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

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Tell me something. You've got those demons who want to dominate creation and the thing standing in their way are the followers of the gods. Wouldn't starting a rival religion be a good way to weaken the opposition? One religion that I enjoyed creating was the "Temple of the Purifying Flame" a religion started by a "demon" known as the lord of lies as a breakaway sect from the previously existing pantheon that claimed to be out to purify the world and cleanse it of wickedness. Admittedly the followers of it didn't think they were part of an evil religion. They were entirely oblivious to the fact that they were being used by a being that wanted nothing more than to feed on human suffering and destroy the god they thought they were worshiping.

This was a common medieval European explanation of both ancient Roman paganism and Islam.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It really depends what sort of players you're aiming for.

For example, there are a lot of quite conventional sf settings, with earthlike planets and ftl and humanoid robots and psionics and archaic political institutions (often even called by archaic names), the sort of thing you see everywhere from Traveller to Star Wars. There are more presentist sf settings, where the interstellar reaches are patrolled by what amount to idealized Americans, as in the Lensman or Star Trek continuities. Pretty much anyone can figure out those settings.

And then there's Transhuman Space, which forgoes most of the last generation sf tropes, in favor of a realistic solar system and nanotech and brain/computer interfacing and uploading and genetic modification and a mixture of extrapolated present-day polities and innovative political adaptations to new tech. It's all put together in a fashion that takes some actual thinking and not just fannish reflexes, at least unless your fandom is something like Ghost in the Shell. Naturally that was just what I wanted to run.

And you know, I found five players for it, who were glad to do the work of figuring out the quirky setting, and build characters who took off from different cultural trends within it. And two of them came back for a second campaign, and were joined by three more, who also got seriously involved.

I don't think I'm the only GM with that experience, either, as THS is continuing to have supplements come out. There must be continuing demand.

The other counterexample would be Harn, which one will get further in if one is willing to learn about France and its neighbours in the twelfth century. But Harn fans and THS fans are pretty small communities within the gaming community as a whole.

It would be interesting to have some kind of survey of the actual games people are playing. As I have said elsewhere, I am skeptical that there is a strong connection between the game products people buy, and those that they use in play. But I agree that gaming groups aren't put together by taking a random sample of all would-be gamers, and that plenty of gamers with minority tastes can find other people willing to have a go.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

The other counterexample would be Harn, which one will get further in if one is willing to learn about France and its neighbours in the twelfth century. But Harn fans and THS fans are pretty small communities within the gaming community as a whole.

It would be interesting to have some kind of survey of the actual games people are playing. As I have said elsewhere, I am skeptical that there is a strong connection between the game products people buy, and those that they use in play. But I agree that gaming groups aren't put together by taking a random sample of all would-be gamers, and that plenty of gamers with minority tastes can find other people willing to have a go.

I was much more impressed with Harn until I noticed all the pseudo-Tolkien it involved or the fact that their afterlife was on the next planet over. I suspect with a thorough removal of that and a quick upgrade of the default religion it could be a very playable setting.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

I was much more impressed with Harn until I noticed all the pseudo-Tolkien it involved or the fact that their afterlife was on the next planet over. I suspect with a thorough removal of that and a quick upgrade of the default religion it could be a very playable setting.

I have never read a complete book on the Harn setting, but I get the impression that to get enough sales to keep going (and not drive away volunteers) they try to ride two horses of low fantasy and pop culture fantasy. Kingdoms of Kalamar has the same problem, where they worked out 10,000 years of Völkerwanderungen and prehistory back when it had to be a generic setting for copyright reasons, then added flashy magic and superheroes with swords and monsters of the week once they got the rights.

Edit: KoK is a good example of a setting where not assuming the cosmology of late 20th century science might have lead to a more interesting result.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Tell me something. You've got those demons who want to dominate creation and the thing standing in their way are the followers of the gods. Wouldn't starting a rival religion be a good way to weaken the opposition?

Why yes it would however here the thing. The demons are not just another faction they are truly spiritually damaged. In every case except one their best efforts only produces small scale cults that appeal to deranged mortals.


What was the one? For various reasons in the pre-history of my campaign a crystal was stolen opening a gap in the ward. Now the gap is just physical but spiritual as well, just "big" enough to allow the weakest of demons to escape the Viridians. There was enough of them (100,000 or so) to conquer an area of the Wilderlands and rule an empire. For those of you with Judges Guild material this how I explained the City-State of the World Emperor came into being. Grandiose as the title was and the Emperor was not a ruler of the World but a large empire covering 1/9th of the campaign area.

So these Viridians actively persecuted the gods and destroyed the religions of the cultures they came into contact. Substituting an Imperial Cult of Emperor Worship. However true their Demonic nature the Viridians turned on each other at various times in their history which reduced their numbers, and caused a Second Empire and finally Third Empire to be created. And because they were the weakest of demons they rarely opened a portal to the Abyss to summon one of their demonic betheren.

By the time of the Third Empire they were so few numbers that they had to use human, goblins and other mortal races to rule even their home city of Viridistan. As a consequence, each empire in succession became more like the surrounding civilization. Although there was always a element of instability. Eventually in the course of play in one campaign the PCs managed to kill the last Viridian Emperor. By then there were only three dozen left and none of them were of imperial blood. The whole Empire collapsed into a bloody civil war that was only recently resolved by another group of PCs in a another campaign.

The Imperial Cult is not able to cast divine spell or use any type of divine magic. They camouflage this with the use of arcane magic. Since the collapse of the Third Empire, religions from surrounding cultures have been making major in-roads.

Finally within the main area of the campaign there are three religions established by gods with unpleasant philosophies. One of them rival to another religion that generally perceived as good by the players. A goddess of honor and justice versus a God of War and Order. Both actively hunt demons, monsters, and evil but disagree violently about how to do this and how society should be ordered. So I have both angles covered in the Majestic Wilderlands. I have the true evil of demon, and the relative evil of the unpleasant religions.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

One religion that I enjoyed creating was the "Temple of the Purifying Flame" a religion started by a "demon" known as the lord of lies as a breakaway sect from the previously existing pantheon that claimed to be out to purify the world and cleanse it of wickedness. Admittedly the followers of it didn't think they were part of an evil religion. They were entirely oblivious to the fact that they were being used by a being that wanted nothing more than to feed on human suffering and destroy the god they thought they were worshiping.

I would consider that a cult i.e. religion on the small scale. When I say demons are incapable of founding religions. I mean on the order of it dominating an entire culture for centuries or millienia. The only way the Viridian did it was because at the beginning they were long lived enough and numerous enough to ram it down their subjects throats.

Basically around the early 90s I took GURPS Religion advice that truly evil religions on a national scale or long term duration are unrealistic and adjusted my cosmology accordingly.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by whswhs

This was a common medieval European explanation of both ancient Roman paganism and Islam.

Except that Roman paganism and Islam truly offers something to their adherents and were able to be part of cultures that lasted for centuries and in the case of Islam existing to the present.

My view is that the rebellion of the demon is a rebellion against creation. They do things so often that its leads to spiritual damage. In certain settings this could involve the potential end of creation. The closest analogy I can think of are those unfortunates that have mental illnesses that cause them want to amputate various body appendages. Demons have a similar self-destructive impute on a spiritual level and unfortunately spiritual damage doesn't automatically lead to a individual crippling themselves in the short term. As well as the fact that a more than a few are beings with immense magical powers.

I think this setup makes for more diverse fantasy setting when are both true evil and relative evils.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

But game settings have to appeal to popular culture if they want anyone to play in them (because most players don't want to have do do a lot of research just to build characters and navigate the setting), and popular culture does not give very good models for religion before the 20th century. Its no good building an anthropologically rich setting if the players bounce off it before they are done creating characters because it gives them a headache/doesn't have room for their cat-girl pirate ninja/is missing something which is a basic part of gaming for them.

Because I live in town of 15,000 surrounded by a rural county, it hard at times to find players. Now with Virtual Tabletops and the Internet it a lot easier but that only happened in the past decade. For the previous 20 years I had to make sure that the Majestic Wilderlands remained approachable for the guy who just wanted to play some D&D or similar fantasy gaming like with GURPS.

So what I did with my the Majestic Wilderlands is deliberately held on to the tropes that I started out with when I ran it with AD&D 1st edition. I still had elves, dwarves, dragons, orcs and dungeons regardless of the system of I used.

I had many groups that had fun just tramping around the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, chasing down rumors of treasure, and crawling through dungeons. But for those are are interested and for those who want to do they can dig deeper.

Finally my approach is neither better or worse compared to other setting. I wanted depth but I wanted a high level of familiarity as well so I stuck with the traditional tropes and expanded from there. For a Glorantha or Tekemul style setting I would stress you keep in mind how to bootstrap a novice into the setting. M.A.R. Barker with Tekemul had the players from his initial campaign play barbarians character from the southern continent that were as ignorant of the setting as the players were. Glorantha had Apple Lane, Praxis, and Dragon Pass.

[cbower]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Have you tried doing that level of setting design when making your homebrews?

I've done it, but it's easy for it to become a form of navel-gazing, especially since the PCs in a campaign will never interact with anything that approaches it. Plus, as I get older I begin to appreciate a more mythic approach to a fictional past, with different cultures believing in different origin myths. In some sense, having an "objective" or "true" origin myth isn't very important to me. The characters wouldn't believe it if they heard it anyway.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Tell me something. You've got those demons who want to dominate creation and the thing standing in their way are the followers of the gods. Wouldn't starting a rival religion be a good way to weaken the opposition? One religion that I enjoyed creating was the "Temple of the Purifying Flame" a religion started by a "demon" known as the lord of lies as a breakaway sect from the previously existing pantheon that claimed to be out to purify the world and cleanse it of wickedness. Admittedly the followers of it didn't think they were part of an evil religion. They were entirely oblivious to the fact that they were being used by a being that wanted nothing more than to feed on human suffering and destroy the god they thought they were worshiping.

Done something very similar myself - a Cathar like heresy based on the "revelations" of an "angel" ... apparently virtuous and given the charitable works (and self immolation), they were not obvious villains and quite hard to oppose. The demon in question wasn't that interested in actually promoting evil, all he was bothered with was a steady stream of souls that had actively rejected their creator and pledged themselves to him instead.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by cbower

I've done it, but it's easy for it to become a form of navel-gazing, especially since the PCs in a campaign will never interact with anything that approaches it. Plus, as I get older I begin to appreciate a more mythic approach to a fictional past, with different cultures believing in different origin myths. In some sense, having an "objective" or "true" origin myth isn't very important to me. The characters wouldn't believe it if they heard it anyway.

Well, I'm not anti-mythic. In fact these considerations largely play nice with such mythic feats as Primordials and Solars (from Exalted) manipulating the Shinma (some of the more basic principles of existence) to change the laws of nature, e.g. creating sections of existence where time is linear, creating or eliminating afterlife as a thing etc.