D&D General Mystara Musings [Discussion]
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jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
Mystara is my second favorite official D&D setting (my first love is Pelinore from TSR UK). I own all of the gazetteers in one form or another. I adore the Voyage of the Princess Ark stories (some of the best D&D fiction ever published, IMO). I wish I could convince more any of my friends to give it a try.
I actually know very little of Mystara. What makes it so good? It seems like a pretty cool setting. Is there an overview gazeteer? There seem to be a lot of gazeteers...
en.wikipedia.org
Mystara - Wikipedia
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
Mystara is my favourite collection of settings and hits so much goodness, it is unapologetically Pulp, High Fantasy Kitchen Sink, but done in a way that is anything but vanilla.
Some of the best DnD Modules were set in Mystara in particular the B Series, not to mention the Video games Tower of Doom and Shadows over Mystara. The game caters to pulp tropes while embracing high fantasy wonder and a weird variety of races with distinct cultures rather than biological essentialism (eg Tortles come from Mystara, and there is an entire nation of Hin (halflings).
Then you had the Gazeteers which really were self contained mini-settings (Karameikos, Glantri, Minrothad Guilds, Empire of Thyatis etc) especially once you start adding Blackmoor, Red Steel, Hollow World. Each with their own NPCs, Villains and cultural dynamics that made them interesting to play.
One thing that people often overlook about Mystara is that it was created as a shared world engineered to cater to the rules progressions of the BECMI system.
Thus it starts with the stand alone modules of Basic, focussed on dungeon looting and small local adventures, in smallish, frontier settlements surrounded with perilous wilderness. Then it adds Experts Wilderness exploration rules via the Isle of Dread and the first map of the Known World - that encouraged PCs to explore and range across a pastiche of nations inspired by real world cultures, they could get to easily by road or sail (and later air ship).
The Map also provided space for PCs who wanted to progress to Companions level Domain play - Karameikos was retrofitted with feudal baronies that PCs could aspire to take over and run, and the Test of the Warlords module gave PCs the tools to wage war and set themselves up to rule.
I never got to Masters or Immortal levels but thats where Empire level play, the Hollow World and Planar travel came in, not to mention the whole game of becoming Immortals.
I recommend people visit Pandius.com
This was the Introduction to Mystara 3E
Some of the best DnD Modules were set in Mystara in particular the B Series, not to mention the Video games Tower of Doom and Shadows over Mystara. The game caters to pulp tropes while embracing high fantasy wonder and a weird variety of races with distinct cultures rather than biological essentialism (eg Tortles come from Mystara, and there is an entire nation of Hin (halflings).
Then you had the Gazeteers which really were self contained mini-settings (Karameikos, Glantri, Minrothad Guilds, Empire of Thyatis etc) especially once you start adding Blackmoor, Red Steel, Hollow World. Each with their own NPCs, Villains and cultural dynamics that made them interesting to play.
One thing that people often overlook about Mystara is that it was created as a shared world engineered to cater to the rules progressions of the BECMI system.
Thus it starts with the stand alone modules of Basic, focussed on dungeon looting and small local adventures, in smallish, frontier settlements surrounded with perilous wilderness. Then it adds Experts Wilderness exploration rules via the Isle of Dread and the first map of the Known World - that encouraged PCs to explore and range across a pastiche of nations inspired by real world cultures, they could get to easily by road or sail (and later air ship).
The Map also provided space for PCs who wanted to progress to Companions level Domain play - Karameikos was retrofitted with feudal baronies that PCs could aspire to take over and run, and the Test of the Warlords module gave PCs the tools to wage war and set themselves up to rule.
I never got to Masters or Immortal levels but thats where Empire level play, the Hollow World and Planar travel came in, not to mention the whole game of becoming Immortals.
I recommend people visit Pandius.com
This was the Introduction to Mystara 3E
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Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I think this is definitely how Mystara works best. Many of the individual settings are fantastic, A+, no notes. And others are ... not.
The good news/bad news about the setting is that none of them are particularly tightly interwoven. So while there are people who will 100% die on the hill of having every bit of lore be part of their Mystara campaigns, in practice, it's extremely easy to say "we just like Darokin, so we're going to play in Darokin" and most other nations will just be a place where the odd NPC is from.
I ran a Five Shires campaign, for instance (yes, I'm the one DM who did), and Glantri was the place where mysterious and untrustworthy wizard NPCs came from. The particulars of Glantri didn't matter beyond that for our purposes.
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Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I can't imagine the rights issues are anything other than a giant mess, but yes, I'd love to see -- at the very least -- a collected set of the Pelinore articles. Even better, of course, would be even a small setting book filling things out a bit more.
Sort of, but not really.
You've got the map and brief write-up in the Isle of Dread, but that's just a few sentences of information.
You've got late-stage BECMI boxed sets that include a lot of information about the setting as a whole, although to my knowledge, those just focus on what's new in the boxed sets rather than giving you a lot of useful info on the other individual settings.
You've got the almanacs that tell you what's happening all over the world in a given year, but can't be used as setting books themselves.
Unfortunately, the best thing to do is get a list of the nations, probably from Wikipedia or Pandius, see which sound interesting to you, and dive in to nations one at a time. I would say that most of the GAZ series are quite good and will be rewarding settings to read and run -- but not all, so at least glance at the online consensus before picking up some of the less talked-about ones, which tend to be less popular for good reasons.
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Thanks, this is great.
May set my next in Mystara...
May set my next in Mystara...
The Sigil
Mr. 3000 (Words per post)
Since the topic requested musings, I'll oblige...
One of the reasons that Mystara is cited as a setting that WotC probably can't revisit is that many of the nations in Mystara hew a little too closely to the "real world" for comfort. Much virtual ink has been spilled on the Broken Lands supplement "Orcs of Thar" and how a lot of people find the content of that Gazetteer racially insensitive for modern gamers, but let's set that particular element of the setting aside for the purposes of this musing, please, because that's its own separate ball of wax.
Many of the "human" nations in Mystara are fairly obvious analogs of real-life fantasy cultures - often amalgams of several cultures. For instance, Karameikos' native elements (the Traldarans) have many Slavic analogs (though I see many of the names in Karameikos and they are clearly derived from Hungarian names, and Hungarians aren't Slavs, but you get the idea); Thyatis is the Byzantine empire (though careless players will probably see "Ancient Rome"), the Ylari mirror aspects of middle Eastern culture, the Northern Reaches are clearly Viking-inspired, the Ethengar Khanate reflect steppe nomads like the Huns, the Magyars, etc.
Mark Rosewater (head designer of Magic: The Gathering) did an article on lessons in game design ten years ago called "20 Years, 20 Lessons" (Twenty Years, Twenty LessonsāPart 1 | MAGIC: THE GATHERING) and two of the lessons that I think is useful here is Lesson #3 "Resonance is Important" and Lesson #4 "Piggybacking" - the quotes I think are relevant here are:
"Your audience has a deep deposit of emotional equity in preexisting things. As a game designer, that's a tool you should make use of and build upon. This lesson is that some of your tools come from the players themselves."
and
"Piggybacking is a term defined as "the use of preexisting knowledge to front-load game information to make learning easier.""
Last time I ran a campaign, I ran it in Mystara - Karameikos in particular. My players were young (college age) and brand new to D&D. After a couple of campaign sessions, one of them expressed something to the effect of, "I get the political tension here; the Thyatians are the Romans trying to assimilate a conquered people ... the Ylari guy we just met; he's kind of like Arabian, and that's why his customs seem so different from everyone else's, right?" This might not have been politically correct, but the real-world analogs allowed him to quickly understand the setting; I hadn't explicitly pointed out "the Ylari guy's customs are different" I simply said he brewed up some coffee and offered to share it while he and the PCs discussed matters (I said it as though it was the most normal thing in the world) but remembering that in the previous session, there were suspicious looks in the tavern when a Thyatian walked in, and everyone in the tavern ordered ale, the detail of "coffee" was enough to make him realize this was a foreigner and they needed to be mindful that his customs - and motivations - were different than other NPCs'.
So I guess my musing is that the parallel to real world culture can be a trap if done poorly, but if done correctly can very quickly enrich the world of Mystara. Make sure you're getting the "enriching" version.
One of the reasons that Mystara is cited as a setting that WotC probably can't revisit is that many of the nations in Mystara hew a little too closely to the "real world" for comfort. Much virtual ink has been spilled on the Broken Lands supplement "Orcs of Thar" and how a lot of people find the content of that Gazetteer racially insensitive for modern gamers, but let's set that particular element of the setting aside for the purposes of this musing, please, because that's its own separate ball of wax.
Many of the "human" nations in Mystara are fairly obvious analogs of real-life fantasy cultures - often amalgams of several cultures. For instance, Karameikos' native elements (the Traldarans) have many Slavic analogs (though I see many of the names in Karameikos and they are clearly derived from Hungarian names, and Hungarians aren't Slavs, but you get the idea); Thyatis is the Byzantine empire (though careless players will probably see "Ancient Rome"), the Ylari mirror aspects of middle Eastern culture, the Northern Reaches are clearly Viking-inspired, the Ethengar Khanate reflect steppe nomads like the Huns, the Magyars, etc.
Mark Rosewater (head designer of Magic: The Gathering) did an article on lessons in game design ten years ago called "20 Years, 20 Lessons" (Twenty Years, Twenty LessonsāPart 1 | MAGIC: THE GATHERING) and two of the lessons that I think is useful here is Lesson #3 "Resonance is Important" and Lesson #4 "Piggybacking" - the quotes I think are relevant here are:
"Your audience has a deep deposit of emotional equity in preexisting things. As a game designer, that's a tool you should make use of and build upon. This lesson is that some of your tools come from the players themselves."
and
"Piggybacking is a term defined as "the use of preexisting knowledge to front-load game information to make learning easier.""
Last time I ran a campaign, I ran it in Mystara - Karameikos in particular. My players were young (college age) and brand new to D&D. After a couple of campaign sessions, one of them expressed something to the effect of, "I get the political tension here; the Thyatians are the Romans trying to assimilate a conquered people ... the Ylari guy we just met; he's kind of like Arabian, and that's why his customs seem so different from everyone else's, right?" This might not have been politically correct, but the real-world analogs allowed him to quickly understand the setting; I hadn't explicitly pointed out "the Ylari guy's customs are different" I simply said he brewed up some coffee and offered to share it while he and the PCs discussed matters (I said it as though it was the most normal thing in the world) but remembering that in the previous session, there were suspicious looks in the tavern when a Thyatian walked in, and everyone in the tavern ordered ale, the detail of "coffee" was enough to make him realize this was a foreigner and they needed to be mindful that his customs - and motivations - were different than other NPCs'.
So I guess my musing is that the parallel to real world culture can be a trap if done poorly, but if done correctly can very quickly enrich the world of Mystara. Make sure you're getting the "enriching" version.
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