theme for a fantasy campaign

[whswhs]

In thinking over possible campaigns for my next cycle, I realized, first, that I definitely wanted to include a straight historical fantasy options, and second, that I had never done an original fantasy setting with the kind of multiracial world that's been standard in fantasy games since the fantasy supplement to Chainmail. My multiracial fantasy settings were Glorantha (from the second edition of RuneQuest) and Middle-Earth (from the novels). So I started thinking about creating my own.

The sticking point, for me, was a variant on Chekhov's gun ("If there is a gun on the mantelpiece in Act One, it must be fired by the end of Act Three"): If I'm going to have multiple races in a setting, the campaign ought to be about the existence of multiple races in some way. That is, the theme of the campaign ought to be one that can be explored best through the presence of such races. What would be a theme that would require that?

I got to an answer yesterday, by an indirect route, after puzzling over it for a while. I was thinking, actually, about the presence of Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings. In a way he really doesn't fit, as has often been remarked: He's not part of any of the Free Peoples, even though he looks like one of the Big Folk; he's not of any use to dealing with the One Ring; he won't even leave his bit of land in the Old Forest. What's he doing there? Well, what Tom is is the most visible example of something that's all through Middle-Earth: spirits of the land, in a very pagan sense, almost like Roman ideas about lares and penates, or Japanese kami. Middle-Earth is what it is, in part, because it's still pervaded with spirits; and Tom himself is in a way the spirit of the whole of Middle-Earth.

But what that kind of spirits are is personifications of the local microecology and microclimate. Every stream has its nymph, like Goldberry; every mountain has its brooding presence, like Caradhras.

So what we're looking at, I think, is a sense of ecological diversity as a value in itself. I had already worked out that the different races would be attached to different terrain types (in the GURPS sense), as to a degree they are in Tolkien: elves to forest and jungle, men to plains, trolls to mountains and arctic lands, and so on. This is a key difference from the real world, where one species has occupied all the various climate types to different degrees. Each species would have its own particular supernatural gifts, and its own affiliation with the spirits of its particular terrain type. But also, survival for each species would involve some measure of trade with the other species. This is especially to be seen with dwarves, whose habitat is underground, and whose food is going to come largely from providing stones and metals to surface races in trade—but all the species will work like that.

And that suggests that the big threats are going to be members of each race who are trying to establish themselves as monocultures, dominating the other races. The diversity of races will itself be a value to be preserved against whichever race's fanatics are trying to damage it.

Of course, the different races' fanaticisms will take different forms. A power-crazed elf, a power-crazed troll, and a power-crazed man will come up with very different schemes.

I think maybe I can do something with this.

Bill Stoddard

[Astromancer]

In several Old AD&D supplements (dealing with the Gods of the Demi-Humans and the Orcs) the idea of Humans as the lucky sepcies that can live anywhere is mentioned or used as an origin element.

Try this idea. It's not a blessing, humanity, traditionally depicted as less magical than the other Races, has no special home, no place that is properly and rightfully theirs. They aren't cursed, but they primal parents of humanity failed to show up for the blessings, so they don't have them.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this idea. It's not a blessing, humanity, traditionally depicted as less magical than the other Races, has no special home, no place that is properly and rightfully theirs. They aren't cursed, but they primal parents of humanity failed to show up for the blessings, so they don't have them.

No, I specifically do not want that. If you make Men special in that way, you have a world whose logic is to end up with the Dominion of Men. That was Tolkien's theme; Middle-Earth was a world whose destiny was to turn into our disenchanted world. But we don't love it because it's disenchanted, but because of the enchantment that lingers in it. I'm looking to explore that enchantment.

Bill Stoddard

[Bengt]

The standard multirace settings always bugs me. If they are seriously restricted to certain terrain types it gets more plausible. I don't think it's a good idea for one race to be forced to trade for their very survival, it makes them too weak in the long run. Dwarves could grow stuff underground in geothermal heat or something. It's better if everyone trades for something that is very convenient but not absolutely essential.

How hard are you planning to lock them to their land? Personally I think it should be pretty harsh, e.g. a race is only fertile if they eat food grown in their natural habitat. That would still allow Adventurers to travel about.

How possible will terraforming be?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Bengt

The standard multirace settings always bugs me. If they are seriously restricted to certain terrain types it gets more plausible. I don't think it's a good idea for one race to be forced to trade for their very survival, it makes them too weak in the long run. Dwarves could grow stuff underground in geothermal heat or something. It's better if everyone trades for something that is very convenient but not absolutely essential.

How hard are you planning to lock them to their land? Personally I think it should be pretty harsh, e.g. a race is only fertile if they eat food grown in their natural habitat. That would still allow Adventurers to travel about.

Not that hard. It will be more that each race is better able to survive in its natural terrain with less technology. For example, trolls, with huge bodies, can endure an arctic environment where a man would freeze.

How possible will terraforming be?

If you mean reshaping one terrain to be like another, it will not be too easily doable with technology. But the threat of its being done with magic will be one of the themes. Men might burn down the great forests, or trolls might cover all the land with snow and ice.

Bill Stoddard

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Not that hard. It will be more that each race is better able to survive in its natural terrain with less technology. For example, trolls, with huge bodies, can endure an arctic environment where a man would freeze.

One thought about Arctic/Polar regions is to put an amphibian race there since beyond a certain latitude all the solar converting organisms are water based.

If you mean reshaping one terrain to be like another, it will not be too easily doable with technology. But the threat of its being done with magic will be one of the themes. Men might burn down the great forests, or trolls might cover all the land with snow and ice.

Bill Stoddard

What stopping them from burning down forests with regular technology? I mean if there is a war and humans make inroads into the forest, they can cut down trees with regular axes before the inevitable counter attack. It will take much longer for trees to grow back mundanely than it took to cut them down mundanely. The elves would have to spend supernatural resources to keep up. This asymmetry could be significant over longer times.

It could be more balanced if there is a spiritual inertia that only lets land grow what is "right" on it until a long time has passed. To speed up the spiritual change could require 37 übermages in a complicated ceremony while singing elf-children is enough to make trees grow a bit faster on forestland.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you mean reshaping one terrain to be like another, it will not be too easily doable with technology. But the threat of its being done with magic will be one of the themes. Men might burn down the great forests, or trolls might cover all the land with snow and ice.

Bill Stoddard

But if humanity burns down the forests, they lose their supplies of lumber and firewood. Also, in the eighteenth century, the century when Europe had the least forested area, weather patterns in Europe were destabalised in strange ways. More obviously, covering the land in ice and snow means little or no food for the huge trolls to eat.

Would it be a commonplace amoung your fantasy races that one plays nice or one destroys theirself?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Not that hard. It will be more that each race is better able to survive in its natural terrain with less technology. For example, trolls, with huge bodies, can endure an arctic environment where a man would freeze.



If you mean reshaping one terrain to be like another, it will not be too easily doable with technology. But the threat of its being done with magic will be one of the themes. Men might burn down the great forests, or trolls might cover all the land with snow and ice.

Bill Stoddard

Scientizing fantasy is problematic and I suspect poses a problem for materialist authors using speculative genres analogical to what Christian authors have dealt from Tolkien on. Fantasy is a genre that is naturally pagan-friendly, just as Sci-fi is naturally materialist friendly. The favorite tropes of each can't be used without giving an uneasy feeling of being on another tribe's territory. That does not forbid it, it just forces the author to squeeze his mind a bit. As Germanic lore is a familiar part of Western Civilization it did not require to much squeezing in Tolkien.

The point I am trying to make is that if you are not careful with your scientizing you endanger the sense of eerieness, wonder, or numinousness that is desirable for fantasy. You can create the same effect in space opera with pseudoscience of course; the B5 idea of two godlike races fighting a war through the ages was a very powerful one. As was the barren desert of Dune filled with hydrocannibalistic barbarians. And so on. But somehow it doesn't work quite the same in fantasy.

[dcarson]

Since Homo floresiensis got nicknamed hobbits call them floresiensis and see who gets it.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I had already worked out that the different races would be attached to different terrain types (in the GURPS sense), as to a degree they are in Tolkien: elves to forest and jungle, men to plains, trolls to mountains and arctic lands, and so on.

Nitpick:

Men to grasslands. The elves will dominate forested plains, and trolls the snowy ones.