A Little Reality in a Fantasy Setting
It was a tag line we used in our first attempt at our setting and it's something we look to carry forward into this one. But, isn't that an oxymoron of a statement? How can you have reality in a fantasy setting? We have flying islands, airships that run on magic rock, people casting spells, demons, devils, the works, what is real about that?
Well it certainly doesn't mean we're basing everyone only on what occurs in real life, after all, where's the fun in that? And we've already established there are plenty of nonreality things happening. So what does that silly tag mean?
Well, Sean and I are very inquisitive by nature, you lay something down in front of us and our first questions are why is it there and what does it do? And that's something we want to carry into the game.
Everything will make sense, everything will have a place, everything will have a reason. When we choose a monster to use, we'll know why it developed the way it did, what it eats, how it mates, what's its place in the ecological ladder. We'll figure out exactly what a MU is doing when he's casting magic, what magic is, how the manipulate it. We'll know know why clerics can turn the undead, what that means in the setting. We'll know how magic items are made, why they retain their magical properties, etc. etc. Making a world work is extremely important to us.
Now, will we explain all this? Eventually, it won't all make it into the first book, or parts will be, with parts to be expanded later, but it will be out there and we'll know why long ahead of time, so going forward, things will fall into place more easily.
How does this effect the game? It actually doesn't, mechanically. If you don't care about the "whys" and want to just run our dungeons and setting cause it looks cool, so be it. Not opting to explain or read the background won't hurt the experience, but for people who dig flavor, it certainly will enhance it. If you're someone who's into the nuts and bolts of delving and killing and looting, this setting will work for you, if you're someone who's into the nuts and bolts of how the world works in a narrative sense, this setting will work for you.
We aim to please!
The best part about talking about RPGs with other people is that once you've established a couple of rules, you infer what consequences those rules have on everything else. And I mean everything.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you're actually thinking things through will probably prevent stupid things like that monster that looks like a tree stump with a bunny on it from existing.