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

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I am also on the side of "does anyone in the setting know this? Then why should I as GM, let alone player, know it?" On the other hand, describing the cosmologies of characters in the setting can be fun.

Depends on the setting. But IME, fantasy almost always includes magic, which implies a much greater understanding of the universe.
Compare: most people have no idea who Napoleon's advisors were, but everyone has at least a vague notion of the Big Bang, while anyone working in a physical area has a much better understanding.
It would seem logical that mages and clerics would be the sorts of people who have this deeper understanding, while a superficial understanding would bleed over to the masses like it did in all other areas.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Depends on the setting. But IME, fantasy almost always includes magic, which implies a much greater understanding of the universe.
...
It would seem logical that mages and clerics would be the sorts of people who have this deeper understanding, while a superficial understanding would bleed over to the masses like it did in all other areas.

It could be, or they could be full of contradictory theories, deliberately spreading nonsense and misinformation, and hiding their knowledge for a few chosen disciples like mystics and occultists in our word. If you ask someone with a PhD in natural science, they are likely to admit that outside of their specialty they mostly trust that the specialists have done their homework and get by with a superficial understanding, and they thought they had a pretty complete model of the physical world in thirteenth century and the late nineteenth century.

Being able to summon ancient spirits might seem like it would help understand how the world came to be, but it doesn't guarantee that they are as old as you think they are, or that they will tell the truth, or that people will listen to you rather than the people who get visions and flashes of insight the old-fashioned way.

[Polydamas]

Another good example is that for thousands of years, blacksmiths were able to make incredible things while believing that steel is purified iron. Their theory was backwards, but it was good enough to direct their practice in useful directions.

In D&Desque fantasy I would expect clerics and druids and paladins to learn lots of dogma which is useful to their patron or their church, while their spell-casting relies on invoking beings to do the work in a way which they don't really understand. And a LG Paladin, a Neutral druid, and a CE cleric of the Bloody-Handed One probably have sharp disagreements about how the world works and where it came from.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

In D&Desque fantasy I would expect clerics and druids and paladins to learn lots of dogma which is useful to their patron or their church, while their spell-casting relies on invoking beings to do the work in a way which they don't really understand. And a LG Paladin, a Neutral druid, and a CE cleric of the Bloody-Handed One probably have sharp disagreements about how the world works and where it came from.

That's one of the interesting things about most fRPG religion - it tends to be a weird form of henotheism dressed up as polytheism to the extent that you have a pantheon of deities, each with their own independent religion.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Depends on the setting. But IME, fantasy almost always includes magic, which implies a much greater understanding of the universe.
Compare: most people have no idea who Napoleon's advisors were, but everyone has at least a vague notion of the Big Bang,

Vague to the point of often being effectively fictional, even among people who 'believe' in it. Same thing with many scientific concepts.

while anyone working in a physical area has a much better understanding.

Not 'anyone'. It's perfectly possible to be a well-trained and skilled, say, chemist, or architect, or cetacean specialist, and have no more or sometimes even less actual knowledge about cosmology than some laymen.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

and they thought they had a pretty complete model of the physical world in thirteenth century and the late nineteenth century.

This^^^.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Being able to summon ancient spirits might seem like it would help understand how the world came to be, but it doesn't guarantee that they are as old as you think they are, or that they will tell the truth,

This^^^.

Very few D&D style settings actually make any sense on their own internal terms. They don't have to, if you're just using them as background for a classic dungeon crawl/hack and slash, etc.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

That's one of the interesting things about most fRPG religion - it tends to be a weird form of henotheism dressed up as polytheism to the extent that you have a pantheon of deities, each with their own independent religion.

You are right. If someone wanted a real-world parallel, they are likely to find something from India or China a better fit than any place or time in Europe or the Middle East.

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.

[whswhs]

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.

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.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

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?

I been running my own variant of Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy for 30 years called the Majestic Wilderlands. At one point, I pulled different plot elements i used in various campaign and made a coherent cosmology out of it.

Even wrote a in-game document that one culture's version of Genesis.

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloa...0Beginning.pdf

I tend to run my campaigns as sandbox where the players are free to do withever makes sense of their character. The setting has a life of it own with the NPCs pursuing their own goals for their own motivations. Sometimes it important to the players and sometimes it isn't.

Because of this it is important for me to come up with NPCs motivations and goals that make sense. For the purpose of running RPG campaigns my view what makes a person behave as they do is a combination of personality and culture.

Where cosmology comes into play is that it influence culture by providing an important foundation of the context in which it exists.

For my setting this is reflected how religion and magic works. I chose to have a limited number of gods (ten in fact) however they manifest differently to different cultures. To the Ghinorians they believe themselves to be the chosen people of Mitra the Goddess of Justice and Honor. However to the Dwarves she manifests as Rosmerta the Battle-Maiden daughter of the High Lord. To the Skandian Vikings, Thor the Thunderer is the chief god of their pantheon while to the tribes of the Ament Plain he is Mantriv the Sky Lord.

One rule that I had was there was to be no evil religions. Every religion would have a reason for being, a reason why a culture adopted it. This doesn't mean that are not religions that players would have repugnant like one that practices human sacrifice, another who believes in order and discipline to point where it is tyranny.

However I want a true evil. My choice was Demons who revolted against creation at the beginning. Creatures whoes motivation is to dominate creation to their own selfish ends regardless of cost to others. All religions regardless of how unpleasant despise demons and will actively seek to destroy their influence when discovered.

Over the years bit by bit I assembled this and other aspect of cosmology with two goals in mind. 1) That players could comprehend it once learned. 2) It led to a similar diversity of cultures and religions as our own history for the size of my campaign area.

For example it wasn't until a few years ago that I settled on why Magic existed the way it did. There was magic at the beginning of creation however it could not be used to cast spells in a few seconds either GURPS Magic style or D&D Vancian style. Instead caster had to do elaborate ritual and if they wanted quick acting magic they had to create scroll, charms or magic items. Something like accumulating energy that GURPS Ritual Path magic has.

The demon revolted, were the masters of creation for a time, and the surviving gods rallied and defeated them. Afterwards they were imprisoned in the Abyss. Which is not a separate plane of existence but a pinched off pocket of the world turned into a prison for the demons.

The Abyss still remained connected in a small area. The gods surrounded that area with a maelstrom and built nine islands each housing a crystal created by one of the surviving gods. The tenth crystal was created by the High Lord Veritas and was used to seal the ward and imprison the demon.

To operate the ward, the crystals cycled the ambient mana of the world and dumped back out in a concentrated form. This allowed gifted individuals to cast normal spells and led to the development of the standard magic of whatever system I was using for the campaign.

The Gods in turn choose to withdraw from direct contact and agreed to operate through faith and mystery. Although it more overt than our own history as miracles still happen frequently, clerics get divine spells, and holy warriors have a direct connection with their patron deity.

This is because I am more interested in running a moderate fantasy campaign rather than something that is completely low fantasy or completely high fantasy.

I would say this about the experience. Even now with my experience I would be hard pressed to design something from scratch with all the details I have in my Majestic Wilderlands. The only reason I have the details I have, is that I built it piece by piece over multiple campaigns, with multiple players, and using different RPGs.

Throughout the process there was some ret-cons and elements dropped or changes. At one point around 1990 my conception of Mitra was she was a women who was mortal that later became divine. But I wasn't comfortable with how that fit with the other elements of my cosmology so I dropped it by the mid 90s to go with my current conception of that deity.

Right now I pretty sastified with the big picture and now most of new stuff is in additional details. For example while I have only ten gods they have a bunch of minor divine servants that would correspond to less deities or saints. I don't have a lot of details on them as they don't up in play that often. It was only in the past year I settled on how I was going to handle faeries and what they are. And so on.

If you want a Glorantha, Tekemul, Harn, Middle Earth of your own the best path in my opinion is just keep using the same setting over and over again through multiple campaigns and RPGs. Don't try define everything at once, but do try to make a structure that you can hang detail on later.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I am also on the side of "does anyone in the setting know this? Then why should I as GM, let alone player, know it?" On the other hand, describing the cosmologies of characters in the setting can be fun.

If it effects the behavior of the NPCs either through personality and/or culture then it is potentially important. If it doesn't then if you enjoy it write it otherwise don't bother as it will never come up in the campaign.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

However I want a true evil. My choice was Demons who revolted against creation at the beginning. Creatures whoes motivation is to dominate creation to their own selfish ends regardless of cost to others. All religions regardless of how unpleasant despise demons and will actively seek to destroy their influence when discovered.

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.