[Spellbound Kingdoms] Setting Ideas

[FrankBrunner]

I've been working out the setting for Spellbound Kingdoms. Right now, the tagline for the game is, "Love, fear, and magic." If I had to pitch the setting as it stands, it would be something like, "Big Brother meets Greyhawk." I'd love to get some feedback on what I'm working with right now.

Here are some highlights:

* Magic is a menace. Most people view it as a threat to happiness. They're not wrong. Madfire, spellstalks, and other magical afflictions randomly sicken, disable, and kill the innocent. Natural magic storms wreck towns. The most common type of wizard (almost to the point of exclusivity) is the wizard who bears the king's seal and commits atrocities in the name of protecting people from unsanctioned or wild magic.

* The Kingdoms are a response to the fear of magic. Magic gets even more wild and destructive when two magicians attempt to control it in the same place. Therefore, in the name of protecting the realm, most kings forbid all but their own cabals from using magic. Kingdoms include witch-hunting Inquisitions, paranoid royal regimes, decaying imperial remnants, Sun Goddess cults, and Renaissance kingdoms with strict social hierarchies.
    As an aside, the "magic hates magic" trope is the reason there are lonely wizard towers out in the wilderness and why wizards are mysterious and uncooperative. It also explains why magic is rare. The more common it is, the more it interferes with and weakens itself. Those who have it work hard to keep it rare and powerful.

* Science pushes in new directions. Most kingdoms are Renaissance-Enlightenment era, albeit colored by paranoia and fear. Zeppelins are becoming more and more common in the skies above capital cities. The first submersibles are prowling undersea and discovering that sea serpents aren't just legends. Early firearms are possible, but gremlins are real in this world, and a blade of steel is more reliable than a blackpowder dueling pistol. There are also dream orreries, speaking tubes that run for miles, and alchemical substances that are impossible in a world where gremlins and magic do not mix with science.

* Two intelligent species live in the Kingdoms: humans and trolls. There are several different races of each. The trolls look more like elegant demons than misshapen beasts, but they're not otherworldly. Humans have an innate resistance to magic while trolls exploit magic with their regenerative powers.
   An example: there is a troll race that arrived in the Kingdoms only ninety-eight years ago. The race arrived in pieces, in trade ships from various distant ports. A foot here, a head there, a heart in the sawdust over there. Regeneration and sympathetic (or curious) harbormasters brought the trolls' bodies back together. Unfortunately, neither they nor any other source knows why they arrived that way or where they came from.
   Another example: There is a human race that is, by custom, raised to maturity by wolves, whose pack intelligence is sparked by the arrival of the infant.
   There are other intelligent creatures besides trolls and humans, but they are the children of random magic. A trader on the Free Road might encounter a strangely intelligent crow, and there are at least three intelligent dragons in the Kingdoms – but that does not mean that any other crows or dragons are intelligent.

Points for discussion:

1. What do you think of the mixing of science and magic? Some people have a visceral "keep your peanut butter out of my chocolate" reaction to this. Would you like to see more weird science, or keep it to "straight" science so that that magic stays highlighted by contrast?

2. Do these setting elements encourage characters to go adventuring? I see some embedded conflicts: kingdom vs. kingdom, with the characters caught on one side (or working for one side); the kingdom is persecuting the characters' hometown or a family member; characters as rebels because the kingdom is persecuting their hometown or a loved one (perhaps only magic will save the love); characters as fugitives because the townspeople's fear has chased them away; legends of lost treasure or arcane knowledge held in the secret royal library; random magic disasters arising and threatening a town. Any other setting elements that would emphasize the themes of love, fear, and magic?

3. Are two races enough? I like the intensity it gives to troll-human relations, but I'm wondering about variety.

4. Can you see a diversity of adventures happening here? Political, war, dungeon delving, espionage. What would encourage such things even more?

5. Do you think the setting encourages the themes of love, fear, and magic? The goal is that fear comes from the constant worry of magic and the Kingdoms' secret police. Love comes from the fact that love (via the game mechanics) is often the only way to survive in the face of the world's challenges. Also, some of the human and troll races, and some of the Kingdoms, have backstories or mechanics that involve love.

[TempvsMortis]

Well, first, please don't increase the races. Two is fine when you consider all the free-magic monsters, and I like the idea of beings shipped over in pieces. Very macabre, but please tell me that they don't look like "troll" trolls, because I hate all d&d-esque fantasy (too much stuff rips it off, and it itself is just one bad ripoff of LotR). I think they should definitely be non-standard looking, because already I'm getting a golem vibe. Also, where the hell did they come from? I can't imagine sailors just picking up body parts for no reason. (Let me reiterate my point, and be blunt: d&D trolls/orcs look stupid. They're in Warhammer specifically BECAUSE they look funny, and both Warhammer universes acknowledge this by making them inherently comedic. There is nothing dramatic about something with such cartoonish proportions. I know I'm being harsh, but I can't stress enough how tired I am of people using frakking orks, or something orkish but named something else - i'm looking at you paolini - why can't people drudge up the two braincells of creativity required to at least rip off something else, let alone actually come up with something of their own.)

As for the technology-magic thing, I don't know. I'm usually a big fan of moving towards more modern fantasy, but I don't think the setting is served by it, which is rare for me. This also adressed the whole issue of "fear" because there's nothing "scary" about the enlightenment. If anything it was a definitively UN-scary time. That's why it's called the enlightenment. The 1800s is where all of the industrial crap and rebellions and fascism and communism happens, but I don't think that's appropriate at all, because by nature of a civilization at that level the world has already lost a lot of its mystery. This may sound strange, but I'd think this would be well served by going back to a dark-ages era of civilization and tech. Now, this doesn't mean everything else in fantasy, which first of all is rarely dark ages, but usually middle-ages. If you actually study the dark-ages you begin to realize what a horrendously crappy place Europe was then.

Government was so decentralized that what we know as "France" didn't exist, and institutions were horrendously backwards. People lived in virtual island settlements inside castles literally enslaved to their lords as serfs. This was of course good for them though, because outside of those thug-run settlements there was absolute lawlessness. Rogue knights and barons (think the Black Knight), road-thieves, disease, etc. At least in serfdom you were safe in the manor. Of course the manors were constantly going to war with each other, because the knights were paid with lands, so like in early japan constant warfare was necessary for a constant wage. Of course what made the outside even worse were the barbarian raids (which is funny considering the lords WERE German barbarians who'd invaded the roman empire). It was a society were virtually EVERYONE had murdered SOMEONE, because constant death was necessary to save one's self from marauders, enemy lords, one's OWN lord, local bandits, vikings, and plague bearers. Even within individual castles (cities were barely cities, and were breading grounds for disease and revolt, so there were few of them) there were multiple noble families within them below whatever baron or marquis ruled the place, and they were constantly killing each other underneath their boss' nose to work their way up the ladder, possibly to assassinate HIM.

And you have to remember what kinds of people the nobles were: despite all of the images we get about nobles from the renaissance, it wasn't like that. They were German warlords, and the commanders of German warlords. They got where they were because they killed everyone who argued with them, bashed their way through the roman empire, and then their descendants killed each other and other warlords. The Visigoths in spain were renowned for their feudal nature: out of  23 visigothic kings, no less than 9 were deposed. The system of divided inheritance basically meant that constant war was necessary, because if no one conquered then eventually everyone would own only a house. The middle-ages was ushered in, in large part, due to the abandonment of the old system in favor of a system where the oldest inherited all of the father's lands (which of course lead to assassination, but to a lesser degree).

Literacy was a hugely valuable asset that a select few (the clergy) horded, which gave them inherent political power. It was a cold, starving, diseased, violent, dark time of little education and almost constant threats to one's life, where everyone was struggling but failing to hold on to the remnants of their Imperial past; watching the aqueducts and roads fall into ruin; peeling off stones from the coliseums to build castles; the catholic church as the only thing remaining connecting the people to their heritage. The land was full of dark stone castles and massive fraying ruins. They were "dark" for a reason, and this is why I look at D&D fantasy and see it as failing the dark ages theme they supposedly espouse. The dark ages were really, really damn scary. And did I mention the torture? Lots of torture?

Also, the enlightenment was defined by the DEATH of feudalism, and considering I get the sense that feudal-ness is sort of part of your setting I don't think enlightenment style civilization really works. You were talking about paranoia, but the enlightenment wasn't paranoid. It was the time of the birth of romanticism and existential philosophy (you know, "secular humanism"). The dark ages were already paranoid, you don't need to add anything to make it morbid.

(And please, pleeeeaaaase, no dungeon-delving. We've had enough of that. The fact that dungeon-crawling rpgs like D&D still sell amazes me. Haven't video-games already copied them to the letter, except removed all book-searching and arguing with the GM, and allowing you to play by yourself if you choose, or with people not sitting around? If pen-and-paper rpgs stick with a mechanic so easily simulated by a computer then the industry will die.)

Also, you say that love is encouraged by the game, but from what you've said here I see nothing to promote it. You can't just have love because you like the sound of it, you need to have something that forces the players to concentrate on their characters as people, and their relationships, instead of as tools (which, I'd like to point out, is actually HINDERED by dungeon-delving designed mechanics - no one looks at d&D and thinks "love"). Maybe you should say more.

Also, there's a series of books that shares a lot of things with your setting (not too much, so don't freak out, but plenty enough) and I think you should read them. The first one's called Sabriel, by Garth Nix, and it's really good. It's stand-alone, so you don't have to worry about having to read the other ones. It isn't LotR. It has free-magic, your three themes (and it pulls them off quite well), a completely original world and creatures. I'd also like to point out it manages perfectly with only humans and free-magic beings/monsters, just to reiterate my point of two races is fine (sometimes I question this penchant in fantasy that we somehow "need" more races. Aren't humans enough? Scifi usually gets by with just humans, or one other race; when more are used you usually get schlock like star trek - just look at Dune: only humans). I'd also like to mention that the Old Kingdom in Sabriel has plenty of magic-tech, but has a definite dark ages vibe going throughout the whole thing, which is part of what makes it dark and gives it a sense of paranoia. I have never seen a world more unpleasant than the Regent era of the Old Kingdom (I mean, WOW it's a harsh life).

[FrankBrunner]

Heh, don't worry, the races aren't increasing.

I hear what you're saying about the dark ages. I don't think dark ages Europe is the right reference frame for this game because it was exactly as crappy as you say.  There should be wonder, not just drinking laundry water and eating grubs and roots. It's more a dystopia than a dirt farm.

Also, a couple of things were confusing in my original post.

About magic: When two wizards interfere with each other, the intended effects are weakened while the unintended, random, destructive effects are strengthened. So if two wizards are in the same area trying to raise a tower of gold and quartz to live in, then their constructions will be considerably weakened, not very tall, and prone to collapse. At the same time, the magic from the two will spawn all kinds of diseases, imps, fire vortices, and other random destructive events in the area. In combat, if there are multiple wizards, then controlling magic becomes harder (that is, casting a spell in the first place), resisting the intended effects of a spell becomes easier, and the likelihood of "wild" magic becomes greater.

Also, actually the highlights I listed didn't emphasize the Big Brother-ness. Here's the backstory on the Big Brother idea. While it's true that there are different kingdoms, each kingdom polices its own magic use very strictly. One kingdom uses a secret wizard police - a telepathic, Renaissance SS - to enforce the "no magic except the king's magic rule." They kidnap, torture, and basically give a magical equivalent of the Ludovico treatment to any dissenters. They're also not above replacing the mind of a dissenter with an automaton's mind and dispatching it Terminator-style into dissenter communities. Of course, necromancy is also a tool of the police, and they have many vampires that they have turned to their cause. The people at large accept the secret wizard police because they've seen the dangers of uncontrolled magic. Another kingdom claims that all magic is evil, even in the king's hands, and they whip up their populace into pitchfork-banging, torch-bearing, witch-hutning lynch mobs. Of course, the king actually does use magic. People who don't volunteer for the witch-hunting mobs are casually marginalized, sent to work in mines, or disappear and wake up in the king's oubliettes to be used as living material components in his experiments. Other kingdoms use religion to create a central authority, and they like to place their rebels in wicker men and sacrifice them - but only after the blood of the victim's family members has been used to anoint the wicker man's bars.

The idea was to allow enough range that the different kingdoms would have different feels, cultures, and be interesting places to adventure in. The one common thread is the totalitarianism. And this thread isn't universal: there are some places that are not quite as harsh. I might have overstated the idea by saying "Big Brother meets Greyhawk." I'm developing the idea, and I'm not sure that I want the whole world to be a police state. That's a large part of it, to be sure, but I do want there to be space in the world to run semi-classic fantasy campaigns. The more free areas would naturally come into conflict with the totalitarian kingdoms; perhaps that could provide additional impetus to adventure.

[TempvsMortis]

Hrm... Okay. I see what you mean, although now that you say that I think maybe you're too far BACK in time. I'm not thinking 1800s... what about WWI - WWII era? That certainly has uncertainty, and what makes that period of technology so interesting is that it's right on the cusp, not just of atomic science, but everything. Physics was starting to become major as technology caught up with it an it increasingly allowed practical things (the culmination of which was the nuke), but it was still a time of enough superstition to allow the nazi obsession with the occult. Now of course your think wouldn't have nazis or world wars, but the whole idea of fascism and scary occult people, plus all the paranoia you want really fits in with the 1920s-1940s. We were still figuring out what we could do, toying with jet technology, missiles, and other things (if you've ever seen that history channel special on weird weapons of WWII you'll know how crazy people got).

Also, I'm a supper-dooper fan of open-ended magic systems with non-standard mutable cost systems. I'm always tired of "mana" or "cast once per day". I like systems where you don't have things like "magic missile", but instead have "transform matter" and the penalty for it is no-one will ever love you. You know, crazy stuff like that, and what you said about your magic totally got my mind running (which means you'll get the benefit of my insanity), and it fits I think well with the whole early-1900s setting. (also, I wasn't talking about perfect-replica dark ages, but I was trying to illustrate that you needed a darker setting to perpetuate "fear".)

Okay, how about this for magic: those curses and bad things that happen aren't just the result of two magi in conflict or doing things near each other at the same time, that's the cost of any and all spells. The more powerful the spell, the worse the effect it has on the world, and this is why magic has to be policed so heavily. I imagine that long, long ago these people had a really really bad dark age that would make ours look like the renaissance, and what contributed to it was magus barons, free-roaming mages who used their power whenever they wanted and for whatever they wanted, releasing horrors upon the world and garnering power for themselves. Of course, this is just a worse version of what happened in our dark ages, except that the lords could wish you dead. And what happened in the actual dark ages was that eventually a few people in each region coalesced power, and crushed the competition, and of course the people were happy with it because they could actually leave the manors, which is what led to the death of serfdom in western europe. Of course, the middle-ages and renaissance were renowned for the brutality of the ruling monarchs. Can one think of golden-age england without thinking of the London Tower? Anyway, this gets back to the whole thing you had: those few mages or groups or whatever established their power, and basically passed edicts that monopolized magic for the government. Also, this makes magic really interesting and dark, because to do anything with magic you're cursing the world to one degree or another, so even the best mage is at the most, morally flexible.

And this would be where all the monsters and everything come from: mages using their power, and as a consequence these things are born. I'm sure some of them haunt their inadvertent makers, but plenty others just maraud the countryside. Then there would also be curses, and you could track a powerful mage by the havoc he leaves behind.

Okay, and about the trolls (please come up with something else to call them). What if they're the attempt of some great mage, or better yet an organization of them (illegal of course) to create life? What if sentience can only be created as a byproduct of magic, and it always results in horrible monstrosities, so this group (which would be dedicated to some ideal that doesn't sound so bad, like elevating humanity to godhood) was the first, and so far only group to successfully create life. And of course the life is frankensteinian, and can't be killed. There's no organization of them, no great political movement of golems to overthrow humanity, they all wander the world alone and unloved, but they can never be killed.

So here you have a world run by police-states that use magic to brainwash their people, sociopathic mages wandering the night wreaking havoc on people for whatever purposes they want (i'd imagine there'd be groups of mage revolutionaries, people devoted to republican virtues but who realized they couldn't defeat mages without becoming them, invariably leading them to commit horrible acts in the name of a just cause), and with strange demonic things wandering the night, many of which were once human before some mage's spell turned them into a six-legged freak that needs to feast on children to survive (and maybe some of them can remember what they once were, and can appreciate the dilapidated parasites they've become), not to mention the lonely, but emotional and dangerous golems living alone in the countryside who can never be killed. And because of all the dangers out there the government cracks down harder and harder to secure people from these things. This would of course lead to most people living very close together for security and venturing out into the countryside little without being in an armored train-car. Those who do live in the country are very superstitious, and have struck morally gray deals with the things that prowl the night (like giving up the first-born of every family to said baby devourer, who spends the nights weeping at what he's become, which can be heard by the townfolk). (As far as the whole jrpg-esque "people live in cities, the countryside is prowled by monsters" asthetic, I had something similar in a book I never finished and probably never will, but it's a pretty creepy and awesome aesthetic.)

How's that for yah? ;-)

[Vulpinoid]

TempvsMortis,

That sounds like a great way to take the setting, very dark, but cool.

[FrankBrunner]

Tempvs, interesting food for thought. I don't want to go with the "bad things... are the cost of any and all spells" idea for a couple of reasons. It's been done before (Athas/Dark Sun springs to mind), and I don't think bijective models provide a lot of play-space. That is, if magic is ALWAYS going to result in evil, then it's pretty clear where the line between black and white, heroic and villainous is. But if magic is a metaphysically given moral neutral that can be used for good or for evil, then we can have Keats's famous negative capability, and the area between black and white, heroic and villainous becomes a lot bigger to play in.

I'm with you on the nonstandard, mutable-cost system for magic. Definitely not "once a day" (unless you're tied to the sun-cycle for some reason, or something like that). There are several magic styles in the game right now. All of them can be influenced by loves and fears. Each style is different, but some have "charge" systems similar to Unknown Armies, some have natural resource costs, and some have relationship costs, like you mentioned.

Hm, what don't you like about the "troll" name? They regenerate. They aren't ugly, though, it's true. I thought about "demon," but I want to stay away from anything otherworldly. There aren't any planes. I feel like limiting the focus to a single world, without gods, with only two intelligent species, lends a bit of intensity. That's why I don't want to go into a post-Industrial time period. A little science is great, for flavor and contrast with magic. But magic should be more center-stage, it seems to me. Also, the baggage of science might weigh down the rules system.

But as for magic that unintentionally (or intentionally) turns people into six-legged freaks that feast on children to survive... oh yes, there will be six-legged freaks. Yes indeed!

[TempvsMortis]

I think you totally missed the point of some of my suggestions.

I don't want to go with the "bad things... are the cost of any and all spells" idea for a couple of reasons. It's been done before (Athas/Dark Sun springs to mind), and I don't think bijective models provide a lot of play-space. That is, if magic is ALWAYS going to result in evil, then it's pretty clear where the line between black and white, heroic and villainous is. But if magic is a metaphysically given moral neutral that can be used for good or for evil, then we can have Keats's famous negative capability, and the area between black and white, heroic and villainous becomes a lot bigger to play in.

Okay, first of all, you're confusing "bad" with "evil". There is no morality judgment in it, and actually your suggestion that it be "morally neutral" actually makes it *less* morally neutral, because now if someone does something bad with magic, they're bad, and if they do something good with magic, they're good. I didn't say to make magic evil, but to provide a negative side-effect that is, in theory, morally negative because it actually eliminates the morality spectrum (without it, if you heal someone you did something good, period; if you do what I suggested, suddenly in order to save that person you are hurting another person - you can't accomplish anything good without inadvertently adding to the collective pain of humanity, thus the only way to liberate yourself of the moral conflict inherent in using magic is to become morally equivalent to the side-effects, in theory becoming a "bad" person, but are you really any worse that the people who use magic for "good" purposes? aren't they hypocrites then?). Remember, *you* wanted something that was dark and propagated fear and paranoia. If magic is central, then it MUST be the central tool to generating fear and paranoia, otherwise the whole thing falls apart. If you don't want magic to have any morality attached to it, then leave it neutral, because then it just becomes like a rock (you can throw it at water, or kill someone with it, it has no more morale value than any other object). But I've found that by attaching these kinds of trade-offs to things like magic you create a much more personally challenging and interesting setting, because it becomes "what is my character I willing to do to get what he/she wants".

Also, don't worry about "has it been used before". Everything under the sun has been thought of, and this thing in particular is rarely used. Every other damn system can be found under every rock, hence why i suggested this: it's dark, and out of the things out there is one of the LEAST used cost systems. If you're really worried about all that, I could come up with examples for everything in your entire setting (no offense; that's true of all things though; this is the modern age, humanity has been around too long for anything revolutionary to be created; you just have to worry about creating interesting things).

Actually, troll is alright, although it comes with the extra baggage of D&D and D&D fantasy, which depicts trolls as some kind of large ork thing, which in norse myth they weren't.

As for chucking the early 20th-century setting, go ahead, though I still think the enlightenment is a bad place to put anything if you want anything other than the positive advancement of human thought. (point being: the golden compass. Not exactly dark, because the enlightenment never was, or will be dark.) Maybe the industrial revolution? I mean, what you're really just considering here is there level of tech, but that also comes with a whole slew of cultural implications.

(Darn you, after I thought of that whole wwII-esque thing I wished you would drop dead so I could write it. You don't know what you got man, you don't know what you got...)