campaign is one, the actual game does not consist of endlessly wandering from hex to hex and running into random encounters. (Reportedly a lot of sandbox campaigns do start this way and then never make it past the second session.) The whole point of a sandbox is not to wander around, but to get somewhere. Guides on mapmaking only give me the sand, with barely any hint of what I could place into it.

A while back I somewhere saw the idea that it’s better to not talk in game design about exploration, but about discovery. Probably nobody goes exploring just for the sake of wandering around and maybe something will happen. The whole reason why exploration is fun is the anticipation of discovering something. And in my opinion, the difference between finding something and discovering something is that a discovery is something meaningful. You not only have to find something, you also have to learn something from it. You need to gain some kind of knowledge or understanding for the discovery to be meaningful. Now in many videogames, you can get away by putting a gold piece behind the sofa and then the player feels happy when he thinks about checking behind the sofa. But I think in a roleplaying game where you have a gamemaster who is limited only by his imagination, this isn’t really exciting.

To give the things the players can find in the campaign area of a sandbox game some kind of meaning, they need to have a purpose and be where they are for a reason. And to make it even better, they need to have some kind of connection to other things in other parts of the campaign area. And sadly, this is something that all the guides and tutorials on sandbox campaigns that I’ve ever seen so far never even touch upon. How do you prepare settlements that are connected to the world around them? How do you prepare NPCs that are engaged in interesting things in which the players can get involved? How do you prepare ruins and dungeons that contain things to discover that make the players learn something new about the campaign area?

As I see it, these are the really important parts of preparing a sandbox campaign. And never have I seen anyone giving halfway decent advice on the topic. Or actually, any advice.

Now over the last few weeks I’ve been giving the subject some thoughts and there are some pretty good sounding ideas forming in my head. Which I might be sharing here in the near (or not so near) future. But then, I’ve never actually done anything like this and probably won’t be running a new campaign until next year, so anything I might have to add to the (mostly nonexistant) discourse will be purely hypothetical. Probably will be better than nothing for many people, but I really wish those GMs who have been doing this stuff for years and decades would share some of their experiences and wisdom with the rest of us.

I hate it when this happens

This week my worldbuilding efforts for the Old World have been spend mostly on trying to develop the role and nature of demons and the Underworld. And the unfortunate conclusion that I’ve reached is that my original ideas really don’t work for the kind of setting the Old World has become.

Lovecraft Horror in the Bronze Age is a cool idea, but the focus of the Old World lies somewhere else, and it just doesn’t fit in. I really, really like the six types of Underworld creatures I had planned, but they are just way too much like space aliens. (Partly because five of them are straight up adaptations from sci-fi videogames.)

But it just doesn’t work. The Old World will be a much better setting without them confusing things. In such cases there really is no point in dragging along dead weight that will only be a burden. So they just have to go.

Perfection is not reached when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left that can be taken away.

But I think I might still be able to at least salvage the aboleth archetype. Instead of being some eldritch being from before time, it can still work as simple one big ass evil fish. This picture is just too cool not to do something with it.

DA144_04

Thinking about NPC levels in an Old World campaign

So here I am again, writing about RPGs. Even though I am creating the Old World as a fiction setting, I can’t shake the constant thought that it also would make for a really great campaign setting. And once more I am finding myself getting back to B/X, specifically LotFP. Yes, I know: Oh, the irony! Aside from the magic system (for which I have a complete replacement almost ready) I just really love the game in all its simplicity. Combat, character advancement, and monsters are just exactly the way I really want it.

With my experiences in fiction worldbuilding, my look on preparing a campaign setting for an RPG also changed a lot. In the past I used to attempt to emulate the structure of settings like Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Golarion, and for a long while really didn’t know what to make of things like Red Tide, Yoon-Suin, or the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. But having learned a lot about Sword & Sorcery worldbuilding in fiction, this very much changed and I am seeing what’s the deal with the later and how it fits my own purposes. Often less is more, and in this case it is much more less that is so much more. I am no longer interested in precise maps, borders, or population numbers for cities and countries. Making up new villages and dungeons as I go will be good enough.

But even when you have a setting that is defined by culture and environments and not by specific places and organizations, to have a campaign in which the players have real agency is that you know who the movers and shakers in the campaign area will be. And one topic that none of the many guides and introductions for running unscripted campaigns ever touch upon is the creation of NPCs. What class level should the major NPCs in the campaign have?

kingconan

Now one very easy solution would be to not set a level for NPCs until the players run into them for a fight. But that causes a pretty major problem. The decision of the players to fight an NPC or not is based on whether they think they can win such a fight or not. Chosing to start a private war with a powerful local leader is as big a choice as players are going to make, and it can only be an informed and meaningful decision if the strength of the NPC is fixed before the decision is made. If you create stats for an NPC only once you know that the players are looking for a fight, their choice will have been meaningless. When you decide to make the NPC beatable or unbeatable for the party at its current strength, the players are completely without power to influence the survival and victory of their characters. Over the years there has been a lot of talking over what makes the differences between the videogames Morrowind and Oblivion (and now Skyrim as well), and one thing that really changed how the games play is the adjustment of enemies to the level of the player, or the lack of it. In Oblivion and Skyrim it has become irrelevant what places you chose to visit and what quests to try, because the difficulty will always be the same. When you discover an area that seems too dangerous for your character, you might choose to leave and go somewhere safer for now. When you then return a long time later, after lots of great adventures and getting many powerful new weapons, and it’s still just as hard as it was the last time, then it really feels like you didn’t make any progress at all and didn’t become more powerful in any way either. What’s the point of reaching higher levels and gaining better weapons and armor if it doesn’t make any difference? In Morrowind monsters and NPCs are always the same strength, regardless of how powerful your character is. While this does mean that you will occasionally have to admit defeat and retreat, it really makes a huge difference to the sense of accomplishment and progress, that is an important part of unscripted videogames and RPG campaigns alike. Losing is good, because it tells you that any victory you gain has been earned.

Continue reading “Thinking about NPC levels in an Old World campaign”

My Old World Music

I am always very strongly influenced by sights and sounds and music always helps me a lot at focusing on a mood and aesthetic when working on my worldbuilding. I got a big collection of fantasy and sci-fi soundtracks from movies and videogames, and these are the ones I like the most for getting into the right mindset when writing for the Old World.

Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal: Baldur’s Gate was my introduction to Fantasy as a wider world of fiction (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings had been isolated one-off things for me) and was a huge influence on me (hence I am writing stuff like this today), and when the second game came out it was even greater. But it’s particularly the expansion Throne of Bhaal that greatly inspired my vision for the Old World and the new music thar came with it is a great match. (Somehow, as a compulsory completionist who always plays a full series in order instead of just individual games, I never actually played this one since my first playthrough after its release in 2001.)
Berserk: Short, but nicely dark.
Bound by Flame: This is a game that is little known and was rather poorly received, though I think it was mostly just well overpriced. But for perhaps half the price it’s a very nice little Sword & Sorcery game about a world that has been overrun by ice mages and their undead armies, with a few surviving mercenaries and sages attempting to prevent the complete extinction of humans and elves. The presentation of this fantasy postapocalypse is very nicely done and the music does a great part of it.
Diablo III:: The world of the Diablo series has almost nothing in common with the Old World and I never even played the third game. But the music is very nice.
Dune: The one from the 80s. Saw only pieces of it when I was 8 or so and Dune is nothing like the Old World. The music is very nice and fitting, though.
Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2: While this series is all out sci-fi (or is it?!), the adventures of Shepard and her crew are exactly the kind of tales I care about. Possibly the single most important influence on the Old World and the reason I am interested in writing stories in the first place. Not sure if the music is that great a fit for the Old World by itself, but after having easily played 200 hours in the series it has all the right associations for me. It’s dark, mysterious, but also bold.
The Empire Strikes Back: Of course it’s here. It’s in everything where I am talking about aesthetics and atmosphere, being the best movie of all time and apparently the blueprint for the art design of Mass Effect. The Bespin and Dagobah pieces are all perfect for the Old World. In fact, the whole aestetic of the Old World is based on the presentation of these two planets.
WarCraft III: Another big fantasy game of my early youth and one that influenced the style of the Old World almost as much as The Empire Strikes Back and Mass Effect In particular the orc and night elf campaigns set in Kalimdor, a continent quite different from any other I’ve seen in fantasy and without any of the generic stuff from the rest of the series. The orc and night elf music is the sound of the Old World.

Old World Animals

The Old World is a world that is intended to evoke an atmosphere of mystery and wonder, but at the same time be relatively easily accessible with no need for long exposition. A good way to do this is by using familiar things that the audience recognizes as a shortcut around unelegant infodumps. Possibly the best example of this method is Star Wars, especially the first movie. Everything you need to know you learn in the first two or three minutes with just a few words from C-3PO. The Rebels are running away in a cool looking ship with very big engines, the Empire pursues them with a ship that is just totally fucking humongous! Then the door explodes and through it comes a hord of guys in skeleton armor shoting everyone. And then this guy in black armor, a black cloak, and a black skull mask follows behind them. And he is accompanied by officers wearing Nazi uniforms. Barely any words have been said yet but you already know everything you need to know about this conflict.

I am using a similar approach to presenting the wildlife in the Old World. It’s different from the animals found in Europe and Northern America, but mostly these are animals that are very similar to what we are already familiar with on Earth. For that reason I am drawing heavily on prehistoric animals like dinosaurs and early mammals. They are very much like normal animals, but they also don’t look like anything we’re used to, which matches my overall approach to the worldbuilding for the Old World. Distinctively different, but not too alien.

In addition to being a convenient shortcut to create a plausible and easy to grasp ecology, basing these creatures on real animals also helps with establishing a clear difference between natural beasts and supernatual monsters. An important element of making things both fascinating and unsettling is a good amount of uncertainty what you’re actually dealing with. In settings in which the natural world is mostly identical to life on Earth, it is very easy for the audience to tell the difference between what is normal and what is alien. When you populate a world primarily with fictional creatures, this becomes a lot more difficult. Is something supposed to be threatening or not? The audience has to understand that to get into the thoughts of the characters who are dealing with it. By keeping the natural beasts of the Old World to animals that did exist or could very well have existed on Earth in the past, I am hoping to make this distinction more clear and easy to grasp.

There are no stats for any roleplaying game attached to them at this point, but to help getting an impression about their strength, each is given a threat class ranging from 0 to 6.

Arag

ow_arag

The arag is a predator about the size of a large dog. Their appearance is somewhat similar to reptiles and weasels and they are covered in sleek gray and brown fur. They have a very wide range and are found in almost all parts of the mainland, but are rare on smaller islands far away from the coast. Arags usually stay away from settled areas, but have little fear of single travelers in the wilderness and will sometimes even attack small groups. (Class 2)

Draga

ow_draga

A draga is a big reptile about the size of a lion but of a more slender build. It’s tough hide is a deep emerald green but tends to be more brown in regions where forests are less dense and there is less vegetation and shadows. Arags are usually solitary but sometimes hunt in groups of three or four, which are able to kill almost anything they come across. (Class 4)

Droha

ow_droha

The droha is a big reptile found in all the tropical and temperate forests of the Old World, except on smaller islands. It’s about the size of a camel and has been domesticated in many areas as the main beast of burden. Drohas often live in herds of one to three dozen individuals. (Class 2)

Garai

The garai is one of the largest predators found in the Old World. It’s a huge lizard bigger than the largest crocodiles and found throughout most of the southern regions. They are not terribly fast and rarely chase their prey far, but are surprisingly adept at hiding in the underbrush despite their enormous size. (Class 4) Continue reading “Old World Animals”

A New Magic for the Old World

In the 5 years or so in which I have been working on a Sword & Sorcery setting I have learned a lot about worldbuilding and the genre, and recent revisions of my previous work have lead to great changes in the geography and wildlife of the world and a slight shift in focus and general approach. Learning more about the inclusion of mystery and the weird in fiction got me to rethink my approach to magic and the changes that resulted from that have made the Ancient Lands different enough to think of the world as a new setting. The Old World is not a snappy title, but it will have to do for now.

In the previous setting, magic worked very much like the Force from Star Wars and was mostly about directing the flow of energy within all things with your mind. It’s a good magic system, but not one that would allow for the contemplation of the mysteries of reality, and certainly not one that goes into the weird. This new magic system builds on those previous ideas but is designed to have much more room for the exploration of spiritual mysteries and Lovecraftian madness.

The Nature of Reality

In the minds of ordinary people the world consists of the normal world in which they live their everyday lives, and the Spiritworld, which is a separate land where spirits live. But this is not at all the case. There is only a single world, but one that consists of multiple overlaping layers. The world that mortals think of as their own consists merely of the layers of touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste, but in reality there are many many more which they can not perceive with their senses. The spirits are not just watching them from another world, but are actually physically around them everywhere. They are merely existing in layers that are invisible to ordinary mortals and as such can not be touched, seen, or heared. But perhaps the greatest insight made by shamans and witches is that even mortals as themelves do not only exist in the five layers of their senses, but that their bodies and minds also extend into several other layers of which they are normally completely unaware. People who have been cursed are being affected in those other layers but are only aware of the effects on their bodies in the layers of touch and sight. All such things in which there is a visible effect in the layers of the five senses but the source is something that is happening in other invisible layers falls into the realm of magic.

As witches and shamans have discovered, mortals are not completely blind and deaf to the other layers of reality, but their senses of perception in those layers is usually extremely weak. Intuition and premonitions are the result of things perceived by these underdeveloped senses and common in all people to some degree. But trough years of meditation and the use of strong potions these senses can be greatly improved, allowing a person to see spirits and to see the presence of curses, spells, and sources of great magical power. And it is not only possible to passively perceive this Spiritworld, the parts of the mind that extend into those layers can also manipulate it. People who have acquired this rare skill are called shamans, witches, or sorcerers.

As everything that exists in the layers of touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste also extends into many other layers, the potential powers of magic are possibly infinite. But in reality the full forms of people, animals, plants, mountains extend only into some of the many layers that exist and not all of them can be learned to be perceived, regardless of training and commitment. And even the greatest sorcerers and most ancient witches have a perception that is very hazy and blurry and their powers of manipulation are clumsy and feeble. Spirits see much sharper in those layers and their abilities of manipulation are much finer and often much stronger. The most powerful magic is never the work of witches or sorcerers performed with their own power, but that of great powerful spirits who have made pacts with mortals who have pleaded for their aid.

As not only mortal people and animals exist in more than the five layers of the normal senses, but everything that exist, seemingly mundane substances can be of great use for the practice of magic. Salt has many important uses in everyday life, but in some layers its presence forms an almost impenetrable barrier for spirits even in small quantities. While a circle of salt is no hindrance at all for beings in the layer of touch or all those layers in which mortals exist, it is an extremely powerful substance in some of the layers inhabited by spirits. Iron is an ordinary metal to touch, and one of low quality compared to bronze, but being stabbed by a blade of either material hurts just the same way to mortals. To spirits it’s a completely different story and while bronze does very little to harm them, iron hurts them much more than simply cutting their shapes. Like salt, iron has effects on spirits much larger than the extent of its physical shape. Just as the heat from a large fire can be unbearable even considerable distances away from the flames.

The Truth of the Underworld

While all these things are understood by all students of magic, the whole reality of the world is truly grasped only by few and missed even by many shamans and witches. Even with the enhanced senses to perceive additional layers of the world, mortals can never learn to perceive all of them. And as hard as it is for mortal minds, this is not just the case for a few layers but in fact for most. The true extend of reality is unimaginably vaster. Ordinary people see the world like the surface of an ocean while witches and shamans can see a hand’s length below it. The spirits of mountains, rivers, and forest live in the layers from the surface to perhaps an arm’s length below it, but below those there are many more miles of additional layers that even the spirits can’t fathom.

“Normal” magic takes place in the topmost layers that are close to the five layers of the senses and directly interact with them on regular bases. Creating fire, clouding the minds of others, or making a tree walk are all things that happen here. But the world of spirits extends further than this and those who attempt to see the gods of the land in their true form find them and their existance to be far stranger and more alien than what a typical village shaman ever experiences. And beyond that lie realms inhabited by beings that normally don’t interact with the five layers of the senses at all and they are the stuff of nightmare and pure madness. Those who are delving into the more remote realms are called sorcerers, and while their magical powers have the potential to accomplish things outside the powers of witches, shamans,and even spirits, the dangers that come with it are unimaginable. When you look too long into the abyss or too deep, it will also look back at you. And it might get curious and try to reach up to you.

Undeath

When a mortal creature dies from natural causes, its existance ends in all the layers that it occupies simultaneously. When this happens it is gone and can not be returned by any means. However, there are ways in which only parts of a being are severed from the whole and the rest of it continues to remain in a state between life and full death. These are the undead. The most common kind of undead are ghouls. These are people whose bodies can still be touched, seen, and heard, but who have lost some of the parts that made up their mind and life energy. They are mad and feed on corpses and though their appearance changes they are still very much like living creatures. An even stranger creature is a wight, which has not only lost parts of its mortal self but also gained completely new abilities it did not have before. Sometimes the physical body is lost and the creature can no longer be touched but still be seen and continues to exist as a wraith. A shade is little more than that. A shadowy outline with barely any trace of a mind that somehow did not cease to exist with the rest of the former creature. As any aspect of a creature that has been destroyed can not be restored, undead can only be dealt with by destroying the rest of them. There is no way to restore them to the people they once were.