Under Sleeping Suns: Putting It All Together

So far, I've talked about a lot of things in relation to Loris and how it all fits together.

I've touched on how history buries all evidence of itself and how that doesn't necessarily fit in with the vast majority of Fantasy RPG worlds.

I've talked about an important historical figure and his direct and lasting influence on the culture, methods, and societal mores of the world at large.

We've had a discussion on how culture and society vary based on things like geography, politics, tradition and languages – and not simply based on the color of someone's skin or whether or not their ears are pointy.

The concept of patterns, as well as the importance of mythological currents and mainstays, has been discussed in the creation of a solid, consistent and persistent spiritual "center" for the cultures of the game world.

These pieces of World Building Theory, along with the rest of the essays (dealing with World Building Practice), have all been specifically chosen by me for one singular purpose:

To assist GM's (new and old) with getting their game worlds off of the page and into the imaginations of their players by helping them make their game worlds consistent, believable, and most of all, rich in depth and character.

Now, let's be clear: I do not pretend to be an expert or a high-demand professional when it comes to writing Fantasy RPG's. My published credentials are few (although I do have them), and even though I have been pleasantly surprised when someone at a convention comes up to me and says "Hey! You're Jim Milligan! I ran your Mekton Zeta mini-campaign set and I loved it! Even better, my players loved it!", by and large I have not made a ton of breakthroughs in the realm of self- or sponsored- publishing.

But I do know my history, and my mythology, and I know more than a little about anthropology and the theories of cultural drift and migration. And so while writing these essays, the underlying theme that I have been weaving through all of them has been a subtle one: Internal Consistency. Your game world can be the most ridiculous, absurd, comical thing in the history of all game worlds, ever, but as long as it is internally consistent, you're golden. Don't believe me? Read Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (or watch the incredibly well done television movies, they're awesome). Discworld is played for laughs just as often as it is played for subtle, macabre, insidiously clever horror, and it is rife with callbacks and references to real-world myths and fables, but it is – above all – internally consistent. Even when it isn't, even when it breaks its own rules, it breaks them in such a way as to keep the suspension of disbelief. When Pratchett breaks his own rules, he breaks them just enough to make sure you don't realize he has until the deed is done and you've already bought in to the new way of things.

Just like in the Discworld, the myths, legends, religions, cultural mores and beliefs of the real world are not always internally consistent. I'm sure that as intelligent, well-read gamers, you've noticed that simple truth as you've gone through life. And here's the nice part about that:

Knowing that religions, myths, and history often contradict themselves within their own chain of events enables me to create those same ripples and folds within the world of Loris, and make them behave in a manner that is internally consistent with the rest of the campaign setting.

Do you get where I'm going with that? I know my way around mythology and history (I'd damn well better, I studied it for 7 years in college), and because I know my way around it as well as I do, I am able to drag out the various repetitive functions and foibles of the mythological models (be they Greek, Egyptian, or what-have-you) and apply them to Loris. As well, because I understand and comprehend that history is made up of discoveries, mistakes, conflicts, and most importantly people, I can apply those things to Loris as a whole, and in the doing, create a very rich and bountiful tapestry that quickly becomes more than just a series of names and dates on a laser printed player handout. 

When creating a game world, whether you are new to the concept or a seasoned GM with numerous campaigns under your belt, it is really easy to forget that in order for your "starting town" to get to the place it is today, it had to be populated by people that came from somewhere else. The importance of that somewhere else, all the little fiddly bits and pieces of history and influential persons, are why I've been writing these essays. They are designed to show you the why's and the how's and the who's  that make up the world of Loris, and to show you how - in my own way - I have been working toward making a solid, believable campaign world.

It is really easy for a GM to say "Man, I really love this particular kind of Elf! I'm gonna stick them in this part of the game world, and then run them up against these Dwarves as their life-long enemies!"

Okay, cool. Elves and Dwarves, fighting one another. I can get behind that. But why? Why are they fighting one another? Why are they living so close to one another in the first place if they don't get along? Seems to me they'd not want to live close to each other if they don't like the other culture, right?

See, now, the new GM has to answer these questions. And these questions lead to other questions. And it never really ends.

There are two ways to build a game world, and that's one of them. I call it the "Toychest" method. It's the one where you start out small and build out and "up" from there: You pull a toy out of the chest, and make up a story about it. Then you pull another toy out of the chest, and make up a story about that. Eventually, you've got a series of toys on the floor, each with their own story – and they may not always fit together seamlessly, but you will always get an interesting tale out of it. Here's a good example of a "Toychest" game world:

You begin play in your home town. One day, while you and your friends are out hunting for deer in the forest, you return home to find that a Green Dragon has come in and destroyed your entire village. Your quest now becomes the goal of gaining enough skill and power to kill the Green Dragon, and in so doing, you venture out into the world around you.

In this example, the GM builds the world as you go, and you and your companions find new and exciting adventures – but all along the way, your GM is answering those questions. Why are there Elves fighting Dwarves here? Why is there a forest right up against this desert? What happened in those mountains over there?

This is a perfectly reasonable and viable method, and I've done it more than a few times myself. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. It can be immense fun and I enjoy doing it.

Another method is the "Sandbox" method – The GM sits down and says "I have this big blank sheet of paper, and on it I'm going to draw a map. And on the map, I'm going to put these five civilizations, and they will interact in this fashion. And these races shall be here in the North, and these here in the South, and these others over here in the East. And there shall be magic, and it's going to be awesome."

The advantage of the "Sandbox" game world is that it's really big, and from a macro level, the GM can pick you up and put you down anywhere, and you'll be able to know that there will be something there to interact with. Sandbox games are usually found in the form of pre-packaged campaign worlds. The Forgotten Realms, for instance, can be considered a published sandbox-method campaign setting – just one that's already had all of the fiddly bits filled in and set down for the GM.

The big disadvantage of the sandbox-method for building a campaign world is that, unless the setting is completely under the control of one particular GM (say, your very own home-brewed campaign world), where you go with your game will not always be where the creators want to go with the game. This ends up with the "Well, that's not what happened in my game!" syndrome coming to pass every time the creators release a new supplement. While not the biggest drawback, it can be frustrating.

Loris, however, was built using what I call the "Vacant Lot" method. Think about a vacant lot. The one down the street from your home, where something once stood, but stands there no longer. There's now a big patch of land there, and at first blush, it seems empty and barren. But if you look, there are little remnants of its history, things that have been there since the house was standing. An old doll, or a few pieces of broken furniture. Some pieces of the foundation may be found, covered by weeds and the turned-over dirt of the lot. This is where I started my entire world-building method with the question of "What happens when all the Gods of a world die, and new ones show up to replace them?" In essence, I generated a vacant lot and started building on it: the world of Loris is built on the castings and remnants of a world that has come before it. Just like in the real world, where nearly every civilization in history has been built on the remnants of those who've come before it, Loris is built on the old vacant lot. As it is built, it incorporates the little bits of character and remnants of the previous house, as it were.

So how does this all tie together? Well, hopefully, Under Sleeping Suns will provide new and established GM's with all three methods of World Building in a neat and tidy package. How?

In last week's post, I was asked the following question:

"How do you intend to help new GMs in their world-construction exercises?"

 

The answer I gave spoke about internal consistency and the persistence of history, and talked about providing a sort of a-la carte method to allow the GM to craft their own path in the game world – by choosing from a series of Scenarios, Root Causes, and Impacts, the GM, essentially, gets to play around with a toy chest in a sandbox on the Vacant Lot that is the world of Loris. The framework – the world of Loris itself – is the vacant lot. The magic, cultures, myths, and peoples of Loris are the toys from the toychest. The maps and nations and meta-plot allusions are the sandbox.

At least, that's the operating theory.