There's some required amount of background for any RPG game, and its maddening to try to parcel it out to players. I've obviously been thinking about it in the context of my own gaming, but also the antagonizer's latest post bout past and current dungeon thoughts and these silly comics I bought off of Humble Bundle a while ago.
One huge benefit of a campaign setting is being able to play in a world where everyone is on the same page. To some extent, the world of darkness games were genius: start off with 100% familiar things and add a layer of fantasy on top. You could easily start a game where players turn into vampires and then navigate their new existence without any background info, or at least without much.
So its time for a confession: not only have I been reading some of these old D&D comics set in the forgotten realms, but Lords of Waterdeep has been one of my go-to time-wasters. And its actually kinda neat seeing some of the random names from that game show up in the comic. And playing through Princes of the Apocalypse now, I also have a few better ideas about the sword coast and the religion of the Forgotten Realms in general. And its frustrating a bit when new DM brings in crazy greyhawk deities for no good reason. Because he's also then using random Forgotten Realms stuff like the Harpers and whatnot. But the point is there's a vaguely coherent and shared framework that could be used.
I missed the print edition of the Guide to Glorantha, and I'm a bit sad of that. I was warned about this, but I didn't want to drop that much cash on something I might not use. But after backing the 13th Age in Glorantha kickstarter I've come to appreciate Glorantha a bit more. Or, at least the basics, and especially the religions. See, originally the Gloranthan deities were designed to be a bit like a lost pantheon of familiar gods, at least the Orlanthi gods. So Orlanth is the sky-father, Ernalda is the earth-mother, and so forth. There's pretty clear parallels for Orlanth with Odin and Zeus and so forth. Now it's not just some proto-indo-european religion, as Runequest/Glorantha incorporates some aspects of Semitic and Sumerian religion as well, but its somewhat easy to draw parallels with these (dare I say iconic) deities.
13th Age similarly does a nice job of presenting a fairly iconic fantasy world without introducing dozens of nonsensical names full of apostrophes (this is a problem with Princes of the Apocalypse: there's so many NPCs with such nonsense fantasy names that its maddening for me as a player, I can imagine its similarly maddening as a DM). I think the genius of 13th Age is leaving the world half-baked so that the players and GM can fill it in. I think this was, in a way, the genesis of the Antagonist's games which involved a floating island in the midst of the "mist sea". Start small, the build outwards.
Its hard to get this shared sense of the world if you're not starting off. When The Antagonizer and I (and another friend) started playing 3.5 back in the day, we built a world together. Each player had the option to bring things in but it was mostly the three of us and when I decided I wanted a priest of a small pantheon of Wisdom Kings, our friend decided that rather than being dedicated to goodness, they should be dedicated to law. I promptly concurred because it not only took advantage of the shared aspect of world building, but it was, frankly, a bit of a better idea. When I left, crazy things happened that I was never apart of, and it was hard going back to occasionally play with them as new things just kept being added to the world that I had no part in. Likewise, my dreams for our empire of law include the peninsula of Twantu which is mostly ruled by incan-like Dwarves, separated from the Empire of Man by the Sargassso Sea (ruled with an iron fist by Blunanda, Kelp Queen of the Sargasso Sea), and further afield lie the Isles of Abandon where misfits and adventurers dwell. So if I ran things it would be alien to them as well, though with some shared elements (ancient blood gods, a powerful wizard's guild, and a senator named Taira who may or may not be evil).
So the point of this rambling? I'm putting together some background info for my game, but its also hard to know what is enough. I can give players some sections of books to read, or suggest chapters, but I don't know who read what. To make matters worse I'm drawing What I want are some quick setting intro videos or 2-4 page setting overviews for things like Al-Qadim and Planescape and more. I want comics (like the Unity of Rings or maybe Ianto's Tomb) that actually introduce some vital elements of the setting, and novels that hew closely to some of the game mechanics and setting lore (and don't drastically change things from the books like the Prism Pentad for Dark Sun or the Avatar Trilogy for Forgotten Realms or the Chronicles trilogy for Dragonlance did). I miss the World of Darkness short story anthologies and ditto for The Sinful Stars: Tales of the Fading Suns (though I don't think their purpose was to really introduce the setting, we definitely passed those around like a doobie back in the day). I really hope that WotC can make some of this work now that D&D is a huge brand, at least for their big worlds.
Obviously the problem here is trying to figure out what is enough. I love Fading Suns for its detailed world, but I doubt I'll ever use that much intricate backstory. I think an ideal way to do this might be the quick and dirty short into to the setting and then the 2+ page entries on different races and factions, or the short story that focuses on an individual character option (city/region, race, possibly class). I love this new Vampire: The Dark Ages behemoth I've got, but there's no way I'd ask players to read a 400+ page RPG manual as though we were using all those options (and it doesn't even go in-depth on the various clans much more than all the bloodlines). God help me if I were ever a marketer for Wizards of the Coast as this might all just muck things up, but a few simple things like this seem like they'd be immensely helpful.
For me though, I'll just have to ask the players what they've had time to read of the Al-Qadim stuff and put some things together for them. And, I guess, appreciate that the new D&D stuff does have a setting, with a stable of deities and cities and NPC groups even if I find it a bit lackluster. I can at least see the benefits, even if it still just makes it feel like 5e is a great compromise edition.
One huge benefit of a campaign setting is being able to play in a world where everyone is on the same page. To some extent, the world of darkness games were genius: start off with 100% familiar things and add a layer of fantasy on top. You could easily start a game where players turn into vampires and then navigate their new existence without any background info, or at least without much.
So its time for a confession: not only have I been reading some of these old D&D comics set in the forgotten realms, but Lords of Waterdeep has been one of my go-to time-wasters. And its actually kinda neat seeing some of the random names from that game show up in the comic. And playing through Princes of the Apocalypse now, I also have a few better ideas about the sword coast and the religion of the Forgotten Realms in general. And its frustrating a bit when new DM brings in crazy greyhawk deities for no good reason. Because he's also then using random Forgotten Realms stuff like the Harpers and whatnot. But the point is there's a vaguely coherent and shared framework that could be used.
I missed the print edition of the Guide to Glorantha, and I'm a bit sad of that. I was warned about this, but I didn't want to drop that much cash on something I might not use. But after backing the 13th Age in Glorantha kickstarter I've come to appreciate Glorantha a bit more. Or, at least the basics, and especially the religions. See, originally the Gloranthan deities were designed to be a bit like a lost pantheon of familiar gods, at least the Orlanthi gods. So Orlanth is the sky-father, Ernalda is the earth-mother, and so forth. There's pretty clear parallels for Orlanth with Odin and Zeus and so forth. Now it's not just some proto-indo-european religion, as Runequest/Glorantha incorporates some aspects of Semitic and Sumerian religion as well, but its somewhat easy to draw parallels with these (dare I say iconic) deities.
13th Age similarly does a nice job of presenting a fairly iconic fantasy world without introducing dozens of nonsensical names full of apostrophes (this is a problem with Princes of the Apocalypse: there's so many NPCs with such nonsense fantasy names that its maddening for me as a player, I can imagine its similarly maddening as a DM). I think the genius of 13th Age is leaving the world half-baked so that the players and GM can fill it in. I think this was, in a way, the genesis of the Antagonist's games which involved a floating island in the midst of the "mist sea". Start small, the build outwards.
Its hard to get this shared sense of the world if you're not starting off. When The Antagonizer and I (and another friend) started playing 3.5 back in the day, we built a world together. Each player had the option to bring things in but it was mostly the three of us and when I decided I wanted a priest of a small pantheon of Wisdom Kings, our friend decided that rather than being dedicated to goodness, they should be dedicated to law. I promptly concurred because it not only took advantage of the shared aspect of world building, but it was, frankly, a bit of a better idea. When I left, crazy things happened that I was never apart of, and it was hard going back to occasionally play with them as new things just kept being added to the world that I had no part in. Likewise, my dreams for our empire of law include the peninsula of Twantu which is mostly ruled by incan-like Dwarves, separated from the Empire of Man by the Sargassso Sea (ruled with an iron fist by Blunanda, Kelp Queen of the Sargasso Sea), and further afield lie the Isles of Abandon where misfits and adventurers dwell. So if I ran things it would be alien to them as well, though with some shared elements (ancient blood gods, a powerful wizard's guild, and a senator named Taira who may or may not be evil).
So the point of this rambling? I'm putting together some background info for my game, but its also hard to know what is enough. I can give players some sections of books to read, or suggest chapters, but I don't know who read what. To make matters worse I'm drawing What I want are some quick setting intro videos or 2-4 page setting overviews for things like Al-Qadim and Planescape and more. I want comics (like the Unity of Rings or maybe Ianto's Tomb) that actually introduce some vital elements of the setting, and novels that hew closely to some of the game mechanics and setting lore (and don't drastically change things from the books like the Prism Pentad for Dark Sun or the Avatar Trilogy for Forgotten Realms or the Chronicles trilogy for Dragonlance did). I miss the World of Darkness short story anthologies and ditto for The Sinful Stars: Tales of the Fading Suns (though I don't think their purpose was to really introduce the setting, we definitely passed those around like a doobie back in the day). I really hope that WotC can make some of this work now that D&D is a huge brand, at least for their big worlds.
Obviously the problem here is trying to figure out what is enough. I love Fading Suns for its detailed world, but I doubt I'll ever use that much intricate backstory. I think an ideal way to do this might be the quick and dirty short into to the setting and then the 2+ page entries on different races and factions, or the short story that focuses on an individual character option (city/region, race, possibly class). I love this new Vampire: The Dark Ages behemoth I've got, but there's no way I'd ask players to read a 400+ page RPG manual as though we were using all those options (and it doesn't even go in-depth on the various clans much more than all the bloodlines). God help me if I were ever a marketer for Wizards of the Coast as this might all just muck things up, but a few simple things like this seem like they'd be immensely helpful.
For me though, I'll just have to ask the players what they've had time to read of the Al-Qadim stuff and put some things together for them. And, I guess, appreciate that the new D&D stuff does have a setting, with a stable of deities and cities and NPC groups even if I find it a bit lackluster. I can at least see the benefits, even if it still just makes it feel like 5e is a great compromise edition.
No comments:
Post a Comment