Worlds of Design: Breaking the Fantasy Mold

Fantasy worlds tend to remind us of medieval Europe in culture, rulership, even geography. Why?

Map courtesy of Lew Pulsipher​

A Long Tradition​

Tabletop role-playing games have a long traditional of European medieval fantasy, starting with Dungeons & Dragons. While there were occasional nods to other cultures (the monk class being one example, with monsters from other non-European cultures appearing in the Fiend Folio), by and large the “default” has been a Eurocentric view.

It’s worth looking into why this is and what to do about it. Mind, this article is not advocating one culture over another. My purpose is not to argue against using a certain culture, but to make designers and game masters aware of their influences and suggest alternatives if they're interested in branching out.

Why Is it Popular?​

Familiarity of the setting can give players context that helps them understand how the world works. Players (think they) know what Viking-like northern raiders are like, what southern lands are like, and so forth. Many players won’t care that the world derives from a European view. But it's helpful to define what Eurocentrism is. Sciencedirect.com notes there are several definitions, and provides a few of them as:

...an attitude, conceptual apparatus, or set of empirical beliefs that frame Europe as the primary engine and architect of world history, the bearer of universal values and reason, and the pinnacle and therefore model of progress and development.

Early Dungeons & Dragons is heavily Eurocentric, and many of the more experienced players and GMs learned RPGs from D&D and early fantasy literature. After all, the most famous fantasy world, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, is recognizably Eurocentric in culture and even conformation. The ocean is to the west, raids (Angmar, dragons) come from the north, technology is medieval, etc. “Tolkien-centric” is also Eurocentric (see my previous article on this, “Escaping Tolkien”).

There’s a lot more to Eurocentrism than just geography. Technology level, feudalism and nobility, strong religious influence, are all part of the package. Even forms of magic.

Branching Out​

There are plenty of alternatives to Eurocentrism. One of the earliest examples was created by linguist M. A. R. Barker. Empire of the Petal Throne was one of the first RPGs after D&D, and borrowed many mechanics from the D&D rules. But the setting was exotic, far from medieval fantasy or Tolkien, closer to east Asia. The novels that he wrote about the world reminded the reader of the differences (e.g., Prince of Skulls and Lords of Tsamra).

TSR later followed suit, exploring some of these in their settings, such as Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, and many others. Notably missing from many of these efforts were creators representing the cultures that inspired these settings; as tabletop gaming has expanded globally, we’re thankfully seeing more and more creators sharing their cultures and perspectives.

If you want to expand your fantasy campaign beyond European influences, there's plenty to choose from.

Exploring New Lands​

An important first step is to learn about other cultures, and real-world history can serve as inspiration. Please note that this is a surface level review of entire swaths of human history; these one paragraph summaries are not meant to be comprehensive.

• Japan has had a single Emperor for more than a millennium. But for much of that time the Emperor did not actually rule, rather a hereditary military dictator called the Shogun was the ruler. Occasionally an Emperor would rebel and a war ensued (the emperor losing). The families that controlled the shogunate succession changed at least twice. Finally, in the 19th century, an emperor prevailed and the Shogunate disappeared. I can’t think of any analog to this, in the long term, in the rest of the world.
• Medieval China was often quite secular. There was reverence of ancestors which might amount to worship, but Confucian philosophy was dominant, and there are no gods in Confucianism. Nor are there gods in original Buddhism, the other spiritual guide in medieval China.
• There are also pre-medieval European cultures to consider. If we go back to the Republic of the Roman Empire, personal patronage was very important. Each client had a relationship with a patron, generally someone from a higher strata of society. The client might refer to the patron as often as every day to see what that patron needed and wanted. And the patron looked after those in his care. “The relationship was hierarchical, but obligations were mutual.”
• There are now many other options in fantasy and sci-fi literature as well, including afrofuturism and indigenous futurism.

We are now blessed with many cultural alternatives written by gamers from all over the world. I encourage you to do your own research if any of these cultures spark your interest.

Think about how any one of these cultures would make a difference in a fantasy (or science fiction) world. Science fiction world settings are much less likely to be Eurocentric, just as science fiction in general is often not reflective of the contemporary world.

Your Map, You World​

The graphic above is my campaign map. I don’t think I consciously avoided comparisons with European geography when I made the map for my very long-running campaign, but that didn’t prevent me from having many European references. But I also borrowed from science fiction/fantasy as well (the Half-Horse, the 8 Arrowed Sign of Chaos, etc.).

By the way, there is a virtue to not making an overall map for a campaign setting, instead just providing wilderness to explore. Which is what I did at first (see my article, “Here Be Monsters”). Maps are constraints, as fantasy author Glen Cook once said:

With the Black Company I took advice from Fritz Leiber who was my mentor and who said “Don’t draw a map because if you draw a map, as soon as you start drawing the map, you start narrowing your possibilities”. As long as you don’t have a map you don’t have to conform to certain things. I have a vague map inside my head and I’ve seen many maps on the internet of what people thought the Black Company world might be like. They’re not too far off, but they’re not close either. It’s north and south with a pond in the middle.

...but I also see maps (and worlds) as an invitation to the players to go beyond the European-inspired places they know.

Your Turn: What cultures influence your fantasy and sci-fi campaigns?

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

This isn't to say that European-inspired settings can't work. They absolutely can. Some are good enough to even overcome my baseline antipathy. But I have grown weary of the constant echo-chamber of "Dung Ages" with schizotech and ridiculous socioeconomic contradictions being passed off as "historically accurate" (and, far worse, then using "historical accuracy" to justify including the worst crappy behavior or social mores of these societies, often to degrees even more extreme than history supports!)

Some day I want a setting to advertise itself as "historically unaccurate": just unabashedly anachronistic (without being offensive).

 

[Laurefindel]

… inspired geographically by Morocco, culturally by Al-Andalus and Golden Age Islam, politically by Mughal India, etc.—a blend of many different parts of the Islamic world. Where "sword and sandal" evokes Ancient Greco-Roman adventure, one might call this "scimitar and sandal", directly inspired by my childhood reading of The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor and parts of The Thousand and One Nights. There's also light touches of another land, Yuxia, the Jade Home, which is explicitly wuxia-inspired.

Those types of settings have been criticized before though, and many went back to old tired clichés after being accused (rightly or wrongly) of cultural appropriation and use of stereotypes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Not to de-rail the thread, but my wife is Moroccan and I would love to hear more about your Jewel of the Desert game.

I cannot promise that it is highly historically accurate; as noted, it's strongly inspired by stories like Sinbad and the Thousand and One Nights, but I have tried to draw on real stuff as much as I can (and have listened to advice from someone of North African ancestry who cares about the history of their ancestors' lands.)

Spoiler: The Tarrakhuna

The Tarrakhuna is a region varying from semi-arid plains to outright desert wastes, where the winds shift the sands and ancient secrets are slowly being revealed.

Around two thousand years ago, the ancient Genie-Rajahs ruled this land as magical tyrants. Some were benevolent, some were horridly cruel, but pretty much all of them practiced slavery of the mortal races. Those mortals who didn't live under the tyranny of the Genie-Rajahs eked out a hardscrabble existence in the lands between the cities. Among them, those who learned how to embody or speak to the spirits of wind and wave, sand and sun, beast and spirit, aided or even led them, developing the two sides of the Kahina, the druids who embody the "living" spirits of beasts and elementals, and the shaman who parley with the "dead" spirits of archetypes and forms in Al-Barzakh, colloquially called "the spirit world". They held great influence in this time since they were kinda the only other option for mortals who wanted to survive in this harsh land.

Then a Very Big Something happened (we're still figuring out what!), which altered the world in such a way that the Genie-Rajahs elected to leave it--which they assure historians had nothing whatsoever to do with the widespread slave revolts/mortal rebellion against their enslaving despots. So the genies retreated to the elemental otherworld, Al-Akirah, to a land that geographically corresponds to the Tarrakhuna and has come to be called "Jinnistan", divided up amongst many feuding nobles and their city-states. As a result, slavery of all kinds is a HUGE no-no in this land, and nearly all mortal races are considered "part of society", even many that would be excluded in other lands, e.g. we've seen ogre caravanserai owners, minotaur potters, and many many orcs and half-orcs. Although there is a division between city-dwellers and the nomad tribes, the nomads are pointedly NOT considered "barbarians" because they were part of the rebellion against the Genie-Rajahs.

In the wake of the genies' departure, a new religion sprang up which, paired with the united front mortals had made against their enslavers, helped to establish the cultural identity of the new mortal culture developing in the Tarrakhuna. This "Safiqi Priesthood" established the first human-built city, Kafer-Naum, which is the religious capital of the region, located near the eastern mountains at the headwaters of the region's largest river, the Sadalbari. The Safiqi revere "The One", and they claim They are the monotheistic creator and sustainer of all things, but the One is infinite and thus incomprehensible in Their entirety to a mortal mind, so they focus on specific facets or aspects of the One--it's all one being, but people focus on a particular conception of what the One's power is or means. By far the most commonly revered aspect is the Great Architect, the One as planner-builder-ruler of the cosmos, but several others exist, such as the Soothing Flame (healing and social work, strongly associated with healers), the Stalwart Soldier (popular among soldiers, guards, and the Temple Knights aka paladins), the Unknown Knower (popular among Waziri mages and ne'er-do-wells), and the Resolute Seeker (not as popular in general, but valued by those who hunt monsters of all sorts, humanoid or otherwise, in dark or perilous places).

Because the One is pre-gender, that is, theologically understood to predate the very concept of gender, the Safiqi priesthood does not care about the gender of prospective priests. Certain orders have vows of celibacy but it isn't required for priests in general. We haven't officially established a single head-of-religion so I'm inclined toward a collegiate/council type government for the faith. The Safiqi shoulder a significant amount of the healing and social-work of the region and sponsor childhood education so that all people of the Tarrakhuna can read the scriptures.

But the Safiqi and Kahina (who only sometimes get along!) are far from the only magical traditions of this land. The most influential--or at least tied with the Safiqi--is assuredly the aforementioned Waziri Order. The Waziri are an academic-scientific-magical society that assists with both non-magical stuff (e.g. Waziri-run colleges teach law, medicine, alchemy, etc., things that don't require a person to develop what I call "magical senses"; Waziri libraries are commonplace; they maintain museums of both natural history and magical phenomena; etc.) and with, as one would expect wizards to do, actual magic education and research. Waziri magic is extremely powerful but very, VERY dangerous if mishandled--as in, if you do it wrong, "blowing up the building you're in" is one of the nicer ways to go out. So the Waziri have this quixotic love-hate relationship with other forms of magic. They look down on it for being "untrained" (even though training is almost always required...), for being "unthinking" etc. etc., but they also depend on such magic for advancing their field--blind experimentation is almost completely useless to them, so they have to dissect or imitate the magic of others and then reconstruct it via esoteric mathematics and arcane geometries. But their magic is powerful and lucrative, so they'll always have a place--even the hardliners among the Safiqi can't truly dispense with them.

At the other end of the Sadalbari, we find the titular "Jewel of the Desert", the city of Al-Rakkah, the largest and most powerful of the city-states of the region, albeit not so powerful as to directly rule beyond its official territory. Ruled wisely and well by the young Thuriya Salah al-Din bint-Karim Zaman sitt-Rakkah, Padishah Sultana of Al-Rakkah and its Islands and Environs, "the Sultana" or "Sultana Thuriya" for short, youngest daughter of the "Old Sultan", Iskandar, who was a brilliant leader in his youth but went kinda bugnuts crazy in his old age. Al-Rakkah is still recovering from the damage inflicted by his last decade of rule, but the Sultana has done well in putting things back together--in part because of the aid of adventurers who prevented a plot to assassinate her shortly after she began her formal reign (there was a roughly five-year regency following her father's death, at the hands of a popular uprising that included a significant chunk of the city's military.)

Al-Rakkah, like the Tarrakhuna in general, is a place of secrets and danger, but also immense wealth and opportunity. By far the largest trade hub on the western coast of its continent, it trades all manner of goods from both the eastern steppe beyond the mountains and the vast Sapphire Sea, with its Ten-Thousand Isles full of mystery and treasure and long-forgotten societies. On the far side of the Sapphire Sea lies Yuxia, the Jade Home, whence comes many other exotic things as well; Sultana Thuriya has only recently had a trade delegation return from there with lucrative trade contracts and hopes of long-term diplomatic ties.

Of course, this land is beset with trouble on many fronts. A mysterious gang of alchemically-altered thugs has been disrupting business in Al-Rakkah for years. Rumors rise that the Zil al-Ghurab, the "Raven-Shadows", were not destroyed two centuries ago as the Safiqi believe, but instead went underground yet again and are now ready to return. Strange whispers seep from the catacombs and underplaces in Al-Rakkah and beyond--signs ancient and recent of a "Cult of the Burning Eye". And the Shadow-Druids, once thought to be little more than superstitious nonsense even to the Kahina, have been recently proven to exist--and be far more powerful than anyone realized.

There's way more I could talk about, but honestly that much is probably enough for now.

Semi-relatedly, something I've often struggled with is valuing the presence of truly evil Devils and Demons, but wanting them to be genuinely sapient beings with moral agency. So I solved the problem with a different idea!

Spoiler: LONG digression about faith, devils, and demons

So, just to lay out an important note first: indirect revelation via a loyal celestial Servant has revealed that the One openly admits They cannot prove Their divinity beyond all doubt. There is no magic which could verify it without possibility of being fooled or inaccurate, the limitations of divination magic mean that it can't look back far enough to see the dawn of time with anything even approaching reliability, and absolutely EVERYTHING that is old enough to personally know the truth has a massive conflict of interest on the subject. So whether They are in fact the one true god, or just a god among many, or not even a god at all, is purely a matter of faith--you can look for what evidence matters to you, but ultimately you have to decide what, if anything, that evidence means. Many Waziri secretly don't really believe, for example, and a fair number of "orthodox" Kahina think the One is merely an extraordinarily powerful city spirit.

Anyway. Back to Devils and Demons. The One has a Divine Plan and celestial Servants to help bring that plan about. But They also command Their Servants to never, EVER use force to make mortals obey that plan; the free will of mortals is an essential part of that plan and cannot be sacrificed. However, some Servants became immensely frustrated by the stupid, selfish, destructive disobedience of many, many, many of the mortals they were trying to help...so they broke that one directive and tried to coerce mortals by force. This sparked a War in Heaven. To any being outside of this War, it was over instantaneously. To every being involved in it (read: every celestial that has ever existed), it was infinitely long. During the War in Heaven, a portion of both sides, both Servants and Rebels, came to enjoy the War itself, reveling in the destruction and chaos.

So, in the end, all three factions remained--and all three believe they won. The Servants believe the One placed curses on both the Rebels (Devils) and the "twice-fallen" (Demons): the Rebels were cursed to be bound by the very coercive laws they championed, while the "twice-fallen" became consumed by their base instincts and incapable of escaping them. The Devils believe they won by tenacity the right to prove that their way is in fact the correct way, and that the chains of law are their tool, not their prison. The Demons believe they won by conquest the right to slake their unending, everburning desires wherever they want for as long as they want.

Because it was a literally infinitely-long war, if ordinary persuasion COULD have convinced any particular devil or demon to depart from their chosen course, they already would have. No argument based on logic or reason or entreaties could ever work on them because they've heard every possible variation of every possible argument too many times to count. But it is still--at least in theory--possible that experience could change their minds. It essentially never does, but the party knows at least one case where this did happen, and a former succubus has become...something else. Nobody really knows what she is. She has surrendered her succubus powers to her (mortal) tiefling descendant, but somehow managed to keep the one thing she loved most, her beautiful singing voice, which she takes as proof that the One has forgiven her and will permit her a mortal death so that she can join her mortal husband in the afterlife.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Those types of settings have been criticized before though, and many went back to old tired clichés after being accused (rightly or wrongly) of cultural appropriation and use of stereotypes.

Well, you may look above at my own description of my work to see what you think.

 

[lynnfredricks]

Well the problem is that it's pop-history "medieval", and specifically Anglosphere-centric pop history. So the further you get away from a ~500-mile radius around London, the more you lose of actual medieval history.

And that pop history contains wildly inaccurate understanding of all sorts of things. Technology (absolutely no cannons or gunpowder or handguns, but widespread plate armor and rapiers...even though cannons and handguns and gunpowder predate the development of plate armor!), economics, politics, social structures, they're all a huge mess ranging from 4th century ex-Roman Britain to 11th-century France to 15th-century basically Renaissance Italy and everything in-betwen.

Yes. But as I pointed out also, that's become a part of "D&D-centric" design that influenced both tabletop and computer RPGs. RPGs then created in non-Western countries then pick up the same tropes, even when the games aren't necessarily intended for consumption outside of those non-Western countries.

 

[Laurefindel]

Well, you may look above at my own description of my work to see what you think.

I didn’t mean to criticize your work, far from it, so I apologize if that’s how it came across.

What I meant is that going outside western culture requires as much research and sensibility as doing a good pseudo-European setting.

Lazy writing is lazy. It doesn’t matter if it’s cliché or novel, grounded or fantastical, familiar or exotic, etc. Non-western cultures and inspirations alone are not gonna save a lazy setting.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I didn’t mean to criticize your work, far from it, so I apologize if that’s how it came across.

What I meant is that going outside western culture requires as much research and sensibility as doing a good pseudo-European setting.

Lazy writing is lazy. It doesn’t matter if it’s cliché or novel, grounded or fantastical, familiar or exotic, etc. Non-western cultures and inspirations alone are not gonna save a lazy setting.

I guess my thing is, in certain specific ways, it is easier to "get away with" lazy writing with this stuff, because it's so widely done and full of so many mistaken ideas internal to the cultures that are the inheritors of the things inspiring it. That is, modern English folks, modern French folks, etc. are not likely to get upset or frustrated by the schizotech silliness or the ridiculous mismash of social structures, because they're so used to their own people telling such stories. But while it's quite easy for a person who doesn't belong to <Historical Culture Q> or any of its descendants to write something that utterly fails to look like Q to <Q's inheritor culture P>, it's usually really, really easy for someone who does know Q or personally does come from culture P to call out those flaws (in part because they're often really obvious and really crappy). So if you set out to do something you already know you DON'T know, well, as the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon taught me, "I learned that not knowing something can be a tool, just like flesh and steel, if upon encountering it, you attempt to know its nature and how it came to be." Ignorance, not so much as strength, but as a motivator: because you know that you don't know what you're doing, you know you NEED to research before you proceed.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's easier to get massively wrong with a culture/history you don't belong to, but it's way, way easier to retain a host of subtle issues with a culture/history you do belong to and thus think you're more familiar with than you actually are.

 

[Koloth]

I think the reason early D&D used Euro-centric middle ages for the settings was the early customer base was primarily United States Americans. To US Americans, middle ages Europe IS largely fantasy. It has things like Kings, Queens and the whole royal entourage complete with castles and such. Things that the US got rid of after that little ruckus in the late 1770s. Oddly, a lot of Americans remain fascinated with the whole English Royalty thing so setting the new D&D role playing game in such a background made the game an easier sell. "Oh, I get to pretend to be a Prince or a Knight! Cool!..." Bonus points for tossing in the Elves and Hobbits from Middle Earth. "Oh, I get to be an Elven Princess!..." Then inertia set in. There were some exceptions as has been noted, but largely the basic settings have stayed Euro-royalty-government based. Even Traveller has the basic Imperial government using the Euro model for Feudalism so it isn't just D&D. If it works, why risk changing it and having a pile of unsold books clutter up a warehouse along with several 'rent due' letters?

As the customer base has grown both in numbers and geography, it became easier to market non-Euro settings. Which is good, there are so many options one can use from Earth history other then Euro middle ages.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I didn’t mean to criticize your work, far from it, so I apologize if that’s how it came across.

What I meant is that going outside western culture requires as much research and sensibility as doing a good pseudo-European setting.

Lazy writing is lazy. It doesn’t matter if it’s cliché or novel, grounded or fantastical, familiar or exotic, etc. Non-western cultures and inspirations alone are not gonna save a lazy setting.

I think there is room for lots of different approaches here. Some people will be very focused on historical accuracy and cultural accuracy, other people are going to take inspiration from anachronistic films and comics. Sometimes we almost fetishize authenticity. I mentioned anachronisms before, when I was saying how well suited Historical China is to fantasy roleplaying. But I don't think being anachronistic or inaccurate is a bad (sometimes it is a creative choice, sometimes it arises out of misunderstanding). I kind of enjoy when I am watching foreign media and they get something very wrong about the US or more broadly about the west, but I can usually see how the misinterpretation arose and sometimes it adds something new and interesting. I definitely want people to explore history and other cultures, but I think we can stifle that curiosity when people when we fixate on things needing to be super accurate

 

[Hand of Evil]

Well, back in the day it was a lot of history books about European history and design that I could steal and base my games on. You use what is most available to you.