Eysia said:
do you work outside-in or inside-out?
I alternate, rapidly, filling up the space between the inside and the outside with a sort of zig-zag pattern. That way I get to move sideways by an alternation of rather staggery forwards and backwards steps.
As it happens, I have a description lying around about how I did the framework threads of one of my more successful campaigns and its setting, which I will post in case anyone is interested. I have changed the name of the campaign so as not to run a risk of tipping the nod to one of the WotC SS panel members, but even so I guess I ought to post a spoiler warning and ask you not to read any further if you are on the selection panel for the WotC setting search.
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HOW I BUILT GEHENNUM
My friends at university and I had been playing a lot of HindSight in Tonio Loewald's setting 'Fvaldanon', and also a lot of ForeSight in my SF setting 'Flat Black'. We used to have a lot of time for RPGs back then. Anyway, I wanted to GM some fantasy, and my prospective players felt like a break from Fvaldanon's high-latitudes continental (and quasi-European) setting.
One idea that had been festering in my mind for some months was that 'religion' in fantasy settings usually combines mythology, powerful supernatural beings, and moral standards, and that these things didn't necessarily belong together. I decided that I would experiment with a world in which mythological entities were prominent, but the 'gods' of the Sun, the Sea, etc. were also real, and of a different nature and significance, _and_ moral codes would come from secular and speculative philosophies, largely separate from the two classes of gods.
Then I was watching the old movie "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" on TV, and a couple of things struck me. One was that when Mrs. Muir first went to the house, she felt as though it was welcoming her, even though the ghost was hostile. I thought of somehow putting the PCs in a haunted house where the god of the house wanted them to stay (and repair and maintain it), while the ghost was sullen and hostile. The other was the phrase "Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam/ Of perilous seas in fairylands forlorn." (it's Keats, from 'Ode to a Nightingale').
I realised that I would need to have something to keep the characters in the haunted house and in conflict with the ghost: a crucible, though I did not then think of such things in those terms. Then I had the idea that it might be a castle that they were given by a king as reward for fulfilling a quest. But why would a king give people a haunted castle (and make them stay in it) as a reward? Obviously, because he didn't want them to complete the quest, even though he said he did. Perhaps he wanted somebody else to complete the quest. Perhaps the entire quest was a setup to allow him to reward somebody, and he was really piqued that the PCs had jumped his favourite's claim.
That seemed like a good idea, but it obviously suggested some things about the setting. For a start, the king was under some sort of constraint: he had to make an excuse to reward his favourite. I decided that the kingdom would be an amalgam of conquered states, and that the descendants of the former monarchs of the subsumed states would have some sort of legislative power over the king. So I had a king and a house of lords: I decided to throw in a house of mayors to give the commons some clout, and this suggested city-states to me. So I gave the cities an old democratic tradition.
The usual reward for completing a quest for a king in fairytales is his daughter's hand in marriage and successor-ship to the kingdom. I toyed with the matrilocal patriarchy ideas of James Frazer, but I'd already done that in something else, so I thought that maybe this king had an only daughter, and that her husband would be heir-presumptive. Why? Perhaps he was estranged from his wife, like the Prince Regent/George IV from Princess Charlotte (IIRC). Why should her not simply divorce her, and marry another wife? Or just take another wife? There has to be monogamy, obviously. And maybe some other authority had control over his ability to divorce? What about the houses of lords and mayors? At one time a divorce in England required an Act of Parliament.
I ended up deciding that divorce in this country would require proof of wrong-doing, and that a wrong-doing against the king would count as treason. and I decided that the nobles (including the Queen) would have a right to trial by the house of lords, not by a judge appointed by the King. The Queen's sympathisers in the house of lords would not give the King a divorce, because that would mean finding the Queen guilty of treason.
Obviously, the King's regime is pretty unpopular. What, then, keeps it going? This was beginning to look like a big bold sort of setting, so I thought it better not be anything too subtle. I decided that the King's regime was maintained by Count Jasper of Souvenir, whom everyone was scared of. Obviously, Jasper had a corps of much-feared secret police. To make sure that Jasper was feared and loathed, and to make the PCs think twice about fooling with him, I established that he had conducted thorough purges of the Royal Family, the nobility, and the leading lights of the democratic tradition. But then, why has the King not simply had Jasper kill the Queen. Very likely Jasper is not devoted to the King, but has another agenda and supports the king to a limited extent and for his own reasons. Jasper is a man of some principles: he will summarily execute the King's relatives to maintain the regime, but not do the same to the King's wife to indulge the King. To make this clear, I decided that the King had impeached his wife for treason, but that Jasper had voted for acquittal, and the other lords, relieved of the fear that Jasper would punish them for voting against the King's wishes, had followed.
So I decided to go all the way: Jasper would be a man of very strong principles. Why should such a man support a weak and feckless, not to mention scheming and faithless, king? Hmm. Perhaps he is deathly afraid of civil war. Why? Well, his much-beloved wife was killed in the last one. And his son, why not? The last one? Okay. The King had a succession war to gain the throne. The opposite side killed Jasper's wife and son. Jasper joined the King's side, and was instrumental in the King's victory. To prevent another such war, Jasper offs all the people who might usurp the throne or raise a rebellion against royal authority. It works. Jasper is obviously a military genius. Perhaps he has made innovations of tactics and doctrine. Okay. He has invented the legion and those neat formations like the testudo. Everyone else uses, say, pike phalanxes.
Right. That's got the political and government situation sorted out, and suggested something about military affairs and the family structure. How about the physical setting?
Everyone is tired of cold snowy places like Fvaldanon. Let's make this place tropical. I really want to drive home the fact that this is a place dramatically unlike Europe. So I'll take away horses and the associated social features. Why are there no horses? Well, horses are grasslands creatures. Perhaps there are no grasslands in this place. And so horses are not imported, let's say there are no grasslands anywhere on the planet. It is a planet covered largely with water, dotted with islands, but lacking any continents.
This place is tropical, and I want to get away from European defaults. I'll make the people brown-skinned and black-haired. And small and nimble. I'll put in some European types for contrast: call their land Fairon. Hmm. this close to the equator they're probably a colony from somewhere else. Seafaring. We want them to be fierce and uncivilised. Think of them like the Norse colony in Iceland.
Tropical islands: the place is going to be wet as well as hot, and probably has monsoons (this turned out to be wrong, and I fixed it later). We'll have the Gehennese grow rice as their staple crop. And there'll be jungle on the uncultivated parts. That's interesting. Make this country an archipelago of rather rugged islands, with lots of volcanoes and jungle. Stick in tigers and elephants (or maybe jaguars and tapirs- think about it later (I ended up settling on the tigers and elephants)).
Now, I want the Gehennese to have an advanced physical culture. Maybe up to clockwork. But to make things a bit different, I'll make metals scarce and expensive, so that people still use flint edges when their blades don't have to resist chipping. Scarce metals? The world is probably less dense than Earth. But I don't want people bouncing around in Martian gravity. Make the world bigger to compensate.
Now- the sky. A sun. Make it like ours, to be simple. The year? Why not 361 days- different enough to be distinct, like enough to avoid the necessity of awkward conversions. A moon? Yes. Why not. Give it a month of 32 days. A few planets. One inferior, like Venus. Three superior- make them red, blue, and green. Is anything going to be different? Well, lets reduce the obliquity of the ecliptic a bit, to reduce seasonal effects. And for a sort of romantic symbol of the whole thing, lets put a bright light, like Venus or brighter, in geostationary orbit. That's vivid and romantic. From any given point it will be invisible, or will be fixed at a certain point in the sky. Neat! You could navigate with a sextant and compass. Or just a sextant it you were careful. You won't need a chronometer. I think I'll call the geostationary star 'Indarian'. From the country I'm working on it appears, say, low in the western sky.
Okay, I'm beginning to like this. What about those 'Charm'd magic casements' and 'fairylands forlorn'. Well, perhaps the haunted castle has magical gates set in some of the window-casements. That'd make a good device for some future adventures. And one of them opens into a forlorn fairy-land. But why is the fairyland forlorn? Are the fairies dying out? Or going somewhere else? The latter? Okay, but we don't want the PCs to go there too: that would defeat the purpose of designing this place. Make it a 'mysterious otherworld of bliss, terror, and perpetual Indarian-light'. Call it 'the Sidhe', for convenience.
Now, this place is on the equator, in the intertropical wind convergence and blocking the equatorial wind drift. Make the seas around it a warm shallow eddy, a Worl-of-Isle Sargasso. Where the sea-dragons come to breed (maybe intrepid people will hunt the sea-dragons-- for bone, or leather, or oil, perhaps). All sorts of things will drift there and wash up on the beaches. And getting away from the place by sail-power would be awkward. That gives me an idea: perhaps in other countries 'go to <this place>' would be like 'get lost' or 'go to Hell'. [Agback rummages in his memory for an obscure hell- finds 'Jehenna' (Arabic)].
I'll call the place 'Gehennum'.
Regards,
Agback
