Not for the first time, I've been thinking about the best presentation style for setting material. This time it was prompted by re-reading the Greyhawk Folio and noting it's ergodic nature. While I'm partial to the format I used in Strange Stars, it is very picture heavy and probably works better for science fiction than for fantasy. I am fond of the approach Jack Shear took in Krevborna and here's an attempt at the Holy See of Medegia (which I've covered before. Sorry!) presented in a format that borrows a bit from that and a bit from other places like Fabula Ultima and Strange Stars OSR.
MEDEGIA
The Holy See of Medegia
Theocrat fiefdom ruled by a corrupt cleric allied to the Overking of Aerdy
While nominally still the supreme religious authority in the Aerdi lands, the Holy Censor has seen his clerical authority decline with the weakening of the Great Kingdom, even as his temporal power has increased over holdings granted and seized around the city of Mentrey. The Censor remains an ally to the Malachite Throne, if a cautious one, he cares little for the moral or temporal restoration of Aerdy so long as he can continue to fill his own coffers.
Aesthetics: High-spired temples; imposing and stern marble statues of Lawful gods; clergy dressed in finery, the poor groveling for alms outside the temple doors; swaggering mercenaries in livery of the temples, chained debtor in public stocks
Locales: forbidden, hidden library of the Holy See, reliquary with the remains of saints of heroes, secret site to worship chaos gods in the forest
People:
- Spidasa, His Equitable Nemesis, Holy Censor of Medegia. Unimaginative as he is venal and grasping.
- Sister Hildegrund, Imposing, scarfaced former paladin with a vow to aid the poor. Abbess of a hospital in Pontylver.
- Captain Ribaldo Belswagger, Captain of the City Guard, mustachioed dandy who is always looking for a bribe.
- Delienn Goodfellow, Wood elf bandit, Robin Hood-type figure to the rural peasantry.
6 comments:
I like this! I've also struggled with better ways to present a setting I made up. GMs are getting busier and pickier, I think, and player attention spans for lore just keep getting shorter :-). I'd probably combine this with an approach that makes sure everything set down is actionable/gameable in some way.
Agreed. The trick with "gameable" is people use settings for different sorts of games with different needs. The exploration/dungeoncrawl games need different stuff than games of political intrigue and religious conflict.
Knowing that all bases can't be covered to an arbitrary level but they can have a brief foundation of understanding to build from
This is great. It's amazing how the types of information seen as essential for running a locale have changed . . . you just don't care about the exports or demographics (or honorifics) that drove the Gygax world so cutting that stuff opens up space for mood.
The light finally clicked for me that in this material it's possible for a church dedicated to one god to be staffed by clerics who worship another . . . and nobody sees this as particularly unusual. This allows Spidasa to essentially worship (and receive spells from) money no matter what the historical Aerdy religion actually taught or teaches today. Same "religion." Different gods. This fits your sense of how Law is more of a philosophical union of superficially diverse interpretations of the order of things. Perversely it also shows up in the later Judges Guild cities, which are very careful to lay out both the god in vogue at a given church and the "religion" as though they are self-evidently not the same.
It also means that if a religion has clear rules for impeaching a clerical authority someone of sufficiently high level and compatible alignment can come into a place like Medegia and depose the current censor, even if he or she has a personal relationship with some completely foreign god! This strikes me as so gygaxian that he wouldn't even have bothered writing it down. Faith is personal. Church affiliation is set by local institutional presence: cuius regio, eius *religio*.
Yeah, I don't feel like the demographics amount to much. Thinking more about it after I wrote this yesterday, I do think some more abstract notation about urbanization, e.q. Mentrey (small city) or whatever would be good, maybe we some introductory text about how those might translate to actual numbers. I also probably would include something about goods as like markets known for [x] since shopping is something PCs like to do.
Love it. Maybe a short encounter table broken into "town and country" would give you these merchants and others at a glance.
That's a good idea.
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