Dungeons and Dragons, "My Worst Player Character"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 9- PC I have Sworn off Playing

            LOUD CATCHPHRASE!

            This was a brief period in my life in which I sought to test out being more boisterous.  This is a factoid which leaves those of you who actually know me in real life saying something akin to, “You were never quiet.  You are the loudest person I have ever met in my life.  What the fuck are you on about?”

Thank you for your support Mister Brian Blessed.  It is appreciated.

            It is true.  I am a loud person.  I sneeze loud, I talk loud, I laugh loud.  I think there might be some kind of regulator switch busted somewhere in my brain.  I am loud.

            So, when I decide to play the kill crazy berserker character who yells a battle cry…

            THE JOKE GROWS OLD QUICKLY.

            The character’s name is lost to the ages, 7+ years ago, I was playing a Dragonborn Sorcerer whose characterization could be summed up with the word, “BURN” said in all capitals.  Often underlined and with multiple exclamations points.  Sometimes it was bolded.

            It was funny, to me, for a very short period of time.  I guess the idea was to unwind the character down.  Make him into more of a level-headed team player as the constant yelling and rage was revealed to just be some kind of veneer.  That didn’t happen.  I liked the mechanics of being a Sorcerer in 4e and had just played a DM juggling multiple characters so I didn’t have any hankering to play a nuanced or interesting person, just someone who had fun blowing stuff up.

            Thing is, I just don’t find that at all fun for any length of time.

            I like the talking and ultimately did not get as much fun out of playing something so far outside my comfort zone.

            I guess the lesson is to play to your own strengths, maybe stretch your boundaries every once in awhile, but not in a way that makes things shallower.  I tried to stretch by playing something dumber, blunter, and louder.  I have no idea why I thought that would work for me.  A departure for me would be playing deceitful, malevolent, and slothful (which would have been a problem in other ways, but certainly more interesting than loud and dumb).

            Not a great deal of complex insight in this entry.  Let’s do a follow up on one of last week’s entries to pad this out, I wouldn’t, but yesterday’s entry was short too, so let’s do something more.

Follow-up: “My Favorite Setting”

            I belong to a facebook group that focuses on roleplaying games, it has thousands of members.  I decided to ask which Dungeons and Dragons setting from my blog last week was each person’s favorite.  I guess I should have specified that I wanted to know people’s preferences among published materials, as they immediately used the write in feature to add “Homemade” and blew the conceit of the survey.  My fault.

            Anyway, here are the results.

            First things first, I have significantly underestimated the popularity of the “Forgotten Realms”.  Like, holy shit.  More than a quarter of respondents gave that as the answer.  To put that in perspective, my preferred settings, the Imaginatives (Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Eberron) highlighted in blue are 4 whole percentage points behind.

            Ravenloft, the setting I complained the most about being absent from the multiverse discussion in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide is a Dark Horse on this list coming in 3^rd?  That is unexpected.  And all the more reason Birthright was a bad pick for mentioning in the core book over it.  Again, Birthright was good for its Rules system, not the setting.

            The reason Mystara also has (Hollow World) next to it has to do with people not knowing that the Hollow World is inside Mystara.  I would have done something similar had regions like the Savage Coast or Maztica been mentioned, but they did not.

            Another thing I want to note is the poor performance of Greyhawk, which for 3^rd edition was the almost default setting and is actually pretty common in discussions of the game’s early years.  I think it suffers from being super generic, much like Birthright and Mystara.  If you are going to play a more typical setting for DnD that is published you are maybe going to start with Greyhawk, but then will move to the ones with deeper lore (hence the popularity of the Forgotten Realms, it in many ways is an upgrade on Greyhawk as far as depth of material is concerned).

            The obvious joke submission of Pizza is also there.  Take from that what you will.

 

Remember when they were playing DnD in the film "ET the Extra Terrestrial"

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about a smattering of character ideas inspired by my short time with Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "My Favorite Setting"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 3- Favorite Game World

            Not to sound too much like an egotistical madman, but the answer is “My own”.  I like being the GG rather than player by a wide margin for just this reason.  I know that I have a lot of derivative ideas, I borrow/steal stuff from other settings, and I make strange pop culture references because I think that having humor to latch onto allows people to remember what the hell is happening.  I still like it.

            I like writing and playing to an audience.  When I have players feeding me ideas I can then build them into the world in interesting ways.  Throwing their concepts into my concepts creates something unique.  But, just banging on about my own world for however many words (and I have a lot of words on that setting, so many that I thought of doing a 30-day blog challenge where I just post stuff from my game world) I feel it is also fun to look at the most common and popular settings and give a bit of a rundown on what I think about them.

            I went a bit nuts with this and ended up making this a long rundown.  This will probably be the longest entry for the entire month.  That being said, feel free to post about your own favorite setting in the comments, post a link to your own blog/website/kickstarter because I like the idea of someone getting a kick out of making a fantasy world.

The Rundown and the “Imaginatives”

            I think a good place to start would be those worlds mentioned in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide on page 68 “Known Worlds of the Material Plane”.  These are (by implication) the default settings when they crafted the 5e material and I think that judging them will give everyone a good idea of where I am coming from.

            This section about the Material Planes also have a mention of “Heroic Fantasy”, “Sword and Sorcery”, and “Epic Fantasy” which are subgenres in the worlds and I think the distinction might be too subtle for people to pick up on in most cases.  Let me take a swing at that before we get going.

            The best line I can draw between these subgenres (based on looking at which ones get each designation) is to say “Heroic Fantasy” puts its emphasis on powerful individuals, like certain gods, warriors, and wizards that seem to be the crux the whole world moves on.

            “Sword and Sorcery” seems to be more about the world with the characters being smaller moving parts in the greater whole, whenever you would describe a particular dungeon, adventure, or kingdom it would feel more like an “S&S”.

            “Epic Fantasy” is about events, the gods/titans are returning, the Ring of Power has been found, or the Dragonborn has appeared.  The worlds of “Epic Fantasy” are still fun places to explore and the heroes still go on adventures but when you talk about the world you talk about the BIG THING that happened.

            Toril is the world of the Forgotten Realms.  It is classified in the book as “Heroic Fantasy” and I can see why.  When you talk about the Realms you talk about the heroes that at this point are so popular they are almost Fantasy icons beyond being Dungeons and Dragons icons.  Drizzt Do’Urden novels were read by some of my friends before they even knew what DnD was.

            I personally am not a fan of the Realms, I have mentioned that before when I talked about setting.  I get the appeal, I just personally don’t care for it.  To me the Lore is simultaneously as derivative as a line of best fit and dense as neutron star.  Again, I do see the appeal for those of you who like it (Kind of like yesterday’s discussion of “Simple versus Complex”, Realms is too complex for me).

            Oerth is the world of Greyhawk.  It is a “Sword and Sorcery” setting and kind of the default setting of 3e.  Greyhawk is pretty good, it is rather down to Earth, there are some key locations, some important NPC’s, some ongoing events, but really it is the sort of setting that provides what you would expect in order to run a fun game without getting bogged down in too many details.  You are heroes and you go on adventures.

            If there is a complaint to have about this setting is that the world is kind of same-same.  There is no Asian influence at all, there are no conflicting religions (that is to say, all the gods are known and fighting for power, but everyone acknowledges the existence of all the gods and conceptualize their struggles in similar fashion).  Nothing that says you can’t add your own, but I would argue the point of running a default world is that you shouldn’t have to add your own continent worth of material.  This is an ideal campaign world to start with.

            Krynn is the world of Dragonlance.  It is an “Epic Fantasy” setting.  With the Dragons coming back and being a bother as the core defining event that shaped the world.  This is another series that has transitioned from DnD fantasy to just fantasy in a good chunk of the popular consciousness.  My Aunt read these novels but until I mentioned playing Dungeons and Dragons at a family get together, I don’t think she knew the connection between the two.

            As far as I can tell the setting is kind of up my alley.  I like big events and do suggest having a singular big event like a world war or cataclysm being a strong starting point or background for a campaign.  I don’t know if I like how prevalent Dragons are in this (I tend to put more emphasis on the first D in DnD), but again I understand the appeal of this more than the Realms even if it is not exactly my thing.

            Athas is the world of Dark Sun.  This is a “Sword and Sorcery” setting that asks, “Do you like “Mad Max” movies?  Cause this is it.”  A desert world full of gangs, god kings ruling city states, and a general theme of misery as the world is drained of its natural resources to become a husk.  This thing was re-released for 4e and I feel that was a sad, too quick on the draw move for Wizards, if they had the luck to release it alongside “Mad Max: Fury Road” it probably would have captured the nerd passions that (I think) inspired it to begin with.  (I have mentioned this setting before.)

            I am not much of a fan of Dark Sun, but have stolen elements from it.  I feel the need to endorse it in theory though.  Dark Sun is part of a collection of Settings that I refer to as the “Imaginatives”.  Those settings that take the freedom provided by the rules to create worlds that break the mold of typical fantasy.  This is Post-Apocalyptic fantasy something you do not see a lot of (unless you look at how many ruined castles and dungeons that imply the fall of a once Great Empire which led to the current age which is a theme present in basically all DnD).

           

            Eberron is the world of… Eberron.  To speak of the “Imaginatives” here is another one.  A “Sword and Sorcery” setting that puts the emphasis on Pulp Action.  Akin to old adventure serials this at times feels like a World War II, Noir Espionage, Indiana Jones, and Doc Savage mashed up and spread on a magical cracker.  There is a race of sentient robots that I love (and have talked about before), there are magical trains, there is a lost continent full of ruins to explore.  It has it all.

            I kind of love Eberron because it is not the typical fantasy adventure, but at the same time you can see how it would be the future of any world like Oerth or Krynn as magic became technology and the massive earth shattering events that shaped those worlds cooled.  It feels like an evolution of the genre rather than a clean break like the other 4 “Imaginatives” but the new elements it brings are so cool that I see it as distinct and worthy of consideration for anyone who wants to move in a more exotic direction for their world.

            Aebrynis is the world of the Birthright setting.  This is a “Heroic Fantasy” fantasy setting and I am shocked they even bothered to mention it.  Birthright feels like they reverse engineered the rules for a Turn Based Strategy Computer Game into a tabletop roleplaying game (at least, from what I can read on Wikipedia).  I can see why it won awards, and the mechanics sound interesting, the idea of playing a line of heroes fighting a war is pretty cool, but and this is going to sound dismissive, “It seems like a game different from DnD”.

            Let’s ignore the rules for a second though, and just focus on the world, it is kind of bland.  Which makes sense, when you are introducing new rules you need to keep the other aspects simple so that players can focus on the new rules rather than the exotic lore.  So, what we have is a world that is kind of flat so as not to pull focus from the cool rules system, a rules system that I feel is kind of outside what DnD’s core appeal is.  If you like this setting regardless of the rules that is cool, but I don’t see the appeal from what I can glean online.

            Mystara is the world of Classic Dungeons and Dragons.  This is a “Heroic Fantasy” fantasy setting as many of the movers and shakers seem to be the immortal heroes that ascended in the distant past.  That being said Mystara has cool elements, even if it has the ugliest logo in the history of DnD.

            This world has plenty of stuff to lift out, like the Hollow World and the Savage Coast, but that is also kind of why it isn’t great.  Mystara is a patchwork of ideas, and that is by design, but as a result it feels less cohesive.

            If Mystara had been built with all of its good ideas there from the start and everything mixed together to create a greater whole I would perhaps love this setting for all of the weirdness, but in its current state it feels more like a typical setting with weird elements in it, rather than a cool setting.  The Hollow World concept is so interesting that had that concept been its own thing, I would have made my “Imaginatives” a list of 5 rather than 4.

Look at how much better this logo is.
Can you believe they ever when with that ugly looking "M"?

             Surprisingly there are several settings I would consider much more iconic to Dungeons and Dragons than Birthright that were not mentioned in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide, I am going to talk about them too just to emphasize that I kind of like them a bit MORE than the ones they did mention.

            The Wild Space of the Spelljammer setting.  This is a “Sword and Sorcery” setting, but in the most fantastic place possible, space.  There are spaceships in this and all of them look and feel different from one another in ways that make them feel magical.

            The idea behind how the spaceships move, the nature of solar systems, and worlds that turn within them is described as Ptolemaic.  And that shit is a trip.  I actually love the idea of this setting and was shocked to learn it is not more well regarded as one of the most extreme settings when it comes to creativity and exploration.  The emphasis in on the world(s) rather than on specific characters and events and just the idea of there being world(S) is fascinating.

            You can probably guess that this is another “Imaginative”.  It is so exotic, so expansive, and allows for the integration of ideas so outside the genre that it feels leaps apart from the other settings in terms of look and feel when played properly.  When they announced 5e I was surprised this was not announced as one of the first big settings to be published.  Illustrating how different they wanted to make 5e from 4e (which I remind, HAD NO SETTING to go with its release).

            The City of Sigil home base for the Planescape setting.  This is setting has more or less been upgraded to default, but in such a way that it is always in the background.  Sigil is such a cool and strange set piece by itself and I like that they established it as a major stopping point in any given multi-verse trip.  It is a city that lines the inside of a ring that floats at the top of an infinitely high tower in the Outlands of reality.  That sentence sounds like something out of aphasic poetry.

            The premise of the game was to allow players to travel between dimensions “Sliders” style to have adventures in many different worlds.  I have used this concept in a “Mutants and Masterminds” game back in the day because I thought players would like to meet and fight with various known superhero properties, and the idea makes sense for DnD, you could even say it is the logical setting with which to push an integration of DnD with the worlds of Magic the Gathering (settings that go inexplicably unmentioned in the books).

            You would figure that this would be the other “Imaginative” but oddly no.  Sigil and Planescape are basically every setting, which is big, but elements like the multiverse and portals to other worlds exist all over DnD; Planescape is imaginative in that it connects everything else, and has a cool set piece, but is not in and of itself super exotic in the context of DnD.  When Planescape is its most imaginative is when it is visiting individual worlds that feel cool by themselves (I may not be making much sense, apologies if I am being unclear).  Much like the Hollow World of Mystara it has cool things, but they are too disparate.

            The Demi-Plane of Dread home to the Ravenloft setting.  This is more of a “Gothic Horror” type setting which distinguishes it from the other worlds a great deal, mostly because it is the only setting that has that designation.  I think Ravenloft gets a short shift.  While they do love the main villain, Strahd Von Zarovich, and Wizards of the Coast keep releasing the one iconic adventure from the setting in each edition, the full-on setting doesn’t seem to get the limelight.  Doubly weird because of how many people were brought into fantasy by Vampire fiction, I guess they figured not to bother competing with White Wolf Gaming for all horror RPG business.

            Maybe if Universal’s new Tom Cruise’s “The Mummy” had been a real success and it looked like the Dark Universe was going to be a pop culture thing, Ravenloft would be getting more love, as is I think it will remain the moody standoffish child of the DnD franchise.

            Ravenloft is the last my “Imaginatives”.  Gothic Horror is such a break from everything else, especially when the look and feel of a world cloaked in mist that it is an example of what can be done by pulling the rules out of their comfort zone.  Even though Magic the Gathering has Innistrad as a sister setting, nothing else in DnD has the look and feel of Ravenloft.

Are you telling me this wouldn't be at all enticing to all the Vampire Gamers?
It looks so cool.

             Lastly, what is not really talked about are the numerous different worlds of popular fantasy not owned by Dungeons and Dragons.  There is no Middle Earth, Hogwarts, or Pern.  No Wheel of Time or Discworld.  No Elder Scrolls.  No Britannia from “Ultima” or Albion from “Fable”.

            There are no mentions of “Warcraft’s” Azeroth or the Known World of “Game of Thrones”.  No mention of Pathfinder (their setting is a lot of fun).  No Hyborian Age of Conan.  No Narnia.  No Barsoom (though Dark Sun might have taken some notes).  No Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.  No Hyrule or Mushroom Kingdom.  No Equestria (another oversight as it is owned by Hasbro and has some crossover appeal).

            No Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  No Oriental Adventures at all.  No world of Norse or Greek myth.  Nothing based on Native American, Indian, African or other real life mythology outside of the West unless you dig into something like the Realms and even then, THOSE AREN’T AT ALL DISCUSSED.

            Most glaringly there is no discussion of the Multiverse of Magic the Gathering even though many are awesome sauce, and I must reiterate ARE OWNED BY THE SAME COMPANY.

            I mean, if you don’t have room for Ravenloft I can see not talking about properties owned by someone else, that would seem like an unwise move to draw comparisons between your product and those of the “competition”.  Conversely, if you have room for Birthright, you can make room for Ravenloft… you know, by cutting Birthright.

Need for a New World

            Let me talk about one last thing, there has been too long a break since the last new campaign setting.  In many ways 5e was an attempt to strip down the game to be simpler, but I think that they are now falling into the same trap that Hollywood is in that they are trying to rehash their older IP instead of making new stuff.  Let me just show you a timeline.  (For this purposes we are counting Mystara from 1981, even though it goes back before that kind of).

(Click on the image for Full Size)

            As you can see from the chart is has been a while since the last new campaign setting (let’s not kick Wizards of the Coast in the nuts by pointing out Pathfinder again).  This is kind of shameful all the more so because the open casting call that got them Eberron also netted them several finalists that they still own but haven’t used.  Why in heaven’s name are they not massaging those things into workable product.  Rich Baker still writes a DnD themed comic online (Order of the Stick) are you telling me he wouldn’t want the setting he submitted to head to the printers?  This is the longest dry spell for new IP in the history of the franchise at 13 years it is closing in on doubling the previous record of 8 between Birthright and Eberron.  NOT GOOD.

            I keep hounding doing a full release of a Magic the Gathering setting in conjunction with a set of Magic cards, the crossover would lead to cross pollination of the franchise, it would also double the market for novels, comics, posters and other merch.  It just seems like a good idea.

Coming Tomorrow

            My favorite god in the game.  Which I already wrote about a couple years ago, so that shouldn’t be too much work.  Unlike this entry, which kind of got out of hand.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Setting" part 1

            I have played Dungeons and Dragons for more than 15 years.  Lately, I have not had access to any other players and so I have just been kicking around ideas that normally would be in a game and instead I am just going to post them on my blog.  This is going to be a reoccurring thing as I just keep hammering out things and not all of them can be turned into elements in my “random fantasy novel ideas” folder.

What Have I Got: What a Wonderful World

            Last week and the week prior I talked about making monsters more exotic and interesting and pointing to various examples of othered creatures in fiction.  (“Exotic Monsters” part 1 and part 2).  This week I am going to start talking about a bigger and more fun concept, world building.

            Generally speaking the Game Guy’s job can break into 3 sections: provide challenge, provide a narrative thru line, and provide a world.

            Challenges, to me are the easy one.  There are 10,000 ways to arrange the monsters and traps present in the core books, ways to make them tougher, ways to make them simpler.  It can be difficult to eyeball all the math that goes into these things, but generally speaking given trial and error you will learn the sweet spots.  This is a thing that can only really come with practice because even if you take a carefully crafted dungeon made by someone who publishes material for a living, if you do not understand HOW the elements come together then the whole thing will play in a clunky fashion.

"Just eyeball it, I want to play!"

             Narrative thru lines are (again, to me) another easier element.  Giving a bad guy with a clear motivation, minions that follow him for a discernable reason, people who will be victimized by his actions, and rewards for defeating the cad.  Players often have to bring their own motivations for the WHY they are participating in the story, you can’t control everything, but this is the bare bones of what you need.  Greater complexity to the whys and hows come with time, but judging by many video game stories the only motivation the villain needs by most player’s perceptions is this, “He’s just an asshole”.

            Quick aside to players: you are here to play.  If you want your character to be a dangerous loner who has no interest in saving the day or working with anyone else you have two options, make a different character or find a reason for the character to want to play with the others.  The GG has too much stuff to do to try and justify bending every narrative element to keep you engaged.  You have to meet him halfway.  So, either have your character arc be, “learning to work with others and embrace saving strangers because the world needs heroes more than it needs mopey loners” or make a character who will PLAY THE GAME.

"Clang!  Clang!"

            The last element, World Building is what I wanted to talk about here.  Really, that is what most of these blogs are about… Or what I thought the majority of them were going to be about, I think only 3 of them actually are… Whatever, the point is building an effective world is often the most difficult and the most fun aspect of being a GG.  It can also be the thing that causes you to overdo it and make the game less fun for everyone.

            I speak from experience.

Published Materials: Why not just adventure in (blank)?

            There are many people out there that love Oerth, Mystara, or the Realms.  These places have appeal for any number of reasons.  Some people like have lore so thick and so deep that they can smother themselves in it.  Some people enjoy knowing that everything is mapped out and if they wanted to they could look up the best place to go have an adventure.  Others just like the stories and characters they have read about in a particular book series and the idea of putting their own character into that story and having them adventure with their favorite guys is the whole appeal, “Dungeons and Dragons: Self-Insert Fanfiction Edition”.

            All of these things are perfectly valid and there are some settings I see as being more magical and fun than others, I have drawn inspiration from basically all of the ones I have seen and taken elements that I like sometimes in their entirety (Hello, Vecna).  There is value to having a setting that is beloved by lots of people serving as the adventure local: built in audience, maps, and lore ready to be picked up and used.  If you are fascinated with a place and want to dive into it, go to it.  There is lots of tasty fluff for your consumption.  But, I will give you some warnings.

            Some players will be MUCH MORE into the setting than you.  They will know the history and major players in exceptional detail, more than you could hope to research.  They will be taking their own baggage about the setting to the table, whether they like Mystra and Elminster or they hate them, whether they want to play a Drow, or where Drizzt Do’Urden is and what he is doing.

            Maybe you appreciate this depth of interest from your players, but you won’t if you ever hear this line, “that wouldn’t happen”.  Maybe it is caused by you going against established lore, maybe it is because you have a popular character acting out of character, maybe you have your original villain defeat someone who is important… Whatever the cause of this line being uttered it will start the process of unraveling that player’s appreciation of the game for the same reason many mega fans can’t stand film adaptations, “You changed it, now it sucks”.

            This of course will not always happen.  Many players like permutations, expansions, or subversions of established lore, this is a rarer phenomenon than I am making it seem.  But it can happen and things will grind to a halt.

            Some players will like the premade stuff MUCH LESS, I am one of them.  The amount of lore can be daunting.  There are dozens of novels, numerous comics, posters, miniatures, video games… There is just a lot of stuff.  And there reaches a point in which I wish we would stop bothering to learn how to pronounce names like Drizzt Do’Urden and instead just call him Daniel or Darren.

            I do not like the Forgotten Realms as it is the gold standard of being both so bloated with lore as to be impenetrable to me, and the lore being so derivative that it is boring to try and get into.  There are too many gods, too many kingdoms, and too many super powerful named characters.  The map feels filled in and crowded to me, like all the cool stuff has already been visited, cleaned out, renovated, and they will be opening a Starbucks there next week.

            If a good world feels lived in, then to me a world like Forgotten Realms feels like it has lived out a full life and by all accounts should have passed away years ago.

            A player like me will disrupt the game not with a statement of resistance to lore, but instead will underwhelm you with this statement, “I’m sorry, who?  Are- are they important?  I am having a hard time keeping up with all of these names.”

            This is coming from me.  I have a mind like a steel trap for fictitious BS.  I know the name of Dumbledore’s brother off the top of my head (I would have to look up the spelling) and I never finished past chapter 8, book 2 in the Harry Potter series, because I kind of hate it.  Forgotten Realms is Dungeons and Dragons something I have been diving into for ages, and Realms lore slides right off my brain.  I can only imagine the random Tim, John, or Sarah that is trying out the game for the first time and is immediately put off by all of the content.

 

They do always get gold standard artist talent when presenting this place.

            I do not care for published settings.  As you have seen above.  That being said, they do have lots and lots of good things in them, and the multiverse is a great big thing to draw on.

Inspiration: Drawing from Fiction

            I am going to wager that a majority of people who enter into Dungeons and Dragons get there because they fell in love with Fantasy literature, movies, shows, comics, or non-table top games.  For instance, the Dragonlance novels have followings that probably don’t even know what Dungeons and Dragons is as they are so present in those circles solely because having a world in which DRAGONS are so present is awesome to lots of people.

            Nothing that exists in fiction is entirely original, everything is a remixing of elements that have appeared in older stories, myths, legends, and the popular consciousness.  Drawing from “Lord of the Rings” for DnD is pretty blatant by any standard.  DO NOT be afraid to borrow.

            That being said you eventually need to cover lots and lots of bases if you want a fleshed-out world and if you borrow elements from all over the place things might end up feeling not all that cohesive.  If you want the background of your game to be, “Evil Empire who ruled for ages is starting to collapse to numerous threats from within and without” that means you are going to have to answer this question for every new element you add to your game, “How do you feel about the Empire?” with the follow up of “Why’s that?”

            When you borrow an element of great size and complexity then it is best to understand how such a thing would affect your world.  Let’s look at something everyone knows coming into this hobby, “Lord of the Rings” (the movies, I couldn’t get thru the books).

            LotR is so ubiquitous in fantasy culture that almost all high fantasy published after it is a reaction to it.  Without Tolkien, elves would be helping Santa and making cookies, not nigh-immortal archers who live in ideal forested lands mastering healing magic and divining the nature of the stars.  Would Dwarves exist as bearded craftsmen in pop culture the way they do now without LotR?  Sure, Viking myth is a thing, but maybe the most popular image of a dwarf in high fantasy would be from the “Thor” comics at Marvel.  With Kirby drawn forges that have stylized magi-tech creations.  Or, Tyrion from “Game of Thrones” would be the only “Dwarf” in popular fantasy.

            So, if you wanted to take Middle Earth as a baseline but then start dropping in things you liked from other stories how would things change?  I don’t know.  Let’s throw some out there.  The biggest question you have to anser for all of these will inevitably be, “What’s up with you and how about that Sauron guy?”

            “I liked Conan, so I am going to ad Stygia to the south of Middle Earth, they kind of fit too because one of the main bad guys uses the Black Ring to summon monsters.”  I would guess that Stygia was on the side of Sauron during the War of the Ring, but what if they weren’t?  What if they saw the One Ring as too much of a threat to try and control it and sent poison bearing cultists of the Snake god to help in the defense of Rohan?  Or maybe they are a country that has disappeared into myth and their lesser rings are all over the place with cultists cropping up to follow the path they laid?

            “I like Greek Mythology, so I am going to use their gods instead.”  I guess Sauron is a Titan now?  Is Gandalf still an angel, or is he some kind of demi-god and if so which god is his father or mother?  Does Zeus still bump around with women all over the place if so is there a Perseus or Hercules?  Does Rohan worship Poseidon for his associations with horses even though they live nowhere near an ocean?  Where is Olympus?  What do the elves believe considering some of them have been around so long that they seem to have recollections about the world being made?  Are there any other Greek elements like phalanxes or Greco architecture?

           “I like Batman, how do I make more Batman in this?”  Is he an urban warrior fighting back against infiltrations against those who believe in Sauron’s vision of a used up industrialized world?  Was he trained by elves and rangers to get his martial arts and detective (maybe make that magic) skills?  Maybe make all of the Ringwraiths be inspired by Batman’s rogues’ gallery and give each of them different abilities based on 9 different Batman villains?  (I would suggest Scarecrow for fear powers, Mr. Freeze for cold powers, and Firefly for fire powers as those would be the easiest things to translate into game rules; 6 more shouldn’t be too hard.)

            Do you see how you can take some things from a different story and drop them in?  And they can be as limited or as expansive as you want.  Sure, Batman might be like Beorn (the were-bear) and only show up twice as a fun little aside, or he could be 10^th guy of the Fellowship, or maybe a feudal version of Gotham city is under siege and breaking it is a multi-session long story in and of itself.

           

The Beg for Attention: Let’s take a break

            I am going to stop here for now.  I am going to start making a deliberate effort to keep the length of these blogs from getting too long.  Besides this is a logical place to end it, having talked about the good and bad of using a published campaign world and how to ask yourself key questions when blending borrowed elements into a familiar world.

            Having a good and familiar baseline is smart, but knowing how to push out the scope, or how to distort the expectations is key to building something into your own story telling landscape.  Sure, you’re inspired by other works, and because you aren’t publishing this (at least not for now) you can reference things by name, I once took inspiration from two historical figures, Shaka Zulu and Genghis Khan, didn’t even try to stop myself from calling him Chaka Khan and having my players NEVER FORGET his name or what he was about.

            Silly can be an asset.  It’s supposed to be fun.  Have fun.

First Impressions 5^th Edition

            You know what makes you feel a little old when playing Dungeons and Dragons?  When a published dungeon you vaguely remember playing when it came out is republished in a “classics” collection.  And that published adventures are still as lethal for level 1 players as they have always been.

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