Weird Revisited: The Ahistorical Historical Setting

This post first appeared in 2017...

Historically accurate Aristotle?

A social media thread about bad history in historical costume drama caused me to recall an idea I had years ago upon a re-read of Aaron Allston's wonderful Mythic Greece: Age of Heroes. At the time, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was still in syndication, and while not particularly good, it did suggest the using of Greek Myth and geographic as a backdrop for a fantasy setting that might not otherwise have a lot of the trappings of Greek myth. For the most part, Hercules stuck to the big names, but there's no reason you couldn't get as detailed as Allston's book, but give it a wholly un-Mythic Greece feel.

The changes can be big. Reign: The Conqueror (based on the novel Arekusandā Senki by Hiroshi Aramata) re-imagines the life of Alexander the Great as a sort of science fantasy thing with giant Persian war machines and Pythagorean ninjas. Or, they can be subtle, like Black Sails weaving historical pirates with a sort of prequel to Treasure Island. (The difference I see between this last one and a standard historical setting which would generally tend to insert fictional characters, i.e. the PCs, into history, is the "high concept" of the literary/historical mashup.)

A lesson on Greek myth every week?

So I say go ahead and run a Kirby-esque space opera based on the book of Exodus. Recontextualize the War of Roses to have it take place in something like Warring States Japan. Or take the history presented in the Book of Mormon and turn it into a hexcrawl as Jeff Reints did.

Let history be your guide, not your boss.

Weird Revisited: A Plague of Goblins

The original version of this post appeared in 2010...

"Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours."

- Planet of the Apes (1968)

Goblin plagues are suffered in the less settled areas of the world. They are more common in places which lie near ancient ruins. In such an infestation, tens, perhaps hundreds, of goblins swarm forth from underground dens or nests. They overrun manor, hamlet, and village, and have even been known to assail the gates of small cities.

No one knows what spawns goblins, but it is certain they don't reproduce in the manner of most humanoids. All goblins seem to be of the same sex, though in truth, this is something of a conjecture. Smaller goblins, perhaps immature ones, are seen among their swarms, but never is any parental nurturing or concern directed towards them by any of their fellows.

It's difficult to guess the intelligence of goblins. There's no questioning their cunning, but they don't build structures or make tools; they behave only as brute beasts. This may be more preference than lack of capacity, as there are reports of them taking up knives and smallswords and brandishing them in deadly mockery of humans. Though they may wear rags or stolen bits of clothing or armor as rude decoration, they are just as happy to go naked.

When swarms of goblins pour forth from the underground, they tend to move toward human habitations, though wild animals will sometimes suffer their assaults. While popular stories make much of the mischievous nature of goblin attacks--their crude pranks, surprise scares, and harassment of livestock--their deadliness should not be discounted. Typically, the actions of the swarm escalate from behaviors which create fear or annoyance to outright attacks with their sharp teeth, stolen weapons, fire, and sheer numbers. They have been known to consume humans they kill, but that seems to be an after-though.

The infestations may last as little as a night or two or as long as a month, depending on the amount of resistance they encounter. If the swarm doesn't end of its on accord, it can be dispersed by killing a quarter or more of its number.

Scholars have attempted to discern how goblin plagues might be predicted. Folklore suggests that they are "summoned"--perhaps by a child entering puberty. Adolescents suffering from the anxiety of an unwanted betrothal, the birth of a new sibling, or other sorts of emotional duress are thought to become unwitting "Goblin Kings" or "Goblin Queens," and call forth their subjects in some psychic manner.  Naturalists remained unconvinced but are at a loss to explain the tales of goblins paying rude homage (in imitation of human courtly deference) to a single child in a decimated village or attempting to abduct such a child without harming them in any other way.

Dark Sun Sword & Sandal Style

Dark Sun certainly seems to have an element of Sword & Sandal films in its DNA, either directly or indirectly through the obvious influence of 80s Sword & Sorcery films and art. I feel like that's an aspect that could be played up.

To do it "pure," you'd want to lose some of the Dark Sun grittiness. The desert is less Arrakis and more the arid regions of the Levant or possible Egypt. The struggle for survival is less important than the struggle against oppression and injustice. Luckily, there's a lot of that on Athas. Pretty much everything else can stay: gladiators, city-states, the occasional monster, muscular dudes without shirts.

For the full Sword & Sandal effect (at least in the Italian Muscle-bound hero vein as opposed to the Hollywood Biblical epic), it might work best to use something like Crawford's Solo Heroes rules like in Scarlet Heroes so the protagonists can pummel groups of mooks into submission with just their fists.

A D&D Party as Skillful Companions

There is a type of folktale called Skillful Companions tale. It's exemplified by stories like the Grimm Fairy Tale "The Four Skillful Brothers." In these tales each character has a valuable, specific skill (sometimes highly specific). The use of each companion's ability is necessary to successfully complete the group's undertaking.

Noting that D&D characters (and rpg characters) are defined by classes, races, and player chosen abilities that make them ideally different from the other characters in their party, I going to suggest that D&D adventures really click when they work a bit like a Skillful Companions tale: when ever player gets to contribute their thing and their thing helps the adventure reach a happy conclusion.

I think "player skill" and creative solutions to problems should of course play a part in rpgs. Players derive more satisfaction from solving problems when they feel like they did it, not just their characters. But contrary to some not infrequently repeated old school wisdom I think the answer should sometimes be on your character sheet, or at least the tool your going to leverage to derive the solution ought to be. Having different character types or arrays of spells, weapons, and other abilities having mechanical differences would be inexplicable otherwise.

Adventure design for an unknown group of players obviously has a hard to tailoring challenges, but I think if you're making adventures for your regular group, maybe they should be crafted with the players in mind. There should never only be one way around a problem, of course, and player's can and should be able to avoid encountering a problem entirely, but there's nothing wrong with at least thinking of things that might give each character their time in the spotlight.

Setting Creation: Patchworks & Found Objects

To an extent, almost all world-building relies on borrowing, it's just a question of the size of the blocks being borrowed. Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age can show its inspirations pretty nakedly in places like Vendhya or Asgard, but even Tolkien's less derived-appearing subcreation has pretty clear analogs like an Atlantis myth. It's not surprising really; real world sources are built on foundations of history; completely imaginary cultures are not only harder to come up with, but also less detailed and less well thought out. The real question is how are these borrowings used?

Mystara (The Known World) is what I would call a patchwork. Its sources are almost always pretty obvious (and the writer's tell you what they are just in case you missed it), and they are stitched together with not much thought to realism. Patchworks have the advantage of being easy to get a handle on for GM or player, but run the risk of hampering the ability to create a vivid, new world. It's also easy for things to run to stereotypes and unintentional comedy, perhaps.

The other form of the borrowing in settings is the one I called the found object. Here the borrowed blocks are smaller, or less overtly recognizable, and they are used in a more transformed fashion. Howard's Hyborian Age actually straddles the border between patchwork and found object. Some of this, admittedly, may be the remove between our pop culture adventure fiction and that of Howard's day. It may be his sources were more obvious in the 1930s. But in any case Asgard as a "Viking culture" and Stygia as "evil Egypt" are pretty big patches. Nemedia gets a little harder to recognize. It's mostly "rival Medieval nation" but its elements of Holy Roman Empire aren't too difficult to see, and it also has details like a band of Northern mercenaries like the Byzantine Varangian guard. Then there are a few lands that are more obscure: Khoraja, for example, has a (Near) East meets West thing going on that might remind on of Howard's historical actioners in the Outremer, but also likely Trebizond.

Tolkien did this sort of thing, too. The Arnor/Gondor divide just changes the cardinal directions of the Roman/Byzantium split, in a way that mirrors the Israel/Judah divide. The Dunlending/Numenorean conflict has echoes of the Anglo-Saxons versus the Celts in the British Isles. These things are there without the borrowing being complete or obvious.

Is there a downside to the found object approach? Well, if the borrowings are too obscured you don't get any advantage of easy recognizability, which might be a problem if you are making a product to sell or trying to communicate things quickly to players. But you still get most of the advantages of patchwork for ease of your own work on the setting.

Conan, 1963

What if during the late 50s to mid-60s Sword & Sandals movie crazy, somebody had got around to making a Conan film? Here's my suggestions for the cast of a 1963 adaptation of "People of the Black Circle."

William Smith as CONAN

Former Miss Israel and Bond girl Aliza Gur as YASMINA

Jack Palance as KARIM SHAH

Christopher Lee as THE MASTER OF YIMSHA

Raf Baldassarre as KHEMSA

and Chelo Alonso as GITARA

Wednesday Comics: New Science Fiction

This continues to be a good era for science fiction comics outside of the Big Two. Here are a couple of recent releases:

Protector

Simon Roy, the co-writer of Protector, is no stranger to quality science fiction, and he and his co-creators (co-writer Daniel Bensen and artist Artyom Trakhanov) have crafted a story set among warring tribes in a North America post a global warring apocalypse. The Hudsoni tribe worship the Devas who seem to be advanced artificially intelligent technology of some sort, but they may have met their match when a member of the Yanqui tribe awakens a robotic demon. There are two issues of Protector out so far, but I'm eager for more.

Starship Down

Cultural anthropologist Jocelyn Young is brought to a secret site in Siberia where delegations from other all over (including the Vatican) are congregating in secret around a startingly discovery: an ancient, crashed spacecraft. And then there's what's inside... Written by Justin Giampaoli with art by Andrea Mutti, starts with a vibe not unlike Arrival. It will be interesting to see where it goes.