The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought about

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Reading through a certain book, I have recently realised that all too often, fantasy settings are written with no regard for the basement upon which they are constructed. I mean, some fantasy settings generally lack a clear cosmology, so this issue simply doesn't apply to them; I'm not sure, but Song of Ice and Fire seems to be that sort of setting, but I'm not familiar enough with it to tell for sure. Some settings do provide superficial cosmological information, such as which god created what, but don't look any deeper. Incidentally, real-life mythologies that seem to have taken this approach are Greek, Roman, Abrahamic etc.

But the example I found really did dig deeper. Here's the short version of the very beginning:

The natural state of existence 'was' timeless. It's actually not correct that the Timeless state existed before time, but that's the only way timed beings can envision it. Everything existed, but it existed in no place. This region was infinite, and all things within it were infinite as well. Nothing was apart. There was nothing from which to be apart. Everything was all at one point, which was the wholeness of infinity. Everything was possible, but nothing was necessary or likely. Infinity was whole, and existence was perfection.
Then 'came' the Principle of Separation. One of the things it did was separate knowledge from ignorence, and in doing that, it separated itself from everything else, including the Timelessness. It also separated other Principles from Timelessness and from each other. Among them were the Principle of Properties, which allowed entities to have them. The Principle of Identity, which made it so that two entities with different properties were not one and the same. The Principle of Communication, which allowed entities to affect/influence each other. The Principle of Space and Location.
It is not proper to say that the Principle of Separation was the 'first' principle or that it somehow created other Principles, because in Timelessness, there can be no 'first' and nothing can be 'created' - things can merely be separate from one another, which allowed the existing Principles to self-realise. Every separation was simultaneous, including that between one moment and the next one. Only 'after' the separations was Timelessness gone, and the possibility of something being 'first' or 'later' realised.

I find it fascinating. A worldbuilding approach that actually addresses the setting beginning from the very basics, from providing the method to the existence of conditions that make possible the things that are all too often taken for granted, such as time, space, entities, let alone the gods that are considering the idea of creating a universe to play in. Have you seen such a level of setting design often? Because I've only found it in Exalted so far (published in Graceful Wicked Masques), and I get a feeling that something like that can be found in the mythologies of Buddhism and/or Hinduism. Mage the Ascension feels like a setting that should contain such info, but I don't recall finding much in the way of it (other than the Cosmological Constants box in one of the books).

Have you tried doing that level of setting design when making your homebrews? How about an unorthodox approach for a science-fiction setting (e.g. some alternative to the Big Bang)? What other thoughts or comments do you have on the topic?

Thanks in advance!

[Murrkon5]

I sometimes go "SQUIRREL" and go chasing off after deep origins in my fantasy game worlds. Fun to do, but then I have to give my head a shake and return to business. I have to consider: how many people living on the game world now are aware of this knowledge? The scholar elite in the richest cities. Wizards studying in the best remote towers. How many player characters, even ones designed to be "brains", would have the vaguest sniff of a hint of such deep matters? Zero. This sort of knowledge and information just isn't available.

(and, then, how many players themselves are interested? Depending on the group, sometimes zero, but usually a minority)

Best to use the time I have available for current events and next week's session.

Of course, any such foundational material in a fictional world can spark ideas for adventure current events. It's rather a "dragon and egg" debate. Many foundational thoughts occur while making a current event adventure. Odd foundational thoughts pop up while riding the bus which domino into the current event adventure. It's rather a crazy quilt.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Fan theories regarding the cosmology of ASOIaF vary widely, but everybody generally agrees that GRRM is keeping things intentionally ambiguous on that front, and most agree that he probably has it worked out in his own head, whatever it is. My personal favorite theory is that it's similar to Banestorm: There are no active gods, or no gods at all, but a lot of people who can do magic have themselves convinced that there are and that they represent them. Witness the distinctly minimal overlap between Thoros and Melisandre's abilities, despite both claiming to draw power from the same deity, which seems strongly likely to be the result of differing training considering that Mel studied in Asshai and Thoros didn't, and Mel shares some abilities with Shadowcasters who aren't R'hllor-cultists.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Murrkon5

I sometimes go "SQUIRREL" and go chasing off after deep origins in my fantasy game worlds. Fun to do, but then I have to give my head a shake and return to business. I have to consider: .... How many player characters, even ones designed to be "brains", would have the vaguest sniff of a hint of such deep matters? Zero.
...
Best to use the time I have available for current events and next week's session.

Me too. I used to love to design this sort of thing, but again and again it proved useless at the table. These days I just flip past the "origins of everything" and even the "history of the world" pages in splatbooks: I want to get to the bits that are actually helpful in my campaign.

I think there has been a bit of a trend to move away from these top-down approaches towards more player-facing approaches - and I think it's a move in the right direction. Once upon a time, every worldbook started out with history, sometimes even starting way back at the origin of the world. The old GURPS Fantasy (now Banestorm) is a good example: it doesn't do much cosmology, really, but it does spend a long time tracing the history of the world. Fun to read, but mostly not going to come up in-game.

Contrast the player-facing approach of the more recent Dungeon Fantasy line: no history at all, certainly no cosmology, just rules for running fun situations the PCs will actually encounter. Similarly with Monster Hunters. I think this is a move towards a better approach (quite apart from the deliberately kitschy tone of DF, which I can take or leave).

(Though I agree that inventing cosmologies can be heaps of fun!)

[mehrkat]

I almost always spend a little time understanding the cosmology. Both on published worlds I use for a game setting and on worlds I create.

However, I focus on how the characters interact with the cosmology. So I need to understand what magic is, how the divine interacts with the world, does evolution exist, what physical laws are different, what the social and economic structure of world is. where the races come from

At that point I tend to focus on the areas of the world the characters are likely to interact with.

[Wavefunction]

Almost every setting I have ever designed has had some kind of explanation for the existence of the universe, I kind of need it, it acts as a foundation for everything else.

In the setting I'm currently designing (can't reveal any details in case of players reading this), I've come up with a whole creation event for the universe, and I'm having to consciously stop my self from going even further down the rabbit hole and coming up with a creation event for the factors/things that caused the creation event. That way madness lies.

[johndallman]

My current campaign, Infinite Cabal, is essentially about discovering why the Infinite Worlds exist. However, I don't know the whole answer yet.

Since I'm playing NPCs that are cooperating and sometimes participating in the discovery, it's a lot easier for me to firewall if I don't know the whole answer. It gradually emerges from experiments, example worlds, and so on. I don't find it too difficult to keep things consistent.

[Anthony]

In general, the people in the world don't know the "real fundamentals", so as a GM I only need to understand them well enough to make a setting that hangs together. This kind of thing is like deciding you need to understand big bang cosmology to run a historical game.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by johndallman

My current campaign, Infinite Cabal, is essentially about discovering why the Infinite Worlds exist. However, I don't know the whole answer yet.

I tend to think this way, too. If the cosmology is going to become relevant to the game, it's probably going to be as a mystery to be investigated: What really happened at the dawn of time? What is magic, really? Who created the world, and for what purpose? and so on.

And if that's its relevance to the game, then as GM I would probably not want to know the answer in advance; my instinct is instead to behave like a show-runner for a TV series and create smaller answers, step-by-step, just a few steps ahead of the players, hopefully as best fits the ongoing drama of the story.

I know that's a very narrativist answer - guilty as charged!

[sgtcallistan]

The deep past of a game I think is vital (in my style of GM-ing, that is).

Legends might suggest that the race of men arrived on this (fantasy) world in a golden ship from one of the many campfires in the night sky; players might realise that there are three moons; they might guess that magic is technological, and that this world is like Thundera (a moon of Jupiter during the sun's expansion, millions of years from now, probably), but they must also ride a longship down the waters to the whale-road to get anywhere.

Fractured history records might suggest this (SF) universe is the distant future, with humans almost everywhere, with a war against the machines to blame for lost places now being re-discovered; but the recovery of ancient proof of the origins of humankind is a sport for the idle rich.

It can set the tone (if only for the GM), and guide the whole course of the campaign, even if it's never properly investigated.