Let's Build A World: Historical Fantasy Turned Dungeon Fantasy

[Davies]

The original fantasy role-playing game has its roots in historical wargaming, just as the literary genre that inspired it has its roots in historical adventure stories given a weird, occult twist. One obvious manifestation of this rootedness in history can be seen in the designer's mild obsession with proper polearm nomenclature -- after all, the proper designation of a Lucerne hammer only matters if there's a Lucerne region of Switzerland with which they can be associated.

That said, it's fairly obvious that the social structure of a world where a large number of adventurers live and slay and are content but aren't being hunted down like the rabid wolves that they are won't really resemble any historical period. This has been discussed in a number of works on the subject, most recently in the exceptional Doomed Slayers by Jurgen Hubert.

The solution, then, would seem to be to create a world background totally removed from Earth's history, yet strangely imitative of it in certain respects. This is the task undertaken by pretty much every fantasy game world out there, from Blackmoor and Greyhawk and "the Known World" to Golarion and the Keranak Kingdoms and the very different "Known World" of the aforementioned Mr. Hubert's book. Yet this separation from our own world's history takes away from the historical roots of the genre.

How do we get around this? One way might be to follow the Banestorm example, embracing the crossworlds fantasy genre on a cultural level by dropping people from medieval times into a world where magic works and there are sapient creatures other than man, and examine how that changes the culture. But another way might be to turn that around, having magic and supernatural creatures invade a historical world, and tracking those changes.

That's what I'm aiming for in this thread -- a world that was our world (more or less) once, but has become something very different and yet eerily recognizable. One that allows for historicity and fantasy, and also faces the sort of challenges best handled by a nomadic guy with a big sword and his psycho buddies who cast spells, turn the undead and pick locks.

I could use help, here, though. I'm not by training or inclination an historian, and what I know is both what I've picked up by happenstance, and largely Eurocentric. So I could really use input as to how events in other parts of the world would be doing while what I have in mind was happening. Any other input that anyone has is also welcomed -- I chose the title "Let's" for a reason.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Davies

That's what I'm aiming for in this thread -- a world that was our world (more or less) once, but has become something very different and yet eerily recognizable. One that allows for historicity and fantasy, and also faces the sort of challenges best handled by a nomadic guy with a big sword and his psycho buddies who cast spells, turn the undead and pick locks.

To some extent, you can get that simply by adopting a mindset that embraces the concept of extremely competent individuals, instead of rejecting them as being offences against the common narrow-minded notion of what "realism" means.

Many different RPG systems can handle that concept. GURPS, for instance. But also several other RPG systems that has character creation being a process that can be done at a wide variety of power levels (BESM is another example, or Hero System, or my homebrew system Sagatafl).

To take GURPS, the big-sword guy just gets lots of Strength, the Weapon Master advantage, some levels of Enhanced Dodge, and so forth. Build him on a generous point budget (unlike GURPS 3rd Edition, it's not guaranteed to become obscene on something like only 400 CP), then give him companions who are equally badass each in their own way, then create a world in which high-powered badassedness isn't unique.

Once that's done, you merely start simulating.

[ericthered]

The real trick for a dungeon fantasy is where all the dungeons come from. The place where the economics of dungeons makes sense is most likely a post apocalyptic setting where a very high tech world reverts to the stone age.

[Davies]

@PeterKnutsen: Uh-huh.

@ericthered: That's another way of going at it, yes, and an influence on the way that I'm going with this -- the various events in the history I'm working out are at least semi-apocalyptic in nature.

That history is more or less identical to our own up until 1199, despite the fact that magic and divine or diabolic intervention were both facts of life, though not nearly as common as they would one day become. Think of it as being like Ars Magica if there had never been an Order of Hermes, or like the larger world background of GURPS Locations: Worminghall with occasional miracles added. Magic was rare and hard to learn ... but no one questioned its reality, and the law of the land accepted its existence, which resulted in a few odd laws that dated back into antiquity.

The Roman civic law had also had to accept the reality of magic and occasional miracles invoked by the priests of various deities, among them being the very very infrequent revival of the dead. The Romans had a very simple attitude towards that sort of thing -- if you'd been dead for longer than a day, you were dead even if someone did something to make you sit up and start walking and talking again. Your property was distributed to your heirs, and while they might be inclined to give it back again, there was no particular obligation to do so.

The Christianization of the Roman Empire resulted in changes to that law, as one might expect. Instead of a single day, a person would still be held to be dead by law if they weren't raised after three days. While the early Christans argued incessantly about the exact nature of Christ and how the resurrection had changed it, but they agreed that a man whom God saw fit to raise from the dead as His Son had been raised should have the same opportunity to maintain his station in life.

And that notion eventually passed into the English Common Law as well. It was rarely discussed, and seldom needed to be argued in court. It would be all but unknown for the act of being raised from the dead to occur more than once a decade or so. Typically, when this occurred and it transpired that the dead man had been raised after three or more days, then the now-living man would enter a monastery to thank the God who had given him a new life.

But it didn't always happen that way.

For example, when a wandering preacher, summoned in hopes of saving the life of a certain gangrenous king, learned from that king's grieving mother that he'd arrived just two days too late, and determined to raise the great crusader, things were different. Particularly since that grieving mother lied through her teeth, and it had been more than three days since her eldest, most favored son, had died in her arms. Richard the Dragonheart, as he was called, was recorded as being furious to learn that his bequest of his territory to his brother John would have to stand. And he was not at all inclined to enter a monastery.

Rather, bereft of all that he valued, he determined that he would seek vengeance on the Devil, who had clearly vexed him so. And he departed to do so.

His quest would, eventually, succeed.

Sort of.

(To Be Continued.)

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The real trick for a dungeon fantasy is where all the dungeons come from. The place where the economics of dungeons makes sense is most likely a post apocalyptic setting where a very high tech world reverts to the stone age.

I try to include a lot of potential for treasure hunting in my Ärth setting. Diving into ancient Egyptian tombs, full of traps (lubricated by magically preserved grease), with the main treasure being a few powerful items, rather than a cartload of +1 swords. Some tombs or other abandoned facilities might be from an Atlantean colony, or have been built and occupied by non-Humans such as Dwarves or "Gnomes", the later being an evolved form of Neanderthals who fle underground and invented a way to survive on fungi that feed primarily on magic.

That still makes for a lot fewer dungeons than in your average D&D setting, but then again I don't consider dungeoncrawls to be that interesting. I just include the potential for them, because I want Ärth to offer a hugely varied potential for adventures, depending on what the player characters are in the mood for.

[William]

If various chthonic races have been hanging around since prehistory but only making themselves more influential as magic grows stronger, you have a ready-made collection of underground complexes with exotic treasures available -- some fraction of them presumably abandoned and/or in various states of ruin, depending on historical events among those other races.

Also consider other ways of isolating construction, such as having fey mazes under hill or reachable by fairy ring, castles floating on permanent clouds, and fortresses on high mountains, possibly the latter being populated by some flying creatures.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Davies

The Christianization of the Roman Empire resulted in changes to that law, as one might expect. Instead of a single day, a person would still be held to be dead by law if they weren't raised after three days. While the early Christans argued incessantly about the exact nature of Christ and how the resurrection had changed it, but they agreed that a man whom God saw fit to raise from the dead as His Son had been raised should have the same opportunity to maintain his station in life.

That's a really clever and plausible idea. Though of course "on the third day" in the New Testament does not mean "after three days" but "after two days." Good Friday, the day Jesus died, was day one; Holy Saturday was day two; Easter Sunday was day three. Three days after would have been Monday, which is not a specially named day. But it would be easy to tweak the rule: "the day of their death or either of the two days following."

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The real trick for a dungeon fantasy is where all the dungeons come from. The place where the economics of dungeons makes sense is most likely a post apocalyptic setting where a very high tech world reverts to the stone age.

My pet theory is that demonic entities create them as traps, baited with insane loot. When they lure in a party of mortal adventurers, the adventurers are likely to die sooner or later, providing the demonic entities with human life force.

Bill Stoddard

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Though of course "on the third day" in the New Testament does not mean "after three days" but "after two days.

It was Easter: he was on time-and-a-half.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's a really clever and plausible idea. Though of course "on the third day" in the New Testament does not mean "after three days" but "after two days." Good Friday, the day Jesus died, was day one; Holy Saturday was day two; Easter Sunday was day three. Three days after would have been Monday, which is not a specially named day. But it would be easy to tweak the rule: "the day of their death or either of the two days following."

Bill Stoddard

Wouldn't that depend on whether you follow John or the synoptic gospels? They don't agree on when Jesus was crucified.