[Worldbuilding] Goals and Tenets

Flammarion Engraving

I have been working on my own setting for a while now, and I even used it in a few short games already. But I maybe really should put down what I actually want from the campaign. So there will be a few posts where I will throw some stuff at the wall and check what sticks.

Some of the elements are more rules ideas, some more setting ideas. I am also working on my own little B/X house rules for use in this setting.

These are the basic ideas I have that I am starting with:

* the setting is comparatively low level. 12 is the given maximum in my rules, but of course that is not the end. In any case the setting should be geared to have the level spread I was talking about before

* in a similar vein it also should have only one example of everything in most cases, unless it’s necessary. Meaning every big monster has a single example in the area, every polity has its own kind of government, every tribal people have one tribe.

* The main inspirations are Vance, Pratchett, C.A. Smith

* the exception are orcs and goblins. Orcs have at least two tribes, while goblins are such a diverse lot there might be dozens of small tribes everywhere

* there is an edge to the world. People are living below the edge in the “Vertical Realms”. Other people use the Edge Fall to launch ships into space. Not many of them are designed to withstand space though.

* elves are one of the most regular but tragic examples of this. They know that they arrived on this world from a different star. Many of them are driven to make the journey back to the star they came from, even if they don’t know how. Pilgrimages of Elves to the edge. The Call is something many of them hear.

* dwarves are dwarves. Sturdy, underground dwelling, small vikings or similar. They weren’t always though. People talk about the lack of dwarf women, but the truth is they lack men as well. Dwarves are created by other dwarves, made from rock that has been given form by one or more other dwarves. And the secret they do not often talk about is… the dwarves are old. Really old. But they did not always look like they do now. Dwarves adapted to what the dominant species above day accepted for a long time.

* there are those dwarves that never turned humanoid in the first place, still lurking, those are the rockworms of the deeps. There are also those that feel the need to go back to the dark. Those are the dark dwarves, the duergar. And there are those that took a humanoid shape in the times of the scaled people. Those are the kobolds.

* there are no halflings or gnomes in the Glimmermark. They might be in other regions.

* anthropoid ducks are a thing because yeah

* magic is Vancian. Magic is rare and difficult to find. Mastery of only a few spells might make one a proper mage. Only the standard 1st level spells are widespread.

* psionic powers are rare, but mystics are a thing. They are those who train their minds in the power of the unknown, and sometimes people receive wild psionics from one source or another

* similar to this various sects and schools of monks (martial artists) exist. They all focus on mastering their own techniques

* the Catholic (as in literally “all-embracing”) Church is a generalized polytheist faith that provides a power structure and basic teaching standard. Their clerics are able to adapt to a variety of cult roles for multiple deities. They accept the existence of nearly all gods, even if some of them are more placated than revered. In any case, it’s your usual hive of scum and villainy that shows up where you put people in charge of what people believe.

* pagans are those that do not accept the teachings of the Church and adhere to a single God or pantheon.

Ok. That’s it for now. I had some more ideas and I really need to gather them to make sense of them all.

[Worldbuilding] More Vance

Douglas, William Fettes -The Spell (1864)

Here’s a few ideas about Vancian magic in my setting:

Magic is rare

Wizards know they know only a tiny amount of the spells that their predecessors knew. Their response to this is typical wizard-like: they guard their existing spells even closer. Only the 1st level spells are easily available and commonly taught as the Canon of spellcraft. People know stronger spells exist, they either can be found in ancient ruins or reconstructed in tedious research occasionally, but few wizards that gain a 2nd level spell or above will be willing to share them with other magic users. Unless paid very well for this, and not necessarily in money. Many will only ever teach them to their apprentices, who often will be willing to serve as the magician’s punching bag for a year and a day just to receive a spell. Even higher spells might be closely guarded special powers only available to a specific arch-mage, their status often based on the mastery of multiple otherwise forgotten spells.

This leads to a few issues:

Outside of the canon of spells known to everybody (the first level spells, some 2nd level spells), many of the spells on the spell lists will be very specialized knowledge. Magic-users might know these spells exist due to historical sources, they will not be able to gain them easily. Spell research often is a tedious process intended to recreate previously known spells from old grimoires and historical references.

The shortcut is to go into the dungeon, abandoned ruins, or other unsavory places, find the stash of a deceased wizard, and learn new spells that might be available here either in spell books or in the form of scrolls. Unfortunately this is a dangerous endeavor.

One might think that making and selling scrolls would be a lucrative business, and it is. Unfortunately the margins for this are less good than one might imagine (materials being high in price, buyers being far and in between except for some of the low grade spells). It also is a wonderful way to draw the ire of the local arch-mages who often are not very happy about someone basically giving away trade secrets. One better knows what they are doing when starting to deal in spells.

Magic is dangerous

Spells are prepared by magic users by almost casting them, leaving just a last phrase or gesture to actually cast it. This means the magic users have the spell ready to go, but they have to carry around what is effectively a loaded weapon in their brain.

A loaded weapon that also is quasi-sentient, as spells are minor daemons with the whole purpose of being cast. The longer they stay in a mind (or actually a scroll or a book), the more they start having their own ideas of when and where they want to be cast.

Killing a magic user has a chance of releasing the spells they have been holding. This can lead to them trying to cast themselves, sneaking away and puffing away in a small cloud of magic, or them trying to find another empty mind to occupy until they feel the time is ready to be cast. This might include the people who just killed the magic user.

They also do not like to exist with copies of themselves in the same mind, it makes them quite queasy and likely to either start arguing or have whatever spells have when they get sick. This is one reason why variations even of known spells are highly prized. It might be a magic missile spell that shoots green missiles instead of red, but it likely is so different for the already known spell to allow putting it into the magic user’s memory with no magical mishaps in between.

Jarandell – The Garden of the Magicians

The Chateau

Note: this is a repost. The original article somehow had lost all the pictures that were kind of the point of it all. Which was a pity, because I specifically liked the art in the referenced articles.

I have been working on my own little D&D campaign world for a while, which I want to piece together from various sources, not all of them in English.

There will be B2 Keep on the Borderlands in there, and B1 In Search for the Unknown, The Caverns of Thracia, the original B3 Palace of the Silver Princess, and… I want to finally use Jarandell in there.

So lets talk about “Jarandell – le jardin des magiciens” (Jarandell – the garden of the magicians). It is intentionally inspired by Jack Vance and the illustrations of Brian Froud, so I will show some of the pictures from the article, because they are just fantastic.

I don’t see anyone else talking about it, at least in English. And neither in German or, according to my spurious Francophone Google skills, in French.

(actually, that’s not quite true, a month after I posted about the art on twitter a while ago someone made a video about it. Might just be a coincidence)

This small setting was published as one of several in the classic French Wargame/RPG magazine Casus Belli no. 59 to 60 (and maybe 61?) back in 1990 (!). This was way before even this old grognard got into roleplaying games, and in the wrong language to boot. Back in ’90 I could say Hello and Goodbye and even count to ten in English and was really proud of it. I might have been able to say merci and bonjour in French. And the Merci mostly because there’s a German chocolate brand called that.

(by the way, quick cross-cultural fact: Merci chocolate is a very popular thank you gift in Germany, for obvious reasons).

Luckily for me it was translated and reprinted in WunderWelten 40 to 42. Of course that meant that I didn’t have any clue if there were any references I missed. As far as I know this was the only Casus Belli article they printed, and while the article seems to be standalone there are a few spurious connections to other settings published by CB, e.g. the mention of a few cities and locations. 

So the question always was… did I miss something? Or was the mystery intentional?

It didn’t help that I only found the first two parts in German back in the day, and now that I have access to the French ones I am hamstrung by my lack of actual French skills…

For some reason most of the references I did find online seem to regard this setting as a Dying Earth location. That seems wrong, although the liberal use of Vancian tropes in there might be a reason for that. Rather than Dying Earth it seems to be a standalone expansion of the Laelith city setting CB published over a dozen or so installments in prior issues. Laelith was statted for D&D, Jarandell on the other hand has no stats at all.

The description of the place was amazing. Jarandell it turns out is a hiding spot created by a magician called Randell.

Randell created it to get away from some extraplanar threat. And the whole setting starts off with the description of the areas around Jarandell…

Lots of adventure locations already. In my own campaign setting I intend to use it as the place where the road northwards from the Keep on the Borderlands ends up at.

I will have to translate some of the place names. I mean, Shanpuir sounds amazing as a name, but the Raze du Lynx… hmm… The Lynx Wastes?

Ileterre at least might be just the Earth Island.

And then we zoom in into a single place in that area… which is again a fantastic adventure location obviously intended to make even finding the actual location of Jarandell as fun and entertaining as possible.

Jarandell it turns out is situated within one of the mills in the area (why a small village and a monastery need 4 mills is not explained, but 3 of them are abandoned).

Jarandell itself is in the attic of one of the abandoned mills, and you have to find a secret door and climb up a “diabolical” staircase that shrinks you the further you go upstairs…and then you reach the garden…

The Garden Entrance

It turns out Jarandell is a miniature world, secluded away in the attic of the mill. From outside its just a few feet across. On the inside it is large enough to house an expanding castle, a labyrinth around that castle, a village with at least 50 houses, a lake, and expansive “greens”…except they aren’t green, they are bathed in eternal twilight, only lit by bioluminescent flowers, wind created by giant flying turtles, with giant… well, actually normal-sized… bats left over from construction as a sort of megafauna.

The Castle

By the way, notice the pictures. These seem to have been a stylistic choice. Except for the maps and maybe two other paintings, the whole art in the article is pictures of dioramas and models. Remember, this was back in 1990. This stuff is all handmade, even the creatures and NPCs.

By the way, these seem to have been created by Franck Dion who also did the art for Dixit Daydreams the last few years.

Dixit Daydreams

Jarandell is ruled by three magicians, the inheritors of Randell. They run a sort of magician’s school in their castle, creating new magic for some mysterious purpose. The whole place is littered with magic items.

Most of the actual magic is actually done by Sandestin, those enigmatic beings of Jack Vance’s fiction (Specifically the Dying Earth and Lyonesse stories). And much space is given as to how these beings act and behave.

I always have wondered how good a setting this actually is. It certainly is an evocative one, but after the characters have found Jarandell and interacted with the people there for a bit… then what?

After some wonderful buildup and amazing art the whole thing seemed to falter.

I still don’t know what the extraplanar danger is that scared Randell so, and there are other hints that might or might not connect this to the wider setting Casus Belli had created in previous articles. I always feel like I am missing some context here.

This I will have to work out for my own campaign I guess. The whole place is more of a high level place anyway, so I will have some time until my players get there. Not that there are many players during these times anyway.

Besides Franck Dion, this was a collaboration of a few people from what I can see. One of them seems to have been J. Balczesak, the other collaborators were Denis Beck, Denis Gerfaud, and Didier Guiserix,the photographs are given as Yoëlle (Guiserix according to some Google searches). I cannot really find more of her work, except the other articles in CB (mostly the Laelith setting which seems to be connected). 

The Sandestin Phoboxen

I really wish there was more stuff in this vein out there, this combination of sculpture and photography as RPG art, especially in this style. But I think outside of some dioramas for the Laelith series of articles they might never have done more. and to be fair, sculpture and modelmaking might be a bit too much work just for some articles in an RPG magazine. On the other hand this is just some of the stuff RPG fans might be into.

Magic portrait

Here is a version of the original article available on the net.

[Worldbuilding] Notes on Population and Character Levels

When playing or writing for old school rules like Labyrinth Lord, Iron Falcon, or my own as of yet unnamed rule set I assume, in line with old school sentiments that somehow got lost over time, that most people in the world are level 0 or at most level 1.

Level 1 is already a professional in any chosen class. E.g. A soldier who already has seen battle, or a wizard who has graduated their apprenticeship.

Level 3 is a highly skilled professional in their class, e.g. an elite soldier, or competent guildsman.

Level 4-6 are people who are at least locally known experts in their field. E.g. master of a guild (in a city), the local commander of the guards, or priests with influence in the whole city. There might be around 100 such NPCs per distinct region.

Level 7-9 are people that have made a name for themselves. These are people that are known in the whole region or even further, even to people who don’t know anything else about the subject at hand. E.g. the bishop of a faith, or  a famous wizard. There might be at most 10 such NPCs per region.

Level 10-12 are people that are known on the whole continent, if not most of the world. E.g. The high priest of a whole religion, an archmage, one of the great warriors of the world. There is roughly 1 such NPC per country.

Anything beyond that is people who start to get into the realm of the legends.

This leads to some interesting problems for player characters:

Not every location has everything you need. A specific specialist to make or repair armor might only be in the next larger city, a wizard or alchemist for potions and similar will be located in a city, or conversely, puttering away somewhere in the absolute wilderness.

Raise Dead in particular can only be cast by a name level Cleric, so likely of the rank of Bishop or above. A bishop cannot be found in every podunk little village, and might need to be convinced (with large bribes…eh… donations) to use their one daily 5th level spell to raise an otherwise unknown murderhobo from the dead. If the adventurers even manage to reach the place in time, in most B/X clones Raise Dead has a time-limit depending on the Cleric’s level, a level 7 Cleric can only raise a dead body for 4 days after it died.

Recognition

Starting from level 7 every NPC has a chance of knowing the PCs (same the other way around). Except when disguising themselves any obvious behavior according to their reputation allows others to figure out who they are. They have literally made a name for themselves. Being recognized might trigger another reaction roll if appropriate.

[Worldbuilding] Just one of each

I have been worldbuilding the last few months instead of actually gaming. The Glimmermark still does not feel ready to actually play in, I am still trying to figure out how to fit the building blocks I have into a coherent whole.

One of the core building blocks is this principle: there’s only going to be one of each.

Which means there will not be oodles of huge monsters just walking around.

The Glimmermark is supposed to be your archetypal borderland (the center even a version of the famous keep), an empty land that once could have been called one of the heartlands of the old empire, before it fell, or rather slowly disintegrated, eating itself up in a series of long lasting conflicts between the aristocracy and local tribesmen.

So there’s not much left. But there’s also no huge realms of monsters. There are some scattered settlements of humanoid tribes (being slowly united by the lone dark wizard of the region), there are some lairs of huge beasts, the odd eldritch god or so lurking in the depths.

But there are no huge amounts of them. Sure the big monsters are in other places, but in the Glimmermark all of the big HD ones are the single local example. Like the Tarrasque, just on a regional scale.

You are not killing a manticore, you are killing Thrak the Dark Minion of Set.

Now this is not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a design principle I try to use when making this setting. If I come up with an idea, is there already a monster like this? Can I just use another monster? Does the first one need to be the type?

Examples:

• There is one (red) dragon. Her name among people is The Old Fire. She has been there for a very long time. People used to worship her, but that has faded away. Not that she cares.

• There is one Vampire. Well, there are a few lesser vampires in his employ, but he’s the head honcho. They call him the Baron. (Yeah, this is supposed to be a distillation of tropes, of course it’s Strahd)

• there is a single tribe of gnolls. They are in multiple locations, but they still are a single tribe.

• there is a single lich, he’s called Xiximanter. No nickname for him, people would freak if they knew how close he is (The Tomb of the Serpent Kings is in place of the Cave of the Unknown)

• there is a single minotaur family, one rules in the palace inside the Caverns of Thracia, the other schemes against his/her father in the Caves of Chaos