Fantasy World Building Elements

[Nicole Massey]

I've been working on my Fantasy RPG world again, and I've started thinking.
In describing the life of people on this world, I found myself referencing
things common to this one. I had to think for a bit why the fantasy world
would have Salmon, rice, and pears, and I had a good one, (that is
irrelevant here) but it got me to thinking. How much similarity with our
world is good, and how much should be changed? And while I'm at it, the
other side of the question is important too. How much change is too much?
It's easy to create things and then have to create a glossary to tell people
that Rospash is similar to a potato. But how much of this is actually
needed?

One of the things I do is write fiction to demonstrate my world. I have both
a different game world and also different game mechanics, and having some
fiction helps to demonstrate how they work and some of the possibilities. I
found myself using the Tarot as a backdrop for a story, and I got to
thinking, I could generate a completely different card deck for this world,
but wouldn't using the tarot be more familiar to readers, at least some of
them, and thereby have more relevance to demonstrating the concepts? I
decided to go with the tarot as the model because it fit the need better
than having to explain something new as I was going along. The fiction
section didn't need another new thing to make it work.

I'd like to hear thoughts on this.

[Stephen McIlvenna]

Post by Nicole Massey
I've been working on my Fantasy RPG world again, and I've started
thinking. In describing the life of people on this world, I found myself
referencing things common to this one. I had to think for a bit why the
fantasy world would have Salmon, rice, and pears, and I had a good one,
(that is irrelevant here) but it got me to thinking. How much similarity
with our world is good, and how much should be changed?

I don't object to the common items you list appearing in fantasy worlds.
These are generally just background elements which don't catch my attention
as being out of place. On the other hand, an entire world of new fauna and
flora with strange sounding names can be quite jarring. The effort of
recognising the new names and their meaning can distract from the more
important details and often adds little value. Certainly you may want some
unique creations in your world, but too many can lead to unnecessary
confusion, in my opinion.

I am more sensitive to histories or cultures which mirror too directly to
our world. It may be natural for climates and available technology to
produce elements which seem familiar, but I can lose interest if the rugged
warriors from a cold northern region are too obviously ripped off from
Vikings or Norse mythology (unless this was the author's goal).

Post by Nicole Massey
One of the things I do is write fiction to demonstrate my world. I have
both a different game world and also different game mechanics, and having
some fiction helps to demonstrate how they work and some of the
possibilities.

I do like little bits of fiction to bring a new game setting to life.
Encyclopaedic descriptions of nations and cities are probably important, but
a short piece of prose is more likely to inspire me to play in such
settings. One risk to bear in mind is that of the fiction contradicting the
game rules, especially if a new magic system is being developed.

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/

[Neelakantan Krishnaswami]

Post by Nicole Massey
I've been working on my Fantasy RPG world again, and I've started
thinking. In describing the life of people on this world, I found
myself referencing things common to this one. I had to think for a
bit why the fantasy world would have Salmon, rice, and pears, and I
had a good one, (that is irrelevant here) but it got me to
thinking. How much similarity with our world is good, and how much
should be changed? And while I'm at it, the other side of the
question is important too. How much change is too much? It's easy to
create things and then have to create a glossary to tell people that
Rospash is similar to a potato. But how much of this is actually
needed?

The answer depends on who your audience is, and what they and you are
interested in.

Who are the players in your game (counting yourself too)? What kinds
of things do they find interesting, as actual people? What kinds of
things do you and they find interesting to make up?

Spend your effort on things that you and your players find interesting,
and which you also find interesting to make up. It's no good if the
effort of making up things leaves you tired and frustrated, and it's
not pointful to spend time on things no one will care about.

You have finite time and energy, so direct them to the highest-payoff
activities.

If one of your players is a big food geek, then explaining that a
rospash is like a blue potato the size of a soccer ball is a good
thing. He or she'll be interested in what that means about the cuisine
of your fantasy land, and start making up dishes and have their PCs
order soup in a baked rospash bowl, and things like that. If they
don't care, then just call it a potato and keep going.

[John Morrow]

How much similarity with our world is good, and how much should be
changed? And while I'm at it, the other side of the question is
important too. How much change is too much?

In general,, I think that the fundamental measures that people think in
terms of like time, distance, temperature, and so on are things that
normally shouldn't be changed. If you want exotic timekeeping, for
example, I suggest a one-to-one alias (e.g., using the word "glass" for
"hourglass" instead of "hour", using "pace" for "yard" or "meter", etc.)
so that people don't have to do math to translate what they know into
something else and can easily mentally substitute if someone slips up.
In practice, that also means that a year should be roughly a year long, a
day should be roughly 24 hours, and so on.

If you tell the players a trip will take 3 oolongs or a target is 15
centiloogies away, it's a lot easier for them to visualize what you are
talking about if an oolong is a 7 day week and a centiloogie is about a
yard or meter. If an oolong is a 12 day week, then your players are doing
math to convert those 3 oolongs into 36 days to understand what it really
means, and it gets even worse if your setting has days that aren't 24
hours long. If a centiloogie is something like 2 feet, 3 inches or maybe
327 centimeters, then your players are doing mental math again to
visualize the difference. Those numbers won't have any intuitive meaning
for the players.

As for other things, I think that what a setting generally needs is flavor
differences. If tea is important to a culture in your setting, give it an
exotic name. Sprinkle in some exotic foods and deserts, some exotic bits
of clothing, etc. Unless you really want your players to have to study
and learn your setting (some players find that rewarding and other players
consider it work, not fun), then keep it light and iconic, not detailed
and comprehensive.

It's easy to create things and then have to create a glossary to tell
people that Rospash is similar to a potato. But how much of this is
actually needed?

As a guide, think about what you might know about some other Earth
culture, especially if it's only a pop-culture view of that culture. As
far as many people know, men in Scotland wear kilts, play bagpipes, eat
haggis, throw a caber, carry a claymore, and speak with a brogue. But
they also still have shirts, shoes, drums, bread, stew, soup, running,
axes, and so on. So there are a handful of exotic things that make the
Scots distinctive and the rest isn't really notable. Think about what you
know (or if you konw a great deal, what the average person knows) about
Australia, France, China, Russia, Japan, Hawaii, Kenya, Brazil, Saudi
Arabia, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, etc. What kinds of details stick out
about those places and how many of them are there?

One of the things I do is write fiction to demonstrate my world. I have both
a different game world and also different game mechanics, and having some
fiction helps to demonstrate how they work and some of the possibilities.

Well, one thing that you'll need to decide is how enthusiastic your
*players* are about learning about your world. Most people are up to
learning a few phrases from a phrase book, reading a tour guide, and
taking a trip to, say, Tokyo to experience something different. Far fewer
people are willing to "go native" and learn Japanese, study Japanese
history and culture, and live in rural Japan for a few years. If you have
players interested in a quick tour of your setting, they might not be
willing to do the work to go native. Of course if you have players
willing to go native and share your enthusiasm for your setting, by all
means go for it and detail away.

I found myself using the Tarot as a backdrop for a story, and I got to
thinking, I could generate a completely different card deck for this
world, but wouldn't using the tarot be more familiar to readers, at
least some of them, and thereby have more relevance to demonstrating the
concepts? I decided to go with the tarot as the model because it fit the
need better than having to explain something new as I was going along.
The fiction section didn't need another new thing to make it work.

I think you can play around with the selection of cards in a tarot deck
and create your own cards with our own meaning, but those meanings should
be meaningful to your players or readers and not clash too strongly with
how they'll intuitively interpet the symbolism. Certain animals and
objects have common associations and if you are looking for your version
of the Tarot to have intuitive iconic meaning for the players, you should
probably work with that, not against it.

For example, a bear could be a symbol of strength or ferocity but would
probably seem strange as a symbol for cleverness, even if bears can be
quite clever. If you use made-up animals, plants, and objects for your
cards, you'll probably need to explain how people view that thing.

There are alternate tarot decks out there with other symbolism (e.g.,
American Indian) that might give you some ideas if you can find them.

John Morrow

[Del Rio]

Post by John Morrow

How much similarity with our world is good, and how much should be
changed? And while I'm at it, the other side of the question is
important too. How much change is too much?

In general,, I think that the fundamental measures that people think in
terms of like time, distance, temperature, and so on are things that
normally shouldn't be changed.

Yeah, I had come to the conclusion that calendars weren't worth
changing for a variety of reasons, but I think you hit on a
more fundamantal point, there. Changing anything that basic
will probably just lead to confusion, likely for a not very
big gain in immersiveness.

[Nicole Massey]

One of the things I've done is keep a standard calendar, but the world
thinks in seasons for the most part, and seasonal names vary by region.
There are three months per season, and those names may vary, but the cycle
of the year on the planet in question breaks out to three months per season
of thirty days each. Weeks stay the same at seven days in most regions, just
to make it easier on my players. The big place where things diverge is in
the year -- most of the regions have their own year one, so different people
have a different conception of what year it actually is. I have an Excel
spreadsheet that keeps all my major events in history, including the birth
years of famous people, and death years when applicable, in check. With a
simple calculation, I can keep track of the year things happened and then
reference them in the individual land's calendar. (My game is very heavily
oriented to local perspectives on things, and thee is a lot of subjectivity
in views on things and their importance based on which culture is commenting
on them)

Post by Del Rio

Post by John Morrow

How much similarity with our world is good, and how much should be
changed? And while I'm at it, the other side of the question is
important too. How much change is too much?

In general,, I think that the fundamental measures that people think in
terms of like time, distance, temperature, and so on are things that
normally shouldn't be changed.

Yeah, I had come to the conclusion that calendars weren't worth
changing for a variety of reasons, but I think you hit on a
more fundamantal point, there. Changing anything that basic
will probably just lead to confusion, likely for a not very
big gain in immersiveness.
--
"I know I promised, Lord, never again. But I also know
that YOU know what a weak-willed person I am."

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Del Rio
Yeah, I had come to the conclusion that calendars weren't worth
changing for a variety of reasons, but I think you hit on a
more fundamantal point, there. Changing anything that basic
will probably just lead to confusion, likely for a not very
big gain in immersiveness.

We did this for a series of long-running D&D campaigns in the same
setting, and I feel it worked for us--though in retrospect I would
have kept the 7-day week, as no one had an intuitive feel for how
long "six weeks from now" was and we had to keep doing math.

The setting had 5 seasons rather than 4 and the months were very
obviously and blatantly tied to the seasons. The seasons were
pronounced (and one of them had a lot of magical stuff happening
in it) and noticable in play.

I wouldn't make a habit of it, but for those games it worked. It
also worked in an Ars Magica covenant-building campaign where, again,
seasonality was important (and we got to see about 20 years of
play, so the repeating pattern was clear).

I would not mess with units of measurement, though (and I regret
having messed with "week" for this reason).

One where the jury is still out for me is currency. I don't feel any
need to have nice names for coins, but sometimes it is nice to know
that Imperial currency is different from Gearian (my PCs had trouble
spending all that Imperial currency without being taken for spies).
On the other hand, it's a pain, and seldom seems worthwhile. A big
hoarde of mixed coins is liable to make the players say "Just tell
us what it's worth, please." And it is hard enough to deal with the
erratic nature of most FRP pricing systems without adding currency
issues to the problem.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Del Rio
Yeah, I had come to the conclusion that calendars weren't worth
changing for a variety of reasons, but I think you hit on a
more fundamantal point, there. Changing anything that basic
will probably just lead to confusion, likely for a not very
big gain in immersiveness.

We did this for a series of long-running D&D campaigns in the same
setting, and I feel it worked for us--though in retrospect I would
have kept the 7-day week, as no one had an intuitive feel for how
long "six weeks from now" was and we had to keep doing math.

In Middle Earth I'm afraid I'm stuck with a slightly different Calendar or
two. Not really a big deal however as the real life one is close enough to
work in general.

[John Morrow]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
We did this for a series of long-running D&D campaigns in the same
setting, and I feel it worked for us--though in retrospect I would
have kept the 7-day week, as no one had an intuitive feel for how
long "six weeks from now" was and we had to keep doing math.

I think the "intuitive feel" is the critical issue here. Things like
distances, weights, volumes, temperatures, spans of time, and so forth are
all things that people often think about intuitively because an value also
instantly gets interpreted with respect to the person hearing the value --
far, near, heavy, light, big, small, hot, warm, comfortable, cool, cold,
long, brief, and so on. If you have to actually figure out whether a
distance is far or near or if a weight is heavy or light then you need to
expend mental energy doing something your character should be doing
intutively.

I experienced a bit of that in Japan. While I can deal with metric
distances pretty well, I've never gotten an intuitive sense of metric
temperatures. While I know 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling, and 37 is body
temperature, I have no idea whether I need a jacket when it's 17 degrees
out and always had to convert or look at the weather at a US web site.
It was annoying.

But I think that how I deal with distances and weights points to the
middle ground that I think I mentioned earlier. I can do distances
because a meter is about a yard or a "pace" and that's easy enough to
visualize and I can do weights because halving the pounds or doubling the
weight is easy enough. The problem with temperature is that the
conversion formula is non-trivial and not easy to estimate. So if you are
going to change things, make it *close* to something people are familiar
with (e.g., paces = yards = meters, rocks = ~1 pound = ~0.5 kg, etc.).
Having 28 day months is OK because that's close enough to a normal month.
Having 17 day months isn't. Weeks are messy because math with 7s is
messy. Basically, keep the math simple if people do have to convert.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The setting had 5 seasons rather than 4 and the months were very
obviously and blatantly tied to the seasons. The seasons were
pronounced (and one of them had a lot of magical stuff happening
in it) and noticable in play.

I think seasons are fine because most people use seasons to assess the
weather or yearly cycles (e.g., "It's Spring again!"), not spans of time.
Where you could mess people up there would be to detach what a season in
the game means from the weather (e.g., "Half way through Cold Season,
precipitation switches from snow to rain which continues several weeks
into Wet Season, after which it rains constantly...") or the yearly cycle
(e.g., "Gaspus starts late this year affter the snow has already started
falling."). It's possible that people used to thinking in a lunar
calendar might have an easier time with that (e.g., the timing of
Ramadan).

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
One where the jury is still out for me is currency. I don't feel any
need to have nice names for coins, but sometimes it is nice to know
that Imperial currency is different from Gearian (my PCs had trouble
spending all that Imperial currency without being taken for spies).
On the other hand, it's a pain, and seldom seems worthwhile. A big
hoarde of mixed coins is liable to make the players say "Just tell
us what it's worth, please." And it is hard enough to deal with the
erratic nature of most FRP pricing systems without adding currency
issues to the problem.

Price, like other measurements, has an intuitive assessment associated
with it. When you hear a price attached to an item, you assess whether
it's cheap or expensive, fair or unfair, and so on. There is some
evidence in the brain research that I touched on earlier that this is
hardcoded (e.g., monkeys will get angry at unfair exchanges of tokens for
food if they see another monkey getting a better deal or got a better deal
in the past). Again, I think the key here is to make conversion simple if
you have to have it. When I lived in Japan, I tended to assess prices in
yen by adding a decimal point two places in so that I'd think of a 500 yen
prices as a $5 price. It wasn't a perfect conversion, but it was close
enough to produce a "cheap"/"expensive" assessment.

One way this sort of flavor can work is when the currency that the
characters are most familiar with is handled in a way the players are most
familiar with, so that their characters' struggles with currency
conversion, money changers, and so on matches their own struggles with the
same issues. Money changers are, of course, another way to handle it
(convert everything once per trip to a new area).

The biggest problem with economics in a non-modern setting is that values
are often tied to the cost to produce something and as production methods
change, prices change. Creating cloth was once a time-consume manual
process that consumed much of the free time of women and now it's done by
machines and cloth is very cheap. So if we price clothing in a Bronze Age
setting relative to other goods based on the relative pricing of clothing
to other goods in the modern world, we'll likely be very wrong.

People who expect goods to have a price can also have problems with
barter. Tribe 8 started moving away from promoting a barter economy early
on (you'll notice mention of "tokens" that are basically coins in some
early supplements) because people were having a lot of trouble figuring
out how many dead rabbits a metal pipe was worth without a price list (I
wrote the essay published in the Tribe 8 Companion in an attempt to save
the barter system).

John

[David Alex Lamb]

Post by John Morrow
I experienced a bit of that in Japan. While I can deal with metric
distances pretty well, I've never gotten an intuitive sense of metric
temperatures. While I know 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling, and 37 is body
temperature, I have no idea whether I need a jacket when it's 17 degrees
out and always had to convert or look at the weather at a US web site.

30+ years after Canada converted I'm more or less used to 0-25, but I'm hazy
on how far above that is where 'too hot' starts. A couple of temperatures
were fairly easy -- 21 is how warm our house used to be in the winter, 18 is
how cool it is now, 24 is where the air conditioner gets set in summer, which
is a degree or too colder than it really ought to be if we were more
energy-conservative.

As you said elsewhere, the intuition is what's critical. And in my personal
experience it takes a long time to learn everything but a few important points
on the scale.

[John Morrow]

Post by David Alex Lamb
30+ years after Canada converted I'm more or less used to 0-25, but I'm hazy
on how far above that is where 'too hot' starts. A couple of temperatures
were fairly easy -- 21 is how warm our house used to be in the winter, 18 is
how cool it is now, 24 is where the air conditioner gets set in summer, which
is a degree or too colder than it really ought to be if we were more
energy-conservative.

I could guess that 17 is "cool" (which is why I used it in an example
about wearking a jacket) but I don't have a sense of how cool at a gut
level like I have a sense of how cool 60 is.

As for a country converting, my wife and I visited Australia while living
in Japan. I found it funny that while on a tour, the two tour guides who
were a bit older than my wife and I were giving us altitudes in feet and
so forth. I asked them about metric and altitudes in meters and they
looked like they'd have to pull out a book and do some math if I wanted
that.

What I also find fascinating is that people in pre-modern times simply
didn't have the same sense of precision in their measurements as modern
people do. People don't think of temperature in terms of degrees without
thermometers. Times and dates become fuzzy when you don't have a watch or
calendar (something one of the people on the most recent Survivor, a
person who lived by the clock, commented on in the post-show program). And
because we expect to think of these things with precisions or numbers,
trying to eliminate that precision in a pre-modern role-playing game can
be very difficult. For example, when the party asks what time they should
meet in the Inn, it's natural to think in terms of "5:00PM" rather than
"sundown" and it gets even more difficult to describe times once you move
away from sunrise, noon, and sunset.

John Morrow

[Del Rio]

Post by Nicole Massey
I've been working on my Fantasy RPG world again, and I've started thinking.
In describing the life of people on this world, I found myself referencing
things common to this one. I had to think for a bit why the fantasy world
would have Salmon, rice, and pears, and I had a good one, (that is
irrelevant here) but it got me to thinking. How much similarity with our
world is good, and how much should be changed? And while I'm at it, the
other side of the question is important too. How much change is too much?
It's easy to create things and then have to create a glossary to tell people
that Rospash is similar to a potato. But how much of this is actually
needed?

One thing I've found that seems always to be too much effort is
inventing a new calendar. Keeping track of time and events in
a campaign is important, but people mostly don't think much
about it *except* for timing and tracking important events.
Having a campaign-specific calendar just adds complication and
introduces errors, i.e. when people forget how many days are in
the month of Winterfall. Not worth the price for the
relatively little extra immersion it adds.

As for other stuff, I wouldn't bother removing or changing
stuff like apples, but adding some campaign specific growing
things is a nice touch. Maybe a few regional fruits, herbs,
spices or what have you. But these are a nice touch, and one
of the things that I would typically get to as a campaign went
on rather than trying to do it all up front. I often seem to
get a lot of people wanting to smoke pipes, so figuring out the
lore of regional tobaccos always seems to be a big thing.
Maybe because roleplaying is the only way most of my friends
ever get to smoke. ;-)

[Rick Pikul]

Post by Del Rio
As for other stuff, I wouldn't bother removing or changing
stuff like apples, but adding some campaign specific growing
things is a nice touch.

Another thing that is easy to do is to keep the general but change the
specific. So you still have apples, but you don't have McIntosh apples.

[Russell Wallace]

Post by Nicole Massey
I've been working on my Fantasy RPG world again, and I've started thinking.
In describing the life of people on this world, I found myself referencing
things common to this one. I had to think for a bit why the fantasy world
would have Salmon, rice, and pears, and I had a good one, (that is
irrelevant here) but it got me to thinking. How much similarity with our
world is good, and how much should be changed? And while I'm at it, the
other side of the question is important too. How much change is too much?
It's easy to create things and then have to create a glossary to tell people
that Rospash is similar to a potato. But how much of this is actually
needed?

The way I'd come at it is this: you have limited resources, your time
and attention for writing things, your players' and readers' for reading
them, everyone's for keeping track of them afterwards. So I'd conserve
those resources for what matters.

Is it important to the flavor of the setting or the stories you want to
tell in it that they eat rospash instead of potatoes? Probably not. So
I'd just let them eat potatoes, and conserve resources for the things
that are important.

[psychohist]

Nicole Massey asks for thoughts about how much should be borrowed from
the player world when creating a fantasy world.

In my opinion, it's largely a matter of taste. As others point out,
borrowing from the player world cn save effort; if you want to put in
the effort, though, having your own unique geology, ecology, and social
structure can be interesting.

One thing I've found that others haven't noted: borrowing, while
having the advantage of not requiring your players to learn as many
things from scratch, also has disadvantages if you want to introduce
differences between the fantasy world version of something and the
player world version of it. For example, I borrowed horses from the
player world, but I made some modification to size ranges and other
characteristics to accomodate a slightly more heroic flavor. This
worked fine as long as people were just relying on lay knowledge, but
when one character became a horse breeder and his player started
researching horse breeding, the differences caused a certain amount of
assumption clash for a while.

[Eric P.]

Post by Nicole Massey
I've been working on my Fantasy RPG world again, and I've started thinking.
In describing the life of people on this world, I found myself referencing
things common to this one. I had to think for a bit why the fantasy world
would have Salmon, rice, and pears, and I had a good one, (that is
irrelevant here) but it got me to thinking. How much similarity with our
world is good, and how much should be changed? And while I'm at it, the
other side of the question is important too. How much change is too much?
It's easy to create things and then have to create a glossary to tell people
that Rospash is similar to a potato. But how much of this is actually
needed?

Some of us love the details that give more setting-specific and cultural
flavor to a game. Such elements sometimes help the players feel that
their characters are truly a part of a unique world. What you might want
to do to keep the players' minds (and your own) somewhat clear is to use
generic terms for some of the more common items the characters encounter
regularly, and use unique creations with their setting- and
culturally-specific names when most appropriate. You can even use
real-world names for items that are most similar in your world,
especially when using whatever passes for a "Common" language. This
happens at times when texts are translated from one language to another.

Post by Nicole Massey
One of the things I do is write fiction to demonstrate my world. I have both
a different game world and also different game mechanics, and having some
fiction helps to demonstrate how they work and some of the possibilities. I
found myself using the Tarot as a backdrop for a story, and I got to
thinking, I could generate a completely different card deck for this world,
but wouldn't using the tarot be more familiar to readers, at least some of
them, and thereby have more relevance to demonstrating the concepts? I
decided to go with the tarot as the model because it fit the need better
than having to explain something new as I was going along. The fiction
section didn't need another new thing to make it work.
I'd like to hear thoughts on this.

Consider the Star Trek universe. In following the various stories, we
became more or less familiar with many terms, while also finding that
many terms common to the real world were also used. When in doubt, it's
best to have a way to easily remind the audience (player, reader,
viewer, listener) of what's what.

As for creating systems of measurement, whether for time, dimensions,
mass/volume/weight, or the like, you may wish to take it as a given that
people of whatever world will think in ways similar to people of our
world, in a general way, so the measurements will be very similar, if
not identical in some cases. I wouldn't consider it unreasonable to have
the audience become familiar with unique terms for even common concepts,
because those terms will arise so often that the audience will quickly
remember what's what.

As for the Tarot, I've seen cases where world-builders have designed
their own similar decks. I favor the idea of creating a unique one, even
if only using the Major Arcana as a base. Alternately, you could simply
rename the cards, and keep the representations the same.

I'm interested to read details of your setting, if possible.

Good luck!
Eric

[Nicole Massey]

Post by Eric P.
I'm interested to read details of your setting, if possible.

What I have is a mix of elements from several published products, usually
from smaller publishers, (The most notable is Gamelords Ltd, where I use
both The Free City of Haven and City of the Sacred Flame) and things I've
developed from my own research and imagination. However, the underlying
system is a system called Artistry, which is a system I was involved in
developing.

The key elements of my world design are history and politics. History
informs the culture and politics, and there is a logical reason for
everything that happens on the world.

The main back story is that this is one world in a vast galactic community,
in this case one of the principal homeworlds of the Lefrin, which are what
the galactic community calls the Elves. Thanks to some great wars many
millennia ago, the Elves do not venture into space anymore and have
forgotten that it exists, with a few exceptions. The world sundered and the
elves and other races that took up residence on it have started rebuilding
their culture to a fantasy world type environment. This is one of the
planets with the particular environment on the sub-atomic level that allows
magic to function well, so a magical culture has evolved.

There has been significant cross-pollination and species inclusion on this
world from other worlds, and that is one of the core reasons that there is
maize, shrimp, Horses, and people following a Scandinavian path living up in
the north. Some place names reference old names from other places as well,
especially the island nation of Atlantis.

This is a world that, with the exception of the mostly unexplored southern
continent and the western end of the main continent are fairly well explored
and tamed. Much of the planet doesn't have to face Orc raids, for example.
Other challenges are present to keep the players active.

About six hundred years ago a mage named Montar developed a theory that
allowed him to better divide and codify magical study and training, and the
schools of magic were created to define these educational boundaries. This
has been a defining factor on the world, as then mages got more powerful and
more specialized, and in at least two cases this made a major change in the
politics of he planet.

There's political alliances and intrigues, nations that hate each other and
allies that would go to war at a moment's notice to aid their allies, much
like Europe in the start of WWI. Schism of political entities also is
present, and thee is both a utopia and a totalitarian theocracy where the
citizens are little more than slaves to the priesthood. I am working on a
series of documents that are called What You Know documents that outline how
characters from different areas view the world and the other things in it
from their unique perspective, much of which is highly subjective and
sometimes flat out wrong.

It's a varied and complex setting with lots of faction, intrigue, and a few
very powerful things hidden around for players to stumble onto. (In some
ways, it's similar to earlier Ultima settings, especially Ultima VI, in that
there are mostly quiet countrysides with a few hot spots around the place)

Anything else you'd like to know about it?

[Russell Wallace]

Post by Nicole Massey
The key elements of my world design are history and politics. History
informs the culture and politics, and there is a logical reason for
everything that happens on the world.

I think this is the key point to answer your original question.

If your primary objective was creating a fictional ecology, for example,
then I'd say go ahead and make up species galore. If you were out to
explore the consequences of an alternative branch of technology
development, then make up widgets, units of measurement and whatnot. If
an alternative spiritual and religious outlook were the main point, then
by all means have an alternative Tarot deck.

But since history and politics are your focus, I think that's where you
should spend your resources (primarily your and your players'/readers'
time and energy), and the other stuff that isn't as important, just
swipe from our own world where possible.

[Eric P.]

Post by Russell Wallace

Post by Nicole Massey
The key elements of my world design are history and politics. History
informs the culture and politics, and there is a logical reason for
everything that happens on the world.

I think this is the key point to answer your original question.
If your primary objective was creating a fictional ecology, for example,
then I'd say go ahead and make up species galore. If you were out to
explore the consequences of an alternative branch of technology
development, then make up widgets, units of measurement and whatnot. If
an alternative spiritual and religious outlook were the main point, then
by all means have an alternative Tarot deck.
But since history and politics are your focus, I think that's where you
should spend your resources (primarily your and your players'/readers'
time and energy), and the other stuff that isn't as important, just
swipe from our own world where possible.

Spur-of-the-moment inspiration: if you'd like certain common items to
have some cultural flavor, but don't want to spend the time on it, ask
players what their characters' people call them. That might help to make
players feel more like their characters belong to the cultures of the
setting.

Happy gaming,
Eric

[Keran]

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:10:55 -0600, "Nicole Massey"

Post by Nicole Massey
I've been working on my Fantasy RPG world again, and I've started thinking.
In describing the life of people on this world, I found myself referencing
things common to this one. I had to think for a bit why the fantasy world
would have Salmon, rice, and pears, and I had a good one, (that is
irrelevant here) but it got me to thinking. How much similarity with our
world is good, and how much should be changed? And while I'm at it, the
other side of the question is important too. How much change is too much?
It's easy to create things and then have to create a glossary to tell people
that Rospash is similar to a potato. But how much of this is actually
needed?

For my current fantasy campaign, I didn't feel any particular need to
change the characteristics or the names of horses, maize, barley,
swords, or pine trees. I might have, if the campaign had been all
about exploring what happens to social structures in a different
ecosystem, or what happens to cavalry tactics if the horses aren't
precisely horses. But it isn't, so trying to make these elements
unique would probably be distracting: the players can't be expected to
improvise useful reactions to the setting if all of it is unfamiliar.

There are elements in my setting that differ from anything that
occurred in societies at similar technical levels in our history, but
which can be adequately described with existing terminology -- for
instance, in my setting they've discovered how to make silk and bamboo
hang gliders, and just calling them gliders is fine.

We did end up with an original vocabulary for magic. The campaign is
about mages, magic, and the social implications thereof, and the
obvious English vocabulary for it often tends to have connotations
that don't convey the subjective impressions or the associations it
has for the people in the world all that well. For instance, English
has a lot of terms and ideas suggesting that working magic is a matter
of language and symbolism -- e.g. spell, gramarye, names of power,
runes. In my setting magic is primarily the direction of energy
flows, and working it is fundamentally a physical act, not a symbolic
one. So sometimes I simply call something 'magic', but often in play
I'm likely to break out the native vocabulary.

verekkha -- magical energy. By folk etymology, which may be correct,
akin to 'fire + flowing (water)', 'verekh+keia'. Magical energy,
conceived as a shining liquid or a fluid flame.

kereisa verekkha-an -- the general direction, patterning, or shaping
of magical energy: the practice of magic. Often simply 'kereisa'.

(It's fundamental to thinking of magic the way the mages in the
setting do to distinguish between the flowing energy and the practice
or act of directing that energy; just calling both 'magic' doesn't
convey the right subjective sense.)

keilan verekkha-an -- an upwelling of magical energy: 'spring of
flowing fire'.

aisde keilan-an -- one attuned to a keilan.

(I started out calling these magical hotspots 'nodes', but that
doesn't begin to convey the right feel. And I started out by calling
the person who's attached to and primary wielder of the energy of a
hotspot its master, but that was also awkwardly far from the
association made in the setting.)

These and a couple of other terms are in common use in play. There
are more I don't use that often in play, but which are in my notes,
just so I have a feel for them.

So ... I introduce differences in places where I intend to explore the
difference; and I may go so far as to introduce new vocabulary if I
think all the words that already exist are likely to get in the way of
the exploration. But I don't introduce differences in peripheral
areas.