Dark Thriving Fantasy

 

Chapter 1

Listening to Lightning at the Door- album by All Them Witches

https://open.spotify.com/album/4ViTtcecbZ1kjNAkZ4BYNh?si=5XCGho3HR7eN3sGxPltmxQ

I’ve come to a point with my gaming that I want to start exploring my own world. I’ve played in so many other people’s imagination that I feel both inspired and entombed. Awhile back my wife got me a set of world building notebooks. Writing is a difficult venture for me, and creative writing is all the more impossible. But I have been really wanting to flex this muscle and learn how to transmit my ideas into text.

I have a trove of books at my disposal, the mains one that I will be using are,

·         30 days of World Building by A Trevena

·         How to Create History by A Trevena

·         From Sanctity to Sorcery by A Trevena

·         The Ultimate RPG GM’s Worldbuilding Guide by James D’Amato

For specific places I will be using The Ground Itself by Everest Pipkin, and possibly A Quite Year by Avery Alder

For specific items I am going to use Artifact by Mousehole Press.

I feel with all of these I can create a rich world with a lot of lore, but not so much that the lore itself becomes the focus. I want a place I can explore through watching players interact with it.  

I am going to be going through each of the first set of books chapter by chapter all at once, because it makes sense to me. Despite having a lot of reservations on using “how to’s” I will attempt to do them faithfully. I may dip my toes into the Without Number books.

30 Days of World Building

Genre and Setting

I feel like dark fantasy is all the rage these days. It has captured my attention as well as the zeitgeist. Dark Soles has really paved the way for this return. I think my generation is a bit nostalgic, yearning for the Dark Son and the 80’s Fantasy that our parents grew up with. But we know better now to avoid the pit falls of past Dark Fantasy, we know how to talk about dark things without being problematic. I doubt I have the capacity to explore dark subjects without using some problematic trope or misrepresenting a group of people. I will however try to do my best.

So…. Dark Fantasy? Maybe more like dark fairy tale. I, like everyone else am patiently waiting for Gavin Newman’s Dolmenwood. In the meantime, I might have to play in that space myself. I like the idea of a dying earth life setting, but maybe its inverse. Like humans are still on the brink of extinction but because of how verdant everything is. Cosmic horror but instead of it being eldritch beings from the unknown nature itself is the unknown. The world is so lush and alive in a way that brings so much chaos that humans never are able to establish an upper hand.

So… I think Dark Thriving Earth.

So, what of the rules of the world. I think we can add them as we go, but I want to start off with a few.

·         There are no other plains of reality, aside from overlapping. Like the spiritual plane is still in the same world but like on a different wavelength. There can be other planes in this sense, but they all have to have the same physical objects, ie landmarks, buildings. However, said physical objects can be distorted.

·         Without a celestial realm gods and demons exist in the real world as actual things. They arise from magical corruption.

·         Magic; this is something I am still working out but basically there are two streams/ forces of magic in the world. Both have polluting effects and determine what type of magical beings exist in certain areas. There might be more than just two but for the moment there are two. I don’t want to get into MTG territory. At the outset these two streams may appear as opposing forces of good/ evil or law/ chaos. They are not opposing more like just different and are not compatible. Think like oil and water.

·         There are no supreme forces of good/ evil and law/chaos. These concepts exist at the micro level and are subjective.

·         Different hominids can not inter breed. There are some cases that I will clear up later, but basically no half orcs.

I want the world to feel very different but not so out there, that there is nothing relatable. Orcs, goblins, elves, and such will exist.