{"id":560,"date":"2017-07-14T02:03:41","date_gmt":"2017-07-14T02:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/campaign-design-walk-through-3-setting\/"},"modified":"2023-02-22T21:18:47","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T21:18:47","slug":"campaign-design-walk-through-3-setting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/campaign-design-walk-through-3-setting\/","title":{"rendered":"Campaign Design Walk-Through 3: Setting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since setting is the foundation of most fictons, we\u2019re going to start our design of the Guardians of Shymeria ficton there. Setting, as we all learned in English class, refers to the time and place where the story happens: Civil-War-era Texas, Middle Earth shortly after the Battle of Five Armies, or Earth-That-Was in its final days, for example. Sometimes all you need is the basic setting and maybe a more specific starting point. Everybody has a baseline idea of what (at least the genre version) of late 19th Century Texas was like, and Middle Earth is prominent enough in pop culture that most people know enough to get by even if they haven\u2019t drudged through the books. Original worlds (and unexplored times\/places from existing universes; all we know about Earth-That-Was is that it got used up, for example) require more work to get everyone on the same page.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Our ficton\u2019s setting is \u201cpresent-day Shymeria,\u201d but we don\u2019t really know what either of those things mean. Since this is a fantasy game, we\u2019ll start with \u201cShymeria.\u201d Since this is a fantasy world, we\u2019re eventually going to need map (it\u2019s the law), but that will come later when I know enough about the world to tell Josh Burnett what to draw. Currently, the map consists of a world divided into three big sections: The Mordor-esque hellscape of Bloodgrave the Demon King, the blasted ruins of the Scarred Lands, and the Saturday-morning cartoon kingdoms where Shymeria is located. I\u2019m picturing that list going from west to east, because I tend to put the frontier lands of any world I\u2019m creating to the west. Maybe it\u2019s an American thing.<\/p>\n

The first question we need to answer about the world is \u201cwhat exactly is Shymeria?\u201d So far I\u2019ve been using it interchangeably to refer to the ficton, the \u201cgood kingdoms\u201d (assuming there are more than one), and the kingdom the default PC homeland. That works fine for a Saturday morning cartoon where the main villain\u2019s goal is indistinct \u201cevil-doing\u201d that doesn\u2019t involve geopolitics, but since the over-arching plot of the game involves an army of Evil trying to take over the world, we\u2019ll probably need to define our terms. My first instinct was to keep it simple and make Shymeria the sole kingdom of Good, but that seems boring. I don\u2019t want to force a single culture (even a vague one) on the PCs, and I like the idea of exotic people and places that aren\u2019t inherently dangerous like the Scarred Lands and the Demon King\u2019s realm. Also, the idea several kingdoms putting aside their differences and joining forces to say \u201cfuck this guy\u201d when the Demon King\u2019s armies start moving has more resonance and fits well thematically with all the World War 2 stuff in Wizards.<\/p>\n

Of course, if Shymeria is just one country and the PCs are the Guardians of Shymeria, were\u2019 back to PC cultural homogeny. So I\u2019ll hedge a little bit. Shymeria is a distinct country. In fact, it\u2019s the most powerful country on the \u201cGood\u201d side of the map, which is one reason why the King of Shymeria is also the head of the Shymerian League, a loose confederation of mostly-sovereign nations set up to promote peace and prosperity among the enlightened kingdoms of the East. That\u2019s the \u201cShymeria\u201d the PCs are Guardianing for. They answer to the King of Shymeria, but he answers to the Council of Kings (at least as far as the Guardians and their activities are concerned). The capital Shymeria, Lighthaven (because this is the kind of ficton where names need to be either on-the-nose or nonsense), is a center of learning, art, and culture, the proverbial Shining City on the Hill. The Kingdom of Shymeria conveniently borders the Scarred Lands and probably has a coastline where all sorts of interesting visitors from across the sea mingle with the locals.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s probably enough about Shymeria itself to get started. We don\u2019t need to know its imports and exports, political term limits, or most popular sexual positions unless a PC decides to be a merchant, politician, or whore. The rest we can come up with during play (with help from the players) or as we need them. The one thing we will need a bit more detail about is the Guardians themselves. Factions like the Guardians are probably technically genre trappings, but since the name of the game is Guardians of Shymeria, they\u2019re also probably central to the setting, so it makes sense to try to pin them down here. You don\u2019t become a Guardian of Shymeria by being born into it or working your way up from the mailroom. \u201cGuardian\u201d is a title given to those who have fought heroically or done a great service for the Shymerian League (so all our PCs start the game as recognized Heroes of the Realm(™)). Heroes who are inducted into the Guardians take an oath that technically binds them in service to the league, but unless there\u2019s a major disaster or war, each member has a lot of control over their involvement with the group. Some go to the occasional meeting and use the title to pick up chicks, some sign on for missions or garrison duty when they need some extra cash or a place to stay, and others are lifers who spend most of their time working for the Guardians in some capacity.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll need to name some of the other nations in the Shymerian League and maybe come up with a few details about some of them (especially those that border Shymeria). We\u2019ll get to that a little later. For the time being, let\u2019s move the the central section of the map, which I\u2019ve already named The Scarred Lands. Thanks to their location and being littered with all kinds of ready-made Adventures of the Week, The Scarred Lands are almost guaranteed to be a recurring setting for the game.<\/p>\n

A Long Time Ago, the area now called The Scarred Lands were the home of an advanced civilization with powerful magic and wonderous inventions (your basic Atlantis-type place, but above sea level). Eventually, the kingdoms and city-states of the area warred with one another, unleashing insanely powerful weapons that destroyed everything and wrecked the land. Now the place is a wasteland dotted with ruined cities, wracked by earthquakes and other natural disasters, and home to monsters, brigands, mutants, and other unsavory types. The ruined cities are of course filled with powerful magic, lost technology, and ancient treasures, including valuable Contrivium (which we\u2019ll get to in the post about genre trappings), making it a place of interest to both the Shymerians and Bloodgrave the Demon King. As with Shymeria, we\u2019ll need some more details before the game starts, but for now we just need a flavor, and that flavor is pretty much \u201cgreat danger and fabulous prizes\u201d<\/p>\n

The third section of our map, far to the west, is the home of our series Big Bad, Bloodgrave the Demon King, and is thoroughly Modor-rific. Since the PCs are unlikey to end up there any time soon (if ever; there\u2019s an excellent chance Bloodgrave will come to them), we don\u2019t need to go into a lot of detail. We just need to know that it\u2019s chock-full of misery and death and there are probably swamps and volcanoes and man-eating monsters everywhere. Otherwise, all we really need is a name. Let\u2019s go with on-the-nose here and call it Nefaria.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve probably got enough to get going, but it wouldn\u2019t hurt to come up with a few places of interest that we can toss out for flavor and use to fill in the map when the time comes. We don\u2019t necessarily need any details, just some evocative names and maybe a few details to give us a starting point. We can develop things more as they come up in the game (or when good ideas strike us). Here\u2019s a quick list of possibilities:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Plains of Bone<\/li>\n
  2. The Forest Kingdom of Arboria<\/li>\n
  3. Kargoth, City of Ten Thousand Swords<\/li>\n
  4. The Shattered City (Scarred Lands)<\/li>\n
  5. The Island of the Sea King<\/li>\n
  6. Dalmaria, The Shining Kingdom<\/li>\n
  7. Gianthead Keep<\/li>\n
  8. Winterhome, land of the Ice Folk<\/li>\n
  9. The Spired City of the Sorcerer King of Arcadia<\/li>\n
  10. The Broken Kingdom<\/li>\n
  11. The Begorian Highlands<\/li>\n
  12. Ortellia (commonly known as \u201cThe Land of Decadence\u201d)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That gives us a basic overview of the world, but what about the \u201ctime\u201d part of setting? Since any Shymerian reckoning of time is going to be meaningless, we have to compare it to known times from our world or other fictons. At first, it seems like a typical fantasy world, but there\u2019s also a post-apocalypse element to the ancient cities of the Scarred Lands. There was obviously a long Dark Age after they fell, but humanity (at least in the east) has managed to crawl back up onto two legs and form a medieval-ish society. There is a lot of amazing ancient (and some more recently invented) technology floating around, but the distinction between technology and magic is extremely vague (thus \u201cscience-fantasy’). So it\u2019s somewhere in the \u201cThor movie Asgard\u201d era, but more influenced by Heavy Metal than Jack Kirby.<\/p>\n

    Next week we\u2019ll start adding genre trappings.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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