The Bottled Setting

I may have never played an rpg with one, but I've long seen the appeal of the "bottled setting": a locale that could be the size of a small city or as big as solar system (or more) but is in some way cut off from the outside. It might also be "managed" in some way, having traits established by who or whatever did the bottling, Kandor from the Superman mythos is probably the most famous of such settings, but it shows up in rpg settings like Empire of the Petal Throne and Metamorphosis Alpha in addition to numerous places in fiction.

The inhabitants of a bottled setting may or may not know they are bottled. If discovering that fact or discovering the why or how of it is the main focus of the setting, you're may well be looking at a Mystery Terrarium. Really, though, all that stuff can just be background for a setting with any other sort of focus where the boundaries just happen to be hard stops rather than the place where things get fuzzy.

What's the appeal of this sort of setting? Well, for one, it can be used to disguise the true nature of the setting. The universe might actually be science fictional, but the "bottle" marks the boundary within which you can run a traditional fantasy campaign, if you want. Crossing the boundary can then mark a major turning point in a campaign, like potentially to a whole other sort of game. 

The other thing is a that a bottle need not be impassable. Krishna in de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sort of a bottle wherein people from a technologically advanced, spacefaring civilization can play at pseudo-Medieval Sword & Planet heroes. Portal fantasies, in general, are not necessarily bottles but could easily be (particularly the sort involving a person somehow getting sucked into an MMORPG world). That allows players to play characters much more like themselves but still get involved in fantasy action.

In the end, though, I suppose the creative constraint it applies makes for an interesting challenge and heightens the potential for player engagement with setting mysteries. Vast traditional settings are great but there's nothing like having the players hit a wall they didn't expect to be there or have hints dropped that things aren't what they seem to get them engaged.

Mysteries of Tatooine

In discussing this recent Youtube video arguing Star Wars (1977) suggests a setting without FTL communication, my brother and I gradually drifted over to considering some minor mysteries regarding the desert planet Tattooine. The central question is: "what exactly is Tattooine's place in the galactic civilization?" Luke tells us: "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from," but is that just the restless teenager in him talking?

Canonically, Tattooine is a sparsely populated world located on the Outer Rim, though Wookieepedia suggests the whole concept of an "Outer Rim" doesn't appear in the films until the sequel trilogy. This perhaps implies it is on the edge of civilization, but it's possible that it only means the edge of Imperial (and Republican before that) control. "Sparsely populated" seems reasonable given what we see in the films and the fact it's an entire planet, particularly when we consider this is a relative sparseness compared to the more urbanized, populous worlds.

There are, however, at least two details in Star Wars arguing against Tattooine as some sort of wilderness frontier. These have to do with the Jawas and Mos Eisley spaceport.

Used Droid Salesmen

The Jawas are scavengers, and they've got a big crawler full of junk that roams the desert and picks up "gently used" droids to refurbish (a bit) and sell to farmers and rural settlements. If Tattooine is sparsely populated and droids are so expensive relative to local incomes that people have to buy the pre-owned ones Jawas sell, then where exactly do all the droids come from that the Jawas scavenge?

It's possible the demand for used droids has to do with where droids come from which makes new ones scarce. Another possibility is that droids were traditionally priced beyond the reach of rural folk of modest means, but the end of the Clone Wars lead to something of a switch back to consumer focused production in the galaxy's industry over wartime production and restored supply chains, so that the wealthy inner worlders were able to finally get that new droid they'd wanted, leading to an abundance of older models on the market, analogous to the situation with cars in the U.S. after World War II. These older models would naturally wind up in the hands of dealers like the Jawas. 

Still, unless what happened to Threepio and Artoo is just an accident, it looks like they are roaming the desert picking up droids, rather than just waiting for their shipment at Mos Eisley. I think it's at least possible that the desert not infrequently turns up excess droids--and I have an idea as to why.

Scum and Villainy

Obi-Wan says of Mos Eisley: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." This is from a guy who knows the Emperor is a Sith Lord and was made to fight in an arena on Genosis! In the Old West idiom frontier towns are often stereotypically lawless, but I don't think Tombstone or Dodge City would deserve a description like that. Also, Tombstone and Dodge City had reasons why they were boomtooms that drew the riffraff (silver mines and the cattle trails, respectively). 

Obi-Wan's description and the vibe of Mos Eisley in general suggests a pirate town like Port Royal, Jamaica ("the wickedest city on Earth.") Such towns would appear in places the law hasn't effectively reached, but close to very busy and lucrative trade routes. You wouldn't get a crime lord like Jabba rich enough to have a palace and sponsor speeder races without crime being lucrative.

Back to the Jawas and their scavenging: If pirates are often taking ships and hiding the evidence or just discarding the refuse, in the desert, well there would wind up being stuff for the Jawas to "salvage."

Tattooine On Viewscreen

I think the evidence from the movies point to Tattooine as at the edge of imperial jurisdiction, but in a well-traveled zone between the Empire and other, civilized regions controlled by other interstellar powers.  It's nature as a desert world means it is less desirable for heavy colonization, but its location ensures the thriving pirate boomtown of Mos Eisley, and the existence of power strongmen benefiting from that crime.

Differentiating Science Fantasy

Often science fantasy as operationalizes in rpgs is just some flavor of rpg fantasy with ray guns or robots, or "ancient technology" as the default explanation for something strange. (In fact, high tech "science" often  becomes the extraordinary thing in a setting full of magic but completely conventional in its portrayal of magic.) There isn't anything wrong with that, but science fantasy fiction points the way to making the genre feel different from a fantasy setting that just also has some lost tech.

More Psychic than Spellcraft

The magical effects (when they aren't technology mimicking magic) often tend to resemble psychic powers instead of spells or rituals.

Non-Medieval Society

In C.S. Friedman Coldfire series, the owners of a bookshop who are the victim of an attack by the magical agents of a dark lord of sorts have to worry the authorities will think they committed insurance fraud. There's no reason a science fantasy setting has to limit itself to mixing science fiction and the (pseudo-)Medieval. Elements of any era could be fair game, depending on the setting.

Device Dependent

In science fantasy, more magical effects are going to be the use of a device or chemical rather than a spell. A Polymorph effect, for instance, can still exist, but it would be from a transformation machine or "atavism ray" or the like. A variant on this is when a classical magic item turns out to be a technological device, like when Travis Morgan's putting a bullet into Deimos' crystal ball and we see circuitry inside.

Subtle Reminders 

Little details that point to the nature of the setting often help set the mood. Post-apocalypses (fantasy and otherwise) tend to excel at this. King's Dark Tower stories have a witch writing a note on an old Citgo receipt pad, for instance, but having an old device put to a new purpose is a device that works in science fantasy too.

Consistency

While in many situations "science vs. magic" in a fantastic context would just be cosmetic, it's important to keep in mind the different origins and make sure the details match. For instance, orcs that are embodied spirits of evil ought to operate differently in any number of ways compared to orcs who are a transplanted, anthrophagous alien species or orcs that are bioengineered servitors.

Longhaul

All the interstellar Science Fiction roleplaying systems and settings I can think of rely on faster-than-light travel (generic systems like GURPs or Hero System discuss the option of forgoing it, but I don't think either devote much space to it) and fairly rapid FTL, at that. It isn't surprising; most starfaring sci-fi literature does so as well. 

There are hard(er) sci-fi writers that generally adhere to a more realistic, slower than light universe, like Alistair Reynolds, Greg Egan or Charles Stross. Reynolds' star travelers enter cyrogenic "reefer sleep" to handle the years long voyages in "lighthuggers." Stross and Egan in some of their stories have digital minds broadcast across the distance as light to be reconstituted at the receiving end.

There are also works with sort of slow FTL, so that voyages still require years. Ruocchio's Sun Eater series has characters entering cryogenic fugue to pass the years. Simmons' Hyperion Cantos has FTL that still results in time dilation so ship time is less than the years than pass for observers.

It strikes me that whatever the method, space travel that takes long periods of time, and where the traveler is somehow able to personally elide the effects of so much time passing (either through cryogenics, weird time effects, or even just posthuman immortality) would make for an interesting aspect to a setting and campaign.

The PCs might set out as smugglers or free traders with valuable cargo for a 20-year voyage (from the perspective of the destination) and arrive to find the market had changed or a natural disaster had ruined their chances for making the sale. Mercenary PCs hired for a job, could find the government they were sent to defend toppled by the time they arrive or the person they were to report to succeeded by someone less friendly. 

Both of these changes are bad for the PCs, but they could have just as easily been advantageous. The point is with years or decades passing, the setting should hardly stay static. I think this would have the effect of modifying PC behavior a bit. It would make them take space travel less for granted, for one thing. Trips between worlds are no longer trivial. Two, even with cryogenesis or the like, long travel times would make PC aging meaningful.

Using a series of random tables to accomplish these changes would of course include the GM in the fun of discovery. A dynamic setting is often, I think, a more alive feeling one than a static one.

Clerics vs. Posthumans

Technology vs. magic, sometimes even to the point of a war, in a feature of a number of fantasy works, though I'm not aware of a published D&D setting that features it. 

Some science fiction settings have cultural/religious limits on technology, either as one facet of the setting or as a means for the author to keep technology in check to tell the sort of story they want to tell. Dune is the primary example, but there are series like the Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio that follow its lead, and other settings that make it a feature. A more recent variant is a group or culture that rejects the rapid changes associated with things like cybertechnology and brain uploading. This shows up in Stross' Accelerando.

I think it would be interesting to sort of combine these concepts. Have the action take place within a fantasy world (perhaps a fairly standard one, or maybe a Spelljammer-ish system), but the demons, devils, and other Outsiders trying to get in and corrupt the world (at least from the perspective of the world's clerics and leaders who consuder them anathema) are actually posthuman intelligences that utilize technology, not magic. Presumably, "magic" (whatever it is) was what allowed these simple, unenhanced humanoids to hold on in a universe of much more powerful sophonts. The Outer Planes (as they view) them are really just planets, habitats or networks.

Of course, whether the Outsiders are really baddies would depend on the specifics of the setting--or maybe even be open to interpretation?

On Magitech

I'm going to define magitech for my purposes here as technology (in the sense of items that appear industrial, mechanical, or electronic) that is powered by magic. I tend to like magitech when it is done well, but I find it often isn't done well, in my judgement. I've spent some time thinking about what for me constitutes "doing it well" versus not.

There are, I think, different types of magitech in media, and the one that almost always works for me is what I would call naive. Naive magitech occurs when the portrayal of something mythic, fairytale-like (and I think those are the two most common modes) just happens to feature some trappings of technology. Stories with naive magitech give the impression the technology they feature is just assumed in the same way Medieval or early modern tech is just assumed in traditional fairytales. Baum's Oz includes elements of this, but so do the New Gods related series from Kirby, or other works  of later creators working in a Kirby mode.

I revisited the Blackstar (1981) cartoon series not too long ago, and it has a great example in the episode "Lightning City of the Clouds." Crios the Ice-King is trying to stop Spring from coming to the Planet Sagar, keeping the planet in eternal winter. He attempts to steal the key to springtime with his fortress that flies on a cloud and appears to be made of ice. That fortress also has a futuristic-appearing control room (draped with icicles) complete with a video screen where he can talk to his boss, Overlord.

It's a setting that makes no attempt separate science fiction and fantasy. We might well call it science fantasy, though that term also covers works that include things clearly defined diegetically as scientific, but are utterly implausible. What I'm interest in here is fantastic technology that is understood within the story as magical or at least implicitly such.

Other examples of magitech, what is more traditional meant by that term, occur when magic is used to replicate something close to modern or science fictional technology. Unlike the naive magitech, it is often part of a rationalized or systemized portrayal of magic, but not necessarily. It's this sort of magitech that can often go wrong because it ends up with obvious cliches (magic carpet taxis, magic wands for guns) or the Rube Goldbergian devices on Flintstones or Gilligan's Island where it becomes a joke based around, "just how are they gonna build this device?"

I find both of these approaches unsatisfying because not only are they often silly (intentionally or unintentionally) but because they make the fantastic mundane. 

I think good magitech ought to aim to do the opposite: make the mundane fantastic.

How does that work? Well, I think magitech should general not be identical to a scientific technical solution to the problem. There ought to be new (and interesting) complications and implications. I'll give a couple of examples: In the comic book series The Outer Darkness, the starship is powered by a captive god who demands sacrifice. This has all sorts of implications for how one might coax more power from the engines or what an engine breakdown looks like. A containment breach becomes a whole different sort of danger.

In my Weird Adventures setting there are radio para-elementals. Their existence suggests something about the physics of the setting, making it more aligned with fantasy, but also brings up interesting complications for radio operation.

There are lots of other examples, but you get the idea. In summary, I guess my pitch is: if you are going to include magitech, think about what it implies about how the world is different from the one we know. That doesn't mean you need a rigorously worked out "magic system." It just means putting though into how technology and the world it exists in are of a piece.

Gameable Fiction Settings

Finding the audiobook of Simon Green's Deathstalker free on Audible until next week, I decided to revisit it. It's a book I read in the 90s, but I've found most of it has stuck with me, and my impression hasn't changed. It's high of action and invention, but above all, it's a really rpg setting-like world. 

Of course, almost any setting is gameable, but some worlds seem have been built with the requirements of game settings in mind: distinct character types with cool abilities, sources of those cool abilities as setting elements, and factions in varying degrees of conflict. The Deathstalker series has all of this and the kitchen sink: noble houses, rebel ESPers, rebel cyberpunks, a sleeping cybernetic army, an inimical AI civilization, and mysterious alien threats. Sources of "power" including intensive training, cyber-and biotech enhancements, weird alien tech, and psionic abilities. And there are swordfights.

All of this reminds me of a gaming setting. It says "play me," I think, more than any rpg tie-in fiction I have read (which isn't a lot, admittedly, but some).

Another series with this quality is Stephen Hunt's Jackelian novels. They are steampunk at base, but also sport robots, feyblooded mutants, biotech, Lovecraftian ancient gods, and a number of post-apocalyptic secrets. I gave them a fuller overview here.

I'm sure there are other such book series out there. Sykes' Graves of Empire series is in that vein, though not as kitchen sink as the above. Certainly, mainstream comic book universes are this and then some. 

The Funhouse Crawl

This past weekend, I visited my mother's family's old hometown of Panama City Beach, Florida. I got a chance to show my kid one of the landmark's I remembered from my childhood, the kitschy miniature golf course known as Goofy Golf. The firebreathing pink dinosaur that once demanded your attention at the roadside is, alas, no longer there, but the sphinx, giant ape, statue of Buddha, Asian dragon, Easter Island head, and assorted more mundane dinosaurs are still in evidence, along with rockets, windmills and the like.

I feel Goofy Golf is good inspiration for a point- or hexcrawl. I don't mean in its specific set-pieces (not necessarily, at least) but in the way it's basically a spread out funhouse dungeon. I like a good, well-thought out setting as much as the next guy, but I also enjoy the kitchen sink weird lost worlds. I'm thinking of things like Ka-Zar's Savage Land or the world beyond the Bermuda Triangle Skull the Slayer gets sucked into. Hollow World has more than a little of this vibe with cavemen, Rip Van Winkle still dwarves, and gaucho orcs, but there isn't as much of this done in gaming as there could be.

Making it a bounded location to be explored like a pocket dimension or lost world frees it to strain seriousness and consistency in a way than might not work in an entire setting. 

[Rifts] Some thoughts on the Coalition

Overall, I think the Coalition is a nice set of bad guys, in the sense that they've got a distinctive look, a lot of scary toys, and a suitably odious and belligerent outlook, ensuring the PCs will come in conflict with them. I think there are a few things I would do differently with them than what I've seen in published material.

Let's start with something really basic: I'm not fond of the despot of the Coalition being "the Emperor." That sounds like the leader of, well, an Empire, not a Coalition. My view of the Coalition is as a military dictatorship that perhaps seized power from an earlier, more collaborative group that called itself the Coalition. Prosek might call himself Director, General, or even President, but I'm inclined to prefer something like Supreme Leader or Supreme Commander.

Good paint job for a Coalition robot

I like the idea that the Coalition is, at least rhetorically, out to restore America. There should be an aspect of palingenesis to it in line with the fascist regimes that inspired it. It does bug me it doesn't drape itself more in American symbols, but I can retcon the Coalition flag to be the U.S. stripes with the skull and lighting bolts instead of stars, maybe. 

We are told that (at least in Chi-Town) the majority of Coalition citizens are illiterate. I assume that doesn't mean complete illiteracy, because the art in the original book with its signs and graffiti suggest a level of basic literacy is present. I assume that, transplanted to our society, the average citizen would be considered functionally illiterate, though within their own culture they are not so impaired. Chi-Town, like other cyberpunkish settings, is to a degree post-literate. What the Coalition educational restrictions take from them is an understanding of the past and a level of abstract reasoning and means communicate those thoughts.

The brings me around to Coalition media. I think there is probably a lot of it, but not much of it worthwhile. It will be blatant propaganda when it isn't just vapid. The pervasive TV of American Flagg! seems good inspiration here. As always, sex will sell. I figure Coalition news magazines/morning show sort of lite journalism programs, would do their hiring of effervescent hosts accordingly.

The Case for Planetary Romance

Richard Hescox

I feel like planetary romance (sometimes called Sword & Planet, though I think that might be better thought as a subgenre or sub-subgenre) is, I think, a genre well-suited for rpg exploitation, but despite this utility is oddly under-represented. Sure, a search for "sword & planet" or "planetary romance" on drivethru turns up a few pages of entries, but many of those are only sort of "planetary romance informed" (like Dark Sun) or really other genres (like Old Solar system space opera). 

Genre boundaries are admittedly, fuzzy things, so I suppose I should first define what I mean. Planetary romance is a genre about exploration of the biospheres, societies, and cultures of an alien world. Typically, the exploration of the world doesn't just entail the usual activities of naturalists or explorers, but additionally the uncovering of a mystery or mysteries. Planetary romance worlds are more than they appear. The protagonist of these stories is most often an outsider like the reader because that gives the author the greatest freedom into working details about the setting into the narrative. Since a singular world and its exploration is essential to the genre, world-hopping works may share stylistic similarities to planetary romance, but I don't think they belong in the genre--though one could have a planetary romance series where every installment was a different world. Works with a non-outsider protagonist might likewise be excluded*, otherwise some secondary world fantasies would be up for inclusion, though mostly I'd exclude those for their settings being too Earth-like. Lord Valentine's Castle, I'd say, one could call a Planetary Romance and has no outsider protagonist, but it has an amnesiac one, which serves the same purpose.

Sword & Planet, I think, is a subtype of planetary romance, where the planet being visited is (mostly) less technologically advanced (at least in surface ways), and the plots mostly involve action. That action typically resembles swashbuckling fantasy or Sword & Sorcery fiction. The exemplar and progenitor of this type is Burroughs' A Princess of Mars. Swords and sci-fi (like Star Wars or any pulp era space opera stories) have anachronist/inconsistent tech like Sword & Planet but lack the focus on a single world.

Anyway, definitions aside, why do I think it's a good genre for games, perhaps particularly those of an old schoolish bent? Well, the focus on exploration for one thing. Planetary romance easily fits a hexcrawl or pointcrawl model. Planetary romances like Vance's Tschai/Planet of Adventure series or the Alex Raymond years of the Flash Gordon comic strip involve covering a lot of ground and uncovering new things.

Panel from Flash Gordon comic strip by Dan Schkade

Secondly, while actual dungeons are perhaps few (the Cave World of Kira from Flash Gordon not withstanding), ruins to explore are quite common. A number of dead cities, for instance, turn up in Burroughs' John Carter series.

Third, there is an element at least close to picaresque in a lot of planetary romance. While the protagonists aren't typically rogues or anti-heroes, their adventures are episodic and involve navigating or outsmarting corrupt or stultified social systems. Money and food are concerns, depending on the story, and the protagonists often have to get menial sorts of jobs or get imprisoned for petty offenses. Don Lawrence's Storm, for example, is more than once forced into some sort of labor for basically not knowing local customs.

Don Lawrence

So, given what I've said, why isn't Planetary Romance more popular? Mainly, I think it's because there hasn't been a recent example that reached a wide audience. Burroughs' work seems old fashion (as the failure of the recent film perhaps shows) and newer examples (like Scavengers Reign) tend to position themselves more firmly in science fiction than as something that sort of mixes fantasy and sci-fi.

*There are certainly books in planetary romance series that have native protagonist (books in both Burroughs' Mars series and Akers' Kregen series come to mind), but these notably occur after several books with outsider protagonists to get things established, so I think my point still stands.

What it's Like to Travel The Stars

Presumably no one on Earth has yet experienced interplanetary space travel. When the creators of space travel-related media go to describe it or evoke the feeling of it for their audience they tend to analogize it in terms of some idiom of travel their audience is familiar with. The ways in which travelers interact with travel, the stylings of ships and controls, and the attitude of the world toward pilots--all of these things are typically informed more by the specific analogy employed that the speculative mechanics of the travel.

For example, the most pervasive of these is likely space travel as sea travel. This occurs at the level of language where we usually talk of "spaceships" instead of craft or vehicles and crew rankings/positions typically follow naval models. This analogy is evident in Star Trek in its naval organization and the conduct of its space battles, but also in the particular romanticization of both vessels, voyaging, and at times, captaincy. In Star Trek V, Kirk quotes the 1902 poem "Sea-Fever" by Masefield: "All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer by," and it's not at all out of place with the vibe.

Star Wars engages in the sea travel analogy, too. It and its imitators like Battlestar Galactica have capital ships acting as aircraft carriers. The Millenium Falcon is a tramp freighter with a captain supposedly inspired by Humphrey Bogart's screen persona (and perhaps his famous role as a tramp steamer captain in The African Queen (1951)). His adventures with Chewbacca prior to Star Wars probably look a lot like episodes of the radio series Voyage of the Scarlet Queen just translated from the South Seas to the Rim. Cowboy Bebop really hits you over the head with the tramp sea vessel analogy by having the Bebop land in water and being built from a sea-going vessel.

Star Wars likes to mix things up, though. It also employs the second most common analogy: space travel as air travel. Dogfights between fighters have moves out of World War II and hotshot pilots are almost as important to the narrative as they are in Top Gun. The cockpit controls of the Millennium Falcon, and the fact "she doesn't look like much" but "she's got it where it counts" could easily be the way a cargo pilot in some pulp adventure describes his aging sea plane, as in Tales of the Gold Monkey (or more accurately, the sort of fiction that inspired it) or the cargo planes in the early years of the Steve Canyon comic strip.

The third analogy that comes to mind is trucking. I define this as a focus on space travel as performed by rather unromanitic figures, blue collar-working stiffs, often solitary and with few amenities in their utilitarian-appearing vessels. It is not nearly as common as the other two, but it is specifically evoked in Alien and in Cowboy Bebop in the episode "Heavy Metal Queen." The farhaulers of the Transhuman Space setting also have some of this vibe. 

Are there other analogies? Probably. I think some media gestures toward spacecraft as automobile, often in a sort of plot where automobile itself is just the modern stand-in for the freedom of a "fast horse." Leigh Brackett has several protagonists on the run from the law in a fast, small ship like an outlaw escaping on horseback in a Western or a muscle car in a 70s car movie. Battle Beyond the Stars, the Star Wars-inspired space opera retread of the Magnificent Seven (and thus, Seven Samurai) has several of its "hired guns" traveling in solo spacecraft, and at least one is a cowboy. These are less convincing, though, because spacecraft tend to only analogize to cars or horses in media in limited ways. They always occur in "mixed metaphors."

And there are a lot of those of course, with Star Wars being the obvious example, as I said. Still, I find it interesting just how clear these analogies often are.

Further Thoughts on Magic

Thinking about my Monday post further (and reading more examples of magic in McKillip's Heir of Sea and Fire), I feel like the part that perhaps the most central element to number of these magic systems I like is that they demonstrate Frazer's concept of sympathetic magic.

Raderle can create a powerful illusion of large lake, by digging a fist-sized hole and pouring water into it. Arthur in The Revolutions can snap a chair leg by snapping the stem of a wine glass. These are both examples of similarity, or like producing like.

The other common employed aspect of sympathetic magic is contagion. It shows up quite a bit in The Revolutions, but I don't think I quoted an example. It's where an item that was once physically connected to someone or something else still has a magical connection to that thing. This is being able to cast a spell on someone because you have a lock of their hair or the like.

Similarity shows up some in D&D spell material components, but I think more of these are sort of jokey correspondences instead.  These things are fine and could even be flavorful for bigger spells or more complicated rituals, I think more spells that used a perhaps caster-specific but reasonable application of similarity and contagion. 

The Patchwork Kingdom Crawl

 As has been pointed out before, the kind of frontier envisioned by old D&D owes more to Westerns than it does to the Western European Middle Ages or most of the fantasy works in the Appendix N. The modern idea of the "points of light" setting is perhaps closer to these things but still tends to miss the mark for many sources of the game's inspiration.

There's another option that shows up often, in disparate places from Le Morte d'Arthur to Star Trek, and many works in between. We have heroes wandering from one place to another, perhaps with a goal, perhaps not. These places are more or less civilized jurisdictions, but they have unusual customs (from the perspective of the protagonists) or eccentric or antagonist authorities. While one of the examples I mentioned above describes voyages covering a significant amount of territory (interplanetary!), some fairy tale-ish or picaresque stories (like Oz novels) do the same thing over a much smaller area: A patchwork of fiefdoms or petty kingdoms. The sort of campaign that could easily be made from a map of Holy Roman Empire:

This differs from the points of light setting in that there really isn't a distinction between wilderness for adventure and civilization for safety. In fact, the challenges of the wilderness in such stories may be much more limited than the challenges of civilization. The various eccentric monarchs and humorously dangerous social situations Manuel finds himself in in Figures of Earth are good examples, as are the strange and isolated cities John Carter visits in his wanderings across Barsoom.

The advantages of this sort of setting to me would be that it's very easy to work in all sorts of adventures from social conflict and faction stuff to traditional dungeons and overland travel.

Religion in Middle-earth

Art by Falmarin de Carme

I came across this site a couple of weeks ago that compiles additional background material generated for a Finnish Middle-earth based role-playing campaign. What I found most interesting is its extrapolation and elaboration of the religions for Middle-earth. 

This is a perceived area weakness pointed out in Tolkien's work in the past. In Imaginary Worlds, Carter notes critically that Tolkien's world "has no religion in it." In Dragon #127, Rolston in his review of Lords of Middle-earth for MERP gets to the gamer brass tacks of it:

According to Lords of Middle-earth, Middle-earth has a "seemingly inexhaustible collection of deities, pantheons, practices, and religions." However, all of them are wrong. Eru is the only god, and the Valar and the Maiar are simply his servants. Enlightened folk (Elves and Dunedain) practice a nonritualistic monotheism with no formal clergy - pretty boring stuff by FRP standards. 

A lot of epic fantasy has followed Tolkien's areligious example (Jordan's Wheel of Time series, for one) and as modern society becomes ever more secular, it probably is less and less seen as a deficit. Still, if you think of religion is a fascinating aspect of the real world well worth including in imagined worlds (where you at, Gloranthaphiles?) it's cool to see the work Sampsa Rydman has done here. The religions described build on the details provided in Tolkien's extensive writings and (so far as I am familiar with the lore) the new things added seem consistent.

For instance, the orthodox worship of Númenor is as described in terms of its simple ritual and insistence that only the king prays to Eru. The description of a Trinity of Eru, Word, and Flame Imperishable seems a credible extrapolation from details given. Likewise, the sort of Satanic faith of the Black Númenoreans is given a creed that is consistent with what me know about the downfall of their land but with reasonable details as to what Sauron might have convinced them to get them on his side. "Doing evil" (from the point of view of the doer) has historically not really been a common motivator for human religions, so it makes more sense that those that Sauron seduced to his cause were given some other line: "The Valar have wronged both you and the true god, and the true god will redress that wrong if you help him out."

Art by Angus MacBride

Of course, an issue with religion in Middle-earth is canonically we know what's true and what isn't. For a game campaign I think it might be more fun, as Rolston implies, if that weren't true. Going as far as Jacqueline Carey's The Sundering duology and switching the moral polarity of the two sides doesn't really help, but borrowing her idea that the Creator is out of the picture and the lesser gods have differing understandings or interpretations of how to carry out their mission leads to a more ambiguous situation with more possibilities for equally valid appearing religions. In other words, something like the sort of cosmologies or interpretations offered in fantasy works that utilize Judeo-Christian mythology as their backdrop. Really just making the complete truth unknowable to beings within the world (even immortal ones like the elves) would serve the same purpose, though I think most people familiar with Middle-earth would tend to make assumptions that would make this minimal change approach Less effective.

I don't think a Middle-earth game (or a game in any setting) has to have religion (unless you got clerics, in which case, you sort of already do), any more than you are required to explore any other element of culture, but if you're planning to run a long campaign I think it's an interesting facet to add.

Arduin Got It

I don't know much of anything about Dave Hargrave or his inspirations for Arduin but the art and content suggest Hargrave's inspirations (or at least his artists inspirations) were much closer to mine and my friends' early influences than the likes of Gygax, Arneson, or Barker. 

I had read a few works off Appendix N in the first couple of years I played (some Howard, some Lieber. Tolkien) but it would probably be well into the 90s before fantasy comic books, art by Frazetta, Vallejo, and Whelan, etc., and animation weren't bigger influences that literary fantasy.

The things I see in Greyhawk now that I think were informed by Gygax's interest in historical wargaming would have been over my head when I first encountered it, and were not something I would have sought to add to a setting. Barker's world has a bit of Sword & Planet vibe but would have felt too bound by propriety and protocol. Greenwood's Realms seem geared toward trilogy novel so of play, but Tolkien's was the only trilogy I was interested in at that point. Hargrave, on the other hand, had insect people like Bug from Micronauts and Amazon warriors of the sort that were all over comics and seem de rigueur for fantasy worlds.

I can't say that (beyond the art) I've ever been particularly interested in Arduin. I came to it too late. Had I discovered it around age 12-13, it might have been a different story.

Weird Revisited: Magical Revolutions

The original version of this post appeared in December of 2010. I've updated it with some newer thoughts...

We’re all familiar with the advance of technology and the shifting--sometimes radically--of scientific ideas. The ether theory gave way to special relativity; the crossbow gave way to the gun. So why is it we seldom see any advancements in the technology of magic, or magical paradigm shifts, in rpg settings?

Not that magic isn’t shown as changing over time, but it's almost always a fall from a more advanced state, even a Golden Age, to its current one. Mostly, though, this seems to just a change from more magic to less. Sure, this gives a convenient rationale for ancient magical ruins and magical items laying around, but there are other explanations for that stuff, surely.

Why can’t magic missiles be more powerful today than 100 years ago? Maybe old spells have completely fallen by the wayside due to improve defenses (maybe, though, those defenses have been lost too?). Or how about old magical theories giving way to the radical new theories of a Magus Einstein? Different magical schools/styles need not be equally valid views that just add “color”, one could be more true than the other. What would that even mean: more powerful spells? shorter casting times? higher levels attainable? bragging rights in the outer planes?

It turns out the manga (and anime) Frieren: Beyond Journey's End actually does some of this. A powerful demon early on is easily defeated because his formerly unbeatable attack has now become so well understood over the time he was sealed away that even relatively inexperienced mages know how to defend against it. It seems that in general, combat magic has gotten better over Frieren's (extended) lifetime, but a number of minor spells or things for noncombat applications have been forgotten.

 

Still though, that's the only example I think I've come across in the years since I wrote this post initially. I think there's a lot that could be done with the idea in gaming, particularly in a system like modern D&D with so many varieties of magic. 

Two Lawful Neutral Religions

 My "Hidden Religions of D&D" posts got me thinking about a new way to view alignment in D&D, and that is not as personal ethics or even (necessarily) cosmic forces, but rather as placeholders for religions within a campaign setting. Old D&D gives us some detail on the generic "Church of Law" so it would be interesting to expand that idea to other alignments--however many one wants to use. 

A Lawful Neutral church would be one that holds to the supremacy of cosmic order. They would focus on the duties of individuals and society to uphold and harmonize with that cosmic order. Here are Lawful Neutral faiths that would represent these ideas in different ways.

Universal Harmony

This faith believes there is an Eternal Order that has always existed on some idealized plane, but through the process of Law that encompasses both the working of the cosmos and the virtuous behavior of the beings with that cosmos, must be made manifest. The obligations of the humanity in this work are laid out in the religion's holy text, the Formicarium.

The common person is urged to be content with their roll in life and work to make society as whole more orderly and harmonious. The contemplation of greater mysteries is left to ascetics who sometimes provide guidance on important issues to the communities they serve. Those involved in the legal system and the formulation of laws are likewise members of the clergy as law flows from and is a facet of perfect cosmic Order.

The Formicarium mandates that the ruler of a state should be a dispassionate vessel for law. Their job is to insure those under them proceed with honest and transparency, and punishment for transgressing the law is swift and impartial.

Upon death, adherents look forward to an ultimate oneness with the universal process, so that they neither suffer nor desire.

Zurthonism

Zurthon is viewed as the first principal, the transcendent god of time, space, and fate. Zurthon is sometimes called a "machine god"--a being without passion or compassion, and above concepts of good and evil. The faithful seek to divine the path Zurthon has predetermined for them from the beginning of the universe by the study of the Heavens. Zurthonist astrologer-priests plot a child's horoscope from birth. The faithful do not seek to avoid or change ill-fate but rather use this for knowledge to allow them to prepare for the future, the better to display their submission to Zurthon's divine plan. 

There are heretical sects of Zurthonism that view predetermination as an excuse for licentiousness or abandon (and thus become a cult of Chaotic Neutral), but orthodox belief promotes a stoicism in all things.

Ergodic RPG Setting Presentations

Going back to the Greyhawk Folio has made me realize how it differs from modern setting material and perhaps why I bounced off of it when I first encountered. I believe it falls into a category of published setting I would call "ergodic settings." Ergodic settings are analogous to ergodic literature, that is that are settings whose form of presentation requires nontrivial effort on the part of the reader to make sense or understand the setting.

I'll concede that "understanding" in this context can be kind of fuzzy. Different perspective DMs likely have different expectations and desires of a setting. I'm sure there are a lot of people that loved Greyhawk from the moment they encountered the Folio or the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, to name another setting I find ergodic. But I don't think that changes the quality of ergodicity, it's more about how much work you're willing to do (or have already done) to meet the setting where it is.

So what do I mean by ergodic? Well, Greyhawk in its initial present is brief, which is often touted as a virtue, but in that brevity its ability to develop an easy sense of place is impaired. It also consistently refuses to take the modern route of focusing on "juicy" details or hooks. It's not that there aren't things going on in the Flanaess, but as far as we know from the Folio, they aren't really things for low-level treasure seekers. When seeds of adventure are there, they tend to be more Game of Thrones clash of armies and intrigues. There's also perhaps a focus on wargame realism over fantasy. A careful read with an eye toward history can suggest Gygax's models and sources, but he doesn't make it easy, like say, Robert E. Howard or the first introduction to the Known World in Isle of Dread (which just tells you the inspiration, so you don't even get to feel smart!)

Well, I don't know the primary export, but these places seem cool!

 Wilderlands is similarly fairly opaque in that department, but at least you can read hexes with a crashed spacecraft, mermaids or giants. And lots of them. The Folio is dressing your set with backdrops and a few props, but with scant actual prompts for adventure and very little enticing fantasy spectacle. This is just the facts; you do most of the fantasy.

But modern settings require work because they are often too completist and too wordy! Getting through all that cruft requires work! Sure, but it's a different sort of work. It's the work of separating wheat from chaff, perhaps, or just the work of reading homework, it isn't the conceptual work of "what does this mean and what do I do with it?" The Folio approach makes it harder to distill "the good bits" for your own thing, if that's what you're after.

This Strange Stars OSR has a good approach. Wonder who wrote this?

Now, this can be a virtue for the seasoned DM. It's easier to make it your own, perhaps, or even run it differently with the parameters that exist in different campaigns. And if all you need is the barest background to sink your dungeons into, it doesn't matter. But looking at the more recent DMs Guild Greyhawk presentations, there's more of an effort to put player-engaging material in, even as they hew fairly traditionalist.

The Hidden Religions of D&D: The Church of Law

Thinking about rationalization of the implied setting of D&D, not in the way of industrial magic or anything like that (though I've done that before) but in the direction of how the implied setting of D&D might point toward its religions or belief systems. Sure, there's the explicit fantasy polytheism, but as others have pointed out, it's undermined by the (at least up through AD&D) presentation of the cleric class as vaguely sort of Medieval Christian and by the fact that historical polytheism didn't work like D&D thinks it does. As Delta puts it:

...D&D claims to have a polytheistic religion, but you've got both the politics and the critical Cleric class set up as in the medieval Christian world, and nowhere else.

Is there a more interesting and perhaps more realistic way weave together the elements presented? I think so.

Note that Clerics of 7th level and greater are either "Law" or "Chaos", and there is a sharp distinction between them.
- Gygax & Arneson, Men & Magic

OD&D mentions Law and Chaos with regard to a cleric's orientation. To me, this suggests a system of belief with a dualist cosmology. (Perhaps this is the actual state of the cosmos, but it doesn't have to be!) This is a moral dualism, as the two opposing forces or principles are in conflict. This could be interpreted (and perhaps is by some sects or particular faiths) as ditheistic with two gods or groups of gods in opposition, but I also think the broader, philosophical tradition could embrace transtheism, where the existence of Law and Chaos is a greater and more important truth than the existence or nonexistence of god-like beings/powers. 

The church of law is syncretic, incorporating deities as it grows as agents, exemplars, or aspects of Law. No doubt there would be historic disagreement (possibly even conflict) over just how much deference and attention these powers are rightly due.

Clerics/priests, given the hierarchical structure presented in OD&D, are important in public rituals and ceremonies of the belief system but are also likely interpreters and scholarly experts on Law. Each of these Patriarchs (and Matriarchs, probably, though OD&D doesn't mention them!) is independent and self-governing but in fellowship with the others (generally). Initially a Patriarch would be a charismatic leader who attracts followers, but presumably the church they founded would have a mechanism of choosing a successor. 

Patriarchs are the final arbiters of the commandments of Law within their area, but the Patriarchs of the various churches might vote to decide points between them, or perhaps different interpretations would reign in different jurisdictions. Another aspect of the high clerical function extremely relevant to adventuring is calling for and supporting crusades/jihad against Chaos. 

Speaking of Chaos, it does seem a bit odd it is presented with a hierarchical clerical structure identical to Law's. One possibility is the "anti-clerics" are sort of Satanists and just performatively mock the church of Law, but another possibility is that "Chaos" only speaks to its ultimate goals or cosmological beliefs, not to its organizing principles. It's also possible (even likely) that the Church of Law applies the name Chaos to a diverse group of belief systems that don't agree with it and often don't agree with each other. 

A More Realistic Middle Earth

Listening to the History of the Germans podcast in episodes about the struggle for power between the Papacy and the Hofenstaufen Holy Roman Emperors, when reading a bit of a MERP supplement started me thinking about righting a post about a grittier, more realistic Middle Earth. Then I discovered I already sort of had written a post like that, back in 2020...

If we take The Silmarillion as Elvish mythology (which it is) promoting a slanted point of view, then most of the doings in Middle Earth are a proxy conflict between two super-powers: Sauron and his minions and the Valar and the Elves. We needn't assume either side is particularly good, In fact, we know the Valar unleashed a devastating weapon of mass destruction against their former allies in Numenor just for getting too cozy with Sauron.

In the modern era, Sauron's forces have been engaged in a protracted occupation of  Eriador. Through the action of the Mordor proxy Angmar, the Western kingdoms of Man were shattered, much of the population fled south, but fanatical bands, the Rangers, structured around the heir to throne of Arnor and Gondor, and supported by the Elves, continued to fight an insurgency against Mordor's Orcish forces and her allies.

Sauron has been a distant and not terribly effective leader for some time. He has been unable to consolidate Angmar's victory over Arnor (a victory that saw Angmar destroyed in the process) and unable to wipe out the remaining Elvish enclaves and human insurgents.

You get the idea. Shorn of much of its epic fantasy trappings, Middle Earth becomes a grittier place, where Men, Orcs, and local Elves, are all dealing with the aftermath of a terrible war wrought by super-powers that they perhaps only have the smallest of stakes in but yet are forced to take most of the risk.

Seems like an interesting place to adventure. It's certainly place where you can get a more interesting mix of adventurers and adventures, perhaps.