The Swag of Yore
These people understand.
I was born in 1975, so I got to spend the entire 80′s fully cognizant of the gigantic vortex of awesome I was daily marinating in. Once the entire Star Wars trilogy, He-Man, the Thundercats, and Ghostbusters came into play, my imagination was pretty much stocked. There are certain part of my childhood that, after knowing some history, I can’t believe existed. For instance, we had a D&D Saturday morning cartoon and we could walk into most toy stores and pick up official AD&D action figures and monsters. In the 80′s. During all the Satanism scare WTF.
Today, we have D&D merchandise, but it’s much more limited in scope. What happened?
Called Shot: Gamers?
Either my parents didn’t know about all the D&D/Satanism hullabaloo in the 80′s, or they rightly dismissed it as stupidity. Either way, my brother and I had lots and lots of D&D stuff to play with. Oddly, though we did have a Red Box set, I don’t think I ever actually played the actual D&D roleplaying game with my brother until my late teens. Had lots of adventures in the Forgotten Realms? Battled evil monsters from the Monster Manual (though we didn’t know it)? Yes, both of those, and lots.
The strange thing about the cartoon, the toys, and a lot of the other random D&D stuff we had was that it really didn’t feel like it pushed you toward playing the tabletop RPG at all. I remember seeing the occasional ad for the games, and the toys shared the same art style and graphic design as the later AD&D books, but they weren’t marketed as supplements or anything directly game-related at all. They were toys, and games, and books with an awesome fantasy flavor.
Sometimes, liberties got taken from the original source material. For instance, Lolth appears in the D&D cartoon as less of a dark goddess and more of an evil lady who tricks people and turns into a gross spider with the face of an angry Winona Ryder.
Sometimes the material was true to the books but only those familiar with the books knew it. I always thought the Acrobat and Cavalier were strange class choices until I read Unearthed Arcana a few years later. The really bizarre thing is that the D&D cartoon was cancelled the year UA came out — previously, those classes had only appeared in Dragon Magazine and the D&D cartoon. Today, we have D&D Insider for these things. Back then, all we had was a magical teenage pole-vaulter with a fur bikini and an awesome perm. And Ralph Malph.
Marketing Tie-Ins
It seems to me like D&D was being marketed to a much broader audience than gamers back then. Though I’m absolutely certain someone will prove me wrong within nanoseconds of writing this, it doesn’t seem like D&D gets a lot of spotlight time outside of gamer circles. Which, on the surface, is double extra weird because, back then, D&D was owned by TSR (a game company) and now WotC is owned by Hasbro (a much larger toy and game company).
These days, we have tabletop games, board games, and videogames. And belt buckles. Now, don’t get me wrong. I want a D&D belt buckle. But I long for my favorite game not to occupy a niche I have to explain to people. (At least, in the 80′s, all you had to explain was how you weren’t casting real spells using your immortal soul as the currency of the damned. I don’t like explaining things, OK?)
I do not have a marketing degree, nor do I have any idea what WotC could do to put a Dire Chicken In Every Pot™. (P.S. I get royalties if that gets used.) What I do have are desires and silly ideas.
Let me get this out of the way first: I cannot believe that we’ve had 4 blockbuster movies about sparkly vampires and werewolf emotions and the best Dragonlance movie I can get appears to be the product of a compromise between two warring animation houses that couldn’t decide on 2d or 3d. We can shrink Sean Astin to hobbit-size, we for damn sure can shrink Ryan Gosling to kender-size or just hire Snooki or something. (Maybe Gosling’s body but Snooki’s voice? Gotta get the kender-taunt just right.) Technology has finally invented Benedict Cumberbatch, so he can voice Lord Soth too when he’s done with Smaug.
Obviously, I’d grant my son all the D&D swag I had as a child and more. I want my son to be able to buy a Sword +5, Holy Avenger in a toy store, and have it glow unless he steals something or lies to me. I want to buy big, cool plastic monsters right out of the Monster Vault. I want a plush owlbear. I want good quality D&D cartoons (rendered in either 2d or 3d but not both!) and I want him to be able to tell tales of the Forgotten Realms and Eberron and Dark Sun like I tell about Eternia and Thundera and Cybertron. I also hope their plots hold up better than the cartoons of my youth but that is beside the point.
Those of you who’ve attended Gen Con probably know how fun this is: I want D&D themed food, especially at fast food places. I want to eat the McIllithid and drink Sahaugin Shakes. I want Beholder Bites. I want Fries +2. I want themed cups, and I for damned sure want cool Happy Meals with neat monsters and treasure. C’mon, I still have fond memories of the Astrosniks. Give me an Elemental Princes of Evil Happy Meal. I wanna see all the crazed soccer moms who used to hoard Beanie Babies lining up for days trying to get the elusive Cryonax figure.
Tears Shed For Decades Of Swag That Never Were
Eh, who am I kidding? I would have hoarded it just like the other stuff I actually did hoard and the majority would likely have the same honored place in my closet and crawlspace. But it really would have been cool and I do hope we see a few tendrils of our favorite game snake out into the mainstream.
Thinking about how vastly different D&D’s marketing approach has become over the last 30 years has really intrigued me (and may warrant a future article in which I am not full of crap). If you are chock full of this info, please let me know so that I may mine the contents of your brain.
Until then, I will wait for the day I can buy an Otiluke brand refrigerator.
Photo Credit
Castle Death! A Dead Simple RPG for Kids and Parents, Part 3
No actual orks were harmed during the writing of this post
Welcome back to this last post of a short series featuring my son Nico and I playing a simple d6-based RPG I created called Castle Death. In Part 1, I described the game’s core rule and character creation. In Part 2, we started playing and created new mechanics to complement the game experience. Today we follow Nico’s adventure as he start interacting with the game’s setting more.
The Implied Setting of Castle Death…
…is nonexistent. I made the title up as I invited my son to play the game. It could have been “The Caves of Xenu”, “The Moon Temple of the Dinosaur God” and even “Lords of the Mecha Dance Hall.” Anything that will pull a 10 y.o. from World of Warcraft to play with his old man/woman is a fine excuse. In fact I think I’ll use one of those next time.
Meet Pit Trap Mac
Chatty: Okay so you’re in a corridor that links the pillared halls of sculptures to rooms deeper in the dungeon. A very strong smell of food and spices permeates the area. There’s a big square hole that takes up the whole corridor ahead. There are doors on both side of the corridor before the pit.
Nico: Do I roll the dice now?
Well not all the time, you actually have to explore and describe what you try to do before stuff happens.
Okay, well then I’ll go see what’s in the hole. Can I roll now?
(Laughing) Sure, roll the D6. (He rolled a 4, meaning a somewhat positive outcome… that gave me an idea). All right, so you see this smiling face with a goatee staring up from the bottom of the pit. He says “Heeeeey Buddy! How you doin?”
I’m doing fine! What are you doing in the pit?
Oh this? That’s nothing, just a temporary thing while I rest up my sprained ankle. Gee listen amigo, you wouldn’t happen to have some rope hidden in that loot bag of yours right?
No I’m sorry. I don’t. Do I know you?
Know me? Haven’t you heard of me compadre? I’m Mac, legendary adventurer®, slayer of slayables and looter of lootables!
(And thus was Pit Trap Mac created) [Read the rest of this article]
Castle Death! A Dead Simple RPG for Kids and Parents, Part 2
In Part 1, I described how I sat down with my 10 y.o. son Nico and prepared, in mere minutes, a RPG session using a very simple game mechanic:
Whenever you wish to perform a task whose outcome is uncertain, Roll a d6. On a 6 you succeed with great success, on a 1 you fail horribly. All intermediate results are interpreted based on the ongoing story.
The Adventure Begins
I took my pad of graph paper and flipped to an empty page. On it, I drew a very large rectangle taking about 3/4 of the whole sheet and put a set of double doors on one side. I then added a sinewy path leading from the castle to an out-of-scale village.
Chatty: All right, Bersork makes his way to the Castle’s entry, the huge double door seems to be barred from behind. What do you do?
Nico: Can I force it open?
Sure, roll for it (he rolled a 3), ahhh I’m sorry but it apprears you aren’t strong enough to open it…
I use my axe to break it down. Can I roll again?
Nah, you’ll get the door “open” no problem but you’ll alert the whole place, are you ok with that?
Review: “Marvel Heroic Roleplaying”
(Editor’s note: as regular readers may know, several of the Critical Hits staff worked on or playtested Marvel Heroic Roleplaying by Margaret Weis Productions. Obviously none of us could make something resembling an impartial review, so we turned to our staff reviewer Wyatt to give it a read, as he was in no way involved in its creation. So enjoy this review from that perspective.)
Life has taken me on a divergent path than a lot of gamers I know. At the ripe young age when people seem to go into comics, I got into Pokemon, and then I watched exactly a million anime shows and read probably twice as many manga. As a child when a Limewire or Kazaa download purporting to be a fansubbed episode of Yu-Gi-Oh turned out to be porn, I was pretty disappointed.
I don’t really have a lot of experience with comics except that I watched The Death and Return of Superman fan-film (warning for language and things) which is absolutely hilarious, and some Marvel comics Hollywood movies. I have, however, played a lot of RPGs, and in the future Marvel Heroic Roleplaying might go into the rotation, though I doubt I will actually use the Marvel serial numbers in my game since I don’t have much attachment to Marvel. It is an interesting game with a versatile core mechanic that models comic book style adventures quite adequately.
Buckets Full of Dice
I’ve never played Leverage before, which seems like it would be helpful for potential new players, if they have experience with that system, since from what I hear Marvel takes after that game. It took me a while to get the hang of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. The first few chapters lay out the dice system and all the trappings, but on a first read, you might find yourself bombarded with terminology, like Stress and Doom Pools, that the character sheet of Captain America can’t explain on its own. If you’re not an experienced RPG player, who can find analogues to these things in other games; it can be confusing to take in the casual mention of them until they’re fully explained. The glossary is at the back of the book – I think it would’ve been better if the glossary was right up front like the old White Wolf books, which also had this kind of problem. I have to admit I found it difficult to get through the mechanical sections of the book – it took me a while to work through the fairly dry explanations and examples. I think a more informal, hammy style of writing could’ve helped the book out. [Read the rest of this article]
Learning to Play “Marvel Heroic Roleplaying”
Now that Marvel Heroic Roleplaying has been released in PDF, you may be itching to start playing.
I came in late in the playtesting cycle and just last Friday ran my first MHR session as a warmup for the launch party at my FLGS this Friday. So I haven’t exactly played this game a lot. It was also the first time I’d had to teach some players a new game since I introduced my group to Torg in the early 90s.
Although I have read through the Smallville and Leverage RPGs, I had yet to actually run a Cortex Plus game. It was a learning experience. So, I figure that other people would be interested in my experiences at teaching the game to my players and that I could provide some tips and warn about some pitfalls in introducing the game to your players.
Don’t Force Feed Them the Rules
Unless your players have played Leverage or Smallville, there is a lot to absorb all at once. There is the core mechanic, plot point usage, actions, complications, stress, and milestones. Instead I recommend starting with going over the datasheets and how you build your dice pool. Mention that the players have Plot Points that they can use to manipulate the dice pool via different methods and SFX on their datasheet, but don’t go into all the various ways they can do so. Finally mention that you, as the Watcher, have the Doom Pool that acts not only as a supply for extra dice for Watcher characters (much like Plot Points are for the players) but also as an an opposition pool for actions that aren’t directed at a specific Watcher character.
Then throw them straight into the action.
Some points that you may want to emphasize to your players:
- The importance of the effect die is the actual die it is, not the number that is showing on the die. This is quite different than other games, and it took some time for my players to wrap their head around it.
- Rolling a one on a die is not necessarily a bad thing! Yes, this will cause the Doom Pool to grow, but it also means that the players get Plot Points! This is important because…
- Plot Points are PLOT FUEL! Players will want to have a nice supply of Plot Points later in the Act when the Doom Pool is larger and with bigger dice. Player’s shouldn’t be afraid to add a d4 to their dice pool (and get a Plot Point) instead of adding a d8 when including a Distinction in their dice pool.
Subtle Rules
As expected, I made several errors in my first session. Most of these errors I either discovered on re-reading the Operations Manual or through discussions online. To help you avoid those little mistakes here is a list of the ones that I made:
- In order for the reaction roll to prevent the action from succeeding, the total needs to be greater than the action roll.
- If the effect die from the reaction roll is higher than the effect die from the action roll, the effect die for the action roll is stepped back by -1.
- Distinctions must have some association with the action or reaction you are attempting. If you can’t come up with one (and for some of the villains it might be tough), consider using a Scene Distinction instead.
- If the Watcher rolls an opportunity (ie. rolls a 1), that opportunity can be activated by the player immedately, and the push or stunt die added to the next roll, including the reaction roll to the action that provided the opportunity.
- Although you cannot use multiple effect dice to inflict the same type of stress on a single character, you can do so with mobs. So if you use one of the Area Attack SFXes, and have effect dice on a 5d6 mob of d10, d8, d6, d6, you can take out three dice from that mob (as you can’t have 2d6 stress).
- When you get to the end of a round, the last character gets to choose anyone to go next, including himself! This is why a player might want to choose a Watcher character instead of a Hero to go next, as explained by Fred Hicks.
Cool Stuff to Do
One of the great things about MHR is that it gives you mechanics to do cool stuff. Here are a couple of things you can do to complicate matters for your players:
- Mess with their Affiliations. Unlike many other games, MHR actually encourages you to split the party. By spending a die from the Doom Pool you can force the heroes to join up or split apart, which will improve (or degrade) their performance by changing which of their Affiliation traits is applicable. Wolverine is going to attack that villain? Spend a die from the Doom Pool and send them crashing down into the lower levels of the complex, separating Wolverine from his friends (and making the player happy). Want to make things challenging for Cyclops? Do the same thing. On the other hand, combining separate groups can be just as rewarding.
- Scene Distinctions (eg. It’s Pitch Black or Collapsing Building) are great for providing an alternative Distinction for players to use rather than the ones listed on their character sheet, especially if it’s difficult to apply them to the current situation. They also provide excellent mood and atmosphere.
Above all, the point is to make cool stories and have fun!
Castle Death! A Dead Simple RPG for Kids and Parents, Part 1
Yay, time for another “Gaming with Nico” story. I haven’t done one of these in forever and it so happens that an occasion presented itself last week.
Ensnaring the Unwary
Nico: I’m bored, I wanna play something.
Chatty: Do you want to play World of Warcraft? Some Magic Commander? How about some Poker?
Nico: Hmmmm, I don’t know…
Chatty: Okay, join me in at the kitchen table then, I’ll teach you a new game.
Nico (wary, as always when I get all mysterious): What kinda game?
An adventure game. Trust me you’re going to LOVE this one.
Oh, what’s it called?
Hmmm… it’s called CASTLE DEATH!
Oh cool! How does it play?
(Hook line and sinker!) [Read the rest of this article]
Collateral Damage Issue #1: Electric Ninja Boogaloo, Part 2
Join us dear readers in a thrill ride where dangers and catastrophe are a dime a dozen. Witness the birth of a new Superhero team in the heart of the City of Angels! Collateral Damage is here to stay! Take a special behind-the-scenes tour here and don’t miss Part 1 of this exciting new series! Excelsior! Sit back and enjoy what the new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game can offer. Excelsior!
Dramatis Personae
Just so you don’t have to go back to remember who’s who:
- The One Man Army (TOMA): A wisecracking troublemaker that can duplicate himself many many times. Played by Yan.
- Tsunami: A water-controller nuclear scientist who’s slowly loosing her humanity as she shifts into a water elemental-like creature. Played by Alex.
- The Great Gregory: A two-bit stage magician and casino cheat with the uncanny ability to see up to one minute in his future. Played by PM.
- Nightcrawler: Our favorite German Mutant teleporting Swashbuckler. Played by Frankie
Part #1 Redux
In one of Los Angeles’ seedier aquatic circus shows, S.H.I.E.L.D agent Sharon S. brings TOMA and The Great Gregory to meet Nightcrawler and Tsunami. As Nightcrawler’s plays his fake Houdini act, Ninjas prepare to attack. The surprise is foiled by a very alert Tsunami and a fight starts. Tsunami, TOMA and Nightcrawler engage the ninjas and save the confused and frightened audience. As the ninjas try to threaten Tsunami into surrendering, The Great Gregory announces the arrival of a far greater threat: The Silver Samurai! [Read the rest of this article]
Collateral Damage Issue #1: Electric Ninja Boogaloo, Part 1
Welcome true believers to a series describing the antics of the newest super hero team: Collateral Damage! I hope you’ve caught our special pre-launch issue where we showed you the nitty-gritty aspects of our creation process. Now get ready form pure raw action and laughs as only the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game can offer you!
Setting the Scene
The Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game supports many playing style, from the more traditional “Game Master describes stuff, players react” to the Writer’s Room approach where the Gamemaster (called The Watcher) acts like a comic book’s editor and the players are as much the writers and artists of the whole series as the voice of their own characters. I really like this approach. Thus, while I get to set and run scenes, I encourage players to butt in and propose cooler ways for things to go down. It’s one of those “Shared Narrative” experience that jargon-laden game designers like to write about. Trust me, it’s a lot more fun than it sounds.
When we finally were ready to start playing, my heart started pounding as I had ABSOLUTELY no plot prepared for the session, having decided to trust the setting elements we’d create earlier in the session and our combined creativity. I picked the index cards unto which I copied the setting elements we created earlier (see previous post) and picked the following (with ideas I got while reviewing them):
- The Circus: Something happens at the show (Nightcrawler and Tsunami are working there. This would let Tsunami shine with her water powers)
- Sharon S: The S.H.I.E.L.D. liaison to the yet-to-be-formed team (She brings the other 2 heroes to introduce them to form the team).
- The Obsessed Scientist: Hired thugs to try to kidnap/coerce Tsunami back to Japan (Opposition!).
I had a scene. I just needed some supporting characters above and beyond Sharon. I started looking through my list (in the Breakout Mini-event that comes out with the Basic game) for an appropriate super villain. I kept going back to the Silver Samurai and that clinched it for me.
The Nipponese scientist pays Clan Harada huge sums of money to send a band of ninjas in LA to track Tsunami and apprehend her. The scientist INSISTS that the Harada himself be there to oversee operations and get involved if necessary.
I stated a large group of ninjas (the game has mechanics for mobs of identical minor characters) within seconds and I was ready to start. [Read the rest of this article]
Collateral Damage #0: The Making of a New (Marvel RPG) Series
I have a gaming group that meets monthly on Sundays. It is composed of my close friends Yan, Franky, (Ubisoft) Alex and PM.
Not too long ago, they approached me to let me know they wanted to go back to classic campaigns. We spent most of the last 2 years playing one-shots of mini-campaigns of various game systems. When I asked what game they’d like to tackle, the answer was unequivocal: Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. They wanted to play with heroes they’d make from scratch and participate in home brewed adventures.
This request brought quite an interesting challenge for em. You see, the Marvel game is principally presented to play out specific events set in the Marvel Universe using pre-established heroes. These events will be based on published plot arcs like the upcoming Civil War or Age of Apocalypse. The events will mix events that occurred in the official storyline with ”what if” elements where players make decisions that may send the story in directions not covered by the original stories.
Thus, what my players requested was not something that I felt entirely comfortable doing right off the bat. Thankfully, I wasn’t without options. The basic rules provide plenty of guidance to make/adapt characters and create your own adventures. But I wasn’t sure I could pull off what they expected: a structured campaign based on my own ideas and my (still) limited knowledge of the Marvel Universe.
(Game designer aside: With over 70 years of history and 9000 characters, I’m not ever going to be a Marvel expert. I joined the team as a Game Designer and as the token “13 y.o boy who played FASERIP“)
Then it dawned on me, I have the tools I need. All those different game systems I’ve been playing these last 2 years give me a lot of options. much like the stuff that Dave and I blogged about here. The Marvel system itself doesn’t inhibit telling my own stories.
Thus I hatched the following strategy to prepare my first RPG campaign in over year.
Character Generation
First, we’d take a whole session making characters. The game provides clear guidelines to create/adapt your own hero but they do require a certain level of rules mastery to get exactly what you want. We spent a few hours individually then together at the table picking Distinctions (personality traits and catchphrases players), Specialties (skills), Power Sets and, more importantly, Special Effects (ways to use powers that bend the rules of the game, like Captain America’s area attack). Getting special effects right was what took us the longest as we wanted to go beyond those found in the book and tweak/create effects that went perfectly well with each hero’s powerset.
We ended up with the following four characters:
Nightcrawler (Franky): Using the available rules, we were able to create a faithful rendition of our favourite swashbuckling mutant teleporter. We established that the character was not being held to canon unless Franky felt it was fun and didn’t constrain his creativity.
The One Man Army (Yan): Inspired by Multiple Man, the self-duplicating mutant seen in X-Men 3 (and X-Factor), He’s a wisecracking troublemaking ex-con who’s idea of problem solving is throwing more manpower at it until the problem vanished under a pile of clones.
The Great Gregory (PM): Inspired by Nick Cage’s character in Next, Gregory is a jaded low-end stage magician and casino cheat with the ability to see one minute into his future. I must say that making a precognitive character was quite a challenge but as you’ll see in Issue #1, the game’s engine can support it much better than I expected.
Tsunami (Alex): A water elemental-like creature that looks like a Japanese idoru. Ami Tsun used to be a physicist who got caught in the Fukushima nuclear reactor in last year’s catastrophe. She got caught in one of the flooded reactors and developped Water Controlling powers.
Player Generated Setting Elements
In order to have something upon which to build our campaign world, I suggested an overarching setting based on the Marvel Universe. Using my recent research for the upcoming Civil War event books, I proposed that the players could be one of the federally-backed supers teams assigned to a specific American state (very loosely based on Marvel’s Fifty State Initiative). They agreed and we chose California.
Borrowing from my own “party generation template” and Dave’s excellent Gammarizer, I asked each player to come up with one setting element (places, recent events and minor characters) linking their character to the setting. Here’s what we came up with.
Sharon S.: S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and former actress. She was to act as the team’s liaison to her organization.
Tow-Wing’s Garage and Halal Fried Noodles: The One Man Army’s work place. I apologize if you find the name culturally offensive, but Yan’s PC is named “Mohammed Chang” a Muslim born from a Sino-Arab union. We all assumed that the business was named by a socially incompetent person… Which kinda fits TOMA to a T.
Hiroito Takashima: A crackpot scientist conspiracy theorist (or is it terrorist?) obsessed with the origins and powers of Tsunami. He has been diverting his own research grants into tracking her to America.
Thomas Redgrave: A Paranoid Casino Security Consultant who once caught Gregory slipping from his usually disciplined casino cheating routine (win slowly and quit before being noticed). He lost many jobs in various Las Vegas casinos trying to convince people of Gregory’s threat. The man is on a vendetta.
Father O’Reilly: Kurt’s Irish confessor and local community leader. Recovered alcoholic, of course.
Le Cirque: A seedy ripoff of Le Cirque du Soleil featuring a pool and scantily clad acrobats. Tsunami works the show’s controls and mechanical sharks. Yes, you read that right.
The Circus Act: Nightcrawler makes occasional guest appearances at the circus in a cheap Houdini act featuring an iron coffin covered in chains, dunked in a pool and stabbed by sword-wielding acrobats. Of course, when that happens, Kurt is safely reading magazines in his dressing room.
Your Mutant Past Will Bite/Help You Someday: In TOMA’s recent past, he dealt with Magneto and Mystique in some undefined way. There’s a good chance they’ll be back to follow up on that.
This setting element brought another one that Franky didn’t want to assume initially but he chose to go with Canon.
Nightcrawler’s Parents: As established, Kurt was born of Mystique and Azazel.
That’s so much material to pick from to create a game.
Milestones
The last element that we needed to establish before the game started was to give character milestones (the game’s experience system based on rewarding specific actions). According to the game, players get to choose 2 from an established list of event or character specific milestones. We took the time to generate one character-specific milestone per hero, agreeing to make setting specific ones in later sessions. I won’t go into specifics as they”ll likely change with time but here’s a summary of each.
TOMA: Dealing with his criminal past. Bring criminals to justice and get his record clean.
Nightcrawler: Being a devout catholic. Putting himself at great risk or even exposing himself in order to save ordinary people. Possibly becoming a priest even.
The Great Gregory: Deal with his boredom by choosing ways of putting his allies in trouble and letting villains escape for a later confrontation. Might even go as far as putting a friend or himself in mortal danger.
Tsunami (To be further defined): Retain her link to humanity or chose to forgo humanity altogether.
Armed with all these, I was totally ready to start a campaign. And let me tell you, it started with a BANG!
Up Next, Issue #1: Electric Ninja Boogaloo!
The Architect DM: Seven Wonders of Your World
Whenever I get a chance I make a pointed effort to read about or look at a map of other DM’s and GM’s roleplaying game worlds. I find it fascinating to look at them both objectively and subjectively, to see things that I may never have come up with or elements that are similar to things in the worlds I’ve created. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a handful of elements that pop up in the majority of people’s fantasy game worlds and these elements have been some of the inspiration for earlier world building posts in my Architect DM posts.
A great place to start with world building is to take inspiration or replicate an element from the real world. Today I’d like to talk about the concept of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and how more people should apply it to their game worlds. One of my favorite aspects of this idea is that featuring exactly seven aspects of a world seems to be a perfect balance between highlighting diversity and summarizing generalities.
Adding Wonder to a Mundane World
When I visualize the “typical DM’s D&D world map” I see something that has wiggly lines for coast lines, land split up by forests, mountains, and maybe some rivers or lakes, and a sprinkling of towns that seem to be placed randomly with some scraggly roads connecting them. I’ve tried to write several posts to help you design a believable and interesting world map from scratch or to adjust what you’ve already designed, so I’m not going to go into the general concepts behind fixing what I’ll call the “boring old D&D world”. If you have a question about general fantasy world design, please share it with me and I’ll address it in a future post!
What I think is missing from a lot of these game worlds and maps are featured elements that stand out from the background of the rest of the world. Though I referenced the Wonders of the Ancient World, these can be natural, man-made, or any other kind of wondrous element you can think up for your world. Add a Thunderspire into the midst of your largest mountain range, draw a giant tree in the middle of one of your forests (maybe even call it Yggdrasil, Teldrassil, or any other kind of *drasil you like), and show a prominent wizard’s tower as the focal point for a major city.
The Building Blocks of Story
Adding Wonders to your game world not only gives the players sign posts that help them navigate the world and differentiate one region from another, but they also present a great foundation for adventures and stories that you and your players can explore. This might feel like a shortcut or skimping on world building, but if you think about running a modern game in the present world it really starts to make sense. If your players visit Egypt, I don’t think they would be disappointed with the adventure focusing on a series of dungeons buried beneath the Pyramids. Or if you run a historic game and the players are sailing to Rhodes, you better believe they’ll want to hear about the Colossus.
The best part about adding these elements to your game world is that you can (and should) borrow liberally from real life. Add a Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls to your game world, just give them a new name or change a few of the key features about them and you’re set. George R. R. Martin did this in the Song of Ice and Fire series with the Titan of Braavos and it was one of my favorite elements of the series.
An Overly Wondrous World
I would probably argue that you can’t add too many wonders to your game world, but I would recommend sticking to a nice list of seven and seeing how your world looks after that. If you really want to add more features, I would recommend creating a list of seven natural wonders, seven ancient wonders, and seven modern wonders of your game world. From there you should have a fantastic spread of elements on which to build stories and to entice your players to explore the world with little extra encouragement.
The idea of presenting ancient wonders and natural wonders in your game world presents a nice view of history and can inspire wonder based on the unanswered questions they bring up. You can tie natural wonders to a god’s acts of creation or to indicate natural forces at work in your world. Ancient wonders can provide the perfect gateways for you and your players to explore your game’s history or to set up ongoing plots that give your world a nice “lived-in” feeling. Modern wonders can round out your world and can even interact with the ancient and natural wonders in your game world. Imagine a Taj Mahal built in the middle of Niagara Falls, or a fantasy equivalent of the race to build the world’s tallest building.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms D&D setting, but upon looking into it in the last few years while running my campaign I was surprised at the number of wondrous elements that were spread around the map. It felt like every region had its one special/unique element that defined it, and very little or even none of the world map was left over to serve as background for the important elements. For a published campaign setting I actually think this is fine, but if you’re creating your own fantasy world I wouldn’t recommend going the route of the Forgotten Realms. Instead, look at the maps for settings such as Dark Sun and Eberron and take note of the way wonderous landmarks are used to define certain regions. A perfect example is the Lightning Rail in Eberron, which immediately effects the DM and player impressions of the regions it connects and can inspire all kinds of adventures and encounters entirely on its own.
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