Fantasy settings and colonialism
2020-Feb-28, Friday 12:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Working more on the setting I was thinking about magic systems for here. I went with shadaras's suggestion of splitting Changeling: the Lost's Contracts apart into individual spells and called it Sorcery, representing the weird and capricious magic learned from the Fair Folk, and I also want to take Vampire: the Masquerade's necromancy and make that magic learned from ghosts and the dead, and another system that I haven't picked a name for yet based on the demons of the Outer Dark. So that's sorted out.
Anyway, I saw a post on Twitter not that long ago about being careful not to replicate colonialism in fantasy worldbuilding and I've been thinking about it:
So, the standard D&D world narrative of civilization and wilderness, and people from civilization go into the wilderness, fight the monsters there, and bring the treasure back to civilization, is pretty much just colonialism. There's a reason that people talk about D&D being a fantasy Western, and early modules like Keep on the Borderlands are basically just the trope of the frontier fort beyond which civilization ends transplanted into a fantasy setting. Sure, you can justify it by saying that there aren't any humans out there, they're "humanoids," but the problem is that literally everything about orcs and goblins and bugbears and so on is something that was applied to actual colonized populations during history. They're savages who threaten our peaceful settlers! They attack us and commit atrocities! They're a threat and we need to exterminate them! They're innately evil and cannot be reasoned with or parleyed with! They're literal inhuman monsters! All of that is actual real-world propaganda.
So, if I still want a world with a dangerous wilderness, ruined cities, dungeons, and the tropes of adventurer fantasy starring wanderingmurdering psychopathsadventurers, what do I do? I don't think you can entirely eliminate this, but you can at least address it.
I have some experience with this based on my Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom game, and so I have ways to deal with the problem. There I didn't have any native humans in the game, so I avoided the problem of "good races" and "evil races"--the players killed plenty of mushroom people and rat people and basically-Hylian-ripoff people and turtle people during the game, but they were all people and none of them were the designated kill-on-sight enemy. Here, I'm doing something similar where there are two basic categories of playable groups:
One way I did this in Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom was by having the PCs fight undead a lot, and similarly here, I'm planning to have a viral zombie plague in the world's recent past, so there are still zombies here and there, ruined towns, strongholds, and vaults--"dungeons," one might say--and the various ways that people decided to try to fight the walking dead off that went awry. Some places have nests of ghouls where people had to resort to cannibalism due to being besieged. Some places are demon-haunted due to trying to fight fire with fire. There's plenty of small-scale tragic stories, like the set pieces in the Fallout games, that I can use.
Similarly, further back the Fair Folk tried to invade and the humans and mountain folk fought them off. I'm basing the Fair Folk off Exalted's Fair Folk, so their presence warps the land where they stay too long, they need to eat human dreams, and any dealings with them have to reckon with that. The world's equivalent of "humanoids" are low-ranking Fair Folk warriors ("hobgoblins") who adopted animal shapes and ride mutated wolves or deer or other animals in battle and still remain out there in the wilds. Ogres are Fair Folk shock troops. Similarly, the Fair Folk invasion left zones of unreality behind that mutated animals and plants that lived there are who wandered in, so wilderness monsters like gryphons and basilisks and owlbears and giant spiders and shambling mounds and so on are all mutated plants or animals.
In a way, fighting the Fair Folk is fighting against colonialism, since they did want to conquer the world.
Second, I love settings that have an actual spiritual ecology and I think D&D turning nature spirits and local gods into either undead or physical creatures removes a lot of possible play space. Why is the local wilderness unclaimed? Because it's like Princess Mononoke and the local forest spirits are furiously fighting against any enroachment. This is skirting the line a bit, but since the forest spirits don't actually need physical living space, different resolutions are possible. Maybe there's a way to come to an arrangement such that the forest spirits are satisfied and some logging can occur. Similarly, ghosts are people too, or at least they used to be. They remember their lives and they can be reasoned with. And another thing I'm carrying over from Exalted is hungry ghosts. If someone dies violently, or of neglect, or in painful circumstances, their ghost comes back vengeful and hunts the living, especially whoever it was that led to their death, but any warm blood will do in a pinch. It's a great way to encourage at least a bit of forethought before the PCs decide to just murder their enemies.
Third, underground are a lot of mutated monsters, dark gods, things that gnaw at the roots of the world, and so on that the mountain folk fight against. This is called the "Endless War," and some of them can't be reasoned with, but others are competing for space and there are small-scale treaties, trade, discussions, breaking apart into skirmishes sometimes. Like in the real world.
I gave the mountain folk longer lifespans, and I remember an old post I saw somewhere about the wars between dwarves and goblins from the perspective of each group. From the dwarven perspective, the goblins are their eternal foe. An old dwarf who's nearing his fourth century has seen them come at the gates of the mountainhomes time and time again, probably raised axe and hammer against the goblin menace more than once, and now faces the prospect of having to take up his old weapons as the drums echo again in the deep. The goblins are the eternal enemy of his people, he thinks. No peace with them lasts. The king under the mountain should raise an army and wipe them out once and for all.
From the goblin perspective, the dwarves hate them unreasonably. Sure they have fought wars before, but the last was thirty years ago! It was over a lifetime ago and the goblins have had three kings since then, and none of them living remember anything but peace. The priests call for war, it's true, but a little posturing is part of relations between kingdoms. None of the goblins in the kingdom have ever raised a weapon against the dwarves, and they could have peace if only the dwarves wouldn't be so suspicious.
From the dwarven perspective, the war is eternal, and sometimes it flares up again and sometimes it dies down. From the goblin perspective, there are wars and then long periods of peace, and they have nothing to do with each other. There are stories to be found there.
(This is, of course, why elves are such jerks to humans in generic fantasy stories too!)
Anyway, I haven't actually done much fleshing out of the world, but that's what I've thought of so far!
shadaras's suggestion of splitting Changeling: the Lost's Contracts apart into individual spells and called it Sorcery, representing the weird and capricious magic learned from the Fair Folk, and I also want to take Vampire: the Masquerade's necromancy and make that magic learned from ghosts and the dead, and another system that I haven't picked a name for yet based on the demons of the Outer Dark. So that's sorted out.Anyway, I saw a post on Twitter not that long ago about being careful not to replicate colonialism in fantasy worldbuilding and I've been thinking about it:
So, the standard D&D world narrative of civilization and wilderness, and people from civilization go into the wilderness, fight the monsters there, and bring the treasure back to civilization, is pretty much just colonialism. There's a reason that people talk about D&D being a fantasy Western, and early modules like Keep on the Borderlands are basically just the trope of the frontier fort beyond which civilization ends transplanted into a fantasy setting. Sure, you can justify it by saying that there aren't any humans out there, they're "humanoids," but the problem is that literally everything about orcs and goblins and bugbears and so on is something that was applied to actual colonized populations during history. They're savages who threaten our peaceful settlers! They attack us and commit atrocities! They're a threat and we need to exterminate them! They're innately evil and cannot be reasoned with or parleyed with! They're literal inhuman monsters! All of that is actual real-world propaganda.
So, if I still want a world with a dangerous wilderness, ruined cities, dungeons, and the tropes of adventurer fantasy starring wandering
I have some experience with this based on my Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom game, and so I have ways to deal with the problem. There I didn't have any native humans in the game, so I avoided the problem of "good races" and "evil races"--the players killed plenty of mushroom people and rat people and basically-Hylian-ripoff people and turtle people during the game, but they were all people and none of them were the designated kill-on-sight enemy. Here, I'm doing something similar where there are two basic categories of playable groups:
- Humans and their Offshoots: Humans and groups that are derived from humanity are one main playable group. So humans, dhampirs (humans with vampire ancestry or whose parents were attacked by a vampire), fae-blooded (humans with Fair Folk ancestry or whose family is under a faerie curse), hellions (humans with demonic ancestry), Dragonborn (humans who were personally or whose close ancestors were transformed into a "better" form by dragons), and so on. I'm thinking of including various kinds of animal people too, but haven't yet.
- The Mountain Folk: This is my version of dwarves and all the other D&D "demihuman" races in one group. They live underground and don't reproduce biologically; instead, they're literally carved out of rock. They're divided into castes: artisan (gnomes), diplomats, entertainers (D&D short elves), guides (halflings), warriors (dwarves), and workers (dwarves). They've been allies with humanity for generations, since they live in completely separate environments and don't compete for resources. This group also includes the warforged, golems constructed by the mountain folk to enhance their fight against the things that lurk in the dark.
One way I did this in Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom was by having the PCs fight undead a lot, and similarly here, I'm planning to have a viral zombie plague in the world's recent past, so there are still zombies here and there, ruined towns, strongholds, and vaults--"dungeons," one might say--and the various ways that people decided to try to fight the walking dead off that went awry. Some places have nests of ghouls where people had to resort to cannibalism due to being besieged. Some places are demon-haunted due to trying to fight fire with fire. There's plenty of small-scale tragic stories, like the set pieces in the Fallout games, that I can use.
Similarly, further back the Fair Folk tried to invade and the humans and mountain folk fought them off. I'm basing the Fair Folk off Exalted's Fair Folk, so their presence warps the land where they stay too long, they need to eat human dreams, and any dealings with them have to reckon with that. The world's equivalent of "humanoids" are low-ranking Fair Folk warriors ("hobgoblins") who adopted animal shapes and ride mutated wolves or deer or other animals in battle and still remain out there in the wilds. Ogres are Fair Folk shock troops. Similarly, the Fair Folk invasion left zones of unreality behind that mutated animals and plants that lived there are who wandered in, so wilderness monsters like gryphons and basilisks and owlbears and giant spiders and shambling mounds and so on are all mutated plants or animals.
In a way, fighting the Fair Folk is fighting against colonialism, since they did want to conquer the world.
Second, I love settings that have an actual spiritual ecology and I think D&D turning nature spirits and local gods into either undead or physical creatures removes a lot of possible play space. Why is the local wilderness unclaimed? Because it's like Princess Mononoke and the local forest spirits are furiously fighting against any enroachment. This is skirting the line a bit, but since the forest spirits don't actually need physical living space, different resolutions are possible. Maybe there's a way to come to an arrangement such that the forest spirits are satisfied and some logging can occur. Similarly, ghosts are people too, or at least they used to be. They remember their lives and they can be reasoned with. And another thing I'm carrying over from Exalted is hungry ghosts. If someone dies violently, or of neglect, or in painful circumstances, their ghost comes back vengeful and hunts the living, especially whoever it was that led to their death, but any warm blood will do in a pinch. It's a great way to encourage at least a bit of forethought before the PCs decide to just murder their enemies.
Third, underground are a lot of mutated monsters, dark gods, things that gnaw at the roots of the world, and so on that the mountain folk fight against. This is called the "Endless War," and some of them can't be reasoned with, but others are competing for space and there are small-scale treaties, trade, discussions, breaking apart into skirmishes sometimes. Like in the real world.
I gave the mountain folk longer lifespans, and I remember an old post I saw somewhere about the wars between dwarves and goblins from the perspective of each group. From the dwarven perspective, the goblins are their eternal foe. An old dwarf who's nearing his fourth century has seen them come at the gates of the mountainhomes time and time again, probably raised axe and hammer against the goblin menace more than once, and now faces the prospect of having to take up his old weapons as the drums echo again in the deep. The goblins are the eternal enemy of his people, he thinks. No peace with them lasts. The king under the mountain should raise an army and wipe them out once and for all.
From the goblin perspective, the dwarves hate them unreasonably. Sure they have fought wars before, but the last was thirty years ago! It was over a lifetime ago and the goblins have had three kings since then, and none of them living remember anything but peace. The priests call for war, it's true, but a little posturing is part of relations between kingdoms. None of the goblins in the kingdom have ever raised a weapon against the dwarves, and they could have peace if only the dwarves wouldn't be so suspicious.
From the dwarven perspective, the war is eternal, and sometimes it flares up again and sometimes it dies down. From the goblin perspective, there are wars and then long periods of peace, and they have nothing to do with each other. There are stories to be found there.
(This is, of course, why elves are such jerks to humans in generic fantasy stories too!)
Anyway, I haven't actually done much fleshing out of the world, but that's what I've thought of so far!
no subject
Date: 2020-Mar-01, Sunday 01:56 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-Mar-02, Monday 15:33 (UTC)The name is from Exalted's Mountain Folk, but the form comes from quotations I've heard of people talking about how D&D's "short races" (dwarves, gnomes, halflings) don't have a lot of differences between them, so I wondered "what if they were all part of the same species?" and the mountain folk were the result!